//------------------------------// // Toothpick // Story: The Light Despondent // by Doctor Fluffy //------------------------------// Some folks got the patience of the angels Not me, my heart, well, it yearns for vengeance When I leave their place, I'm gonna leave it smoking Hearts to be healed and their ribs to be broken Hearts to be healed and their ribs to be broken When I leave their place, I'm bound to leave it smoking Gas to the floor, I see no moving ground Park brake holds me down Release and I'm halfway across my town Eat red lights, chew tram tracks Stole my morals, I don't need them back Now they got a stand in a problem museum Evening is dull, stick a toothpick in their skull when I see them Biting Elbows, Toothpick ”He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is detestable. And it has a fascination, too, which goes to work upon hm. The fascination of the abomination - you know.” And back...you’re coming back… Back from madness, to lost innocence. From rage and pain, to love and care. Back to the filly named Dancing Day. “You’re saying you saw Kraber… around there?” Cheerilee asks you over a videoconference connection, concerned. Right now you’re in a building the PHL has commandeered for evac efforts - this one is in Littleton, not too far from Colebrook, and it used to be a big box store. It’s been fortified, and is patrolled by armed guards, though a small section of it extends into what was once a parking lot, open to the public and bristling with various PHL sensors. And autoturrets, of course. Though only a fool would try to bomb it. You’d been looking forward to seeing Quebec City, but Johnny, Kiki, and mommy have gotten scared, so they took a u-turn and drove back here for your safety. But it’s not a problem because you like Littleton - you like it a lot. From the car you could see that wonderful scenery surrounds the town and there are these two other foals to play with, Amber Maple and Rivet. Their pappa Mr. Aegis is almost as big as an actual Earth horse. On top of that, there’s a railroad running right through the town. Johnny says it’s just ‘come back’, and now trains go by all the time. The ones in Equestria seem so tiny by comparison, because these ‘diesels’ are massive, almost house-sized. On the way back, Johnny C asked your group detour through Bethlehem to visit what he calls a synagogue. You don’t…you don’t exactly know what it all means, or understand the language he speaks when in prayer, or the concept of a religion where your god(dess) can’t walk down and say hello, or praying to ask... some celestial weather team, you think?... that the weather will be better. You, and Mr. Aegis’ foals, liked Bethlehem as well, from the tiny glimpse you got to see. It’s a funny place, an artist’s town, and Johnny C claims to have many happy memories there. “Well, I didn’t see him, but Kiki did,” Johnny C explains to Miss Cherilee over the phone. “Same with Dancing Day and Astral Nectar.” He gestures you over. You would desperately like to be off indulging in summer activities, but evidently, you are needed for…’debriefing’? According to Johnny C, ‘briefs’ are human underwear, and that gives you a quick giggle. Viktor Marius Kraber, you think. You can’t believe you didn’t know it was him before. Not the worst of those horrible HLF man. That’d probably be that nasty Mr. Carter or his daughter. But Kraber’s certainly up there, and Kiki says he’s got enough crimes to his name to spend a looooong time in prison. “Ms. Palmer, do you think you can point out exactly where you were?” a local officer named Rachel Womack asks Kiki, one finger placed on a road map of Northern New Hampshire that has been projected onto the far wall. ‘Google Maps’ - that’s a funny name. You almost giggle, but want to seem grown up in front of these adults. “Hmmm...” Kiki says, holding up a large stick brought in from from outside, running it along the length of the road until she suddenly stops. “Right there.” Everypony, even little you, knows what Kraber has done, of course (to varying levels of detail). They also know that where there’s one HLF man, there’s probably more. Insanity loves company, after all. Nearby, Typewriter Ribbon, a PHL earth pony newsmare is typing something out on an awkward, ugly keyboard custom-made for hooves. She’s practicing using minor TK fields extruded from her hooves to work a normal human keyboard, but it’s not easy. The headline she is writing for the new PHL circular, the Beacon, says, rather unflatteringly: “Serial Killer Epidemic: The HLF are Nearby.” You later learn that ‘Serial Killer Epidemic’ is a common shorthand for the HLF, invented by a drunken Scotsman named Francis ‘Franco’ Begbie. There'd been other, catchier terms in his drunken tirade that were even now making its rounds on the internet, but 'serial killer epidemic' was the only one that was actually printable. Right now you wondering in all seriousness why anybody would want to hurt breakfast cereals. Count Chocula never hurt anyone. “Was anyone else you remember there?” asks Johnny C. Kiki and your Mom all look thoughtful, very wise and contemplative. You try to, even as someone offers ‘the brave little filly’ a chocolate chip cookie the size of your head. Gracefully you accept it, and try to chew on it in a manner that at least looks worldly and knowledgable. Yummy. Maybe Mr Kraber and his friends just need cookies like this to see why they’re on the wrong team… ...and then you shudder. No. No amount of cookies would be enough to ease the animal pain you’d seen in those nights, only the night before last. So what would help? What would a man like Mr Kraber need to feel happy? Because as much as you hated him in that moment when he had a gun in your face, you do feel sorry for him. There was something in him that had been torn out and might never come back. Nobody deserves to lose that much. As you ponder this dilemma, the grown-ups rattle off various details about the HLF members they hear. There are unfamiliar names tossed around, like “Randall Lovikov?” and a few others. “Thenardiers?” someone asks. “Could they be involved.” “Nah. This isn’t their territory, elusive bastards that they are. It’s not the most unbelievable thing I’ve heard, though,” Aegis says. Apparently he’s known for keeping silent. He seems very chatty now though, in a quiet sort of way. “But... why would Kraber do that?” He seems to be asking the same question of himself as you are. “Do what?” Rachel asks. “He let my friends live,” Aegis says, gesturing to Kiki, Mom, and yourself. “...why?” “Maybe he was planning on following you?” suggests Cheerilee. “Tailing you to your destination?” “No. We weren’t followed…” Kiki says. “I pulled over after five miles and parked in the bushes for ten minutes. Nobody from the HLF overtook us.” “There was this shifty-looking guy with a huge widow’s peak, green eyes, and stringy blond hair outside the bar, though,” your mom adds. “Looked like a starving coyote stuffed into human clothes.” “Did he do anything?” “No,” she says. “I feel kind of sorry for Mr Kraber,” you put in, and everyone looks at you like you’ve grown a second head. Aegis will say you’re far too calm for a young filly. You talk to him all the time whenever you meet up with him. After one of your magic lessons with the lovely Ms Nkiruka (a mare with beautiful black stripes all over her grey body), he says he worries about how you’ve grown up so fast, being on the run, being so afraid and hungry. “How are you going to go back to normal life after war?” he asked, and you thought at first that he was being silly. “No, wait, scratch that. What’ll normal be?” You pondered on that as much as you could. What’s the problem? It has been nice to unwind in New England, meeting locals who’ve taught you so many interesting skills and facts, like how to not leave a trail, or how to shoot a gun from the assault harness that’s being fitted for you. Honestly, you’re fine. What’s abnormal? Aegis later tells you that he suspected pony refugees are trying to become like natives of earth in a sort of rebellion against Equestrian propaganda, but he can’t prove it. He’s not a psychologist, and he hates those who posture themselves like that. Your main concern though is what will happen when the Barrier makes landfall? Will you and momma be on the run again? And more importantly, what about all your human friends, and the dozens of kind people you’ve met along the way. What will happen to them, and all the thousands (you’re getting good with big numbers!) of other people who live on Earth that have proven a ‘fucking’ lot nicer than some of the ponies back in Equestria. You’re getting good with ‘big’ words too. “You feel sorry...for Kraber, Dancing?” Mr Gransvoort says. “Really?” “Something really terrible happened to him,” you explain, glad to have the grown-ups listen to you, and trying to not look like a little kid. “I could see it,” you explain, gesturing with the cookie. “It was like there wasn’t anything behind his eyes…something had ripped what should be there out.” “Even so, can’t see why he’d have any pity,” Aegis said. “I saw him at Agua Caliente, and it was...” You are still for a moment as he continues speaking. Aegis tells you stories, but never talks about Agua Caliente, or, as it’s known among some troops, A.C, sometimes ‘Ass Crack’ or ‘Air Conditioner’. Whenever you ask him about it, all he’ll say is that “Agua Caliente was a grudge match curb stomp, not a battle.” You’re not sure what the means, but you have seen pictures of Agua Caliente looks - spells everywhere, grass and bushes growing over the buildings, and horrid bloodstains all over the ground, you gained some idea. You did wonder about the thousands of little holes visible throughout the pictures, but after trying out your new gun-saddle for the first time today, you now know bullet-holes when you see them. Thousands of them... “...it’s not his usual stomping ground but I doubted he’d have missed it for love or money,” Aegis is saying. “The bastard just had no mercy. That’s vouched for by the HLF suvivors - about all of whom are in our ranks now, or trying to reform-” Your mother and Johnny C snort at this. HLF reformists are, putting it lightly, delusional. “They’ve kept him on a short leash since.” “I met that man once,” says a mare named Tempest to the assembled PHL before her, a story flowing naturally from her mouth. “The mind of man is capable of anything - because everything is in it, all of the past as well as the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valor, rage - who can tell? - but truth - truth stripped of its cloak of time.” ”It was in Year One. Back in Innsbruck, before the Barrier started moving. The Three Weeks of Blood had left people confused and scared. Most, if not all of us ponies ‘Earthside’ had been horrified by Equestria’s actions, and yet that hasn’t stopped the riots. We had no idea what was going on, we still thought Equestria was Equestria, not an Empire. The army was sent in to control the city, and the local Bureau had gone ‘proactive’...kinda a precursor to the ‘official policy’ that was yet to come. They were herding humans in like cattle, saying that the Bureau was a secure place to ride out the violence, and then persuading as many as possible to take the potion. Enhanced persuasion methods were being used. And me, well I’m in like a neighborhood watch, just trying to keep the peace on our streets. And it’s hard...we’re fighting people who’ve gone made from the violence across the world, and the fights are getting uglier. Some of them are bringing guns, and we’re having to use knives and home supplies… That, that was the week when I made my first kill. Some kid with a shaved head, screaming about how Equestria was out to kill us all. She came at me with a police baton, and I closed my eyes and swung a box-cutter in my hoof TK...cut her right across the neck… But there was one man in the neighborhood who was worst. He just showed up with some other crazies, not locals, about two weeks into the madness, and gave us five or six days of hell, climaxing when they blew up the Bureau. Before that though they worked themselves up by going after equestrian expatriates, torching homes with molotov cocktails, flushing ponies out of burning houses and then laying into them with guns and cudgels. They had, like...military equipment. I think the German HLF found some old Nazi stashes lying around and distributed them. Because these guys were HLF...like new recruits inspired by the May Day attacks. And one of their worst thugs was a guy in a gasmask, weidling a baseball bat, a revolver, and an MG34. He didn’t care about anything-or-anyone. If anyone came at him, he’d hit them with the baseball bat, disassemble them with an LMG, just cut them up. Didn’t matter if you were neighborhood watch, police, army, or innocent - if you walked on hooves or associated with ponies, he butchered you. That man was Kraber. How’d I know that was him? Because there’s a video. Somebody filmed their escape outa the neighborhood with a smartphone, and caught footage of ponies running out a burning storefront, only for that bastard in the gas mask to pummel them with a bat and throw them back into the building. All the time, he’s screaming in Afrikaans, and at one point he bellows his name and pounds his chest like he’s fucking King Kong. Don’t watch it. I don’t want to know what expression he had under that gas mask. On the third day after his arrival, a police officer tried to arrest him...and Kraber just shot her in the leg, and belted her with his baseball bat till there wasn’t anything left to hit, ranting in more languages than I know. Knowing what I know now about guns, I don’t think he was shooting to kill, just to wound. Then he could get in close and beat the shit out of them with his hands. There are so many people that owe crippling injuries to that bastard. So many friends dead. Soldiers came after him, you know, right as he was putting the torch to this shop. And he killed them all. He would duck out of sight whenever they found him, open fire with that MG34, just chainsaw right through their body armor. The stragglers? For them he’d get up close, holding this quad-barreled ten-gauge, and cut them apart. The ones still standing got a taste of his knives. Always the same M.O. Wound from a distance, then get up close and...well, you get the picture. He killed children. Foals, even. He crushed the skulls of newfoals. He’d stab ponies to death, skin off their cutie marks. He hung Reitman’s activists from lampposts, garrotted them, left them to die of shrapnel in their windpipes.” “Let the fool gape and shudder - the man knows, and can look on without a wink. “There is so much blood on that man’s hands,” Tempest finishes. “From his week in Innsbruck alone, that it doesn’t matter how many of either side he killed. She looks hollowed out and empty. Momma had tried to cover your ears seconds into the story, but you’d ducked away and insisted that you needed to hear, and needed to understand. “...Kraber needs to go down,” Cherilee agrees onscreen. “Any trace that can lead the law right to him is valuable.” “Yeah,” mutters Mr Aegis. “And, if we’re lucky, it’ll open a bigger can of worms.” “Look Dancing,” Tempest says, “Don’t waste pity on the man. By the Golden Lyre, I don’t think there’s much left in him to separate him from the beasts...” And after what you’ve heard, you’re inclined to agree. “Principles? Principles won’t do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags - rags that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief. An appeal to me in this fiendish row - is there? Very well; I hear; I admit, but I have a voice too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced. Homebase ‘Marlow’, Maine “AWWWW... It’s so cute and fluffy!” Kraber laughed, petting the fluffy white samoyed dog that was currently trying to lick his face off. “Look at youuuu, oh, I just want to keep hugging-” “Are you quite finished?” Colonel Galt asked, glaring down at him. "...nah," Kraber said, verbally flipping off the commander of the Thenardier Guards with a shrug, before going back to petting the dog, who was panting, its tongue hanging out. They were in the back room of a hardware store in one of the towns outlying Portland, Maine. Kraber and his ‘escorts’ were in the company of Galt and that annoying Russian aide of his. Atlas Dagney fokking Galt. Despite all of his prattle about ‘equal opportunity for each man to prove his worth’, he was probably blanching at Defiance not having sent someone classier. What a snob. Still. That was Galt for you. The picture of the average HLF ‘code-head’, a commanding officer obsessed with phrases and codewords, obsessed with his own philosophy. Obsessed with making things by his own hands, be they tables, weapons, maps, plans, or units. But what Galt didn’t want to admit was that in this case he was a beggar, essentially forced to take what came to him - which, in this case, meant he had to take what few safehouses and allies he could get. If Galt had his way, his best options, they’d likely be in a hotel with some even more pompous codeword attached to it in official HLF communications, even if the so-called ‘communications’ were just children that were probably too young to remember things before the War, and almost certainly too young hold anything larger than barroom .32 pistols. He would’ve even taken a farm run by a sympathetic survivalist with a lot of guns, but all those contacts had dried up. The money, or at least what little of it was left nowadays, was in employing Earth Ponies as work to squeeze even larger yields out of the fields and orchards. That, and the fat government subsidy for employing earth ponies was too much for all but the most radically anti-government and anti-pony HLF to ignore. And the government had a nasty habit of confiscating the property of those who refused to provide for the country during wartime, like with Clive Mudget. “Bloody fascists!” was the HLF’s usual response to this. Which was why this meeting was at the back of this hardware store in Portland, instead of a farm like Mulvey’s. Galt was looking speculatively at the shelves, and giving particular attention to a shiny new Black & Decker power drill. “I see Birch isn’t here?” Kraber observed, taking a brief break to look up at the Thenardier Guards that had come to visit. “Why, you miss him?” asked one woman, a redhead in clothing that looked like it was made of more patches than original fabric. “Fok no!” Kraber said, briefly throwing up his hands. “Bastard’s got more neurosis than Woody Allen in a drugstore!” The Samoyed, belonging to the HLF sympathizer who owned the store, briefly looked up at him, making a high-pitched whine of concern. “No, no,” Kraber said, looking down at the dog, reassuring it. “I’m fine, I’m fine…” Searching for the animal’s name, he held up the dog’s tag. “...Fluffy. See, I’m fine, it’s just that Birch is batshit crazy,” he continued, still adressing the samoyed. ‘Fluffy’, cocked his head, visibly confused. Arroooo? “Well,” Kraber explanation. “Our boy Birch talks about seeing ponies kidnap people before the war, zionists, chemtrails, reptilians…and he desperately wants the sane people to share in his madness, so he preaches this shit all the time.” Chuckling, he scratched the dog behind the ears. “God help us all if that man ever becomes a officer. You wouldn’t want to serve under Lieutenant Birch, would you?” Fluffy whined, and licked Kraber’s face. “Awwww… stop it, stop it!” he laughed, unmindful of everyone staring at him. “That’s what I thought, though. You know, you know a lot about this stuff...you’re a very wise dog, brother Fluffy. And for that I salute you! Where’s a dog biscuit?” “You’re one to talk,” muttered the youngest of the group, a twenty-something standing just behind Galt, dressed in civvies, augmented with a pair of under-arm holsters. Her hair was tied back with a bandanna, and her entire body had a youthful roughness to it that was simultaneously offputting and beguiling. Her bearing however was professional, and her twin pistols bright and polished. “Verity Carter…” Kraber stared at her, wondering where he had last seen her. Had he run into her recently? Damn silly name she had. Wasn’t it latin for ‘truth’? The youth shook her head in revulsion, eyes glinting. “You’re disgusting.” Dismissing his wandering thoughts, Kraber smiled, showing his yellow teeth and wild eyes. “I didn’t even say anything this time! But yeah. I am, bakvissie. Doesn’t that at least give me some right to judge? Can’t I have standards?” Shaking her head in disgust, Verity pulled on a short jacket that neatly hid her weapons and tugged on her ponytail, revealing it to be a clip-on. With it removed and a scruffy baseball cap (turned backwards) replacing it, she suddenly looked five or six years younger. A denim skirt pulled on over her jeans completed the image of a disaffected teen. Yay for counter-culture. “Redd, you’re with me,” she beckoned to a young man dressed similarly to herself, before saluting Galt smartly. “Colonel, requesting permission to proceed to the waterfront and finalise preparations for the mission with ensign Flamel.” “Granted, Captain Carter,” Galt said blithely, not even looking in her direction. The girl and her one-man escort left with another lip-sneering glance in Viktor’s direction. In her absence, uncomfortable silence reigned supreme for a few seconds. “Well, at least Viktor doesn’t talk about zionist conspiracies,” Lovikov said when the quiet became too much to bear. “That’s one up on Birch.” “Because Judaism, bru,” Kraber said. “-Or any conspiracies that don’t involve the PHL or that bitch Yael,” Martineau finished. “That means our madman is better than yours. Besides, Viktor here does surgery.” Galt threw up his hands. “Fine. Your insane person is better than ours.” “Don’t remind me about that bull-dyke kike Yael,” Andrei Rianofski sighed, drawing the ‘evil eye’ from Kraber. “Our allies have lost over a hundred to her raids alone!” For any members of the Front near to the Canadian border, Yael Ze’ev had become a sort of local boogeywoman. Not more famous than Marcus Renee, of course not. That’d be silly. But she and a pegasus mare named Heliotrope were infamous for leading brutal, cutting raids against the HLF. It hadn’t helped that they frequently played the Front’s fragmented structure against itself, exploiting the convuluted code phrases and passwords some units so loved, misdirecting and distracting them in friendly fire, then shooting up the remains. She’d apparently been demoted just yesterday for burning one Canadian redoubt to ashes with a squad of flamethrower tanks, but that was unlikely to stop her. “We have far more important things to discuss,” Galt said, leading them into another room. “Myself, Rianofski, Captain Carter and several others have come up with a plan that might just cripple the PHL locally…if only for a moment, but a moment is all we need.” And that was why Galt was where he was, and why he had even Kraber’s attention, if not his respect. The guy was very good at planning and executing daring raids. He’d built the Thenardiers around himself on the results he could produce on demand. Non-descript infiltrators like the Carter girl were the silken blades to Galt’s armored fist, opening up cracks and seams into which a booted foot could then be driven. Infiltration, Assassination, Exploitation, Paralyzation. Any wetwork Defiance needed done, the Thenardiers could deliver. Which to Viktor was why it was so delightful to be here on their own terms, as the shock troops Galt needed to pull of his plan. It must have been galling to the man who’d cast himself in the role of a Randian uber-being. Not even trying to hide his displeasure, the Colonel placed a chess piece, a black King, on the map, sitting it about thirty miles out to sea from Portland. “Tell me”, he asked, voice as treacherous as water flowing over rocks. “Have any of you ever heard of the Sorghum Exile?” ‘I feel a reference coming,’ Kraber thought, still running his hands through Fluffy’s fur. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve heard of it. Some mobile rig of theirs?” “That’s right,” Galt answered, like he was talking to a child. ‘As if I was some kind of fokking retard, like Sheja, that kontgesig,’ Kraber thought, struggling not to pull out a revolver and splatter Galt. But that’d bring people running, so that was out. “The Exile is a mobile drilling platform, bigger than anything else of it’s kind. The PHL took it over from Phalanx Energy last year, and thanks to their ‘magic’, it’s now capable of also extracting and distributing oil brought up from any wells it’s tapped,” Rianofsky explained. “Yeah,” said Lovikov. “Just imagine the boom it’d make!” He rubbed his hands together. “I get the implication it’s one of a kind,” Martineau added. Galt nodded. “It’s also a-” “-slow, fat sea cow of a boat that needs tugboats to keep it moving any faster than the bare minimum speed needed to outrun the Barrier, and it has enough defenses that any… Oh fok I’m actually saying this… privateers...who get too close end up as red mist if they show undue interest. So we’ll have to be real careful with whatever you’re planning to do. So we can’t go in skop, skiet, and donner.” All of that had come from Kraber, which earned him another baleful stare from Galt. “...Yes,” the Colonel grunted. “I told you, that Viktor’s more than he seems,” Lovikov said. “Trauma surgeon,” Kraber said, as if that explained anything. Internally, he was wondering if Lovikov was talking up his reputation to sweeten his legacy when he was reported ‘K.I.A.’ He refused to let those thoughts show however. For now, he was stuck in this situation, and would see where it led him. “The platform is due to be relocated from its current position on Usherfall Bank in one week’s time”, Rianofski was explaining. “There’s consequently increased activity to and from it in preparation for the tow.” “This is our opportunity,” Galt continued. He tapped another chess piece, a White Queen, on the table. “Through my contacts I have commissioned an ‘amenable’ shipwright down south. He has modified a ocean-going tugboat for our purposes. It’ll have a submerged basement of sorts for you to keep additional personnel, as well as concealed weapon lockers to arm yourselves… anything you could need.” Everyone was now intrigued, as Galt slid the Knight across the table towards the King. “Captain Carter has obtained us the passcodes and documentation necessary to get aboard the Sorghum, and then... ” “We make like Captain Kidd and go Errol Flynn on them!” Galt’s eyes swept over all of them, with especial focus on Kraber. “Don’t kill the enemy forces you encounter. Your primary goal is to take hostages. Then, as soon as you’ve secured the platform, place those hostages under guard in a location where you are unlikely to be visible to snipers. I’d also suggest destroying any PHL tech or weaponry that you find.” “Excellent,” Lovikov said. “We can all do tha-” “I wouldn’t say that’s a good idea,” Kraber interrupted. “Enemy tech can be useful.” “Kraber, shut up,” Lovikov hissed. “As a last resort, we might need their toys,” Kraber persisted. “You sure that PHL gun you have hasn’t made you a ponypounder?” Mariesa asked, eager to please. “No, I’m just saying it makes sense to turn the enemy’s tools against him,” Kraber said, slapping his new runically-enhanced MG. “Your guns don’t break shields like this thing. It’s just… it’s something I’m worried about. PHL guns break shields, Equestria has more newfoals. We’re going to need to step up, cause I’m getting worried about where we’ll be next November-” “Your tugboat,” Galt said insistently, packing as much of an incentive to shut Kraber’s mouth as he could within those two words and three syllables, “Is in Portland, Maine. Our agents have logged a falsified profile with the authorities, as well as the PHL themselves...” (In at least one week’s time, during the Great HLF Purge, most of those same agents will be either dead, incarcerated or forced into penal reserve battalions, if they haven’t been found ‘resisting arrest’. In the telling, Kraber makes clear that he was a lucky survivor) “As far as the Sorghum is concerned, you’re heading out to set up the initial tow south,” Galt said. “As soon as you take the hostages, we can make our demands.” “Which are?” asks Lovikov. “The release of our comrades, such as Yelena Schmidt, Fedorova, and Captain Carter’s father, as well as military supplies,” Galt says. “If they do not acquiesce to our demands, we’ll maneuver the Sorghum into the mouth of Portland harbor and fire on the city with the platform’s defenses.” “But… the city’s full of refugees!” protests Mariesa. “It is,” Galt said, unconcerned. “And there are also ponies there, PHL…” “Yes,” Lovikov murmurs thoughtfully. “There are…” “In the event of an escape,” Galt continues, placing a White Knight on the table, checkmating the Black King, “there’s a fleet of narcosubs in the vicinity. They can be used as an escape.” “...the foreign shore, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance…” It was raining, and the sky was the color of a television tuned to a dead channel. So it was gray, then. Thunder roared off in the distance, and the rain poured down and down on the city. Before the Barrier, Portland hadn’t been what it was today. There were so many languages spoken here now, with signs in the languages of so many atomized countries dotting the streets. The pedestrians - the human pedestrians, anyway - were dressed downright weird, in whatever clothes they could find, which weren’t many. There were weapons carried openly, either professionally manufactured or hammered together in caves or someone’s basement. Kraber thought it reminded him of Blade Runner, Sunset Overdrive, or that one… that one Mexican flash animation he loved as a kid, the one with the smileyfaces and the giant robot clown. Of course, that didn’t mean he liked how the city now looked. He would have loved a melting-pot like this back before the war, but it was another thing to live it. All the rich people, virtually anyone with enough money had left to go east, buying themselves a few more months to live in comfort on the west coast, in deserts, in America’s heartland, or in the mountains. Anywhere that’d buy a few more hours of (comparative) luxury before it was destroyed. And filling the gaps were… Kraber’s lip curled into a sneer. Ponies. Zebras, even a few griffons. None of whom wore any clothes. “Fokking disgusting”, he said to himself, and yet the invective that should have lent venom to the words was missing. Foods from other countries were combined with poor amounts of ingredients, substitutes and replacements, to form strange new culinary combinations. Kraber had happily visited a restaurant selling Nigerian ice cream alongside more American flavors like Moose Tracks and Husky’s Lover, which was vanilla malt ice cream with pretzels, peanut butter and chocolate swirls. The same fusion was tangible, visible, and even audible wherever you went, what with mongrel pidgin slang, mingling with dialects and languages from all over the world. Improbably enough, there were a few places selling stolen Equestrian goods and ‘Equestrian-prepared baked goods’, which nobody in the HLF would touch. There was graffiti over the signage for these stores, and signs of broken windows, and yet, business seemed brisk. The city’s primary industry had always been shipping, but the routes that outbound and inbound vessels now followed changed by the day, with cargos of wood, ammunition, food, and other necessities departing for southernmost Africa and America. Imports consisted for raw materials, scrap metal, neglected Soviet or American military hardware, all commodities that would be reused in the war effort. A cargo of steel ore might end up smithed into guns, or forged into rails for more locomotives, or any other possible permutation of human skill and technology. Who could say? There was even a huge ship, emblazoned with the Crowe Labs logo, armed with strange blocky guns and offloading multicolored containers. They found the tugboat, as promised, near the Maine Street Pier. It stood out next to all the other vessels nearby for being utterly normal in appearance. Compared to the junks around it, made of half-sunken cars and scrap, held together with cable and ropes, the meaty ocean-going tug looked trim and ready to put to sea. As they approached, a pair of diesels could be heard turning over, and fumes belched from the twin exhaust stacks aft of the orange wheelhouse. That was another difference from the other boats, many of which appeared to run on strange, magical engines pioneered by pony expatriates - Kraber noticed one outbound fishing boat, helmed by a mixed crew of humans and ponies, all clad in oilskins, that appeared to run on clockwork wound steadily by a hefty earth pony and a small, slight woman. He had to admit, it was fascinating. “Alright, this is our tub,” said Lovikov warily, “the Arctic Warrior.” “Ain’t she a beaut?” called out the young corporal Kraber had seen leave the briefing with Verity Carter. Redd Flamel was his name if memory served, and right now he was coiling ropes on-deck. “Welcome aboard!” Kraber jumped down on deck and nodded. “You a seaman?” “Yessir. Raised on my family’s fishing boat, Antonia Graza. I’m your deckhand and engineer for this voyage.” He seemed squirrelly, excitable, and yet utterly in command of his environment. Kraber liked that. “Where’s the Carter girl?” “Up in the wheelhouse, readying us for departure. Both herself and me were trained by the builder to operate the boat, but the fake Master’s Certificate is in her name.” Kraber shook his head. A twenty-something slip of a girl as the captain of a vessel. Well, that wouldn’t do. A quick inspection of the Warrior showed everything to be in order. As first impressions showed, it had been kept almost immaculate. By comparison to the other floating wrecks in the harbor, anyway. The tug wasn't pristine, but on the other hand, it was full of the concealed weapon lockers Galt had promised. Even better was a hatch apparently leading to the bilge, which in truth opened up onto a secret compartment outfitted with bench-seats sufficient to seat twenty. It would be… perfect. Over the course of the next hour the troops arrived in groups of two or three, keeping their numbers discrete. Thenardier Guards, and Menschabwehrfraktion alike, they came aboard. Most headed for the submerged compartment, cramped, smelly, dirty, and more than a little leaky, but the best place to conceal such a force. At last, with everything ready and all supplies loaded, and the light of day dwindling into evening, Verity gave the order to cast off all lines, and turned the Arctic Warrior’s prow towards the harbor mouth. Down below, Kraber watched with approval as Redd busied himself with the twin diesel motors. The young man was clearly born to the sea. Leaving him to it, Kraber himself went up to the immaculate wheelhouse, where Verity Carter was manning the helm, looking deceptively small as she stared forward through the reinforced viewports out towards the dark eastern horizon. Although she still wore her turned-back baseball cap, she’d swapped her civvies for body armour concealed under a heavy seaman’s jacket. To his delight, Viktor had earlier found a matching garment that fitted him hung in the captain’s cabin, along with the requisite peaked cap. “Avast!” he cried as he entered the wheelhouse, a smile on his face and one hand on his revolver. The other hand was clenched around the snapped-off hook from the coathanger, completing the appropriate pirate-y image. “I be Kapitan Kraber!” “... Shut up,” Verity muttered, pointedly tapping the framed Masters Certificate made out in her own name. Mariesa on the other hand, the only other woman in the crew, was smiling. “Fok you, I always wanted to say that,” Kraber laughed, stepping outside onto the bridge wing. The tug was ploughing steadily through the swells, her navigation lights and portholes aglow with light, and she seemed to be a pocket of light and warmth in the ever-increasingly vastness of the Atlantic. Pausing, he leaned on a gunwale and enjoyed the scent of salt on the warm evening air. His fate and appointed doom were furthest from his mind now. All the mattered for the moment was the op. If everyone kept their heads and did their job, something great would be accomplished. Their comrades would be free, the geldos and the horsefuckers will be dead, what could be sweeter? What could be? Kraber asked himself, a little too insistently. Was that to be his legacy? Yes, something still eluded him. Even under all this bluster and excitment, he knew that he was just not getting something. Some deep, important puzzle piece. And why didn’t he feel right about this op? There was something, some sensation that something was off… “Platform ahoy!” Mariessa announced at last, sighting forward through a pair of binoculars. She seemed to have somehow become Verity’s first-mate during the few hours it had taken to head out to sea. Following her gaze, everyone sighted a cluster of lights on the horizon, a slice of Christmas adrift at sea… “Big bliksem,” Kraber muttered. And as the tug grew closer, the structure grew even larger - a massive leviathan kept afloat on two submerged hulls, like a giant catamaran. Four cylindrical columbs supported the superstructure, whose small, jagged skyline bristled with light and activity. The columns themselves seemed to shimmer softly, ripples of something (magic perhaps?), descending to radiate in the sea. As they closed to within five miles, a sudden squall of rain came down, drawing a curtain around the tug and hiding the platform from view. With it came a shroud of anxiety, the unspoken fear that now was when things would go wrong. “State your business, Arctic Warrior,” Kraber heard the radio crackle, the hiss of static whispering in tune with the rain fizzing on the windows. “Platform Sorghum Exile, this is commercial tugboat Arctic Warrior. I am her skipper, V Carter. We are approaching on a bearing of 100 south-easterly and are under instruction to moor up beside your north-western column. Over…” Verity said trimly into her radio handset, having yielded the helm to a scowling Lovikov with the whispered orders to “keep her straight and point her where I tell you.” “Arctic Warrior, please state your business. Over.” Kraber stifled a laugh at the sight of the young girl strutting around the wheelhouse as she continued to banter with the platform, switching between coded frequencies on demand. Annoying and bitchy she may have been, but the girl’s balls clanked like wrecking balls. He could see how she survived in a unit like the Thenardiers. “Please confirm security passcode?” the platform’s radio officer demanded at last. “Break a fucking broomhandle off in Celestia’s flank,” the youth said. “Over.” “Thank you Arctic Warrior, your documentation has been filed and you have permission to approach. Please turn to heading 154 and reduce speed to six knots, then proceed to final. Over.” And like that, a pall had lifted over them. Verity twirled the radio handset on its cord with all the cocksure confidence of a gunslinger, and hung it on its hook with a satisfied smirk. “We’re in,” Lovikov said, a smile on his face. “The hard part is over.” “The sight of it made the earth seem unearthly. They were accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there - there you could look at a thing monstrous, beautiful, and fre-” ”Really?” you ask, in the not so distant future where you find yourself on the same side as Kraber. And here’s where he breaks into laughter. He laughs hysterically, a bellowing guffaw that switches in pitch near-constantly, like you haven’t heard him laugh since the… incident… with the ponified, yet not zombified, HLF infiltrator in the brig below, screaming, driven mad with hate, almost certainly in the throes of a mental breakdown. You find it hard to say she doesn’t deserve it though. “...ya done?” Aegis asks, raising an eyebrow. Kraber shakes his head no, doubled over laughing. “Oh, no. It only got harder after that,” he manages to get out, eyes moist from tears of laughter. But then he grows somber, and produces a book, a book in which he has underlined choice quotes, mining them for inspiration… “Heart of Darkness?” you asked, managing to read the cover upside-down. “What’s it about?” “It’s about me, little Day...and about you...and about people…and where my story took me next. There’s lank I could use, but this… it fits better than Trainspotting or anything else I could think of.” And he turns to the very last page, to the very last lines, and read aloud... “The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky - seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.”