//------------------------------// // Chapter 12 // Story: The Great Escape! // by Wheller //------------------------------// Chapter 12 Sprocket increased the speed of the train engine, pushing the throttle to the maximum as they all hopped off. The Internal Troops would be looking for it, so better that they left it behind. It was Viktor Karkov’s idea to send it off on its own, where it would inevitably crash into something else and cause even more property damage. Summer found that she did not care. She felt that her time with this little group of jailbirds was rapidly coming to a close. She looked over to TANTALUS, he looked back at her. ‘What are you planning to do from here?’ she asked, mostly to be polite. She didn’t really care, she only had room enough for one fixation in her mind. ‘I was sent on a mission from Prime Minister Twilight Sparkle to destroy an artefact that can control the minds of others. It’s exceedingly dangerous, and I happen to be able to destroy it,’ TANTALUS said, crossing his arms over his chest. This piqued Viktor Karkov’s interest. ‘Is by chance a strange leather-bound book?’ he asked. TANTALUS let out a gasp of surprise. ‘You know of the Tome of Alhazred?’ he asked. Viktor Karkov frowned and shook his head. ‘I do not know it by that name, but if it is a black leather book that radiates evil. It is in the private possession of Yuri Tasarov,’ he said. TANTALUS frowned and exhaled sharply through clenched teeth. ‘Of course, it is why am I not surprised? I’m starting to think that everything nasty in this world has his hooves on it.’ Summer was not particularly interested in this development. If TANTALUS wanted to go after Yuri Tasarov, then that was his business. Summer’s only concern was with the death of Madeline Wolsey. If Yuri got in the way again, Summer would not hesitate to kill him. He didn’t matter to her plans, though, and if he left her alone, then she would leave him alone. She turned and started to walk towards the tree line. ‘Where are you going?’ Sprocket called out to her, focusing those unnatural eyes on her. ‘I have some business to attend to,’ she said without looking back. ‘We’d be safer if we stayed together!’ Sprocket called out to her and moved to follow. Viktor Karkov stuck out his foreleg to stop him. ‘No. My friend that is a broken mare who only has one drive, it would not be right to try to dissuade her from her path,’ Karkov said simply. ‘Selfish if you ask me,’ TANTALUS said. ‘All we’re doing here is trying to save the world!’ he called out after her. This made Summer pause. She turned back to look at TANTALUS and stared at him for a full minute before positing her response. ‘Fuck the world,’ she said simply. ‘The ghost of Princess Fucking Luna can bring down the sky on this miserable fucking world, and I wouldn’t shed a tear for it. So long as I get a chance to put a bullet between Madeline Wolsey’s eyes first,’ she said and whirled around and galloped off into the treeline without a second look. ‘What now?’ TANTALUS asked, looking back at Viktor Karkov. Karkov smiled brightly at him. ‘I think I might just know where Yuri keeps it.’ ——— Stowing away in a cargo container in the port of Nagadan had been surprisingly easy. She’d only needed to slit the throats of ten guards to make it into one. Summer Lightfall sat on the floor of the half-empty cargo container, and she was unconcerned about what came next. The freighter rocked and rolled through the stormy seas of the Occidental Ocean, bound for the Twin Gryphon Kingdoms. Her plan was simple, she would sneak off the ship, and make her way to the Equestrian Republic embassy. She’d tell them everything, that she was Lance Corporal Summer Lightfall, she had been taken prisoner in 95 by the NKVD, and that she had been the sole survivor of the prison revolt at Nagadan, as far as she knew, and had escaped. That wasn’t a lie by any stretch of the imagination, TANTALUS was running off on some fool’s errand to destroy some stupid book, and Karkov, Sprocket, and Iron Will were going to help him. They were going to get killed. It was probable that they were already dead by this point. Yuri Tasarov clearly had some sort of mentalic power from his ability to put them into a trance that had kept them from interfering when he commanded Oleg Petrenko to attack her. Anyone in a right state of mind might have wondered why, if Yuri had such an impressive mentalic ability, he did not just use it on Summer to make her want to come back with him. Summer Lightfall had not been in a right state of mind for five years, so even though the thought had occurred to her, she discarded it immediately. She was close, so very close to completing her life’s ambition. She estimated that in a little more than a week, she would be back home, and Madeline Wolsey would be dead. Her thoughts turned to those she had lost. Her friends, ‘Cereal’ Wheatly, Colour Sergeant Gunmetal, Private Joker, all dead. Wheatly had been killed by Oleg Petrenko. She had avenged his death, so that had to account for something. It felt right that, given the circumstances, the entire platoon be wiped out. It would be a monument to the ineptitude of its officer. She had officially decided after she finished with Wolsey, she would turn the gun on herself. There wasn’t any reason to live anymore after that anyway. What else would happen? If she murdered Wolsey, the police would arrest her, and she would go to prison for the rest of her life. It would just be pointless. Yes, this was indeed the perfect plan. A thought occurred to her; it wasn’t enough that Wolsey would be killed. No, the world needed to know what a fraud Wolsey was first. Yes, she would make her confess her crime. Summer couldn’t help but smile. Everyone would see, Wolsey’s legacy would be ruined. Then they would die together. ‘Yes. Yes. Yessss.’ Summer spent the rest of the trip muttering happily to herself. ——— ‘Stack up!’ TANTALUS ordered and turned his head to look behind him to see if they would actually do it. Viktor Karkov took his place on the other side of the door frame, beside Sprocket, ready to cover them as they went in. Iron Will hefted his rifle in his one good hand and pointed it at the door, nodding that he was ready to go whenever they were. It was hard to believe that someone as outwardly critical of the “decadence of the Equestrian Republic” as Yuri Tasarov would live in such a big manor house, on what was clearly an estate from the time before the revolution had turned the old aristocratic Cossack Confederation into the state of the people that was the Unified Praesidium of Socialist Republics. Yuri couldn’t possibly spend much time in this place, in the middle of nowhere that it was when he worked in the NKVD offices in Petrograd. The house looked deserted, they would go in, burn the Tome of Alhazred, and get out. TANTALUS had lived the last hundred years knowing that he had failed Twilight Sparkle. She had trusted in him to find that damnable book and destroy it. It seemed like only yesterday that Twilight had called him into her office and asked him to hunt down the Tome and destroy it. The book had at one time seized control of Twilight’s mind, and almost destroyed the friendships that she had held most dear. All of it was coming ahead today, TANTALUS nodded to Iron Will, and the minotaur charged forward and kicked down the door. TANTALUS went in first and swept the room, followed shortly by Karkov. ‘Clear!’ TANTALUS called out. ‘Clear,’ Karkov agreed. Iron Will and Sprocket followed them in. TANTALUS looked over at Sprocket and nodded at him. The old-style ocular implants saw in thermal, so if there were anyone here, Sprocket would see their body heat first. Sprocket and TANTALUS moved in lockstep. Both of them took point as they crept slowly through the house. Everything had an extra thick layer of dust on it like no one had been here for quite some time. ‘Would have thought he would have had someone cleaning the place,’ Sprocket commented idly as they made their way up a staircase, into a hallway. Viktor pointed out a sign that pointed to a library. If the Tome were to be anywhere in this house, it would make sense for it to be there. They crept along the hallway, TANTALUS jumped as he stepped on a creaky floorboard, his heart began to race, could someone have heard them? No, that was silly, this place was deserted, the dust on everything proved it. TANTALUS shook his head and took a deep breath and pushed open the door to the library. There it was. TANTALUS would recognise that book anywhere. It sat on a small wooden pedestal in the centre of the room. ‘This feels too easy,’ Viktor said with a frown. ‘I would have thought something would have arrested our progress.’ TANTALUS couldn’t help but feel the same way, as he slowly approached the pedestal, they turned his head to look at Sprocket. ‘See anything?’ he asked. Sprocket did not get a chance to respond, TANTALUS glanced over at a bookshelf that was bathed in shadow, and Yuri Tasarov stepped out from it as if he had materialised from the shadow itself. Sprocket let out a scream. ‘He wasn’t there! I would have seen him if he’d been there a moment ago!’ he cried out. Viktor and Iron Will levelled their guns on Yuri, TANTALUS was about to, but he suddenly felt as if his arm was too heavy to hold up his pistol. His arm sank lower and lower, and he felt his hand go numb, and the gun dropped to the floor in a clatter. Yuri grinned at him and chuckled. ‘It was foolish for you to come here, Spike the Dragon. You cannot stop the will of the people.’ ‘You’ve never cared about anyone but yourself in your life!’ TANTALUS spat back at him. ‘What do you know is the will of the people?!’ Yuri merely shook his head. ‘You simply don’t understand. None of you ever did. That is what we call ourselves. We are The People before we were driven to near extinction by the ulix’ith’nail.’ ‘The what?’ TANTALUS asked, looking confused, but Yuri ignored him and pressed on. ‘The sinai called us Warlocks, and the ulix’ith’nail—the Others, you know them as—called us the Meccab, but we are The People! And I intend to make sure you remember it!’ Yuri said, his face began to melt and reform, his grey coat sloughed off and was replaced with sickly sallow skin, his legs split into a group of ten tentacles, and his body contorted into a round bulb with two onyx black eyes that looked like they could stare into your soul directly. Yuri reared himself up so that he balanced on the tentacles, raising him up to a height of three metres, he leered at them and shuffled forward. Iron Will charged, lowering his horns as if to skewer the monstrous creature, but those dark eyes narrowed on the minotaur. ‘Don’t be shy! Look them in the eye!’ Iron Will cried out and leapt into the air to drive his horns into the creature’s eyes. Iron Will suddenly burst into a thin red mist. His cybernetic pieces came crashing down to the floor in an untidy pile. Despite lacking a mouth, they could tell that Yuri was grinning, and he waved a tentacle back and forth in mock disapproval. ‘Now that that is out of the way,’ Yuri said. ‘I think that I am going to have a lot of fun with the rest of you.’