Earth Calendar: 2117
Equestrian Calendar: 15 AC (After Contact)
Twelfth Month, Tenth Day, Celestial Calendar
Celestia
My world was shattered in just ten minutes.
I felt in that moment that I at last understood the Human Biblical story of Job. His whole reality upended by calamity that would have killed a lesser man, or anyone separated from Divine Grace, just by the hearing of it.
I felt a sudden twinge. A desire to reach out to that same Divine Grace, the self-same one the Gryphons also almost universally seemed to worship, and beg for something, anything, to stem the pain.
I had always held something of a divine mystique among my little Ponies... Even among many Humans... But I felt grossly inadequate to shoulder that mantle. Doubly so given what I had learned.
It had started with the arrival of a sweat drenched Pegasus. The courier was so close to death from his flight that I had been forced to intervene directly to arrest his body's shutdown, and restore some energy.
The news was even more dire than I had feared to infer from his condition. An exchange of weapons of mass destruction on Earth. The fires of atomic hatred nearly poured out on a Conversion Bureau. An outright civil conflict. Thousands dead in retaliation. Antithetic Matter used as a weapon. Millions more teetering on a knife's glittering edge. Billions of futures in the balance on the whole.
Everything I'd worked so hard to avoid for so many years.
Oh Fyrenn. What did you do?
The instant the thought hit me, I chastised myself for it roundly.
I didn't have enough details yet. Maybe he had done something rash, if partly justifiable... Or perhaps maybe I just wanted someone easy to blame. Perhaps the fault lay, as it usually did, with a variety of people, across a rather larger span of time. A chain of many sickly sour links eventually at last forged unto the point of disaster.
The worst had at least been averted for the moment, but only ever-so tenuously.
Time was of the essence. I needed to be there. Needed to stand in the gap and hold back the howling storm before it metastasized into outright war.
And then Luna and Varan came into my study. I knew right away from my dear sister's face that it was going to be the worst possible kind of news. Luna hardly ever deigned to show others her tears, not even me. And it was plain to see she had been crying openly and profusely.
The sight was like a dagger thrust between my ribs.
I sat still, as if turned into one of the statues in the castle gardens, as Varan calmly laid out the entire train of conjecture for Kephic, Shining Armor, IJ, Stanley, and I. Calling it conjecture was a futile attempt at holding onto a false hope. I knew it was the only possible explanation for a great many things the moment the words left Varan's beak.
They fell on my ears with all the unholy weight of two worlds.
Varan never said a word as to any theories on why the Nightmare had done the things she did. I think he had only a faint idea. Luna almost certainly knew outright, but she didn't interject to say it.
The numbers were the only thing that gave it any kind of sense. I kept closely apprised of Humanity's statistics. Population. Birth rate. Death rate. Conversion rates.
I felt my breath catch. Conversion rates. The best offer of hope and salvation I could give... And that too was just one of the jaws of the trap. I'd helped to create one of the essential instruments of our doom. I understood a part of how Luna must have felt.
I needed to say something to help her. To take some of the guilt on my shoulders and get it off hers... But to do that, I would first have to explain to the trusted few in attendance.
My horn flared, and the windows and doors snapped closed. The curtains were drawn, A quick sweep of the arcane to ensure none were listening in ways they ought not.
I allowed a few more somber moments to pass before raising my head, looking to each occupant of the room in turn as I spoke, finally bringing my eyes to rest on Luna.
"There is only one logical reason for the Nightmare to have spent so much energy, on a horror of such scope... Given that we know Wisps exist outside the corporeal. And that for hosts, they need Equine form. Most ideally Ponies. To possess. The way Nightmare possessed Luna."
Sildinar was the first to leap ahead to the full conclusion. I could see it in his eyes. I heard him mutter an old Gryphic prayer aloud as I paused for breath.
"A'h Deh'ya aarum-acehd a'ingeal, dèy'an to'ròcair a'guh dy'on si'yann."
Oh God of Angelic Hosts; Protect us and show mercy.
IJ caught on next, and mercifully gave voice to the remainder of the obvious truth for me.
"She linked our world to theirs, in a way that would force Humans to flee here. A way that would force them to become ideal hosts in order to escape, and separate them from all their defensive technology in one smooth stroke. I've seen one of the Wisp Hives. They are as numerous as sand grains on a beach. But your population is small. And while ours is somewhat compatible, it too is not nearly large enough, nor fully physically ideal. And it is far better defended mentally by the Hive mind... She wants the Humans' sheer numbers. Their sheer numbers, in your ideal bodies."
Kephic winced visibly, and sighed. He spoke with the kind of almost prophetic utterance that had the timbre of a bell rung for a funeral. It was an eerie thing to come from his usually more jovial, colloquial tongue.
"The Dispossessed seek to be so no more, but to have form and feeling of the real."
The only sound after that was the 'THUD' of Carradan collapsing to his haunches. IJ reached to put a comforting wing around him as I heard him struggle to control his breath.
I realized with a shock that I hadn't drawn breath myself for several moments, forcing air in through my muzzle with a soft hiss as Stanley spoke.
"What... Does this mean? For us?"
Luna opened her muzzle to speak, but Varan raised a wing over her back to both comfort her, and stem the tide of what were doubtless very dark words indeed. The golden Gryphon spoke out instead, and I shot him the warmest glance of thanks I could. It likely came off more dour than I intended, but I think he understood as he tried to lend the room some strength with his words.
"It means that we fully know our enemy at last. And in knowing, there is hope yet to fight."
Earth Calendar: 2117
Equestrian Calendar: 15 AC (After Contact)
December 10th, Gregorian Calendar
Aston
The darkness was warm. Like a comforting blanket in the deep of winter. I hadn't had any rest, or peace, for so long... I didn't want to fight it. I'd done all I could. My only regret...
Hutch.
I never got to tell him just how much I...
Lights. Indistinct. Like flickers of sun against eyelids... But Earth's sun had never been warm, or golden. The light was warmer than the dark blanket. And vibrant gold. Like a healthy sun shining down through a clear, living sky.
I felt myself scooped up in a pair of wings.
Fyrenn? Or Neyla?
So tired... Can't even open my eyes... Don't want to even ask...
The warmth of the sun seemed to spread through those feathers right into my own body. The ice cold void of my chest wound vanished.
That was it. I realized in a flash... I was dead.
The bolt hadn't severed my spine completely, but it had demolished a pretty good chunk of my insides.
The antimatter! The ship! Out of danger?
Did it even matter from my perspective if I really was dead?
Could you realize you were dead? Had Fyrenn been right? Was there really a Heaven and a Hell?
And where was I going if there was?
Going... I could feel motion. Air sliding past. More images and sounds, but they began to flood in too fast! It was overwhelming! How to make sense of it all?
Laughter. Crying. Joy. Sorrow. Pain... Was that my life flashing before my eyes?
No... Too indistinct...
A tickling, prickling sensation all through my head and sides. What the actual fuck?
And then one voice slowly becoming more distinct, repeating itself over and over...
"Laura! Laura please! Please Laura don't go! You're almost there! Don't leave me alone in this hell Laura please... Please!"
Hutch!!!
My eyes snapped open. Pain assaulted my skull like a trillion microscopic railgun rounds fired through every neuron in my brain.
Pain was good. Pain meant I was still alive.
"LAURA!"
I realized with a shock that I wasn't breathing. A heaving gasp shook my body, and then something pressed against my head and neck. A familiar smell hit me, mixed as it was with the tang of medical fluids, the reek of blood, and... Warm feathers? Hutch's particular preferred brand of military-issue deodorant.
I'd never been so happy to taste the scent of 'Bracing Redoubt.' Stupid name for a stupid scent.
I mashed my eyes shut, and the pain lessened. I felt tears begin to well up, even as Hutch's own tears dripped onto my... FEATHERS?!
"WHAT THE FFF-FFFF---"
I scrambled, and pitched forward. I could feel Hutch do his best to arrest my fall from the biobed, but he was just a Human and I was...
My beak hit the floor with a 'THUD.' My... Beak. Oh wow that was strange...
I winced, but the pain wasn't as bad as I'd braced for. I scrambled madly to get my legs... All four legs... Under me.
My breaths came in huge heaving gulps as I fought to suppress a panic reaction, sort out new nerve endings, parse instincts from two different brain structures, old and new, and try desperately to get my sense of linear time back in order.
I felt Hutch's arms encircle my neck. Felt his head against the feathers of one cheek. Oh wow that felt so good. So comforting. So right.
The gulps of air turned to sobs, as time unspooled from its tangled mess, and my mind finally rejoined the land of the living outright.
So glad to be alive. To know that he was alive.
And I felt ALIVE!
As the pain of the transitions in my mind began to fade to a dull tingle, I opened my eyes... And saw real color for the first time.
No, I wasn't color-blind as a Human... It was just that Humans apparently were seeing practically nothing of the real colors in the world.
Even the drab soothing inoffensive pastel tones of the Lucapa medical ward were a riot of colors, and details... Oh God the details! I could count surface imperfections in every head of every bolt and screw in the entire room in less time than it took for one beat of my... Enormous... Heart...
That was new. I felt so drained... So tired... Like I hadn't eaten in YEARS! But the raw potential underneath. Something like a fusion-driven Naval engine.
Was this what Fyrenn and Kephic, Varan, Sildinar, Seyal... What they felt all the time?!
I had some intellectual idea how much power their bodies had... How much mine now had... But oh boy its a different story when you experience it for yourself. Suddenly all those hair-brained ideas at command about Humans simming war games against Gryphons made no sense at all, and I finally *got* why they made no sense.
I had the kind of potential energy thrumming in my breast to power a squadron of tanks! My mind could move at speeds that made everything else appear to stand still.
But I didn't have any fuel. God I needed food... My stomach let out a rumble that almost shook the floor.
Hutch finally pulled away, and I finally fixed my new eyes on him. Charted and re-charted every wrinkle and dimple, every pore and cell of his face. That face I loved so much.
"I am not putting this off another second. Before anything else happens... Laura? Will you marry me?"
I sat down hard on my hind legs. The position was surprisingly stable, and comfortable, which was a good thing, because the flood of emotions was like being shot out of the spillway of a hydropower dam.
But at the same time, I knew the answer.
I nodded slowly, the tears forming in the corners of my eyes again as I worked out how to speak without either whispering so low that he couldn't hear, or screeching loud enough to shatter his ears.
To my surprise the voice that came out was very much my own, but somehow more melodic, and powerful. Like the difference between a half an orchestra and a whole.
"Yes Terrence. Yes I will."
"Hot DAMN Finally! SOME-bird actually gets it!"
I turned my head only just in time to see Skye cannon into my right side. I barely kept my balance, gingerly opening my right wing so she could snuggle in underneath. Something about the mixed smirk and joyful smile on her muzzle sent a burst of pure joy coursing into my own heart.
Her next words carried the familiar part saucy, part sarcastic tone that she often used to rib Fyrenn.
"Now, you two. Kiss. Kiss now. I have been waiting for the four of you to get your ships straight for years, and somehow I always knew you two would beat red-and-blue over there to it. KISS DAMMIT!!"
Who was I to deny that kind of enthusiasm. I smirked at Hutch, then grabbed him by the front of his off duty black T-shirt, and pulled him in close. For his part, he planted a long, slow kiss right on the side of my beak.
"FINALLY!! Congratulations to you both!!!"
As Hutch pulled away, smiling in a way I'd seen before, but to a degree that I never had, Skye reached out a hoof. He bumped it with his right fist, and then I did the same.
"Congratulations indeed. Hell of a pull-through, and hell of a proposal."
I turned to see the rest of the room behind me. Fyrenn was reclined in a biobed made specifically for a Gryphon, forelegs clasped behind his head, wings cushioned by cooling gel, and legs braced against a small paw-rest at the bottom. A technician was busy scanning the part of his chest where the Wisp's spine had been embedded. There was a dermoplast patch there beneath the feathers and fur, white textile just peeking out in the sea of red.
Neyla was sitting beside the bed, a host of cuts, gashes, and bruises mostly hidden by her feathers, but I could see a few that were serious enough that they too had patches on them. Beside her, nestled under one wing, Alyra sat completely unscathed, beaming up at me with a smile that seemed to warm the entire room.
I braced myself to look out beyond them to the rows of other biobeds. There were a lot of bodies. Not as many as I'd feared, but all looking much worse for wear. A few sealed corpse-containers in one corner spoke to at least some casualties.
My smile vanished. I raised an... Eyebrow? Well it felt like an eyebrow.
"How bad?"
Fyrenn shook his head, wincing as the action tweaked something in his chest. The med tech, a young Human man with stark white, hair frowned and shook his head. Fyrenn didn't skip a beat.
"Not as bad as it might've been in any other outcome. But the ground teams took a real beating. A third killed, most of the rest wounded, but only a few hundred severely. But they won. And so did we. You almost died four times. Weren't sure you'd ever wake up, even after the body came through. They had to pump you with a double dose of serum. Providential that they keep a few vials on hand from all species for emergency treatments like yours... Here's hoping we live long enough to all enjoy our second chance."
I couldn't tell if he was referring to the way we'd all nearly been crushed by that thing they called Veritas... The Nightmare... Or whether he was talking about the global situation. I didn't even know how bad it might've gotten after Skye and I left the bridge.
Maybe he was referring to both. Shit.
Suddenly worry and care flooded back into my mind. I felt my wings tense, and I reflexively ruffled them to try and re-seat them. Aaaaahhhh. Much better.
Hutch caught my expression, and let out a sour chuckle.
"Laura, I have a secure debrief in the SCIF in twenty... I need to shower and put on something presentable... Will you be ok until I get back? I promise I'll catch you up."
I nodded silently, and he reached forward to give me another short, firm hug.
"I'll be back as soon as I can. They have me down for a rush-job appointment tomorrow, oh six thirty. Fyrenn pulled some strings. Apparently here at Genesis, a Paladin's word can get you a Conversion slot with no further if's, and's, or butt's."
I shook my head and exhaled slowly.
"You don't have to do that just because---"
Hutch's finger rested gently on my beak, putting a stop to both the words, and the train of thought.
"I *want* to. More than I have ever wanted anything in the world, besides you. I want to put two of those gorgeous gray and amber wing feathers of yours right in my new head crest, and you can have two of mine. And then we can kiss properly in true Gryphon fashion. And we never have to be apart again. I'll resign my commission if they won't post us together."
Oh boy did he know how to say the words that would make my heart skip beats.
I nodded silently, and smiled, gently pressing my beak to the side of his cheek before he turned with a similar smile, and made his way slowly down the central aisle of the ward.
I looked down at myself and took stock, then turned to find the closest full length mirror. White feathers covered both of my cheeks and ran down all the way to my chest. My sides and wings were a deep downy gray, mixed with bars of amber near the ends of the primaries and leading edges. My head and back were jet black, stretching right down to the end of my tailfan.
Grayish yellow scales on my forelegs, less saturated than Fyrenn's or Neyla's, and an almost dull-brass-colored beak, but very similar bright golden eyes.
My build overall was somewhere halfways between Fyrenn's and Neyla's. A little above average in size for a female, I guessed.
Damn. I looked GOOD.
A sudden urge to run my beak through one wing's primaries began to compete urgently with the desperate hunger for meat. Raw. Red. Dripping protein...
"Uhm.. Aaah..."
As if in answer to my sounds of consternation, a younger female Gryphon came through one of the Ward's side corridor access doors, quickly fixed her eyes on me, and began striding my way on all fours.
"Commander Laura Aston? I'm here to help with rush emergency orientation and acclimation... Are you hungry?"
Oh sweet mercy. Food. I nodded fast and hard.
"Point me to the protein!"
Earth Calendar: 2117
Equestrian Calendar: 15 AC (After Contact)
Twelfth Month, Tenth Day, Celestial Calendar
Luna
"I still think you should stay... The Humans made their bed. Let them lie in it for a little while. No matter what they do, the planet is doomed. The outcomes here matter more ultimately than the ones there."
Celestia paused, dropping the writing case that she had been levitating towards the last of her bags. We stood still, and alone as the silence that filled her study gained an energy of unspoken things...
I regretted what I'd said as soon as I'd said it.
Even if I believed it with ever fibre of my being. The second and third couriers had brought more of the full story, and knowing what their military had very nearly done... Had tried to do, and only been restrained by threats of total annihilation...
Perhaps the majority of them deserved to die after all.
The words were as much an expression of truths I believed, as they were of a desire for Celestia not to leave me alone with my pain. My fear. But what choice did she have? I knew what she would say even before she said it.
And as she finally delivered her reply with her usual kindness, and patience, placing one comforting wing over my back, I knew as well that she was right. I was being too harsh.
"What we have learned does not change any of the outstanding facts; They need me right now Luna. They need an experienced voice of peace, and calm. Someone neutral whom they will respect. Their planet will die. Sooner or later. How much more so now is it not our responsibility to help them to escape, by any means necessary? Now that we know that we... Share a small part of the blame."
I winced. She caught the gesture, and brought one hoof up quickly to keep my gaze locked with hers, instead of allowing it to drop to the floor.
"Luna. She is the one most and first at fault for all this suffering. We, both of us, and I perhaps even more than you, have merely made mistakes. Had we not made them, there is no guarantee that she would not have found other ways to her ends. She planned and has carefully executed the death of a world. And something far worse to come. What are they to say of us in the next age? That we laid down and died? Or that we made a way through the darkness for two worlds? I would rather fight than surrender to that evil."
The final words brought my head back around sharply. My sister hardly ever said words like 'fight,' and then usually only with tones of sadness, or disdain. And her ultimatum had been delivered with no measure of either. Just a hard steel that would have been more at home in my muzzle than hers.
I knew she was capable of it, when pushed. I'd seen it before. Once directed right at me... Or at least, the wicked thing nestled inside me.
I began to nod slowly, and pulled in a deep breath for strength. I did my best to put a confidence I didn't fully feel into my words.
"Then as Varan said; We will fight."
My sister nodded once sharply in satisfaction, and returned to the task of loading her last supplies. Her voice had shifted into a more pragmatic vein, one I was intimately familiar with, that she used when discussing matters of court.
"I suggest that while I am gone, you fight by making us an ally. Push for this alliance with Inside Joke and her Hive. Break with subtlety if you must. And even with protocol. We can no longer afford to appease the nobles. If they need a push... Then give them whatever push is needed. I am tired of pandering to the baser instincts of Ponies whom I know are capable of being better. Let them be better, or let them get out of our way."
The words shocked me into stillness. Yet they also send a thrill into my wing feathers. Was she finally giving me license? To put those insufferable pricks in their place? After so many years of diplomacy, and meeting them halfway?
I nodded slowly as she looked over her shoulder at me with a smile, and a wink. A wink!
I had to remind myself; She didn't want to appease the old, mostly long-lineaged overrepresented Unicorn doddards anymore than I did. She had just always felt that the right way to rule was to rule gently, and with a guiding hoof, rather than a pressing one.
But desperate times...
As she levitated her bags into orbit around her and moved towards the door, she glanced back one last time with a sad smile.
"I will return soon. As always, I trust the kingdom to your *most* capable hooves, my dear, beloved sister."
I wished, as she disappeared through the archway, that I felt as much confidence in myself as she had in me.
Were it so easy.
Earth Calendar: 2117
Equestrian Calendar: 15 AC (After Contact)
December 10th, Gregorian Calendar
Fyrenn
The last notes of the old Gryphic lullaby faded away, and I closed my beak as softly and quietly as I could. For a long moment, I focused purely on my daughter's steady, somnolent breathing, matching my own to it as I stood over her curled up form.
When I was sure she was fully asleep, and had succeeded in slowing my own breathing, and centering myself, I turned and strode silently from the guest quarters, sparing a sad glance for the blasted hilt of my sword where it lay on the desk. Damn shame. But things could be replaced. People could not. And memories were forever.
I tried not to think about the contents of the lone DaTab in the desks drawers as I padded across the corridor, and into the open door of Neyla's room.
I found her sprawled out on the nest-bed, beak propped on one claw, eyes scanning the wall screen as five news feeds played on mute, with the subtitles enabled.
I stood silently in the doorframe, watching her expression. Parsing her worry. Tracing the outline of her feathers. Soaking in the gorgeous blues and browns of her coat. Tracing the utterly perfect curvature of her half-splayed wings.
Come on you fool. Stop stalling, and stop staring. Not all battles are fought with sword and spear. Hutch could do it. So can you. Tomorrow might never come. Don't put off your life until there's nothing left to live.
I cleared my throat, and she turned her head slightly, raising one eye crest and looking up at me with a half sad smile.
"She is asleep?"
I nodded, and made my way fully into the room, glancing briefly at the carnage on the wall screen before averting my gaze to look out the window instead. So much fighting. So many hurt. So many dead.
Every city on Earth was on fire. The retribution of an enraged populus, half of them furious at their government for launching warheads at children, and the other half just as furious that they had backed out when faced with the consequences.
The last paroxysms of a dying society, on a dying world.
What a shitty place for a second date.
As far as I was concerned, that night out at the dive in Manhattan three years before had been our first. Still. Make the best of what you have. I'd cleared everything I needed through requisitions, and what were they going to say? 'No'? After we'd put our lives on the line for them?
Martins had personally approved the order. I had the authenticator chip nestled in my neck feathers. A small rucksack packed, and handed to a flight line technician.
Got the food, the drinks, and the ride.
All I needed was the girl.
Neyla sighed, and gestured to the screen, then to the myriad glowing lights of the facility out the window.
"She did the right thing. I hope she knows that with every last bit of her heart and soul. She saved an untold number of lives. And neither of you are remotely at fault for what's going on out there now. But without you, none of this place would still be here, and the hope it represents would be dead and gone."
I choked back something halfway between a sour laugh, and a heartfelt sob. How the hell did she always know what to say? Always...
I turned, and fixed her with the best smile I could, twisted as it was halfway by the urge to cry at the release her words brought. Love is a powerful thing. And the truths of the people you love, who love you, can heal any wound... If you'll just let them touch your heart.
Time to go. Seize the future I knew we both wanted and rage against the coming darkness in the best way I knew how.
I crooked one claw, and gestured with one wing towards the door.
Neyla snorted, and raised both eye-crests. But I could see an excited tension hit her wings and hind legs.
"What? Now?! It's oh two hundred!"
I nodded, and smirked, moving silently towards the door, and casting the sauciest grin I could muster over one shoulder.
Her eyes widened like a cat's when they saw prey, and she bounded from the bed to follow me.
It was a short, silent, and enjoyably anticipatory walk. First to the lift. Down to the ground floor. Across a walkway to a small access tarmac and tertiary runway.
The shape of the vehicle was backlit by landing lights, and larger arc lights far off in the distance. A graceful wing-like swoop that resembled a falcon stooping in flight.
Still as-yet unable to take armaments, or survive deep space radiation, but fully capable of pressurized suborbital, near-orbital flight. A batch of two hundred was destined for every future wave of Genesis.
Martins still hadn't gotten her department to settle officially on a name for them.
I had suggested Shrike.
A middle aged green Unicorn was standing beside the open rear hatch. He snapped off a habitable salute as he stepped away, which I returned casually. Neyla snorted in amusement, and inclined her head.
"You certainly know how to show a lady a good time."
I grinned widely, and started up the boarding ramp.
"Oh. You ain't seen nothin' yet."
The cockpit was a gorgeous space, easily two thirds transparisteel and holo-dome. Two forward stations sat surrounded on three sides by open views, controls tucked neatly into Hand/Claw-on-throttle-and-stick systems on each side of the multi-species capable bucket seats.
Behind and above were two more similar stations with excellent views. Aft of the cockpit a larger bay space with room for more people, equipment, or stations depending on the configuration. Ours was empty except for the insulated rucksack stowed on one wall.
I sank into the left seat with a contented sigh, slotting the authenticator chip into a slot under the throttle, threading my wings into the Gryphon-specific control sleeves, and touching back paws to rudder pedals as Neyla moved to strap herself into the right seat, gazing about the cockpit in undisguised wonderment.
"Humans know how to build a beautiful thing."
I smiled, and inclined my head as I began to work through the hastily memorized preflight and startup checklists. New prototype impulse engines began to spool up with a low rumble reminiscent of distant thunder.
The cockpit lights dimmed to almost nothing, and the controls all turned to a pleasant shade of night-vision-saving red.
As I finished the remarkably short and simple list of tasks, allowing the Shrike's AIs to do their own final preparatory work, I punched up our course as a holographic faint trackline, and toggled my communications switch to the local tower frequency.
"Lucapa ground, Shrike Sierra Two Five Niner. Requesting takeoff clearance under flightplan as-filed."
I grinned, watching Neyla's expression as she worked out where we were going.
"Shrike Sierra Two Five Niner, clearance granted. Roll at your discretion. Squawk one eight four nine six for Shenzhou traffic control to clear the defense perimeter. Enjoy your flight."
It was eerie, not being asked to contact AfCom for a link to Earthgov aerospace control. Suborbital and orbital vectors had always required permission before. But Earthgov's entire aerospace control network was still crippled. We could go wherever we wanted, do whatever we wanted, and no one could say a damn thing about it.
Except for the need to play nice with area-control on Shenzhou, still hovering in the dark cloud bank above our heads, keeping silent watch over the entire area. I held in the comm control on my stick with one claw as I secured my G-harness with the other.
"Roll at discretion. Squawk one eight four nine six for local control. Two Five Niner out. Thank you, and goodnight."
I tapped out a series of instructions on the short-claw entry keys on the throttle, and spoke once more.
"Shenzhou area control, Shrike Sierra Two Five Niner. Requesting exit vectors through the ADIZ."
I glanced reflexively up through the canopy, just barely picking out the ship's hulking gray form in the night.
"Sierra Two Five Niner, proceed from runway to flight level twenty two hundred and turn north north-west to three five zero. Hold course until you cross the ADIZ and then maneuver at your discretion... Thank you. For everything sir. Have a good flight."
"Runway to flight level two two hundred, then north north-west snap three five zero until exit ADIZ. Thank you too."
I sighed, and then locked eyes with Neyla.
"Ready?"
She nodded resolutely. I knew she understood the layers of the question.
"More than ready."
I smiled, and pressed the throttle forward.
Neyla
The sensation of such power, and acceleration was sublime. The runway flew past at breathtaking speeds, naught to hundreds of stadia a second in less time than a breath. And then Fyrenn pulled back on the stick.
We went from level, and grounded, to an eighty degree climb in no time, passing into the assigned traffic pattern, levelling off again, and then blasting away over the desolate plains at full acceleration, until we hit the vehicle's maximum lower-atmosphere speed of mach four.
As we crossed out of Lucapa's aerial defense identification zone, Fyrenn withdrew his claws from the throttle and stick, and gestured to me.
My heart began to race with the thrill of the idea, even as I laid claws to stick and throttle on my side. I gave him one 'really?' look for confirmation. And then I frolicked.
The Shrike seemed to have no limits that I could find. I looped, rolled, spun, dipped, wheeled, and sometimes just raced the wind. Though it was mostly pure darkness outside, and the dull ashen color of the sky blotted out the moon and stars entirely, the projections on canopy provided more than enough data to fly the vehicle safely.
After a good ten minutes of pushing the flight envelope as far as I dared, I finally set to the task of the real thrill... Getting out of the atmosphere.
Fyrenn said nothing the whole time. He just watched me. And smiled. A warm, peaceful, joyous thing that far too rarely graced his beak. I enjoyed the way he was looking at me more than the flying.
When you find someone who looks at you that way...
I had hopes for the night. Such hopes.
I pressed the throttle all the way forward, and pulled into a steady shallow climb, allowing the engine AI to continue to push the impulse engines' maximum setting upwards as the majority of the atmosphere fell away beneath us, and drag decreased.
Our speed began to climb into space-launch territory and then.... And then we were suddenly through the damaged layers of atmosphere.... And it took my breath away as if I'd been struck.
I was deeply, intimately familiar with Equestria's night sky. It was like an old friend, always there, ever-changing yet always constant and predictable. Filled with new things wherever you looked hard enough, but always the same much beloved familiar old things too.
But the closest I'd ever seen it was from a Gryphon's maximum flight ceiling. High, to be sure, and higher than many Human aircraft...
But we were well and truly in space. I could scarcely believe it. All at once the sense of gravity was gone. And the lensing and distortion of the atmosphere with it.
A Gryphon's eyes are a wondrous thing... Without an atmosphere? I could see all the way to what felt like creation's inception itself. Ten to the third to the third more stars and galaxies than you could ever hope to see from inside an atmosphere, even with our enhanced eyes.
A glittering canvas of unadulterated reds, blues, greens, blacks, velvet purples...
And with a gasp I saw the moon. Not Equestria's, but Earth's. I knew every landform by heart... I'd developed a mild obsession with Human spaceflight during my time with the JRSF.
Deep dark gray mare against the almost-white paler silver gleam of brighter regolith...
Tears came unbidden, but not unwelcome. Appropriate to the beauty of the creation that I could see in a way no Gryphon ever had before...
"My God... It's magnificent... Beyond words..."
Fyrenn closed his eyes, similarly wet with tears, as if needing to momentarily shut off the view just to process the enormity of it, nodding as he did so, his voice husky with emotion.
"Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hovering there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager self through footless halls of air…
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew –
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my claw, and touched the face of God."
I exhaled slowly at the beautiful words, and just how much they fit everything about not just what we were seeing, but that which we were, body and soul.
I realized with a jolt that it would be both his first, and last chance to ever see the real night sky of his first Homeworld with his own eyes.
I started to cry too.
He opened his eyes, and brushed one claw against the canopy glass.
"John Gillespie Magee. Boy would someone like him have loved this..."
A moment of silence passed as the Shrike rolled gently to put itself between the Earth and us, providing the best unobstructed view of space yet. Fyrenn smiled, reached out, and hit the release first on my harness, then his.
We each pushed off from our chairs and floated there for a moment. The sensation wasn't new, I'd felt 'hang-time' plenty of times in a JRSF craft, or even using the power of my own wings... But being functionally weightless second by second without end... That was something new and wondrous indeed!
After a long moment of gazing out at the stars, suspended with wings partly outstretched, Fyrenn smiled, and glanced down at the nearest console.
"Computer; Begin playlist."
Fyrenn
As the first notes of the old tune came out of the cabin speakers, I stretched out one open claw to Neyla. She paused, obviously drinking in the moment, face filled with an expression of love, and desire, so intense that it almost set fire to my tender newly repaired lung.
At last she reached out to clasp the claw in one of her own, wrapping the other around my waist. I did the same, and we both extended out wings slightly to push against the cockpit air.
And we danced in zero-G. Slowly. Intimately. Cheek to cheek.
We danced to 'Fly me to the Moon.' An old waltz or two. A salsa. And then something soft and full of aching longing on a dozen different bagpipes, woodwinds, and various instruments by someone called 'McCreary,' the instrumental-only version.
I'd memorized the Irish Gaelic of the lyrics before-claw, and sang them to her softly as we went, slipping in the words 'my love' instead of 'my friends,' though she wouldn't realize until she later went back to check the translation against her memory.
As the last notes faded, I kept both her claws clasped in my own, all four of our wings curled into a canopy that partially enclosed us, and highlighted the setting Moon above our heads, her back paws standing resting on top of mine, tails entwined.
I have honestly no idea how much silence passed as we hung like that. I wished it could have gone on forever. But suddenly I became aware of the mission clock, and I knew we only had another half-hour of sub-orbital flight time. I needed to make the most of it. The rucksack of food and drink was long forgotten. There'd be time for that whenever. It didn't matter anymore.
I had more important things to do.
Take that final plunge.
"Neyla... I am so sorry."
She opened her beak to respond, but I shook my head, placing one talon on her beak to close it, before grasping her right claw in mine again.
"Let me say this, please. Then say what you will after."
She nodded, and I inhaled deeply, steeling myself. Don't make a chicken of yourself now you idiot. You've defied goddesses, and demons. What's there left to fear...? Just say it from the heart.
"I owe you such an apology. I've been so stupid. So full of fear... I've known what we both wanted for a long time now... But I let my faithlessness get the better of me. I let fear come before love, and for that I am truly sorry. And if you wanted to tell me good riddance and to stuff it, and go the hell away... I'd probably deserve it... Because how could I ever live up to the gift of you?"
She shook her head adamantly, a silent rejection in force of the idea of sending me packing.
I felt my throat hitch as I watched her tears start up again. I could feel my own not far behind. Get it done you idiot, before you start to ugly-cry and your voice cracks.
"You are a gift. Something I could never deserve. Perfect in love. Brilliant in mind. Kind and stalwart of spirit. Valiant of heart. The best mother Alyra could ever ask for, in any world, in any time, of any kind, in any place... And you are the first, and only that I've ever loved with the passion of romance..."
I fought to keep my breathing in check. I could see her doing the same. Her expression screamed expectation. And hope. And a thousand other things.
"...Neyla. Will you let me take you up on your offer? Be a mother to Alyra. Be mine forever, and let me forever be yours?"
I could barely pick the 'Yes' out of the half laughter, half crying sound she made that cut me to the deepest part of my soul. Then we were both completely wrapped up in each other physically and emotionally, a weeping, laughing, hugging tangle of wings and paws and claws and legs tumbling through the aether, the stars pinwheeling behind us.
At last, after many, many moments, she pulled back, and smiled with a luminosity that made the Moon seem dim by comparison.
It was the single most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, that moment where her head was framed against all the glory of Creation, lit by the Moon, radiating love.
And then she reached out, and snagged me by the feathers of my neck, and pulled my beak to nestle against hers in the longest, first, and best romantic kiss of my life.
I spent every last tiny erg of time dilation skill I had drawing out that kiss, and I know she did too.
At long, long last, the oldest and worst of my pains, and fears, died a beautiful death.
And love was given leave to soar.