It might be the last meeting of Lucky’s civilization.
This time, it wasn’t the major leading them—there were no higher authority figures for her to go begging to. The success or failure of this entire mission rested squarely on her shoulders.
They used the same conference room they had before, where Olivia had lied to them about their mission to Dragon’s Folly. The same gathering was here now—every soldier, every native pony, everyone still alive.
Lei made them some refreshments—muffins this time, instead of hotpot. Fine with Lucky, she liked the muffins better anyway. It was morning on the day after her call with Twilight Sparkle. They would have no better chance to prepare.
There was no happy conversation, as there had been the time before. Word had gotten around of Olivia’s survival, and what that would surely mean for Othar. Lucky suspected the soldiers had already started planning.
“Alright,” she said, settling down into Olivia’s chair. It was higher than all the others, and made her look like the largest pony in the room. “Everyone listen. I want to be as quick as possible. Everyone here knows most of what we’re facing, but not all. Major Fischer always focused on the immediate threats, without planning for the larger dangers that were less urgent. I’m going to do that now, then anyone who has updates can give them. After that, I’ll tell you the plan.
“I’m sure it has problems—I’m not trained the same way lots of you are. I’m not a soldier or a diplomat. But I think all of us are going to have to be a little bit of everything in the next few days.
“First, the threat. I don’t know how much you all know about this…” She found herself looking at the natives as she said this most of all. “I’ve been in contact with a number of Equestria’s movers, including two of its princesses and one of its… gods, I guess. A powerful AGI named Discord. Between those contacts and our own research, we’ve put together a pretty good picture of what’s going on.”
She brought up the projector in the center and started flashing through images. Martin’s pictures of advanced civilizations, all destroyed. Thousands and thousands of cities in various stages of decay, though most seemed very well preserved. She threw in a few images of the uniform, igneous surface.
“The Equestrian ruler known as Celestia has threatened me, and it is possible if Olivia has been captured that she is aware of the rest of us as well. This does not make her the most dangerous threat to us, however. There is a danger that threatens all Equestria equally—the thing that Celestia fears.”
She shifted to an image of the ring, as much an artificial composite as any of the old whole-Earth images. “This is the Sanctuary ring. It is controlled by an… AI named Harmony. We do not know its motives, or its goals. All we know is—it’s wiped out civilization on this ring before, many times. When I went with Flurry Heart, we saw one city like that, filled with dead ponies. The natives are as much captives here as we are—we have no reason to suspect Harmony wouldn’t have total knowledge of all that transpires on this ring. The instant it decides to kill us, there won’t be anything we can do.”
She waited a minute, to see if any of the room would interrupt her. Nopony did, not her mom, not anyone else. The ponies seemed more shocked than the crew-members, horrified by what they saw. Lucky couldn’t blame them—it had done the same thing to Flurry Heart.
“Celestia’s fear comes from Harmony—she is afraid that it will destroy Equestria, as it has done to other civilizations. When she spoke with me, Celestia communicated a fear that my actions… our actions… might make Harmony decide to perform this… purge. Unfortunately, we don’t know what those actions might be. But Discord indicated that we might stop it. Our goal is not to kill Celestia, not to do anything to Equestria at all. Our goal is to stop Harmony.”
Perez sat up, banging one hoof on the desk. “Alright, enough. Have you thought that maybe we don’t have a damn thing to do with Harmony? I’m not disputing something exists with power the natives don’t have. I saw that something killed one of our scientists. But we don’t know that Harmony cares what we do. We’re not part of its programming, right? So maybe we just stay out of its way, and let it do what it wants to Equestria. Let the one who wants us dead worry about it. They can keep feuding, and we can build somewhere Harmony doesn’t care about.”
“It isn’t right.” Deadlight wore the translation headset, just like Lightning Dust. Unlike her, he didn’t need it for most things. Deadlight had learned English much more rapidly than her mom had. “There are many legends of great monsters that have destroyed cities. Creatures too terrible to fight, creatures that feel nothing but hatred. I don’t recognize much of the images you showed us… but if we know about a monster like that, we should do something to contain it. Equestria is helpless, but maybe you aren’t. I have seen what you accomplished. Those ponies downstairs are free because of you. If all Equestria is a hostage, you must free them too.”
Perez grunted, settling back into his seat. The message was clear.
“That is the threat as I see it.” Lucky said. “More than Equestria, more than anything. That is what we need to stop. With Harmony pacified, or neutralized, or convinced… whatever we have to do… Equestria will have no reason to be afraid of us. We can make Othar into a country, we can follow the Pioneering Society handbook… everything we came to do.
“But now, I know a few of you had information to share with us. I want to know everything you’ve figured out, in case it has relevance for what I’m planning.”
Dr. Born spoke first, not even looking up from the computation surface on the table in front of her. “The new samples recovered have opened up a new avenue of research. Cracking human immunity should be on the order of weeks. I could already start fabricating human biosleeves now, since fabricator conditions are sterile. Though there is a small chance we would have to leave them in stasis until I’m finished working.”
“That’s it?” Lucky asked. “All we’ve been through, and… you’re sure you can just cure it? The… prion thing?”
She nodded. “Fairly certain, yes. It’s about probabilities—greater genome coverage would improve that, but the more samples we have the better our chances of extrapolating. I don’t see how it helps you, though.” She looked down at her nearest screen. “Are you going to free up the gestation pods, Forerunner? Wash out some of the ponies so that you can grow a few humans instead?”
Forerunner hadn’t said anything so far, not during the entire meeting. It spoke now though, almost reluctantly. It sounded distracted, though Lucky couldn’t guess why. “I would have. My programming prioritizes the creation of a human colony, which was once defined based on genetic profile. My updated definition is a fuzzy matching of more abstract traits. The growing army matches that definition as well as they might if they wore human sleeves. Given the expenditure of time required to start over, and the resources already invested that would be destroyed in the process, allowing them to grow to completion and then leaving them in stasis seems the optimal course. I am already working to build new fabricators to diversify my organic segments.”
“But you’re right,” Lucky added. “This isn’t very helpful for our mission. Once we beat Harmony, we can take as long as we want to make humans who can live here.”
“I’m not going on any missions,” Dr. Born said. “Dragon’s Folly was enough excitement for me, thanks. I belong in a lab.”
“And you should be,” Lucky said. “But there’s something more important. When Olivia was… not killed, I guess. When she was captured, the Nightmare agents used some kind of mind-weapon on her. Forerunner has copies of her suit’s medical logs. If you could find out what happened, find some kind of inoculation, or vaccine… somehow, I think we’re going to need one.” I’m going to need one. Against Celestia. But she didn’t say that. Even Lightning Dust didn’t like the idea of open conflict with her princesses, though she never would’ve admitted it. And Deadlight, even moreso.
“I can look into it,” Dr. Born said, noncommittally. “But that’s not really my field, and suit sensors aren’t great. It would be better if you had one of the weapons here, and someone to test it on. A few days of that should be enough to figure out what the weapon does to a person, and how to stop it.”
“I can’t get you that,” Lucky said. “Just do your best.” Then she turned to Melody.
Her older self just looked away. She always seemed deferential lately, though Lucky didn’t know why. Maybe it had to do with the way her scent had changed. “I don’t think the ones we rescued will be able to help you, Lucky. Deadlight and I have been trying to work with them, but they’ve been abused pretty bad. They seem to think we’re going to be helping them, uh… save their tribe. I guess they’ve been dealing with slavery for a long time, and…” She trailed off, looking down at the table. “But if you need us to come with you on this mission, it does sound important.” She looked to Deadlight, as if for permission.
Deadlight nodded. “Even if you don’t need us, I would like to speak with you… in private… about Harmony. Before you leave. But if you do plan on exploring any ancient ruins, you will probably need my help. I’m the only one in this room with any experience, aside from you.”
She nodded. “Would you go even if it meant leaving Melody behind?” There was no sense pretending that she didn’t know. Not when everypony in Othar knew about them.
The two of them shared a glance. Then he nodded. “For the good of Equestria, I would. Under other circumstances, I would prefer Melody come along, greater risk or not.” He glanced down at her, then his ears flattened. “But there are the rescued slaves!” he hastily added. “Somepony who can speak to them should be here.”
Lucky nodded, tucking away that information to her running tally of resources she had to work with. She probably would bring Deadlight, all things considered. He was the only Equestrian native they had without a criminal record.
She finally turned to Martin, who was positively bouncing up and down in her seat by then. At least she hadn’t interrupted. “Yes?” She didn’t really know how much more the physicist could contribute, but then…
“The Forerunner and I are close to cracking the encryption on the cube you brought. Encryption isn’t quite the right word, it wasn’t that. It’s just the file structure—it’s way beyond anything the Forerunner used, or is using now for that matter. I don’t understand it, but the Forerunner does.”
“Really?”
“Quite sure. We’re already into the filesystem. The Forerunner thinks the device stores recordings of some kind. The only thing slowing us down right now is that they don’t seem to play back on any device we have—they’re not pixels, or voxels, or anything else we have equivalents for. Still, the Forerunner said it’s only about getting the computation time on it. Once it doesn’t have as much to do with other projects, it should be ready.”
“You don’t need me to tell you to keep working on that,” Lucky said. She didn’t even entertain asking Martin to help with her mission. The astronomer had been well-behaved in Dragon’s Folly, but she’d also been a liability. One that wouldn’t be coming with her on this mission. “But as soon as you get it working, go through the recordings. Find anything about Harmony. I think the… I think the Alicorn who made them was fighting it too.”
Finally, she turned to the little group of soldiers. They had sat together, except for Lei, and aside from Perez they had remained quiet. Lucky stared, waiting for them to speak—but Perez remained determinedly silent. She didn’t know how much the others respected him as a leader, but they did respect the chain of command. If he wanted them to stay quiet, they would.
“Well?” she asked. “You were working on something… a device you recovered from Dragon’s Folly? Reverse engineering it, I think?”
Perez grunted noncommittally. Finally he looked up. “This is fun play acting, Dr. Irwin, but it’s a waste of time. You only had authority because our major was dead. Well, she isn’t. My men and I are going to get her back, and that’s all you need to know. When she’s back in command, then maybe we talk.”
Dammit. I thought we were done with this.
Lucky looked down at the computation surface on the table in front of her. “Forerunner, please.” She didn’t have the time. Apparently Forerunner was distracted trying to crack into the cube’s video files—it was a shame to pull its concentration away again, but she could think of no other option.
They had discussed this eventuality.
“Recovering Major Fischer is part of the mission plan Lucky and I constructed together,” Forerunner said, sounding annoyed. “I rest full command authority in Lucky Break until Major Fischer is returned. If she does not authorize you, no ships will fly, no armor will move, and no guns will fire. And if you threaten her or any other member of my crew, I will destroy you as a malfunctioning segment.”
Perez seemed to think on that for a long time. He glanced down at the sidearm on his belt, at the other soldiers in the room. Maybe they had their own plan for this—knives, perhaps. Would they be held hostage by their own soldiers?
Then he sighed. “What kind of rescue did you have in mind?”
Olivia could hear voices from outside the room—even though she couldn’t understand what they were saying, the tone of it was obvious. Guards, asking if everything was alright. Olivia didn’t have much time.
But the drugs had long since worn-off, and her failed attempt at suicide hadn’t done more than leave an opening between her molars. It was time to act.
Her legs were free, and that would have to be enough. Olivia hooked her hooves around the thick strap attaching her to the table, the same one that was secured by buckles outside her reach. The strap was made of thick canvas, meant to contain a hospital’s troublesome patients. She doubted it was rated against a determined escape attempt by someone with a fiber-reinforced skeleton and genetically engineered muscles.
Olivia yanked. She felt the canvas digging into her flesh, drawing blood as it cut even through taught muscle. She felt her legs strain against the pressure, in a direction that no earth horse could’ve moved. But despite the visual similarities, ponies were a different creature.
The strap snapped with a crack, spraying blood from her open wounds, and flinging her sideways off the table. She flopped, then righted herself. She could hear the sound of ponies working the locks outside. How long would they take? Not long enough.
Olivia surveyed the room, searching for weapons. Her own gear had all been taken, and anyway most of it was melted now. Only the mechanical tools, like the rifle, would still be of any use.
There were no knives with her, at least not at a glance. No scissors or pliers or anything else she could use as a weapon. Her wings tried to twitch in agitation, but those were still strapped down, and lacked the strength they would need to break free. Her delicate wing-bones would not survive the treatment she had given her legs.
Her hoof touched on the metallic edge of Starlight’s fallen helmet. The same one made from dark metal, that had granted the ability to understand her. The same spell that might have caused her to lose the desire to fight.
The door started swinging open. Olivia lurched down for the helmet, sprawling out on the ground even as she slipped it over her head.
At first she felt nothing, just a cumbersome weight over her face and total darkness. Was the suit secured, as human powered armor sometimes was? She had seen nothing from Starlight to suggest anything like unlocking it, but maybe it was keyed to her in some other way.
She heard muffled voices above her through the metal, stern and demanding. One of them prodded her with the butt of a spear. Whatever these ponies saw in the room above, they would obviously think she was responsible. It was time to move. Escape or die trying.
As soon as she thought, the helmet seemed to vanish from in front of her, metal shimmering away to reveal the room all around her in perfect clarity. The unconscious form of the pony she had attacked, the pool of spilled alcohol, the two guards in their gold armor holding spears and glaring down at her.
She felt alive. The cloud of alcohol around her brain puffed away like fog before the sun, and she felt the searing pain on her forelegs vanish as the skin knit together. Olivia rose to her hooves, ignoring the guards. She could see her reflection in the polished steel of a cabinet, and she watched as armor formed around her. She felt the weight settle on her limbs one at a time. The guards backed away from her, one actually dropping his spear as the other screamed for help.
“Shut up!” Olivia shouted. A ghostly protrusion appeared on her forehead, poking out the opening in the helmet for an instant before it too was covered by metal. Her shout struck the guards like an explosion, sending both of them flying into the wall. Glass all through the building shattered at the force of it, and many screams of fear and panic went up. Damn. Not quite what I had in mind. I need to get these restraints off…
She felt a momentary flash of heat against her skin, and a second later her wings emerged from her back, encased in a protective armor shell. Olivia felt power, and she saw it in the mane that lifted behind her, opening into a twilight sky. She was an overcharged battery, an explosion trapped, she had to escape! Olivia turned to the back wall, and she roared. An explosion shook the room in front of her, as a chunk of the ceiling and the entire corner wall was atomized.
Olivia could hear distant screams, shouts of terror and panic. She found she could understand them all, and all she had to do was think of one to hear it perfectly.
“Get the princess!” someone shouted. “The Nightmare agent lost her mind!” Who was yelling, and to whom? She didn’t care.
“Sorry about your head,” Olivia said, glancing back over her shoulder at Starlight’s unconscious form. She hoped the pony wasn’t hurt too badly, but there was no time to stay behind and find out.
Olivia rocketed into the night sky, wings barely flapping as she accelerated. It was dark, and the little village of Ponyville provided the only light below, feeble electric or chemical lamps, tiny flames against the gloom. Now to lead them on a chase. Wearing this armor, Olivia felt like she could take on the princess herself. Maybe she could fight Celestia in person, and kill the one who threatened Othar.
Maybe she could, but Major Fischer wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t going to seek out a power she didn’t understand and confront her using a weapon she had just stolen. She couldn’t fly it back to Othar, not until she knew that her position wasn’t being tracked. She picked the darkest part of the night below her, then shot straight down, moving so quickly that a sonic boom exploded through the air in her wake. This was power.
Let them try and drag me back into a cage.
“It’s pretty simple,” Lucky said, rising to her hooves and walking away from the table. She couldn’t help it—she had to be moving again. Learning about Olivia’s survival had not changed that. If anything, it only made her anxiety worse. At any moment, she might be interrogated, reveal the truth about Othar and its ponies, and lead an army here. Incredibly unlikely, given Olivia’s resistance, but there was no way to be sure. Nightmare had captured her, so why not extract information as well?
“There is an Equestrian artifact called the Tree of Harmony, located somewhere in the Everfree Forest. I heard of it while I was there, though I never thought it was more than a religious thing. According to Twilight, it was a map—it contained information about Sanctuary’s facilities. Like the one she sent us to, Transit Equus Zero Violet Zero. Hopefully, it will give us the location of wherever Harmony is controlled from. Once there, we shut it down, and everyone is safe.”
It sounded so easy when she put it like that.
“Well, that sounds like bullshit,” Dr. Born muttered. “Not that I care. This Harmony thing seems like a waste of time—you want to get yourself killed, fine I guess. Just so long as you go out like Karl and there’s no one to interrogate. But nothing about what you just said is realistic.”
“I was getting to that,” Lucky said, marching back to the table. “I’ve put in everything I know about Equestria, and its defenses. First, getting in—Equestria has protections that can shoot down hypersonic ships. But Equestria also has zeppelins, and we have lots of records. Forerunner is building one now—sort of the equivalent of a private trading ship. It should look basically indistinguishable from the native-built zeppelins to every sensor we know about.”
Forerunner spoke from her computation surface, though its voice was loud enough that everyone could hear. It didn’t sound annoyed to be involved anymore, not as it had been with Perez. Had that just been a ploy? “My active defenses have improved as well. I believe this new ship will be able to survive at least one strike from the sort of weapon that took down the jumper. But for obvious reasons, we won’t have time to test it.”
Just how much could this computer do at once? It hadn’t told her this—though in fairness, she hadn’t asked. “That will take another forty-eight hours, right?”
“Right,” Forerunner said. “And I will be dismantling the Sojourner to do so quickly, along with all but one of the jumper fleet.”
An unhappy murmur passed through the soldiers, but none of them spoke up. Lucky went on. “The zeppelin will carry our best-armed soldiers, with the best weapons we can fabricate. Also me, Lightning Dust, and Deadlight. We’ll drop on the road to Ponyville somewhere, and walk the rest of the way in. I’ll have my meeting, and hopefully convince Princess Twilight to join us.
“See, even if I can read their language, even if drones could probably find the Tree of Harmony, every artifact we’ve found so far has had protection on it only Alicorns could break. I had Flurry Heart with me on my last trip, but she’s a captive now. Hopefully Twilight Sparkle will take her place, maybe even bring her Nightmare along. Returning Olivia to us is a given.”
“Unless she tells us to fuck ourselves, then locks you up for interrogation too,” Perez said, annoyed. “You were too much of a pussy to have the suicide implant, and you aren’t trained for interrogation. You’ll sing like a lark once they lock you up.”
“No,” Lucky said, raising her voice slightly. Though nothing he had said was wrong—she didn’t have the awful suicide tooth, and she didn’t know how to resist interrogation. That wasn’t exactly one of the skills the Pioneering Society had expected future space explorers to need. “Because that’s why our Zeppelin will be there. You’re the backup. If Twilight won’t cooperate, then… we’ll spring Olivia, then find out where they’re holding Flurry Heart and bust her out too. That’s where you get to use all your soldiering skills.
“From there, either we head to the Tree for the map, or if that doesn’t work, back to the ring transit station. That place is massive, and it looked like it could house thousands of people indefinitely. Worse come to worse, we set up shop down there. There’s a… sort-of monorail system in there… probably it could take us right to the control center if we knew where to go.”
And assuming it even exists. That was the fundamental assumption even a total success of their plan relied on. There had to be a place they could go to shut the intelligence down. If they couldn’t, or if it took more than one Alicorn, they were all doomed.
There’s nothing for it. We have to make some assumptions, or we can’t plan at all. “Well, now you know,” Lucky said. “The basics, anyway. There are some details to work out—like the anti-magic artifact, or an inoculation for whatever mind-control they used on Olivia. If the Nightmare can do that, I’m sure Alicorns can too. Sooner or later, Celestia is going to get involved. Maybe Luna and Cadance too… it’s too much to hope that they won’t.”
“It’s too much to hope that most of that will work,” Mogyla said, though he sounded more amused than objecting. “Does anyone have better?” He seemed to be looking at Perez.
But the bat-winged stallion only looked away. “If it comes to a rescue, you let us do it our way,” he said. It didn’t sound like a request. “You don’t know anything about war. But at least it sounds like you didn’t try to plan one. I hope you realize it’s probably going to come to that. It might be better to take the zeppelin idea, and the bit about rescuing the major, and trash the rest. Wait until we have a real army, however many months they have left.”
“Three,” Forerunner volunteered helpfully. “I have made significant improvements to the gestation pods. But any faster than that would leave them underdeveloped and unfinished. The two who experienced that process both expressed objections to me about inflicting that treatment on others.”
“And I stand by it,” Lucky said, before anyone else could start arguing. “We won’t consider them. They can be a resource for building Othar into a city when they’re finished, after Equestria is safe. Or maybe I’ll be dead, and some better leader than me can use their help for something else. I don’t know. But there is… there is one person I’d like fabricated. Do you have the synthsleeve we talked about ready, Forerunner?”
“I do.”
“Then… then I want you,” she said. “If you can do that, I mean.”
No one else in the room with her seemed to understand. Probably none of them even knew what a synthsleeve was.
“What you’re asking for is… not impossible,” Forerunner eventually said.
For once, it seemed she had been the one to catch it by surprise, and not the other way around. Unless it just wants me to think that. She abandoned that line of reasoning pretty quickly, though. She couldn’t keep second-guessing herself around the computer, or else she would never feel confident enough to make any decisions.
“It would not be a high-fidelity copy, however. My ‘mind’ is designed to be distributed and redundant. Each of my nodes individually exceed the maximum processing power of the most capable synthsleeve I can produce. There is a… method, however. I have a procedure.”
“What are you telling it?” Perez asked from across the room, sounding annoyed again. “It sounds like you freaked it out.”
Lucky ignored him, still looking down at her screen. “Do you not want to, Forerunner? It isn’t an order. If you’d rather not, then don’t.”
It didn’t answer at first, so she looked up from the computation surface. “Forerunner has new hardware. It can make synthetic bodies instead of biological ones. I’ve asked it to put itself in one of those and come with us.”
“Why?” Perez demanded. “It already has thousands of bodies. Enough that my men could never win a war with it. We’re already its slaves.”
She ignored the last part. “The Sanctuary ring is incredibly advanced. I believe it will be able to isolate us from communicating with Forerunner once we get inside. I couldn’t get a signal out with my helmet before… I think even its upgrades won’t be enough to penetrate the shielding. But if we had a smaller version of Forerunner in a body, then…”
The outside door swung open, and a human figure walked in. A human figure wearing only a plain white jumpsuit, with skin that didn’t reflect the light quite right. There was something a little uncanny about it—at a glance, it looked like synthsleeves were kept as basic as possible, probably intended to be customized to fit the individual.
It was like a clothing store mannequin had come to life and walked into their conference room. Round face, lacking the distinct signs of either gender. No hair, plain gray eyes, no shoes. There was no telling from how it walked or stood what sex it was, either.
Neither, Lucky supposed.
“It is good to see you all,” Forerunner said, and for once its voice came from only one place. “I guess we’re going to save the world together. That sounds like fun.”