I was the stupidest, worst pony in the Enclave. Ponies were hurt because of me and it wasn’t even the first time. I should never have trusted Double Nothing, I shouldn’t have smashed things without thinking about it, and I really shouldn’t be flying out in the storm. The Thunderbolt Shoals were like a perpetual hurricane and I was throwing myself into that just to try and fix a mistake that was my fault to begin with.
The rain was bad. The wind was worse. It was gusting so hard the sleet was horizontal when it wasn’t even worse and finding ways to hit me from below. I don’t think a pony could intentionally set up more awful conditions for flying. The light was that kind of dull, strangely-colored light you get when a storm is rolling through, all purple and green and grey. Lighting strobed every second or two, showing dim shadows of the wrecks and half-disassembled ships around us hovering in the clouds.
“This is a really bad idea!” Destiny said. If I hadn’t been wearing the helmet I wouldn’t have heard her at all.
“It’s keeping the rain out of my eyes!” I retorted. The display might have been dead but the narrow field of view was better than squinting through hail.
“Not that!” she yelled. “I’m a big fan of anything that keeps you from getting more head injuries! I meant everything else!”
I could see the barge from here. Whatever had exploded when it crashed, it was still burning. The smoke mixed with the rest of the clouds, and the closer I got the more the rain carried the soot and ashes from the fires. The flames outlined a squared-off, boxy shape. Emerald probably would have known the right name for whatever type of ship it was, but she was also too smart to get involved in something as stupid as this whole navigational beacon mess.
“I have to at least try to save them!” I said. Just seeing the ship gave me the determination I needed to push through the storm even if it felt like I was flying into a brick wall.
With the strobe lighting and just not knowing how big the barge was, it came up on me faster than I expected. One second it seemed like it was half a mile away, the next I was so close to the hull I could almost reach out and touch it.
I flapped my wings as hard as I could and tried to think about anything but the way my shoulders were telling me needles were stabbing into my wing joints. I mean, pain was supposed to be your body warning you you were hurt, right? Why couldn’t it stop after giving me the first strongly-worded message?
I spotted a hatch and flew over to it, pulling it open and stumbling inside, slamming it shut behind me and cutting out the worst of the tempest.
“Identify yourself!”
I slowly turned to face the pony who was talking. She was a mare that had to be a year or two younger than me, talking around the grip of a laser pistol.
“I’m here to help,” I said. I sat down and held up my hooves. “I’m unarmed. Let me just--” I took the helmet off so she could see my face.
“Are you with the military?” she asked.
“I’m pretty sure we’re wearing the same uniform,” I said. I shoved Destiny in my bag and hoped she’d stay quiet for a little while.
She looked me over carefully like she had to check that for herself, then took the gun out of her mouth.
“Sorry,” she said.
“You don’t need to apologize,” I said. “What can I do to help?”
The mare glanced back behind her. I could see crates and netting, and a lot of stuff spilled all over the floor.
“When we crashed, the cargo shifted. Sarge tried to secure it, but the straps broke and he’s pinned. I tried to move the crate, but…” I saw frustrated tears welling up in her eyes.
“Good thing I came, then,” I said. “If there’s anything I’m good at, it’s brute strength and shoving stuff out of the way. We’ll get him out of there.”
“We need to go fast,” she said.
“I know. I saw the fire from outside.”
“One of the engines exploded. We hit floating debris or something,” the mare said, leading me through the cargo hold. “Careful. Some of this is still ready to fall over. What happened? Sarge said he lost the nav beacon.”
“The nav beacon is out,” I said. “Something happened to the transmitter.” Technically, I had happened to it, but I wasn’t going to just tell her that. She was armed and I wasn’t. “The other guy is trying to get it back online. We couldn’t even make a radio call out to warn you.”
“Great,” the mare muttered. “You said your name was Chamomile? I’m Snow Shadow. I’d say it was nice to meet you but this is practically my first real assignment and it’s already a disaster!”
“I know the feeling,” I said. “Something that should be a simple job that just turns into a huge mess.”
She nodded and stopped in front of a tilted crate. “Sarge! One of the ponies from the beacon outpost is here to help! We’re going to try and get this thing off you, okay?”
“That would be lovely, Private Shadow,” the trapped pony said breathlessly. I looked over Snow Shadow’s shoulder to get a look at him. He was pinned between the crate and the hull of the ship. If it slipped even a little more it’d squash him like a bug. The way he was lying, and how little space he had… at least one leg had to be broken. Maybe more.
“I don’t know how these barges are set up,” I said, looking around for options. “Is there a crane or something we can use to lift it off him?”
“That’s on the dock, not the ship,” Snow said.
I looked around. “We need something sturdy enough… grab two of those pipes,” I said, pointing to a pallet on the other wall. “We’ll use them as levers.”
“Will that work?” Snow asked. She picked two up with some difficulty, flying them over.
“It’ll be fine,” I said, hefting the pipe in my hooves. It felt solid enough to work. It only had to last a few seconds.
“Just be really careful,” the trapped pony groaned. “This cargo…”
“It’s valuable, I know,” I said. “Getting you out is more important.”
He shook his head weakly. “It’s explosive! You can’t be rough with it!”
I froze. “Explosive?”
He nodded. “Missiles. The… the warheads are mostly safe, but the propellant… Snow?”
“Just try to relax Sarge, I’ll explain,” Snow said. She looked at me, worried. “These missiles are old, and they weren’t stored in a sealed compartment. They use a kind of hybrid peroxide-sugar-monoprop.”
She might as well have been speaking some obscure dialect of zebra for all that I understood what she meant. Snow must have caught the look on my face.
“Didn’t they cover this in basic?” she asked.
“I’ll be honest, I’ve never been a great student.”
“The point is…” she sighed. “Over time, especially in damp areas, the fuel destabilizes. It starts to slowly decompose and gets shock-sensitive. If they get bumped the wrong way, they’ll all go off.”
I paled. I was in a cargo hold with enough explosives to level half of Thunderbolt Shoals. “And you were carrying this stuff through a storm like this? It’s a miracle that crash didn’t set everything off!”
“Never say never,” the trapped pony quipped. “They could still go off any time they want, if the fire doesn’t get them first.”
“So we have to go fast, but gently,” I said. “That’s… two things I’m really great at.” I smiled and tried to sell that lie along with all the others.
“Lucky me,” the stallion coughed.
The smart thing to do would be to run. Quattro would have just gotten out of there and let the place explode. I could yell at Double Nothing later about the mission, but only if I was alive enough to do it. These two were military ponies, and I had absolutely no reason to even be polite to them, much less spend this much effort trying to save their lives.
“I wish my brother was here,” Snow muttered, talking to herself.
“Was he good at heavy lifting?” I asked.
“Rain always seemed to know what to do in a crisis. He didn’t panic.” Snow said. “He kept his cool and stayed ahead.”
The name tickled at my memory, but it wasn’t possible, was it? “...You don’t mean Lieutenant Rain Shadow, do you?”
She blinked in surprise, staring at me. “You know him?”
“I might. Was he working under Colonel Ohm? Got reassigned to somewhere hush-hush?”
“You do know him! How’s he doing? He never writes.”
Last time I’d seen him, he’d been unconscious and had a nasty fall. I couldn’t tell her that her brother was a jerk who killed innocent ponies and falsely accused somepony of being a deserter. That was the kind of thing a pony needed to find out for themselves.
“We only worked together for a few days,” I said, opting for something not entirely a lie. I jammed the end of my pipe in and gave a few test pushes. The trapped stallion winced at the motion. I hoped I wasn’t going to end up crushing him. “You ready on your side?”
She nodded, bracing her pipe and planting her hooves.
“Okay, once we start lifting, you’re going to need to move, sir. Are you going to be able to get out once the pressure is off?” I looked at the trapped stallion.
“Don’t ask me to dance a jig, but I’ll try and crawl out,” he said.
I nodded. “On three!” I said. “One, two… three!”
We levered the crate up. It only moved about a hoof-width, but that had to be enough. The trapped stallion dragged himself forward. I ignored the pain in my joints, focusing on keeping that weight lifted. He was crawling out with a back leg so badly broken I could see the bone. I couldn’t complain just because I was a little sore. Snow was using all her body weight, only barely touching the deck under her.
“I’m clear!” the stallion gasped.
“Let it down gently!” I said. “Slow and easy, don’t drop it!”
I eased off, and brought the crate down. The weight came off our pipes… and then the crate shifted, slamming flush against the hull and deck. I held my breath. For a second I was sure it was going to explode and kill us all.
The moment passed, none of us were dead, and I groaned and fell back on my flank.
I closed my eyes for a second. I hadn’t gotten anypony killed. Thank the stars for small favors. “That’s too much excitement for one day.”
“Too much excitement for a whole deployment,” the stallion agreed. “Snow Shadow, get on the radio again and see if you can get somepony on the line.”
“Yes, sir!” Snow said, saluting and running forwards to the bridge.
The stallion groaned and tried to move. I pulled him up, helping him get himself settled a little less painfully.
“I think I’ve got a healing potion here somewhere,” I said, rummaging around in my bags. “Hang on.”
“Don’t,” the stallion said, holding up a hoof. “Need to get the bone set first. Guessing you don’t have medic training or I wouldn’t be the one telling you that.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize for trying to help.”
Destiny’s eyes lit up at the bottom of my saddlebags, and she lifted up a needle of Med-X. My last dose. The aches in my body and the feeling like I was constantly on the verge of tearing apart collectively begged me to use it on myself, or at least save it for when I really needed it.
I offered it to the stallion.
“Here,” I said, looking away so I wouldn’t have to see myself making another stupid decision. “For the pain.”
“I’m surprised they let you have that,” he said, taking it and injecting it into his leg. He immediately started relaxing, the twitching and tension abating.
I took a deep breath. It was done. I could be anxious about my own pain later. “They don’t,” I joked.
He winked at me. “I gotcha. Just don’t let the brass know how things work in the trenches.” He offered his hoof to bump. “Altius volantis.”
“Uh, sure,” I said, bumping his hoof.
He gave me a strange look.
“Sarge, I got through to another barge and they’ve relayed the message,” Snow Shadow said, coming back from the front. “They’re going to get another crew out here in an hour or so and told us to hang tight and secure everything. No evac. They’re worried about theft.”
“They should be,” the stallion said, still looking at me. “Snow Shadow, place this pony under arrest.”
“Uh…” I took a step back.
Snow Shadow looked confused. “What happened?”
“Altius volantis. It means ‘soaring higher’. It was the motto of the Wonderbolts, and one of the things they drill into you in basic training. This pony isn’t military.” He narrowed his eyes. “Should have known, coming just at the right time. Navigation beacon goes out mysteriously, just when we’ve got cargo like this?”
“Calm down,” I said. I must have moved too quickly, because Snow Shadow pulled her laser pistol and took aim at me. “Okay, okay, let’s not fire guns around the unstable explosives.”
“Get over against the wall,” she ordered.
“You seem like a decent pony, and I hope this is just a mix-up,” the stallion groaned. “If it is, I’m sorry about this. But I’m not wrong, am I? What’s your ID number?”
“My, uh…” I swallowed. My mind went blank. I had a calculator in my head and suddenly I couldn’t remember any numbers. “Seven?”
He laughed. “That’s what I thought.”
“Look, I didn’t come out here to hurt anypony,” I said.
“Great,” Snow Shadow said. “Over against the wall like Sarge said!”
“I’m not gonna do that,” I said. “You’re a smart pony. You don’t want trouble. Heck, I’m a stupid pony and even I know neither of us needs more problems today. What I’m gonna do is, I’m gonna move real slowly like this.”
I started backing up.
“I’m unarmed. You’re not going to shoot me when I’m no threat and I just helped you save somepony’s life. I’m just going to walk over to the hatch, open it up, and you’ll never see me again. You can tell the ponies coming to pick you up that I overpowered you, or slipped away when you weren’t looking, or whatever you want.”
I kept backing up, not making any sudden moves. I think she really might have let me go. She didn’t want to shoot me. I didn’t want to get shot. I was all the way to the hatch, and she was just keeping the gun on me, shaking a little. She looked betrayed and angry.
But then the Sergeant groaned and started to collapse. He’d only barely been staying awake already and once the Med-X hit, his body was doing its best to make him pass out for a while. He wasn’t in any danger, but Snow Shadow was so focused on me that the motion and sound caught her by surprise.
She turned and started to say something, with a gun in her mouth that was triggered by her tongue.
The laser pistol went off, and when she turned the aim drifted from me to one of the crates full of explosives right next to her. There wasn’t even time for me to react.
I was standing right next to the hatch, and the blast threw me into it and out into the storm. The gusts outside caught me and wrenched me aside just in front of a wave of fire and shrapnel, tossing me away from the cargo barge.
“No!” I yelled, barely even able to hear myself over the raging wind. I flew back towards the barge, and my hoof touched the hull at the same time the second explosion went off. The hull blasted apart like an eggshell full of napalm. I slammed hard into a floating scrap of cloud and was instantly buried in grey fluff.
“Chamomile, stop!” Destiny snapped.
I pulled myself upright, shaking off vapor, and the helmet floated out of my bag.
“Look at your side,” she ordered.
I looked at my right side. My hoof was still as messed up as usual, but everything seemed okay otherwise.
“Other side,” Destiny said, sounding exhausted in the way only the undead can.
I checked my left. A chunk of shrapnel was embedded in my ribs. If I concentrated I could feel other cuts and scrapes, but they were just background noise.
“Stay still,” she ordered. The shrapnel blade was surrounded by red magic, and she slowly pulled it free. It was a little deeper than I thought, actually. And seeing it come out made me feel dizzy. Really dizzy. Or maybe it was the blood. Was my blood supposed to be that dark?
A healing potion was shoved between my lips, and I drank it, the sharp medicinal taste and cherry flavor telling me it was one of the military surplus potions we’d found.
“You okay?” Destiny asked.
“I’m just glad it wasn’t grape flavor,” I said weakly.
“We need to get out of here,” the undead unicorn said. “No telling how long it’s going to be before those salvage teams get here.”
“But--”
“They’re dead, Chamomile,” Destiny said. “There’s nothing you can do now.”
“Is there any way we can schedule these things in advance?” Para-Medic asked, as she checked me over. “If you can wait until Sunday to get blown up again, I know a pony who has a weekly sale on bootleg healing potions, and we can really save a lot of bits on keeping you alive.”
“How do you bootleg healing potions?” I asked, curious.
“I’m pretty sure he only fills the bottles halfway and then mixes the rest with white whiskey,” the pink pegasus said. “I actually like them that way, you know? Most ponies that drink potions don’t really need the whole dose anyway, and the whiskey makes injured ponies a lot easier to manage.”
I thought for a second about that. “I wouldn’t mind being made easier to manage.”
“Normally I’d say you don’t deserve a drink after getting yourself hurt like that, but I’m pretty sure Captain Glint would give you a bottle herself if it meant you’d stay out of trouble for a while,” Para-Medic said. “If anypony asks, tell them Stalliongrad Standard is traditional folk medicine.”
I was about halfway through the bottle when Quattro showed up. At that point, Destiny was helping me pour the vodka. I didn’t want to get in trouble for damaging medical equipment, after all.
“Hey,” she said, sounding guilty.
“Want a drink?” I asked, offering her the bottle.
“Don’t mind if I do,” Quattro said, taking a long sip before handing it back. “How are you holding up?”
“Your friend played us like a damn fiddle, Quattro. It wasn’t a drone barge!”
“I heard. You were pretty loud about it when you came back. Emerald is pretty angry at me for sending you on that mission.” Quattro sighed and looked away. “I’m angry at myself too. I should have been the one to go.”
“Why?”
“Because even though I’d probably do the same stupid thing you did, it’d be me doing it. You’ve had a bad enough time already.” She sat down next to the cot. “Speaking of Double, I’ve got good news, bad news, and worse news. How do you want it?”
“Give me a good news sandwich,” I said.
Quattro chuckled and nodded. “Bad news first. No fusion core. The supplier isn’t happy that the cargo got blown up. He’s talking to them and trying to work something out. I’m going to check on him in a few hours and see if he made any progress.”
“Great,” I sighed and scratched at my hoof. It hadn’t even been itchy a second ago, but now I knew I wasn’t getting any relief and it made things worse somehow.
“Good news!” Quattro clapped her hooves. “I got that memory orb you wanted.” She fished it out of her bag and put it on the bed next to me.
“Oh, nice!” Destiny grabbed it with her magic before I could touch it. She held it for a few seconds then turned to me. “I can’t access it. I think I’m going to need to borrow your head to do it. I think it needs an actual brain in the loop.”
“In a minute,” I said. “What’s the worse news?”
Quattro looked around to make sure nopony was listening in, then leaned in and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Before that cargo barge went up? They got a message out.”
“I know that. I was there. Snow Shadow sent out a mayday. A couple of them, actually. What’s the problem?”
“The problem is, the last one she sent mentioned you by name.” Quattro folded her hooves. “Your name is in the official reports going around and you’re mentioned as a pony of interest. When that works its way up the chain…”
“Anypony looking for me is going to have a good idea where to start,” I groaned.
Quattro nodded. “And from what that special ops team said back in Cirrus Valley, the survivors from the Smokestack have already been debriefed. We’re going to have to lie low for a while.”
“We were going to do that anyway,” I said. I started to get up, and the world swam. I groaned and almost dropped the bottle, Quattro nabbing it a moment before it would hit the deck. She helped me settle down.
“Rest,” she said. “Watch the memory orb, maybe? From what I’ve heard, you can’t really feel anything while you’re viewing one. Maybe it’ll be something pleasant like a memory of a day on the beach.”
“Have I ever been to the beach?” Destiny asked quietly. “It’s so hard to remember, like my life was a dream…”
“Only one way to find out,” Quattro said cheerfully. “Just don’t ask for a refund if it’s something boring. Double Nothing doesn’t do refunds.”
“I’ll take boring over what I’ve got now, which is very exciting aches and pains.”
“I’ll come get you when I’m ready to check on him. I want you there so you can tell him exactly what happened, and I want him to apologize to you in person.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “Destiny?”
She settled on my head, and I felt her magic reach out for the orb and slip inside.
Sliding into the memory was easy. All the aches and pains of my body vanished, and for a moment I was floating in nothing, in that timeless oblivion of dreamless sleep. It felt good, just to not be tired for a while.
Things came into focus suddenly, but without a discontinuity. Have you ever sat in front of a book and just stared at the page and there are words there but you don’t really see them, and then your eye catches on something, and you’re abruptly reading instead of just looking? That’s what falling into the memory was like, a shift from oblivion and nothing into implicit understanding, letters turning into words.
It was a body I’d been in before. Destiny had been right on the money with her intuition that the orb had something to do with her, because it was her. I was standing in front of a whiteboard, drawing on it with markers.
“I’ve started the recording,” she said to herself, as she finished what she was drawing on the board, a collection of shapes and runes I couldn’t understand. “This way you’ll have a record of it that you can review at any time.”
“Thank you so much,” said another pony. My host, Destiny, turned and looked at her.
It was a lavender unicorn with a dark purple mane. She looked familiar. Familiar to me, I mean, not just to Destiny, which was impossible. There was no way I’d know some random pony from that long ago. Not unless she was so famous that I’d seen her in history books.
“It’s no problem, Miss Sparkle,” Destiny said, and just saying the name amused her. “If you’re going to be spending much time here, a shield spell is a good precaution.”
Twilight Sparkle. The ministry mare herself. She looked different than in the photos I’d seen. She looked younger and almost unsure of herself, but it was definitely her. No wonder she’d seemed familiar. I’d seen dozens of pictures of her!
“I appreciate the lesson,” Twilight said. “I know we have a lot to go over, but for obvious reasons I haven’t been able to get much practical work in.”
“That’s what this memory orb is for,” Destiny said. “This recording will have me casting the spell, and when you replay it, you’ll be able to get a feel for it from my perspective. I think memory orbs could be very useful for education. Recordings of lectures are good, but some ponies have problems focusing on them. On the other hand, if a tutor records themselves reading a book, and a pony replays that memory…”
“They’ll have the same memory,” Twilight said. “Even if they couldn’t normally focus enough to read through a book or notes, they’ll almost be forced to learn it.”
“Forced makes it sound bad.” Destiny laughed. “I’d like to think of it more like borrowing somepony else’s talent at studying.”
“Speaking of which, we should get this lesson going,” Twilight said. She grinned and tapped her forehooves together excitedly. “I’m ready for my first magic lesson!”
“Right. We shouldn’t get too off-script while the recording is running,” Destiny agreed. “So the basics of shield spells…”
Let me tell you, when they talked about forcing ponies to pay attention, they were right. I literally couldn’t look away. I could sort of think about other things, but I couldn’t entirely take my focus off what was going on. It was out of my depth, and they talked about things that really only unicorns would understand.
Destiny was amused every time Twilight Sparkle asked her a question, actually laughing at some like there was some hidden joke. I didn’t really get it. Wasn’t Twilight Sparkle supposed to be some kind of prodigy with magic? Why was she getting lessons in basic spellcasting? Maybe she was playing it up for the recording, pretending to be an eager student to make the lesson seem more authentic.
I just couldn’t shake the idea that the smiling, excited mare constantly adjusting her thick glasses was somehow different from the way she’d always been presented in the history books.
“...and now I’ll cast it to show you what it looks like, and when you review the recording, what it feels like,” Destiny said.
I felt myself drawn back to the recording, and I felt that surge of magic through me, or through Destiny anyway. It felt exactly the same as when she was casting through me when I had the Exodus armor on. I’d experienced it enough by now that I could actually tell this was different from the basic telekinesis or the force bolt she’d used before.
A shimmering red field sprang up in a hemisphere in front of me.
“This is the most basic shield spell,” Destiny said. “Go ahead and throw something at me.”
“Are you sure?” Twilight asked, holding up a pencil in her aura.
“Absolutely. This could block a bullet. You’re not going to kill me with a pencil.”
Twilight threw it. Destiny didn’t even flinch. The pencil hit the shield and bounced off like it had hit a rubber wall. I felt it hit, like the magic was an extension of myself.
“See?” Destiny said. “My shield is strong enough to stop a bullet. With your natural talent, you can probably stop anything short of an anti-tank weapon.”
Twilight blushed. “Now you’re just trying to flatter me.”
Destiny laughed, and the memory faded back to oblivion before ejecting me.
“That was…” Destiny whispered, as the pain crashed back down on me like the tide. Destiny gently lifted off my head to float over me.
I groaned and shook it off. Pain was just pain. I could deal with it. “That was interesting,” I offered. “I guess you were friends with a Ministry Mare.”
“I guess so,” Destiny agreed. “Now I really wish my memory wasn’t so fuzzy. I can remember that lesson perfectly now, but it’s like… a book where all the pages got wet and the ink ran, and seeing that orb let me undo the damage to a few paragraphs, but the rest is still a blur.”
“We’ll find more,” I said. “You said it was like a dream, right? Sometimes I forget a dream entirely, then I see something that reminds me of it and bam! The whole thing comes rushing back to me. Your memory might be like that. We just need to find the one right thing and then the other pieces fall into place.”
“Yeah!” Destiny agreed. “Or like finding the corner pieces for a jigsaw puzzle. Once you have something to build off of, the rest comes together. Thanks, Chamomile. And thanks for letting me use your brain, too. The orbs need a living pony to work.”
“It’s no problem,” I said.
“But you know, now that I remember that lesson, I think I can get a shield spell working!” Destiny said. “I won’t be able to generate much power like this, but if we’re able to get the armor going with a fresh fusion core, maybe I can use it to keep you from getting blown up again.”
That sounded good to me. “I’d really enjoy not having to spend more time in bed healing.”
Quattro pushed through the curtains. “I thought I heard you talking. You feel up to being a big, scary pony to scare Double into giving us the fusion core he owes us?”
“I feel like he owes me an apology first,” I said, getting out of bed and stretching. “Think he’s got any in stock?”
“He’d better. Emerald’s so mad about this she’s ready to drag him here by the ear to make him deliver it in person.”
“I’ll pick it up myself,” I said.
“I’m going to stay here and practice that spell,” Destiny said. “It shouldn’t take long to get it down.”
I nodded and started working on exactly what I’d say. I was gonna give him a piece of my mind and I was gonna make it good. Double was going to regret not telling us everything before sending me on that mission. About the ponies on the barge, and the explosives, and… mostly about those two things.
I’d work on the wording on the way over.
I stepped over a broken shelf, careful not to walk on broken glass. The interior of the yacht was totally wrecked. I was guessing it had been done with wrenches and crowbars, mostly because of the wrenches and crowbars that had been left behind.
“Somepony got here first,” I guessed.
“Somepony even more angry than we are,” Quattro mumbled.
“Oh, hey,” Double groaned. He pulled himself to his hooves. “Sorry about not saying hello right away. I was cowering behind my desk, and I’m not ashamed to admit that because you’re one of my very best friends.”
He looked like he’d been through a cloudball match. As the ball. He was covered in bruises and his shirt was ripped to shreds.
“Am I?” Quattro asked.
“I hope so,” Double said. “Because if you’re not, I’m just going to lay down here and die now. I can’t take another beating.”
“Who did this?” I asked.
“My other client,” Double said. “The one you were securing cargo for. They were going to wait for the barge to crash, then go in and swoop up the cargo before the real emergency crews could get there. Apparently it didn’t go well.”
“It didn’t go well for anypony,” I agreed.
“Unfortunately, the Labor Union is less understanding than you, my very good friends are,” Double sighed. “So they decided they’d put the boots to me, and if I don’t find a way to make things right, they’re going to come back and finish the job.”
Quattro sighed. “Wonderful.”
“Better news, they’re the ones who were securing your fusion core. They control all the heavy machinery around here, and they’ve got all the appropriate power sources.”
“You’re saying this is our problem,” Quattro said.
“If you want the core, it is,” Double shrugged. “Also I might have let your name slip when they were kicking me. They want to talk to the pony who messed up the operation.”
He looked at me.
“This deal keeps getting worse all the time,” I muttered.