--a dark and distant hilltop. There were ponies present, all ones he recognized, and two that were familiar-yet-different. A sick feeling of anticipation, masked by brusque rudeness and a sense of rising power--
--unfamiliar magic, learned by rote, that did unidentifiable things to a cube of solid-state hardware near the top of the Church. "That's it," he said, keeping the note of uncertainty from his voice. "The labournet connection is--"
"Too far, go back," Merlon whispered, pushing away the emotions that came with the sharing. "I don't care what happened at the corral. I want to know how you got there."
--terrible brightness and heat at his back, the flat farmland below illuminated as if by the noon-day sun. Wings folded, he fell, trying to escape. A complex, long-practiced spell pattern filled his mind, parts of it altering to match his position in the naked now, then a push--
The remembered details flicked by too fast to follow, but Merlon was starting to get a sense of how the spell operated. "That's good," she whispered, muzzle close to Scalar's ear. "Show me another jump, somewhere else."
"You've seen them all," he said, voice trembling. "My mate, you said that--"
"In time, Scalar, in time. Show me your practice sessions again... that one where Redshift was playing with the gun." Merlon kept her voice calm and quiet, trying to push away the emotions that came back down the sharing link with Scalar. Horror and panic blended with flashes of imagery, little snippets of memory of ponies Scalar knew, but mostly of Elliptic and what life would be like without her. Merlon swallowed and opened her eyes, dispelling the visions. The magic she was using to control the injured mare's heart was still there, and the loss of the other distractions made it impossible not to stare at her. Must follow my orders; this pony's life is not important. She kept the thought hidden, separated from the sharing's residual connection.
"I can teach you the pattern directly... it would be much quicker." His head twisted and his nostrils flared, all senses focused on the still form of Elliptic.
"Yes, but I need to see your memories first. Can't have any accidental mistakes in the pattern, can we?" Merlon thought she'd kept her voice level and even, but it sounded tense and unnatural to her ears. Is this what an interrogator feels? I know my Master has done this many times in his past... how can they do this and not be affected? She shifted her weight, ears drooping slightly. This mare has done nothing wrong, and I am using her like she is a thing. Even Scalar isn't really at fault, just... contaminated by these bad ideas.
"All you have to do is forget about her -- what could I do?"
A whining tone had entered Scalar's voice, and Merlon sighed as the flow of memories wavered. "Focus!" she snapped. "The sooner I am happy, the sooner you will be. A foal could see that I can't keep up a second spell during a jump." More mental prodding and the scene changed again, and Merlon compared the start and end points to the changes in the patterns used. It's true; there are memories of places encoded in the patterns. Even if I don't know where the rogues are hiding, I could travel there. Scalar's recollections of the base were quite clear, more than clear enough to build the required patterns. "Right. Now you can show me the details." Scalar's horn flashed and Merlon flinched, but he didn't try anything rash. "Carefully, Scalar, carefully."
"Yes," he whispered, eyes closed. "You don't have to remind me what's at stake. I think you have most of it, the actual complexity is here, at the central node, but at least it's constant..." He kept talking, manipulating the pattern and allowing her to follow along, until her copy of it was a perfect match. "...and that's it. There, you have everything I know. Try the spell, you'll see that it works." His voice became raw and trembling, an alien thing to come from such a stoutly-built pony. "Elliptic, you promised."
"Yes." Merlon replaced the suppressor unit on his horn, ignoring the look of panic, then gently lifted the mare from the floor, bringing her up to head height. A flick of magic and her interventions were gone; Elliptic's heart beat on without her input, still a little weak. "The thing is... I still don't really trust you. I've seen inside your head, and I know how much you hate what I've made you do. This spell needs a live test subject." She looked down at him, then back at Elliptic. "Are you sure there's nothing you might have forgotten to mention? Some detail that wasn't obvious from my inspection?" She cocked her head, making Elliptic rotate slowly.
"Use me, not her. The first jump can be rough," he said, the muscles around his withers bunching and flexing in a futile effort to escape his bonds. "Elliptic is too badly hurt, the shock might kill her."
Merlon opened her mouth, then looked at him thoughtfully. "You wouldn't be trying to die, would you, Scalar?" Would he do that? Some hidden defect in the spell that only affects complex living tissue... "This is an issue of trust," she said, then shook her head.
"I told you the truth," he said numbly. "It will work, I promise."
There was fear in his eyes, but no more than might be expected for the situation. "I hope so, Scalar, for your mate's sake." She took her test pattern and pushed.
===
It is a good thing that this job never encouraged a home life, Orgon thought, keeping his face blank through long habit, even though he was alone. The endless lists of command decisions, meetings and political compromises that had consumed what passed for his life since his 'promotion' were a matter of record, some public, most utterly secret, and filled his secure calendar further than he cared to look.
He made an unconscious gesture, one intended to signal to his servitor, then sighed and opened his medical kit instead. This one could just do with a correction to his somatic system, rather than... Extracting a spray, he glanced at the warning decals and ignored them with a grimace. Eyes closed, he fired a dose onto his tongue, fighting to keep a straight face at the sudden, intense burst of bitterness. Running on two doses already, the taste of the third was so horrible as to leave him weak and trembling; with enormous effort he resisted the urge to scrub at his muzzle with both paws.
The weakness faded, leaving behind a feeling of wondrous clarity and strength, such energy that he felt the sudden desire to get up from his desk and pace vigorously around the blank office he'd commandeered in the anonymous depths of Arcology Five. Orgon wonders if Merlon has made any prog--
The communicator chimed, an urgent message pushing aside all the nested data windows of the command network's information feed that covered the wall screen. The information was simple: a servitor designator and a set of coordinates with a circular error. Orgon gaped at the information, mind running in a dozen directions simultaneously, then his jaws snapped shut. It actually worked! Now, what to do with the information...
The drugs were still making his mind jump randomly; Orgon was familiar enough with the effects of the cocktail of stimulants to be wary of any decisions made under their influence, but there was an interesting thread of logic that just wouldn't die, despite the unthinkable nature of it. These ones have no choice, not really, but this path of extreme military force is unlikely to succeed. What chance is there that we even caught one of them in the induced quench at Hub Twelve, no matter what this one told the Auditors? They move too fast... even the slightest warning and they will get away.
He ran his tongue over his teeth, trying to wipe off the residual taste of the stimulant's anti-addiction compounds. Orgon got the Court on-side with openness about the servitor problem; now that these ones actually have a location, he does not think using it will actually be useful...
Orgon is the only one who knows this information; he could not pass it on... He frowned, then stabbed at a couple of controls, drumming his claws on the desk while waiting for connections to be made to the dispersed and hidden members of the Synod core group. The first few connections opened, showing Councillors in various states of dishevelled undress. This one supposes it is pretty late. Orgon hid the urge to smile manically, lips twitching back from his teeth momentarily. Or early.
"Councillors," Orgon said quietly, "apologies for the early call, but this one has the location of the rogue servitors."
"Then tell the Court!" Indutu said sharply. "Rid us of this threat and get the Auditors out of our fur!"
"There may be another way, Councillor. This one thinks that there is too much risk that use of the Hammer will not achieve the goal we seek." Orgon stared at the faces of the Synod; all looked back at him with disbelief and mounting anger. "Consider this, please. The servitors are just too mobile to guarantee killing all of them. If these ones fail to kill the primary targets... well, imagine the excesses of the Maker's Path committed on a scale to encompass whole arcologies."
Half the Synod started shouting and he muted them, continuing to talk. "This one believes that the risk is too great without trying to bottle them up first. The current iteration of Arclight is not sufficient, but this one is working to understand how the teleport magic functions." Merlon must have made some progress by now! "Once he has that, the servitors can be trapped and eliminated, no matter their level of personal power." They do not trust this one's skill in this matter, he thought, surveying the faces again and feeling faintly ill.
The Synod didn't take long to reach a consensus; Orgon kept his features expressionless while they overrode his advice and ordered the strike anyway.
===
Chau looked again at the launch order, then lifted his eyes to meet the gaze of his supervisor, Arturon, the Strategist in charge of the Lunar Kinetic Driver. Behind Arturon, visible through the wide, thick windows, the ranks of accelerator rings marched in a long line towards the horizon, amid a plain of matte-black photovoltaic cells. A blurred pulse of silver, little more than a momentary flicker so brief that it was almost invisible, swept through the centre of the rings. More visible was the tiny ripple of dust that followed the projectiles, like glowing fog in the harsh Celestia-light, kicked up from the moon's surface by the shivering vibrations running down the accelerator loop's support struts.
"Target is above the horizon. These ones have a firing solution that avoids anything large enough to be a problem," he said, dropping his gaze to the banks of displays, filled with high-level summaries from the cubic kilolengths of machinery ringing the moon. "Projectile package has left the low-orbit storage loop and is in the main accelerator. The power sequence has started."
Arturon leaned forwards, studying the display. "Launch position in... nine hundred seconds." The main display showed a high-level schematic, a section through the moon looped with strings of tiny rings and vertical lines that penetrated deep into the mantle. A dash of red light was moving through one of the loops, visibly accelerating as it did so.
"Yes. The automatic sequencer is running on the exit magnets and these ones can fire on any pass. Kinetic accumulators are fully charged and responding as expected; the capacitor banks are cycling. There is sufficient reserve to achieve launch. Feed from the equatorial PV belt is coming online to lift the drop masses back into position--" It's not like those crustal pits don't store enough gravitational potential energy for dozens of full-power shots, Chau thought, suppressing a sigh. One of the more pointless procedures. "--and Defence reports no incursions within our perimeter; antiproton traps are filling from cryogenic storage. Thaumic suppression is stable." His paws shook slightly as they swept across the board, requesting another series of radar pulses directed deeper down the gravity well.
The view was already cluttered, and getting worse. The ablation cascade, started on the other side of the planet, had spread rapidly as a result of wildly different velocities of debris scattered across the range of affected orbital altitudes, and was now a lethal blanket over the whole globe. A few of those high-velocity fragments were from the last planned resupply launch, an event that should take place once every ten days. There's something stupid about only having fifty days of food, Chau thought, switching away from the down-well view. There'd been no replacement cargo launches since the disaster, and the Court's own food reserves had already been moved to war-footing rationing. It's just more standard procedure... nothing to worry about.
Cameras on the accelerator rings captured images of the projectile package as it passed. Slender darts tapering to needle points fore and aft, the early weapons in the string were small compared to rings they flew through, looking like nails dropping through circles of drainage pipe. Frozen by the imaging system, and individually little bigger than a Person, the three formations of ten darts were high-performance missiles in their own right, complete with hybrid liquid-solid fuel motors and a full suite of sensors and ECM.
"Telemetry is good; all birds report successful integration of the atmospheric penetration plan," Chau muttered. "Self-destruct charges are primed." The camera view changed, the individual images from each ring strung together to produce a video feed, as if taken from a camera being accelerated with the weapons. It was an odd way to view the world; the rings and projectiles appeared stationary while the landscape outside flickered past. At the moment they were on the night side, and Chau could see the motion of distant debris-ring objects as they rose and set with stately grace.
The view changed, showing another needle, but this one closer to the size of a levitation train. The best part of ten thousand tonnes of iron with a tungsten core, coated with a thick layer of ablative silicates, the thing was bone-white under the glare of the camera strobes. It was a much simpler machine than the missiles that were designed to protect it; little more than dumb mass.
The view behind the projectile suddenly became a brilliant glare of distant mountains and foreshortened craters, all steadily moving past the apparently stationary accelerator track. The closest features were already reduced to a series of brief impressions, and in any case consisted mainly of a grid of black PV cells. Chau studied the feed, paws unconsciously clenched. "It's hard to believe that the decision to fire is coming from Lacunae itself," he muttered. "This one doesn't think the Court has ever fired the Hammer at full power against a ground target. To call it down on your own lands..."
"No. Even during the Baur-Lacunae war the shots were only at twenty percent," the Strategist said quietly. Outside the window something flickered past, raising another, slightly larger, ripple of dust.
"That's the first circuit... velocity is now seventy-five kilolengths a second," Chau said, running claws through his whiskers. "Forty-five to go."
===
Merlon gently peeled the now-inactive field dressings from Elliptic's shoulder, probing the extent of her injuries, and noting the locations of blood vessels only partially repaired by the simple magic. They kept her alive for long enough, she thought, mind half directed towards her labournet communicator. My Master isn't answering, and he needs to know this. Frowning, she examined the random patches of singed fur on the mare's coat, using a wad of dressing material to wipe away the char. Scalar was right, it was tricky. The first jump had nearly gone badly wrong when she'd had a flutter of doubt during the casting, but the second and third had been better. The fourth she'd cast on herself.
"Is she okay?" Scalar whispered, the strain in his voice obvious.
"Elliptic has lost a bit more fur, but that's all." She picked up a plastic pouch of blood substitute and connected the intravenous line. "Now that I've stopped the worst of the bleeding the extra fluids will reverse her shock."
"Thank you," he breathed, the words a sob and tears soaking the fur of his muzzle. "Thank you."
I have saved her only for you both to be euthanized later. At least it won't hurt. The thought made Merlon flinch at the anticipation of Punishment, then tears pricked at her own eyes. ...and what about me? It seemed like a necessary act at the time, but what happens next? Will they allow me to receive a second Blessing? Security burned its own ponies out of simple suspicion. She snorted, shaking her head hard enough that her mane whipped from side to side, delivering stinging slaps on her neck. No, I am still loyal. My Master will understand this. She shifted her weight from hoof to hoof, heart beating a little faster. I think.
She repeated the connection request to her labournet communicator, swallowing hard when there was no response. Despite what I know, I am only a servitor. Am I being denied access because of this? What else is happening that could be more important?
There was a sudden ping of sound, seeming to originate from the centre of her own head, then the comms panel in the room lit up, showing the face of Strategist Orgon. His gaze seemed distracted, constantly shifting to one side. "Servitor, report," he said curtly.
Merlon blinked, momentarily at a loss for words. "Master, I..." A look of irritation flashed across Orgon's face; she flinched, but there was no pain. I will never get used to that. "I have the teleport spell, Master. With it I can locate the rogues’ base of operations."
"Tell this one the location," Orgon snapped.
"I will have to travel there; if provided with navigation equipment I will be able to--"
"No, that will take too long. This one already knows where it is, he just wanted confirmation. Random Walk has used the spell. Does the pony have any insight into how the teleport magic may be blocked?"
"Yes, the magic is fragile and--"
"Can this be done over a wide area, and quickly? As in right now?"
"I, ah..." Merlon's mouth opened, but no other words came out. She shook, mane whipping back and forth. "Master, there may be a way to modify Arclight to blanket a large area, but that will take time and I don't know how--"
Orgon made a deep bubbling hiss, almost a snarl. "Not soon enough, then. The pony will discuss its findings with a Security technical team. Leave the prisoners and go to the Sector Eleven Hub." He nodded once, then turned his full attention on her. "Is there any other information that the pony thinks this one needs to know?"
Merlon realised that she was staring back open-mouthed. The words were there in her head-- I removed my own Blessing. --but they wouldn't come out. "No, Master," she said, "nothing that cannot wait." She watched him carefully, examining the cant of his ears and the arrangement of his whiskers. He must see it, he must know! But there was nothing, no change in expression, no hint of realisation or dawning horror that said she'd been found out, that she'd turned herself into a monster. The connection went blank as Orgon dropped the link, leaving her staring at the default Security logo.
"I am a good pony, but I didn't tell him. Why didn't I tell him?" she murmured, then walked slowly to the door of the interrogation suite, intent on telling the Intelligence officers that she had finished with the prisoners, but she paused, ears suddenly flat back. "Did I do all this, cut myself away from the Master's herd, for nothing?! He already knew!" Merlon's eyes went wild, lips pulling back from her teeth, and she gave a little rear, forehooves beating at the air. "I know what Security has done to ponies even suspected of contact with the rogues--" Her mouth snapped shut and she glanced at the stallion, still bound to the interrogation bench.
Scalar gave a short, harsh laugh. "They'll kill you, they'll kill all of us." His voice dropped to a mumble. "At least it's not me who's gotten everypony killed; still should have had the courage to keep quiet. I'm sorry, Elliptic, but I failed." His mouth worked. "How did the dogs find us?"
The extra insult, on top of her rage, nearly translated into a vicious kick of telekinesis that would have caved the stallion's skull in. Breathing heavily through flared nostrils, Merlon closed her eyes and held back the power. "If you are trying to get me to kill you, remember I can make you suffer in other ways," she said at last.
But it's not Scalar you are angry at, is it? The nasty, unthinkable thought wouldn't go away, following her as she left the stallion to the Intelligence officers, rattling around her brain as she flew to her next assignment.
===
Fusion blinked, sluggishly opening her eye, then closed it again against the fast-moving blast of air and the stinging whip of pink mane-hair. Her whole body felt heavy, every muscle loose and rubbery, like she was a toy held in the magic of a yearling. Eye opening again, just a slit this time, she looked upwards, past the mad flutter of pink mane and streaming tail, past stretched-out wings and floppy legs. The wind was a dirty brown-grey colour, like that of wood ash and dirt, and was staining her white coat the same colour everywhere it touched.
She inhaled sharply, then coughed; the air was hot on the insides of her muzzle, and seemed too thin while still full of particles. I'm hot. Why is it so hot? Heat radiated down from above, like the brutal beat from an open furnace door. Weak magic kindled, building a bubble of clear air around her head and allowing Fusion to breathe. Still not enough air. Eyes closed, she tried to grab hold of the thought; the idea seemed very important, but it wasn't clear why. The air is too thin. I can fix that, she thought muzzily.
A few moments of concentrated thought and some false starts later, Fusion pulled together another spell, one that she'd used for atmospheric lensing, and increased the pressure around her body. Focus and clarity emerged a breath later, the haze in her mind swept away by the hot, dry air. Falling... She reached out for the sun, letting the connection snap open and fill her body with a warmth so unlike the heat from above. A flick of a wing and Fusion was nose down in the slipstream, slight movements of her feathers curving her plummet and damping her speed.
I'm falling through the stem of the mushroom cloud. Uneasy, she pulled out of the dive, beating her wings and soaring on the hot, gritty updraft. Her shadow sight, belatedly rekindled, showed nothing but darkness directly below, as did her energy sensitivity. Lifting her head, Fusion swept the horizon, finally picking out the faint rivers of light from the deep tunnels. Probably could have remained unconscious for another half kilosecond. The teleport pattern formed in her mind, but she hesitated. If they still have detectors here, perhaps I should leave by a more conventional route.
Magic condensed around her, forming the nested array of fields she'd used to travel to the Security base and enclosing her in a comfortable darkness that kept out the oppressive heat. Tilting back, Fusion accelerated upwards, letting the air rip past her at just under the speed of sound. There was turbulence, and it became more of an effort to suck in enough air to maintain the pressure within her enclosure, then everything went still and she was above the heat.
Fusion simplified her field structures, allowing some of the outside light to get in. Beneath her was a broad cap of dirty cloud, still visibly churning and rising, but above was only the darkest blue and the brilliant sun. One of the moons, Luna, was just rising, a gibbous shape made faint by the glare of Celestia. How high can I go? If I can bring air with me... then there's how to actually move. Can't fly in a vacuum. The thought nagged at her, along with some easily testable ideas, but she pushed it away, turning her magic inwards and hunting for a trace of Gravity.
The connection opened with a sudden rush of confused memories -- tumbling feathers and loud voices, the crash of hard objects falling at speed, a polychromatic glow of telekinesis -- then faded to a simple surface-thoughts signal. What happened? Gravity asked, relief filtering back through the sharing channel. When you didn't follow, I went back, but the Security site is just gone. A new image appeared: a towering mushroom cloud, its cap just starting to be pulled apart by high-altitude winds. I didn't want to jump too close, just in case...
I passed out after the explosion and woke up falling. You did the right thing. The old Gravity would have charged straight in and damn the consequences.
I... I wanted to, but without both of us, I was afraid of what would happen to all our friends--
Gravity, you did the right thing. Did you have enough time to get all the gryphons out?
There was silence for a moment, the only signal the steady leakage of bodily sensations -- wings beating, heart pumping -- then Gravity sighed. No. I grabbed everyone I could reach from the third roost, but there was so much panic when I jumped in. I left at least half of them behind. Should have been faster.
Think how many we did save.
And will they thank us for it? If we weren’t there, they would have been pulled out eventually. We got them killed, Fusion.
Shivering, Fusion accelerated upwards again, curving her path towards the distant mountains but gaining height all the time. The air thinned but she kept a hold of what she had, magic grasping great, rarefied volumes of atmosphere and throwing it behind her. "Yes, we did," she said, whispering the words along with the thought. At least the rest have a chance. Even if they were rescued, the dogs would have thrown them at us, given half a chance. It would have been a slaughter.
I left Ellisif and the medics to work on them, there were quite a few-- What is that? I can feel...
The words faded out, leaving Fusion with a sensation of cold mass moving at high speed, a feeling so very different and alien from her own warm and friendly linkage to the heavens. Close to the surface of the world it was a chaotic mess, far more so than it had been the first time Gravity had shared it with her, and she wondered how the other mare managed to feel anything at all in the tangle of orbits. What? I can't understand any of this--
Further out. Here, I'll just...
There was a sensation of focus, then Fusion could feel the locus of her sister's attention. It was high, well outside the clutter of the debris ring, further out than the odd fuzzy blob that was the inner moon, Grund, with its stretched, oval shape sitting in the 3:2 orbital resonance. In the outer system there was almost nothing -- a few satellites that had escaped her improvised energy beam, a drifting rock in some long-term path -- until she felt something much larger in a distant, slow orbit. It was unlike the other swarm particles, which were static, stately things that only ever moved at a snail's pace. It was twitching, almost writhing, with a steady, accelerating heartbeat.
A chill shivered down Fusion's spine and she pushed away from what Gravity was feeling, directing her energy-sensitive shadow sight in the direction of Luna. Faint, but getting brighter, a band of violet light had encircled the moon. It pulsed in time with whatever Gravity was sensing; even as she struggled to understand what was happening, a bead of purple raced along the band, followed by another, much brighter than the first. She pushed her own sensorium back to Gravity, merging the two together. It's alive with electrical power... if that's the outer moon you are feeling, I think--
That's not just a moon, Gravity thought sharply, teleportation patterns building in her mind, that's a weapon syst--!
The sharing vanished as Gravity jumped, leaving Fusion completely alone and staring at the moon. The little pips of purple light made another pass, this time noticeably faster. They are firing the Hammer, but at what? Wings frozen, she started to glide, mind locked in a kind of paralysis. We've been found out. The teleport pattern filled her mind and she pushed--
~~~discontinuity~~~
--there was a gryphon screaming, harsh, crow-like caws of sound, no more than a dozen body lengths away. Both wings were pulled back at strange, stomach-churning angles, twitching and jerking as the muscles attached to them spasmed. Claws lashed out, striking mindlessly at anyone who came near, forcing back the medics trying to get close. Neat piles of equipment, and far larger piles of rubble and broken-open packing crates, littered the area. Great slashes had been carved through the forested slopes, where some collection of excised building material had materialised and barrelled through the trees with unimpeded momentum.
Fusion looked around wildly, but Gravity wasn't here. "ELLISIF!" she shouted, magic boosting her voice to a jet-engine bellow that shocked the whole valley full of panicking gryphons into silence.
The sersjant's grey and black head snapped in her direction and she took off with a leap, only to be snatched out of the air in a field of white-gold magic and dumped at Fusion's hooves. "What, did I do something wron--"
The sudden fear in her voice cooled some of Fusion's panic, and she released the gryphoness. "They are firing the Hammer; you have to get everyone out. I don't think you are a target here, but we--"
"Are too rutting close to our base," Ellisif finished, her wings flicking out. "Go, I'll send your ponies to help. Remember, you might be better closer and behind a mountain, than further away and in the air. Don't get lulled by the initial flashes; that's just the lead projectiles punching a hole through the atmosphere. The main shot's thermal pulse has the greatest range and the fireball will climb very high," she said rapidly, then nodded and sprang back into the air without a backwards glance. "Svartr, Adigard, to me! We have incoming high-yield fire, probable Hammer strike to the north-west. Pass the word for everyone to scatter in teams, we'll meet up--"
Fusion was no longer listening and pushed--
~~~discontinuity~~~
===
"--she's told the dogs something, I don't know what!" Packet glanced upwards, feeling the urge to check the sky for what might be coming for them, even though he was hundreds of lengths underground. Nothing by shadow sight, but Gravity said the military didn't use much magic... "We have to get out of here, Backdraft!" He made a conscious effort to control his wings, currently half extended and twitching with the desire to fly. All the ponies in the chamber where he had found Backdraft were staring at him, eyes widening with panic.
The mare nodded sharply, her ears folding back. "Too good to last," she mumbled, a sick look crossing her face. "There has been no emergency planning." The phrase was a statement and not a question, and she stood up straight, voice stern. "They will respond with extreme force if they think we can all be caught dreaming." She lifted her voice, horn glowing as her power boosted the volume, making the words echo from the smooth rock walls. "Ponies and gryphons! This place has been discovered by the dogs and they will attack us as soon as they can." There was shouting and the scuffle of hooves, any words made indistinct by the convoluted tunnels and chambers.
Backdraft slumped slightly and closed her eyes, the stump of her right wing flexing in time with the whole left, then shook all over. When she lifted her head again, her eyes were clear and very hard. "All ponies with teleport training will report to the main chamber immediately. Everyone, split yourselves up into three groups and take wing and fly fast and low to the north, east and west; when you tire, or if you see a bright light, take cover behind solid rock and a force field. Stay together and we will come back for you, as soon as we rescue the flightless. Ponies without foals, find a gryphoness with a chick and help them, or go to the stores and carry something out. Protect yourselves; protect each other."
"What about our foals, and where will we go?" This came from a dapple-grey mare, her wings wrapped protectively around a gangly-legged youngster. Her foal looked at Backdraft uncomprehendingly, just starting to pick up on the fear in his dam's voice.
"Carry him. You are more than strong enough. Keep going until you run out of strength." She stepped forwards brushing her muzzle against the youngster's poll. "Then hide, like I said." There was a thunder of hooves and the thumps of displaced air in the chamber outside.
"What about you? Can you teleport?" the mare said, her eyes fixed on the Backdraft's wing stump.
She snorted. "Not important. Get going." She flicked her wing out, spooking foal and dam alike into a skittering canter that turned into a sliding gallop. Backdraft followed her out at a more sedate trot, Packet at her side, stopping in front of a group of ponies waiting in the big chamber. "All the rest are with the gryphons," she muttered, swallowing hard; there were only twenty or so ponies waiting for them. They looked scared, but determined, flickers of magic congealing about their horns. "Anypony here with rescue team experience?" There were only uncertain, shame-faced looks. "It doesn't matter." She smiled reassuringly. "I don't know what form the attack will take, but--
"I do." All eyes turned to the gryphon, a striking male with white and black patterned fur and feathers. "Sersjant Kafli. It will be either a pattern of nukes or the Hammer. There's upwards of a thousand megatons in those strikes." He cocked his head, beak opening in what she knew was a malicious smile. "I think you've got less than a kilosecond." One wing drooped more than the other; he seemed unable to fold it fully. He laughed, a harsh sound that matched his expression. "How fast can you fly, pony? How many can you save?"
Backdraft was frowning at the gryphon, but was otherwise motionless and didn't seem to be breathing. Packet switched his gaze from her to Kafli, panic starting to make his legs and wings twitch. Come on, you have the experience here, I know you have been a teacher, but you said... He bit at his lips, willing Backdraft to say something. The few details that Fusion had relayed about the Hammer didn't seem they could possibly be real. What will it be like? The explosion at the power plant seemed bad, but the energy levels here are huge. How far is far enough?
Backdraft gave a shudder but her expression cleared. "You, you and you," she waved her wing at Metal Matrix and two other ponies Packet didn't recognise. "Go and find a place for us, at least a five hundred kilolengths away. Somewhere isolated and with the mountains between you and here, obviously." Her voice was firm and unwavering, the tones of one used to giving orders. "When you do, come back here and tell the rest of us. We will move the non-fliers first, then start to jump the slowest ahead. The rest of you -- get aloft and help group the ones on the wing. Select your passengers and be ready when the scouts return." She swallowed, then looked at them sternly. "If you see anything -- bright lights, whatever -- don't come back." There were shocked looks and Metal opened his mouth to protest. "Do you want to jump into a nuclear explosion, Metal? The survivors will need your skills."
They stared at her, open mouthed, until she stomped one hind leg. "What are you waiting for? Fly!"
They vanished in pulses of coloured light and thumps of displaced air, leaving him the focus of Backdraft's attention. "I take it you don't know the spell?"
"No. My wingshoulders are still painful, so I'm not going to get far, either. You?"
"No, and I'm not flying anywhere." Backdraft sighed, then shook her head. "Panic and disorganisation will get poni-- people killed. We need to do a sweep of the tunnels and start to move the injured. Prisoners, too. Korn and that other dog will need to be moved. Where did you leave Random?"
"Up on one of the ridges. She needed to see the sky for the spell." She can't fly and never would have dared take part in a sharing.
"It's not her fault, not really." There was the sound of hoofsteps, an odd, stilted cadence, and a young pony, purple fire dancing over his hindquarters, trotted around the corner to the medical tunnels. "It's Lilac, isn't it?" Backdraft said, her gaze lingering on his clipped wings.
The youngster nodded, coming to an untidy halt. Behind him were a collection of wounded, moving with the unsteady gaits of those not completely connected with their bodies. Most were gryphons, many supported by the hazy glow of telekinesis from the few ponies present. "I thought that I could help. I'm pretty mobile, even if the others aren't."
Kafli stared at the little herd, beak hanging open. "They made you well, didn't they," he mumbled finally.
"Yes they did," Backdraft said primly, "and that's why we'll win." She cleared her throat. "Thank you, Lilac. What I want you to do is this..."
===
Gravity appeared above the centre of the slender lake filling the valley. The air below was filled with ponies and gryphons, a chaotic tumbling mass that streamed from hidden tunnels and focussed into three rivers of winged shapes. In the silence of the still air around her, the sound of shouting and panic was faint, but clear. The flyers were spreading out along their routes, the fastest pulling ahead from the herd. Little flashes of light started to dance amid the streams of ponies and gryphons, concentrated at the slow ends of the convoys, and people started to disappear.
Somepony warned them. A spike of relief ran through Gravity, then the unnatural movement around Luna made itself felt again. It was as massive as many of the debris ring fragments but far, far faster, circling the moon every ten seconds. How are they holding it there? The energy levels... Just don't let it go until we can get everypony out! She reached for the distant feeling, fumbling past the debris ring and all the tiny, glittering fragments that Fusion's attack had left of the heliostat orbits.
They moved at her touch, tumbling and shifting, some accelerating and some slowing. She frowned, brow wrinkling. That's not like telekinesis, not like when I moved the satellite-- She pushed the thought aside and reached further, but the far moon was outside her grasp, far beyond the ragged edge of her ability. I should have been practicing! Now when I need it-- Below, there was a pulse of white-gold light and familiar weight as Fusion arrived, then vanished again to reappear somewhere underground. Other ponies started to appear in the low-level airspace, diving to follow the three departing streams.
Breathing hard and with eyes clamped tight-shut, she hovered, wings making short, sharp strokes in the cold air. Is there another way? I once thought that this power came from the motion of everything in orbit-- She gasped, remembering the unintended motion of moments ago, then tried to do it again, this time deliberately. Things in orbit twitched, but the effect was hard to control and harder to aim, like trying to shift the trajectory of an iron filing by throwing a magnet near it. The smaller particles, those little more than dust or sand and mostly a product of Fusion filling the heavens with fire, decelerated wildly, orbital paths turning into collision spirals and starting a new rain of meteor streaks visible even in the daylight.
The steady beat from Luna reached a crescendo and just stopped.
===
Fusion appeared amid a swirl of ponies and gryphons, then swerved violently to avoid striking a cluster of flyers right in her path. Shadow sight probed the deep tunnels they'd bored into the mountainside, counting at a glance the number of people still underground. At least that is working. Should have planned for this, but at least someone is in charge down there. There was a knot of coloured lights, right in the main tunnel, unmoving as all the others streamed to the surface. She spotted one in the group, the pastel green of a pony, but missing one of the winglights. Backdraft--
~~~discontinuity~~~
"--what are you doing?" she said, wings fanning as she dropped to the floor.
The mare gave a whinny, dancing sideways a couple of steps, her eyes wild, then spun to face her. "Fusion, thank the Maker you are here. We think that Random has signalled the dogs."
Fusion's ears folded flat back and light pulsed from her body, bright enough to make Backdraft step backwards. How could she do something so-- She took a deep breath, folding her magic and anger back into her head, leaving only a feeling of sickness. I should have known; I saw what they were doing to her. What else did I miss, how many other ponies or gryphons--? "Yes," she said hoarsely, "they are firing the Hammer. What have you told everyone to do?"
"Fly away at best speed. The teleporters are scouting out several places to regroup, far away. When they return we'll--"
Metal Matrix appeared, wings out, nearly falling as he misjudged the distance to the floor. "Got one," he gasped, "glacial valley, crosswise to this place. About a thousand kilolengths."
He started the sharing magic and Fusion reached in and took the proffered memory-- a high, bleak place without vegetation, all rock walls and old ice, far enough around the world that the sun was still below the horizon, the glow of dawn just starting to --building the teleport spell around it. "Got it. The ponies from the gryphon pick-up are jumping in overhead. Get aloft and pass the word, then start to transfer the stragglers to the new site." He nodded, then leapt off the ground and vanished.
There was a sudden pressure in her head, a feeling of intrusion. For a moment she resisted, then the other presence became recognisable and she let it in. It's been fired! We have less than half a kilosecond--
Panic flooded Fusion's body, a mixture of her own and Gravity's, funnelled through the sharing. Can you stop it? There was no answer, so she jumped into a hover, checked Gravity's location, and pushed--
~~~discontinuity~~~
--dropping out a dozen body lengths away from her sister. Tension radiated from Gravity; every muscle was sharply defined and her eyes were screwed shut, lips drawn back from her teeth in a silent snarl. Magic flowed from her, the familiar alongside the alien feeling of her access to the heavens and the sensations of cold mass. Fusion stayed silent, searching the sky with her own senses. Nothing, I can't feel it at all. Magically dead, nothing but the energy of motion. She glanced down, seeing the large numbers of ponies and gryphons still close to their valley, and her own panic built to new heights. Too many! Lights were starting to flash amid the stragglers, the pulses of teleportation magic. Two or three jumps to make it safely, each pony can take maybe five per jump. She ran the calculations in her head, coming back with an unwelcome answer.
"I can't get a grip on them," Gravity ground out, her eyes still shut. "One big one and some small stuff out in front. Too fast. Might when they get closer." She opened her eyes and stared back at Fusion, her expression distant. "Maybe. You should go... in case I cannot." The sharing closed down to little more than a thread of thought, all emotion drained away.
"No," Fusion said gently, applying pressure to the linkage and opening it once more. Gravity resisted, but only half-heartedly, "we do this together or not at all. I'll do what I can down below, then return for the end." With that, she folded her wings and fell, speed boosted by her grip on the air. She levelled out, magic reaching in all directions to fold a score of flyers inside bubbles of power, then pushed--
~~~discontinuity~~~
--holding the magic until her conserved velocity fell away, then dropping the panicking mass of feathers and fur into deep shadow under a rocky slope. It was cold, cold enough to bite through her coat and sting the insides of her muzzle. She reached for the sharing connection again; the things Gravity was feeling had travelled perhaps a third of the distance to the world. Got to be faster, never going to get them all out-- She closed her mind to the thought and focused on the push.
~~~discontinuity~~~
===
They're coming, and I can't stop them. The huge masses were slippery with speed and she felt clumsy, unable to grip the things with her power over the heavens. Perhaps-- Gravity threw her power at orbital debris closer to the world, things travelling at a mere five kilolengths a second, shuttling energy between them so some slowed to pass their momentum on to others with more useful trajectories. A jet of fragments, thrown to intercept the inbound course, their speed a crawl compared to the terrible liquid rush of the dogs' weapons. They can't change their course, too much energy. It took a whole moon full of machines to throw them.
At the back of her mind. Fusion flickered in and out of perception, frequent little nudges of attention that each terminated with the jarring absence of a teleport jump. The presence was comforting, and Gravity left the connection alone and unguarded, allowing her sister full access to her sensorium. Can I do anything else? The weapons had yet to cross the orbits once occupied by the heliostat constellations, a distance that she thought of as marking the outer limits of her more conventional power. The sky's too bright, I won't be able to see them to use telekinesis. Her eyes snapped open and she abruptly accelerated vertically, the blood draining from her muzzle and making her vision flutter with sparkles of random colour.
Got to get above the air, but I need it! More magic flared, fields to pull in a protective blanket of atmosphere even as the pressure outside her defences dropped precipitously. The sky, completely clear now that even the highest of clouds were far below her, shaded to midnight at the zenith, the darkness spreading down towards where Luna sat, a few hoof-widths above the horizon. The trajectory will be flat... their speed is too high for anything else.
The view distorted and wavered as she built the lensing spell, guiding the alignment of its optical structures by the feelings of motion coming back from the sky. There was a cluster of dots in a regular pattern, at odds with the chaos in the rest of the environment. It's them, it has to be. The dots were static against the moving background. Not in orbit and heading straight for me. She reached for her own projectile stream, narrowing it from a fan to a concentrated jet and placing it on an intercept course. Any second--
Great plumes of gas jetted out from several of the points and they abruptly moved sideways. There was a flash like lightning, then a whole series of pulses with increasing brilliance, and her weapons disappeared. Too soon! They were defended, of course they were. Gravity started to feel sick, her anger giving way to panic.
There was a flash of white-gold and Fusion was there, a warm weight by her side. Her sister smiled, and the simple gesture made Gravity's heart lift. With renewed hope, she lifted her head and swept the sky with her magic, hornlight overpowering the sun and turning Fusion's coat a brilliant violet. A twist of incandescence materialised with a crack high overhead, in time with a sudden feeling of power from Fusion. The filament collapsed into a brilliant bead, too bright to look at, then shot upwards.
Gravity smiled in return, then reached for the weapons and pushed.
Chapter up!
6839776 Thank you!
A moon full of machines, huh? Wonder if those machines are still there in modern-day Equestria? And I strongly suspected you wouldn't actually show the hammer strike this chapter, but my god, the anticipation for the next one is real.
yay new chapter.
aww it over already.
Going to take a lot of power just to deflect that amount of mass, but just how to teleportation works? It would be very scary if they didnt move such a mass through space, but could use a conversion, affect the matter so it randomises, as a loop back portal cant be done given the zero length of teleports? Would be most unfortunate if even deflecting the main mass slightly, it heads towards dogs territory.
Given where they are, and where the show started, theres going to be a lot o Fallout one way or another.
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Your avatar was pretty much my face for this entire chapter.
I really like the tension throughout the chapter. It made me hold my breath while I read it! I'm not quite sure what happened there at the end, but I have no doubt that that will become clear in the next chapter. I'm looking forward to both the outcome of the Hammer strike, and whether Merlon is going to realize that there is more to her misgivings about the Masters than the absence of the Blessing.
Alright, so the Ponies are bones, Dogs know where they are due to Random being an idiot. But at least the ponies also know the Dogs know. Fusion is busy enjoying riding the blast wave of a massive explosion (Yes story please do not try to convince us she is in real danger or dead) And given how bad every attempt on the Ponies has gone so far for Dog troops, and the name of this chapter, time to unleash the Hammer? AKA Gravity's soon to be new favorite toy?
Ah and of course we have the self freeing Merlon, the biggest wild card in the game right now. Though for a moment this was a flashback to her teaching Random how to sell out her race, explain what the spell did precisely. Though her trying to learn how to teleport is also good. This is... I have no idea how this is going to go really.
So how deep will the programming run? Just telling herself that to try and force herself to stay on orders, or start to have doubts about it? Start to realize how evil what the dogs do is?
Cause she is definitely thinking on her own, the question is how far will she let those thoughts go, or will the competing needs drive her nuts and make her do something that would screw over both sides?
Hmmmm, that does make sense. If a pony knows the PRECISE, down to the last detail 'pattern' of a teleport jump, they could cast it and follow. That does work with how things seem to behave. Of course the hard part is getting that pattern in such detail in the first place, likely impossible bar something like this. Still one danger to be aware of that the Ponies don't know about.
Oh fuck you Merlon. Yes it makes sense but, still cold, cruel, calculating, using other ponies as nothing but mindless tools... she really is closer to a Dog then a Pony, still possible for her to come around, just really eager to see what side she finally chooses.
And really really interested to see how Orgon takes hearing what Merlon did. Cause for all else, he actually does seem to trust and possibly even respect Merlon, as much as he possibly could respect a Pony, and more then he trusts other Dogs.
Ah stims, and damn up to three doses? How bad would a forth one taste? But still CONTINUITY! yay! And without needing to rehash all that was said about them the first time either, double YAY!
Merlon having amazing timing? The guards at the site calling to complain about Merlon, or the notice of "We know where the Ponies are"?
Well that answers that. But wouldn't it still need some second data point to come up with where they are? How far up the sun is from the horizon at that precise time would give them a rough idea of the Longitude, but how would they then get the Lattitude? You'd need at least some idea of what angle she's looking at it at wouldn't you?
Still, well time for the Ponies to panic.
And Orgon continues to be so freaking smart it is scary. Yeah he is the ONLY reason right now the Dogs stand any chance at all. Smart enough not to underestimate them just because they are servitors. Just underestimate them because he had no way of knowing just how uber level Fusion and Luna had been boosted. But still able to treat them as the dire threat they are and not just toss bodies into the meat grinder uselessly. So now what shall he do? Still figuring Hammer strike.
And this is without knowing that Fusion can sense non-thaumic energy sources as easily as other ponies can sense thaumic ones. If not easier. And see even Orgon knows better then to even try thinking Fusion of Gravity are dead. But yes, oh and they already have that warning, unless They have two utter idiots working agsint them.
I get needing to get it off his teeth, but wouldn't putting it on the tongue be even worse? Then again as potent as this is made out to be, might not matter, and he want's to stay controlled so no just trying to scrape it off with his sleeve or something.
So yeah, Hammer, and yet, not even Orgon thinks that will work either. But be a nice thing to get the World Court on his side, let them deal with it, tell them everything, and then of they fail, well, they will know just how hard it is and be more likely to understand why Hive Lacunae failed to contain them so far. And if it does take them out, well, problem solved. So yeah for Orgon it's a Win/Win, baring something he can't foresee coming into play, like finding out just how OP Gravity is now that they know how powerful Fusion is.
Or you have the "Just tell them and let them deal with it, let it be their problem now" approach. Makes sense but short sighted and failing to see what a threat to the Dogs the Ponies really are. Just how it opens them up to intervention form the World Court. Still calling them "The Auditors," if you read enough Pratchett, that makes them all the more chilling and scary....
Full strike won't work, Hammer won't work, what does Orgon have in mind then?
How? You don't KNOW how it works, so how can you be sure you CAN block it at that level? Okay build a better arclight, but would still only be able to affect a certain area, just need ponies outside of that to take it down. Yes I have no doubt that the Dogs can pull some really nasty tricks and find some way to catch the ponies by surprise and trap them with better knowledge of how teleporting works. But it would only work once and then the Ponies would find a way around it. Plus how long would it take to find that answer compared to how strong the Ponies would get by then? Still it does show Orgon is really the most dangerous foe the Ponies have.
Though Orgon doesn't know the ponies will know about him knowing and so will be moving soon anyway. So really they have to hit now to have any chance of having any effect at all.
And they are to shortsighted to see this. Now, at best, you will cause the ponies to scatter and move, and not have any idea where they are. OR, you give Gravity a new toy to play with.
And skipping right to the launching then? Trying to build up tension on what the ponies were doing? We know this isn't going to work, at least not completely.
Okay was going to question that, they just got the launch order apparently but was already a mass in the tube? Was wondering if they just kept a few going around primed to launch at a moments notice. But guess not, they just are able to pop them into the loop really fast to start getting them up to speed.
The wha?
1. Yes, a lot of the things on a checklist are pointless due to there never being any time they aren't right, However, the one time you skip that step, is the one time somethng will be wrong and screw you, when dealing with forces of this magnitude, don't take shortcuts you idiot.
2."store enough gravitational potential energy" Ohhhhh more fun playthings for Gravity>
3. What is a "Crustal pit" Wait, is it a typo on Crystal, or a pit in the crust of the moon?
AH taking about Fusions little Kessler Cascade. Wait on the other side of the planet? From the target? From the moon? How far away is the Ponies base? How large are the Hive's territory if she is still in her own, and yet the Hammer can be on the other side of the planet from Narraka and still fire on them?
Well, they are all kinds of fucked aren't they?
But it is also a leash to keep you all up there from going rogue and trying to take over everything. You have the Hammer, but without the ground support you will all starve quickly and be no threat.
Riiiight........
Wait, not only do they fire relativistic speed orbital bombardment, but it's not even just launching basic dumb rocks? They are outright missiles? How do they have time to course correct at those speeds? Not to mention dealing with time dilation. Or are they not THAT fast? Still, that is impressive amounts of near overkill. But still won't be enough to deal with the Ponies.
A little added boom for when they hit? Even though no basic explosion could hope to match the shear kinetic power in those things. Or a safe guard in case they go astray and veer off target? Still, they do plan ahead and aren't doing anything stupid with this, good planning there Dogs.
OHHHHHH, so the smaller ones are just escorts for the big one, that makes sense. Still, won't be enough if Gravity decides she wants it.
Wait.... duh Photo-Voltic cells, okay makes sense.
Assuming a Kilo length is about a kilometer...
Yeah that is a massive fuckload of energy.
And what about earlier, when you actually had planned to try and speak on their behalf? Still, Merlon is starting to act more and more like a Dog then a pony since having her Blessing removed.....
With Orgon....... I really am not sure. He very well might.
Okay, alter arclight to encompass a wider area of effect, at a lower power, just enough to block the rather delicate Teleport signal, but likely making it unable to fully take down all magic, decent enough trade off for effects. Of course a few ponies outside the effect ring will still fuck you up hard. But yeah so long as it's a trade off, block teleporting over a wide area in exchange for only limiting, not totally blocking other magic in the region, that could work and not be to OP and bad for the story. Specially since given Dogs, they likely would operate in pairs of arclight. One set up for wide are Teleport denial, the others blocking regular magic.
Well, that is hardly the type of thing Merlon should say over a com like this with who knows how able to hear it. Much better to do this in person and directly. If at all. Still willing to keep secrets, still not sure where Merlon will end up going.
Yeah Merlon is by far the most intriguing character in the story, and I have no damn idea which way she'll end up going. There is just so much to her and... yeah eager to see where this goes. Though more eager to see what is going on with the ponies.
And good, not going to drag it out, nice job story, also, pink hair? Well, they at least knocked out her connection to the Sun for a bit, though guess getting knocked the fuck out will do that, though whipping past... wake up in free fall, or still rising the blast wave?
For some reason, I found this rather amusing. Just lazily getting her thoughts together while falling from who know how high up. Hum dee dumm.. oh wait I'm falling, and then snap, all fixed. Good to see she can reestablish her connection to her power source so easily.
Just being able to say that, yeah that is freaking badass, and doing so so casually. You just tanked a point blank explosion large enough to leave a mushroom cloud, and it's just another minor fact.
I don't wanna get up yet, I still have a good four or five minutes to wake up before I'll be smeared across several acres.
Look at how destroyed everything is? If they HAD detectors, they are long gone. Still they can't track... oh or just to not let them know you survived? But still how could they still have detectors in place? You can outright see that there is no energy source at all anywhere close. Though guess better safe then sorry.
he.. hehehe if only you knew. Still how the buck has no one yet told them about the Hammer? Wouldn't the Gryphons, or at least Korn have known?
Well, if a pony can move his own legs via TK, why not move yourself, or have you and Grav go up and push each other? Also, set up for one of them taking a trip up there later?
Gravity regarding the consequences of acting... this is good. Still the Dogs would have just gotten them killed pointlessly at some point anyway. So yes it is the right thing. And since Grav didn't lead with it, how do they not know about them being ratted out?
Precisely.
Ah Gravity senses the hammer powering up?
And a reminder that something is not right with that thing..........
Curiouser and curiouser
Win just just pure win story, that line.. game over, shut it down we have something to epically awesomely hilarious to top here.
Okay so they DO know about the Hammer, this is just weird. Why did it take them so long to work it out if they knew it existed? And once again how did they not know they had been found out? Did packet just not tell them the Dogs were coming? This happened at Dawn, now it's dusk, what were they doing all this time? Seriously story, what gives?
The ROYAL CANTERLOT VOICE sure does come in handy at times.
Okay, so Gravity was at the Griffon base and separate from the Ponies so didn't find out then? Still no pony has anyway of getting in touch with them?
And quick to respond, good job with that one, of course might want to set a meet up point or have some way of getting in touch with the Griffons after the blast settles.
Okay so he is telling them. But I am really confused about timing. It was dawn there when Random sent the message, how long has past? And how far away are they that it's night where Fusion was? What sort of time scale are we looking at here?
Yeah really should have thought about that, got an escape route planned, though yeah was really hectic and not a lot of time for planning, still next base will have that set up.
Alright Backdraft is awesome. getting all of this organized immediately, planning things out so well, yeah this is not going to go as well for the Dogs as they hope. And this is before Fusion and Grav even get involved with moving stuff. Still might want to speak up again and rescind the "Everypony scatter" orders. Or is it more, everypony move out in groups, we will grab you when we know where to go" orders now and keeping the scattering to get as many out as possible?
Okay, yes Backdraft is pure freaking WIN! Sorry Spiral but, think I have a new favorite pony.
Also love that they don't blame Random for this, just feel sorry for how badly she was used.
So, not up to moving Luna yet, still need practice but, nice try. Though... could she move the inner moon? Maybe get it in the path of the strike? Could be how it fragments, and then those fragments hit down all over, triggering a massive, catastrophic event on the surface? But yeah going to be a lot of practicing in Gravity's future.
Fire the Hammer, or the sudden change in orbital debris require them to do an emergency cancel on the firing?
Okay, so got about three to four minutes, plenty of time for all of you..... right?
Well that's likely what she is trying to do. Don't distract her.
She's going to fly up into orbit.. or at least as far up as she can get to extend her range and try to intercept them earlier? Or at least see them after canceling out the brightness of the atmosphere by getting above it?
Yup.
WHY YOU STOP THERE!!!!!!!! Of course you stop there!!!!
Right as they are about to slam a freaking black hole at those things and see how they like that.
Still, fucking EPIC! Things are moving now, Dogs are attacking, Ponies are proving far to adaptable. Orgon remains their only real threat, Merlon as much a mystery as ever, and then this ending.... damn.. just.. damn.... Really they only issue is a confusion about time scale due to not knowing how far around the globe the camp is from the place it is night, I thought it was roughly the same Longitude, just at a higher latitude. And thank you for not trying to milk the "Fusion is really dead" thing, cause yeah you will never pull off making anyone thinking either of the Sisters is in real danger since we KNOW they make it through. Now a lot of the other ponies.....
But still, why did you stop there!!!!!
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Well they did say that the things had self destruct charges on them, likely just in case something like that happens.
As to the amount of energy, it won't actually take a whole lot, well it will but not directed at them. This is Gravity we are talking about, trying to match power with power and brute force them away, yeah be almost impossible, but she just created a black hole essentially. That is one hell of a gravity well, is she can get it shaped right, and strong enough, it won't have to even touch the rocks energy at all, she'll be warping space itself so that the rocks curve along the new gravity well without any change in their own energy, redirecting them away from their base.
And with Fusion feeding her power.... wait a moment.... yeah you can tell the author reads Schlock Mercenary. Fusion is effectively acting like an Anni-plant feeding Gravity power to set up a Unifield in front of the rocks.
Pretty much same idea as here, just at lower power.
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He almost certainly knows since we have seen another pony (forget who it was, might have been Metal Matrix, but he was in the power plant flashback in the early chapters of book 1) do the same thing so it's not a unique ability. But why would this knowledge affect his current decisions in any way? He knows Fusion tried to defuse the bomb and didn't entirely succeed.
The taste is on his tongue, he's scraping it against his teeth to try to get it off.
Not really, he knows that if they fire at the ponies and don't get them all the retaliation will be spectacular.
Crustal as in a dug through the crust of the moon and a significant way into the mantle. Not quite bottomless but close enough.
They way it works is roughly this:
1. The weapon needs lots of power to fire.
2. Photovoltaics produce slow but steady trickle, not good enough for this purpose.
3. Dig a deep pit, hang a rock from the top and hook it up to a generator. When you drop the rock it will power the generator, converting its gravitational potential energy into electricity. Then slowly haul it back up with the power produced by the PV panels.
The planet rotates. At the time of the Naraka incident Luna was below the horizon from Lacunae perspective, therefore Lacunae was on the other side of the planet when viewed from Luna. Now they're on the same side so there's no need for waiting or trying someting tricky with the trajectory, it's just point and shoot.
No, they're not that fast. The projectile has a velocity of about 1000 km/s which is 1/300 of c. Relativistic effects start to become measurable around one percent of c.
1 length is approximately 2 meters though I don't think the author has put that into the story anywhere. Bad author!
Archlight always operates in pairs since you need two projectors to generate a complete suppression field. We saw this in Naraka when Gravity killed one half of the Arclight, it weakened the suppression enough that Fusion got most of her magic back.
Someone has. In naraka Ellisif explained it to Fusion on their off-screen walk from the comms center to the control room.
The only pony who knew was Metal Matrix, who was on top of the mountain. He was still not up to full strength and didn't know the sharing spell so the only way to let others know is to fly down the mountain. Then the others need to find out and think of what to do and by the time they have Fusion and Gravity have found out on their own and are back already.
What made you think it was night? The moons can be seen on the sky even in daytime as long as both the moon and the local sun are sufficiently low on the horizon.
6840950
And yet the dogs have tried sneaking up on ponies simply by suppressing all thaumic signatures, only for Fusion to pick them up via their other power signatures. So it's not something they are considering as a factor, even if they could find it out if they wanted to look at feats other ponies have done. They have shown no hints of realizing this, and while the Dogs are competent, there are times the story seems to push them to far into Omniscient territory with how often they just magically knew everything they needed to when they needed to and were never wrong, other then in underestimating the Sister's power.
As to how it effects things, if he does not know that, he could think he might be able to sneak a force in for containment using conventional power to hide form the Ponies and spring a trap, where as knowing Fusion could detect even that, know it isn't an option either.
... alright that would actually make sense. Though would still be in his mouth.
Politically it's a win/win for Hive Lacunae. Either the Hammer takes out all of the rebels and the crisis is over, with Lacunae clearly doing everything they could to aid in it thus earning them a little good will. Or it fails, and the World Court is forced to realize the Hive was not being lax, was doing everything right, and the threat is simply to large for them to deal with at all, thus taking some heat off the Hive.
Strategically, yes a miss could be horrible. Luckily for the Dogs, Orgon is a strategic thinker, not a political one. Unfourtinitly, he still answers to a bunch of politicians.
Hence me questioning if that was the case, given I'd never heard the term before, and while able to figure it out from context, the fact it is only one letter away from Crystal, and the two possibly transposed letters are right next to each other on the keyboard opens up the need for clarification in case it simply was a typo.
The issue is the way it is said makes it seem as if the incident took place on the other side of the planet from where they are NOW, not where they were then. And they also wouldn't have been on the opposite side of the planet then either given how soon afterwards Luna came over the horizon. Yes I know how orbits work, the issue is with word choice leading to a different meaning then seems to be intended. Thus only adding to the confusion over location that crops up later.
Meh, little to used to Schlock, specially given all the similarities and references or ideas shared with it in this story. There pretty much isn't any non-personal weaponry that isn't relativistic. Or pure energy.
Okay so slightly less powerful then thought, but still, one hell of a kick. Also yes bad author.
I know this. I meant pairs of arclights as in two or more sets. One set broadcasting the wider beam, weaker suppression field that only takes down Teleports, and maybe some minor issues with magic. And another set using the more focused blanket dampening to take down the rest.
Though hopefully they don't realize that even just one Arclight alone is enough to take down teleporting.
Speaking of bad author, this REALLY needed to be addressed and made clear, given all the build up all the talk on the Dog's end about using it, how often it's been a source of building tension, while making it look like the ponies were blissfully and utterly unaware of it in the slightest. Until she pulls the "Oh it's this thing" out of nowhere at the point it's to damn late to mean anything.
At no point was it ever made clear that any of the ponies knew about the Hammer, making it a question of why the fuck someone who should know about it, Korn and/or the Gryphons, hasn't told them about this pretty major threat.
Again, the main issue with that was not being sure how long had passed between these events, and thinking that it had been far longer between Random ratting them out, and the events we were seeing.
Moon in the sky, nothing saying this was day with a reference to something the usually means it's night, the fact the line earlier made it seem like Luna was on the opposite side of the planet at the time from the Hive, yet still had a clear LOS firing solution, therefore bringing into question how far around the planet the Hive territory goes and where the Ponies were. All making the exact situation here unclear as to what was going on.
My comments are essentially stream of consciousness thoughts as I'm reading, some of those are thing that yes, with more information could make sense, but the issue is the story does not give the needed information, instead of "Why does that person have issues seeing this, how did he mess up." It should be "Okay someone is confused about what is going on, why is the story making him confused?" Now yes sometimes it's just a case of missing the obvious, others it's because the story simply does not give the detail needed to know what is going on, forgetting that what the author knows =\= what the reads know and so creating things like not having any clue if Crustal pits are pits in the crust, or a typo of Crystal Pits, and being really lost on how much time is passing in these situations, and where everything is in relation to each other.
Destroy the hammer, or guide it for the next time it fires, so it hits one of the Dogs Deep Tunnels.
Always figured Orgon would side with the ponies, but this makes it seem inevitable. His people are all incompetent, and Merlon's very possibly the only being for whom he has any respect at all — once she turns, he'll probably go with her. Either that or he'll turn first, and Merlon will be put in a very difficult position.
That is clever. Great way to keep energy in the system without actually costing anything to maintain it.
6840703
Uh, no. Not a unifield. Fusion is not feeding power to Gravity. The "feeling of power from" is merely the sharing that they are using allowing Gravity to feel some of the things Fusion feels
(The point of light is a ball of fusing plasma, emitting bright light in all directions, like a teeny tiny sun. The lenses mentioned are for something else entirely, and have nothing to do with it.)
6839776
The description given of the Hammer is more disquieting than I thought. I was imagining a mass driver designed for minery, militarized by doubling its muzzle velocity and by making it steerable, and making it shoot stealthy solid-metal projectiles attached to smallish rockets. The weapon wouldn't seem insidious on its own, except that it should be able to shoot every few minutes (like a good mass driver), that its projectiles should be able to hit beyond the horizon, and that the projectiles would have time to steer themselves into useful formations (from perfectly aligned for ground penetration, to a wide spread for improved surface destruction).
EDIT: I forgot to give results.
Even if the projectiles were only being accelerated by gravity, they would have a final speed of 87km/s upon impact, with the only problem of taking 150 minutes to impact. This time could be reduced by improving the mass driver's muzzle velocity and/or the integrated rockets' thrust.
Although it yields one very interesting question: how do you aim your own version of the weapon? X-axis aming would be as simple as letting go at the right moment, but you would need to steer the moon to achieve Y-axis aiming.
6842160
Certainly reads like she is getting power from Fusion. Now yes looking at it again, could simply be Fusion using her power, but what would she be using that much power to do rather then supporting Gravity?
And the analogy was rather simplistic, of course it's not identical, but it looks to me like Gravity is forming a singularity and then tossing it at the rocks, most likely to use the gravity well it generates to knock the missiles off course without having to fight their energy directly. orrrrr just rip them apart with it, but going for drive them aside due to the Chekhov's Gun set up earlier of them having self destruct devices.
Yes it's nothing close to a 1:1 comparison, but it was the general idea I was going for. Fusion is somehow using her power to support Gravity, who in turn, looks to me like she is about to use a massive gravity well to alter the course of projectiles without having to directly counter their energy.
Waaiiiit unless...
No she has to be referring to the Hammer strikes, thought for a moment it could have been Fusion was giving her some form of intense energy packets to use to hit them with, and those were the 'weapons' Gravity was reaching for... but there was only one, so it wouldn't be plural.
6842306 Well it would depend on how mobile the actual 'muzzle' of the thing is, We don't see how the rocks get out of the accelerator loops to be fired, so that could have multiple exit ports to arrange for aiming, or some other mobile arrangement that lets them alter it, since they don't seem to be able to actually move the moon itself.
6842341
Such a weapon would only be able to aim on a single axis. That's my problem with it. Like a warship with a spinal gun.
6842375 Unless they are able to bend the 'muzzle', alter it's trajectory on exit. If the angle was shallow enough they could guide the shots right down it, and at that range wouldn't need to alter it by much. Be really tough to pull off, but with the Dogs tech level, don't think it would be impossible.
Without seeing that actual part of the weapon we can't say for sure, but it's clear there is some means to do that, since they can.
Someone's going to get a VERY unpleasant surprise.
6842397
The way the weapon is described, it wouldn't have a muzzle. It would be a ring-shaped maglev accelerator hugging the entire moon, and it would shoot by letting go of the maglev.
6842321 remember that they have a mental sharing spell going?
Remember that Fusion has used her little miniature sun trick before?
The feeling of power Gravity gets is from Fusion. Fusion is feeling the power of her pocket sun, and Gravity is feeling what Fusion feels through the link of their sharing.
As for the reaching for the weapons, yes, she is reaching for the... Hammer-head?
However, that is not to change their positions or motion, but rather, that of herself and her sister. In other words, she was setting the target for the teleportation spell.
6842306
Look at this bit from the Hammer operators' discussion:
They have magnets at where the projectiles leave the track and can use those for final course corrections. Remember that the planet is only a few degrees wide when viewed from the moon so it doesn't take much correcting as long as you fire from the correct position. If on the other hand you want to fire from somewhere where the tangent doesn't intersect planet then you'd need a whole lot more correction.
Hm... so maybe they can teleport the projectile? Or take out the hammer first? I suppose it has a bit of delay while it ramps up velocity...
Yeah, it's just your average Kessler cascade, it's not like that's going to take more than fifty days to clear... hm...
Now why would you want self-destruct charges on a kinetic projectile? The explosive energy is obviously orders of magnitude less than the kinetic one. Maybe a contingency if they go off course - such as being unexpectedly diverted by Acts of Alicorn?
Dammit, Merlon, think faster.
At this point I suspect her turning might literally be the rebels' last hope...
Merlon might not know it yet, but she's already started turning.
Why not, actually? She's already using telekinesis to fly much faster than wings would allow. She's thrown around big stuff without conservation of momentum ever being an issue, so wouldn't she be capable of reactionless propulsion?
Is this where the other moon is first named? Alas, poor Grund... given the future state of the Equus system, I suspect it's not going to get much older.
I see what you nearly did there.
... oh no. She's totally going to die.
AAAAARGH CLIFF-HANGER
6843781 Because she's not using her TK on herself, she's using it to essentially turn herself into a massive jet engine. Sucking in air ahead of her, and then expelling it behind her fast enough to push her forward. No air means nothing to use for thrust.
6840456
That last scene appears to have confused a few folks (there's a lot going on and I obviously didn't do a massively good job of describing it). So. Gravity has a two methods to move stuff: telekinesis (accurate, but shorter range and she must be able to see the thing) and 'fundamental manipulation' (alterations to momentum of stuff in orbit; a very new skill -- hard to 'aim'). She starts by using method #2 to throw (alter the orbit of) stuff at the projectile, but her shots get intercepted by the weapon's defences. It gets closer and she prepares to try out her TK (going high to see it). Remember that closing speed is very high, so they are only within range for 30-odd seconds, and her strength is very low at the limits of that range. At this point Fusion stops her rescue operations and goes to help (with a plasma bolt).
6840682
I'm kind of impressed that you remembered about the stims! That was ages ago!
For pure celestial navigation you need two observations and a time to get a position; this is a little more complex in that you are also using the profile of the mountain ranges within Random's view. to get the final position.
Turol appears to have answered a lot of you questions so this may be a bit repetitive...
All ponies with Fusion's energy specialisation share her ability to 'see' energy (kinetic manipulators directly perceive mass, matter manipulators can taste different elements, and so on).
No, they don't know how teleport works, but thay have observed it in action, and where it does/does not work. They'll know, for example, that a single Arclight beam probably is enough to disrupt the spell. Arclight itself is too focused; they need a floodlight rather than a spotlight.
The 'ready rounds' are kept in lunar orbit (a very low orbit!), then shunted into the accelerator for firing. They can't keep them whizzing round at full energy for long, because it take too much power to bend the path.
Crustal pit: deep hole to drop a rock down, extracting energy in the process. I was going to use antimatter, but that's a lot of complexity, while this is big and dumb.
Sub relativistic; 0.3% of c. 1000km/sec ish. The self-destruct lets them abort a strike (don't wait too long!), or convert a single round into a shotgun blast.
Grav and Fusion have a close connection due to being in and out of each other's heads so much; the same is not true of the other ponies (so they have not been told about Random's 'betrayal' at this point. The sun is moving about because the ponies are in different locations (don't think I ever mentioned dusk though; it's morning at their base).
Backdraft's plan is to get as many ponies away as possible, in the hope that just flight might help. Three directions because one escape flight might go the wrong way (if the strike is off target), and to a teleporter, it doesn't really matter where the ponies are, they can be picked up just as fast.
...and then the cliffhanger. Yes, I know, pretty mean of me. The resolution for these events was too long, sorry.
6841181
Sigh. Yes, bad author. This one is has been thinking about stripping out all the 'lengths' and converting back to meters, but that's a lot of chapters and a lot of search and replace. As to knowledge of the Hammer, this is the relevant passage:
...back in chapter 17.
6842127
It's not much of a saving, considering the speed of a near-surface orbit, but it does make for rapid handling (and is still better than having them on the ground!).
6842306
Aiming: the Hammer isn't a particularly 'tactical' weapon, as you do have to wait for the planet to rotate to hit many targets. As you say, X axis by altering the release time. Y axis by altering the field on the exit ring to skew the trajectory. Max. required dV is ~13km/sec for a max power shot. Also the accelerator belt isn't exactly equatorial, but tilted slightly.
6843593
Self destruct because the weapon is more useful as a threat; it's nice to have a recall option! Also sometimes a shotgun is more useful than a rifle.
Moon#2 has been mentioned a few times, all the way back to the beginning of Wasp (just not that often!).
===
Thanks for all the comments, folks!
6844454
Which was my issue, they only had one pint of observation, the Sun's angle to the horizon, and the time. Was wondering what the second point was. But using the Sun to get an idea of roughly where, and then analyzing the topography to narrow it down.. that works well enough depending on how wide that 'error' circle on the map was.
Fair enough, but as I told him, doesn't mean the Dogs in charge would care enough about ponies to know this detail off the top of their heads, and they haven't shown any signs of knowing it yet.
And then the ponies can just toss several ton boulders at super sonic speeds at the floodlights to put them out.
Like I said, I figured that might be what it meant, but with it only being used once and no detail about it, wasn't sure that it wasn't simply a typo on 'crystal'.
Regarding speed, yeah that was a combo of just over estimating, and also doing the math wrong cause I figured a kilolength was about a kilometer, so apparently was about three orders of magnitude to high.
Backdraft's plan was the best one they could have come up with that quickly, and yeah she is awesome.
As to the whole dusk thing, it was more Fusion looking up and mentioning Luna was in the sky. Yes the moon can be seen during the day as well, but between that and the whole thinking Luna was on the other side of the planet from the Hive right now, (The tech saying the Keppler Cascade started on the other side of the planet) all just made it a bit confusing about what sort of time frame we were dealing with. It does make sense now, but yeah was a tad confusing... but mostly because I was overthinking it.
Well I know that, the issue is finding them. Still shadow sight should let them stand out at quite a range so, not impossible, just be a pain to make sure you got all the groups and stragglers.
But yes, the ending... it was a bit confusing what was going on.. I got the whole going up to get them in range of TK, and the whole effecting orbital stuff working differently. It was just what was going on after Fusion showed up I kind of wasn't sure about.
6844535 Hmm, okay so it was mentioned that Fusion knew, just felt odd nopony ever brought it up after that, or Fusion didn't make plans knowing it's up there. Granted things were rather hectic, but that's a pretty big thing to ignore.
6840003 Think about something. If I'm remembering correctly in this fic there are multiple moons but not in the show.
Draw conclusions from that.
6846735
... What's Grund's inevitable destruction or else lack of presence have to do with machines inside Luna? Unless you're referring to the 'anticipation for the hammer strike' part, in which case, I believe we're beyond the point of them positioning Grund to take the blow. They're waiting for it to get within TK distance, I'm fairly certain that's closer than Grund is. Also, with all the recent talk of how the Hammer works and power output, I'm starting to doubt that the Hammer could completely destroy Grund in one shot, anyways. If it doesn't get destroyed by the Hammer like I've assumed since pretty much the beginning, then I would be that much more interested to find out what does happen to it.
6847648 Who says it's Grund that goes bye bye? It could be Luna that gets destroyed.
Well, that was another great chapter. Really thought of everything with defensive projectiles to protect the kinetic kill slug. Of course, I have no idea how you could stop something like that, or even alter its' course when fired like that bar putting a very large and very dense spacecraft in the way as a sacrifice, which probably wouldn't be possible in the time allowed.
@Lunatic
So... ten thousand tonnes at 120 kilometres per second... Is it 72*10^15 Joules of kinetic energy?
Ive checked in Wikipedia for comparation with atomic bombs, and it says this:
megaton of TNT - 4.184*10^15 J
I am missing anything? A 20 megaton bomb doesn't seem so... hammerish :)
6858818
It's not (although, look up the 'Castle Bravo' test...). Just curious -- where did you get the 120km/sec figure from? Velocity of this shot is ~1000km/sec (0.3% of c), which translates to 5x10^18J (about 1200Mt TNT equiv.).
6848963
It's certainly possible, but since Gravity is going to go by Luna in the future, I guess it just seems more likely she is named after the moon that she still controls than the one that's gone.
6860608 Consider it a memorial. Would you rather be remembered for destroying Luna... Or Princess Grund.
@Lunatic
Ok, I misread. It is not 75 k-lengths/s, 45 more k-lengths/s, in order to go. It is 75*45. Ok :) 3.375 km/s. This translates to 5,69*10^19 Joules.
Ah... but then probably there is happening some relativistic thingie. The faster you go, more mass you have, you need more energy to increase the speed, you dont reach 3.375km/s in 45 loops. So that explains the 1.000 km/s. But even if you go slower you have more mass... so in the end you still have a similar amount of energy.
And now I check with the dinosaurs killer meteorite... it was 4 × 10^23 Jules... Well, I guess that the hammer will only destroy/make inhabitable directly-indirectly something like half europe (between earthquakes, tsunamis, clouds of powder...). But no idea about how to measure this :(
6861599
It's not quite as simple as 75*45; because the speed increases, the residence time in the accelerator drops with each loop and thus you need to use v^2 = 2as (twice). This gets you the 1000km/sec (not really fast enough for relativistic effects to do much). The force/energy to circularise the path is quite horrible, especially at full speed; you are looking at 4x the total shot energy per loop (so they can't hold the projectiles at full speed for long). Those accelerator towers are >20 metres thick and made of fullerene nanotubes.
1000Mt is too large for the normal nuke weapon effect calculators to work well, but 'nukemap classic' (http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/classic/) will give you an idea. Most of it is thermal flash when the yields get that high. I've an asteroid impact spreadsheet somewhere; I must dig it out. It might come in handy...
I'm disappointed nobody has commented on Luna noting that 'That's no moon, that's a space station'
Youngins and whipperschnappers not recognizing their shoutouts.
I wanted Luna to move the moon, just for the wtf faces the dogs would have when they hit another hive unintentionally with the hammer.
6863127 Ahem?
6865965
I'll be honest, your livereading comments are too long and I always just skim them
So I guess my bad!
6865965
So do I.
I caught up ... and you can see this as either a good or a bad thing. A bad thing in case that I now need to wait for the next chapter.
But I have had two ideas on how to handle that thing: Being able to create a singular point of high gravity should allow to either slow it down (need to hold it behind the projectile) or to change its trajectory drastically by letting it pass that singular point of gravity. If the later is possible - aligning the projectile on a new trajectory that won't bring it toward the planet but out again into space - then it should be possible to avert damage at all.
And after that ... the base on m... the moon as to pay. NO ONE BUILDS A WEAPON THERE!
6922235
Yeah, sorry about that. Still, here you are, and at least you don't have long to wait for the next one (and I'm pretty good at sticking to my schedule).
6922235
Or just drive that spare moon in front of it. Been waiting since chapter one for somebody to get rid of that thing...
6942595
In theory a nice plan but moving it might take more time than is available. Maybe it can be used to remove the hammer.
Though that might result in further problems and an all-out war.
Though it seems everything is headed there nonetheless. In that case a demonstration of power might do ... but in heat of battle the thought would only contain removing the initial threat. And destroying that mass driver will give me a lot of satisfaction.
6861950
I was wondering where the second moon was gonna go