//------------------------------// // 15 Slow-burn Serendipity // Story: The Skyla Pseudonym // by iisaw //------------------------------// Chapter Fifteen Slow-burn Serendipity We burned through almost all of the energy in the engine crystals finding a suitable valley high in the mountains and powering down into it. Then the crew struggled with the ground anchors and a dozen heavy cables to keep Nebula held down and steady against the gusty winds. Skyla, Ao, and I ran ourselves ragged keeping everything going smoothly and lending a hoof wherever it was needed. The unicorn rebels were actually eager to be doing something productive, but they were the greenest lubbers imaginable[1] and needed constant supervision. ---------- [1] I do not mean that in a pejorative way. It is simply the most efficient way to convey that they had absolutely no experience with airships, and any action they took on their own initiative was more likely to hinder than to help. ---------- Cream Puff labored heroically in the galley, producing lots of hot mulled apple juice and savory oat pasties to keep the rest of the crew warm and fed. Skyla found me below decks, unshipping one of the bilge pumps and forced the hot meal on me. "Have you eaten?" I asked her. She held up another pasty. "These are the last two; I'll join you." We inhaled the food, gulped the drinks, and went back to work. Lance and Swift had built a little rock dam to make a decent sized pool from the rill of glacial melt-water that trickled down the stoney valley. I set up the pump next to it and connected the long hose that stretched back up to Nebula's hull. "When the pool fills, we'll pump the water into the ballast tanks," I told them, eyeing the basin and making a rough estimate of its capacity and the rate of inflow. "We'll have to repeat that a dozen times or more to fill the tanks, so have Filigree check the pool every couple of hours and get some of the unicorns to operate the pump when it's full. Nebula will ride easier with some weight in her bottom." "I'd be happy to do that, Ms. Nightshade," Lance said. "Thank you, but I have another job for you and Swift Wing," I replied. "You guys know the basic concept of good guard/bad guard, right?" = = = While the interrogation of Loose Leaf started, Skyla and I settled in on the stern gallery with a nice pot of tea and a plate of biscuits for a preliminary brainstorming session. We both agreed that it would be wonderful if we could transform the Empire of Earth into a peaceful and prosperous monarchy like Equestria or the Crystal Empire. The only other point we agreed upon was that such an outcome was a ridiculous fantasy. "A widespread program of sabotaging the gems won't work," I told Skyla. "The earth ponies will just institute a tighter system of supervision and tracking, and any unicorn that produced a flawed gem would be severely punished if not killed outright." "I suppose so," she grumbled. "So what do we do? And, I'm not going to take 'nothing' for an answer! I know you've seen countless worlds that are worse, and there's no way we can save them all, but we are here right now!" Well, at least it proved that she'd been listening to my counter-arguments. "We will do something, even if it's just taking the rebels back to Equestria with us when we return." "And leave behind thousands of others in slavery? That's just not—" I held up a hoof. "Let's get some more information first. There are a lot of things we can do to help the unicorns to help themselves, at the very least." "What about the pegasi? What's going on there?" "We should know a lot more in a few days. Loose Leaf is a goldmine of information if we can get it out of her." Skyla frowned at me "Why don't you just ask her? She would tell you whatever you wanted her to. She worships you!" And then under her breath, "For some bizarre reason." "That's the problem," I replied. "A pony that worships me—or is utterly terrified of me, for that matter—might tell me anything they think would please me whether it was true or not. By taking this slowly, and giving Loose Leaf a friend to unburden herself to, we should get some decent information eventually. I can then crosscheck whatever she tells me against our other sources." "Eventually," Skyla said sourly. "What do we do in the meantime?" We were interrupted by Good Guard Swift Wing, who came down the ladder from the chart room and through the cabin, shaking his head. "That mare is crazier than a bag of sparrows!"[2] ---------- [2] A traditional pegasus idiom that I've never been able to make much sense of. ---------- "I assume Bad Guard Stalwart Lance is with her now?" I asked. "Yes, Ms. Nightshade," he said, nodding. "I'll go 'rescue' her from him in a half hour." "Did you find out anything?" Skyla asked him. "I learned that pegasi are lick-spittle curs and witless tools of the oppressors," he said with wry smile. "Present company excepted, I hope?" That made him chuckle. "Of course, Captain! I also learned that there are thousands of others like her waiting to cast off their chains and flock to the side of the—" He paused to clear his throat. "Dark Mistress. I'm pretty sure she is wildly exaggerating, but I'd bet there are at least a few other crazy cultists among the pegasi." He glanced in my direction. "Uh… no offense, Ms. Nightshade!" "None taken," I said, and forbore to mention that I had quite a few enthusiastic supporters who were perfectly sane. "Any mention of me in particular?" He nodded vigorously. "Oh yeah. It seems there's this sort of prophecy—" I groaned. "Oh blistering sun, not a prophecy!"[3] ---------- [3] Anypony who thinks that prophecies are intriguing, mysterious, or in any way helpful, has never been the subject of one. See my annotated and expanded edition of Predictions and Prophecies for details. ---------- "I'm afraid so, ma'am. Loose Leaf has it memorized." He plucked a folded piece of paper from under the coverts of his left wing. "Here; I wrote it down." And Twilight Sparkle said unto the pegasi, "I will be back to check on you. And if you haven't straightened out, I will tear your wings out by the roots, And beat you senseless with them." And so shall it be when the ponies of the sky Fail in their duty to the ponies of the earth. It was amazingly direct for a prophecy. "She swears it's no joke," Swift said in response to my suspicious frown. "There are several books of commentary on this so-called prophecy, 'explaining' what it means. It seems like it's pretty straight-forward to me, but I guess there's a lot of disagreement among the blacklips. Loose Leaf doesn't have any of the books with her, but she seems to be solidly in the you're-doing-it-wrong-you-fools camp." He cleared his throat and went on. "Evidently, the one thing they all agree on is that you stopped a big war between the tribes about three hundred years ago and set up the empire." "What?" Skyla blurted out, staring at me, aghast. I flopped a wing across my face and dragged it down my muzzle, sighing. "Pestilential multiverse! This sort of thing is always happening to me!" Skyla and Swift just gaped at me. "I'll fix it! I'll fix it!" I told them. = = = A feral storm rolled in that night, and we were all up late keeping Nebula as stable as possible. She bashed her keel against the rocky ground a couple of times and ripped a fairlead out at her starboard head, but nothing else of significance occurred. I checked the keelmast gear and winches by hornlight before I crawled into my bunk for a couple hours of sleep. That morning Swift and Lance resumed their charade while Skyla spoke with the rebels about their options. I drew up a set of plans for Filigree, and he went to work crafting another gun matrix to extract lift gas from suitable minerals, and Star and I scouted the valley to find the suitable minerals that could produce a decent amount of the gas. We returned to Nebula about noon, having marked out several promising deposits. We had our saddle bags stuffed with rocks, and in addition, I was floating as much of the minerals as I could along side. "I'm feelin' a mite low, Ms. Nightshade," Star said, as we unloaded our burdens. "Altitude sickness, from working so hard in the thin air," I told him. "Go sling your hammock and get some rest." I was tired from being up most of the night and hauling a double load of stones for miles, but at least I wasn't nauseated. I went down to my cabin and attempted to bring my personal log up to date, but the soft singing of the unicorns who were charging our crystals made me drowsy, and it wasn't long before I 'closed my eyes for just a second' and fell asleep at my desk. = = = Nebula was burning. Skyla and I were the only ponies aboard, and there was just one parachute left. Don't ask me why we couldn't both fly away; with the weird certainty that comes in dreams, I knew one of us was going to fall to her death. Dream logic also told me that if I could cut the parachute in half, we could both use the halves to escape. But the only sharp instruments I could find were my fighting blades, and they were so slick with blood that I couldn't get a grip on them. With a hissing roar, Nebula's burning envelope dropped on top of us and I woke with a start. I groaned and tried to slow my panicky breathing. "Oh, Luna! Where are you when I need you?" I muttered. It was a foolish thing to say, because I immediately realized how much I missed her and began to feel even worse. I thought that I should have written more emphatically about how much I loved her in that last letter. If I had... My train of thought hit that badly set switch and roared onto another, unexpected track. Parachutes. Huge power gems were common in that world. So was orichalcum. The only problem was that etching the mandalas would be prohibitively time-consuming. Unless... "Sugarpine!" I shouted, galloping on deck. He didn't have the information I needed, but it didn't take me long to locate one of his group who did. She was an exceptionally beautiful sea-green mare named Katydid. She wore her light pink mane very long and combed back to hide the scars criss-crossing her shoulders. "Amberdale is the nearest metal-working center, but they don't do much specialized casting there," she told me. "They mainly smelt the ore and ship it out in ingots. Some rough foundry work for large pieces that are finished later is about it. They do have a small stamping mill, though. Just trivial stuff like buttons and medals." "How big can the medals be?" I asked her. She shrugged. "The Imperial Star of Valor is bigger than my hoof! Stomper soldiers just love their glittery decorations." It might just work! I was very careful not to grin at her. "Do you know the layout of the town and the buildings? The more details you know, the better." She nodded, then took a shaky breath. "I was the overseer's... " She squeezed her eyes shut and was silent for a long moment. "He took me everywhere with him, so I know the whole town pretty well. I can draw out a map for you." I really wanted to comfort her, but a hug from a jagged-fanged horror wasn't likely to do her much good. "Make sure to mark the overseer's quarters and put down a description of him, will you? Also the ponies in charge of the stamping mill and the foundry." She looked at me blankly for a moment and then slowly nodded. "I'll give you their names and describe them, but you will have to write it down, ma'am. I don't know how." "You can't write?" I asked, surprised. "It's illegal to teach a unicorn to read and write," she said simply. I'm afraid I gaped like a landed trout for a bit, trying to wrap my head around this new atrocity. "What? Why?" "They say it would be a distraction from our duty to the Empire. I've heard of some who learned, but the penalty is blinding for the unicorn and prison or death for the teacher, so it doesn't happen often." "Oh, I am going to wreck those miserable stompers!" I growled, unthinkingly baring my fangs. Katydid's face lit up in a sweet, wistful smile. "That would be nice." = = = I explained everything to Skyla and she eagerly agreed to the plan. I spent the rest of the day drawing up a very specific pegasus disguise matrix for Filigree, as well as a mandala that looked a great deal like an imperial medallion. We didn't have the facilities aboard to actually produce a stamp, but Filigree assured me that any competent craftspony could quickly and easily make one from his prototype. The next day, while Filigree did the metal work, I went over Katydid's drawings of the town with her to make sure I had everything down correctly, and held several meetings with Star and Sugarpine to try to glean enough information to be able to pass for a low-level functionary on business for a high noble. They both had experience dealing with ponies of that sort, but neither of them had any direct knowledge of all the little details that could trip me up. The only pony aboard that had been part of the imperial hierarchy was Loose Leaf. Well, the other pegasus prisoner also, but he wouldn't be much help. So I finally sat down with her and had a long chat. The key to posing as a divine/infernal being is to never answer any probing questions. The only appropriate reply to a pony so impious as to ask, is an expression[4] suggesting that a plague of carnivorous parasprites might feature prominently in that pony's obituary. ---------- [4] It's mostly in the eyebrows, but according to Luna, it's the tiny curl of the upper lip that really sells it. ---------- It was a technique I did not have to employ, because Loose Leaf was nothing if not worshipful. In fact, the main problem with getting any information out of her was getting her to stop praising me long enough to say anything else. What finally worked was telling her to write down a list of blacklips who were intelligent enough to realize how magnificent and absolutely correct I was, along with where they were posted. After that, she was to give her new friend Swift Wing as thorough a briefing as she could in regard to successfully posing as an imperial official. Before I left, I laid my wingtips on her shoulders and said, "You have my blessing, Loose Leaf. Soon you will be freed to do my work in the world, and the world will change because of you." Her eyes rolled up in her head, but at least she didn't faint again. By the morning of the third day, I had cobbled together the Amberdale Operation and Filigree had completed the waveguide that would shoot a pegasus disguise, as well as a prototype for the medal stamp. There was one last-minute change to the plan, though. It made the most sense for Skyla to be the officer remaining aboard, but for some reason, neither disguise gun would work on Ao. Ao would have to be the one to stay behind. Ao was not pleased by this turn of events. "This one is uncomfortable being so far from you should you require assistance," she said, after I had been disguised and was gearing up for the flight to the foundry town. "I'll have the raptor set with me and it's only about four leagues from here," Ao got a bit twisty. "This one would require a half-hour or more to cover that distance. Much ill could befall you in less time." "I promise I will be careful," I said. She shook her head, sadly. "Always, your intentions are good, Majesty." I didn't ask her what she meant by that comment because I knew what she meant. "If we pull this off, it might mean freedom for thousands of these poor ponies. I have to take the risk. You'd do it yourself in a heartbeat!" She sighed and nodded but didn't say anything. "Don't worry, Skyla and I will be back by the evening watch change." She nodded again. "I'm all set," Skyla called out as she descended from the quarterdeck. "Ready, Ms. Nightshade?" I nodded. "Excellent!" She didn't even glance at Ao when she told her, "Take good care of my ship, Ms. Ao!" Her ship? The flurry of expressions and slight head movements that I traded with Ao behind Skyla's back in desperate silence were rather intense and information-dense. In the space of three heartbeats, we had agreed that immediate mutiny was a very bad idea, given our current circumstances, but the moment would not be forgotten. "As you command, Captain," Ao said, softly. Skyla dove over the rail, and I followed her down the mountain. = = = =