It had been hours since Chalcedony and the soldier stallion fled from Zerra. The mood was too somber for conversation, so the two of them sat in silence. The stallion sat near the door, ramrod straight and impassive. Chalcedony watched the stars from the sole window, waiting to cry for her lost home. Then she saw a Sky-lord ship speeding towards them.
“Uh... sir? There’s... not friendlies coming for us,” she said. The stallion moved to the window, careful not to touch her, and looked.
“This ship has no weapons and no protection,” he stated evenly. “Your employers played it cheap, and now we’re going to die for it, unicorn.” Turning round, he took his seat again and removed the gun from his back, polishing it with an oily cloth. “The Sky-lords never give up a hunt.”
Eyes wide, Chalcedony could only watch as the ship flew closer. It took only thirty minutes to close the distance, though it felt like long hours had passed. It’s front flashed red, the same colored energy beam hitting an instant later. The whole pod shook, every screen showing alerts and errors. She flinched back with a scared mewl, waiting for the vacuum of the void to devour her, or the craft to burst.
Nothing happened, and she looked again. The Sky-lord had flown away, out of sight, leaving them to die in their damaged pod. Chalcedony began to smile, until the stallion reminded her that the navigation had been taken out. They had been spared quick destruction for days of hopeless drifting.
Taking a look at the monitors, she smiled anyways. The Zerra escape pods were indeed low budget and overall faulty things, but that was because they relied on very simple models. Except for a few points, like water levels and purity, the programming behind this ship was very similar to that of the Terraformer she had worked on for years.
Chalcedony ignored the stallions stare and peeled back one of the circuit covers, revealing mess of wires that put her bedmane to shame. Horn glowing gray, she reached inside with feelers of magic, following streams of energy until they lead her to the navigation system. Now came the tricky part; the shot had damaged some of the cords, severing the connection. But, with the right parts...
“Give me your gun,” Chalcedony said, not looking away from the circuitry. The stallion didn’t even move, just looked at her like she’d gone mad. When nothing came to her, she looked over a shoulder at him. “Your gun. I need it to fix the navigation.”
“Why should I trust you with a weapon?” he asked. “For all I know, you could be rigging the ship to explode.”
Chalcedony blinked. “By the stars, why would I do that?! I’m on the ship too! Five seconds ago you were waiting to die, just let me try to save us?” She gave him her best ‘trust me’ face and a winning smile. He stood and placed his gun reverently on the ground, watching her eyes all the while.
And then she systematically pulled it apart. He protested, and she didn’t like it either. She would have been thrilled to get such an up close look at historic technolog; but today was no time for admiration. She piled the useless pieces by the side, working until she had a fair collection of springs and slim metals. These she floated into the wiring, coating them with a protective enchantment that matched the wire covering.
It took ten minutes or so for Chalcedony to finish, but the screens remained frozen in error. She rolled her eyes and gave the panel a good buck, jolting it back to perfection. Unable to help a little gloating, she brought up the navigation system with a few proud clicks. And froze, one hoof in the air.
“Where are we going, again?” The stallion pushed her aside and tapped in the coordinates. The craft gave a shudder as it readjusted, and the engine made an unpleasant stutter as it accelerated.
When the massive ship came into sight, Chalcedony had moved on to attempting small talk, to no avail. She stopped mid-sentence, spotting it out the window. It was bigger than the main Sky-lord ship that had attacked Zerra, almost triple in size. The main hulk was composed of four blimp shapes that widened and fused toward the back until they were a single square. Each blimp was connected by elegant looking space-walk arches, enclosed in painted glass to keep the oxygen in. The engines were inlaid in the rear square, a circle at each corner with the base of cones jutting out. On it’s side, crudely painted on was the standing pony insignia of the Earthen March.
As they closed in, the stallion’s crystal anklet buzzed. There was a brief, muttered conversation with it. Then a pair of small disk-shaped ships flew out of the lower left blimp and took a spot at both sides of the craft, easing it’s approach with magnets.
The ponies at the docking station had heard about the attack on Zerra, and were already in position to receive the escapees. As the tiny pod drifted into the airlock, a metallic claw reached out of the floor and held it in place so the artificial gravity could be turned on. The outer doors closed behind them, and oxygen flooded the chamber with a loud hiss. Ponies in cautionary hazard suits gathered on the extending platform, waiting for the passengers to exit and be taken to the detox room.
Thus it was no small surprise when the door opened not towards them, but on the bottom. A mare, a stallion, and a collection of gears falling out, one with brief yelp. The fall was only a few feet, luckily, and both seemed unhurt. They were retrieved with a ladder, the parts collected and sent elsewhere, and the procedure went on like nothing had happened. Chalcedony was given an extra dose of bacteria killing fumes though. Three more than the stallion, actually. And then was told to sit on a bench until somepony came to get her.
“Sweeper!” she exclaimed after a few minutes sitting idle. “I left Sweeper!” Chalcedony moaned, ears going limp in despair. Sweeper had been her constant companion for years, never complaining, and only sometimes breaking. Even if he was just a poorly repaired bot from some shady trader, it deserved better than being buried under Quik-steel.
The yellow stallion interrupted her thoughts, staring down his muzzle at her. Without a word he started away, and Chalcedony decided to follow rather than be lost. They left the arrival station, meeting a pair of earth ponies at a double door. The stallion showed them a paper and they opened the door with a whirr. Beyond was a foyer, large enough to hold hundreds of ponies, shaped as a giant cube. At every corner was a similar pair of doors, and in the center floated a sign post with long arrows pointing at each. They had just left the ‘docking bay’.
What caught Chalcedony’s attention was the blatant disregard for gravity being shown. Ponies walked on every side of the cube, looking either upside down or sideways to her.
She would have stared all day, trying to guess how they managed such a thing (magnets taped to everypony’s hooves? A rotating gravitron? Maybe they were all secretly pegasi) but yellow pony cleared his throat and motioned her onwards. They crossed down their floor, and coming to a wall, simply walked up it as though it was natural. Chalcedony had a brief moment of vertigo, but no other change.
They continued to the ‘military wing’, although the name seemed scratched on compared to others. Here yellow tried to flash the paper again, but the guards shook their heads. From here on out they would need an escort, they were told, and one of the guards followed next to yellow. They kept walking, both earth ponies knowing the direction despite the many intersections. They talked to each other, but never acknowledged the unicorn behind them.
“You’re in for it rough, Vanilla,” said the escorter. “The Loo’ himself was calling the shots.”
Neither noticed Chalcedony’s smile, having learned her rescuer’s name at last. “I’ve served well for the last seven years. Besides which, I followed my orders as best I could, under the circumstances. Just came on some... collateral damage.” Vanilla jerked his head backwards. Chalcedony looked back too, worried that some eagle-hybrid had followed them.
The other laughed, and the talk went on to small things that Chalcedony could not keep interest in. She took to inspecting the ship around her, trying to match it to her knowledge of mechanics. The pieces she recognized were outweighed by the amount of which she had no clue. It didn’t help that all the important, interesting circuitry was hidden behind shimmering greyish walls.
Then she ran head-first into one of the stallions in front. She backed up, apology forming on her lips, but the guard beat her to it. “Keep your filth away from us, unicorn,” he growled, and Chalcedony took a half step back, watching the gun holstered on his back. They held that for a few seconds before the guard eased, waving them through the door, making a point to glare at Chalcedony until it closed behind them.
Now they were in a chamber that looked rather like a judges room. Rows of seats lined either side of a bare isle, which lead to a raised podium. At this sat three earth ponies, the two on the side wrinkled with age and the center hardened with experience. Before these, and after the seats, were two tables. Vanilla waited at the entrance, standing at attention, until the center pony called his name.
Chalcedony watched him, puzzled by the purpose of the room, until the same pony called her over by the suddenly common title of ‘the unicorn’. She went down the aisle behind Vanilla, and took a seat next to him at one of the front tables.
The pony on the left rose, trying to look wise with his powdered wig. “Sergeant Vanilla Drops of the fifteenth Earthen regiment, you are called to the tribunal today to speak your case for the incident on Zerra.” Here he looked down, shuffling a stack of papers. “As a sworn member of the Earthen March, you are required to participate to any and all questions, as stated in lines five through eight of the oath. Your prisoner must also answer honestly, as per line one hundred-oh-five of the-”
“We understand the rules, Captain Rubidium,” said the center pony. “Now, unless there is some aspect of the oath or associated codes that you feel is vital, I would like-”
“I’m not a prisoner...”
Everypony stared at Chalcedony, who slammed a hoof into her snout too late. She smiled sheepishly around her hoof and slid lower in her seat, trying to hide beneath the table. Vanilla followed her example for some reason, dropping his head, perfect posture drooping.
“If there are no more interruptions,” said the right pony, “I believe the defendant should hear the charges. You are hereby charged with dereliction of duty, abandonment of your soldiers, cowardice in the face of danger, and failure to protect the colony of Zerra. How do you plead?”
“I did not abandon my men!” he cried. Lowering his volume, he continued “We were overwhelmed and outgunned. I ordered an alpha evac, but was too far away to ensure they followed through.”
“Are there any to confirm this?” asked Rubidium. Chalcedony caught just a hint of smugness in his tone and bristled.
“They should be arriving shortly, if not before me.”
“And yet, you two are the only ones to make it here,” the right pony said.
Frowning, Vanilla turned to the center pony, who nodded. “I’m afraid the other escape pods were destroyed by enemy ships. Sky-lords do not give up a hunt. You know that, sergeant.”
“AS there are no others to confirm your story,” Rubidium went on. “We must take you on the undeniable evidence before us; you arriving here with a disassembled weapon and a unicorn. A mare, no less. I know a week is a long time on such a desolate planet, Vanilla Drops, but to stoop so low?” As he was saying this, a pony trotted down the aisle and deposited a bundle on the table before Vanilla. Opening it revealed a mess of metal that was once a gun.
Center pony breathed deeply before waving away the other judges. “You have made your say, Rubidium, Palladium. A case of minor military transgression is beneath ponies of your prestige.” The two exchanged a glance before agreeing, leaving their stands with heads held high. When the door closed behind them, he thumped a hoof against the wood.
“You’ve gotten yourself in a tight spot, Vanilla. The best I can do is try and sway them from the harsher punishments.” Seeing Vanilla’s look, he waved a hoof. “They were speaking of treason before you came in.”
Vanilla went pale. Chalcedony, feeling braver with the two elderly ponies gone, spoke up. “He’s not a traitor! I was there, he saved my life!”
Her tablemate dropped his head on to the table with a ‘thunk’. The center pony’s eyes narrowed at her. She swallowed. “T-there was a lot... the Sky-lords...”
“Captain Iron, I swear to you if I could have saved some I would have,” Vanilla said, raising his head enough to look the captain in the eyes. “There was no warning, no time to evacuate the citizens.”
“I know Vanilla. And I know your loyalty. The March is lucky to have you.”
Before they could continue, a somewhat tinny voice intruded throughout the room. “It has come to my attention that a certain somepony broke some very important rules. And it is my decision that this pony should serve as an example for his more faithful comrades. Iron, if you would be so kind as to bring this pony to my offices. I’m sure we can come to an agreement.” And the intercom clicked off without waiting for a reply.
Iron bowed his head, “I’m coming with you Vanilla. With any luck, I might convince the general to go easy. What that means with him, though...”
With that both soldiers stood and left the room together, leaving a confused Chalcedony sitting at the table. The intercom buzzed on again, “Oh, and somepony give the prisoner appropriate rooming. I’ll deal with her later.” A guard pointed at one of the doors and Chalcedony went through, following her escort into the common wing. They went down an elevator, and out into a typical prison, unpleasantly damp despite the filtration system. She was motioned into a cell, and the door locked behind her.
On the opposite side, in a cell just a bit further down than hers, was another pony. He seemed to be shaking in place, and had his back turned to her. Chalcedony said hello, and the pony spun suddenly, jamming his face against the bars. From the wild, pupil-less stare and nervous energy she guessed he wasn’t much for conversation. So she climbed into the narrow bed and waited, quickly becoming bored.
When Vanilla came to fetch her from her cell, she assumed it was not going to end well for her. But they were on a ship full of military ponies, and when the sergeant asked her to follow, there was little choice. So they went, out of the prison bay and through the bedding quarters, passed a lounge area that was bigger than the entire prison. Chalcedony was charting the entire route in her head, more of an nervous distraction than active effort. There wasn’t much she would be able to do with it, unless she liv... was around long enough to act as a tour guide. Along the way she made several attempts to ask what had happened between him and the general, but he ignored each one.
They left the common wing entirely, and Vanilla took them to the public wing. Almost immediately they turned, and Chalcedony found herself in a mess hall. The tables and seats were rough wooden things, bolted to the floor with unseemly workponyship. In one corner was a collection of richly padded cushions, and there the floor was much cleaner. Only a single elderly pony ate there, wearing more jewelry than there were red hairs left in her mane. The far wall was laced with serving areas, pans of edibles under pseudo-sunlight bulbs. Very few ponies were in the hall then, it being well after standard breakfast time.
Vanilla lead her to a empty table and left. She looked around, confused as to why she had been brought here. Vanilla, coming back with two laden trays, saw her standing exactly where he left her, investigating the room and trying not to look it. He sighed and pushed her towards the seat, dropping one tray in front of her. It had bread and sprouts, and a cup of peach colored liquid without any discernible smell. Chalcedony stared at him blankly.
“If the rations are not to your liking, I can assure you there is nothing else,” he said, taking the seat across.
The unicorn stared at him for a moment longer before sniffing her food, and finding it satisfactory, lifted a fork with her magic. Vanilla swiftly kicked her hind leg. She gave him a hurt look, but got the message and ate like an earth pony; using her hooves to manipulate the utensils. The food tasted fresh and wholesome, a stark contrast to what she had eaten before.
When they were finished, Chalcedony said “Better than anything I had on Zerra,” with a hopeful smile.
“That’s because unicorns can’t grow like earthens can.”
“But, I was the only unicorn there. They never let me near the rations.”
Vanilla didn’t respond to that, taking the trays back to the serving area. Chalcedony slumped in her chair until he coughed behind her, gesturing towards the door. This time she wanted to see where Vanilla took her and almost walked next to him. Almost. She had managed it for a few seconds before he glared her backwards. They went back into the common wing, passed the lounge and the bedding quarters, and right back into the prison bay.
When the sergeant had left, she groaned. “Cells,” she announced to the jittery pony down the hall, “are boring.” The other prisoner’s high pitched laugh startled her, and the way he stared at her with those eyes was worse. Chalcedony slowly retreated to the far corner of her cell, resolving to stay away from jittery.
Vanilla visited her a few hours later. Without a word, he opened the door and jammed a bright yellow crystal anklet onto her right foreleg. With a few button pushes it tightened on Chalcedony’s leg. “You’re free to wander, but don’t do anything stupid. The scryer will be keeping track of you,” he explained and left. Chalcedony stared at the new accessory, watching a pair of lights blink continuously.
She left the cells and poked around the common wing, finding the lounge area quickly. Lush pillows were positioned in neat stacks, and a long couch was in place in front of each of the ten wall-consuming screens adorning the room. Nopony was inside, so Chalcedony sat on a couch, playing with the controls on the armrest.
“-on the next episode of ‘My Husband is an Alien Brain Parasite.” The screen suddenly showed a picture of a mare with a beehive mane cut and a greenish thing wiggling out of her ear. They seemed to be in a debate, or as much as one that could be managed. The mare was yelling at the thing about infecting somepony else, while the thing mostly gurgled. Chalcedony blinked a few times and changed the channel.
Now there was a younger mare, with silver mane and dark blue coat. She was standing in front of a burning building, a line of text scrolling underneath with information. “The fire continues to rage out of control, and still no sign of help from either military or civilians. One can only ask, what is holding the Alliance back?” She made to continue, but somepony off-camera made a squeaking noise as a pair of shadowy ponies moved towards them. The film cut off and started on a different news story with a wig bearing stallion.
Another click brought up a unicorn wearing some form of colorful pads. Around her several objects of different sizes floated in her orange aura. “Now to build up on your concentration. The best way to do this is by trying to levitate many objects at once, but don’t strain yourself! Magical backlash will leave you out of it for hours. For additional difficulty, try-”
“Ugh, turn off that trash,” said a voice behind Chalcedony. “If you’re really looking for something to watch, I’m sure we can arrange something more fun.”
She turned to face the mare standing behind her, bearing a lascivious grin that quickly faded. “Oh. Well, I am sorry. You would’ve been cute if not for that, thing, on your head.”
Confused and insulted, Chalcedony groaned in exasperation. “What is so wrong about being a unicorn?!”
The mare glowered at her. “As if you don’t know. Your kind has been lording over ours for centuries. The Earthen March is here to collect our dues.”
Chalcedony tried to question her further, but she left the room. The unicorn remained in the lounge for a while longer, inattentively flicking through channels as she brooded. When she did leave, she nearly ran into Vanilla waiting at the door.
“Apparently letting you roam without escort is trouble. I... will show you through the Star Marcher. So long as you cooperate.”
Chalcedony immediately asked him to lead the way to the gravity defying cube, and pried him with questions on the way. Vanilla answered only a few, mostly those that related to the earth ponies in particular. The ‘Star Marcher’ was the name of the ship. Formerly a luxury interstellar ship, it was rebuilt (by earth ponies) to serve as a command ship. The Earthen March was formed seventy-eight years ago, for the reasons of furthering the earth pony cause. And yes, they did have an onboard greenery (better than anything a unicorn can grow, he assured).
Now at the cube chamber, Chalcedony experimented with the gravity fields on the walls. She made a full circuit of the room, and held herself half over one wall, half over another, and stayed attached to the ground. Vanilla was stationary, watching her with an unamused expression. Then she tensed, preparing to make a short hop, and he stopped her. “Better not. The fields don’t extend very far above the surface.”
From there, she had a choice of wings to visit. There were four main ones, the commons, the public, the military, and the greenery. Each door in the cube went to a different point in the wings, with a few leading to offshoots like ‘maintenance’ or ‘pumps’. Having already seen the other three, and having ever seen a single tree, Chalcedony chose the greenery, trying to get Vanilla to move faster.
This door was guarded by four soldiers, who searched them before even considering letting them in. They were reluctant to allow Chalcedony in, but the scryer on her leg convinced them that she wouldn’t be too much a danger. They were waved through into a detox chamber like the one from the docking station, and liberally sprayed with liquid chemicals. A gust of warm air dried them, and the inner doors slid open.
Chalcedony had begun to giggle at the mess Vanilla’s mane had become, but stopped seeing the greenery in full. Willows, firs, and oaks towered towards the ceiling, laden with spring leaves. Other trees She had never heard of bore blossoms of blue, or gold, or other vibrant colors. Beneath these were the flowers and bushes and vines, bearing their harvests. Her mouth watered at the smells wafting from them, and she drifted in as if in a dream. Vanilla followed behind her, one corner of his lip curled so slightly.
They ended up spending the rest of the day in the greenery, to which Vanilla did not object. The days end was announced by overhead intercoms, telling the time as 17:00. Vanilla lead them out, back into the public wing. Chalcedony bent her head, expecting to be confined in the cell again, until Vanilla gestured into one of the rooms. It was a spare, and Chalcedony was allowed it’s use for a while.
The room was sparse, with a bed, a dresser, and a desk with a pillow seat. The bedding was softer than that of the cells, and she thought it might be softer than those on Zerra. And, remembering her lost planet, her mood fell and she lay on the bed, silently grieving for an hour or two before sleep took her.
She awoke to a faint hissing noise, coming from outside. Groggy, she lumbered off the bed and bruised her knee against the desk, remembering her old home’s layout. She sighed and cleared her eyes, opening the door. Or trying to; the gears inside made a whirring noise, and the door shook, but it was stuck. Chalcedony peaked through the window and saw a trio of colts outside, snickering while a fourth did something to her door. Adjusting her view, she saw that he had a welder in hoof and was sealing her door.
When they were done, ignoring the trapped mare’s knocking, they collectively blew a raspberry and fled. Chalcedony banged on the door for a minute before giving up, pacing around the room. ‘This,’ she thought, ‘is just as bad as the cell.’ She lifted her foreleg and pointed the scryer at the door, saying “I’m, uh, locked in? Could somepony unweld my door?”
An hour later Vanilla finished prying the door open, managing to look irritated around the crowbar. “You can not even rest without finding problems,” he observed, leading the way to the mess hall. Chalcedony didn’t mention the colts, walking behind Vanilla and avoiding the eyes of everypony else.
They sat at a table remote from the rest, and predictably empty, and Vanilla got their food. Taking a bite, he choked and coughed it onto his tray, spitting curses. “Who puts hot sauce on sprouts?” He looked up to see Chalcedony’s reaction, but she munched away happily. Vanilla snuck a bite from her tray and, tasting heat, spat it out as well.
“Are you going to finish that?” she asked, reaching for his tray once hers was empty. Vanilla pushed it forwards. His comfort for that morning was the confusion on the prankster chefs’ faces.
Yesterday’s tour resumed, this time leading to the more banal sections. Chalcedony lost interest quickly. The sudden blaring of the alarm caught them aimlessly wandering the corridors. Every light on the ship turned flashing red, and an automated voice told everypony to find a secure place.
“What’s going on?” Chalcedony asked, choosing not to acknowledge her yelp of surprise a moment ago.
“The Star Marcher’s under attack,” Vanilla said, jogging to the nearest emergency room. Chalcedony followed him into a cramped closet space, filled with cleaning supplies. She raised an eyebrow, and Vanilla shrugged. “It’s blast proof.”
The alarm lasted for a few long minutes, during which the ship shuddered once. The two ponies sat as far from each other as they could manage, and were uncomfortably silent or anxious the whole time. As soon as the sirens ended, Vanilla practically leapt out of the closet, and questioned a colt galloping passed.
“It was the Sky-lords!” he shouted, excited. “A couple of their hunting ships got too close, but we showed them! Knocked em’ clean out of their precious sky!” Giving a cheer, the pony ran down the hallway. The voice on the intercom spoke up suddenly.
“All passengers proceed to the nearest harness. Spacial jump in ten minutes. All ponies...” They left the hall, moving further into the public wing to find a harness area. These turned out to be long halls lined with seats on either wall, lengths of cloth and metal attached to each one. It was specifically designed to ease, if not remove, the effects of a spatial jump.
Vanilla strapped her into a seat, giving the belts a last tug to ensure safety. He took the seat next to hers, which had been given a wide berth by everypony aboard. Above them, the metallic voice of the intercom continued: “All ponies secure yourselves, spatial jump in three minutes.” Chalcedony sat, eager to get her first taste of space faring technology.
“What’s it like?” she asked Vanilla.
“Supposedly based on unicorn teleports, but remade by earthen ingenuity,” he said. It surprised her that he had actually answered, and he mistook the silence. “You horn heads got magic, we have the strength in our legs and the genius of our minds.”
Unfort
unately this opened the floodgates, and Chalcedony was asking questions faster than he could think of the answer. Everything from when they first managed it to how fast could they go. As the timer hit half a minute he told her to stay quiet and see for herself.
At zero, the constant hum of the ships machinery lulled, and everything was silent for a single second. Then the noise returned a hundredfold, a droning buzz that reverberated in teeth and stomachs. The floor beneath their hooves bucked upwards, stray trinkets bouncing in their containers. Chalcedony opened her mouth to ask if this was normal when the breath was pulled out of her, as though there was a breach in the hull sucking all the oxygen out. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the other passengers gaping like fish, and would have laughed except for the pressure. And now she saw their images begin to melt backwards like rubber being pulled. Everything seemed to follow suit, creating a nauseating mirage. Finally she blinked, or thought she did, because everything turned black. When color returned, the ship was like normal and the ponies were filling their lungs with air, some already leaving their seats. The jump had completed. Chalcedony’s last thought before she passed out was ‘how long did that take?’
The answer was precisely three and a half seconds.