Twilight Sparkle’s ears flattened as she galloped out of the airlock, eyes going wide as she looked around at the chaos surrounding her. Humans in blue and red jumpsuits were sprinting across the broad open space of the dome, lit only by the dim yellow emergency lights on the walls. Masses of crates and boxes had been set up as barricades at several large entrances and hallways, and two looked to be armed, with a few armored humans wielding rifles and pistols set up in defensive positions. Dozens of unarmed humans, many of them injured or children, were cowering behind other defensive positions, made of shipping containers, further in the dome.

The alicorn’s heart seized- it was so much like some of the villages she had seen during the invasion…

“A pony? Here?”

One of the armed humans, a male soaked in sweat and with wide blue eyes, had skidded to a stop in front of her party, looking up at them all with near tearful relief. Victoria and the captain of their transport stepped in front of the Princess- Victoria had put on her power armor, and was clutching a long rifle given to her by the crew. The man’s eyes flicked to her in surprise; he visibly stifled more emotions as he nodded to her.

“Yes, sir, we’re with the senatorial Crane transport Echidna,” the captain spoke up, “We’re here to evacuate you all.”

“A Crane?” the man repeated, scowling, “That’s all they could send?! I’ve got over two hundred people here! Why-”

“We were approaching Titania when the attack began,” Victoria interjected calmly, “No one sent us- we sent out a beacon to ask for more ships, though.”

“That’s just fucking great,” the man growled, rubbing his eyes before turning to several other jumpsuited men who had rushed over, “Start bringing the people in- families first, keep them together. We have to get all the kids and injured off station, that’s top-”

A loud, wailing alarm drowned out his words, and all of the men immediately turned to sprint for the defensive positions. Twilight’s blood turned to ice, recognizing the desperation in the run- one she even now was copying. Scrambling to the crates and stairs and flapping a few times so she could see over the humans, Twilight grit her teeth. Down a long, already bloodied and burned out partially, hallway, they came. Screeching, roaring; swinging their bladed arms and snapping their maws. Scrambling over one another to get at the fresh flesh arrayed before them.

Seraph.

The alarm quite firmly aroused Nathan out of his bunk and slumber, well-honed instincts having him halfway dressed before he was really aware. The subtle pitch of the alarm, something drilled into all Intelligence operatives trained on the Deimos, told him something rather… alarming. Full general quarters.

“Ugh, what is that?” Sunset Shimmer groaned, pulling herself out of the ponies’ shared bunk, thankfully followed by the grumbling forms of her compatriots.

Nathan smirked slightly to himself- they were learning, at least.

“It’s the station alarm, girls. Get dressed, we need to report, ASAP.”

The techs, in the weeks since the battle for Equestria, had begun development of Equusian-style bodysuits, for both utility in the Republic, and to study unicorn physiology. In a week, the mares would undergo surgery, to implant Terran AI units, and the military-grade neural package that would allow them power armor usage, and to interface with most military hardware. They were odd recruits, but Nathan was starting to see just how useful they might be, and so was command.

The operative’s eye flicked upwards as an icon flashed in his implanted eye-HUD- a communique from Command. He blinked to send it to his cochlear receiver.

“Operative, report to the command center with your charges, immediately. Station is now on Alpha Security level.”

A bolt of ice shot down the human’s spine.

‘Alpha… oh fuck.’

“We’re ready.”

The mares stood at attention- legs straight and heads held high, the tech-suits covering all but their heads in red-black polymers. Nathan grinned weakly.

‘Huh.’

“Let’s get moving. Something big is going down.”

Throughout the Unification period, Ceres had remained a vastly important hub for defense for the Outer System of Sol. Covered in the best communication hardware money could buy in the Belt, Ceres Command had kept a close eye on the ever-changing, ever-packed space of the travel lanes and mining/service colonies within Ceres space. And it was because of this hardware that it was among the first to realize that something was going wrong.

On any given day, the transponder signals flowed into the command and control computers at Ceres Command, on steady and rarely changing flightpaths. Most would switch off when they reached their destinations, but even those had trackable subsystems, for crime prevention. But out in the dead of space, they rarely ever just disappeared entirely, not with piracy being a null point since the last days of the Belt campaign. And yet, an alarm sang as nearly a dozen transponders on the fringes of Ceres’ space switched off in an instant, leaving both human crews, and the few Belter AI’s confused and alarmed. There was no call for radiation waves or comet storms of any size- malfunction could be attributed to one, but eleven?

Sensors were trained on that section of space; probes launched… and they saw them. Asteroids had always been a problem in the early days of the Outer System colonization and exploitation attempts, being unpredictable for human minds. The bouncing, crashing, gravity-dependant rocks had destroyed more than a few starships and service colonies before they had been mapped out by AI systems from Terra, or properly moved and locked with thrusters by engineer teams. These asteroids, however, were unlike anything the sensors of their masters had ever seen before. A mix of sizes, some rivalling Ceres itself, these space rocks bristled with mass driver systems, constantly putting out a cloud of projectiles into the void of space. At the rear of the strange vessels sat three massive fusion engines, powering the mass along at rates rivalling purpose-built starships. Within microseconds of these scans, AI Wellington, Charity, and Benson were firing off message buoys towards the closest FTL wormhole-point.

But the last had another purpose. Designation, Persephone; the command and control AI of Ceres itself, Persephone was a purpose-built military AI, and was devoting nearly all of her processing power towards the defense of Ceres’ main control space, and pulling in any and all nearby defense fleets in around the city-station. One of the asteroids, the largest, had begun to turn slowly towards the station, slowing down… but on a direct collision course. And the space between the heavenly bodies was quickly filling with the barely visible radar flickers of incoming mass drivers…

Mana was heating up the metal up and down the Titania hallway- it was starting to glow a dull orange, and would surely have burned any of the defenders had they cause to go down it. Twilight Sparkle’s legs shook as she stared ahead, horn glowing and sparking in a prepared overcharged kill spell. Repeated use was burning through her mana reserves, but it was all that was keeping the Seraph back- from this walkway. Near constant automatic fire thundered from the other defensive position, humans shouting to one another while fighting, or rushing to get more ammunition. Desperation and fear… The princess gulped.

‘Not again…’

“We’re loading up the last families now!”

The captain had rushed back to the position, sweating profusely and tightly clutching his pistol as he glanced back and forth between the hallway and his tablet, “Princess, we need to load you and your people.”

Blink. Incredulousness filled Twilight as she turned on him; she could feel herself scowling, but did not have the energy to correct the rude expression.

“We’ll be the last to board, captain; get everyone else on first, we aren’t-”

“We do not have room for everyone, ma’am.”

Twilight’s heart seized at the captain’s firm stare, his jaw set.

“My orders were to keep you safe, and to get you back to Terra. I will do so, with or without your agreement.”

“I am not leaving these people to die,” she returned with a growl, hoof pawing the deck, “They’re dying for these people! They have families! We have magic, we can-”

“Rarity!”

The alabaster unicorn had collapsed at her position, body soaked in sweat as she struggled to catch her breath; beyond her, several enterprising blue-armored Seraph lay in pieces, bisected by sharp pieces of metallic flooring. Applejack was doing her best to lift the mare up, but her own body was shaking. She and Pinkie Pie had been scrambling to help the survivors onto the ship, or helping to fix up the barricades in between waves of Seraph. Her green eyes met Twilight’s own, and she slowly shook her head. They had been pushed to the edge before, and none had properly healed before this kind of battle. The princess gulped thickly, ears flattening.

“I…”

“Get out of here, princess.”

The jumpsuited man, whom Twilight had come to find was named Jeremy, and was a security chief on Titania, was staring at them, holding up a crate of ammunition. His face was grim, bleak even, but set. He motioned to the ship.

“Sol needs you; my people need you.”

The crate thudded to the ground as he stabbed his finger towards her, hand shaking.

“You keep them safe, you hear me?” he growled, practically chewing his words, “Make sure they are safe. And make sure Titania isn’t forgotten. We…”

Jeremy lowered his hand, staring at her for several moments before picking the crate up again, “We’ll hold them as long as we can. Hopefully the fleet will get here. But I’m not willing to risk losing everyone. Go.”

Twilight wanted to say something, anything. But her mouth was ashen, and she could only stare as he turned to Victoria.

“Hope that bot in your head was recording this, Terran,” he spat, “Try to make the footage worth somethin’, got it?”

Victoria’s face couldn’t be seen past her armor, but she nodded slightly, turning to lift Rarity up in her arms.

“Princess…”

“Get in the ship.”

Victoria stared out the viewport as the Crane began to pull away; she and the rest of the crew had been packed into the cockpit, as every inch of available space in the rest of the transport was jam packed with survivors. Vaguely she was aware that they would have to find a berth soon; the live support system couldn’t tend to all of them like this, not for long. But her main focus was on the view of Titania- and Princess Twilight Sparkle.

It was dark. Without an atmosphere, any fire was quickly extinguished by the void of space; the only light came from the screen, and the flickering blue of the asteroid’s engines, in the distance. And it was quiet- the captain had the comms open, but there was nothing coming out from the moon’s surface. It was dead.

“What did he mean, Victoria?”

Twilight’s voice was hoarse, tight with emotion that the human could understand entirely. She had yet to move, eyes locked on the surface they were rapidly leaving behind. Victoria slowly reached to open her visors, then reached for Twilight’s shoulder- only to pull it back. She sighed.

“Terrans are implanted with AI minders when we’re young. Part of the surgery is a small camera in my eye that I can turn on and off at will. It’s… the culture is complicated, but ah…”

“Was it? Recording?”

Victoria sighed again, hands resting behind her as she stepped up beside the alicorn.

“Yes, it was.”

She peered down at her, biting her lip at the piercing, calculating look on Twilight’s face. She glanced up to meet her attache’s eyes.

“Send it to my pad, please. The… the country needs to know about this.”

“Of course, Prin-”

“Senator.”

Twilight turned away from the viewport, heading back towards a worried herd of pegasi settled near the far wall.

“I am a Senator of the Republic now. Time I started thinking that way. Come, Victoria. We need to talk.”

Author's Notes:

Phew! Finally blew past my block! I'm back!