Slipshod sat in somber silence atop the cockpit of his borrowed BattleSteed. He felt listless. Numb. Apathetic to the fate of the entire galaxy. Every star could explode, every planet could burn, and he doubted that he’d care at all. But just below that ambivalence burned the embers of a raw fury that was even now being slowly stoked into a raging inferno of hatred.

Cinder would probably have appreciated that rage if it had been unidirectional, targeted exclusively at the queen of the changelings. Unfortunately for the star admiral, she wasn’t very high up on his list of ‘favorite creatures’ either. Her nor Twilight, as it turned out. Ironically enough, even though he was a member of a race who had long thrived specifically because they’d kept important secrets from others, he didn’t particularly care for being kept in the dark himself.

Granted, that was a very emotional reaction to the news, and some time later he was sure he would―begrudgingly―acknowledge it as being the right call to make. Perhaps even the call that he himself would have made if he’d been the one to come up with the plan. That, however, was the future mental state of a calmer and more composed Slipshod.

Present-Moment-Slipshod was too pissed off to entertain rationality.

As it turned out, in the wake of the serious losses suffered by their ground forces on the way to Equus since entering the Faust System, the invasion plan had undergone something of a ‘downward revision’. Ultimately, it was concluded that besieging and capturing Canterlot was impossible. Especially in the timeline that they had available to them, given the imminent arrival of the much stronger ComSpark WarShip fleet. They couldn’t afford the time needed to bombard Chrysalis’ stronghold so that their available forces could take it. Nor could they have hoped to adequately fend off the repeated counter-attacks that the changelings would launch at their beachheads even if they’d had the time to spend.

Every subsequent attack on Baltimare and Fillydelphia would have whittled away at their forces there, meaning that more of Canterlot’s defenses would need to be battered down to let them take it with their diminished numbers. That additional time would have allowed the changelings to regroup and launch another sortie on the cities, causing even further losses, and creating a need to prolong the bombardments even more. Creating a spiral of attrition that could only favor ComSpark’s stupendous numerical advantage. It, ultimately, was not a workable plan and never had been.

Instead, what needed to be done, since they couldn’t hope to get in to Canterlot, was to draw Chrysalis out of Canterlot. Beyond the heavily fortified walls of Equus’ capital stronghold, the changeling queen was―relatively―vulnerable. Once she was exposed, she could be dealt with, and it was hoped that the defeat of their queen would effectively destroy the will of the other changelings to fight. Especially if the allied forces immediately withdrew from the planet and opened negotiations. It was hoped that whoever emerged as the spokesmare for the changelings in Chrysalis’ place could be reasoned with.

It was far from the perfect plan, but it was at least more likely to succeed than simply trying to wade their BattleSteeds through the ocean of changeling corpses that the queen was certain to try and drown her attackers in.

As for what could possibly possess Chrysalis to elect to leave her sanctuary and venture into a fight that would put her safety in jeopardy, apparently Twilight had already taken care of that. She had made a transmission to the planet through Cinder, addressed directly to the queen. While the star admiral had not seen fit to give him a copy of this message to watch himself, she described the sentiment that Twilight had expressed in the message as: inflammatory. Basically, Twilight had stuck at Chrysalis’ biggest weaknesses: her vanity and pride. Essentially mocking the changeling queen for being a coward, and encouraging her to keep hiding in her hive like a scared filly; because both of them knew that if it came to a confrontation between the two, Twilight would emerge victorious, like she always had.

Slipshod had to admit that if anything was going to draw Chrysalis out of Canterlot, it was something like that. Not that he maintained the same level of confidence in the practicality of the next part of the plan: which was to divert the forces in Baltimare and Fillydelphia to Ponyville…and trap Chrysalis in an ambush. Cinder and Twilight had intended to encircle the changeling encirclement of the Disciple forces attacking the relay. A bold strategy, to be sure, and one that might have even worked…had Twilight been there to confront Chrysalis herself.

She wasn’t though. She’d been aboard the Zathura. A ship that nocreature had heard from in over two hours. A ship that couldn’t be located on any sensors and was presumed destroyed…

…Along with her entire crew.

Those embers of hatred flared again, fanned by grief and loss.

Slipshod drew in a deep, ragged breath, clamping down hard on those emotions, lest they overwhelm him. He needed to be thinking clearly, especially now. There would be time to mourn later. Assuming that they all survived this. If they didn’t, well…the changeling stallion supposed that it just meant there’d be one less thing to worry about.

The changeling stallion wished, at moments like this, he had Xanadu’s optimism. Though it was arguably crossing the threshold into full on naivety at the moment. For reasons that Slipshod couldn’t comprehend, the zebra maintained that the crew was fine. Well, that wasn’t quite accurate. His exact words had been: “Mig’s not dead; I can feel it.”

Of course, the striped pilot hadn’t been able to explain how or why he knew that the kirin chief engineer was alive. It seemed to just be a ‘feeling’ that he had. While Slipshod was perfectly willing to acknowledge that maintaining a level of optimism in the face of adversity had its benefits, the changeling also felt that there were limits to such optimism. Otherwise it could lead to more unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as denial. There would come a point where the zebra would have to accept the same reality that he himself was working on coming to terms with. The longer Xanadu put that off though, the harder the loss would be for him to get over. If he ever did.

His ‘feelings’ simply weren’t going to alter reality, no matter how much he insisted otherwise.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of fluttering wings nearby. He turned to see Triton hovering a few meters away. “It’s almost time to move out,” he reminded the changeling. Then the hippogriff Reiver paused briefly. Slipshod could feel his unease regarding the next question he was about to ask. “Have you thought about what we’re going to do with that other changeling? We obviously can’t let her go.

“If you want I can―”

“No.”

Slipshod wasn’t sure who was more surprised by the refusal, the Reiver or himself. He hadn’t had to hear the full question. He’d felt the building up of the callousness within the hippogriff as he’d begun to prepare himself for the task of ending the life of their captured scout. It was hardly going to be the first time that he’d ever killed a creature in cold blood, after all. Triton probably even though he was doing Slipshod a favor by taking on the burden.

In a lot of ways, it was probably even the logical call in this situation. They weren’t equipped to handle prisoners, and he was correct that they couldn’t just let her go. If she blabbed to Chrysalis that Twilight wasn’t with them, then the queen wouldn’t show up in Ponyville and their plan would be a bust. The changelings would retain control of Equus. She couldn’t be allowed to tell what she knew.

They couldn’t let her go. They couldn’t keep her. It seemed pretty clear what their only course of action was. The changeling pilot found himself morbidly amused regarding the nuances of what made killing an enemy more palatable. He knew that he wouldn’t have hesitated to pull the trigger if he’d been in his ‘Steed and had her unarmed Swift Wind in his crosshairs. No pilot or gunner would have. Even when operating a defenseless reconnaissance vehicle, she would have still been an enemy soldier working against them, and thus a perfectly ‘legitimate’ target for destruction.

All that had changed since then was that the changeling mare was no longer in her Swift Wind. Nothing else was really different. She was still unarmed, and she still possessed valuable information that had to be kept out of the hooves of ComSpark. Putting a gun to her head and pulling the trigger shouldn’t feel any different than vaporizing her with a PPC would have.

And yet…

“...I’ll take care of her,” Slipshod said, getting to his hooves and spreading his wings.

He landed near the supply trucks that augmented their small BattleSteed company. The crews there had constituted pretty much the only marepower available to do the job in the interim, but it wasn’t like they didn’t have their own jobs to do. Slipshod looked over to the side of one of the trucks where the ComSpark scout was sitting, her hooves hobbled and two armed griffons watching over her. She looked up at his approach, showing no visible reaction to his arrival. Inwardly though, Slipshod felt her tense up.

She’d have to be an idiot to not have reached the obvious conclusions that the rest of them had.

One of the griffon guards raised an eyebrow in Slipshod’s direction, begging the silent question. “I’ll take her now,” he said in response. The griffons nodded, again wordlessly. One of them noticed that the ‘Steed pilot wasn’t armed and fished his pistol out of its holster, passing it to the changeling. Slipshod took it in his magic, briefly checking the chamber to confirm it was loaded. He then turned to the ComSpark scout.

She didn’t beg. There was no futile pleading for her life to be spared. Just a defiant look in her eye and resignation in her heart. He could feel her welling up with pride for not having succumbed to her despair and managing to face her end with courage.

It sickened him.

This poor changeling was so ready to die in service to Queen Chrysalis; a creature who wouldn’t have wasted the effort to piss on this drone if she were on fire! She was even proud of her service to such a being. This level of blind, misguided devotion might have been funny, if it weren’t for the fact that it was so fucking sad. Slipshod was hard pressed to think of any creature in the galaxy less worthy of this kind of unerring devotion than his own former queen. To see it on display so brazenly in this drone…he pitied her.

Half starved of love, and doomed to die for a ‘leader’ that didn’t care if she had to sacrifice a million drones to secure her own personal safety and continued domination; and yet this scout was still filled with a sense of loyalty. She felt it her duty to die for her queen, even. It was pathetic. It was tragic.

It was heartbreaking.

Slipshod started laughing. He’d surprised even himself with the outburst; and he’d certainly thrown the changeling mare for a loop, as her pride melted away into confusion. The nearby griffons exchanged puzzled looks as well. It was a few seconds before the ‘Steed pilot recovered enough to explain himself.

“Sorry. It just occurred to me that, even though you’re a changeling, and our race thrives by feeding off of love, you’ve probably never actually ever known what it tastes like,” Slipshod said, favoring the scout with a wan smile. “Imagine being so ready to die…when you’ve never actually even lived.

“It’s funny. In a sad sort of way.”

The ComSpark soldier frowned at the changeling stallion, “I’ve tasted love,” she insisted, “We get rations of love all the time; drained from those idiots that flock to our academies. You know that, traitor!”

Slipshod chuckled again, wagging the pistol at the mare and shaking his head. “That swill isn’t ‘love’,” he chided her, “It’s sorrow and regret. It’s the refracted feelings those poor souls had for their friends and families back in the Sphere that they know they’ll never see again. I didn’t know that back then, but I know it now.

“It’s a shit substitute for the real thing,” Slipshod insisted, “and I think Chrysalis knows that. I think that’s why she tells us to hide who we are from everycreature else in the galaxy. Because she’s afraid of how much stronger we would become if we experienced real love.

“Strong enough that we might even realize that we don’t actually need her.”

The scout let out a snort of her own now, sneering at him. “We keep ourselves hidden because otherwise the other creatures in the Sphere will kill us, dumbass!”

“They don’t want to kill me,” Slipshod quipped, gesturing towards the pair of nearby griffons, “do you, fellas?” The pair of feathered felines exchanged confused looks, but then shook their heads. The ‘Steed pilot looked back at the other changeling. “That hippogriff didn’t either. Or the zebra,” he pointed out. He then gestured to his obviously changeling physique. “They don’t care I’m a changeling.”

“Because you’re helping them!” She snapped back. “They’ll turn on you the moment you’re not useful,” the scout insisted vehemently. “They don’t really care about you.”

“I stopped being particularly useful to them a while ago,” Slipshod insisted with a dismissive shrug. “I’ve basically just been tagging along it feels like.

“You’d be surprised how many creatures could care less that we’re changelings. It turns out that, as long as we’re upfront and honest about who and what we are, most creatures are accepting of our natures.”

Another derisive snort from the mare. “Bullshit. The moment they find out that we feed off them they’ll―”

“They’ll give us love freely,” Slipshod finished for her, a wan smile crossing his lips. The pain was there, waiting in the wings for any sign that his thoughts were about to turn in Squelch’s direction. It was a sharp thing that twisted in his heart. Yet, there was a sweetness to it as well, as that pain was accompanied by a reminder of all of the love that he’d felt from her. Of the love that he’d felt for her. If being free of this pain meant giving up those feelings too, the stallion knew that was not a deal he would make. “And trust me, you’ve never felt anything even remotely like it in your life.”

“You keep telling yourself whatever you have to,” the changeling scout replied bitterly. Her defiance still burned bright, but Slipshod noticed the faintest flickering just beneath the surface. The telltale signs of her entertaining the hidden thoughts of: ‘what if?’. The transient doubts that she was trying to quickly discard, but that persisted in the back of her mind. As much as she might want to insist that nothing he was saying could be the truth, she couldn’t overlook some of the plain facts that couldn’t be disputed. Such as his presence, and his obvious good health.

He was a changeling who had been away from the hive for years, and yet was positively gorged on love to a degree that this ComSpark drone could never have hoped to experience. He was the healthiest changeling that she’d ever seen in her life. Confronted with that reality, it was difficult to completely dismiss everything that he was telling her. Of course, since so much of it flew bluntly in the face of everything that she had always been told since she’d hatched, it was also hard for her to accept what he was telling her. Slipshod acknowledged that, a few years ago, he would have been just as skeptical as she was.

Which honestly just pissed him off even more.

Not at this changeling mare, no. Her stubbornness wasn’t her fault. Rather, the blame lay squarely at the hooves of Queen Chrysalis, who had spent centuries feeding her subjects lies. When Slipshod thought about how much better his life could have been if he’d only known the truth that Twilight had shown him from the beginning, he came to resent Chrysalis to a degree he hadn’t known was possible.

When he thought about the life he could have had with Squelch and his friends…the future that he had been looking forward to…

A future he’d been robbed of.

It was the same world of possibility that had been kept from this changeling too, Slipshod knew. She’d never known how good things could have been without the queen’s lies. If she had, then maybe―

The ‘Steed pilot’s thoughts were abruptly sidetracked by the sudden appearance of what would almost certainly be labeled by the leaders of this invasion as a: ‘bad idea’. On the other hoof, he was almost positive that Twilight Sparkle would have wholeheartedly approved of what he was about to do. Of course, the alicorn wasn’t a tactical mastermind; so ideas she endorsed weren’t necessarily what was best for the invasion. She had been the foremost expert on Friendship though, and that did count for something in his mind these days, given his own past personal experiences.

Fuck it.

Slipshod took a deep breath, closed his eyes…and gave the other changeling some of his love.

He shared with her a veritable smorgasbord of emotion, spanning the spectrum. The platonic love he’d received from his close friends as well as deeper and more intimate feelings Squelch had shared with him. A stream of raw, unfettered, and genuine emotion flowed into the ComSpark scout, catching her so completely unaware that she actually gasped in alarm. Her shock passed quickly, and then instinct took over as the famished changeling gladly drank in the offered emotional sustenance. Yet, even as she did so, Slipshod could feel the mixture of surprise and wonder whirling within the mare.

She’d never experienced such potent feelings of love before―had never dreamed that emotions of this intensity could even exist! She was a starving mare who hadn’t just been given a ration of gruel meant to do nothing more than sustain her again, but had instead been graced with a five course meal of the most succulent and delectable foods imaginable. Even those changelings who were sent out into the wider Harmony Sphere to live among the creatures of the galaxy while posing as members of their families had never before known such genuine feelings of love. For these were not feelings that had been had by others towards Slipshod, earth pony heir to the Lackadaisy House; but rather towards Slipshod the Changeling, as himself.

Her form filled out before his eyes. The drone’s carapace took on a glossier shimmer, looking like it had been polished. The light shining off its black surface taking on the subtlest of turquoise hues. The membrane of her ragged wings cleared and their tips rounded. In a matter of seconds, she barely resembled the emaciated matte creature which had been sitting there earlier. It was a transformation that even the pair of griffon guards took notice of.

Slipshod held up a hoof in their direction. “It’s alright; I know what I’m doing,” he assured them. This wasn’t technically a lie, as he did know what he was doing: he was giving her access to power of a potency that the changeling mare had never before known existed. What he didn’t know was what the consequences of this action would be. After all, he had just bequeathed to this enemy soldier enough emotional reserves that she could transform herself into a gargantuan hydra and devastate the whole area, if she so desired. That was one reason that many others would have considered what he’d just done to be a ‘bad idea’.

On the other hoof, it was the simplest and most direct means by which Slipshod could think to demonstrate how she―and indeed all changelings―had been deceived by Chrysalis.

“Wha…what is this?” The ComSpark changeling asked, obviously still taken aback by what Slipshod had done for her.

“That’s love―real love. That’s how other creatures can feel about changelings, even when they know we’re changelings,” Slipshod informed her, smiling, even as the ache of loss plied at him from deep within his heart. He’d shared with this changeling an extremely finite resource after all: the love he’d received from Squelch and the rest of the crew of the Zathura. Now that they were gone, he’d never be the recipient of those exact feelings again. Once he’d burned through Squelch’s love for him, it would be gone forever. He intended to preserve it as long as he could, taking from those reserves sparingly over the course of the rest of his life. Treating it like the last few bottles of a revered vintage of wine.

What he’d just shared with this other changeling had cost him a decade or more of that reserve, assuming he used it sparingly for ‘special occasions’ like anniversaries of remembrance. Maybe that was stupid of him, to ‘waste’ such precious feelings on the enemy, who may not even be able to appreciate their significance. But, as he had come to learn not too long ago: love was not a thing that was meant to be hoarded. It existed to be shared. It was therefore probably right of him to share those feelings. To let others know how strongly his friends had loved when they’d been alive. To let the memories of them endure in others.

The scout swallowed, her eyes wide with awe. “...They felt this way…about you?” Slipshod couldn’t help but let out a wan chuckle as he resolved not to take the question as an insult. “How?”

“It turns out that it doesn’t take much,” he admitted, “you just have to be yourself. Make friends. It’s honestly the easiest thing in the world for a changeling to do with our empathic abilities. Which makes sense, when you think about it: Of course a race of creatures dependent on positive emotions of those around them to sustain their existence would be superbly adept at fostering those positive emotions in others. All I have to do is help make those around me feel happy, and in return I get to experience, well, that,” Slipshod finished, gesturing broadly towards the other changeling, and her processing of the emotions which he’d given her.

“They don’t expect you to do anything for them in exchange for giving you their love?” She asked, only tentatively skeptical, as she could clearly feel the details of the emotions that had been directed towards Slipshod. Specifically their lack of qualifiers and conditions. They’d loved him because they could. Which Slipshod further confirmed.

“All love―real love―is unconditional and unrequited, by its nature. That’s what makes it ‘love’,” he pointed out. “That’s what makes it such a potent emotion: the fact that it doesn’t really need anything to propagate it. It’s limitless power.

“What Chrysalis gives us is a pale shadow of the real thing. It comes with conditions of loyalty and sacrifice. She holds it over our heads like a carrot at the end of a stick, promising us what she calls ‘love’ in exchange for servitude…otherwise we get beat with that stick. Because of how she manipulates us, we go through life thinking that it’s real love; but it’s not. It just keeps us weak and subservient to her―dependent on her. She tricks us into thinking we need her to survive, and that she’s the only source of support that we can depend on in this galaxy.

“But it’s all a lie,” Slipshod said with a sneer as he thought about how he’d been deceived his whole life. The years spent living in fear of others and what they’d think of him if they knew the truth, His faith and reliance on his former queen…until he’d finally seen her true callousness. Until she’d cast him aside the moment he wasn’t of any use to her. Even then it had taken a long time to recognize that he could be loved for who and what he was. That he wouldn’t just be used again.

He’d found that salvation though, in the end. That source of love that would sustain him. The validation of his existence…

…Only for Chrysalis to take it away from him again!

Slipshod was determined to take from his former queen now too. He’d take away her base of power. One changeling at a time, if that was what it took. He stared into the eyes of the ComSpark scout, feeding her his determination and defiance. “Chrysalis doesn’t deserve your loyalty, or the loyalty of any changeling. She has robbed our entire species of its potential, just to satisfy her ego and her pride. She would sooner see the galaxy burn than let even one changeling realize our kind’s potential.

“You know I’m telling the truth, because the one thing a changeling can’t do to another is lie and expect to get away with it…provided the changeling in question has access to powerful enough emotions to keep their senses from being dulled. Now that you do, why don’t you reach out towards Canterlot? Tell me what you feel coming from there?”

The scout flashed him a dubious expression, her features scrunching up with doubt. “Canterlot’s hundreds of kilometers away. No changeling can sense emotions from that far.”

“Under normal circumstances, no,” Slipshod acknowledged patiently, not the least bit dissuaded. “But you’re not a ‘normal’ changeling anymore…and neither is Chrysalis. She’s so glutted with emotions after five hundred years of hoarding them, and you finally have enough genuine love in you to let you unlock your potential. So go ahead: reach out and take a ‘sniff’ of what’s coming out of the north.”

Still looking a little like she expected nothing of any significance to happen, the ComSpark scout rolled her eyes and directed her attention in the direction of the planet’s capital. Her jaw went slack and her tongue poked out for a brief moment. The mare’s eyes widened in mild surprise that was borne equally from her discovery that she was indeed able to sense emotional states from such an extreme range as well as from what it was that she had detected. Her lips pulled back in a grimace, as though she had just tasted something quite bitter. Which, Slipshod knew, she likely very well had.

“See?”

“It’s…vile…” the ComSpark mare remarked, still sounding surprised by the findings.

“It’s conceit and pride, marinated in a broth of malice and contempt. You’ll notice that it’s not all being directed towards the ponies either,” Slipshod said in a flat tone. He’d become very familiar with the ‘stench’ present on Equus since making their landing. It had shocked even himself at first, since he’d never known the world to possess this oppressive emotional atmosphere. It certainly hadn’t felt this way in the past.

At first, he’d thought that it was just a result of the invasion, but the longer he’d been on the ground and the more he’d been exposed to the miasma of feted emotion, the more Slipshod realized that it wasn’t anything focused. It was the result of a general state of being. And there was only one conceivable source of such strong emotions on Equus: Chrysalis.

She didn’t just despise the other races of the galaxy. The queen of the changelings maintained contempt for her own kind as well, it seemed. A callous disregard for their existence. In her mind, her drones existed to service her desires, and nothing else. They weren’t living things, just tools to further her personal goals. ‘Steed pilots showed more regard for their BattleSteeds than the queen did for her subjects.

“The Queen…hates us?”

The betrayal that the changeling mare was feeling right now was palpable, and Slipshod felt for her. Given his own personal experiences, he could certainly empathize with the scout. “In order to hate us, she’d have to first acknowledge that we exist at all,” he countered with a mirthless smile. “She simply doesn’t care about us. She never has.”

The mare’s shoulders slumped, her head hanging dejectedly towards the ground. Sorrow and loss flooded out of her in waves, prompting Slipshod to wince as he was battered by those sickening feelings. The fear followed soon after as the other changeling’s thoughts turned towards the future. She now recognized that their race would never thrive like it should so long as Chrysalis ruled over them. No matter how this invasion turned out, millions of changelings would die, sacrificed by their unsympathetic queen on her altar of narcissism. She knew that her whole existence was hopeless…

“She needs to be removed,” Slipshod stated plainly, almost matter-of-factly. The words certainly contained an air of frivolity to them, like the ‘Steed pilot was commenting on a weed growing where it ought not to be. The other changeling regarded him warily, doubtful at the prospect. After all, Chrysalis was the most powerful changeling in the galaxy, and had been stockpiling emotional energy for literal centuries. Add to that the fact that she was surrounded by a legion of loyal drones determined to die at her whim. It certainly wasn’t like somecreature could just walk up and shoot her in the head and be done with it!

“She’s not invulnerable,” he pointed out, smirking again, “she can be stopped, and she knows it. That’s why she has you out here tracking ‘Twilight’. She believes that the princess can stop her. Which means that she can be stopped,” he reasoned. Even if he wasn’t entirely sure just how they were supposed to do it. Twilight certainly hadn’t told him what her plan was. He assumed that she had some spell or something in mind that she’d used one of the last times the alicorn had subdued the changeling queen. Which meant that it probably wasn’t something he had access to.

Though, while they might not have alicorn magic, they did have a fleet of WarShips in orbit. Uber-powerful changeling queen or not, Slipshod doubted that she could endure a few thousand tons of naval autocannon shells raining down on her from orbit! If they could draw her out of Canterlot, then Cinder’s ships would have a clear shot.

They just needed to do it fast, before the fleet of ComSpark WarShips arrived and chased the Clanners out of orbit.

Slipshod eyed the dejected changeling scout next to him.

It occurred to him that, maybe, they now had a way to do just that, and much more quickly than they’d hoped…

“Out of curiosity,” the ‘Steed pilot asked hopefully, “you wouldn’t happen to have seen the transmission encodings for the Palace Command Network recently…would you?”

It was a longshot, to be sure. Most drones weren’t privy to that information, as it was understandably sensitive. However, as this specific scout had been given the task of tracking the movements of ‘Twilight Sparkle’, it was plausible that she’d been given alternative communication protocols in the event that she wasn’t able to contact her immediate chain of command. The last thing Chrysalis would want is to lose track of the greatest threat to her power because some lower-echelon officer had either gotten themselves killed or was too distracted to pass on an intelligence report timely enough. If Chrysalis was as paranoid as he believed she was, then there was every possibility that this lowly scout had actually been entrusted with some of ComSpark’s most sensitive communication codes.

The ComSpark mare cocked her head in response to the apparent non-sequitur. Then her eyes widened with comprehension. With those communications protocols, any individual would not only be able to listen in to the communications made over that network, but would in fact be able to transmit directly to any specific user on that network. The Palace’s network, in addition to hosting the supreme military commanders for the planet’s armed forces, also allowed for the direct messaging of one other specific individual that was otherwise inaccessible through any other means: Queen Twilight Sparkle, CEO of ComSpark.

Or, as she was otherwise known to the residents of Equus: Her Royal Majesty, Queen Chrysalis of the Changelings.

The changeling scout’s lips spread open in a wide, hungry, grin.

“How are we looking?” The sage green unicorn mare asked her head of security.

The scarlet pegasus wiped at his brow with one of his wings and let out an exhausted sigh. “Objectively? We’re properly fucked if anything more than an infantry company shows up,” he informed his commander bluntly. It wasn’t like sugar-coating anything was going to do any of them any good, after all. The mare grimaced, but seemed to accept that her resident security expert was likely correct and that everything which could reasonably have been done about it had already been done.

“Subjectively,” Blood Chit went on with a mirthless smirk, “we’re as tough to crack as we’re ever going to be,” he assured her. He extended a wing, gesturing at the various defensive measures that the crew had taken since Squelch had made the decision to dig in in anticipation of transmitting their distress beacon to the orbiting Clan fleet. “We’ve got a trench line that just about surrounds the whole crash site. We’ve cannibalized the vehicle weapons from the garage and set them up around the perimeter. Channel Lock also had the techs strip out a few beam weapons from the Cavalier and storage to supplement our defenses.”

Squelch nodded as she took note of the relatively recent additions that had been made to their defenses. In a testament to the high standard of training that Mig and her late twin had held the Zathura’s technical and maintenance crew to, Channel Lock and her truncated engineering teams had managed to reestablish at least partial power to the remains of the DropShip by wiring the systems into the reactor of Slipshod’s Crystal Cavalier. Being a much smaller power source than the core of the ship itself, it wasn’t able to do much more than power internal systems though. It definitely didn’t have enough output capacity to maintain the heavier energy weapons in the DropShip’s turrets for more than a shot or two. Not if they wanted things like sensors, radios, lights, and their medical equipment running at the same time.

However, it seemed like their technicians had found a way to emplace a few of the lighter energy weapons along their perimeter defenses. Although, from what Squelch understood, they would require a significantly longer cycling time between shots. Still, she was grateful to have weapons significantly more potent than machine guns available to use if the situation ended up calling for it.

Ideally, none of this was going to turn out to be necessary and it would all be looked back on as a complete waste of time and effort. However, Squelch had not been willing to rely on that considering where they were. Even at their most optimistic projections, it would take upwards of half an hour to get a rescue team down to them. And that was only if there just happened to be a DropShip docked at one of the WarShips that was ready to go. Otherwise they could easily be looking at needing more than an hour to get picked up.

As long as nothing stumbled across them before they were ready to get off their distress signal, they had a better than even chance of all getting through this.

The unicorn mare took one more look around the defensive line and then returned her attention to the pegasus stallion. “Good work. Let me know if anything changes. I’m going to check on Cravat…and Mig.” She received a tight-lipped nod from her head of security before he flitted off to check with their defenders. Squelch returned inside the DropShip.

The ‘Steed Bay had become their new clinic as the Zathura once again played host to far more injured creatures than its designers had ever anticipated. Unfortunately, this time all of the patients were members of their own crew, and their chief medical officer was far less capable.

That wasn’t meant as any sort of slight against Cravat. Celestia knew that the earth pony medic was doing everything that he could for his patients. He simply just wasn’t a real doctor. His level of medical knowledge didn’t go very far above first aid, as most of his duties had involved stabilizing wounded ponies long enough for Doc Dee to evaluate and treat them. Other than stopping bleeding and administering pain medication, there just wasn’t much more than Cravat knew how to do. He certainly wasn’t about to attempt anything invasive with his patients and risk doing further harm by bungling something.

Fortunately, many of those under his care had suffered relatively ‘simple’ injuries that he knew exactly how to address; like broken limbs, concussions, and lacerations. While many of her crew had been wounded grievously that there was no way they could contribute to the fight, that wasn’t to say that they were in immediate danger of dying. For the most part. While there were some who honestly only needed some rest to recover or wait for their bones to mend, there were a few who obviously needed the skills of a surgeon if they were ever going to recover fully. They were stable for now, yes; but they certainly weren’t going to improve on their own. If anything, a day or two without invasive interventions would see them start to deteriorate.

In fact, at the moment, there was really only one patient that Cravat was having to actively fight to save: Mig.

At some point during the crash, the DropShip’s chief engineer had suffered a grievous blow to her head, visibly caving in part of her skull. She’d survived―if only barely―and Cravat was able to keep her heart beating at a relatively stable rhythm with the use of a defibrillator that was continuously monitoring the kirin’s cardiac activity. A ventilator was keeping her breathing. Unfortunately, that constituted the extent of what the medic knew how to do for her. It also wasn’t going to be enough to keep her alive for much longer.

Cravat had been able to see from the medical scanners that there was an active bleed in Mig’s brain. Not a big one, in fairness, but it was persistent, and Cravat didn’t have anything on hoof that he knew how to stop it with. She needed a real doctor. Otherwise the blood would continue to build up and put pressure on the engineer’s brain, eventually causing irreparable damage―assuming there wasn’t already―and even death if it went on too long.

It wasn’t Mig’s condition that Squelch was the most interested in at the moment though. While the unicorn certainly cared a great deal whether or not her chief engineer lived or died, she doubted that the kirin could play a pivotal role in the invasion beyond this point. Or even the survival of this ship. As brilliant as Mig was, even her nigh-miraculous mechanical expertise wasn’t going to be able to resurrect the Zathura from the state it was in. Frankly, the DropShip was beyond the help of a whole team of yard dogs. The quantity of rebuilding that would be needed to get the vessel space-worthy again was comparable to building a brand new Mustang-class DropShip from scratch.

No, it wasn’t an engineer that they needed right this moment. It was an alicorn. Unfortunately for Squelch, their resident princess was his other significant patient.

According to Cravat, Twilight had regained consciousness briefly during the DropShip’s descent after they’d been disabled by the collision of the ComSpark fighter. She’d almost immediately tried to suspend the Zathura in a giant telekinetic levitation field. Naturally, trying to effectively ‘fly’ two thousand tons of freefalling spaceship had gone about as well as one would expect, even with an alicorn. Her magic had burned out within seconds and Twilight had been rendered unconscious again.

Which wasn’t to say that it had all been for nothing. Aileron was insistent that he’d mistimed their ‘suicide burn’ and the DropShip was set to hit the ground with more than sufficient force to pancake the entire vessel. Twilight’s telekinesis―if only briefly applied―had reduced the mass of the ship significantly for long enough to avoid certain destruction. While their landing had obviously been far from ‘gentle’, Squelch did concede that the Zathura was mostly intact. Completely unflyable, yes, but most of the pieces of the ship were still oriented on or around the crash site with respect to their original locations on the vessel.

Twilight had saved their lives just as much as Mig and Aileron had. It had been a group effort, even if they hadn’t been actively coordinating with one another at the time. Now it was up to her. Even if she didn’t even remotely feel up to it.

Like just about every other member of the crew who wasn’t ‘seriously injured’, Squelch was suffering from moderate whiplash as a result of the crash. Cravat had passed out all of the pain medications that he dared to without risking the faculties of those who were still physically able enough to defend the ship, but so far all those pills had done was take the worst of the edge off. The sage green unicorn still felt incredibly stiff as she walked across the ‘Steed Bay to talk with Cravat.

“Any updates, doc?”

The dappled gray earth pony stallion turned away from where he’d been consulting his datapad and looked towards his commander. His eyes were sunken and bloodshot. He’d debatably been working the hardest out of everypony since the crash, as he really didn’t have much help. Every able hoof was needed to prepare for any possible attacks. Which meant that he’d been the only one available to care for the fifteen patients he had who’d been too severely injured to work. In addition to his efforts to try and preserve the lives of three of the missing ponies who’d eventually been found still alive.

He’d been…unsuccessful. Each time. Their bodies had simply been too mangled. Those losses had taken their mental toll on the earth pony as well. It didn’t seem to matter how many times Squelch assured him that their deaths hadn’t been his fault. He’d taken it as a failure on his part nonetheless.

“Mig suffered another arrhythmia,” the medic said, looking back at his pad. “She’s also trending more towards bradycardia. Her bleed’s getting worse. I know where it is, but trying to get to it…” The stallion shook his head dejectedly, the helplessness plain on his face. He desperately wanted to help his patient, he just didn’t have the ability to.

Squelch could sympathize. There was a lot that she wished that she could do for her surviving crew as well, but the situation was working against her. “I understand,” she assured the dappled stallion, “and I know you’re doing your best. We’re working on getting her help.

“Speaking of which: what’s Twilight’s condition?” The sage unicorn asked, turning her head in the direction of the unconscious purple alicorn. The fact that she was still unresponsive seemed pretty indicative that Cravat’s report wasn’t going to be what Squelch had been hoping for though.

“Unchanged.” Cravat confirmed, turning towards the alicorn as well. “She burned herself out pretty thoroughly this time. It’ll be days before she’s up and about, but she’ll recover.”

“I take it there isn’t anything you can do to get her out of that bed in, oh say, the next fifteen minutes?”

“I absolutely could,” the earth pony admitted without missing a beat, much to Squelch’s obvious surprise. However, he quickly followed up this revelation with some qualifiers. “I could pump her full of adrenaline and amphetamines and have her awake and alert in the next thirty seconds.

“However, she’d be in so much agonizing pain that the amount of drugs I’d have to give her for it would just put her right back out again. So…” Cravat gave his employer an anemic shrug.

“Right; got it,” Squelch sighed, deflating slightly as she massaged her brow in frustration. She’d honestly known before asking that there was little chance of receiving a different answer. She’d just really hoped that there would have been one.

“Keep up the good work, doc. I’m working on getting us out of here as quickly as possible,” she assured the stallion. “I’m about to head to the bridge and see where we’re at with long-range comms. Work on getting me a comprehensive list of all your patients and their injuries that I can have High Gain transmit to the fleet so that their doctors are ready when―”

Squelch was interrupted by a beep from her comlink. She glanced down to see that the ship’s communications technician was trying to reach her. Squelch grimaced, “speak of the Shadow,” she murmured as she accepted the transmission.

“Squelch here; what’s up?”

“Ma’am,” the mare on the other end of the line began, concern clearly evident in her voice, “we have a problem…”

“There it goes again!” Doppler groaned in exasperation, glowering at her terminal’s display.

High Gain looked up from where she was sitting at her own workstation to see what was frustrating her companion. “There what ‘goes again’?” She inquired, curious. “What are you trying to do?”

“I’m ‘trying’ to patch together those early-warning perimeter sensors that the Elementals scattered all around the ship,” the cobalt unicorn mare said, still glaring at the offending computer screen. “But every time I think I finally have a working sensor net, one of them bugs out and throws up a whole bunch of noise! It’s the same one every time too. Pretty sure it must have been damaged in the crash, but every diagnostic I run comes back perfectly fine!

“I’m going to call down and have it swapped out anyway. I can’t get the net up until all the sensors are working.” Doppler keyed in her comlink and set about trying to get in touch with one of their dragon defenders to coordinate a replacement for the misbehaving module.

Not having much to do herself until Channel Lock’s techs completed their work on the improvised transmission antenna for the DropShip, High Gain wandered over towards the sensor operators console and glanced at the readout on her display. She was by no means an expert on the ship’s sensor systems, but was quite familiar with various technical problems where signal interference was a factor. If the issue was in maintaining a consistent line of communication with the sensor module, there might be some insight which she could provide.

She studied the readings from the last report, scanning over the details that the ship’s computer had been able to provide. It didn’t take long for the comm tech to notice something which piqued her curiosity. She gently nudged the conversing unicorn aside and brought up the last few diagnostic reports for the module in question.

Just as Doppler had said, the evaluations had all come back without the slightest indication that there was an issue with the device’s hardware or software. Which meant that there was either something wrong with the diagnostic software, or the device was malfunctioning as a result of some sort of outside interference. The former was certainly possible, but the sort of damage that would have had to be done to the module to make it fail intermittently and affect the self-diagnostics exclusively would have been quite bizarre, given the seriousness of the crash. There was honestly a better chance of it being deliberate sabotage, but even then it was the sort of problem that would have been way too obvious and served no real purpose.

It was curious to the technician that the ‘outages’ seemed to be occurring at predictable intervals. Not regular ones, to be sure. There was a variance in how long the sensor operated before fritzing out again, but those variances followed a very specific pattern, she noticed. Quite interestingly, it was a pattern that the mare even recognized, as she’d seen it before. Indeed, High Gain didn’t know a Harmony Sphere communications specialist who wouldn’t have recognized this timing pattern, as it was a common one: It matched up with standard ComSpark frequency modulations.

High Gain felt her blood run cold. She swallowed, “Doppler…what’s the frequency range that these sensors use?”

“They’re Clanner tech, so they bounce between eighty-three-five and eighty-seven,” the unicorn answered in a somewhat distracted tone, as most of her focus was on her conversation with the Elemental technician she was speaking with on her comlink. A second later the cobalt mare seemed to finally recognize that High Gain was captivated by something on the sensor terminal and redirected her attention. “...Why?”

“ComSpark tends to use eighty-one thru eighty-four,” High Gain answered, her mouth suddenly dry. “They use the higher bands because that’s what the CLDF used to use.”

Doppler was frowning now, her conversation with the dragons forgotten. “So? Even if there’s some overlap, that shouldn’t matter,” she insisted. “I mean, not unless ComSpark literally has a high-power transmitter within a couple hundred me…ters…” The sensor operator’s jaw went slack as realization finally dawned on her.

A moment later the unicorn was unceremoniously shoving High Gain aside as she latched onto her console and began to input a series of commands. The display shifted to a localized map of the area. A few more taps of her hooves and the unicorn altered the map slightly, highlighting a small region just to the south of the DropShip’s hulk. Doppler stared at the region for a few seconds…and then began swearing, once more reaching for her comlink.

“Flux, forget what I was talking about before!” She snapped into her mic. “Get a squad out to fourteen mark seven-nine right now! We’ve been made!”

Her warning sent, the unicorn mare buried her face in her forehooves, letting out a frustrated scream that was only barely muffled. “I’m such an idiot! I was looking out for thermal signatures this whole time because I figured that ComSpark would be sending out a ‘Steed or a truck or something.

“They sent a fucking remote drone!”

“How long do you think it’s been there?”

“For at least as long as I’ve been struggling with those sensor remotes,” Doppler spat, bitterly. “So longer than fifteen minutes.”

High Gain winced and then reached for her own comlink, “Ma’am? We have a problem…”

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