When We Saw the Universe

Chapters

Chapter 1: Lyra
Chapter 2: Twilight
Chapter 3: Xentrill
Chapter 4: Red
Chapter 5: Sword
Chapter 6: Crusaders
Chapter 7: Applejack
Chapter 8: Rainbow - Part 1: Gladiator
Prologue

Chapter 1: Lyra

Nearly everypony captured by the Bolkarn was used as slave labor in their many mines across the galaxy. I was lucky to escape that fate.

– Extract from When We Saw the Universe by Twilight Sparkle

The Dominator II hung above the planet Krankor. It was the only thing that could be seen in the planet’s sky, it didn’t even have a moon. The Dominator II was a long triangular spaceship, its shape splitting in half and ending in two points at the front. The ship had once been coated in gleaming gold paint but now most of that was gone, giving way to dank grey metal which was covered in uncountable battle scars. Dotted along the ship’s hull was a series of windows and doors, some of them lead to airlocks while others concealed the ship’s weaponry. The largest door was at the rear of the ship, just below its engines. This door led to the ship’s hanger bay, which began to open.

The thick slab of metal tilted downwards, any sound it would’ve made muted by the vacuum of space. As it opened it slowly revealed the gleaming lights of the hanger bay, like a beacon in the darkness. The hanger was full of countless ships of varying sizes, fighters, bombers, carriers, and many others. Ten carriers rose up from the floor and one by one shot through the open door. The carriers were simple grey blocks with a few windows dotted along the side. The only deviation from this basic shape was a cockpit mounted on the front, almost as though that had been an afterthought. The carriers were covered in almost as many scars as the Dominator II, though unlike their mother ship nobody had bothered to paint them with the exception of the large white numbers that adored each of them. The Carriers were used to transport troops, traveling a short distance from their mother ship parked in orbit to the surface of the planet below. That is, assuming they survived the journey.

Lyra was seated aboard Carrier 3. She was nervous; then again she always was before these assaults. There wasn’t much room to move about in her seat and everyone on board was packed in very tightly. Of course with missions like this it was best to try and fit as many in a carrier as you could. The black body armor she was wearing was also rather tight and not particularly comfortable but she’d gotten used to that over time, though she’d never been sure about her horn which stuck out through a hole in her helmet. It felt exposed; she thought it would be far too easy for it to be torn off in the heat of battle. She heard the built in radio in her helmet crack into life. Several of her companions winced as theirs did the same. Then Captain Twilight Sparkle spoke to them all.

“All right everypo... everyone, you all know the drill by now,” she said. “According to our sources there’re nearly a hundred slaves in these mines. We’ve also been told that the Bolkarn are using this planet for weapons storage so if you find any give us the location and get everyone away. We’ll send some Bombers down to deal with them. Understood?”

“Yes Captain Sparkle,” they all said in various languages.

“And Sergeant Heartstrings... Lyra.” Lyra’s ears pricked up as the captain addressed her (not easy when you’re wearing a helmet). “I haven’t been able to confirm this but... I think she’s here.”

Lyra felt her heart jump slightly.

“Thank you captain,” she said quietly.

“Heartstrings,” she heard O-Kaarn’s voice, not over the radio but in her head.

“I know, don’t let my own feelings get in the way of the mission.”

“Well yes, that too. But I was going to say good luck finding her, I hope you do.”

“Thanks O-Kaarn.”

Lyra glanced out of a small window on the opposite wall. She could see the planet getting closer to them. She’d heard a few things about Krankor, it used to be referred to as ‘The Dark Planet’. Lyra had seen and heard of several planets that could easily be described that way and Krankor certainly wasn’t one of them. Apparently there’d once been a small civilization on the planet. Lyra had heard the people of Krankor being described as evil, corrupt, proud, egotistical and very incompetent. Several decades ago the whole civilization had been suddenly wiped out, how exactly nobody knew or cared. Nobody missed them. Sometime after that the Bolkarn had moved in and set up their usual mining operation.

The carrier gave a slight jolt as it penetrated the planet’s atmosphere. Lyra could hear the air buffeting against the sides as it continued downwards making the whole thing shake violently. She heard loose components being jolted around in their place and she shut her eyes tight, willing the Carrier to stay in one piece. Of course she knew that if it did hold together there was worse to come. The ship gave a sudden lurch and almost flipped over as something hit its underside, they were under attack. They all knew that was going to happen sooner or later. More explosions rocked the carrier which began to return fire. Lyra felt completely useless, all she could do was just sit there and hold on tight while the ship was buffeted from nearly every angle. She gritted her teeth, desperately wanting to get into action. Then things started to go wrong. They heard the engines start to sputter and rattle, and then they gave out. Looks of horror spread across the faces of everyone on board that had a face as the carrier began to plummet.

NO! Not now, Lyra thought. Not when I was so close!

A speaker mounted just about the door to the cockpit gave a crackle and the panicked voice of the pilot came through it.

“We’ve lost the engines,” he said.

“Yeah, we noticed,” Lyra muttered.

“I’m going to try and set this thing down as best I can.”

The carrier shook and Lyra through the small window saw a wing metal folding out. They were going to glide down to the ground. The carrier continued to shake and rock as more gunfire struck its hull. Lyra thought she heard something behind her break, it sounded like something important. She had a bad idea about what it was. The whole carrier started to roll over several times. Lyra could hear the pilot shouting but couldn’t make out what he was saying over all the sounds of the wind and gunfire striking the carrier. Finally the carrier hit the ground in mid role, landing on one edge before tipping back onto its base. It skidded across the planet’s surface before finally coming to a halt when it collided with something. The carrier lurched and something in the cockpit smashed.

There was a mass exhaling of breath amongst them, they were all glad to be alive. Then they were having orders shouted at them and they all unstrapped themselves. Lyra and another pony, a stallion Earth pony, were ordered to check the cockpit. The force of the crash had jammed the cockpit door and they had trouble getting it open. When they finally opened it they found the cockpit empty. The pilot was gone along with his seat and one of the windows had been smashed. The seat was lying a small distance from the ship and the pilot a little further away. He wasn’t moving. In the distance Lyra could see Carrier 1 coming into land, taking just as much fire as they had but it was still in one piece. As the carrier descended a group of Bolkarn came over the rocks, heading straight for them.

From that distance Lyra could only make out the faint shapes of the Bolkarn but she’d seen enough of them to know what they looked like. The Bolkarn were humanoids that stood at around eight feet high with jet black skin and vast bulging muscles that gave them an enormous bulk. They all wore very basic black metal armor though the armor didn’t cover their entire bodies. The Bolkarn began to open fire on the downed carrier. Lyra and the other pony ducked behind the control console as bullets ricocheted off the ship, some coming through the broken window. Lyra could hear the others returning fire.

“Let’s go,” she said to the stallion and the two of them darted through the cockpit door and headed out of the carrier.

Outside there was chaos. The air was full of the sound of gunfire and ricocheting ammunition. The different noises mixed together and echoed off the rocky landscape. Lyra drew out her own gun and dived behind a rock with the stallion close behind her and they both began opening fire. Being an Earth pony the stallion couldn’t use a normal gun, you’d need hands and fingers for that. Instead he had a specially designed weapon strapped to one of his legs. The trigger was a large round button that he pressed with his other hoof. These were only used by Earth ponies and Pegasi though since unicorns like Lyra could just carry and fire a gun with magic, though Lyra didn’t need to.

The sound of bullets and energy blasts was almost deafening. Lyra didn’t like bullets; bullets were messy and agonizing if they didn’t kill you instantly. In fact, that was the only positive Lyra saw about being struck with one, there was a small chance that you might survive. Of course immediately after being shot with one you’d be in so much pain you’d probably wish you were dead anyway and what little time you had left wouldn’t be pleasant. Energy blasts on the other hand were quite different. An energy blast would kill you immediately. No blood, no mess, no pain, at least Lyra assumed there’d be no pain. An energy blast could also be set at a different intensity to only paralyze or stun your target rather than outright killing them.

Suddenly a hail of Bolkarn gunfire came straight towards their hiding place. They both ducked behind the rock, covering their heads as the bullets slammed into it or sailed straight over their heads. Lyra shouted something to the Stallion but he didn’t seem to be able to hear her, she could barely hear herself. Lyra’s horn lit up and her gun floated into the air, stopping just above the top of the rock. Then the trigger was squeezed and a volley of energy blasts burst forth from the barrel. She couldn’t aim it; instead she just swung it round randomly and hoped it was pointing in the general direction of the enemy. Then the sounds changed. The amount of Bolkarn gunfire had suddenly decreased.

“I guess that worked,” Lyra muttered to herself.

She peeked over the rock and quickly ducked back down again as a shot came her way. But she’d had enough time to see several dead Bolkarn lying amongst the rocks. The two of them began to open fire again, this time with fewer Bolkarn to worry about they concentrated their barrage on specific targets, though not the same ones at the same time. Fighting like this reminded Lyra of playing arcade games when she was a filly. Back then she’d mostly go for first person shooters but she wasn’t particularly good at them and never got on the scoreboard. Of course for those games she’d been firing magic at various monsters rather than blasting aliens with a gun. When playing those games she’d often be rather reckless. When you were attacked by an enemy you were supposed to duck for cover. Lyra would just stand there and continue shooting at them while they shot back and eventually killed her. She wasn’t going to make that sort of mistake now. She stayed behind the cover of the rock as more and more Bolkarn fell until finally there were none left here and orders came through their radios to advance.

They rushed forward, scrambling over rocks until the mine came into view. The mine was a vast hole in the ground that had been dug out over goodness knows how much time. The place was honeycombed with various tunnels leading deeper into the rock. Bits of equipment and machinery lay scattered about the place and in the distance at the top of the hole was a series of wooden huts, presumably where the slaves slept.

Well at least they let them sleep under a roof, Lyra thought, bad memories of cold rainy nights bubbling up at the back of her mind.

Down at the bottom of the mine a few of the squads where already fighting the Bolkarn and some of the slaves had joined in. And not just ponies, there were dozens of different creatures. Some great, some small and others incredibly bizarre in Lyra’s opinion! The Carrier 3 squad charged down into the mine to join them, all guns blazing. The few Bolkarn that weren’t occupied returned fire. Lyra could feel bullets bouncing off her helmet and one metal limb while others embedded themselves in her body armor. The stallion that’d been beside her tripped over as they went and his helmet flew off, almost immediately a bullet shot straight into his head. Lyra didn’t stop charging, there’d be time to think of the dead later assuming she wasn’t among them.

When Lyra reached the mine’s floor she immediately ran for some cover. There was a dead Bolkarn lying nearby which she dived behind. They were pretty big, much bigger then ponies anyway, so the body was suitable protection from the chaos around her. Blasts from her weapon joined the cacophony of noise that echoed around the mine. Some shots came her way but there was far too much going on for the Bolkarn to focus specifically on her. Another pony joined her behind the dead Bolkarn, an Earth pony named Battle Plan.

“You enjoying yourself?” she asked him.

“You bet I am!” Even if he hadn’t spoken the large grin plastered over his face would’ve given her the same answer.

A group of slaves came rushing out of a nearby tunnel, knocking down a Bolkarn who was unfortunate enough to get in their way. Noticing there were a few ponies amongst them Lyra was struck by a hunch. She grabbed one of the ponies as they ran past.

“Anybody else in there?” she asked them.

“I think so,” they said after a second, momentarily surprised by Lyra’s left forelimb which they were now gawking at.

“Thanks.” Lyra let them go and then turned to Battle Plan. “I’m going in there, cover me will you.”

Battle Plan nodded and Lyra charged straight for the tunnel. She didn’t stop running until she was at least ten feet into it. She took the opportunity to catch her breath and let her eyes adjust to the darkness. There was a time when she’d have lit the way with her horn but she’d learnt that that wasn’t a good idea. The light would only stretch a short way and her eyes would adjust for the light so they couldn’t see anything that it didn’t touch. Letting her eyes adjust for the darkness allowed her to see a lot more.

Lyra walked down the tunnel slowly and cautiously. The further down she went the quieter the sounds of the battle raging outside became and she noticed that the tunnel sloped downwards slightly. She kept looking left and right as she went, taking note of various side tunnels that didn’t seem to go very far as she went along. The first sign of life she came across was a Bolkarn lying on the floor. He was still conscious but clearly in a lot of pain, his breathing was heavy and he kept letting out weak moans. Lyra saw a pickaxe embedded in his torso with blood gushing from the wound. Lyra gave him a quick blast of her weapon after switching its power setting so that it would only stun him before proceeding onwards.

She didn’t know how long she’d been in that tunnel for or how far down she’d gone. She had been counting the number of side tunnels she’d passed but lost count after running into the injured Bolkarn. Then a sound made her stop. She stood there, listening. She could hear someone breathing and it didn’t sound like a Bolkarn. She glanced around looking for where the sound was coming from. She spotted a side tunnel and galloped down it. This one seemed longer then some of the others. As she continued into the tunnel she spotted something ahead of her. At first she couldn’t quite tell what it was except that it seemed to be white. As she got closer she realized it was a pony, and then she realized which pony it was. She decided that now she should light up her horn.

“BON BON!” Lyra shouted as she drew closer, probably a bit too loudly as it echoed around the tunnel.

Bon Bon looked up and saw a unicorn clad in black body armor with their face obscured by a dark helmet visor racing towards her. She gasped and backed away as Lyra came to a stop.

“Hey, relax sweetie,” Lyra said levitating her helmet off. “It’s me.”

Bon Bon’s face immediately switched from an expression of fear to one of sheer joy, she threw herself towards Lyra and flung her front legs round her neck and kissed her.

“You’ve no idea how much I’ve missed that,” Lyra said while stroking Bon Bon’s now rather dirty and untidy mane.

“I can probably gue– uh!” Bon Bon collapsed; the strength she’d managed to muster a moment ago had gone.

Lyra looked over her, Bon Bon was a mess. Her coat and tail were just as dirty as her mane and she was covered in cuts and bruises.

“I know,” Bon Bon said. “I look terrible.”

“No worse than I did when they got me out of a mine. In fact, I was definitely a lot worse.”

“Oh? Just how bad were y... what the hay is that?” Bon Bon had just spotted the mechanical limb that was where Lyra’s left foreleg should’ve been.

“What this?” Lyra waved the limb about, it emitted a few whirring sounds as it moved. “It’s an arm. I have an arm now. Arms are cool.”

Lyra grinned and wriggled her fingers at Bon Bon. Bon Bon just face hoofed.

“How did that happen?” she asked.

“I... I don’t want to talk about that,” Lyra said.

“How did you even get here?” Bon Bon asked.

“I joined the resistance. There’s a load of us outside right now fighting off the Bolkarn. I’m surprised you didn’t notice.”

“That would explain why all the Bolkarn rushed out suddenly. Everypony else just followed them when we were left alone. I was just too exhausted to follow them.”

“Well we need to get you out of here then.”

Bon Bon tried to stand up but collapsed again almost immediately. Lyra lifted Bon Bon up with some magic and placed the exhausted mare onto her back before putting her helmet back on.

“Thanks,” Bon Bon said.

“I’ll go slowly, but hold on tight.”

“Ok.”

“And I’ll need to check to see if there’s anyone else in this tunnel first.”

Lyra set off down the rest of the tunnel, it took longer than it really should’ve done but she didn’t mind, she was just glad that she’d found Bon Bon after all this time.

“How did you even know I was here?” Bon Bon asked her after she’d checked a fourth side tunnel.

“Actually I didn’t, we’ve just been raiding mines at random while I just crossed my fingers hoping you’d be there.”

“Oh.”

“But on the way down Captain Sparkle said she thought you might be here. Though I don’t know how she knew.”

Eventually they came to the end of the tunnel and since they hadn’t found anyone else they headed back to the exit. On the way out Lyra realized something, if there was still a battle going on outside Bon Bon didn’t have any kind of protection and sitting on Lyra’s back she’d be a pretty easy target and if Lyra made a quick dash for any nearby cover Bon Bon might accidentally fall off. She remembered the Bolkarn she’d found earlier, she thought about maybe taking his body armor and giving it to Bon Bon. But that probably wouldn’t work since the armor would be much too big and heavy for her. As they got closer to the exit Lyra realized that she needn’t have worried. The sounds of the battle had stopped but that didn’t mean they’d won. A few feet from the tunnel entrance Lyra set Bon Bon on the ground.

“Stay here, I’ll go see what’s happened,” she whispered.

Bon Bon just nodded and Lyra dashed off outside. Almost immediately she ran into Battle Plan.

“There you are,” he said. “I was just about to come and find you.”

“Well you’ve found me now, so what happened?”

“In short, we won.”

“How many did we lose?”

“I don’t know yet, best guess maybe about twenty.”

There were certainly a lot of bodies littered around the place, mostly Bolkarn though there were also quite a few slaves amongst the dead. The survivors were either herding Bolkarn prisoners out of the mine or gathering up the bodies, several others were leading (or sometimes carrying) slaves out of the tunnels. A few of the Carriers had been brought closer to the mine. Lyra saw Carrier 2 touchdown close to the edge while another, a little further away, took off and headed into the sky.

“It’s gonna take a lot of trips with the Carriers to get everyone back up there,” Battle Plan said.

“And we lost Carrier 3 too.”

“Yeah, I heard. So did you find anybody in there?”

“Just the one, guess who.”

Battle Plan’s eyes widened. “You mean...”

“Yep. I’ll go and get her.”

Lyra bounded back towards the tunnel and returned with Bon Bon on her back.

“So you’re Bon Bon,” Battle Plan said. “It’s nice to meet you at last.”

“You know who I am?” Bon Bon said, slightly surprised.

“Oh, I talk about you rather a lot,” Lyra told her.

“In fact sometimes it’s hard to get her to shut up,” Battle Plan said, and they all laughed.

“There’s a wounded Bolkarn in that tunnel,” Lyra told Battle Plan. “We’ll take a few others in there and bring him out. I stunned him but he might have woken up by now. I’ll join you once I’ve dropped Bon Bon off, where are the slaves being picked up?”

“We’re gathering them by the mine’s entrance.”

“Thanks, I’ll be back in a minute.”

Lyra headed over to the mine’s entrance and sure enough there was a small crowd of slaves of various different species there with a few ponies mixed in.

“So what happens now?” Bon Bon asked as Lyra set her down next to the crowd.

“I’m just going to leave you here for now while I help clean things up,” Lyra told her. “A carrier will take you up to our ship though I guess you’ll have to wait a while.”

“You’re going already?”

“I know, I don’t want to leave you again but I’ve got work to do. I’ll head back here when I’m done, but if you’re not here then I’ll see you back on the ship. Then we’ll have plenty of time together, ok?”

“Ok.”

“Good.” Lyra gave Bon Bon a quick kiss on the forehead. “See you soon sweetie.”

Lyra hadn’t returned by the time Bon Bon was put on board a Carrier with a bunch of other rescued slaves. The ride up to the Dominator II was a little rough, apparently the carrier had been damaged on the way down so it wasn’t working as well as it should. When they finally arrived they were immediately led out to the back of the hanger where a series of lifts were waiting for them. Before boarding one Bon Bon looked back to see the Carrier taking off again to bring back another batch of slaves.

All the slaves were led to the ship’s medical section, a lot of them were injured or just in poor condition from being overworked and underfed so they did need an examination. While she was there Bon Bon noticed that nearly every member of the crew was wearing a headset mostly made of white plastic save for a transparent orange visor that crossed over their eyes. The headsets also wrapped round the back of their heads with two bits that stuck into each ear. While Bon Bon was being looked over by one of the medics, who happened to be another pony, Lyra arrived. She was also wearing one of those headsets.

“How is she?” Lyra asked.

“She’ll be fine, she just needs some rest and a few decent meals that’s all,” the medic told her. “So she’s ok to leave now.”

“Thanks,” Lyra said. “Can you walk now, or do you want me to carry you again?” she asked Bon Bon.

“I’m fine walking,” Bon Bon replied. “But I wouldn’t mind if you carried me.” She gave Lyra a wink while she said that.

Lyra chuckled and headed out of the room with Bon Bon walking alongside her.

“I think we’ll head to the ship’s canteen,” Lyra said. “And while we’re there I can probably introduce you to some of my friends.”

The canteen was on a different level from the medical section so they headed towards an elevator at the end of the corridor. Lyra mentioned that there were shafts with ladders here and there on the ship but completely vertical ladders don’t mix well with hooves. Along the way Bon Bon noticed that some of the lights were flickering slightly, one of them had fallen off the wall and was now lying on the floor being completely ignored, and once they’d gotten in the elevator the lights in there flickered and went out. Lyra’s only response to that was a muttered “Not again!” Fortunately the elevator itself still worked.

The canteen turned out to be very close to the elevator, though there didn’t seem to be any indication of where it was. There was no sign on the door; in fact there weren’t any signs anywhere. All the corridors and doorways looked almost exactly the same.

“Yeah, you can get lost in here pretty easily,” Lyra said when Bon Bon commented on this. “There are some bits of the ship I’ve never seen and some bits I’ve only been to because I got lost! But it doesn’t take long to just memorize where everything you need to know about is.”

The door to the canteen opened by itself... almost. It got stuck after only opening partway, Lyra applied a bit of magic to force it open.

“Does that happen a lot?” Bon Bon asked.

“You have no idea!”

The canteen was incredibly noisy when they stepped through the door. It was packed full of various beings including a few ponies. Most of them were wearing the same headsets Bon Bon had seen on Lyra and other crew members.

“Hi everybody,” Lyra shouted at the crowd.

They all responded with what Bon Bon assumed was ‘hello’ but aside from the ponies they were all speaking in various different languages that she didn’t understand. Some of them weren’t even using regular speech, instead they communicated with growls or squeaks and other random noises. Bon Bon was all too aware of the language barrier since she’d encountered several different creatures that didn’t speak English in the mines and hadn’t been able to learn any of their languages. Lyra didn’t seem to be having any trouble understanding them at all. Lyra led Bon Bon over to the end of the room where several trays of food were waiting. It all looked artificial, mostly consisting of a thick liquid full of lumps of... something, and all in various random colors.

“Don’t worry, looks can be deceiving,” Lyra told her as they sampled some of it.

They found themselves places at a table where Battle Plan happened to be eating. He and Lyra began introducing Bon Bon to the various others that were there, of course aside from the ponies she couldn’t understand what any of them were saying to her with one exception.

“It’s good to finally meet you at last, I’m glad Lyra finally found you.”

Bon Bon almost jumped out of her seat when she heard that. It hadn’t come from any of the others; she’d heard it inside her head.

“I think you scared her O-Kaarn,” Lyra said.

Bon Bon looked round and saw a large sphere floating a few inches off the floor, its body covered in various swirling colors, mostly oranges, reds and browns. There was another smaller sphere floating round it, this one was a solid pale purple. Bon Bon saw a lump of food float out of a tray on the table in front of it and into the swirling mass of colors which rippled slightly as it passed through them.

“Bon Bon, this is Lieutenant Raarf O-Kaarn,” Lyra said. “His race is called the Orbitals, they communicate telepathically.”

“What does that mean?” Bon Bon asked.

“This is what it means,” said the voice in her head.

“Oh!”

“Don’t worry, I was a little surprised first time round too,” Lyra told her, giving her a pat on the back.

“I do understand it is a little hard to get used to for a non-telepathic life form,” O-Kaarn said.

After everybody had been introduced they all began talking about the mission to Krankor. Bon Bon just sat eating quietly. She wasn’t entirely sure about joining in with a conversation where she didn’t understand what most of those involved where saying though Lyra, Battle Plan and O-Kaarn would sometimes translate some bits for her. Lyra had been right about the food, while Bon Bon had no idea what she was eating it tasted alright and she was glad to have a decent meal for the first time in goodness knows how long.

It wasn’t until at least half an hour after they’d both finished eating that they finally left the canteen. A few of the others had departed beforehand and some more crew members had turned up. Lyra set off down the corridor away from the elevator and Bon Bon followed close behind her.

“My cabin is on this floor,” she told Bon Bon. “So we don’t have to worry about that elevator this time. It’ll probably break down altogether anyway… again. Anyway, what did you think of them all?”

“They seem alright,” Bon Bon said. “But I’m impressed that you could understand everypony. I didn’t expect you to be able to learn all those languages.”

“Everybody, Bon Bon.”

“Huh?”

“Say ‘everybody’. We dropped ‘everypony’ because a lot of the time not everyone present is a pony, so it would just seem a little silly.”

“Oh, I’ll try and remember that.”

“And to be honest, I haven’t learnt all those languages.”

“So how did you understand what everyp... sorry, everybody was saying?”

“This thing,” Lyra said tapping the headset she was wearing. “It translates everything being spoken for you. And I’ve got a spare one waiting back in my cabin. When I was given it I insisted on having another one for you when we were together again.”

“It looks rather uncomfortable.”

“Actually if it didn’t have the visor I don’t think you’d notice it was there at all. Besides it’s either one of these or sticking a fish in your ear.”

“Oh. Wait, what?”

“Don’t ask.”

They stopped outside a door that Bon Bon noticed had a crude attempt at Lyra’s Cutie Mark drawn on it and a drawing of her own just underneath it. Like with the canteen the door opened of its own accord though this one didn’t get stuck. The room itself wasn’t very big and it was rather bare. There was a shower in one corner, a few shelves built into the walls which were mostly empty and a bed in another corner.

“Bed’s only big enough for one I’m afraid,” Lyra said. “But I’ll let you have it, I’ll sleep on the floor. And you can use the shower if you like.”

“You bet I will!”

Bon Bon hadn’t had a chance to wash herself in over a year. It turned out she was a lot dirtier then she thought and she ended up taking longer in the shower then she expected. When she was done she looked around for a towel but couldn’t find one. Then an unexpected blast of hot air came from the different sides of the shower which dried her pretty quickly. When she stepped out she saw that Lyra had laid out some spare blankets on the floor that she’d extracted from a draw under the bed. She’d also taken off her arm which was now plugged into a small stand on a small table by the bed.

“It needs recharging,” Lyra explained. “It draws some of its power from my body’s own energy but that’s not really enough to keep it running so it needs its own power source.”

They heard something in the ceiling crackling, and then a voice came from a speaker mounted in the middle of it.

“Attention all crew, night period begins in ten minutes,” it said, and then it repeated the statement before shutting off.

“Night period?” Bon Bon asked.

“Yeah, up in space there’s no actual day or night so we have to make our own. They both last for ten hours each. So, time to get some sleep.”

Bon Bon felt a little confused about that. It’d been early morning when Lyra had rescued her from Krankor and that had only been a few hours ago. She did feel tired though mostly from exhaustion from working in the mines but that wasn’t as major as it had been earlier. She decided to go with it and climbed into the bed as Lyra pulled the blankets on the floor over herself.

“So, what are we doing tomorrow?” Bon Bon asked.

“Right now we’re heading to Xentrill,” Lyra said. “That’s pretty much our base planet. It’s suspended in Hyperspace.”

“In what?”

“Hyperspace.”

“What on earth is that?”

Lyra scratched her head with her right hoof. “Oh how do I explain this,” she muttered. “What did Captain Sparkle say it was... oh yeah, everywhere and nowhere and... what was the rest?”

“Huh?”

“I know, I don’t really get it either. All I really know is that it’s the best place to hide from the Bolkarn.”

“So they don’t know about Hyperspace?”

“Oh they know about it alright, they just don’t know which bit of Hyperspace it’s in. It’s like looking for a needle in a desert.”

Bon Bon laughed.

“One thing though.” Lyra now sounded very serious. “If we ever get separated from the Dominator II or any other ship we happen to be on the rule is we make our way back to Xentrill. And for that you’ll need the right Hyperspace coordinates so you should memorize them just in case.”

“Oh, what are they then?”

“914-621H,” Lyra said.

“914-62...” Bon Bon repeated, but fumbled on the last bit.

“...1H,” Lyra finished for her. “914-621H.”

Bon Bon repeated it again, getting the whole thing right this time. She repeated it a few more times until she was sure she’d remember it, then the speaker came to life again announcing the start of night period and the lights dimmed.

“Well good night then sweetie,” Lyra said, lying down and closing her eyes.

“Lyra,” Bon Bon said.

“Yeah?” Lyra looked round to see Bon Bon looking at her with a wide smile spread across her face, she’d lifted up part of the blanket on the bed and had backed up against the wall. “Come here.”

Lyra smiled. “Bon Bon, I told you that bed’s only big enough for one.”

“I can make room.” Bon Bon winked at her.

Lyra chuckled and climbed in beside her. There was only just enough room for both of them. Bon Bon wrapped both her forelegs around Lyra and pulled her as close as possible and then kissed her hard.

“You know,” Lyra said when they broke apart. “Sometimes... sometimes I have nightmares, nightmares about what’s happening to you.” She shivered slightly as she said this.

“Sometimes I’d find you dead or close to it only for you to die when I finally get to you. Or sometimes I’m running through caves calling your name and you’re calling back. But I can’t find you.”

Bon Bon pulled her close again, and gave her a small kiss on the cheek.

“And there was one where you were dead but then you stood up and attacked me shouting about why I didn’t come to save you.”

Lyra was crying now, Bon Bon wiped away some of her hears with a hoof. Then she brushed over the metal socket for Lyra’s arm. She looked at it sadly.

“And you know what the worst part was,” Lyra continued.

“What?”

“Waking up and finding that you weren’t there beside me.”

Bon Bon kissed her again.

“Well I’m here now,” she said quietly.

“I know.” Lyra smiled.

Chapter 2: Twilight

During my time with the resistance I recorded a log of each day’s events; it’s a habit I’ve kept up till this day.

– Extract from When We Saw the Universe by Captain Twilight Sparkle

“Dominator II crew member’s log, 771 days after the Bolkarn invasion of Equestria, Captain Twilight Sparkle recording. The Dominator II has now carried out a successful raid on the Bolkarn mine on the planet Krankor rescuing a total of 57 slaves. However 28 slaves were killed in the process along with 25 of our own. Amongst the rescued slaves was Sergeant Lyra Heartstrings’s partner Bon Bon. On a personal note I am glad that the two of them are now back together though I need to ask Sergeant Heartstrings whether or not she plans to stay with the resistance after this. The Dominator II is currently proceeding towards Xentrill and will make the jump into Hyperspace at 15:30 ship time. The time is currently 14:58. End of log.”

Twilight’s horn lit up, enveloping the log recorder in a haze of violet light. There was a click as it was switched off.

“File that recording with the other’s Starswirl,” she said.

“Affirmative, Captain Sparkle,” said a monotone voice from a computer screen mounted on one wall.

Starswirl was the Dominator II’s Artificial Intelligence Computer Operating System. It didn’t have an official name and most of the crew would refer to it with their own nickname so only Twilight Sparkle referred to it as Starswirl. Some would just refer to it as Computer or Voice and Twilight knew that a few would call it Dominator. Rainbow Dash liked to call it Daring 2. What anyone else called it Twilight didn’t know.

“Now entering Night Period,” the computer announced which was followed by the lights dimming.

“Starswirl, keep the lights up for a little longer please.”

“Acknowledged, Captain Sparkle.”

As the lights brightened again Twilight went over to the computer screen on the far wall of her cabin. Her cabin was a little larger than most of the others, partially because of her rank but mostly because Twilight did more than just sleep and wash in here. Most members of the resistance would regularly engage in combat against the Bolkarn but not Twilight, at least not very often. Twilight was an organizer, preferring to coordinate the battles from above and while she’d often do that from the bridge of the Dominator II she’d sometimes operate from her own cabin. Aside from the main computer screen there were three more that could display footage from cameras sent to monitor the battle along with a radio set up to communicate with all the troops they’d sent down.
Twilight had also made heavy use of the shelving space which was mostly crammed with books except for a small gap which had housed a book that she was currently reading. There were also various files relating to the activities of the Bolkarn and the resistance along with reports of space pirates, astronomical activity and what little information they had on a being known only as the Red Star-Fighter.

Twilight opened up a program on her computer that allowed her to receive messages from other ships, Xentrill, and their various spies and contacts they had within Bolkarn occupied territory. Those spies would often send them reports about Bolkarn activity as well as information on the various mines they had scattered across the galaxy. Before heading to Krankor Twilight had received a set of photographs of the mine showing the various slaves that were being forced to work there. It was in one of these photographs that she’d spotted Bon Bon, or at least a pony that she thought could be Bon Bon. She’d been in the background and out of focus but from what Twilight could make out her color scheme was right and she was definitely an Earth pony. Both Lyra and Bon Bon had lived in Ponyville before being captured by the Bolkarn and while Twilight had never really spoken to them she did know them both by sight.

This time she had a few messages informing her of two more planets that the Bolkarn had invaded along with reports of two successful attacks on Bolkarn mines and unfortunately one unsuccessful one. The Sky Piercer had been sent to the planet J14C-X and had the misfortune of arriving at around the same time as a Bolkarn ship delivering more slaves and a changeover of Bolkarn wardens. The Sky Piercer had been completely destroyed, killing everyone on board. Twilight slammed a hoof down on the desk in frustration; this was something their spies should’ve warned them about. Twilight didn’t have any information on the planet’s operations since the Dominator II hadn’t been given that mission so she didn’t know if they knew when the Bolkarn ship would be there or not.

Another report was about a planet called Bandraginus V. The resistance had been receiving information about the planet and a Bolkarn mine on it and they’d been making plans for an attack; in fact Twilight had been told that there was a chance that the Dominator II might be sent on that mission. But according to this message the whole planet had disappeared. They hadn’t received anything from their spies on the planet for a few months now, though that wasn’t particularly unusual. But an unmanned probe had been sent to fly past the planet recently, hoping to get some photographs of the mine from orbit, and there was no sign of it. Another ship, the Sunlight Rider, had been sent to the area to investigate. Twilight hoped they’d find something, and started thinking of possible reasons for its disappearance. Maybe the Bolkarn had taken a leaf out of the resistance’s book and hidden the planet in Hyperspace. No, that couldn’t be it. If they were doing that then why hadn’t they done the same thing with all the other planets they had mines on or even their own planet?

Twilight had a quick glance through the other messages; there were minor updates about various plans and missions, a message from Fluttershy who was currently on Xentrill, and some spam. Twilight rolled her eyes at those as she deleted them, she’d installed filters to try and stop those kinds of messages coming in but they never seemed to work. After that Twilight turned off the screen and spoke to the ship’s computer.

“Starswirl, is Sergeant Heartstrings in her cabin?”

“Affirmative, Captain Sparkle.”

“Good, I’m going to go and talk to her.”

“Information,” the computer said as Twilight approached the door. “Lights in Elevator B have ceased to function.”

“Again!?”

“Affirmative, Captain Sparkle. Suggest you take an emergency shaft down to Level 10.”

“Starswirl, how many times do I have to tell you, I can’t do ladders and if I did I am not climbing down twenty levels!”

“Acknowledged, Captain Sparkle.”

Twilight donned her translator headset before stepping out of her cabin and headed down the corridor. She glanced up at some of the lights strung along the walls, even with the lights dimmed for night one of them was flickering. There was one light flickering in almost every corridor on the ship. She heard a crash behind her and looking round she saw that one light had fallen off the wall. That happened a lot to.
The light’s had been installed after the Dominator II had been captured by the resistance, originally it had belonged to the Bolkarn. The Bolkarn’s home planet, Bolka, was the closest planet to its sun and subsequently should’ve been uninhabitable. However the planet’s rotation rate was almost the same as its orbit and subsequently life had evolved on the planet’s dark side and the only light they received was reflected down from its only moon. Bolka’s moon had an orbit period that once again was almost exactly the same as the planet’s rotation and so was always visible at the same point in the sky. As a result of these factors the Bolkarn didn’t require much light and their spaceships were often very dark so the Dominator II and a few other ships that the resistance had captured had been refitted to include lights and a few other new features, the ships Computer Operating System had been one of them. Light’s had been installed in various rooms without a problem, the corridors not so much, leading to long rows of lights haphazardly screwed to the walls with long exposed cables leading to a nearby power source. Unfortunately the refit hadn’t been perfect and some parts of the ship would occasional break down. Thankfully this hadn’t happened to anything that was too important, yet.

When Twilight stepped into the elevator she saw that the computer had been right about the lights, she lit up her horn as the doors closed. The descent from the 30th level to the 10th took a few minutes and Twilight was glad when it was over. She didn’t want to spend too long in a dark confined space and there was a chance that the elevator would break down in mid journey leaving her stuck inside. She didn’t want to have to go through that again. She passed by the canteen, which had a lot of noise coming from it, and eventually reached Lyra’s cabin. She was about to knock on the door when she heard something from inside. It took a few seconds for her to work out exactly what she was hearing since the sound was almost being drowned out by the noise from the canteen. When she realized what it was her face turned slightly red, but she smiled as well.

“Good for you Lyra,” she whispered and walked back to the elevator, deciding that she should talk to Lyra another time.

Twilight stepped back into the elevator, deciding to head up the bridge instead. However due to the design of the Dominator II the elevator didn’t go all the way up to the top level where the bridge was so she had to get off on the 50th level, where another set of doors at the back of the elevator opened to let her out, and get another elevator that would take her to the top.
After disembarking from the first elevator she ran into Captain Quell coming the other way. Twilight said a quick hello to him which he returned as they passed. Quell was from a race called Ujelks, a species that slightly resembled a mythical creature Twilight had read about called a centaur which had the top half of a humanoid with the bottom half of an equine. The difference between them and the Ujelks was that the Ujelks lacked heads. Instead they’d have each of their eyes in their shoulders with a mouth in their naval. Though it wasn’t what Twilight would consider a normal mouth, it was actually a hole that never closed which they’d use to speak with a series of clicking noises which her headset would translate as a bland monotone that would suck any emotion out of the original speech. Twilight often wondered how the headset’s translation into Ujelk speech would sound. The Ujelks weren’t the most unusual life forms Twilight had encountered out in space; she’d met equinoids, humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking-treeoids, and super-intelligent shades of the color blue. Speaking of which...

“Oh, good evening Captain nVVe,” Twilight said as she saw a large ball of blue light float through one of the corridor walls.

The blue light floated directly in front of her face and pulsed with a series of flashes in different shades of blue.

“Good evening Captain Twilight Sparkle,” the translator said.

This was what the orange visor was for. Some species in the universe didn’t communicate with speech or any other kind of sound and instead had a language which relied on visuals. Some of them would use sign language, nVVe’s apparently nameless race (generally referred to as the Blue Lights by others) would uses flashes of different colors, and Twilight had even met one race that communicated with eyebrow movement. The visor could also translate writing.

nVVe flashed again. “I assume Captain Twilight Sparkle is heading towards the bridge.”

One thing Twilight had noticed about nVVe’s race was that they would always refer to someone by their full name, and always their name. They’d never shorten it or use ‘you’ or ‘they’ or similar words. Twilight had once seen another of nVVe’s race holding a conversation with someone whose full name consisted of ten different names, ten very long names.

“As a matter of fact I am,” she said. “What about you then?”

“I am heading the same way Captain Twilight Sparkle.”

“Great, then let’s go there together.”

Twilight carried on down the corridor with nVVe floating alongside her, they didn’t talk to each other while they walked mainly because nVVe would need to be directly in front of her for the translator to work. Twilight got into the elevator first and even though she didn’t need to she waited until nVVe was inside with her before closing the doors. Before she could press the button to send the elevator to the top level nVVe floated upwards and straight through the ceiling. Twilight stared at the bit of ceiling nVVe had gone through and sighed before pushing the button.

nVVe’s race was quite definitely the strangest she’d encountered. They didn’t need to eat or breathe, they could pass through solid objects, and they didn’t need translators to understand what somebody was saying to them. Of course that particular trait wasn’t very unusual. Twilight had encountered a few telepathic races like the Orbitals that could also do that, in fact it had been a telepathic race that invented the translators, but they achieved it by reading the minds of whoever they were speaking to. She had no idea how nVVe’s race did it.
Twilight had heard that nVVe’s race didn’t even have a home planet, they just existed in space. She supposed that this made sense, gravity had no effect on them and she’d seen that they could survive the vacuum of space so they certainly wouldn’t need spaceships. She’d heard stories about some of them boarding spaceships and being accidentally left behind when the spaceship set off since they would just remain stationary, passing through the spaceship as it moved around them. Twilight had also heard that they could survive in Hyperspace where anyone else would eventually drift apart if they didn’t have protection, though Twilight had yet to see this particularly trait herself.

The elevator reached the top level and Twilight stepped out onto the bridge. The bridge was the only room on this level, of course with the shape of the ship there wasn’t really space for anything else in this part of it though the bridge itself was a fairly large room. Unlike the rest of the ship the lights on the bridge weren’t dimmed for night period as the bridge was always set to ‘day’. Because of this instead of being on duty during one of the two periods like in other parts of the ship the bridge crew would alternate in five hour shifts.
Lined along the walls of the bridge were a series of screens and consoles, each one being monitored by a different crew member. A wide window stretched across the far wall through which Twilight could see uncountable stars and a planet in the distance. Mounted on either side of the window were two projectors that served to project a holographic communications screen just over it, the hologram itself would be transparent so the crew could still see through the window. Twilight had heard of other ships which didn’t have a front window but rather a screen which would show the outside of the ship via a camera mounted on the ship’s front and sometimes rear ends and this screen would also be used for communication. Near the front of the bridge there were a few desk consoles and on an elevated platform in the very center of the room was the commander’s chair.

The Dominator II’s current commander was General En. En was from a race called the Neyn, a humanoid race that came from a planet covered almost entirely with water with only one landmass which they originated from. Due to them all coming from the same confined area of the planet the entire race shared the same pure white skin tone while other races that would be scattered across the surface of their home world would have some color variation. En was rather tall for her race, coming just under seven feet high. She was almost completely bald save for a an inch wide strip of black hair that went across the middle of her head and continued down the back in a long braid that extended all the way to the ground. She was dressed in the dark green uniform of her planet’s small military, which consisted of a sleeveless jacket with matching pants along with a pair of heavy black boots and thick black gloves. When she’d first heard about the Neyn military Twilight had questioned why a race that only consisted of one nation would need a military. She was told that there were a few other races living in their planet’s oceans and they engaged in war with them on a few occasions. Once they advanced to space travel and made interstellar contact they’d also need a military to defend against a possible alien invasion. Though the planet had yet to come under alien attack probably because of its limited amount of land, even the Bolkarn had left it alone, probably due to its limited amount of land.

General En herself took her position very seriously and Twilight had never seen her smile, she always had the same glaring frown plastered across her face. Sometimes it made Twilight feel uneasy when she was talking to her. She was also one of the few beings Twilight knew that didn’t bother using a translator headset. Instead she’d worked hard to learn all the different languages of the various species she had to work with. And for those languages she couldn’t speak, like the language of nVVe’s race, she’d just learn to understand it and hope that they’d have some way of understanding her. Right now she was talking to nVVe who was hovering a little way from her face, normally they’d stay relatively close to the floor if there was one.

Looking around the bridge Twilight spotted Rainbow Dash talking to one of the console operators, an equinoid that was slightly larger than a pony and with a pair of arms where a Pegasus’s wings would be. Rainbow Dash spotted Twilight and came bounding over to her. These days Rainbow Dash was keeping her mane slicked back so she could show off a long scar she now had across her forehead. Rainbow was rather proud of that scar and while Twilight understood why she wasn’t sure she’d want to show off something like that to everyone.

“Hey Twilight,” Rainbow said. “What’s up?”

“Oh nothing much, just felt like coming up here for some reason, something to do I guess.”

“I know, right. I just get so bored sometimes.”

“Well what do you normally do to stave off boredom?”

“Duh, go flying. But I can’t do that can I.”

“Well I guess it’s a good think we’re going back to Xentrill, plenty of time for you to go flying there.”

“Plenty of space too, I just feel so confined in this thing.”

Twilight had to agree with Rainbow; sure she couldn’t fly and would often spend a lot her time indoors studying but she did like to sometimes go outside for a walk or to just do some reading out in the open. Of course the environment on Xentrill wasn’t the same as back in Equestria but outside was still outside wherever you went.

“Speaking of Xentrill, I got a message from Fluttershy.”

“Awesome! What did she say?”

“Oh not much, she asked if we were both okay and said she’s looking forward to seeing us both again and she wishes we were going to be on Xentrill for more than a week.”

“So do I really.”

When returning to Xentrill a ship would remain there for a week to allow for maintenance and to give the crew a rest while its period out in space would last for at least a month. The only occasions when a ship would stay on Xentrill for more than a week would be if maintenance couldn’t be completed in that time.

Their conversation was interrupted with an announcement from the computer.

“Hyperspace jump in five minutes.”

“Thank you, computer,” General En said. Then she picked up a radio attached to her chair. “Engine room, standby for Hyperspace jump.”

While she’d been using her native language when speaking to nVVe this time she spoke in Universal, a language that had been invented specifically for aiding communication between species with the idea that it would be easier to learn this one language then to learn countless other languages. A sound idea though it hadn’t quite worked out as planned, Twilight had been trying to learn it but in about a year and a half of doing so hadn’t gotten very far.

“Well, I guess I’ll go and get some sleep,” Rainbow Dash said. “What about you?”

“I’m going to stay here a little longer; I want to have a word with General En.”

“Ok, see you when the lights are on.”

Rainbow Dash stepped into the elevator and nVVe followed her after the doors closed. Twilight heard a muffled “GAH! Would you please not do that!” before the elevator began to descend. Twilight decided to wait until the Hyperspace jump had been completed before talking to General En. The computer came to life once again and began a countdown until the Hyperspace jump. When the countdown reached zero the view of the stars through the window vanished and was instantly replaced by the swirling colors of Hyperspace. The first time Twilight had seen that happen she’d expected something a bit more spectacular, a flash of light maybe or perhaps a large hole would’ve opened in front of them which the ship would then have flown through, but instead all that happened was the ship would vanish and reappear in Hyperspace without any kind of special effect.

Ahead of them was a large black sphere. This was Xentrill, or to be more accurate the energy shield surrounding it to protect it from the ravages of Hyperspace. Xentrill was almost the same size as Pony-Earth only slightly smaller. The planet lacked any natural satellites or moons which was fortunate as they would’ve caused some trouble when the planet was shifted into Hyperspace. The shield itself was several times larger than the planet, the distance between the shield and Xentrill was about the same as between Pony-Earth and its moon to allow spaceships to orbit the planet inside the shield. The shield itself was projected from six generators that were suspended in orbit around the planet, five of them were simple large disks and the sixth was a ring which projected part of the shield into its center which could temporally be deactivated to allow a ship to pass through.

General En ordered the computer to establish contact with the planet and picked up her radio again.

“This is General En, commander of the Dominator II calling Xentrill control. Requesting passage through the Xentrill shield,” she said in Universal.

“Pass code?”

“There is no pass code.”

The pass code was one of the few phrases Twilight had managed to learn in Universal; of course she’d needed to since the pass code had to spoken in Universal to be accepted.

“Pass code confirmed, shield opening.”

“Thank you Xentrill control, signing off.”

As they drew closer the hole in the shield opened and the ship passed through it with the hole closing behind them. Up ahead of them was Xentrill itself. The planet’s surface consisted of two large landmasses with a few smaller ones dotted around the edges. When seen from space the landmasses mostly appeared to be grey or black thanks to the many cities that occupied it. The rest of the surface was covered in a pale green ocean. Orbiting around the planet was an artificial sun, about a fifth of the size of the planet. The Dominator II was currently on the planet’s night side.

Since they’d passed through the shield Twilight decided that now was the time to talk to the General.

“Good evening Captain Sparkle,” General En said, turning her chair round to face her when Twilight spoke up. “I was wondering when you were going to make your presence known.”

“Good evening Sir,” Twilight responded. “I received a few messages earlier that I thought I should relay to you, that is assuming you hadn’t received that information already.”

“Very well then, what did they say?”

Twilight quickly ran through the information she’d received, specifically the messages about the Sky Piercer and Bandraginus V.

“Hmm... I’d heard what happened to the Sky Piercer but this is the first I’ve heard about Bandraginus V,” General En said. “Do you have any theories about what may have happened to it?”

Twilight told the General about her Hyperspace theory but also pointed out why she thought the idea might be wrong.

“I see. How about this, they’re hiding it in Hyperspace but only because there’s something important about it that warrants it unlike all the other planets they’ve occupied and their home planet.”

“That does make sense sir; actually I’m surprised I didn’t think of that myself.”

General En turned back to facing the front of the bridge. “Put the ship in orbit, we’ll prepare to land once the next day period begins.” There was a “Yes sir” from one of the bridge crew in response. “Now Captain Sparkle I suggest you get some sleep.”

“Of course sir.”

General En gave command of the bridge to another crew member and stepped into the elevator with Twilight following her. General En’s quarters were almost directly below the bridge so she stepped out again almost immediately without a word to Twilight. Twilight carried on down as far as the elevator would go before heading to Elevator B. She didn’t encounter anyone else on her way back to her cabin and when she got there she just climbed into bed. She mentally went through everything she had to do the next day once they were on Xentrill. Then a thought struck her.

“Starswirl, next time I want to speak to Sergeant Heartstrings when she’s doing something... private, warn me,” she said. “In fact that goes for everybody else as well.”

“Acknowledged, Captain Sparkle.”

Chapter 3: Xentrill

Xentrill was the first alien planet I set hoof on and it was certainly a lot more pleasant then some of the others I’d end up visiting.

– Extract from When We Saw the Universe by Twilight Sparkle

Twilight had overslept the following morning and didn’t wake up until after the Dominator II had landed at the space port of Xentrill’s capital city. By the time she did most of the crew had already disembarked, carrying some of their personal possessions with them. While she imagined that some of the crew would probably be in rush to sort everything before leaving the ship if they’d overslept this wasn’t the case for Twilight, while she hadn’t gathered together anything beforehand she wasn’t taking much with her anyway, just the book she was currently reading, a second book in case she finished the first, and a clean resistance uniform which she didn’t wear that often anyway. In fact, hardly anyone really bothered with the uniform, not even General En who preferred the uniform or her own military. Twilight and other ponies hardly bothered with it mostly because they very rarely wore clothes anyway. The uniforms were only really worn for official meetings and similar events. The uniform itself consisted of a dark blue tunic and a pair of black pants which Twilight had cut a hole in for her tail, in fact pretty much any race that had tails had done the same thing. The tunic bore the logo of the resistance on the right breast; well actually it was the logo of the Xentrillian space fleet which was where the resistance had spawned from, the logo showed a rather generic looking spaceship flying past a dark red sun. Just beneath the logo was a white rectangle with a series of seemingly random black lines of varying thickness that designated its wearer’s rank. The uniform also came with a peaked cap that was the same color as the tunic save for a black visor, it also bore a metal version of the spaceship from the logo on the front.

Twilight loaded her limited luggage into a pair of saddlebags and headed towards the exit, which required going down in the elevator. As it descended Twilight hoped that once the lights had been fixed that they’d last until the end of their next mission, she was sure they’d broken every time she’d been onboard the Dominator II during its periods space. Well except for the period where they’d attacked the Golgafrincham space station. That time the lights had been broken before they even set out!

The Xentrill space port was quite vast, and also quite empty. Apparently in the past, before the planet had been hidden in Hyperspace and the resistance had begun, the place would’ve been very busy. Full of crowds of people and ships coming and going by the minute. But now the only ship there was the Domiantor II and the only people where either it’s crew and the slaves that had been rescued from the mines or those that worked there. It was a long walk from the ship to the exit.

Nearly everybody boarded a series of coaches that were parked outside, waiting to take them to their accommodation, Twilight on the other hoof preferred to walk. It would take her longer but she didn’t mind, and she had plenty of time anyway and after being cooped up on that spaceship for a month she was taking any chance she got to get some exercise out in the open air. Every member of the resistance had a small place to live in the capital city of the planet, mostly in buildings that had once been hotels. Any slaves that had been rescued from the mines were also given somewhere to live until they could be taken back to their home planet. Twilight had seen many ponies depart back to Pony-Earth, though many stayed on Xentrill, often because they had friends or family in the resistance. Nearly all the ponies lived in a former hotel called ‘The Haliwc’. Twilight hadn’t been able to find out what a Halwic was; she assumed it was either the name of the hotel’s founder or a Xentrillian word that didn’t have an English equivalent.

One thing that had amazed Twilight and Xentrill when she first saw it was just how tall a lot of the buildings were. Back in Equestria the tallest building she’d seen was Canterlot castle, though she’d heard that there were buildings taller than that in Manehatten but she’d never been there and the buildings on Xentrill were several times bigger than the Manehatten ones apparently were. Twilight’s room in The Haliwc was on one of the higher levels of the building and facing the ocean, conveniently the hotel was very close to the coast so there weren’t any other tall building’s getting in the way of the spectacular view.

Twilight made it to the hotel about an hour later. As she got closer she saw Rainbow Dash fly out of one of windows of its top floor, of course the only reason she could tell it was Rainbow Dash was because of the rainbow striped streak in the air she left behind her as she flew. Twilight had often wondered exactly how that happened. After she entered the hotel and signed in Twilight boarded the first of several elevators that would take her up to the 203rd floor where her room was. The Elevators here were a lot larger than the ones on the Dominator II; those could hold about four pony sized passengers while the ones in the Haliwc could hold fifteen in total. It took another fifteen minutes to get to the floor; fortunately her room was very close to the elevator. Twilight pulled out a key card that she kept a small pocket of her saddlebags at all times to open the door and stepped inside. After unpacking, with her uniform folded up on the bed, her headset and one of books sitting on a bedside table and the other placed neatly on a shelf, Twilight took a quick shower. After she’d finished and dried herself Twilight extracted a drink from a small fridge and lay down on her bed to do some more reading.

The room itself was a lot larger then her cabin on the Dominator II which was only as large as it needed to be so as not to take up too much space. The hotel room didn’t have that problem and could be as large as it wanted. The walls had been painted a pale yellow and the floor was covered with a dark red carpet, the bed was a lot larger than it really needed to be, one wall had a desk built onto it with a television sitting on top (which Twilight never used) and the fridge underneath it. The far wall was almost entirely taken up by a large window bathing the room in sunlight with curtains that matched the floor hanging on each side of it. If there’d been a moon or stars visible Twilight would probably have left the curtains open during the night, though she’d been told that since there were so many lights on in the city at night it would be almost impossible to see the stars anyway.

Twilight continued reading for almost an hour, occasionally glancing up at the window when she heard Rainbow Dash flying past. After finishing a chapter she glanced up at a clock mounted on the same wall as the desk, she had a conference to go to in just under an hour. She put the book down, dressed in her uniform and put on her headset before heading out of the hotel. She knew walking there would take too long so she boarded a taxi, one of several that were almost always waiting outside the hotel, to take her to the resistance headquarters building.

The building itself was nowhere near as high as some of others, only coming up to ten stories high. However what it lacked in height it made up with the amount of land it took up unlike all the tall buildings that only took up a small amount in comparison. Nearly all the buildings here were colored gold, which gave it the name ‘The Golden City’, at least that’s how it translated into English. This one however was silver, and its official name was ‘The Silver Center’. Prior the formation of the resistance the Silver Center had been used mostly for either political or business meetings, and in a sense it was still being used for the same thing now. On the inside the building had various rooms of different sizes. The resistance generally made use of the larger ones.

Twilight arrived at the Silver Center about half an hour early, so after paying the taxi driver she decided to get something to eat since she’d skipped breakfast. The Silver Center had a small food court on its fifth floor which turned out to be rather crowded. Twilight just got herself a few sandwiches, though she wasn’t entirely sure what was in them. It seemed rather like cheese, but tasted more like some sort of fruit, and it was purple. While she was eating Twilight glanced around the place, looking for anyone she might recognize. There wasn’t anyone she knew though she did spot a few blue lights, which was what most people called nVVe’s race. She watched as one of them was given their food which just floated in front of it. The blue light carried its food over to a table and set it down. Then it drifted over the foot, completely enveloping it, stayed there for a few seconds, and when it moved away the food was gone.

There were plenty of races around that Twilight recognized, and a few she didn’t. There was one green alien sitting a short distance from her whose head was covered with a large glass helmet and taken up almost entirely by a large green eye, in fact almost its entire body was its head save for the six tentacles it had. In the far corner was a being with two heads that seemed to be arguing with each other. One table had a group of Neyn sitting around it that were all laughing about something. An equinoid with two heads was just departing and hanging from the ceiling were two large bat-like creatures eating chunks of meat and accidentally drooling on anybody who walked right underneath them.

Eventually there was an announcement that the conference would start in ten minutes and that everyone attending should make their way to it. Twilight, along with nearly everyone else, headed out of the food court, taking care to avoid the puddle of drool on the way. The conference was taking place in the Main Conference room, the largest one in the building and due to its size Twilight wasn’t sure that ‘room’ was the right word for it, maybe there was a slight flaw in the translation. The ‘room’ was almost as big as a stadium, and laid out in a similar way. The seating was laid out in tiers and in ‘boxes’ that contained two seats each. Each box had a large translucent orange screen spread across the front, the same as the visor on the translator headset and doing the same job. Each seat also had a camera and a microphone in front of it, the microphone would translate what was being spoken into it into Universal and the cameras were linked to a series of screens placed on each of the four walls above the seats. One box was raised above the rest; this was where the resistance’s leader, the President of Xentrill, would be. The seats themselves were able to change shape in order to match whichever race happened to be sitting in them, though their default shape was meant for humanoids.

Twilight took her seat and was joined in the box by General En. Twilight greeted the General who only responded with a nod. The two of them were there to make a report on their most recent mission, General En was going to do most of the talking and Twilight was just there to listen, though there was a chance that the General would ask Twilight to contribute something to the conference. Twilight watched as everyone else attending the conference made their way in. Twilight had been to several of these conferences before but she’d still see races that she hadn’t seen before. A box a short distance to her left was being occupied by two beings that resembled pine trees, another was taken by something that looked like a horned badger and in a box on the opposite side of the room was something that looked like a large red blob of slime. There was a lot of chatter filling the room, each conversation being drowned out by all the other conversations. Twilight’s translator wasn’t able to cope with all of them, and only translated those that were happening right next to her, everything else was just a random mish mash of goodness knows how many languages. Eventually the president entered and everyone fell silent.

“Good morning everyone,” he said in Universal. “I shall call to order the 27th Resistance Conference.”

There was a round of applause from the audience members who could applaud; others resorted to slightly different approaches, such as a loud roar. This subsided when the president raised his hand and asked for silence. The president was being displayed on the screens with his name shown at the bottom. While Twilight couldn’t read it she recognized the letters as being Universal, she’d had even more trouble learning to read it as speaking it. The visor of her translator told her it said ‘President Oykxc’, Twilight had never heard his name being spoken aloud so she had no idea how it was pronounced.

One by one the president called on those present to give their reports, first Admiral Oks, then General Ttttt, Commander A19C2, and so on. It was almost an hour and a half before it was General En’s turn to make her report, and another half hour after that before the last report was made. There were mostly all the same, giving numbers of slaves that had been rescued, how many troops had been killed in the attempt, how many of those rescued had agreed to join the resistance and so on. Occasionally they’d have something different to say, such as an encounter with and subsequently a battle with a Bolkarn spaceship. Another reported finding a Bolkarn spaceship that had been abandoned by its crew and taken over by the slaves, apparently thanks to the intervention of the Red Starfighter. One report mentioned that they’re ship had encountered some space pirates, though they’d managed to escape unharmed. Apparently that particular pirate ship was captained by a pony. Twilight decided that she should talk to the ship’s commander, one General Paximat, at some point.

“Thank you everyone,” President Oykxc said once the last report had been made. “And now we must move on to other matters, Commander A19C2, you have the floor.”

The commander stood up again and his face and name appeared on the screens. A19C2 was an android, though he insisted on being referred to as a cyborg. Originally he’d been a humanoid life form and over time he’d had parts of himself replaced with mechanical ones. Eventually so much of him had been replaced that he was now completely mechanical. Even his name had been changed to something resembling a serial number, how and why that had happened Twilight didn’t know.

“I have been receiving information from our various spies and contacts on the actions of the Bolkarn,” while the translators would also convert what was being said into an emotionless monotone this was not the case for Commander A19C2, though this was because his voice was already an emotionless monotone. “They have told me that the Bolkarn have recently been attempting to alley themselves with various other races in order to combat us.”

There was some nervous muttering around the room.

“If they’re trying to recruit allies then that must mean they’re worried about us,” Twilight said to General En. “That must mean our efforts our having some effect.”

“Yes, but if they do manage to form an alliance with other races that could be a major problem for us,” the General replied.

“I have a list of their attempted alliances,” A19C2 continued. “It includes the Vrel, the Hulming Tars, the Jatravartids, the Un, the Kleptons, the Ooz, the Sorsons, the Zygons, the Silastic Armourfiends of Striterax, the Draconians, the Daxamites, the Zolplastics, the Kree, the Kleptons, the Treens...”

“Wait, didn’t he say the Kleptons twice?” Twilight whispered as A19C2 continued talking.

“There are two races in the galaxy called Kleptons,” En told her.

“Oh... doesn’t that get confusing?”

“Sometimes.”

Twilight thought that she shouldn’t really be surprised that there were races in the universe that shared the same name. Not too long after joining the resistance she learned that there were two planets in the galaxy called Earth, her own and one someone in the western spiral arm of the galaxy dominated by a humanoid race that had yet to make interstellar contact officially, and the Bolkarn had left that one alone so far.

“...the Majesdanians, the Linf, the Syv, and the Mysterons. All these races have so far turned down the Bolkarns offer of an allience.”

There was a loud sigh of relief from most of those present.

“We have also made another appeal to the Galactic Federation to help us,” A19C2 said.

“And do they still refuse to do so?” the President asked.

“They’re not refusing outright, but they are discussing the issue.”

“They’ve been discussing the issue for three years!” someone shouted.

“The Galactic Trig is completely useless!” another cried.

Then the conference room erupted into loud shouts and cries of anger, once again drowning each other out. The president had to shout for silence several times before the noise finally subsided.

“It seems we will have to carry on without the help of the Federation,” the president said. “Commander, do you have anything more to report?”

“No Mr. President.”

“Then I thank you for presenting this information to us,” there was a round of applause as Commander A19C2 sat down again.

“Now, I am sure you are all aware of the recent disappearance of Bandraginus V,” the president said, this was followed by some mutterings. “The Sunlight Rider arrived at the planet’s location a few hours ago, though they have not yet sent any reports on their findings. I now ask if any of you have any suggestions as to what may have happened to the planet.”

General En stood up. “Captain Sparkle and I have a small theory, which I will let her explain.”

Twilight was startled to hear this, yes she knew that she may be asked to contribute something at some point but she’d expected the General to explain the theory herself if she brought it up. Twilight glanced up at the screen on the opposite wall; there she was plastered across it with her name written in Universal. When it appeared she’d heard sounds of suppressed laughter around the room. Apparently unlike some names pony names could be translated into other languages, and some species found the names to be rather silly. Twilight ignored them. She cleared her throat and gave a quick explanation of her Hyperspace theory, including why she thought it might be wrong and General En’s own addition to it.

“Thank you Captain Sparkle,” the president said when she’d finished. “Does anyone have anything they would wish to add to this theory, or perhaps their own?”

A blue light appeared on the screens, Twilight didn’t recognise this one but according to the translation its name was simply P.

“It is possible that the planet could have been illegally demolished,” it said.

There was a gasp and some muttering when they all heard this.

“If that does indeed turn out to be the case then we must find out who is responsible, and when they do they will have to answer for their crime,” the president said, and the crowd cheered and applauded or did their own alternative in response, “Now, are there anymore suggestions in regards to this matter?”

Silence.

“Very well, then I will ask if there are any other issues any of you may wish to raise. If not then I will bring this conference to a close.”

Again, silence.

“Then I bid you all farewell,” with that the president left.

The whole room slowly became filled with chatter once again as they all began to leave. Twilight and General En remained in their seats as the General checked a watch she was wearing.

“It finished earlier then I expected,” she said. “We’ve got a whole hour to spare.”

“What should we do in the meantime sir?” Twilight asked, wishing she’d brought one of her books with her, and then she remembered something. “I thought I should speak to General Paximat about those pirates he encountered.”

“I think the General has an appointment right now Captain,” General En told her.

“Oh.”

“I suggest you and I get something to eat before our next meeting.”

“Very well sir.”

The two of them got out of their seats and exited the conference room, heading for the food court.

Chapter 4: Red

Chapter 4: Red

One of the sub-missions assigned to some of the crew of the Dominator II, myself included, was to find as much information as we could on the Red Starfighter, and hopefully find out their identity. When we finally found out who they were, it turned out to be the last pony I expected.

– Extract from When We Saw the Universe by Captain Twilight Sparkle

The Dominator III was a very different ship from its predecessor. While the Dominator II had been designed to look sleek and majestic the Dominator III gave off an image of power and strength. The ship’s hull was made of various heavy metals and coated in a dark red paint, which was mostly still intact. The ship looked like a solid red brick, with a curved front. At the top of this curve was a wide red tinted window, and behind the window was the bridge.

Bolkarn Lord Gofthraki was in command of the ship; he was sitting in the large black commander’s chair, unlike all the other chairs on the bridge which were constructed from plastic the commander’s chair was made from the same metal as the ship’s hull. It wasn’t very comfortable, but comfort was not something that the Bolkarn cared about. Draped across the back of the chair was a cloak he wore, made of the skin of a manticore he’d killed during a visit to the Bolkarn’s mines on Pony-Earth. The beast had killed almost an entire squad of Bolkarn before he killed it with his hammer, which was propped against the right hand side of his chair. The hammer was a solid block of metal with a short handle that was barely bigger than its wielder’s hands. It was also stained with the dried blood of its many victims. Sitting against the other side of his chair was a long black sword, the sword was mostly just for decoration but he did know how to use it, and any member of his crew who ‘disappointed’ him would have a choice for how he’d kill them, they could either choose to die by his hammer or by his sword. And then he’d kill them with the one they didn’t choose.

The Dominator III was currently cruising casually through space, they did have a destination in mind but they weren’t in any particular hurry, they could just jump through hyperspace and arrive there almost instantaneously. But first they had to find a suitable place to cross into hyperspace. The ship was returning to Bolka after making a series of visits and inspections to the many worlds that the Bolkarn had occupied and set up mines on. This was not something that Gofthraki enjoyed doing. He wanted to be part of the attacks, to be in the midst of battle and conquest. He had been once, long ago. He began at the bottom, and overtime came to dominate battlefield after battlefield before finally being given the title of a Lord and put in command of the Dominator III. Now he felt as though he’d been put out of the way, to make room for new younger Bolkarn to take his place as great heroes of battle while his glorious deeds were forgotten by the new generation. He gazed through the window at the infinite number of stars out there, with goodness knows how many planets orbiting around them. He wanted to turn the ship towards one of those stars and launch an attack on one of those planets, they’d never see them coming and the Dominator III would crush them within hours. It would all be oh so easy, and oh so glorious.

The ship had left the planet Celo-7 several hours ago, shortly afterwards they’d discovered that two slaves from the mine had stowed away onboard the ship and later stolen two escape pods. The Dominator III had opened fire on of the two and damaged it, though they didn’t know how severely. Both escape pods had landed on two very inhospitable planets with very little chance of survival for their occupants, and Gofthraki had decided to leave them to their fate. But he couldn’t help wondering what a younger Gofthraki would’ve done, a Gofthraki who wasn’t a lord, who wasn’t in command of a ship that could probably ram through an entire fleet of battleships as though they weren’t even there. That Gofthraki would probably have gone down to the planets himself, inhospitality be damned, and smashed the stowaways heads into paste with his hammer. Was he going soft? Maybe he was. As those thoughts crossed his mind Gofthraki vowed that the next time he had an opportunity to prove that he wasn’t going soft he’d take it.

Then one of the bridge crew spoke up, “Lord Gofthraki, sir, we’ve reached a suitable point for crossing into Hyperspace. Shall I prepare to… hold on… sir, there’s something coming through Hyperspace, just in front of us.”

Gofthraki stared out of the window as the something popped into existence a short distance away from the ship. It was a small ship, and very hard to make out clearly at that distance.

“Give us a closer view,” he ordered.

“Aye aye sir.”

A holographic screen activated in front of the window, displaying the same view. A red ring moved across the screen and over the small ship, the image was replaced with another, this time a much closer and larger view of the ship. The ship was shaped like a squashed bullet, and painted a bright red color save for a black patch on the top that must be the cover for the cockpit. They could see tiny holes pointing forwards, probably weaponry. Gofthraki didn’t recognize the design.

“What it is?” he barked.

“I’m not sure,” one crew member said. “The computer is studying the design to see if it matches anything in our records.”

“Sir,” another one said, “The ship is hailing us.”

“Then let us hear what they have to say. Put them on screen.”

“I’m afraid we have audio only sir.”

“Then put that on the speakers.”

“Aye aye sir.”

There was a crackle as the speakers were activated, and the message was heard throughout the entire ship. A long bout of laughter came through the speakers and echoed round the dark corridors of the Dominator III. The crew stared at each other, not sure of what to make of it while Gofthraki just scowled. Then the laughing stopped and whoever it was spoke.

“Attention Bolkarn ship,” they said in Bolkarnese, the voice sounded distorted and sometimes buzzed, whoever it was must’ve wanted to conceal their identity. “This is the Red Starfighter; you will now abandon your ship and hand it over to me.”

There was a brief moment of silence across the Dominator III, and then everyone onboard burst into laughter.

“I’m guessing that’s a no,” the Red Starfighter said.

“That’s right, ‘Red Starfighter’,” Gofthraki bellowed. “If you think we’re going to be intimidated by one tiny ship then you’re clearly dealing with the wrong race. Open fire!”

The Dominator III’s weapons burst into life, firing bursts of energy in the direction of the small ship. The ship shot away, ducking, diving and weaving in and out of the path of the blasts. The Bolkarn fired a few small missiles at it, but it dodged those to. The missiles changed course to follow it. The ship shot over the top of the Dominator III, and then flew away with the missiles trailing behind it.

“That should sort them out,” Gofthraki said, now wearing a smug grin on his face.

Then the Red Starfighter changed direction, and so did the missiles. They were heading straight for the Dominator III. At almost the last second the Red Starfighter changed direction, the missiles did not. They slammed straight into the hull of the ship which shook from the force of the explosions.

“Damage report,” Gofthraki shouted.

“Minimal,” came the response.

“Good,” Gofthraki thought, the ship was strong; it would take more than two of their own missiles to destroy them.

“Sir, the craft is opening fire on us.”

“Then return fire.”

The Red Starfighter’s craft shot some of its own energy bursts into one of the Dominator III’s weapons banks, dodging out of the way as the ship opened fire on them. The weapons bank eventually exploded and the Red Starfighter pulled away from the ship, before turning back and opening fire once again, this time on a missile launch port which was destroyed very quickly. The resulting explosion was intensified when several missiles went up with it.

“DAMAGE REPORT!” Gofthraki shouted again, slamming a fist down onto the arm of his chair.

Part of the right side of the hull had been ripped away by the explosion, and now the Red Starfighter was turning for another attack. Gofthraki understood why they were being beaten by this thing. The Red Starfighter was small and fast, a hard target to hit, but they should be scoring a few hits. Why was every single shot they fired at this thing missing? The Dominator III on the other hand was the exact opposite, strong yes, but slow and a very easy target. They couldn’t quickly turn their ship around to face an oncoming threat, which was why the ship had weapons mounted on all sides. The ship was rocked by another, much larger explosion and alarms started sounding.

“They’ve… they’ve taken out the engines,” a crew member shouted over the noise.

Gofthraki let out a scream of rage, and then he saw the Red Starfighter descend into view, only a few feet away from the window.

“Now, I’m going to ask nicely,” said the voice from the speakers. “Abandon ship or I’ll open fire on the bridge.”

“NEVER!”

“I can do worse you know.”

“YOU AND WHAT ARMY?”

“Oh goody, you just gave me the perfect opportunity to do this!”

The Bolkarn watched in horror as several dozen ships of various sizes suddenly appeared out of Hyperspace, they were surrounded and outnumbered.

“Now, I’m going to ask nicely one more time,” the Red Starfighter said. “Either abandon ship now or you won’t have a ship to abandon.”

One secondary objective that had been assigned to the crew of the Dominator II was to gather as much information as possible on the Red Starfighter. Twilight had been given a major role in this task, originally when she’d first heard about this she was going to request that she be assigned to it before learning that she’d been selected for it anyway. The Red Starfighter had first appeared about eighteen months ago, around the same time that the resistance liberated Pony-Earth from the Bolkarn. The resistance first heard about them about a month later when a Bolkarn ship called the Dreaded VI made contact with them. Apparently the Red Starfighter had attacked the ship and ordered the crew to abandon it and then given the slaves control of the ship along with the option to join either the Red Starfighter’s own fleet or the resistance, the slaves choose the latter option.

The Red Starfighter’s actual first assault was on the Dominator III, the circumstances were apparently the same as with the Dreaded VI, though in this case the Dominator III didn’t have any slaves on board and the Red Starfighter simply captured the ship after ‘persuading’ the crew to abandon it. The resistance had only heard about this incident some time afterwards from some of their spies on Bolka. Since then they’d been keeping track of the Red Starfigher’s movements as best they could. From the information they’d been given they knew that the Red Starfighter was an Equinoid, and female. Ever since they’d been able to determine that fact Twilight had wandered if the Red Starfighter was from Pony-Earth, though exactly where the Red Starfighter came from they still didn’t know.

Twilight and General En stepped into meeting room 18. This was one of the smaller rooms in the Silver Centre, able to accommodate about 15 individuals, though they certainly didn’t need that many. The purpose of this meeting was to go over and share the most recent information they’d acquired about the Red Starfighter, and compare it with whatever they had so far. Twilight and En weren’t the first to arrive; the only other members of the Red Starfighter Committee were already there. nVVe was floating above one of the many tables in the room, nVVe had been assigned to the committee because all the blue lights shared a mental connection, if any of them learnt anything about the Red Starfighter nVVe would know about it immediately. Sitting on the opposite side of the room from nVVe was Liha. Liha was one of the Dominator II’s engineers, Twilight didn’t know the name of her species nor where she came from, she hadn’t meet anyone else of that race either. Liha was an orange skinned humanoid, she had a third eye set into her forehead and shoulder length white hair, but Twilight thought it looked more like spaghetti then hair. She was also one of the few members of the resistance Twilight knew who almost always wore her uniform, though she also wore a white jacket over it. She was also wearing a belt with several pouches and hoops holding various tools and other things, one hoop was currently empty and its usual contents, a small screwdriver, was being twiddled between the five fingers and two thumbs of her left hand. Liha’s job on the committee was to try and determine where the Red Starfighter, or at least her ship, came from. They’d been able to produce a few possibilities for what the ship looked like based on descriptions from eyewitnesses, unfortunately very few of these agreed with each other and some seemed to be very exaggerated. Liha had also been studying some recordings they had of communication between the Red Starfighter and the ships she’d attacked, the Red Starfighter’s side of these recordings was heavily altered presumably to disguise her voice. Liha had been trying to restore these to how they originally sounded, she hadn’t managed it yet.

Twilight took a seat and extracted the folder from her saddlebags while General En stood at the end of the room and cleared her throat for attention, Liha quickly put her screwdriver away.

“We have recently received new information which may be a big step in discerning the origin of the Red Starfighter,” she said. “Captain Sparkle, if you please.”

“Yes sir,” Twilight said and extracted a few sheets from her folder which she distributed to the others.

“This picture was taken by one of our space probes as it was passing Planet 46,” General En explained. “It shows a Bolkarn ship, specifically the Great Annihilator, being attacked by what we presume to be the Red Starfighter.”

The Great Annihilator had made contact with the resistance during the first week of the Dominator II’s most recent mission and the photograph had been received shortly afterwards. The Red Starfighter’s small ship had been highlighted in the photograph; otherwise it was rather hard to see. Twilight extracted another sheet of paper and inserted it into a projector at the back of the room. An enhanced and enlarged image of the ship appeared on the opposite wall. The image was slightly blurred, but it was still easier to see then the original. Liha stared at it.

“Hey Twilight, you got any of the drawings with you?” she asked.

“Yes, hold on,” Twilight took out several more sheets and levitated them over to Liha.

The sheet’s Twilight had passed to her showed several drawings based on the various descriptions of the Red Starfighters ship they’d been given. Liha started going through them all, she’d look between the drawings and the photograph and some she’d toss aside while others she’d lay down on the table, Twilight noticed that the ones that were on the table seemed close the what the ship actually looked like so she must be tossing the ones that didn’t match. Twilight could remember what some of them looked like, a few of them were far too big to be a starfighter, and one had a set of enormous spikes protruding from it. While that would certainly be intimidating it wasn’t very practical.

“Well?” Twilight asked Liha once she’d gone through all the drawings, there’d been 23 in total. Liha had tossed aside nine of them and now spread the remaining 14 over the table.

“This is the basic description we were given the most,” she said. “So I’d say this is definitely the real Red Starfighter.”

Twilight glanced at the drawings; while they weren’t exact they were certainly the same ship. Some of the descriptions had given the ship decorative paintwork such as a monstrous face on the ship’s front; another one had two large missiles attached to the side of the ship though the ship itself had the same shape as the real one.

“So do you have any idea where the ship came from?” General En asked?

Liha stared at the photograph for a few seconds before answering, “I’m afraid not,” she said. “It doesn’t match any design I’m aware of.”

Liha had had a keen interest in space travel since she was very young, and over the years she’d gathered as much information as possible about every spaceship ever created, old and new, to find a spaceship she didn’t know about that was more than a year old was very unlikely.

“It could be a custom built ship,” nVVe suggested.

“Good point,” Liha said. “Or it could be a different ship, we’ve always assumed that the Red Starfighter has been using the same ship since the beginning, but they could have switched to a new model. Though I’ll admit I don’t recognize any models from any of the descriptions we were given, so there’s that theory shot down already.”

“The original could’ve been a custom made ship as well,” Twilight suggested.

“Another good point.”

“Perhaps we would be able to better determine its origin if we were able to examine its internal workings,” nVVe said.

“Okay, good idea,” Liha said. “But how are we going to do that?”

“She has a point,” Twilight said. “We only got this image purely by chance so I think it’s unlikely that we’ll get another one that easily. And we can’t have probes following every single Bolkarn ship just on the off chance that the Red Starfighter will show up.”

“I agree, but I think that is the only way we could manage to get another photograph of the Red Starfighter,” General En said.

“But it’s not a practical solution sir,” Twilight replied. “We don’t have enough probes for an operation like that for a start, but we’d also need to know when a Bolkarn ship is travelling through space and its course, and there’s no guarantee that the ship would be attacked by the Red Starfighter.”

“Twilight’s right, I mean… wait a moment, I’ve got an idea,” Liha exclaimed, as all three of her eyes widened and a wide smile spreading across her face.

“Well?” General En asked.

“Okay, how about this, we plant a series of bugs on several Bolkarn ships and have them monitor the ships radio transmissions. We’ll also have those transmissions being relayed to a probe waiting in Hyperspace fitted with an x-ray camera. If the bug picks up the words ‘Red Starfighter’ over the transmission then it’ll send the ships location to the probe which will jump out of Hyperspace a short distance away from the action and start taking pictures.”

There was a short silence as Liha grinned at the rest of them, waiting for a response.

“It’s a good idea,” Twilight said. “But…”

“But?”

“How exactly are we going to get the bugs planted?”

“Zark! I didn’t think of that.”

“We’d also need to make the bugs themselves,” General En pointed out.

“Oh don’t worry; I can do that pretty easily. And getting a probe set up should be pretty easy to.”

“So we just need to think of a way to actually install the bugs then,” Twilight said.

“Exactly.”

The meeting carried on for another hour after that. Liha gave a report on the progress she’d made in regards to restoring the audio of the Red Starfighter to its original form, and Twilight was asked if the space probe had taken any more photographs of the Red Starfighter. It had, though only three more and the quality on the others was rather poor. She’d also been asked if they’d managed to photograph the vast fleet that sometimes came with the Red Starfighter, however on this occasion the fleet hadn’t appeared. They also listened to the recordings of the Red Starfighter from the Great Annihilator. The Red Starfighter always started with laughter, none of them knew why. Though because of this an idea as to who the Red Starfighter might be had popped into Twilight’s head the first time she’d heard it, but after thinking about it she’d just dismissed the idea as incredibly unlikely and chalked it up to just wishful thinking.

Eventually General En called an end to the meeting and they all prepared to leave, nVVe was the first to go and floated out through the door without flashing a goodbye. Liha picked up a crutch that had been leaning against the back of her chair; Liha had suffered a wound to her right leg during an incident when a group of Bolkarn had boarded the Dominator II and since then had been walking with a limp.

“Hey Twilight,” she said in English, to speak English over time thanks to spending a lot of time with Lyra since Liha had made Lyra’s arm and was responsible for maintaining it. “You got any plans for tonight?”

“Not really,” Twilight replied, “Except maybe spending a night doing some more reading.”

“Well, I was thinking a few of us could have a night out. You, me, Lyra, Lyra’s girlfriend…”

“Bon Bon.”

“Yeah, her… actually I haven’t met her yet. Anyway, I’m going to be meeting Lyra in a short while to give her arm a check up.”

“Well when you do tell her I wanted to talk to her.”

“Will do. So, you interested?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Okay, then I guess I’ll see you later. Bye.”

Liha left the room, Twilight was about to follow her when General En spoke.

“One moment Captain Sparkle.”

“Sir?”

“We are having some new crew members assigned to the Dominator II, one of them is a particularly significant figure on his home world and I am about to go and meet him. I would like you to come with me.”

“Very well sir,” Twilight said and followed General En out of the room.

General En led Twilight back to the Silver Center’s food court; Twilight understood why they were meeting this new recruit there as she’d often arrange to meet up with her friends there after a meeting. The new recruit was sitting at a bar at the far end of the food court drinking a large glass of a green drink called Glando. Twilight had never tried it herself, but it was apparently very popular.

The new recruit was a large humanoid being; in fact he was a similar size to the Bolkarn, with tough looking dark grey skin and wearing various pieces of armor which included a helmet that appeared to have a translator built into it, he also had a large sword hanging from his belt. He looked towards them as he heard them approach and got off the stool he was sitting on.

“Greetings,” he said in a deep voice. “I assume that you are General En.”

“You assume correctly.”

“And your companion?”

“Twilight Sparkle,” Twilight said, then realizing she’d forgotten something, “Captain Twilight Sparkle.”

Twilight waited a few seconds for the slight chuckle that almost always followed when she introduced herself to someone. To her relief it didn’t come.

“Captain Sparkle is in charge of organizing any new information the Dominator II receives and with coordinating our attacks on Bolkarn mines,” General En explained.

“Certainly an important position, though I assume this means you rarely see combat yourself.”

“I have a few times, though not since... never mind.”

“Something personal you’d prefer to not talk about?”

“Yeah.”

“I understand. So we should change the subject, I realize I haven’t introduced myself yet. I am Phaurn, Champion of Vendagol.”

“And I’m pleased to meet you,” Twilight said, raising one of her hooves, Phaurn had to bend down to shake it.

“I don’t think I’ve heard of your home planet,” Twilight told him.

“Vendagol has yet to become involved in the Bolkarn conflict,” General En told her.

“Oh, then why join the resistance then?”

“The resistance needs all the help it can get,” Phaurn told her. “And I believe an individual should be allowed to become involved in a conflict even if his people do not. And by doing so I may help my world to continue to stay out of the conflict.”

“Well I can guess I can understand that idea. So, I assume you will aiding us in our attacks on the planets that the Bolkarn have occupied.”

“Indeed.”

“And is that sword the only weapon you’ll be taking into battle?”

“Certainly.”

“Then I may have to reorganize some of my basic attack strategies to accommodate for you and that sword. I assume that’s why you wanted me to meet him,” the last part was addressed to General En.

“That is correct Captain Sparkle.”

“Well what would your standard tactics involve?” Phaurn asked.

“Usually find some cover and open fire on any Bolkarn who happen to be in range while slowly moving closer to the mines, though I’ll admit once they actually get into the mines there isn’t that much cover.”

“A basic, but sound strategy.”

“How well does that armor stand up to bullets?” Twilight asked. “I can see a few gaps in it actually.”

“I will admit that I have yet to find out.”

“Then may I suggest that you wear our own body armor, we know that it’s mostly bullet proof, though it does have one or two week spots but it does its job.”

“I will consider it.”

“Good. I think you should also carry a blaster with you just in case. If that sword is going to be your main weapon in a conflict that mostly uses firearms you could easily get into a situation where it’s not much use, like if you stuck behind somewhere and being fired upon from nearly every side. A sword isn’t going to be much use there unless you throw it, and then you’ve lost your weapon, and you might even miss.”

“I will have to give that some thought.”

“Please do.”

Silence followed this, Phaurn didn’t respond to Twilight’s last remark and she wasn’t sure what to say next. The silence was eventually broken by General En.

“Do you have anything else you wish to ask our new recruit Captain Sparkle?”

“Oh, erm... no. Sir.”

“Very well then, you may go,” General En said. “I have other thinks to discuss with Phaurn.”

“Thank you sir.”

Twilight saluted and trotted away and out of the building. She really wasn’t sure what use a sword would in the battles they’d have to fight; really a sword would only be useful if your enemies were also all armed with swords. Twilight wandered if she’d have to persuade Phaurn to abandon the idea of using the sword and carry a blaster in its place, or at least make the blaster his primary weapon. Twilight supposed that something like a sword would be useful as a backup weapon, blasters could run out of power and a gun that fired physical projectiles would eventually run out of ammunition. A sword didn’t have anything that could run out, although it could maybe break, or its sharp edge could be blunted. One the rare occasion where Twilight involved herself in a battle she’d always carry a blaster, and if it ran out she’d resort to firing blasts of pure magic at her enemies. But too much of that would eventually wear her out.

Since she didn’t have a schedule to stick to this time Twilight decided to walk back to the Halwic, and walking would give her time to think. As she walked she gazed around at her surroundings, the tall buildings still amazed her. Glancing upwards she saw Rainbow Dash flying overhead, and once Twilight was close enough to be able to see the Halwic she saw Rainbow Dash fly back in through a window. Twilight thought that maybe she should ask Rainbow if she’d be interested in Liha’s plans for a night out. Twilight passed many different species as she went along, some she knew and some she didn’t. At one point a blue light floated through the door of a building across the street, and at another time she walked past a pegasus pony who’d lost her wings which had now been released by a pair of stiff wings and a pair of small jets. The walk back took about two hours, and as she approached the building Twilight saw Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy coming out of the front door.

“Hey Twilight,” Rainbow shouted as she saw Twilight approaching, Fluttershy just smiled.

“Hello you two,” Twilight said.

“So what’ya been doing?” Rainbow asked.

“Oh you know, just lots of boring meetings,” Twilight replied. “How was your…” then Twilight glanced at Fluttershy, “never mind, sorry.”

Fluttershy smiled and shook her head, “I don’t mind,” she said.

“Good,” Rainbow said, giving Fluttershy a friendly nudge. “And it was AWESOME!”

“Of course it was. It always is.”

“I know!” Rainbow’s voice had risen to a rather high pitch with all her excitement and she now had a wide grin slapped across her face. Fluttershy let out a small giggle.

“So, where are you two going?” Twilight asked.

Rainbow Dash’s grin instantly vanished, “Oh, we were going to go and see Applejack.”

“Oh,” an awkward silence followed, which was eventually broken by Rainbow Dash.

“You want to come with us?” she asked.

Twilight sighed, “I wish I could. But I’ve got important things to do. Next time I’ll come, I promise. Pinkie Pie promise.”

“Ok,” Rainbow said as Twilight went through the gestures of a Pinkie Pie promise. “After all, she’s not going anywhere yet.”

“Yeah, I guess not. Well, I guess I’ll see you two later.”

The three of them all said goodbye and Twilight watched Rainbow and Fluttershy walk away. Twilight sighed, thinking about Applejack had caused her mood to drop, and now she needed cheering up. She’d probably ask Rainbow if she’d want to join in with Liha’s night out later after they got back, maybe Fluttershy would be interested to. She walked into the hotel, and after quickly signing in headed for the elevator as usual and found Lyra waiting for one. She had a pair of saddlebags slung over her back with a bottle sticking out of one of them.

“Good afternoon Captain Sparkle,” Lyra set when she saw Twilight.

“Lyra we’re not on duty right now, you can drop the ranks,” Twilight told her.

“Oh good. Liha said you wanted to talk to me.”

“I do, but let’s head upstairs first. I think Bon Bon should be there to hear what I’ve got to say as well. How is she by the way?”

The elevator doors opened and they both stepped in, Lyra pushed the button for the highest floor it would go to.

“She’s fine, not perfect but fine. Mind you she has just been rescued from two years of slavery in a Bolkarn mine so normally I’d expect her to be in a pretty bad state.”

Twilight nodded, a lot of the slaves would need to go through some therapy to get over the trauma they experienced in the mines, Lyra herself had taken a while to get back to her old self when the resistance had rescued her.

“How’s the arm?” Twilight asked her.

“Doing well, Liha needed to adjust some of the joints and tighten some connections and some dirt got trapped in it during the last mine assault but that was easily fixed. She’s trying to rework it so that the movements a bit smoother and faster.”

“And what’s the bottle for?”

Lyra grinned and lifted the bottle out of the bag with some magic. The label stated it contained imported Equestria wine.

“A little something to celebrate,” Lyra told her. “Though before that I’m taking Bon Bon out for dinner at Feldrian’s.”

“Oh wonderful!”
Feldrian’s was a restaurant that Twilight had discovered after her first few days on Xentrill, after first getting over her surprise that an alien world actually had restaurants Twilight found that the food they served there was really impressive. And the head chef was willing to experiment and expand the menu and before long they started serving Equestrian food. Twilight had introduced the place to all her friends, Lyra included, and they’d all had several wonderful evenings there, with the possible exception of the time when Rainbow Dash almost sat on a Vl’hurg.
“Liha was asking if you’d be interested in joining her for a night out, but I guess since you’ve got plans…”
“Yeah, she did bring that up. I told her we could do that another time. Tonight it’s just going to be me and Bon Bon.”
“You know, I was going to talk to you last night while we were still on the ship,” Twilight said. “But you were... um, busy.”
“Oh, right,” Lyra blushed and let out an awkward laugh.
“Nothing to be embarrassed about,” Twilight told her. “In fact I think you deserved a bit of time together after all you’ve been through.”
“Thanks Twilight,” Lyra said.
As the elevator ride continued they carried on talking. Lyra asked how the Red Starfighter investigation was going, and after answering that question Twilight told her about Phaurn and Lyra seemed intrigued when Twilight mentioned his sword. Eventually they reached their floor and Lyra led the way to her room, extracting her key card from a saddlebag with her arm before going inside.
The room was almost exactly the same as Twilight’s, the only exception being the double bed which Lyra had insisted upon having when she was assigned a room for when she found Bon Bon. Bon Bon was standing by the window on the opposite side of the room, gazing out at the city in amazement. When she heard them come in she turned round and bounded towards Lyra. The two of them embraced and kissed, Twilight couldn’t help but smile at this. Lyra showed Bon Bon the wine bottle and told her what she had planned for that evening, Twilight just stood by the door waiting patiently.
“Hello Twilight Sparkle,” Bon Bon eventually said.
Twilight wasn’t surprised that Bon Bon recognized her, after all the stuff she’d wound up involved with in Ponyville and Equestria in general she’d be more amazed if Bon Bon didn’t know who she was. Twilight just smiled and gave a nod in reply.
“So, you wanted to talk to me,” Lyra said gesturing for Twilight to come a bit further into the room.
“Well Lyra, when you first joined the resistance you said your reason for doing so was so you could find Bon Bon,” Lyra nodded. “So now that you have done do you still want to be a part of it?”
“Well... back when I joined up I thought I’d just rescue Bon Bon and we’d find some corner of the universe to hide in where the rest of it would just ignore us,” Lyra said. “But now, after all I’ve been through I don’t think I can give this up. I’ve made friends, and I’ve seen some of them die. I’ve seen innocent beings die and worlds that have been torn apart. I can see that all of that has to be stopped, and sure I can’t do much to help, but ‘not much’ is still something. So my answer is that I’m going to carry on until this is all over.”
“Thank you Lyra, somehow I knew that’s what you would say,” Twilight said.
Bon Bon gave Lyra a kiss on the cheek, “I’m so proud of you Lyra,” she whispered into Lyra’s ear.
“So, what about you?” Twilight asked Bon Bon. “Do you want to join us?”
Bon Bon shook her head, “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t fight, and right now I’d rather get back to a normal life. But I guess if Lyra’s still going to be fighting that’s not going to happen for a while.”
“Well then, I guess that means you’ll be staying here,” Lyra said.
“What?”
“Well when we rescue the friends or family of someone in the resistance and they don’t want to join in, they usually just stay here when they’re out on a mission.”
“How long would that be?”
“A month.”
Bon Bon shook her head again, “I can’t wait that long. I may not be fighting, but I’ll come with you.”
“Are you sure?” Lyra asked.
“Absolutely,” Bon Bon said. “From now on I’m going to stay by your side as much as possible. You need me Lyra, you need someone to come back to after attacking somewhere, and you need someone by your side when you wake up from your nightmares.”
Twilight saw a few tears starting to well up in Lyra’s eyes and a wide smile spreading over her face. Then Lyra gave Bon Bon a tight hug.
“Thanks sweetie,” she said.
Twilight noticed a tear running down the side of her cheek and quickly brushed it off.
“Well, I guess I’ll have to see if I can give you a room for two on the ship then,” she said.
“Thanks Twilight,” Lyra said, giving her a thumbs-up.
“Well, I guess I’ll leave you two together,” she said and left the room.
Twilight trotted back to her own room, and after stepping inside stripped off her uniform and translator headset. Before settling down with a book she picked up a small radio she had and called up Liha with it.
“Liha,” she said once she got a response. “I think I will join you tonight.”

Chapter 5: Sword

Chapter 5: Sword

Phaurn eventually rejected my recommendation that he take some of our own body armor and a blaster into combat, though in hindsight I guess he didn’t need them.

– Extract from When We Saw the Universe by Captain Twilight Sparkle

The week past without anything eventful occurring; only the usual reports of more planets that had been attacked by the Bolkarn, and Bolkarn ships that had been attacked by the Red Starfighter. The Dominator II was launched again on schedule, and within a few hours was launching another assault on a Bolkarn occupied planet. The assault came in the middle of a storm. The planet Xocvi was known for particularly violent storms, the Bolkarn had taken shelter from it leaving the slaves to cower in the tunnels.
Lyra went down to the planet aboard the new Carrier 3. Carriers would always be occupied by the same troops, though a few members of Lyra’s squad who had been killed on Krankor had subsequently been replaced. One of those replacements was Phaurn. He was sitting directly opposite Lyra, squeezed into a space between two others that was a little too small for him though he didn’t seem to mind, the two on either side of him clearly did mind.
Lyra looked out through a window at the cloud layer below them. She could see lightning flashing through it though they weren’t close enough to hear any thunder. When they entered the clouds the carrier was battered by wind which only lessened slightly when they emerged from them. The sound of thunder drowned out almost any other sound and the view through the windows was obscured by the rain, with only an occasional blurred lightning bolt visible. The Carrier touched down with its rear end facing the mine a short distance away, and its occupants rushed out almost immediately, Lyra cast a small field of magic around herself to keep the rain off.
The Bolkarn had been taken by surprise and were unprepared to fight off an attack in this weather. The weather itself wasn’t a disadvantage for the resistance. The visors of the helmets they wore were similar to the translator headset visors, and they did more than just translate. Just before emerging from the Carrier Lyra and everyone else had activated an infrared setting on the visor, allowing them to see everyone around them in lurid colors that didn’t really fit with the situation. The Bolkarn did wear helmets, but they didn’t have visors or anything that would allow them to see their enemies coming, they preferred to fight using only their own unenhanced senses.
The troops charged forward, and a handful of disorganized Bolkarn rushed out to meet them. The sounds of rain and thunder surrounding them were joined by the sounds of gunfire. Lyra was running forwards on all fours, her blaster suspended in the air by magic and firing shot after shot into the enemy. Suddenly, a small rock caught her arm and she fell forwards, rolling over her head and landing on her back. Her gun flew away and was lost in the darkness. Lyra felt slightly disoriented, her head had struck the ground in the fall and damaged her helmet. The damage had affected the infrared function of her visor and all the colors were now blurring together making it impossible to make out anything. Reluctantly Lyra switched it off and lit up her horn to get her bearings. In the light of her horn she saw a Bolkarn looming over her. In his hands he was holding a large hammer with a long shaft. Her eyes widened in terror as he raised it above his head.
“No! Not again!” she thought.
The Bolkarn brought down the hammer, and Lyra quickly rolled aside onto her front as it struck the ground. She tried to get to back on her hooves but she slipped on the wet rocks and fell back down again as the Bolkarn raised the hammer for another strike. She closed her eyes as she heard the hammer cutting through the air, waiting for the blow to land on her. It didn’t. She heard it strike something, somewhere off the ground. She opened her eyes and looked back towards the Bolkarn. There was Phaurn, he’d drawn his sword and had blocked the falling hammer with it. The Bolkarn jumped backwards and prepared to swing his hammer round again, this time aiming for Phaurn. Once again Phaurn brought up his sword to block it. Another swing, another block. Lyra carefully stood up again and watched the display in amazement. The Bolkarn was now focusing on defending himself with the hammer, with one hand at each end of the shaft and bringing it up to meet the strikes of Pharun’s sword. Then Phaurn managed to swing the sword into the Bolkarn’s left arm. The blow wasn’t strong enough to penetrate his armor but the shock of the impact made him let go of one end of the hammer, and now with an opening Phaurn brought his sword upwards and then swung it down into the Bolkarn’s shoulder, finding a small gap in the armor and slicing downwards to cut the Bolkarn’s arm off. To Lyra’s surprise he didn’t give up, as the now one armed Bolkarn continued to swing away with the hammer, though now with his one remaining hand gripping the middle of the shaft.
Lyra was so focused on the spectacle of this fight that she’d forgotten about the rest of the battle raging around her, she was brought back to reality when a bullet ricocheted off the ground just next to her. She looked around the place at everything that was happening, or at least everything she could see through the rain. She needn’t to get back into the fight, she needed her weapon. She lowered her head and began to sweep the light from her horn across the ground. Eventually she found an abandoned resistance blaster; whether it was actually hers or not she didn’t know, but she picked it up anyway. She quickly checked that it still had power before charging back into battle, running past Phaurn and his Bolkarn opponent as she did so. As she passed she noticed that he’d now relieved the Bolkarn of his other arm and that the Bolkarn still hadn’t given up, he was now swinging a series of kicks at Phaurn. She averted her eyes from this, deciding that the whole affair was now starting to get a little silly, and spying a small group of Bolkarn a short distance in front of her she began to open fire.

Several hours later Lyra was back on board the Dominator II and trotting down one of its many corridors. The ship was now flying away from Xocvi and heading for its next destination. The assault on the mine had been successful and the resistance hadn’t lost any troops this time though a few had been injured. The surviving Bolkarn wardens were now in the ship’s brig and the rescued slaves had been given temporary quarters on the lower levels of the ship and at the end of the first week of its mission the Dominator II would transfer them to another ship which would take them back to Xentrill.
After getting back on the ship Lyra had gone through the usual post-assault debriefing and had taken a quick shower while telling Bon Bon about what happened during the assault. She’d given a lot of detail to Phaurn’s one on one fight with the Bolkarn who probably would’ve killed her if Phaurn hadn’t intervened. After seeing him in action Lyra wanted to talk to him, according to the ship’s computer he was in one of the training rooms a few floors below their new cabin, and now she was heading there. The sounds of her hoofsteps echoed around her, with the sound of metal on metal from her arm mixed in. As she proceeded down the corridor she counted the number of doors she passed, Lyra hadn’t been into this part of the ship before unless she was heading through it to another part and with every door being unlabelled and seemingly identical she wouldn’t know which one she wanted so she’d asked the computer how many doors down the training room was.
She finally stopped in front of the 17th door, and there was a much larger gap then normal between this one and the next. The door opened for her and she stepped through it. The room was almost twice the size of the ship’s bridge. There weren’t any lights in the room since every surface of the room was painted a bright white that seemed to give off light by itself. The walls, ceiling and floor of the room blended together and looked as though they weren’t there making the room seem like a featureless white void stretching on forever. The only evidence that there were any surfaces in the room at all was the open door in the wall behind Lyra which eventually closed and blended into the whiteness, and the very small shadows being cast on them. The room was already making Lyra feel uncomfortable.
Phaurn was in the middle of the room; at least Lyra thought it was the middle of the room, sparring with a hard light hologram of himself. The hologram was a pale blue color and transparent probably so that it wouldn’t be confused with the real thing. Lyra stayed by the door and watched what he was doing. Every time the hologram made a swing at him Phaurn managed to block it, but whenever he’d make a swing at the hologram that would be blocked as well. Eventually Phaurn made a wide and wild swing which knocked the sword out of the holograms hand and sent it flying across the room where it faded from existence. Phaurn stood back and returned his sword to its scabbard as the hologram kneeled down in front of him before it vanished.
“So, Impressed Sergeant Heartstrings?” Phaurn asked turning towards Lyra.
“Yes,” Lyra said. Then she realized that while they’d been in the same carrier on the way down to Xocvi she hadn’t properly introduced herself to him. “How’d you know who I was?”
“The computer told me you were asking where I was.”
“Oh.”
“And I’m assuming you didn’t come down here just to watch me practice.”
“Well, no. I guess first I should say thanks.”
“For what?”
“Well, you pretty much saved my life on Xocvi. You know, from the Bolkarn with the great big hammer.”
“Oh, so that was you. I didn’t notice at the time, for one thing you all look the same in that body armor and the weather certainly wouldn’t have helped there.”
“It certainly didn’t.”
“Is there anything else you which to say?”
“Well yes, I… um,” Lyra took a deep breath before continuing. “Could you teach me how to use one of those?”
“You mean this?” Phaurn asked as he drew his sword, Lyra nodded.
“Hmm, I’m not sure you would be able to use a sword,” he said. “After all your species lacks hands and they are necessary for the art.”
Lyra raised her arm and spread out its fingers to make it quite clear that she did have one.
“Ah, well you have that problem overcome I see,” he said. “Computer, produce one small training sword for Sergeant Heartstrings.”
“Acknowledged Sergeant Phaurn,” the voice of the computer said.
A few seconds later a small hatch opened in one of the walls and Phaurn extracted the sword from within it and tossed it over to Lyra and she picked it up.
“Step forward Sergeant,” Phaurn said.
Lyra did so, and both of them were standing a short distance apart in the middle of the room.
“Now, I think the first question we have here is one of balance,” Phaurn said, pointing his sword at her. “You are a life form designed to stand on four limbs, yet you will be using one of those to use your sword. So, will you be able to keep your balance while using it? Try waving the sword around, see what happens.”
Lyra made a few swings of the sword, varying the distance and direction each time. She remained on her feet.
“Good. But you were staying on the same spot. During combat you will have to be constantly moving around. Try again, and this time move.”
Lyra nodded and tried again, taking steps in different directions as she did so. At first she was just stepping and then swinging but after a while was able to be doing both at the same time. And not too long after managing that she lost he balance.
“Bother!” she exclaimed as she got back to her hooves.
“As I thought,” Phaurn said. “If you wish to learn how to use a sword you will have to learn to maintain your balance.”
“I guess so,” Lyra said. “Or I could just do this.”
Lyra’s horn lit it and the sword was enveloped in a pale green glow as it rose up from the floor.
“Ah, so I assume then that your race is telepathic.”
“No, we’re not. This is magic, not telekinesis or anything like that.”
“I see. So, do you think that using this method would be suitable in combat, more importantly will you be able to keep…” he paused, searching for the right word, “will you be able to keep ‘hold’ of your sword like this?”
“Dunno, let’s try it.”
“Very well then.”
Phaurn stepped back and took up a combat stance while Lyra spread out her legs and lowered her head. Then Phaurn stepped forward and swung his sword at hers, Lyra’s sword was sent flying away and the magic glow around it vanished. The sword struck the wall and fell to the floor with a clatter.
“I guess not then,” Lyra said.
“Indeed, it seems you will have to use the arm after all. And I think we may have another problem there.”
“Oh?”
“Your size, most races I know that are likely to be using swords or similar weapons are much taller your race. I am for one, as are the Bolkarn.”
“Yeah I had noticed that… wait, the Bolkarn use swords?”
“I have heard that they do, though I have yet to see them do so, and I assume you haven’t either.”
“Yeah.”
“Anyway, with the size issue the disadvantage would be that you would not have enough reach to match the height of your opponent’s sword. Whereas they could easily reach down to strike you.”
“I see.”
“I think if you were to stand solely on your hind legs that may alleviate the problem.”
Lyra thought about this, she could rise up on her hind legs for a few seconds, but even when doing that she wouldn’t be standing up straight.

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s gonna happen I’m afraid.”

“Then I suggest you practice your balance on three legs,” Phaurn said as he picked up Lyra’s fallen sword and returned it to the small compartment in the wall it had come from, just as the hatch closed Lyra thought she saw the sword turn into vapor. “I will consider whether or not I shall give you lessons in the art of the sword.”

“So it might still be a no then.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“You may.”

“Well, I’ve seen various species since I left my own planet, and while I am still seeing new ones when I do they’re often in groups or not long after I see another. I haven’t seen any others of your race. Is there a reason for that?”

“There is,” Phaurn said. “My people come from the planet Vendagol, and the people of Vendagol do not leave their planet. If we have enemies in the universe we say that they should come to us, let them fight us on our own soil.”

“So why are you here then?”

“I am the Champion of Vendagol. My people are a race of warriors and nearly all of us live and sometimes die by the sword. The champion is the best swordsman among our people, and they are tasked with going out into the universe to teach others the art of the sword. However, since I left Vendagol you are the first to have approached me for that.”

“So why did you join the resistance then?”

“After learning of the activities of the Bolkarn I decided that I they should be stopped,” Phaurn told her.

“But if your people wait for an enemy to come to your world rather than going out and facing them doesn’t joining the resistance sort of go against that? Or is a champion exempt from that rule as well?”

“I would assume they are not, though I don’t believe the issue has ever come up since an enemy of our race would no doubt be made up of a large army and it would be unwise for a champion to take on such an army alone. Thus I join the resistance, and the resistance does not share the rules of my race. So I have decided that while I am with the resistance I am not a member of my own people and not subject to their rules.”

“Well, I guess that makes sense,” Lyra said.

“I’m glad you think so, now if you’ll excuse me I would like to continue my training alone.”

“Oh, of course. Well I guess I’ll see you around,” Lyra turned to leave, glancing round at the four walls. “Um… where’s the door?”

“Here Sergeant Heartstrings,” said the voice of the computer as the door opened.

“Thanks computer” Lyra said. Lyra had wanted to give the computer her own personal nickname for it like most of the rest of the crew, but after being on the ship for a year she hadn’t been able to come up with one.

“You’re welcome Sergeant Heartstrings,” the computer replied. “Also, Engineer Liha Halpstaluz Beeon has wishes that you to her workshop as soon as possible.”

“Did she say why?”

“She did not.”

“Well tell her I’m making my way there right now.”

“Acknowledged Sergeant Heartstrings.”

Lyra left the training room and headed for the elevator at the end of the corridor, setting it to take her to the Engineering section once she got in. The Engineering level was one of the higher levels towards the back of the ship. Each of the ship’s engineers had their own workshop where they’d work on fixing damaged equipment or components of the ship as well as occasionally tinkering with their own personal projects. Like the rest of the ship the corridors of the engineering section were blank and indistinguishable, or at least they would be if each engineer hadn’t personalized the doors to their workshops like most of the crew did with their personal quarters, and this helped with finding the specific engineer someone wanted to see. On the other hand Lyra wouldn’t need that help anymore, she’d been to Liha’s workshop so many times she could probably find her way there with her eyes closed.

After trotting down the corridor without looking up at the doors she was passing she knocked on the door to Liha’s workshop. Once the door had opened she stepped inside and spotted Liha sitting at a table tightening a screw belonging to a piece of technology Lyra didn’t recognize. The room was rather untidy. There were small bits and pieces littering the floors and tabletops, in either small quantities or large piles. One pile was obscuring a wall mounted computer screen. There were a few shelves set in the walls containing various manuals for the use and repair of different pieces of equipment. On one wall was a large printout of the blue prints for the Dominator II, it was rather dirty and there was a large rip in one corner. Other walls had racks mounted on them holding different pieces of tech, including a few blasters.

“Hey there Lyra,” Liha said, looking up from her work.

“Hi,” Lyra replied. “So why’d you want me? Do you to make some adjustments to my arm?”

“No, but since you’re here I’ll probably do that anyway.”

“Ok. So what did you want?”

Liha told Lyra to take a seat and began explaining her plan for acquiring photographs of the Red Starfighter and their fleet.

“I’ve already made a few of the bugs,” she said. “So we just need to sort out planting them.”

“So how are we going to do that? Sneak onto the Bolkarn’s home planet or something?”

“Exactly.”

“So how are we going to manage that without being caught?”

“Do you know what a shape changer is Lyra?”

“No, but from the name I can guess.”

“A shape changer, or a shape shifter, is a life form that can alter its appearance to whatever it wants.”

“Ah, thought so. Actually there’s a species from back home that can do that too, they’re called Changelings.”

“Neat, are there any in the resistance?”

“Somehow I don’t think so, the Changelings are kinda the bad guys.”

“Oh.”

“Are there any shape changers in the resistance?”

“Not that I’m aware of, and if there are they’re not amongst the crew.”

“So how are we going to infiltrate their planet then?”

“With this,” Liha stood up and extracted something from a rack on one wall.

It was a black disc, about three inches across with a series of straps attached to it. The disc itself had a series of buttons and a small screen set into it.

“This is an artificial shape changer, or an A.S.C for short. We’re going fit it to some of our crew and turn them into Bolkarn.”

“Good idea,” Lyra said. “So, why did you call me up here then?”

“I want you to help me test it.”

“Why me?”

“Well probably because I know you better than anyone else on the ship.”

“Right.”

“So, you okay with trying it out?”

“Sure.”

Liha connected the A.S.C to a computer terminal on another table and began programming it for the task before strapping it to Lyra.

“The straps are designed to expand if you turn into something much larger than your normal form,” Liha told her. “And it also scans you before you activate it and stores your normal form in its memory so you can change back afterwards. And I’m afraid we’re going to have to remove your arm, it won’t work with that.”

“Ok, hang on,” Lyra quickly removed the arm with magic and set it on a table. “Will I grow one there as a Bolkarn?”

“I’m afraid not, the A.S.C uses what’s there to make the new form. So if you have a limb missing as yourself it’ll be missing in whatever you turn into.”

“Darn. What about the socket?”

“I’ve programmed the A.S.C. to grow around it, so it’ll be inside a stump.”

Once she’d finished strapping the A.S.C into place Liha stood back and examined her work, making sure it’d been done correctly.

“Okay, you ready for this?” she asked.

“I guess so,” Lyra said.

“Okay, here goes.”

Liha pressed a button on the A.S.C and Lyra felt herself changing and growing. Her left foreleg became an arm; she felt fingers sprouting from what had previously been her hoof. Her back legs expanded and the hooves extended into feet. Her mane and tail receded, along with her horn. Her eyes shrank and the rest of her body expanded. Her increased weight caused her to overbalance thanks to her missing right forelimb. Finally, the changes stopped.

“Did it work?” she asked, her voice was now a lot deeper.

“Perfectly,” Liha replied. “Do you want a mirror?”

“No thank you, I’ve seen enough Bolkarn to guess at what I look like now.”

“Okay. Try standing up.”

Lyra pulled herself up with the aid of one of the tables. Slowly she raised herself onto her two legs, and steadied herself against a wall.

“Okay, now take a few steps forward.”

Lyra cautiously put a foot in front of her and took her hand off the wall. Balancing on two legs wasn’t as hard as she thought it would be. Then she took her other foot off the floor for another step and toppled over.

“Okay, you’re clearly going to need to practice walking but aside from that I’d say this worked,” Liha said. “Get back up and I’ll change you back.”

Lyra got herself into a sitting position and Liha pressed another button on the A.S.C. to return her to normal before removing it and putting it back on the rack.

“Okay, now let’s take a look at the arm,” Liha said.

As she began examining the arm Lyra stayed sitting in the middle of the floor, an idea came to her.

“Liha, if the A.S.C. can change me into Bolkarn, can it be used to make some alterations to me but still keep me as a pony?” she asked.

“Yeah I should think so. What sort of thing did you have in mind?”

“Could it change me so that I can walk on just my hind legs?”

“Yeah I think so. Why?”

“Well…”

Chapter 6: Crusaders

Over the last few decades nearly ever foal has joined the Cutie Mark Crusaders growing up, to learn more about themselves under the guidance of two great ponies. I knew them when they were just foals themselves, but one thing many ponies forget is that there were originally three of them.

– Extract from When We Saw the Universe by Captain Twilight Sparkle

Shortly after leaving Xocvi the Dominator II made a jump through Hyperspace to bring it close to its next destination, the planet Celo-7. This would be the second time the resistance had sent a ship to that planet, the previous mission there had ended up as a spectacularly failure. Every Carrier sent down to the planet was shot down by ground fire, and the main ship itself eventually had to retreat when the Bolkarn sent another ship to the planet to confront them.
Shortly after materializing in the sector of space that the planet was part of the Domiantor II picked up two escape pod distress signals. One was coming from a planet called Stixus, the other from H997-Ω. The crew was hesitant about answering those distress calls, partly because it would take them outside their mission objective but mostly because the signals identified them as being from a Bolkarn ship. Eventually it was decided to answer the distress calls, if it turned out they were Bolkarn they’d be taken prisoner and interrogated. They went to Stixus first as it was the closer of the two, the escape pod had not been occupied by a Bolkarn and after that they knew who would be in the other escape pod.

H997-Ω was a cold planet and a long way from its sun, its surface was covered in ice and snow with winds rushing across it constantly. The planet was completely uninhabited and the atmosphere was unsuitable for any known life forms in the universe. It wasn’t somewhere you’d want to be stuck in an escape pod, and according to the occupant of the other one they’d both been waiting to be rescued for over a year.

Carrier 1 touched down on the planet’s surface. The journey down had been rough with the small ship being battered by the raging wind. Once it had landed a group of ten members of the Dominator II’s crew emerged from it with Twilight and Liha among them, the pilot stayed behind to help guide them back to the Carrier. They were all wearing bright orange spacesuits; the spacesuits themselves were capable of changing color depending on the situation. Orange allowed them to be seen clearly against the almost completely white environment around them. However even with the bright orange it was almost impossible for them to see each other thanks to the heavy snowfall combined with the wind obscuring their vision.

Twilight put up a small magic shield around herself to keep the snow off while Liha took the lead. Liha was carrying a small receiver that would home in on the escape pod’s distress signal and lead them to it. Because of the environment Liha had left her crutch behind, Twilight had a feeling that she was regretting that decision as now she was having more trouble walking through the snow then the rest of them.

“Everyone keep close,” Liha said to them though the built in helmet radios.

Liha was holding one arm in front of her face in a futile attempt to keep some of the snow away, she wasn’t the only one. The helmets did have an infrared filter for the visors but Liha had told them that if they used them they might miss the escape pod. While Twilight would’ve expected something like that to be giving off some heat apparently after spending so much time in this environment its temperature would’ve decreased to a similar level, it was also fairly likely that the pod would’ve cryogenically frozen its occupant as well as deactivating any systems that weren’t absolutely necessary to conserve power for those that were.

They’d been searching for almost half an hour when they finally found the pod. More than half of it was buried in the ground, with the rest sticking out at an angle. The pod itself was a long wide cylinder; it would need to be if it was meant for a Bolkarn, and covered in frost and snow. Liha limped towards it and began examining it.

“The cryogenic system is in operation,” she said, even with the radios she still had to raise her voice to be heard over the wind. “And the occupant is still alive.”

“Thank goodness for that,” Twilight said as she joined Liha beside the pod.

“We’re gonna have to take the pod back to the ship to revive them,” Liha said as she began brushing aside snow from the pod to reveal a glass panel underneath through which they could see the occupant of the pod. “Well, is that her?” she asked.

Twilight looked inside at the sleeping occupant. Her mane was a mess and she was covered in dirt, scratches and bruises, Twilight noticed a lot of scratches and cuts along her front as though she’d been dragged across hard rocky ground, she essentially looked like anyone else who’d been in a Bolkarn mine for some time. She’d also lost her big pink bow, but despite all this Twilight could still recognize her.

“Yes,” Twilight said. “That’s Apple Bloom.”

Somehow, and none of them knew how it had happened but they were glad it had, the Cutie Mark Crusaders had managed to stay together after the Bolkarn attacked Equestria. They hadn’t been together at the time of the attack but the three of them were all captured and herded into the same ship with several other ponies and transported to Celo-7.
Foals and other small life forms weren’t much use in the mines. They were mostly used for carting around the chunks of rock and minerals that had been dug out away from the mines, sometimes however they’d be sent through gaps in the natural caves that the larger creatures couldn’t go through. And there were a lot of caves on Celo-7, and this was one of the reasons why the Bolkarn had chosen the planet for one of their many mining operations, most of the work had already been done for them. Working in the caves was hard work, a lot of them were high up in the mountains so pushing or dragging the carts up to them was very difficult. And going down had its problems too since you could easily lose control of your cart and have it roll down the mountain ahead of you until it crashed into something or someone.
The environment around the mine was rather pleasant. The sky pale red was often clear with only occasional and very light rain, and the air was cool and relaxing with the wind never amounting to anything more than a gentle breeze. When the slaves looked out at the view from high up in the mountains they could see a vast landscape of dark blue plant life spreading out towards the horizon. Most of the vegetation around the mine had been torn up and thrown aside, leaving only a few patches that would grow on the side of the mountains.
Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom and Scootaloo had all stayed close together since they arrived on the planet, any job they were given they did together. The Bolkarn never attempted to stop them or split them up, either they didn’t mind or they just didn’t care. The only other slaves they interacted with were other ponies, though there weren’t many of those. The only reason they didn’t talk to anyone else was because of the language barrier, the only race in the mines aside from the ponies that spoke English were the Bolkarn, and the three of them preferred to avoid interacting with them as much as possible. They’d been in the mine for at least three months, though from the state they were in anyone looking at might think they’d been there for a lot longer. Sweetie Belle had said on more than one occasion that if Rarity saw her in that state she’d probably die of shock or something.
The sun was setting and they were taking a cart up to one of the caves to be loaded up with anything that had been dug before taking it back down again, they’d done this several times that day already, and on Celo-7 days were nearly ten hours longer then what they were used to. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle were both pushing the cart while Scootaloo was pulling it with a harness strapped around her. All three of them were exhausted.
“You’d think this would get a little easier after a few months,” Sweetie Belle said between.
“Well, jus’ look on the bright side,” Apple Bloom said.
“What bright side?”
“At least it’s only full o’ rocks on the way back down.”
“Oh. You know what, that is a bright side.”
“And at least we’ve learnt one thing after all this,” Scootaloo said.
“Wha’s that?”
“Our special talent is quite definitely not mining!”
“Oh come on Scoot, seriously!” Sweetie Belle exclaimed, rolling her eyes in annoyance.
Apple Bloom glanced down at her Cutie Markless flank. “Ya know, she has a point,” she said. “We’re never gonna our Cutie Marks in this dump.”
“Well let’s hope we all get out of here as soon as possible,” Scootaloo said.
None of them said anything to that. They all knew that they had almost no chance at all of escaping the mine or being rescued. Apple Bloom decided to change the subject.
“Ya know, aside from the mine this is a pretty nice planet,” she said.
“Nice!” Scootaloo exclaimed. “The sky is red, the plants are blue! This place is weird.”
“Well Ah like it,” Apple Bloom said.
“Me too,” said Sweetie Belle. “Just look at the view, and that sunset.”
“I’ve seen the view and I’ve seen the sunset,” Scootaloo replied. “And you know what, I really don’t care.”
“But Scootaloo…”
“Shut up okay, anyway we’re almost there.”
The steep slope of the mountain began to flatten out as they approached the cave, making it easier to push and pull the cart. A Bolkarn warden was standing outside, a large gun held in two hands. He didn’t get much opportunity to use it as the slaves knew there wasn’t much point in trying to fight the Bolkarn. Instead he’d take the occasional shot at some of the planet’s wildlife when they flew overhead. He glared at the three crusaders as they went past him into the cave. They avoided looking at him, staring at the ground instead.
The three of them took the cart to the back of the cave where a small group of slaves were hacking at the stone wall with pick axes. The cave itself was only just large enough for a Bolkarn to stand up in. A series of lights had been hung from hooks that had been hammered into the cave walls. The slaves working in the cave included another pony, a tree, a reptile that walked on six legs with four arms, and a pink creature with large round ears and a long nose whose skin looked like it had been knitted that communicated through a series of whistling sounds. The pony gave them a small nod when they brought the cart to them while the others acknowledged their presence with their own language.
The Crusaders’ work wasn’t done yet. They went back down the cave and stopped at a small opening in the wall. For a few days now they’d been tasked with mining the cave on the other side of the opening, though since they’d often be called upon to take the cart up and down the mountain they hadn’t made much progress. They each squeezed through the gap one at a time. The narrow gap itself lasted for less than a meter before widening out to about the same size as the main cave. They quickly hurried over to where they’d left their tools and a small lamp and set to work. While they hadn’t made much progress on the cave wall they’d done enough to make a noticeable indentation in the bottom of the wall.
“Ya know if we keep this up we’re gonna have a really small tunnel to mine in,” Apple Bloom said.
“Best mind our heads then,” Scootaloo replied and the three of them laughed.
The mining work wasn’t easy, having to hold the tools in their mouths made it difficult to see what they were doing, on the occasions they’d been doing actual mining work over the last few months they’d almost hit each other several times, and once they actually did. Scootaloo now had a long scar down the back of one leg because of that. They’d been working on this bit of the cave for five days now, and the amount of work they’d managed to do could probably be done by one of the larger species in less than a day.
They continued to hack into the cave wall for half an hour, during that time Sweetie Belle almost hit Apple Bloom in the head with her pick axe twice. Then they heard a crash from outside, the sound being muffled slightly, and the cave shook.
“Wha’ that hay was that?” Apple Bloom said.
“I dunno,” Sweetie Belle replied. “It sounded like… uh oh!”
“What’s up?”
Sweetie Belle was looking at the ceiling, the other two glanced up at it and saw a crack appearing in it, small bits of dust started to fall from it.
“EVERYPONY OUT!” Scootaloo yelled, and the three of them made a dash for the entrance as the cave began to shake again.
As they forced their way through the gap leading back to the main cave they saw the other slaves rushing out of it, with more cracks appearing and chunks of rock coming away from the ceiling. Getting through the gap quickly wasn’t easy, Scootaloo got stuck just short of getting out, Apple Bloom stopped to help her and told Sweetie Belle to go on without them. By the time Scootaloo managed to get out of the gap all the other slaves were already outside the cave. The two of them galloped towards the exit, with rocks falling all around them.
Apple Bloom managed to get ahead of Scootaloo, but then she tripped on a small hole in the ground and fell flat on her face a short distance from the cave mouth. As Apple Bloom got back to her feet Scootaloo charged up behind her with her head lowered. She then got herself underneath Apple Bloom and used her head to throw her forwards. Apple Bloom hit the ground flat on her front and skidded across the floor and out of the cave, leaving a few small streaks of blood behind her. She looked back at the cave, and saw Scootaloo charging forwards, she was almost outside. Then the entire cave collapsed on top of her.
“SCOOT!”
Apple Bloom rushed towards the blocked entrance and began digging into the pile of rocks with her hooves, but only managed to shift the smaller ones. Tears started to well up in her eyes, and before look she broke down crying against the rocks. Then she opened her eyes again and saw that the other slaves had started clearing away the rocks. Apple Bloom stepped back and let them work; she knew she couldn’t do anything to help. She sat down next to Sweetie Belle and watched. They could see what appeared to see a small spaceship embedded in the side of the mountain just above the cave, the ship’s hull was just bare metal save for a large number 7 painted on the side. The ship was on fire with several Bolkarn gathering round it, pulling out the ship’s occupants, some of whom were still alive. Looking up at the sky Apple Bloom saw more ships like it descending towards them and being shot down by several large cannons set up around the mine.
While they were watching this happening Apple Bloom finally noticed the pain from her underside, looking down at herself she saw several scratches and cuts with blood seeping from them. She hadn’t noticed it in the heat of the moment, and it was only now that she’d managed to calm down that she became aware of it. She gritted her teeth and tried to ignore it, there were more important things to worry about now.
The slaves finally managed to clear away all the debris, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle rushed towards them. They wished they hadn’t. There was Scootaloo lying on the ground, dead. Patches of her flesh had been torn open with her insides exposed, and several of her bones had been broken and crushed to bits. The worst part was her head which had been smashed open, a few of her teeth and been knocked out and broken apart. One of her eyes had come out, which was now lying on the ground, squashed almost completely flat. Sweetie Belle shut her eyes and turned away from the horrific sight, Apple Bloom just stared at it in horror with her mouth hanging open. Eventually she turned away from it two and started to cry again, they both did.

After that the other slaves had carried Scootaloo’s body back down the mountain to a makeshift graveyard near the mine. They dug a shallow grave and buried her body in it, making a pile of rocks on top to mark it. When they left Apple Bloom and Scootaloo stayed there, staring at the pile of rocks. Night had fallen now and slaves were being ordered to stop work for the day which they all did gladly. The Bolkarn herded the slaves into several small shacks that they slept in, but they left the two mourning ponies alone.
Apple Bloom glanced up at the moonless sky. The world that had seemed pleasant now felt like what it really was, alien. The cutie mark crusaders were a long way from home, and now one of them was dead, buried in the ground of an alien world countless miles from Equestria. Apple Bloom wasn’t crying anymore, she didn’t think she could shed any more tears now, though she desperately wanted to.
“Do… do you think it was quick?” Sweetie Belle asked?”
“Ah hope so,” Apple Bloom remembered what Scootaloo’s body had looked like. If she hadn’t been killed instantly then she must’ve been in sheer agony before finally dying.
“An’ she died without a cutie mark,” Apple Bloom said quietly.
Sweetie Belle was about to say something but decided against it, only giving an ‘mm’ of agreement. The two of them went back to silently staring at their friend’s grave. Eventually Sweetie Belle broke the silence.
“We are the Cutie Mark Crusaders,” she began to sing, “On a quest to find out who we are...”
Apple Bloom’s ears pricked up when she heard this. She hadn’t heard Sweetie Belle singing in a long time. The sound of her singing voice was calming, but it didn’t completely go against the mood. The song itself was different from what it used to be, softer and slower.
“And we will never stop the journey”, Sweetie Belle continued, and then Apple Bloom joined in, “Not until we have our cutie marks,” they both sang.
The both continued singing for some time, repeating the song more than once. Eventually the song came to its end. Throughout it Apple Bloom’s memories of the many escapades the three of them had had together flashed through her mind, even if they’re countless attempts to achieve their cutie marks had failed they’d still had fun. The grief she felt over Scootaloo’s death was still there, but now a new feeling was rising within Apple Bloom, determination.
“Sweetie Belle,” she said after they stopped singing, “Ah swear righ’ here and now tha’ the two of us are gettin outta here. Or we’ll die trying.”
Sweetie Belle stared at Apple Bloom, her mouth open in shock. Then she nodded and the two of them trotted back towards the mine.

The two of them spent the next few months trying to work out exactly how they’d pull off their escape attempt. One part was obvious; they’d have to sneak aboard one of the Bolkarn spaceships that came to the planet every so often to bring in more slaves. But these ships were always guarded by countless Bolkarn, getting past them unnoticed wasn’t going to be easy. One idea they considered was to hide amongst the materials that had been extracted from the mine when they were being loaded onto the ships. They weren’t entirely sure about this idea and decided to watch the next ship to arrive being loaded. It turned out the Bolkarn had already thought of the possibility of slaves trying to escape that way and would check each load for anyone hiding amongst them.
They’d almost given up hope of being able to make a successful escape attempt until about six months after Scootaloo’s death when a large red ship arrived. They were surprised to discover that this one wasn’t carrying slaves. Instead a small group of Bolkarn emerged, lead by one who carried a large hammer and wore a cloak and Apple Bloom was sure was made out of the skin of a Manticore. It turned out they’d come to inspect the mine. Most ships carrying slaves only stayed for a few hours at most, just long enough to unload all the slaves and load up everything that had been mined, they didn’t expect it to stay more than a day.
It was the middle of the night, the ship had been there for two days now and most of its crew were outside sitting around several campfires with the mine’s wardens. They were all chatting, laughing, drinking, and occasionally fighting each other. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle had snuck out of their shack and were hiding behind an outcrop of rocks watching them.
“Are you sure about this Apple Bloom?” Sweetie Belle whispered as one Bolkarn threw his drink at another and missed.
“Yeah, it’s now or never,” Apple Bloom replied. “Ah’ve got this gut fellin’ that they’re gonna leave tomorrow. And we’re goin’ with ‘em.”
Sweetie Belle gulped, but then whispered, “Ok then.”
They slowly and cautiously moved out from behind the rocks, making sure to keep to the shadows and always watching the Bolkarn. They’d sometimes stop and remain as still as possible if they thought a Bolkarn was looking in their direction, and they wouldn’t move again until they were absolutely sure that they weren’t being watched. Eventually they made it to the ship. They edged around the outside of it, keeping close to the ship’s hull, and made their way to the rear of the ship where a large ramp led from a wide entrance to the ground.
The next part would be a lot harder. Up until that point they’d been relying on the darkness to hide them, but the entrance to the ship was brightly lit, bathing the ramp in bright light. This was the only way in and if a Bolkarn looked towards the ship they’d be spotted easily. Apple Bloom quickly explained the problem to Sweetie Belle after realising it.
“So what do we do now?” Sweetie Belle asked.
“Ah dunno. We’ll probably have to move fast, really fast.”
“But don’t hooves make a lot of noise when you’re walking on metal?”
“Shoot! Ah didn’t think’a that.”
“So are we still going to try it are do we give up?”
“Well we’re certainly not givin’ up. We jus’ need ta think’a somefin.”
The two of them sat there, huddled against the hull of the ship, watching the small crowd of Bolkarn. They didn’t know how long they’d been sitting there before something finally happened. Sweetie Belle saw it first, and she nudged Apple Bloom to get her attention. A group of slaves had emerged from their shacks, carrying various mining tools, and they were slowly sneaking towards the Bolkarn. One of the Bolkarn happened to look round and spot them, he shouted out a warning to the others and then the slaves charged towards them. The two foals watched as slaves and Bolkarn clashed, a lot of the Bolkarn were drunk and clumsy and the slaves knocked them out easily. Others weren’t beaten so switfly, Apple Bloom saw the one with the manticore cloak swinging his hammer left and right, striking down every slave unfortunate enough to get in its way. The noise from the fighting was incredibly, weapons clashing against each other, shouting and screaming and growling and countless other noises. One Bolkarn was knocked into one of the fires, another had taken a pick axe to the eye, and one Bolkarn pulled a gun and shot a slave at point blank range.
Then Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle saw the pink whistling creature look towards them, it whistled something loudly that they could barely hear and waved one of its arms. Apple Bloom realised what it was trying to tell them.
“GO!” she shouted to Sweetie Belle and the two of them dashed away towards the end of the ramp, running up it as fast as they could go, they didn’t stop until they were deep inside the ship.
“What was... that about?” Sweetie Belle asked, gasping for breath.
“A distraction,” Apple Bloom told her. “They did that so we could ge’ in here unnoticed.”
“Oh...” Sweetie Belle said quietly, and then she realised what this meant. “Oh my gosh! Some of them could get killed.”
“Ah’m sure they all realise tha’.”
“But why would they do that just to let us escape?”
“Ah dunno, bu’ it’s done now. Notin’ we can do abou’ it.”
“But...”
“Look, they gave us this chance to escape. Let’s not waste it, okay.”
It took a few seconds for Sweetie Belle to respond, eventually she just said a quiet “Okay.”
“Good. Now let’s go find some place to hide.”
After cautiously walking through the ship they eventually found their way to the hold. The hold was dark and quiet, it was full of large crates containing goodness knows what. They made their way to the back of the place and found a small gap between two crates and squeezed themselves between them.
“Are you sure we’ll be okay here?” Sweetie Belle asked.
“No, bu’ it’s the best we’ve go’ for now.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Jus’ sit here an’ wait for the ship to take off Ah guess. So in the meantime Ah think we should ge’ some sleep.”
“How long do you think that’ll take?”
“Dunno, maybe it’ll take off in the mornin’... though I think they migh’ stay a little long’a now after tha’ distraction.”
“Oh. I hope they’re all alright.”
“So do ah. Now jus’ go to sleep now okay.”
Sweetie Belle nodded, and the two of them lay down on the cold metal floor and eventually they both fell asleep.

They were woken the next morning (at least they assumed it was morning) by the roar of the ships engines. The whole thing shook as it lifted off from the ground and headed into the sky. Eventually the shaking stopped shortly after the ship had reached open space and the engines died down.
“So what do we do now?” Sweetie Belle asked.
“Stay here for a little long’a,” Apple Bloom said. “An’ then try an’ find a way off this thing.”
“So, we put all that effort into getting on this ship and now we’re just going to get back off again.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Can’t we just wait for it to land somewhere and then get off?”
“This ship is either goin’ to another planet that the Bolkarn have set up a mine on or their own planet. An’ Ah really don’ think we’ll wanna be in either of those places so we should get off before it gets there.”
“Oh! That makes sense... but, what do we do if we can’t find a way off?”
“Then Ah guess we’ll have to wait fer it to land somewhere... either tha’ or start panicin’!”
They remained huddled in their hiding place for nearly an hour before finally venturing out of the hold. As they explored the ship they made sure to move quickly, but quietly. They thought that the ship’s low lighting might help hide them from the Bolkarn. About half an hour after they started looking they decided to try another level of the ship, they’d seen Bolkarn using the ship’s elevators but thought it would be unwise to use those. It wasn’t long before they found an emergency shaft. The ladder made them almost reconsider using the elevators, but they decided to risk it. Going up or down the ladders was slow progress but they managed it without getting hurt. After a while they lost count of the number of levels they’d searched without finding anything useful.
“Do you think we should just give up and go back to hiding?” Sweetie Belle asked.
“No, not yet. We keep lookin’.”
“Yeah, but...”
“YOU TWO, STAY WHERE YOU ARE,” someone shouted.
They looked round and saw a Bolkarn standing at the other end of the corridor and pointing his gun at them.
“RUN!” Apple Bloom yelled.
They ran. The Bolkarn shouted at them to stop, and then began to open fire at them. They turned a corner and spotted an emergency shaft ahead of them and headed straight for it. As they closed the access panel behind them they heard an alarm going off, and then a voice.
“Attention all crew,” it said, “we have two intruders aboard the ship. The intruders are small and of an equinoid race. Find them, and eliminate them.”
“What does eliminate mean?” Sweetie Belle asked.
“Do Ah look like a dictionary to you?” Apple Bloom said.
“Intruders were sighted on level 24,” the voice continued. “It is likely they will head for the escape pods, they must be prevented from doing so. That is all.”
“Escape pods,” Apple Bloom repeated. “Ah like the sound of that.”
“What’s an escape pod?”
“Well Ah dunno, but I can guess. An’ it has to be our way off.”
“So how do we find them?”
“Well they have to be on this level otherwise they wouldn’t be worried about ‘em, so they might have a few Bolkarn standing guard. We just have to find the guards.”
“But how do we get past them?”
“Don’ worry, Ah’ve got an idea.”
A short while later Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle had found a cluster of guards standing in front of a door that they assumed led to the escape pods. It hadn’t taken them too long to find it and they’d managed to avoid being spotted by the Bolkarn, though there were a few near misses.
“Are you sure about this?” Sweetie Belle whispered.
“No, but it’s the only plan we’ve got,” Apple Bloom replied.
Having established where they needed to go they crept back towards a nearby shaft and climbed inside, shutting the door carefully and quietly behind them. Apple Bloom then began to climb up the ladder.
“Good luck,” Sweetie Belle whispered to her.
Apple Bloom made her way up to level 21, along the way she almost slipped and fell twice. To climb the ladder she had to push her hooves hard into its sides and had to rely on friction and the force of her own muscles pushing against it to hold her in place. The hard part was when she’d have to move upwards, moving her back legs was simple enough but her forelegs were another matter since they were keeping her from falling over backwards. Sometimes she’d add some extra grip by biting into the rungs if she thought she was about to fall. Progress was slow, but eventually she reached her destination.
She carefully opened the access panel and climbed out of the shaft. There was nobody in sight, good. The whole plan would’ve fallen apart if she’d been spotted immediately. Keeping herself pressed against the walls she snuck down the corridor and eventually spotted a group of Bolkarn walking away from her.
“HEY LOSERS!” she yelled, stepping out into the middle of the corridor. “BET YA CAN’T CATCH ME!”
Now came the hard part. Apple Bloom spun round and dashed away from them as fast as she could, past the emergency shaft and down the corridor. She’d managed to put a fair amount of distance between herself and the Bolkarn, now she just needed to lose them. She’d turned a corner into another corridor and rushed down that. As she darted down it she quickly looked around her for somewhere to hide. There! A small panel had been removed from one wall, exposing the ship’s inner workings. The space wasn’t too big, but it was just about large enough for Apple Bloom to fit in. She quickly glanced back to make sure the Bolkarn hadn’t turned the corner yet and then ran towards the exposed space and dived inside, and then she picked up the panel and carefully lifted it back into place. She stayed huddled in that space as she heard the Bolkarn come thundering past her. She waited a little while longer before finally emerging, and careful to make as little noise as possible she made her way back to the emergency shaft.
She managed to get back to the shaft without being spotted and as she climbed back in she heard the voice from earlier speak again.
“Attention, intruder sighted on level 21,” it said. “All guards head to level 21 and eliminated intruder immediately.”
Apple Bloom grinned as she started to make her way back down the ladder. Everything had gone according to plan so far. She descended the ladder as quickly as she could until she spotted Sweetie Belle below her, clinging to the ladder as hard as possible.
“Are they still there?” Apple Bloom asked her.
“Well I heard some of them running past here after that voice told them to go after you,” Sweetie Belle replied, “But I don’t know if they all went.”
Once again they made their way towards the escape pods as quietly as possible. All the guards that had been stationed there had gone. Sweetie Belle let out a sign of relief and they both quickly darted towards the door. The door opened by itself when they approached it and they stepped inside. The room was larger than they expected, and full of large vertically mounted cylinders, each one much bigger then a Bolkarn. The two ponies walked around them, staring at them. Through a glass panel in each pod they could what they assumed was a seat and a few screens.
“Looks like they’re meant fer only one,” Apple Bloom said.
“One Bolkarn,” Sweetie Belle added. “I’m sure we can both fit in one of these together.”
“We could,” Apple Bloom said slowly. “But Ah’m not sure we should.”
“Why not?”
“They’re bound to come after us, an’ if we split up that might make it harder for ‘em.”
“Oh. Are you sure?”
“No, I don’ want us to split up but Ah think we’ll have to.”
Sweetie Belle swallowed, and then said a quiet “Ok.”
“Good, now all we’ve gotta do is work out how to work these things.”
That part proved to be easy; they found a large button at the base of each pod which opened the glass panel. Climbing inside wasn’t easy, but they managed it.
“Well, good luck Sweetie Belle,” Apple Bloom said once they were both inside a pod.
“You too,” Sweetie Belle replied, and then the glass panels of the pods closed.
Suddenly the two pods rushed downwards, Apple Bloom’s pod was covered in darkness until finally it shot out of the bottom of the ship. She could see Sweetie Belle’s pod just in front of her. They waved to each other before small engines in each pod kicked in and the two pods shot away from the ship in opposite directions.
“WHAT THE!” Apple Bloom exclaimed when she saw this, she pressed herself against the glass to try and see Sweetie Belle’s pod, but hers was pointing in the wrong direction.
“Attention occupant,” said a voice.
“What! Who said that?”
“I am this pod’s artificial intelligence operating and guidance system.”
“Ah don’t know what that means.”
“I am tasked with guiding this pod to the nearest suitable planet, or to follow your instructions if you wish otherwise.”
“Erm... okay, what is the nearest suitable planet?”
“The nearest suitable planet is Celo-7.”
“NO! Not that one, definitely not that one.”
“Acknowledged.”
“Phew.”
“Please provide alternative destination.”
“Oh, Ah dunno. Somewhere close where that ship ain’t gonna follow me.”
“Acknowledged, searching for nearby planets suitable for these instructions.”
The voice remained silent for a few minutes. Apple Bloom sat there waiting for it to speak again.
“Potential planet found, planet H997-Ω. Is this destination suitable?”
“Sure why not, let’s go with that one.”
“Acknowledged, changing course.”
The engine’s flared and turned the pod slightly and then shot it off towards its destination. Apple Bloom didn’t know how long it took to get there since she fell asleep after a little over an hour. Eventually she was woken up when the voice spoke to her again.
“Attention occupant…”
“Apple Bloom, call me Apple Bloom.”
“Acknowledged, attention occupant Apple Bloom, about to make planet fall on H997-Ω. Standby for entry into planet’s atmosphere.”
Suddenly a series of straps snaked out from behind Apple Bloom and wove themselves around her, securing her tightly in place. She had a bad feeling about this. Looking through the glass she saw a large white planet in front of her and getting steadily closer. It wasn’t long before the pod reached it and punched its way into the planet’s atmosphere. The whole pod shook as it fell at an incredible speed. Apple Bloom could feel the pod getting hotter and she could see flames lapping against the bottom of the glass. She closed her eyes and held on tight to the straps around her hoping it would be over soon.
And then the pod struck ground. If it hadn’t been for the straps Apple Bloom would’ve been thrown against the glass, but she still felt the shock of the landing and needed a few seconds to recover while the straps undid themselves.
“Planet fall successfully accomplished,” the voice said.
“Yeah, Ah noticed,” Apple Bloom muttered.
Apple Bloom peered through the glass at the world around her. Everything was white, covered in snow and ice. There was snow falling all around them, and beginning to obscure the glass. She suddenly understood why this planet wasn’t the pod’s first choice for a suitable destination.
“Information: surrounding environment and atmosphere unsuitable for occupant Apple Bloom.”
“What does that mean?”
“Occupant Apple Bloom should remain within the pod until rescue arrives.”
“Oh. How long will that take?”
“Unknown. Time till rescue can range from a few days to several years.”
“YEARS! Ah can’t stay in this thing fer that long.”
“This pod is equipped with cryogenic freezing systems for situations such as this one.”
“Erm…”
“Cryogenic freezing systems put the subject to sleep for a period of time, during such time subject will not age or grow or similar effects of the passage of time.”
“So it’s like hibernating then.”
“Affirmative.”
“Well Ah guess you’ll have to do that then. But how will anyone know I’m here waiting to be rescued?”
“This pod will send out a distress signal that will be picked up by any passing spacecraft.”
“Oh good. But… what happened to Sweetie Belle’s pod?”
“Status of Dominator III Escape Pod 8-12-99-Z1, unknown.”
“Oh.”
“Activating distress signal and cryogenic freezing systems. Shutting down all unnecessary functions.”
Apple Bloom glanced up at the glass, which was now completely covered in snow. Then the pod began to fill with white vapor. As it spread around her Apple Bloom began to feel sleepy. She felt the pod getting colder and her eyelids getting heavy. She let them close on their own, and then she drifted into sleep.

Apple Bloom woke up. Her body felt stiff and numb. She opened her eyes. That wasn’t easy, she could only get them half open and what she could see was slipping in and out of focus, there was something purple standing over her.
“Oh thank… ness yo… right,” said a voice that sounded familiar. “…or a m… I tho… you hadn’t m… t.”
“Where am Ah?” Apple Bloom tried to say, her voice sounded hoarse and speaking hurt her throat.
“You’r… afe,” said the voice. “Just st… nd quiet, you should be… in a moment.”
The stiff feeling in her body was lessening, and the sounds around her were becoming clearer. She managed to get her eyes fully open just as her vision was clearing and she saw who had been talking to her.
“Twilight,” if she hadn’t been having trouble speaking Apple Bloom would’ve let out a load exclamation, but instead what she said was a hoarse whisper. For a moment, seeing Twilight Sparkle made her wonder if the whole experience with the Bolkarn had just been a dream, but then she realized she was still sitting in the escape pod. “Yah found me,” she said, just managing to force the words out.
“Yes, we did,” Twilight said softly. “And I’m sorry we didn’t find you sooner.”
“How long was Ah waitin’?”
“Well, according to some information we got out of the pod, you’ve been cryogenically frozen for 18 months.”
“WHAT!” Apple Bloom gasped and then a stab of pain shot through her throat, she felt like she was about to choke and had to take a few deep, wheezing, breaths.
“Take it easy Apple Bloom,” Twilight told her. “After being frozen for such a long time you’re body’s going to take a while to recover, but you’re recovering faster than I expected.”
Apple Bloom nodded, and took a few more deep breaths, those didn’t wheeze as much as before.
“Ah was with Sweetie Belle,” she said slowly and quietly. “Our pods went in…”
“I know. We found Sweetie Belle before we got to you, and she’s already told us what happened. And… I’m sorry about what happened to Scootaloo.”
Apple Bloom looked at Twilight and nodded, and then she asked, “Are Big Macintosh an’ Applejack here?”
“Well Big Macintosh is back on our base planet,” Twilight told her. “And Applejack… well…”
Twilight paused, and then took a deep breath before continuing.
“I’m afraid Applejack’s dead.”
Apple Bloom’s eyes widened when she heard this.
“No!” she said, it came out sounding like a squeak.
Twilight just nodded. And it was a few minutes before either of them said anything, Apple Bloom broke the silence first.
“Whe… where’s Sweetie Belle?” she asked quietly.
“Oh, she’s in the medical section. Do you want me to take you there?”
“Yeah. Wait, why’s she there?”
“Oh… well her escape pod’s cryogenic systems weren’t working so she had to experience the long wait for rescue.”
“Oh.”
“And… well the planet she was stuck on wasn’t very nice. Do you think you can walk?”
Apple Bloom stretched and flexed her legs experimentally, they still felt a little stiff but they weren’t as bad as they were earlier.
“Ah think so,” she said.
“Good, hold on a second.”
Twilight’s horn lit up and she levitated Apple Bloom out of the escape pod and set her down carefully on the floor. Apple Bloom felt a bit unsteady on her legs and almost fell over but she managed to catch herself and recover her balance. Now she was out of the pod she was able to get a decent look at the room she was in. It was fairly large, it would need to be fit the pod, with various racks on the walls, some of them were empty and Apple Bloom had no idea what was hanging from the ones that weren’t. There was also a table built into the far wall which was strewn with seemingly random bits of metal and other things.
Twilight pressed a button on a control panel mounted on one side of the room, and then nearly a whole wall slid upwards revealing the ship’s hanger outside. Twilight lead the way out of the room and across the hanger, staying close to the wall. Apple Bloom stared at everything they went past, there were several ships spread across the hanger floor haphazardly. Some with engineers either clambering over the tops or slid under them, doing goodness knows what. Looking up Apple Bloom could see several large frames attached to the walls, each one holding several of a specific type of ship. One of the engineers shouted something in a language she didn’t understand and a large mechanical claw descended from the ceiling. It grabbed one of the ships and lifted it into the air. The claw shifted across the ceiling before it was parallel with a frame holding the right type of ship before moving towards the frame, a pair of metal arms extended from the frame, grabbing the ship and drawing it into the frame.
Apple Bloom followed Twilight to an elevator at the back of the hanger. The elevator took them up several floors before they stepped out into a long corridor. Twilight led the way down the corridor, looking at each door as they passed it before finally stopping in front of one.
“Ok, I think this is the right one,” she said.
The door opened as Twilight stepped towards it and she gestured for Apple Bloom to follow her. The medical section was gleaming white, with a series of beds up against most of the walls. Above each bed was a screen, though what was being displayed on them Apple Bloom didn’t know. There were also beds in the middle of the room, back up against small sections of wall only a bit wider than the beds themselves. Twilight led Apple Bloom across the room to where Sweetie Belle was.
“I’ll leave you two alone, shall I?” Twilight said, Apple Bloom nodded and Twilight trotted away.
Twilight had left Apple Bloom a short distance away from Sweetie Belle’s bed. Apple Bloom took a deep breath and walked towards her. She was shocked when she was able to see Sweetie Belle clearly, in her own head it had only been a few hours since she last saw Sweetie Belle, this wasn’t the same Sweetie Belle she’d waved to before their escape pods took off in different directions. Sweetie Belle had grown a little and her horn was now longer, after 18 months that was to be expected. But she was now a lot thinner and Apple Bloom could see some of her bones pressing against her skin. There were small patches of her coat missing, along with some of her mane. Apple Bloom was struck dumb by the sight of friend in this condition.
“I know, I look terrible don’t I,” Sweetie Belle said.
Apple Bloom didn’t know how to respond to that. She couldn’t even look Sweetie Belle in the face. Instead she just stared at a small table by Sweetie Belle’s bed that had a small rock sitting on top of it. In the end she just nodded.
“What happened?” Apple Bloom asked quietly.
“The Bolkarn took a few shots at my pod,” Sweetie Belle told her. “That damaged some bits of it and it needed to land on the first planet it came to.”
“An’ what was that planet like?”
“Awful, there was almost nothing there but rocks, moss and stuff like that. And it rained a lot.”
“I… I guess bein’ alone there fer so long must’ve been awful.”
“It was, but I wasn’t alone.”
“No, no of course you weren’t, Ah guess the pod’s voice thingy could’ve kept yah company.”
“No I didn’t mean that, I made some friends. They’d been marooned on that planet a while ago. But…”
“But?”
“They… they all died, slowly, one by one. And… and I thought I was going to die to before I was rescued.”
Apple Bloom was stuck for words again. She looked around for inspiration for something to say, and then her eyes fell on Sweetie Belle’s flank. That hadn’t changed.
“Gee, and in all tha’ time yah still haven’t gotten yer cutie mark.”
“OH FOR GOODNESS SAKE APPLE BLOOM!” Sweetie Belle suddenly shouted, causing Apple Bloom to take a few steps backwards in surprise and a few of the others in the room to look and stare at them. “HAVEN’T YOU REALISED BY NOW THAT THERE’RE THINGS MORE IMPORTANT THEN A DAMN CUTIE MARK?!”
“I… I…” Apple Bloom stammered.
“Oh, gosh! I… I’m sorry Apple Bloom,” Sweetie Belle said after realizing what had just happened. “It’s just…”
“No, yer right. Ah’m sorry.”
“Though I see you haven’t gotten your cutie mark either,” Sweetie Belle said, and she winked at Apple Bloom.
“Yeah, but Ah was frozen!”
Then they both laughed for a few minutes, though their laugher soon petered out into an awkward silence which was finally broken by Apple Bloom.
“Ah… Ah guess this is my fault,” Apple Bloom said.
“No, it isn’t. Don’t say that.”
“No, it is. Getting in different pods was my idea so if we hadn’t done that we’d at least have been together. An’ if we’d both used mine the cryog… cryogen… the freezin’ thingy would’ve worked so yah wouldn’t have to wait.”
“Look, it’s already happened and there’s nothing we either of us can do about it. So please don’t go blaming yourself.”
“Ok, Ah’ll try.”
“Has anyone told you what happened to your family?” Sweetie Belle asked.
Apple Bloom opened her mouth to speak, but then paused. Did she want to tell Sweetie Belle what had happened to Applejack? No, she decided to keep that to herself for now. She’d tell Sweetie Belle when she was close to being healthy again.
“No,” she said. “Not yet.”
“Oh. I asked about Rarity and my parents. But nobody knows where they are at the moment.”
“Oh, well Ah hope they’re ok.”
“Me too.”
There was another pause in their conversation.
“Apple Bloom, I’m feeling a little tired. Do you mind…?”
“No, not at all. Yah get some sleep if yah need to.”
“Thanks.”
“Ah’ll come back and talk to yah later, okay.”
Sweetie Belle smiled and nodded. Then she closed her eyes and went to sleep almost immediately. Apple Bloom trotted away and out of the medical section. Twilight was standing just outside the door waiting for her.
“So what now?” Apple Bloom asked her.
“Well, I guess we’ll have to find you a cabin to stay in while you’re here,” Twilight told her. Then she muttered to herself, “Now where’s there a free one… ah, I know,” then she spoke up, “Follow me Apple Bloom.”
They headed back to the elevator which took them down a few floors and to another corridor. As they walked down this one Apple Heard a lot of noise coming from behind one door, then she noticed that most of the doors here had things painted or written on them. She spotted one with a lyre and three sweets on it, another with what she assumed was writing in an alien language scrawled across it. Finally they stopped outside a door with three red apples painted on it. Apple Bloom’s jaw dropped.
“Is this…?”
“Yes, this was Applejack’s cabin,” Twilight said quietly. “Nobody’s touched it since… since we lost her.”
The door opened and they stepped inside, the lights came on as they did. Apple Bloom looked around the cabin, there wasn’t much here. Just empty shelves, a shower in the corner, a few draws, the bed… then she realized what was on the bed. She approached it slowly, and then she picked up Applejack’s hat. She looked back at Twilight, who nodded.
“I think Applejack would’ve wanted you to have that,” she said, Apple Bloom nodded back.
Then Apple Bloom spotted a small framed photographs sitting on a table beside the bed. The photograph had been taken a few years ago during cider season. There was Applejack, Big Macintosh, Granny Smith and Apple Bloom herself standing beside the stall with a long queue of ponies stretching into the background. Apple Bloom had a sudden brief flashback to the Bolkarn invasion, seeing them storm across the fields and orchards of Sweet Apple Acres and setting their home and the barns on fire, Granny Smith had died in the attack. Apple Bloom noticed that the photograph had been damaged, with the edges being heavily burnt. Applejack must’ve either grabbed this as they fled or found it in the remains afterwards.
“Are you alright Apple Bloom?” Twilight asked.
“Huh, wha’?” Apple Bloom realized she’d been silently staring at the photograph for a few solid minutes. “Oh… yeah, Ah’m fine.”
“Good, is it okay if I leave you by yourself now?” Twilight asked.
“Yeah. Ah’ll be fine.”
“Ok, but if you need anything tell the computer to call me, ok?”
Apple Bloom nodded, and Twilight stepped out of the room with the door closing behind her. Apple Bloom lay down on the bed, putting the photograph back where she found it and the hat on the shelf. She felt she needed time to relax after everything she’d been told in the last hour. It didn’t seem that long since Scootaloo had died, and now she’d learnt that Applejack was gone to, and Sweetie Belle had come close to death as well. And now memories of the Bolkarn attack on their farm and Granny Smith’s death were flashing through her mind. She buried her head in her forelegs and began to cry.

Chapter 7: Applejack

I’d seen plenty of death during my time with the resistance. But they were all strangers, I’d feel sad and sorry for them but it never hurt me personally. All that changed when Applejack was killed. I still feel like that was my fault, despite what Rainbow Dash told me.

– Extract from When We Saw the Universe by Captain Twilight Sparkle

“Ok, you ready?” Liha asked.

Lyra nodded.

“Ok then, here we go.”

A day after the Dominator II had successfully carried out its attack on Celo-7 Lyra and Liha were in the training room where Lyra had talked to Phaurn before, Phaurn himself was also with them along with Bon Bon who was sticking as close to the door as she could. Liha had just finished strapping an A.S.C. onto Lyra and once Lyra had confirmed she was ready Liha activated it. Once again Lyra felt herself changing, but she wasn’t turning into a Bolkarn this time. The bone structure of her back legs began to alter with her hooves widening and her flesh growing to fit their new shape. Almost everything else remained the same. It didn’t take long for the transformation to end.

“Okay, now we need to make sure it worked properly,” Liha said.

She lifted Lyra up by her front leg and arm while her back legs stayed on the ground. Liha held Lyra upright, like this she was almost as tall as Liha.

“Now, tell me when you’re sure you’re steady and balanced,” she said.

Lyra shifted her hooves slightly, and then took a deep brief. “Ok, now.”

Liha let go and stepped back. Lyra wobbled slightly and quickly shifted one of her hooves to steady herself. She took a few more deep breaths before she was absolutely sure she wasn’t going to fall over.

“I think it worked,” she said as a wide smile spread across her face.

“Good, now try walking.”

Lyra’s smile shrank slightly.

“Okay,” she said and took a few more deep breaths.

After Liha had tested the A.S.C. to turn her into a Bolkarn Lyra wasn’t entirely sure about trying to walk. Yes the Bolkarn body was much larger then what she was used to and now she was going to be trying it in a slightly altered version of her own body but unlike ponies the Bolkarn were designed to walk on two legs, even if they had altered hers for the same purpose.

Lyra carefully moved her right leg forward, barely taking if off the floor. After setting it back down again she managed to keep her balance. She tried again with the other foot, again she kept her balance. She took a few more steps, each time taking her hooves further off the floor. She almost lost her balance twice but managed to steady herself. Before long she was walking around the room with ease, the sound of her hooves on the floor echoing around them. She only stopped when she collided with one of the walls. Liha laughed and applauded.

“Well done Lyra,” she said. “We’ve got the basics sorted now, I think the next step would be to try running but I think we’ll leave that for another time.”

“Yeah, I agree,” Lyra said. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to manage running just yet.

“Very good,” Phaurn said. “But I have a few questions. Did you change any aside from her back legs?”

“No, that was all,” Liha told him.

“Then may I suggest some alterations to her remaining foreleg as well,” he replied. “It still has the basic structure of a leg. Even if you do not intend to use it as such I suggest converting it into an arm. Whether or not you wish to add a hand is up to you.”

“Alright, I’ll do that,” Liha said. “Lyra, what do you think?”

“If he thinks it’s a good idea then I say go with it,” Lyra said. “Though I’ll be fine with just one hand.”

“Alright then,” Liha said.

“So, do you think you could teach me sword fighting like this?” Lyra asked Phaurn.

“You may require a bit more practice with using that form,” he said. “But I think I will take you on as an apprentice.”

“YES!” Lyra exclaimed and punched the air, which almost made her lose her balance again.

Phaurn ordered the computer to produce a practice sword for Lyra while Liha sat down next to Bon Bon to watch. Phaurn tossed the sword to Lyra who just managed to catch it and stay balanced.

“I think for now I will teach you some very basic and necessary skills,” he said. “They might also help you get used to that form.”

Lyra nodded and they both took up a fighting stance, with their swords pointing towards each other.

A few hours later Lyra and Bon emerged from the training room, Liha had left a while earlier to attend a meeting of the Red Starfighter investigation committee and Phuarn was staying to continue training on his own. Bon Bon was glad to be out of the training room since it made her feel uneasy. Lyra suggested they head to the ship’s canteen and Bon Bon agreed with the idea so they boarded the elevator at the end of the corridor to head to the right level.

Once the doors opened again and they stepped out into the corridor they spotted Apple Bloom coming the other way. She was walking slowly with her head down, not looking where she was going. Lyra approached her slowly, and bent down to talk to her.

“Hi,” she said gently.

Apple Bloom looked up at her and Lyra saw that her eyes were rather red.

“Hello,” Apple Bloom said quietly.

“You’re Applejack’s sister aren’t you,” Lyra said. “What was your name?”

“Apple Bloom.”

“That was it. Sorry it slipped my mind for a moment.”

Pretty much everypony in Ponyville knew the Apple family, and especially Applejack. Some were just casual acquaintances, some were reasonably close friends, and others were just aware that they existed. Lyra had never really interacted with the Apples, except to occasionally buy food from them.

“So, what are you up to Apple Bloom?” Lyra asked.

“Jus’ explorin’,” Apple Bloom said.

“Ah, you don’t want to spend all your time in that tiny little cabin, right?”
Apple Bloom nodded, then she noticed Lyra’s arm and stared at it with her mouth half open in surprise. Lyra lifted it off the floor and flexed it around, before holding her hand out in front of Apple Bloom. Apple Bloom tentatively raised a hoof which Lyra held and shook gently. She saw a small smile form on Apple Bloom’s face.

“How… how did ya get tha’?” Apple Bloom asked her.

“I’d rather not talk about it,” Lyra said, letting go of Apple Bloom’s hoof.

“Oh… Ah’m sorry.”

“No need to apologies,” Lyra told her. “From what I’ve heard you’ve had enough of your own problems without needing to hear about anyone else’s.”

Apple Bloom nodded. An awkward silence followed.

“Ah… miss mah sister,” Apple Bloom eventually said quietly.

“Yeah, I know Twilight told you what happened to Applejack,” Lyra said. “I miss her to.”

“Y… yah knew her?”

“Yeah, though I didn’t really get to know her until joining the resistance, I fought alongside her a few times.”

“Where yah there when… when it happened?”

Lyra nodded.

“Could yah tell me how it happened?”

“Well… I don’t know if I should.”

“Please.”

Lyra thought about it for a few seconds before finally agreeing.

“Thanks,” Apple Bloom said.

Lyra led Apple Bloom and Bon Bon into the canteen, which was conveniently empty. After they’d all gotten themselves some food they set down at a table at the back of the room.

“Well, I guess I should start,” Lyra said. “Though I don’t really think I’m the right pony to tell you this but I suppose someone has to.”

“Why not?” Apple Bloom asked.

“Well, I kinda feel like Applejack’s death was my thought,” Lyra told her. “You see, she died saving my life.”

Another planet, another mine, another attack. Lyra couldn’t even remember the name of this one. It was one of those worlds that didn’t have a proper name, just a string of seemingly random numbers and letters maybe with a dash or something through in for good measure.

As always Lyra was aboard Carrier 3 which was making its descent towards the planet. She’d been with the resistance for five months now, and the first two and half months of that time had been spent recovering physically and emotionally from her time in one of the Bolkarn mines. She gave her arm an experimental flex. She hadn’t quite gotten used to it yet and she felt it still needed improvements particularly after the last mine raid where the elbow jammed.

As always the Carrier was occupied by several different species, Lyra had been getting to know them slowly over time. The only one she’d really managed to become more familiar with was commander of their small squad, Captain Applejack. She was standing at the far end of the Carrier by the door to the cockpit, clad in the same black body armor as the rest of them with the resistance’s logo on the right flank. Applejack had painted her cutie mark on the left flank like most ponies did, Lyra included. The only part of the armor Applejack wasn’t wearing at the moment was the helmet. Lyra thought she didn’t look quite right without her hat on. This wasn’t helped by the fact that Applejack had cut her mane shortly after joining the resistance, now it was shorter then Lyra’s.

“Now listen up y’all,” she said and a few members of the squad gave their helmets a whack, apparently the translators sometimes had trouble with Applejack’s accent. “We’ll be touchin’ down in abou’ five minutes. Now yah all know that’s its nighttime at the moment on this side of the plane’. Now Ah know we’d all prefer to hit ‘em in broad dayligh’, but it won’t be dayligh’ for another week by mah own planet’s timescale.”

There were a few murmurs from the assembled troops, just to show they’d acknowledged what Applejack had just said. The pilot made an announcement that they were about to land.

“Ok, y’all know the drill, we’ve gone through it enough times,” Applejack said as she put her helmet on. They all felt the Carrier touch down on the planet’s surface. They unstrapped themselves and stood ready for action as the door opened. “Let’s ride.”

They all charged out of the Carrier with Applejack in the lead. In the distance they could see two other Carriers that had already landed, with their occupants spilling out of the back. A third was just touching down in the distance. Before long the area was filled with the sounds of gunfire and being lit up by the light of the resistance’s energy blasters. Eventually the Bolkarn turned on several large floodlights, sweeping them over the battlefield to get a get a better few of their enemies.

Lyra and a few others were using a large mining machine for cover. They could only just hear the bullets ricocheting of the other side over all the other noises around them. They eventually had to abandon that position when two Bolkarn came up behind them and opened fire, managing to kill one of the group as they fled. As they ran Lyra heard a loud explosion, quickly glancing in the direction she thought it had come from she saw that one of the Carriers had been destroyed. Eventually they managed to find some more cover behind a pile of rocks that had been dug out from the mine. Lyra managed to fell three Bolkarn in quick succession, but she had a feeling that something wasn’t right. She quickly gave some vocal commands to her helmet and a series of numbers appeared on her visor. The numbers represented how many troops were still alive right now. There had been fourteen in her squad which was now down to nine, and as for the entire attack force that had been reduced from one hindered and twenty seven to fifty four. They were losing.

Lyra and her squad mates managed to take down a few more Bolkarn, but two of them were taken out soon after. Then over their radios they were given the order to retreat. Lyra hesitated, while the others ran as fast as they could almost immediately, only for nearly all of them to be picked off by the Bolkarn. Lyra fired a few more shots, then took a deep breath and ran. Her horn lit up, creating a shield around herself as well as suspending and firing her blaster at the same time. She needed all four limbs if she was to escape quickly. At the same time she needed to concentrate on firing, running, and protecting herself at the same time. A few bullets bounced off the shield, but then one managed to make its way through and embedded itself in her armor.

Lyra kept going, pushing herself as far as she could go. Then she heard something hit the floor. She looked back but didn’t stop running. She saw her blaster lying on the ground and getting further and further from her. Then something slammed into her, throwing her off her feet and behind a rock just before a hail of Bolkarn gunfire sped past where she’d just been.

Getting back to her feet Lyra saw Applejack standing beside her, and firing shot after shot towards the Bolkarn. Lyra realized that Applejack must’ve pushed her out of the way of the gunfire that would probably have killed her. Around them resistance troops were rushing for the Carriers, and Carrier 3 was just a short distance behind them.

“Thanks,” Lyra shouted to Applejack over all the noise.

“Don’ mention it,” Applejack replied. “Now grab yer gun an’ help private.”

“Yes sir,” Lyra replied and quickly levitated her gun back to herself and joined in with the barrage.

More and more troops ran past them, either to be gunned down or to make it to one of the Carriers, and once each Carrier had enough troops on board they took off back to the Dominator II. Before long only Carrier 3 remained, and Applejack and Lyra were the only ones still out on the battlefield. They kept up their barrage, Lyra squeezing the trigger as fast her mechanical finger would allow and Applejack pounding the firing button on her hoof blaster with so much force and frequency that small cracks were starting to form in it. They were waiting for the right opportunity to run for the Carrier.

Lyra kept on firing, until suddenly her gun stopped working. She squeezed the trigger a few more times, willing it to work but to no avail. She quickly lowered her head and shot a blast of magic out of her horn before ducking behind the rock and checking her gun.

“What’s the matter?” Applejack asked her.

“Power cell’s dead,” Lyra replied.

“Well then, yer no good to me here,” Applejack told her. “Get back to the Carrier, Ah’ll cover you.”

“But what about you?”

“Don’t worry abou’ me, now when Ah say run, run.”

“I’m not going without you.”

“Yes you will, Ah’ll be fine.”

“But I…”

“RUN!”

Lyra ran. She could hear Bolkarn bullets whizzing past her and Applejack’s blaster fire behind her, getting fainter the further she went. It wasn’t long before she was back in the Carrier. She looked back towards Applejack, and saw several Bolkarn closing in around her.

“APPLEJACK, COME ON!” Lyra shouted, forgetting all about ranks in the heat of the moment.

“No time,” she heard Applejack say over her helmet radio. “Go without me.”

“No!”

“Please, go.”

Then Applejack was surrounded, Lyra just had time to see Applejack throw her weapon aside and raise her forelegs in the air as the Carrier’s door closed and the small ship took off.

“Ah surrender,” they heard her say over the helmet radio.

Only four members of the Carrier 3 squad made it out of the mine alive, Lyra included. When the Carriers made their hasty departure they had to endure a volley of gunfire from below, Carriers 2 and 7 had been heavily damaged while Carrier 10 was destroyed before it could make it back to the Dominator II.

The survivors gathered in the hanger for their debriefing as they always did while the engineers bustled around the damaged Carriers and the ones that weren’t were raised back into their storage frames. General En and a few other higher ranking crew members, including Captain Twilight Sparkle, were standing on a walkway that ran along the walls of the hanger several feet above the floor gazing down at them while the surviving squad commanders made their reports of what had happened. If their commanders had been killed the squads just selected someone at random to make the report. Lyra had been selected by her squad to make the report, though she had a feeling it wasn’t due to random selection but because none of them wanted to make it themselves. She didn’t either but decided that someone had to. When her turn came she ran through all the details of what had happened to her and her squad mates, which they’d quickly given her details of on the way back, everything from the moment they’d landed to the moment of Applejack’s capture.

“WHAT!” Twilight exclaimed when Lyra finally reached the last part of her report.

There’d been a few surprised gasps and murmurs from the assembled crowd, which was understandable since none of their comrades had been captured during a mine assault, at least not during the time Lyra had been there, only Twilight had reacted with genuine shock. Lyra could understand why.

After the debriefing was over and the troops had dropped off their body armor and weapons along with picking up their translators if they had them the Carrier 3 squad was called to a small conference just below General En’s quarters. They were joined by General En and Captain Sparkle. Twilight looked stressed and uneasy; clearly she wasn’t taking the news of Applejack’s capture well. After first going through the details of the events again General En started asking them some questions.

“Had Captain Applejack been acting a little differently recently?” General En asked.

They all said no.

“Have any of you seen her doing anything unusual or suspicious?”

Again, no.

“Why?” Lyra asked.

“It may be possible that Captain Applejack has joined the Bolkarn, and her surrender was just a ruse to allow for that,” General En replied.

“NO!” Twilight shouted. “Applejack would never do that.”
“Captain Sparkle, I think most would think the same thing if a close friend of theirs was a potential traitor.”

“No General, with all due respect I’ve known Applejack for much longer then you have, yes she has her flaws but so does everypony, and treason isn’t one of them.”

Twilight was definitely being affected by what had happened, she’d slipped back into using ‘everypony’, and switching to using ‘everybody’ instead had been her idea in the first place.

“Very well then.” General En turned back to addressing the squad. “Do any of you have any idea as to why Captain Applejack surrendered and allowed herself to be captured?”

“Well, I guess she didn’t think she’d be able to make it back to the Carrier before either getting caught or shot,” Lyra said. “Or maybe she used herself as a distraction so the Bolkarn wouldn’t come after us before we had a chance to take off.”

“Yeah, that sounds like Applejack,” Twilight said.

“Very well then,” General En said. “I think we’ve heard just about everything that could be said, you may all leave now.”

“What? That’s it!” Twilight exclaimed.

“Is there something else you wish to discuss Captain?”

“Yes, what are we going to do now?”

“There is nothing more to do Captain.”

“Yes there is, we can rescue Applejack.”

“No, that is utterly out of the question.”

“But…”

“Our attack on UU12-88C was a complete failure,” General En said. “Any attempt to go back down there for a rescue attempt will receive the same result, and the Bolkarn are likely to take Captain Applejack somewhere else which will no doubt be heavily guarded and we would also need to find where that place is.”

“We can’t just leave her.”

“I am not risking my entire crew just for the sake of one.”

“A small group might be able to succeed. A small target is harder to hit then a larger one.”

“And there is less of a small target left when it does get hit.”

“General, I refuse to just abandon her, I’m sure she’d feel the same way if it was someone else in the same situation, even if it was somepony she didn’t even know.”

General En sighed, “You’re really not going to give up on this are you Captain.”

“No.”

“Very well, if you wish to organize a rescue attempt then do so,” General En said. “But I will have no part of it. If anything goes wrong it’ll be on your head and not mine. Understood?”

“Yes general,” Twilight said. “And thank you.”

Nobody knew what the surface of the planet Golgafrincham was like. Around two million years ago a third of the planet’s population that were considered as useless had been tricked into leaving under the belief that the planet was in grave danger and they were the first of a trio of ships meant to transport the planet’s entire population to a new world. Shortly afterwards the remaining population were wiped out by a disease that certain members of the departed third could have prevented. Subsequently the planet had been placed under quarantine and has remained that way ever since.

Despite, or maybe because of the quarantine the Bolkarn had chosen to place a space prison in orbit around the planet. The T.S. Prison station housed many different prisoners, its population included pirates, terrorists and the very rare member of the resistance that was captured rather than being shot on sight. Many who had been imprisoned in the station had attempted to fight off the Bolkarn when they occupied populated planets, including political figures and military leaders. There were even a few Bolkarn imprisoned here, Bolkarn criminals were usually always executed but those imprisoned here were only kept alive because the Bolkarn world leaders thought they may be of use one day. These Bolkarn were considered dangerous even by Bolkarn standards, and they were mostly members of terrorist groups set on overthrowing the Bolkarn leaders and taking their place. In the past some of these attempts had even succeeded, only to be eventually be overthrown by another terrorist group a few decades later.

There were rumors that the Bolkarn would sometimes eject prisoners that were uncooperative or that they just didn’t like from the station down the planet below, presumably to succumb to the same disease that had wiped out the Golgafrinchans all those years ago, assuming it hadn’t died out. If it had they were still being sent to a dead world with little chance of survival.

The Dominator II came out of Hyperspace at the far end of Golgafricham’s solar system. The ship was now reaching the end of its current mission and had just come from an assault on the last planet that had been assigned to it, now it had only one task to carry out. Over the preceding month Twilight had been gathering as much information as she could about where Applejack could have been taken, from spies, intercepted Bolkarn communications and a few other sources, and now she was sure that Applejack was on the T.S. Station. When she wasn’t investigating or seeing to other more important priorities Twilight had been putting together and preparing a small group tasked with infiltrating the station and bringing Applejack back alive.

The squad consisted of Lyra, Rainbow Dash, Captain Quell, nVVe, and Twilight herself. Twilight had wanted a few more but General En wouldn’t let her have any more than four others. The five of them stood in the hanger as the ship drew steadily closer to its destination while a Carrier and two single seat fighters were lowered down from the storage frames. They all knew how to pilot each one of these having gone through a short training period when joining the resistance. Twilight was going to pilot the Carrier herself, while Rainbow Dash and Lyra took a fighter each. The fighters were going to take down any defenses that might prevent them from boarding the station and they were also meant to serve as a distraction. The idea being to give the Bolkarn multiple targets to hit, they were likely to consider the fighters to be a greater threat then the Carrier and focus on destroying them first.

Lyra and Rainbow climbed into their fighters while the others boarded the Carrier and the enormous doorways that separated the hanger from the universe outside began to open. Lyra could just about see the stars outside flicker out of focus sometimes, an effect caused by the thin shield that prevented the ship’s atmosphere from rushing out of the open door. The fighter’s radio came to life and Twilight’s voice came through it.

“Now remember everyone, once we go through that door we’re on our own,” she said. “The Dominator II isn’t going to give any backup and if we’re not out of there within two hours it’s leaving without us. Understood?”

“Understood Captain,” Lyra said.

“Yeah we all know that Twilight,” Rainbow Dash said. “You’ve told us that like a hundred times already!”

“Alright then everybody,” Twilight said, “Let’s move out.”

The hanger was filled with the sound of engines powering up as the three ships lifted off the floor.

“Okay,” Lyra said to herself after taking a deep breath. “Here goes nothing.”

Then Twilight gave the order to launch and they shot through the open door and out into open space. The ship’s swung round the side of the Dominator II and then accelerated towards their destination, the two fighters pulling ahead of the Carrier and flying parallel to each other. Lyra could see Golgafrincham in the distance, and she could just make out a faint shape floating above it that must be the T.S. Station.

As they drew steadily closer the shape of the station became clearer. Lyra had seen pictures and diagrams of it while preparing for this mission but they didn’t do the real thing justice, for one thing it was much bigger then she thought. The station was made up of six short cylinders with a long column running through the center of them and two hemispheres at each end of the column. The different sections of the station were also connected by a series of struts that ran around the circumferences of each one. There were no lights or windows. The whole structure was completely black.

When they were close to the station a command came from Twilight over the radio, “Action!”

The two fighters shot upwards while the Carrier headed down towards the planet. They knew that the entrance to the station’s hanger bay was in the top hemisphere, so that was their first target. They flew straight past the hemisphere and continued on for another hundred feet before flipping the fighter’s over and streaking back towards it, as they did so they began to open fire. They sank several shots into the hull of the station close to the main door to the hanger, but they did little damage.
They flew straight down the sides of the station, and now they were much closer Lyra could make out the smaller details of the structure. She could see the joins between metal panels and the rivets holding them together along with countless scratches and dents. As they approached the bottom they turned the fighters round again, this time with the front ends facing the station. They propelled themselves upwards using the fighters’ vertical jets and then sent themselves circling round the structure, spiraling their way to the top. Now the Bolkarn knew they were there and small panels in the sides of the structure opened up, revealing the station’s weapons. Just as planned.

As the two fighters continued their circling ascent they blasted and destroyed every weapons bank they came to, they didn’t knock out every single one but it was enough. When they reached the top they turned the fighters upwards once again and flew away, just as the Carrier came over the horizon of the planet, having just completed a full orbit. The Carrier came up to join them and then all three ships turned towards the station. Lyra and Rainbow Dash fired a series of explosive charges into the hanger doors. Once the smoke had cleared from the silent explosion the hanger bay lay exposed and open to them. All three ships accelerated and shot down towards the hanger, passing dead Bolkarn that had been thrown out along with the atmosphere as they went. As they drew closer the ships tilted so that their undersides were facing hanger floor, and they saw a protective cover begin to close up the opening they’d made. They sped up once again, managing to pass through the entrance before the cover closed, and finally the ships touched down hard, but silent, on the hanger bay floor.

nVVe emerged through the Carrier’s hull and not too long afterwards Twilight and Quell burst out, both wearing spacesuits. Lyra and Rainbow Dash had to wait until the atmosphere had been fully restored before they could leave their seats. In the meantime they kept their fighters hovering just off the floor with their weapons trained on the two doorways leading to the lower levels of this section.

Twilight had activated one of several computer screens built into the walls. These particular computers only granted access to specific information about the station, they couldn’t be used to take control of it or anything similar, but they didn’t need to do that at the moment. Twilight quickly found a set of records of the prison’s inmates and began scrolling through them until she found what she was looking for.

“Applejack’s in Section 4, Level L, Cell 4L221,” Twilight told them.

Then a voice came over the station’s speakers, telling them that the atmosphere in the hanger bay had been fully restored. Almost immediately the doors opened, each one revealing an elevator full of as many Bolkarn as it could take. As soon as the doors were fully open they began to open fire, Lyra and Rainbow Dash did the same. They kept the intensity of their blasts as low as possible, they didn’t want to damage their only way down to the rest of the station. Twilight and Quell took cover behind the Carrier and added their own shots to the firefight. Before long all the Bolkarn were dead.

Twilight quickly set to work clearly the bodies out of one of the elevators while Lyra and Rainbow got out of their fighters, setting the built in security systems as they did so, Quell did the same for the Carrier.

“nVVe, check what’s directly below us,” Twilight said.

nVVe flashed an affirmative before changing his color, becoming transparent and almost invisible, and descended through the floor. It wasn’t long before he rose up again.

“Main control center. Twenty five Bolkarn present. Currently attempting to contact those we just eliminated. Also preparing to send up another squad. Main elevator shaft in the center of the room.”

“Thank you nVVe,” Twilight said, and then she ordered them all into the elevator she’d cleared.

One thing Twilight had known from the moment she’d started planning this mission was that they had no chance of getting into the station unnoticed. So instead she’d proposed to make their presence know immediately, she hoped they’d make the Bolkarn think they had greater numbers then what they really had and make them panic, and if they were panicking they’d get careless. If that didn’t work, they’d just fall back on killing and destroying everything that got in their way until they got out of there.

The elevator descended down one level and opened up into the dark control room. The place was full of Bolkarn, nearly all of them sitting at one of the many consoles built into the wall. When they realized that the elevator wasn’t brining down some of their colleagues they all jumped to their feet and drew out their weapons, Twilight and the others had their weapons out and ready the moment the doors opened.

“Identify yourselves,” one Bolkarn snarled at them.

Lyra saw a grin spreading across Rainbow Dash’s face before she responded.

“Nanencran Drashiga,” she said, putting strong emphasis on each syllable and making sure she sounded as threatening as possible.

Several of the Bolkarn recoiled when they heard this. The squad saw their opportunity and opened fire. A lot of the Bolkarn hesitated and were taken down with ease and the rest soon began to return fire. Bullets embedded themselves in the back of the elevator and into the walls on either side of it. Lyra could feel the bullets bouncing off her armor or embedding themselves in them. One bullet ricocheted off her helmet, the noise shot through her head and briefly caused her to lose focus as another bullet flew past, just grazing her horn. Just behind her Lyra could hear Twilight whispering to herself, counting down with each Bolkarn that they managed to take down.

“21… 20… 18… 17… 16…”

nVVe meanwhile floated towards the throng of Bolkarn. A few attempted to shoot him but the bullets went straight through him, one shot that pass through him went into a Bolkarn that happened to be right behind him, he was killed almost instantly.

“14…”

nVVe floated into the torso of a Bolkarn, as he did so the Bolkarn started to panic and back away, trying again to shoot the blue light to no avail. Once nVVe had drifted into him the Bolkarn began to convulse, the convulsions soon became more violent and he started to scream. Then he stopped and fell to the floor, dead. nVVe floated away to do the same thing to two more Bolkarn.

“12… 11…”

Lyra heard a bullet bounce of her arm, she responded by felling two more Bolkarn in three shots, the second of the three missing its target and accidentally damaging a console in the process.

“9… 8…”

One bullet hit Rainbow Dash’s helmet visor, it didn’t penetrate it but it caused the visor to crack as the bullet bounced away to embed itself harmlessly in the wall. nVVe drifted into the body of another Bolkarn who wound up shooting and wounding two of his comrades when he started to shudder, Quell quickly took the opportunity to kill those two.

“7… 6…”

Rainbow Dash took down another.

“5…”

Lyra followed with two more.

“4… 3…”

Two left, Quell quickly halved that number.

“2…”

And then Twilight shot both a blast of magic and a shot from her gun at the final Bolkarn, the others also fired a shot each towards him. The onslaught of multiple blasts sent the Bolkarn flying into the wall, smashing a computer screen before it fell onto a console, slipping off it and onto the floor.”

“1,” Twilight announced loud and clear.

As soon as the last Bolkarn was dead they all rushed out of the elevator, Twilight heading for the nearest undamaged console. The rest grouped together around the central column that ran through the whole station. The column had two elevators built into it which were the only way up and down the rest of the station.

“I thought so,” Twilight said. “They’ve warned the rest of the station, there’re some more Bolkarn coming up in elevator 2. nVVe, deal with them.”

nVVe floated through the closed door of elevator 2, they all knew what was going to happen next. They just had to wait for him to complete his task and return. Shortly after that the door to elevator 2 opened, revealing several dead Bolkarn inside. Once they’d confirmed that all Bolkarn sent up there were dead they boarded the elevator and sent it down to section 4, level L.

Each section was made up of twenty levels, each one consisted of a gantry around the edge where all the cells where and four walkways connecting the gantry to the center. There was nothing between the gantries and walkways except a long fall to the bottom of the section. Six Bolkarn patrolled each level, all armed with weapons that weren’t the standard issue for most Bolkarn soldiers. They carried rapid fire weapons, regular Bolkarn guns would have a delay between shots and the guns trigger would need to be pressed for each bullet, for these the trigger was held down to allow for continuous fire. These weapons would be necessary in case of an attempted large scale escape from the prison’s inmates.

It didn’t take long for the elevator to reach its destination, the moment it stopped Twilight slammed a hoof into a button on the control panel that stopped the doors from opening automatically.
“Okay, they’ll probably know it’s us in here,” she said. “So now comes the hard part, you ready nVVe?”
“I am ready Captain Twilight Sparkle,” nVVe flashed.

“Okay everyone; switch your visors’ to infrared.” They did. “Private Heartstrings, open the door.”

Lyra reached for the button, and as she did so Twilight lowered her horn and pointed it at nVVe. The door opened and Twilight shot a burst of magic into the blue light. The whole section was filled with a blinding white light, followed by several screams of pain from the Bolkarn guards. Twilight ordered them all out and they rushed along the walkway in front of them, opening fire on the Bolkarn around them. One fell over the railings and plummeted to the floor below, others just fell dead where they stood.

“nVVe, which cell are we in front of?” Twilight asked when they reached the end of the walkway.

The light hadn’t faded yet and even with infrared none of them could read the numbers above each cell door, infrared also couldn’t detect nVVe but the translator could still pick up his flashes.

“4L173,” he told them.

“And Applejack’s cell is…?”

“To our right.”

“Roger.”

They all rushed off along the gantry, as they did so the white light faded and they all switched off infrared. Lyra saw that they’d managed to wipe out all the Bolkarn on their level but some on the levels above and below them that they’d missed with their initial attack were getting to their feet, they began to open fire. Lyra and Twilight raised their guns with magic and returned fire, nVVe floated through the gantry above them to take out the Bolkarn with his own method.

Lyra glanced up at the signs above the cells, there were just running past 4L200, nearly there. A bullet bounced off her helmet and ricocheted into the gantry above, bouncing off it and plummeting down to the levels below. Finally they reached Applejack’s cell.

“Okay everyone,” Twilight said. “Keep up the defense, this may take a while.”

Twilight lowered her horn towards a panel on one side of the cell door with a series of numbered buttons on it. The cells needed a specific code to open them and for the past month Twilight had been developing a spell that would allow her to discern the code and unlock the door. Her horn lit up, it was giving off much more light than usual which flowed over the control panel. Lyra could hear a hum coming from the magic, and a few sparks flew from Twilight’s horn. She had her eyes tightly closed as she concentrated hard, before long she couldn’t keep them shut any longer and they sprung open with magic light emanating from them. One by one the buttons were depressed, and the control panel emitted a loud beep to confirm that the button had been successfully pressed. As Twilight continued working Lyra saw the elevator descend through a pair of windows set into its entrance, heading down to the other sections where more Bolkarn were waiting for it.

Finally the last button was pressed and a series of clicks told them that the door had unlocked. Twilight collapsed, exhausted and breathing heavily as the door opened. The cell was covered with dank grey walls, and it was completely featureless. And there was Applejack, sitting in a corner at the back of the cell. She was covered in bruises, she even had a black eye, and her mane had been shaved clean off. She still had her tail, but what was now dirty and frayed. She looked up at them when the door opened, smiled at them.

“Wha’ kept ya?” she said.

Twilight, her exhaustion forgotten, bounded into the cell and wrapped her forelegs around Applejack in a tight hug. Applejack winced, but still hugged Twilight back.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t get here sooner,” Twilight said.

“That’s okay sugar cube,” Applejack replied.”

“You look terrible,” Twilight said as she broke away from the hug.

“Ah know Ah do,” Applejack replied. “Ah’d say Ah’ve had worse, but Ah really know I haven’t.”

They both chuckled, and then Twilight said they needed to get out of there as soon as possible.

“Er, Twilight,” Rainbow Dash shouted back to them over the sounds of gunfire, “we’ve got a problem out here.”

The elevator had brought up more Bolkarn to their level, and now they were charging along the gantry towards them.

“Can you run?” Twilight asked Applejack.

“Ah think so.”

“Good, everyone we’re heading for the other elevator. Lyra, stick close to Applejack.”

Then they all sprinted away from the cell with the Bolkarn behind them, Lyra running alongside Applejack, keeping Applejack between herself and the wall. Rainbow Dash brought up the rear with Twilight and Quell in front. nVVe came back down from the upper levels and began eliminating the Bolkarn pursuing one by one. Then a shot from one Bolkarn penetrated Rainbow Dash’s body armor just above her right back leg. She let out a grunt of pain and stumbled, but managed to keep running despite a slight limp.

“Oh no!” Twilight exclaimed. “They must armor piercing bullets.”

Rainbow Dash continued running, but started to lag behind the rest of them.

“You know what, buck this!” she said.

Rainbow Dash spread out her wings and took off. She flew round the whole level, circling it several times and gaining more speed as she went. The Bolkarn tried to shoot her down but kept missing. Then she dived downwards and plowed straight into the Bolkarn, knocking a few of them off their feet and some over the sides. More Bolkarn emerged from the same elevator as the previous group. As they charged along the walkway Rainbow Dash flew straight into them, knock more over the sides to their deaths on the floor below. The rest began to circle round the gantry in the opposite direction.

“We need to get to the next walkway before they do,” Twilight shouted back at them. “Otherwise we’re done for.”

The small resistance group picked up as much speed as they could. Lyra and Applejack began to lag behind them. Lyra could tell that Applejack was starting to struggle. Bullets flew past them and into the walls. One came close to Lyra’s helmet, just scratching the top of it before embedding itself in the wall. Finally, they reached the walkway and turned into it. As they did so Lyra began to pull away from Applejack. nVVe extracted himself from the throng of Bolkarn and joined them, as did Rainbow Dash who landed on the walkway just in front of the elevator door and began opening fire on the two groups of Bolkarn that were slowly closing in on them.

Then Applejack spotted a single Bolkarn who’d detached himself from the rest, he was standing on the gantry facing them, he raised his gun and fired a single shot.

“LOOK OUT!” Applejack shouted, and then she leapt forward and on top of Lyra, pushing the unicorn down to the floor, the bullet went straight though Applejack.

Lyra heard Twilight let out a loud scream. She looked up and saw Twilight lower her head and fire a burst of magic at the Bolkarn that had just shot Applejack. This wasn’t a normal single shot blast but a full stream of magic. The Bolkarn was lifted off his feet and pinned to the wall. Twilight’s eyes were wide and glowing. Lyra could just see the light coming through the visor of her helmet. All anyone could clearly see of Twilight’s face was her mouth, which had now formed into a wide grimace with her teeth being forced tightly together.

Then Lyra realized that she could still hear Applejack breathing, her breaths were harsh and ragged but they were still breaths.

“TWILIGHT!” she shouted, once again forgetting all about rank, “SHE’S NOT DEAD,” she almost ended that sentence with ‘yet’ but decided against it.

Twilight either ignored her or just couldn’t hear her as she continued her assault on the Bolkarn. The two groups of Bolkarn finally met at the end of the walkway, and Quell and Rainbow Dash began to open fire on them.

“Twilight, come on,” Rainbow Dash said. “We need to go NOW!”

“Whuh?” Twilight’s magic attack ceased and she came to her senses. “Oh, gosh! Come on everypony,” she shouted.

Lyra forced herself to her feet, bearing Applejack’s body on her back.

“Applejack, if you can, hold on tight,” she said before darting towards the now open elevator door.

Quell and Rainbow Dash continued to fire on the Bolkarn as Lyra made it through the elevator door, once they were all inside the doors closed and they heard a hail of bullets slamming into them. Quell pressed the button to take them up to the control center. Lyra let Applejack slip off her back and onto the floor. Lyra’s body armor was covered in her blood, blood which was flowing out onto the floor and forming a large red pool.

“A… Applejack…” Twilight said quietly after throwing off her helmet, tears starting to form in her eyes. “Are… are you…?”

“Shush,” Applejack said, but it sounded like she only just managed it. “Don’t cry sugar cube.”

“But… but…”

“It’s okay Twilight, it’s okay.”

“No… no it’s not!”

“nVVe, check her condition,” Quell said.

nVVe floated into Applejack, he only remained there for a few seconds.

“The bullet passed through Captain Applejack’s heart and left lung,” he told them. “Captain Applejack will die in a few minutes.”

“Wha’ did… ACK! Wha’ did he say?” Applejack asked, as did Twilight, Lyra repeated what nVVe had told them.

“No…” Twilight whimpered.

“Ah well, had to happen sometime didn’t it,” Applejack said.

Lyra was shocked at how easily Applejack had accepted that she only had a few minutes to live, in fact Lyra was sure Applejack had realized that long before nVVe had told them. Twilight on the other hand definitely hadn’t.

“Please, hold on,” she said. “Hold on a bit longer, we can get you back to the ship. We can save you.”

The pool of Applejack’s blood had spread to cover the whole of the elevator floor. Lyra didn’t like the idea of standing in another pony’s blood, but still after losing this much Applejack was still alive. Just how much did she have?

“Twi… Twilight,” Applejack said. “Ya know that isn’t gonna happen.”

“NO! We can do it, I know we can.”

“Twilight, if ya ever find Apple Bloom, tell her… tell her…” and then Applejack’s eyes closed, she stopped breathing.

There was a dead silence after Applejack’s last words, broken only by Twilight.

“A… Applejack,” Twilight whispered, nudging Applejack’s body with a hoof. “Come on AJ, speak to me. You can do it, come on… please!”

More silence. And then Twilight gave up. She buried her head in her forelegs and rested them on Applejack’s body. She began crying very loudly, the noise echoed around the elevator. Lyra felt a few tears welling up in her own eyes, and an image flashed through her mind of herself crying over Bon Bon’s dead body. Then Rainbow Dash grabbed Twilight by the face and glared at her, she didn’t seem to care that she was getting blood from her hooves over Twilight’s face. Twilight was already covered in it anyway.

“Twilight, snap out of it,” Rainbow Dash shouted at her.

“But… but… Applejack…”

“…is dead, yeah I know. But we don’t have time to grieve now, you can do that later. But right now, we. Have. To. Get. OUT OF HERE!”

Twilight just stared at Rainbow Dash with her mouth hanging open, after a few seconds she shook herself, as well as giving herself a slap across the face.

“I’m sorry, you’re right,” she said after taking a few deep breaths.

“It’s okay, I feel the same,” Rainbow said gently, giving Twilight a light pat on the head.

“nVVe, check that the command center’s empty before we get there,” Twilight said.

nVVe flashed an affirmative before floating up through the elevator’s ceiling. It wasn’t long before he reappeared and confirmed that the command center was clear, just as the elevator stopped there. They quickly left the elevator and headed for one that would take them to the hanger bay, while nVVe floated through the ceiling to confirm that the hanger was unoccupied Lyra lifted Applejack’d body onto her back and went to join the others, moving slowly and carefully so Applejack didn’t fall off and stepping over the bodies of dead Bolkarn as she went.

Once nVVe had confirmed that the hanger was safe Rainbow Dash fired a few shots into the controls for the elevators in the central column, rendering them useless. Then they ascended up to the hanger bay and quickly headed for their ships.

“You okay to fly that thing?” Rainbow Dash asked Twilight.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” Twilight replied as Quell deactivated the security systems for the Carrier. “What about you?”

“I’m okay,” Rainbow Dash replied. “I don’t think it hit anything vital, I guess I got lucky.”

Lyra dropped off Applejack’s body in the Carrier before heading to her fighter. Once the security systems had been deactivated she climbed aboard. After everyone was in their craft Twilight gave them the all clear for their departure. Rainbow and Lyra’s fighters took off first. They stopped few meters from the ceiling and tilted the two ships so that their front ends were pointing upwards. Once again they proceeded to fire charges into it, it took several more then it had the first time but they managed it. The air began to rush out around them, and the two fighters shot out just as the Carrier began to take off below them.

The two fighters pulled away from the T.S. station, with the stations remaining weapons firing shot after shot after them, they managed to dodge every one. Then they both realized that the Carrier wasn’t following them. Turning round they saw that that it was circling round the station and opening fire on it with its own weapons.

“TWILIGHT, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Lyra heard Rainbow Dash shout over the radio. “Lyra, take out as many of the stations weapons as you can. Use charges if you have to.”

Lyra shot her fighter back towards the station, and began to open fire. She sunk charge after charge into the station’s hull, before long the station’s weapons were aiming for her as well. One charge left an enormous gaping hole in the section she hit and she saw a body come flying it, she must’ve punched through the hull and into a cell.

“TWILIGHT! TWILIGHT STOP, SNAP OUT OF IT,” she could hear Rainbow Dash shouting over the radio, but not even the few shots that hit the Carrier were stopping Twilight’s attack.

“Don’t make me do this,” Rainbow said.

Twilight didn’t listen, she just continued to fire shot after shot at the station.

“Okay then, here goes.”

Rainbow Dash fired a volley of blasts into the Carrier, a small explosion burst out from it. Rainbow Dash had taken out the ship’s engines. But Twilight still didn’t stop blasting the station. Rainbow Dash turned the rear of her fighter towards the Carrier and fired a cable from the back which attached itself to the Carrier with a strong magnet. Lyra did the same with hers and together they towed the Carrier back to the Dominator II.

“…and that’s pretty much it,” Lyra said.

Apple Bloom and Bon Bon had both been listening to Lyra’s account of the incident for over half an hour, neither of them had said a word for at least twenty minutes and both of them had their mouths hanging open.

“Once we got back we found out that a patrol ship from the station had returned from its usual round and the Bolkarn on it had boarded the Dominator II, but they’d been subdued by the time we got back,” Lyra said. “Afterwards we were all reprimanded over what had happened. Though most of it was directed at Twilight since she organized the operation, the rest of us had just volunteered.”

There was a brief silence after that.

“Anythin’ else?” Apple Bloom asked.

Lyra shook her head, “That’s all.”

“Oh.”

“Are you ok Apple Bloom?”

Apple Bloom shook her head.

“No, I didn’t think you would be, to be honest I’m feeling a little down myself after telling you all that.”

Apple Bloom sniffed, and soon started to cry once again. Lyra gently pulled Apple Bloom into a hug. She didn’t hug her tightly though because of the hard metal of her arm, she didn’t think that would be very comfortable.

“That’s it, let it all out,” she said gently. “I know those feeling aren’t going to go away, but they’ll lessen over time, trust me I know.”

Bon Bon just watched the two of them, saying nothing. Eventually Apple Bloom stopped crying and Lyra let her go.

“Thanks,” Apple Bloom said, wiping away some leftover tears, “fer tellin’ me what happened to Applejack.”

“You’re welcome,” Lyra said, giving Apple Bloom a light pat on the back. “Like I said, someone had to.”

“One last question,” Apple Bloom said. “Do yah know what she was tryin’ to say when she… wha’ she wanted Twilight to tell me?”

Lyra shook her head.

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, please don’t be.”

“Alright.” Lyra paused and then said, “One last thing. I think you should be proud of your sister, even if I didn’t know her for very long she’s probably one of the best, and certainly one of the bravest ponies I’ve ever met.”

“Ah am,” Apple Bloom said quietly. “Ah’d think Ah need to be by myself for a while,” she said as she got down from the table.

“Ok,” Lyra said, “I guess we’ll see you around then.”

“Yeah.” Apple Bloom then walked out of the canteen door and down the corridor to Applejack’s cabin.

She lay down on the bed, thinking about everything that had happened to her and what Lyra had told her. Applejack had died saving Lyra’s life, and Scootaloo had died saving hers. Lyra blamed herself for Applejack’s death. Did that mean that Scootloo’s death was her fault? No, there was nothing she could’ve done to prevent that, either one of them died or both of them did, Scootaloo chose the latter option. And as for Applejack, that’s probably how she would’ve wanted to go. Yes, she wouldn’t want to just waste away over decades and just die of old age or exhaustion or starvation in a Bolkarn mine. She’d want to go out helping somepony, even if that meant giving up her own life to save another.

Apple Bloom looked over at Applejack’s hat which was sitting on the bedside table. Twilight had said that she would’ve wanted Apple Bloom to have it, and Lyra said she should feel proud of Applejack. She was right to. Apple Bloom reached for the hat and put it on.

Chapter 8: Rainbow - Part 1: Gladiator

Chapter 8: Rainbow – Part 1: Gladiator

By the time the resistance had liberated the mine on Olacia almost every Bolkarn in the universe knew about Rainbow Dash, whether they’d heard the truth, rumors, wild exaggerations or absolute lies. Almost every Bolkarn knew about her, and every Bolkarn that knew about her was afraid of her.

– Extract from When We Saw the Universe by Captain Twilight Sparkle

It was almost night period aboard the Domiantor II. Rainbow Dash was returning to her cabin after spending some time in the canteen, on her way back she thought she’d pay a quick visit to Twilight’s cabin to say goodnight. Their cabins were in the same corridor so she didn’t have to go out of her way for that.

“Hey Twilight,” she said as she knocked on the door to Twilight’s cabin, “you in there? It’s me.”

No answer, that was odd. Rainbow had checked with the computer earlier to confirm that Twilight was in there. She was about to knock again when the door opened. The lights were dimmed but still active with most of the light coming from one of the wall mounted screens, and there was Twilight sitting at the desk in front of them.

“Twilight?” Rainbow Dash said quietly as she stepped through the door.

She walked towards Twilight, moving slowly. It took a few seconds for Twilight to notice she was there, and this was when Rainbow was standing right next to her. Twilight looked up at her and Rainbow saw that her eyes were red and she could see a few tears on her face.

“Oh, gosh! Twilight what’s the matter?” Rainbow asked.

Twilight sniffled and brushed aside a few tears.

“Oh, sorry Rainbow, it’s nothing,” she said. “It’s just… well, seeing Apple Bloom again I started thinking about… Applejack.”

“Oh.”

“I just… I just…”

“Look Twilight, you went through enough self loathing when Applejack died and I really don’t want to see you go through any more,” Rainbow said. “So please stop blaming yourself.”

“But it was my fault, the whole thing was my fault,” Twilight said. “General En was right, we should’ve tried rescuing her, or I should’ve come up with a better plan.”

“Twilight, stop it.” Rainbow grabbed Twilight by the face and glared at her, staring straight into her eyes. “It wasn’t your fault, understand. Now just say that it wasn’t your fault.”

“But…”

“Say it!”

“It… it wasn’t… wasn’t my fault.”

“Again!”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“Louder!”

“IT WASN’T MY FAULT!”

“That’s it,” Rainbow said and smiled.

Twilight took a few deep breaths, and then she began to cry again. Rainbow Dash hugged her and gave her a pat on the back.

“It’s okay Twilight,” she said gently. “I don’t blame you, I’m sure Applejack wouldn’t blame you. So you really shouldn’t blame yourself.”

“Thanks Rainbow,” Twilight said as they broke out of the hug and she wiped away her latest fountain of tears.

“Don’t mention it,” Rainbow said. “I understand how you feel, after all you know I’ve been through something similar.”

“But you didn’t have anyone die on you.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You know what the worst part is? I mean about Apple Bloom and her friends,” Twilight said. “They came close to being rescued twice before they got stuck on those two planets?”

“How?”

“Well, based on what Sweetie Belle told me about when Scootaloo was killed, it sounds like that was when the resistance made its first attempt to attack Celo-7.”

“Oh yeah, I heard about that.”

“And their failure was what killed Scootaloo.”

“NO! How?”

Twilight gave Rainbow a quick run through of the events that led up to Scootaloo’s death and the aftermath.

“Whoa, that’s harsh.”

“I know.”

“What was the other one?”

“The ship they boarded was the Dominator III, the first ship captured by the Red Starfighter. Looking at the info in the escape pods I think they were on board around the time the Red Starfighter attacked it, in fact I think they ejected only a few hours before the attack.”

“Ouch!”

Twilight nodded in agreement. There was a lull in the conversation after that.

“Rainbow,” Twilight eventually said, “I’m getting a little worried about the others. We haven’t found Pinkie Pie or Rarity yet, and it’s been two years. I’m worried something might have happened to them. I mean, Applejack’s dead, Scootaloo’s dead, Sweetie Belle came really close and Apple Bloom could’ve been left in that pod forever. What if… what if they’re both already–?”

“Don’t say that,” Rainbow said. “Don’t even think it. I’m never going to give up on either of them or anybody else, not until I find them or I’m dead.”

Twilight smiled. “Me to,” she said.

Then they both heard the ship’s computer speak. “Attention all crew, night period begins in ten minutes,” it said.

“Well, best get going then,” Rainbow said. “Night Twilight.”

“Goodnight Rainbow,” Twilight said as Rainbow Dash left the room.

Rainbow Dash trotted back to her own cabin. She didn’t have much in there, Twilight had managed to fill her cabin with stuff thanks to having never left Equestria by the time the resistance arrived so she was able to pick up some of her own possessions. Rainbow Dash on the other hand had been carted off to a mine and subsequently had nothing to work with. She desperately wanted to personalize her cabin; the far wall would look great with a Wonderbolts poster on it. All she had where a few books on the shelves which she’d borrowed from Twilight and a broken collar sitting on the bedside table. She’d glance at it at least once every day, it used to get her thinking about her own time in the Bolkarn mine but that had stopped quite some time again. But now, after her conversation with Twilight it was happening again. They weren’t all bad memories though. Some of them were the best times of her life.

Rainbow Dash just stared at it and smiled. “Nanencran Drashiga,” she whispered to herself before climbing into bed as the lights went down for night period and memories flowed through her mind.

When the Bolkarn first came to Equestria and emerged from their ships almost everypony who saw them fled in the opposite direction. Rainbow Dash was one of the exceptions. She’d been sleeping on a cloud when the Bolkarn launched their assault and the noise of screaming and gunfire had woken her. The moment she realized what was going on she dived out of the sky towards the invaders, with nothing but her bare hooves to fight with. She shot towards them as fast she could, ramming into any Bolkarn who happened to be standing in her way. They tried to take her down but she managed to dodge every shot fired her way. Before long other ponies were joining her in her retaliation against the Bolkarn, they weren’t so lucky and most of them were shot down almost immediately. Finally one Bolkarn managed to stop her with a lucky shot.

Some time afterwards, she didn’t know how long, Rainbow Dash woke up. She’d only been stunned. She found herself somewhere dark and she could hear a humming sound coming through the whole place. As her eyes adjusted she was able to see that she was in a large room lined with metal walls. The place was full of ponies, she recognized a few that had tried to take on the Bolkarn and failed.

“Rainbow?” she someone say, it was a voice she recognized.

“Fluttershy!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed.

Rainbow Dash flew the short distance over to the back of the room where Fluttershy sitting in a corner away from most of the other ponies.

“What the hay happened?” Rainbow Dash asked her. “And where are we anyway?”

“I… I don’t know,” Flutershy said. “But I think–”

Fluttershy was interrupted when a door at the other end of the room opened revealing a Bolkarn. Almost immediately Rainbow Dash leapt into the air, ready to fight again.

“Okay buddy, you ready for round two?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. Rainbow Dash shot towards the Bolkarn who just rolled his eyes and raised a fist, punching her to the ground. The ponies gasped, and the Bolkarn laughed.

“You’re either very brave or very stupid,” he said. “Do you even have any idea where you are?”

“I’m where you’re gonna have your butt handed to you!” Rainbow Dash shouted before taking off towards the Bolkarn for another try.

Once again the Bolkarn punched her to the floor before grabbing her by the back of the neck and raising her up to his face. He spat in one of her eyes. Rainbow just snarled at him.

“If you’re thinking of trying to escape, don’t bother. Let me show you why.”

The Bolkarn carried Rainbow Dash through the door which closed behind them. He marched along the corridor outside until they came to a small round window and held Rainbow Dash up to it. Through the window Rainbow Dash could see the night sky, a vast blackness dotted with stars. She could see the moon as well, and a short distance from it was something that she’d never seen in the sky before. A vast sphere covered in shapes she recognized, shapes she’d seen on maps and globes. Her eyes when she realized what it was. She was staring at her home, and it was slowly getting further and further away.

“Take a long look,” the Bolkarn said, Rainbow looked back at him when he spoke. “It’s the last you’ll ever see of it.”

Rainbow Dash just stared at him with her mouth hanging open. Finally a wicked smile formed on her face and she looked back towards home.

“No, I’m coming back,” she said.

Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy and all the other ponies onboard were taken to a mine on the planet Olacia. The planet was dark and cold thanks to being a long way from its sun. When the sun was visible in the sky it was tiny and even when it was there the sky store bore the black of night only without any stars visible. Unlike a lot of other planets occupied by the Bolkarn Olacia was inhabited. When the planet had been invaded its leaders surrendered very quickly and allowed the Bolkarn to occupy their world and set up the mine on the condition that none of their own people were used as slave labor, with the exception of some convicted criminals. The Olacians themselves were a humanoid race. They had orange skin, three eyes, two thumbs on each hand, and thick strands of hair that weren’t really hair at all.

In the mine Rainbow Dash and most of the other Pegasus ponies were tasked with transporting the material extracted from the mine to the local spaceport where it was loaded into the Bolkarn ships and taken back to Bolka. The spaceport was right in the middle of the city of Aicil which the mine was a short distance outside of. The city itself was in the middle of vast rock desert. Rainbow Dash had flown over it countless times bearing her heavy load to its destination. When she flew over it she could see an area filled with spaceships on the opposite side of the city, spaceships that were covered in rust and falling apart. She’d tried asking one of the locals in the mine what the place was but thanks to the language barrier she didn’t get an answer and she wasn’t going to ask a Bolkarn what it was.

Aicil was a perfect circle with high walls around the outside. Towards the edge the buildings were small and basic and Rainbow Dash assumed they were all just small houses. These buildings were all the same brown reddish color as the rocky landscape that surrounded them. As they got closer to the center the buildings became bigger, more elaborate and painted in many bright colors. Not too far from the spaceport Rainbow Dash could see a large round structure that looked like it might be a stadium. Sometimes she’d see activity in there though she was often too far up to see it clearly. On more than one occasion she’d thought about flying down there to take a look, but she knew that if she took any too long with her task the Bolkarn would punish her. She’d seen them punish other slaves before, often fatally.

On this occasion Rainbow Dash wasn’t the only Pegasus in the sky, there were several behind her and getting close, a few had passed her earlier and others were returning to the mine. Flying alongside her was Fluttershy. Normally Rainbow Dash would be making the journey from mine to spaceport as quickly as she could but this time she was keeping pace with her friend. Fluttershy was struggling with her load, she almost always was. Sometimes Rainbow Dash would empty some of Fluttershy’s cargo into her own load when the Bolkarn weren’t looking. But she hadn’t found a chance to do that this time.

Originally they carried the load in two very large wooden boxes slung over their backs like a saddlebag. But the boxes were far too big and got in the way of their wings so the system was changed. Now the boxes hung under them like hot air balloons and to make up for the fact that they’d only be carrying one the boxes were now much bigger then they’d been before.

“Come on Fluttershy,” Rainbow shouted over to her. “Keep it up, I know you can.”

Fluttershy didn’t answer. She was too exhausted and panting for breath. Seeing her like this made Rainbow Dash feel guilty that she could carry such a heavy load with ease. She was wondering if she should just fly ahead, drop of her own load and come back to help Fluttershy the rest of the way. She glanced towards Fluttershy and noticed that her wings were slowing down.

“Come on Fluttershy!” she shouted. “Don’t give up just yet, we’re nearly there.” They weren’t but Rainbow thought it might help encourage her.

It didn’t work. Fluttershy’s wing movements slowly became weaker and weaker and her altitude slowly decreased. Then suddenly her wings stopped altogether and she fell out of the sky. She was too exhausted to even scream.

“WHOA!”

Rainbow Dash reacted almost immediately, darting downwards towards her falling friend. As she shot down her cargo flew upwards, trailing behind her with the sheer force of the acceleration stopping the rocks from falling out of the box. Rainbow Dash caught up with Fluttershy and caught her easily. But she didn’t have time to pull up when her speed brought them both crashing through the wall of a building and out the other side. They slammed into another building on the opposite side of the street and fell towards the ground. Rainbow Dash managed to slow down their descent just enough for them to be unharmed when they landed. Fluttershy’s box had been smashed to pieces when they hit the first building and Rainbow’s had survived until they struck the side of the second one. Now the pieces of the box and its contents were strewn across the street. Rainbow Dash got to her feet and immediately rushed to check on Fluttershy. She was okay, but breathing heavily.

“Are you okay?” Rainbow asked her.

“I… think so,” Fluttershy said. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Rainbow replied.

Fluttershy tried to stand up but fell back down again. She was still exhausted and the shock of the fall and landing certainly didn’t help. Then Rainbow Dash realized that they weren’t the only ones in this street. They were being stared at by several Olacians along with a group of Bolkarn that had been patrolling the streets. The Bolkarn marched towards the two ponies, shoving aside anyone in their paths.

“Pathetic creature,” one of them scoffed, and kicked Fluttershy hard in the back.

Rainbow reacted immediately, she jumped upwards and straight into the Bolkarn’s face knocking him off balance. Another moved towards them, Rainbow rose into the air and gave him a hard kick in the chest with her back legs.

“Don’t you touch her,” she growled at the Bolkarn as she landed back on the ground, putting herself between Fluttershy and the Bolkarn. Rainbow Dash didn’t care what they did to her, she wasn’t going to let Fluttershy suffer any more then she already had.

Two of the Bolkarn glanced at each other. One of them whispered something to the other. Then one of the two raised his gun, pointing it straight at Rainbow Dash and pulled the trigger.

Once again Rainbow Dash found herself waking up in darkness. This time she could feel a hard stone floor beneath her and there was also something wriggling in her left ear.

“Hey look, it’s awake,” said a voice in the darkness.

“I told you not to say ‘it’, they’re female, I checked.”

This was followed by the sound of someone being slapped.

“Don’t say that in front of her you idiot!”

Rainbow Dash got to her hooves, as her eyes adjusted she was able to see who was talking. One was a four legged creature whose front feet looked like they could be used as hands as well. They each had something that looked like a thumb and each finger or toe, whichever they were, ended in a short curved claw. The creature’s back was covered in something that looked like rock that was divided into squares and covered with studs. Some of it also covered the creatures head. It also had a long and very flexible tail. The other one was far more unusual. Its lower half consisted of a spherical body covered in scales with four legs sticking out of it that reminded Rainbow of a crab. Sticking out of the top of this body was something that resembled a humanoid torso covered in the same scales as the lower part. The torso had two arms with had two elbows each. Its head seemed to be conical with a pair of pincers instead of a mouth and two insect like eyes. Then she noticed that both these beings were wearing a tight black collar around their necks, and each collar had a small glowing red circle set into it. Rainbow ran a hoof around her own neck and discovered she was wearing one as well.

She needed to find out where she was and these two creatures were the only ones she could ask. She was surprised that they were speaking English but at least that meant she’d be able to talk to them properly.

“Where am I?” she asked them.

“In the arena,” the rock covered one said.

When it spoke Rainbow Dash realized she was hearing two things come out of its mouth. In her left ear she was hearing English and in the other she was hearing a series of animalistic growls. While she couldn’t see it clearly in the dark what she could make out of the creature’s mouth movements certainly didn’t match the English speech she was hearing. The arena, he’d said. Rainbow Dash wondered what that was, then it came to her. She was in the stadium.

“What am I doing here?” she asked.

“Well, you got on the Bolkarn’s nerves,” the rock covered creature said. “So I guess they thought sticking you in this place was a fitting, if rather messy, punishment.”

“Messy?”

“Oh boy, kid you have no idea what’s about to happen do you.”

Rainbow shook her head.

“In a few moments,” the one with the crab legs said, again English in her left ear and in her right a series of clicking sounds, “the three of us are going to be sent out there to fight… something.”

“What sort of something?”

“Dunno,” rocks said. “But from personal experience I can tell you that it’ll be something really dangerous that’ll kill us, and probably eat us if we don’t kill it.”

Then they heard the sound of a gong from outside.

“That’s our cue,” crab legs said.

The two of them moved towards one of the walls and after a bit of hesitation Rainbow Dash joined them.

“What’s your name kid?” rocky asked?

“Rainbow Dash. And you two?”

“I’m Narx,” rocky said.

“Hhhhilp,” said crab legs.

Then the wall in front of them descended into the ground and the three of them walked out into the area. Rainbow Dash looked up at the cheering crowds surrounding them. Just from flying over it she never realized just how big the arena was, sure she realized it was big but not this big. As the wall closed behind them three Olacians approached them, one was carrying a spear, another was carrying a sword and the third was carrying a spiked ball on the end of a long chain.

“Choose your weapons,” one of them said.

Hhhhilp stepped forwards and took the spear.

“I’ll be fine with this,” Narx said, he raised his tail and a long spike protruded from the end of it.

“Cool!” Rainbow Dash said as Narx withdrew the spike.

“What about you?” he asked her.

“Um… I don’t think I can even hold any of those weapons,” she replied. “Never mind use them!”

“As you wish,” said one of the Olacians and they left the arena floor.

Rainbow Dash looked upwards. She could see the night sky above them through the completely roofless arena.

“What’s stopping me from just flying out of here?” she asked.

“The collar,” Hhhhilp replied. “If you try to escape, attack the audience or anything like that it gives you an electric shock that knocks you out for ten minutes.”

“And given what’s about to happen, you do not want to be knocked out for ten minutes,” Narx said.

Then they heard the gong again and the crowd suddenly became very quiet. Rainbow Dash felt all the eyes in the area looking towards the wall directly opposite them, Narx and Hhhhilp were staring at it as well. They heard a loud screeching roar coming from behind it.

“Oh no,” Narx said.

“What? What is it?” Rainbow asked.

“A Drashig,” Narx replied.

“And what the hay is a Drashig?”

“You’re about to find out.”

“Well whatever it is I’m sure we can take it, right?”

They both stared at her as though she was mad.

“Take it? TAKE IT!? THESE THINGS EAT SPACESHIPS!” Narx shouted.

They heard some laughter from the crowd directly behind them.

“Oh dear,” Rainbow said.

Then the far wall descended revealing the Drashig. As it moved outside and into the arena the first thing Rainbow Dash noticed bout it was that it didn’t have any legs. The creature was like a long and enormous snake with brown rubbery skin with a few long hairs protruding from it. Its head was taken up mostly by its long mouth which was full of long sharp teeth. On the top of its head were six stalks, each one ending in an eye. It also had a collar round its neck, though a much larger one. And then they heard the gong again.

“Time for action,” Narx said. “It’s been nice knowing you kid, even if was brief.”

Narx and Hhhhilp charged forwards, Hhhhilp with his spear lowered and Narx raising his tail over his head with the spike protruding from it. Rainbow Dash stared at the creature in front of her unsure of what to do. She glanced up to the sky wondering if she should try and escape. No, she wouldn’t escape. Even if she’d only known them a few minutes she couldn’t leave the other two to be devoured by that monster. She lowered her body towards the ground and then took off.

She shot towards the Drashing as fast as she could and slammed straight into its skin. It didn’t even notice, its skin was tough. Just below her she could see Hhhhilp attempting to dig into it with his spear without success. Rainbow pulled back to try again. This time she aimed for its head, though she made sure to steer clear of its mouth. She flew round it and struck it from behind. It let out another screeching roar, it had definitely noticed that.

Hhhhilp was still trying to dig his spear in while Narx had climbed onto the Drashig’s back and was trying the same thing with his tail spike. Rainbow flew at the creature once again. This time aiming for its eye stalks. She flew straight through them, knocking them about and disorienting the creature. As she did so she grabbed one with her mouth and managed to tear it clean off. A loud cheer erupted from the crowd when she did that. She spat out the stalk, it tasted foul.

Then Hhhhilp managed to penetrate the Drashig’s skin and plunged his spear deep into it. The Drashig roared again, much louder than before. Then as Hhhhilp pulled his spear out it leaned down towards him with its mouth open.

“NO!” Rainbow yelled and shot towards Hhhhilp.

But she was too late. Hhhhilp had tried to flee but the Drashig’s jaws closed around him, biting him in two. Hhhhilp’s spear fell to the floor as the Drashig’s head rose back up. Rainbow could see Hhhhilp’s body in its mouth being slowly shredded to pieces in the monsters teeth. She glanced down at what was left of him, just the spherical bit with the legs attached and the spear lying on the ground next to it. She looked into the creature’s mouth, then she realized that except for when it was eating Hhhhilp it hadn’t closed its mouth at all, it just hung open all the time. A plan began to form in her mind.

“NARX,” she shouted, “TRY AND KEEP IT DISTRACTED, I’VE GOT AN IDEA.”

She flew down to the ground and picked up Hhhhilp’s spear in her hooves. She gripped it tightly between them, she made sure it was pointing forwards and closed her back legs around the end of the spear’s shaft to keep it steady. Then she began to fly around the arena, circling it again and again. With each lap she got faster and faster. She kept accelerating until she was absolutely sure she couldn’t go any faster.

The crowd below was staring at her. Narx had stopped his attack on the Drashig to gawp at the rainbow striped blur that was circling the place. Even the Drashig was watching the display. It had stopped eating Hhhhilp and its mouth was hanging open once again. Rainbow Dash changed course and headed straight for the Drashig. She closed her eyes as she shot spear first straight into the creature’s mouth. There was a loud gasp from the crowd and then she burst out of the back of the Drashig’s head. Bits of its flesh, blood and bones rained down on the ground and Rainbow Dash was covered in the creature’s blood. The Drashig keeled over and hit the floor with a loud slam.

A shocked silence descended over the crowd of a few seconds before they erupted in cheers and applause. Rainbow Dash looked down at the dead Drashig, finding it almost hard to believe what she’d just down. She’d dropped the spear when she burst out of the back of its head and it had sailed through the air to hit the ground point first near the edge of the arena. Rainbow Dash punched the air in delight and let out a loud “YES!” She descended back to the ground and landed next to Narx, in was staring at her in silent shock.

“That was… that was…” he said.

“Told you we could take it,” Rainbow said smugly.

Shortly after the fight with the Drashig Rainbow Dash learnt some more details about her new situation. The Bolkarn had sold her to the owner of the arena to be a gladiator with the condition that she be put into a fight as soon as possible against an opponent that was guaranteed to kill her. Clearly they’d wanted punish her in the most horrifying way they could think of, they must be regretting their decision now.

As a gladiator Rainbow Dash was still a slave but a slave with privileges. Gladiators could wander through the streets of Aicil and go wherever they wanted so long as they didn’t leave the city and still showed up to take part in gladiatorial combat. While exploring the city Rainbow Dash soon realized that she’d become a celebrity and the Olacians had started referring to her as Drashig slayer or in their own language Nanencran Drashiga. When she walked through the streets the Olacians would stop and stare or point and some would call out to her or wave. The Bolkarn patrolling the streets would just glare at her but some seemed to go out of their way to avoid her. According to Narx even the Bolkarn were afraid of Drashigs, and someone who could kill a Drashig was someone they should be wary of.

Rainbow Dash first became aware of her celebrity status when she saw a crude attempt at her cutie mark gratified on the wall of a small alley. Before long the image was popping up all over the city and not just as graffiti. Some Olacians had given themselves tattoos of it and she’d often see banners bearing it amongst the crowds when she fought in the arena. Once she a passing Olacian asked what the image meant and her answer wasn’t what they expected. Apparently they thought it was meant to represent a weapon of some sort and several Olacians had given it names. Some called it The Spectrum Knife while others gave it the name The Blade of Many Colors. Rainbow Dash didn’t understand why they hadn’t worked out what the mark was but she worked it out over time. During the time she’d been on Olacia she’d never seen a rainbow or a single storm, clouds would gather and they’d sometimes have rain but the Olacians had never seen lightning. Some Olacians at least recognized the image of a cloud in her cutie mark which was why some called it The Spear from the Sky.

The idea of her cutie mark being a weapon could also be seen in the graffiti and some of the banners. Sometimes she’d seen it stabbed through a dead Drashig or another creature she’d fought recently. On one or two occasions she saw it stabbed through a Bolkarn. She’d really liked that one, the Bolkarn clearly didn’t. Once she’d seen a group of them assaulting an Olacian who’d been in the middle of painting the image on a wall somewhere. Of course she’d intervened, though it turned out she didn’t need to do anything. The moment she made her presence known the Bolkarn stopped what they were doing, took one look at her and stormed off. Rainbow Dash had assumed that this was because they didn’t want to have to deal with the famed Drashig slayer but according to Narx it was because weren’t allowed to do anything to the gladiators, they could do whatever they liked to the Olacians but they had to leave the gladiators alone.

Rainbow Dash would sometimes go flying, though very rarely. Even when she was flying she wasn’t allowed out of the city. This didn’t feel right, she had the whole sky to fly through and yet she was limited to a confined space, yes a large confined space but compared to the vast sky it wasn’t very big at all. In the arena seeing her fly had become the main attraction for the crowd. All the gladiators who had come before her were all ground based, not a single wing between any of them. Seeing a flying gladiator put a bit more variety into the combat and with her flying around the arena the Olacians in the higher seats would get to see her clearly otherwise the gladiators would just be vague shapes fighting a monster. There had been talk of brining in a flying creature for Rainbow to fight though there were concerns that it might fly right out of the arena. All the creatures the gladiators thought wore the same collars so if it did attempt an escape it could be knocked out but nobody wanted the crowd to have to wait ten minutes for the beast to wake up again.

One thing she’d sometimes do when flying was talk to the Pegasus ponies that were transporting materials from the mine, at least she’d try to. Some would just ignore her while others would glare at her and then ignore her. When one of them did speak to her they told her that the mine slaves weren’t happy that she’d found freedom. She responded by saying that she wasn’t free, not properly, but that didn’t matter to them. She was out of the mine, and that was enough.

While flying amongst the Pegasus slaves she came to realize something, she never saw Fluttershy. At first she thought she was just flying at the wrong times but soon she grew worried. One Pegasus she managed to speak to told her that Fluttershy was still alive and still in the mine but refused to say anything beyond that. She couldn’t get any more information out of anyone else and after a few months she decided to try sneaking into the mine to talk to Fluttershy herself.

Of course there was a problem with this plan; the mine was outside the city. She knew that if she went outside the collar would knock her out automatically. She’d also found out that it kept track of her movements so it wouldn’t be long before someone came to retrieve her. What she didn’t know was what would happen if she was caught trying to leave the city. Before she could talk to Flutteshy she had to find a solution to this problem somehow. Rainbow decided to ask Narx about the problem.

“Well kid, you’ve got yourself a tough one there,” he said. “What did you have in mind?”

“Well, I was thinking of asking the boss but…”

“But you know that’s really not a good idea, don’t you.”

“Yeah.”

Rainbow Dash had met ‘the boss’ shortly after her fight with the Drashig. She still didn’t know his name and everyone else just referred to him as ‘the boss’ whether they knew his name or not. He was an older Olacian who’d lost most of his hair and was apparently going blind in his third eye. When they’d first met he’d showered Rainbow Dash with praise and went on about how she was going to be the greatest gladiator Olacia had ever seen and so on but afterwards Narx told her that normally he was a much more unpleasant individual. Rainbow had done her best to avoid ‘the boss’, not wishing to see his more unpleasant side.

“So what do you suggest I should do?” she asked Narx.

“Well, if you’re really insistent about sneaking into that damn mine…”

“I am!”

“…then there’s someone who might be able to help you.”

The following evening Narx led Rainbow Dash through the various tunnels and corridors beneath the Arena. Down here was where the gladiators lived. Their rooms were small, dark, and cold. Most of the gladiators only spent their time down here when they absolutely had to. Rainbow thought they’d probably spend more time down here if there were food facilities there but there weren’t so instead all the gladiators would find somewhere to eat out in the city. Despite being officially slaves the gladiators were still paid, though not much, and what little they got was mostly spent on food anyway.

Rainbow soon learnt that the gladiators’ living quarters weren’t the only things beneath the arena. Narx led her through a door at the end of one corridor into a room that was lit up by multiple computer screens. The room had eight wide walls, each one with a console mounted along it and nine computer screens set into in rows of three all mounted on top of each other with a colored plate above each screen with something written on it that Rainbow Dash couldn’t read. The only exceptions to this were the wall with the door set into it and the wall directly opposite which had one screen spread over its entirety. The screen displayed a map of the whole city and some of the outskirts but not enough to show the Bolkarn mine. Spread across the map were several brightly colored dots. In front of this one screen was an Olacian sitting in a chair with his feet propped up on the far wall’s console. He was fast asleep and snoring loudly. Narx slammed the door behind them which woke up the sleeping Olacian.

“What? What was…? What’s goin’ on? Is there any way of… oh, it’s you.”

“Hello Kyeil,” Narx said.

Kyeil was shorter than most Olacians Rainbow Dash had seen. His clothes were dirty and ripped, one sleeve of his shirt was missing, and his feet were bare. His skin was rather pale and his hair was a bright purple color which reminded Rainbow Dash of Twilight Sparkle. She could see traces of black in the roots, his hair must be dyed. Rainbow noticed that his chair swiveled but he didn’t rotate it to face them. Instead he turned himself around, resting his chin in his hands, and his elbows on the back of the chair.

“So dude, who’s your friend?” Kyeil asked.

“Rainbow Dash,” Rainbow said. “Though you’ve probably already heard of me.”

“Uh… no man, sorry.”

Rainbow was taken aback by this response.

“You know, the Drashig Slayer.”

“Oh, right.” He sounded unimpressed.

“‘Oh right’? Is that all you’ve got to say?”

“Yeah, that’s all.”

“Come on, I killed a Drashig, that’s gotta be worth some kind of reaction.”

“Nah, not really. Everyone knows those fights are fixed anyway dude.”

Rainbow’s jaw dropped, she almost couldn’t believe he’d just said that.

“Kyeil, if that fight had been fixed it would’ve been fixed so she’d get killed,” Narx retorted.

“Yeah, sure she would.”

“I’m being serious here Kyeil!”

“And how exactly do you fix a fight with a Drashig so that one of the gladiators manages to fly right through its mouth and out the other side with a spear?” Rainbow shouted at him.

Kyeil raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you did?”

“Yep.”

“Sounds messy.”

“It was.”

“Okay look,” Narx said, “we’re not here to discuss whether or not these fights are fixed or not.”

“No, didn’t think you were dude,” Kyeil said.

“And by the way, they’re not.”

“Whatever you say dude.”

Narx rolled his eyes. “Look, the kid has a problem which I think you can solve for her.”

“I’m listening.”

Narx then began to tell Kyeil about how Rainbow Dash had wound up as a gladiator and that she wanted to get to the Bolkarn mine. While Narx was explaining all of this Rainbow noticed Kyeil pick something out of his nose and flick it across the room where it landed on a computer screen and remained stuck there.

“…so we need a way round to get her there without her collar knocking her out. Can you do that?”

“Hmm…”

Kyeil stuck a finger in one ear and starting digging in it for something. Rainbow suddenly became aware of the thing in her own ear. She’d managed to get used to it now and could ignore it most of the time but now she could feel it in there again. Sometimes it itched a bit. She stuck a hoof in her ear and began digging around herself, and she saw that Narx was doing the same thing. Whatever was her ear Narx and Kyeil must have one too.

“You do know that we could all get into a lot of trouble for this dudes,” Kyeil said, and then a wide grin spread across his face. “I’ll do it!”

“Excellent,” Narx said.

Rainbow Dash on the other hand wasn’t convinced. “Wait a minute, if you think you’re gonna get in trouble for doing this then why do it?”

“Dude, do you even know what I do down here?”

Rainbow shook her head.

“You see that thing behind me?” Kyeil said pointing a thumb over his shoulder at the screen with the map. “That’s a map of the whole city, and you know what those little dots are? Those are all the gladiators, or to be exact their collars.”

“And what about these other screens then?” Rainbow asked.

“Oh those are showing life signs and all that stuff, you know, heart rate, breath rate, whether you’ve just been zapped by your collar or not. That sort of thing.”

“That one,” Narx pointed towards a screen with a dark rate plate above it, “is mine. And there’ll be a red dot on that screen on that screen showing where I am.”

“Which one’s mine then?” Rainbow asked.

“Not a clue,” Kyeil said.

Narx looked up at the map screen, searching for his dot somewhere in the Arena.

“Well, I’m right there,” he said and pointed at the screen. “So you must be the black dot next to me.”

Rainbow looked round the room at all the screens and the plates above them before spotting one with a black plate. It was in the middle of the set on the left side of the door. She gazed up at it. There were various lines and bars across it along with words she couldn’t read and several numbers. None of it made any sense to her.

“So, do you just sit down here watching screens all day?” she asked Kyeil.

“Pretty much,” he replied. “I really don’t need to do much since the collars knock you out automatically when you try and leave, I just need to let the guards know when that happens and where you are so they can come and get you.”

“What about if we try and escape when we’re in the arena, or attack the crowd or something?”

“Oh I keep an eye on that to, when that happens I trigger them myself, same goes for the monsters. You know you lot really should try and escape more often, give me something to do.”

“So, you’re just going to help us because you’re bored?”

“Yep.”

“I’ve heard worse reasons,” Narx said.

“So what can you do then? Can you stop the collar from knocking me out?”

“‘Fraid not dude,” Kyeil said.

“Then what can you do to help?”

“Easy, I screw around with the collar’s systems and increase the range it allows you to move around in.”

“Okay, that’ll work.”

“But I’ll have to change it back not too long afterwards.”

“Why?”

Kyeil shrugged. “Someone might notice, that’s all.”

“Alright, that’ll have to do.”

“Great, so how far should I set the range?”

“Just outside the mine, I’m not going any further than that.”

“Okay. So when d’you wanna go meet this friend of yours?”

“When’s the soonest you can sort this out?”

“Well, if you’re asking me that then I’d think the soonest you can go is tomorrow night.”

“Great, that’ll do fine.”

“Okay dude, but you’ll need this.”

Kyeil got off his chair went down onto the floor. He opened the door to a cupboard under the console and pulled out a box that was full of random knick knacks and bits of technology. Some of these were broken and others were just a random mess of tangled wires. Kyeil began rummaging around in the box, throwing things aside as he did so. Eventually he found what he was looking for. It was a small hemisphere with a short cylinder protruding from its flat side that looked like it was supposed to be inserted into something.

“What’s that for?” Rainbow asked.

“This goes in your ear,” Kyeil said, grinning.

Rainbow felt the wriggling thing again and she made to scratch at it once more.

“Ah, the other ear I’m guessing then.” Kyeil stepped towards her and rammed the thing it her right ear.

“So what’s it for?” Rainbow asked him, now slightly annoyed. He’d been rather rough when inserting it.

“A radio,” Kyeil said with a tone of voice that suggested that the answer should’ve been obvious.

He went rummaging around in the box before pulling out another one of the small radios.

“I’ll use this to talk to you, let you know when I’m ready for you to go, and when to pull out. It also has a translation function so you won’t have any problems there.”

“Okay, how long will you give me?”

“An hour at most, that’s all? Is that enough?”

“It’ll have to do.”

Rainbow Dash spent most of the next day flying around the city though not with her usual hectic speed. She was gazing out towards the mine and thinking about how she’d get there unnoticed. She’d decided the best thing to do would be to move quickly but to keep as low to the ground as possible. Normally nighttime would help cover her movements but here it made very little difference. In fact with the stars visible at night she suspected that the planet might have more light at night then during the day.

Eventually the sun set though hardly anyone would’ve noticed when it did. Rainbow flew down to the wall surrounding the city and settled herself on top of it, flattening herself against it as best she could. She sat there for just over half an hour before she heard Kyeil’s voice in her ear.

“Okay dude,” he said, “time to go. One hour remember.”

And without a word Rainbow was off. She dived down the side of the wall and shot across the ground. She could feel small bits of rocking jutting up from the ground skimming underneath her as she went. It didn’t take her long to get to the mine and she quickly shot down the edge of it and darted behind a rock. From here she was going to have to be stealthy. She peered over the top of the rock, there were a few Bolkarn dotted around the place but they didn’t seem to be paying attention to their surroundings. One wandered away from where he was standing to talk to another. All the slaves were spread around the place, all of them sleeping, but Rainbow Dash couldn’t see Fluttershy anywhere amongst them.

Rainbow slowly made her away around the mine, keeping herself pressed against the walls. Still no sign of Fluttershy, she’d have to ask somebody. She glanced around for a pony, and then spotted someone she recognized.

“Psst, Lyra.”

Lyra’s eyes opened partially and she looked around to see who was talking to her.

“Huh? Whassat?”

“Lyra, where’s Fluttershy?” Rainbow whispered.

“Uh… oh.” Lyra raised her left foreleg and waved it around a little while pointing across the mine, then she went back to sleep.

“Thanks, that’s really helpful,” Rainbow muttered to herself sarcastically. But she followed the vague direction anyway, it was all she had.

Rainbow remained close to the wall. She’d lost track of how much time she’d spent there. Eventually she spotted Fluttershy, she was a long way from where most of the other slaves were and she was still awake. She was facing Rainbow and looking up at the starlit sky. Rainbow decided to move a little bit closer before making her presence known.

“Hey, Fluttershy,” she whispered.

Fluttershy let out a panicked squeak and dived behind a rock.

“Relax, it’s me,” Rainbow said as she began to move closer.

“Stay there!” Fluttershy squealed at her.

Rainbow froze where she was standing.

“Why? Come on Fluttershy, what’s wrong?” Rainbow asked. “You can’t think I’ve abandoned you do you?”

“No.”

“Well then, come out and talk to me.”

“No! Fluttershy squeaked.

“Why not? What’s wrong?”

“I… I don’t want to talk about it, please, just go.”

“No way, I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s wrong,” Rainbow said. “I’ve been worried about you Fluttershy. I even thought you might be dead. So please, come out and talk to me.”

A few minutes passed in almost utter silence, finally Fluttershy spoke.

“Ok,” she said quietly, so quietly that Rainbow Dash barely heard it.

Fluttershy stepped out from behind the rock, she moved slowly and she was staring at the floor the whole time. Rainbow’s jaw dropped when she finally saw her properly. Her wings had gone leaving two long scars where they should’ve been. Rainbow Dash had sometimes had nightmares about losing her wings and she’d injured them plenty of times. When that happened she felt like she’d lost some of her freedom, she was trapped on the ground. But that had only been temporary, her wings had healed. But for Fluttershy, this was permanent now. Sure she wasn’t much of a flyer, yes she could show great skill and speed when she pushed herself, flying wasn’t something she obsessed over or really bothered with but she’d still lost a part of herself, and they must’ve been removed by force against her will.

“They… they did this to you, didn’t they.”

Fluttershy nodded. “They… they said that if I couldn’t do any flying for them then I shouldn’t fly at all.”

“Oh Fluttershy…”

Rainbow walked towards Fluttershy and embraced her gently. Fluttershy began to cry, Rainbow could feel Fluttershy’s tears flowing onto her shoulder and down her back. Rainbow stayed there, holding her friend for quite some time. After a while she heard Kyeil’s voice in her ear.

“Okay Rainbow Dude, times almost up, you better be getting outta there,” he said.

Rainbow Dash gritted her teeth. She didn’t want to leave Fluttershy, not like this. But she had to. She led go of Fluttershy who went back to looking at the floor. Rainbow gently lifted up her face until they were both gazing into each other’s eyes.

“Flutteshy, I’ve got to go now,” she said. “But I’ll come back, and I promise… no, I swear that we’re getting out of here, all of us. And the Bolkarn will pay for doing this to you.”

Flutteshy stared at Rainbow Dash, and then gave a small nod. Rainbow smiled at her friend before turning to leave. As she prepared to take off she heard a voice.

“Hey,” it said, trying to whisper but be loud enough to be heard at the same time.

Rainbow turned towards where the voice had come from and saw a brown Earth pony hiding behind a nearby rock.

“Not now,” Rainbow said. “I need to get out of here.”

“Okay, but I heard what you were saying,” the Earth pony told her. “The name’s Battle Plan, and if you’re planning some sort of escape I think I can help.”

“Thanks, I’ll remember that,” Rainbow said before taking off and heading out of the mine and back to the city.

Prologue

Prologue

We all know how it all started, don’t we. It’s become a defining moment in our history already, even though it was just over a decade ago. Foals have been told stories about it by their parents, or maybe grandparents and those that haven’t have learnt about it from history books and at school. But really not everypony knows what it was like to experience it. The initial state of confusion, then the uncertainty that any of us would survive, and then the determination to come out of this alive or to go down fighting. And without that determination Equestria probably wouldn’t be here anymore. I know I’ll find it hard to forget; sometimes I used to have nightmares about it. Though in my nightmares things turned out a lot worse.

It began on a day when the sky over Ponyville was almost completely cloudless, and you could clearly see Canterlot in the distance. Because it was such a nice day I’d decided to go for a walk around the place. I’d been out for maybe half an hour when I heard somepony, I think it might’ve been Rose or Daisy, shout “LOOK! UP THERE!” Everypony who heard that, myself included, turned our eyes skywards and saw several grey shapes coming down towards us. At first they were too far away to make out exactly what they were, but as they came closer it became clear that these things were enormous. I think there were two dozen of them in total. As they descended they split off heading in different directions, spreading out over all of Equestria.

One of them landed just outside Ponyville, the noise from its impact was incredible. The thing was made of grey metal, and covered in scratches and dents. I saw a few patches of color that must’ve been the last remnants of long worn away paintwork. At first I thought the thing must’ve been completely solid, until I spotted the windows. Then a large door opened in the front, hitting the ground with a loud slam. That was when the Bolkarn emerged. I don’t know how many of them there were, my best guess was maybe thirty. They all carried large black guns. The charged straight towards us, opening fire at anything they could hit. Naturally, everypony ran for their lives.

– Extract from When We Saw the Universe by Twilight Sparkle

Two years later…