“Where are they headed? Can we predict a landing site yet?”

Moonlight Radiance tried to keep her tone even and detached, as though she were asking about some routine itinerary information. She felt like she even mostly succeeded in that regard. However, any pony who was watching the progressively increasing distortion of the projected terrain hovering above where her hoof was pressing into the surface of the table would have been left with little doubt as to the heightened levels of anxiety that she was feeling. Only when the nearby mountain range began to flicker out of existence did the captain-general withdraw her hoof and plant it stoically on the ground.

The arrival of the interloping Jump Ship hadn’t caused the leader of the Our Worlds League much concern initially. Even when they’d confirmed that the vessel was flying under the direction of the Nirik Light Pony, the pet mercenary force for the Kirin Confederation, she’d hardly batted an eye. Of course the Confederation would be massing forces for a counter-attack. That was to be expected.

What hadn’t been expected was for the Light Pony DropShips to undock and begin making their way towards Colton almost immediately upon arriving in-system. Four Friendship-class ships would only be able to hold a single battalion of BattleSteeds, along with limited support personnel and equipment. That assumed that one or more of those ships wasn’t loaded down with infantry or vehicles in lieu of ‘Steeds, of course. In any case, such a force would hardly be up to the task of uprooting the multiple brigades of BattleSteed groups and their support that were currently securing the planet.

The smart thing for the Light Pony ships to do would have been to hold their position near the zenith of the system primary and wait for the arrival of additional allied forces until they had at least an equal number of BattleSteeds with which to confront the Gray Lines Legion troops securing the planet. Ideally―for them―they would have done well to wait until they had at least double the number of ‘Steeds that Moonlight possessed.

Yet, the small flotilla of DropShips had not seen fit to do the sensible thing and wait. They were speeding their way towards Colton, their fighter screens in place, clearly intent on making planetfall. The unicorn stared at the plotter, trying to decide if the commander of those forces was merely insane, or if there was some grander strategy at play here that she couldn’t grasp. As much as she would have loved to disparage the quality of the Light Pony’s commanders, the truth was that they were a respectable outfit who didn’t put outright morons in command.

So, unless whoever was over there was feeling particularly suicidal...there simply had to be a side to this that she wasn’t seeing!

This apparent ignorance was helped not at all by the recently received―and deeply unpleasant―news that she had received less than an hour ago. Her cousin, Stellar Nova, had turned up on Aether. Alive. Worse, he’d even managed to produce a writ authored by Moonlight’s aunt which specifically designated him as her preferred successor.

Under most circumstances, Moonlight Radiance wouldn’t have been overly concerned about any of that. She had already been granted the title of Captain-General, and that position was nearly impossible to revoke. Of course, there was ultimately quite the world of difference between nearly impossible and actually impossible. Hypothetically, if a stupendous majority of the members of the Parliament were to enact a resolution declaring Moonlight ‘unfit’ for the position, the title could be stripped from her and passed on to her cousin.

As much as it pained her to admit it, the unicorn knew that she had not been particularly well-liked by the entrenched politicians of her government. She’d not had the benefit of being groomed as an ‘heir apparent’ like Stellar had. However, there had not been quite enough blatant opposition to block her ascension, so Moonlight had managed to acquire her nominal rulership of the Our Worlds League upon her aunt's tragic demise. She’d sought to galvanize additional support within Parliament by proving her mettle. She’d been able to conceive of no better way to do this than by personally expanding the influence of the League.

It had somewhat shocked her how much the notion had been opposed by some in her government―and her own military too. The unicorn had attributed that hesitance to cowardice. After all, politicians weren’t soldiers like she had been. War and fighting were things that they didn’t understand, and so they were afraid to embrace them. The same went for many of her senior officers, who were little more than political appointees themselves, and hadn’t sat in a BattleSteed cockpit since their academy days on Equus. It was no wonder to the mare why they had resisted her ambitions.

Ultimately, that was why she was relying so heavily on Gray Lines Legion forces for this operation. She intended to prove to her generals that war with the Confederation was nothing to fear. That they could be ousted from a world with little real effort by even a moderate-sized force. Once she had completely secured Colton, Moonlight would return home in triumph, fire all her current generals for their cowardice, and install her own fresh cadre of like-minded officers.

There was an argument to be made for simply doing just that in the first place, but Moonlight had been so incensed by the reticence of her military leaders that she had been utterly determined to humiliate them before sacking them.

Of course, with the return of her cousin from being dead―apparently―the unicorn was feeling herself being placed under additional pressure to deliver. Before, if the invasion had failed, she could have laid the blame at the hooves of her incompetent and unhelpful generals. However, now that she’d taken sole command of a mercenary detachment to unilaterally lead the surprise invasion of Colton, there was no doubt in her mind that her cousin and the Parliament would be able to twist any failure into a sign of her incapability to lead competently. They’d almost certainly include it in whatever articles of impeachment that they drafted to remove her from the position of captain-general and replace her with her cousin.

The unicorn mare felt her teeth grinding as she continued to gaze down at the plotter. Colton was hardly a major industrial hub. It was barely better than a backwater world. She’d chosen it partially because of how undeveloped―and thus how poorly defended―it was. An easy target to make for a smooth invasion in order to prove her point regarding the vulnerability. Naturally, any half-way decent military-minded officer would see that being able to conquer a world like Colton was hardly indicative of the overall vulnerability of the Kirin Confederation, but it wasn’t the military that she was trying to impress with this feat.

It was the public. The easily pliable and gullible masses who were largely ignorant of such distinctions as the difference between a fortified and a peripheral territory. Moonlight Radiance would be able to frame herself as one of the greatest military leaders in League history by merely having to point out that she was the first captain-general in centuries to lead the conquest of another world. It would technically be the truth, and a massive source of popular support.

She could ride that popularity out until the next election cycle, pushing for the replacement of difficult ministers of Parliament by her own supporters. Once she had a legislature that supported her, she’d be unstoppable!

The mare glared at the quartet of crimson blips traversing onwards the planet.

But, if she lost Colton…

If she suffered even a significant setback that the pundits back on Aether―and her cousin especially―could exploit for long enough to get her ousted…

“Course plotting completed, Ma’am!” one of her command staff announced. A moment later, several different dashed lines appeared in the holographic display, “if they divert in the next hour, they can make an orbital insertion at―”

“―and get shot out of the sky in minutes,” Moonlight snapped, not bothering to hide her annoyance that the possibility had even been suggested. These new arrivals might be brazen, but they couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to try and enter planetary orbit for any real length of time. It was obvious to even a moron that Gray Lines Legion forces control the space around Colton, with far more DropShips and fighters than could be fended off by a force of four ships and their paltry escorts.

“Where are they landing?!”

There was a brief pause as the second dashed line finished being plotted to a point on the planetary surface, “the capital spaceport, Ma’am.”

Of course; that made sense, Moonlight thought to herself. It was the obvious point for establishing a beachhead. It contained many of the warfighting materials that the Legion forces on the planet were using to finish securing the planet, which would certainly become quite the boon to any expeditionary forces which sought to lead the counter-attack. Simultaneously benefitting theme, while hampering her own forces on the surface. The spaceport facilities would also allow them to unload any followup forces and supplies much more efficiently than landing out in the wilderness. Depending on what they brought with them, they might even be able to dig in deep enough to become impossible to remove until their inevitable reinforcements showed up.

Her forces still controlled the planetary orbitals, but with a direct line to the surface, the Light Horse units that followed these first four DropShips might not need to wedge her out in order to grind down her forces trying to secure the planet. She could eek out an eventual victory, likely, but if they took the spaceport it would set the invasion back quite a lot. Enough perhaps that her detractors back on Aether could use it as a sign of her invasion’s ‘death kneel’. Long enough to place her cousin in charge, at any rate.

The unicorn turned away from the plotter and accessed a nearby console, “what units do we have that can be pulled back from the front―”

Moonlight didn’t finish her question, her eyes widening. No. No, that was the easy solution. The coward’s solution, the mare realized. Redeploying forces from active engagements to snuff out this attempt to outflank her was far too obvious a response. It almost certainly had to be what the commander on those DropShips was counting on. She’d pull back forces, reducing pressure on the planetary militias.

What if this was what those militias had been waiting on? This moment when the pressure let up? Up until this point, driving them back had been a patently easy affair, as was to be expected when sub-par part-time BattleSteed pilots were put up against hardened Gray Lines Legion veteran mercenaries. She’d thought nothing of it.

What if that was the point? What if they’d been pulling back in order to lull her into a false sense of security?

Moonlight recalled the ambush of her engineers by a previously unknown force. She had assumed they were smugglers, or some such. What if they had been additional, previously undetected, planetary defense forces? What if they weren’t the only such force hiding out in the wilderness? Entire divisions of troops could be hiding out, just like those had been, waiting for the right moment to strike. A moment like pulling ‘Steeds off the front lines, making them vulnerable.

No. She wasn’t going to risk that. She wouldn’t pull back forces. It was too much of a risk.

Besides, it wasn’t like all of her forces were on the planet already. There was still one group which had not been committed: hers. Herself and her personal guard.

The mare’s lip curled in gleeful satisfaction. Besides, what better way to cement her capabilities as a leader of the Our Worlds League than by personally leading the force which crushed the counter-attack? She’d save the invasion and prove her mettle to the skeptics back home. Once the spaceport’s security was ensured, she could then return to Aether and put down the little coup that was brewing before it got too far along.

This time, she’d make certain that her cousin stayed dead. With her own hooves, if necessary.

Never trust a bomb to do what truly needs done, the unicorn sneered.

“Ma’am,” one of her aides began, respectfully, “perhaps if you were to lead―”

“Prepare my Star Hunter,” Moonlight snapped, turning away from the console and already heading for the command center’s exit, “alert the House Guard. I want them to be ready to drop within the hour.”

The aide blinked with mild surprise, initially, then quickly recovered and nodded, hiding a smile, “of course, Ma’am,” as they watched the captain-general head for her quarters in order to don her pilot’s barding, they offered silent thanks for making the task of convincing her to go down to the planet herself so much easier.

It seemed that, sometimes, plans just moved along with hardly any issue at all. They turned back to their station and tapped out a quick set of commands that would see to it that a properly discrete message was transmitted on a coded frequency, updating their superiors on the state of matters.

Minutes later, a kirin mare reclining in the command chair on the bridge of a Nirik Light Pony DropShip received a notification from a nearby console. She glanced over, read the brief report, and smiled.

Slipshod canted his hind hooves back on the throttle pedals of his Crystal Cavalier as he eased it into the ‘Steed Bay of the Zathura. No sooner had the tail end of his BattleSteed cleared the bay door than it started to close behind him. He could feel the vibrations through his piloting couch of the DropShip’s ventral thrusters idling. The ship would be going airborne the moment the last of the ‘Steeds was aboard in order to avoid the possibility of being caught in the blast of the changeling’s secret HyperSpark Generator facility.

The golden stallion let out a deflated sigh as he brought his Cavalier to a stop and began to power down its systems. He’d hoped that they’d be able to successfully secure the facility so that they could study its files thoroughly. However, he’d recognized that that outcome had hardly been a sure thing from the outset. Hopefully Blood Chit’s team had been able to retrieve some information of value though.

He finished powering down the ‘Steed at about the same time that the gantry reached his cockpit hatch. Extracting himself from his harness, the changeling opened the hatch and climbed out. The stallion started to remove his helmet, but paused halfway through. Something was off. The mood of the ship was sour. Very sour.

His first instinct was to attribute it to their failure to secure the HSG. However, Slipshod had made it clear that doing so was hardly a deal-breaker where their overall resistance to Queen Chrysalis' control of the galaxy was concerned. Getting the information there would have been a huge help to them, but failing to do so wasn’t going to set them back or anything, so no big loss. This level of almost outright despair simply didn’t make any sense.

Slipshod was so distracted by the despondent emotions permeating the ship that he nearly lost his balance when the Zathura lurched upwards, heading for orbit. He managed to recover and scampered off the head of his Cavalier and onto the waiting gantry. It didn’t take him long to see confirmation of the somber state of things among the crew when he caught sight of the faces of the nearby techs trotting towards his ‘Steed. Their gaits were mechanical and stilted; their eyes haunted. A few were even red from...crying?!

The stallion felt his gut suddenly tie itself into a knot.

Something had gone wrong. Very wrong.

He wanted to pull one of the technicians aside and find out, but Slipshod recognized that he wasn’t quite finished with his duties yet. He and Twilight were due at the garage the moment they’d returned to the ship, so that they could clear Blood Chit and his team to enter. Besides, who better to give him answers to his questions about what had gone wrong with the mission than the pony who had led that mission?

The changeling stallion caught sight of Twilight Sparkle as she emerged from her Rainbow Dash. It didn’t seem to be lost on her either that something was off about the demeanor of the technicians. The pair exchanged glances, and then the alicorn hurriedly shucked her helmet and glided towards the ‘Steed Bay exit, heading for the garage. Slipshod galloped after her.

A pair of guards stood watch of the garage entrance, stepping aside and unlocking the door when they saw Twilight and Slipshod arrive. They rushed inside. Slipshod froze.

The grief was almost stifling. The changeling threw up emotional blocks to keep it from overwhelming him completely. It hardly took him a moment to discover why, of course. He didn’t even need to conduct a hard count in order to see that there were far fewer ponies here than there should have been. Barely a third of Blood Chit’s team was present.

Slipshod’s jaw was slack. How could so many have not returned? He’d specifically told them to abandon the mission if it looked like they’d be facing too much resistance! It would have been unrealistic to expect than nopony would get hurt or killed, of course; but to lose over a dozen?! To a failed mission? What had Blood Chit been thinking?!

The golden stallion’s eyes locked on the pegasus head of security, slumped against Squelch’s limousine, his eyes glazed over. The activity at the entrance to the garage had only just caught the crimson pony’s attention before Slipshod was upon him, “what the fuck happened?!”

He hadn’t meant to yell, not really. He’d simply been so overcome with the shock of seeing so few members of the team returning. Especially when he’d specifically cautioned against the need to take such losses. This had been the farthest thing from an ‘at all costs’ kind of mission. Clearly something had gone horribly wrong, and the changeling had to know what it had been.

“We failed,” was Blood Chit’s flat, detached, response. He’d barely reacted to being accosted by Slipshod at all, seeming almost listless.

“Why didn’t you withdraw?” the changeling demanded glaring now at the pegasus, “I thought I told you this mission wasn’t that important?”

That got a rise out of the crimson stallion. In a flash, the head of security went from listless to incensed. His wing lashed out and knocked Slipshod’s hooves away from him, his eyes glaring daggers into the changeling, “No, you told us that the information in there could save billions of lives! How could you possibly think that ‘wasn’t that important’?!”

The response caught Slipshod momentarily off guard, causing him to take a step back from the now irate pegasus. Then his own expression hardened once more, “well I didn’t mean for you to go and get everypony killed!”

Blood Chit was on his hooves now, his eyes burning with rage, and glistening with barely restrained tears, “Oh, I’m sorry; I must have missed the part of the briefing where you put out a hard limit on the number of ‘acceptable casualties’!

“What was that number, by the way?” the pegasus went on, his words burning with fury, “should I have turned everypony back when Currants got downed in front of me in the first five seconds? How about when Thistle bought it before we reached the entrance?

“How many, Slip?! How many dead ponies to get the intel to save billions of lives was ‘too many’?!”

Slipshod didn’t respond. He couldn’t. He was still processing that two ponies had been killed before even making it inside the HSG. He’d known it would still be somewhat defended, but he’d hoped that they’d meet less resistance than that from the outset. Of course, if anything, that should have been a sign that the mission was much riskier than they’d thought, and an indication to abort it entirely.

“You should have aborted the mission,” the earth pony finally affirmed, “if you lost two before even getting in, you should have known than you didn’t have the forces to take the facility,” he looked hard at the other stallion, “you shouldn’t have just thrown away more lives like an idiot―”

Slipshod was very nearly spun around by the left cross to his face, and went tumbling to the deck, “fuck you! Billions. Of. Lives,” the pegasus seethed, glaring down at the earth pony moaning on the ground, “that’s what you said!

“Now, I get that a changeling like you probably doesn’t think the lives of other creatures are worth a damn, but they matter to us! Don’t you dare say that I ‘threw them away’! Those were my friends who died out there, trying to complete the mission you gave us!” Blood Chit was screaming now. Fortunately, from Slipshod’s perspective, he wasn’t throwing any more punches.

Nonetheless, Twilight decided that it was best to intervene and ensure that remained the case. The larger purple alicorn interposed herself between the pair of stallions, facing the irate pegasus, “Blood Chit, you have every right to be upset,” she said. Her amethyst eyes surveyed the room, seeming to take note of who wasn’t there, rather than who was, “we’ve all lost ponies important to us today, and we know you did everything you could to keep them safe…”

Slipshod gently touched his cheek, wincing slightly at how tender it felt. His lip felt inflamed, and he could taste a little bit of blood with his tongue. That pegasus had a pretty solid left hook. The changeling spent a few seconds listening to the alicorn feed Blood Chit a litany of platitudes and soothing words. To her credit, he could sense that she even meant most of them sincerely. The head of security was calming down―slightly―as she spoke. The changeling fought back the impulse to contribute. He suspected that his own efforts to soothe things over wouldn’t be particularly appreciated right now.

Besides, he seemed to be off his game at the moment anyway. He hadn’t meant to aggravate things with Blood Chit like that. He’d just…

It had been very obvious who hadn’t returned from the mission.

He wasn’t paying much attention to what Twilight was saying anymore as he slowly got back to his hooves. Numbly he headed for the exit. He got the impression that Twilight was trying to say something to him now, but he didn’t feel like dealing with it. He waved a dismissive hoof behind him in her direction and left. She’d be more than up to the task of sifting through the survivors and ferreting out any changeling infiltrators among them. After all, there was less than half the number they’d thought they’d have to screen.

The mission you gave us…

The changeling winced. Had...this really all been his fault? Had he set up ponies to die because of something he’d told them again? It had dug at him enough when it had just been Valkyrie. Slipshod dreaded how long this was going to bother him now that so many others had perished.

Of course, that begged a good question: why did it bother him so much?

Blood Chit had hit on another good point―besides his cheek―after decking him: he was a changeling. He was separate from the other members of the crew in just about every respect that really mattered. His race was already responsible for an unfathomable number of deaths among the other creatures of the galaxy. Why should a dozen more bother him so much? They were the ones who really stood to gain from overthrowing Chrysalis, so why shouldn’t they be the ones who got to decide how much they were willing to risk to do so?

Obviously, Slipshod did have some chitin in the game. Winning meant getting his revenge, and losing meant his certain death; but those were paltry stakes compared to what so many others had on the line, and especially what they stood to gain. If the creatures of the galaxy wanted to sacrifice themselves by the thousands―even the millions―to end the reign of the changelings, that was their prerogative.

It shouldn’t matter to him how many of the ponies on this ship got themselves killed.

It shouldn’t...but it did. It did matter to him; and he hated that it did.

The creatures on this ship shouldn’t have held such importance for him. He was a changeling. That meant that other creatures were nothing more than a source of food and resources for him to exploit to his own ends. Their wellbeing shouldn’t matter to him beyond what a rancher might feel for their herd of cattle. He worked to keep them happy and safe, sure; but only because doing so guaranteed a ready food supply for himself. The individual members of that herd shouldn’t matter all that much. Each one lost was easily replaceable.

Lose a Valkyrie, get a Xanadu. Easy. Simple. No further thought on the matter required.

Ponies could be replaced. After all, the galaxy was rife with the little morsels.

It shouldn’t matter that Tig and so many others had died. Squelch could just hire on more security ponies and BattleSteed techs at the next major port they reached. The holes in the roster could be filled in a day. It would be like nopony had even died.

…

Slipshod slammed a hoof against the wall of the empty corridor. The sound of it echoed in the silence around him. His lips pulled back in a sneer as he inwardly cursed himself for refusing to actually feel the way he wanted to. The way that he was trying to convince himself that he was supposed to.

They were just ponies. They didn’t matter. Not to a changeling. That wasn’t how this whole thing worked. He lived among them, used them, and tossed them aside when they ceased to be relevant. That was the way of things for a changeling like himself. The whole crew could get wiped out, and he’d just find another to sustain him. At the most, it would be a minor inconvenience.

Even if they all died because of something he’d done, it shouldn’t bother him.

And yet...it did. Damn him if it did bother him, and he couldn’t for the life of him understand why! They were just fucking ponies!

Another pound against the wall.

He was seething through clenched teeth, raging at himself for his inability to remain rational. If he didn’t know any better, he’d have thought that he was grieving too, at the loss of so many members of the crew. That would have been ridiculous, of course. Changelings didn’t ‘grieve’ over dead ponies. Or kirin, for that matter. That was what lesser creatures did.

Yeah...that was it, Slipshod thought to himself as he managed to steady his ragged breathing and begin to get himself back under control. This wasn’t how he actually felt, it was just the emotional feedback from the rest of the ship’s crew. He’d thrown up a few hasty mental barriers to blunt the worst of the negative emotions that had been permeating the garage, but those slapdash measures could hardly be expected to fend off the despondency of half and hundred creatures in close proximity.

That thought firmly in mind, the changeling sucked in a deep breath, straightened his posture, and firmly rebuked those feelings that were threatening to overwhelm his sensibilities. He reinforced his emotional barriers and buried those pervasive thoughts away. Death was what happened to creatures who were part of mercenary units. Dwelling on how many―and especially who in particular―had died served no productive purpose. The crew would recover from the losses, and Squelch would hire replacements to rebuild their company’s numbers.

In no time at all, things would get back to normal and it would be like nothing had ever happened.

Slipshod had only just managed to solidly affirm that thought in his mind when a yellow light began to strode from above. A heartbeat later an abrasive alarm began to echo throughout the ship.

The changeling’s first thought was that they’d come under attack. However, this notion was quickly cast aside, as the alert that signalled the crew to assume their appointed stations during such a crisis sounded different, and the strobe would have been red in color. This wasn’t an attack; but it was an alarm that indicated something almost just as imminently lethal for a crew about a space-faring vessel: a fire!

Once more, annoyingly, Slipshod assumed that some system had been damaged and had shorted out or exploded as a result. Of course, they’d certainly taken no damage since lifting off―they’d have all felt it if that had been the case―and he hadn’t heard any announcement from High Gain while planet-side that the Zathura had been struck by any enemy fire. Whatever this was wasn’t connected to military action. It was likely an accident of some sort, which certainly happened from time to time on a vessel. Things broke. That was the nature of time and wear where machinery was concerned.

Of course, that hadn’t been the nature of things on this particular ship since he’d come aboard. Mig and Tig ensured that the techs kept every system running cleanly and efficiently, and any of their staff who let scheduled maintenance fall by the wayside risked bringing―literal―fire and fury down upon them. Which wasn’t to say that an actual manufacturer’s defect couldn’t still have crept in and caused an issue.

Slipshod glanced down at his datalink and summoned up more specific information regarding the reported fire. He discovered that it was coming from the ‘Steed Bay. Perhaps something had gone wrong while the techs were assessing or addressing the battle damage on their BattleSteeds? If that were the case, he felt it best to go down there himself and see what was going on. They’d probably end up needing those ‘Steeds fairly soon. There was still an invasion going on, after all; and who knew when Moonlight Radiance was going to want to call on them again.

The changeling cantered to the DropShip’s ‘Steed Bay, passing a few responding ponies hauling firefighting equipment as he did so. When he emerged into the massive hangar bay, the first thing he noticed was that all three of the BattleSteeds seemed to be perfectly fine―battle damage notwithstanding, of course. If anything at all was odd about them, it was that there weren’t nearly as many techs crawling over the ‘Steeds and getting to work repairing the damage as he expected there to be. They’d only been back aboard for less than ten minutes, sure, but he’d at least expected Mig to have her assessment crews taking stock of everything that needed to be addressed. She knew that it was only a matter of time before he and the other two pilots might have to go out again.

He didn’t have to look far to find the Bay’s ‘Steed techs. Or the apparent source of the fire, for that matter. A sizable crowd had gathered around one of the storage closets where some of the more frequently replaced parts for the ‘Steeds were kept, for ease of access. Slipshod could see visible tendrils of smoke creeping out from around the doorframe. Something was clearly bruning in there.

However, much to the changeling’s chagrin, it didn’t look like any of the gathered techs was at all interested in actually going in there and doing anything about it. What was even more annoying was that a few of them had very clearly already retrieved fire extinguishers of various shapes and sizes to be used to put out the fire. They just weren’t, well, puting it out.

“What are you waiting for?” Slipshod snapped, causing a few of the ponies nearest to him to jerk in surprise, “put out the damn fire!”

Without waiting for a response from the apparently unmotivated technicians, the golden stallion scooped up one of the fire extinguishers and began marching towards the door. Unbelievably, one of the techs actually interposed herself between him and the door, blocking his progress. His shock must have been rather plain to the unicorn mare who’d stopped him, because she winced slightly but remained solidly in his way, “sir, it’s not a fire...it’s Mig.”

Slipshod blinked for a few seconds, not quite understanding at first what the other mare was talking about. If their boss was inside a burning room, shouldn’t that have been even more of a reason to go in there and put out the flames?! Now that he was closer, the changeling could even hear the sounds of somepony screaming coming from inside the parts room. He was about to rebuke the mare for stopping him from rescuing the company’s senior technician when he realized that the screams he heard weren’t the cries of somepony burning to death.

They were the anguished wails of a pony in the throes of unassailable grief.

Mig wasn’t screaming; she was crying. And she almost certainly wasn’t a ‘kirin’ anymore.

That certainly explained a few things.

Confronting a raging nirik wasn’t a wise move for anycreature that was even remotely flammable. The kinds of burns that one could suffer from even being in close proximity to them were nothing to sneer at. Similarly, because of the internal, and magical, nature of their ‘fire’, things like foam-spewing fire extinguishers wouldn’t do anything more than make the nirik in question even more pissed off than they were, while still remaining just as on fire.

Indeed, there typically wasn’t anything more that could be done for a kirin in Mig’s condition than simply waiting it out and addressing the damage after the fact. Once upon a time, Slipshod might even have acknowledged that the other technicians should do just that. However, they did have other options available to them right now that he didn’t have to keep hidden from the crew any longer. And there was the fact that they needed their ‘Steeds to be fixed sooner rather than later.

Slipshod dropped the extinguisher and concentrated for a brief moment. A burst of green flame and a collective gasp later, and the earth pony that had been standing among them was no more. In its place now stood an amber-scaled dragon a little smaller in size than Cinder was. The list of creatures that could withstand the intense fires of a nirik was short, but it was a list that did include dragons at least. A lava wyrm would have been a little awkward to try to wriggle through the narrow door.

The dragon whelp that had once been an earth pony motioned for the techs to stay back as he approached the door. He listened for a few seconds, waiting for a moment where it sounded like Mig was catching her breath before launching into another bout of her grief-induced rage. When he felt that moment come, he opened the door and quickly ducked inside, closing it firmly behind him to ensure that as much of the smoke and fire within remained contained.

A pony would have almost certainly started choking to death within seconds of entering the room, Slipshod thought to himself. The air was thick, not only with smoke, but the lingering fumes of several combusted materials that would have proven toxic to most other creatures. Apparently nirik were not among them. Dragons certainly were not, their physiologies adapted to endure the plethora of highly poisonous gasses that normally went hoof-and-hoof―well, claw-and-claw, perhaps―with the volcanically active regions that served as their preferred habitats.

When compared to things like hydrogen-sulfide and sulfur-dioxide, a few dioxins from burning plastics were hardly an issue. As a result, Slipshod found that he had no trouble at all breathing in the smoke-clogged closet. Seeing was another matter though. The thick haze of the room made things considerably darker. Fortunately―sort of―Mig’s inflamed nirik form managed to stand out quite clearly even through all the smoke.

Slipshod didn’t say anything at first. Instead, he started by peeling back just a bit on the emotional walls that he’d just finished reinforcing a couple minutes ago. He needed to get a ‘lay of the land’ before he went trying to manipulate any emotional states. It didn’t take much reduction for him to get a very clear―and vivid―appreciation for what Mig was going through.

Some of it was mundane and to be expected: grief, loss, despair; the emotions that went part and parcel with the death of a close loved one. The regret that she was putting off was common enough too. Though, he wasn’t entirely certain about the focus of it. Usually the regret that surviving friends and relatives felt was more externalized. They regretted not saying certain things, or spending as much time together as they should have―that sort of thing. Mig’s regret was directed much more inwardly.

The guilt was a little surprising too. Again, this was something that was typically expressed not nearly as inwardly as Mig was doing so. If Slipshod hadn’t known any better, he’d have thought that Mig was genuinely holding herself responsible for her sister’s death. Which didn’t make any sense of course. Blaming the changelings, or Blood Chit, or even himself, would have been far more understandable a reaction.

But, that’s not what was happening. She was taking sole ownership for Tig’s death. No wonder she’d gone full nirik.

Mig’s inflamed gaze fell on the dragon intruder. For the briefest of moments, there was visible confusion. Understandable, as there weren’t any dragon members of the crew. It seemed though that, even in her ragged emotional state, the ‘Steed tech was able to piece together who it was that had come to speak with her beneath the scaly disguise. Not that his presence felt like it did much to quell her broiling feelings of guilt or loss.

The rage was new though.

She charged him.

Slipshod flinched away reflexively, even though he was―mostly―sure that the nirik shouldn’t have been able to inflict any particularly grievous injuries upon a dragon with just her bare hooves; and she wasn’t wielding any power tools with her magic that he could see. She was hurting, and that pain needed an outlet. His dragon form afforded him considerably more durability than even an earth pony possessed. Besides, as the individual who bore responsibility for putting into motion the series of events which had brought this state upon the mare, the very least he could do was endure a few punches from a nirik in crisis.

Besides, the ‘Steed pilot got the impression that it wasn’t specifically him that the mare was pissed off at.

“They killed her!” she screamed as she reared up, her cloven hooves raining down a successive hail of blows upon the dragon whelp’s chest and shoulders. Slipshod braced himself with a shift of his clawed feet, not shying from the assault. Almost immediately, he could feel her ire bleeding away even as the first hit landed, “those monsters killed Tig!”

In the back of his mind, Slipshod wondered who’d told her about her twin’s death. Blood Chit wasn’t the kind of stallion to break that kind of news over a radio, and he hadn’t left the garage yet. Of course, as close as the two kirin were, the changeling had little doubt that the first thing that Mig would have done upon hearing about the assault team’s return was reach out and try to check on her sister.

It wouldn’t have taken a creature as intelligent as a genius mechanic to figure out why they weren’t getting a response.

The blows continued to come down on the dragon, though the force of their impacts lessened dramatically with every hit as her rage bled back into grief, “she’s gone...and they took her from me…” and, right on schedule, the guilt made its return, “I shouldn’t have let her go. It should have been me…”

A half dozen trite and cliche platitudes presented themselves to Slipshod. The usual suspects: “it wasn’t your fault”, “there was nothing you could have done”, “these things happen in war”, “we’ll make them pay for what they did”, the typical go-to’s.

The lines you expect to hear said to a creature in crisis after a loss in vid, or when reading a story written by some hack.

The things that never actually help to hear in real life. Mig had just lost her sister. Her closest and most intimate companion. A part of her. No trite, vapid, sentiment from him was going to lessen the pain that she was feeling. Which wasn’t the same as saying that she didn’t need to hear something from somecreature. An affirmation that she wasn’t alone during such a vulnerable time.

Slipshod wrapped his arms around the nirik and hugged her to him tight, “we’re here for you,” he whispered, “we’ll always be here for you.”

And, with that little bit of tactically applied emotional pressure...the dam broke. The rage fell away, and the tears came out. The transformation reversed itself, and a rose-coated mare with a scaled backside was soon draped over the dragon where an inflamed nirik had been only a moment before, “she’s gone!” the words were barely even comprehensible through the mare’s bawling, “she’s gone, and it’s all my fault…”

“The changelings killed her, not you.”

Mig began to shake her head fervently, “you don’t understand,” she managed to get out between sniffles, her head still buried in Slipshod’s neck, “I cheated…I knew Tig was going to choose pegasus. She always throws pegasus when it’s something she doesn’t want to do.

“Most of time I’ll go unicorn so she doesn’t have to,” she admitted, “but...this time…” her grip around the dragon tightened, another wave of sobs wracking her body, “I didn’t want to go, so I threw earth pony and made her go instead!”

Ah, so that was the reason for the guilt. More than mere survivor’s guilt, because it had a twinge of remorse over her act of dubious ‘cheating’. She’d taken advantage of how well she’d known her twin in order to manipulate Tig into doing something dangerous. Something which had ultimately gotten the other kirin mare killed. As a result, she felt that she bore responsibility for the death.

An ultimately irrational and ridiculous conclusion, since there was no possibility that Mig could have known how poorly the mission would go. Nocreature could have.

...Well, that didn’t necessarily have to be true, the changeling supposed.

Mig didn’t deserve this guilt. Tig’s death was not her burden to bear. And it didn’t have to be. Not when there was a much more deserving target for the blame close at hoof.

“Tig dying wasn’t your fault,” he began, already feeling the kirin starting to shake her head as she prepared to reaffirm her stance on the matter. However, what he said next stopped her, “it was mine. I lied about the mission. I knew it would be a suicide run.”

Mig pushed herself away from him, her eyes staring wide in shock into his, searching. Doubt reverberated within her...at first. She’d obviously assumed that he was being as irrational as she was, and ascribing blame where none had any right to be duly applied. However, if changelings were good at one thing, it was faking their emotional states. Not that he needed to ‘fake’ all that much. He’d proposed the mission, after all. Maybe the reality had been that he’d genuinely believed the facility would be depleted enough of defensive forces to be taken by the Zathura’s small security detachment; but if it could be of benefit to others that that wasn’t the case…

Whatever Twilight or Blood Chit might believe to the contrary, he knew perfectly well that he was a monster. Monsters deserved to be hated.

“Honestly, it’s a shock any of them made it out,” the changeling continued on in a detached tone, his gaze cold and unfeeling. The rosie kirin withdrew from him even further, taking a few steps back, her mouth agape in shock even as she still fought to process what Slipshod was saying.

Finally, she found her voice, “wh...why would you do that?” she sputtered, aghast, “why would you send them in there if you knew they couldn’t do it?”

“I didn’t expect them to survive,” he correctly coldly, “but I thought there was a decent enough chance that they’d still be able to get me some useful intel before they died,” the dragon shrugged dismissively, “guess I overestimated them.”

Even through his dragonhide, the slap across the face he received from the kirin stung. He bore it though. Already he could feel the mare’s focus for her grief shifting. It was no longer herself she blamed, but him. Good. The more she hated him, the less self-destructive she’d be over her twin’s death.

“...Get out,” Mig seethed.

Wordlessly, Slipshod turned away from her and headed for the exit of the cramped parts closet. He’d briefly debated making one additional heartless comment to really sear in the animosity he was nurturing in her, but decided against it. Mig was hardly the sort to let what he’d said just now remain exclusively between the two of them. She’d let members of her maintenance team know how he’d admitted to ‘suckering’ their friends into the deadly mission to take the changeling HSG, costing them their lives. From there, it would get out to the rest of the ship.

In less than a day, the whole crew would have a productive outlet for their feelings of loss: him. Their resident changeling. The monster who’d crafted a lethal mission to further his own personal agenda; one that merely happened to compliment their own objectives of defeating Chrysalis. What little trust he’d managed to rebuild after having been outed as a changeling would suffer, yes―perhaps even be wiped away entirely―but he didn’t need the crew to ‘trust’ him to accomplish the mission. He needed them focused.

With a readily available outlet for their negative emotions, they’d recover from this crushing blow to their morale in days, instead of weeks or longer. They’d galvanize their resolve, and perhaps even grow stronger as a result. More determined than ever to rid the galaxy of his race. Which was what was best for them anyway.

There was nothing more to be gained here. So he left.

There were mixed schools of thought among the BattleSteed piloting community when it came to the subject of selecting ‘appropriate’ color schemes for their paintjobs. The joke went that, if you were to place two ‘Steed pilots in a room, they’d emerge with three ‘perfect’ color palettes.

On the one hoof, there were many pilots who were ready to point out that the idea of trying to ‘hide’ a ten meter tall, sixty ton, BattleSteed using paint was patently ridiculous. You could slather even a smaller ‘Steed, like a SneakyShy, with all the greens and browns that you wanted; but it was never going to be mistaken for a tree. So, that being the case, the argument was that it made more sense to go with vibrant and garish colors. Colors that would do the opposite and make the ‘Steeds stand out, making it easy for commanders―and their subordinate pilots―to tell friend from foe in the middle of a chaotic firefight.

Similar to how militaries of old would dress their soldiers in brightly-colored tabards and caparisons.

On the other side of the debate, those who championed subdued, earthy, ‘terrain-appropriate’ tones pointed out that a pilot could see objects that were at a much greater distance than even the best sensor suite could achieve a target lock. And while no targeting computer would be fooled by a millimeter-thick coating of sable paint, a pilot doing a quick visual sweep of a desert might overlook something that is the same color as the hundred other ‘rocks’ around it while conducting a patrol. The same went for an aerospace pilot cruising at a couple thousand meters above the ground traveling at near supersonic speeds.

Seeking out any kind of advantage in a fight, no matter how fleeting it might be, was never regarded as a wasted effort. Especially if it helped to place a pilot in the position to fire the first shot. Sometimes landing that first hit was all that it took to turn the outcome of a fight into a foregone conclusion.

Of course, in the predawn darkness, it hardly mattered what color a ‘Steed was painted. As long as their running lights were turned off, even a ten meter tall robot was the next best thing to invisible until you were standing nearly on top of it. This worked both ways though. Which was why it paid to have a network of hundred of surveillance satellites in orbit that could aid in reconnaissance.

Though in order to be genuinely useful, it was necessary for the ponies pulling data from those satellites to be at least halfway competent...

“Orbital Control, do you have that tracking data yet?” Moonlight Radiance growled into her helmet’s mic from inside the cockpit of her Star Hunter. By her own estimates, the enemy DropShips had to be at least close to entering the atmosphere by now. If she knew what direction and declination to look, the unicorn could probably have seen their reentry from her cockpit.

The command lance, composed of her BattleSteed, a Shining Armor, a Riflemare, and a Wild Bronco, were poised in wait on a ridge overlooking Colton’s primary spaceport. The rest of her House Guard were seeded throughout the spaceport’s facilities so that they could respond to, and converge on, any location that the Nirik Light Pony forces ended up landing. However, the sooner they knew where precisely that was going to be, the better off the defending forces would be. If they received the precise coordinates early enough, it was possible that they might even be able to converge on the DropShips and destroy them before they even had the chance to disgorge their ‘Steeds.

That would be the ideal, of course. However, even if her Guard couldn’t manage that clean of a sweep, they would still have an undeniable advantage by virtue of being able to surround the invaders and attack them from all sides. This whole area was poised to become a deathtrap for the Light Pony forces.

“Targets Apple through Donkey making steady approaches towards pads One thru Four. ETA: fifteen minutes,” came the response from the stallion on the command platform, “Bronze Wing has been intercepted by enemy fighter screens and was unable to make contact with the DropShips.”

The unicorn mare sneered, though she certainly could not have honestly said that she was surprised by the news. The entire purpose behind fighter screens was to intercept any aerospace fighters sent to harass descending DropShips, after all. Still, it would have been some rather pleasant tidings to learn that at least one of the approaching companies of ‘Steeds had been shot out of space on their way towards the planet…

Nor could she say that she was shocked that the approaching DropShips appeared to have elected to land at the pads themselves. They were readily available landing areas clear of obstructions with ample space around them to deploy ‘Steeds. Which was the purpose of a landing pad, after all. Any DropShip attempting to drop off their lances anywhere near within sight of the spaceport was hardly going to need to avoid any less fire than they would if they were heading for the spaceport proper.

Though, now that they had more specific coordinates, Moonlight could begin to redeploy her House Guard, “Sword Company to Pad One, Spear Company to Pad three, Axe Company to Pad Three, Bow Company to Pad Four,” she barked out over her mic, “nothing makes it off those DropShips, is that understood?” the pink unicorn listened for the acknowledgements from each of her company commanders.

She then finally allowed herself a soft sigh of the closest thing to relief that she’d felt all day and relaxed on her piloting couch. There should be no realistic way that this misguided assault by the Nirik Light Pony forces ended in anything other than a complete disaster for them. Moonlight would have her newly conquered world, as well as proof that she could rebuff any attempts by the kirin or their lackeys from taking it back. Those doubting MPs back on Aether would have no choice but to recognize her greatness, and her mandate to rule.

It would still behoove her to figure out a more long-term solution where her cousin was concerned though. Stellar Nova wasn’t simply going to fade back into obscurity after this. He’d continue to undermine her position from the sidelines. Moonlight needed to arrange for another ‘incident’ at some point in the coming months that would address that potential problem.

One that ComSpark wouldn’t be able to ‘miraculously’ save him from this time…

That part still nagged at the mare, if she was being honest. Why would ComSpark forces have intervened in a domestic disaster like that? What had they even been doing close enough to the bombing to have been able to respond quickly enough to save Stellar’s life? Why keep his survival a secret for so long too?

They were glorified mail delivery ponies! What interest could they possibly have in galactic politics?

It was a thought that made the unicorn mare decidedly uncomfortable. Moonlight Radiance knew perfectly well―as did nearly every other political-minded creature in the galaxy―how powerful ComSpark could become if they elected to capitalize on the wealth of information that passed through their proprietary facilities. The Queen’s mandate for her organization to remain impartial was all that kept them from shaping the political landscape.

...Or were they?

Moonlight found herself wondering about that now. Too many coincidences were occurring for her to blindly accept that they were coincidences. Events that were all quite easily explained by ComSpark taking a much more ‘active’ role in things than they claimed to be.

The unicorn made a mental note to look into the matter once she returned to Aether.

Her attention was drawn away from her thoughts and towards the distant spaceport. Unusually a well-lit facility, the pink unicorn gaped as she saw it growing dark. The mare jabbed at her communications suite and raised the main control tower, “Spaceport Command, what is going on?! I gave no blackout order!”

A few seconds later, a very staticy and slightly garbled response was barely audible over her helmet’s headset, “Apologies, Captain-General,” a mare replied, “a transformer blew when we powered up the turrets! The whole defense array is down and we’re on reserve power.”

Moonlight’s hoof lashed out in frustration and slammed into a nearby bulkhead. The loss of the spaceport’s considerable turret system took more than half of their firepower along with it, to include dozens of LRM launchers that might have been able to disable or destroy at least one of the DropShips before they even reached the ground, “when was the last time somepony checked on those turrets?!” It was too late to do anything about the system now, of course, but the unicorn intended to make an example out of the pony who’d failed to do their job properly when all of this was over with.

“The array is tested every morning, ma’am,” the mare on the other end of the radio insisted defensively, “and the transformer that blew was just serviced yesterday afternoon in anticipation of the attack!”

The Captain-General resolved to have those techs shot at dawn. Obviously they’d done something very wrong while working on the equipment. In the meantime, they’d just have to make do without the turrets backing them up. She informed her company commanders of the situation. As much of an inconvenience as it was, her forces should still be able to manage and achieve victory. They had a great number of advantages in their favor, after all.

As long as nothing else went wrong, at least…

There was a brief flicker of movement on her navigation map.

Moonlight Radiance squinted at the display, but the errant signal was gone before she could discern what it was. There shouldn’t have been anything else in the area, so she was tempted to write off the anomaly as nothing more than a sensor ghost. However, the unicorn had already reached her limit today where ‘surprises’ were concerned, “Regal Four, go see what that contact at out six was.”

“Roger, ma’am; moving out,” the stallion replied soberly. A moment later, Moonlight saw the icon representing her lance’s Wild Bronco moving away from their formation to conduct a sweep of their rear arc. It would probably turn out to be a civilian ground cart out for a drive through the countryside. Moonlight wanted to be sure it wasn’t anything far more dangerous though.

The unicorn returned her attention back to the now-dark spaceport. Far above it, she could also make out four pinpricks of orange light that she assumed must have been the incoming DropShips. They’d be on the ground in moments. Her hind hoof began to tap nervously on the deck of her cockpit as she watched the fiery orbs growing bigger in the sky. She continuously assured herself that the battle would go in her favor and be hailed as nothing short of a resounding success.

How could it not?

The Wild Bronco’s beacon ceased transmitting.

Moonlight balked, scowling at the electronic display, “Regal Four, come in. Your IFF is malfunctioning. Report status,” she listened intently for several seconds, but received no response. Becoming even more annoyed―and perhaps a little concerned―she addressed one of the other members of her lance, “Regal Three, try to raise Regal Four.”

“Wilco, ma’am,” the mare responded.

While she waited for Regal Three’s report, the captain-general took a moment to confirm that the rest of her battalion was where they were supposed to be. All four companies looked to be in place around the landing pads identified by Orbital Control. There should be little to no chance at all that any of the enemy’s ‘Steeds would make it off their DropShips. Perhaps the Light Pony mercenaries would recognize the futility of their assault and simply offer to surrender right then and there? Capturing a battalion of kirin mercenaries would certainly prove to be quite the feather in her cap when she returned to Aether―

Streaks of orange light lanced through the air off to Moonlight’s right. Her head whipped around to see what the source could possibly have been, her hoof ready to activate her radio and chastise whichever member of her lance had been stupid enough to break the light discipline that why were observing by firing their weapons. She looked just in time to see the Shining Armor next to her―Regal Two’s ‘Steed―explode as its reactor detonated.

The unicorn’s eyes went wide with shock. Years of combat experience took over and the mare all but subconsciously took hold of her Star Hunter’s controls and throttled it forward into a gallop, bringing it around to face their attackers. She certainly wasn’t going to be able to outrun whoever this was in her Star Hunter, and she’d survive a lot longer with her heavier front plating absorbing hits. The Shining Armor hadn’t lasted very long being hit from behind, after all.

“Contact; rear!” She barked out over her House Guard’s primary frequency, so that every pilot under her command could hear her, “Regal Lance under fire from the east! Send backup now!”

Even as she yelled out her orders, the unicorn’s mind raced to come up with an explanation for what could possibly have taken down a Shining Armor so efficiently. Even against the relatively thinner rear ablative plating, the heavy ‘Steed should have been able to take a hoofful of hits from a PPC before outright exploding! Not that those flashes of light had looked anything like the distinctive chromatic double-helix of a prismatic projector cannon. In fact, those orange bolts of fire hadn’t looked like any weapons that she was familiar with. They’d been moving too swiftly to have been any sort of missile, and no magical energy weapons were that color.

The Riflemare at her side was pouring autocannon and energy fire into the woodline. Trees splintered, fell, or merely burst into flame. Moonlight joined in, sweeping the area with a pair of medium energy cannons and letting out a stream of unguided LRMs in the hope that they would at least give whoever was attacking them pause.

Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be what ended up happening at all. Instead, the captain-general saw four more of the strange weapons appear to fire as four more orange bolts of hypersonic fire leapt from the dark interior of the forest. The quartet of bolts all converged on the Riflemare’s core, appearing to slip through the plating on its breast with hardly any effort at all. The heavy ‘Steed staggered, ceased firing, and then exploded in a cloud of smoke and purple fire.

Moonlight Radiance gaped in shock. While a Riflemare’s reputation for being something of a ‘glass cannon’ was well-earned, the unicorn still found it to be inconceivable that one of the sixty ton ‘Steeds could be brought down so cleanly with just four hits from any weapon. Yet she had seen just that happen.

The leader of the Our Worlds League was alone now. She stamped hard on her throttle pedals, roughly reversing the direction of travel of her ‘Steed. Charging the woodline was a death sentence. Again she put out a frantic call for help from the rest of her guard. Several of her subordinates assured her that help was on the way, and the unicorn was able to confirm that much on her navigational map. No fewer than three lances had been peeled away from the spaceport and were heading for her position at a respectable pace. They’d be with her in less than five minutes.

However, that was likely to be four and a half minutes too late to do anything for her, Moonlight suspected. She continued to fire blindly into the forest, which was growing brighter by the moment as the fires started by her energy weapons grew bigger and brighter.

Then she saw it: the death which had come for her. Four heavy ‘Steeds prowled slowly from within the dark confines of the forest, out into the firelight. An orange glow danced over the matted gray surfaces of the quartet of BattleSteeds. They were designs that Moonlight didn’t recognize, and neither did her targeting computer. She could see that they weren’t equine in appearance, the way that most ‘Steeds were. Their heads were broad and bulbose, situated low on broad shoulders. The forelegs bowed outwards slightly, ending in massive clawed paws. The body was almost teardrop shaped as it swept back to a pair of smaller hindlegs.

Almost like a giant, metal, Diamond Dog.

Armed with an odd-looking autocannon that the unicorn hadn’t seen before. Tendrils of electricity began to collect around the barrels of those weapons.

Moonlight didn’t hesitate. She was already reaching for the ejection controls even as the four enemy ‘Steeds fired their impossibly potent weapons. Few things could outrun the detonation of a ‘Steed’s reactor core. Fortunately, a pilot’s ejection system was specifically designed to be one of those. The unicorn mare was thrown violently upward just as the top of her cockpit was blown away by strategically placed explosive bolts. Beneath her, the mare could see the expanding sphere of violet flames racing to try and catch her, but they soon fell away as her couch’s thrusters carried her high into the air.

Just as she reached the pinnacle of her ascent, a parachute deployed from a compartment near the couch’s front. The unicorn breathed a sigh of relief as she began to descend slowly back towards the ground. She felt some initial lingering concern that she might end up drifting into the growing forest fire, but those fears were waylaid as she noticed that the wind was carrying her gently away from them. She saw the four strange enemy ‘Steeds still stalking around on the ground, almost like they were waiting for her.

The unicorn sneered. No doubt their intent was to capture her and force her to surrender. That would certainly be a less than ideal situation. Aside from the blow to her pride, it would almost prove to be the death kneel of her short-lived tenure as captain-general. Once news of her status as a prisoner reached Aether, Parliament would almost certainly hold a vote that same day to strip her of her title and uplift her cousin to the position. She’d be less than nothing to anypony at that point.

Her only hope was that those reinforcements of hers got to her before she could be captured. Which wasn’t entirely out of the question, the mare supposed, as she turned her head in the direction of the dozen spotlights bobbing their way towards her position. The enemy pilots couldn’t possibly have any infantry on the ground who would be able to actually affect her apprehension, so all she had to do was scurry off into the woods and wait for her House Guard to drive the enemy away.

As concerning as those strange ‘Steeds and their terrifyingly potent weapons were, there was no possibility that a single lance could fend off a whole company. All she had to do was wait for her forces to achieve their inevitable victory. Then she could get on with destroying the Light Pony intruders.

Then she would find an appropriate pony to execute for not warning her about the enemy lance that had managed to sneak up on her―

Cteniza allowed herself a satisfied smile as she watched the pulsed indigo light vaporize the slowly descending piloting couch and its occupant. The changeling pilot glanced down at her instrumentation and confirmed that each of the four components of the Command Lance had indeed been dealt with. Only then did she open up her secure communications frequency with the pony that she was to contact on the orbiting station that served as the command center for the Our Worlds forces on Colton.

“Complete.”

There was little need to elaborate on ‘what’ it was that had been completed. The agent on the other end of the message knew perfectly well why her lance was here, after all, and what their object was. All that was left for her lance to do was to withdraw back out of sight and wait for their DropShip to come by and collect them. While Drop Pods offered a very convenient way for BattleSteeds to make planetfall without needing to draw all the attention that a DropShip landing would, there was still only the one way to get a lance of ‘Steeds back off a planet.

The changeling mare did pause for a few seconds though, keeping her eyes on the beacons which denoted the position of the reinforcing lances that the―late―captain-general had summoned. They should be receiving their withdrawal and stand-down orders momentarily. However, there was always the possibility that one or more of them would get a wild hair up their flanks and commit themselves to ‘avenging’ their dead commander. If that happened, she needed her lance to be ready to meet them so that they could be dispatched before being able to report back what they were seeing.

Her Majesty wanted these Diamond Dog heavy BattleSteeds designs to remain a secret from the wider galaxy.

While it took longer than Cteniza would have liked, eventually the three approaching lances of House Guard ‘Steeds turned around and headed back for the spaceport. She could also see that those forces which had remained at the landing pads were pulling back as well, apparently now content with allowing the DropShips to land and digorge their Light Pony cargo.

The changeling idly wondered if the arriving mercenaries were going to be at all disappointed that there wasn’t going to be a fight after all? The order should already be going out to all of the Our Worlds troops on the planet to cease all further operations and instead begin packing up in preparation to leave the planet. It was an order that would be found to have been rather fortuitously prophetic when word reached the local commanders here from Aether that the soon-to-be-captain-general Stellar Nova wanted his armies back in Our Worlds space where they belonged.

The Our Worlds military would be permitted to leave unmolested, the Nirik Light Pony mercenaries would regain control of Colton on behalf of the benefactors, an appropriate restitution would be agreed upon between the League and the Confederation, and the galaxy could go back to working the way that it always had. The way that their queen decreed it to.

While it was not Cteniza’s place to question―nor any drone’s, for that matter―the changeling did find herself wondering why Her Majesty had not seen fit to install agents as the direct heads of state before now? Having a drone serving as the captain-general in the first place would surely have prevented something like this from happening in the first place.

The drone shook her head roughly, sweeping such thoughts aside. They were unbecoming of one of Her Majesty’s loyal subjects. She would be better served continuing with her assigned mission.

“Nightshade Lance, withdraw to the extraction point.”

The door chime didn’t even go off before it opened this time. Slipshod’s once more earth pony lips quirked into an annoyed scowl, but he declined to move from where he was laying on his bunk. He hardly needed to in order to determine who it was that had come to yell at him―and he could distinctly feel that they were going to be yelling at him in short order.

Only one pony on this ship constantly radiated that particular mixture of superiority and fatigue these days, “what the fuck is this I’m hearing about you ‘sabotaging’ the HSG mission?!”

“Good afternoon, Princess. Please do come in,” the stallion responded with flippant detachment. He’d been waiting for this conversation for the last hour.

“Oh, fuck you!” She spat.

“You know, your cursing has greatly improved over the last few months,” the stallion pointed out, pointedly ignoring the crux of her question, and taking some small measure of delight in noting that it had the desired intent of making Twilight even more incensed, “we’ll make a proper ‘Steed pilot out of you yet!”

“Slip!”

The changeling felt himself wrench from the cot by the purple mare’s powerful telekinetics. He didn’t fight it. He didn’t resist in any way, and not simply because he recognized the futility of trying to contest the magical will of an alicorn. The stallion simply let it happen. In less than a second, his limp body was dangling in front of Twilight. The taller mare glared balefully into his eyes…

...Then her ire bled away. He could feel the shock in her as she finally caught sight of his own expression. One that he wasn’t putting on as a front. He was allowing himself and his emotions to be seen quite plainly right now.

Resignation.

It wasn’t what she’d expected to find, and so she wasn’t prepared to address it. He was prepared for her though, “go on,” he insisted, “do something. Hurt me. Punish me.”

Apparently Twilight finally found a way that she was going to respond: disgust, “oh, Celestia; you have got to be fucking kidding me...is that what this was all about? You think this was all your fault?” the mare’s magic evaporated, dropping the changeling unceremoniously on his flank as she turned away, “unbelievable…”

Slipshod winced, rubbing his sore hind end. “The mission was my idea,” he pointed out, feeling a little annoyed himself that this encounter wasn’t going the way that he’d quite anticipated. Twilight, of all ponies, should be more than willing to punish a changeling who was responsible for the deaths of other creatures, “thus it’s my fault that it all went wrong.”

“Okay,” the purple mare responded dismissively, issuing him a flat look as she walked over and sat down by his cabin’s small desk. There were several moments of lingering silence in the quarters, each pony looking at the other expectantly, before the alicorn finally made an indignant wave with her hoof, casting an expectant look at the earth pony, “...And?”

Slipshod frowned at the purple mare. Of all the ponies on this vessel, he expected her to be considerably more empathetic towards his situation. She’d made decisions and choices that resulted in a ‘considerable’ number of deaths too, after all, “And so there are consequences,” he insisted.

“Yes,” she agreed, soberly, “the consequence is that ponies died who probably wouldn’t have if they’d never gone on that mission,” once more her eyes landed expectantly on him, “And now you have to decide what you’re going to do about that.

“And, for the record: wallowing in self-pity isn’t an option available to you. I’m not going to allow that.”

The changeling glared at the alicorn, “you don’t get to tell me how to feel about what happened,” he snapped, “what c―” the stallion slammed his mouth shut on what he had just been about to say. For a brief moment, he’d forgotten who he was talking to.

However, Twilight had apparently caught on to the line that he’d about to use, and her expression shifted to one of amusement. Though the feeling behind that look felt anything but ‘amused’, “I’m sorry, were you about to ask me what I could possibly know about how you’re feeling? Maybe ask me if I knew what it was like to have ponies I cared about die because of my own poor decisions?

“If I’d ever fucked up and gotten everypony killed?” Those last words were dripping with disdain. For him. For his presumption that he was alone in making deadly mistakes.

“Well you’re in luck!” The mare’s expression and tone shifted once more, if not her underlying feelings on the matter. The changeling’s clear perception of the diametrically opposed physical and emotional presentations made the combination perhaps a little more off-putting than it might have otherwise been to a non-empath. Like seeing a pony wearing a manic grin who was insisting that they were genuinely ‘happy’, “You happen to be in the presence of the resident expert on the subject of: ‘Fucking Up and Getting Everypony Killed’!

“I also know more than a little about dealing with losing close friends,” the alicorn added, “so I can help you with that too.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the stallion insisted, “none of those ponies were my ‘friends’. Changelings don’t ‘do’ friends.”

Twilight’s faux affectation of exuberance at the prospect of imparting wisdom to a creature in need of enlightening evaporated almost immediately, and she was scowling at him once more, “Okay. That? We’re done with that. I’m done with that.

“I have put in way too much work just to have you backslide on me,” the alicorn snarled at him, “I’ve dealt with a lot of obstinate creatures over the centuries―believe me. So I was mostly content to wait for you to come around to finally having your long-overdue personal epiphany in your own damn good time. That sort of thing can take weeks, months, even years; but with enough probing and prompting, the walls of emotional constipation inevitably crumble.

“There’s even almost always a brief little ‘self-destructive’ phase where they push creatures away as a last desperate effort to avoid confronting those feelings that scare them so much,” Slipshod was almost positive that he didn’t appreciate the condescending tone the purple mare was using at the moment, “remind me to tell you about this dragon I knew who hid himself away in the mantle of a dwarf planet for half a century.

“However, we don’t have fifty years for you to finally experience your emotional revelation―and we sure as shit can’t afford to have you sabotaging every last relationship you have left in the galaxy! You’re barely recovered from your last period of isolation; how long do you expect to survive if you turn the ship against you a second time?!”

“It doesn’t matter,” the stallion insisted with a rueful snort, “they’ll get along better without me―”

An intangible force of violet magic clubbed him over the back of the head. Slipshod let out a brief hiss of pain, more because he hadn’t expected it than because any serious damage had been done to him. It hadn’t really ‘hurt’ all that much; but it had certainly been quite unexpected.

“Yes, it matters. Yes, you matter. And no, they won’t!” Twilight seethed, glaring at the earth pony stallion. Apparently realizing that she was letting her frustration get the better of her, the alicorn closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

Her hooves came up and began massaging her temples, “I get that you’re hurting over what happened, and that you feel responsible for the deaths of your friends,” despite her eyes still being closed, the purple mare must have heard Slipshod take in a breath in preparation to rebuke her for the label that she’d used to describe the ponies who’d died, because she cut him off, “If you say they weren’t your friends, I will hit you again, you dense motherfucker.”

Those magenta eyes shot open again, glowering at the changeling stallion, “they were your friends. Because if they weren’t, their deaths wouldn’t be affecting you this much,” the alicorn pointed out. Slipshod kept his expression impassive, but inwardly he was forced to acknowledge that there was some measure of truth to that observation―maybe.

“And while I would love nothing more than to take the time to ease you into this, we don’t have that luxury,” the mare withdrew her hooves from her head and planted them back on the floor, straightening up and staring down at the smaller stallion with an almost imperius expression, “So we’re going to do this the hard way:

“Repeat after me: They were your F-f-f-f…”

Slipshod averted his gaze and closed his eyes, shaking his head defiantly, “No. They weren’t that. Changelings don’t have those.”

“Says who?” The alicorn mare asked in a bark of dry laughter, “Chrysalis?” The name stung the stallion, eliciting a sharp wince. He wasn’t sure who he resented more at the moment: himself for allowing the queen that he’d so vehemently renounced to retain even that minimal level of control over him even after all this time, or Twilight for managing to correctly identify the source of his reticence, “Did she tell you caring about others would make you ‘weak’? That having friends made you vulnerable? Something like that?

“Even after everything that you blame her for, you trust her to have been honest with you?”

Slipshod felt compelled to respond now. To offer up a justification for his attitudes. Of course, he couldn’t admit that he had, in fact, allowed himself to give Chrysalis’ rhetoric on personal relationships credibility. At best, that would have made him a hypocrite. At worst, he’d have been a moron. Truthfully, he was quite likely to be both, a rather scathing part of his mind noted with sardonic mirth.

His jaw worked wordlessly for several seconds before the changeling finally abandoned his efforts to offer up a laughably pathetic justification for his denials. Besides, even if he were to acknowledge the―hypothetical―validity of Twilight’s observation, “What does it matter? It won’t change anything.”

“It changes everything!” Twilight exclaimed, clearly exasperated, “Friendship is literal power! It is a form of actual magic that can directly impact the material plane; more powerful than any spell that even an alicorn can cast!

“Forging those bonds―embracing those feelings―is how we’re going to be able to defeat Chrysalis. A fleet only gets us to Equus. A hundred DropShips and a thousand Big Macs won’t be enough to actually take down her and the changelings, and you know that. Not if she knows we’re coming.

“And after chowing down on love for five hundred years, Chrysalis is certain to be far too powerful to defeat through conventional means,” Twilight pointed out soberly. Slipshod added his own nod of reluctant agreement. Perhaps even better than Twilight, he knew exactly how powerful the queen of the changelings was, “Which means that we need Friendship.”

“Fine. You need creatures who are ‘friends’,” the changeling acknowledged with a sigh, “What does any of that have to do with me? There are plenty of creatures on this ship who are friends with one another.”

“But they’re not changelings.”

“So?”

“‘So’ I need a changeling for my plan to work,” Twilight stated bluntly, “specifically one who is capable of being genuine friends with other creatures. You represent the chink in Chrysalis’ armor. You―and your connection with the crew of this ship―is how we’re going to win.”

Slipshod felt his brow rise in surprise. He hadn’t quite expected the alicorn to be this manipulative, “...you need me to convince ponies to be my friends?”

“No,” the purple mare corrected him pointedly, “I need you to be their friend. I need it to go both ways―you need it to go both ways.”

The stallion felt his gut grow tight with trepidation. He started shaking his head again, “that’s―”

“―Dangerous,” she finished for him, nodding along in understanding, “I know. Changelings need to ‘consume’ love in order to sustain themselves; so they constantly retain the feelings of others. Giving it out freely with no guarantee that more will be incoming places you at great risk.

“If you were to admit how you felt about somepony you cared about―if you expressed those feelings―only for them to not return those feelings in kind...I’m sure the prospect terrifies you,” Twilight said, her words soft and full of empathy now. A tiny smile pulled at the corner of her lips, “it’d be like taking an EVA suit off the rack and stepping out the airlock with it, without doing a full check yourself: placing your trust―betting your life―on somepony else. Blindly. Completely. No turning back once the deed is done.

“Anycreature would be afraid under those circumstances,” she assured him.

“But you can’t keep suppressing these feelings,” the alicorn insisted more sternly, “it’s not just hurting yourself anymore. You’re hurting others. And, no, I’m not talking about the ponies who died in the HSG raid. What you’re doing is hurting all of the other creatures on this ship who lost somepony down there. I know you think you’re helping them, but you’re not.

“They need to grieve; and you’re stopping them from doing that by trying to turn their sorrow into rage and directing it at yourself.”

“Anger can help creatures focus,” Slipshod defended.

“They’re plenty angry already,” Twilight assured him, “at the changelings. The ones who actually killed their friends. You are just trying to be selfish and punish yourself because you feel bad for screwing up.”

“So...what? I’m not allowed to feel responsible for what happened?” the changeling scoffed, “I created that mission! I promised them it would be easy!”

“And you were wrong,” Twilight retorted, entirely unmoved by Slipshod’s words, “that happens. You’re not omniscient―nocreature is! You fucked up; ponies died. Making yourself into a fucking pariah won’t change that and doesn’t help anypony; least of all the crew.”

“What the fuck am I supposed to do then?”

“Make those deaths mean something. Learn from them. Do better next time,” she replied coolly, her eyes growing distant. Slipshod wasn’t entirely certain that she was merely speaking about him anymore, “work to earn the forgiveness of your peers.”

The changeling snorted, “First you tell me I need to make the crew my friends, and now you’re telling me I need them to forgive me? I thought forgiving each other was a thing that ‘friends’ did for each other automatically?”

“They might,” she conceded evenly, “but receiving forgiveness and earning forgiveness aren’t the same thing. Part of the latter involves being able to forgive yourself as well. And that...well, that’s a lot harder,” Twilight added in a softer tone, “trust me.”

“Maybe some things aren’t worth forgiving,” the stallion countered, “you wouldn’t honestly consider forgiving Chrysalis for everything she’s done, would you?” he flashed a sardonic smirk in the alicorn’s direction, ready to receive her acknowledgement of his example; and was shocked to not only see that she appeared unconvinced, but also to feel that Twilight was genuinely entertaining the notion, “...you’re not serious?”

“If Chrysalis immediately backed down and started to actively make amends...yes,” she said, almost reluctantly; obviously quite aware that this would not be one of her better-received decisions, “I would. I would forgive her, and petition to spare her life; on the condition that she continue to make amends.”

Slipshod gaped at the alicorn, uncomprehending, “She’s responsible for the deaths of billions,” he pointed out―he hoped―unnecessarily, “what could she possibly accomplish in a million years that could even come close to making up for that?”

“Probably nothing,” Twilight responded with an anemic shrug, “but a galaxy where a truly repentant Chrysalis is working to make life better for others is better off down the line than a galaxy where we petrify or kill her.”

“And what about justice for her victims?”

“Do you believe that what the dead crave is more death?” Came Twilight’s simple response, and then an addendum which drew the changeling up short, “how many changeling bodies will satisfy Tig’s spirit, do you think?

“No matter how many creatures Chrysalis has already killed, killing her doesn’t serve ‘justice’; it merely sates our own desire for revenge. Does ending her single life truly balance the scales on the billions who died?”

The alicorn grew quiet for a brief moment, then, “...and is she solely to blame? What of the mare who could have done something to stop her from ever escaping again? Is she as culpable in those deaths? Would ending her life bring more balance to the scales?”

Twilight looked to the changeling, her features wan and drawn, as only the expression of a being who’d spent many thousands of hours contemplating those notions could be, “‘Justice’ is a funny thing. Define it.”

Slipshod balked briefly before managing to stammer out an answer, not having quite expected the question, “it’s...what's right,” he insisted, “it’s what somecreature who did something wrong should receive as punishment.”

“To what end?”

Again the changeling hesitated, frowning now, “...to make things right. Make them even.”

“And how does one make death ‘right’?” Twilight asked, “Is it really with more death?” Hers wasn’t any sort of critical tone, but a socratic one. As though she was genuinely unsure of the answer, and was hoping that the changeling stallion could provide her with the correct response.

“Does Chrysalis dying once ‘make things even’ for the billions she’s killed?”

“It makes them more even,” Slipshod countered.

“Maybe,” the purple mare acknowledged with a slight nod. Then she flashed another weak smile, “but if she was allowed to live, and at a point in the future managed to keep two creatures from dying―preventing two deaths that otherwise would have happened―wouldn’t that make things even more even?”

The changeling stallion scowled. He wasn’t certain that that was how math worked when it came to things like death. Perhaps though, that was the alicorn’s point: that death wasn’t a numbers game, even when it was in pursuit of justice. He wasn’t sure how much he really believed that. The desire to punish killing with death simply felt too visceral to be the wrong answer.

“Tig was just one death. Those scales can be balanced with one death too,” he insisted.

“But the changeling who killed Tig is already dead,” the alicorn pointed out.. Then she hastily continued before Slipshod could respond, holding up a hoof to stay his words, “and they ended their life on their own terms.

“One could argue that they actually managed to ‘elude’ justice―that they weren’t ‘punished’ in any meaningful way, as nothing was done to them by others on Tig’s behalf. So was any ‘justice’ actually served in her name? Can justice ever be served for her?”

The changeling’s mouth closed without saying anything. He hated that thought. It was hard to argue against it from a philosophical perspective, and the idea that Twilight was right―that Tig’s killer could and would never actually be punished for their crimes―galled the stallion. It wasn’t right. Tig deserved justice. Somehow.

“I suppose you could kill another changeling as a sort of surrogate,” Twilight muse aloud, rubbing her chin. She observed the changeling’s response out of the corner of her eye.

He shook his head, “that’s not how ‘justice’ works,” he protested bitterly. If only life were simple enough to allow for substitutes in such important matters, “you can’t punish some random creature for the crimes of others.”

“...So then you shouldn’t be punished for what some random changeling did,” The alicorn concluded, casting an aside glance at the changeling. Slipshod grimaced, silently acknowledging that he had been largely tricked into helping Twilight make her argument for her. He briefly argued that he wasn’t an entirely ‘random creature’ in this specific case. He’d been involved. Of course, he suspected that the purple mare was ready to list off the names of half the creatures on the ship who had been ‘involved’ in the mission; and then ask him how they should all be punished as well.

He still despised the notion that Tig wouldn’t ever get to see ‘real’ justice. At least, not the way that he’d defined it. Perhaps he was wrong though, and there was some other aspect that he had missed. It was possible that he’d find some means of satisfying his desire for seeing her death avenged in the fullness of time.

...Of course, Slipshod recognized that he needed to survive long enough for that to actually happen. Which meant not allowing himself to throw his life down the drain here and now. The stallion suppressed an amused smile as he found himself wondering if Twilight had actually been crafty enough to manipulate him into coming to that realization, or if he was giving her more credit than she deserved. Either way, he supposed that he needed to concede defeat on one front.

“...I think I need to speak with Mig.”

“Finally; some progress,” Twilight smirked down at the stallion, “Xanadu is with her right now, smoothing things over. When she’s calmed down enough, you two are going to have another talk,” the alicorn narrowed her gaze at the stallion now, “and I’m going to supervise. Make sure you don’t pull anymore stupid, self destructive, stunts. Fair?”

“Fair.”

“Good,” she nodded, “then you can sit and talk with Blood Chit,” Slipshod winced again, recalling that his last conversation with the crimson pegasus hadn’t exactly gone very well either. For a creature that was supposed to have superior control over his own emotions, the changeling was certainly having quite the off day. Admittedly, it wasn’t every day that he lost fr―

The changeling stallion’s breath caught in his throat as he instinctively beat back the thought. His chest tightened. His brain screamed all sorts of warnings at him about how dangerous that word was for a changeling. Of course, he recognized something about that voice now, that had never really occurred to him in the past, now that Twilight had pointed it out to him:

That admonishing voice sounded an awful lot like Queen Chrysalis. Her warnings. Her cautions. Her will. Even though he’d cast his allegiance to her aside, he’d subconsciously clung to the parts of her instruction to him and the other changelings that he’d felt made him a changeling. Staying hidden. Manipulating the feelings of others. Surviving off their manufactured love and affection for him. Regarding other creatures as ‘inferior’ beings to be fed upon.

Things that felt like they defined his species.

Of course, now that he was actually taking a step back and reflecting upon those ‘tenets of changelingdom’, Slipshod realized that they were merely how Chrysalis had chosen to define their race. He didn’t have to live by her rules. He didn’t have to let her indoctrinations control him.

He didn’t have to feel guilty about regarding other creatures as his equals. He was allowed to care about them. It wasn’t ‘wrong’ just because somecreature else he’d once respected told him it was.

Not that having a cognitive grasp of that concept made it significantly easier to overcome the decades of practiced unease at entertaining the thought. Slipshod found himself having to take a deep, reaffirming, breath just to get out, “I’d like that. I...I think we could both use a friend right now.”

Twilight beamed proudly at the stallion, and was about to say something when Slipshod’s datalink beeped at him, alerting the changeling to an incoming message. He peered down and saw that High Gain was attempting to contact him about something. He reached down and acknowledged the transmission, “what’s up, High Gain? Is something wrong?”

“I just got off the comm with the new League commander,” the earth pony began. Already Slipshod’s brow was creasing with confusion. ‘New commander’? He exchanged glances with Twilight, who was also looking quite perplexed by the wording that had been used, “Captain-General Moonlight Radiance was killed ten minutes ago,” the news hit the pair like a blow to the gut. The leader of the Our Worlds League―the mare they were supposed to recruit to their efforts to confront Chrysalis―had been killed?!

“She’s dead?” Slipshod blurted, “How?!”

“They aren’t giving out many details,” the company’s comm tech responded, “They said she was killed when a force from the Nirik Light Pony made planetful. All Gray Lines Forces are being ordered to retreat from Colton...and our contract has been pronounced complete and paid out.”

Slipshod sighed and hung his head. His free hoof started massaging the side of his head as he tried to process the news that High Gain was delivering. The League mercenaries were really just going to pack up and go, just like that? Also, what Nirik Light Pony force? If there’d really been an incursion by the Confederation’s mercenaries large enough to push Moonlight’s troops off of the planet so quickly, he felt like Doppler would have said something to him about it by now even if the League hadn’t seen fit to make him aware.

“Thanks for the info, High Gain,” the stallion finally said. There wasn’t anything more they could do in this siter now anyway, he supposed. If Moonlight Radiance was truly dead, and the League was pulling out, then it was best that they leave too and meet back up with Squelch to discuss their next steps. Maybe the next Captain-General would be receptive to their plans?

“Have Aileron plot a course for the system primary and arrange for transport out of the system. Let’s start making our way back to Commonwealth space.”

“Roger, Commander.”

Slipshod closed the channel and looked over at the alicorn. Twilight was scowling, looking like she’d just bitten down on something sour.

“Well...fuck!”

Her cursing was indeed much improved.

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