Adjutant sat in the lounge of the Virtuoso sipping on a glass of champagne. Their pilot had caught a northbound wind towards Mount Reindeer, so there was little left for her to do except relax in the comfortable appointments of Prince Blueblood's private yacht and plan her next move.
The dossier Princess Luna had compiled for her indicated that Queen Andrenida was grateful to Equestria for providing aid to Hive Mephera, but her hive had been crippled by extremists and would be unable to spare royal jelly while they were rebuilding. Still, it was the right place to start; Queen Andrenida was Adjutant's ticket into the world of changeling politics.
Adjutant frowned as she realized just how little she knew of diplomatic protocol. Chrysalis's emphasis on conquest meant that she had never passed on that knowledge to the others of the hive. From the stories she remembered, though, a visiting monarch was entitled to an honor guard for the duration of her diplomatic mission.
She looked over at Ace, who was playing cards with Flash Sentry and Silent Knight, and sighed. It was just as well — she could not be expected to receive the privilege of a formal retinue. Just an assistant.
So, she would be going in virtually alone to negotiate with either Queen Andrenida or whomever the queen could introduce her to. What could they offer in return? Changelings had little need of money, and they were rather self-sufficient when it came to manufactured goods. Love and power were the primary currency between changelings. Of the two, Adjutant could only offer love.
Unfortunately, there were precious few ways to gather it — indeed, virtually all of the colony's love currently came from the members of House Argent. It was a good bargain on their part; amnesty in return for giving Celestia enough love to barter a truce with Chrysalis. But they were slowly being released and their skills put to use by the crown, while volunteers were few and far between.
The obvious proposal would be to ask for royal jelly and promise a great deal of love in return. It would, of course, depend on the other party being a gullible idiot, as no queen in her right mind would make such an investment with a traitor such as herself. While there was little love lost between Chrysalis and other monarchs, treason against one's hive was positively heretical.
She looked up from her dossier and saw that Ace had won a sizeable amount of bits from the other two. Ace infuriated her. He never had problems getting along with others, and even seemed to enjoy it. To a certain extent, this was to be expected; Chrysalis had expended no small measure of resources in endowing him with the charisma, cunning, and magical prowess to become a supremely skilled agent provocateur. But everything he did to make friends was annoyingly genuine, in a manner no self–respecting changeling would tolerate.
He was also an idiot. (Maddeningly, it did not seem to impede him in the slightest. Some changelings were born lucky.)
Adjutant decided to slip upstairs into the helm and check on their progress. Comet Chaser — an earth pony mare, surprisingly enough — was sitting with a navigational chart in her front hooves, idly drawing on it with a protractor in her mouth while her rear hooves steered the ship. It looked dangerously unprofessional, but Comet Chaser was Blueblood's personal pilot, and if the pampered prince trusted her with his life, she probably knew what she was doing. Or had a parachute handy.
The table in the back where the chart would have gone was empty, so Adjutant sat in the navigator's chair and took in the view from the front of the ship. They had already arrived at the edge of the White Tail Woods between Los Pegasus and Seaddle. At this rate, it would not be long before they reached the remains of Mount Reindeer to the north.
"Can I help you, ma'am?" Comet Chaser tilted her head back and shook a hooffull of violet hare out of her eyes.
A burst of laughter rippled through the cabin from the game downstairs, interrupting Adjutant's reply. While she was inclined to tell the pilot to return to her duties, a part of her was curious as to whether Ace's unorthodox method for gaining trust and establishing alliances worked. She licked her lips and imagined she was Ace. What was the most impulsive thing she could say?
"Isn't Comet Chaser more of a pegasus name?" Adjutant cringed as the words tumbled out of her mouth.
Amazingly, Comet Chaser chuckled and set the chart aside. She shifted her aviator's jacket aside so that Adjutant could see the comet soaring across her midnight blue flank. "Most of us like to stay well grounded, but I was born in Cloudsdale, to a pegasus family. I was in my first hot air balloon by 5, gyrocopter by 8, and my first genuine chopper by 11. I made it all the way to Canterlot University for an aeronautics degree, and wound up working as a private pilot after graduation."
Adjutant looked around the cramped helm. "Seems like a step down from what you could have been."
"Nah, it's not so bad. I get paid a lot to do what I like, and even get a budget for customizing this ship." Comet Chaser patted the steering wheel fondly. "You notice how it runs quiet, and how nobody's been stoking the boilers? This baby doesn't run off of fuel, it runs off of electricity. All I need to do to charge her up is throw out an antenna in a thunderstorm or get a pegasus to buck some clouds. Every lightning strike is collected in a Leyden jar — 1.21 gigawatts of electricity on tap whenever I need it."
"I take it such an arrangement would be prohibitively expensive without Blueblood's patronage?"
"Yeah, I'm currently running a setup using ultra–pure graphene sheets in ionic media. Stuff costs more than I make in a year, but Blueblood only wants the best." Comet Chaser gave the ship another fond pat. "I'll be able to build my own in a few years, once the state of the art nudges forward another few inches and His Highness comes in demanding I upgrade the ship to something more befitting his royal status." She grinned and shook her head. "Funny thing is, he never seems to care what happens to the old parts when he tells me to get rid of them…"
Adjutant found herself sharing a laugh with Comet Chaser at Blueblood's expense. Maybe Ace was onto something.
The setting sun outlined Mount Reindeer later that evening. Its shattered peak loomed majestically in the light, reflecting sunlight off of dull grey volcanic ash mixed with snow. A titanic crater had been carved out of the top, with a small mound in the middle that billowed smoke at intermediate intervals. If it were not for the tragedy that had befallen it, Adjutant would have found it breathtaking.
A flight of four changelings came out to greet the Virtuoso. After taking up positions on each side of the ship, they guided her down into the caldera. A cliff jutted out from the outer rim, with a clean, smooth surface free of debris save for flat rocks embedded in the soil in the shape of a capital L. The Virtuoso down on the landing pad and the diplomatic party stepped out into the crisp mountain air.
The flight's lead changeling, a tall teenager with aquamarine hair, bowed before her. "Greetings. I am Princess Apida, Queen Andrenida's heir and daughter. I welcome you and your delegation to our hive."
The party looked at Adjutant, who returned the bow. "The honor is all mine, Princess. Please lead the way."
Princess Apida gave a curt nod to her guards and they slowly moved down a path down the cliffside to a solid iron gate several dozen meters below the landing pad. The heavy iron doors slowly swung inwards, accompanied by the clanking of chains and gears, to reveal the interior of Hive Mephera.
It was pleasantly warm, from a combination of the body heat of the inhabitants, fluorescent blue fungus growing on the walls, and volcanic activity. Indeed, judging by the stepped texture of the walls, the hive was built into extinct lava tubes. Water could be heard rushing through the walls, likely trying to escape the magma reservoir below.
Adjutant felt a shiver run up her spine despite the temperature as she saw the changelings within. A hive was normally bustling with activity, but here changelings sat huddled in lifeless clusters that were plagued with persistent coughs. Many were children, who would otherwise be playing. Gaunt work teams wearing dirty cotton masks stumbled in and out of the lower reaches, clearly having gone too long without rest. The rumbling of machinery echoed faintly through the walls, sputtering like the changelings around them.
For a fleeting moment, Adjutant could have sworn that she could taste the acrid volcanic ash in her mouth and feel it choking her lungs. She shook her head; it was all imaginary. The illnesses was an after effect of inhalation poisoning from the initial attack weeks ago. The inhabited portions of the hive had surely been cleaned up by now.
All activity in the hive had come to a halt as the other changelings watched them warily. Adjutant looked at their hollow eyes nervously. Did they know who she was? Did they care?
Apida glared at them. "What are you waiting for? Pay your respects to our esteemed guests."
One by one, they knelt before the delegation. Adjutant let loose a breath she had not realized she had been holding and motioned for them to rise. "Please, there's no need to go overboard."
The workers looked at Apida for confirmation, who dismissed them with a wave of her hoof.
"Do forgive them," Apida said. "Your reputation precedes you."
Adjutant kept her voice level. "Hm. I suppose it would. Tell me, Princess, will we be meeting with your mother first, or shown to our chambers? I would like some time to prepare myself."
"Certainly." Apida gestured down a tunnel to their right. "Follow me."
Flash Sentry and Silent Knight stood beside the door of their guest quarters and watched Ace wear a circle into the floor from his furious pacing. Adjutant sat in a wicker chair off to the side, enjoying the complimentary fruit basket that had been left for them. She had worked her way through a coconut, and was now eyeing a pear.
"Did you see what things were like out there?" Ace hissed. "Who would do something like this?"
The two guards exchanged glance. Silent Knight reached out and put a hoof on Ace's shoulder. "That's no longer a concern. Let's focus on how we can help them, okay?"
Ace shrugged his way out of Silent's grasp. "If I knew, I'd have brought more supplies. Food, water, anything! Why didn't they tell us?"
Adjutant raised an eyebrow. "Did you expect a hive to advertise its weakness?"
The pear she was eating went flying across the room as Ace smacked it out of her hooves. "Stop eating that! We have a full pantry on the ship. Why are you so calm about this?"
Silent Knight wrapped his hooves around Ace's barrel and dragged him back as Adjutant picked up her pear. She walked up to him and gently stroked his mane. "Ace, I understand why you are upset, but your emotions will do nothing to help these changelings. Now, I propose we stick to our mission and gain an audience with Queen Andrenida, during which we can offer our assistance."
"Fine." Ace relaxed and let Silent Knight guide him to an armchair in the corner. "How much aid could we get?"
Adjutant nibbled at her pear. "Us? Virtually none," she eventually admitted. "The colony has no money, and House Argent's assets are either confiscated or frozen. Our best bet is to try and convince the princesses to bankroll it, since an actual foreign aid package would get wrapped up in red tape."
Silent Knight raised his hoof. "How about a fundraiser? I'm sure Fancy Pants would set a great example if we had a charity dinner or something."
"It's a thought," Adjutant nodded. "In the meantime, why don't you three borrow whatever supplies you can from Blueblood's stores and distribute them as a token of our appreciation?"
Comet Chaser stretched herself out on the cabin's plush couch as she flipped through the latest edition of Wings magazine. She paused at the centerfold of a pegasus with a particularly fetching wingspan and grinned. Enjoying the luxuries of royalty while they were away was one of her favorite perks.
The cabin door flew open, backed by biting winds, as the stallions poured into the ship, teeth chattering from the cold. Comet Chaser quickly hid the magazine behind her and straightened her jacket. "Uh, hey there! Welcome back! Is it over?"
Ace shook his head. "No, we just came to get some supplies."
Comet Chaser gestured to the small kitchen opposite from her. "Go for it. What do you want?"
"All of it," Flash grinned.