//------------------------------//
// Chapter 12:  Castle Raid 
// Story: Starbound Flight 
// by computerneek 
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“Good morning, Princess,” High Admiral Timber Wolf greeted from the communicator screen.
“Good morning,” Princess Short Flight answered calmly.  “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
“If you mean that there are six hundred pirate cruisers in Equineothame orbit, yes,” the Admiral answered.  “I was actually just having a discussion with the other Admirals about exactly how to deal with it.”  She paused.  “It looks like there’s a gap in their orbital pattern, creating a half-hour window in which a ship with as good of stealth as yours could sneak in every six and a half hours or so.  I’d hate to send you and your sister into someplace that dangerous, though- do you have any shuttles or something with similar stealth capability?”
Flight shook her head.  “Only the First Light.  However, we do have magic, so between-!”
“You have what?” Timber Wolf asked.
Flight looked at her for a second.  “Oh, right.  There’s a few things we haven’t been telling you, Admiral, and I’m sorry about that.”
She sighed.  “What is it?”
“You know about the Enterprise, right?”
She nodded.  “Yes, that info had to be in every database we breached.  I think the whole Fleet knows- but she disappeared before the pirates were able to recover her.”
“She disappeared because of us,” Flight told her simply.  “The Enterprise is stored securely in our ventral cargo bay, and throughout this last year of antipiracy activity, they’ve successfully reverse-engineered her Distortion Drive to the point where the First Light is, as of about a week ago, a superluminal vessel.”  She smiled.  “Of course, the Drive wasn’t the only gift the Enterprise has- there’s magic floating around all throughout that ship.  Not much- but enough that it’s made its mark on every one of my permanent crew, including myself and my sister, and we’ve regained our magic of old.  Well, I say regained, but…”  She shrugged.  “You know what I mean.
“But anyways.  You may have noticed I’ve been wearing a cloak, dress, or suit whenever we met, and never used the full-body camera viewpoint when we talked, right?”
She nodded slowly.  “Yes, now that you mention it.”
She chuckled.  “That’s because I’ve been growing wings.  In addition to my horn, yes- and yes, I can fly.”  She paused.  “According to the data we pulled from Enterprise’s surprisingly robust archival database, I’ve become an ‘Alicorn’...  which makes me ridiculously more powerful than any other unicorn.  And it’s true- our best estimate is that I could block an artillery barrage from the entire Fleet with a magical shield without straining myself.  And since said shields don’t necessarily interfere with aerodynamic surfaces and whatever, it’ll be a piece of cake to guarantee that no matter how many missiles those idiots fire, we’ll make it to the surface alive and unharmed.”
“Ahh,” Wolf muttered softly.  “What about your sister?”
“Her wings are only starting to grow in, and she’s also only just starting to get the hang of her magic, whereas I’ve had over a year to practice and study everything we found in the archives.”  She scowled.  “I’m still not as good as I want to be, but it’ll do.”
“And the other unicorns?”
“Still unicorns, me and Bubbles are the only Alicorns.  Not sure why, but the archive suggests that royal status might be a part of it.  But yeah, all the unicorns have the same magic, just…  not as ridiculously overpowered.  But anyways,” she nodded sharply, “we can get the First Light down risk-free.  What do you want us to do once we get there?”
“Well,” Wolf nodded.  “The orbital defenses are tough enough to give even the Fleet trouble, and I want to know if they’re under our control or the pirates’ before we let them figure out where we are.”
“Alright,” Flight nodded.  “So once we’re down, we make contact with…  Who would be best?”
She shrugged.  “I don’t know.  Anything in the military is likely to be monitored by the pirates, so…  Maybe your father?  I kinda don’t want to suggest talking to him, given…  But still.”
Flight shrugged.  “We’ll live.  So, how long do we have before we’ll be descending?”
“About two weeks,” Wolf informed her.  “I’ll send all the tactical data over, then leave it to you to decide exactly how.”  She paused.  “Though…  Hmm.  Does that magic have any way to communicate that they won’t intercept?”
Flight grinned.  “Thanks to some very clever engineering by Shooting Star, all our recon drones communicate with the ship via thaumic entanglement rather than electromagnetic transmissions, for effectively unlimited range with total disrespect for the speed of light.  Of course, we can still bounce transmissions off them- we’ll just use that to keep in contact with the Fleet.”
“Better than I was expecting,” Wolf nodded, then grinned.  “Though I’m not sure what I was expecting- it’s magic, after all, isn’t it?”
Flight shrugged.  “The archives call it magic, and don’t contain much in the way of how it works, but what is there suggests that the civilization that wrote it knew quite a bit about that.  Even though ‘magic’ is a term used to describe that which you cannot understand, isn’t it?”  She chuckled.  “It’s got its own rules, and its own limits, but we don’t know them- only how to use it, and the limits of what we know how to do with it.”





“Aaaand, touchdown,” Flight announced, as the first waves touched the belly of her ship as it descended into them.
“Splashdown, more like,” River Skip observed.
“Same difference,” Flight grinned.  “Anyways, let’s get fuel processing underway.”
Willowstone tapped a few keys.  “Fuel processing started, full tanks in about…  twenty-six and a half hours.”
“Alright then,” Flight nodded, going through the motions of shutting down the engines, though she left the wings extended for additional buoyancy and stability in the water, especially as the fuel tanks filled up.  “It’s about time for me to be on my way.”
“Right about,” Willow sighed, looking up at her.  “Be careful out there, okay, Princess?”
She smiled.  “Don’t worry, I will be.”
Then she sighed.  Willow was right- what she was about to do was very dangerous.  She was going to take the stealth shuttle, alongside Bubbles, Shadow Flight, and a couple other soldiers, on a ‘quick’ jaunt across about two hundred miles of ocean to the Capital City, land it inside the Palace, and meet her father alone, face-to-face, protected only by her magic.





King High Cost glared at the computer console in front of him.  Twelve years of those pirates’ terrorism had gone by- and they were far too coordinated to be real pirates, rather than an entire unknown nation of their own.  Yet…  what had come of it?  Way back in the day, his daughters had still been babies when they’d shown up on his father’s dying day.  His father had always been a brave, militaristic man; he made many contributions to the Navy and other fighting forces, despite his…  lackadaisical allotment of forces that eventually let the pirates in.  Unfortunately, one thing that the old King Large Spending had sucked at, was teaching his son how to resist persuasion.  High Cost was far better than his father at allocating the forces at his disposal…  but he’d never had the freedom to exercise them, as the pirate Queen Cheap Gold had…  installed herself as his wife and threatened to kill his daughters if he didn’t do what she wanted.
It hadn’t stopped him from exercising his skills in other ways.  Even under pirate supervision, the Royal Equineothame Navy grew explosively to the total of almost sixty thousand vessels, composed primarily out of superdreadnoughts with heavy artillery capability- though the infighting when Little Bubble was killed had reduced it to just thirty five thousand vessels with an even larger capital ship majority.  He’d even been able to allocate his daughters, to an extent- as commanded, he’d carefully steered them into disliking him.  However, he’d gone beyond those commands and steered them into actively despising him, and had been forced to conceal his shouts of glee when he’d realized they’d started trying to be as expensive as possible.
That had been good.  It meant they had stopped following his orders, which included the ones he was required to give them from the pirates.
Well…  had been required to give them.  They’d both been killed a couple years before, before they’d been able to become the saviors he was hoping they would be for ponykind.  They’d been close- when he’d had the First Light created, and ordered the sisters to be the ones to approve the blueprints…  he had been hoping they would make something that only barely met his requirements, cost a boatload so he could justify reducing his contributions to the pirates’ coffers, and could help them maybe resist the pirates- maybe just get the elusive Enterprise out of space before the pirates reached it.
Nobody knew, but it had been his father that had discovered that ship, so far out there, three days before his death.  The pirates had caught wind of it, and been pressuring him for info on it- but he refused to give them the info.
He’d been forced to.  He’d bought the pirates off with tiny little tidbits for so long…  then just before the First Light’s blueprint had come due for approval, they had decided he’d dallied too long with the final, crucial tidbit, and had his daughter, Little Bubble, assassinated.  It didn’t matter that she and her half-sister Short Flight were both born to concubines that had been early casualties in the silent war with the pirates, nor that he’d never been married- they were still both his children.
Not too long after that, Princess Short Flight had approved the blueprints on her own, without her sister’s input- something which had surprised him.
Not nearly as much as the enormity of the price tag had surprised him, though.  Perhaps his orders to leave the pirates had been too brusque, too sharp?  He had wished, dearly wished he could send the entire Navy after the pirates, and blow them clear out of space…  but with Cheap Gold pointing a gun at him from out of view of the comms camera, he couldn’t do that.  Only issue an order that she’d despise and give her a reason that would encourage her to violate it.
She hadn’t violated it.
A year later, the First Light had been completed…  and the pirates waited until after he’d given them that last snippet of info on the Enterprise in exchange for her life to tell him she’d already been killed.  Then the news had come back that his info had been wrong- and they’d accepted his proof that it was the info he’d had.
So he’d started looking for other ways to resist…  Only for, a year or so later, the entire Royal Equineothame Navy to suddenly and silently break orbit and disappear.  Even the pirates hadn’t been able to find them, so had moved in to ‘protect’ the nation but actually to hang orbital bombardment over his head.  Now…  He’d given them everything, but things were starting to look uphill anyways.
Fortunately, their attention seemed to be elsewhere.  Their bases, scattered across the cosmos as they were, seemed to be disappearing tracelessly, one after another.  Even scout ships sent to the bases that had gone silent had come back telling that they couldn’t find them.
Then, a couple months ago…  the final base had gone silent, at a range of almost two and a half light-months.  The pirates were very agitated, and willing to take anything they could get- so printing the painfully-useless ship classes he’d ordered designed explicitly for that purpose was enough to keep them off his back.  He could start planning, finding ways to resist them again.  Even Cheap Gold didn’t spend much time in the palace anymore- she was much too busy managing the pirates’ ground base a few blocks away.
A sudden chime sounded from the door, and he winced.  Speaking of Cheap Gold…
He glanced at the clock, and paused.  It was far too early for her return.  Unless she’d come rushing back for some reason?
Still, though.  There was nobody else in the Castle to request an audience with him, and that chime didn’t go off when ponies from outside the Palace requested personal audiences with their King.  He punched the admittance key, they leaned back to look around his screens at the door.
The door slid open to reveal…
Princess Short Flight was significantly older as she walked into his office than she had been when he’d last seen her.  She was no longer a tiny filly, but was now a strong, growing teenager.  She was wearing a long, mint-green cloak to match her coat, neatly hiding her body from view- though judging by the shape of the cloak, her body was much bulkier than it used to be, like she’d been doing a lot of bodybuilding.  When her hooves peeked out through the gap in the front, he saw that she was wearing her mag boots- she must’ve just landed and rushed to the Palace to still be wearing ‘on-orbit equipment’ like that.
There was also an interesting flicker of golden light around her horn that he couldn’t remember ever being there before.  Perhaps she’d gotten one of those holokits that children loved, to make it look like her horn was magical?
“You’re alive,” he greeted.
She smiled at him- an unexpected act but, given the cold in her eyes, it was clear her amusement wasn’t for his benefit.  Too bad he’d had to alienate her like that.  “I am,” she answered simply, then sighed.  “And just like it, I’m not here to fight, or listen to whatever.  There’s a bunch of pirates in orbit, and I need to know who controls the orbital defense network- us, or the pirates.”
He stared at her, even as the door closed behind her, for several seconds.
“...  Us, technically,” he eventually said slowly.  “But if we don’t do what they tell us to with it, they’ll blow us to Kingdom Come with those ships they have in orbit.”
Flight grinned, and turned her head slightly.  “Admiral?  It’s ours.”
He watched her in silence for a few seconds.
“Alright, we’ll be waiting,” Flight then spoke.  “Flight out.”  She reached up and tapped one hoof to her ear…  and in the process, revealing that she wasn’t actually all that much more muscular than before, though there was some up-muscling.  Was the bulk under her cloak a set of saddlebags or something?  It didn’t look like a Bands, or Back Attached Natural Digit System.
She gazed back at him, a calm, calculating look on her face.
The silence held for almost a minute, before a sudden buzzer on the panel caught his attention.
He looked.
Artillery.  The Defense Network was in panic mode in reaction to an enormous wave of artillery.  A few rounds got picked off…  then space burned, all around the planet.
He stared at it.  It looked like…  Yes.  Every single pirate vessel in orbit, and nothing else, had been…  eliminated by a wave of about five thousand artillery rounds coming from every direction.
He looked over at her again, still waiting calmly while all the buzzers died.
“I hope that wasn’t too expensive,” she told him, grinning mischievously.
“Five thousand artillery rounds?” he muttered, looking back at it.  “That’s gotta be a part of the Navy.”  He shrugged, then looked back at her.  “But I’d pay anything to get those damn pirates off our backs.  They’ve been killing and torturing us for twelve long years.”
She raised an eyebrow.  “Twelve?”
He nodded.  “You were about eighteen days old when it started,” he told her.  “Damn monsters, threatening me with first yours and Bubble’s lives, then my own.”  He sighed, staring at the floor.  “And all so they could get their hooves on the intel my father obtained.  If you have the power to kill them, then be my guest, even if it bankrupts the nation.”
“Done,” Flight answered calmly.
He looked up.  “Done?” he questioned.
“Over the last year and a half, I and the Royal Equineothame Navy have…  blitzed a couple dozen big pirate bases,” she informed him, grinning mischievously once again.  “Now there’s only stragglers.”
He stared at her.  “Thank you.”  He looked at the floor again.  “Flight…” he began, then paused.  “No.  Princess…  May I hug you?”
It looked like Flight was taken aback by the question.  “...  What?” she asked, audibly confused.
He looked up at her.  “May I hug you, Princess?”
“Uhh…  Sure, I guess,” she muttered uneasily.
He noticed the bulk under her cloak shift a little- was it a weapon?  He didn’t care.  He wanted to hug his daughter for the first time since she was a newborn foal, even if it was the last thing he did.  He walked forwards…  and hugged her.
He didn’t die.  The thing under her cloak moved again- it felt almost like it was alive.  Did she have a foal of her own?  No, she wasn’t old enough for that- and it was the wrong shape, anyways.  Did she have a pet?
The door suddenly slid open of its own accord.
He looked- and so did Flight.
There was Cheap Gold…  with a minigun in her hooves.
“Princess,” she greeted calmly.  “You’re alive.”  She raised the gun and pulled the trigger.