//------------------------------// // Chapter 25: Deliverables // Story: Evening Star Also Rises // by Starscribe //------------------------------// Hayden wasn’t sure how much time had passed by the time she finally woke. Hours? Days? She wasn’t in the workshop, but somewhere else. It looked like a warehouse, its plain white walls rising high above her. She could hear the whir of wheeled robots as they moved around, each one an odd pillar of stacked crates. She’d seen pictures of this kind of thing in Amazon fulfillment centers. Some of the drones even looked similar. Familiar, yet more somehow. The future really did seem like the most plausible origin for Avalon and his technology, though she would’ve been as willing to believe that before as accepting the existence of a world of magic horses. Under the circumstances, her horizons had expanded. “You wake.” Avalon, his strange accent unmistakable. Human lips just weren’t quite right for speaking Equestrian language. Someone set a piece of dark metal and plastic on the ground in front of her. It was a holster with a belt, made to be worked by a pony. She recognized the hilt of the sword poking out from inside, held rigidly straight by straps. Guess it would cut through the holster otherwise. The old man pulled over a stool, sitting down across from her. She had been resting on a thick pile of blankets and cushions. Now she looked up, blinking bleary eyes. At least it didn’t hurt anymore. “I have never seen a pony survive with as much infection as you had. It astounds me there was anything else within—that your essence could have survived so long. Ponies do not endure the corruption well. Most are fragile—your minds easily broken.” Hayden opened her mouth to argue with that assertion—she’d seen plenty of evidence of ponies’ resolve in the face of evil in her last few days. Sure, there had been ponies who broke. Lord Storm had given in to base instincts, perhaps that was all his involvement had ever been. But there were so many others. She could practically see the faces of the soldiers in her mind. Thousands who had refused to obey Celestia’s order to retreat. “I am not a pony,” she said again, more forcefully than before. “I have the body of one, but that’s only thanks to Princess Luna.” She looked around, trying to sit up. Her legs were still a little sore—it was a struggle to get into a sitting position at first. “I guess I can’t deny your story now.” Avalon set a few objects on the ground in front of her. Her wallet and phone, beside the sword. Taken from her saddlebags, no doubt. You were supposed to watch those, Star Swirl! But she didn’t see the old wizard around anywhere. There was no point expressing her frustration with the invasion of her privacy right now. “Some part of you really was what you said it was.” He nudged the edge of the sword with his walking stick. “Doesn’t explain that, though. The perfect weapon for an aberration like the one that you were stuck with. Star Swirl tells me there is a teleportation charm worked into the handle, that Luna can call upon it in a moment of need. But you aren’t her.” “I’ve been doing her job,” Hayden muttered, before she could stop herself. Far bolder than she’d been with anypony else, even Honed Edge. She typically kept her frustration with the lunar princess in her throat. “It almost looked like you were an Alicorn,” Avalon said. “Some of the details were wrong, perhaps, but… almost. You aren’t anymore, though. I don’t know how you could raise the moon like that.” “I don’t,” Hayden admitted. “But I’ve been defending Equestria.” At those words, all the rest of her memories came rushing back. The urgency of the invasion, the desperate need of her troops. Icefalls had already begun implementing her plans—but there was one thing they couldn’t do. “If Princess Luna had been standing up for herself, resisting Celestia’s will, we wouldn’t be in this position.” Hayden wasn’t sure where she found the strength, but she found it. She rose into a standing position, at about Avalon’s eye-level. “I came to request your help making weapons to arm my soldiers. A griffon slaver clan intends to invade the north, and Celestia refuses to give us the troops to defend ourselves. But with new weapons, I could create my own troops.” Avalon reached down, picking up the wallet from the ground. He flipped it open, eyeing the picture on Hayden’s driver’s license. “Was this what generals looked like back on Earth?” Hayden winced. That old face looked so strange to her now—stranger than Avalon, even. It was the face she’d seen in the mirror her whole life, yet now it felt like it belonged to a stranger. “I was an architect. Before that, I was a laborer… and before that, I was a soldier. I was never a general… never even an officer. Equestria has generals and officers, but with the soldiers they have, they can’t win. Icefalls and all the land in the north will fall and a hundred thousand will be enslaved. I subjected myself to your tests, now you will help me.” Avalon looked away, tossing the wallet back onto the ground at Hayden’s hooves. “Are you sure you aren’t her? Princess Luna… it would be alarming to hear you had been infested by some unmade monster, but now you aren’t. Your magic must be enough to hold the north.” “I am connected to her,” Hayden admitted. “She summoned me for… well, it’s not important, I don’t think it worked. But I don’t have her power. Even if I did, it wouldn’t be enough. An Alicorn can’t hold a city on her own. She can win every battle, and it won’t be enough. What is she going to do, kill every soldier herself? Terrorize their villages, sabotage their supply-lines? No. I would love to have Luna’s help, but even if we had it, I would still need you.” “Come with me.” Avalon turned away from her, marching down the warehouse shelves. As he stepped near them, every drone that was moving stopped in place. A low siren went off, flashing red through the room. There was a faint warning voice in a strange English accent, repeating that people should not enter the warehouse for any reason. “I can do less for you than you would like, Hayden of Earth. You want the weapons for an army—I don’t have them. You want me to manufacture them? My resources are invested elsewhere. I’m afraid there is little I can do.” Hayden’s heart sank. After all this—after having her insides ripped out, after leaving Icefalls behind during this critical time, traveling to the other end of the world… could she still fail? Was there any justice in Equestria? Hayden passed her possessions, without trying to pick them up. She even left the sword, though she could hear it whispering to her. That man is suffering, can’t you feel it? We should take away his pain. I think I know why Luna doesn’t carry you all the time, Hayden thought back. But if the sword could hear her, it made no reply. “There must be something,” Hayden begged. “You had half a hundred robots outside. What are they doing?” “Helping me find a cure,” Avalon said, voice solemn. He didn’t turn around as they walked, didn’t even look at her. “Hayden, every bat is infected with an Outsider. Those symptoms will worsen. If we do nothing, then in time there will be four bats in all Equestria who survive.” He stopped, resting for a moment on his walking stick, glancing back at her. “The others will not simply die, Hayden. They will become monsters—ask Star Swirl, he will tell you. With so many within its borders, Equestria may be doomed. For all her heartlessness, Princess Celestia’s way may be the only one. Unless someone can find a treatment. Someone like me. I have diverted all of Avalon’s resources to finding the solution—every gram of ore, every fabricator, every spare processor cycle. As terrible as your war is, I cannot spare even one to help you.” “You would let us die? The entire northern province enslaved, eaten?” Avalon glowered at her. His age barely seemed a factor anymore—there was anger behind those eyes to rival anything she’d ever seen from Celestia. “Would you rather an exchange, Hayden? You find a cure for the infection, while I fight your petty war? Slavery and death are terrible things, but aberrations are worse. Records from Earth indicate these beings would see the entire planet destroyed—all life expunged, or warped to their will. You encountered one more recently than I. You barely survived it. Griffons are terrible masters, but at least they are alive. At least they can be beaten, overcome. We must all fight on the battlefields where we are qualified.” “So that’s it.” Hayden stomped one hoof, glaring down at nothing. But try as she might, she couldn’t come up with a counter-argument. Avalon actually had a point. “Icefalls and everypony in it will die so that Equestria might not.” “I hope not,” Avalon said. “But no, I cannot solve your problem for you. I cannot arm every pony soldier in the north with advanced weapons and build ships for you. When this aberration is defeated, I would happily assist… but by then, it may be too late.” He started walking again, a little faster than before. Impressive someone so old could move so quickly. “I have a little to offer you, though. Come with me, and I will show you.” They left the warehouse floor, and into a small hallway. “What happened to Star Swirl?” she asked as they walked, searching the area around them. “Maybe he would agree with me.” “He is in the workshop,” Avalon replied. “Studying the captured aberrations. Equestria does not have a way to contain the demons for long—it’s not an opportunity he has had before. He thinks he might be able to learn something.” Hayden flexed one of her wings. The more awake she got, the less sore everything felt. “That… thing… wasn’t what made me a bat. I’m still like this.” “Yes,” Avalon said, voice low. “It was the same for the other three. None were… as severely affected as you, but all remained changed when they had been treated. I suspect the mutations are permanent.” They reached another hanger. As they stepped through the doorway, Hayden found herself staring up in wonder at the massive shape waiting there. It looked a little like a zeppelin, except that it had a rigid shell of polished metal, no gasbag, and no gondola either. She couldn’t see any obvious means of propulsion on the strange craft—though she could only see it vaguely from the ground. The room was so dark that she could have easily missed much happening below the surface. She could barely read the markings on the side. Well, the design, anyway. Like a towering skyscraper, rendered in plain black ink alongside the word “Transport Carrier Excellus.” “You aren’t the first one to want to help ponies, Hayden. There have been other wars, long ago. This craft arrived here with Avalon… the colony. Which I suppose you don’t know about, if you really are from my past.” As they approached, the side of the ship opened, and a massive ramp extended, leading all the way up into a brightly lit interior. “If this is… old…. Why hasn’t this ship broken down?” “I guess you hadn’t invented hyperstable alloys yet,” Avalon said. “We can’t make them here, either. I could not build another ship like this if I wanted to. The industry that created this vessel requires an entire planet working in concert. For better or worse, Equestria is a simpler place.” They began climbing the ramp. There were no barriers to prevent them from falling off. “So this is a warship,” Hayden volunteered, though her voice wasn’t very helpful. “So well armed that it will be able to win the war on its own.” Avalon laughed. “If that were true, then I wouldn’t have told you I couldn’t help. No, so far as I can tell, this airship lacks armaments of any kind. But it can fly higher than ponies can breathe, and it would take a dragon to bring it down. So it may have its uses in war, unarmed or not.” It took thirty seconds to make it up the ramp. Hayden might’ve been afraid from the height, except that she knew she could fly if she stumbled. She was unbound, her wings free to catch her if she fell. She didn’t. They stepped inside, and the feeling of being inside a spaceship got much more intense. She saw airlocks along the walkway at regular intervals, and much bare metal. It didn’t look quite like any substance she’d seen before—it was dull like unpolished steel, but too dark. This was no material she’d been trained to use. They passed through an obvious control room, with chairs clearly built for humans and many control panels at human eye-level. Then down a hallway, to the first of many doors. “Secure Storage 1.” “It wasn’t easy getting in here.” Avalon sounded a little proud as he tapped his cane against the door. It made a polite beeping sound, then whooshed up into the ceiling. “I don’t know why none of them were around. The Steel Tower were supposedly immortal.” They stepped into a more secure version of the warehouse they’d been in minutes before. Plain metal shelves rose to fifty feet all around her, the ceiling roughly curved. The top of the airship? Tracks along the shelves would allow a little robotic claw to zip around and remove any of the given containers. Almost the entire room was empty, though. There were exactly three crates left on an upper shelf, as though they’d been forgotten. All of them looked dented and scuffed, well worn by whatever strange use they’d been put through. “Not… much left, is there?” Avalon ignored her. He stepped up to one of the consoles and tapped his cane to it again, then pressed a few buttons at random. He didn’t seem like he particularly understood what he was doing, but the screen flashed green and the little robot moved. It zipped to the far end of the room, then made its way back carrying a hard-plastic case about four feet by two. It deposited the crate on the ground in front of them. Avalon gestured. “Go on. Look.” She made her way over, walking past him and up to the edge of the plastic box. It had spring-loaded plastic clips—simple for someone to do with hands, but a struggle for her hooves. She grunted and whined, but eventually the clips obeyed her. They popped open, and there was a slight hiss of compressed gas from inside. Hayden pushed the case open with a hoof. There were ten rifles inside, attached to harnesses very similar to the one she’d sketched. Instead of using primitive materials, these made use of basic servos and a dark resin. Actually everything looked like some kind of polymer, though it didn’t look like it had gone brittle or yellowed with age. This is what my rifles would’ve looked like if I had a CAD team and twenty years of prototyping. She pulled one out of the foam, and she could already see some obvious improvements. A thin shell of material separated the gun from the user’s head, one that would probably catch light, sound, and gunpowder. Though the idea of rifles mounted to shoulders was always going to be a deafening proposition in that regard. Hayden pulled one of the harnesses from the foam with her teeth, almost reverent as she lifted it out. There was a single bundle of wire connecting the harness, with something like a sight that looked poised to fold out. The only thing she couldn’t see… “Where do I load it? I don’t see any place to attach a magazine.” “You don’t.” Avalon seemed pleased by her attitude, though there was a level of wariness buried a little deeper. “Most of the machines on this airship use nuclear batteries. They aren’t installed, since they decay over time whether they are active or not. But it only takes a few minutes to produce a fresh batch of cells. Human technology is like that—universally modular, interchangeable.” “I wish I had lived during that day,” Hayden muttered. “Things sure weren’t like that when I was alive. We didn’t use nuclear batteries either. Except on… space probes and stuff.” She spent a few seconds trying to imagine how such a battery might work without being thermoelectric—which surely wouldn’t have been enough energy to fire a weapon like this. But she couldn’t think of how it would work, not with science as she understood it. Again Hayden found herself wondering exactly how far into the future Avalon had come from. But then, so long as this all worked, it wouldn’t matter. “I would love to offer you more to protect Equestria,” Avalon said. “Celestia’s solution to the Outsiders appears to involve allowing griffons to eat the infected. If you can prevent that, perhaps I can use the time to discover a solution that can be scaled. “I can’t exactly bring every bat in Equestria to my lab, and the energy requirements to extract and store that much…” He trailed off. “Well, I don’t expect your help with that. This particular aberration seems to have an enormously long incubation period. Even you, the mostly severely infected I’ve seen… you still had the strength to survive once the tumor was removed. Not only that, but… you used Luna’s sword. If that did not destroy you, then I think I can trust you with this.” He glanced towards the door. “These are not cannons, unfortunately, meant to unerringly strike down the griffins in their airships. But I can give you these fifty rifles, and whatever batteries are left. I can give you this single airship. Will you take them?” “It is less than I hoped for,” Hayden said, replacing the rifle in the padded foam and closing the lid. “I wonder, though… if there might be something else you can offer.” Hayden found herself smiling, though she knew she shouldn’t be. This was very near to a defeat for her cause—Avalon wouldn’t provide weapons. He wouldn’t even be giving them food. But some reckless, desperate part of her kept clinging to hope. “I already told you,” Avalon said, a little annoyance in his tone. “I need almost everything I have. My fabricators are working full time building my new facility, and what computers I still have can barely handle the load. I can’t make anything for you.” “I was just thinking…” Hayden muttered. “You had these things stockpiled. I wonder if maybe you might have some other things piled up somewhere, things you don’t really need. Maybe you could share some of them with us.” “Such as?” “Do you have any gold?”