We decided to take the scrying device to one of Pinkie's hideouts and view it there, so that we could start planning and prepping as soon as we were done. Trixie and Twilight had already set up some node thing in the hotel room and another in the technomancy dump to get between Pinkie's and the hotel. They had mixed the reagents and cast the spell about ten seconds ago; and now I'm spewing all over the ground next to a broken refrigerator.
“Jeez Gilda, you okay?” I think that's Rainbow Dash speaking.
“Gimme a sec, I'll be- *blurghhh*” Turns out my stomach ain't quite empty. It feels like my organs are having a drunken wrestling match.
“...that's a lung, surely I need that... M'kay, I'm good,” I say, wiping my beak and getting back to my paws.
“Well it's about time, the Great and Powerful Trixie has expended considerable effort tracking this quarry of ours, and would not like to miss this opportunity because you have some prayer-induced hangover.” She taps a hoof on the secret entrance, which swings open, and she heads into the tunnel.
How have I worked with Trixie all these years and not stabbed her yet?
We follow her, and after a short trip through the sewers, some dry-heaving from me and a jaunt through an abandoned licorice factory, we're at Pinkie's. The whole place smells of apples and cinnamon with a hint of something else. As soon as we're all inside, the pink loon appears behind us and tries to hug us all together.
Of course she does.
“Hey girls! I thought you might be hungry after all that stuff we did yesterday, so I baked some apple pie and got Snails to whip something up for Gilly-Boo!”
“You will never use that nickname for me again.” Also, I hate you.
“Okiedokes, Gilda Redbeak of Clan Blackwing!” she sings, bouncing past us to the cluttered table. She shrugs two cardboard boxes off her back onto the table, and opens the larger one to reveal a gigantic apple pie with a flaky golden crust, steam gently rising from the slits.
Then she opens up the smaller box, and it is pure beauty. Dozens of lightly fried whitebait, garnished with diced tomatoes and onions, with a big chunk of lemon on the side. I squeeze the lemon over the fish and shove a whole claw full into my beak. Crispy skin, soft flesh and crunchy bones. The nausea dies down as I eat, finally settling my stomach. I hate Pinkie Pie a little less.
The next ten minutes are a mad flurry to set up and calibrate all the runes, sigils and other sourcery to get the scrying device up and running. Soon, the whole place reeks of ammonia and coalmilk. Now we're sat around the table, staring at the arcane viewing portal chalked on the wall across from us.
The image on the portal is a small waiting room, seen through the eyes of a pony. There are two sofas, the viewer sitting on one and a stony-faced, milk coated pegasus sat across the room from him. Between them is a coffee table with a coffee maker and a bunch of magazines on the top. The pegasus is reading Aviation Weekly. The viewer sighs, and looks at the beautiful silver watch on his forehoof.
“I thought you said this guy was meeting up with Trotsky, what's this crap?” asks Dash.
Trixie glares at Rainbow Dash. “Goodflank entered the building and asked to see her, he is very obviously waiting. Now be quiet, Trixie is in no mood for your nonsense.”
Dash responds by flinging a piece of pie crust at her. Twilight catches it with her magic and shoots Dash a look. We all turn back to the screen. We don't wait long until a buzzer goes off in the waiting room, causing the pegasus to look up. “Ms Trotsky will see you now,” he says, in a strong Trotholm accent.
“Finally,” Goodflank sighs. It's been a while since I've heard Goodflank's Manehattan prep-school accent. He sounds like the bored and impatient management consultant he should have become. The milk-coated pegasus gets up and lets him into the main office.
Trotsky's office is opulent and well furnished. The room is softly lit by lamps on cream walls, decorated with Namby Pamby prints. A burgundy chaise-lounge is in the corner of the room, and in the centre of the room is a large desk. Directly behind that desk sits Trotsky. She's a brown russ, as ugly as most earth ponies, maybe a bit uglier. Her face is weathered and a little squashed looking; and there's a chunk missing from her right ear. She has calm grey eyes and is smiling the thinnest of smiles. As Goodflank approaches, she gets up and trots towards him.
“Dzien dobry, Goodflank,” she says.
“Darling.”
Trotsky moves in close to Goodflank, and her face goes out of view as she nuzzles his neck. She sighs softly as she kisses and nips somewhere behind his ear. “You have news for me?” she whispers.
“Mmm. Rather bad news I'm afraid.”
Trotsky pulls back and looks at our target through wide and innocent grey eyes. “This news, it is so bad you must tell me right now?”
“I think it can wait,” says Goodflank. You can practically hear his smug smirk. Trotsky's eyes go lidded and she moves in to kiss him. Goodflank keeps his eyes open when he kisses. Figures. When the russ mare pulls away, she turns, wraps her burgundy tail around his neck and leads him to the chaise-lounge.
I don't think I need to spell out what the pair spend the next twenty minutes doing on the chaise-lounge. Rainbow Dash and Pinkie are giggling. Twilight's cheeks are glowing red. “They're certainly, um, energetic...” she says over the moans.
Trixie on the other claw looks unimpressed. “Trixie has seen far better. Six out of ten.”
I'm glad when it's over. Earth ponies are gross, and Trotsky makes creepy noises when her tail gets pulled. The pair spoon and snuggle for five minutes before Trotsky speaks up. “Mmnn... so, lover, what was this news you come to give me?” she asks, voice soft and contented.
“Some very bad business up north at the mechanics,” he says darkly, “Ogorki and his colts are all dead, house burned to the ground. The two fillies they were ransoming were released to their parents. I assume the mares were released too. All the records and funds are gone, either burned or taken.”
Trotsky turns towards Goodflank, frowning. “This is very not good. Ogorki and his group were good ponies. Very competent. You have leads, moj ogier?”
“I would not come to you empty-hooved, my love,” he says, “Only one other pony knew the location of the mechanics, Smedley Puddinghead. I went to his home and searched it. He sold Ogorki out to an EIS agent, now he's either far away from Filly or buried in some shallow grave.”
Trotsky's face grows darker. “This is... worrying.”
“That's not even the best part,” says Goodflank, chuckling grimly, “I know the agent and I know her assignment. It's Agent Harvest, and her assignment is protecting and assisting Lucino Tagliatelli.”
“Oh horseapples...” mutters Trixie.
“What just happened?” asks Dash, looking worried.
I inhale sharply. “We may have just started a gang war.”
On the screen, Trotsky's face is twisted with rage. “That shit-birthed, dust addled donkey dares to attack us!? We will bring terrible things on his head for this!,” she says, “But first Agent Harvest must be removed. Can she be tracked?”
“I know she'll be eating at Il Pomodoro Dolce at eight tonight, that gives me nine hours to whip something up. Do you have something in mind, love?”
A look passes over Trotsky's face, and I can see something terrible behind those calm, grey eyes. “Il Pomodoro Dolce is Macaroni business, yes? Pick up Wiley Pegasus from refinery at four. Get rid of Il Pomodoro Dolce and Agent Harvest at same time.”
Dash's eyes go wide. “Did she just say what I think she said?”
I nod. “Yup. This is bad, dude. Very bad.”
Twilight looks back and forth between us, brow furrowing. “Wait, what? What's she planning? Who's Wiley Pegasus?”
“Twi, wait,” says Dash, eyes glued to the portal, “We need to see if they mention anything else.”
We're interrupted by Goodflank letting out a long whistle. “You know Trotsky, if it were anyone else asking me this I'd tell them to go clop with a cheese grater,” he says, “But for you, my dear, anything. Do you have a fall pony for me?”
Trotsky shifts, stands up and walks to the desk. “Teaflower has been making plans to leave the business and he does this without consulting me or asking my permission,” she says, rooting through some files, “I was going to have him gelded and let him bleed out, but he may as well serve some useful purpose. This will be enough to impersonate him, yes?” She passes Goodflank a few sheets of paper and some photographs.
“This should do nicely,” he replies, looking over the files. He puts them away and looks back at Trotsky. “Another round before I go?”
Trotsky smiles. “I would like that, I think.”
Rainbow Dash mutes the portal, stands up and walks in front of the screen. “Guys, this is not good. We've gotta stop this flankhole and the ponies he's working with, or a lot of innocent ponies are going to die."
Twilight, Trixie and the nutter look worried but confused. “What exactly is going on? Who's Wiley Pegasus?” asks Twilight.
“A Wiley Pegasus is a bomb, made of fifty litres of cyoctene, jellied coal spirits, with a white phosphorus detonator,” I say, trying not to think of the memories it dredges up, “It creates a thirty-meter explosion with a total mortality rate for anything caught inside. Liquid fire will splash outside that circle and has a seventy-percent mortality rate for anypony it touches. It burns underwater, and is enchanted to be near-impossible to extinguish before it burns out. Cyoctene bombs are some of the most dangerous weapons in this world, and their use is banned by any international treaty worth mentioning.”
I know way more than I want to about cyoctene. It's one more reason to hate Nainuoc.
“It sounds like there's a stockpile, or maybe they're even brewing it,” says Rainbow Dash. “We need to shut them down, we can't have douchebags like these owning weapons like those.”
We all get to work. Me and Twilight work through the business and property listings, trying to find anything with refinery or finery in the name. Trixie and Dash sort through Pinkie's stash of old military munitions manuals and whip up the equipment and know-how to defuse a Wiley Pegasus. Pinkie starts getting our equipment together and keeps an eye on the monitor in case Goodflank mentions anything else.
Fifteen minutes later I'm tearing my crestfeathers out. “Dudes, this is a mess. There are ten possible places with refinery or finery in the name: Four bars, an inn, a textile mill, the salt refinery on the docks, a fashion house in uptown Filly and two restaurants.”
“It won't be the bars or the restaurants,” says Dash, looking up from a copy of EAF Manual B2M21: Incendiaries and You. “Cyoctene stinks and needs ventilation, you couldn't serve food around it and you want a lot of room between the bomb and the detonators.”
“Right, so we're looking at either the salt refinery, the textile mill or the fashion house,” I say, “The salt refinery is in Wharfie territory so it's probably not there-”
Twilight cuts me off: “We can't assume that. We don't know how far Goodflank's influence reaches, he might have friends in the Wharfies too, and it sounds like he can impersonate ponies. For all we know, he's planning on stealing this bomb.”
Dash is poring over a map, sticking pins into it. “The textile mill is in west Filly, the fashion house is central and the salt refinery is in the south-eastern docks. There's twenty minutes as the pegasus flies between each of them, probably an hour by hoof. We'd have to split up to check them all out in time. How are we gonna know anyway? They're not exactly going to have a sign saying 'yo, we make bombs' posted outside.”
“Uh, girls?” Pinkie pops out from a large pile of webbing and contraptions.
“Yes, listen here,” says Trixie.
I turn to our resident nerd. “Twilight, could you figure out what molecular compounds cyoctene ventilation will give off and what they'd break down to in chromatography? I could lift a few portable analysers from the university, I've got the technomancy chops to take an air sample and do a read out.”
She shakes her head. “It'll take a few hours to get hold of the chromatographs, the results will take at least an hour to process and with city air and masking agents, the results will be clear as mud. No, we need some other way...”
“Uh, girls, we've got something important,”
“Yes, cease your chatter and listen to us.”
“Wait, Twilight, what about magical scrying?” asks Dash, “I fly you over, you do your thing, bam, we find our guys.”
“The spell itself would take two hours to prepare in each case. We have less than five hours until he makes the pick up, unless we get lucky on the first go, he'll be picking up the bomb before we know which is the right one. It would be simpler to just tail him to the place,” says Twilight.
Shit. That won't do. “We need information from this guy, and to get it we need proof that he picked up the bomb and planted it. I gotta be there before he makes the pick up, or I might miss it. He'll probably be in disguise when he plants the thing.”
“Oh by Discord's prostate, I've had enough.” Trixie's horn flashes and the room goes completely silent. Twilight and Dash's mouths are still moving, but no sound is coming out. There's no drip-drip of the coffee maker or hum of the Hex engine. There's not even the ringing in the ears of walking out of a loud nightclub into a quiet morning. Just pure silence.
Twilight's brow furrows, her horn glows for a second and the ambient noise returns. Trixie gets that weird flushed look she gets when Twilight does stuff with magic. Her ears twitch, she swallows and then speaks:
“As Pinkie and I were trying to say, you may have overlooked a likely location. The condemned beet processing plant in the northern outskirts is colloquially known as the sugar refinery.”
Pinkie holds up some files from the book of names. “It's smack-bang in Kurierzy territory and it's walking distance from where Daisycutter, a criminally inclined ex-Royal Guard quartermaster lives. You won't have found it in the business and property listings because it's been condemned for a few years.”
“Jeez, how many condemned factories are there in Fillydelphia?” says Dash.
Pinkie's face scrunches up and she somehow counts on her hooves. “'Bout fourteen I think. There's a demolitions and construction shortage in Filly, my sis Blinkie is thinking of setting up here, the pay's pretty good.”
Twilight's eyes light up. “Of course! It's isolated enough to store or produce explosives, and the chimney could be used to ventilate and filter the fumes. We'll have to scout it out, but it looks like we've found the place. How did you guys know about this?”
Trixie smiles smugly and flicks her mane over her withers. “Trixie and the lovely Miss Pie know Fillydelphia rather well, especially where criminals are involved.”
I put my fist down on the table and get everyponies' attention. “Okay, here's what we're going to do. Dash and Trixie will get to the restaurant and set up what you need to kill that bomb and capture Goodflank. Pinks, do your costume thing, photograph Goodflank going in and out of the factory and into the restaurant, and catch him going into disguise if you can. Twilight's on mission control. Make sure Pinkie knows where Goodflank is at all times, get some communication doohickeys ready so you can anonymously set Special Branch on the refinery after the pick up and get the local guard to the restaurant after the bomb is defused. I'll get into the refinery, make sure it's the right location, and photograph Goodflank making the pick up. Any questions?”
Pinkie's hoof shoots into the air. “Ooh! Me! Pick me!”
“Yeah, pink stuff?”
“Snails wants to know what you thought of the whitebait.”
“Better than sex. Any questions about the job? No? Let's get prepped.”
* * *
We're getting our gear sorted when Pinkie Pie appears in front of me, dressed in a dark purple bodysuit, with a mask over her face, a wide-brimmed hat and a cape. I look her over.
"I'm loving the gimp look."
"Be nice, Gilda," says Dash with a frown.
"Hey, I'm being serious. There's stallions that pay Trixie good money for putting on outfits like that, ain't that right Trix?"
Trixie sighs exasperatedly and narrows her eyes, but stays focused on two conical flasks of chemicals she's mixing on a makeshift alchemist's bench.
"Featherbrain, Trixie knows you are uncomfortable with equipment more complicated than a plank of wood with a nail through it; but some ponies require more specialised equipment, for tasks like bomb disposal. Specialised, volatile equipment requiring a thorough facility with chemicals and reagents. Chemicals and reagents that could drown us all in lethal fumes if prepared incorrectly."
She places the two conical flasks, one now full of clear, viscous liquid, down on the surface and then looks straight at me. "So please, Gilda, clop off."
I roll my eyes and turn back to the Gimp-Do-Well.
"Come with me, Gilda. I have some toys for you."
I do a double take when I hear that voice, and for a moment I'm not even sure it came from Pinkie. It sounded nothing like her. It wasn't the horribly peppy, chirping-like-a-foal-on-a-caffiene-drip that it usually is. It was smooth, dark and creamy with a weird intensity that makes it hard to know if she wants to seduce me or stab me. She sounds like a femme fatale from some noir detective film.
The others haven't looked up. Dash and the librarian must have heard it before, and Trixie is concentrating on her chemistry. Pinkie is still staring at me through the freaky grey eyes on her mask.
"Uh, sure," I say, "Lead the way, freak."
She turns and walks out the door with me following. We go into the corridor. Left is the way out through the licorice factory and dumping ground, right is an unused emergency exit, and directly to the front is a steel door with a mechanical combination lock. Pinkie twists the dial for a moment, then the door swings open.
The room is large and dimly lit. The right side of the room is a makeshift plywood-built shooting range twenty meters long; and the left of the room is filled with cardboard boxes, wooden crates and plastic barrels. A crate near me, about half my height, has its lid pried off. Half a dozen strange black tubes that flare out like a grapnel on the end, encased in grey packing foam, are visible on the top. There's probably eighteen total in the crate.
"Gas-powered grappling hooks with thirty meters high-tensile nylon cord. Re-useable, but requires reassembly and a new gas cannister with each use. Those are spares." Her chocolatey superhero voice sounds no less freaky the second time.
We walk to the back of the room, which is slightly better lit by yellow lamps on the wall. The back wall is home to a large rack of weapons and equipment; from heavily modified crossbows, to coils of rope, to technomantic goggles, to weird and complex devices I'd be hard pressed to describe. I swear I'd seen once piece of equipment there in a gynaecologist’s office. In the corner are several Mare-Do-Well suits hanging up, next to strange variants like a Mare-Do-Wetsuit and a ghillie suit. There's a large workbench, covered in tools and bits of scrap. Small gas cannisters are scattered all over it. Mounted in a pair of vices is what looks like a crossbow without the bow or string.
"This is the armoury, where I store and develop my equipment, as well as keep confiscated items that are... too interesting to destroy," she says. She picks up an odd-looking bit of gear from the wall. It looks like the twisted offspring of half a set of welding goggles and a jewler's loupe, pumped full of gem matrices and technomantics.
"Pie Technologies Specterscope® in the sixty thaum range. It casts out infra-red light beyond the visible spectrum and the viewer picks it up, allowing you to see in even the darkest spaces clearly without giving away your position; and has a pure light amplification mode which casts out no light whatsoever. The viewer also picks up ultraviolet, infra-black and octarine wavelengths making it second to none for the detection of illusions and thaumatic activity." She passes it to me, pressing a button above the scope as she does. I put it over my right eye. The dim room is suddenly bright as day, though most of the colour is bled out of it. I take it off, and sling it around my neck.
A small duffel bag filled with half-meter long black bars catches my eye. I point to it. "Are they-"
"Flexible linear shaped charges, two-two-five grain TNGB, will cut through half an inch of high quality steel. Very useful for breaching interior walls and doors. Highly inadvisable in environments filled with explosives and flammable substances. Not for you. Moving on." Spoilsport.
She moves along, picks up a camera and passes it to me. "Camera with scope, no flash."
"Just a camera?" I ask, eyebrow arched.
"A nice camera. I'd like it back in one piece."
"I'll see what I can do. What's next?"
She thrusts a small fabric case towards me and opens up the top, revealing six plastic tubes the size of firecrackers. Each tube has a button on the side and a ring pull on the end. "Dual chemical freezing agent," Pinkie says, "Pull the ring off to arm, press the button to spray. It'll freeze locks and let you shatter them.”
"Now last but not least, the Gas-Propelled Dart Launcher with less-than-lethal ammunition." She lifts the strange crossbow-looking thing from the vices on the table and passes it to me. It has an adjustable stock and a strap for slinging across the shoulder.
Pinkie picks up a piece of ammunition and shows it to me. It's a dart with a hollow shaft about the width of an arrow, four fins and an odd half-sphere blob where a spike or arrowhead would be. In the dim light I can see two colours in separate halves of the blob, a blue and a yellow.
"Fin stabilised dart with a two-part electrothaumic payload. Each half contains decayed or hypercharged gemstone powder dissolved in an electrothaumatic gel. When the film separating the two parts is crushed, the mixture of opposite-thaumacity gemstones releases magic, causing the gel to release an electric charge powerful enough to incapacitate a stallion,"
She turns back to the launcher. "The GPDL is lever-action with a trigger mechanism adapted for griffon use. Darts are loaded into this slot above the trigger; press the slot to unload the magazine. Six darts fit in the magazine and one fits in the chamber. Effective range is sixty meters, point-blanc is ten meters. Do not use more than two darts per target. Do not use on foals, pregnant mares, elderly ponies or ponies with heart conditions. Gas cannister slots in here, provides propellant for up to fifty shots. Extra darts can be mounted on the side for ease of loading. I have dummy rounds and a small firing range if you wish to familiarise yourself in the next thirty minutes before we set out."
"I might just take you up on that, Pinks," I say. I've seen dart launchers before, but you never want to use a new weapon without knowing how it handles. "Anything else?"
Pinkie walks over to the wall and starts strapping bits of equipment to her suit. "That's it for toys, but there's something else I need to talk to you about."
"Yeah?"
"It's... I've killed ponies, Gilda. Two ponies." She speaks slowly and sounds resigned. The unblinking mask and smooth, dark voice make it more than a little creepy.
"So I've heard," I reply. I double check that Leroy is in his sheath. Pure habit.
Pinkie turns towards me but doesn't look at me, and seems to sag a little. "It's strange. I'm a party pony who does party pony things. I make punch and cakes, I send out invitations and get everypony playing and laughing and dancing and I threw a pony out of a thirty-sixth story window and I took a rock in my hooves and I hit a mare over the head with it until her head was all over the floor."
She stops, and takes deep, ragged breaths through her mask. "If anypony deserved to die it was those two, but it didn't matter. After the first one, it was all I could think of for weeks. That I should have prepared better. That I shouldn't have chased him just after I'd raided his home and was reeling from everything I'd seen. That I could have done something, anything different and I wouldn't have blood, no matter whose, all over my hooves. The second time was no better."
She whips her head around to face me and steps forward so she's barely a foot away. I nearly go for my knife.
"You don't see it that way, do you Gilda? You've killed enough griffons and ponies under orders that it just doesn't faze you any more; or maybe it never did," she says, an edge to her voice.
"I've done what I had to for the Kingdoms and Equestria," I snap, "Not all of it was sunshine farts and gumdrops and I feel the exact same way any normal griffon or pony or fucking donkey or whatnot in my place would, so where exactly are you going with-"
"I have no argument with what you did on your job. Dashie..." There she goes, using that name again, "She was with the Wonderbolts and they had orders. But she doesn't do things like that now. You're a free agent now Gilda, with no orders whatsoever. You were a free agent when you killed twelve ponies four nights ago."
I roll my eyes. "Oh go soak your head, dweeb. They were scum, doing some of the worst shit I've seen in my line of work and if you're going to tell me-"
"I know what they were, Gilda. That's the reason you're not in a prison hospital with four broken legs and a fleet of detectives poring over your entry in the book of names."
"Well if you're not flipping out over that, what's your point?"
"Protecting the innocent is a heavy burden and a sacred duty. You treat it like a game at the fairground and I don't like that. You go blood crazy like that again and I'll end you before you lay a talon on that sharp little knife of yours. Be a dear and pass that on to Trixie." She turns, and walks away.
"Pfft, whatever freak, I'll shove a cupcake so far up your flankhole you'll be coughing sprinkles and pissing icing-"
I blink. She had disappeared into the shadows.
How the fuck did she do that?
One mystery at a time, I guess. I sling the launcher over my shoulder and head out.
* * *
It took a bit longer than we wanted for us to get completely sorted, but it was worth it. Twilight pulled up blueprints for the beet sugar refinery, blueprints for the sewers and a map of Fillydelphia and used her magic to combine them all on one piece of waterproofed paper. This means I can figure out exactly where I'm going to enter the sewers, where I am when I'm down in the sewers, and how to get to the refinery from there.
The abandoned refinery is on the outskirts of the city, past a landfill site and a bit of scrubland, but close enough in that it has access to the sewers. I went into the sewers near a bunch of warehouses just before the landfill, and I'm now about half a kilometer from the refinery. I've done this kind of thing enough times that the smell doesn't bother me anymore. I almost like it. It smells like shit and subterfuge.
Two minutes later and there's a chain link fence blocking a turn I need to take. It goes all the way across, not just on the maintenance paving but also the actual water-filled sewer. There's a sign attached saying in big letters: 'DANGER: THIS AREA IS STRUCTURALLY UNSOUND. DO NOT ENTER. The padlock is on the other (read: wrong) side of the fence and looks well used and maintained. That's a clear red flag of someone playing silly buggers. I think about using one of Pinkie's freezing agents to just break the fence, but there's no point leaving a big fat sign that somebird broke in if I can help it. The brand of lock is good quality but common, so I fish out a bump key and get to work. It's a right nag securing the lock in place with tape and getting enough leverage for the mallet, but after about five minutes tinkering I'm inside.
I look overhead and see something interesting. There's a ceiling-mounted rail mechanism in this part of the sewers. It looks solid but not something that was made by professionals, and definitely not by the city council. If they've opened up the factory to the sewers, it would be perfect for transporting materials onto a raft that could take them to anywhere in Fillydelphia. If they're manufacturing this stuff...
"Mission control, this is bravo one," I whisper into my headset. "I'm getting close. This section has been locked off and modified for transporting heavy materials, over."
After our last little hitch using the headsets we decided to adopt some extra security measures into our communications strategy, like "call signs," "radio discipline," and "not being fucking idiots."
"Copy that bravo one, proceed with caution. Sound carries far down there, so no further communications unless absolutely necessary. Out," comes Twilight's voice into my ear.
I walk further down the section, with one eye using the Specterscope to see in the total darkness. The quality of the sewer and maintenance paving gets worse as I walk. A hundred meters on and the maintenance paving is submerged in six inches of sewer water. I'm very glad I'm wearing gauntlets and pawboots. Down here it smells less like sewage and more like damp and mould, with just a hint of something chemical. I'm moving through the shallow water slowly and methodically, making sure my weight is never on the paw or claw I'm stepping forward with. I don't want to be heard down here.
I stop in my tracks when I see a tiny glimmer in the water through the Specterscope. I look a little more closely and let out a sigh of relief when I realise I just narrowly avoided setting off a tripwire. They rigged it underwater, and it was pure luck that I saw it before I set it off. I look up and see what looks like a thin dark line of smoke stretching from one side of the sewer to the other. These guys are devious bastards. They set another tripwire at flying height, covered in dark wool so you'd never see it. Very gingerly, I step over the wire in the water.
I very slowly, very carefully, trail along the side of the tripwire for fifteen meters before I find what it was connected to, and it's all I can do not to piss myself. Eighteen claymare anti-personnel mines in an array, at a range of fifteen meters. Anyone or anything that tripped those wires would be painted across the wall. There's a nice little disarming mechanism next to the claymares, so they don't blow themselves up on the way out. I discreetly disable the mines. I don't want to turn into a meaty sieve if I have to get out of dodge.
I'm getting close now, the stench of chemicals is much stronger here and I can hear distant sounds from down the tunnel. I'm treading as slowly and quietly as I can, desperate to find traps before I trip them. I can see light shining down from a section of ceiling ahead.
Clinging to the wall as I approach, I see a gap in the ceiling ahead. They had cut out the top of the sewer at that point and built a makeshift freight elevator. There's a hanging mechanism connecting a raft of wooden planks on air-filled plastic barrels to the ceiling railing and a steel crane thing. There's a ladder leading up from the maintenance paving into the refinery above. It's not lit by daylight, but by dull orange sodium lights. I'm close enough that I can hear voices and movement from above, though they sound muffled.
I take out Pinkie's periscope when I get near the top of the ladder and use it to peek into whatever is above the elevator. It's dark and only lit by a single sodium light, but it looks like the entire room is a loading bay. There are two forklifts parked nearby, dozens of metal coalmilk drums scattered about and a garage door large enough for two fully-loaded wagons. On the other side of the room is a set of double doors, light shining through the cracks. I can hear noise and movement from the other side.
Double checking that there's no one in the loading bay, I climb up the ladder. The room stinks of coalmilk and solvents. It's then I realise that the dart launcher will be a no-no in most of this place. A spark might light half the room up. I slink up to the double doors and slide the periscope under to get a view.
Through the scope I see a large factory floor, thirty by fifty meters at least. Down the left length of the room there are four gigantic vats that rise up fifteen meters to a set of catwalks above the ceiling. In the centre of a room is a huge machine being operated by several unicorns and half a dozen russ, all wearing masks and goggles. Coalmilk drums full of coalmilk spirits are being poured into funnels at the top, combined with binding and jellying agents and being processed with unicorn magic. I get another shock when I see what the end product is: a gigantic, reinforced, two-hundred litre yellow metal barrel. That's not some pissant, fifty litre Wiley Pegasus made for a team of commandos, a crude catapult, or two fliers with a skywagon. That's a two-hundred litre bomb, designed to be carried by a team of fliers with a gigantic skywagon packing nine other bombs just like it. The kind of bomb that says: "See that little village down there? Fuck that village and everything in it."
There's a jury-rigged ventilation system, crude-but-effective like the railing system in the sewers, taking the fumes from the factory floor into the chimney which (if I remember the blueprints) is behind the right wall. That's where half of the noise is coming from, it keeps switching between thwug-thwug-thwug-CHUG-CHUG-CHUG. I don't think I need to worry about setting off a giant explosion, those reinforced barrels are enchanted so that nothing but a strong detonator will set them off. Still, even a small gas explosion could suck all the air from the room and snuff me like a candle, so I'd best not chance it.
First order of business is to contact Twilight and let her know that this is the place and I'm inside. I slink behind some barrels so that I don't get caught slipping by anypony trotting through those double doors, and turn on my headset. The static is loud and crackly.
"Mission control this is bravo one, do you copy?"
A few seconds of static, then: "Snirvle wurbles hshhhshhk"
Damn it. I must be out of range of the signal booster we left in the sewers, but behind too many thick walls to get signal. Second order of business: find somewhere I can contact Twilight from. I go towards the far side of the room away from the double doors, and the static gets louder. This part must be a ways within the building or have a lot of stuff overhead.
Turns out I've got to go through a factory floor full of bomb making flankholes. Figures.
I can't go through the double doors, there's way too many ponies roaming about in there moving barrels and making bombs, I'll stick out like a thorny dick. I stick the Specterscope back on and have a look around the room. There's a thin metal grate in the wall far to the left of the double doors, it should lead out straight behind the vats, so I go to check it out.
Fucking boss. Leads right out behind the vats, no illumination, out of line-of sight. A tight squeeze, but big enough for me to get through. I'm less happy when I see that it's built into the wall. Not a simple screwdriver job, I'll have to break it quietly. Hopefully no one will see it before I'm done here. I take out one of Pinkie's freezing agents, pull the ring off and wait for the CHUG-CHUG-CHUG of the fan. When it comes, I spray one of the sides of the grate. Then the next, then the next, then all the edges of the grate are frosty-white. I slip a length of nylon cord through the middle of the grate, wrap it round and wait for the ventilation to go loud. When it does, I give a mighty pull and the grate comes right off towards me.
The chilled edges of the grate burn at my sides as I squeeze through, and I pray that nopony peeks around the vats. The next order of business is getting to the catwalks above. Hopefully it'll be a good vantage point to find the Wiley Pegasus; and the ceiling isn't nearly as well lit as the bomb-making machine and factory floor. Staying close to the vats, out of view of the rest of the factory floor, I fly up to the catwalk as quietly as felinely possible. As soon as I clamber up, I have a perfect vantage point of the rest of the room.
Past the bomb-making machine are six two-hundred litre bombs on three customised pallets. Past the pallets is a large table where several ponies at one end are poring over chemists' equipment, and at the other end a unicorn is making the final adjustments to a Wiley Pegasus. Fucking aye, I've found the bomb and I've got a nice little vantage point to view the pick-up from. I can't get too comfy just yet though, I still need to contact Twilight and I need to make sure nopony trips over me while I'm waiting on the catwalk. Twenty meters ahead is a door going off to the side. I creep over to it.
There's window on the door and inside is a well lit hallway. Every cadet gets Shape, Shine, Silhouette, Shadow, Spacings and Movement drilled into their brains, and opening a door to a well lit hallway throws at least three of those into the shitter. Fortunately the vats block the view of the door from most of the factory floor. There's only a few ponies moving about that would have line-of-sight, and I wait until their backs are turned before I slip inside.
At the end of the hallway is a glass door leading to an office. I can see a few open-plan cubicles from where I'm standing. I don't want to go too near in case there are ponies in there. A door on the right of the hallway has a sign saying 'Stairs.' On the left are two doors next to each other, the mares' and stallions' toilets. I head into the mares' room, dart launcher at the ready to stun any nefarious dork with the gall to take a dump when I need to contact mission control.
Empty and dilapidated. The room doesn't look like it's been used in years. I go into a stall and grab bog roll from the holder, then stuff it into the cracks of the bathroom door to muffle any sound. I turn my headset back on.
"Mission control, this is bravo one, do you copy?"
"Brablen un krrrk misznun kintrsss, radew chuk"
I wait for a second, then it clicks. 'Bravo one this is mission control, radio check.' Definitely not loud and clear, but better than the loading bay. Maybe if I go into the office...
The ceiling has foam tiles. I go to a toilet, step on top and poke four of them out. There's a subspace above the tiles. No room for most of my equipment, but enough to get in, check out the next room and get in if it's empty. I drop the launcher and unstrap most of my equipment; and hide them inside the bin just in case somepony pops in for a crap.
Soon I'm in the ceiling subspace. There's no divider between the bathroom and the office, just support beams at the corners of the walls. I gingerly lift a ceiling tile from the office ceiling and slide the periscope through. It's a medium sized office with about twenty low-walled cubicles and two glass-walled corner offices at the far end.
The office itself is only barely lit, but inside one of the corner offices is a brightly lit desk with a reindeer, antlers and all, hunched over it, assembling some technomancy. It's hard to tell from this distance, but it looks like he's making detonators. There are dozens of components scattered around him or organised into boxes and drawers. Smart move keeping the detonators well away from the bombs.
The reindeer is concentrating on whatever he's building. I should be able to sneak up behind him and knock him out without much fuss. I remove four ceiling tiles, use my knife to cut away the supporting strips that go between them, and oh-so-quietly drop down onto the office floor. I creep through the cubicles staying well out of view, moving as slowly and silently as I can towards my target. I love moments like this. They make my heart jump into my throat, and that feeling never gets old.
Eight meters from the corner office, I peek around the side of a cubicle with the periscope and check he's still facing away, which he is. Something else catches my attention: a reindeer spear, with a leather strap for easy wielding, runes carved all over it and the scariest looking blade I've ever seen. It's glowing black. I take out a set of brass knuckles, I don't want to go in for a choke without a shot to the liver first, not with those massive antlers in the way, and definitely not with that evil-looking spear about. I move out from behind the cubicle and-
His head shoots straight up and I'm instantly back behind the cubicle, out of view. There's no fucking way he heard me.
"Perkele!"
I hear the tkk of a wooden shaft being lifted from the floor and a glass door swinging open.
He fucking heard me.
Oh fuck.
His hoofsteps quickly get louder and I nearly panic. The dart launcher is in the bathroom and he's got a spear sharp enough to spatchcock me. I shoot for my knife, forgetting that my brass knuckles are still in my claw. Leroy comes out but clatters to the floor as I fumble, and in the second it takes to slip the knuckles off the reindeer is on top of me.
I was an idiot to go after him with brass knuckles and a little knife. Detonators or no detonators, he has the face of a barbarian-turned-soldier, staring at me with cold, dark eyes, teeth bared. He's at least a head taller than me and built of iron sinews and thick, taut muscles. Standing on his hind legs with a glowing runic spear in his hooves he looks like a hero out of the Kingdoms, reborn in a lesser race. A demigod of violence, with murder in his eyes.
I blink, and something hot and wet hits me. Something came out of nowhere and slammed a knife straight into the reindeer's neck, blood spurting everywhere. As the buck gurgles and paws at his attacker, I see that the 'something' is a griffon. He forces the reindeer to the floor and stabs and slashes until he stops his struggles.
The griffon clambers off the dead reindeer and turns to face me. I recognise him. Trevor Carver of Clan Blackwing. Same dull green eyes, same messy crest, same serenely pleasant expression of a waiter who is jizzing in the soup simply because he can. He looks less weathered than when I saw him last. And less dead.
I wipe the reindeer's blood off my face and blink a few times. He smiles at me.
"Hello, Gilda."