The Flying Emperor is the biggest military sky-ship ever build. Equipped with a quad-crystal-reactor, the newest ark-shield-generator, 15 Ragnarok-cannons mk IV and a whole lot of other weapons, it is really a doom bringer to it's enemies. And not only that, it still has one secret even most of the crew doesn't know of. And Red Ashes has the honor of flying this ship. Well, he is not actually flying it, the crew is, the Emperor is just too big that one person could fly it. But he is in charge of the crew.
As the time passes Red starts to feel more and more nervous. It isn't like there was some sort of risk, the council guaranteed him an easy victory and thinking of the size of the ship they probably were right but he is still feeling unsure about all this.
He calls his military adviser.
"Something wrong, sir?" the adviser asks.
"No...nothing." answers Red. Awkward he thinks.
"Then, why did you call me?"
"It's... it's just so quiet...too quiet."
"Well we're still very far away from the boarder and there is no expected enemy contact for the next two hours."
Red sights, he knows that already. But still: Something is wrong, he just don't know what.
That was until they heard the alarm.
Red and the adviser run to the deck. There are three enemy aircraft flying towards them. One of them fires. Their shoot hits the shield of the Emperor and in front of Red a huge wall of fire emerges, but it isn't strong enough to break through the shield. As the fire vanishes Red is screaming: "Fire!". One of the Ragnarok-cannons fires a huge fireball at one of the enemy sky-ships. A loud crack sounds as the fireball bursts through the enemies shields and while the fireball turns the ship into a new fireball that slowly descends to the ground, Red can hear the screams of the ponies that were on that ship. They hall inside his head giving him a headache.
Suddenly Red feels very sick. He watches as one of the two ships left turns away but the other one holds course still heading directly towards them, before his vision fades and he blacks out.
The only thing he sees is darkness. He starts to feel very calm, as if the battle raging on around him never existed. A vague contour of a pony appears in front of him. His vision is very blurry, so he squeezes his eyes trying to see who it is...his vision slowly becomes clearer. It is a white mare, with a blond mane and tail, somehow she looks familiar to him but he still can't tell who she is. He sees her clearer and clearer and a bit later he starts to see another pony next to the mare. It was a young colt, with red fur and dark-red mane and tail. And even though his vision is still blurry he can easily tell that this foal is a younger version of him. Suddenly he realizes who the white mare must be. The mare in front of him must be his mother. She died when he was just a very young foal, too young to remember her. Red is just about to approach the two ponies when his vision fades again.
He wakes up and is back on the Flying Emperor. The two ponies of his dream are gone.
"Commander Ashes! Sir, respond!" the screams of his adviser drags Red back into reality.
"Um, status-report, please," Red mumbles.
"The shields are still holding. No causalities or damage on our side. We've destroyed one of the enemy's aircraft, another one escaped. We're still fighting the last one. The cannons are ready to fire, we're just waiting for your order," the adviser answers. Red looks around. He can't see any enemy. Seeing Red's confusion the adviser points upwards showing Red that the enemy is right above them.
"Sir? Can we fire?" the adviser asked.
"Yes, sure." Red is still thinking about the dream he had.
Another fireball emerges from one of the Emperor's cannons bursting right through the shield of the enemy. The now-burning sky-ship falls and crashes on the shield of the Emperor giving everypony a terrifying view out of fire, metal and burning pony-body-parts. But the shield of the Emperor still protects Red and everypony else on the Emperor.
As the fire vanishes a shadow is still standing on top of the shield. Am i still dreaming? Red wondered. But hearing the voice of his adviser, saying 'What the hay!?' and seeing the confused views of the crew he realized that whatever that is, the other ponies are also seeing it.
"Can somepony get me some binoculars!?" Red screams and one pony of the crew reaches him one. He looked through it inspecting the mysterious shadow on top of the shield.
It was a pony. He or she is wearing a black cloak so that Red cannot see the pony very well except for... Red rubs his eyes... he couldn't believe what he is seeing...
"A horn..." whispers he.
He must be dreaming! A unicorn!
"A unicorn? That's impossible!" says his adviser, "Nopony has seen an unicorn in over two thousand years!".
Red ignores him, he knows that very well. Speechless he watches as the unicorn starts to use it's magic to rip a hole into the shield and jumps through, landing in front of Red.
Now it is clear to everypony: The visitor is a unicorn.
For a moment nopony dare to move. Then the unicorn starts to use his magic to attack the crew.
"Everypony! Take cover!" screams Red while the stranger uses his magic to use multiple machine guns at once. Red throws himself on the stranger trying to take him out. The unicorn manages to throw him into a wall hurting him very badly. At least he got him distracted long enough for those ponies that weren't killed already to take shelter and they start to shoot back. But the unicorn simple reflects the shots using magic. Red manages to get back up on his hoofs, he hardly drags himself to his adviser, without the unicorn noticing him, and says to him: "Use the special weapon." before collapsing.
"So, Mr. Ashes, ac-"
"It's still commander Ashes."
"This has yet to be decided."
After Red passed out when the unicorn attacked he woke up several hours later with most of his crew either dead or hurt very badly like him. The unicorn seem to escaped after they used their special weapon, but preparing it took them very long so the unicorn was able to damage the ship very badly. The first thing Red did after waking up was to give orders to return to the capital. Most of the travel he spend in bed, recovering from his wounds and writing a report about the attack, he didn't mentioned the vision he had when he passed out, instead he wrote that he couldn't remember anything. Once they reached the capital he immediately contacted the council and is now discussing with the council, defending his decision to abort their mission and return home.
"So, Mr. Ashes, according to you report, you abort your mission because of an attacker intruding the ship and killing many members of the crew, is that true?" asks one of the ponies in the council, a brown stallion, his name is Ducampero. Red knows him very well because he is usually leading the military forces. There are a total of 14 ponies in the council, but only Ducampero and 2 other are here. The other two are Charging Star, a blue mare with a white mane, and Vulcan Strong, a carmine stallion with an umber mane. Red asked where the others are but they just ignored him.
"Yes, that's true." replies Red.
"Would you mind describing us the attacker?"
"He was wearing a cloak, i could barely see him. I think he had gray fur, but as I said I am not sure."
"I have to admit i didn't had time to read your report yet," says Vulcan, "can you explain me how a single pony can nearly destroy one of the stro- THE strongest aircraft ever build?"
"That's rather simple, he used magic. Unicorns tend to do this."
"A UNICORN?!" Vulcan looks like he nearly died hearing that the attacker was a unicorn. Charging's face looked like she had the same reaction reading the report. Ducampero stays surprisingly calm.
"Yes a unicorn, with a real horn and real magic."
"You know that they are extinct, right?" Charging asks.
"Obviously they aren't."
"In your report you mentioned a blackout you had, shortly before this 'unicorn' attacked. Is there any possibility that this could have affected your consciousness?" Ducampero asks.
"I'm not sure what you're implying.", Red replied.
"Well, in a stressful situation the mind of a pony might, how do i say this delicately, get a little confused, and" Charging starts but Red interrupts her: "You mean I'm crazy."
"It would explain the blackout."
Red sights, he knew that it would come to this.
"I wasn't the only pony who saw the attacker, just ask the rest of the crew, most of them saw him too." Red defends himself.
"We've already talked to your adviser and he told us that the attacker might have used some sort of device to break through the shield. He didn't confirmed that he was a unicorn." Vulcan says.
"For me this situation is clear," Ducampero says, "in the case of emergency you had a mental break down, and that is not appropriate for a commander. Your will be removed from duties until a psychiatrist can confirm you a stable mental condition, if your mental condition turns out to be not stable, you will be removed from duties permanently."
Vulcan and Charging agreed and Reds fate is sealed.
After he got 'fired', Red went to his favorite bar.
"Come on Red, it isn't that bad, I mean you always complained about how war and killing is stop, and you think we should wrong it.", Reds friend Midnight tries to cheer him up, unfortunately he is already very drunk and when he is, he can't even say the simplest sentences correctly.
"Dude, you're drunk.", unlike his friend Red is nearly immune to alcohol. He normally wins every drinking competition without getting even a bit drunk. Normally that's not a bad thing but it sucks when you actually try to get drunk because you lost your job.
"And after all, you just have to go to a proctologist and get yourself tested to get your job back."
"You mean a psychiatrist."
"Yeah, yeah, what's the difference? Hey, man, don't sad, there's always something good in everything."
"You know, I think you're right. This isn't so bad, I should look on the bright side of this, This is a new start and I will not waste it. I will turn my life around and fight for all the good things in life! Maybe I can even end this war. Wait, not maybe, I surely will!"
"Drunk, now you're dude." Midnight comments Reds speech.