The table in the front room was covered with paper, books, notes, and a few crude mockups of buildings. It represented all the data the guild had collected on a particular city block in Manehattan.
The corner of Forty-Seventh Street and Rocky Road was occupied by a pharmaceutical research laboratory called Philly Pharm. It had taken weeks, but the guild had tracked down everything there was to know about the company. It was the elusive headquarters of the Weeds.
The research load had mostly fallen on Piper, who had spent so many hours sifting through deeds, public records, and financial reports, and Coin, whose expert analysis had put it all together. However, once Piper had identified leads, he was able to quickly put parasprites on the case to keep an eye on suspected ponies and property.
The layers of the shell corporations had been peeled back, and surveillance told the guild what they needed to know. They had finally found the Weeds.
As tempting as it was to strike them as soon as possible, this was a dangerous task, perhaps the most dangerous the guild had ever undertaken.
Piper stood back and provided details he obtained via parasprite. Pale found herself running the operation, which gave her mixed feelings. It was good to know he trusted her judgement and experience, but Pale was constantly worried that the task would fail. She was fine with risking herself. This job would place much more than that at stake.
To that end, Pale drew on the strengths of those around her. Coin was organizing the overarching plan. Shard had prepared a variety of substances, everything from explosives to nerve agents. Hammer had done delicate work to model the building - two stories and a basement - so they could study the layout beforehand. Mirror was outfitting all of them with armor. The guild had always been cloak and dagger, not sword and shield; but Pale understood the extraordinary situation warranted extraordinary tactics. They all did.
The fight ahead was sure to be bloody and destructive. If they were to wipe out the Weeds in one night, then by necessity, it would have to be in combat. Once the guild breached the building, there would be no stealth and no room for error.
Pale raised her head from where all of them had been studying the material. “Are we all in agreement?”
Heads nodded from around the table. All of them had a stake in this, and all had a role to play. Pale looked at each of their faces. Serious. Focused. Just as they needed to be for the biggest fight of their lives.
Pale nodded. “Let’s go.”
They did not depart the cave together, instead traveling in small groups. All of them knew where they were going, that had been planned.
Pale was first to leave, with Coin. It would be a long trip, but that was all the better to review the plan. Attacking a building in a crowded city that would be filled with hostiles sounded difficult, and it would be. Coin was good at planning, but with the input of the others, the operation had come together into a single, unified task. It would take all of them, but Pale was confident it would work. It had to.
Pale had packed heavy for this task. She wore her mail, both of her matching knives, and a heavier blade. She’d asked Hammer to make some plate for her forelegs. Doubtless, this would be a close-quarters fight the whole way. She’d also wound a scarf around her neck, so she could pull it up around her face to filter the air.
She and Coin talked little on the way, both of them thinking of what was to come. It was not until they were in Manehattan and a mere few blocks from Philly Pharm that the plan was put into motion.
They glanced around at the darkened, empty streets. Pale lifted a sewer grate and the two of them dropped through.
“Ugh,” Coin wretched, “it smells even worse than I thought.”
Pale agreed, but the topic was put aside and the two of them set off down the damp tunnel.
In the distance, a small light flared, a mote of exhaled fire. Hammer was already there, crouched under the low ceiling. He’d come in from the river, squeezing up into the sewers from the outlet.
There was the sound of steps from the cross tunnel. Tietack and Shard appeared. A few minutes later, so did Piper and Whirl.
Tietack’s eyes were wide and nervous. Shard appeared to be much calmer than the situation warranted, and Pale suspected he’d taken something to achieve that. Whirl was his usual fidgeting self, perhaps even worse than normal. Piper was alert and looking remarkably spry tonight.
The group of them checked the time. By now, Mirror and Jolly would be on the sidewalk above. Their job was to turn away any bystanders, and if possible, lock the building’s doors from the outside. Overhead, Shadow and Whisper provided overwatch and insurance against any escapees.
Through long observation of the building, the guild had noted the days and times the Weeds tended to gather. Staring at the roof of the tunnel, Pale could just barely hear their movements and conversations.
“There are approximately sixteen inside,” said Piper, eyes closed and voice low. “I can’t get an exact count.”
It was doubtful that was all of them, even if the guild had already managed to kill nearly that many individually. The Weeds were definitely on the defensive now, but if this attack worked, only stragglers would be left. The guild would have to clean up the rest, but this task done tonight would put them most of the way to eliminating the Weeds.
Pale nodded. “Ready?”
They all were. Shard opened his rucksack and took out a large wad of sticky paste that he slapped to the ceiling and spread out a little. He fussed with it for a moment and then ordered, “Stand back.”
The group retreated around the corner of the tunnel. Pale pulled her scarf up over her nose and made ready.
Three seconds later, a blast knocked the air from their lungs and brought the stone ceiling down with a crash and tornado of dust. Pale, already crouched, burst forward, wings out, blades up. Whirl was at her shoulder, and they went through the new hole. Shard was behind them, with Tietack and Coin bringing up the rear. Hammer stepped into the hole while Piper stayed down below.
The basement they’d blasted into was empty, but that wasn’t surprising. Startled voices and shouts of alarm came through the ceiling above. Shard grabbed a glass bottle out of his satchel and hurled it at the basement door, which blew apart in a comparatively small explosion.
Pale was through it a fraction of a second later, Whirl just behind her. Shard should be coming with them to clear any other obstructions. Tietack and Coin would cover the rear. Meanwhile, Hammer stayed behind to ensure their escape route.
The first floor was a laboratory area. Pale didn’t have time to stop and look around. There were four ponies on the first floor, one near the front door. Whirl was closest and charged in that direction. Pale faced the other three. One, a stallion, pulled a knife and bellowed, charging her. The other two grabbed whatever was nearby.
Pale stabbed the first pony as he got close, using his momentum to throw him to the side. She ducked a beaker as it flew towards her face, hearing the glass shatter somewhere behind her. The two remaining opponents came at her, using her momentary distraction to their advantage. Simultaneously, ponies began to pour down the staircase at the far end of the room.
Pale slammed her blade into the chest of the nearest mare, twisting her body to meet the second with a similar attack. Pulling both knives free, she tossed them up, snatching the blade the first stallion had dropped. With her free hoof, Pale caught each of her knives as they came down, and with two quick flicks sent them across the room. She scored a hit in one pony’s eye and the other knife glanced off the shoulder of another.
Pale buried the knife she’d picked up into the sternum of another Weed and pulled her third blade, slashing forward. One of Shard’s glass bottles flew forward from behind her and Pale had time to swing up a foreleg for protection before it exploded on the staircase in the middle of the hostile crowd. A fragment of glass slashed at her cloak but cracked against her armor.
One stallion, had, if anything, only been propelled forward by the blast and met Pale head-on. She put her weight behind her knife, stabbing it through his throat, between the vertebrae, and out the nape.
The next Weed was the one stabbed in the eye, her entire face covered in blood, but still she screamed and ran into the fight. There wasn’t time for Pale to pull the knife out of the stallion’s neck. She raised her hoof and hammered it forward, driving the blade still stuck in the mare’s eye deep, all the way to the back of her skull.
The weed dropped instantly, but now Pale was left with two stuck blades. It was almost fortunate that the pony she’d wounded with her other thrown knife had picked it up. She ducked his swing, punched him in the nose with a sickening crack of bone, and slashed his throat with one of her wing razors. She took her knife back from his flailing hooves.
And still the Weeds kept coming. At least the rest had been injured by Shard’s weapon. With their suicidal charge, though, Pale was about to be overwhelmed.
Pale shoved her dying adversary away and made ready to meet the next, but Whirl tackled him from in front of her. Another pony used the distraction to dodge Whirl and come at Pale. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw another.
Pale attacked the one in front of her, and still got stabbed in the mail by his knife before she put him down. She heard a gasp of pain just behind her and turned to see Tietack bleeding from lip to ear but counterattacking an opponent who had tried to flank Pale.
Tietack finished the job, not requiring any help from her. Pale looked around. Whirl was finishing with his target, spatterings of red dirtying the pale brick wall before him as he stabbed everywhere. There were no other Weeds still standing. Pale caught Coin’s eye and they rushed the staircase.
A mare met them halfway. Pale stabbed her, and Coin followed up with the poisoned knife Hammer and Shard had collaborated to make. Their target dropped instantly.
The upper floor was a meeting area, with tables and bookcases. One stallion was stuffing papers into a bag when they appeared. He turned and bolted for a window. Pale got to him first, knocking him off his hooves and flipping him over before she unceremoniously stabbed him in the heart.
Pale turned to help Coin sweep the room, but there were no other weeds. It was only then that they stopped to look around.
An eye was painted in simple black lines on the far side of the room, lit by candles and spanning the whole wall. Not pausing to examine the decorations, Coin grabbed the papers the stallion had been after, plus whatever else she could find nearby.
The two of them went back down the stairs. Whirl was going around the room stabbing bodies to ensure their deaths. Pale gathered her knives and resheathed them.
Shard had bandaged Tietack’s face. “He’ll have a heck of a scar. Good thing it missed the eye, though.” His reassurance didn’t look like it meant much to Tietack, who was shivering and blinking, holding both hooves around his upper body.
Coin collected a few more things from the lab. There wasn’t time to give it a thorough look. They’d only planned the operation to last minutes, if that. It was time to go.
The group descended back to the basement and down into the sewer. Shard helped Tietack along. Coin carried the captured documents.
Whirl was fidgeting to the point of practically vibrating, but followed the others. Pale turned to look at Piper. He nodded to her, saying nothing. Nothing needed to be said, not now. He turned and followed the others down the tunnel.
Pale looked at Hammer. “Burn it.”
Hammer took out a dragon-sized handkerchief and wiped the building’s drain pipe that hung down from the ceiling of the sewer. He then took a lungful of air and spit fire up the pipe. Even from the basement, Pale heard it erupt from every drain in the building. Flames were already casting flickering light down the basement stairs.
Pale headed down the tunnel, joining up with Coin. The two of them took the next branch in the sewer, breaking off from the group to take separate routes back to the cave just as they had entered Manehattan.
Emerging from a storm grate a few blocks away, Pale looked back to see the glow of the burning building.
“We did it,” Coin said quietly, a few stray strands of blonde mane dropping across her face. She didn’t appear to notice. “Thank Celestia, we made it.”
Pale glanced at her as they turned to walk away. “Couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Or you,” Coin insisted. “There were so many of them. Even by your standards, that was…”
She trailed off and looked away, recognizing the thorny subject. Pale was glad of it. Even as long as she’d had the job, it still made her uncomfortable to be complimented. Killing was necessary to stop the Blight, but praise was not.
It sometimes surprised Pale how much conscience she apparently had. That was strangely comforting.
The two of them walked into the darkness. The night ended quietly, as it had begun.