//------------------------------// // Part 3 (Moriah) - Chapter 3 // Story: Founders of Alexandria // by Starscribe //------------------------------// “Alright, Alex, I’m here. Why did you want me to drive miles out of town and not tell anyone, exactly?” Moriah leaned closer to the headset, trying to tune out the annoying static coming from Alex’s end. Another few seconds of frustration, and she heard the other pony’s voice. “Because I don’t want our newcomers to see yet. I’ll tell the others about it later.” “You’re going to have to tell the immigrants something, Alex. I only told them you were out on business, but… are you really going to try and keep the HPI a secret?” “Oh, no. We’re not allowed to tell them where we think they live, but other than that there’s nothing secret about the HPI. They want to have a corporate relationship with Earth’s ponies. They were founded ostensibly to protect our interests and preserve our culture.” “Then why am I wearing the thaumic suppressor and meeting you five miles from Alexandria at five in the morning? You still haven’t answered.” “It’s the Hummingbirds I don’t want the newcomers to see. One of them is staying behind: it’s gonna be our baby. You get to learn to fly it. I don’t want ponies to know where it’s parked who we can’t trust.” Moriah looked up into the early morning sky. She heard it before she saw it, though. A dull roar, a muffled jet engine as it tore across the sky. She saw it seconds later, though it looked like the aircraft was actually using its engines to decelerate. Even after seeing them on several occasions, Moriah still couldn’t get over how impressive the aircraft looked. It astounded her such a sophisticated piece of hardware had been produced without creating more of a stir. Was the long range carrier the HPI called the Hummingbird the last and greatest aircraft produced in the fabled Area 51? And she was going to get to fly one? She wondered just how much Alex could be overestimating her abilities. The jet engines died abruptly, replaced with rapidly spinning props as the nimble craft lowered itself down towards the field. This farmhouse was a full three miles off the highway, probably twenty miles away from Alexandria proper. The Hummingbird crushed short weeds with its landing struts as it touched down. Only when the rapidly spinning props finally stopped spinning did a ramp extend from inside and Alex emerge. She looked the worse for wear. Paler than Moriah remembered, with bandages wrapped around one shoulder and a slight limp. There was some sort of device on one of her forelegs, though Moriah couldn’t say for certain what it was. She was still wearing the shackles, and made no effort to remove them. A man emerged just behind her, wearing the bio-thaumic armor humans needed to survive outside the protection of their powerful shields. “Will you be needing me, ma’am?” The soldier’s voice came from within, strangely muffled by the suit he wore. Moriah felt nothing strange around the plane, which she supposed was the work of the dark metal wrapped around the stump of her horn. “No, Captain Wright. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you for the safe flight back.” She turned, gesturing at Moriah. “This is Moriah, our pilot. She’ll be the one flying us.” The man inside the suit chuckled, turning towards Moriah. “I hope it never comes to that. Still, the documentation is all on the computer. I showed Ms. Haggard how to get into simulator mode.” He reached forward, patting Moriah’s shoulder. Unlike Sky, Moriah wasn’t the least bit intimidated to be around humans. It felt natural, the place where she belonged. Pity she hadn’t been good enough at anything to earn a spot in that bunker before the Event. “I can’t even imagine the training it must take to fly that,” Moriah responded, glancing into the cavity of the ship in awe. She had never actually been aboard an HPI aircraft, and was more than a little eager to get a glance inside. “A human pilot? I don’t want to think about it either!” He laughed again. “You’ve only got to be there in case something screwy happens to the computer. I didn’t touch the controls except to map the route.” He walked down the ramp, past her and towards the empty field. “Your boss gives me too much credit.” Moriah could see a second aircraft moving in for approach, also keeping frighteningly low. Once it had landed, the captain waved a gloved hand, vanished up a ramp, and the Hummingbird took off again. It must’ve accelerated frighteningly fast, because even with the relatively flat ground it had vanished after less than twenty seconds. “What did he mean, Alex?” Alex beamed, gesturing for her to follow her inside. “You wanna see? It’s pretty amazing.” Moriah did. “But are you gonna be alright, Alex? I’m introducing you to the immigrants in…” She glanced down at her watch. “Two hours. Would you rather take a nap or something?” “Nah.” Alex drew back her hooves, taking a key from around her neck and slipping it into the mechanism. They clicked off, striking the earth with a resonant thud their weight never would’ve suggested. Moriah could almost see the color and energy rush back into her, a faint power flowing up from the earth. It gave its strength freely to its favorite children, if what she had read about earth ponies was true. Moriah unlocked the restraint on her horn, tossing it down beside the shackles. She took a moment to try and sense the difference. She could feel very little more than before, except perhaps that she wasn’t being slowly strangled by an invisible cold. She tried to ground her hooves, tried to push her mind into the unfocused calm the books described as conducive to sensing thaumic fields. As usual, nothing happened. “Oh, you get one of these!” Alex reached into her (totally ordinary) saddlebags and drew out a black bracelet like the one she was wearing. She tossed it lightly towards Moriah. She caught it, turning it over in her hooves. It was thicker than she had first thought, maybe a quarter inch. It had quite a bit of heft, though nothing that would slow down the hooves of a pony. She swung it open, stuck her hoof inside, and clicked it closed. It began to hum, and she held it up to see a curved screen set into the plastic, filling with rapidly cycling text. “Oh, I should probably warn-” Something stabbed into her leg, though not very deep. It took all her self-restraint not to bash the thing off right then. “It’s registering you as a user. They only gave us two. You’re the pilot, so you’re in.” Sure enough, after a few more seconds, the bracelet chimed “User Registered” in a synthetic-sounding voice. Alex walked past her, waving her own bracelet on a patch of slightly elevated metal near the ramp. It retracted, closing off the interior of the aircraft. A second wave and it descended for them. “Pretty neat, right?” She stepped up onto the ramp, hooves clopping with each step. Moriah followed, watching as the onboard lights came on with each step. The ramp actually took them up quite high, through a sloped area with six seats mounted on each side, retracted to keep the floor clear. “You don’t want to know what’s below us.” “I… what?” Alex gestured to a manhole-esque opening, a ladder visible through its transparent cover. “Down there. The soviets couldn’t do it, and we couldn’t do it, but we’re doing it now!” Where had all her energy come from? Did this thing have an espresso dispenser she hadn’t seen? Alex hadn’t been wearing the thaumic suppressor for an hour, she had been wearing it for days. Could getting magic back really make that much difference for a pony? “Power of the atom, taking us straight through the sky.” Moriah took another glance at the hatch, and the radiation hazards printed there. She had to take a deep, deep breath. “This aircraft is… nuclear powered?” Alex nodded, walking past the hatch towards what had to be the cockpit. “The technical details went over my head. I could repeat them back to you if you want, though! If you think you could make sense of-” “No. I’ll read it myself. He said the manuals are all on the computer…” She hurried to catch up, stepping down into the slightly lowered cockpit. There was only one seat. As she neared it, she saw a display superimposed on curved plastic, including a projection of what was outside. The HPI never had windows on any of their vehicles. She stepped away again, and the display went dead. “Nice.” Alex nodded, holding up her bracelet. “It uses these. They had to modify a few to fit our legs, but it actually isn’t that hard since they’re made to be worn over those bulky suits once they’re configured. Did you ever notice that all the HPI’s soldiers wear these things?” She sighed, resting against one of the slightly padded walls. “But nevermind this. I want to know about the new ponies!” “One question first.” Moriah looked around the cockpit, then down towards her hooves. “Why did they give us a plane? A resource like this has got to be pretty scarce.” “Oh, it’s not to keep.” Alex nodded, understanding. “They could remotely fly it back if they wanted at any moment. But we’re way more useful if we’re mobile. They’ve got assignments for us. In exchange for our hard work, we get to use this beautiful machine.” She tapped the soft felt with one hoof. “So answer the question, Moriah. What are the new ponies like?” “Not all of them are ponies,” she responded, scanning the controls. They were not built for a pony, nor did they look like anything a pony had any chance of operating. How many thousands of people had been employed to build an aircraft like this? “The ponies actually come from three separate groups, so far as I can tell. Little cadre of military ponies put the idea of the caravan together. They don’t really seem to have any plans to stick around. Just came to ‘gather intelligence’ on what our bodies are and what they can do. I’m sure they’re eager to learn about what the Equestrians did to us, though I’m not sure if they’ll buy your story without-” “I’m not going to show ponies the crystal until we can copy it!” Alex interrupted. “It’s fragile. Somebody steps on it or breaks it intentionally, and I don’t have any way to show anypony again. They’ll have to do with the book Princess Luna wrote about the Preservation.” She sighed. Whatever rush of energy returning magic to her had brought seemed to be fading. “What are the other groups?” “Six ponies all came from the New York City settlement. Didn’t give me any specifics about why they came, just that they felt like they had better chances away from the city now that the world had ended. They brought three trailers, probably intend to live in them. We can get them moved into the park today once Adrian gets up.” Alex nodded again. “Any others?” “A handful of refugees they found along the way. Five, I think. I guess they’ve been isolated for a long time, maybe damaged by it. I couldn’t get anything useful out of them except that one of them came down from somewhere back east.” “Hmm.” Alex looked thoughtful. “You said not all of them were ponies. Did you count which species were which? Ages, sexes, that sort of thing?” Moriah nodded. “I couldn’t give it as precisely as you. More women than men. A few teenagers, the rest adults. Mostly ponies, but two of them aren’t. Sky called one of them a 'diamond dog', and the other one a griffon. What was the point of the spell making so many different species again? Wouldn’t it have been easier if we had all been one species?” “I don’t know.” Alex looked down again. “Luna said something about having a balance. Magic moves through the ecosystem just like carbon or water does in ours. Without the right species, the ecosystem doesn’t work right. I don’t know why you need some species but not others. That’s too theoretical for our books.” “Sounds like one of many mistakes those princesses made.” “Maybe.” Alex started walking towards the exit, and Moriah had to hurry to catch up. “I’ve thought about how much better it could be. If they hadn’t sent people forward so far in time. If they had warned us of what they were going to do, so we could at least prepare ourselves, say goodbye to our families…” There was real anger there, and Moriah shared it. It was part of why she had remained loyal to Alex, despite all her other failings. At least her heart was in the right place. “But then I think, as screwed up as this was, at least we’re alive to think it’s screwed up. If Equestria hadn’t interfered, we wouldn’t even be alive to hate them.” She shivered, and her eyes took on a haunted look. “I saw footage, Moriah. A volunteer exposed to a thaumic field… before everything really started. He didn’t die with dignity, Moriah. I wouldn’t wish that death on anyone. I can see how the Equestrians, after seeing that, would’ve felt they had to do something about it. Anyone who would sit by and let suffering like that happen when they had the power to help would be monsters.” She followed Moriah to her car, scooping up the thaumic suppressors into her saddlebags as she went. Moriah said nothing, considering her words. Alex didn’t seem to expect a reply from her, because she kept going after another few minutes, once she had backed out onto the empty highway. “Any other news?" Moriah nodded. "Joseph got another broadcast, really brief just like the last one. Different voice." "Did you get anywhere close to translating it?" Moriah shook her head. "Unfortunately not. Joseph is fairly certain they haven't changed the cypher, so it's only a matter of time before he's 'brute forced' the thing. Whatever that means." "Your guess is as good as mine. I brought a copy in case you wanted to look at it." Moriah removed a scrap of paper from one of her pockets, passing it to her. It read: kum-b-kb-tul-zgzyz,-hkm-xqqhqpqr-k-min-pq-yqwqz-hkmmq-drvy-vri-mes-tul-dbbqf-wp-tul-f-kh-tul-tul-k-rh-kum-ndcb-bbqw-tul-tul-tul-dy-mes Alex glanced at the paper once, then passed it back. "I got nothing. How about our friends? How are they doing?” “How are they doing?” Moriah’s eyebrows went up. “You’ve been gone for three days. How much can really have changed?” Alex shrugged. “Well, the last of the pregnant cows was set to deliver the day I left, and I know Sky’s been stressed about that. I also know Adrian’s been planning to ask her on a date, something with go-karts and model building… I helped him plan it!” Her weary expression turned proud, though it didn’t stay that way. “Oliver said he’d discovered something amazing about earth pony magic, but he refused to tell me before we could meet in person. Riley, obviously, figured out how to play Minecraft with hooves a week ago, and she really wanted me to see the replica of Alexandria she was working on, including some ‘ideas about things we could build one day.’ “Then there’s you. Joseph’s been telling me you were really close to being able to levitate, that he expected just a few more days before you got it. Not to mention all that work you’ve been doing into designs for a small-scale CHP plant. I’ve seen how much time you put into those books, and on the Kimballnet tracking parts down. Bet you planned on telling me you’d got a working design during the ride back.” Moriah was stunned. She drove on without speaking for several seconds, before squeaking, “Y-You remember all that?” Alex nodded. “Not like I do with visual stuff. People aren’t books. But… I guess I do.” She leaned back, and looked for a moment as surprised as Moriah herself. “Guess I never really thought about it.” Moriah didn’t tell her about any of those things, though she could’ve now that she had been reminded about them. Instead she said something she had been thinking about for a long time, something she had been putting off since forever. “Sorry!” The younger mare tilted her head to one side. “Sorry?” Moriah had to struggle to get the words out, but struggle she did. “All those months ago. You reminded me of some things I was trying to forget. I… lost control of my magic. Could’ve killed you. Caused some pretty… long-term damage. I’m sorry.” She almost couldn’t bear to look at Alex to see her reaction. She did though. She couldn’t not look after how long she’d been putting this off. Alex didn’t look upset. Actually, she was smiling.