//------------------------------// // 11 Into the Empire // Story: The Skyla Pseudonym // by iisaw //------------------------------// Chapter Eleven Into the Empire "Aaaarrgh!" I slammed a hoof down on the table in frustration. "These maps are completely inaccurate! I'd mortgage my larboard teat for a proper chart!" I looked up at the sharp intake of breath. Skyla and Daisy were wearing shocked expressions, and I did a quick mental review of my last statement. Oops. Unfortunately, spending a lot of time with sailors and aeronauts tends to have an insidious effect on one's situational vocabulary.[1] ---------- [1] I have never used rough language in a social setting or at court, though in the latter case I have been sorely tempted on more than a few occasions. ---------- "Your pardon, Captain," I said. "So, we have no real idea how long it will take us to get across the border?" Skyla asked, ignoring both my apology and my slip of the tongue. "Once we sight the mountains, I'll be able to give you a decent estimate, but if we run up on them at night, we might get too close, and the last thing we want is to be spotted by an imperial outpost. If I could only teleport!" I resisted the urge to stamp my hoof again. "There's no way to use the charged crystals from the guns to power our own magic directly?" Skyla asked. I had mentioned the possibility to her a few days before, but my calculations had led to an unpleasant conclusion. "It's theoretically possible to build an organothaumic interface, but the accuracy of the flow nodes would have to be ridiculously precise, and the only way to zero in on the proper settings would be trial and error. Unfortunately, errors would probably manifest themselves as exploding gems or horns. I also considered Tirek's spell, but it takes about double the available force to initiate, and dark magic is inherently unstable." "So we're stuck with low-level magic," Skyla grumbled. "There's one possible way to power high level spells, but it's not something that going to be easy or convenient," I said. "We can build specialized waveguides for the guns that have spell matrices built into them. Essentially, they would 'shoot' the spell with each pull of the trigger." "But wouldn't that be worth it for teleportation?" Skyla asked. "The problem is that the matrix would have to be built into the waveguide." I explained. "The parameters couldn't be changed, so a teleport gun would only operate one-way from a single specific location to another. Also, it's a complex spell, so it would take a very long time to construct." "Any good news?" I paused, sensing a slight change in Nebula's behavior. A moment later there was a loud knock on the deck above us and Ao called out, "Captain? This one has urgent news to impart." We had made the rough crossing of the mountains south of Palo Verde and had headed into the blank space between our maps. Ao had been scouting ahead of us as we ran northeast above the plains, hoping to catch sight of the next mountain range that marked the border of the Empire. Merely locating our goal wouldn't have been a case for urgency, so Skyla and I rushed on deck to see what had come up. Ao had ordered Sirocco to change course, turning southward and beating as close to the wind as possible. "There is a large fleet of warships to the northeast. Scores of ships and many sky chariots heading for the Palo Verde pass." "Yes!" I cried, clicking my forehooves together. "There's your good news, Captain!" Ao raised an eyebrow. "Oh, right! Let's take in sail and use the engines for a bit to get further south. Don't want them to spot us." We climbed to the quarterdeck and I gave the sailing orders with a grin on my face. I had expected that rumors of a pirate uprising in the Western Territory would misdirect the attention of the Empire, but I hadn't imagined that they would divert an entire fleet to deal with it. Baron Ironhoof had probably exaggerated the situation to save face after losing his flagship, bless his little hooves. "So, Daisy," I said, when Nebula had settled on her new course and the three of us had returned to the chart room. "Before we got sidetracked, you were talking about this factory where you were born. You're sure that the gems we're looking for would have passed through it, and you'll be able to spot it from the air?" "Yes, Ms. Nightshade." she replied. "I was very young when they flew us out to the west, but my mom held me up to the window, and I watched the factory until it was out of sight. I'll never forget it. Factory Five is where the nearest experts are, and they would have wanted the gems evaluated as soon as possible. We only charge small utility units at Palo Verde, and send any damaged ones back to the factory. They're building a new factory at Ursa Negro, but that one won't be finished for a year or so." "So right now, Factory Five supplies the western territorial military and all these border forts, as well as the military craft of the province?" I asked, tapping the map. "Yes, ma'am. Also the provincial capital, Grayhold. The villages do their own charging, and there are a few unicorns at the forts, but that's just for everyday things. The Count has several for his bodyguard and household needs, but everything of any significant size goes to the factory." "Good," I said. "A large quantity of storage gems in one place might make our job easier, Captain." Skyla regarded me silently for a moment and then said, "Do you think we can use a whole lot of smaller gems to take the place of the original ones from the gate?" I nodded. "Exactly. It'll take some improvisation with the connections, but it should be a lot easier than trying to find the big ones in the heart of the Empire. I mean, look at this place!" I put the tip of a primary feather on Grayhold. "It looks like a fortress built into a mountain, and it's just a provincial capital!" "So… a hit-and-run raid on Factory Five? What about this place, Redkeep?" Skyla looked to Daisy. "It's really all one place," she said. "The keep overlooks and partially surrounds the workshops and charging sheds of the factory. There's a wall around the barracks area, but it's nothing compared to the keep's. Just a fence, really. The two places look separate on the map because the damned stompers don't want to admit they live in the same place as a bunch of unicorns." "Language," I admonished her.[2] ---------- [2] Yes, I know. But rank hath its privileges, and I did apologize. ---------- "Sorry, ma'am." "That'll make it more difficult," I said. "Maybe we can sneak in or hijack a shipment instead. What we really need first is reconnaissance." "That's difficult and dangerous to do without looking like the natives," Skyla said. I nodded. "If only we… wait." Skyla and I both said it at the same time. "A disguise gun!" = = = As we ran on above the western grasslands, Star guiding us through the gap not covered by our maps, I worked on the spell gun. It wasn't as easy as I had hoped, and my first attempt produced results that looked like fun-house mirror reflections,[3] but Filigree and I eventually produced a waveguide that would reliably disguise the target as a dull-colored earth pony mare with a generic looking cutie mark of three horseshoes. Unfortunately, every disguised pony would look exactly alike, but we could adjust our tactics to compensate, and we were finally able to put together a workable plan ---------- [3] I kept that faulty matrix ring because I was pretty sure Pinkie Pie would love to add it to her arsenal of party-related devices. ---------- Aside from having Zebra alchemy[4] on her side, Nebula had a couple of significant advantages over the imperial ships. The primary one was that—at a rough estimate—her flight ceiling was about twice theirs. In an emergency, we could climb away from a tight spot. Of course, once the imperials had seen us do it, they could just follow us and wait for us to come down. But before they realized what we could do, they wouldn't look up. ---------- [4] And a very knowledgeable and experienced first mate, of course. ---------- The second advantage might not seem like an advantage at all, but when Star told us that the border forts had listening horns to detect the motor noise of airships trying to sneak by on moonless nights, we knew we could shut off the engines and sail high over the mountains and the line of forts without making any detectable noise. But that didn't mean we didn't freeze our rumps off on the way. And Cream Puff had such bad altitude sickness that the crew had to make do with cold oats for supper. And we lost about half our volume of lift gas,[5] which we had to make up from our irreplaceable stores when we descended. And… well, no plan is perfect. ---------- [5] The gas expands remarkably at high altitude, and needs to be vented to prevent the cells from rupturing. I learned a spell to quickly compress the gas back into storage cylinders a few years into my travelling career, but it worked far too slowly on that world to be of much use. ---------- We crossed the mountains south of Fort Death (no, really!), and dropped down into a river that cut through a thick forest of mixed evergreen and deciduous trees. Literally into the river. Nebula's hull doesn't just look like a sailing ship's; she floated as gracefully as a swan, and we were able to spend the day refilling our ballast tanks, bathing, resting, and preparing for the next phase of the plan. According to the map, Factory Five was about 25 leagues northwest by north of where we had landed. But, given the cartographer's evident lack of skill, the location could be a half dozen leagues and several points off. We decided to run north-northwest, low over the forest until it started to thin out, and then find a clearing big enough to drop Nebula into. From there, we could put on our disguises and trot north until we found the road to Redkeep. Because I had the most experience in precise maneuvering, I took the wheel on our night run above the forest. Sirocco stood close by my side, carefully watching everything I did. Trying to stay just above treetop level by managing ballast and gas alone would have exhausted both in very short order. But Nebula had another advantage over the sleek and "modern" craft: she was very maneuverable. Her big steering fins could lift or drop her dozens of yards in seconds. Opposed, they could roll her far enough to sling her hull around like a dropstone. Ao curled herself around the bowsprit and used two of our signal flags to warn me of upcoming tall trees and other obstacles. Aside from the occasional ssssshhhhh of an evergreen's top along our keel, the trip went perfectly. Swift Wing had healed up nicely, and he went ahead to scout for a clearing when the woods began to thin. There was enough moonlight for him to see fairly well, and it wasn't long before he returned with directions to an ideal spot. I don't want to keep complaining about that world's lack of magic and the inconveniences it posed, but it would have gone so much easier back home. I would have shoved Nebula into place with a little telekinetic nudge and that would have been that. Instead, we dropped a ground anchor into the clearing to keep us steady while we lowered Lance in a bosun's chair. Then we dropped heavy cables for him to make fast to the biggest trees, and hauled him back aboard so that he could be on the capstan to help winch us down into position. What should have taken a minute or two occupied the greater part of an hour. Those of us who could fly spent another hour and a half cutting branches from the surrounding trees and tucking them into a net stretched over the top of Nebula's envelope until she was thoroughly camouflaged. By the time we had finished, the sky was beginning to lighten in the east, and we were all tired and eager to get whatever rest we could before setting off to find the road to Redkeep. And that's when we were ambushed. The thunk thunk thunk sounds of multiple grappling hooks hitting Nebula's rails was depressingly familiar to me. Her keel was barely above the grass of the clearing, and so the attackers were up and over the sides almost before I had time to yell, "Boarders! Nebulas, repel boarders!" Immediately, all was chaos, shouting, and the clash of steel and magic. I leaped into the air to get above the deck and instantly got hit with something very like a bola. The weighted line spun around my neck and left wing, bringing me back down to the planks with a jarring impact. I rolled onto my back and kicked out at the figure suddenly looming above me. Both my hind hooves hit solidly and my attacker topped over with a wheeze. I drew my short blades with my magic, spun one around me to clear a space, and used the other to cut the cord around my neck. Almost before I was on my hooves again I heard a strange voice calling out, "Stop! Stop! Back away! They're unicorns!" "This one isn't!" came another voice I didn't recognise. "He's a bloody huge stom—" An unpleasantly loud and meaty sound of impact was the last we heard from that direction. "NEBULAS, HOLD!" I bellowed in the Royal Voice. "Back away, but keep your blades ready!" "Oh holy stars!" The unicorn in front of me cried out. "What are you?" "We," Captain Skyla said from the quarterdeck, flaring her wings as she floated the unconscious body of a unicorn down to the main deck, "are the worst choice of victims you ever made." Ao, wrapped with two ineffectual bolas, floated down behind Skyla as if to emphasize the point. Lack of wings could be an advantage, evidently. "Shall we parley?" Skyla asked. "Or shall I let Ms. Nightshade here off her leash?" She indicated me with a casual wave of her cutlass. All the strange unicorns on deck flinched and looked at me in alarm. I went with it, baring my teeth and letting dark magic light my eyes. "Let's talk!" a big, burly unicorn called out quickly, pushing to the fore of the crowd. "This is a mistake! We're not bandits, we're runaways… rebels! When you landed so near our camp, we thought you were bounty hunters." Skyla turned her cutlass point down and rested a hoof on its pommel. "We're pirates. Big difference." "Privateers," I hissed under my breath, but Skyla was already continuing. "I'm going to assume it's the Empire of Earth that's put a bounty on your horns, and since we are here to disrupt, despoil, and demoralize that empire, we really ought to be allies." The unicorn glanced at Ao and I again, then said, "That might be an option… Can we tend to our wounded?" Skyla nodded graciously. Fortunately, nobody on either side was too badly hurt, and when Skyla, Ao, and I lent our healing magic to the unicorns, they relaxed quite a bit. They still avoided Stalwart Lance and Cream Puff, but even Star and Daisy were still a little leery of the earth ponies, so that was a battle for another day. It may seem like an odd way to make new friends,[6] but it happens more often than most ponies would suspect. ---------- [6] You'll find it (and variations) listed as techniques 237a-237e on page 186 of The Compendium of Friendship, third edition. ---------- It took the rebels a little while to open up to us, and I think it would have taken even longer if not for Cream Puff. After living rough in the woods for many months, a couple of lavish meals aboard Nebula, followed by truly superb desserts, convinced them that we would make excellent allies. Skyla and I sat down with their leader, Sugarpine, and had a very productive little talk. The rebels had managed to survive on their own and had slowly developed some tactics to enable them to raid caravans transporting gems to and from the factory. Once they had acquired a few guns, they'd become a serious burr under the saddle of the imperials. But Sugarpine was a bright fellow and he knew that, sooner or later, the Empire would manage to capture or kill most of his ponies. They had been constantly harried by airship and pegasus patrols, and were only safe deep in the dense woodlands. But they couldn't fight the Empire or even feed themselves while under cover of the trees, and it had become a game of cat-and-mouse. It was a game Sugarpine knew they would eventually lose. He wanted to get his ponies away to safety, as far beyond the Empire's reach as possible. I told him that we could get him further away than he'd ever imagined, but didn't go into details. The information he provided us was invaluable, and soon we had come up with a plan that would, with a little luck, achieve both our goals. = = = "Yarr, me hearties! It's the Empire's treasure we'll be havin'! Har, har!" "Do you think that maybe Star has gotten a little too enthusiastic about being a pirate?" Skyla asked me with a slightly worried frown on her face. I looked up from where I was transcribing the notes from our conversation with Sugarpine into my personal logbook. "Oh, that happens occasionally. He'll calm down eventually." We watched the big mule wave his cutlass around dramatically while regaling the rebels with stories of our adventures, embellished, of course. They were eating it up. "Why do all pirates speak with a Trottingham accent?" Skyla muttered, perhaps to herself. "Small island," I said distractedly, penning a note in the margin of the Blackwood Province map. "The only way off for non-pegasi was by boat or aircraft, so they built a great number of ships. Naturally, all the crews were from there, and the percentage that went pirate were therefore a very large proportion of the total. Counting Croup claimed that 78.3% of pirates had a Trottingham accent, but his sample size was certainly not big enough to be that precise." I paused for a second to recall the acerbic annotations I'd added to his book The Golden Age of Piracy, particularly at passages regarding a certain Captain Blackmane. "But there were a lot of them with the accent, and that's probably where the stereotype comes from." Skyla gave me a look. "What?" She continued to look at me. "What… Captain?" I amended. "Has anypony ever called you a 'know-it-all', Auntie Twilight?" "Not when I was captain, they didn't, Darling Niece," I said, dryly. Star paused in his dramatics and lifted his eyepatch[7] to get a better look at the unusual sight of his captain and first mate laughing their heads off. ---------- [7] No, there was nothing wrong with his eye. The whole crew had eyepatches to preserve their night vision (at least in one eye) when going into a brightly lit cabin from the deck on night watch. There were also a number of extras stowed in various places on board. ---------- Laughter is a good way of relieving tension, and we needed it right then. In less than a day, we were going to raid a critical stronghold of the Empire of Earth. = = = =