Squelch sat in quiet seclusion in her apartment on Aether. Her eyes scrutinized the next in the series of articles that she had spent the better part of the week reading with great interest. Well, if she was being perfectly honest, dread was the more apt description for what she was feeling at the moment.

The sage green unicorn had to admit that she hadn’t been as up to date on Our Worlds League politics as she could have been. Perhaps most clearly demonstrated by her ignorance to Moonlight Radiance’s absence from the capital. However, it seemed that she hadn’t been the only pony in the League who’d been unaware of quite a few of the goings-on. Even quite a few of the government’s entrenched bureaucrats were getting caught off guard by recent―very recent―events.

Yesterday, much to the utter shock of nearly every citizen of the Our Worlds League, Stellar Nova, one of the previous captain-general’s several foals, had made their reappearance back onto the public stage. Moonlight’s aunt had proven herself to be exceptionally, erm...prolific, where her progeny were concerned. To the point where Parliament was genuinely concerned about the possibility of a succession crisis between her many possible heirs.

When it had been her niece, of all ponies, who’d declared herself to be the next captain-general in the wake of her untimely death, there’d been a mixture of relief and surprise among the political elite of the League. On the one hoof, it looked like it could head off a grisly multi-part civil war, with the better part of a dozen heirs all vying for domination. On the other hoof, Moonlight had ostensibly been so far down the list of possible heirs that many worried if she would be able to hold onto her power for long.

From what Squelch saw now, it seemed that those latter concerns were quite well founded.

Not only was Stellar Nova regarded as one of the last captain-general’s more competent foals, he had also been very prominent on the political scene for a great many years leading up to his mother’s death. He’d been working very closely with Parliament, creating numerous inroads with the movers and the shakers there. At a glance, it seemed obvious that he was being groomed for his mother’s position. He had even been serving as regent until last year…

...Right up until he’d been presumed killed, along with his mother and older brother, in a bomb blast.

However, now it seemed that the reports of his death had been premature. What was more, was that the stallion had produced a document written by his late mother which explicitly named him as the designated heir to the captain-generalcy.

Ostensibly, that should have been the end of any question as to who was in charge of the Our Worlds League. However, there were quite a few legal tangles that fowled up the works. By design, the title of captain-general was one which was nearly impossible to revoke once it had been bestowed. Generations of holders of the title who had been wary of sibling pretenders trying to usurp the position had seen to it that it took more than merely being well-liked by the government’s Parliament to ascend once somepony already held the position.

Which wasn’t to say that it was impossible to revoke the title either. It would just take an overwhelming quantity of support from the Leagues representatives. Support which Stellar Nova was very quickly gathering about himself. Nopony in the League seemed to doubt that he’d be granted his cousin’s position within the year. It was especially not helpful for Moonlight Radiance that they were halfway across the galaxy at the moment, bogged down in a politically divisive planetary conquest.

Squelch had been half tempted to try and secure a meeting with Stellar Nova in order to discuss the ‘changeling matter’ with him, since even she saw no chance of Moonlight retaining her title. However, then she’d started reading into his history in an effort to learn more about the sort of stallion that he was, and get a better idea of how to approach him.

...That was where things had started to look bleak.

A year ago, she wouldn’t have batted an eye at a resume like his as being anything unusual or concerning. On the contrary, it made for the appearance of quite a competent and well-rounded pony with excellent leadership potential. However, given what she’d come to learn, the unicorn found herself nursing quite a few suspicions. To the point where she had to wonder if Stellar Nova’s apparent competence hadn’t been by design...

While he’d never gone to Equus specifically in his early life, Stellar Nova had worked at numerous HyperSpark Generator complexes throughout the Our Worlds League. He’d even served aboard a ComSpark survey vessel for a number of years. If that hadn’t been enough to make her suspicious of his nature, then the fact that Stellar Nova himself was crediting his miraculous survival of the bombing which had killed his mother to ComSpark agents, and a lengthy ‘recovery period’ on Equus…

There was no doubt in Squelch’s mind that a changeling was about to be placed in charge of the Our Worlds League. The only reason that it hadn’t happened yet was because of the procedural hurdles that yet impeded it. Hurdles that they were crossing one by one with every passing day.

All hope wasn’t quite lost yet, though. If Moonlight Radiance made it back to Aether quick enough, and with news of a decisive victory against the Kirin Confederation, she might be able to muster up the support she needed in the government to firmly bar Parliament from rescinding her title. While it was unlikely that she knew of her cousin’s return yet, that knowledge would surely be making its way to her through the HSG network in short order. Hopefully that meant that, once she received the news, she would be motivated to wrap up her invasion of Colton and return as quickly as possible.

Perhaps Squelch would be able to secure that earlier meeting with the captain-general after all. Especially if she could find some way to let Moonlight Radiance know that there was more going on with her cousin than she might yet suspect. How better to get an ally against the changelings than to prove that the stallion trying to take your title from you is one?

They might still have a chance at pulling this off after all!

Doppler’s eyes nearly burgled out of her head as the display she was staring at so intently lit up like a tree on Hearth's Warming. She’d honestly begun to lose hope that she’d be able to find anything at all that might suggest where the hidden HyperSpark Generator was supposed to be located. Even though such equipment required considerable power to operate, it wasn’t difficult to hide the emissions of their reactors by burying them deep enough underground. If the changelings didn’t want it to be found, then it wouldn’t be, in her opinion.

Even with the finely tuned sensor suite that Valkyrie had created for the Zathura, it would have been the next best thing to impossible to pick out the masked thermal signature of a buried reactor amidst the dozens of burning wrecks that Gallop Lance had littered the area with during the fight. The whole valley was now effectively covered in a warm smokey haze that created an almost homogeneous ‘cloud’ of warmth that made it difficult to pick out anything distinct at all.

The unicorn mare had seen no feasible way that she was supposed to locate the facility.

Then it made a transmission.

While the principles under which Jump Ships and HSGs operated were largely similar―cutting through normal space in order to bridge vast distances instantaneously―there were still significant differences between them. Most noticeably were the power requirements. A Jump Ship had to carry its own bulk of hundreds of thousands of tons, as well as the tens of thousands of tons that made up the DropShips it was lugging around, through hyperspace. An HSG carried only information in the form of electromagnetic pulses. As a result, it could create points that were much further apart, using much less energy, through ‘jump points’ that were much smaller, and thus harder to detect. Indeed, some transmissions could last for as little as a single millisecond, and would often be automatically flagged as an ‘anomalous reading’ by the ship’s computer and never even shown on sensors to the crew.

That automated ‘scrubbing’ was one of the many ‘quality of life’ features that Valkyrie had stripped from the Zathura as part of her effective redesign of the sensor suite. Which was why even the brief transmission was picked up by the DropShip at all. The increased sensitivity of the sensors, combined with the fact that Doppler had already had them trained over the valley at the time that the signal was detected, also allowed for her to get a very precise point of origin.

She’d found the HSG!

The unicorn’s horn burst to life, quickly tapping out a sequence of commands, “High Gain, we got a hit!” she announced excitedly, “sending you the coordinates now. Aileron? I’ll have a landing zone picked out for you in just a moment,” she assured the ship’s pilot as she finished passing the information to the comms tech and began to scrutinize the terrain layout nearby.

Now that she knew exactly where to look, she was able to tighten up the view on the ship’s scopes and get a clearer image of the local area. She soon let out an amused snort, “looks like an ‘abandoned’ mine entrance,” she noted. Further scrutiny revealed that there were quite a few tread marks that looked very recent...and like a few dozen tanks had all rolled through the area, “but it seems pretty lively to me.”

Their pegasus pilot was already pulling up a duplicate screen of the sensor tech’s view for himself to look at and nodded his head in agreement as he considered the scene, “I’d say you’re right,” he massage his chin idly with the pinions of one of his wings, “...I think I can bring us down right on top of the entrance,” he said, “we can use the forward guns to cover your insertion,” he turned his head to peer behind him at where the crimson pegasus had been standing near the rear of the bridge, waiting for exactly this revelation.

Blood Chit nodded firmly, looking over the image as well, “no telling how far in the facility itself is,” he said in a somewhat wary tone, “but I can’t imagine it’ll get too intricate in there. An HSG is an HSG,” he noted, “I’ll get my ponies ready. Let us know when we hit atmo.”

“You got it,” the other pegasus responded, giving a winged salute.

The head of security for Rayleigh’s Irregulars made their way to the Zathura’s garage at the nose of the ship. It had been chosen as the staging area for the insertion team that would be entering the changeling facility. That ‘team’ was made up of twenty-two ponies, consisting of the entirety of the companies security and recovery teams, as well as Tig and one assistant tech that she was bringing along as both a knowledgeable set of hooves to help her disable the HSG’s reactor and also as a backup...just in case.

The team was conducting final checks of their weapons, magazines, and charge packs. For nearly all of them, this would be the most significant engagement of their lives. There might be the odd pony who’d served on the front lines during some skirmish or other during a prior career with the planetary militia or House Guard, but for many of his ponies, serving aboard the Zathura was their first taste of ‘military life’.

It was certainly the case for himself, if Blood Chit was being honest. His prior work history consisted of search and rescue jobs, which rarely involved violence of any kind. Landslides, floods, structure fires, that sort of thing. It was fulfilling work, but not the greatest paying. Nothing that would comfortably support a family. This job would though. Of course, most jobs that offered high pay did so because of the considerably higher risk involved.

Like storming a fortified changeling base.

At least he didn’t seem to be the only pony who was about to lose their ‘firefight virginity’. The cyan kirin mare was standing off to the side of the garage, trying to hide how much she and the other tech were having getting their armored barding to fit right. They’d likely never had to wear anything like it before, the stallion supposed.

He stepped over to the pair, “your barrel straps need to be tighter,” he said, already reaching out with his wings to start making the indicated adjustment to the fit of the kirin’s armor. Tig jerked slightly at the sound of his voice, but quickly calmed herself, flashing the pegasus a sheepish smile as she allowed him to make the corrections to her outfit.

“Be gentle,” she cautioned in an effort to make a joke to relieve the tension that she was feeling, but her tone trembled slightly in a clear indication of her heightened anxiety at the situation, “it’s my first time.”

The other tech started coughing in an effort to avoid making a comment that she obviously wasn’t sure whether or not would be appreciated by her kirin supervisor. Then busied herself tightening her barding in a similar fashion to what Blood Chit was doing.

“You just have to play with it a little bit so that it’s easier to work with,” he flashed her a broad grin, and had the satisfaction of hearing both mare’s start to laugh in a far less nervous fashion.

“I wish more stallions were as knowledgeable as you,” Tig remarked, smirking. Her mirth was short-lived though, as the sounds of ponies chambering their weapons and the high-pitched whines of charging energy rifles made their way over to the trio, reminding them of their upcoming mission.

She swallowed back her nervousness, her rosy pink eyes darting away from the security ponies back to the pegasus again, “how dangerous is this going to be?” she asked, all signs of her previous joviality gone, replaced now by a sort of desperate need for a reassurance that she didn’t really believe would come.

Blood Chit let out a resigned sigh. He could have told the pair of technical equines all manner of lies to set them at ease; but he didn’t think it was a good idea to send them into a dangerous situation after understating the risk involved. Mig and Tig would certainly never assign a repair job to one of their techs without making sure that tech wasn’t also sully aware of the dangers involved in the job, after all, “one of the riskiest and toughest kind of fight that has ever existed in the history of warfare has been assaulting a fortified position,” he stated flatly, “traditionally, they have the highest casualty rates, and the lowest success rates.

“If we’re not fast enough, and don’t hit hard enough, we might even be pushed back right at the door,” he admitted with a wan smile, hating himself for causing the rather frightened exchange of looks between the techs. The pegasus then reached out with both his wings, placing one around each tech reassuringly, “but, even if that happens, my ponies and I will do everything we can to keep the two of you safe. Without you, there’s no mission at all,” he reminded them.

Blood Chit then looked up and whistled towards the other team members, “Fusilier, hey! Come over here!”

A periwinkle thestral stallion trotted over to the trio, “s’up, sarge?”

The scarlet pegasus looked back at the techs, “Corporal Fusilier here is one of my best. He’s former Lunar Guard and has seen more action than the rest of my ponies combined,” he now turned back towards the batpony, who was already smirking at the praise, “corporal? You’re personally responsible for making sure that both these mares make it to that reactor. You get them there alive, you get them out alive, got it?”

“An escort mission?” the leather-winged pony waved his hoof dismissively, grinning at the other three ponies, “Pfft! I could do that with my eyes closed, sarge,” as though to prove his point, the thestral closed his eyes tightly. A moment later his tongue clicked and then his ears trembled. The stallion then reached out with one leathery wing and picked up Tig’s pistol from where it lay on a table, along with a full magazine. He proceeded to load and ready the weapon in a single, smooth, motion before tossing it into the air such that it actually managed to land in the kirin’s open holster. All while keeping his eyes closed.

Fusilier then opened up one twinkling eye, grinning at the techs who were staring at him in awe, “see?” His wing reached out and snapped the pistol’s retaining strap. He looked over at Blood Chit, “and here I expected you to give me something hard to do!”

The pegasus stallion found himself on the fence regarding the thestral’s bravado. On the one hoof, he supposed there was nothing wrong with confidence. It was certainly preferable to the anxiety that the pair of techs were experiencing. As long as that confidence was merited though. In Fusiliers, the flier figured that it probably was. He hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said that the batpony had seen more combat than the other security ponies.

Honestly, that was what had Blood Chit most concerned.

It wasn’t that he questioned their competence. Far from it. Hotheads like Breech Block and Sabot aside, everypony on the Zathura’s security and recovery teams had prior experience in either law enforcement or some variety of military/paramilitary service. They knew their way around a weapon, and the basics of security procedures. Every one of them was more than up to the task of keeping the ship orderly and providing security for salvage and pilot recovery operations.

...but none of that was real combat. Most of the salvage sites had already been pacified by Slipshod’s lance, leaving behind little in the way of imminent threats. They’d had a ‘hot retrieval’ or two, sure; but even those had been brief affairs and involved little ‘active fighting’ on the part of the recovery team―what was a rifle going to do to a BattleSteed a half a kilometer away anyway?

This mission was going to be so fundamentally different from anything that they’d ever done. Worse, like he’d admitted to Tig, this was objectively one of the riskiest and least likely to succeed type of operation. These ponies were going to be thrown right into the deep end of a very unforgiving―hydra-infested―pool.

...how many letters would he be writing to next of kin tonight?

Would somepony be writing to his―?

“Atmo!” Aileron barked over his earpiece, drawing the pegasus out of his reverie. Blood Chit felt the deck plating beneath his hooves starting to tremble as the DropShip started hitting thick enough air to offer resistance, “touchdown in three minutes!”

The crimson stallion took a breath and let it out, steeling his nerves. Woolgathering was best left to sheep shearers; his attention would best be served focused on the fight ahead of them, “alright; form up! Team One, get in position; unicorns up front. Teams Two and Three: you stop for nothing. The moment we hit that door, assume they’re priming that reactor to blow,” he warned them, “which means we’re on the clock.

“We do not stop; we push. We push hard,” the pegasus took up position just behind the half dozen ponies who made up Team One, their primary assault force, consisting of four unicorns and two earth ponies. Behind him would be the ten ponies of Team Two. Their job would be to break off and secure corridors to keep them from being cut off from retreat if needed. Team Three was Tig and her escorts who would split off and go for the reactor while Team One secured the command center.

If Tig found that an overload had been triggered which couldn’t be aborted, there might be time enough to extract a few important files before they needed to evacuate. At least that way they wouldn’t need to leave completely empty-hoofed.

All three teams organized themselves and formed up into two even columns of ponies in the ship’s garage, their attention focused on the forward ramp that would be lowered once they’d landed. Hopefully Aileron would manage to land the vessel so that the entrance to the mine was directly ahead of them and they could just charge ahead without needing to be slowed down by a sharp left or right turn at the bottom of the ramp.

“Sixty seconds,” came the update from the pilot, “objective will be at one o’clock.”

Blood Chit repeated the message so that the rest of the assault force could hear, receiving nods of acknowledgement from the ponies around him. A soft right turn was fine. It wouldn’t cost them much momentum.

The stallion’s right pinions danced over the trigger mechanism of his rifle, almost as though he were making sure that it was still present. He saw a few earth ponies briefly raising a forelimb to surreptitiously reconfirm that their own weapons were slung to the preferred side of their withers. Only the unicorns didn’t seem to be fidgeting with the rifles floating in front of them. Though Blood Chit had to wonder if maybe there wasn’t some anxious equivalent that they were doing with their telekinesis. He’d have to remember to ask one of them after all this was over.

“Fifteen seconds!”

Even as the crimson flier yelled out the warning, he felt himself growing slightly heavier as the ship’s ventral thrusters ignited and started to slow their descent. He forced himself to take deep, steady, breaths. Just as he found himself having to do every time he’d dropped out onto a ‘Steed to facilitate a recovery. Even during their practice drills.

This would go as planned. His ponies knew what to do, and they would get it done. He was aware of that. He merely needed to convince his subconscious to believe it too.

“Touchdown!” the pilot called out over the earpiece just as the vessel trembled with the impact of its landing gear touching down on the ground. In that same moment, the forward ramp dropped away. Normally the hydraulics would force it to slowly lower down so that nothing was damaged upon hitting the ground. However, those hydraulic lines had been intentionally disconnected for this specific operation, as they didn’t want to wait the nearly full minute it took to open up the garage under normal operations.

“Move out!” Blood Chit yelled. The twin columns of armored ponies surged ahead, charging loudly down the ramp, the pounding of their booted hooves on metal being drowned out by their own battle cries and yelling. They pegasus easily spied the entrance to the mine, and their formation veered in its direction.

A hail of bullets poured forth from the opening.

The earth pony directly in front of Blood Chit seemed to go suddenly limp and tumbled to the ground in a heap. He leaped over the downed mare, forcing himself not to look back and make sure that the rest of the formation managed to avoid being tripped up by the body as well. He had to trust that they would manage. Besides, there wasn’t anything he’d have been able to do for them even if they had been delayed. Instead, he focused on taking advantage of his brief rise in altitude to swing his own rifle forward, cupped in his right wing. He snapped off a burst in the direction of the mine entrance. It was unlikely he’d hit anything, but it would hopefully make whoever was there at least a little more hesitant.

Even as he fired, brilliant streams of emerald and sapphire light flashed overhead. The Zathura’s forward batteries burst to life as their gunners endeavoured to help suppress the enemy. The potent beams of energy designed to strip away the robust armor of BattleSteeds and DropShips alike were more than up to the task of sanitizing a doorway.

Mostly.

Blood Chit heard a pained cry from somewhere behind him over the din of gunfire being exchanged by the assaulting Irregulars and the creatures intent on holding them back. Two down, and they hadn’t even made it to the threshold. The pegasus grit his teeth as he fired off another burst.

This was going to be a rough fight.

“Contact left!”

Slipshod’s hooves were in motion almost the same moment he heard Xanadu’s call-out over his helmet’s speakers. The linked sensor systems of their lance’s BattleSteeds meant that what one pilot’s suite picked up, was instantly relayed to the displays of the other two pilots. The changeling had seen the crimson blip appear on his HUD at about the same instant the zebra had picked it up.

His Crystal Cavalier heaved to the left as quickly as it could, but getting sixty-five tonnes of hardware to move with anything akin to genuine grace simply wasn’t going to happen. Well, at least not without rocket thrusters built into the ankles of each of its limbs, the stallion supposed as he saw Twilight Sparkle's heavier Rainbow Dash pirouette in a bit. The cyan and gold ‘Steed snapped off a helix of chromatic energy from one of its prismatic projector cannons…

...and missed the Twittermire that had emerged from the treeline almost right next to their lance by less than a meter. Xanadu’s Philomena was similarly trying to track the swift-moving light ‘Steed with his machineguns, as it was moving too swiftly for him to do more than score a brief graze with the beams of his energy cannons. However, even then he only seemed to get in a smattering of hits before it vanished into another line of dense forest and fell off the radar of all three ‘Steeds.

The Cavalier lurched and an alarm briefly chastised the changeling pilot for allowing himself to be outflanked as the second Twittermite revealed its proximity by unloading five missiles into the rear of his ‘Steed, “contact rear!” he yelled into his mic, though he already knew that it was a futile announcement. It had already fallen off his screen before he could begin to turn around. He let out a frustrated snarl, silently damning the infallible tactics being used by the ComSpark pilots.

“If this keeps up much longer, they’re going to whittle us down,” Twilight pointed out. It was hardly a groundbreaking observation, of course. This was the third such strafe that they’d been subjected to in the last five minutes. None of the ambushes had caused anything that could be classified as ‘serious damage’, to be sure; but it didn’t take an ace pilot to recognize that when the enemy was doing at least some damage to their ‘Steeds, and their lance had yet to inflict any...this ‘fight’ was only going to ultimately have one conclusion.

Slipshod’s eyes darted to the map, and the massive blue icon denoting the location of the Zathura. Not for the first time, the changeling ‘Steed pilot weighed the idea of returning to it and using the DropShip’s weapons to help them deal with the pair of light BattleSteeds. However, he also once more dismissed the thought as being too risky. The DropShip was their only means of retreat, and it was extremely vulnerable right now. Those Twittermites would have barely any trouble at all scrapping it’s main thruster assemblies and grounding the vessel permanently. The crew was much better off with him and the other two pilots keeping those ‘Steeds far away.

Not that that plan was proving to be particularly sustainable either, “I’m open to suggestions,” he said as he once more turned his Cavalier to cover his assigned sector and wait for the next pass from the masked enemy ‘Steeds.

“We need a way to mark the Twittermites,” the purple alicorn continued, “then we can get a lock, and the Zathura can unload with their LRMs.”

In theory that was a perfectly sound plan, and a solid solution to their current problem of trying to use slower and less maneuverable BattleSteeds to shoot smaller, more agile, targets. Long ago, equipment that would allow them to clearly mark those Twittermites in spite of their ECM suites had even been developed. Equipment like the NARC, a launchable beacon which attached itself to a target and acted as a homing beacon for tracking-capable missile launchers. Even a ‘Steed mounting stealth hardware would be easily trackable on sensors.

However, like most advanced systems that had been developed by the now-defunct Celestia League, none of the factories in the Harmony Sphere had the schematics to produce them any longer. Some ComSpark ‘Steeds used them, and Slipshod had little reason to doubt that the Dragon Clans still retained knowledge of the technology. However, it wasn’t anything that the three of them had access to at this precise moment. In fact, he knew of nothing that their own ‘Steeds had that could help them in this moment.

“Well, if you have any idea on how to do that―” the changeling began, only to find himself interrupting his own snide remark when an alert flashed across his HUD. According to his console, a member of his lance had ejected and their emergency tracking beacon had been automatically activated as a result. His eyes widened, and he immediately feared the worst.

Then he frowned in mild confusion. While his ‘Steed’s console insisted that a distress beacon had been activated, the status display for the other two members of the lance assured him that both ‘Steeds were still functional. The stallion peered more closely at the information that he was being fed, “Twiggie, what are you doing?”

“I assume that means you’re picking up the signal?” came the alicorn’s reply.

“Yeah…” he said, prompting the other mare for some sort of explanation. However, before he received one, High Gain’s voice was in his ear, sounding understandably concerned.

“Gallop Leader, I’m reading an ejection; are you okay?”

“I honestly don’t know―”

Twilight jumped onto the frequency now, though her transmission sounded different than it had a moment ago. Slipshod soon realized that this was because it wasn’t being relayed through her Rainbow Dash’s communications suite, but rather through her helmet’s mic exclusively. He knew this to be the case because he saw a purple alicorn wearing ‘Steed pilot barding flying past the front of his cockpit, “I’m fine,” she first assured everypony before finally explaining her plan, “High Gain? I need you to contact the gunnery crews and have them lock on to my ejection beacon. Be ready to fire when I give you the signal!”

“Lock on to―fire?!” the earth pony mare exclaimed, aghast, “what are you―”

It finally clicked for Slipshod what Twilight was trying to accomplish now. Creative, the changeling thought to himself with a smirk, “do it,” he instructed the Zathura’s communications tech, “get the lock, and have all launchers on stand-by.”

The alicorn herself had flown out of visual range within a few seconds, but the stallion was still able to track the position of her ejection system’s locator beacon with his helmet’s HUD. He saw it rise high up into the air and seem to hang there for several more seconds as the purple mare scored the ground for signs of the Twittermites. She must have spied one, because there was a sudden twinkle of violet light in the sky, and the next thing he knew the beacon was over a kilometer away.

“Target One marked!” Twilight declared over the communications channel, “fire!”

“...firing,” High Gain confirmed, though she still sounded audibly anxious about complying with the order.

Slipshod watched the navigational map on his console as the beacon’s signal continued to meander through the valley, moving at about the speed expected of one of the light BattleSteeds. However, before he could watch how it fared against the incoming hailstorm of sixty long-range homing missiles arcing its way, the changeling found his attention drawn up to the hatch above him.

Had...had he heard a knock?

He jerked in surprise a second later as a helmeted purple head popped down from above, right outside his cockpit. The alicon peered inside for half a second, and then vanished in a flash of magical light...only to materialize right next to the stallion.

Slipshod maintained that he did not, in fact, ‘yelp!’.

“Yelp! Hey, how about you warn a pony first, huh?!” he snapped at his unexpected guest.

“I knocked!” Twilight protested and then immediately began to rummage around the edges of his piloting couch, “aha!” she exclaimed moments later, right before the changeling―who was finding himself becoming increasingly more irate with her intrusion into his cockpit―heard what sounded to him like something that Mig was going to be yelling at him about later, “got it!”

The alicorn sat back up, holding a locator talisman in her telekinetic grasp. A second later, a slightly panicked High Gain was crackling over his headset, “Slip, are you okay?! Doppler said she picked up your rescue beacon―”

“I’m fine,” Slipshod said in a resigned tone, having anticipated getting a message very much like this once he’d realized what the purple mare was going after, “but go ahead and get a lock on my beacon with the LRMs now, okay?”

“...yes, commander.”

“Poor mare’s Narc,” Twilight quipped, taking the talisman in her hooves.

“Quick thinking,” the changeling pilot acknowledged, “stay safe.”

After a nod, she was gone in another flash of light.

Vesper was the epitome of an unhappy bug pony as she scowled at the camera feeds on the massive screen in front of her. While most of her attention was dedicated to doing everything that she could to address the rapidly unfolding situation, the back of her mind was consumed with persistent thoughts as to whom she would burden with the blame for this catastrophe. Because Queen knew it wasn’t going to be herself that took the fall for this!

It did not escape the facility director’s notice that the Mustang-class DropShip had descended directly on top of the location of the ‘secret’ changeling HyperSpark Generator mere moments after she transmitted the superliminal message requested of her by Colonel Myrma in order to aid the company commander’s invasion efforts. As impossible as it should have been, the only rational explanation was that the DropShip had, in fact, been able to triangulate the source of the transmission.

However, even if that had been what happened―and it was still not a certainty that it had―it didn’t explain how the DropShip had been able to respond and launch a ground assault so quickly. Things like that didn’t just happen on a whim, especially not with ships that had such small crews. That strike team had been ready to go, probably before even the BattleSteeds had been deployed earlier. Which meant that whoever these ponies were had already known―or at least strongly suspected―that there was something here to assault.

Again, she entertained the notion that they were looking for the ‘militia base’ that had served as the garrison for the force which had attacked the interloping engineering battalion, but Vesper had to doubt that a mere two dozen troops would have been used to try and secure an entire military base, if that was really what they expected to find.

No, they’d known that there was something else in the area that wasn’t nearly as mundane as a firebase.

The question then became how? How could a minor-league mercenary outfit have possibly been aware that a clandestine HSG existed here?

As impossible as it seemed, they had to have known that it was an HSG before they’d dropped. Because even a ship which could detect hyperspark pulses had to at least be already looking in the general area in order to have gotten a fix on the origin as precise as these ponies had. Which should not have been information that anycreature should have had access to.

Vesper was going to make it abundantly clear in her after-action report that there was absolutely no way that knowledge of the existence of the secondary HSG network being leaked to an outside party could possibly have been anything that she had been involved in. These mercenaries had to have known about that before they even arrived in orbit...somehow.

However they’d learned of it though was sort of a secondary concern for the facility director though. Of more immediate consideration was how she was going to repel the insertion team which had managed to breach the entrance and was advancing deeper in as she watched.

The fact was that, unlike publicly accessible primary circuit arrays, this―nominally―hidden facility didn’t have a large internal security force. After all, who exactly would they be securing the grounds against? The combat vehicle and light BattleSteed forces were onsite to dissuade interlopers that couldn’t be put off by litigation and government mandates, such as smugglers and the like. However, these arrays were not genuinely designed like the genuine fortresses that primary array facilities were. Those places had to be ready to deal rebellions and overeager invasion forces, after all.

Vesper’s ‘lings weren’t supposed to be getting into ‘real’ fights. They certainly weren’t supposed to be getting invaded!

The attacking force had been whittled down some at the entrance, but that had also been where she’d dispatched most of her paltry security elements to the moment she’d been alerted to the approaching DropShip’s projected landing site. Now they were blitzing through the corridors, and there was little question as to what their destinations were: the main generator and the control center. Both had been ordered sealed, but the doors that were in place weren’t anything that couldn’t be blasted open with a little bit of high-explosive.

The changeling mare cursed vehemently under her breath as she watched one of her last remaining security teams get gunned down in an intersection that served as one of the last obstacles between the invaders and the main generator. They’d be in control of the facility’s power production in less than a minute. Once that was done, it was only a matter of time before they controlled the whole complex, since they could then wait around for reinforcements to arrive if they so chose to.

She might not have to concern herself with writing that after-action report after all, Vesper thought bitterly to herself. Her horn illuminated and her magic tapped out a brief command on the terminal in front of her. A moment later, a stallion’s voice answered her, “generator control. What do you need, ma’am?”

“Initiate the overload sequence,” was her flat command. A few heads around her in the room briefly glanced in her direction, but quickly resumed their work. The shift in overall mood was impossible for a changeling to miss, of course. However, her drones knew what their duty was, and they would not shy from it. How these invaders had come to learn that the facility existed in the first place was neither her business, nor her concern. Prevent tangible evidence from being recovered from it was.

Vesper may have failed in many ways in order to have been brought to this moment, it could be argued; but she would not be known for failing in this regard!

“...understood, ma’am.”

The channel went silent. A quiet that seemed to permeate the room that she was in as well. Even the background din of console commands being tapped in had become muted. There was a difference, Vesper supposed, in knowing one’s duty, and relishing it.

Which hardly changed anything, of course, “begin scrubbing the system,” she instructed the ‘lings in the command center, “purge everything,” while the reactor blast should be more than sufficient to effective vaporize most of the facility’s contents, there was the possibility that some circuitry might yet survive. Modern systems were designed to be pretty robust in an age of near-constant warfare, after all. If that happened, then at least there wouldn’t be any data left on it which could be recoverable.

Her staff voiced their acknowledgements and began working.

Vesper let out a resigned sigh. That prospect of a boring career was looking a lot more appealing right now…

Fusilier felt his lips break into a pervasive little sneer as his fetlock pulled back on the trigger of his assault rifle. The burst that flew from the weapon tore cleanly through the barding and flesh of the pair of changelings which had made the mistake of coming around the corner in that moment. The thestral’s ears flicked about as he listened for any sign that others were coming, but he heard nothing more. He glanced over his shoulder and jerked his head, signally for the pair of techs to move up to his position, “clear!”

He’d missed this.

It wasn’t something he’d realized about himself before, the batpony recognized. In fact, he’d sought out the security job with the Steel Coursers―now Reighlay’s Irregulars―over employment with another genuine military outfit specifically because he’d felt like he wanted to ‘take things easy’ for a while. He’d seen his share of action with the Lunar Guard. There was even room to argue that he’d seen significantly more than ‘his share’. At least, he assumed that was what the pile of awards and decorations he’d been given by his superiors had been intended to showcase.

The stallion had never considered himself to be particularly ‘valorous’, or ‘heroic’, or whatever else the names of the medals he’d been given were meant to signify about his performance. He’d just...done what needed to be done to achieve the stated objectives. No more; no less. It had been a job to him; but a job that he’d intended to do well.

Everything he’d heard, and that he’d ‘known’ about ponies who had been through what he had, suggested to him that he needed a ‘change of pace’ and to take on calmer employment. Something that wouldn’t further agitate the PTSD that he assumed he’d acquired during his years in the military. A largely ‘ceremonial’ stint as a security pony working for a small mercenary group on a DropShip sounded like it would fit the bill. Something well within his skillset that wouldn’t place him in many active combat situations.

It was nice work. The crew was amicable enough, he got to travel to plenty of interesting places, the pay was phenomenal. There really wasn’t anything about the work that he could have complained about. He’d liked the job well enough.

But he loved this!

This whole day had been something of a revelation for the stallion. The anticipation of a dangerous mission. The thrill of a hotdrop. The fast-paced action of a breach and clear. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it, and how much he thoroughly enjoyed it! Truthfully speaking, the thestral found himself genuinely considering tendering his resignation with the Irregulars and going back to the Federated Moons to reenlist―

His ear twitched.

“Down!” he snapped out a fraction of a second before the barrel of a gun peaked out from an intersection. His wings snapped to his sides and he dropped out of the air in an instant. The unicorn mare accompanying him and the two technicians hadn’t reacted quite as quickly, needing his warning to alert her to danger. She’d almost managed to get her defensive shield up before the shots rang out.

Fusilier had the butt of his weapon tucked into his shoulder even as he hit the ground and was returning fire. The changeling that had peaked out screamed and crumpled to the ground in a heap, green ichor splattered in the wall behind him. The batpony stayed still for a moment longer, listening for any further sign of trouble. When he heard none, he glanced over towards his partner and was about to ask if she was alright, but stopped short.

The vacant expression on the face and the crimson pinhole in her forehead just beneath her horn was all the answer that the stallion needed regarding the cyan unicorn’s condition.

He hopped back into the air and looked back at the technicians. The kirin’s eyes were locked on the dead mare in front of her, her eyes wide with horror. This wasn’t the first body that the ‘Steed mechanic had seen today, and Fusilier suspected that she wouldn’t be the last either, “ma’am. Ma’am,” he repeated, louder. She jerked and numbly looked in the thestral’s direction, “we need to move,” he jabbed the barrel of his rifle towards the intersection where the changeling’s body was lying, “reactor should be right up here.”

Tig swallowed back her fear and nodded, “yeah...yeah…” the other technician wasn’t looking any less pale that his supervisor was, but he seemed to have a slightly easier time repressing his apprehension as he gently nudged the kirin to accompany him. The thestral supposed that not everypony was made for this sort of thing the same way that he appeared to be.

Sure enough, the door to the reactor room was just around the corner. Fusilier held the pair up behind him as he chanced a brief glance. He pulled back just as a burst of rounds ricocheted off the wall, missing him by inches. He clicked his tongue. Three changelings. Narrow doorway. There was no way that he’d be able to simply charge them. They’d be able to hold the position even against a dozen ponies like this.

The batpony alit on the ground and fished out a small cylinder from his barding with one of his leathery wings. He used his teeth to pull out the pin and then deftly tossed the object around the corner. It bounced and rolled along the floor before coming to a stop. In the meanwhile, Fusilier ejected the mostly empty magazine from his weapon and inserted one of his two remaining full ones into it. He retained the other to use later, if the need arose.

“Hold this position,” he cautioned the technicians, “wait for me to give the all clear,” he tilted his head, listening to the soft hiss that could be heard from around the corner. His nostrils tingled from the acrid smell of smoke. He waited another few seconds and then chanced a second brief glance around the corner.

No shots rang out from the reactor room this time. Understandable, given that nopony could be expected to see anything through the thick cloud of white smoke filling the corridor. The thestral clicked his tongue. The three changelings were still exactly where they had been a moment ago. One of them was even still leaning his head obligingly around the doorway, staring down the sights of his weapon, waiting for an attacker to come bursting out of the smoke.

Fusilier grinned and brought up his rifle. A single shot rang out, and the changeling fell over dead. He darted forward now, plunging himself into the smoke. His hind hoof lashed out and kicked the grenade, which was still actively spewing forth more of the obscuring cloud, right into the generator room itself. The thestral continued to hover, concealed in the smoke, keeping tabs on the two remaining changelings with intermittent clicks of his tongue. Once he was confident that the room itself was filled with enough smoke to hide him from sight, he darted in.

He wheeled to the left, bringing up his weapon once more and sighting in on the aural outline of the target that his brain formed from the returning echoes of his high-frequency clicks. Then the batpony hesitated. Something was off. The outline of his target had changed. It wasn’t the smooth surface of a horned changeling any longer, as it had been only a second ago. The horn was gone. The hide was fuzzy. The ears were tuft at the tips.

The wings were no longer gossamer, but...bat-like...

He was sighted in on a thestral!

Fusilier depressed the trigger of his weapon, and a dozen rounds ripped into the body of the changeling in front of him. The security pony flapped his wings and spun around in the air to acquire the last remaining target.

The bullet that tore through the side of his head killed him before his hyper-sensitive ears heard the shot.

Tig focussed on controlling her breathing. She found herself spending a great deal of her attention forcing herself to either slow down her respiration, or restarting them entirely, depending on the situation. She’d never been in a real battle before. At least, not this close to one. The DropShip got shot at every once in a while, and sometimes those shots would inflict damage on the ‘Steed Bay. But that was a very different matter from having bullets whizzing past her head at the speed of sound.

There was a reason that she was a ‘Steed mechanic, and not a ‘Steed pilot.

If there was any consolation to be had, it was that this whole ordeal was nearly at an end. They were at the reactor control room. Once Fusilier was done clearing it, the two of them could go inside and make certain that it wasn’t going to blow up the whole complex with them inside. Blood Chit’s team could secure the control center and take the time they needed to extract all the data that there was to get.

The kirin idly wondered if High Gain was going to be needed to be brought in to access any protected systems that were bound to be present. The yellow earth pony mare was unlikely to be any more used to seeing bodies than Tig was, the cyan mare thought to herself―

She nearly jumped out of her scales when Fusilier poked his head back out around the corner and looked at her, “Celestia!” she gasped, clutching a cloven hoof to her chest, “you scared me! Is it clear in there?”

The stallion briefly glanced at her and the other tech before nodding and waving for the pair to precede him into the room. Tig let out a relieved sigh and started walking. The corridor was still extremely hazy from the smoke grenade that the thestral had thrown to conceal his advance. She stepped gingerly over the changeling corpse in the doorway and slipped into the room.

Just as Slipshod had assured her: the model was indeed the standard design used in the Primary Circuit relays. That meant that checking for any signs of overload would be a trifling matter. Even if it was currently working itself towards a meltdown, there would still be a considerable window where things could be corrected before a point of no return was reached. She’d know almost immediately once she looked at the status displays.

Tig reached for her comlink, “Blood Chit? We’re at the reactor. Checking it now for…”

The kirin’s voice trailed off.

Being a much more spacious interior than the adjoining corridor, the smoke in the reactor room had begun to dissipate much more rapidly than what she had walked through previously. It was like standing in a light fog at the moment. Barely an inconvenience at all.

Which was why she was able to make out Fusilier’s corpse on the floor a few meters away. The corpse of the same pony who had just come out to get them a few seconds ago. The dual thunderclap of gunshots erupted from behind her, even as the kirin spun around to call out a warning to the other technician. She was already collapsing to the ground, most of her face missing due to the much more gruesome nature of exit wounds.

Tig’s horn lit up, her magic wrapping around the grip of her sidearm. Her eyes went wide with mounting horror as she saw ‘Fusilier’ turning the assault rifle that he’d used to kill her tech on her. They widened even further as she realized that the pistol in her holster was resisting her efforts to withdraw it. It wouldn’t come out! She looked down at the holster, crying out in fear and despair, her magic flaring even brighter as she yanked at the stubborn weapon with all of her telekinetic might; and still it refused her.

Her gaze locked on the retaining strap, which she had neglected to undo.

The cyan kirin became acutely aware of something hovering very close to her head. She glanced up, her rosy eyes focusing on the barrel of the assault rifle pointed directly at her face. Her magic failed her in the wake of the fear and despair that overwhelmed her, her whole body going numb.

She closed her eyes, unable to bear to watch the end come.

Blood Chit and the surviving members of his team fanned out through the control room, weapons trained on every downed changeling. A few shots rang out here and there. Whether because they had seen movement, or because they didn’t want to take the chance that any of the changelings were simply ‘play dead’, the crimson pegasus wasn’t sure. He focused on clearing his own sectors and waiting for the other ponies with him to announce their findings.

A sting of ‘clears!’ sounded out from various parts of the command center, finally culminating in Blood Chit’s own, “all clear! Frappe, Whipple, secure the entrance! The rest of you, find a terminal and download whatever you can. Until I hear from Tig, assume we have minutes, so don’t waste time sifting through anything. Grab files as you find them.

“Not like any of us would know what’s ‘useful intel’ anyway,” he muttered. A couple ponies who were close enough to make out that last little bit echoed the sentiment.

The feathered stallion turned his own attention to what was probably the console for the changeling in charge of the facility. Unlike the other changelings in the room, this one had opted to take its own life, the gun that she’d used to shoot herself in the head laying in a pool of green ichor. Probably so that she couldn’t be taken alive and tortured for what she knew.

Blood Chit sat down at her terminal and started tapping out commands. He soon found himself scowling at the display. He might not have been a ‘wiz’ with computers, but he didn’t have to be to recognize that hardly any files seemed to be left; and the ones that were appeared to be vanishing quickly. He cursed under his breath.

“They’re wiping the system!” he announced, “new plan: crack open the consoles and pull the drives themselves,” again, he wasn’t a deft hoof with this sort of thing, but he’d had friends in various law enforcement agencies back when he worked for emergency services who had regaled him with stories about being able to recover files which suspects had thought they’d deleted.

The pegasus suspected that the changelings likely had more thorough means of destroying digital data than might be available to the average Harmony Sphere denizen, but there was also the equally as likely possibility that the Clans had their own means of negating those more robust deletion methods. It certainly didn’t hurt to try.

Ponies quickly set about prying off panels in order to get at the internals of the consoles in front of them. Now all that remained to be seen was how badly they could mangle the hardware while trying to extract it…

Blood Chit’s comlink buzzed and a mare’s voice sounded in his ear, “Blood Chit? We’re at the reactor. Checking it now for…” Tig’s voice trailed off, prompting the stallion to frown as he waited for her thought to finish.

Then he heard gunshots. A second later, he heard the kirin cry out, followed shortly by more gunshots.

The stallion was on his hooves now, his eyes wide as he peered at his comlink, “Tig?” there was no response, “Tig?!” the frantic pegasus looked up at the large nearby display screen which was alive with well over a dozen camera feeds. He scanned through them until his gaze finally came to rest on the segment titled “GEN CON-1”. His heart fell.

He could see clearly the bodies of Tig and the other tech. Just a few meters away was the corpse of their thestral protector. His doppelganger stood over all three of the bodies for a few more seconds, before a flash of sickly green flame revealed the changeling that had been lurking beneath the disguise.

It took more self-control than the pegasus had thought he was capable of to suppress the urge to order a team to the generator room. He could tell from here that all three were dead. Never mind that their team had been twice that size to begin with anyway. Too many ponies had already died in this effort. If they remained any longer, none of them might end up making it out alive.

Besides, with the deaths of both the creatures who knew anything about how to keep the reactor from going critical, there was now only one order left for him to give anyway, “pack it up, ponies!” he yelled to the room before bringing up with comlink again and addressing the entire assault team, “all ponies: withdraw! I say again: withdraw! Back to the Zathura, now!”

He looked up again at the ponies in the control room, some who were still tugging at hardware embedded in the consoles, “now!” he yelled, “this place could blow at any moment; we’re leaving now!” that seemed to get their attention. All further efforts to extract drives ceased and the team reformed to precede back down the corridors and exit the facility. Blood Chit tried to feel at least some measure of satisfaction that he saw a couple ponies stuffing data drives into the pouches of their barding.

However, he had serious doubts that whatever could be recovered from them would prove to be worth the price that had been paid for it. As they withdrew, he signaled the DropShip, “Zathura, we’re returning to base. Be advised…” he felt his voice catch slightly as he very carefully chose how he wanted to phrase what he reported next, “we will not be able to avert the reactor breach.”

He’d relay the specifics as to why that was the case himself. Mig deserved better than to be told about her sister over a comm line.

“Understood,” came High Gain’s sober reply.

At some future date, Blood Chit was confident that he’d be able to look back on this moment with some measure of amusement. For, while their infiltration of the facility had been executed with meticulous coordination and precision, the teams moving with the speed and grace of seasoned veterans; their departure was nearly the opposite. It was the next best thing to a mad dash for the exit, with only the briefest care given towards checking corners and maintaining sectors of fire.

This paradigm shift wasn’t the result of any sort of panic, per se, but more so because while they knew the facility was likely going to suffer a catastrophic reactor meltdown, there was simply no way of knowing when it would happen. The crimson pegasus wasn’t going to insist on deliberately keeping their retreat slowed and risk having the rest of his team getting wiped out in the imminent explosion. Enough of them had died as it was.

They picked up the various ponies which had been left behind at crucial junction points to secure their exit route as they ran by. By the time they reached the vast garage area that had lay just beyond the entrance, Blood Chit had accounted for less than half of the ponies who had gone into the facility with him. More than a dozen casualties in almost as many minutes…

They reached the ramp leading into the DropShip. Several technicians were just making the final connections of the ramp’s hydraulics so that it could be closed again. Normally it wouldn’t have been a huge deal whether the ship’s garage was properly sealed against vacuum. Nothing in there was particularly vulnerable to the airless nature of space. However, this time there would be.

“Unload your weapons and place them in the cabinets,” Blood Chit called out as he trailed the last of the members of his team into the ship. By way of example, he withdrew the magazine from his own rifle and ejected the round from the chamber with a deft flick of his hoof. The crimson stallion then placed the firearm into a sturdy cabinet which usually held tools for the vehicle mechanics, but had been cleared out for this specific purpose today. One by one, the other ponies on the team hoofed over their firearms and grenades to Blood Chit so that he could lock them away.

Once the weapons of every surviving pony had been accounted for, the pegasus closed the cabinet and engaged the electronic lock. Even he didn’t know the code to open it again, “make yourselves comfortable, everypony. We could be here a while.”

Once bitten, twice shy. Though, Blood Chit supposed that the crew had actually already been ‘bitten’ twice where changeling infiltrations of the crew was concerned, between Slipshod and Doc Dee. In any case, they were going to make every effort to ensure that there wasn’t a third such instance. So, until such time as either Slipshod or Twilight came by and magically screened them for additional changeling infiltrators, Blood Chit and his team would be remaining sealed in the ship’s garage.

The pegasus knew that none of the ponies who had made it with him to the control room could possibly have been replaced during the mission, but there had been several cases where only a single pony could be spared to watch a corridor intersection. He’d have preferred to mandate that no pony ever be left alone―and there were more than a few reasons why that was a ‘best practice’ even when not worrying about being replaced by shapeshifters―their small numbers had made that an unrealistic proposal. Their options had either been to leave their exit route completely uncovered, or to risk having a crewmate being replaced by a changeling. Blood Chit wanted to believe that he’d chosen the least worst option.

Of course, now that he had the benefit of hindsight, the crimson stallion suspected that what he should have done in lieu of either of those choices, was to simply have scrubbed the mission entirely.

Nine ponies had come out with him alive. Nine. Twenty-six had gone in, to include Tig and her fellow tech. The stallion slumped down next to the wheel well of Squelch’s limousine, his head falling back and thumping lightly against the waxed fender. He felt numb. Empty.

Seventeen dead ponies. He wanted―desperately―to believe that it had been worth it. That they’d managed to collect material that would indeed prove worthwhile to the broader mission to usurp control of the galaxy from the changelings. He wanted to believe that. He needed to believe that.

Someday he even might.

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