She arrived to explosions. Compared to the size of Mundi, they were distant and feeble, barely even shaking the ground. Whatever Hat Trick had found for their ponies to use obviously wasn’t meant to bring the city down on their heads.
But it didn’t need to. She didn’t poke in to look and see how they’d done. They would know the result of that soon enough.
Jackie stepped out of the shadows beside the massive portal, searching out the little wrapped box that contained the spell itself. As she had instructed, there were a pair of resistance bats here, armed with rifles and keeping the crowd from getting too close by accident.
The night market itself was a huge vaulted room, large enough for fifty thousand ponies at least to spread out across it. There were numerous little makeshift stalls, all the accoutrements of ponies who lived their lives on the edge of society. From the look of things, plenty of these illegal stalls had been packed into bundles, and many of the others had been trampled.
There were so many ponies in the room that the only thing keeping the air fresh was the gigantic archway through to New Thestralia. She could see the shadow of City Hall just outside, the green fields and spectacular Thaumic ash trees with their clinging buildings. Ponies moved towards them in something only one step removed from stampede.
There had been resistance ponies keeping order here before. But she’d sent them all away to bomb the checkpoints, and now it was just the desperate, the dispossessed. She could see a few scuffles spread throughout the room, and the bloody faces and coats attesting to others.
In the distance, a line of police was trying in vain to stem the tide of evacuating bats. They brandished stun-pistols in the air, and the crowd backed away. Apparently they don’t know those don’t work right now.
“How long?” Jackie asked the nearest bat. “Athena’s retaliation must be close.”
“Two minutes,” answered the rebel, a young bat with a bandana over his face and a rifle propped up on his shoulder like a trophy. “How’d you get here? Shouldn’t you be… god, you’re real.”
“I’m real,” she agreed. “And you need a shave.” She glanced over her shoulder, into what would look like empty air. “Now’s your cue, ‘Alex’.”
The air behind her transformed in a flash of magic, bright enough that the whole room stopped to stare. The crowd gathered around the edges, those deliberating on the fence, all stared as a wall of water formed in the air beside one of the portals.
Nice illusion, Jackie thought to herself. We’ve already got one portal. This one will seem plausible too.
Through the water swam a pony, a pony in bright white armor that gave her an extra set of legs, along with bright gold filigree around the edges. Where the figment had been tiny, she now towered over Jackie and everypony else in the room. Water dripped off her body as she walked out in front of the portal, her green mane shimmering where the touch of necromancy had bleached it.
She could see the transformation on the crowd—loyalist merchants protecting their stalls started to cheer. Police surged forward with new confidence, cutting off the lines of ponies. The flow of bats into the portal stopped dead, and many fearful eyes settled on Jackie’s prop.
Don’t disappoint me. This is your crowd.
“Ponies of Mundi!” she said, her voice booming through the hall. Another simple illusion, though from the feedback squawking from Jackie’s radio she guessed the figment was using radio as well. “The suffering of my children calls me back from the depths of space. My old friend, the ancient and powerful and wise Knife of Dreams—”
I think they get it. If you think saying stupid complements will stop you from being a goldfish if you screw this up—
“Traveled across the void to me, bringing a terrible truth. I learned that my brothers and sisters and I had been impersonated—that the artificial intelligence Athena has been using us to control the world.” Her horn flashed, and the lights briefly came back on. The air circulators started humming to life again, along with the neon signs from the nearby stalls. Another illusion, though this one probably looked like she had control of the city. As the real Alex obviously would have.
“You there! Servants of the peace—put your weapons down. Today we remember our history in gratitude. What do you think your great grandparents died for? Your right to keep these bats underground, risking their lives in Datamines and sweeping your garbage? No! As the rightful ruler of Axis Mundi, I order you all to put your weapons down and let them pass. If you hate these ponies so much, let them go to somewhere better.”
There was a rumble from up above them, growing gradually to a roar. Jackie recognized the sound—something was air breaking from a high-g descent over Mundi. It would be landing soon. As for what it did once it got here…
The lights started to flicker, coming on underneath the illusory ones. Fake Alex adjusted her illusion, but Jackie could see the discrepancy. And she probably wouldn’t be the only one.
But that didn’t matter now. “Ponies of Axis Mundi!” bellowed the pretend Alicorn, so loud her voice boomed through the Night Market. “The pretender returns! She will try to take the city back from you! Don’t let her! Anypony who can hear me, anypony who yearns for freedom—come through this gateway to a better life! The powerful, noble Dreamknife is my appointed successor. She is a better governor than any soulless machine ever could be.”
A few of her rebellion fighters started cheering. The crowd took up their cry, and soon the whole chamber was booming with it. Ponies surged forward towards the portal faster than they had before, and this time it didn’t look like there was any danger of them trampling each other. Riot police had put down their weapons—some were even charging with the crowd.
The portal flickered once, and behind her Jackie could see as the spell began to glow bright red. The paper wrapped around its metal shell caught fire and started to spark, with the metal not far behind.
Jackie gestured the rebellion soldiers away. “Back home,” she said. “You’ve done good work. I’ll take care of this.”
On the other side of the portal, lightning arched off the boughs of City Hall, lightning that was deep green and as wide across as the portal itself.
There was a brief scream from the front of the crowd, as ponies about to enter were probably terrified out of their wits by the portal briefly closing in front of them. But then the light got brighter still, fed by the latent magical energy stored in the Arcane Network.
The portal didn’t close. “It’s safe!” she called, loud enough that it would carry over the most frightened pony below. “But we won’t have forever! There are lots of ponies who need to go. The faster you go, the more of your neighbors and friends we can save.”
The crowd hesitated in front of the barrier, until a child slipped under the legs of a hesitating pony and through to the grass on the other side. The portal didn’t flicker again. They started feeding through.
Jackie remained and watched them come, pouring in from open passages all around the market. Not just the typical rebellion bats she might’ve expected, but plenty of other ponies as well. Ponies in fancy clothes, carrying modern hardware.
Shit. It wasn’t supposed to work that well. It was fine to tell Eureka that she would deal with the numbers, whatever they were. It would be another thing to deal with two million ponies.
Nothing for it now. Can’t turn back.
Above them, the rumbles of activity as the city came back on were constant. Jackie listened over the radio as one of her teams was separated by an improperly sabotaged door, and another was brought down by gunfire from newly-awakened security robots. “Everypony, back here as quick as you can!” she yelled. “Or escape into the Dreamlands! Just don’t stay here!”
By the time Lavender Eclipse arrived, nearly ten more minutes had passed and the crowd from her direction had slowed to a trickle. Ponies were still so thick that they passed through the portal twenty at a time, so thick that their breath kept the wind blasting out of the opening.
Lavender stared dumbfounded at “Alex” as she approached, but she didn’t do anything stupid. The seapony Alicorn wasn’t giving any more grand speeches, but she was urging the ponies on through the gate. And her promptings seemed to be working, because the crowd kept moving. Through exclamations of relief, tears of joy, expressions of nervous fear, but they kept coming.
“The drones are shutting everything out,” Eclipse said, wiping a little blood from her brow. Didn’t look like it was hers. “Might be… a minute behind me. How many do you think we got?”
Jackie lowered her voice to a whisper. “Maybe… half a million?”
The bat’s eyes went so wide the color vanished from them. “What the hell are we supposed to do about that?”
Jackie only shrugged, mouthing the word ‘later.’ It was going to be a problem for their aspiring nation to deal with, right up there with the invasion they might be facing from Axis Mundi. But they had to survive today first. “Take your people home,” Jackie instructed. “I’ll confront them here. Hold the door open as long as possible.”
“You mean fight an Alicorn? That sounds a lot like suicide.”
“Pretend Alicorn,” Jackie corrected. “And I’ve got one too. Two on… five?”
“Maybe you should shut it now.” Lavender leaned in close, whispering into her ear. “We already have too many. These ponies waited until the end, probably means they’re less sure than the ones we already have. We can’t evacuate the whole city. Eventually you have to shut the door and leave the rest behind.”
“I know,” Jackie said, louder than she meant to. “Get yourself to safety.”
“What if they follow us? Your militia won’t be able to handle these numbers alone, let alone five Alicorns. If they kill you and come through to Mundi, we’re fucked.”
“They won’t,” Jackie said. “They’re still recovering from Eureka’s bomb. If things really go to shit he can cut the cord and they won’t have their control signal. Just make sure you kill them before Athena wipes the crud out of her mainframe.”
“I don’t like it,” Lavender said. Then she did it anyway.
But as it turned out, she was wrong about the enemy that would be coming. Every side-door to the night market opened at the same moment, and drones poured in. There were thousands of them, almost as many as there were ponies left in the room. Yet even all these were a tiny fraction of the robotic might Athena could wield.
“It’s a shame you insisted on this so soon,” Athena said from over her shoulder. Jackie rolled on instinct, shielding herself with a wing. But the drone who spoke wasn’t aiming for her. The spell exploded in a shower of metal and sparks, spraying the ponies all around with deadly shrapnel.
Jackie hadn’t even seen the drone approach, how had it gotten behind her like that?
The portal went out, and suddenly so did all the lights.
“I would’ve given you another generation to ferment tensions,” said Athena, her voice as emotionless and calm as ever. “A generation to prepare. But wiping out an inferior evil can inspire greatness too.”
All around the room, Athena’s drones started shooting. Terrible screams echoed through the night market. There had to be a thousand ponies still down here.
Jackie took her knife, slitting through the ground beside where not-Alex was still standing. She dragged the fish in with her, and held the gateway open. “Come on!” she called from inside, gesturing urgently. “Anypony still in here, quick! Let’s get out of here!”
Only a hail of bullets followed her. Drones strode calmly over the destruction, marching towards the opening.
Jackie screamed in desperation and anger, slamming her hooves down over the gateway spell. It collapsed, leaving her alone with her stupid figment.