The Thessalonica Legacy

by Dashukta

The Thessalonica Site

The Thessalonica Legacy
Chapter 14: The Thessalonica Site

The Felicity Klimkosky had landed on a broad, low mesa indistinguishable among a dozen just like it scattered across a dry savanna. Scraggly, thorny trees dotted the dry, yellow grass extending off to the horizon, all the way to a line of volcanic mountains barely visible on the horizon. A broad river cloaked in a ribbon of green snaked through the grassy plains, passing near the base of the LZ. Dark storm clouds built on the distant horizon, which Rainbow Dash eyed nervously.

The ponies watched as a half-dozen of the DropShip crew, with the aid of the five Militia infantry, unpacked several small vehicles from palates lowered from the ship’s cargo bay. Rainbow Dash and Twilight were most interested in the bulky robotic exoskeleton worn by one of the crewmen and Ramirez’s Valkyrie which performed the necessary heavy lifting.

The jeeps and all-terrain vehicles would be used to transport the expedition, consisting of the infantry squad, Tartaglia, Dr. Langley, and Ramirez, as well as the Equestrians, to what they were calling the Thessalonica site, the unseen area down the river and around the next mesa. Meanwhile, a second fleet of vehicles would be used by the DropShip crew to retrieve fresh water from the river to refill the ship’s reserves. Only part of this water would actually be used for the crew. Most would be broken down into its constituent hydrogen for use as fuel for the fusion torch engines and oxygen for the life-support systems. Or as the pilot had put it, “H for burnin’ and O for breathin’.”

Meanwhile, Spike and Pinkie Pie were more enthralled by the workers themselves. As they went about their duties, one of them had started singing. It had started as little more than a hum, and Spike had missed the first couple lines, but in short order someone else had picked up the melody. From there it spread like wildfire until the entire dozen workers, and even Dieter Ling overseeing the operation, were singing the increasingly bawdy and violent lyrics. When they got to the refrain, they didn’t so much sing as all shouted at the top of their lungs,

It seems that old man Liao’s come a-lookin’ for a fight! We’ll send the bastards straight to hell! We’ll Show ‘em the Militia’s might!

As his crew sang, Edgar Tartaglia disappeared around the angular nose of the Leopard DropShip. He stood hidden from the others; he didn’t want to participate in the song. His eyes scanned the arid grasslands, but his mind was elsewhere.

“You seem worried, Captain,” Tartaglia looked down to see Twilight Sparkle’s big violet eyes peering up at him.

“You could say that,” he looked around to make sure they were quite out of earshot, “Can you keep a secret?” He felt he needed to tell someone of his concerns. He still felt a little weird treating these diminutive creatures as more than clever animals, but he couldn’t talk to any of his crew. Besides, this little unicorn had shown herself to have a sharp mind, and she did have the ear of the local government. If he could tell anyone, he could tell her.

“Of course,” she smiled, “Strictest confidence.”

“Good. If any of this gets out, it could be devastating to morale,” Tartaglia took a deep breath. He knew as an officer he shouldn’t be voicing these concerns, but then as ranking officer, it was ultimately his call, “I’ve been in touch with our JumpShip, the Silvertongue. I’ve received some…troubling news.”

“Repairs going to be more difficult than you thought?” Twilight cocked her head.

“No, nothing that simple. They’ve finally gotten the navigation computer working properly and gotten a fix on our location.”

“But, that’s great!” her brief smile faded when she saw the grim look on his face, “Isn’t it?”

“It’s Terra,” his voice tinged with despair.

Twilight hadn’t quite followed his train of thought, but she was determined to try and help any way she could, “What about Terra? Did the, uh, Word of Blake do something bad, or uh, worse?”

Tartaglia shook his head, “No,” he swept a hand across the landscape, “This. This is Terra. We’re on Terra.”

“The human homeworld? But, I don’t understand. How can that be?”

“I don’t understand it either. But everything fits. The constellations, the other planets, even the moon. It’s like our world and every trace of humanity in the solar system just disappeared and was replaced by yours.”

“That’s… Wow.”

“Yeah. Wow. Now you see why I don’t want this news getting out. Finding out they might never get home, that they might not even have a home to get back to? It would be…”

“Awful,” Twilight stared off at nothing in particular. She couldn’t imagine being torn away from her home, her family, and her friends, and then being told she could never see them again. She shuddered.

The song ended as the unloading was completed. The vehicles were loaded and the BattleMech powered down. Reemerging from their hiding spot around the front of the vessel, Tartaglia and Twilight Sparkle rejoined the rest of their expedition.

“Almost ready to go, sir,” Leftenant Ling gave a jaunty salute, “My team is loading the last of the supplies now.”

Applejack kicked a rock with her hoof, “This ground sure is funny. It’s almost like somepony paved it over at one point.”

Dr. Langley bent over and examined one of the greyish rocks. She hefted a chunk in her hand, “What the hell? Sir, this is ferrocrete.” She tossed the rock to Tartaglia.

He peered at it closely. It was unmistakably that reinforced concrete mixture used so frequently in large-scale construction throughout the Inner Sphere. For the first time, he truly looked at the plateau they had set down on. Chunks of ferrocrete lay everywhere. Applejack was right, this area had been paved over at one point, but now the pavement lay cracked and crumbled. Plants, mostly hardy grasses, had invaded the cracks and hid what he now saw to be ferrocrete extending for several kilometers along the plateau in a long, narrow strip.

“What in the hell?” Tartaglia repeated.

****************

The ferrocrete extended farther than just the ancient runway. They quickly discovered a narrow road winding down from the top of the plateau and around in the direction they needed to go. The pavement of the road was broken and buckled. More than once they ran across patches where it simply didn’t exist anymore, washed away by the shifting river, buried by falling talus, or just simply gone. Even where the road hadn’t been completely destroyed it was often little more than a strip of broken cobbles.

“So, what do y’all think we’re gonna find?” Applejack was riding in the back seat of the middle jeep wedged in between Dr. Langley and Rarity. Rarity let out a little squeal as the jeep bounced heavily through a small ravine. Applejack thought her friend looked ridiculous with here delicate silk scarf around her neck and over her head and her large sunglasses, but knew enough to keep her mouth shut lest she unleash the floodgates of fashion advice.

“I don’t know,” the doctor replied, “I was thinking we’d be lucky just to find traces of an old landing site, or if we’re lucky the Thessalonica itself. But this road has me confused.”

“All this dust is going to play havoc with my mane. Haven’t they been getting enough rainfall here? And these plants are growing so chaotic. And what is that salty smell?” Rarity’s comments may have sounded like complaints, but Applejack had learned to recognize her elegant friend’s manner of expressing nervous worry.

“I reckon we’re pretty far from Equestria, but it is awfully dry. Hey, Doc? Can we use your communicator-thingy and ask Twilight?”

Langley pulled out the headset for her military communicator and slipped it over Applejack’s ears, “You remember how to do it?” The orange pony nodded and called out the appropriate protocols.

“Twilight here. Go ahead AJ.”

“Hey, Twi? We’ve been wonderin’ why it looks so… wild… here. Over.”

“We’re really far from Equestria now. We’re probably the only ponies for thousands of miles. You could say we’re really, really deep in the Everfree. Oh, um. Over.”

“And what’s with that odd smell? Over.”

“That salty smell? That’s the ocean, I think. We’re really close to the shoreline. Oh, yeah, over.”

“Will someone get those critters off the horn?” they didn’t recognize the voice, it must have been one of the four from the infantry team who had not received Twilight’s translation spell.

“Thanks, Twi. Over n’ out.” Applejack said quickly and shook the headset off.

In the lead jeep, Twilight flushed pink. Tartaglia turned around from the front seat to look at her, “Don’t worry about it. You were using it on my authority.”

Ling in the driver’s seat tugged on the Captain’s sleeve to draw his attention to something in front of them. The Leftenant brought the jeep to a stop as they rounded the base of the mesa and their destination came fully into view. The land came to an abrupt end along a sandy shore, replaced by the deep blue blanket of the sea. An ancient lava flow extended to form a breakwater for what had once been a lagoon, but had long since been mostly filled in with silt and sand.

On what had been the shore of this natural harbor sat the broken and crumbling wharfs and quays of what had been a small fishing port, now stranded high and dry. Landward to these docks sat the ruins of an old military installation with large earthen ramparts and surrounding this was what could only be described as a small city.

The centuries had not been kind to the settlement. Most of the outlying buildings were little more than the ghosts of old walls and most were partially covered in sediment and plant growth. One edge of the old town had been completely wiped out, swept away by a previous meander of the large river. The once gigantic ramparts able to hide BattleMechs had been worn down to mere grass-covered berms, though still impressively tall by human standards.

“Blake’s blood,” Tartaglia muttered, “How did this get here?”

****************

They slowly made their way through the grass-choked streets of the ruined city. They peeked into what had once been old warehouses and tenements. The centuries had stolen away most of the clues as to the inhabitants, but occasionally they would spy an odd broken piece of computer hardware or some rusted industrial machinery.

“So, you think this was a human settlement?” Rarity asked, peering over her stylish sunglasses.

“No doubt about it,” Dr. Langley waved her hand towards some of the more intact buildings, “I was a bit of a history buff as a teen. This is characteristically 26th-century architecture, late Age of War or earliest Star League.”

“And the people from the Thessalonica built all this?” Rarity asked with awe.

Dr. Langley shook her head, “No way in hell. Princess Celestia said the Thessalonica claimed to be a merchant ship. Most of those are set up to carry a lot of cargo with a minimum crew. Figure maybe a dozen or two, plus another dozen or so for the JumpShip. Even if the JumpShip carried other DropShips you’d be looking at maybe a few hundred people at most. This town is big enough for several thousand.” She pointed ahead to the military base towards which they were moving, “And there’s no way one merchant DropShip brought along with it all the equipment and materials to build all this plus a full-on military installation and the soldiers to run it. No. This wasn’t a bunch of marooned refugees, this was a concerted effort.”

****************

They figured the best place to look for clues as to the nature of this abandoned city was the military installation. Within the ramparts of the old fort the buildings were in much better repair. Even after centuries of neglect, the highly reinforced ferrocrete construction designed to withstand heavy weapons fire had held together. The weathered grey central headquarters sat with its thick blast doors still sealed shut. Even the massive doors to the attached ‘Mech hangar stood intact. Only the outlying buildings—the barracks and mess, mostly—had been worn away.

“If there’s one thing the Hegemony and the Star League knew how to do, it was build things to last,” mused Ling as he stood admiring the thick structure.

“Are there a lot of these sorts of buildings where you come from?” asked Rarity, “I must say, the style does leave something to be desired.”

“It may not look pretty, but that heavy construction is how this old building has managed to last so long. But to answer your question, yes. Star League buildings are incredibly tough. Nearly every major city in the Inner Sphere, hell, almost every planet, has a good number of League-era buildings still in use.”

“And not just buildings,” chimed in Ramirez, “but their hardware was tough-as-nails, too. There are still computers, factories, space stations, JumpShips, hell even BattleMechs that are still in frequent use centuries after they were built.”

“What about your Valkyrie?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“Nah, my ‘Mech’s new. Only about a year old. But the Chameleon I trained in at Academy was built shortly before the Amaris Coupe and the fall of the Star League. Which really says something about its toughness, considering all the abuse we put it through.”

“But what that means for us,” continued Ling, “is that if we could just get in there, there’s a good chance we might find some working LosTech.”

“What’s ‘loss tech’?” asked Dash, confused at the colloquialism.

“The Succession Wars devastated industrial capacity across the Inner Sphere. LosTech refers to technologies that they had in the Star League that we can’t build anymore. It can be quite valuable.”

“Get those c-bill signs out of your eyes, Ling,” Captain Tartaglia jested as he joined them, returning from his survey of the headquarters complex, “This isn’t a LosTech treasure hunt. We need a way in, and this place is locked up tighter than a Castle Brian.”

“We have that block and a half of C8.” Ling suggested.

“Wouldn’t make a dent, and we need it for evidence.”

“I could try to open a door with my magic, but I’d have to know how the locks work,” offered Twilight.

“The doors aren’t so much locked as corroded shut,” he found the unicorn’s constant attempts to help endearing.

“I could probably do it, then, but only if you can get it started.” Twilight said confidently.

“Well, then we’re back to square one.”

“Twilight, how big or heavy an object can you move?” Ramirez asked, an idea forming.

“Pretty big. Especially if I don’t have to move it far. Why?”

****************

Thunderous footfalls reverberated through the ground. The rhythmic thudding couldn’t be so much heard as felt as the Valkyrie appeared in the aperture in the rampart and strode easily across the broken pavement of the courtyard. Humans and ponies stood aside as the humanoid war machine maneuvered up to the large hangar doors.

Ramirez keyed the external speaker, “Stand clear. Twilight, be ready.” She shouted an ok, though she wasn’t sure if he could hear her.

Ramirez flipped a toggle switch and dropped his targeting reticule over the seam where the two doors came together. He pulled the trigger, using his neurohelmet feedback and the touch sensors on the control stick to communicate the nuance of the requested action to the ‘Mech’s computer. The Valkyrie drew back its left arm and balled its metal fist. With a resounding crash, it drove the fist hard into the edge of the door. Ramirez squeezed the trigger again and the ‘Mech landed another heavy punch on the obstinate hangar door, then another and another. The metal began to bend and crack as the armored fist drove home again and again. Eventually, the metal bent inward enough to open a small hole. With a different set of commands, Ramirez ordered the ‘Mech to extend its hand into the hole and grip the thick metal. Metal shrieked as the 30-ton machine pulled on the door with all its might. Working the right arm into the gap as well to act as a lever, he managed to widen the gap, but the door as a whole barely budged.

Twilight took this as her cue and grunted with effort as a powerful glow erupted from her horn. The door began to sparkle with a faint purple light as she dug her hooves into the ground. The rails the door would normally run along were totally shot, so together the ‘Mech and unicorn pulled outwards. Slowly the door bent as sweat formed on Twilight’s brow. Metal began to tear away around the old rails and all at once the door broke free. Pulling it clear of the newly created aperture, they let it fall to the ground with a heavy thud which kicked up copious amounts of dust.

With the door down, the armored BattleMech lead the way into the hangar, followed by the infantry team with weapons ready. They knew they wouldn’t need them, but better safe than sorry. At the call of “all clear,” the rest of the expedition followed into the dimly-lit interior.

The hangar was empty. No BattleMechs stood in the bays, no lifting equipment or repair gantries either. Only some animal nests, a small colony of bats, and a thick layer of dust in which they left shuffled footprints.

“Respirators on, everyone,” Dr. Langley called out as they entered. Fumbling in the dim light, everyone pulled breathing masks over their noses and mouths, even Spike and the ponies who wore borrowed masks modified for their use by Rarity’s magic.

The door leading from the hangar into the interior of the headquarters itself proved less problematic. Even through their masks they could smell the dank, musty air. Rarity and Twilight used the glow of their horns to help illuminate the way while the humans shone flashlights through doorways and into side passages. It was not an expansive complex, mostly just offices and meeting rooms. When they came to a dark stairway, they split into two teams. While one headed up the stairs to seek out the control room near the top of the structure, the other headed down into the depths in search of the main computer room or the archives. The control room was a loss. It had totally been stripped bare so that not even a scrap of circuitry, or even a desk, remained.

It was Pinkie Pie who found the archive room down in the headquarters’ sub-basement. It was a smallish room with a desk for the long-absent clerk and rack after rack filled with data disks.

“Perfect,” said Captain Tartaglia, “Now let’s get to work.”

****************

They set up camp outside the headquarters complex, in the shadow of the remaining hangar door. Ramirez kept his BattleMech in stand-by so they could tap the electrical power from its fusion reactor using the connectors hidden behind armored panels on the back of the leg below the jumpjet exhaust ports. Using power packs recharged from the ‘Mech’s near limitless supply of energy, man-portable spotlights illuminated the musty old corridors with their harsh white light.

The eerie old structure gave Fluttershy the willies, even with the now-ample lighting. The empty rooms and bare walls always seemed to be closing in on her. Maybe with some furniture and some pictures on the walls and a fresh coat of paint it might be livable, but probably still depressing. She decided she did not want to venture inside again unless absolutely necessary, and took to exploring the seashore instead. She found lots of new animals, hermit crabs and shore birds and even some little fish in a tide pool. Having never been to the ocean before, she was thrilled with all the new little creatures.

Rainbow Dash spent most of her time going through the outlying village. This was an entire alien settlement, and she wanted to explore every inch of it. She also wanted to see if she could find any worthwhile artifacts as a souvenir. She fancied finding an old discarded laser pistol of her very own—it didn’t even have to work—but she wasn’t picky. She knew from Twilight that archaeological sites were rife with discarded objects from former inhabitants. She had found some old food containers and other garbage, but there was very little of that even. It was almost like the entire town had been stripped bare, just like the headquarters building.

As for the other ponies, they mostly hung around the campsite. Applejack set herself up as a sort of de facto quartermaster, working with Dr. Langley and the Leftenant to ration food and supplies. Rarity took it upon herself to clear as much of the dust and other offensive material from the hangar and passageways leading to the archive room. She also tried to make herself useful by working with Rainbow (when she could get ahold of the restless pegasus) to pump fresh air into the interior of the building. By the next morning, she had managed to make it so they no longer needed to wear their respirators when inside the stale old building. Pinkie Pie split her time helping out anywhere she could, though mostly she acted as a safety buddy for Dash and Fluttershy, keeping an eye on them when they were away from the safety of camp.

As an officer who rose through the ranks, Ling was well aware of the problems inherent with idle soldiers. In attempts to keep his enlisted subordinates busy, he sent them on short expeditions to scavenge food from the surroundings, hunt for artifacts with Rainbow Dash, or simply patrol the area. He was most pleased with his idea to have them investigate whether the old power generators could be repaired, until Quigley informed him there were no power generators—they had also been long since removed.

Meanwhile, in the bowels of the headquarters building, Tartaglia and Twilight tore into the archives with abandon. Using a pair of noteputers, they were making short work of cataloging the data disks by content and moved on to analyzing them for whatever data they could. Experienced with the nuances of running a library, organization, and working with Twilight, Spike proved invaluable by labeling and reorganizing the disks once the Captain or Twilight told him what was on them. He had figured Twilight would be almost impossible to remove from the archive room once he found out what the room was. He was a little surprised at the Captain’s enthusiasm, but chalked it up to the human being closer than ever to a possible way home. The little dragon also took it on himself also to make sure the two obsessive personalities took time to eat and rest.

It had originally been planned that the infantry team would rotate through the archive room to help with the investigations down there, but the plan was abandoned for two reasons. For starters, the first couple sent down ended up stepping on the toes of the well-oiled machine of Tartaglia, Twilight, and Spike, and second, Ling didn’t entirely trust all of his team.

****************

Their third day at the Thessalonica site dawned grey and drizzly. Rainbow Dash waged a single-pony war against the spring showers, but for every cloud she dispersed, another quickly condensed to take its place. These clouds were strange. They were high and thin, not like the ones in Equestria. Eventually, she gave up and let the uncontrolled weather go about its business. Taking shelter from the rain in the hangar, she expected to find the rest of the expedition lounging around or maybe having a meal. What she found was an argument.

“You saw what that purple one did with that door. Can you imagine using that sort of technology on the battlefield? Throwing ‘Mechs and tanks around like toys!” it was one of the others from the infantry team, a sturdy blond woman with a pointed chin. Rainbow Dash tried to remember her name, Harris was it?

“She has a name, you know,” Ramirez glowered, “And what you’re suggesting is entirely out of the question.”

“What’s going on?” Rainbow Dash sidled up next to Rarity and Applejack, who were watching the proceedings.

“Oh, those three came up to Dr. Langley and Ramirez and asked if they could speak freely. Next thing you know they go off on this awful tirade about us.”

“Us?” Rainbow asked incredulously.

Rarity nodded, “Mmmhmm. They were apparently, oh what would you say, Applejack? Confused by our part in this expedition.”

Harris hadn’t quite finished her protestation, “We can’t let such a potential boon for the Fed Suns just slip by!” she shot back, “Ackermann said that...”

“I don’t give a vrikk’s backside what Ackermann said,” snapped Ramirez, “They’re a civilization, not a resource.”

Rainbow Dash snorted, “Hmph. I should have known that stinker Ackermann was behind this.”

“And another thing, why are you calling it magic? I didn’t take you for the supernatural type, Sargent,” losing on one front, Harris had decided to redirect.

“I call it magic because that’s what they call it. You’re right, I don’t go in for the supernatural, it’s part of why I’m an atheist. Whether they’re doing it by some really advanced technology or biologically tapping into some undiscovered force or whatever is beside the point. Yeah, I would love to get my hands on however they do it, but we can’t just take it from them.” The debate then turned philosophical, arguing the relative merits of espionage, Machiavellian politics, and all-out consequentialism.

“Consarn-it! I hate this not bein’ able to stick up for ourselves!” Applejack stamped her hoof, “Why couldn’t Twi have just charmed them all with that fancy translatin’ spell of hers?”

“I just don’t get why you and the officers are all gaga over a bunch of animals,” a lanky young man Rainbow knew was Private Quigley chimed in, “Yeah, they’re cute, but you’re acting like you’re actually talking to them.”

“Damn it, Quigley!” Ramirez had had enough, “Haven’t you been paying attention? We are talking to them. I’m sorry you can’t understand their language, but they talk just the same.”

“They have cities, Quigley. Whole cities,” Dr. Langley rose to the defense, “They’re not just a bunch of animals. They have an advanced and complex civilization and they’re damn smart. For all intents and purposes they’re people, and they deserve the same respect we would give any other person. What’s more, this is their planet. I think we can agree it would be a good idea to stay on the good side of the locals.”

Comments

[Cheesey]

Huh. No comments? Anyone?

Okay...

[EllysPerani]

2885622
Too busy reading awesome fanfiction.

[AppleTank]

Ah, one of the classics of our time.

[Silentwoodfire]

maybe a mention that pissing off the leader meant that the very SUN would be utilized against them might make them rethink a few things

[Bronzer]

The Succession Wars devastated industrial capacity across the Inner Sphere.

Something that always irritated me about lostech lore is that the technology was lost at all. It'd be like saying that if the majority of ball-barring factories were destroyed twenty minutes from now, humanity would lose the ability and knowledge to build them. Seriously? Even if our technology disappeared over night, we'd still have countless people with the knowledge to build the tools needed to build technology we cannot reproduce without those tools as well as countless people with the knowledge to use those tools to build the technology again. The same would apply in the BattleTech-verse. But then the game wouldn't nearly have as rich a lore.

[DragonMaus]

5241972
A valid point, but it doesn't really apply to BT lore. The Succession Wars went on for centuries, and most LosTech is significantly more complicated than ball bearings; a better analogy would be if we lost the ability and knowledge to build aircraft, and it stayed lost for 4 or more generations.

[jaroslav]

5241972
Problem is that in brutal wars those that have education are the first that are murdered when conquered. And when such war is lasting very long some knowledge tends to disappear.

[Silverwind Blade]

6531014
It's also the fact in BT lore that the vast majority of people that made up the Star League, and thus posessed the knowledge needed to build the tech in question left in Kerensky's exile. After that, Comstar did their part in fiddling about and interfering in what knowledge was available and preserved too, which wouldn't have helped.
I'm not really a fan of the idea of lost knowledge like that in sci-fi settings either, but at least there's some attempt to justify it, and it does get better as the timeline continues.