Out & About in the Equestrian Kingdom
by Midnight Shadow
Chapter 9
With every second that passed as the security system remained down, I grew more and more agitated. Velvet, though, seemed unflapped. In fact, she seemed even more impassive than Rogers had been when I'd first met him.
"Calm down, Wild," she said nonchalantly to me, biting off the words as she only half-peered over her shoulder. "First thing to remember when pulling off a heist is to not let the excitement get to you. You'll get sloppy." She grinned, then reached inside Rogers' coat and pulled out a large metal ring with several sets of keys, and a longish, flexible-shafted hammer-like object.
"What is…?"
"You've been around a while, right, Oats?" she began, eyeing the lock on the door as she sorted through her key collection.
"I guess?"
"Do you ever miss locking your door? You know, with a real lock and key?"
"I—" I thought back. I used to miss it, actually, a long time ago. Over the years, though, I'd got used to just walking up to my door and having it open. I grinned, and nodded.
Velvet smiled. "Same here. But I kind of miss opening a door with a real key, too. So I took up a hobby." She brandished the keyring and the odd-looking hammer. I blinked. Then I took another look at the door before gazing back at her with an incredulous expression.
"Are you telling me you can pick a lock?"
"Yup." She turned to the door, narrowing her eyes. "Hmm. Full mortise, flat steel key… I really should improve security around here some day, and fit a proper Chubb lock. This will be a doddle. Total clean install."
"...You designed the security system?" I squeaked. I glanced around in surprise at the ordinary, gunmetal-green corridor, lit by the archaic, faintly buzzing strip lighting.
"Of course I did. I upgraded it after the first time I got caught breaking in, when they 'offered me a job'." She air-quoted, then pointed to me, gesturing at my body. I nodded, understanding blossoming. "Though not enough, apparently. The whole setup's still totally shanty."
She picked out one ordinary looking key after another, trying them out until one slid into the lock all the way, then started rhythmically hammering on it as she turned it gently. Seconds later, the key turned and the door opened with an innocent-sounding click.
"Seriously?" I deadpanned. "We're after something so important that I was brain-hacked for it, and the door opens almost on the first try?"
Velvet straightened, then nodded. "Only because any full-frontal attack on this station that could actually get anybody in is almost certain to fail. Unless you happened to have built the system, are already recognized enough to shut it down for a 'test' and can get past an ancient, obsolete security system that's so old nobody knows how to defeat it any more." She stepped into the room beyond, laughing, then gestured after me. "Come on, Wild. We're still likely to fail, and I won't be able to accept my inevitable reassignment if I don't find out just what Rog found."
I swallowed, and my knees felt weaker than ever. "I don't want to be reassigned!" I wailed, shivering.
"Oh relax, Wild. You'll just get a slap on the fetlocks. You belong to Celestia, and it's your first offence, besides. Now, fire up your helmet and tell me what's been touched. Broad spectrum, biologicals and non."
I nodded, mouth very dry, as I stepped through the door. The helmet I was wearing flared up into multi-spectrum analysis mode as it examined the spacious, dimly-lit area. The storeroom was obviously original; it had been fixed up with plascrete in multiple places, but it was structurally sound and well tended, if dusty. Rows of simple LED bulbs – in-place replacements for obsolete incandescent-type bulbs, of all things – hung from the ceiling, illuminating metal-bracket free-standing shelves. On them were stacked boxes upon boxes of evidence, each neatly labelled with their respective case-codes. In moments, my helmet was picking out where multiple previous occupants of the room had stood and what they had touched. It offered combat advice based on calculated sizes, weights and capabilities, along with the suggested profiles of those occupants. I transmitted the pertinent overlay to Velvet, picking out the relevant evidence boxes. One was further from the others. As Velvet walked towards it, I voiced the nagging concern I'd had ever since I'd agreed to go along with the crazy plan in the first place.
"Velvet, uh… what makes you think it's even in here?"
"Oh, Wild…" Velvet laughed.
Rogers' voice made it sound warm and friendly, though more than a little condescending. I plastered my ears against my head and bared my teeth before pouting.
"I think I get what Rog sees in you," Velvet said with a smirk, tapping me on my muzzle. "Think like an AI. How much smarter do you think they are than us mere mortals?"
"Um, a lot?" I asked, pricking one of my ears up in confusion as Velvet yanked on the most-likely box and hefted it to the ground.
"A lot." She nodded. "So much so that they overestimate their own abilities sometimes. Honestly? There are few places in this country more secure than a police station. We've got almost zero chance of getting out of here with what we're looking for, you know. The flipside, however, is it's going to be here if it's anywhere. The fifteen – or whichever subprocess was overseeing the job – had no idea what it was you found yesterday. I still don't, but I do know they've been scrambling ever since. I asked Penrose, my avvy, to look into it. He says it's bad mojo, but I'm committed. The agents of the fifteen, they figured it was as safe here as anywhere else. They didn't want to destroy it for obvious reasons. They just had it hidden… and I think we're in luck!"
Velvet in her Rogers suit had been digging through the odd box, picking out and examining odd devices one at a time, until she found one that the manifest said did not belong. Checking it against the stored object simulacrum, she nodded as she stood up straight.
"Is that it?" I asked. I honestly couldn't remember what I'd seen a day ago. My brain was relatively fuzzy about such things, and I knew for a fact my neocortical memory store had been compromised at least once. The helmet declined to pass judgement on less than satisfactory levels of data.
"I'm not sure, and that probably means it is."
"Well now what?"
Velvet grinned, threw the object in the air, caught it and pocketed it in one smooth motion. "What do you think we do? We run!"
***
Mint Julep circled the cottage lazily before perching on a small outcropping of cloud. The dwelling was a non-descript wooden affair nestled in a freshly-cut clearing, deep in the dark forest that covered the foothills of the foal mountains. A single plume of smoke rose up into the rose-tinted evening sky from a makeshift cobblestone chimney as a lone earth pony split kindling in the garden, an axe held in his muzzle. His grunts and the meaty sound of metal on wood filled the air.
"That our guy?" asked Rogers, leaning precariously over the pegasus' neck as he peered down into the gloom.
"Certainly looks like it," murmured Julep. "Keep an eye out, I'm going down."
Rogers huffed, a small plume of smoke rising from his nostrils. "For what?"
"You tell me. I can name a dozen creatures that could be hiding in the shadows. Just because they don't touch him doesn't mean they won't skin us."
"You think he's protected?"
"I think he's an earth-mage. Can't you…? No, I guess you wouldn't know what I mean."
"Magic?" Rogers lifted an eyeridge.
"How did you think I was sitting on this cloud?" Julep fluffed her feathers indignantly. "If you think you can cloudwalk, give it a try."
Rogers ran a claw through the fluffy whiteness that surrounded them. "I'll take your word for it."
"Good thing too." Julep smirked, then gave Rogers a kiss on his forehead. "I'd hate our first meeting with Haft to be a screaming hatchling dropping on his head." She stood up and stretched her wings, then hopped over the edge and fell like a brick. To his credit, Rogers managed to emit little more than a strained squeak as the ground came up to meet them.
Mere feet from the turf, the mare flared her wings and swooped in a tight arc around the perimeter of the clearing before dropping to the ground into a quick gallop. She bled speed quickly, folded her wings and came to a stop before an unimpressed Bronze Haft.
"I wondered how long it'd take 'fore somepony came looking for me," he huffed. The pony was slate grey with white socks around three of his hooves. On his flank was a silvern axe adorned with a brilliant white ring. Piercing blue eyes peered out from beneath a jet-black shock of a mane that fell over his muzzle. He snorted in contempt. "I must say, though, I thought y'all had given up on me."
"We're, uh, sorry to disturb—" began Julep.
"Y'all ain't disturbin' me none. Ain't much to be disturbed. Ain't got much to do. Used to be a painter. I don't do that no more. Now I just chop wood and plow fields. If I were of a more generous nature, I'd spout some bullshit like 'the earth is my canvas', but now we know that ain't rightly true."
"I'm sorry, but—"
"And 'fore you ask, no, I'm not satisfied. Hard to be satisfied when you're a prisoner."
"Oh." Julep furrowed her brow, digging a hoof into the ground thoughtfully. Rogers reached again for his non-existent hat as Julep fell silent. The salmon-hued hatchling hopped down and stretched, popping and cracking his back, then approached the stallion.
"You know, we've come a long way to meet you, sir, but if this is a bad time—"
"Can't rightly say as there's any time better or worse," Haft interjected. "Any day is much the same as the rest, 'round here. Been here nigh on three year, don't see that changin'."
"You do know you can just… uh…" Julep gestured with a hoof, off into the darkness.
"Aye, I could, but what good would it do me? All this is hers. I can't go back where I was, and I won't…" Haft paused. Then he tutted, spat, and gestured to his cabin. "Look, y'all might as well come in, seems you want the whole sordid tale. Won't rain tonight, the wood'll keep. It always does when I need it to."
Turning somewhat defeatedly, the stallion led the way into his house, chattering all the while. "Built this place meself. It took me a few tries, but Equestria's forgivin' like that. It helps I can ask th'plants to hold it all up." He tapped a hind hoof against the walls as he stepped through the open front door, two solid thunks sounding through the timbers, before he trotted further inside. Rogers peered closer: the beams were little more than solid tree trunks piled one atop another, and thick vines grew through what tiny gaps remained, sealing out the chill of the night air. A latticework of creepers surrounded the walls right up to the roof, which the dragon realized now was covered with grass.
"I see what you mean about earth-mage," Rogers murmured to Julep. "Does every pony get that?"
Julep shook her head. "Depends on the individual, sometimes the shard," she replied. She shook herself and trotted into the cottage. "Come on," she said over her shoulder, "let's get inside where it's warmer."
The interior of the cottage was as rustic and spartan as the outside, save for one odd, incongruous object floating freely above a plinth on the mantle behind a little cast-iron pot-bellied stove. It drew the eyes like motion in an otherwise still scene. Rogers hopped down from Julep's back and waddled towards it almost as soon as they'd cleared the doorway. He was too small to touch it, tucked away as it was up and out of his reach, but he nevertheless stood in front of it, staring.
"Won'nered how long it'd take y'all to notice that. Tell me, strangers, what do y'all think it is?"
"I… I don't…" Julep began. She shook her head thoughtfully. "I'll say one thing: it doesn't belong here in this world."
"You're right," grumbled Rogers. "It's not built from the same interface at all, even half blind like I am, I can tell that. It's an avatar for… something else, from somewhere else."
"Aye, that it is," said Haft. He trotted up next to Roger, took a deep breath, and sighed. "Say hello to all that is left of the man I used to be."
***
You wouldn't think running through a glorified office building would be all that exhausting, and to tell you the truth, it wasn't... well, it was – by every reliable metric from the battery of medchines that made their home in my bloodstream, I was stressing my recently traited body to the limit – but thanks to an unhealthy dose of fear-induced adrenalin coursing through my veins, I wasn't yet feeling it.
Velvet panted as she ran ahead of me – Rogers' older body may have had several upgrades, but older is older, and he hadn't traded up. She twitched her head to the side as she fired another logic-bomb at the frantically rebooting security system, but it was no good; the semi-aware Mil-spec systems had grown impatient with the extended testing and were now actively labelling Velvet as persona non-grata. They were shutting out her access rights one daemon at a time, killing her marauding sub-processes and freeing the resources she was trying her hardest to lock down.
Finally, the system came fully online, hardened itself against all intruders, issued a general alert and locked down the building. I winced as the datastream between us and Buttercup fluttered, momentarily slowing to a walk.
"Keep up, Wild!" called Velvet, straightening up as she persuaded another set of doors to open a few feet ahead of me.
"I'm keeping, I'm keeping!" I grumbled back, picking up the pace. "Where are we going, anyway?"
"Where to doesn't matter," she called over her shoulder as she leaned into my helmet's smarts and ran a quick search through possible pathways, "it's where from that matters."
I narrowed my eyes and mentally poked my battle helmet again. It was being suspiciously quiet, not anticipating as much as I'd hoped.
Angry at the substandard responses, Darillo reached out for Mortimer. The GPS daemon fluffed herself up at his approach, but allowed him to take hold. Whatever he said to her, he was persuasive, because moments later, the testy little creature booted up some software upgrades and fluttered off, slipping into Station's 'net. A query to Darillo rendered nothing useful in reply, only a toothy grin.
He hadn't led me wrong so far, so I let it go and put the bulk of my attention back on my helmet and its twitchy interface. Trying to persuade it that what were ordinarily good things were instead, in this special case, things to get upset about was proving relatively difficult. Still, I'd almost got it cra—
Uh oh.
"Velvet, stop! Don't open that—!"
My warning was too late. Velvet turned to face me as the double doors she'd been hacking swung open. I took a single step back, lowered my head and pawed at the ground.
"What? You wanna lead? Sure, I'll let you…" she turned. "Oh. Oh, that's… that's not good."
A chorus of growls drowned out the epithets that followed, as the resident K9 squad – surely set loose by at least one of Station's mindernodes – squared up against us.
"Velvet, those are highly trained, highly strung and very obedient members of the canine division. Do not make any sudden moves."
"You don't have to tell me twice. Any chance you can nobble them?"
I shook my head tersely at her question. "They aren't the sort of defence mechanism you can just reset, though they do usually obey the station master."
"Guess not then, unless you know who let the dogs out."
Police work may have changed in the years since police-persons were really needed for anything other than solving personal disputes, but the K9 squad had never gone away, and with the new and improved uplifted units the Fey had been breeding since the red tape went away, they were even better than ever.
When I'd first started getting truly interested in the idea, I had been somewhat surprised that K9 traiting had never really become a thing, but then I'd figured that most canine traitees were more 'wolf' than 'dog', or at least so they claimed. The idea of following orders rarely came easily to the sort of person who fancied themselves an improved, sexier version of a werewolf. The upshot of that was that we only had to deal with ordinary, every-day, super-intelligent, super-strong, super-fast and resourceful full-blooded, battle-trained weapons.
Yeah, I decided, that's it, we're boned.
"Velvet?" I hazarded, stepping back tentatively.
"Yeah?" Velvet asked, backing up with me.
"Remember what we were doing before? I think we should do it again."
We ran.
"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!" I mentally kicked myself; despite the whole thing being batshit insane with zero chance of success, I was angry at being caught by something so obvious as mecha-mutts. However, having twigged that the dogs were to be avoided, my helmet had rapidly mapped out several new escape routes – and I didn't quite feel like giving up.
We'd not got more than a couple of feet when crunch-time came, the microseconds expanding as my neocortex ran a ghost program on top of my usual sensorum. I could feel Darillo grumbling in the background about my lack of true defensive wetware, but I mentally quashed him.
"Left or right?" sent Velvet, her right foot in motion, mere moments from impacting the ground. Precious milliseconds would be lost if I delayed answering. Pathing programs and intel subroutines warred behind my eyes, and I grew increasingly frustrated.
Then, with a flutter of virtual feathers, the choice was made for me. Mortimer returned from her sojourn in the wider world, and she had returned bearing gifts: reinforcements had been called, and had been tracing our steps. They'd blocked off the lower levels. Despite Darillo's strong leaning towards the underground – whether that was part of his programming or just common sense I wasn't sure – I had no alternative now but to risk heading upwards.
"To the right! Shift it, I'll bust us through!" Deciding it was now or never, Darillo uploaded himself to my forebrain – merging before my conscious meat mind realized what was going on – muscling in on my behavioural routines and taking charge. With new vigour, I thundered around the corner, careening off the plaster-covered walls as I surged past Velvet, lowering my head and slamming straight through the next set of doors. The tactical helmet took the impact, and then I was heading up the stairs. "Velvet, sure you can keep up?" I called back.
"I'm okay for now, this body's in good shape," Velvet lied. Her pulse was high, and respiration was uneven.
"Won't matter soon anyway," I huffed. "This'll be over before you get winded. How're our boys and girls back home?"
"Buttercup says he's under attack, but nothing he can't stave off, so fa— damn it!"
I blinked. "Had to jinx it, didn't you?" I growled. Buttercup's datastream had gone down – as had our joint sensorum – and we were now flying blind.
"Ohh this isn't good, this isn't good at all!" Velvet repeatedly tried to hook into my helmet, transferring her motive functions to a slave routine before diving into the link. Despite her best efforts, though, she could not get it back. We were not only being blocked, we'd been completely shut out, with only cursory bio-statistics making their way through some very low bandwidth links.
"You mean more not good than being chased by hounds?" I grumbled.
"Definitely," snorted Velvet. "You don't understand, there is nothing that can shut down this link!"
"Tell that to whoever did it!" I spat.
"It's just not possible," Velvet hissed. "This is a rotating steganographic cypher based on a morphic progression salt – without decrypting the entire sequence in real time, there's no way in hell to lock us out! They won't know the spread spectrum key let alone the frequency map! And it's an infinite sequence!"
"That sounds hard."
"It's impossible, without…" Velvet paused – mentally, that is, we'd not stopped running as the dogs were literally nipping at our heels – thinking hard.
"So it's not impossible, I take it?" I smirked, mental fangs bared in laughter.
"Not without building another impossible machine for the task." Velvet brought up the schematics of the strange device we'd liberated from the evidence locker, it floated in my peripheral vision, low resolution and indistinct as only the most basic links were stable under the blackout, despite my helmet's best efforts. Velvet started swearing. "Ohh no, no, no. This is bad. If they've actually brought in quantum decryptors, then they really want this back."
"Didn't we know that at the beginning?" I replied, nonplussed.
"No," replied Velvet flatly, "we didn't. Buy me some time, Wild, buy it now."
"As my lady wishes," I replied. "Cover your ears, just in case."
As we emerged into an upper canteen of some sort, I spun, slamming into tables, sending them flying. Some crashed into the ceiling, shattering lights and sending the room into semi-darkness. I was glad the building had been emptied as soon as the situation had begun, it was standard procedure to avoid hostages and the inevitable paperwork from bodyloss.
Velvet leaped over the airborne furniture, shoes squeaking as she came to a halt. "Do it," she said, and clapped her hands to her head. I nodded, and engaged countermeasures.
Immediately, the still-charging canines howled and whined, tensing or going limp, all of them flailing madly and impacting the floor and the detritus spread about upon it. Members of the pack spun where they lay, whirling wildly as they kicked their hind legs, pawing at their heads with their front paws.
I gritted my teeth and forced my body upright – the aural bombardment was loud and painful, a pervasive woodpecker boring into my skull. I turned off my hearing almost immediately – it would probably mean a trip to a regen clinic later as the countermeasures would almost certainly be damaging my nerves, but at least I'd be able to function for now.
I straightened and turned, Velvet was dusting herself off, having cautiously taken her hands away from her head. Other than some obvious discomfort, the sounds weren't bothering her much – they were out of the human frequency range. She was mouthing something. Lip-reading programs sprung into action.
"Good work, Wild."
I nodded, then tapped a hoof to my head, wiggling my ears.
"Ah, gotcha. How long will it last?"
I cocked my head to one side, interrogating the helmet. That was going to be a problem. The battery had hours of time left, and I could lock out the controls so they'd have to physically destroy the unit – pretty difficult, as it was designed to be as close to indestructible as possible – but as soon as I left the area, the dogs would recover. I grinned, ferally, and flipped the device off my head, kicking it under a table. I overrode the safeties, and the volume increased. I didn't want to hurt the dogs, but it wasn't like I had a choice.
I sprinted past her, then looked back.
"That wasn't what I meant," she mouthed.
I just stuck my tongue out, then gestured with my head up the corridor. She shook her head.
"Can't, I need to interrogate our little prize, Wild. Badly. Real badly."
I gave her a look. "You can rest all you want when we're safe," I said, moving my jaw with exaggerated motions.
"You're deaf, Wild, not dumb. Just talk normally. Tell you what, come here…" Velvet reached out a hand, and suddenly I could hear her again. "They can block our radio, but they can't block induction. You want to get us somewhere safe, and I know I need to check out what we found. You can't hear, and I can. Remember our lessons on equestrianism?"
"Get on," I said, gritting my teeth and nodding. "I'm your faithful steed, aren't I?"
"You know, Wild? I'm really going to miss this when they mulch what's left after they catch us," she said, as she heaved Rogers' body up onto my back, digging her hands into my mane.
"They'll have to catch us first."
***