Cold had just shot a pony. He was very glad it wasn’t with an actual weapon. But the hiss of his disabler, the look in the pony’s eyes, and the way they’d crumpled to the ground…
Why had he let this happen? Did the ‘combat stimulant’ have some undisclosed effect? Or had he always been capable of violence? The unsettling warmth in his core left him guessing. A past lingered in him, and it was catching up to the present.
Fokienia’s words shook him free. “We’re still not in the clear.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t recognize any of these ponies. Except Sequoia and the unicorn. There’s more operators than this.”
Cold chewed over the hard position he found himself in: they’d cleared the ship of the intruders, but according to Fokienia, there were bound to be more. He checked on the compromised elevator once again. The elevator itself maintained functional, but the pegasus and the cutting torch had done a number to the airlock wiring-sequences hidden around the edges of the platform. It would take some time to repair, and it was a job for station services. Flying in-system with sealed bulkheads was possible, but no guarantee of safety in the face of long-term faster-than-light travel. Still, that left the issue of the possible coordination of Station Concord with the attackers.
“By the way, you did good. It was actually really dangerous back there.” Fokienia was busying herself by piling the ponies by the elevator. Their bodies fell again and again, and still they did not wake. “I’m sorry about getting you shot.”
Cold didn’t want to make her feel any worse by talking about how he felt right now. Truth be told, he was still sleep deprived, and the ‘medicine’ she’d administered was fading fast. “Are they going to be okay?”
“They’ll be fine,” Fokienia muttered. She probably wanted to preemptively ‘end’ another chase before they roused. Cold tried not to think about that. “It’ll be a few more minutes until they wake up, though.” She seemed pensive, but it wasn’t about the ponies she was lifting and throwing like sacks.
Cold knew exactly what it was she was thinking about. “You still want off-station?” It was already one thing that the ship wasn’t entirely safe to fly, but if Concord truly were working with the ponies behind her ‘modification’, he certainly couldn’t guarantee a safe flight. He didn’t want to tell her that, especially not while she still wore that disabler.
Fokienia had hesitated. “Yes, but not right now.”
That was good. “The ship needs repairing,” Cold blurted. Woops. Fokienia’s yellow eyes met his. His anxiety to get things moving wasn’t helping in a subtle way. “I can get station services to work on a repair. If we can’t stay here, then at least my ship can get sent down to storage.”
Fokienia cocked her head. “What’s stopping ponies from stealing your ship in the meantime?”
“If it’s in the storage bays below, the shipworks will maintain it and keep it secure, so long as I’m paying.”
“Paying what?”
“Er, money. Bits.”
“Oh, right.” Fokienia chuckled halfheartedly. “Sorry, I forgot that um, normal ponies have actual currency for things. Typically we practice a kind of… trade.” She paused. “Well, Sequoia and I used to. We never met the other departments.” She waved a hoof, and started dragging Sequoia’s limp body to the elevator. “But sure, sounds fine,” she finished through clenched teeth and coat.
Sounds fine? Cold sighed; with ten unconscious ponies on his doorstep, they were far from fine. “Fokienia, I don’t want you to get… taken. But I also don’t want to get on the wrong side of the law.”
She spat Sequoia’s scruff from her mouth, and shook. “If what I’ve done is wrong, then I don’t want to be right.”
“All I’m saying is that… I don’t want to be a criminal.” He cringed immediately.
Fokienia blinked. “You think I’m a criminal?” Her ears fell back.
“No, I… Fokienia, I didn’t mean that.”
She stared at him for a moment longer. “Ah, it’s okay. I’m sorry. I understand.” She looked over the bodies, the ship interior, the elevator. Her eyes closed. “I didn’t mean for you to get involved. I just… wanted to be free.”
“I—”
“Just go. Set up the services thing. Whatever gets us out of here faster.” She glanced over the piled ponies and sighed. “Every moment we’re still here is just a risk for you, too. I get it.”
It wasn’t like that. He wanted to say it, but he couldn’t bring himself to. The coward in him wanted out. Out of her situation that he’d plugged himself into like an idiot. An armed conflict was one thing, but to be pursued by law enforcement agencies? He left before he could finish that thought; it wasn’t going to help her to freedom. Sweet Blaze, he was so tired, and this had all happened in the wee hours of the morning. He needed to stop thinking for a while.
That thought didn’t last long. As he trot to the bridge, he broke into a canter, and then into a gallop. Maybe he could fly them out. Get them free of the station. Get her to ponies who would listen to her, and have the authority to help stop whatever was going on at Cypress.
Cold thought of Holly, and it all fell apart. He couldn’t leave. Not until Fokienia’s continued freedom was assured. He needed to shut the coward inside of him down. There was work to do.
He returned to the elevator room. The ponies on the floor were still out, and Fokienia was watching over them from the side. She was standing with all four hooves planted to the floor, unmoved, unwavering. Her head turned. “Is it done?”
“Yeah. Should be enough time for us to do what we need to do and leave. What do you want to do with them?” he questioned, casting a hoof at the retrieval unit.
“Preferably, I want to never see them again.” She gave him an earnest, if tired smile. “What do you think?”
Send them to somepony who could better control this. He wasn’t exactly willing to leave them on his ship. “Call Concord?”
Her confidence shifted to incredulity. “You can do that?”
“Station Concord has to fill out for hundreds of thousands of ponies. Anypony can call them.”
“Okay, bad question. Here’s a better one. Why would we do that? Those are the same ponies working with these guys—” she clocked Sequoia in the wings with her hindleg, “—to hunt me down, remember?”
Cold shrugged. “You asked what I thought. Calling Concord would help.”
She gave him a deadpan look, the kind of stare only a mare could stare.
“It wouldn’t hurt us. I could call in and say there were a bunch of ponies breaking into a ship. We can just do that when we’re clear of the ship. At best, these guys’ll be caught up in red tape. At worst, slowed down by questioning, plus still have to deal with resupplying, like you said. And it’ll at least put me in good conscience knowing I’m not just leaving them here alone.”
Fokienia looked over the ten ponies jumbled together.
“Okay, well, you know what I meant.”
“Fine. Let’s just…” She sighed. “Let’s just get out of here, okay? If we’re not leaving to… space, then we’re going back the way I came. And then you can call Concord.”
As they descended through the elevator and stepped out, their sound plan seemed to be going just fine. Then Cold was reminded by his empty jacket sleeve that his PDA had been destroyed in the boarding action. That was temporarily resolved by bumming a comm-link capable device off of one of the workers. He’d need to get a new one connected to his ship’s data-link and cloud-held files. His noiseless earpiece only heightened its importance.
He returned to Fokienia by the edge of the platforms. She stood on a staircase leading up out of the sub-floor of the docking bay; she’d insisted on staying there until Cold had made his call. This was where the supply closets and other industrial equipment were stored. The gravity emitters and junction boxes that held the shipworks together hummed. There was no reason to be down here if you weren’t a worker, or a pony trying to stay low profile.
Cold trot with her as they descended. “Why do you want to stay out of sight?”
“I’m not supposed to be seen.”
“Why?”
“My orders were to—” she paused, then grumbled something to herself. “Look, it’s better that I’m seen by as few ponies as possible. I don’t need to be profiled by somepony, and have my location reported to the retrieval unit. Anyways, come on, I know my way through here.”
A little skepticism went a long way in Cold’s business. Like mystery packages, he didn’t bond well with the idea of not knowing why they were going down. He didn’t need much, he at least wanted enough to be sure. “We’re just trying to get away from my ship, right? Then why not take the bus?”
“The bus?”
“The main transportation line for the station. You get on, and ride it to a different stop on the station, depending on which bus you’re riding.”
“Well, we don’t need that. We’re not going far. Yet.”
Okay then. “Alright.” He wasn’t a big fan of walking into the unknown, especially if she intended on taking them through the maintenance tunnels. It became apparent that navigating the tunnels was exactly what she wanted to do; as the klaxons of a Concord unit pulled up to the Waste Peddler, the maintenance door sealed shut behind them.
Life on a space station necessitated a lot of things. Life support was one. The pipes in this brown, cold space maintained a steady staccato. Working to the beat of the station’s many hearts, these veins fed water, power, and life to all corners of the station. Ponies had not been made for space, and despite their squeamish nature, they had fostered a place in the universe as void dwellers. All the other species of the old world looked to ponies for guidance among the stars, and their divine ancestry answered. Heaven-bound was one way to describe ponies, and their work surely showed here.
Through the catacomb-like structure of maintenance tunnels, and descending deeper into the station, Cold followed after Fokienia. Her hooves walked along corrugated metal, and her eyes scanned along the confined walls and narrow path ahead. Cold had never been down in a place like this: the ponies kept things pretty up top, and while he wasn’t afraid to dirty his hooves with the good work, he preferred the climate control and earth-like nature the ponies maintained up there. All of that was supplied by the underbelly of the station. There were no souls here, at least not now. Despite the critical infrastructure, it made for a desolate and empty space.
“How do you think they found me?” Fokienia asked.
Cold wanted to wipe at his tired eyes, but he kept walking. “You said they were following you, right?”
“They had to have been close, but they weren’t precisely following me. Those scanners don’t have that big a range, maybe a hundred hooves. And I wasn’t exactly leaving an easy-to-track path.”
“Then it probably had something to do with letting you use my computer. I don’t buy into the pony paranoia, but there’s always been rumors of ‘eyes on the network’, if you know what I mean.”
“I think I do.” She didn’t speak for a moment. “Can I ask you a question, Cold? I was going to earlier, but then…” her voice fell away.
“Of course.”
“Do you not think of yourself as a pony?”
He laughed low. “I’m a kirin. We might all be hooved at the end of each leg, but a pony I am not.”
“What makes a kirin distinct from a pony?” Curiosity bubbled in her voice. “That pony you spoke to didn’t hesitate to trust you. He treated you like another pony.”
She must not have seen many ponies… or creatures, for that matter. “For one thing, I wasn’t raised like most ponies and kirin.” He gave her back a somber look. “Something we both might share, I feel.”
“Yes.” She paused. “Sometimes, I don’t feel like myself.”
Cold breathed. He’d heard this before, a long time ago. “Is that because of how ponies treat you?”
“…Yes.”
“Then as long as you see yourself in a positive way, I hardly think it matters.”
“Really?”
“Our lives are dictated through our own actions, not what others think of us. Ponies can look at you and see one thing, but as long as you have the confidence to assert who you are, you will be free.” She’d stopped and turned. He looked her in the eyes. “You’re a strong mare, Fokienia. Don’t let the actions of others make you think less of yourself.”
She nodded numbly. “It’s… the ponies who augmented me, sometimes they talked about why they were doing it. About how they were ‘making me more’. It made me feel like I wasn’t a pony anymore, just a piece of technology. Some of the things I learned when I was a foal… don’t add up to what you’d expect from a pony. I act different, I talk different, I think different.”
“The way I see it, ponies are fickle. Prone to change. But they’re still ponies. You are still a pony. Nopony can strip you of that. Not through force, not through magic, and… not through technology.” He nodded his head at her. “Do you have a cutie mark, Fokienia?”
“I… I do.”
“Then fate flows strong with you. You are still a pony. And while you walk free, you control your destiny.”
She absorbed his words. “And… how did you figure all of that out?”
“Figure all of it out?” He smirked. “Nopony, save maybe the princesses, can figure out the strings of the universe. But when you fly alone in space like I do, all you can see is the history of the cosmos, and your own past. It’s a lot of nothing, but with enough time, you can pick out some truth from the bleakness of the black.”
A wave of emotions guided itself along Fokienia’s features. It was surprisingly difficult for Cold to place. “Thank you,” she finally said. Her voice was quiet. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
Fokienia felt that the kirin gave her more credit than she deserved. She was a lethal operative, a pony made to harm others. She hadn’t chosen this life of hers, but she’d been born into it. That was fate, a factor that was objectively unchangeable. The best a pony could do was fight it. That was destiny.
But the destiny she could make with her cutie mark was tied to her fate.
For all the knowledge the kirin behind her showed, he didn’t have the same perspective she did. It wasn’t his fault, and it was better that she carried it alone. Ponies didn’t deserve to be war machines, but somepony had to be. Those were orders, what she’d been trained and groomed into. Augmentations, bioengineering, and physical conditioning. Selective education, sparring, and field operations. She might have had destiny in her hooves now, but her fate was tied to the mark she’d earned working with the ponies who’d made her this way.
Working for, she corrected.
Fokienia considered telling Cold everything. She desperately wanted to, and he’d essentially encouraged her to, but he didn’t have a place in her world; he had a life of his own. A life she’d broken into, and forced to interact with her. Those were all the same thoughts she’d reamed into, and they all produced the same obsolescent conclusion: she was delaying the inevitability of returning to fate.
Where was she going now? She was leading Cold astray, away from his life. Sure, it was for his protection, but that was a nifty side effect of the situation, and she couldn’t protect him forever. He needed a secure future just as much as she did. While he lived a much better life than her—or at least she felt he did—it was his life to live, not hers. It didn’t take much of the little empathy she had to understand that taking choices from another for her own gain was wrong. The ponies above her had tried so hard to drill that into her, but she wasn’t like Sequoia and others: she wanted to be free to make her own mistakes, and suffer alone for them. They brought harm to others for their own reward, and Fokienia did too. She differed with the fact that she had at least sought to change that.
And what that had culminated in was the disruption of the life of another. A victim from a tribe hailed as the peacemakers of the stars.
She felt sick again. Her neurostimulator calmed her nerves, and left her mouth parched. “I hope you don’t get into trouble,” she suddenly broke. Cold didn’t reply; it made Fokienia wish there wasn’t a delay on her neural implants. She lowered her head slightly, and tried to focus on the movement through the walls. “And we’re getting close.” No response, but she heard his steps loud and clear.
Then on top of her standing circumstances, there was also the matter of just how little she actually knew about Cypress. She’d gleaned parts from the simulated missions she’d taken part in over the years, but they never trusted her with the more ‘high profile storylines’, if the boasting from Sequoia was to be trusted. Cold’s computer and data-bank had exposed her to a lot, but nothing dense or concrete enough to warrant a complete understanding. She was starting with nothing: she had a lot to learn about Cypress Station and space, and seemingly not much time to do it. Before any of that could happen, she had to find someplace safe, for her and Cold both.
They came to another maintenance door, and she hacked it open like the first. After so much time on the proving grounds, everything beyond the rigorous training locks were foal’s play. She wondered what they’d been thinking when they’d given her so much power to wield. Again, she shook the thought. “We’re here.” Fokienia threw a look back at Cold as he emerged into the space. “Keep close, and watch your step.”
Steel and mortar hung thick in the air. Years of construction and reiteration had gone into play, here. Where loose wiring clung to the damp and unkempt walls, the ponies who lived down in this cloudy place clung just as roughly to the packed, regolith-swept floor. Dust encroached every corner of the environment, and though most ponies seemed more tired than ill, it hardly brought on any sense of freedom to Fokienia’s heart. She’d spent the majority of her free days wandering this place, exploring from the shadows, and she’d had yet to find any forbidden fruits: the overwhelming sense of oppression she got from this place made her usual life feel more comforting by compare.
Beside her, Cold licked at his lips. “Not the most inviting place, is it?”
Fokienia nodded. “It’s enough to keep the ponies here going, so I can’t complain.”
“It’s not much of a life,” the kirin remarked blandly. He was in agreement.
Bands of moving ponies had begun to form in the early morning hour. From overheard conversations, many were off to work. Fokienia entertained the thought briefly: would she be able to hold a job in the future? Moreover, did she want to? Dimly, she supposed that many of these ponies had just as much choice as she once had. She tried to bury those thoughts. She was getting bad at controlling herself. Had she always needed the neurostimulator to maintain self-control?
Almost there.
They wove through dank alleys, jammed between bright neon billboards, and smoky hovels of both residence and work. The bright pastels of their coats shone against the dark grays of metal and soot-covered coats of ponies they skid by. A few bright-eyed foals played in the ramshackle streets, but again, they at least looked healthy, and even happy. Clanking stairs sent the two higher, but not high enough to reach the far-off ceiling above, which was painted with dots of yellow lights, draped cables, and rusting clamps. Ascending a little more took them to the rooftops of the higher buildings. They trot along laid out bridges of both wood and metal beams. Still, they remained on the outskirts of the city underneath.
An empty doorway hailed their arrival. Fokienia led Cold into the open-air room, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the darkness in. She flicked a switch on the opposite end of the room, and the room’s sole remaining bulb coughed to light. Cold swung his head wide, inspecting the place while Fokienia managed her way to a refrigeration unit, rumbling away on its side. She slid the acyrlic door open. She had hoped there were still some meals squared away, but nothing remained; other scavengers had likely come.
“You lived here?”
“For the last couple of days,” Fokienia replied. She slammed the unit shut a little harder than she’d wanted to: the servos in her hoof rang through the machine. She settled over on a couch—thankfully unstained—and laid all her hooves to rest. “It’s been somewhere to sleep.” Something she needed more of than she was used to: the bio-pod usually negated fatigue.
Cold squinted. “I suppose… At least you seem to have a bathroom.” He sat beside her.
She scanned him for a moment. Even if he hadn’t said so, he was definitely suffering from sleep deprivation. “You need to rest.”
“I know. But… I’d like to talk about what your plan is.”
Plan? She kept her mouth held shut, and hung her head on the couch, peering out the metal slats of the room’s lonesome glass window.
“This is already a lot for me. At this point, I’m thinking I might turn myself in to Concord. Or if they’re not upset with me, ask to be interned for protection.”
“What?” She snapped to look at Cold. His gaze was lowered, and ears bent back. “You can’t do that.”
“I’m not going to be able to keep up with you. I’m not made out for… combat. I’m only a cargo ship captain, Fokienia.” Tentatively, he reached his foreleg out and set it across her cold, gray steel hooves. “I really do want to help you, but I think you’d be better off without me keeping you down.”
She couldn’t feel his touch through her leg, but it still made her flinch. “But you’ve already helped me so much…”
“I only gave you the tools I had. Tools that are available almost everywhere else. Information is free.”
“Trust isn’t,” Fokienia whispered.
He lifted his head. “What was that?”
“I can trust you.” She met his look. “You showed me what nopony else would. You offered me kindness in return for my violence. I’ve never met a pony who would do that.”
“Ponies are—”
“Not like you. I know ponies, Searing Cold. And those ponies are the worst you could ever meet.” Behind her stare, calculations ticked away, artificial and organic. “I don’t want them to get away with everything they’ve done, but I can’t operate the same way you can. You’re different from ponies because you can see past their flaws. Because you know they have history. And you do, too.”
Cold’s voice was low, his gaze unwavering; he was awake, now. “What do you mean by that?”
“Your kind has a history. It’s not talked about. It’s something you carry with you. Something unspeakable. All the ponies know about kirins is what you wear on your sleeve. Something you have to be selective about, because you’re not perfect. You’re flawed, but express yourself differently.”
Slowly, his hoof drew back, receding into his prone form. His lips were taut, and muzzle wrapped tight. “Yes, Fokienia. I am flawed. Everypony alive is flawed.”
“If you want to help me, I need you to trust me.”
Cold puffed smoke from his nostrils. It was a quick, chief motion. “What do you want?”
“I want to know what led ponies to believe kirins were peacemakers.”
He looked away, and held a long, silent pause. The air hummed, and outside the hovel, the ringing and clamoring of life had begun. “Okay.”
Fokienia brightened, and held her tongue.
Cold began with a hefty draw of breath. “In the days of the first starships, no kirins left the earth. It had been a troubling time, that period before we’d made peace with ponykind and more, and an isolated time. We had just begun acclimating to the prospect of a shared world when the universe opened up for grasping hooves. In that time, the closest a kirin strayed to the stars was from the tops of our mountain home. We stayed far from technology, and the vices of space. I believe that kirins weren’t ready then. There was still so much happening at once for our species.”
“Our tribe was small, and always has been. Not all ponies left Equestria, but the tenets that had brought us to them went to space. Keeping a star system unified was a difficult, demanding task. And despite the ponies’ efforts, there were some revolutions at that time. Not many, but enough to cause harm. It didn’t affect our tribe as much, until one day, one of those protesting attacks came close to the mountain home. We’d receded into old isolationist policies at that point, and when war came to our doorstep, we hadn’t been expecting it.”
“Did… did ponies… hurt you?”
“Yes. But they hadn’t meant to. Our elders were wise, and knew that. But the chaos created by the attacks…” He hung his head over the side of the couch. “Many kirins turned to… Niriks.” He managed the word with difficulty.
“Niriks?”
“Beasts… beasts of flame and anger. Remnants of a troubled past from before the starships.” He lifted his head, and looked to Fokienia. “Righteous as their anger was, it brought only further strife and conflict to our homeland. It was only through intervention from the combined efforts of the elders and the princesses that fighting began to cool. At the end of the fighting, the elders declared enclave, and recalled all of the tribe to the mountain home. The princesses acquiesced to our elders’ demands for isolation, and for a long time, we were left alone.”
“Until war came again?”
“Yes. But this time, we weren’t just victims of collateral.” His eyes glossed slightly. “The war came during my grand ancestors’ time. I remember their stories. The aggressors, then, were still ponies. Miners who were desperate. By then, so many of the other species had reached far into the stars, and these ponies on the edges of the Equus System were as isolated as we were. The princesses tended to them, but it wasn’t enough, and it wasn’t their fault to begin with. The miners could not hold tenure in the resource-drying space they held, but they also couldn’t find the support to manage their growing population and culture. They were an isolated tribe, and desperate to hold onto what they had, even if that meant war.”
“Why did they come to you?”
“We were the easiest target, and had the most organic wealth out of any other place in the star system. Ponies with starships, against kirins with—at most—kinetic weapons.”
Fokienia bowed her head. “I’m sorry.”
He went on. “Some of us fought. Most didn’t. They came to the mountain home, and then to the lands beyond. Then… the princesses and their ponies intervened. Much of the miners’ fleet was destroyed in the first wave, but it only led the miners to more desperate, horrible measures. Their families moved with the fleet, and despite the efforts of the princesses’ ponies, many were lost during the orbital conflicts. My grandparents helped a family of miners recover, and allowed them to hide while the war raged. Anger had overwhelmed many at the time, and it took no sides in the fighting. The elders, in one last attempt, set out to broker a treaty between the two groups of ponies, and our kind. And then, there was peace.”
“Did it last?”
“Yes.” Cold had a short-lived smile. He solemnly started again. “But by the war’s end, our homelands were devastated. Ecologically, and geologically. The miners were sent to a distant side of the colonized systems, and we were left without a home. The princesses offered us worlds and worlds, but there was nothing like the mountain home. So we set out for the stars, aboard pony-made starships, in a pony-dominated existence. And according to the elders’ wishes, we have restrained ourselves from violence. Isolation, we have learned, will eventually give way, so we have learned to secure peace where we can.” He paused gently. “I don’t know where the enclave is, now. But I know they are well, and among clear, friendly skies.”
Fokienia chose not to speak. Neither of them did for the quiet minute. Cold held his eyes shut, with his head laid over his hooves.
“Thank you,” Cold eventually started. He yawned. “I think… I really needed to remember.”
Fokienia pat his hoof. “Why aren’t you with your tribe?”
“Not all of us chose to stay with the elders and the greater enclave.” He spoke passively, his voice tempered neither by adoration or disdain. “When I was a foal, we traveled a great many star systems. And one day, among other kirins, I decided to stay. I worked my way up to a starship, and set out on my own. I am not the first to leave the tribe, nor am I the last. But there will always be a place for me with them.” He smiled endearingly, and set her hoof aside. “Thank you again for listening to me ramble.”
“…Thank you for sharing your history with me.”
Cold nodded, and sighed. “I am happy to trust you.”
That brought a great smile to her lips. “I’ll let you get some rest, now. I’m going to see if I can find some food for you.”
He blinked, then grumbled. “Then, come up with an actual plan.” He yawned again. “If you’re keeping me fed and alive for more than just stories, we still have the future to deal with.”
The sleepy kirin’s words made her stomach flutter. “Of course, Cold.”
At least she wouldn’t have to face the future alone.