"All Aegis Teams, prepare for deployment."

The cold, mechanical voice of the computer shook Emma Sinclair out of her awestruck stare at the battle going on kilometers away, the young blonde quickly leaning back in her pilot's seat and sounding the battle stations alert. The klaxon was piercing, and even after a month of trying to get used to it, it made Emma wince. They were like wailing banshees from her mother's old tales, and considering what was waiting for them down there... Hell, what was fighting them up here... A lot of good men and women were going to lose their lives today. Possibly a good deal of those on her own starship.

The Aegis Program was one of many civilian-sector projects that had sprung up in the month leading up to the Rescue. Civilian yachts and freighters all, they would be equipped with heavy armor and shielding and packed full of medical gear. Their brave captains, Emma included, had all volunteered to be in the second wave of landers, to get down on the ground and try to protect the refugee population Equus was sure to have. It was going to be damn dangerous. They had no idea of the scale of the Seraph land assault, or what their forces were capable. The reports from Equus had described mass suicidal charges that could break walls of pikes, spears, and even walls of actual stone. The vision that brought into Emma's mind made her shudder. Goddamn, were they fighting smart zombies?

And now, in space above the near-ruined world they had come to defend, Emma was beginning to have some doubts that there would be anything worth saving after this conflict.

"I want a system's check!" Emma barked out, voice scratchy from lack of water- she needed a damn drink.

"Shields at full capacity."

"Sensors online and ready."

"Medical suite fully operational, as are escape pods, and defense turrets."

Emma's second, a statuesque African woman in a Terran Stellar Police uniform, chuckled faintly from her standing position on the far side of the bridge.

"My men are eager to get down on the ground, captain. Our weapons are primed and ready, as is the surprise."

Emma let a deep breath hiss from her nose, eyes focused on the screen in front of her. That Seraph ship was taking an utter pounding. The Yamato and its battleship line had closed in on the gargantuan vessel, and each side were trading blows shot for shots. Several smaller human frigates were limping back behind the lines, and one was a shattered mess of metal and escape pods. The first casualties of the battle, and certainly not the last. Emma would just have to put some faith in her crew and her old bird that they would all make it through. A small smirk wound its way onto her lips. And her own flying skills, at least.

Emma Sinclair knew without any form of arrogance that she was a damn fine pilot, even at her tender age of twenty-four. She had been flying freighter-sized craft since she was fourteen and living a true spacer's life with her parents, trading ores from some of the independent mining companies on Neptune's moons to refining companies on Mars and Venus. She knew this brand of craft, the GS-3 freighter, like the back of her hand, which is why she had chosen it for the Aegis Project. Her family's GS-3 had once taken a direct hit from a car-sized asteroid, and they had all lived to tell about it. She was more confident in this ship than in any military-built corvette.

A bright blue light lit the window, and Emma jerked upright in her seat, habitually brushing back a lock of hair. Something had changed. The Seraph vessel was beginning to list towards the planet, and a faint stirring of glee began to rise up in Emma's heart.

"This is our chance. All Aegis Teams, launch! LAUNCH TO THE PLANET!"

"Full power to engines, go!" Emma snapped over the cheers of her crew, hands gripping and pressing the controls down hard as the ship leaped forward.

Emma was in her zone now. Her periphery vision was keeping track of the thousands of yellow dots simulating her brothers and sisters of battle flanking her, surrounding her, while her focus was latched firmly onto the viewport in front of her. They were heading straight into the thickest of the black smoke surrounding the battlefield of Canterlot; this would not be pleasant. Some of the Aegis Teams were beginning to break; that was according to plan. Emma's ship was in the Central A squadron, and would be heading for wherever the fight seemed thickest. The others were be looking for pockets of resistance to reinforce and mark on the charts so the ground troops would have some idea where to go. Others would be assisting the initial Assault teams in rescue and medical work. And others would be directly engaging any atmospheric flyers they came in contact with.

"Breaking through the dust layer... NOW!"

"...holy fuck..."

It was worse than anything Emma had ever imagined. Fires ran rampant through what had to once be massive fields and orchards, the sheer size of them boasting of incredible organizational skill. At this height and this speed, Emma had not expected to see any of the true horrors of ground warfare. She was sorely mistaken. Red... coated entire roadways and fields, and great chunks of red. Pyres and body-piles burned with acrid black smoke, filling the sky along with the fires that raged in the food supply. Buildings and entire villages were seemingly swept into piles of burning rubble- stone and thatch and wood and their inhabitants... all so much kindling and flame. Nausea burned in Emma's belly... but was scrubbed aside by a quickly rising tide of white hot rage.

Why? What could possibly have driven a race to do this to one such as the ponies?

Unlike many people of her generation, Emma did not have a pony pen-pal: with so much traveling around the solar system, Emma's family were simply not around enough mail carrier systems to reliably send the required packages. That had not upset Emma too badly, really. They still get plenty of news about Equus when they were in port, and were able to reap the benefits of the Trading Agreements. Emma's sister Codi had been able to get the physical body she had always longed for thanks to the potions of the Zebras, which had saved her from a horrific bout of depression at the tender age of twelve. And working around early, unshielded engines all his life had left Emma's father with a fast-acting form of bone cancer that had nearly killed him... till the treatment plan from Princess Twilight and Chief Medical Officers Fluttershy and Zecora led to a cure. Emma's father, at sixty-two, was still alive and kicking back in his homestead on Mars, getting fat and jolly off a lifetime of achievement. Though she had never met a pony face to... snoot, she owed them so much.

"Captain, to your left, grid square L-4!" One of her bridge officers yelled, not needing to point as Emma's eyes quickly looked up.

A circle of ponies, at least two to three hundred, were clustered together, technicolors behind a line of white and gold-clad soldiers. Puffs of gunpowder smoke hazed the air above the mass... while blasts of bright red would often light up the cloud. A tide of writhing black surrounded the ponies on all sides, undulating like wave as they crashed down onto the pony lines again and again, driven back... but each time, wearing down the circle into a tighter and tighter formation. It was going to be a killing field.

"Spool up the guns!" Emma roared, eyes blazing as her hands clenched on the controls of her beloved craft, "When I say so, drop that shield around the ponies!"

"Yes ma'am!"

A high-pitched whine of whirring machinery filled the bridge section as the four forward-facing heavy chainguns began spooling up into firing position. On the rear of the freighter, four more began to spin... and on the port side... the starboard... the aft. Heavy thunks signaled the grenade launchers dropping into their open positions, and ammo redoubts began to form on Emma's screen. She gave a feral grin as she punched the stick forward.

"Gunners! LIGHT 'EM UP!"

"Aye, aye, captain!"

The feeling of flying a multi-ton death machine laden with enough killing power to make an army brigade piss itself was... heady, Emma had to admit. White fire tore at the edges of her vision as her forward chainguns responded to her clench on the controls, the tracer rounds embedded with every third bullet letting her track her fire up and into the edges of the black tide. Red mist filled the air, and the closer they got, the easier Emma could see the deadly aftermath of her dive. Seraph bodies, looking ever-so-much like upright panthers, rippled and blew apart in great gory chunks as the 30mm x 113 caliber rounds ripped into them, their lines falling away in a dead panic.

"Die you motherfuckers!" Someone screamed behind her, and the lines blew apart further as the grenade launchers went into action.

High explosive and incendiary shells sent up great balls of dust, blood and fire as they ripped into the Seraphs, the creature tripping over themselves to get away from the deadly hail that had seemingly come out of the blue. It was amazingly satisfying, Emma found.

"We've got aerial incoming! Looks like airborne Seraph!"

"Drop the shield, and I'll touch us down," Emma replied, frowning deeply and immediately tapping her comm unit, "Any Assault units in the area, this is Aegis Team One. We are settling down near a group of refugees, but we've got a flood of enemies on both ground and sky. Any help would be mighty appreciated."

The shield emitter had been settled on the aft compartment of the freighter, and when activated gave out a bright blue light. The dish on the top of the ship gleamed so brightly that the glare even reflected on the forward viewport. According to Emma's charts, all the energy reports from the shield were nominal as it settled down in a wide area around the ponies, stretched out to its limit, but still an adequate defense. Bursts from the chainguns took care of any Seraph that had managed to survived the initial sweep and were within the shield. They didn't have to worry about the bullets ricocheting inside the dome- their bullets were specially charged to be able to pass through the energy layer.

Thankfully, the ponies seemed to realize en masse just what the ship was, and quickly made way for Emma to settle it down on the blood-caked ground; armored boots rang out on the metal floors as the Security marines raced for the lowering ramp.

"Give 'em hell boys!" Emma yelled out, grinning despite herself, "Tell the ponies to get their wounded on board! Doc, are-"

"We're ready, captain!" came the reply in an instant, the older woman sounding amused over the com, "Hell, we've been ready."

Emma merely smirked at that, turning back to her controls. The doc was right. They were ready for this. Come what may, the human shield was here, and they would defend this planet with their lives.

"Aegis One, this is PPA squad one! We have rendezvoused with the Wonderbolts and several units of the pony military!" Emma's com barked at her, "Give us ten minutes and we'll be there to help. What's the situation? Can you hold?"

Emma looked to her viewport, squinting her eyes. The Seraph had not taken long to get their act together; claws, blades, and fangs were already pressed tightly to the shield, utterly ineffective but for the mass of numbers behind each one. A sea of teeth and death. And with a thumb on her controls, her chainguns roaring in her ears to turn the mass of killing machines into a smokey cloud of red mist and dust, Emma laughed. No... no, she cackled.

"Oh, take your time, ma'am. We'll hold them as long as you need."

Author's Notes:

Phew. In this chapter, we wanted to explore some humans who didn't have so much a personal investment in the ponies, but still felt like they needed to be apart of the invasion. ^___^ And a little peek into human life at that time. More of that will come up, of course, but you know... battle first.