//------------------------------// // 19 - ...and the sky was full of stars. // Story: Final Solution // by Luna-tic Scientist //------------------------------// Breathing with a deep, steady rhythm, Fusion cantered in the middle of the little group, fighting to keep her balance as she ran down the spiral ramp. The dog, Rthar, was in the lead, flanked by Olvir, his gryphon. Ellisif ran at her side, eyes and gun focused on the two prisoners. "Ellisif, call Red and get him and Korn to meet us in the mid-level exercise room with the rest of the ponies," she said in a tight voice. Got to get them out, got to do something with them. At least they are already out of their stalls. The gryphoness nodded, muttering into her armour's communicator. "We get a training session on Arclight... I can feel nothing from my wings at all." She waggled them experimentally, then ruffled the feathers. "My magic is completely gone, but you..." Ellisif gestured at Fusion's mane, which still retained a pale reflection of its pastel rainbow shades. Fusion nodded. "I've still got a little, but I don't dare use it unless it's desperate. The instant I do, the machine will take what's left." As she said it, the suppression effect twisted, shifting to a new configuration, and Fusion slowed as she fought to rearrange her defences to match. Makes sense, otherwise it would be too easy to work around. Holding on to what was left was like trying to control a wriggling foal with only her teeth; every moment and distraction brought a risk of escape. "The pony must be very strong to be able to manage anything at all," Rthar said, voice strained with the effort of running to keep ahead of Fusion and Ellisif. "Arclight-class weapons are the reason why these ones do not rely on thaumic systems. Rthar has never heard of any way to defeat them." He coughed and stumbled, leaning on Olvir’s withers. The gryphon glanced up, extending one wing from beneath his armour to support the running dog. "I have a lot of surprises left for your kind. Things are going to change, Rthar, whether or not I survive to see them." The group hit the bottom of the ramp and skidded to a halt before a door, nearly colliding with an agitated Redshift and a shivering Korn, the latter with his paws still cuffed together. There were cuts and little raw patches of stripped skin on Redshift's fetlocks; he noticed her look and shuffled on the spot, obviously favouring one leg. "He was cuffed to one of the equipment racks; I had to kick it to bits," he said, a little wild-eyed. "What are we going to do? I was sure that the dogs would at least hold back for long enough that we could get everypony out." "What will the pony do... has the bomb already been sent to Baur Hive?" Rthar clenched his paws together and leaned against the wall, his ears flat back. "How many millions will the pony kill in her futile quest?" "Did you know what was done here, Captain? What would you do to stop your children being slaughtered in these laboratories?" Fusion snarled, then gestured to Korn. "Student, your only chance to get out of here alive is with the rest of the ponies in that room behind you. You will get them to move calmly to the lower levels and wait there until I return." She reached for his restraints, then cursed as the tiny effort not only failed, but drew away a fragment of her remaining strength into the sucking void that seemed to fill the shadow universe. "Ellisif -- untie his wrists." "What is happening? This one needs to know something to--" Korn flinched as Ellisif grabbed his paws with one set of gloved talons, then sat back on her haunches and held up the others, their razor edges gleaming wetly as protective layers retracted. "Hold still." He froze as she used her talons like wire cutters on the plastic-coated metal bands. "All you need to know is that you will die if you don't get them moving. They are burning Naraka before we even get a chance to!" She ran a claw down the bloody fur of his chest, then gave him a push. "The ponies already know something is going on, so I think you look perfect." "B-but how long does this one have?" The gryphoness shrugged, then cocked her head at the sound of gunfire, distant and muffled, from somewhere below. "Who knows. I wouldn't waste too much time enjoying the scenery, if I were you." She pointed at a wisp of smoke emerging from an air vent a little way away and gave him another shove, this time hard enough to send him staggering. "Seriously, we have Security coming up from below and fire from above. There is no escape for any of us unless..." "Gravity," Fusion muttered staring up at the ceiling. "I imagine she has her own problems to attend to." Were they waiting for you, too? Was there a trap set for both of us? She felt her stomach clench and tasted something foul at the back of her throat. Perhaps we can fight our way out through the tunnels... but the dogs will just keep piling on more forces until we are dead. "...right, Gravity can do something from the outside." There was another burst of gunfire, followed by a thump that sent vibrations shivering through the floor. "Fusion, we have to go. Security is moving up in force and Svartr says she can't hold them. They have those pocket airtanks in the lead." === Katabatic shuffled sideways to avoid a stallion who barged through on his way to who-knew-where. Her foal, still a little shaky on his long and gangly legs, wriggled against her flank and poked his head out from under her wing. He made a high-pitched whinny and pulled back, pressing so close that he threatened to trip her up. She moved a little further through the herd, working her way towards the perimeter wall. Here the press of bodies was relaxed a little, and she could actually focus on her surroundings. The floor sloped away from the perimeter and towards the centre of the wedge-shaped room. It was a familiar place, but full of unfamiliar bodies. I knew there were more ponies here than I’d seen before, but I didn't know there were so many, she thought in a daze. It was the smell, more than the sight, that made it real, and almost reduced her to confused tears. Amid the melange of scents she could pick out traces of her exercise group, but they were in the minority. The overhead lights were at full brightness despite the late hour, and glared off the backs of the hundreds of ponies who were beating the grass to a pulp under their hooves. Katabatic felt a slight pang of regret at the sight. It will be days before there is anything fit for eating... now I have nothing to start weaning my foal on to. The Master's food was nutritious and filling, especially along with the endless quantities of hay they supplied, but nothing quite matched up to fresh grass. She flinched at the disloyal thought, waiting for the sting of the Maker's Punishment, but nothing came. Katabatic whimpered and dropped her wings to fold the primaries under her belly, practically enveloping her foal. The youngster picked up on her stress and tried to wriggle deeper into her flank, making little hops with his legs as if trying to pull them away from a hostile world. She tried again to pick him up, but the magic just evaporated. Katabatic closed her eyes and tried to relax. It's not just you, everypony else has lost their magic as well. You're not useless. There should have been pain with that thought, but yet again the shame and fear was hers alone. She tucked her head under her right wing, brushing muzzles with her foal and breathing in his sweet milky breath. I still have you, at least for a little while. Long enough to teach you to speak and learn your name, before they take you away. There was a sudden mechanical whirr from behind her tail, and Katabatic jumped, taking a few cantered steps before pulling up in front of the press of bodies, who were all staring in her direction. She cringed at the sudden attention, then caught a movement out of the corner of one eye and wheeled. A Master... but the only time-- --the filly was perfect in every way, from stubby, still half-formed horn to legs that were over-long for her body. There had been praise and extra rations of more interesting food, and the whole whirlwind of attention from the other ponies, along with brief looks of sorrow and sympathy behind some of those eyes, followed by carefully controlled flinches and twitches. She'd not paid much attention, because there was now so much to do, because the world had shifted to revolve around this one precious collection of strange movements and soft fur-- She started to hyperventilate, rapid flutterings of breath that made her nostrils flare and the world start to spin. Katabatic's wings clamped down on her sides, the bones under her feathers digging into her foal's flanks, making him squirm. --alone in the group's shared room, ordered to stay behind while the others exercised in the high-ceilinged chambers nearby, when the door opened and the Master was there, putting something on her foal's neck and taking her away. Her own tears and cries, choked off by a constricting agony that collapsed her chest and made it almost impossible to breathe, as her beautiful filly walked like one asleep behind the Master, away down the corridor, never to return-- "--no, you can't take him, it's too soon!" As soon as the words left her mouth she froze, eyes going wide. There should have been the scream of the Maker's rage inside her body, but there was nothing, so she swayed on her hooves for a moment, then fell to her foreknees and pressed her muzzle into the crushed grass. Around her, the rest of the herd was doing the same. Eyes clenched shut, Katabatic listened to the bangs and thumps that punctuated the sudden silence, her nose twitching at the unexpected smell of smoke. === Korn, paw still half raised from where he'd operated the door controls, limped forwards and into the big room. Mouth open, he stared out over the kaleidoscope sea of manes, tails and wings, eyes darting from one pony to another. All had prostrated themselves, but he could feel the weight of their attention, the way every single eye and ear was focused upon him, and he swallowed heavily. So many! He took another step forwards, fixing his own eyes on one of the closest, a skewbald mare who seemed to be shivering as she huddled on the floor. What had the pony said? 'Don't take him?' Korn blinked, suddenly noticing the extra set of slender legs poking out from under the mare's right wing. Oh... the room full of horns. He felt sick, and bent down to brush a strand of mane from her muzzle "This one will not take any foal away," he said, voice rough and trembling. "None of the pony's foals will ever be taken again." The smell of smoke was suddenly noticeable, and he imagined the appalling heat that must be working down towards them, boiling off layer upon layer of the building above his head. Not one of them has the Blessing at the moment... who knows how they will react. Perhaps it will be better if this one stays here and everyone burns. The thought was horribly tempting, but Korn stood up and gestured for the mare to do likewise. "The ponies will listen," he said, trying for that iron authority and complete self confidence that would come with the expectation of being obeyed. Voice of command, he thought, and tried again. "The ponies will listen and stand." There was a subdued thunder and rustling as, all at the same time, the ponies did. Mouth open and momentarily at a loss for words, Korn started at them again. It... it actually worked! Now, how is this one going to organize so many, when he doesn't-- He closed his mouth and smiled, feeling stupid. These are servitors, this one just need to ask, he thought. "The ponies need to move to the lowest levels; there is a..." Beam of concentrated sunlight rapidly turning Naraka into a volcano. "...civil emergency taking place on the surface that will shortly render this facility uninhabitable." He cringed, waiting for any of them to ask some awkward question or call him out as a liar, but none said a word. "Do the rest of the Masters need any assistance? You appear to be injured--" The mare, the same skewbald he'd approached, hung her head, staring at the ground between her hooves. "I have no magic, Master. I cannot help you." Tears welled up in her eyes, dampening the fur of her muzzle. "The other People have left, and this one's injuries are not important," Korn said. "The loss of magic is only temporary." A great sigh rippled across the herd, some of the tension leaking away from the sharply defined musculatures. Of course, the ponies will all be dead, but... "Follow this one to the lower levels to await rescue; organize yourselves to pass through the doors efficiently." He turned, moving as fast as he could -- a kind of limping jog -- out into the wide corridor and towards the spiral ramps. Behind him there was movement and urgent voices, then the ponies were trotting four abreast behind him. This one can't imagine a crowd of the People being so calm! A warm wind, rich with the scents of combustion products and looking a little hazy, was flowing from his back, strong enough to ruffle fur. "Forgive me, Master," said one of the leaders, a grey stallion at the larger end of the pony size range. Korn tensed and nearly tripped at the polite words, only just audible above the clatter of hoof on stone. Here it comes... what is this one going to do if they refuse to continue? He has no authority and validating the chain of command-- The whirl of self-destructive thoughts stopped when Korn realised the pony had taken his silence as an invitation to continue. "The pony will repeat what it just said." The stallion's ears drooped and he cringed away from Korn, pushing against the pony next to him. "I am worried that we are not moving fast enough, the smell of smoke..." "If this one is slowing the ponies down, they should go on ahead," Korn said, in between gasps. "This one cannot go any faster." The pony looked horrified at the suggestion and immediately shook his head. "No, Master! We must get you to safety first." The others nearby, all listening into the conversation, nodded in agreement. "If you wish it, Master, I could try and carry you," he mumbled, averting his eyes. "Carry? But the pony has no magi--" The stallion twisted slightly, giving Korn a view of his withers and back. Between his wingshoulders was a fairly flat patch of fur, with only a hint of spine forming a ridge down the middle. Korn's ears folded back and he swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. "Oh." He nodded jerkily. The pony came to an abrupt halt, the whole stream of other servitors behind him doing likewise, dropping to his foreknees and mantling his wings. Shakily, Korn straddled the stallion's neck, sitting down so his legs were hooked over the creature's wings. There was a moment of great instability as the pony levered itself upright, then it started to walk. This isn't so bad, Korn thought, the interplay of intensely warm muscle and bone against his backside was complex and seemed to be far more than was necessary to move a limb forwards. Then the stallion started to a trot. The bounce was unexpected, and Korn left the pony's back, grabbing for cream-coloured mane as he was tipped forwards. He came down just as the stallion was coming up again, and the bony protuberance of the pony's spine caught him between the legs. The breath woofed out of his chest, and Korn curled forwards, trying to lift himself fully off the pony's back. The instrument of his punishment turned its head and started to speak, but Korn gritted his teeth and held on. "Keep going," he gasped, legs clenching together in an action that prevented the next impact while flicking him further off balance. The pony nodded and his wings came forward, clamping down on Korn's legs and holding him in place, then accelerated into a canter. "Door!" the stallion shouted, and the ponies to either side shot past, heads lowered and legs flying, going at least four times faster than his own mount. "Is that better, Master? Try leaning back a little." "Yes," Korn squeaked, his voice sounding high and unnatural in his own ears, and pushed back off the pony's neck. Something seemed to have happened in his body, because the pain between his legs -- and from all the other indignities the world had heaped on him recently -- faded into the background, leaving everything with a razor-sharp clarity. The pony's motion was much easier to manage, despite the increase in speed; more like a series of bounds than the vicious vertical hammer of its trot. The doors ahead were held open, and they passed through, his outriders accelerating away to the next set. Korn risked turning his head; behind them was a literal river of fur and feathers, moving at the same steady distance-eating canter that was about as fast as he could have sprinted if he'd been fit and well. The ponies didn't seem to be even slightly winded, they just ran with that focused look the creatures had when given an important task. Amid the herd were foals stuck tight to their dams and given extra space by the adults around them. More than once, he saw a wing flick out, steadying a youngster if it appeared to stumble. Next came the spiral ramp, and he tensed, anticipating the change to trot as the pony slowed, but the stallion kept his speed up. "What is--?" "Grab a hold of my neck, Master," the stallion called, aiming for the middle of the doorway. "I'm going to need my wings for balance -- the best way to keep your footing cantering downhill is to keep accelerating!" Korn's eyes widened and he fell forwards, hugging the stallion's neck, as they passed the threshold for the ramp. Immediately their speed started to climb, and the ride became much more bouncy. Leaning over to one side, both wings extended and brushing floor and ceiling, the pony half fell, half galloped down the spiral slope. The wall flew past and Korn closed his eyes, holding on with legs and arms, then buried his muzzle into the stallion's mane and screamed as the pony's motion threatened to hurl him to the floor. === The cavernous storage bays were shrouded in darkness, lit only by the actinic flare of lasers and the steady glow of multiple fires reflecting off the ceiling. The emergency lights had failed just after the dogs’ forces had breached the loading dock gates, victims of a short-range electromagnetic pulse. Beak clenched tight, Svartr cursed in the privacy of her own head, watching as the squat disk of the airtank floated down the wide corridor left by stacked containers. The roar of its ducted fans, even in 'stealth' mode and without the plasma drive, was horrific, filling the room with sound. It was buttoned up, primary mirror locked away behind metal shutters, and viewing the world through sensors. This is where I find out if the flea-bitten curs have been lying to us all this time. All her armour electronics were off; she had no tactical computer, no radio and no sensor suite, and even her main superconducting storage cells had been removed to avoid the risk of those modules giving her away through magnetic leakage. The only thing that remained was her gun, the specks of computronium that controlled it and its own reserves of power. This was in the form of the graphene-boron nitride supercapacitors that provided the huge current surge required to fire the projectile, and would not betray her presence. Or so Redshift had said. Around and beneath her, the mob of liberated gryphons flowed away from the first of the three armoured vehicles, staying out of their lines of fire, exactly as they had planned. Mostly staying out of the line of fire. Here and there were bursts of gunfire, terminated by screams of pain and rage, as the dog soldiers that filtered ahead of the airtank took snap shots at the retreating gryphons. Hiding under a refrigeration unit's heatsink, Svartr squinted and worried about surveillance drones, while trying to make out the tank's turret through the low-resolution fibre probe she'd laid over the side of the cargo container under her belly. Without the augmentation of her armour's visor, even her battlefield-grade eyesight was having trouble. She shifted one talon, manipulating the mechanical controls that rotated the tip of the slender tentacle to recenter the airtank in the eyepiece's visual field. Come on you useless... She caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of her other eye, a hint of feathers from the end of the row of storage modules. A shutter flicked open on the airtank's bulbous turret and green light flared, a pulsing cone of horrible intensity that turned the world a green monochrome and made her blink, even through the nonlinear filters. Now! Svartr popped up onto all fours and crouched slightly to sight down her shoulder gun's barrel at the tank, then bit down on the trigger. Without the fancy linear actuator-powered recoil carriage, the sudden hammer-blow against her shoulder and back was shocking in its intensity, and she fought to keep the weapon on target as it emptied its ready magazine. Sparks, only just visible against the green glare, sprayed off the airtank's hull, then the laser went out, leaving smoke and vapourised ceramics billowing from the primary emitter. Too late, shutters blinked closed over the ruined eye, then she stamped down on the mechanical detonator taped to the container’s roof and rolled away. Got to get some use out of that supercon bank, she thought, wondering if she'd get far enough away before the improvised explosive triggered. The shock tube flashed yellow, like a laser able to follow curves and go around corners, then the sides of the containers lining the corridor blew out with a rippling roar filled with the spider-crawl of lighting. Tonnes of stored food -- and the much greater mass of refrigeration machinery on top of the containers -- fell onto the airtank, slamming it to the floor. Return fire from a dozen points lashed where she'd been, and Svartr completed the roll to fall off the other side of her container and down to the padding she'd strewn there to make the ten-length drop survivable without functioning wings. On her back and stunned for a moment, she looked upwards to see heavy laser fire from the other two airtanks turn everything above into an exploding shower of molten metal that rained down on everyone she could see. Shapes, once hidden in the gloom, staggered shrieking as plumage caught fire, bouncing mindlessly in the little alleys between the containers until they slumped to the ground or were shot by the dog soldiers making insect-leaps from one spot to another. Other gryphons were luckier and avoided the rain of fire, turning on the soldiers in groups of three or four. Hissing like a leaking steam boiler, Svartr twisted to get her paws under her, then bounded into the fight. === Fusion glanced back at where Ellisif was hog-tying Rthar to his gryphon, with Redshift remaining behind to keep watch, then back out over the cuboid landscape of fire and screams. Her nostrils flared and she snorted, trying to shed the tang of burning feathers. I convinced them to fight, so they are dying because of me. I am responsible for this. Her ears drooped and her head lowered. I can't save them... Fusion shook her head, trying to clear the foul taste from the back of her throat, and gave a little unconscious whinny. Eyes narrowed, her ears went from a dismal droop to flat back against the sides of her skull. I can't ever be in this position again. "How close do you have to be?" the gryphoness asked, beak twitching as she moved it in arcs to follow the occasional jumping figure. There was a bellowing roar, and one of the airtanks flew high enough to clear the ranks of containers, its lasers stabbing down into the alleys and passageways below. "Maker-dammit! That thing will be the death of us all!" It was joined by a second, and the pair flew in close formation over the miniature cityscape, wedged in between the ceiling and the tops of the containers. Wherever they passed, the fighting abruptly ceased. Fusion felt for the machines, sidestepping the sucking pull of the Arclight weapons, but there was only the barest hint of the things within the space occupied by her magic. "Closer than this," she said huskily. "I'll only get one chance." Even then, will I be able to do it? The howling void in her head tried to close in again, and she focused on forcing it back. "Of course," Ellisif said, only a hint of disgust in her voice as she loped ahead into the room. "You are still a bit... glowy." "Nothing I can do about that. When the glow is gone you'll know I have nothing left." Distracted by the harsh and variable lighting, Fusion nearly tripped over one of the loading robots, currently lying powerless on the floor. A panicked leap let her hurdle it, but her hind right hoof clipped the edge on the way down and she stumbled sideways, bouncing off a container wall. The impact jarred her wingshoulder and she gasped, a few more strands of mane turning back to a dusky pink. Focus, filly, focus, she thought, jaws clenched, then returned to her steady, collected canter. Ahead, Ellisif had swerved to the right, down a passageway that led away from the airtanks, and had fallen to her belly behind another of the inactive robots. Frantic claw-waves: a talon pointed at an eye, then down the corridor; three talons held up; a thumb-claw gesturing down the corridor Fusion had been heading. I can see-- Eyes widening, Fusion lowered her head and charged, flashing across the side corridor even as Ellisif opened fire. She's drawing them in, Fusion thought, then leapt over a bundle that had the strong, nose-twitching odour of burned feathers and charred meat. The distraction proved effective; the pair of airtanks had changed course and were heading this way. If they see me-- Fusion groaned as the pressure from Arclight shifted again, tottering to a halt as she sought to keep her power from it. There was a half-empty patch of storage racking at ground level only a few paces away, and she wriggled past heavy sacks of pellets that smelled vaguely of grass and apples. The howling roar of the lead airtank's lifter fans grew loud enough to make her ears ring, and Fusion jammed her head in a crack between two stacks of food in an effort to block out some of the noise. Closing her eyes, she looked for the airtanks again, and they were there, right overhead. Dust and smoke whipped through her hiding place, stinging the exposed tip of her muzzle, but she ignored it and finally risked examining the aircraft properly. Even within Arclight's black haze, the glare of the airtank's stored power was obvious. At the centre of the hull was a deep violet torus which had the familiar taste of fusing deuterium and helium-3, but she ignored it and focused on the cube of tight-packed colours at the rear of the airtank. Dense, complex coils of blue fanned out to various points throughout the hull, tracing the lines of the wiring loom to the bulky packages of laser, ducted fan and -- fortunately -- inactive thaumic defences. Those coils, the superconductors, were fully charged, as the aircraft's reactor was able to keep pace with the power requirements. This is going to be messy. Fusion ignored all that, even as the hazy black fog closed in from the edges of her shadow sight, and focused on those coils. They sat in the most heavily armoured part of the airtank, even better protected than the crew, but mere physical stuff was no defence against this sort of intrusion. Mind galloping to keep ahead of the crawling darkness, she mapped current pathways within the storage banks, locating all the safety systems that split the horrible amount of stored energy into marginally safer parallel packages. Oh, Backdraft, if only you knew how useful your lessons on what not to do would be. The thought was a fleeting one, occurring in the fragment of time it took Fusion to set the hooks of her magic throughout the power bank, and brought with it a pang of regret. Am I too close? Fusion hesitated, then pushed away the fear and poured everything she had left into the spell. At a score of points within the airtank's hull the superconductors abruptly quenched. Giga-amps of current, endlessly circulating without losses, suddenly encountered resistance and gave up a fraction of its power to heat. Safety systems reacted in a pawful of microseconds to shunt the remainder into reserve pathways, only to find that their superconducting switches had all been sabotaged. The temperature, currently down in the vicinity of liquid nitrogen, spiked, passing the volatilisation point of the exotic-element wiring in far less time than it took to blink. From overhead there was a fantastically bright flash, dazzling even in the darkness amid the food sacks, followed immediately by a hammer-blow as the container she was hiding in, despite its size and weight, was smashed sideways. Fusion reached for the walls around her, pushing outwards with her magic, but there was nothing to push with. The darkness in the shadow world filled her mind, and she was helpless to prevent the storage rack above her head from buckling and dumping tonnes of supplies on her body. There was an immense weight on Fusion's chest. She breathed shallowly, feeling her barding flex inwards slightly with each motion of her ribs. The dogs really know how to build armour, she thought, struggling to move even slightly. That unknown engineer had done an excellent job; the plates of rigid armour had locked together, forming a protective cage around her body. The air was close and warm, filtering in through some crack in between the woven sacks of food pellets, but there never seemed to be quite enough of it. With the air came an acrid scent, the increasingly familiar odour of burned fur and seared meat. There were harsh, avian screams and gunfire, all muffled and made strangely distant, and Fusion flattened her ears to try and block out the sounds, but that didn't work either. Not again, I can't do this again! Her heart hammered and a quiet whinny escaped her throat. They are dying out there and there is nothing I can do to help. She struggled again, but the pile above her just settled slightly and breathing became more difficult as whatever collection of cracks that delivered her air was closed off. === ~~~discontinuity~~~ Arrival, with a flash of light and the sudden slap of air not expecting her presence. Three, four-- There were aircraft everywhere around her, black things lit by the blue-white spears of their plasma jets and the sullen red glare of the incandescent clouds over Naraka, their lasers still focussed on where she had been, rather than where she was. Gravity pushed out the first sheaf of pillaged railgun ammunition, then the second and third, flicking them out in a wide spray towards the closest targets. Lasers, the small ones that seemed to be scattered along the hulls of the aircraft, were firing back in an instant, but her decoys took the first wave of hits, lighting the volume with stroboscopic pulses of green. Automated threat assessment switched targets, the beams reaching for her hypersonic projectiles, but Gravity was too close and half a dozen airtanks disintegrated in flashes of flame and smoke. --five, six. How accurate is Redshift's timer? The world turned hot green, even through her closed eyes, and the temperature spiked-- ~~~discontinuity~~~ --closer to the local source of the darkness within the shadow world and her own stolen weapon, still falling through free air amid her decoys. One beam, from the distant half of the antimagic weapon pair, was swinging across to meet her, and she dived, ducking under the curdled edge of the effect. For a moment it had her, and all her magics faltered and weakened, the carefully hoarded teleport pattern evaporating like spring frost in the morning sun, then she was through, firing a spray of projectiles at the ungainly aircraft. Explosions stitched the air between her and the target, the laser antimissile defences of half the fleet combining to knock her projectiles out of the sky. Too weak-- The beam twitched, curving to follow her, its partner from the closest aircraft finally able to swing through the greater arc to catch her. Nine, ten, elev-- The teleport pattern reformed in her head, and Gravity pushed-- ~~~discontinuity~~~ --ten kilolengths from the fleet, wings open and letting her speed bleed away, all magical propulsion and defences down. Gravity hung beneath her wings, head drooping and gasped, inhaling great lungfuls of cold, thin air. Nothing, it didn't work-- Light, far brighter and bluer than the noonday sun, bloomed from a point somewhere in the direction of the dogs’ airfleet, but lower down. How far did it fall before detonation? Was it close enough? Gravity turned her head away, bringing her wings forward to cover her eyes with layers of dark feathers and let the world pull her down. The light dimmed briefly, then brightened again and an unrelenting heat beat against that shield, filling the shelter behind her wings with a stifling closeness and the stinging scent of burning feathers. Am I far enough away? The light dimmed to bearable levels through Gravity's closed eyelids, even though the heat did not relent, and her addled mind finally put together enough magic to be useful. A force field bloomed about her, arresting most of her terminal descent, but the heat kept coming. More magic, directionless telekinesis that did nothing except use power -- but that was the whole point. A sheen of frost grew on her feathers and ice crystals spread in the sodden dampness of her sweat-soaked flanks. The chill ran through her, and Gravity opened her eyes. There was a globe of light, the colour of blood, expanding and churning, where she had been. It was rising, flattening and darkening, the edges curling and turning endless loops that revealed streamers and filaments of incandescent gas that vanished as the torus faded from sight. Wreckage fell from the sky, flashing and bursting from internal explosions, surrounded by a scattering of vehicles still under power. These were small things that accelerated wildly before themselves detonating with blue-white flashes, little more than pinpricks at this distance. Shadow sight confirmed it: the glittering heart of darkness had vanished without trace. Gravity's chest heaved in a single, convulsive sob, then she shakily rebuilt her magic, coming under powered flight once more and curving towards the volcanic glare of Naraka. There, the flying jewels still circled, firing hazy beams of utter blackness into the heart of the facility. How can anything still be alive down there? Back in the real, that core was nothing less than a pit filled with fire, a continuous jet-engine blast that lit the clouds of volatilised rock with the colours of flame. Strength returning a little, Gravity gritted her teeth and pushed aside the fatigue, building the teleport pattern in her head. Just one more, kill just one more so that Fusion can get herself out. Three of those weapons and two of us... they will never stop us now. If Fusion is still alive, if-- The mare snarled, staring at one of the pair over Naraka and pushed-- --the pattern distorted and started to dissolve, and Gravity aborted the spell, trying to fix the damage. The partner of the one I destroyed... she thought dully, suddenly feeling the sucking, twisting sensation inside her head. It wasn't enough to stop her from using magic, but it made everything that much harder, and she tried a second, then a third, time to jump again. Every time she failed, the arcane pattern was too complex to keep intact, even at this extended range. "No!" she screamed, "Not this close, I won't--" Power flowed and her speed jumped; the air cracking as she broke the sound barrier. An iron paw closed about her body, telekinesis reinforcing her bones and preventing her head from being snapped backwards as she accelerated ten times faster than a falling stone. Lights bloomed on the still distant fleet as the bright pinpoints of missile drive plumes fanned out from the aircraft on the perimeter, vanishing as they turned in her direction. Lasers came on, filling her eyes with a green glare, so she closed them. Heat came with the light, but she was too far away and it was a minor thing compared to the thermal rush from the shockwaves building up in front of her muzzle, so she ignored it. The missiles were upon her in the next moment, blue-white quench explosions buffeting her from all sides, and she nearly tumbled until her field grew blades that bit and held the air. Through a moment later, at closing speeds so high that the engagement time was just too short for more than one salvo. Her personal force fields folded down to ever-narrower cones, turning her into a double-ended needle that ripped the air apart and heated it to incandescence. Ahead, the burning clouds of Naraka expanded, but Gravity ignored them and aimed for one of the flying jewels, the brightest thing in her shadow sight. She let her speed climb and didn't stop, didn't slow, not even when the aircraft turned from a dot to a wall that was impossible to get around. === The dark veil disrupting Fusion's magic was whipped away, like she'd walked from a small, plain room and into some vast landscape full of vibrant colour and life. The familiar feeling of strength surged through her and she pushed at her confinement, building a spherical chamber lined with twisted metal and trickling piles of food running from split sacks. Shadow sight came next, overlaying the white-gold glow holding back the walls with the frantically moving wing-bars of gryphons fighting in the complex of alleyways between the containers. More subtle, but still obvious, were the technological colours of stored power from the dog soldiers’ machines. Both airtanks were down; one completely vanished, the other upside down and inert apart from a few little flickers. There were still plenty of other sources: dogs in armour and several large somethings moving up from the corridors below. Above... ...a milling mass of ponies, hundreds of them, against a backdrop of solar heat that was getting closer by the second. Korn got them out, she thought, some of the mental weight evaporating, but they don't have long. The luminescent background, with all the implied heat and violence, should have felt threatening, but it was like the embrace of an old friend. Where are you, sister? Fusion probed the distance, hunting for a trace of Gravity, in colour or flavour or mind, but there was nothing there. The worry, always present under her thoughts, was held back. There must be something wrong... she would have come for me, I'm sure of it. Something of the veil returned, but it was a pale, translucent thing compared to what it had been before, only enough to disrupt her fine control. No teleportation... they can still hold me here, but this cage is no longer strong enough. Magic punched out, opening a hole through the debris wall, and Fusion jumped out, wings flicking as she came to a hover. Shields of golden light encircled her and she let her wings rest, wholly supported by magic. This close to the ceiling it was hot, redolent with the odour of burning organics; somewhere a fire had taken hold and was pumping black smoke into the already filthy air. She was unnoticed amid the struggles. Here was a gryphon grappling with a power suit, beak working at the neck joint even as the machine's fighting claw took a carmine bite from his belly. There was another suit, weapon-arms gone, held down by a gryphon on each limb, while a grey-feathered gryphoness in battered security barding sat on its chest. She held the amputated rotary cannon over her head with both claws and brought it down barrels-first onto the suit's faceplate. The violence was almost mesmerising in all its varied forms, and Fusion stared for a long moment, before shots started to make sharp explosions against her defences. Lasers would be next, so she folded the light about her body, relying on shadow sight and a very short range clairvoyance spell, focused just outside the nested fields. Eyes closed within the utter black of her defences, she reached outside and twisted, calling a point of Celestia-hot plasma into being. That attracted a lot more fire. Fusion made a lightning-fast adjustment to her arcane armour, altering the intensity of the antientropic arcana that was keeping the pressurised air between the sculpted field layers close to its liquefaction point. Her clairvoyant point of view remained uninterrupted, unaffected by the passage of fast fragments through its locus and immune to dazzling by laser or her own actinic weapon. The arc-welder glare of her spell brightened, becoming the dominant source of light in the storage level, and she sent it off towards the exit to the transit tunnels, pumping more energy into the tight knot of magnetic fields and high pressure plasma as she did so. The thing flashed through the gate, ploughing through the squads of dog soldiers still in the tunnel, and touched the glacis plate of the lead airtank coming up from below. Fusion held onto the spell, allowing the magnetic containment to fail asymmetrically. The front of the airtank exploded, followed a moment later by its supercon power stores, filling the wide tunnel with fire and overlapping shockwaves that threw smashed bodies in all directions, before collapsing the roof. How easy it is when your enemy doesn't have a face, Fusion thought, spawning another point of plasma with a loud crack, before letting it vanish unused. Too many allies without protection; even a close pass might set them on fire. She chewed at her lips, then picked the same spell she'd used on the Institute and the Security Hub. Fusion pulled in the power she needed, filling up that immaterial reservoir within her mind. Burning worms, eating me from within. She shied away from the memories of the attack on the Security Hub, making sure not to take so much this time. No need at this range... I wonder if I can-- The thaumomagnetic pulse, only using a fraction of her rapidly filling reserve, rippled out, this time as a fuzzy cone rather than a sphere. The arcane wavefront was an ephemeral gossamer, silken spider's webs at dawn, compared to the glare and hard radiation of her bolt of energetic plasma, but it passed through solid material like it was nothing more than vacuum. Where it passed, the energy colours of the armour suits went chaotic, the hardware reacting as if electrocuted. All gunfire in that area abruptly stopped, leaving a stunned silence from dog and gryphon alike. That didn't last; the gryphons converged on the spastically vibrating suits, working in groups to pry the dogs from their armour. Fusion turned and repeated the spell, not once but a dozen times, sweeping the room and everything in it with rainbow light. The effect was the same, and she turned away from the gryphons and their grisly work, lifting her head to the milling herd of ponies on the floor above. There will be panic-- She shunted the thought aside and bolted for the other side of the facility. Here the path overhead was clear of ponies, gryphons or anything she cared about, and distant from the central core that marked the grave of so many foals. Horns and wings; the only parts of us that they value. Ears flicking back, Fusion accelerated, then abruptly curved upwards, striking the ceiling. Magic, of a similar sort to her anti-armour weapon, came to life, shrouding the outside of her field in a layer of plasma far hotter than that needed to boil tungsten. She sliced through the roof, with its layers of reinforced concrete and ersatz stone, without slowing. The material Fusion pushed through was subjected to pressures and temperatures far beyond its yield strength, and simply got out of the way, blasted explosively fast down the yellow-hot tunnel behind her. A moment later and she was through into the empty exercise room above, visible only as a burst of appalling light that set every tree in the chamber aflame in the instant before she was gone again and through the next ceiling. The next level was an inferno before she had passed through, ruddily lit by a rain of rocks and lava from above, then she was through again, and into the cauldron of molten, boiling rock at the base of the heliostat's beam. Compared to the temperatures she now swaddled herself with, this was nothing, and she swam the magma like a bubble rising through water. Now, at the heart of the beam, there was turbulence, as the roiling lava below vaporized and rushed out of the deepening crater. Fusion rode the rocket-engine plume, up until the gasses spread sideways and left her flying in the column of light, blazing like the sun itself. The enemy was here. Not close, but certainly all about. There was one of those Arclight machines, still trying to suppress her power, with another moving to join it. Here and here and here were aircraft in groups, clusters and singletons, orbiting her like the debris ring orbited the world. Fusion, buoyed up by the sheer amount of power around her, expanded her defences and twisted the air, forming it into invisible geometric shapes that distorted the landscape seen through them. The cascade of light flowing around her bent, running along thaumically controlled interfaces, and was directed sideways like a titanic searchlight, making the aircraft glint like scattered snowflakes. More lenses and optical structures formed, taking the broad fan of light and collimating it further, directing it towards the closest Arclight squadron. Fusion sat in the middle of the flood, staring out through those same lenses and using them to find her targets. The beam, a million times brighter than the noonday sun, boiled clouds to nothing as it tracked over them before settling on the aircraft. They flashed like sparks rising off a fire, turning into brief meteoric plumes of excited plasma before vanishing completely. The closest fleet was dealt with in a few breaths, the loss of its half of the Arclight weapon lifting the rest of the haze from Fusion's mind. Her shadow sight sharpened, picking out a colour that wasn't visible before. A pastel violet, the familiar colour of Gravity's hornlight, was falling from altitude perhaps twenty kilolengths away. Again, Fusion probed the mental space which should have held her sister, but again there was no response-- ~~~discontinuity~~~ --magic gently enfolding the bloody and battered shape, protecting it behind fields that would survive any number of physical insults-- ~~~discontinuity~~~ --back in the darkness of the eye in the hurricane of solar energy, Fusion nuzzled behind Gravity's ears, tasting sweat and burned fur. "What...?" the mare said, eyes opening to stare up at Fusion, her muzzle wrinkling in confusion and wonder. "It worked... you survived." "All thanks to you," Fusion said softly. "I need to make us safe -- can you help me find the rest of the heliostats before they shut this one down?" Fusion opened a sharing, showing Gravity her view of the sky and its myriad of drifting points. The other mare latched onto the scene, adding her own peculiar sense of everything in orbit. "I tried to reach the heliostat, but it was too far... I'd used too much strength trying to kill those antimagic weapons. Did... did anypony else get out?" "All of them, hundreds and hundreds of ponies and gryphons, all protected in the lower levels. The gryphons kept Security at bay while I was incapacitated." Fusion looked into Gravity's eyes and smiled fondly, while another part of her mind swept the beam of focused sunlight across the heavens, letting it play over every artificial object that she and Gravity could identify. Pity Luna is still below the horizon... "We have an army now, one that knows how to fight." Outside that pocket of comfortable darkness the river of light flowed on, making short-lived fireworks in the sky.