//------------------------------// // Chapter 16 // Story: The Blueblood Papers: Bound By Blood // by Raleigh //------------------------------// To this day, I still struggle to understand how common ponies can put up with this state of affairs, but I suppose working every single day until blessed retirement comes is their lot in life and somepony has to do it so that we nobles can get on with the arduous task of running the country. Though I had rather enjoyed my first day of what might be considered ‘gainful employment’ since Spring Rain had seen fit to pay me for chopping vegetables for her, when I woke up the next morning and pondered the thought of having to do this monotonous duty every single day for the rest of my life if I did have the great misfortune to lose my titles, my spirits were deflated somewhat. The cold light of early morning, or rather the blazing heat as it was here, had illuminated the deeply troublesome position I found myself in. As I lifted my head from Spring Rain’s lumpy sofa, alternating as it did between lows lacking adequate stuffing and lumps harder than diamond, and spent a few moments working through the post-awakening confusion and remembered where I was and why, it was all that I could to keep myself from falling again into a state of utter despair. Uncle had done quite a good job of making me believe that there was a way out of this mess, and I supposed that’s why he was so well-regarded amongst the kirin here, but after the lengthy crawl through the filthy gutters back to Spring Rain’s home, Uncle having decided that keeping me in his safehouse was too much of a risk, and a fitful, dreamless sleep that somehow left me feeling even more tired upon waking than when I’d fell upon the sofa in the first place, I struggled to see the bloody point of carrying on like this. I had, somehow, found myself agreeing to a thoroughly suicidal plan, one involving pirates of all things. Yet it was the only plan we had, and say what you will about your good friend Prince Blueblood but he certainly does not lie down and accept failure when there still remains the merest glimmer of hope for returning to a life of idle, decadent luxury; I concluded, as Spring Rain barked at Cannon Fodder and me to get up and ready for another monotonous shift of slicing spring onions, that in the hopefully likely event that Operation: Sunburn was to fail, either shot down over the Celestial Sea or defeated on the slopes of Mount Canter, and when ponies invariably start asking questions about what I was doing when I was within trotting distance of those docks, ‘chopping vegetables’ was not going to impress ponies back at home, who might then start asking all sorts of interesting questions about what I was really up to during other momentous events in my far-too-eventful career. The thought of personally ruining Dorylus’ plans myself was one that appealed to my base, bullying nature, and was the main factor in convincing me to very reluctantly go along with what I had agreed with the previous night. Call me petty, amongst other apt things if you will, but I could not wait to see the look on his face as Operation: Sunburn burned all around him, hopefully from the safety of the deck of a liberated airship, slowly flying away into the sunset. Finding these pirates was easier said than done, being criminals and reavers of the sea who had apparently been hunted down like adorable bunnies on the plains around Griffonstone by the very forces loyal to the same crowns my Aunts wore, they were, as Spring Rain had explained to me relentlessly over the previous day regarding the kirin resistance, very reluctant to be found easily. I left Uncle and his loyal followers to deal with organising that particular rendezvous, while Spring Rain, Cannon Fodder, and I thought about how to secret myself inside the docks. “The Changelings collect ponies each morning off the street,” said Spring Rain, as she re-applied the false cutie mark to my flanks after the necessary roll around in the dust. “They usually drop them off when the sun sets. Usually.” “So why don’t ponies just stay indoors?” I asked. “Ah, don’t ask silly questions, lah,” she snapped. “Changelings break into homes and drag ponies out. You think they care about privacy?” Spring Rain stepped back, ostensibly to admire her hoofwork, and appraised me from horn to hoof as though I was a rather pretty vase she was considering buying for her drawing room, if she had one. “They look for strong ponies,” she said, her eyes running over my dusty, dirty, painted frame, and I couldn’t help but feel a little self-conscious about how spending much of my youth indulging in a little too much wine and cheese and not much in the way of regular exercise had left me a little on the larger side. “Strong ponies who can lift heavy things. You’re a big stallion; I’m sure the Changelings will grab you and your smelly friend, if they can stand him.” I wasn’t quite so sure myself, seeing as how multiple patrols of both native police collaborators and Changeling Blackhorns didn’t give me so much as a second, sneering glance the day before, and I saw no reason why they would regard me in any way different this day. As I found out, once I was suitably disguised again, covered in a layer of dust and with a pair of suspiciously callipygian plums painted each of my flanks, and we ventured out into the streets a little earlier than we had done yesterday, it was a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This time, my disguise was supplemented by the addition of an old, stained undershirt, with which to cover the distinctive scarring that marred my back; it had escaped notice last time, but as we were going straight into the dragon’s lair I wanted to leave nothing to chance. Yoked to the surprisingly heavy cart with Cannon Fodder and dragging it through the quieter streets, Celestia’s sun cresting above the jagged outline of the city beyond and throwing the clear, dark sky into brilliant hues of oranges and reds, it did not take us long to encounter our first group of these pony-snatchers. A half-dozen Blackhorns in grey tunics and a half-dozen local police in tan uniforms watched over a long line of perhaps double their total number of rather sullen, unhappy ponies, who, judging by the slow way they loped along the road, were clearly about as enthusiastic about having been taken at this early hour from whatever it was they wanted to do today to perform manual labour as I was. If it led to me getting out of this Changeling-infested place then I was just about willing to go along with it, though I was certain that the enemy would find me an as unproductive worker as I could get away with; that’s rather the problem with using slave labour, the Changelings hadn’t quite worked out the obvious thing, that forcing individuals to work without adequate recompense or at least a feeling that it was all worthwhile in some way tended to lead to some terribly substandard work. Perhaps I might even organise an act of casual sabotage, I thought, if I could get away with it. The line of conscripted labourers and their escort walked along the road towards us, and soon we would meet. As the distance between us closed, I could see that only the Changelings were armed with muskets, which they kept casually slung to their backs, while the native police had nothing more lethal on them than truncheons. The occupiers had sufficient foresight not to arm their collaborators, it seemed, being of rather dubious loyalty. “Aiyah, it’s those two,” muttered Spring Rain under her breath. I followed her glare to see the two police ponies who had extracted a bribe from her in the market the day before, one, the individual who had attempted to interrogate me, barking something insulting at a stallion who looked as though he was seconds away from inflicting grievous bodily harm upon the officer, were it not for the presence of the Changeling drones around them. His fellow, as before, marched along off to the side, observing the rest of them for any sign of potential resistance. The drones keeping an eye on them seemed to find their behaviour amusing, judging by the fanged grins and chittering laughs shared between them. Spring Rain led us along the street, closer to the approaching line of conscripted labourers and their armed escorts. She tried to nudge us away from them, as far as the open street would allow without us and her precious cart falling into the same gutters we crept through the night before, which only had the effect of drawing their attention. Being rather sharper than her loud mouth and lack of verbal filter otherwise implied, this was likely very intentional, and worked as well as one could have hoped for. The second officer, the quiet one, looked to us as we tried to not-so-discreetly slip past him, and immediately barked something in the local dialect that, while I was still unfamiliar with it, likely translated as ‘stop!’, for that is what Spring Rain did immediately, and Cannon Fodder and I only did when we both walked straight into her stationary backside. The patient reader will have to forgive me for not providing the details of the conversation that took place, as my grasp on this particular local dialect was still stuck at the very basics of ‘Hello, my name is Prince Blueblood’ and ‘I would like a dry martini with one olive, please’. I managed to get the gist of what was going on by context and what few snippets of words and phrases. The officer, a tall and gangly unicorn with a scratchy beard, demonstrated his intent to conscript Spring Rain’s employees for the greater good of the Changeling war effort. Spring Rain protested that she needed us for the far more important cause of preparing hot and filling meals for the good, free, and hard-working citizens of this great city, and that we couldn’t possibly be spared. She seemed to be exaggerating somewhat in her pleading, and while it would not have won any awards in terms of acting, it still had the apparently desired effect of aggravating the officer to a sufficient degree to cause him to shove her out of the way, thus ensuring that my aide and I would certainly be conscripted, if only out of spite. Language barrier aside, ‘come with me or I’ll lamp you’ translated quite well with the assistance of that rather hefty-looking truncheon being held menacingly within skull-smashing distance. Spring Rain, keeping up the pretence that this was an undesirable course of action so as not to arouse suspicion, barked what could only be aspersions on the stallion’s honour and parentage and those of the Changelings he served, which was universal in all known languages, equine or otherwise. However, with as much reluctance as I could possibly fake, I made my apologies to my ‘employer’, un-yoked myself from the cart with Cannon Fodder following suit, and fell into line with the band of other conscripted natives. Aside from a few queer looks from said natives, whom I still didn’t quite blend in completely with, Cannon Fodder and I slipped effortlessly into this line, of sorts. However, the officer still argued with Spring Rain, holding up our march to the docks, and it was getting quite heated. Whatever was being said it had certainly long gone past the mere point of stealing her two best employees; the kirin, though clearly doing her damnedest to keep the infamous temper of her kind in check, looked to be on the verge of losing that self-control she had mustered through those long hours of solitary meditation. Sparks and flames, white-blue hot, danced around her horn, crackling audibly with the rising magic that fuelled the transformation, as she spat verbal venom and insults at this smug, sneering stallion in uniform. She was ranting by now, about what exactly I could not say as her voice was quite low, but I could at least pick up one or two words relating to various immediate family members. Her face was twisted into an enraged snarl, and her compact little body was starting to tremble. If I didn’t know better, the stallion was trying to goad her into turning into a nirik, and since that would incur some risk of physical harm to himself, I assumed he was only doing so to give him a pretence to arrest, hit, strike, assault, or whatever. [Kirin-baiting, in addition to being an unpleasant thing to do to a creature, was used by some ponies to demonstrate the perceived dangers of cohabitation with kirins, as well as an activity for bored juvenile delinquents in cities with a kirin diaspora. Kirins have developed and perfected methods to control their anger to avoid turning nirik, including zen meditation, over thousands of years to the point that they can live together with ponies and other creatures. However, by provoking individual kirins into these destructive transformations by personally antagonising them until they lose that self-control provides a convenient excuse for some narrow-minded ponies to encourage repressive measures against them.] I was quite powerless to do anything, held back by my need to maintain cover, besides one thing. “Boss!” I called out in Ponish, affecting an almost comically heavy Coltcuttan accent, which immediately attracted the attention of the Changeling Blackhorns still loitering nearby and reminded them that they still had a job to do. “I told you, no kirins,” snapped one of the drones. “Leave that one alone, we don’t need her.” The smugness evaporated from the officer’s face like spilt water left on hot plate armour in the Badland’s hot sun. He spluttered a few times, turning quite red with what I took to be embarrassment. “But she called me a-” “I don’t care!” The drone stamped a hoof, and the officer flinched. “Do your job, or you’ll join the others working in the docks.” Apparently having re-asserted his authority with the sort of petty vehemence typical of the ambitious low-level enforcers of tyrannical regimes, this Blackhorn, who I noticed wore an extra green pip alongside his green flame insignia, thus marking him out as some sort of leader of this group, turned and marched off, ranting to himself and any other drone who would listen about the perceived incompetence of their equine ‘helpers’, as he described them. As the officer, suitably admonished, sulked and rejoined our group, Spring Rain made good her opportunity to escape, and was already halfway down the street with her cart, trotting merrily away with sparks still dancing around her horn until she turned a corner and disappeared from my view. I found myself missing her, oddly, and though Cannon Fodder was still by my side, the two of us being strangers in this exotic city made me feel quite alone and exposed. Still, I had only to make it through the day, which, while perilous, when couched in those flippant terms made me feel as though there might be a slender chance that I would see her again. We carried on down the street, shuffling and shambling forward at the speed set by the slowest of our number, which was swelled periodically each time an able-bodied pony had the misfortune to cross our path, at least those who hadn’t spotted us coming and suddenly remembered that they had something very important to do elsewhere immediately. While most did join us, usually following some argument that was quickly won by the Changelings owing to their weaponry, a few had managed to weasel out of this duty by presenting slips of paper, stamped with the green flame insignia of the Hives, that presumably marked them exempt from this due to being needed for important war work or having some sort of medical complaint like cracked hooves. My new colleagues were not ones for conversation, quietly ambling along and speaking only amongst themselves; it was a damned good thing, though, as I was well-aware that any time I opened my mouth and attracted undue attention entailed a risk of being uncovered. The city was still rising languidly from its torpor, much like Yours Truly crawling out of bed after noon after a late evening, and the streets gradually filled with more ponies and kirins. I gathered that our Blackhorn patrol here operated on some kind of quota of ponies they had to recruit, for after picking up more than perhaps twenty-five (I didn’t exactly count them all), we hurried on down the road without stopping to pick anypony else up, and the remaining civilians, emerging from their homes as the sun rose in the East, gave us and our Changeling about as wide a berth as they would if we’d all been visibly infected with the cutie pox. The terrain changed somewhat as we neared the docks. The low, squat, concrete and stone houses favoured by the kirins gave rise to larger tenement blocks, which I presumed were the homes of the ponies who worked on these docks before the Changeling occupation, loading and unloading the vast array of goods and maintaining the ever-growing fleet of merchant ships that served this place. They were rather ugly buildings, I must admit, reminding me of the similar workers’ housings I’d seen through the window of my carriage when travelling through the seedier parts of Trottingham and Manehattan, where multitudes of families inhabit a space not much larger than the master bedroom of my Prench summer house. The locals here, as with those aforementioned Equestrian metropolises, had seen fit to make as much of a home of these rather unpleasant buildings as possible; street food vendors and market stalls were on every corner, foals played, and older ponies gathered as they always do to exchange opinions on the state of the world and how to put it right. The latter would have much to discuss about the increasing presence of the Changeling occupation, with the painted walls and decorations on the drab buildings becoming more obscured by the propaganda posters depicting smiling, happy drones and the patrols of Blackhorns skulking through every street. The sun was higher in the sky by the time we finally reached the docks, and already I was all but exhausted from the mere walk over. I’m not sure why, but walking slower than usual can feel more tiring than the same distance travelled at a brisker pace. Nevertheless, we were there, and from what I’d gathered from the Blackhorns’ incessant grumbling about this rather onerous and unpopular job, we were quite late and much of it was the fault of the ‘incompetent’ and ‘lazy’ pony police collaborators. The huge hangar building I’d seen in the photographs had been visible from quite some distance away; vast, dark, and glistening with a malignant emerald sheen in the bright morning sun, it towered over the smaller buildings all around and had formed a beacon of sorts for us to navigate our way to, once it had hoved into view. It was about as imposing as the photographs had implied, for it looked nothing like anything else within the local architecture, and appeared like an enormous monument to the unassailable power and authority of the Changeling occupiers as much as a practical building for storing airships. A tall brick wall ringed the docks area, and we passed through a security checkpoint manned by more Blackhorns with muskets. There was an imposing metal gate, with a relatively small hut where the few drones who supervised the checkpoint resided. This, however, took perhaps an hour to pass through (I hadn’t my watch with me, so I could only guess), as, with the typically over-wrought, complex, and ultimately pointless bureaucracy that characterised Chrysalis’ oppressive regime, allowed petty functionaries like the little uniformed tyrant who commanded this checkpoint to satisfy his ego and exert as much of his minor authority as possible by inconveniencing his fellow Blackhorns. He, a tall, slim drone with a pristine grey uniform starched so stiffly that it was a miracle he could still move in it, spent a great deal of time faffing about with bits of paperwork, and when it eventually dawned on me that he was examining each individual ponies’ identification papers with excessive and deliberate care, of which Cannon Fodder and I had none, I soon began to feel the sense of rising panic return. Blast, I’d walked straight into the dragon’s den, and I’d might as well been wearing the Blood family jewels arranged into a neat little sign that read ‘please eat me’. I could only watch helplessly as he moved down the line, making a great show of ensuring that absolutely everything in each pony’s identification papers was all in order and instructing his assistant, another drone who bore that familiar expression of having gone through this countless times before and was invariably beyond the point of caring to even try to speed things along, to take down notes on a clipboard. He drew closer and closer to me, and my mind raced to find some sort of excuse or explanation; I was a Coltcuttan servant, perhaps, who had worked in the governor’s palace before the invasion, and therefore had no papers that I could provide. Or I could flee, and though the guards seemed inattentive and the surrounding tenement blocks were dense enough that I could lose myself in them, the city was still crawling with sufficient drones that any reprieve I might find would only be temporary. It was then, however, as this officious, ill-mannered bureaucrat, who continued to ignore the protests of our armed guard to just get on with this so they can return to barracks, that Dorylus of all Changelings wandered into view and came to my rescue. It was the first time I’d seen him since being forced into the cocoon, and even then it was much too soon; he had ditched the absurd velvet smoking jacket and cravat ensemble, and had instead gone for the simple austerity of being without clothes entirely. Changelings, even Purestrains, looked much the same as one another, so it took a second or two before I recognised that face, and as that sudden shock I felt at the realisation tore its way up my spine I immediately dropped my head to look at the ground by my forehooves and shrank back into the crowd around me, only daring to take short, furtive glances in his direction. He, escorted by two drones, swanned on over, with his entourage struggling to keep up with his swift, long strides. Murder was etched on his sharp features as he bore down upon the petty bureaucrat who was clearly holding up his work. “What is it now?” hissed Dorylus, with the air of an exasperated lord of a manor who has found his servants slacking off in the pantry for the third time that week. He looked tired, despite putting on a brave face, and had no doubt suffered a great deal of telling-off from Queen Chrysalis for the undoubtedly enormous waste of resources that was Camp Joy and for losing me in the process. Changelings don’t quite get bags under their eyes, but there seemed to be a little less life in them than before, and his posture was rather more sagged than the formal, ramrod-straight demeanour from before. The uniformed drone snapped to attention and saluted the Purestrain with parade-ground efficiency. “Sir, I’m checking that these workers’ papers are in order.” Dorylus glared down at the drone, whose belief in bureaucratic rules and regulations were so absolute that he was entirely unfazed by the tall, imposing beast bristling with fangs and magic. “There’s no time for that,” he said with a dismissive, exasperated wave of his hoof. “Just let them go to work.” “Sir…” The drone shuffled from hoof to hoof. “Their papers need to be checked before I can let them through. We can’t risk-” “Your diligence is admirable,” interrupted Dorylus, “and under normal circumstances I would be applauding your commitment to procedure. Perhaps there would even be a medal in it for you.” The drone straightened his posture and puffed out his chest, which was soon deflated, however, when Dorylus carried on speaking. “The Queen is here, drone. Every day she asks me, ‘Dorylus, why aren’t my airships ready yet? My war-swarms are waiting to take Equestria, but the lack of progress on assembling my airships is taking too much time. You told me they would be ready by now. I should be in Canterlot already, having Princess Celestia’s throne adjusted for my more royal behind’. She doesn’t quite put it like that, but I’m sure you get the idea. Now, I can only come up with so many excuses to protect those diligent little drones who remain so committed to sticking to the rules and regulations that keep our Hives running in a fine and orderly fashion, but sooner or later I may just run out of patience and ask, no, order you to personally explain to her why you are causing the delay in getting these pony workers to where they’re needed.” The colour drained from the drone’s face. Being covered in chitin, I didn’t think it was actually possible for Changelings to go pale like that, but this one managed it admirably. “I believe their papers are all in order, sir.” “There’s a good drone,” said Dorylus, smiling in an overly wide manner that I found distinctly off-putting. If he patted said drone on the head I would not have been too shocked. He then turned away from the trembling little drone, who, suitably admonished in front of both his peers and the ponies, skulked back into his hut, and addressed the assembled ponies: “Now listen up, my little ponies!” It took a considerable amount of effort on my part not to sigh loudly and dramatically at his strange imitation of Celestia’s most famous catchphrase. “First I just want to say ‘thank you’ for volunteering to help us today. I know each of you have other jobs and things you need to be getting on with, so let me tell you now that this is so important. So very, very important. What you do here today will help us bring down the Tyrants of the Sun and Moon, who have grown fat off your nation’s wealth, and will usher in a bright new future for free ponies and Changelings together!” I hadn’t heard a more ridiculous amount of drivel compacted into such a few short sentences before in my life, except perhaps when I heard Lord Windy Mere drunkenly but sincerely pontificate over the granting of citizenship to the Diamond Dogs, and judging by the scant amount of applause Dorylus here received, which bordered on outright sarcasm to my ears, neither had the overwhelming majority of the assembled ponies either. It was impossible to imagine anypony falling for that utter nonsense, so blatantly cynical and self-serving as it was, and about as honest as one would come to expect from their kind, but amidst the silently standing ponies and the ones rhythmically pounding their hooves on the ground out of mere social obligation, one or two amongst our small crowd appeared to be voicing their approval with genuine enthusiasm. They would, of course, be looking back on that with some considerable embarrassment, as the Changelings would slowly but invariably tighten their stranglehold upon their city and take more from it than Equestria ever would in centuries of imperial authority, and I knew that even without the benefit of hindsight. Either that, or we’d picked up a group of actors. With that, apparently unconcerned about the lacklustre response he had received, Dorylus turned hoof and strutted away, entourage in tow and struggling to keep up with him. Clearly, that little display told me that Chrysalis’ presence here had rattled him somewhat, as I’d expect it would for any one of her Purestrains unlucky enough to have his new pet project attract her personal attention; it almost gave me some measure of hope, if security here was truly as lax as this in the name of hurrying along Operation: Sunburn to its culmination. If I was truly lucky, then I might not have to actually do very much to initiate a sabotage to bring it crashing to the ground in flames. Still, I was getting too far ahead, and I reminded myself that my intention here really was to gather information and see if I could find Square Basher, if she was even still here, and then I could begin to think about what I would have to do next. The commander of the checkpoint had been shaken by the mere mention of his Queen to a sufficient degree that he simply waved the rest of us through, which was a blessed relief as I feared that he would carry on when Dorylus’ back was turned. We were marched through the gates and out into the docks themselves. Warehouses surrounded us on all sides; large, sprawling buildings made of brick, each almost identical in shape and colour, with large open doors for the admittance of various goods. More Changeling drones milled aimlessly about the place, as soldiers do in the absence of any particular orders, passing the time by napping, chatting, or playing strange games with dice, papers, and small models. “Must be an entire war-swarm here,” whispered Cannon Fodder, close enough for me to hear without the drones overhearing and for me to be met with the full force of his halitosis. There certainly did seem to be an awful lot of them even in the open space between the warehouses, and only Faust knew how many more inside those structures. As for the ones we could see, there certainly seemed enough of them along to deserve the title of ‘swarm’; most ignored us, mercifully, though a few took to some half-hearted jeering as we passed them before returning to whatever activities they were doing before. Nevertheless, we made it to the hangar without further incident. I could see, now that we were much closer to it, that it was in fact made of a series of metal sheets glued together with that distinctly slimy and unpleasant chrysalite stuff. This, I imagined, was what had allowed them to construct it so quickly. That, and slave labour with a large and expandable workforce, which probably contributed more. There was a small door in its side, one of many that I could see, and we were ushered inside with some rather aggressive posturing from our guards, who apparently seemed eager to be finally done with us. The interior was suitably vast, and as the photographs had demonstrated, the wall facing the open sea simply was not there, and from where we stood I could see the blue ocean and the sky, beyond which lay Equestria, home, and a well-deserved recuperation. However, from the moment that I crossed the threshold, my gaze was not on the infinite majesty of nature and the promise of freedom, but on the airships themselves. Now, when I heard the word ‘airships’ when I eavesdropped on that fateful meeting with Queen Chrysalis, I, and most likely anypony else who could have been there in my stead, had imagined the sort that I and all ponies would have been quite familiar with. Even somepony plucked from the most isolated of rural peasant communities out there could draw a picture of a crude approximation of what one might consider to be a typical Equestrian airship: a large envelope for holding the lighter-than-air and more-flammable-than-anything-else gas that keeps the bally thing afloat, a gondola which holds the passengers, cargo, and all-important crew precariously beneath it, and the necessary cables, beams, and struts that keep the latter very much connected to the former. Our hypothetical peasant might, if possessed of an artistic spirit beyond his meagre means to indulge in, include the engines with which to propel the airship forwards and rudders to steer it by, or perhaps include decorative embellishments on both the envelope and gondola typical of both luxury craft and the most utilitarian of our cargo transporters. The point is, just about everypony has a broadly similar view of what an airship ought to look like. What I saw there, sheltered within the dubious protection offered by the hastily-built hangar, scarcely conformed to those basic principles I have outlined above. These ‘airships’ were a damned sight bigger than any such aeronautical craft that I had ever laid eyes on, not that I partake in the wearing of anoraks and hanging around aerodromes during my free time, or thought that could be built and remain comfortably airborne. There was a row of them, each filling the width of the hangar from prow to stern, and each certainly looked as though they could carry an entire swarm of drones in reasonable comfort across the Celestial Sea. These were huge, dark aircraft, seemingly made entirely of steel and armoured to a sufficient degree so as to seem utterly invulnerable to my thoroughly uneducated eyes. Great sheets of armour plating covered the upper part of the gas envelope, and upon its armoured prow were the twin lightning bolts that I had seen engraved onto the Changelings’ bought muskets, giving one the impression of a shark diving after its wounded prey. The gondola itself was similarly armoured at the front and on its underside, and it lacked what I would call a conventional deck on its top. Ports for what I presumed would be used for cannons were dotted in rows along its length, currently empty. Upon its side, the green flame of the Hives had been freshly painted by its new owners. My hopes that, in the increasingly likely event that I failed here, that these would be shot out of the sky or stormed by pegasi troops were dashed upon seeing them, and I felt a horrible sinking sensation that, once again, it would solely be up to me to stop this, somehow. I tore my eyes away from these imposing machines and looked elsewhere; crates containing Faust knows what were stacked up everywhere, and ponies and Changelings alike scurried between them. Elsewhere, I saw stacks of strange machinery, all wires and gears and tubes as arranged by a madmare or a modern artist, guarded carefully by drones, who would allow their pony slaves or indentured workers near them under particularly close supervision. The gas and fuel storage was what I was really after, and from where I stood, under the shadow of these monstrous airships, I struggled to see any large tanks conveniently marked with obvious signs warning of flammability. There wasn’t much time to stand and gawk, unfortunately, for our escort, now consisting of only drones as our pony police escort had presumably gone off to harass more innocent stall owners in the market, directed us to the closest corner of the hangar. There, another security detail had set up shop, this time staffed by that other variety of bureaucrat - the one who’d much rather be doing anything else besides his job, which suited me perfectly fine. “Send them to the unloading docks, I guess,” a drone with a dishevelled uniform said with a vague shrug. “I thought the volunteers weren’t supposed to mix with the slaves,” said another, clearly more diligent in his work than his boss. “And the unloading is supposed to be happening faster.” The drone waved his hoof dismissively in the direction of the airships. “Look, they keep sending us any idiots they pick up off the street and expect us to teach them how to assemble airships. I don’t have time for that. Carrying boxes is the easiest thing for them to do that doesn’t involve me having to explain these very complicated machines to a bunch of dumb peasants who barely speak Ponish. One of them’s bound to wreck something. All they have to do there is pick something up, carry it somewhere else, and put it down. Diamond Dogs can be trained to do that.” “But the Commandant said-” “I’ll deal with the Commandant. There’s a trick to it; you just remind him the Queen wants results quickly, ignore his threats, and remind him that he’s the one who really has to answer to Her Majesty if it all goes hooves-up here. Just send them to the unloading dock and be done with it.” In light of such lazy wisdom, his underling shrugged and moved to escort us to wherever it was that we needed to go to pick something up, carry it somewhere else, and put it down. However, in what was probably a very rare moment of diligence from this inept bureaucrat, he looked up from his desk to observe this latest batch of ponies, in what I took to be idle curiosity than any sort of professional rigour on his part, and his gaze focused sharply on Cannon Fodder and me. I feared that I had been recognised, still not entirely blending in well with the locals despite my convincing disguise of dust and paint. “The two unicorns,” he said to his underling, “fit them with nullifier rings before they blow something up, intentionally or otherwise.” As these rings were retrieved from his desk drawer, I considered how I’d gone most of my life without even thinking about these irritating things, and now that the whole world had been turned upside down by this war I’ve had to wear them three times in the space of a single year against my will. One was placed clumsily on my horn, with a fair bit of knocking of said appendage as the drone was clearly rushing to be rid of us as quickly as possible, followed by another on Cannon Fodder, which was quite redundant but I didn’t want to tell them that. The irritatingly familiar feeling of numbness, of being disconnected from the wellspring of creation itself, returned, and my hopes of not having to use my physical form in this work were dashed upon the wall and stamped on repeatedly. What’s worse is they didn’t pick the right size, so it pinched around the base of my horn in a way that was almost calculated to drive me insane over the course of the day. Still, I’d just have to put up with it, as with most inconveniences in life, and now that we were suitably blocked from accidentally blowing the entire hangar up and becoming the first ponies to leave Equus’ atmosphere unaided by the Elements of Harmony, we plodded along with the rest of the ‘volunteers’, as Dorylus had called them. We were led to the back of the cavernous hangar, along the opposite side of the great opening, up a flight of stairs that left me quite out of breath by the time we reached the top. There, we crossed a gangway with a precarious guard rail that I would not trust to hold my weight should I be hurled against it with great force. The grating under my hooves didn’t fill me with much more confidence either, and I found that I could peer through the small holes there to see the drones and ponies scurrying around beneath us. It creaked ominously too, as we crossed it, and I felt as though I had merely to jump up and down a few times and it would bring the whole thing crashing down. We passed the airships, allowing me the opportunity to see them up close, or at least their rears. These sections, at least, were less heavily-armoured, likely a concession to weight or the bally things wouldn’t have been able to fly at all. I fancied that a particularly daring pegasus, like Rainbow Dash for instance or that Lightning Dust even, might be able to weave her way through to the under-protected stern, and with the assistance of some sort of explosives could even bring one of them down in flames. There were five of them that I could bother to count, but if there were others hidden somewhere in this vast open space then it was entirely possible that I might have missed them entirely. I had thought that Chrysalis might have her own flagship of sorts, gilded to the gunwales with gold (likely stolen), from which she might observe the invasion, as her enormous ego demanded, but from my position I couldn’t see anything that might fit the description. One airship, however, did not resemble the others; it was a small cargo ship that more closely followed what our aforementioned hypothetical peasant would recognise as an airship, and bore a superficial resemblance to the one I had very nearly been immolated in with a pop star (when I write these things down, it often strikes me just how implausible much of my life had become in those days, but it’s all true). Parked with its stern to the wide open gangway, which was also suspended precariously over a very lethal drop, and held in place with anchored chains, the rear of the gondola had opened up to allow the teams of shackled, despondent ponies to enter and retrieve the large wooden and cardboard boxes and sacks of supplies and place them at the back of the gangway, which I was not terribly confident was adequate in supporting the weight of. Further teams of ponies, however, were tasked with taking these unloaded supplies and taking them to a large goods lift that creaked and groaned with the near-constant use. There were quite a lot of enslaved ponies there, working alongside the Marelay locals. These were clearly natives of the Badlands, judging by the small snippets of hushed conversation in their native tongue that I could pick up, and with their thin, undernourished physiques they already had some considerable experience with working under the Changelings. I always found that to be rather counter-productive; I’d have thought that a race that relied so heavily on slave labour to do all of the unpleasant but necessary jobs that a functioning society required, inasmuch as the Hives could be considered a ‘functioning’ society at all, and all in addition to serving as a source of food, would think about providing actual nutrition to their slaves to extract the maximum amount of productivity and love out of them. As ghoulish as it might sound, it did occur to me then that it would make identifying Square Basher, who was about twice the size of these poor wretches both in terms of height and girth, and any of my fellow former guests of Camp Joy all the easier for me. They hardly blended in even at the best of times. [There was considerable variation in conditions amongst the Badlands tribes enslaved by the Changelings, depending on the quantity of food that could be transported to the hive cities and the callousness or pragmatism of individual Purestrains. The larger hive cities of the Heartlands often struggled to feed their populations even during peacetime, with supply routes from the more agrarian west being raided by free tribes and Equestrian-backed partisans in the countryside where Changeling control was weakest. Some administrators did consider ponies to be an expendable resource, and would expend as few resources as they could get away with in feeding them. These conditions would deteriorate as the war worsened for the Hives.] I was anxious to get started, as one might well expect, however, the Changelings were unlikely to be understanding of my need to find my comrades so that we might arrange a method to turn their hangar and its airships, bought and transported here at great expense, into a smoking, burning hole in the ground. Upon arrival, we were placed under the supervision of one drone with a whip, which he liked to drag around behind him and wiggle so that it slithered like a snake on the floor. Others had them, but kept theirs wrapped up around their waists, and that I never saw them in use led me to believe that the whips were merely an indication of rank and not an actual method of coercion, and since I wanted to avoid a repeat performance of my flogging, I was most relieved when I realised that. This belligerent fellow, who, judging by his manner, felt rather oppressed by the system he lived under, and saw fit to take out his frustrations on the one group in the Hives who could not fight back - ponies. He came out from the ship’s hold bellowing at the top of his voice, rendered quite thin and reedy by the odd accent most drones speak in. “Queen’s flanks!” he started with, providing a fascinating insight into his psyche. “More livestock? They must think I’m running a nursery here! Alright, now pay attention. This should be really, really easy, but a lot of you still screw it up. You go in the airship, you pick up a box or a sack, you carry it over there, and you put it down again. Then you go and do it again, and again, until that ship is empty. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you ingrates are dropping things on purpose.” That was about as much orientation, as I think they call it in the depressing world of gainful employment, as we were going to get on this ‘job’, and so we got to it. After some hesitation, which I took to be the result of our merry band of ‘volunteers’ struggling through the language barrier and their apparent bewilderment and understandable confusion at everything that was happening to them, the braver of our lot followed the direction of the outstretched hoof of our overseer and into the darkened hold of the cargo airship. It was rather like going into a large cave, I mused, and given that pirates were on my mind I imagined smugglers going into a cave to retrieve their illicit contraband. The interior of the hold, which I would usually consider to be large had I not seen the hangar just prior, was about half-full of those boxes and sacks, and were stacked up rather haphazardly with little regard as to how these objects would fit together in this limited space. There were ponies everywhere, picking up the goods and carrying them outside as instructed, but in this dimly-lit hold I still couldn’t make out Square Basher, who should have been towering over them. I struggled to grasp how a mare with such a distinctive appearance could disappear into a crowd so readily. It was a vast complex, and if she was here, it was so huge and so sprawling that I might never encounter her. As it turned out, she found me. My cunning disguise must not have been as convincing as I’d thought, or, as was most likely, she’d picked up Cannon Fodder’s distinctive scent and followed it. We were poking around the boxes, where they had formed a veritable maze from which one could quite easily hide from the Changeling overseers if we were quiet enough. Dim light was cast by a series of lamps set up all around, though the haphazard way in which the slaves had removed the crates, clearly and intelligently favouring the smallest and lightest ones, left areas shrouded in darkness, which at first made me feel rather confident about my chances, until I remembered that drones can see body heat and I was better off standing near something hot. Nevertheless, we fumbled about, passing slaves who scarcely lifted their eyes at us, until I felt the presence of something quite large immediately behind me. Before I could react, I was grabbed with a great deal of roughness; a hoof the size of a dinner plate clasped around my muzzle and another had seized my arm, dragging me behind a wall of enormous wooden boxes. My yelp of surprise was stifled most effectively, though I was rather more confused as to why Cannon Fodder was not immediately coming to my rescue as he’d always done. However, that perplexing question was answered when I was abruptly turned around and found myself staring in shock at the very apologetic face of Company Sergeant Major Square Basher. “Sorry, sir,” she whispered, “but where in Equestria have you been?”