The radio tower was north of Ponville. There was a small building at its base.
I’d followed the broadcast all the way there, traveling well into the night. Whoever was transmitting definitely had my attention. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been specifically designed to get my attention. After all, the station identification was WMKE: Milwaukee.
With that in mind and not knowing what I might face inside the building, I decided to go for a sneaky approach and a dynamic entry. Fortunately, airships are pretty quiet. I hovered in the night sky overhead and grabbed a rope, swinging over the side.
I slammed into the door, knocking it off its hinges, and burst into the room. A nerdy-looking pony with a robot for a cutie mark fell off his chair in surprise. I had my knife to his throat before I realized that I’d seen him somewhere before.
“Wait, you’re Gizmo, right?”
“Y-yes,” he stammered as he lay on his back on the floor.
I tilted my head. “Didn’t we have a deal?”
“Uh…”
“Yeah, I remember now. I gave you the Bill Gates deal.”
“The who-what?”
“I gave you the option of either a buyout offer or overwhelming competition. You accepted it, for ten bits, and in return agreed to turn over to me any technology that you had or would produce in the future.”
“That doesn’t sound fair!” he protested, just like he had protested last time.
“Well, tell your lawyers to talk to my lawyers…oh wait, you probably don’t have any,” which is what I had said last time, too.
I still didn’t have any lawyers either, but he still didn’t know that. As it turned out, he didn’t know much of anything. “But I don’t remember any of this.”
“It was a different universe.”
“But doesn’t that imply that it wasn’t me that you made the deal with?”
I tossed ten bits down on him as he lay there. “Now it doesn’t matter. Tell me what you know. What’s the deal with this radio station?”
“I just got a job here,” he said.
“From who?”
“I don’t know, it was an ad in the newspaper with my name on it.”
“Did you have some sort of special skill it required?”
“No, I mean it literally had my name on it. Somepony wanted me. So I showed up, and there was money, so I maintained the transmitter like I was told.”
I glanced around at the equipment. I could see how the station was set up to broadcast, but I didn’t immediately see any playback equipment and surely Gizmo wasn’t manning the mic 24/7.
I turned back to him. “Where does the programming come from?”
“I don’t know. It’s beamed here from somewhere else and rebroadcast.”
I vaguely recalled the other antennas on the roof. Okay, I just had to find the input signal and track that. The feed horns would probably be directional and make it easier to find the original broadcaster.
I let Gizmo up and walked back outside. I realized I’d let the airship drift by itself and had left it hovering, so I was going to have to shimmy back up the rope. Nobody ever looks good while shimmying, so I made sure Gizmo didn’t see me.
Back aboard the airship, I looked down at the antenna arrangement and picked up a sextant. It was part of the airship’s original navigation kit from the Royal Guard and while I was clumsy with pre-1700’s sailing technology, I had been using it to help take bearings while searching for the radio tower.
Sighting in on what looked to be the receive dish, I adjusted the sextant and looked for the angle. I adjusted it up, and then again. I kept pointing it further and further up until I had the sudden realization that it was aimed to receive signals from space.
I put the sextant down, and swore.
“Help me…” came a faint voice from below.
I looked down. Gizmo had managed to crawl out of the building on four broken legs.
I‘d had to make sure he didn’t see me shimmying after all.
“So anyway, Princess, that’s why I need to go to space,” I finished explaining to Luna in the throne room at Canterlot.
“No.”
“What do I have to do?”
Princess Luna put on her sunglasses. “See us again when we come back from vacation. We still won’t consider it, but at least we can show off our tan to you.”
She and Celestia teleported out.
Since when did the two of them take vacations? I looked around. And if they were gone, who was in charge in the meantime?
I wandered out of the throne room and ran into the girls coming in. They all looked surprised to see me. “What are you doing here!?” Twilight blurted out.
“The Princesses left me in charge,” I replied immediately.
“Wha-no they didn’t!” she argued. “We’re in charge. We're here to follow up on a few things. They've kept us busy.”
Applejack nodded. “The Princesses have been runnin’ us ragged with all their tryin’ to help us fight monsters and fix problems.”
“They what now?” I said.
“They got a little taste of saving Equestria back when Sombra was loose and decided they wanted to do it all the time,” Pinkie explained. She put her hoof to her chin. “Say Valiant, do you think you could help us distract them so we could get some peace and quiet?”
“Can’t, they’ve just left on vacation.” I opened the throne room door wider and showed them. I quickly added, “And they left me in charge.”
“Do you even know how to do a Royal Swanifying?” Twilight demanded, holding up a list of what I presumed were instructions the Princesses had left behind.
“You don’t,” Spike muttered under his breath. I was surprised I heard him. My hearing had been unusually sharp lately, likely due to my recent absence of firearms.
“Did they leave you in charge of this swanifying or did they leave you in charge of the whole entire kingdom?” I asked. “What did they actually say?”
“But...but...they gave me this amulet to control the sun and moon!” she protested.
“You really want to take responsibility for this?” I said. “The last time the Princesses left you in charge, Sombra invaded and you had to have my help to defeat him. Why not just skip the middleman and I’ll run the show.”
“No,” Twilight said firmly. “I’m not going to back down on this.”
“Well…” said Applejack. “Valiant does have a point that the Princesses didn’t specifically say we were running all of Equestria while they were on vacation.”
“And they didn’t leave us very detailed instructions on how to do that,” said Rarity. “Most of this list is just about the Royal Swanifying.”
“And if something goes wrong while they’re gone, you can pin it on him,” said Rainbow.
Twilight glanced at them and then turned back to me. “Alright Valiant, I’ll let you be a figurehead. But I’m going to be watching you. I’m still a Princess myself and if you put one hoof out of line, you’re going to regret it. No changing existing laws, got it? You are going to promise me right now to cede authority as soon as the Princesses return.”
Well, it was a start. She’d left a ton of loopholes, too. “I promise.”
I clapped my hooves together. “Now let’s get down to business.”
“Wow, you’re acting like it’s not a terrifying amount of responsibility,” said Pinkie.
“I relish the opportunity.”
Twilight shook her head. “Nevermind. We’re going to do what the Princesses said.” She looked at Spike. “Tell us about the Royal Swanifying.”
He consulted the scroll. “Apparently it’s a celebration of all the swans in the royal lake. We round them up, parade them through the streets, and finish with a party in the castle.”
“One question,” said Rainbow. “Why?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Twilight. “This is our chance to show Celestia and Luna we’ll do whatever the job requires, including reining in Valiant.”
Just then, the door opened, and Fancy Pants came in with a couple of other ponies. “Princesses, we are here to offer our assistance as heads of the Royal Swanifying Committee.” He looked around, frowning.
“We’re fillin’ in for their majesties,” said Applejack.
“Wait, the Princesses went on vacation and didn’t tell anyone?” I said. “Did they even tell the guards?”
By the look that went over Twilight’s face, I guessed the answer. I turned to Fancy Pants. “The Royal Swanifying Committee? Excellent, that’s exactly who we needed.”
“But if we ask for help, it’s just like admitting we’re not as good at the job as Luna and Celestia,” Twilight protested.
“Do you seriously think heads of state planned their own parties?” I said. “They didn’t even save the world until a little while ago.”
“He’s right,” Pinkie agreed.
“I mean, why would the Princesses even have a Royal Swanifying Committee? Use your brain, Twilight.”
“You don’t have to keep rubbing it in,” she muttered under her breath. She suddenly looked up, realizing that the Committee had already gone to work and in the span of minutes had nearly finished decorating.
“So with all this spare time now that the Swanifying is being handled,” I said, “And since I'm in charge, I wanted to take a look at castle security because holy shit it didn’t improve much since the last time I broke in.”
Even Twilight couldn’t disagree with me there, though I could see she wanted to.
A while later, Starlight Glimmer stumbled in. I was immediately on the defensive until I remembered the shrink session we’d had a while back. Based on the haunted look she still wore, it seemed like she was having a hard time forgetting.
She stood there for a moment, looking hesitantly at what I was doing, before saying, “Um, Mr. Valiant, if you have a moment I hope I could speak with you.”
I flipped up my visor, pausing from what I was doing. “What?”
Starlight flinched, but continued speaking. “I obtained the dozen churchbells you wanted. I’m still not sure what a church is, but I got them.”
“Wait, what’s a church?” said Twilight.
“Hush, welders don’t talk.” I flipped my visor back down and grabbed her by the face again, touching her horn to the metal framework I was building.
It had taken a ton of convincing to get her to go along with that. Like a lot of things, I just had to demonstrate that I was right. In this case, a steel framework to support additional defensive measures inside the throne room. I had all kinds of plans for security equipment to install, but the easiest and simplest would just be to hang a bunch of bells to drop on people who needed a bell dropped on them. I was still working out the confetti dispenser that would put out a bunch of little slips of paper that said you just got donged.
It took a while, but we were mostly finished with the security upgrades when the Princesses got back. I walked them through all the new measures.
“So Shining Armor thought anti-pegasus fans, doubled guards, pit traps, and geese would do the job. I replaced the fans with electrified chicken wire, which is safer as long as you don’t touch it and it actually looks better than whirling blades everywhere. I appreciate the doubled guards, but they still suck at their jobs. Instead, I replaced the door locks with biometric authentication. The pit traps could be effective, so I installed more of them. I also brought your beds down to the throne room because none of this security extends upstairs to your actual bedrooms. Plus, it shortens your walk to work. And since you’re now living in the throne room, I got rid of the geese. If you’re already here, you shouldn’t need an alert. You probably wouldn’t want shit everywhere, either.”
“I...have to admit, this is a more attractive plan than it has any right to be,” Luna said after a long moment.
“Maybe a furniture rearrangement was the excitement we needed all along,” Celestia agreed.
“And now, ladies, the tables have turned.” I demonstrated where I had put their nightstands. “All this, and I successfully planned the Royal Swanifying,” I finished.
“How did you plan it?” Celestia asked.
“I let the Royal Swanifying Committee handle it.”
“Excellent,” said Luna. “I thought we had left Twilight and her friends in charge, but clearly you are also a worthy and capable leader.”
I saw Twilight’s mouth open in shock and rage. Not only was I stepping on her parade, but I was raining on her authority. As much as it amused me, however, I had other things to worry about. In my efforts to solve the mystery of the radio and avoid too much responsibility, I really didn’t want to do this job much longer.
In response to the Princesses’ compliment to me, Twilight started to speak, but I cut her off. “Now Princesses, about me going to space…”
“Not a chance,” said Luna. “Because we have much need of you here.”
Celestia nodded. “Valiant, we hereby appoint you our new castle Chief of Staff, to be our number one assistant and confidant, and to run day-to-day operations in our stead.”
“Oh shit.”
I glanced at Twilight in surprise. “Where the hell did you learn that phrase!?”