//------------------------------//
// Chapter 38 
// Story: Return to Sender 
// by Starscribe 
//------------------------------//

"We're going!" Felicity shouted, directly at the screen. Of course she wasn't sure if Escape Gear would even be able to hear her. Was Manny transmitting her words, the way he had before? 

Now that she thought about it, there was probably something to that idea. Harmony could interpret what she said, and transmit her words in another form. "Manny, can you send a message with pheromones? We should tell the custodian ship we're friendly in a language they understand!"

There was a long pause, long enough that Delta floated along beside her, through the opening. "I hope they don't mind us swimming here. I'm only a Grovetender. And I don't even know what you are. First sapling of a new age? Hungry predator?"

"Friendly, not a predator," she answered. The passage was at least submerged, but continued down an entire section of the ship to the external airlock. At their size, it seemed to pass with agonizing slowness. She gave up on just swimming, and found the wall, using her tentacles to heave herself forward.

"I apologize, Felicity. Harmony would have made this deduction some time earlier. But I have been entirely devoted to your survival for so long I stopped considering our original mission."

That makes two things I've figured out in the last few seconds. If she was still a pony, she would've gritted her teeth with annoyance, waving her wing to urge him to get to the point. She couldn't do any of those things, but she could curl the tips of the tentacles she wasn't using, as though preparing for a wrestling match with another creature. It was the closest emotion the plants seemed to have. "Can you send the message or not?"

"The strange communication we received upon arrival in this system—I did hypothesize it corresponded to volatile organic molecules, among many other theories. I believe I have decoded their communications protocols. Please forgive my incompetence."

The ship shook under them, violently. Bubbles began hissing into the fluid ahead of them, with ice forming along the wall where they emerged. After only a few seconds, the leaking stopped. "You're not incompetent! We had to live with them long enough to learn the language. Could you please send a message now?"

"I believe so. What would you like to say?"

She stopped swimming a moment, wrapping enough of herself around an exposed bulkhead to keep from getting tossed in the current. "Tell them... we're escaping! Tell them we seized the ship, and we're trying to get away! We have valuable knowledge about the enemy and they need to let us aboard."

"Attempting now. But you should know, Felicity, there is considerable range of interpretation in their tongue. It contains all the subtlety of pony body language, scent, tone, and meter. I cannot predict how your message will be received."

Delta wrapped one tentacle around Felicity, pulling herself closer. In the tumultuous current of the tunnel, that had the effect of making her words “louder” and clearer. "Why do you tell them this? I thought we were trying to negotiate a surrender, so the Sky Temple would be spared?"

"We are," Felicity answered. "But if we tell them that, they might just blow us up. Besides, we do know important information. We know how to make sure everyone lives."

As quickly as it began, the shaking stopped. A few seconds later, and the water stopped surging, and she could let go of the wall.

"Your message was received. They say—" and it was as though she could taste it, or smell it, or however the plant equivalent worked. It contained total fidelity—the speaker's great age, exhaustion, and poor health. Their panic and desperation. "We wondered when the sun would send us good news. Please share your story."

The message ended, and Manny's usual voice returned. That one carried none of the extra weight—it was thought alone, the same way he had always communicated. "Docking clearance granted. What should I tell the Varch'nai?"

"That we might have visitors to the docked section. They shouldn't fly away unless they don't have a choice, because it will probably give away our plan." She turned to Delta, though of course her orientation didn't matter and the plant did not react. "Do plants understand subterfuge?"

She didn't react for several seconds. Long enough that Felicity had her answer. Either the ordinary plants growing on the planet below didn't understand it, or none of them did. "You mean like... baiting a trap for predators with something green, then snapping it on them?"

"Similar," Felicity said. And like the trap you built in this system. "But we aren't trying to catch anyone on the custodian ship. We're here because—" the Varch’nai could've destroyed you already, but they want to save the missing Equestrians so they can complete their mission.

So maybe she shouldn't share that part with Delta. The hostage-takers might not even know what was keeping them safe. "We're here to trick them into listening to us. My friends have tried for all this time to get them to talk, and they haven't."

Without the current it was much easier to swim to the docking airlock. The controls had been adapted for the cold just like last time, but they didn't need to bother. There was already liquid on the other side, cemented with a thin barrier of transparent ice.

"Good luck in there!" Escape Gear said over the radio, her voice only slightly distorted by transmission. "Once you're inside there's not much we can do. Transmissions won't penetrate, and there's no Varch’nai suit built for those conditions. You could die. Between you and me, I think Admiral Gant hopes you do. That would give him just the excuse he needs to genocide their whole species. Peaceful negotiations fail for years, then our messenger gets murdered."

"I know," she said. "I don't want to get murdered either. Delta and I have this covered."

The metal door hissed open, bringing with it a gentle current towards them. It tasted far better than the water they had been swimming through, lifeless and chemical. Out there might be another starship, but it was also alive somehow. There were so many growing smells, mixed with the machines. 

Delta hesitated nervously in the entryway, leaving Felicity to lead the way inside. She wrapped one limb around the other plant, dragging her along at first. After a short distance, she started swimming along under her own power. Through a tube of opaque white ice, and into a tunnel.

She had seen openings like these long ago, with very different eyes. The strange custodian ship had hundreds of them, most frozen over with white. They hadn't guessed they would be passages for living creatures, not with their size and temperature. Evidently they weren't frozen cooling ports after all.

The inside resembled much of what she'd seen in Effervescent Meridian. Elegant metal construction, with openings throughout to bathe the chamber in constant white light. Even the light felt better than what Escape had rigged up aboard the Varch’nai ship. She felt more alert with each stroke through the water. 

"Leaving transmission range. If you have any final messages to send, tell me now."

"Nothing," she whispered. "A lot of lives are weighing on this, Manny. No one can save them but us."

It didn't reply, leaving them to swim in relative silence. Except it wasn't. After only a short distance, Felicity was again reminded of her time in Effervescent Meridian but for very different reasons. They passed an open panel of dissected machinery, and another hallway where churning water held bits of rotting plant that would've made her puke if she had a stomach.

This ship is falling apart.

"I've seen images of the Sky Temple before," Delta said, as quietly as any plant could. "It was so beautiful, so perfect. Keeping the temple is a sacred duty many growing things aspire to reach. It should not look like this."

Felicity was silent for a time, taking in the damage. Like Effervescent Meridian, the ship had tunnels branching in many directions. Creatures that floated freely with no respect to gravity had no particular interest in up or down. Many rooms were divided into sections, with machines along each of their six faces. Entirely separate stations, with a gulf of empty space separating them. 

Many of those passages were sealed, with bits of scrap metal hastily welded closed. Others were only iced over, and showed signs of leaking into dark places unknown.

"Anything broken can be repaired," Felicity said. "You people seem like talented engineers—when the war is over, you can build anew. Replace it with an even holier temple."

"We... cannot," she said, voice on the edge of tears. "There is nothing new before the face of our Goddess, Felicity. All that grows, grew. We must subsist on what was built before. We must repair, make do. There will be no new temple. No one knows the method."

Well that's something we can fix. Maybe the replacement won't have as many weapons on it.

"I detect a computer system operating aboard this vessel," Manny said. "It is unlike anything in my records. I read no sign of wireless data transmission—we will not be able to interface with it without a terminal. Even if we do, it will take more time than we have to comprehend whatever protocol it is using."

"Tell me anything you figure out," Felicity whispered. But there was no chance to say more, not with what she saw up ahead.

There were half a dozen people congregating in a large, open passage. They all carried weapons, exactly like what the Grovetenders had used against the predators of below. Useless against plants, but there was nothing stopping such a large group from just ripping them apart.

It reminded Felicity of a strange tradition from her home—like a crueler version of Hearth's Warming. The humans of New Canterlot had decorated their homes with evergreen trees... and when the holiday ended, piled their corpses out on the streets, and collected them to make paper. 

This looked a little like collection day. She saw very little green in front of her—mostly it was yellows, browns, and the occasional patch of purple. Everyone had a little purple on them, the only leaves that weren't some degrees of wilted. 

Delta spread her body limply in the water, producing a scent that Felicity barely even recognized. It was total submission—utter surrender to another. Like terror, but with a religious connotation. 

She did say this was the Sky Temple.

"We welcome you, victors of a strange battle. You have come from a dry, sunless place. How is it that you seem so alive?"

Poor Delta trembled, but couldn’t form words. Probably for the best, she would just reveal too much, and spoil the negotiation before it even began.

Felicity did not swim closer, though they were about a meter away. Like yelling across a room might be, if they were larger. "We come from further away than you can imagine," she began. "We have suffered through... incredible things. But after our conflict, we learned the way to end this war. We came to share it with as many as we could, while the temple survives."

There was silence, at least so far as Felicity could taste. Yet from across the room, there was feverish, desperate conversation, so rapid and confused that she couldn't make out any specific words. They weren't trying to be overheard in any case, but whispered in the way of plants. 

She waited patiently for them to finish, holding still in the tunnel as best she could. Was this the moment their deception ended, and they were torn apart? If they were smart enough to destroy her implants, they could make sure Felicity's death stuck this time.

They did not. "You must accompany us to the Sphere of Gold," said one. "Witness of Her Divine Light would wish to hear this message. It must not be distorted through the leaves of another."

"We would be honored," Felicity replied.

Delta shuddered, a wave of fear passing from one end to the other. But when Felicity started swimming, she followed along. There was nowhere to go but forward.