“How?”, Fluttershy asked scared, “How were they able to Ponynap AJ?”,

“I have no idea!”, Rainbow Dash asked letting her head hang down,

“Neither do I is there something that was wrong with her in the last days?”, Spearhead asked,

“Sir!”, a guard said tapping the captains shoulder, “I’m not sure if this is of any importance but Miss Applejack didn’t allow guards in her chambers since the day of the attack.”,

“That is helpful soldier, good idea we should search her chambers, soldiers come with me!”, the captain said and Twilight just gave them a nod and they left the throne room.

“Soldier lead the way!”, Spearhead ordered the mare who pointed the fact out. The ponies went up an endless number of stairs to the chambers of Applejack, as they entered nothing seemed suspicious and the captain ordered:

“Search the room leave no stone unturned there has to be something here!”, the ponies opened every drawer most of them being filled with hats and in one was a safe and a stallion took a crowbar and started trying to open it as Spearhead shouted:

“PUT THAT CROWBAR DOWN RIGHT THIS INSTANT YOU DISRESPECTFUL IDIOT, WE WILL NOT OPEN THIS SAVE WITH FORCE, IF YOU THINK THERE IS SOMETHING INTERESTING IN THE PRIVATE SAVE OF A COUNCIL MEMBER MOVE YOUR USELESS ASS DOWN TO THE THRONE ROOM AND ASK ONE OF THE COUNCIL MEMBERS TO OPEN IT!”, the stallion taken aback by the response he earned hung his head down and walked out of the room. The captain continued to search through the room until he looked at the edge of the carpet Applejack had in the middle of her room and saw something that made a shiver go down his spine:

Blood! He had just found blood!

“Sir…. You might wanna take a look at this!”, a stallion said as he came out of the bathroom attached to the chambers, the captain walked into the bathroom expecting to see more blood or in the worst case something he didn’t want to think about.

“She killed two.”, the captain noted as he looked at the two changelings one with a smashed skull the other one filled with six bullets.

“Good day ma´am”, sounded from the chamber and the captain turned around and as he walked out, he was face to face with a very annoyed Rarity.

” Captain is there a reason why this soldier was down in the throne room begging us to open Applejacks personal safe?”, she asked, the captain didn’t believe what he just heared and said to the soldier that walked in with her:

“How could there be something of any importance in a safe THAT THE CHANGELINGS COULDN’T EVEN OPEN BECAUSE THEY DON’T KNOW THE CODE FOR IT?”,

“I thought something hinting at her position might be in there.”, the soldier answered timidly,

“Do you want to know what´s in there?”, Rarity said with anger and even a bit of sorrow in her voice,
“In this safe Applejack keeps the bow of her sister she wore as she passed away.”, with that the mare walked out trying to hide the tears forming as she thought about her sister.

Spearhead waited some time before he and the other soldiers left the chambers and walked towards the council. The two guards at the door let him in and as he walked inside, he saw that Rarity crying was in the arms of Fluttershy and as they realized that he had entered the princess asked:

“Did you find anything?”,

“More or less”, the captain explained, “She killed two but we didn’t find any evidence of where she could be now.”. The Mares were visibly clueless on how to continue but everyone’s train of thought was interrupted as the doors swung open once more and a messenger flew in and said:

“Princess one of our Explorers has found a Space station in the orbit of Mars and according to the scans they have a prisoner!”,

“AJ!”, Rainbow exclaimed gleefully, “Captain go to this Space station rescue Applejack and destroy it!”,

“Affirmative Ma’am!”, he answered and stormed out of the room and towards the taxi Station. The captain trotted into the bridge and opened his holocom interface to contact the rest of the fleet and as the other captains lit up he explained:

“Ok everypony lets keep this short we have information about a Changeling Space station with a hostage, this hostage is our HVT (HVT = High Value Target) there will be no direct shots at the Station as long as HVT is not secured! Be ready to warp to sector 1-2-0-1 on my command! Gearhead ready our Warp!”, Spearhead ordered,

“Affirmative!”, said the red stallion as he turned and started barking orders at his technicians. “Warp is ready, Sir!”, Gearhead said after a few minutes,

“Ok Gentlestallions”, the captain started telling the other captains over the holocom, “As soon as you arrive open fire on every ship defending the station, the Insignium will send a team to rescue HVT and only then I will give the order to destroy the station. Anypony trying to shoot it earlier is to be treated as a danger to the mission and to HVT and has to be put in immediate custody of the security of the respective ship.”, With that he gave a nod to Citrus and the fleet once more vanished in a flash.

A huge flash appeared not more than 100 kilometers away from the station and as if Celestia herself had blessed the ponies they found most of the ships in repair but far away enough from the station to enable firing at them. Before the Changelings were able to pull up their shields five of the originally eight ships had been destroyed and the remaining three were still loading their weapons.

“Bullet, Citrus, Gearhead!”, the captain shouted jumping up from his chair, “Come with me!”, the four ponies once more found themselves on the way to the armory to gear up for a mission but this time stealth was not needed so Gearhead could this time really use his old minigun. As Bullet and gearhead mounted their weapons on the saddles Spearhead was in the other part of the armory with Citrus helping her put on her saddle which was a medic saddle, she wasn’t really a medic but she knew how to inject painkillers and bandage a wound.

“Why do you take me on this mission you know I can’t kill any more Changelings?”, Citrus asked the stallion who has now started to put his own saddle on,

“Because we need a medic.”, he explained but that was a lie, they didn’t need a medic they didn’t need a fourth pony at all but after what happened on the moon he didn’t want the mare he had called his marefriend to leave his sight. They trotted once more to hangar three and entered the stealth shuttle. As they landed they would have been greeted by machine gun fire but bullet takes to sniping like a Yak to smashing and before they even landed he had pulled out his sniper and shot the three changelings he saw through the front window of the shuttle. As they trotted out Gearhead teasingly said:

“Couldn’t you have left me some?”,

“If you want some be faster next time old man.”, Bullet shot back using the one thing that Gearhead gave to tease him with, he would normally have retired three years ago but as the Insignium Project started they wanted the best of the best to form the bridge crew and he was without a doubt the best head technician there is. The Station to the surprise of everypony was empty only as they reached the cell block Spearhead stopped the group and said:

“Wait! Two around the corner!”, with that he took out a grenade and removed the pin waited a second but did not jump around the corner to throw it, he threw it against the wall and it bounced towards the changelings, eliminating both of them. They continued and as they entered the cell block or rather the small room with 5 cells at the other end. They were immediately met by five changelings opening fire and Gearhead didn’t need a second invitation to start his minigun and killed two as he let his weapon cool down the remaining three saw there chance and attacked again leaving the ponies in a bad spot having all just entered through the door and as they started shooting Bullet and Spearhead were returning fire as best as they could but the captains concentration was broke by a squeak that overpowered all gunfire in the room.

He turned around and saw Citrus collapsing to the floor and once more he felt the rage he felt when she nearly got raped on the moon and ignored every bit of gunfire soaring towards him, he just stood up and jumped one of the changelings. As the second one turned around and aimed for the earth pony’s head but he had already pulled his pistol out of the saddle and while he held his hooves around the first changeling he shot the second one. He dropped the pistol and kept chocking the last one until he stopped struggling and just for good measure put a bullet into his head.

They were all now centered around Citrus and the captain did not take long to just rip open her bag, take out a painkiller syringe and injecting it into the mare. As she woke up again she mumbled:

“My wing…”, Spearhead didn’t even let her finish he pulled out bandages and lifted her left wing and saw a bullet had jammed itself into the main bone, he just pulled it out earning another painful squeak from the Pegasus and bandaged it with what can only be described as excessive amounts of bandages and injected another dose of painkillers now that they all looked up again Spearhead still holding up Citrus they saw that the fifth one after struggling with the lock had pulled out Applejack but she waited for exactly this.

“Big mistake…”, she whispered into the changeling’s ear as she kicked herself free and within seconds pulled out a revolver from her scarf and filled him with six bullets. The revolver, Spearhead realized, was custom made with a special grip to hold it in her mouth and shoot it without the need of either a saddle or the need to nearly swallow the whole grip and a metal rod that connected the trigger with a little bite platform like the saddles had and four symbols engraved in the handle. The first one was known by everyone, the tricolored shield of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, an ancient organization created by three little fillies and since then continued by whoever had this shield in their cutie mark, in the shield was an apple with a heart in it, this could only be the cutie mark of her sister Apple Bloom one of the three original crusaders,

another one was the half of an apple which after some thought he could connect to Big MacIntosh, Applejacks older brother and the first pony to develop space flight even if it was just on a small scale, the third one was an apple pie and after he dug deep into his knowledge he remembered this was the symbol of Granny Smith´s Pie world the first store to enable delivery over all of Equestria some people said this store was the one which led to the massive growth of Equestria others say it was Sweetie Belle´s Boutiques which had only three locations but also were one of the first to enable delivery all over Equestria and the first ones to use delivery drones and Applejacks cutie mark.

The three stallions just looked at the bruised mare in surprise, trying to process what just happened.

“Didn’t think a mare can shoot this well?”, Applejack snickered,

“They´re just used to being the knights in shining armor and saving the damsel in distress.”, Citrus answered too snickering and trotting next to Applejack with bandages already in her mouth, this answer caused Applejack to just continue snickering as Citrus bandaged her braced body. After Spearhead regained his composure, he shook his head and said:

“Ok Citrus hurry up we have to get out of here!”. They raced back to the shuttle and Spearhead jumped into the driver’s seat and they flew of. As Spearhead entered his bridge and shouted:

“Blast this thing to Celestia!”, and the Insignium slightly turned and fired every canon on the left side and before the other ships could even react the Space station blew up in a ball of fire and the Ships warped back towards Equestria and as they arrived the Insignium docked onto the space station. Spearhead left the space station with the minister and they walked towards the shuttle which then brought them to the castle and as they walked through the endless hallways all the soldiers immediately snapped to attention as Applejack walked by.

They opened the main door into the throne room they heard a gleeful,

“AJ!”, coming from Rainbow Dash as the blue mare jumped her friend and the other did the same. Rarity, with tears of joy, said:

“Thank you so much, Captain!”, but the captain just left with a smile on his face, he had something else to do. Spearhead walked towards Citrus who was still giggling about Applejacks comment and he said:

“Citrus could you please meet me in my office!”, the mare was surprised by this but nodded. They both walked into the office and Spearhead closed the door and turned towards the yellow mare:

“Ok you might have realized that I lied to you, we didn’t really need a medic on this mission I just wanted to have you near me because…. Because..”,

“You like me,” the Pegasus finished his sentence, “Did you think I wouldn’t notice that you look at me this certain way?”, The captain just stuttered,

“And if your eyes are only half as good as you look you might have realized that I did too”, Citrus answered and kissed Spearhead and he just returned the kiss and before they knew they were rolling on the ground having their little private fun time.

Author's Note

First thank you so much for reading this far, this fic has now more than 12k words and I still can´t believe that I wrote this much. If you liked it so far please give me a follow because this fic will still get some more chapters even if it takes some time.