Awakening

by solocitizen

18th of Harvest Season, 10,051 AC

The last day Lumina saw her mother was the day the pegasus tribe set fire to the sky. Lumina and her father had just stepped off the tram at the Arion City Spaceport when trails of fire arced through the sky. On any other day, they might have fooled her for shooting stars over the city, but that day she knew better; they were ships falling from orbit. She carried her suitcase in her mouth and followed her father.

“Dad.” Lumina stopped for second to take in the sight above, and the crowd of anxious ponies behind her pushed past. She set her suitcase down to talk properly. “Are those Pegasus Empire dropships?”

Her father stepped around behind her and pushed her until she got moving again.

“No,” he said above the roar of the crowd. “That’s our defense fleet burning up in the atmosphere. They didn’t stand a chance. Come on, the invasion force won’t be far behind.”

They continued until they reached the spaceport gate. Lumina stopped and scanned the crowd for a familiar face. Her father didn’t like that, and prodded her with his horn to get her moving again.

“She’s not here,” her father said. “We can’t wait for her! I give the pegasi thirty minutes before they make planet fall. We have to find a shuttle and get out of here. Now!”

“She said she’d be here.” Lumina shifted on her hooves. “We can spare a minute, then we’ll go.”

From out of that crowd of strangers and refugees emerged a pink unicorn with a smile as wide as her heart. She waved at Lumina, pushed her way through the crowd, and when she finally reached her daughter, she threw her hooves around her.

“Mom, we were worried you weren’t going to make it,” Lumina said.

“And let you two go off on some big adventure without me?” Her mother pulled herself away and put a hoof on her shoulder. “Never.”

Lumina’s father cleared his throat.

“It’s good to see you again, Lightning Specter,” said Lumina’s mother, and she meant it.

“And you as well,” he said. “Wherever we end up, we’re going to get there together.”

Inside the spaceport, hordes of earth ponies, zebras, unicorns, and pegasi huddled in tents and around shuttlecrafts. The spaceport itself was nothing more than a grey tarmac with shuttles parked in little concrete craters. A lucky few gathered around the shuttles waiting to depart, while others pushed and yelled against fences trying to break through to the ships. A handful of the Arion Defense Force was all that kept the crowd from devolving into a mob. The harsh scent of bodily waste and sweat stained the air.

One at a time, Lumina and her family approach the shuttles, and one after the other they were turned away. “Last shuttle up to the FTL ship,” every pilot told them, “and we don’t have room for any more.”

“We’ll have to flee to the country,” said Lumina’s father at one point. “If we can’t find transport off-world, we’ll have to run and hide.”

They had given up hope of finding transport off world when they stumbled upon a shuttle unlike any of the others. It wasn’t of earth pony, pegasi, or unicorn design, but a combination of all three. Nopony would call it a hybrid -- that was too generous a term. ‘Patchwork’ and ‘derelict’ fit it much better. Someone creative put together a shuttle out of an earth pony hull, pegasi engines, and an oversized dark matter reactor model that was banned on most worlds.

Lumina and her family stopped near the edge of a crowd gathering around the ship.

The shuttle belonged to a griffon with enough presence to stop every conversation at a party as he strolled in. His gestures were as grand and as sweeping as his personality. The griffon wore a denim Interstellar Express flight jacket. He sauntered out in front of his shuttle, like a sales pony about to peddle his wares, and put a claw in his beak and whistled.

“Fillies and gentlecolts, please settle down.” Quiet rolled through the crowd and the griffon continued. “We all know what’s going on in the skies over head, so I’ll be quick. The pegasi are closing in and, according to Interstellar Express policy, we have about forty minutes before all FTL ships break orbit. They aren’t going to send down any more shuttles. There’s only one boat with shuttles still planet side, and that’s mine: the great and powerful I.E.C. Ursa Minor.”

The ponies gathered around the shuttle kicked and fought to break down the fence between them and the griffon.

“Wow, hold your horses.” He whistled again and the crowd backed down. “I can’t have a bunch of trigger happy ponies all over my ship. There just isn’t enough room, and frankly it’s a little too stressful for my AI companion and me to deal with. So if you even think of trying to overrun my little shuttlecraft, I’ll take off and leave you all sucking on my engine fumes.”

At that, the griffon started pointing at ponies near the front. “You, you’re in,” he said to each. As he picked them, the ponies organized themselves near the gate, and one at a time the soldiers ushered them through.

“We’re not going to get on that ship,” said Lumina’s father. “He’s only taking those near the fence. If we want to get off world we’ll need to get close enough for him to see our faces.”

Lumina’s father pushed and shoved his way through the crowd. She followed, and her mother stayed less than a tail-length behind her. They cut through an earth pony family; two parents and three foals just old enough to walk. When they reached the fence Lumina’s father threw himself against the metal and thrashed his hooves until the chain links rattled.

“Hey, over here!” Lumina’s father banged against the fence as the griffon walked by, but he waved him off without even looking in his direction. “Can you take three more? We need to get off world. Anywhere but here.”

“You and everyone and their grandmother,” said the griffon. “I don’t have the spare weight for any more. Sorry, I can’t take you.”

Lumina and her mother joined her father at the fence.

The griffon stood up on his box, whistled, and addressed the crowd one last time.

“Listen up,” he said. “My AI friend overestimated how many I could fit aboard my tiny craft. I told her to run the numbers twice, but what can I say, if machines could really think where would we be? I’m out of room, so scram. And don’t even think of trying to swarm over this fence or I’ll turn on the engines they explicitly told me not to engage in atmosphere. The pegasi will secure the spaceport first thing, so if you leave now, you stand a good chance of missing their mobile infantry and their fancy powered armor. Believe me, they do not play nice and they will use excessive force.”

The griffon stepped down from his box and the crowded devolved into screaming and pleading. The father of the earth pony family shouted obscenities at him with a raised hoof. The griffon adjusted his jacket and slicked back the plumage atop his head.

“Please, I’m a scientist!” Lumina’s father rattled the chain link fence as the griffon retreated toward his shuttle. “If the pegasi capture me, they will force engineering secrets out of me any way they can. I dare not imagine the things they will do to my family in order to get to me. You have to help us!”

Nothing her father said changed the griffon’s mind, he just walked on by. He gave Lumina’s father no more than a sideways glance as he popped open the shuttle’s cockpit, but then he spotted Lumina. They made eye contact briefly and the color drained from his face.

The griffon broke away and shook himself out.

“I, I think I’m gonna regret this,” the griffon said. “Alright, fine, I think I can make room for two more. Yeah, two more but that’s it. Anymore and we’re too heavy to break atmosphere.”

“But there are three of us,” said Lumina.

“I’m sorry, but I’m pushing it at two.” The griffon curled his tail around and fiddled with it. “Sorry, I really am. I know she’s really pretty to look at, but my shuttle is a hunk of trash. She can’t handle much weight.”

Lumina’s mother pulled her away from the fence, put her hooves on her shoulders, and made her look her right in the eye.

“Listen to me, I can’t come with you,” her mother said.

“What?” Lumina’s eyes widened and she shook her head. “But you have to, we’re not leaving you behind. We’ll find another way.”

“I’m not letting my only daughter stay behind for what happens next.” Her mother broke into tears and her voice trembled. “You heard your father. We can’t let him get captured. You have to go on without me.”

“We’ll leave our luggage behind,” said Lumina’s father. “We’ll get the pilot to lighten up his ship. I can find a way to get you aboard, watch me. You’re coming with us.”

“We both know what’s in those saddle bags of yours, Lightning.” Lumina’s mother put her front hooves back on the ground and addressed the father of her daughter. “We can’t let them get their hooves on you, or what you’re carrying in there. You have to go. I’ll be fine.”

Lumina buried her face in her mother’s mane. She fought back tears, and they never came. Part of her didn’t believe what has happening, while another part resorted to walling off the emotion. The mare reached a hoof around her daughter and held her close.

“I’m going to see you again, and I don’t care how long it takes,” said Lumina. "I'll come back for you."

“I love you more than anything else.” Her mother backed away. “But I don’t want my one and only daughter obsessing over something she doesn’t have any control over. Make a life for yourself out there. Now go. You have to get out of here while you still can.”

In a hyper-real daze, Lumina’s father dragged her away from her mother by the tail. Fireballs cut through the cloud cover and descend toward the city. That wasn’t debris, the angle and speed was completely different. Her father nudged her toward the gate, and the guards let them through.

The griffon ushered her inside the shuttle, but her father stopped to say something to her mother. She never heard what he said, and she never asked. Her mother let out a little laugh, and waved him off with tears in her eyes.

Not a minute after Lumina’s father stepped on board, the engines fired and the craft peeled away into the sky roaring. Her mother shrank and shrank on the receding tarmac. She kept her eyes on the window until her mother vanished in the concrete, then she fell to floor and sniffled. The inside of the shuttlecraft smelled like somepony threw up in the corner, but she didn’t care about anything around her. Lumina’s father put a hoof on her shoulders to comfort her, but she shrugged it off.

After a few minutes, the roar of the engines faded into silence, and when Lumina looked out the window again, all she saw was darkness, and a plane of white and blue stretching out below her. They said the sky was full of ships, but Lumina didn’t even see the FTL ship as the shuttle pulled up alongside it and docked.

A hatch at the far end of the shuttle hissed open to let the crowd of refugees and their griffon pilot step through to the ship. Any other hour of any other day, the very idea of trotting onto a gleaming white interstellar spaceship would have filled Lumina with awe. After today, she kept her eyes focused on the floor and just followed the crowd to a cargo hold. Their new home for the next few weeks.

Over two thousand ponies shared five cargo holds, each roughly the size of the gymnasium at Lumina’s school. Ten thousand more filled the ships clinging to the Ursa Minor’s hull, but Lumina never heard nor saw any of them. Ponies from every social class and every tribe were huddled around cots spread throughout the chamber. There was a single food synthesizer tucked into a corner to serve everypony there and ponies occupying the hold next to them. A few of the larger families claimed the empty cargo containers in the corner and converted them into temporary houses. Everypony else lived in tents or on cots out in the open. Neither Lumina nor her father thought to pack a tent, so they claimed two cots beside each other in the open. At least no pony had peed or puked in it yet, but with a couple hundred ponies sharing such a small space, it wouldn’t be long before it reeked.

Near their territory, a blue unicorn with a worried expression unfitting of her bright blue coat and cyan mane questioned an earth pony couple. She had strapped a signboard to her with the picture of a grinning earth pony standing in front of the Fountains of Arion. A caption beneath it read: “Have you seen this stallion?”

“He said he would be on the last shuttle up,” she said. “He has to be here.”

Lumina watched the unicorn until she gave up, and trotted over to a group of zebras to try again.

For a long time, neither Lumina nor her father spoke, and after a while she tried meditating, but her mind was too restless and distressed to focus. Her mind wandered to her mother, and then to the pilot. What did he see in Lumina that caused him to reconsider? She withdrew the book from her suitcase, laid down on her cot, and started reading the story of The Mysterious Mare-do-well.

“I can’t believe you brought that.” Her father pointed at her open book.

“It’s here now and I’m not getting rid of it.” Lumina lifted a hoof out from under her and turned the page.

“No, I wasn’t going to--” Lumina’s father sighed. “Never mind. Would you mind if I take a look too?”

Lumina nodded, and her father trotted over to her cot and peeked over her shoulder.

Regal and slender illustrations accompanied each page of text; the artist took great care in capturing the elegance of the style used to craft the Canterlot stained glass works of old. On the page, a unicorn in a purple costume levitated rocks and concrete into the air, and commanded them to take on new shapes and reconstruct a broken dam.

“I have a question,” said Lumina’s father. “How is it that one unicorn can lift all that into the air? And cast a completely different spell to rebuild that thing at the same time? That sounds impossibly difficult, even for a unicorn mage.”

“According to the mythology, the size and weight of the object doesn’t really matter.” Lumina turned the page. “Their magical strength depends on their connection to the magical world, their knowledge, and their own belief in themselves. In other words, with enough understanding and conviction, a unicorn can move a mountain just as easily as a pebble. At least in the stories.”

“Huh, sounds far-fetched even for fantasy.”

“Well, it’s just that, a fantasy. None of it ever happened. The rules of magic can be whatever the author wants.”

“It still sounds absurd to me.” Lumina’s father pointed at the picture of the Mysterious Mare-Do-Well. “What’s stopping her from robbing a bank or burning the town down?”

“I think you’re missing the point.” Lumina pushed the cover closed with her horn and climbed out of her cot. “It doesn’t work like that. Ponies with a strong magical connection are enlightened, so they’re above that kind of thing.”

“Here, take a look if you want.” Lumina shoved the book into her father’s hooves. “I’m done here for right now.”

Lumina didn’t say more. She cantered toward the door, and her father didn’t stop her. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of her father just as she stepped out of the cargo bay. She wasn’t sure, but it looked like he was reading her book.

More refugees congregated in the corridors, but as she put some distance between her and the cargo bays, the crowds thinned until she was alone with the white walls and low hum of the starship. The white unicorn crossed the threshold into an empty room lit from every angle by LEDs. An alarm flared, yellow light replaced the white. Lumina covered her ears to save them from the siren.

“I’m sorry, whatever I did, I didn’t mean to do it!” Lumina lied down on her stomach, buried her face in the floor, and pressed her hooves into her ears. “Please just let me go, I need to get back to my father.”

The siren died, and the lights returned to their sterile white.

“You are not Gerard,” said a female voice. From where exactly the voice was coming from, Lumina didn’t know. She peeked over her shoulder, but found no pony. It voice didn’t sound like it belonged to any equine either, it was too synthetic.

“No, my name’s Lumina.” She got back on her hooves. “Who am I talking to, exactly?”

“I am GILDA,” the voice said. “I am the ship. You are trespassing inside me. Why have you strayed outside the designated refugee area?”

“I don’t know, I was just wandering around a bit, and I wanted to find your pilot. You know, the griffon in the flight jacket?”

“His name is Gerard, and he is currently engaged in activities considered illegal on seventy worlds and frowned upon by our employer. He does not wish to be disturbed.”

“Well, then, in that case, I’ll just be going,” said Lumina. “I’ll turn around, head back to the cargo hold, and we can forget this happened.”

“I never said you were not permitted to see him.” The inflection in GILDA’s voice never changed, not even a little, and that creeped Lumina out. “On the contrary, I believe now is the best time for you to visit Gerard. Take the hyperlift at the end of this room to the bridge.”

A set of doors opened up further down the room.

“I really think I should get back,” said Lumina. “My dad is probably really worried about where I ran off to by now, but maybe some other time?”

“I have sealed the doors behind you.”

“Uh, alright, I’ll go say 'hi' to your pilot then. That sounds like the best thing to do.”

Lumina boarded the hyperlift, but before she even approached the control console, the doors clamped down behind her, and the capsule took off. She rode on a low vibration to a long hallway lit by orange holograms. Something was burning up there, it smelled like a cross between a skunk and the health food store next to her mother’s house. A figure kicked back in a command chair with his back to the door as he breathed out smoke, and flipped through the pages of his paperback book without even glancing at the star field outside his window. Music sang out of speakers all around the bridge:

The figure’s tail danced to the beat.

“Gerard, you have a visitor,” said GILDA.

The head of an eagle poked out from behind the command chair, then popped back out of sight.

“Crap.” The figure shuffled around behind his chair and mashed holographic symbols together. “Hold on, I’ll be right there.” The music cut out and air vents around the bridge sucked the smoke out of the room and replaced it with clean, breathable air. The figure raised an eye-dropper above his head and squeezed until it produced a couple of drops.

The chair spun around, and there sat the griffon that saved Lumina and her father. His eyes were much redder than she remembered.

“Hey, what’s good?” He smiled through his beak. “The ship’s AI put you up to this, didn’t she?”

“Sort of, I didn’t really have much choice. I wanted to say thank you. You took a risk bringing my dad and me on your shuttle, but you brought us along anyway, and, well, thank you. If you didn’t take that risk, I don’t know where I’d be right now.”

The griffon’s eyes widened and the plumage on his head stood up.

“You’re that unicorn from before,” he said. “Yes! I remember you. No problem. I have to apologize for my good-for-nothing AI, we pass the time by playing pranks on each other.” The griffon leaned forward in his chair, glanced left and right, and covered one side of his beak while only half-whispering to Lumina: “She wasn’t socialized very well, none of the other computers like to play with her at recess. I think she also rode the short bus to school, if you know what I mean.

“Anyway, I’m just glad we got off Arion in time.” Gerard scooted back in his chair. “And it looks like we’re going to have enough speed to make our first FTL jump to New Canterlot before the pegasus blockade sets up. The Pegasus Empire is damn ruthless, and I can say that from first-claw experience.”

“New Canterlot?” Lumina stepped forward and glanced at the holograms. “Is that where we’re headed?”

“You didn’t know that? You boarded a superluminal starship without even checking the destination first? That’s messed up.”

“We didn’t even pay for our tickets. Your shuttle was the last off-world, so we didn’t think to ask.”

Gerard aimed his command chair at the console and started dragging and rotating symbols in the air. At his touch, the holograms turned green, and a strong bass pumped through the bridge.

“Yeah, New Canterlot, the glorious stronghold of the unicorn tribe,” he said. “I bet you’ll like it. A pretty unicorn like you will fit right in. You said your father is a scientist or engineer, right? The corporations will love him. You two will do fine.”

“You’ve been there before?” Lumina nodded her horn in Gerard’s direction.

He glanced at her, over his shoulder and out at space, then back at her.

“Where, Arion?” Gerard pointed at the star field beyond his window. “Nope, can’t say I have. Excluding the spaceport, of course.”

“No, I mean New Canterlot.” Lumina shook her head. “Have you ever been there before?”

“Yeah, a whole bunch of times. Every major corporation this side of the Pegasus Empire and their mothers is based there, including yours truly's employer. They say a unicorn monarch leads the planet, but that’s minotaur crap. The corporations run everything. Hell, the vending machines on New Canterlot take corporate shares.”

“Is it beautiful?” Lumina asked.

The griffon scratched his lower beak.

“That depends entirely on if you like trees or stalactites. New Canterlot isn’t technically a habitable world. It’s the second rock in a binary system. It was settled by unicorns looking for precious gems and metals, and they carved out these massive underground quarries and built their cities in the mined out sections. You’re going to walk on streets of gold, and your daddy the engineer will probably find a nice stalactite overhanging Celestial City to live in. You’re never going to see the sky again, not unless you get a ride off-world. And next time, they will make you pay a small fortune for the privilege."

No sky? Lumina left her world behind, but she assumed wherever she ended up would have a moon and a sky. She ears tucked down, and wrapped her tail around her legs.

“I didn’t know I was leaving the sky behind,” she whispered.

Gerard sighed, and brushed ash off his jacket.

“When I was younger than you, the pegasus tribe invaded my world, forcing me, my parents, and about four million other griffons to flee to the stars.” Gerard’s eyes lost themselves a spinning hologram to his left, but after a moment he locked them on Lumina. “We ended up colonizing a rock just outside of the Sirius system. I thought I’d never see the sky again. There was no way I could afford to get a ship to ferry me away from there. But I was like, ‘I’m not going to spend my entire life pulling heavy metals out of caves.’ So I started looking for a way out."

“What did you do?” Lumina’s ears perked up a little.

“I became a pilot for the Interstellar Express first chance I got, and I never looked back.” Gerard leaned back in his command chair. “If you want to see the sky over Arion again, the Interstellar Express can make it happen.”

For the first time in what felt like ages, Lumina's eyes lit up and her lips turned up in a slight smile.

“I wanted to ask you something, Gerard,” Lumina said.

“Shoot.”

“Why did you change your mind and decide to take my father and me?”

“Oh, boy, I’m not sure how to answer that one.” He scratched his head and thought for a moment. “It’s like this, you know how pony society props science and everything left-brained up on a pedestal? Us griffins didn’t. We believed that everything living was magical. I was taught to always listen to my gut and to use my instincts.”

“Sounds really cool,” said Lumina.

Gerard’s eyes narrowed. “If medicine that doesn’t work, a dirt poor economy, and almost no army to defend the planet when the Pegasus Empire attacked sounds cool, I guess it was pretty cool.

“I know this must sound like superstitious minotaur crap,” said Gerard. “But when I saw you, I got this feeling like I was doing something wrong. It was like you were supposed to be on that shuttle, like staying on Arion wasn’t in your horoscope and it was my job to get you out of there. In a way I was greedy, cause if I hadn’t taken you along I knew I’d pay the price in bad karma for the rest of my life.”

Lumina pinched her eyebrows together; she didn’t really know what to think of that, except to ask more questions.

“How am I more important than any of those ponies that got left behind?”

“I don’t know.” Gerard threw his claws up. “Maybe you’re supposed to do something really great, like build a bridge, or bring peace back to the galaxy. Maybe you’re an Element of Harmony, if you believe in that kind of thing. Or maybe I have it all wrong, and I just owed you some good karma and this was my way of paying my debt. I don’t know. All I know is that whatever you're supposed to do, you wouldn’t accomplish it on Arion.”