//------------------------------// // Finding Passage // Story: Star Crossed Ponies // by MillenniumFalsehood //------------------------------// Chapter 15 “I can't recall too many times in my life where I had felt that my life was in danger to the same degree as it was when I was running from the Galactic Empire and their Stormtroopers. True, fighting Equestria's greatest villains put me in great danger of being killed by some magical blast. And I also was at risk from having the love drained out of me, making me wish I was dead. But that was short term. In retrospect though, I think that it was the near constant state of danger for months on end that makes me count our time trying to escape the Empire and return home as being the worst time of my life.” -Twilight Sparkle, On Extra-Galactic Voyages, p. 627 Thunder rolled in the distance as the planet mirrored the disposition of the group with a downpour of rain. After witnessing the impounding of his starship and realizing that all their food and equipment were onboard, Junas had given a nearby garbage bin a solid kick, uttering a few Corellian curses in the process, and then sauntered back to their camp. Taking shelter under a small tent made of a discarded tarpaulin and some lengths of rusty pipe they found lying in the alley, Junas had used one of the emergency flares in his survival kit to start a garbage can fire to keep them all warm and dry. None of them said a word for some time as they all struggled to cope with how hopeless their situation was: they had no support, no friends except each other, no food, no water and no ship. They all knew they had the option of traveling with a smuggler or gun-runner, but the odds of them making it out without being robbed and shanked were slim. The idea of stealing a ship was brought up by Junas, but Twilight dismissed it, citing the fact that not only would the Imperials be likely to find a stolen ship if the captain reported it missing, but it was unethical, and she would not allow them to stoop to the Empire’s level. “Well we gotta do something! We can’t just sit around while the Empire has our princess!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash, stomping a hoof in protest and then wincing from the resulting pain. “Besides,” she continued, “my side is killing me.” “Yeah, me too,” said Applejack, taking a glance at her own wound. Fluttershy walked over to take a look, but Applejack waved her off. Junas opened his mouth to speak, but was silenced by the sound of a TIE Fighter roaring overhead. Fine time for you to show up, he thought. They all huddled under the tent, using it as camouflage until the dark craft had disappeared over the horizon. When it had left, Junas looked over his shoulder to make sure he didn’t have any of his buddies in the area, then turned back to the ponies. “Okay, he’s gone. Look, we need to get out of here. There’s no telling how long it will be before they find us, and we need to find a ship and get off this planet.” They all nodded in agreement. “Junas is right,” added Twilight. “We’ve got to look for a way off this world if we are to find Princess Luna.” “Twilight,” asked Spike. She looked down at him. “When are we gonna eat?” Rarity looked at him with a high degree of sympathy. Twilight sighed. “I’m sorry, Spike. We can’t eat until we get to a ship of some kind, or else we find some food somewhere along the way.” “Why?” She shook her head. With his usual level-headedness, it was easy to forget sometimes that Spike was just a baby dragon. “Because the Empire is after us, and we might be seen if we hang around a restaurant.” He looked glum, but nodded. “I understand, Twilight.” “Let’s go,” said Junas. They all left the shelter just as a crack of thunder sounded overhead, the cold rain draining the warmth of their fire away as they walked into the darkness. ----- The group exited the sewer system they had to trudge through in order to get around the Stormtrooper patrols. Thankful that her cloak had kept a majority of the awful fluids contained in the sewer away from her fur, Twilight looked up at Junas. “Junas, do you have any idea why the sewer is big enough for ponies, much less people? The ones on Equi are usually too small for even a rat to get through.” “It’s probably a hold-over from the Sith War. Many cities erected around that time used their sewers as secret passages in order to get around the city without being seen by the Sith.” Twilight smiled at the ingenuity. Even with a war going on around her and general hopelessness weighing on her shoulders, she still had an appreciation for cleverness and intelligence. “So why are we here?” asked Applejack. “That.” Junas pointed at a small building on the outskirts of the city. It had a flickering hologram with a word in bluish-green alien text none of them could read, but below that was a glowing tankard filled with some sort of bubbly substance. Twilight blinked. “A bar?” “Yep.” “Sweet!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash. She glanced at Applejack, and they both shot over to the bar as fast as their legs could carry them. Junas and Twilight smiled and then motioned for the rest of the group to follow them. ----- They met Dash and A.J. at the door to the tavern, then looked around inside. It was not up to the same standards as the rest of the city, but they all knew this meant that the type of people who wouldn’t be on good terms with the Empire would hang out in a place like this, and what they observed confirmed it. Sitting in the booths and standing by the bar were seedy individuals, and few of them were without a firearm of some kind. A bar with a lit cabinet full of drinks was on the back end of the building, and the low lighting, smoke and dim, flickering holograms along the wall completed the image. Twilight was eager to get out of this establishment, but she knew they were there on a mission. Junas however held out his hand. “You guys find a booth. I’ll ask around and see if I can find someone to take us to Bestine.” Twilight gratefully nodded, and the seven ponies and baby dragon all headed to a booth near the back of the bar. Twilight was relieved that the cloak around Celestia managed to hide her flowing mane. While awe-inspiring to behold, it would draw attention in a place like this, though there was little they could do to hide its ethereal glow. They all kept relatively quiet. None of them wanted to draw attention to themselves, and even talking amongst themselves might cause a few glances to be sent their way. Well, almost none of them. Rainbow couldn’t stop tapping her hoof on the table. Applejack, who was sitting next to her, took notice. “Rainbow, can ya quit tappin’ yer hoof?” she whispered harshly. The cerulean pegasus scowled. “But I’m so bored!” “Ah don’t care, you’re gonna draw attention to us. Besides, it’s getting on mah nerves!” Rainbow shot her an angry glance. “Well buck your nerves! If I don’t get up and do something I’m gonna explode!” “Girls,” said Celestia with a quiet but authoritative voice. “Please stop. It serves us no good to bicker like this.” The two ponies looked at their ruler with a mixed look of surprised and shame, then Dash set her hoof back on the seat. Applejack looked at her apologetically. “Ah’m sorry, Rainbow. Ah shouldn’ta gotten on ta ya.” “No problem, A.J.” Twilight smiled. She was so grateful for friends like these who could get past their own pride and forgive each other. She had seen many relationships which were rocky due to ponies who were seemingly incapable of uttering a simple apology. Her smile however was tempered by the uncertainty about their future. Feelings of despair were starting to creep back into her mind now that things were relatively calm, and she was struggling to hold them back. Her teacher’s words of wisdom were well understood, yet the lavender unicorn was still having trouble keeping her mind on the prize. Thoughts of her princess of the night as well as the fact that they were now stranded on an alien world were swirling in her head, and as much as she knew she had to keep a level head, she was far too intelligent to be able to ignore the consequences of their circumstances. By now Equestria was certainly gone. She was aware of how long the atmosphere and natural magnetic shield of the planet could last under the intense barrage from the sun, especially with the planet no longer rotating and replenishing the magnetic field, and it was certainly less than the two weeks that they had been on the run from the Empire. She wasn’t very worried about that, though it pained her to think how ponies would have suffered before their inevitable deaths. She had been working on adding a time element to the teleportation spell that had delivered them here in the first place, and it wouldn’t be long before the formula was complete. What was truly occupying her mind was the knowledge that Luna was certainly being interrogated by her Imperial captors. Twilight was not certain how well the monarch might be able to handle that. Physical torture could be ignored if you have the magical ability to banish pain. Mental torment on the other hand was something no magical incantation could ward off. Princess Luna was strong, but Twilight knew that strength had a limit, no matter who you were. If the Emperor could get to her, pry open her mind and turn it inside out, they may be dealing with more than a simple rescue mission. This frightened Twilight. The idea that someone she knew was turned against her was nothing new. Discord had attempted successfully to turn her own friends against her, but she had been able to use a memory spell on them. She would have no such luck with Luna. The navy blue alicorn would be able to shield herself against such manipulations with her magic, and if she were now their enemy she would most likely hit them all with deadly magical beams, similar to the ones that Princess Celestia had used to blast Stormtroopers during their first escape. Moreover, if they were unable to turn her back to good, then their expedition was doomed. Celestia seemed to know just what Twilight was thinking. “My student,” she said. Twilight looked up at her with a worried expression. Celestia smiled down at her with a look that calmed Twilight’s anxiety. “Do not worry about my sister. She may be my younger sibling, but she is powerful and clever, and the Imperials will certainly fail at any attempt to control her.” As she finished speaking, Junas walked up to the table. “I think I found some transportation.” They all looked at him anxiously as he jerked his thumb toward the back of the room. “There’s a guy at the bar who told me that a pirate who frequents this establishment operates near the Inner Rim. He doesn’t often hit Bestine, but he could be persuaded to head that way.” Celestia raised an eyebrow. “In what way might he be persuaded?” Junas shrugged. “He loves novelties. If you and Twilight could give him a good magic show, he would probably be willing to drop us off.” Twilight fought the urge to throw up. Ever since Trixie had come to town the term ‘magic show’ had left a sour taste in her mouth, and the idea of parading her magic powers around for the entertainment of anyone, much less a pirate, was enough to cause her to give Junas a dirty look. “You want us to just show off our powers to some stranger?” Celestia held up a hoof. “Do not worry, my student. The price of getting help in this case is trivial compared to the stakes.” The unicorn looked surprised, but relented. “Of course. I’m sorry, I just forgot our circumstances for a second.” Her teacher nodded in understanding, then turned back to Junas. “When do we meet this pirate?” “Right now. He’s over there, at the end of the bar.” ----- Sitting on a stool next to the bar was a humanoid alien seemingly drowning himself in alcohol, if the number of empty goblets in front of him was any indication. Yet he didn’t seem to exhibit the normal signs of being drunk, something Twilight attributed to his alien physiology. The man wore a long coat, under which was strapped a blaster pistol. He had a dark gray complexion closely resembling rough hewn stone, with dreadlocks tied up in the back, and his head was topped off with what Twilight assumed was some sort of turtle shell. Fluttershy noticed this, and out of the corner of her eye Twilight saw the yellow pegasus look at it in horror. Slamming down the rest of his drink, he wiped his mouth, then turned and looked right at Celestia. “So you are the ones that the Empire hunts, yes?” Celestia nodded. “I’m not surprised. I’ve been along the length and breadth of this galaxy, dealt with the enslavement of many species, and I’ve never come across or even heard of creatures such as yourselves. You would be quite valuable, being as how there are only seven of you.” The ponies recoiled at the term ‘enslavement.’ Twilight stepped out with a look on her face that might have fused durasteel. “You mean you sold pon-, er, people into slavery?” He waved his arms at them in alarm. “Oh no, no, no! Well, not anymore.” He laughed nervously. “These days I mostly just go about the galaxy, trying to make a living on a day-to-day basis, trying to take care of my men . . .” He indicated to the bartender droid that he wanted another round, which it promptly deposited in front of him. “At least the ones who stuck around after the Empire began really cracking down on my trade.” He took a bitter swallow of the drink in his hand. Celestia raised an eyebrow. “Your trade is illegal, is it not?” “Eh, I prefer the term ‘entrepreneurial’.” “Regardless of how you define you occupation, you realize that we are in dire straits. We need transportation. It is this reason alone that we would even consider casting our lot in with the likes of you.” He rolled his eyes. “My dear, I do not care what you think of me or my trade. As long as the credits are good, that is.” He drank what remained of the brew in his goblet, then swaggered casually toward the door. “Pay the droid,” he said over his shoulder. Junas shook his head, then took the credit chit that Pinkie Pie’s winnings were holographically inscribed on and inserted it into the bartender droid’s credit slot. Twilight watched the arrogant alien walk out the door, a quizzical expression on her face. “Is he really the best you could come up with?” “He’s been in the business for decades. If anyone can get out from under the Empire’s radar, it’s him.” “Does he have a name?” “Yeah. Hondo Ohnaka.” ----- “Are you sure he said to meet him here?” Twilight was looking all around the place where Hondo had scheduled to meet and feeling less and less happy about their decision to travel with this pirate. What stood before them was a barren, greasy landing pad and a bunch of service droids and machines for pumping fuel and coolant, all wet with the recent downpour that hadn’t managed to clear out the gray overcast sky. The smell of ozone and cleaning fluids permeated the air, making her nostalgic for the pure atmosphere of Equestria, and she was sure they could be seen through the open roof of the docking bay if any Imperial patrols happened to pass by. Her friends apparently had the same idea. Rainbow and Applejack were watching the sky nervously; Rarity, Fluttershy and Spike were sitting together in a huddle; and Celestia took a position between the two groups as though she might shelter them with her magic. Junas looked down at her as she asked. “I’m sure,” he said. “We’re paying him quite a bit for the pleasure of his company, so he’s not going to double-cross us.” Twilight couldn’t be so sure. In Equestria, she could usually count on ponies to be pretty up-front about their intentions, whether or not they were your friends. In this galaxy however, she had to be very careful about who she chose to trust. Humans and other aliens were apparently willing to stoop to any level to gain the upper hand if they were so inclined, and only the Changelings of her world were anything like that. This pirate however was still the only way off this world. At least, the only way they had at the moment. So despite her misgivings, the only thing she did was look back at Junas with a concerned expression. All of the sudden a door on the other side of the docking bay opened up and out strode Hondo, a strange, lizard-like monkey sitting on his shoulder. Holding up his arms in the air in a grand gesture, the pirate jovially shouted, “Welcome to my little piece of this world! Please feel free to make use of the facilities and enjoy yourselves!” Junas scowled. “What are you talking about, Hondo? This is a public docking port.” The mangy pirate bellowed a laugh. “Well, if you want to believe that, you may. But I’ve had some dealings with the owner of this spaceport, and he’s made sure that I never have to worry about Imperial scum screwing with my ships.” Junas was not impressed. “So if this is your docking port, where’s your ship?” he asked, crossing his arms skeptically. “Oh, it’ll be here, don’t you worry about that.” Hondo’s voice grew a defensive edge. “You think I would keep a ship parked here twenty-six hours a day?” Junas rolled his eyes, and Twilight couldn’t blame him. This pirate either had a tenuous grasp on reality, or he had some sort of hold over the spaceport’s administrator, most likely by bribery or other such unsightly methods of control. Neither option appealed to Twilight, though she strongly hoped that the latter was true. Hondo scanned the skies, apparently looking for his ship. Twilight watched him as he seemed to grow concerned, then her apprehension grew as he checked the device on his left wrist and frowned at it. Suddenly a beep was heard from his belt. He grabbed the tiny device on his hip and held it to his mouth. “Yes, what is it?” A few seconds passed by. “What are you talking about? You should have been here—” He listened to the device. “Oh, you’ve got to be—” He never got a chance to finish the sentence. Blaster fire filled the docking port as Stormtroopers began piling into the bay, guns blazing and causing the ponies to scream and scatter. Hondo produced a blaster of his own and began firing back, and Celestia and Twilight joined him. Junas however desperately wished he still had his gun. Hondo ducked behind a nearby packing crate, popping up every once in a while to pop off a few shots at the Stormtroopers, then turned and smirked at the ponies. “Well, it would appear they want you guys pretty badly, eh?” Twilight looked at the pirate in astonishment at the grin playing on his face, dreading the idea that maybe he was nuts. He began backing away slowly, never taking his eyes off the Imperials. She watched as Hondo got near the wall and began feeling around. As soon as his hand reached a small metal stud on the wall he pressed it, and suddenly a small piece of machinery on the wall retracted with a confirmatory beep and revealed a small corridor. He waved them over with his blaster. “Come on!” They all dodged blaster fire as they headed toward the small doorway, and it was only by Celestia projecting a powerful shield around them that they were able to escape the Stormtroopers. ----- As they ran through the street and dodged blaster bolts, Twilight realized that she had been premature to assume that ducking into that corridor would provide a way of escape from the Empire. A near miss tore a chunk out of a nearby building, raining pieces of wood and concrete down on the ponies. “We need to split up!” shouted Twilight. “We’re too big of a group to move through the crowd!” “I agree!” yelled Celestia. Twilight turned her attention to the pirate at her flank. “Hondo!” “I’m busy, little one!” He punctuated his sentence with a few shots from his blaster. “Will your ship come back to the docking bay?” “They were chased away by TIE Interceptors. But they will be back when they dispatch those bastards. There’s a large duracrete landing pad on the outskirts of the east side, right next to a communications tower. We can meet them there.” They all nodded, then Twilight broke to the right, which was all the signal the group needed that it was time to split up. ----- Applejack headed into a small department store, running at full tilt past the displays of jewelry and other niceties and thinking how Rarity would be sorely tempted to stop and gander at them. Lucky for her, she had no such desires for pretty things. She dodged and wove through the aliens populating the store and nearly knocked over a woman carrying a stack of packages. She was immensely grateful that the Stormtroopers were hesitant to fire on her in such a packed location, but she knew she would run out of crowd eventually and have to get back out in the open. The orange cowpony hopped over a small floor-cleaning droid and banked around a set of clothes hangers, then bolted down a long stretch of path in the floor. She ran past alien after alien, weaving around them in order to confuse the Stormtroopers; lucky for her the store was reasonably busy. Suddenly a group of Stormtroopers appeared in the crowds before her. She didn’t have time to think. Quickly she hopped up and in one swift motion used a Stormtrooper’s shoulders as a springboard, leaping through the air and landing on the other side of the group of Imperials. Good thing Ah practiced every day for that National Equestrian Rodeo Championship in Canterlot. As soon as her hooves made contact with the tiled floor she galloped as fast as her legs would carry her in the direction of the store’s exit. ----- Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash raced through the streets, crimson energy bolts whizzing past their heads, and as usual Pinkie struggled to take the situation seriously and hopped along the road. Rainbow glanced at her and wondered how she hadn’t been hit yet, then chalked it up to Pinkie Sense. They dodged a particularly close volley of energy blasts, then rounded a corner. As soon as they did they realized their mistake. Ahead of them was nothing but brick wall. They were still a few seconds ahead of the troopers, however. As soon as they were around the corner Rainbow whipped around and waited for the troopers to round the bend. Pinkie Pie saw what she was doing and immediately turned around as well. When the first pair of Stormtroopers appeared in the alley both ponies bucked as hard as they could, sending the men flying into the troops behind them, armor clattering and guns flying out of their hands. As the men landed hard on the pavement, Rainbow let out a yelp, the effort of kicking exacerbating the now constant pain in her side. As soon as the troopers fell, Rainbow and Pinkie Pie ran as fast as they could to an ally on the other side of the street, grateful for the moment that it was without obstruction. ----- Red-hot blasts of laser energy were gouging holes in nearby buildings as Junas and Celestia scrambled through a landspeeder parking lot, with Spike clinging to the alicorn’s back for dear life. The trio leaped over duracrete barriers and dodged parked vehicles as they struggled to avoid being blasted apart by the deadly energy beams flying past their heads. “You’d think they would at least check our ID,” Junas muttered under his breath. The three fugitives raced past a long line of parked speeders and down a street lined with industrial buildings as they maintained a lead on the large group of Stormtroopers hot on their tail and searched for some way to evade their pursuers. Suddenly an opportunity presented itself in the form of a low duracrete tunnel through the side of a wall. “This way!” shouted Celestia. Junas looked in the direction she was heading and sprinted alongside the galloping alicorn, reaching the tunnel just as a blaster bolt would have drilled a hole through his head. As they cleared the threshold, they could hear the clatter of armor and pounding of boots on pavement. Celestia’s breath was hot on his neck as they both whipped around to face their attackers. Out of the corner of his eye Junas noticed a pale yellow glow as the princess said calmly, “Get down.” Junas barely had time to duck before the Stormtroopers poured into the tunnel, only to be met by a golden wave of pure, magical energy. As the armored men were blasted against the building on the other side of the street, the three comrades shot out of the tunnel, simultaneously relieved to have dispatched their pursuers and nervous that others might be called in to join the chase. ----- Riding on the back of a passing speeder truck, Twilight, Rarity and Fluttershy flattened their bodies as much as possible against the tarpaulin covering the load, hoping that the Imperials hadn’t noticed where they had disappeared to. The wind whipped their manes and tails as the truck moved quickly through the street, the exhaust from the front-mounted jet engines blowing hot against their skin. Rarity coughed disgustedly at the offending emissions. “I hope this vehicle gets where it’s going soon. This smoke is going to damage my mane!” Twilight rolled her eyes as her friend struggled in vain to shield her mane from the exhaust. Fluttershy for her part was handling the situation fairly well, though Twilight suspected it was because the timid pony was too scared to do much more than huddle with her friends. Suddenly the truck slowed to a halt. The three ponies looked at each other in horror as they heard an all-too-familiar clattering of armor and a filtered voice demanding that the driver of the truck exit the vehicle so that it may be searched. Tension in their chests grew as the Stormtrooper ordered his subordinate to search the bed of the truck. Fluttershy let out a tiny squeak, prompting Rarity to hold her hoof over the pegasus’ mouth. Frantically Twilight tried to think of a spell to use against the Imperials. She thought about an invisibility spell, but it would take too much time to prepare. Suddenly, she remembered one that would alter their appearance into anything the caster thought of. When the trooper looked into the bed, all he saw was a pile of piping and some coils of wire. ----- Hondo checked his wrist chrono, looked up in the direction that the ponies were most likely to come from, and then began pacing again in front of the boarding ramp of his starship, the grey sky casting an uncertain atmosphere on the whole situtation. He had just patched up his ship from a run-in with CorSec, and it would be all-too-easy for the Empire to set up an EWHB heavy repeater and blast his ship to pieces as it sat on the landing pad. There was good money to be had here, though. He’d wait a few more minutes yet before he took off. Besides, they’d promised him a genuine magic show, and outside the Jedi he had tangled with during the Clone Wars there were few people around anymore that were even capable of actual magic. Just as he’d started a third circuit, he heard the pounding of hooves on pavement and looked up to see Junas and Celestia running and galloping toward him, with Spike hanging on to a hank of the alicorn’s mane. He waved at them to make sure they knew it was him. The human scout stopped and began breathing heavily while Celestia calmly stood next to him. The baby dragon tried to hold on, failed, then fell to the pavement in a heap. Junas bent down to stand him up as a speeder truck drove by and a trio of ponies hopped out of the cargo bed, then Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie burst from between two buildings, and finally Applejack ran out of an alley behind a large collection of mechanical pumps and tanks of fuel. The relief they felt was punctuated by the sight of a group of Stormtroopers shooting out from where Pinkie and Rainbow had popped out. “There they are! Stop ‘em!” Celestia saw them, then stood in front of Hondo and spread her magnificent wings and projected a magical barrier between her ponies and the men who sought their deaths. They fired several shots into it, which caused Celestia to wince, but she held firm. Hondo however was rather put off by the creature’s wing blocking his line of sight and brusquely shoved it out of the way. “Do you mind, Princess? I would very much like to get a clear shot at those boys in white.” She eyed him dangerously. “I would rather you didn’t endanger my ponies’ lives with a stray bolt from your weapon.” He rolled his eyes, then headed up the ramp. “I’ll be in the cockpit getting the engines primed.” Junas looked after the mangy pirate with a look of disdain, an expression which was matched by Spike. “If he wasn’t our ride off this world, I’d have lit his shirt on fire.” “I would have held him for you, Spike,” said Junas with a twinge of regret, “But like you said, he’s our ride.” Spike scoffed as the ponies finally made it to the ramp and shot up into the starship. As the group headed into the bowels of the ship, Applejack stopped and nodded toward Celestia. “Thank ya kindly, Princess.” “You’re welcome, my little pony. But make haste into the ship so we might escape those who wish us harm.” Applejack bowed slightly, then ran up the ramp, followed by Junas, who waved Spike toward him. “C’mon, little guy! We gotta get the hell off this planet.” Spike ran after him, leaving Celestia at the bottom of the ramp. When she heard the engines ignite, she lowered the barrier and began backing up the ramp, which retracted beneath her. As the ship lifted off, the Stormtroopers let loose with all their might, but the shields blocked most of the deadly energy as the ship’s primary drives lit, igniting oil and grease as it flew up and away into the charcoal atmosphere to escape into the inviting darkness of space.