The Sixth Age

by TacticalRainboom

0: Heist

Southern Cross winced in mid-gallop as a bullet broke against his magical barrier. Sparks flashed across the shield’s domed surface, accompanied by a shock of pain that shot through Cross's horn and bounced off of the back of his skull.

Typical corporate security tactics—ventilate the intruder’s hide with shredders or HVs, then claim that the idea had been to bust his magic shield with live rounds and finish the job non-lethally with tranq venom. Everypony gets away with a slap on the wrist, except for the sod who ends up as a smoking corpse. Funny how having the ability to magically block bullets tended to make somepony more likely to end up dead...

Cross‘s partner was yelling at him over the staccato of gunfire and the steady thundering of hooves. “If we get through this alive, I swear to the Six I’ll kill you, dickhead!” Her cyber-implants flashed harshly in the artificial light as she sprinted full-force down the hallway.

“If we get through this alive it won’t be thanks to you, cloudhumper!” Cross shot back. “Do those look like spitballs I’m blocking? Well, they’re not! Where the hell are you, Rider?” That last phrase wasn’t meant for the pegasus running alongside Cross—it was directed toward the microphone taped to his throat.

“Shut up and keep running!” Spectra retorted. “I think I’ve got us an exit! Right turn here!”

Cross barely even heard those instructions thanks to his barrier stopping a burst of bullets that would’ve dropped Spectra on the spot. Several shots pounded into the wall at the end of the hallway as the two swung a sharp right. Cross felt sure that his brain would catch fire if his barriers caught any more flying lead.

The hallway they'd turned into led to the outside edge of the building, and the wall at the far end was a curved glass surface giving a view of the perpetual dusk of the Lower City. “Spectra,” Cross snarled, “if your ‘exit’ is a fucking window again...”

He punctuated his sentence with a growl-scream of suppressed agony as a bullet sliced through his shield and into his left haunch. Somehow, somehow he managed to stay on his hooves, but his shield was gone, and—

Spectra glanced over, and her steel-grey eyes immediately zeroed in on the bloody wound marring Southern Cross’s backside.

“Oh hell," she panted. "Jump on my back!”

“The fuck did you just say?” Cross gasped raggedly. His vision was blurring and his body was starting to go numb, but his ears were still working, and he could swear Spectra had just told him to—

“Did I stutter? Get on my back!” Spectra surged ahead and pulled in front of Cross, giving him a nice close-up of her rear end, and of the pneumatic pistons grafted to her hind legs.

Cross pounced as hard as he could with his disobedient left flank, and ended up awkwardly clutching Spectra’s abdomen with his forelegs.

“I didn’t mean mount me!”

Instead of dignifying that comment with a reply, Cross just leaned forward, clutching Spectra tightly and lifting his rear hooves off the ground. Every bump and lurch of Spectra’s hips dug roughly into his chest, but he managed to hold on even when she spread her wings and flapped them once, propelling herself into a full sprint.

“Get ready! Same as last time!” Spectra yelled, holding her wings in a rigid upright position.

“I hate you, cloudhumper,” Cross grumbled weakly, lighting his horn.

A bullet hit the ground squarely between Spectra’s hind legs, and Cross heard her snarl as shards of tile bit into her belly. Another bullet hit the drywall next to Spectra’s head, and she winced away from the dust and plaster that it kicked into her face.

An eardrum-shattering burst of gunfire sounded from all around Cross’s head as Spectra opened fire on the oncoming wall of glass with her fearsome amount of implanted hardware. Muzzle flashes from four pistols embedded in the cyber-pegasus's wings strobed angrily in an attempt to weaken the oncoming barrier of glass.

“DO IT!” Spectra bellowed. Her wings flapped again, and Cross’s grip on her rear nearly slipped as she accelerated to terrifying speed, screaming straight towards the wall.

Cross spat one last barrier from his horn—not behind them to protect from bullets this time, but in front of them.

The field of solidified magic hit the glass with a sharp crack. The pane spiderwebbed, but held. Shit!

Spectra hit the glass with a meaty CRACK, and the pane shattered around her. She and Cross plunged together from the air-conditioned office into the polluted haze of New Canterlot's undercity.

Spectra was yelling wordlessly with either pain or effort, but Southern Cross barely heard it, because he was too busy howling his lungs out with sheer primal terror. He squeezed Spectra so hard that he felt sure he was going to leave bruises on her flanks, and nearly emptied his stomach onto her back while he was at it.

Their descent ended as suddenly and as violently as it had begun. Spectra landed hard and collapsed into a heap, dumping Cross onto a smooth, cold surface—the roof of a sky-bridge spanning the gap between two buildings.

For a few moments, the only sound was the hissing, thrumming breath of the sprawl and the panting of two ponies who had just escaped certain death.

For now, Cross and Spectra were safe. Their pursuers didn’t bother sticking their heads through the smashed glass to look for them, probably because they now had a choice between getting fired for letting intruders escape, or getting thrown in jail for shooting at neighboring buildings.

From this vantage point, perched on a stretch of glass and steel dozens of stories above ground level, Cross had a nice view of the vast network of girders and pipes staring down from where the sky should have been. Cross remembered learning long ago that the corporations liked to use extra-bright UV lights to make the ponies who lived down here feel less like they were entombed under the weight of an entire city. The corporations were doing a lousy job of that.

“You raised Rider on the comms yet?” Cross muttered, though he already knew the answer. He glanced around for any sign of their getaway vehicle, but all he saw was a forest of identical platescrapers stretching all the way from the streets to the steel sky above.

Spectra could only reply with a pained shudder.

Cross smelled the reason before he saw it. “Oh no,” he groaned, hauling himself to all fours despite the screaming pain wracking his head and left haunch.

“Hey. Hey! Stay with me!” Southern Cross said as he lurched over to Spectra’s prone body. The fact that his brain was ready to pack up and quit its job made it hard, but Cross tried to take a mental inventory of the lacerations scoring Spectra’s flesh. No major arteries, she would be okay if they got her some help soon, damn it he was an idiot for not realizing it earlier, Spectra had pounded through tempered glass for both of them, and now Cross had wasted precious seconds doing nothing, while—

Cross's frantic thoughts were interrupted by the roar of VTOL turbines as a cargo lifter wafted around the corner of a neighboring platescraper. Then came the irritating coltish voice blaring through his earpiece.

“Thank you for choosing saved-your-sorry-asses airlines! This is your captain, Rider, speaking. The goods have been secured, and you’re my last stop for the evening, so please keep all hooves, horns, and wings inside the vehicle while—”

“After I kick this dickhead’s ass, you’re next, Rider,” Spectra rasped weakly. The getaway vehicle touching down next to the two was little more than a covered cargo bed kept aloft by a pair of swiveling jet engines—unassuming, innocuous, just the thing for disappearing into the urban tangle.

Cross shook his head, chuckling despite the circumstances, as he dragged Spectra’s bleeding body into the back of the getaway vehicle. “What would I do without friends like you?” he mused.

Comments

[Mobius of the Moon]

Quite interesting. Please continue!

[Verdigris]

Hmm, Canterlot meets Shadowrun. Gotta say, it reminds me of a few runs I've done. Including the dialog and injuries.
Being a sam can be a real pain.

[soulwinds]

Cross barely even heard those instructions thanks to her barrier stopping a burst of bullets that would’ve dropped Spectra on the spot. Several shots pounded into the wall at the end of the hallway as the two swung a sharp right. Cross felt sure that his brain would catch fire if his barriers caught any more flying lead.

I'm confused. Is Cross a he or a she?

[djthomp]

Fantastic start, I'm glad I finally got around to reading this.