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The Greater Good
By Deathstrike666
Chapter 5 – Ambush
Thx to Tresviri and Pony of Change for Proof reading
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A Tau ship was hovering above a clearing deep within a dark forest. Two Air Caste drones helped guide the ship as its four engines slowly lowered it into the center of the clearing. There were three smaller Tau craft already there, they had been sent to scout the forest and look for a place to make a forward base on this new planet. On one side of the clearing was a large ravine separating the open area from the tree line, while on the other side was a large abandoned stone structure that the could use as a command centre.

Once landed several Tau started hauling out the ship’s cargo. One by one large boxes full of equipment they needed came out of the Tau Orca. The shipment was mostly power generators and tactical equipment like long range scanners and a communications array.

The Orca left shortly after it was unloaded, heading back to the Shas’Kai to collect more supplies. Most of the ground team sat back and relaxed after the Orca left, they really couldn’t do anything until more supplies arrive which was about two hours away. The next shipment was being brought in by a Manta, seeing as it is the only ship that could easily carry the larger and heavier equipment that they needed for the base. The Manta was also bringing in a few members of the Fire Caste to set up a defensive perimeter even though they haven’t seen any life in this planet yet.

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Celestia and fifteen of her royal guards appeared in a flash of golden light. They appeared in an unnatural fog that was covering Appleloosa. The only things that they could see through this fog were the faint outlines of ruined buildings.

The Princess of the Day could sense that this fog was unnatural. She had been too busy trying to find the cause of this fog that she didn’t realise that she was standing in something wet and sticky. After a few moments her horn started glowing and the fog started slowly moving away. The princess gasped in horror at the sight the fog was hiding.

Littered around the town where the shredded corpses of the appleloosan population. Most of the town was literally painted red with the vast quantities of blood and pony insides. The ground was a virtual sea of broken bodies.

Finally feeling the strange sensation on her hooves, the princess looks down toward the ground. Beneath her hooves were multiple incomplete remains of several Earth Ponies.

“What could do such a thing?” asked one of the unicorn guards.

“It doesn’t look like any monster I have seen,” replied another guard while examining one of the corpses, “These wounds aren’t like anything I have seen before. They don’t look like they were caused by a sword, they are too rough. There is also nothing that indicates teeth or claws were used either. Some of them have holes going straight through them, which could be a spear, but the holes are too large for any spear that I have seen”.

“Well whatever did this shall definitely be punished,” growled Celestia while stepping off of the corpses she had landed in, “Let’s see if we can find whatever did this”.

Celestia and her guards started walking through the now ruined Appleloosa, stepping over the scattered limbs of ponies. There was a low buzzing noise coming from the horde of flies that were attacking the dead ponies. They continued walking slowly down the main street, passing several spikes with impaled ponies, their faces were distorted beyond recognition.

The closer the group got to the centre, they started to see more and more dead and dismembered ponies. The group stopped in the middle of the town. Right in front of them was a large pile of pieces of dead ponies and a large pool of blood radiating from the mound.

“Search for any evidence of what has caused all this,” ordered Celestia, “I doubt there are any survivors still here”.

The guards just nodded before heading off in different directions. The princess felt like crying over the death of her subjects, she had never seen anything like this before. The only thing that she really wanted to do now was find and severely punish who or what ever had done this to her subjects. And when she mean severely punish, she means torture them and then banish them to the sun for an eternity.

“What do you think these symbols mean?” asked one of the pegasus guards looking at a half destroyed wall.

On that wall was a brown earth pony, his hooves were spread out and nailed in with rusted metal. His chest was cut wide open and around him were large symbols written blood, most likely that pony’s blood.

“It doesn’t look like they are used for enhancing magic”, said one of the unicorn guards examining the symbols around the rotting pony.

The princess just sensed something. Something evil. Something that she should’ve sensed earlier. A presence, wait multiple presences. Then it hit her. One creature didn’t do all this, multiple creatures did, and they are still here.

“Everypony get back!” yelled Celestia, “The creatures that did this ar-”

Celestia was cut off when a large blue metallic creature burst through the wall that had the brown earth pony pinned to it. The two guards that were looking at the wall were knocked to the ground with the large creature towering above them.

The pegasus quickly regained focus and rammed his spear into the creature’s chest. Instead of going right this creature, as the guard hoped for, the spear did nothing, nothing at all. The blue creature just laughed at the pegasus puny attempt of an attack and raised its own weapon to strike at the two guards. The creature pressed a button on the side causing the jagged teeth along it to start spinning.

Before the creature swung its weapon down, Celestia shot a bolt of lightning out of her horn. The bolt collided with the creature’s right shoulder, ripping straight through it. The creature’s arm plus its weapon fell to the floor. Using this distraction to their advantage the two guards quickly got away from the blue giant and regrouped with the princess.

The creature though didn’t seem fussed that it had just lost its right arm, it seemed pissed more than anything. The blue giant pulled out a large serrated knife from its hips with its left hand and began charging at the princess. Each of the creature’s steps caused a small tremor in the earth and it was quickly closing the gap with its long strides.

The princess started charging up her horn, trying to add as much magic as she could into the next attack. When she couldn’t hold any more power she released it, a large beam of golden light shot out of her horn. The beam of light struck the creature dead centre in the chest and passed right through as if nothing was there. The blue creature collapsed to the floor shortly after the beam ripped a large hole into its chest.

“Quickly! Form up on me,” ordered Celestia, “I can sense more of them out there and from what I have seen these things can only be affected by magic”

The fifteen royal guard formed up around their princess, forming a tight circle around her. Each one of the guards were facing out in every direction giving the princess three hundred and sixty degree coverage.

“How many can you sense?” asked an earth pony guard to the princess.

“Nine of them,” replied the princess, “Their hiding in the shadows themselves and they are slowly surrounding us”

All the guards were whipping their heads from side to side trying to spot any incoming attackers before they could strike. Their spears were held out straight in front of them and the unicorns also charged up their magic. They all stood there waiting for the incoming attackers.

Celestia could sense them all around them, drawing closer and closer. she knew it wouldn’t be long before they attack. Something changed, the nine just stopped. Celestia didn’t understand why they had stopped.

“They’ve stopped,” said Celestia confused, “Why are they just staying in the shadows of the ruins?”

A large thudding sound started up in the distance, getting louder and louder. Celestia and her guards turn their attention to the direction of the noise. Above some of the ruins they could see the top of a square object moving with black smoke billowing out from behind it. Its six large metal legs slowly moved the beast into the main street. The blue and black metal behemoth started hauling itself towards the group of ponies, each step it took caused the ground to shake beneath it.

A large flash and ear shattering boom came from the centre of the metal beast. The shell of the battle cannon impacted a few meters away from the ponies. Three guards were killed as shrapnel lacerated through their armor and flesh, while the others quickly jumped for cover.

Celestia raised a magical shield over her guards. The princess knew the shield wouldn’t last long. With each shot from the metal behemoth, larger and larger cracks started appearing in it. She also knew that they couldn’t stay there forever, eventually the metal beast would reach them.

Celestia didn’t know what to do to do now. They were all stuck in the diminishing shield and the metal beast was getting closer. With the shield nearly gone, Celestia noticed something different, a new noise. Her ears flicked up to better identify the new sound. It was a low metallic hum, coming from behind her.

Before she could look around her magic shield finally gave in as another shell struck it. The impact knocked everypony to the ground. Celestia took a few seconds to recover but it was too late, standing directly in front of her was the defiler. The large battle cannon was directly aiming at Celestia’s face, preparing to fire.

Celestia knew that she couldn’t do anything to the metal behemoth, she just closed her eyes and waited for her death. It felt like an eternity for her, why couldn’t this monster just kill her right now. With her eyes closed, her other senses began to heighten. While she waited for her death she focused on that metallic humming she had heard earlier, it was louder now and much more clearer.

The princess quickly covered her ears when a sonic boom rang out from behind her. Opening her eyes she saw the beast rearing up with half of its supposed head missing. Another sonic boom came from behind Celestia. Everything went too fast for Celestia to understand what just happened, this second she heard the second sonic boom a large part of the bottom left side of metal beast vapourized into a fiery ball. Now missing two of its legs, the defiler collapsed to the ground.

A third sonic boom rang out. The shot impacted the centre on the wrecked defiler and caused it to explode into a fiery ball of shrapnel. Celestia reacted quickly enough to raise another magic shield to protect her guards from the explosion.

The princess looked up just as a gargantuan yellow ship flew over head, it’s wingspan was at least fifty meters possibly more. Her eyes tracked the ship’s flight as it slowed down and landed behind the wrecked metal beast. Several already ruined building were crushed underneath the ship’s four massive landing pads and once landed the metallic humming began to die down.

Celestia continued staring as a large door flipped open from the back. Twenty bipedal creatures, about the same size as Angrus and his men, came running out of the back. They were clad in yellow and brown armour covering their entire bodies and held weapons that looked similar to the ones that the Imperial Guard use. Well not vaguely similar but they looked like they were used for a similar purpose. The new creatures quickly surrounded Celestia and her remaining guards, pointing their long weapons at them.

“Hold your fire”, ordered a male voice coming from the direction of the ship. All the creatures surrounding Celestia obeyed the order and lower their weapons.

Celestia turned her head to see who had given to order. She noticed one that stood out from the others. He was wearing very little armour compared to the others and a red cape which exposed most of his blue skin. In his right hand was a golden staff with a very complicated pattern running all along it. At the top of the staff was a giant round red stone, supposedly a ruby, if it was a ruby it would've been the biggest one that she had ever seen.

The creatures surrounding Celestia quickly parted to allow room for him to enter. He stood in front of Celestia for a few seconds, examining her, before breaking the silence.

“Greetings, I am Kor’El. Ethereal of the Tau and commander of the Shas’kai. And who might you be?”

“I am Princess Celestia,” she replied with a small bow, “I am the co-ruler of this land we call Equestria”.

Kor’El nodded his head in response to Celestia’s bow.

“This planet would definitely make a fine edition to the Greater Good”, stated the ethereal.

“The Greater Good?” asked Celestia a little confused with his statement, “What’s that?”

“The Greater Good is our main principle in life,” answered Kor’El, “We use it to bring peace and order to our society. Seeing as you are to ruler of this place then I would have to ask you if your citizens are willing to join the Greater Good”.

“Mmmm... what benefits do we get if we join this Greater Good?” wondered Celestia.

“Well if you do decide to join the Greater Good then your species will gain many new things,” replied the ethereal, “We can give you new technology and intelligence. We can even give space travel so that you can trade with other planets”.

“What do you want if we do join?” asked Celestia.

“The only things that we want is peace between our races and to set up a few colonies on your planet”, aid Kor’El.

“Let me have some time to think about it. I will have to talk to my sister about this proposal of yours,” said Celestia, “And I first have to deal with what has happen here earlier”.

“We could help you with that. We know what did this to this village,” offered Kor’El. He pointed the the creature that Celestia had killed earlier, “They are a warband of Chaos Space Marines called the Sons of Midnight, they worship the four gods of chaos and bring death and destruction to those who oppose the dark gods. They are enemies of the Tau and the Greater good, so we could help you to get rid of them”.

“I would be most grateful if you could help me dispose of them,” said Celestia, “I will need to go and inform my sister of what has transpired here”.

“As you wish,” said Kor’El with a small nod of his head, “We are also heading behind schedule too. Our ship was supposed to be at our base that we set up in one of your forests by now”.

“Which forest?” asked Celestia getting slightly angered with the idea that more off worlders have made their home in her kingdom.

“In a forest that is about four hundred and fifty kilometers north-northwest from here. It is at the location of some abandoned stone structure”, replied Kor’El.

Celestia knew of the structure he was talking about, well it was one of the only stone structures left in Equestria, everything was either made of wood or steel now days. She also knew the dangers that were lurking in that dark forest but this didn’t really concern her, from what she has seen these beings can easily defend themselves. At least they were in an isolated spot where the chances of stumbling onto another pony was very unlikely.

“Well, I must get going,” said Celestia, “I will let you keep the base for now. I will leave my guards to help you if needed”.

“I will see you later later than,” said the ethereal, “Hopefully you have made your decision about joining the Greater Good”.

Celestia turned her attention away from Kor’El and to her guards, The alicorn only spoke with her guards for about half a minute. Just after she finished her horn started to glow a golden light. The sudden action caused most of the fire warriors surrounding the group of ponies to point their rail rifles at her but she vanished entirely before any of them had the chance to pull the trigger.

“What did she just do?” asked Kor’El to one of the pegasus guards with a very confused look.

“Our Princess just teleported away. Can’t you lot teleport where you are from?” replied the dark red pegasus, “Well enough of that. I think that we should get going. Our Princess has ordered us to to accompany you to your base”.

Kor’El didn’t like the idea of allowing these ponies into their base but it was probably something that he would have to do in order to gain the trust of this new race. He gestured to the guards that they could board the Manta. The guards nervously bordered to craft, all of them were wondering how this thing could fly with fixed wings. The area that they had just walked into was roomy, despite the three oversized crates sitting inside the flying round box with wings.

They carefully followed the blue off-worlder up to an area just above the one with the crates. In front of them were four rows of seats designed for bipedal creatures. The guards just stood there and watched as the off-worlders took a seat and strapped themselves in. Seeing the aliens waiting on them to take a seat, guards carefully took a seat.

“How the fuck do these creatures sit like this,” said the dark red pegasus to himself while trying to adjust into a more comfortable position, “This is really starting to make my flank sore”

Once all the guards got into their uncomfortable seating positions the Manta’s engines started up again. Slowly the ship lifted off the ground and headed for the Tau base.

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Celestia appeared in the middle of her throne room. She called for one of her castle staff, who quickly ran in through the doors to her throne room, stumbling as he entered.

The dark green unicorn bowed in front of Celestia, “Yes, Princess”.

“Where is my sister?” asked Celestia.

“She left the castle about a half-hour ago,” answered the unicorn, “She received a message from Shining Armour and left immediately”.

“Thank you. You may go now”, said Celestia.

The unicorn gave a bow to the princess before turning to leave. Once the unicorn left the room, Celestia’s horn started to glow again with another teleportation spell. There was a bright flash as the Princess’ body disappeared into nothingness.

Celestia re-appeared in the center of Angrus’ base, her sudden appearance and bright flash caused some of the guardsmen to aim their lasguns at her. They quickly lowered them when they realised who they were pointing their weapons at. The first thing she heard was her own sister yelling at Angrus in one of the many tents.

The two were interrupted from their arguement when the princess of the sun barged in. She noticed the dead guardsmen and the bandage over Rainbows nose.

“What in tartarus is going on here?” yelled Celestia while directing an angered stare towards Angrus.

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Author's Note

It took me 15 god dam tries to get the conversation between Celestia and Kor'El to work.
I hope that I did get it right

I just realized that this story is going to be long, 18000 words in and the Tau have just made contact with Celestia.
I have still got the Tyranids to show up yet and all the mass distruction and chaos to come after that