New Las Pegasus was one of the most heavily trafficked systems in the Our Worlds League. A bustling hub of commerce and tourism, it was one of the closest things to a ‘pleasure planet’ that existed in that part of the Harmony Sphere. Creatures from all over the known galaxy would often make what amounted to a ‘pilgrimage’ in order to partake in one or more of the boundless pleasures available to those with the means and money to make the most of them.

Sequestered deep within League space, the visitors who vacationed and the citizens who worked there feared little in the way of the combat that tended to ravage more vulnerable border regions. Even most internal struggles among the transstellar corporations or feuding powerful families tended to avoid bringing any of their troubles to New Las Pegasus. After all, even executives and members of the nobility required someplace to vacation when they felt like getting away from the stress of all their intrigues and machinations.

Which wasn’t to say that there wasn’t a great deal of care taken to ensure that the planet was kept protected and secure. Indeed, while the planet was too important to all concerned for any notable power to risk tainting it by bringing their fighting to its doorstep, the fact that it was a known hangout for many of the Harmony Sphere’s movers and shakers meant that it was also the ideal destination for assassins to go to when looking for their targets. As such, traffic was very carefully monitored and new arrivals were screened thoroughly at its spaceports. No DropShip landed anywhere on the surface which had not been explicitly cleared to do so, and certainly nothing landed that wasn’t at a sanctioned spaceport!

Of course, while air and space traffic was strictly controlled and monitored in the system, centuries without a serious issue had allowed for much of the traffic control officers to largely take it for granted that every craft in their area of operation would comply with the commands they were given and didn’t need to be scrutinized every step of the way. As long as the DropShips were traveling along designated approach vectors, most controllers didn’t pay too much attention to individual ships.

So when Mint Julep completed issuing her approach directives for the latest arrival in her queue, she didn’t even notice by the time that she’d moved on to the next that it had settled into a course along approach corridor NLP-A-013, instead of corridor NLP-A-012, like she had told them to. Even if she had been paying the DropShip a few additional seconds of attention, the error would not necessarily have been immediately apparent anyway. As the designations implied, both approaches were quite close together. Indeed, the course would bring the vessel into the same spaceport in the planet’s capital city, just at a different landing pad.

Such an error would obviously be noticed during the later stages of the approach, but it was also easily correctable. Doubtlessly, a flustered DropShip commander or pilot would simply hop over the occupied landing pad and deposit themselves onto the one which had been cleared and reserved for their arrival. Hardly the first time such a slip up had ever happened, and every controller well knew that it wouldn’t be the last. So, even if it was noticed, nothing much would be thought of the mistake.

It was harmless enough. Certainly nothing that anypony thought worthy of notifying planetary security about.

After all, there was nothing immediately obvious for anypony with nefarious intent to gain by taking the other approach vector. They were still clearly traveling along an approved flight corridor, heading for a certified landing zone. If the vessel were smuggling something, they weren’t going to avoid the customs authorities. It obviously had to be a simple―and harmless―mistake.

That was the thought process that everypony who might have been bothered to even note the error would make, the DropShip’s flight crew knew. They were even ready to comment on the mistake and profess their contrition for the simple error in understanding if they were called on it. However, they never were. The crew and their vessel were permitted to fly along their erroneous vector unmolested, none of the traffic controllers being any the wiser that this had not been a ‘simple mistake’ at all.

For there was one significant difference between corridors NLP-A-013 and NLP-A-012 other than the landing pad at the end: and that was that while both had the DropShip overflying most of the capital’s downtown area, 013 took them over Hurricane Plaza before reaching the spaceport.

012 took them over the planet’s HyperSpark Generator.

On such a highly-trafficked planet, it wasn’t immediately apparent to even the ComGuard garrison station at the HSG that something was amiss. DropShips overflew their facility every few hours every day of the year. Hardly anycreature ever bothered to look up when the sound of engines roared overhead, as it was a foregone conclusion that it was just one more ship on its way to the spaceport. It wasn’t even noticed that the engines in question were considerably louder than they usually were. At least, not right away.

It was difficult to say if it was the intensity of the noise, or the HSG’s proximity alarms which first drew the attention of the guards on duty that day. In either case, by the time the DropShip had dropped to a mere thousand meters in altitude, it was clear to everypony that the DropShip wasn’t on its way to the spaceport after all. Yet, even then, the first thoughts going through creature’s heads were along the lines of either marveling at the spectacular fuck-up that the vessel’s pilot was making, or wondering if perhaps it was suffering some sort of emergency that had prevented it from reaching the spaceport.

In either case, the ComGuard was put on alert, as was the outlined procedure when responding to any unauthorized landing at their facility. Granted, it was a procedure which had seen very little real-world application….well, ever. Unscheduled landings at ComSpark facilities just didn’t happen!

Their soldiers turned out in force all the same, though mostly in anticipation of having to keep the day’s visitors to the HSG away from where it seemed the DropShip was about to make its supposed impromptu landing. A couple crews were trotting out to their vehicles in no particular hurry and a quartet of scowling ‘Steed pilots were just emerging from their ready room after donning their gear. It was clear that most of the ComGuard was more ‘annoyed’ than ‘concerned’ by what was happening. Even the officer in charge of the facility’s security detail was thinking more about how bothersome writing the report on this incident was going to be than anything else.

Even though all eyes were on the DropShip approaching them, it was high enough up in the air that it was difficult to make out the movement of its defensive turrets. Indeed, few thought to focus that hard on where its armaments were directed at; because why would the vessel be pointing its guns anywhere? One of the soldiers stationed in the facility’s northwest guard tower who was watching the vessel had a better vantage point than most, being several dozen meters in the air above her comrades. She did notice that the prismatic projection cannons and heavy lasers were rotating on their mounts, angling down towards the forces waiting on the ground.

It took her a few seconds to fully process this though. After all, like everycreature else watching the DropShip approach, her first impressions had not been along the lines of nefarious intent. Perhaps there was even a benign reason that she was unaware of for what was happening with those turrets. However, she thought it best to at least notify her superiors about what she’d seen.

The unicorn mare―who was definitely a real unicorn and totally not a changeling―toggled her communicator, “Tower Three to Control; be advised: I’ve got activity on the DropShip’s weapons systems. I say again: Tower Three has activi―”

She was too busy reporting her observation to notice that one of the ship’s PPCs had oriented towards her position. Nor was it the only weapon to fire in that opening salvo. Two other PPCs removed two more guard towers in that same instant, while heavy lasers and autocannons raked the courtyard, clearing a landing zone. The first volley of fire took the ComGuard by complete surprise.

Energy weapons carved their way along the exposed lines of infantry who’d turned out to form a cautionary perimeter around the DropShip’s anticipated landing zone. While their armored barding tended to perform fairly well against small arms fire and shrapnel, they might as well have been completely naked for all the good it did against the intense beams of coherent energy that were designed to sear away the thick alloyed plating that coated combat vehicles and BattleSteeds. Little was left behind but scorch marks and the occasional smoldering remains of the odd body part that hadn’t fallen entirely within the brilliant column of destructive energy.

The high-explosive shells of the autocannons swept through the motorpool and the staged vehicles sitting there. Previously pristine hulls of brightly-painted tanks and light combat vehicles which had never before needed to be taken into battle―because who would be crazy enough to attack a HyperSpark Generator controlled by ComSpark?!―were quickly reduced to blown out wrecks by the DropShip’s guns.

For a moment, the whole facility was paralyzed with shock. Things like this simply didn’t. Happen. Nocreature attacked the ComGuard. They certainly didn’t attack a HyperSpark Generator, the backbone of the galactic telecommunications network and an indispensable piece of planetary infrastructure! It was something that had never happened in the history of...well, history!

It was happening today though.

Klaxons wailed. Alarms whined. Orders were shouted. The previously quiet and inert HSG facility erupted into a flurry of activity, like an anthill suddenly beset upon by an invader. While it was a fact that ComSpark’s HyperSpark Generator network stood apart from and above the rest of the Harmony Sphere and its petty disputes―exempt from the machinations of others―the fact had remained that such places were simply too important to be left completely unprotected; lest the temptation to interfere with their regular operations be too great for even the most foolhardy to resist.

Besides, ComSpark knew that the Disciples of Discord existed, and what their true motives were. They were hardly willing to risk making their arrays too tempting of a target for those terrorists.

They had thus been built as robustly as any military fortress, surrounded by towering walls and teeming with defenders. Properly alerted, such a place would have been able to fend off a brigade-size element with little issue at all. Perhaps they could even have survived an assault by a whole division long enough to be relieved by reinforcements.

Such things had, of course, assumed that the attack would have been known about ahead of time, and that the enemy forces would be coming at the HSG from outside of its walls. Defending against even a company-sized group of invaders was going to be considerably more difficult if they were already inside the facility’s more formidable defenses.

The ComGuard troops who hadn’t been burned away in the opening volley, recovered in time to find the DropShip settling in the courtyard, its doors falling open. From within spilled forth a mixed force of infantry, light vehicles, and even a single medium-tonnage Autumn Blaze chassis. Outfitted with three six-count SRM launchers, backed up by a pair of medium energy cannons, the singular BattleSteed was able to dole out a considerable amount of damage very quickly in the relatively confined quarters of the HSG facility. All the while, the DropShip continued to support its deployed forces with its own weapons.

To say that the ComGuard had been placed on the back hoof was an understatement. Quite frankly, they had been caught completely by surprise, and much of their defensive capabilities had been thoroughly demolished in the first minute of the fight. What forces had survived the initial assault prior to the landing were pulling back in the face of the outpouring of attackers from the DropShip’s interior. Indeed, it was looking like the surprise assault was going to result in an outright victory for the attackers.

...Then the perimeter defenses came online.

In order to facilitate their purpose as the backbone of communication across the galaxy, HyperSpark Generators had to be open to the public at large. To that end, ComSpark had also always strived to appear as welcoming as possible to the citizens of the Harmony Sphere. There was little hope denying that anycreature couldn’t feel truly ‘welcome’ in a place that was bristling with guns and automated turrets. So an effort had been made to make an HSG’s defensive measures more discrete. To that end, most of the heavier, more fearsome-looking, turrets were kept recessed within the walls of the facility when they weren’t needed.

Now, however, they were needed.

One after another, turrets bristling with all manner of weapons began to emerge from their hidey-holes along the perimeter wall. With foreboding smoothness, those emplacements oriented themselves to face inward and tilted down so as to be able to fire into the facility’s interior. These movements didn’t go unnoticed by the invaders. The gunnery crews on board the DropShip took aim and began working their way through the turrets. However, the ship had only so many weapons capable of being brought to bear on those emplacements at once. Meanwhile, the newly emerged turrets could all focus on the singular DropShip simultaneously.

The Autumn Blaze’s sensor suite had noticed the appearance of so many more additional hostile signatures coming from all around it too, and the ‘Steed pilot at its controls did the best that they could to cover the vulnerable vessel, pouring missiles into the turrets as quickly as their launchers would reload. One turret erupted in flames. A second. The Dropship snuffed out three more. Yet, that represented only a fraction of the emplacements which had popped out of their berths.

Those that remained fired on the DropShip as one.

The BattleSteed staggered as it was buffeted by the explosion of the nearly four thousand ton vessel. Ground vehicles and infantry who had not managed to quite clear the bay doors were not so lucky, finding themselves either enveloped by the explosion of its fusion reactor, or cut down by the shrapnel and debris created by the vessel’s spectacular death. In all, perhaps a third of the forces carried by the DropShip died along with it. Those who survived did their best to keep their attention focused on their objective: the building housing the HyperSpark Generator itself. As long as they could make it there, the deaths of their comrades could be made worthwhile.

The Autumn Blaze continued to focus on the turrets, cycling through its missile launchers as quickly as they could. Steady progress was being made, but it was clear to even the pilot that it wasn’t being made fast enough. They felt a cold knot forming in their gut as they recognized that, with the DropShip now out of action, those directing targets for those turrets had decided―and rightly so―that the BattleSteed represented the next most significant threat.

The ‘Steed pilot started to find it significantly more difficult to target the defensive turrets as they were forced to do their best to dodge a torrent of fire coming at them from all directions. Hit after hit plowed into the BattleSteed, stripping away plating with terrifying swiftness. It took less than a minute for nearly every ounce of armor to be blasted away from its surface. After that, the pilot couldn’t hardly hear the explosions of missiles striking their ‘Steed through the din of alarms.

They were reaching for the ejection controls about the time an autocannon round pierced the cockpit viewport.

A herd of pony ground troops charged for the entrance to the building housing the HyperSpark Generator. Unicorns floated heavier machineguns with their telekinesis, firing the weapons in order to keep the ComGuard defenders suppressed. Following closely on the hocks of the infantry, lighter combat vehicles now turned their turrets to cover their advance from the turrets.

Unfortunately, those vehicles were nowhere near as durable as the Autumn Blaze had been. The turrets were able to divide their attention, each focusing on their own target and picking them off within seconds of one another.

After that, with nothing to cover them or draw the attention of the turrets, the throng of galloping infantry began to burn.

“Don’t look back, just run!” Danube shouted at the top of his lungs to those who might yet be able to hear him over the cacophony of gunfire and explosions. The unicorn stallion’s rifle hovered at his withers, snapping off bursts of covering fire at the ComGuard forces beginning to gather along the main building’s battlements. At this range, and moving as he was, Danube knew that his chances of actually hitting any of those defenders was slim. However, the presence of rounds striking their cover nearby was at least enough to keep the ComGuard soldiers from exposing themselves long enough to acquire properly aimed shots as well.

A pony behind him screamed, but it was a cry which was cut disturbingly short, halting with eerie suddenness as the beam of annihilating energy which had struck the pony vaporized her lungs less than a second after making contact with her. The Disciple officer caught sight of the emerald column of energy which had killed her out of the corner of his eye as it sliced its way across the courtyard’s tarmac, leaving behind a blackened line of carbon.

The unicorn stallion felt his teeth grinding in frustrated determination as he sought to block out that loss, and focus his attention exclusively on doing everything he could to reach the relative ‘safety’ of the HSG’s main building. It was pointless to consider the many threats which lay within until he and the rest of the forces which survived this perilous sprint across no-mare’s-land actually made it out of the line of fire of those damnable turrets.

His frustration ratcheted up another notch as he witnessed the very portal that was their goal begin to seal. A massive reinforced door was being lowered into place over the main entrance, which was usually never obstructed, allowing visitors bearing their message traffic to freely come and go at all hours of the day and night. The galaxy never slept, after all. ComSpark was closing it now though, and at their current rate of progress, Danube’s detachment wasn’t going to make it in time to get through.

He glanced back over his left shoulder, briefly relieved to catch sight of one of the corporals in his unit keeping stride just behind him. The young stallion was an earth pony, and―more importantly at this moment―one of the ponies who had been assigned to carry some of the group’s heavy ordinance. The portable short-range-missile launcher was still strapped across the earth pony’s back, unused, “Corporal, the door!” Danube screamed.

With barely a hint of a nod, the other soldier rolled to the stop, managing to unsling the personal launcher and take it up in their hooves in a singular, smooth motion. He hesitated for only a second to line up the shot―

A burst of gunfire struck the corporal, starting in his chest, and raking upwards to his head. His barding, while capable of providing considerable protection against lighter munitions and shrapnel, did little to shrug off the multitude of impacts from the heavier-caliber machine gun which had zeroed in on the briefly-stationary earth pony. The corporal’s own shot went high, striking the reinforced concrete wall above the now sealed entrance. Danube cursed under his breath as he continued to sprint towards the same closed door. His head swiveled from one side to the other as he tried to seek out any other soldiers still on their hooves who might have ordinance powerful enough to blast them a way through.

How Danube managed to survive long enough to reach the door and the meager shelter that its associated alcove provided, the unicorn would never know. Nor was he the only one who managed to do so. Several other members of his unit, and a few other lucky survivors from others arrived on his cannons. However, the unicorn captain could immediately see that none of them were in possession of anything powerful enough to blast their way through the door which was barring their path inside.

He let loose a string of epithets. Most of their plan for this assault had counted on being able to get at least some members of the assault team inside before the facility was able to seal itself. Admittedly, he wasn’t aware of the presence of so many turrets being discussed. Had they predicted this level of automated defenses, the unicorn doubted that they would have selected this location as a target. Not that there was any help for it now. They were here, and they were dying. Quickly.

Frantically, Danube scanned the courtyard for an option. The alcove that he and the ponies with him were huddling in kept them from being presently fired upon by the ComGuard troops above them, but that wasn’t likely to last for much longer. They needed to get inside as quickly as possible.

Soon, the unicorn officer noted that one of the light tanks had managed to make it off the DropShip intact, and was apparently still in operation. Currently, it was making a valiant attempt to deal with the turrets up on the wall. However, its crew had to realize that was a futile endeavor. They weren’t maneuverable enough to keep from being hit eventually. They also were in possession of the heaviest ordinance the landing team had left.

Danube got on to his comlink, “Dove Six to surviving Scorpion; I have a team at the door, but we need it open! Requesting assistance, ASAP!”

“Acknowledged, Dove Six,” came the staticky reply of a stallion who sounded as though he was feeling more than a small amount of stress at the moment. However, they managed to get their turret around and plant a shell squarely in the middle of the door, blowing it open in spectacular fashion.

“Much obliged, Dove Six-” The unicorn stallion began, only to feel the words catch in his throat as he saw the SRM strike the tank’s turret.

It wasn’t a particularly big explosion. Honestly, it hardly looked like anything catastrophic had been done to the armored vehicle at all, and that its ablative plating had managed to absorb the worst of it.

Then the hatch burst open, and a column of flame erupted out of it. Along with the screaming. Danube could only look on in horror as some...thing clambered out through the raging inferno. It had four limbs, and what might have been a head. Maybe. It was honestly hard to tell through all of the flickering flames. Whatever it was, it wasn’t very well coordinated, and slipped and tumbled its way off the turret, bouncing off the tank’s treads and collapsing in a squirming, flaming, screaming, heap on the tarmac.

Why wouldn’t it stop screaming?

A hoof on the captain’s withers jerked the captain out of his shock. He turned to see a unicorn mare looking at her with a desperate expression on her face, “Sir, we need to get a move on!” She insisted.

Danube managed to nod shakily in agreement and followed the rest of the hastily assembled ponies inside. Not many of them had made it, the unicorn stallion noted with a resigned sigh, but maybe it would still prove to be enough of them. However, before they moved on deeper into the facility, he supposed there was something that needed to be taken care of first.

“Trot outside and you see the sunshine,” the captain sing-songed, gesturing to the pony nearest him.

The unicorn mare smiled and picked up the lyric, “Something’s in the air today!”

“Sky is clear and you’re feeling so fine!” A pegasus mare crowed.

“Everything’s going to be A-okay,” an earth pony stallion continued, glancing at the unicorn stallion next to him.

That unicorn only blinked in mild confusion, looking at all of the others before shrugging, “Yeah, I have no idea what the fuck you guys are doing.”

Danube hesitated. The voice that had come from the unicorn stallion had been of a much higher register than he would have expected. At least, for a stallion. It would have been perfectly suitable for a mare though, he reasoned.

The captain’s brain was only just beginning to make the connection between that realization and the only logical conclusion when the light machine gun being wielded by the ‘unicorn stallion’ began to fire. After three seconds of continuous shooting, the no-longer-a-pony looked around at the eviscerated bodies and activated their comlink, “Interior’s clear again,” she reported, “Moving back into cover in case another group makes it inside…”

In stark contrast to New Las Pegasus, Long Harvest was a barely inhabited agrarian world in Federated Moons space that saw little in the way of visiting traffic that wasn’t there specifically to service the conglomerates exporting foodstuffs to more urban planets in nearby systems. So the arrival of an unscheduled DropShip with the latest jump tender was noticed almost immediately by system traffic control. It was the conglomerates that went on high alert though, and not the residents of the small Order of the Holy Luna monastery located on the planet’s smallest continent. After all, everycreature knew that they were nothing more than a cloistered religious order that didn’t involve themselves with anything approaching galactic politics.

Two days later, when the DropShip entered orbit, they even saw fit to announce themselves as being part of an independent mercenary company who was there to shut down one of the larger farms on the planet on behalf of a competitor. Confirming that this was indeed what everypony in the system had initially suspected it to be: a raid being perpetrated against one of the transstellar agri-corps at the behest of another. It was one of the most mundane occurrences in the Harmony Sphere and not something that was doubted for even a moment to be the case.

At least, most wouldn’t have thought to doubt the claim’s authenticity. There was one pony on the planet who thought the arrival of the mercenary DropShip was a little odd though. One of the ‘monks’ in the ‘monastery’―who was totally not actually a creature called a ‘changeling’, and certainly hadn’t been monitoring the communications traffic between the DropShip and the farming conglomerate GluTransCorp on a hidden surveillance array located in the chapel’s basement―quickly brought up their most recently updated list of mercenary contracts in the region issued by the Mercenary Review Board. As they had suspected, they were unable to locate any sanctioned contracts taken out against GluTransCorp.

Of course, that didn’t mean that something hadn’t been brokered ‘off the books’. Such things could indeed happen. ComSpark and the rest of the civilized community frowned upon such things quite heavily though, and so the ‘monk’ logged the anomaly for later transmission during tomorrow’s morning update to the network. The breach of MRB protocols would be investigated and the offending parties notified about the penalties being levied against them for ‘unsanctioned’ contracting. Other than that though, not much more thought was given to the DropShip.

At least, not by the changeling drone who had overheard the comm traffic. The drone’s supervisor―who was absolutely nothing more than a simple prior of the monastery―however, took a keener interest in the DropShip, as he reviewed the list of registered mercenary companies operating with a Mercenary Review Board license. His intent was to ensure that his addendum to the report could provide additional relevant context for when an appropriate punishment was meted out by ComSpark. If this was a very new company, for example, it was possible that they could merely be placed on a probationary status. On the other hoof, if the company had been around long enough to know better, a punitive fine, or even censure, might be more appropriate.

It was during this bit of research that the totally-a-real-prior discovered that, while such a mercenary company did exist, they were already contracted out in Kirin Confederation space. A confirmed sighting placed their entire available force at least two months away from Long Harvest as of last week. It was impossible for one of their DropShips to be in this system.

Whoever these creatures were, they were not who they claimed to be.

Most likely, it meant that these were outlaw raiders, the changeling supervisor reasoned. Most victims of a raid would see little worthwhile distinction between getting attacked by criminals when compared to bona fide mercenaries, of course. However, by and large, registered and sanctioned mercenary companies could typically be counted on to abide by the Aris Conventions. Raiders, not so much.

By disguising themselves as a legitimate mercenary unit, this pirate group likely hoped to be able to get away with a few raids before the Federation took notice and dispatched forces to deal with them. ComSpark would need to be made aware of this group so that the damage they ended up causing could be tracked. If it looked like they were getting out of hoof, or posed a threat to any of ComSpark’s ongoing operations in the area, the Federation military could be appropriately tipped off, or a contract taken out by ComSpark directly to deal with these raiders ‘for the greater good of the Sphere’.

He’d compile a report on how excessive these raiders were where their collateral damage was concerned so that those above him in the intelligence network could classify the group accordingly.

No additional thought was given to the ‘mercenaries’ for another couple of hours, until the prior received a priority alert at his terminal from his own chief intelligence officer. The mare was reporting that, in the last five minutes, they’d lost contact with no fewer than three of their surveillance satellites. The prior jerked upright in his chair in stark surprise. That surprise turned to something approaching genuine concern when it was reported to him that the last moments of telemetry recorded by those satellites identified them being approached by aerospace fighters.

A great deal of red flags began to go off in the changeling supervisor’s head at that moment. First and foremost, those ‘surveillance satellites’ in orbit above Long Harvest were technically standard ComSpark traffic navigation beacons. These were typical planetary orbital aids which were present in just about every star system in the Harmony Sphere which ComSpark had ‘generously gifted’ to the governments of every world in order to help them keep their arriving and departing traffic nice and orderly. That they had a secondary function providing detailed information to various ComSpark facilities―both the overt and the covert―was something the rest of the galaxy was largely ignorant of.

Since they were clearly identifiable as being ComSpark property, however, that should have meant that any aggressor would consider them to be ‘off limits’, regardless of whatever else might have brought them to this planet in the first place. Even a band of raiders like these creatures apparently were shouldn’t be going out of their way to antagonize ComSpark. Only an idiot would do something like that. Well, an idiot or the Disciples, the prior thought to himself.

That theory was confirmed less than an hour later when their hidden ground-based tracking stations detected the DropShip on approach towards their location. The site’s director spent a few minutes pondering the situation, weighing the odds that his small staff would be able to repel a dedicated assault on the facility. Ultimately, he concluded that, if the forces aboard a DropShip that size were determined to get inside, there was little that could be done to prevent it.

So be it. The ‘prior’ reached over to the terminal and pressed a key that would activate the complex’s public announcement system, “All hooves: Molt. This is not a drill.”

He said nothing more, as there was no need for him to expound upon the directive. Every changeling in the ‘monastery’―and the HyperSpark Generator buried beneath it―was entirely aware of what they needed to do, and they would drop everything that they were currently doing and carry out his instructions. The prior turned off his terminal and headed for his office’s exit.

Lieutenant Remmy Red strode smoothly―but briskly―along the ancient-looking stone corridor. A rifle hovered beside her cheek, wrapped in the golden glow of her telekinesis, pointing ahead of her. At her rear, she heard the muffled sound of booted hooves walking in her wake as the rest of her squad moved with her. Their team was currently the deepest inside the monastery, making their way through its catacombs towards the entrance to the HyperSpark Generator.

The lack of any activity on her comlink, other than sporadic updates from other teams about their continued lack of contact with any changeling forces during their own searching, had convinced that unicorn mare that two possibilities were likely: Either the ComSpark forces hidden here were laying in wait for them at the heart of the HSG itself in order to be able to force the invaders through a single avenue of approach and increase their chances of holding them off at a choke point, or…

Or, frankly, she and the rest of the teams in here were living on borrowed time.

Either way, it reeked of a trap, and Remmy didn’t care for that.

The wine-red unicorn mare rounded another corner and came to a halt. The rest of the squad behind her paused as well, waiting for her next signal. She hesitated for several seconds as her eyes studied the door a few meters ahead of her. The very modern-looking door. In stark contrast to all of the rest, which had been built of appropriately rustic oak in order to maintain the appearance of a mendicant retreat for the religiously-focused ‘monks’ who lived here.

They’d found the entrance to the HSG.

Remmy activated her comlink, “Team One has located the objective,” she announced. Then there was a brief pause, before she finally sighed and issued a set of orders which hadn’t been previously discussed during the planning meetings leading up to this operation, “All other teams: pull back to the DropShip.”

The young lieutenant wasn’t surprised when the DropShip’s captain spoke up, “Team One, what’s the issue?”

Remmy raised a hoof and waved it forward, signaling to the rest of her team to follow her as she resumed making her way to the door, “They know we were coming,” she pointed out to the stallion on the other end of the line, “But there’s no sign that anypony’s here.

“I don’t think they’re just going to give us this generator, do you?”

The DropShip commander swore, “Then get your team out of there too, lieutenant,” he demanded.

“We don’t know how long we have. It might be too late for us anyway.”

“It also might not!”

“We also might have enough time to complete the mission, sir. If there’s even a chance, I’m going to take it,” Remmy looked over her shoulder briefly, and felt bittersweet relief to see that the expressions of the rest of the Disciples with her confirmed that they were all in agreement with their lieutenant. She loved them for that.

The unicorn mare once more directed her eyes forward, in case it turned out that this was all in preparation for a more traditional ambush, “We don’t know how big of a surprise they might have left though,” she advised the DropShip captain, “So get yourself back into orbit once everypony else is aboard. Just to be safe.”

“...Good luck, lieutenant.”

Remmy and her team finally breached the door to the HyperSpark Generator, and found themselves on a catwalk that spanned across the cavernous depths of the massive machine which was used to warp the very fabric of space itself in order to send messages across dozens of lightyears. The pair of pegasi with her immediately took advantage of their less confirmed surroundings and took wing, spreading out to search the area for signs of changelings. The rest sprinted towards the control room.

Barely any scan was done for changelings as they arrived at the main terminals for the HSG, as it was pretty moot by this point. Remmy Red positioned herself in front of the console which would allow her to upload both the virus as well as the message which Twilight had recorded of herself posing as Queen Chrysalis issuing her ‘ultimatum’ to the Harmony Sphere. The tech sergeant with her made an effort to gain access to the HSG’s diagnostics terminal in order to see what the actual status of the array was.

It turned out to be pretty much what Remmy had already concluded, “The main reactor is already on a runaway to meltdown,” the senior non-com reported soberly.

The maroon unicorn mare didn’t miss a beat and plugged in the data cartridge she’d been given which contained a copy of the virus and the message for upload, “How much time do we have?”

“I can’t tell from here. The reactor’s internal temp has already fried most of the monitoring sensors,” the sergeant admitted, and then toggled their comlink, “Zeph, find the reactor. I need you to tell me what color the reaction is, preferably in nanometers. There should be a spectrograph in a cabinet somewhere nearby.”

Remmy’s gaze was locked on the progress bar for the upload. It would only take a minute or for the program and the recording to be extracted and parsed for distribution. There might not be enough time for her and her team to get out before the reactor exploded, but hopefully they’d be able to get the transmission off.

“Most reactor housing collapses at around ten thousand kelvin,” the tech sergeant informed her superior, “If that reading comes back at under three hundred...”

“How long would we have?”

The response of the non-com was interrupted by a report from the pegasus that she’d dispatched to get the reading, “Sergeant, if I have this thing working right, it reads at two-eighty-four,” the stallion said.

“...Seconds, ma’am.”

Lieutenant Remmy Red’s eyes widened in shock. She’d known that they wouldn’t have a lot of time to work with, but she’d hoped at least that there’d be some. The unicorn glanced back at the display, noting how much longer it would be until the transmission was made. Would the reactor hold out long enough to―?

The former prior―for he no longer had any monastery left to pry, if that was indeed the verb for it―winced and looked away from the sudden eruption of blinding light. Seconds later, he felt the concrete floor of the bunker which he and the rest of the ‘monks’ were sheltering in quiver as the massive explosion’s shockwave reverberated through the ground. Even from miles away, the sensation was intense.

After a few seconds, he once more peered out of the hidden bunker in the hills overlooking the―former―monastery. Nothing remained but a crater and a slowly rising mushroom cloud. In the distance, he could see the DropShip rising into the sky. His lips quirked in a frown. His superiors were not going to be particularly pleased to learn about the loss of the secondary array. On the bright side, it would be some time before he managed to make such a report. Hopefully, by then he will have managed to come up with a way to sufficiently characterize what had happened to make himself look appropriately blameless in all of this.

“Sunspot Three reporting scan complete; breaking orbit.”

“Acknowledged, Three,” came the staticky response from the stallion on board the command DropShip.

The small Lightning-class aerospace fighter’s engine flared to life above the small desolate moon in near orbit of the Ifrit system’s largest gas giant. The craft lifted away from the airless surface over which the fighter had been patrolling as it gained speed, heading off on its new trajectory towards the next moon in the pilot’s queue. It was a patrol pattern which the kirin mare had run a hundred times before. At least, that was what it felt like to her. In reality, the actual number was likely closer to forty or so.

Scanning dead moons was far from the most exciting duty that an aerospace pilot could have been assigned, in Flare’s opinion. However, mere lieutenants didn’t get to choose their assignments. So, if the kirin was going to keep herself from going brain-dead due to boredom, it was left to the pilot to come up with her own means of keeping herself alert and engaged. At least, within the limits of what she was permitted to do in accordance with Kirin Confederation Armed Forces regulations and protocols.

A mischievous little small touched the red-maned mare’s lips as she tapped in a series of calculations into her Lightning’s navigational computer. While the scans themselves might have varied little from one patrol to the next, the complicated orbital arrangement of the no fewer than fifty-six moons in orbit of the jovian host planet meant that she was never forced to follow the same path twice. Indeed, the duty presented the kirin with a plethora of opportunities to practice and refine her knowledge of orbital mechanics.

It was even something of an unofficial competition between herself and the other pilots who could perform their patrols the ‘best’; with scoring taking into account variables such as time, distance covered, and fuel usage. Flare consistently performed in the top three for Sunspot Squadron, but she’d never quite managed to achieve the number one spot. She’d come very close on one or two occasions, but Major Vernal Gale always seemed to be able to eek out a victory.

In some respects, Solar Flare suspected that it was hardly surprising that the most experienced pilot, and the commander of the squadron, should manage to retain her superior ranking. The youthful lieutenant was mostly satisfied to beat out the rest of her peers. Mostly.

However, right now there was every likelihood that Lieutenant Flare was going to be able to seize that coveted top ranking this time. She’d managed to work out a couple of exceptional burns that placed her in low orbits around the airless members of the gas giant’s progeny, granting her an abundance of speed in reserve; and right now she was lined up for an optimal delta-vee transit to the next one. By her own calculations, she was well below her usual fuel consumption for a patrol, and she was definitely performing this patrol much faster.

All that was left was distance; and while she might be diving a little closer to the gas giant than was ‘advisable’, per official guidance, skipping off of the upper atmosphere like she was about to was going cut more than a hundred thousand kilometers off of her trip, boosting her score even further.

She was going to win the competition this time for sure!

The aerospace pilot watched intently as her velocity continued to increase as the supergiant’s gravity dragged her vessel towards it. Her sensor suite performed continuous scans of the gas giant. The upper atmosphere of such planets were far more volatile than those of their smaller terrestrial cousins. Flare was looking to merely ‘kiss’ the thin topmost regions of the gas giant. Going too deep into its atmosphere would cause her to bleed off too much speed and require additional acceleration burns, which would cost her in time and fuel.

Solar Flare’s smile broadened into a grin as she felt her small fighter begin to hum ever so softly as the thinnest wisps of the jovian’s atmosphere reached up to touch her hull. However, she was already screaming past her flight’s perigee, and lifting away from the gas giant on her way to the next moon in her patrol pattern―

Proximity alerts blared out a shrill warning. Flare was firmly convinced that she would have leaped clear through the canopy in surprise if she hadn’t been so firmly buckled into her seat. At first, the kirin thought that some manner of asteroid or other celestial debris had been detected around her, however this was quickly proven to not be the case. Her sensors were detecting a thermal signature. A very large thermal signature.

“Sunspot Three reporting unknown contact in low orbit of Ifrit IV!” Solar Flare blurted out, still trying to recover from her own shock, “Negative IFF; they’re running dark,” she noted quickly as her sensor suite confirmed that nothing had been received in response to the automated requests made by her fight’s computer. The IFF verification process was a completely automated one, and would only have failed if the queried vessel had theirs turned off.

Which no reputable vessel ever would while operating in civilized space.

There was certainly no good reason for a ship to be crouched in low orbit of a gas giant like this. Flare might have lightly touched the planet’s atmosphere, but whoever these creatures were appeared to be deliberately sequestered in it. The only reason that a ship would have buried itself in a gas giant’s atmosphere would have been to hide itself from the passive scans of a system’s traffic control network.

And only pirates or raiders would want to do something like that. The sorts of groups that the sweeps being performed by Lieutenant Solar Flare’s squadron were intended to ferret out.

“―ay a―n, Su―t ―ee.”

The garbled transmission was nearly incomprehensible to the kirin pilot. The mare confirmed that her comms suite was configured correctly and tried to send out her report again, “I say again: Sunspot Three has made contact with an unidentified vessel near Ifrit IV. Requesting support!”

This time she was met with nothing more than white noise. Her craft’s sensors registered a significant level of electromagnetic activity throughout most of the frequencies commonly used for communications. She was being jammed. That seemed like a decidedly unfriendly move on the part of the unidentified ship she’d stumbled across.

While it was doubtless that additional forces would soon be on their way to her position, if for no other reason than to investigate what had caused her to lose contact with her host vessel, Solar Flare realized that, for the moment, she was on her own. Her two most obvious options were to take advantage of her current velocity and attempt to flee, or to try and hold the other ship here until relief arrived.

It was a foregone conclusion that she’d be able to escape if she really wanted to. The other ship was far too large to have a hope of overtaking her, especially considering her already existing excessive velocity. However, if she got too far away and lost sensor contact with this ship, it was unlikely that it would stick around long enough to be picked up by the relief force that was being scrambled right now.

Major Vernal Gale was hardly going to fault the lieutenant for electing not to match her fifty-ton Lightning against another ship that massed a few thousand tons if she chose to retreat. So there was nothing to be lost by choosing discretion in this instance.

...On the other hoof, Flare wasn’t entirely comfortable with the thought of letting probable raiders get loose in the system to cause who-knew what kind of havoc. If they managed to escape now and went on to hit some settlement or other in the system, the lieutenant wasn’t sure if she’d be able to live with the knowledge that she could have done something to stop it.

With a resigned growl, Lieutenant Solar Flare of the KCAF’s One-Forty-First AreoWing, Fifth Squadron, flipped her Lightning around, powered up her weapon systems, and kicked her engine into a full burn.

“Bogey One is decelerating,” the griffon sensor operator announced calmly, “It looks like they’re going to fight.”

Down Range, the earth pony captain of the recently acquired Disciple DropShip Turtledove, frowned at the sensor plot with great annoyance. He was already well behind schedule. They should have been on their way to Ifrit II and the ComSpark HyperSpark Generator nestled in the planet’s capital city six hours ago. However, he’d elected to delay their departure when the fighter had shown up on their sensors and begun its sweep of the moons in orbit of the gas giant they’d been hiding in. This far out from the only settled planet in the system, there was a chase that they could remain hidden long enough to make their way to an appropriate location where they could ‘appear’ on traffic control’s sensors without looking too out of place.

‘Unfortunately’ for Down Range and his team, they’d made much better time on route to their objective than they reasonably should have. Which wouldn’t normally have been too much of a problem, except that it would have proven difficult to explain why their vessel was waiting around in orbit of Ifrit II doing ‘nothing’ for the better part of three weeks. That might have drawn questions from planetary officials or―worse―ComSpark. So he’d elected to have them hide out in the outer reaches of the system until it was time for them to act in concert with the other teams throughout the Harmony Sphere.

Now they had this to deal with.

“Helm, break orbit. Best time course for Ifrit II,” the DropShip’s captain growled, “Looks like we’ll be going in hot. Launch Bucklers One and Two,” he barked at the pegasus stationed at operations. He’d let his own fighters deal with the incoming KCAF craft. The earth pony toggled his comlink, “Colonel Barrister? We’re moving out. ETA to touchdown is…” he glanced over the plot which had only a moment ago been updated with the navigator’s recently calculated course, “eight hours.”

“Acknowledged. We’ll be ready to fight, Captain.”

Lieutenant Solar Flare grit her teeth, rethinking her earlier choice to remain and tangle with the ship she’d found. When she’d made that decision, there hadn’t been two other aerospace fighters in the mix. The kirin considered herself to be a capable pilot, but even the most accomplished aces in the galaxy would hesitate at the thought of tangling with two other fighters on their own, especially when those other fighters were being backed up by their mothership.

However, it was too late for Flare to back off now that those fighters had been launched. While the DropShip might not have been able to match her acceleration, those other fighters would certainly be able to overtake her if she tried to withdraw now. On the bright side, she didn’t necessarily have to get into a serious dogfight with them. Her goal from the outset had always been just to keep in sensor contact with the DropShip so that the rest of her squadron wouldn’t lose track of it while they made their way to her location. That shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes or so, in her estimation.

Even against two fighters, she could play grab-flank for that long at least without much issue.

Her sensors updated her on the status of the larger DropShip, revealing its dramatic increase in acceleration. They were leaving the gas giant. The course projected for it was Ifrit II. It looked like they were going to conduct their raid after all. Flare frowned. That seemed odd to her. She’d have expected pirates to opt for a retreat upon being discovered. They’d lost the element of surprise after all. Whatever their target was would surely soon be on alert and a much harder nut to crack, wouldn’t it?

The DropShip’s intentions hardly mattered much in the interim though. Solar Flare’s primary concern soon became the pair of aerospace fighters closing with her, and keeping herself intact long enough to be relieved by her approaching cohorts. At least, she desperately hoped they were approaching. The kirin threw her little fighter into a series of evasive maneuvers in the hope of confounding the targeting computers of the closing enemy fighters.

Flashes of brilliant sapphire and emerald lightning filled the vacuum of space around her. Alarms blared, warning Flare of incoming missiles. The kirin pilot swiftly discharged a number of flares and cut her main engine. She briefly held her breath reflexively as trails of wispy smoke zipped past her cockpit in the wake of missiles which missed her by mere meters, chasing after the decoys meant to confound them.

Once more her primary engine ignited, flaring to life and plastering her body into her seat. Her hind hooves worked her aerospace fighter’s ‘rudder’, sending her craft into a roll as contrary dorsal and ventral thrusters fired. At the same time, the kirin cut her thrust once more and pushed forward on her control yoke. Her nimble little Lightning threw its back end ‘up’, seeming to dance on its nose as she whipped towards the enemy fighters. As the front of her fighter flashed over top of one of the enemy craft, Flare lashed out with a trio of jade beams from her energy cannons. The destructive torrents of light carved their way across the port wing of her target, shearing it off, along with multiple clusters of the aerospace fighter’s maneuvering thrusters.

The enemy fighter shuddered beneath the strike and began to tumble wildly out of control through space. It wasn’t strictly impossible for the pilot to recover from such a spin, but it would be quite a difficult and―more importantly―time-consuming task for even an experienced pilot to accomplish. For the time being, that fighter was no longer something that Flare needed to be concerned about. It would similarly be another minute or so before the remaining fighter in full operation was able to double-back and come after her.

Once more alarms blared as additional missile locks were detected. Flare felt her blood go cold. While the other fighter might not be able to do anything to her right away, the DropShip could. No fewer than sixty missiles launched from the multi-kiloton vessel and began snaking their way towards her.

The kirin mare killed power to nearly every system that the fighter had, save for the thrusters and her countermeasures. She sent the nimble little Lightning into a continuous roll, while spewing out every last flare that her craft had left. To an observer, she was sure that the sight must have looked quite beautiful, as the stream of brilliant white lights were ejected from the rolling fighter like an artistic imitation of a supernova.

Not every missile was diverted away from her fighter in favor of the flares. That would have been hoping for too much. A few of them did find their mark, detonating against her Lightning’s armored hull. The craft trembled and groaned as the explosions tore away ablative plating and damaged systems. At a glance it didn’t seem like anything too important to the fighter’s operation had been lost. That was a good sign.

Flare set about hastily restarting her systems, making the weapons a priority. Her trajectory would be carrying her across the DropShip’s stern. If she was lucky, she might be able to land a shot on one of its engines which would cripple the vessel and make it easier for the rest of her squadron to catch. She ceased her Lightning’s tumble and lined up a shot with her fighter’s heavy-hitting type-twenty autocannon. The weapon wasn’t very practical against other aerospace fighters, but against lumbering DropShips on the other hoof…

The kirin pilot grinned and snapped off a shot.

“I want all the squad leaders to do one last check on ammunition,” Lieutenant Jasper said, addressing the four sergeants that commanded the squads in his platoon, “I know this will be the tenth time, or whatever, but we all know that somepony always manages to have slipped through the cracks until the last moment no matter how many times we do these things,” the earth pony officer saw the assembled non-coms all exchange sardonic smiles with each other. Each of them knew that they had that ‘one soldier’ in their squad for whom it felt as though they went out of their way to raise a squad leader’s blood pressure through their inexplicable obliviousness.

“Check their magazines yourselves if you have to,” the young officer continued, “I don’t care. We’re going to be deep in the roadapples on this one and I want to make sure all our troopers have the bullets they need to shoot their way out of whatever trouble they get themselves into―”

Lieutenant Jasper and the rest of his platoon were nominally aware of the fight going on outside the Turtledove. They’d heard the alert, and they’d been briefed about the change in plans from Colonel Barrister. Of course, there wasn’t a lot that any of the grunts being ferried by the DropShip could do about anything going on right now. That was for the DropShip’s crew to concern themselves with. Jasper and the rest instead focused on ensuring that they were properly prepared to carry out their duties when it finally came for their part in the operation.

Even if the earth pony officer had been focusing his thoughts on the disposition of the enemy fighter outside, it wasn’t as though there was anything that he could have done about it. So while Jasper knew about the enemy fighter, he and the rest hadn’t concerned themselves with it. They had other things to think about.

Or, rather, they’d had other things to think about. Unfortunately for them, Lieutenant Solar Flare of the Kirin Confederation Armed Forces was a better shot than she’d expected to be. The one hundred kilogram explosive shell that she’d fired from her autocannon actually missed her intended target of one of the DropShip’s nacelles. Which wasn’t exactly a mark against her marksmareship. That she’d managed to hit a vessel―even one as large as a Friendship-class DropShip―at a distance of more than ten thousand kilometers while traveling at a target-relative velocity of over a thousand meters per second was quite a feat! So it could be forgiven that she’d missed her intended hit location by a few meters.

Unfortunately for the Turtledove, while a discrepancy of even a few meters could have meant that the kirin fighter pilot’s shot would have missed entirely if it had gone wide of its mark in a majority of directions, it had done so along one of those few which wouldn’t miss. Indeed, the divergence was doubly unfortunate in that instead of being a hit on one of the engine pylons which would have done little more than cost the DropShip some of its acceleration, it turned out that the armor-piercing shell struck abreast of the main fusion reactor.

Being a vital part of a DropShip, the main reactor core was actually one of the more heavily armored parts of the vessel. Protected well enough plating that even a direct hit from a munition as powerful as the shell of a type-twenty autocannon wouldn’t have been able to penetrate and do any significant damage. However, as fate would have it, Flare had not scored a direct hit on the DropShip’s reactor core itself. The Turtledove would have emerged nearly unscathed if she had, much to the kirin’s chagrin, one could be sure.

No, she hadn’t hit the core. Instead, she had managed to wheedle her shot into something that wasn’t as thickly armored, but was still of vital importance to the reactor: the primary transformer for the reactor’s magnetic containment coils. These were quite summarily destroyed by the autocannon shell.

The DropShip had secondary systems for something so vitally important of course. They were even located well away from the primary system in order to keep both from being knocked out simultaneously by a singular strike. Strictly speaking, any combat damage which managed to destroy both systems during a battle would almost certainly have effectively destroyed the DropShip by that time anyway. Under normal circumstances, those secondary transformers would have been able to effortlessly take over without notice by the reactor and keep it functioning perfectly fine.

In this instance, however, that didn’t happen. For those secondary systems were in the middle of being replaced when the DropShip was stumbled-upon. A routine check had noted that they were sluggish to respond during a test of the redundant transformer. There hadn't been much of a delay in response time, but it had concerned the ship’s chief engineer enough to order the transformer replaced. He’d figured that there would be plenty of time to do so, since it would be hours before the ship was anticipated to head out for Ifrit II. The transformer had definitely needed to be replaced before they started taking fire during the landing at the HSG, after all.

With the primary transformer destroyed, and the redundant system no longer patched into the reactor, the magnetic field which was essential to keeping the miniature sun burning at the heart of the DropShip safely contained...evaporated. With nothing to keep the reaction stable and confined, that tiny little ‘sun’ blossomed into a ‘nova’.

Nocreature was more surprised than Solar Flare when the DropShip exploded less than a second after her shot landed. Because nocreature aboard the Turtledove lived long enough to be surprised.

The griffon hen’s talons tapped diligently across the datapad held in her grasp. She paused frequently to scrutinize the contents on the display, occasionally even bringing her other hand up to massage her beak in contemplation. Reconsidering her last alteration, the griffon reached down once more and tapped out a fresh sequence. After all, one needed to be completely certain that the message which they ended up submitting for transmission by ComSpark’s Primary Circuit was one that they were satisfied with. Sending messages wasn’t exactly cheap enough for the average creature such that they could afford to clarify any mistakes that the recipient felt compelled to ask about.

The hen wanted to be completely certain that her message was as close to perfect as she could get it before she finally took the pad up to the counter for final submission and payment to the courteous and professional ComSpark staff servicing that day’s customers. The griffon was far from the only creature doing this. So frequent were customers who felt compared to make last-minute adjustments to their message traffic, that ComSpark had set aside a respectable lounge space to do so in, complete with a small café.

Briefly, the griffon’s eyes darted up from her datapad as she watched a pale yellow unicorn mare step out of the nearby lavatory. The pony didn’t appear to notice the hen’s brief attention, as she was quickly distracted by having to adjust the placement of her saddlebag before continuing on to get in line at the counter to submit her message traffic.

The griffon saved her most recent changes to her message and stood up from the chaise which she’d been lounging on. She tossed her empty paper cup which had held her coffee as recently as ten minutes ago and made her way to the lavatory. Her gaze didn’t linger on a pegasus stallion exiting the buck’s room for more than a heartbeat before she lost sight of him upon entering the restroom. Unobtrusively, the griffon navigated her way around the mares and hens washing their hooves and hands and slipped inside the far stall.

Once inside, she carefully lifted the lid of the toilet’s cistern and looked beneath it. She diligently removed the last of the five energizer coils which had been taped there over the past week and replaced the lid. Holding the coil firmly in one hand, the other dug around in her saddlebag for the focusing array that she’d found sequestered beneath the lounge that she’d been sitting on only moments ago, as well as the trigger assembly that had been in the coffee she’d purchased, and the battery pack which had looked like nothing more sinister than an eclectically-powered cigarette lighter to the ComGuard security ponies who’d screened her belongings at the main entrance.

All four components snapped neatly together. A barely-perceptible whine of power could be heard as the energizer coils charged themselves from the battery pack. The griffon confirmed that the heavily stripped-down energy pistol was charged and functional before stuffing it back into her saddlebag. She then flushed the toilet and made her exit from the stall, not pausing at the sink to wash her talon on the way out of the lavatory. It hardly mattered to her whether the other creatures who might have noticed her thought poorly of her personal hygiene habits after all.

Once back out in the main reception area, the griffon ensured that she definitely wasn’t looking at the unicorn mare or pegasus stallion from earlier. Nor the hippogriff barista at the café working the espresso machine, the griffon tiercel paying more attention to the news feeds on the large overhead monitors than his message editing, the earth pony stallion trying to chat up a thoroughly uninterested pair of pegasus mares. She simply made her way to queue up and finally send out her message traffic.

The pair of creatures in front of her were serviced with practiced efficiency born from the many years of experience the staff had fielding such requests. It was only a few more minutes before the smiling unicorn mare wearing a ComSpark uniform behind the counter turned her attention to the griffon hen and asked in an impossibly bubbly voice, “Hello and welcome to ComSpark! How may we help you today, ma’am?”

Lieutenant Gretel, an officer serving in the Disciples of Discord, reached one of her hands into her saddlebag, withdrew the concealed energy pistol, and wordlessly shot the mare in her face. The crimson beam of coherent energy bored right through her head and left a blackened divot in the otherwise pristine wall behind her. The mare’s death was so instantaneous that the smile hadn’t even wilted by the time the corpse collapsed to the floor.

For the briefest moment, all activity in the lobby ceased. Anycreature who had been looking in the vague direction of the griffon for whatever reason gaped in shock as their brains attempted to rationalize what they’d just witnessed. After all, nocreature launched an attack on ComSpark personnel in one of their HSGs! Those who hadn’t seen the shot fired with their own eyes picked up on the shift in the room’s mood almost instantly, and it didn’t take them long after that to piece together what was happening from the scene of the griffon hen holding a steaming energy pistol pointing at the black scorch mark on a wall where one of the service staff had once stood.

Before anycreature caught off guard by their shock could react though, a pale yellow unicorn mare drew a nearly identical weapon from her saddlebag with her magic and fired off a shot at another of the ComSpark staff behind the counter. The earth pony stallion’s eyes widened in surprise as the ruby beam drilled through his chest, dropping him to the floor.

Then the screaming started.

An eruption of nearly deafening panicked cries of the dozens of guests and patrons filled the room, causing the thick concrete walls to tremble with the noise. A flood of creatures made a mad dash for the main entrance in a flurry of hives, claws, and wings. The ComGuard security forces standing just outside who had been too busy screening new arrivals to be paying attention to what the patrons they’d already searched for weapons were doing, found themselves nearly bowled over by the throng of bodies making their desperate escape.

A half dozen other flashes of crimson light from the rest of Gretel’s squad cut down the remaining ponies wearing ComSpark uniforms who hadn’t tried to leave with the rest. The hen turned and shouted at the pale yellow unicorn mare, “Daisy, get the door!”

The pony vaulted over the counter, taking care not to trip over the body of the stallion she’d killed moments ago, and began using her magic to manipulate the console in front of her. The other members of the team made their way swiftly towards the counter and their commander, their gaze focused on the front entrance and the ComGuard forces trying to shove their way past the fleeing denizens. However, it was not that door which Daisy and Gretel were concerned with.

“Got it!” The mare called out, coinciding with the ‘whoosh!’ of the door behind the counter opening.

“Move! Move! Move!” Gretel snarled, one hand fervently waving for the other seven members of her team to move through the recently opened portal while she kept her gaze―and her weapon―trained towards the ComGuard troopers still trying to make their way inside. The griffon was the last to follow them through, turning as she did so just long enough to seal the door behind them.

She scanned the hall briefly for any immediate threats. Spying none, she cast an aside look at the yellow unicorn, “...Winter Wrap Up,” she said in what could only ever be loosely defined as a ‘chant’ given the tone she was using.

“Winter Wrap up,” the mare said in a slightly more lyrical tone without missing a beat before looking to the next creature nearest her.

“Let’s finish our…” the hippogriff continued before looking at the pegasus stallion.

The stallion blanched, “Uh...holiday beer?” He stammered, sounding unsure, “No, wait, it was-”

The rest of the squad winced away as a bolt of ruby light passed through the side of the pegasus’ head, dropping him to the ground. Gretel’s diamond-hard expression didn’t so much as twitch before she turned the barrel of the weapon to the earth pony stallion, “Let’s finish our…?”

The pony swallowed hard, his gaze locked on the steaming barrel of the weapon pointed at his muzzle, “...Holiday cheer,” he stressed very carefully.

“Winter Wrap Up.” “Winter Wrap Up.” The two mares said in quick succession, both staring at the corpse of who they truly hoped hadn’t been their comrade.

The griffon lowered her weapon, “Good,” she said with a terse nod of her head towards the survivors, “Riptide, move us out,” Gretel gestured at the hippogriff, “Double-time. We have a virus to upload.”

“Moving, ma’am,” he acknowledged, stepping gingerly over the body of what he was trying very hard to think of as a changeling. In spite of knowing that Shoal had come to him several times over the past week with concerns about committing to memory the rhyme their lieutenant had chosen for them in order to ferret out changeling imposters in their ranks. He’d claimed a mixture of dyslexia and tone-deafness. Riptide had promised to help him in the evenings.

He’d always found himself too busy getting the materials the squad was going to need for the mission to actually do so though.

He chose to believe a changeling had gotten him somehow in the chaos earlier. It was more pleasant than the alternative.

Victoria was working at her desk when her console announced that she had received a priority message from ComSpark. The ivory pegasus raised an intrigued brow. It was exceedingly rare for anypony to receive a high priority message directly from ComSpark. While there was a part of her that grew concerned that somehow the changelings had gotten wind of the brief period where she’d aided the real Twilight Sparkle and the Disciples, and was letting her know how truly fucked she now was, the rest of her fully understood that, if that were the case, Victoria would have been informed of that discovery by way of a bullet through her head.

This was far more likely to be in regards to the Harmony Sphere’s invasion by the Dragon Clans. Up to this point, and in keeping with ComSpark’s long-standing official policy on staying out of ‘Sphere affairs’, there hadn’t actually been all that much direct commentary from ComSpark on the Clans. They had elected to waive contracting fees for any planet posting a request for mercenary assistance fighting the Clans, as well as slashing the fee they charged to the mercenaries themselves to nearly nothing. However, they had of course not taken any direct action themselves.

It was possible that the situation had finally grown serious enough for them to decide that they couldn’t stay out of this matter much longer if they still wanted to have a Sphere to lord over in the future. Hopefully they were pledging direct military or technological support.

The Pony Commonwealth’s Archon put her other work on hold and accessed the attachment, expressing some amusement upon seeing that it was a video file. Those were fairly time-consuming and expensive to send over long distances. Whatever it was that ComSpark had to say, it was obviously important.

Victoria played the video and sat back in her chair.

Her screen was filled with the face of a familiar purple alicorn. However, this one was wearing a rather ostentatious crown and was glowering at the viewer with a coldness that she couldn’t recall ever seeing on Princess Twilight Sparkle’s face during the times they’d spoken.

“Creatures of the Harmony Sphere,” the contemptuous voice all but snarled, as though the mere act of addressing her viewers was an indignity, “ComSpark and Myself have long elected to keep ourselves out of the affairs of the Successor States. We withheld Ourselves as a courtesy to you.

“However, after witnessing how pathetically all of you have performed against the Clans, it has become clear to Us that this was an error. You are obviously all in need of Our more focused guidance.

“We have already eliminated the threat posed to the Sphere by the Clans. They were stopped cold, effortlessly even, by Our ComGuard at Buckwheat less than a week ago. It is a wonder to Us how Our―while superbly trained―untested ComGuard were able to so effortlessly do in a week what none of you could do in six months,” Queen Twilight’s lips turned up if a contemptuous sneer.

“Thus, We have decided that you are all in desperate need of more direct control and guidance. These are Our demands:

“The leaders of the Succession States will travel to Us here on Equus and submit themselves to Us as Our direct and loyal vassals.”

Victoria balked at the demand. She couldn’t be serious. She was claiming to have single-hoofedly stopped the advance of the Dragon Clans and was now demanding to be given direct dominion over the whole Harmony Sphere? She couldn’t honestly believe that Victoria and the other reigning heads of state would agree to that, did she?

“To ensure you take Our demands seriously, We have withdrawn from the Sphere the privilege of using Our HyperSpark Generators. You will be permitted to access them again, only upon your submission to Us.

“Do not keep us waiting.”

The video ended. Victoria stared at the blank screen for several more seconds as the shock worked its way through her system. Then the pegasus glared at the screen where the queen had been a moment ago and reached for her terminal again. She had some calls to make, and a military to mobilize...

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