"It feels odd, being back down here." I muttered as Celestia led me through the underground caverns under her throne room. It seems that during the past couple years they had excavated out a great deal of crystal to set up a secret weapons lab. One that I didn't even know about, and I practically had top level clearance.

"I bet it is." Celly mused, pursing her lips. "Truth be told, if it wasn't for that ship heading towards our planet I wouldn't have ever brought you here in the first place."

"What, you don't trust me with top secret toys?" One sideways look was enough for me to give her a shit eating grin.

"I don't fully trust your little diary, Mark." She dryly answered. Okay, had to admit she had a point there. I know how many people seem to fucking read the damn thing.

"And when were you going to admit that you all had pelicans?" I asked, tapping a finger against a piece of thigh armor while we waited for a large, heavyset crystal door to slide back. Once passing through, I could see the main objective of my interest; two pelican dropships that were fully functional. One was royal blue in color with a painting of Luna's smiling face on her nose, while the other was the standard matte green, but had Celestia in an admittedly sexy pose on the nose. There was a third under construction, mainly missing the engines, and already was painted up in a pitch black color with some dark purple highlights.

"Three armored D77-TC Drop Pelicans. Each sporting a chin mounted auto-cannon that will fire rubber bullets, beanbag rounds, or seventy millimeter APHEDU salvos. They also contain two ANVIL II-ASM rocket pods with eight missiles each." Celestia stated as I took in the beasts and the mechanics making adjustments to them.

"Max tell you to tell me that?" I asked, smirking when she just rolled her eyes. "How the hell did you get a hand on APHEDU rounds? I don't even think they had them in the first place!" Honestly they were gonna be badass if we ever had to fight anything with armor, though. Could probably get rid of a Xenomorph Queen with no problem.

"Magic." Of course. "You'll be taking mine, since Lunacae didn't exactly want hers to be rushed out and endanger you all, while your team can fit in one easily so there's no reason to take Luna's."

"How touching. We get to impress the big bad aliens with your fat ass." That got me a hard hoof to the back of the head, which I fully deserved.

It only took about ten minutes to convince little mister hourglass ass to bring in a colonial marine who had likely had his face chewed off by an alien to train us. After all, he would have the most experience fighting in zero gravity, and against xenomorphs as well. Truth be told we could have easily gotten the same training from Beck, but he wasn't exactly acquainted with our soon to be friends.

As a result, one Corporal Dwayne Hicks got to enjoy a new ODST suit, and we got to enjoy shooting ourselves around the moon with Thompsons, Vectors, 1911s, and 1887 lever action shotguns. While we were being thrown around in zero G's, it didn't take us long to learn how to use the terrain and any floating objects to keep from floating off into space and near certain death. A fate that O'Drake nearly experienced if it wasn't for the fact Lunacae was supervising us and dragged him back to the surface of her moon.

"No!" Looking up, I saw that Max and Celly were having a heated argument as they arrived into the hanger to see our teams off. I would be going in with Raptor Squad (the Kenov brothers, Ricotta, and Ash), while o'Drake, Ramirez, Nakitta, Hicks, and another new guy by the name of Billy were going in as Wolf Squad.

"Its okay Tia, I promise you that I'll only be there to fly the pelican." Max calmly said, putting a hand on Celly's back. I could see her hesitate despite his calm words. "I won't be in any danger, my helmet will be on the entire time, and I'll have a weapon to defend myself should I need to."

"Max, I've seen what these things can do..." She wasn't giving up on keeping here just yet.

"And I'll also have the pelican sealed up as soon as they leave." He added, causing her to finally relent and consent to him coming along. From the way they looked, they had been arguing about this for some time.

"Fine. But you are not going on the next dangerous mission Mark has, do you understand me?" I couldn't help but snort as he sheepishly nodded and came over.

"Whiiiipped." I heard Ramirez mutter, making a whip sound and getting Ricotta to snort in amusement.

"We all set guys? Time to head off." After saying goodbye to AJ, who was pretty pissed that I was endangering myself again as well, we boarded the Morning Glory and set off to the Argonautica.

Max, Mark gazing over his shoulder, was piloting his pelican alongside the Argonautica, looking for the shuttle hanger that was found in the Moon Palace's databanks.

"Fuck me, that's one big mother," Mark gave out a low whistle as Morning Glory drifted along the larger ship's hull.

"She must have come through the asteroid belt, or been hit by a meteor shower," Max quietly observed, pointing out various dents and breeches in the Argonautica's lengthy hull.

Indeed, the Argonautica had done just that, the worst damage was to the farming ring… or what was left of it. Huge sections of the lower habitat ring were twisted wrecks or completely gone, some debris still floating off into space behind the ship.

From there they finally come across the open hanger, just beneath the upper command section and the recreation ring. To Max and Mark's dismay, the hanger opening was barely large enough for the pelican to fit through.

Angling in, Max is able to thread the needle, only to discover that, not only does the Argonautica still have power, there was gravity inside the hanger… to which, the Morning Glory suddenly slammed to the ground and skidded to a halt halfway into the hanger, shoving cargo boxes out of the way.

"My bad, sorry guys," Max calls out over his shoulder, getting several dirty looks and a few fuck you's from the troops in the back.

"What the fuck T-Rex," Mark demanded, picking himself up off the floor of the cockpit.

"Seems the Argonautica has a force field around the mouth of the hanger, keep air in and space out," the prince called back while checking his flight systems for damage. "I had to push the Glory a bit to force our way through… and forgot about Argonautica's artificial gravity." Satisfied with the readouts, he turned to look in the back.

"Wait, so there's air out there?" Gunny asked, pausing from putting her helmet on.

"By what my scans are reading, yeah," Max nodded back. "It's a bit stale in here, but we have atmo."

"I don't care if the ship had atmosphere good enough to cleanse all of Equestria, keep your fucking helmets on," Mark ordered. "The hull has massive breaches and we have an infestation of parasitic-face humping-space monsters out there… better to play it safe. I do not want any of you having one of these xenomorphs popping out of your chest."

"Aww, he cares about us." Anderson muttered as the ramp lowered and the two squads spilled out, guns raised to their shoulders for any aliens. Satisfied that the hanger was secure for the moment, they made their way to separate doors on either side of the hanger, splitting up into their respective teams. Quickly and quietly they made their way to their objectives; Wolf to engineering and Raptor to the bridge.

All of the mentioned weapons in the little training bit can be used in a vacuum, so its scientifically accurate!