//------------------------------// // Chapter 47: Fated Siege // Story: Luna is a Harsh Mistress // by Starscribe //------------------------------// “You really plan on doing this?” Silver looked up from his charcoal drawing, several sheets of parchment scattering around him. He winced at the thought of putting them all back in order, then slowly spun around to face the speaker. Magpie, obviously. Nopony else would leave their posts, not with an attack potentially coming any second. He turned, and sure enough there she was in the doorway. She hadn’t removed her armor—who would, with an enemy at the gates? But she didn’t have a rifle nearby anymore. You sure are good at using that thing for a creature who just spent centuries wandering the surface of the moon like a vagabond. “What other choice do we have? If we don’t seem willing to carry out the threat, it doesn’t mean anything. They win, thousands of ponies die.” She stopped beside him, gathering up several sheets of parchment. She skimmed over their contents, muttering quietly to herself as she did so. Right, she can read runes. I almost forgot that. “This is… you weren’t bucking with them. You’re really going to rip out the airlock.” He took the pile from her, returning it to its careful circle around the doorway. “I don’t want to. I think it’s more likely we’ll have to open it for a bit and scare them. Waste some air…” She rested a hoof on his shoulder, entirely silent. She stayed that way for almost a minute before finally saying anything. “If it comes to it, will you really kill everypony in the city? All those wealthy Purples and Greens up in their skytowers, working for the army? Their wives and foals who don’t know a damn thing about us?” “Some part of me wishes I was willing. To just… drain the whole city and start over, the way some of these ponies want. But… no, I couldn’t. Flint and the Lord Regent need to think I would. But I couldn’t be like them. If I did that, I wouldn’t really be any better, would I? The same kind of murderer, just with different motivations. How is that better for Moonrise?” Magpie relaxed, letting go of him at last. “That’s good. I was getting worried about you. Honestly, Silver, being an evil murderer just wouldn’t suit you. I’ve seen how badly you shoot. I, uh… don’t suppose this is a good time to mention how you’ve challenged Flint to a duel to the death. Even if she takes it, and this whole plan pays off somehow… you realize she’s been training her whole life, right?” He settled the charcoal down in front of him, looking grim. “So have I, Magpie. Not some puffed up, formal way of pretending I’m better than everypony else. Down in the dirt, creatures fight dirty. They gouge out your eyes, they bite, they kick sand, then cast dark spells. Flint might’ve spent her whole life training, but she has no idea what’s waiting for her. It’s the world she created, it’s only fair it destroys her in the end.” A set of hooves pounded down the hall, echoing loud enough that Silver turned. He knew what this would be, but that didn’t make it any less difficult. Here we go. I hope we’re ready. He didn’t feel terribly ready, despite his bravado. It would be so much easier if it wasn’t just my life at risk. I could fight for myself, maybe win, maybe lose. But fighting for the whole city? He could still remember being a pony who just wanted enough to eat and somewhere warm to sleep at night. Was it his fault that all of Moonrise was falling apart? No, don’t be stupid. They invited this, they practically demanded it. The whole city will keep running down if you don’t do something. There’s no invasion of Equestria coming. Only starvation, suffocation, and death. Fog Bank rushed into the room, skidding to a halt on the polished stone. “S-Silver! There’s… I think they’re coming! Looks like… half the army is getting ready to march. They’re all lining up and everything.” Buck. They thought he was bluffing, and Flint planned on calling it. “In the middle of the night?” Magpie asked, eyes wide. “They have enough cold-weather gear for that? Isn’t it… freezing?” She reached up, touching her face with a gloved hoof. “I can’t tell.” “Yes,” Fog said. “It won’t be warm again for nine days, m-maybe ten. I lost track of time when they just… left us out to freeze.” “Run back where you came, Fog,” Silver instructed. “Tell everypony to hold onto something and don’t stand in any doorways. It’s about to get windy outside.” She nodded, eyes wide with horror. “We’re… really going to do it? Just open the city to space?” He nodded grimly. “Hopefully not for too long. We won’t destroy the door, but it’s still opening. They didn’t give us a choice.” Silver gestured through the heavy outer door, already open. “Magpie, will you help me? I don’t think I’m strong enough to do this alone.” “I was wondering about that,” Magpie said, following him. “You, uh… I know you grew up in the dirt, but you know how much pressure is on that outer door, right? There’s… a lot. Isn’t the whole point of an airlock to pump the air out so the door even works?” Well that’s part of the point. We don’t usually want our precious air and heat escaping into nothingness. “I know,” he countered, annoyed. “I’ve already thought about that. Put your helmet on.” He led the way, actually sealing his air armor. It wouldn’t matter too much if Magpie’s was wrong, she didn’t need to breathe. But Silver very much did. They passed into the airlock tunnel, through the outer door covered in half-finished explosive runes. I probably should’ve used paint. That charcoal won’t be there in a second. They stopped in front of the outer door, a round section of steel set into huge gearing and connected to a mechanical crank on the floor. Even with all those screws and gears, they wouldn’t have a prayer. “You really think a pony made of glass and a half-starved unicorn are going to get this open?” “Yes. Just… give me a second to cast the spell.” It was nothing new—he had almost a month of practice with the air shield now, and could cast with enough skill to precisely measure where the spell would end. In this case, the inner door already waiting fully opened. There was little visual difference. With air on all sides of the bubble, there was nothing to see. Another unicorn would’ve sensed it, but Magpie wasn’t a unicorn. “What are you waiting for?” He walked over to the controls, then switched on the pump. A loud hissing filled the space around them, along with a little line of text in Silver’s field of view. “Decompression in progress.” Magpie’s head jerked around, momentarily dumbfounded. Then she seemed to realize, and she smiled at him. “Oh. You’re… damn. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.” He looked away, so she couldn’t see his smug smile. “Probably because you’re not a unicorn. I’ve heard that pegasus and bats think in three dimensions instead of two, because they’re always moving through the air. But I don’t, because I can’t fly.” They had precious little time. Every second spent waiting for the decompression was another waiting in agony. Just how stupid was the enemy? Would they have enough time to intimidate them into giving up, or would they just rush for the airlock and try to shut it on their own? Finally the hissing stopped, and Silver approached the much larger crank. “Push with me?” She did. A sliver of absolute darkness appeared on the other side, then the first flicker of starlight. A concrete floor covered with lunar dust was outside, along with plenty of discarded carts and tools. They were entirely undisturbed at first, as they pushed the door as far open as it would go. Nearly twice his height, and just as wide. Enough for a cargo cart to travel through without obstruction. “Now we stand back,” Silver said. “And… probably hold onto something. This has never been done before.” Silver kept the bubble in place, keeping most of his concentration on the spell. He had to walk slowly to move at the same time, passing through the edge of the bubble and back into the air. He stepped to the side of the room, securing his rifle under the desk and bracing his forelegs against it. “There’s… some chance the princess kills me for this,” he said, mostly to himself. “But if I don’t, it’s a guarantee that Flint kills all of us. We have to take the death that might come over the one that will, eh?” Magpie wrapped one hoof around his shoulder, squeezing tight. “You’re a brave pony, Silver. If this insanity works… they’re going to build a statue of you. Not me, though. I’m already a statue. Maybe you can be one too, eh?” Silver gritted his teeth together, then released the spell. Thousands of tons of air suddenly found nothing at all holding it back from the gulf of space. A roar echoed through the room around them, loud enough that Silver might’ve gone deaf the instant he heard it. Dust and bits of paper pinned to the walls all went ripping past him, sucked out the massive opening into the void beyond. In a single moment, the air in their perfectly still little corner turned into a hurricane. He shuddered and rocked in the torrent, bracing one leg against the desk and holding Magpie firmly against him with the other. But his instinct to just wait out the disaster wasn’t helpful here. The storm didn’t stop, or even slow down. Air kept rushing past him, fast enough that he could barely hear Magpie’s voice between their helmets, even with the magic of the Alicorns sending it. “Is this what you expected, Silver? Seems like… we’re losing a lot of air!” “We are!” he called back, finally rising to his hooves. A light pegasus in their room might very well be swept out and lost to the void, but he wasn’t that light. Magpie might be small, but now she was even denser than he was, and the wind didn’t so much as budge her. “That’s the point! They have to know… we can do what we say! Now we… have to get out there! Give them a chance to surrender! Otherwise…”    If they attacked now, it was all over. The army would win, his ponies would die, and they’d probably get the door shut before any permanent damage was done to Moonrise. Unless they understand the airlocks as well as they seem to understand everything else. Maybe the army doesn’t know how to close them. At first Silver crawled through the room, keeping his body pressed up against the wall. But after a short distance, it became obvious to him that path was doomed. He closed his eyes, and teleported forward through a few intervening walls, dragging Magpie along for the ride. They appeared just behind the barricade, where Silver’s ponies held off in the same place as the old soldiers had waited. With a few big guns, and a few more sandbags. Dust and snow blasted past them, enough that the room seemed swallowed by a fog. A fog that his soldiers had to shelter their eyes from, lest they be blinded. Silver’s horn was already feeling sore from all this rapid spellcasting, but considering what he might be about to lose… he covered the barricade with another air-shield, this time the simpler kind centered on him.  The terrible roar became distant, like they’d stepped into a little tin building. A layer of dust and debris collected on the edge of the shield, bouncing past. But they were out of the shortest path to the exit, so there was no reason to linger with them too long. “That’s it,” Silver declared. “As you can tell. But now… we might want to go outside. We could probably take a few shots from the roof before the army reaches the gates.” “What do we have left?” Nidus lifted his fallen weapon anyway. The same one he’d used to lead their captured soldiers away. “You destroyed the door? We don’t have anything left to negotiate with.” “I didn’t destroy it. I just opened it, as soon as Flint disobeyed. I’m going to… I was hoping to send an envoy. To remind her that she still has a chance to comply. I would go myself, but that will make the request seem petty. She needs to think of me as a pony worthy of respect, but also one she can easily defeat. That means sending someone.” For a few seconds there was silence, except for the roar of wind just outside the air-shield. Finally Rictus stepped forward. “I don’t know, uh… I don’t know why they didn’t find my name when they were getting rid of ponies earlier. But they should’ve. It’s been borrowed time since then.” He reached out, clasping Silver on the shoulder. “What’s the message?” “I can still shut the door. But if she comes to the gates with anyone but herself and the witnesses I requested, I’ll destroy it before she can reach the door. I’ll blow it so wide that no unicorn could hold the air in. Tell her that.” Rictus nodded gravely, then let go. “I’ll do it, you… absolute mad pony. But if I don’t come back, just… make the new world better than the old one. Promise there won’t be any damn colors.” Silver nodded. “No colors, promise. Or leaving people to freeze in the cold, or letting them starve when they’re too sick to work. None of that.” They followed Rictus to the front of the building, though they didn’t travel much further. The outside was… well, he should’ve expected the chaos waiting outside. A great cloud of dirt, dust, and hoof-sized debris were swept along at terrifying speeds, banging into the outside of his air-shield before smashing against the building. It was impossible to see more than a few meters before the chaos swallowed everything. I wonder if we finally got your attention. What are you thinking right now in your skytowers, drinking wine beside your personal heat-vents? Did we finally get your attention? Will you take us seriously now? “How long until nopony can breathe?” Magpie asked. Her voice would be muffled by the helmet to the others, though in the same bubble they would probably still understand her. “You said it would take hours for all the air to get sucked out, but ponies start dying before that, don’t they?” He shrugged. “I… don’t know. You’re getting into math now. I’d need to know the size of the cavern, the pressure of the air… and probably more I can’t think of. My father didn’t get to subjects that advanced before they executed him.” That silenced her, and any investigation from the rest of his ponies besides. “This decision is theirs, anyway. Flint gets to decide when it stops. Either they meet our demands, or… we leave it open.” He spoke so loudly that his voice echoed inside his helmet. But that didn’t matter if the audience could hear him clearly. So far, it seemed they could. They weren’t kept waiting for long. Silver tensed as the first pony shapes emerged from the fog, but his fears that it was an attacking army were in vain. There were only half a dozen figures here, towering soldiers with bodies well fed since their earliest years, wearing air-armor except for their faces. Similar to what Silver’s own ponies had done. They slowed as they neared the building, holding weapons close. “Don’t shoot,” Silver ordered. His mob were already drawing their own guns. Half of them probably didn’t even know how to shoot them. But Silver himself wasn’t much better. “We wanted this. If you attack them now, our compromise is ruined. Keep your guns ready, watch them for betrayal, but don’t shoot unless they do first. If you do, my Voidseeker will kill you, not them. Isn’t that right, Magpie?” “I’ll what? I’ll… yeah! Fear the pony made of glass. I’m sharper than any knife you’ve ever seen.” Silver stepped forward, past the protection of his soldiers. “Get ready to lose your shield!” he yelled back. “Hold onto something.” He held still, then banished the spell. The terrible roar returned, along with a constant battering against his air-armor. But the Alicorn construction was tough, and he couldn’t even feel it. It was only the noise as he crossed towards the group. He didn’t actually have earth pony strength to resist the wind, but the suit was a decent substitute. He stopped half a dozen paces away, close enough that he could get a good look at the enemy. One of them looked different than the others—his armor was silvery metal, and seemed to radiate the shimmer of moonlight rather than just reflecting Silver’s suit. The stallion wearing it seemed chiseled from white marble, with deep red eyes and fury on his face. Lord Regent. He came in person. Silver wasn’t ready, he needed to prepare! There were spells to write, research to do… he couldn’t fight that pony yet! But it wasn’t the Lord Regent who stepped forward. Another pony—smaller, though in air-armor she wasn’t much smaller than Silver—advanced from the crowd. Her mane was too short to be whipped about in the storm, her eyes covered by Dustwalker goggles. A gigantic mace was strapped to the back of her air-armor, which was made as much from steel as flexible resin. In her case, it really was armor. “You’re the source of this,” she barked. “Not rotting in the fungal cavern with the rest?” “It was fight or die, Flint,” he spat. “You created this. Did you expect ponies to curl up and die?” She tensed, one hoof briefly twitching towards her back. But she didn’t draw her weapon. “I expected them to do their duty. The strong would have survived, and the weak would be removed from the population. Moonrise doesn’t have the food to squander on those who can’t provide. Now, shut the door. Stop the air before we all die.” “Do you agree to my challenge?” he countered. “Before these witnesses?” She laughed. “I see the way your ponies hold their weapons, child. The six of us could cut them down and reach the door. We don’t need your permission. Obey, and I will grant you all a quick death. It’s more than you deserve.” It was his turn to laugh, with every drop of contempt he could. “Try it. But before you do, I suggest you look at the mounted guns on the roof. Maybe these ponies miss with a dozen bullets, but do you think we can miss with a thousand?” Before Flint could answer, a louder voice boomed from behind her. Despite the noise, apparently the Lord Regent could hear. “Accept the challenge, Flint. He has already killed half a dozen of your ponies—honor demands it. Pony, who are you? What is your name?” “Silver Star,” he called back, hopefully just as loud. “Order your ponies to surrender when you lose the duel, and send one inside to end this madness. You will have no need of it if you win.” Silver nodded. He’d been expecting something like this, and it made sense. Letting the air drain away while they fought would only be hurting the citizens of Moonrise. He took a few steps back, then invoked a far simpler spell, making his voice roar over the wind for his soldiers to hear. “Run to the baricade and shut the airlock! If I fall, you must surrender this building to the army. Those are our terms!”  He turned back; expression flat. “Good enough?” “Fine,” Rockshanks said, unhappy. “Kill him quickly, Flint. End this.”