“How is she, Doc?”

Every head in the conference room turned to the dappled gray earth pony sitting with them at the table. While only a mere medic by trade, and a far cry from a genuine physician, Cravat was the most experienced medical professional on the Zathura, and the de facto ‘Ship’s Doctor’; hence the reason why Squelch addressed him with the honorific title. The young stallion cleared his throat, a little uncomfortable being the center of so much attention, and delivered his report to the ship’s captain.

“She’s resting. It looks like it’s just a moderate case of mana burn,” he informed them. “She should be back on her hooves with no lasting effects by morning.”

Despite the medical pony’s undeniably positive prognosis, the revelation still generated a distinctly unhappy expression on the sage unicorn’s face. “‘Morning’ is twelve hours away,” Squelch observed. “Meanwhile, we’ll be landing in less than six. Is there any way you can get her on her hooves before then?”

Now it was Cravat’s turn to look unhappy, “I mean, I can get her on her hooves now,” he admitted, though it was clear from his tone that the earth pony very much would have preferred not to, “but she wouldn’t be cleared for combat. Ma’am, you have to know that mana burn can’t be alleviated with an aspirin…”

Squelch let out a defeated sigh, nodding her head in agreement with the medic. “You’re right. You’re right,” she acknowledged bitterly, “I just don’t like being down our best pilot right before making a drop. To say nothing about her being our best shot at stopping Chrysalis altogether,” she pointed out wryly. “Having an alicorn in our saddlebag to use against the changeling queen would have been pretty nice. I know I certainly felt a little better about it…”

“In a way, it kind of works out,” Mig chimed in. “The Cavalier’s not viable anymore either,” Slipshod didn’t appreciate the kirin side-eying him the way that she was as the chief technician said that. As if it was his fault that he’d nearly been thrown off the Zathura’s hull by Aileron’s flying. “Its knee actuator is bent all to tartarus, and I don’t have any spares on hoof that are compatible. As it is, the whole leg’s liable to shear right off if it's put under any real stress.”

“I assume that a rebuild’s out of the question?” Squelch asked, her tone indicating that she had already anticipated the answer she was about to receive.

“Day and half,” the kirin confirmed with a helpless shrug, “and that’s if I cut a lot of uncomfortable corners at the testing stages before putting it back together,” she qualified. Slipshod grimaced at the thought. While he respected the engineer’s skills, and that of her staff, he didn’t much care for the idea of taking a BattleSteed into combat that hadn’t had its recently replaced components tested for viability. Especially something as critical as a leg joint. There was a lot involved in such a restoration that could be easily overlooked, especially if the technicians performing the work felt that haste was needed to meet an important deadline.

To her credit, Mig hadn’t sounded like she would have been comfortable with the idea either.

The unicorn mare nodded. She clearly wasn’t happy with the revelation, but recognized that it was hardly Mig’s fault. “We can see about getting parts from one of the other units after we land. In the meantime, Slipshod will pilot the Rainbow Dash for the initial drop. Are we good with that?” She asked with a glance in the changeling stallion’s direction.

Admittedly, while the thought of piloting Twilight’s BattleSteed felt a little bit like he was ‘stealing’ it from the alicorn, there was no dismissing the logic of it all. His Cavalier wasn’t in optimum condition, and wouldn’t be until they’d managed to secure a beachhead or two down on the planet and set up rear logistical areas to conduct repairs and rearmament of their forces. Sending Xanadu out on his own was certainly out of the question too. Using the alicorn’s ‘Steed until she was recovered and his Cavalier was repaired was the most sensible solution.

“I’ll spend a few hours familiarizing myself with the controls,” the changeling promised.

That was the only real issue that had any merit anyway: he’d be going into a fight in a BattleSteed that he wasn’t well acquainted with. While the broad mechanics and functionality of most ‘Steeds wasn’t all that far removed from any other, it was well understood among pilots that every chassis had quirks and characteristics that needed to be understood and respected, or an unwary pilot was going to have a ‘bad time’. Like his old Wild Bronco: it had been a ‘Steed which packed a considerable amount of strength and power in its limbs that a novice pilot could easily inadvertently use to either hurt themselves or seriously damage the ‘Steed itself.

Slipshod had little doubt that the Rainbow Dash would be any different. He’d seen it in action, sure; but even so, the changeling was doubtful that he underwood all that it was capable of. To say nothing of how to get it to perform like Twilight had. The alicorn had overseen the development of that whole class of BattleSteed, and had almost certainly tailored it to her tastes. So while the stallion doubted that he had anywhere near the time needed to truly get himself fully acquainted with the Rainbow Dash and be able to pull off the same sorts of maneuvers that Twilight had, the ‘Steed pilot was confident that he could reach the point were he didn’t face-plant it the moment he stepped off the DropShip.

“Good,” Squelch said with a nod before turning to the next topic of discussion, bringing up a map of their immediate surroundings on the holographic plotter.

Several others in the room immediately tensed as they saw the small cloud of crimson specks materialize, clearly sitting almost perfectly between the signals representing their own forces and Equus. “Another group of fighters?!” Xanadu blurted. Slipshod felt the level of despair in the room ratchet up a notch or two as the others contemplated the prospect of fending off yet another group of ComSpark aerospace fighters. There were still about a hundred or so trailing them from the moon. Though those were unlikely to be able to catch up before the fleet reached the planet, so it shouldn’t impact their intended landings.

“Why didn’t we see them coming earlier?” Slipshod asked, curious. He studied the plotter intently, all the while his mind working its way through a series of hasty estimates and calculations. The force of six hundred fighters that they’d just faced should have accounted for the entirety of the squadrons garrisoned at the shipyards, the changeling knew. It was possible that those squadrons had been reinforced in the intervening years―or that there had existed a secret swarm of fighters somewhere that he’d never known about, as had been the case with the WarShips.

That seemed unlikely though. Equally unlikely was the notion that these squadrons had been launched from the surface of the planet. They’d have detected such a deployment on their sensors. The sudden appearance of these ships like this could only be explained by a launch from the far side of the moon, which wouldn’t have been detectable until they’d rounded it.

“Not fighters,” Squelch confirmed, “DropShips,” the last was uttered with a note of bewildered contempt. Which was understandable, since the revelation didn’t make any sense to Slipshod either. Why would a force of DropShips have been leaving the moon on a course for Equus now, of all times? They had to have known that they’d be overrun by the force of WarShips heading for the planet, right?

“We estimate that they launched some time just before we reached the moon,” the sage green unicorn continued, “We’re not sure why they launched, or what they hoped to accomplish,” she admitted, “Cinder’s rearranging the fleet to let her WarShips take point to deal with them. There shouldn’t be any need for another outing,” she said with a glance at her two remaining ‘Steed pilots; both of whom visibly relaxed at the confirmation. It was Slipshod’s opinion that his close brush with being launched into space had given him an acute case of kenophobia, and even the thought of doing all of that again gave him palpitations.

“Well…that’s a relief,” Xanadu said with a breathless sigh. The pair shared a look, silently acknowledging their mutual disdain for space-combat. They were BattleSteed pilots, after all. If they’d fancied fighting in space, they’d have learned to pilot aerospace fighters.

“Good. Now allow me to give you guys the bad news,” Squelch said, flashing them a sardonic smile as she focused the holographic project not on the force of ComSpark DropShips, but on their own forces. “It’s unlikely that we’re going to face much more resistance before making landfall at this point, which is good,” she began, and Slipshod found himself nodding in agreement.

Equus itself didn’t have much in the way of aerospace fighter garrisons. At least, not in quantities that would give them cause for concern. There were a few thousand DropShips, but those weren’t a threat so long as Cinder’s WarShips were around to provide support. They even still had a few hundred fighters of their own left to provide cover for landings. What they didn’t have nearly as many of, the changeling noticed now, were DropShips of their own. Despite the best efforts of Cinder’s WarShips and their fighter screens, they’d taken serious losses on the way here. He didn’t have an exact number at hoof, but―

“―Since we’re already down to about two-thirds of our initial landing capacity,” the unicorn finished with a resigned sigh. The announcement was met around the room with a mixture of dismay and frustration.

“Can we still pull this thing off?” Blood Chit asked, his tone suggesting that he was harboring more than a few doubts. He wasn’t alone in his thinking either, the changeling could feel. Slipshod himself was even one of those whose faith in the plan had just fractured, as he started running numbers through his head.

“Not as initially intended,” Squelch admitted. “It’s going to have to be modified.

“The heaviest losses were suffered by the Commonwealth,” the unicorn mare explained, “followed closely by the Combine. Neither group has the numbers to take their targets anymore and hold them for any real length of time.”

“Are we just hitting Canterlot directly then?” Xanadu inquired, a slight grimace visible on his lips.

Slipshod was grateful to see Squelch shaking her head, “Wouldn’t do us any good. Even if we made it through the anti-air stacked on the place, Slipshod’s intel on their force strength and turret defenses suggests it’ll take more than an hour to breach that place.

“That kind of timetable means that we’ll need at least some kind of rearward logistics area. Ammunition, parts, replacement ablative armor―we need a collection point to gather and distribute supplies for the front,” Squelch explained. “Given the size of the force we’re talking about supporting and the quantity of supplies involved, only an already established spaceport can handle the throughput we’d need to sustain operations. We have to take one of the outlying major cities.”

“But I thought you said―”

The unicorn mare held up a hoof, cutting off the zebra’s puzzled query. “We won’t be able to take Manehattan, Baltimore, and Fillydelphia,” she conceded, “not all at once. We’re moving from a three-pronged assault to a pincer and a feint. Victoria and Nacht will work together taking Baltimare while Thera and Timberjack hit Fillydelphia.

“Meanwhile, what’s left of the Disciples and the Reivers will perform a series of raids along the changelings’ rears. Which is what we’ll be a part of.”

Squelch transitioned the holoprojection in the center of the conference room into a landscape rendering. Slipshod recognized the area as being part of the Appeloosan region, and almost immediately deduced where the mare was going with this briefing.

“This is Appeloosa,” the sage unicorn confirmed, “and it’s the site of a supply base that would be essential to any counter-offensive coming out of the south against Fillydelphia. Taking it out will keep the changelings from being able to hit the city too hard. It’s also pretty far from other major garrisons in the area, so there should be a window of opportunity to get in, level the place, and get back out again.

“Now, unfortunately, because of how many DropShips we lost on the way here, the Zathura can’t stay on station to pick you guys back up when you’re done. We’ll already be on our way back to orbit to load up another lance from the fleet for deployment. Instead, once the depot’s dealt with, you’ll make your way to a rally point here,” an area on the map illuminated, denoting the coordinates for the rendezvous, “where you’ll meet with additional groups who will hopefully have had a few successful raids of their own.

“From there, you’ll strike at Ponyville. There’s a comms relay there the changelings will be using to coordinate their forces. Taking it out should disrupt their forces in the area and help mask our approach to Canterlot. By then we should be able to arrange a pickup for you.”

“I assume it’s going to be more than just the two of us doing this?” Slipshod inquired, gesturing between himself and Xanadu.

“You’ll be landing with a company of Reivers, yes. Triton has been briefed on the mission. He’s been told that you have operational command on the ground for this one,” Squelch said pointedly.

The changeling stallion felt himself relax slightly. The mission sounded a lot more doable with fourteen BattleSteeds than two, that was for sure! The supply cache would have little more than a token security force, he knew. It should be just about a cakewalk for an augmented company of ‘Steeds to take and destroy it. The push into Ponyville would pit them against much more substantial resistance, but by then they’d likely be at battalion strength or better. In terms of ‘Steeds, at least. He wasn’t clear on what they’d have in regards to additional support units.

Actually, on that point: “Where’s Keely?” Slipshod asked, glancing around the decidedly dragonless room.

“I assume with the rest of his platoon―or ‘star’, or whatever the clans call them,” Squelch replied, “I already briefed his group. They won’t be dropping with you; they’ll be hitting a fuel refinery in Dodge Junction a little bit further west. From there they’ll be moving on to harass supply convoys coming up Ghastly Gorge.”

“Are we really going to have enough ammo on hoof to hit two targets before getting a pickup?” The zebra pilot asked, a faint hint of skepticism audible in his words. It was a fair question, Slipshod acknowledged. The better part of two hundred kilometers separated Appeloosa and Ponyville. It would take them hours to cover that distance, and that meant there was a better than average chance that they’d run afoul of at least one changeling patrol along the way. Between leveling the supply hub and fending off attacks, their group was certain to need a resupply before they could hope to take a place as fortified as Ponyville. Especially since all of the other groups that they were supposed to regroup with before launching the attack on the communications relay would doubtless be as depleted as they themselves were.

“The Reivers will be landing with a couple of supply trucks,” Squelch assured them, “They’ll have enough ordinance for a reload or two for each of you. Armor replacement will be limited though,” she warned them, “so try not to get shot up too bad before reaching the relay.”

That was reassuring, at least. It still wasn’t going to be an easy affair by far, of course. Not that Slipshod had expected any part of this to be. Not being easy was a far cry from not being possible, though; and the changeling couldn’t help but feel some budding optimism as he considered the plan as outlined. This was in spite of knowing the kinds of odds that they would be up against. After all, it wasn’t just the legitimate military forces that they’d be fighting. Every able-bodied changeling between them and Canterlot would be called by the queen to defend her.

As had been demonstrated by the presence of the ComSpark DropShip fleet heading for the planet, clearly drafted from the moon-based garrison.

Slipshod pondered over the significance of such a force, and found himself of mixed feelings over it. It suggested that Chrysalis was panicking and making knee-jerk decisions based on instinct more than rationality or tactical consideration. On the one hoof, that could mean that the defenders would be disorganized during the initial phases of the landing, because they’d still be in the throes of trying to reorganize their forces around the sudden inclusion of so many additional units being summoned in from other regions of the world.

On the other hoof, quantity possessed a certain quality all its own, Slipshod recognized. The changeling forces wouldn’t necessarily need a lot of sophisticated and perfectly coordinated tactical planning to overwhelm the invading forces if they had enough bodies to throw at the problem. Achieving victory by means of target saturation was hardly an ideal option for most commanders, but if it was a choice between that and placing themselves at risk of losing the fight, Slipshod knew which direction those commanders would lean.

There was every possibility that this whole affair was going to turn into a horrendous slaughter the likes of which nocreature had ever imagined, as they were forced to wade towards Canterlot through a sea of changeling blood and corpses. Corpses that Chrysalis surely wouldn’t hesitate to stack as high as the walls surrounding Canterlot itself if she thought it would help.

The thought of his race being discarded in such abhorrent numbers chilled Slipshod to the bone…and boiled his blood at the same time.

“Full house; eights over threes!” Gaster announced with a victorious chitter, slamming down his pair of pocket eights onto the table, very nearly scattering the river. The disgust and resentment wafting from the other players was all the confirmation that the changeling stallion needed to confirm his assumption that none of his competition possessed a superior pair of cards. Not that there was much chance of that, as only a pair of threes could have bested him, allowing their holder to make four-of-a-kind. However, he’d seen the slight quiver in the wing of the only other ‘ling who’d been calling his raises when that second three turned up as a diamond instead of another spade and knew that the mare had been hoping for a flush.

“Drinks are going to have to be one me if this keeps up much longer,” Gaster snickered as he scraped the chips in towards himself. “Since none of you are going to have any money left at all in a couple more rounds!” His gaze lingered on the pathetically small piles arranged in front of the three other changelings who were still a part of the game. Two others had been cleaned out already and had left the barracks to go and soothe their sorrow with something from the cafeteria.

His opponents leveled baleful glares at him, briefly taking down their emotional barriers so that he could feel the full force of their ire. Gaster grinned back at them in response, further stoking the spicy animosity being directed his way. He was about to issue a retort when the PA system let out a sour tone, drawing their attention.

“Alert! All hooves report to your designated assembly areas! This is not a drill!”

Gaster frowned now, glaring in the direction of the speaker. “Well that’s some rotten timing,” he grumbled to himself as the other changelings he’d been playing with all stood up and zipped to their lockers to fetch their gear. He did the same, but also took a moment to stash his winnings in his locker for safekeeping. The changeling stallion quickly donned his barding and helmet before darting out of the barracks.

Outside it was near pandemonium. Or, at least, it didn’t appear to be too far removed from it. While Gaster could sense any outright panic in the air, there was certainly an uptick in the overall tension hovering over the base. It had been ratcheting up steadily since yesterday when the combined fleet of Dragon Clan and Harmony Sphere ships had unexpectedly entered into the Faust System.

Their initial assumption that the pair of WarShip fleets defending the system would be able to thwart the invasion before it could even present a threat to the planet was quickly proven to have been overly optimistic. The stallion would have hated to be the admirals in charge of those forces when all of the dust settled. Their deaths were sure to be drawn out as long as the queen could possibly manage so as to make an example of what the consequences were for failing her.

Such knowledge was all the motivation that Gaster needed to do whatever he could not to fall short of Her Majesty’s expectations either.

The stallion stalled out briefly into a hover as he caught sight of motion to the south, high up in the atmosphere. Two small streaks of dark smoke were visible, descending quickly towards the surface. DropShips making their reentry.

Gaster grimaced. He’d hoped that their distance from the capital would mean that they were unlikely to have to engage the enemy. Mostly because he knew that any invasion by the Dragon Clans was certain to contain a not-insignificant proportion of BattleSteeds. Which weren’t particularly vulnerable to Scorpion Tanks like the one he operated. One-on-one, there wasn’t even a debate regarding who would come out on top, even when discussing a lightweight ‘Steed. When the aforementioned tanks were massed together in large numbers though, that at least offered hope.

The changeling grunted and resumed his flight towards the motor pool, and the rest of his waiting crew, “Glad you could join us, corporal,” Sergeant Chate, the commander of their vehicle, sneered at the late arrival.

“Sorry, sergeant,” Gaster offered in reply before darting to the open hatch in the turret and peering inside. His horn flickered to life with a sickly green light as he set about starting up his console near the main gun’s loading port. He quickly tabbed over to the screen which denoted the tank’s loaded ammunition. Considering that he’d personally loaded up the magazines less than twelve hours ago, the changeling stallion was perfectly aware of what it would say, but he also knew that the senior noncom didn’t want to hear Gaster inform him of what the tank’s gunner thought he’d loaded into it; he wanted to see confirmation, “Twenty HEAT, forty dart, ten canister.” He pulled his head back out of the hatch and looked at his sergeant. “She’s loaded and ready, sergeant!”

“Good,” came the terse reply, “everyling in!” He snapped. The other two changelings piled in through their representative hatches mounted in the forward hull of the Scorpion. Gaster hopped into the turret, seating himself at the firing controls. Sergeant Chate dropped down beside him in the commander’s seat a moment later, sealing the hatch behind them.

“Private Sate, take us to the south perimeter; form up with the rest of the squadron.”

“Aye, sergeant!” Their driver replied, confirming her receipt of the orders. A moment later, the tank lurched forward out of the motor pool, joining the line of other combat vehicles moving out to their respective defensive positions.

“Prep a sabot round, corporal,” Chate instructed his gunner.

“Loading sabot, aye,” Gaster confirmed, tapping out the command into his terminal. Beside him, the actuator made a whirring sound as it grabbed the indicated ordinance from the magazine and slid it into the breach of the tank’s main gun. “Loaded!”

Gaster brought up one of the tank’s exterior cameras on his display screen and started tracking the descent of the two DropShips heading for their area. One of them appeared to be a Friendship-class vessel, which couldn’t hold more than a dozen BattleSteeds. Flying along beside it was a much smaller Mustang-class DropShip, which could only carry a single lance at a time. Which meant a maximum of sixteen ‘Steeds. Of course, there was no way of knowing what tonnage classes those ‘Steeds were going to be. For all Gaster knew, they’d end up having to repel sexteen Big Macs!

That was an image that didn’t fill him with a lot of high hopes about living through the day. He wasn’t sure off the top of his head how many Scorpion Tanks or Strikers they’d need to hold off a metric ton and a half of BattleSteeds, but the changeling knew it was more than the forty they had present!

Through the tank’s armor, Gaster heard the low ‘thump’ing of the base’s turrets opening fire on the incoming DropShips. The range was pretty extreme, even for the farthest reaching of their weapons. To the point where the changeling stallion found himself skeptical as to whether any rounds that managed to make contact with the descending ships would actually even be able to penetrate their armored hulls. Still, he did suppose that it was better than simply having those guns sitting idle…

“What’s the over-under on us getting any support?” Gaster asked aloud, his tone making it clear that he was already doubtful about the likelihood of such a thing happening.

“The whole eastern half of the continent is being invaded,” Sergeant Chate replied acidly, “Fillydelphia called us fifteen minutes ago asking to be reinforced. So…not great.”

“Lovely,” the corporal snorted as he returned his attention back to the cameras and the two DropShips touching down.

Sate maneuvered their Scorpion into a shallow ditch along the base’s southern perimeter. It was one of a whole line of such ditches that most of the assigned personnel―themselves included―had spent the previous evening digging out as a precaution. The meter-deep pit helped to provide some defilade for their armored vehicles, leaving little more than their turrets exposed. Gaster had found the notion a lot more reassuring last night, before he was acutely reminded right this moment that the exposed tank turret was where he was…

Other tanks pulled up to either side of them, nestling into their own conveniently per-dug shallow graves.

He shook the thought from his head. That sort of defeatist thinking wasn’t going to do his nerves any favors. The odds were stacked heavily against them, sure; but that didn’t necessarily mean that there wasn’t any way for them to achieve victory. After all, he’d been on the back hoof in that poker game a little less than an hour ago before his luck had turned! Who was to say that newfound fortune wouldn’t endure over the course of the next thirty minutes?

Missiles went flying overhead now, launched from the Strikers and LRM Carriers sequestered deeper within the base. The damage that they were likely to inflict at such a range was negligible, but it should at least keep the enemy from getting too bold. The longer that they could keep the attackers at extreme range, the better. The type-five autocannons of their tanks could reach considerably farther than most of the energy weapons that BattleSteeds were outfitted with. And their own ballistic armaments would be less accurate while in motion, while simultaneously being employed against targets with much narrower silhouettes.

The changeling stallion watched his displays intently, which had begun to populate with additional contacts as the DropShips disgorged their BattleSteeds. He noted the interpolated weight classification of each as the sensors isolated each new contact, feeling himself cringe inwardly every time one was identified as being in either the ‘heavy’ or ‘assault’ ranges. Those were especially worrisome in his mind, as they were more likely to be armed with weapons that possessed both extreme range and hit with enough potency to have a chance of utterly destroying a tank like their with a single direct hit.

Then he saw something on his sensors that took him aback. He performed a quick diagnostic of the computer to ensure that the system hadn’t spat out some sort of error, and then asked the tank’s suite of sensors to re-scan the target. When he received an identical result, he turned to the changeling sitting next to him. “Sergeant, the computer’s reading one of those ‘Steeds as being a ‘Rainbow Dash’. The fuck is that?”

The senior noncom frowned and brought up Gaster’s findings on his own display screen. He performed the same diagnostic and re-scan that the gunner had, with identical results, which only deepened his confusion. “Beats me. It’s moving pretty fast for something that heavy though. Maybe a new dragon design we didn’t know about?”

“If we don’t know about it, how can its profile be in the system?” Gaster pointed out.

“Well I never saw a TRO on the damn thing!” Chate snarled at the corporal in annoyance. “Just shut up and keep an eye on the ranges. I’ll feed you targets as soon as I get them.”

Gaster made sure that he had his face pressed up against the gunsight before rolling his eyes. “Range: three thousand. Enemy closing at sixty KPH.”

“Roger. First target is going to be the lead Gilda on the left.” Chate informed him, sounding a little less gruff than he had a moment ago, his mind focused on his duties rather than his ignorance.

“Gilda on the left, aye!” The gunner confirmed as he rotated the turret and lined up the sights with the medium ‘Steed loping towards their line. It was part of a vanguard lance of three Gildas led by a Blackjenny. He took a reading on the target’s range and aligned the sights with the center of its chest. His hoof hovered over the trigger as he waited for the order to fire.

The range ticked down to eight hundred meters…

“Fire!”

Gaster fired the autocannon. He watched through the sights as the round burst out from the end of the barrel, the sabot flipping away as soon as the round was free of the cannon. The remaining rod of solid shaped explosive material hurled through the air, covering the distance in seconds. It struck the targeted Gilda on the ‘Steed’s left hip, blasting away most of the ablative plating protecting the joint.

His shot wasn’t alone either. Dozens of additional identical rounds converged on the singular medium-tonnage BattleSteed. Not all of them hit, but most did. The Gilda practically vanished behind a cloud of explosions as a little under twenty shaped charges struck home, shattering armor and destroying the vulnerable internal systems that lay just beneath those protective plates. The ‘Steed staggered under the weight of such a destructive volley before falling to the ground in a heap of mangled metal a couple steps later.

Then it disappeared in an expanding sphere of violet energy as its reactor core went critical.

“Target down!” Gaster crowed, newfound excitement bubbling within the changeling as the first of fourteen contacts vanished from his displays.

“Next target: Blackjenny!” Sergeant Chate relayed to his gunner, not content to celebrate quite yet while there were still so many ‘Steeds galloping their way.

The changeling gunner rolled his eyes again, insistent on maintaining his high morale despite the senior noncom’s attitude as he shifted to the next target. He recoiled back from the gunner’s sight reflexively as something extremely bright and colorful momentarily blinded him. “What in the―?”

Gaster felt the turret tremble as their tank was buffeted by a large explosion. The display showing the tank’s left flank showed the reason why: the Scorpion directly beside them had exploded. Fortunately, the shallow trench that they’d been sitting in had directed most of the explosion upwards, so Gaster’s crew didn’t have to worry about too much damage from shrapnel. The changeling gunner caught himself staring at the display for longer than he should have been, the shock of another tank so close to them being outright destroyed by a single hit rebuffing his earlier rising spirits.

“Where’d that come from?!” Chate demanded, already using the external cameras to pan across the battlefield.

“It’s the Rainbow Dash!” Gaster blurted as he found the source first during his own quick scan. He’d been aided in his search by the fact that the ‘Steed in question had fired off a second prismatic projectile, the destructive helix of brilliant light managing to find another of the mostly shielded tanks on their line.

Then he saw a stream of missiles leaping from its backside, right behind its shoulders. They went streaking over the tank line, falling to their rear in the base. Gaster had a pretty good idea what those would be targeting.

The bright cyan and gold BattleSteed wasn’t the only one firing, of course. Other chassis mounting long-range weapons were making their presence on the field known as well. Coils of chromatic light, trails of missile vapor, and the faint cavitations left by hypersonic autocannon rounds were all served up by the attacking force as they exacted their retribution for the slaying of their comrade.

Forty tanks had been needed to instantly dispatch that single Gilda. Meanwhile, the responding volley had claimed half a dozen Scorpions nearly simultaneously. This fight, Gaster acknowledged, wasn’t going to go well…

The changeling gunner took a deep breath and let it out as he put his face back up against the targeting scope, “Targeting the Blackjenny…Firing!”

“Bay’s clear!” The DropShip’s chief engineer announced.

Squelch nodded in acknowledgement from her seat on the bridge, “Aileron, take us out of here,” she instructed tersely, doing her best not to let her anxiety show through her tone. She wasn’t too fond of the look of those LRM carriers in the base, and she didn’t intend to give them a chance to launch any additional barrages their way. The Zathura had only taken some minor hits so far, but it was also hardly the sturdiest DropShip in the galaxy.

Besides, they had another drop coming up shortly, and the sage unicorn mare doubted very much that they’d be able to make it uncontested.

“Don’t have to ask me twice,” the pegasus stallion intoned before throttling the ship out of the dropzone. The vessel executed a few slaloms as it ascended. Not because they were under any sort of active fire, but more as a matter of prudent precaution. It seemed like the base’s defenders had decided that the company of BattleSteeds on the ground assaulting their defenses were a higher priority of concern.

Which was perfectly fine with Squelch. This day had already contained more than enough ‘exciting’ moments, as far as she was concerned. She was very much looking forward to getting their drops over and done with before finally retreating back into orbit with the WarShips in relative safety. Until the ComSpark fleets arrived, at any rate. At which point, Squelch suspected that she would suddenly become inclined to seek refuge planetside again…

Aileron guided the Zathura into the upper atmosphere, well out of range of most ground-based weaponry. Anything capable of reaching them at this extreme altitude was likely to be more concerned with trying to fend off Cinder’s bombarding WarShips anyway, so they were probably as safe here as they could reasonably be, given the circumstances. They weren’t going very far at least, so it wasn’t like they’d be exposed for very long―

“Contact!” Doppler blurted out, cutting off the sage unicorn’s thoughts. “Two fast-movers on approach from astern!”

Squelch bolted upright in her command couch, her gaze intent on the sensor tech’s station. The news was more than a little surprising. She’d been under the impression that there weren’t many more fighters present on Equus. Though, she supposed that it would have been a little too optimistic to assume that every aerospace fighter had already been committed to those encounters on the way to the planet.

Any number of reasons could have explained the presence of these craft. Perhaps they had been undergoing maintenance or repairs when the initial call was put out for them to gather in orbit. These might even be older craft that had been retired from service and had just finished being overhauled. Wherever they’d come from though, they were here now, and that created something of a problem for Squelch and her crew.

“Distance?”

“Fifty klick out and closing fast,” the cobalt unicorn informed her, her tone sounding a little strained now, “They’re definitely coming for us. Computer’s profiling them as light aerospace fighters.”

The sage mare grimaced. It could be worse, she supposed. At least they weren’t heavy strike craft. However, even though they were lightly armed, those fighters would be a lot more maneuverable than her DropShip was. She looked over at High Gain. “Alert the gunnery crews. Aileron, go evasive. Leave the atmosphere if you have to.”

“Aye!” “Aye!” Came the simultaneous acknowledgements.

A moment later, Squelch felt herself being pressed back into her command couch as the pilot pushed the ship’s engines to their limit and strove for altitude. He wasn’t going to manage to outrun them, of course. The unicorn knew that much for certain. Whether in the atmosphere or in space, DropShip of any class wasn’t capable of moving faster than a fighter, especially not ones as light as those. They were almost certainly of a type that was designed to be able to outpace and intercept other fighters. Her ship certainly wasn’t getting away. This was going to come down to a fight.

Fortunately, the Zathura had a lot more firepower than those aerospace craft.

Beams of sapphire light and coils of destructive prismatic energy lashed out from the DropShip, seeking out its pursuers. The nimble fighters bobbed and weaved through the air, narrowly avoiding being struck by the defensive fire. The weapons that they carried possessed a much shorter range, forcing them to move in closer before they could return fire. However, it also meant that they had no reason to fly directly at the DropShip and make themselves a less maneuverable target. They instead were able to fly at oblique angles, frustrating the Zathrua’s gunner, who were not having much luck in getting their turrets to turn fast enough to maintain good track of the harassing fighters.

Eventually, however, the ComSpark craft were obliged to fly directly at the DropShip in order to perform their attack run. They didn’t need much time―just a couple of seconds―so there wasn’t a large window of opportunity for the DropShip’s gunners to take shots at the now no-longer-evasive fighters. But it was a window nonetheless. One that the Zathura’s gunnery crews exploited to no small effect.

One fighter was destroyed outright when a pair of heavy energy beams caught it head-on in its nose-cone and then proceeded to drill right through the center of the fuselage and out its hind end. The cored aerospace fighter exploded an instant later.

It didn’t die quietly though. Its pilot had needed even less time than the gunners who killed them to discharge their own weapons. No fewer than six emerald columns of coherent light converged on the DropShip’s port quarter, raking across the nacelle tucked in along its side. Armor plating melted away without offering up much resistance. More than enough energy was left after cutting through the DropShip’s protective alloy shell to wreak havoc on the more delicate systems beneath. The main port thruster housed within the nacelle flared, sputtered…and then died.

The second fighter escaped death, receiving only a glancing blow to its wing. However, this had largely been due to the pilot seeming to lose their nerve at the last moment and divert, robbing the gunner of their killshot. This meant that the fighter, too, failed to do significant damage, two of the shots lightly scouring the DropShip’s underside, the other four going wide off the ship’s starboard.

On the bridge, alarms were going off. The slate gray pegasus stallion cursed as his hooves and wings both worked the controls at his station in concert. “Port engine’s gone,” he informed his commander through gritted teeth. “I have to throttle back on the remaining engines or we’re going to spin out!”

Squelch was already leaning on her internal comlink, “Mig, can you recover that engine?”

The kirin mare replied a couple seconds later. The unicorn could hear the sounds of klaxons and a lot of yelling happening in the background, “I don’t know yet; I need to check it out. I’m honestly more concerned about that second hit,” she added, much to Squelch’s surprise. “The starboard power regulator spiked for a moment. I’m not sure why. I think it might―hold on…” The chief engineer broke off suddenly, causing Squelch no small amount of worry. When the kirin returned to the mic, it wasn’t to put the other mare’s worries to rest either, “I’ve gotta g―”

Mig closed the channel before she’d even finished signing off. Squelch didn’t care for the implications of that!

Down in the bay, the rosy engineer was galloping over to where one of her senior mechanics had flagged her down. The ‘Steed Bay was effectively a din of alarms and shouting techs as ponies scrambled every which way in an effort to address the damage that had been done. They’d taken a direct hit to one of their larger engines, which was leading to no small number of secondary issues. Fuel lines needed to be closed off, power diverted, thrust rebalanced, the secondary gyros brought online as the mains were recalibrated…there wasn’t an idle hoof in the room.

And naturally every one of those hooves needed her for something; whether it was her expertise on a system, permission to perform an unorthodox bypass or repair, or just to make sure that she was aware of the seriousness of a new problem that was just discovered, Mig’s proverbial dance card was full to bursting; and she could only be in one location at a time. The commander was just going to have to wait for an update on their status when the kirin had time to give her one.

A small part of the engineer’s mind lamented her twin’s absence. Tig’s presence would have been invaluable right now. Both in terms of the skill and expertise that she brought to the table…as well as the emotional support that Mig could really have used a little more of right now. It was bad enough taking a serious hit from enemy weapons in space. The risks and hazards were compounded when it happened in an atmosphere. After all, if they ended up losing all their thrust, the Zathura wasn’t going to just calmly coast through the sky. Gravity was waiting in the wings for any excuse to invite their DropShip to a meeting with the ground; and it was up to Mig and her team to send it a raincheck.

“What’ve you got?” She asked the mechanic who’d summoned her. The kirin suspected that it wasn’t going to be good news, given how the unicorn’s eyes were looking a little ‘panicky’ in the chief engineer’s opinion.

The horned stallion swallowed before he found his voice. His hoof was gesturing to the control terminal his was standing next to, the screen displaying real-time metrics from the DropShip’s main reactor. “I don’t think the breakers kicked in fast enough when Port One died,” he told her. “The main bus suffered a surge, and I think the port regulator got a piece of it.”

Mig leaned in and studied the numbers flickering on the screen. Several of the figures were highlighted in orange, denoting their abnormal values. Most of those values, the kirin noting with some worry, were on the high side. “What about the starboard regulator? It spiked too, right?”

“That was an output spike,” her senior mechanic clarified, “this was an input spike; and while the starboard regulator recovered, the port one still hasn’t. It’s actually getting worse,” he amended, shifting the screen to display a history of the readings for the indicated equipment. “Look: it’s trending further off-normal.”

“Fuck!” Mig very nearly spat. A single power regulator was officially capable of adequately supporting the DropShip on its own, according to all of the technical literature on the subject. After all, that was the point of having redundant systems in the first place. However, that provision was unofficially marked by an asterix. While just one of the ship’s regulators could handle the full power load of the reactors and distribute it across the whole vessel, it was understood that the load in question would be reduced across the board. As in: not under combat conditions where the engines and the weapons were both guzzling power like there was no tomorrow.

The moment they took the regulator offline, the Zathura was going to lose its ability to shoot back at the remaining fighter.

Obviously, that wasn’t an option at the moment. It would hardly matter if they kept the engines powered if that fighter was just going to blow them up anyway. However, it was also clear to her that they were going to lose the regulator any minute now anyway.

They needed a work-around.

“Stay on it,” she told the unicorn, “manage it manually if you have to, but keep it online and out of the red,” Mig added, eying the still-trending readings warily. “I’m going to work on a bypass.”

The kirin elected not to comment on the stallion’s sudden look of professionally-backed horror. She was honestly surprised that she had managed to say those words without gagging in disgust. The prospect of her proposal offended even her own sense of professional pride.

One did not simply bypass a power regulator. Not lightly, at any rate. A DropShip’s main reactor output simply astonishing quantities of power, which was necessary since it turned out that a two thousand ton spaceship required a lot of power. Not all of that ship’s systems needed the same amounts of power though. For example, Cookie’s coffee makers pulled just a hair less wattage than the PPC battery. Which meant that something was needed to throttle the flow of power from the reactor to the ship’s various systems. Otherwise those systems had a tendency to explode.

There were, however, a few systems that required enough power that getting direct access to the reactor’s output would necessarily melt them in ten seconds flat. Fortunately for the ship, one of those systems was the engines. It was conceivable that the thrusters could be routed around the regulators, leaving their remaining good regulator to handle the weapons and secondary systems. Without having to manage the starboard engines, it shouldn’t be under too much of a load.

Mig flagged down a nearby tech who wasn’t working on anything that was likely to blow up in the next two minutes, “Channel Lock! I need about twenty meters of type-B conduit…”

“He’s coming around for another run!”

Trunnion felt his teeth grinding in his mouth as his assistant gunner made the announcement. He pulled as hard as he could at the control yokes, urging the barrels of the heavy lasers he was controlling to swing around faster. It was a largely meaningless gesture of course. The turret’s servos would only move so fast, no matter how much additional pressure he put on the controls. It wasn’t like the gun emplacement particularly cared whether or not he was threatening to break it if it failed to move as fast as he liked.

“How are you coming on that firing solution?” The earth pony stallion all but snarled out around his clenched teeth.

“Working it now,” the pegasus mare responded, her voice not quite cracking beneath the weight of the stress she was under. The fighter was coming around for another low pass on the DropShip. A prudent choice on the pilot’s part, as the Zathura’s ventral side boasted the least weaponry after the rearward arc. Mostly because there just wasn’t a lot of available real estate for turret emplacements. The bigger the guns they put on the bottom of the DropShip, the more ground clearance they’d need, and that meant building lanky―and thus unsteady―landing gear.

A DropShip that buckled and collapsed when it landed wasn’t really desirable. So designers had kept the landing gear stout and stubby, while electing to scale back the weaponry covering that area. It was a completely logical and prudent design choice.

It was also one that Trunnion was finding very inconvenient at the moment, as it meant that his gun was the only one that could align on the incoming fighter from this angle. Unless Aileron was obliging enough to rotate the ship. However, he’d heard the scattered reports over his headset about what had happened to the port engine nacelle. It was unlikely that the DropShip pilot was willing to do anything particularly fancy where maneuvering was concerned.

“Got one!” The mare announced, sounding almost breathlessly relieved as she passed the targeting data to her gunner.

The screen in front of Trunnion alit with a plotted trajectory for the incoming Aerospace fighter, along with a point of aim for him to use in order to score a hit. He wrestled the frustratingly-slow energy cannon into alignment and fired. Indigo light that burned hotter than a star crossed through the sky. The pair of ponies held their breath as they watched the beam of energy lance out towards the incoming fighter…

…And they left out a collective cheer as they saw it make contact!

The small aerospace fighter’s right wing sheared off as the column of burning light sliced through it nearly effortlessly. The ComSpark craft began to roll wildly out of control, no longer able to stabilize itself in the atmosphere of the planet. A scattering of emerald beams lashed out as the changeling pilot controlling it made a vain attempt to hit his target before his craft plummeted to the ground. All of the shots missed by a hundred meters or more.

Trunnion turned and exchanged an exuberant hoof-bump with his partner, each feeling immensely relieved to be free of further threats to the DropShip. Neither were looking in the direction of the doomed fighter. Not that it would have done either pony much good even if they had been. It only took seconds for the spinning aerospace fighter to collide with the Zathura, and it would have taken far longer for the two of them to disengage their harnesses and escape the turret’s confines.

The two of them were still grinning when they perished along with the gun mount they occupied.

Aileron had seen the fighter coming. A chorus of alarms and warning screamed at him, advising that the aerospace fighter was on a collision course. The slate gray pegasus did everything in his power to avoid the impact, but it was just no use. He didn’t have the thrust of the time to change course significantly enough, not in an atmosphere. It wasn’t merely inertia that was his enemy at this moment, the very air that surrounded them had fought against his desire to place the Zathura elsewhere in the sky.

The deck beneath everypony on the bridge shook violently. They all felt themselves pitched suddenly to the right as the DropShip was spun off course by the impact. Midway through Aileron’s efforts to regain control, the screen on his terminal flickered. A second later it died. The pegasus stallion blinked in astonishment as he found himself looking down at a completely dead computer interface. The control yokes went instantly limp in his grasp.

He was about to say something to Squelch about the issue when the entire bridge was suddenly plunged into darkness. More worrisome than the darkness and the loss of power though, was the silence. Under power, it was easy for most of the DropShip’s denizens to unconsciously push the constant low rumbling of the ship’s engines out of their perception. Ponies simply got so used to its omnipresence during normal ship operations that it was easy to forget the sound even existed.

Everypony was very much aware of its absence now though.

Then Aileron felt himself start to rise out of his seat as the DropShip began to enter freefall…

“Pegasi, get flightless ponies to safety! Unicorns, control those tools!” Mig yelled up the top of her lungs as she herself held on tight to a nearby railing. The pegasus stallion next to her was about to fly off until the kirin’s magic snagged him by the tail. “You stay here!”

The technician nodded jerkily, his wings outstretched and fluttering intermittently to keep him fixed in place and oriented amidst all of the turmoil being experienced by the now effectively weightless confines of the ‘Steed Bay. Mig didn’t know how high up in the air the DropShip had been when it lost power, so she didn’t know exactly how much time they had to work with and get things working again. She just had to do what she could as quickly as possible. Either it would be enough and they’d all live, or it wouldn’t. In the latter case, the rosy mare just hoped she died quick.

They had a few things going for them at least. “The reactor’s obviously still online or we’d all be dead,” she pointed out, jerking her head towards the rear of the ship. “Judging by where we took that hit, I’m guessing the starboard regulator’s gone,” this was said with a rather somber expression. Naturally it would be their remaining good regulator that dies first.

“I need you to fly over to the distro panel and lock out the engines and weapons. Then throw everything on the port regulator,” she instructed the flier, “I’ll be standing by to reset it. That’ll get us main power back.” She hoped.

The stallion nodded hurriedly and jetted off. Mig, meanwhile, locked her gaze on the reactor control terminal, which was one of the few consoles that was still functional. It received its power from an auxiliary power unit that was isolated from most of the other ship’s systems. Otherwise, there’d be no way to restart the main reactor if they ever needed to take it offline for any reason. She used her telekinesis to start inputting commands that would reset the regulator. It was a command sequence that she knew by heart, as resetting them was a common maintenance task aboard the ship, and she’d either performed or supervised the task thousands of times during her tenure on the DropShip.

Once the reset was in place and ready to be executed, the kirin looked over towards the distribution panel and saw the pegasus flipped the last of the massive breakers that she’d asked him to. He spun around and waved at her, signaling his completion of the assigned task. Mig nodded and executed the prepared command.

At first, nothing happened. Nor would it. The reset took a full ten seconds to complete so that it could be assured that all of the involved capacitors were properly discharged. It was a ten seconds that seemed to drag on overlong even during the best of time. Now, as the rosy kirin found herself clinging to a railing aboard a plummeting steel brick that was an indeterminable amount of time from catastrophe…those ten seconds took about ten years off of her life.

When she finally counted to ten in her head and nothing seemed to happen, the chief engineer felt a lump of panic begin to form in her throat. If this didn’t work, then they were all going to die and there’d be nothing that she could do about it. They needed power to operate the ship, and this was simply the only way to get it. The port regulator had been damaged though, and she’d known it was unstable. It was conceivable that it had been unstable enough that it simply wouldn’t be capable of coming back online after powering down―

The terminal beeped a melodic tone. A moment later, lights in the ‘Steed Bay began to flicker to life. The ship had power again!

It did not yet, however, have engines.

“Channel Lock, where’s that conduit!”

“Here!”

It took Mig a few seconds to parse out where the call had come from. She eventually found the unicorn mare above her on the gantry, her forelimbs holding tight to a railing. Hovering beside her, enveloped in her telekinesis, was a spool of thick cabling. She looked back at the pegasus stallion she’d recruited to help her. “Get that and hook one end to the J2 socket on the distro panel!”

Mig then turned her attention to a section of wall over to her right. Specifically one panel on that wall. Behind it lay the nearest access point for getting at the power cables heading for the ship’s engines. She used her grip to try and orient herself towards it, and then pushed off. The now entirely weightless and free-floating mare found herself tumbling end over end in the vague direction of her goal. This had likely been a very poorly thought out idea, she realized…

“―dge to Engineering, what’s our status? We have power back but the helm’s not responding.”

How she didn’t go full nirik, Mig didn’t know. It was all she could do not to snap back at the commander that she was perfectly aware that there would be issues with helm control at the moment. After all, the ship’s engines weren’t functional, seeing as how she had intentionally taken them offline right at the source. As for their ‘status’, the chief engineer was pretty certain that it was evident to everypony that they were all currently hurtling towards their demise.

Out loud, she said, “Working on it, commander!” She then ripped off her helmet and flung it away in frustration. It wasn’t like any of them needed to worry about dying from vacuum exposure.

The action didn’t help her situation much though, as it only sent her tumbling even further off course. Mig let out an aggravated snarl as she tried to find something nearby to grab onto and stabilize herself. It was a difficult prospect, it turned out, as her frantic jerking of her head and torso as she looked around only seemed to add entirely new rotational axis to her chaotic drifting. Kirin, the mare deduced, were simply not intended for flight…

Something grabbed her from behind. The rosy mare initially thought it had been the pegasus mechanic that she was working with, but then she felt the material of her vacuum suit bunch up near her shoulders as though grabbed by something with actual fingers instead of hooves. She looked to her left and saw the mechanical manipulator arm of one of the sets of Battle Armor that the Elementals utilized holding her. A few puffs from its integrated jump jets righted the pair and steadied them in the air. Mig turned her head a little further and saw crimson eyes framed by soft-white scales peering out through the suit’s narrow viewport.

“Need a lift?” The occupant inquired through the armor’s external speaker system.

“Yes!” Mig blurted, finally feeling a sense of relief. “Take me there! Second panel from the right!” She waggled her hoof in the direction of the indicated section of bulkhead.

With calculated puffs of her jump jets, the dragoness flew the pair of them to where the chief engineer had pointed and set the kirin down near the panel. There still wasn’t a lot for Mig to hold on to, so the Elemental ensured that she kept a firm hold of the kirin’s suit.

“Okay,” she let out a relieved breath, “to open this we’re going to need a fifteen millimeter driver an―”

The Battle Armor’s other manipulator-tipped arm swung down, grabbed hold of one corner of the panel, and then yanked. Steel shined and screamed as the pony-sized cover was forcibly torn away before the engineer’s horrified eyes. It wasn’t that she was afraid the dragoness was going to destroy anything vital; it was just an instinctive reaction to seeing part of the ship she worked so long and hard to keep in pristine condition torn up with such reckless abandon.

“Oopsie,” the Elemental said. It didn’t sound to Mig as though she was at all sorry for what she’d done though. Neither was the kirin particularly angry. That had certainly been a lot faster than she could have managed with a driver. “Now what?”

“Now we need the other end of that cable over here,” the mare said as an aside as she turned her head for any sign of that pegasus. She found him already flitting towards their position.

As he neared, realization seemed to dawn on the stallion as he finally recognized what his chief was intending. “Um…can’t we burn out the engines doing this?”

“If Aileron red-lines them for too long, yeah,” Mig acknowledged in an indifferent tone as her magic groped for the end of the cable he’d brought over, “but I figure better to melt the engines than let the ship crash,” she quipped. The stallion mechanic offered no further objections.

“Stand back,” the kirin warned as she guided the end of the conduit towards an open socket that had been sitting behind the panel, “this might arc a little―”

The trio winced away as a few tendrils of amethyst lightning cracked around the connector end and its socket. It dissipated as soon as the two pieces were solidly joined, and Mig let out a small sigh of relief. “Good. Now I just need to let Aileron know not to do anything until I can set the flow rate,” her hoof instinctively went for her comlink so that she could contact the pilot, “otherwise it’ll…” Her voice trailed off as she realized that she no longer had her mic on her, having just thrown it away in frustration with her helmet less than a minute ago.

The sudden surge of power that ran through the panel a heartbeat later flung Mig against the far wall of the ‘Steed Bay. Had she been conscious before the impact, the kirin would have been deriding herself for removing her helmet.

Aileron didn’t like that the sound of the earlier eerie silence on the bridge had been replaced with so much noise. Between his recently illuminated console playing a veritable symphony of warning trills, the sound of wind buffeting the hull of the DropShip as it fell through the air, and High Gain’s repeated distress messages, the pegasus pilot found himself thinking that he’d have preferred to die surrounded by darkness and quiet.

Then his control station issued a new sound, this one much more encouraging than the last several: Engine power had been restored! He wasted no time, throwing himself at the controls, throttling the engines up to their highest setting. The roar of their ignition was one of the sweetest sounds that the pegasus had ever heard in his life. Aileron saw the thrust outputs on his display spike at the same time it felt like a giant hoof had reached out and smooshed them all down into their seats.

The slate gray helmsmare was cackling with exuberant glee as he saw their airspeed decreasing. It was a sound that morphed all too soon into one of concern as he noted the almost instantaneous appearance of ‘OVERHEAT!’ alerts by each of his still operational engine status icons. A nearly simultaneous warning that the engines were experiencing a power overload appeared along with those alerts. At first, the stallion wasn’t sure what to make of it all. There was no reason that he could see as to why the engines should already be overheating. They hadn’t even been running for the last minute or two!

More concerning though was the message regarding the overload. He could end up blowing out additional engines if that persisted for much longer, and it wasn’t looking like any of the systems meant to regulate the power were functioning properly.

Then one of the DropShip’s ventral thrusters died. Then another.

Aileron’s hooves and pinions flashed out along the controls in front of him as the stallion manually clawed back the power settings on the engines, reducing their thrust output to near-idling levels. His body regained its earlier weightlessness as the DropShip once more entered freefall. He spent a few seconds of the precious little time they had left running a quick diagnostic, and felt his throat constrict as he saw the report come back with multiple critical failure points noted. There was no longer any automated power regulation controlling the engine output. Worse, he seemed to have only limited ability to do anything about it from this panel. Which suggested a hardware bypass and not a software one.

Whatever Mig had done to get the engines back online had robbed the pegasus of most of the systems he needed to safely fly the ship. The Zathura’s ventral hull was lined with dozens of individual thrusters. He simply didn’t have the physical capability to manually control them all! Even if he did, the control scheme of his station wasn’t equipped to allow for that extended level of micromanagement. The lack of such functionality could hardly be labeled a ‘design oversight’ either, because it would have been sheer folly to even attempt such a thing in the first place. Organic minds just didn't possess the capacity to do all of those hundreds of thrust calculations manually. That was why these ships were largely controlled by automated systems that did the work on the backend.

They might still very well be doomed, the pilot thought to himself. He effectively only had the ability to engage the engines at their maximum physical capacity. As such, he'd only get a few seconds of burn time before they broke down completely. Slowing their descent using constant deceleration wasn't an option. Which was a shame, because the alternative had the potential to be...unpleasant.

Aileron had always found the name for such a maneuver to be morbidly humorous. He didn't know by who, or how long ago, the term had been coined, but the stallion did appreciate its apparent aptness. Or at least, he had. Suddenly the pegasus didn't find himself much caring for the unfortunate implications of preforming a, so called, "suicide burn".

The helmsmare began making the necessary calculations. He didn't like rushing them, but physics didn't seem to be on his side today.

On the face of it, the concept was rather simple and straightforward: objects falling through an atmosphere didn't accelerate forever. Eventually the drag force of the air passing around the falling object would equalize with the force of gravity pulling it down and the velocity would stabilize. At which point, only a very specific quantity of thrust was needed to show that object down to a compete halt. It didn't matter if the object was miles up in the air, or just above the ground, the amount of thrust was approximately the same.

Which meant that, hypothetically, it was possible for him to time a deceleration burn that would bring the DropShip to a complete stop exactly at ground level. He didn't necessarily need to use a constant, lower thrust, burn to ease the Zathura down like he normally did. A few seconds of an extremely hard burn would effectively accomplish the same effect. Which wasn't to say that the two approaches were equally pleasant…

There also wasn't a lot of room for error. If the burn ended too early, they'd begin to fall again, only this time with no functioning engines left to recover with. If the burn ended too late, well...the only practical difference between "landing" and "crashing" really only came down to the amount of downward velocity a ship was experiencing when it made contact with the ground. He really only had a couple meters per second of velocity to play with where the resiliency of the ship’s hull was concerned. Too much more than that, and the DropShip was liable to pancake when they hit.

Of a slightly lesser concern, though still an issue with bearing in mind, was the problem of the ship’s forward momentum. Aileron was hesitant to address it with the engines being in the state that they were in, since he didn't trust the ability of the attitude thrusters to keep the DropShip level if they couldn't engage at anything other than their new "all-or-nothing" setting. Trying to slow their forward velocity could end up putting them into a tumble there would be no way to recover from. It was dropping off steadily as the air around them slowly bled away the ship's speed, but they certainly weren't going to be moving "slowly" by the time they reached the ground.

Still, the pegasus reasoned that they had a much higher chance of surviving a brief skid along the ground than they did belly-flopping into it.

His calculations compete, the DropShip pilot brought all of the necessary thrusters to a "standby" status and kept his hoof at the ready to engage them when the moment arrived.

"This is going to be rough!" He warned his commander.

Squelch nodded. She was perfectly aware that her ship was in dire straights, and that pretty much everything was out of her hooves now. She wasn't the experienced pilot that Aileron was, and she had to trust that he’d be able to land the Zathura in a way that left it nominally intact. All that she could do at the moment was prepare the rest of her crew for what was coming.

She activated the ship's internal announcement system. "All hooves, brace for impact! I repeat: all hooves, brace for impact!"

Elsewhere on the bridge, another mare was also calling out into her mic. "Mayday, mayday; any receiving station, this is the DropShip Zathura. We are going down! Say again: we are going down! Our coordinates are: one-one-five by two-seven. Mayday, mayday…"

The comms tech repeated the distress call continuously as the DropShip fell. Somehow the earth pony mare managed not to let panic get the best of her, keeping her words clear and her tone even. Aileron's hooves and wings moved over his panel with calm precision. Even Doppler hadn't given into despair, constantly feeding both of her fellow crewmates typographical and sensor data for them to use in their respective tasks.

All three ponies were fighting valiantly to save the ship and all those on board. In spite of the very real peril that they faced, Squelch felt her lips crack a tiny smile. She'd assembled a good crew, the unicorn thought to herself. They deserved to live through this, if anypony did. Hopefully fate would recognize that.

Aileron touched his panel. The engines roared to life with a ferocity that Squelch hadn't sensed from them before. The mare felt herself being pressed hard into her seat.

Outside the forward viewport, the rocky Appeloosa desert rushed to meet them. The last thing Squelch remembered was the sound of the collision alert siren going off.

The unicorn mare let out a bored yawn in the cockpit of her BattleSteed as she stood watch over the Timberwolf's Dragoons supply trucks loading up additional supplies from the changeling logistics base they'd just finished raiding. The defenders had been relatively easily subdued, with the Dragoons only suffering the loss of one 'Steed and moderate damage to a few others. The repairs to those 'Steeds were already underway and would be completed in a couple hours. After that, they'd be on their way to Ponyville.

Arrangements were also being made to demolish every last kilogram of supplies that they couldn't make use of, leaving nothing behind that could be of any use to any changelings who might come by here later. While it would have been possible to mostly destroy the base by having their BattleSteeds shoot and/or trample everything around them, using strategically-placed explosives would ensure that the destruction was thorough and complete.

As the unicorn pilot lounged in her seat, eyeing the sensors for signs of any approaching forces that might happen their way, she heard a faint burst of static over her headset. Curious, the mare glanced at the comms panel to see if it had identified any incoming signals. While she did find signs of activity, it didn't look like her 'Steed's electronics were having much luck pulling in any details. This suggested that it was either a very distant, or very weak broadcast.

Concerned that it might be signs of a surveillance team making a report of their activists, the Dragoon pilot quickly set about trying to triangulate the source of the errant broadcast. This proved to be extremely difficult, as it turned out that the signal was both far away and a low-power broadcast. Ultimately, the mare was only able to snag a few bits from the transmitted message: "―inates are: one-one-five by two-se―"

After that, the signal became too garbled to make out much, nor did it seem to go on for much longer. By the time she'd recalibrated the 'Steed's electronics suite to focus more on the indicated origin of the broadcast, it didn't seem to exist anymore. Whoever they were had apparently ceased transmitting altogether.

The unicorn did a cursory search for points of interest at the listed coordinates she'd heard mentioned, but nothing seemed to come up. As best she could tell from the maps they had, it was simply barren desert for miles in any direction. Certainly nothing worth reporting a location for. Not that she could think of anyway.

The mare compiled a short report of the intercepted message and forwarded it up through their intelligence channels. Maybe they'd be able to make some sense of it. Once her brief missive was transmitted, the pilot once more resumed watching crates being loaded onto trucks.

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