I landed hard because I didn’t care enough to even try to be gentle, letting out a stream of lurid curses and unbuckling the armor’s helm, struggling to get it off. I was so frustrated that everything just felt stifling and awful and I needed fresh air before my anger turned into a panic attack. Destiny floated it away before I could throw anything on the ground in frustration and stomp on it to let out some of the aimless rage.
“It didn’t work at all!” I yelled. “Stupid… it’s been a week since I stuck that stupid thing into my head and it’s not doing anything!”
“It should work,” Destiny said. “I’ve done every diagnostic I can think of. We didn’t break it when we killed Fornax and it was installed correctly.”
“If it was done right, why isn’t it helping?! I still can’t get anywhere near the Exodus Green!”
“I thought actually getting out there and picking up the signal would work,” Destiny said apologetically. “I’m sorry.”
I grunted. I was sore, and hungry, and tired, and I’d made no headway at all. With the High Priest dead, the attacks from the raiders had mostly stopped, but the SIVA dragon was still out there and it was only a matter of time before it decided to attack on its own. It had been licking its wounds since I’d annoyed it at the Iron Temple, but how long was that going to last?
I felt helpless, and like everything I’d done had just led me into a dead end.
“Even if the dragon came out here and told me to take my best shot at it, I couldn’t do a bucking thing,” I mumbled. “It’s all just so… useless!”
The zebras were giving me some distance, which was for the best. I knew I was having a stupid temper tantrum like a big, dangerous foal. If my Dad was here he’d probably slap me and tell me to control myself and stop embarrassing him. Mom would… well, she’d probably roar and shoot a giant stream of plasma or something, since she’d been turned into a dragon-monster.
“We’ll come up with another idea,” Destiny said. “Maybe we can figure out how to get in touch with Kulaas? It’s literally the smartest thing in the world, so it could probably fix this for us if it’s a programming problem.”
“Do we have any idea how to do that?” I asked.
“No, but there has to be a way. If it can contact us through a data link, we can do the same thing. I’m just… not a hundred percent sure how. There’s a lot of radio interference. I think the jungle is releasing tiny particles like metallic spores that’s acting like nano-chaff.”
“I guess that explains why we haven’t heard from anypony back home,” I sighed.
“Yeah. I don’t think they’d have any way to help even if we could talk to them.”
“So what do we do now?” I asked.
“You take off the armor and go get something to eat and rest for a while. I’ll do the heavy lifting on brainstorming,” Destiny said. “I know you’re hurting from that trip.”
I nodded. The infection felt like some kind of early-onset arthritis, and every joint in my body creaked like I’d slept funny on four legs, my wings, my neck, and my back all at once. I stripped down and found a barrel of water, grabbing a bucket and upending it over my head. It was ice-cold, but the chill helped my sore joints and washed the sweat off.
I shook myself like a dog to dry off a little, and when my mane wasn’t hanging in front of my eyes, I saw Wheel-of-Moon standing there, waiting patiently for me to finish.
“Tea?” she offered.
I sipped at the Dartura tea, and all my pains eased away. It felt different from a healing potion. Those were cool and soothing, but Dartura was more like a deep warmth in your body that soaked into your hurts and massaged them away from the inside. I could tell this brew was weak, more for relaxing than medicine, but it still carried enough potency to calm my frayed nerves. I was even getting used to the taste.
“Thanks,” I said.
Wheel-of-Moon smiled and settled a blanket down over my shoulders.
“I don’t want the Sky Lady getting a cold,” she said. “It sounds like you have enough troubles without adding sickness to your woes.” She sat down next to me. “I wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done for us.”
“I haven’t done enough,” I said. “I still haven’t even done what I came down here to do. The dragon that caused all this is just a mistake made by pony technology, and I have to fix it. But I don’t know how to do that. I thought I had a way, but…”
I sat back, trying to find a way to put it into words.
“You are not an unwise pony, but I find that I am thankfully able to offer you something,” Wheel-of-Moon said. “You are trying to use the tool of your enemy, aff?”
I nodded, rubbing my right forehoof self-consciously.
“To get it, you killed him. That is poison to the spirit. Even if it should work, some trace of his grudge will remain on it. You have to come to terms with what you’ve done and quiet his lingering rage. Until then, it is not your thing to use, it is stolen and remembers the owner it should have!”
I must have made a face at that, because I saw Wheel-of-Moon’s eyebrow go right up.
“You think I’m speaking nonsense and superstition,” she said.
“It’s just a machine,” I protested.
“You, who travels everywhere with a ghost, think a machine cannot be haunted by its last owner? I know it is the pony way to seek a simple, worldly solution to problems, but this is something you cannot fix without addressing the root. Do you understand?”
“How am I supposed to do that?” I sighed. I was just about ready to do whatever she said, just to have something new to try.
“You remember your first attempt to journey into your spirit world?” Wheel asked.
I shuddered. “I remember being attacked by metal bees!”
“Good, it would be terrible if you lost your memory!” She patted my head. “I’ll get the special tea brewing. And something for bee stings, just in case.”
My spirit world. It was like the deepest night you could imagine, with a light haze hanging over everything. I was sitting at the edge of a field of flowers growing on a mountainside, the slope gently tilting down and into the cloud layer. I ran a hoof through the nimbus and it was like it wasn’t even there, not even a suggestion of holding my weight.
I looked out at the blackness. If I really strained my eyes, I could swear I saw other lights, other peaks pushing through the lapping sea of clouds, far off in the distance. It was hard to be sure in the endless depths. It felt like no matter which way I looked, I was always staring straight down into a bottomless abyss.
“This place is so creepy,” I muttered. “Why can’t my spirit world be somewhere bright and happy and nice?”
“It’s dark because nothing out there exists,” a voice said from behind me. I almost fell right into the clouds and down to the unknown below. I spun around to face whoever’d spoken and…
There was a young stallion there, sitting placidly and looking at me with a blank, stoic expression.
“This is the world of the spirit,” he explained. “What exists here is a reflection of your impact in the minds and hearts of those around you. It’s the space you’ve carved out of existence to fit into.”
“How did you get here?” I asked, frowning. “Who are you?”
“That’s quite rude, since you invited me here,” the stallion said.
“I did?”
“I suppose you didn’t recognize me without my accouterments,” he said. “That is entirely fair. I did remake myself almost entirely.”
I blinked and narrowed my eyes. He was very patient while I worked it out. “Wait… you’re Fornax?”
“Very good,” he said, nodding. Without the giant metal hat and… metal everything else, he didn’t look at all like the High Priest. Even his voice was different. The unicorn was a muddy orange-brown, with a dark blue mane sporting a single streak of crimson.
“I guess I was expecting you to be taller. Not that I expected to see you again.”
“Of course. I am dead, after all. This shade you see before you is just what still lingers in the world, like the echo of a last breath.”
“Very poetic,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“That was my special talent, you know,” he said. Fornax turned a bit to let me see his flank. There was a scroll there, but with a carefully scrawled flower instead of letters. “I was a poet, before I was a priest. It’s a very rare talent in the wasteland, if only because ponies have more need for bullets than sonnets.”
“You were also a raider,” I said.
“Poetry doesn’t keep a pony alive. Scavenging did for a while. Then I had to kill ponies to keep what I had. One thing leads to another. It’s easier to get perspective on it here. I don’t have to justify things to you or myself.” He shrugged. “It’s not much different from what you’ve done, really.”
“What are you talking about? I’m nothing like you!”
He chuckled. I wanted to punch him for that smug laugh, but I’m a great pony with amazing self control and I’d never smack a defenseless pony in the face. Anyway, once he’d picked himself off the ground, he rubbed his cheek.
“Somepony is a bit touchy,” he mumbled. “You came into my home and killed me because you wanted something I had. If that isn’t raiding, I don’t know what is.”
“The difference is… that it’s different!” I huffed, turning away from him.
“I see. A very compelling argument. You are stronger than I was, so I suppose I don’t have a right to complain. I was hoping you’d sit and we’d be able to chat and I’d tell you the sad story of how I became who I was.”
“You got bullied as a foal about liking poetry, snapped and killed everypony, then ran away and changed everything about yourself to escape your dark past,” I guessed.
He laughed. “Far from the truth. Actually, I was quite well-liked! My parents were part of a trading caravan, and naturally I ended up being part of it as well. They spoiled me a bit and always tried to surprise me with pre-war books they found in their journeys.”
“...Oh,” I said. I was looking out into the clouds, and while he spoke, I could swear the shapes in the clouds became vague ponies, like a shadow play going along with his tale. “That sounds kinda nice.”
“It was! Until they were killed by raiders, at any rate.” The image of his parents was washed away in a gust of wind that tore the tops of the clouds up until they resembled flames.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
Fornax sat next to me and gave me a disappointed look. “I don’t need apologies or sympathy. I just want you to understand that I was weak. They were strong. They had every right to kill my parents. The world is cruel and uncaring.”
“The world is only cruel if we let it be that way. We can be decent to each other! Where I come from, we all work together.”
Fornax frowned. “Then why did you leave?”
“It’s complicated.”
“My reasons for being here are simple. I was with a small group. We thought of ourselves as treasure hunters. We weren’t afraid to fight and kill, but we always justified it. We attacked raiders, or slavers, or a merchant that cheated us. Mostly we scavenged. We hung on by the very edge of our hooves and survived. And one day we went north, because there were rumors of treasure and untouched ruins. We thought it would be our big score, and we found the Green.”
“A big metal forest made of knives. I can see why it’d excite you.”
“It was the only forest I’d ever seen. It’s vibrant and alive! And it’s strong. So, so strong. I wanted to be part of that strength. I wanted to stop worrying about monsters and raiders and the undead. I really underestimated how much I had to worry about pegasus ponies pretending to be alicorns.”
“Pretending to be what?”
“Running around with a horned helmet like that is a statement. A bold one. I wonder how you’d compare to a real alicorn…”
“There aren’t any around for me to wrestle,” I snorted.
“Perhaps. My goal with the Green was to share its power with others. You defeated me, so the least I can do is be graceful in defeat and help you.” He tapped my shoulder and pointed behind us. The hive was there, a pony-shaped pile of clockwork surrounded by a cloud of buzzing mites. “With that.”
“Ugh…” I groaned. “It’s like a bee hive. I think it represents my SIVA infection.”
“Yes. And you haven’t mastered it. I’m amazed you survived this long.”
“You’re not the first pony to say that…” I sighed.
He shook his head and rolled his eyes. “You have to establish dominance. It’s as simple as that.”
“You can’t punch a bee hive in the snout!”
“You can when it looks like a pony,” Fornax said. “The leader of a bee hive is the queen. There can be only one.”
I paled. “I have to dig around in that thing? Do you know how bad it hurts to get stung by bees?”
He shrugged, obviously not caring. I sort of understood. To him, if I was weak enough that a little pain was enough to keep me from doing something that would save my life, I didn’t deserve to live in the first place.
I carefully approached the hive. If it was a pony, I would think it wasn’t aware of me. It didn’t turn its head to follow me when I moved or swivel its ears. It moved, but it was more like a machine than a living thing, walking in a jerking circle like a broken toy. If the hive seemed unaware, the swarm was anything but. The buzzing got louder with every step closer. It was trying to scare me off.
But if it was scaring me off, that meant it was worried I’d do something.
If I spent too long thinking about it, I’d lose my nerve. I couldn’t gird myself for this, I had to plunge in and keep moving. I was hoof-deep in clockwork before my brain caught up with my impulsiveness. Gears and twisting metal cut into me as I tore panels free, trying to find whatever I was supposed to find. My skin burned and blistered with mites trying to burrow into me. I shielded my face as much as I could.
I shoved the hive to the ground, the metal legs kicking feebly at the air, and used what leverage I had to rip off its right foreleg. The shoulder came out along with it, and I saw a glimmer of light deep inside the chest. The swarm redoubled, biting at my ears and trying to get into my eyes. I squinted through the pain, pulling odd mechanisms and pipes and chains out of the way to reveal something.
A glass jar, right where the heart should have been. Inside it was a glowing mote, buzzing like somepony had trapped the tooth flutterpony. I ripped the whole jar free and stumbled back, trying to get away from the swarm, but it followed me like I was the center of the storm. I smashed the glass on the ground and dug through the shards, ignoring the pain of the broken glass cutting into me, and found the struggling little thing, like a wristwatch crossed with a dragonfly.
I put it in my mouth and crunched down. It was metal. I shouldn’t have been able to chew it, but it acted more like hard sugar, shattering and then quickly dissolving. It had a taste like perfume and brown sugar.
The biting and burning stings slowed and stopped, the swarm quieting. The mites orbited me, either confused or placid.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Fornax asked.
I glared at him. I still felt like raw meat, and looked like I’d rolled down a mile of sharp gravel and left most of my hide behind. I felt exposed. Weak. If it had been my real body instead of a hallucination or something, I’d probably be screaming. The pain was more distant here, removed a level from my awareness.
A chill, dead wind swept across the field. The cold hit me like a brick, and made everything sting where the fresh air touched it. The swarm around me shifted and started glowing, warmth radiating out of them to counter the cold.
“Remember,” Fornax said. “You have to be strong. You beat me, so you have no excuse for weakness. Do whatever it takes to survive. That’s the only rule of this world.”
I woke up gasping, feeling too cold and too hot and like I didn’t fit in my skin all at the same time. Wheel-of-Moon was standing over me with a cloth in her hooves. She patted my shoulder and put it on my forehead. It was warm and wet and smelled like herbs and flowers.
“You were on a long journey,” she said. “I was beginning to get worried.”
“I met somepony I didn’t expect to see again,” I said. “We had an argument.”
“Ah,” she said. “You attacked him.”
“What? No! I mean literally, we had an argument! I don’t always fight ponies!”
“That is good!” Wheel-of-Moon smiled warmly. “I am pleased that you are trying something new, Sky Lady.”
“You’re not gonna ask what we talked about?”
“You can tell me, if you wish, and I will listen. But I will not force you to say anything. What you experienced is inside you, and personal in a way difficult for the uninitiated to understand.”
I bit my lip, trying to decide. “It’s not… that important,” I decided. “He believes the strong are better than the weak. I think caring for the weak is what makes us people instead of animals. Then he told me to wrestle the bee hive and become the new queen by force. I guess that sort of worked, but I don’t feel great that his advice was good, because then does it mean he was right about the rest of what he said? Because he was an awful pony.”
Wheel-of-Moon shook her head. “Good advice can come from strange places. What is important is learning to tell good advice from bad. Would you now destroy this village to take what you want because we are weak?”
“Of course not!”
“Then you have already decided your own truth about those words. I believe the truth lies between the two - the strong have a responsibility to use their strength. But people can be strong in many ways. My medicine is strong. Rain-at-Dawn is a great farmer and feeds many with her skills. Burning-of-Sky cuts wood and makes charcoal. The Companions hunt and protect. Every zebra here is strong, but they do not have to be strong in every way. We each find our own path, and because of that we have fresh food, and clean water, and medicine, and fires in our hearths.”
I nodded. “Yeah. That’s what civilization is all about. Written history begins when ponies first started to settle down and share and pool skills like that, because then they had time to start doing things like inventing ways to write. Once they did that, they could pass on information from generation to generation.”
“It is our nature to work together,” Wheel said. “It is the nature of our real strength, not how much we can lift, even with muscles like these.” She patted my shoulder. “You should go and find your friend when you are well enough to stand. The little ghost does not like us much, and when she is worried she becomes less polite about such things.”
I groaned. “I’ll talk to her.”
“I can’t believe you made me apologize to every zebra in town,” Destiny grumbled. She was trying really hard to sound upset about things. “I’m too old to go around and start being nice to everyone!”
We were flying along Highway 13, over the river of stopped and broken down vehicles. It had started as a trickle and this close to the Cosmodrome they were literally on top of each other, skywagons rolled over onto carts, accidents that must have happened centuries ago when ponies were scared and caught in a terrible panic.
“You’re not that old,” I said. “You’re like, practically my age!”
“Your age plus a hundred and seventy years.”
“Are you really gonna count the whole time you were dead?”
“I will if it lets me win an argument.”
DRACO beeped, interrupting our banter.
Destiny popped up a window on my HUD. “SIVA signal strength is increasing. We’ll be hitting your tolerance limit in less than a minute.”
“It’s gonna work this time,” I said, feeling sure. I felt good. I was sore, but it was the kind of sore a pony gets when they’re healing. I could feel the edge of the signal outside tickling at me, but it was just a pressure, like the sensation of walking into a room full of ponies talking to each other.
“Anything? Any pain?” Destiny asked. “Your vitals are holding steady.”
“It worked!” I laughed. “We did it!”
“Finally.” Destiny sighed and collapsed a few windows. “I was starting to think we’d have to fabricate some kind of Faraneigh Cage.”
“There’s only one thing to do now,” I said. “We’ve got to track the dragon down.”
“All the information at our disposal suggests the local SIVA infection came from the Exodus Green. It looks like it’s the last Exodus Ark remaining in the area.”
“Let’s scout it out,” I said. “We still haven’t figured out how to actually make the weapon Kulaas gave us, but this is a good opportunity to get the lay of the land.”
I could feel Destiny mentally sit up and pay attention. “I’d call you reckless, but I’m just as eager to get moving. We can deal with anything short of the dragon itself without the Valkyrie. We’ll confirm the location so we can make more detailed plans for a real attempt.”
A location popped up on my compass, in the deepest part of the red zone we’d mapped out. Before now, flying in there would have meant certain death with SIVA going out of control and doing something awful to my insides. Now, it was like nothing at all. I could just tune it out and ignore it, and the SIVA in my body ignored it too.
“It’s like deja vu but all wrong,” Destiny said quietly.
“Hm? What is?”
“I remember how this place used to look. There was a little Hayburger Princess down there next to the road, and the building next to it was a Starbucked.” I looked down, but there were just collapsed shells barely visible through the forest, overgrown and ruined. “I used to get coffee there all the time…”
“I, uh…” I tried to think of something appropriate to say. “I know how to make coffee?”
Destiny snorted. “You’d probably get frustrated and headbutt the espresso machine.”
“See if I make you a cup next time I find a coffee pot and some coffee!”
“I’d appreciate the gesture, even if I couldn’t drink it,” Destiny said. “We’re getting close to the Ark Runway. You should have seen it when it was new. It was the largest runway in the world, by a huge margin. Over ten thousand meters!”
“That’s a heck of a runway,” I said.
“The Arks were the size of cities. You’ve only gotten to see parts of one. Now you’re going to get to see the real thing!”
I looked around. I could tell we were close to the point on the marker. I couldn’t see the ship anywhere. There was just a mountain of vegetation, with trees reaching twice as tall as anywhere else.
“Where is it?” I asked.
“You’re right on top of it,” Destiny said. The view on my visor brightened, and she started drawing lines across the terrain, picking out the edge of a massive wing.
“Oh,” I said quietly. It was like suddenly seeing a hidden picture. It wasn’t a small mountain. It was a ship. I really hadn’t been able to get a sense of the scale before. It must have been ten times the size of the largest cloudships, shaped more like a flying wing resting on top of two huge fuselages flanking a central bulge. I could make out the outline even through the jungle.
“We can try going in through the cloudship dock,” Destiny said. “It’s on the rear of the ship, right in the middle.”
I nodded and started swooping down towards it. It was still more like flying around terrain than a cloudship. It was so big it was hard to even think of it as a structure. It seemed too big to be something ponies could build. I came in low, with twin monolithic fins to either side.
“Woah…” I whispered. The dock was under an overhang, vines trailing from the top ledge high above. It was easily large enough for a couple Raptors, or even a Thunderhead.
“Someone’s been busy. The structures on the walls and floor aren’t part of the ship.” Destiny pointed out a few of them with markers. They were like treehouses made from cargo containers and metal panels salvaged from elsewhere in the wreckage.
“It must be where the raiders live when they’re not trying to murder anypony,” I said. “I don’t see anypony down there. Do you?”
“Nothing. Unless the war against the Companions has completely depleted their numbers…”
“You don’t think they went to attack in force, do you?”
“I doubt it. We flew here low enough to the ground that we would have noticed an army.”
I flew around a massive tree that reached towards light streaming in through a hole broken in the roof, and that’s when I spotted them.
“Looks like we found the party,” I whispered. There must have been a hundred of them, in a rough semicircle around a bonfire. Two ponies were standing near the flames, fighting hoof-to-hoof. The rest of the raiders were almost silent. I thought they’d be cheering, or at least screaming in bloodthirsty rage. It was completely the opposite of the Companions. There, the fighting had been for fun, testing strength for bragging rights.
This fight was tense. It wasn’t ponies having fun. Lives were on the line.
I set down quietly where I could watch from the shadows, close enough to make out the individual raiders. I was pretty sure I’d killed some of them before. Their broken bits had been replaced, and they looked as healthy as anypony could with steel spikes growing out of their hide and half their body turned into weapons. It explained why the bodies seemed to vanish. They limped back home when nopony looked and licked their wounds.
In the center of the circle, the two fighting were obviously on another level. Both of them had elaborate metal growths on their heads like something between antlers and crowns.
“This is a good opportunity to look around while they’re distracted,” Destiny whispered. “They won’t even know we’re here.”
“It makes sense,” I said. “Fornax was the leader, right? I can’t see them sitting around voting like we would back home.”
“I’m torn, because voting seems almost as bad,” Destiny said. “Do you really think the average raider is smart enough to vote? Most of them probably can’t even read! It’s one thing for educated, informed ponies to make decisions, but the majority of ponies are better off if they’re just told what’s best for them.”
“Sometimes I forget you’re used to living in a monarchy,” I mumbled.
“It was a really good monarchy,” Destiny retorted. I stopped at the next intersection. The hallways looked just like the Exodus Blue. The wild growth only poked through here and there, with most of it hidden behind the walls.
There weren’t any raiders in sight.
“So far, so good,” I said. “Good thing you know your way around.”
“I doubt those raiders outside have even explored much of the ship. They can’t have been here for long. From what the scavenger we rescued said -- what was her name? Riptide Rush? -- ponies weren’t always disappearing from around here. And Wolf-in-Exile only saw the dragon for the first time a few weeks ago.”
“Any idea where the dragon might be?” I asked.
“I’d put every bit I have on it being in Engineering. The SIVA cache would have started out there, and it’s big enough to fit a monster like we saw. Follow the green track and it should take us the right way.”
I nodded and picked up the pace.
“Should we be trying to find survivors while we’re here?” I asked. “I know on the Exodus Blue the, um, whatever they were called, the pony freezers--”
“Cryo-pods.”
“They broke down because the ship got cut in half and set on fire. This ship seems okay, though. We might be able to get them out.”
“That… isn’t an issue,” Destiny said. “This ship doesn’t have cryo-pods. Not for ponies, anyway.”
“It wasn’t finished being built?” I guessed.
“I… it’ll be easier to show you. We can take a shortcut through there anyway.”
Destiny was quiet while I jogged through the hallways. The emergency lighting was still on, and everything seemed to be working. I guess the ship was just sealed so well that the wasteland couldn’t get in, sort of like the Stables.
“Go in there,” Destiny said, when I reached a secure-looking door. I hit the control to the side and it slid open smoothly, a rush of wintery air hitting me. I stepped through and into something that felt like a library run by spiders. Rows of shelves stretched in both directions, and above me I could see more on an upper level. All of it was caught in a web, some strands so thin they were hard to see.
“What is this?” I walked closer to one of the shelves. Instead of books, it had rows of plastic bins. Inside were carefully-secured glass tubes filled with cotton and a few black… “Are those seeds?”
“It’s the largest seed bank ever put together,” Destiny explained. “It has every plant species in Equestria, and even some from outside. The upper level has genetic material and tissue samples from almost as many animals. Except for one.”
“Phoenixes,” I said confidently. “You couldn’t get samples because they’re made of fire.”
Destiny laughed. “Ponies, Chamomile. There are no pony gene samples here.”
“Huh? Why? Weren’t the Arks about rebuilding Equestria?”
“It was a specific request from Fluttershy, towards the end. She made a recording for the crew that explains it better than I ever could. I’m sure there’s a copy around here somewhere.”
I nodded. If she was pawning the explanation off on somepony else either she didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news or it was another hole in her memory and she didn’t want to admit it. It was better to let it go for now, so I plucked one of the taut strands of plasticy tubing. “I bet this isn’t part of whatever she wanted,” I said.
“No,” Destiny agreed. “That was definitely built by SIVA. It looks like it’s connecting everything.”
I traced the strand, trying to get a sense of the structure. It bundled itself up with others into a thick cable. That connected to a trunk studded with bronze buds. I flew carefully around the web to get a look at it.
“This thing is just like one of the mini SIVA factories that were making explosives and stuff back in the munitions plant.” I tapped it, and it dribbled green goo studded with black bits. “I think it’s making more seeds.”
“It’s the source of the jungle outside,” Destiny said. “It must all connect here. It’s trying to replicate seeds with SIVA, so all the new plants are born infected.”
“Yeah, but…” I tapped it again. I was sure this time. I could feel something there, like a bell or a tuning fork or a bell that was also a tuning fork and it was in two places at once. It wasn’t easy to describe.
“What’s wrong?”
“I think… I can use this.” I focused. Fornax had been able to get the munition plant making all kinds of things. Explosives, bullets, guns. All of it had come from pods like this. If I had the part of him that let him control it, shouldn't I be able to do the same thing?
I rested my hoof on the fruiting SIVA and closed my eyes. I tried to picture what I wanted.
The bronze fruit started heating up, like it had been sitting out in the sun. After a few seconds, it opened up. I opened one eye cautiously.
A rifle shell slid out of the brass fruit. I caught it before it could fall and held it up. It was a little slimy, but...
"I think it worked," I said, turning it around to look at the other side. I didn't see anything wrong with it right away. "I was trying to make ammunition for DRACO."
"I think that's actually the right caliber," Destiny said. "That's kind of surprising. Unless... the logic coprocessor! It must have done something for your spacial awareness! That explains your accuracy with the Junk Jet, too. It's been helping you think of the right angles and arcs subconsciously."
"Maybe having a computer brain isn't all that bad," I conceded. "What do you think, DRACO?"
I slid the round into the rifle's chamber, and it beeped and flashed a smiling emote.
"Seems he likes it," Destiny confirmed. "This confirms my hypothesis that we can use this to make the Valkyrie weapon Kulaas sent us."
"I, uh..." I hesitated. "I don't really know how to do that. I knew how to make a bullet because it's pretty simple, but..."
"The Valkyrie is far from simple," Destiny agreed. "But we can put the puzzle pieces together. Back in the SPP tower, you were able to decode a data steam from Kulaas. A little, anyway."
"I could hear something under the music it was playing."
"Right. That means the augmentation in your head can decode a Warmind signal! I guess I really future-proofed my own cybernetics. Always good to be an overachiever."
"So what do I do?"
"Put your hoof on another one of those pods," Destiny said.
I obediently flew over to another fruit and touched it, feeling that same magnetic attraction.
"Now just keep your eyes open, and let's see if this works the way I think it will..."
My display changed, a window occluding my entire field of view. Images started flashing, one after the other in quick succession. It only lasted a few seconds, but it made me feel like somepony was holding my eyes open and making me read a whole textbook, like information was being poured into me with a hose. The images stopped, and I was left with an afterimage of all of them layered on top of each other, like a crystal in four dimensions.
"I think I might be sick," I groaned. “Did it work?”
“It’s doing something,” Destiny said.
The brass fruit shook and steam started rising from it. I backed off, and it split open, disgorging a black, iron shaft, still hot with the warmth of its forging as it slid out, the SIVA building it inch-by-inch. I gently took the end and held it steady while the miniature factory finished its work. When the copper fruit fell apart, I was left holding an angular spear made of geometric shapes pressed together, like it had been grown from a single huge crystal. It glowed faintly from within, and when I tilted it the glow moved and flowed.
“Is this it?” I asked.
“The only way to know for sure is to test it out,” Destiny said. “If it does what it’s supposed to, it should be able to destroy the SIVA in here without harming the seed banks.”
I flew back, getting some distance from the main knot of the growth. The Valkyrie was heavy in my hooves. I hefted the javelin and took aim.
“Here goes nothing!” I shouted, throwing it into the mass of copper wire and lime-colored plastic. It was balanced perfectly, lancing into the vines right where I’d aimed. The spear unraveled in a way that solid metal shouldn’t, compressing like a spring and injecting that orange glow inside it out into the SIVA-made vines.
Instantly, they burned. It wasn’t a normal fire, it was like acid and flame and something else all at once, a swarm of lights turning at right angles in the air and tracing out squares and cubes as they sought out the growth, eating into it and reducing it to dust.
“Woah!” I gasped. The burst of activity only lasted a few seconds, but it left total destruction in its wake. Everything it had touched was crumbling and grey. I poked it cautiously and it flaked away. The thin tendrils that had been wrapped around the shelves peeled off on their own, falling away and leaving the plastic bins intact.
“I think we can call that a successful test,” Destiny said, sounding impressed.
Everything shook around us, the SIVA vines swinging in the air and the seed banks rattling.
“You don’t think we caused some kind of chain reaction, do you?” I asked.
“I hope not. That vine didn’t seem like a structural member, and the reaction seemed self-limiting. Let’s retreat for now. We’ll find somewhere with a lot of these SIVA nodes and we’ll make a bunch of Valkyries, and then come back--”
The floor tore open before she finished speaking.
The green SIVA dragon struggled to fit its head through, the array of antenna-antlers catching. I dove to the side, away from the snapping jaws, and smashed into one of the massive shelving units. The rest of the deck started to break, and the shelf tipped, an avalanche of heavy boxes tumbling onto me and carrying me through the broken floor and into the abyss below, the dragon’s roar echoing around me.