The light was far, far away but bright enough to wake me in the absolute darkness of my bedchambers. I had lost track of time in the random walk to Zion. Day, night, date held no real meaning anymore, and why should it? There was only the false dawn dressed in enemy white. I perambled lazily to the control room, forgoing dress and ablution, to the serial already in progress.

“Zion control to unidentified craft.”

Beat.

“I'm telling you Dash, it's a bird on the dish.”

“And I'm telling you, it's not a bird!”

I could hear the eyeroll in the lack of response. I watched Zion approaching, not through my monitors but via the growing glowing dot through the bulkheads. I pulled a screen over, comparing telemetry to the dot. They didn't quite line up. Gravity or refraction maybe. I had neither the time nor the inclination to recalibrate.

“I just flew up there and checked. There's no birds and nothing's wrong. They're just not responding.”

“Zion air control to unidentified flying object on all channels. Please respond.” Another sigh. “Look, Rainbow Dash. Rangefinder, repeater, telemetry satellite. It would have to be huge to make a ping that big at that range. Nothing that size flies. It's an animal on the dish or something and the rangefinder's picking up something else. You're probably just scaring it away when you go check."

I flipped the switch that connected the visual receiver, and got a nice view of the back of a head to complement the audio feed. The head in turn was connected to a teenager in an ancient bombardier jacket, who was busy demonstrating Italian gesticulation as he argued with a blue pony with a rainbow mane. Oddly, his accent was east coast. He was resting on the edge of a large workstation dominated by a radar display.

“Pinging something else like what?”

“I dunno, a deorbiting satellite or something? Reflection off weird weather phenomena? Swamp gas? Does it matter? I want to go flying Dash. This is a waste of time.”

I slid back. Responding required a physical component to be retrieved and connected. At least I had the entertainment of a machine arguing with a teen behind me. Component retrieved, encryption selected, message typed in, then component connected. I waited a moment as the machine worked. A momentary lag preceded the click-sh-whirr-beep of coded message bounced from me to Zion's rado and back again.

“Da Fuck?” He seemed confused as encryption cycled through transauditory frequencies and back again.

“It's responding! Clouds don't respond!”

“Raindude, that's like aliens or shit.”

I face palmed. Why am I surrounded by these incompetent fools? I went to switch to a unencrypted message, before realizing I didn't have a way to send an unencrypted message. Pulling the encryption module would physically disconnect the transmitter. I rummaged for a solution.

They had sent SETI's greeting for extraterrestrials.

I was well passed tired of this insanity. Morse code was the simplest encryption I had, and I slammed it in. I sat back to the reassuring beep of “Hailing Zion air control, requesting landing clearance.”

I reclined and relaxed while I waited for tweedle dumb and tweedle dumber to parse my request. I had a great view of them on open comm, having a rousing debate on whether or not aliens use Morse code. Finally, he responded in hand typed Morse with the casual proficiency of a second language. I received the response in wuxia stereo.

“Zion control to unidentified aircraft.” Awkward pause. “What the hell are you flying, the ruins of NYC?”

I type my reply in the liminal space between malaise and amusement. “Something like that. Do you have a space for me to set down?”

They looked back at each other with a long “uhhhh” before sending, “Let me get back to you.” He pulled out a ponypad and flipped it open. When the hell did those come in flip phones?

“Hey, Starbreezer. Could you get the mayor on the horn? We've got a plane coming in and we need a place for it to land.”

“That's sure as hell not a plane,” The bot was laughing at him.

“Okay, well. Give me a minute.”

A message came in a rapid series of beeps. “What's your callsign?”

I considered the question. “I don't understand.”

“What do I call you? What are you flying?”

“This is,” I hesitated, “the penultimate defense.”

He turned back to the pad “Tell him the callsign is 'The Penultimate Defense.' Ask him if maybe Twilight can figure out what the hell it is and where we can put it.”

The response was alarmingly fast. “Twi says it's an airship? Mayor says to put it down in the north fields. They're fallow except for some soybeans. He'll get together the welcome wagon.”

“Does he need a ride? Pinkie can be pretty energetic.”

“Nah, Celestia will bring him.”

“Damn, she doesn't usually meet newbies.”

I had course laid in almost before he had finished tapping it out to me. I threw out a terse acknowledgment of “Thanks, Ace.” and was on my way.

“How the hell did he know my name's Ace?”

“Dude, what makes you think he's a he?”

I switched off the inanity of betting on my gender and focused on the external view. Without drones deployed to crowd source the video feed resolution wasn't the best. Still, I could make out the ant like shapes of ponies and people as I descended for landing. They were a mix of brightly colored bodies, ponies and humans alike, with just enough drab to accentuate the mosaic. So too were the buildings, a mix of eclectic styles painted together by a masterful eye. The modern and pastoral mixed harmoniously with each shade between in perfect accent. In total it gave the impression of idyllic perfection.

I cast a looming shadow over Zion in the bright afternoon light. My approach was over mostly automated fields of crops. The enemy's presence was subtle, bright in the machinery but mostly absent from the soil and plant life. Killing the lights allowed me to check sensors against the naked eye. Satisfied in their congruity, I considered the risks of her pale choir. Caution prevailed.

Ordinance that once was awkward came into its time. Extreme exothermic reaction combined with MASER and raw current to produce an anti material conflagration of biblical timbre. The crater below me formed a meters deep molten pool of magmatic slag. When I was thoroughly convinced nothing could have survived I dropped the nitrogen bomb.

The inevitability of the ideal gas law coated the lake with a deadly fog as it froze. Much work was needed with the maser to ensure the landing zone solidified properly, free of dangerous crevasse and sharp edges. A few more coats of liquified gas and it was done. The landing zone was far from perfect, but it should protect me from a nanite based attack long enough.

A swarm of pegasi buzzed at minimum safe distance like bees from a shaken hive. There was a small crowd under them. I tossed out a quick message of “Landing now. Approach when ready.” and saw a figure flip open a pony pad. I set the reactor to overload and booked to the airlock. There was just enough time to dress and cycle the airlock open with dramatic timing as they arrived.

They were a motley crew. Ace and Rainbow Dash, looking sheepish and out of place. A Twilight Sparkle, looking intrigued yet alone. And finally the enemy herself, her avatar bearing an old man with white knees on her back. They bore the unmistakable grim gravitas of a politician at war. The enemy greeted me before I fully took them in.

“It's nice that you finally made it Tempest Shine. Your entrance was certainly grand, even for you.”

There was only one polite way to greet her back.

“I'm here to discuss terms for surrender.”

Author's Note

Thanks to Squarks for pre reading. The end of the story is near.