Psychologists spent twenty centuries perfecting the sound of the alarm, optimizing it to cleave into the human soul, shake the sleeper to wakefulness, drive the cobwebs of fatigue from the mind, and focus years of training into professionalized violence.
What the noise did to a pony's ears was even worse. Ears tucked flat to her head, Midshipmare Rainbow Dash rolled out of her bunk and landed all four hooves solidly on the floor of the midshipmen's quarters. She was already pulling on her skintight vacuum suit before the others—five midshipmen, six midshipwomen—were even out of their bunks.
The alarm's scream dropped in volume as the voice of the bosun cut across HMS Minotaur: "General quarters! General quarters! All hands man your battle stations!"
Hooves, Dash thought with a thin grin, slamming her rear hooves into the suit's boots. All hands and hooves.
The others grabbed their skinsuits and began dressing for battle stations, too. Dash grimaced, making the plumbing connections.
The announcement continued: "An unidentified task force has come out of hyperspace to system north. Distance twelve light minutes."
Well, no surprise there. She got her suit zipped and slung her helmet over her back. Dash tapped a boot on the floor, chest tight with held breath, waiting for the next part of the announc—
"Flight crews, man your ships."
Dash released a breath. This was it, then.
Midshipwoman Rolanda Young, who slept in the bunk below Dash's, dropped to her knees and crouched to go eye to eye with Dash. She extended a clenched fist. "Stay safe," she said.
Her Majesty's Ship Minotaur was a Light Attack Craft carrier. Its job was to launch its shoal of LACs and then scurry away, like a chipmunk chased by a hexapuma. The eleven other middies' battlestations were all aboard the ship herself: weapons, engineering, communications.
Dash, however, was the helmsmare of Her Majesty's LAC Dragon Zero Nine, and the LAC squadrons went out to meet the enemy.
And, inevitably, fewer LACs came back then went out. The others all knew Dash would be hundreds of millions of kilometers closer to the enemy than them.
Dash bumped Rolanda's fist, flicked her ears, and nodded to other middies. They nodded back. She galloped from their quarters and joined the rush of ratings and officers headed to their battle stations, wishing the suit didn't need to cover her wings.
"Four minutes to the mark," said the astrogator.
"Acknowledged," replied Lieutenant Smyth-Jones, Dragon Zero Nine's skipper.
Dash sweated, despite the perfectly cooled air that circulated in her helmet. Strapped tight into her battle station's shock frame, she rested her forehooves on the steering yoke and her rear hooves on the yaw-pitch pedals.
How were the others so cool? The wing of LACs was falling stealthily but steadily toward a formation that outweighed them one hundred to one. Two superdreadnoughts, twenty-six battlecruisers, and a screen of cruisers and destroyers were accelerating into the system, towards the planet.
"Stealth?" asked Smyth-Jones.
"Fully functional," replied the warrant officer.
"Message from Dragon Zero One, Skipper," said the petty officer at communications. "Squadron is to pitch up two degrees and drop five gravities in twenty seconds."
Smyth-Jones looked at Dash and pointed.
"Aye aye, sir," Dash said. "Pitch up two degrees, reduce to one-forty-two gravities acceleration... n—now."
She watched the ghostly image of their squadron leader's LAC on her sensors. Delicately, Dash's hooves pulled on the yoke. Her tail, wrapped in the balloon-like protection of her spacesuit, twitched the throttle down, following the rest of the squadron. Dragon Zero Nine was in the squadron's tail-end position. Dash twitched the throttle down a little more, for two-tenths of a second, slotting just so into the formation the battle computers had calculated for the best mutual missile defense.
"Three minutes."
Sweat pooled under Dash's wings and ran down her back. The grav plates kept the ship's interior at a steady one gravity, pulling the sweat down and into her eyes. She blinked.
Her wings itched, feathers sweat-matted under the protection of the suit and driving her mad, the muscles sore from hours folded tight to her flanks. She needed to pee but never really trusted the suit's plumbing connections, no doubt designed by a male human mechanical engineer hundreds of light years from any hostile starships' fire.
"Two minutes."
The Solarian League Navy wasn't up to the Royal Navy's snuff, but a lucky shot would make you just as dead. LACs like Dragon Zero Nine didn't have the armor or shielding of a proper warship; their protections were speed, surprise, and stealth. Even a light kiss from a battlecruiser-grade missile or laser would gut their LAC, probably blow it to atoms.
Dash took her forehooves off the yoke, one at a time, stretching her shoulders and back, limbering up for the upcoming battle.
They would cross the Solarian's missile envelope in under two minutes, and the range of their energy weapons in but a few seconds, followed by the LACs going to full stealth and running for the depths of space after their slashing surprise attack at knife range. So... My first battle's going to be quick, at least. Get my hooves wet.
"One minute."
Knife range. Dash grinned without any real humor. She always used human cliches, didn't she? A proper pony would have said hooves' reach. Well, Dash knew she wasn't really much of a pony...
The worst part, Dash decided, was the canned air. A pony didn't realize how much she depended on her nose to read humans' emotions until she was crammed into a battlesteel can with nine humans, and all she could smell was her own recycled sweat. Sure, Dash read human facial expressions better than any other pony she knew, but that didn't mean she was good at human body language or tone of voice. The nose knew better.
Were the other nine as terrified as she was? Or were they as cool as their clipped voices seemed to indicate? She couldn't tell without their scents...
Dash swallowed. She'd thought four years at the academy had prepared her for this, but now she realized no number of drills—
"Helm?" Came the skipper's voice, on a private one-on-one channel.
"S—sir?" Dash said.
"Dash, you'll do good. You're the best natural pilot I've ever seen."
"Thanks, sir."
The skipper switched to the all-hands channel: "Thirty seconds. Ripple fire the missiles on the tick, helm and counter-missiles free for self defense when the last bird is gone. We'll only get one energy shot at this crossing speed. Midshipwoman Dash: slew to bring the main battery to bear as we cross their formation, call the shot yourself. You'll have the best view."
The entire crew replied with Aye-aye, sir.
Dash bit her cheek. Midshipwoman Dash? Well, close enough, and the skipper hadn't had a pony bef—
"Five. Four. Three. Two. One."
The entire LAC wing drove their acceleration to over six hundred gravities and belched missiles.
All twenty thousand tons of Dragon Zero Nine shook as grav drivers salvoed her twenty missiles from the four rotary launchers. Dash watched the Solarian formation, hooves light on the controls, letting the computer handle maneuvers until their shipkillers were away.
The Solarians' radars and sensors went hot, lashing the LACs, burning through their stealth—
"Missile threat port!" barked the defensive systems operator, tagging the missile on Dash's screen.
Christ, but the Solarians were fast with return fire today. As soon as their last bird was gone, Dash rolled the ship, interposing the thick bands of gravity focused by her drive. The bands absorbed the missile's high-megaton detonation without transmitting even a twitch to the ship.
"Missile threat forward!"
Dash killed their acceleration and yawed on thrusters, blocking another missile.
"Smartly done, Helm," the skipper said.
Idiots. The Solarians were spreading their fire across the formation instead of overwhelming one LAC at a time.
"Missile threat—two threats low port." Yaw, roll, pitch, accelerate, decelerate. Dash's hooves and tail worked as one, sweat soaking her forelock and spine as she watched her tactical displays and listened to the combat chatter on her headphones. The entire ship rattled with the whap-whap-whap of counter-missile launchers on rapid fire.
"Twenty seconds to energy range," astrogation called.
They would slide in between a superdreadnought and a battlecruiser, and the gamma-ray laser mounts on either of those ships could evaporate a tiny gnat like their LAC with even a glancing blow. Dash pitched the ship up, interposing the impenetrable gravity bands. Dash lined up a shot at one of the destroyers—
"Wyvern squadron gottem!" shouted Tactical as one of the superdreadnoughts exploded, breaking in half, seven million tons of metal and six thousand crew staggering from formation as lifeboats began to launch. The other superdreadnought slewed up, pouring on acceleration to dodge the debris—
The rest of Dragon squadron slashed through the Solarian formation, two LACs and twenty friends died, a destroyer exploded and a battlecruiser staggered as Dash's compatriots took snapshots with their LAC's massive main lasers—
The remaining superdreadnought, dodging the debris of its companion's pyre, was rising toward HMLAC Dragon Zero Nine, its nose pitching ponderously up—
Dash kicked her pedals, yawing, brought their nose straight down the narrow unshielded throat of the superdreadnought's gravity bands—
Return fire bored in, Dash rolling the ship as she yawed, dodging the superdreadnought's spite while bringing their own spinal-mounted weapon to bear—
She fired, not even consciously aiming, in the thousandth of a second she had an open shot at the monster's bow, expecting a returning snapshot from the capital ship's bow armament to blow them all to atoms—
Dash ran on the treadmill. She'd been spending a lot of time here, in the junior officers' gym, since the battle.
It was one of the only places she could think. The pony-style treadmills and weight machines were in the back corner of the gym, far away from the basketball court, the sparring salle, and the human-style weight and aerobic machines.
It was, quite simply, the only place she could be alone.
Midshipman's row was intolerable except to sleep, the other middies treating Dash like...
Like...
Like some sort of hero.
Two marine lieutenants sparred on the salle, practicing some martial art or another, full contact and heavily padded. A three-on-three game of engineers vs. tactical officers played out on the basketball court. Eduardo—one of the other middies, a communications specialist—lifted weights.
Dash raised her nose and sniffed. All the normal smells of humans, no hints of strong emotion. Just sweat and exertion.
But Dash ran, ran, ran. Frothy sweat dripping off her flanks, she ran. Thank goodness the humans' useless noses couldn't detect the thick reek of stress she smelled on herself.
Seventeen kilometers, said the treadmill. She tried to increase the speed but it was already at maximum. Her hooves pounded, a full sprint, wings flared wide over the walkways to either side of the treadmill. She needed to fly but it was hard to find a time when the cargo bay wasn't busy or under vacuum. As the only pegasus on the ship, it was hard to get special accommodations. So she ran today and planned wing-work on the weight machines tomorrow. Maybe shore leave if they got close enough to the planet... its gravity was obnoxiously high but Dash could almost taste the open sky...
She'd been here over an hour, slowly increasing the speed the whole time. In another hour or so, she would shower, then breakfast, and then her shift. The wing commander had a drill planned, and rumor said it would be a nasty one. Eight hours, minimum, strapped into Dragon Zero Nine in her skinsuit for the simulation, breathing canned air, drinking from the water nipple in the helmet. Then? To sleep, claiming tiredness to avoid speaking to any of the other middies.
Go to sleep with the privacy screen closed on her bunk, in case she spent the night staring at the ceiling again, wide-awake. Start over again tomorrow.
The door to the gym opened and then slid shut again. Dash's ears flicked, since no one came in the door while it was open.
Then a blue unicorn trotted from around the tall bank of weight machines that obscured the door, a towel around her neck and a water bottle levitating in front of her.
"Ensign," Dash said.
"So formal! Dash, good to see you."
"Trixie." Deep breath. Pounding run. "How're you?"
By a very strict reading of the rules, Trixie shouldn't be here. The ship really carried three separate crews: first, the ship's crew itself, like the other midshipmen Dash bunked with, or the other officers working out on the far side of the gym. Second, the ship carried the crews of the embarked LAC wing, like Dash. Third, much smaller but far more visible, the Minotaur was the flagship and carried the admiral and the admiral's staff officers, like Trixie.
"Trixie is excellent." She adjusted the next treadmill to a brisk walk and hopped aboard.
There was a dedicated gym down in Flag Country, near the quarters and the small cafeteria reserved for the admiral and her officers. But, there were no pony treadmills or weight machines in the Flag Officers' gym, so Trixie was forced to use this gym. Which... Dash didn't mind. They were two of only six ponies in the ship's company of three thousand, and she and Trixie were the only two pony officers.
And Dash needed someone—somepony—to talk to, today.
"How is Ms. Midshipmare Dash?" Trixie asked, increasing her treadmill to a trot. Trixie sniffed deeply and raised an eyebrow. The humans might not smell the reek of stress rolling off Dash, but Trixie clearly did.
Dash poked the controls with her nose, trying to up the speed a little more, forgetting it was already at the maximum—a maximum no human Manticore Games sprinter could dare to match, much less sustain.
"That bad?" Trixie said.
Dash flapped her wings, did an inside loop, and made a precise four-point landing on the control panel of her treadmill, glaring down at Trixie, then mashed the treadmill's off switch.
Trixie continued trotting, looking up at her. "Dash will cramp up if she doesn't cool down properly."
Dash hung her head, sweat dripping from her mane into her eyes.
"Join me at a trot, Dash." Trixie looked around. "It's just us mares. Talk?"
Dash set the treadmill to a quick trot and hopped back on.
"Trixie overheard Admiral Truman speaking to your wing commander. Expect a medal. But act surprised when you get it."
Dash cursed, using human marine slang no proper pony should have known.
"My squadron lost two craft," Dash said. "twenty friends, gone. Just—atoms on the solar wind. The wing lost nine total. Ninety."
"The Solarians surrendered. We took or destroyed over a hundred million tons of warships."
"They're lucky we accepted their surrender. Idiots."
Trixie didn't say anything.
"Hey, Trixie? Can I ask you a... a personal question?"
"Of course. But Trixie might not answer it, if it's too personal."
"That's fair. You're from Equestria. Originally, right?"
"Yes. Trixie's dad moved to Gryphon after the divorce. Trixie—" she coughed "—Trixie was ten years old and had to choose. She chose Dad."
Dash nodded. Gryphon was one of the Manticore system's three inhabited planets. Harsh and sparsely populated, it seemed to attract hardy immigrants from across the galaxy. "Your dad an asteroid miner, or something?"
Trixie laughed, then took a swig from her water bottle. "Asteroid miners need entertainment while they drink away their wages between cruises. Daddy's a stage magician. Trixie thought she would be, too."
"Huh. Why the Navy?"
She flicked her ears. "The war. Trixie became a Manticoran subject on her sixteenth birthday and applied to the academy when she was seventeen. Trixie's talent with fireworks translated into a talent for countermissile doctrine, and Admiral Truman put Trixie on her staff."
"Career Navy?" Dash asked.
"No. After the war... Landing City's Greatest Magic Stage Show!" Sparks flew from Trixie's horn.
"Okay," Dash said. "So you were raised around other ponies. Are we... are we really, well, as pacifist as people say?"
Trixie trotted for almost a minute. "No. Humans misunderstand 'Friendship' as a guiding principle for 'naiveté.' Ponies don't go looking for fights. They'd rather leave the hydra or the ursa in peace. But if they need to fight, ponies fight to win."
"Huh," Dash said. "Yeah, I guess."
They trotted next to each other, in silence, for another minute or two.
"Dash? You smell like Trixie's dad did the day before he told Mom he was filing for divorce. Stress and fear. You need to talk to somepony. Someone. And Trixie is here."
"I killed six thousand Solarians."
Trixie didn't say anything.
"I fired a one point five meter graser from the hip, right down their bows, and clipped a fusion plant. The ship blew up. Not a single life pod. Not one."
Trixie didn't say anything, but Dash felt a brief pat of magic between her ears.
"I don't feel bad. Not even a little. That seems... it seems like humans should be better killers than ponies. Can ponies kill? What are we like, Trixie? Really?"
"Dash?" Trixie asked. "You've never seen Equestria, have you? At least not that you remember."
"What makes you say that?"
"Dash's accent is pure Landing City. Dash curses by Hell or Christ, not Tartarus or Celestia."
"I haven't ever seen Equestria."
"Your parents...?" Trixie said. "If it's not too personal."
"Major Jasmine MacBeth, Royal Manticoran Marine Corps, and Surgeon Commander Doctor Richard MacBeth, Royal Manticoran Navy," Dash said.
"Does Dash have siblings?"
"John and Andrea. Andrea's a lieutenant jay-gee in Astro Control. John's a senior in high school. He's already signed papers to enlist in the Army when he graduates. It's... gonna be a hell of a long war. Everyone knows this."
"Does Dash want to talk about how..."
Dash hopped to the sides of the treadmill, hooves off the belt, turned her head toward Trixie, and stuck out her tongue.
Trixie's eyes widened, her legs froze, and the treadmill threw her clear, into a pile of hooves and fur against the weight machine opposite the treadmill. She jumped up and back onto the treadmill. "Trixie... apologizes. That was probably very insulting. Trixie, well. Trixie didn't know the Mesans manufactured ponies, too."
Dash pulled her tongue back in and rubbed it against the roof of her mouth. She usually didn't think about it, since it had been there literally before she was born, but when she concentrated, she could feel the ridges of taste buds that were arranged into the barcode.
"'Manufactured.' That's exactly the word. I was one of the first," Dash said.
The barcode the slavers from the planet Mesa had engineered into her zygote's DNA before growing her in a vat and decanting her into a creche.
"When I was nine," Dash said, "they started training me for my specialty. Well, we think I was probably nine-ish. Nurse Redheart at the Equestrian Embassy could only narrow my real age down plus-or-minus a year of her best guess. We picked my adoption day as my birthday, and subtracted thirteen years."
"I—" Trixie said, her voice weak. "I won't ask what your specialty was, but I can guess if you don't want to say it out loud."
"Most planets don't have any pony immigrants. The only reason Manticore or Gryphon or Sphinx have pony enclaves is how close Equestria is, less than five days in hyperspace. So most places don't realize what kind of work ponies could be good at. So the Mesans only thought of one job ponies can do. And it wasn't with my wings. It was under my tail."
"Trixie was afraid you'd say that," Trixie said. "Trixie is... ahem... I am sorry."
"It's not your fault I was genetically engineered to be a... toy." Dash shrugged her wings. "I know exactly whose fault it is. A whole planet of them."
"Trixie's been with Duchess Harrington's strike fleet since graduation. She hasn't seen the underside of the galaxy first-hoof. Trixie's, I've gotten letters from classmates on Admiral Sarnow's anti-slavery patrols, though. The letters are... bad."
"Five or ten times a day for years, they 'trained' me. When I was twelve, twelve-ish, they threw me on a freighter with a few thousand other slaves—no other ponies, just me, I was to be a free sample—and shipped us toward a depot in Silesia."
Trixie took another drink, and they jogged in silence for another few minutes while Dash glared at the distance readout on her treadmill.
"Her Majesty's Ships Goshawk and Cantrip ambushed and boarded the slaver. Mom was the marine platoon leader who rescued me. She let me watch her marines... well, the slavers got a scrupulously proper drumhead trial right there on their own ship before their last airlock cycle. She and dad adopted me. Mom wasn't real happy that I went navy instead of marines, but" —Dash smiled— "I'm one hell of a pilot. Mom says I'm just a chauffeur for Her Majesty's real fighting force."
Trixie chuckled.
"I hope they don't give me a medal," Dash said. "It was like... a video game. Slew, roll, fire, dodge, scatter, run."
"They came out of hyperspace with blood in their eyes," Trixie said. "And Solarian ships suck."
"I know, I know. But most of them were just dumb spacers following orders, like us... you know what I'm really thinking about, these last few days? Besides the recovered POWs I've seen getting marched from sickbay to the boat bay, of course?"
Trixie shook her head.
"I'm not... I'm not upset. A pony should feel bad, right? It's humans who are the killers in the galaxy. Have I, have I gone that far over the boundary? Did the slavers slip some human DNA into me before they grew me? Did I go native, growing up in a human family?"
"Ponies are just as individual as people, Dash."
"I joined the Navy to pop slavers. I want to go stomp Mesa flat. My serial number..." Dash rubbed her tongue against the roof of her mouth again. "C dash four zero one A slash zero zero two dash two slash six. Two out of six. I have five clones, somewhere. Are they dead? Are they getting 'rented out' right this second? Which would be worse?"
"We can't go stomp Mesa while the Solarians are protecting them. We need to make the League take their ball and go home first."
"Exactly. I'm not even not upset about that superdreadnought... I think I'm happy. I want to brush these idiot Sollies out of our way, so that we can get on to Mesa."
They trotted in silence for another minute.
"If we get leave," Trixie said, "Come visit me and my dad. Gryphon had the best snow skiing in this half of the galaxy, and Dad lives in a pony neighborhood. The population is... oh, ninety, maybe? We'll have a Hearth's Warming in July block party. Or January. Or whenever our next leave is. Dad always throws a party when I get leave."
Dash chuckled. "Maybe. Although I was basically raised human. I wonder if I should think of myself as a human."
Trixie bumped her treadmill up to a run. Dash slowed hers to a walk.
"Be the person you are. Don't worry if you're the right sort of pony. Or human. Just be Rainbow Dash."
"Trixie? Thanks. It was nice to talk about, well, things."
"Any time, Dash. You're a friend."
Dash reached out a wing and patted Trixie's back. "I'm going to go head back to the midshipman's quarters. I've been avoiding the others, but... well, they didn't do anything. It's not fair of me to dodge them."
"Trixie will see Dash later."
"Later."
Author's Note
Sequel
Constructive comments are always welcome. My brain has been on the theme "Pony, raised among humans, has questions about her identity." I've got several stories planned on this theme. I've recently re-read the 20+ books of the Honor Harrington series, so this short somehow ended up in that universe.
If you haven't read Honor Harrington, it's fun space opera. It's basically the Napoleonic Wars in spaaaaaaaaace. Start with On Basilisk Station.
