Chapter Thirteen
Surprises, Pleasant and Otherwise
It was like getting hit with a huge, soaking-wet comforter at high speed. Unpleasant, but immensely less unpleasant than it might have been. The shot still slammed me face-first into the pavement and knocked me silly. The energy sort of wrapped itself around me, but it didn't vaporize me.
Which was a bit of a surprise, given the sheer size of the gun. Oh, my aeronaut armor was of excellent quality, and it had some hefty anti-magic protections, but it didn't cover my legs, wings, or head and wasn't made to stand up against siege-level weaponry.
I heard Skyla scream something unintelligible and I tried to call out to her, but my head swam and it took me several seconds to even think about getting to my hooves.
When I managed to get my head up and take a look around, Skyla was gone, but the thugs were still there. Oddly, they all looked like they'd gotten a couple of taps on the head with a sledgehammer, too.
"Hnnnn… Wow, that was a good one!" The pony with the big axe said through gritted teeth.
The pony with the scarred face hefted his iron-bound cudgel in his forehooves and blinked his eyes rapidly. "Where's the pretty one?"
"Kill this one first," the gray stallion with the saber said, pointing his sword at me.
I went for my blades… and then everything made sense. My magic backed up with an unpleasant pulse, and my short blades remained inert, lying on the street underneath Gray's hooves. Suppressing fire, the pony on the gun had said.
Scarface chucked, a low nasty sound. "Figured it out have you? That ugly screw on your head is useless now. Go on, try your freaky wings, I love that stunned expression on your stupid face!"
I wasn't about to entertain them by flapping uselessly around, trying to get airborne on magically deadened wings, but using them seemed like a very good idea. At four-to-one odds, I couldn't afford to play nice.
I took a half-step forward and flicked the edge of my right wing into Gray's face. I wasn't wearing wing blades, but a stiff feather viciously whipped across an eye can do a lot of damage.
Gray screamed and shied back far enough for me to scoop up my short swords with the tips of my primaries. I flipped them into a forward grip in the first joint of each wing. It was the weakest way to hold a weapon, but it gave me more speed and reach, which was exactly what I needed when outnumbered so heavily.
The best way to fight four ponies at once is to fight them one at a time. I feinted at the one with the longsword to make him hesitate, and then threw myself sideways at the one on the far end of their ragged line. The one with the huge axe.
Axepony reacted as I had hoped, by trying to split me in half with a powerful downward chop. There's no way I could parry it with my light blades, particularly when held with my wings, but all I needed to do was deflect it a little bit while continuing to slide to the left. Doing so put me on the far left of their group, and it was a simple matter to sidestep around to Axepony's right side.
At that point, he was the only pony that could reach me, and I had a couple of seconds of one-on-one time with him.
That was all I needed. His back-bladed return shot was easy to dodge, and before he could stop his heavy axe and start it back in my direction again, I had hit him five times.
He went down with a groan, and his axe clattered to the street. I kept him on my right flank, hoping Longsword would be stupid enough to try to lean across the body to strike at me. No luck there; he covered my right while Scarface circled around to cut me off on my left.
I turned and stepped left, even though I knew I barely had room to get around Scarface. His cudgel swung up, in much the same manner as Axepony's wind-up, but I could tell from the set of his shoulders he expected me to try to get past him, and was prepared to turn his downward blow into a horizontal swing as soon as I stepped sideways.
So I went straight in. The big guys never expect it. I used all the strength of my hind legs to leap forward, and scooped air with my wings as I threw them back to my sides. Scarface swung, but by the time his cudgel had passed the vertical, I was already between his forelegs, my horn rising up under his jaw.
My head slammed to a stop with a sudden jolt, and the cudgel spun out of his grip, painfully grazing my left knee. His lifeless hooves bounced off my shoulders, falling away to either side as I sidestepped and jerked my head to free my "useless" horn.
I spun and back-stepped as it came free, slashing with my short swords in the direction I figured Longsword would have moved to. But he was still standing on the other side of Axepony's body, gaping at the spasming Scarface. Gray was trying to get around to my rear, but was still a couple of lengths away.
I wasn't going to turn down a gift like that. I charged Longsword, bringing my blades up in a crossguard that caught his sword between them near the hilts. He tried to get out of the bind, but he'd obviously had no experience fighting twin blades, and all his instinctive reaction did was allow me to free one sword while maintaining control of his weapon with the other. My freed blade rose in a deep cut through his neck, and he fell.
That left Gray. When I turned to face him, he was backing away from me, holding a hoof to his dripping face, and attempting to keep up a decent guard position with his saber.
I twirled my blades in a fancy pattern that would have had Maestro Flèche scowling in disapproval. "An eyepatch can be kinda sexy," I said, jabbing the point of my left blade in the direction of Gray's remaining eye, making him flinch. "A white cane? Not so much. I'll let you go if—"
There was a flash and a blur, and Gray's head tumbled to the pavement. It was followed by the rest of him a moment later.
"Your pardon, Majesty," Ao said, flicking blood off of her long curved blade. "Did this one interrupt?"
I sighed. I had hoped he would turn tail and run so I wouldn't have to kill him. I wasn't going to criticize Ao directly, but I had to say something. "That was a really clever line. I was hoping he'd remember it."
Ao looked down at the head, considering. "The chances of that are slim, Majesty."
I let it go. "Have you seen Skyla?" I asked.
"She is abusing the few remaining guards on the wall."
"Can you get me up there? My wings won't work."
It was a struggle, but she managed to get me high enough to hook my forelegs over the edge of the parapet, and I hauled myself up the rest of the way.
Skyla was hacking away at a prone guard that was well past caring, screaming, "You! Hurt! My! Auntie!"
"Captain!" I called out to her. "It's okay! I'm fine!"
She looked up, and I flinched. "It's me! Auntie Twilight!" I hurriedly called out to her, and was vastly relieved when the madness drained out of her face.
"Are you hurt? Where—" She dropped her cutlass and ran to embrace me.
"No, no; none of it is mine." I returned the hug briefly and then pushed her away. "We need to get out of here fast, but I want to take a quick look at that gun."
Skyla nodded and wiped at her tear-stained face.
The gun had six rotating barrels that shot different spells. One created a pure blast of deadly energy, of course, but another projected an anti-magic seal, much like the ones used in Equestria for large sporting events. Only much, much more potent. At a rough guess, I wouldn't be able to fly or use magic for nearly a day.
"Curse it!" I growled. "I'm going to have to hoof it out of here. Well, maybe we can get one more gem out of it." I turned the levers that secured the housing at the gun's base and swung up the cover. The crystal that powered the weapon has huge. It was also familiar.
"Ao, check me on this, but does this look like one of the castings we made?"
She peered into the gun housing. "It does indeed!"
I automatically tried to reach out with my magic and then cursed again. "Ao, there's a hank of cord in my left saddlebag, can you get that gem out of the gun and lash it across my back?"
She gave me a nod that was almost a bow and went to work. I turned to Skyla. "Do you still have the booby-trapped crystal?"
She blinked at me for a moment and then turned to rummage through her own bags. "Yes, here it is!"
"Good! Do you still feel up to the little sabotage job?"
"What? Oh the loading platform, yes... Yes, that's a good idea."
I put a hoof to her cheek. "Flurry, are you okay?"
"I'm fine. I just… I'm fine. Really."
I lowered my hoof, leaving a bloody print behind. "Okay then, Captain. I would respectfully suggest that you get a good bit of altitude, drop that gem on the cargo on the platform, and then wait for us a league or so outside the town. Ao and I will join you as soon as possible."
"I… I don't want to leave you."
"Won't be for long… Captain."
She started and blinked at the word. "Yes… yes… half a league down the road. You have fifteen minutes, and then I'm coming back for you, Ms. Nightshade. Understood?"
"Aye, aye, Captain!"
Skyla helped lower me to the street and then she soared up into the night. I galloped down the street, Ao flying above me. The frightened and curious unicorns that had come out of the barracks to see what was going on were only too eager to get out of our way.
Not so the overseer's pegasus thugs. The guards must have freed them, because they swooped down on us before we had made it even halfway to the gate. They screamed, "Demon!" and "Monster!" at us—or more likely, me—as they circled, looking for an opening. When they quickly discovered that I couldn't fly, they made the mistake of rushing Ao. She cut one out of the air almost instantly, and barely missed getting the other. The remaining pegasus went back to circling, darting in and out, slashing and feinting with her wingblades and careful to keep out of Ao's reach.
But not out of my reach. I scooped a dropstone out of my saddle bag, saying loudly, "So, it has come to this."
Ao heard the phrase and curled herself back away from the pegasus. The pegasus realized that something was wrong an instant before the slung stone caught her in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her, and her out of the air.
I grinned at Ao. "Sometimes, throwing rocks works."
She shook her head, chuckled, and opened her mouth to reply.
And that's when the keep blew up.
The massive concussion shattered windows, blasted roof tiles from the barracks, and knocked everypony in the streets off their hooves. Ao and I scrambled upright and gaped at the huge fireball rising over what little remained of the keep.
"I… I think my estimate was a teeny bit off," I said, horrified. I had intended a distraction, not wholesale devastation.
"Even Your Majesty's mistakes are awe-inspiring," Ao said.
"Aww… You say the sweetest things!"
It may seem strange to ponies that have never been through such extreme and terrifying circumstances that a natural reaction to shock and horror is humor. But I can assure my readers that joking and laughter is often a good defense against such things. "Giggling at the ghosties" is an emotional release that can keep a pony functioning rather than breaking down.
So… after some tearful laughter, only slightly tinged with hysteria, we turned and galloped for the gate. Quite a lot of the townsfolk joined us. The guard took one look at the huge herd of ponies rushing down on him and decided that running was a great idea.
Most of the unicorns scattered across the countryside and had no inclination to be anywhere near Ao and I, so we were alone when Skyla met us a half league down the road. Her mane and feathers were slightly singed, and she wore a stern expression. "Some of the gems might explode, I think you said?"
"'Some' covers up to 99%, so, technically, my prediction was only a point off."
"Ha," Skyla said. "Ha."
Ao and I absolutely collapsed laughing, and after a heroically maintained moment of pouty-face, Skyla joined us. Ah, sweet release! We'd have time to be appalled later.
= = =
There was no way I could have made it back to the camp before dawn, especially with my injured knee starting to stiffen up, so we spent the few remaining hours of the night in a small thicket of scrub trees, covered by our cloaks. Ao and Skyla used their healing magic on us, and we got a bit of sleep.
The morning light revealed the smoking ruins of the keep and the imperial airship anchored a few furlongs upwind of it. A dozen or so pegasi flew overhead, scouting the countryside for escaped unicorns, so we kept under cover and watched.
It was difficult to tell what was going on from a distance, but when ponies began to pull carts out of the town to where the airship was anchored, I had a hard time repressing a shout of triumph. "They're loading up the booby-trapped gems from the shed!"
Ao grinned at me. "If we are fortunate, they will be distributed to the whole fleet before the imperials find out what we have done to them."
Skyla shook her head. "I still don't see how a song can turn those crystals into explosives."
I shrugged. "Any highly-charged gem will detonate if it's smashed. The trick is to get an undamaged one to do it. It's not the song that creates the flaw, it's the pattern that's introduced into the unicorn's magic by the rhythm of the song they're singing. Instead of a controlled release of energy, when the magical load on the gem reaches the altered pattern in its matrix, all of the mana is released in one big burst, just as if the crystal had been shattered." A memory suddenly popped into my head that provided the perfect analogy. "Do you remember those popsicle stick 'bombs' that Rainbow Dash taught you to make when you were a foal?"
Skyla frowned for a second and then said, "Oh, right! You bend them and weave them together in a certain way and then, when you drop them or pull out a stick the others all fly apart! It's really that easy?"
"Well, the pattern has to be exact to create that reaction. Most rhythmic voids would just mess up or stop the mana flow." I couldn't help grinning at my own cleverness. "Fortunately, The Bells of Canterlot has an overlapping four-six beat that is ideal for inducing the right thaumic orientation and spacing."
Skyla thought about it for a minute before her face lit up. "We can teach it to more unicorns! As many unicorns as possible... and they can teach others until every unicorn everywhere knows the song! The imperials won't be able to use any gems for fear of them being bad ones!" She turned to me smiling in a rather disturbing way. "We can topple the Empire!"
Oh, Sun and Moon, I'd created a monster! "No, no!" I said. "You don't understand! Doing that wouldn't just destroy the Empire of Earth, it would devastate their whole civilization! Our little scheme to cripple the Western Fleet is one thing, but—"
"If their civilization is based on slavery and oppression, maybe it deserves to fall!" she replied, hotly.
"It's not just the rulers who would be affected." I explained. "All the oppressed people would suffer a host of—"
"At least they wouldn't be slaves any more!" Skyla mantled her wings in anger.
"Might this one make a slight observation?" Ao asked, placidly.
Uh-oh.
Skyla looked at her warily, but nodded.
"If the honored captain wishes to attract the notice of the enemy patrols, she will have to shout somewhat louder."
Skyla scowled at the both of us. "This isn't over," she said in a low hiss.
"I promise we will talk it over when we're safely back aboard Nebula," I said, shifting to make myself more comfortable. "There are... options."
= = =
We slept as much as we could while the sun was up and didn't leave the thicket until full dark. My knee had stiffened badly despite the healing I had received,[1] and I could only hobble along at a walking pace. Skyla and Ao took turns carrying the big gem.
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[1] That's usually the way of it. Wounds that seem trivial in combat often turn out to be more serious once one's adrenaline has worn off.
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I told both Skyla and Ao that one of them should fly ahead to let the crew know we were okay, but neither of them would leave me.
We didn't pause for rest until we came to a small creek that flowed under a low stone bridge. The water was cold, shallow, and a poor substitute for a proper bath, but we were filthy. It took me at least a dozen times dipping and shaking my wings to get all the feathers unstuck from each other and clean enough to preen, but I felt much better afterwards.
We had to leave the road and hide about an hour later as a large troop of armored earth ponies came trotting toward Redkeep. Lying on the cold ground, still wet, made my knee ache and practically freeze up, so we wasted more time while Ao and Skyla cast a couple more spells on me.
The treatment made my knee feel much better, and I was starting to regain the use of my magic by the time we arrived at the rebel camp, about an hour before dawn. I had expected that a sentry would call out to us as we approached, but we reached the area of the camp unchallenged. It took my exhaustion-fuddled brain a few seconds to realize the implications of that, and a few more to gallop to the big clearing.
Nebula was gone.
= = =
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