Chapter 21
Sparky was more than a little afraid at what Yuri had in mind for them. Oleg had since put the bags back over their heads, and many more NKVD agents had come in and shuffled them out and into the back of a truck. Oleg and Yuri took to the driver compartment and started the truck up. Before they knew it they were on their way to whatever the NKVD had planned for them.
‘You know?’ DC Hopely said. ‘Considering the situation we’re in right now? It might have been easier to let the Præsidium Spetsnaz hijack the Madame La Salle’.
Sparky turned towards the direction, or at least, what she thought was the direction of DC Hopely and scowled at her. ‘No it wouldn’t have been! Innocent people could have gotten hurt!’
‘Oh? So now you care about other people? When did this happen?’ Amarilla said sarcastically from the back of the truck.
Sparky felt herself overcome with anger at the statement. ‘Amarilla! Shut up okay! It’s my fault. I know it’s my fault! I couldn’t forget it even if I wanted to! So just... SHUT UP!’ Sparky cried out.
The entire cargo hold of the truck fell silent, as if they were all afraid to say anything. Sparky’s eyes began to water, and she fell over onto the floor, overcome by grief and guilt. This was her fault, all of it was her fault, her and this damn cutie mark that appeared out of nowhere. She’d run off from home after getting it. She turned Dizzy into a target of opportunity for the Ponyville Police Service’s heavily corrupt Serious and Organised Crime Group when they went out to look for the jamming device in Olde Towne. She’d forced DC Hopely into permanent exile by making her to choose between her and Dizzy, and DCI Auditore. Grandma V and Shortfuse had to leave with them because of what Sparky did, and now she’d gotten Amarilla and Juan Carlos wrapped up in this huge mess that she had created, completely against their will.
Sparky couldn’t do anything right. She started to cry. She then felt someone brush up against her, it was Dizzy, by the feel of the nephite’s CO19 riot barding vest against her. ‘Sparky...’ Dizzy began.
‘Leave me alone... just... just leave me alone!’ Sparky said between sobs. ‘This is all my fault... all my fault... I’m so sorry I got you all wrapped up in all this, I was selfish, and I got us all into this mess... if I’d just stayed at home like Grandma V told me...’
‘If you just stayed at home, then the Spetsnaz would have hijacked the Madame La Salle and people might have gotten hurt, and not to mention, it was our easiest option to get to the Præsidium, but you said no, that we’d find another way!’ Dizzy said. ‘You did something good!’
‘They still took me and Juan Carlos!’ Amarilla said.
‘And we’re sorry that happened, but stop being so hard on Sparky. She’s smart, she’ll think of something!’ Dizzy said.
Amarilla said nothing, but she didn’t need to. Sparky knew now that she had been telling the truth, she was a difficult person to get along with, for some reason or another, but that didn’t matter now. She sat back up and looked around to... or well, at least, where she thought the rest of her friends were sitting. ‘Like it or not, we’re all in this together now, if we’re going to get out of this in one piece, we have to work as a team. Otherwise, the NKVD wins... I’ll think of something... we just need to...’
The truck shuddered slightly, and changed its position suddenly and Sparky fell back onto the floor from the sudden change. The truck had just gone up a ramp. They heard the engine shut off and the doors to the driver compartment open up, followed by the sound of a number of latches click, as if they were securing the truck to the ground... but why would they do that?
Then they heard the ear shattering shrill of a jet engine roaring to life. They’d just been loaded onto an aeroplane. Suddenly, the aeroplane jolted, shooting off at full thrust and causing all of them to slide back towards the cargo door of the truck and, involuntarily piling up on each other.
‘Sparky... you’re sitting on my face!’ Amarilla called out.
‘What?!’ Sparky cried out, the roar of the engines and the cloth bag over her head made it very difficult to hear.
‘YOU. ARE. SITTING. ON. MY. FACE!’ Amarilla called out again.
‘I’m last in a race?’ Sparky asked. ‘That doesn’t even make sense!’
Amarilla growled loudly in annoyance. ‘Never mind!’
...
The aeroplane levelled out soon enough, and with the balance of aeroplane in the air, they were able to shift back to more comfortable positions. The engines had gotten quieter, indicating that they had been forced to accelerate quickly, likely having a shorter runway than what they should have had for takeoff.
Everyone did their best to try and get some rest. With the exception of Juan Carlos and Sparky, each for different reasons, Sparky’s oversleeping on the Madame La Salle had meant that she wasn’t tried enough to be able to try to sleep even if he wanted to, or at least, so logic held.
Juan Carlos, on the other hoof... hand... talon... whatever, was attempting to undo his bonds. Sparky could hear him struggling and he tried to snap them.
‘You really should stop, you’re going to hurt yourself!’ Sparky said.
Juan Carlos did not reply, though, Sparky wasn’t surprised by that. He did not speak her language, and she wasn’t about to wake up Amarilla to ask her to translate. Sparky tried her best to come up with a plan, but she really had no idea where to go with anything. They had obviously left the Hispaña Third Republic, probably on a direct course for Præsidium aerospace, but to where? Where exactly were Yuri and Oleg taking them?
...
Sparky must have dozed off during the flight, because now she found herself awake, having slid, along with the rest of her party, towards the front of the cargo hold of the truck. ‘Amarilla... I think you’re sitting on my face!’ she cried out.
‘I’m sorry, what was that? I CAN’T HEAR YOU!’ Amarilla cried out mockingly.
The aeroplane was descending, they must have gotten close to their destination, and a few minutes later, they felt it touching down on the ground, causing them all to slide back to the other end of the cargo hold once more before coming to a complete stop.
One of the NKVD must have opened the door to the truck’s cargo hold, as Sparky felt them all fall out of the back of the truck and land in a pile on the ground.
‘Why me?’ Amarilla groaned from the bottom of the pile.
‘Ah shut up, I’m one hundred and twenty six years old! And you don’t see me complaining!’ Grandma V cried out.
Amarilla mumbled something incoherent as NKVD Agents picked them up and marched them down the aeroplane’s exit ramp. Once they were outside, the cloth bags over their heads were removed. Sparky shut her eyes tightly expecting light to blind her, but as she slowly opened them up again, she discovered that it was dark out. She looked around and discovered that they were in an airfield in the middle of grassland plains... out in the middle of nowhere.
She turned around and looked, that was when she saw it, several hundred metres away was a tall launch pad intended for rockets. She knew instantly where they were. This was the Tyuratam Cosmodrome, the home base of the entire Præsidium space programme.
She turned back around and looked at Yuri in confusion, why would they have been brought here?
Yuri smiled, and ordered their bonds to be severed. All of the party were now free to walk around... in a most relative meaning of the word. They were in the heart of the Præsidium, they weren’t free to go anywhere.
‘Now you are here, you will learn what we want of you!’ Yuri said as he began trotting towards the launch pad that Sparky had seen off in the distance. ‘As you know, Discovery One mission includes three members of Præsidium Air Force, they are now dead, no one knows what happen. Everyone wants to know. Which is why we find out first, our government readies this ship to launch and we are sending you along to find out’.
Sparky’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t be serious. ‘What? You want us to go into space?!’ she cried out.
‘Dah!’ Yuri said with a nod. ‘You have necessary skill sets to do job’, he said, pointing to Sparky. ‘You are FutureTec Systems Analyst, you know how to operate the Discovery One’s computer’, he said, then he looked to Shortfuse and pointed at her. ‘You are software engineer, you will find out what went wrong with FutureTec VI’, he said, then turned to DC Hopely. ‘You speak Cossack, you will translate between our crew and yours!’
He then turned to look at Grandma V. ‘You are old mare, do not know what you’re purpose is yet, will find out and let you know’.
‘Thanks’, Grandma V said sarcastically, rolling her eyes at him.
Yuri then turned his head towards Amarilla and Juan Carlos. ‘Gryphon is good heavy lifter, and hispaña mare will speak for him!’
Amarilla looked more than a little worried at that statement, but she realised that she had no choice. They were all stuck here, and they were all going into space, whether they liked it or not.
‘And you... you are nephite machinist!’ Yuri said, pointing to Dizzy.
‘That’s nephite missionary!’ Dizzy corrected.
Yuri blinked several times, as if processing the response that he had been given. ‘Eh, close enough’, he said eventually. ‘Congratulations! You are all going to space!’