--a dark and distant hilltop. There were ponies present, all ones he recognized, and two that were familiar-yet-different. A sick feeling of anticipation, masked by brusque rudeness and a sense of rising power--
--unfamiliar magic, learned by rote, that did unidentifiable things to a cube of solid-state hardware near the top of the Church. "That's it," he said, keeping the note of uncertainty from his voice. "The labournet connection is--"
"Too far, go back," Merlon whispered, pushing away the emotions that came with the sharing. "I don't care what happened at the corral. I want to know how you got there."
--terrible brightness and heat at his back, the flat farmland below illuminated as if by the noon-day sun. Wings folded, he fell, trying to escape. A complex, long-practiced spell pattern filled his mind, parts of it altering to match his position in the naked now, then a push--
The remembered details flicked by too fast to follow, but Merlon was starting to get a sense of how the spell operated. "That's good," she whispered, muzzle close to Scalar's ear. "Show me another jump, somewhere else."
"You've seen them all," he said, voice trembling. "My mate, you said that--"
"In time, Scalar, in time. Show me your practice sessions again... that one where Redshift was playing with the gun." Merlon kept her voice calm and quiet, trying to push away the emotions that came back down the sharing link with Scalar. Horror and panic blended with flashes of imagery, little snippets of memory of ponies Scalar knew, but mostly of Elliptic and what life would be like without her. Merlon swallowed and opened her eyes, dispelling the visions. The magic she was using to control the injured mare's heart was still there, and the loss of the other distractions made it impossible not to stare at her. Must follow my orders; this pony's life is not important. She kept the thought hidden, separated from the sharing's residual connection.
"I can teach you the pattern directly... it would be much quicker." His head twisted and his nostrils flared, all senses focused on the still form of Elliptic.
"Yes, but I need to see your memories first. Can't have any accidental mistakes in the pattern, can we?" Merlon thought she'd kept her voice level and even, but it sounded tense and unnatural to her ears. Is this what an interrogator feels? I know my Master has done this many times in his past... how can they do this and not be affected? She shifted her weight, ears drooping slightly. This mare has done nothing wrong, and I am using her like she is a thing. Even Scalar isn't really at fault, just... contaminated by these bad ideas.
"All you have to do is forget about her -- what could I do?"
A whining tone had entered Scalar's voice, and Merlon sighed as the flow of memories wavered. "Focus!" she snapped. "The sooner I am happy, the sooner you will be. A foal could see that I can't keep up a second spell during a jump." More mental prodding and the scene changed again, and Merlon compared the start and end points to the changes in the patterns used. It's true; there are memories of places encoded in the patterns. Even if I don't know where the rogues are hiding, I could travel there. Scalar's recollections of the base were quite clear, more than clear enough to build the required patterns. "Right. Now you can show me the details." Scalar's horn flashed and Merlon flinched, but he didn't try anything rash. "Carefully, Scalar, carefully."
"Yes," he whispered, eyes closed. "You don't have to remind me what's at stake. I think you have most of it, the actual complexity is here, at the central node, but at least it's constant..." He kept talking, manipulating the pattern and allowing her to follow along, until her copy of it was a perfect match. "...and that's it. There, you have everything I know. Try the spell, you'll see that it works." His voice became raw and trembling, an alien thing to come from such a stoutly-built pony. "Elliptic, you promised."
"Yes." Merlon replaced the suppressor unit on his horn, ignoring the look of panic, then gently lifted the mare from the floor, bringing her up to head height. A flick of magic and her interventions were gone; Elliptic's heart beat on without her input, still a little weak. "The thing is... I still don't really trust you. I've seen inside your head, and I know how much you hate what I've made you do. This spell needs a live test subject." She looked down at him, then back at Elliptic. "Are you sure there's nothing you might have forgotten to mention? Some detail that wasn't obvious from my inspection?" She cocked her head, making Elliptic rotate slowly.
"Use me, not her. The first jump can be rough," he said, the muscles around his withers bunching and flexing in a futile effort to escape his bonds. "Elliptic is too badly hurt, the shock might kill her."
Merlon opened her mouth, then looked at him thoughtfully. "You wouldn't be trying to die, would you, Scalar?" Would he do that? Some hidden defect in the spell that only affects complex living tissue... "This is an issue of trust," she said, then shook her head.
"I told you the truth," he said numbly. "It will work, I promise."
There was fear in his eyes, but no more than might be expected for the situation. "I hope so, Scalar, for your mate's sake." She took her test pattern and pushed.
===
It is a good thing that this job never encouraged a home life, Orgon thought, keeping his face blank through long habit, even though he was alone. The endless lists of command decisions, meetings and political compromises that had consumed what passed for his life since his 'promotion' were a matter of record, some public, most utterly secret, and filled his secure calendar further than he cared to look.
He made an unconscious gesture, one intended to signal to his servitor, then sighed and opened his medical kit instead. This one could just do with a correction to his somatic system, rather than... Extracting a spray, he glanced at the warning decals and ignored them with a grimace. Eyes closed, he fired a dose onto his tongue, fighting to keep a straight face at the sudden, intense burst of bitterness. Running on two doses already, the taste of the third was so horrible as to leave him weak and trembling; with enormous effort he resisted the urge to scrub at his muzzle with both paws.
The weakness faded, leaving behind a feeling of wondrous clarity and strength, such energy that he felt the sudden desire to get up from his desk and pace vigorously around the blank office he'd commandeered in the anonymous depths of Arcology Five. Orgon wonders if Merlon has made any prog--
The communicator chimed, an urgent message pushing aside all the nested data windows of the command network's information feed that covered the wall screen. The information was simple: a servitor designator and a set of coordinates with a circular error. Orgon gaped at the information, mind running in a dozen directions simultaneously, then his jaws snapped shut. It actually worked! Now, what to do with the information...
The drugs were still making his mind jump randomly; Orgon was familiar enough with the effects of the cocktail of stimulants to be wary of any decisions made under their influence, but there was an interesting thread of logic that just wouldn't die, despite the unthinkable nature of it. These ones have no choice, not really, but this path of extreme military force is unlikely to succeed. What chance is there that we even caught one of them in the induced quench at Hub Twelve, no matter what this one told the Auditors? They move too fast... even the slightest warning and they will get away.
He ran his tongue over his teeth, trying to wipe off the residual taste of the stimulant's anti-addiction compounds. Orgon got the Court on-side with openness about the servitor problem; now that these ones actually have a location, he does not think using it will actually be useful...
Orgon is the only one who knows this information; he could not pass it on... He frowned, then stabbed at a couple of controls, drumming his claws on the desk while waiting for connections to be made to the dispersed and hidden members of the Synod core group. The first few connections opened, showing Councillors in various states of dishevelled undress. This one supposes it is pretty late. Orgon hid the urge to smile manically, lips twitching back from his teeth momentarily. Or early.
"Councillors," Orgon said quietly, "apologies for the early call, but this one has the location of the rogue servitors."
"Then tell the Court!" Indutu said sharply. "Rid us of this threat and get the Auditors out of our fur!"
"There may be another way, Councillor. This one thinks that there is too much risk that use of the Hammer will not achieve the goal we seek." Orgon stared at the faces of the Synod; all looked back at him with disbelief and mounting anger. "Consider this, please. The servitors are just too mobile to guarantee killing all of them. If these ones fail to kill the primary targets... well, imagine the excesses of the Maker's Path committed on a scale to encompass whole arcologies."
Half the Synod started shouting and he muted them, continuing to talk. "This one believes that the risk is too great without trying to bottle them up first. The current iteration of Arclight is not sufficient, but this one is working to understand how the teleport magic functions." Merlon must have made some progress by now! "Once he has that, the servitors can be trapped and eliminated, no matter their level of personal power." They do not trust this one's skill in this matter, he thought, surveying the faces again and feeling faintly ill.
The Synod didn't take long to reach a consensus; Orgon kept his features expressionless while they overrode his advice and ordered the strike anyway.
===
Chau looked again at the launch order, then lifted his eyes to meet the gaze of his supervisor, Arturon, the Strategist in charge of the Lunar Kinetic Driver. Behind Arturon, visible through the wide, thick windows, the ranks of accelerator rings marched in a long line towards the horizon, amid a plain of matte-black photovoltaic cells. A blurred pulse of silver, little more than a momentary flicker so brief that it was almost invisible, swept through the centre of the rings. More visible was the tiny ripple of dust that followed the projectiles, like glowing fog in the harsh Celestia-light, kicked up from the moon's surface by the shivering vibrations running down the accelerator loop's support struts.
"Target is above the horizon. These ones have a firing solution that avoids anything large enough to be a problem," he said, dropping his gaze to the banks of displays, filled with high-level summaries from the cubic kilolengths of machinery ringing the moon. "Projectile package has left the low-orbit storage loop and is in the main accelerator. The power sequence has started."
Arturon leaned forwards, studying the display. "Launch position in... nine hundred seconds." The main display showed a high-level schematic, a section through the moon looped with strings of tiny rings and vertical lines that penetrated deep into the mantle. A dash of red light was moving through one of the loops, visibly accelerating as it did so.
"Yes. The automatic sequencer is running on the exit magnets and these ones can fire on any pass. Kinetic accumulators are fully charged and responding as expected; the capacitor banks are cycling. There is sufficient reserve to achieve launch. Feed from the equatorial PV belt is coming online to lift the drop masses back into position--" It's not like those crustal pits don't store enough gravitational potential energy for dozens of full-power shots, Chau thought, suppressing a sigh. One of the more pointless procedures. "--and Defence reports no incursions within our perimeter; antiproton traps are filling from cryogenic storage. Thaumic suppression is stable." His paws shook slightly as they swept across the board, requesting another series of radar pulses directed deeper down the gravity well.
The view was already cluttered, and getting worse. The ablation cascade, started on the other side of the planet, had spread rapidly as a result of wildly different velocities of debris scattered across the range of affected orbital altitudes, and was now a lethal blanket over the whole globe. A few of those high-velocity fragments were from the last planned resupply launch, an event that should take place once every ten days. There's something stupid about only having fifty days of food, Chau thought, switching away from the down-well view. There'd been no replacement cargo launches since the disaster, and the Court's own food reserves had already been moved to war-footing rationing. It's just more standard procedure... nothing to worry about.
Cameras on the accelerator rings captured images of the projectile package as it passed. Slender darts tapering to needle points fore and aft, the early weapons in the string were small compared to rings they flew through, looking like nails dropping through circles of drainage pipe. Frozen by the imaging system, and individually little bigger than a Person, the three formations of ten darts were high-performance missiles in their own right, complete with hybrid liquid-solid fuel motors and a full suite of sensors and ECM.
"Telemetry is good; all birds report successful integration of the atmospheric penetration plan," Chau muttered. "Self-destruct charges are primed." The camera view changed, the individual images from each ring strung together to produce a video feed, as if taken from a camera being accelerated with the weapons. It was an odd way to view the world; the rings and projectiles appeared stationary while the landscape outside flickered past. At the moment they were on the night side, and Chau could see the motion of distant debris-ring objects as they rose and set with stately grace.
The view changed, showing another needle, but this one closer to the size of a levitation train. The best part of ten thousand tonnes of iron with a tungsten core, coated with a thick layer of ablative silicates, the thing was bone-white under the glare of the camera strobes. It was a much simpler machine than the missiles that were designed to protect it; little more than dumb mass.
The view behind the projectile suddenly became a brilliant glare of distant mountains and foreshortened craters, all steadily moving past the apparently stationary accelerator track. The closest features were already reduced to a series of brief impressions, and in any case consisted mainly of a grid of black PV cells. Chau studied the feed, paws unconsciously clenched. "It's hard to believe that the decision to fire is coming from Lacunae itself," he muttered. "This one doesn't think the Court has ever fired the Hammer at full power against a ground target. To call it down on your own lands..."
"No. Even during the Baur-Lacunae war the shots were only at twenty percent," the Strategist said quietly. Outside the window something flickered past, raising another, slightly larger, ripple of dust.
"That's the first circuit... velocity is now seventy-five kilolengths a second," Chau said, running claws through his whiskers. "Forty-five to go."
===
Merlon gently peeled the now-inactive field dressings from Elliptic's shoulder, probing the extent of her injuries, and noting the locations of blood vessels only partially repaired by the simple magic. They kept her alive for long enough, she thought, mind half directed towards her labournet communicator. My Master isn't answering, and he needs to know this. Frowning, she examined the random patches of singed fur on the mare's coat, using a wad of dressing material to wipe away the char. Scalar was right, it was tricky. The first jump had nearly gone badly wrong when she'd had a flutter of doubt during the casting, but the second and third had been better. The fourth she'd cast on herself.
"Is she okay?" Scalar whispered, the strain in his voice obvious.
"Elliptic has lost a bit more fur, but that's all." She picked up a plastic pouch of blood substitute and connected the intravenous line. "Now that I've stopped the worst of the bleeding the extra fluids will reverse her shock."
"Thank you," he breathed, the words a sob and tears soaking the fur of his muzzle. "Thank you."
I have saved her only for you both to be euthanized later. At least it won't hurt. The thought made Merlon flinch at the anticipation of Punishment, then tears pricked at her own eyes. ...and what about me? It seemed like a necessary act at the time, but what happens next? Will they allow me to receive a second Blessing? Security burned its own ponies out of simple suspicion. She snorted, shaking her head hard enough that her mane whipped from side to side, delivering stinging slaps on her neck. No, I am still loyal. My Master will understand this. She shifted her weight from hoof to hoof, heart beating a little faster. I think.
She repeated the connection request to her labournet communicator, swallowing hard when there was no response. Despite what I know, I am only a servitor. Am I being denied access because of this? What else is happening that could be more important?
There was a sudden ping of sound, seeming to originate from the centre of her own head, then the comms panel in the room lit up, showing the face of Strategist Orgon. His gaze seemed distracted, constantly shifting to one side. "Servitor, report," he said curtly.
Merlon blinked, momentarily at a loss for words. "Master, I..." A look of irritation flashed across Orgon's face; she flinched, but there was no pain. I will never get used to that. "I have the teleport spell, Master. With it I can locate the rogues’ base of operations."
"Tell this one the location," Orgon snapped.
"I will have to travel there; if provided with navigation equipment I will be able to--"
"No, that will take too long. This one already knows where it is, he just wanted confirmation. Random Walk has used the spell. Does the pony have any insight into how the teleport magic may be blocked?"
"Yes, the magic is fragile and--"
"Can this be done over a wide area, and quickly? As in right now?"
"I, ah..." Merlon's mouth opened, but no other words came out. She shook, mane whipping back and forth. "Master, there may be a way to modify Arclight to blanket a large area, but that will take time and I don't know how--"
Orgon made a deep bubbling hiss, almost a snarl. "Not soon enough, then. The pony will discuss its findings with a Security technical team. Leave the prisoners and go to the Sector Eleven Hub." He nodded once, then turned his full attention on her. "Is there any other information that the pony thinks this one needs to know?"
Merlon realised that she was staring back open-mouthed. The words were there in her head-- I removed my own Blessing. --but they wouldn't come out. "No, Master," she said, "nothing that cannot wait." She watched him carefully, examining the cant of his ears and the arrangement of his whiskers. He must see it, he must know! But there was nothing, no change in expression, no hint of realisation or dawning horror that said she'd been found out, that she'd turned herself into a monster. The connection went blank as Orgon dropped the link, leaving her staring at the default Security logo.
"I am a good pony, but I didn't tell him. Why didn't I tell him?" she murmured, then walked slowly to the door of the interrogation suite, intent on telling the Intelligence officers that she had finished with the prisoners, but she paused, ears suddenly flat back. "Did I do all this, cut myself away from the Master's herd, for nothing?! He already knew!" Merlon's eyes went wild, lips pulling back from her teeth, and she gave a little rear, forehooves beating at the air. "I know what Security has done to ponies even suspected of contact with the rogues--" Her mouth snapped shut and she glanced at the stallion, still bound to the interrogation bench.
Scalar gave a short, harsh laugh. "They'll kill you, they'll kill all of us." His voice dropped to a mumble. "At least it's not me who's gotten everypony killed; still should have had the courage to keep quiet. I'm sorry, Elliptic, but I failed." His mouth worked. "How did the dogs find us?"
The extra insult, on top of her rage, nearly translated into a vicious kick of telekinesis that would have caved the stallion's skull in. Breathing heavily through flared nostrils, Merlon closed her eyes and held back the power. "If you are trying to get me to kill you, remember I can make you suffer in other ways," she said at last.
But it's not Scalar you are angry at, is it? The nasty, unthinkable thought wouldn't go away, following her as she left the stallion to the Intelligence officers, rattling around her brain as she flew to her next assignment.
===
Fusion blinked, sluggishly opening her eye, then closed it again against the fast-moving blast of air and the stinging whip of pink mane-hair. Her whole body felt heavy, every muscle loose and rubbery, like she was a toy held in the magic of a yearling. Eye opening again, just a slit this time, she looked upwards, past the mad flutter of pink mane and streaming tail, past stretched-out wings and floppy legs. The wind was a dirty brown-grey colour, like that of wood ash and dirt, and was staining her white coat the same colour everywhere it touched.
She inhaled sharply, then coughed; the air was hot on the insides of her muzzle, and seemed too thin while still full of particles. I'm hot. Why is it so hot? Heat radiated down from above, like the brutal beat from an open furnace door. Weak magic kindled, building a bubble of clear air around her head and allowing Fusion to breathe. Still not enough air. Eyes closed, she tried to grab hold of the thought; the idea seemed very important, but it wasn't clear why. The air is too thin. I can fix that, she thought muzzily.
A few moments of concentrated thought and some false starts later, Fusion pulled together another spell, one that she'd used for atmospheric lensing, and increased the pressure around her body. Focus and clarity emerged a breath later, the haze in her mind swept away by the hot, dry air. Falling... She reached out for the sun, letting the connection snap open and fill her body with a warmth so unlike the heat from above. A flick of a wing and Fusion was nose down in the slipstream, slight movements of her feathers curving her plummet and damping her speed.
I'm falling through the stem of the mushroom cloud. Uneasy, she pulled out of the dive, beating her wings and soaring on the hot, gritty updraft. Her shadow sight, belatedly rekindled, showed nothing but darkness directly below, as did her energy sensitivity. Lifting her head, Fusion swept the horizon, finally picking out the faint rivers of light from the deep tunnels. Probably could have remained unconscious for another half kilosecond. The teleport pattern formed in her mind, but she hesitated. If they still have detectors here, perhaps I should leave by a more conventional route.
Magic condensed around her, forming the nested array of fields she'd used to travel to the Security base and enclosing her in a comfortable darkness that kept out the oppressive heat. Tilting back, Fusion accelerated upwards, letting the air rip past her at just under the speed of sound. There was turbulence, and it became more of an effort to suck in enough air to maintain the pressure within her enclosure, then everything went still and she was above the heat.
Fusion simplified her field structures, allowing some of the outside light to get in. Beneath her was a broad cap of dirty cloud, still visibly churning and rising, but above was only the darkest blue and the brilliant sun. One of the moons, Luna, was just rising, a gibbous shape made faint by the glare of Celestia. How high can I go? If I can bring air with me... then there's how to actually move. Can't fly in a vacuum. The thought nagged at her, along with some easily testable ideas, but she pushed it away, turning her magic inwards and hunting for a trace of Gravity.
The connection opened with a sudden rush of confused memories -- tumbling feathers and loud voices, the crash of hard objects falling at speed, a polychromatic glow of telekinesis -- then faded to a simple surface-thoughts signal. What happened? Gravity asked, relief filtering back through the sharing channel. When you didn't follow, I went back, but the Security site is just gone. A new image appeared: a towering mushroom cloud, its cap just starting to be pulled apart by high-altitude winds. I didn't want to jump too close, just in case...
I passed out after the explosion and woke up falling. You did the right thing. The old Gravity would have charged straight in and damn the consequences.
I... I wanted to, but without both of us, I was afraid of what would happen to all our friends--
Gravity, you did the right thing. Did you have enough time to get all the gryphons out?
There was silence for a moment, the only signal the steady leakage of bodily sensations -- wings beating, heart pumping -- then Gravity sighed. No. I grabbed everyone I could reach from the third roost, but there was so much panic when I jumped in. I left at least half of them behind. Should have been faster.
Think how many we did save.
And will they thank us for it? If we weren’t there, they would have been pulled out eventually. We got them killed, Fusion.
Shivering, Fusion accelerated upwards again, curving her path towards the distant mountains but gaining height all the time. The air thinned but she kept a hold of what she had, magic grasping great, rarefied volumes of atmosphere and throwing it behind her. "Yes, we did," she said, whispering the words along with the thought. At least the rest have a chance. Even if they were rescued, the dogs would have thrown them at us, given half a chance. It would have been a slaughter.
I left Ellisif and the medics to work on them, there were quite a few-- What is that? I can feel...
The words faded out, leaving Fusion with a sensation of cold mass moving at high speed, a feeling so very different and alien from her own warm and friendly linkage to the heavens. Close to the surface of the world it was a chaotic mess, far more so than it had been the first time Gravity had shared it with her, and she wondered how the other mare managed to feel anything at all in the tangle of orbits. What? I can't understand any of this--
Further out. Here, I'll just...
There was a sensation of focus, then Fusion could feel the locus of her sister's attention. It was high, well outside the clutter of the debris ring, further out than the odd fuzzy blob that was the inner moon, Grund, with its stretched, oval shape sitting in the 3:2 orbital resonance. In the outer system there was almost nothing -- a few satellites that had escaped her improvised energy beam, a drifting rock in some long-term path -- until she felt something much larger in a distant, slow orbit. It was unlike the other swarm particles, which were static, stately things that only ever moved at a snail's pace. It was twitching, almost writhing, with a steady, accelerating heartbeat.
A chill shivered down Fusion's spine and she pushed away from what Gravity was feeling, directing her energy-sensitive shadow sight in the direction of Luna. Faint, but getting brighter, a band of violet light had encircled the moon. It pulsed in time with whatever Gravity was sensing; even as she struggled to understand what was happening, a bead of purple raced along the band, followed by another, much brighter than the first. She pushed her own sensorium back to Gravity, merging the two together. It's alive with electrical power... if that's the outer moon you are feeling, I think--
That's not just a moon, Gravity thought sharply, teleportation patterns building in her mind, that's a weapon syst--!
The sharing vanished as Gravity jumped, leaving Fusion completely alone and staring at the moon. The little pips of purple light made another pass, this time noticeably faster. They are firing the Hammer, but at what? Wings frozen, she started to glide, mind locked in a kind of paralysis. We've been found out. The teleport pattern filled her mind and she pushed--
~~~discontinuity~~~
--there was a gryphon screaming, harsh, crow-like caws of sound, no more than a dozen body lengths away. Both wings were pulled back at strange, stomach-churning angles, twitching and jerking as the muscles attached to them spasmed. Claws lashed out, striking mindlessly at anyone who came near, forcing back the medics trying to get close. Neat piles of equipment, and far larger piles of rubble and broken-open packing crates, littered the area. Great slashes had been carved through the forested slopes, where some collection of excised building material had materialised and barrelled through the trees with unimpeded momentum.
Fusion looked around wildly, but Gravity wasn't here. "ELLISIF!" she shouted, magic boosting her voice to a jet-engine bellow that shocked the whole valley full of panicking gryphons into silence.
The sersjant's grey and black head snapped in her direction and she took off with a leap, only to be snatched out of the air in a field of white-gold magic and dumped at Fusion's hooves. "What, did I do something wron--"
The sudden fear in her voice cooled some of Fusion's panic, and she released the gryphoness. "They are firing the Hammer; you have to get everyone out. I don't think you are a target here, but we--"
"Are too rutting close to our base," Ellisif finished, her wings flicking out. "Go, I'll send your ponies to help. Remember, you might be better closer and behind a mountain, than further away and in the air. Don't get lulled by the initial flashes; that's just the lead projectiles punching a hole through the atmosphere. The main shot's thermal pulse has the greatest range and the fireball will climb very high," she said rapidly, then nodded and sprang back into the air without a backwards glance. "Svartr, Adigard, to me! We have incoming high-yield fire, probable Hammer strike to the north-west. Pass the word for everyone to scatter in teams, we'll meet up--"
Fusion was no longer listening and pushed--
~~~discontinuity~~~
===
"--she's told the dogs something, I don't know what!" Packet glanced upwards, feeling the urge to check the sky for what might be coming for them, even though he was hundreds of lengths underground. Nothing by shadow sight, but Gravity said the military didn't use much magic... "We have to get out of here, Backdraft!" He made a conscious effort to control his wings, currently half extended and twitching with the desire to fly. All the ponies in the chamber where he had found Backdraft were staring at him, eyes widening with panic.
The mare nodded sharply, her ears folding back. "Too good to last," she mumbled, a sick look crossing her face. "There has been no emergency planning." The phrase was a statement and not a question, and she stood up straight, voice stern. "They will respond with extreme force if they think we can all be caught dreaming." She lifted her voice, horn glowing as her power boosted the volume, making the words echo from the smooth rock walls. "Ponies and gryphons! This place has been discovered by the dogs and they will attack us as soon as they can." There was shouting and the scuffle of hooves, any words made indistinct by the convoluted tunnels and chambers.
Backdraft slumped slightly and closed her eyes, the stump of her right wing flexing in time with the whole left, then shook all over. When she lifted her head again, her eyes were clear and very hard. "All ponies with teleport training will report to the main chamber immediately. Everyone, split yourselves up into three groups and take wing and fly fast and low to the north, east and west; when you tire, or if you see a bright light, take cover behind solid rock and a force field. Stay together and we will come back for you, as soon as we rescue the flightless. Ponies without foals, find a gryphoness with a chick and help them, or go to the stores and carry something out. Protect yourselves; protect each other."
"What about our foals, and where will we go?" This came from a dapple-grey mare, her wings wrapped protectively around a gangly-legged youngster. Her foal looked at Backdraft uncomprehendingly, just starting to pick up on the fear in his dam's voice.
"Carry him. You are more than strong enough. Keep going until you run out of strength." She stepped forwards brushing her muzzle against the youngster's poll. "Then hide, like I said." There was a thunder of hooves and the thumps of displaced air in the chamber outside.
"What about you? Can you teleport?" the mare said, her eyes fixed on the Backdraft's wing stump.
She snorted. "Not important. Get going." She flicked her wing out, spooking foal and dam alike into a skittering canter that turned into a sliding gallop. Backdraft followed her out at a more sedate trot, Packet at her side, stopping in front of a group of ponies waiting in the big chamber. "All the rest are with the gryphons," she muttered, swallowing hard; there were only twenty or so ponies waiting for them. They looked scared, but determined, flickers of magic congealing about their horns. "Anypony here with rescue team experience?" There were only uncertain, shame-faced looks. "It doesn't matter." She smiled reassuringly. "I don't know what form the attack will take, but--
"I do." All eyes turned to the gryphon, a striking male with white and black patterned fur and feathers. "Sersjant Kafli. It will be either a pattern of nukes or the Hammer. There's upwards of a thousand megatons in those strikes." He cocked his head, beak opening in what she knew was a malicious smile. "I think you've got less than a kilosecond." One wing drooped more than the other; he seemed unable to fold it fully. He laughed, a harsh sound that matched his expression. "How fast can you fly, pony? How many can you save?"
Backdraft was frowning at the gryphon, but was otherwise motionless and didn't seem to be breathing. Packet switched his gaze from her to Kafli, panic starting to make his legs and wings twitch. Come on, you have the experience here, I know you have been a teacher, but you said... He bit at his lips, willing Backdraft to say something. The few details that Fusion had relayed about the Hammer didn't seem they could possibly be real. What will it be like? The explosion at the power plant seemed bad, but the energy levels here are huge. How far is far enough?
Backdraft gave a shudder but her expression cleared. "You, you and you," she waved her wing at Metal Matrix and two other ponies Packet didn't recognise. "Go and find a place for us, at least a five hundred kilolengths away. Somewhere isolated and with the mountains between you and here, obviously." Her voice was firm and unwavering, the tones of one used to giving orders. "When you do, come back here and tell the rest of us. We will move the non-fliers first, then start to jump the slowest ahead. The rest of you -- get aloft and help group the ones on the wing. Select your passengers and be ready when the scouts return." She swallowed, then looked at them sternly. "If you see anything -- bright lights, whatever -- don't come back." There were shocked looks and Metal opened his mouth to protest. "Do you want to jump into a nuclear explosion, Metal? The survivors will need your skills."
They stared at her, open mouthed, until she stomped one hind leg. "What are you waiting for? Fly!"
They vanished in pulses of coloured light and thumps of displaced air, leaving him the focus of Backdraft's attention. "I take it you don't know the spell?"
"No. My wingshoulders are still painful, so I'm not going to get far, either. You?"
"No, and I'm not flying anywhere." Backdraft sighed, then shook her head. "Panic and disorganisation will get poni-- people killed. We need to do a sweep of the tunnels and start to move the injured. Prisoners, too. Korn and that other dog will need to be moved. Where did you leave Random?"
"Up on one of the ridges. She needed to see the sky for the spell." She can't fly and never would have dared take part in a sharing.
"It's not her fault, not really." There was the sound of hoofsteps, an odd, stilted cadence, and a young pony, purple fire dancing over his hindquarters, trotted around the corner to the medical tunnels. "It's Lilac, isn't it?" Backdraft said, her gaze lingering on his clipped wings.
The youngster nodded, coming to an untidy halt. Behind him were a collection of wounded, moving with the unsteady gaits of those not completely connected with their bodies. Most were gryphons, many supported by the hazy glow of telekinesis from the few ponies present. "I thought that I could help. I'm pretty mobile, even if the others aren't."
Kafli stared at the little herd, beak hanging open. "They made you well, didn't they," he mumbled finally.
"Yes they did," Backdraft said primly, "and that's why we'll win." She cleared her throat. "Thank you, Lilac. What I want you to do is this..."
===
Gravity appeared above the centre of the slender lake filling the valley. The air below was filled with ponies and gryphons, a chaotic tumbling mass that streamed from hidden tunnels and focussed into three rivers of winged shapes. In the silence of the still air around her, the sound of shouting and panic was faint, but clear. The flyers were spreading out along their routes, the fastest pulling ahead from the herd. Little flashes of light started to dance amid the streams of ponies and gryphons, concentrated at the slow ends of the convoys, and people started to disappear.
Somepony warned them. A spike of relief ran through Gravity, then the unnatural movement around Luna made itself felt again. It was as massive as many of the debris ring fragments but far, far faster, circling the moon every ten seconds. How are they holding it there? The energy levels... Just don't let it go until we can get everypony out! She reached for the distant feeling, fumbling past the debris ring and all the tiny, glittering fragments that Fusion's attack had left of the heliostat orbits.
They moved at her touch, tumbling and shifting, some accelerating and some slowing. She frowned, brow wrinkling. That's not like telekinesis, not like when I moved the satellite-- She pushed the thought aside and reached further, but the far moon was outside her grasp, far beyond the ragged edge of her ability. I should have been practicing! Now when I need it-- Below, there was a pulse of white-gold light and familiar weight as Fusion arrived, then vanished again to reappear somewhere underground. Other ponies started to appear in the low-level airspace, diving to follow the three departing streams.
Breathing hard and with eyes clamped tight-shut, she hovered, wings making short, sharp strokes in the cold air. Is there another way? I once thought that this power came from the motion of everything in orbit-- She gasped, remembering the unintended motion of moments ago, then tried to do it again, this time deliberately. Things in orbit twitched, but the effect was hard to control and harder to aim, like trying to shift the trajectory of an iron filing by throwing a magnet near it. The smaller particles, those little more than dust or sand and mostly a product of Fusion filling the heavens with fire, decelerated wildly, orbital paths turning into collision spirals and starting a new rain of meteor streaks visible even in the daylight.
The steady beat from Luna reached a crescendo and just stopped.
===
Fusion appeared amid a swirl of ponies and gryphons, then swerved violently to avoid striking a cluster of flyers right in her path. Shadow sight probed the deep tunnels they'd bored into the mountainside, counting at a glance the number of people still underground. At least that is working. Should have planned for this, but at least someone is in charge down there. There was a knot of coloured lights, right in the main tunnel, unmoving as all the others streamed to the surface. She spotted one in the group, the pastel green of a pony, but missing one of the winglights. Backdraft--
~~~discontinuity~~~
"--what are you doing?" she said, wings fanning as she dropped to the floor.
The mare gave a whinny, dancing sideways a couple of steps, her eyes wild, then spun to face her. "Fusion, thank the Maker you are here. We think that Random has signalled the dogs."
Fusion's ears folded flat back and light pulsed from her body, bright enough to make Backdraft step backwards. How could she do something so-- She took a deep breath, folding her magic and anger back into her head, leaving only a feeling of sickness. I should have known; I saw what they were doing to her. What else did I miss, how many other ponies or gryphons--? "Yes," she said hoarsely, "they are firing the Hammer. What have you told everyone to do?"
"Fly away at best speed. The teleporters are scouting out several places to regroup, far away. When they return we'll--"
Metal Matrix appeared, wings out, nearly falling as he misjudged the distance to the floor. "Got one," he gasped, "glacial valley, crosswise to this place. About a thousand kilolengths."
He started the sharing magic and Fusion reached in and took the proffered memory-- a high, bleak place without vegetation, all rock walls and old ice, far enough around the world that the sun was still below the horizon, the glow of dawn just starting to --building the teleport spell around it. "Got it. The ponies from the gryphon pick-up are jumping in overhead. Get aloft and pass the word, then start to transfer the stragglers to the new site." He nodded, then leapt off the ground and vanished.
There was a sudden pressure in her head, a feeling of intrusion. For a moment she resisted, then the other presence became recognisable and she let it in. It's been fired! We have less than half a kilosecond--
Panic flooded Fusion's body, a mixture of her own and Gravity's, funnelled through the sharing. Can you stop it? There was no answer, so she jumped into a hover, checked Gravity's location, and pushed--
~~~discontinuity~~~
--dropping out a dozen body lengths away from her sister. Tension radiated from Gravity; every muscle was sharply defined and her eyes were screwed shut, lips drawn back from her teeth in a silent snarl. Magic flowed from her, the familiar alongside the alien feeling of her access to the heavens and the sensations of cold mass. Fusion stayed silent, searching the sky with her own senses. Nothing, I can't feel it at all. Magically dead, nothing but the energy of motion. She glanced down, seeing the large numbers of ponies and gryphons still close to their valley, and her own panic built to new heights. Too many! Lights were starting to flash amid the stragglers, the pulses of teleportation magic. Two or three jumps to make it safely, each pony can take maybe five per jump. She ran the calculations in her head, coming back with an unwelcome answer.
"I can't get a grip on them," Gravity ground out, her eyes still shut. "One big one and some small stuff out in front. Too fast. Might when they get closer." She opened her eyes and stared back at Fusion, her expression distant. "Maybe. You should go... in case I cannot." The sharing closed down to little more than a thread of thought, all emotion drained away.
"No," Fusion said gently, applying pressure to the linkage and opening it once more. Gravity resisted, but only half-heartedly, "we do this together or not at all. I'll do what I can down below, then return for the end." With that, she folded her wings and fell, speed boosted by her grip on the air. She levelled out, magic reaching in all directions to fold a score of flyers inside bubbles of power, then pushed--
~~~discontinuity~~~
--holding the magic until her conserved velocity fell away, then dropping the panicking mass of feathers and fur into deep shadow under a rocky slope. It was cold, cold enough to bite through her coat and sting the insides of her muzzle. She reached for the sharing connection again; the things Gravity was feeling had travelled perhaps a third of the distance to the world. Got to be faster, never going to get them all out-- She closed her mind to the thought and focused on the push.
~~~discontinuity~~~
===
They're coming, and I can't stop them. The huge masses were slippery with speed and she felt clumsy, unable to grip the things with her power over the heavens. Perhaps-- Gravity threw her power at orbital debris closer to the world, things travelling at a mere five kilolengths a second, shuttling energy between them so some slowed to pass their momentum on to others with more useful trajectories. A jet of fragments, thrown to intercept the inbound course, their speed a crawl compared to the terrible liquid rush of the dogs' weapons. They can't change their course, too much energy. It took a whole moon full of machines to throw them.
At the back of her mind. Fusion flickered in and out of perception, frequent little nudges of attention that each terminated with the jarring absence of a teleport jump. The presence was comforting, and Gravity left the connection alone and unguarded, allowing her sister full access to her sensorium. Can I do anything else? The weapons had yet to cross the orbits once occupied by the heliostat constellations, a distance that she thought of as marking the outer limits of her more conventional power. The sky's too bright, I won't be able to see them to use telekinesis. Her eyes snapped open and she abruptly accelerated vertically, the blood draining from her muzzle and making her vision flutter with sparkles of random colour.
Got to get above the air, but I need it! More magic flared, fields to pull in a protective blanket of atmosphere even as the pressure outside her defences dropped precipitously. The sky, completely clear now that even the highest of clouds were far below her, shaded to midnight at the zenith, the darkness spreading down towards where Luna sat, a few hoof-widths above the horizon. The trajectory will be flat... their speed is too high for anything else.
The view distorted and wavered as she built the lensing spell, guiding the alignment of its optical structures by the feelings of motion coming back from the sky. There was a cluster of dots in a regular pattern, at odds with the chaos in the rest of the environment. It's them, it has to be. The dots were static against the moving background. Not in orbit and heading straight for me. She reached for her own projectile stream, narrowing it from a fan to a concentrated jet and placing it on an intercept course. Any second--
Great plumes of gas jetted out from several of the points and they abruptly moved sideways. There was a flash like lightning, then a whole series of pulses with increasing brilliance, and her weapons disappeared. Too soon! They were defended, of course they were. Gravity started to feel sick, her anger giving way to panic.
There was a flash of white-gold and Fusion was there, a warm weight by her side. Her sister smiled, and the simple gesture made Gravity's heart lift. With renewed hope, she lifted her head and swept the sky with her magic, hornlight overpowering the sun and turning Fusion's coat a brilliant violet. A twist of incandescence materialised with a crack high overhead, in time with a sudden feeling of power from Fusion. The filament collapsed into a brilliant bead, too bright to look at, then shot upwards.
Gravity smiled in return, then reached for the weapons and pushed.