Moment of Honorby Cold FireChaptersPrologueChapter OneChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter TwoPrologueMoment of Honor By Cold Fire Inspired by the Honor Harrington series and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. These characters and the events that happen within the story are completely fictional, and any semblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. This story does not represent the views of David Weber, Baen Books, Hasbro, or DHX Studios. So, in other words, these aren't real people, it's not my intention to infringe on any copyrights, and this is all my idea. Terms Ship types(smallest to largest): LAC - Light attack craft, has no hyper capability FG - Frigate DD - Destroyer CL - Light cruiser CA - Heavy (armored) cruiser BC - Battlecruiser BC(P) - Battlecruiser pod-layer BB - Battleship DN - Dreadnought CLAC - LAC carrier SD - Superdreadnought SD(P) - Superdreadnought pod-layer Navies: SLN - Solarian League Navy IAN - Imperial Andermani Navy RMN - Royal Manticoran Navy GSN - Grayson Space Navy RHN - Republic of Haven Navy MAN - Mesan Alignment Navy Common terms: Alpha node - Generates a Warshawski sail Beta node - Generates an impeller wedge Warshawski sail - Disc of gravity in front and back of ship, used in gravity waves to gain much higher rate of acceleration than an impeller wedge Impeller wedge - Wedge of gravity on two sides of a ship, theoretically capable of instant acceleration to light speed, used in normal space and in between gravity waves Inertial compensator - Device that uses the gravity bands generated by the alpha and beta nodes to dump inertia and allow very high rates of acceleration Hyperspace - A higher dimension where all points of space are compressed together, allowing for faster travel Gravity waves - Bands of concentrated gravity in hyperspace, used as interstellar highways Ship of the wall - Any ship larger than a battlecruiser Andies - Inhabitants of the Anderman Empire Manties - Inhabitants of the Star Empire of Manticore Peeps - Inhabitants of the Republic of Haven Sollies - Inhabitants of the Solarian League P.D. - Post Diaspora, or years after 2102 Common Era A.D. - Ante Diaspora, or years before 2102 Common Era T-Year - Classic Old Earth year Prologue There aren't many more things worse than the violence of war after a period of peace. -Dastraya Lomwicki, 1209 P.D. The massive superdreadnought spun on its tail, desperately trying to intercept the incoming missiles with its impeller wedge. This ship, along with three inert wrecks and four more expanding balls of plasma, were all that had stood in the way of the group of well over seventy battlecruisers that had crossed the hyper limit of Minotaur five hours ago. The superdreadnoughts had performed well, taking out almost half of the battlecruisers, but the impossible salvoes had kept screaming in. No seventy old-style dreadnoughts could have put that many missiles into space, but that had changed along with the entire field of battle when the Royal Manticoran Navy had perfected its pod design. Now, instead of missile bays, the capital ships mounted cargo doors, each dropping a parasite pod every ten seconds. Each pod had ten missiles in single-shot "box launchers", designed to spend its shot and be recovered for overhaul. Each battlecruiser was capable of six pods per salvo, and they were double-salvoes as well, with half the speed but double the punch. That meant over a hundred missiles per ship, and the initial salvo had spread eight thousand missiles over two targets. The superdreadnoughts had taken out half of those ships and crippled many more, but two thousand missiles had raced out with the final salvo, and those missiles reached attack range and maneuvered to get better shots at their prey. The countermissiles destroyed almost five hundred, the last-ditch lasers caught three hundred more, and six hundred missiles missed or got swept up in the invulnerable impeller wedge, but that still left 528 missiles that got at their target. They detonated almost as one, and suddenly the SLNS Marzipan ceased to exist. The remaining twenty-six battlecruisers flipped over and began decelerating to pick up life pods and search the wrecks for survivors, and the K5 star behind them shone brightly. Chapter OneChapter One The funny thing about war is that everybody loses. Oh, the leaders might spout such garbage about how “Our losses were so much less than theirs,” but they still lost something, now didn’t they? -Jared Praneroad, 22 P.D. Steadholder Duchess Knight Admiral Lady Dame Honor Alexander-Harrington looked out over the deck of the RMN Stalwart as it cruised out of the Rembrandt system. Stalwart, her sister Stubborn, and six other superdreadnoughts were going out to chart unknown space between the Solarian League’s verge and the Talbott Sector. It was something of a miracle that nobody had even bothered to look there before, but wormholes dictated where people had gone just as much as railroads on Old Earth. There wasn’t much there, save one G4 star in the middle of nowhere. That was what Honor and the Admiralty were interested in. Of course, this could have been done by any rear admiral or even commodore, but Honor had volunteered out of whimsy. The Grand Alliance fleet was still building up. Haven and Grayson had delivered their bits and more, but Manticore was at least a T-year behind on production, which left Honor floundering for something to do. This mission had popped up in her docket, and she had gone for the bait. Many people would have seen this as a demotion, but she was just glad to have something to do, which brought her thoughts back to the bridge as the ships climbed into hyperspace. The trip would only take eight days, so she planned to settle down and let her staff and the people running the ships take care of business. Nimitz bleeked in approval of that plan. Nimitz was a cream and grey treecat, a six-limbed arboreal mammal from the planet of Sphinx, one of Manticore’s three habitable systems. Nimitz, and treecats in general, were very intelligent empaths and telepaths. Nobody truly understood how that telepathy worked, but it was obvious that the nerve clusters in their hips contributed. There were two nerve clusters; one for sending, one for receiving. Honor’s eyes darkened as she remembered the time when a brute from the terror regime of Haven’s previous rulers had broken his middle hip, making it so that he couldn’t send his thoughts anymore. That was what had led to the development of sign language so that Nimitz could communicate with both his own kind and humans, but Nimitz could still share thoughts with Honor, so she considered herself lucky. She felt Nimitz give her a little bit of happiness for that. Her eyes swept the bridge, and they stopped upon Captain (senior grade) Scotty Tremaine. Scotty had been with her since Basilisk, and she smiled as he took care of everything. He was very competent, and he handled his crew with a quick, crisp efficiency that made other captains quite jealous of his abilities. Like Honor, Tremaine had volunteered for this mission, but he had done so only when he had heard that Honor was going. He still followed her with almost puppy-like devotion, but he had matured from the first time she had seen him. What hadn’t changed was the fact that Senior Chief Warrant Officer Horace Harkness was with him. The Bureau of Personnel had realized they made an unstoppable duo, and this trip was no exception. Honor looked at the visual display, and the chaotic, strange patterns of hyperspace stretched out before her. She didn’t really have much to do this trip either, but she had some very evil surprises spread out for Scotty and his crew waiting in the simulation room tomorrow. Her smile turned into a nasty grin, and she turned to head to her quarters. Chapter ThreeChapter Three It’s human nature to make war. You don’t see animals doing it. In fact, they seem very much at peace with themselves, so can you really say humans are smarter than them? -Jonathan Carstairs, 738 P.D. “Preliminary scans show significant signs of life. Possibly sentient life, based on these habitats here,” the sensor tech reported. “How sentient, I can’t say. An expedition would have to be made with exobiologists just to determine if these are actually structures or just hollowed-out rocks.” “Thank you, Krimanson,” Tremaine said. “Let me know if you find anything more.” “Aye, Sir.” Stalwart and her companions were in orbit around the unnamed star’s only planet, a pretty blue pearl smack dab in the Goldilocks Zone of liquid water. There were pretty obvious signs of life, but the sensors hadn’t detected any signs of advanced communication, which suggested the life here was either not sentient or in its very early stages of development. The sensor tech had still done well to spot the not-too-obvious habitats, and Tremaine had still done well in congratulating him. Honor looked on the scene with pride. She knew exactly who would be making first contact. It would be her, Scotty, Harkness, Lieutenant Surgeon Montoya, and a few exobiologists. Montoya was another friend from Basilisk, just like old times. She turned back with Nimitz on her shoulder, and she went to prepare for her expedition. One hour later, Honor, Nimitz, Tremaine, Harkness, Montoya, and the rest of the small skinsuited crew launched a pinnace down into the oxygen atmosphere on the planet. The crew didn’t know if there were any harmful bacteria in the air, so they weren’t taking any chances. The pinnace descended on counter-grav, and as Honor watched, the sky went from black to a very pleasant light blue, enough to make her homesick, even though this planet was only .9 g as opposed to Sphinx’s 1.37 g. The pinnace landed in a clearing about 55 kilometers from the nearest observed settlement, and the crew cycled out of the airlock. They looked around at the scenery. It was a very pastel-colored world, and even the few birds flying around were very bright. The exobiologists were taking their preliminary measurements, and all signs suggested the air was perfectly safe to breathe, with no harmful substances and a very nice temperature. Honor was the first to take off her helmet, and she inhaled the sweet, clean air. The rest of the crew followed suit, and soon the were in their uniforms looking around at the beautiful world they had found. Suddenly, Tremaine said, “Locals at six o’clock.” The party unholstered their pulsers, but kept them down low in a non-threatening manner. Honor turned to look in that direction, and saw eight strange creatures walking towards them. No, not creatures, ponies, and they were trotting towards them. Five of them were winged, and three of the winged also had horns. There was another horned pony without wings, and they were all colored very much the same way the landscape was. The ponies came up to them, and both parties stood there for a minute, looking at each other. Suddenly, the cyan pony with the rainbow mane blurted out impossibly, “Who the hay are you guys?” Honor was astonished. They had just made contact with a sentient, alien race of ponies who also spoke Standard. The chances against this must be literally astronomical! The rest of Honor’s party was also taken aback by this, but Honor recovered the fastest. “I’m, ah, Admiral Honor Harrington, and this is the rest of my party. We’re here for, well, never mind. Um, may I ask how you know Standard?” “Standard?” The purple horned pegasus cocked her head quizzically. “Is that what you call your language?” “Yes, do you call it something different?” “We don’t have a name for it, but we’ve been speaking it since before anypony can remember.” “Um.” Honor stared off into space, thinking about the implications of this. She didn’t need any linguists, that much was certain, but she needed her technology experts to assess how far these ponies are so that she doesn’t reveal anything too excessive to them, jumping them too far ahead. “Would you mind waiting here for an hour or so while we bring in some specialists?” “Sure,” the white horned pegasus replied. “Twilight, would you mind staying here? I’m sure you can handle anything that needs handling.” “Of course, Princess,” the purple one said. “It’ll be a snap. Oh! We didn’t introduce ourselves, did we? Pardon me, that must have been very rude. Ah, here. This is Pinkie Pie,” Twilight pointed to the pink pony without any wings or horn, “Applejack,” this was the orange one of the same breed as Pinkie, “Rarity,” the white unicorn, “Rainbow Dash,” the brash cyan one, “Fluttershy,” the yellow pegasus that seemed perfectly content to hide behind her pink mane, “Princess Luna,” the dark blue horned pegasus, “Princess Celestia,” the white horned pegasus, “and I’m Princess Twilight Sparkle.” “So you brought out all of your rulers here to meet somebody that you didn’t know anything about? Nice,” Tremaine said. “Scotty, these ponies obviously have a very trusting society. This isn’t a bad thing,” Honor replied. “Oh yeah! You can go fetch your specialists now. We already have ours here, so we’ll just wait. I hope the verdict is good. Bad verdicts lead to mistrust, and mistrust leads to chaos. Let’s not have chaos.” What wise words from such a happy pony face. Chapter FourChapter Four War is like fire. It rages on, but eventually it does end. Many people just get burnt before the end. -Lisa Kalbernacky, 1857 P.D. “...and that about sums it up. A good parallel to draw would be about 100 years before Diaspora. They’re probably about to make their own starships, so it probably would be safe to give them current technology. Of course, we would need official recognition to do that.” “Thank you, Stevens. Are there any questions?” Honor was holding a meeting in her briefing room, and she had collected all of the captains and executive officers for this meeting, plus her own staff. “Yes, Ma’am,” Tremaine said. “How do you plan to get that recognition and still keep this system safe from any advancing forces?” “I plan to leave all but Stalwart and Forceful here, giving this system defense against at least a hundred Solly SDs.” “Hold on a moment, Ma’am.” Captain Graves, Stubborn’s commanding officer, was looking at her with a pained expression. “You mean that we’re going to leave a sentient race in the line of fire with only six superdreadnoughts to protect the system from attack?” “That’s exactly what I said, Captain. Do you have a problem with that?” “No, I suppose not.” “All right.” Honor looked around at the expectant faces of her officers. “Then I’ll leave within 24 hours. You all know your duties. Carry them out. Dismissed.” * * * Honor looked at Queen Elizabeth, monarch of Manticore, and tried not to winch as Elizabeth finally settled down. “I appreciate your concerns, Your Majesty, but we really have nothing to lose here.” “Nothing to lose?” Elizabeth scoffed. “Honor, you know better than most the dangers of giving a sentient race advanced technology. Hell, you were there on Basilisk, and the meddlers there nearly got you killed! What makes you think this will be any different?” Honor shook her head. “There’s a difference, and a large one at that. First of all, these ponies are much further along than the Stilties. The Medusans were only in their late Bronze Age, while these ponies are just about to reach space, which is an impressive achievement. While it’s true that their culture is much different than ours, they are just as intelligent as us, which makes them logical allies. And finally, there remains the fact that they have an amazing control over space as it is. Have you read our briefing on the unicorn’s horn?” “No,” the Queen admitted sheepishly. “Well, it’s quite impressive. I assume you have heard of Old Earth electric eels or New Texas contralions?” She got a nod in return. “Well, in essence, this is much the same thing, except in much finer detail. Their horns use packets of muscles specifically designed to exert an electromagnetic field over any specific thing, and the way they can manipulate that field is truly beyond compare. They are capable of a much finer control over things, and some even are able to control the fields at such a level as to change the molecular structure of objects themselves.” “That’s… impressive.” “Yes, impressive. But is it useful to us? And can trust them?” Prime Minister William Alexander spoke up for the first time. “Maybe, maybe not. What really matters is that we now have access to a brand new pool of intelligent bodies who aren’t war tired. We need these ponies if we’re going to take the fight to the Sollies.” “All right, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt” Alexander said. “I’ll try and get permission past Parliament, but I’m not promising anything. If this ends up like another Basilisk, I’m going to be stuck with the blame, and if they stab us in the back, I’m not going to be the one taking all the blame.” * * * Two months and a flurry of debating later, Honor Alexander-Harrington was back on the deck of Stalwart as it cruised back to the star people were calling “Celestia”. They had the permission to bring the ponies in and leap them ahead, and it was up to Honor to make it work. She chuckled as she thought about how hard she had fought to get that permission, but that was all behind her now as the two SDs crossed the alpha wall back into normal space. The com section reported the receipt of the FTL challenge, and Tremaine beamed back his acknowledgement and response. Everything went according to plan for once in Honor’s life, and she was grateful that it had. Everything had a tendency to turn to mush around her, and she didn’t want to deal with any more. Stalwart and her companions were in orbit around the planet and Honor was once again descending down in the pinnace, except this time she was nothing but smiles. The fleet craft descended rapidly, and at about a hundred meters Honor could make out the ponies waiting for her down on the ground. Another pony, Rainbow Dash, was escorting the pinnace down. The craft landed with a soft thump, and the crew exited the pinnace. Honor smiled as she saw Twilight Sparkle walk up to her. The purple pony was nervous, and she blurted out “Did they say yes? Are we to get newer technology?” “Indeed you are, but before we start giving you the tech, we need to speak with you and your rulers. In private.” Honor made a little motion to Twilight’s friends, and Twilight followed her gaze. “Oh, right. Um, if you’d care to join the Princesses and I over here?” Twilight nodded to a row of benches hastily set up fifty or so meters away, and Honor nodded. They made their way over, and Honor didn’t need Nimitz to know that the Princesses were bursting with curiosity. Honor sat down, and the princesses sat across from her. “So, what did you need to say?” “It’s hard to know where to start, but I’ll just dive in. The Star Empire of Manticore is at war. We have been at war for a very long time, and we are about to fight the biggest entity in space that we know of. Luckily, we have Haven on our side this time, but this is still going to be one of the hardest, longest, and bloodiest wars of all time. We are going to be building spaceships faster than we can man them, and even then we’re not going to have enough ships. In order for us to give you this technology, we have to have the assurance that you’re either going to be allied with us in this war or be a neutral observer. We don’t need to be fighting any more people than we have to at once.” “Of course we’ll ally with you! Uh, I mean…” Twilight stopped as she looked at the other two princesses. Luna seemed willing to sit this discussion out, and Celestia took the lead in simply nodding. “Yes, yes, we will be your allies. We would be honored to fight with you.” “Excellent! In that case, Your Highnesses,” Honor took out a rather large briefcase, “if you would care to sign here, I welcome you to the Grand Alliance.” Chapter FiveChapter Five The only thing comparable to losing a war is training for a war; in both instances you get your posterior handed to you. -Javier Rimero, 1928 P.D. Cold Fire looked around the spacious halls of Saganami Academy. He had just arrived (amongst tremendous pomp and circumstance) at the island as the first pony to go into service in the new Space Navy. He was the only pony in this class, but he had a suspicion that many more ponies would begin streaming in from all corners of Equestria. Cold was always a bright colt, and he had just barely signed up for this opportunity. He thought he would probably excel at the electronics path, but just for the honor he had signed up for tactical. He had heard from Admiral Alexander-Harrington herself that Tactical was the fast track to command, and he wanted to command a ship. A thought crossed his mind as he was thinking about that. Humans have fingers. Cold Fire didn’t know how he was going to operate complex things using only his hooves, but he knew the Admiralty was going to figure it out by the time he actually got into the simulators. That was another thing. He had to figure out how to use all this new technology. That was going to be hard. He knew the ponies had just been jumped ahead about two thousand years in advancement, but that was something for the Princesses to deal with. All he was doing was learning, and he found his modified bunk room without too much trouble. Very user-friendly, these holographic maps. He hoped the rest of it was as easy. * * * Cold Fire looked up at the cube with the frozen battle in it and felt a sense of elation run through him. He was actually going to be part of that in a few years. The flashing sidebars of battle damage were offset by the flood of green friendly lights that had swarmed and overpowered the red dots of much larger enemy ships. He knew he was looking at something which had been developed only four hundred moons ago, and that made this a very special moment for him. Cold loved technology. He had always been looking for ways to advance Equestria’s tech base, and he was practically rubbing his hooves in glee at the possibilities of all of this new stuff. The counter-grav technology would make the pegasus’ jobs much easier, and the computers would make everypony’s lives easier. The farmers wouldn’t need more than one or two ponies per farm! That freed up an immense amount of ponies to work on new construction, and he had heard that the Princesses were planning to pump more than a trillion bits into some new shipyard that was going to be producing some of the smaller ships for the humans. Cold knew that the Alliance was always short on small ships, and that they appreciated the Princesses’ efforts greatly. He also suspected they didn’t know whether to trust the ponies or not, but that was okay. The ponies still didn’t completely trust them, and Cold harbored a thought that it would take very many moons for the two races to be fully integrated. This thought brought him back to the speaker, some Admiral that Cold had never bothered to learn the name of. The Admiral looked out over the hundreds of human students and the one pony, and began his monologue. “Students, today marks the day when you take upon yourself the task of defending your planet, system, and Alliance. You will be run ragged in this course, but we do this for your own good. Here at Saganami, we adhere to the idea that it’s better to be run ragged in the Academy when it’s relatively safe rather than pamper you through the process and throw you in the deep end and expect you to do well under the pressure of actual combat. Our job, ladies and gentlemen, is to make sure that you are able to do the best that you are physically and mentally able to. “Nevertheless, some of you will die. You will come across a time when your best just isn’t good enough, when all the tactical genius in the world isn’t enough to save you from being defeated. You all must accept that now, or leave. You may think you’re ready to face the challenge, but you aren’t, and I know how it is. You think that I’m an old, pompous admiral who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Well, I was like you once. I thought I could face anything. I was told I wasn’t prepared for it, and they tried to give me all the preparation I would take, but it took the battlefield to really drive that home. Know that now. “And on that note, tomorrow begins the simulations. You will find your sim assignments in your bunk console. Be there at 0800 sharp. We have a lot to do and not very much time to do it. I wish you all luck, and know that we really aren’t trying to kill you, we’re just trying to harden you up. “You are dismissed, ladies and gentlemen.” * * * Cold Fire leaned back in his chair with a very tired grin as the last ship of the opposing force blew up. The latest simulation had been the hardest, and he had very nearly lost it. Indeed, he suspected a great many others had lost, just because he had done something which he believed was so against the Book that it gave the umpires a coronary. Faced with twenty superdreadnoughts to his five, he had detached three of them before he came into his opponent’s sensor range, leaving the other two to run on a pre-planned course. The three had shut down all emissions, becoming a hole in space, and the opposing force had swooped right into the superdreadnoughts’ waiting broadsides. He had destroyed ten of them before the other ten even realized what was going on, and he had cut it down to seven versus five before the other ships fired. But then it was a long slogging duel from there, and he had his fellow shiphandlers’ maneuvers to thank for winning at all. In the end, he had lost two SDs, severely injured another, and the other two were left with reduced fighting power. All in all, though, he considered that simulation a success. As he exited the sim chamber, he spotted the umpires talking to the Admiral (Tourville, wasn’t it?) and them motioning to his chamber. He saw the Admiral look speculatively at him, and he pretended to reach for an itch on his foreleg which brought his head towards the Admiral, and they quickly went about their business. Now what was that all about? Did I do something wrong? Cold Fire decided to let sleeping dogs lie, and he turned to go towards his quarters. He had just about cracked the second-tier Admiralty database, and he thought he had found a first-tier door as well. This was going to be a very interesting night. Chapter TwoChapter Two War is what happens when the idiots making the rules decide it would be a good idea to send the idiots volunteering for their country off to die. -Anna Foshay, 83 A.D. Princess Twilight Sparkle was reading about space. She was researching how the stars may change their positions over thousands of years, and this research could lead to allowing the sun and moon to rise and set by themselves, allowing Princesses Luna and Celestia to take care of other pressing matters. In fact, Twilight also was thinking about building some flying device to take her into the stars. That would require quite a bit of magic, but it should work. Her only worry was if she could breathe up there. After all, nopony knew just what was up there. That would take more research. Just then, Rainbow Dash walked into the library. “Yo Twilight! You in here?” She called about, and Twilight sighed as she got up. “Twilight,” Rainbow said, “you really need to get out here. Something big is going on.” “What’s happening? Is there danger? Please tell me it’s not Discord again,” Twilight said. “Naw, not that. I’m about to break the all-time record for the highest a pony’s ever flown.” “Well. That’s certainly big,” Twilight said. She resigned herself to not being able to take care of her astronomy until at least a day later. Rainbow was still going on about what she was about to do. “I’ve got all of Ponyville out to see me break this. It’ll be the story of the year!” “I’m sure.” “Aw, Twilight, no need to be like that. You can go back to your studies if you really want to.” “No, Rainbow, it’s fine. I’ll watch as well.” “Sweet! You won’t regret it!” Rainbow flipped in mid-air. “I just hope you’re as excited as I am.” “Probably not,” Twilight answered honestly. “This is your moment.” “Heh! You’re right, it is my moment! I wonder if Fluttershy will cheer me like she did at the Young Flyers Tournament. That was seriously awesome.” Twilight was just about to give a snarky remark on how Fluttershy can’t really cheer, but she was interrupted by Pinkie Pie. “Hey Twilight! I bet you’re gonna be super duper excited at what Rainbow’s gonna do! It’s gonna be sweet! Like cakes! And chocolate! Ooh! Or chocolate cakes! Hmm, chocolate cakes,” Pinkie blurted. “I’ve already told her,” Rainbow said. Pinkie frowned, but before she could retort, Twilight interjected her. “Rainbow, aren’t you supposed to be breaking a record?” “Oh yeah, that. I’ll get right on that,” Rainbow said, and she launched herself. All of Ponyville watched as she flew higher and higher, up and up, until they couldn’t see her anymore. Twilight brought out her telescope, and everybody clustered around as Rainbow flew up, the sky darkening around her. “And… she’s… got it!” Twilight cheered as Rainbow breached the previous record, and all of Ponyville followed in turn. Suddenly, Rainbow stopped, looking at something behind the telescope’s field of view. Twilight began to turn the telescope, but Rainbow suddenly dove for the ground as fast as she could. Twilight saw the speed cone form around her, and as she watched, rainbow executed a Sonic Rainboom. But she didn’t stop there, she just kept diving. She leveled out just in time, and she came up running to where Twilight stood. “Twilight. We have big problems. We need to talk to the other Princesses right away,” Dash said. “What sort of problems?” The question was uttered by everypony. “Bad ones,” Rainbow said, “and I don’t think we can deal with them without Luna and Celestia. I think your studies have just been made redundant.”
PrologueMoment of Honor By Cold Fire Inspired by the Honor Harrington series and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. These characters and the events that happen within the story are completely fictional, and any semblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. This story does not represent the views of David Weber, Baen Books, Hasbro, or DHX Studios. So, in other words, these aren't real people, it's not my intention to infringe on any copyrights, and this is all my idea. Terms Ship types(smallest to largest): LAC - Light attack craft, has no hyper capability FG - Frigate DD - Destroyer CL - Light cruiser CA - Heavy (armored) cruiser BC - Battlecruiser BC(P) - Battlecruiser pod-layer BB - Battleship DN - Dreadnought CLAC - LAC carrier SD - Superdreadnought SD(P) - Superdreadnought pod-layer Navies: SLN - Solarian League Navy IAN - Imperial Andermani Navy RMN - Royal Manticoran Navy GSN - Grayson Space Navy RHN - Republic of Haven Navy MAN - Mesan Alignment Navy Common terms: Alpha node - Generates a Warshawski sail Beta node - Generates an impeller wedge Warshawski sail - Disc of gravity in front and back of ship, used in gravity waves to gain much higher rate of acceleration than an impeller wedge Impeller wedge - Wedge of gravity on two sides of a ship, theoretically capable of instant acceleration to light speed, used in normal space and in between gravity waves Inertial compensator - Device that uses the gravity bands generated by the alpha and beta nodes to dump inertia and allow very high rates of acceleration Hyperspace - A higher dimension where all points of space are compressed together, allowing for faster travel Gravity waves - Bands of concentrated gravity in hyperspace, used as interstellar highways Ship of the wall - Any ship larger than a battlecruiser Andies - Inhabitants of the Anderman Empire Manties - Inhabitants of the Star Empire of Manticore Peeps - Inhabitants of the Republic of Haven Sollies - Inhabitants of the Solarian League P.D. - Post Diaspora, or years after 2102 Common Era A.D. - Ante Diaspora, or years before 2102 Common Era T-Year - Classic Old Earth year Prologue There aren't many more things worse than the violence of war after a period of peace. -Dastraya Lomwicki, 1209 P.D. The massive superdreadnought spun on its tail, desperately trying to intercept the incoming missiles with its impeller wedge. This ship, along with three inert wrecks and four more expanding balls of plasma, were all that had stood in the way of the group of well over seventy battlecruisers that had crossed the hyper limit of Minotaur five hours ago. The superdreadnoughts had performed well, taking out almost half of the battlecruisers, but the impossible salvoes had kept screaming in. No seventy old-style dreadnoughts could have put that many missiles into space, but that had changed along with the entire field of battle when the Royal Manticoran Navy had perfected its pod design. Now, instead of missile bays, the capital ships mounted cargo doors, each dropping a parasite pod every ten seconds. Each pod had ten missiles in single-shot "box launchers", designed to spend its shot and be recovered for overhaul. Each battlecruiser was capable of six pods per salvo, and they were double-salvoes as well, with half the speed but double the punch. That meant over a hundred missiles per ship, and the initial salvo had spread eight thousand missiles over two targets. The superdreadnoughts had taken out half of those ships and crippled many more, but two thousand missiles had raced out with the final salvo, and those missiles reached attack range and maneuvered to get better shots at their prey. The countermissiles destroyed almost five hundred, the last-ditch lasers caught three hundred more, and six hundred missiles missed or got swept up in the invulnerable impeller wedge, but that still left 528 missiles that got at their target. They detonated almost as one, and suddenly the SLNS Marzipan ceased to exist. The remaining twenty-six battlecruisers flipped over and began decelerating to pick up life pods and search the wrecks for survivors, and the K5 star behind them shone brightly.
Chapter OneChapter One The funny thing about war is that everybody loses. Oh, the leaders might spout such garbage about how “Our losses were so much less than theirs,” but they still lost something, now didn’t they? -Jared Praneroad, 22 P.D. Steadholder Duchess Knight Admiral Lady Dame Honor Alexander-Harrington looked out over the deck of the RMN Stalwart as it cruised out of the Rembrandt system. Stalwart, her sister Stubborn, and six other superdreadnoughts were going out to chart unknown space between the Solarian League’s verge and the Talbott Sector. It was something of a miracle that nobody had even bothered to look there before, but wormholes dictated where people had gone just as much as railroads on Old Earth. There wasn’t much there, save one G4 star in the middle of nowhere. That was what Honor and the Admiralty were interested in. Of course, this could have been done by any rear admiral or even commodore, but Honor had volunteered out of whimsy. The Grand Alliance fleet was still building up. Haven and Grayson had delivered their bits and more, but Manticore was at least a T-year behind on production, which left Honor floundering for something to do. This mission had popped up in her docket, and she had gone for the bait. Many people would have seen this as a demotion, but she was just glad to have something to do, which brought her thoughts back to the bridge as the ships climbed into hyperspace. The trip would only take eight days, so she planned to settle down and let her staff and the people running the ships take care of business. Nimitz bleeked in approval of that plan. Nimitz was a cream and grey treecat, a six-limbed arboreal mammal from the planet of Sphinx, one of Manticore’s three habitable systems. Nimitz, and treecats in general, were very intelligent empaths and telepaths. Nobody truly understood how that telepathy worked, but it was obvious that the nerve clusters in their hips contributed. There were two nerve clusters; one for sending, one for receiving. Honor’s eyes darkened as she remembered the time when a brute from the terror regime of Haven’s previous rulers had broken his middle hip, making it so that he couldn’t send his thoughts anymore. That was what had led to the development of sign language so that Nimitz could communicate with both his own kind and humans, but Nimitz could still share thoughts with Honor, so she considered herself lucky. She felt Nimitz give her a little bit of happiness for that. Her eyes swept the bridge, and they stopped upon Captain (senior grade) Scotty Tremaine. Scotty had been with her since Basilisk, and she smiled as he took care of everything. He was very competent, and he handled his crew with a quick, crisp efficiency that made other captains quite jealous of his abilities. Like Honor, Tremaine had volunteered for this mission, but he had done so only when he had heard that Honor was going. He still followed her with almost puppy-like devotion, but he had matured from the first time she had seen him. What hadn’t changed was the fact that Senior Chief Warrant Officer Horace Harkness was with him. The Bureau of Personnel had realized they made an unstoppable duo, and this trip was no exception. Honor looked at the visual display, and the chaotic, strange patterns of hyperspace stretched out before her. She didn’t really have much to do this trip either, but she had some very evil surprises spread out for Scotty and his crew waiting in the simulation room tomorrow. Her smile turned into a nasty grin, and she turned to head to her quarters.
Chapter ThreeChapter Three It’s human nature to make war. You don’t see animals doing it. In fact, they seem very much at peace with themselves, so can you really say humans are smarter than them? -Jonathan Carstairs, 738 P.D. “Preliminary scans show significant signs of life. Possibly sentient life, based on these habitats here,” the sensor tech reported. “How sentient, I can’t say. An expedition would have to be made with exobiologists just to determine if these are actually structures or just hollowed-out rocks.” “Thank you, Krimanson,” Tremaine said. “Let me know if you find anything more.” “Aye, Sir.” Stalwart and her companions were in orbit around the unnamed star’s only planet, a pretty blue pearl smack dab in the Goldilocks Zone of liquid water. There were pretty obvious signs of life, but the sensors hadn’t detected any signs of advanced communication, which suggested the life here was either not sentient or in its very early stages of development. The sensor tech had still done well to spot the not-too-obvious habitats, and Tremaine had still done well in congratulating him. Honor looked on the scene with pride. She knew exactly who would be making first contact. It would be her, Scotty, Harkness, Lieutenant Surgeon Montoya, and a few exobiologists. Montoya was another friend from Basilisk, just like old times. She turned back with Nimitz on her shoulder, and she went to prepare for her expedition. One hour later, Honor, Nimitz, Tremaine, Harkness, Montoya, and the rest of the small skinsuited crew launched a pinnace down into the oxygen atmosphere on the planet. The crew didn’t know if there were any harmful bacteria in the air, so they weren’t taking any chances. The pinnace descended on counter-grav, and as Honor watched, the sky went from black to a very pleasant light blue, enough to make her homesick, even though this planet was only .9 g as opposed to Sphinx’s 1.37 g. The pinnace landed in a clearing about 55 kilometers from the nearest observed settlement, and the crew cycled out of the airlock. They looked around at the scenery. It was a very pastel-colored world, and even the few birds flying around were very bright. The exobiologists were taking their preliminary measurements, and all signs suggested the air was perfectly safe to breathe, with no harmful substances and a very nice temperature. Honor was the first to take off her helmet, and she inhaled the sweet, clean air. The rest of the crew followed suit, and soon the were in their uniforms looking around at the beautiful world they had found. Suddenly, Tremaine said, “Locals at six o’clock.” The party unholstered their pulsers, but kept them down low in a non-threatening manner. Honor turned to look in that direction, and saw eight strange creatures walking towards them. No, not creatures, ponies, and they were trotting towards them. Five of them were winged, and three of the winged also had horns. There was another horned pony without wings, and they were all colored very much the same way the landscape was. The ponies came up to them, and both parties stood there for a minute, looking at each other. Suddenly, the cyan pony with the rainbow mane blurted out impossibly, “Who the hay are you guys?” Honor was astonished. They had just made contact with a sentient, alien race of ponies who also spoke Standard. The chances against this must be literally astronomical! The rest of Honor’s party was also taken aback by this, but Honor recovered the fastest. “I’m, ah, Admiral Honor Harrington, and this is the rest of my party. We’re here for, well, never mind. Um, may I ask how you know Standard?” “Standard?” The purple horned pegasus cocked her head quizzically. “Is that what you call your language?” “Yes, do you call it something different?” “We don’t have a name for it, but we’ve been speaking it since before anypony can remember.” “Um.” Honor stared off into space, thinking about the implications of this. She didn’t need any linguists, that much was certain, but she needed her technology experts to assess how far these ponies are so that she doesn’t reveal anything too excessive to them, jumping them too far ahead. “Would you mind waiting here for an hour or so while we bring in some specialists?” “Sure,” the white horned pegasus replied. “Twilight, would you mind staying here? I’m sure you can handle anything that needs handling.” “Of course, Princess,” the purple one said. “It’ll be a snap. Oh! We didn’t introduce ourselves, did we? Pardon me, that must have been very rude. Ah, here. This is Pinkie Pie,” Twilight pointed to the pink pony without any wings or horn, “Applejack,” this was the orange one of the same breed as Pinkie, “Rarity,” the white unicorn, “Rainbow Dash,” the brash cyan one, “Fluttershy,” the yellow pegasus that seemed perfectly content to hide behind her pink mane, “Princess Luna,” the dark blue horned pegasus, “Princess Celestia,” the white horned pegasus, “and I’m Princess Twilight Sparkle.” “So you brought out all of your rulers here to meet somebody that you didn’t know anything about? Nice,” Tremaine said. “Scotty, these ponies obviously have a very trusting society. This isn’t a bad thing,” Honor replied. “Oh yeah! You can go fetch your specialists now. We already have ours here, so we’ll just wait. I hope the verdict is good. Bad verdicts lead to mistrust, and mistrust leads to chaos. Let’s not have chaos.” What wise words from such a happy pony face.
Chapter FourChapter Four War is like fire. It rages on, but eventually it does end. Many people just get burnt before the end. -Lisa Kalbernacky, 1857 P.D. “...and that about sums it up. A good parallel to draw would be about 100 years before Diaspora. They’re probably about to make their own starships, so it probably would be safe to give them current technology. Of course, we would need official recognition to do that.” “Thank you, Stevens. Are there any questions?” Honor was holding a meeting in her briefing room, and she had collected all of the captains and executive officers for this meeting, plus her own staff. “Yes, Ma’am,” Tremaine said. “How do you plan to get that recognition and still keep this system safe from any advancing forces?” “I plan to leave all but Stalwart and Forceful here, giving this system defense against at least a hundred Solly SDs.” “Hold on a moment, Ma’am.” Captain Graves, Stubborn’s commanding officer, was looking at her with a pained expression. “You mean that we’re going to leave a sentient race in the line of fire with only six superdreadnoughts to protect the system from attack?” “That’s exactly what I said, Captain. Do you have a problem with that?” “No, I suppose not.” “All right.” Honor looked around at the expectant faces of her officers. “Then I’ll leave within 24 hours. You all know your duties. Carry them out. Dismissed.” * * * Honor looked at Queen Elizabeth, monarch of Manticore, and tried not to winch as Elizabeth finally settled down. “I appreciate your concerns, Your Majesty, but we really have nothing to lose here.” “Nothing to lose?” Elizabeth scoffed. “Honor, you know better than most the dangers of giving a sentient race advanced technology. Hell, you were there on Basilisk, and the meddlers there nearly got you killed! What makes you think this will be any different?” Honor shook her head. “There’s a difference, and a large one at that. First of all, these ponies are much further along than the Stilties. The Medusans were only in their late Bronze Age, while these ponies are just about to reach space, which is an impressive achievement. While it’s true that their culture is much different than ours, they are just as intelligent as us, which makes them logical allies. And finally, there remains the fact that they have an amazing control over space as it is. Have you read our briefing on the unicorn’s horn?” “No,” the Queen admitted sheepishly. “Well, it’s quite impressive. I assume you have heard of Old Earth electric eels or New Texas contralions?” She got a nod in return. “Well, in essence, this is much the same thing, except in much finer detail. Their horns use packets of muscles specifically designed to exert an electromagnetic field over any specific thing, and the way they can manipulate that field is truly beyond compare. They are capable of a much finer control over things, and some even are able to control the fields at such a level as to change the molecular structure of objects themselves.” “That’s… impressive.” “Yes, impressive. But is it useful to us? And can trust them?” Prime Minister William Alexander spoke up for the first time. “Maybe, maybe not. What really matters is that we now have access to a brand new pool of intelligent bodies who aren’t war tired. We need these ponies if we’re going to take the fight to the Sollies.” “All right, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt” Alexander said. “I’ll try and get permission past Parliament, but I’m not promising anything. If this ends up like another Basilisk, I’m going to be stuck with the blame, and if they stab us in the back, I’m not going to be the one taking all the blame.” * * * Two months and a flurry of debating later, Honor Alexander-Harrington was back on the deck of Stalwart as it cruised back to the star people were calling “Celestia”. They had the permission to bring the ponies in and leap them ahead, and it was up to Honor to make it work. She chuckled as she thought about how hard she had fought to get that permission, but that was all behind her now as the two SDs crossed the alpha wall back into normal space. The com section reported the receipt of the FTL challenge, and Tremaine beamed back his acknowledgement and response. Everything went according to plan for once in Honor’s life, and she was grateful that it had. Everything had a tendency to turn to mush around her, and she didn’t want to deal with any more. Stalwart and her companions were in orbit around the planet and Honor was once again descending down in the pinnace, except this time she was nothing but smiles. The fleet craft descended rapidly, and at about a hundred meters Honor could make out the ponies waiting for her down on the ground. Another pony, Rainbow Dash, was escorting the pinnace down. The craft landed with a soft thump, and the crew exited the pinnace. Honor smiled as she saw Twilight Sparkle walk up to her. The purple pony was nervous, and she blurted out “Did they say yes? Are we to get newer technology?” “Indeed you are, but before we start giving you the tech, we need to speak with you and your rulers. In private.” Honor made a little motion to Twilight’s friends, and Twilight followed her gaze. “Oh, right. Um, if you’d care to join the Princesses and I over here?” Twilight nodded to a row of benches hastily set up fifty or so meters away, and Honor nodded. They made their way over, and Honor didn’t need Nimitz to know that the Princesses were bursting with curiosity. Honor sat down, and the princesses sat across from her. “So, what did you need to say?” “It’s hard to know where to start, but I’ll just dive in. The Star Empire of Manticore is at war. We have been at war for a very long time, and we are about to fight the biggest entity in space that we know of. Luckily, we have Haven on our side this time, but this is still going to be one of the hardest, longest, and bloodiest wars of all time. We are going to be building spaceships faster than we can man them, and even then we’re not going to have enough ships. In order for us to give you this technology, we have to have the assurance that you’re either going to be allied with us in this war or be a neutral observer. We don’t need to be fighting any more people than we have to at once.” “Of course we’ll ally with you! Uh, I mean…” Twilight stopped as she looked at the other two princesses. Luna seemed willing to sit this discussion out, and Celestia took the lead in simply nodding. “Yes, yes, we will be your allies. We would be honored to fight with you.” “Excellent! In that case, Your Highnesses,” Honor took out a rather large briefcase, “if you would care to sign here, I welcome you to the Grand Alliance.”
Chapter FiveChapter Five The only thing comparable to losing a war is training for a war; in both instances you get your posterior handed to you. -Javier Rimero, 1928 P.D. Cold Fire looked around the spacious halls of Saganami Academy. He had just arrived (amongst tremendous pomp and circumstance) at the island as the first pony to go into service in the new Space Navy. He was the only pony in this class, but he had a suspicion that many more ponies would begin streaming in from all corners of Equestria. Cold was always a bright colt, and he had just barely signed up for this opportunity. He thought he would probably excel at the electronics path, but just for the honor he had signed up for tactical. He had heard from Admiral Alexander-Harrington herself that Tactical was the fast track to command, and he wanted to command a ship. A thought crossed his mind as he was thinking about that. Humans have fingers. Cold Fire didn’t know how he was going to operate complex things using only his hooves, but he knew the Admiralty was going to figure it out by the time he actually got into the simulators. That was another thing. He had to figure out how to use all this new technology. That was going to be hard. He knew the ponies had just been jumped ahead about two thousand years in advancement, but that was something for the Princesses to deal with. All he was doing was learning, and he found his modified bunk room without too much trouble. Very user-friendly, these holographic maps. He hoped the rest of it was as easy. * * * Cold Fire looked up at the cube with the frozen battle in it and felt a sense of elation run through him. He was actually going to be part of that in a few years. The flashing sidebars of battle damage were offset by the flood of green friendly lights that had swarmed and overpowered the red dots of much larger enemy ships. He knew he was looking at something which had been developed only four hundred moons ago, and that made this a very special moment for him. Cold loved technology. He had always been looking for ways to advance Equestria’s tech base, and he was practically rubbing his hooves in glee at the possibilities of all of this new stuff. The counter-grav technology would make the pegasus’ jobs much easier, and the computers would make everypony’s lives easier. The farmers wouldn’t need more than one or two ponies per farm! That freed up an immense amount of ponies to work on new construction, and he had heard that the Princesses were planning to pump more than a trillion bits into some new shipyard that was going to be producing some of the smaller ships for the humans. Cold knew that the Alliance was always short on small ships, and that they appreciated the Princesses’ efforts greatly. He also suspected they didn’t know whether to trust the ponies or not, but that was okay. The ponies still didn’t completely trust them, and Cold harbored a thought that it would take very many moons for the two races to be fully integrated. This thought brought him back to the speaker, some Admiral that Cold had never bothered to learn the name of. The Admiral looked out over the hundreds of human students and the one pony, and began his monologue. “Students, today marks the day when you take upon yourself the task of defending your planet, system, and Alliance. You will be run ragged in this course, but we do this for your own good. Here at Saganami, we adhere to the idea that it’s better to be run ragged in the Academy when it’s relatively safe rather than pamper you through the process and throw you in the deep end and expect you to do well under the pressure of actual combat. Our job, ladies and gentlemen, is to make sure that you are able to do the best that you are physically and mentally able to. “Nevertheless, some of you will die. You will come across a time when your best just isn’t good enough, when all the tactical genius in the world isn’t enough to save you from being defeated. You all must accept that now, or leave. You may think you’re ready to face the challenge, but you aren’t, and I know how it is. You think that I’m an old, pompous admiral who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Well, I was like you once. I thought I could face anything. I was told I wasn’t prepared for it, and they tried to give me all the preparation I would take, but it took the battlefield to really drive that home. Know that now. “And on that note, tomorrow begins the simulations. You will find your sim assignments in your bunk console. Be there at 0800 sharp. We have a lot to do and not very much time to do it. I wish you all luck, and know that we really aren’t trying to kill you, we’re just trying to harden you up. “You are dismissed, ladies and gentlemen.” * * * Cold Fire leaned back in his chair with a very tired grin as the last ship of the opposing force blew up. The latest simulation had been the hardest, and he had very nearly lost it. Indeed, he suspected a great many others had lost, just because he had done something which he believed was so against the Book that it gave the umpires a coronary. Faced with twenty superdreadnoughts to his five, he had detached three of them before he came into his opponent’s sensor range, leaving the other two to run on a pre-planned course. The three had shut down all emissions, becoming a hole in space, and the opposing force had swooped right into the superdreadnoughts’ waiting broadsides. He had destroyed ten of them before the other ten even realized what was going on, and he had cut it down to seven versus five before the other ships fired. But then it was a long slogging duel from there, and he had his fellow shiphandlers’ maneuvers to thank for winning at all. In the end, he had lost two SDs, severely injured another, and the other two were left with reduced fighting power. All in all, though, he considered that simulation a success. As he exited the sim chamber, he spotted the umpires talking to the Admiral (Tourville, wasn’t it?) and them motioning to his chamber. He saw the Admiral look speculatively at him, and he pretended to reach for an itch on his foreleg which brought his head towards the Admiral, and they quickly went about their business. Now what was that all about? Did I do something wrong? Cold Fire decided to let sleeping dogs lie, and he turned to go towards his quarters. He had just about cracked the second-tier Admiralty database, and he thought he had found a first-tier door as well. This was going to be a very interesting night.
Chapter TwoChapter Two War is what happens when the idiots making the rules decide it would be a good idea to send the idiots volunteering for their country off to die. -Anna Foshay, 83 A.D. Princess Twilight Sparkle was reading about space. She was researching how the stars may change their positions over thousands of years, and this research could lead to allowing the sun and moon to rise and set by themselves, allowing Princesses Luna and Celestia to take care of other pressing matters. In fact, Twilight also was thinking about building some flying device to take her into the stars. That would require quite a bit of magic, but it should work. Her only worry was if she could breathe up there. After all, nopony knew just what was up there. That would take more research. Just then, Rainbow Dash walked into the library. “Yo Twilight! You in here?” She called about, and Twilight sighed as she got up. “Twilight,” Rainbow said, “you really need to get out here. Something big is going on.” “What’s happening? Is there danger? Please tell me it’s not Discord again,” Twilight said. “Naw, not that. I’m about to break the all-time record for the highest a pony’s ever flown.” “Well. That’s certainly big,” Twilight said. She resigned herself to not being able to take care of her astronomy until at least a day later. Rainbow was still going on about what she was about to do. “I’ve got all of Ponyville out to see me break this. It’ll be the story of the year!” “I’m sure.” “Aw, Twilight, no need to be like that. You can go back to your studies if you really want to.” “No, Rainbow, it’s fine. I’ll watch as well.” “Sweet! You won’t regret it!” Rainbow flipped in mid-air. “I just hope you’re as excited as I am.” “Probably not,” Twilight answered honestly. “This is your moment.” “Heh! You’re right, it is my moment! I wonder if Fluttershy will cheer me like she did at the Young Flyers Tournament. That was seriously awesome.” Twilight was just about to give a snarky remark on how Fluttershy can’t really cheer, but she was interrupted by Pinkie Pie. “Hey Twilight! I bet you’re gonna be super duper excited at what Rainbow’s gonna do! It’s gonna be sweet! Like cakes! And chocolate! Ooh! Or chocolate cakes! Hmm, chocolate cakes,” Pinkie blurted. “I’ve already told her,” Rainbow said. Pinkie frowned, but before she could retort, Twilight interjected her. “Rainbow, aren’t you supposed to be breaking a record?” “Oh yeah, that. I’ll get right on that,” Rainbow said, and she launched herself. All of Ponyville watched as she flew higher and higher, up and up, until they couldn’t see her anymore. Twilight brought out her telescope, and everybody clustered around as Rainbow flew up, the sky darkening around her. “And… she’s… got it!” Twilight cheered as Rainbow breached the previous record, and all of Ponyville followed in turn. Suddenly, Rainbow stopped, looking at something behind the telescope’s field of view. Twilight began to turn the telescope, but Rainbow suddenly dove for the ground as fast as she could. Twilight saw the speed cone form around her, and as she watched, rainbow executed a Sonic Rainboom. But she didn’t stop there, she just kept diving. She leveled out just in time, and she came up running to where Twilight stood. “Twilight. We have big problems. We need to talk to the other Princesses right away,” Dash said. “What sort of problems?” The question was uttered by everypony. “Bad ones,” Rainbow said, “and I don’t think we can deal with them without Luna and Celestia. I think your studies have just been made redundant.”
