~~~discontinuity~~~
Gravity appeared in clear air, high above dark farmland covered with little patches of forest and herds of cattle. Shadow sight confirmed there was nothing nearby, and she turned her gaze to the horizon. Here, there was a haze of light from her home corral, and above that...
Fragments of a deeper darkness orbited the glow, marked out by the difference in density between them and the air, and Gravity pumped her wings while studying the scene. In the back of her head, the final images from Spiral played out, of dark and angular shapes amid everything she held dear, but she held back from jumping straight into the fight. Nowhere to hide, except behind clouds... if they catch me, I'll be dead and Fusion will be alone. I can't do that to her.
"Then there are the lasers..." Gravity muttered tiredly, a sudden and unwelcome feeling of nervousness making her ears droop. Is this how Fusion feels all the time? There must be something I can do about them... She eyed the sheaf of steely needles floating in her magic, pulling one out from the cluster and setting it spinning. It was heavy, far more so than would be suggested by its size. "Got to be better than just using a random lump of metal."
Dropping back to normal sight, she reached for Spiral, but there was nothing to find; the mare's mind with its constant low-level babble of worry and complex magic was just gone. Are you dead, Spiral? Have they killed you all? Her ears went back and her magic built an array of force fields around her body, then pulled in and compressed the air until she could feel the radiated warmth. I'll make sure they regret anything that has happened to you. Optically, the horizon had become a swollen and distorted thing, the once-straight line curving and pulsing in time with her wingbeats.
The sight brought up a slightly alien memory, faint despite its closeness in time, of standing in a patch of forest while the world faded out and cold spread across her coat. Fusion had talked about camouflage during their free-wheeling -- and far too long -- planning sessions, and this was obviously some hint of what the other mare had tried while sneaking into Naraka. "Oh my," Gravity whispered, voice lost amid the rush of air over her muzzle. "That's got more uses than just hiding."
The fields, really there as protection from fast projectiles and the ripping tear of supersonic wind, tightened further and grew a second, smooth, skin, while the inner layer bulged and developed a multitude of wrinkles. The world outside distorted further, then became angular as the wrinkles deepened and became sharp-edged pockmarks, like a forest of glassy crystals growing towards her skin. Wings out and blind, all concentration focused on the complex magic, Gravity let her breath out with a hiss, letting the changes propagate through the array of arcane structures.
The complex pattern visualisation was complete, so all that was left was the smaller effort of actually maintaining her creation. Gravity relaxed a little, feeling the slight drain on her strength. Simple corner reflectors built from pressurised air. Is this really going to be enough? She hesitated, staring out into a world turned faceted and indecipherable by the structured fields held in the real by her will. Gravity dropped back into shadow sight, then gritted her teeth, folded her wings beneath her armour, and pushed--
~~~discontinuity~~~
--the shadow world was quiet for a moment, only marred by the silent rush of dense, lenticular shapes sliding through the air. What must’ve been a howling wind was muted to a dull, near-infrasonic rumble by the layered fields turning her into a streamlined teardrop. Aerodynamic forces slapped at her, a sudden wrench that the rigid magic transferred immediately to her neck and wings, but the jump was short and it was nothing more than a momentary distraction.
Then the sky lit up.
The polygons of antimagic defences sprang into being around all of the flying shapes, lighting them up like beacons in her shadow sight. Gravity's wings, still folded, twitched in sympathy with the movements of her force field shell as air was thrust backwards and she accelerated. This wasn't the heart of the formation, centred somewhere over the corral, but one of the outlier groups. Close-in, and with their thaumic defences active, it was obvious that the mass of fliers wasn't uniform; a single delta-shaped aircraft was at the core of this group, surrounded by a swarm of the smaller flying disks. Unlike the disks, the delta carried some of the dogs’ crystal thaumic technology, and this came alive, highlighting the hull with patches of bright colour against the dead silhouette of frame and armour.
Gravity pushed a cluster of metal needles out towards the delta as hard as she could, spraying the projectiles along the length of the larger aircraft. They snapped out, the crack of sonic booms penetrating her fields with the deadened thump of a hammer on stone, only to be met by rigid disks of thaumic light that flickered along the flanks of her target. Inhaling sharply, she manoeuvred hard, the magically directed airflow turning her in an erratic spiral that made the blood rush alternately to her head and hooves, then selected a single needle and poured all her power into making it move.
The defensive field flicked on again, only to die as the generator powering it, a glittering construct in the belly of the aircraft, went dark. Speared through the vitals, blackness cascaded along the hull, extinguishing the remaining crystals. Fragments flew away at high speed on simple ballistic trajectories, and her target staggered in the air. There was a sudden light, intruding even through her closed eyes, followed immediately by heat that washed across Gravity's body, shocking in the cold, high-altitude air and she pushed--
~~~discontinuity~~~
--but the heat stayed with her, a steady beat like the sun at the height of summer. There was nothing visible by shadow sight and she opened her real eyes, seeing only faint and distorted kaleidoscope patterns through the layered fields. Sweat was starting to dampen the fur under her armour and she groaned, then released the trapped high-pressure air. The heat vanished and her view cleared, no longer distorted by the gaseous prism structures she'd coated herself with. "Took too long," she muttered, "but at least it stopped most of the laser fire. I wonder what it looked like? All those corner reflectors must have been a surprise." I wonder if the reflected beams did any damage?
Off in the distance, there were flashes of blue-white light, irregular things that spread apart like the cascade from a firework, and bright enough to light the ground beneath with a ghostly radiance. So I did get it... Gravity smiled, lips pulling back over clenched teeth, then drew in the air, squeezing it until the world disappeared once more, and pushed--
~~~discontinuity~~~
--emerging near another group to select a single target, this time one of the airtanks, and let fly with a lone metal arrow, then--
~~~discontinuity~~~
--back to the original group, still chaotically circling their stricken leader as it fell towards the distant ground, and shot again.
Suddenly, there were two somethings visible, far apart on the horizon, brilliant glittering objects that appeared out of the blackness of the shadow world, surrounded by masses of complex magic that made the universe fold towards them, like a blanket dragged by a hoof. Their antimagic weapon... these are the jaws of this trap, she thought, then bared her teeth and pushed--
~~~discontinuity~~~
--on to a third group, further in towards the corral, and firing twice in quick succession, then risking a third shot as the heat found her; no longer the summer sun, but an open furnace door. She reached for the teleport pattern to escape, mesmerised by the beams of twisting darkness that sprang out from the distant mystery aircraft and pivoted in her direction. One reached her before the other, and her power was sucked away as fast as she could accumulate it. Defensive fields fluctuating, she let go of the complexity and focused her will on escape, as the other beam swung across to join the first. The teleport pattern, with all its complexity, wouldn't stabilise.
I can't-- Light flooded through her closed eyes, a brilliant green, then an impact to her flank, sudden and violent, made her tumble. A white flash, like lightning hitting the ground a bare length away, and an instant shockwave, knocked her away from the laser's focus and the ripping crack of railgun projectiles shredding the air where she had been. Half blinded and even shadow sight failing her, Gravity fell out of the questing beam of darkness and was finally able to assemble the arcane pattern. She pushed, not caring where--
~~~discontinuity~~~
===
Alone in the darkness, Lilac probed the space where Spiral had been.
--a pony starting to cast some spell, screaming in pain and rage as bright green points of light danced over his body, her own efforts to disrupt his magic, to forestall the inevitable, disintegrating under a blow-torch heat from somewhere above, then the hard crack of gunfire and the pony going silent--
He shivered, trying to separate her memories, so appallingly sharp and vivid, from his own, but the urgency and horror lingered. "Come on, Gravity, talk to me." He reached for the mare, but she wasn't listening for him, and all he got was an impression of speed and intense flashes of light. Fusion was similarly distracted, and he could see little snippets of her journey through a room made to look like some dry and mountainous place. Trocar-- The stallion was in the middle of a cloud of excited ponies, more than Lilac had ever seen, swirling and all talking at once.
There's nopony to help! He cast out again, hunting for Spiral or any of the others at the corral, but there was nothing, except... It wasn't another mind, but a point of resonance: the specially prepared crystal that Fusion had used to watch Spiral at the infirmary. It was still active, and Lilac modified his magic, switching to clairvoyance.
"No!" His shout drew the distracted attention of Ogive, and Lilac stifled a sob at the sight of a pony, dragged apart from the others, being gunned down by the gryphon troops. There's got to be something-- His eyes flew open, focussing on the stacks of granite cubes that still filled half his chamber. Mimicking Gravity's actions from before, he built the teleport spell, then hesitated. But what if I hit the others? An image of a sharp-edged stone cube tearing through the defenceless herd made him whinny, then he lifted his viewpoint upwards.
Above was a cluster of flying things, their lights illuminating the scene and filling the world with glare and hard shadows. From their level, he could see the expanse of the corral, the strut and stride of the gryphons and dogs. Another pony was pulled from the herd, and the frantic sound grew in volume. Lilac whinnied softly, unable to look away. "There must be something I can do..." he whispered, then looked back at the aircraft. An appalling, burning heat with no visible source -- Fusion felt that before, as well. The undersides of the airtanks had a faceted appearance, with thin lines gridding the flat plates. Does it come from them? He sucked in a breath, then called up the teleport spell once more.
The pattern built in his mind, and he altered it again and again, little, lightning-fast adjustments to integrate his change in viewpoint. Oh, Maker, please-- He took one of the blocks and pushed--
--it appeared in his remote view, flicking up and sideways in a direction completely different than he'd expected. The airtanks twitched, as if their pilots were surprised, and accelerated, orbits becoming chaotic. Below, the pony had been thrown down next to the gutted corpse of the first victim, but the soldiers seemed distracted or were waiting for something, and didn't shoot. Biting his lip, Lilac shifted his viewpoint, modified the spell yet again, then picked up a pile of rocks and poured all his strength into the next push.
===
They are going to get slaughtered, Fusion thought, watching as Ellisif picked out a few likely gryphons from the thousand or so packed into the exercise space and put them to work organizing the rest into groups. ...but I suppose that was always going to be the case. At least now they have a fighting chance. She shivered, keeping her expression stern as she hovered above the sea of feathers and fur, the colours unfamiliar and plain compared to ponies. A few gryphons flew in wide circles about her, unable to keep the wonder from their expressions, and Fusion maintained the magic that radiated heat and light from her coat.
I am leading them all to their deaths. Fusion felt ill, and suddenly pushed--
~~~discontinuity~~~
--appearing next to Redshift, still in the service core.
He grinned wildly at her arrival, doing a little stationary jog that filled the cluttered room with a complex tattoo of hoofbeats. "The Agent found them! Shock Diamond and the rest, about two levels down on the other side--" He gestured with his head, horn still glowing fitfully from whatever he was doing to the computronium. "--we've got to get them out."
Fusion glanced at Salrath, currently shackled, feet and paws, around one of the stanchions holding up the equipment racks. "She did, did she?" The Agent flinched at her stare, ears drooping and head downcast. I don't believe it.
"Yes, look!" One of the inset monitors came alive, displaying a collection of views from cells somewhere in the complex. Four rooms, each containing half a dozen foals, one with a tan pony nearly adult size. Wings, bare and ugly without their natural covering of feathers--
"Random!" Unconsciously stepping forwards, Fusion stared for a moment, a sudden lightness filling her body. "You are sure this is live? Not a recording?" Why do her wings look worse? "What have you been doing to her?" she growled, wheeling about to push her muzzle in Salrath's face.
"T-this one has not been at Naraka for more than a hundred kiloseconds," the Agent said, pulling against her bonds and gasping suddenly as the metal bit into her flesh. "That was how the pony was when Salrath arrived. Fusion should ask Sector Chief Orgon... or his personal servitor, about that."
There was something in Salrath's eyes, something that wasn't quite fear, and Fusion lashed out with a forehoof, putting a dent in the nearest panel and making a satisfying crash. Redshift jumped, glancing at her reproachfully, and Salrath flinched, but again it wasn't quite right. Salrath is out for just Salrath... this should not be a surprise. She reached out and lifted the Agent by her shoulders, feeling nothing but satisfaction as Salrath gritted her teeth. Is this all it takes for me to hurt someone? A little anger? She's still playing with me, I can feel it.
"Salrath is telling the truth!" she ground out, gasping when Fusion unconsciously increased the pressure slightly.
"I will ask her myself, and then we will see." Or give you to Gravity, and see if she is as good at the minds of dogs as she is ponies. Relaxing the pressure, but still holding Salrath, she picked up the bomb. "Redshift, ask Ellisif to join me, please," she said, then looked back at the Agent and narrowed her eyes. "How many more Security staff are here at Naraka?"
"One--" Fusion's horn light brightened slightly and, even though the telekinetic pressure stayed the same, a slight look of panic entered Salrath's eyes. "Two! One is a gryphon, the other is Captain Rthar. They were both in the control room when this one left, watching the battle updates."
Ellisif arrived in a flurry of wings, expertly dropping through the door to come to a sliding stop a few paces from Fusion. "What? I've got a squad of armour moving up from the transit tunnels, if the camera blackout is anything to go by. My lot are ready for a fight, but this is going to be a rout if we don't get it right."
The gryphoness didn't seem frightened, more angry at the disruption. "We might be able to slow them down. Redshift, keep feeding whatever you have to Svartr and Adigard. Lilac will need your help shortly. Make very sure he understands what he needs to do."
"Me? But..." His eyes widened and he nodded.
"Exactly." Fusion unhitched Salrath from the instrument rack and set her floating at shoulder height, ignoring her strained curses, then trotted smartly from the room, Ellisif in tow and bomb on the other side. As they moved, Fusion eyed the gryphoness. "What are the things I need to know if I try and negotiate with the dogs?" she said. "Do you know anything about how the Hives interact, or what they are likely to do?"
Ellisif blinked, nearly tripping. "Kill us all, I'd think. Negotiate? Ah... well, there's the World Court which is an overall arbiter, and they have this thing called the Hammer..."
===
~~~discontinuity~~~
--she came out. Still falling, the cold air whipping away the vestiges of shock running through her addled mind, Gravity carefully opened her wings, turning the plummet into a steep, curving glide. Blinking, she stared at the flashes and sustained glares from a few kilolengths away, mostly the hard white of superconductor fires lighting up clouds of smoke and atomised ceramics. Here and there, perfectly straight threads of green lanced those clouds, making them glow like transient aurora, while fast points of white turned and twisted among the larger aircraft, each terminating in a brilliant flash.
Missiles, perhaps? Gravity thought, watching the silent light show, then shook vigorously, turning a fast helix as she pumped her wings and rebuilt her defences. How am I going to kill that antimagic weapon, if I can't get close enough? All that distortion near it... She hefted her stock of stolen ammunition, frown turning into a smile. Another distraction, I think. She looked down at the dark forest and--
~~~discontinuity~~~
--a terrible snapping and rending of branches and whole trees, the quick violet planes of force fields slicing tonnes of timber into fat disks--
~~~discontinuity~~~
--ignored amid a flurry of laser fire that speared the wooden decoys, filling the night sky with blasts of smoky yellow flame and yet more smoke. Able to actually see, with only a single, simple field between her body and the hostile air, the bright spears of her own weapons reaching out for their targets, atmospheric ablation turning them into artificial meteors. The touch of those claws against fast aircraft, turning them into bright-burning hulks. Gravity imagined beams of darkness reaching for her and--
~~~discontinuity~~~
--explosions, made silent by the laggard speed of sound, filled one quadrant of her vision. Preparing to jump again, Gravity swept the night with her shadow sight, watching for the telltale signature of the dog's weapon, and seeing nothing but traces probing where she had been. Something else caught her arcane sight: a lone airtruck travelling at high speed directly away from the corral, near invisible apart from its cargo of pastel-glowing objects. There are ponies in that--
~~~discontinuity~~~
--aircraft! The airtruck flicked by, seemingly unaware of her presence, and Gravity got a good look at the occupants. Five ponies crammed into the cargo compartment, their hornlights curiously suppressed. Five ponies, all of whom were immediately recognizable.
Her magic lashed out, an elastic tentacle of violet force, wrapping around the airtruck and dragging her along. It would have been trivial to anchor her power to the passing ground and stop the vehicle dead, but that would not have been kind to the occupants, so she tagged along. Magic pulled her in, effectively welding her hooves to the armoured roof and supporting her body against the slipstream passing over the hull.
Teeth bared, Gravity stabbed down, shearing open the crew compartment and peeling back the ceramic-alloy laminate. Two canine faces, slack with shock, stared up at her for a moment, then were whisked up and away, screams dopplering into the darkness. The airtruck started to nose over and she caught it, holding it straight and level, while a force field opened the cargo bay. The expressions of those inside, tear-stained and distorted by horror, changed to wonder, and she carefully pulled them out and let the airtruck plough into the rushing ground--
~~~discontinuity~~~
--dropping through the trees to settle on a hilltop over the horizon from the corral while pulling the suppressor rings from each horn.
Triple Point immediately rushed over, wrapping her wings over Gravity's withers and burying her head in the feathers. "Oh, you found us, thank the Maker." Her voice was distorted, throat closed up like she was being strangled. "It was horrible; I can't imagine what--"
"Triple," Gravity said gently, pulling away, "where are Spiral and Scalar?"
"Spiral is back at the corral, I think. I-it was like they wanted her to see everything they were doing. Scalar..." Triple looked puzzled for a moment, then her mouth opened and her head drooped. "You didn't find the other airtruck? It's got Scalar and Elliptic. The dog hurt her until he told them what Fusion was doing." She glanced at the other four ponies, and they mirrored her look of horror. "They've got him... what will they do to him?"
Gravity stood up straight, then marched away stiff-legged. "Go back to the mountain base. I will find them." In a sudden rush that pulled a column of shattered vegetation high into the air, she leapt straight up, disappearing into the night.
===
"No Master, please, I beg you. I didn't do anything wron--"
A heavy blow from one of the gryphons silenced the mare's cries, and she was thrown down on the same bloody patch of grass they'd used for the stallion's execution. Another of the soldiers kicked her over, a bright laser spot flaring on her belly as his shoulder gun came on target. The soldier, features and movement clear in the harsh lighting, hesitated, his gaze flicking to the herd and back to the watching dogs. One of the others said something and he shivered, then reached for the bite trigger. He paused, the motion incomplete, staring at a series of flashes on the distant horizon.
Summer lightning, Spiral thought in a daze, her own attention drawn to the lights. They were completely soundless but strangely coloured, full of violet and green, along with a more normal blue-white, and pulsed and flickered in rapid succession. Then there was another pulse, this one directly overhead and lighting the corral with a flash of pale purple, and not silent but thunderclap loud. After the initial bang, the sky filled with a thin whistling roar that swept towards the zenith. More sound, an ear-punishing rockslide rumble, and the airtank lights flickered, spinning wildly across the ground.
Spiral, able to really look up as talons about her head loosened, saw cubes of rock, briefly limned in lilac light, materialising out of thin air and flicking across the sky towards the airtanks. Two were already in trouble, plasma drives faltering, while the third twisted to avoid impact. The emergence point tracked it, closing the range, and finally a rock scored a glancing blow. Sparks flew and it staggered in the air, starting to tumble, meeting another boulder side-on. Drive finally failing, it suddenly fell from the sky, smashing into one of the empty shelters with a thump she clearly felt through the grass under her chest.
The dogs seemed to be unable to react, and the gryphons were not much better. Spiral took a chance, remembering the heat, directed like a beam from above, and drew on all her skill, adding it to things Fusion had learned from her early attempts to break one of the horn rings. This time there was no pain. Her magic spiked, enough effort to uproot a tree, vanishing into the disruption and haze that filled where before there had been smooth action. She held her breath, straining and urging the power ever higher, ignoring the way the world swam and sweat suddenly soaked her flanks.
Something gave in the thing clamped onto her horn, and Spiral reigned in the magic before it could burst free in a random and lethal manner. Unnoticed by her guards, whose grip on her wings had slackened further, she wormed through the crude thaumic defences of their armour, latching on to their central nervous systems and stopping all nerve impulses between the sixth and seventh cervical vertebrae. They fell bonelessly to the ground, their cries of distress lost amid the thunder of falling rock. One more adjustment and they were silent apart from rapid, breathy noises, their vocal cords paralysed.
All of the ponies that Fusion had sent to her were gone, vanished into the backs of two airtrucks and flown off to destinations unknown, so she stared at the cowering herd that remained, watching the confused motions of the guards for a moment then kicked out to get clear of the gryphon's distracting antimagic fields. She held back her anger, allowing her mind to drop into that state of cold calculation that accompanied any of the more normal emergencies she had to deal with. Spell patterns queued up in her head, an orderly, prioritised matrix of arcana, then she made space for the teleport spell and pushed--
~~~discontinuity~~~
--materialising with a green flash amid the herd. The closest guards reacted with a shout, but she was already casting. Magic, primed with an understanding of how the thaumic field's disruption operated, lanced out and ran riot through their nerves, triggering convulsions and collapse. At the same time, her force field came alive as a half-dome that floated like a roof over her head, flaring as it intercepted the stinging rain of rock fragments falling from the sky. More spells, the simple instinct of telekinesis, pulled the suppressor rings from the ponies around her. Spiral walked forwards, face blank and horn alight with the chaotic, flickering glare of multiply-parallel spell casting, the air about her turning misty and frost growing on every surface within ten paces. More gryphons dropped as she moved, an ever-expanding circle of twitching and vibrating bodies.
Shots came from the little group that had been about to euthanize the mare, and she grunted, concentration faltering as her field soaked up the hits. Magic flared, not hers, but a bright yellow from a stallion a few paces away. He had gotten shakily to his hooves and stood there, head bowed and jaw tense, as his magic tried to grab at the pair of protected gryphons. "Be subtle, or just throw stuff from outside the field," Spiral gasped, and he nodded, the ground about the soldiers suddenly bursting to release stone tentacles.
She turned her back on the scene, ears folding at the sudden wild gunfire and screams, choked off and silenced by the sounds of heavy impacts and nasty snapping, cracking noises. Where are you... Around her hooves the other ponies were stirring, some dazed and stunned, but several starting to remove suppressor rings from their friends. Long practice screened them for injuries, magic and gigaseconds of experience categorising severity, prognosis and treatment. Several were dying, bleeding out from wild shots, but Spiral wrenched her attention away, hunting for the real threat.
The group of five dogs was there, on the other side of the herd and just starting to notice her. Some of Spiral's icy calm cracked and she swallowed hard. You are the one. Their antimagic fields were of a more robust nature than those of the gryphons, not so much stronger, as more tightly woven and harder to side-step and work through. Guns came up, and her field moved, forming a flat plane between the herd and the dogs, catching the first rounds from the rotary railgun.
The impacts drove Spiral to her knees, all thoughts and preparation vanishing with the effort to keep the field alive. Pain flared in time with the impacts and her vision narrowed; her concentration failed and she cried out, but the agonizing rip of high velocity projectiles didn't happen. The guns were still firing, but not at her. Instead, the figures were struggling against a polychromatic haze of magic, limbs and weapon arms encased in faltering bands of telekinesis from a dozen different ponies. As she watched, still unable to act, a missile jumped from one suit's backpack, turning in the air on fast jets of fire to point at the herd, only to detonate before it had gone more than a few paces.
Around her, the ponies were lit up by the glare of their own horn lights; a score were trying to hold the dogs still, while a few others removed the remaining suppressors. "Hold them... hold them... nearly got it..." The words came from Backdraft, her croaky voice instantly recognizable. The old teacher stood, the stump of her amputated right wing moving in time with the flicks of her intact left, and the glow of magic about her horn. "Done!"
There was no visible change, but the ponies around her sighed and relaxed. The magic holding the dogs abruptly solidified, and Spiral dipped into shadow sight to see what had changed, then smiled. "I'd forgotten you were on the rescue teams, Back Draft." Four of the antimagic fields had disappeared, and the fifth blinked out as she watched.
"Teaching everypony here lets me keep in practice -- you should see the trouble some foals get into." The mare looked sad for a moment, then her expression cleared. "I remember how it works -- you are in charge, so what do you want to do? I can help organize...?"
There was a painful amount of hope in her voice, and Spiral had to blink back the tears. "Maker, yes. Detail somepony to disarm the gryphons and make sure no more are coming, then we need to move away from here.” There was another barrage of soundless flashes on the horizon, the same mix of violet, green and blue-white, but closer, far closer. Backdraft nodded and headed off, barking orders to some of the less shocky ponies. Spiral nearly smiled at her tone; it was the same one she used on uncooperative foals.
Spiral turned her attention to the wounded, putting her magic to the use it was intended, stopping blood flow, eliminating the pain of injury and, in a couple of cases, stripping out the Blessing. Most of the wounds were minor, the results of fragments from explosive ammunition detonations or rock splinters, but a couple of ponies had suffered direct hits. She focused on these, stabilising them enough to move, then turned to the dogs, still hanging in the telekinetic web.
"Back Draft? It's time we were going," she said, staring hard at the faceless suits.
"Yes, Spiral," the mare said, arriving at a canter, another four ponies behind her. Each held a tangled bundle of equipment, a mixture of armour and weapons. "We stripped all the soldiers; what do you want to do with all the kit? Seems like we shouldn't leave it behind."
Spiral blinked. By the Maker, you are actually enjoying this! A mare of your talents, sidelined for so long... "Good idea," she said weakly, "keep hold of it as I teleport you. Remember: wings in, eyes closed." She winced, but Backdraft just nodded at her comment.
"And them?" she said, gesturing at the five dogs as she lay on the grass.
"I'll knock them out in a moment; I'm sure Security will want to talk to them." Spiral reached out for Trocar, finding his increasingly desperate mind. I'm safe; we drove the dogs off. I've got injured to send through... and several dead.
His thoughts calmed, becoming all business. Send away; plenty of catchers at this end.
Sending now. Spiral's horn flashed, and Back Draft and her little group vanished with a thump. A few more pulses and she was alone bar the pair of ponies holding the dogs still. They didn't seem to be trying to struggle, and she wondered how much of their suits Back Draft had disabled. Not that it matters now. She reached in, paralysing the nerves leading to vocal cords and voluntary muscles, then nodded to the other ponies to lay the dogs on the grass. "That's it; thank you for doing that... it must have been very hard."
The closest, Metal Matrix, a dark green stallion no older than Fusion, shivered. "Yes. I know orders are orders, but it feels wrong to hold a Master against their will, even if they are from another Hive. At least they are not injured."
"I know," Spiral said. "Let me send you to the others, and we can start to recuperate." At her nod, they both lay down, disappearing in a green flash moments later. Now alone, Spiral knelt next to the dogs, probing with her magic until she managed to open the helmet latches of the leader. The dark-furred face glared up at her, eyes full of helpless rage and anger, and Spiral stared back.
"I have wondered what I'd do if I caught up with someone like you," she said, "and it strikes me that I should make an example... make you a warning to those who might think of hurting my friends." The soldier's jaw moved, but no sound came out. "No, there's nothing you could say that I want to hear." She sat the other four suits in a circle around the first, opening their helmet visors so they could see what she was doing, then moved closer, staring into the lead dog's eyes and feeling the delicate mesh of nerves feeding the brain. "Because of that, I am going to make sure you live. Remember me, soldiers, remember what I said and tell everyone you meet."
The spell, a modified version of the one used to repair neural damage, bit, twisting some nerves so they joined to others in self-reinforcing loops and fed into certain parts of the brain. The dog's expression shifted, her ears going back and whiskers drooping. She inhaled sharply, jaws opening wide, but all that emerged was a kind of breathy whistle.
Spiral stood up and backed away, reversing her paralysis of the leader's vocal cords, then vanished in a flash of green light, just as the first screams rang out across the silent corral.
===
"Nalka still can't get any response from any external source, but the comms unit says it is working," the Analyst said, rubbing nervously at the sides of her chocolate-brown muzzle.
"Neither can this one," Rthar said, still staring up at the complex and overlapping data feeds occupying the main displays on this half of the control room. And he can't reach Salrath, either. He turned and looked uneasily at the door. If this building has been compromised, can Rthar trust the internal cameras? He drummed his claws on the console, then glanced at his gryphon bodyguard. The creature, always alert, stood up at the movement, and Rthar flicked his eyes at the door. It moved from his side, padding silently down the access corridor behind the door, and Rthar turned back to the console.
There is too much stone here... Orders be damned; this one needs a clear view of the sky for a direct connection. He turned, already setting his comms bracer to long-range search mode, freezing when the door opened before he reached it. Shapes, too many and too large to be anything other than-- His heart pounding and the room starting to sway, Rthar dropped one paw down to the butt of his pistol, then flinched as the brilliant green flare of a laser designator left dazzling tracks across his eyes.
"Nothing too hasty, Master," came a scratchy voice from behind the light, and he opened his paw, slowly pulling it away from his sidearm. "That's good; it's not as if that toy will help you much, anyway."
The laser turned off, and he could finally see what he'd glimpsed in the corridor. A gryphoness in battered Security reaction team armour, obviously the source of the voice and the light, watched him carefully, the bell-snout of her shoulder gun trained unerringly on his face. Next to her was a servitor, but he kept his gaze locked on the gryphoness, not looking at the pony or the things it held in a haze of golden magic. Panic will not help Rthar, he thought, resisting the urge to run away. The memories of being trapped in his armour suit in the depths of the Institute, never far away, resurfaced, and he tried and failed to keep from panting.
"Stay with us, Master. I need you to relay a message."
Though soft and gentle, this voice did a little to calm his racing heart, and Rthar forced his eyes to move. See? It's not the blue one. There's no need to panic. Wearing the servitor version of Security armour, there was precious little of the pony actually visible, aside from a hint of white fur and an oddly flowing aurora-coloured mane and tail. Like the other one, the same sort of changes, he thought in a daze. "What--" The words caught in his suddenly dry throat, and nothing else came out.
"Rthar is a cowar--" The words cut off with a gasp, and Rthar finally felt some of the fog in his mind evaporate at his recognition of the speaker. With the pony, half hidden behind her body, was Salrath, his own gryphon bodyguard, and something else, something smooth and egg-like, that he couldn't identify.
"There is a time and a place, Agent," the pony said, a trace of anger suddenly colouring her words.
Rthar's gaze lingered on the Agent. "Did Salrath encounter a bit of a problem?" he said, retreating into the control room as the pony stepped forwards. As she moved, her cargo floated with her, now joined by his personal weapon and equipment vest. Salrath didn't reply, or couldn't, and just glared at him. Always knew something would catch up with that one. There was an urge to smile cynically, but he resisted, lest it release the hysteria he felt scratching at his thoughts.
There were gasps and little cries from the technical staff, and a sudden shuffling of chairs as they stood. The pony stared at them for a moment, jaw working and ears flat against the sides of her skull. "I want to talk to you all about the activities of this place, what is being done here and why..." Light flared about her horn, the strange drifting colours of mane and tail shifting to purer, harder shades. Heat started to radiate from her body, as if the summer sun was shining through some hidden window. "...but there isn't the time for the depth of questioning the subject deserves. You will all leave this facility, right now."
No one moved. A breath later, an electric point of light materialised with a snap in the centre of the room. Too bright to look at, like a welding arc, and hot enough to make everyone shy away, the miniature sun made a kind of crackling sound as it drifted towards the assembled People. Nalka broke first, running with paws up over her face to protect it from the glare, and the rest immediately followed. The heat subsided and the pony's ears relaxed a little.
"We have neutralised your communications, but now it is time for you to speak, if you want to save your own life." The oval, a smooth egg of bone-coloured ceramic plastered with warning symbols and text in small letters, was placed without a sound on the floor in the middle of the control room. "Security is moving, but there is still time to prevent a massacre."
Massacre of whom? She can't mean... Rthar's eyes drifted to the screens, still showing the battle management feed. Something was engaging the force surrounding the servitor's corral and chewing through them at a frightening rate. Arclight didn't seem to be able to catch it. There was a hollow clunk, and he turned, drawn back to the servitor, who was standing with one hoof resting on the egg, then his eyes widened. "Where did the pony get that?!"
"You recognise it, good. It was in the lower levels, next to one of the detector devices."
Then it is true. Rthar is only a loose end to be cut off. He met Salrath's gaze, and she nodded slightly. "How does this one know that the pony can detonate the bomb?"
Her gaze went distant for a moment, then half the screens, the ones displaying the internal camera feeds, flickered and changed from empty corridors and cells holding quietly sleeping creatures, to packs of gryphons moving with obvious purpose, while ponies were hesitantly collecting in one of the internal exercise chambers. "My friend has complete control of this facility." She smiled slightly. "You want me to test the bomb? Arming systems on these sorts of devices are not much of a challenge when you are able to directly edit the computronium.
Rthar sighed, then slumped. "No," he said softly. "What does the pony want Rthar to do?"
"Security obviously knows we can use magic to move between places by radically warping the space-time manifold and forming..." There was a look of confusion on the dog's face and Fusion sighed. "By teleportation." At his nod, she lifted up the bomb, holding it in a field of white-gold magic. "I can send this anywhere I want. You will tell your command this." There was a sharp bang, and the weapon disappeared with a flash of light.
Jaw dropping, Rthar gazed at the now empty spot. "What has the pony done? This one--"
There was another flash-bang and the bomb reappeared. "That was just a demonstration. Next time I will send it much further away, to a friend who has instructions to forward it to a prearranged target in the event that he loses magical contact with me. I imagine you have one of your antimagic machines on its way... perhaps you should mention this detail to your leaders."
"The Arclight, yes," Rthar whispered, his ears back and stomach churning. Bringing up his comms bracer, he shakily tried to contact Sector Chief Orgon. The call was answered almost immediately, and he found himself staring at the thaumographic head of his boss, completely unable to say a word. Orgon, his face battered and burned, blinked, then his eyes widened and he gazed at a particular spot on his own display. So Orgon can be surprised, Rthar thought, the urge to giggle dangerously close to the surface, and rotated his arm so that the little camera on his bracer had a better view of the servitor.
"Fusion Pulse TC4668 will surrender immediately. Do this and no more ponies will get hurt." Orgon's voice was quiet but clear in the silence of the control room.
===
Fusion stared at the translucent, floating head of a dog she didn't recognize, but must have been in some position of power. Such total arrogance-- Her ears went back and her head came up, the carefully controlled leakage of power she'd used to intimidate the technical staff doubling then doubling again, lighting the room with a glare that made Rthar shield his eyes, even as he held his comms bracer still. Teeth clenched, she pulled the magic back in, letting her breath out with a hiss. "Identify yourself," she said finally, voice rough.
"This one is Sector Chief Orgon. The pony--"
"No, Sector Chief. You will listen to me." She held the weapon up so it floated beside her head, with Salrath on the other side. "Tell this dog what I have, Agent."
"Hello, Orgon. These ones found your little present." Salrath gave a pained laugh, gesturing with the stump of her maimed arm. "It appears to be a fourth-generation, antimatter-triggered, lithium deuteride fusion bomb. Tuneable yield, but about a megaton, at this one's best guess." On the screen, Orgon frowned, and Salrath laughed again. "Don't look at this one like that, Orgon. Salrath is not stupid; she is also not feeling particularly loyal at the moment."
"Enough." Fusion gave the Agent a slight shake, and Salrath's teeth clicked shut. She will cooperate for as long as it benefits her, then take advantage of any distraction... but it will do. "Orgon, I am sending this between, to a friend--" She found Trocar, still flying in the deep valley and trying to organize the swarms of ponies into groups for the much larger numbers she' wanted to send through as soon as she had the time. Time, if there's one thing I need is time. Trocar, I'm sending you something; make sure you catch it, then pass it to Lilac as quickly as you can. He'll know what to do.
Okay... ready.
A push, much less effort than it took to move a pony, and the bomb vanished, appearing by the distant stallion to be immediately caught and then pushed again. Fusion relaxed a little, then stared at the Sector Chief. "If my friend can no longer sense me, he will send that bomb to a pre-arranged target." She leaned forward, lowering her head. "Call off your attacks on this base and my home corral, then we can talk about what to do next."
Orgon gave a chilly little smile, and Fusion felt her stomach twist. "This one has experienced what the pony can do. He hardly thinks one nuclear weapon is a significant addition to the threat the pony poses."
They can't be that callous, can they? Fusion's mind went blank, then she glanced down at Ellisif, who shrugged and nodded. "Then what about if it was sent to Arcology Prime at Baur Hive?" she said, voice suddenly sounding rough. "Sersjant Ellisif tells me you have fought them before... what do you think they would do?"
The smile froze, then vanished. "If the pony does this, there would be a World Court judgement enacted on Lacunae. They would demand the euthanisation of every servitor within our borders."
Ellisif laughed, a single harsh caw. "It would be war first and millions of the People would die. The Court wouldn't be able to react quickly enough... the Hammer can't hit you before Baur does."
"This one sees you have thought of everything." The face, already hard to read with its coating of fresh burns, became as still as a mask. "Very well. On the condition that TC4668 remains on this video channel at all times, Security will hold its position. This one needs to contact the Synod... what are the pony's demands?"
Fusion blinked, mind suddenly blank. I never even believed this would be possible. "No more Blessings, starting now. Control over our own breeding. The immediate cessation of all experimental work involving ponies and gryphons. I know ponies are vital to your industry and civilization, so we will still work for you, but on our terms. Make us your partners, not your slaves."
"The pony doesn't want much, does it?" A sour look crept over Orgon's face and he wrinkled his muzzle. "Very well. This one will talk to the Synod."