//------------------------------// // Chapter 9: Velifer // Story: Meliora // by Starscribe //------------------------------// Of course, it wasn’t as simple as just pretending that nothing had ever happened. While Jackie took special joy in imagining the displeasure of the ponies back in Mundi, she couldn’t quite act like nothing had happened. Her average citizen would just take her at her word—practically worshiped the ground she walked on—but not all were so compliant. Hat Trick found her near the end of the party, holding a tablet computer and looking agitated. She hadn’t been on the viewing balcony, but she was here in the upper lounge and she didn’t look happy. She set the screen down on the table in front of Jackie, who had been sharing an intimate moment with a changeling she’d met a few hours ago. Jackie glanced briefly down at the screen, and was unsurprised to see it was a recording of her speech. More precisely, the moment where she was almost assassinated. “Hey, sweetheart,” Jackie said, pushing the changeling gently away. “Sorry about this, but I’ve got to do… important government things. My office is upstairs. Why don’t you… hang out in there for a few minutes. I’ll meet you.” “With her? She’s not old enough for you, princess. Tell her to buzz off.” Hat Trick raised an eyebrow—but that was it. She looked amused—probably she was waiting to see how Jackie would handle it. As infuriating as ever. Jackie wasn’t a princess, but she didn’t much care if the ones she was dating wanted to call her that. “Sorry,” she said again, hoping she sounded appropriately apologetic. “This is important. She’s… important. It’s not what you think.” The drone made an unhappy fluttering sound, before buzzing away. Jackie could smell her displeasure—she wouldn’t be waiting in the office. Hat Trick took her seat, though didn’t get nearly as close. “Not a word,” Jackie growled. “Don’t even think about it. We’re not.” “I wasn’t going to say anything,” she said, indignant. But unlike so many others, Jackie was unable to read her. Hat Trick didn’t have the same visual cues as even the oldest ponies. You would only see her emotions if she wanted you to. But then she pointed at the tablet with a wing, and she no longer sounded amused. “You should’ve told me about this.” “I was planning on it,” Jackie lied, almost as good as the young-looking bat. “But I wanted to enjoy the party. This is the last of the spirits, and the swill we’re brewing to replace it isn’t the same. I didn’t want to… talk to the city council while intoxicated.” And she was intoxicated, at least enough for her cheeks to feel warm and her inhibitions to dissolve. Maybe not enough to date someone as young-looking as Hat Trick, though. Too many sour memories of Archive down that road. “Well, I’m interested in what you would’ve said to city council. Why don’t you run through the practice version with me. Pretend I’m completely furious that some dick from Mundi just tried to kill our princess.” You can’t call me that, Jackie thought, but didn’t say. She was too drunk to trust her reasoning completely right now. She might say other things that she shouldn’t. “It shouldn’t be hard to pretend,” Hat Trick went on. “I’m at least as upset as they will be when they find out.” I don’t answer to you, she thought. And maybe she didn’t, but that didn’t mean she could just ignore her. This pony had been intimately involved with the rebellion from the first. Many of Jackie’s new citizens were loyal to her as much as to Thestralia itself. “Well, they fucked it up,” Jackie said simply, draining the rest of her glowing cup. The glamour inside made her feel a little better, but not much. “They don’t have an assassin good enough to kill me. I’m the one they would’ve sent. Just some wannabe martyr.” “You didn’t kill him?” the bat looked suddenly interested. “That’s good. I’d love to know who thought they could vote in our elections with a dagger.” “So you can assassinate right back?” Jackie asked. “That’s not how this works if we want peace. I’m old enough to remember this, kid. Back in the day, civilized countries sent spies into each other all the time. Typically you just look the other way. And if you lose some, that’s your fault.” Hat Trick grumbled something unintelligible. Jackie couldn’t hear it, except that the word ‘civilized’ was in there somewhere. “Let’s say I care,” she eventually said. “I think we need to send a message. The other members of the city council will as well. If we let Mundi think from day one that they can do whatever they want to us, that’s what they’ll do. On the other hoof, we make it clear that every action has an equal and opposite reaction—” “No.” Jackie smacked one hoof onto the table. “If we assassinate somepony over there, then you might as well just kill all these ponies now. Mundi might be fat and stupid, but they still have the hardware left over from a war, and a hundred times more soldiers than our whole population. Even a catastrophic war for them would be the end of us.” “So you’re going to propose… nothing,” Hat Trick finished. “Great, they don’t get mad enough to go to war with us. Maybe next time they send somepony with a bomb into a city council meeting. Maybe they try poisoning our water supply. Just because they picked a hard target this time doesn’t mean they will next time. I’ve seen this too.” “I figured,” Jackie said. She wanted to say something snide about the way Thestralia had run itself before the collapse. There had been stories—stories of mandatory magical donations, of intrigue and corruption. Some ponies said that the law wasn’t so much there because of any abstract ideal, but because overcoming it was meant to be the challenge in itself. But that world was gone now, like so much else. Like Ezri. “Look, we don’t have to do nothing. We just can’t respond the same way they did. We need something that won’t inspire as much of a war. Something that gets back at the ones in power without affecting the regular ponies much. We want Mundi to be unwilling to fight.” “Great, sounds perfect,” the bat said, raising a hoof to a passing server. He set down a clear glass frothing at the rim beside her, and she downed it in one swig. “So what’s your plan?” “We, uh…” She hadn’t actually thought about this yet. Her plan had been not to tell anyone and hope Mundi took their failure as a sign to move on to greener pastures. She looked out at the party for inspiration. Ponies were still celebrating out there, plenty of them in various stages of unconsciousness. And below this lounge were almost a thousand other ponies, spread everywhere. Ponies who had running water again, who didn’t have to scavenge fruit and bugs for food. “We stage a jailbreak,” she said. “How much do you bet the powers that be are saying we all came here to starve. Nobody thinks they can survive away from infrastructure anymore. Leaving Athena behind is like walking right off the world. Athena will have tried to turn our escape to her advantage.” “Go on…” Hat Trick no longer seemed annoyed. She raised her wing for another drink, and soon received it. Things like minimum drinking age were still a ways off for Thestralia. “Well, assuming that’s true, Athena stuck herself out on a limb. Made herself vulnerable. All we have to do to show everyone she’s full of shit is prove we’re still alive. We make our own propaganda, bring it back with us into Mundi… and we bust some more bats out. Maybe more this time. Maybe if we can find a better way out, we could do ten thousand instead of two.” Hat Trick nodded. “More effective than an assassination. Though I still want to talk to the one they sent over. I’d like to ensure that whoever they work for gets a personal message. They’ll know we’ve got their number, and whatever we do is in retaliation. It’s more than they deserve.” “More importantly, we need to make places for all the people we’re gonna rescue. And we need to make sure the jailbreak happens soon enough that it’s obvious why we did it. That means getting our shit in gear now. No resting on our laurels and just enjoying our self-farming trees.” “Yeah.” Hat Trick nodded. “Well, I’ll head off now, take a look around Mundi, see what I can see. We can put together some videos to distribute to the ponies back home. I trust you can set the whole meeting up yourself.” Jackie nodded. “Yeah, sure. No problem. Tomorrow. I still think they deserve a little relaxation. A little alcohol and some time off is the best way to solve our population problem.” She didn’t try to follow the young bat out. She never quite saw where she got off to, and some part of her didn’t really want to know. There were some things best left unknown. She tried to enjoy the rest of the party, she really did. She went up to her office, but of course the changeling wasn’t there anymore. So it was back down to the lower floor, where most of the ponies celebrated with cheaper drinks and simpler food. She mingled and chatted with as many as were still sober, hearing little complaints and writing them down to give to other people to solve. But most of her couldn’t just switch off her worries. There would be another jailbreak. Maybe they’d get enough people to be a full blown city. Now that they could promise a little more stability, with even more on the horizon. Things would only get easier as they expanded and repaired the Arcane Network. Only Liz seemed to share her solemnity, though for completely different reasons. The seapony still seemed like she was tearing herself apart over the assassination attempt. “It’s nothing you did wrong,” Jackie insisted, for perhaps the tenth time that night. Liz swam in uneasy circles near the heart of the capital tree, which had its own massive reservoir of drinking water. It would pass through the tree before it made it into ponies’ homes, so Jackie didn’t really mind to see her here. Jackie herself kept to the walkway around the outside, watching her circle around. “I was glad you were there. Another few seconds and you would’ve got him for sure.” Liz splashed up out the edge of the water, landing again with a plop. She carried the glowing water around with her in her circle, and for a few seconds she seemed to glow a little too. The Arcane Network was tied into this tree now, just like all the others they lived in. But it wasn’t the high-voltage connection that would melt a pony alive. “I don’t like it,” Liz sang, over and over. “I should’ve done better. I will next time. You can still die.” “Everyone can die,” Jackie said, ambivalent. “And I’ve had a long life. It wouldn’t be so bad if he got me. There are… people I’d like to see again.” Liz sang a few disdainful notes at that, but said no more. Jackie left her to her lonely aquarium. She didn’t feel like explaining what she had seen beyond the effervescent veil. Some secrets were too deep, too close. She had the meeting the next day, exactly as Hat Trick had suggested. There was much discussion about it, but in the end the council agreed. This was a perfect excuse to free more ponies from Mundi. In the end they wanted the millions of bats who lived there to be free. But their single small city couldn’t handle a million. “I can give you ten thousand,” said her city planner, Melanie. “If you give me six months.” “Do what you can in three,” Jackie said. “It has to be soon enough that it’s obvious why we’re doing it. Six is too long.” She glanced across the table to Lavender Eclipse, her current militia commander and former rebellion leader. “Maybe pass the word along that ponies might need to take guests into their home in a few months. We can be all patriotic about it and shit. Everypony sets up a guest room for a visiting family. It’ll just be for… three months?” It was time to get back into the news at Mundi. And we’ll deserve it this time.