Moonlight by Starlight Book One: Rebel Moons

Chapters

Prologue
Rebel Dreams
Wandering Moons
Councils of War
Brightstar Yard

Prologue

The night would have been quiet, were it not for the crackling of the fire. It was a soft sound, yet that was only because the flames had nearly burned out. Hours ago they had raged and roared. Now only a few feeble tongues remained active, licking among the glowing embers that threw ruddy light up towards the paired moons in the sky. They in turn sent a silvery gleam back down on what had once been a small but thriving town.

It was now a shattered ruin, with not one single home left intact. Many of the houses were merely craters, no longer identifiable as buildings at all. Others were burnt-out shells; still standing, but with walls and beams that were more charcoal than wood. Occasionally something would shift, and a wall would collapse or a roof fall in. Those short punctuations were the only sound, besides the fading crackle of fire, that broke the stillness of the night.

A spark floated through the rubble-strewn streets. At first glance it might have been mistaken for an ember, a true spark blown by a breeze from some burning house or other. But the tiny glow drifted with purpose, slowly moving up one street and down another, as no bit of wind-blown debris could have. Whenever a noise sounded, the spark darted towards it with swift purpose.

In one particular house, the fires had mostly died. The roof had fallen in, but all four of the walls were more or less intact. The windows gaped open, their glass shattered, and the door was likewise vanished into ruin. The floor was strewn with the charred remnants of the roof, mixed with blackened scraps of what little remained of the house's furnishings.

An untidy pile of such debris shifted suddenly, something moving beneath the embers and ashes. A trap door slowly inched upwards, sending bits of burnt roofing tumbling aside. It lifted further, until a pair of wary eyes finally peered out at the destruction. The stallion who had lifted the door coughed suddenly, and his face twisted with terror at the noise. He rapidly dropped the trap door. It fell, and the pile of debris across it fell too, creating a startlingly loud crash.

The little spark zoomed over to the noise and bobbed through the burnt-out house for some time, exploring the empty shells of its rooms. Eventually, though, it found nothing, and so drifted away once again.

Time passed. The fires faded further. The moons drifted across the sky, a third one now edging slowly above the horizon. Finally, the trap door moved again. Once again it eased up, revealing the same pair of frightened, tired eyes. After those eyes regarded the ruined house for nearly fifteen minutes, their owner finally lifted the door further, and climbed out. The stallion, his coat color almost invisible beneath streaks of grime and soot, looked back down into the basement, and nodded towards whatever he saw there once, solemnly. Then he shut the trap door carefully behind him, and moved slowly across the room, taking great care to make as little noise as possible.

Suddenly the front wall of the house gave way, the charred wood no longer able to hold up its own weight. It collapsed with a dull roar, the crumbling embers birthing a few live sparks that flew up into the air. The stallion didn't curse, but he looked as though he wanted to as he dove back for the trap door. He yanked it up and dropped through, letting it slam shut behind him.

The sparks that had rushed up into the air settled and went out, but one spark bobbed now above the trap door. It hovered uncertainly for just a moment, then vanished with a tiny pop!

High overhead, between two of the gleaming moons, another spark hung. It looked like a star, but anypony who knew the constellations here would know it was no part of them. It was a little bit too bright, and it drifted slightly out of sync with the motion of the other stars, moving on its own course that only loosely paralleled theirs.

From that tiny speck fell a bolt like lightning, streaking down from the heavens to the earth.

Unlike lightning, however, it did not move at some random whim. It came with terrible purpose, slamming into the exact spot from which the spark had vanished only moments before. Its white heat was beyond imagining, and when it touched the floor of the house, the world itself seemed to explode. House, ground, and everything for dozens of meters around vanished completely into a white hell of energy, vaporized completely. A shock wave of heat raced out from the impact, flattening several partially intact houses around the target zone, and re-kindling fires on any bit of unburned wood within its reach.

When the explosion was finally over, the spark popped back into existence, in the same place it had been. It hovered now, though, at the center of a huge crater. There was no trace whatsoever of the house, the trap door, or the basement that had lain beneath it.

High above the once again peaceful night, aboard the orbiting speck that was the IDS Flame of Justice, Lieutenant Thunder Chaser of the Imperial Draconian Navy lifted his hoof from the firing stud. He was a fairly ordinary pegasus stallion, with a blue coat and green mane and tail that clashed a bit with the crimson, black, and gold of his uniform. Beside him, Ensign Dappled Petal looked up from her screen and nodded, her horn glowing gently as she provided a bridge between the sensor spell and the ship's computers.

"Target destruction confirmed, sir," she said briskly. She was also wearing crimson and black, but with a single, narrow gold band on her sleeve and just one simple gold pip on her collar, where Chaser had one wide band and one narrow, along with the two pips of a full Lieutenant. Her cream colored coat and light pink mane and tail didn't exactly compliment her uniform either. In truth, most ponies looked a bit out of place in Draconian colors, even though ponies made up the majority of those who wore them, both in the navy and in the other branches of the Draconian Empire's military.

"Excellent," said Chaser, and his lips curved in a hard, bitter smile.

There were many reasons for a pony to join the navy. Some joined out of a sense of patriotism, because they wanted to serve their nation and the noble dragons that ruled it. Some joined because they were good at the work, and found it satisfying to use their skills. Some joined, of course, for power and prestige. There were few ways a pony could rise higher in the Empire than through the navy. Civilian administrators were nearly always dragons, but space was at a premium on a warship, and there was no room for them there. So even at the highest ranks, those who flew and fought the ships of Draconia were always non-dragons. Only the Grand Admiral himself, who oversaw the entire Imperial Draconian Navy, was a dragon. So power was definitely part of the allure for many.

For Thunder Chaser, though, it had been hatred. Hatred blended with family tradition. His mother had been in the navy, and had risen to the rank of captain, before being killed in one of the countless outbreaks of senseless violence out in the fringe worlds at the edge of the Empire. Chaser had been thinking about the navy before that, but once the news came, any indecision he might have felt had vanished. In fact, he had gone directly from his graduation ceremony to the recruiting station. He wanted a chance at vengeance; a chance to kill some of the equine scum who thought they were too good for the Empire, who dared to challenge the might of their overlords, and who caused thousands, perhaps even millions, of senseless deaths across dozens of worlds every year. Deaths like his mother's. She had joined up because she wanted to make a difference. She'd told him that, whenever he had asked why she'd wanted to be away from her children so much. She'd wanted to make the galaxy a safer place by serving and protecting the Empire's citizens. Then somewhere on some pathetic ball of rock, some pony had selfishly decided to throw away everything the Empire provided for them and rebel against it. That rebellion had been larger than most. The rebels had actually stolen a pair of naval pinnaces somehow, flying the small but heavily-armed craft up to attack his mother's ship. The ship itself had survived, but many of its crew had not.

None of the rebels had lived.

And none of the scum down there, on this ball of rock, would live either, if Thunder Chaser had his way.

"Ahem."

The throat-clearing sound cut through the subdued bustle of an orbiting cruiser's bridge. Thunder Chaser jumped, and all around him ponies did the same. "Captain on deck," called the marine stationed by the bridge's door, belatedly.

"Tell me, Lieutenant," said Captain Burning Zeal, from directly behind Chaser, "are you familiar with your own orders?"

"Y-yes Captain?"

"Including the ones that say kinetic strikes are to be cleared with me before being fired?"

"Uh... I'm sorry, Captain, that one slipped my mind. Ensign Petal reported catching a glimpse of an equine energy signature, and I didn't want to give any of the rebels a chance to get away, sir."

Captain Zeal, an incredibly stocky unicorn, obviously from a heavy-gravity world, frowned. His charcoal gray coat and platinum mane and tail actually complimented his perfectly-pressed uniform, with its four gold cuff stripes and three gleaming golden stars, quite well. "Your devotion to the cause is commendable, Lieutenant, but orders are orders. I'll let it slide this time, given your stellar record, but it had better not happen again."

"Yes sir," said Chaser, saluting briskly.

The captain returned the salute somewhat less crisply. "Carry on, then." He settled into his chair at the center of the bridge and surveyed the ponies around him with an air of satisfaction. Flame of Justice wasn't the biggest ship in the navy, nor the newest, but it was a fine little vessel and it had done its duty well for many years. It would certainly continue to do so for as long as he was its captain, Zeal would make certain of that.

And as long as the Empire continues to squeeze its fringe worlds for all it can get from them, he thought rather cynically as he looked at the planet that hung on the main display in front of him, there will always be plenty of work for ships like this. There were several hundred worlds in the Empire, most of them fringe worlds. Only a few dozen were counted among the "civilized", protected, and in Zeal's opinion rather pampered core worlds. Those were gleaming monuments to everything good about the Empire. The rest of its worlds, well... that was the way of things. The strong prospered and the weak struggled.

The faint smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth was far less bitter than the one on Lieutenant Chaser's face, but it was no less hard. That was the reason why Zeal had joined the navy. You could be a little fish in this universe, or you could be a shark. He was going to be a shark.

Far below, the crackle of flames still broke the otherwise peaceful night, and a little spark zipped away from the smoking crater that had once been a house, with a basement that had sheltered the last four survivors of the tiny town, whose name its destroyers had never even bothered to learn.

Rebel Dreams

Brightstar City didn't much live up to its name. Once it had. Once it had been a bright, vital frontier town, the kind of place where people came to make their fortunes. It had been a little rough around the edges, compared to the polished gleam of the core world cities, but it had had a certain kind of cheerful energy, a certain glitzy glitter all its own. Now, though Brightstar City was barely three centuries old, it had stopped growing and started rotting. The only thing that glittered anymore was the broken glass that lay in the gutters, beneath the shattered windows of its many closed and shuttered storefronts.

The stores that remained open were generally all clean, shiny, and very much alike. The same few logos were repeated over and over across the city, many of them featuring dragons in a prominent display of patriotism from the loyal citizens of the Empire who owned them.

None of those owners lived on the planet Sage itself, of course. They lived on the core worlds. A genteel business district near the spaceport did hold the equally clean, shiny housing towers where the management who ran the local branches of the great interstellar companies lived, but there were not many of those. Most housing in the city was much more dilapidated.

One such crumbling apartment building lay near the edge of the city. It had once been at least serviceable, if never the equal of the managerial housing towers, but was now well on its way to being completely uninhabitable. Ponies inhabited it all the same, including Dreaming Brightstar and his sister, Glory Brightstar. Their distant ancestor had discovered Sage, and founded the the city that bore her name. Her descendants had been among the movers and shakers of the frontier world for centuries. Now the last two of that lineage had no official political power at all.

The siblings were currently descending the stairs from their thirty-fourth-floor apartment. The elevators hadn't worked for years. The stairs were still intact enough to use, though the concrete was crumbling in places and the lights that made it possible to navigate the windowless stairwell were dim and flickering, where they weren't absent entirely. Both of them had their horns lit to provide a little extra illumination.

"I don't know about this meeting, Glory," the colt said as he descended. He was young, only sixteen, but already much taller than his sister, with a stocky, draft-pony build. His coat was pristine white, while his raggedly-cropped mane and tail were dark brown, streaked with lighter brown. His eyes were green, a dark, intense, pine color. His cutie mark was a compass rose in silver and gold.

His sister was quite petite, though she was almost twice his age. Her coat was light purple, with a long, straight mane and tail in jet black, streaked with silver. Her eyes were silver too, a color that could be bright and shining or stormy and dark. Her cutie mark was a silver star that trailed a long tail behind it. "We don't have a lot of options, Dream," said Glory. "Not since that ship got here." She heaved a sigh, then added, "Maybe we never had any options. The ship was inevitable once we started actually accomplishing anything. We need outside help; we can't do this alone."

Dream glanced back at his sister. Her face was set in a hard line of determination. He knew that expression very well. He wasn't going to be able to talk her out of—or into—anything right now. So he simply nodded and continued down the stairwell.

His hooves echoed in the concrete-walled space, as did Glory's behind him. Ahead of him, the stairs went around a corner and into pitch blackness; all the lights in that section were out. His own feeble horn-glow was barely enough to illuminate a meter in front of him.

That meant he didn't see the attacking stallions until they were nearly upon him. Their hooves were muffled in layers of rags, so they didn't echo in the stairwell. There were two of them, earth ponies, both as big as he. His mind flashed through the possibilities even as they closed, and he decided on a course of action almost instantly. Lowering his head, he leaped down the stairs, driving into one attacker horn-first. The stallion he'd hit screamed and staggered, falling down the stairs as he lost his footing. Dream immediately whipped his head sideways, slashing his horn across the other attacker, who yelped and collided with the stairwell's wall in his attempt to get away.

Dream rammed his chest into the stallion's side, pinning him against the wall with crushing force. He might be young, but he was already bigger than most adult stallions, and he had the strength to match. Pitching his voice to a low, dangerous growl, he pushed the tip of his horn against the other stallion's throat. "You must be new here, or you'd know better than to mess with me. Now, you're going to just lie down, and do nothing, until we're gone, otherwise I'll kill you here and now. Got it?"

"Yes, yes, yes, whatever you say, I'm sorry!" babbled the stallion.

"Good," said Dream, and he stepped back, letting the other pony slide down the wall to lie on the stairs in a trembling heap. His partner was lying on the landing below, whimpering softly. Dream thought it looked like he might have broken a leg. Under other circumstances he might have offered some help, but the two had almost certainly meant to murder he and his sister for whatever of value they might be carrying. He had no sympathy for ponies like that.

With Glory following him, he stepped over the whimpering pony and continued down the stairwell.

"I could have taken care of them both, you know," said Glory, sounding a little bit annoyed. She patted her jacket with one hoof, tapping the small pulse gun she kept there.

"You'd have probably killed them," said Dream. "Which is fine when we're not at home, but do we really want an official murder investigation right here where we live?"

"As if official investigations into the deaths of ordinary citizens ever discover anything," muttered Glory darkly. "The cops don't care unless you're from off world."

Dream snorted. "No, they don't. Not usually. But they're a little more alert than usual these days, what with there being a rebellion and all. We shouldn't take any chances that can be avoided."

Glory sighed. "Yeah. I wish..." She let that thought trail off. Dream echoed her sigh as he continued down the stairs. They both could wish a great many things, but none of those wishes would do them any good. The galaxy was the way it was, and they would just have to deal with it.

Soon they reached the bottom of the seemingly endless stairwell and exited, into the thin, cloudy light of day. The streets were wet, the potholes filled with muddy water. No rain was currently falling, the the clouds above threatened that more might come at any moment.

The pair trotted out into the dull afternoon. A few others moved through the sodden streets, mostly ponies, but the occasional diamond dog or minotaur moved among them. They saw no dragons, but then dragons seldom ran their own errands.

The city's streets weren't crowded. Most ponies would be at their jobs at this hour, slaving away for their masters the dragons. Oh, many of the city's businesses were nominally owned by ponies or other creatures, but only the smallest and poorest of them escaped being controlled by the draconic overlords of the empire. One of those small, poor businesses was a dingy coffee shop, one of its windows boarded up, the sign in the other scarred and defaced, its lights no longer glowing. Dream and Glory stepped inside and went to the counter, where they placed their orders before retreating to a table in the back.

The other patrons of the shop all greeted them with comfortable familiarity, exchanging a few words, or merely a nod and a smile. They all knew the brother and sister well, and not just because they were regulars here. Or, perhaps more accurately, they knew each other for the same reason they were all regulars here. Good little citizens of the Empire would have gone to one of the bright, shiny corporate stores. Those who came to places like this were all, in one way or another, something other than good little citizens.

The barista and shop's owner, a cheerful yellow pony in a somewhat threadbare apron, came over and delivered their drinks personally. "The worms hit Green Pines last night," she murmured as she set their cups down. "Kinetic strikes. Far as we know, nobody got out. They leveled the place completely."

"Damn," muttered Glory. "What about the caves?"

"Still intact. They can't see those from orbit," she said with grim satisfaction.

Glory sighed. "I don't want to be forced entirely into hiding, but it looks like we're going to have to retreat at least a little. We're losing too many people, and too many innocents are getting killed in the crossfire. Can you get out word to the other small town supporters in the area? Tell them to head for the caves, but emphasize that they're to take every possible precaution to keep from being seen going in. We don't want the worms to know we're there."

"Will do, ma'am," said the barista, nodding firmly. As she trotted back to the counter, the shop's door swung open and a pony stepped in. Every eye in the place was immediately fixed on her. There was nothing particularly odd about the pony, she was a fairly ordinary pink mare, but she was a stranger, and a stranger might well mean a Draconian agent.

The newcomer's eyes scanned the coffee shop, assessing its patrons, and settled on Dream and Glory. She strode towards them, the other patrons still watching her warily.

"Hiyas," said the stranger with a relaxed, casual flippancy. Dream and Glory both looked at her with wary tension. She was alone, so she probably wasn't here to arrest them, but still, she might be trouble. "Some good rain today. Worms come up, when it rains."

Both ponies relaxed at the code sign. Glory gave the response, "One sometimes treads on worms."

"One does indeed," said the pony, grinning broadly. As Gory and Dream relaxed, the other patrons noticed, and they went back to their conversations, filling the room with a soft murmur of voices. "So, now that we know who we are, shall we go somewhere safe to talk?"

"It's safest to talk here," said Glory. "No one here will betray anything they overhear, and the other conversations make spying on us much more difficult. A sensor spell couldn't single out just this table without us seeing it."

"Ah. You're a clever one. Good! Clever is good! Clever is what we need if we're going to get the worms off this planet, and I hope we are."

"Are you really from, well... Equestria?" asked Dream. "Isn't it mythical?"

"I'm from one of the independent worlds, my friend. But no, Eqestria isn't mythical, I've been there. Hard to walk on a myth."

"If it's real, then where are the alicorns? Don't they care? Don't they want to do something about the way ponies are suffering?" said Glory, harshly.

"Hey, they care. But there aren't very many of them. They have just one planet, which isn't especially populous. They're up against the frickin' Draconian Empire, which has hundreds of worlds. If they come out in the open and fight, they'll get crushed."

"I thought alicorns were supposed to be nearly gods?"

The pink pony snorted and shook her head. "They're strong, but they're not gods. They're doing what they can. They've sent me, and what I've got right now is better than nothing."

"What do you have?"

"Weapons." Her grin broadened. "Modern heavy weapons, and lots of them. I've already set up the back end of the shipment, it'll be arriving here in about a month. The right people are bribed, so it won't be inspected. It'll be shipped to one of the big corporate warehouses right here in Brightstar. All you have to do is get your hooves on it once it's down, and I'm sure you've got people who can get into a regular commercial warehouse."

Glory's eyes gleamed. "You bet your tail we do."

Dream, though, frowned faintly. "Weapons are good, but I'm not sure they're going to be enough." He waved a hoof at the ceiling. "There's a ship up there now. It's just a cruiser, but it's in orbit, where we can't possibly reach it. If we come out and use the weapons openly, they'll just call it over to drop kinetic strikes on us."

"Then you'll have to find ways to use them secretly," said the pink pony, still grinning. Her grin suddenly faded and she added, "In all seriousness, kiddo, you have a point. This is going to be dangerous. But the alicorns are committed to bringing the worms down. Right now they can't do much, and your world is just one of dozens they're trying to help. The day will come, though, when they'll be able to send more than just weapons. I promise you that. They would never abandon ponies if they had any choice."

Dream looked into the pony's purple eyes. They seemed to be completely sincere. He wanted to believe that she was telling the truth. He wanted to believe that Equestria was real. He'd heard about it all his life. Some said it was the home planet of ponies, the way Draconia was the home planet of the dragons. Some said it had been settled later, as a genetic research station, and that said research had produced the alicorns. All the stories agreed that the alicorns, the immortal, powerful ponies that embodied all three of the pony races, made their home there. If the alicorns really were going to help, then their hopeless little rebellion might not be so hopeless after all. "All right," he said slowly, hesitantly.

"So for now," said Glory, "it's just the weapons?"

"For now. Here's the shipment schedule, so you know when the weapons arrive and where to get them." She put a data chip down on the table, and Glory put a hoof over it. "I'm headed off planet," continued the pony, "to arrange for help to reach some of the other worlds that are fighting back. I'll be back sooner or later, though. Hopefully sooner, and hopefully with a way to get that ship out of orbit. But whatever happens, I won't be abandoning you. You guys just have to keep the fight up. Keep the pressure on. You're doing something for the alicorns too, you see. As long as the worms are looking this way, they won't be looking for Equestria. If they find it now, things will go badly. So keeping the rebellion going, and using those weapons when they come, those are important. Even if you don't drive the worms out, just keeping them busy will do a lot to help."

Glory nodded. Dream nodded with her. He could see the logic to it. If the alicorns really were working in secret to bring down the Empire, having people like him keep the dragons' attention away from them would be invaluable for them.

"Don't worry," said Glory, her face set in familiar lines of determination, "we'll definitely be keeping the worms busy here."

"Good. I'll leave you to do your part, then, and I'll be off to do the rest of mine." The pink pony rose and walked out of the cafe, a grin once again on her face as she sauntered out the door. She was very pleased with how this meeting had gone. The ponies were just as brave, and just as gullible as she'd hoped. They would get their weapons, and use them, and put a few more cracks into the huge yet fragile egg that was the Draconian Empire. The alicorns wouldn't come, so their rebellion was probably doomed, but she didn't really care one way or the other. The ponies didn't matter, only the Empire and its inevitable fall mattered. It did not even matter exactly how it shattered, no matter who rose to power in the aftermath, those that she really represented would be able to gather up the pieces.

It is really amazing, though, that ponies in these modern times can still believe in such an old mare's tale, thought the creature who wasn't actually a pony at all as she cut through an empty alley. A green glow flickered, and the pony that walked out the far side didn't look a bit like the one who'd walked in. Every sensible creature knows that Equestria is just a myth. There's no such thing as alicorns.

Princess Luna of Equestria soared over the sleeping ponies of Canterlot with wings outstretched. The landscape below her was not real, exactly. It was a dream-version of reality. The moon above her was a little too perfect, the stars a little too bright, and the landscape below was dotted with glowing lights, each one a dreaming sleeper.

There were a great many of them, though not as many as there were sleeping ponies. Not all sleepers dreamed, after all. Most of the dreams glowed with clear, bright, rainbow tones. They were happy dreams, or dreams that were merely harmless nonsense. Scattered among them, however, pulsed the tainted colors of nightmares. It was those that drew Luna's attention. There were enough of them that it was always difficult to choose which ponies to help. She generally selected foals, but sometimes would touch the dreams of adults too, if they were particularly bad.

Tonight, though, a different sort of light drew her away from the dreams of Canterlot's ponies. It was a shimmering, silvery gleaming, very unlike the steady glow of dreams or the pulsating sickness of nightmares. As Luna flew towards it, she realized that it was coming from the ancient Temple of Harmony, which stood high on the mountain's slopes, near the palace itself. She landed in the plaza before the temple and looked around. She found a shimmering silver-white circle hovering in the air near the heart of the plaza, standing directly over a crescent moon that was carved into the plaza's white marble paving stones. Each stone bore some symbol of harmony, including the cutie marks of all who had ever borne the Elements of Harmony.

The silver circle was a portal, Luna didn't have to look twice at it to know that. Beyond the portal, though, was simply a dream realm just like the one in which she now stood. She could see the glows of sleeping ponies there as well. Directly in front of her, in fact, was a pulsating, sickly, red-and-purple nightmare. It looked as bad as any nightmare she'd ever seen, throwing off constant tendrils of terror and despair. If the dream had lain within her own dream realm, she would have flung herself into it without hesitation. Yet it lay on the other side of an unknown portal.

She scuffed one hoof against the plaza's marble and considered. She had seen such dream portals before. The symbolism of this one was certainly clear, even if she hadn't. The portal stood above her cutie mark, therefore it was meant for her. It was silver, the color of moonlight, and also white, the color of unified harmony. It was the color of certain sorts of magic, especially those involved in fate and destiny.

Fate, however, was not always kind. She might be destined to step through that portal, but it didn't mean she'd like what she found on the other side. Harmony was not always kind, either. The needs of harmony could cause suffering. She who had once been Nightmare Moon knew that very well indeed.

She stood for a long time, considering her course. There had been a time, centuries ago, when she would have leaped into the portal without hesitation. She had traveled through many worlds in her reckless youth, using dream portals such as this, and helping the ponies she'd found there. Those adventures had been sometimes wonderful fun, and sometimes terrible trials. Either way, the ponies she had visited had always desperately needed her help. This situation would be no different.

What was different was Luna herself. She had once fought against nightmares, yes, but then she had become a nightmare. She had let her own weakness turn her against everything right and good. Could she still claim to be a champion, after how far she had fallen? Would she still be able to help ponies, after having proved so weak? What if she couldn't? What if she stepped into this other world and it proved to be too much? She was not what she had once been. She might fail. She might even die. Failure, letting down ponies who needed her, was almost more terrifying than death.

Yet in the end she knew that refusing to go would be a failure as well. Fate was calling her, and somewhere on the other side of the dream portal were ponies who needed her help. So, knowing that she might someday regret it, yet unable to make any other choice, Luna stepped through the dream portal, into the strange realm beyond.

Once there she didn't hesitate, she reached out a wing and brushed her feathers against the dream, making contact with it so that she could enter the dream and see what lay within.

A gleaming golden dragon, splattered liberally with wet crimson stains, stood at the heart of the dream. It had dozens of heads, and dozens of arms, and each fanged mouth and clawed hand held a creature—mostly ponies but a few other species as well—which it was slowly, deliberately killing. Luna shuddered at the sight. She wasn't sure she'd ever seen anything so horrific. Two tiny figures moved around the dragon's feet, hitting futilely at it. Luna sensed that one of them, a young stallion—a colt really—with a white coat and brown mane and tail, was the dreamer of this dream.

One of the dragon's heads spat out its bloody burden and lowered to speak to the colt. "You know you can't win. Why do you even bother to fight?"

"We're not just going to lie back and let you destroy everyone's lives," said the colt.

"And trying to stop us has saved lives, has it?" asked the dragon. "Did it save their lives?"

Another head lowered, this one holding two ponies, limp and bloody, mangled almost beyond recognition. Luna felt the colt's rage growing, his anger almost as high as his terror. "They're not dead!" he screamed. "Don't lie to me! I know they're not dead!"

"They are. And soon your sister will be dead too. She can't escape us. None of you can escape us." The dragon lifted its head, looking up. Luna and the colt looked up as well, and saw something like a star, gleaming far above. "See?" said the dragon. "The ship is up there, and your sister is doomed."

The second small figure at the dragon's feet was a purple unicorn mare, who stood still, looking up at the star as well. Her face was determined, and she screamed a curse to the sky above.

"Run," called the colt. "He's called a kinetic strike, you have to run!"

"Running won't save her," gloated the dragon. The mare just stood there, shouting defiance at the star.

Luna could feel the colt's terror growing unbearably strong, and knew that she had to stop this, now. She leaped into the air, soaring up to hover between the star that seemed to be the source of the fear and the mare below. Her horn glowed as she summoned a protective shield. Here in the dream realm—in her realm—it would protect her from literally anything.

Something streaked down from the star above with impossible speed, striking her shield with a force like nothing she'd ever felt before, but it held. The dragon hissed at her with all of its many heads. She glared at it. "You will not harm them," she said.

"An alicorn," breathed the colt, almost reverently.

Luna glided down, spreading her shield over all three of them. The dragon roared, but it was a distant, futile sound, it was already fading from the dreamscape.

"We've been hoping for so long that you would come," said the colt.

Luna was about to ask him to explain, but she felt the dream beginning to break up around her. The colt was waking. And so was she. She could already hear a trace of the real world. Somepony was shouting, very near her. The voice sounded as fearful and worried as the colt's had. She blinked her eyes open, the last of the dream fading away, and found herself in near darkness.

"Who are you? How did you get here? Answer me!" A unicorn mare that Luna couldn't recognize in the dimness was shouting at her. The mare's horn was glowing, but only feebly. Luna, without really thinking about it, lit her own horn, silver-blue light spilling brightly from it. By that glow, she immediately recognized the mare as the one from the dream.

She also saw another shape, the colt from the dream, who was rising to his feet from a pallet beside the stone floor where Luna lay. Luna rose too, and the unicorn siblings gaped at her, their faces blank with surprise. Awe swiftly replace surprise, though unlike so many ponies that Luna had seen with such awe on their faces, neither of them tried to bow to her.

"You're real," said the colt.

"I am," replied Luna.

The mare had no words at all, she just stared.

There were hoofsteps outside, many of them, moving with urgent swiftness, and Luna looked up to find that a rough-hewn hall outside of the small cavern where she had awoken was filling with ponies, all of them looking stunned and awed as they caught sight of her. A few daring ones crowded into the room, making way for those behind them. They were all staring at her. The pressure of their eyes was unnerving. Luna was used to crowds, but there was something different about these ponies, something far too intense, almost desperate, in their eyes.

"I'm Glory Brightstar," said the purple unicorn, finally recovering herself. "This is my brother, Dreamer. Have you come to help us then, like the Equestrian agent promised us?"

Luna looked at the two of them. She looked at the crowd in the corridor beyond that was spilling anxiously into the room. She had no idea what their situation was. Fear flickered in her, telling her that she might fail, that she might break and fall, rather than succeed. Fate was not always kind...

Then she thought about the dream, and the horror of a dragon in it, and the terrible promise of death from the sky, and replied the only way she could.

"I am Princess Luna. And yes, I have come to help."

Author's Note

Thank you all for reading. I have a couple more chapters written out that I'm giving a bit of editing before posting, so expect more soon. Beyond that I make no promises, but I do hope you've at least enjoyed what you've read so far.

Wandering Moons

"...and this is the barracks. We've had to expand it faster than anticipated, unfortunately. When we got the weapons you alicorns sent we got a little bit too bold, and a number of our teams got caught. We lost several cells and had to pull a lot of compromised people out in a hurry. We're working on finding places to get them back out, and ways to strike at the worms, but with the ship up there, well, you know." Dream trotted briskly down a tunnel, with Luna trailed behind.

"Ship?" she asked, hoping for once that she would get a comprehensible answer. She had jumped at the offer of a tour, thinking that she could glean enough information about the situation here to know what to do. Unfortunately most of what Dream had said made no sense. Luna didn't know what a worm was, or why ponies should be fighting them. She didn't know who had sent weapons, since it quite certainly hadn't been her. She didn't know much of anything. She knew that she represented some great hope for these ponies, and she did not want to disappoint them by revealing her complete and utter ignorance, but the more she heard, the more lost she became.

"Yeah. It's just a cruiser, but that's all the worms need, really," Dream said, rather bitterly. "It can drop kinetic strikes pretty much anywhere on the planet. It could probably drop nukes too, there's no way it isn't carrying some, but I'm sure the worms don't want to contaminate their property."

Luna wanted to scream in frustration. When he'd said the ship was "up there", she'd thought she might perhaps understand that much, it must be some form of airship. Yet she didn't know what a cruiser was. She also had only the dimmest idea of what a kinetic strike was. She knew what the words meant, but they made no sense. And "nuke" was complete gibberish to her, she'd never heard the word before at all. Both things were obviously weapons, but how was she supposed to help them defend against something she didn't understand? In the dream, her shield had blocked what was presumably a kinetic strike, but dreams were not reality.

Dream trotted on, oblivious to Luna's frustration. "Here's a weapons storage depot," he said, gesturing at an unlit room filled with dark, squarish shapes.

"Can I look at them?" asked Luna. Perhaps she could sense something from these weapons. If she learned how the weapons they had here functioned, she might garner some clue about how to help these people defend themselves.

"Uh... sure," said Dream, sounding a bit puzzled.

Luna lit her horn a bit brighter. She'd noticed that other unicorns here seemed to have very dim horn glows. She sensed very little power from any of them. The currents of magic here seemed no weaker than those she was familiar with, though. Was it simply that this rather ragged group had failed to attract any powerful unicorns? Were unicorns in this place—obviously very different in many ways from Equestria—simply less powerful? Or was something else going on? Perhaps the enemy, the powerful "worms" that all seemed to both hate and fear, somehow culled the unicorns and prevented those with power from arising? Luna tossed idle speculation around as she examined the weapons storage chamber.

It was filled with crates, all of them bearing labels that had nothing whatsoever to do with weaponry. "They were smuggled in, of course, so what you see isn't what you get," said Dream with a smile. He reached out a hoof and tapped one crate. "This one has grav-drive missiles, for example. I'm not even sure what we're supposed to do with these, that's part of why they're still here and haven't been sent out to people who can make good use of them. They're meant for naval warfare. You can use them down on a planet, but they're not exactly self-launching. We have some people with the know-how to build launchers, but that hasn't really been a priority. They're a bit overkill for anything short of a tank, which thankfully we don't see many of."

Luna reached out her senses to the contents of the box, and her eyes went wide. She almost burst out with a shocked exclamation, but managed to bite it back somehow. The box was full of chaos magic! It was contained and directed somehow, but it was definitely chaos magic. She would know that power anywhere. She swallowed hard.

"How... how exactly are these 'grav-drive missiles' used, should they be needed?"

Dream gave her a somewhat dubious look, as though he were wondering why the alicorn sent to save them was ignorant of such a simple thing, but he answered willingly enough. "Well, you have to make a launcher, you can't let the drive come up and shoot itself, unless you want to obliterate whoever's firing the thing. Usually they're launched from a big mass gun, same as the little pulse mass guns we use as small arms. Once they're outside a certain safe range, they bring up the grav-drive and accelerate like hell. So of course they don't even need a warhead, they're a kinetic weapon. In fact the orbital kinetic strikes work pretty similarly, they're just carrying a lot more mass, and the ship has the launchers to start them off really fast."

"I... see. And they do not need a unicorn to fire them?"

Dream looked puzzled. "No. Why would you need that?"

Luna sat down hard on the cavern floor. She couldn't do this. She could not possibly do this. These ponies were using tame chaos magic, which somehow could be employed by any, even an earth pony, and they seemed to consider that perfectly ordinary. The bits of chaos magic in the box were all small, certainly. They were no more than specks, and she didn't doubt that she could counter any of of them with contemptuous ease. Yet there were dozens of them here. If these struggling rebels had such weapons readily to hoof, how could Luna face those they fought, who surely would have even more? Her utter ignorance would doom her, even if the power she held did not fail her.

It was impossible. These ponies were doomed, and Luna had doomed herself with them by coming here.

"Luna? Princess?" Dream looked uncertain, almost fearful.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, her heart breaking. "I'm so sorry."

"I don't understand." Dream's ears were back, and the fear in his eyes mingled with confusion.

"Fate drew me here, so I thought I surely could aid you. Your dream told me it would be difficult, but I thought it possible. Surely fate would not bring me here if I could offer no help. Yet these weapons, all this... I am not the alicorn who sent these weapons, I do not even know what they are! I am not the one you were hoping for. My home has no such things. There are no 'grav-drives' or 'kinetic strikes' or 'nukes', whatever those may be. I had barely become accustomed to trains, and electricity, and printing presses!" Luna's voice turned plaintive, and she stopped short, shaking her head. "I'm sorry," she repeated.

"But... but you're from Equestria, the lost pony home world. How can you not know?"

"I am from an Equestria, yes. But I came through a portal, and my world is nothing like this place."

"An Equestria? Like... an alternate dimension?"

"Yes."

"But surely you can still help?" Dream's eyes were wide, pleading. "You said fate brought you here. You have to be able to help! You're an alicorn! Your magic is so strong! We've fought for so long, and hoped so hard! You're the answer to our prayers, you can't just leave us!"

Luna looked at him, seeing the churning emotions flickering across his face. She had chosen to come here, knowing how cruel fate could be, merely to soothe his dreams. How could she back down from the real life nightmares that had caused them? She sighed softly, turning away from Dream. Hopeless nor not, it wasn't as though she had any way to go home. She was stuck here for the foreseeable future.

The chaos magic had been a shock, but she shouldn't let herself despair because of it. Fate might be cruel, yet if she was fated to come here, she surely must be meant to accomplish something. She turned back to Dream. "Forgive me. I thought this world would be much like my own. Finding that it is not has been something of a shock. You are right, though, to say that I can't just leave you." She shook herself, her starry mane and tail rippling around her, and gathered both her wits and her determination. "If I am to stay" she said, a hard gleam sparking in her eyes, "I must learn more of this place. Tell me everything. Tell me who these 'worms' are, and why you fight them. Their strengths, their weaknesses, you resources, the history of this conflict... everything."

Several hours later, Luna strode purposefully through the cavern tunnels, with Dream still trailing at her heels, and thought about what she had learned. She found herself wishing that Twilight had come with her. She would have understood things like "FTL travel" without needing to ask for explanations. The awe that had lit Dream's eyes was entirely gone, now. He knew how stunningly ignorant she was, and part of her regretted that.

The rest of her, though, was trying to fit what she knew into some plan of action, some way to help the ponies of this world against the terrible opponent she now knew they faced.

Their conflict had its roots in the early days of space travel. Those times had been so long ago that their history was mostly lost, but all knew that at some point, ponies and other races had left their home worlds and begun to colonize space. The first colonists had used "slow ships," vessels that moved slower than the speed of light, and thus took many years to reach their destinations. Some were even "generation ships", tiny, self-sustaining worlds that might take a century or more to cross the vast gulfs of space. Trade and travel between the colonies had been impossible in those days.

All that had changed with the invention of the grav-drive. Luna knew, as Dream did not, that it used some form of chaos magic. She had no idea how it actually worked, nor did Dream, but something in the interaction between gravitic forces and tamed chaos bent reality in a very specific way, allowing a ship to break the light speed barrier. Early grav ships were still slow, but with the trips between the stars reduced to months rather than years or centuries, travel and trade began to flourish.

With them came war.

Draconia, the ancient dragon home world, became the center of one of the earliest interstellar battles. The dragons of Draconia were the "worms" that Dream and his sister fought. They claimed that they had been attacked by the half-dozen pony worlds nearest their planet. Dream said he suspected the attacking had gone the other way around, but whatever the start of the conflict, it had ended after decades of brutal bloodshed with a weary, reluctant truce. The terms of the truce had allowed free trade between the dragons and their former enemies, and economics had accomplished what battles had not. Dragons were masters of the art of manipulating money, their obsession with hoarding had long ago taught them such skills. So they used those skills to gain power and prestige with their neighbors. Eventually, when the economies of the pony worlds were so intertwined with those of the dragons that separating them would cause economic collapse, the dragons convinced their neighbors to join them, as independent yet allied members of what was then called the Draconian Alliance.

The Alliance gradually spread through space, absorbing its trading partners over slow centuries. Draconia itself invested the vast wealth it gained in the process into building a strong military, especially its space navy. The warships were to protect its trading ships, the dragons said, and that seemed reasonable enough. Yet not all its worlds, nor all its trading partners, appreciated the economic pressure it put them under, and eventually there was a rebellion. That rebellion was crushed, thoroughly and brutally, by the Imperial Draconian Navy. In its wake, the Draconian Empire was born, claiming ultimate authority—for the protection of its trade, of course—over all the former Alliance worlds. In a orgy of violence, it used its military might to conquer a further dozen trading partners who had resisted its economic strong-arm tactics. Ever since then it had grown slowly, its sphere pushing those who hated it out to settle new worlds beyond its reach, yet those worlds in turn eventually being absorbed into it anyway.

It was huge now, so vast that even with modern grav-drive ships rendering most star systems only days apart, it still took many months to cross the whole of the empire. Only the core worlds, the original trading partners and the few dozen more conquered in the first days of the Empire, were under the Emperor's direct control. The fringe worlds, like Sage itself, were governed by dragons who answered to regional offices, who then answered to the imperial bureaucrats of the dragons' home world.

Sage was fairly typical of the fringe worlds. It was a "protectorate" not a member of the Empire, so in theory it had an independent government, and the dragon overseer was merely an "adviser." In reality, the government had little actual power; the adviser and the interstellar corporations ran the world as their own little fiefdom.

Sage had been settled, as were many worlds, by ponies who wanted to find their own fortunes, away from the control of the vast corporations and tight government regulations on trade that favored them. Yet forty years ago, circumstances had combined to send Sage's economy into near-total collapse. Unemployment had been at unbearable highs, the government had been falling apart, crime had been rampant, and the planet had been more or less in the process of melting down completely. Dracodyne Industries had arrived at just that convenient moment and offered to set up a ship-building yard in orbit, to produce hulls for merchant vessels. It wouldn't be on the planet's surface, so Sage would still be technically free of the hated imperial companies, but it would be there, in system, and would employ tens of thousands of out-of-work citizens.

Some of the ponies had fought it. They knew where a Draconian company's presence must inevitably lead. But they had been in the minority. Most ponies welcomed the jobs Dracodyne had provided. The shipyard was still up there, and from that beginning, other companies had wedged their way into Sage, one at a time. A bit over twenty years ago, protests against the way the interstellar corporations were driving local competitors out of business had turned violent, and Draconian marines had been landed on the planet, to protect the Draconian citizens targeted by the protesters. With them had come the dragon adviser, to help the still theoretically free and independent government of Sage deal with the crisis, and now the dragons controlled pretty much everything on the planet, even though less than a dozen actual dragons lived there.

"The ironic thing about the whole situation," Dream had told her bitterly, "is that our father had actually launched a shipyard venture just a few weeks before Dracodyne arrived. It didn't employ as many people right away, but some day it might have. Dracodyne drove it out of business, of course. It hung on for years, managing to compete mostly because our parents put everything they had into it. The yard is still up there, but it was shut down and abandoned before I was born. That was the last straw that drove our parents into outright rebellion. They were part of that first uprising. They were one of the lucky ones that escaped back then, but they were eventually arrested when I was just child. I hardly remember them." He'd heaved a heavy sigh, and Luna had put a wing over his back gently, trying to comfort him.

He had soon taken up his story again, telling her about how he and his sister had continued the rebellion their parents had begun, and how they'd had a few small successes in recent years. A few months ago, they'd apparently become too successful, prompting the dragons to send a military ship to aid the local police forces in fighting the rebellion. Its kinetic strikes, weapons with no explosives, which used the brutal physics of speed plus mass to cause destruction, had forced the rebellion underground, literally, where the ship's sensors couldn't find them so easily.

Dream had explained that the ship could still reach them here, the strongest of kinetic weapons could crack open the tunnels, all save perhaps the very deepest of them. Secrecy was currently the only way to survive.

The ponies here knew their fight was probably futile; worlds never won free of the Empire once it had them in its claws. Yet they could not simply stand by and watch their home being taken from them. They had clung stubbornly to one tiny glimmer of hope; if enough worlds were rebelling, surely even the might of the Empire might be stretched thinly enough to allow a few of them to break free. So they fought. They'd gained another sliver of hope when they thought they had a ally from Equestria.

The mysterious agent had provided them with powerful weapons, and they'd used them to good effect. Yet that too, in the end, had only made things worse. Dream and Glory had fled here to the caverns after the dragons had actually ordered a kinetic strike on the apartment building where they lived, the first such in the heart of the capital city. They'd had bare warning that the strike was coming, thanks to having a compromised some of the Imperial communication codes, and had evacuated the building, so that time the loss of life had been minimal.

The total tally of the rebel dead, though, had shocked Luna. The dragons had killed thousands, and imprisoned thousands more. Officially, Dream's parents were among those living in prison, and Dream still hoped to someday free them, but rebel prisoners were not allowed to communicate with friends and family outside, so he had no way of knowing if they were truly still alive or if they'd been killed after all.

The bleakness in his voice as he told her that had further hardened her determination to help. Now she walked briskly, with Dream directing her towards the surface, where she could find one last piece of information. She knew the history of the dragons and she knew the strength of their weapons, now she needed to learn the strength of her own, and to do that, she needed to know the strength of this planet's moon. Underground it was hard to sense. She knew there was one, she could feel a trickle of lunar power, but the earth over her head attenuated and blurred it. Earth and moon were powers in opposition; they did not work well together.

A glimmer of ruddy light ahead told her that they had reached their destination. The tunnel mouth was draped with camouflage netting which hid it from prying eyes. Luna stopped just inside the tunnel mouth, peering out through the net.

"Let me move that for you," said Dream but Luna shook her head.

"No need. I can sense what I must from here." She looked out over a peaceful valley. There was no sign of equine life within it. This was still a frontier world, after all, and vast swathes of it were completely unsettled. To her left the sun had just set, and the sky was alight with ruddy color. To her right the moon had already risen, showing pale against the purple dusk.

The second moon was just edging above the horizon beneath it.

Luna stared at that in shock. Two moons. She never could have imagined that a world might have two moons. She reached out and felt them both, dual wellsprings of power that flooded easily into her. The force that she thought of as "tide", but which she knew was truly gravitational attraction, played through her veins—strongly, so strongly. One of them was smaller than the moon she knew, but the other was about the same size, though a little further away in space.

Suddenly wondering, Luna reached her mind out further, seeking.

She found what she sought. There was a third moon, still well below the horizon, very much smaller than the other two, but there all the same, and a fourth, much larger.

Four moons. There were four moons here.

With her heart suddenly lifting, Luna threw back her head and laughed.

"Princess Luna?" ventured Dream, sounding confused.

Luna lowered her head and grinned at him. "Your tides must be very interesting," she said.

"Uhm... yes, that's why Brightstar City is inland, not on the coast. But I don't understand."

"I am the Princess of night, of dreams, and of the moon. I feared, in a world where ponies put chaos magic on a leash and dragons can rain death from the heavens, that I did not have power enough to do aught but witness your world falling." Luna stood straight and tall, her mane and tail billowing out behind her, flowing on an invisible wind of pure lunar power, and her grin was frightening and feral. "Now, though, the 'worms' on this world would shake and tremble if they but knew what was about to hit them."

Councils of War

Eyrie, the capital city of Draconia, was a city of vast towers. In a civilization that had tamed and mastered gravity, buildings of a thousand stories or more were commonplace, their walls of ceramacrete reinforced with carbon nanotube rebar were easily able to bear the immense loads placed upon them. The great towers were studded with vast balconies, where the city's dragons, in all their hundreds of thousands, came and went through the air. Below, smaller doors let the swarming millions of the dragons' servants and allies, the ponies and diamond dogs and minotaurs, come and go as well.

Air cars wove among the towers in orderly lanes, though dragons took precedence over all other air traffic, soaring freely through the artificial canyons of the city.

Towering above them, larger than any building—even those built to a dragon's scale—was the immense bulk of Eyrie Mountain. It too had landing balconies built into the slopes, for the heart of the Draconian Empire lay within the mountain itself. There, a stupendous chamber hollowed out of the living stone of the mountain held the Imperial Council. In that vast hollow, the Emperor sat on his golden throne at the center of the chamber, while all around him in tiered balconies rising in a dozen levels sat the representatives of all the member worlds of the Empire.

The dragons had said, since the earliest days of the Empire, that they were not mere conquerers, nor dictators. Every world that joined the Empire, whether conquered by military might or otherwise, had a voice here in the chamber, where the Emperor himself listened whenever the Council was in session.

There had even been a time, centuries ago, when this had might have meant something. Now the Empire was simply too big. The hundreds of worlds, and thousands of council members, meant that the Imperial Council never accomplished anything of note. There were simply too many voices clamoring to be heard, and rare indeed were the causes that could catch the interest of even a simple majority. So, with the Council in a perpetual gridlock, and the Emperor himself lending his ear to an eternal stream of complaints that could never be solved, the day-to-day running of the Empire had shifted elsewhere.

Within the mountain there was another chamber. It was large, given that it needed to hold a minimum of five adult dragons, but it was nothing like the splendid showpiece of the Imperial Council. It was a practical room, the stone of its floor sculpted into five comfortable lounging spots, while a large holo-projector at the center allowed data about the Empire and its situation to be displayed for all present to see.

The display was currently showing a simplified map of the entire Empire; an irregular sphere, its stars color-coded by their status as core worlds, general member worlds, or protectorates, each color helpfully labeled in the key that floated beside the main display. Several dozen stars were burning a dull red, marking worlds currently sustaining active rebel factions. These were scattered all around the fringes of the sphere, seemingly at random.

"Thank you all for coming so promptly," said Alchemera, who had just fed a data chip into the projector and turned it on. She was a purple dragon of average size, and she headed the economics department, in charge of both the Imperial treasury and the regulation of economic policy within the Empire, which meant that she was probably the most powerful dragon in the galaxy, even perhaps including the emperor himself. The manipulation of economies was how the Empire had grown, and the economic prosperity of its core worlds was the one thing that mattered most to all the dragons who lived within it.

The other four dragons nodded at her, some more gracefully than others.

"What's this all about?" said Lady Emerald, frowning at the display with its scattering of red dots. Her scowl was not quite so fierce as that of the red dragon beside her, but she looked definitely unhappy with the situation. Her long green tail twitched restlessly, coiling and uncoiling from around her feet. She headed the department of the interior, putting her in charge of the Empire's interests at home.

The red dragon, easily the largest in the room, snorted wordlessly. His gleaming crimson scales set off the gold pendant he wore, which bore four golden flames wreathed together into a circle. It was his personal symbol, the symbol of the Imperial Draconian Navy, and the symbol of his rank within it. He was the Grand Admiral Char, its highest officer, and thus the one in charge of the bulk of the Empire's military might. He was also the sole member of the council who wasn't the head of a bureaucratic branch of the government.

Next to the admiral, a portly blue dragon was refusing to even look at the map. Instead he idly inspected his claws, as if searching for some speck of dirt that might be caught on one. His name was Whiptail, and he was in charge of the foreign affairs department, and thus tended to have the least power and influence of those here, since generally the Empire's only interest in foreign worlds was if it could conquer them or not.

"What do you think it's about?" said Sinuous, a small black dragon as long and winding as his name implied. He regarded the holo display with a neutral expression, a perfect poker face that showed nothing of his thoughts or emotions. He headed the department of education, but though on paper he mostly controlled the Empire's school system, in actuality he was also behind the Empire's propaganda efforts. He allowed a small, almost mocking smile to appear on his narrow face for a brief moment as he continued. "The fringe worlds are restless. They begin to doubt the wisdom of allowing the Empire to absorb them."

"And why shouldn't they?" said Whiptail, finally looking up from his claws. "They'd be better off having stayed outside the Empire, however you and your people might might try to convince them otherwise. The fringes get squeezed so that the core worlds can prosper."

"The core worlds are the Empire. Of course the Empire needs to prosper," said Emerald sharply, still frowning.

"Indeed," said Alchemera. "Nevertheless Whiptail has a bit of a point. The fringe worlds aren't happy. There are more of them in some state of rebellion now than ever before. If we don't take firm action, we might actually lose some of them, and that will spell disaster. Once one world escapes the Empire, others are going to start getting ideas."

"'Firm action,' by which you mean more of my ships, no doubt," rumbled Admiral Char irately.

"What else do we have a fleet for, if not to put down this sort of thing?" said Lady Emerald, waving a dismissive claw.

"We have them for a great many reasons. There are always piracy problems, even close in to the core worlds. Most of the fleet's smaller ships are tasked with guarding our merchant fleet. The larger ships are necessary in case some outside threat should challenge us. We need to be able to crush any such attempt immediately."

He looked over at Whiptail for corroboration, and Whiptail was happy enough to give it to him. "There are at least six multi-planet polities that border directly on us right now, including the Gryphon Hegemony, which isn't terribly centralized, but they're fairly big."

"Not compared to us," snorted Lady Emerald. "They're pipsqueaks compared to us."

"Yes, but if you have me sending every capital ship we've got to go piss out fires in the fringes, they could still take a rather large piece of out of us before I could get the fleet back together again. Breaking up the home fleet isn't possible."

"What's the state of the availability of lighter ships, say cruisers and smaller?" asked Alchemera.

"Getting thin on the ground. We have a few thousand of them, but better than half are merchant escorts, another quarter are needed as screening elements for the home fleet, and you already have the remaining quarter assigned out in the fringes, either policing rebels or reinforcing sector governors."

"So there are no free ships at all?" said Alchemera.

"Not a one. I can pull some more off the home fleet if I absolutely have to, but I am unwilling to do so without a truly pressing reason. The other options are to build more, or to pull some from merchant escort duty."

Alchemera shook her head. "That's not an option. The Empire's strength is its wealth, and its wealth is its merchant fleet. Those ships must be guarded. And we don't have the funds to embark on a massive building project right now."

"Then no, there aren't any ships left."

"Surely we can send some of the home fleet out if needed?" said Lady Emerald. "We can call them back in the, ah, highly unlikely event of a foreign invasion." She shot a grin at Whiptail, who glared back at her.

Admiral Char snorted. "If someone invaded us right now, we'd find out in two months, Emerald. It would take almost twice that long to get the home fleet out to the fringes from here. If I have to call some of it back from the fringes first, then we're adding six more months to our response time. It's bad enough as it is; taking a year to respond would be disastrous." He stared at the map thoughtfully and added, "I can break up a few task forces, some of the restless worlds have groups rather than single ships, but those groups are mostly real small fry like frigates. Sending out frigates on their own is a good way to start losing frigates, they're hardly up to suppressing a rebellion with any real force behind it."

"'Behind it' is the key word there," said Sinuous. "I sometimes suspect that there must be something behind this. The Empire has never had so many restless worlds before. One has to wonder why so many fringe worlds are rebelling at once."

"I'm afraid it may be a simple matter of size," said Alchemera with a sigh. "The Empire has never been this large before. I think we've hit a tipping point where the fringes are just too far away. We've already decided that further expansion is a bad idea right now. Trying to re-balance the economics of the Empire without a constant stream of new worlds is also part of why we're currently feeling a financial pinch, though. It's a perfect storm of otherwise minor problems that are reinforcing each other here. If we didn't have so many very new worlds, I doubt this would be happening. Give things a few decades to settle and we'll be fine."

"Why not just let the rebel worlds go, then?" ventured Whiptail. "Do we really need them all?"

"Oh no," said Sinuous instantly. "If we let any of them go, others will notice their example and start thinking about breaking away. Once that starts, it ends with the Empire reduced to mostly just the core worlds, and we could even lose some of those. We can't let anyone go."

"Surely you're exaggerating?" said Whiptail.

"He may be a bit, but not by much," said Alchemera. "Only the core worlds really benefit economically from the Empire. The outer member worlds don't do too badly, but most of them would do a little better outside the Empire. And the protectorates are much worse off than they'd be otherwise. We let the interstellars squeeze them as hard as they like. They're mostly the ones in rebellion, though a few of the newer member worlds have rebel groups too."

"Perhaps we could get the corporations to ease off a bit, then?" asked Whiptail.

"It'd never work," said Lady Emerald. "They have far too much power here at home. We can deal with losing fringe worlds more easily than we can deal with angering any of the big interstellar companies."

"What do we do, then?" said Whiptail.

Alchemera gave him a wry smile. "Our options are limited. We can't take our claws off the neck of the fringe worlds. If they start leaving, Sinuous is right, the wheels will start to come off. And Emerald is right that the interstellars won't let us stop squeezing them. Our only option is to squeeze harder, until the fight goes out of them."

"I'm not sure I like that," said Whiptail.

"Well it's not you who will have to do the squeezing!" said Admiral Char, rather bitingly. "You don't have to like it." He turned to Alchemera. "Although I don't like it either. Reducing the home fleet feels like an act of desperation. We're the Draconian Empire, we cannot possibly be that desperate."

"No? So you're willing to be responsible for us losing at least a dozen fringe worlds? We will lose them if something isn't done," snapped Alchemera.

Admiral Char scowled at her. "Why does the 'something' have to be done by me?"

"Because you're the one who has the ships. I suppose we could scrape up some ground troops from somewhere, we do have an army."

Char snorted again. "Only in theory. Those idiots couldn't find their tails with both hands. All right, I suppose that if we're all agreed that we'll start losing worlds if I don't...?" he glanced around, and got nods from everyone except Whiptail, who was examining his claws again. "Very well. I'll see what I can do to free up more ships. I am not going to pull capital ships out to send to the fringe though, you'll mostly be getting destroyers. Maybe a few cruisers."

"Thank you. I want at least one cruiser or bigger, or a pair of destroyers, at every single one of these worlds," said Alchemera, gesturing at the map. "About half of them already have a naval presence, and so far that's been very effective at containing any rebels. If we can get the rest of them similarly bottled up, we should be able to keep the lid on the situation." She smiled, showing her sharp teeth in a cheerfully predatory grin. "After all, it's not like any of the rebels have warships of their own. That would spell trouble."

"Let us be thankful for small blessings," said Sinuous, returning her smile.

The others smiled and nodded too.

"Now while we're all here, I wanted to get your feedback on how I'm spinning this upswing in rebel activity for the domestic press," said Sinuous. "And perhaps toss a few ideas about dealing with foreign press your way, Whiptail. I'd hate to encourage anyone from outside the Empire to stick his snout into this mess, so why don't we..."

Alchemera leaned back and listened as her peers discussed the running of the Empire. Her head ached, and she was glad when the conversation wound down soon after. She said her goodbyes to her fellow shadow rulers and headed for her home in one of the high-end towers on the mountain's slopes.

She passed the Imperial Council on her way out of the mountain, and wondered—not for the first time—if the Emperor had the easier job, or if she did. He had to listen to the whining of thousands of diplomats, but his decisions had little effect outside the council chamber itself. Alchemera was spared that torture, but she had to live with the consequences of her choices, and they could be very far-reaching indeed. The stress was constantly with her, no matter how she tried to relax.

Fortunately, when she arrived home she found that her pony servant had already prepared a bath. The huge tub was a luxury that many dragons eschewed, the water bills were stupendous, but Alchemera enjoyed her relaxing baths far too much. She could afford them, she was more than wealthy enough.

"How did the meeting go?" asked Azure as he added scented oil to the bath for her. The blue-maned pony had been with her for several decades now, and had become something of a relief valve for her, he never minded if she complained about her fellows with him, and he never gossiped either.

"It went better than I'd expected, actually. That fossil Char actually agreed to release the ships we need to put down the rebels."

"Oh? He's been insisting we need to make the home fleet bigger for years. I'm surprised he let you cut it down for any reason."

"I know. Honestly, he has a bit of a point, weakening the home fleet could be a bad thing. Not that I think we'll ever use it, but it's a powerful symbol. Still, no one has to know we've pulled some of the light units from it but the fleet itself, and they won't be talking. Not if they want to keep their jobs." She sighed and settled into the water. "Oh, that is good. Thank you Azure. You always know just what I need."

"You're welcome, ma'am," said the creature who was not a pony at all, with a tiny bow. He continued to hover attentively over his mistress, but mentally he was composing his next letter to his queen. The captains probably wouldn't talk, no, but somebody was quite definitely going to know about the reduction in the home fleet's strength.

"Simultaneous" has little meaning across the stars. Not when relativity plays havoc with time and news moves at the speed of a ship's journey. Yet as much as any two things could be simultaneous, two very different meetings were. Removed by many light years worth of travel, any news of what might happen at one meeting would take months to reach the other. Both meetings were held in secret, so no such news would ever come. Yet each meeting might eventually have profound consequences for the other. So, even as the most powerful dragons in the galaxy spoke of the fate of their empire, a little group of ponies with no particular influence beyond their single, unimportant world gathered together to speak of rebellion.

Luna took her seat at the conference table in a room hewn from limestone, hidden deep beneath the earth. She choose a place to Glory's right, though she had no idea if such symbolism was in use among these ponies. It had nearly faded entirely in the Equestria she knew. She felt a moment of melancholy for that thought. She'd missed a thousand years of history, and though this universe seemed to have followed a different course, it was even further forward along it than hers, so she had missed who knew how many centuries more here. She was utterly adrift from time, and from anything she might call home.

She pushed that thought aside. There might be time later for such sorrows. Now there was only time for the struggle before them, and she had chosen to commit herself to it. There was no going back now.

Around her, other ponies filed into the room. Electric lights lit it, though they were dim and flickering, and the stone walls here were bare and scored with rough tool marks. No time had been taken for aesthetics nor for comfort, only for cold practicality.

A half-dozen ponies entered the room, along with a single diamond dog. Luna watched them, gaging the mood of the room. Fear and determination mixed in equal parts, with an ugly undercurrent of anger. These ponies had been hard-used and they knew it. There was also quite a bit of curiosity. Ponies were looking at her, wondering what she might do.

When they were all seated, Glory rose to her hooves. "Thank you all for coming on such short notice. Princess Luna has asked me to call you together to speak to you. Princess?"

Luna rose. "Thank you." She surveyed the ponies, and the diamond dog, catching the eyes of each in turn. "Ladies and gentlecolts, I must begin by telling you that I am not the help from Equestria that you were promised." A murmur of surprise and dismay ran through the room, but Luna ignored it and continued. "I know nothing of the pony who made such promises, nor of whatever plans she and her people may have. Perhaps that help is yet on its way. Perhaps it will never come. Yet I am an alicorn, and I have promised to help you. And I do not break my promises." Her voice was firm and determined. "I will do whatever it takes to free this world from the dragons, and I believe that together we can find a way to make that happen. But as I am not part of whatever plans have been made on other worlds, I need your help to come up with plans that we can use here and now."

"What sort of plans do you have in mind?" asked one of the gathered ponies.

"Plans for attack," said Luna. "No war has ever been won by remaining on the defensive, I am sure you know that better than I."

"But if we attack anything openly, we'll just get that damned ship over our heads," said another pony, bitterly.

Luna grinned, a hard, fierce grin. "Not if we attack the ship first," she said.

There was a chorus of incredulous shouts, mixed with several eager, bloodthirsty exclamations that it was about time the ship was taken down. The two reactions immediately threatened to turn into an argument, but Glory banged one hoof on the table until everyone else present quieted. She looked at Luna again. "Explain."

"It is quite simple. The ship hinders all else you do here. Take the ship out, the rest of the equation becomes perfectly straightforward. I have more than sufficient power to tear the ship to pieces." There were a number of shocked stares around the table at Luna's confident proclamation. "Unfortunately," added Luna, a bit more hesitantly, "there is a problem with reaching it. When I am here on the planet, the forces..." Luna struggled to find the term she needed, and wished, once again, that Twilight were here. She would have had not only the words, but the numbers, the math that proved them. Finally Luna gave up on explaining it elegantly and just said, "Gravitational pull, that is the basis of my power. But I am attuned to the moons, not the planet. The planet's gravity interferes with my magic. I am powerful even here, but the ship is not small, and the distances that are considered 'near' in space are vast indeed. Projecting the needed force over the current distance is impossible while I'm in this gravity well. I need to get off the planet, out, say, to the orbit of the nearest moon."

"Easier said than done," muttered one of the ponies. Several others murmured agreement.

"It can be done," said Glory. "There are shuttles that could be hijacked."

"And shot down before we can get far enough out," pointed out the diamond dog pragmatically. "Just getting a stolen shuttle off the planet without the spaceport guards shooting it down would take a miracle. Getting all the way out to Jackalope is impossible."

"We could hire a shuttle legally," offered another pony. "Or smuggle her up on a worker's shuttle going to the orbital yards.

"The orbital yards..." Luna only heard that soft, thoughtful whisper because she was sitting right next to Glory. No one else noticed, the conversation about shuttles continued.

"Getting her to the yards isn't getting her out to the moons," said the diamond dog.

"What about hiring a shuttle, then?" that was Dream.

"Maybe, but it'd be pretty expensive, and it still might be noticed. There's no real lunar traffic out there. We'd need something to pretend we were heading for."

"I know where we can head, and where we can get something much, much better than a shuttle," said Glory, her thoughtful look turning to a smile of dawning hope as the idea that had been working its way through her mind suddenly blossomed.

Luna looked at her intently. The others did as well, and the room fell silent as they waited for her to explain.

"It's fitting, I think, to use my parent's failure to bring success now. The yard my father founded is still up there. It was simply abandoned when his business was forced to close. As was the last ship he'd been building." A low murmur of sudden understanding ran around the room, and Luna found her heart lifting. If they could have a ship to match the dragons' ship... "He got the hull itself finished, I know that much. The rest, well... I'm sure we can come up with the needed parts one way or another. It's easily thirty or forty times the size of that cruiser. It's no warship, but it's big, it could take a few hits. Frankly, they'll be hard pressed to hit anything important, even if they shoot at it all day, given how much of it is empty hold. We even have some conventional weapons we could put on it. Nothing as powerful as the worms' ship has, but enough to give our bow a second string, in case something happens to the princess. But weaponry aside, the ship would almost certainly hold up, even under fire, for long enough to get the princess out to the nearest moon."

"That is a completely insane plan," said the diamond dog, shaking her head. Then she smiled and added, "I guess insanity has the benefit of being something the worms will never see coming."

Glory's expression sobered a bit, and she nodded. "I don't think it's that insane. True, it may not work. But Luna's right, if we let them just bottle us up here in the caves, what good are we? This has a real chance of letting us actually chase the worms off. If this works, we'll be the ones with a ship in orbit. I think it's worth the risk." She looked around the room, and Luna saw agreement on every face there.

"We have nothing left to lose," said Dream, softly. "They've taken it all away already. I say we do it."

"All in favor, say 'aye' now," said Glory, scanning the room.

There was a chorus of "ayes" of varying levels of enthusiasm.

"Any against?"

There was a long silence. "As you say," said the diamond dog finally, "none of us have anything left to lose."

Brightstar Yard

The shuttle was quite crowded. Mostly with ponies, but a half dozen diamond dogs were crammed in too, all headed up to the orbital yards to work. They would spend several months on-shift, doing nothing but working and sleeping, since Dracodyne didn't provide any sort of recreational facilities. Then they would have perhaps a week off planetside, before coming up again aboard the alarmingly decrepit shuttles that ran every day between the planet and the shipyards. The scarred floor of this one showed where seats had once been bolted to it, but those had been removed at some point to allow more workers to be packed aboard. It was horribly unsafe, but then only about half of the workers wore spacesuits, so safely clearly wasn't the first priority here. The company didn't provide any, the workers had to supply their own. Saving up enough for one was possible on a yard worker's pay, they were better paid than the average worker on Sage, but not by all that much, and it was very easy for the money to end up going elsewhere, given the near-total lack of social services available from what the dragons had left of Sage's government.

At least the lack of suits meant that Luna didn't stand out. She was using a small spell to make her wings invisible and her mane and tail seem ordinary. She could probably have provided the illusion of a spacesuit too if needed, but she was just as glad she didn't have to. The other three members of the little rebel expedition were suited. Glory and Dream both had suits that were fairly good quality, even, a relic of their parents' shuttered business. Rosie, the diamond dog who had been so pragmatic at their earlier meeting and the fourth member of their little group, had a suit that looked as though it might come apart at any moment, but she had assured them that it was functional.

Luna had needed to assure Glory and Dream too, since they'd initially insisted that a suit she could wear be found. It would have had to be cobbled together from two suits, given that she had a unicorn's horn and pegasus wings, and the unusual length of her horn would probably have been a problem. Thankfully she had managed to convince them that a suit was completely unnecessary.

She could already feel her power growing as the planet dropped away below them. Its gravitational pull was still strong here, but much weaker than on its surface, and the moons were also that much nearer. It was a rather heady sensation.

Closing her eyes, Luna let her senses expand out into space. She was aware of the moons, of course, swinging through the heavens on their gravitational strings, their energies glimmering in her inner eye with cool, soothing light. The planet too was very obvious, a dull, warm glow behind her. It wasn't unpleasant, but it still clouded her mind, and she found she was glad to be speeding away from it, the dulling haze of its power fading with every second. She could also sense the sun, distant but brilliant. Being close to it would be even worse than being close to the planet, it radiated so much more than gravitational energy. Thankfully it was distant enough, and she was used to tuning out its glow. Distant too, just at the edge of her ability to sense them, were several other planets which orbited this system's sun. Their gravitational forces were negligible at this distance, so she could dismiss them as currently unimportant.

Smaller but much stronger—utterly impossible to dismiss even if she'd wanted to—was a blazing point of active chaos magic that tugged at the fabric of space itself as it circled the planet. It was the warship whose destruction was her eventual goal, or rather it was the ship's drive. Even as she watched, the drive dimmed, the ship completing its course change and putting the drive on standby as it settled into a new orbit. With that blaze of energy no longer obscuring her senses, she could sense the hull of the ship itself, and the little flecks of life within that were the ship's crew. Other flecks of chaos magic, bright but inactive, lay dead ahead of her. They were the drives, some installed, others waiting in storage, that belonged to the merchant ships being built at Dracodyne's orbital shipyard. That shipyard sprawled through space, growing steadily larger ahead of her as the shuttle approached it. She flung her senses out, looking for anything else in orbit. An additional spark of slumbering chaos magic from what must be a merchant ship drew her attention to a vast storage space that seemed to be some kind of orbital warehouse, and she found several other such in orbit, though none of them had ships docked at them, so they were harder to find.

Then she found what was probably her eventual destination. It quite tiny compared to the immense bulk of the Dracodyne yard, but it too held the vast hull of a merchant ship cradled in the same sort of construction dock that the other shipyard did, and it was right where Glory's charts said the abandoned facility should be. It also flickered with a dim trickle of power, which Luna thought was probably a very good sign.

"I've found the shipyard," she murmured to Glory quietly.

"Good. You're sure you can get us there?"

"Definitely." Luna could have gotten the whole shuttle there, and the thought made her smile. The regular working ponies around her would probably object, not to mention the consternation of the people above who were expecting the shuttle's load of workers. The shuttle's pilots would probably be a bit upset as well, particularly since she might do their engines some damage if she just yanked the shuttle off its course like that. Those engines also contained chaos magic, a small spark compared to the blaze of the warship, but still quite distinct and impossible to completely filter out from her senses. Luna found herself idly prodding at the engines, trying to figure out exactly how they worked. And how the chaos was contained and controlled so closely. She would have said such a thing was impossible, had she ever been asked, yet here it was.

Of course breaking the speed of light was also supposedly impossible, which was probably why the ships needed chaos magic in order to do it. She hadn't known the term "FTL" before Dream had explained it, but she understood the principle behind it quite well. She had to, given that the distance between herself and her moon was usually large enough for the delay in the moon's light reaching her to be a measurable thing. Light moved at a speed, and nothing else could move faster than it. She paused for a moment to consider that this must actually be quite untrue, for she could sense anything that happened on the moon, or on any of the four here, well before the light of such actions reached her. The bonds that bound her to the moon must somehow operate at greater speed. Did magic move at faster than light speeds, then? She would have to ask Dream or Glory if they knew. Yet if magic moved faster than light, why was chaos magic needed to move ships around, why not more ordinary, less dangerous spells? Perhaps ordinary magic moved at light speed, and only alicorn magic was instantaneous. Perhaps she could devise some experiment to discover if this was the case. There were still so many things she didn't know, and her ignorance was a constant source of frustration.

She was tugged from her thoughts by a subtle shudder as the shuttle reached its destination and docked with the shipyard. It was followed by a series of mechanical sounds as the shuttle's airlock mated with the docking tube. Then the shuttle's doors hissed open and people began streaming out of the shuttle. Luna moved with them, feeling an irritating sense of vertigo as she did. The shuttle's artificial gravity didn't bother her too much when she held still, but whenever she moved, the fact that her body could feel a gravitational pull while her finely tuned magical senses felt no planetary or lunar pull to match it was profoundly disorienting. It wasn't quite enough to make her actually dizzy, but she still didn't much like it.

It was actually a relief to step from the shuttle into the free-fall of the docking tube. She launched herself smoothly down it, using a touch of magic to help her maneuver. She moved more easily and naturally than Dream did, and he looked a bit green. Obviously he found free-fall, not artificial gravity, to be dizzying. Rosie, thankfully, was there to help him along, and though Glory wasn't particularly graceful, she managed to make her way down the tube competently enough. Luna sighed in regret as she exited the tube and landed lightly within the shipyard itself, feeling that faint sense of disorientation return, but Dream breathed an audible sigh of relief as artificial gravity closed in around him again.

"Are you going to be all right if the Brightstar Yard doesn't have active counter-grav, Dream?" asked Glory, quietly, as the quartet made their way through the corridors of the Dracodyne Yard.

"I'll be fine," said Dream firmly. "It wasn't that bad, I'm just not used to it. Anyway, there should be counter-grav, shouldn't there? It must have power, otherwise it wouldn't still be in the right orbit, it would be decaying."

"It probably has power, but there will almost certainly be micro-meteorite and other debris collision damage. It might have taken out the grav units. Hell, the whole thing may actually be a floating wreck, full of holes, and only staying in orbit by sheer dumb luck. We have no way of knowing until we get there."

Luna chuckled. "Actually, I had a look at it while we were on the shuttle. I can't tell if it has small holes at this distance, but there aren't any big ones, and there's definitely power of some kind there."

Rosie let out a low whistle. "You have some useful skills, your highness," she said.

Luna smiled. "Well, if I didn't, we'd be in trouble, since my skills are going to get us over there." She glanced around. The flow of workers had thinned as they peeled off towards their various different duties, so the quartet was nearly alone now. "Assuming that somepony else gets me to the airlock we're looking for first," she added.

"Right this way," said Rosie, and moved down the hall at an easy pace, with the three equines trotting along behind her. She had worked here until she'd been fired, which had been a final straw that had driven her to active revolution, "As much because I have literally nothing better to do now as for any other reason," she'd explained when telling Luna her story. Dracodyne was the only active shipyard in the system, so Rosie had had nowhere else to turn for employment, save the most menial and low-paying of jobs. She had decided that doing something about the horribly broken system that had led to such a situation was the best thing she could do, even if it might be futile.

Luna couldn't help but admire that about the rebels. They were up against something that was almost beyond imagining, and they had all gone into it knowing they probably couldn't win, but they'd done it anyway. Glory expected, and Luna agreed she was probably right to, that if they could show that rebels could win after all, most of the planet would be squarely behind them. And with that many hooves turned to the task...

She pushed that thought out of her mind. That was for the future. For now she needed to think about their more immediate plans. They were making their way towards an empty construction bay. Various malfunctions had caused it to be shut down some time ago, and it hadn't yet been repaired. Several unnamed, sympathetic yard workers had, in addition to making the arrangements for the quartet to get passage on a worker shuttle, gotten the sensors here to malfunction, so there were no cameras recording them, nor would there be any record of the airlock that let out into the bay itself cycling. They could be seen walking into the blank spot, of course, but workers did that all the time, the broken sensors extended into areas that were still used, so unless someone was unusually alert, it was unlikely that their brief passage through the shipyard would ever be noticed. They were just four more people among the thousands who worked here, with nothing to draw any particular attention to them.

They trotted through increasingly empty corridors until they came at last to one that terminated in a pair of heavy double doors with a control panel set beside them. Rosie went to the panel and tapped a series of buttons, causing the doors to slide open, and revealing a second set beyond them. Taking her helmet in her paws, the diamond dog gave the suitless Luna a long glance. "You're absolutely certain that you'll be fine?" she asked, sounding dubious. "In case you've never seen what exposure to vacuum does to a pony, you should know it's not pretty."

"I lived on an airless moon for a thousand years, Rosie," said Luna, giving her a confident smile. "I'll be fine. Go ahead and cycle the lock."

"All right," she said, still sounding dubious, but she shrugged and donned the helmet. Glory and Dream did the same, though they took a bit longer, since they had to be careful positioning the horn caps on top of their helmets, lest they accidentally damage their own horns by ramming the close-fitting metal down over them at the wrong angle.

Now prepared, the quartet stepped through the first set of doors and into the airlock. Rosie went up to a second panel inside and tapped another sequence of keys. The doors slid shut. The second set of doors didn't open immediately, instead a pump sucked a good portion of the air out of the little room, so it wouldn't be wasted. Luna felt the curious sensation of thinning air around her, and felt her magic and her body reacting, adjusting her vital functions, drawing what she needed directly from lunar energy, rather than from oxygen. She didn't know exactly how it worked, the process was instinctive, but it was also quite effective, and by the time the far set of doors slid open, letting out the last wisps of air, Luna was fully prepared for the hard vacuum that now surrounded her.

She smiled serenely at the three sets of somewhat startled eyes looking at her. She'd told them, but they still hadn't quite believed it. With no air she couldn't speak to them, but she gestured to the now-open door and the cavernous space beyond it, and they nodded and stepped out of the airlock one by one.

Luna dropped her disguising illusion, then folded her magic around them, and began accelerating them all, herself included, out of the docking bay, towards their distant destination. She couldn't see it with her eyes, but her magic knew it was there. She arrowed through space as fast as she dared, but with three fragile, mortal beings along, that was slower than she would have otherwise preferred. They would accelerate constantly until they were about half way there, when she would have to begin slowing them lest they soar past their goal, or worse, run into it and be splatted into goo, for it was far enough away that with constant acceleration, even as low as she was forced to hold herself to lest she break her companions, they would be moving very fast indeed when they arrived. The need to slow would increase their travel time, but it couldn't be helped. It would be at least an hour, probably closer to two, before they arrived.

As she soared through space on wings of magic, she let her magical senses explore the cosmos around her. Once she had once again scanned the large and obvious objects around her—natural or otherwise—she turned her attention to smaller details. Eventually she noted something faint but quite nearby. In fact, it was radiating from her three companions in irregular bursts. It was a vaguely familiar radiation, something like light, something like sound, something like magic. It was especially like light, but with a much slower, or perhaps broader, sort of vibration. She could see that the others were talking, and without air to carry their voices, she knew they must be using their com units to keep in touch, so it wasn't hard for her to reach the conclusion that this was the energy she sensed. Curious, she prodded at the energy with her magic. It wasn't directional, it radiated outward from each of them, so it was easy enough for her to sample it.

With nothing better to do, and with no need to concentrate on the simple, low-powered spell that propelled them through space, Luna started experimenting with the com signals. Surely there must be some way for her magic to interact with them such that she could tell what the others were saying? She toyed with various small spells, and finally hit on something that worked.

"...owing what's there until we get there." That was Rosie's gravelly voice.

"I know, I know," said Glory. "I just can't help but speculate. We're nearly half way. I can't see anything yet, I wonder how close we'll be before we can?"

"Assuming we're headed for the right place at all," said Dream.

"Hey, Luna has done everything she's promised she could do so far, including at least one thing that's completely impossible," said Glory.

Dream sighed. "I know. I just... it's scary, some of the questions she had to ask me. I can't help but worry that she's misunderstood something somewhere along the line. She doesn't know anything about how the world works."

Luna frowned, suddenly feeling bad about eavesdropping. They had no way of knowing she could listen to them talk about her. Deciding that listening without letting them know she could wasn't really right, Luna began working out a second spell, that would let her broadcast as well as receive.

"She seems to be picking things up quite quickly," said Glory. "I wouldn't worry too much if I were you."

Dream snorted. "You never worry enough, I have to do all the worrying for you."

Glory chuckled. "I worry plenty, but if I let my worries stop me from doing things, we'd be sitting back in that lousy apartment building, applying for menial jobs as good little lackeys for the dragons, rather than risking any of this. Frankly, so far we're doing better than I ever realistically thought we would."

Getting her spell to the point where it seemed workable, Luna cast it and then spoke. Or rather sub-vocalized, since she couldn't truly speak without air to breathe. "We can do quite a bit better still, even if everything doesn't go entirely according to plan," she said, and grinned as it successfully broadcast on the same frequency as the others were using.

"Luna?" squeaked Dream, shocked.

Luna giggled. "Yes. I have just now created a spell that can interface with your suit coms."

"Ha! I told you she was picking things up quickly," said Glory.

"I guess so," said Dream, still sounding startled.

"We're nearly half way, so it's time to start slowing," said Luna.

"It's called 'turnover' usually," said Rosie.

"Whatever one may call it, I am beginning it now," said Luna, shifting her propulsion spell to reverse its vector. Now instead of gaining speed they began losing it, slowing as they drew nearer the little shipyard ahead of them. Luna's keen pegasus eyes eventually spotted a faint speck of sunlight gleaming off the yard and the single ship there.

As they drew closer, it grew until the others could see it as well. Dream said nothing about his earlier doubts, and Luna didn't bring them up, but she did feel more than a little smug when they finally arrived, the spell canceling the last of their momentum, letting them drift gently to touch down on the scaffolding of the abandoned shipyard. With the boots of their spacesuits having built-in tractors that latched them on to the scaffolding, the others were able to walk along it, heading for the main module on the other end and the airlock that had to be there. As they went, Luna hovered by them, propelling herself with a touch of magic. The scaffolding cradled the immense bulk of a cargo ship. It was an almost perfect sphere, save for a few protrusions where sensor ports were embedded in its hull matrix, or where shuttle docks and access hatches showed. Those were quite small, though, so most of it was simply a smooth curve of silvery alloy like a miniature moon, which loomed over the scaffolding and absolutely dwarfed the quartet as they made their way along it. The ship was over half a kilometer long, and Luna had been told that it wasn't especially large for a merchant ship, larger ones were common.

The central module of the shipyard was tiny by comparison, though the entire apartment building where Dream and Glory lived, or the whole of Canterlot Palace, could easily have fit inside it. Its surface was dotted with the slick shine of solar cells, which Luna could sense gathering in the sun's power. She smiled a bit to see them. They no doubt used some arcane methodology to turn solar energy into power the edifice could use, but they, at least, she understood. How could she not when she'd witnessed Celestia drawing power from the sun on countless occasions?

They found the airlock, which yielded to Glory's security codes, but its double doors weren't needed, for the inside of the module was as airless as the outside. Luna stayed by the doors, knowing she would only get in the way, and watched the others spread out, searching for information. They needed to know a dozen different things, from whether there was stored air still here, and whether the walls were still sound enough to contain it, to the state of the ship itself, and what—if any—of its internal systems had been installed before it had been abandoned.

Several hours later they gathered to discuss what they had found. Luna had grown bored enough to explore as well, though she didn't know enough to really contribute to the search.

"First thing's first," said Rosie. "There is some canned air here, and a working enviro plant. So we won't have to head back to get more air when the suits run out."

"Excellent," said Glory. "Unfortunately what I found wasn't so good. The ship is there, the hull is intact, and the bridge and the crew quarters are pretty much finished, along with the sensors and navigation systems, but the final crystals for the computer were never installed and, worse than that, there's no drive at all. We can get our hooves on some crystals, probably, but a drive is much harder to swing."

"The parts storage here is pretty much empty," reported Dream. "There are plenty of tools, though, so you're right that if we can steal computer crystals we can install them. The drive though... that's not good news."

"That means the ship can't move, yes?" asked Luna.

"Yeah. Though I'm starting to wonder if you really need a ship. I mean... you've said you can pull apart the cruiser without needing its weapons, and you've just demonstrated you can move through space on your own. Can you just... go fly out to it and take it out?"

"Well... yes, I suppose so. My power is already much increased, but we're still very close to the planet. I need to be further out to have enough to be certain of destroying the enemy ship. Still, there's no reason I can't fly out to one of the moons and do so from there." Luna wasn't quite certain she liked that, using the ship had been the perfect plan, for it had allowed her to aid these ponies while also giving them an active role in their battle. She didn't want to just sweep in and solve all their problems for them. Still, if the ship itself couldn't be flown, doing it by herself was probably the most viable option.

"You know," said Glory, looking thoughtful, "I'm wondering if there's any way to take the ship intact. Can your magic target its crew, rather than destroying it outright?"

Luna blinked at her. For just a moment her mind shied away from the very thought. She didn't want to kill the crew. Then a shudder ran through her as terrible realization dawned.

The night will last forever...

She had thoughtlessly embarked on a course that would kill the ship's crew, and she hadn't even considered their deaths. The ship would be destroyed, that was all that needed doing, and never mind that destroying it would almost certainly kill everyone on board.

Just like before. Just like when I broke the heavens and kept the sun from rising, only this time I don't even have a thousand years of madness as an excuse. She shuddered again. Her first attempt at bringing darkness had been an eclipse, which had been bad enough, but when she'd tried a second time to bring eternal night she'd done much worse. The celestial mechanisms that should have kept Equestria spinning, and its moon orbiting around it, had been shattered by Discord long ago, so Celestia had needed to keep a gentle hoof constantly on the planet, shepherding it through its proper course, just as Luna had needed to carefully guide the moon. Similar damage from ancient chaos also meant that ponies had to direct the weather, and shape the seasons. Equestria was a broken world.

Then Luna herself had damaged it further. She hadn't been able to control the planet, then as now it resisted her influence, so when she'd been freed from her lunar prison she'd simply smashed at it, bludgeoning it to a halt. Celestia had been able to repair the damage and start it moving again, but Luna herself would never have managed it. The night really would have lasted forever had Twilight Sparkle and her friends not defeated her, even if she'd changed her mind and wanted it to end.

She would have eventually, she knew. She hadn't given it any thought at the time, but later she'd done the research. She'd even had Twilight help her with the math, and the conclusions she'd reached had been inescapable. She would have killed millions. The night side of the world would have frozen, while the day side baked. Plants and animals would have died, and people with them. She wouldn't have quite exterminated all life, a narrow twilight band would have allowed a few to survive, but even if every pony, gryphon, minotaur, diamond dog, dragon, donkey, and every other thinking being on Equestria had been able to reach it—and most of them would not have, she knew—they would not all have been able to survive there, conditions would still have been harsh. Some areas would have no rain, ever, while others would have such constant rainfall that they'd never see the sun, even though it would stay fixed on their horizon eternally. Mountains would cast shadows of lifelessness, and only constant labor would enable crops to grow.

She would have been forced to watch her ponies die, and she would have regretted her actions, but she would have been utterly helpless to change anything. She could not move the sun, it was simply beyond her abilities.

The worst thing was that although Luna hadn't realized the full extent of the catastrophe when she set out to destroy Celestia and create eternal night, she had known perfectly well that at least some ponies would die. She'd put it out of her mind, and not thought about their deaths, but she wasn't so stupid that she could completely delude herself into believing that no one would suffer if she halted the planet's rotation. But their deaths would have been indirect, no blood would be on her hooves, so it had been easy, all too easy, to do it anyway.

Now here she was, doing the exact same thing again, if on a smaller scale. She had known that the ship's crew would die when she destroyed her ship, but she'd been perfectly willing to kill them. Now she was being asked to kill them directly, individually, and once again she was forced to face the fact that she was an inequine monster. It's so easy to kill when the blood isn't literally on your hooves. So easy...

"Luna?" said Glory, sounding puzzled.

"I'm sorry," blurted Luna, her body shuddering.

"What's wrong?" asked Dream, his booted hoof reaching out to her.

Luna sprang to her feet and shied away from Dream's touch. "I'm sorry," she repeated, then she turned and ran. A babble of confusion and dismay broke out behind her. Luna cut off the radio transmission spell, and utter silence embraced her as she fled into the darkness.

Author's Note

Long time, no see. I'd had most of this chapter written already, and today I had a few minutes to go over it and get it more or less publishable. The next one is also partially written, and I may have it ready to post soon. But as always, with this story, I make no promises.