//------------------------------//
// 5 - Blood Moon 
// Story: Secrets in The Stars 
// by CommissarVulpin 
//------------------------------//

Azure Coast’s claws grip the stick of his GA-11 Sky Stinger. He looks out the window to see the desert landscape whizzing by at transonic speeds. Appleloosa passes beneath; all of its buildings are either burnt-out shells or demolished completely by now.  He gains altitude, reduces speed, and adjusts course to begin circling the AO. He identifies the front lines, the trenches filled with ponies, bison, and griffins fighting against the enemy. He scans the horizon toward the enemy’s fortifications…there. He spots an artillery position, responsible for pounding allied forces. He steers the Sky Stinger on an approach, lines up the crosshairs, and unleashes a few quick bursts of the 20-millimeter cannon. He pulls up, wheels around, and makes another pass, this time dropping a pair of bombs strapped to his wings. He doesn’t hear the impact, but radio calls from ground forces confirm: good hit, splash one. He adjusts course to circle again, waiting for another CAS call.

Cockpit alarm: radar lock. Enemy shouldn’t have missiles; that wasn’t in the briefing. Begin evasive maneuvers. Release countermeasures. Something blue in the mirror…not mission-critical, ignore. High-gee turn, squeeze legs to maintain consciousness. The aircraft shudders. Assessment: Left wing hit. Fuel fire. Copilot dead. Listing left, push stick right to compensate. Losing altitude. Mayday call. Pull up, hydraulics failing, elevators barely responsive. Flare, brace for impact.

Assessment: aircraft on fire, cockpit glass stuck, enemy troops approaching. Release harness, reach for sidearm. Enemy troops start forcing the cockpit open with crowbars and

Azure Coast woke up in his bed. He stared at the ceiling, dappled with moonlight filtering in through the blinds. He performed the breathing exercises his therapist taught him, and felt his heart rate slow back to something approaching normal.

Again. Again with the dreams. There was seemingly nothing he could do against the dreams, so vivid, like replaying a video. He could do things to avoid flashbacks and panic attacks when he was awake, but the dreams…just kept coming. He realized, again, that he probably saw Princess Luna in his aircraft. But the dream version of himself had been so laser-focused that there was no way to convince him that it wasn’t real. Because it had been real.

He looked at the clock. 4:27 AM. There was no way he was going back to sleep. Serving in the hippogriff navy had put him through earlier mornings than this, but his age was starting to catch up with him. He forced himself out of bed and stretched out his aching muscles; some early morning exercise and a run would get him more awake and help him limber up before breakfast.

Carrier food was generally-regarded as being barely edible, especially the reconstituted egg-type substance they fed the sailors every damn morning. You had to learn to like it, or at least tolerate it, otherwise you’d either go hungry or insane. The eggs he ate this morning were far better than the powdered shit, thank the gods, but he had never kicked the habit of slathering everything in hot sauce.

A short drive to the city limits took Azure to the Vanhoover Spaceport, where he worked loading cargo on and off shuttles. It was mindless manual labor, just the way he liked it. His tasks could be boiled down to nothing more complicated than “move this box from here to here.” It reminded him of his time in the military, and he fell into it with ease, turning his brain off and humping crates for eight hours a day. His experience as a carrier-based naval pilot could have gotten Azure a job behind the controls of one of these shuttles in a heartbeat; but he had no desire to pilot an aircraft or spacecraft again.

He clocked in five minutes early and immediately inspected the schedule board, which denoted which terminal and gate each worker would be assigned to that day. He ran a claw down the screen until he reached his name, and saw that “Hangar 17” had been entered next to it.

“Hey Trilby,” he called out. His boss, a slightly overweight pony, looked up from the clipboard he was inspecting.

“Yeah?”

“It says here I’m assigned to Hangar 17? Where is that?”

“Oh, it’s one of the storage hangars, way at the end of the south runway. Some small private joint or whatever just needed an extra hoof loading their cargo shuttles. Shouldn’t take long. I’ve got you at Gate C10 once you’re done with that.”

Azure nodded, grabbed his high-visibility vest, and hopped in one of the carts designed for long-distance travel across the spaceport. Despite being a small spaceport, the smallest in Equestria, the runways still had to be very long to handle the huge craft descending from almost orbital velocity. Skirting the edges of the runways along the maintenance roads, he was able to get an unparalleled view of the giant SSTO shuttles taking off and landing, transporting hundreds of passengers or dozens of tons of cargo all over the world, to orbital stations, and even to the moon.

Near the end of one of the runways was a small, little-used hangar with the number 17 stenciled in fading paint to its main doors. Azure parked the cart nearby and headed inside.

Inside the hangar was a pair of small cargo shuttles, and about two dozen ponies walked in and around them. Upon entering the hangar, almost every single one of them paused what they were doing and turned to look at him.

“Uh…I’m with the spaceport. I was told you needed help loading your shuttles?”

That seemed to placate the workers, and they went back to their tasks. One of them started walking up to him, a slate-grey earth pony stallion with a brown mane clipped into a military cut. As he got closer, Azure could see that he was wearing black tactical barding, similar to the type used by police, and he was also armed. While not strictly unusual, Azure now noticed that, with few exceptions, all of the ponies in the hangar wore weapons.

The unicorns held special pistols in holsters, bare-bones models consisting of little more than a receiver, barrel, and magazine. There was no comfortable way to hold them, but there didn’t really need to be. The other ponies, like the one before him, had their firearms in flank mounts with complicated mechanisms for cocking and firing. Azure had been briefed on these during his time in the military. While they could hold larger firearms, usually rifles or carbines, the mounts were complex, and impossible to reload by the one carrying them. They were far less elegant than the claw-held models wielded by griffins or hippogriffs.

“We’ve just got some crates too heavy for us to lift with magic, so we needed somepony on another forklift,” the pony said. He motioned to a pile of wooden crates and a forklift parked over at the edge of the hangar, while a pony in another forklift was busy loading the same crates into one of the shuttles.

“We’re on a bit of a tight schedule here, so thanks for coming so quick.”

Azure nodded and climbed into the forklift, deftly maneuvering it over to the first crate with practiced ease. Carefully checking his surroundings, he drove it up the lowered ramp of the nearest shuttle and neatly deposited the crate next to dozens of others.

As he continued to make trips back and forth between the shuttle and the pile of crates, Azure couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t quite right. He decided to pay attention to that feeling and began looking around, trying to take in as many details as possible.

The fact that almost all the workers in this hangar were armed was the first detail that stood out. The second was that there were no logos or corporate insignia anywhere. No uniforms, nothing on the shuttles; even the crates were similarly unmarked. If what Trilby said was true, and this was some small company making a cargo run, then they were being very clandestine about it.

The pony who had addressed him earlier began talking to somepony, so Azure kept an ear pointed in that direction.

“Everything ready on your end? We’re still on schedule, thankfully.”

“Yep. Shuttle one is full and strapped down. Just need to get the boys loaded and I can start doing pre-flight checks.”

“What about clearance?”

“Handled. I’ve got us registered all the way up to LEO.”

“And shuttle two?”

“They’re registered too, but I haven’t seen the pilot around. The cargo is almost loaded, so we’ll be good to go.”

“Well, that pilot had better –”

Their conversation, as well as Azure’s attention, was distracted by a shout, a screech of tires, and a crash of splintering wood. He looked over to where the other forklift had been loading its last crate into the shuttle, to see that its load had toppled off the tines and landed on another pony who had apparently run in front of the forklift.

Azure carefully stopped his forklift and lowered the crate, then got out to help, but the other forklift was already surrounded by ponies who had been closer. They pulled the pony out from beneath the remains of the crate, where he lay groaning on the concrete floor.

“I’m no doctor, but I don’t think his leg is supposed to bend that way.”

“What should we do? Call an ambulance?”

“We’re not going to call an ambulance, stupid!”

The grey stallion, who by now Azure assumed to be the leader, pushed aside the throng to look at the victim on the floor.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” He stomped and cursed. “That was our only other pilot!”

A shocked silence descended upon the hangar at these words. Azure had gone quiet too, but not for the same reason everyone else had; he was staring, wide-eyed, at the contents of the crate which had fallen. Nestled amongst the splintered wood and packing hay sat the parts for a 20mm anti-aircraft defense cannon, standard equipment for the Equestrian military.

This new revelation brought two possibilities to Azure’s mind: either this was some clandestine military operation, or something far, far worse was going on.

His mind immediately selected ‘far, far worse’ the moment the grey stallion cocked his carbine and pointed it at him. Azure fought back the shakes, the cold sweat, the panic upon seeing a gun pointed at him again.

“Alright, this whole thing has gone tits-up, and I’ve got a fucking schedule to keep, so listen up, grandpa. I don’t suppose you know how to fly one of these, do you?”

Despite the panic, Azure found his mind being forced into combat mode, something he’d wanted to avoid for the rest of his life. In a split second, he assessed the situation. He was in a room, full of armed ponies. He didn’t have a weapon himself, but if he were desperate he could use one of the unicorns’ pistols. And even if he was somehow able to take a gun from one of the others and avoid being shot, he’d still be outnumbered. He was in an enclosed space with one known exit, so flying away wasn’t feasible, either. His only option, at this point, was to cooperate.

That left him two options: say he could fly a cargo shuttle, or say he couldn’t.

Technically, his training with the hippogriff navy had covered generic spacecraft piloting as well as aircraft, and some of the principles were similar. He was sure that, with practice, he could fly a shuttle with some competence. However, he needed to get out of this situation as fast as possible. If he told these ponies that he could fly, they would definitely force him to pilot their shuttle for them, to destinations unknown. If not, they could conceivably leave him behind under guard, at which point he would have a much better chance of escaping. That’s how he survived in Appleloosa; laying low, waiting for the possibility of escape to present itself, then taking it.

“No, I can’t.”

The stallion stomped and cursed again. “Fuck!” He rounded on the other ponies in the hangar. “I know for a fact none of you other shitsacks are pilots, but I’m not looking for formal training here. Anyone fly their uncle’s crop duster? Or play one of those flight-simulator games?”

One of the other ponies in the back, a younger pegasus, hesitantly raised a hoof.

“Awesome! Great! Get in the cockpit and start reading the fucking manual. You!” He pointed a hoof at the forklift driver who had dropped the crate. “Grab the hippogriff’s crate, and don’t fuck it up this time. Everyone else, get that cannon loaded. And you,” he said, addressing Azure this time, “You’re coming with me. Can’t have you running off and snitching, now.”

Azure remained outwardly calm, moving smoothly and deliberately, as he was led up into the rear shuttle at gunpoint. The leader guided him past the stacks of crates, currently being strapped down by the other workers, to a small door at the fore end of the cargo bay. The open door led into the cockpit, where Azure was instructed to sit in a jump seat behind the pilot’s seat. The grey pony took the seat behind the copilot’s seat, at a navigator’s station. Azure could see that the brown pegasus who had volunteered to pilot the shuttle was sitting in the pilot’s seat, frantically flipping through a thick manual.

“I’ll handle the radio,” the leader said to him. “You just focus on not killing us all.”

The leader then began talking into a shoulder-mounted walkie-talkie, communicating with the other workers and verifying statuses. Through the cockpit glass, Azure watched about a dozen of the armed ponies line up with the discipline of trained soldiers and march up the ramp of the shuttle ahead. Once they were all inside, the cargo ramp was closed and the two main hangar doors were slid open, and the twin kinetic thrusters began to glow blue as they flared to life.

The pony across from him kept his gun trained on Azure the entire time, but he could see that his attention wasn’t terribly focused on his prisoner, being split between the radio and the pilot. In addition, Azure suspected that the pony wouldn’t consider him a threat once they were in the air. And he would be right; attacking the driver of a vehicle while one was riding it was an incredibly foolish move.

Since the leader’s attention was split, Azure began looking around the cockpit, taking in as much information as he could. He saw the impromptu pilot nervously working his way through the pre-flight checks; this was taking quite a long time, since he had to search for each switch and gauge.

Azure’s eyes then scanned the controls he could see at the copilot’s seat, comparing their positions and functions to what he knew from his experience with the Sky Stinger. Everything was clearly labeled, and their positions were at least logical, if not exactly the same as in the fighter. There were extra controls which he assumed were for orbital flight, but the main atmospheric controls would be simple enough to adapt to.

Soon, the shuttle ahead of them pulled out of the hangar and onto the apron. Azure estimated that the two shuttles should be able to get a departure slot easily, since he noticed earlier that the spaceport hadn’t been very busy. His estimation proved to be correct as the front shuttle made its way almost directly towards the runway, out of sight.

The pony across from him began making calls over the radio, coordinating their departure with air traffic control.

“Clearance, Equestrian Shuttle Logistics 452 to LEO.”

Azure could hear the controller’s response through the cockpit speakers.

“ESL 452 cleared to LEO via warehouse 17 departure, flight plan route, depart runway 9 right, squawk 0544.”

“ESL 452 cleared to LEO, hangar 17, flight plan route, 0544.”

“ESL 452 readback correct, contact ground on 1-2-2 decimal 0-7 for pushback.”

“ESL 452, one two two zero seven for pushback.”

He adjusted the radio and spoke again.

“Ground, Equestrian Shuttle Logistics, 452 ready for pushback.”

“ESL 452 push at your discretion, call ready for taxi.”

“Roger.”

Their pilot carefully throttled the engines up and pulled the shuttle out of the hangar and onto the tarmac, where he stopped and nodded back to the pony on the radio.

“Ground, ESL 452 ready for taxi.”

“ESL 452 roger, taxi on Delta for runway 09 right.”

“ESL 452, Delta for 9 right.”

Upon hearing this, the pilot throttled the engines again and steered the shuttle across the tarmac, towards the nearest runway.

“ESL 452, contact tower on 1-1-8 decimal 3-5.”

“ESL 452, tower on one one eight three five.”

Again, the leader adjusted the radio.

“Tower, Equestrian Shuttle Logistics 452 on Delta for 9 right.”

“ESL 452, continue on Delta, hold short of 9 right.”

“ESL 452, Delta, hold short of 9 right.”

Upon reaching the very edge of the runway, the pilot stopped the shuttle again.

“ESL 452, taxi into position runway 9 right.”

“ESL 452, roger into position.”

The pilot pushed the shuttle forward onto the runway proper, turning it to the right so that it was lined up with the center of the runway, then stopped again.

“ESL 452 clear for takeoff on runway 9 right, contact departure at 1-2-8 decimal 8 in the air.”

“ESL 452 clear to go, one two eight eight in the air.”

Azure watched as the inexperienced pilot slowly throttled the engines up, and felt the gees push his back into the seat as the craft accelerated down the runway. He grasped the yoke tightly in his hooves and pulled gently backwards, but the lumbering craft refused to pull up. He pulled harder, gritting his teeth as the shuttle continued to gain speed. Finally, about three-quarters of the way down the runway, Azure felt the shuttle lethargically heave itself off the concrete. The pilot immediately retracted the gear and flaps for cruising flight, then banked and turned to the appropriate departure heading.

Overall, his performance had been admirable for someone who had apparently never flown a real aircraft before. Azure had to fight the urge to congratulate him, since he was one of his captors, after all.

The leader continued to speak on the radio as the shuttle ascended.  The pilot kept straining on the yoke, desperately trying to gain altitude.

Azure looked out the cockpit windows and saw the mountains to the east of Vanhoover looming directly ahead of them. He knew that orbit-bound shuttles were required to crest these mountains, but they would always have enough altitude to clear them easily. This shuttle, on the other hand, was struggling to gain altitude and was bearing directly towards the peaks.

He could hear the departure controller urging the shuttle to gain altitude over the radio.

“C’mon kid, pull up!” the leader shouted.

“I’m trying!” the pilot shouted back through gritted teeth, the muscles on his forelegs quivering as he strained to lift the craft higher.

Azure’s eyes instantly flew over the gauges and multi-functional displays, trying to figure out why the shuttle wasn’t gaining altitude. Gear was up, flaps were up, airbrakes were retracted…then he saw it. Most shuttles were equipped with systems to detect when the craft moved from atmospheric to non-atmospheric flight, and automatically transition from using the control surfaces to using the attitude thrusters. There was also a manual override in case the sensors failed, since the control surfaces were useless in space and vice versa.

Somehow the override switch had been flipped so that the shuttle was trying to use its attitude thrusters to pitch up which, while possible, was much weaker than the elevators. There was no way they’d be able to pitch the shuttle up enough to avoid smashing into the mountains.

As the slopes drew closer, Azure acted. He unbuckled himself from the jump seat, eliciting a ‘what do you think you’re doing’ from the pony with the gun. He leapt across to the copilot’s seat, flipped the override switch back to AUTO, gunned the throttle, and immediately yanked the yoke backwards. The shuttle’s nose quickly elevated as the computer returned control authority to the elevators, filling his view with cloudy skies above the mountains. He gritted his teeth and watched the altimeter climb, praying that they would reach four thousand meters before they smashed into the mountains.

Three thousand two hundred meters.

Three thousand three hundred.

Three thousand four hundred.

An alarm followed by an automated voice started to sound in the cockpit.

Terrain. Terrain. Pull up!

Three thousand six hundred.

Pull up!

Three thousand seven hundred.

Pull up!

Three thousand eight hundred.

“I am pulling up, you stupid…!”

Pull up!

Three thousand nine hundred.

Terrain. Terr—

The alarm stopped.

Azure took one last look at the altimeter. Four thousand two hundred meters. He pitched the shuttle back down to a more reasonable ascent path and throttled the engines back. At the sound of quiet chuckling, he looked around the cockpit.

The young pegasus in the pilot’s seat was staring at him with wide eyes. Behind him, the earth pony had a smug grin on his face.

“Well, aren’t you just full of surprises, flyboy,” he said.

Azure tried to keep his expression neutral. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Nah, I saw that look in your eyes. You hopped into that seat like you were born in it. Let me guess: navy pilot?”

It was obvious the pony wasn’t going to believe any of Azure’s excuses, so he just nodded slowly.

“Alright, here’s what’s gonna happen. You’re going to get us to LEO, and then you’re going to do exactly what I say. Got it?”

Once again, Azure considered his options. It was highly likely that the pony behind him would keep his gun pressed against the seat back, earning him a bullet in the spine should he try anything untoward. And the pegasus had proven himself to be at least a competent pilot, so Azure wasn’t essential to get the shuttle to wherever they were going. For now, the opportunity for escape hadn’t come yet, so once again he decided to play along.

“Where are we going?”

“Just fly the damn shuttle. You’ll find out soon enough.”

The rest of the trip to orbit was uneventful, and within half an hour Azure had placed the shuttle in the altitude band designated as “Low Equus Orbit.” From here, shuttles would normally tune to the orbital control frequency and follow their flight plan to wherever they were headed. But when the grey pony behind him began speaking over the radio, it was obvious that he had other plans.

“Blackwater checking in. Shuttle twenty-two now in orbit, awaiting TLT on your go.”

The irritated response came not long after. “It’s about time. All ships, energize and prepare for TLT jump. Shuttle one, jump in T-minus thirty seconds and immediately head for the staging checkpoint. All other ships jump in numerical order, spacing sixty seconds.”

A multitude of affirmative responses sounded over the radio, undoubtedly belonging to the other shuttles.

The pony sitting behind him, Blackwater he assumed, got Azure’s attention with another order. “Power up the teleportation crystal and get ready to teleport to the lunar beacon on my mark.”

Azure did as instructed, and heard the low-frequency hum from behind him as the magical crystal energized. He put his talons back on the controls, clutching them nervously as he pondered how difficult his situation was quickly becoming. Going to space was bad enough, but the moon? And why were so many shuttles, theoretically also with weapons onboard, heading to the moon in the first place? There was only one major settlement there that he knew of, and it was just a hub for shipments of raw materials; hardly a military target.

Azure ran the numbers in his head. Twenty-two shuttles, and if each one had a dozen soldiers loaded, that made over two hundred and fifty heavily armed ponies. He didn’t know how large the lunar settlements were, but he could reasonably assume they didn’t have many guns to fight back with; in his experience, ponies generally eschewed weaponry. They didn’t stand a chance.

After a tense wait, Blackwater ordered him to engage the teleportation crystal. With a crackle and flash of light, the shuttle was now hundreds of thousands kilometers away, floating above the moon’s surface. With guidance from the shuttle’s computer, he steered the shuttle to the recovery vector and boosted them into a stable orbit.


***


After the hippogriff had placed them into a lunar orbit, Blackwater opened up the encrypted communications channel the shuttles were using.

“Shuttle twenty-two, TLT complete. Awaiting orders.”

Syzygy’s response came quickly. “All shuttles, proceed to Starshine checkpoint. Shuttle three, shut down the beacon and lunar comms.”

Blackwater tapped on the headrest in front of him to get the hippogriff’s attention. “Alright, you see that waypoint on the MFD? Head there, no detours. And watch out for other shuttles.”

“Copy,” he responded, his expression inscrutable. That’s what Blackwater liked about the guy; he had an excellent poker face, which was part of the reason he suspected him to be a pilot.

A few minutes later, the voice of a young mare came over the channel. “Attack successful. TLT beacon and all lunar communications are offline.”

Blackwater recognized the voice. She was some kind of programming prodigy, and could hack into just about any computer system. He didn’t know the mare’s name, but he had seen her a few times. She was pretty cute; maybe after all this was over he’d ask her out.

It wasn’t long until the sprawling lights of Starshine City appeared on the horizon. He could even make out the large circular track of the city’s mass driver, a huge electromagnetic catapult that flung cargo back to Equus. He had seen the transponder markers of the other ships on the navigational display for a while, but now the blue pinpricks of light from their engines could be seen as they all slowed for landing.

As they passed over the station’s solar array, dozens of square kilometers of glittering blue solar panels, Blackwater instructed the pilot on where to go, which mostly involved following the line of other shuttles towards a hangar on the southern edge of the city. Blackwater had been skeptical that any building would have enough space to hold all two dozen of their shuttles, but Syzygy had assured him that there would be, and he trusted his judgement.

The city stretched out ahead of them, dozens and dozens of buildings interconnected with tunnels, bridges, and skyways. Blackwater had never been there in person, but he had studied its layout extensively. The gleaming white structures formed an orderly radial pattern, with the residential areas at the center and the industrial sections around the outer edges. The city was mostly a transit hub, serving as a distribution point for the various mining and manufacturing operations all over the moon’s surface. He could see factory complexes outside the city, connected with pressurized trains to allow ponies to commute.

One by one, the shuttles ahead of them descended to a few meters above the lunar surface and flew towards a spaceport at the southern edge of the city. The hippogriff pilot fell in behind them as they made for a hangar that looked far too small from this distance. But as they approached, the hangar grew larger, and larger still, until it took up most of the view outside the cockpit windows. The shuttles ahead of them easily slid through the open doors and landed in a neat row on the inside, and the hippogriff joined the pattern by gently setting the shuttle down and shutting off the engines.

The radio crackled with Syzygy’s voice again. “All shuttles. Hangar is sealed and pressurized. Dismount and prepare for assault.”

“Showtime, flyboy!” He cracked a smile and clapped the hippogriff on the shoulder. “Into the back. No sudden moves.”

The hippogriff slowly unbuckled himself and made his way through the door into the cargo hold. Blackwater followed, keeping his carbine trained on his back the whole time.

“Alright, fucksticks!” Blackwater shouted to the mercenaries gathered in the hold. “Gear up, and move out!”

Almost in unison they all stood, gathered their gear, and headed down the ramp. Blackwater prodded his prisoner to follow them down to the hangar floor. Most of the mercenaries proceeded to where a large group from the other shuttles was gathering, while a few stayed behind; their job was to help unload and assemble the defense cannons.

Blackwater turned to the pegasus behind him, whose piloting skills had almost sent them into the side of a mountain. He didn’t know the kid’s name, and didn’t particularly care.

“Hey, you. Grab some cuffs from one of the other guys. I don’t want this hippogriff getting in our way.”

The young stallion quickly obeyed, and returned in short order with a pair of hoofcuffs. As he put them around the hippogriff’s wrists, Blackwater turned to the half-dozen ponies who stayed with the shuttle.

“Keep an eye on this one, and don’t let him get any ideas. If he makes trouble, shoot him.”

When they nodded in understanding, Blackwater made his way towards the group gathering in front of the center shuttle. He looked around the cavernous hangar and could see several passenger spacecraft parked around, as well as a large overhead crane. He guessed that this was a factory that made ships, and a large door in the opposite wall would probably lead to the main assembly area.

As he approached the front of the group, he could see Syzygy standing there, arguing with a hoof-ful of other ponies, most likely employees of the factory. The argument came to a head as Syzygy drew his pistol and shot his opponent in the face. His companions gaped in horror at the body for a moment, before screaming and running in the opposite direction. A chorus of chuckles bubbled through the gathered mercenaries.

“Gentlecolts!” Syzygy announced once Blackwater had joined him. “Today, we take back the moon. This is the day you’ve been waiting for. The day you’ve been training for. The day you’ve been praying for. If they surrender, leave them be. If they resist, send them to the spirits. You all know your objectives. Make Luna proud!”

With a wordless battle cry, the mob split into squads and surged forward. Blackwater located his squad and joined them as they plunged towards the heart of the city.


***


Hex Key grasped the wrench handle in his hooves and took a few preparatory breaths.

“Okay, last one. Three, two, one…hrrk!”

He heaved against the handle, pulling on it with all his might. His muscles burned, but a steely determination kept him going. That, and an array of steadily-worsening curses uttered through gritted teeth.

“Come on, you pile of scrap metal…rusty bucket of shit…”

His wings tried to splay out with the effort but were stopped short by the confines of the corridor.

“Celestia…curse…you…you motherfucking piece of—”

Click.

Hex released the pressure on his torque wrench as its internal mechanism signaled that he had sufficiently tightened the offending bolt. Panting, he pulled the wrench free and slipped it into the tool holder across his back. He wiped the sweat from his brow and turned to make his way back to the maintenance bay of Engineering Section.

The air was always hot near the traction motors. He might not know as much as the eggheads who designed this place, but he knew enough to know that heat was the enemy of any spacecraft, and removing it was difficult. So he couldn’t fault them too much if the environmental controls couldn’t quite keep up with the energy dissipated by the massive motors that kept Maulwurf trundling along the lunar surface.

However, that did not excuse the location of some of the bolts that he had to get to just to replace a coolant manifold. Trying to coax four hundred newton-meters out of a torque wrench in such a tight space was almost impossible.

“If I ever get my hooves on the engineer who designed that…” he grumbled. He took a quick detour to the local access point and approached the control cabinet. He pulled a key out of his tool belt and used it to remove the padlock hanging from a large red lever.

Hex flipped the lever with a satisfying clunk, and his ears swiveled to take in the sound of distant pumps spooling up. He kept an eye on the gauges as the pressure built; if the manifold he just replaced had any problems, he would see it here. Pressure was good across the board and all lights were green, so he closed the control cabinet and continued towards the maintenance bay.

Maulwurf began construction before the lunar surface factories were up and running, so most of the materials used in its initial construction had to be delivered from planetside facilities. As a result, its designers sought to use the space as efficiently as possible, and that meant making the corridors and rooms in the bowels of the station very small, with low ceilings. Sections that were added later, such as Medical and Control, did not have this restriction, as they were built after the cost of acquiring materials on the moon’s surface plummeted with the completion of the first lunar factories. Most of the staff did not have to suffer the submarine-like innards of the station, but the less glamorous maintenance staff did. Two ponies could just barely pass in a corridor, if one wedged herself against the wall. Passing through a doorway, however, was impossible; one pony would have to wait while the other passed.

Hex had been through these corridors so many times he could find his way with his eyes closed. He knew just about every turn and alcove, and could name every duct and conduit. Hex thought back to when the elderly foreman had taken him under his wing (figuratively speaking; the foreman was an earth pony).

“Most ponies don’t realize it, but Maulwurf has a personality. All machines do,” the foreman had said. “With a little effort, you can feel her heartbeat; from the sounds of the machinery in her walls, to the vibrations in her deck plates.”

Hex Key had come to understand the immense station. There were always little idiosyncrasies in her operation, like the fact that even after two full rebuilds, traction motor six needed just a little more amperage to meet the necessary torque output. And how the main breakers that controlled the corridor lighting behaved strangely in the morning, in a manner Hex could only describe as ‘cranky’.

Sure, he’d curse Maulwurf’s engineers and swear at her bolts, but it was all out of affection. He’d always make sure to give the bearings a bit more grease every month, polish the linear rails to a mirror shine, and dig every chunk of regolith out of the chain drums. If you treated her right, she’d keep running long after her builders had passed their tools to the next generation.

“Got that manifold swapped out?” The foreman asked when he returned to check in his tools.

“Yeah-huh,” he replied absently. “Clock me out, would ya Grease Stain?”

Grease Stain wasn’t his real name; he said he got the nickname after he earned his cutie mark while working in his dad’s mechanic shop, but didn’t notice until he got home because his flanks were covered with giant grease stains from sitting on the floor.

“Sure thing. You’ve been putting in a lot of overtime lately. I do appreciate what you been doing here, Hex.”

Hex Key gave a weary smile. “I just do what needs doing.”

“Got any plans tonight?”

“Nah. I’m going home for a shower, and then I’ll maybe hit up Haven’s for a nightcap.”

“Don’t go spending all that time-and-a-half pay in one place, now.”

Hex chuckled. Even if he wanted to, there wasn’t much to spend money on here. Room and board were free; the only thing one really needed to pay for was food, and luxuries like the station’s small theater. Even if the pay down in Engineering Section wasn’t very good, Hex was still making more money than he would be planetside.

“Still got eyes for that beauty in Control Section?”

“Huh?”

Grease Stain’s face took on a crooked grin. “Don’t play dumb with me, boy. I seen how you look at her.”

The old machinist was incredibly observant and sharp as a tack, even at his age. He was referring to Hex’s crush on Piper, a mare who spent her days in Maulwurf’s traffic control tower. He hadn’t managed to drum up the courage to ask her out yet.

There were a couple of reasons for this: the griffin’s share of his trepidation came down to simple nerves. He hadn’t been in a relationship for…almost five years now, and he wasn’t sure if he knew how anymore. Dating as an adult was very different from a college fling.

The second reason came as his father’s words echoing in the back of his mind: “Don’t shit where you eat.” He had been rather coarsely warning against pursuing relationships at work, considering that if something went afoul, one would have to still endure their company for eight hours a day. This argument was somewhat tempered by the fact that the two of them worked just about as far away from each other as it was possible to be. Hex only really saw her in the Atrium, and that was assuming they happened to take lunch at the same time. Besides, he knew that ponies hooked up all the time out here. Spending six months without sunlight in a metal can hundreds of kilometers from civilization drove ponies to blow off steam however they could.

Hex’s room in Hab Section was small; all the living spaces on Maulwurf were small, with the possible exception of corporate staff and the like. Despite being the size of an aircraft carrier, quarters for 4,000 ponies took up a lot of room. Hex didn’t mind it so much. LMC had given a hard limit on how much of his personal belongings he could bring, so there wasn’t much in his room to take up the already limited space. He dumped his empty tool belt on the floor, then grabbed a towel from his wardrobe and the mesh bag with his bathing supplies and headed down the hall to the showers. It would have been an egregious waste of space for every room to have its own washroom, so each dormitory corridor ended in a shared restroom/shower space shared by about a dozen ponies.

After getting his coat cleaned, his mane brushed, and his wings preened, Hex headed towards the Atrium. This is where the cafeteria and theater were located, along with other leisure areas for employees to spend their money and maintain morale. One of these areas was a small bar called Haven’s, named for its proprietor Safe Haven. Hex walked in and immediately felt relaxed. The dim lighting, the low music, the snap of billiard balls from the lone pool table. This was one of the first places on the station he had begun to visit regularly, and he had made friends with many of the other regulars.

Safe Haven waved to him from behind the bar as he entered. “Hey, Hex! Come over here, I got somethin’ for ya to try!”

Safe Haven used to own a restaurant in downtown Manehattan, but sold it to work on the moon instead because it paid better. In his words, ‘I ain’t doin’ in for the money…I’m doin’ it fer a shitload o’ money!’

Haven was always experimenting with new ways to prepare certain foods, mostly by deep-frying them.

“This isn’t deep-fried butter on a stick again, is it?” Hex asked cautiously as he walked over to the bar.

“Nah, not this time.” Haven pushed a plate towards him, bearing a donut with a crunchy-looking exterior. “It’s a deep-fried donut!”

“Aren’t donuts already deep-fried?”

“Sure, but I deep-fried this one twice!”

Hex shrugged and took a bite. It tasted like a normal donut, yet…greasier.

“So? What’s it like?”

“It tastes like…double bypass surgery.”

“Shit, that’s genius! I’ll name it the ‘Double Bypass Donut’! Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to send ya royalty checks!”

Hex heard a laugh from behind him, followed by a familiar voice.

“Hex, is Haven here trying to max out your cholesterol intake again?”

Hex turned to see a bespectacled zebra making her way towards the bar, a grin pasted across her face.

“Hey, Zuri!” Hex greeted the zebra, exchanging hoofbumps with her. Zuri was one of Hex’s first friends on the Maulwurf, close in interests yet far apart in capability; she was a reactor technician, responsible for keeping the twin fusion reactors that powered the massive station running smoothly. She was smart, and young, too, even younger than he was. She was also quite attractive; if it weren’t for the fact she was gay, Hex would have asked her out a long time ago.

“Haven’t seen you around lately. Old Grease Stain been cracking the whip?”

“Not exactly, but I have been putting in some overtime recently. It seems like whenever there’s a less-than-glamorous job that needs doing, the other maintenance techs are mysteriously nowhere to be found.”

They each ordered a drink from Safe Haven and found a place to sit down.

“Plus, it helps that I know my way around the traction motors better than anypony there, but come on! I’d like to go a single month without getting saddled with lubrication duty.”

Zuri laughed. “I envy you sometimes, Hex, but at the same time I don’t think I could do what you do.”

“What do you mean?”

“I spend my whole day staring at monitors, making sure the reactors are maintaining output. I don’t even have to adjust injection rates or field strength or anything, the computers take care of all that automatically!”

Hex just nodded. He understood some of those words, but most of it went over his head.

“Seriously, the only time I even picked up a tool this week was to swap out a quartz lens on a chamber camera. What did I even go to college for, if I never even use the stuff I learned?”

“Yeah, I could ask you that myself,” Hex quipped as a jab at his friend. Hex had never gone to college, instead bouncing around several different maintenance jobs. He always seemed to find himself employed by ponies a lot smarter than him, yet unwilling to get their hooves dirty fixing their own machinery. Still, the experience fixing really large and expensive machines had worked to his advantage getting a job aboard the Maulwurf.

They sat and enjoyed their drinks for a while longer, chatting and catching up, when Zuri poked her head outside the booth. “Hey, it’s that mare again.”

Hex Key twisted around to see who she was talking about. All he saw was a middle-aged unicorn mare with a pink coat and a straw-colored mane. She was standing in the bar’s entrance, looking around curiously, with one of the station’s doctors next to her. She didn’t look familiar, and judging by her behavior she was a newcomer to the station.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

“What, you haven’t heard?” Zuri asked incredulously. “Have you been living under a rock?”

“Something like that.”

“A few days ago, she was found in one of the ground-level airlocks, dying from vacuum exposure. After they got her patched up, they found out she disappeared a hundred a fifty years ago!”

“No fuckin’ way,” he said. Zuri liked to joke around sometimes, but her expression led Hex to believe that she wasn’t kidding this time.

“It’s true! I saw her earlier today in the reactor room. Sigma was giving her a tour.” Zuri leaned out and waved a hoof, catching the mare’s attention. “Hey! Over here!”

The mare noticed them and smiled as she trotted over. Hex and Zuri scooted over to make room for the pair as they sat down.

“Hello again!” Zuri said brightly. “I’m Zuri, and this is Hex Key.”

The mare looked confused for a moment, before realization dawned on her face. “Oh! You’re the zebra I saw by the fusion reactor!”

“Yep! I didn’t expect to meet you here, but I’m glad I did.”

“Why’s that?”

“You’re all anypony is talking about! A mysterious mare, lost for a century and a half before suddenly appearing in the middle of nowhere? You’ve lucky I got to you first!”

The mare ducked her head sheepishly. “Well, I’m not really anypony special…”

“What’s your name?” Zuri asked.

“Oh! Sorry. I’m Spring Bloom, and this is Dr. Needle Prick,” she replied, motioning across the table to the doctor.

He smiled politely. “Just call me Needle.”

“So what brings you to our little watering hole?” Hex Key asked.

“Well, Dr. Needle here is showing me around the station, and it gave me the opportunity to eat something besides hospital food.”

Zuri grimaced. “I don’t blame you. We might be hundreds of kilometers from the ass-end of nowhere, but there’s some good food here. Unless you want something dripping in grease, though, I suggest you look elsewhere.” She leaned in conspiratorially. “Safe Haven isn’t exactly a culinary mastermind.”

“I heard that!” the bartender shouted.

Spring giggled. “No, we already ate at Hayburger. I saw this place and decided to check it out.”

Hex smiled. “Well, Haven might not be good at cooking, but he’s the best bartender on the moon. Hey Haven!” he called over his shoulder. “Two Moondrops, please!”

“Ooh, I like the sound of that,” Spring said. “I’d pay you back, but I don’t have any money right now.”

Hex waved her off. “Don’t worry about it. My treat.”

“So, Hex Key, I’ve seen you around Medical Section a few times, mostly scrapes and bumps. You work in the maintenance areas, right?”

“Yeah, I do. I mostly maintain the traction motors and the caterpillar tracks. It’s hard, dirty work, but I like it.”

“You can do that while it’s moving?”

“Sure. If you need to swap out a motor, for example, you can shut it down and the others will pick up the slack. There’s a trick to pulling it out and re-mounting it, but it’s definitely possible. EVA work is my favorite, though. I’ve stood on the caterpillar tracks and swapped track shoes while being carried along like I’m on a conveyor belt. It’s fun.”

Safe Haven arrived at their table and placed the ordered drinks in front of Needle and Spring. The Moondrop was one of Haven’s signature drinks, and one whose recipe was a closely guarded secret. Inside a whiskey tumbler was a perfectly round, milky white orb, suspended within a translucent blue liquid. Spring was enthralled as she gently slid her glass closer, as if the drink would evaporate with too-rough handling.

Despite her efforts, the orb popped like a soap bubble, eliciting a surprised “Oh!”. The milky liquid swirled and mixed with the surrounding alcohol, the emulsion eventually homogenizing to an opaque cyan.

“Don’t worry, it’s supposed to do that,” Zuri said. “Haven likes to see who can keep their bubble intact the longest. I think the record is four minutes.”

“Three minutes and forty-two seconds,” came a response from behind the bar.

“Wow…” Spring gazed at the drink in awe, before taking a sip. “Huh. It tastes like raspberry and cream and…coconut?”

Zuri shrugged. “Nopony knows what’s in it for sure; Haven won’t tell. But it almost seems like everyone tastes something different.”

Spring took another sip. “By the way, Zuri, why are you the only zebra I’ve seen here? In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen any creature besides ponies on the moon yet.”

“There’s a couple reasons,” Zuri replied. “Equestria kind of has a monopoly on space travel. All the major spaceports are in Equestria, aside from Xenith, so it’s hard for other races to take casual trips.”

Dr. Needle nodded. “And since Equestria already has so much space infrastructure, no one else has bothered to build any since they can just use Equestria’s if they need to.”

“You’ll find more diversity in Starshine City,” Zuri continued. “It’s still mostly ponies, but there’s zebras, hippogriffs, and I think I even saw a dragon there once.”

Spring looked tired all of a sudden. “The city sounds nice, but I just want to go home. I think I’ve had enough of the moon for one lifetime.”


***


Piper had become quite attuned to the soft ding of the elevator from Control Section arriving, signaling that she needed to pretend like she hadn’t just been daydreaming and spinning circles in her chair. A sound she wasn’t used to hearing, however, was an alarm accompanied by a flashing alert from the communications panel. She wheeled her chair over to it and read the flashing red message:

SATELLITE SIGNAL LOST

“What the fu—” Ding!

The elevator doors barely had time to open before Rosette marched through, and she was angry.

“Let me see your comms panel,” she said.

Piper backed up to let her see. “I just got an alert that we lost the satellite connection.”

“So did we. Total comms blackout, no messages in or out from Starshine, or from Equus. We’re completely blind!”

Piper decided to stay silent. It was unusual for Rosette to lose her temper like this, and she didn’t want to say something that would accidentally rouse her ire.

Rosette took a deep breath. “Mark my words, someone’s head is going to roll for this. Nopony fucks with my station.”

“I can still handle local shuttle traffic,” Piper said, attempting to placate her with some good news. “Just the satellite connections are down. Local broadcasts are unaffected.”

Rosette took another breath and smiled, which was somehow more terrifying. “Thank you, my dear. Do what you can here, I’m going to try and find out who needs to be flushed out an airlock.”

After Rosette had swept out of the room, Piper busied herself with trying to find out what exactly went wrong with Maulwurf’s connection to the lunar satellite network. She knew how to poke around in the comms panel a little bit, since sometimes there was a hiccup in the uplink, and she would need to swap to another satellite to maintain a more stable connection. Due to the spacing of the satellites, there were always at least six in range to connect to. Piper tried executing the command to switch uplink priority to another satellite, but got another error: CONNECTION FAILED.

“Odd.”

In an emergency, the Maulwurf could connect directly to an Equus ground station. Unfortunately, this was impossible at the moment due to the station being on the dark side of the moon, forcing the station to rely on the satellite network to relay the signals. Piper dove a little deeper into the communications controls, to a little-used diagnostic tool. After running for a few minutes, the computer happily reported that the Maulwurf’s satellite uplink was functioning just fine. The problem, it seemed, was that the entire lunar satellite network was down. The station couldn’t connect to the satellites because the satellites were offline.

Piper tapped at another screen, sending a message over the station’s internal network to Rosette’s tablet. Within minutes, the elevator dinged again.

“Yes? What did you find?” Rosette asked as she approached.

“I ran a network diagnostic on our external connections. Maulwurf’s equipment is functioning just fine. It’s the satellites that are down.”

Rosette blinked. “All of them?”

“As far as I can tell. I tried swapping to another satellite and the connection failed, but there’s only six or seven visible at a time. I’d have to wait until the other satellites come over the horizon to make certain.”

“How long will that take?”

“Each satellite takes three hours to make a full orbit, so about that long.”

Rosette nodded. “You do that, and keep an eye out for any approaching ships.”

With that, she turned and left, leaving Piper alone with the static in her headset.


***


Starshine City fell quickly. There was panic, of course, but herding the citizens into the residential blocks and sealing the doors was easy when one gave the proper motivation. Since the city was in night mode, most of the citizens were in their quarters anyway. Blackwater would have preferred to simply vent the atmosphere, but Syzygy wouldn’t allow it. “Let Luna sort them out,” he had said. Blackwater wasn’t sure how much of this ‘trapped goddess’ business he really believed, but he knew that Syzygy’s money kept coming, so he didn’t ask questions. He didn’t really care as long as he got to shoot someone, which was why he joined the Equestrian military in the first place. He was far too late for the last war, unfortunately, and it didn’t look like they were going to find themselves in another one anytime soon. All that ‘peace and love’ horseshit that they were preaching now is what got him discharged.

He still got the chance to take out a few ponies who tried to play hero, coming at his squad with pipes, fire extinguishers, and all manner of other improvised weapons. Those were fun, because putting them down made anypony else who happened to be nearby much more agreeable.

After Blackwater’s squad had finished locking down their assigned sectors, he led them back to the rendezvous point, a large atrium near one of the residential areas. Some of the other mercenaries had already started looting the shops and restaurants. He was contemplating how long it had been since he had last eaten when he heard Syzygy’s voice come over his radio.

“Blackwater. Meet me at the city’s main electrical control room. There may be a change of plans.”

“Copy that,” Blackwater responded, before letting out an extended sigh. He took the chance to grab some cold pizza before heading in the direction of the electrical controls.

This room handled the input and distribution of electrical power from the thousands of solar panels in the array outside the city. It was the closest analog to the city’s lifeblood; without power, there was no light, no heat, no gravity, and no air. Between rows of computer stations stood Syzygy, engaged in a tense conversation with another pony.

His glasses betrayed his profession; Syzygy had brought on several dozen engineers and technicians who were apparently loyal to the cause, and he appeared to be one of them. Blackwater took one look at the stallion and immediately wanted to put a bullet in his face. He carried himself like an arrogant prick that assumed he was better than anypony else, staring down his muzzle and belittling anyone who dared question his wisdom. It was obvious that even Syzygy’s patience was wearing thin.

“Sir?” He announced as he entered.

“Ah, Blackwater,” Syzygy smiled, grateful for the distraction. “Thank you for joining us. We have a bit of a power supply issue I need your help in resolving.”

“Which I tried to warn you about before we left,” the pony-shaped shitstain interrupted before Blackwater could respond. “But of course no one listens to me.”

“Slipstick, please,” Syzygy scolded. “Let me handle it from here.”

“I’m not sure how much help I can be with all this egghead stuff,” Blackwater said, “Unless you want me to break something.”

“Oh no, that won’t be necessary. You see, I had intended for the Armillary to tap into Starshine’s power grid. But it appears that it will not quite be up to the task.”

“Not unless you want to hold your breath,” Slipstick broke in.

The Armillary. Of course. Syzygy’s little science experiment. Blackwater wasn’t savvy to the details, being a lowly grunt, but he had overheard enough to glean its purpose. Apparently it was meant to cast a spell of some kind, intended to free Luna from her imprisonment. After which she would be eternally grateful and grant the faithful everlasting boons and strike down the unworthy and blah blah blah.

“Yes, of course,” Syzygy responded through gritted teeth. “Now, there is an LMC mining station relatively nearby. This station is equipped with two fusion reactors, providing more than enough power to supply the Armillary and keep the station running at the same time. I need you to take a squad and secure the station. I will follow with the remaining engineering and technical staff. Any questions?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. Send a messenger shuttle back when the station is secure. Dismissed.”

Blackwater left the room and made his way back to the atrium, his mood improving somewhat. He gathered up enough mercenaries to fill three shuttles and pilots to fly them, and led them back to the spacecraft factory where they had landed. As they loaded up and made ready, Blackwater could see that the hippogriff pilot was nowhere to be found, along with the guards he had left him with. He stormed over to a nearby mercenary.

“Hey! Where the fuck is the prisoner?”

“They took him inside, sir. They needed to help set up the twenty-mils, so they locked him in a supply closet or something.”

In retrospect, Blackwater should have just shot him when he had the chance. Syzygy didn’t even know about the hippogriff, and right now he was just another loose end. He didn’t have the time to deal with it right now, though, so he’d just have to rely on his mercenaries to keep the hippogriff under guard until he got back.

Once the shuttles were loaded and ready, the hangar was depressurized and the doors were opened. As the trio of shuttles flew out over the lunar surface, Blackwater could see teams in EVA gear busy assembling the defense cannons. Hopefully they would deter anypony from interfering with their operation.

The other shuttles fell in formation behind his as he directed the pilot toward the Maulwurf.