//------------------------------//
// Chapter 55. Is it a Little Breezie Around Here? 
// Story: H'ven Sent 
// by otherunicorn 
//------------------------------//

The tiny breezie slowly orbited my head, his straw-yellow mane and tail gracefully fluttering, which was more than his wings were doing. They barely moved. As with the pegasi, magic had to be involved in levitating them.

"You are from Habitat Six?" I asked again, this time addressing him directly. This was the first time I had heard any news of a habitat other than our own. I wanted to learn what I could about it.

"Our Landing Craft came from Habitat Six." The breezie said. "I came from the Landing Craft."

"So," I asked, "you are saying you have never seen the habitat itself?"

"I was born on the landing craft, in deep space."

"And Habitat Six itself? Do you know where it is?"

"No, I do not know its current location," Zephyr said. "It was destroyed hundreds of years ago, before I was born. Where the hulk drifted, I have no idea. Perhaps the elder or one of the others would know."

So much for that hope. A habitat full of the creatures we had lost, or never had in the first place, would have been truly wonderful.

"I guess it doesn't matter where it is, then," I said. "I wanted to know if there were more ponies and other creatures that had survived."

"I was told that only ponies and breezies survived. Only those outside the main hull, on the bridge, and in the hangars had any real chance. And a few HELaTs from the lower levels somehow survived too. I think there were enough of them left to sparsely crew a few landing craft. It's been a while since I heard the story."

"A landing craft in deep space?" Snow thought to me. "Landing craft are only equipped to shuttle ponies between the habitat and a planet. The would be lucky to survive a week in deep space."

"I do not know how the landing craft survived," Zephyr said. He had been privy to Snow's thoughts as well. "You would need to ask one of the technical ponies."

"We will be sure to do that," I said. It sounded like these ponies also had quite the tale to tell. If nothing else, they would keep Habitat Eleven's movie makers happy. "Now, please excuse me for a moment while I finish off my meal."

"Will you help me search for my friends and family?" Zephyr asked.

"In as much as we can. You can come with us, if you wish, but we are not going to roam too far from our home, lest we also become lost," I said around a mouthful of greens.

"Where is this home of yours, then, and why are you afraid of becoming lost?" Zephyr asked.

"Home's about half an hour of driving in that direction," I said, pointing a hoof.

"And it's our first time out here, so we don't have any real idea of what goes where, or what else we may meet. Our last encounter with something from out here was nearly fatal for all involved," Cacha said.

The breezie frowned at us for a few moments, then its eyes went wide. "There is an old, abandoned habitat not far in that direction – one that never launched. In fact, from this close to it, it would be hard to get past it without going well out of your way. Could it be you...?"

"That we come from it?" Cacha asked. "Yes. Habitat Eleven is our home."

"The others will be eager to hear this!" Zephyr said. "We spent quite some time trying to gain access to it in the hope of salvaging what we needed from it. Some even hoped it could be revived enough for us to live there."

"Don't even think about it," I said. "It's dying. We're trying to  get out  of it. It's taken us this long to make a replacement key."

"So, is it just you three, or have more survived?" Zephyr asked.

Cacha laughed. "We are the only three to leave, but we kind of left the other three million ponies and changelings behind."

"Three  million ?" Zephyr sounded incredulous.

"Give or take a few hundred thousand," I said. "We do not have the means to take a census, so the estimate was based on population density in a few select areas."

"Three  million ?" Zephyr said, again.

"Is that so hard to believe?"

"The few of us that lived on our landing craft struggled to survive due to lack of resources. How could three million survive in a habitat for thousands of years?"

"With a damn lot of recycling!" Cacha said.

"And a lot of fuel that wasn't used for propulsion," Snow thought to us. "Something I find much harder to believe is that you survived for more than a week in a landing craft. They are designed to get people and goods from a habitat  down  to a planet. They have so little power that they have to return to the habitat  almost empty. And here you were, in deep space in one for how long?"

"Sixty-something years," Zephyr said.

"Sixty... hang on. Quiet everybody," I said. There was a distant sound niggling at my ears. Something repetitive that hadn't been there before. When we fell silent it became obvious – a cyclic thumping.

"My companions!" Zephyr exclaimed. "We must go!"

"That sounds like an automatic weapon," Cacha said.

"That's Heavy Hitter's cannon," Zephyr said. "They must be fighting an antibody again."

"I think we need to go, if only to learn," Snow thought to me, discretely.

"Okay, mount-up everypony," I said. "Zephyr, you can come with me. Grab my horn and hold on."

"We are going into a combat zone. Are your craft armed?" the breezie asked as he landed on my head.

"Strictly speaking, no."

"So how would you fight?"

"With these!" I said, holding up a hoof.

"We are so dead. Perhaps we should wait until the fighting is over."

I tapped the pod with my hoof, and was greeted with a delightful squeak of surprise as the pod reached out, grasped, and consumed us.





The sounds of fighting were coming from several levels up, if levels was the right term to use. While the structure did have some major, structural levels that were built very much like platforms in the habitat, complete with the hexagonal openings through them, a lot of the remainder of the structure varied, being built as needed. Ramps between groups of levels, both up and down could be found without too much searching.

Sometimes there were gaps that appeared to drop quite some distance, before line of sight became obscured by cables, pipes, tendrils and whatever else the modifiers had built. Other times, what appeared to be a pipe or tunnel would taper off until it was too small to navigate. These would frustrate Zephyr to no end, and he would rattle off a set of directions, completely forgetting he was the one who got lost in the first place.

"You aren't really helping, Zephyr," I said.

"But you are unarmed! We cannot risk bursting into the combat zone. We must hold back until the fighting is over."

"We can hold our own," I said.

"You do not understand the power of the antibodies. Even the breezie antibodies are hard to kill, and they are only the size of a pony. The pony antibodies are huge!"

"I think I see where this is going," I said. "Cacha, Snow and I have trained as a fighting team."

"But you can't have fought against antibodies, if today is your first excursion outside your habitat. You simply do not understand what you are up against. All of your training can't have prepared you to take them on! They are fast!"

"And their weapons are their blade-like limbs," I said. "All eight of them. And those blades could easily cut off a pony's forelegs..."

"Or all four legs..." Snow thought to us.

"Or even cut you completely in half," Cacha said.

"Yes, yes, that is right! How could you know if you have never left your habitat until today?"

"We met one over a year ago. It broke into our hangar."

"How did you survive? Did you have weapons?" Zephyr asked.

"Yes, and... our friend beat it. We didn't manage quite so well. It cut off my forelegs..."

"And all of Snow's legs, and cut me in half," Cacha said.

"So, stop!" Zephyr squeaked, "and wait until the gunfire ends!"

"How many of these antibodies are they fighting? The shooting has been going on for too long." Cacha asked.

"Probably just one pony size antibody," Zephyr said. "They are very hard to kill."

I wondered what kind of weapons were being used. The sound of the cannon suggested all they had was a regular, explosively fired gun. Whatever they were, they were not effective.





We burst out of the tunnel a couple of levels above the ongoing fight. Coming to a stop, I positioned the pod so I had a good view of what could best be described as an arena. There was a moderate amount of illumination, coming from lamps positioned above us, and the constant muzzle flashes of multiple weapons. As we were now exposed, we switched off the lights of the pods, returning them to their default grey color.

The structure had opened into a pit of sorts, the battle contained within its sides. On a shelf on the opposite side of the pit were the other HELaTS. A particularly large HELaTS, Heavy Hitter, Zephyr informed me, was leaning into a tripod-mounted gun that was bigger than he was, aiming it, trying to keep a bead on the clockwork spider that was thrashing around below him. Several ponies were assisting him by feeding the gun with shells, and helping to dampen its recoil.

Other ponies were positioned along the shelf to either side of Heavy Hitter, each firing much smaller, and quieter weapons. Unicorns were working together, using their magic to restrain the killing machine as much as possible, although despite their best efforts, it was still thrashing and moving about.

For a fight that had lasted as long as this one, there wasn't a lot of progress to be seen. The clockwork spider's head was showing the greatest damage, pocked by many impacts, the eyes being the apparent target. Both of those had been destroyed, rendering the machine blind.

It was clear that if this was to end anytime soon, it would require our assistance. A brief mental conversation with my team mates had us all ready ourselves by forming our weapons. I created a gun along the length of the cannon bone of my right foreleg, its barrel extending as far as my hoof. As such it wasn't in my way while I was inside the pod.

I loaded it with a new spell I had developed for fighting clockwork spiders. Instead of simply atomizing everything in the path of the beam, as had happened when I took out the changeling queen, this spell was designed to bore a very fine hole through the first continuous layer of the multidimensional material of the clockwork spider's armor, before spreading out and disintegrating everything until it hit another layer of multidimensional material. The theory was that would contain the explosion inside the armor, making it safer for us. As a failsafe, the spell was designed to stop after traveling a couple hoof-lengths beyond solid material. Cacha and Snow were likewise equipped with this spell, as well as all the other finalized spells I had developed.

Another burst of shells from Heavy Hitter's gun found their target, shaking the clockwork spider's head, chipping away at its destroyed eyes.

"Not very effective, are they?" I said to Zephyr. "Lots of gun fire, but so little damage."

"This one is taking a little longer than usual, but even at our best, the antibodies are  very  hard to destroy. The only way we can take them down is through their weakest point – their eyes. Once we penetrate them, we can damage the control center in their head."

"So, destroying their head stops them?" I asked. "Do they explode, or anything annoying like that?" I asked.

"No, not that I have ever seen."

"Well, girls, we know gut shots work, thanks to Brainstorm's efforts, and now we know head shots will also do the trick."

"Snow projectile," Snow said.

"You want to take the shot? Please do."

"Up!"

"Cacha, you and I can aim for the guts, but hold the shot. Fire only if Snow's..."

"Shit! There's another one!" somepony down bellow yelled.

It only took a moment to locate the second clockwork spider, and it was moving in, fast, on the shelf on which the other ponies were taking their stand. Some of them turned their weapons on it, but it ignored the barrage. Several of the unicorns that had been restraining the machine turned their magic against the latest arrival in a failure destined attempt to stop it. All that achieved was to allow the blinded machine to lash out more effectively. It may have been striking blindly, but those strikes were mighty close to some of the ponies that were shooting.

A brief mental exchange of images had already set us into action, even before the other ponies had started shooting at the second antibody. At our command, our pods ejected us upwards, maintaining a grip on our rear legs and hind quarters. That gave us unobstructed views of the two enemy. The original target was a lesser threat, but only just so.

Snow targeted the head of the damaged clockwork spider, while Cacha and I targeted the gut and head, respectively, of the second machine.

We fired.

The result was immediate, and spectacular. Funnels of flame blasted from each impact point, as the released atoms explosively reacted, forming new compounds. Coming from very dense multidimensional material, there were a lot of atoms to react, despite the hair-thin penetration. Flame and shrapnel spewed from the eye sockets of blinded clockwork spider, as the internal explosion sought the path of least resistance to escape. The machine immediately collapsed.

The explosions in second clockwork spider, somewhat constrained by the intact armor and eyes, spewed flame out around all joints and points of motion for several seconds, before collapsing, smoking, into the pit beside its fallen peer.

"Wow," Cacha said. "That went rather well. A much better result than last time!"

"Revenge is sweet?" I asked.

The image of a food generator filled with slices of apple sprung into my mind.

We all chuckled. Our training had worked wonders. My adrenaline levels hadn't even risen.

Down below, all gunfire had ceased and the ponies were staring up at the three of us, protruding from our pods. Judging by the dropped jaws, we were, at the very least, an unexpected sight!

"You said you didn't have any weapons!" Zephyr barked, floating into view.

"We don't  have  any weapons," I insisted.

"But..." he said, ardently pointing his tiny hoof at the weapon protruding from my leg. "That. That. It did more in a second than we can in an hour. That..."

"We don't  have  weapons, Zephyr. We  are  weapons. Living weapons," I said, reabsorbing the barrel and associated mechanisms into my body.

The little fellow's jaw dropped.

Below us, a few ponies clambered down into the pit with the fallen clockwork spiders. With them they carried various pieces of equipment. One particular, and somewhat heavy item they placed near the head of the machine they had been fighting. From the equipment they uncurled some heavy cables, each of which terminated in pointed probes. These they rammed through the empty eye sockets of spider, before stepping well away from it.

Other ponies were gathering near us, some calling up to us. I decided deal with them in a moment, as my attention was still on what was being done to the fallen. There was a whining sound coming from the box connected to the skull, and it grew in pitch and volume, reminding me of the sound the ship's main gun had made while preparing to fire.

When the sound stabilized, there was a mighty  crack  an a bright flash as electricity arced through the skull.

"Now it won't ever get up again," Zephyr said, from near my ear.

"They get up after having their heads blown up?"

"Usually, no, but they are not completely dead, either. We like to make sure they cannot be salvaged. Defeating them once is hard enough!"

"Zephyr, is that you, up there?" Heavy Hitter called, finally breaking my attention from the activities of the clean-up crew.

"It is!"

"We thought we had lost you."

"I lost myself," Zephyr admitted, sheepishly. "I got caught in a strong air current while scouting."

"You should know better than to wander too far by yourself!"

"I should, shouldn't I. I just want to be useful!"

"If we needed practice forming search parties, getting lost would be useful, but I must admit we really don't have the time to be doing that," Heavy Hitter said.

"But look at the good side. I really found something good this time!"

"So, I'm a  something  am I?" I muttered.

"You did say you were a weapon, didn't you?" Zephyr grinned.

"Touché."

As remaining up on my perch seemed inappropriate, I had my pod lower me to the floor. I was still a level above the other ponies, but I wasn't sure I trusted them enough to be down amongst them yet. Cacha joined me, but at my request, Snow remained well out of reach. She did detach herself from her pod, but remained seated on top of it, lazily spreading her bat wings.

"So, who are these special ponies you have brought to us?" Heavy Hitter asked Zephyr. "Are they from Lander 7H6?"

"No," Zephyr said. "And they have trouble believing we are from Lander 2H6."

"Hello," I said, deciding to move from being the subject of the conversation to participating in it. "I am Aneki, of Habitat Eleven. Yes, we come from that giant ball over there." I waved a hoof in its general direction. "This is Cacha, and that's Snow, up there."

At that moment, a breezie with cream colored head and strawberry mane and tail fluttered onto the scene at what I imagined to be maximum speed. She hit Zephyr in a flying tackle, immediately covering him in kisses. Somehow, the two remained aloft.

"The wife, I presume?" I asked, observing the tiny creature with coloring similar to my own.

"Enthusiastically so! This is Strawberry," Zephyr said, before being cut off by a mouth planted firmly across his.

"You are from the abandoned habitat?" a navy maned mare asked. Her HELaTS skin was marred by numerous scars, some quite significant.

"We are from the habitat, yes," I said, "but I can assure you it hasn't been abandoned yet."

"Ponies live in there?"

"Yes, and changelings."

"And insects," Cacha added. "And who would you be?"

"Ultramarine, or just Marine." She peeled back her armor to reveal that her coat color matched her name.

That started a cascade, and within moments all of the HELaTS present, ourselves included, had revealed themselves. If nothing else, it showed they were prepared to trust us enough to weaken their defences.

We talked.





Ultramarine began her story.

"Habitat Six was loaded with the ponies and creatures of Manehattan and the surrounding areas, and launched without issue. Its launch was several days after that of Habitat Five, and presumably a few days before Habitat Seven, assuming that launched on schedule. We were unable to maintain any form of radio contact. It reached maximum speed successfully and had been cruising for several decades."

"Things went wrong when an undetected and fast moving body, presumably an asteroid, hit at an oblique angle, not too many degrees from the from the path the habitat was traveling. It was effectively a head-on collision, but off center enough to miss the bridge. The resultant explosion vaporized a sizable chunk of both the outer hull, and the life support chamber, killing all within.

"The bridge was spared, the bridge crew surviving. Ponies who were working in the hangars also survived, as the hangars were also a separate environment to that of the main hull. A few of us HELaTS in the lower levels somehow survived in pressurized pockets or were able to get ourselves into them before asphyxiating."

"Were you there, yourself?" I asked.

"Yes, I was one of those in the lower levels. While I, and others like me were trapped down there, the ponies from the bridge and the hangars joined a landing craft to each of the two scout ships, boarded them, and left to pursue the other habitats, hoping to intercept one."

"They left you behind..." Cacha said.

"Yes. They presumed us dead, as they had not been able to contact any of us, and had no way to go to the lower levels to look for us."

"How do you know that, if they had already left?" I asked.

"We found that out when we finally made it to the hangars and found the notes they had left in case any pony discovered the wrecked habitat, or indeed, climbed up from miles below. At least they had the courtesy to do that. I can't blame them. Their window of opportunity to meet with another habitat was very narrow. For all I know, they all died. That is the most likely outcome. The scouts were designed for deep space trips that lasted up to five years."

"You never know," Cacha said. "Maybe they got lucky, like you did."

"Perhaps, but the odds were long, and a fast moving habitat is a lot harder to find in space than a star is."

"The impact, explosion, and subsequent venting of several of the emergency air tanks had knocked the habitat off course. When they abandoned the habitat, the output of the engines was reduced until only the gravity generator and life support for the hangars and bridge were left powered, and the habitat was left to drift.

"As the years passed, those of us who remained gathered in the hangar. Some of us found HELaTS space suits, which allowed us to move about freely. By sharing them, we were able to shuttle those from air pockets to the hangar. I think we found everypony that was left, but it's impossible to be sure.

"Of those that survived, there were two mindsets. Some wanted to leave as soon as possible in smaller craft, and head back here. The other group wanted to try to turn the damaged habitat back in this direction, and then use smaller craft to make the final trip."

"So, you were one of the first group?" I asked. "Zephyr said you spent years in deep space in a landing craft, something I find a bit hard to believe."

"Hell, no! We changed the course of the habitat as best we could. We only had one shot at it, and we failed to get the habitat on the correct course, or up to speed, but it was heading in the general direction we wanted to go.

"Both groups then set about adapting the landers, the only ships we had left, into something that could be used for longer trips. The hulls of several were joined together, and larger engines, actually auxiliary engines and retros from the habitat itself, were fitted. We crammed as many supplies and spares as we could into them, fitted food and modifier generators and so on, and generally made them as deep-space-worthy as possible.

"How long did that take?"

"Over two hundred years to finish the first one," Ultramarine said. "There were so few of us, it took a rather long time. Rather selfishly, the ponies that wanted to leave took off as soon as it was finished, abandoning the rest of us. They claimed we had plenty of time to finish the second ship as we weren't planning on leaving the habitat any time soon."

"And that was Lander 7H6?" I asked.

"It was. Actually, I think it was Landers 7H6, 8H6, 10H6 and 11H6 all joined together, but we all called it 7H6. The other ship, our ship, was made from Landers 2H6, 4H6, 5H6 and 6H6. Of course, with even less of us to build it, it took a lot longer. By the time we did finish it, our workforce had grown. In a way, it was heartless to bring foals into a life with such a bleak outlook, but we were alive, and we wanted to  live.  Most of those foals are still with us today, although we have lost a number of ourselves to these despicable antibodies.

"Anyway, to continue with the story, we stayed in the habitat preparing our ship, or just living in general, until we reached the closest point its path took it to here, then we launched. We accelerated for as long as we could afford to, then coasted for decades, finally using the remaining fuel to decelerate as we approached. It took us sixty-seven years in deep space to get here. We landed on the outer surface of the ring-world about forty three years ago."

"On the outside?" Cacha asked.

"Yes. There was an incomplete space-dock there, so we docked, unloaded and made our way into this ring-world, and have been climbing ever since."

"So, how far have you climbed?"

"You don't know how thick the ring is?" Ultramarine asked.

"Why would we? It's not as if we've explored down there."

"What? Why not? How long have you been hunting antibodies? We've been in the area for a few months, trying to get rid of that one, as it was blocking our progress, and you arrive on the scene and blow it and its friend away in  seconds! You clearly have experience."

"Cross," Snow said, from her perch above us.

"Huh? You're cross about what?" Ultramarine asked, puzzled.

"As Snow just said, we don't have much experience." I translated her meaning, but did not explain why such a translation was needed. "Last time we met one of those was about a year back, when it broke into our habitat. Snow and I lost our legs, and Cacha was killed. Our stallion killed it. As for those two clockwork spiders, today is our first day out of the habitat, and those two down there are our first and second kills."

The resultant silence went on for long enough for background chatter to break out, then fade.

"I thought you were Cacha," Heavy Hitter said, pointing a hoof at my attachment. "But Aneki just said Cacha was killed..."

"I am Cacha," she said. "I did die. It chopped me clean in half, after all, but we had a convenient unicorn medical expert close enough to prevent it becoming a permanent case of very dead."

Ultramarine shook her head, as if trying to get what she knew of our reality to gel with hers.

"You ponies are... a bit... weird," Zephyr said.

"Well, yes, I guess we would look that way to a society so removed from ours," I said.

"I suppose you have had two thousand years to develop new technologies, and... stuff," Ultramarine said.

Cacha shook her head. "We have had some significant scientific and medical advances recently, but that's it. Our last great scientists were locked away centuries ago, and we only freed them a few years back. Mostly we were a..."

"Changeling larder," I said.

"A  what?"

"A changeling larder," I said, again. "The power structure of our habitat was usurped by changelings that had smuggled themselves aboard. They were fearful for their lives and did what they could to survive."

"But you've freed yourself from them now? What did you do to those that were left?" Ultramarine asked.

"HELaTS can distinguish changelings from real ponies, so we were hunted to near extinction, but then Aneki happened," Cacha said.

"Well, you happened first," I responded.

"You are losing me," Ultramarine said.

"No surprise there," I said. "Unfortunately, I haven't rehearsed a short version of our history. Even the last three years would take a while to explain."

"But to give it a go," Cacha said, "In their effort to kill us, the changeling queens needed an alicorn to open the doors to which they had no access, and they tried to use Aneki to create one, and that was their big mistake."

"So, you didn't create an Alicorn?" Heavy Hitter asked.

"Oh, yes I did. My daughter is a miniature version of me, but with wings, but that's another story."

"Thinking that had failed, the changeling queen tried to copy Aneki directly, to infiltrate the lower levels..." Cacha said.

"But the changeling queen hadn't allowed for this," I said turning my foreleg into the most fearsome weapon I could imagine.

After the commotion died down, I retracted the weapon, causing another minor outbreak of chatter. I waited for those present to fall silent, before continuing the story.

"Let's just say that after the ruling generations had been dealt with, the remaining changeling queen was quite happy to share power, and now we have a functional society that caters to both species."

"You lost your habitat's princesses?" Zephyr asked. "Is your daughter the  key  you told me about?"

"Indeed, Allie is the key. As for the princesses, Luna's daughter, Princess Moon Glow, died in changeling captivity. Her daughter, Princess Lunar Eclipse, survived, locked on the bridge for thousands of years. She now acts as the public face for our government."

"What about that one?" Ultramarine asked, pointing a hoof at Snow. "She's the first bat-winged alicorn I have ever heard of."

"It doesn't count, does it?" Snow thought to us. "I am a construct, a being created by the alien spiders that drove us from our world. I am not a princess, but I am the  first  HELaTS. Our doctors gave me wings and a horn when they put me back together after our last encounter with an antibody."

"Sweet Luna!" a few ponies gasped. At least, despite millennia apart, we all used the same form of exclamation!

"So, back to my earlier question," I said, "How far have you climbed. How thick is this ring?"

"About a hundred miles, at our best estimate."

"That thick? What's down there?"

"Solid matter. The first few miles are made of the same sort of stuff as these antibodies – a very dense and heavy material. It's so dense it generates its own gravity field. Docking on the outside was easy. Because the ring is stationary with respect to the sun, and because of the gravity, we were able to simply land our ship, then taxi into the dock. From there, we had to take a spiral ramp through the material. There were also elevator shafts, but no elevators. The ramp was more like some sort of emergency provision. Actually, we had to climb downwards at first.

"Gravity dropped the lower we went. At some point, we had to negotiate a weird area of artificial gravity, that allowed us to invert ourselves, and from then on, it's been a long climb.

"As the material became less dense, we began to find tunnels, pipes, wires and that sort of thing. The higher we got, the more like this it became. We've been weaving our way though this stuff for years, camping in safe spots, avoiding the antibodies or fighting them as we were able. We think we must be near the surface now, but we have not been able to go that little bit further, yet."

"Why not?" Cacha asked.

"Because every time we do, this place generates more antibodies and drives us down again!"