//------------------------------// // Into The Past Part XV // Story: Legacy // by NFire //------------------------------// “How are you feeling?” “I’m fine, quit being a worrywart.” Wyatt was laying down in the bunk room after a few trips to the outside. It was rough on the old soldier, snow blowing almost perpendicular to the ground, he fought through winds and not a couple of unexpected surprises in the form of critters that absolutely did not want to let him pass by peacefully. Calliope had watched with trepidation, one time even expressing that he shouldn’t be doing this sort of work anymore. This led to an argument that was now ending. Both sides seeing the futility in it. The sergeant would do what he wanted, Calliope would worry for her closest friend. “I believe after so many years, I am allowed.” Her voice held a little pique in it, after being ignored in her entreaties for him to take it carefully. The lanky human sighed, “You’re right,” His voice was soft in the commset, “You’re allowed. More than, if I’m any judge.” It was night time, after hours of running search patterns, Crusader and Athena had declared a halt to activities. The dark was fully ensconced outside, and even with the spotlights on their hulls, the weather too vicious to continue operations. “I only wish you to take care of yourself.” “I understand, but there’s nothing we can do, you know that.” Athena had partitioned off a section of the bunk room, giving him some privacy as he stretched out across the comfortable bed. The pillows soft enough he could relax, letting the aches fade away under the ministrations of the nano-docs under the Bolos control. Turning on his side to get away from a particularly nagging pain in his back, he kept talking softly into the boom microphone that was draped across his mouth. “It’s been a good life Calliope, no regrets. Don’t you be having any either.” “I try not to, b..b..but I...I...I c-c-c-can’t.. Hate them! Hate them all! Why would we be associating with these quadrupeds! They destroyed them, took them away from me!” This made Wyatt pay very close attention, Calliope had been having crashes more and more as the hours went by. They had hoped for more time, but it was getting worse. “We have her Sergeant. One minute, we are recompiling certain files to wipe the errors.” Crusader. He was always calm, so sure of himself, or so the human thought. But he could tell sometimes there was that little hint of hesitancy when doing certain things. Athena had explained about the Sap and what it did to help him remain even. White noise filled his ear as he waited with soft breaths. One day they weren’t going to be able to save her. He was steeling himself for that moment. Closing his eyes, he tried to keep his mind off of the worst thoughts, remembering the fun times when they took trips in neural connection to places he’d never been nor could imagine. A click, then a silence before Calliope’s sweet tones came back. “I am so sorry..” “No apologies needed, they don’t hear it, Athena and Crusader make sure of it.” “It is embarrassing.” “We all have those moments.” The two shared a laugh. A knock on the partition cut any more comments off. “Come on in!” A golden head peeked in, covered with the falling wave of a pink mane, the lovely eyes searched, then found, their target. “Dinner’s ready, if you want something to eat?” The quiet voice was hopeful, wanting to hear more stories from the past along with the others. The empty space where his stomach once sat, before bailing out on him in search of food, reminded him he hadn’t eaten in a while. “That, Miss Fluttershy, sounds like a wonderful idea.” He started to get up, throwing an arm out to brace himself against the wall, almost falling on the floor before he recovered. Fluttershy gasped, holding his side with a hoof that was stronger than he’d realized. Ponies were powerful in many ways, he’d learned, trying to arm wrestle with Applejack was a losing proposition. “Are you okay?” Her low voice was echoed by Calliope in his ear. “I’m fine, just got a bit dizzy.” he dusted his battle dress off, trying to straighten himself up after the ungainly move, “Shall we proceed to dinner?” He opened the partition back up, extending an arm outward and bowing to the pegasus, “After you, Miss Fluttershy.” The mare was charmed, giving him a bright smile as she walked out, “Why, thank you, kind sir.” She stuck her nose in the air with a chuckle and trotted out like some worthy straight out of Canterlot. He couldn’t help but like them, really. Cute as buttons the lot of them, but hiding so many things underneath colorful exteriors. Flexing one arm, he figured maybe Applejack would like to go one more round. A man had his pride after all. The smell of cooking wafted in, making him forget everything except the yawning of a hole inside him yearning to be filled with good, hot food. He followed behind Fluttershy to the main room where everyone was waiting. Calliope immediately got on a side channel to the two Bolo AI’s. “That was not a simple stumble.” Crusader answered her, “No, it was not. We are monitoring him closely, he is losing his sense of balance.” “It’s getting worse isn’t it?” The two Bolos couldn’t lie to her, they had discussed this for many compressed hours of time, telling Calliope what would happen. “It is.” “Is this why he goes out there when there is no need?” “He has advised us he will live his life as he chooses. We can’t, and I don’t think we should, tell him otherwise.” Athena was stating only what she’d been told. In no uncertain terms, this was the way it would be. “Will you do everything you can?” Calliope’s voice was whisper soft. “Of course! We know how much you care for him. Twilight and the others do as well. We are doing all in our power to make him comfortable. It is our duty, as well as a privilege.” Coming from a Bolo, it was enough. “Thank you.” “None ever needed. Meanwhile, we shall repair what is needful for you, some files are slipping from logic tracks, we will take care of them now.” A comfortable silence reigned over the comm network as Athena and Crusader directed their powerful cores to reassembling parts and bits of Calliope’s architecture. They hadn’t any knowledge of what all the code did, but with simple programs given by Calliope, they could take an outsider’s look at her structure and try to fix what was wrong for the moment. Tackling the symptoms but unable to find a cure for the ultimate cause, losing two-thirds of herself when Sombra destroyed part of the AI’s core units. It was a losing fight, but one that the two stubborn machines refused to give up on. ----- It had been only a few days of searching, stopping when needed and taking breaks at the Empire. Cadence and Shining always wanting to know if anything was found, fearful that other weapons might be hidden underneath the blanket of snow that was constantly renewed around them. Up onto a glacier’s edge through careful work and the application of a few well-placed Hellbore shots, gave them a ramp to slowly move up onto the ice. Sensors had detected a massive debris field, jumbled like a huge jigsaw puzzle, the two Bolos slowly brought it all together, looking with wonder at the remains of a defense node and associated bases. “That is possibly an above ground magazine, had to be, got the remnants of cradles and launchers still there, but melted.” Athena was eyeing the readouts carefully, they had tuned their sensors to the bleeding edge, enabling them to detect things underneath the coating of ice. It gave them a clearer picture of what was there, but it was all guesswork until something popped, making the scrambled mess fit into a whole. “This appears to be an airfield defense point. The scanners picked up remains of atmospheric fighters, or what we assume to be. It is hard to delineate anything beyond a certain resolution and spectrography.” Crusader was pondering the picture of the waste fields, slowly attempting to bring it together into a comprehensive whole. It was a very lost cause. “Could it have been a spaceport? We were all at the loading docks at Defense Nodes Five and Six waiting for transshipment.” Athena was frustrated, this was not adding up to anything they could figure out. “I do not know, it is all so badly torn up by weather. The ice action over millenia, and time itself, have worn away anything we might have used to develop a clearer picture.” He nodded as if to himself, “This long, I am amazed that anything at all survived.” A thought occurred as Twilight sat there watching them try and make sense of all the pictures on the screen, “Have you found the mine those ponies were working that they mentioned in the old book? Might be a really good place to start.” Two heads swiveled slowly to look at her for long enough that she started to feel the heat rise in her cheeks, trying to think of some excuse for interrupting when Athena’s hoof smacked into a sable forehead, Crusaders’ eyes were closed as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Did I say something wrong?” Twilight was getting that nervous look. “No, not at all. Thank you for bringing to our attention something we should have done. Researched that book first, to find possible areas of exploration.” Crusaders voice was deadpan, Athena could tell he was mentally kicking himself for missing the bloody obvious, just as she was. They’d been so wrapped up in the discovery of Wyatt and Calliope, plus the problems of the weapons magazine, it had actually become a low priority among the queue of things to be done in tactical programming. Meaning that it would not be brought to their attention unless it received a higher importance rating. They had both shoved it back in memory while bringing other things to the fore, causing them to ‘forget’ for a moment about the old book. “Perhaps it is time to retire to the library?” ----- “I’ve got nothing.” Twilight was slamming a book shut, an aura of magic surrounding it as the tome flew off the table and back into its correct place upon the shelves. Spike was setting on his own pile, looking dazed after reading through about as many books as he could, wanting badly to find a corner and curl up for some nap time. His attitude was copied by the the others who looked slightly frazzled around the edges. The Alicorn looked over to where Crusader and Athena sat, ensconced in seats, they flipped pages rapidly, scanning them at a blink and moving on, letting their cores process the information as they continually snapshotted new pages through their avatars. She found herself actually feeling jealous for a moment, wanting to be able to do that without all the tedious process of reading each line and understanding it before moving on. “Hello...hey?” A lavender hoof waved in front of a pair of staring eyes, “You alive in there? I haven’t found anything.” Athena first, then Crusader, stopped turning the pages, blinking to clear eyes of any dust or impurities before turning to look at Twilight, “Pardon?” “I haven’t found anything, what about you?” Athena looked longingly at the book in front of her, “Nothing odd except lists of materials collected for some experiment Sombra was doing is the only thing close enough.” She nudged her companion with a wing, “What about you Crusader?” “I have come up with forty different ways of serving Crystal Empire gems in different dishes,” At this Spike perked up, getting a restraining hoof from Twilight as she waited, “Numerous tales and legends about creatures who had lived, or still did so around the Crystal Empire...” At this Twilight looked very interested, getting her own restraining hoof from Athena as she leaned forward. “Other than that, nothing much of any importance. There are quite a few spells covering various fields, that seem to have fallen out of favor and are no longer known according to what we know.” He didn’t hesitate, sliding a pile of documents directly at Twilight. Neat hoofwriting covering the entire front and back of the pages with spells and formulae organized into groups and possible uses . The Alicorn’s eyes got wide as she saw the thick sheaf of documents, grabbing them tightly and diving into them with a squee of delight. “...and we’ve lost Twilight.” Rainbow was looking bleary from across the table. The cyan mare tossed a hoof lazily about, “We haven’t gone through much of this place, I like reading as much as the next pony, but this is getting to be really boring.” “I do have to agree with Rainbow, this is getting us nowhere.” Rarity was pushing away another thick ledger of meaningless figures and lists. A techspider wandered up, one they had rigged and ceded control to Calliope for her own uses. It carried a stack of books almost as tall as Wyatt, who was currently in his room resting while they searched, not being able to read Equestrian. The heavy cloth bound books thumped on the table as the various ‘eyes’ looked around at the group, “They are right, there are thousands of volumes here, it would take us forever to go through them. Well, not forever, but a year or so at top speed.” Her voice held a tinge of laughter, hearing the others groan at her pronouncement. “Who would know where to find a singularly obscure title that is probably around here somewhere, but misfiled?” Athena leaned on the table, looking at the book in front of her for a moment when it hit her. Everyone around the table looked up, meeting each others eyes and saying as one. “Dusty.” ----- “Oh, come on Dusty! We need your help!” The named unicorn’s face popped out from behind the door to his private quarters, peering myopically at all of them gathered before it, “I’m quite busy.” The door slammed shut in Twilight’s face as she stood there stunned. As the Alicorn tried to regain her composure, Rainbow snickered, “He’s still pretty mad about that whole art collection.” Rarity hmmphed and tossed her mane, “Well, it certainly is quite a find, and all of it gorgeous. I can see why he would be upset.” Twilight turned on them both, “It has to be preserved carefully! Those are art pieces from a history we only know so little of through them,” She pointed at Crusader sitting quietly, and Athena who waved back. Rarity’s cultured voice replied, “I know that dear. But when you spend your life doing what he does and something like this comes along, of course you’d want to be a part of it.” “I can break down the door. We can get some riot control stuff in here and haul his tail out..” Athena stopped, seeing the narrowed eyes on Twilight’s face. “You will not use that stuff on Dusty.” “Got it. Still miffed about the tanglefoot, huh?” By the glare she got, Athena realized it was going to take a while to forgive that one. “He just wanted to help curate the collection is all.” Fluttershy was sitting by the closed portal, trying to think of something that would help. “The Princesses agreed to move it all to Canterlot, so everypony could see it, and be under professional supervision the whole time.” Twilight shrugged, she’d been in on the discussion and they all thought it best since Canterlot was the capitol city of Equestria. Wyatt and Calliope had agreed, even Cadence and Shining as it would give them reason to visit. Turning it over to all the historians and archivists the princesses had working and living there. Dusty Shelves, however, was a dissenting voice. He’d lived most of his life trying to figure out what these things were that kept turning up in the ice and snow. Ponies brought items to him to identify, until Crusader and Athena visited and gave him the information he so desperately needed, there wasn’t much he could do. He tried his best though, and kept going through all the confusion and mess. But he took pride in his collection of artifacts and relics from an unknown age and race. When the art trove was given to the ponies of Equestria, he had hoped to be asked to go along with it to help preserve the ancient items. It would have been a crowning achievement in a long career of which he was so very lucky to have been doing. But alas, he was turned down in favor of historians and preservationists whose work were at the leading edge for pony society. Needless to say, Dusty wasn’t real thrilled with any of them right now. “Can you not offer him a post in Canterlot?” Crusader’s voice was warm, “He has lived his life doing this. He loves his job, and has taken extremely good care of the items retrieved from the surrounding lands. I would say he deserves it more than anyone.” When Crusader had arrived, he’d seen what Dusty had done to preserve the artifacts he’d been presented with. He’d taken an immediate liking to the scholarly Unicorn and provided him with any information he needed on what an object was if it could be identified. “But there are ponies who’ve been doing this their whole lives too, already in charge of the museums and art galleries up there. The Royal Archivists will..” “Take them and put ‘em all on shelves to gather dust like so many of the other things that should be out but aren’t.” Applejack was looking directly at Twilight, knowing what she said was the truth. Having seen it first hoof when they’d been to Canterlot so many times before. “Well, they can only do so much.” Twilight definitely did not sound convinced of her own arguments. “There are plans for a museum though, they’re working on it as we speak.” Athena chimed in, “Would you like somepony who viewed it as just a job, or one who loved everything he did and would take special care of everything?” “I say throw Dusty into the lot and let him shake ‘em out!” Rainbow’s forelegs crossed her chest in a defiant look, “They’re too stuffy anyways, let Dusty get them working.” Twilight was looking almost convinced. “Dear, you see the inside of this storehouse. Spotless, clean, neat and it was only Dusty in there. He deserves it if anypony.” Rarity was gentle, but firm, laying a hoof upon her friends shoulder, “Give him a chance.” Twilight chewed on her lip for a moment and nodded, “You’re right. Definitely. If anypony should get a chance like that, it should be him.” Rainbow punched a hoof into the air, “All right!” Twilight knocked on the door once more, waiting for it to open. When it did, Athena moved quickly, sticking a solid hoof between it and the jamb, preventing the Unicorn from closing it. This got her a slight frown from the pony, to which she smiled back warmly as if it were nothing at all. “Dusty,” Twilight began as he tried to push the door shut, failing and frustrated against the pegasus who seemed to be solid as a rock. “I told you, I’m busy.” “Listen, please. We know you’re upset about not being chosen as curator of the art collection..” She paused while the older pony kept trying to close the door, Athena’s hoof not budging a millimeter. “Will you stop that?” Twilight’s face garnered an expression of pique, “As one of your Princesses, I order you to stop and pay attention!” Her voice got surprised blinks from everyone as they looked at their friend. Athena leaned over, whispering in her ear, “Nice command voice, needs a little work though.” “Oh shush!” Dusty forgot his struggles with the door and plopped his backside on the crystal floor, “What?” He peered owlishly at the lavender alicorn. “Like I was saying, we know you’re upset about not being chosen as curator for the artifacts.” The tan pony blinked, “Upset? Yes, I am upset!” he stood up, stepping out of his sanctuary into the storehouse itself, “I have worked all my life on these and I asked, politely mind you, to maybe be included in the care of all those wonderful things that were given to Equestria to care for. I was ignored!” A hoof stomped the floor, the frustration rising in the older stallion. “I know, and I am so sorry your request was ignored. We honestly did not mean to do so. It’s been very hectic, with all the discoveries and problems, we’re still searching the snowfields for anything else and we could really use your help.” She stepped forward, blocking him from pacing back and forth. “I would like you to help with them, preserve them for generations of ponies to enjoy and wonder about. You know these things better than anypony and it’s only right.” “But Princess Celestia said..” “I know what she said,” Twilight gave him her best smile, “I can talk to her, tell her we shouldn’t have ignored your request when you’d been doing this work already for years. If anypony should have a chance at doing something like this, it should be you.” The eyes behind the thick glasses blinked once, then twice, “Do...do you really think so?” Nods all around, the murmur of agreement as Twilight replied, “I do.” This stopped the poor pony dead, he fumbled with his glasses for a moment, straightening them, blinking to get rid of what looked to be a bit of dampness gathering there, “I..I would be honored.” “Then it’s settled. We’ll get you off..what?” Dusty had held up a hoof politely. “Can..can I take my artifacts with me? If the Empire finds anymore they can ship them to Canterlot couldn’t they?” He looked nervously around at all the things he’d spent his life among. “I guess so..” Her brow furrowed as she glanced at Athena. “Most of it is junk, we can always use the metal for our nanovats. But there are a few items that should be taken.” Crusader was nodding slightly in agreement. “Done. We’ll notify Luna and Celestia tomorrow, and I’m sure Cadence would like to hold a small going-away party when you get all packed up.” “Oh... Oh, there’s no need for that. I can just leave quietly..” He was immediately mugged by a pink mare who hugged him tight. “Not a chance, Dusty! Parties are my thing and we’ll throw a good one for you! We’ll send you off right!” The fuschia face grinned in delight. Dusty wasn‘t exactly sure what to make of all this, “O..okay?” “Give it up Dusty, Pinkie’s got her mind set an’ yer gonna get a party.” Applejack was snickering along with Rainbow and Fluttershy. “So you’ll take the job?” Dusty extracted himself from Pinkie’s firm grip, “I will Princess, thank you.” Everyone heaved a sigh of relief as Twilight gestured, bringing Dusty along with them. Her voice was urgent, “We know you know every book and artifact in the castle, so what can you tell us about..” To be continued...