Author's Note

Welcome back all!

A couple of housekeeping things to mention... It's been a while. A very serious family emergency hospitalisation took a lot of my time and my mental stamina to write for the last year or so, coupled with losing my job this year (don't worry, I got another one!). As such, the finale of Loose Ends is still only around half complete. But I'm working on it! It will come! If there's one thing I hope people know about me it's that I get big projects done in the end.

But in the meantime, I thought I'd put this up here to tide you all over. I wrote this for fun a few years ago, following the backstory of Gaius and Rose, Tami's parents. It covers how they met, and the events that carried their career in space that's been so heavily referenced throughout HITB.

This is written more as a descriptive piece. Like reading a 'dramatised documentary' description of their history, rather than a perspective story as it was mostly for myself and the original game followers. But I tried to make it filled with as much interesting worldbuilding outside of just them and builds for the current story as I could. I think you may find it satisfying as a hold over until the finale is done.

Napalm Goat's wonderful 'The Impenetrable Fortress' introduced us to period pieces on the War of the Two Crowns. Now, I'd like to zoom that scope out a little more and tell its story through two pairs of eyes...

Between Two Crowns

An Orphan’s Dead End

He was born in one of the most remote systems in the Crystal League: Rosaline, a ‘dead-end’ system - one that lacked any FTL route passing through it, only one in and out. In particular, he was born on Rosaline II, long regarded as one of the forgotten worlds where few of the megacorporations had ever truly invested any of their holdings. It offered few natural resources, was too distant for efficient manufacturing, and was generally seen as a very backward and ill-educated world. Among its threadbare colonies, lack of export meant most industry was focused on local needs.

It was within one of these self-sustaining bio-habs that Gaius grew up as an orphan. The exact circumstances of his parents’ disappearance from his life remained unknown, owing to poor record keeping and rapid staff turnover by the time he was old enough to realise and ask. Employed, like most local orphans, into farming via the orphanage’s parent company that owned the greater habitat, the young griffon found himself falling in with a rebellious group in the hab-domes, made up mostly of other griffons. Pranks and petty theft were common, as was a disdain of the other groups. Yet as young males got older, and egos grew the pre-teens would compete or even fight. Caught out by his younger age compared to the others, Gaius found his place in the pecking order dropping rapidly.

Instead, he found himself being looked to by the non-griffon orphans for protection, seeing him as one outside of the ‘main’ group of delinquents and troublemakers. Lacking any real urge to go back to those tormenting him, Gaius instead acted as a ‘playground head’ for many of the ponies also present in the orphanage. Yet before this had a chance to bring him into direct conflict with his old peers, fate intervened and saw him adopted and taken away from the fields toward Rosaline II’s singular spaceport enabled city.

Gaius’ foster parents were part-owners of the planet’s ancient space elevator service, a relic of the pre-wyrm era that had somehow survived to still function, albeit barely. Notoriously unsafe (and technically illegal), its presence was simply permitted by the lack of attention shown to the little visited planet. Other than by the occasional journalist or vlogger seeking to make a record of this curious, isolated world and its single point of note in the elevator, few took notice. However, quickly after arriving into his new ‘home’, even the young griffon began to realise something was not as it ought to be. The house was far larger than any living space he had ever known, but the two ponies who had adopted him were rarely present, leaving him to a maid and a tutor. Quickly, he began to feel distant from his ‘parents’. This was further compounded when other orphans joined the home, making him one amongst a dozen. Soon enough, there was little difference between his new life and the orphanage.

He never really connected with the other ‘siblings’, leading to a return to his delinquent juvenile ways. After numerous reprimands, seen as the black sheep who couldn’t behave, the final straw came with the discovery of the ‘marketing goodwill’ concept after eavesdropping on the staff of the house. On a world with nothing, those with money were everything, and they were the only connection between this world and the greater galaxy via the orbital ports. Being seen to take in orphans was a way for them to show charity, to appear philanthropic against a jealous population, rather than to ever be truly parental. At least as far as until the children were old enough to not be as useful as a symbol. Gaius could quickly see the charity running out as his age climbed toward that of a young adult, and his personal discipline and impulse control went into a nosedive.

With his behaviour risking expulsion, Gaius upon his sixteenth birthday instead made the daring choice to simply go off on his own terms. But not on this planet, there was nothing here.

Taking an access disk from his foster father’s office and using the cover of an adopted son looking to meet him at work on the orbital platform, Gaius took the elevator for the first time. With saucer-size eyes at the passage off-world, Gaius found himself finally seeing the great vastness of the galaxy he lived in, and almost turned around on the spot at the intimidating void.

Disembarking, he found himself in a very new place, surrounded by small ships hauling cargo to and from the world. Quaint by any other world’s standards, but to him it was an unthinkable splendour.

He didn’t even bother to meet with his father before using the access disk to enter the hangar floor and stowing away on the first ship he could see departing; A PNR-01 ‘Pioneer’, the initial model of what would become a successful series in the coming decades.

It was less than a day after the ship departed that he was discovered. Attempting to sneak out of his hiding spot below the decks to acquire food during the night cycle he heard a startled gasp and turned to find a young filly across the common room, her wings across her mouth in shock...

A Dream in Freefall

By contrast, and born within the Equestrian civilization at the height of its still united power, Compass Rose grew up as the daughter of a successful couple. Owning their own logistics and shipping business, with a fleet of twenty small to medium scale cargo vessels, they made a comfortable and well educated life for her on Ursa III, close to the idyllic home planet of the galaxy’s denizens: Equestria itself.

Their business predominantly traded with the other civilizations of the galaxy, most notably the market powerhouse of the Crystal League. Rose was used to trips across the stars even by her twelfth year, usually aboard one of their fleet ships with her parents as they sought to meet and greet, or to negotiate a maintenance contract abroad in the League. She would always sit on the bridge with them, but quickly her parents noticed her staring more at the navigator’s magic hooves controlling such amazing feats of technology from one little station at the back. With such comfort as her parents provided and such interstellar splendour to see, she grew into a happy, cheerful filly with a surprisingly cheeky sense of humour.

Yet by her tenth year, she happened upon a strained argument of her parents late at night in their home. Quickly realising they were not actually angry at one another, she overheard them casting worry and bitterness over a change in law. Equestria’s mandates on the freedoms of its private companies were being steadily shut down, and their transits to the Confederacy were being threatened with closure. The ramifications of this were far from the mind of a filly, but she saw them talk with many stallions and mares in stiff suits, and felt their increasing worry.

By her pre-teens, Rose had seen their lovely home sold, and then the smaller home after that, until they were living above their own warehouse. Smart for her age, she heard the basics of how their fleet of mostly Confederate-type ships was having its parts chain to Minotaur space restricted by new laws focused on ‘improving Equestrian-raised industry’, The reduction in ship availability due to lack of spares had just cost them a long term contract. As clients left, their business began sinking rapidly, and instability created by the apparent abdication of Princess Luna only worsened matters. While the fine details went over the filly’s head, she understood well enough that her parents’ company was being strangled out of existence.

Later that year, the decision was made to leave Equestrian space. It had become unsustainable to operate from Ursa, and the family business sought to take three of its few remaining ships to the Crystal League to start anew. To enable this, the company ownership was sold out to a much larger logistics giant in the League, and her parents found themselves becoming crew aboard their own vessels.

Mere weeks after the convoy left Ursa, news of civil unrest breaking out behind them arose; mere portents of the events that would impact Rose’s life much later on.

Attending school in the League, Rose’s sweet and pleasant personality lent her an advantage to fitting into a new world, and soon she was rekindling the bright spark of her personality again, proving herself an intelligent filly. She would spend her time in a dormitory at a private school, her parents somehow finding a way to afford the best for their daughter even as they were away hauling cargo. In her holidays, she would often return to space to be with her parents on their journeys.

It was at the age of fourteen, as her parents’ ship made a small run to Rosaline III, that she got a notable shock on board. Staying up late while doing her holiday coursework, she departed her quarters to get some water, only to spot an unfamiliar blonde griffon by the fridge holding some of their food in his claws.

The voice caught in her throat before she could scream, but the terrified, desperate look on the griffon’s face stole away her urge to panic. Watching him quickly throw the food back in, she squealed and backed against the wall as he hurried up to her, the scared and out of his depth youngster begging her to not tell anyone.

Unfortunately, that one squeal was enough to reach the sixth sense of any parent. The captain’s quarters door was thrown open, and soon after the rest of the crew were up as well.

Rose could only stand with her wings across her mouth and watch as the griffon was hauled into a chair to be sternly questioned as to his presence onboard as a stowaway.

Meeting in the Stars

At first Gaius’ arrival on board the ship was a matter of confusion. The thought to turn and take him immediately home was stymied by the requirement to finish their contract. The owning corporation had been notoriously strict regarding their schedule, and Rose’s parents were well aware of the fines. Career-ending collateral hung over their heads in this new, harder life.

As such, the decision was made to take Gaius with them until they could locate a ship going the other way. After a thorough dressing down, the young griffon was given the instruction to work for his ‘passage’ in the meantime. Cleaning dishes, scrubbing bulkheads, and carrying tools and cargo among many other menial tasks.

To their surprise, his only protest was knowing he had to go back, afraid of what his foster parents might then do. The tasks themselves he undertook without anger or lethargy, even outwith that which they had required. There was a hopeful determination about him, one that left many of the small crew scratching their heads as he hurried about his business. After only two days, he had already asked for more tasks. After four, he no longer even asked before doing. Some questioned just how much he actually slept, and before long they were including him at mealtime chatter, learning about his past and his daring escape, even as he set (and later cleaned) the table for them.

Gaius, for a lack of any other option, was doing the only thing he could, no matter how far fetched it seemed.

And all the while he did, there was always a curious little filly watching the strange new addition to what she saw as her home, occasionally giggling at the jokes of his antics in the fields.

After several in-space deliveries, a week had passed before they eventually arrived at a populated planet with shuttles to various locations. It was here that Gaius was met with a true shock.

After gathering to inform him as to which ship would take him back to Rosaline and saying goodbye, the entire crew jokingly closed the cargo door ahead of him walking morosely away. Then and there, Rose’s father placed a hoof on the griffon’s shoulder, and asked him if he’d be willing to work that hard long term and stay out in space a little longer.

Gaius had no idea that when eagerly taking the captain’s hoof and accepting, ‘a little longer’ was to eventually total more than twenty years out in the black.

Family and Friends

For the next few years, Gaius would gradually integrate himself into the crew. First simply as a ship’s mate doing much as he’d done on his first voyage, but soon to learn. Lacking any direct education for space travel, he instead simply tried to learn a bit about everything. Often he would be found in the engine room or the bridge shadowing the crew, memorising what their hooves and hands did to achieve results and why. He went with the captain on deliveries, and learned to shoot, barter and treat injuries. There were no formal qualifications, but he learned fast.

It wasn’t long before he and Compass Rose became friends. Being the two youngest on board lent them a natural chemistry and her cheerfulness was never going to hold her back from getting curious about the unusual new recruit. Oftentimes on nightwatch, he would find her coming up to keep him company and to idly chatter about seemingly anything that crossed her mind. At first he just entertained her, but as they both matured, became young adults, and the two-year age gap began to mean less and less, the talks became more mutual. He would talk of his wonder to have made it out here to see such unknowns, and his luck in finding a crew like this who were beginning to feel like an adopted family. She would talk of the stars, their details, and the fun of mathematics in navigating them. The latter always went completely over his head, but he enjoyed her passion for it.

Before too long, Gaius began to learn more complex things in the bridge. At first it was how to change the autopilot, and then manual reangling. With a few years of daily exercises, he was manoeuvring the vessel on his own, and soon after committing to re-entry, landing, and takeoff. He would learn beside Rose who, during her few months at a time on board, was to her long-awaited delight being tutored on the use of the navigator’s console. She had been bothering her father for months to let her try, seeking a new outlet to learn from.

When she returned to university each year, she would always give them all a hug goodbye, until her next run back ‘home’ on the ship.

It wasn’t long before Rose’s father, with traditional paternal intuition, spotted his roguish young crewman missing his daughter’s presence in those times. While at first wary, he eventually grew to find it amusing, particularly when learning that Rose was regularly forwarding letters to the griffon on how her studies were going. In time his reservations faded away, especially when watching how much she would smile around the griffon, and how tightly she’d dive onto Gaius for a hug on returning.

For six years the pair continued to develop, sharing time together and apart on board. Gaius took a half year absent from the ship on his twenty-first year to attend and qualify his ‘on the job’ skills as an official pilot, while Rose graduated as a fully fledged navigator. With the retirement of crewmembers from both such positions on her family’s ship, they had only one natural place to go for a job. Within one year of each other, they both had finally ‘made it’ into their long-sought purposes. A life outside of nowhere. A stable life away from constant change. And people to share it with.

The Tammaran

The sixth and seventh years of Rose and Gaius’ lives together were to prove to be a period of great change, both personal, and of the world they had around them.

Within the sixth, they took a long overdue break from their working life. After graduating with qualifications, the rest of the crew granted them leave for a month at the same time. Allegedly only the pair themselves failed to spot the clear hints from the rest of the crew who had, by this point, been taking a pool on the exact timing of what they called ‘the inevitability’.

The pair, as expected, elected to share their holiday, travelling via chartered ships and short cruises from Chrysolite in the League to the Confederacy, the Periphery (including what would someday become the New Lunar Republic), Avalon, the by-now-called Solar Empire, and finally meeting up back in the Crystal League. Partially subsidised by the crew themselves as a gift, the pair travelled, experienced, laughed, and relaxed together. Whether in a picturesque hotel overlooking an otherworldly vista or huddled in the guest quarters of a not-so-glamorous ship, they journeyed far, and their bond grew immeasurably with no work to keep them focused elsewhere.

It was aboard a tour yacht in orbit around a planet with no true name yet in the Periphery, at the furthest end of the galaxy from where they met, that the crew’s predictions finally found their date and time. Watching the tidally locked planet amidst a great blue nebula and admiring the day and night below them from the clear glass bubble of an observation deck, Gaius felt Rose pull him gently into her side and look up, one of her wings stroking his blonde cheek. Smiling back to her for a long time, he finally decided not to let this embrace end so simply. His wing layered over hers to shield them in their own little private vista for a moment, and he leaned in to make it all clear.

On their return, amidst the delighted cheers of the ship’s crew (and after a traditional ‘Captain Dad’ talk to Gaius) the pair had little time to resettle. Contracts needed done, and the ship needed its newly romantic bridge-pair to fly it. It was in this time that their skills finally flourished, given the freedom and trust of one another and those on board. Gaius, the longest running crewmember outside of Rose’s direct family, eventually became a young second-in-command to Rose’s father. Here, a new natural talent surfaced. Coming from little, and having worked from the bottom, he understood those coming aboard, developing into a calm, comforting link between the crew and the captain. He began taking more responsibility, and after a collision damaged the vessel and incapacitated the captain, it was Gaius who took over to lead damage control, undoubtedly saving lives.

Yet come their seventh year, once again the undignified crunch of corporate decisions would affect Rose’s family. Their owner’s changing ‘strategy’ elected to condense its fleet assets into a series of vessels that the crew were no longer familiar with. Within months, the long-running family company was ignominiously stricken from existence, disappearing from the League counting boards and trade floors, and leaving only a dead site on lingering GalaNet signals. Its ships were auctioned off, including their home. Rose’s parents received just enough severance pay that they were able to afford a small home on Chrysolite II to retire into. They were of the age to consider doing so, after all. It was earlier than expected, but they were able to settle into some small jobs until the employee pension of the city’s corporate owner would kick in.

For Gaius and Rose though, their life in the stars was far from over. Indeed, it was little more than a beginning.

Finding themselves unable to find a ship needing both a pilot and a navigator so they could remain together, and with their accounts swollen with lump-sum redundancy wages on top of years of savings, they had one last idea. One remaining way to stay in the stars. Combining the funds they had, they approached a junkers yard in orbit above Chrysolite III, and simply picked what they could afford.

Later that day, with barely enough money to keep clothes on their backs and food in their bellies, the pair stood within the cargo bay of a Gleaner RB-Eight. Known as the ‘Shell’ due to its smooth, angular top half and somewhat less aesthetic underside it was little more than a rusted old vessel with a hundred things needing repaired.

But it was theirs. And as Gaius limped it out of the yard towards a storage dock at sublight speed, he could not deny a smile from forming.

They had no corporation owning them. No-one higher than themselves. No contracts beholding them to any particular space.

It was a risky, daring move. It cost them everything they had and put them immediately into the red, relying on this all coming off with pay to function. Their newly-hired crew would be without wages if they couldn’t repair the ship and find tasks within a month.

But it was theirs, and they chose its name as a combination of themselves to reflect that. ‘Tamm’ from Gaius, a slang reference from his homeworld for something precious, and ‘Amaran’ from Rose’s own world; an old word for space, meaning ‘escape’.

Thus, their route to freedom in their own lives became known as the Tammaran.

With only a month to fix her up, Gaius, Rose, and their four new hires did all they could. The new crew were inexperienced, young, enthusiastic, each of them also seeking a ship that was not aligned with anything greater. Mostly from the League, wanting an escape from the megacorps for one reason or another. Debt, mostly. None were older than twenty five, an unusually young crew for the time. But at last they had all they needed. A systems technician, a comm-operator, a reservist field medic, an engineer, Rose with her navigation skills, and Gaius himself with the knowledge to pilot a vessel.

But only now, after he saw five creatures looking for him to give the word to depart the system, did he realise he was now also a captain as well.

Still half complete, with only enough fuel for a single moderate journey, the Tammaran bore her crew into a magic rift, leaving the League behind them.

At almost the same time, systems away, deep in the Solar Empire, groups of thestrals and their allies cracked open smuggled crates and removed the weapons within. They watched the news of the continued crisis regarding the shutdown of the robotic armies amidst the ongoing riots and skirmishes. They looked to their leaders and received a nod. It was time.

The Tammaran had entered M-space at a time of instability and revolt.

By the time it exited again, it would be a time of open civil war across the stars.

Two Crowns

Lacking the collateral to acquire contracts in the League, the decision had been made to head for the Empire. Contracts were cheaper to acquire there with Rose’s old family contacts, needing less paperwork and more handshakes with the smaller institutions that were less affiliated with megacorps. Yet as the Tammaran burst back into realspace near a refuelling hub in the Empire system ‘Vigilance’, it ran into a scene of chaos.

Radio channels on the bridge went haywire. Masses of weapon locks on all freighters and cargo vessels in the area were being held by Imperial Warships and the distant heat signatures of weapons fired across the vacuum of space flared across all warning sensors. Even as they watched, converted merchant vessels were opening cargo doors to reveal improvised cannons and silos, launching illegally modified weapons at the resplendent vessels of Nightmare Star’s armada. Panicking, the fleet began attacking every such ship it thought may do the same, and before the Tammaran’s crew even knew what was happening, a massacre began to occur.

Unarmed and unshielded merchants were vapourised by magnetic accelerators and lumbering conveyors effortlessly caught by interceptor missiles. Revolutionary converted ships hid among them, ambushing and crippling frigates and destroyers from close range, before immediately attempting to jump into M-space.

Gaius desperately did what he could to veer the Tammaran behind the larger transports as cover as the comms-front erupted in panic, threats, death-throes, and pleads to cease fire. Rose danced her hooves over her station, trying to pull up anything she could. Any destination that was possible. Working as one, they pulled the ship to align on their route, leaping into M-space even as the lock warning rang out on the bridge. Confused, still uncertain of what was happening, the crew had to make six further emergency jumps through the Empire. At every point they were hounded by demands to stop, or mass spam across the net to join the fight. Less than an hour between arrival and departure from any given system, at the limits of what lower end ships of the time were safely capable of, they conducted a day of terrifying escape and evasions by the skin of their teeth to try and reach the Periphery. Even then, at Mothellum, patrols on emergency orders to return to imperial space began angling toward them, and the tired young crew were forced once again to expend precious fuel. Only after coming into Jhurope were they finally able to let the Tammaran’s complaining core (and engineer) rest. Sweaty, on edge and short tempered, the new crew gathered around a screen in the common room to connect to the information channels and finally catch up on what had just occurred.

What many had said was coming but which few had believed possible had erupted. An Equestrian Civil War, between those loyal to Nightmare Star and the Empire, and those aligned with Princess Luna to try and overthrow the so-called tyranny. In almost every system of Equestrian space, the population had shattered in two. Controlling the media, the Empire made clear that it remained the majority, and told of the terror strikes against them and civilian vessels. Yet all across the net, reports reflected from League and Avalon sources told of a brutal crackdown on freedom fighters seeking to end the corruption of an evil force that had taken hold of Celestia. The information war, as much as the physical one, had begun.

Left alone, isolated from friendly ports, the Tammaran’s crew tried their best to process all of this. Mostly League-born, there was some natural bias in favour of the rebellion, but they had all seen revolutionaries using merchant lanes as cover to ambush from. Was the situation really that desperate? How far would this go?

And in particular to Rose, what was becoming of her world? Her home? The area of space that, even while its laws pushed her out, she still loved for the stars and planets as they were?

Wandering away from the questions and arguments, she settled back into the great domed glass bridge, aligned the ship to look back upon the steller direction of the Empire, and simply stared.

Only when Gaius came to sit with her later did she finally stir, look up at her partner, and finally snap back to her senses. At his gentle urging, she began to plan.

They were caught in unaligned space, with a civil war between them and home. With almost no fuel, no money, and a redlined vessel.

After checking local signals, they finally found one place. One port nearby, away from the storm.

The Iron Jellyfish

Using the last dregs of their fuel reserves, Rose and Gaius brought the Tammaran to Saphibban, aiming for the one port they could find within their limited remaining range. As they slowly drifted across the system, they finally received the automated welcome ping, followed soon after by an escort of skiffs converted into gunships that brought them to within range of the station itself. A colossal series of metal rings and circular plates held in orbit above a planet’s rings, crowded by dozens of freighters, shuttles and even two cruise liners.

Joining the procession of other refugees and ships stranded by the outbreak of civil war, the Tammaran arrived at Port Medusa. Fairly new by comparison to the more established stations in the galaxy, it had become a hive for those preferring to operate in the grey area of legality. Quickly the crew questioned Gaius’ decision to dock there, citing the number of pirates operating from the port itself, ‘polite piracy’ or not. He could only tap the malfunctioning fuel gauge and remind them that they had no other choice.

And with no means to jump again, it would have to be here that they would find work.

Soon after landing, and after barely talking his way around the immediate docking fee, Gaius exited his ship with Rose at his side. The others remained to watch over their new home, as the pair moved into the chaos of the station itself. Screaming crowds lingered around comms-relay providers, wanting insurance contacts, family calls, or lawyers. Security drones buzzed relentlessly, hounding those who let fear and panic turn to violence. Gaius and Rose found themselves doggedly pursued by an older model of one such machine over the same docking fee issue, much as it had already been dealt with, until they required the assistance of a guard to get it to finally leave them alone.

Needing work to get any money they could for their dire situation, and with the shipping receptions too gridlocked to operate, they found themselves quite at an end. The civil war had crippled operations even into the Periphery with the economic backlash and closure of space lanes.

In the end, they didn’t find work.

Work found them.

After days of hapless searching and increasingly desperate attempts to waive the docking fee with no means to pay it, the pair were called to the upper level of the station’s primary hub. Flanked by security drones, Gaius and Rose were marched to a security gate, and soon after, into the station director’s office.

An ambitious, driven stallion, the director of the station demanded the pair find a means to pay, or he would claim their ship. Threatened with homelessness aboard a pirate station, they pushed for any method they could think of to pay off the mounting debt, but only one began to emerge.

In the days since the civil war began, the grey and black markets had been driven into overdrive across the sector. Refugees were looking for anyone promising a way out, Luna’s forces were seeking access to any weapons, supplies, and ships they could muster, while Solar Empire military contingents stranded on far flung worlds were trying to garner allies to help them survive amidst a rebellion. The director’s contacts, ever eager to exploit the situation, were overflowing with prospective jobs.

There, on the spot, the director gave Gaius and Rose an ultimatum. He would take ownership of the vessel, they would take jobs from him to pay off the ship’s worth and the accrued debt, and he would support their ship’s requirements until financially stable, with two clauses. One: that he would take a cut of all earnings; and two: that they would do the jobs he wanted.

Faced with little choice they agreed, already knowing in their hearts where this would take them.

The dream of personal freedom had died before it had even begun, and a journey back into harm’s way at the will of a ruthless business stallion stood ahead of them.

Profit Runners

The crew did not react well to the news, but ultimately there was a realisation that it was not the fault of anyone but fate. With the docking restriction lifted, the Tammaran began to receive its first instructions within the day, and by the following morning had already departed Port Medusa.

The first task was to become a familiar one: to use their status as a commerially unflagged, independent cargo vessel to penetrate within the Solar Empire’s borders, smuggling arms, medical supplies, and communications equipment to whichever side the director had received a contract for. Immediately, the jobs received debate and stressed the new crew’s chemistry to breaking point. Shouting matches erupted on board at bringing weapons to irregular Solar Empire forces to help them subjugate rebellion, just as much as there was about flying a server network to a group known for committing indiscriminate attacks on pro-Nightmare Star civilian locations. War profiteers from the Periphery were taking advantage of the confusion, and the Tammaran was nothing but a contractually obligated provider held in place by the threat of losing everything.

The stress of enduring on-board inspections by both the Imperial ships and roaming insurrectionists along with ending up caught in the gunfights of compromised deliveries began to take its toll. Yet as scars mounted, experience began to set in. The crew identified all the nooks and crannies of their ship to hide materiel in, or how best to spoof comm-signals to hide their real location. The ship they had hoped to use as their home became a grey entity. A neutral force beholden to the will of another.

Opinions on the war were fractured. Witnessing all sides of it like this was trying to all. They were young, impressionable and given to emotion, yet the realities of these dangerous lowlife meetings and dispassionate business calls stifled the youthful fire. There was a slight bias toward Luna’s forces, partly due to a shared sense of feeling like the underdog trying to escape their own situation, and partly due to growing intelligence from the Crystal League on the true nature of the Solar Empire’s shift toward totalitarianism behind the scenes. Some on the crew began to wonder if they were only seeing the worst of it via the director’s less-than-reputable contacts.

Yet every time the meetings came to judge their progress on their debt, there was always more. Weeks turned to months. Months turned into a year. Progress was made, but their own funds were kept locked away from them.

Through it all, Gaius absorbed the stress of his crew. Giving a pep-talk, a stern word, a forced order, or just a big hug where needed. Many times he had the option to replace some of them; the director even offered to exchange for his own experienced group, but the griffon would not allow it.

Through a year of hell, for all their flaws, he held on to those same hopeful souls that had come with him in the first place. He stayed strong for them, even if they weren’t. Yet in quiet, as he retreated to his shared cabin with Rose, he would fall to her chest, feel her forelegs wrap around his head, and himself be comforted as the tears of worry would fall.

The Stars Aflame

If this long period was to do anything, it was to harden the crew. Maturing quickly, they began to flourish and bond. Rose’s skill at navigating kept them safe, able to jump when needed, and Gaius’ leadership was coming into its own as a natural born talent to make the best use of everyone under his command. They were their own people, caught in the middle of two sides.

Yet, in the second year of the war, events would transpire to finally push them to one side of the fence.

In the initial confusion, the forces of Nightmare Star and Luna had encircled one another on a hundred worlds. There were no frontlines, no safe zones. Even Equestria itself knew the scars. But as time went on, the core worlds began to assert their dominance, pushing out the rebellion almost entirely, while some of the fringe worlds, particularly those positioned to receive clandestine aid from Avalon or the Crystal League, began to almost come under the control of those loyal to the Princess of the Night. A rough order of battle began to emerge; Luna appeared to be trying to force a stalemate - an opportunity to better develop her uncertain position. As the anniversary of the outbreak passed, millions in the Empire began to realise they were on one side or the other, whether they wanted it or not. In a strange twist of fate, refugees fled in both directions based on their choices. The Empire was harsh as they had ever been in recent years, but the rebellion brought its own brand of hardline rule under the justification of a conflict.

Backed by captured infrastructure and foreign aid, the rebellion grew until its capabilities were enough to wage war conventionally. This was seen as a dire threat to the Solar Empire. If Luna's forces could establish an organised breakaway state within the Empire's borders, they might formalise diplomatic contact with other sympathetic states like the Crystal League or Avalon. Though Nightmare Star's fleets could soundly crush the rebellion given enough time, the possibility of Avalon and the League guaranteeing this new power's independence threatened a far less certain war on three fronts.

Indeed, news soon broke of Princess Luna visiting both of those possible allies, but for whatever reason the negotiations stalled. History never knew why, often theorised to be due to League transports being shanghaied by Luna’s followers for desperately needed materials. But the negotiations did not wholly collapse, and the threat remained. Thus everyone knew that the Solar Empire would act fast before Luna could entrench and seek factional standings from other civilizations. But no-one could have dared imagine the lengths to which they would go to achieve it.

The Tammaran had spent a number of days slipping past Imperial patrols via the means of coordinated jumps from nebula to nebula. They were dangerous routes on the very fringes of charted space between systems, but with the ship packed full of rare metals, Avalonian fire control systems, and even a League hyperdrive for the rebellion’s ship conversion efforts, Gaius wasn’t taking chances. Rose had simply accepted the challenge, diving into several sleepless nights surrounded by maths and route plots with an eager grin to get off the main routes a little and explore the open space between the stars.

To their shock, upon arrival in the Empire, and after spoofing an automated identification beacon, they encountered an Imperial task force already blockading the planet hosting their buyer. Electing to come in via the other side and travel in-atmo to avoid detection, they drifted on minimal power through the debris of the planet’s most recent conflict before dropping down from orbit.

Meeting their Lunar-aligned contact amidst a bustling cliffside city, the crew made the delivery amidst frantic preparations for planetary defence. There was every sign that an orbital landing was about to take place, and Luna’s followers prepared as best they could to hold until their own fleet could arrive. Gaius and his second were accepted, seen, and quickly sent away with a notice to get away from the impending war zone as rapidly as possible.

It was as they signalled the Tammaran that they were returning and boarded a maglev transport to return to the starport that the true nature of the Empire’s attack took place. Mid-route, as the high line passed over a great lake, every display showing the planet’s news in the maglev train changed, emitting a keening tone and displaying an emergency broadcast transmission. A shaking voice informed of a colossal detonation in the atmosphere and a loss of contact with the planet’s orbital infrastructure. Warnings to reach shelter were themselves interrupted by the train’s screens shorting out, exploding in a shower of sparks on the panicking civilians. Moments later, Gaius, Rose, and the rest of the shore party were nearly blinded as the horizon toward the planet’s capital, hundreds of miles away, lit up, and an earthquake rolled through the landscape.

With a horrendous groan of tortured metal, the supports of the maglev line collapsed. Sixteen train cars fell one after the other, taking shrieking passengers with them into the water below. Taking to the air on their wings, Gaius and Rose managed to pull their crew through a broken window. Rose clutched a young hippogriff to her chest as she went, the only other trapped creature she could grab before being forced to flee. Clawing their way out, they launched into the open air, struggling and faltering under the weight of carrying multiple others. By some miracle, they managed to crash land onto the remaining strut of the railway as the trains pulled hundreds of others to their deaths below, only a handful of other winged creatures managing to get free.

In the fifteen minutes they spent there, stranded aboard a thin pole above open water with Rose holding the crying hippogriff colt to her breast, they witnessed three other searing detonations over the horizon. Eventually, the city they had just left was devastated by another strike.

Too tired to fly to land, and with no other place to go, the group of a dozen creatures could only hold one another to avoid the harsh winds and long range concussive impacts throwing them off the support. For an hour, they remained quiet. For an hour, they faced the certainty of eventual collapse.

Yet even as the metal creaked and groaned, the one ray of hope left would come to them. With a roar of turbines, the Tammaran dropped from the clouds, having been following the known route of the maglev line to look for them. Awkwardly flown by their engineer, the clumsily banking ship at least got close enough for Gaius and Rose to fly the survivors onto its cargo ramp.

Most collapsed, but the pair girded themselves and flew to the bridge. Angling up and pushing the reactor to its very limit, Gaius set them away from the planet. Warnings flared as further impacts took place within the flight route, forcing him to redirect to avoid the monumental forces pulled down from the atmosphere as hypersonic projectiles surged past them. A fire broke out in the engine room as he kept the afterburners on for far longer than was safe. Eventually, the safety of the black melted around them as the Tammaran erupted into the void and powered into a high orbit, before finally dialling back.

Only then could they take stock and realise what had happened.

The Empire, desperate to quell Luna’s growing force, had unleashed their so-called ‘deterrence arsenal’. The fleet they had seen carried not an invasion force, but weapons of mass destruction. Twelve mass-reactive kinetic warheads had rained from orbit to the largest centres of infrastructure across the planet, most centred on one continent. Even now, they could see the bright lights upon the surface. The comms-channel was alive with noise, drowning in thousands of distress calls; the buffer was only able to accept some at a time, resulting in it playing three or four overlapping messages at once as signals fought for prominence. Screamed orders, pained shrieks, desperate begging for someone to come, and unnatural dead static cut over one another. A planet, as one, cried out for help and the crew could do nothing but drift and listen.

Still reeling from the shock of their own narrow escape, they witnessed millions of lives ended in but a few hours. And just as they were at their most vulnerable, the reports began to filter in. This was not an isolated incident. Crystal League and Avalon outlets reported the same escalation at five other planets, all core bastions of Luna’s rebellion. On top of that, smaller tactical level weapons of the same mass destructive class being used were crowding reports, confusing the information as to just how much had been unleashed or not.

Even before the Solar Empire confirmed the ‘limited’ use of ‘clean, non-radioactive surgical strikes’, there was not a soul in the galaxy who did not have their eyes glued to the largest devastation unleashed since the conflict that had brought on the Dark Age. The game had changed, and in less than a week, what had been a developing conventional war became a desperate struggle for survival.

In the shadow of a burning planet, listening to the horrified pleas for mercy, something changed for the crew of the Tammaran. None of them vocalised it at first as they limped their way back to the Periphery, but they could all see the look on Rose’s face. Even through the tears, a steely, determined visage had come over the normally bubbly pegasus. The one who had been, due to her birthplace, the most torn had made up her mind; and not even their captain needed to give the order for them to know where their jobs would be focused from now on.

And as they carried the survivors of the planet with them to safety, none of them would have disagreed for even a moment.

The Choice

Upon returning to Port Medusa Gaius finally tore himself from his distraught partner’s side, bore a grim look, and marched his way to the administration level. Scuffling with the griffon on duty, a newly started young security attendant, he forced his way past the waiting list into the director’s office, heedless of the numerous rifles that the bodyguards within pointed his way. With a sharp reprimand from the director himself, they held fire; the ruthless businesspony saw the fire in the young captain’s eyes, even as the two griffons separated.

There, staring down the pony that had set their lives down this path, Gaius made a declaration to him. That he’d pay off his dues. He’d still work. He’d do all the efforts he’d been doing thus far. But he’d be damned if he ever did another job that would support the Solar Empire.

After a few tense moments, the uneasy silence was broken by a great grin across the director’s face. A slow clap of hooves followed, as the master of Port Medusa indicated Gaius to his advisors, and remarked upon ‘someone who finally has the balls to show a little passion here.’

He slid his console around and showed the impetuous griffon that he could more than accommodate this ‘adjustment of contract’ for someone clearly so eager to take on such danger.

Gaius felt the red-mist dissipate just enough to turn his eyes from the smirking pony’s face to scan the display, and realised what he meant. Even in the days it had taken to get back, hundreds of requests for aid had flagged up from contacts Gaius knew were associated with Princess Luna. Backed into a corner, suddenly fighting for their lives against an enemy they couldn’t hope to outshoot, they were turning to desperate measures. Both on the offense, and to prepare for the worst.

If Gaius wanted to work for only one side, the director declared, then he was more than free to throw himself into the fire for the jobs that other captains wouldn’t dare touch.

If the director had expected this to curb Gaius’ errant choice, then he would have been wrong. The griffon only nodded and asked for the first available task to be forwarded to his ship, before departing on the spot.

Through the ether, information rushed ahead of the captain to the Tammaran. On the bridge, holding a crying, scared, and suddenly orphaned and homeless young hippogriff in her forelegs to rock and hush, Compass Rose saw the main console light up and the details emerge.

She scrolled through it with a wingtip, reading the details, and felt her heart settle on knowing Gaius had chosen the path she had wanted for them.

The Empire was already marching now that the weapons of terror had shattered their enemy. Luna’s command structure was in tatters, isolated and unable to coordinate a mass retreat from world after world in the face of such indiscriminate power. The rapid flight to the fringes of the Empire had left several important ponies and assets behind. Things that known ships of the rebellion couldn’t reach.

But not for the ‘grey fleet’, as they had been coined. Ships like the Tammaran, still capable of flying within the Solar Empire somewhat freely.

Somewhere in there, one of Luna’s advisors and his family needed rescuing from a conquered world, and they had just been handed the location to go and make it happen.

Holding the hippogriff’s hand, Rose cantered out of the bridge and hailed the crew to her, displaying the authoritative voice that was so often underestimated by those around her. Smiling, feeling a little sense of good creep into her weary heart, she directed them to make ready to leave.

When Gaius returned to the hangar floor, he found his ship and his crew needing little more than him to take the helm, and his partner completing her ordering them around. He took a few moments to watch her, letting his fury fade. And as he witnessed that strength in her rekindled of her own accord, and saw that cheeky, adventurous look as she turned to his bewildered face with a look of ‘well, you coming?’, he made a solid decision about her.

He knew then and there that he was going to ask that pegasus to marry him someday.

Night Runners

Bolstered by their year of tense smuggling runs, the Tammaran’s crew quickly took to the change in roles, and soon the tasks were arriving faster than Port Medusa could keep up with in its limited availability of ships. The Tammaran began flying deep within the Empire, moving with authorised trade lanes on false documents, or taking unusual FTL approaches on the very fringes of the connection routes to evade notice. Quickly, they became adept at their signature manoeuvre. Provided with details on Solar Empire wake-detection systems, they began jumping outside of systems and allowing the ship to drift on minimal power past the detection grid, until well within the normally classified ‘clutter zones’.

The technique, pioneered by a member of the crew, proved effective - if slow. The Tammaran rescued two separate high ranking rebel officers in this manner over the course of the first four months. Eventually, however, one of the so called ‘night runners’ aiding Luna, another ship from Port Medusa, was caught and its crew imprisoned while attempting the same. Within weeks of that event, adjustments to Empire sensors rendered the shared technique worthless. The captured crew, and the fate that had befallen them for such private information to be given up, remained forever unknown.

Instead, Gaius and Rose plotted with their crew to devise new tricks. It was a game of cat and mouse of competing imagination between rogues and empire. More than once, they hid their vessel inside a paid-off mass conveyor, until searches of holds became common. Thereafter, they attained an illegal wake-spoofer, that - at range - made them look like a small Empire frigate to most sensors. It lasted a month before one rushed chase and a few scars on the hull made it clear that the Empire knew about that method too.

But with every dangerous outing, and every miraculous survival, they were bringing what was needed to Luna’s forces. Be it returning the lost survivors of the WMD strikes, pouncing on known isolated Empire transports for a generally bloodless bit of ‘robbing the rich’ via trickery and bluffs, or carrying physical assets from planet to planet under the noses of the Empire.

For another year, the Tammaran seemed blessed by luck. The identifications on it never quite stuck, and its crew remained mostly unseen. As far as the Empire knew, they were a regular transport commonly seen in their space. Slightly suspicious, but one amongst a thousand such on the record, and commonly overlooked as ‘not worth the time’.

Throughout these, their morale bolstered by the sense of doing good for a side they now fervently believed in, the crew began to bond. In particular, the young hippogriff they had picked up became a regular on board. Known as Aileron, he -despite being new to space- displayed a strong demeanour to push past the horror of the past year. Gaius knew what it felt like to leave home like that, and was adamantly against abandoning the youngster to Port Medusa’s mercies. Simply as a ‘mascot’ or not, he joined the crew, and eventually began to follow Gaius’ teachings, much in the same way as the griffon had done under Rose’s father years before.

But there was only so long the Tammaran could remain untouched. The work was fraught with danger, and while they all knew it, the point at which the Empire would eventually catch up to their presence was not far off.

Faced with the now called ‘War of Two Crowns’ (a name not officially recognised by the Solar Empire, who repeatedly stated that it was an ‘ongoing terrorist situation’) changing once again to a less conventional field of battle, the Empire similarly adapted. Guerilla warfare across the stars brought the importance of field agents back to the fore, and a game of shadows spread far beyond the borders of the war itself. The League, Avalon, and even the Confederacy and Zebraha found their lands bearing the passage of ‘Solar Agents’ seeking to root out sources of support for Luna.

The Periphery was no different, and they had long since suspected Port Medusa. Indeed, they knew well it was conducting such operations, but could ill afford the brute force necessary to wipe it out in the middle of a war, especially given the not insubstantial loose affiliation of pirates protecting it. Instead, they sent a much more subtle approach.

Over the next four months, the Tammaran’s excursions to and from the Periphery began to get mysteriously more difficult. Patrols began moving around their lesser known routes, and two out of the six jobs undertaken resulted in on-site ambush. In the last one, to deliver a veteran Lunar Operative back into the Empire, Gaius barely escaped with his life. He and the operative had disembarked to meet their contact, only for the contact to draw a pistol and murder the operative the moment their backs were turned. Shot in the leg and wing, Gaius was able to hurl himself through a window to escape the betrayal. Under fire, he was pulled back into the Tammaran by a remarkably courageous Aileron.

It was to mark the first instance of a dire reality. From that point on, every mission became an exercise in paranoia with double agents, turncoats, and information warfare seeking to curb the ‘grey fleet’ in their work.

Within a single day, three ships from Port Medusa simply vanished, never arriving or returning after entering M-space. A week later, the director’s staff found a sabotaged line of code within the station’s FTL database, the same one those ships had uploaded their preset jump coordinates from. Tracing its origin, the director shared a file with Compass Rose: an intercepted, decrypted transmission made from the station, one that explicitly named those three ships and the Tammaran as having been targeted for the sabotage. Only Rose’s personal pride of writing her own calculations rather than using station presets had averted disaster. Yet with it, the confirmation was clear. Not just the Empire, but a specific individual, was targeting them.

Efforts were undertaken to mask their activities. Taking on purposefully mundane tasks and then diverting after undocking became the go-to method to disguise their intent. A three month stretch of deliveries to the Confederacy was offered simply to break off the suspicion, but shortly into the second month a dire cry for Avalon medical supplies in the aftermath of yet another ‘tactical’ strike from a weapon of mass destruction drew them back in.

And with that opportunity, a patient watcher made her move.

Emerging into the ruins that had once been a secretive asteroid base, converted from an old mining colony for one of Luna’s three remaining major fleets, Gaius flew the Tammaran into the line of Empire ‘charity transports’ allegedly bringing relief supplies to the civilians and prisoners of war involved. In truth, their ‘medical scans’ were also a cover for identifying known rebels should any of them seek their help. The front face of the station had been devastated, a sudden retaliation strike in vengeance for a widely controversial act by the Lunar Fleet. A week before, a civilian ship broadcasting distress signals had wandered toward an imperial shipyard before detonating a nuclear warhead on its own unstable reactor. Six thousand naval personnel and yard workers had been killed, itself a revenge strike for an earlier planetary bombardment.

The mass accelerator attack on the supposedly hidden Lunar base here was revenge in turn.

Landing within one of the few areas still possessing an artificial atmosphere, the crew began to offload to their contact, sneaking the materials past the ‘charity workers’ to the individuals who couldn’t dare submit to such aid. Within a hidden mining compartment of the asteroid, they found dozens of ponies bearing radiation burns and horrendous crush wounds. Their on board medic did what he could, joining the field team to distribute aid. Gaius and Rose instead took a moment to the side to discuss what to do next, standing watching the shattered wreckage of the Lunar Fleet drifting by after the impact.

The first shot hit Rose from above. Punching down, narrowly avoiding her skull from a lucky step forward, the searing laser scythed down the side of her torso. The moment of shock from Gaius as he saw his partner’s mouth open, and felt her slip away from him allowed the second to spear through his shoulder. Falling away, the follow up intended for his head hit the metal decking of the crude facility.

Dropping down from the ceiling, magnetic hooves disabling, a slender unicorn in an infiltrator’s bodysuit danced away from his desperate, almost blind shots. Gaius had always been a fast draw, but the acrobatic speed of the assailant seemed to blur around the hasty return and a snapping point of a hoof, its magnetic gauntlet active again, tore the pistol from his claws entirely.

The gunfire set the area into a panic. The injured screamed for help, and the two rebel guards who came running found a hidden mine detonating right beside them. Pushing through the distraction of the concussive wave, Gaius threw his heavier bulk toward the attacker, even as another laser cut through his side. Falling on them as much as tackling, a desperate struggle for the weapon ended only as hooves wickedly targeted the laser burns, making him gasp and fall away in agony.

The suit their enemy wore was blurry and shifting in colour to match the ambience around it, an emotionless, tinted bubble of polymer glass surrounding the head that tilted toward him. The laser pistol again rose toward him, cold and simple.

In a burst of fire, that bubble shattered.

Rose, crawling on the floor, opened fire a second time, driving the attacker away with one of the dead guards' rifles. Darting, bouncing and galloping down the thin corridor, their assailant made to escape. Through the broken helmet, they briefly glimpsed a gold-coated mare with a hard, focused expression.

The remainder of the guards arrived, along with sentry drones who began to chase the infiltrator. Terribly injured, both Gaius and Rose could only submit themselves to using the same supplies they had brought. Hastened back to their ship, they conducted an emergency jump from within the reaches of the asteroid’s small field even as Empire ships began to reorient, warned by whoever it was that had attacked them.

As they held one another in the aftermath aboard their ship, they were forced to accept yet another confirmation that they were no longer an unseen success.

Now, they were being hunted.

The Bright Dawn

From that day, as the war moved into mid-2014, there was a steady decline in hope.

The Grey Fleet was being reduced in number. ‘Accidents’ and betrayals on arrival were killing crews that both Gaius and Rose had regarded as friends and allies as their hidden assailant tortured the Grey Fleet’s resolve. Twice more, Gaius and Rose encountered the same operative, a mare with an uncanny talent for stealth and disguise. Both times, it led to desperate conflict and ever more threadbare escapes. Port Medusa itself had gone into a state of near martial law, as its increasingly paranoid director feared a direct clandestine attack from within.

Even as the director’s opinion of Gaius grew, and eventually so much so that he freed the Tammaran from its debt in trust that its crew would continue to support Luna out of ideal alone, Port Medusa’s approach to the war under his authority began to change. The Empire’s actions were furthering his favour of Luna, and his neutrality began to become suspect. Skirmishes between Medusa-aligned pirates and the Solar Empire's own equivalent of the Grey Fleet took place all over the Periphery. Clear lines of allegiance began to break down in the frontiers beyond the frontline itself. Despite the Director’s turn of opinion toward Luna, Compass Rose was troubled by the thought of it after witnessing the brutal actions of some of the “pro-Luna” contacts he was making. Chief among them was the Bright Dawn, a group in favour of attempting to put an end to Nightmare Star, began using tactics designed to spread terror or strike at soft civilian areas in the very core worlds.

Despite the princess of the night's public disavowal of the Bright Dawn, the damage was being done. In the wake of each attack, fresh rumours and speculation cast doubt on her sincerity. The Empire's media behemoth had all the fuel it needed for an effective propaganda campaign. Within a few months, support for war bonds, recruitment levels, and willingness to inform on ‘seditious activity’ exploded, as imperial citizens who had thought themselves safe from the fighting now felt threatened.

With much of their public support being compromised under a wave of misinformation, Luna’s forces faced yet tighter conditions, with many beginning to think that the miracle they’d hoped for to recover from their crushing ousting over a year ago simply could not exist if this kept up. As attacks mounted with increasingly sadistic methods, the Bright Dawn’s approach was crippling the rebels’ presented role as the victims in the war.

Arguing with the director until he was red in the face, Gaius finally managed to convince the station’s master to grant a mission. One deep into the core worlds, to try and convince the leader of the Bright Dawn to stave off their attacks. The director would not give up his existing contracts, but offered deeper, more public ones if Bright Dawn cleaned up their act. He only sought the profit in the end, and saw the meeting as too risky, but if Gaius wanted to undertake the danger to take that offer to them in the core worlds that was his choice. He was, after all, now a ‘free captain’, able to make his own decisions.

Armed with the location of the Bright Dawn’s leader on the same planet were Rose had been born, the Tammaran began its deepest, most dangerous infiltration of the Empire yet. Disguised as a different vessel, with upgrades even to change the flare of its engines in colour and length, and non-functional scrap to present itself as a different variant of the hull, they made their slow, week-long journey. At the very least, they hoped, such a journey would throw off their perpetual rival. No-one would expect them to be heading this deep, after all.

Returning to the comparatively untouched worlds, Rose insisted on accompanying the task, her nature and childhood memories giving her a method to blend in. Passing through contact after contact, and more than a couple hasty relocations at night to dodge authorities, they eventually were granted audience under the guise of bringing plans for furthering the Bright Dawn’s aim. They agreed to a one week time of visit, for the group refused to permit such an obvious entrance and exit within the same day.

Sitting upon rugs in a muggy basement below a desert region’s shanty town, the pair waited for their talk. Gaius had rehearsed it in his head; he had multiple contacts with Luna’s forces he could offer to let them find a better route. He could promise them passage aboard the Tammaran back to the fringes.

As soon as he saw the leader arrive, he felt all those hopes fade away. For he and the leader recognised one another immediately. A golden-coated mare arrived in the basement, smiled in surprise, and then immediately ordered them taken prisoner.

Two Betrayals

The Bright Dawn, despite their brutal methods, were genuine in their goal to depose Nightmare Star. However, as early as their initial formation they were already known to the imperial intelligence agency. An agent of the Empire was quietly inserted into the group, and quickly rose to lead it altogether. The Bright Dawn, for all intents and purposes, had unwittingly served Nightmare Star from the beginning.

This same agent was implanted to Port Medusa to foster support from the director, and to create the infrastructure needed to sabotage flights that might aid the rebels and encourage those helping the Bright Dawn carry out their attacks. Each ‘accident’ carefully orchestrated and passed along to imperial command. Every ‘near miss’ was planned. Every ‘assassination’ was to further some internal goal of those deemed expendable. The Bright Dawn themselves had no idea of their genuine purpose, believing themselves saviours even as their work ultimately played to the long term goal of discrediting the Princess-in-exile in the eyes of the public.

Holding responsibility for both leading the Bright Dawn and crippling the Grey Fleet, the same operative found her luck delivering her long sought rivals in the stars right to her. Playing her role, she had them held underground, and left the Bright Dawn to interrogate the two 'imperial agents' for information, knowing all too well that it would result in two of those she wanted gone losing their lives.

Now realising the truth, Gaius and Rose did their best to inform the Bright Dawn of the betrayal at play here, but the members were fanatical and stubborn, and not given much to listening to an alternative narrative.

Days passed. A slow, horror-filled time of stress positions, scorching sunlight, and repeated barrages of shouted questions and threats. Into the second week, it became apparent that the excitable faction was about to begin more torturous methods to find the answers that neither griffon nor pegasus could give them.

Yet even as they tore Gaius away from a furiously kicking Rose, threw a bag over his head and began opening the cellar, the sound of fusion engines split the air. Intuiting what was to happen, Gaius threw himself flat on the ground.

The Tammaran raced above, its nozzles angled down, sending a surge of engine power across the village. It tore down buildings, blew Bright Dawn guards from their hooves, and sent pegasi crashing into the ground. Piloted by the still in learning Aileron, the crew that Gaius had never given up on, now never gave up on him. They had searched, wrangled, risked, and fought to find the Bright Dawn of their own accord, aided by the director himself, and brought those who had lost their own ships. The refugees of other vessels hit by the operative. Even those not given to combat had come armed, and a furious firefight ensued as they struggled to find time to land and bring the battered and confused captain and navigator back aboard.

Even as they freed Gaius, a savage burst of laser fire cut down two of Gaius’ original crew even as they just released his bonds. Gaius threw himself to the side as the operative dropped down to finish the job, laser SMG spraying fire and chasing his panicked, desperate rolling to find cover.

Coming to his senses and finally glancing out, he watched in horror as the two injured crew members were executed before his eyes by a casual spray of fire at the hooves of the solar agent.

Bellowing in anger he threw himself at the golden mare, his larger bulk letting him knock the SMG from her hooves, yet her savagely skilled martial ability struck back in excess of her smaller size. Shrieking in pain as she caught, twisted, and broke his wrist, Gaius felt his arm bent around, hooked around a hindleg, the elbow joint exposed.

And then, seconds before a horror could unfold, Rose was there as always.

Having freed herself from the basement at the outbreak of trouble, she came flying off the roof of the building, cannonballing into the operative. Through Rose was no brawler, it gave Gaius a chance. A chance to get up and join his marefriend. As the sand whirled, engines roared, gunfire erupted around them, Gaius and Rose fought tooth and claw. Injured, weary, only the presence of both of them gave them any hope. The operative was fast and merciless, sinking a deployable knife into Rose’s side before Gaius could grab the pony’s fetlock and hurl the agent through a hut’s wooden wall. They rolled and scuffled. She attacked his wrist, he resorted even to using his beak to force her onto the defensive. It was all he could do to keep it uncoordinated. Keep it brutal. Remove her chance to be skillful and agile.

He heard the shouted command to move, before a clay pot collapsed over the agent’s head. Rose collapsed even after throwing it, giving Gaius one more chance to throw a mighty, vengeance-fueled punch to break the agent’s nose. Tackling her, the pair came out the other side of the hut and nearly on to the Tammaran’s entrance ramp itself as Aileron finally got her down. Separating, and hearing Gaius’ crew returning to the ship after sight of him and Rose near it, the agent threw a flare to the ground. Its mighty bang blinded them all, and by the time they had recovered their senses she was gone.

Pulling their dead with them, a relieved yet sorrowful crew boarded the Tammaran and finally departed.

A sombre mood reigned on board the Tammaran. Gaius, his wrist splinted for now, stood over the body bags and, for the first time for many aboard to witness, wept. Two of the four who had followed him since buying the ship were now gone.

By his measure he had failed to protect them, and worse, they had lost their lives coming to rescue him.

Compass Rose’s perspective differed; owing to her raising in Equestrian space, she saw the truth: that this was what friendship could mean, and that neither of them would regret it, because they knew he would have done the same.

Despite her gentle squeeze, he still elected to be alone with the bags ahead of their launching them into space. Closing off the cargo hold, he stood a silent vigil of memory as they left the planet.

And it was during that last watch for his crew that the agent dropped from the dark supports in the ceiling.

Crashing down upon him, fury in her eyes at his crew’s having beheaded the Bright Dawn’s headquarters and ruined years of work, she dropped him to the ground, smashing her hoof over and over into his face, kneeling on his broken wrist. Shrieking in pain, writhing to get the shockingly strong mare off of him, Gaius could at best only push up and then throw himself away.

Pain snapped through his back as she grabbed a heavy crowbar and brought it down upon him. He fell away, and away, his cries of pain unheard by the remainder of the crew. He had sealed the hold for privacy, and now found himself alone with the rival who had hunted them for years.

Every time she struck, he backed away, unable to fight any more, until his back was to the wall.

He caught her eye and saw the first true expression besides anger and disciplined intelligence. Satisfaction. She told him of how they had placed a black mark on her record. Of how they had evaded her. Through luck or trickery. If only to her pride, it had become personal.

The crowbar slammed into the metal wall behind him as Gaius tried his best to dodge, ducking and weaving. Finally, he threw himself haphazardly away from her, feeling the crowbar impact a wing as he went. Rolling across the floor, he reached up and struck the one thing he could think of: the override command for the main cargo door.

A blaring alarm was met by a bang of displaced air. Gaius was blown toward the main doors, his one good arm hooked around an emergency handle.

The agent had no such warning. Grabbing onto his wing, she howled and clambered as Gaius struck with his hindlegs again and again. With no air still enough to breathe, and the effects of the void seconds away from overtaking the cargo hold, he made one last strike, and caught the agent’s broken nose dead on.

His last sight of her was the look of bewilderment. Of disbelief as she was blown away, knocked off the descending ramp and out into the black itself, to be with the two bodies that had been ejected, the last remnants of that personal war sent out together. Two for peace, and one to end.

Holding on for dear life, Gaius knew he couldn’t reach the button again. If all he had done was save the rest of his crew, it would be enough. Yet even as he held on, and held on, and felt the unnatural sense of a death approaching, the cargo door closed again. To his relief, the ship hissed as it began to repressurise.

Alerted by the sudden depressurisation of the hold, Rose and the crew rushed back to him.

And this time, there was more than just Rose holding him, as he lay amongst them all, held them all, and told them that finally, finally their hunter was gone.

The Sun Rises, The Moon Falls

It was a great personal victory for them. Taking a month to rest and recover from their ordeal, the crew remained in the Periphery, shipping goods to relay stations for the war effort and staying away from the Empire. Gaius took longer to recover than most. It wasn’t just the physical damage; often Rose would come across him sitting morosely with his thoughts resting on the crew members he had now lost along the way. It would take time for him to finally accept their choice, feeling the responsibility rest heavy on his still very young shoulders.

But if it seemed like a relief to them, for Luna and the greater war, it was not to be the case.

Gaius and Rose had actually been sharing a relationship anniversary dinner when the news broke across private channels. Having settled into a new station to further distance themselves from the repetition of the previous routes, a deep Periphery waypoint outpost titled as the ‘Huss Shelter’, they had laid low. Yet even here, on the surface of a moon far from the common routes, news reached every single screen around them.

The Solar Empire had once again unleashed a series of mass destruction attacks. The third such wave in two years, and by far the largest. Each time before it had been used to break up any regrouping elements of Luna’s -by this point purely guerilla- forces. Only now, it had broken the back of her efforts by targeting even rumoured locations. Civilian targets were repeatedly hit over the most tenuous of justifications, and even those who had been reluctant to take a side found their consciences challenged.

It had taken multiple years, but the Empire’s greater resources, stronger communication networks, and rigid discipline had allowed it to organise and carry out a simultaneous assault on the last remaining strongholds with merciless attacks. On every front, Luna’s followers were in full retreat. Entire fighting arms were being encircled and cut down. One of the remaining greater fleets was wiped out by a cunning trap, exiting M-space to find a fusion-charge minefield waiting for it. Planetary assault forces rained from the sky to breach the last stands that were being undertaken across the Empire.

Outnumbered many times, the believers in the Night Princess were scattered, broken, and rounded up for mass capture. Nightmare Star had signed the decree of mass ‘recollection’. In effect, an order to intern en masse those who had supported her ‘fallen to evil’ sister. Columns of prisoners young and old, the populations of entire settlements who had 'supported' the rebellion simply by existing in proximity, were marched to disarmingly elegant ships. Prisoners of war were held in their thousands in cargo holds. Stories of mistreatment abounded. Hunter-killer teams stormed through burning habs, dragging out those trying to hide and putting down resistance.

The galaxy at large, even those who had criticised Luna’s methods at times, looked on in horror.

In the wake of the free use of WMDs, and with every possible plan being found untenable, Princess Luna within a week took to the air in a rare appearance to declare an open admission of failure. A soft spoken alicorn by this point, weariness clearly gripped her character, held together by a stern passion. In an emotional speech, she spoke of how her goals to curb Equestria’s fall into tyranny were, after so long and so much sacrifice, now ultimately beyond her grasp.

At length, she told of Equestrian history. Of the Elements of Harmony and their meaning. Of the first days, of her own redemption after a thousand years. Open, frank, and vulnerable, she spoke of the last decade and its decline, and promised all of those that believed in her, that if it took another thousand years, she would continue to believe in what their people had once stood for. In the tone of old, conducting a majestic series of evocative memories to times long lost, she gave context to the history of all peoples’ place in the stars. And yet noted that for now, the battle was lost.

Instead, she unveiled a new aim. An aim to preserve life. She tasked every available vessel that remained loyal to her to take who they could, and to evacuate ‘Equestrian’ space entirely into the Crystal League, Avalon, or if they had no other choice, the Periphery.

To the end of the pivotal, historical speech, Princess Luna of the Moon and the Night made an appeal. A direct request to ‘any who bear the means to traverse our stars’ to consider the travesty unfolding now. Footage of the mass captures, predominantly batponies, was spliced in, along with that of planets burning under orbital bombardment. Billions would need to be rescued from such a fate. It would be the largest migration of souls ever undertaken.

In a pleading, humble tone, she asked any who would come to their aid to do so, and to show the true spirit of Equestria that she still believed in.

In years to come, the video would be the most viewed piece of footage in the history of the galaxy. Debates, studies, and controversies would reign over its content, its wordings, and Luna’s body language. It would be re-edited many times for propaganda until its true form became impossible to prove and would be banned in the core worlds of the Empire. But at that moment, it broadcast in its original form to those lucky enough to see it and be able to tell future generations that ‘I was there to lay witness’.

Generations of ponies were trapped in the Empire, Luna’s fleets unable to evacuate them all. There simply was not the space, nor even the infrastructure at times. Many were cut off entirely.

Yet within twenty four hours of that broadcast, after the call had gone out, border stations of the Empire casting their sensors into deep space began to detect a most unusual signature. A great disturbance in M-space. They reported it and were called delusional by their superiors. The numbers to create that sort of disturbance were impossible.

As it turned out, the numbers were very correct.

All across the Solar Empire, from every possible direction, rifts to M-space tore open and a legion of ships began to pour forth in the tens of thousands. Small shuttles and sports vessels flew beside bulky cruise liners and kilometre long mass conveyors. Contracted pirate vessels, rented ships from distant families, rogue traders from other nations, the scattered remnants of the Lunar Fleet, and every kind soul who felt a stir to action descended upon the Empire’s borders. Caught so unaware by the enormous rush of mostly unarmed vessels, the Solar Fleet held fire. Orders were given, but many ship captains denied them. Others had outbreaks of mutiny by officers who had had enough of the massacre.

For those planetside who had lost hope, hope now came to them, as ships to number the stars in their sky came to their aid.

And among the first wave, running her engines to the limit to penetrate deep into the Empire as it always had, was the Tammaran.

The Railroad to Hope

The effort captured the imagination of the galaxy, and for months it felt like all the news could talk about was the innumerable stories taking place of daring rescues, controversial attacks by imperial vessels, and heartfelt stories of families finding one another in the refugee zones. The Tammaran stuck to its job, taking information from their contacts among Luna’s remaining followers. They used the cover of the mass relocation to extract resistance leaders, popular figures, and even some captured agents or crewmen. They teamed up, or worked alone. They would land planetside via illegal means, board space stations, or hijack imperial vessels. There was little pay, for the infrastructure to make such contracts was long gone to the Periphery, but this was no longer about a job.

Eventually, a month after the beginning, a destination was found and broadcast to all. A system at the far end of the galaxy from Equestria. Unclaimed, hidden behind a startlingly blue nebula. It was decreed by Luna that this was where they would make their home, and that it would bear a new name: Hope.

All evacuees were to be taken there and distributed to planets to which she had already sent her remaining colony ships. It became a saying. Pick up those who needed to evade the Empire, and give them ‘Hope’. In between the dangerous deep-work missions, the Tammaran would land in the fringe systems and pick up sometimes dozens of distraught civilians to take with her all the way to Hope. Some became new crew, helping keep the ship running as months of constant work passed.

Eventually, as the ferrying began in earnest, the Empire took further steps to block their progress by interdicting or searching ships, and the Tammaran was caught behind the lines with a hundred other vessels. The Solar Fleet moved in with more vicious orders to engage. Their ‘easy grabs’ in areas Luna’s ships couldn’t reach had run dry, and they needed new successes to avoid being seen as complacent. They moved in and cornered the evacuation ships near the League border.

In one of the greatest and most hotly debated moves of the war, a military scale coordinated jump emerged from a third party. The Corporate Fleets of the Crystal League jumped into imperial space to form a cordon around the rescue vessels, declaring a moral emergency to preserve life as their justification to intervene. No shots were exchanged, but the incident would mark the beginning of a new distrust between the navies of both nations.

Eventually, the Tammaran became one of the fewer ships that continued to ferry even after the Empire began locking down systems more firmly. Over the course of the last year of the war, Gaius and Rose’s crew saved over two thousand ponies and other species to bring to Hope and the forming New Lunar Republic. Many of these were brought from active warzones after days of searching.

They were hunted still, they fought their battles, they had their tragedies and their setbacks, but as the war wound down, so too did they. The last few excursions were truly dangerous, including a twenty-system chase by an Empire frigate from Mothellum all the way to the NLR, with several diversions to get around long range patrols. It was during this pursuit that, stuck planetside and veering around atmospheric buildings of a long abandoned colony to avoid a target lock, they were ambushed. In orbit there was enough of a blockade that they could not escape, and a series of jump-limiter units had been deployed, covering all of empty space in navigation-scrambling electronic interference. Such units made it impossible for a civilian ship to jump into or out of the system safely. The Tammaran and its passengers, some of the last families from the Empire, were stuck.

It was an absolute trap, like a little slice of imperial space out in the Periphery, too far from the NLR to receive help.

Scanning the starmap as he heaved the weighty vessel around, Gaius overheard one plan. In their truest traditions, it was an impossible one, one he barely even believed he had heard right. Rose claimed that if she could pull off an in-atmo jump calculation to get them off-world with a miniature FTL ‘hop’, and nail the exit close enough to the system’s star, it might shield them from the signals of the limiters. On hearing it Gaius, lacking further options, told her she could try. He flippantly added that if she pulled such an impossible thing off, he’d be so impressed that he’d ask her to marry him on the spot.

After a moment of disbelief, she only shot back with her trademark daring smirk. Hooves dancing, her tongue poking out the side of her mouth, she began to put her masterwork together, a work that sent the Tammaran tearing off-world in the depths of M-space, a jump location the vessel had never even been designed to handle.

Less than a minute later, they erupted back into space in the blue glow of a sun, casting the entire bridge, and Gaius’s disbelieving stare in its hue. A few seconds later, he felt her lean both her forelegs on his shoulder and turned to see Rose waggle her eyebrows at him.

Her impossible jump, as she would come to call it.

It was in that glow of the sun that they held one another, as Gaius stayed true to the bet. He revealed the ring he’d been holding for months now in a shaking hand, and asked her.

Her post-chase adrenaline-fuelled grab of his head into a passionate kiss seemed a fitting non-verbal reply.

Later that week, after Gaius and Rose escaped the noose once more, the newly engaged couple settled on Hope to deliver their rescues.

It was while there that they were thanked in person by high delegates, told of their tracked numbers, and were given the chance to meet many of those they had pulled across the galaxy to safety. It was a moment neither would forget. Being hugged by so many, and thanked over and over again even as they held each other, hand in hoof.

As the evacuation drew to a close, Gaius looked over across the main floor of Hope’s single scratchbuilt starport, spying an ornate, sleek vessel. With its lowered ramp surrounded by grim-faced and obviously well armed batpony guards he watched as its weary crew disembarked, accompanied by a tall, cloaked figure. Taller than most ponies or even griffons he knew.

A glinting starlight emerging from under that shadowed hood caught his gaze, lingering for just a moment before it shifted in a slow vertical motion and turned away, leaving him wondering if that had been eye contact.

Even thirty years later, Gaius never did know if he had seen who, or what, he thought he’d seen, and he never tried to claim it openly.

But inside he quietly believed it, and felt as though all those years of work had been appreciated.

New Life in the Stars

In the aftermath of the War of Two Crowns what had once been Equestria was split, and both sides now licked their wounds and came to a ceasefire. Luna could not hope to push back, and the Empire under Nightmare Star was already suffering from sanctions imposed by other political groups in response to their less than admirable tactics. The New Lunar Republic conversely was itself isolated, tales (in some cases quite true) of desperation leading to morally ambiguous attacks still circulated, leading them to also be cut off from much of the galaxy’s open trade.

As a weary populace was displaced across the galaxy, many away from even either civilization, all simply seemed to grow tired of war, with many living light years away electing to see it as nothing but bickering princesses causing problems for millions.

But for the independent starships, the New Lunar Republic was a wealth of potential. Thousands of jobs needed done. Colonisation efforts to carve out their home needed support, while families were still split apart and in need of both location and transport. Materials by the millions of tons needed acquired, and mercenaries filled in for the reforming fleet.

For the Tammaran, this became their new stomping grounds, taking jobs as they came, and finally acquiring some measure of the peaceful, wandering life that Gaius and Rose had dreamed of. No more infiltrations, firefights, and smuggling. Just passengers, cargo, and the beauty of the nebula to fly within for the better part of the next five years.

In that time, captain and navigator were married back in the Crystal League. Many of Rose's family still lived in the Solar Empire, and neither Gaius nor Rose could safely cross the border again. The League, with whom the Empire maintained peaceful if frosty relations, was the next best thing.

It was, at first, an awkward affair for Gaius. Rose’s family attended in droves. They saw to her, gifted them, and yet he felt somewhat inadequate. The sight of so many of them was a harsh reminder that he lacked any family of his own to bring.

Yet as soon as he entered the venue of the ceremony itself, prepared to his side of the aisle standing empty, he was taken aback.

Rose’s family crowded one side, but the other was filled to the brim, standing area overflowing. They were predominantly ponies - many of them thestrals - and at the front in the area for ‘direct family’ sat his crew. In secret, they had made contact with much of those Gaius’ command had rescued years ago, many electing to be there for his wedding to support him as thanks.

To the present day, he still never did once feel an ounce of shame for being the one between them to be teary eyed as they swore their vows, and exited that wonderful day as husband and wife.

They settled on a gentle honeymoon to a natural resort in Avalon’s capital system. Far from the debates and stresses. Once it came to an end, they once again took up their ship and continued searching for the next job. The NLR was booming, and while the Empire would always be restricted territory for their ship, they had a galaxy to make use of. Dangers always remained, and more than once there was a quick evasion from an Imperial vessel that bothered to actually check its logs of known troublemakers. Times when the money was low led to more dangerous endeavours, and more than one task led them down a rabbit hole of factions at play. The Tammaran would never be a place to get bored, that they knew and somewhat took pride in, but always the good times would return.

Over the course of a decade after the war, the Tammaran and her crew were for the most part at peace, and both the ship and its inhabitants could enjoy their life in the void together.

Tammani

In the fifteenth year of their career aboard the Tammaran, Compass Rose took Gaius aside and quietly informed him of something they’d been trying for over a year now.

Within the year, husband and wife would become father and mother.

Amazed, speechless, Gaius just gaped and held on to her shoulders. They had discussed it before, and had tried before. The combined genetics of griffon and pony always made it harder, not rare, but certainly a less common prospect to produce a hybrid. Finally, after longer than most had to try, things seemed to have taken for them too.

A stop over by a medical station in the Confederacy at Heraklion confirmed it in the most fitting of ways. A female hippogriff. The combination of both of them, just like their ship’s own icon and its name. From that moment, they already knew the name for this final culmination of their coming together: Tammani.

They hadn’t, however, taken much time to consider the needs. The Tammaran was a ship mostly occupied by those older than thirty by this point, and too small to healthily raise a child within, let alone support a newborn foal. After a series of difficult decisions, they elected to take an early retirement and settle in Rose’s old family house upon Chrysolite once Tammani’s birth was near. It had links to education, their citizenship was assured, and it was in friendly territory. They did briefly contemplate the New Lunar Republic, but turned it down for fear of future war breaking out with the Empire and a concern that a decade had eroded the impetus to seek settlement as thanks for their efforts in the evacuations. Most of their involvement had been off the record, after all. Chrysolite was safe and feeling the fragility of life more than ever now, that was what mattered to them.

But it left them with an issue: while the Tammaran was doing well for itself, they didn’t maintain the funds to make a full retirement this early. Most of their personal accounts had been used keeping the ship and its crew in order, and they dared not leave their friends under their command with nothing by raiding the Tammaran’s own assets.

Eventually, the answer came to them from an old ‘friend’: the director of Port Medusa.

The message reached them as they were crossing the Periphery, requesting their audience for a ‘talk’, and a possible job. Arriving back at the Iron Jellyfish, they found an older, more relaxed lord of the void coasting his business on the grey market now. The end of the war had brought him stability, with his biggest concerns having become more that of other pirate lords than either the Empire or Republic. Medusa was doing well.

But despite that, he still had his contacts, and one of them had requested the Tammaran specifically.

The director had the ear of the Republic Intelligence Corps, owing to the station’s later bias in the War of the Two Crowns. One of their informers in the Empire, a turncoat within a secretive organisation that the Director was not privy to the details of, was requesting an urgent extraction. For ten years, he was told, the Republic had been attempting to build a ship that could infiltrate the Empire via stealthy means, but the project had hit snag after snag and was mired in delays. A decade was not a long time for a civilization to form, after all, and the NLR was struggling to find a way in with their still limited resources.

Someone at the Intelligence Corps had looked through the archives, saw a certain ship’s name come up several times, and had begun asking questions as to whether the vessel and crew that could get in and out were still around.

The job was to be dangerous; to not just go into imperial space, but to Equestria itself.

Holding his wife’s hoof in his hand, feeling responsibility for more than just the two of them now, Gaius opened his mouth to deny it, until he felt Rose’s wing tap his shoulder, drawing his attention to the pay. A large number stared back; enough to set the crew for another year, and enough for their cut to let them retire.

After a long pause, Gaius nodded his head and reached out to shake on it with the director.

One last run to attain a future for himself, his wife, and their daughter.

The Equestrian Job

They had expected convincing their crew to take time, but instead they found Aileron waiting with the answer as soon as they told them. By this point they were all family, and much of the crew were looking to their captain and navigator’s upcoming retirement with a positive, wanting attitude. The money was good, Aileron claimed, but making sure the pair that had taken them through all this got their happy ending was more important. Not one of them debated returning to their old ways once again.

They were to enter via Avalon, acquiring a neutral shipment from Zebraha co-signed to a Solar Empire defence company. The plan was to hide in plain sight and fly under the radar carrying sensitive goods in service of the Empire after re-registering the ship in another name and giving her a new paint scheme. Patrols, they knew from experience, were less attentive to stopping ships that might draw complaints from an angry ‘just-in-time’ based corporation awaiting some power converters or treated alloys for the latest monument to the Imperial Navy’s power. To further this, they registered the Tammaran over to a new captain and corporate title. Aileron, under a fake name, would now officially be 'captain' in the eyes of those scanning the vessel, removing the ‘tainted’ name and face of Gaius from its record, permitting them to stow away themselves if searched. To further distract the patrols, they prepared a series of fake distress and regroup call signals, mounting them in junk satellites to launch from the cargo hold, and would stick to the less known routes. The signals were keyed to NLR ship frequencies, setting the stage for a mock stealth insertion by official Lunar craft, taking attention away from civilian ships who would only be seeking to get away from the ‘developing situation’. The Empire would be chasing some unknown stealth ship even as the real source slipped by.

The key point, however, was simply their knowledge of the doctrine and habits of the Solar Empire ships. Space was a large place, and easy to move around if one was patient enough and clever enough to think one step ahead. After fifteen years to learn, they were just that. The NLR might have had more resources, but in this case, there was no replacement for straight up experience in the art of smuggling to keep things quiet.

It took over a week to traverse the Empire, making stop by stop, and doing a couple of legitimate jobs within its borders to further avert suspicion. Rather than sneaking past the border they followed a meandering trail of mundane work, carefully chosen to carry them through areas of relatively low security and closer to Equestria itself.

Neither of the two had ever visited the ‘home of homes’, as some called it, before. Compass Rose was more wistful, seeing an opportunity to lay eyes. Gaius, for his part, seemed more enthused about the sense of whisking someone away from under Nightmare Star’s own nose. Wistful exaggeration as it may have been, the thought brought him pleasure.

Landing off Fillydelphia, they settled in for a week-long wait. Masked as a ‘between jobs’ holiday, the pair of them took a chance to contemplate and rest before what was coming. Or rather, they would have tried.

Only a lucky choice to go out for dinner led them to be absent from their hotel room when it detonated. A small, controlled explosion seared the room in monoblade fragments that would have torn them limb from limb. It was an advanced weapon, and the pair immediately fled to the Tammaran, fearing official pursuit.

None came. As far as they could tell, even the police had no idea who was out for them.

After a period of contemplation they decided to change dock, and lingered in the air above the Celestial Sea as long as they could to remain safe before advancing to their meeting point. While Rose was willing, care for their daughter came first, and Aileron was chosen in her stead.

The meet time was in the dead of night, within an old mall, long since disused and shut down. As Gaius and Aileron picked their way through it, the imagery on the walls of a softer, gentler sun princess and her sister of the moon, along with six colourful ponies, gave hints as to why it had been left to rot by official mandate. There, they hid and waited in a great plaza.

After two hours in the dark, eerie mall, they finally heard hooves approach. Down the rows of silent shops came a figure bound in tight leather, twin lines of fabric hanging from the back of their neck, almost like a royal attache. A mare approached and spotted them in the darkness, her curved horn lighting up to reveal a tired and stoic face.

She revealed her name to be Silent Boreal, and made clear that she had also been chased, but not by the local authorities at all, although she was certain the intelligence agency, and ‘her own comrades’ would be coming for her as well. When queried as to what group Boreal was defecting from, she refused to answer.

Yet as they met and hashed out a plan to get her undercover to the Tammaran through the streets, their meeting was disturbed. The clink of broken glass was all the warning they got, before three black-clad figures dropped down from the level above in the great plaza, unusual and advanced weapons unloading from between them.

The griffon and hippogriff had no chance to dodge the expert ambush, but instead found the bursts clattering into a shield of glittering magic, as a pink aura erupted from Boreal’s horn. The entire bubble wavered, and then rocketed into the trio attacking, blowing them from their hooves. Boreal grabbed the pair in a powerful field of telekinesis, urging them with a powerful shove to run and show her the way out.

Staring at one another in disbelief, Gaius and Aileron turned and fled, leading Boreal with them. Around them, the crash of doors and windows rang out. A whole hostile team was arriving and searching for them. Eventually leaping from a window with the two winged creatures carrying the unicorn, they made way for the Tammaran, intent on a rapid departure.

Again, the local police seemed unaware of a hunt, not bothering them as they hustled past. Flight keeping them ahead of the chase, they were startled to see an unmarked vehicle pull up near the Tammaran on their return. Even as they advanced up the ramp, low calibre weapons began spraying at them from across the road, and the same three figures emerged once again.

Breaking docking regulations to flee the planet, Gaius set the ship skywards, despite the warnings from the unaware Fillydelphia Port-Control. Justified or not, the declaration of intercepting frigates being dispatched to catch up in orbit was enough to drive the panic home. They were on Equestria, in the heart of the Empire, on the run from the Empire themselves and an unknown force, carrying a unicorn who had just demonstrated powers thought lost centuries ago.

Spraying decoys from their hold, Gaius had the ship make haste for the shipping lanes off world. From a combination of using much larger ships to hide behind and direct heat-tracking and the electronic interference of their own decoys, they got a brief window to disappear among the cargo-haulers to carry them out of orbit. Nestled between the struts of a colossal ship transporter, they were unable to begin the FTL spool, but could at least get some distance from the planet.

Deeper space listening posts, however, reported their position almost immediately, their more sensitive detectors picking the Tammaran out from the clutter. After only three minutes to rest and start asking Boreal just what the hell was going on, further pings from an escort fleet on exercise meant they were forced to move on again. Commiting to an emergency jump, Compass Rose sent them spiralling to the next system on perhaps the messiest route she had ever made.

By the time they arrived, the Empire was already waiting. The core systems were policed by a well drilled, well trained force, and the Tammaran’s exit jump came immediately into the lock range of several vessels. The ship’s illegal comm-unit began picking up emergency broadcasts through space, directing any available ships to converge on the unknown vessel’s trajectory. Further M-space rifts opened around them, as interceptors began to catch up.

Caught within a net of imperial vessels, Gaius did what he could. He began unleashing the rest of their decoys to scramble communications and overloaded the engines to push them toward the rings of a planet for cover. What followed was two hours of evasion, tricks, backtracking, and pushing his long honed skills to the absolute limit. Through some miracle, he held them off until Rose could spool the FTL again. Taking multiple pieces of rock with them, they jumped again and again and again. Every time, a weary battle of wits against doctrine ensued. The Tammaran suffered hits, and only through a monumental effort did they keep her running. As they neared the border to the Periphery, shocked to the core over the effort the Empire was putting in to prevent their escape, they recognised four separate interdictors leaping ahead and around. The advanced, fast vessels were trying to predict their routes, aiming to catch them as they exited a jump and snare them in with their powerful electronic warfare systems.

Many more times, with increasingly desperate measures, Gaius, Rose, or any of the others, had to outfly or outrun them. The route was not straight, with them even trying to go back toward the Empire again just to throw off pursuit. For over a week, the exhausting challenge went on, Gaius and Aileron switching turns at the helm, while Rose simply endured as best she could, sleeping at her station.

In a brief hour of rest within a nebula, a tired Gaius could be found with his wife, his hand resting on her stomach, promising her they would make it. Promising that he would move the stars themselves to keep Tammani safe and to see her smile. With every jink and every close call, the image of their coming daughter was fixed in their minds. It drove them to limits they never realised they had.

Yet for as good as Gaius and his crew were, there was only so long they could keep this up. As they emerged on the border to the NLR, the Tammaran’s core finally failed, and the M-space transition shattered the mechanism. Hull breach alarms blared all through the vessel, until the engineer sealed the drive bay off before the void could claim it. Spinning out of its suspension, the core itself erupted and blew a twelve foot hole in the outer hull, venting gas and fluid equally, leaving the FTL unit itself glowing in the black with a searing magical light.

They were dead in the water.

Powered by newer, more reliable engines, the Empire didn’t take long to close in. Their hunt successful, they had hounded down the elusive ship through sheer weight of persistence. Jumping in around fifty thousand kilometres away, they began their impulse drive toward the stricken Tammaran.

Yet even as they closed, another signature opened up just off the Tammaran’s bow: a small vessel, large enough only for perhaps three ponies, broke through into realspace. Viciously armed, jet black, it was virtually invisible in the void both to sensors and the naked eye. As it arrived, Gaius found it hailing them, and a disarmingly casual voice began asking them to transfer Silent Boreal to their vessel. If they did, then they would help the Tammaran escape the coming punishment.

The unicorn overheard and shook her head. She told them this was not an ally to be trusted. When Rose demanded to know who, the unicorn fell silent.

The demands were reiterated; firmer, more urgent. Rose ran every check she could on the vessel, but it seemed like it either didn’t exist, or was behind some level of confidentiality. Raising from his chair, Gaius approached Boreal. A rare anger from him picked up, as he told her of Tammani, of what mattered to him now. With stern eyes that shocked even his own crew, he told her that there was only one way out of this. When no other choice was left, the unimaginable was all you could do, he told her. It was all his life had been, from its origin until now.

Boreal finally, firmly, nodded.

Using the remaining thrusters to angle their ship, Gaius allowed the newcomer to dock with them. Soon after, before the interdictors could catch up, the black vessel spooled its own FTL and jumped them into NLR space, behind the lines of their prowling defenders watching out for Empire signatures.

As they transitioned, Gaius let Aileron take the helm, patting his shoulder and nodding.

Safe from the Empire within range of the Republic’s border scans, the ship again hailed them. They demanded Boreal be handed over. The voice was more insistent now; intelligent, predatory in its tone. The accent wasn’t of the Solar Empire. He implored Gaius to think of his crew, his ship, and to ask himself why such a clearly special unicorn was defecting. He made it clear that if he had to cut through the docking airlock to get ‘the data’, he would.

Finally, Gaius opened comms, asking the newcomer who they were, only to be told it wasn’t what he should be caring about. Again, the ‘requests’ for Boreal and ‘the information with her’ were reiterated.

Gaius hadn’t been without an answer.

He’d simply been waiting.

Shouting to Aileron, the hippogriff and Rose activated the Tammaran’s FTL. The core was dead, but they had used the other ship’s transition through M-space to charge their own drive through the intake scoop. Blasting the retrothrusters to angle as best they could, the Tammaran tore itself off of the other ship as the rift drew it in, and left their pursuer behind.

As they left, the shouted panic over the comm from the trio in the other ship as they tried to disengage before being dragged in unprepared gave him some satisfaction, and the name of one of them he would never know the true meaning of in his remaining time aboard.

‘Boa’.

End of an Era

On Hope itself, as Silent Boreal was escorted away by a cautious set of guards, Gaius found himself standing with one of the NLR’s directors of intelligence.

A contract lay in her hoof, ready to be taken. The pay was the same as the previous one. In recognition of the measures they had gone to, there were more tasks lined up. Even before the debriefs and interviews, Boreal had brought with her a series of further tasks to be done, the director said. They could use such continued services as an independent contractor, especially now.

It was enough money that they could have lived a rich retirement. One more job and they could settle anywhere they wanted. One more job for luxury.

But despite all the promises, Gaius could only turn it down. There were only so many ‘one more jobs’ that a responsible captain could undertake in his life. He had everything he’d wanted to get when leaving his backwater home. His love, his coming daughter, years of adventure behind him, and even more years of peace ahead. He would have a decent little home on a nice planet, and enough put aside to fund his child’s future.

In the end, despite being born with nothing, he could confidently say to those offering that he had now found all that he needed.

As he came back to his crew and took Rose to his side, he made the last declaration to them: that the pair of them were retiring, and that Aileron was to assume command of the Tammaran on a permanent basis from then on.

What followed was a respectful pause, and then a series of stomping and clapping of hooves and hands. Several light whoops emerged, and one by one, they all hugged their now ex-captain and navigator. There were well wishes in that hangar, there were tears and hopes and promises. Aileron, crying openly to lose a couple he had thought of as surrogate parents, told over and over that he wouldn’t disappoint their legacy with the Tammaran, that he would keep its name, that he’d stay true to what Gaius and Rose had always done. His ever respectful handshake instead got him yanked into a hug from both husband and wife as they comforted - and took comfort in - the young hippogriff they had rescued so long ago. He only let go after they promised to keep him updated on Tammani.

With a splendid week of relaxation on Hope itself as the Tammaran was repaired, the ship eventually made its voyage for their new home. Under Aileron’s command, they took Gaius and Compass Rose back to Chrysolite, and helped them set up their home as a crew, remaining in the League for as long as they could find the contracts. Eventually, as the news broke, they were present as their ‘extended crew’ gained a new member when Tammani finally entered the galaxy.

Holding their child between them in the hospital, Gaius and Compass cuddled and reflected. This was it, they knew; the start of a new stage in their lives. From a chance meeting of a stowaway, through misfortune, wars, hunts, and most of the galaxy, they had made it. Made it together.

And with a gently kicking and wriggling hippogriff between them, they had no better symbol of it being both of them that had done it.

Those Distant Stars

The adjustment wasn’t easy. Seeing the same sky every morning took some getting used to, but their attention was more than elsewhere. Finding casual work to bolster their funds, the pair relaxed into early retirement to raise their child. As Tammani grew, they saw her inherit the positives of their life experiences. From Gaius' gentle nature and eager thrill seeking, to Rose's wholesome love and boundless wanderlust. None of their worries about old loose ends coming back to them panned out, leaving them both in peace to watch Tammani run in the wheat fields of Chrysolite, flapping the still tiny wings on her back to try and lift herself off the ground. They would encourage her, watching her little limbs doggy-paddling in the air as though it would help her stay off the ground, and feel content.

Occasionally they would reminisce and share in old tales. Some with their daughter, some just to themselves. It delighted them to watch her squeal and hug the golden retriever they bought to keep her company. Orbit, as they had named him, would smile as only a dog could, and enthusiastically lick Tammani’s cheek as he played with the foal. Many photographs were kept of both Tammani and Orbit exhausted and collapsed together, the canine wrapped protectively around the tiny hippogriff. It made them laugh to witness her eyes bulging out at some fancy treat, or to see her stumbling gait trying to copy dancers in videos.

But for all that side of her, every time they watched her wistfully staring through her telescope at night, or caught her eagerly pointing at a passing vessel in the atmosphere, they would look to one another with a knowing glance at seeing the awestruck passion on her young face.

Long before Tammani brought a quiet, curious question to them about how people got to fly those things, they knew where she’d be going someday.

They just knew.