Felicity was not a warrior. She lacked the experience to know when a battle was being won, or when an attack had the desired effect. But she could read people, even if their bodies were so strange that they couldn’t live outside their ships.
Their terrible barrage struck against the enemy vessel. She knew it couldn’t be so simple, but some part of her still hoped the war would end before it began. A decisive strike, the ship destroyed, and they could return with the crew avenged.
Ordin gestured, and their view expanded to the impact site.
It looked a little like someone tearing the shed skin from a snake. Thick sheets of material ripped up from the enemy vessel, before dissolving into a thin film of molten metal. Lightning crackled near the edges, deep red light reaching out for more material to unravel, but not able to touch.
“They’ve detected the strike,” said the artillery officer. “I’m seeing… ablative armor, Captain. I can’t pinpoint the design, but it—”
“I can see.” She gestured angrily, and the screen returned to a tactical view. The enemy vessel continued past them, either oblivious or unconcerned with their attacks. It didn’t even stop to destroy them along the way.
We don’t have what it wants, she realized. This scout ship doesn’t have anyone aboard. Maybe it wants to kill as many people as possible.
For a few minutes, Felicity waited in silence beside Escape Gear, listening as officers shouted and radio messages flew back and forth with the fleet. It wasn’t their fight anymore; they’d been left behind.
“Does it feel like we’re missing something to you?” Escape whispered, nudging her in the shoulder with one thin hand. Felicity tried very hard not to realize the reality that must be taking place underneath, where fake bodies interacted on a vessel where no one lived. “I’m halfway through constructing something, and just realized they didn’t send me a power core. What the hell is going on here?”
This is why Equus stayed contained, she thought bitterly. Harmony wanted to hide from the unknown. It suspected the universe would be full of things like this.
What would they do if this ship flew back to Equus itself? Would the station even be able to defend itself?
“You’re right,” she whispered back. “I just wish we could be… useful.”
Escape Gear raised an eyebrow. “You, Captain? What happened to delegated responsibility and understanding where our abilities can be most useful?”
She didn’t argue the point, because someone started shouting from the other end of the room. Or… well, as much as the Varch’nai ever yelled about anything. Slightly louder than normal, enough that the whole room quieted.
It was the captain. “The unknown vessel has stopped, about two days out from the flotilla at our maximum acceleration. It is not transmitting, or firing weapons.”
“Defensive posture,” someone muttered. “It’s trying to scare us off. It’s blocking us from the planet, isn’t it?”
Ordin nodded. “If this were an unknown system that had done no wrong, we would be preparing to disengage. Unfortunately for them, this fleet attacked an unarmed science vessel, and killed its crew. If they do not respond and pay blood-ransom for the primitives they killed, the Admiralty will engage.”
Blood ransom? Felicity stormed over to the captain, growing bolder with every step. She’d been perfectly willing to stay silent until now, and let the experts run their own ship. But that was absurd! “We don’t know that my crew are dead,” she said, matching Ordin’s volume as best she could. “We should be asking to have them given back, not paid for.”
What payment could ever be enough for a life, anyway? Would Harmony accept some physical resource in exchange? Or maybe more people to add to Equus, to replace the ones killed.
Ordin tensed visibly, but didn’t even look in her direction, let alone acknowledge what she had said. “The Admiralty is exhausting every method of communication. That means Orion has served its purpose. Helm, take us to these coordinates. We’ll interface with the asteroid, and shut Orion down.”
Felicity felt the ground shifting subtly under her hooves as they changed direction. The helm had already obeyed. “Shouldn’t we use this opportunity?” she asked, much more quietly than before. She spoke to Ordin directly now, and wasn’t trying to argue with her in front of her crew. “That ship isn’t protecting the planet anymore. We could reach it, see what they’re guarding.”
And maybe that’s where they put the survivors from my crew. Better down there than the warship we’re about to blow up.
But maybe that was being overly optimistic. Their first shot had not left any visible damage behind, so there was no telling what the fleet could do.
“That decision is for the Admiralty,” Ordin whispered back—not unkindly, though she could see the frustration in her eyes. “A war is not fought with a thousand captains, but with one general. We follow what ours orders.”
Felicity nodded curtly, then retreated from the helm. There was nothing more for them here. Harmony, will you be satisfied with an apology? The lives of my friends and the other brave explorers in exchange for a few words?
Someone had followed her from the bridge—Escape Gear, looking just as dissatisfied as she felt.
It wasn’t Escape who answered, though. “No being shall rob souls from us,” said a pale horse, its metal body now missing the silly uniform. “No nation, no collective, no federation.”
She slowed, eyes widening. How could Harmony be here? But if so much else was an illusion, why not project an illusion of itself? “So why do you let them talk like that? We don’t have to listen!”
Harmony only had two pairs of eyes, but it spoke with many angry voices. “Do not interfere, Citizen Felicity. Minds greater than you can consider every aspect of this war—entire civilizations as you comprehend their scale have weighed and considered. The Varch’nai serve our purpose, in deed if not in will. The truth of their service will be revealed in time.” Harmony vanished.
For a moment there was silence, until the one following caught up with her. At least Escape Gear looked as frustrated as she felt. “It seems like a waste. That ship didn’t care about us—I think maybe because there aren’t any people aboard. I’ve been thinking—if they’re built to fight an ‘evoker’ civilization, they might not consider the automation of our civilization to be a threat. We’re not on their radar, and we should take advantage.”
“We shot at them,” Felicity countered. She slowed as they reached a window—probably just a screen made to look like one. There was nothing outside but stars. They might be moving through an asteroid field, but contrary to fictional representation that didn’t mean space was full of rocks. “Isn’t that enough to see us as a threat? How much more threatening can you get?”
Escape Gear shrugged. “Didn’t seem like it did much damage. They stopped our torpedoes, and the beam scratched off some armor. But this was always a scout ship, right? The intention wasn’t to destroy them, we were just trying to see how they would react. Maybe an entire fleet of weapons like these will be dangerous, and that’s why they stopped. Now that they know we’re a threat, they’re waiting to negotiate.”
Or mobilizing more ships from their planet. Felicity hurried away from the window, into the first set of quarters they came to. There were no real bodies here, so no pods or sleeping tubes. But privacy was still provided by bedrooms that adapted to whoever was in them. She stepped inside, and the furniture dropped lower to the ground, the lights dimmed, and the heat lamps switched off. Scents of brewing tea were replaced with something approximating floral, designed by someone who had never seen a flower in their life.
But Felicity didn’t care about any of that, she hadn’t come here to sulk. She hurried over to the oversized computer-table, what Forerunner might call a “holodesk.” Their files were all on here, including all the scans they’d taken of the planet with their first probes.
“No stations,” she whispered, rotating the image with her hoof. She couldn’t use her magic—she had none right now, and these systems didn’t know how to interface with it in any case. “No satellites. No orbital ring. No shipyards. What does that say to you?”
Escape Gear pulled over a chair, leaning down and staring at the projections with her. She waited for approval, then used her dexterous little fingers to zoom in and examine the planet in detail.
Its surface was covered with unbroken green and brown, from its tiny inland seas to large landmasses. Finding a city took Escape over a minute of searching, until she finally gave up and used a locator tool. The flyby photos from a distant probe didn’t give them much detail, though the structures didn’t seem like they’d been built by incomprehensible masters of technology.
“This says I wouldn’t stop my ship here if we needed servicing,” she said. “I wasn’t the one to make decisions like that, but… this says industrial levels of technology. Either they have a small population, or they’ve mastered ecology, because the planet looks good. No mega harvesting or poison atmosphere. No radioisotopes in the air from some ancient nuclear war.”
She was almost there, but Felicity wasn’t feeling terribly patient. “They didn’t build that warship. It’s not aerodynamic, I don’t think they launched if from that planet.”
“You think they’re foreigners in the system,” Escape supplied. “I don’t think that planet even has space travel. There’s barely a fuzz of radio traffic. But maybe they were… maybe the warship is using it somehow.”
Escape Gear conjured an image of the warship, floating ominously near the planet. She glanced between its strange angular wings, then the graceful, modest buildings on the planet below. “Resupply? Maybe they rule it, and the planet… feeds them. Gives them resources to stay repaired and stuff.”
Felicity nodded. “Or it’s even simpler than that. It’s the flower, and we’re the fly. Here to explore, here to colonize… whatever. I just can’t figure out why they’re leaving the scout ship alone. It seems like they could’ve destroyed us so easily. What if we had poison aboard, or a bomb to drop onto their little kingdom? Do they plan to chase us into the system?”
The floor shook again, with a sound like metal grinding on rock. Then the motion faded, and Ordin’s voice echoed overhead. “Orion has docked with a sufficiently-large asteroid. They probably watched us, but just in case we’ll be going completely dark from here-on. All departments, put your systems into hibernation. Interface with Orion will be terminated in descending order beginning with non-essential personnel. Glory to the Varch’nai.”
Felicity imagined hundreds of voices echoing along with that chorus, though she didn’t feel particularly inspired to join them right now. Non-essential certainly meant them—neither of them did anything on the ship.
Indeed, the world was already starting to fuzz. Felicity felt her body sit down of its own accord, as though she were falling abruptly asleep without her consent. She didn’t even have time to swear at the captain before Orion faded from around her.
She emerged coughing and spitting from her pod moments later. Faint sirens blared in her ears, like the speakers had been submerged in fluid for months and cones mostly rotted. Her body felt much the same, her fur white in the pale glow of her horn. She expelled lungfuls of fluid and feeling the ache of whatever interface had kept her breathing. Gone now, though her throat would probably sting for days.
“Where the… hell?” She looked up, and found her quarters weren’t what she remembered. The room looked ransacked, with every cabinet opened and several wall-panels torn free. One sparked before her eyes, and an overhead light went briefly red before exploding in another shower of glass. She shielded her eyes with a wing, stumbling to a standing position.
“There is no time for explanations,” said Harmony from beside her. The metallic pony looked undamaged in a ship of ruin, which probably meant it was only in her mind. “You must reach the escape systems before this ship’s orbit decays. Follow me, or die here.”