Heart of Courage

“I still think this is a horrible idea!” Twilight Sparkle had to shout over her suit’s radio just to be heard over the piercing cracks of incoming cygnul weaponry and the heavy rumble of anti-aircraft batteries firing into a pale yellow sky. The little unicorn mare huddled behind a low wall while repeated impacts filled the air with an acrid smoke, as the high-energy beams sloughed off the outer layers of whatever rock-like material the cygs used to construct their planetary bases. Her nose would probably have been burning if her faceplate’s filters didn’t continuously clean the air she breathed.

“It’s our only chance to break through, Twilight!” Next to her, James Fletcher crouched low while reloading his boxy submachine gun. Slapping its bolt forward, he lifted his arm up and let loose a long burst of return fire, filling the air with the virulent buzzing sound of an angry nest of bees. A near miss by a lucky sharpshooter nicked the top edge of their barrier, dazzling Twilight’s eyes with a brilliant blue-white flash. Closest to the impact, the human captain dropped to the ground, cursing over the radio as he blinked back his vision.

On his other side, another human raised an open hand and a white-hot sphere of flame kindled to existence. Isamu Zhang looked over at her and grinned through his faceplate. “It’s going to work, Twilight. Just trust us. Alice doesn’t miss.” He then stood up and threw the fireball in the direction of their attackers. The moment it left his hand, he had enough time to duck down before the world turned white. Her suit’s audio speakers clicked off to keep her ears from bursting from the resulting sound wave.

Twilight peeked up over the wall, seeing half a dozen cygnul still reeling from Isamu’s arcane flash bomb. She telekinetically lifted her heavy pistol and took aim down the weapon’s sights. Boom! She fired once, missing her target by inches. The cyg, realizing it was being shot at, scrambled for cover as she began squeezing the trigger as fast as she could. Four shots later, a slug caught it in its back and the creature finally dropped. I really need to work on my aim, the lavender unicorn thought to herself as she reloaded her firearm.

A cygnul heavy weapons emplacement took notice of the exposed pony from its perch somewhere on the facility in front of the UEN battle line. Before Twilight Sparkle could lower her head back down, a disk launcher opened fire, sending down a cascade of basketball-sized magical missiles. The oval-shaped charges arched in on curving trajectories, glowing a brilliant turquoise while they closed in on their target.

She saw them coming just in time. In the span of a second, six super-heated disks of plasma impacted upon a dome of violet light. The shield bore the brunt of the assault, filling the air with a sharp arcane shrieking. Twilight ground her teeth hard, letting out a rough grunt due to the intense magical feedback stabbing through her mind like a knife.

As soon as it had begun, the cygnul barrage ended and Twilight collapsed from exhaustion. She whimpered and curled up in a ball against the damaged wall, clutching her head in her forehooves. Each beat of her heart sent a fresh wave of pain throughout her mind.

“Victoria, we need you! Twilight is down!” James yelled over his radio. “Socket, do something violent to that disk launcher!”

“Roger that. On my way.” The calm and collected voice of their field medic contrasted the dismal situation Twilight felt they were in. It only took a glance behind them at the ruined tail-end of their wrecked shuttle, Tank, to remind her of that.

Twilight’s headache subsided enough for her to take a peek at the cygnul weapon that had very nearly turned her into nothing more than a smoking crater and a pleasant memory in the minds of those who knew her. Already, she saw three of the creatures working to realign its heat-dissipation lattice. That was when a shriek ripped through the air, and an armored pegasus swooped by at high speed. A small warhead detached from Socket Wrench’s side and slammed into the launcher, blowing it apart spectacularly.

Having completed her attack run, Socket Wrench pulled away. Twin gouts of flame blasted out of the boosters of her suit as she outpaced the tracking systems of a nearby cygnul anti-aircraft battery. A beam cannon swept across the sky in an attempt to knock down the pony, but it burned through nothing but empty space.

“Good shooting, Socket. We appreciate the help.” James waved in the direction of the departing pegasus mare.

Just before Socket vanished behind another tower, she wagged her wings. “Don’t mention it; glad to be of service. I hope Twilight still has her coat after that close call.”

Twilight Sparkle couldn’t help but flash a grin. “I am fully accounted for, but my suit might need the soot scrubbed off of it.”

A sharp whooshing grew louder, sending an icy chill through the lavender mare’s veins and she panicked, thinking it was another attack. To her relief, the sound resolved itself to be a human in a jetpack-equipped suit landing next to her. “Twilight, are you okay?” She moved with a firm resolve, but Victoria Schaefer’s blue eyes only showed concern for her wellbeing.

“I’m fine.” Twilight tried to wave off Victoria as the latter checked over her vital readouts. “My head hurts a little from throwing up that shield.”

Victoria seemed content with whatever readings her arm-mounted diagnosis scanner told her and she leaned against the wall with Twilight. Even so, she still pestered the unicorn about her condition. “How bad does it hurt?”

Before she could answer, a thick stalliongradian accent crackled in on the radio. “Her head feel better if you don’t bother her, da?”

Through her faceplate, Twilight watched Victoria’s eyes narrow. She opened her mouth to rebuke the earth pony, but James interjected just in time. “Dmitri, how about you focus on getting that tail gun operational. We’ll need the firepower if we want to hold them back. I don’t know how long it’s going to take Alice to punch through their jammers.”

“Da, Captain. Almost ready. Need cover fire to cut off last panel”

“We can do that for you.” James Fletcher scooted far enough from the broken wall to address his team but not far enough to put himself in the cyg’s crosshairs. “Alright, listen up. We are going to lay some suppression fire down on the cygnul. Try to pick off a few of them, but focus on keeping them preoccupied.”

“Captain,” Socket Wrench called over the radio. “I have one last AGM I can drop on them as well. I will swoop in after you open fire.”

“Good idea, Socket. Everyone, ready up!” James returned to his place in their battle line, slapping a fresh magazine in his weapon. Isamu brought up a large tubular shotgun and flipped off the safety. Twilight Sparkle reloaded her pistol and readied herself while Victoria Schaefer pulled a modular battle rifle off of her back. It folded open in the human’s hands and she met Twilight’s gaze, nodding to her once.

“Now!” James barely finished the word before the four of them took aim over the wall. Rounds flew downrange and impacted among the cygnul. Twilight aimed for the warriors on the far left, her gun blowing chunks of their barricade in the air. The cygnul triggered a series of defensive smoke grenades, and the resulting cloud further obscured her vision, making it harder to pick out anything moving beyond the dusty veil. This gave some of the cygnul the opportunity to return fire, but their eyesight didn’t fare any better than the UEN soldiers and the battle soon dissolved into a chaotic furball.

Cyan beams sliced through the air, fired by erratic cyg soldiers. Most passed by harmlessly and had little effect on Twilight Sparkle and her compatriots. A lucky few that did manage to get close only disrupted their concentration for a moment or two at most.

Twilight carefully aimed through the smoke and fired a trio of slugs whenever she saw a cyg particle rifle flash. Next to her, Victoria did the same, but with much more precision. The human carefully squeezed her battle rifle’s trigger, sending accurate fire downrange one round at a time.

Eventually, Twilight Sparkle’s slide locked open and she ducked down to reload. A magazine, encased in a lavender aura, popped out of a pouch on her suit and replaced the empty one after it dropped away from the pistol. As she flicked down the slide stop lever, sending a fresh round into the chamber, she heard the familiar whine of Socket’s engines.

Wings stretched wide, the pegasus came in guns blazing. Her mounted machine gun spat out a line of tracers, cutting a swath through the cygnul lines. Enemy soldiers scrambled for any cover to protect them from the onslaught but it did them little good. On the heels of the final burst of gunfire, a micro air-to-ground missile leapt free from its rails and dove into the side of a barricade, blowing debris and cygnul everywhere.

Socket Wrench pulled away, pushing her suit to its limits as enemy fire crisscrossed the sky after her. The pegasus pony’s luck ran out though when a particle beam sliced into her side, blowing out one of her engines. This sudden loss of propulsion threw her into a chaotic spin. Twilight watched her flap her wings hard, but it was to no avail as she spun into the ground.

“No! Socket!” Twilight cried out. She focused on the incapacitated pony struggling to get on her feet as the cygnul peppered the area round her with weapons fire. The lavender unicorn narrowed her gaze and poured her will into a spell she knew quite well. An arcane pop sounded and suddenly, she stood over the downed pegasus.

She leaned in and powered up her magic once more and the two ponies vanished from the open plaza. Reappearing back where she started, Twilight pulled Socket’s prone form towards Victoria. The human wasted no time checking up on her, holding down the struggling pegasus, even as she fought to free herself from the still smoking wreck that had once been a micro-jet engine. Sparks sprayed forth from a jagged tear in its titanium housing as a damaged compressor fan still struggled to rotate.

Someone finally activated an emergency release latch and a mechanical click sounded as the broken component dropped to the ground. In her fit of anger, Socket let out a long string of obscene words as she kicked the engine away with one of her rear legs. The impact sent it spinning through the air, venting grey smoke and emitting an almost pitiful screeching sound. It might have been humorous had their circumstances not been as dire.

“It look like you won’t be flying no more.” Dmitri’s voice filled their speakers as cygnul potshots continued to streak by overhead.

“What?” Socket Wrench struggled against Victoria’s typical diagnostics routine, but she managed to right herself on all four hooves. The pegasus flared her armored wings and lowered her head, directing a furious stare towards the wrecked ship behind them. “I still have my wings.”

“Easy there, Socket.” Isamu tried to defuse the situation. “You are perfectly capable of flying. Just don’t expect to be going very fast when you do.”

Socket Wrench pursed her lips tighter; her pride hurt more than herself. For the benefit of his team, James stepped in, taking a break from firing downrange to glance over at her and flash a toothy grin. “Think you can get up on the shuttle and help that poor excuse of an engineer get that gun online?”

A sly smirk immediately replaced her scowl. “You bet your flank I can.” She then ducked low, before jumping into the air upon her outstretched wings. The cygnul had apparently still not recovered from the airstrike and only a few stray shots made it anywhere near the pegasus pony. Socket deftly angled around the crashed shuttle and vanished into the open tail-gun suite.

“How does it look in there?”

“Well,” Socket Wrench’s confused voice paused, “I now know why it’s taking Dmitri so long.” She finished speaking and the earth pony’s rambunctious laughter filled the airwaves.

James tightened a fist, shaking his head side to side. “Dammit, Dimitri. This isn’t a game! What are you doing?”

“You’ll see.” He said between chuckles. “Get ready for this.”

Three humans and one unicorn turned as one just in time to watch a crumbled armor plate drop away from the tail of their ruined shuttle. As one, their mouths dropped open with shock. In the open compartment just inside, Dmitri Bearclaw stood on his hind legs behind what could only be called a macabre example of mechanical design.

The earth pony had apparently not been satisfied with just bringing the tail gun back online. Somehow, he thought it had been a good idea to actually go and drag the two front guns up from the nose of the craft. Then with what appeared to be a copious application of welding and cutting, Dmitri Bearclaw had built up a weapon mount for the three ship-grade rotary cannons. The asymmetrical turret and its seemingly random assortment of angles and flanges almost hurt to look at.

Any reservations the UEN soldiers had were vindicated as soon as Dmitri spun the turret downrange. “EAT THIS MOTHERF….” His voice cut out and the air filled with the roar of an explosion. But, instead of the incredible sound of three gouts of flame blazing forth from the Gatling weapons with shell casings pouring out in a cascading waterfall, they were greeted by the sight of the entire rickety gun platform blowing apart spectacularly.

Twilight Sparkle might have been concerned with the clumsy earth pony’s fate had the airwaves not been filled with his angry ranting and ravings about sound mechanical design. As soon as the smoke cleared, she could see a grime-covered Dmitri swinging an angled piece of metal against the ruined weapon turret. Even from this distance, it didn’t take any squinting of her eyes to tell how angry he was.

A flurry of particle rifle strikes peppered the area around Dmitri, burning holes in the already shattered shuttle remains. The earth pony’s personal shield lit up several times, and Socket Wrench had to drag the still kicking stallion away from his failed creation. More incoming cygnul fire made it clear to the remaining defenders that their time was running out.

“Alice, we really need you now!” Captain Fletcher held his weapon up and blindly fired a full magazine downrange.

“Hold on just a little longer, Captain.” Their AI’s calm voice finally crackled over the radio.

“I’m with Twilight on this one.” Victoria started before pausing to pick off an exposed cygnul who got too greedy with its counterattack. “We are way too close for an orbital strike, even a precision one. Maybe we should retreat further back before calling it in.”

James flipped the tab on his last grenade and tossed it over the wall, dipping down before a deep rumble reverberated through the ground. “Retreat? Where would we go? They will cut us down before we could make it to the shuttle!”

“We should think about this before calling in the strike. Alice, can you hold off for a moment?”

“No, that is not going to be possible.”

Victoria froze mid magazine change. “Why not?”

“Because I launched the kinetic rod twelve minutes ago.”

Twilight Sparkle’s pupils widened and her head shot up to look at the sickly yellow sky. Her eyes darted between each wispy little cloud, straining to pick up any sort of movement. Though she tried as hard as she could, the eyes of a pony are not sensitive enough to see a tiny meter-long metal rod traveling ten times the speed of sound. However, at the last second she did catch sight of the resulting fireball of superheated gas enveloping the invisible weapon just as it streaked overhead and slammed into the side of the cygnul bunker.

Human-derived kinetic weapons are scarily powerful, as Twilight came to learn from her studies of their technologies. An orbitally-launched tungsten bar picks up quite a bit of speed as it falls planetward from a patrol frigate in space. Its flight path calculated by a sapient hyper intelligent computer, it managed to impact the target point within a few inches, transferring all of its stored up kinetic energy into its surroundings. When a piece of metal no taller than a pony hits something as hard as rock whilst traveling eleven thousand feet per second, it explodes violently.

One second, Twilight Sparkle lay crouched against a wall. The next, she flew in the air as the ground heaved underneath her. An audible oof, squeaked involuntarily from the little pony’s lungs; the impact knocking the wind out of her even through her body armor. As she tumbled away, she flailed her legs futilely as the world quaked around her. Eventually, the shaking ceased and she managed to right herself on all four hooves.

Carefully, she worked up the nerve to peek over her cover and take a look at the devastation in front of her. A massive crater now sat where a series of low walls, weapon emplacements, and defensive fortifications used to be. The kinetic rod had come in at an angled trajectory, directing most of its energy in a forward-facing blast of splintered rock. Whatever resistance the aliens had relied upon was now crumpled, twisted, and broken.

Twilight Sparkle stared wide-eyed and slack-jawed. The little pony stood frozen as her mane and tail gently wavered in a light breeze whipped up by the updrafts above the impact site. Delicate lines of smoke drifted lazily upwards into the sky, riding along currents of warm air. The heat from the kinetic strike created enough of a temperature variance in the air to refract the sun’s light in a shimmering mirage centered in the crater’s heart.

She didn’t notice her compatriots joining her to take in the devastation before them. The intense silence weighed down upon her like a constricting blanket. After their frantic firefight only moments before, the soundless calm that had settled over the battlefield only seemed to get under the unicorn’s skin. Twilight made to open her mouth to say something, anything, when she heard Socket Wrench speak from behind her.

“I’ve never seen a kinetic strike from so close. Everything is just… gone.”

“It’s something you never quite get used to.” James chipped in, and Twilight glanced to her right in time to catch sight of the human’s expressionless face. He stood there for a moment longer before stepping away. “Come on, team. Let’s see what is so special about this facility.”

Quickly, the ponies and humans navigated around the jagged edges of the bombardment site. They had to steer around a few larger boulders thrown clear from the epicenter, but with nothing shooting at them, the debris only served as a minor hindrance and they easily made it to the entrance of the bunker. Twin slabs of hardened steel lay uselessly along the ground, crumpled by the sheer intensity of the blast.

The UEN team formed up for only a moment on the ruined entryway before slipping inside. Dmitri and Isamu led the way, James and Socket kept an eye on their surroundings, and Twilight covered their rear with Victoria. Weapons swiveled every which way, leaving no alcove or shadow unchecked.

With only one way to go, they followed down a long main hallway that descended gently into the recesses of the barren world. Dark stone columns lined the pathway, each as unremarkable as the next. A few small globes spaced every dozen paces or so, served as the only light sources Twilight could see. They bathed the nearby area around them with a muted cerulean light, making it easy on their eyes, but doing little to penetrate the deeper shadows in the narrow passage.

She turned her suit’s auditory sensitivity to its max setting, trying to hear anything attempting to sneak up on them. Though Twilight strained with all her concentration, she failed to pick up any sound but their soft footsteps echoing faintly. Her instincts screamed at her that something was about to go horribly wrong even though they truly seemed to be alone. This doesn’t feel right. This doesn’t feel right at all.

After what felt like an eternity of traveling with no landmarks of any kind, Twilight Sparkle glanced ahead and noticed the hall leading towards a large auditorium brightly lit with scores of the usual spherical cygnul lights. A quick click of her radio, and she opened up a private channel with James in front of her. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

The human pivoted his submachine gun around another column, finding nothing but barren rock just like the last couple dozen he had checked. “Me too. The cygnul fought pretty hard to keep us out of here. They must have had a reason.”

“I think we are about to find out.” Twilight spoke as they reached the end of the passageway. It opened up into a vast hexagonal central chamber. Like the ribcage of a tremendous creature, six arches curved far overhead, towering above and beyond anything she had ever seen except maybe the highest buildings in Manehattan. On the far wall in between two arching columns, an enormous double door stood taller than her tree house back in Ponyville.

“This is rather impressive.” Socket Wrench stared at the ceiling high above. “But what purpose could this place possibly have?”

“I have a feeling it has to do with those over there.” Isamu gestured across the wide-open atrium towards the doors on the far side. “Alice, what do you think? Have your scans picked up anything new?”

Their A.I.’s voice fizzed over their radios. It seemed being this far underground made it more difficult for her to transmit, but they could still hear her clearly enough to understand over the background static. “It almost looks like a cygnul cloning facility of some kind, though I haven’t detected any changes in power consumption since we entered in orbit around the planet. I am having trouble accessing their bio-network remotely, but it still seems that the facility is running on low power.”

“Well, I think I have seen enough. Let’s cut a few holes in these walls and find a conduit we can manually tap Alice into in order to bypass their security. Then she can power up whatever reactor runs this facility, and rig it to overload and melt down.” James pointed to the nearby wall face where Dmitri and Socket trotted to in order to get to work. “Alice, call in Aspire, we will need a pickup since Tank got hit on the way in.”

Twilight kept an eye on their surroundings, but with such a wide-open space she should have felt relaxed due to the fact that there were no obstacles for a cygnul soldier to take cover behind. Even across the arching ceiling, her eyes could not pick out a suitable perch for a sniper. Her ears twitched in her helmet as her nerves began to get the better of her. Something terrible is about to happen.

Over by the wall, Socket Wrench had assembled a small portable cutting torch Dmitri kept in his utility pack and the two ponies began carefully burning through the cygnul metal. The butterscotch pegasus did most of the work while the rambunctious stallion grew bored relatively quickly. He took his eyes off of the temperature gages for a moment and noticed Twilight fidgeting nearby.

“Calm down, Princess.” His statement was met with glares and annoyed stares from everyone except Socket who rather kicked out at him with one of her rear hooves.

“Because Deval isn’t here doesn’t mean you need to fill his place, Dmitri.” Twilight skimmed across the chamber again, her eyes flickering at imaginary flashes of movement.

The earth pony laughed and adjusted one of the knobs on the cutting tool when its blue-white flame sputtered a few times. “Just trying to get you to relax, da? Everything will be fine. This place not even operational. Nothing can go wrong.”

Twilight Sparkle had enough time to spin around and take in a deep breath in order to chew out the troublesome pony for challenging the universe when it beat her to the punch. She caught sight of a heavy metal slab drop from the ceiling and close off the pathway back to the surface. Instantly, the lavender unicorn lowered into a combat stance, quickly looking around for the danger sure to come.

“James, watch out! I am detecting a heat bloom in the facility just ahead of you!” Alice’s frantic shouting filled the airwaves and all six of them turned around to see the massive doors across the room start slowly swinging outward. Before they could completely open, two monstrous claws shot out of the darkness and sunk into the heavy metal slabs as if they were as delicate as tissue paper. A screech filled the air as the doors were torn from their hinges and tossed aside.

Twilight froze, staring at the darkened opening where four glowing cerulean eyes stared back at her. She couldn’t settle on what terrified her more; the sight of the creature’s claws tearing through metal like butter, or the fact that the eyes she was staring at were situated a dozen feet above the ground. She didn’t have time to make a decision when it stepped forward into the lighted atrium and she finally realized how much trouble they were in.

The cygnul titan had to duck under the top header of the opening before it could stand fully upright. Its clawed feet hit the ground with enough force to send reverberations through the floor that Twilight could feel even through her armored suit. Plates of black chitin covered its body from head to toe, appearing with the sort of commonality one might expect to see on a main battle tank. It held its hands out with claws extended on either side of its body and from its back, four thick tendrils whipped around erratically, each ending in a razor sharp scythe.

Twilight Sparkle took a step back when the titan opened a mouth with too many teeth and let out a roar easily heard without the assistance of her helmet’s audio microphones. As she had been taught by James, standard operating procedure for combating a bio-organic cygnul siege weapon, such as a titan, usually entailed the use of a radio and the frequency to the nearest artillery firebase. If this wasn’t possible, a limited orbital strike would work in a pinch.

But seeing as there were no friendly artillery units on the planet, and they were too far underground for the strike, they went with the next best thing. The three ponies and three humans took off running while hosing fully automatic fire at the cygnul titan. It only waited a second before taking off after its prey, and the battle began in earnest.

The titan moved much faster for a creature of its size than it should have, and in no time it had halved the intervening distance between it and the UEN team. Its jaws opened wide, and a glowing sphere of energy grew in intensity in its throat before launching towards them. By unspoken command, the humans and ponies scattered to avoid the attack whilst still pouring copious amounts of firepower into the cygnul monster.

A harsh buzzing sound accompanied the rapidly encroaching energy blast. Twilight, being closest to the incoming attack, spun on her hooves and ran towards it, closing the gap before it could drop low enough to hit her. The lavender mare galloped as the crackling sphere flashed overhead close enough to dazzle her eyes for a second before it smashed harmlessly into the floor with a resounding blast of heat and energy. Twilight had to shake her head to clear her vision before she realized that her clever escape left her in a precarious situation; running directly at the cygnul titan now bearing down on her.

Luckily for her, the towering monster seemed just as surprised as her for the moment and it failed to seize the initiative. Twilight continued forward and easily dodged a series of terribly aimed blows from the titan’s scything tentacles. In the meantime, she made sure the cygnul paid for its mistake and a full magazine’s worth of heavy slugs slammed into its right leg. Twilight may have been proverbially shooting from the hip, but with the carriage-sized shin of the cygnul within spitting distance from her, she did not miss a single shot.

Cygnul titans are typically only used for planetary assaults against heavily fortified positions and as such, it would take more than a few pistol rounds to put the beast down. However, when it tried to dig its damaged leg into the ground in order to go after the little unicorn pony, the wounded appendage gave in and it crashed to the ground screaming furiously.

Twilight took a glance over her shoulder at the flailing monster while she exchanged her empty magazine for a full one. She then altered her course around in a shallow turn to meet up with the closest team member to her, a galloping earth pony whose suit-mounted turret spat a continuous stream of particle fire behind him as he ran. Dmitri nodded at her as she took up position alongside him, and a click in her helmet preceded his voice coming in on a private communications channel.

“Good shooting, da? That was nice move, Twilight Sparkle.” Even through his helmet, Twilight could easily see his customary smile.

“Thanks… Dmitri.” She spoke between heaving breaths. Running had never been her strong suit anyway. “Any idea… how we can… stop this thing?”

Dmitri Bearclaw turned towards her to answer when the barrel of his turret swung upwards to shoot at something above them. The two ponies both looked up behind them in time to see that the cygnul titan had somehow used all of its appendages to launch itself high in the air, coming straight at them. Its mouth stretched wide, emitting a horrifying shriek and its arms and bladed tentacles extended out, ready to slice through both of them. Though it fired for all its worth, all Dmitri’s cannon seemed to do was discolor the outside of the creature’s natural armor plating.

As the building-sized living siege weapon dropped out of the air, both ponies screamed; one, a feminine shriek, and the other; a not-quite-so-masculine squeal. Acting on instinct, Twilight powered up a quick kinetic blast and fired not at the titan, which probably wouldn’t feel it anyway, but at Dmitri’s flank instead. The earth pony cursed from the unexpected blow, as he bounced along the ground. The tumbling stallion ended up landing roughly, but at least he did not have to worry about an incoming cygnul crashing down on him.

On the other hoof, the titan now had its sights fixed squarely on the lavender unicorn beneath it. Oh, dear Celestia. Twilight Sparkle’s eyes widened and her horn grew brightly before her world vanished in a flash of light.

With a massive swipe of both clawed hands and a flurrying stabbing of scything tentacles, the cygnul tore into the armored deck plating as it landed. Debris and rubble flew through the air, accompanied by the harsh screeching of tearing metal. The cygnul roared as it furiously ripped into the ground under its feet, leaving no possibility that anything could have survived.

Fortunately for her, Twilight witnessed all of this from above as she fell from the top of the curving ceiling where she had teleported to at the last second. She gathered her will in her horn once more as she dropped, keeping an eye on her target below. Slowing its progress, the titan stepped back to survey its handiwork, expecting to see the shredded remains of its prey but finding nothing but torn plating instead.

Its surprise lasted for only a moment when a little pony plunged by it and fired a superheated blast of magic into the right side of its ugly face, burning away several layers of its bio armor. The titan reared back screaming, swinging a scythe around to catch its foe before she could hit the ground. Twilight caught sight of the attack in time and with a melodious pop, she vanished once more.

She reappeared in front of the titan in time to watch its living blade cut through empty air. All four of its glowing eyes seemed to lock on her yet again and another two tentacles came around in wide arcs meant to catch her no matter which way she ran. I have to level the playing field if we are going to have a chance, Twilight thought, not knowing what the others were up to and not having the time to spare a look. Strategizing on the fly, she took off directly towards the cygnul once more. Titans appear to have trouble in close quarters. I’ll have to use that to my advantage.

Angling to her left, the titan sped up its right scythe, attempting to slice her in half, but Twilight had other plans. The unicorn’s magics flared brightly as she directed her power into a slightly different version of her usual blasting spell. Instead of using the energy stored within her as a single-shot beam attack, she allowed it to coalesce around her horn and extend somewhat further out from its tip. Then, she directed its shape to form a wide, thin blade of superheated arcane plasma.

As the tentacle came around, Twilight kicked off the ground with her back hooves and jumped into the air, rolling forward as she did so. The cygnul appendage swung below her harmlessly just as her horn came about, and the nearly blindingly bright lance cut cleanly through the titan’s armored tentacle. The scythe-bearing section flew away, spraying ichor as it convulsed along the ground. Staggering from the loss of its limb, the monster let out a mighty shriek of pain.

Twilight Sparkle completed her front flip, but she did not quite land as gracefully as she would have liked. She fortunately still had enough momentum to be able to turn her awkward tumble into a somewhat coordinated forward roll forward to right herself and keep moving. The titan snapped off another poorly aimed swing of its claws, but the little pony easily ducked under them.

Stepping about to face her, the titan stabbed forward with all three remaining scythes, trying to not give the unicorn the same opportunity she had before. Twilight Sparkle stopped and glared down the cygnul before performing a simultaneous teleportation spell whilst keeping her arcane lance burning bright. She appeared above the titan and allowed gravity to do its work, accelerating her down alongside the two left tentacles, which she cut through as well.

From that high of a fall, she landed on her hooves hard enough to crumple to the ground. By the time Twilight had recovered, the furious titan managed to swing the back of one of its hands and it brutally knocked her across the floor. She tumbled and rolled against the unforgiving surface, crying out with each jarring impact. Even though her combat armor kept her from breaking any bones, the impact still knocked her quite senseless.

Twilight Sparkle’s vision blurred between grey and black while she attempted to right herself. Every beat of her heart sent a surge of agony through her mind. The sharp coppery taste of blood brought her back to her senses and she grew aware of a stinging pain in her mouth. Ow, I think I bit my tongue. She might have been more concerned about her injury or the pounding in her skull, but the cygnul titan bearing down on her took precedence.

Wracking her aching brain for ideas, she tried to come up with any plan that would save her life. The amount of magic she had been throwing around, almost carelessly, had begun to take its toll in the form of a massive migraine threatening to overtake her mind. Physically, her legs wobbled badly, making it debatable whether or not she could even run. It seemed the only option she had was to pick up the discarded heavy pistol nearby that she had dropped sometime in the last minute or so. Even the simple telekinetic spell she used to hold the weapon felt like a knife slicing through the back of her skull. At least I have some way to fight back.

Twilight Sparkle stood tall, aiming down the sights of her pistol at the titan coming straight at her. Figuring that she might not fare so well in the next dozen seconds or so, she thought about activating her radio to talk to the squad one last time when something cylindrical flew in from her left, trailing a few hoses behind it. It took a second to register the cutting-torch canister before it hit the cygnul on the damaged portion of its head with a hollow, thunk. The impact did nothing noticeable to the creature, but before it could fall more than an inch, an incendiary round from a battle rifle punched through the thin metal and the entire canister erupted into flame.

A brilliant white sphere of superheated gasses blew apart against the weakened portion of the cygnul titan’s skull. The volatile mix of fuel used to quickly cut through high strength steel burned away organic chitin, either outright vaporizing it or causing it to bubble and pool to the floor. Even with so much damage done to it, the titan only faltered. It fell forward, catching itself on its remaining limbs, shrieking incoherently.

“Bring it down! Bring it down!” A voice roared over the comm net just as every UEN soldier answered the call. Several different types of weapons poured unrelenting gunfire into the now broken section of the titan’s head. Twilight Sparkle squeezed the trigger of her pistol as fast as she could keep it on target, watching round after round strike true. In front of her, the titan wavered for a moment, letting out a gurgling moan before it finally dropped to the ground once and for all.

Twilight lowered her weapon slowly, making sure the beast had actually expired. Its remaining eyes glared at her as their glow gradually faced and it lay still. Adrenaline levels falling, the unicorn mare looked away and closed her own eyes. She bit down on the terror and guilt bubbling up from her stomach that threatened to make her physically ill.

Though the confrontation probably only lasted for a minute or two, the shear intensity of the brawl made it feel like an eternity. What if I hadn’t pushed Dmitri in time? What if I had gone right instead of left? What if I had been a little slower? She kept second-guessing herself. The same questions flew through Twilight’s mind, like they did after every battle.

On top of the anxiety that naturally accompanied such a close brush with death, the unicorn pony also had to deal with shame she faced for what she had to do to the cygnul in order to stay alive. They may have tried to end her life countless times before, but she still never hated them for it. She consciously knew and understood that they were mindless killing machines that had to be put down, but it never failed to make her feel ill when she thought about it.

The weary pony took a shaking breath and spoke, not bothering to uphold the pretense of checking if she was transmitting or not. “Alice, is it over now?”

The artificial intelligence answered right away, sounding as if she were standing right next to her. Missing the crackling of her previous radio transmissions, Alice’s clear voice exhibited a knowing concern for her condition. “Of course, Twilight. Stand by for withdrawal.”

The walls of the chamber grew fragmented and disjointed, allowing a bright white light to shine between the fractal patterns of cracks that grew in the chamber. As the world faded, Twilight allowed herself to be pulled away freely. Her vision flared white only for an instant, leaving her in a comfortable darkness with the reassuring humming of Rainbow Dash audible in the back of her head.

The sound of boots hitting the deck grew louder and two human hands helped pull the virtual reality helmet off of her head. Twilight blinked back her vision, seeing James Fletcher place her helmet back on its shelf. Around her, the others from the simulation worked silently to store all of the delicate equipment. They were all well aware how she felt after a battle and their usual post-combat jokes would wait until she settled down. Surprisingly, even Dmitri somehow managed to keep his mouth shut.

“Here you go, Twi.” A glass of cool water wrapped in a feathery wing appeared in front of her muzzle.

Twilight turned to see the smiling face of Socket Wrench, holding the drink out for her. Taking it in her hooves, the lavender mare washed away her dry cottonmouth with the refreshing liquid. “Thanks, Socket.”

“How do you feel, Twilight?” Victoria came over to sit next to her.

“I’m okay.” She spoke, taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “But that was just so brutal and violent. I don’t know if I ever will get used to it like all of you are.”

Victoria placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Twilight, no one here enjoys fighting this war any more than you do. We hide behind our humor, using it as a shield to keep from bringing us down in despair. This world is so different from the Equestria you come from, but we were born into it.”

She gestured to the others watching them expectantly. “All of us have lived our entire lives during this war and because of that, we are sadly used to a darker way of life than you are. I am truly sorry that we ask you to train with us. We only do it just in case the unthinkable happens and you have to defend yourself. That being said,” Victoria paused for effect, giving her a reassuring squeeze, “if you ever want to stop then don’t be afraid to let us know. There would be no shame in it.”

Twilight lifted her head and met the human’s gentle eyes. “It’s alright. I will be fine.” She took in a heavy breath and let it out before hopping off the recliner to land on her hooves. As she left towards the exit, the others fell into a natural pace alongside and Twilight felt a ghost of a smile creep onto her face. “But if we do end up finding a cygnul planet, I would like to stay as far away from it as possible.”

Walking next to her, Victoria’s face tightened and she let out a short snort. Obviously trying not to laugh, she nodded her head to the sound of snickering from Dmitri who tried and failed to stay serious. “Of course, Twilight.”

“Yeah, don’t worry, Twilight.” She heard James say from behind her. “The plan is still to take us home in the quickest way possible. No sightseeing.”

Feeling more relaxed; Twilight Sparkle twisted her neck to eye a certain troublesome earth pony. “You just had to open your mouth, Dmitri.”

Smiles and laughter broke out amongst the humans and ponies as they all ragged on their resident clown. Even Alice’s voice followed them via the ship’s speakers placed every dozen feet or so, joining in the revelries they always had to unwind after such a stressful practice. Twilight stared around her as her team threw around various jokes and insults, leaving no one untargeted, but they meant none of them seriously. Twilight herself even snuck in a quip or two, and she may have been a target once or twice, but her grin never faded away.

The mixed group of ponies and humans meandered through the hallways of the Rainbow Dash. Victoria and Socket Wrench peeled off to check on their stations in the medical bay and engineering compartments respectively. The rest made their way onto the bridge of the patrol frigate. Taking up their usual stations, the UEN sailors checked on the status of their ship and its crew.

“How do we look, Alice?” James asked almost absentmindedly as he worked on his seat’s computer.

“We should be dropping back into real space in five hours. From there, we will wait quietly until I have recharged the jump drive and we are oriented to the next system in line. After that, we only have three more jumps until we arrive back in UEN controlled territory.”

Hearing that, a wave of relief washed over Twilight as she climbed into her chair. The past few weeks of traveling in dangerous uncharted territory had been unnerving to say the least. In front of her, Dmitri pulled up a star map of their destination on the main display screen. “I still wonder if this best course of action. After all, you drop us in middle of dying star cluster, Alice. This does not sound safe.”

“We aren’t jumping to any of the stars that are at risk of imminent core collapse. I believe our target is a small red dwarf that probably wandered into the region millions of years ago. It’s also not in any danger from a nearby supernova. The estimated radiation levels fall within acceptable…”

“Wait,” Isamu interrupted the A.I. “You aren’t sure where exactly we are jumping to?”

“It’s too small and faint that it was not discovered by the first explorers that visited the local region. I was only able to pick it up from our previous destination which was only a few hundred light years away.”

Seeing Isamu growing tense, James chimed in to calm any fears. “I know it’s been awhile since the age of exploration, Isamu, but that’s how a lot of stars were studied in the old days. Brave pioneers jumping into an uncharted solar system was a normal thing. Sensors can only tell you so much when you are hundreds of light years away.”

He turned around to meet James’ gaze as he talked, looking somewhat more at ease. “Anyway,” Rainbow Dash’s captain continued, “it was either cut through this cluster with one jump, or go around which would have taken a minimum of fifteen jumps. By now, the cygnul must know what we have done and they are undoubtedly trying to find us. The less time we take getting to Pegasopolis, the better.”

Alice spoke again from the room’s speakers. “Even though we are in cygnul territory and there is no reason to suspect that they would be unaware about this jump point, I determined that the odds of an extensive cygnul presence to be marginal, because of the volatility of the region.”

“I don’t know.” Isamu looked back at the blinking icon on the front screen marking their destination. “If I was going to hide something, a system like that would be perfect.”

James Fletcher nodded his head, acknowledging Isamu’s point. “We can only speculate on that for now. Rainbow Dash is a small vessel and we haven’t had trouble staying hidden from the cygnul so far.”

Twilight swiped her hoof across her own computer as she sat down to zoom in on their destination, a numerous collection of aging red giant and supergiant suns. The majority of which had progressed far enough off the main sequence of stellar formation that the computer model could only guess how much longer they might stay around. “There are a dozen stars here that, if I am reading this correctly, are expected to die at any possible moment. Could one of them have gone supernova during our transit?”

“Actually yes,” Alice’s avatar answered as it appeared on her leg rest. “The last solar system we jumped out of is two hundred and sixty seven light years from the closest star in the cluster that is in its final death throes. When we reappear in normal space, however, we will be less than thirty light years from the closest candidate. Therefore, is possible for one of these stars to die during our intervening journey in jump space.”

“That is kind of crazy. Does that mean every time I look at the night sky, I am looking at stars that might not even exist anymore?”

“Yes it does. Some of the stars you might be able to see, burned out millions of years before you were even born, and they will continue to shine on for a million more. Their light will travel through space forever, gradually fading until not even the barest trace remains.”

Twilight Sparkle studied the stellar construct on her screen, her eyes drifting along the seemingly random patterns it made as its constituent suns swung around each other in shifting orbits. No two stars were the same, with only their size and color giving any indication of their ages. As she rotated the three-dimensional image around, it reminded her of a piece of artwork. Hanging there in the void, the motley collection of colors chased away the darkness, filling space with light.

She thought on a topic Socket Wrench had once brought up. No matter how unimaginably fast it is, it still takes time for light to travel. Twilight wondered if they could somehow zoom in on Harmony from where they were, if she would be able to look far enough into the past to see the Equestria she came from. “I guess you could say that we are always looking backwards into the past.”

Alice smiled and inclined her head towards her. “Indeed, Twilight Sparkle. Some of us more so than others.”