Thorax strode with his head high back towards his quarters, traveling amongst the other changelings as a wolf among lambs. Two things he had read about once, somewhere. In a magazine? Lambs were the big hairy ones with big claws.
His quarters were little more than a single room in the lower floors, with a heavy stone door and a pile of old hay to act as a bed. He had recently been provided with a wooden desk, but not due to rank or seniority. The requisition officer had given it to him because he had had no idea what to do with it. It wasn't damaged but none of the higher ranked changelings had wanted it, so it wound up in Thorax's room.
He closed the door and looked around the room, trying to spot anything unusual. A highly trained Infiltrator would be able to see this sort of thing instantly, yet nothing at all seemed out of place. There were only three objects in this room anyway, his bed, the desk, and the small letter resting atop the bed. He sighed, figuring that his contact would reach him later, and sat down on the bed to wait.
There was something under his flank. He sat up and looked at it. A letter! Oh, his contact was a devious one. Whoever it was wasn't going to meet him here, too obvious. He opened the letter and read it over.
Mess Hall. South wing. Three piles of hay.
Must be written in some kind of code, he reasoned. He stuffed the letter into the pile of hay and opened the door, peering into the corridor beyond. A low-ranker was making her way down the corridor, otherwise it was empty. He waited a moment until she had gone into her room before he snuck out, towards the stairwell.
The trip to the southern mess hall was uneventful, but an agent such as Thorax is always on alert. He was totally aware of every single molecule in the entire hive at this point, so aware that he completely averted crashing into the changeling who had suddenly stepped out from the passage in front of him.
"Watch it, moron," the other changeling spat at him, before wandering off towards whatever unimportant task he had been charged with. Thorax forgave him, he couldn't know he was dealing with a professional. Thorax, of course, was merely acting so well, anyone would think he was a moron, and certainly not a secret agent.
The mess hall had cleared out somewhat by now, it was getting into the evening and most changelings ate right around five, which was when most of the industrial sections went into their maintenance shifts. Thorax took stock of the situation, taking in every tiny detail.
There were about fifteen other changelings in the hall, not counting the server. None of them looked like a secret agent contact, but then again, his contact would be slick. Possibly even slicker than him, though Thorax admitted that was merely an outside possibility. He had also neglected to eat anything that day, and hunger gnawed at him. There was certainly no harm in getting some food.
"Hay?" the server asked cheerfully as he stepped up. The line was empty, he was the only one getting anything right now.
"Two lumps," he said. He stopped, realizing what he had said. "No, three!"
"Three lumps it is!" the server said, and put three lumps on his tray. She smiled and asked, "Water with that?"
"No, just the nectar," Thorax said. She had not reacted when he said three lumps, clearly this server was not the contact. He had played it cool, though, nobody would suspect a thing. No way was he going to be able to choke down three lumps of hay, though.
The server took a carefully portioned lump of the golden, pure, buttery nectar and spread it lightly on the hay lumps. She passed him the tray and smiled again as Thorax took the tray over to a table, selected at random. The changeling sitting opposite him didn't look up from her tray, though she wasn't eating. Thorax noticed her tray also had three lumps of hay on it. He wondered to himself if this was a common signal in the espionage service, or if he had elected to sit opposite a glutton.
His attention, however, would immediately become transfixed on his food. The moment he, or any changeling, for that matter, put the nectar-covered hay in his mouth, it was an explosion of pure, unrefined bliss. Liquid happiness, better than any drug, a taste that never grew weaker with exposure. Nectar. He cherished every tiny drop that had been spread on the hay and braced himself for the next bite.
Most changelings didn't know what nectar was, or where it came from. Thorax, however, was well acquainted with the stuff: It was his job to mix it. He worked in the processing vats all day, and knew the chemistry of Nectar, how to get it to the perfect composition and consistency. He didn't know everything about it, specifically what some of the chemicals that were mixed into it were.
He had asked his boss about it a few times, mostly to relieve the boredom. Apparently, it was the job of harvesters to go into the societies of the other races and collect raw love, supposedly by impersonating ponies or griffons or whatever. Once collected, they returned it to the hive, where it was congealed and put in the processing vats. Thorax and his co-workers would then mix it and blend it with a number of other nutrients and chemicals until it was in the familiar finished form they served in the mess hall.
Not all the harvesters had to do that, though. Some of them were responsible for the extraction process, or for collecting other materials from the forests that would go into the nectar. Despite all that he had learned from his boss, he still didn't know what 67-Benzodiazepam was, where it was gathered from, or why he had to put it into nectar, but once when they had run out of it, all production had ceased for the duration of the day. Other than that, though, he knew every single chemical and was something of an expert on creating it. Every bite was so much the better for knowing that he had been so crucially involved in it.
Unfortunately, he mused, he'd have to leave that behind. Then again, Infiltrators were key in getting the information for harvesters to collect effectively. He'd just be higher on the food chain.
"Thorax?" the changeling across from him whispered. She was looking at him now, nobody else had heard her speak.
"How did you know my name?" he asked, quietly.
"I'm your contact, of course I know your name."
Thorax thought, then realized that the letter meant that his contact would have three lumps of hay. Clever.
"Now listen up. I've already gone ahead and taken care of your job. Do you need anything from your quarters before we go?"
"Taken care of my job?"
"Yeah. You've been transferred a non-existent desk job in the administrative policy division. We can't have anyone wondering why you're not coming to work anymore."
She continued, "I don't know what you've been told, but we're moving out tonight. So finish your food and let's get going."
"All right, all right," Thorax said. He tried to focus on eating, but the more he focused the worse it was. He was nervous, all of the sudden. In under a day, everything had changed, and his upset stomach didn't want to be disturbed. He merely settled for licking the nectar off the hay, his stomach having no problem at all with devouring that.
"Gross," his contact said, seeing the saliva-coated hay he left on his tray. Thorax grimaced and pushed the tray aside.
"All right, let's go," he said.
"Meet me at loading dock G-17, behind the ventilation pipe. I'll go first, get up and follow me after five minutes."
"Wait, why not go together?"
His contact sighed, hanging her head down. "You really are a newbie, aren't you?"
She left her tray where it was and stood, exiting through the door opposite where Thorax sat. His stomach had settled, some, so he ate a little more of the hay. Keenly aware of the five minute time-limit, he took both her tray and his back up to the server and cleaned them off for her. She smiled at him again.
Of course, it was no kindness on his part. He was studiously trying to not make an impression. He wanted everyone to forget him the moment they saw him, to blend into the background.
"Hey Thorax, thanks for cleaning off the tray," she said. "So, who's your girlfriend?"
He sputtered. "Nobody, Maxilla, that was nobody," he said after a pause.
"Right, sure. See ya later!" Maxilla said, before giving Thorax's trays to the changeling in charge of washing them off.
Thorax marched out of the mess hall, dejected. Of course Maxilla would recognize him, since they had gone to basic training together. But every other changeling? They would forget him instantly, he was sure of it.
Loading Dock G-17 was darkened by the time he had reached it. The dock was a few hundred meters away from all the other rooms in the hive, as it was one of the locations for harvesters to drop off their hauls before returning to the field. More importantly, the loading docks were all far enough from the hive that their tunnels could be sealed in case of a breach. It was also the gateway to the outside world.
Thorax peered through the darkness, trying to locate that ventilation pipe that his contact was going to be behind. After a moment, he realized the pipe was actually just behind him as he had exited the tunnel. Ahead of him was a large open section of flattened grey stone, carved into the shape of a square with several marking made on it. Fortunately his contact hadn't noticed him yet, so he slid along quietly in an attempt to surprise her.
"The hell are you doing?" she asked him as he approached, staying close to the wall.
"Nothing, nothing at all," he said. Smoothly.
"Look, just act normally, okay? Nothing gives you away worse than trying to be all secretive."
She led him over to a metal hatch covering on one side of the loading dock. Exactly how to open it, he wasn't sure, as he'd never needed to before. She pushed on a latch and spun something around that she blocked with her body, then pushed on the hatch. It opened, and a gust of cold air hit Thorax in the face as he saw the night sky beyond it.
It was huge! The sky went up so far, he couldn't even see the top! He had heard of this, and seen pictures, but he'd never actually had occasion to go outside. Still, though it was awe-inspiring, he could not give away his inexperience. He tried to remain stoic, his face flat, his expression betraying nothing.
"You haven't even seen the sky before, eh, rookie? Yeah, happened to me my first time, too," his contact said.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Listen, kid, I know! I know this is your first mission, and while I ain't too happy about it, it's way over my head. So just try to listen to me and maybe you won't get us both killed, yeah?"
"Okay, so, your job is to infiltrate a town called Ponyville, way southwest of here. You'll be getting mission instructions from me every Saturday, but for the first week, you'll just have to get acquainted. Meet the inhabitants, introduce yourself, find a place to live."
"Wait, what about you? What's your name, even?" Thorax asked.
"Spiracle," she said.
"Thorax," he said.
"Yeah, I know."
Spiracle stepped out onto the grass of the world beyond, and Thorax stepped out after her. He had never seen the hive from its outside, and even now, he couldn't. The hatch they had exited through was painted exactly like the sandstone cliff face it was on, if you didn't know it was a hatch you'd never be able to find it. The hive itself was carved into the rock below the ridge the was now far to Thorax's side. In front of him was a small tract of shrubs, much like the hay he had eaten only minutes before, except still alive and not nearly as dry. Far out ahead of him, illuminated by the light of the moon, was a vast expanse of open desert sand and rock.
"Where are we?" Thorax asked.
"This here is Dusty Dries ridge, and that town way over there is Dusty Dries junction," Spiracle said, pointing her hoof off at the distance. Thorax squinted in order to make out the handful of lights close to the horizon on the otherwise darkened plains.
"Now, before we get going, you'll need a disguise. You got anything in mind?"
When Thorax looked over to her to answer, he saw not Spiracle, but an earth pony in her place. She was a dark blue, earthen color, with a pig-tail styled white mane and tail. Her cutie mark was that of a row of flowers being rained on.
"No, I'll think of something."
"Before you do, I'd suggest being an earth pony. Ponyville has a lot of those, you'll stick out less."
Thorax tried to decide on what to look like. He could always change himself later, but once he was seen around the town, he'd be stuck or risk being discovered. What does an unassuming pony look like?
"Eww, try again," Spiracle said. Thorax had unconsciously shifted into the appearance of a black pony with a light red mane.
"Sorry."
This time he concentrated on the appearance of a brown pony with a ruffled blonde mane. Spiracle nodded her head as his transformation completed.
"Good start, but you'll be needing one of these," she said, pointing at the row of flowers on her flank.
"What does that mean?"
"Beats the hell out of me. I picked it because nobody cares about flowers around here, so they leave me alone. If you get asked, you best have a story ready to explain how you got yours, though. Ponies get cutie marks based on their talents, so make it something you know about."
Thorax thought for a moment and made a beaker filled with green fluid appear on his flank.
"Is that like a chemistry thing?" Spiracle asked.
"It's what I know."
"See, that's a good instinct, kid. Keep it simple, use what you know."
Two figures plodded across the darkened flat plain, nary a whisper passing between them. The settlement on the edge of his vision presented Thorax with a new kind of excitement, and a new kind of fear. This was the big leagues, so to speak, and he was already in them. One false step, one false statement, and he'd have to make a mad dash to escape the ponies, and be hounded by them until he was caught and tortured for information. Spiracle was alive, that alone was proof of her skill. No doubt she had made this journey a hundred times, and her first was every bit as perilous as her most recent.
"Now, before you go asking, we ain't got you an official birth certificate or anything yet. I'll try to get you one by next week, but if anypony asks, tell them you lost it," Spiracle whispered as they were approaching the town's outskirts.
Thorax asked, "What's my name?"
"Come up with something, and make it quick."
Thorax thought as he walked. He had heard once that ponies had silly pun names, where the first name and last name would sometimes coincide into a common phrase. Changelings certainly didn't have a silly naming scheme like that, Thorax was living proof. He had no idea what a Thorax was, any nobody else ever paid it any attention.
Chemistry words that came together to make phrases. He stopped himself from wondering anything aloud, consciously, as he would frequently talk to himself when nobody else was around.
"Lab Coat?" he asked.
"Try again," Spiracle said. This time, there was no disdain in her voice. "I've heard of the Coats, they're really rich."
"Bunsen Burner?" Thorax ventured.
"Absolutely not, that's not a pony name at all."
"Hist Amine?" Thorax tried.
Spiracle didn't respond immediately. They were close to the town now, he could start to see the details of the buildings that glowed from within, lit by candlelight. Spiracle murmured the name he had suggested again.
"That's a good one, get used to everypony calling you by that name. Train yourself to respond to it and offer it up when asked."
The town itself, the details now visible from Thorax's proximity, was really little more than about six wooden buildings and a set of train tracks running between them. The buildings were enormous, each about as big as the entire processing vats facility back home, and an audible din was coming from the biggest and brightest. The sign on it read, "Dusty Dries Hotel and Casino".
Spiracle seemed to be aiming herself towards that building, and Thorax followed along more out of fear than anything else. The nervous feeling in his stomach was getting much more powerful, the full breadth of his concentration was going towards suppressing his desire to panic and run. One wrong word, one wrong step.
There was a real racket coming from beyond the glowing doorway, ponies seemed to be shouting from within the building. Spiracle hovered in front of the door before shooting a nasty look at Thorax.
"After you."