Wardrobes, chairs, and tables had all been assembled to form a large barricade just outside the command bridge of the Canterlot’s Pride. Electrical torches were pointed outward, toward the light-devouring mist that was slowly advancing toward the four soldiers standing behind the barricade; guns pointed outward and ready to shoot.

They had heavy bags under their eyes, a direct effect of the little time they had to sleep. The constant scratching sounds from behind the wall and the nightmares they had every night had made sleep a nigh-impossible task.

At the opposite side of the corridor, a bright bulb of light advanced towards the soldiers at moderate speed, but they did not grow nervous. Light, they had learned in their extended stay in the Endless Sea, meant life and protection from the encroaching darkness. Any light that could survive in the mist was a good thing.

“Oh, they’re back,” one blue unicorn said, exhaustion dripping from his voice. “Lucky them.”

“Let’s hope they haven’t lost anyone this time,” a large and green earth pony added as she lowered her long rifle, allowing herself to relax for a moment. “We need numbers.”

After a few more seconds of silence, the bulb of light emerged from the mist, almost blinding the soldiers for a moment, and then finally dissipated to reveal those it had protected.

Spike walked alongside a blue unicorn and a green changeling. All looked deprived of almost all their energies and had barely enough strength to reach the barricade where several helpful hooves pulled them over the wooden mountain.

Spike’s uniform was cut in several sections, especially the arms, and he was carrying a large bag filled with rations on his back.

“Four, huh?” The green earth pony asked.

“A moment of weakness,” the white unicorn seemed about to whimper, his shaky voice struggling to come out. “My magic flickered for a second, that’s all it took.”

He lowered his eyes in shame, it had not been the first time he had lost someone. This time it had happened because, in the blink of an eye, monsters had dragged three soldiers kicking and screaming into the darkness.

“We found another crazy one,” Spike said, hoping to turn the attention away from the unicorn. “Poor guy.”

“Another one?” The athletic red pegasus that had asked that question did not sound surprised. “What did he say?”

“Nothing new,” Spike replied. “The usual doom and gloom. Also, I checked the hangar again, the transports are still gone.”

At first, the deranged crew members they had encountered their food-hunting expeditions had been insightful, revealing hidden monsters and traps waiting in the corners. Recently, however, they had all become prophets of doom and seemed more interested in sharing their nightmares instead of providing any help.

“I think you should start killing them,” The red pegasus said casually. “At this point why not?”

“What? How could you say that?” The proposal shocked a purple and skinny unicorn mare with a clean and pretty face. “Never thought you were a monster.”

“You would rather let them live like they are living now? You heard the stories,” the pegasus said. “Killing them is the nicest thing you could do now. While we’re at it, we should stop looking for survivors.”

“We?” the mare exploded with rage. “I will not help you…”

“No one will do any killing.” Spike ended the discussion before it could escalate into one of the many ugly brawls he had witnessed. “We’ll just need to endure this a bit more; Twilight will get us out of here.”

It had only been two weeks, at least he hoped it was only two weeks, since Twilight had temporarily saved the Canterlot’s Pride, but now Spike was caressing the idea that the quick death the violent aliens were offering was probably better than the slow descent madness he had witnessed.

Despite that thought, he couldn’t bring himself to harm a member of the crew unless he saw no other option, and he definitely was not brave enough to turn a gun on himself.

“How is Twilight?” He asked the blue unicorn, trying to take his mind away from that last dark thought.

“Cold as usual, just checked on her a few minutes ago.”

“Anything else I should know?” he asked again to the same unicorn.

“Not really.” The unicorns scratched the back of his head. “The lights are still blue, and everyone is still on edge. That’s all there is to say.”

“Thank you for the information, soldier.” Spike thanked him and then moved on towards the command bridge while the other survivors of the trip took their places with the soldiers on the barricade.

The doors opened slowly as the metal creaked as they revealed the almost empty room beyond. Most of the high-ranking officers had been the first ones to go mad when the dark mist had appeared two weeks before, and now the command bridge resembled a ghost town.

Just like the unicorn had said, an intense blue light colored everything in the room, giving the impression that the bridge was underwater.

On the wall to his right, there was an extensive collection of photographs that reminded everyone present of all those who had not made it. A lonely, weeping mare was lighting up a small candle next to the memorial.

Next to the memorial, someone had hastily assembled an altar to Twilight with the electronic equipment that no longer worked. A single pole rose from a square base and ended with a smaller square at the top. Its builders had tried to use candles to replicate Twilight’s mark extending from the base, but they quickly abandoned that project in favor of creating a small circle. Spike wondered where they had found any candles at all, but he decided he would worry about it when and if the ship came back to real space.

The crew, what was left of it, was so much smaller than it had been. Spike could not even call it a skeleton crew, as it had gone from almost five hundred to barely over thirty lost souls.

A couple of them were still trying to get their consoles to work, but their buzzing grey screens signaled that their efforts were pointless. So most officers were just sitting around, doing nothing besides playing cards and drink what little alcohol remained. Around the altar, the few that were not drinking had gathered, murmuring desperate prayers.

The cult of the alicorns had never been particularly big in Equestria, as the education system taught all there was nothing divine about them, but the weeks of desperation had quickly pushed the most desperate members of the crew towards anything that may bring salvation to them. The fact that the dark mist had stopped advancing when the altar was constructed only helped in spreading the religion to the last few unbelievers.

Spike was the only one who did not convert to the new faith, as the idea of worshipping any alicorn like some sort of divine being was absurd for someone who had grown up with one. If the crew was not so desperate, he may have even laughed at them for believing in something that sounded so stupid to him.

Both severe breaches in discipline reminded Spike of how much things had changed in such a short amount of time. What had once had been a professional security force patrolling colonized space had transformed into a ragtag band of drunkards and frightened converts.

After dropping the bag next to the door, he made his way to Twilight, feeling the air growing colder as he approached her perfectly immobile body. The crew not even paying attention to his arrival. She was like a purple frozen statue with eyes brighter than a young star. The most devout officers had placed several tokens of good fortune, mostly necklaces and family photos, in front of her.

There was a chair next to Twilight, reserved for him. A thin layer of solid ice had covered the armrests, and a small eight-pointed star had formed over the top rail. Looking at the star filled Spike with a slight sense of unease, but he did not understand why.

He sat on the chair, the ice melting when touched by the ever-warm body of a dragon, and looked at Twilight. There was nothing else he could do, the crew was non-existent, and she was not under his control. All that he could do was watching over one of his last real friends.

Many minutes passed with him sitting silently on the cold chair, watching over Twilight, his heart jumping into his throat every time he saw her legs twitch. He usually watched over her until his body consigned him to the many nightmares everyone had endured since the start of the ill-fated journey, but something much different happened this time.

It began with a tic, her head constantly twitching to the right. Spike worried for a moment, but thought very little of the event. When the twitches began spreading, soon reaching down to her legs and became increasingly more violent until they became spasms. That was when understood something exceptionally dangerous was happening right in front of him.

The light in her eyes became even brighter, akin to a floodlight, as it overpowered the surrounding blue. It quickly overran the room in a flash as she began grunting like an animal, as if she was lifting the heaviest weight imaginable.

Spike stood up a moment after seeing that, ready to rush to her side to offer any kind of help, but everything was over before he could take a second step. The light in Twilight’s eyes flickered out and faded before she collapsed to the floor, immobile and drawing shallow breaths.

As he and the crew rushed to her side, checking her normal heartbeat, a voice came out of the few loudspeakers that still worked.

“At-t-tention crew, the-the ship has ret-turned to-to real space.” The robotic voice remained understandable despite the technical issues “Eme-mergency measures will be lifted immediately, we apo-pologize for the inconvenience.”

Some survivors cheered as loud as they could as they heard the news and the iron shutters slowly retreated, but many others, Spike included, were too tired to do anything and just remained as silent as they had been before. Some simply collapsed from exhaustion just like Twilight had.

Spike feared that the Endless Sea was about to play one last trick on the poor crew, and half expected to see the maddening vastness of immaterial space to appear in front of him. Instead, Equestria, with its lightshow from the surface and many ships flying in its orbit, slowly came into view, and he finally allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief.

His relaxation was short-lived, however, as he soon heard the unmistakable beeping sound of someone trying to hail the ship. He quickly opened the communication channel, surprised to learn that it now worked perfectly, just like every other piece of equipment that not been dismantled for the sake of the altar.

“This is Port Luna,” the voice of a young mare said. “Please identify your vessel before docking, over.”

“This Admiral Spike, commandeering control of the Canterlot’s Pride. Princess Twilight is incapacitated and most of the crew is dead. We require immediate medical assistance.”

“My apologies. Can you repeat your identity?” the mare asked. “The readings confirm it, but your vessel has been declared destroyed three weeks ago, over.”

If Spike had more energy left in his mind, he would have questioned how they could have been declared dead before their mission had even started, but he was too tired to ask that. Only one thing was on his mind at that moment.

“I know who I am and what ship I am leading. Send a medical team now, and a transport. Ours have vanished without a trace. Admiral Spike, over and out.”

Five unicorns, all dressed in white, had entered the command bridge. Their faces were green with nausea because of what the horrid sights had witnessed in the corridors. They had gathered around Twilight’s body and were putting her on a stretcher while one of them scanned her several times with his magic.

Even if the electrical equipment had started working once more, everything else had stayed as it had been before. In fact, the star on Spike’s chair had inexplicably grown slightly larger and a chromatic blue eye had appeared in its center. Even the icy feeling coming from the chair had not gone away.

A mare, wearing the white hat of a navy officer, had quickly approached Spike the moment she had entered the room. Her yellow face looked calmer than that of the medical officers with her. She had an azure coat, and Spike could see a ring of gold shining in both of her blue eyes.

She saluted him once she was in front of him.

“Lieutenant Golden Path, reporting for duty,” she said, her voice having a strong accent that stressed her every use of the letter r. “Admiral Blue Song sent me to collect a detailed report about your unfortunate travel; he said he is interested in the recent events.”

“So interested that not only did he not come here himself, he sent a lieutenant to do it,” Spike replied, annoyed at the mere mentioning of the Admiral’s name. “Tell him that our interstellar travel encountered deadly complications that resulted in the loss of most of the crew. That’s all he will know.”

The mare nodded and then continued to speak.

“He also wanted me to bring his apologies for his absence here,” she then stated. “Admiral Blue Song could not be present here because he is currently busy representing the navy at the ongoing strategic meeting.”

“What?” If Spike had been a less controlled dragon, some fire would have spilled out of him. “He was never given the right to be at that kind of meeting.”

“He was the only admiral in Canterlot when the meeting started,” she explained. “He said he would be happy to see another admiral with him.”

“And he will,” Spike said. “As soon as Twilight is at the Canterlot Central Hospital, I will be there. That is the second message you will give him.”

“As you wish, sir, the transport is ready to carry everyone here to Canterlot. We move when you and your crew are aboard.” She nodded and then walked out of the room.

Spike then waited several more moments, looking from a distance at the medical squad working on Twilight. They seemed to be almost done with their procedure and ready to move out; they were only checking if all the straps of the stretcher had been secured properly.

Eventually one of them, a stallion, approached Spike. As expected, he saluted him.

“Everything is in position, sir,” he said. “I suggest we move immediately.”

“Of course.” Spike’s reply made the stallion turn his head around for a second to nod at the other medics. They started moving, and with them, everyone else in the bridge, Spike and the stallion included. “What is her status? Is she in danger?”

“Yes and no,” the stallion sounded less than confident to Spike’s ears. “She’s not dead. Her body works perfectly and her soul remains attached to it. The problem is that she seems to have fallen into a coma, a very deep one; we do not if she will ever wake up from it.”

“Is there nothing you can do?” Spike asked as he did his best to contain his worry from spilling out from his voice.

“Not here I’m afraid, sir,” the stallion quickly stated it as if it were a mere matter of fact, but the subtle trembling of his voice betrayed his desperation. “We need the equipment of a real medical facility to be able to do something.”

There was little else to say after that, Spike and everyone else followed the medical team through the corridors, Twilight and the medics in front and everyone else behind, in a grim parody of a religious procession. Twilight was akin to a ghastly object of worship, followed by a desperate and starving flock of devout followers. Spike contemplated the absurdity of worshipping something stuck in a coma, but his two weeks in hell had taught him that the desperate would worship anything capable of giving them hope.

What he witnessed in the corridors soon overtook his attention. He was glad to see them clearly once again, even if he still wondered how and why the lights had started working once more. To his eyes, the colors of the somehow still intact pieces of art were more vibrant and the figures more detailed, but the corpses on the floor spoiled all that beauty.

Many of the bodies were of equestrian creatures, their faces locked in a final wide-eyed expression of agony and terror. That sight alone was enough to induce vomit from several witnesses, but other bodies induced an even stronger reaction of disgust and horror, as none had ever seen their accursed forms before. They were shapeless bundles of bleeding meat slapped together by some sick god and covered by a sea of jaws, deformed eyes, and fist-sized craters. Rows of spikes and a thick layer of blood covered many of their long tentacles, some still twitching despite the death of the bodies.

From the distance, far away from Spike’s path, all could hear wailing screams interrupting the quasi-religious silence of Spike that had overtaken the group. They were sounds that should not have existed, the wrongness of their absurdly high pitch evoked images in their mind of being alone in a dark forest while unknown monsters roamed freely around them, all ready to strike and devour them.

The screams encouraged all to increase the speed of their walking, and soon they had reached the hangar, where a large transport had landed. All the others, just as Spike remembered, had vanished.

The transport itself was a welcome sight. It was tall and long, and its thick armor smoothed its otherwise rough edges. Spike knew that its experimental shields could deflect almost anything. It had been designed to carry officers even through asteroid fields in relative safety, after all. Nothing less than a direct crash into the largest rocks would have pierced the hull. When he had first seen the prototype for the transport, Spike had wondered how many schools could have been built with the money allocated to the project.

It was probably the safest vessel in the entire Equestrian navy. It was also never meant to transport more than a couple of officers at a time, so Spike considered it an odd choice.

What did not elicit relief was the hangar around the transport. While the rest of the ship had mostly regained all of its power almost magically, the hangar looked like had gone years, maybe even decades, without basic maintenance. Most of the lights were broken, and few that had survived could do little but flicker incessantly as they produced an annoying buzzing noise. The floor was littered with dirt and rust, and the acid dripping from the ceiling had created small holes in every nook and cranny.

Worst of all were the bugs crawling all over the floor, making it appear as if it had a life of its own. The smell reaching down to Spike’s throat reminded him of rotting corpses covered in excrements and all other bodily fluids mixed in a single, disgusting concoction.

The smell was familiar to Spike, as he had passed through the hangar several times already, but the sight was enough to turn his face green for one brief second.

The disgust they felt kept them moving quickly, and they soon rushed towards the large transport ship, glad to see its insides had none of the wear and tear of the outside. Its interiors were large enough to have several rooms connected to a large central one. The central room made Spike feel like he was in a hospital, with perfectly clean white walls and a few desks to the right. To the left, there were two metallic doors two leading to either a small private comm room or to an operating room. One last door, on the opposite side of the entrance, led directly to the cockpit.

Golden Path had surprisingly arrived long before him, and was compiling some notes near a desk with a bored expression on her face. She barely reacted to Spike’s arrival.

The moment the landing ramp closed, Spike breathed in the clean air and looked one last time at Twilight as they brought her into the medical room.

As the transport’s engine roared to allow it to take off, Golden Path spoke.

“Admiral Blue Song told me he wishes to speak with you in the comm room.” Her voice sounded lifeless, like her body was just going through the motions of being alive. She lazily pointed to the entrance of the communications room. “He was quite adamant about it.”

Spike considered ignoring the request for communications from the Admiral. After all, the two had never even pretended to like each other. He thought talking with him would have been a waste of everyone’s time.

Slowly but surely, however, his professionalism won over his distaste of the stallion and he decided he would listen to whatever he felt the need to say. The reality of how little else there was to do also helped with that thought process.

As remnants of the crew tried to find some place to rest and process what happened, some completely breaking down in tears, Spike entered the comm room.

Unlike the entrance, the comm room was small and with black walls. There was only one desk with a white circular hologram hovering above several lines of buttons and dials. The black chair in front of the desk, Spike noticed as he sat on it, was much softer than he expected it to be.

A red button was blinking. He knew it meant someone was trying to open a communications channel. He pressed the button, and the hologram changed shape to show him Blue Song’s head. The color, however, remained white.

“I was told you wanted to speak with me,” Spike said. “Why?”

“Because I believe every high-ranking commander should be aware of what we are facing. The information I need to share comes directly from the ongoing strategic meeting. Since you expressed tour intentions to be here, I deemed that the professional thing to do was to share this valuable information.” Blue Song spoke quickly and with confidence. He had probably expected that exact question. “I know we are not friends, but things have never been this serious. I am being a professional right now, I expect you to do the same.”

Even when keeping a professional attitude, Blue Song could not help but try to make himself look like the superior part. Despite that, he was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt in this situation, as the memory of the alien attack was still fresh in his mind.

“Ok,” he said after a sigh. “What do I need to know?”

That simple question opened the floodgates of a discussion that lasted for the entirety of the travel to Canterlot. First, there was the news that five, a full quarter of the Equestrian colonies, had ceased communications and only a few ships from those regions had returned to Equestria, all with crippling tears on their hulls.

Then had come a blistering casualties report, with horrific numbers that showed the loss of thousands of soldiers and dozens of ships, most taken by surprise in the first hours of the attack. Both Spike and Blue Song understood the numbers were probably much higher, and they both said so. At least on that, they had found something on which they could agree.

What took most of the time was the status of the Equestrian fleet in comparison with the estimated numbers of the attackers. Each group was dwarfed even by what they had deemed to be mere enemy scouting fleets, and none had ever received enough supplies necessary for a long war. The very idea of a long war had only existed in dusty books written by military theorists imagining a worst-case scenario, but not even they could have imagined the sheer size of what the Equestrian military faced.

That last part, the revision of each Equestrian battle group, took almost six hours. Six hours spent looking at a succession of maps, charts, and projections of potential future supply situations for each of the battle groups and trying to come up with an estimate of how long each of them could be able to delay enemy action. They deemed only the most promising groups to have the capability of deviating an invading fleet from its path, and that was only because of their capable commanders or the experimental technology they had on board.

He may have disliked Blue Song for his attitude with Twilight, but he could not deny he was more than competent at his job.

The six hours spent losing hope as he assessed the terrible predicament Equestria was now in made it impossible for him to sigh in relief when they heard a voice on the loudspeaker announcing that the transport had finally landed. Instead, he was filled with dread for the future.

“I assume this is the moment when you join us in person?” Blue Song asked.

“Yes, it is,” Spike replied as he got up from his chair. “I will be at the meeting momentarily.”

His stay at the hospital had been short, much shorter than Spike would have liked; they had left him and everyone else with no medical qualifications in the waiting lobby, while they carried Twilight to a large lift and she disappeared from his view when the large metal door closed. He was then told he could not see her for at least two weeks.

No matter how much he would have wanted to stay at the hospital and wait for Twilight to wake up, his awareness of Equestria’s dreadful situation compelled him to go to the war meeting as quickly as he could.

It was for that reason that he had immediately gone to the Canterlot Palace. Not to the throne room, but in the labyrinth constructed underneath. Spike’s voice had been of the few that had spoken against the proposal to build the Joint Headquarters in such a secluded location, away from prying eyes. It reeked of secrecy of the worst kind, and Spike did not want to make the government look like it had something to hide from its citizens. Twilight had even agreed with him, but the overwhelming support for it coming from the rest of the upper echelons of the military and civil administration had forced her to accept the proposal.

After many years of work, and the expenditure of millions of bits, the work was finished. The result was a web-like labyrinth that extended far beyond the perimeter of the palace above. Twilight had reserved several sections for the construction of impressively large laboratories dedicated to the study of all the new things discovered in the colonies, but the area remained under the control of the military.

There was barely anyone as Spike walked through the sterile white corridors, nothing more than the occasional researcher or low-ranking officer. They were mostly empty and lifeless, with steps of solitary clerks and buzzing of the electrical white lights. If not for the many maps and his memories, Spike might have gotten lost in the identical corridors.

The Head Quarter he reached after half an hour of walking was a moderately large room. It had several steel lockers near its walls, Spike knew to be filled with the most recent reports that had yet to be sent to military archives, and a large round table of the same material. Officers of all branches sat on all seats, with only the ones reserved for the navy being almost empty except for the one being used by Blue Song. Spike also saw four much larger placed at the four cardinal points of the table.

From the center of the table, a purple light created a large hologram showing a map of Equestria’s little colonial empire. It also highlighted five sectors in red. Blue Song was the only one with the white cap and blue elegant uniform with golden trims and buttons. The rest wore the green uniform of the army or the white and yellow coat belonging to the officers of the Royal Guard. All Royal Guard officers had a medal representing a small purple shield imposed on a white field.

There were also several officers wearing the clean white uniform of the Research Corps, Twilight’s addition to the armed forces. They were the most numerous, as their fleet was so much larger than the one with explicit military purposes. Their explicit purpose was to venture into the unexplored regions with the explicit purpose of looking for unknown things to be further researched back in Equestria. Spike knew them to be far more adventurous than all the other branches.

A large circular white light on the ceiling cast the lower parts of their faces in shadow.

All were arguing furiously, with loud voices and angry faces. Many had brought old and dusty books to the table, and they seemed more interested in finding someone to blame for Equestria’s unpreparedness rather than trying to come up with a plan.

“We predicted this a hundred years ago,” one of Research Corps’ officers said. “Why did you not prepare anything substantial?”

“Ah yes,” a changeling of the Royal Guard was pretending to be amused by the accusation of negligence. “How could we forget about one of the sixteen theories about alien races? What fools we were…”

Blue Song had tuned out of the discussion, and was focused on writing a letter on a yellow piece of paper. He put the letter down when he saw Spike, and did not look relieved despite his smile. His eyes were red from the lack of sleep and his breathing sounded heavier than normal.

“Take your seat, admiral,” he said. “We’re gonna be here for a while.”

Spike sat down a moment later, receiving a few lazy salutes from some generals, who were all too tired for formalities.

“Calm down, everyone,” Blue Song said to the generals, and every sound in the room stopped.” Whoever is at fault does not matter; we need a plan, not scapegoats.”

“Go ahead,” the changeling that had spoken before replied. “I am sure we can find a place for your plan among all the others.” He pointed at several large folders filled with yellow papers.

For a fraction of a second, Blue Song’s narrowed down to slits, looking at the changeling with what appeared like murderous intent. His well-defined muscles tensed, making him look as if he were about to strike, then he replaced his anger with a mask of apathy. If Spike had not been looking directly at him, he would have missed that.

“My plan is not my own,” he said as he lifted an enormous book he had been keeping under the table. It had a grey hardback with a golden circle on its front cover. “My grandfather in the Research Corps came up with it.”

“Grey Star had many interesting ideas,” A griffon of the Research Corps interrupted his probably well-prepared speech. “None of them sound. There’s a reason we gave him a dishonorable discharge.”

“I know my grandfather’s service history very well.” Song kept a neutral tone as he addressed the concern. “I am not here to defend his crimes, as I am not his lawyer. Despite his service record, you will soon understand he had the perfect plan for a situation like this. In that regard, he was ahead of his time.”

“Even if his ideas had any value, why should we listen to you?” the griffon scoffed. “You are just one admiral among many, and you should not even be here.”

“I don’t see many any other admirals here,” Blue Song smiled. “Unless Spike has formulated a plan while he retreated, I see you do not have many options. Need I remind you that all of your operations rely on our approval and cooperation?”

Spike a mental note to explode with rage when he was in private. The admiral was using him to make himself look better by comparison, as Spike was already unpopular with the officers. He contained his rage only because he knew how to play the game. Each branch would adopt a facade of unity and strength when interacting with not belonging to it. Making a scene would have seen him even more isolated from his few allies.

“Go ahead,” the griffon sighed. “Enlighten us.”

Blue Song opened the book as Spike mentally prepared the harsh words he would say once the two of them were alone.

“Here on the third chapter of his magnum opus,” he said as he pointed to one page and smiled. “My grandfather had prepared a plan to deal with the overwhelming force we face right now. I will start by describing it with three simple words: Defeat in detail.”

Author's Note

I'm a bit unhappy with how this one came out

Next one should come out sooner