Planet Hell: The Redemption of Harmony

by solocitizen

8. The Cold Hearted Colt I Used to be

Solitary confinement was designed to wear the mind down.. Ponies are social animals. They wake for the day and live out their lives together under whatever sun happens to be closest. With neither companionship nor the semblance of day and night, their circadian had no rhythm. It was only a matter of time before paranoia crept in. Given enough time, the brain cements the madness in and there’s no going back.

But for the last eight days, Thunder Gale was not alone. Behind the bars that separated his cell from the next, a mare named Breeze Heart kept him company. They had a lot in common as they were both from the upper-side of Pegatropolis, they both came from families that congregated in similar flocks, and they had both lost all of that over night.

After his second day in jail, she started to notice him on another level, and he noticed that she noticed him. They both watched each other intently as their wings and hooves and manes passed under rare patches of light. They hung on each other’s words and laughed at each other’s bad jokes. Although they shared such close quarters, they didn’t push each other’s buttons.

On the third day, while a command carrier was docking at the station and the light from its engines poured in from the window, Thunder Gale asked Breeze Heart to join him at a patch of golden light between their cell bars so they could get a better look at each other.

He had seen her face once before, on the day the guards threw him in, and he remembered there was such kindness and understanding in her that she put his troubles aside for a moment, but when he saw her again clear in the light he was unprepared for her beauty. From her thistle colored mane, to her petite frame, and to her sweeping tail, every inch of her was just as beautiful as the face he glimpsed before.

“You’re a gorgeous mare,” Thunder Gale dared to say.

Her eyes lit up, she beamed, and she exclaimed: “You too!” Then it all vanished as soon as she realized what she just said and she fled to the far end of her cell.

Thunder Gale chuckled and tried to help her laugh it off, but that only drove her under the shadow of her bed where she knew he couldn’t even spot her outline. It was several hours before she crept out.

The day after, when they were sitting as close to each other as the bars allowed and the conversation flowing between them had lulled, he decided to take a gamble. His heart beat swiftly as he reach through the bars and around the back of her neck. His hoof found her hair, but as soon as he started to reach over her shoulders she bolted into the air and squeaked. In the darkness, he hadn’t notice that she was in fact standing. It wasn’t her mane that his fumbling hoof caressed, but her tail. The neck and head he had been reaching for was actually her buttocks.

Heat rushed to his face and he flung himself from the bars. He spent ten minutes apologizing to her, hiding, and trying to figure out a clever way to spin his slip up into a complement. He tried to dig himself out by making a witty comparison between her tail and butt to her mane and face, but it didn’t work.

But she didn’t judge, and told him to stop worrying; she forgave him. He startled her. That was all.

On the fourth day he told her that the Emperor hadn’t been acting like himself for the past two years, and that he believed one of the most powerful ponies in the galaxy, his father, had been replaced by an agent of some kind. He laughed at himself, and said it sounded preposterous.

But she reached across the bars, put her hoof on his shoulder, and told him that it sounded a little crazy, yes, but so was the galaxy they lived in and that stranger things were known to happen.

Six days after getting thrown in jail, Thunder Gale told Breeze Heart that if they ever got out of the brig, he’d like to treat her to dinner at a fancy restaurant.

And she asked him, “Why wait?” and to give her a day or two to put something together.

On the eighth day, Breeze Heart called him over, and they sat down facing each other between the bars.

“I’d like to welcome you to The B&H Diner, the best restaurant in the cellblock.” She held out a sack tied together from her scarf and set it down on the cold concrete. “On our menu, we have whole-wheat bread from our local bakery, apples grown right here on our ten-acre farmland, and chocolate imported from Equus itself.” She pulled on the knot with her mouth and with her hooves, and food rolled out.

The bread she was referring to was the dry, grainy, high-protein biscuits the guards handed out. The apples were none other than those served at lunch and they were always hard and sour. The chocolate were bite-sized bits accumulated over the last week from desert. To Thunder Gale, it was a small feast, and it was divine.

“I’ll start with an apple, if you don’t mind.” He nodded at one of them and swallowed spit.

“Why certainly, sir.” She picked one up in her mouth, holding it by the stem, and dropped it in his waiting hooves. “And if there’s anything else I can get you, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.”

Thunder Gale devoured that apple, and after he wiped the juices from his mouth, asked for some biscuits and gobbled them down. The guards fed them just enough to keep them healthy, but never enough to keep them satisfied. He stopped shoveling food in his mouth long enough to admire it all: there was so much more food spread out on that scarf than he’d seen since getting locked away.

“How did you get all of this food?” He sat up and nibbled on the remaining bits of his biscuits.

“I set aside food from my meals that last couple days.” She took a dainty bite from an apple.

“You couldn’t have been eating very much. I’ll slow down, you should have the rest.”

“No, please, have what you want.” Her wings snapped open and she shoved two more biscuits to his side of the jail. “I’ll admit I more than probably wasn’t eating enough to stay healthy, but it was only for a few days, and I didn’t mind fasting if it meant I could treat us to dinner. Please, don’t spoil it by worrying. Enjoy yourself.”

The rest of dinner passed without conversation, as dinners tended to when the food was delicious or the ponies were famished. Thunder Gale and Breeze Heart picked the scarf clean and afterwards they sat in each other’s company with, for the first time since either was locked up, full bellies.

“Can I ask you a question?” he asked her.

“Go ahead, I reserve the right not to answer, but I can’t imagine why I wouldn’t.” She straightened up.

“You mentioned that you were training to be a doctor.” He propped himself up on his side and gave her his full attention.

“That’s correct.”

“I guess I’m curious to hear about how you landed on that career path.”

Breeze Heart lay down on her stomach and rested her chin on her hoof while she thought. She hummed in near silence to herself.

“Since I was little I had this dream about opening a free clinic,” she said. “I’m not attracted to the thought of spending my career as a MD so much as I am running that clinic. I figured that the best way I could provide such a service was from the front lines, so to speak. I can’t guarantee the help of other surgeons and medical professionals, but I can do what I can. I suppose next you’re going to ask me where I got the idea from?”

“That’s my plan. I’m really curious, so don’t stop there.”

“Well, if you must know, it’s a story I prefer to keep to myself. So if I do tell it to you, you have to promise me that you’ll never repeat it without my permission. I know I might not seem like it but I’m actually quite, well, shy.”

“Okay.” He sat up on his hindquarters. “I promise not to tell.”

“Very well then, and thank you.”

There was a flash of lightning outside their window, and they glimpsed each other again for a second or two, no more than that. Before the light faded, she found his eyes.

“When I was a little filly, my mom and dad took me on a trip out to the Feather Hills Province on Hellas,” she said. “Have you ever been?”

“No, I can’t say I have.”

“It’s the most undeveloped and under-populated region on the whole planet. It’s covered by forests so vast, that you could fit all the ponies on the continent comfortably inside their borders. However, only about thirty-thousand individuals reside there. Lumberjacks and miners, mostly. We went there to see the mountains and so my dad could talk business with a wealthy landowner, but as our ornithopter was about to set down on the airstrip my mom went numb and stopped breathing.

“It was acute equine pulmonary turbulence, and only about one in ten million ponies get it, but as it turns out pegasi are more prone to the disease and she had a genetic predisposition. At the time, though, we didn’t know what it was and we rushed her to the nearest hospital. When we arrived, the medical staff weren’t of much help; most of them were just surgeons and hadn’t seen anything like this before either. They said the most they could do was try to make her comfortable and hope for the best.

“I remember watching my dad argue raise his voice at the nurses outside her room, but after a time he gave up and broke down crying. I felt so helpless. I had never conceived of my parents as anything less than larger than life figures before, as I had never seen either of them get sick or in a hospital. I suppose I had thought them immortal, but then I saw her like that and as much as I refused to accept it, I knew deep down she was dying.

“Right as we were getting ready to say our good-byes to her, this stallion in a surgical gown knelt down next to us and said he could help. As it turns out he was a traveling cardiac specialist that was there with a whole menagerie of experts as part of some program to train and assist hospitals in disadvantaged parts of Hellas. They wheeled her into a tent they converted into an operating room and ten minutes later the surgeon came out and told us that the operation had been a success.

“Ever since then I always looked up to those doctors as heroes. I want to do that for others: be there when they need it most. Save a family’s day or be there however I can. I know it sounds rather childish, wishful, and naïve, that’s why I don’t share that story very often.”

Breeze Heart hid her face behind her mane and turned her eyes down and off to the side. She tapped her two front hooves together. He glimpsed her infrequently as the storm flashed.

“Thank you,” Thunder Gale said, “I’m not sure what else to say other than I’m glad that you shared it with me.”       
 
“You’ll remember not to tell anypony else?”

“Of course, that’s what I promised.” Thunder Gale reached past the bars and brushed his hoof through her mane to uncover her face. “I don’t think you’re naïve or have any reason to hide. I think it’s wonderful that you want to go out of your way to help ponies like that, and if anypony has a problem with that, then they’re the ones with the problem. Not you.”

She put her hooves down, not far from his, and looked at him from across her side.

“I believe you’re the first pony I’ve told that to who hasn’t called me overly wishful or naïve.”

“I can’t imagine why, but maybe that makes me a wishful thinker too.”

For a long time they sat there without doing any more than enjoying each other’s company.

“So, how was your meal?” Breeze Heart asked after awhile.

“It was a feast fit for the royal stomach.” He rubbed his belly. “Make sure you pass my compliments along to the chef.”

“Thank you.” She giggled. “The B&H prides itself on high quality service and its gourmet cooking.”

“My only complaint is this chair.” Thunder Gale shifted his rear end around on the concrete and stirred wings. “It’s as hard as a rock. I still want to take you to a fine restaurant once we’re out of here, someplace with better seats.”

She got quiet, and her face retreated into the shadows her side of the jail.

“What’s wrong?”

“Do you really think they’re going to let us out?” she asked.

“I’m the prince of the pegasus tribe and, although you’re not nobility, you’re a citizen of The Empire and from a family with enough wealth and status to live in the upper city. They have to do something with us. They can’t just leave us in here and pretend we don’t exist, that’s not the way these things work.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Me too.”        

There was quiet between them, but they stayed beside one another and kept each other company. After a time, Breeze Heart leaned all the way forward and rested her forehead on the bars, right next to him. He reached a hoof through to her side and held her as best he could. Her body was warm, and her pink coat was soft to the touch. She smelled of sweat and dirt, but there was smooth harmony and sweetness under all that. He savored the sensations of her, her smell, her warmth, and her colors, to commit them to memory.

After a while they fell asleep beside each other, with only the bars between them.

Shouting woke them sometime later. As Thunder Gale and Breeze Heart shook the fog from their heads and rose to their hooves, muffled gunfire joined the shouting beyond the door to their cellblock.

“What’s going on?” she asked him.

“I don’t know.” His eyes were fixed on the door. “We’d better find cover.”

The two of them scattered; Thunder Gale to the far end of his cell where the shadows were the thickest, and Breeze Heart to her hiding place under her bench.

The shouting stopped, as did the gunfire, but both they kept silent and to their hiding places. A moment later, and blinding sparks spat from between the plates of the cellblock door. The sparks lit up the jail and the shadows of the bars leapt and danced across the floor. Molten metal dribbled onto the concrete and heat and chemical fumes wafted into the air.

"Thunder, what should we do?” she asked.

“There’s nothing we can do. Just hang tight.”

The light faded out, and the door flung open, and there stood Lightning Fire, clad in blue power armor and her helmet clutched at her side. Her blazing mane burned in the light unlike anything Thunder Gale had seen in eight whole days. A whole team of marines stormed in around her.

“Major, my friends and I got it in our heads to take the Spitfire for a joyride, care to join us?” She raised her steel plated wings.

“I’d love to, but my dad grounded me and told me I couldn’t have friends over.”

“Let me see what I can do about that. Stand clear.” She pointed at the lock to his cell and barked: “Get a thermite charge on the door.”

One of the marines rushed up and patted an adhesive strip onto the lock.

“Hey, get her door too.” Thunder Gale pointed to Breeze Heart’s cell with a flex of his wing and a nod of his head.

“You’re taking me with you?” Breeze Heart asked. “I’m not sure if I want to get involved in all this. I’ve never been in a fight before of any kind. I abhor violence, and it sounds like there might be plenty ahead.”

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want to,” Thunder Gale said, “but would you really rather stay here and eat protein biscuits by yourself?”

She crawled out from under her bench then looked to Lightning Fire, to Thunder Gale, and then to her hooves.

“No, I wouldn’t,” she said. “Cut me free.”

The marine at his door rushed to hers and attached a charge to the lock. He darted back to the entrance and Lightning Fire’s entire squad backed away. Thunder Gale and Breeze Heart both covered their eyes and turned away from their doors.

Light flashed, metal burned and boiled, but in a few seconds it was over, and when it did the doors to their cells swung wide and open.

“Unless there’s anything else, Major, I suggest we get going before the station AI figures out what’s going on and sends the entire Mobile Infantry down here.” Lightning Fire raised her helmet over her head and fastened it on. She nodded at two of the marines and they took point out of the door and into the brig.

Thunder Gale followed Lightning Fire and her troops out the long corridor out of the brig, with Breeze Heart sticking close behind him, and a trio of marines bringing up the rear.

Guards in power armor lay on the ground groaning. The neural links along their spines were torn open, trapping them in their own suits. Even more who were armored only with their uniforms were hog-tied and gagged. Each stared up at Thunder Gale in fear and anger as he walked by on his way out. He only stopped long enough to grill a guard about his pendant and retrieve it from a storage locker.

A network of computers managed by a central AI relayed data across each of the various compartments and sections of Kronos Station. Before Lightning Fire raided the cellblock, she used her command codes to isolate the brig and kept the AI from checking in on the brig. A silent alarm had been triggered the moment the marines had stormed the brig, but it didn’t make it out until Lightning Fire got Thunder Gale, Breeze Heart, and each of her marines aboard the Spitfire and halfway to a jumpship. Two command carriers and five squadrons of gunships were in pursuit, but they wouldn’t catch them before the ship reached jump velocity.

After they docked with the jumpship and were in the final stages of FTL prep, Lightning Fire asked Thunder Gale to join her in the captain’s ready room.

The cheers of celebrating crewmen rose and fell on the other side of the door, but in that close space, they were alone. The air was cool and fresh and the overhead light was bright, but not so much that Thunder Gale needed to squint. A black and red manticore—the banner animal of the royal family—hung from a golden cord over the captain’s desk; both himself and Lightning Fire stood before the desk, neither one quick to grab the chair behind it.

“I wanted to thank you, General Fire, for coming to get me out.” Thunder Gale adjusted the straps on his cuirass; the blue on it bothered him. “You pulled it off flawlessly, but that was still a huge risk. Why did you do it?”

“What other choice did I have?” she said. “You could have handled yourself in that meeting better, but it doesn’t change the fact that you said exactly what I was thinking but didn’t have the courage to say myself. You were right. Loyalty is about more than just going along with the flow, and your actions were those of a true patriot. Did you think I was just going to let you rot in there after you one-upped me like that?”

“I’m just glad you did.” Thunder Gale chuckled and glanced at the captain’s seat. “As soon as word gets out about what we did, there’s not a moon in the Empire that we can run to. We have to find some place outside pegasi space. At least that’s what I’d recommend, ma’am.”

“You’re still the commanding officer last time I checked.” Lightning Fire gestured at the desk as if she was presenting it to him. “Pick out a star in the sky and we’ll set a course.”

“That was back when I was next in line for the throne. I only got my command because I was the prince, and because this ship was only one part of a much larger fleet. I wasn’t calling the shots like this. We’re not a part of the marines any more, I can’t expect to—”

“Yes, you can.” Lightning Fire held up a hoof. “Believe it or not, you’re older than I was when I became an acting CO. Remember your training and you’ll do fine—”

“But you’re a general. I can’t—”

“Shut up, colt, I still outrank you so don’t cut me off.” She huffed and continued. “I’m just a commoner from Hoofhills Province who somehow managed to attain the rank of general, but you’re the prince. Do you think any of them liked the idea of spending their career in a champagne unit farting around Hellas? They signed up for that crap because they wanted to follow you. You bet your ass I can captain them, but only you can command their hearts and minds. No, the captain’s chair is yours. That’s an order.”

Thunder Gale approached the desk, but stopped before he stepped around back.

“You’re the more experienced officer,” he said.

“Which is why I’m planning on remaining your second in command. The ponies on this ship want to put their faith in you, as long as you honor and respect that trust you'll do fine.”

Thunder Gale at last stepped behind the desk and lowered himself into the chair. He hadn’t used his ready-room before; he never felt like the ship’s commanding officer. But with the black and red manticore behind him, his XO ahead of him, and his front hooves resting on grains of lacquered oak wood, he felt like the captain of a starship.

“Thank you,” he said to her. “I won’t let you down.”

“What are your orders, sir?” Lightning Fire smiled with her eyes, there still was an undertone of disappointment in her voice.

“I’m going to address the crew.” Thunder Gale leaned forward in his chair and held down a button on his desk. A whistle sounded, and the cheering voices in the outside his door went quiet.

“This is Major Gale speaking, I wanted to thank each and every one of you for the sacrifices you made to rescue myself and Doctor Heart from the brig. For your actions, you have my gratitude, but I will not shield you from the truth: we are all traitors and enemies of the throne in the eyes of the law and the military. We cannot return to our families and friends and the lives we left behind, but I promise you that I will not rest until we can. The true enemies of the empire are out there, and make no mistake we will bring them to justice, and once we do we will earn our way back. I promise each of you that.

“Tough times are ahead of us, but I expect the same level of professionalism and dedication that the marines are known for. Just as we did not cease to be citizens when we enlisted in the marines, we have not ceased to be marines just because we no longer answer to an admiral. Carry yourselves proudly, and stay faithful to each other and we will make it home. Gale out.”

He leaned back in the captain’s chair—his chair—and rested his front legs on the hoofrest. The blues on his uniform caught his eyes again, and at once he pulled off the straps and pulled the entire cuirass over his head and flung it down on the desk.

“Something wrong with your uniform?” Lightning Fire blinked, but she did not flinch or move in her spot.

“Yeah, we’re not officially part of the marines any more. I want our uniforms, our armor, and our ship to reflect that. Find somepony to start painting the blues over. I don’t want to see those colors on my ship any more.” He glanced at the manticore banner behind him, and then hopped out of his chair onto all fours, and then turned to her. “Maybe we could do something with this?”

“Aye, aye, Major, I’ll get somepony on it right away.” She turned toward the door and put a hoof on the console, but then made a sidelong glance at him. “Before I leave I wanted to ask about these ‘enemies’ you mentioned. You do know who they are and where to look for them, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he said. “Sort of. I’m aware of them but not where to find them. At least not yet. You know pretty much all that I do; one’s been impersonating my father since my fledging night.”

“I’m sure we’ll find them. No pony’s more eager to get back home than I. You can count on me, sir.”

“Glad to hear it.” Thunder Gale nodded at her. “Dismissed.”

She pressed down on the control panel and the door to the bridge slid open, and she hurried out.

After she left he spent a long while staring at the black and red manticore banner, and everything that happened over the last few hours. And about Lightning Fire. It took the entirety of her career to reach her rank and her status within the military, all in the hopes of one day ascending to the upper echelons of nobility, and in a single day she threw it all away. She used to command entire legions of marines, but now she wasn’t even in command of the gunship she served on.

For a time, Thunder Gale stood there letting the vibrations of the Spitfire’s engines, the smell of the air pumping out of the vents, and the chatter of the ponies on the other side of the door soak in. He grinned, and put aside all thoughts of Lightning Fire. The Spitfire was his ship and he loved it.

Before he got too comfortable in his chair, there was the matter of who to put in charge of sickbay. The ship’s medical officer decided to staff on Kronos Station, and so, they needed a new one. Breeze Heart was the best pony for the job, and nothing that anypony could say would change his mind.

Thunder Gale trotted down to sickbay a little later looking for Breeze Heart. He had a feeling she’d be there, after all she wasn’t the kind of pony to sit on her hooves when the opportunity to help other ponies presented itself.

Sure enough, when he opened the door to sickbay there she was perching over a medi-pod with dozens of holographic documents spread out on its plexi-glass dome.

She tapped a document and it drifted off the dome and floated to her face, and as she cantered to the desk for a stylus, it followed her. Scribbling away with the stylus between her teeth, she filled a page with notes, and cantered back to the medi-pod. Breeze Heart still hadn’t spotted him.

Not that it mattered. That didn’t shake his confidence any.

A lot of times when a colt approached a filly to solicit a date from her, or anything else for that matter, there was often a lot of mental preparation involved. Whole hours, days, or even weeks can burn away while the colt worked up that false sense of invulnerability and confidence that he needed to ask. Thunder Gale himself was just as guilty of that as anypony else.

But he didn’t fall victim to that thinking as he stood before sickbay. He simply cleared his throat, marched up to Breeze Heart, and accepted whatever might happen.

“I could really use a doctor onboard, and I was wondering if you’d like the job.” Thunder Gale put the question to her without thought of failure or rejection. Although he had only met her little over a week ago, something inside him compelled him to ask. He was just following through on the natural next step.

“I know that this isn’t what you had in mind,” he went on, “I don’t really like the idea of being an exile either, but we just might find our way back and we could use the help.”

She met his gaze and, for a brief second, her tail twitched and the corners of her eyes lit up and a grin flashed over her lips. Then she looked away and hid her excitement.

"I must admit it’s a tempting offer.” She set her stylus down. “It’s not everyday that the opportunity to run my own clinic—excuse me, sickbay—knocks on my door. Given my current status within the empire and the rather incomplete nature of my resume, it will probably be a long while before another one comes by.”

“So what’s holding you back?”

“I’m not very ambitious, but I still want to find that cottage I was telling you about and start my own clinic.” She turned her eyes to the floor and lowered her ears. “I want to help ponies in need, and I’m not sure if serving in your sickbay will get me there. I don’t want to spend my best years on a starship and, you know, being in combat situations. I don’t like violence much, remember?”

Thunder Gale shook his head, reached for her hoof, and gave it a quick squeeze.

“I’m not planning on staying in exile for very long,” he said. “A year, maybe two at most. I think I speak for everypony on this ship when I say that we’re all highly motivated about getting back home and back to our lives. As soon as we’ve shown the empire who the real traitors are, we will.”

The hologram beside Breeze Heart’s face beeped, and she pulled herself away from him. She swiped her wing across the floating box of text, and the orange light holding it together vanished, and the beeping along with it. She took her time before saying anything more.

“What happens if you can’t set things right in a year or two?” she asked. “Are you planning on keeping up the crusade until you do?”

“This crew has already sacrificed so much, and I’m not about to ask them to give up any more than a couple of years.” Thunder Gale took a step toward her and flicked his tail.

“You haven’t entirely answered my question: what would you do if it took more time?” She looked to him and awaited his answer in composed silence.

He thought up a response right away but waited before speaking.

“After that, I’d give up the search and find world far away from the Empire where we could all start over,” he said. “Believe me, I’m not particularly excited about being an exile aboard a stolen ship, either, but if we’re successful we can go back to our families and all that we left behind.”

“That does sound like a reasonable plan.” She rested a hoof beneath her chin. “There is something romantic about life on a starship, and a thrill of standing on a stolen vessel like this. I feel quite like a pirate.”

“And if you stay with us, at least we’d all be in this together. I know some of the crew is a little rough around the edges and life on a gunship isn’t exactly glamorous, but I’m sure it’d beat trying to make it completely on your own. That’s what friends are for, right? Helping each other when they need it.”

Breeze Heart stared at the floor, and reached for the stylus with her wing. She fiddled with it in her hooves for a few minutes.

“Okay.” She picked her head up and giggled with glee. “I’ll be your doctor. I was less than a year and a half away from completing my training and certification, anyway.”

“Great! I’m happy to hear it!” Thunder Gale reached for her hooves and held them in his. “Now, about that dinner I promised you…”