Equestrian Badlands, Ghost Base, Day after Coronation
Archer

Sleeping outside isn’t something I’ve done in a long time… Last time that happened was a camping trip when I was little. But where the base doesn’t have bunks set up yet I didn’t have much of a choice. Luckily for the lot of us, Mahan was smart enough to bring some instant coffee along. Where I had only gotten two hours of sleep last night, having been ordering technicians around until the wee hours of the morning, I decided that the paper cup full of the black liquid was good enough to keep me going at bare minimum.

Endeavor was the last of the ships to finally arrive at the base and settle into one of the drydocks. Even the two new destroyers had arrived, settling in just as the support crews finished setting up the vast array of diagnostics computers built specifically for the Atlas and Illustrious. “So did the engineers finish their timelines for the repairs yet?” Spark asked as he joined me on the top of the base’s wall that overlooked the drydocks.

“If memory serves, Endeavor is going to take about a day or two, Redoubtable is about a week out, and Paris is easily six weeks to be fully repaired. The engineers just don’t know for sure on that one… There’s so much wrong with it, they’re not going to have an accurate guess until she’s fully broken down.” I explained, thinking back to the reports that I had read just before we arrived the previous evening.

“You think the Admiral will pull his crew off?”

I shook my head. “Baxter and his crew have been through hell on that ship, and it got them home every time. Call me crazy but I think they’ll want a hand in patching her up.”

“I know the sentiment…” Spark admitted. “So… You knew about the picket I was attached to. What happened to her? What happened to the rest of the crew?”

“Just going off of what I saw in Dusk’s memory orb, they were either dead or attempted to journey south into the heartland on foot after they abandoned Poneva.” I explained. “Steadfast’s body was the only one Dusk or anyone on his team at the time recovered… They found his corpse frozen in the big chair.”

“I see…” Spark muttered. “That means I’m all that's left.”

“Are you going to be OK?” I asked.

Spark just shook his head. “I don’t know… Maybe? I mean first I find out that my son is a psychopath tied off on the leash of a veritable god, and now I know what happened to the rest of my crew? Honestly Archer, I’ve got a lot on plate right now.”

“Well at risk of sounding like a heartless bitch, I don’t envy you.” I offered.

Spark just chuckled. “I wouldn’t still be standing here if I thought you were being a bitch about it. Besides, I don’t envy me either. The truth is that the stuff on my plate sucks ass.”

“I think that all of us are in the same boat with you. We’ve got a shitty hand, and we have to face down an ancient being of nearly unknown power with it.” I offered. “Trust me Spark, there’s no envy floating around on this little piece of paradise.”

“Alright, fair enough.” Spark admitted. “Now about why I’m actually up here… Are you actually going to run the morning briefing, or are we going to just let anarchy hold the line until we can figure out which way is up?”

While letting anarchy run wild is admittedly tempting, I’m sure I’d never hear the end of it if I allowed it to happen. “Are all the important ponies waiting downstairs?”

“They are, Crown Prince included.” Spark said as the two of us started down the stairs.

“So Dusk got out of Canterlot then… Good for him.” As the two of us entered the large store room that was acting as our temporary meeting space I easily picked Dusk out of the small crowd. With the black and gold vestments he was still wearing, it was hard to miss him. “Sorry for keeping you all waiting. My sanity needed a dose of coffee to get going again.” Some quiet chuckles echoed around the room at my quip. A good sign if any… If the ponies were still aware enough to chuckle, then we’ll at least be able to keep going with the base. “Now then, where do we stand?”

“Atlas and Illustrious are one hundred percent.” Captain Sentry called out. “We’re just waiting for our orders.”

“Well it turns out Endeavor wasn’t all that bad. The repair teams should have her back in order by lunchtime.” Amore added. “However she still needs a permanent crew. Your father and his ponies can’t pinch hit forever.”

“Well I already found her a proper Captain.” Dusk said, motioning to the guard standing at his side.

Said guard looked rather surprised. “You mean me?” The stallion asked. “But sir, what about-”

“Jellico, don’t sweat it.” Dusk replied. “I can get the guard squared away easily enough. “But right now Endeavor needs a proper captain. One who’s organized, quick on his feet and give a shit about doing the job right. As of now you’re the only pony I’d trust to put in that chair for the long haul.”

“Of course sir.” The captain replied.

“I take it that the rest of the fleet is still a crapshoot?” I asked, directing the question towards Captain Fleetfoot and Admiral Baxter.

“So far the engineers aren’t liking what they’re finding on the Paris.” Baxter admitted. “As of half an hour ago that six week estimate for repairs is in the trash. They’re telling me at least a week before they can give me a rough estimate, let alone a set timeline for the repairs.”

“Same on my end.” Fleetfoot said. “The repair crews are finding a lot more damage on the Redoubtable as they pull stuff apart. Best guess they gave me is two weeks to a month to get her combat ready again.”

“Well we can pull the slack in easily enough.” Illustrious’ Captain offered. “Just Illustrious is twice as capable as any frigate we could hope to put on the battle line. So as I see it we’ve still got a net increase in fleet capabilities.”

“Sandstorm, I told you once already. Shakedowns aren’t a good measure of either of the new ships. The only way we’ll know for sure what they can do is to go into battle with them.” The Admiral pointed out. “And last I checked we’re in a rather quiet neighborhood… Unless more of those drone ships show up.”

“I think that brings us to a good question.” Dusk pointed out. “Who built those ships, and where did they launch from? I went over Endeavor’s sensor logs this morning. Those were regular slipspace aperture that those things dropped out of.”

“I’ll admit, it’s a fair question.” Baxter replied. “But the vector those things came in on doesn’t make any sense. It’s a straight shot to the galactic boundary, and the UNSC’s deep space probe network confirmed that there’s no stellar bodies along that trajectory. Wherever those things launched from, they must’ve come in on that vector to make sure we couldn’t identify their point of origin.”

“Were we able to recover any computers from their debris?” Dusk asked.

Baxter shook his head. “Looks like they were built with some sort of failsafe. The things melted down when the drone ships blew apart. We can’t get anything out of them.”

“So we’ve got a boatload of nothing, bar knowing who’s probably responsible for them…” Dusk observed. “Well this is going to make these next orders a lot more important then.”

As Dusk stepped out of the group and walked towards me, I couldn’t help but cock an eyebrow. “What orders?”

“I’ve got two orders, and a promotion. I’ll start with that one first.” Dusk said as he handed me a bone white envelope, as well as a star pin. “Archer, I hereby draft you into the Equestrian military and promote you the rank of Brigadier General.”

“Uh… Brigadier?” I asked. Admittedly I didn’t have a problem with the whole ‘draft’ part… But unless my understanding of proper military progression is flawed you don’t go straight from draftee to general.

Dusk nodded. “As far as high command is concerned that’s the equivalent rank you hold with the Northern Guard… Now as for my orders. The first one is simple.” He said as he turned around to face the group. “Under the order of the crown, I’m hereby temporarily consolidating Stellar Forces and all other personnel presently on this base into Task Force Torch. The objective of the task force is simple; we defeat Euripides using any means necessary.”

“Ok… What’s the second one?” Baxter asked.

“While the task force will answer to me, Brigadier General Archer is hereby placed in command of the task force. What she says is law, as if I gave the order myself. Do I make myself clear?” Dusk replied.

“Crystal sir.” Baxter replied, looking rather uncomfortable.

“Good…” Dusk said. “Now then General, assemble your command staff and meet me on the bridge of the Endeavor in one hour.”

Wait, he’s giving me an hour to identify junior officers? “Uh… That’s a bit of a tall order. I still need to-”

“Archer, you have plenty of fine ponies on this base that you have first-hand experience with.” Dusk said as he cut me off. “Now I trust your judgement… The question now is do you trust yours?”

***

Bridge of the Endeavor, One Hour Later
Dusk

Looking around the bridge holotable at the assembled ponies and few humans, I knew I was right to put my faith in Archer. Right off the bat she grabbed Baxter to be her right-hand, a smart choice given his decades of experience. Her father Cosmo, Constellation, Rush, Commander Tremble,Lieutenant Spark and a Sergeant Mahan rounded out her team of advisers. “You put together a good team Archer.”

“So why exactly are we here Dusk?” Baxter asked.

“I was hoping that Dawn would be here to help me, but she’s still occupied with her mother at the moment…” I admitted. “However I need to bring you all up to speed on what led us here, so the notes I have will have to do.”

“Alright, now maybe it’s because I’ve been out of the loop but who’s Dawn?”

Baxter brought up a good point… He has been out of the loop. “Well I’m sure you’ll hear about how Dart and I blew up eventually but long story short Faust screwed the two of us out of raising our daughter, and turned her into her personal assassin to boot.” The bridge went quiet once I said it. Admittedly it is some heavy stuff to toss out at free-random, but it made my point. “Now Dawn is the resident expert on Euripides and the Alicorn Imperium, which is why I wanted her here… But like I said, my notes will have to make do.”

Out of the holotable came a familiar small orb of light. “Your notes are all loaded Dusk. Whenever you’re ready.”

“Thanks Greyscale.” I said as I hit the blinking ‘ready’ button on the console, and a copy of a sketch that I had found in the Book of Faust grew out of the holotable. “Now it bears mentioning that the conflict that we’re staring at now has roots that predate even the earliest surviving records of pre-Equestrian culture. The root of our problem started with the downfall of the Alicorn Imperium, a theocratic regime of pureblood alicorns that ruled the planet centuries before the first of the pony tribes even coalesced. The conception of Celestia and Luna triggered a curse that was old even by Imperium standards, and it left the entire race infertile. Within the year anarchy was the rule of the day, and a massive civil war broke out. Faust’s notes aren’t clear on who fought on what side, but the end result was the death of nearly every Alicorn and mass destruction across the entire surface of Equis. Hell, entire landmasses were created and destroyed. What was overall a post-industrial level of society that spread across the planet was cut down to a something more equivalent to pre-stone age development. It took centuries for society to even remotely begin to grow again.”

“That… Wow.” Baxter muttered. “At least we only have to deal with one of those bastards.”

“And therein lies our problem.” I retorted. “We know next to nothing about either Euripides or his upbringing. There are a lot of blanks in the book that Faust left behind. But there was a mention-” I paused as Greyscale brought up a copy of the page in question “-of the bunker that the few Alicorns survived the fall of the Imperium in. Faust spent ten years there and gathered copies of just about every record left in the Imperium’s capital. After Euripides and the mages left, Faust and Starswirl abandoned the bunker soon after. When they left Faust collapsed the entryway to the bunker.”

“Well, I guess where we’re fighting an ancient bad guy, some archeology will probably help us solve it…” Spark observed. “Does the book have any maps or anything?”

“Even if it does, weren’t you listening?” Mahan asked. “I mean look at these notes. Ghastly Gorge, the Canterlot Mountains, Carniola, Manehattan Bay… They were all created during the fall. Imagine what landmarks were destroyed. Any maps that predated the fall would be inaccurate and unusable.”

“You’re right on the money Mahan.” I said. “So to get this treasure trove of intelligence, we’ve got some hunting to do. Now then… We’re going to need some ideas on where to start.”

“There are maps in that book, aren’t there?” Baxter asked. I nodded, but stayed quiet. “Alright. We also know which landforms were created during the fall. We could probably run some computer simulations to figure out what Equis looked like before the Imperium fell. Then we can try and match up the maps in the book with the simulations.”

Now that’s one good idea if I’ve ever heard one. “That could work… Then we’ll just need to figure out what countries we’ll have to deal with to get access to the bunker site. How long will you need?”

“If I may sir-” Greyscale interrupted. “-I’ve already run a simulation that matches up with the maps. I have the location of the old Imperium capital and bunker.”

“Well that’s great! Where is it?” Archer asked.

“That… Well, that’s the problem.” Greyscale admitted, replacing the copies of the pages with a hologram of the globe, the location of the bunker and capital marked with a red dot. “What was the Imperium capital is not only occupied, but it is in clearly unfriendly territory.”

I studied the map and finally shrugged. “Why, where is it Grey?”

The AI was quiet for a moment before finally speaking up. “The Imperium capital… Well, it’s now the Court of the Storm King.”

Author's Note

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-Striker