• Published 24th Oct 2012
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The Great Escape! - Wheller



100 years in the Future, a unicorn from Equestria makes the greatest escape in history.

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Chapter 7

Chapter 7

'Summer Lightfall!'

Summer's eyes popped open as the hoarse whisper filled the air in her cell. She had been a light sleeper since her imprisonment; the need to wake at a moment's notice had saved her life plenty of times in the past.

'Summer Lightfall!' the voice came again. She sat up and looked towards the ceiling, half expecting it to be TANTALUS that was calling to her. It was not, standing in the doorway to her cell was none other than Sprocket himself.

'Sprocket? What are you doing here?' Summer asked.

'It's time! Come on! Karkov is gathering us!' Sprocket said, grinning madly.

Excellent, Summer had been looking forward to meeting Viktor Karkov, she had heard so much about him, yet so little of him was seen. He did work in the Steel Mill, but in the day and a half that Summer had been at Nagadan, she had not seen him once. This had apparently been by design; Viktor Karkov had been a major in the Præsidium's Second Shock Army who had been imprisoned here for killing his commanding officer. That made him something of a 'high profile' prisoner, they had to be careful, if someone was noticed speaking to Karkov, then the guards would know something was up.

Sprocket had been made prisoner-foreman of the Steel Mill, a position that he had held for longer than anyone could remember, including himself, as such, he was the only one who could speak to Viktor Karkov without arousing the suspicions of the guards. The planning of the breakout had all been Karkov's ideas, passed to the rest of the conspirators through Sprocket. Summer wondered for a moment, who these others were, she figured that she would be meeting them as well.

Summer trotted over to her cell door, only to find that it was unlocked, in fact, the lock on her door was broken. It must have been like this since she had got here. Sprocket pushed open Summer's cell door and waved for her to follow. 'The locks go bad on these doors all the time when it gets cold, they don't bother to fix them; they figure what is the point? Where would we go after all?' Sprocket said with a grin. 'Time to show them their folly!'

She took a deep breath, it was time. Sjaak De Vries patted her on the back to reassure her. After all, it wasn’t like this was the first time that she’d gone out onto a stage and spoken in front of a crowd when it was, quite frankly, the absolute last thing that she wanted to do.

Sparky Starlight trotted out onto the stage, and stepped up to the podium, her notes of what she’d be speaking about sat written on two sheets of holopaper in front of her. She took a deep breath and used her telekinesis to pull the microphone down to her mouth so that she could speak.

‘I just wanted to thank you all for coming out today, it’s a pleasure to have the members of the press here with us for this historic announcement’, Sparky said, feeling like she was going to vomit. She hated talking in front of crowds with a passion, but as administrator of Station BRIGHTHOUSE at the Whitetail Industrial Complex, this was all part of the job. There was a glass of water that had been left on the podium for her, she took a drink from it and smiled at the crowd.

‘Six months ago, during the Discovery One’s trek to the gas giant Tartarus, Mission Commander Ice Wind reported to FutureTec controllers that there was a large metallic asteroid that they’d just passed. Preliminary surveys done by the Discovery One crew determined that the asteroid, dubbed X57 was rich in heavy metals, the most important being osmium, and iridium, which, as you are all aware these two elements are highly sought after for their use in armour plating for the ships of our navy. Alongside the metal deposits, X57 is equally rich in helium-3, which is, of course, an essential part of the fuel cycle of our fusion reactors. The Discovery One command crew informed us that the forty five kilometre long asteroid was on a slow course towards Belleau, and calculations done by the ship’s on board Hannibal-class Virtual Intelligence informed us that it would be passing between Belleau and our moon, Selena, at the end of February of next year. It is my pleasure to announce to you today, that FutureTec intends to bring this asteroid, X57, into orbit around Belleau, where it will be strip mined for resources. Estimates of the He-3 count on the asteroid project that it has the capability to power every fusion reactor on Belleau for the next one hundred and fifty years, this is not an opportunity that can be passed up’, Sparky finished before taking another drink of water.

She let everything that she just said sink in to the reporters before her for a moment before speaking again. ‘We have time for a few questions…’ she said before every reporter in the crowd’s forelegs had shot up.

‘Miss Starlight! Have you considered the dangers of bringing such an asteroid into orbit?’ one of the reporters shouted out.

‘Oh of course we have, bringing a forty five kilometre long asteroid into orbit is no easy task, there was a lot of complex math that was involved in calculating the asteroid’s trajectory, one wrong calculation, and the asteroid either hits our world and destroys all life, or it hits Selena and causes a tidal shift which will kill us all. Neither of those prospects is very appealing. We’ve gone over the math nearly a hundred times, the absolute worst thing that could happen would be a slight rise in sea levels when X57 enters orbit, which we are projecting to be no higher than a centimetre at the absolute highest’, Sparky said confidently. ‘Next question…’

Sparky pushed open the door to the washroom and dashed into the first open toilet, promptly vomiting into it. Oh she hated talking in front of large crowds. Hated it! She was lucky that she’d been able to hold it back this long! She let out a deep sigh before rising to her hooves and flushing the vomit down the toilet. She went back over to the sink and cleaned herself up a bit before leaving the washroom entirely.

To her surprise, Dizzy Doo was standing outside, leaning against the wall; she looked up and Sparky and smiled. ‘Hey!’ she said as she trotted up to her, planting a kiss on her lips.

Sparky wrapped her forelegs around Dizzy and kissed her back. ‘Hey’, Sparky said softly as she held her mare friend tightly.

‘You did great!’ Dizzy said brightly as the two of them released their embrace.

Sparky merely let out a sigh. She’d been incredibly nervous during the entire thing. Sparky Starlight had always been a shy mare while growing up. Before a couple of months ago, she’d grown up with only two friends in her life, Dula Heartstrings, who was currently the Chief of Navy for the Equestrian Republican Navy, and ten years her senior, and the recently deceased Shortfuse Skydancer. She’d met Dizzy Doo a few months ago after a bit of soul searching had practically dumped her on her doorstep. The two had become fast friends since then, and had now grown to something more.

Dizzy Doo was a nephite, a member of a religious group from out west, thanks to that, the two had radically differing cultures that sometimes clashed with each other, but thanks to Sparky’s kind and caring personality, the two of them ended up being perfect for each other. The biggest difference between the two cultures was their views on sexuality, the general social liberalism held by the majority of citizens of the Equestrian Republic didn’t see much of a problem with casual sex, so long as safe measures were taken to prevent accidental pregnancy, and even in the modern era, the problem of accidental pregnancy was practically non-existent thanks to improvements in medical science. Of course, the homosexual relationship that the two of them shared would have made that a non-issue entirely.

The Nephites, on the other hoof saw it differently; their spiritual beliefs saw sex to be something special to be shared only between those who had made a lifelong commitment to each other, marriage, something that was becoming rarer and rarer in the rest of the Republic. Sparky respected Dizzy’s beliefs on the subject, but still took every opportunity to make teasing sexual advances on her, which would cause her mare friend to turn an adorable shade of pink every time.

‘Thanks’, Sparky said with a smile. ‘It went better than I thought it was going to… I’ve been working on this for a while’.

‘Yes you have…’ Dizzy said, a coy smile forming on her face as she leaned forward and whispered into Sparky’s ear. ‘And you deserve something… special’.

Sparky turned bright red, Dizzy wasn’t seriously suggesting… Sparky stopped herself; she saw what Dizzy was doing. ‘That’s… that’s not funny’, she said.

Dizzy couldn’t help but giggle. ‘It’s a little funny’, Dizzy added with a widening grin. ‘Anyway, I’m thinking ice cream, sound good? I do love me some vanilla!’

Sparky sighed and nodded her head. ‘Twit’, she muttered under her breath as the two left the Whitetail Industrial Complex and headed out for ice cream.