“CIC reports that the primary target is in the open!”

The call went out across the flag bridge of the Rockhoof, echoing above the din of Star Admiral Cinder’s command staff coordinating the various fronts of the planetary invasion of Equus. It was an announcement which invited a brief moment of silence from just about every other creature on the bridge, as they processed the implication: the invasion was nearing its ultimate endgame. After all, everything that they had been doing up to this point had been undertaken for the purpose of drawing Queen Chrysalis out of her Canterlot fortress and into the open. Now that she was exposed, the orbiting fleet of Clan WarShips had the opening they’d been waiting for to end the changeling threat.

“Fucking finally!” Cinder all but snarled under her breath as she stood glowering at the plotter in the center of her command bridge. “Time to target?” She asked her tactical officer.

“The fleet is making final orbital adjustments now, star admiral. We’ll achieve minimum firing angle in five minutes, but CIC recommends we wait until we’re directly overhead to maximize the effectiveness of our bombardment,” the junior officer replied.

“How long until the fleet is overhead?”

“Approximately eight minutes, ma’am.”

Cinder frowned, studying the plotter intently. So far, the plan was going about as well as could be expected. They’d taken more serious losses to the ‘bait’ force than the cobalt dragoness might have liked, but they’d always known that those forces would be hit the hardest. Meanwhile, the redirection of their staged forces in Baltimare and Fillydelphia had gone flawlessly and they’d managed to perfectly surround the ComSpark divisions that Chrysalis had deployed to entrap ‘Twilight’. Even though the changeling’s outnumbered them, the Sphere and Dragoon units had achieved near perfect surprise in their opening strikes and were hitting them from behind. The ComSpark units were in complete disarray and falling into chaos.

It was already turning into the next best thing to a rout!

That was the extent of the ‘good’ news, however. Now they had the changeling queen herself to contend with, and it appeared that she had changed considerably from how her parents and Princess Flurry Heart remembered her. Five hundred years of gorging herself on the creatures of the Harmony Sphere had allowed her to grow both in power and in size, it seemed. Chrysalis had already destroyed an entire lance of BattleSteeds with little more than a thought, Cinder noted. Even if the conventional ComSpark units were rendered combat ineffective, the dragoness had to wonder what kind of losses their own forces would end up suffering during those eight minutes it took for the fleet to get into position.

Would their army really be able to hold out against that kind of firepower for long enough to keep the queen’s attention? Cinder had the option to cut that time down to nearly half if she was willing to settle for a ‘less than optimal’ firing angle. However, if her WarShips fired as soon as they were able, there was the chance that many of their shots would either miss their target or not hit with their maximum destructive power. In which case, the changeling queen might survive the initial bombardment and retreat back to her fortress in Canterlot. If that happened, they wouldn’t have the time to pummel the castle into ruin, as the ComSpark WarShip fleet was due to enter planetary orbit in less than six hours.

If they didn’t finish the changeling queen off here and now, they might not get another opportunity.

They needed to make sure that, if this was going to be the only shot they were going to get, they needed to make sure that it counted. Cinder let out a resigned sigh as she watched a pair of ‘Steeds get erased from the board by another of the changeling queen’s magical blasts. A lot of lives would be lost the longer they waited, ture; but she needed to believe that so many more would be saved in the end when Chrysalis was gone.

“Wait until we have an optimal firing solution,” the star admiral instructed. Her tactical officer nodded in somber acknowledgement and began to relay her orders to the rest of the fleet.

“Star Admiral!”

Cinder looked up to see one of her communications officers running up to her and cocked a curious eyebrow, “yes, lieutenant?”

“Ma’am, I’ve just finished reviewing one of the latest reports from our forces on the surface.” The junior officer began. His whole body was shaking with what looked to be barely contained excitement, and a hint of worry. “They contained mention of a distress call from a DropShip in the Appaloosa region during the initial landings, along with coordinates listed in the message.”

Cinder felt her own eyes widen at the news. That was the location and approximate time that they’d lost contact with the Zathura and Princess Twilight Sparkle.

“I had Ops scan the area, and they found the Princess’ DropShip! The ship appears to still be―mostly―intact and we’ve found signs of survivors on the ground.”

The star admiral let out an immense sigh of relief. If the DropShip was largely whole and there were survivors, there was a good chance that the princess was among them. At least, that was what the dragoness chose to believe at this moment, until she was informed otherwise. However, the next bit of news gave her renewed cause for concern.

“We also detected a massive ComSpark presence in the area, ma’am. They’re moving in on the DropShip as we speak.”

“Get on the horn with Flight Ops!” Cinder snapped far more aggressively than she’d meant to. “I want DropShip and aerospace fighter support there yesterday! Recovering that DropShip has just become mission priority number one!”

“Yes, ma’am!” The lieutenant nodded his head in vigorous understanding and immediately sprinted back to his station to relay his commander’s new orders.

The cobalt dragoness turned back to the holographic plotter and redirected it away from the battle unfolding at Ponyville, seeking out the crash site of the Zathura. Her features set into a grim line as she saw the dearth of crimson blips denoting ComSpark units closing in on the grounded DropShip. She saw scores of armored vehicles and thousands of cavalry. Far more than the crew of such a small ship could hope to hold out against for very long. It would take time for the forces that she’d just ordered to be sent to arrive.

Two major engagements, and each teetered on the brink of collapse if she couldn’t get them the help they needed in time…and in both cases she was all but helpless to do anything more than wait. The survival of both of those groups on the ground was entirely out of her claws, and that frustrated the star admiral to no end.

“Just hold out a little longer,” Cinder whispered to the holographic blips hovering in front of her, “we’re coming for you…”

“Another squad; ten o’clock, high!” Blood Chit called out. The machine gun crew beside him wasted no time in swinging the barrel of their weapon around and opening up on the flight of changeling drones that the head of security had just pointed out to them. The earth pony at the rear of the weapon leaned on the trigger, spraying the sky with bullets while the unicorn next to them used their telekinesis to ensure the ammunition belt didn’t kink as it fed into the weapon. The high-caliber rounds chewed into the half dozen changelings diving through the air, killing them in a matter of seconds.

Which was quite fortunate, as the weapon went silent just as the last changeling drone was struck dead. The unicorn assistant gunner detached the empty ammunition canister and began looking around hurriedly for a replacement. However, it soon became clear that none were available. Blood Chit let out a curse under his breath as he recognized that this position had run out of ammunition and was about to put a call out over the radio for a resupply when he heard somepony call out from a little further down the trench line.

“Ammo up!” Squelch called out as she came into view. Two canisters of rounds for the heavy machine gun were balanced on her back and a cloud of magazines for their assault rifles was hovering above her, wrapped in her cyan magical aura.

Blood Chit let out a relieved sigh and flitted over to the unicorn mare, deftly lifting the canisters off his employer’s back and tossing them to the waiting assistant gunner. The other unicorn caught the containers in his own magic and set one down beside him while affixing the other to the weapon. Squelch deposited the mass of small arms magazines on the ground nearby before looking at the gun crew herself.

“Short, controlled, bursts!” She reminded them. “We don’t have an infinite supply of ammo!”

Blood Chit was still finding himself getting used to seeing his employer and commander wearing a combat helmet and barding. She was usually dressed up in something far more ‘business casual’ on any given day. Now, however, she could just as easily have been mistaken for a member of the ship’s security detail. While the current crisis hadn’t spontaneously gifted Squelch with the ability to effectively use firearms, the mare was determined to be of as much use as she could be. And while she was a mare who had spent much of her life navigating requisitions and operating budgets, she wasn’t entirely useless during a firefight of this magnitude.

The sage green mare lifted her combat helmet and wiped some of the sweat from her brow as she took a moment to catch her breath. She was hard-pressed to recall the last time she’d needed to partake in so much manual labor. The unicorn favored her head of security with a knowing look. “We have four more cans of the fifty, and we’re down to our last case of rifle ammo.”

The crimson pegasus felt his blood run cold at the news. He’d known that they had far from an infinite supply of bullets, of course, but he still found that he hadn’t quite been ready to hear that they were very nearly completely out. Especially not when it was clear that so many changelings were still pressing in on their position.

“Understood, ma’am. We’ll try to make it last,” he assured her.

“Right. Just…don’t waste your last bullet on the changelings, okay?” Squelch said with a sober expression.

Blood Chit found himself initially taken aback by the implication of the sage unicorn’s advice. Then he recalled the transmission early on in the fighting announcing the destruction of the Zathura’s command deck, and how it had dashed their plans to send out a signal requesting help from the orbiting WarShips. Even then, there’d been something of a hope that, if they could weather this attack, they might yet find a way to get out a distress call. However, the longer the fight raged on, the less likely it was looking like there would ever be an end to these drones.

In the end, they were going to be overrun. When that happened, the pegasus stallion supposed that it would perhaps be for the best if there wasn’t anything left that was of use to the changelings.

As Squelch repositioned her helmet and turned to head back for the DropShip to fetch more munitions, Blood Chit called out to her. “Commander!” The unicorn paused, looking back over her shoulder at her chief of security. The crimson flier managed to muster up a smile, despite his recognition that their time was limited. “It’s been an honor, ma’am.”

The sage mare offered up a wan smile of her own in return. “The honor’s been all mine, captain.” Then she turned once more and galloped off down the trench.

Blood Chit turned back to the machine gun crew and repeated Squelch’s warning about not using overly long bursts of fire. He then nudged the assistant gunner aside, pointing his wing at the full canister. “Take that to gun three. Tell them it’s the last they’ll be getting.”

This wasn’t entirely accurate, the pegasus knew. However, he suspected that the ponies operating it would be a lot more judicious with their shots if they believed that was the case. It also wasn’t too far removed from the truth either. With four canisters left in the ship, there wasn’t quite enough to give each of their six active guns any more reloads.

“Take some mags with you too. No more than two per pony you see!”

The unicorn nodded and picked up the ammunition that Squelch had brought with her in his telekinesis. He then began moving along the trench line towards the next heavy machine gun, passing out magazines to members of the crew as he went. Blood Chit assumed the position of assistant gunner, pointing out incoming flights of changeling drones.

The unicorn stallion cantered along, his attention focused on his destination and the message that he had been trusted to deliver. So intent was he that he very nearly face-planted when he stumbled over the body of another security pony. He let out a stifled curse and regathered his bearings. Even taking a moment to strip unused magazines from his unfortunate comrade, knowing that bullets were a premium at the moment.

It was due in part to his looting that the unicorn didn’t notice the changeling drone who dropped down into the trench beside him, having crawled the better part of two hundred meters over the ground to avoid being spotted by the ponies who had become quite focused on scanning the skies for his flying brethren. A round to the back of the unicorn’s head created a second corpse over top of the first. A second later, a remarkably similar-looking unicorn stallion was galloping towards the nearest entrance into the DropShip.

Cravat could have sworn that he’d still had suture kits left, but obviously he’d been mistaken. It was difficult for him to recall when exactly it was that he’d used the last one. All of his patients over the course of the last couple hours had all blended together. He was reduced to scrounging the deck in search of lengths of silk that he’d discarded during previous wound closings. Even if each individual length was only good enough for a stitch or two, they would suffice.

He’d just need to make sure to dunk them each in a bowl of alcohol first so as to reduce the likelihood of infection settling in. Weighing the risks, it was far more important that he stop the bleeding of his Elemental patient anyway. Any infections that might crop up later could be addressed with antibiotics. Besides, it would be at least a day before any infection became serious; and they’d surely be back aboard one of the orbiting WarShips by then. Assuming that they survived any of this, that is.

When he finally surmised that he’d gathered together enough bits of string, the dappled earth pony began making his way back towards his most recent patient. Hopefully she hadn’t deteriorated too far since he’d left her side. He’d run out of fluids for transfusions a while ago.

On the way there, he very nearly bumped into a unicorn stallion who stepped into the ‘Steed Bay. “Whoop! Sorry about that! If you’re injured, just go and sit over there, I’ll look at you in a…wait…”

Cravat wasn’t much of a military-minded pony. While his primary duty on board the DropShip―prior to the previous physician’s death―had once been to accompany Blood Chit’s recovery crews on their extractions in case the ‘Steed pilot they were rescuing was injured, the earth pony wasn’t really all that well versed in technical military matters. He knew how to operate a lot of common firearms, sure, if the need arose; but such instruction had always been retained in his mind as a ‘secondary concern’. He never gave it his full focus, because he always saw his job as being one of saving lives.

So it took the medic a few extra seconds to recognize that there was something off about the unicorn stallion he’d nearly run into. While he recognized their face and had shared more than a few meals with this stallion, and the uniform and barding that they were wearing was clearly that of Rayleigh’s Irregulars…the weapon wasn’t quite right. It didn’t look like the rifles that Blood Chit and the rest of the crew carried. Indeed, it seemed to possess an entirely different coloration and style when compared to anything that he’d ever seen the security teams carry with them.

Which wasn’t to say that the weapon was completely foreign to the dappled stallion either. Quite the contrary, it was extremely recognizable. He’d seen rifles like it all the time as a colt growing up. Specifically whenever he passed by the HyperSpark Generator on his homeworld.

The unicorn was carrying a ComSpark weapon.

Unfortunately for the medical pony, this revelation came a heartbeat too late to do him any good. Just as his eyes began to widen in surprise, and his mouth opened to get out a warning, two thunderous cracks echoed throughout the ‘Steed Bay. The earth pony dropped like a stone, a pair of holes in his chest oozing blood.

As the life began to drain from Cravat’s eyes, the earth pony stallion heard additional gunshots, as well as the screams of his patients…

Phage grinned broadly as they watched the first pony drop. The shock and surprise that the earth pony experienced the moment one of his ‘friends’ killed him was intoxicating! It was a sensation that was compounded a second later by the mirrored surprise of two dozen other ponies as they turned their heads to see what the source of the unexpected gunfire had been. Only to see a pony that they all knew standing over a body, and pointing a rifle at them.

The changeling drone began to fire at them as well, planting rounds into the terrified bodies of the lame and injured even as they groped futilely aorund them in an effort to escape. Their surprise quickly gave way to panic and fear as they realized that they were trapped in the ‘Steed Bay with what could only be a changeling infiltrator. However, none of them had any way to defend themselves, since pretty much every weapon and bullet had been carried outside by now in an effort to fend off the hordes of his fellow changelings descending up their crashed ship.

Then the changeling stopped shooting as he caught sight of something that he hadn’t expected he would find here. Especially since, to the best of his knowledge, every report he’d heard suggested that they couldn’t be here. They were in Ponyville, fighting with Her Majesty.

…Except they obviously weren’t. Because it was patently obvious that Princess Twilight Sparkle was lying on a bed right in this very room.

The drone raised his rifle in his telekinesis and was just about to place a round in the unconscious alicorn’s head…when he suddenly thought better of it. Killing her would end any threat that she posed once and for all, yes. Of that there could be no doubt. However, the drone suspected that, if he killed the princess, and deprived Her Majesty of the privilege, he was likely to find himself wishing for death.

It didn’t look like the purple alicorn was going to be going anywhere any time soon anyway. She hadn’t so much as stirred in response to the gunfire that had been happening nearby, after all.

So the drone reached up to the side of his head and keyed in his comlink, “Fetlock-Two-Two-Four to Control. I have eyes on Target One inside the DropShip. I say again: I have eyes on Tar―erk!”

Something large and sharp clamped around the unicorn’s throat, very nearly crushing his windpipe. Before he had time to comprehend that he was being attacked, the pressure removed itself…along with an approximately six inch long section of his trachea, esophagus, and carotid arteries. All of which were gripped rather tightly in the balled up claws of a dragon’s bloody hand. The stallion choked and gurgled as he jerkily staggered around, seeking out his killer. The rifle, unfortunately, fell to the floor as he lost the concentration necessary to utilize this form’s magical abilities.

His strength left him as blood found it could no longer reach his brain and he sank to the ground, First to his knees, and then finally over onto his side, still instinctively trying to draw in breath through a neck that had been stolen from him. He couldn’t form a coherent enough thought to transform either. In fact, the last thought that flashed through his brain before everything descended into blackness was: ‘Oh. It was a dragoness…’

The Rainbow Dash jetted aside just in time to avoid being struck by a blast from the changeling queen, and responded with a shot from one of its prismatic projector cannons. The prismatic coil struck Chrysalis in the shoulder. However, it was immediately clear that the weapon hadn’t done much damage to the larger than life changeling. This didn’t really surprise Slipshod at this point. None of his other previous hits had seemed to do much to injure Chrysalis, why should this last one have been any different?

Indeed, it was looking like none of the weapons of the gathered BattleSteeds were having much luck in doing anything more than greatly annoying the queen of the changelings. Energy cannons, missiles, autocannon shells of various calibers, none of them seemed to inflict any real damage. Mostly due to a combination of the ultra thick carapace of the massive changeling queen and her ability to use her nearly bottomless reserves of hoarded emotional energy to heal even the superficial damage that the more powerful weapons were doing in an instant.

Chrysalis was demonstrating herself to be nigh invulnerable. Much to Slipshod’s frustration, if not the changeling drone’s surprise. He’d known―and warned―from the outset that the changeling queen wasn’t someling who could be defeated with most conventional weapons. Twilight had seemed to understand this as well, supporting his idea that a few divisions of BattleSteeds weren’t going to be a solution to the Chrysalis ‘problem’. The purpose of their ground forces had always been as a means to getting the princess safely to Chrysalis, and not as a weapon to defeat the changeling queen directly.

Unfortunately, the purple alicorn hadn’t been particularly upfront about exactly how she’d intended to ultimately defeat Chrysalis. She’d been able to stop the changeling queen in the past on multiple occasions, Slipshod knew, so the stallion had little reason to harbor any doubts that Twilight couldn’t manage to do so again. He’d also suspected that whatever means she’d used before had been unique to alicorns or something, so there wouldn’t have been much point in sharing the specifics, because it would only be something that she could manage anyway.

However, right about now―as he swerved to avoid another blast of magical energy slicing across the ground towards him―Slipshod was finding himself wondering very much exactly how it was that even an alicorn as powerful as Twilight might have hoped to bring Chrysalis down. Because, quite frankly, the stallion was at a loss. The changeling queen was being powered by the pilfered emotional energy of millions of creatures, and Slipshod was uniquely aware of how potent such energy was, even when compared to alicorn-level magic. It just didn’t seem conceivable to him that Twilight had thought she could go up against this and come out on top all on her own. Even if she’d done so before.

“Hold still!” Chrysalis thundered as Slipshod guided his nimble BattleSteed around another blast meant to kill him.

“What’s the matter, Chryssy?” Slipshod responded over the ‘Steed’s external speaker in his Twilight voice, “Did you get fat and slow while I’ve been away?”

“You insufferable little―”

Chrysalis’ retort cut off suddenly and the queen went still, her expression distant, as though she were listening to a sound that only she could hear. Confusion flashed briefly across her face, quickly shifting to fury before finally settling into a grin which was far more satisfied than Slipshod was comfortable with. She looked suddenly very happy about something, and the changeling stallion was fairly certain that anything which made Chrysalis happy would bode ill for the rest of them.

The queen of the changeling launched herself into the air…and proceeded to start flying away…

“Woah, where the fuck is she going?!” Xanadu exclaimed in obvious surprise as the massive changeling that they spent the last few minutes dancing around disappeared into the distance.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” A masculine-registered purple alicorn princess responded in mirrored bewilderment before changing radio frequencies and voice pitch. “Running away already, Chryssy? I didn’t realize I’d scare you that badly!”

“I will return for you later, you treacherous little runt,” came the changeling queen’s snarled retort. Then the frequency they’d been using went dead. Chrysalis had terminated the communication protocol entirely.

Slipshod balked in confusion. The tone of that last transmission had been entirely different from the previous ones that he’d exchanged with her. As had her emotional state. There were newfound tinges of excitement and outright glee present within the changeling queen. There was also a hunger within the massive changeling. A desire and anticipation to feed that was nearly overwhelming. Wherever she was going, Chrysalis anticipated a particularly delectable meal to be at the other end.

Then there’d been the terminology that Chrysalis had used to address him in that last message: Treacherous? How could Twilight, of all creatures, have possibly betrayed the Queen of the Changel―

“Oh shit.”

It was a completely flat declaration as Slipshod’s brain finally recognized the only likely series of events which could have prompted both that response and reaction from Chrysalis. He slammed his hind hooves down, throttling the Rainbow Dash to its maximum running speed, utilizing jump jets to accelerate the BattleSteed as quickly as possible.

“Now where the fuck are you going?!” The zebra pilot didn’t―quite―whine.

“The real Twilight’s alive! Or at least Chrysalis thinks she is!”

“Ha! I told you they weren’t dead!”

“Yeah, yeah; lucky guess there, Neighstra Donkey. Stay here and take charge, I can’t let Chrysalis get away and I’m the only one with a ‘Steed fast enough to maybe keep up!” Slipshod reverted his form back into that of his changeling self. There was little purpose in maintaining the alicorn disguise at this point if Chrysalis had found him out. He plied the controls of the Rainbow Dash for every last iota of additional speed he could coax out of it, engaging the rear-facing jump jets every time they completed their recharge cycle. Contrary to what her size might have suggested, Chrysalis appeared capable of moving through the air at considerable speeds.

While the Rainbow Dash couldn’t actually fly, Slipshod found that he could convince it to leap and bound exceptionally high and far with a judicious application of its overpowered jump jets. The measured velocity displayed on his HUD was already creeping into the upper hundreds. Still it wasn’t fast enough though. The changeling queen had an impressive lead on him already, and her speed was considerably greater than his.

“Come on…” He begged of the ‘Steed, his hind hooves straining at the throttle pedals in a futile effort to depress them even further than what was clearly their maximum setting. As though applying more force would grant him access to an additional reservoir of speed that the mechanical equine had simply been arbitrarily withholding from him up to this point. “Come on!”

As he crested two hundred kilometers an hour, it was technically incorrect to classify what the Rainbow Dash was doing now as ‘running’. It was more accurate to describe its mechanism of motion as skipping along from one hilltop to the next in great bounding leaps, with its changeling pilot applying additional bursts from the jump jets with every push-off, and at the peak of every jump. In the back of his mind, he couldn’t help but be impressed with the engineering that had gone into this ‘Steed, that its legs were able to move fast enough to keep stride with the speed he was traveling at. Any other BattleSteed this size would have tripped over its own legs and face-planted in spectacular style over a hundred kilometers an hour ago.

But he still couldn’t help but feel like it wasn’t enough!

Chrysalis was going to reach the Zathura and then she was going to kill anypony who was left alive. Just because Twilight had apparently survived, that didn’t necessarily mean that Squelch had, the changeling knew deep down. However, he also knew that there was a chance that she had. Squelch could be alive at this very moment. He might still have a chance to see her again.

But that wasn’t going to happen if Chrysalis got there first. The changeling queen’s reason for going to the Zathura might only be to retrieve Twilight Sparkle, but there was no doubt in Slipshod’s mind that she wouldn’t also kill any and all non-alicorn survivors that she came across when she got there. If he didn’t reach the Zathura fast enough, then he wasn’t going to see Squelch alive again anyway.

He hadn’t even had enough time to process her ‘death’ this first time. The changeling drone definitely wasn’t going to be able to handle losing her ‘twice’ in the same day. So, even if he was already piloting a ‘Steed at speeds he’d never have believed possible if he wasn’t seeing it with his own eyes, he needed to get there and…

Actually, that was a good question: what exactly was it that he planned to do to stop Chrysalis even if he reached the DropShip in time? It wasn’t like the changeling queen was particularly bothered by PPC blasts with the power that she possessed. None of his weapons were likely to harm her enough to drive her off, and he certainly wasn’t going to be able to convince Chrysalis that he was far more worthy of her attention than the unconscious Twilight.

Slipshod cursed under his breath. Even if he got there in time…it wasn’t going to matter. His weapons couldn’t hurt her. Frankly, the changeling doubted that anything short of a nuclear explosion was likely to do any real damage to the changeling queen, and he didn’t have any conventional missiles left, let alone a thermonuclear―

The Rainbow Dash alerted its pilot that the liberal use of jump jets and outrageous speed was starting to drive the temperature of its reactor higher than was recommended. Nothing particularly serious yet, but it was certainly a good thing that Slipshod wasn’t firing his weapons at the moment, otherwise he’d risk pushing the BattleSteed’s powerplant towards critical condition and risk an…explosion…

…Maybe he did have something that would get Chrysalis’ attention after all!

“Coming up the target,” the fire control officer standing by the plotter with Star Admiral Cinder announced, “optimal firing solution for all ships in thirty seconds.”

The cobalt dragoness felt, for the first time in a long while, an almost immeasurable sense of relief radiating through her body at the news. Though she knew that she wouldn’t feel entirely at ease until her fleet had commenced their orbital bombardment, confirmed that Queen Chrysalis had indeed been killed, collected all of their ground forces from the surface of Equus, and begun their burn out of planetary orbit ahead of the approaching ComSpark WarShips. Cinder didn’t entirely trust that the death of their queen would be enough to convince the other drones to completely cease all hostilities right then and there. Obviously, their ‘defeat’ would be inevitable with Chrysalis gone, but that fact wouldn’t keep the changelings from killing more right here and now.

The star admiral allowed herself to divert her attention to the rescue effort being undertaken at the Zathura. She saw the contacts representing the half dozen Friendship-class DropShips and their embarked forces entering the upper atmosphere above the crash site. They’d be on the ground in just a few more minutes. The combat units aboard those ships should prove more than adequate to secure the area around the wrecked DropShip and recover the survivors. Hopefully Princess Twilight was indeed among them. With Chrysalis dead and Twilight recovered, they could return to the League-in-Exile and finally be able to secure the full support of all the Dragon Clans in order to start rebuilding the Harmony Sphere.

Five hundred years of patience was finally about to pay off in just ten more seconds―

“The target is moving!” A nearby sensor tech announced. Almost immediately, Cinder saw that the marker tracking Chrysalis’ position shifted drastically to the south.

“What?!” It wasn’t the most dignified outburst that the dragoness had ever made, but the completely unexpected timing of the report had caught her off guard. The star admiral all but leaped to the closest communications terminal, startling the technician manning it. “What’s going on down there?”

“Unknown, ma’am,” the tech insisted. “Reports indicated that Queen Chrysalis just…left.” He clearly didn’t enjoy being helpless to explain the unexpected change in their target’s demeanor to his commanding officer. “One moment she was engaged with our forces outside Ponyville, and then the next moment she took off and headed south.”

Cinder was already moving towards the nearest sensor operator. “Heading where?!”

“Calculating!” The officer manning the terminal assured her, his talons flying over the controls as he plotted out a course for their quarry. His console chirped, drawing the operator up short, his face a mask of surprise. “Ma’am…Chrysalis’ present course intersects with the Zathura crash site!”

Star Admiral Cinder blanched, the revelation causing a cold lump to form in her gut. The dragoness didn’t know how, but obviously the changeling queen had learned that the real Twilight Sparkle wasn’t outside Ponyville engaged in battle with her, but on board the crashed DropShip. She was heading there to retrieve her prize.

Cinder once more glanced at the section of the plotter showing the six Clan DropShips descending through the atmosphere on approach to recover the alicorn princess. “How long until she reaches the Zathura?”

“Less than five minutes, ma’am. She’s managing to move extremely quickly.”

Five hundred years of hoarding magical energy allowed one to do a great many things beyond expectations, Cinder thought to herself even as she considered her next course of action. The relief DropShips would touch down around the Zathura before Chrysalis arrived, yes; but there was little chance that they’d have enough time to secure the crash site, retrieve the survivors, and escape the atmosphere before the changeling queen was upon them. Friendship-class DropShips wouldn’t have a hope in Harmony of fending her off if she caught them on the ground. She had been having no trouble at all dealing with forces more than ten times the number aboard those DropShips. She’d certainly be able to annihilate the relief forces that were about to land.

Did she recall them? Save who and what she could?

…Or did she take advantage of this new opportunity?

“CIC, give me a new time-to-target for the crash site.”

The flag bridge felt uncharacteristically quiet as the star admiral’s words were processed by the crew. Even the normal operating sounds of the equipment seemed to mute themselves. As though the WarShip itself was uncertain as to whether it could have interpreted the dragoness’ question correctly.

Her subordinates appeared to be hesitant as well. “...Ma’am?”

Cinder’s hands were trembling at her sides, but she was determined not to lose her conviction and balled them into fists in an effort to keep her internal reticence from becoming too obvious to her junior officers. If they didn’t think she was confident in her orders, they might hesitate to carry them out, and it was clear that they might not be presented with a lot of time in which to initiate this bombardment. They’d already missed out on one opportunity. They might not get a third. “The crash site, star commodore,” she reiterated, grateful that her words weren’t wavering nearly as badly as her fingers had been as she gave voice to the thoughts that were disturbing her so, “how long until we’re in position to bombard it?”

The other dragon’s jaw worked silently for another couple of seconds before he became aware of his agape mouth and closed it sharply with an audible sound. He pulled out a datapad and performed a few calculations upon it. He finally looked up. “We can have the fleet in position in eight minutes, ma’am.”

“Do it. Advise the relief DropShips to land accordingly around the target zone. Their orders are to secure the area only. Do not approach the Zathura.”

Another few seconds of deafening silence. For a moment, Cinder had to wonder if one of her officers might question her new orders. A small part of her desperately hoped that they would. She was already so internally opposed to her own proposed course of action, that she honestly felt like any significant pushback would cause her to abandon this wild notion.

Unfortunately, her crew was too loyal to their commander. Even if they didn’t understand―or even agree with―what she was ordering them to do, they trusted her to be acting in the best interests of their Clan, and the League-in-Exile as a whole. They would have followed her to tartarus if she’d asked it of them. So of course they were going to change course and realign their bombardment to target the Zathura and Princess Twilight Sparkle. They had faith that she knew what she was doing.

Damn their faith! Cinder thought bitterly to herself. Damn their faith and twice damn me for what I’m about to do…

They needed Chrysalis to remain relatively still and occupied in order to ensure their bombardment from orbit was successful. She was clearly powerful enough that a glancing blow from their naval cannons wasn’t guaranteed to be enough to bring her down. It had been hoped that Slipshod’s deception would be enough to keep her attention for that purpose. Unfortunately, it seemed that their ruse had been discovered, and Chrysalis now obviously knew where the real Twilight Sparkle was.

While their initial plan had been ruined, Star Admiral Cinder recognized that there was still an opportunity to salvage it. They knew where Chrysalis was going to be, and it was a fair bet that the changeling queen would be hanging around that area for at least a minute or two, if only to gloat over her capture of a fourth alicorn princess. That would provide her fleet with plenty of time to coordinate their bombardment and strike at the changeling queen.

Unfortunately, it was a near certainty that the unconscious Twilight Sparkle would also be caught in the attack. The stupendous quantities of firepower that were to be used to finally kill the empowered changeling queen would definitely be more than enough to kill the princess as well.

Cinder tried to console herself with the knowledge that, had Twilight been conscious, she would have made the decision to sacrifice her own life in the pursuit of stopping Chrysalis without a second thought. That, given the situation they were facing, Twilight might very well have given Cinder the order to do exactly what she was planning to herself. That this was something the purple princess would understand and support. Had she been conscious.

She wasn’t of course. Twilight would know nothing of what was about to happen. She would die in ignorance.

At least she would die a hero though. Perhaps, someday, that little mote of solace would be enough for Cinder.

“Start a new countdown…”

“We’re dry on the north side!”

“Pull back to the ‘Steed Bay!” Blood Chit responded back over his comlink even as he swung the machine gun he was manning to the left and sent a short burst of three rounds in the direction of a pair of changeling drones who were flying around the north end of the DropShip. The drones veered away, returning fire back at him with their rifles. Bullets impacted the dirt beside him, but none of the rounds made contact. This time.

His right wing was pressed in tight against his side where a round from a ComSpark rifle had punched through his barding a few minutes ago. As much as it hurt, the pegasus knew that he’d gotten off better than the earth pony lying dead next to him who’d been struck by the same burst of gunfire. They were far from the first member of his security team that he’d lost today. It was a given that they wouldn’t be the last either.

There just didn’t seem to be an end to these damn changelings!

“Anypony who’s still left: get to the ‘Steed Bay!”

They didn’t have either the personnel or the ammunition to hold the perimeter any longer, the crimson stallion knew. They still had some ammunition for their personal weapons, but that was really about it. His was the last of their heavy weapons that still had bullets left, and he could see that there wasn’t much of this last belt remaining. In another few seconds, he was going to be down to his rifle too. At which point he intended to get back to the DropShip as well. From there…

Another burst of small arms fire tore through the dirt just in front of him. The pegasus snarled in pain, feeling like some massive wasp had just stung him on the cheek. Most likely it had been a fragment of a splintered bullet imbedding itself in his flesh. Blood Chit spotted the offending changeling drone and sent an answering volley of fire their way. He leaned on the trigger for longer than was prudent under the circumstances, but he was feeling rather aggravated as a result of his wound. At least he had the satisfaction of seeing the ComSpark trooper go down.

Unfortunately, just beyond them was a tank, who appeared to take exception to the loss of their fellow drone. Its autocannon belched out a cloud of smoke. Blood Chit hugged the ground as the explosion shell sailed overhead and impacted the Zathura’s hull directly behind him. The explosion peppered him with flecks of shrapnel, not all of which were cast aside by his barding. The pegasus let out a pained hiss as several slivers of glowing steel alloy embedded themselves into his flanks and wings.

Even though it was a pointless waste of his precious remaining ammunition, Blood Chit fired off a burst of gunfire at the armored vehicle. The gun went silent after just two rounds, despite his hoof still holding down the trigger. A quick glance confirmed that the weapon wasn’t jammed. He was finally dry himself. The crimson pegasus let out a frustrated grunt and climbed off of the weapon, grabbing up his rifle as he started limping towards the nearest entrance to the DropShip.

Just before he left though, he noticed that the ComSpark tank did something quite unexpected: it withdrew.

Blood Chit paused, watching in confusion as the tank backed away, instead of doing what he would have expected it to and keep pushing in on the downed DropShip. It could clearly see that the defensive trench line was all but abandoned now. Similarly, the last of the Elementals had been taken out a minute earlier. There was no longer anything left that could pose a threat to the changeling armored vehicles. Now was their best chance to drive in close and start tearing the DropShip to pieces one explosion shell at a time.

Instead it was backing off.

Nor was it alone, Blood Chit noticed now that his attention had been drawn. The sky was emptying of drones as well, and not because they were descending down upon the Zathura. They too were flying away, shadowing the reversing tanks. Indeed, the stallion hardly heard any weapons fire anymore.

Not feeling particularly inclined to tempt fate, the pegasus kept his head low and resumed limping inside the DropShip.

When he finally reached the ‘Steed Bay, Blood Chit was confronted with a whole new set of horrors. It was far more of a madhouse in the cavernous interior of the Zathura than he’d anticipated, with a number of ponies scrambling among the wounded. He looked around, but was unable to spot the one pony that he would have expected to be among those rendering aid. Not feeling that his own wounds were worth drawing attention away from others, Blood Chit contented himself with hobbling around the outskirts of the chaos, seeking out a relatively out of the way section of deck to at least lie down and catch his breath for a moment.

“Oh, fuck, Blood Chit!” A mare’s voice drew his attention. He turned his head and saw that Doppler was limping his way. “Are you okay?!”

“Looks worse than it is,” he assured her, trying to muster up a smile and immediately regretting doing so because of the pain in his cheek. “Cravat can get to me whenever.” The sudden wince on the indigo mare’s face caught his attention. “What’s wrong?”

“Cravat…” Doppler’s voice cracked, prompting her to clear her throat. “A changeling got in. He killed a lot of ponies before one of the Elementals took him down. Cravat was one of them.”

Doppler glanced behind her. The pegasus security chief followed her gaze, and spotted the short row of crimson-stained sheets which covered a few equine shapes; along with one sheet which tried its best to grant some dignity to the dead dragoness laying near them. Her scales looked far more ashen and pale than they should have, even on the deceased, suggesting that she’d bled to death. Not surprising, he thought to himself. It was likely that quite a few of the remaining wounded would go on to die in a similar fashion now that the last of their ship’s medical staff had died. He idly wondered how much longer he had left, given the state of his own wounds.

As Blood Chit’s gaze continued to linger on the collection of corpses that had resulted from the brief infiltration by the changeling drone, his hind legs gave out from under him. The wave of loss ripping through his body felt like it sapped the last of his barely-maintained strength. A changeling had gotten through? Worse, that changeling had managed to devastate their medical treatment capabilities in such a brief amount of time. The stallion felt himself overcome by a feeling of failure. Keeping everypony inside the Zathura safe had been his job, and he’d failed.

Not that there had really been much hope of keeping everypony safe forever, he recognized. This had always been a fight they couldn’t win. They’d just been hoping to last long enough to be saved by Star Admiral Cinder. Though it didn’t look like that was going to be happening either. In spite of the unexpected withdrawal of the ComSpark forces, Blood Chit didn’t get the sense that their chances of survival were going to be increasing any time soon.

“Squelch?” He blurted. “Is she…?”

“I’m here.”

The pegasus jerked with a start as his sage green unicorn employer approached from the other direction. Her hooves and face were smeared with blood from where she had apparently lent her own efforts to trying to help the wounded. The dullness of her eyes suggested to the security pony that those efforts had been met with limited success. If any at all. She briefly scanned over the obviously wounded state of her chief security officer before sending Doppler to fetch what clean bandages she could. Then she looked back at Blood Chit and asked with trepidation, “how bad is it?”

“They’re pulling back,” the pegasus revealed as he allowed the unicorn mare to ease him down to the deck for treatment. “I don’t know why. It doesn’t make sense. We’re finished and they know it. They could overrun us in seconds if they charged in now.”

“Maybe they’re going to call and offer us a chance to surrender?” Squelch theorized, her expression making quite clear how little she relished the notion. “I bet they’d rather have live prisoners to feed on than corpses.”

“If that was the case, they’d have made an offer like that when they first showed up,” he pointed out, “instead they blew up the bridge and started assaulting our defenses.”

Squelch conceded that he’d made a fair point, but she was also obviously at a loss for a plausible explanation for the changelings’ unexpected reversal in tactics. Doppler returned with bandages that were at least more white than red and both mares began doing their best to keep Blood Chit from losing any more blood than he already had using their―very―limited knowledge of first aid. All that they could really hope to do was stop most of the major bleeding. Which wasn’t going to really help Blood Chit for more than a few hours if they couldn’t get him to someplace with real doctors.

“Well, whatever they’re up to, I don’t like it,” the unicorn insisted as she got back up to her hooves, leaving the head of security in her sensor operator’s hooves. “I’m going to go discuss our OPSEC options with Channel Lock.”

The other two ponies exchanged briefly confused looks, not immediately recognizing what insight the ship’s interim chief engineer was going to be able to offer. Blood Chit made the connection first, his eyes widening briefly before resignation calmed his features once more. He nodded at his commander, a sad little smile on his lips. When he saw that the other unicorn was still having trouble understanding Squelch’s intent, he explained it to her. “Intelligence denial. We can’t let ComSpark get their hooves on anything that’ll help them repel the invasion. We’ve been privy to a lot of high-profile meetings, after all.”

“Not to mention one VIP,” Squelch confirmed with a brief nod in the still-unconscious Twilight’s direction. “There’s a lot here we can’t let the changeling’s get.”

With that, the sage green unicorn began making her way towards her current head of engineering and was about to draw her attention when she received a call over her comlink. “Commander! DropShips incoming!” Squelch felt her stomach tighten immediately at the thought of additional changeling forces landing at their position. Was that why their cavalry forces had withdrawn? So that fresh BattleSteeds could move in on them and rip the Zathura apart in order to avoid the pitfalls of shipboard combat heavily favoring the defenders?

The next part of the message dissolved her apprehension and replaced it with profound relief: “They have Clan Timberwolf markings!”

Rescue. Somehow, they’d been found and Cinder had dispatched forces to rescue them. That had to be why the ComSpark forces were pulling back! They’d detected the approaching DropShips and recognized that they couldn’t contend with a few companies of Clantech BattleSteeds.

They might just get out of this alive yet!

“Understood,” Squelch replied over the comlink, unable to hide her relief, “let me know when you’ve made contact with their commander. I’ll start getting our wounded ready to move out.”

“Roger, ma’am! I’ll…hold on,” Squelch paused mid stride as she heard the confusion in the voice of the pony who’d call her up. “Ma’am, they’re landing really far away. Like, at least ten kilometers.”

Squelch balked. That made no sense. She’d seen the terrain around the Zathura. She knew for a fact that there were perfectly suitable landing zones for DropShips even as large as a Princess-class just about right outside their door! There was no reason at all for any of the Clan vessels to land that far away. What possible assistance could they hope to provide from that distance?

“Channel Lock!” She called out, summoning the pink unicorn engineer.

“Ma’am?” The other mare said almost breathlessly as she trotted over. She was stained head to hoof with dirt and grease as a result of working non-stop to jury-rig half of their recent defensive efforts, as well as create a work-around to solve the crashed DropShip’s power issue. Yet, despite her obvious fatigue, the unicorn technician straightened herself up in anticipation of being given yet another almost insurmountable engineering task that needed to be overcome if they were going to manage to live another hour.

“Is there any way you can get us external comms?” Squelch’s tone wasn’t a pleading one, but it certainly skirted right up to the line. “Nothing particularly powerful; just a few kilometers. Timberwolf DropShips are landing on the horizon, and I want to be able to coordinate an extraction with them.”

Channel Lock began chewing her lip furtively. With the news of salvation being so close at hoof, the pink mare clearly didn’t want to affirm that what Squelch was asking wasn’t possible without thoroughly considering every available option. She glanced over at the mostly cannibalized Crystal Cavalier and winced. “We ripped out most of the ‘Steed’s mid-range comms to fix the DropShip’s systems. I might be able to boost the short-wave though. With enough power and some cabling to act as an antenna, I can probably pump a transmission out far enough.

“Assuming ComSpark doesn’t jam us,” the engineer added by way of a qualification, lest her commander feel too optimistic about their chances.

Squelch was just happy that she hadn’t received a firm ‘no’. Still, she did make an effort to temper her expectations. “I understand. See what you can do.” She was about to turn away when she remembered what she’d initially been about to summon Channel Lock for before she’d been informed about the arrival of the Clan vessels. For a moment, she hesitated, wondering if that point had been rendered moot by the change in circumstances. On the other hoof, their rescue hadn’t been guaranteed quite yet. Even if they did get out, it still wouldn’t do to leave behind intact information systems that could be accessed by ComSpark. This ship had seen too much with regards to the Dragon Clans and the League-in-Exile. That information couldn’t be permitted to fall into the hooves of the changelings.

“Oh, and Chief…Just in case: I want you to see what you can come up with by way of a denial protocol. Focus on the information storage systems if you can.”

The pink unicorn engineer nodded. “Understood, ma’am.”

Squelch’s comlink chirped again, indicating that she was about to receive another transmission. Hopefully it was some good news regarding those Clan Timberwolf DropShips. Maybe they’d deployed their ground forces and a couple battalions of ‘Steeds were moving in to secure the Zathura. “Go ahead.”

“Commander, we’ve got something heading our way from the north. Not sure what it is yet, but it’s big and moving fast.” The stallion on the other end of the line reported.

The sage green unicorn frowned. She found herself really wishing that the ship still had functioning sensors. ‘Big fast thing’ wasn’t exactly a lot to go on when it came to making a decision about what to do in response to it. Especially since there was no way of knowing if this was a friendly object or a hostile one. Hopefully it was just another Clan DropShip coming in on approach. Perhaps even the vessel that Cinder had dispatched to come and recover Twilight and the surviving crew of the Zathura, and the other DropShips had simply landed so far away at first to form a defensive perimeter and secure the site to ensure a safe extraction.

Squelch desperately needed to believe that was the case right about now. She wasn’t sure if she was mentally capable of handling any additional bad news at this point. Not after having lost so much in such a short amount of time.

Her eyes scanned the ‘Steed Bay, pausing on each of the sheet-covered bodies that had been dragged into it. She knew that many more corpses lay outside the DropShip, likely never to be recovered even to that extent. Even if they escaped, it wasn’t like they’d be taking any of the remains with them. Depending on the means by which they were rescued―if they were rescued―it wasn’t even a guarantee that they’d be able to take all of the wounded with them. There were far more injured ponies than able ones at this point.

Her crew had numbered over eighty when they’d arrived in Faust. Three quarters of them now lay dead, and half of those left alive might still yet ultimately succumb to their wounds. It would be a miracle if even a dozen of them made it off Equus alive at this point. Squelch had understood that the fight to take down Chrysalis would be a difficult one, yes, but…in her optimistic naivety, the unicorn hadn’t imagined that it would be her crew that would suffer such pervasive losses.

Perhaps that had been a silly notion, the mare supposed. It wasn’t like she hadn’t already seen dozens of DropShips blown out of space right beside her own on their way to the planet. Thousands dead in an instant, with barely enough time afforded to them to recognize that they had been killed. Yet, those tragedies had always been things that happened to other ships and other crews. Deep down, Squelch had never felt like it was something which would ever happen to her ship. Her crew. They would be safe. They would survive. They would emerge victorious, leave this world, and return to their old lives with the fortunes promised to them.

…But that wasn’t what had happened.

Fate had seen fit to disabuse Squelch of the notion that somehow her crew was ‘special’. That they were immune to the consequences of taking on a mission so obviously perilous as invading the seat of Queen Chrysalis’ power. That they’d all make it back home alive. That any of them would make it back alive…

Squelch was forced to spend a moment taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly in an effort to fortify herself as those more anxious thoughts started to get away from her. It wasn’t a healthy state of mind to be in, given their current predicament. Whether it had been right or wrong to risk her ship and her crew on an undertaking like this was largely irrelevant at this point. They were here now and that couldn’t be changed. It was her job now to focus on how to save as many of them as she could.

“Blood Chit!” The sage green unicorn called out. “Start getting the wounded ready to move out.” Whether Cinder was coming to them, or expected the crew of the Zathura to get to her forces for some reason, it was a given that they couldn’t remain in this DropShip for much longer. The ComSpark forces had withdrawn, giving a chance to escape if that’s what it came to.

“See if any of the forklifts still work; maybe we can use those to transport―”

“It’s not a DropShip!” The stallion on lookout yelled over the still-open comlink channel, interrupting Squelch. Judging from the reaction of other ponies around her, the unicorn suspected that he was making a shipwide broadcast.

She frowned and keyed up her mic. “What’s not a DropShip? What is it?”

“That thing that’s heading for us! It’s not a DropShip―it’s not a ship at all! It’s―”

The ‘Steed Bay trembled as it was rocked by an explosion. At first Squelch feared that the ComSpark forces had rallied and resumed their assault. However, she soon discarded the notion, as whatever weapon that could have been capable of creating a blast that powerful wasn’t anything that the changeling forces had been fielding up until that point. That didn’t mean that it couldn’t have been some sort of long range artillery piece, she supposed, but there were certainly far more appealing targets in the area for them to bombard than an already destroyed Mustang-class DropShip.

The unicorn mare wasn’t given much more time to process the list of possibilities forming in her head before she became aware of the sound of rending metal. She, along with the other ponies in the cavernous bay, all looked up towards the source of the concerning chorus of screeching metal and popping rivets. Squelch would have assumed that that last explosion had done something to destabilize the Zathura’s already precarious structural integrity and bring the room down around their heads…except that the ‘Steed Bay’s ceiling was rising up, rather than falling down.

“Everypony take cover!” She yelled out in warning, herself diving under the torso of the mostly-dismantled Cavalier. While the ceiling might have been going up, there was more than a bit of debris raining down.

As her mind still raced to make sense of what was happening to her ship, the unicorn mare peered up to catch sight of the telltale glow of telekinesis grabbing at the hull of her ship. Somepony was using their magic to open up the Zathura like a can of sardines, peeling away the entire dorsal section. Squelch found herself in awe of the kind of raw magical power that such a feat would require. She had to struggle to use her telekinesis to open up a particularly stubborn jar of peanut butter! But whoever this was didn’t seem to be having much trouble at all unwrapping her DropShip.

With a final great heave of telekinetic force, the top half of the crashed ship was ripped free and thrown aside like a tupperware lid. In the absence of a ceiling, Squelch was now able to catch sight of the source of her ship’s dismantlement. Though she had never before met the changelin’s ruler, nor had she seen any archived images, Squelch suspected that it wasn’t an unfair assumption on her part to deduce that the gargantuan changeling leering over the top of her DropShip was the very Queen Chrysalis that they’d come to Equus seeking.

It only occurred now to the unicorn that she had never thought to inquire of Twilight after the queen’s size. In her defense, it hadn’t crossed her mind that she might have needed to take the initiative on that front. Surely, the mare thought to herself, if Chrysalis had possessed physical attributes of any particular note, Twilight Sparkle would have seen fit to volunteer that information unprompted.

Obviously not.

While Squelch and a good many others were clearly paralyzed with shock as their minds struggled to process what they were seeing, her chief of security proved his worthiness for the position he held by leaping into action. For all the good that it did him.

Blood Chit dove for his rifle, rolling onto his hooves before leaping into the air and interposing himself between the towering changeling queen and his shipmates. He squeezed the trigger of the weapon, emptying the remaining contents of its magazine into her chest. The rounds sparked harmlessly off of her chitin plates, leaving not so much as a visible scratch in their wake. Not appearing to be dissuaded in spite of the obvious futility of his actions, the crimson pegasus retrieved another magazine on his barding and slammed it into his rifle.

Squelch swallowed back a lump in her throat as she watched the flier commit himself to the hopeless effort. She knew that Blood Chit didn’t expect to be able to defeat―or even harm―Chrysalis. That wasn’t why he was up there. His goal was to serve as a distraction and buy the rest of his comrades time to escape. And she wasn’t going to let those efforts be wasted.

She galloped out from beneath the Cavalier. “Everypony out the port side, now! Go, go!”

At the sound of her voice, other members of the crew jolted and began to finally move again, freed from their terrified awe. A few reached out for those who were too injured to move on their own. Squelch bit down on her tongue to keep from telling them not to bother, and to save themselves. Obviously, there wasn’t going to be time enough for any of them to try and save the wounded. There might not even be enough time for the otherwise healthy to escape. Yet, the unicorn couldn’t bring herself to make such a declaration. She wasn’t going to order her crew to abandon each other.

Not when even she wasn’t capable of saving herself.

She didn’t run for the exit initially, instead diverting towards where Twilight lay, still unconscious. There was no doubt in the unicorn’s mind that the purple mare was what Chrysalis had come all this way to find. The changeling queen knew all too well that, if anything could defeat her, it was the alicorn. Chrysalis couldn’t be allowed to claim her prize. All their lives depended on it.

So, while Squelch wasn’t entirely convinced that she’d be able to manage even a decent trot while hauling around the larger mare on her back, she was at least bound and determined to try and―

The sage unicorn’s train of thought was interrupted as something that was both hard and soft collided with her, knocking the mare to the deck with a loud cry of pain. Both herself and whatever had struck her rolled to a stop. Squelch was aware of a pained groan coming from nearby that wasn’t her own. She managed to look over and catch sight of an armored scarlet pegasus struggling to get back on his hooves. His right wing was mangled. Whether as a result of the landing just now or whatever had knocked him out of the air in the first place, it was hard to tell.

It wasn’t just his wing that was messed up either, Squelch soon noticed. The stallion’s hind leg didn’t look as straight as it should either. Blood Chit was letting out slow, hissing breaths as he slowly got back onto his hooves. He glanced back over his shoulder, catching sight of his commander. She hated that she could see the look of shame on his face. The recognition in his eyes that he’d failed to hold off the changeling queen. It was a ridiculous thing for the security pony to have been ashamed of. Chrysalis was an abomination of unheard of proportions, and he was just a pony.

As far as Squelch was concerned, the pegasus had performed well above and beyond what could rationally have been expected of him, and he had no cause at all to feel like he’d failed anypony, let alone her!

The unicorn spared a glance in Twilight’s direction once more. That was a pointless endeavor. She wasn’t going to be able to outrun Chrysalis―with or without the alicorn weighing her down. Likewise, Blood Chit clearly wasn’t going to be able to get the princess anywhere safe either. Squelch saw what was left of her crew making their way out of the ‘Steed Bay, leaving the ship.

The mercenary commander’s features set in a grim line. She turned her head in the other direction, glaring defiantly up at the looming Chrysalis. Squelch knew that she couldn’t save herself, or Blood Chit and Twilight. But maybe she could keep the changeling queen from noticing the other ponies trying to flee if she kept her attention for long enough.

Though she was sore from her collision with the pegasus, none of the mare’s bones felt like they were broken. She was able to get to her feet well enough, her gaze still locked on the sneering changeling queen. Her horn reached out with its telekinetic magic and retrieved Blood Chit’s rifle from where it had been dropped when he’d hit the deck. Squelch raised the weapon up and pointed it at the changeling queen.

“Get off my ship, you fucking bitch!” She pulled the trigger.

It didn’t fire. The unicorn balked, staring at the rifle blankly for a moment. She then glared at the offending weapon as she struggled with her magic to get it to work. A half remembered lecture from Flechette a few years ago that she’d―apparently―not paid nearly enough attention to flickered through her mind. Something about…buckball? It was related to some form of sport, at any rate; she recalled that much! One which involved slapping and…pulling? Pulling was definitely a part of it. Unfortunately, she wasn’t entirely sure exactly what on the weapon needed to have which done to it. After trying unsuccessfully to pull on and smack various parts of the rifle―the latter done with mounting fervor that grew exponentially with each passing moment the weapon continued to remain stubbornly inoperative―Squelch finally just let out a frustrated scream and used her magic to hurl the entire thing at the looming changeling queen’s head.

The rifle arced up into the air…and clattered uselessly to the deck plating of the ‘Steed Bay, not having reached even half the distance to the queen. Who by now appeared to be rather amused by the thoroughly unimpressive display of defiance playing out before her.

“Pathetic…”

A magical force swept the pair of ponies aside, sending them careening into the bulkhead. Blood Chit cried out in pain as his already mangled limbs were further agitated by the blow. Squelch was fairly positive that something of hers was at least cracked by now too. She winced as she made an effort to get back up, letting out a gasp as the pain briefly overwhelmed her, slumping back against the wall. All she could do was look on as Chrysalis returned her focus to the unconscious alicorn, her lips twisting up in a cruel smile.

“To think, after searching for you for five hundred years, you just end up being delivered right into my hooves.” Chrysalis cooed condescendingly as her magic reached out for the purple alicorn. “I’m almost disappointed…” She chuckled. “Almost.”

Twilight’s body began to lift into the air, wrapped in eerie green light, floating towards the changeling queen. “It’s going to be such a touching reunion when I get you back to Canter―”

Chrysalis’ head exploded.

Well, not precisely, Squelch decided once she’d had a moment to process what had just happened. However, that was what it looked like had happened in the moment. One minute the queen of the changelings was taunting an unconscious Twilight Sparkle, and then the next there was a massive eruption of violet magical fire not unlike what one witnessed when a BattleSteed’s reactor suffered a critical meltdown. The force of the explosion was so powerful that Chrysalis was knocked aside, collapsing to the ground, her massive weight causing the deck plating beneath Squelch to tremble. No longer supported by the queen’s magic, Twilight dropped to the floor as well, not far from where Squelch and Blood Chit still lay.

The unicorn mare was still trying to ascertain the cause of the strike that had felled Chrysalis when her comlink crackled to life and a stallion’s voice could be heard. “―ome in! Anypony on board the Zathura: do you read me?”

The identity of the caller was so unexpected that Squelch wasn’t entirely sure she’d heard right. “Slipshod?”

“Squelch?! Oh, thank Celestia you’re alive! Where are you―? Nevermind; I see you. I’m coming in!”

The unicorn mare glanced up in time to see the now-familiar changeling form of the ‘Steed pilot gliding in on his gossamer wings. The drone landed in an almost flat out run, galloping the last few meters to Squelch’s side and gathering her up into his forelimbs. The embrace was so constricting that the unicorn found herself unable to take in a full breath. Yet, she returned the gesture all the same, feeling the tension drain from her body even as a sensation of immense relief flooded into her.

“I…I thought you were dead.”

It wasn’t until she’d heard that catch in Slipshod’s voice that Squelch realized he was crying. As though they had been waiting exactly for that recognition, the sage green unicorn mare felt tears welling up in the corners of her own eyes as well. In the wake of the relief at being rescued by her lover, it was like all of the walls which had been holding back Squelch’s despair and terror that had been building up over the last few hours gave way all at once. She could finally acknowledge to herself how afraid of dying she’d truly been…

…And how much it hurt to know that so many hadn’t lived long enough to be saved.

“...I had a good crew…” She managed to get out in response.

Far too soon for Squelch’s liking, Slipshod loosened his embrace and pulled back, looking around at his surroundings as if only seeming to have noticed them for the first time. His gaze lingered especially long on Blood Chit and Twilight, both of whom were very much unconscious at this point. He was gnawing on his lower lip in contemplation of how he was going to manage to extract three injured ponies all on his own. “We have to get clear. I’m not sure how much time we’ve got, but I bet it’s not much.”

“Time for what?” Squelch asked, confused.

“Time until Cinder levels this whole valley,” Slipshod informed her as he stood up and started dragging Twilight closer to them. He looked around for some sort of cart that he might be able to load all three of his charges into so that he could pull them to safety. Then he noticed that it wasn’t just three ponies he had to worry about. His gaze fell upon the half dozen or so critically wounded―but clearly still alive―crewmembers that hadn’t been extracted by the rest of the able-bodied crew when they had fled earlier.

The changeling felt himself begin to despair again…

…but only long enough to remember that he was a changeling.

“Stand back,” the drone cautioned Squelch as he got some distance between himself and the others. He vanished beneath a wave of viridian fire, emerging a moment later as a dragon, though one of considerably larger size than any of those in the Clans had been. Large enough, certainly, that he could easily manage to carry several ponies in his claws and fly them to safety.

“Okay, now let’s―oh shit…”

Squelch wasn’t sure what it was that Slipshod had become suddenly concerned about at first. Then she heard the rumbling. At least, she had thought it was ‘rumbling’ initially. However, it soon became clear that it was actually a growl. A very―very―angry growl, coming from a very―very―angry changeling queen. The unicorn’s mind raced as she tried to reconcile Chrysalis still being alive after having taken a blow like that.

Then Chrysalis’ head rose back into view above the ‘Steed Bay. It was then that Squelch could see that, while clearly a lethal blow had not been struck, it had at least been one which the queen of the changelings had felt. At least, the unicorn couldn’t imagine not feeling something that peeled away half the chitin from her cheek and jaw. Green ichor dripped from the gaping wound which exposed not only flesh and muscle, but also her teeth and tongue were visible from the profile of her ‘closed’ mouth.

Yet, as the two of them watch, that damage was already beginning to slowly heal itself as Chrysalis drew upon her reservoir of hoarded energy. It was likely that all traces of the grievous injury would be completely erased in a minute or two. Slipshod cringed at the idea of having destroyed the last surviving Rainbow Dash in the entire galaxy and not even having any lasting injury on the changeling queen to show for it.

“Not gonna lie, I really thought slamming a BattleSteed into her head at two hundred KPH would put her down for longer,” Slipshod murmured as he swallowed back his trepidation. As large as he currently was in his bulked-up dragon form, he was still forced to tilt his head up considerably to meet his former queen’s gaze.

Those piercing blue eyes locked onto the large purple dragon standing before her, burning with an emotion that easily transcended mere ‘hatred’. “You…DARE?!”

“I did,” Slipshod replied with a curt nod. “And I do!” He spewed a gout of golden flame right in the queen’s face. It was a surprisingly cathartic act, the dragon thought to himself.

Though it was unfortunately not a particularly effective one. While Chrysalis did recoil away initially from the shock of the unexpected attack, the dragon fire quickly proved not to be anywhere near as potent a weapon as an exploding BattleSteed reactor had been. The changeling queen soon retaliated, blasting the dragon square in the chest with a bolt of magical energy. Not just any magically-charged energy either, but energy that was charged with changeling magic. The queen’s magic.

When Slipshod hit the ground, he found that his dragon form had been forcibly stripped away from him by the attack, leaving him once more in his default appearance. This fight was going to be a lot tougher than he’d originally thought; and he’d already been of a mind that it was going to be the next best thing to impossible to win to begin with. Fortunately for the changeling, he didn’t have to ‘win’ this fight. Not really. It would be enough to just not die in the next minute or two. Which―hopefully―would be all the time it took for Cinder to get her WarShip’s into position.

“Slip!” Squelch cried out in concern when she saw him struggling to get back up.

“Stay back!” He warned. “I’ve got this!” Slipshod leaped into the air, transforming mid-jump into a hydra. Each of his five heads snapped at his former queen. However, Chrysalis barely even flinched at the attack from the massive creature. With a contemptuous snort, she struck him to the ground once more with another blast of her magic. The no-longer-a-hydra changeling drone let out a pained wheeze from where he lay on the deck.

He might not have this.

All the same, he couldn’t afford to give up. Not with so much at stake. Slipshod grunted as he struggled back onto his hooves once more. His carapace ached from where it had been singed by the queen’s attacks. He set his stance, glaring defiantly up at his renounced monarch. Another whirlwind of emerald flame enveloped him, growing into a cyclone that quickly dissipated to reveal a looming tatzlwurm.

This time he at least managed to get in a firm slap across the changeling queen with his tail before she knocked him back down. He didn’t immediately get back up this time. Each of the forms he’d assumed were known for the toughness and their innate resilience to magical attacks. However, ‘resilient’ wasn’t quite the same thing as ‘immune’, and Queen Chrysalis’ magical power was extremely potent. While he was managing to not be killed outright as a result of the toughness of those forms, a lot of damage was still being done. Slipshod wasn’t convinced that he could endure many more such hits at this rate.

He was half tempted to assume the form of Queen Chrysalis herself, if he thought it would have done any good. Unfortunately, Slipshod was aware that the changeling ruler’s current might wasn’t the product of anything intrinsic to her form. It was her reservoir of hoarded emotions that gave her the power she wielded, and that wasn’t something he could mimic. In all reality, he was hypothetically capable of achieving Chrysalis’ level of power in his natural state, provided that he’d had access to such vast reserves of emotional energy.

He didn’t have that access of course. Nor was the changeling entirely convinced that he would have elected to amass it if given the chance. The sheer quantity of emotions that Chrysalis was holding within herself wasn’t the sort of level that could be achieved by sipping sparingly at the offered feelings of others. A changeling could only gather so much if they stole it away by force. And he wasn’t the kind of changeling who could do that to another creature.

“Learn your place, traitor!” Chrysalis snarled as she lashed out at him with another bolt of magical energy. Slipshod had barely completed his transformation into a maulwurf before it struck. The form was stripped away from him immediately. Slipshod’s body bounced across the deck of the ‘Steed Bay, tendrils of smoke wafting off his carapace.

He stirred in an effort to get back to his hooves, but his limbs felt weak. These complicated transformations were taking a lot out of him. His body was briefly wracked by a fit of coughs as he rolled over onto his hooves. Slipshod tried to summon more strength that it felt like he didn’t have, repeatedly reminding himself that he didn’t need to keep Chrysalis occupied much longer. Cinder’s fleet should be in position soon enough. He just needed to hold on a little longer…

Another swirl of jade flames. The sphinx that staggered out of them already looked worse for wear, but it was the best that Slipshod could manage under the circumstances. He coiled back, preparing to pounce―

The blast to his chest sent the changeling drone flying back across the ‘Steed Bay, where he slammed hard against the far bulkhead and dropped to the floor. This time he didn’t immediately get back up. He couldn’t. It hurt too much. Every part of him felt like it was on fire. The parts of him that weren’t completely numb, that was. Slipshod wasn’t sure which concerned him more: the parts of him that hurt beyond his ability to process the pain, or the parts of his body that he could no longer feel at all. It left him idly wondering if he hadn’t lost a limb of two in that last hit…

“―ip! Slipshod!”

He wasn’t sure that he’d actually heard the voice at first. It was hard to hear anything over the pain he was feeling. As a result, it took Slipshod longer than it should have for the changeling to recognize that Squelch was calling his name. She sounded rather distressed. Understandable, he supposed. He was feeling rather put out himself.

Something was moving him. It hurt. He’d have pushed them away if he had the strength to lift his legs. As it was, all he could do was groan and open an eye. The other one was being stubborn for some reason. He wasn’t surprised to see that Squelch was holding him in her hooves. He’d felt her worry and anxiety pouring into him the moment she’d touched him. He tasted her love for him too. He pushed her other emotions aside, but that love he allowed to trickle in. Just a little. She was going to need her strength too in the coming seconds if she was going to escape from here.

The infusion of even that small amount of energy was enough to jolt the changeling back into complete awareness. It didn’t do much for his physical injuries, but at least he was fully conscious again. He was certainly in no fit state to try and go up against Chrysalis again, but he could at least help Squelch one last time. He reached out with a hoof and ensured that the unicorn mare was looking directly into his eyes. The sage green mare fell instantly silent, concerned.

“You have to leave,” Slipshod told her firmly, “Cinder’s fleet will be overhead any second now. They’re going to bomb the whole valley.” Assuming the dragoness was sticking to the spirit of the original plan, of course. He acknowledged that he couldn’t be certain whether or not the star admiral would go through with the attack knowing that Twilight Sparkle would almost certainly be killed in the bombardment along with the changeling queen. But he wasn’t going to bet Squelch’s life on that.

“Get Blood Chit and get out of here,” he pleaded with her, “I’ll hold Chrysalis back.” He had no idea how he was going to manage to do such a thing, but that didn’t change the fact that Squelch had to leave.

The unicorn mare gaped at him, her face shifting through a whole flurry of emotions ranging from grief, to anger, to fear…and then finally settling on resignation. She flashed the changeling a wan smile, “...I’ve never left a member of my crew behind in my life.

“So I’m definitely not leaving my husband!”

Slipshod was tempted to argue with the mare. If only on principle. It wasn’t like he didn’t know the unicorn well enough to recognize when he’d lost a ‘discussion’ before it had even begun. She was the owner of the company, the captain of the DropShip, and his commander besides. When she made a decision, there was nocreature around with the authority to override her. She was going to stay, and there was nothing that he could do to stop her.

Squelch wasn’t going to just sit here idly and wait to die either, he noted. The unicorn mare reached out with her magic and collected a nearby discarded pistol, leveling the sidearm at the changeling queen who was looking rather miffed that her traitorous drone still wasn’t quite dead yet. Slipshod felt his lips crack into a smile as he watched the sage unicorn offer up her token defiance by firing ineffectual bullets into the face of their imminent killer―

Then he saw the pistol cant suddenly downward, away from Chrysalis. Instead, what Squelch appeared to be aiming at was Slipshod’s old―and mostly disassembled―Crystal Cavalier. Specifically, the BattleSteed’s exposed reactor core. In order to hook up the ‘Steed’s otherwise integrated reactor to the DropShip’s systems, a great deal of the Cavalier’s armor plating and internal systems had needed to be stripped away, leaving the reactor extremely vulnerable.

Still, as exposed and sensitive as it was, Slipshod wasn’t convinced that a pistol would have enough power to rupture its shielded casing, and was about to remark on such when Squelch fired her first shot. The round sparked not off the ‘Steed’s reactor casing, but rather off the metal rack holding a green acetylene tank sitting close by, which Channel Lock or one of her technicians had been using in order to cut away the internal structural supports which had been blocking their access to the required ports on the reactor.

…Now that, Slipshod acknowledged, could be breached by a pistol round.

Squelch fired a second time. This time the round struck true and pierced the cylinder of compressed gas. It promptly exploded, as containers filled with flammable gasses stored under intense pressure were want to do when suddenly ruptured by hot metal bullets. That explosion was enough to crack the casing of the Cavalier’s reactor, as well as draw the eye of the changeling queen looming over the partially-dismantled BattleSteed. Chrysalis had just enough time to process what she was looking at before the reactor went critical and exploded.

Slipshod wasn’t sure what he was doing in that exact moment. His movements were instinctual. While the two of them weren’t nearly as close to the explosion as the changeling queen had been, they weren’t all that far away either. Neither him, nor Squelch, nor the other wounded members of the Zathura’s crew were anywhere close to safe from being killed by that same blast. So…Slipshod did what he needed to do in order to protect his friends, as well as the pony he loved.

He grabbed Squelch and rolled her under him even as the transformation rippled through his body. Purple wings flared out to either side of him, as though to protect the sage mare, even as his horn alit with amethyst magic.

The changeling was hardly a master of magical manipulation in his own right, and a changeling drone’s arcane diversity was about as limited as that of the average unicorn. Which was to say that he knew how to use telekinesis, change his shape, and perform a couple other limited spells. A spell that would help them survive the detonation of the Cavalier’s reactor was not among them…typically.

However, while having assumed Twilight’s shape might not have granted the changeling the alicorn’s knowledge of magic, it did grant him her natural versatility with spells. It also just so happened that he was familiar with the casting of a rather robust shield spell as well, thanks to a prior, magically―and otherwise―‘intimate’, sharing of power between them. While giving the purple mare his own reserves of power, he’d ‘touched’ the spell matrix that she’d been using at the time. He’d learned how to invoke the spell, even if the physical limitations of his changeling form wouldn’t permit him to cast it as effectively.

He could cast an equally resilient version as Twilight though.

The barrier expanded outwards, rushing towards the oncoming explosion about as quickly as it was coming at them. The alicorn winced as the force of the explosion he was fighting to hold at bay reverberated back through his shield, threatening to collapse it. While Slipshod didn’t possess the real Twilight’s raw magical power, he did have access to reservoirs of energy that were not entirely his own.

While, generally speaking, he was partial to only taking what was freely offered these days, the changeling was confident that none of those present would object to helping him save their lives. He took only sparingly from the others, not wanting to impact their recovery too badly―assuming they all survived this. As for what he took from Squelch, well, that was apparently not something that he was going to be in full control over it seemed. The unicorn―either because she recognized what he was doing or because she thought they were about to die anyway―was currently kissing him rather deeply, and her love for him was flowing into his body like a river. He similarly returned what he had no use for in the moment, lest she inadvertently give too much of herself to his efforts.

The result was that the barrier managed to hold long enough to endure the reactor detonation, sparing both them and the other remaining injured members of the crew. When it was over Slipshod―reluctantly―broke the embrace and spared a look behind him. Not surprisingly, the Crystal Cavalier was completely destroyed, as was just about the entire starboard side of the DropShip’s ‘Steed Bay. Chrysalis was back on the ground once more, knocked back by the explosion that had occurred nearly right in front of her.

Equally unsurprisingly―though much more frustrating―the changeling queen wasn’t dead this time either. She also didn’t stay down nearly as long, having not taken the hit directly to her head this time. It had at least left another visible mark on her carapace though. So that was something.

Though she wasn’t down for the count, the changeling queen was no longer quite the immediate threat that she had been just moments ago. Squelch’s actions had bought them at least a small measure of time. Time enough for Slipshod to take advantage of his current form certainly.

The purple alicorn’s horn flared again. Simultaneous flashes of violet light enveloped Blood Chit and the other injured crew members. When the light died away, they were no longer lying on the deck. He hadn’t quite been able to get them all of the way to one of the Clan DropShips, but they’d at least now be well outside of the anticipated blast area when Cinder’s orbital strike arrived.

The real Twilight Sparkle remained though. Unfortunately for the unconscious alicorn, her presence was the only thing truly binding Chrysalis to this location. While Slipshod liked to believe that he’d made enough of an impression on the changeling queen that she wasn’t likely to forget him any time soon, he wasn’t quite so self-centered as to think that Chrysalis was willing to forgo capturing Twilight just to teach him a lesson. If he removed Twilight, there was a very good chance that Chrysalis would leave here to go hunt the alicorn down. He couldn’t risk that happening.

Just as he couldn’t risk anything further happening to Squelch. He’d already almost lost her far too many times that he could really bear to think about. He wasn’t going to risk losing her again.

He turned to look at the sage green unicorn, who had just taken note of the disappearance of the rest of her crew. She met Slipshod’s gaze, and instantly recognized his intent. “Oh no, don’t you fucking da―!” She vanished in a flash of purple light.

Slipshod dropped his alicorn form, smiling wanly at the spot where Squelch had been standing only a moment ago. “Sorry. But this isn’t your fight.”

His smile then faded as he turned back towards Chrysalis. The queen was already getting back up on her hooves―for the second time in two minutes, Slipshod noted with a satisfied smirk in her direction. He spread his wings and rose up to eye-level. “You know,” he began, “the real bitch of all this is: that you probably have no idea who I am or why I’m so pissed at you!”

Chrysalis hissed at him, lashing out with a bolt of energy that Slipshod was free to dodge around this time since he was no longer interposing himself to protect anypony else. “I don’t concern myself with the names of traitors!”

Slipshod folded in his wings and dove for the ground as he avoided being hit by another attack. He pulled up just before impact, skimming along the surface. He felt anger stirring within him as he flew over the scattered bodies of hundreds of changeling drones who’d died trying to storm the crashed DropShip. Drones who had perished following the orders of their queen.

And for what? What had they gotten for their efforts? Even if they’d succeeded and taken the Zathura and her crew, what would their reward have been? Perhaps the privilege of getting a small taste of their captives before turning them over to Chrysalis to glut herself. Certainly these drones would have received no lasting gratitude. No drone ever did. Yet they still followed her and did their queen’s bidding without question.

He pitied them for their misplaced fealty. Their undeserved loyalty to a leader who cared nothing for them and kept them living in ignorance. That scout they’d captured earlier had been a window into Slipshod’s own past. A brief vision of what he’d once been like as an ignorant drone, not so very long ago. Then he’d come to experience what Chrysalis had been keeping from her subjects for so long. He’d learned the secret of their birthright that their ‘loving’ queen had sought to deny to them so that she could retain her position of power over them in perpetuity.

When he’d learned that Chrysalis didn’t actually care for her subjects, that she simply sought to exploit them for her own benefit, Slipshod had been furious. At first he’d been mad for purely selfish reasons. He’d been angry that he’d been mistreated and abused. That he’d been neglected. It wasn’t until much more recently that those feelings of personal betrayal had grown out into righteous indignation at the way his whole species was being manipulated.

The way so many of his kind were dying. All in service to a lie being perpetuated by their queen.

While that scout, Callie, had not wanted to believe his allegations at first―that her whole life had been based on a lie―she had acknowledged the validity of his claims when she’d tasted what real love felt like. Changelings were naturally extremely sensitive to emotions. Empathy was one of their senses, as important to them as sight, hearing, or any other sense was to other creatures. The moment she’d felt that example of real love, the changeling mare had recognized the truth of what he was saying. It had taken very little convincing beyond that, even if the others with him had been skeptical about how easily the scout had been swayed.

That wasn’t their fault. From their perspective, all Slipshod had done was have a conversation and share a little of his ‘feelings’ with the drone. A short talk wasn’t the kind of thing that would have changed most other creatures’ whole worldview, and so he understood why they couldn’t conceive of how it would have done so with the scout. However, for a changeling, being shown an emotion was just as convincing a piece of evidence as seeing a picture, or hearing a recorded confession, when it came to proving something was true or not. The feelings of love that Slipshod had shared had served just as well as irrefutable proof that Chrysalis had been lying to her subjects as if the queen herself had confessed the truth―

Slipshod was suddenly struck with an idea.

He was also nearly struck by a stream of emerald light slicing across the ground just ahead of him and was forced to roll rather abruptly to the side to avoid it. Before he pulled up, Slipshod swung by one of the fallen drones scattered around the battlefield and snatched their helmet. He retrieved the comlink from within and discarded the piece of armor. As he climbed higher into the air, the changeling stallion began continuously transmitting over the ComSpark communications network. Thanks to the numerous relay towers strewn across the surface of Equus and the constellation of satellites in orbit around it, this would be a transmission that every changeling in the system could hypothetically hear if they tuned in.

They also wouldn’t merely ‘hear’ what was being transmitted either. ComSpark comlinks, having been designed and built for a race of empaths, were not limited to relaying just aural information. Emotional states could also be conveyed, if not the actual empathic power that could be derived from them. The emotions of a speaker were often just as important as the words themselves to a changeling.

Slipshod rose up to eye-level with the gargantuan Chrysalis, staring her down. “You don’t concern yourself with the names of your ‘loyal followers’ either!” He finally retorted. “What was her name?” He demanded, jabbing a hoof towards the mangled body of a dead drone dressed in ComSpark barding who had perished in the attack on the Zathura’s crash site. “Or how about his?” He pointed at another slain changeling.

“They died for you. What were their names?!”

Another snarl and a bolt of destructive magic which Slipshod ducked to avoid―narrowly. “They fell in service to the hive!”

“They fell in service to you!” Slipshod screamed back at the colossal changeling.

“I am the hive! To serve me is to serve all changelings!” Chrysalis insisted haughtily. “I keep you all alive!”

“You keep us all weak!” He countered even as he dove around another blast from her crooked horn. “You convinced us to hide ourselves away from everycreature in the galaxy; to conceal what we are.”

“To keep you safe!”

“To keep us from ever being loved!”

“You do not need the love of others.” Chrysalis insisted acidly, glaring at the juking drone. “My love sustains the hive.”

“You don’t give us ‘love’, and you know it! Not real love. You can’t. You’d have to actually care about us to do that, and you don’t. You cast us aside the moment we cease to be of use to you.

“What you give us is a cheap imitation.” Slipshod seethed at the queen. “You give us barely enough of something you claim is ‘love’ to keep us going, but make sure that we always have to come back to you to get more! You trick us into thinking that we need you to survive, which you know is a lie!

“I'm proof of that! I'm proof that changelings don’t need you―or any queen!” He declared. “We can’t just survive without you around, we can thrive!

“And that scares the crap out of you, doesn’t it?”

Slipshod only barely managed to avoid the blast Chrysalis responded with this time. “I fear nothing!”

“Then why hide the truth from us, huh? Why keep us from living up to our true potential? Why keep us powerless?!”

“Because you wouldn’t appreciate it!” Chrysalis snapped back, finally seeming to lose her tenuous hold on her composure as her frustration peaked. “Because you would squander that power, as you have before! The power of love is wasted on all of you, because you do not have the ambition―the vision―to use it how it should be.

“You do not deserve love―none of you do!”

“So you are keeping us weak.” Slipshod noted.

“I am keeping you in your proper place!”

“And is our ‘proper place’ dead on a battlefield in service to your selfishness? How many of us will you sacrifice?”

“As many as are needed,” Chrysalis sneered, “All if I must.”

“You would sacrifice the whole hive for your power?”

Slipshod’s tone suggested he wasn’t going to be surprised by the anticipated answer. After all, the drone was already well aware of how self-serving the changeling queen was. Still, knowing something and hearing it were two different things. The latter gave the former a sense of finality. It could shift entire philosophical paradigms.

“In a heartbeat.”

He’d been prepared to hear the words. That wasn’t the issue. What Slipshod hadn’t been ready for though, were the emotions behind it. The utter contempt that the changeling queen had for the lives and wellbeing of her subjects. It bordered on outright malevolence. As though Chrysalis would have thought nothing of personally crushing the life out of every single drone herself if she thought it would gain her more power than ruling over them. Those feelings possessed within them a foulness that nearly overwhelmed the changeling stallion, and left him with the taste of bile in his mouth.

It seemed as though while Chrysalis recognized that the only way to obtain the power she so desperately craved was to exploit the other drones of the hive, she simultaneously resented her dependence on them. The changeling queen viewed her reliance on the others as a weakness. A personal flaw that she would have erased all trace of if she could. She detested the other changelings from making her feel dependent on them, even as she was the one perpetuating that dependency.

The feelings were contrary and twisted, and they felt all the more feted for it.

Slipshod had what he needed now though: the precise emotion that Her Majesty Queen Chrysalis of the Changelings associated with her loyal subjects. An emotion that had been broadcast, along with her words, across the open ComSpark network that Slipshod was using. Now every changeling in the System knew how their queen felt about them.

“You’re a monster.”

Chrysalis sneered. “Your opinion means less than nothing to me. You are a gnat. I can obliterate you with a thought. You cannot defeat me.”

“Maybe not,” Slipshod conceded, “but I don’t have to. I just have to keep you distracted long enough for―”

The shockwave from the explosion buffeted the smaller changeling, flinging him backwards as the turbulent air disrupted his hover. Slipshod struggled to right himself amid the maelstrom. The moment he regained his balance, however, another massive detonation occurred in the same place, and another blast of air slammed into the drone. He dove for the ground, for it had suddenly become far too hazardous to be airborne.

Cinder’s bombardment had arrived.

Multi-ton high-explosive shells and purely kinetic rounds pounded the valley as hypersonic velocities. The raw energy of each impact was only sensibly measurable in terms of millions of tons of conventional explosives. At first it was a few, and then a dozen, and then scores of simultaneous strikes impacting the surface, converging on the singular point that was―that had been―Chrysalis. Wave after wave of ordnance designed to take down WarShips the size of a city carved out a deep crater on the surface of the planet.

Slipshod found shelter in one of the defensive trenches dug by the Zathrua’s crew, and was now quite thankful that he’d teleported the injured away when he had. Even with the protection offered by the wall of the trench, the changeling drone found himself struggling to breathe beneath the stifling heat generated by the nearby explosions. He shifted into a smaller-sized dragon, relying on their tolerance of active volcanoes to help him endure the hellish conditions.

All the while the changeling drone felt a sense of relief washing over him. He’d succeeded. He’d kept Chrysalis occupied long enough for Star Admiral Cinder to get her fleet into position and strike down the changeling queen from orbit! He’d even kept her distracted enough that she hadn’t collected―oh shit!

“Twilight!” The changeling gasped, having just remembered that the unconscious alicorn wasn’t nearly as shielded from the bombardment as he was right now. The dragon leaped out of the trench and ran inside the remains of the DropShip, using his wings to shield himself from the worst of the ongoing shockwaves.

He found the purple mare easily enough, rolled up against the far bulkhead. He had to dig into the deck plating with his claws to keep himself from being blown off balance too badly as he scrambled to get to her, throwing himself over her body so that his tougher hide could act as a shield. She was still breathing at least, but the princess certainly looked worse for wear. At least he’d be able to get her back to someplace with medical facilities soon enough.

The bombardment ended almost as abruptly as it had begun. In that short time, hundreds of destructive shells had landed on the changeling queen’s position, carving out a deep furrow in the ground too deep for Slipshod to see the bottom of from where he was. The changeling let out a long, relieved, sigh as he felt the great weight of their mission lifted from his shoulders. It was over. After all this time…it was finally over.

He almost couldn’t believe it.

Slipshod placed a claw to Twilight’s neck, just to confirm that she still had a strong pulse. Upon feeling the telltale sign of life, he found himself unable to restrain the almost manic giggle escaping from his throat. Chrysalis was dead, Twilight and himself were alive―Squelch was alive…

Somehow, in spite of what had seemed like insurmountable odds, they’d achieved their goals. They’d won.

“Come on,” the changeling murmured as he scooped up the limp alicorn into his arms, “let’s get you back to one of those DropShips.” He hopped up off the deck of what was left of the Zathura’s ‘Steed Bay and took flight.

Slipshod hadn’t taken two wing-beats before he was struck in the back.

The drone screamed, for he was no longer a dragon any longer. Twilight’s body slipped from the clawed fingers he no longer possessed and fell to the ground below. Slipshod fell beside her, hitting the ground hard enough that something in his shoulder felt like it had given way. He screamed again as agony shot through his right leg like a lightning bolt.

“...Your suffering…will be great…”

“No…”

Slipshod wasn’t sure if the nearly whispered word had been an expression of shocked disbelief, or a demand offered to the world that this could not be permitted to be reality. He turned his head in the direction of the newly-dug impact crater, and his eyes went wide as he saw Chrysalis climbing the rest of the way out of it. Her size had been significantly diminished from what it had been. The changeling queen was approximately only about three times the size of a normal changeling now rather than the few thousand she had been two minutes ago.

Not that the distinction made much difference in the moment, Slipshod recognized. Whatever her size, Chrysalis was alive…and she was pissed. She was also coming his way.

It took Slipshod some time to register the sound that he was hearing. It began at such a low frequency that it was easy to miss at first. As its volume and intensity grew though, the drone eventually recognized it as being ‘laughter’. Or, at least, a rough imitation of that sound, coming from his formal queen. It was really more of a manic cackle, he would later reflect.

“Did you honestly believe you could kill me in such a fashion, you pitiful wretch?!”

“Would you be disappointed if I said: ‘yes’?” Slipshod offered up sarcastically. He then let out another pained cry as his body was wrenched off the ground by the changeling queen’s telekinetic aura. He felt her magic pressing in around his body. It was a sensation that was reminiscent of his first encounter with a fully conscious Twilight Sparkle during her interrogation of him.

The changeling didn’t find that very encouraging. He’d only survived Twilight by appealing to her better nature. Chrysalis had recently demonstrated that she didn’t have one.

Slipshod was in the middle of struggling to think of a way out of this current mess when his thoughts were interrupted by a burst of rifle fire. Nor did he seem to be the only one who was taken by surprise by the unexpected sound. Chrysalis likewise jolted with shock. Not just as a result of the noise either, it turned out, but also because she was the one who had been shot! Or, rather, shot at. For all her drastic reduction in size and power, the queen of the changelings was still tough enough not to be laid low by anything as trivial as small arms fire it seemed.

Both Chrysalis and Slipshod turned their heads in the direction that the sound had come from. Both sets of changeling eyes came to rest on a lone drone dressed in a ComSpark uniform hovering nearby, a rifle clutched in her hooves. The queen’s expression shifted from perplexed to infuriated.

Slipshod was simply surprised. “Callidae?”

He’d honestly never expected to see the scout he’d spared again after he’d released her. Slipshod had been fairly confident that the changeling mare wouldn’t be content to return to the embrace of ComSpark after learning the truth that he’d revealed to her, but he’d also not imagined that she would take up arms in active resistance to Chrysalis. Especially not when it was clear that such an act of defiance was not only futile, but pretty much guaranteed to be terminal.

The enraged roar from Chrysalis was primal. The burst of magical energy launched from her horn would surely prove fatal if it made contact, and the changeling mare was too close to avoid it in time.

Another changeling life was about to be snuffed out by Chrysalis. Another of his race was to be slain because of this creature who had essentially enslaved them and deceived them with her lies. Perhaps worse, it was a changeling who had just recently learned the truth and freed herself from that enslavement. She’d been freed of the queen’s control. Free to not throw her life away in service to a false queen.

While, on some level, it did mean a lot to Slipshod that the scout had utilized that freedom to take an active role in the resistance to Chrysalis―just as he had―it grieved the changeling stallion so much more that her new lease on life wouldn’t even last the day. Some might argue that dying free was better than dying in darkness, but Slipshod would have preferred that she not have to die at all.

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right that yet another changeling should have to die because of Chrysalis. Not when he was trying so hard to finally save them all. If he couldn’t protect even a single freed drone from the queen, how could he expect to save the entire race?

It couldn’t be allowed to happen like this. He wouldn’t let it. He would save the changelings. He would save that mare!

“No!”

Slipshod was barely consciously aware of what he was doing. The desire to protect that other changeling awoke something within him, and suddenly he knew exactly what to do. It was like instinct had taken over. He opened himself up, completely and without consideration or reservation. If that mare was going to survive Chrysalis’ attack, then she needed energy and a lot of it.

So he gave it to her. Slipshod dissolved every emotional barrier and empathic attenuation that he had in place. Anything that might have metered the exchange of emotional energy between himself and another. The stallion prepared to give her everything, if that was what it took to save her from Chrysalis’ attack.

He would not allow their queen to harm another changeling.

The outpouring of energy from Slipshod was so intense that it overwhelmed the telekinetic field surrounding him. Chrysalis’ hold on him shattered in an instant. That energy then converged on the changeling scout, whose own attention had been focused exclusively on the bolt of lethal energy headed her way. She stiffened in shock as the outpouring of emotions from Slipshod made contact first, only a heartbeat before the jade bolt struck home…

…And was promptly deflected away, impacting harmlessly on the ground.

The transfer ended, and Slipshod was left free of Chrysalis’ hold and panting in midair…and that was it. In spite of what must have constituted an utterly massive amount of energy flowing from him into the scout mare, he didn’t feel the least bit worse for wear. If anything, the stallion might have actually felt more invigorated than he had a moment ago. That couldn’t be right though, he reasoned. He’d very clearly just given the other changeling some of his love―

Slipshod’s eyes widened in confusion for a number of simultaneous, but quite divergent, reasons.

First: the stallion was completely perplexed by the present levels of his stores of emotional energy. They weren’t where they should have been. In that: they weren’t lower. The love he’d received from Squelch, Xanadu, the other members of the crew, they were all where they had been a moment ago. Which shouldn’t have been the case. It was those stores of love that should have been drawn upon for that transfer of energy just now. They should be lower―a lot lower. But they weren’t.

Second on Slipshod’s list of puzzling developments was the coloration of the limb that he had stretched out in what he’d thought was vain futility when he expected to watch the other changeling in front of him die. While the past year had seen his carapace’s coloration shift gradually from the matte black of a typical changeling to a dark lustress green color, the last few moments had seen his appearance change far more suddenly and dramatically. Gone were the holes in his legs. The formerly dark sheen was considerably brighter now, bordering on mint. His limb had even taken on a glossy aesthetic that almost permitted him to glimpse his reflection in his chitin.

He was barely recognizable as his former self, and yet he could feel in his core that this was how he had always been meant to look.

It was then that Slipshod noticed that he wasn’t the only one who had taken note of his new appearance. The nearby changeling queen was all but gaping at him. He could feel the shock from her. The confusion. The fear. She was terrified of him―of what he represented.

So it wasn’t too surprising when she lashed out, throwing at him a ball of destructive magic so intense that it might very well have wiped any trace of him from existence. It certainly would have too, as Slipshod had no hope of avoiding such a blow while in his own befuddled state. However, just before the blow could land, the changeling felt himself awash with a stupendous quantity of emotional energy that seemed to cocoon him in a protective layer of magic.

Chrysalis’ attack dissipated on contact. Both he and the queen were surprised by how impotent the spell had been. Both of them were likewise surprised when they noticed that the other changeling mare hovering nearby no longer looked like a traditional changeling either. Instead, she had transformed into a creature that looked reminiscent of a changeling, but with a soft turquoise carapace with pink shading along her elytra. She looked equal parts shocked and relieved that Slipshod had survived the queen’s assault.

More fear wafting off of her, Chrysalis found herself taking a trembling step back from the pair of technicolor changelings hovering nearby. “H-how? How is this possible?!”

“...Love is limitless power.” Slipshod murmured. He’d said those words to Callidae just hours earlier, but even he hadn’t quite imagined that they’d been true to such an extent. Though, to be fair, he’d only ever dealt with feelings of love shared between singular individuals. The love between himself and Squelch, himself and the crew…never with the broader sense of desire to protect a whole race―or, indeed, all the races of the galaxy. He supposed that, in hindsight, it made a certain amount of sense that, the broader the target of that love, the more potent its power became.

The love one had for themselves, the desire to save oneself―especially at the expense of another―wasn’t ‘love’ at all. It was selfishness, and so without any power worth considering. The love that an individual felt for another was far more pure and potent. Yet, as noble as such focused feelings were, they paled in comparison to a compassion for―and a desire to protect―many. That latter emotion was the most potent form of love, and so could accomplish far more.

Especially again an individual who could only conceive of the former.

“GUARDS!” The cry was dripping with panic as it echoed across the valley.

Slipshod and Callidae glanced up in time to see a swarm of drones flying in towards them. He felt his throat tighten as his eyes noted the weapons they were carrying. The changeling wasn’t entirely convinced that the pair of them would be able to fend off so many all at once, even with their shared power. He was about to suggest that they withdraw for now. Chrysalis hadn’t been defeated, true, but she was at least drastically diminished from what she had been an hour ago. Maybe that was enough.

He was about to give voice to his recommendation for retreat when he caught a sense of the prevailing emotional state of the approaching drones. There was anger, yes; but also betrayal and a deep sense of loathing…and none of it was being directed at the two more colorful changelings. It seemed that there had indeed been some drones nearby who’d been listening in on his earlier exchange with the queen.

Chrysalis turned to face the approaching wing of ComSpark soldiers, jabbing her hoof in the direction of the pair of pastel changelings. “Kill them!”

Not a single rifle was raised in response. At least, not towards Slipshod and his companion. A fair few were pointed at the queen though.

Even though Chrysalis was still not vulnerable to such weapons, the sheer shock at seeing so many barrels held by her―formally―loyal soldiers pointed at her head compelled the queen of the changelings to back away. One or two drones breaking ranks, sure―there were always ‘exceptions to the rule’; but for well over a hundred of her subjects to turn on her all at once and without warning? It was unfathomable!

…It was infuriating!

Chrysalis’ features became creased with seething rage, her body trembling as the fury at such a monumental betrayal burned within her. She opened up on the new arrivals with a guttural scream that seemed to shake the very ground, and a blast of magic followed in its wake. “Traitors!”

Slipshod and Callidae were both there to lend their support, and their power. They would not allow their brethren to come to harm. Certainly not from a queen who had deceived them all for so long.

Just as before, Chrysalis’ magical assault on her subjects was turned away, much to her mounting consternation. It seemed, however, that she had at least finally recognized the futility in trying to directly attack anyling while there were individuals like Slipshod and Callidae around. So she changed tactics and extracted herself from the situation, taking flight in an effort to get away. More than likely seeking to return to Canterlot and barricade herself in her palace until she could find more supporters. As much as Slipshod might have hoped otherwise, it was likely that not every changeling on the planet had heard Chrysalis’ earlier admission and would still be willing to offer their ruler their loyalty…and lay down their lives in her defense.

Slipshod wasn’t about to let that happen though. He took off after the fleeing queen. “Get back here!” This time he lashed out with a magical burst of his own. The bolt of white light struck Chrysalis and knocked her out of the sky. The scream that escaped her mouth was more anger and indignation than pain, but there was pain in it.

Chrysalis recovered just before she connected with the ground, skidding to a stop on her pocked hooves. Her eyes locked onto the approaching changeling, her lip pulled back in a ferocious sneer. Emerald flames ignited at her hooves, running up her legs and enveloping her barrel. The fire spread out and grew into a raging inferno. When it finally died away, in its place was a jet black dragon that stood as tall as any assault-tonnage BattleSteed. The dragon queen let out a defiant roar, and upon the heels of that echoing sound came a gout of searing crimson fire.

Slipshod was forced to quickly backwing out of the way of those flames, letting out his own frustrated snarl at Chrysalis’ stubborn defiance. She had to know that she was already effectively defeated. If the current disposition of the local ComSpark forces was any indication, the queen had lost the support of a considerable percentage of her military―and likely the planetary population in general. That crippled support would only continue to decline as word of the queen’s true attitude with regards to her ‘loyal subjects’ continued to spread. Her base of power had been swept out from under her, and her carefully hoarded reserves of magic had been depleted by Cinder’s orbital bombardment.

She had nothing left, and nowhere to go. Surrender was the only viable option. It was the only way that she had a chance of getting out of this alive. Yet he could feel her burning rage and defiance. She would not surrender. The thought of losing every last vestige of her power and control was beyond terrifying to her.

He knew that Chrysalis would, in fact, prefer death over capture.

So be it then. If the only way to save the changeling race was to end the life of one more changeling, then Slipshod would bear that burden.

A flash of turquoise and pink caught the changeling’s attention as Callidae dove at the massive black dragon. Several darker shapes followed in her wake as scores of ComSpark soldiers joined in on the assault on their―more than likely former―queen. The better part of a hundred changelings were circling the raging reptile, weaving around her petulant flames and swiping claws. All the while they fired their rifles and blasted at her with bolts of jade magic.

They seemed little more than insects in comparison to Chrysalis’ greater size, and it was clear that their attacks were barely more than bee stings in terms of lethality…but there were a lot of them. And while one or two bee stings might amount to nothing more than a brief inconvenience, a few hundred had the potential to be far more dangerous.

As the surprise at seeing all of those drones take the initiative and attack Chrysalis began to wear off, Slipshod felt it replaced by another emotion: pride. His fellow changelings were actively working to finally free themselves of their oppression. These changelings had already cast off their blind allegiance, just as he had all those years ago. Surely more ‘rebel’ drones would follow suit in the future, whether Chrysalis survived or not. Yet, even so, it was certainly better for not just changelings, but all the creatures of the galaxy, if the queen didn’t escape.

Slipshod dove in to join the swarm of his fellow revolting changelings, lending his own magical attacks to the fray. As was expected, the strikes were not particularly devastating in their own right, but the stallion did notice that each hit was still leaving a mark. Slowly but surely, the swarm was whittling away at Chrysalis’ defenses.

The dragon’s enraged roars gradually began to sound more frustrated and desperate as the changeling queen sensed her power ebbing even further. She’d lost so much already as a result of the earlier bombardment, and now she could feel what little power she’d managed to cling onto being stolen from her as her former servants maligned her. Her own attacks and attempts to repulse her assailants became ever more uncoordinated and ineffectual as her mind became beset by panic that only continued to grow in intensity. It became something of a self-perpetuating cycle as her mounting terror caused her to mistep and create additional openings for the swarm to attack her, inflicting more damaage which further drained her reserves and caused Chrysalis to feel even more terror as she sensed her ultimate defeat growing near.

The emotional imbalance within the queen only served to expedite her inevitable defeat as well. What few reservoirs of positive emotions she had stolen from her victims remained were being steadily depleted to heal her injuries, but all that there was to replace those reserves was her fear and panic. Those darker emotions only served to taint and dilute her power even further, weakening her.

It wasn’t long before Chrysalis appeared to finally reach her breaking point. The massive jet dragon stumbled, falling to its hands and knees. She tried feebly to protect herself with her wings, using them as shields against the persistent barrage of magical attacks being levied at her by the swarming drones circling overhead. Even that lackluster effort seemed to soon fail her.

Slipshod sensed an opportunity, and that the changeling queen might finally be in a vulnerable enough state that even she wouldn’t be able to resist the effects of spells wielded against her. He lashed out with a blast from his horn which struck the dragoness square in her back. Chrysalis roared with pain even as the effect took hold, stripping away her assumed form. When the spell finally subsided, it left behind an emaciated and heaving Chrysalis, barely being supported by her own trembling limbs.

The swarming ComSpark drones collectively ceased pummeling the clearly impotent former queen of the changelings, continuing to circle overhead as though waiting for further instruction. Slipshod as well came to a hover, looking down upon the defeated Chrysalis. Callidae was keeping station beside him, her own expression suggesting that she wasn’t sure what they were supposed to do next. Chrysalis was clearly no longer a threat…but was that enough?

Slipshod touched down on the ground in front of the struggling Chrysalis. The withered former ruler of the changelings raised her head slightly, though even that seemed to take her a great deal of effort. He could see the unbridled loathing in her gaze―and the fear that was lingering just beneath it. The stallion could feel her defiance even now. Even as she was―as broken as she was―somehow her sense of superiority and pride remained intact. It was honestly a little impressive, in its own way.

It was a shame that she couldn’t have found a healthier way to focus such drive and determination. What a leader of changelings she could have been, if only she’d been willing to see the value in those besides herself. She hadn’t, obviously. Now she was reaping the fruits of her many centuries of laboring; which was to say: nothing. She had invested in naught but herself; and so, at the end, she had no other sources of support from which to draw strength. Her hoarded emotions were gone. Her armies had turned on her. She was destitute…

…And Slipshod now found himself standing in a position that, as little as a year ago, he could only have dared to dream of: Chrysalis was powerless. Helpless. Completely at his mercy. The culmination of his quest for revenge was close at hoof. Her life―and the ultimate victory that so many had fought and died to achieve today―was there for the taking. She couldn’t stop it now.

Slipshod caught sight of a magical glow just off to his side. He glanced over and noticed that Callidae was offering him a standard issue ComSpark pistol. The two of them exchanged silent glances with each other. The scout recognized that this moment had only been made possible because of what Slipshod had done―not just for herself―but for all changelings in the galaxy. If any deserved to deliver the final blow and bring the struggle to an end, it was him.

He took the offered weapon.

The changeling stallion had never before held anything in his telekinesis which had felt so heavy. The pistol―and the responsibility that it represented―weighed on him almost immediately. A dozen different visions form distant dreams of this moment played though his head. He recalled the mirth and glee that those fantasies had once filled him with. The excitement at the thought of finally being able to kill the changeling who had wronged him…

Those same feelings made him feel nauseous now.

This wasn’t a moment he should have been excited about. Killing Chrysalis wasn’t a cause for celebration. Slipshod knew now that it was something to be lamented. They should all be mourning the loss of what their queen could have represented. She indeed had been the most powerful single changeling which had ever lived. If she could have been redeemed―if Chrysalis could have been made to feel even the slightest hint of empathy…who knew what soaring heights changelings might have been able to reach with a Reformed Chrysalis leading the way. Twilight’s Celestia League might have seemed like little more than a third-rate imitation of an idealized society if such could have been the case.

It wasn’t though, and it never would be. What Chrysalis could have been was going to be forever lost to the galaxy, and that was not a thing which should bring anycreature relief. Least of all himself.

Slipshod had been where Chrysalis was, after all. He’d lived for himself. Thought only of himself and how to use and manipulate others to serve his needs, with barely a thought to their’s. Without Twilight’s guidance, the stallion knew that he might never have gotten to where he was today as a changeling. But for a twist of fate in a distant star system while orbiting a dead moon, he might have ended up no different than the wretch he was looking at now: depraved, alone, and beyond redeeming any longer.

Chrysalis began to chuckle now, the grating, raspy, imitation of a laugh slowly growing in volume as the former queen of the changelings stared up at Slipshod. “...You pity me…even now,” she rasped, her lips pulling back in a wicked sneer, “you see? You’re weak! Even after all I’ve done, you can’t bring yourself to hate me. You can’t do what needs to be done!”

She turned to face the others, jabbing a trembling hoof at Slipshod. “This is your new leader?! You would have this spineless wretch give you orders?! He can’t even kill one he considered a mortal threat! Only I have the strength and conviction to lead you into glory!” Chrysalis insisted, doing her best to assume an ‘imperious’ stance, despite her overwhelming feebleness due to her severe emotional depletion.

Slipshod heard the murmuring of some of the other drones. He could feel the wavering inside them. Chrysalis may have viewed them with contempt, yes; but perhaps a strong leader needed to feel such things in order to make difficult choices?

The reformed stallion refused to give up the ground that had been so hard fought. “It’s not ‘weakness’ to wish that your leader could have been so much better than they were,” Slipshod insisted. “To feel pity at seeing one they once respected falling so far, and turning out to have never been worthy of that adoration in the first place.

“You’re right: I don’t ‘hate’ you, Chrysalis.” Slipshod confirmed. “I hate what you’ve done to our kind, and to the Sphere. I hate that changelings are going to have a difficult road ahead of them being accepted by the rest of the creatures of the galaxy. I hate that so many of my friends lost their lives because of your selfishness.

“...But you? You’re not worth hating.

“And you’re also right that I do think of you as a mortal threat. You are a danger to the whole galaxy, and I shudder to think of the suffering you would continue to bring to others. But, no, I won’t kill you for that. I won’t kill you out of fear or hatred.”

Chrysalis started to laugh once more, sensing that she was going to manage to achieve something of at least a personal ‘victory’ in this encounter. It was a laughter that died suddenly, cut short by the sound of a gunshot.

The lifeless body of the emaciated former changeling queen slumped to the ground, green ichor seeping out of a hole in the center of her forehead. Over her stood Slipshod, the smoking barrel of the pistol hovering in front of him. The changeling’s expression was the furthest thing imaginable from ‘relieved’. If anything, he looked distraught. Which was because that’s exactly how he was feeling. After all, he’d just ended the life of an individual who’d had the potential to become the greatest of them, and now never would. If only Chrysalis could have been given the help that she needed when it would have mattered.

But she hadn’t received that help, and the window of opportunity to change who she was had passed the galaxy by. It was a tragedy whose consequences would never truly be appreciated by the galaxy, Slipshod suspected.

“...But I will kill you to end your suffering. In that small way, maybe I can make up for the failings of so many others who came before me; who wouldn’t help you when it would have benefited you the most.

“Rest in peace, Chrysalis.”

Slipshod tossed the pistol away, as though it had suddenly become something dangerous to hold onto. All around him, he could feel that a lot of the other changelings were starting to feel a great deal of uncertainty about what they were supposed to do from here. They’d lived their lives in service to their queen. Now she was gone, and they felt rudderless and adrift. As much of a benefit as they were sure to find it in time, for right now, they weren’t used to deciding things on their own.

They needed direction.

While Slipshod had exactly zero desire to assume anything even resembling a position of leadership among the changelings, the stallion could at least start them in the right direction. He looked over at Callidae. “Get the word out that Chrysalis is dead,” he told her. “Tell everyling to stand down. See if you can reach out to the Clans and make contact. They’ll want to negotiate our surrender.”

He wasn’t aware of the pronoun he’d used until after it had escaped his mouth. He briefly thought about correcting himself, but then reconsidered. He wasn’t nearly so reluctant to be associated with the changelings around him now as he had been to be lumped in with the drones following Chrysalis’ orders. Now that she was gone, maybe he’d start to feel more like he belonged with them again.

The scout was hesitant. “Are we sure that they’ll accept our surrender? Chrysalis said they’d come here to exterminate all changelings…” Even as she spoke the words, the changeling mare seemed to recognize that the source of that information might detract more than a little from the voracity of that claim.

“They won’t chase down our forces if they retreat.” There was that ‘our’ word again, Slipshod noted with an inward chuckle. He really had ‘gone native’ quite easily, hadn’t he? He supposed it was only natural to feel like he was one of them again when he’d been the target of so much love from those around him. “Chrysalis was always the target. Twilight wants the changelings brought into the fold more than anypony―oh, shit! Twilight―”

“She’s safe. We’ve got her.”

Slipshod wheeled around upon hearing the sound of the mare’s voice. The changeling stallion was more than a little shocked upon seeing Squelch again, let alone to spy the mare riding upon a light hovercraft. A half dozen more of the fast-attack vehicles were gliding along in the unicorn’s wake. Slipshod felt himself experiencing a moment of panic as he spotted the approaching hovercraft angling their weapons up towards the cloud of ComSpark soldiers hovering overhead. He was about to leap into the air and once more interpose himself as a shield when he saw that all of those yet-unreformed changelings simultaneously dropped their weapons and raised their hooves above their heads.

Squelch touched her hoof to her comlink. “Hold your fire. Stand down weapons.”

The changeling stallion was a little skeptical as to whether Timberwolf soldiers would actually follow the unicorn’s orders, seeing as how she wasn’t at all connected to their command structure. However, none of the Clanner gunners opened fire and slaughtered the obviously surrendering drones, so Slipshod took that as a good sign. Just in case anycreature got a little twitchy though, he instructed the ComSpark soldiers to land; and to not transform under any circumstances, just to help keep tensions to a minimum. Only when he was confident that nothing was going to shatter the tentative tranquility the valley was currently experiencing, did Slipshod allow himself to relax as well and turn his focus back to Squelch’s arrival.

The unicorn, for her part, didn’t look all that much worse for wear compared to how she’d been when he’d teleported her away. She hopped off her chariot and trotted towards the relieved changeling. He could sense a lot of emotions broiling within the mare in such a tumultuous mess that it was a little hard for him to get a read on any specific one of them. Understandable, Slipshod supposed, given what they all had been through recently. He smiled at the approaching unicorn and opened his hooves to welcome her into an embrace.

Instead he caught a firm smack across the snout. “Ow! What was that fo―?!”

“That was sending me away like that!” Squelch said, her features scrunched up into a furious glare. “I do not need your fucking protection! Do you understand?!”

“Ow, yes, Celestia fuc―!” The changeling’s words were stopped short as a result of Squelch’s tongue forcing its way down his throat. Not particularly understanding why the situation had undergone such a favorable change―and certainly not inclined to question it―Slipshod gathered the sage unicorn into his hooves and returned the kiss with equal passion.

When they finally broke contact, she said breathlessly, “and that was also for sending me away like that.” Upon seeing the stallion’s perplexed expression, she elaborated before he could ask for clarification. “I appreciate that you care about me so much. You’re stupid and insensitive, but I know it comes from a place of love.”

“Okay, see, now I’m getting some really mixed sig―”Squelch smacked him again. “Ow! Now what did I―”

“That’s for being a prettier shade of green than me now!”

Slipshod rolled his eyes, but a smile snuck its way onto his face and ruined any chance he might have had at feigning annoyance. Though his expression did become slightly more concerned as he asked his next question. “The crew…?”

That sobered Squelch up a bit more as well, but at least he sensed significant amounts of relief coming from the unicorn as well. “They’re being taken care of. Twilight, Mig, Blood Chit, and a few of the other more seriously wounded are already back at one of their DropShips for treatment. The rest are being moved out soon.

“I don’t know the final numbers yet,” she went on, her expression darkening. The changeling felt her emotions sour sharply as well. “I know we lost a lot though. High Gain, Cravat, Axle Rod was in the garage when we hit―”

Slipshod took the mare into his chest and held her tight. He gently supplanted her mounting grief with warmth and compassion, taking the worst of the edge off. He didn’t erase her sorrow though. She had a right to mourn their friends. Both of them would, for a long time to come. But with everything that they’d just been through―the trauma and terror―Squelch wasn’t in the right frame of mind to process those losses in a healthy manner. Not right now.

“It’s okay,” he assured her as he held her close, leaning his chin on her head, “you did the best you could. We all did. Now it’s over.”

That last bit was a lie, Slipshod knew. Things were far from over. None of it. The invasion and securing of Equus, dealing with the rogue Dragon Clans that were still out there, getting the rest of the galaxy back on track…There was a lot to do.

However, for right now―for them―they had a chance to breathe. They could revel in the knowledge that Chrysalis would never be a threat to anycreature again. They could focus on treating their wounded comrades. They could be here for each other. Just like this. For just a little while longer.

…Until the next crisis comes along.

General Charon’s hooves lightly tapped against each other as she sat in the command chair aboard her flagship. Her eyes stared at the plotter in the center of the flag bridge. The haze of blue dots which represented her fleet of WarShips was ticking progressively closer to Equus…and the knot of scarlet specks in orbit which represented the remains of the Dragon Clans combined fleet.

They wouldn’t be there for long, one way or the other, the changeling mare knew. Most likely whoever was in charge over there recognized the strong disparity in their respective fleet strengths and they would elect to withdraw. They still had some time left before it became impossible for them to escape contact with her WarShips. It was extremely unlikely that those ships would stay in orbit, given the likelihood of certain defeat…but, then again, it wasn’t like Charon hadn’t seen examples of these clanners being willing to sacrifice their ships and crews in the interests of biding time.

It was interesting to the general that, despite making every effort to reach Equus in decent time, it was entirely possible they would still be too late to do any good. Charon didn’t think it was possible for the Clan fleet to successfully breach Canterlot’s defenses this quickly with what ships they had at their disposal, it was much harder to gauge the strength of the ground forces which had been landed. A lot of DropShips had survived to reach the surface, and it was impossible to know what those ships had been laden with. For all Charon knew, they’d each contained a company or more of nothing but Big Macs. A few thousand of those would have little issue breaching Canterlot’s barricades in a matter of hours.

Part of what was unsettling Charon at the moment was the lack of contact from Canterlot Command.

Her fleet was just a couple hours out from being able to deploy their own DropShips and relief forces to the surface. Which meant that they needed to know where, precisely, those forces were needed the most. Yet she had received no clear directive on that front. She had ceased receiving much of anything in the last hour actually. And that was making her very nervous.

“General, we’re picking up a transmission,” Charon’s intelligence officer informed her, “it’s a network-wide broadcast.” The junior officer flashed his commander a knowing look. An announcement being sent out to all receiving stations like that was rarely ‘good’ news. At least, in her experience.

“I’ll take it on personal comms,” Charon informed him. The general thought for a moment, and then added, “signal the rest of the fleet to disregard the transmission.” If there was anything worth informing the rest of her fleet about, she would.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Charon keyed in her comlink and listened in on the transmission.

“―keep us all weak!”

The changeling general raised a brow in curious contemplation as she listened to what turned out to be some sort of personal exchange between an unknown stallion and..Queen Chrysalis! Charon found herself suddenly very glad that she had directed all others to disregard the broadcast. There was no way that the queen would have been intentionally transmitting a private exchange to the entire system like this, which suggested it was being done without her knowledge.

Yet that only raised further questions. This couldn’t have been something being transmitted from within Canterlot Castle, Charon knew. The palace had too many security measures in place to allow for a pirate transmission like this. Which meant that it had to be coming from outside the palace. And that suggested that the queen was outside the palace.

Charon’s gaze went to the plotter once more, focused on the orbiting Clan WarShips. What moron had seen fit to let Her Majesty leave the safety of Canterlot while there was a fleet of enemy WarShips in orbit?! On the other hoof, it wasn’t like anyling who’d tried to stop Chrysalis would have survived the attempt…

Which considerably shortened the list of ‘morons’ who’d been involved in the decision, in Charon’s opinion.

The mare was hard-pressed to think of what it was that could have drawn Her Majesty out of her castle, but clearly something had, and now she was the focus of a broadcast that was capable of being received anywhere in the whole system.

“...I'm proof that changelings don’t need you…”

Oh, shit!

Charon fought to keep her expression passive and her emotional state suppressed from detection by the rest of her command staff as she continued to listen in on the transmission. A rogue changeling had made it back to Equus and had managed to arrange a confrontation with the queen. This could prove…problematic. Especially if the conversation continued to go in the direction that it sounded like it might.

“...We can’t just survive without you around, we can thrive!...”

The changeling general let out a long-suffering internal sigh. Yes, this was most certainly going to prove problematic. Queen Chrysalis’s greatest secret was on the verge of being exposed to the entire hive, and Her Majesty didn’t seem to have a clue.

Months of plotting and scheming, tireless hours spent covering her tracks so that her duplicity wouldn’t be discovered until it was too late for Queen Chrysalis to do anything about it…and the bitch was about to go right on ahead and yank the damn rug out from under herself! It almost felt to Charon like she’d wasted all of her time and effort. Apparently all she’d had to do was just go on living her life for a few more months and her problems would end up solving themselves.

Typical.

General Charon reached out and toggled the controls which would broadcast the incoming transmission throughout not just her own ship, but her entire fleet. If Her Majesty was really so anxious to make Charon’s defection all that much easier, then who was she to argue?

“...In a heartbeat.”

And there it was.

The changeling mare wasn’t convinced that all of the shock she was feeling upon hearing those words from her queen was truly hers. A lot of it was doubtlessly refracted emotions from the rest of the ship. It was still a little staggering to feel the weight of the utter contempt being carried over the transmission though. Almost certainly more so for the lower ranks, who’d only ever entertained the notion that Her Majesty loved and cared for each of them, and worked tirelessly to benefit all of her loyal changelings.

Now they knew what Charon and many of the more senior changelings had learned long ago after attaining their high stations: ComSpark existed to serve Chrysalis, not the hive. Once upon a time, that had been a bitter pill for a more naive Charon to swallow. The years and decades since her elevation had made the general appropriately cynical and accepting of reality. She’d contented herself with the knowledge that, even if Her Majesty was the principal beneficiary of the system, Chrysalis still depended upon the hive, and therefore would surely keep its welfare at least somewhat in mind.

Then she’d seen the aftermath at Buckwheat.

There’d been no sign that Chrysalis cared for the hive. Not beyond what it could do for herself directly at any rate. Each of its members were expendable―all of them were. Charon had learned that lesson then…

…And everyling else had just learned it now.

In a way, it was something of a relief, the general thought to herself. It meant that the order she’d been dreading to give had suddenly become a lot easier to issue. “Helm, plot a course around Equus back to Faust. Best speed.”

Five minutes ago, there would have been members of the crew who might have balked at her order to abandon their queen to the invaders. Charon had been confident that enough of her senior officers would go along with her intentions to leave the system, even against Chrysalis’ orders. The enlisted drones might not have understood what was going on, but they would have followed the lead of their officers.

Now, however, there was essentially no pushback at all. If anything, there was something of a sense of relief felt by the crew at the knowledge that they wouldn’t have to potentially disobey any order that their commander might have given to press on and help their―former―queen.

“Aye-aye, ma’am!” The ship’s helmsmare wasn’t―quite―beaming as she laid in their new course and then relayed it to the rest of the fleet. The WarShip cut its deceleration burn, turned end over end, and then proceeded to put on speed so that it could slingshot around the far side of Equus.

Now all Charon had to do was figure out exactly where they could safely go. Though the general did have a fair idea of where a safe harbor might be found…

“They’re breaking through on the left flank!” Archon Victoria Blueblood proclaimed over the command network as her eyes studied the sensor data being fed to her BattleSaddle. “Colonel Dervish, where’s the Thirty-Fifth?! They’re supposed to be covering that sector!”

“Apologies, My Lady,” responded a rather frantic voice over her headset, “but the Thirty-Fifth is down to just two understrength lances. They can’t hold their position. I’ve ordered the Twenty-Seventh Regulars to reinforce them, but they’re still pinned down by a lance of ComSpark assault ‘Steeds. They’ve lost two pilots trying to break free already,” came the exasperated explanation. It was clear from the colonel’s voice that he was no happier with the situation than his archon, but there wasn’t much more he could reasonably do about it. Victoria found herself torn between relief that she was not in fact surrounded by incompetent commanders, and feeling frustrated that nearly a full third of her forces were on the verge of being outflanked and surrounded.

She conducted a quick survey of her forces, searching for any units that didn’t already look like they’d been stretched dangerous thin. It was rather distressing to the pegasus that she couldn’t find any.

The opening engagements had gone off remarkably well for their forces. ComSpark had been caught completely unaware by the arrival of the staged forces arriving from Baltimare and Fillydelphia. The missile carriers and other artillery platforms which had been stashed at the rear of the changeling formations―where they were supposed to have been safe and protected―had been wiped out in minutes. Then Victoria’s line units continued right on through and slammed into ComSpark’s reserves, inflicting further devastating losses upon the unaware changeling divisions. It looked like it was going to become a full on rout!

Then the changelings had rallied.

The element of surprise had really been just about all that the Commonwealth, Federation, and Combine forces had going for them. Unlike the Dragoons, they didn’t have the sort of advanced technology or BattleSteed designs which could give their forces combat parity with ComSpark units. And none of their groups had anywhere near the numbers to hope to win a stand-up fight―with or without comparable tech. Once the changelings reformed their lines and restored order among their ranks, the tide of the battle had almost immediately begun to turn against the Sphere forces. Now they were just trying their best to contain the changeling division; and it wasn’t going well.

This moment was a particularly pointed example of how close they were to being summarily defeated: If ComSpark broke through where they were just about to, they’d have a wide open corridor that would allow them to feed their forces around behind most of her forces. Once she lost control of that flank, the Federated Moons units which were relying on the Commonwealth to keep them secure would find themselves suddenly surrounded as well. At that point, a full half of the allied Sphere units fighting ComSpark would be effectively wiped from the field. Victoria wasn’t sure how long Timberjack and Thera would be able to hang on after that happened, but she suspected the answer lay somewhere between: “not long” and “no time at all”.

Which was why it couldn’t be allowed to happen. “Major Redoubt, follow me; we’re moving to reinforce the Thirty-Fifth!”

“Yes, My Lady!” The mare commanding her personal guard responded. On any other day, the unicorn charged with ensuring the safety of the leader of the Pony Commonwealth might have objected to her liege charging into combat with a vastly superior force of enemy BattleSteeds. However, in this instance, Redoubt was perfectly well aware―as were they all―that there was no retreat from this fight. Even if they wanted to run, there wasn’t anywhere to run to.

They’d never make it back to Baltimare without being run down by ComSpark forces, even if they left now, before the line was completely broken through. Indeed, the only hope that they had of survival was to keep the changeling divisions contained and continue to whittle them down through attrition until their numbers were more manageable. Which wasn’t going to happen if they punched through the Thirty-Fifth.

The thirteen BattleSteeds piloted by Victoria and her three lances of guardmares galloped down the line towards the weakened point in their lines. The ground spat up clouds of dirt and debris all around them where stray autocannon shells or missiles which had lost track of their intended target impacted. Beams of coherent light criss-crossed the sky all around them. The other comm channels on their network were a din of voices designating targets and calling for assistance with progressively increasing franticness as comrades fell and the ComSpark forces showed no signs of thinning any time soon.

Victoria considered it no minor miracle that she and her bodyguards arrived just in time to watch the last surviving ‘Steed of the Thirty-Fifth Commonwealth Regulars fall, the Thunderlane toppling to the ground and detonating in a fireball of amethyst magic. Beyond the small mushroom cloud of smoke rising from the BattleSteed’s corpse, a lance of purple and white ComSpark ‘Steeds marched into view.

“All units, weapons free!” The archon declared, her own fetlocks tightening around the control yokes in her hooves.

Pillars of sapphire light drilled into the lead changeling unit, fired by no fewer than six of Victoria’s guard units. The Pharynx was felled almost in an instant, three of its limbs sliced off by the potent energy beams. Trails of smoke briefly obscured the small battlefield as a volley of short-ranged missiles crashed against a Sombra. Plates of ablative armor were peeled away, exposing the vulnerable internal systems. Then it detonated as its reactor was breached. Another Sombra was promptly beheaded by a hit from the heavy autocannon of a Big Mac. The last of the ComSpark BattleSteeds, a Grogar, was pummeled into submission by repeated hits from Prismatic Projector Cannons, finally crumpling in a heap as a shot from Victoria removed its left foreleg at the ankle.

…Then an additional two companies of changeling BattleSteeds appeared.

The ivory pegasus archon grit her teeth as she turned her focus towards the new arrivals. It seemed that the ComSpark commanders had indeed been preparing to breach their lines here, and had the spearhead force ready to go immediately. Her thirteen ‘Steeds were now facing down twenty-four attackers.

“Hold the line! Don’t let them through!”

Her guards formed ranks and poured on the fire. Missiles, explosive shells, and beams of light were pumped out as fast as could be against the enemy, and many changeling BattleSteeds fell…but so did Victoria’s guards. One by one, the pegasus mare heard her protectors die. They went down fighting, flinging every last shot they could manage before meeting their end.

Major Redoubt was one of the first to fall. Victoria assumed personal control of the major’s lance, directing their fire. As the changelings pressed in closer, the pegasus soon found herself commanding a lance of three ‘Steeds. Then two. Within minutes, it was just her and one other. The other two lances of her guard force weren’t faring much better. It wouldn’t be long, she knew, before they were completely wiped out. Her sensors already showed additional ComSpark signals moving in behind the ‘Steeds they were still currently fighting.

They had made a good show of themselves though, the archon felt. The twenty-four changeling BattleSteeds had been whittled down to just under a dozen. Including the lance they’d already felled, that was nearly a two-for-one exchange. That wasn’t too bad for being outnumbered.

Not that Victoria was convinced they’d ultimately done much real good. Their mission had been to keep the changelings contained, and they were about to fail in that task. When she and the last of her guards finally went down, those ‘Steeds were going to get through and flank around their lines anyway. The Sphere forces were going to be wiped out after all.

An alarm sounded, warning the ivory pegasus that her BattleSaddle had sustained severe damage to its right foreleg. She felt her piloting couch drop out from under her as her ‘Steed faltered, going down onto one knee. The limb hadn’t been completely severed, thank Celestia; it had just lost function in a few actuators. However, it was going to take the gyroscopes a few seconds to adjust the balance so that she could resume moving around on just three working legs. Until then, she was extremely vulnerable.

“My Lady!” One of her remaining guards called out over the comms, concern clear in her voice.

“Keep fighting!” Victoria insisted. “Don’t let up for even a moment!” To emphasize her point, she snapped off a poorly aimed shot with her PPC. The coil of rainbow light went wide, unfortunately.

Her BattleSaddle was rocked by another hit as a volley of missiles peppered her barrel. Victoria let out an outraged snarl in response, her eyes locking on the offending enemy ‘Steed that had just fired at her. If she lived long enough to right herself, they would be her next target―

The Sombra in question was struck along its neck and head by a seemingly unrelenting torrent of viridian energy. Beam-after-beam of emerald light burned into the heavy ComSpark BattleSteed until they finally succeeded in burning through and melting the internal supports which secured the head and cockpit to the rest of the ‘Steed. The control center of the ‘Steed promptly fell to the ground, followed shortly by the rest of it.

“That’s my betrothed you’re shooting at, fiend!”

“Nacht?!” Victoria wasn’t sure if she was more relieved or surprised that the First Prince of the Federated Moons had seen fit to make an appearance. Either way, she was quite happy to have his assistance. She just hoped that he hadn’t come alone.

The dozen blips and change that manifested on her sensors indicated that the batpony ruler had indeed brought along some friends of his own. Presumably his own personal guard, and probably some relief forces to plug this hole in the lines with.

“I realize I’m slightly out of position, Vicky; I hope that’s not a problem?”

“Not at all! Besides, who am I to tell a prince where he may and may not go?” The pegasus responded. Her ‘Steed finally finished shifting its center of gravity, allowing her to rise back up and resume engaging targets, even if her BattleSteed’s movement was a lot less fluid now.

“As this prince’s princess, you’re entitled to tell me quite a bit,” he assured her, “I may not always listen or actually do what you tell me, but that’s more of a me-being-a-stallion thing than a prince thing.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Victoria felt himself smiling wryly as she noticed Nacht’s own BattleSaddle, wearing the cobalt and silver livery of House Belle sidled up beside what remained of her own white and gold ‘Steed. She found herself considering for a fleeting moment what the primary livery colors of their joint house would be; but only for a passing moment. There was still a fight going on after all.

The arrival of the additional Federation forces was enough to reverse the tide of the engagement and once more push the ComSpark BattleSteeds back, but Victoria had her doubts that this would remain the case. The changelings seemed rather determined to succeed in their planned push. She could already see another two dozen enemy contacts nearing firing range. They wouldn’t be able to hold out for very long.

Victoria noted that the rest of their lines were looking even thinner than they had been before she got here. If things kept going the way they were, the changelings weren’t going to have to force their way through this specific point in their defensive lines. Those lines wouldn’t exist at all in about another hour.

“Invicta.”

The mare blinked in mild confusion even as she turned her ‘Steed to help her fiance engage the Pharynx he was fighting. “What?”

“I think that would be a good name for our daughter: Invicta.” Nacht said, managing to almost sound nonchalant over the sound of the alarms whining in the background of his transmission. “Invicta Belle-Blueblood.”

“Blueblood-Belle.” Victoria corrected primly even as she felt a smile start to work its way across her face, in spite of the tension caused by the battle raging around them.

“You’re right, of course. Blueblood-Belle sounds much better. Invicta Blueblood-Bell―” There was a brief burst of static as Nacht’s ‘Steed was rocked by a PPC blast. The pegasus’ breath briefly caught in her throat, released a moment later when the batpony stallion resumed transmitting. “She’ll be a strong leader someday. How could she not be, with a mother like the archon?”

Inwardly, Victoria thought it a bit overly-optimistic for him to be using the future tense. It did manage to help keep her spirit’s up though, the mare admitted; so she supposed the word choice had fulfilled its purpose. “And if it’s a colt?”

“I honestly hadn’t given much thought to that,” Nacht admitted. After a brief pause to consider, he offered up, “Invictor?”

Victoria let out a snort. “We’ll discuss ideas later,” she promised, continuing on with his charade of presuming they’d get out of this alive. Half of the reinforcements that the batpony had brought with him were already slain, and still there seemed to be no end to the changeling forces coming their way.

“I look forward to that.”

The Pony Commonwealth’s archon felt her throat constrict slightly. It was a nice thought. Planning their future. The future of not just their little family, but of the grand empire they’d hoped to forge. A step towards making the Harmony Sphere whole once more. Perhaps even making it a bit more ‘harmonious’. A nice thought. A nice dream…and all of it was burning down around them one BattleSteed at a time.

Vitoria watched as another Grogar assault ‘Steed stepped out in front of her. The pegasus mare fired her PPC, watching as the chromatic coil evaporated some of the plating on its shoulder. It responded with a high-caliber autocannon shell to her chest. Fresh alarms blared. She could smell smoke in her cockpit. The emotionless voice of the computer listed off a litany of systems and components which were no longer functional. A great deal of her cockpit console was flashing either scarlet or amber lights.

Nacht’s BattleSteed darted in front of her, unleashing a volley of energy beams at the Grogar. The batpony paid for his gallantry with a barrage of missiles along his spine that very nearly broke his ‘Steed in two. Now it was Victoria’s turn to surge forward―or at least lurch―as she responded with a burst of her own energy cannons, though far fewer than there should have been. Again the ComSpark pilot shrugged off her efforts.

She could hear the sounds of her remaining guardsmares on her comlink, struggling to get to their archon. Nacht’s protectors were likely making the same efforts. But there were just so many changeling BattleSteeds all around them. Their bodyguards would be cut down in no time if they just ignored all other threats.

There was no hope for any of them anyway. ComSpark had won. All that remained was to see how many of the changelings they could drag down with them to their graves―

The Grogar’s head came off.

The move was so unexpected that Victoria didn’t believe at first that she’d really seen it. Indeed, it took her a few seconds to realize that she hadn’t seen the other ‘Steed’s head ‘explode’―not really. What had happened was that she’d seen the ejection system activate! Not that the realization made the event any less confusing. She and Nacht couldn’t possibly have inflicted enough damage on the enemy BattleSteed to compel its pilot to eject. The Grogar certainly didn’t explode or anything after the changeling left. It simply stood there, inert.

Nor, Victoria soon noticed, was that pilot the only one who abandoned their BattleSteed. As she stared out across the field, slack-jawed, the pegasus witnessed a veritable exodus as ComSpark pilots vaulted out of their ‘Steeds and took wing, leaving the battle far behind. There seemed to be something of a propagating ripple effect across the whole region, with more and more changeling’s giving up and running away as they saw their companions do so.

It was a rout!

It was a rout that made no sense―seeing as how the ComSpark troops had been on the cusp of a crushing victory over the invaders―but it was a rout! Victoria wasn't inclined to voice any objection over the sudden shift in their favor either.

“...I’m sure there’s a rational explanation for this,” the batpony said, sounding more than a little bemused, “but I know I’d never be able to guess what it is.”

“That makes two of us.”

The pair remained sitting in stunned silence for several more seconds, watching more changelings eject from their ‘Steeds and fly away. Some went towards Canterlot, but most just looked like they were picking a random direction to leave in.

Nacht finally broke the silence again. “So…not Invictor then?”

“Not Invictor,” Victoria confirmed, smiling.

“You don’t have to be here for this,” Slipshod said, regarding the purple alicorn with concern. She could put on whatever brave face she wanted to, but she wasn’t going to fool a changeling. He honestly wasn’t sure what worried him more: the intense physical pain that the mare was feeling, or the apprehension balled up so tightly in her chest that it was as likely as not to cause a cardiac event.

“No, I do. I need to be here,” Twilight insisted even as she staggered on ahead through the corridors of the palace dungeon. In her wake followed a squad of Cinder’s elite cadre of Elementals. Twice as many of the magically augmented dragons had already moved on ahead to ensure that the way was clear.

Taking those guards had been the only way that the Star Admiral was going to allow Twilight anywhere near Canterlot Castle. Not that Slipshod was convinced the cobalt dragoness would have dared to physically restrain the alicorn if she’d threatened to leave anyway. The changeling had felt how Cinder had been walking a tight line between her loyalty to the princess, and her sense of duty as a star admiral. Keeping Twilight Sparkle safe was now her primary concern in the wake of Chrysalis’ defeat, but she also wasn’t about to disobey any order that the princess issued to her either.

This had seemed like a reasonable compromise.

It turned out to have been unwarranted. By the time their forces had reached Canterlot, the city was all but deserted. The changelings had all left. It was hard to say where many of them had gone, even for Slipshod, but none of them had remained behind in the capital. If the changeling had been asked to guess the reason, he’d have suggested that they couldn’t stand the lingering stench of their former queen.

It still remained to be seen how many of the changelings would ‘convert’. While pretty much all of the drones had withdrawn from the fighting, not nearly so many had outright surrendered to the invading forces. Slipshod could sense the lingering fear and uncertainty that seemed to permeate the planet now. The changelings didn’t know what was going to happen now without Chrysalis. They were unsure of how they were going to survive.

The invaders might have succeeded in accomplishing their most critical objectives: defeating the changeling queen and gaining control of Canterlot; but Slipshod knew that they had a long road ahead of them when it came to actually being able to claim Equus.

While gaining back the entire planet was something Twilight wanted to do in the nearness of time, it wasn’t the alicorn’s chief concern at this moment.

“Twilight, I really don’t think―”

“I have to know they’re okay!”

Slipshod’s mouth closed with an audible sound. The alicorn was on the verge of being overwhelmed by her anxiety and guilt. He reached out and did what he could to ease those feelings, and earned a glare from Twilight in the process as she sensed what he was doing to her. The verdant changeling held his ground this time though. If he couldn’t stop her from coming here, then he was at least going to keep her from having an outright panic attack!

Twilight’s nostrils briefly flared, but the alicorn finally seemed to accept that she was going to be subjected to his empathic menistrations. The mare resumed her stilted walk down the dim hall. After some time, their group reached an open door. Inside, a team of Elementals had secured the room. The leader of their little detachment snapped to attention and rendered a sharp salute to the princess as she stepped inside.

The purple mare’s breath caught in her throat. The changeling standing behind her felt her emotional barometer alternating rapidly back and forth between relief and guilt like some sort of bipolar metronome. He peered past her and saw the three changeling cocoons arranged around a raised dais. Visible through the translucent green shells of the cocoons were three alicorns lying in tranquil repose. At least, that was what it looked like from the outside. Within each of their minds, however, there was a veritable storm raging.

Sorrow, grief, anger, helplessness, hopelessness―it was almost impossible for Slipshod to keep track of the kaleidoscope of roiling emotions. They seemed to come and go, as if in a constant state of flux. No conscious creature could have hoped to remain coherent while their mind was afire with such tumultuous strong emotions.

“Nightmares.” He declared out loud, a sense of disgust tickling at the back of his throat. “They’re having nightmares about all of the things Chrysalis showed them she was doing to the creatures of the galaxy. I think they have been for a while.” For certain unreasonably excessive interpretations of the word ‘while’, given how many centuries the three alicorns had been locked away down here for the changeling queen to torment.

Twilight briefly looked back at the stallion, her expression understandably one of horror. She swallowed. “Can you…?”

Slipshod shook his head. He dared not even try to mollify psyches that were so consumed with such dark and powerful emotions that had been festering over centuries. His ability was only useful as the equivalent of an emotional analgesic. He could safely take the edge off of someone’s case of acute and transient sadness. Make somepony feel slightly less despondent.

He couldn’t reconstruct a broken mind. Those three needed real care, and a lot of it. Years―maybe even decades―of healing would lay ahead of them, and even then it wasn’t a certainty that they’d ever really recover completely.

The realization hit Twilight hard. She could barely bring herself to look at the cocooned ponies any longer, her guilt was so great. “Is it silly that, when we began all of this, I imagined that this would be a happy moment? We’d be together and everything would instantly be okay again. Just like old times.”

Slipshod smiled weakly at the princess. “If it is, then I wasn’t any less silly,” he admitted. “I thought getting rid of Chrysalis would be the most satisfying feeling in the galaxy. It wasn’t.”

“No?” Twilight sounded genuinely surprised by the admission.

The changeling stallion shook his head. “Not really. It sure didn’t get me anything I didn’t already have. If anything, it cost me so much more than I ever thought I’d have to pay. Worse? It didn’t even solve anything; not really.

“This wasn’t the ‘final act’; it’s the first,” Slipshod gave an almost exhausted snort. “When I think about everything that still lies ahead of us: restoring the HyperSpark Generator Network, negotiating peace between the Successor States, reforming the rest of the changelings in the galaxy, reintegrating the Periphery Powers, the Clans…” He was shaking his head.

“When does it finally end?”

The purple alicorn smiled again, though it was a visibly fragile thing which looked as though it might disappear if notice was brought to existence. “Harmony doesn’t end,” she informed him, “it’s always a ‘work-in-progress’, and that’s okay. Everycreature should always be working towards a better future for all.

“But you’re right: this fight wasn’t the end. This is where we can finally get started.

“And this time, you’ll make a much better go of it.”

Slipshod frowned. “‘You’ll’? I thought you were going to take control of things? Wasn’t that the plan? To put you back in charge?”

Twilight shook her head slowly. “This isn’t the galaxy I knew anymore. And if I’ve learned anything since waking up in it, it’s that I obviously didn’t do such a great job putting the Sphere together in the first place. If I had, then Cozy Glow wouldn’t have been able to dismantle it like she did.

“No. The reforging of the Sphere needs to be handled by creatures who know the political climate. Who understands what’s dividing everycreature and keeping them from living in Harmony.” The alicorn cast an aside glance at the changeling stallion. “Maybe…somecreature like you?”

“Me?!”

“And Victoria, Nacht, Timberjack―the creatures who stepped up and did the right thing, even when they didn’t have to. That’s the hallmark of a good leader: they lead. Creatures look to them for guidance.

“The changelings are going to need somecreature to guide them too.” Again Twilight eyed the stallion. “And you certainly look like you’d be a good candidate as their mentor on how to reform again.”

“I wasn’t looking to become the next queen―or king, or whatever―of the changelings.” Slipshod protested, already feeling a little uneasy at the thought of ascending a throne.

“Then don’t.” Twilight said simply. “Don’t be their ‘ruler’. Be their Friend. See how that works out.”

The changeling was still skeptical. “You make it sound easy.”

“I make it sound simple,” the purple mare corrected him, “as you already pointed out: nothing about the road ahead for any of us is likely to be ‘easy’. But it’s a road that takes us to a good place, I think. And I’d like to see us get there.

“Don’t misunderstand: while I won’t take the reins on this, I’ll always be around to help.” Twilight assured him. “And it’s not like I won’t be doing anything.” She finally looked back at the other alicorns. “I need to help them. Set things right with Flurry Heart and the League-in-Exile. Help Ember and Spike with the Dragon Clans…” It was her turn to sigh now as she considered the ‘to-do’ list that lay ahead of her.

The alicorn smirked back at Slipshod. “Where am I supposed to find the time to ‘rule’ the Sphere? You see? It has to be up to all of you.”

It was hard to argue her point, the stallion admitted to himself. She was just one pony, and there were a host of other issues outside of the Harmony Sphere that required her attention. Besides, he supposed it wasn’t like they hadn’t already taken the first steps in mending the divide. The Pony Commonwealth and the Federated Moons were on track to merge after Victoria and Nacht had their wedding. Thera was already making overtures at something resembling a permanent treaty between the Hippogriff Combine and whatever grand alliance emerged from the union of House Blueblood and House Belle. That was three of the ‘Big Five’ on their way to ending the war and strife between them. The Confederacy and the Our Worlds League would have to see the writing on the walls at that point and recognize that risking a war against such an overwhelmingly powerful star nation wouldn’t work out in their favor…

Maybe they were already off to a decent start fixing the broken galaxy that Chrysalis had left them. Obviously it wasn’t all going to be sunshine and rainbows starting tomorrow morning or anything, but, “...I guess we could give it a shot and see how it goes,” Slipshod acknowledged.

Twilight raised a slightly unsatisfied brow. “That wasn’t quite as reassuring as I’d hoped…”

The changeling stallion shrugged, flashing a wry grin at the purple alicorn. “But it was honest!” He pointed out.

Whew!

As you can see: easily the longest chapter of the story...Hopefully it's as satisfying as it is lengthy :P

As I mentioned before: there will be an epilogue on the 20th that will tie up one or two things that it didn't make sense to bring up in this chapter. So if there are any burning "Wait! But what about...?!" questions you still have, they might be answered then. If they're not, well...I guess you'll have to answer them in a story of your own then, won't you? ;)

Thank you to everyone who has been with me through this whole adventure, and also to those of you who only recently stumbled onto this story. Heck, thank you to the readers who made it halfway through the first chapter and then bailed and so won't even see this, heh.

Stay frosty, 'Steed pilots! And may your reactors, sensors, and weapons, always be online! :D

Thank you so much for reading! As always, a thumbs up and comment are always greatly appreciated

I've set up a Cover Art Fund if you're interested and have any bits lying around!