Rainbow Dash checked her zero-emission chameleon-skin bodysuit for tears and dead zones for what felt like the twentieth time. It was a more advanced version of what she’d worn on her tour in Bridleon, modified to nullify body heat to fool infra-red detection systems, and built from radar-absorbent material.
The dropship took two hours to get into position, not because the destination was particularly distant, but because the piloting AI fired up one initial thrust to start the journey and then immediately shifted gear to the ‘drift’ setting on the anti-grav propulsion system. Ideally, this would prevent the craft from being detected or differentiated from any other more benign airborne mass like a flock of birds or a migrating drake or wyvern.
The vocal codec on Rainbow’s NOI crackled to life, broadcasting Rarity’s voice intimately close.
“I’ve returned. How goes the journey?”
Rainbow held down a shudder and tried to suppress the conviction that her private space was being invaded by an invisible mare whispering in her ear. “Hermes said that we were about twenty minutes off, but that was maybe ten minutes ago. So I guess we’re close. Where’d you go, by the way?”
A pause.
“An acquaintance of mine was requesting assistance. Nothing you need concern yourself with. Let’s go over your orders one more time.”
Rainbow sighed wearily. “Drop two miles off the base. Infiltrate the security perimeter and extract this ‘Circuit Cutter’. Head engineer, mousy guy named Gizmo. Ignore the warhead, get in and out as quick as possible.” She stopped and, after a moment’s deliberation, decided to finally ask. “You never really told me what this warhead is actually for though.”
“It’s quite simple,” said Rarity gently. “The rocket contains an experimental magnetic accelerant engine known as a CME Enticer. The Children of the Night intend to launch it into the sun. There the engine will activate and trigger a solar storm of an unprecedented scale. This will result in a coronal mass ejection powerful enough to overload the global power grid and essentially fry all networked electronics.
“In essence,” she concluded, “if the launch isn’t stopped, our electrical infrastructure will be crippled for years to come. And given how much we’ve come to rely on electricity, our society may very well disintegrate completely in the meantime.”
“Fucking seriously?” asked Rainbow, tone tinged with amused disbelief. “This sounds like the plot to an e-comic; like something out of the sundamned Power Ponies. Why don’t you want me to destroy the thing while I’m in there?”
“Comic book plot or no, I sincerely doubt you’ll find a glowing red self-destruct button on the consoles, Miss Dash. Make no mistake, this is a very large, very sturdy device. Decommissioning it will be Pinkamena’s department.”
Rainbow sprang toward the unfamiliar name. “Pinkamena?”
That hooves-on-chalkboard voice sounded in her ears again, the same irritating voice that came from the helidrones, the voice of the datarat she found in Rarity’s company.
“That’s me! Pinkamena “Pinkie” Diane Pie, novahot decker extraordinaire, best datarat on this side of New Ponyville, humbly at your service!”
Rainbow’s curiosity got the better of her. “Pinkamena Pie, you said? You wouldn’t happen to have any space-faring relatives would you?”
“Not that I know of,” Pinkie answered brightly. “Why?”
“Applejack told me about a geologist she met on the way to Artemis II, or something? Don’t remember her first name. Anyway, ask her later.”
She heard the confusion in Pinkie’s voice. “You’ll ask her later, or are you telling me to ask her?”
Abruptly, carrying on the conversation wasn’t worth it any more. “I don’t—ugh, whatever. Forget it.”
“Oookay then.”
Hermes cut into the awkward exchange with machine-surgical precision.
“Miss Dash. The dropship is in optimal position for you to disembark. If we drift any closer, we will be at risk of crossing the facility’s aerial cordon and forewarning the security systems.”
“Got it.” Rainbow got out of her seat and hooked a forehoof around the cabin door’s drop latch. “Looks like it’s showtime, ladies and gentlemen. Shut off the neural codec, Rare.”
“Will do. Remember: double-time it in and out. You won’t want to be in there forty-five minutes from now. And Rainbow?” Rarity’s tone hardened in the wake of the jarring informal address. “Bring Gizmo out alive. I don’t want a repeat of what happened in Bridleon.”
Rainbow paused, wondering sluggishly if she’d misheard. No chance; the neural codec was pitch-perfect. “How in Tartarus do you know about that?”
No answer, only the hum of the dropship’s anti-grav engine. The link was closed. Rainbow shrugged to herself and jerked the latch. The door slid away grindingly slow, and she leapt through the opening immediately, not giving herself time to consider what else Rarity knew about her.
The featureless green of the steppe spread from one end of the horizon to the other with nary a landmark in sight. Rainbow spun on her axis as she fell, taking in the sights at terminal velocity. The unclaimed steppes of Leng lay beyond the Olympian peaks that supported Canterlot just north of New Ponyville. Leng was not a contested territory. Much like Bridleon, the natural resources available here were sparse, though without the benefit of Bridleon’s buried treasure trove of fossil fuel and anthroid relics.
There was a government-mandated development initiative to try and make some use of the acres upon acres of empty space a couple of decades back, but it fell apart due to a general lack of enthusiasm and funding. Pony communities wilted, citing soul-crushing isolation and exposure, while crops fared no better in the cold, dry climate. To this day, the steppes were mostly devoid of life, save for wolves, ghouls and a handful of nomadic antelope tribes. The antelopes were diminutive and singularly peculiar, savage and shamanistic. As such, they got on poorly with the ponyfolk and the Equestrian government eventually abandoned all hope of forging a fruitful relationship with the tribes. Ambassadors returned home and trade routes dried up as fast as they were erected. The paper trail wrote Leng off as worse than unprofitable, as an unmitigated money sink.
But it seemed that there was at least one off-the-books project taking place here at the behest of the Equestrian government.
Rainbow doubted it would be the only one.
A hundred fifty meters until contact. She spread her tri-folds and pumped the anti-grav to slow her descent. The earth turned sharp, she could discern the individual blades of grass below. It hit her like a truck, and she loosened her joints to absorb the shock. She let her momentum carry her forward and rolled over the stiff grass, feeling her mane moisten with dew. Her chameleon skin came online with a snap and a whine as she stood and pulled up her hood, and she vanished in the dim early afternoon sunlight like a phantom. The sky was heavy with storm clouds. The rain hadn’t reached the steppe as yet, but if and when it did the water might further distort the camouflage of the chameleon skin. Consulting her optical compass, she started in a north-eastern direction, unconsciously taking a marching pace.
She wondered idly how Rarity had gotten hold of her military track record, and how Pinkamena intended to ‘decommission’ the warhead remotely. The notion that the targeting computers or the missile itself were somehow connected to the Expanse seemed ludicrous. Black sites tended to be fully isolated from the grid. There were no phone lines and no open networks.
The chilly breeze ran a parent’s caress through the grass, revealing a weatherproof sensor spike. The device was slick, bulb-shaped and shaded green to blend in with the surrounding turf. Were it not for the blinking lights puncturing the bulb at each of its cardinal poles, Rainbow would’ve missed it completely.
She flipped up her eyepatch and surveyed the surroundings with her smart eye. The sensor spikes were spread along the perimeter of the site at ten meter intervals. In theory, her zero-emission chameleon skin would allow her to penetrate the perimeter without alerting the sensors. She crossed the barrier trying for equidistance between two of the spikes; the closer she came to either, the more likely it was that they’d pick up on the distortion from her camouflage.
If the sensors detected her presence, they didn’t show it.
She continued deeper into the perimeter, keeping an eye peeled for sentries. Lightning’s voice in her ears, almost as clear as the vocal codec: Dash, we’re strapped for time and you’re wearing a state-of-the-art infiltration suit. Why not fly?
Under the hood, Rainbow’s lip twitched. Did you get killed by the nuke in Bridleon, then? Haunting me now, are you?
That’s moronic and you know it. The fact that you think you’re hearing my voice is probably just a symptom of your PTSD.
Hey. Is that any way to talk to a superior officer?
Officer? You were a staff sergeant, Dash, don’t get a swelled head. Besides, you’re nobody’s fucking officer anymore.
A raised mound materialized among the featureless green, notable due to how artificial it seemed compared to its surroundings.
See? I woulda missed that if I’d been flying, right?
The ghost in her ears remained silent. She shrugged it off and approached the protrusion. The grass looked different in this patch, denser and less natural. Following a vague feeling in her gut, she dug into the patch and pulled. It came away smoothly and in one piece, a strip of sod laid to cover a gleaming steel hatch. A DNA scanner blinked dully in the center of the octagonal door.
Thankfully, Rarity had seen this coming. A biohazard pouch containing a sample of Blue Moon’s blood was provided after the initial briefing. The old stallion proved unreceptive to willingly give them the sample and after a few minutes of arguing, Rarity allowed her security to collect it forcibly.
Rainbow ripped the pouch, withdrew a test tube and uncorked it with her teeth. She sprinkled the sample liberally over the scanner. Most DNA locks were fine-tuned to recognize saliva, but blood worked as well and often better. The lock chirped accommodatingly and the bolts withdrew with a dry chink. Peering into the darkness below, she could make out no obvious threat. She took the ladder two rungs at a time, taking care to shut the lid above her. The night vision setting on her smart eye was of no use without any ambient light; the shaft might as well have gone down for miles. As though she was descending into the pits of Tartarus itself.
The afternoon was transitioning slowly into early evening when the carrier finally made its shuddering descent onto one of the landing pads on Canterlot’s outer rim.
“You couldn’t have taken us in closer?” Twilight asked Snake Eyes irritably.
“Yeah? You wanna try piloting in these conditions, huh?” Snake Eyes twisted around his seat to glare at her. “This is the Olympian Ridge, and FYI, it’s some serious shit. The air’s thin and the rain’s turning into hail. The sundamned rotors are gonna crystallize midair if I push her much farther.”
He shook out a cigarette and lit it. “I’ma pop the hatch and let you folks get on with your bid’ness. I reckon you don’t need me out there and I’m not going to sit in the cold if I don’t gotta.”
“Thank you, Snake,” said Fluttershy.
“Yeah, yeah, sure.” His mood had evidently soured from the exchange with Twilight.
True to Snake Eyes’ observation, stinging grains of ice took the place of rain outside. The SkySystems weather net looked to be down once again. Twilight tried to stem the waves of resentment as they washed over her; this was her homecoming, after all.
Ivory towers lined the streets.
New Ponyville had been an unplanned melting pot of a number of species and cultures, and for the most part, the buildings and street plans tended to reflect this fact. The tenement houses could be patched together from bricks, corrugated steel, wood, cement and in some extreme cases drywall, sometimes all at the same time. The streets were equally chaotic, radiating from the center in all directions, over hills and valleys and through public parks. New Ponyville’s expansion was, in a word, organic. Traffic suffered; the roads twisted, punctuated by unsynced traffic signals often at intervals consisting of less than a hundred feet.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Canterlot’s development was always rigidly plotted. The architecture was soft and sterile, and the streets were arranged in an intuitive, AI-generated grid. Consequently, ground traffic was more manageable and there were fewer air vehicles. Building permits were granted sparingly and the owners had to agree to keep within a number of set parameters before construction could commence. This made sense: unlike New Ponyville, Canterlot stood on even ground and only had so much room on its cliff side platform to work with. Efficient use of space was ideal.
The palace towers jutted upward ahead, phallic and erect despite the frost.
Giselle fractionally quickened her pace until she was striding side-by-side with Twilight. Twilight kept her eyes unflinchingly ahead, trying to ignore the tall, dark-plumed gryphon next to her. The façade didn’t last; she flinched visibly when the gryphon elbowed her.
“Ack! W-what?!”
Giselle leaned in conspiratorially. “Hey, don’t look now but I think the rookie’s taken a liking to you.”
Twilight grunted. “Sentry? Yeah, no kidding. He’s been staring at my ass ever since we got off the carrier. Not very subtle is he? Doesn’t know how to take a hint either.”
Giselle chortled. “You know how to speak your mind, Sparkle.”
Approaching the foot of the palace, they saw that the main throughway was barricaded wall to wall with about a dozen assorted vehicles, air- and ground-functional. Contrary to what Twilight expected, none of them appeared to be Royal Guard or police transports. They were sleek and dark, modern but conservative and very well maintained. Though they lacked the lightbars, the front of each vehicle was fitted with conspicuous push and PIT bumpers, much like a standard police patrol car.
“Do you think those cars belong to the Children of the Night?” asked Fluttershy.
Twilight shook her head without stopping. “From what Rarity told us, the Children of the Night are disorganized and interested in maintaining their anonymity. There’s no way they’d arrange to have matching transportation.”
A unicorn stallion wearing an immaculate pinstriped suit and sunglasses emerged from one of the cars and started toward them. Twilight couldn’t help but notice that he was holding a Levitus pump-action before him, casually lowered but promising to rise at the first sign of trouble.
Her armed escort tensed and cut in front, keeping her out of the firing line.
“Then who is this?” Fluttershy continued. “Is he with the, uh, the Canterlot Underwatch?”
“Fella does look pretty spiff,” Applejack contributed. “Y’don’t see a lotta government officials nowadays sportin’ pinstripe though.”
Twilight cut the farmer a surprised look. “I’m… inclined to agree.”
“Stop! What you think you are doing?” The stallion’s accent seemed familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it. “This is restricted area. We… insist you clear out immediately.” He jerked the gun at them, still not quite raised.
“And who in the bleeding Tartarus are you to ‘restrict’ this area?” asked Twilight, more confident behind her four armed bodyguards. “This is the Canterlot palace. What authority do you have here?”
The suited stallion clicked his teeth.
“Oy! Shtani! How long you’re going to have me sitting out here, scaring off kids?”
Another one of the cars in the center hinged open, this one an impressive limousine. A single stallion descended the discharge steps and stood squinting at them in the sleet and fading light. He was a fairly tall specimen, bearded and dressed in a tailcoat fit for a tsar. A pair of diminutive prescription lenses was mounted on his nose, framing his face and accenting his cheekbones.
Twilight grimaced. Sundamned ghetto chic. You want me to believe that you can’t afford corrective surgery, wearing that?
The two suits exchanged words in a harsh-sounding foreign dialect. For a moment it seemed like the first stallion would lose it and ventilate his superior with the pump-action then and there, but instead he left the way he came, trembling with barely-suppressed irritation and wounded pride. The bespectacled newcomer glared at Twilight’s group.
“Can I help you folks?” he asked icily. His accent was much less pronounced than his subordinate’s and, while he was not armed, he radiated an aura of cultured control.
Twilight brushed past her guards and locked eyes with the stallion. “You can tell me who you are and why you’re obstructing traffic into the palace.”
“My name is Fancy Pants.” He made an all-encompassing wave over the cars behind him. “My associates and I are here at the behest of the Royal Guard. Until the signal is given, nobody enters or leaves the palace grounds.”
“You’re Fancy Pants?” Twilight remembered her last few days in Canterlot a number of weeks back. The Stalliongrad Mafia and their new Pakhan, Fancy Pants, courtesy of Lucid’s assassination of Duke Levin. The same Lucid that Shining Armor took into custody shortly thereafter, with Twilight’s consultation. “Did my bonehead brother put you up to this?”
“You’re Twilight Sparkle then? A pleasure to make your acquaintance.” Fancy Pants bowed stiffly. “Yes, it was Shining Armor who requested our services. And seeing that he did us a kindness some months ago, I felt it was only right and proper to return the favor. The Bratva does not forget its debts.”
“Why couldn’t he get the Guard’s help instead?” Twilight asked, narrowing her eyes.
“It is my understanding that most of the Royal Guard is, rather inconveniently, missing in action,” said Fancy Pants. “Mister Armor came to us as a matter of last resort. For the moment, we’re keeping watch over the outskirts of the palace, but Mister Armor took a detachment of our combat operatives inside about an hour ago.”
“An hour?” Twilight repeated disbelievingly. “You don’t think it’s suspicious that he hasn’t come out yet? Come to that, don’t you have any vocal link with him?”
“Mister Armor tells us that the palace interior is equipped with comm jamming equipment. As for the interval… It is still inside acceptable parameters. He’s enlisted our assistance until six in the evening. Once this span is fully exhausted we will cut our losses and depart. But until then, he has our full support. Will that be all for questions?”
“Full support.” Twilight gave the Pakhan a sardonic grin. “Right. I’m going in. With or without your aid.”
Fancy Pants consulted an antique pocket watch detachedly. The action looked manufactured to Twilight’s tutored eye; he was taking cover.
“And what makes you think you’ll have any better luck than your brother, Miss Sparkle?”
“I can at least get the lights back on,” said Twilight, nodding to the farmer. “Come on, Applejack. I’ll show you the way to the circuit center.”
Applejack smirked and pulled her Stetson fractionally lower over her eyes. “Right behind you.”
The Pakhan turned to watch them as they passed but made no attempt at pursuit. Twilight gauged her opponent correctly: he didn’t dare try stopping her by force—not with her overt connections to both the Royal Guard and the Princess herself.
“We will not take responsibility for any harm that comes to you while you are inside the building,” he called after them.
“Deal,” she answered curtly over her shoulder.
When her hooves were finally on solid ground again, Rainbow found herself in a confined corridor cramped with pipes, vents and pressure meters. She moved cautiously but without hesitation, and the corridor’s mouth opened out into a rectangular processing checkpoint, overseen by a stallion in what she recognized as Lodestar Antimag armor.
Is Lodestar supporting the Children of the Night?
The notion wasn’t out of the question: despite their position as effective law enforcement in New Ponyville, Lodestar was at the end of the day a private military contractor. As such, its allegiances tended to align with those whose pockets ran deepest. And given that Equestrian economics were strictly a free market affair, Lodestar could legally support domestic terrorist groups as long as they could provide the receipts.
The Lodestar grunt sat reclining in his chair behind a desk laden with newsprint hardcopy, clearly asleep. Presumably his job was to make sure that new arrivals were on the staff list, and to usher them through the x-rays and the metal detector. Rainbow slid a glance appraisingly over her prosthetics and the metal detector in turn, lip twitching at the sheer obsolescent stupidity of it.
For real? You still have this stone-age gear? Don’t have many cyborgs working here, do you?
She vaulted over the counter, bypassing the arch of the metal detector, flicked the sleeping guard a lazy salute and continued into the fluorescent-lit corridors beyond, deeper into the sprawling complex.
She ran into several more awake, patrolling guards as she navigated the burnished metallic hallways, but none of them presented any difficulty to her. Wearing the chameleon-skin, she snuck through and around their patrol routes without fear of alerting them; it was unlikely that they’d pick up on the minimal visual distortion unless they were actively looking for it. The few cameras smattered around the facility proved equally unaware, at least for the moment. Perhaps when someone went over the security tapes later on they might be able to track her progress, but that was inconsequential. There were non-military personnel as well; occasionally she ran into engineering and maintenance workers busily replacing wall panels or troubleshooting exposed circuits, wire cutters and soldering irons at the ready. They seemed fully absorbed in their respective tasks and she doubted they’d notice her even without the suit.
Piece of piss. I could sleepwalk through the place without tripping a single alarm.
She came to a one-piece acrylic window looking out into a LED-dotted abyss. Looking at what lay beyond, she felt her bearings slide smoothly into place like a deftly manipulated game of fifteen: The complex wrapped around an enormous parabolic pit, housing a single massive warhead. Rarity had not been exaggerating: the rocket was the single largest piece of artillery Rainbow had ever seen. It was hued a deep blue-black with navy accents on the fins. Blocky letters bisected the rocket fins to tip, and Rainbow instinctively knew what they said even before her eyes adjusted enough to properly read them: NOX AETERNA. The Lunar Ex-princess’ brand, (crescent over a nebulous night sky), was faithfully reproduced next to the letters making the whole thing look like a rather unsubtle advertisement for a sleep-aid product.
A crotchety-sounding male system voice filtered through the overhead intercom. The cheap syllable-by-syllable recordings contributed to the launch facility’s grimy low-budget atmosphere.
“Commencing phase three of pre-launch procedure. Facility temperature to be lowered by a factor of 20%.”
The vents around her exploded with rushing air and pipes flooded audibly with liquid coolant.
Rainbow shook herself, circulating. “Awesome. 20% cooler, and no fur coat.”
She stared through the window once more, looking for any clues regarding her objective. The spotlights inside the few alcoves on the outer rim of the pit highlighted a single outcropping on the opposite end, connected to the rocket via a retractable arm. She could only assume that this was where the main control deck was, likely her best bet on where she’d find Gizmo.
It was a twisting, difficult path. The corridor didn’t circumnavigate the silo perfectly and took her out of sight of the rocket several times. Doubtlessly it would have been easier to enter the silo proper and fly towards the control deck directly, but she didn’t trust chameleon bodysuits in high-contrast environments. The active camouflage simply couldn’t shift hues fast enough to keep up with such a rapid change between lights and darks.
Trotting hurriedly through the corridor, Rainbow finally ran into a sign, the first one she’d encountered since she arrived, discounting the high voltage and hazardous substance warnings plastered so liberally throughout the complex. It was a shiny white-on-black navigational plaque, listing different facilities including restrooms, generators and most notably, the control center.
CONTROL CENTER 0.5 MILES
A stylized arrow painted on the sign urged her forward. Rainbow Dash threw a triumphant hoof in the air.
“Alright! Finally getting somewhere!”
Her mission time was rapidly accumulating: it had been twenty-five minutes since her departure from the dropship. She quickened her pace, leaving her luck behind in the dust.
An Antimag-clad guard emerged from a side passage and in her rush she couldn’t quite stop in time to avoid him. She pivoted to the side, brushing shoulders with the stallion.
Stunned, he jerked around, squinting at her. “W-what the—?”
The zebra-taught martial art of sakuden’ko is not one unduly concerned with detrimental notions like fairness or mercy.
Riding her panic, she struck him in the throat. The stallion crumpled over the waxy floor tiles, rolling onto his back and gasping for breath, probably trying to get his headset online. She stepped over to straddle him like a lover, and whipped him repeatedly with hook after violent hook directed at the face. After about half a minute, bruised and bleeding from his nose and mouth, his eyes seemed to swell shut. Rainbow continued bludgeoning the guard until she felt sure she was just short of killing him. Finally she straightened up, wiping the blood spray absently from her cheek, and dragged the body behind a couple of pallets stacked with metallic crates.
More or less satisfied that he wouldn’t be discovered any time soon, she spun on her rear hooves and started towards the control deck.
A rasping cackle erupted behind her, bringing with it a peculiar sensation of almost nostalgic dread. She stopped dead in her tracks, putting off the moment that she’d turn around and confront the memory.
Who’s the fucking enthusiast now, Dash, it asked derisively. Tell me you don’t enjoy this shit.
“You’re dead,” Rainbow muttered. “Me and Dust left you behind in Bridleon, a necrotic payload eating through your system. There’s not a filly’s chance in Tartarus that the Commonwealth had the resources to bring you back, not fast enough.”
That’s right, Dash. Maybe I should have killed you when I had the chance. But I’ll always cherish the memories we shared in the short couple of hours that we were in each other’s company.
Rainbow Dash did turn around then, and instead of the unconscious Lodestar officer, she saw the gryphon reclining casually on her elbow. Behind her scarred beak, Gilda’s cheek was still raw and torn open from the grazing shot of Lightning Dust’s necrotic bullet. Rainbow could see through the gash and into the dark recess of the gryphon’s mouth. A mixture of blood and saliva dribbled over her cheek and neck plumage as she stood, and she wiped it away with a nauseating slurp before speaking again.
I can’t be here, you and I both know this much. She grinned and leaned forward, inclining her head. But your perception of me is less a question of my existential status than it is of your current state of mind.
A muscle jumped under Rainbow’s smart eye.
Yes, you understand the implication: early onset variance-induced psychosis. The words sounded alien on Gilda’s tongue, twisted by the Tlanese accent.
You’re losing it, just like you knew you would eventually. Test tube grunts like you typically don’t start exhibiting symptoms until their late thirties, but it seems you’re a special case, aren’t you, Dash? Maybe the process has been accelerated by the recent installation of your new prostheses. Gilda shrugged dismissively. But who cares, really. Soon enough, you’ll go completely batshit and they’ll put you down like the rabid bitch you always were.
The words were irritating, infuriating like a consistent full-body itch that ebbed and focused into a dull ache in her teeth. It would be sated by nothing less than the taste of the gryphon’s still-beating heart. She leapt, pinning Gilda beneath her as the phantom burst into a fit of manic laughter. It had to stop. Rainbow stamped down hard on Gilda’s head, feeling her skull cave in under the weight.
All of a sudden, it wasn’t Gilda’s skull anymore. His facial features mangled and concave and immobile beneath her forehoof, the guard lay dead at her feet. As the buzzing in her ears subsided, it was replaced by a more substantial sound: the blaring of intrusion alarms. The systems voice chattered over the intercom again.
“Guard 404 is deceased. Intrusion countermeasures are in effect. All personnel be advised.”
“Ah, fuck me,” she groaned.
It appeared that the vital signs of each guard were wired into a central monitoring system. The slowed heartbeat of general unconsciousness didn’t seem to be enough to trip the alarms, judging by the sleeping receptionist she’d met at the entrance, but the same could not be said for altogether absent vitals.
Bright rotating warning lights emerged from apertures built into the ceiling, filling the corridors with flashes of garish crimson. Rainbow raised her foreleg, assessing the active camo. It was no good; the hue of the pigment cells fell behind the revolutions of light by nearly a full second, and with the now-alert guards patrolling the compound, her chances of getting to the deck unseen were looking dodgy at best.
And here I was hoping that the chameleon-skin might end up useful for the complete run just this once, she thought morosely.
She reached into a low-profile pocket on her bodysuit and withdrew the slender blade of the martial horn. Leaning against a nearby wall, she slotted the horn neatly into the socket hidden under her forelocks. She had declined to take any firearms along with her on the mission, knowing that no gun currently manufactured was compatible with chameleon-skin bodysuits. Lacking the pigment cells coating her martial horn, leg or spine-mounted firearms would stick out like the implements of an angry poltergeist.
Rainbow hurriedly undid the straps on the dead guard’s leg-mounted assault rifle and wrapped them around her own foreleg. It wouldn’t be much more visible than the bodysuit itself flashing out of sync with the warning lights.
Her ears caught steps echoing down the corridor—the remaining guards were closing in on the location of their fallen comrade. Shadows danced to either side of her, there and then gone again as the lights made another revolution. Her mind went into overdrive, drunk on the neurachem sloshing through her gray matter. The restrooms were a dozen feet behind her, probably a dead end. She might be able to use the pallets of metal crates as an improvised cover, but she was willing to wager that the guards would search the area thoroughly enough to discover her. There was a vent grate just over her head, on the ceiling, but it seemed to be inset with screws.
There’s no time for this.
She flew up to the grate, slid her forehooves through the wide oblong holes between the turning vanes, and yanked at it using her full body weight. The grate came loose with a metallic thunk, followed immediately by the clatter of a couple of the screws as they hit the floor. It wasn’t a quiet exit by any stretch of the imagination, and she could only pray that security wouldn’t catch wind of it immediately. She cast the discarded grate behind the pallets and scrambled into the cramped ventilation duct just as the first of the Lodestar officers turned the corner.
Rainbow imagined what it must have looked like, something flashing and indistinct disappearing into the ceiling. The officer shouted and opened fire at the duct. Bullets chewed the metal around her, loud and insistent in the confined sound-amplifying space. As she shimmied further in, a stray slug bit into her stomach. Her system automatically administered anesthetics and amphetamine to keep her functioning, but the sensation was far from pleasant. She clenched her teeth and crawled further in, trailing blood, remembering that the duct disappeared into an adjacent wall. There she should be comparably safe from harassment for a moment, assuming of course that security didn’t have any pegasi on duty, or stepladders within easy reach.
The vents were dark and claustrophobic with no room to maneuver. She was forced to contort herself into painful positions to turn the sharp ninety-degree corners, and each time she felt a stab in her small intestine where the bullet had lodged itself. Through the grates below, guards hurried to and fro, searching for her. Their efforts appeared to be coordinated via their headsets, with individuals splitting from groups to search each corridor and question other employees. They weren’t scanning the vents just yet, but it was only a matter of time.
She reminded herself of her time limit and crawled on. The control deck was in sight, but the duct terminated just over the entrance. Two sentries, a male and a female, had been posted to keep watch over the door, which was closed off by a steel shutter not unlike the ones she was used to seeing over storefronts after dark in uptown New Ponyville.
She sighed, prompting another sting in her belly.
Can’t be helped.
She broke through the nearest grate and descended over the two guards like a closing curtain. The Lodestar mare’s proximity sense kicked in well in advance of her partner; she actually managed to spin around and fire off a shot before Rainbow severed her spinal column with her vibrating martial horn. The stallion was slower on the uptake, barely raising his voice as she ducked below him and delivered an unrestrained kick into his solar plexus.
He struggled on the floor for a split second before Rainbow finished him with a cranial gunshot. It was a little late in the day to be taking prisoners.
As an afterthought, she bit down on his headset and shook it off of him. Closer examination of the device revealed that each one was meant to be used in conjunction with military-standard commjacks, typically implanted in the base of the neck. Being ex-military herself, Dash naturally still had her own jacks, though they were getting dusty with lack of use.
She opened her neuro vocal codec and dialed for the decker.
Pinkamena’s voice intruded into her thoughts once again, this time uncharacteristically impatient.
“Yeah Dashie, what’s up?”
“Pink. Mind doing me a favor right quick?”
“Oh, sure,” the decker muttered reproachfully. “It’s not like I’m preparing for a super-important decomish or anything.”
“It’ll be fast, I promise,” said Rainbow. “I’m gonna hook myself up to security’s communication channel. I need you to piggyback on my NOI and knock it out.”
“Don’t know if I got the means to do that right now,” said Pinkie, still sounding preoccupied with something in the background. “Best I can offer would be flooding the channel with white noise.”
Now it was Rainbow’s turn to start losing her patience. “Yeah, good enough, just do something.”
“Well, since you asked so nicely…” There was an acidic cheerfulness in Pinkie’s voice. “How could I possibly say no?”
Rainbow smiled to herself and mounted the headset, plugging the jacks.
“All units check in,” said the channel operator, his voice high and bearing a distinct Germanian accent.
“Squad leader alpha checking in. No sign of the intruder. Sector four looks clean.”
"Squad leader gamma checking in. 311 is saying he saw something weird crawling into the—”
Something obscene flashed across Rainbow’s vision just as the line disintegrated into the drone of white noise.
“Sundamn it Pink, was that what I think it was? Did you dig that shit up on a shock site somewhere?”
“Got no idea what you’re talking about,” the decker said unconvincingly. “We all good?”
“Yeah, thanks.” Rainbow ran a hoof over the headset. “Do I need to keep this on to broadcast the signal?”
“Not unless you wanna go deaf,” said Pinkie. “It’s a self-perpetuating feedback loop. It’s gonna keep building in volume until the channel crashes. Won’t stop the operator from restarting though, so don’t hang around. By the way, just reminding you, you’ve got ten minutes left on the clock.”
“Thanks.” Rainbow ripped the headset off and discarded it.
The shutter obstructing the entrance to the control deck was secured to the floor by an old-fashioned padlock, rusty and calcified, and a cursory inspection of the bodies indicated that neither of the guards had the key on them. Rainbow powered on the vibroblade of her horn again and cut through the shackle of the lock. The metal screamed and spat sparks but gave way and the shutter slid up with minimal resistance.
As she entered the bunker-like interior of the control deck, she was met with the sight of a stallion consulting a wall of security monitors. He spun around in his chair as she came near. He was a frail-looking specimen wearing a bow tie and corrective lenses that looked to be grafted directly into his skull. His expression was slack and stupid, bordering on the uncanny valley. Wirehead syndrome they called it: small muscles in the face tended to die in users that spent an inordinate amount of time physically hooked up to high-resource hardware.
“Ach! It’s…! It’s him! The intruder is here!”
She recognized the stallion’s voice as that of the security channel operator. He turned hurriedly back to the main screen, which was occupied by a waveform visualization of the comms channel.
“S-shit! What’s wrong with the audio system?!”
Rainbow pulled the chameleon-skin hood from her face.
“I’ve disabled that. Gizmo, right? You won’t be alerting any of your guards in here, so make it easier on yourself and come quietly, mein freund.”
The weapons locker next to her burst open and a familiar thestral tackled her to the floor. The two of them grappled there, with the stallion clenching her rifle and tearing it free. She swung her head sideways, swiping at his jaw. He let out a strangled grunt and recoiled, spitting blood. She got up and dusted herself off theatrically, then looked at the thestral youth. The vibrablade horn sliced straight through his cheeks, giving him a bloody Cheshire smile.
“Fancy seeing you here,” said Rainbow. “I guess you came to before Carousel arrived to collect you and your friends at the old fort, huh? What’s your name, kid?”
He bared his bloodied teeth at her. “The fuck is it to you?”
She shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Gizmo was out of his seat and leaning against the monitor assembly as though he was hoping it would absorb his mass and allow him to escape the room. “V… why are you here? Do you have any idea what you are doing?!”
Rainbow shrugged again. “Pretty good idea, yeah. Anyway, I’ve been paid.”
“So you’re a corporate samurai then, are you?” said the thestral, his voice dripping with disdain.
“Actually…” Rainbow smiled gently. “I fancy myself more of a ronin.”
“H-how much?” asked Gizmo. “We’re government-funded! Tell me your price, and I’ll double it!”
“Ah ah ahh…” Rainbow tutted, shaking her head. “That’s poor form. I can’t build a very good résumé if I have a history of backstabbing my employers, now can I?”
“Then save your résumé…” The thestral lunged, flaring his wings. “…for the fucking Cerberus!”
Rainbow spun, sweeping her attacker with the levitite alloy of her implants. As he stumbled sideways, she hooked his head with one of her forelegs, and drove him face-first into the monitor assembly. The screens cracked and shattered, raining sparks and tube fragments.
He lifted himself weakly off the imploded screen, face bloodied.
She strolled casually and put a companionable elbow on his back. “Bet you wish you upgraded to holo-displays,” she said, addressing Gizmo. “Seriously, are these fucking CRT monitors?” She kicked the thestral in the ribs, flooring him.
And then it was over. The engineer stood cowering in the corner, while his thestral bodyguard lay incapacitated at her feet. She evaluated the youth. He would probably live unless…
Gilda’s voice echoing somewhere far away, perhaps from the smoking radioactive ruins of Bridleon: Put the little shit out of his misery, Dash. It’s in your nature.
She took a breath through her clenched teeth, feeling the bullet worming through her gut.
I’ve accrued enough of a body count for one lifetime. What do I have against any of these poor bastards? Most of them are just doing their job. The kid’s a thestral, probably born into a disgruntled chiropteran family, surrounded by anti-solar sentiment. He never had a chance.
She turned to the engineer.
“You’re coming with me.”
The perimeter of Children of the Night’s rocket launch facility stretched before her, a vast ostensibly empty plain stretching to infinity below, hiding the sprawling industrial complex in its depths. Hermes’ voice boomed through the interior of the dropship.
“Mission successful. Retreating to minimum safe distance.”
Rainbow stiffened. “Minimum safe distance?”
Everything went white. It was as though the terrorist cell had incited the wrath of the gods themselves. A throbbing column of white descended from the heavens above and enveloped the plain in unimaginable heat and light. There was no sound, except a subdued sizzling as vast quantities of earth and metal were almost instantly vaporized.
Rainbow’s vocal codec came online giving her a start. Maniacal laughter filled the line, sounding like it was already well underway when the decker hit the broadcast switch.
“Did you see that, Dashie?! The whole damn thing, up in smoke in ten seconds flat!”
“Pink.” Rainbow’s mouth had gone dry. “Was that… Was that an orbital beam?”
“It sure was! Can you imagine? With this deck and software bundle, the whole global network of god lasers is at my fingertips!”
“You hijacked Æther’s orbital network?” She felt nauseous. If a two-bit datarat like Pinkamena could break into the Equestrian orbital beam network and fix it to annihilate anything they pleased…
“There is no need to worry, Miss Dash.” Rarity’s voice on the codec. “This is strictly a single-use affair. I’m sure that Æther will reinforce their security systems once they discover our actions here. And it’s not as though this was easy to arrange; I provided Pinkamena with a deck and ICE-breaker software bundle that won’t be commercially available for another two years.”
Gizmo was strapped into his seat next to the thestral, both unconscious. Rainbow scooped a cigarette out of his pocket, held it up to the ignition patch on the side of the box, and drew.
It had been a while since she’d smoked last.
“I will transfer your payment as soon as you arrive with our target in tow,” Rarity continued.
The cigarette tasted bitter. You gotta stop with this self-destructive bravado of yours, Lightning whispered in her ear. Sound and fury, et cetera.
Rainbow Dash cleared her throat through the fumes. “Rare, could I get checked out by one of your psychosurgeons, pronto? You can take the expenses out of my payment.”
“A psychosurgeon?” Rarity hesitated. “Well, yes, of course, but…”
“Appreciate it. So what do you want with Gizmo anyway?” asked Rainbow Dash.
“I wish to offer him a job.”
Rainbow heard a derisive snort over the line and could only assume it had been Pinkie’s.
She peered at the bloody face of the thestral beneath his singed forelocks. “I see. I’m bringing somebody else for you to have a look at too. If it’s not too much trouble on your end.”
Look at you. A rabid killer with delusions of sainthood.
She couldn’t tell if the voice in her head had been Gilda’s or Lightning’s or her own.