The old familiar alicorn sat her fat ass on my chest once again, trying to force the air out of my lungs, but I was both trained to resist her and experienced in her ways. Four heartbeats later I was able to relax my diaphragm and take my first easy breath as the g-forces unloaded eight Equestrian gravities off my chest. Glancing back behind me I saw the last flickers of the spew of energy the launch tube had used to send me outward bound and I turned my gaze forward to the welcoming gem-studded darkness that was outer space.
“Celestia, this is Spike. Clean launch,” I called back to the ship, as I swept my eyes over the readouts of my swift little craft, looking for any telltales of danger. “All systems green.”
“Confirm clean launch, Spike,” came the welcome voice of Wide Eyes, Celestia’s “Space Boss” who controlled all the ships in the local flight zone. “Vector 38 mark 182 to holding area Epsilon and standby for the rest.”
“Acknowledged, Celestia,” I replied, and repeated back the coordinates to the holding area to make sure I had them right.
I banked my Dragon, which is the accepted slang these days for the fighter craft on board the ESS Celestia, and I took a moment to admire the lines of the old girl as I flew past her long body. She had been the only home for any of us during those first desperate years of the Exodus and since then she had lumped, changed and grown as the needs of her ponies had changed as well.
My arcing course took me up and over the spread wings of great ship’s landing bays on her dorsal surface and as my field of vision cleared I felt pride and satisfaction as I saw the Fleet arrayed in close cruising formation like obedient foals lined up behind their mother. They were Celestia’s children as much as I was, and the reason I was out here in a fragile Dragon rocketing along through unforgiving space.
“I am a Dragonflyer,” I intoned, repeating the lay I’d been taught by my first flight instructor. “We fly on fire to defend our home, and as long as there is discord in the universe, we will fight.”
“Celestia to Spike, please repeat that last transmission,” crackled the comm systems, and I grimaced as I realized that I must have accidentally sent some of that out.
“Uh, disregard please,” I stammered out, trying to think of an explanation. “Minor comms glitch.”
“Understood,” was Wide Eyes’ response, and I could hear the suppressed laughter there. “The rest of your division has launched and is enroute to join up with you. Continue to holding area Epsilon, and stand by for an in-flight briefing.”
“Confirm,” was my only response as I reached Epsilon, the marshalling area on the Celestia’s starboard beam.
Braking thrust brought me to a matching velocity with the rest of traffic in the area, and I took the moment of quiet to do another check of my little ship. Main engine, thrusters, shields, weapons and the all important Pinkie Drive all showed green, except for a slight wobble from one of the maneuvering thrusters.
“Coming up on your six, Spike,” called the welcome voice of Top Kick, leader of our division’s second flight of four, and overall commander of the division.
All of the Celestia’s fighter craft flew in divisions of sixteen, each division was split into four flights of four, and each flight was split into two elements of a lead and a wingpony each. That way the members of an element could cover each other, the elements of a flight would then work together, and so on back up the chain so that an entire division could fight, fly or flee as a single cohesive group.
“Good to see you,” I responded, twisting in my seat to see the flickers of light that were Top Kick’s thrusters. Behind him I could just pick out the twinkling lights of the rest of the division as they approached.
“Stand by for a briefing from the Admiral,” declared a tense voice over the comms, just as the division began to form up around me.
“Ponyfeathers,” cursed Top Kick over flight leader’s channel. “This one must be bad if the Admiral’s handing us the mission herself.”
“Yeah,” I grunted, and I heard similar from Wingover and Fire Flight, the other two flight leaders.
“Good morning, everyone,” greeted the cool voice of Twilight Sparkle, the Eternal Admiral of the Fleet. “Sorry to get you all out of bed, but we have a situation that I need my number one assistants to deal with.”
I felt my face pull into a smile at that. The admiral always tried to make us feel relaxed and at ease no matter what was going on or the situation. It was one of the quirks that made her so adored by her ponies, dragons, griffons and every other creature and combination of creatures that made up her Fleet.
“Four days ago the survey ship Roseluck found an ocean planet teaming with algae,” the admiral began. “They immediately sent out a call and for the past three days the harvester vessel Maud has been scooping up biomass that the Fleet is always in need of. Everything has been going fine, but thirty minutes ago both ships' emergency beacons jumped into local space and started broadcasting.”
“Neither beacon had any details other than ‘multiple unknown craft approaching’ and ‘under attack’, so we have to assume the worst,” Admiral Sparkle’s voice firmed up. “Your mission is head out to the harvesting site, engage and drive off the attackers, then escort the Roseluck and the Maud back to the Fleet, or call for support as needed. Good luck, and may Harmony watch over you all. Celestia, out.”
Silence reigned over the comms until my navigation system beeped a few seconds later to acknowledge the receipt of the coordinates that we were headed out to. I glanced at them and mentally did the calculations. The ships were right at the outer edge of what we could handle without recharging our systems, but we were in range.
“Alright ponies, you heard the Admiral. Everyone have the coordinates?” I asked, hearing the confident replies of the others as they each acknowledged in turn. “Right, let’s get going. Heading 90 mark 45 until we are clear of the fleet. Division on my mark: 3, 2, 1, Engage.”
As one, sixteen lean space fighters pivoted on their tails and drove themselves up and away from the lumbering behemoth of their mothership, onboard systems aligning the ships for the jump through otherspace, and as the timer counted down for the leap across space Top Kick’s voice came through loud and clear on the comms.
“3… Dragonponies fly… 2… when danger roams… 1… the sky!”
“JUMP”
Twisting reality in its hooves like warm taffy, the Pinkie Drive surrounded each of us in coronas of rosy hued light as it threw us into otherspace, a dimension where time and space had no meaning at all and every place was right next door. Everypony travelling through this strange neverland had the impression that some instant of time had passed, but nopony could ever remember how long it had been or what they had seen there.
Every clock on every fighter showed that only a fraction of a moment had passed as we emerged from otherspace and the Pinkie Drive wound down, automatically beginning its five minute recharge cycle. Little ships like our fighters only needed five minutes to recharge, but a ship the size of the Celestia needed a little over half an hour.
“I have eyes on the Roseluck,” called Thruster, the wingpony of my own two-ship element. “They’re under attack from the Hive.”
Everypony felt a chill at that. The Hive were our eternal enemies, organic crystal entities that preyed on carbon-based lifeforms for some foul purpose that we’ve never been able to determine. Rumor had it that they were fellow escapees from Equestria, horribly twisted and mutated through some freak encounter in the depths of space, but nopony, not even the Admiral could really say for sure.
All that anypony knew was that they attacked ships, planets and any other non-mineral life with equal gusto, dragging it off to their city-sized ship to be consumed or converted into more strength for the Hive.
“All ships, break and attack!” I ordered, punching a burst of speed from my normal space thrusters and I saw with satisfaction that Thruster was matching my maneuver and settling into position just back of my right wing where he could cover me. All around us, seven other pairs chose their own vectors and began their own runs into the fight.
“The one at 315 mark 20,” I called, on the element frequency. “We’ll take that one first.”
“Roger that,” Thruster replied.
“Thank Celestia!” sounded a voice on the main channel. “Roseluck here. They jumped us a few minutes ago and went for our engines first thing.”
“How enveloped are you?” demanded Fire Flight. That’s how the Hive got you, with a method someone had dubbed ‘envelopment’. Hive ships didn’t fire destructive lasers like we did, or missiles like a corvette or the Celestia. They fired a sort of trans-spacial goo that drained a ship’s power, slowly rendering it more and more helpless.
When a ship was fully covered, the goo would organically tear open a hole through otherspace and take whatever it surrounded, be it a ship or a pony, directly to the largest collection of Hive biomass in space, namely the Hive city ship. An individual Hive fighter could take a long time to cover a big ship like the Roseluck, unfortunately there were always lots of Hive ships.
“We’re at sixty percent covered, engines out and sitting ducks, but don’t worry about us. The Maud is nearly covered, you’ve got to get to her before it’s too late!” begged Roseluck’s captain, and ship’s scanners showed that he was right. If somepony didn’t get to the Maud right now, she and her whole crew were doomed.
“Spike, you and your squadron work on getting the Roseluck clear and out of here, the rest of us will go help the Maud,” Top Kick declared, pouring on the thrust. He would be in for a lot of gees when he went to finally turn or arrest that much delta-v, but it would get him and the others there in time.
“Understood, good luck,” I replied, before switching to our four ship squadron frequency. “Okay ponies, it’s up to us. Ringo, you and Hard Line take the forward and ventral areas, Thruster and me will take aft and dorsal.”
“Roger,” called back Ringo, our second element leader. He and his wingpony Hard Line altered their approach to match my orders and as one we dove in against six to one odds.
The next several minutes were a blur of maneuver and fire while dodging return fire as best we could. Inevitably some fire got through, and once the immediate battlespace was clear I called for a damage report.
“Thruster here, thirty percent covered, one laser and two maneuvering jets down,” my wingpony replied, always careful to distinguish between his name and ship part. “Ringo here, thirty-five percent, similar damage.”
“Hard Line here,” came the third response, and I heard the edge in his voice as he continued with, “got caught in a crossfire. All three lasers down, life support at half, most of my thrusters are gone… about the only thing really working right now is the Pinkie Drive.”
“NEW CONTACT!” screamed somepony over the all ships channel so loudly I winced for a moment. “Oh Celestia save us… we are so screwed.”
A look at the scanner screen showed why. Top Kick and the others with him had nearly finished cleaning up the thicker swarm of ships around the Maud, and had kept her from being dragged off, but it had been a near thing. Now however, winking into existence at the edge of our detection range was a new ship.
A Hive harvester vessel, complete with an escort of over a hundred fighter craft, all of whom were igniting their own engines in order to burn toward us and making their intent clear.
“Roseluck,” I commed, “how is your Pinkie Drive? Can you jump?”
“Negative, our engines are fully down,” the ship’s captain replied. “Get out of here, there’s nothing more you can do.”
“Like hell there isn’t,” I shot back, snarling. “All ships clamp onto the Roseluck and we’ll tow her home ourselves.”
“I heard that,” Top Kick interrupted. “Great idea. Wingover, Fire Flight, have your squadrons do the same for the Maud. She’s got more mass so it will take all eight of you to get her home. My squadron will engage and delay.”
“But that’s four against a hundred,” cried Wingover. “You won’t stand a chance!”
“We don’t have to beat them, we just have to slow them down,” Top Kick replied, as four tails of fire grew from four outbound fightercraft. “Get clamped on and get going. The sooner you get done, the quicker we can all get out of here.”
“Roger that,” responded Wingover, clearly not happy with the order, but understanding the situation as well as the rest of us.
“They aren’t going to make it, are they?” Thruster sent, on our little two-ship channel.
“Probably not, but the best thing we can do is make sure their sacrifice isn’t in vain,” I replied, and switching my mic to the squadron channel added, “okay ponies, we don’t have much time. We’ve got one chance to make a clean dock and get this ship out of here. Let’s get it done.”
I focused on the task at hand, trying to shut out the chatter from Top Kick and his squadron as they threw themselves into the teeth of our onrushing foe. At last it was done, and the four of us were clamped on with the Roseluck rolling onto the proper bearing back to the fleet as we used our entire ships in place of its disabled engines.
Risking a glance at the scanner I saw that the Maud was already moving forward under the combined thrust of the eight fighters clamped to it, but of Top Kick’s squadron, only he remained with fifty enemy fighters swarming around him. The ace fighter and his ships having accounted for over half of the enemy.
“We’re about to jump, get out of there!” I called frantically.
“Too late,” Top Kick calmly replied. “Pinkie Drive went down over a minute ago. All I’ve got left are a couple of thrusters. You’re in command now, Spike. Get our ponies home.”
“But—” I radioed back, only to be overridden.
“That’s an order, Dragonflyer,” Top Kick interrupted. “Give the Admiral my apologies for losing four of her ships.”
“Top!” I screamed, as a bloom of fire marked the pyre of my friend as he rammed an enemy fighter and took them to hell with him.
“Sir?” Thruster asked, a moment later.
“All ships, jump on my mark,” I responded, fury in my voice and tears in my eyes. “3… 2… 1… JUMP!”
A twisted moment later and the fleet was in view. Top Kick and his squadron had done it. We were safe and home, and in a second I would send in a radio call for fighter cover and proper towing ships for the Roseluck and the Maud. But first, something else needed to be done.
“Dragonponies fly, when danger roams the sky,” I intoned, repeating Top Kick’s mantra before adding my own. “We fly on fire to defend our home, and as long as there is discord in the universe, we will fight.”
“We will fight,” repeated the rest of my division, and with those words and intent Division M6 became united under my command.
“Let’s get back to base ponies,” I ordered softly, as the lights of the Celestia called us home.
Author's Note
