Cloaked Shield

Chapters

Prologue: Nothing But Ocean
Chapter 1: The Galaxy is a Weird Place
Chapter 2: Impending Unrest
Chapter 3: Squall Part I

Prologue: Nothing But Ocean

The night on the high seas was frigidly cold and moonless, but the stars were out. Lighting up the sky like guiding torches to show the way home, like the Princess of the Night, had intended herself to do so.

The twin funnel, crystal white passenger liner ENMS New Harmony steamed unabated through the Celestia Sea. Its propellers fed by twin reciprocating steam and magical tome engines built by Equestria's most exceptional lead shipbuilding company Baltimare Designs.

The pine brown Earth stallion didn't a watch to remind him of the time. By his honed years of experience at sea, by his reckoning, it was almost an hour till midnight, his shift in the crows' nest for the night-shift coming to an end.

He, like one of the many crewponies of his kind, served with professionalism aboard the last leading and of the three remaining of the Equestrian Navy and Merchant Shipping New Harmony-class of liners.

Below, strolling the decks, delighted voices came from the few passengers who braved the cold and gaze upon the starry sky.

"Wonderful sight, isn't it, dear?"

"Indeed, it is."

Standing comfortably with hoof under chin, the Earth crewpony surveyed the smooth glass surface that was the sea.

He began to ponder in excitement as to how so many things have changed for the better for everypony in Equestria, ever since they steamed out of the Gryphonian Empire's protective waters three days ago.

The Earth crewpony thought about what things the Royal Crystal Ambassadorial Party aboard would bring about with the new treaty of peaceful relations reached between both nations. He gazed up at the show of the flowing aurora borealis.

A combined spectacular display of colours, dancing with the stars in the night sky above, the vibrant, dazzling hues of purple and the rose-red of this show tonight dominating over the neon greens, blues and pinks of the previous two nights.

Another great treat to his end shift on another graceful night.

A whistle blew from below, and the Earth crewpony exhaled the deep refreshing breath. He began his climb down the ladder to allow the other crewpony below to take his place when everything so perfect not took a terrifying turn.

All of a sudden the ship decided to take an abrupt detour, heaving hard to starboard and racing down a massive rolling face of a rogue wave as if it was plunging headfirst into the bowels of Tartarus itself.

As the ship pitched and rolled erratically, some unknown force seemed to take hold of the maritime vessel and began jarring nonstop like it was ploughing straight into pack ice and kept going.

Events that occurred below decks was like a scene from a horror movie as metal buckets, silverware, and anything else that had a magnetic quality shot forward towards where the bow of the ship would be facing.

A unicorn waitress that had been softly singing absentmindedly to herself as she polished the silverware in the first-class galley was nearly pegged to the opposite wall when a tray full of forks, knives and spoons flew at her as she screamed.

The sudden motion sent the startled Earth crewpony off his ladder for the remaining rungs and onto his back, as well as waking every passenger and casting the off duty crew out from their reasonably comfy bunk beds from their slumber.

The crewponies still out on deck had their eyes wide as saucers, pupils shrunk to the size of pinpricks, and mouths open wide in terrified horror as they stared up at what had become of the breathtaking sky above for lightning crashed overhead at an electrifying pace.

The cruiseliner reached the bottom of the rogue wave and knifed into the seawater, the ocean emptying over the prow and gunwales like it didn't exist.

The churning white water blasted across the open deck like a dam had burst open; catching crewponies and passengers outside alike into its tossing embrace, hurling them unforgivingly into the superstructure's metal walls.

From his view from the bridge, the veteran pony captain of the ENMS New Harmony mouth fell open as the lightning flashes illuminated a danger that loomed ahead.

In all his years out at sea, he could not believe what he saw. A section of the sea – about three miles out – began to part and dropped away. Two entire geysers of spray blasting high into the air, revealing in its parting centre nothing but a sheer drop into inky blackness.

"Cap'n! The maelstrom! It's sucking us in!" A holler from his first officer roused the captain from his frozen state.

The captain bellowed to the officer at the helm, racing horn aglow for the engine order telegraphs on either side with his XO, "HARD TO PORT!"

"Aye, Cap'n'! Hard to port!"

The wheel was turned feverishly in the commanded direction, while in simultaneous dings, both telegraphs changed from 'Full - Ahead' to 'Full - Astern'.

A junior officer near the helm watched through the rain-streaked bridge windows, his body feeling the same dread like everyone was as the liner ploughed through the raging sea straight for it, urging faintly through gritted teeth, "Come on, turn. Turn. Turn, girl, turn..."

The gap in the ocean ahead continued to grow wider and wider, and in turn came closer and closer all the while the storm ramped up in intensity, the pelting rain coming down in thick sheets.

"Is it hard over?!" the first officer yelled in trepidation.

"It is! Yes, sir, hard over!"

Dead ahead, the gap in the sea had spread so wide that, when another series of lightning bolts speared into it, the captain could've sworn he saw six silhouetted shapes of a pod of whales and their calves swimming through the water.

"By Celestia..."

Then, with a slight tilting to the deck, and much to the grateful relief of all the crew and captain, the ship began to veer away.

Resounding cheers of pure happiness followed by the applause of hooves went up from everypony on board as the ship turned from the danger.

From utter disaster, the ship spared a tragic fate.

They were saved.

Saved...

Saved until the storm above unleashed its unbridled fury on the liner that nopony could've predicted.

As the ship turned side on to the open pit in the sea, the gusting winds astern from the storm blew against the hull, giving an unwarranted helping hoof at pushing the ship back towards the danger, much to the sheer heart-wrenching horror of everypony on the bridge and those watching on deck.

With the portside acting like a gigantic metal sail and under the ever sucking pull of the ocean draining into the pit, the stern end of the passenger liner slewed about, the rear pointing arse first towards the ocean opening until it slithered out over the edge — the propellers churning uselessly in empty air.

In desperation to prevent the ship from going any further, the two anchors at the bow were released.

The anchor chains rumbled out with a clattering clamour as the ship eased even further out over the precipice, the deck began to tilt at an incline.

More lightning struck out of the storm as another bolt hit the forward funnel of the liner followed by another striking the same place a scant second later. The tremendous surges of enormous energy from the lightning strikes caused the protective lightning rod of the twin stacks to become overtaxed.

As the anchor chains snapped tautly, the anchors firmly snagging something on the bottom of the sea, a third strike struck the funnel lightning rod.

Overloaded the rod couldn't disperse the energy in time and exploded. A wave of hazy purplish-blue shot out and travelled throughout the entirety of the ship. Knocking out everything left and right that was electrical or magical.

Lighting, radios, the two crewponies still actively using the radiotelegraph to put out the distress call for help, and placed havoc with every unicorn and sole alicorn aboard abilities to use any magic of any form.

As the occurring chaos rampaged his stricken ship, the captains' attention was focused elsewhere as his ears picked up a deep, reverberating, thrumming rumble much like thunder from in storming night above.

Staring up from the wing bridge of his afflicted vessel, the captain bore witness to a monstrous bulbous blunt yet elegantly curved object knifing through storm clouds towards them.

Whatever this thing was, the captain noticed it was not heading for them specifically but directly for the wide-open inky blackness of the chasm they were balancing over.

"Oh, buck me…" the captain breathed as the humungous unidentified flying object clipped the tail end of the ocean liner.

CRUNCH

One of the alien space ship's four fins protruding from the underside of its immense silver-purple prow made contact with the oceanliner's overhanging stern, just behind the second funnel, cutting straight through like a hot knife through butter.

The collision not only served to sever the entire rear half off but also served to pull the rest of the ship, snapping its two anchor chains from the bow like wet twine.

By the time the ENMS Zephyr arrived an hour later at the given latitude and longitude coordinates according to the received SOS distress call from the stricken liner, there was nothing to be seen but the scattered clearing of the reported storm.

No maelstrom looking whirlpool.

No void in the ocean.

No bottomless abyss.

No ship.

No wreckage.

No lifeboats.

No sign of the listed 1483 souls of the passengers that were aboard before departing on its fiftieth transcelestic voyage from the Gryphonian Empire back to Equestria. Although it would be many stressful hours until the news of this tragedy would reach the two princess sisters in Canterlot.

The tragic story of the ship lost at sea would send waves of grief-stricken sadness through the both of them, an empire, the rest of pony kind of the Equestrian nation.

But there was one place that would be hit the hardest to the news. One purple alicorn living within one very one-off town by the name of:

Ponyville.

Chapter 1: The Galaxy is a Weird Place

Nothing fascinating was seen outside the bridge viewports.

No radiating warmth from the stars. No breathtaking sights of alien planets, and their many unique colours and landmasses. No cosmic views such as moons orbiting objects that trapped them with their gravitational pull smears of nebulas displaying stupendous colours, chunks of rock and ice of all sizes hurtling through the depths of space only the Ancestors knew where.

Not one single one of those. Period. It was just a vast swath of black in all directions.

Well, except for one.

Seventh Generation Smart-class Artificial Intelligence Leio, serial number SOS LO 0876-8, was young for her generation. At just four years old, Leio was created by sangheili scientists of the Unified Sangheili Empire in conjunction with the humans of the United Nation Space Command as part of an intelligence and technology sharing pact between the two species.

Leio carefully sized up and compared the constant streaming data against the intricate gravitational influxes caused by the insurmountable celestial objects they passed by them while in the dimensional travelling plane called slipstream space.

As she monitored the situation, cautiously and very carefully adjusted the course, she began to detect a sudden build-up of turbulence that started to ever so slowly to affect the Frigate's path through the alternate planes of eleven that was slipspace.

GALLIPOLI

FFG-1915

Motto: Duty Ante Nos - Duty Before Us.

Commissioned in late 2548, Gallipoli was a Stalwart-class light frigate, a hardened and battle-tested warship whose decorating service history included several high profile engagement commemorations, four of which dated back to the last years of the Human-Covenant War. The near three full decades of bloody genocide waged against the humans by the original religious conglomerate that started it.

Monitoring the stress numbers as they ticked ever upwards on the macro level, Leio decided to do something about it. She saw a far less disturbed path among the twisted ways of the matrices that made up the plane of slipspace and nudged the frigate on to it. The stresses acting upon the armoured hull slowed and returned to normal and the ship skimmed by the now identified patch of turbulence created by a sun going supernova. Not that any single member of the crew aboard would ever feel or experience such awe-inspiring violent spectacle.

Near where the commander's chair would've been, a holographic pedestal lit up. In it, pulsing as a basking soft grey was Leio's avatar, an elegant, confident, and eager looking female sangheili in what could only be described by humans as a Roman toga from 44 BC.

Even though Leio was an AI, her very being of millions upon millions of information and data, she still stretched and yawned the fun of it, and be more 'down to earth', as the humans would say, to the cross-species crew that ran the frigate, which made her happy.

A deep low growling, yet pleasant male voice started speaking to her in the standard Sanghelios dialect. "Leio. I trust everything is alright?"

"As far as I can report, Fleetmaster. All operating systems are operating well within limits. I had to nudge our course slightly to cut around some turbulence." stated Leio, looking over at the imposingly tall sangheili.

Standing at nearly 8 feet tall, clad in deep ivory crimson armour with a prominent featuring helmet, Thel 'Surum, Fleetmaster and acting commander of the Gallipoli tilted his head in her direction on the pedestal.

"So no problems, then?"

"Not even a shudder this time," Leio said, playing it off as a regular everyday occurrence.

Leio knew damn well the Fleetmaster was looking for an honest answer from her. Just because the last time she brought it up in a conversation about such a thing relating to an in-slipspace course correction by the results by her intervention so wasn't that bad in retrospect‒

Leio picked up the resounding clack as he pressed his mandibles together. "I would like it if you apprised me of any more course corrections in due-slip before it is committed." 'Surum expressed disapprovingly.

‒ Perhaps to be rephrased as to say: The failure of the forward hangar energy containment shields, resulting in a decompression of one of them as the coarse adjustment around an anomaly that closely resembled the same effects as being near the event horizon of a black hole. At least there wasn't anyone in the hangar at the time as per her warnings beforehand.

Leio bowed. "Of course, Fleetmaster."

Breep!

Both AI and Fleetmaster turned their heads towards the brief trilling sound. Even though Leio was the ship, her lifeblood of information and code flowing through its many various and complicated systems constantly, she still turned her head to the noise.

A human ensign in a dull grey uniform at the workstation turned in his seat. "Fleetmaster 'Surum, sir. We are approaching our exit vector as given by the pathfinder Echo of Stars."

'Surum nodded to the human, understanding and stood behind the shoulder of the frigate's weapon officer.

The Elite that was operating the station didn't pay any attention as he sensed his superior's eyes gaze fall upon his screen readouts while he methodically went about checking the systems as they came online.

"Leio, ready transition and inform the rest of the crew and our escorts." 'Surum ordered.

Leio bowed, "Yes, Fleetmaster."

She vanished from the podium.

The two escorts were Halberd-class II destroyers. Both vessels classed after the original warship along with the striking arrowhead hull design, the IIs had superior improvements over the standard class. Most of these improvements were in the weapons and energy shielding for the vessel. But also extra room for their hangar, able to fit two Broadswords and two Pelicans, and could even now operate in atmosphere operations without worrying for the need of affixing costly and cumbersome specialised thrust modules to hard points on their exterior hull.

All three ships, one ageing and retrofitted Stalwart-class light frigate Gallipoli. Two brand new Halberd-class II destroyers the Call Me Maybe and the Arkhangelsk were all once part of a bigger, original sixteen vessel strength group now only a mere seven ship strong force. Of the remaining four ships included two USE CCS-class battlecruisers, a UNSC Paris-class Heavy Frigate, and one Spirit-class Assault Carrier.

To everyone who knew of it, the group was known as 'Bellerophon'. How FLEETCOM and USE Fleet Security saw it 'Joint Expeditionary Strike Group 7'.

Crewed of both human and sangheili along with the occasional unggoy and lekgolo intermixed, JESG-7 was the newest and latest to join the six other operational joint fast-response groups before war broke out.

While it was curious that such a small number of vessels made up JSEG-7, it wasn't always that way. It was the result made by the valiant efforts, brutal hardships, and the tragic loss faced that the many brave people that made up the majority of the joint task force faced on and before the world of Augusta in the ongoing war against the Covenant resurgence.

'Surum turned to observe the rest of the crew as they went through their duties and checklists, preparing the ship for the coming transition from slipspace into realspace and return to fighting the war.

Recreation room. Deck 10. Room C.

The recreation room was always empty after the outcome of the battle of Augusta. The notion of peaceful sleep and much-needed rest was on everyone's mind on the first day travelling through FTL towards destination unknown. But this afternoon on the third and supposed third day of slipspace travel, the place had garnered more than a handful of people.

Gathered around a widescreen were a mixed bunch of Marines and Elites of various ranks and a couple of technicians. Off in a booth on the far wall was two Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, informally referred to as Helljumpers due to their unique method of deploying into the war zone.

Those watching the widescreen were watching a recorded replay of a five-month-old game of the Ricochet XIV Championship Finals and discussing tactics, mistakes and plays. The ODSTs, as mentioned earlier, were casually discussing the subject of dates and girls while playing a game of 'Fleet Battles: Human/Covenant War'. A holographic board game.

The steel grey door to the rec room hissed open to reveal a lone stooped over sangheili. The armour told all who even remotely looked over. The Elite was Special Operations.

The Elite wore head to toe a heavily modified dark maroon Infiltration harness, minus the full-faced helmet which happened to be attached to the waist of its combat harness. The protective headgear was swept back and predatory looking, it came to a blunt point at the back, and it sported a curved sky blue visor.

The Elite gave a cursory glance around the room with his green eyes before his gaze settled upon the two ODSTs in the corner. Without making any sound, other than the noises of its armour plates sliding smoothly against each other, the warrior casually strode over and silently pulled up a sturdy chair to observe the small-scale space battle from the sidelines with piqued interest. Neither man gave any inclination of protest to the Elite's presence.

The supported formation of a CCS-class battlecruiser blew up violently on the board as well as Lance Corporal Nathan O'Donnell's screen in a gigantic fiery explosion as a salvo of MAC rounds gutted the shieldless battlecruiser. O'Donnell exasperated his displeasure of the loss of the vessel with a deep groan while deep chuckling of enjoyment emanated from the observing Elite's throat.

"You see my predicament here, right, Hark?" O'Donnell asked, slumping back in his seat.

O'Donnell was born on Earth, Australia, Jervis Bay. Even though he migrated to the colony of Rainbow Falls where the mainstay language was French his natural Aussie accent stayed with him.

O'Donnell slumped back in his seat and looked across to the other trooper sitting across from him and crossed his arms.

Hark rolled his holo-dice to challenge a rolling result from a previous turn.

"Yeah, I do. But come on Nate, do you think she'll go for it? I mean, think about it. Her name is Violet, after all. And people with names like that are reclusive, secret. And I've got feelings she's an ONI spook. Why not Cass? She's nice, outgoing, a real ground pounder, true leatherneck. She's also ODST, just like us."

Born on Earth, United Republic of North America, New York, Jason Hark was known to have a terrible habit of telling anti-jokes and a warped way of impersonating voices of people when he's in a tight fix for something. In particular, when it came to women. Like, for an extreme example, when it came to the Commander-in-Chief of the Office of Naval Intelligence, Admiral Serin Osman, or some of the cute ace female pilots aboard the Solemn Twilight. However, these exploits have landed him in hot water with his superiors more than once.

O'Donnell scratched his shaven chin, thinking about what his friend was implying. His dismissed it with a casual wave. Long ago, he had made up his mind. And today he was going to tell him about it.

O'Donnell picked out his next round of shots for the upcoming action phase. He rolled a boarding action dice for one of Hark's formations of ships.

"Yeah… but Vi has got that special air about her. Ever since she joined us on Aigio, things just sorta' clicked after that, if you get my drift. And she knows what we're getting into, too. You know, that stuff how the corps frowns on that kind of bullshit on inter-unit relationships. But me bringing this up to you is putting me off my game and starting to bore the heck out of him." O'Donnell pointed a finger to the Elite watching. "So, are you going to roll that or what? Or are we going to sit here all day talking about how I should pick up girls that aren't members of our squad?"

Hark gave a smug laugh, shaking his head slowly as he rolled his dice to see if O'Donnell was successful on the attempts. "I'm just saying. You don't know what you're missing out on."

The holo-dice stopped and revealed their results. The roll was a success on three of the die, but a failure on the four desired.

As Hark re-rolled for the failed rolls the room was plunged into deep red lighting; the holoscreen showing the replay match winked off - much to the dismay of everyone watching - with the rotating symbol of the Gallipoli's emblem while the ship-wide klaxon alarm for action stations.

Hark slumped back and groaned sourly, "Damn n' shit," looking at the dice results that told him that his CAS was boarded successfully and was going to blow up instead of looking up at cacophony of the shipwide alert of Battlestations.

A sudden authoritative shout outside the open door sent the Marines in the room scrambling out as fast as they could. The crew of the frigate and the Elites followed right after the Marines similarly but a more orderly.

Hark finally acknowledged the klaxon and moved to get up. "Well, we know the music. Time to dance."

"To be continued, then?" O'Donnell questioned Hark, saving the game's progress onto a data-chip and then depositing it into a chest pocket.

The sangheili officer that had been silently watching the game stood, slipping its helmet on before leaving at the same ambling pace as when he arrived initially.

"Yeah, sure," Hark agreed, looking behind over his shoulder.

The room was empty.

The two reached the door as technical crew, and officers briskly went about their assigned duties.

"Come on, we linger here any longer the Lt will make good on his promise of those who will be late. So let's get off this perfectly good flying brick, kick ass and take names from the 45th Battalion. The best son-of-a-bitches in the UNSC!"

"Oohrah," O'Donnell said jubilantly and took off after Hark.

Luna.

That was her name.

Princess Luna.

Alicorn, youngest sibling of Celestia, and co-regent with her of a landmass called Equestria. Home of the earth, unicorn, pegasi, and thestral ponies, as well as all other sentient creatures that shared the land.

Luna let the Tantabus do its worst as usual. And as usual, it did, transforming her into Nightmare Moon for her to suffer and punish her for what she had done all those years ago. But then about halfway through the transformation, everything went wrong.

The Tantabus shrieked in agonising animalistic fear, withdrawing its tendrils of purple fog from around Luna and disintegrated into wavy wispy pieces. Whatever was left behind was blown away.

Luna cried out in terror as she realised it was happening again.

"Oh, no. No. No, no, no, no! Not again! Calm. Calm. Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts. Hap-"

With a gut-wrenching lurch, the floor vanished beneath her hooves, and Luna fell. Tumbling into the pit of darkness as blinding flashes of pure white light, blurred outlines, and changing scenery raced past her, setting suns, purple oceans, and towering snow-capped mountains.

While all of this was happening, distorted and distant voices, some crying others screaming, for her attention in her head like a claw dragged down a blackboard.

'Do you think this is wise…I HAVE CREATED…if only thou…WHILE YOU IGNORED…it followed…were not it that…MY DEFEAT…was another way for thee to be safe…THROUGH ROCK…But would they…AND METAL… condemn thee not to know…and need to know…AND TIME! ALL WILL YIELD…nay, it best they…AS THOSE VASSALS BEFORE…lookout for each other and others…THE FATE THEY SHALL ABIDE!'

Multiple voices screamed out as one in constant suffering agony at the deepest of the harsher of the others that roared with venom.

Without warning, the flashes of locations plunged into pitch-black darkness as she smacked into something hard.

Opening weary eyes, Luna found herself standing atop a lush grassy hill. She immediately squeezed them shut.

Snaking away from where she stood was a narrow sand-coloured path that headed directly into a dense forest of tall pine trees.

Luna knew that path, where it went.

She had travelled this path through this forest many times, enough to know by memory as to what eventually lay at the end. Every time she refused to experience it. But as countless times before, her body refused to listen to reason and began to march her along the path.

Cryo Bay 3. Unit 7.

The frigid cold air tickled his burning lungs as he tried to open his eyes in the soft but bright white light. When he did, he thought he caught the blurred shape of something tall and human-looking standing in front of him.

"Take a deep breath and swallow," instructed the tall female blurred image.

He did as suggested. However, it had the immediate effect of making him gag and nearly collapsed to his knees to the gridded deck, all the while violently coughing up the long spittle of white surfactant from his burning throat.

"Oh, God… That stuff will always be disgusting."

"And always tastes the same, wouldn't you say, Mike?" declared the figure as she watched him groggily get up onto his feet and wearily rub his eyes from the cold.

'Mike' looked up at the eight-foot-tall woman. With a fiery red hair that was cut short in a buzz cut, eyes that were a brilliant blue, and a skin tone that was a ghostly white, was Mia Taylor. One of the closest friends he had in his entire life since being a Spartan.

"Yeah, it does." No matter how many times they change the flavour of the formula, to him, it still tasted like lime-flavoured mucus. "Yelch!"

Michael "Mike" Lorenski's life had been tough. Tougher for most since he had been born on Sol's moon, Luna, before moving and spending only half a year on the planet of Emerald Cove before settling down on the once habitable place of an outer colony with a name and family he could barely remember now. The more he tried to think of both, the more it felt like a dream than a familiar memory.

With jet black hair with odd silver streaks running through it and multiple scars all over his body from plasma burns and other harrowing close calls with countless enemies, Lorenski had one particular battle scar. One that stood out from all the rest.

The battle scar ran from his left temple behind his left ear before ending at the base of the back of his neck. The official report how this happened was he went for a tango with a very pissed off sangheili Zealot brandishing an energy sword in close quarters.

Lorenski coughed coarsely again to clear out the remainder of the surfactant substance from his throat and draw in the frigidly cold air through his nose.

"So, sleep well?" Taylor asked gently, arctic cold blue eyes looking to his lighter glacier green ones.

Taylor swore that his eye colour was one of the strangest things she had seen as a Spartan. She was always remarking them as they should've been blue from the augmentations whenever the height difference came into question when comparing the two Spartans from each other by some remarking officer whenever they saw them together.

Lorenski would've been happier if he was half a foot taller and matched height with hers and avoid the brought on attention ultimately.

Lorenski took in a long breath and stifled a yawn that came along with it. "I don't think I've needed to tell you enough that I don't dream that well in cryo. Just those weird visions of something foreboding that's about to occur in your life. Why? How much did yours change?"

"A lot. From a desolate open reddish-orange canyon to a lance of charging Scorpions tanks and LRV Warthogs into a sandstorm. You?" she questioned him, eyebrow raised.

Lorenski bent over to touch his toes as he continued to go through the motions of the essential stretching exercise for any extended period whenever suspended in cryo.

"Well, I got a metal grey geometric patterned floor; Forerunner. Plasma fire. A few dozen unmoving blurred shapes that kind of resemble small deer. Then open blue sky ringed by pine trees. That's it."

Taylor rapped her knuckles against the outside of the inactive cryo-chamber next to his. It was the one she had been frozen in a few hours ago. "Huh, that's vaguer than everything else you've gotten. You've figured out what any of it means?"

"Nope. Although, I wish I did," Lorenski said with a sad shake of his head. He started checking his titanium nanocomposite bodysuit.

The black bodysuit was what had the hardpoints that connected all the external armour to a body of a Spartan. It also added that extra protection from ballistic and plasma-based weaponry. Any problems that he missed might arise later, and it'll certainly greatly hinder the attachment of his armour components considering he hadn't stripped himself of it before he entered cryo, or since they left Augusta.

"Good to go?" Taylor looked to Lorenski. "Checks complete? Ready to leave the freezer box?"

"Yeah," Lorenski bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. "All set. And you, Mia?"

"Checked out just fine." she pointed at him. "You're the lucky SOB who got the luxury of an extra half-hour of cryo time."

"Oh, fantastic," said Lorenski sarcastically as the ship-wide PA system activated and the AI's electronic voice piping over it.

"Attention, all hands, we are at TAC CON Alpha Two. Slipspace exit is imminent. All crew in main cargo bays 1 through 3 and storage bays 4 through 18 are to check and inspect that heavy equipment is secured and stowed for exit transition."

"Where are we going first? The armoury or the bridge?" Lorenski questioned.

Taylor shrugged as the announcement repeated. "Doesn't matter either way. We are what we are, no matter which generation we were part of, it doesn't define us much except those who take the time and examine us more closely if ONI lets them. And taking into account on what always seems to lie at the other end of a jump, there is always–"

"All hands, prepare for exit transition in Seven - Six…"

"– trouble to be had." Lorenski finished. "Especially in my case."

Bridge of UNSC Stalwart-class frigate Gallipoli.

"... Four - Three - Two - Mark!"

The Gallipoli shuddered as a wash of electric blue like static travelled over the exterior of the hull, and the frigate exited the physics rule-breaking realm of subspace and back into realspace.

The billions upon billions of the masses of un-twinkling white pricks of stars sprung up on external cameras and bridge windows.

As the destroyer escorts slipped into view a few thousand dozen kilometres away on either side of the bridge viewports, the little blue dot of a planet in question they were here to head towards showed up, appearing enlarged and dead centre on the forward view screen.

"Navigation, immediate course: come to 7-7-2 by 0-6-0. Engines to seventy per-cent. Weapons officer, arm the MAC." 'Surum ordered quickly.

"Coming to course of 7-7-2 by 0-6-0, aye." responded the officer at navigation.

"Beginning charge of MAC."

"Fleetmaster 'Surum, do you expect an ambush so early after the jump?"

Off to the side, overlooking the navigation officer's console, the human stood dressed in a blue-grey battledress uniform, turned to face 'Surum while the Gallipoli's adjusted to its new heading.

'Surum appraised the human officer that asked as the two destroyers adjusted to their courses outside the bridge viewports.

At thirty-six years, sporting short-cropped black hair, a long face and with piercing brown eyes, Captain Xavier Werth was, at current, acting second-in-command of his ship.

"We may be of few, Captain," replied 'Surum, turning his head from Werth and flexing his jaws strongly with an air of wariness. "But the potency and first-strike capability of your species' ships are still well known to be a considerable threat. Of that, I remember when my people once killed yours all in the name of a lie."

"Depends really on who we hit first," said Werth as he strode up behind a crew member crewing the communications station who had caught his eye earlier. "You have something?"

"Yes, sir." the Petty Officer said, tapping her station's screen. "The Call Me Maybe had retrieved the intelligence package left behind by the ONI Prowler."

Werth looked over her shoulder to read the information on the screen, "Did Captain Schreiber adhere for the further requested 48 hours after the 72 hours observation after reporting back code of S-3-46F?"

"Yes, sir."

"Right. Transfer all data packets from it. Forward them to every officer datapads and bring the main findings up on screen two."

"Aye, sir. Sending out, pulling the main log up on screen two," she said as her fingers danced and dragged across her holo-screen.

When the information first came up, there were lines upon lines of jumbled letters and numbers. Well, it was until Werth put in a decryption key he had and the algorithm started unscrambling the information from the data packets.

As the first data logs became readable, most of the very first things displayed were the number of planets and celestial anomalies that had been observed and noted after the system had been passively and in some parts, at immense risk, actively hyperscanned.

"Single white-yellow star with nine core planets, of the nine, four are gas giant types. Our destination is the third planet from the sun. Planet has one orbital, low gravity no atmosphere. Of note, expansive asteroid belt between the third and fourth planets..." Leio started to list off. Meanwhile, the bridge crew and officers near them came alive with hushed whispers of harsh speculation.

"Kind of looks a bit like Sol really," remarked one crewmember as he observed the information for himself.

"Seriously?" hissed another. "The entire system looks like someone came along and went copy n' paste. And don't get me started on the Jovian look-alike that's blue and green…"

"... The atmosphere is the typical nitrogen-oxygen mix. So, it's breathable for us. Not so for Unggoy. Oh, well…"

"So?"

"So? Take a look at the spot in the lower half."

"Holy shit…"

Being born and raised on Earth, Werth looked for himself. Indeed there was a massive swirling storm spiralling in the lower hemisphere, but all this wasn't the most disconcerting, as what came next was the information regarding the predicted orbits, which revealed more of the glaringly apparent anomalies that plagued the world.

"It doesn't take a bloody genius to know why the Blades found this place so tantalising. I mean, what else could it be?" one of the crew continued. "It's a star. A massive active ball of fusion that is somehow revolving around the planet. Got to be at least some freaky powerful source at play there. Gotta be Forerunners."

"It always comes back to the Forerunners. What else is there? Magic? Precursors? Heh," another sniggered. He gave a sad shake of his head. "Heck of a navigation hazard too if I ever saw one. How did the over-zealous cloaking bastards find this place anyway? I thought the recovered information we got from the restored Domain showed everything the Forerunners built?"

One of the female Elites sitting at the station next to his leaned over. "The Domain does not tell of this. Sources of mine have heard it has something to do with an assault on the Human world in Aegis 7."

Werth stood straighter as he overheard the star system's name.

The guy who asked was aghast. "What? Aegis-VII?" he hissed. "They would've had to go through the grid to get there."

"Yes. And you humans had the same setup as your intelligence prison. And look how that turned out." The Elite said with a short dark laugh.

The crew member that asked looked at her, eyes narrowed. "Wait, how do you know about that place?"

"It's what is called a secret. And no, no amount of whatever you'll bribe me with is going to tell you how I know this. Now shut up and return to your duties."

Leio made a noise like she was clearing her throat, getting Werth's attention from the crew's conversations but not 'Surum's, who was still studying the system projected from the centre of the holotable.

"Apologies for the interruption, Captain, but the Arkhangelsk reports that they've detected multiple impulse drives on their long-range scanners. Readings of consistent power outputs match that of Type-31 Seraph fighters. Looks like a perimeter patrol picket for this sector of the system."

"Have they detected us?" Werth put a hand to his chin as he looked to Leio.

Leio shook her head and placed a hand on the hilt of her curve-blade - an ancient blade whose origins made way to the more modern design of the energy swords - attached to her hip. "Negative. Although by their current course and ours, they'll see how many there are of us here and bug out to warn the fleet."

"Range out?" asked 'Surum, still not looking up from his observation of the representation of the planet's surface.

"At their current velocity and ours... seven minutes separation. Give or take a minute before they will be alerted to our presence beforehand."

"Send out what Broadswords we have to intercept,"

Nodding to the Fleetmaster, Leio disappeared from the bridge holo-projector to give the Broadsword pilots and navigators their orders personally.

Looking from the projection of the planet, Thel 'Surum looked to Werth.

"This is as much detail the Prowler could manage?" 'Surum said, indicating to the displayed surface scans of the planet's surface. "I was led to believe by the ONI captain's boasts and my own experience that prowlers had the best and improved Hyperwave scanning equipment?"

"He isn't wrong, and the data didn't lie." Werth furrowed his brow as he ran his finger underneath the line of exact words he was reading. "But it seems, according to this data and the observational notes here done by the prowler's AI, and if I'm interpreting it correctly,"

"Apart from the anomaly of the sun and moon orbiting the planet in this unusual way, the inability to acquire clean, detailed scans of the overall terrain features of the planet is causing due to a variety of supposed natural occurring jamming influencing factors. Most of these key influencers include high and low concentrations of electromagnetic radiation, gamma, and various unknown type of neutrino radiation emissions as well as sporadic bizarre weather anomalies."

Apart from the electronic noises of terminals whirring and crew working in hushed whispers, the bridge was quite enough for a few minutes that it could've been practically possible to hear a mouse fart in the next system. At the end of the minutes, three simultaneous flashes of white blue pin-pricks briefly appeared in the blackness of space before snuffing out.

The COM came alive with chatter from a deep male-sounding broadsword pilot and that of air control, "Drake 1-2 to Gallipoli. All T-31s are space dust. Returning to escort formation delta 6-3."

"Gallipoli copies, Drake 1-2. Seraph sortie destroyed. Return to escort formation delta 6-3."

"Can these interferences be used beneficially?" 'Surum pointed towards the close-up representation of the planet in holographic form.

Werth was taken entirely off guard by 'Surum's sudden question. It had been so abrupt that in fact, he didn't quite know just what the Fleetmaster had asked of him.

"I'm sorry, sir? I don't understand what you're asking?"

'Surum enlarged the planet, so he was focused on the second one of the more significant continents of the world.

"If we were able to jump our forces near the surface, perhaps over by one or two of these marked high concentration areas, could our foes still be able to detect us?"

"Uh…" Werth paused as he looked at the data displayed on his datapad and scoured through it until he found the information he needed.

"Only by direct line of sight, sir, they would be. According to the data, they will have a more than a difficult time using scanners to successfully get a lock on our position due to this interference clutter. But this is a double-edged sword, sir. It'll apply to us too."

'Surum put his hands into the hologram and spread his arms. The representation of the planet enlarged and zoomed so now that the landmass he was previously looking at now took up the entirety of the holotable in all its hazy glory.

"The time until sundown for this landmass?"

Leio appeared on the holo-pedestal. "According to the data, it'll be in just less than three hours from now. For a planet of this size and if it's sun's, uh, peculiar orbit didn't exist, this world would have had a day cycle close to that of fourteen hours. However, this isn't the case as observed; it has an almost exact twenty-four-hour day/night cycle. Twelve hours from the sunrise of 6 a.m. to sunset at 6 p.m. and vice-versa for the night cycle."

"What was the last known position and composition of the Covenant fleet in the system?"

Leio switched the holotable so that it was showing the entire system. "The last count from the prowler was that of thirty vessels. Last observed holding steady between the world of interest and the fourth one."

A swarm of about thirty red and yellow triangles of various sizes appeared between the worlds mentioned.

'Surum took in all of it. Larger triangles represented capital ships while smaller triangles yellow represented cruiser class and a mix-match of corvettes, frigates, and supply vessels.

"That said, analysis of my passive scans have returned and show a significant reduction in the fleet's size. I'm picking up signatures belonging to no less than seven covenant vessels — one capital ship, two cruisers with the rest being frigates, and corvettes."

The number of triangles vanished from the hologram showing the reduction of ships.

"Even with the energy signature anomalies that are ever prevalent on the planet of interest, data from the prowler has picked up on energy signatures relating to cloaking spires and teleportation towers, including Dark Zone generators, scattered across on all main continents. They are however less periodic over the continent of the one you've taken in interest." Leio changed the holotable back to the planet's surface.

Werth was at a miss as he looked to the Fleetmaster. "Sir, what is it that you're planning?"

"Doing. Not planning," 'Surum declared.

Werth looked out the bridge viewports then back to the Fleetmaster. "Okay, then. What are we doing, sir?"

"An atmospheric slip-jump,"

'Surum's long finger was pointed to a specific point of the landmass of the world. The continent he had inquired to Leio about earlier.

Werth looked at where the Fleetmaster's finger was and saw a long, wide running gorge bordering a couple of densely wooded areas. Said location was nestled neatly between two of the most substantial concentrations of interfering energy emissions.

Werth wrinkled his brow, and then slowly nodded in understanding. "That could work. If the Covies aren't right there when we appear."

'Surum motioned his finger to the holographic interpretation of the brewing storm. "This storm will give us the cover needed from any prying eyes which surely be watching the skies. Whether they are there as you said or not."

Leio bent over slightly as she observed the somewhat distorted holographic representation of the terrain, brought up the calculations for the coordinates to jump, and simulated how the storm would run its course all at once.

"Agitating an already illustrious reading thunderstorm with casual reconciliation coupled with static discharge after exiting slipspace in the atmosphere?" she vanished from the holotable only to reappear near the navigation officer. "Well, sure, why not?"

'Surum turned to her. "Leio, are you able?"

Leio nodded and spread her jaws in what sangheili interpreted as a smile. "It's done. Just say the word."

Forward Main Armoury. Deck 14, one deck above Primary Hangar 02.

Spartan Lorenski stepped out of the armour assembly machine, turning his hands and flexing his armoured digits before testing the rest of his joints. It felt like he never left the power armour as it always felt like a second skin to him.

The Master Gunnery Sergeant admired the dark steel blue and midnight purple Spartan clad in FOTUS-class MJOLNIR [GEN3] Powered Assault Armour. A rare type of armour fitted with emissions cloaking, heavy-duty waste recycling, and redundant rebreathers for extended combat excursions in any environment.

Of course, the Gunny was more interested in the FOTUS helmet's torque-node or 'the horn' extension. It featured forerunner technology. The horn replicates when in use, that of forerunner 'baffler' sensor-disruption systems.

"So, how'd it feel?" the Gunnery Sergeant remarked as he monitored to Lorenski as he strode around the bay.

"Like I never left, sir," Lorenski stated firmly.

"Good to hear, well, after what happened last time." The Gunny chuckled lightly before indicating towards a datapad he held in his hand. "I'll need to run your armour through the usual diagnostic checks before I can let you off the hook, alright?"

Lorenski nodded. He knew the drill. Arms out, legs spread.

The Gunny stood in front of the Spartan and began tapping a few inputs into the pad and checking them. After a few minutes, there was a single solitary chime followed by an angry buzzing beep. The Gunny lowered the pad with a grumble.

"Okay, I've got good news, and I've got bad news. Good news: your environment systems and all that checks out," the Gunny tapped something on his datapad.

"Bad news: your Heads Up Display, targeting systems, team COMs, and energy shielding of your suit are coming up with faults. But it's nothing to raise your eyebrows at; there are just some minor discrepancies. Straightforward fixes that could've been done out in the field with a reboot or two, but we're going to rectify that now. And save a little face, yeah?"

Lorenski looked to the Gunny. "What would you have me to do, sir?"

"Stay as you are, Spartan. We're going to start with your targeting systems first thing. After that, EJ will deal with your COMs systems and shielding. That is after he's finished with Spartan Taylor." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the Huragok while still looking down at his datapad.

The Huragok, named Easily Adjusted or called EJ for simplistic reasons, was one of the thirty Huragoks of JSEG-7 and one of three on-board the Gallipoli. Usually, the little floating guy had a translator affixed on the armoured plates that ran along the underside of his long head, but after it had been shot off in a firefight while he was busily fixing a Pelican Gunship engine on Augusta, Easily Adjusted had yet to make up a replacement.

At the moment, EJ was running one of his tentacles over Taylor's helmet visor that was part of her PATHFINDER-class MJOLNIR [GEN3] Powered Assault Armour. The armour was already popular with Spartan reconnaissance teams and is suited ideally for deployment operations deep in unknown territory.

The glinting of reflected light off from a thin electric blue visor caught Lorenski's attention, and he shifted his view ever so slightly to look past the Huragok. Standing back there, on digitigrade legs, notable height difference to an average Human, and evolved with four mandible mouth that gave their identification away, were two Elites of the special operations unit — the Crimson Shade.

Both Elites were clad head to toe in grey skinsuits and a heavily modified Infiltration harnesses that were a dark maroon red. One of them was gilded with grey-silver ancient Sangheili symbols and also bore scratches and abrasions of many battles. Attached to each of their hips was a silver hilt, and when ignited, would become a long energy blade split into two tines that glowed like bright crimson red.

Lorenski personally knew the USE officer in the gilded armour that stood nearest to Taylor. He had worked with the Elite in multiple missions and long-term operations. In turn, both looked out for each other's backs and owed their lives to each other on more than one occasion. One of the best Elites Lorenski ever had the pleasure of being teamed up with, as did the Elite officer.

That officer was Special Operations Officer Xytas 'Dorvo, a skilful warrior at both medium and long-range weapons he was also a master with a blade. A veteran of the Human-Covenant War, one that in retrospect gives him some shame, 'Dorvo has made great strides to improve interactions with humans and succeeded in fields where most rarely haven't — becoming friends with a Spartan, both on and off the battlefield.

The other Elite standing near to 'Dorvo was a female sangheili. The more slender-looking armour gave it away as did the not-so-many battle marks as 'Dorvo's did.

Lorenski knew little about her and only knew what Taylor told him when the Elite arrived in tow with 'Dorvo a minute or so after they arrived. Lorenski hoped that what Taylor told him about Feyo 'Nrahom held up true.

'Nrahom hailed from the elusive city-state of Muram. Despite being one of the city-states that had been one of the first that rallied behind the state of Vadam and the Arbiter, leader of the Sangheili people and Swords of Sanghelios, during the initial first-year throes of the Blooding Years. How she had become part of the Crimson Shade, a role within the Sangheili Fleet Security Special Operations section was a mystery.

Female sangheili were a rare sight anywhere else apart from the planet city-states were they took care of the more complicated things in life: family and business. Raising their brood and running the keeps and cities efficiently as possible, as since it was traditionally the male's job who were sent off to war. But much has changed to those old traditions over the past two or three decades after the Created Conflict, but there were still many exceptions to those changes.

"Alright Spartan, could you look up for me here please?"

Lorenski shifted his gaze away from the two Elites as they quietly conversed in their native language, and up at the Gunny's datapad that the man held high above his head. Lorenski followed the pad around to the different places where the Gunny moved it.

As this was happening, the Huragok had finished whatever work he was doing and offered Taylor her helmet back.

"Thanks, EJ," Taylor nodded in appreciation and slipped her helmet on.

The Huragok tilted its seven eyed eel-like head and sounded off a soft, cheerful trill in return. And with that, EJ lazily spun around and drifted towards where Lorenski stood spreadeagled and his head still following the datapad.

Gunny lowered the pad and tapped a few symbols. "Alright, Spartan. Your tracking is green and good to go. EJ, it's your turn."

Taylor watched as EJ chirped and floated around behind Lorenski where the Huragok then latched onto the Spartan's back. She didn't see what the Huragok did next as the COM terminal across from her caught her attention as it was flashing with a message marked urgent.

Striding over for it, the Gunny reached the terminal and tapped the flashing icon on the screen. The blocky letters of urgent disappeared from the screen and replaced by the weathered face of captain Xavier Werth.

"Gunnery Sergeant Fox here," the gunny said, saluting. "What's up, Captn'?"

"Is Roan out of cryo?" Captain Werth said impassively.

"Yes, sir. Just finishing up with armour checks and then they'll be rarin' to go to get kitted out. So have many of the USE," he said, pronouncing the acronym as use-ee, "The Elites that have come through beforehand. Speaking of which, I've already got two of the sort here. Both Crimson Shade."

"Names?"

"Special Operator Feyo 'Nrahom and Officer Xytas 'Dorvo, sir."

As the Captain and the Gunny conversed to each other about something that was a very one-sided with the XO sounding like he was on the winning side, Taylor walked over to where Lorenski was still standing, EJ firmly engrossed in what it was doing attached to his back.

"So, Mike, what does it feel like?"

Lorenski cocked an eyebrow in question. "What does what feel like what?"

"To have an Engineer latched to your back?" Taylor pointed to EJ with a flick of an armoured finger.

"Annoyingly unbalancing," Lorenski muttered, rolling his shoulders.

His abrupt movement earned him a chirped huff of annoyance from EJ still back there.

The Gunny practically yelled at the terminal.

"WHAT?"

The image of Captain Werth was unfazed. "Your reaction is noted Fox. Once we jump there, Pelican 404 will be standing by in hangar bay 2 for them. And don't forget that a unit from the 74-MWD will be joining as well."

The call terminated before the gunny could voice anything else.

The Gunny exhaled through clenched teeth and sighed in deliberation as he scratched the back of his short shaven head. He continued to look at the black screen with a slowly rotating Gallipoli's emblem with the ship's motto ringed around it.

He turned around sharply; his face livid. "EJ! You finished yet!"

At that exact moment, there was a chirping warble of success from the Huragok, quickly followed by an audible pop, then a buzzing noise of 'vvmmmm' as Lorenski's shields came online. A wave of energy popped out, and his armour skin shimmered briefly with a golden glimmer.

EJ affixed Lorenski's armour reactor housing back on and released its hold on the Spartan's back before lazily floating off to do something else.

"What's the play, sir?" asked Lorenski, dropping his arms back to his sides.

"Slip-jump into the atmosphere, and the commander needs you both getting kitted up, now. Heavy loadout." Gunny looked past both Spartans and pointed with a forefinger. "That includes you two as well."

Both Elites briefly glanced to each other before acknowledging the gunny with a simple nod of compliance.

"Slip-jump into Atmo." Taylor wasn't exactly surprised with the information, but she still showed it. "Not unheard of, but a pretty risky move. Did the Captain say where?"

Lorenski looked over. "Please tell me we're not exiting over a mountain."

"We're not, this time. Instead, we're exiting over a gorge and headlong into an encroaching storm. Not too close to the disturbances and yet not too far. You'll understand that in the briefing packets you'll get from Leio." the Gunny rattled off, now calmed down and rather bored like as he inputted in a code into a keypad on the wall.

"And joining us will be a team from the 74th K-9 Military Working Dog Unit. That should be interesting," Taylor noted as she read the information packet she'd got.

A series of clunks and whirs sounded everywhere throughout the armoury as every weapon locker unlocked and opened wide, exposing every weapon known of the UNSC to the USE arsenal. There were even a couple of racks solely containing Forerunner weapons and gear.

Immediately, both Spartans and sangheili strode over to the weapon lockers and began pulling equipment of all sorts.

"What are those?" questioned 'Nrahom as she stopped reassembling a Type-51 Carbine she had stripped down and indicated up with a finger to a specific ceiling rack near her head in curiosity. "I've never seen anything like them before. Are they Forerunner?"

"I wish," Gunny shook his head in dismay, turning and handing a circular magazine of plasma scatter rounds to 'Dorvo and then the Type-58 Plasma Caster itself before returning his attention to 'Nrahom.

He jabbed a finger at one of the long silver rifles and bemoaned. "Those things are XM-909 and XM-177s. They're ours, and a pain in my but. Supposed to be the cream of the crop after years of cooperation in R&D between both our species for use by sangheili and Spartans." the Gunny reached up and took down one of the shorter silver rifles, an XM-909, for her to examine.

'Nrahom looked at the silver rifle once over, getting a feel and weight before bringing it up to her shoulder so she could peer down its Forerunner-inspired scope.

"Supposed to be self-sufficient, ammo wise." the gunny explained. "Its ammunition is hard-light and uses the power of your armoured suit's reactor. Sure, it might make your users' shielding a bit weak after firing on full auto for a while, but there's no argument for checking to see if one has enough ammo for the mission needed or long waiting times for a gun to cool down from overheating. But as you can tell by my frustration vent, they are no more than pieces of expensive metal that don't do much except eat into my time," he scratched the back of his head. "Well, they will until I find a solution to solve the hairy touchy firing mechanisms in these blasted things. I once lowered it after a test firing, and it discharged full auto into the floor. My finger was nowhere near the trigger."

"Why not let the Huragok solve the problem?" indicated 'Nrahom, nodding her long head toward EJ who was tinkering with the inner workings of, and recently disassembled into a thousand pieces, assault cannon. Uninhabited by Mgalekgolo worms of course.

"I told him not to interfere… and that the Top Brass of both our species would rather want us to fix 'em instead of relying on an Huragok to do it. Because if one breaks in the field, well, there are seven hundred pieces to them, and you get a general idea."

As 'Nrahom handed back the XM-909, she heard the sound of someone grunting.

Turning her head, she saw Spartan Lorenski heft an M6 Spartan Laser and affixed it to his back mag-plate before reaching out and grabbing a BR85 battle rifle and pocketed three attachments that went with it. He checked over two M6H2 magnums before holstering them both on his hip-plates.

Taylor did the same thing for all three of her choice of weapons. The only difference was she swapped out the flashlight on the bottom rail of her rifle with an M301 grenade launcher.

Leio came in over the PA system, "Attention, all hands. Intra-slip jump commencing in 4… 3... 2..."

There was a sudden surge of forward inertia before just as quickly as it came, it subsided.

"Alright people! Gather round and listen up." Taylor strode over to an inactive holo-table of the armoury. Everyone else arranged themselves around it. "As in the mission briefing packets you received, I'm only going to go over this once. Even though some of us have worked together numerous times on other missions before, remember, I've gone over your files, even the parts ONI or USE Fleet Security didn't want me to. Impressive. But we're a team here. That lone-wolf mentality stays behind. Clear?"

Everyone nodded in understanding. 'Nrahom made sure Spartan Taylor saw it.

"Good. Welcome to fireteam Roan."

Taylor touched a symbol on the holo-table. A mass of blue polygons shifted and blended into topographical details of mountains, plains, valleys, and other land features. On one such mountain range and near it on one side showed two red markers.

"Despite no clear surface details, there was still enough to give us a rough idea of what we're going to expect." She pointed to both red icons. "These here are what we're going after. This one is a high-end energy spike correlating to a dark zone pylon somewhere on this mountain range. Leio has worked out that the structure should be located here, near the strongest of all the interferences. The second energy readings we have is located here, on the other side of the range. The readings indicate, as sketchy as they are, is to be a large Covenant structure. A teleportation spire. One that the Covenant are using to ferry supplies and equipment to the planet's surface for this region."

Taylor double-tapped a section on the table. Further mission objectives and informational data became overlayed on the map, pointing out critical areas of interest.

"At eighteen hundred hours, we will be deployed to our objectives by Pelican gunship Uniform 404 with an unflattering callsign of Ugly. In addition to that, there'll be three F-99 drones joining us for an escort for the first two waypoint markers before splitting off on their sorties doing terrain scanning the prowler couldn't manage with their observation. Our first mission objective is to identify the dark zone pylon type, then prep it for demolition so we can have clean COMs for the region. Once the structure is gone and wiped from the face of the planet, we have a little hiking trip planned. We are to scout out the teleportation spire and record recon data. Mike," Taylor said, turning to Lorenski, "have you got a charge to take our little dark zone problem?"

Lorenski nodded. "Yep. Right here," half turning revealing a large block attached securely above his left hip and the sidearm there.

Black, green and roughly square-shaped, the block was an M169 Det-charge with a specialised tight ion-laser det-link.

"It's remote or timer-based ― whichever is preferred," Lorenski said. "Also have a block of C-12 and three canisters of C-7 in case we run into some unseen complications."

"Right. Be careful how you handle that C12. I don't want a repeat of what happened back in '52." Taylor said, eyeing the four by a 4-inch black cube that Lorenski carefully put back in its protective satchel then into the armoured backpack and slung it over his shoulder.

"It won't," Lorenski promised.

"Let's get this mission going."

As the two Elites and Lorenski began to leave for their ride, there was a loud barking noise that could've only come from a dog, causing everyone to turn their heads in the direction of the door to the armoury.

Walking at a brisk pace into the armoury bay was a human woman with blond hair and a pale complexion and leading a black and tan Australian Kelpie on a long leash, into the armoury bay.

"K-9 Chief Petty Officer Nipper and his handler Petty Officer First Class Kirsten Viago reporting for assignment, Spartan." the Marine proudly announced, saluting.

The dog came to a heel and sat next to the Marine, looking up to the woman above him and patiently indicating he was ready to get to work too.

"Welcome to the team you two," Taylor warmly greeted but with a stern undertone. "Glad to have both your skill sets. I'll brief you on what is going to happen while you gear up. We'll be departing for the hangar before we exit this short jump."

"Yes, ma'am," said Viago, bending down to scratch behind the back of both of Nippers' ears. "This will be interesting. Won't it, mate?"

Nipper's tail began to wag.

Canterlot Royal Palace. Princess Celestia's royal bedchambers. Tuesday. 5:50 pm according to her last observation of the grand antique clock.

Celestia paced slowly about her chambers, horn encased in a golden glow, and a lengthy written scroll she had yet to sign off before her eyes.

Celestia had read through it many times already and aloud to herself and was on the last time making sure she wasn't overextending her condolences to her faithful student and arisen to Alicornhood: Twilight Sparkle. The unicorn was close family and now forever, even what has been recently occurring around Equestria as of late, Celestia took steps to be sure she was taking things slow with her.

Taking the quill off a nearby table, she dabbed the tip into the hovering inkwell before putting it to the bottom of the parchment of the scroll.

… I hope this list assists you for what you've been after. Be strong, Twilight. Just like your brother had always been and strived to uphold. Love and condolences.

- Princess Celestia.

It had never been easy writing what of that of what she wrote on the scroll as she used a spell to check the words for any spelling mistakes before rolling it up, sealing it, and sending the message scroll off with a greenish flaming hue.

On the terrible day when it came in about the tragic and heartbreaking loss at sea that occurred four nights ago today, hit everypony and that of the Crystal Empire and its neighbours very hard with grief.

To grieve the passing of a friend was one thing; it was on a whole different level when it was one of a family member. That much Celestia knew very, very personally.

Her adoptive niece Princess Cadence and Twilight Sparkle's brother, Shining Armor, along with everyone aboard the cruise liner New Harmony, was gone, lost to the vast Celestial Sea. Never to see their warm smiles or speak their inspiring thoughts.

Celestia had taken off two whole days to recuperate from the terrible news, not that it did much to alleviate her sorrows. Her absence didn't go unnoticed by the dignitaries of the noble ponies either.

Four days since the disappearance.

Was it not that long ago? It still felt like it was just hours ago she got the ill-fated telegram.

Celestia sighed. Even though she had to eventually accept and put on record the tragedy on paper in the end, deep down in her heart and very soul, she hadn't given up on them. Celestia felt that somewhere, and somehow, they were still out there. Doing everything they could in their power to return to those who adored and loved them.

With a tear in her eye, Celestia, her heart laden with grief and sorrow, walked out onto the balcony to raise the moon.

Although it didn't fall to her duty to raise it anymore as that had been returned to her sister when she was redeemed, Luna needed all the rest she could get. Like herself, her sister has also been plagued by terrible dreaming visions that involved unsettling scenery, unplaceable locations, blurred figures and in every single dream ended in a pine forest and a cold clingy feeling of sensation of dread and loss that clung to their thoughts long after they had awoken.

Gazing longingly off to the west, Celestia could see out in the distance the massive thunderstorm had been gathered and was beginning to roll in.

As if we ever did need it tonight, Celestia thought to herself.

The moon began to peek up from above the horizon before being engulfed by the rolling storm clouds.

As it disappeared, Celestia's thoughts drifted back to a series of matters raised during the day part of the royal court. Ever since ENMS New Harmony up and vanished from the face of the earth, a significant number of terrible tidings seemed to have smothered themselves all across the nation of Equestria and its neighbouring provinces and countries.

From matters involving the city of Manehatten to Baltimare about strange colours of blue, green and pink on the horizon of the Celestial Sea in the evening and well into the night, to random and everyday magic suddenly going haywire, the most disconcerting was the number of pony disappearances over the last two months or so.

Seeing the numbers just as a list with numbers next to them was one thing, seeing them represented as coloured pins spread out all over a map of Equestria was most disturbing.

Speaking of which there were two reports, in particular, that had the majority of disappearances to date. About a third of both town populations of Appleloosa to the south of Macintosh Hills and Dodge Junction that sat on the frontier of the forest of Hayseed Swamps had vanished without a trace overnight.

In response to the vanishings, Celestia had sent a contingent of E.U.P to both towns to uncover where they went. Celestia didn't like the idea of sending such a force, let alone that of a military response but the stakes demanded it. As that happened, the royal court proposed an increase of the budget for the Equestrian military and massive reform to update and upgrade the E.U.P, Royal Guard, the Magic Corps, and the Night Guard in line with the rest of the world militaries. Especially how quickly the Gryphonian Empire has advanced its army technology to worrying proportions.

There had even been a proposal to make the Wonderbolts become an active military unit again and not the advanced acrobatics team they are today.

There was a ruffling of wings, and Celestia felt something land on her back that gave out a long squawk of appreciation. She turned her head to see her pet bird, a phoenix, and long companion with a happy grin set on her beak.

"Yes, it has been indeed a long day, Philomena. Thank you."

Sensing that her master was feeling sad, the phoenix shuffled up towards Celestia's head and nuzzled her beak affectionately against the princess's ear. Celestia's mood of woe and despair lifted slightly, replaced by the warm sensation of comfort in her heart and a small smile upon her lips.

The warming moment was interrupted by a loud and long roll of thunder accompanied by an intense moment of lightning strikes from the front of the rolling thunderstorm.

It was going to be a long and rough night.

UNSC Gallipoli. Port Hangar-1.

Everyone but Spartan Mia Taylor sat down in one of the crash seats of the Pelican as they boarded; she instead stood by the open ramp door. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

Standing at the rear of the Pelican stood Captain Werth. For reasons unbeknownst to anyone but him, had come down to the hangar to see the team off.

"Granted, Spartan, what is it?"

"If by the slimmest chance these interferences we detected on the surface scans of the planet is caused by an undiscovered civilisation. What would be our orders for proceeding to such an encounter?"

Werth's face-hardened as he looked at her unbelievingly like she had suddenly become highly radioactive. "I don't know how or where that question of a thought you just asked came from, but for your answer, there are still FCS protocols in place for just such an event. You know which if it comes to that. If you don't, it should be in first contact scenarios under the list of 'engagements'."

Werth scratched some stubble on his chin that he'd seemed to have missed. "Why, Spartan? Have you seen something in the data that correlates to your question that neither of us has noticed?"

Taylor shook her head, "No, sir. Just a feeling. My gut feeling."

Just by the tense pause that followed, Taylor could feel that the captain was mulling this over.

"Well, let's hope you are right about it and they don't shoot back on first sight. Hope, Spartan, the contacts are of the friendly kind and don't get spooked easily. Every time humanity ends up with a First Contact, and something gets spooked; things often get bloody," Werth stated and turned to leave.

"Sir,"

Werth looked over his shoulder as the Pelican's ramp began to rise.

"If there is one, do you think they know about the Covenant resurgence presence? What if they've allied with the Covies? What then?"

Werth turned back. "A gorge to be spanned if there is a chance, Spartan. A bridge to cross if we ever get-" the pelican's door ramp sealed tightly, cutting off the rest.

The Gallipoli gracefully emerged from the entanglement that was slipspace and was immediately confronted by the looming front of the thunderstorm.

The dropship's engines ramped up to full power, and the aircraft thundered out of the hangar bay, flying straight into the dwindling twilight with three escort F-99 UCAVs in tow to the backdrop of the thunderstorm as it swallowed the frigate and its destroyer escorts.

Instead of the dream ending and waking up in a sweat every time Luna shimmied through a gap between her sister's large frame and another pony, the settings abruptly shifted, and Luna felt very small.

All around her was a grey interior room of sorts. A stark contrast to the green and brown pine forest she was just in. Everything was shrouded in darkness. The only light source was two rows of dim red lighting on the ceiling.

Squinting through the hazy, dim red-lit darkness, Luna noticed two huge blurry figures.

Luna thought to move closer, to examine and explore what this new environment had to offer when she suddenly had the urge to speak. Instead of words, she let out an utterance of deep horse-like coughs. Coughs that sounded like she was a dog.

What? No. I can't be.

Snapping her head down to look at as to what she was standing on, Luna saw that her coat and hooves had changed into paws and glossy black fur.

She was a dog!

Luna's mind raced a mile a second.

Although this wasn't the first time she had an out of body experience and possessed other creatures bodies, which has happened randomly and every time scared her half to death, this was the first time she had become a dog.

Luna had no idea this time as to where she was or what creatures, well the dog she had possessed, was sitting near. Worse, Luna couldn't tell what kind of a dog she had become or even if she was still female. That sent a shiver up her spine.

"-ey? Wh-s -oked h-?" a sudden near illiterate voice punctuated the continuous roaring noise from somewhere.

"N- -dea." said another. "Pr-b- bi- e-cit-d. A-n't -hat rig-?"

Luna turned her head in the direction of the second voice.

She should've been expecting it but didn't expect whatever creatures this dog she had possessed was sitting with would be that close. There was a sudden movement from this figure, and Luna saw what looked like a long stick moving down towards her.

Inclining her head sharply back to move it out of the way, Luna felt something land atop her head and begin to stroke her head, then move on to scratch behind an ear affectionately.

Something deep within her chest stirred and Luna couldn't help herself for what happened next.

She felt her mouth drop open, and her tongue rolled out. The cruel irritating, yet satisfying tingling sensation of the scratching moved from her ears to her back as the blurred figure moved its claw up and down her spine.

The urge of howling stayed put thankfully, the panting and the thudding of the tail on the other hoof, however, didn't simmer down.

Nightfall. Edge of a vast dark forest. World's surface.

The sound of the thunderstorm all around, the growling of Warthogs driven by combat engineers with trailers full of equipment and even a Special Purpose-42 MBT otherwise known as a "Cobra" following behind its headlights blazing.

With heavy stomping as they moved forward to their destination, two HRUNTING/YGGDRASIL Mark IX Mantis mechs trudged off the massive vehicle lift of the hovering Stalwart-class frigate as two Orbital Drop Shock Troopers walked casually across a field of mud and torn up grass that had become a marshalling area for M12 Warthogs.

"… sucks, you know. You do know that, right?" said one of the two Helljumpers. "It's been like that for three months straight! Doesn't the stupid thing ever change?"

The man stopped and watched as a squad of drenched Marines trudged past before lifting the flap that belonged to one of the many jungle camo tents that had been hastily set up.

"To be honest, Pokey," said the other, nodding in thanks and walked into the somewhat dry and warm interior of the tent. The two troopers took off their helmets and placed them on a plastic fold-out table alongside five others there already.

The man proceeded to grab a green packet from his combat webbing. "Once the Arbiter is shot in the face by a Flood infected Jul 'Mdama and the return of the crazed evil fragmented version of the Created as well as the ultimate heat death of the universe, Jinjy will get off his lazy fat-ass and change the quote of the day on the Gallipoli's news board." He opened the top and removed one of the many tightly rolled white sticks within with his teeth.

Jason Hark offered the opened cigarette packet to his brown-haired and hardened ruddy complexion friend.

Carter "Pokey" Reilly's eyes lit up, and he took one out with a thanking nod. Without another word, Hark took the packet around to the others in the tent gathered about the place.

Hark stopped by four troopers chatting to each other. He tapped on the shoulder of the closest female trooper with slick black hair and a single purple stripe running through it.

Staff Sergeant Violet Reynolds turned around to see the broad smiling face of Hark first then the packet of cigarettes.

"Not today, Hark," said Reynolds, refusing politely with a hand up.

Hark turned to Nathan O'Donnell next and got the same result. When he offered the packet to the second lady in the group, Gunnery Sergeant Luna Tanner took one with a nod and stuck it behind her right ear.

Hark put the cigarette packet back into the chest pocket, positioned the stick between his lips and lit it. "But I digress for everything I just said, as it'll probably only happen and I mean it, doesn't matter how it will only be when we come face to face with intelligent horses in relative harmony with others." he puffed out a plume of white smoke and waved his hand through it majestically. "Their multi-hued colour chart coats shining in the light of the sun and moon, all the while sprouting of their angelic avian genes along with whimsical magic of bullshit across the galaxy."

Everyone stared at Hark for a brief second before those in the tent erupted in hoots of laughter.

O'Donnell wiped a tear from his eye and jerked a thumb over at Reilly. "Wow, dude. And here I thought Pokey came up with the most ridiculous screwed up predictions."

"Hey!" Reilly cried out, feeling insulted by the remark and jabbed a finger at the centre of O'Donnell's chest. "It wasn't my fault that 'dear squad us' came across data records regarding a long-dead race of Ursus sapiens after we jumped for planetside, and before we did I said 'we'd better not come across sentient bears' as Jingy walked past looking like a grizzly bear if he doesn't shave for more than a day."

Coming over with another trooper and blowing out a puff of smoke from lighting his cigarette with his UNSC Marine Corps flick lighter, Private First Class Timothy Vargo chuckled humorously from the thought. "Those wise, wise bears..."

Reilly's face heated and turned from O'Donnell to shoot a murderous glare over at Reynolds, who, try as she might, kept failing to keep a straight face as she looked over at him from recalling the event.

"Yeah, well, I try," Hark replied modestly, slapping a hand on Reilly's back. "So with that in mind, I'm going to get a nicotine hit, keeping all my wits about me. And when the sun rises over the horizon, I'm gonna drink a swing from this here flask before heading for the head."

Everybody raised and pumped a fist into the air. "Here, here!"

Reilly's expression cooled and miserably examined his unlit cigarette. "So, what it is, is that, as for all of eternity, the quote on the notice board will always remain to be," he cleared his throat noisily and looked to Hark, cigarette extended towards him. "'Hell hath no fury like a sangheili's mate scorned?'"

Hark struck a 'strike-anywhere' match on Tanner's left shoulder armour plate and brought the licking yellow flame to the end of Reilly's cigarette. Hark dropped the lit match into a puddle of muddy water on the ground in the tent. "Yep, pretty much the gist of it. Only this time it won't be a gravity-hammer that's thrown through the barracks quarters front window as a result."

Everyone gave a light, hearty chuckle.

As they stood there in the tent, talking about other things as the ever pitter-pattering of rain on the tent's canvas roof, the dull, distant rumbling whines of UCAV F-99 Wombat engines added a new layer of sound to the backdrop of the thunderstorm.

There was a sudden noise of splashing boots and the tent flap lifted, everyone turned to see their boss, First Lieutenant Ricky Rainier, enter through the tent flap with two other troopers. Helmets on; visors polarised.

"Alright ladies, one last drag and put 'em out. Time to hoof it out of here and get it done," said Rainier sternly. He turned and pointed a long finger out the tent flap. "There's a large building like structure somewhere out in that direction that the Call Me Maybe spotted visually before the cloud cover obstructed her view. Our orders come straight from the top. The Fleetmaster wants us to paste the hell out of any Covenant we find in the area and take it for use. It'll be better than trying to set up shop out here."

"That's why we have Mantis support, boss?" grumbled Reynolds as she hopped from foot to foot. "Geez, we have enough as is and I feel a bit exposed with them coming up on our heels and rompin' around in the dark."

"Aw, come on, Violet." Tanner teased her half-heartedly. "You want the Spartans to turn tail and act as our tip of the spear instead?"

Reynolds hefted her 99-Series 5 Anti-Materiel sniper rifle off the table and into a comfortable position in her arms. "And miss the fun of taking the hats off covies?" she said, ratcheting back the charging handle. "Try and stop me."

Tanner punched Reynolds down playfully on the shoulder.

Rainier looked over to Hark, Reilly and Vargo. "Out of it, kids. I have a feeling this is gonna be another all-nighter."

The three shock troopers took the final drag before they ground them into the mud under the heel of their boots.

"Set to go, boss." Vargo and Hark said in unison.

Reilly gave a cheering jeer. "Yeah! Right as rain-yer!"

A collective groan emanated from everyone's lips from hearing the gratingly lousy pun. Rainier shook his head sadly at Reilly's response and motioned with his head towards the tent flap and donned his helmet. "Let's move out, Delta 75."

On the lieutenant's words, the near rhythmic clicks of safeties clicked off, and everyone left the tent, putting on their helmets, visors polarising and began quickly moving out for the edge of the tangle of forest jungle. Silenced SMGs were shouldered and pointed ahead of them.

Already the sounds of the other team of Helljumpers were making their way through the twisted, mossy and lichen-covered trees way out ahead. The only sounds of the night were the pitter-pattering of falling rain and the slow thudding thuds accompanied by the occasional crack of branches being broken or trodden under mechanical foot as the Mantises made their path through the brush when there wasn't a path clear enough to be had.

It still felt like she was in a dream, but it looked more like a memory while the tall blurred shapes before Luna ambled about to and fro as she felt compelled to move closer. But before she could, Luna was interrupted by something immensely strong that seized her by the scruff of her neck, yanking her away from what she could see before she felt the grip tighten around her throat and lifted her clean off the ground.

Turning her head up and around in the direction of what held her aloft, Luna saw the form of her attacker quickly clean up into a less than blurred focus. And what she saw scared her more than Tantabus ever did.

The black shadowed daunting biped backwards-jointed monster sneered louder, harsher than the other times she had heard before as it squeezed her neck further. In doing so, she found herself starting to lose focus, struggling to breathe in the ever-tightening grasp.

As her vision started to go dark at the edges, Luna lashed out at the monster with her hind legs and then with a blast of magic from her horn. The actions caused the creature to let go, cursing at her in an unknown language through angered-filled roars.

At that point, Luna didn't want to care even to know if what she did solve the problem as she turned tail and flew away fast. And fly away quickly she did, as far as her wings could carry her.

Luna weaved through the offending trees in her path of the forest, but still, the shadowy figure that had grabbed her advanced closer, its guttural growls and angered sneers getting louder as it somehow gained ground faster than she could fly.

She tried flying above the black forest only for something to draw her back. Whatever it was, it was keeping her from ascending no more than about a meter or two above the rushing earthen ground that streaked below.

Without warning, furious and enraged words of a language she did not understand assaulted her ears,

"Dohmoh'Eenngahnehnn! Karumshurah ree chitakorru!"

With sudden realisation, Luna found herself back in the tight grasp of the creature. Without pause, it ignited a blue, glowing object that sparked to life in a claw that was then thrust straight into her chest.

Luna screamed.

The agony she was feeling wasn't like anything she had ever experienced before in her life, waking or the dream world. The closest thing the searing pain she was experiencing was like she'd been forced to drink lava from a volcano, then have somepony slice open her stomach, so it was now searing her skin and body as it poured out of her.

The torment proved too much for her will power to endure any longer, and she woke up from the dream.

Luna's eyes flew open as she bolted upright in her bed, rivers of perspiration streaming all over her as the once crisp and clean bedsheets she was once under now wrapped tightly around her body, the tightest of which wrung around her neck like a noose as she continued to scream from the top of her lungs.

CRASH!

The doors to her room burst open almost off their hinges. Standing in the open door was a very concerned and fraught princess and eldest sister Celestia accompanied by five Royal Guards and two of the night variety, batponies of the Night Guard. Their expressions were stern-looking as always, but the body language told otherwise.

"Luna! Sister! I'm here. Shush now. I'm here for you. Are you okay?"

Luna was far from okay. She was still trembling and sweating profusely from the experience of the vision-dream. It didn't help that she was still trying to unwrap herself from the entanglement of bed sheets coiled tightly around her body like a hungry python.

The collection of guards stayed out of the room but stood guard by the door as Celestia moved to her distraught trembling sister's side on the bed and wrapped a feathery white wing around her, in an attempt to calm the shaking Alicorn princess. It worked, the shaking eased to nothing, and the sweating stopped.

Celestia comforted Luna and quietly spoke into her ear in concern. "What happened? You can tell me, sister."

When Luna didn't reply, Celestia asked again, and in doing so realised the answer to her sister's terror dream. "It was the same one, wasn't it?"

Luna wiped a tear that had formed again from her eye with the tip of one of her wings and looked back into her sisters. "Yes, it was Tia. But this time, it went on far longer than it has previously."

Celestia's facial features hardened with concern as she looked at Luna. "It was different? Different how?"

Luna didn't hesitate to launch into the retelling of the strange vision events for her sister of what happened after she had tried to once again push past her in the pine forest.

Somewhere...

A large red-lit metallic silver door flashed with patterned blue geometric lighting and slid open, irising apart into three parts. Coming out from within, five equine-like shadowy figures of varying height, all with horns and only one without wings came out of the once sealed off confines. Two of these figures split off immediately, each going their separate directions.

The remaining three strode out into a gigantic open cavern and straight onto a thin partially see-through glass platform that jutted over the edge without any visible means of structural support.

Of the three, the smaller ones that flanked the largest, their bodies wholly encased in grey-silver armour with purple highlights denoting their allegiance, quadruple pairs of floating spikes running down the back of their armoured necks, gazed upwards awaiting the order.

"Go," the large one said, expressing the littlest hints of relief in her calm tone of voice.

The two that looked for instruction then leapt off the platform without hesitation and plummeted down into the massive cavern towards their task.

She hadn't felt like this in untold millenniums to such a job. It was great to do what she was privileged to do.

She smiled with genuine glee, the warmth of the feeling lifting her spirits and her outlook for the future. As she smiled, the tips of her forward sharp white fangs glinted in the soft blue light that emanated from around the illuminated both halves of the broken cruise-liner caught in mid-air in the interlocking confinement fields of the service passage down below.

Chapter 2: Impending Unrest

The Royal Court.

The night session of the royal court that is.

Annoying as it was necessary, yet somehow it was even duller as she had remembered it a thousand years ago.

Princess Luna usually didn't attend these as she often was out on diplomatic missions across the country and being used as a way of inspiring confidence in intercultural relations. But lately, things have been different. And things weren't going the way she or those of the nobles on the council wanted it to go.

But this was how important it was and always as it's been, for them to suck it up and work towards a compromise.

It was also crucial for Luna to not fall asleep through it either. Sure, it grated her gears, but she knew that without the royal court, Equestria would have collapsed long ago, society sunk to a desolate place of lawlessness and chaos all on its own without a single shred of Discord's input if he decided to leave the natural life of progress alone and let it take a natural course.

Luna bit back her tongue from releasing a sigh of boredom.

After revisiting the matters that were brought up or postponed for the iteration of the day part of the royal court, the dispatching of Night Guard patrols by Captain Greystone of the Night Guard, it came to that time of reading reports about smaller problems or projects requiring funding approval that would benefit pony society.

Luna thanked the everlasting stars above that this iteration of this month's court session was less than she had been expecting.

There was a total of two.

The first issue had been about land ownership; the other involved a program teaching advanced astronomy and possible advancement towards potential space exploration.

The first one was a straightforward resolve. A math problem that led to an error of a misplaced decimal point in the land boundary measurements. The second had been a no brainer and, alongside outstanding eager agreements to the idea by ten out of fourteen on the council, Luna signed off on the proposal.

With the court over and sitting on the cushion of her throne, Luna finally elicited herself a muffled yawn, and she shifted her gaze to one of the many batpony Night Guards standing at rigid attention about the room. She looked for any change in their demeanour. When having to see none to cause for her care, Luna bowed her head, and her horn began to glow.

Time for the real work to begin,

In a flash, her eyes turned solid white, and she delved into the dimensional realm of the dream world.

Luna immediately knew her sister wasn't asleep. The door to her dreams had yet to appear. And she knew why. Tia was probably still writing up of the tale of her out of body experience of becoming a dog and eventual violent ending she cried into Tia's wing.

Thinking of doors to dreams, Luna was curious when she found an entire hall of new doors of peculiar make in the realm. She was even more intrigued as all of them were locked tight. Even for her impressive experience and mastery of the dream domain couldn't gain access.

Fwip.

Huh?

Luna exited the dream realm to the waking world just in time to witness a scroll sealed with a blue cord, and a crescent moon symbol materialised in front of her face and land at her hooves.

Picking it up from the floor, Luna unfurled the parchment and began reading what the report said. Midway through, she let out an exasperated grumble.

Somepony had the gall to graffiti part of a historic railway bridge with a wax pencil. Said bridge was dedicated and remembrance to an old friend and acquaintance from long ago: D'Amore La Aurora. To Luna and Celestia as Amore, the first and former princess of the Crystal Empire.

And by somepony, it meant some rebellious griffon had done the tagging.

Even though Gryphons of the Gryphonian Empire mainly spoke Ponish as a second language to their national tongue of Gerphon, Luna recognised the graffiti was written entirely in their script of Gryffic.

Terrific.

Luna groaned and looked up.

To translate this into a language, she could read coherently; she needed to head into the Royal Archives on the other side of the palace. Go into the language section and under the Gryphonia section, look for the book that would translate what she was reading.

Or…

Luna performed a quick translation spell on the parchment, and the Gryffic script immediately turned into Ponish before her eyes.

'AW 56 I 206 WAZ HERE.'

Luna rolled her eyes, eliciting another exasperated groan. The graffiti was written in short-hoof and was utter gibberish.

Keeping the report aloft in the air, Luna summoned a quill and inkpot.

Dabbing the tip into the inkpot and putting the quill to the bottom of the report, Luna scribbled down in the space provided with her approving signature to proceed, then rolled up it up, and with a simple application of magic, the scroll vanished. Heading back for the incident room of cryptology.

"Still can't get my head around as to why they go and write their names into things only to be tracked and sent to jail, just because they think it's fun." muttered Luna aloud and turned to the nearest Night Guard, "Wouldn't you say?"

The batpony turned his head in her direction, giving a firm nod of agreement before returning to stoic attention.

If it was up to her and if it were before her thousand-year imprisonment in the moon, she'd throw those types of rebellious birds into Canterlot's dungeons. See how they'd like that compared to the comfy cells they're given.

...

What by the waning moon, are you thinking Luna?!

By the laws in the Criminal Procedure Act of Equestria Act XXI, that practice was abolished nine hundred years ago after your banishment to the moon along with the death penalty, and most of all Tia wouldn't like it very much if you dared try it.

Luna sighed and groaned as she sat down, hoof under her chin as she thought about it. Things had been so simpler back then. Cause trouble, stand trial before the two sisters, into the dungeons for a day or two if proven guilty or didn't have the bits to pay off the fine.

Luna stifled another yawn of boredom. By Tia's mark, she thought. I do miss those fugitives from justice pursuits.

BOOOOM!

The crash of lightning and the roll of thunder that followed rattled the windows and sent a slight tremor through the floor.

Getting up, Luna stretched her back and neck in a rhythmic of clicks and strolled over to a window as it began to be rain-streaked. She looked out through it, chin held up with a hoof on the window sill and watched mesmerised as lightning forked through the clouds while another ominous boom resounded through the night.

Oh, how I'd give a million bits right now for a chase, a challenge to remember for a lifetime.

The cockpit of Pelican G97H-TC: 'Ugly 404'.

The Pelican gunship burned through the night at a mere two hundred feet off the deck.

It was no cakewalk keeping the aircraft flying on course, especially in such winds and that two of the most intense interferences coming up was making navigating the hilly landscape ahead in the dark while at this low altitude challenging than it needed to be.

There had also been a change of objectives in the mission plan. Instead of going for the DZ as was planned, Command had them going to scout out the Spire first, then proceed to take out the Dark Zone Generator.

In the cockpit, twentieth and twenty-first-century music genre 'Old Rock' filtered in over the Pelican's cockpit speakers. Flying the dropship, the USE sangheili Ranger bobbed his head in time with the beat.

The genre was one of Ossis 'Relcam's favourites, much to the chagrin of his gunner and close friend Flight Officer Captain Elizabeth 'Liz' Allencourt's disapproval.

"Blessed be the Ancestors, we're sure are going to lose some connection on these for this one." 'Relcam commented. The interferences were cropping up now and again on the radar screen — one smear for both sides of the scope.

"At least these are just interfering with COMs this time and not hunting our electronic signature for Covie flak to find our faces," remarked Allencourt from the gunner's position down in front of him.

"Although the interferences could be a type of jamming we have yet to encounter; hiding said emplacements."

"Ehh.."

Pelican 404 suddenly plunged from the sky only to rise sharply up as it flew through another pocket of rough turbulence.

"Yee-haw," Allencourt jeered. "Ride 'em cowgirl."

The door to the cockpit cycled open behind 'Relcam, and stepping through in the opening came a grey and orange-clad Spartan. Voices of a heated argument from the dropship's cabin about using a specific phrase of a derogatory word in a game of Galactic Scrabble filtered in behind the super-soldier.

"... Common usage. That's the keyword here," a female voice was heard arguing.

"No. If it's not in the official USE and UNSC lexicons it hardly counts."

"It doesn't have to be in the lexicons!"

"It does have to be in the lexicons! Listen…"

Taylor gripped the back of 'Relcam's seat as the dropship gave another lurch. "With that fantastic atmosphere back there, are you at least trying to make two war veteran Spartans, two USE SpecOps, a Marine MWD handler and her BBDFF airsick as well?"

"I didn't think Nipper, the super search and defence woof that led my downed ass out of the fire on Augusta last year, would get airsick. That said... wanna know how I've done it to veteran Drop Shock Troopers?" Allencourt said jubilantly, looking up and over her shoulder for a moment to acknowledge Taylor before quickly returning to concentrating on the terrain ahead as it blurred past below them.

"... Touch my split-lip; I'll stab you, Xytas." 'Nrahom barked.

"You can attempt to. But expect no mercy from me." 'Dorvo scoffed in return.

"I'll take your silence as a yes. " Allencourt jerked a thumb over her shoulder at 'Relcam then at herself. "You can thank for tonight that you got two professionals who know what you're in for," she then pointed her finger forward. "As you can see, my good buddy has quite the time keeping this beast in a straight line because of the turbulence and this persistent freakin' lightning keeps threatening to wash out my NVDs."

'Relcam snorted. "Well, if it bothers you so much, why don't you switch over to forwarding infrared for the time being and I'll warn you if you're going to clip into anything taller than a tree."

Since the time they were paired together as flying buddies, it's well known throughout the task force's air wing that 'Relcam had built up a tolerance to Allencourt's antics, mostly in her line of humour.

"Oh, screw you, Ossis. It was one time, one time in a billion!" she adjusting her NVG sights to decrease the light gain.

"On a clear moonlit night, right Liz?" added Taylor.

Before departing for the hangar, Spartan Taylor had taken the time to download information packets on both pilots' service records and their backgrounds before and in service with the UNSC and USE respectively.

Brought up on her Heads Up Display was the overview of the incident report filed involving the so-called tree. According to the report, this so-called tree was once the head and main firing channel for a Covenant Type-27 Mantis AA emplacement in the Sinar Mountains. When the emplacement went up in smoke, the giant gun's firing channel tipped off the edge and settled at the bottom pointing straight up. Allencourt flew into it while transporting a team behind enemy lines using the canyon in question and tore some pieces of the right-wing off, including the dropship's second Anvil missile and the all-important sole radar/scanner jamming wing pod.

Allencourt groaned out in exasperation as she heard 'Relcam gave a gravelly hearty laugh along with the Spartan.

"How's navigation?" Taylor asked, turning serious. All traces of her humour now absent.

"Terrible. Frankly, it's up shit creek thanks to the interferences," muttered Allencourt in with disdain while looking down at a holopad in her lap and a crude sketched map she had made of the area. "We've been VFR ever since we began skirting those flux areas."

'Relcam grunted. "You could say that again. Just take a look at my instruments."

Taylor glanced over to see it was flickering every so often with the wrong flight input orientations.

The near muted music in the cockpit changed to a piece of 'Hard Bass' music but 'Relcam quickly hit the pause icon for the music on his secondary screen.

"Other than that, how's progress on the new route looking?" Taylor asked.

Allencourt sighed. "Well, Spartan, apart from the switched objectives, which is no biggy since that makes it all the better for us. So far, so good. About an hour more on our current heading to the third waypoint. Then bank this way…" she tapped a finger against her thankfully still working analogue compass for emphasis.

"Back whatchamacallit-ish up another valley for ten. And then from there, we should be there for the sixth waypoint near the ranges. After that, it's hauling ass time of a climb for the drop for the HALO jump. On another note, uh, how well can you swim?"

Taylor leaned forward. "Come again?"

'Relcam handed a datapad to the Spartan.

"Don't think that'll affect us much." Taylor said as she took the offered datapad, "Torrent rain and wind like that never disrupted our drops." she handed it back to 'Relcam when she was done downloading the information. "Especially against any Covenant."

Allencourt scoffed. "Still, I would give someone a thousand credits just to watch a Kig-Yar try to swim in this."

With a word, Taylor turned and left, shaking her head as she returned to the cabin.

'Relcam reached back and unpaused the music. Lyrics flowed from the cockpit speakers once more as the gunship gave a typical jolt of what was now considered by this point by both pilots as typical average weather for this hunk of liveable rock in space.

Ponyville. Golden Oak Library.

"Rainbow Dash? Isn't this a bit, well, excessive?"

"Whatta you mean?"

Crash!

Twilight Sparkle flinched, startled by the lightning that cracked through the cloudy night sky.

Twilight's tree home was protected by a magical lightning rod, yes. But for such extreme weather produced tonight by Ponyville's weather team just seemed, overdone.

'Overcharged more like it' was what Spike remarked when she had asked him earlier.

"That," Twilight indicated with a hoof up towards the ceiling. "The recent weather patterns for the past week. Are you or aren't you the leader of Ponyville's weather team?" she jotted the final words down onto a scroll before giving it to Spike.

"Yeah, I am to the first. But these pattern changes came from Downburst herself. We missed last week's scheduled downpour and have to make up for it."

There was another electrifying crackle of lightning with the accompanying crash of thunder, this time the ground gave a surprise jolt including Rainbow Dash.

"Buuuuttt, I see your point. I'll ask her some time tomorrow morning about toning it down."

"Thanks again, Dash."

"No problem,"

Twilight placed a book on 'Animals and Magical Creatures of the Everfree Vol. 6', back to its proper spot in this time alphabetically year of published ordered bookshelf.

"How's Fluttershy doing?" Twilight asked, turning around as she picked out and extracted the next volume.

"Better-ish," said Rainbow Dash, deeply still concerned.

Twilight shared the same concerned feelings for her yellow pegasus friend.

Fluttershy had been staying with Rainbow Dash for the time being until the Everfree Forest had settled down and returned to its "usual state" of creepy, deadly glory.

The Everfree Forest and the many animals that dwell within, dangerous or otherwise, have been acting twitchy and out of character over the past three weeks. And since Fluttershy's cottage rests on the border of the forest, it came to be of great concern to their friend as there have been some abnormal events that happened when she had asked to have at least somepony staying with her for the night. And so began the strange sightings and odd sounds in the middle of the night.

First to go over was Pinkie Pie, and she heard skittering and scuffling sounds on the roof.

Rainbow Dash heard a deep eery warbling whine, and when she got to the window, she swore she saw a bright shaft of light come from the forest's errant clouds and pan through the trees.

Rarity saw four pairs of parallel blue irradiant streaks in the overcast sky.

Then came Applejack's turn and by far was the creepiest. As she went down the stairs from the second floor, she saw, just out the window of the back door out in the field were at least more than a couple of pairs of bright glowing unblinking orange and one set of four hauntingly green eyes staring directly back at the cottage.

'T'was certainly no Timber Wolf's eyes I've ever seen, that's for sure.' Applejack quietly mentioned to Twilight and Pinkie when they came around in the morning to see how Fluttershy was.

Twilight's experience was haunting, and when both ponies woke up in the morning, Fluttershy found a strange pair of footprints in a bare patch of dirt in her vegetable garden. It went without saying anything about the guttural rasping noises heard during the rest of the night.

After that, Rainbow Dash asked Fluttershy if she wanted to stay the rest of the nights at her place until things cooled down.

There wasn't much of a discussion or debate of what Fluttershy's answer was.

Twilight levitated the sketch of what looked like an eagle's footprint but far more significant over to Rainbow to see as she put the next volume down on the desk with a thud.

"What do you think it is?"

"What do I think it is?" Rainbow Dash repeated as she looked at it for a scant second. "You're kidding, right?"

Twilight's brain whirred for a bit before it finally clicked. Oh, right.

"Ah, yeah."

She levitated the sketch over to Spike, who at the moment was carrying a pile of new books in his arms to be sorted out. As the piece of paper floated near his face, Spike put the books aside, out of the way as to not be a tripping hazard.

Rainbow Dash yawned, "Anyways, it's getting late, and I'd better get going. See ya tomorrow, Twilight!"

"Goodnight, Rainbow. Be safe. To the both of you."

Rainbow Dash gave a final wave, "You know it, and the same to you." and flew off before the door closed in her face.

Everything fell quiet as Twilight returned to her search, all apart from the drumming drone of the rain against the outside of the windows.

After close to an hour had ticked on past, Spike walked up to a window by the front door and peered out into the storming night outside and spotted something. He sighed. "There he goes, back at it again."

Twilight looked up from reading the text of the book and the next volume in the collection directly beside it. "Hmm?"

Spike just waved to her to come over and indicated out the window with a finger.

Twilight got up and walked over to Spike and the window in question and peered into the storming night.

Folding his wings and once again standing in the middle of the street, always on the dot of nine o'clock just like every other night, completely alone, and now in the pouring rain, happened to be a dark coloured stallion pegasus.

The pegasus was an odd one. Of a near charcoal coat, amber eyes, and a grey steel blue mane with a single blue cobalt stripe running through his tail.

"You have got to be kidding me…" muttered Twilight aloud in an exasperated tone.

Many ponies who live in or around town would call it Ponyville's luck. Others would say it's a curse. A scant few say the village had a mind of its own. Whatever the case, the town had the magical charm to it that attracted even the oddest of ponies that had or still have great trouble in their past to sort out at any given time. And just one of those ponies, the one standing outside in the downpour of rain, happened to be only one of those.

The pegasi's name? Eclipse Shadow.

An enigma come day or night that stumped even knowledgeable Twilight Sparkle.

Shadow wasn't just a mystery for Twilight and her friends; he was a mystery to even the entire town ever since he showed up out of nowhere one sunny day about a month or so ago.

As for why Shadow was a mystery, it wasn't because of what race he was and had an annoying habit of using the word 'we' in place of 'I' randomly when referring to himself, kind of like Princess Luna did after being returned from being cured by the Elements of Harmony, no pony knows. For all Twilight knew, he could've developed this manner of speaking because of his knowledge. And quite a deep well of knowledge that was.

To say he even could potentially meet Twilight's level in a knowledge duel and bypass it without flinching was a complete understatement. Twilight had a gut feeling she'd barely scratched the surface of what Shadow knew, because, in another friendly chat, led on more than he claimed to have known. She found this out for herself in another conversation with him of the start of last week about how to spot a changeling based solely on behaviour patterns.

In all honesty, after that specific conversation took place, Twilight had gone and searched for that information for herself. In the end, after an entire week of searching, it had boiled down to that there was information on spotting changeling behaviour, but all but a few scraps remained. The ensuing battle incinerated the rest. The one between Princess Celestia's loyalists and Nightmare Moon's cultists before the corrupted princess's banishment to the moon for a thousand years some short hours later.

After knowing that, Twilight believed that Shadow had to be a changeling in disguise.

Hashing out a plan to expose him, Twilight met Shadow the next day for the continuation of what they'd been discussing over a plate of hay fries, and she discreetly performed a passive spell; a type of magic that allowed only the caster to see a different colour aura around the targeted.

Twilight had learnt this ancient spell on a cloudless day with help from her sister-in-law Cadence, and Shining Armor, her big brother, in preparation in case of another changeling invasion like it did for the Royal Wedding.

The indicating colours of the magic were typical and easy to identify. Green: clean. Deep red with various tone stages of red intensity: warning and threat level indication. Blue mixed with white: conflicting results. However, the colours of purple and orange were a complete mystery. She had no idea what they meant, and neither did the book detailing the spell list anything about it.

The latter of which is what happened to Shadow when she used it on him halfway through their chat. The aura she had seen had gone to blue first, quickly switching to orange, then black, then back to blue, and before she had to get the chance to recast the spell, it went purple and remained that way.

All of that and he didn't once trigger Pinkie Pie's 'Welcome to Ponyville Newcomer!' routine either. Even when the two had practically walked into each other, and he mentioned directly to her, he was new and staying in town.

Best to get it over and done with, Twilight thought and steeled herself for what she was going to do next. Opening the top half of her door, she called out to him,

"Shadow?" she called, waving a hoof to him to come closer. "Why don't you come inside where it's dry, warm and out of the storm?"

There was about a five-second delay before he responded while he craned his neck up, like only now just realising he was standing outside in the falling rain.

"So it is," Shadow nonchalantly said, turned his attention back to Twilight. "But I'm quite okay as I am Princess Twilight Sparkle. There is no need for your concerned worry tonight. All is quiet tonight for now."

Both Twilight and Spike watched him turn to leave when something caused him to pause mid-stride walk off.

Shadow wasn't that good looking or well kept, nor was he ugly and steered clear of, and nor was he the type of pony that was interesting or annoying. He was just one of those types with that certain aura about them. An atmosphere that when you'd first met with one, you'd ignored most of what just transpired and forgot most about them entirely afterwards.

This understanding probably explained the whole strange event that played out when Rainbow went up to Pinkie Pie and asked about Eclipse Shadow right after her bump in with him about how he's new to town, to which Pinkie replied 'What to who's new in town?'

"Although taking into consideration that I am here, there is one thing we wish to ask of you," Shadow said, quite pleased.

Twilight had a gnawing feeling in her gut that he knew something important that she didn't realise, again.

"What is it?" Twilight asked, trying not to sound so flustered about it.

"We had heard through I that you found a peculiar footprint in your friend's garden, Fluttershy's, not a few days ago. Is it possible that we may see your drake's sketch of it?"

Twilight and Spike faced each other.

First off: That was bound to happen eventually, but she'd expected it to be quite a while before anypony else came around asking. And second: How by Celestia did he know it was a sketch and not a cast?

All of them; herself, Spike, Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash had all been very cautiously discreet with the finding of the prints after Applejack erased them immediately when Spike finished compiling the drawing of the mysterious print. Nopony else knew. And she hadn't even broken the news yet to Princess Celestia or Luna.

So, that begged the question. How in Equestria did he find out?

Thinking quickly as to whether or not to tell or lie, Twilight made up her mind, and she looked at Spike. The look he gave said to Twilight he had come to the same conclusion.

"Come in out of the rain, and I'll show it to you."

Shadow nodded, "Thank you, Princess Twilight Sparkle." and walked through the rain for the door.

Twilight opened the rest of the door, and half turned. "Spike, can you get a towel for Shadow to dry himself off."

"You got it. I'll be back in a jiffy," Spike said and took off down the hall.

Twilight turned back to Shadow now standing in front of her.

"As I said back then, there is no need to for you to call me princess while I'm in Ponyville. Or bow, I'm not a princess of anything yet. It just feels too, unnatural."

"And as long as you're an Alicorn, Princess Twilight Sparkle," Shadow bowed, much to Twilight's displeasure. "There is no deviation from those rules established by those in the past that we followed by."

Spike came back as Shadow came inside, and handed him the towel.

Huh? What the?

Spike frowned as he offered Shadow the towel for him to dry off. The young dragon noticed the pegasi was already bone dry — his coat, his wings... everything. Shadow appeared as if he hadn't been standing out in the rain at all.

Shadow took the towel with a wing, patted his already dry face before giving the scarcely damp cloth back to Spike.

"Thank you, drake."

"Hmph," Spike grumbled in exasperation under his breath.

When Spike had met Shadow for the first time, the pegasus knew everything about him right off the bat. So right then and here, Spike at least expected his name used, but Shadow continued to use the name of 'drake' every time Spike was in earshot, ground his gears.

Looking back, Spike saw that Shadow was giving him a disguised sly grin only he could see.

What a-

Knowing if he had spoken his mind would get him into trouble, Spike took the towel back. But not before rolling his eyes while muttering something under his breath and turning on his heel to return to the kitchen where he got it.

Now with him inside and in the warmer glow of light, Twilight was able to get a better look at him. In the month to know him somewhat, he had the oddest habit of sitting or standing in the darkest possible spot imaginable, obscuring many features.

His coat was definitely charcoal black, but his mane wasn't as a white silver like she thought, it was more of a two-toned silver hue. Part blue the other light shade of grey, and by being this close, she was able to see his cutie mark more clearly and cleanly.

It was quite curious for a cutie-mark as she hadn't seen anything quite like it. In fact, in all her years and extensive knowledge, Twilight didn't think anypony had a similar mark in history that came anywhere near it.

The mark consisted of four separate grey-coloured fractured circles as rings. Each ring was spaced out inside of each other and each with at least a sizable gap at some point. It appeared as if it was some puzzle or maze. It was as if somepony had to turn the rings a certain way for their gaps to line up just right to solve it.

Twilight motioned calmly to Shadow come over to the desk she was working at and pointed with a hoof at the sketch.

"This was the footprint that we found in the garden,"

Shadow had barely glanced at it, and Twilight could already see he had something of an answer on the tip of his tongue as his ears folded back.

"Perosus latrunculus," Shadow said with a deep sounding snarl.

Twilight saw his dull amber eyes flicker the colour of green and red with a hint of purple briefly for a second before returning to normal. That was new seeing that about him… and very disturbing.

"You know what it is?" Twilight inquired.

"Yes. It's my task to know all. But I think you've come to your conclusion quite nicely." Shadow said, giving a shiver, ruffling his wings as he did so.

"And we've wished they weren't to be this far over here, but they are here now, which puts matters we have of others who prepared long ago into greater turmoil."

Whether it was involuntary or on purpose, Twilight couldn't be sure but what she could be sure of is that when he did, the temperature in the room around him seemed to drop by a few degrees and the sense of a heavy burden of dread weigh down heavily on her consciousness.

"Is that the reason behind why it's so bad about this print?" asked Spike.

"Well, it depends really," Shadow shrugged.

"Depends on what exactly?"

Shadow jabbed the tip of his left-wing at his chest. "And that there, Spike is the correct answer,"

Shadow's eyes ignited, and he began to panic. "That there wherein lies the complication. Even I don't know for certain anymore as to who I relay the info to right now. There is nothing else to gain any more by being near the capital or the Everfree for that matter. Her words made sure of that."

Twilight could see that Shadow was becoming more distressed the longer he ranted on, and after what she had witnessed in his eyes after the initial outburst revealed that he had been in contact with a vast amount of dark magic at some point of his life. She didn't want him to unleash it. Not here.

"But unless, unless if they… argh!" He rubbed his temples with his wings in frustration while beginning to pace back and forth.

Exposure to high concentrations of dark magic, like the way she saw in his eyes, could affect anypony and there were dire consequences because of it when the pony in question affected was not a unicorn or Alicorn for that matter.

Twilight put a hoof on his shoulder, "Okay, just calm down and come back to this," directing the distraught Shadow from his pacing back to the footprint. "You said you know what the creature this belongs to?"

"Hmm? Oh yes. That." said Shadow, his ears flicking back up and his nervous manner completely disappearing from how he was behaving just a moment ago. "This creature, the one you've been scouring many books for, the one this print belongs to, it will not exist in any volume collection of books that you have here or have studied elsewhere that I have on record. This creature that made it, it is a subspecies belonging to a saurian-like creature of the perosus latrunculus kind."

Twilight waited for him to elaborate.

"In Ponish it is a T'vaoan," Shadow grimly expressed as deep rolls of thunder rumbled overhead.

To Twilight's ears, he said the name with a quick and sharp "T" to begin with then "vow" for vao then "en" for the end. When it came out from his mouth a second time when she asked for it again, it rolled off his tongue so smoothly like touching silk, so when she tried speaking it for the first time, it sounded more like a swing and a miss.

"And these, ahh, teh-viv-an? t'vow-en? … t'vaoan?" Twilight asked, looking over at him for clarification when she pronounced it correctly.

Shadow said the third one was correct and Twilight smiled in return.

"These T'vaoan creatures, do they reside within the Everfree Forest?" Twilight inquired, jotting down the notes down onto a scroll. She'd make a note to search what the first name, perosus latrunculus he gave the footprint, the means for another time.

"No. Not in Equestria, its neighbouring countries, the Greater Gryphonia Empire, the Zebraconia Isles. Point is perosus latrunculus have never been native here. Ever. Although, if you are truly feeling adventurous and you, Princess Twilight Sparkle, wish to travel the distance. May I suggest looking towards the Y'Deio province?"

Twilight raised her eyebrows at that. "The Y'Deio province?" This new word was quite easy to pronounce than the other.

"No matter. I doubt you even have the planispheres required. And besides, nopony of your cycle would know; apart from the Guardians, the empress and both Custodians. That's not including a few hundred thousand others and me. Lynthia and the others would probably glue me to the ceiling if they found out that I had told you that." said Shadow, looking quite pleased with his answer while rubbing the tip of a wing against his chin. "Not that I overly enjoyed the time stuck hanging upside down in the sanctuary archives for the billionth time with a Custodian go about explaining why I shouldn't do what I did to me. It wasn't bad and still an enlightening experience until a certain annoyance showed up."

Shadow caught Spike just staring at him, jaw slightly agape and a confused expression. "What are you staring at, Spike? I'm convinced that it was his idea of discipline and not hers the last time arou–"

"My cycle? Sanctuary archives?" Twilight Sparkle said, on the edge of sheer giddiness and quite intrigued by what the charcoal pegasus had said.

Twilight had stopped writing what she heard as her eyes picked up on what she just wrote. She was looking up from the parchment over to Shadow with a dire gaze of wanting to know so much more.

Shadow's calm yet odd perplexing demeanour he had about him shifted back to that of absolute trepidation, and his amber pupils shrank to the size of pinpricks as he stared dead ahead. He was wound so tight it looked as if somepony so much as breathed on him, it would set him off.

"By Sun- I-I-I-ah-I… Oh crap," Shadow stammered out. He swallowed hard enough for both Twilight and Spike to hear before abruptly shouting, "Bye!"

As fast as a cragadile's jaws snapping shut, the front door was flung open with a loud wham and flew headlong right into the now hammering rain of the storm and fled.

Stunned in silence, Spike could only stare at the empty spot where Shadow had been standing just a moment ago thinking both how he'd dropped all of his mannerisms in one swoop and that the pegasus had used his name.

Meanwhile, evoking the same expression Spike had, Twilight could only think of what she saw about his tail when he turned and fled. Her mind was trying to make sure it wasn't just her eyes playing tricks on her.

She could've sworn that the stripe was cobalt blue when he came in and not a vivid yellow when he bolted out the door.

The cabin of G97H-TC 'Ugly 404'.

"...UCAV 7-5, 7-6. Redirecting flight to sector Alpha-Tango 1-5-1-3-0-0-"

Spartan Lorenski had listened to enough and switched from the Pelican's powerful long-range uplink over to squad COMs as the dropship climbed steeply upwards, clawing for altitude.

From what he had gathered from listening to radio chatter, somewhere where they had slipped in two squads of Helljumpers and their Mantis support mechs had uncovered a battery of Type-38 'Tyrant' anti-aircraft cannon emplacements located in an area uncomfortably close to their primary objective.

To make matters more complicated than they were, a sizeable armoured and mechanised Covenant division were protecting the guns.

Support came in the form of Joint Third Platoon, Human and Sangheili, in a couple of M12 Warthog LRVs and two Grizzly Main Battle Tanks, provided courteously by the Arkhangelsk.

Pulling at the many straps and belts of the pack Viago had strapped to her back legs, Lorenski then began tugging the occupied special carry harness strapped to her chest before moving on to the buckles keeping the disk-like ARGUS-type surveillance drone in place. Heading behind Viago, he triple checked the exceptionally compact black backpack.

The black backpack was a Falcon Wing Aerial Decent Unit, i.e. a ram-air parachute.

Lorenski made sure it was not going to come off anywhere when they jumped out the back of the perfectly good Pelican.

With a fifth check done, Lorenski gave Viago a thumbs up. "All set, Petty Officer."

Viago gave a thumbs up in return, "Great. How 'bout you, buddy? You ready?" she said, her voice coming muffled over the squad COMs as she breathed via a high altitude-breathing mask that was over her mouth. She scratched something that was strapped snug and securely long across just below her chest.

Despite being utterly strapped in and unable to move except his tail, Nipper wagged it enthusiastically in response as his master scratched him behind one of his ears to know if he was alright.

To Viago, it never was a dull moment with her little fur-missile buddy being around. He couldn't bark because he had on a special breathing mask-muzzle. Not just for more comfortable breathing on the way down, but for the protection of his muzzle when they jumped. Viago didn't want him to break his jaw if they came in for an awkward landing for whatever reason.

An alarm went off twice in the cabin while a call from 'Relcam came in over the bay intercom. "One minute!"

Taylor finished checking over herself and called over the radio as the cabin was enveloped in a red wash, "Right. Sound off. COM check."

One by one and in no particular order, the members of Roan came in crisply over squad COMs.

"Specialist Feyo, Roan 3. Link clean and clear."

"Spartan Michael, Roan 4. Link is green and clear."

"Specialist Officer Xytas, Roan 2. Link clean and clear."

"Roan 5, Viago and Nipper. Link clean and clear."

"Spartan Mia, Roan Leader. COMs check green and clear," said Taylor, turning to look over her shoulder and she hit the red ramp door button. The indicator light underneath turned green, and the ramp door rumbled open with a reverberating thrum.

The roaring wind from the outside rushed in along with the high-pitched drone of the pelican's engines. Outside were towering anvil-shaped cloud formations and below was a foreboding greying blanket of a powerful raging thunderstorm. The storm stretched far as the eye could see, complete with the ominous white blue flashes of lightning.

Without hesitation, Xytas leapt out of the Pelican first, plunging headfirst for the storm below with Taylor quickly following behind. Immediately jumping out next was a tandem Viago and Nipper, and finally Lorenski and Feyo jumping out last.

With the drone of the Pelican's engines gone, the only things Roan heard, for now, was the sound of the rushing wind past their protected ears and their steady breathing in their heads as they fell towards the grey storm raging below.

With a muffled crash of thunder, the flashes of lightning, the rain creating streaks across their faceplates and armour, Roan team entered the full embrace of the storm.

Hell

Hell on earth.

The fighting between the two sides was a frantic mess, and yet completely normal to a select few, given the circumstances surrounding their original mission.

Everywhere one would've looked there were signs of the hectic battle — smoking husks of M12 LRV Warthogs and burning Type-32 Ghosts. The crashed remains of Type-54 Banshee that had been shot down. The odd appearance of overturned Type-29 Shadows now acting as a cover for those who were once passengers and those who took one out, littered about the ins and outs of the ancient castle ruins.

Off in the distance to the north-west, three Type-38 Tyrant Anti-Aircraft Cannons. The massive ship-killing guns wrecked and engulfed by fire, burning fiercely like those Norse funeral pyres of old.

When the guns power cores went critical, the storm finally hit them with all its might. With the mission task complete, everybody fell back to the ruins for shelter, to regroup and resupply, and rest before setting about to prepare this place as a forward operating base.

Then the Covenant returned in overwhelming force.

Explosions cast shadows for brief seconds in the darkness, revealing Marines and friendly Elites doing their best against the Covenant onslaught. Everybody did what they could from their positions as the Covenant poured out of the woods and arrived by dropship from every direction.

The cries of assistance and reports of the enemy positions that came in over the COM were barely discernible from the explosions, the whine of plasma, and the chattering of gunfire continually ringing in his ears.

Brraaapp. Brraaapp. Brraaapp.

"…Marines! Call in-is twenty and up…"

"...Take that fifty and light up that sector left of the greenhouse! I said the left side of the greenhouse! At least five enemy squads are trying to force their way through there…"

"...Charlie down to three! I say again, I'm down to three men! We're folding in with Delta…"

Every surface of the ruins was basked and lit up with all kinds of colour. Blue, green, pink, purplish-red plasma intermixed with yellow and orange tracers.

"...Twenty and up for Alpha. Break. Be advised; part of Alpha-2 has re-positioned to the third and second floors in the southwest corner of the castle overlooking the divide. We are nil on AT. Say again; we have no AT. Pilums and Jackhammers are dry. Break. We've captured some Fuel Rod cannons and will be-"

"INCOMING!"

As he lay on the ground, O'Donnell watched as an M850, outnumbered and outflanked by Covenant, was being pounded by all kinds of hellfire. So much in fact by now parts of its hull had been turned into slag by an overwhelming barrage of fuel rod rounds and a strafing run of a couple of Banshees. The twin 120mm cannons of the Grizzly fired once more into a squad comprised of Grunts and Elites before something cooked off inside the tank and violently blew the turret off.

O'Donnell squeezed his eyes shut from being blinded by the terrific explosion and reopened them to see a Covenant Elite round the corner and run through a fellow Helljumper. "Dohmoh'Eenngahnehnn! Karumshurah ree chitakorru!"

The hinge-head was quickly put down by a hail of bullets from all around.

"-te..."

Different voices continued to filter in, sounding distant and muffled but to Nathan O'Donnell, he could've sworn he recognised one particular voice out of the others and a firm tug of the back of his collar. He reopened his eyes; everything was a mixed light show of constant blur and a shadowy black shape of someone above him, dragging him across the ground by the back of his collar.

"…BREAK! BREAK! BREAK! Grizzly 1-2 is gone! I say again, 1-2 Victor is gone! They just took multiple direct hits from T-58 LAAWs!"

"…rret round! Right side, right side!"

The flash of a plasma grenade somewhere nearby brought the figure behind and above, another ODST, helmet missing, into sharp focus.

'Nate. Come back to me, buddy!' Chris Vargo mouthed.

BRRRRRTTTTT

O'Donnell squinted down at his legs, one of them had a tourniquet and snaking away across the floor was a slick red blood trail. HIS blood trail. When did that happen?

The buzzsaw roar of a GAU-23 spewing 20mm from another F-99 UCAV thundered overhead.

He looked up back to Vargo, the team's designated medic, and saw he was now yelling at him.

Why was he doing that? What the hell happened to me?

A flash of blue plasma zipped past his face bringing him back into the harsh reality of the war zone raging on around him. The sensation of everything came back in a rush, with pain at the forefront.

"Nate, come on! Keep those goddamn eyes open! We need you!" Vargo shouted, ducking to avoid incoming plasma fire.

"Dammit, shit, Vi! You've got Elites coming in from the right, eight-ten! Two hundred bloody meters close!" He propped O'Donnell up against the wall and dumped a full mag from his SMG blindly out a gap in the wall, roughly in the direction of the incoming contact.

Covenant ducked behind cover as the stream of bullets wildly flew in their direction. When the firing stopped, the Covies fired back to where they thought they saw the muzzle flash had originated.

But either this Covie squad was confused by other similar muzzle flashes, or they were all greenhorns, a majority of their shots went wide and never got close.

"On it," Reynolds was heard over the radio.

O'Donnell's muscles burned. His body protested with pain as he tried to move his arms and legs to get up. Vargo shoved him back down by the shoulders.

Five distinctive cracks of a sniper rifle boomed over the sound of the raging firefight.

Downrange, the Elite Ultra and three Minors fell to the ground, dead. Each with holes through their heads. Those who remained stopped and lost their situational awareness of their surroundings and fired blindly back at what they thought was the source of their brethren deaths. They were shortly gunned down by the concentrated fire by a group of marines.

"Hostiles de-hostilized," announced Reynolds coolly over the COM.

O'Donnell let Vargo remove his helmet and take out an auto-injector from a med-pack. Vargo proceeded to stab O'Donnell in the leg. The adrenalin from the epinephrine coursed through his veins, and his hearing sharpened.

"Jesus. That's lodged way deep down in there," said Vargo, observing the mess O'Donnell was in with an indicating hand as he popped out the empty yellow band tube with a ftiz-ping! Replacing it with one marked by a green band.

"I can't believe you're still alive after that. And by the way, you look like shit."

A glob of spit mixed with blood escaped from the corner of his mouth as O'Donnell laughed, and immediately regretted that he did because of what pain was brought on by it. "Thanks. And so do you, mate. What the hell happened?"

Vargo laughed and peeled back O'Donnell's black-grey under the suit to get better access to the nasty leg wound.

"Vi and I both thought you died when that Wraith opened up as we were on the sixth-floor balcony — we got out, but you were still on it when it brought down the whole thing. Here, put this in,"

Vargo gave a mouthguard to O'Donnell to put in his mouth. He readied his combat knife. "Gonna need you to bite down on it; I'm not going to lie, it's gonna hurt."

"Iff ift havvn bvvn arvvarry. Unnnngggrr uuuuukkkrrr" O'Donnell grunted in agonising pain as he bit down hard on the mouthguard while Vargo slipped the combat knife into the wound and worked as delicately he could to remove the offending shrapnel.

There was a series of shouts in both English and Sangheili from down the hall. Vargo hardly noticed as a flurry of plasma rounds zipped past his head and impacted the adjacent wall. "Almost there buddy, almost... got the sucker!"

He readied his auto-injector again, a packet of Optican and his canteen. "Don't worry; you'll still have your two legs to walk on, I promise,"

O'Donnell spat out the mouth guard. He couldn't feel the offending object in his leg anymore, but at the same time, he couldn't sense much of anything else there.

"What of that Wraith? The one that took me down with the sixth-floor balcony? What happened to it?"

"Scrap," said Vargo plainly, giving a powerful painkiller to O'Donnell with the injector in the arm and flushed the wound with water. "Charlie 1-2 Victor blew it to hell."

"Good Ol' Boomer," O'Donnell noted, a yawn escaping from his mouth.

"Hey, bud! I need you to stay awake. We ain't out of the woods yet." Vargo warned, applying Optigel into the cleaned wound and handed O'Donnell a fully loaded M6H, including his helmet. "Just keep that barrel up and aimed that-a-way." he pointed down the hall.

O'Donnell watched as an exchange of tracers and plasma fire crisscrossed through the intersection and riddled with holes, the corpse of a Skirmisher tumbled into view.

"What you take me for?" O'Donnell smugly replied as he took the pistol and put on his helmet, "A snivelling Grunt?"

"Only if I let you remain in this condition." Vargo chuckled with a smirk, tightly wrapping a bandage over O'Donnell's leg wound just as the wounded ODST fired his pistol, drilling three Skirmishers through the head.

Fireteam Roan. Dirtside.

Standing in the pouring rain even up here, Spartan Lorenski dumped Viago's Falcon Wing aerial decent unit into a shallow hole and marked its location. Viago took her collapsible shovel and began heaping the dirt back to hide it.

"Roan to Ugly," Spartan Taylor called in over COMs. "We're boots on the ground and spotted a good vantage point to observe the Spire."

"Understood Roan," replied an unhappy voice of Flight Officer Captain Allencourt of Pelican Uniform 404. "Slight hitch to our plans. Our long-range COM gear and advanced flight systems are having a hard time cutting this crap. We're no longer in contact with Command ATC GCI, and navigating this mountainous area in wild weather is too dangerous with both instrument aids on the fritz. We've put down somewhere secluded to fix it hopefully. If you require assistance to take down something heavy, like Hunters or provide as a distraction of a couple of Wraiths, we'll be unable to do so until we radio back with an update on our status."

"Copy, Ugly. Let's hope whatever you've got is not too serious," Taylor turned her head to look behind her.

Lorenski stamped down the mound of dirt while 'Dorvo helped kick some loose rock around, scattering them over the dumping site.

"Fingers are crossed, Spartan. Well, happy trekking. Ugly out."

"Let's get this done. Xytas, you have Feyo and Mike at designation position two," Taylor indicated, pointing towards the SpecOps officer.

Both Crimson Blade Elites and Spartan nodded in confirmation before 'Dorvo headed off for a rock wall and started climbing with them in tow.

"Viago, Nipper you're with me towards position one." and looked to Viago. "Ready?"

"My pal and I are ready, Spartan." Viago happily announced, watching both Spartan and Elites reach the top of the rock wall and disappeared as they moved into the foliage up top.

Taylor nodded. "Good. Get the drone up and put it on auto. I want the tower scouted first, and then this entire mountain reconned and mapped."

Viago nodded back and reached for the ARGUS drone strapped to her lower back. With a grunt, She pulled it free. Gripping the drone like a Frisbee, the Marine flung it out into the storming night sky.

Canterlot palace north tower. Princess Celestia's bedchambers.

Notes and scrolls full of words and sentences stared up at Princess Celestia, as she couldn't put her mind to rest. Not after having gone through the ordeal of where her sister Luna had to go through again, the one where she went about recalling her dream.

After returning from her private study to jot down everything on a new record she had learned and gathered about Luna's dream, everything kept coming back to one thing: a lush landscape covered by a pine forest of perfectly straight trees and a ring of faceless ponies surrounding a crater.

Everything had been the same, except for the last bit. It was this new addition that haunted Celestia. The foreign words that her sister heard snarled to her in her dream were overly disturbing.

Celestia hadn't the courage to tell her sister that in a previous dream of her own, she too had something similar occur to what Luna went through.

Celestia shuddered from the thought as those words from her dream repeated. 'Rosoluguan mormeero. Dohmoh'Eenngahnehnn! Ree harg meri!'

Letting out a heavy-hearted sigh, Celestia carefully took off her head and chest piece regalia first, placing them onto a unique stand before kicking off her hoof guard protectors into a messy pile to the side. Celestia was too bothered by the early night's events to put them in proper order like she always did.

Curling up by the hearth, absorbing the warming fire crackling inside its confines in contrast to the of the cold pelting rain hammering outside against the windows. Celestia curled up on the quilt bedding, laid her head down on the silk comfort and closed her eyes, deep in thought.

BOOOM!

Celestia woke with a start.

Peering around with sleepy eyes, Celestia spotted Philomena sitting on her perch; her head burrowed into a wing and sleeping peacefully despite the now hammering rain on the windows from the storm outside. Moving her gaze on up for the clock on the wall she noticed the magic rune keeping the fire alive in the hearth had weakened to such a point that something so simple as somepony just breathing on it could snuff it out.

Celestia looked up at the time.

10 minutes to midnight.

She had nodded off on the floor. Again.

That's the fourteenth time she'd done that this month.

Stifling a yawn, Celestia stretched out her back with a series of popping clicks as she stood while listening for the rolls of the thunder outside to settle down before slowly making headway for the comfort of her bed.

With a little expenditure of magic, Celestia drew back the sheets back and was about to lie down on her bed comfortable mattress when her ears flicked, picking out a strange droning sound as the rumble of another roll of thunder went away.

The peculiar droning was like the vibration of a distant thunder roll but stuck on a loop.

Laying her head down onto the silk pillow, Celestia closed her eyes as she continued to listen when the odd sound suddenly came to a crescendo as a deep reverberating roaring that grated at her ears and-

SCHHHEEE - ROOOAAARRR!

Rudely awoken from her slumber, Philomena emitted a loud, startled screeching squawk and almost fell off her perch in the process. Meanwhile, Celestia grabbed hold of the closest bed pole as the very floor and windows of the room shuddered and shook.

As the tremor and rumbling abated, Celestia picked up another sound. A great many numbers of urgent hoof-falls accompanied by the sounds of armour shuffling about that was rapidly approaching from the hall that leads to her bedroom quarters door.

The hoof-falls cease, and a rapid knocking sounded on the door.

"Enter!" Celestia called out as she slid out of bed, levitated her regalia chest piece back into place. The doors opened just as she finished putting back on her hoof guards.

In the doorway stood her sister Luna and accompanying her were two guards. A batpony stallion from the Night Guard and a pegasus mare from the Royal Guard.

"Sister, I trust you heard that?" Luna said worryingly, coming in with a quick step. The guards stayed outside.

"Yes … and felt it," Celestia said, slipping on her golden hoof guards.

Luna stopped and looked past Celestia to the rumpled cushion in front of the fireplace, then back to her and sporting a sly smile.

"You fell asleep on the floor again, didn't you?"

Celestia looked over at her. "Whatever do you mean?"

Luna pointed with a forehoof to Celestia. "You have carpet marks all over your left flank."

Looking over, Celestia saw the strange pressure marks crisscrossing her coat. "So what if I did?"

"It's not good for your back." Luna teased, bumping her flank into hers.

Celestia bumped her back with a smirk crossing her lips, "and neither is sneaking early morning snacks before bedtime," she paused, "Woona."

Luna's sly smile vanished instantaneously.

"I thought you signed a personal decree for that childish name shall never be spoken of again?" she hissed.

Celestia couldn't help but snigger at her sister's outburst. "But you're so cute when you do that."

"Never again. Please," said Luna, breathing out and calming down.

"Yes, my little Woona," Celestia smirked, barely holding back her giggles.

Luna had all the right intentions to slap her sister across the muzzle as stated clearly in the written decree since she returned, but just the way Celestia said it caused her to burst out laughing instead.

Hearing the droning sound begin to build up again; this one an octave higher in pitch.

"I assume you're here to tell me you saw what caused the noise?" Celestia asked her sister seriously.

"I did not. But those two out there, however, did." Luna looked back to the closed bedchamber doors. "Both saw a sort of angular object that flew at terrific speed, zipping in and out of the clouds as they were on their rounds on the southern perimeter wall."

Celestia looked to the doors as well. "What were the names of these two?"

"One Private Nightshade and Private First Class Ebony Star."

"Hmm," Celestia frowned as she levitated her regalia tiara onto her head. "A batpony that has been rumoured true to have been born with a cutie mark. And a pegasus that has an acute sensitivity to sunlight, hence her temporary reassignment on night watch for a few less strained duties."

Luna scrutinised Celestia with suspicion, "I'm surprised that you know more of what I know of this, Tia."

"Where would Equestria be without our foresight... also eavesdropping on the guards who think they're in the clear helps too."

Horn aglow Celestia opened the doors, falling rain immediately sweeping inside. "Also, there are some things that eavesdropping royal guard gossip can reveal that other forms take very long to process. And the fact I always deliberately chose Ebony Star to be assigned to my security detail for any night-time occasions."

Both walked out into the drenched night with Luna following. The slanting rain hammering into their faces as Celestia closed the doors behind them.

Despite the intensity of the storm outside, the distinctive droning was still being heard, sounding as if it was returning, building up to its crescendo roaring to shake the palace as it had before.

The two peered into the distant murky gloom of the night, their eyes adjusting to the darkness. Meanwhile, the droning sound got louder and louder with each passing moment.

After a few more seconds of nothing when suddenly-

"Sister, there!" Luna exclaimed, pointing a hoof towards a patch of the storm covered the night sky.

"I see them."

Charging down out of a thunderstorm cloud bank like enraged phoenixes out of Tartarus came not one, but three of these alien spacecraft.

The first two were greyish white, resembling science fiction jets but more on the sharp-edged and ugly side. The third trailing in pursuit, however, was anything alike.

This alien aircraft had a more cetacean aspect to it. The craft sported a deep blue metallic sheen, curved features of an aquatic nature. The foreign aircraft looked like it should have been swimming in some deep ocean current rather than zooming through the sky.

One of the grey jets suddenly rolled near a perfect ninety degrees on its side and zoomed sharply upwards while spewing out spheres of white-yellow light behind it. It disappeared as it continued to fly upwards, knifing into the storm clouds.

While one had gone, there was still another grey jet left, and the aquatic looking craft was again approaching head-on, now even closer and threatening. Even though it was partly obscured by the grey one, the front of the blue one suddenly flashed with light of an even brighter blue.

In swift jinking responses, the grey one moved about, throwing itself across the storming sky while almost always turning and rolling at speeds only the most talented of pegasi flyers could in their wildest dreams be able to manoeuvre as streams of small blue orbs skimmed past around it.

There was no doubt the grey jets were being fired upon, attacked by some weapon that used blue-hued magical energy or something that resembled it.

After watching more jinking and gut-wrenching manoeuvres from both aircraft that made even Luna sick to her stomach, the grey jet snapped rolled sharply to the right. Barrel rolled over and turned going left.

Luna recognised the move.

It was an evasive manoeuvre taught in the Pegasus Corps of the E.U.P called a "split S".

Despite the tricky move, the blue craft stayed doggedly locked on the grey one's tail, and its fire began again scoring hits. This time a stream of thick black smoke belched from the rear of the grey craft.

As soon as the black smoke poured out was when the grey jet pitched its nose sharply up. The two alicorn sisters watched as the aircraft travelled vertically for a few seconds; nose pointing to space, ass pointing at the ground, and drastically losing speed in the process.

The blue craft couldn't match the desperate play-by-play move as it tried to stay behind it by doing the same thing.

But it was too little too late and overshot.

Going for the break it created itself, the grey craft pitched forward and levelled out, lined up on the rear of the blue one and let loose with something that detached from its wing and rocketed straight into the back of the blue craft.

One second it was there, the next it was gone. Replaced by a flash of bright white tinged electric blue and expanding falling debris of the aftermath of an explosion.

There was no doubt to the two princesses that these crafts, both appearing to belong to two parties of unknown superior technological advancement had engaged one another to do.

To kill or be killed.

With the falling wreckage of what remained of the other craft falling to earth behind it, the wounded grey craft still trailing black smoke lazily rolled inverted and blundered belly first into a cloud bank then to seemingly reappear without anything wrong with it now.

There was neither no smoke or damage to see.

Celestia squinted her eyes and had a feeling that they had been watching not one, but two of them. The one, she and her sister, had seen dogfighting the blue craft had a friend up in the clouds. This supposition was proven correct as of the one with the smoky tail reappeared, flew alongside its undamaged wingmate before veering at a right angle and flew off into the night.

With a sudden great beat from her wings, Celestia took off from the balcony and flew towards the undamaged for an intercept as it continued to soar towards Canterlot, much to Luna's surprise.

"Tia? Whereby Starswirl's Beard do you think you're off to?! Surely, you're not ser-" Celestia heard her sister shout before her words faded into the wind.

Celestia didn't question herself as to why she'd taken off, but deep down she knew this was the right thing to do. Entrap this thing in her magic, uncover who the individuals were piloting these things and put a stop to it.

She increased her airspeed, closing the distance with the incoming craft.

As she closed the distance, the boxy craft grew to size to that of a royal carriage and didn't look that boxy or sharp-angled anymore now that she was that little bit closer. Its body was futuristic and streamlined, and it's grey colours exotic and beautiful in a weird way. Although not that it mattered now.

Almost head-on with it, Celestia witnessed the craft roll on its side to avoid a head-on collision, but it didn't matter now.

Coming to a jerking stop in midair and surrounded by a soft golden colour, Celestia smiled with satisfaction with the successful catch.

Gotcha! Now then, let's see who you belong to…?

Careful not to exert too much magic into it all at once, Celestia channelled little by little bit into the spell to conduct a search of the craft and, more importantly, find its occupant. However, what she found instead astounded her.

Even though the cone-like front half, of what she initially assumed was the cockpit, large enough to accommodate an adult-sized pony if one was to lay down inside, no living thing was detected within to dictate its actions.

The entire thing was one big automated machine. From tip to tail, all the way down to the tips of its wings contained all kinds of strange internal components of wiring, crystal, some variation of explosive gunpowder, and a whole lot of other electronic bits and brass crammed inside that she had no clue as to what they were or even did.

But if it was all controlled by electronics, the commands of what it had carried out had to have come from somewhere, and more distressingly, someone.

As if the machine wasn't loud enough before, Celestia almost cancelled her containment field when two roaring white-hot cones of fire ejected from the alien craft's rear. While that happened, segmented flat pieces of metal, large and small, began to move up and down or side to side in a somewhat frantic manner on its wings and short stubby 'V' tailfin.

It took Celestia a moment to realise this was how the grey craft powered and controlled itself from crashing into the ground as it soared through the air.

Try as it might and free itself from Celestia's magic containment field, it wasn't going anywhere. Not without any air flowing over its fixed metal wings to keep it aloft, its actions were pointless.

The grey craft somehow learned that very fact, as all at once it fell silent. The blaring roar of its powerful engines died and flicked out. While at the same time its moving control surfaces froze, ceasing all movement.

"How curious," Celestia voiced as she heard the beating of wings and deep breathing behind her.

"You could've.. warned me. You... have waited for… some guards… to provide security…" said Luna, breathing heavily.

"I think that's a little late for that, don't you think?"

Chlunk!

A sizeable conical tube, tapering at each end with one pair of little stubby fins near its rear, detached from under the craft's innermost left wing. It tumbled end over end into the darkness towards the ground eventually somewhere below.

Celestia kept her eyes on the craft to see what other surprises it had in store when the tips of its wings and tail fins lit up suddenly with tiny white and red lights. All of which began to pulse in an unknown pattern.

Hmm…?

"Tia! Watch out!" Luna cried, horn surging with magical power.

With the grey machine still encased in her magic, Celestia turned at her sister's warning to look in the direction Luna had faced.

Swooping down from the clouds in uncanny grace due to their odd shape came three blue flying craft. On first glance, they looked like the other one that had been blown to pieces only far, far larger. Close to the size of a medium-sized dirigible yacht.

But it wasn't the case as they got closer and appearing somewhat flat, piscine, and teardrop-like shaped.

One of the teardrop-like crafts angled in towards the two Alicorns and the front of one blazed as a flashing blue. The blue bolts of energy tore through the air, with two striking her containment field.

Not wanting the grey machine exploding in her face, Celestia released it from her magic.

For its part, the grey craft, free of the princess's magical grip, plunged like a stone for a second before the shrill roaring noise of its engines returned and the aircraft shot forwards, away from them before going vertical and spearing into the clouds.

The trio of teardrop ships careened past, each showing off their twin articulated tails steering the purple-blue exhaust coming from their backsides. With a sluggish and graceless move, the trio of ships turned back around.

Celestia felt a primal fear rise deep from within her soul and screamed for immediate action.

Move! Move now!

Celestia barely began to move forward when a flurry of blue bolts of energy zipped around Celestia, but bizarrely none of them hit her. Shimmering from the recent energy bombardment between her and the incoming teardrop craft was a deep blue protective barrier. Luna's horn was aglow fiercely with magical energy.

In retaliation to this, the two other craft opened fire as well, adding their firepower and putting more strain on Luna as she concentrated harder on keeping it up.

A massive blue sparkly ball-like thing dropped out from the belly of the third teardrop alien craft as it passed low over them and impacted right in the centre of Luna's protective shield.

CRRRRAAACK!

An enormous explosion erupted against the barrier with tremendous force.

Luna's shield failed instantaneously, cracking and falling apart in a million fragments.

With the barrier down, the teardrop alien ships opened up on the alicorn sisters. Blue plasma stitched its way across Luna's side like a scythe.

From chest all along her flank, each bolt burned and blistered her dark blue coat and skin.

A horrific pained scream erupted from Luna's throat.

"Luna!" Celestia cried in shock as her sister fell uncontrollably from the sky.

Luna fell for a distance before splashing headfirst into a deep lake.

BRRRRRRTTTTT- Fwoosh!

The hull of one of the incoming teardrop craft rippled an electric bright blue and sluggishly, veered off from its attack run on Celestia.

The second blue craft that had joined behind the first was greeted in the nose by two bright orange explosions, knocking the teardrop blue craft off course but not destroying it.

Inverting out of the clouds above Celestia came, not one, but three of the sleek grey craft which included the one with the smoking tail.

Saved by the three grey aircraft that barrelled directly for the teardrop-shaped ships without hesitation, Celestia didn't linger around to watch, and she speared into the lake like a knife. A few moments later, she broke the surface of the water, gasping for air as she hefted her unconscious sister's head above the water and began paddling for the shore.

Back on dry land, Celestia checked and found Luna still drew breath, which was a good sign. It meant her sister hadn't breathed in any water while she was under the water and drowned. However, she could not get Luna to wake no matter how hard or what she tried.

To say Princess Celestia was irate before would be an understatement. She was furious; seething within from witnessing such a horrendous act of violence against her sister.

These blue teardrop craft had attacked and hurt her sister without reasonable cause.

Stepping away from her unconscious sister with tears of rage, she had to put a halt to this — all of it.

Celestia launched herself high up into the night sky, her horn and body encasing in a golden aura, her eyes turning white from the surging magic while her mane and tail turned to fire shining brighter than the sun she raised and lowered.

All the rain evaporated mid hydrant pour. Only the Everfree forest, Ponyville and the surrounding areas far off to the west unaffected.

With a murderous glare, Celestia encased the first teardrop craft she saw coming at her with the containment spell and threw it right back with a warcry at the two other ones that just blasted through the burning debris of the two autonomous aircraft.

The cockpit of Pelican G97H-TC Uniform 'Ugly' 404

It was like someone had come along and turned off the tap.

"That was... sudden," Relcam said intrigued, as he peered through the plexiglass of the cockpit as the drumming rain just receded midway through its hydrant like pour.

Allencourt peered through as well before opening the cockpit door and shook it off with a shrug, "Yeah well, just like the Intel said about this world, freak weather. C'mon, now since there's a break in this, let us see if we can't fix our instruments so we can fly on out of here in a straight line."

She patted 'Relcam lightly on the arm as she went by him into the cabin.

"Roan Leader to Ugly."

'Relcam watched as Allencourt went outside before touching the flashing COM icon on the nearest screen. "Ugly here, send it."

"Observation and scouting of the Spire complete. Trekking for the source of the dark zone. Shouldn't take long to destroy it."

"Roger. We've got the long-range uplinks back again, and we're forwarding your progress status back to Command. Be advised; we're working on basic navigation. Advanced navigation is offline. Check back in when you destroy the generator. We figure we'll be ready to lend you a hand on any clean up you might need before picking you up from the site. Over."

"Copy that, Ugly. We'll see if we can at least try to save something fun for you to do. Roan Leader. Out."

Allencourt's voice sounded over the COM in 'Relcam's ear, "Shall we get started?"

'Relcam nodded to himself and turned on the port side wing searchlight.

Fifteen minutes later the storm clouds in the sky began to break up and scatter, revealing the multitude of twinkling pinpricks of stars and a nearly full moon, its light illuminating their Pelican in a wash of soft bluish-white moonlight.

"Ossis! Is it still stuck like that?!" called a demanding voice of Allencourt over the radio.

'Relcam looked out through the cockpit canopy and caught a glimpse of Allencourt's shuffling combat boots sticking out from underneath the dropship's rotational nose gun-pod.

"Yes!"

'Relcam locked down in disgust by what he saw. Both his own and his gunner's flight instrument panels, including the backup analogue Attitude Director Indicator, were still giving false readings. This time both were indicating that the Pelican was upside down.

There was a chiming clinking of tools against one another followed by a hard clunk against the underside of the hull. "Hnngh. I tell ya what, Ossis. These interferences? They're great in a sense, blocking the Covies from getting an accurate ID hit on us from anywhere on this bizarre rock, but it's cursed enough that it has has a conscience as we flew back in the direction of where Roan 'll be, and decides to foxtrot both our systems to- ah, dammit. Hey! Mind tossing the arc thingy down here!"

'Relcam rummaged through the kit for the desired tool for a minute. When he found it, he tossed the black and blue bottle that landed next to her boots. "I understand. What is the human saying for this? Life's a hitch?"

"Bitch. Life's a bitch, Ossis," Allencourt strained with something. She stretched a leg out, knocking the soldering tool with a boot so that it rolled under the fuselage and up into her waiting open palm.

In the cockpit, 'Relcam began to hear intermediate sounds of a plasma torch cutting through metal coming from under the floor as Allencourt went into with whatever she had determined could modify and fix the problem that was plaguing their instrumentations.

The noises stopped, and a loud muffled cheer of mock jubilation followed. "Phew. Huzzah! … Okay, try it now! And don't forget to give it a good whack this time!"

'Relcam flicked switches and pressed buttons, rebooting the Pelicans flight systems. As the screens flickered on, he punched the top of the instrument flight control panel hard with a closed fist. One buzzt sound and hum later, any malfunctioning analogue aids and dials either flipped or spun back to show their correct display orientation. He pressed the test button for the ADI.

Allencourt turned her COM off and shouted from beneath the nose, "Well? What the hell happened up there? Did it work?"

"For now," replied 'Relcam as he rechecked the systems.

Allencourt grunted as she shimmied her way back out from working in the cramped nose of the Pelican.

When she finally squirmed out the soft moonlight was now poking through the clouds and illuminating her face well enough to see it splotched with grime and specks of green-tinted hydraulic fluid.

She leaned up on her elbows in the short grass and raised her visor up.

"I wonder how our drones' are faring with this shit in their guidance systems?" She said, looking up to see 'Relcam standing over her.

His mandibles arranged in what was the sangheili version of a wide grin. He held a hand out towards Allencourt.

"And wipe that off your jaws, Ossis. I know perfectly well what you saw, and it's not fair on me." Allencourt smirked as she was hauled up by 'Relcam. "That stupid scuttlebutt reasons why the stupid quote on the Gallipoli's bulletin board hasn't changed."

At this, 'Relcam rearranged his jaws into what passed for a smirk and started to laugh when there was a loud snap as something stepped on a twig or a rotting branch.

Both pilots spun, pistols drawn. All traces of their friendly banter was gone. 'Relcam put himself in front of Allencourt. She understood why. If Covenant were here to take them out, 'Relcam had shields to protect him. She didn't.

It wasn't a second later when-

"By Luna's-"

"Shhhh, keep it down. It's going to hear you."

"Corporal, don't you mean both?"

Clang!

The various voices ceased as the sound of something clad in armour collapsed on the ground.

'Relcam motioned to the dropship as he switched out his plasma pistol for his Storm Rifle. Allencourt palmed an access panel on the side of the dropship and switched off the wing searchlight.

The area plunged into soft moonlit darkness, 'Relcam primed his weapon. He winced as the faint whine of the rifle warmed up cut loudly through the still air like plasma sword.

Meanwhile, Allencourt flipped down her visor and night vision activated, turning her surroundings into a grainy green glow.

The hushed hissing voices came again,

"Hey, do you think they picked up on that?" questioned a new one.

"Jeez, what made you think that bat brain? We all saw that." answered another.

"What do we do now? The protocol doesn't say anything about this. Nothing at all."

"What are we going to tell the sergeant? That-"

"FREEZE! Hold it right there!" Allencourt ordered loudly enough to scare a Grunt into wetting itself. "Any sudden moves, and it's a bullet to your brain. Don't move, and you won't die. Or move and die with my bullet in your skull. Your choice."

If Allencourt was honest at that point with herself, it was damn near impossible to figure out as to what she was aiming at on the oddly shaped figure, but it had to be one of the species that made up the Covenant's ranks because whatever they were, all of them had just spoken in clear English.

First things first, it wasn't human nor sangheili, no fooling anyone with that. They were the only UNSC/USE team deployed this far out here. Most of all, if they were friendlies, Allencourt would have at least have their status and call signs displayed on her HUD in blue.

So, what were these things?

Unggoy?

Only Grunts were known to speak English over their native language. Mostly because it was fun and challenging; however, not all Grunts got the grammar right mind you; many of the gas breathers had a habit of mixing human language in the wrong order on occasion.

The shadowy figure stayed put, standing still and probably at a complete loss on what it should do next.

It occurred to Allencourt that something felt off about this, just the way it had paused. It reminded her of how a deer or an animal would have reacted if caught staring into the glaring floodlights of a Warthog. She immediately ditched the idea that it was a Grunt.

No. Not big enough and it didn't sound high pitched, scared or wimpy enough. Kig-Yar then?

Allencourt pointed, "Alright, you lot in the trees! What you're gonna' do is that you're going to walk towards me and only me. Flee to your buddies; we'll cut you down. Got it?"

The shapes in the dark seemed to take an even longer pause, presumably trying to figure out before slowly moving in acceptance in a beeline straight for her in compliance with her orders.

Nope. Not Kig-Yar. Not slender or birdlike enough. Then again, the Kig-Yar were known to be sly and crafty birds when a potential score is involved. Their Pelican would be worth a lot on the Black Market if they happen to kill them and steal it, and the shifty looking things slowly moving towards her through her sights appeared as if they sported some sort of quills on their heads. But what's with the perfect English then?

"That's it. Nice and slow, now."

Yanme'e?

…

Yeah right.

The shadowy Covenant figures emerged straight into the moonlight and Allencourt immediately recognised a problem.

They weren't Covenant.

Allencourt didn't flinch as a raindrop hit her squarely on the nose. She blinked rapidly, mentally shaking her head to clear it of any fatigue from what she was looking at exactly.

She began to feel sick when the realisation finally hit her like a swinging Hunter's shield to her gut.

Shit.

It was hard going, but Celestia knew what she was doing now.

Having figured out the teardrop-like alien craft had shields of their own of some kind protecting them from damage, Celestia found a way to drain the shields.

She found out that the longer she kept them contained within a magic field to fling them away in a different direction or hit them with powerful blasts of magic, the more the alien's shields weakened until they failed and exposed them to be inflicted by her attacks.

Celestia, with all her might, encased and flung around the second last of the teardrop craft directly into the path of the other remaining ship that began to fire on her for the seventh time.

The two ships met and blew up spectacularly, becoming a mixed ball of purple-blue explosive carnage that fell to the ground with a ground shuddering whumph.

All at once, the sounds of the night returned. Even the rain from the storm began to fall at a mere drizzle.

Letting out a long and collected deep breath of calm, Celestia finally relaxed. The intense magic surrounding her horn and the blinding golden aura around her disappeared. Her mane returned to its usual wavy four toned sights, and she flew back and landed next to where she had left her sister to lay.

As Celestia touched down lightly on the wet grass, Luna stirred.

"Luna?" Celestia said, kneeling in the wet grass next to her. "Sister? Are you alright?"

"Ugh," Luna groaned, groggily sitting up and putting a hoof to her throbbing sore head. "Tia? Wha- what happened? Why am I soaking wet? The last thing I remember was projecting a shield for us from those things, then Wham, there was a blinding flash-" she was immediately cut off by Celestia's wings as she brought Luna close in for a warming cuddle.

"Don't ever do that to me again."

"Ahhh… do what now?" Luna looked around noticing the twisted chaos of metallic carnage strewn around the area of the lake. The purple-blue fires that were burning from the wrecks bathed the lake's surface with a haunting blue glow.

Astonished and slightly put off by this, Luna pushed Celestia a little out of the embrace and looked into her eyes. "What happened while I was out? What did you do?"

"I'll explain what I can. Better when both of us will be warm and dry again. Can you fly?" said Celestia, examined her sister's wings as she stretched hers from the embrace.

Luna stood up and stretched her wings. Other than the few prangs of stiffness and an odd stinging sensation down her side, Luna otherwise felt fine.

"Stiff. But I can manage," said Luna with a smile.

Celestia smiled back and looked around herself at the damage she had created in her fit of protective fury. "We'll come back here in the morning when its day-light. But right now let's return home, stick to what we know and gathered so far."

"I like the sound of that, sister." Luna agreed, and both of them took off into the night.

Had the two princesses turned to look over their shoulders to look one last time at the strewn wreckage about the area before they left, they would've noticed a large piece from one of the Seraph wreckages shift before being booted away with considerable force.

Crawling out on its belly and eventually standing tall in the drizzling rain a little worse for wear, emerged a tall bipedal digitigrade creature, clad in dark blue-purple armour and with a sizeable crack running through its near-transparent blue face shield of its angular-like helmet.

Tightly grasping to both the hilt of its energy sword and plasma rifle, the Covenant sangheili growled out in frustration at its lost quarry.

It scrutinised the destruction and carnage strewn about him. With a final sneering growl it headed off, sprinting through the dark in the direction of exactly where the two princesses of this place would retreat too.

And there will be no place to hide.

Not 10 minutes later, both princesses returned to Canterlot without further incident from any other flying craft or rumbling droning sounds and landed back on the balcony they took off from in relative silence.

"But Tia, that spell," Luna said apprehensively, walking back indoors with Celestia, "After what you did, there is a reason why the last time we-"

Celestia put out a wing and pressed the tip up to her sister's lips. "I remember the dangers to the mind, dear sister. I wouldn't have asked you to do it with me in the first place if you didn't trust my judgement."

"So, where do you think would be a good place to do this? Doing this in one of our rooms is certainly out of the question. They would contain too much sentimental value if something were to go awry."

"The dungeons?" Celestia suggested.

Luna looked up in apprehension, "Just how much do you remember when we tried this last time, sister?"

"Not as much as I thought I did judging by your look. Then what is your suggestion for where it should be?"

"Well, definitely not the archives. Don't want a repeat of that. Hmm…" Luna said, tapping her chin in thought. "The throne room. Spacious, robust and importantly, not underground."

Celestia stopped over by the bedchamber doors and opened them to reveal the guards still on the entrance in silence that Luna had brought with her at the beginning of all this.

"Agreed."

Facing each other, the two sat on their cushions in the throne room and delicately touched the tips of their horns against one another.

"Right," Celestia breathed evenly and slowly, closing her eyes in preparation, "Deep breaths in and out. Slowly release and-"

There was a sharp crackle of electricity as both princesses magic started to intertwine with each other and flow down their horns.

It wasn't unlike experiencing the worst brain-freeze Celestia had ever had, but it was more akin to somepony driving an ice-pick deep into the back of her skull.

"What do you see?" she asked her sister, as she strained to keep the memory of the craft as stable as she could.

Luna increased the magical flow that, in turn, resulted in more clarity of the memory's quality.

"I see…? I see…? I see the nose, swept wings, those tail fins-"

Celestia cracked an eye open, "Skip that part, could you? Look for identifying features. Crests. Symbols. Markings… Things like that."

"Markings…" Luna briefly opened her eyes in triumph. "Huzzah! There, I see them, crests, three of them. One is occurring more often than the others."

"Describe them."

Luna furrowed her brow in concentration. "Uhh, let's see here…" and began to describe what she was seeing.

Of the first she described was of a symbol painted halfway up near the nose. It was an intricate and colourful circular crest emblem of black, white, and yellow that depicted a dark mountain range with what looked like the sun cresting between a gap, but the most attention-grabbing of the crest was that boarding around the outside like a ring.

"There are words... in a ring around it. Huh. Most of them are all in-"

But before Luna could go further in detail, there was a sudden feedback surge of magic, and both princesses violently convulsed.

Seeing the princesses in agony, the two Night Guards in the room rushed over to help.

"Halt! Stay back! Do not come closer." Luna commanded through gritted teeth, holding out a hoof to keep them from coming closer.

One of them didn't appear that convinced as Luna cringed as she heard the words, "Are you sure, Princess? Perhaps this can-"

"Stay your tongue! Do not interrupt us." Celestia snapped in a fury, horn still aglow with magic, from Luna's to face the insubordinate guard.

The intertwined magic that was once swirling around both their horns crackled fiercely before sputtering out.

Realising he had overstepped his bounds, the Night Guard fell back. His shocked partner quickly escorted him from the room to stop Celestia going off at him even more.

"Tia," Luna said in concern. "While he was indeed out of place, he does bring forward a good point. This spell doesn't react well to high stress and anger, remember? It was this very thing that caused it to go wrong last time. That is why it works best if those undergoing are well-rested and calm."

Celestia shot Luna a furious glare. "Those things attacked us without provocation! They injured you."

Well, not exactly. Hurt? Yes. Injured? Not quite.

Granted, both Celestia and Luna weren't expecting or prepared for this type of thing to happen, their physiology of being alicorns helped stave off that severe injury. Had they been something else otherwise, the injuries sustained by being hit with that kind of plasma would've been horrendous.

"I want to know why the automated aircraft didn't. It and its others had every chance and opportunity to attack us unprepared, yet decided instead to defend us. The sooner we know what those markings are, then the better we can understand what is going on."

Luna sighed as she re-lit her horn alongside her sister's; she knew what Celestia said was true. She wanted to go through this as much as she did.

Luna pressed the tip of her horn against Celestia's and re-entered her sister's mind straight back for the ringed words.

"Words and numbers. All in capitals in Gryffic and Equus" stated Luna.

That was quite surprising to hear that Equus, quite a very dead language and that was succeeded by what is called Ponish in Equestria these days, had been used. But even more so was the use of Gryffic.

Was this some technology the griffons failed to set forward to the table? Celestia thought to herself but immediately rejected it. No, if they did, they would've been boasting about their progression in that field long ago before the annual diplomatic talks. There was more to this than initially met the eye.

The sound of her sister's voice brought Celestia back to the situation at hoof."Unsc Gallipoli. Stalwart class. 2541, F-F-G dash 1915. Duty Ante Nos."

"Duty ante nos from Equus to Ponish is Duty Before Us," Celestia noted as she translated.

The next symbol Luna began to describe was located on the left wing, and it consisted of some two-pronged blade with two spread eagle wings behind it. This one still depicted as a circular crest, but it was smaller, less attention-grabbing, and was a complete light grey; almost blending into the wing of the craft.

"No. 507, unsc slash-"

"Unsc again?" said Celestia in interest, her ears picking out the word.

"Yes, sister. But perhaps I'm not transcribing this right. Maybe it's short hoof for an acronym of sorts. For what those initials that form it, though? I do not know,"

"What comes after the slash part before I interrupted you?"

"Use," Luna said.

"Anything after that?"

"Joint Expeditionary Strike Group dash 7, recon air and space wing. G-L-I dash 77."

Joint expeditionary strike group. A military force. Correction: an alien military force.

Celestia hadn't heard the term 'expeditionary' use in such a way since several hundred years ago. Going by what Luna had told, this joint expeditionary group was one of seven, and for all, she knew it was roaming about their world and Equestria somewhere given the description of the first symbol her sister described sounded like this aircraft came from a class of spacefaring vessel.

"And the last crest?"

"Just a second Tia. There's something I can see scratched in underneath."

"Be quick about it. I don't know how much longer I can keep this up," Celestia muttered through now gritted teeth. "Those migraines, from last time? They're getting to me."

"Dormieris cum… uno oculo… aperta. Resurgence." Luna said, "'Sleep with one eye open. Resurgence.' Sister, I've never heard such an expression used before in our time, have you?"

Celestia had a good inkling as to what those words meant. She had heard the modern-day translation of that particular saying brought up by Shining Armor during a E.U.P. defence review a few weeks later after being promoted to Captain of the Guard in Canterlot.

"I do, but later," waving a hoof for Luna to hurry it up.

The last marking Luna scrutinised was the most prevalent on the aircraft, appearing more than three times. As she described it in detail, she probably should've started with this symbol first as to avoid beating around the bush as it answered what UNSC stood for.

The symbol was that of an eagle, its wings spread high and wide, and a shield in the centre with the word UNSC spilling out across it. Below that was a ribbon with the words 'United Nations Space Command'.

The intertwined magic dissipated from around their horns as the two separated.

"'U' 'N' 'S' 'C'. An acronym for United Nations Space Command." Celestia groaned, exhausted and rubbing her throbbing head. "Of course, it is."

"Tia," Luna started, "could this UNSC be the source of all the things that have happened over our land as of late?"

"Perhaps… But I have a feeling they aren't the ones responsible."

"How are you so sure?"

"I don't know." Celestia shook her head. "A feeling. And maybe it's because when those other crafts that attacked the UNSC automated craft, why did the UNSC drone come to assist me? Luna, there is something here that we do not see aside from these two forces fighting each other. And I can't shake the feeling that something drastic is going to happen. And when it does, neither of us is going to be prepared even if we try."

Luna went silent, not because she didn't have any response to that or the fact Celestia was right in that regard, but also because there was a clamour as a Night Guard suddenly burst in through the doors.

"Princess…" The earth guardspony began before noticing that Celestia was there and quickly corrected himself. "Princesses, forgive me for barging in such a manner. I bring an urgent report from Captain Greystone."

Celestia nodded to him. "Speak,"

"The Captain reports that there is a small thing roaming the sculpture garden hedge maze and that he requires your presence."

"Greystone requested that?" Celestia asked, surprised. "That's not like him at all. I'm sure there's some mistake on somepony's part with whatever he is dealing with... this small thing is."

"Princess Celestia, I- We… We've never seen or dealt with anything unlike it before. It's a grey flying machine of some sort, and it's been roaming from statue to statue. It is flat and disk-like, making a strange droning buzz sound like a bee or a wasp."

Celestia and Luna looked to each other.

Luna turned to the Night Guard and narrowed her eyes. "It wouldn't happen to have something like an eagle marking on it, would it?"

The guard looked as if he had been caught like a deer in the carriage headlights before giving an unnerved swallow and nodded in the affirmative.

Chapter 3: Squall Part I

It was all quiet in the red-lit cabin of Pelican gunship Uniform 404, otherwise known for its unflattering call sign of Ugly. Only the constant noise of the whistling air and the continuous drone of the dropships' engines was the only thing that broke the silence while he grimly stood by the open ramp door. Looking and taking in the vast valley as a grainy purple from his HUDs night vision, as it twisted and turned like a gigantic serpent far below.

Turning his attention back down, Ossis 'Relcam examined the T-55 storm rifle he had used during the fight. The barrel had a long crack running through it. The cooling shroud had deformed, warped by the extreme heat from continuous firing. By all rights, the weapon wasn't in any shape for a firefight. Or anything else for that matter.

Sounding with a barely audible hiss, 'Relcam thumbed a button on the side of the shroud, and the conical charge coil slid straight out without complication. As he secured the damaged rifle to his back mag-plate, 'Relcam felt the deck plates beneath his hooves give a faint vibration as something jumped down and sat down behind him.

'Relcam knew who, or rather what it was; it was one of the reasons why they intentionally left the ramp door open. They claimed motion sickness the moment his Allencourt put the Pelican into a slight banking right-hand turn even though they had wings and fly for a living.

The USE pilot turned his head enough to see which one of the four passengers it was. Back there with its rear left leg treated and bandaged up from a near-death experience with a needler was one of the four intelligent sentient equines, four-legged creatures that inhabited this world and called it home.

With gun grey coats, dark purple manes and tails, along with a set of bluish set of light metallic armour they wore, the equines were practically identical to one another — apparently, it had something to do with the thing imbued within their armoured chest plates.

From what they've learned from these equine's squad leader, they were that of a nocturnal subspecies — usually referred to as a 'Batpony' or 'Thestral' in their spoken tongue of Ponish.

This Ponish was, as 'Relcam and his people knew it, a rendition of basic standard English that humans typically spoke in, only mired by a few quirks he'd picked up on.

The more he observed the batpony; there were some physical features of the equine that was of some interest to him, such as the leathery wings and furry tuff-tipped ears. He further noted that the batpony and its fellow brethren overall size was if only by the slightest, just a fraction taller than the average Unggoy.

"I guess I should say thank you. For what you did," the batpony suddenly spoke up, having to raise its voice over the rumble of the dropship's engines.

'Relcam noticed the stallion didn't have the nerve to put his fear aside to look at him.

'Relcam didn't care nor blame the thing for feeling that way. It reminded him how humans who have never seen a sangheili before up close react. Or in this batpony's and its fellow squadmates case, a Covenant squad firing plasma and needle rounds at them.

He turned around to face the batpony who talked sitting with his back towards him. The pony, now mostly stripped-down of what ancient-looking and outdated silver-ish blue light purple armour leaving only the chest plate remaining.

"For saving my life, our lives. You know, after, after what Starfire did when…" the batpony nervously rubbed the back of his neck with a hoof. "Look, I'm not good at this, but it's just… uh, I don't know how things would've turned out if you didn't- we didn't..."

'Relcam turned his head down to the Storm rifle in his hands, "A mistake of both our own making. For poor judgements can heal quickly but lives take time," and inserted the conical charge.

With a low audible whine, the status lights of rifle glowed blue as the battery was accepted. 'Relcam didn't pay much attention as the batpony near his boots sharply whirled around at the sound.

"It's not over, is it?" inquired the batpony in apprehension, his gaze fixated on the storm rifle in the sangheili's hands.

'Relcam turned his attention from the rifle to the batpony and saw the equine's large eyes filled with a familiar emotion he'd seen from countless humans before. On Reach. On Xanthi. On Augusta... humans who couldn't escape the Covenant onslaught.

The thought triggered a memory of the end times when he served in the final years in the Covenant of the Human/Covenant War. 'Relcam remembered where he was when he learned the truth about the Great Journey and the lies. The blood of the countless deaths of the humans he had killed in the name for following the lies of the false prophets.

"No," 'Relcam said plainly, turning back to fiddle with the rifle. "Our struggle against the Covenant resurgence continues. There will always be another place; another world caught in this tedious conflict. What we fight for is the return of peace and order, while the Covenant seeks to destroy and burn everything we once strived for as they preach and blindly follow their false idea of what the Great Journey was always to be."

The batpony turned back and slumped. 'Relcam knew what the equine was possibly going through. Its response was just like a defeated human would do.

It was the first emotion he felt when he first learned the truth of the Covenant.

'Relcam noted both the humans he'd seen and interacted with were quite similar to how these equines expressed their emotions now that he thought about it. The equine was probably praying to whatever ancestors he had that this entire ordeal was just a terrible dream and that he'd wake up and everything would be just the way he remembered it.

Reaching over for the destroyed rifle from his back, 'Relcam switched the gun out for the new one before turning around for the cockpit, leaving the batpony to his thoughts of woe and despair as he stared somberly into the night.

On his way towards the cockpit, 'Relcam bypassed the two other batponies trying to get as comfortable as they could on the jump seats or the cold floor.

Stowing the destroyed rifle in an empty compartment above the bay's portside weapons rack, 'Relcam touched the door control to the cockpit.

"How are they doing back there? Doing well?" asked Allencourt cheerfully, glancing over her shoulder as 'Relcam stepped into the cockpit proper and the door slid behind him with a hiss.

'Relcam only grunted in response and pulled himself up and into his pilot seat.

"Okay. I'll take that as a no, then. Though it could be worse."

Tapping a few inputs on her holoscreen, Allencourt handed the Pelican's flight controls back to him.

With 'Relcam flying and having travelled further down the valley, Allencourt growled with vexation and hit the hull next to her head with a fist. "Shit…"

'Relcam's flexed his mandibles in concern, "Again?"

"Yeah. The radio…" Allencourt threw her hands up in frustration. "And there goes the radar."

The radarscope cluttered with false contacts, cleared with a proper readout before returning to a cluttered state and repeating the process.

"The radio is but a trivial matter. Once the Dark Zone goes…"

"Yeah, once. Once the DZG goes - big emphasis on ONCE, and right now, it hasn't been gone for a while now."

"Hmm,"

"Roan should've reported it in ages ago. And with the radio down, I can't contact Gallipoli's ATC ACI to tell about Phoenix protocol, and them back there…?" she slumped in her seat and slowly shook her head. "What the hell have we landed ourselves into this time, Ossis?"

"One big mess." said 'Relcam. "But perhaps this is an advantage that we can bring to our foes. Tell me. How do you think this reign, the diarchy of these two whatchamacallit hierarchs, that they spoke very proudly of, would react to threat the Covenant poses to them on their homeworld?"

Allencourt looked through the cockpit window and spotted the flying mare batpony still fully clad in the silver-ish medieval armour guiding them to this city, outside through the tinted cockpit windows.

She thought back to the altercation that became a surprise ambush by Covenant from three directions.

"Same as us. Probably take it the same way as they did back there. Dunno how they'd react when they learn that the Covies fired upon the ponies first when we fired back."

"One would think that these ponies would already know of the Covenant's existence. From what we know, it's probably been months."

"They probably never saw them. Maybe because Elites like to hide in the shadows."

"We do not hide in the shadows, human," 'Relcam growled deeply from that quip. "The Covenant have been here for a while. These... things, should have at least have known that something was amiss."

Allencourt shrugged. "Maybe they know. Maybe they don't. But whatever their reason for ignoring it, that all changed now, hasn't it?" she glanced upwards.

"Looks like this is the place. Jeez, that's some view."

And what a view it was.

Even though bathed in darkness and falling rain, through his purple-washed night-vision, 'Relcam could see that the ponies description of their fair city wasn't that far off. Perhaps a little exaggerated but he expected that.

The Keep was small yet impressive considering it was built by creatures without hands, though seemingly flawed. More attention-grabbing than the practicability of keeping out unwanted guests or if it was to sustain a long siege. However, what impressed 'Relcam the most was the way that a segment of the Keep jutted over the edge, further than physically possible. It reminded him of the impossible feats of what the Forerunners could do with their massive constructions.

He witnessed the batpony that had been guiding them flying alongside and indicate with her outstretched hoof towards one of the many docking platforms jutting far out in the open sky.

Allencourt grumbled. She wasn't that thrilled with the parking choices. The platform wasn't precisely low-key as she thought, but it had to do. There were no other places large enough for their Pelican, especially a gunship, to land and still be in military jurisdiction.

Well, aside from an area situated on a mesa far from here and a previous conversation about a short runway on the palace side. But that was out of the question. If the Covenant had any fliers in the area, and they probably did after that battle in the clearing, Allencourt wanted to be as far from any strategic structures as possible.

'Relcam eased back on the controls and flared the Pelican in for a landing.

As the dropship neared the docking arm of the cleanest white platform either pilots had laid eyes on, a slurry of blue orbs impacted the ground off their bow with splashing against the cockpit.

"Contact! Contact! Pair T-54s are coming in at a point one five! Angels twenty-nine thousand descending fast." Allencourt called, observing the radarscope fill with a swarm of red dots behind the two that were coming at them before it cut out from the flux. "They're angling right for our six at point eight five!"

Honed years of instinct and combat experience, 'Relcam reacted to the threat and slammed the throttles to null power while pulling back the stick.

Despite its cumbersome appearance, the dropship responded immediately and stalled. 'Relcam pulled the controls further back, and the dropship flipped over on its back as it fell off the edge of the landing platform. 'Relcam allowed the Pelican to drop farther than he needed before rolling right side up and putting some distance from the alien city.

The batpony that had guided them in looked up from her covering position on the ground as the pair of Banshees blasted out of the clouds after the dropship, grav-drives howling.

"They must've redlined their drives to catch up to us. I can see their anti-gravity drives showing up as white-hot on thermals."

"We cannot allow them to have control of the skies above the city," 'Relcam stated as began expertly flying backwards. "I'll hold this direction and drag them back. You get their attention."

"Gotcha,"

Even with one boot resting on the emergency thruster pedals, Allencourt still felt the heavy vibration of the nose Gatling gun spur to action. 70mm autocannon rounds rushed out to meet the two onrushing Covenant aircraft.

Despite being equipped with energy shielding, the shields of the two Banshees were no match for the Pelican's firepower.

The first one hand nowhere to turn and flew right through the literal hail of 70mm rounds. The Banshee fell apart, disintegrating as the 70mm tore into the craft before a cannon round found its drive core, blowing the Covie up in a flash of blue. The second Banshee met an identical fate. Its flaming carcass careened into the wooded valley, ending in another explosion.

'Relcam yanked the Pelican back around and punched it, burning north.

"Did that do it?"

A bolt of lightning lit up the atmosphere, and at that moment, there was a flash of something reflective caught Allencourt's attention.

"Yep, we have more contact. Multiple bogies are streaking in for our five O'clock."

In the storm, wreathed sky and seemingly appearing from all directions came alive with multiple blue lights belonging to Banshees boosting their anti-gravity drives to their limits.

"Inbound at a 600-knot closure," Allenourt guessed, glancing at her scope as it blinked briefly back to life, lighting up with multiple paired unfriendly signatures.

"Your count?"

"Looks like ten flights paired Type fifty-four on steep attack vectors. That's over 20 Banshees. RWR briefly nailed two ships of Type twenty-nines for top-cover."

"Vampires," 'Relcam grumbled. "Wonderful."

Twenty-something Banshees he could deal with, this flying rig could take the hits. But 'Relcam wasn't looking forward to confronting those things. Vampires were the bane of any aircraft pilot, regardless if it was UNSC, USE, or even Covenant that found themselves facing off against them. And there were two of them, too.

A flight of three Covenant Banshees screamed in head-on, their plasma cannons blazing. Plasma struck the underside of the Pelican as 'Relcam rolled it on its side. Allencourt jammed her finger down on the trigger as the Banshees zoomed past the canopy, a white flash marking a kill on one of them.

"Aw, shit," Allencourt cursed in panic as one of her computer screens caught her attention, "Shit, shit shit shit shit!"

"What's the matter?"

"I just remembered. We still have those other batponies in our cabin. We never told them to get out."

"Then the priority is to get them out,"

As Allencourt keyed the intercom and told their stunned passengers to leg it, a flurry of plasma zoomed by them as another flight of Covie Banshees entered effective firing range – their twin heavy plasma cannons blazing like strobe lights.

'Relcam jammed his thumb down on his trigger, hoping that the M8CG/GNC laser gun was still enslaved in its forward-firing position. With delight, he watched as the broad beam of ruby red energy perforated the canopy of the Banshee. Its shields did little to resist and flared out like a popped soap bubble. The Covie craft tumbled to the ground in many pieces.

"They're away," Allencourt announced, watching the batponies leave on the cabin camera as they eagerly spread their wings and flew off. As they did, she keyed her radio to another channel as the dogfight heated up.

"Sergeant Starfire, you still out there? This is Flight Officer Captain Elizabeth Allencourt of Pelican gunship 404, Get your wings into gear…"

…engaged by multiple Covenant craft. I've let go of your squad. We'll provide a distraction and stall the Covies so you can go and tell your people of the danger." Starfire heard the human pilot's reply ring sharply her ear, courtesy of a modified earpiece fixed on one of her tuff ears. "I've advised the rest of your charge to do the same."

Lagging behind the battle and having caught up to the rest of her squad that was sitting on a low hanging cloud catching their breaths, Starfire was thankful for what the human and her other alien compatriot had done. But at the same time, she believed she could be of assistance.

"And I thank you for your help, but I, for one, are still quite able. Equestria is my home, my world, and by all rights, it falls under my duty, not yours, to protect and those who inhabit it," Starfire stressed out into the throat microphone as she flew hard through Equestrian's skies to catch up to the fight.

When she got there, it was a furball of metal and energy. Purple-blue alien craft dived, dodged, spun, and weaved all over the place. All of them were trying to get an attack solution on the heavy yet nimble dropship that was the centre of all the attention.

"I can sympathise with what you're experiencing despite our short time together. We have experienced such bravado from others like that a bit too much lately in this war. But this, even for you, is suicide. While we admire your sheer tenacity at going at Covenant troops despite knowing nothing to zilch about them… or us for that matter, I'm still bound and obliged by UNSC First Contact law of the Phoenix Protocol to inform you that any slip up with these guys - no matter how marginal - will likely result in you ending up in a body bag. And I'm pretty sure our superiors will have both our asses once I write up a report explaining how you got yourself grilled alive. Do you understand what I'm getting at?"

The alien has a point, Starfire. You're a squishy pony with ornamental armour up against aliens that have technology far exceeding all of what ponydom had achieved put together.

She tucked her wings in, rolled over on her back and sharply dove for the deck. "As soon as I joined up, dragged my flank through basic of the E.U.P for one year and then CARG for three years and graduated top of my class, all graduates had to swear an oath. An obligation we ponies of the Royal Guard, the Night Guard, and that of the E.U.P. to some extent cannot break. To serve as the Princess's protectors, as the nation's saviours, to those under their charge, with everypony we are charged to, to upkeep peace in Equestria. Whether that be in times of a great crisis or war, we will try our best to uphold it… no matter the cost."

Starfire had no idea what prompted her to add that last bit. It was never part of the oath when she graduated from the strenuous training regime of the CARG with flying colours.

Feeling like there was something huge tailing her, Starfire looked over her shoulder and saw the purple-blue bulbous prow of a Banshee.

It's plasma cannons fired.

Starfire felt the scolding plasma near misses nip past her flanks as she zoomed off, looking for a solution and get rid of it. She didn't have to look for long.

Lit up like one of those trees on a cold Hearth's Warming Eve, the Pelican she'd guided to Canterlot airship docks, Starfire blurred past the nose, and the gunship tore apart the Covie craft. She watched as the Banshee spiralled from the sky trailing blue fire. An entire wing having been sheared off by a scything spread of 70mm Armour-Piercing rounds.

"Fine," She heard the human relent, "But if I say that this gets more hectic than it already is, you're out of here. Am I understood?"

A small smirk crept into the corner of Starfire's mouth. "Crystal."

"Good. Be warned as you climb. There is more than just us and those Banshees up here."

Starfire frowned confused. "More?"

"What?"

"Oh, you mean other alien craft?"

"Well, yeah, what else is there?" Allencourt half-heartedly joked. "Don't answer that."

'Relcam chimed in. "While Banshees are of no need for concern at the moment, mere pests. Our primary concern is that two aircraft called Vampires that are on top-cover. They are a close support fighter. Bulky in a sense and their front somewhat resembles the mouth of an Orzil. Its main offensive-"

"What's an Orzil?" Starfire interjected.

"That would be a large beetle-like creature found on his homeworld," Allencourt clarified.

"The main weapon is a heavy needler," 'Relcam continued to explain, "is positioned on its dorsal end and is a danger to anything airborne, whether that be metal or flesh. It has two plasma cannons it wields on its flanks. Mainly used for anti-personnel roles."

"Cheers for the ongoing nightmares, Ossis," Allencourt took in a deep breath. "Anyways, Starfire do you remember those small needle pink crystalline things the enemy fired at you and your kind? The pink crystal stuff that shatters into tiny-tiny fragments that I pulled as much as I can out from your buddies sides?"

Starfire refrained herself from speaking as the vivid traumatising and terrifying memory flashed before her.

The human's voice quickly brought her back to the present. "Now think of those things about the size of a truck, a trailer or whatever the hell you guys use to haul big, heavy stuff."

Starfire felt sick immediately as the sudden terrible outcome of what one would do to somepony. What six could do if- Breathe, Starfire, breathe...

"Then you have a plan?"

The human was surprisingly calm with her solution. "Of course, we have a plan. You think we don't have a contingency of dealing with this antique. Although, usually, that kind of plan kinda involves taking them out with some backup. Like Sparrowhawks or a Falcon or ground side anti-air vehicles, or a ground-unit packing some heavy ordinance…"

Starfire had a terrible feeling in her gut as what the human was going to ask of her.

"Whatever. You get up there and see if you can force… well, lure the Vampires down to us so we can take them out?"

Starfire was shocked, she should've expected it to be honest, but not in the way how the gears in her head ground to a halt, and she sprung her wings out as a result.

All forward momentum disappeared, and Starfire came to a jarring halt in mid-air before dropping straight down into a layer of storm clouds.

Another Banshee had taken a fancy to her, one of the last few remaining, overshot the batpony and banked into a hard right turn. The pilot was baffled when the equine didn't reappear on his scope as it would've fallen out from the bottom of the grey clouds.

"Bait? You're asking me to be bait?" Starfire cried in alarm.

"Pretty much," came the reply. "You did say you wanted to help in any way possible. So what's it going to be?"

Starfire clenched her teeth and blew air through her nose. "I'll do it."

As the Banshee that had its hots for Starfire came around for a second pass, the Covie pilot thought long and hard of the reports he read about which of these equine creatures could do the impossible.

The thought clicked, and he deployed the air-brakes.

"Alright. Just remember to do it quick and fast. We're damn close to your capital, and there's no telling what damage the covies would do regardless of what you've told us about your leader's abilities … I can't believe magic like this is a thing, Ossis. ONI is going to have a field day when they get their hands on-"

The Banshee came to a less graceful slewing halt in mid-air and pivoted on the spot; plasma cannons pointed directly at the cloud the batpony enter.

Starfire's emotions were spurring into turmoil alongside her stomach. She didn't want to agree with what Allencourt had said, but she was right. They were quite literally a stone's throw from Canterlot city.

"When I see them, how am I going to get them to follow me?" Starfire asked as a new electrical surge of adrenaline coursed through her body.

"Land on the canopy of one of them located just behind the two prominent "boom" like wings - looks like a concave maw, and then start making faces. I'm positive that should get their attention. It's what I'd do if I were in your ssshoo- hooves."

The Covenant pilot clenched his controls, peppering the cloud with a long stream of plasma directly into it.

Starfire poked her head out to see the Banshee down below that once was on her tail, hovering in place and pelting plasma into the wrong cloud. Seeing an opportunity too great to pass up and for a little experiment to sake her curiosity, Starfire got out and pushed part of the cloud she hid into a position right above the hovering Banshee while it continued to fire plasma into the clouds surrounding it.

When the cloud was in a position where she wanted it, she bucked both hind legs into it hard. The cloud responded, and a lightning bolt shot out, striking the Covenant craft and arced its way from nose to tail and all across the canopy.

The Covenant pilot didn't know what happened when his craft gave a sudden shuddering dying whine or why every indicator light winked out before his eyes.

"And if it doesn't?" Starfire added, watching in awe as the Banshee's anti-gravity drive leapt into gear a second too late and pancaked into the forest belly first, erupting in a satisfying explosion.

"Do something else. I'm ninety-nine per cent sure that whatever else you can come up with will piss the covies off enough to come after you. We'll be ready with a stake and a hammer when you bring em' past. The Vampires are still currently cold, but if those covies go hot before you get there, all of us are gonna be up shit creek without a boat. No pressure. Good luck, Sergeant. Allencourt, Out."

And with that as the transmission ended, leaving Starfire to look up to the solid thundercloud cover. Her expression hardened with determination as she focused on the mission.

"Fox!"

The missile blasted out of the pod on the wing of the Pelican and corkscrewed through the night. Guided by its onboard radar, the rocket curved down and rammed its high explosive warhead into the Banshee's canopy.

'Relcam pulled the gunship out from under the storm layer as the Covie exploded behind them in a blazing cloud of blue.

"I don't know if you can be so sure of yourself of this cocked up plan of yours that this will work." 'Relcam said, unconvinced.

Allencourt let loose a burst of cannon rounds as a Banshee that crossed their path. She smiled as a wing sheared off and the thing spun out of control. "She'll pull it off. I can feel it. Why? You worried?"

"I'm concerned. And it's not your style. We met these equines in the most hostile way possible, and before we could explain ourselves properly, the Covenant showed up. And, yet, you just recently piled a whole lot of whimsical faith on a mind that is still trying to comprehend–"

"Break, right!"

'Relcam flung the Pelican hard right just in time to see a flash of a Banshee's wingtips fly past the canopy and into the forest below. Its end signified by a blue fireball of death.

'Relcam's eyes went wide. The Covenant were employing a new tactic, a tactic he'd only seen employed in the last year of the First Covenant War. The Covies had begun using suicide tactics and using their aircraft as makeshift guided missiles to try and ram the gunship out of the sky.

Allencourt blasted a Banshee to kingdom come as it missed and attempted to loop around for another try. "Look, don't worry, I told you, I got a gut feeling about her. About them. I don't specifically know what that is, but I know something good will come of it in the long run."

"You better hope so," 'Relcam grumbled before he mumbled something else.

"Hey!" Allencourt shouted, "Just because you said it that way doesn't mean that I still don't understand what you just said. She'll do fine."

Piloting one of the two Covenant T-29 Vampire's, Ranger Turse 'Uerumee scanned his cluttered scope of the ensuing proverbial "knife fight in a phone booth" that raged below the infernal cloud cover.

'Uerumee was not that surprised to be called out to deal with a few of the subspecies of the technicoloured equines, mostly to deal with the ones that flew that along with its others desecrated the holy planet below with their foul footsteps. However, what else sent his blood into a rage as one of the dropships belonging to one of the most hated races infernal military aircraft popped in and out of the storm cloud layers, chasing, rolling and firing upon the Banshees he was ordered to protect.

UNSC.

Humans.

The sighting sent his blood to a raging boil as a long and distant memory he thought he had banished from his mind resurfaced.

'Uerumee remembered the time when he watched through the scope of his focus rifle as high ranking humans attending a summit held on Sanghelios with the false Arbiter along with the grand council of Kiadons made an official speech of joint unity, cooperation and lasting friendship between both sangheili and humanity to bring the galaxy into a new golden age.

Heretics! The lot of them!

Thud.

Huh?

'Uerumee snapped his head up at the sound and saw a four-legged creature he recognised as a batpony, one of the many kinds that must be wiped from existence from this world, standing on the outside of his canopy.

You little pest! Get off my ship!

'Uerumee jerked his Vampire violently from side to side to try and dislodge the stupid thing off. But the batpony remained stubbornly glued to the outside. Before he could even think of rolling his craft inverted, the batpony stomped down with its two back legs hard on the canopy.

Crrraaaack!

Right before 'Uerumee's eyes he saw the impacting stomp caused the entire canopy to turn into a billion spiderwebs that emanated from the impact site, compromising the entirety Vampire's canopy and making it nigh impossible for him to see out of the shattered cockpit.

Enraged at the gall of this batpony, 'Uerumee grabbed his inactive energy sword and positioned it under the distorted form of the pest standing on his cracked canopy.

Starfire heard the satisfying shattering of glass sound beneath her hooves as the purplish metal-like skin cracked and splintered under her stomp.

Choosing between which Vampire to pick on, Starfire carefully decided that merely making faces while standing on flying war machine's nose wasn't going to warrant much in the alien pilot's eyes other than a lacklustre nuisance to them, but perhaps breaking something would.

In all honesty, when she saw the canopy fracture beneath her rear hooves into a billion series of cracks across its entirety like a giant spider web, she didn't think that her effort would be that effective. She figured it would've at least taken five more hits to do that kind of damage.

Schwizz!

Starfire jerked her head back, recoiling instinctively as two pointed crackling cyan blades stopped inches from where her muzzle used to be.

Stepping away and onto one of the twin booms of the war aircraft from the apparent danger and gazing down, she watched as the two-pronged sword she had seen in use elsewhere retract from the now perforated canopy before it was gone altogether. Then the shattered canopy was entirely booted off by an aqua green coloured boot.

Exposed to the storm, Starfire could see the various glowing blue and pink alien interfaces inside the cockpit used to control the craft. It was also the place where the sangheili pilot was now standing up in the light, who had an ignited energy sword and lunged at her aggressively despite being a few thousand feet off the ground and little room to manoeuvre.

Starfire ducked low, the heat from the energy sword, making the back of her neck prickled as the twin blades slashed over her head.

She darted around the Elite as it swung at her again, and landed at the rear of the alien craft and instinctively reached back for the sheath that carried her weapon.

As she reached, she recalled something. A specific something that happened in the aftermath of the clearing as her hoof grasped at the empty sheath where her sword should've been.

"Shnarr jah kiree!"

Starfire spun around as the language failed to translate and almost unknowingly butted her head against the silver armoured legs of the massive alien pilot.

Attempting to back up, one of the Elite hands shot out and clenched tightly around Starfire's throat before lifting the struggling batpony to its eye level.

"You think work with nishums stop destruction?" He spat at her in broken Ponish and brought its sword up so she could see it.

Starfire spat back in the Elite's face.

Wiping away the saliva that coated its faceplate with the back of his sword hand, the Elite tightened his grip around Starfire's throat.

"Disgusting filth! I'll see to it that your death will be painful!"

By now, beads of sweat poured down from under Starfire's helmet and rolled down her face as the intense heat from the energy sword caused her to swelter from it as it drew within inches of her nose.

"My face the last thing your pathetic eyes will see."

He brought the sword back in preparation to strike just as a blurred grey-purple thing slammed into the backside of the alien pilot. The Elite stumbled forwards, its shields flaring as the thing on its back, holding on for dear life.

Starfire was released from the Elite's grasp as it roared in angered frustration as he groped behind himself.

As the Elite swung around, his back now to her, Starfire could now see what the grey-purple thing was that attacked it.

A batpony had collided and plunged his service issued sword deep into the Elite's unarmoured part of the neck. Starfire watched, stunned as the batpony busily worked his blade back and forth, the dark purple blood of the Elite pilot flowing from the wound.

The batpony gave a quick twist of his blade, and the Elite bolted upright, its thrashing and vain attempts to rip the batpony off its back coming to a sudden halt. The energy sword dropped from the alien's hand and blinked off.

Starfire watched on as the Elite fell to its knees. Eyes wide in utter shock of disbelief and unceremoniously slid off the Vampire. Tumbling off the aircraft and vanished into the storm.

Starfire looked over to the panting hard batpony who had brazenly assaulted the Elite from behind as he sheathed his sword.

"Nightbreak?" Starfire turned to the batpony in astonishment. "What by Luna's ire are you doing up here?! I specifically told - No! I ordered you to stay with the others and report back. No matter what happens to me."

"Nopony goes at it alone. You know that. We all took the oath." Nightbreak declared firmly. "It's the first thing the instructors drilled into us back in training. And I couldn't just sit by thinking as we twiddled our hooves waiting to hear from somepony in the morning that you got yourself killed, or worse."

"This," he gestured to the hovering alien craft under their hooves, "is something we should be doing together as a team, as soldiers... as friends, to protect those of Equestria and the other races we have welcomed to our land."

He was right. But what he did was still reckless, the alien could've killed him even if Nightbreak attacked from behind. If this was revenge because of what one did to his right hind leg in the attack in the clearing and their first encounter with the Covenant, it was uncalled for.

Nightbreak looked about himself and the alien craft they stood on. "So? Got any bright ideas on how we are going to take out this thing and the other one, together?"

Starfire's mind raced as she looked down at the sturdy and robust purple-blue airframe under her hooves. Then, off to the side, her eyes fixated on something teetering precariously near one of the boom wings.

"I've got an idea," smirked Starfire, looking over at the inactive energy sword.

"Well, you don't see that every day," Allencourt remarked, genuinely surprised as she saw Starfire blur past at speed outside the cockpit window and into the lowest grey layer of the storm.

But the batpony officer was not alone as a pilotless Vampire spiralling down out of an anvil cloud in a flat spin. The brief glimpse of an energy sword plunged into the engine.

"Second Vampire. twelve thousand descending in a hard left turn for our friends." 'Relcam called out as he put the dropship on a vector that'll intercept it.

"ASGM still acquiring lock… going guns."

The Pelican shuddered as the stream of yellow autocannon fire reached out and strafed the Vampire's side.

Chunks of Covenant airframe shredded off as the explosive rounds punched through.

The heavy needle cannon weapon on the Vampire's dorsal surface rotated and now pointed in their direction. The rounds of Blamite glinted with a sinister neon pink glow as lightning struck around both aircraft.

"Come on you covie bastard, put it off for-" A shrill growling tone sounded in Allencourt's helmet. "Good tone! Fox, fox!"

The Vampire, also having acquired lock on that same time, fired its payload a scant moment later.

Four ASGM-10 missiles and their high explosive tipped warheads shot out of their pods, their rocket motors kicking in seconds later, and homed in towards target.

At the same time every single one of the six four foot long crystalline rounds of blamite sliced through the air towards their target. The unnatural tracking abilities of the pink crystal homed in towards the dropship in earnest like a pack of ravenous bloodhounds.

'Relcam stomped on the thruster pedals and angled the dropship to present a smaller profile, while at the same time dispensing chaff of a particular kind designed by the R&D people in the Office of Naval Intelligence that was intended to confuse any tracking munition. Covenant or otherwise.

The Covenant pilot did the same when he saw the missile's track towards him with deadly intent, deploying a bright bluish orb countermeasure of some type that didn't fall behind it, but instead shot out ahead.

The orb fooled two missiles.

The Vampire blew apart. Exploding in a massive ball of white light as it took the two remaining ASGMs directly to its cockpit. One came in from above while the other looped around underneath and then up and collided with the underside.

There wasn't time to breathe a sigh of victory as the crystalline pink blamite continued to track towards them — each round holding the genuine prospect of a gory death.

"They're coming up on your right!"

"Breaking left!" cried 'Relcam, still dumping chaff and flares.

The flares fooled three.

The deceptive move avoided one.

The starboard side wing and engine copped the rest.

The three four-foot-long blamite rounds punched deep into the wing and detonated with a tremendous BANG. The blamite perforated the area of impact and turned that side of the Pelican into a flying sieve.

From where she had initially directed the UNSC Pelican to land, Starfire and her squad could only watch on in horror. Their cheers whenever they saw the big green craft appear from the stormcloud banks turned to horror as it reappeared, spinning wildly out of control from the sky. Fire engulfed its starboard side.

Over her earpiece, Starfire heard the desperate call for help.

"Mayday, mayday, mayday! Pilot 7-8-dash-9 C-W-3 Allencourt of dropship Uniform 4-0-4 to all UNSC and USE monitoring this frequency. We're hit and going down. I say again; we're hit and going down. Be advised: Protocol Phoenix in effect. I say again: Protocol Phoenix is in effect. Encountered four Echo Tangos that are part of an intelligent civilisation of equines. Activating our beacon. Ossis! Hold on- I-"

Starfire never heard the rest of the transmission as, with screeching straining engines, the Pelican disappeared from view as it plunged into the dark green floor of forest far below.

A moment later there was a reverberating boom and panicked squawking cries of birds as they fled their trees and spooked animals howling and barking from having being awoken from their slumber by the explosive crash.

Then it all went quiet.

They could only stare. Starfire felt a deep emptiness form in her heart as she stared at the smoke that started to slowly rise a little aways from where the dropship had plunged into the forest.

An hour earlier. The Main Hall of Canterlot Academy of the Royal Guard armoury...

"Tia?" asked Princess Luna, concerned. Turning her armoured helmeted head as they walked down the length of the great hall.

"What is it, dear sister?" Celestia turned to face Luna walking alongside also clad in similar combat armour.

Celestia's armour, burnished gold, on the other hoof only covered her head, legs and chest. The rest was exposed. But there was a more substantial reason for that other than having a better range of movement. And it was a secret only known to her and the gruff old stallion that forged it. Her mane was also kept in check with rings to keep it from being a nuisance if the battle did occur.

Luna's armour, which was silver and gleamed like polished annealed steel, covered the majority of her body. Head, chest, flank, legs; even individual plates of it included her cutie mark. Her mane and tail were free of such restrictions and flowed freely.

While there were things that set apart the two princesses armour from each other, there were, however, three things in common.

Both had a prominent curved spike that stuck out from their helmets that followed beneath their horns. The second was that both sets of armour reflected each sister's profession.

And lastly, both of their armours were imbued with personal magical runes and enchantments. Even to this day, nopony in the CARG or E.U.P knew the full effects and capabilities of the runes inscribed.

Out ahead and behind the two princesses as they transversed the palace's halls was a small contingent of Night Guard of batponies and night orientated Royal Guards.

Leading was Greystone, a batpony with a dark olive green coat and grey mane; he was the Captain of the Night Guard and overall commander of the garrison of the guard here in Canterlot.

"I still see that this decision to armour up still weighs heavily on your mind. And it troubles you. Is there something that you need to tell me?"

Celestia shifted her head over at her little sister, the silver armour she wore glinting majestically in the flickering torchlight like the brightest stars in the night sky. Luna could always tell when she was worried, whether she wanted it showed or not.

"It's nothing," said Celestia.

A lie and Luna knew it. The body posture, the brief eye contact showed as passed through a set of open double doors.

Celestia let out a stressed sigh, "If this disc described is indeed from the same things as this other craft from earlier tonight. What would it stop it from comprehending our attire? A peaceful intent that we represent and not going against those set from its masters?"

They passed through another set of double doors and to the outside into the cold and damp night air.

The late-night stars high above twinkled brightly without a care in the world of what turmoil was occurring below, and the moon slowly drifted for the horizon. Eventually, it would reach it and be time for Celestia to commence the day with the rising of the sun.

Luna bit her lower lip. "You and I both saw the large grey autonomous machines did not try to bring harm to us. Surely you don't mean it like that, Tia?."

Celestia came to a halt mid-stride. "I'm not one to make such a decision like this lightly, Luna. Had it been-" she was interrupted when all of a sudden, a shrill buzzing sound and the thundering of hooves pounding the cobbled street.

Zig-zagging its way around a grove of small trees in a flash of grey, a disc-like object, about a meter in width all around and flat, came zipping towards the princesses and gathering of pony guards.

The little thing was perfectly circular like the Night Guard had described. Apart from a few stubby antennas as well as a few dozen small holes that appeared to have been stopped up with a reflective surface dotting around its circumference, the little machine's core was hollow and contained rapidly spinning fan blades.

Both princesses got a unique chance to see these fan blades in the centre gullet of the machine as it reared up to stop itself from colliding into Celestia.

"Apologies, Your Highnesses," a unicorn from the Royal Guard came up. One who had been chasing it and began profusely apologising about his squad's failure to contain it.

The unicorn was almost out of breath, panting hard from galloping down the path that led from the sculpture gardens, bowing apologetically while the disc sharply rotated to zip off in a new direction only to come face to face with another Royal Guard.

"Once we received word that you were coming to deal with it, we sought to contain it, for a time. It slipped through and," the Royal Guard fumbled in his words and indicated at the grey machine with an upward nod as the thing faced down three in-rushing pegasi guards flying low from opposite directions. "We've been trying to reestablish a perimeter since."

The three Royal Guards came together in a crunch of silver armoured limbs as the disc zipped temporary skywards and out of harm's way.

Luna winced. "Yes. 'Trying' is putting it lightly..."

As if to add insult to injury, the machine did a series of backflips despite its otherwise unwieldy aerodynamic dimensions.

The three guards groaned in pain, emitting muffled curses as they readily set about trying to untangle themselves.

"Just may I inquire as to how it managed to get past you and your charge in the first place?" asked Luna as the disc stopped its flips and lazily buzzed back towards Celestia.

The small flying machine bypassed Celestia and stopped, hovering so close to the tip of Luna's armoured muzzle that, if she had ever wanted to, headbutt it.

When the unicorn guard didn't respond immediately, Luna's eyes hardened, her lips taught in a thin line and an ear flicked in irritation.

The guard stiffened to attention, not knowing that the princess had reacted not at him, but rather at the machine because of the annoying droning buzzing sound it consistently produced to keep itself aloft.

"We cornered it, but we... we didn't account that it'll fly over the wall," the Royal Guard responded in embarrassment.

Behind them, there was a series of groans accompanied by the sound of armour shifting and metal striking metal. Evident sounds of a few guards face-hoofing by the cringe-worthy choice of words.

Celestia mentally rolled her eyes while still keeping a straight face and her trademark placid nature. Leave it to Lulu to trip up a guard in full view of his peers and his commanding officer.

"Well, at least it is here, and there is no need for another game of hide-n-seek when it decided to go into the hedge maze," one guard openly voiced, which was met with many agreeing murmurs of others before a commanding grunting noise silenced them.

Yes, indeed. But the question on Celestia's mind now was: 'Now that it was here and now not playing hide and seek. What to do with it?'

It didn't look like it could do any harm. But as evidenced by many years of personal experience and what she and her sister had discovered in the Equestrian night, looks could be deceiving.

Celestia watched with a stern expression; although secretly in fascination as the grey disc spiralled slowly around her little sister. 'It' starting up from the hooves first before working its way up to her head.

Luna also well kept a wary eye on it as well. More out of concern for her safety for every second of the way as it made its way almost behind her for the third time.

The disc came to a stop just before it could round Luna's backside a fourth time.

Celestia continued to be intrigued with the little thing as it inched closer to Luna's flank.

A sudden flash of white light came from the 'front' of the disc, startling everypony and temporary blinding those who had their complete attention focused on it from the same angle as the flash.

As the multitude of sunspots from the flash cleared, Celestia released just as to what had occurred when Luna gasped in shock.

It just took a picture of Luna's cutie mark at an angle that could be considered the lewdest thing somepony could do.

Sharply turning to look at her sister's face, she saw Luna had flushed a deep rosy red before she spun about to confront and stare at the machine with fury.

Celestia understood very well what was going through her sister's mind. But due to the circumstances of how it all happened right there and so quickly, she couldn't help it and tried to suppress a laugh. It didn't work as well as she thought it did.

"Really!? You think that's funny?" Luna scowled back at Celestia who made the noise of an escaping laugh mixed with a snort.

"Oh, Luna. I'm sure it's just as curious as we are," Celestia let out one last giggle with a cough as she composed herself and gestured calmly at it with a hoof. "Who or whatever this UNSC is, they are quite curious towards us. It means us no harm, that can be as seen so far with this."

"Riiight. But what of my public image, Tia," Luna shot her eyebrows up and pointed an accusing hoof at the little flying disc machine. "That thing just took a picture of my butt without my consent!"

"Your image is fine… sort of, judging just by the angle it was taken. But what do you want me to do about it? Give it a hard slap and say: 'Naughty little thing' or thereof? Perhaps give it a good whack with my sword. Inevitably that will paint a fantastic impression with those observing, or going to watch if and when it returns."

Luna groaned in vexation, glaring daggers at her sister. "Wish it does yours next."

"And if it doesn't?" Celestia responded with a sly smile. The machine moved away from Luna and came to hover in front of her.

"I'll do it myself… When you're in the bath!" Luna chided, a little evil smirk forming in the corner of her mouth.

Celestia softly smiled as she rolled her eyes at her sister and watched the machine's moment as revolved around her head and eventually down her side as it had before.

"Looks like you may get your wish, sister."

The little machine was fascinating to observe. Almost mesmerising in a way as it glided around her length. It was almost like watching a leaf dance as it took to the air by the slightest gust of wind.

But then something odd happened as it arrived midway down her body. It suddenly jerked away as if it had been startled by something. Spun, tilted up, and-

CRACK!

Everypony flinched as a thin dazzling beam of purple energy shot out of nowhere and struck the dead centre of the machine, blowing it apart.

"What the-?" some guards started to exclaim only to be cut off by a loud firework-like explosion going off at ground-zero.

The disc drone exploded violently. Blasting chunks of itself and shrapnel over a wide area before whatever remained dropped to the ground in heavy metal crunching whump.

Everypony spun on the spot, some facing in different directions trying to locate the source of origin of the beam while others formed a protective ring around the princesses, their training and duty kicking into overdrive.

Another dazzling beam of energy zapped out of the dark, missing the remains of the drone entirely and struck a batpony in his flank.

The Night Guard didn't have time to scream, let alone express any emotion other than his eyes boggling in shock as the beam went right on through his armour-like it was tissue paper.

In the fraction of a second it took the Night Guard to register he'd been hit, the shot punched out his back in a shower of red blood and gore.

The beam continued, ricocheting off a flagstone, tore through the chest armour of another, killing the batpony instantly, before exiting in the same manner and dissipated its murder spree against a stone statue holding the flag of Canterlot.

ZANG!

Luna threw up a hoof to shield her eyes from the dazzling bright flare that emanated from her sister's armour.

The protective enchantments imbued in it successfully and harmlessly dispersing the beam that had struck Celestia somewhere between where her left-wing joint was. The shot was even strong enough to topple her onto her side.

Disarray and confusion spread quickly through the ranks of the guards. Many could only stare at the traumatising horror before them as their fellow compatriots lay dying or dead before them in pools of their blood and guts.

It was then a chilling call rang out from somewhere out among the towers where the most prestigious and influential of the pony citizens of Canterlot resided. The cry cut through the night air, like somepony, was strangling a rooster.

Still squinting from being blinded, Luna spun in the direction of where she heard the off-key grating crowing call.

Royal and Night Guards finally came to their senses over the shock; they began to do everything in their power to save their struck brethren.

After a couple more rapid clearing blinks, Luna saw a dazzling sky blue light appear off in the dark then a flash of purple. Her adrenaline surged.

Luna cast a blue opaque magical barrier in front of herself as well as for everypony in time just as another thin purple beam flew out of the dark at them.

ZAMPH!

Luna was shocked.

Not because the beam had been glaringly bright when it struck but because whoever had fired it, the blast was aimed right between her eyes.

Luna watched, mesmerised, as the impact rippled out like a stone thrown into a pond as her protective barrier safely disbursed the energy.

Looking through her magic shield and coming into sharp focus, Luna pinpointed precisely where the beam had originated.

While her night vision was superb - a trait that all Alicorns shared with pegasi and subspecies of batponies, many of whom still proudly serving the Night Guard - Luna could only make out a series of small glowing vivid blue lights among the balconies of noble towers.

The light was a dead giveaway as it was very out of place compared to the only other light source in the of the dull, faint yellow glow of the electric-lit street lamps below.

There was never any doubt in hers or any pony's mind, or Celestia's if she asked that this light belonged to the thing that was attacking them from afar.

Luna took off with a great beat of her wings, dropping the magic barrier as she sped in the direction of the blue glow of light.

The bright blue light shifted position and disappeared, winking out of existence.

No!

Luna mentally kicked herself as she landed on the balcony where she had spotted the unearthly light.

She had been so naive to rush for the attacker by 'flying' there she forgot that whoever it was could see her leave from such a distance under cover of night and in this type of lighting conditions.

Luna stamped the ground hard in frustration. She should've teleported.

She looked to her left to where she had seen the light before it had disappeared and saw leaning up against the railing a long and sharp angular object.

An object that immediately made her feel sick as it shone in the light of her horn with a smooth and disconcerting purple colour sheen. Luna swallowed her sickness and steeled herself as she enveloped the exotic weapon in her telekinesis magic to examine it closer.

The weapon in question was unmistakably alien in origin and design. A fat wedged-shaped barrel that tapered to a sharp, menacing point at one end while at the other it ended with a large chevron. A small channel glowed a brilliant magenta pink ran from the centre of sharp end to a circular mechanism with a circular hollow centre and five shimmering, glowing pink circles.

It didn't take a genius to figure out that no pony could use such a thing. A hand-held weapon obviously because it wasn't designed to be used by somepony.

Luna had no idea how much time had elapsed as she was too absorbed in studying the weapon when the beating of multiple wings and the unmistakable rattle of shifting armour she was acutely accustomed to sounded behind her.

"Princess Luna? Is that it? Is that the weapon that killed my men?" demanded Captain Greystone, announcing his attendance.

Without uttering a word, Luna levitated the weapon over and gave it to him. Turning around and with a flick of magic, she opened the balcony doors a crack.

Luna jerked her head back, recoiling almost immediately as the overpowering smell assaulted her senses. Her nostrils greeted by the foul stench of something dead and decaying, and most of all, the unhealthy overabundance of fear she could taste at the back of her throat that almost made her throw up on the spot.

Luna pulled her head away and shot Greystone a sentencing glare. "I want patrols through the city streets until I say so otherwise and triple the guard on every entrance, and personally see to it that you and a portion of your men will guard the main entrance to this tower. Seal it off. I don't want this thing to escape. It has a trial I wish it not to miss."

"But if you find whoever this is proving to be too difficult to handle," a displeased Celestia added as she approached. "You must do what is right."

Greystone turned his attention from the alien weapon and towards the princess. No doubt, silently asking if she was sincere in the order. He shouldn't have bothered as a flash of emotion in the princess's eyes told him he was skating on thin ice right now.

Greystone nodded, "Of course, Princess," and left. Only the other Night Guard remained as did the alien rifle leaning up against the railing.

Celestia opened the doors wide, avoiding gagging from the smell like her sister had done earlier.

Luna addressed the batpony as her sister entered the building through the glass balcony doors, "Nightshade. Remain here. If anything that doesn't look like a pony or without our say-so tries to flee through these doors, do not hesitate to use extreme prejudice."

Nightshade nodded sharply, "As you say, Princess." and promptly placed a forehoof ready upon his short-sword hilt.

Luna took the exotic weapon in her magic and brought it inside.

"I heard from Greystone they're dead but not the how?" Luna asked as she propped the weapon against the wall, shut the glass-windowed balcony doors and drew the curtains closed.

"The second Night Guard was shot through the heart. The first died of his injury on his way to the Academy infirmary." Celestia lowered her head in sorrow, "Before he was covered and taken away, I saw that he had received second to third-degree burns to his skin from where the beam had struck and heated his armour to a rainbow shine… I assume that is the weapon?"

With a quick flick of magic from her horn, Luna levitated the alien rifle over to her sister.

Celestia felt a wave of anger pass through her as she scrutinised the weapon. Even in her hold, her pleasant soft golden aura didn't help ease the ire of what she witnessed unfold.

Such a horrible way to die. Why would anything design such a thing? Celestia thought to herself. Of course, she already knew why. A war of sorts had arrived in on their world and was using Equestria as their battlefield. A war fought between something called the UNSC and perhaps two other parties.

She put the rifle down and toggled the light switch for the room.

Revealed immediately in front of the two sisters was a shocking sight. Ravaged by something fierce, the room, its walls and ceiling were scorched from either missed blasts of magic or whatever their attacker had been using.

Wooden tables had overturned. Bookshelves toppled. Most of the grand dining table in the centre burned near to cinders. Broken glass lay smashed and littered on the floor like some miscreant young pony had gone and dumped a load of glitter.

As she searched, going from room to room, seeing the resulting destruction, the violence, it shocked Celestia as to how of a domestic noise had been made to have gone unnoticed and unreported.

Celestia turned from the hall, around the corner into another room and stopped in her tracks.

All the air sucked from her lungs as Celestia forget all of the destruction and chaos, the anger and despair vanishing as her searching gaze fell upon what lay in the middle of what remained of a broken and smashed timber glass coffee table.

Contorted in unnatural positions on the carpeted study, having been ruthlessly bloodied and broken were two ponies. Each a mare. One a cerise unicorn, and the other a light green Earth pony.

Celestia came over and carefully knelt next to the unicorn and carefully parted the mare's mane from her face.

She closed her eyes and a tear formed as she mourned for the two.

Celestia knew them both. Not from important meetings. Not from celebratory events.

Not that.

The circumstances of how she knew were more on a personal level.

The two ponies were Sapphire Dream and her girlfriend Riverbed. Both were the proud owners and operators that ran the 'Elite Equine Spa'. A place that Celestia went to relax, to unwind, to alleviate the burdens on her mind and body from dealing with the stresses and the hardships faced when dealing with many problems and challenges presented in the Court.

The tear that rolled down Celestia's cheek evaporated when she saw something that made blood came to a boil.

Where Riverbed's cutie mark should have been, there had been attempts to remove it physically with something red-hot. Deep cauterised wounds crisscrossed, some deeply bordered around the cutie mark. She looked over to Sapphire Dream and saw the same thing, only this time she couldn't make out the mark at all on the mare.

"When we catch that responsible creature, they will rue the day they had ever set foot in Equestria," Celestia snarled horn aglow and looking back to the open door.

Luna was paused in the doorway and quickly figured out Tia wasn't speaking to her precisely but rather about something else, back the way they came.

She cast a cautious glance back over her shoulder, and she felt it.

A cold shiver ran down Luna's spine. "I sense it too."

Returning to the room, they had first set foot in; it didn't take Celestia long to find the disturbance. There was a shifting movement from behind the ferns of a potted plant. The doors and windows were still closed, so there wasn't a draft to be had.

Then she saw it. She steeled herself for what she prepared to do, channelling magic into her horn.

"Do you think it was so easy?" spoke Celestia lowly without emotion, facing the warped section of disturbed air sitting beside a wilted potted fern. "To try hide for what barbarity you have committed?!" and let loose an electrified blast at the distorted shape.

Luna watched impassively as the sparkling magic struck centre mass of the warped haze.

The cloaking field that concealed the figure failed immediately, revealing a hunched over and sinister-looking biped avian, as large as the tallest stallion, nearly clad from head to toe in sleek and completely alien black armour, and screaming incoherently and writhing in agony as electricity coursed across its body.

Even as it dropped on its knees, the bird creature was as tall as an average pony but far from tall as either alicorn princess.

Everything about its physical appearance told both sisters it was agile. Fast. Its legs were reverse jointed much like a bird but stockier. Its head, was covered by an armoured plated neck, had a sharp beak with bony facial features, two amber eyes with one covered by a semi-transparent mechanical eyepiece that glowed a calm crystal blue. Extending from under the creature's helmet was a plumage of long dark black feathers, many of the tips dyed a blood red.

Celestia restrained herself from using another blast as the alien fell to the floor accompanied by a glowing red blade of sorts that fell out of its right feathered arm's three-fingered grip.

The glowing red blade shattered as it impacted the floor.

Celestia walked up and stood over the alien as errant electrical current from the magic continued to make its presence as it coursed across the creature's blackened armour plates.

The strength of magic she had channelled into the spell was enough to knock out an adolescent dragon out cold. So, it was quite a surprise to Celestia when she went to move it to see that the avian creature was still conscious.

"You both will pay dearly for that," the alien growled in heavily accented Ponish. "Not that mine has come to be already,"

It propped itself up in a kneeling stance from the floor with one arm while the other clutched at a part of its heaving chest, a sliver of reddish blood oozing from under its claws.

Luna halted the alien's motions as she encased its body in a deep blue glow of her magic. With great force and a magical aura more heavily deeper in colour around its red-throated neck, she hurled the creature up against the wall with a loud thud.

There were a series of snapping sounds that came from within the alien, followed by the screeching of agony from its beak.

"Who sent you? Why did you kill them? Why did you try to kill us!" Luna demanded, her voice long teetering on the brink of using the Royal Canterlot Voice.

Instead of answering, the alien had other ideas.

With a hacking cough, the alien creature spat a glob of thick bright purple liquid at one of the princesses.

Luna turned her head, and the glob of the alien's blood splattered across the side of her helmet.

"No matter how you go about this, Woona," the alien chuckled in a menacing tone, blood dripping from its beak as Luna became even more livid. "Your pathetic little rule of yours will not last."

"H-how did you k-know of that name?" Luna stammered, willing every part of her body not to tear the creature apart right then and now.

The alien smiled back at her unperturbed through a bloody row of needle-like teeth and bony facial covering.

The action ticked Luna off even more. It yawned, pointed one of its sharp talons indiscriminately at Celestia. "Did you honestly think that you were alone in your room every night?"

Celestia's subtle surprise twitch disappeared as soon as the emotion tried to show and locked eyes with the alien. It laughed back.

"I know everything about you and your kind, and this one…" the alien snorted. "Well, let's just say it's a desire to keep tabs on you until the time came."

The alien suddenly flinched as if he was startled by something before reaching down and pulled something large, circular and most of all, golden from a pouch strapped to his leg.

"I'm fairly sure you'll recognise this." The alien tossed Celestia's neck regalia piece at her hooves and flinched again. "It was considered by you, your 'good luck charm' after all."

Celestia remained quiet but her right eye twinged as the neckpiece clanked to the floor before her hooves.

Celestia knew something was amiss when she didn't find her necklace where she thought she had left it five nights ago. Back then she thought it was a result of one of Luna's pranks and mentally made a note to give her a week to return it before confronting her about the matter. Ironically tonight was the night she was supposed to have confronted her about it.

"Enough of this! Who are you? What's your name?" Luna barked.

"Tor-Yen," the alien announced, utterly unfazed by the furious princess before it. "Best overall Kig-Yar and T'vaoan alike. Clan Meh'k. Band came seeking profit. We rightly got the score and… slaked our lust for blood." Nodding towards the two dead mares on the floor.

"Why?"

The alien twitched as it continued to laugh. "With these here, one could say I was curious."

Right at the words 'I was curious', the alien's voice suddenly dipped the octaves lower than it had before. Its voice was gravelly, downright devoid of all emotion and dripping with sheer malice. It was as if Celestia was suddenly talking to somepony else.

At this point, Luna was grinding her teeth in anger by just the alien's carefree manner while Celestia was holding back her vexation. Just.

"And my ponies? The guards?" Celestia asked.

The alien flinched as its shoulders raised and fell. A shrug. "More fun probably for him. Perhaps deen I more time to practice this ciahcra speech speak."

The twitches and muscle spasms were more prominent than ever before like it was struggling to maintain control of something.

All of a sudden, the alien screamed at them.

"Can't you hear it? It chants to them for your slaughter, and I am his puppet!" it said in hysterics, alternating between fear and anger. "Three Geks for every equine limb lost! Ten if it results in a headshot! Fifteen is scratch off!"

Not only had it up and confessed that it was a cold-blooded killer and murderer; the alien was batshit insane.

The alien's mocking laughter that followed snapped Celestia's patience, and her horn glowed to an intense glare and shocked the creature again, and purple blood trickled from one of its nostrils before Luna upped the pressure to its throat.

The alien craned its head back up at them and spat out a globule of more purple blood as it spoke.

"Hehe, is that the best you got… Woona?" it said, giving Luna a menacing, sinister smile through sharp bloodied teeth despite missing a few and a shattered jaw.

Luna's irises shrank to pinpricks as she delivered a mighty blow straight to its chest. The alien tried to double over but couldn't because of the princesses magical containment field.

"As I drown in realities looking for the light of redemption as it drags you out from safety. How does torturing this reyarteb and shattering his every frail bone in his body is going to help your small pathetic desufnoc minds find the answer?"

Celestia re-focused back on the alien's eyes and noticed something alarming. The irises had changed. Gone was colour of sap amber, replaced with a deep hollow haunting red. The room seemed to take a dip in temperature as well with this change, and she felt a freezing chill flow through her and her heart the longer she focused on them.

"What do you mean?" Luna angrily pressed.

The alien's irises turned pitch black like looking into an infinite deep void and began glowing with a red aura around its edges. Its broken jaw reset with a foul crack before it answered in a rasping manner, but now more in a dark and depraved demonic twist.

A shock wave of red and black mixed magic blasted out from the body of the alien and slammed into the princesses, levitating them off the ground for a brief moment before flinging them across the room.

"Of the eons, you have hidden the artifacts, believed that our God remained out of reach. You have failed!"

Luna smacked headfirst into the overturned couch, knocking her senseless. For her part and thrown clear into the opposite wall, Celestia rebounded off it and landed face-first in the blood-soaked carpet.

"This glorious Covenant will reclaim that of what we seek from your hoarding clutches and bring the end of this world and those beyond! The extinction of your pathetic little race, the eradication of your taint from this world's surface by our cleansing might is a blessing bestowed by the Gods! And we, WE. ARE. THEIR. INSTRUMENTS!"

The alien's claws surged with haunting deep red magic. The same sinister red aura filled its soulless eyes and reached out towards a dark blue semi-circular weapon with a glowing green tip lying on the floor. The gun rocketed across the room and into its awaiting hand.

The next thing Celestia knew, she felt the alien grab and turn her head sharply, and she was staring down the weapon's charging coil pointed between her eyes.

Celestia tried with all her might to get up, but the dark magic possessed alien possessed more strength than it had and pressed its taloned foot down even harder on her body, right against the small of her wing, preventing her from using them to bat the creature off of her.

Across the room, coughing in horse retching and shaking her head as she struggled to breathe and clear her vision of the dizzy haze, Luna shakily got back onto her hooves and looked to where she had last seen her sister. As she did, her heart leapt from her chest and into her throat.

The alien was standing with a taloned foot pressing down hard upon her sister, pinning her to the floor. The long sleek purple weapon it had used to kill two Night Guards levitated and slowly travelled across the room and affixed itself to its armoured back. The other half-circular gun it held in its claws buzzed loudly as green energy collected at its tip as a bright ball of light.

The alien leaned in closer, seizing hold of Celestia's throat with a weapon free hand and yanking her head closer.

At that moment, something in Luna's eyes ignited. It was a look that hadn't shown itself for a thousand years.

"Sing your final song, Celestia. Bringer up the sun; daughtered by the remaining bane towards my tnemnosirpmi." the alien spat out and sneered. "For this shall be the way—"

"THALL SHALT HARM NO PONY NO MORE NOR MY SISTER!"

The alien snapped its head up to see Luna, her hooves shrouded by a ring of blue fire that whipped like a whirlwind around the base. Her horn surged with magical power, and her eyes turned completely white from the result.

The alien whipped the pistol around to fire at Luna instead.

A surge of blue magic slammed full-on into the buzzard's chest, cannoning it backwards. The stored energy gathering at the tip of the pistol discharged harmlessly into the ceiling.

For its part, the alien was thrown clear across the room, smashing straight through the doors in a hail of glass, before slamming and bursting through the metal railing of the balcony and plummeting down out of sight with a furious screeching scream.

Standing her ground for a few more, Luna blinked out of her emotional magic, fuelled rage and quickly rushed over to her sister's side, looking her over for any sign that her sister was hurt.

"Sister? Sister, are you okay? Come on, Tia. Speak to me. Say something!"

Celestia groaned. "I'm a little shaken, but I'm okay." she coughed hoarsely, reassuring Luna with a sincere smile. she rose gingerly to her feet. "Thank you, sister."

Luna let out a sigh of thankful relief. "I thought it was going to..."

Celestia shook her head. "I wouldn't… never leave you behind. Not like that. And surely not by one controlled by that kind of dark malefic magic." she gazed towards the shattered remains of the glass doors.

"Good aim by the way. It outwardly shows your skills are showing through ever since you began teaching once again at the Royal Guard Academy."

"It's been… enlightening. Although not as much has changed since the last time. A further revision in tactics with dealing with such a powerful force such as the one we encountered may be a prudent course of action."

"Princesses..." a worried voice began to say.

Both Celestia and Luna turned from each other to the noise to behold a barely composed Nightshade. He was shocked for having witnessed the alien rocket through the doors in an explosion of glass and hurtle past him, smash through the cast iron railing and over the edge, screeching all the way.

Celestia noticed he was standing right at the opening where Luna had blasted the alien out through.

"Are you… Are you alright, princesses?" He began as both princesses came towards him.

"We're fine," assured Celestia. "And you, sister?"

Luna turned her head away in what appeared to be discomfort before she coughed loudly and began to rub the back of her sore neck uneasily.

Nightshade breathed out a sigh of relief and nodded in understanding.

Back outside, Celestia turned her attention to the smashed balcony railing and cautiously peered over the side.

Far below, surrounded by a cautious closing ring of no more than fifteen Night Guards and those of the Royal Guard that also included Captain Greystone, lay the broken body of the alien.

Even from way up here and despite the dim lighting of the streetlights and the returning storm as lightning flashed somewhere overhead, Celestia could see the outline of a starburst of bright purple of the creature's blood on the sidewalk far below.

"A good thing we didn't go through with the usual strategy, sister," Luna remarked, joining her.

Celestia cocked an eyebrow and quickly glanced over.

"Oh? And what might that have been?"

"Delve into its mind after knocking it out and – through me and to some degree of you – convince it to reveal its reasons for being here. That would've backfired horribly because of that dark magic."

Ah, yes. That option. "You're right. It wouldn't have worked."

Celestia teleported with Luna doing the same and both princesses re-appeared not a few steps away from the crowd of night and royal guard surrounding the motionless body of the alien but keeping a wary eye on it.

Celestia moved over, and the crowd of guards parted, allowing her access to the creature.

As she came close, the alien's eyes snapped open and looked at her. A deep gurgling of Ponish emanated from the creature's throat.

"You … you delayed no-thing…"

Even after crashing through a pane of glass, a metal railing, and plunging at least five stories that were surely enough to kill anypony regardless, the alien had somehow beaten the odds and survived.

Almost.

Its bright purple-red blood was slowly draining into the gutter as it clutched to the last thread of its life it had left. The alien gurgled out another string of words.

"I-It seeks you … whispers from encaged … deranged …"

Celestia could see that the alien wasn't affected by the possession the dark magic or whoever was controlling it anymore. But the alien still harboured ill towards her in its words.

Luna came alongside and placed a wing on Celestia's shoulder.

"Leave it, sister. It only wants to scold us even more. It deserves this fate like the murderer it is."

Celestia didn't say anything and kept quiet as she glanced over at Luna before turning back to the alien.

Seeing that she wasn't going to Luna gave a strained frustrated huff and left.

Celestia wanted to make sure it didn't harm anypony else, and, to a lesser extent, to hear what the creature had to say as its lifeblood slowly drained from its body.

"Not without … lost control … cannot see you, cannot sense you" the alien coughed, a dark slurry of blood flowed from its long beak. "You'll need … p-p… p-... please."

The word 'please' struck a chord with Celestia and it must have outwardly shown through her trademark stoic expression, because at that moment and with its last remaining strength, the alien brought up a metal, rust red, half-dinner plate with a small circular hole in the middle device from its leg and held it up for the princess to take.

The sudden movement triggered the ring of guards that surrounded him to immediately close aggressively around, levelling their spears down at the Kig-Yar with two guards resting the sharp tip of their spears millimetres away from the alien's beak.

Cautious not to let her guard down, Celestia took a small half-step forward towards the Kig-Yar and the object it was trying to give to her.

"Princess Celestia, hold on a minute. What if it's a trick?" Greystone said, concerned. "From what I've seen, it's already tried to kill you, and for all, we know it's probably some explosive."

The alien overheard the captain's words and held the device up further. "Not that. Never that…" it managed to grate out. "… salvation."

Celestia's horn glowed, and the object in the alien's outstretched claw did the same. She did not move to remove it yet, though.

"Why?" Celestia asked sternly, locking her steely gaze with the alien. "Why should I take this? After all the atrocities you have committed against my people and Equestria? After all that you have committed against us tonight?"

The alien's arm fell limply to the ground, allowing the device to be free within Celestia's magical grasp and closed its eyes. Its breathing becoming more shallow and laboured with every passing second.

"Ivph jah choice, different … Could not. Zealot … jamataa here. Judgement. Test … 'Arahk comes … sacred vorhan … it is the tahshee … sangayri isha iqurre … teedah kahnoh uhso jeeneh…"

With a final exhale of air, the alien ceased all movement and finally became still.

The only sound was the ominous rumble of thunder punctuated the silence.

As the rain began to fall once more from the regathered storm, Celestia gazed down at the dead body of the alien and then to the object still held aloft in her magical grasp.

The constant sound of shhhhh as the rain began to come down harder, Celestia addressed Greystone sternly.

"Clean this mess up and secure the tower. I want this encounter kept quiet until we figure out how much danger this poses to everypony in Equestria and us."

Greystone nodded and looked to the body of the alien. "And this thing?"

Celestia eyed the dead T'vaoan for a second. "Take it to the Royal Academy mortuary for study. I want you to discover more about what it is and what we face."

Greystone saluted and turned sharply, barking orders to his subordinates.

For her part, Celestia trudged through the rain over to where Luna was standing, separated a-ways from the scene, a faint glow of shield spell protecting her from being drenched by the storm.

As Celestia drew abreast of Luna, she could see very well her sister was upset.

"You shouldn't have listened to it," Luna grumbled. "After all, it has done. It killed four ponies without any thought to its actions, and yet you show pity for it. Here I am asking 'why?'"

Celestia gave Luna a wary look. She still had much to catch up on in terms of learning forgiveness. "Nopony in their right mind would sympathise with what terrible crimes the creature committed. Even though you thought I went too far with it, know I did not, but everything deserves a second chance." and teleported both of them where they ended up back in Canterlot castle throne room with herself dripping wet while Luna was not. "Not many can understand the power that dark magic can influence those with a weak mind and make them do their work."

Luna blew air through her nose. "So, this device thing? It is going to give us all the answers we've been thinking hard for?"

Celestia rotated the alien object in her magic. "Truthfully? I don't know what this is." she frowned. "But it said 'salvation'. Our salvation, probably."

"The preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin, or loss." Luna defined and loosely twirled a hoof towards the half-circular device. "I get it, okay? … Did it say how to use it before it died?"

No. No, it didn't. Not once. Celestia thought. She shook her head.

Luna gave a visible sarcastic smile. "Oh, well, by all means," and trotted to her seat.

"It can't be that difficult, sister," said Celestia as she too trotted over to her throne and sat. "It wouldn't have given it to me so willingly if it hadn't thought we could use it."

Celestia looked back at the object. The alien wouldn't have given it to her if that was the case. No, there had to be something here. She flipped the device over and saw something in the light that caught her eye.

Scratched into the object was a series of tiny characters. Crude characters carved in Ponish. And very recently too by the looks of it.

Squinting and peering closer as she read the scratched words, she flipped the object back over and conjured up a quill – minus the inkpot that usually came with it – and threaded the quill's tip into the small hole she'd seen near the centre.

Despite the thunderstorm outside, the audible click that came from the device sounded like Discord had cracked a whip in a cavern through a loudspeaker.

The object began to vibrate slightly, whirring a strange humming noise before abruptly, a thin orange-red band of light filled the space at the top of the device, making it a near-perfect circle.

Celestia slowly and tentatively reached out and lightly touched the light. What she felt surprised her. It was solid to the touch.

She lifted her hoof off the light and the device – now powered on – began to produce a strange high pitched chime and a bunch of weird, intricate triangle-like symbols, each one a different colour than the last began appearing on the hard-light surface before disappearing completely. Leaving all but three blue symbols behind which began to pulse in a slow and steady blinking pattern.

Celestia moved her hoof to touch the centre blue pulsating triangle.

"Maybe Greystone is right about this being some explosive," Luna gave her sister a wary look while she adjusted her cushion so she could leave in a hurry if need be.

Celestia's hoof was poised a mere millimetre above the flashing glyph. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained,"

"At least you're feeling adventurous about this. Because if this is indeed what Greystone said it was…" Luna paused briefly before voicing more on her mind. "You're going to cop most of the blast."

"Well, thanks, sister," said Celestia sarcastically. "Your outlook on self-preservation in situations involving me is enlightening as always." and touched the flashing icon.

Luna gave a glancing smile.

The triangles suddenly began to blink quite rapidly before disappearing. When nothing happened after about five seconds, Luna quickly moved to get up.

"Well, I'm out of-" she began saying, mid-rise from her cushion before the ring of light flashed in time to the grating amount of splutters and a hacking squawking of a familiar rasping voice that emanated from the device.

"Reigning alicorn leaders of the world designated as H-D-1-1-3- … Kitgial! The name given in the contract is of no importance. I am no more with them."

The voice belonged to that of the alien they had confronted in the tower and defeated.

"One you, jah, hope understood the scrawl I left on the underside of the data-disc and are hearing this. Writing in the flat-face mainstay language is murder to my claws as is my voice. So I will tell why short of course and information for reasons jamahtaa klual from the Covenant. My betrayal.

Tor-Yen, heed my call. T'vaoan. Mehoh, former marksman and grand lieutenant Meh'k, forgive me of my oath-breaking the contract and listen with forgiveness to betrayal and those of princesses of those who listen. I've made sure data are in language they can understand. Only few access here. Demons to the UNSC, their constructs or a sangayri ally of theirs also able to access this to understand this struggle. They'll help you, that I'm sure. They will come. I feel it. But is hard to predict. No word of flat-face or sangayri retaliation fleet in neighbouring system for days…"

There was a sound of rasping gagging, strangled coughing, and undeliverable squawking before his voice returned.

"Argh! I… cannot… waver… etuloser lortnoc… sdaerps ssenkrad, sedaf thgil… sorry for what will… suteiuq… for what will become… Started to feel… drags closer to void, prison as time counts. I've compile together many weeks prying on chatter about patrol zones, camps, and staging zones. I cannot assume will be accurate,"

A loud piercing squelch of static cut across the voice as the recorder failed to record before the alien's voice resumed his speaking, albeit some way through a sentence that made no sense.

"... though removing squatters through death is common, abductions are profitable. The central Spire is close to the centre and a Dark Zone even more so. The exact location of the Spire is finicky; however, DZG is very close. Note for you: a DZG setup closes enough will and can interfere with your…"

Another wash of static cut through the recording.

"There is last thing. In between bouts of its actions, I have taken many pauses to deal the other members of strike team positioned strategically about your home. I cannot say others that set for same way. But hope is start to atone for sins past…"

"Princess Luna! News from the watch of the airship docks!" one loud and unnerved voice spoke up.

Luna turned sharply up away from listening to see a guardsmare galloping in and heading towards her in alarm.

"Judge my nefarious actions of death if you will, but do not ignore the words of those who saw the sun before you… ungh… Deyaled ylerem si ti for what he sees of you and ruoy kind: Utmost noitalihinna. I can only hope that hguorht by siht selfless snoitca, thgif siht ni ecnereffid a ekam ot egdelwonk uoy ot trapmi I… Htaed uoy ni hsiler ll'I dna uoy dnif lliw I! Srethguad, dekaolc reverof edih tonnac Uoy!"

The message ended on a chilling psychotic note. Whatever sinister presence had infected the alien's mind, had completely overtaken it entirely.

She turned to face her sister. "Luna. If the alien said in this and what is true about others in the city, then-" and saw empty air instead.

Celestia wrinkled her brow and looked about in disdain. "Where did you go now?"

It didn't take her long to spot where her sister had gone.

Her sister was in the middle of the room off to one side and having a quick one-sided conversation with a unicorn from the Magical Corps. Better known throughout the E.U.P by their nickname of Magi.

Celestia got up and started to head over to her sister when something moved out of the corner of her eye that caught her attention.

Said something was grey stallion pegasus with an orange stripe in his steel grey tail. The pony strolled casually into the open doorway only to stop dead centre in the opening.

However, while his body was facing her, his head wasn't. It was looking the other way, so he was looking behind himself.

Regardless of where the pegasus stood and the fact the throne room magnified any sounds created within she couldn't hear what was being said.

She watched as his mouth opened and closed and his body tense up. It seemed as if he was arguing with somepony, yelling to whoever was there.

Celestia decided to confront the pegasus about why he was doing here. Not because it was very late at night, it was because nopony aside from staff and the guards were supposed to be here.

As Celestia approached, something caught her eye as all of a sudden the orange strip of his tail visibly changed to white before cycling to a reddish gold and started to glow and shimmer – much like her mane and Luna's shimmered due to their magical reserves – in that colour.

That was not normal.

That was never normal.

Celestia quickened the pace towards the pegasus just as he turned sharply back to face where he was looking and locked eyes with her.

Paf!

Startled by the loud sound and bright flash of light that went with it, Celestia broke eye lock and sharply looked back to see that the unicorn pony had teleported away and that her sister was coming over, appearing quite concerned. Celestia twisted back to the pegasus in the entranceway.

He was gone.

"Tia? What's wrong?" asked Luna concerned, noticing her sister's confused expression, "you seem distracted."

"There was… never mind." Celestia shook her head. "What did the Magni have to say?"

"During our hunt of the alien sniper, some keen far-sighting Night Guards along with a Magni at the airship docks saw this dark green bulky craft attempt to land on one of the platforms. They also spotted two purple-blue alien-looking aircraft come out of the clouds soon after. These two were described much in the way of the one we saw tonight."

"And what happened to the bulky craft?"

"It waved off its attempted landing and fled, however, drawing the alien aircraft with it. When it did, one of the guards described a symbol of a white eagle with its wings spread wide on the side of it."

Celestia felt her stomach knot just as the floor shuddered violently. It was like an earthquake had struck Canterlot.

As the floor continued to shake, all of a sudden, something purple passed by her that appeared to have come from behind. Celestia's knees buckled as she felt an overwhelming sense of sleepiness and a tremendous sense of vertigo before the blackness consumed her.

Feeling the ground shake and seeing a wall of purple energy cascade over herself and Tia, Luna's legs gave way, and she pitched forward, collapsing face-first into the floor, the blackness of unconsciousness slowly engulfed her.

However, before she lost consciousness, the last thing she remembered was not the sight of her sister falling, collapsing down next to her, but it was of a serene view of a white sandy beach with, oddly, a setting blue sun in a midnight blue sky and a strange comforting feeling of a significant figure nearby. And it, whoever it was, was whispering low into her ear over the sounds of crashing ocean waves and merry laughter.

"With me by your side, along with your sister. These coming days are going to be just perfect… You remember, do you not? You always loved this since you were small…"

Bridge of UNSC Halberd-class II Arkhangelsk.

The steel grey arrowhead profile of the UNSC destroyer cruised through the sky, prowling cautiously through the planet's lower atmosphere as the pelting rain hammered away pointlessly on the hull outside.

As the Halberd-class II passed over a ridge, one of the crewmembers at his station called out an alert.

"Commander! Energy spike at 1-7-9 at 1-3-0 southeast of our position."

Standing by her commander's chair, reacting on gut instinct that was usually never wrong, Song 'Yu' Jia gave her orders.

"Navigation, come about to heading of 2-6-0. Get us moving into that steep valley."

"Aye-aye, commander. Coming about to course 2-6-0. Diverting forty per cent power to engines."

If someone had eyes on the warship from the outside, they would've seen the destroyer take on easing slanting dip, a smooth rolling list, as the ship moved for the valley in front of it.

With a few engagements against the Covenant remnant and more than a dozen engagements in space in the ongoing Resurgence War, five successful in-atmosphere counterinsurgency operations, she wasn't afraid to put the Arkhangelsk through its paces when it even came.

As Jia issued a series of further orders, the crewmember that reported the initial energy spike spoke up: "Commander, I don't think it is Covenant. The energy signature… it's just not right."

Jia glanced in his direction from her chair, "That still does not convince me, Lieutenant Jürgens. That could mean its Forerunner instead of Covenant. Which in all data books I've read is a far worse prospect."

"Commander, Lieutenant Jürgens could be right on this one." the navigator backed up with without turning around in his seat. "It's not the Covenant. And it's hardly Forerunner." He tapped his screen. "The energy discharge matches nothing been recorded before. I'm running it through what ONI has in their databases to see what they've got. But that's a long shot. With ours, currently, it's saying the signature doesn't match any known output. However, it was artificial and—"

The console chimed, finding a result.

"Organic? What the hell?" he frowned, peering at the result given on his screen.

"Keep it up on your monitor." Jia got up out of her chair to check to see if her navigation officer was correct when an ensign turned in their seat.

"Ma'am. Roan has reported in on our frequency having completed their mission in neutralising the DZG, and long-range communications are back and green across the board…"

Odd that the Spartans would be using them for a relay. "I'm sensing a 'but' coming from this,"

"But our hyperscanner is no longer being jammed anymore," replied the officer, obvious befuddlement plastered across his rugged face.

Jia ultimately turned to face him. "Come again?"

The ensign looked back at his screens. "All environmental and surface scanning sensors are operating at one hundred per cent. The readouts are telling me that the anomalies never existed or posed a problem to its operations in the first place."

"That's impractical," stated Jia firmly. "Check and re-check your parameters. The data gathered by the Echo Of Stars told that the anomalies interfered near constantly with any UNSC or USE hyperscanner regardless of tuned settings."

"Ma'am, I don't know what to make of it. Radar, Ladar, SWIR, LWIR," he listed off names of the different systems quickly, hands now dancing over the holo-screens as he checked and triple checked each system. When he finished, he indicated to his screen with a stumped expression. "Everything is there. All back and working as expected. No anomalies detected."

Jia frowned. "If if this is indeed the case, then we must assume the Covenant has theirs back too. That is if they had not got around the problem already in the first place."

She turned to the officer to her right first. "Lieutenant Jürgens, get me the origin point of that energy discharge. Lieutenant Fey, reposition for a higher atmosphere course and get jamming countermeasures online, full-spectrum spread. You detect anything remotely Covenant, jam the crap out of it!"

"Aye-aye, Commander." came in the multiple stern replies of the crew.

"Ma'am," the weapons officer turned from his monitors as the Commander returned to her chair. "Should I divert reactor power to the MACs and start charging sequence?"

Jia leaned an elbow on her armrest, contemplating on the supposed future course of action. "No, Kirillov. The best course of action right now is to determine the exact location, the reason why, and what gave that energy discharge. Fleetmaster 'Surum works best on flexible answers not speculation from a now supposed 'working' hyperscanner for this planet." She let out a strenuous sigh as she drummed her fingers on the chair's armrest. "Spin up the Rampart's and warm the Archer pods."

Lieutenant Kirillov nodded back in compliance. "Yes, ma'am."

The lieutenant's fingers danced over the numerous holographic screens, arming Archer pods and setting up targeting sector screens for the crisscrossing fire network of the five M870 50mm Rampart point defence guns placed in strategic points about the Halberd-class II destroyer. Usually, an A.I. would have been monitoring and coordinating these tasks on the fly, but Jia didn't have the luxury of one due to the shortage of artificial intelligence when the Arkhangelsk was pushed out from its assembly cradle of the Reyes-McLees Shipyards over Mars just a few months ago.

Lieutenant Jürgens turned in his seat with good news. "Ma'am, I've pinpointed the origin of the energy spike, and I'm picking up a distress call far north of it on the low band emergency frequency."

That got Jia's undivided attention.

"On bridge loudspeaker,"

"Aye-aye, ma'am. Putting it through now."

The distress message that came through was choppy and heavily riddled with static, but the message was clear enough to understand.

"Mayday, mayday, mayday! Pilot 7-8-dash-9 C-W-… of dropship Uniform Four Zero Four to all UNSC and USE monitoring th-… We're hit… -own. I say again... hit and going down… Phoenix in... I say again: Protocol Phoenix is in effect. Encountered four Echo Tangos tha- … -telligent civilisation of equines. Activa- … Ossis! Hol- … -st, thrusters! Can't cont-… Brace-" the call cut out abruptly before the message repeated.

The message looped, and Jia with the bridge crew and even the Arkhangelsk herself seemed to go quiet.

"Did she just say what I thought I heard she say?" an officer of the crew inquired.

'Protocol Phoenix in effect...', Jia thought before snapping to and issued an order. "Lieutenant Jürgens! Get me a scan of the surrounding area around that distress beacon location."

"On it, Commander!"

It had not been even a minute that elapsed by when the hyperscan was complete and was then put up on the centre view screen for all to see.

What happened next was a mix-match reaction of half-expressed expletives from few as everyone else had suddenly lost their will to speak.

"Commander!" an officer hollered. "Atmospheric slipspace rupture detected! Exit vector at point 3-3- Arghh!"

Everyone on the bridge, sitting or not, was either thrown violently sideways out of their seats or were knocked to the floor as the broad Covenant Corvette's prow ‒ a Sangheili Hekar Taa-pattern Blockade Runner to be precise ‒ glanced off the destroyer's rear port side as it exited from slipspace into the atmosphere of the planet.

The only saving thing that prevented the UNSC destroyer from incurring catastrophic damage from the ramming and very possibly breaking in two was the active protective energy shielding that took the entire brunt the blow.

The prow of the Corvette continued to push the rear of the Arkhangelsk, shunting the destroyer out of the way and sideways until both starships came almost parallel to each other in the sky.

On the bridge, officers scrambled back into their chairs and called out with urgent status warnings and situation reports.

"Commander! Shields took a massive hit! System's showing only seven per cent charge and imminent collapse!"

"Multiple Banshees, Phantoms, and Spirits just launched from the Corvette's forward launch bays,"

"Commander! Corvette's plasma lines are heating; they're preparing to fire!"

"All hands, Battlestations! Quick launch our Broadsword. Keep those fighters off our engines," bellowed Jia. She pointed to the weapons officer, "Lieutenant Kirillov! Bring point defence to bear on the Corvette, light the bastard up!"

Almost immediately the hull of the destroyer reverberated with the vibrations of the point defence as further orders, including directing counter-boarding teams to areas as a hollowing cry of 'Shields are gone!' from a senior officer and flow of reports of enemy borders just after it.

A plasma torpedo from the Corvette impacted the hull and sent a shaking rumble that could be felt all the way up on the bridge.

Commander Jia's expression turned grim as damage reports flooded in. "Kirillov, Archer Pods 1 through 8! Target solution on the port prow and engines."

"Archers away!"

A hailstorm of fifty millimetres raked the Corvette as a swarm of over a hundred Archer missiles streaked out of their launch tubes and impacted the prow and the starboard engine. Covenant ship hull rendered and tore from the explosions. The vessel must've lost all of its shield strength from ramming them a while ago as Jia saw a flash of silver briefly in resistance from the destroyer's raking point defence fire before flicking out as the multitude of Archer missiles impacted shortly after.

Jai saw as their single Broadsword fighter blasted past the bridge viewports on an attack run on the Corvette. There was a massive explosion that erupted at the rear of the Corvette as the exoatmospheric supremacy fighter delivered a lucky critical blow with new blossoms of fire and explosions chaining throughout the length of the ship. Nanolaminate armour tore away and created massive holes in other critical areas inside.

Despite initially having the surprise, the size and weight advantage, the Covenant Corvette was faltering in its return fire and had begun to take on a substantial list to port. Meanwhile, the UNSC Arkhangelsk didn't let up and continued to pound and gut the hell out of it mercilessly.

"Commander!" an ensign cried in warning. "New heavy contacts at point 2-3-6!"

Off in the distance, three Covenant warships appeared from slipspace and did something unexpected. Instead of turning and engaging the Arkhangelsk and tipping the balance of favour to the Covenant in the strange broadside duel, they instead changed course, wheeling around and away from the fight.

"Lieutenant Jürgens, keep track on those ships! Relay their course information to Commander Selena," Jia ordered, pointing towards the two Covenant Man O' Wars and single CCS-class battlecruiser as the glow of their repulsor engines grew ever brighter.

She knew where the covie ships were going, and it made her sick.

"And get me Fleetmaster 'Surum on the channel, now!"

Starfire dreamed.

Her mind raced with the fleeting feelings of recent events.

Ones of her waking up in the barracks of Canterlot on the setting of the sun and putting on her recently polished to perfection armour, rounding up the members of her patrol with smiles and cheery moods all around. Then the first order of the night from Princess Luna herself, 'Patrol the eastern part Canterlot and sweep north of the valley, and that of Cantermount range'. Then flying above a forested area as her patrol searched the ground below.

And then the nightmares came.

These involving a massive matte green metal machine of unknown origin and design sitting in the middle of a clearing and two tall figures were pointing strange weapons at her patrol.

Then in another nightmare featured imposing tall creature with a mouth for two pairs of mandibles, jutting out and roaring at her. More so at those stood further behind with the words: 'Heretics! The removal of your filth on this holy place is at hand!'

The inrushing haunting cyan two-pronged blades were swinging for her head. Cleaving clean through her steel sword as she tried to block it, only for them to be blocked by an identical energy blade in a meeting of clashing blue sparks.

Hollering of: 'Get down!' and 'Get to cover!' while blue and green bolts accompanied by abnormal loud cannon-like sounds echoing again in the air.

Pink crystalline shards were sticking out the right-hind leg of one of her charges. Then something later told about being thankful it had been six instead of seven.

As every image ended, Starfire always found herself standing alone inside a red-lit area, grey uncomfortable looking metal seats lining the walls, and gazing down at a bloody scene of death and devastation.

A loud sound of crashing thunder jolted Starfire awake, and in doing so, she inadvertently breathed in a mouthful of muddy water from a puddle she collapsed in.

"Euuugh!" exclaimed Starfire as she spat out a mouthful of the murky, foul stew.

Now well and truly awake, Starfire looked about herself as the rain fell upon her. Her face fell into despair as her vision adjusted to the night dark. It looked just as grim and murky than it had been.

Stretching away from Starfire was the start of a path of destruction created by the Pelican as it crashed into the forest belly first.

Starfire suddenly heard a series of multiple footsteps, the sounds of splashes and a crack of a twig being stepped on behind her. She whirled around, wings out and hooves up in hoof-to-hoof combat stance ready to defend from those who decided to sneak up and attack her from behind.

What she saw there instead was the rest of her patrol.

"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Take it easy, Starfire." an alarmed Nightbreak exclaimed, hooves up in a non-threatening stance. "It's just us."

"Nightbreak," Starfire relaxed, and she fell back onto all fours. "You know I don't like surprises. Especially after what's going on tonight."

"Sorry. You okay?"

"I'm fine," She turned to the other two batponies gathered either side of Nightbreak. "Adlyn? Eirlys?"

Both guard mares shared an almost identical stiff nod. "As good as we'll ever be."

Starfire nodded and looked at the trail of burnt and extinguished destruction that had been left behind when the transport went down in flames.

"Does anypony know where that wave of magical energy came from?" said Nightbreak as he hoofed over his backup dagger to Starfire.

"I have no idea," answered Eirlys. "I think it came from somewhere behind us. I think from - that direction."

She pointed in a northerly east direction, towards the towering Canter mountains.

"We better get moving. Alive or dead, I'm not going to forgive myself if we didn't help in some way after they saved us. I have a point." Starfire said and set off first.

Eirlys fell into step next to Adlyn with Nightbreak taking up the rear.

"Do you think...?" asked Adlyn.

"I don't want to think about it." Eirlys cautiously looked about as they travelled further down the slope towards the river bank.

Nightbreak looked to them both, "Well, while you all just thinking about it. I'm just saying it. Covenant."

"Don't be absurd, Nightbreak," said Adlyn, rolling her eyes. "We hardly even know anything about the aliens except they want to kill us. And I don't think the aliens can do magic. At the very least, I think our new alien friends would've at least mentioned something about it."

"How would you know that Adlyn, hmm? How can you know that the aliens aren't holding back? You know, like our protocols when it comes to secrets."

"Whatever the case, none of the aliens we fought had horns."

"They could've used something else. Like a wand, or even their hands!" proclaimed Nightbreak.

"Hands… pfff, come on."

Nightbreak looked to Eirlys. "Eirlys, come on, back me up here. You know what I'm on about, right? It's in that book I read."

Eirlys levelled her gaze. "Nothing in that is real. We all know Griffons cannot do that. They're more into potions and industrialism. It's just a fiction novel written up by the novelist to give the rush and excitement to the reader."

Despite being able to see in the dark quite well, Nightbreak managed to trip over an exposed root but caught himself from tumbling as they began to move down the wet and slippery slope towards the river. "He could very well be telling the truth."

"For your information, Nightbreak," Adlyn piped in, "I've read the other books by that somepony, and he is a she. And that mare got one crazy imagination."

Feeling insulted, Nightbreak brought up a retort that sounded a lot better in his head which earned him giggles from both bat mares.

Starfire sharply looked over her shoulder. "Cut the chatter, guys. We're here."

The three looked ahead of Starfire and saw the source of the column of smoke they had been using to hone in.

"By Luna's grace…" breathed Eirlys, looking at the strewn carnage of the crash site.

Situated entirely exposed out in the open and lying on its side, half in half out of the river with its nose buried half-submerged in the river and bits and pieces of the once-great alien aircraft were everywhere.

Starfire couldn't help but again look in shocked awe as she got closer at one of the broad pivotal wings – one which housed one of the massive engines – had been completely sheared off in the crash and now the thing lay speared into the ground at a slanted angle. To the untrained eye, somepony might mistake it as a ramp built to nowhere.

Separated a bit from Starfire and Nightbreak, Eirlys and Adlyn ambled through the carnage around them.

"I hope they survived this," whispered Eirlys. "I'd want to know if- mmm?!"

One of Adlyn's wings was firmly pressed tightly over Eirlys's mouth.

"Look, I know how you feel, and it's been a long time since then." hushed Adlyn in a firm voice. "But things are different now, and now is not the time. You know we have our orders. We can't disobey them. Think of the consequences of what it'll bring if we do it wrong? Especially with those two here."

Eirlys frowned. "You're exaggerating this a bit, Ad. I think she deserves to kn-"

"No. No. Nuh-uh-no. There are and is a time and place. And right now? Is not now and not now. Got it? Cause if any of us so much as blurt out anything about that to Starfire now, any trust we had and everypony else will be all for nought and we'll be buried six feet under. Now come on." Adlyn hurried over to where Starfire was standing near what remained of the rear of the Pelican.

The ramp door that was previously open when they had left was sealed shut. Nopony could see any apparent means of reopening it.

"Know any way to open the door from out here?" asked Nightbreak.

"If there is a way, I don't see it," Starfire looked at the side of the Pelican. "And even if we did find it, I doubt that we'll be able to use it anyway."

"Why?"

Starfire gestured to her and his hooves.

"Oh,"

The warbling wail of multiple alien engines alerted Starfire and her squad to the sky above.

Following the river downstream, the batpony squad saw two Banshees out ahead of a purple ship that looked like a beetle's carapace, with a third of the former trailing behind it. Starfire watched as the alien craft followed the river before rounding the river bend and disappeared out of sight.

The two Banshees flew over again and landed a little way upstream and out of view. Starfire let out a strained sigh of relief. It was more likely the Covenant had seen the crashed Pelican rather than them. Otherwise, they'd be dead.

"What now?"

Starfire saw six little squat aliens with strange triangle-shaped packs on their backs led by two Elites run into view from around the river bend.

"No time. Find a place to hide and stay quiet," she ordered.

The squad split into groups of two. Starfire and Adlyn took cover under the torn-off wing. Nightbreak and Eirlys managed to find a spot under a large slab of the unremarkable fuselage.

In her spot, Starfire couldn't see very much. But despite the limitations of that, she could still hear what was going on around out there.

There was a rattle of stones as the two Elite moved closer and more rattling when they stopped.

"Brother, this is not the way things should've gone. I knew it that when Dur squadron did not report in, the heretics had arrived in system."

"Indeed. We have lost many to nishums shameful tactics tonight, yes. But we will push them back soon enough, and they will fall to our might like the weaklings they are."

Starfire wondered why these two were speaking in Ponish and not in their native language she'd heard from before.

As she pondered the thought, she heard the unmistakable noise of the alien's boots crunching on stones almost next to her head.

"Arr! I cannot recall where the override is."

There was more skittling of rocks as one of them moved.

"It's on this side, brother. Down to the right ... Right there! No! The one next to the panel I'm pointing at, fool!"

A loud grinding sound of something been torn off from the dropship's hull caused Starfire and Adlyn to cringe from the ear-grating noise. The mechanical groaning made a high-pitched squealing and stopped.

She heard one of the Elites kick something metallic - probably the stuck door - while the other gave a deep growl of displeasure.

With the door open ajar, something coming from inside the dropship caught Starfire's ear. She could hear muffled radio chatter of combat reports.

"...Lima 2-7 to Tango 1-4, we have eyes on thirty enemy heavy foot-mobiles due north and advancing towards your position. We're going to move up and give suppressive fire until you're back in the safety of the defilade. How copy? Over."

"Tango 1-4 to Lima 2-7, thanks for the heads up. Didn't have good eyes out that way. I'll pull back as you lay down the hurt and knock them dead. Out."

"Overlord, this is Mike 2-2. Requesting reposition to the north-west of Mike 2-1 to help take on those T-54 RAVs that are hounding them. How copy? Over."

"Mike 2-2, Overlord. You're clear to move at your discretion to waypoint six to support Mike 1-2 on clearing those RAVs. Out."

"Break! Break! Break! Tango 4-2, 4-3! Orient turrets northwest! Covie armoured column of T-26's and T-58's have just crested the hill at your one O'clock at 0-5..."

"These nishum's radio is undamaged, and I think I saw movement." One of the Elites said. "Without the DZG, their location can be pinpointed and call for help."

"Not for long. That is why we're here to finish what Lur squadron failed to accomplish." The other replied resolutely. "Be vigilant and watch my back as I place the charge."

It wasn't a second later when there was a louder shuffling and skittering of rocks on the other side of the crashed Pelican that put both Elite pilots on heightened alert.

"What was that noise? A pony?"

"I do not know, Duram. But it's dead either way." "You three! With me."

Starfire heard the telltale sound of one of the Elites ignite an energy sword and then walk by her spot in search for the cause of the noise.

One second later, when there was a grunting exclaim of surprise. A heavy slicing wet thunk-! And then the sound of rocks shifting as something collapsed to the ground.

Starfire heard the other Elite spin and ignited its energy sword. It slowly moved cautiously towards where the falling noise occurred. "'Kursum? Did you kill-"

The Elite's words were cut off mid-sentence, giving out a brief alarm of surprise that ended in the same thunking noise but with an added strained drowning gurgle before the sound of something falling to the ground.

Chancing it, Starfire poked her head out and could see one of the Elite pilots lying on its back, dead, purple blood staining the rocks around its neck. Standing over it, facing away from her, was a heavily armoured figure in think dark steel blue armour and a very aesthetic looking helmet with what looked like a spike, or more accurately a horn, protruding from the front.

Starfire watched in silence as the armoured figure spun something that flashed silver in its hand before inserting it somewhere between its armoured shoulder plates. A masculine voice, devoid of emotion, came over the headset she still had.

"Roan Leader, crash site secure. Going for the antimatter charge."

A female voice, also without emotion, responded. "Good. After that, join Roan Two over on the Pelican ramp door."

"What of you?" asked the male voice.

"We're going to see ourselves to those four equines taking cover amongst the wreckage. Get to the bottom of this Phoenix protocol once and for all. Starting with the one staring at you at your six."

There was a sudden bark from what sounded like a dog and multiple crunching sounds of boots on the stones next to her.

Looking up, Starfire gasped as she found herself staring up at an Elite. Her shocked reflection reflected in the thin curved sky blue visor of its accompanying dark maroon red swept-back helmet.

Cradled in the sangheili's hands and pointed in roughly her direction was a long purple weapon. The silver barrel having a stripe down either side glowed an ominous and menacing neon green.