//------------------------------//
// Chapter 18: Avalon 
// Story: Harmony Defended 
// by Starscribe 
//------------------------------//

The jungle was thick, forcing the Fury to fly far higher than they wanted to. None of the ponies aboard had any illusions about its invincibility, particularly now that Celestia was gone. The jungle this far south was known to be the home of dangerous creatures, every bit as bad as the Everfree. Flying so high might well broadcast their coming to every large predator in the area. They couldn't fly lower through the trees, but if they went too high they might not be able to find the ruins they were looking for.

"So you're sayin' this was part of Equestria?" Apple Bloom sounded doubtful. "It sure don't look like ponies ever lived here. These trees are outta control!"

Pip didn't remove the binoculars from his eyes as he searched, at least not to look at his audience. Occasionally he glanced away and down at the map on the ground at his hooves, somehow reading the chicken-scratch even at that distance. "A thousand years ago, yes. A magical artifact protected the settlements here from the jungle and all the predators inside. It was destroyed during the Lunar Rebellion."

"Oh." Apple Bloom seemed mollified. "But that ain't what we're lookin' for?"

Pip shook his head. "It was destroyed."

"We don't need to stop a jungle from growing right now, we need to open a portal." Chance was glad nopony had asked more about what had happened here during the Lunar Rebellion. After becoming so close to Princess Luna, Chance had become almost as sensitive to the topic as Luna herself. Maybe her friends realized that and that was why they didn't ask. "A really big portal. Celestia said that the one who knew the secret was somepony named Avalon."

"Not a pony," Pip corrected, though he didn't look away from his search. "Avalon was a diamond dog. Back then, relations were much worse than today. Diamond dogs frequently captured and enslaved ponies, provoking skirmishes wherever these foalnappings happened. The story goes that after one of these battles, the local militia killed all the attacking diamond dogs and found that one of their young was left behind. With the local tribe wiped out they didn't know where to take the pup, so some older ponies raised him."

"I don't see what this has to do with getting a human spaceship into Equestria," Scootaloo called from the helm, annoyed. "Or why we have to fly so low."

Pip echoed her annoyance. "Because this diamond dog was one of the most intelligent beings to ever live! The Starswirl the Bearded of inventions. Of course he didn't have much to work with. Back then ponies didn't understand electricity, or chemistry, or advanced agriculture. The stories about some of the things Avalon came up with anyway are... staggering."

"He built a laboratory and a factory here, before there were names for either of those things. Six hundred years later, the first electric lights were built using some of his designs. Flush toilets, hot water... Everything." For the first time, he glanced away from the jungle and back towards the eagerly listening ponies, grinning. "But things didn't get interesting until he got old. Diamond dogs don't live as long as ponies, and the story goes that he started to go crazy. His inventions started making less sense, or stopped working altogether. Like, he invented this house all made from cement, and a flying machine that couldn't fly..."

"Anyway, about ten years after he started making things he stopped letting ponies into his lab. Huge machines would pile up dirt every day, and ponies thought he must have finally decided to be a proper diamond dog. Eventually he stopped sending his inventions out into Equestria, and warned the ponies that there were traps in his lab now and he didn't want anyone coming anymore."

"Another decade went by, and ponies thought he had died. Nobody came in or out of the labs, not even to bring food. But then Nightmare Moon came, and it turned out Avalon was alive after all. He emerged from the lab with all sorts of strange weapons, driving off her army and giving the ponies of the city time to escape. But Nightmare Moon herself couldn’t be driven off, and she confronted him. Nopony saw what happened, but Nightmare Moon continued on towards Canterlot and nopony saw Avalon again.”

“His lab is still here, though, and the old factory. The machines never stopped running when he died. The power he used to fight off Nightmare Moon’s whole army by himself is still here, somewhere. Explorers have tried before… but unlike lots of old ruins, this one has machines that keep everything running even today. The traps are so dangerous, Daring Do herself refused to come here.”

“If Daring Do won’t come here, what makes us think that we can do it?” Scootaloo asked, as she began to slow the ship. “Even Rainbow Dash looks up to that pegasus, and she saves Equestria all the time!”

“I always thought it was a team effort.” Sweetie Belle sounded annoyed. “Don’t you get it, Scootaloo? The story makes it sound like Avalon had machines and stuff. We have machines too, remember? We can just disable the traps."

“Oh yeah.” 

Second Chance wasn’t sure it was going to be that easy, but she was too distracted by her own thoughts to actually say so. Luna had seemed to think Avalon might be alive, which didn’t seem possible for several reasons. Nightmare Moon had not been known to leave her enemies alive. Even if she had spared this diamond dog though, she wasn’t sure how he could still be alive. Alicorns lived that long, and maybe a few unicorns had managed to stretch their years that much with powerful spells. Starswirl the Bearded had refused to die until his work was complete.

Very little was known about diamond dogs, but the best guess among zoologists was that they lived between twenty and forty years, with childhoods so rapid they reached sexual maturity within a year or two. They had no magic, nor the capacity to learn it. They had no eldritch rituals like dragons, no innate magical focus like unicorns. So why did Luna think there was any chance he was still around after all this time? 

Chance got the sense that Luna had known things she hadn’t said. She could hardly be upset about that, not with the danger Equestria was now in. She had evacuations to conduct!

Maybe Chance could figure it out. She had a feeling the answer was in the technology. Diamond dogs weren’t exactly known for their intellect: why had this one been able to figure things out all the ponies around him couldn’t?

Chance left her friends to search and to argue and walked back belowdecks, to one of the screens mounted on the wall. “Truth, Celestia said the information about Avalon was in a book. Did the book have illustrations, or descriptions of what he might have looked like?”

Truth’s virtual image appeared briefly on the screen, a glowing blue stallion with “0x1” for a cutie mark. Of course no magic had been involved in the selection, no destiny, but Chance admired the simplicity of it all the same. A computer’s way of representing something was true. “So you have a brain after all? Here I thought that was why you had invented computers, so you wouldn’t have to figure things out.”

Chance ignored the sarcasm. The thought of what was going on back in Equestria proper, of her sister surrounded by mind-controlled humans. The thought of the Free People’s Army mind-controlled and puppeted into serving the purposes of the Outside, meant her soul was too cold to enjoy his humor just now. “Your reaction suggests I’m right with my suspicions.”

Truth nodded, seeming to prance across the screen. As he did, images appeared. Images of the moon from orbit, of the massive city that Avalon had been, the glittering pride of human engineering. “Too much of a coincidence for you? It gets sooooo much better. You know what diamond dog names sound like? They translate to things like 'Earthmover' and 'Quickfinder.' Usually two-word phrases reflecting their environment, or their talents. They earn their names like ponies earn their cutie marks. Not Avalon, though. He was raised by ponies, and they named him right away. His father was the city magistrate and his mother was the city clerk, so they both kept excellent personal records. Much of Avalon’s story comes from their writings. Get this…”

His voice changed, becoming higher and dryer; Chance pictured a stern librarian, a mare with a white mane and thick glasses. Truth’s appearance did not change to make things easier on her, unfortunately. “The strange vessel was made from a metal we cannot identify; it did not chip or dent with pressure from steel or iron, though diamond was able to scratch it. It was smooth and round, like a sphere crushed with great pressure, yet there were no signs of weakness or deformation. The surface had been worn down to its metallic base, though a few symbols were visible.”

“Written in the Precursor script, the phonetic translation is 'Avalon,' followed by numbers. We assumed these marks must be the infant’s name. The fact that such care had been taken to give the infant somewhere safe to rest during the day’s efforts suggests it must have been the offspring of the clan’s alpha-couple…”

“No way. They found a hairless infant in a metal capsule and just assume it must have been a diamond dog and that they were more advanced than ponies thought? I bet when he grew up…”

“We think that instead of being the offspring of clan leaders, Avalon must have been isolated as the deformed child that he is. His claws never properly developed, and his paws are freakish and unsuited to proper motion. Most diamond dogs seem to prefer quadrupedal locomotion like civilized creatures, but Avalon is clearly unsuited. Without prompting he walks on his hind legs alone, and returns to that position unless pressured not to."

"No way." Chance shook her head. "You're making this up now."

Truth's voice returned to normal, though only for a brief few moments. "I haven't even read my favorite!"

Chance raised her eyebrows, not so much an invitation to continue, but he did anyway. "Avalon continues to fail to grow the fur necessary to protect himself from wind and cold, and seems uncomfortable in all but the mildest weather. We have sewn a faux-fur outfit for him to wear, in a brown roughly matching what little fur he has, in the hopes it will protect him from harm as well as help him fit in around the city."

She laughed. Chance couldn't help it. The absurdity was too much. "So he was just human, then. The strange metal, the precursor speech... That was a clue already. But he walks on two legs and didn't grow any fur. It's amazing anyone ever thought of him as a diamond dog."

Truth shrugged. "Just leaves his inventions themselves as the mystery. Ponies aren't any less intelligent than humans, yet the stories about him indicate he either invented or had access to post-industrial technologies. Automation, assembly lines, replaceable parts, the scientific method. Producing X-Rays using vacuum tubes and inducing a charge with magnets. The writings we still have could have easily come from Tesla or Edison during the nineteenth century... Except that those people hadn't been born yet."

"Don't pretend like that matters. You know as well as I do travel between universes makes time irrelevant." She took a deep breath. "Do you... think he could have come from Avalon? Maybe this is where it disappeared to..."

Truth was silent for a moment, considering. "The description of the container they found him in is consistent with some of our prototypes for human cryogenics. When I left those techniques hadn't been perfected, but it's possible Avalon solved the crystallization problem after arriving here..."

"Suppose... As our working theory... Avalon vanished to Equestria, only it got ripped off the moon and jammed underground on Equus somewhere."

"For some reason."

"Right. Do you have Avalon transmission codes somewhere? I know the city vanished long before you were built, but..."

"The entire archive, yes." Truth puffed out his chest on the screen, looking proud. “I have them. Would you like me to transmit them?"

Chance grimaced. "No, I want you to read them out loud... Of course transmit them!"

Truth paused, though he made no visual sign of effort. Not that he would; this was only an avatar, a simulation made to make interacting with organics easier. Chance had no reservations about talking to plain cubes of metal, but she had expected to need to interact with illustrations and the like and that was easiest with a real screen. Her Nanophage could support high-band data transmissions, but after learning about the virus they had all stopped using those. Just because it couldn't affect ponies yet didn't mean that it wouldn't figure out how eventually.

"Uplink established with Central Computer of the SCIENCE VESSEL GWYN AP NUDD. Incoming transmission:" The screen filled with numbers and symbols, in three regular groups. Chance recognized them as spatial coordinates, of the sort intersolar ships used to represent position based on the angle of the star from galactic center and the distance to several nearby stars.

"Where is that?"

Chance almost never had the satisfaction of watching Truth take a moment to answer a question. Even if the limits came from the requirement to reference orbiting satellites and not his own processing power, it was nice to have a reminder that he wasn't omniscient. 

"Less than a kilometer. Overriding navigation." The ship swerved abruptly, and Chance was nearly flung from her hooves. She managed to resist a painful fall by pressing herself to the nearest wall. Without another word, she turned and stumbled back onto the deck.

Scootaloo was pounding on the controls, angry. "Truth, give me back my ship!" The others looked confused, though Pip was the quickest to recover. Chance stepped into the center of the group and spoke loud enough for all of them to hear. "Truth and I think we figured out part of what's going on here; it's connected to humans somehow. We sent a transmission on a bandwidth we don't usually use, and got a position sent back to us; probably the location of the lab." She put a hoof on Scootaloo's shoulder. "We're so close, it's easier for Truth to fly us there than to explain to you where there is."

Scootaloo stopped banging on the controls, muttering: "Could've warned me first."

"Should have," Chance agreed, loudly. "What if somepony had been leaning off the balcony or something?"

"Sorry." Truth's voice over the radio didn't sound sorry. "Being patient with organics is a full time job."

"We should'a left you back in the castle," Apple Bloom said. "We don't take grumps on adventures."

All conversation was silenced as they dropped into the trees, zipping by within a hoof's distance more than once. At their present speed it took only moments to drop through the canopy into the jungle proper. Beneath them, the ground was already retracting, opening up into a cavernous chamber many times larger than the Fury. It was easily the size of the largest lunar drydock, with dark stone walls and old electric spotlights set in at regular intervals. With the grinding of electric motors they allowed the Fury passage, and with similar groans they began to seal the metal ceiling closed above them, sealing them in the darkness of the depths.


* * *


"PREPARE FOR HIGH ALTITUDE DROP!"

The command came so loudly and harshly that Applejack was jarred violently into an alert position in her chair, which was all the more painful with the restraints still in place. Almost no sooner had the command come than the lift platform settled into place behind her and a single human figure stepped out. Applejack didn't recognize this particular human, but she hadn't exactly met that many. When he spoke, the radio transmission came with the prefix S_RYAN, which she could only assume was his name. He wasn't the one who had shouted. No, that had been Pinkie Pie.

"I'm your squad leader," the voice said over the radio. There was no accent to it, he merely sounded confident and friendly. "Ryan, you can call me. The four of us are going to supervise the evacuation; Sigaal figures you can get the civilians to cooperate easier than humans could." Applejack liked him already; he hadn't said "natives." "There's been a development: according to the satellites, advanced scouts of the goblins made it through the artificial stormfront and are already besieging the town. From the look of it, the population has already lost several of the outlying farm areas and are gathering near city hall. This will make evacuation easier than we thought, but also means holding the settlement unill the carriers return could be extremely difficult."

"The captain is still goin' through wit' the evacuation?" Applejack removed the restraints and got to her hooves, grateful to be standing. "I thought humans cared more about strategy than savin' ponies."

The human turned to face Applejack. Of course she could not see his face, not with the helmet between them, but she imagined harsh eyes behind the mirrored glass. "Maybe the Steel Tower would just extract a box full of cortical recorders and have done, but the Sons of Barsoom aren't like that." He formed a fist with one hand and slammed it into his breastplate, which clanged loudly in the confined space. Pinkie Pie gleefully imitated the gesture behind his back, though she didn't make as much noise. "Nil mortalibus ardui est!"

Applejack blinked, but had no idea what Ryan was trying to tell her. These were all the same sort of humans, right? Why did they have so many different languages, anyway? "Is that 'yer way'a sayin' we're gonna' save the ponies no matter what?"

Pinkie Pie was suddenly right beside her, helmet retracted so that she could see her face. "As if you haven't read the Odes," she said, voice as scathing as Pinkie Pie could ever sound. 

Ryan ignored this exchange entirely. "In about thirty seconds, we'll be over town square. We're going to drop during the flyby, while the carrier continues on to drop the rest of the unit along the ridge outside of the settlement. The carriers should be back within ten minutes; we have to have the population ready to load up by then."

Applejack turned away from her friend, looking back up at Ryan. "That should be easy. Appaloosa is mostly earth ponies. We know how 'teh get work done mighty quick."

A siren began to sound around them, along with the words, "Prepare for drop!" bellowed over the internal speakers. Even Pinkie Pie had the good sense to put her helmet on then. Her big brother stood up, as calm as anything.

"You ready Big Mac?" she asked, bumping shoulders with him the way they always did when one of them was trying to reassure the other.

"Nope." He returned the gesture, though there was no time to say anything else.

"Everyone spread out!" Ryan shouted over the radio, standing near one of the walls. "We don't want to strike each other during the jump. Don't use the parachute override, and be careful not to impale yourself on anything." He moved his hands rapidly, attaching the large rifle he had been carrying to metal brackets on his back, where the armor's magnets would make sure it didn't go anywhere during the jump.

Applejack obeyed the command, and the four of them stood as far apart as the small chamber permitted. There was a loud, wailing cry from the speakers, and the floor abruptly opened beneath them.

Applejack had very little experience with flight. Aside from a few trips in a hot air balloon and a few visits to Cloudsdale, she had no experience with altitude. She wasn't ashamed to admit she was more than a little afraid of heights. Earth ponies were meant to have their hooves firmly rooted on the ground. The carrier hadn't been bad; even while moving at spectacular speed there had always been solid-feeling metal beneath her.

The sky opened beneath her almost cloudlessly, an endless ocean of blue. Applejack had taken high jumps into water before, and in some ways the feeling of downward momentum was similar. Only there was no water to catch her, only the air spreading her hooves apart as it grew more forceful. She started to tumble head-over-hooves, until the armor's rockets kicked in and corrected the spin.

"Everythin' is just fine," she muttered to herself, her voice shaking. "Armor's takin' care of it. Just gotta think of what I'll say teh' get the ponies movin' when 'ah get down."

Pinkie Pie zoomed past her, her front legs gathered together as though she were diving into a pond. "WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" she shouted over the radio, loud enough for Applejack to hear her over the violent roar of the air.

Every second the sound was louder, like an angry animal was gathering itself around her and trying to buffet her around in the air. It was hard to tell how high she was; there was an ocean of slightly different shades of brown down there speckled with green. Was this what a pegasus saw when it was in a high-altitude dive? She would make sure to be more enthusiastic the next time she complemented Rainbow Dash after one of her shows. Come to think of it, Twilight seemed to be avoiding the subject whenever anypony asked where Rainbow was assigned right now...

This wasn't the time for her mind to wander. The engines on her back fired in little blasts, directing her into what seemed to be clear ground. There were the orchards, and the buildings, and the railroad tracks cutting across the wilderness. The center of town appeared to be crowded tight with ponies, sheltering behind barricades of wagons and other detritus blocking off the streets. Of the buffalo tribe there was no sign, for which Applejack was grateful. If their herd was nearby, that would make evacuation extremely complex.

Applejack directed her armor towards a patch of ground just outside the wagon barricade, so she wouldn't accidentally land on anypony. The ground seemed to be approaching rapidly now, far faster than a gallop. Faster than Applejack had ever moved outside a machine. The altimeter in her helmet scrolled down almost faster than her eyes could follow. At exactly 500 meters, there was a loud bang from behind her, an explosion of air as her parachute deployed, followed by a jerk as it tugged her upward. Rockets engaged in her armor, even as it constricted her movement so she couldn't move her hooves and push herself the wrong way. Breakneck speed dropped to almost nothing so quickly Applejack felt as though her whole body had been struck from all sides, and she was completely winded.

Dirt scattered in a billowing cloud under the force from her rockets, charred black. As she neared the surface, she could already feel the parachute retracting back into her armor. Her hooves landed with a thump, barely more forceful than a jump from a few feet. She panted, letting the cloud settle a little before she took her first few glances around. They were all there, spread out for thirty meters or so of road.

"Identify yerselves!" came the fearful shout through the gradually settling cloud of dust and smoke. "You got five seconds 'afore we shoot!"

Applejack immediately stepped forward, retracting her helmet even as she shouted. "Braeburn, you best be doin' nothin' of the kind! It's yer cousins and friends! We'd have a hard time helpin' if you shoot!"

As the dust cleared, she could see a ragtag band of ponies behind the barricade, gripping muskets or standing behind their cannons. A few had armor from the Guard, though very little of it seemed to be in good condition. "Applejack?"

She closed a little more of the distance, and by the time she had Pinkie Pie was at her side and Big Mac not far behind. Ryan kept his distance, for which she was grateful. Humans might have been a common sight in Ponyville and Canterlot lately, and stories of them had probably traveled to the bigger cities. Appaloosa was not one of those, though. No doubt most of the ponies here barely knew there was a war. "In the flesh!" She kept walking forward, and none of the ponies at the barricade showed any sign of using their weapons. Why wasn't any of the army here?

"What are you doin' here, cousin? That's mighty impressive jumpin' outta the sky, but-"

Applejack cut him off. "The goblins'll be here mighty soon, but we can get everypony out!" Mutters and whispers passed between the ponies at the barricade, though all of them seemed to have abandoned the pretense of keeping on their weapons. Strange armor or not, Applejack was a familiar face around here, and probably related to half of them if you traced things back far enough.

She was standing right before the barricade now, looking up at them. It was far from impressive; fallen wagons and carts, along with sandbags and some hastily-erected timbers.  This barricade wouldn't stop even a small force of goblins.

"We were promised we wouldn't have to leave!" That wasn't her cousin's shout, though it was familiar. She couldn't remember the name of the pony, though he was clearly young. Too young to be out fighting a war. "The army will protect us! They're out there fighting right now!"

"Well that's silly!" Pinkie Pie exclaimed. "If you thought that, why'd you make this wall?"

That silenced him, and Applejack seized on the opportunity. "Listen, we don't got time ta' be arguin'! There ain't no other rescue comin'... it's now 'er never!" She jumped with all her might, landing smoothly on the barricade. "Come on!"

For a moment it seemed like these ponies were going to argue with her. Then there was a distant boom, like thunder, though Applejack's false memories identified it as the 700mm shells from one of the tanks. Soon other sounds joined it, most prominently the anti-air turrets and fifty-caliber guns. If there was going to be any further argument, this silenced it.

"Back to town square!" he called. "Leave the cannons. They weren't loaded anyway..."

Soon they were all on their way through the empty streets, galloping as quickly as they could. Or rather, as quickly as the ponies without powered-armor assistance could gallop. This seemed to suit Ryan fine, who looked to be straining near the capabilities of his armor just to keep up.

"Where'd you... get that armor?" Braeburn asked as they ran together. Maybe he thought he was keeping pace with her. She hoped he didn't notice that she wasn't even breathing hard. "The army had new... armor but... not like yours..." They passed boarded-up homes and closed storefronts, though every now and then she glimpsed a face cowering inside. Her armor probably wasn't helping to reassure these ponies.

"The humans asked for earth pony volunteers, to see if we would be any good to fight with." She gestured at Ryan with a flick of one of her ears. "This here's Ryan, he's one of 'em. They're the ones who're gonna get all of you to the Crystal Empire."

"A whole town? I didn't... hear a train..."

They could see the crowd of ponies now, so thick in the street it was difficult to see a way through. Soon they had to slow to a walk. A platform had been erected, and Applejack recognized the mayor standing there. He had been giving some sort of speech, though at the sight of the approaching strangers he fell silent, staring. The crowd turned to look, and their murmurs fell to stillness. In the quiet before anypony said anything, there was only the distant rumble of the tanks, the pat-a-pat of machine guns.

This was why they had asked for ponies, situations just like this. This town might not believe Ryan if he were alone, might not cooperate. Where would they be then? It wasn't as though the humans could force them and defend them at the same time. Applejack moved forward, and the crowd parted for her. Pinkie Pie and Big Mac remained below with her cousin, but Ryan was soon at her side. With his towering form, the space only spread wider. Their ten minutes were already half gone.

She said nothing until she was standing on the platform. Ryan did not climb up beside her but waited just at the base, turning to face the audience even as she did. This man was shrewd. Applejack cleared her throat, then spoke as loudly and confidently as she could. "Listen; we don't got lotsa' time, so I'll be quick. You ponies already know there's a big army comin' your way. There ain't nothin' nopony can do to stop it, only slow it down like what the pegasi did with their storm. We're gonna hold 'em off, but we can't fight the whole army. There're a couple of big airships comin', the biggest airships you ever saw. There's room for everypony in town, but you've got to hurry! Grab whatever you can carry and everypony who ain't here, and get back here right away! We'll take you straight to the Crystal Empire - it's already set up for ponies evacuating from Equestria proper, so you don't need to worry one bit if you'll be taken care of."

Unhappy murmurs passed through the crowd, but nopony started moving. Applejack looked around for help, but her cousin looked too fearful to do anything. The mayor was no help at all, and from the expressions she saw on ponies faces they were far from happy about having to evacuate. After being promised that they wouldn't have to move, this change in plan was bound to cause resentment.

Ryan saved her, with the mechanical grinding as his helmet retracted. She saw pale skin now, with lots of little brownish spots and brilliant red hair. She'd never seen so much color on a human's mane before. She couldn't actually see his face, however, since he was facing the crowd of ponies and not her. When he spoke, his voice carried well. His Equestrian was a little accented, as all humans sounded, but it was easy enough to understand.

"Listen up! What Applejack just told you is exactly correct! There is an army bearing down on you. They will make it through the storm. The Equestrian army is not coming to save you. If we weren't here, the invaders would be standing right where you are in less than an hour!" There was a harsh mechanical sound from above them; the force of the ionic manifold engines lifting the carriers as they zoomed towards the town. Ponies gasped on the edge of panic, but Ryan stopped them. "Those are the airships your Princess sent to get you out of here. Either you get on and ride to safety, or we leave you behind and the lot of you end up captured and enslaved. It's up to you!"

Braeburn spoke up, eyes tracking the gigantic form of the first of the carriers as it slowed above them, descending on the nearest patch of empty ground large enough to hold it, resting in one of the lots meant to receive future construction. "Is it safe, Applejack? You wouldn't lie to us; will these strangers really get us safe to the Crystal Empire?"

Again the weight of the crowd seem to focus down on her, an almost crushing pressure. She considered her answer carefully, not willing to risk even a slight chance that she might not be telling them the truth. She went back through the memories of training they had given her; of the lessons they gave to each human soldier in this group. First in, last out. Never leave a soldier behind. Their own leadership, their own version of the Princess, was in great danger. Yet they hadn't abandoned their mission to protect Appaloosa. They hadn't given up on the ponies here even when it was clear they would have to put their own lives at risk to evacuate them.

"Absolutely!" she cried. "Without a doubt, they'll get you out safe'n sound... but only if you hurry!" She turned to the mayor, and lowered her voice to normal conversation volume. "If you could supervise the evacuation, Mr. Mayor. Two groups, one for each of the airships. We've got maybe ten minutes to get everypony loaded and the ships in the air."

No sooner had earth pony muscle and ingenuity been set to the task than it was done. Every citizen was accounted for, and divided into two groups based on familial ties. Soon Applejack was looking up at the retreating carriers, as their outlines began to shimmer and melt into the sky with their refractive camouflage. Only then could she finally breathe easy; though for her the danger was only just beginning.


* * *


Pipsqueak led the way down the gangplank, a spotlight shining from his shoulder. The ground was mostly bare in here, aside from a thick carpet of dust and little piles of plant-matter, no doubt from when the roof overhead had been opened.

"Wonder what used to be in here," Sweetie Belle muttered, a flashlight floating in her magic. Scootaloo, perhaps more pragmatically, had slipped into one of the rifle harnesses, along with a helmet. Chance thought it made her look a little silly, but she wasn't about to say so.

Pip nodded approvingly. "Good thinking. Avalon can't have known we would come in an airship; must mean he had one too. Levitation spells hadn't been placed into crystals back then, and diamond dogs don't have magic, so it must have been technological. Couldn't have been any other sort of vehicle, or else it wouldn't be able to get in and out."

"He wasn't a diamond dog." Chance cantered down the ramp behind them, slowing down before she collided with the backs of her friends. She had her engineering saddlebags, tools and tablet ready to go, but none of the tools common to adventuring. No chalk, or ten-foot-poles, or lengths of rope, or hooded lanterns anyway.

Several pairs of eyes turned on her. "What do you mean?" Pip was indignant. "Everypony knows this story. Avalon is a diamond dog in every single version!"

"Well, the stories are wrong. Truth and I think he was actually human." The party hadn't stopped moving, through the stale air towards the only doorway. "Avalon isn't an Equestrian word, it's Welsh... that's a human language. It was the name of the largest moon colony we built. It disappeared when I was just a child, like magic. Metal buildings and underground tunnels ripped right off the moon, radiation so intense that the rocks still glow red at night around it, even after all these years."

"Avalon was the last joint project between the two big human factions, before either one had solidified into full-blown governments. Avalon's disappearance was the spark that ended the world government and got both sides preparing for war." Most of the others had slowed down, letting her walk beside Pip. She was grateful for that, and not just because she wanted to be as near to him as possible. Mostly it was because he knew more about exploring old ruins than any of them. Just because they had been invited inside did not mean that it would be safe. "Think about it: the name of a missing human colony, and machines a thousand years more advanced than anything in Equestria. Diamond dogs aren't that much smarter than ponies, are they?"

Apple Bloom laughed, though less loudly than usual.

Pip was the first to reach the door, thick and metallic like a bank vault. He began fiddling with it. "Could be you're right. I don't know what difference it could make, all these years later. He couldn't still be alive."

"Probably not," Chance agreed, watching the space around them every moment. If they triggered any traps, her magic was ready. "But it changes his motivations, doesn't it? Means he probably never cared about piling up gems and gold the way diamond dogs do. If he built traps and defenses, they weren't to protect his hoard."

"So you're saying..." Pip grunted a moment as he wedged his hoof against a wheel-shaped extension of the door. "The traps won't be meant to kill everypony, because not everypony who comes is a thief." There was a click, and the door began sliding downward. From somewhere just beyond came the sound of a rushing wind, a torrential gale that buffeted them back from the door as it began to open. Their party drew well back, until the door was fully open and the wind had settled to a stiff breeze blowing down. Behind the door was a ramp stretching into the dark, easily wide enough for the whole party to walk abreast, and several times their height. Even the tallest humans could have walked here in comfort.

The halls seemed melted from the stone more than carved. The sides were smooth, free from the slightest crack that might evidence the action of water. There was no dust, no sign of cobwebs. No sign at all a thousand years had passed in this place. Nor was there any motion from inside, not until Pip crossed the threshold. At once, a series of flickering lights began to glow from overhead, and it took only a few moments before they had resolved into an even white glow. A breeze was suddenly blowing at their backs, drawing the air past them into the depths. Motors rumbled in the far distance.

"Electric lights that still work after a thousand years?" Apple Bloom looked towards the ceiling, with great skepticism. "No way."

Sweetie Belle took a few brave steps into the newly-lighted chamber. Nothing lept out to attack her. "It's not that strange. I bet there wasn't any oxygen in here... no water, no oxidation, and you lose most of what makes things get old."

"We also have self-repairing nanomaterials and hyperstable compounds," Chance added, helpfully. "Equestria's about two centuries away from inventing them, and I'm not really sure you want to. Some of these chemicals are practically immune to decay." She looked nervously to Pip. This might be a little more evidence this was indeed a human facility (as if she needed convincing), but he was still the seasoned explorer.

Her trust was well-placed. The bottom of the corkscrewing ramp brought them to another door, which produced the sound of rushing air again when they opened it. They were ready this time though, and none of them were close enough to be battered. Beyond the door was a massive complex, made from stainless steel instead of stone. There were defenses; false paths, collapsing walls, security robots. In every case it seemed as though the facility were steering them, directing them away from forbidden paths and down towards some unknown destination.

Perhaps two hours after their exploration had begun, they reached what seemed to be the last blockade between them and the laboratory of Avalon. Chance was sure this was the last, because it was by far the most dangerous of any of the obstructions they had encountered. Automatic doors closed behind them, sealing them into a chamber perhaps twenty feet long and ending in a face of smooth and fearless metal. There were no side-passages, though no sooner had they all moved past the newly-closed door than a shaft opened beneath it. The distance was tremendous, and fires burned in the flickering darkness there.

A voice spoke then, from speakers they could not see. It was the voice of an old man, with a thick and strange accent. The words were unmistakably English, but not the English of a native speaker. It was the English of someone who had learned using textbooks and pronunciation guides. "If you have made it this far, then you are at the doors to my lab, my life's work is buried still. This technology might very well be the undoing of this peaceful world; I will not give it into the possession of conquerors. You have shown yourself to be strong and determined to make it this far; are you also wise and kind? I have no magic to test your soul and I cannot examine your mind, so forgive me if the inadequacy of this test costs you your lives. Know that your death comes to preserve Equestria's peace."

The strange male voice went abruptly quiet, replaced with a distant and haunting music. The strains of the harp might have been beautiful, were it not for the fact that the further wall had started pushing slowly towards the opening and the sure fall to their deaths that waited there.

"Uh..." Pip's expression was blank. "What did that voice say? What's it asking us to do?"

Of course, her other friends could speak and understand English by now, through years of long practice and the presence of the Nanophage.

"Not sure..." Chance tried to ping Truth, but found to her sudden panic that not only were they not connected, but they hadn't been for nearly an hour now. No doubt they had been so caught up in their exploring they had failed to notice when the regular pings hadn't reached him. Not that Chance should be surprised; they had no radio repeaters, and there had to be a mile of metal and stone above them now. "Truth can't help us, we're too deep underground."

Scootaloo bucked the advancing wall with all her might, with little effect. She fired her weapon, but the accelerator only dug a foot into the metal without affecting the advance in the slightest.

"Don't!" Chance called, panicked. "You can't fire a gun in a confined metal space; bullets bounce!"

Scootaloo's eyes widened, and she took a different tack, digging her hooves into the ground and trying to stop the wall. "Help me, Apple Bloom! Pipsqueak!"

They did, though if the advancing wall was really slowing the effect was barely noticeable, and already hooves were sliding over the edge.

Chance did the only thing she could think of, the one thing her mother in Equestria had told her could solve any problem; magic. A simple spell focused in her panicked intensity solidified the air over the opening, so that the wall could not push them into the void. Indeed, the barrier stopped at the boundary of the shaft. No doubt the human mind that had created this trap hadn't thought about it from a magical perspective. He had built this section of the chamber smooth, without places to hold or secure ropes, but hadn't thought to have the wall keep going and force them down.

Unfortunately the trap didn't just reset right then, and holding the spell took almost all of Chance's concentration. She wouldn't be able to hold the spell forever, and when it failed... Scootaloo might be okay, if there was a way out of the shaft that didn't end in flames. The rest of them not so much.

"I've heard this before." Sweetie Belle was the only one not presently engaged in great effort; chance to hold up the floor and all the other ponies pushing against the wall without effect. "Isn't it from a play?"

Chance made the connection in a flash of insight. "That time you asked about human musicals!" She tried to place the melody, but found that even that much thought strained her concentration to the breaking point, and she had to stop.

Sweetie Belle didn't need any further prompting, though. Her special talent was music after all, she did not need encouragement to sing. She waited only long enough for the track to loop back from the beginning. Chance was amazed she had somehow remembered the words and the tune, though it was a little strange to hear this song from a female vocalist. The small chamber with its magic floor made the sound reverberate very strangely. Even so, the sound was beautiful.

The wall began to retract. They took their first steps back onto solid ground, following the wall as it moved along the track. Sweetie Belle was breathing hard as she finished the song, but that didn't stop the door from vanishing into the floor, opening into the massive laboratory beyond.

"No way-" Chance was panting too, though from the effort of the spell. "A musical key from an ancient Earth play? How's that supposed to test anything?"

"It's supposed to test to see if you're the sort of pony who knows that song," Pip supplied. "Not every trap has to make sense, Chance. They just have to make sense to the ones who built them."

"I don't know why he built any of them." She was recovering a little; at least enough to move forward into the chamber beyond. They stood on a balcony, overlooking an enormous room. It looked to her like the floor of a defunct modern factory. Assembly robots were scattered about on the tables of parts and pieces, inert and quiet. Passages opened on the lower level in several directions, though she had eyes only for the doors on their own level. She could see the flicker of servers through a set of glass doors. If the information they were looking for was stored here at all, they could find it there.

She gestured with a hoof. "That's where we need to go. Hopefully the master computer will be in there. We can get our information and escape without any more Daring Do impressions."

The party split up then, as the other crusaders insisted on exploring the lower level. Pip refused not to accompany Chance to the computers, since he was sure that "the others could take care of themselves." But there was no sign of further traps or barricades in their way, and the doors to the central computer opened without resistance.

"In case the human song as a key wasn't enough of a giveaway." Chance gestured at a little blue logo on the racks of servers. "That's the logo of a human computer company; they had a manufacturing plant in the Avalon colony. This is..." She passed between the rows of servers, shivering a little at the chill. The environmental systems were still keeping the servers cold after all these years. "a fairly old design, nowhere near as powerful as Truth. More than enough to run a small city, though. And that-" she gestured, "is holographic data storage. Capacity is almost infinite, but read times increase the more information you store."

Pip hadn't walked very far into the room. Rather, he stood at the door, eyes casting about almost like a guard. Stallions and human males weren't all that different then, really. Both seemed to want to take the role of protector to their mates. Or for the ones they wanted to be their mates, anyway. "Can you get what we need?"

She shrugged. "It would be easier with Truth's help, but I can manage. This was my job, once." She found a working console and attempted to make a mental connection, with no effect. With a groan she dragged an old rolling-chair with her teeth, and climbed gingerly onto it so she could look down at the keyboard. Out of habit she extended her hooves to the keys, only to sigh. Somehow, she didn't think she was going to enjoy the next few hours very much.