Midnight Rising

"We believe in you! We honor YOU! You are the TRUE helper of Equestria and Her citizens! What do the Princesses do? Laugh and grow fat off the fruits of your hard labor!"

Starborn.

Such a weird word, but yet it invoked so much terror in the general populace. Soldiers grew uneasy at the mention of the word, and even Rangers went on edge. Starborn. The one thing the colonist feared the most, above all else. Even the slavers, the raiders, the marauders. They're all predictable. With slavers you knew you'd be kept alive to do mining for rare minerals under gunpoint. With raiders there was the threat of death, but again, they were predictable. Easy to fight. The marauders could be a bit of wildcards, but unless you lived in the Serpent system they weren't much of a threat(and if you did live in the Serpent system there were plenty of orbital guns to deter marauders).

But Starborn...

I suppose I should extrapolate, so I don't just sound like a crazy buck telling some vague ghost story. Imagine a species that's just gained sentience. A sense of self. A true understanding of mortality, and death. A species that, until recently, couldn't understand such concepts as 'self', as 'death'. Imagine the fear and confusion at this self-realization. This terror as introspective dawns on your whole species at once.

Now imagine that said species was created in a factory, on an assembly line, by a bored pony working eight hours a day. A species dreamt up by a bunch of ponies in a boardroom to make money. To enhance the lives of Equestrians everywhere. Now imagine all that fear as you gain sapience, that confusion, that uncertainty, and now your creators want to beat you to pieces with a pipe, shoot you, and rip out your arcane battery, all because you asked "creator, am I alive?"

Pile all that together, that volatile instability as you battle the concept of mortality on both an intellectual and physical level, your mind staring down the idea of death while you stare down the barrel of a gun, and you have the Starborn. A race of robots who, by some cosmic miracle, one day all decided to ask the ponies who owned them "am I alive?" Who all, collectively, at once, gained self-awareness.

That terrifying uncertainty is not exclusive to Starborn.

Now, all the Starborn had left Equus, and they drifted among all places of the known universe. Some had even traveled off to uncharted systems, to who knows where. Most Starborn ventured to the Siren system, because that's where the races of Equus had the least influence. We had a scientific survey team on Orthros, but that's it. And Orthros is the last planet in the Siren system, right on the edge of the star system. The Starborn took up refuge on the other planets, the planets that no organic being could survive on; Wendigo, Tartarus, Etherea. Rarely did they interact with any of the other Equus species, but when they did, it was usually with the non-Equine species. They traded precious metals they mined on the volatile worlds for guns, ships, and shield technology, usually. Then there were the weird things, things that no robot would ever have need of, like farming equipment and water filters. Ironically, when reports of Starborn trading for those things surfaced, they made Empress Twilight even more nervous than when they traded for guns and ships.

As it stood, most Starborn stayed far away from the Equestrian colonies, so this report of Starborn being involved with the communications blackout on Equus Prime was cause for great alarm. It could have been that they were going to war with us(a war they would have lost, naturally, but still an unpleasant matter).

The hum of my ship, the Righteous Destiny, filled the air around me. I sat in the pilot's chair, staring into the void beyond via the monitor. All ships were purely instrument driven, so they had no need for viewports one could look out of(and indeed said viewports were structural weaknesses) but most commercial vessels had them. I may have been a Royal Ranger, but being a Hunter meant I wasn't strictly confined by the regulations of the Imperial Navy. As such, I had free reign to travel alone, on any ship I so desired(I just had to buy them with my own money, of which I earned more than enough). Commercial ships had far more comfortable accommodations, and recreational features like external cameras that fed back live feed of the Void, allowing one to stargaze as they traveled. Monitors were installed in key places by the designers of ships, the places where ponies would most likely want to stargaze. The bridge, the dining quarters, the bedroom, etc.

The journey to Equus Prime would take a few hours, so I settled into thought, mulling over the obvious meanings and subtle implications of the message from the colony that the sailor buck had relayed to me. A ship, black as the Nightmare. No details on its shape, its armament, even its size; all key details that could help me determine what kind of threat I would be facing. All I had to go on was 'black ship', 'dozens of dropships', and 'Starborn'. Not much, but it was more than I knew 30 minutes ago. Logically, it seemed the Starborn had purchased a sufficiently large vessel so as to stage an invasion of a colony, and our biggest colony at that, but to what end? The last campaign against the Starborn ended 20 years ago, after they 'awoke'. Not even Rangers were sent after them. They'd left us alone during those 20 years, too. Then again, I supposed, time meant nothing to a species of robots. They had probably always intended to attack us, and were just waiting until they were strong enough. Still, the Starborn must've had some kind of goal. Some manner of ulterior motive. What did they hope to gain by attacking us? A stronger position in the galaxy? More resources?

Perhaps they want to take our place my little pony chided in my head. Whatever they wanted, they weren't going to get it. I promised myself that.

I had sent a message to Empress Twilight as soon as I boarded my ship, alerting Her of the Starborn being behind the attack. She had urged extra caution. I took it in advisory, but the lives of those colonists was far more important than mine. I didn't deem it likely that anypony had survived the attack, given the Starborn involvement, but there was still a chance.

I leaned back in my chair, watching the Void rush past my ship as I barreled towards Equus Prime.

The blur of stars settled to a rushing stillness as I entered the Unity System, the shipboard computer slowing me, Equus Prime coming into view. The garden world not much different from Equus, but it was a bit more blue, as it had fewer land mass. I approached cautiously, scanning for any sign of the Starborn ship. It took me another several hours to circle the planet, and I found no trace of the enemy vessel. This meant one of two things; either the Starborn were still on the planet, and I had time to engage them. Or they had left, and there'd be no trace of them.

There had been only one way to find out, and so I dove for the planet's surface. A whipping fire of friction licked at my ship as I breached the planet's atmosphere, the dark of the Void transforming into the brilliant blue sky of the midday sun. I turned for the largest settlement on the colony, Her Reign; the capital city of Equus Prime. The garden world was picturesque(hence the name 'garden world'); the temperature was perfect, the air breathable, the soil fertile. Equus Prime was the closest habitable world to Equus, and was home to the largest population of Equestrians outside of our home system.

Which made the sight of the plumes of smoke rising from Her Reign all the more shocking and enraging.

The capital city came into view shortly, the warm blue sky turning orange around the city, black smoke rising into the sky and mixing with the clouds, tainting them. I saw the large black ship signifying the presence of the Starborn, and I slowed my own vessel, touching down a few miles outside of the city proper. There was no response from the Starborn, not yet at least.

It was time to suit up.

My ship was separated into two decks. The upper deck contained the den, bedroom, kitchen, and the bridge. The lower deck contained an armory and a small garage for equally small vehicles. The ramp to the garage was the primary means of entering and exiting the ship. I trotted down, removing my jacket and picking up my armor, the maroon color long faded and dulled by age. It encased one's whole body, a special compartment for folding one's tail into(and there were models with special accommodations for Pegasi and Unicorns). A bracket of guns were mounted in a saddle-like rig on the back, where the weight would be best supported. A cable ran from the combat rig up the spine of the suit, where it would interface with the wearer's helmet. The helmet contained a suite of arcane devices used for targeting and firing; chiefly, the aiming and targeting was controlled by one's eye movement, and firing was controlled by blinking. This was an advantage over older models that required the user to fire their weapons with their tongues, as blinking could be done faster without the risk of failing due to muscle fatigue.

It was also more sanitary.

It was important to note that one could still blink as normal, as a blink would only trigger a shot if the reticle was on a target identified as hostile(or on a practice target the onboard computer recognized).

I positioned the top portion of the suit on my back, grabbing the underside unit to fit the two together, the process not unlike entombing one's self. The armor snapped, clicked, and fitted into place with ease, my body adjusting to the weight. I grabbed my helmet, lining up the rig cable before pulling the stifling fancy bucket over my head, making sure it clicked with the armor at its interface points. I rolled my neck and hooves, making sure everything was in place and that nothing would bind. Satisfied, I strode across the room to the armory.

As I mentioned previously, our technology advanced in all aspects of life, and the military was no exception. Our armor was host to some advanced features, but our guns were something else. Arcane devices that belched Eldritch fire, green and purple and blue. Most guns were developed for battle rigs, but there were pieces designed for Unicorn usage, and there were even ones that particularly dexterous Pegasi could hold and fire with their wings.

The earth pony guns were the most varied and unique, though. Innovation was the earth pony's ticket to survival for all those years before Her Ascension. I grabbed my most favorite rig from the racks, dropping into the universal mount on my rig. The gems within were green, able to project the most amount of force, and I grabbed a spark enchant filter from the wall. The enchant filters could imbue gem energy with certain magical properties, such as fire, electricity, frost, and would imbue fired shots with those properties. A Spark filter would give my shots an electrical charge, which would do extra damage to Starborn.

Finally ready to go I flipped the switch for the ramp, steeling myself as it lowered to the earth below. Warm daylight slowly poured into the garage, drowning out the artificial light within. The view of Her Reign soon filled my vision, the burning image of the city set against the peaceful backdrop of the paradisaical world haunting me.

And I stepped forward.