Azure Field was drinking her morning coffee when the klaxons started going off. She liked to tell other ponies that she preferred a rich, dark roast because it made her sound fancy and like she was acting her age, but in reality she poured so much gunk in it that it was almost white. She sipped at it while the sirens continued to sound, rousing the rest of Pilot Level from their sleep.
Young, spry pilots with manes that hadn’t grown back from the boot camp buzz went running by the mess hall, shouting and laughing to each other. Other unicorns followed them, shouting orders and pushing everypony down Pilot Level’s central corridor, toward the drop rooms. All except one mare with a hard look on her face.
She trotted over to Azure’s table and stood in front of it with a smirk on her face. “Does the old mare need to wake herself up before her drop?”
Azure’s silver eyes gleamed. “Just don’t like going on a mission without my daily dose of caffeine, is all. Nice to see you’re up and ready, Gray Joy.” She looked the onyx mare up and down, her gaze traveling across the bland, beige suit that covered the mare from neck to tail. “Your uniform’s getting loose.”
“And yours is getting tighter.” She helped pull Azure up and walked her out of the mess hall. “Remember, on a normal day, I’m Gray Joy, but today’s D-Day. In front of the ducklings, I’m Mom. Don’t want them getting any ideas about getting personal with me, Joker.”
Azure smiled at her codename. “Right, Mom, because I know from personal experience that it’d be a tragedy to get to know you.”
Mom rolled her eyes and trotted down the main hall, while Joker followed. Pilot Level, superficially, was like any other main level on the colony, with a system of living quarters, mess halls, recreational rooms, and other facilities that could operate in the event of one or more being destroyed. Unlike the rest, Pilot Level was centred around a central hallway, one Joker had taken to calling the Birth Canal.
Past the mess halls, pilot quarters, rec centers, and more, the Birth Canal branched outward in all directions. Mom went down the center hallway, while Joker made her way right. Each of the new halls was guarded by a door with a number and a slot for a keycard. Joker’s door had a big, red one painted on it. She used her magic to slide her keycard and stepped on through the door.
Inside, she walked down a short flight of stairs into a cramped room just big enough to fit her and her handlers. All earth ponies, the handlers gave her their usual blank expressions while she stood in the center of the room. Each Golem pilot needed a special suit to wear, and putting it on was a hassle without any help.
First came the basic underpadding, which was lined with electrical nodes that pressed against similar ones implanted across Joker’s skin. Then the handlers hooked plates onto the padding, which made her look like a knight from a kid’s book, donned in armor, only hers was white and plastic instead of metal. Each of the plates, which together hugged her whole body, were filled with feedback sensors that would transfer her movements to the Golem, and send back the impacts they had on her Golem.
After attaching a few more sensors until she looked like a plastic pony figurine, they lowered a helmet onto her head. Joker felt a buzz as the nodes inside connected themselves to the ones sticking out of her head, which would allow her thoughts to be transferred to the suit, and from there to the Golem’s movements.
Joker sighed and blinked a few times to try to chase away the icy feeling that crept into her head every time the helmet secured itself. While she did, one handler came up behind her and helped her onto her hind legs, while the other snaked what looked like a large hose from a port on the wall and attached it to a special outlet on the underside of her suit.
What the brass called an emergency shutoff valve, Joker called an umbilical cord, and the hose fit both functions. Back in basic training, whenever it had been brought up about dying with your Golem, the answer had been the same: you cut the cord. Severing the umbilical cord would end all transmission of thought and feedback to the Golem, separating pilot and machine. Or, at least, so long as you weren’t too deep in synchronization.
A buzz came in Joker’s ear, and then Mom’s voice was pouring through. “Goooooooooooooooooood morning, boys and girls!” she crowed in her high-pitched “performance voice,” “Nice to see all my pilots awake and hooked up, right on time. A gold star for that, though a few of you were spotted emerging from the same quarters. You know who you are.”
She paused to let the new meat laugh, then continued. “It’s D-Day, pilots, and that means you’re bringing your best to the playing field today. This isn’t any simulation or Everfree patrol, but the real deal, everypony. You’ve all gone over the objectives, and I’ve seen more than a few of you in the sim chamber for Sugar Rush, so you know what’s coming.”
Mom’s voice dropped. “I’m not here to tell you to do your job or to follow your orders. You’re pilots, you know that already. I’m telling you that today’s the day to stay alive. All but one of you are Mark VI pilots, equipped with the very best that we can give you. Don’t waste it. Stay alive, finish the mission, and all of you come home to momma, you hear?”
A chorus of affirmations rang in Joker’s ears, and then the channel cut out. She’d lost count of how many times Mom had given the same speech. It was cheesy at first, but now it was just part of a routine. Giving the pilots a goal beyond mission parameters would give them, especially the newbies, a reason to make it home. Just do the job, de-sync, and get back to your bunk.
The handlers cleared out of Joker’s room, and vents opened on each wall. A viscous red liquid poured out and began filling the room. It was the final touch to making Joker feel like she was being shoved back into the womb. The “womb juice” was heavier by the gallon than just about anything else, so Joker in all her equipment floated in the middle of it.
Encased in the thick liquid shell, hard feedbacks would be absorbed by the womb juice instead of her body, turning what could be a spine-breaking blow into a jolt against her back. As many times as it had saved her life, Joker still had to force herself to breathe it in and remember that she could breathe oxygen through it just as well as air.
Once the liquid reached the top of the chamber, a tinny voice in her ear announced: “Pilot-to-Golem sequence activated.” Just like that a nauseous feeling overcame here, and where before she had been a pony swimming in a red gunk, now she was in a metal body looking down over the earth.
The same sensors connected to her brain that allowed her to instantly communicate with her other pilots and receive feedback also acted as rerouting her thoughts from her body’s highway, connecting the electrical impulses in her brain via magic into the half-magic, half-machine brain of her Golem. She was still aware of her real body, but it was like a distant thought, a picture hanging on the wall.
Truth be told, she liked her Golem body better. Several thousand kilograms of steel infused with magic and bristling with the most powerful weapons ever conceived by ponykind was more secure than the weak flesh and blood she normally wore. Then again, that might have been the Golem talking, she thought. With so much magic in them, the Golems weren’t completely machine, and could take over if a pilot wasn’t careful; another one of the reasons to keep the umbilical cord around.
With a shake of her mechanical head, Joker turned on her comm array, built into the tips of her Golem’s ears. “Joker successfully loaded into Golem V-113, Thief. Running diagnostics scan now,” she said, back on the moon where it was broadcasted through her helmet.
Back in Thief—the brass’ name, not hers—Joker quickly ran through the diagnostics exam, which was more just mentally kicking every part of Thief to see if it was still working right. Missiles? Loaded. Chain guns? Wound up. Beam guns? Primed.
She shook her steel body back and forth to check the joins and reactions—normal, as usual. Joker smiled when she did it, though. Being back in Thief was good. The newer Mark V and Mark VI Golems seemed more timberwolf than pony in appearance, compared to the first models, but she preferred it that way.
Joker looked down toward her target, exactly thirty five thousand, seven hundred and eighty six kilometers below. Thief hung from the geostationary launch platform only by a clamp on its back, with its limbs pointed toward the world below. The first few times Joker launched, she had stared in awe at the world below, at how deep the greens and blues were compared to the stark gray and white she had always known. Now, returning only meant she’d be risking her life all over again.
“Diagnostics are green, Thief is looking mean,” Joker said into the comm. “Golem ready for drop.”
Eleven other voices rose in chorus with her own in quick succession. They were all the nasally, high-pitched tones of new pilots, and Joker rolled her eyes. Or, thought she did anyway. Golems didn’t actually have eyes, just a multitude of cameras all over their bodies to see out of, and she couldn’t see herself back on the moon.
Silence prevailed over the comms for a full minute. Joker waited on the last pilot to check in for a few more seconds, then keyed a private channel to Mom. “Hey, everything alright up there? I’m reading green across the board down here.”
No answer, and her private channel was wiped away for her. Joker sighed and waited along with the rest of the pilots. Her metal limbs twitched, and her steel maw filled with teeth that could bite through boulders hung open in anticipation. She felt like a runner at the starting line, pumped up and waiting on the gun.
Finally, Mom’s voice came over the open channel. Her voice shook; not enough for a new pilot to notice, but for a veteran it was enough. “Pilot Goose did not make it through the Pilot-to-Golem sequence,” she said, enunciating every word carefully. “Goose’s position in Fireteam Philomena will be filled by Pilot Joker. Pilot Joker’s previous assignment to support the Mark V fireteams around Sugarcube Corner will go unfilled. Good luck, boys and girls. Drop in five.”
There was no time to argue or protest; not even enough time to grieve. A thick clamshell of steel coated in ceramic descended over Thief, securing her in darkness. A countdown timer appeared in the corner of Joker’s vision. 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .
A small jet on the top of the clamshell ignited and sent Thief hurtling toward the earth’s surface. Joker’s mind raced the whole time. She had trained in the sims and pored over mission data for hours with the intent of veering off from the Mark VI fireteams and joining the Mark Vs. If Thief hadn’t been sent back to the moon to repair its magic cortex, Joker would already be with the Mark Vs. But supporting Mark VIs? There was a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, and it wasn’t from the orbital freefall.
A private chat opened on her comm, and she keyed over to it. The voice that came from it was only vaguely familiar; Pilot Jaeger or Lager or something like that; Fireteam Philomena’s leader. Mouthy, from what she remembered.
“So you’re the pilot they decided to dust the mothballs off and send into battle,” Jaeger said. “Figures that they’d give you to me; Mom knows me and my other two pilots can make up for whatever slack you’re going to leave us with. Goose was always the weak horn anyway.”
Joker groaned inwardly. “Look, rook, I’m not here to mess up your squad. The Mark V has more explosives than the Mark VI, so just give me the grenadier position, and we’ll—”
“Rook? Do not even dare call me rook!” Jaeger exploded. “I’ve run more sims than you and gotten more scouting hours than anypony else in this whole operation! Just because you’re old as Luna doesn’t mean you get to call me a rookie! You’re taking Goose’s rifle position, and that’s final. Listen to me, do everything I say, and shut up so maybe we can both forget about this whole mess when the operation’s over.”
The private comm channel clicked off. Joker shook her head and gave a small prayer to Celestia that they’d make it back in one piece. The last thing she needed was Thief getting ripped to shreds again.
The clamshell around her—burning red hot from atmospheric entry—finally burst off, leaving Thief falling through open air. With any luck, the extra parts of the entry shield would confuse any Brutes below. Thief’s own entry jets engaged, slowing her descent. A succession of parachutes engaged and tore off, further slowing down the metal beasts’ impact speed until, at last, Joker just let herself fall.
She landed with a massive crunch. A fallen log exploded into splinters around her, and the ground cratered inward from the thousands of kilograms of metal landing in one precise spot. Thief itself was unharmed, and after a good shake, showed green across the board.
A sparkling, magic-powered heads up display appeared in the corner of her vision, marking the location of her new fireteam, just a few dozen meters to the west. She heard them land, the ground-shaking thumps of Golems coming down hard. All across her comms channel, war cries and whoops of combat fever exploded from Mark V and Mark VI pilots alike.
Mom’s voice came over the cacophony, just for a moment. “All pilots are in the green; Operation Sugar Rush is a go,” she said. “Golems, move out!”