The Friendship Express was a dark rice grain at the edge of a supercell thunderstorm. Thick, cottony grey clouds were spreading out from the storm with abnormal speed, and the temperature inside the transport dipped sharply as the sunlight dimmed and vanished. Lightning flashed almost continuously from the anvil head to the lower layers of the cloud; even more strikes were taking place between the black, angry base and the rough ocean below.
As Trailblazer watched, a particularly intense series of strikes converged on a single spot on the water, then the electricity shifted to another spot for a few moments, before returning to its first target. He'd read about such things and seen the test footage from the trials of one of the Express' sister ships, the Diplomacy in Action, but this was the first time he'd experienced it, and it made a tingle run down his spine. Blevie had fallen asleep again, her head against his withers, so he turned to glance at Night.
The mare was looking much better, and she was watching the view with a critical eye, her horn glowing slightly as she sampled the local magical conditions. "Should you be doing that?" Trailblazer asked, placing his muzzle next to her ear to avoid the need to shout.
"It still hurts, but a little bit of light exercise does wonders. Just a few arcane stretches to work out the kinks." She nodded at the still tiny aircarrier. "Not that I need to do much with the amount of juice that thing is putting out."
Trailblazer found himself nodding in return. Like all pegasi, he had no real way to feel magic directly, but something about the clouds felt different. "At least they left the door open for us." Normally the aircarrier would have cloaked itself completely in cloud, but that added more excitement than was strictly necessary for what was only a test. You had to treat a powerful storm with respect; even with modern thaumic systems it wasn't always possible to prevent a microburst or errant lightning bolt from striking where you didn't want it. The Express had built itself a monster, but the crew knew not to rattle its cage too carelessly.
The view outside the door started to move as they came on final approach, gracing the ponies with a final glimpse of the edge of the storm cell, a bulging mass of cloud that looked more like hammered iron than something made from water droplets, glowing and flickering with internal discharges and curtained with torrential rain. In moments the scene was gone, replaced by the complex shapes of the aircarrier's portside fan cluster as the transport neatly slotted in through the rear door of the number one hangar.
Another moment and their aircraft had come to a rest, slotted into the powered transport tracks that snaked over the floor of the hangar deck. After a nod from the crew chief, the three FOALS jumped out of the open hatch and trotted away from the hazard zone and into the relative safety of the walkways next to the port wall. Their aircraft was pulled away with an electrical hum, leaving room for the pair of fighters that had been their unseen escort.
The Express and the Diplomacy were built to the same plan: a basic tapered cylinder with hangars in the lower spaces. Number one hangar extended the length of the Express and was open at both ends to allow aircraft to land and launch at the same time. Numbers two and three occupied the midsection of the cylinder, like panniers on a pony, holding the Loup-Garou multi-role fighters on their thaumokinetic launch rails. With the new powered taxi systems attached to each aircraft, there were no delays waiting for each fighter to be placed on the launcher, instead the airboss could get all forty-eight airborne in less than a hundred seconds.
Waiting for their escort, Trailblazer looked on appreciatively as the first Loup-Garou flew neatly through the opening, its wings half furled and in constant motion as the pilot made the tricky transition from fast free air to the slow 'bubble' that filled the hangar. During combat operations number one hangar would be kept clear of all but the minimum number of workponies; with the aircarrier at full speed the inside of the hangar was a literal wind tunnel, the walls slick and featureless apart from the track system, and designed to produce smooth flow throughout the volume. Ironically, this made it far easier to land when the Express was living up to her name.
Trailblazer watched as the fighter was pulled through the big doors about halfway down the deck, ready for loading back on the launch track in hangar two, when there was a polite cough level with his hindquarters. Starting, he wheeled sharply, coming muzzle to muzzle with a slightly embarrassed crewpony.
"Apologies, Captain. I didn't mean to startle you," the earth pony, a piebald stallion of late-middle years, said with a slight smile. "It's quite a view, isn't it? Fairbairn Sykes, FOAL liaison. The internal notification system is down, otherwise I'd have been here to greet you."
"Quite alright, sir," Trailblazer said, with a tap of his hooves that the other swiftly returned. "It's been a few years since I've been on a ship of the line. The Express was still under construction when we were sent to Razorclaw." He knew this stallion; every FOAL knew Fairbairn Sykes. Four decades ago, his team had been the ones to discover that the Changelings, under the latest incarnation of their Queen, had been breeding at far over their treaty-sanctioned rates, amassing an army that would have been horribly difficult to root out if it had gotten into the general population.
...and that had been exactly what had happened. The Queen had chosen, not Equestria, but the Crystal Empire, as her first target. By the time anypony had found out what was going on, a significant proportion of the ponies had been duplicated, their bodies spirited away and replaced by Changeling drones.
The story of Fairbairn Sykes' escape with the vital information was the stuff of legend, and was still required reading at the Academy. This was just the worst in a series of attacks and treaty violations spanning centuries; only on this occasion there was no time to gather the usual multispecies coalition of conventional forces to respond. The end result was what everypony had known was coming, sooner or later. As was their right, Celestia and Luna acted to remove the threat; by the time the day was over the Changeling lands were dotted with impact craters and lakes of glass that took months to fully cool, and the Empire was no more.
Cadance had fallen with her people, one of the first targets of the Queen's improved tactics, the memory of her and the Empire the subject of memorials dotted about Equestria.
The sunsets had been fantastic from all the dust injected into the upper atmosphere, but the main fallout had been political. Despite that the Changeling threat was well known and had been dealt with many times before, there was nothing quite like having really visible evidence that your nearest neighbours were best friends with beings able to cause that much devastation on a whim. Populations soon forgot the original threat, remembering only what was done to defeat it.
Whispered conversations in every forest, field, city and aerie held the same refrain: If they would do that to their own kind, what's to stop them doing it to us? The world was now a more dangerous place, as every polity quietly tried to build something it could use as a deterrent.
Sykes frowned. "Nasty business, in Razorclaw. Come on, we'll get your team settled, although Intel wants to debrief you as quickly as possible." The stallion opened a small hatch and started walking down the corridor. "Any idea what set it all off?"
"It was very strange, sir. Generally we got on quite well with the locals, although there was always a few groups who didn't like us... then one morning the whole place went mad."
"Still, excellent job you all did, getting that many civilians out. Impressive, no question." Sykes swept his gaze over the three FOALs, nodding sharply.
Trailblazer felt a quiet glow of pride, but was careful not to let more than a polite smile actually reach his face. "Thank you, sir. That's appreciated, but a lot of credit should go to the Dreaming's security detail. This is our job, but they never signed on for a combat mission. I plan to put their names forward for honours."
"Quite so." Sykes nodded again, then gestured at the hatch they were just approaching. "This is your stop, Captain. The reward for a job well done, and all that."
Trailblazer sighed, pushing open the hatch. Inside was a compact meeting room, with a half dozen ponies working around a central map table, making adjustments to a little holographic model of Razorclaw city. His heart sank and he fought to keep a grimace off his face. Let me go hoof to paw with a manticore, he thought, I guess this is the price I pay for that afternoon in the sun. He turned and nodded to Sykes and the rest of his team, who were busy trying to keep smiles off their muzzles. You'll get yours, soon enough.
Keeping his ears erect and a spring in his step, Trailblazer walked into the room, the hatch closing behind him with a solid-sounding clunk.
Celestia save me.
===
Since Libi had been swallowed by the maelstrom that had overtaken Razorclaw, Neighmann had taken to living out of his office. He plodded the few hundred metres to the main facility, mind full of a yawning emptiness. The sun was up, but seemed to hold no warmth, despite it being the middle of summer. Neighmann knew that the cold was in his bones. No amount of heat seemed able to thaw that core of ice that had developed in his belly after he'd spoken to Libi's manager, Cinnamon.
Nodding mechanically to the Guard -- the Princesses had decided that, as this was their own pet project, they could have their own ponies on site -- Neighmann went through the side door and into the main facility.
Not many ponies were up at this hour, and this was the way Neighmann normally liked to start the day. As he had grown older, he'd become more and more of a morning pony; it wasn't uncommon for him to rise before Celestia. This time he hadn’t slept at all, his mind continually sifting through the meagre information available, searching for some overlooked fact or inference that would give him a sign that Libi was still alive. When the sun rose he was still wide awake and desperate for something to distract himself from the waking nightmare.
Trotting through the security barriers, the powered doors opening at the delicate touch of his magic, he bypassed his workstation completely and went into the Monster Room. That wasn't its real name -- officially it was 'containment bay one' -- but everypony called it the Monster Room. A shallow amphitheatre, with concentric circles of instrumentation surrounding a central dais, it was a more finished version of the setup they'd built in the statue garden of the Royal Palace.
The outer row of workstations sat behind panels of what looked like slightly tinted thick glass, although they were actually single crystals of artificial sapphire, the aluminium oxide doped with very specific lanthanides and holding a series of complex enchantments. They had been horrifically expensive to make and required hundreds of unicorn-hours each to enchant, but the result was a barrier that could stop a hit from a tank railgun and at least slow down some of the more vile magics that the Chaos Group's research mages had devised.
I wonder if it will make any difference at all? Neighmann thought, not really caring one way or the other. The only really worthwhile test was the one nopony wanted to make. The Princesses had given their approval for the effort, but when he'd asked Luna after the opening ceremony, she'd just shrugged.
Inside that were arrays of delicate and sensitive electronic instruments: high definition multispectral cameras, interferometers to monitor the slightest movement or change in shape, and things to detect gravity waves, radiation, change in the charge on the electron or the value of pi. Interspersed with the mundane equipment was the arcane: carefully shaped arrangements of gems and crystals containing a multitude of spellcraft systems, things designed to detect the slightest and most subtle of enchantments. They'd practically taken over the Fancypant's Canterlot R&D facility to make that order.
All of this information was collected and fed back to the computer farm that sat several kilometres away in its own shielded bunker, but the most important part of the Monster Room sat in the open space surrounding the dais. The metal boxes he'd seen before were now part of the floor, sunk deep into the concrete so that all could be seen of each was a brushed steel square, about a metre on a side. Not quite featureless; whoever had made the things had carved a subtle but historically significant pattern into each: butterflies, gems, an apple, and so on.
Neighmann walked slowly down the ramp that cut its way through the equipment, ignoring everything except for the thing that was at the centre of it all. Discord, the original monster, the worm in the apple of Equestria. The 'statue' towered over him, a strange mishmash of parts taken from all over the animal kingdom. The first thing they'd done was remove the thin layer of concrete, giving the instruments a direct view of the figure. Without that artificial skin, the odd temporal effects had become apparent -- if you waved a hoof over him, the movement of your shadow was curiously delayed, the light taking far too long to travel the tiny distance through the thickness of the spell's effect.
Coarse brown fur, big yellow eyes and wings of contrasting colour and shape; Discord made the eye twitch with the effort of trying to impose logic to his form. He looked like a clown, or the product of a taxidermist’s LSD fueled binge… but only until you knew what he had done. "Why did I make you go, Libi?" Neighmann said, dropping to his belly on the cold floor and staring up at that distorted head with its uneven eyes. "Are you going to destroy everything I hold dear, even before you wake up?"
The statue kept its own council. Neighmann stared into the mismatched yellow eyes; there was something about it that gave him the creeps, over and above the malignant intelligence that lurked behind the shield of relativistic space-time. Perhaps it was the light -- the ring of lamps cast strange, multiple shadows across his coat -- but the expression of fear on Discord's face appeared to have a mocking quality. It wasn't so much the look of a creature being blasted by the most powerful magic Equestria could bring to bear, but that of someone making a parody of one.
The ice in Neighmann's belly spread to his legs, and he found himself unable to break the creature's gaze. Much had been said of Discord's manipulative powers, and even vastly slowed there seemed to be something still there, looking out at a world that blurred and buzzed far faster than anything he could imagine. Tears started to roll down his muzzle and his eyes started to burn. The muscles of his neck knotted, fighting for control of his head. You fool, he screamed, the words going no further than the inside of his own skull, this is why it's a three pony minimum in the Monster Room.
Over the roaring in his head, Neighmann heard a gasp, then the sudden rapid beat of hooves at the gallop, then a wall of chestnut fur stepped into his line of sight. His body twisted, trying to regain eye contact, but none of the muscles responded correctly and he just toppled over sideways. Warm feathers wrapped around his head, while a quiet voice started singing a foal's lullaby in his ear, and slowly Neighmann's screaming muscles relaxed.
"T-thank you, Neon. I've been so stupid."
His assistant sighed. "Yes, you have. I'm sorry about Libi -- I take it there's nothing useful coming out of Razorclaw?"
Neighmann choked back a sob, then cleared his throat and pulled away from Neon. "No," he said dully. "The military is heading out there, but they won't intervene unless the gryphons step outside their borders. I'll have to wait until it all calms down before I even know if she's--" He flinched and swallowed heavily, his ears folding back.
"Come on; let's get you away from this thing." She put her head under his shoulder and started to lever him upright. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Neighmann climbed heavily to his hooves, starting up the ramp with a reluctant, dragging walk. "Not really, but I probably should." By the doors leading out of the Monster Room was an uncertain-looking white pegasus in gold armour; at a nod from Neon he backed off, disappearing down the corridor leading to the outside world. "Is that how you found me?"
"I asked Silver Star to call me if he saw you going into the facility too early. I'd rather you stayed at home, to be honest."
"Can't go home; it's too empty. Too much space to think."
Neon was silent as they went through the heavy door to the outer circle of workstations, then nudged Neighmann into one of the padded conference niches that were dotted about the ring, purposely placing him with his back to the statue. Another moment and the mare had placed two wide bowls of black lemon tea between them. The aromatic steam made Neighmann's nose twitch, and some semblance of life re-entered his eyes.
"Hot, with plenty of sugar. Tea is the best remedy in the world for situations like this. Talk and drink, but mostly talk. I'll listen." She dipped her muzzle into the dark golden liquid, taking a tiny sip, while looking up at him with sympathetic eyes.
Knowing there was no escape, Neighmann started to talk, hesitantly at first, then, after some more prodding from Neon, with greater confidence. By the time he had finished, drink untouched, his voice was rough but at least held some animation. There was still a lot of dread there, hidden in the deeper layers of his mind, but he could now manage it, lock it away and let it bleed and diffuse into the void without it paralysing him.
Eventually he ran dry, and lay there staring into Neon's chocolate brown eyes for a long moment before looking away, embarrassed. "Thank you, Neon. That was above and beyond the call of duty."
"Don't talk rubbish, I'm your friend. It's what I'm here for."
"Even so," he muttered, picking up both bowls of now cold tea in a haze of yellow magic and placing them in the recycler. His ears twitched; there were sounds of another pony walking down the corridor. "I'd like to keep busy... shall we start by looking at today's data." Neighmann kept a neutral expression on his face and his tone bland. "This experiment may prove useful to assess our detection systems."
"Busy it is, boss," Neon replied with a grin. "First on the list was recompiling the chaos plot, now that we've got his lordship fully in place, but that sounds like a better idea. I'd like to run a repeat, but the ethics board might object." The smile faded and she looked thoughtful. "I'm a little disappointed that the breakout alarm didn't even murmur." She turned to the nearest display, telling the computer who she was and calling up the mathematical models Neighmann had spent the last decade building and refining.
"Right," Neighmann said, "let's start with the raw data for this area. Those qubit decoherence devices looked promising, so we'll go with those."
He dove into his work, successfully distracted, at least for a little while.
===
"Well, I don't know what's wrong with it," the earth pony, a steel gray stallion with a straggly, white-streaked mane, said. He reached out and tapped the cryostat with one hoof, listening thoughtfully to the dull clank of the metal vessel. "They are all hoof-built, and every one is a little different, but I've never heard of them being too stable. Normally it's a fight to get the things to stay coherent for more than a few seconds; we've got this one up to..." He waved the same hoof through a near-by terminal's input volume, calling up a report. "...over a minute, with luck."
The component parts of the sensor were strewn over a polished metal worktable, the brassy coils and plates gleaming dully under the spotlights. Everypony stared at the core of the device, a carefully engineered fragment of semiconductor no bigger than a tooth. "The original tests were very promising, that's why we ordered a half dozen. Perhaps some subtle flaw that's only manifested after the time they were in storage?" Neon said, holding her breath and leaning closer.
The technician winced, then sighed with relief when Neon stepped back. "It's not impossible. The early models had issues with atomic drift through the quantum dot boundary layers, but that would cause fast decoherence, not slow." He bent down and placed his muzzle into the control interface, coming back up with the device firmly in his teeth. Waving Neighmann and Neon back and mumbling something indistinct about charging spectators extra, he twitched his lips and tongue, activating the robotic assistance rig suspended over the table.
More twitches -- the technician looked like he was trying to eat a particularly reluctant carrot -- the quantum computer heart of the sensor was removed and placed into the electron microscope mounted next to the bench. Spitting out the control interface, he turned to stare at his onlookers with a disapproving glare. "I suspect it's the readout systems in the substrate; they are probably reporting garbage. I'll pull this one apart and see if there are any flaws, but it will take time. Come back tomorrow." With that he turned his back on them, kicking out with one hoof to turn on the vacuum pump, and settled down to wait for his instrument to become ready.
After all that, was it all in my head? Neightmann sighed, then exchanged a fleeting grin with Neon, and they both left the technician to his domain.
===
Walking back between the buildings, Neighmann found his mood falling as fast as the night was creeping across the land. The vast majority of staff had already gone home for the night, leaving only those totally dedicated to their work. ...or those with nopony to go home to, he completed the thought. Reluctantly he picked the path leading back towards his office and the cramped sleeping pad he kept in one corner.
Neon nudged him on the shoulder, jolting him out of his reverie. "Not that way, come with me."
"Sorry?" he said, brow wrinkling in confusion.
"I think you need a break from this place, and you shouldn't really be alone at a time like this. You can sleep at my place." She saw the look on his face and smiled. "Not attractive enough of an offer, huh? Or if sleep's going to be hard to come by, how about shouting at a few bad science-fiction films?"
"The recent crop has been pretty poor," he said weakly, almost in tears over the unexpected offer. "I'd be delighted."
"That's the spirit! There's nothing like righteous anger after a trying day. I'd suggest we start with 'Canterlot Has Fallen', a film that has to be seen to be believed."
===
"Another one?" Captain Spinnaker said wearily, her wings drooping slightly as the injured Night Stick approached him, chief purser in tow.
"I'm afraid so, ma'm," Night Stick said, limping slightly as her steps aggravated the recent gunshot wound to her right wingshoulder.
Spinnaker closed his eyes. "What was it this time?"
"Somepony had been spreading rumours about that Shredder, and how easy it would be to down the Dreaming. They want off this airship as fast as possible."
The Captain stole a glance at the airspeed indicator, already five percent higher than the maximum permitted under the company’s safety policy. "I take it they were told we're going as fast as possible?"
"Yes ma'm. Unfortunately that didn't seem to calm things much."
The Purser, a grizzled unicorn fast approaching retirement, cleared his throat nervously. "That's a bit of an understatement. I've had at least a dozen fights between passengers and my stewards. Most have been little more than shoving matches, but the last one put Lemon Grass in the infirmary, while the pony who was with her can't be found at all." He looked uncertainly at Night Stick for support.
"Nothing too sinister, we think, but Jackstaff was a pegasus and his personal effects are missing. Personally I think he's another deserter -- there are just too many hatches being vandalised for the engineers to keep up, especially with the harassment from the passengers. I only hope he took his keys with him, because we can't find those, either."
"That's what... the fifteenth?" Spinnaker said, ruffling her wings in agitation. "Surely they can't all have panicked... most of them are ponies with years of experience. Any theories?"
"There is something of a pattern," Night Stick said slowly. "Since I'm no use on patrol at the moment, I've put some thought into this. It's not just the pegasi, but all ponies who have the most contact with the passengers. The pegasi can just leave, now we've made Equestria landfall; with the other clades it manifests as increased absenteeism and a more general reduction in efficiency."
"Some kind of disease?" the Captain said sharply. "I thought the medics had cleared those we picked up from Razorclaw."
"They did, the doctor swears blind that there's nothing wrong with them other than physical injuries, and I believe him. There aren't many bugs that can jump the species barrier, and none at all that cause this... madness. I think it's an odd kind of panic -- we're overcrowded, loaded with the injured and just escaping from a hostile power; you know how confined herds can react in extreme ways."
Spinnaker nodded slowly. Makes sense, she thought, I can feel a little of it myself. The Dreaming feels... ugly, somehow. She loved the airship, had been its master since the maiden voyage almost a decade ago, and this strange, slow-motion disaster made her want to weep. "What do you recommend?"
Night Stick shrugged. "I've talked this over with Tiller," he said, waving his uninjured wing at the Purser, "and we're both in agreement. You need to seal off the bridge and engineering, protect the critical areas in case any of the passengers--"
"Or crew," Tiller broke in, ears drooping slightly.
"--try to take matters into their own hooves. Those areas are off-limits anyway, we just need to reinforce them a little."
"It's only another day to the landing field, I've received clearance to make a direct overflight, rather than the normal course. I did suggest landing at one of the closer fields, but they said medical facilities were better at Canterlot."
Night Stick breathed a sigh of relief. "That's something, at least. I'm just glad we managed to get the most critically wounded off in the Express' transports before things got so bad. Even with the extra medics they flew in the medical bay is over capacity... and those staff have the highest dropout rates of any of the crew."