Eagle eyes shone brightly through the dark trees, what little light came from the campfire in the nearby clearing reflecting off them and sometimes falling on the dark leaves.
A branch snapped, there was a flutter of wings and powerful talons grabbed tree bark.
“Found you!” the griffon shouted, pointing with her talon. “Fruit bat, second branch from the left.”
There was a flash of light, and a grinning Changeling sat in place of the bat. “You found me, Gabby. How did you figure it out?”
“Fruit bats usually hang upside down,” Gabriella replied, crossing her talons and quirking an eyebrow. “Didn’t you know that, Tibi?”
Tibia shrugged. “Not a lot of fruit bats in the Badlands.”
“You know what would be even better? Can you do an owl?”
Tibia promptly changed her form to that of a snowy owl. “Who?”
“That’s so cute!” Gabby squealed while clapping.
“Hey!” A shout came from the forest clearing below that made the owl wince. “You two are supposed to be on perimeter patrol! Play hide and seek on your on time!”
“We finished our round, Captain Pharynx, sir,” Tibia replied with a guilt-ridden look, “all clear! We were just … uh … “
“Training exercise, sir,” Gabby covered quickly. “Tibia was showing me how to ferret out a Changeling intruder, you know, just in case the Red Shade turned out to be one.”
Pharynx gave them a withering look, then shook his head. “Just go and check the traps on the East side one more time. I’ll take the next shift.”
After the two youngsters had confirmed his order and headed off, Pharynx was about to return to the study of the map before him. But he shot an annoyed glance at the griffon sitting to his left around the campfire who was currently snickering. Pharynx had always thought the snicker of beaked creatures to be even more grating than normal.
“Something funny, Corporal Gilda?”
The griffon rolled her eyes and blew the feather bangs out of her eyes. “I was just remembering the time when we met in that cave, and you were all serious and like ‘Welcome to Shadow Patrol,’” she replied, making her voice overly dramatic and gravelly for that last part, before grinning. “The way these two feed off each other, sometimes it feels more like a school field trip.”
“That so? Then why do I feel like you’re the one I need to keep an eye on not to sneak out for booze and cigarettes at night?” he grumbled.
“Ouch,” she replied in mock hurt, before turning to the third creature sitting around the fire. “Hey, G-Man, how’s dinner coming?”
The red dragon snorted. “I told you not to call me that.” He lifted the lid off the pot and stirred for a while with the ladle. “Give it another couple of minutes.”
“Thank you, Master Sergeant Garble,” Pharynx said, not looking up from his map.
Gilda sneered. “Yeah, I’m definitely not gonna call you by those stupid ranks the Boss arbitrarily decided upon. By the way, what is up with that? How is he a Master Sergeant, and I’m a Corporal? And how come you’re always so polite to him while you give the rest of us a hard time, Boss?”
Pharynx looked up momentarily. “He’s our cook,” he replied, as if that explained everything.
“So? He was the only one dumb enough to volunteer for the job,” Gilda pointed out.
“Let me tell you something I’ve learned over my many years of military service, it’s called the Chain of Command,” Pharynx began. “Goes like this: The commander, the quartermaster, the cook, and then everyling else.”
“Translation,” Garble said with a smirk while holding one nostril closed to stoke the fire with a jet of flame from the other one. “Don’t piss off the people who handle your food. And be glad that I feed you. You’re stringy like a chicken as it is. How about I call you G-String from now on?”
Gilda looked back and forth between the grinning dragon and the Changeling who was once again focused on his map. “I hate the both of you,” she finally said. “Hey, Master Chef, hit me with some of that secret ingredient you add to your stew.”
Garble fished out a flask from his supplies without comment and threw it over to the griffon who deftly caught it with one talon. She worked the stopper loose, took a swig and sighed happily. “And suddenly I like you much better again,” she said, handing the flask back.
“So where are we headed?” Garble asked, looking around at the dark forest devoid of any landmarks. “We’ve been on this trail for so long, I don’t even know which side of the border we’re on anymore.”
“I’m not sure there is a border here,” Gilda mused, “nobody ever bothered surveying this backwater. But Master Chef brings up a good point, Boss. We’ve been chasing this thing for weeks, and we’re no closer to catching it than when we started. We need to get ahead of it.”
Pharynx nodded. “We’ll break camp tomorrow morning and head straight here.” He laid out the map for the other two to see. Several spots were circled in red. “So far we’ve been reactive. But every location we investigated had one thing in common with the others. It was the site of some kind of military action. Which means, we just have to pick one that hasn’t been hit yet, and we can intercept the Shade. I wanted to be sure first, but we can finally head it off. There’s one nearby, and it’s one of the few that hasn’t been hit yet.”
Garble squinted at the point Pharynx had indicated. “There’s nothing there.”
“It’s there. It’s just not marked on any map. Khitomer, the last rebel holdout during the Changeling Civil War.”
Gilda and Garble looked at each other. “I didn’t know the Changelings ever had a civil war, did you?” she asked. The dragon shook his head.
“That’s because we didn’t,” Pharynx stated firmly while folding up his map, “at least as far as the rest of the world is concerned.” He worked his jaw wordlessly. “Probably not right to call it a war, anyway. Wars follow rules.”
There was a heavy silence as Pharynx simply stared into the flames of the campfire, and both Garble and Gilda, curious as they were, proved unable to follow up on the implication due to his brooding intensity.
The silence was broken when buzzing and flapping wings announced the return of the two youngest members of the team. “Perimeter clear, all traps set, sir,” Tibia reported in a chirpy voice, not noticing the heavy atmosphere.
“Dinner ready?” Gabby followed up, equally oblivious to the tense silence.
Pharynx stood up. “You lot eat. I’ll take the next watch.” As he started walking off into the shadows, he added: “And hit the sack early. We move at first light. In Silentio Vigilo, In Umbris Confido.”
“Christie! I need his number!“
“And I hope you’re having a nice lunch break, too.” Unlike most others in the cafeteria, she hadn’t actually looked up at Tom’s outburst while the man had stormed in, calmly lifting her fork to her mouth and slowly finishing the bite from her salad before answering again. “Whose number?”
“Your crazy ex-husband. The astrophysicist,” he elaborated.
Christie nodded sagely. “I see. Well, that makes it fortuitous that you interrupted my lunch.” She waved at the man sitting across from her. “You can ask him yourself.”
The indicated man wore an old-looking brown jacket and glasses, and his hair had a streak of grey in it. He turned towards Tom and offered his hand with a smile. “Hi, I’m the crazy ex-husband. But please, call me Jack.”
“Gah,” the programmer could only sheepishly shake his hand in return.
“Oh, don’t be embarrassed, Tom. I’ve called him much worse than that,” Christie said.
“It’s true,” Jack confirmed. “You should have heard what she called me right after we got divorced.”
“Yeah, these days I’m down to my eccentric old friend,” she pointed out with a Cheshire grin.
“Oh? I’m moving up in the world again,” Jack replied with a smile tugging at his lips. “Perhaps I should stop calling you that workaholic harpy?”
She chewed her next bite slowly. “Half of that is technically true,” she admitted in a moment of self-reflection.
“Just harpy from now on then,” Jack decided, turning back towards Tom after deftly dodging an improvised projectile that had instantly honed in on him from Christie’s salad bowl. “Now then, what can I help you with, my good man?”
“I read your paper,” Tom replied, sitting down next to him and across from Christie. “The Distant Cousin Theory.”
Christie groaned.
“Ah, yes. The folly of my youth. Interesting read, wasn’t it? Neatly explains the slight tilt in the orbit of our sun in relation to the galactic plane.”
Christie rolled her eyes. “As a premise for a Science Fiction novel maybe. It was an interesting math experiment, sure. But it’s kinda hard to defend the thesis that our sun is a binary star when there’s clearly just one sun in the sky.”
Jack shrugged. “Most of Galileo’s contemporaries thought his thesis was hard to defend since the sun so obviously moved around the Earth and not the other way around.”
“Don’t Galileo me on this,” Christie said irritably, “you know what I mean. Your math works, but there’s no empirical evidence.” Indeed, the two had played out that particular discussion to the death, both before and after their divorce.
“I think you’re right. Our sun is a binary star,” Tom interjected.
“Well,” Jack said, clapping the man on the shoulder and instantly warming up to him, “would you look at that?”
“Great,” Christie answered dryly, “my best Senior Developer has gone around the bend and my ex-husband is contagious. We’re doomed.”
Tom looked at his superior, hoping to convey to her that he was dead serious and this wasn’t one of his pranks. “Christie, how many people are currently looking for Oppy?”
“Everyone is looking. Hubble, Kepler, the folks at APL even woke up New Horizons ahead of schedule to have a look around the edge of the solar system. None of them found anything. Heck, even the James Webb might be launched this century just so it can have a crack at finding Oppy.”
“Exactly! And they’ve all been looking outside the solar system.”
“Right. Because SatCom has scoured every inch of Mars’ surface, and there’s nothing in the direction where we actually picked up the Praise the Sun message, not even asteroids. Plus, the inclination of the way it had to travel puts it way off the ecliptic.”
“But that’s just it,” Tom maintained. “Oppy couldn’t have sent that signal from outside the solar system. It would have never had the solar power necessary. Which is what I’ve been telling the other eggheads. And the math backs me up. According to the timestamp embedded in the signal, it took Oppy’s message 16 minutes 43 seconds from sending it until we received it. Furthermore, the source in the header was MER-B Direct, no relays.”
“Yeah, well. We’ve all been operating under the premise that Oppy experienced a mission clock fault at some point,” Christie explained, even though she privately harbored doubts. Even if the rover’s batteries had somehow ran dry between losing contact with JPL and the message, it shouldn’t have been enough to offset the mission clock, at least not by much. But the fact remained that the location was empty.
“Curious,” Jack muttered. “Light, and a radio signal for that matter, takes around eight minutes to reach Earth from the sun. Almost exactly half as long as that signal took.”
“Exactly!” Tom said, pointing at the man. “Almost as if it came from another Earth! An Earth in another solar system that somehow occupies the same space as ours.”
Christie raised an eyebrow at that, but Tom was already ahead of her.
He took out a piece of paper and a pen and drew a circle in the center, then a line out from the circle to another smaller circle. He flipped the sheet upside down and drew the same thing on the other page. “Okay, two solar systems in different dimensions.” He flipped the page around several more times to get his point across. He pointed at one of the small circles. “A planet in the habitable zone. And the Solaire Protocol was supposed to send the message towards the sun. Eight minutes from that world to that sun. From that sun to our sun, almost instantaneously. And then eight light minutes from the sun back to us.”
“Okay, hang on!” Christie said. “I’ve got several questions, but let’s start with the obvious one: Different universes?”
“And how could something pass between them?” Jack added.
“But that’s the beauty of it, Jack,” Tom pointed out with a grin that was almost mad. “You proved it! Mathematically, at least. Two suns, only one of them visible to us, yet locked in an interstellar dance.”
Jack gave him a look, then gasped. “Gravity!” His eyes widened and his grin became as mad as that of the programmer. “An interdimensional binary star! And information that can travel between the gravity wells of both stars.”
Now staring at two grinning madmen, Christie fought hard to hold down Fort Sanity. “Alright, let’s say I believe this theoretical madness, for the sake of argument. Oppy’s message didn’t come from the sun.”
“Not our sun,” Jack said, having snatched the pen from Tom and now busy scribbling complex formulas on his napkin. “But maybe from the combined center of mass between the two bodies, which explains why we thought nothing was there and thus assumed the signal came from deep space. But if I can refine my model from the actual movement of our sun and prove that our distant cousin was in the right spot at the time … perhaps we could even …”
“Right,” Tom picked up again when Jack began mumbling to himself, his pen strokes increasing in intensity. “Praise the Sun was a joke message. It was never designed to even be received back on Earth. Oppy was supposed to send it directly towards the sun, our sun. That’s what it did, at least to the best of its ability. But it arrived here.”
“How?” Christie pressed.
Tom once again took his piece of paper to visualize what Jack had already grasped. Taking out a second pen, he drew a new line on both sides, connecting the two larger circles, then marked the midway point with an X. “Even though the two suns are in different worlds, their gravity acts upon each other. That’s what I realized when I read your ex-husband’s paper. And here’s where they meet.” He stabbed the pen through the paper at the connection point. He looked around the table, grabbed Christie’s salad bowl and unceremoniously emptied its contents onto her tray.
“Please, go ahead,” she said with a frown, “I was done with that anyway.”
Ignoring her, he placed his sheet of paper atop the open side of the glass bowl. “Here’s where Einstein comes in,” Tom explained.
“Oh, good. I was wondering where he went,” Christie said with waning patience.
“The gravity of the two stars curves spacetime,” he went on undeterred, slightly pressing the paper down at the middle to make a concave shape. “Now, atop the bowl, that’s where Oppy is. Below, that’s where we are.” He picked up a pea from Jack’s tray who was too far gone in his calculations to object. “And this is Oppy’s message. It was shooting for the point in space where our sun is. Watch.” Tom placed the pea on the smaller circle on the top page and lightly pushed it forward at an angle.
Christie watched as the pea circled around the conical shape made by the paper, getting closer to the center, until it finally dropped through the hole Tom had made and into the bowl, into the other universe.
She simply sat there completely still, even lowering her head to the surface of the table to look at the pea in the salad bowl, letting all that sink in while Tom watched her intently. “Wait, we’ve been … looking the wrong way the entire time? If you’re right …”
“I am,” Tom said with conviction. “I wrote the code. I know what it was supposed to do.”
She picked up the paper and held it close to her face, looking at her subordinate through the tiny hole in the page. “Which means we know exactly how Oppy’s message got through to us. So if we can figure out the point in space where that sun is …”
“On it!” Jack said, looking around for a moment, grabbing another napkin and continuing to furiously write formulas.
“… then we could theoretically aim a signal there and send a message back to Oppy the exact same way.” They’d done it, and Christie didn’t need a mirror to know that the grin that was beginning to spread across her own face was just as mad as theirs. She stood up abruptly. “I need to make a phone call.” Math was all fine and good, but they would need actual proof for NASA to pursue a theory that, on the face of it, sounded completely crazy.
“Who are you calling?” Tom asked.
“Friend of mine from college. As it happens, she’s working on the Parker Solar Probe Team.”
“Christie,” Tom said as she was getting ready to leave and act on this new revelation. “There’s one more thing. I’m gonna need access to one of the SSTBs.”
“What’s it really like, living among ponies, I mean?” Tibia asked while she coasted over the treetops next to her new friend shortly before sunset during yet another patrol of the untamed wilderness that lay in the border region of the three troubled nations.
“Have you never been to Equestria?” Gabby asked.
“Never more than a few miles from the border, and never inside one of their settlements,” the Changeling replied. “I only hear the stories from Thorax and others who have been.”
“Hm.” Gabby contemplated the question for a moment. “It’s not that different from anywhere else, I guess. I used to think ponies were so different from griffons, but I’ve come to realize that it’s more a matter of how we treat each other. That’s the difference. People just need to listen to each other more. I think you’d like Equestria, and I definitely know you’d get along with the Cutie Mark Crusaders.”
“Who are they? Some kind of elite guard unit? Like Shadow Patrol?”
Gabby chuckled. “No, not quite. I first met them when…”
Tibia cut her off by suddenly stopping in mid-air, hovering and holding a hoof out in front of her. A rumble could be heard in the distance. “See anything?”
The griffon, with her superior eyesight, scanned the area. “There!” She pointed, and Tibia saw the shaking tree in the distance.
She drew in her breath and continued to observe. The tall fir in the distance shook some more, before it suddenly popped out of sight below the canopy with the sound of snapping wood.
“Treefall?” Gabby asked.
Tibia remained silent, waiting, watching. She was about to call a false alarm when another evergreen went down in the distance with a mighty thud. “It’s him!” The Changeling Scout was off like an arrow before she’d even finished the words.
“Tibi, wait!” Gabby called out after her. “We’re supposed to report in before we go after it!”
“You find Pharynx and the others,” she shouted back over the air rushing past her, “I’m not letting the Red Shade get away from me this time!”
Then she dove down, through the treetops and out of sight. If Gabby said anything else, she didn’t hear it. The young scout pumped her wings, weaving between the trunks of ancient, undisturbed trees. It would cost her time, but it would also mask her approach. This time her prey wouldn’t be able to spot her and escape.
She drove on relentlessly, using her eyes to avoid the trees in the waning light and her ears to stay on course by following the sound of splintering wood.
“Gah!” Having to shield her eyes against the low sun when she came out of the cover of the forest, she stopped for a moment in what appeared to be a clearing. Only after her eyes had adjusted, did she realize that this wasn’t a natural clearing. There was a lane of fallen trees leading West. Tibia grinned.
A sudden crack from a new direction made her look up, and Tibia could see the bright glow from a magical flare in the sky, trailing a thin line of smoke behind it. It was the sign for the rest of Shadow Patrol to assemble. Gabby must have had found Pharynx, but that was the last thing on Tibia’s mind at that very moment.
“What are they thinking?” she cursed under her breath. “If he sees that, he’s going to get away again!”
She turned back towards the path and pressed on. Months of fruitless chasing and near misses pushed themselves towards the forefront of her thoughts. Not this time. She was the fastest flier in the Hive, and this time she wouldn’t let him get away, no matter what!
“Ahhh!!!” She screamed when a tree suddenly came down right across her path. Banking sharply, she hit the forest floor and came down in a tumble. “Oh,” she moaned, sitting up on her haunches and holding her head. Thankfully the soil had been soft and loamy, cushioning the worst of her fall.
She heard two slow thuds approach and, as her mind cleared, Tibia swallowed hard before turning around. What she saw, was not of this world.
“Esne saucius?”
The being that had posted the question was huge, towering almost as high as the ancient evergreens around it. Tibia had never seen anything like it. The closest approximation she could have given would have probably been a minotaur, at least its upper body down to the fact that it was bare-chested and rippling with muscles. But there was nary a hair on it, only glistening bronze skin. The being’s lower half was clad in a kind of laminar skirt and sandals. Bronze guards covered his forearms and right shoulder, and a tattered red scarf that may at one point have been a cloak hung around its shoulders and down its back. The head was encased in a bronze helmet, huge gashes and scratches from past battles visible along the sides and crowned by a large crest of red bristles, though it left parts of the mouth and nose exposed. And the eyes! Those red, glowing eyes! They had been right.
“Tu exaudi me? Tu loqueris?”
Tibia jumped at the low, booming voice. Only now did she realize that from the moment the chase started, she hadn’t once given a moment’s thought to what she would actually do once she came face to face with the Red Shade. “I … on the … uh … in the name of the Changeling Federation and King Thorax, I order you to stop and explain yourself,” she said shakily, getting back to her hooves.
“Hm?” The Shade simply stared at her, uncomprehending, with those eerie eyes.
She opened her mouth to say something else, but found that she couldn’t. She simply stared, right into those red eyes that seemed to be boring into her soul and laying bare primordial fears. Now she knew how a hare felt staring down a snake, or how ponies must have felt when staring down a Changeling warrior prior to the Reformation.
Something snapped, and a huge hand flashed towards her. Tibia stared, her legs giving out under her. “In Silentio Vigilo, In Umbris Confido. In Silentio Vigilo, In Umbris Confido. In Silentio Vigilo, In Umbris Confido,” she repeated over and over again, closing her eyes and waiting for the inevitable. “I’m sorry, Captain. In Silentio Vigilo, In Umbris Confido.”
There was a crunch, and still Tibia waited for the strike that would never come, shivering uncontrollably and hot tears forcing their way through her tightly shut eyelids to roll down her cheeks.
“Tu Latine loquis.”
She jumped at the voice, clenching her teeth and bracing herself. And once again, the blow never materialized.
Tibia opened her eyes with a sniffle, fighting away the tears of fear and forced herself to really look at her situation. Above her, a half-fallen tree was being held up by the huge hand she thought to be her doom a moment ago as the mysterious being loomed over her, eclipsing her in height despite kneeling down. She realized that, had the tree continued falling, she would have been right in the path of its fall. “You … you saved me?”
The Red Shade shouldered the tree aside and it fell to the ground a safe distance away. The red eyes seemed to pierce through her again. “Non potes adiuvare? Quaero meum amicum.”
The Changeling blinked. “Amicus? I know that word. It’s Ancient Changeling.” She reached out her hoof slowly, and the Red Shade looked at it. He, too, began to reach out.
“TIBIA!!!” The moment was broken when Pharynx’ scream thundered through the forest. Not long after, the Changeling Captain himself broke through the treeline at top speed, his eyes wide with fear of what he’d find. They narrowed instantly when he spotted the huge being hovering over his precious subordinate. “Get away from her, you monster!” he roared and changed into a dread maulwurf mid-flight.
The Red Shade barely had time to react as the giant animal crashed into him, tackling him into a nearby tree which didn’t last long under the onslaught of their combined weight.
He struggled to his feet, felling yet another fir in the process of hauling his massive weight up by grabbing it. “Horrida bellua!” The Red Shade balled his giant hand into a fist, and this time it did strike out in anger.
Pharynx stumbled backward from the hit to his body, but held his ground, protectively putting himself between Tibia and the enraged beast. He struck with his claws, finding his target and leaving some fresh marks on the bronze helmet. “That’s right! Pick on someone your own size for a change!”
“Tibia! Are you alright?” A breathless Gabby landed next to her while Gilda and Garble drew themselves up around them on either side.
“I’m fine,” she replied, her mind going a mile a minute. Pushing herself off the ground, she moved forward. “Captain! Stop!”
“Oi, what are you doing,” Garble asked when she sped past him. “Are you insane!?”
“Listen to him, kid,” Gilda also began to go after her. “Let the adults handle this!”
“Captain, you need to stop!” Tibia galloped forward towards the titanic struggle between the Red Shade and Pharynx in his maulwurf form as they grappled with each other, ignoring the calls from the others to stay away.
“Tell HIM that!” Pharynx grunted back.
“What was that word? What was that word?” Tibia thought back hard to her history lessons. Pharynx had made it a point to give her some education on the subject when it had become clear that the Shade was interested in old battlefields. “Pax!” she shouted, remembering the declaration that had ended the Changeling Civil War so many years ago, the Pax Mutara.
The Red Shade hesitated at hearing the word. Emboldened by the reaction, Tibia flew up between the two giant combatants, holding out her hooves and repeating the word. “Pax! Amicus!”
Pharynx stepped back slightly when he realized that the Shade had stopped attacking. “What’s going on?”
“Captain, change back to your regular form,” Tibia instructed while holding eye contact with the Red Shade whose attention was now squarely focused on her. “He wasn’t attacking me, he saved me. I think we can reason with him.”
Pharynx eyed the mountain of a being warily. “Are you sure?”
“Just trust me, please.”
“… I hope I don’t end up regretting this,” he mumbled but changed back to his natural from nonetheless.
“See?” Tibia gestured towards the other Changeling. “Amicus. Pax.”
“Amicus?” the giant rumbled.
“That’s right, he’s a friend,” Tibia replied. “Pax. Peace.”
“Is that … Ancient Changeling?” Pharynx asked, perplexed.
“Yes,” Tibia confirmed. “I only know a few words, but he seems to speak it.”
“Watch out!” Pharynx barked as the Red Shade once again put his hand forward.
“It’s alright,” she answered, moving forward and putting her hoof against the outstretched index finger of the strange being, and he didn’t make any aggressive moves in return. She pointed at herself. “Tibia,” she said, patting her chest and repeating for emphasis, “Tibia.”
“Tibia?” The Red Shade seemed confused for some reason.
“Pharynx,” she continued slowly, indicating her superior and in turn the rest of Shadow Patrol who had slowly taken to the air and approached cautiously. “Gilda, Gabriella, Garble.” Finally, she pointed at the Red Shade.
He seemed to get her meaning as he placed his free hand on his chest. “Mars,” he rumbled in response.
Tibia looked back towards Pharynx. “We can communicate with him. I don’t think he actually means anyone harm. All we need is someling who speaks Ancient Changeling.”
Pharynx eyed the Red Shade, or Mars as he’d introduced himself, realizing that deep down he wished the fight had just continued until one of them fell. This was shaping up to be much more of a headache than a straight-up battle. “I only know a couple of words myself.” He frowned. “But I know one Changeling nerdy enough to actually speak that dead language.”
“Who?”
“What do you think?”