//------------------------------// // Ch8: Androids On A Plane // Story: Synthetic // by Not Luna //------------------------------// Space Cold, empty, dead space. No heat, no sound, and no life. It surrounds us from all sides; imposing and seemingly infinite, with only the distant stars, so far out of reach, to keep us company in the vast expanse. But even then the volatile balls of gas offered little in the ways of comfort in the face of the soul crushing loneliness. It was a wonder how the first beings to go into space, the griffins, were able to survive without interaction besides themselves for so many months. Perhaps it was just because griffins are not as sensitive to friendship magic as other beings are. Perhaps it was because these particular griffins were just more jaded among their kin. It just goes to show that when ponies made it to space, there was a lot of crying and begging, just a few minutes after leaving the atmosphere. But, instinctual pony pride demanded they make it without the pilots canceling halfway through. So, they picked the most jaded, desensitized, and distant pony they could find to perform the first mission to the moon on her own. Princess Luna. It is said in history books and stories, that her face didn't even twitch from the annoyed scowl she wore earlier that day. She didn't say a word aside from the required responses from base. When she got there, she only said a few words, before taking pictures, collecting samples, and returning home: “Up here, in the cold of space-- even on my beloved satellite. I truly am alone aren't I?” Even the unmovable herald of the moon and succumbed to the loneliness of the great unknown. It wasn't until a few years later, that the problem was solved, thanks to the ingenious and stupidly simple idea of Bubble Berry, the great-grandson of the the once-Element of Laughter. “Just have a party in space! That way, all the ponies up there wouldn't be so scared and lonely!” At it’s core, the idea was silly and simple. Friendship magic is itself, a manifestation of camaraderie, used to naturally keep ponies in a perpetual state of optimism and good spirits. Parties had, in the past, proven themselves many times over to be great sources of friendship magics. So in light of this new idea, early star-bound ponies were sent up with pre-packaged party-MREs of a sort, complete with balloons, dehydrated cake, and powdered punch. It was a success and the practice of parties in space continued to live up into the distant future. Which is why Jacob was so confused as to why all of the ponies had gotten up from their seats and moved to the lower deck to have a party as soon as the passenger craft took off. He took some time to look it up on the internet and learned that the ponies aboard any craft need to have a party in order to keep from contracting something akin to manic depression. A strange, but necessary practice. However, as much as he appreciated a good get-together, he could not bring himself to join them in the merriment. He felt as if his melancholy mood would bring everything down. He didn’t want to risk the other’s health so he stayed in his seat. He contented himself to mindlessly sift through popular culture on the holographic display on his wrist while his thoughts drifted elsewhere. He thought of his family, the past, and of the trials ahead. He had been told time and time again about how dangerous this mission was, how there would be a fifty-fifty chance of him not coming back. He had been told that if he used all his skills, both from training and human instinct, that the chance of return would increase dramatically. He had been told that if this was done correctly, it would send a message to all others looking to start trouble, and he could return home. He was told all this would happen. But he doubted. He still questioned whether he would make it back, questioned whether any of the skills he had would make a difference, and questioned whether any of this would prevent a future event. He wondered if it was even worth-- “Hey!” “Gah!” Momentarily startled, Jacob whipped his head around at lightning speeds to face the voice. He saw a griffin had taken the seat next to him and had gotten really close to his face. “Where ya headed bud?” “...” Now that Jacob had a moment to calm down, he could take in more of the griffin’s form. He was dressed in some normal street clothing for a griffin: just a pair of pants to cover the no-no zone and shirtless for easy wing access. “How ‘bout some names first! Mine’s Gull! Or was it Lou? I don’t know, just call me Gull! What’s your name?” “... Jacob.” Jesus Christo did his breath smell something awful. “Well that’s a weird name! You wouldn’t happen to be one of them experimental new species made in test tube would ya?” “What? Who is this guy?” Jacob thought as his CPU tried it’s hardest to compute all the sensory input it was receiving. Eventually, he noticed some defining features of the griffins face, more notably the completely bloodshot eyes he had. “Dude, are you high?” He snicked a bit before bursting out into full blown laughter. Yup. Definitely high. “AHAHAHA! O hohoh, man, the only thing I’m high on right now is the knowledge I posses.” Jacob’s face morphed into an unamused stare. He had met people like this before; idiots on drugs who boasted that they had the answer to life and everything, only to wake six hours later up in a ditch next to a dilapidated stretch of road in south-eastern Kansas. That was a weird Spring Break. “Dude, if you knew what I knew, you’d be havin’ to pick your brains up from the floor from how much it blew your mind!” “I’m sure I would.” Jacob responded calmly, wiping spittle off of his face. “What exactly do you ‘know’?” Deciding he would humor the crazed griffin, he egged him on. Better than sitting alone sulking in his chair, he mused. “The government man! They’re everywhere! They have cameras and microphones and spies all over the damn system man! It’s domestic surveillance!” Now Jacob’s interest was actually piqued. The government happened to be his immediate family. Now he felt obligated to listen to the blazed griffin, if only to glean what he felt like was the average citizen’s view on the government. That last bit caught him though… “Domestic surveillance? I don’t think I’ve heard anything about that.” The griffin snickered, “Dude, you been livin’ under a rock er’ somethin’? It’s all over the news! The governments' been setting up all kinds of secret agencies the track our every move! You can’t even get on the internet without feeling like yer’ bein’ watched. Only way to avoid it is to cut yourself off. But who can live without the internet ya know?” Now Gull had Jacob’s undivided attention. How had he never heard of this? Surely Celestia trusted him with information like this? This had to be a hoax or some druggies ramblings. He momentarily stopped time in the equivalent of his mind’s eye to check something. Bringing up several news articles with the key-word ‘surveillance’, he found that the griffin was not lying. Almost all of the news was taken up with stories about spying agencies and such things. Why was he not told about this? He would need to speak with Celestia about it later at length. The short range comm embedded in his jaw could only reach so far and there was no guarantee that she would read any of his emails in time. Running a company and a solar system tended to take up a lot of time. He would just have to file it away for a later date. He let his CPU come down from over-clock and turned to address the still way-too-close griffin. “Thank you, you have been… Most helpful.” “Yer welcome! Always there to help a citizen in need! If you’ll excuse me Jeremiah, I’m gonna go down to the party!” As Gull bolted from the seat, Jacob didn't even bother to correct him. His mind was still trying to compute what he had heard. There was absolutely no reason why Celestia would need to keep secrets from him. They were thicker than thieves in almost every aspect! Perhaps it was just a scenario of ‘Didn't ask, didn't tell’. He went with that for the moment, it was the only logical explanation to the conundrum besides ‘Celestia didn't trust him’. “Like that’s actually an option.” Deciding not to dwell on it for too long, Jacob began the routine of letting everything go into sleep mode in preparation for another extended period of dormancy. ...That is until he heard the gunshots from the party deck. “Everypony on the floor now!” “You idiot! Did you just fire a gun in a spaceship?” “They’re blanks dude! I’m not stupid!” “Both of you shut up and get the zip-ties! Take the hostages to the the cockpit! Everypony does as we say, and nopony has to get hurt!” Jacob immediately went into a battle trance, blocking out all internal stimuli and concentrating on the environment around him and everything in it. Using his enhanced hearing, Jacob counted three voices, but that didn't necessarily mean there weren't more. The rapid succession of shots denoted that the hijackers had automatic weapons, making any Marshall aboard the craft defenseless. That left him, the only being aboard that had the ability fight with uneven odds, to fight. Taking responsibility into his own hands, he unclasped his seat belt, and crept into the aisle. As he stepped out from his row, he cloaked in to remain unseen by other passengers. A little bar popped up in the top left corner of his vision, showing him how much time the computer allotted for cloaking before it had to shut down, lest he draw power from vital systems. “Three minutes. More than enough time.” The craft he had been aboard was a simple three deck Doeing 868. There was the luggage deck at the bottom, the party deck in the middle, and the passenger deck at the top, with the cockpit at the front, and the engine room at the back. It wouldn't take long to move to the party deck, asses the situation, and hastily come up with a plan to save the craft and land on Io as expected. Time to go to work. -------------------------------------------------------------- Gull was having a very-- wait… was it Lou? He couldn’t for the life of him remember. Probably due to that amazing hash he had not a few minutes before the flight to Io. The perfect mixture of dank with the perfect golden brow-- He shook his head violently to get his thoughts back on track. “Concentrate Gull! This is not the time to drift off!” He was again reminded of his situation by the butt of a machine gun being introduced to the side of his beak. “Quit movin’!” “Sorry.” “Yeah you better be bud.” Gull was having a very bad day. After he had talked to the weird monkey thing up in the passenger deck, he had gone down to the party for some good times. Although good times did not entail a passenger craft being hijacked by White Knights, it was certainly not out of the range of possibilities when it came to the amount of violence being created in the recent months. Many in his conspiracy group even speculated that it would happen eventually, the opposing groups getting so desperate for a flaw in the other’s armor that they would endanger the very beings they were protecting/selling to. “No skin off their noses if we all die, as long as they get a blow directly on the compound.” Gull knew where they were taking them. They either intended to use the hostages as bargaining chips for the surrender of information or prisoners, or they were going to crash the thing into a building wholesale. That last thought sent a cold chill down his spine. “I don’t wanna die!” There was a lull in activity as the excitement calmed down and Gull took his first good look at the White Knights that has imprisoned him and his fellow party-goers. They were a White Knight Cloaker squad. A good portion of them were decked out in casual civilian clothing with mundane arms, probably plants to boost the numbers when the attack started, causing distractions, relaying movement, and blocking exits while the real team moved in. When he got his first look at the real deal, he was absolutely stunned. They were geared up in some of the most advanced looking armor he had ever seen. Servos whirred, face-plates shone like the midday sun, and lethal looking weaponry stood poised and ready to fire at a moments notice. He could tell there were more than meets the eye though. Every once in a while, the air would shimmer slightly and give a faint outline of a creature that was faintly quadrupedal. If his buddies could see this now, they would shit themselves. This was a known vigilante militia made up of civilians, waving high tech weaponry and tactics only a military genius could come up with around like a chick waves a rattle around. It was a contradiction that only a conspiracy theorist with a philosophical boost like his could comprehend. “The government.” Gull thought with a mental snarl. While Gull was brooding he noticed that the Knights in armor had taken ‘High Value Individuals’ to the front of the ship for holding, leaving the rest to lay awkwardly on the floor with the non-armored ones, one of which was fidgeting rather intensely and sweating buckets. “Dude, I gotta bleed the lizard!” The pony that was next to him reared back and pointed to the lavatory at the back end of the room. “I didn’t need to know that! Just go! You’re a big pony!” The pony in question mumbled a thank you and bolted for the door. As it started to close, it suddenly stopped in its tracks for a few moments then swung all the way shut. From inside you could hear the satisfied sigh come from the pony. He must've been holding it a long time because you could hear it for a good twenty seconds. Gull heard some shuffling, then a flush-- “Gak!” It was small, but noticeable to hypersensitive griffin ears. The noise of the toilet flushing mostly muted the sound of surprise. Then silence. “Hey dude! You okay in there?” More silence. “This isn’t funny man! Come on out! Only the faint roar of the engines and murmuring of the prisoners greeted him. “Alright that’s it! I’m dragging you out of there!” The pony that formerly stood next to his companion stomped angrily toward the door, now seemingly twenty times more imposing to Gull than before. Using his obvious Earth Pony strength, the pony wrenched open the door to drag-- “Sweet Celesti-- Gak!” His sentence was cut off prematurely, courtesy of the nine inch blade that shoved it’s way out the back of his throat. The whole thing went to shit right then and there. The plane exploded into chaos, shots being fired, civilians screaming and trying to get out of the way, the sounds of pain and gunshots and sizzling flesh and-- Wait… Sizzling flesh?! Gull forced himself to look up from his fetal position to locate the source of the burning flesh. All around him he saw the bodies of his former captors, some eviscerated, organs spilled everywhere. Some were decapitated, and some were just hastily stabbed through the neck. He did see the one body that was burned black as charcoal near the front entrance. The few hostages that were left were the ones like him, curled up in protective positions on the floor or behind tables. Snacks and punch and bullet holes were everywhere. Miraculously, none of the bullets hit anything vital like wires, pipes, or windows. Just a lot of cosmetic damage. He was just getting his bearings to help the others when something brushed past his leg. Gull jumped up and eagle shrieked at the top of his lungs in a very un-manly manner. His nerves were already frayed from the hijack, he didn’t need one of those spooks coming back to clean up the mess. He waited for a bullet to the head from nowhere, but got nothing. The only sound that greeted him was the whimpering of the ones that didn’t flee, and the continued drone of the engines. Whatever brushed past his leg, was cloaked, the savior of the craft, and definitely not a White Knight. He only hoped it was benevolent. -------------------------------------------------------------- Jacob watched from plain sight as Gull gathered up the remaining hostages and started escorting them to the luggage deck. The events had probably sobered the griffin up enough that he was able to comprehend the severity of the situation and let his instincts take over, moving and protecting those that were too weak to protect themselves. “Probably for the best.” he thought as his battle trance calmed down and he assessed the situation again. Those ones in the fancy armor were still holding some of the passengers and the crew in the cockpit and he needed them out on the party deck. The cockpit was too small and linear to fight effectively in, and the wide open party deck made the perfect battlefield. Only problem was that the armor they had on was on-par with his own ability, making the fighting of them a more difficult prospect than hunting dazed and under-equipped red shirts. Glancing at the amount of time he had left, he was pleasantly surprised to find that the initial attack had only taken one minute. As Gull escorted the final civilian away, Jacob let his cloak drop, conserving power for the upcoming battle. Striding over to the doors to the back, he locked them, intending to release them after they landed. Turning his attention to the room, he began the process of creating defensive positions with tables and chairs in the large, open room. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing. He worked quickly, as chatter came over one of the corpses comms, sounding panicked. As he finished up, Jacob caught one phrase over the radio that signaled the beginning: “--gunshots, coming to investigate.” Taking that as his cue to get into position, he activated his cloak again and pressed his back to the wall next to the front door. It didn’t take long before he heard the hoofsteps coming from the stairwell. He ,once again, slipped into the battle trance as a polarized dome poked out of the threshold of the door and gasped. “What the hell happened-- Hey!” The pony was quickly silenced by a hyper-vibrating blade that cut through the thin cloaking armor like wet paper. Unceremoniously dropping the limp body on the floor, he grabbed the pony's Kriss Vector T-3 and dove behind the nearby table for the incoming shitstorm. Of course, the rapid action of the kill and the dive broke the cloak he had going. Seeing the large blur take out their squad-mate, take his gun, and dive behind a table inspired the rest of the nine hijackers still in the stairwell to take action. “Open fire!” The bullets rained down on Jacob’s light cover like a hailstorm. By the holes they were making in the far wall and the sound they made, he discerned that they were all using SMG’s for mobility and close quarters combat. Unfortunately for them, they were still lightly trained civies, and didn’t know the meaning of cover fire. As soon as the lull came in, Jacob dolphin dived from one table to another strategically placed table, popped his head up, and opened fire himself. His firearm training with Luna paid off, as unprepared combatants were assaulted with .40 S&W. Two were dropped with short bursts before they got the idea and cloaked. Knowing he had no chance if he wasted his ammo, Jacob cloaked himself and crept to another table farther up in the front and laid low. When the ponies finished reloading and made swiss cheese of the table he was at, it was too late. With their concentration on the wrong table, he gripped the Kriss in one hand, prepped a super chilled blast in the other, and popped up once again. He capped two more as he let out the chilled air toward its target, freezing servos and firing mechanisms until the strain of exerting them caused them to break. The armor on at least three had been made immobile and useless, rendering them incapacitated. Seven down, three to go. At least, that was his mentality before he heard the sickening crack from behind him. A stray bullet from one of the Cloakers that had reappeared next to him had missed and flown straight into the window where cracks were slowly becoming bigger. “Hull damage detected. Hermetically sealing doors to party deck now.” The ship’s pre-recorded message played like a funeral song in Jacob’s audio receptors. The cracks became bigger, and bigger, and bigger until… “I fucking hate you all.” The starboard side wall burst outward from the pressurized cabin in a deafening explosion, making a hole large enough to let in a bulldozer. The remaining three ponies, Jacob, and debris were all sucked out into the void. As per regulation, the ship had stopped it’s trek to Io on account of hull damage, and awaited instruction from crews that had been notified. “This is where it ends.” he thought as he waited for the blackness of space to kill him. And waited… ...And waited. “Hold on.” Jacob took a look around and saw the others in a similar state. The suits must have been rated for space walking. “Duh, android!” he let out a silent bark of laughter as the vibrations in his jaw allowed him to hear his own voice. He had held tightly onto the SMG throughout the whole ordeal. This sparked an idea in him. Orienting himself facing away from the craft, he let off two short shots that pushed him back toward the ship. He felt something crash into the side of the gun and saw the hijackers had regained their bearings as well and had opened fire. Jacob didn't dare return, lest he alter his own course and fly into the engine heat-sink or something. The hijackers had noticed how stupid they were in firing upon him as they drifted away, orienting around with well placed shots and drifting back. By then Jacob had already gotten back to the artificial gravity of the ship and planted his feet on solid carpet. Ending the ponies who were drifting back was like shooting fish in a barrel. As the kinetic energy in the bullets shot them back into the void of space, Jacob let himself drift out of the battle trance and look around. There were no more life forms to be seen, just the gaping hole in the side of the ship. He sat down, hard and let it all sink in. He had to end at least seventeen lives in less than five minutes. Those ponies probably had families somewhere, waiting to see if their father or husband came home! They knew they could die in the line of duty but that made Jacob no less remorseful about what he had become. What he had to become for the good of others. Perhaps it would be easier to end the lives of drug trafficking scum than ponies who took matters into their own hooves to protect themselves. They had good intentions; it’s just when you go and endanger innocents, the line blurs just a bit. “It’s easy to forget what a sin is in the middle of a battlefield.” He went inside and hid behind some free-floating tables as tow-ships came in to take it to the Io space port. Off to the side, Jacob could clearly see the majesty of the gas giant Jupiter in all his glory. Swirling winds up to several hundred miles-per-hour raged within, writhing about with clouds in a big, ever churning stew of chaotic activity. The small rings paled in comparison to Saturn’s but they were magnificent in their own way, the backdrop being what it was. In the distance, he could make out a yellowish moon that was steadily growing bigger with each passing minute. He could hear some muffled vibrations through the floor, picking up the message-- even without sound to carry it to his ears. He set his jaw and stared at the approaching moon intensely. His skills had been used in a real world situation and he was now confident he would make it out alive and get back. Luna and Celestia and Cadence and Twilight and Solder and Matte and all the others were counting on him! Any that got in his way would be pushed aside or dealt with accordingly. The sounds from the ship played multiple times in his head like a marching cadence, steeling his nerves for the impending test he was going to endure for the whole system. “Now approaching your final destination: Io.”