//------------------------------// // Chapter 27: Gold // Story: Evening Star Also Rises // by Starscribe //------------------------------// Hayden stood on a mountain of torn paper. The torn wreckage of dead plans was broken at her hooves like the soldiers of the invading army. They had so little time. Three months until the soonest the enemy could arrive, with twice that as the most optimistic estimate. She had solved so much. Outside, Icefalls was changing. She wasn’t alone—she had most of the soldiers of Defiance, many of which were already trained in her strange methods. The city already had a sewer—in a few weeks, its frozen fields would be growing crops. Its mines sung with the sound of pony pickaxes, and soon forges would rise over the city. In the absence of the Stonebeaks, it would be a glorious new future for Icefalls—an industrial powerhouse to dwarf anything in the empire below. But with so little time… how could they possibly defend it? Basic training is ten weeks. I have more than that with my recruits. Surprisingly little of that time was devoted to the use of weapons. Of course, they couldn’t put off that time forever. American soldiers would have been taught every aspect of care for their expected service weapon. Her growing troops needed to know how to fight together, how to follow orders. They could be the bravest ponies in the world, but if they had sticks and rusty pitchforks, they would all die. Not to mention every single bat has a little demon inside them. She couldn’t let herself get distracted with things she couldn’t control. Avalon would have to solve that one, or else Equestria was doomed. The door opened, and Hayden looked up. There were few ponies who would dare to interrupt the general of all the north while she was working. There was one, though. Nightbreeze wore an ill-fitting noble’s dress, pale blue and glittering with glass imitation gemstones. “What’s this mess?” she asked, bending down to scoop up the nearest sheet. “You know paper is expensive, right?” She spread the sheet out on Hayden’s desk, frowning at it. “What is this?” “Simpler rifle,” Hayden muttered. “Trying to get it down to a single cast-forging. But no matter what I do, there’s always too many parts. Avalon was supposed to be making all this for us, and… he can’t.” Nightbreeze looked between the ruined sketch and Hayden for a long time. Hayden wasn’t sure what she was looking for. “You really do care about them. About… ponies. All those hours wasted making pipes back in Harmony, remember? I thought you were the strangest, wildest noble I’d ever had the displeasure of caring for.” She set the sheet down, gazing into Hayden’s eyes. “Then, after you cursed me… and convinced Luna to send me away… I thought you were the worst pony in all Equestria. Selfish, blind, stupid… it didn’t matter who you hurt as long as you got what you wanted.” Hayden couldn’t meet her eyes anymore. “You still think all that?” “No.” Nightbreeze set a hoof gently on hers, pushing her to put down the quill. “I wish Princess Luna was as brave as you are. Equestria would be safe right now. There would be no poor, no enemies trying to invade us… nothing.” Hayden rose to her hooves, pulling away. “I wish. Nightbreeze, it’s not enough. I couldn’t get Avalon to help us. We have eight thousand soldiers with their old Equestrian army weapons and armor. How many recruits?” “Just… over ten thousand,” Nightbreeze said. “And a third of those are mares. Still not sure what you wanted with them. We don’t need three thousand scouts and messengers.” “Ten thousand. Even if we armed them all, we would be outnumbered. And we won’t arm them. At this rate, they’ll be fighting with spears.” “That isn’t what you told us before.” Nightbreeze stared around at all her designs, plucking one off the wall. “These cannons. We can shoot their airships down before they’re close enough to bomb the city.” “We will,” Hayden agreed. “Gunpowder and cannons… we’ll do that. We’ll drop them out of the air. But we’re fighting an army of birds. They’ll come for us, with claws and armor and all the swords they stole. What do we do then?” “You’re asking me?” Nightbreeze turned away from her. “What happened to that big scary general? What was it you said to Celestia? Threatening her in front of the court… can’t you be that pony? Think of the worst weapon you can, it’s still not worse than what the Stonebeaks want to do. They eat ponies. They keep slaves. We must win. We both know Celestia won’t change her mind.” The most terrible weapon she could. Nuclear—impossible. Might as well teach them how to build space shuttles while she was at it. After that? Hayden walked away, not even hearing Nightbreeze anymore. She lifted her Kindle off the shelf, opening it up and scrolling through her books with stylus in her mouth. Until she found what she was looking for. The Illustrated History of the Weapons of World War One. Hayden skimmed past the parts of the book that had interested her most before—early tanks, U-boats, those parts she had enjoyed reading about back when she’d been enlisted and vaguely interested in military history. Tanks? Impossibly complex. Artillery? She was already making canons, and they would have next to no ground targets. She lingered a little on the Vickers gun. Still too complex. Not enough time to come up with something simpler. She stopped when she got to the section about poison gas, though she didn’t stay there long. Getting chlorine gas would be something she could do, even with her basic knowledge of chemistry. Enough sea water, a little electricity, the right catalyst… but no good. Their enemy would be fighting them in their own territory. Even the worst gasses she didn’t have the chemistry to make required soldiers to be trapped with them—every enemy soldier had built in tools to disperse them, not to mention a coat of feathers to keep the poison from contacting skin. The Germans made 88 tons of chlorine, their enemy were all trapped in trenches, and they only managed to kill a thousand people. Hayden sighed, shutting off the Kindle. An army of many times that size would not be deployed to Icefalls all at once, even if they somehow had a way of protecting the residents of the city and all their soldiers. She’d already played with crazier ideas. Floating nets, mines hidden in clouds—both seemed interesting as tricks for her toolbelt. Neither seemed like they would win her a war. “I just don’t think there’s a way to cheat this,” she finally said. “Lodestone told me I would need a hundred thousand ponies to stop the Stonebeaks when their fleet arrives. We’ll probably kill a lot when we bring down the airships, so… call it half that many. We have less than half of the ponies we need, most of them are new, and as of right now they’re going into battle naked.” “Don’t tell them during your next recruitment speech,” Nightbreeze said, eyes scanning her sketches and drawings again. Looking for something she had missed, maybe? “What did you manage to bring back from Avalon, anyway? Most everypony saw your caravan headed into the vault and didn’t ask questions. Yet. Were those shiny boxes all empty?” “No,” Hayden muttered, not even looking back at her. “They’re mostly just full of gold.” “Don’t lie to me, Hayden. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” Hayden turned sharply on her hooves, making for the door. “Come on then. See for yourself.” They made their way to the treasury, and Hayden unlocked the door. She was the only pony with a key anymore. The new steward seemed loyal and eager to prove he was better than his family, but he was also a potential danger. Besides, there wasn’t much left of the city’s original wealth. There were also two of Hayden’s new elites stationed here—soldiers being trained to human methods, selected from the best pony troops, with access to their very limited supply of firearms. Only one of the guards in four would wear a rifle—they were too valuable to risk having too many out at once. Not to mention the energy cells were impossible to replace once depleted. They would all be trained on the weapons, even if she could never hope to arm them all that way. But if we last long enough for Avalon to solve our Outsider problem, then I can. We’ll need them if Celestia decides to attack us next. “Just the two of you, ma’am?” Hayden nodded, and pushed the door open. “See we aren’t disturbed.” She took one of the torches off the wall by its holder and tossed it onto the stone floor near one of the plastic crates. There were a dozen of them—three held weapons. The other nine… she spent a few seconds struggling with the plastic locking mechanism, before the lid sprung off and open. Revealing the interior. Gold commodity bricks, stacked up in neat rows. Each of these bars were small, ready to be melted in one of Avalon’s advanced fabricators and make computer parts. Each tiny bar weighed one kilogram, though there was plenty of foam in the case as well. Otherwise, it might weigh so much nopony could lift it. “Two point seven tons in all,” Hayden said. “Two thousand, four hundred and fifty little bars like that.” Nightbreeze stumbled past her, mouth opening and closing but no words coming out. She lifted one of the bars to her mouth, imprinting the edge slightly with one of her pointed bat teeth. She squeaked in shock at the taste. “I-it is…” She dropped it onto the ground, then glared up at Hayden. “This has been sitting here for three days now, and you spent all that time confused about whether we would be able to find weapons? With this much, you could… you could buy every mercenary in Equestria! You might even be able to pay off the birds!” Hayden laughed bitterly at that last. “Yeah, sure. Because once they had the gold they’d honor their promise for sure.” Nightbreeze didn’t laugh—she met Hayden’s eyes with deadpan seriousness. “Griffons are serious about their word. They’d never break it, if they gave it to us.” “Then they’d never give it,” Hayden said. “I already spent weeks going over this with Lodestone, and he knows how they think. They want to move into Equestria too badly. They hate the cold. They were waiting for their friend Sombra to lead them, but now he’s dead, the Empire’s gone, so…” “Why not mercenaries, then? They’d come with their own weapons. They’d already be trained, we could use all our ponies for other things.” She shook her head. “My world tried that a few times… I don’t like it. Even if it works, maybe tomorrow Celestia comes around and offers them a better deal. Or the Stonebeaks do… not a chance I’m putting Icefalls in their hands.” “Hands being…” Hayden turned away from her, ignoring the question completely. “What if we wanted to hire an army of… workers. Do you think crafts-ponies would take our gold?” “Why?” “Well… they’re harder to train than infantry. Star Swirl is incredibly fast, and he said there were unicorns who do nothing but make things all the time. But that kind of skill takes a lifetime of practice. If Avalon won’t be our assembly line, we might need to make our own.” “I could…” Nightbreeze hesitated. “I still have contacts in Equestria proper. If you give me a few days, I could inquire. Bring in a few.” “Not a few,” Hayden corrected. “Bring in all of them. Anyone who works in metal, wood, or alchemy. Get the best prices you can, but… get them. Tell them we’ll have work for years. Offer them twice their regular wage, and work for any apprentices or assistants they keep as well.” Nightbreeze glanced past her to the crates of gold, picking up the single brick and settling it into a pocket of her dress. “I suppose we have the gold to pay. I assume you’ll want this to be in the name of the Equestrian Army?” “No,” Hayden corrected. “Princess Luna’s name. You probably know her signature, right? Forge it.” Nightbreeze opened her mouth to protest, then shut it again. “I… that’s a lot to ask. But if Princess Luna were here… I wouldn’t have to risk it. It’s her fault we’re in this position, isn’t it?” Hayden shrugged. “It’s many ponies’ faults. I think if we manage to protect Icefalls, she won’t even notice what you did, or care. And if she does… we can tell her I did it. It’s my fault, not yours.” “I’ll get as many as I can,” Nightbreeze said. “Though I think we might want to consider buying some things. Armor, for instance. We can’t make everything here, even if your method is faster. There are many good armorers in Equestria.” “Fine.” Hayden turned to leave. She reached into a pocket and tossed the key to the treasury at Nightbreeze’s hooves. “You know how to manage bits better than I do. Just make sure the money lasts until spring. After that, buck it.” Hayden hurried past the guards, speeding into a gallop. Pony craftsmen would not be skilled enough to make cartridge firearms for her soldiers, but they wouldn’t have to in order to give them a strategic advantage. Where did I leave those Arquebus designs?