UFO: Equestria

"Nighttime.  Those gray bastards always seem to hit us at nighttime, when they know they have a visibility advantage over us.  Luna sends us out there to grope around in the dark for aliens, and those bug-eyed freaks would just stand back and pick us off like fish in a barrel." – SGT Moonbeam

Darkness was a thing that the Knightmares had grown accustomed to.  As servants and protectors of a nocturnal goddess, many of their training regimens had involved learning to live and fight blind when the situation demanded.  Yet even now, Sergeant Moonbeam could see that there had been a particularly fatal oversight in their training: it had always assumed that one's opponent would be likewise handicapped by darkness.  That reality was underscored when a bright blue flash pierced the darkness, eliciting a howl of agony from Excelsior.

"Cover!" yelled Moonbeam, quickly diving behind a stone well.  She could hear the deafening cracks of plasma bolts impacting the other side of the well, each shot hot enough to audibly boil the very moisture from the air.  "Spiral, get us some light out there!"  Light Spiral - a white Unicorn stallion who had transferred into ECLIPSE from the Sun Guard – was more than happy to oblige that request.  His horn flared to life for but a moment, and a globe of bright light suddenly appeared over the battlefield.

Now they could see the adversary that had already brought down four of the six ponies who had been sent on this suicide mission; two more would make it official.

"I've got a visual, Sergeant!  It's one of the gray-skinned ones!" yelled Light Spiral, peeking out from behind his cover just long enough to get a look at their enemy.

Moonbeam was all too familiar with their gray-skinned adversaries.  They weren't much taller than a pony, but walked upon their hind-legs in the same fashion as a juvenile dragon.  Their bodies were slender and hairless, covered with a mottled gray skin.  Their heads were almost comically large and bulbous, with two large, soulless black eyes that – if the rumors were to be believed – could snap a pony's mind like so much tinder.  They had proven to be the most numerous of the alien invaders, and while they proved to be the easiest to kill, the weaponry they fielded made them more than a match for any ordinary soldier.

"All right," Moonbeam said, lowering her voice.  "On three, we pop out and shoot it."

Light Spiral was less than enthusiastic about this reckless plan of attack, but could see no alternatives.  He swallowed hard, and nodded his assent to the sergeant.

"One...two...GO!"

Both ponies simultaneously stepped out from behind their cover, and in the split instant that the alien spent trying to decide which pony to shoot, shot at the alien with their shoulder-mounted auto-crossbows.  One bolt whizzed past the alien's head, while the other buried itself dead-center in the alien's torso.  Several agonizing moments passed as the alien simply stood there dumbfounded, before it finally collapsed onto the ground.

"Nice job, Spiral.  That kind of shooting will land you a promotion," Moonbeam said as she readied her auto-crossbow for another shot.  While that might have been a good joke before the aliens invaded, nowadays anypony who managed to bring down an alien was considered a war hero.  "Let's move up and secure the UFO.  It looks pretty small, so I don't think we'll encounter any more resistance."

Steeling themselves, the two Unicorns began to march their way towards the gleaming metal disc sitting amidst a field of grain...

XXXXXXXXXX

The rest of the events from that night had blurred together to create a jumbled mess.  Even now, she wasn't even entirely conscious of her surroundings.  She could vaguely recall securing the interior of the UFO with Light Spiral, which hadn't taken long.  They'd searched the rest of the farmland for any other aliens that might be in hiding, and she could remember Light Spiral getting his first good look at what the alien weapons could do to a pony when they found Private Evening Star's body sprawled out in the grass.

"It was his first time," she said, to nobody in particular.

"And you're positively certain that there weren't any other aliens left there?" asked a disembodied voice.  It was soft and refined, clearly a mare's voice, but deep and with a strong sense of authority about it.

"Positive.  Spiral and I turned over every rock and hay-bale looking for aliens," she replied.  She was gradually becoming more and more aware of her surroundings as the seconds passed.  The room was white and smelled of disinfectant; a hospital in all likelihood.

"That's all, then," the disembodied voice stated.  "Miss Sparkle, please gather your team and prepare to retrieve the UFO once day breaks."

Sparkle...Sparkle...Moonbeam knew that name.  It belonged to Twilight Sparkle, one of the Bearers of Harmony and head of research and development at ECLIPSE.  So she'd somehow managed to make it home, and was now in a hospital bed.  Why?  She didn't feel any pain at that moment, but attempts to move her limbs were met with sluggish responses at best; she'd obviously been sedated for some reason.

"And as for you," the disembodied voice continued.  "Cephalopod."

Without warning, the release from hypnosis caused the physical world to suddenly come back into crystal-clear focus for Moonbeam.  While memories of the battlefield quickly began to fade once more, she found that a large number of other things began to make sense.  She was in a hospital bed, and she recognized her surroundings as the ECLIPSE base infirmary.  Likewise, she recognized the form of Dr. Fluttershy quietly tending to the corpses of several ponies, and the form of Princess Luna – the founder and director of ECLIPSE – sitting next to her bed.

"Twilight Sparkle did not jest when she said that you proved difficult to interrogate under hypnosis," the Lunar Princess spoke, offering Moonbeam a warm smile.  "I apologize for any confusion you're feeling right now; it took a great deal of magic to open up your memory enough for us to make sense of what happened."

For several moments, Moonbeam simply sat there trying to take hold on what fleeting memories she could.  When it was clear that her increasing efforts were only giving her an increasingly vicious headache, she decided it prudent to simply ask Luna for an explanation.  "So what did happen, Princess?"

"Your mission was a success," the princess responded, clearly quite excited and cheerful for some reason that Moonbeam didn't understand.

"Six ponies died killing one alien, and you're calling that a success?" she blurted out as she sat upright.  Embarrassment flooded her, however, as she remembered who she was speaking to.  "I, er...forgive my insolence, Princess."  She steeled herself, expecting a stern rebuke from Luna.

The harsh rebuke never came.  Instead, Moonbeam felt Princess Luna's hoof touch her shoulder, and gently push her back into a resting position.  "You're forgiven," the Princess said, rolling her eyes at Moonbeam.  "I understand where you're coming from, but please understand that this is the first time we've managed to be the last ones standing when the shooting stopped.  More importantly, you and Private Light Spiral managed to not only bring back one of the alien weapons, but you were the first to successfully secure an enemy UFO."

The realization ran down her spine like ice water.  If killing a single alien was enough to make a pony into a war hero, then capturing an intact UFO was the sort of thing that would get a pony written into the history books – assuming that there was an Equestria left to write said history books when the war was over.

"Now, Dr. Fluttershy is going to give you a once-over when she finishes with the autopsies.  You stay here and get some rest until she tells you it's time to go," Luna said, her smile fading as her voice took on a more authoritative tone.  "No getting up and wandering around like a lost soul, Sergeant.  Stay put."

Moonbeam had to question which frightened her more: the alien menace, or her own boss?