Final Solution

by Luna-tic Scientist

35 - Something new under the sun

Author's Note:

A full plot summary can be found here. Do not read unless you are up to date! Spoilers!
Preread by: turol, NoeCarrier and Caliaponia.

## Calibration error: ring fragment RF7227DB beacon position mismatch. Verify identity. ##

Again. Steinar switched his high-altitude drone to autopilot and carefully withdrew one foretalon from its control niche and scratched at the feathers under his beak. He blinked slowly, his nictitating membranes interfering with the laser display and turning the view into a crazy blur of lines and stars. His command collar gave a warning tingle and Steinar quickly returned his talons to the controller, making a few unnecessary inputs to show the dumb ‘attention’ system that he was back in the loop.

For the fifth time he sent the verification query, waiting as the signal made its light-speed crawl up to the high orbit relay and back down to the ring fragment's beacon. Another breath as the processor ground through the cryptographic keys, long enough to watch the steadily increasing discrepancy between actual and reported positions. It’s speeding up... He took a moment to grab the historical data and jam it into a crude graph.

Steinar made a soft cheeping noise at the back of his throat, like that of a chick wanting the shelter of a parent’s wing but afraid to attract the wrong sort of attention. The velocity curve had started at the noise level of the instruments but climbed steadily until it was now off by well over five lengths a second. Am I dreaming? How is this possible? He risked pushing up the display goggles, arching his back and neck to gaze around the stark cavern of the pilot farm.

Neat rows of deep couches spread in every direction, each with a gryphon, wings half spread and attached to armatures, lying within them. All he could see were their backs, muscles twitching as they remote-flew drones spread over several kilolengths. There was a hum of air conditioning and constant susurration of feather on feather, louder than Steinar could ever remember. There was a harsh electrical buzz from his collar, a sudden jagged pain around his throat, like razor wire pulled tight.

Steinar gasped, welcoming the shock and allowing the pain to clear any thoughts from his mind, before hunching over and taking his high-altitude surveillance drone out of automatic. We're spread thin, no low orbit satellite coverage... is it possible no one else has noticed? RF7227DB was an unimportant rock, partially exploited for carbon compounds in the last gigasecond but otherwise unremarkable and retaining most of its megatonnage. Unremarkable, but for the presence of a position reference beacon. None of the other beacons showed signs of problems, but there were plenty of other, unmarked, rocks with similar orbital elements.

Steinar carried on with his real job, ordering the calibration system to switch to another beacon and letting the drone's ladar track ballistic weapons departing Lacunae’s territory for their interception by Baur defences. There are the gravitational anomalies... A constant source of stress, trajectories deviating from the expected. ...perhaps this is the same? The feathers on his crest rose involuntary. Well outside thaumic suppressor range!

Attention drawn back to the errant beacon, he willed someone else to notice. There was nothing, no change, no alert. The speed of the rock was still increasing, and it was losing altitude. Most of his drone’s activities were highly automated, systems feeding data on trajectories of the projectiles and any number of decoys travelling with them to the defence systems buried under a kilolength of rock and layers of armourcrete, so all Steinar had to do was fly the thing and keep an eye on power levels. Even that was going away; the last projectiles were in the air and no more followed them. Even as he watched they disintegrated, undoubtedly due to self-destructs being activated. Is it actually over?

Relief was tempered with a nagging sense of worry. He played with the tracking systems, plotting the course forwards in time, then let his breath out with a sharp hiss. I shouldn’t be surprised... The track generated by the drifting orbital elements was contracting like a noose, and finally penetrated the surface of the planet. Only a kilosecond left! Exactly where was hidden within a wide error circle that blanketed a large chunk of Baur territory. Swallowing, Steinar sent a request for a sliver of time on one of the few high orbit satellites that had survived the ablation cascade. If I’m wrong, they’ll make me suffer.

"Explain, gryphon," came the voice of the supervising Person.

Steinar swallowed, throat abruptly dry. This was Monan, the commander of the whole base. The penalty for wasting a superior officer’s time-- "There is an anomaly. One of the debris ring objects is in the process of deorbiting."

There was a sharp hiss from the other end of the audio line and Steinar’s screen became bordered in flashing red as it was commandeered. "The descent plot," Steinar babbled, drawing a circle around the scrappy analysis he’d pulled together. Numbers flickered and flashed, far too fast for a single person to be manipulating, and he realised that his data was being shunted to some deep analysis system.

"Return to your duties, gryphon," the commander said, his voice choked and barely recognizable. "The gryphon will ignore any Lacunae weapons and focus on the ring debris object. It will be attacked."

But it’s a kilolength across! "Yes, sir!" Bright lines of light were once again jumping from the launch installations, heading straight up. He checked the paths, rapidly instructing the ladar and phased array units in his high-flying drone to focus on the errant object. It was only then he saw the newly predicted trajectory of the rock. It had stopped accelerating and the new orbital elements had been collapsed into a single laser-thin line.

His forelegs felt leaden, carrying on their tasks as if controlled by someone else.

The line intersected the surface of the world no more than a dozen kilolengths from his position.

===

Fusion left the dog pilots and accelerated into the sky, the speed of her passage dragging the roiling smoke from the burning vehicles in her wake. "Where are they?" she shouted, magic fumbling for the communicator clipped to her ear. The wind noise made any reply inaudible, and Fusion rebuilt her defences as the sound barrier was left far behind. "Say again." Some of the fire in her belly faded and she actually looked at her surroundings, sweeping the land around by shadow sight. There were lights everywhere, skeins of laser-pure colours layered through the ground, building to something that looked like an ant's nest in the hazy distance.

Arcology. Her single eye narrowed and she curved in that direction. Is this what it will take? There were patches of shifting darkness among the lights, more of Baur's static Arclight projectors, hunting for and eliminating vague zones of deep violet pony-magic at low orbital altitude. Gravity... so this is why they are having trouble pinning me down. She smiled, a bare hardening of the lips. There was a change, the violet patches were being picked off and not being replaced, and her smile faded.

The voice of the Hive strategic controller babbled something that didn't sound like directions. "I said, where are they?" Fusion snarled into her comms unit.

"This one has no way to know; he can give the pony the location of the Palace, but the command groups won't be there. As with Lacunae, they will have dispersed to..."

There was more, but Fusion wasn't listening. "Then direct me to a command centre," she snarled into the communicator, fighting a sudden urge to rip it out of her ear and crush it to a speck of undifferentiated matter. There was silence from the other end, and Fusion's fury faded, becoming cold calculation. I cannot let this go unanswered. Her lips parted, revealing clenched teeth. Ellisif must be rubbing off on me.

Around the arcology, set in a distant ring, were the Baur Arclight installations. All designed to protect the population and outlying military bases... they don't seem to have the mobile units that Lacunae has. She watched them for a moment, waiting for her Lacunae contact, as the beams of hazy darkness hunted down and eliminated the last traces of violet in the upper atmosphere. Fusion shivered, feeling cold. Where are you, Gravity?

===

Orgon watched as Tundru listened to something on a private channel, one half of a set of earphones pressed to his head. What he was hearing wasn't certain, but the range of expressions crossing his face made for an interesting show. "The Strategist must stop the pony -- Baur has agreed to a cease-fire!" he finally blurted, eyes wide and panting. The other members of the Court were looking concerned, examining updates on their own screens.

One of Orgon's displays updated, an orbital schematic showing a debris ring fragment on collision course with Baur territory. More annotations flowed up the side of the display, hastily typed comments from the analysts. There's no way that impact point is an accident.

Orgon kept his face blank and stared back at Tundru. "The pony isn't a member of the Court and will not answer to it. What possible reason would it have for obeying?" He allowed a trace of frustration to cross his face, lips curling up to show sharp teeth. "The Court has not given the tiniest fraction of a length in its position. The Court persists in its failure to grasp the new reality." The frustration, given a crack in his control, burst through and Orgon clenched his paw into a fist, bringing it down on his console with a dull thump. "What does the Court expect Orgon to do?" he roared. "He has nothing to work with!"

"But the cease-fire--"

Orgon took a deep breath. "Tundru kills hundreds of the pony's kin to make a point and he expects there to be no repercussions? He challenged the pony and the pony has called Tundru's bluff."

"But--"

"There are no 'buts'! Baur will have to accept the damage as the price of doing business. The Court tried their best. It was not good enough." He let go of the anger, features smoothing and becoming calm once more. "In any case, the rock is being dropped by a different pony, Gravity Resonance, to which Orgon has no direct link. Even if he did, Gravity has just spent the last kilosecond fending off a saturation kinetic and nuclear bombardment. This one doubts the pony will be in much of a mood to listen."

===

Lightning-bright pinpoints flickered maniacally across the sky, high up near the zenith. They were in complete silence, but the patterns of pulses expanded rapidly, as if the source was getting closer. More light flared, real physical light that was bright enough to outshine the sun, turning the land below into a patchwork of terrible white and inky black. There was no glare, not through her clairvoyant vision, but the sheer contrast overwhelmed the magic and rendered everything monochrome, tinged at the edges with electric purple.

The intolerable light brightened further, starting to flash and pulse. Fusion hunched in her wings, ducking slightly and looking upwards into the darkness of her defences. Escape patterns bloomed in her mind, places far away over the horizon, but she held them back and watched as the main glare shifted and turned into a thousand streaks of blinding fire, all heading towards the arcology and its defences. More points of blue-white pulsed, the now recognizable flash of distant nuclear weapons, but the glare of the streaks made them seem weak. Defensive fire, Fusion realised.

The falling streaks split and tumbled, some spreading, slowing and fading, like embers scattered over sand, but others kept their speed all the way to the horizon.

The sky and ground were engulfed in lambent incandescence, disappearing behind luminous, merging shockwaves, as the hazy black bars of Arclight beams winked out. Fusion accelerated straight up, defences shrugging off the thermal bloom from the arc of the explosions that spanned a quarter of the horizon.

There was no real danger, not this far and this high; the blast overpressure would be attenuated by distance and lack of air, so she bent her arc and headed towards the core of the arcology. There was a familiar pressure at the back of her mind, never quite absent but suddenly stronger, and--

Sister! Did you like my surprise?

There was more pressure and a gentle request, so Fusion replied with the view from her clairvoyance spell, still looking out from behind her obsidian defences. It was just what I wanted... they attacked the rock with nuclear weapons, but it didn’t help them much.

Gravity’s mental voice became smug and a little self-satisfied. I felt it split, but I could still move the fragments, so...

A shotgun rather than a sniper’s rifle. Fusion nodded. I watched them fight your magic, earlier.

They tried. Gravity still sounded slightly smug, then her tone changed, shading towards awe and fear. The rock lost quite a lot of mass, ablated away, but it was still too big. The impact would have been huge, far larger than the Hammer. I drained away some of the velocity before it hit. There was a pause, filled with a feeling of regret, and her tone became bitter. I couldn’t stop all the weapons. They sowed nuclear fire across our valleys.

"We can’t save them all," Fusion muttered out loud. I’ve discovered that already. They want to trap me while I try and rescue their ponies. The thought came down on Fusion like a hammer, reigniting the fire under her skin. "They are killing their own just to get to us!" With the shout, high and thin in the rarefied air, went her vision of euthanised and laser-sliced ponies, all in neat rows. "I saw it, imagined it, back at the start of all this, sitting in the dark under our sire’s wing." She tipped over, increasing her real-world speed, holding on to the feeling of Gravity in her mind like she was scrabbling for purchase on a muddy slope.

I will come to you--

There was a purple flash and an impression of something dark and needle-shaped flying away, only leaving behind the crack of a sonic boom. "Are you mad?!" Fusion shouted after the object, glaring at the turbulent wake. It turned, slowing all the time, and shrank, layers of protection dropping away to leave a wild-eyed Gravity hanging in mid-air. "A single jump? How could you be so, so..."

Gravity flicked her wings, closing the distance, then hovered in front of Fusion for a breath before folding her wings around the other mare. "You said it, but I don’t think you believe it. You cannot save them all."

"No," Fusion whispered, "but I can try." She pushed Gravity away, frowning. "You took too much of a risk."

"High-altitude terminus... there's not that much air up here. I had a correctly aligned and streamlined force field..." Gravity shrugged, grinning. "I also used a lot of telekinesis on my body. It’s fine as long as you don’t want to breathe."

Fusion closed her eyes, then fiercely returned Gravity’s hug. "I’m glad you are here. We have a point to make."

===

Is this what I looked like after I pulled us out of the Institute? Gravity thought. Fusion looked... haggard. Fur bedraggled and feathers clumped like she was going through a simultaneous coat and wing moult bad enough that she really shouldn’t be flying -- as if anything about Fusion’s flight wasn’t brute-force magic by this point. There were few of the large collection of minor injuries she’d acquired in those frantic kiloseconds, but she looked just like Gravity had felt, back at the Institute. Nothing left but a shell propelled by anger and desperation.

She held Fusion for a few more breaths, manipulating the air to reduce their rate of descent. "What do you want to do, Fusion?" She gestured behind her, feathers sweeping the arc of the horizon. "They are wide open... their Arclight bases along this whole area are rubble-filled craters." Gravity smiled, eyes gleaming. Come on, sister, stop me! Be my voice of reason again. "We can make them regret all the things they’ve done to us."

She gathered her power, letting the darkness flood out and flicking the air with stomach-twisting flutters of gravity. I can do it... the same drive spell I used before, shredding and-- Her smile hardened and she imagined what that might do, gravitational shear strong enough to rip flesh from bone, unhindered by any physical armour, only defended against by pure distance. Fusion stirred under her wings, neck arching back to look her in the eye. Gravity stared back, pulled away from her daydream, and studied Fusion from magenta eye to horn before lingering on the blank white sphere of her prosthetic. I must see if I can help her with that.

Some of the frustration and despair faded from her face. "No." Fusion shivered, pulling away and fanning her wings to arrest their descent. "Now is not the time to be indiscriminate. I am not that desperate yet. I made a promise that I would take the fight to their leaders. They hide behind their troops... I can’t believe the dogs as a whole want the sort of war we can bring to them."

"Do you think they know?" Gravity said quietly. "How much do the leaders tell their people? The secrecy in Lacunae is quite extreme... I heard that Baur is worse." That’s right; talk to me. Something at the back of her head coiled around the drive spell, persistently trying to bring it to the front. I want to see what I can do with it...

"You might be right. No distant military bases this time. Something showy, something obvious." Fusion looked over Gravity’s shoulder, looking at the smoke-filled horizon. "...although your last act might be hard for them to hide."

"Explosions. Anything could have caused that. Most of the dogs are underground." They wouldn’t put corrals near Arclight bases, would they?

"Megaton-range, but yes. They are at war; they can hide whatever they like. Detonations on the surface, at distant military installations." Her voice sharpened, directed into her comms unit. "Officer, you promised me the location of the Baur command centre."

Against the rush of the air the tiny voice in the earpiece was inaudible, but Gravity could hear the repeated thoughts in Fusion’s mind. There were excuses and prevarications, delaying tactics that only served to make Gravity wince at the sudden flash of heat radiating from Fusion’s body. Give her a target, you fools! Then there was a delay, then another voice came on the link.

"Fusion, this is Orgon. The Court has agreed to stop hostilities."

Fusion’s gaze flicked to Gravity, and the younger mare nodded. "It’s true. Apart from what they used to try and hit my rock, I’ve not felt any other launches."

"They didn’t believe that the pony is a threat, but they are starting to." Gravity could almost see Orgon; there would be a toothy smile on that brown-furred, green-eyed face. "No matter what the pony does, this one can enforce his will. Merlon has successfully trained a number of Security ponies and this one has leveraged that training. With the hole Gravity has knocked in their suppression perimeter, Orgon can strike wherever he likes." The voice became more gentle. "This one understands the pony’s anger, but it does not need to take any other actions."

The furious heat radiating from Fusion’s body didn’t decline. "They hide behind their soldiers and I won’t take my revenge on those who just follow orders." Her voice became a hissing whisper, muscles tense and iron-hard. "They have made this personal. Give me a target, Orgon, or I’ll find one myself."

There was silence at the other end of the link and Gravity felt a sudden sinking sensation in her gut. Maker, Orgon, tell her!

"The pony wants to make a point, this one understands." More silence, the dead air of a muted channel rather than mere not talking. "This one wants to minimise civilian casualties," Orgon said finally.

"Their leaders are not civilians!" No whisper this time, but a shout, a snarl of fury.

Orgon’s voice was measured and slow. "No, these ones are not. Destruction of the leadership, especially in a Hive with a... top heavy command structure like Baur will result in mass chaos. These ones believe they have a novel method to ensure compliance that is not well suited to radical changes. Intelligence thinks there are... safeguards. Still..."

The tension in Fusion’s body grew worse as Orgon spoke. The radiated heat grew stronger and the colours of her mane became hard and laser-pure, too bright to look at without squinting. "Orgon," Gravity said loudly, "an example has to be made." Give her something, anything.

"Yes." A sigh came through the audio link and the display unit on Fusion’s comms rig lit up, projecting a little spot of golden light into her eye. "Make your point. Remember that these ones must live in this world after the pony has finished. There are consequences to revenge."

Fusion snorted, but some of the heat faded. Her wings twisted, orienting on some point behind the curtain of dust and smoke on the horizon. Her horn flashed white-gold, and she vanished in a flutter of gravity waves.

===

"This one has done what he can. The pony wants to make a point... this one would suggest that Baur let it," Orgon said, eyes on the wallscreen and its relatively low resolution live view of the world. The spot of flickering rainbow colours, bright like some laser was pointed straight up, vanished and reappeared closer to the heart of Baur’s Arcology Prime, then jumped again. The crude gravitational and thaumic contour maps, overlaying the strategic schematic, with its litter of cryptic icons of units and vectors, painted diffuse blobs of colours over the land.

Tundru's eyes darted over displays Orgon couldn’t see. "The course the servitor has been directed on--" His voice turned high-pitched, almost a whine. "--passes over some of the most populated volumes of the Hive!"

No bluster this time... this one thinks Tundru has had a difficult conversation with his Monarch. So much for the supposed independence of the Court."The pony will keep its word. Even after everything, it does not want to slaughter indiscriminately." A private message scrolled across Orgon’s console, highlighting a patch of land along Fusion’s projected route. A subwindow opened, showing a fuzzy plot crosshatched with the signs of computer enhancement. Vague delta-shaped blobs tracked across the landscape, all converging. Orgon suppressed a twitch, then looked up to stare Tundru in the eye. "Assuming Baur Hive keeps its side of the truce, that is. This one hopes the Monarch isn’t going to do anything rash."

Tundru shook his head, mouth half open and throat working. "What will the Strategist do? Orgon can—"

"Can what? Tell the pony to abort? The Court may have noticed that this one does not exactly have much control over it." The gravitational signals shifted again and again; the distance covered only a dozen kilolengths or so, but the jump frequency was up to one per two seconds and climbing rapidly. Interesting... Fusion has been joined by another. It must be Gravity. "Perhaps the pony will just jump straight through the force." Orgon shrugged, then gave a short bark of a laugh. Or not; the site is in range of one of the Arclight bases. Plenty of military assets in the area. "Lacunae will not respond as long as Baur keeps its launchers silent. The Monarch has made his choice; he will have to live with the consequences." Or his people will.

===

The sun jumped, twitching across short arcs like the sky was clockwork. Hints of high energy painted her shadow sight with speckles of deep violet; the hues of fully charged superconductors in flying vehicles.

Rage stoked the fire in Fusion’s belly, filling her eyes with a golden haze. I could... Patterns flowed into her mind, simple things made monstrous by the amount of power she could route through them. Energy followed her unconscious desire, flooding down from the sky in a rain that didn’t pass through normal space, and into reservoirs she’d used before. Deep things, they drank greedily, and Fusion let them. She felt... stretched, but the feeling was familiar and easier to deal with than the first time at the Pit.

The pattern of violet dots expanded, changing from the size of a hoof at the end of a leg to something more like a wing spread wide. The power swelled, filling her from horn tip to tail root with waves of sensation, begging to be used. With her was another locus of intensity, a patch of cool darkness a few lengths away, matching her jump for jump.

No. There will be ponies in those ships. Fusion held onto her power, locking it away from manifesting in the real world in bursts of plasma and high-energy light. The fury flipped, changing from hot to cold in a heartbeat, the spell patterns giving way to analysis and plans.

A hint of a sad smile flickered from the darkness, sliced thinly by the knife of teleportation. Yes, there will be. They have already tried to distract us with the deaths of their ponies. It is only a matter of time before they use them as... as meat shields against our power.

If there really will be peace, we must give it a chance, but they must understand that we negotiate from a position of strength. Fusion’s attention narrowed and she reached for the teleport pattern again--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--the spread of violet stars was all around her, but the spell pattern was still in her mind and the power flowed again. There was a sudden feeling of weakness, like she was bathed in cold, and her shadow sight wavered. Arclight, but only one. That might have worked before, but won’t be enough now! Fusion drew on her stored energy and pushed a little harder--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--the dog fleet was behind her and Fusion felt the sudden lightness of being out of the Arclight beam--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--something was missing, an absent patch of friendly darkness--

~~~discontinuity~~

--no sense of closeness, no feeling of cold mass moving at speed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

Fusion inhaled sharply, the next teleport pattern evaporating, and swept the sky for any sign of Gravity. Nothing but the dusting of crystal thaumic lights lighting up the shadow universe beneath her hooves. She spun in the air, wings straining, and accelerated back the way she had come. Off in the distance, high above the curve of the horizon, were brilliant flashes of electric blue and pulses of hot green.

===

Fusion vanished in a flash of white-gold and Gravity's hold on the teleport pattern evaporated, the fine details fuzzing and twisting under the sudden impact of the Arclight beam. A dip into shadow sight told her the thing was wide, far larger than the ones generated by Lacunae's mobile units. Her magic fluttered and she snarled, pulling down more power from the orbiting rocks and rebuilding her defences. Fast-moving delta shapes, felt more for their mass and speed than seen, were converging on her.

She gritted her teeth and pumped her wings, a proxy for the sudden rush of air directed by her magic, cracking the sound barrier a few moments later. Still in the beam-- The thought was fleeting, subsumed by the sudden urgent demands on the flight magic. Flashes of light came from the aircraft, along with blurs of motion. Wires of green flicked on, drawing lines of radiance from horizon to horizon, whipping erratically as Gravity threw random shifts in direction into her flight.

"It’s like that is it!" She laughed, darkness congealing in the air and making the laser beams dim and flicker as they passed nearby. The effect was surprising, almost enough to make Gravity pause, but she latched onto it, strengthening that part of the pattern and bringing it to the front of her mind. The ambient light dropped further, the colours shifting towards the red, making the world appear as if she flew within a bubble of dark glass.

Gravity narrowed her eyes, straining to see through the dimness. Tuning the magic, she made even the bright flares of missile launches and aircraft plasma drives fade to invisibility; normal vision useless, she switched to shadow sight. There was colour only from the dog systems deep within the ground, but that didn’t matter. Unlike the time in the Institute, when she struggled to differentiate between rock and vehicle, here the shadows of dense, artificial materials were easy to spot as they circled her.

Gravity smiled, lips drawing back from wide, square teeth that sharpened a little as her anger rose, and gathered her power. The spell was the same one she’d always used -- simple enough that the distraction of the single Arclight beam couldn’t stop her, yet capable of absorbing all the magic she could pump into it.

Local spacetime fluttered and drew away, collapsing into a deepening pit. The sides of the pit went from shallow to steep, the smooth edges growing spikes and starting to rotate. So much easier than before! There was little stray influence, nothing more than a slight twist in her belly; the edges of the gravitational abyss were sharp and sheer. Holding the vortex close, she accelerated towards the closest cluster of aircraft. Invisible lines of motion were converging on her, far faster than the bulky machines that launched them or the missiles that rode incandescent plasma and had closed half the distance.

The gravitational eddy slid through the air, space-time itself flowing and shifting into new shapes, as she accelerated. She held it there, watching the landscape behind the weapon distort. It flowed and melted into curves and arcs, as light travelling in ostensibly straight lines found itself bent around the dip in space time. Gravity sighted on one of the clusters of aircraft, the lights of their drives forming short-lived rings against the mangled background.

She flung it forwards, the metric changes propagating at a small fraction of the speed of light. Away from the centre of her power it faded rapidly, trapped air decompressing with a bellow. Through the brief haze of condensing water vapour, Gravity snarled in the general direction of the distant Arclight base and rebuilt the weapon, this time keeping it close.

Strings of railgun projectiles, already curving to intercept her, were swept into strange and short-lived orbits about the spell, turning the invisible creation into a hazy patch of chaotically tumbling metal. The missiles were next, finally catching up with her mad rush, only to be shredded by the harsh tidal forces. Some detonated immediately, the blue-white concussions reddened and made distant, others merely vanished as they were hungrily devoured by the extreme curvatures. The aircraft kept their distance, flowing away from her as might a flock of sparrows near a hawk, ebbing and flowing at the edge of the danger zone.

Sweat started to soak the fur of her neck and flanks, even within the cool, entropically-controlled inner core of Gravity’s defences. Breath starting to make harsh noises in her throat, she accelerated towards the Arclight base, but the suppression effects grew stronger as the distance shrank, draining her power a little more efficiently with each passing kilolength. Cold chills ran down her spine. I’m not going to be able to reach it. She fumbled for something in orbit, but the demands of all the other magics made the rocks distant and out of reach.

There was a pulse of thaumic energy somewhere behind her and, for a moment, relief flooded through Gravity. Her attention shifted, shadow sight catching a glimpse of a huge set of wings before the whatever-it-was vanished behind a collection of nested magical fields. That’s no pony!

===

If you’ve hurt her-- Fusion gritted her teeth and pulled her power around her like a blanket. She was outside the Arclight beam and, after Gravity’s orbital bombardment, it was the only installation that appeared to be in range. Otherwise we’d both be targeted. I could kill it first... Indecision twisted her gut, then she pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--air slammed into her defences, but Fusion had shaped them into a double-ended needle and she slid through the sky, keeping the velocity of her vector change. You’re rubbing off on me, Grav. There was nothing to mark the presence of the Arclight base itself, no great spherical bulge to hold the crystal thaumic suppressor array, but the concentric rings of more conventional weapons were obvious.

Time seemed to slow, like it did when she really exercised her power. Below, the muzzles of point defence railguns were swivelling in Fusion’s direction, but slowly, so very slowly. A more immediate response came from a particle accelerator dug in behind a ceramic revetment. Power flared within the emitter cone, twisting the path of a river of lightning to jump from the ground and spear her with a low frequency rumble, stretched out and Doppler-shifted

Fusion suppressed a giggle as she let the beam of relativistic electrons curl around her impenetrable fields and shoot off into the upper atmosphere. Even before everything I could have survived this! Me or my sister... let’s see if I can make you change your minds. The thought sank away, vanishing beneath layers of spell patterns. The power flowed, funnelled down every nerve strand, every bone and through every organ and into immaterial sinks deeper than the greatest ocean, hidden in the spaces between her thoughts.

Magnetic fields twisted the air into plasma, a shining star that cast long shadows through the trees covering the landscaped grounds of the base’s skin of earth and rock. They moved in one, achingly long arc, tracking the passage of Fusion’s brilliant weapon as it accelerated downwards. Green, growing things charred and flashed to flame an instant before the shockwave pulverised the installation and tortured the air with a thunderous clap. A bubble of fire expanded, electric blue-white rapidly fading to yellow and red as it climbed.

It didn’t have the horrific power of a nuclear weapon, but it was good enough for the task at horn. The beam of accelerated electrons died, along with a patch of the electronics and power conductors that laced the ground under the cosmetic layer of grass and trees. Below this was the reality of the landscape: layers of basalt-whisker armourcrete, far tougher than mere rock. Defensive weapons, built to intercept hypervelocity missiles descending in ballistic trajectories, responded, but far too late. Fusion pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--leaving behind a messy tangle of converging smoke trails and shockwaves from missiles accelerating as fast as artillery rounds. A savage glee filled Fusion, and she fired again and again, digging the defences out from their hiding places with a rapid-fire barrage. There was no chance of concealment; shadow sight exposed every concentration of energy, and she didn’t stop until all the lights were snuffed out.

It should have taken half a kilosecond or more, exposing her to ground fire and any aircraft conducting combat air patrols from local bases, but the time dilation was still in effect. Fusion's wings may have flapped lazily, barely playing up to the facade of her flight as the fireball-lofted dust rolled over her, but her mind and magic were unbridled, galloping at insane speeds. One breath... nothing more.

The pastels of her mane and tail had been stoked into a blast-furnace glare, now no longer composed of anything as mundane as hair, but something more vivid, a kind of whipping, silken lightning. She still had power to spare, and felt the great machine, a pall of darkness under the material skin of the world, start to turn in her direction. More of her thaumic weapons lashed out, not a discrete pulse, but a beam that filled the suspended fines with a lurid light. It struck the exposed armourcrete, biting in and chewing a tunnel, flesh pierced by a white-hot lance. Even through the defenses, she could hear a distant, awful howl as rock vapour boiled away from the impact point.

The shadowed darkness within the base flickered and, just for an instant, Fusion saw the whole vast complexity of thaumically active crystals, a great geode of radioactive crystal. It died a moment later, systems randomising and vanishing as she pumped superheated plasma into its heart. Fire blew out of the ground at half a dozen unexpected places, lighting the haze a brilliant orange.

Fusion didn’t stay to watch--

~~~discontinuity~~~

===

His compartmentalised crop was full, the feeling a comfortable weight in his midsection. The sensation wasn't a familiar one; thus far his masters hadn't seen fit to give him more than a fraction of his carrying capacity. The food was rich, isotopically pure U235, far more energetic than the thorium of his regular diet.

Harq listened to the voices in his head. At the moment they were whispers, cajoling and persuading. His gaze focused on the prey, a tiny thing hidden inside a cloak of darkness. Structures moved inside his eyes and the prey wavered and blurred before becoming clear. It was no bigger than the training targets the Masters had instructed him to kill, back when he’d been small enough to actually look up at them, but the power... How can something that small put out so much magic under partial suppression? Claws of the Maker... what would it be like away from interdicted space? He'd practiced against the machines, assured by his Masters that he was unique in his ability to resist their effects.

His vision cleared, eyes finally finding some configuration that pierced the defences. It’s only a pony. He risked a glance at the command aircraft, obvious by its brilliance in the radio spectrum, then hunched his wings as the weedling whispers became angry shouts and the early prickles of claws danced down his spine. The volume, so loud it drowned out his own thoughts and turned him into an automaton, dropped as, against his efforts to resist, his eyes and brain returned their attention to the designated prey. What didn’t fade was a sudden gnawing hunger, hunger that could only be quenched by the prey.

You have played this game before. The sudden urge was imposed from the outside, he knew that, but real all the same. Anger grew, more than the synthetic stuff his masters fed him. I know what you want me to do! he shouted in the limited privacy of his own mind. There was no punishment for this little rebellion; careful experimentation had shown that it was intent the masters could read, not actual thoughts. They still think I am an animal...

The prey was small and fast, faster than he was, but it was slowing. Caught in the convergence of a dozen lasers, forced to waste power fending off a constant stream of high-velocity projectiles and RF drive missiles, it was close to the limit of its astounding abilities. Harq followed the thrust and jab of magic, tasting the directed warp and flutter of spacetime that surrounded the prey, and felt fear.

But there was no choice. The voices insisted, becoming strident as they sensed his apprehension. Harq used the anger they gave him, used it to blot out the bad emotions under a tide of raw fury.

The prey turned, obviously deciding that it couldn’t reach the thaumic suppressor that held it pinned like a dissection specimen on a tray, and fell towards the ground. Harq watched in interest, the distance closing, ticking down towards in range. Muscles, dense collections of whiskered corundum, contracted and a new fire grew in his chest, in the place any normal flesh-and-blood creature would keep its lungs. Molten fissile material, self-heating and near boiling, was transferred from his crop and into glassy bulbs of pure quartz lining the space. Plates of tungsten carbide contracted around the cavity, reflecting a fraction of the fission neutrons back into the molten cores.

Power output of the fuel spiked, flashing it to vapour; magic and magnetism spun the resultant plasma into searingly hot gyres, keeping them isolated from the walls of their quartz vessels. The heat and pressure became intolerable so Harq inhaled, pulling in air and passing it close to his heart, letting it soak and heat and ionise and burn. His own power concentrated, turning air into a frenetic collection of stripped nuclei and electrons orbiting so fast that the cyclotron radiation made his insides prickle.

I think that will do. The prey was climbing rapidly, gaining distance as it rose above most of the atmosphere. Harq and the rest of the aircraft followed it up into the rarefied air. It is making things too easy!

He stretched out his neck, aligning the magnetic accelerator in his neck. Harq’s armoured lips pulled back from diamond-hard teeth, letting slip a nuclear lightbulb glare of x-rays and vacuum ultraviolet. His eyes rolled back behind refractory lids and his mouth opened, arcane power forming an invisible funnel of magnetism in his magically shielded throat. Chest convulsing, he coughed, spitting up a self-sustaining plasma ring vortex travelling at a high multiple of the speed of sound.

===

Self-doubt flickered through Gravity, feeding on her growing fatigue. None of the aircraft ever came close enough to strike at, outpacing her increasingly sluggish responses. The incoming fire was relentless; she could avoid the guided railgun slugs and destroy the missiles, but the green laser light was unerring. She was speared by a dozen emitters, sapping her strength still further.

She’d turned away as soon as it became obvious that she’d never reach the Arclight base, but her escape route was straight towards the unknown flying thing. Eyes clenched shut, Gravity struggled to improve the resolution of the clairvoyance node she had positioned just outside her defences. Fiddling with the parameters gave the sky and land an odd purple hue, but blocked the laser glare. What is that thing?! Shadow sight was useless, showing little more than a coruscating mass of magic, seemingly undeterred by the limited Arclight effect. Means nothing; anypony could manage some magic through this... but there is so much of it!

Hints of a shape leaked through the field; a long, thick, reptilian tail and wide, angular wings, all glowing with a light she’d only seen when looking at Fusion through shadow sight. Too big for a pony, far too big, and with as much magical power as a herd of at least a score. It was fast; not the sort of speed Gravity herself could manage, but on par with an experienced weather team pony, a low multiple of the speed of sound.

Trajectories flowed through her head, some path that would get her away from the converging threats. A high, exoatmospheric route looked the best; free from air resistance she could really get up some speed. Gravity's magic bent space and she used the synthetic mass to accelerate her climb. Her ears popped again and she hardened her defences, preventing gas exchange. The lasers and projectiles still followed her, the latter a little faster without the thick air of the lower atmosphere to get in their way, but it was worth it to increase the range.

Light flared ahead, making the lizard-thing disappear behind a blue-white glare that reached out to touch her.

===

Harq gave a basso-profundo growl, the sound of mountain ranges grinding together, as the prey failed to die. Sapped by distance and with only limited thaumic guidance in this partially suppressed environment, the plasma ring vortex had been beaten away by a blast of something that made his inner ears sting. That thing is manipulating gravity! A dense zone of artificial mass spun around the pony, thrown like a spiked weight on the end of a chain, intercepting everything the aircraft threw at it. Haloed in writhing snakes of fast-dissipating plasma, the creature changed direction again and pulled a chunk of liquid metal seemingly from nowhere.

The metal stretched out, losing its white glow in an instant, then vanished with a subliminal flash of motion. Harq twisted his wings, pulling his body sharply to one side, then grunted, hind leg suddenly numbed by a tremendous impact. Cubic boron nitride and carbon filament scales, tougher than an airtank's glacis plate, splintered and spun away, ripped free from his right hip. There was no pain; his battlefield-grade nervous system wouldn't permit it in the middle of a fight.

A fast glance showed the extent of the damage: a dozen scales were gone and twice that number ruined, around a long scar splattered with shiny globs of tungsten. The flesh beneath, the colour of freshly erupted volcanic basalt cracked with rapidly cooling incandescence, felt icy cold from the loss of the protective scales and their insulation. Harq's heart contracted again, the extra warmth keeping his molten blood flowing and driving back the chill.

The voices in his head raged and fury kindled the fire in his gut, prompting the release of a little more fissile material into the glassy structures of his chest. He spat fire then immediately turned, tracking the superheated gyre and turning it towards the prey.

The pony was too fast, but at this range Harq had full control over his weapon; he shorted out the field lines and the vortex exploded in a fizzing cluster of brush discharges, playing over and around his prey.

===

Gravity lashed out, connecting with the flash of fire and turning it into a rapidly dispersing cloud of luminious gas. Buffeted by the shockwave she darted away, reaching into the knotted, distorted space of her weapon and pulling out its central core of glowing metal. This, a messy alloy made from captured railgun projectiles and missile fragments, she pulled out into a sharp spear, flash-cooling it to solidity. With a grunt and a push she threw the thing, the best part of a hundred kilos of dense metal, as hard as she could.

The lizard swerved and the projectile struck sparks from its hindquarters rather than skewering its head. Would even that have killed it? The wound seemed to be little more than a scratch, but the creature changed its direct approach for something more evasive. I hurt you, at least a little. She reached for another glob of molten tungsten, when there was a flash of white-shading-to-purple light from within those heavy jaws.

Gravity dodged even as the hypersonic plasma bolt curved towards her, diving to let to pass over her head. Can't hit me--! The bolt exploded, triggered by a pulse of magic from the creature, turning to writhing lightning that grounded out on her own defences. Currents surged, transferred in through the force field layers by inducting coupling of the charged gas, some tiny fraction of the energy touching her on the hip and back.

She gave a startled whinny, big flight muscles contracting irregularly and making her wings thrash. Smoke filled the little bubble of captive atmosphere, catching at the back of Gravity's throat when she inhaled sharply. Her concentration faltered, defences thinning and letting in a little of the killing green light that still tracked her unerringly. Too big, too tough, too many other enemies. Can't stay in this killing chute!

Fusion, where are you? All the power Gravity could spare was in that thaumic scream, but there was no response. Her sister's mind was out there, off in the distance behind the curve of the world, but it buzzed like a mosquito and equally impossible to pin down. Vague impressions came back down the stuttering link; explosions and virulent light cut and sliced thinly by surges of magical power.

Gravity swept the ground around her with shadow sight, picking out the skeins of light marking deep tunnels and crystal thaumic infrastructure. Less obvious but still detectable from this height were the voids in the rock from those tunnels; she picked one of the larger ones, folded her wings and fell.

Planes of warped space-time congealed under the crushing force of her magic, hiding the rapidly approaching trees and grass behind heat-haze distortions. She hit the ground without slowing and kicked through, the roar of pulverised rock muted to a whisper by her defences. Muscles rigid with effort, Gravity closed her eyes against the glare of shock-heated matter, curving her path to intersect with the big tunnel.

She broke through and dropped her crushing hold on the world, letting her defences collapse and natural light flood back in. Twenty lengths in diameter, the tunnel stretched to the vanishing point in both directions, the wide, flat base filled with burning, tumbling vehicles. More vehicles – small personal transports and lumbering cargo carriers alike – were smashing into the wreckage, two unstoppable rivers flowing towards each other.

Wings fanning the rising columns of smoke, Gravity listened to the screams and cries filtering up over the electric sizzle of discharging superconductors, her mouth hanging open. Her gaze lifted, looking along the chaotic river of vehicles, towards the distant, imagined ant's nest blur of the arcology. The constant demands on her magic were gone and she felt some of her strength returning.

Can’t stay here! She pivoted in the air, pumping her wings and accelerating towards the arcology. Can’t manoeuvre, but they can’t hit me with normal weapons... would they nuke their own? The walls around her shivered with the passage of a rapid shockwave from somewhere in the distance, away from the arcology. Gravity glanced in that direction, flinching at a distant bloom of light, no more than a spark in the rapidly thickening haze.

===

~~~discontinuity~~~

--aircraft were spread from horizon to horizon and the sky was thick with missile smoke trails and the stuttering, linear threads of weapon lasers. There was no sign of Gravity, no patch of curdled darkness and power flitting about the sky.

Fusion tried to breathe, but it was like she'd been kicked in the gut. "Gravity--" she gasped out, then a tide of fire flooded her body and she screamed. The closest missiles, all heading for some point on the ground, exploded with a string of silent blue-white flashes. Mane and tail whipping and curling in an insubstantial hurricane, she burned with a furious light, a steel model of a mare heated to incandescence in a blast of pure oxygen.

Her howl rang out across the smoke-filled air, loud even against the backdrop of explosions and sonic booms. The burning light flickered and swirled around Fusion, a wild twist of unconstrained plasma that outshone the sun. Weapon lasers, their hard, green light made dim by the outpouring of energy, converged on her, but the beams bent away or were absorbed without a trace. Missiles and railgun projectiles followed, but the distances were large enough that even high Mach numbers were not enough.

The light swelled still further, streamers of plasma collapsing to a single point and then blasting out as a column of white, so bright is seemed to be a scratch through the skin of the world and into some sun-filled basement reality. The first aircraft exploded and the beam slewed sideways to the next, then its tip split into a dozen spurs that speared targets of their own.

The lasers attacking Fusion cut off and the other weapons stopped firing as their launch aircraft spun about and fled behind glittering clouds of chaff and a haze of coruscating flares and other, more esoteric countermeasures. She didn't stop, spinning the beam around her and sending lances of energy after each in turn. Some had dived to the ground, trying to place the horizon between them and sudden, murderous rage--

~~~discontinuity~~

--aircraft rammed sudden forcefield squares or broke in two, pulled apart by wild telekinesis. Still others detonated, superconductors force-quenched and dumping gigajoules as flashes of heat and blasts of rare earth element vapour. There was a staging area below her, full of support vehicles and slower, heavier artillery; Fusion rekindled her beam, this time without the tight focus, spraying fire over a kilolength circle and melting the rock to glass. Tough military vehicles survived a pawful of seconds against that onslaught, but the signatures of their drives failed one by one, popping like corn in a kettle in erratic waves of bursting embers.

Breathing heavily, the fur of her neck and flanks crusted with dried sweat, Fusion hovered over the pyre, wings making the smoke curl into vortices. "Damn you!" she screamed, eyes wild, then groaned and inhaled with a sob. I didn't check, maybe she was hurt--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--perhap there's something... The blasted ground of her first short-lived battle was spread below her, but she ignored the craters and still-falling wreckage to focus on her shadow sight. A violet glare moved underground at supersonic speed, pursued by something large, magical and fast. A vaguely chthonic, bat-winged shape filled with the bright lights of magic, not pony, not crystal, but something else. Fusion inhaled sharply, sudden joy making her head spin and her wings tremble and fail to bite air. Pausing for a breath, she took aim at her sister's pursuer.

===

The prey dove at the ground, striking a hillside and punching through; it was not destroyed, the magical and gravitic signature fell through the earth unimpeded. There were other things under the ground, the deep transit tunnels, and it was immediately obvious where the prey was going. I will follow my orders to the letter.

He followed it down, spitting another fire vortex as he went. Delicate touches steered the thing, collapsing it into a furious lance that bit deep into the ground. Harq didn't slow, diving into the climbing plume of shattered rock; he exhaled again, this time not a cough but a continuous stream.

Wings folded, he swam the outflow of incandescent dust and rock like the world’s biggest crocodile, emerging into clear air within the transit tunnel in a luminous plume of superheated rock melt and steam.

The tunnel was just wide enough for Harq to spread his wings, if he kept low. Semi-circular in cross section, with a roadbed on the flat floor for the largest of cargo trains and plenty of airspace above for smaller personal transports. The lights here were out, power circuits cut, fires and smoke making the air impenetrable. None of this bothered Harq; he didn't need light to see.

Now the air was empty, all the aircraft downed by the shockwaves and thermal pulse of Harq’s entrance, filling the roadbed with burning wreckage. One heavy paw came down, massive talons flattening the carcass of a bulk ore transporter and leaving deep dents in the concrete surface beneath. I have my orders... but there is some latitude in their execution. How should I... Harq inhaled, breathing in the arousing scent of scorched flesh and ceramics. His smile returned. "To the letter!" he howled, an electric blue glare from deep in his chest overpowering the yellow and orange of burning composites.

Wings flexed and mantled, then thrust down and back, blasting debris backwards as Harq accelerated towards his prey. Soon the darkness in the tunnel gave way to light and working vehicles, but Harq didn’t stop. Safety systems had brought everything in the air to a steady hover, and he shouldered them aside like flies. Shrouded in a plume of fire, he flew after the prey, contracting his insides and feeling the warmth of excess neutrons. The power flowed and he cracked the sound barrier; everything died in his wake, broken by shockwaves and irradiated by the thorium reaction in his heart.

Magic flared somewhere overhead, high above the surface, and the voice in his head cut off mid-flow.

Harq slowed his headlong rush, suddenly uncertain. Is this another test? The last time he’d managed to get free had been an opportunity to get some measure of revenge on his masters, but the cost had been very high; starved to the point of thorium cycle collapse and held there while they... He let out a little whimper and shivered. Harq slowed, coming to a hover. Faint screams came from the closest aircraft and the dim shapes within moved frantically.

The artificial fury gone and mind clearing, he looked over his shoulder at the trail of destruction. What will they do to me this time? The prey...

More magic, a tremendous hammer-blow of power from above, then another and another. Harq inhaled again, hunting for some place to which he could escape, but the roof overhead buckled and collapsed, pinning him to the road bed. Further fearful impacts followed, then a glaring explosion of heat and light--

===

Fusion probed the ruins of the tunnel system, hunting for any sign of the thing that had been tracking Gravity. Something... faint, but without any sign of movement. Her power surged again, a star-like flare a wingspan away, shedding the odour of electric discharge and a harsh crackle of displaced air. She gritted her teeth and twisted, tightening the magnetic fields holding the plasma bottle closed, preparing to send it downwards. There was a flash-thump at her side, followed by a general cooling and dimming.

"Is it dead? Huh... guess not. That thing is tough." Gravity stared downwards, into the blasted landscape, then glanced sidelong at the weapon. "Subtle, sister, very subtle."

Fusion stared at Gravity, her mouth opening and closing, letting the plasma bolus expand and vanish. Her head drooped and she let out a shuddering sigh. "I left you behind, I was so focused that I didn’t notice, I--"

"Not important, Fusion." Gravity said. "You came back. That is what matters, remember?" Darkness swirled around her as her power built. "It's still down there... the tunnels have collapsed and buried it." The magic collapsed, letting the light back in. It's probably just another slave. She shook her head and opened her eyes. "Never mind. What did you do to the Arclight base?"

"It’s gone, all of it. Baur is wide open." She plucked out the earpiece, holding it up with distaste. "They’ve found me again. Keep trying to get me to come back."

"Baur wants to talk, we’ve forced them that far." Gravity smiled, a grin that threatened to unhinge her whole muzzle. "Orgon wasn’t idle... the stolen teleport spell was used to send teams into Baur sites, and he’s threatening the Court with similar treatment."

"We can’t trust him."

"Of course not!" She snorted, dipping one dark wing to turn a fast loop in the air. "But he does know we can really hurt him. He chose us rather than them."

"I won’t stop here!" Fusion’s breathing became ragged, and she closed her eyes.

Gravity slowed her wing beats, drifting close enough to touch Fusion on the muzzle. "We won’t... but I don’t think we can get to the leadership the way you want to. If we could find them..." She shrugged. "They do need to pay, but we can wait. Their power will fail as more ponies are freed. As much as I’d like to smash them to paste, there’s something to be said for a long, slow revenge. I think it is that thing the dogs call 'justice'."

"I’m sure you are right. They tell me that Baur has not resumed its general attack, that the whole thing was just a mistake by the local commander." Is that really all it was? All those lives snuffed out in error or to try out some bit of military hardware? Some of the anger came back, erasing the fading remnants of terror. Fusion put the communicator back in her ear, listening intently. "Fine, I’ll let this rest for now. You warn them, that any treachery..." She nodded to Gravity. "Come on, let’s go home."

~~~discontinuity~~~

===

Harq couldn’t even open his eyes against the crush of rock. It was hot. Not terribly so, but getting hotter. Too much insulation! My heart can’t take this. The patch of warmth in his midsection was becoming more pronounced, spreading to the rest of his torso and starting to trickle down his limbs. The Master’s warnings had been dire; too much heat and his heart would melt and burn its way out of his chest. The heavy load of food remaining in his crop was a secondary source of heat. Got to get out, find somewhere to dump the heat. If my crop loses containment--

The thought made his heart beat faster, bringing more heat and the start of a fiery burn that threatened to burst from Harq’s jaws even though they were clamped shut. Calm, they said to remain calm. He flinched as another pulse of magic flared above, followed immediately by a shockwave that made his prison settle a little further. It’s digging down to me and I’m not deep enough! Please don’t kill me, it’s not my fault!

The rebellious, whining thought should have brought a rebuke, the scream of angry voices in his head, but there was only silence. This can’t be a test, not now. The magic built again and Harq hunched his shoulders, but there was no strike, no hammer shock to break open his flesh and snuff out his heart.

Something else had happened, a strange twist of magic and space-time, and the weapon spell faded away. Harq strained his shadow sight, trying to resolve the brilliance overhead. A second point, the prey, had joined the first. The other target? This pony is why I can’t hear the Masters any more... it has killed the whole fleet. The certainty of this thought blended in with the near-automatic military threat assessment based on the size of the force he’d been deployed with, and Harq shuddered again.

It showed me... Harq struggled with the concept, hunting for words that had nothing other than academic meaning. ...mercy. I was going to kill its friend and it showed me mercy. The odd twist of space-time happened again, leaving him with the subliminal hint of a tunnel vanishing away in some direction out of the real world, and he was alone.

I’m not going to die! He shifted carefully, exploring the stresses that pressed down on his back. The last strike had actually lifted some of the pressure, and Harq managed to pull his wedge-shaped head back, clearing a little space near his jaws. It will do. He exhaled carefully, a needle of blue that made the rubble run like hot tar, cutting away more of the rock. The process was a long one, and at some point the voices returned.

===

They took a slower path back home, jumping at very high altitude in full view of the world. Look, we’re not going to crush you! Gravity thought as they left Baur territory. Not today... Without much air to get in the way, the individual jumps were long but spread out, giving her time to rest.

Fusion was silent, her thoughts a red-tinged complexity at the edge of Gravity’s mind. "I understand, Fusion, I really do," she said softly, just loud enough for her sister to hear. "No harm was done; you didn’t come back but you did fix the problem. As soon as you destroyed the Arclight I was able to leave."

"I know, Grav. I remember. Still shouldn’t have done it." She shook all over, momentarily destabilising her flight. "What is the situation back home?"

"I had to make a choice... turns out I’m not good enough to intercept simultaneous salvo firing of the entire world’s strategic arsenal." She laughed, a sound that came out unexpectedly bitter. "Hard to imagine, right?" I think I could have brought down enough rocks to wreck the biosphere, but that wouldn’t have stopped the attacks... the thought tailed off into vague plans to threaten arcologies with rocks just big enough that it would tie up defences, then she pushed them away. Who knows what other systems they have hidden?

"What happened?"

"Their Arclights started fighting my power directly. I could have switched to point defence to get out of their range, or carried on fighting, or..."

"So you dropped rocks on them from outside their range." Fusion nodded. "But at a price."

"There were nuclear detonations scattered at random across our valleys. I left just ahead of one of the blast waves." How many ponies did we lose? "At least our people were mostly in shelters. We can dig them out."

"It could have been worse," Fusion said, barely loud enough to hear, then twisted her head to stare directly at Gravity. "How are we going to settle this, Grav?" The words came out in a strangled shout. "They sling nuclear weapons around like fireworks!"

"They still don’t really believe we can hurt them. Not mere ponies." But I think they may be starting to. "We actually have Orgon and Merlon to thank for this ceasefire. She tells me that her dog faced down the Court, threatened them with nukes teleported into their arcologies."

Fusion snorted. "Unlike me, I bet he went through with it."

"There was a demonstration... but just military -- a barracks and that Arclight that was blocking you."

"An actual ally among the dogs... I wonder if he sees it as a route to personal power?"

"I don’t see how it matters." Gravity fluttered her wings, turning a fast aileron roll. "The numbers of free ponies increases by the kilosecond and Ellisif has been working on the gryphons. They’ll never put us back in harness."

===

"Heavy losses among the fleet; anything within the pony's horizon was destroyed." Ininil recited the conclusions tonelessly, trying not to let the twisting in his gut show on his face. "The conclusions from the Lacunae data about the rogue's teleport magic were obviously incorrect."

"This one is also disappointed by the performance of the Seraphim prototype." The Monarch ran one bone-white claw along the underside of his muzzle.

Ininil's ears drooped for a moment, then recovered. "Yes, Monarch, although the Harq device was the only thing that survived the rogue's response... and these ones were successful in preventing the detection of Strix." The predicted flight path had been far too close for comfort.

"True, there are losses in war." The Monarch made a dismissive gesture, eyes on the strategic display.

On the screen, annotated by a tiny 2D gravity wave plot, the positions of the two ponies had shifted, heading back to their cloud-covered territory with wide-spaced jumps. "Monarch--"

~~~

The design of the command and control installation and its network linkages were clear. It had not visited this particular base for some time, but it had the same design as many others. Chaos reached in and triggered the control mechanism in the biped, bypassing it completely. A fast read of the current mental state and Chaos retreated to model the biped's responses to certain stimuli. Guardian activity was high this close to the world and one of the biped's 'Creation Stones'; speed of light delay alone made this a risky proposition, but the work was complex and could not be interrupted. It travelled as far as it dared, then replicated the mind.

A tiny fragment of its attention remained within the command and control facility, a thread that reported back on activity within the base. Practically independent, a tiny wisp of self far more basic than its decoy, the fragment packaged up a collection of raw data and sent it on to Chaos via a circuitous route.

~~~

General Ininil swallowed, shaking his head, then put out a paw to steady himself. What --? "--the targets have returned to Lacunae territory."

"The officer may fire when ready."

~~~

Chaos could have given the order, interfering with the communications network and placing data to be replayed on the activation of subtle flaws in control systems, but there was too much risk it would be discovered and blocked. On-site intervention was out of the question; the glacial nature of systems that had to move actual atoms around meant there was just far too much time, and time in one place meant Guardians, and Guardians meant--

The suborned biped’s upper distal limb moved towards the capacitive control surface, reaching for the targeting systems. Slow, very slow, but still moving, and speed of light meant that it wasn’t even where Chaos thought it was. The modelling process was not straightforward; there seemed no way to make the biped enact the desired actions autonomously. Chaos shrank within itself, pulling all components close together and reducing its own processing lag. The speed of external events slowed as the tempo of its thoughts jumped.

~~~

Ininil touched at controls on his pad, nodding to his counterpart from External Security. Eliminate the threat, all at once. He opened the firing console, pulling up a targeting map.

~~~

The local automata, the amorphous machinery that Chaos swam within, slowed and started to malfunction, more and more of their internal systems suborned by Chaos for its own purposes. This was a risk; it was not far enough from the high activity areas to escape Guardian attention for long, and they would notice. There was--

~~~

He carefully checked the firing coordinates and area of effect, then placed a paw over the accept sensor--

~~~

--a solution! Not clean and subtle like it wanted, but it would work! Hurriedly crafted patterns formed and were tested on a bare ten of the model minds, far too few to be sure, then Chaos dove back to the world, effortlessly passing through the best shielding the bipeds could manufacture as if it were so much air. A moment of intense activity, shuffling electrons and quantum states within the disordered organic networks of its target's visual cortex and--

~~~

--blinked, frowning as his vision blurred, then cleared. Has there been another system update? The screen was subtly different from the last training session; controls were placed in different locations and the targeting coordinates incorrect. Why was this not preset? He shrugged off a sudden crawling sensation down his back, hiding a sense of unease while a quick swipe of his paw cleared the existing targeting data.

~~~

Chaos watched from a safe distance, darting in to make occasional adjustments before dashing away to avoid the attentions of a persistent Guardian. Its interest had been aroused and more of its kind were coming, sharp-edged forms among the fuzzy automata. Chaos hovered, torn between annihilation and desperation to see this critical manipulation through to the end, then left at last, taking a long loop around the weapon chamber itself. At the centre, almost hidden among a swarm of Guardians, was the brilliant complexity of the Creation Stone, forever out of reach.

~~~

lninil corrected the coordinates and tapped a claw on the ‘accept’ control. Now we’ll see if the Monarch’s read of the Court was correct.

There was a moment of breathless silence, then the thaumic alarms went off.

Comments

[Luna-tic Scientist]

Ten days late, but here we go again!

[Obsidian]

Ahh... Dragons... I wonder if Celly did manage to free it from the master's control and how it's going to take it.

I wonder what Baur's second super-weapon is... one of these is going to send the world into a impact winter and somehow split the Alicorn race into it's present day components...

Still, these dogs are institutionally stupid and arrogant. I have absolutely no problem with what will eventually happen to the species as a whole in the long term and hopefully these fatally idiotic dogs in the short term.

[Booster Spice]

As Gravity and Fusion rank up higher and higher, hopefully learning healing asssembly spells that can be pushed into pseudo self active forms, and the energy manipulated becomes more and more rune form, the already near event horizon class Gravity manipulation will start to fluctuate out of normal metric bounds as it accesses higher dimentional spacetime. Muonic and Taounic Prion interactions would then start to lead towards direct nucleonic collapse as the matter and antimatter forming quarks are rotated to realign in gamma production.

If Strix is Changelings, will that be where the Throne came from? A reordering of the Arclight Geode crystal structure, therfore the magic free effect is a ranged static field, like a disruption region?

Fusion Gravities Plasmonic Harmonic Resonances are going to destabilise the entire region of spacetime. Who wrote it best when they described Celestia moving the sun as a stellar class self powered microstepping warp drive?

All they need is for cargo, time stop or BEC quantum shields, so there is no interactions for within to feel the effects of, and the idea that hat is observed, no matter how long after, can be affected at that moment, because thre is no time in quantum mechanics, and someone is really going to start a Time War.

I highly suspect that given the ratio of destruction to planetary size, and overall cost, that no Hive tried building Unit ZEUS etc because the cost analysis wasnt worth it?

Hmm. Dragon is Kaiju, but it aint no King Ghidorah. Unless it can analyze and learn reinforcing electroweak magic to generate electrograv and SU level power, complexity. The first Magical Dragon?

[Seraphem]

OHHHHHHH BOY! Getting closer and closer to the big ending. Things are in motion, the Ponies are pissed, the Dogs are just starting to maybe see how fucked they are, and this chapter is huge and going to be doing a lot of talking, or maybe a lot of skipping and just eagerly moving on to the next thing quickly, who knows, yes rambling now. SO EXCITED!

making a few unnecessary inputs to show the dumb ‘attention’ system that he was back in the loop.

Oookay, so, a Griffon, doing something with the ring fragments? Doing Kessler Runs to try and sweep away some of the debris? Or, just trying to work out some kind of system for getting things back in order? Either way, nice detail of an automatic "Hey not paying attention' system to keep them in line, really shows, well stuff we've seen already, but that fits all too well with what we've seen so far.

until it was now off by well over five lengths a second. Am I dreaming? How is this possible?

Orbital tracking noticing what Gravity is up to with the debris and momentum transferring? Not to mention her own version of "Well fuck you too!"

We're spread thin, no low orbit satellite coverage... is it possible no one else has noticed?

Sooo, yeah? Orbital mapping, or just, sending Gryphon controlled drones around to try and keep a watch on things to replace the satellites they lost?

but otherwise unremarkable and retaining most of its megatonnage

Wait, MEGAtonnage? As in, this isn't just some random chunk of space debris, but a full on asteroid? Well..... fuck

Steinar carried on with his real job, ordering the calibration system to switch to another beacon

"Screw it, aint' my problem." One of the may many issues of having this sort of system, where initiative and creativity are not encouraged, just strict obedience and obeying the rules to the letter. So love seeing the Dogs entire outlook come back to bite them hard.

Also, okay, so yeah, drones being used to try and target incoming fire to make up for the loss of orbital stuff.

There are the gravitational anomalies... A constant source of stress, trajectories deviating from the expected. ...perhaps this is the same?

Toootaly nothing to worry about, not at all.

Well outside thaumic suppressor range!

[Insert ME2 Isaac Newton quote here]

Is it actually over?

Nope, it's only just beginning, your Masters pushed the wrong beings too far.

If I’m wrong, they’ll make me suffer.

So nice to encourage taking actions that would save all your asses. Still not much they can do against a mini hammer strike.

"Return to your duties, gryphon," the commander said, his voice choked and barely recognizable

And likely in need of a new pair of pants.

"The gryphon will ignore any Lacunae weapons and focus on the ring debris object. It will be attacked."

AKA... OH SHIT! FIRE EVERYTHING!

The line intersected the surface of the world no more than a dozen kilolengths from his position.

Too bad, this griffon actually had a few signs of intelligence and being worth having fighting back.

Still LOVE the commanders reaction to this, you can just feel the panic. Now, how long till they realize just who did that, and how easily she could do it again, and again, and again.

Arcology. Her single eye narrowed and she curved in that direction. Is this what it will take?

That would definitely get their attention... and make them realize just how much damage you can do, while they can't do shit against you.

"Then direct me to a command centre,"

And even now, trying to temper her response, to use her anger rather then just lash out, to strike smartly in the way that would have the most effect for the least loss of life. Hit the leaders, not the innocent dogs just trying to live their own lives.

Where are you, Gravity?

Prepping something big.

but the range of expressions crossing his face made for an interesting show.

Damnit, I so want to see this!

"The Strategist must stop the pony -- Baur has agreed to a cease-fire!"

You still don't get it you dense mother-fucker. She isn't going to listen to any of you, and threatening her or her ponies, well you see how well THAT worked out.

"The pony isn't a member of the Court and will not answer to it. What possible reason would it have for obeying?"

At some level, Orgon has to be enjoying this. If it wasn't such a serious matter, and the stake of everything on the line, he'd definitely get a lot of fun out of tossing their own idiocy back in their faces like this.

the rock is being dropped by a different pony, Gravity Resonance

AKA, remember, there are TWO of them, and either one could royally fuck you all over.

But yeah, they've pretty much backed themselves into a corner by not realizing the situation till it's too late. Now, to see them over react to it and just make things worse.

Sister! Did you like my surprise?

heheheh, well she hasn't quite realized what it was yet. So all the stuff Fusion was seeing, just being on the edge of the panicked fire on the Gravity Hammer strike and not them actually firing at her?

A shotgun rather than a sniper’s rifle.

Yeah, with that much mass, it's still going to fuck up your day when it hits, even in pieces.

"You said it, but I don’t think you believe it. You cannot save them all."

And that is the sad truth that, no, Fusion hadn't truly believed, and still hates that it has to be so. She's too idealistic for that, and it's one of her best qualities, and why the Sisters need each other. Gravity isn't ruthless, isn't heartless or even cynical, but she is realistic and pragmatic enough to see what Fusion won't, while Fusion will keep her from actually going down into cynicism. They make such a perfect balance. And, sadly, it is true, there are too many dogs, with too much power, over too many Ponies to save them all.

"I’m glad you are here. We have a point to make."

heh, hehe, HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEEHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Nothing left but a shell propelled by anger and desperation.

And one freaking HELL of an adamantium will.

Come on, sister, stop me! Be my voice of reason again.

Oh shit.... and it's bad when Grav is actively trying to get Fusion to hold her back, and we know Fusion is too done with their shit. Still, target the command structure rather then the civilian population.

I must see if I can help her with that.

Eventually.

"Now is not the time to be indiscriminate. I am not that desperate yet. I made a promise that I would take the fight to their leaders

mhm, still Celestia. Pissed, ready to rip apart the Dogs, but just those responsible, strike with a sniper rifle, not a shotgun.

"Officer, you promised me the location of the Baur command centre."

"Or will I have to find where YOU are?"

there would be a toothy smile on that brown-furred, green-eyed face

Yeah, he's enjoying watching them realize what he's known for a long time.

top heavy command structure like Baur will result in mass chaos. These ones believe they have a novel method to ensure compliance that is not well suited to radical changes. Intelligence thinks there are... safeguards

Yeah, just shows that for as fucked up as it was, Lacunea was one of the NICER hives. And, also yes, a situation like this, taking off the head will just cause SO many issues. Still, give her something solid and impactful to destroy.

Remember that these ones must live in this world after the pony has finished

Ouch.... well..... ummmm... about that........

this one would suggest that Baur let it,

Or it will make a much much bigger point.

So, is this where they unleash the mother of all dragons?

So much for the supposed independence of the Court.

Heh, like that ever would have happened. Especially in a hive like Baur.

Lacunae will not respond as long as Baur keeps its launchers silent. The Monarch has made his choice; he will have to live with the consequences.

AKA, "Your funerals"

with than he first time at the Pit.

She's getting better at this. Also, typo.

If there really will be peace, we must give it a chance, but they must understand that we negotiate from a position of strength.

mhm. The moment they know the Sisters wont harm ponies at all, every major base and strike will have ponies pretty much strapped to the walls and armor.

--something was missing, an absent patch of friendly darkness--

1. So she's got so much power, she just say 'Fuck you" to a single arclight?
2. So, did Grav not have that much power to jump, or did she decide to stay and fight?

the colours shifting towards the red, making the world appear as if she flew within a bubble of dark glass.

Wait... is she just using darkness.. or is she actually pumping out enough gravity, that she is curving space time enough to red shift everything?

others merely vanished as they were hungrily devoured by the extreme curvatures

I.. I really have nothing to say here.... this is just TO DAMN AWESOME!

That’s no pony!

OHHHHHH SHIIIIIITTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I could kill it first...

Kill it, you'll need every scrap of power you can get for what's next!

Even before everything I could have survived this! Me or my sister... let’s see if I can make you change your minds

It's the shooting Superman situation. Sure you know it isn't going to work, but you are despirit enough to try it anyway.

but it was good enough for the task at horn

Huh, interesting way to phrase it.

galloping at insane speeds. One breath... nothing more.

Please tell me the Dogs were watching that, and realize just how fucked trying to screw with them is.

Fusion didn’t stay to watch--

Badass ponies don't stop to watch explosions. They are too busy moving on to creating more of them!

Seriously this whole bit has just been too damn epic!

The food was rich, isotopically pure U235, far more energetic than the thorium of his regular diet.

... A fucking NUCLEAR POWERED DRAGON!?

Also, they have refinement that good to get fully enriched u-235? That is.. just overkill. That's beyond weapons grade, that just needs 90% enrichment. Reactors go with much lower amounts. But yeah, that's a shit load of power stored away. Though, given he just ate it, rather then it being carefully shaped to actually have efficient criticality, it's mostly just a source of some decent, but not amazing decay heat and radiation. Hell, doesn't even have a moderator or reflector to reduce the fast neutrons to thermal ones and point them back at the pile. So, while the idea sounds awesome, hard to see how it goes from "Eat Uranium" to "Get power" Given if it needs the radiation and the decay, there are much more unstable isotopes that have a much shorter half life and so will produce more energy faster. Just, really curious how this is supposed to work,

Claws of the Maker... what would it be like away from interdicted space?

You will find out soon enough. Also, so it can think if sluggishly and not well. This.... is going to be one hell of a fight.

The volume, so loud it drowned out his own thoughts and turned him into an automaton,

Yeah, that's not going to cause issues while expecting him to fight two small, fast, mobile, and powerful targets, slowing him down by distracting him and trying to force him to fight the way you think he should. It really is amazing how much of this is the Dogs just shooting themselves in the balls over and over.

They still think I am an animal...

......... break him free of control? OHHHH THAT WOULD BE FREAKING AWESOME!

whiskered corundum,

All I can think of is..... what a pain in the ass that ore is to deal with in Skyrim.

Plates of tungsten carbide contracted around the cavity, reflecting a fraction of the fission neutrons back into the molten cores.

Okay, that answers that question, not a fuel source, but a weapon. Still, given the inability to shape it into a critical mass, if you are just going for highly radioactive, could have gone with a more active isotope. Granted with this you also get the mass of the Uranium. Still, a dragon spraying nuclear fire...... oh..... fuck.............. IT'S GODZILLA!

Light flared ahead, making the lizard-thing disappear behind a blue-white glare that reached out to touch her.

Well, be glad that even those particles have to deal with curvatures of space time.... still.... ummm... duck?

Harq's heart contracted again, the extra warmth keeping his molten blood flowing and driving back the chill.

Okay, so cold is something to use against it then.

I hurt you, at least a little.

"If it can bleed, it can die"

but still detectable from this height were the voids in the rock from those tunnels

Usually open skies are a bonus to her with her better speed and maneuverability, but now they serve to allow too many to attack her at once, so yeah, narrow the field down and get somewhere you can focus your defenses.

small personal transports and lumbering cargo carriers alike – were smashing into the wreckage

I should not find that image so funny. Though doubt Dogs have insurance to worry about or try to explain this crash to.

Can’t manoeuvre, but they can’t hit me with normal weapons... would they nuke their own?

Yup, though might give you JUST enough time for Fusion to catch up. Not to mention some ablative armor.

Missiles and railgun projectiles followed, but the distances were large enough that even high Mach numbers were not enough.

I'm picturing something like Twilight's ultimate special in Fighting is magic, only, more epic.

--aircraft rammed sudden forcefield squares

huh?

I didn't check, maybe she was hurt--

Yeeeaaaahhhh, Dogs, take note, harming one of them, means the other stops giving a shit about restraint.

Pausing for a breath, she took aim at her sister's pursuer.

Ohhh, sucker punch it. Yeah it might be a threat to one of them, with backup, and them stuck in an arclight field, but both them, on it's own, and them at full power?

I will follow my orders to the letter.

If that means a "Accidentally' crush a few cities along the way, oh well.

It really is Godzilla!

I have my orders... but there is some latitude in their execution.

"So time to have some fun!"

irradiated by the thorium reaction in his heart.

he's using uranium, not thorium, or, is that what actually powers him?

What will they do to me this time?

They have bigger issues to deal with right now.

then a glaring explosion of heat and light--

Owwwww... poor thing..... but it's tough, maybe it will survive, and be week enough for them to talk to it and help it!

"Is it dead? Huh... guess not. That thing is tough."

And then Fusion slaps her in the face hard enough to send her over the horizon. "I was so worried about you! Don't do that to me!"

It's probably just another slave

And so good of them to know this, to not have any personal hatred, to know it's just being forced to obey like all the rest, just another victim.

"We can’t trust him."

You can trust him to do whatever gives him and his hive the best chance of surviving, and that is allying with you. But no, do not trust him fully. He's a useful ally, but a dangerous one, always be cautious with him. Still, gotta start somewhere.

As much as I’d like to smash them to paste, there’s something to be said for a long, slow revenge

Grav being the one speaking for restraint? What's going on?

Still, it's smart, and you really aren't going to get at them directly, but yes, erode their power base, free more and more slaves from their grip. Though, downside, that leaves them more time and more desperate to come up with other schemes.

Is that really all it was? All those lives snuffed out in error or to try out some bit of military hardware?

The second one. And because they though maybe that would get you.

It’s digging down to me and I’m not deep enough! Please don’t kill me, it’s not my fault!

Poor thing. Come on Sisters, be awesome.

...mercy. I was going to kill its friend and it showed me mercy.

And they just got themselves another friend. YES!

...mercy. I was going to kill its friend and it showed me mercy.

Again.

Still, we know what side he'll pick if ever given the choice.

"I know, Grav. I remember. Still shouldn’t have done it."

No, hitting the arclight was the right call, it made sure you would both be able to fight at your fullest.

"We actually have Orgon and Merlon to thank for this ceasefire. She tells me that her dog faced down the Court, threatened them with nukes teleported into their arcologies."

A threat they can conceptualize. But now they have a nice, messy image of what fucking with your two is like.

"An actual ally among the dogs... I wonder if he sees it as a route to personal power?"

Not really, he's not a power monger at all. He is actually noble, in his own way, and just wants to protect his people.

these ones were successful in preventing the detection of Strix.

Yeah..... that WILL fuck thing up, but not in the way you are hoping.....

the fragment packaged up a collection of raw data and sent it on to Chaos via a circuitous route.

And then there's THIS asshole still doing something.

"The officer may fire when ready."

Strix missile?

At the centre, almost hidden among a swarm of Guardians, was the brilliant complexity of the Creation Stone, forever out of reach.

And are those actually going to play a role in all this after everything that's been hinted at?

Still not sure what he just did.. change the target? Push them to fire? Not, fully sure. He did something,and the target thing, has me thinking just before firing he tricked them into swapping back to a usual target for training drills rather then the Ponies.... just, really lost here.

Still, epic fight, epic chapter, and things have reached 11:59:59 on the Dogs Doomsday Clock it seems. Just... SO MUCH AWESOME!

[Seraphem]

8761731 8761749 Their other super weapon is Strix, which has already been established as a Prion Precurser they slipped into the servitor food supply of all other hives years ago. Just sitting there, dormant, infecting all the Ponies, waiting for one final catalyst to activate into a full prion disease with, as they said, 'potential and untested epi-genitic side effects'. So, what breaks ponies into the three tribes. Though wondering if it will be a direct effect? something that weakens all the current alicorns, making them susceptible to old age now, and only bearing non-alicorn foals? or if it will nearly kill them all, and the Sisters will gather the Creation Stones to try and heal them, which due to the damage done so far, results in the splitting?

As to the nuclear winter and global devastation... there is still that second moon that doens't exist in the present.....

[keroko]

Now what is Chaos up to? He was messing with the controller and targeting systems, but for what purpose? And more pressingly important, what is the new target the attack is aimed at?

[56]

> losing it's white glow in an instant
its*

Great update! Thank you for writing

[Blaster M]

Godzilla Threshold

[FanOfMostEverything]

The light swelled still further, streamers of plasma collapsing to a single point and then blasting out as a column of white, so bright is seemed to be a scratch through the skin of the world and into some sun-filled basement reality.

Given how this universe came to be, that's entirely possible.

Just as ponies were greater in this bygone era, so to were dragons. And Fusion still managed to scare the irradiated crap out of one.

And Chaos just sent something somewhere, to disastrous effect. The question is what, where, and what happened moments afterwards. It may yet get that annihilation scenario it hoped for...

[Cedric Bale]

Heeey, Discord crawled out from under his quantum rock! I'm not entirely sure what he just did, though. I think he just helped the ponies, maybe? They are the tool he's using to hurt the Dogs, so it makes sense he wouldn't want his weapon destroyed.

[Luna-tic Scientist]

Typos fixed! Thanks folks.
8761749
Ha -- interesting thought on the Throne! You'd have to tune it to ignore changelings, but since the Arclight effect is active in nature that's at least within handwave reach.

8761903
We really are getting there! Although that could easily mean another 50K+ words. Still, that's only 10% of the total length of this monster.
Everyone loves an atomic dragon. Harq is hot inside, and not just from radioactivity. His 'blood' is a molten silicate suitable for his body temperature, which is somewhere over a thousand kelvin. He's a flying nuclear reactor, operating on a thorium cycle, so natural radioactive decay is only a side effect, rather than an actual power source. The U235 is what he needs for the breath weapon; it's a closed-cycle nuclear lightbulb, so there's no fallout as long as he stays intact. There's more to it, but that's the basics. Destruction of Harq would be a horrific radiological incident, Chernobyl-grade.
===
Thanks for the comments, folks! I see I was a little vague on the Chaos-front; all will become clear next chapter.

[Seraphem]

8763839 Definitely awesome, and even then Chernobyl if it were to happen given what he's packing. Just.... damn, Baur is ranking right up there with Umbrella and Apature Science for the "What the fuck were you thinking making that!" awards.

Yeah the Chaos thing..... my best guess, is given the dialog and some things said, they were targeting the pony hide out area with something, and just before launch, the commander was twisted by Chaos to seeing it as a drill, but with the wrong targets, and so corrected to the usual targets they drill at shooting at.

Given even Baur by now has to know missile will just piss them off, and their ace in the hole we know about, I'm guessing then't launching more nukes, but rather a warhead or hundred tipped with whatever the activating agent for Strix is set for high altitude detonation and dispersal of the agent, and what Chaos did was change the target from the free pony hideouts, to all the major corrals of the other hives, which would be the most logical target for Baur to practice firing at.

[herp]

more

[TheTownCrier]

Here there be dragons

[Alondro]

Oh boy! A new chapter! How many millions will die this time? I'm so excited!

[Alondro]

8761921 The second Moon turns out to be Unicron the whole time! Cuz if ya flip around the 'o' and the 'r', Unicron becomes 'UNICORN'!! ERMAHGERD!! The story was a Transformers origin story in addition to being a Pony origin story! Best twist crossover ever!

[Seraphem]

8768328 Ohhh and in another twist, the "Creation Stones" are not the Elements of Harmony, but rather a split up Autobot Matrix of Leadership!

Who doesn't want to see Celestia and Optimus Prime team up to kick some bad guy ass together? You know the two of them would really get along well together "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" and all that.

[Alondro]

8768383 I think we've nailed it here!

[arancaytar]

But it’s a kilolength across! "Yes, sir!" Bright lines of light were once again jumping from the launch installations, heading straight up. He checked the paths, rapidly instructing the ladar and phased array units in his high-flying drone to focus on the errant object. It was only then he saw the newly predicted trajectory of the rock. It had stopped accelerating and the new orbital elements had been collapsed into a single laser-thin line.

Note to self: Seriously, never ever piss off Luna.

[I_bringthebass]

Yesss

These are the kinda chapters that make me do a happy dance every time this story updates. Not to say the build-up isnt worth reading.

The writing while at times a bit esoteric is so steeped with precise description and imagery followed through with flawless execution, I can't get enough. Comment sections always demand more chapters asap but if the quality is this high I'm perfectly fine with waiting.

Fusion suppressed a giggle as she let the beam of relativistic electrons curl around her impenetrable fields and shoot off into the upper atmosphere.

A pony caught on the mean end of a particle accelerator? I think it was the author suppressing a giggle

so bright is seemed to be a scratch through the skin of the world and into some sun-filled basement reality.

Godly description, but is => it?

[I_bringthebass]

8768415
Sadly the other moon is named Grund, gonna be a good day when lulu smacks that badly named rock down

[Easysnuggler]

Merlon admires Orgon and I think is smitten and love with him platonically, and thats not entirely unrequited. She has had some nasty shocks though, but maybe they can work through it together. The dynamic of those two characters was surprising and interesting at least to me. After all he is a bastard butshe knows why.”, and defends his character repeatedly. Her jealousy and demand that people treat him with the proper respect added a lot of depthto her character for me and his also.

[Alondro]

8768830 Hmph. In that case I will throw together a horrible crackfic with this plot. Michael Bay will then make a movie out of it... which will likely gross over a billion worldwide.

[Seraphem]

8768830 Soooo close to being an awesome name if it had just been named Grond instead. Epic reference that would perfectly, yet not quite obviously set up its eventual fate.

[Lex4art]

What a POWERful chapter ! ^_^

[arancaytar]

In any case, the rock is being dropped by a different pony, Gravity Resonance, to which Orgon has no direct link. Even if he did, Gravity has just spent the last kilosecond fending off a saturation kinetic and nuclear bombardment. This one doubts the pony will be in much of a mood to listen.

Celestia sends you to moon.

Soviet Princess Luna sends moon to you.

A subwindow opened, showing a fuzzy plot

I giggled.

[Bugsydor]

Wooo-wee! That was one heck of a chapter and escalation. And Baur just does not know when to quit. Harq was cool and intriguing, though. (A shame the voices came back after all.)

Does this mean that Spike's dragonfire is also nuclear-powered? Keeping him properly fed must be a pain-and-a-half, though I suppose being besties with Celesty probably helps with that.

[Bugsydor]

8768830
Fun-fact: Grund is German for "ground".

I, for one, cannot think of a better name for an impactor.

[Sir Mediocre]

8803984
With sufficient velocity comes tremendous explosive potential.

[krakentoa]

Your fic is so detailed that it keeps being mentally reviewed and rehashed weeks after I read this chapter. Getting to the point, as soon as I relistened to Imagine Dragons's Radioactive, I thought of Harq:

I'm waking up to ash and dust
I wipe my brow and I sweat my rust
I'm breathing in the chemicals
I'm breaking in, shaping up, then checking out on the prison bus
This is it, the apocalypse
...
All systems go, the sun hasn't died
Deep in my bones, straight from inside
I'm waking up, I feel it in my bones
Enough to make my systems blow
...
Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh, whoa, oh, oh, oh, I'm radioactive, radioactive

Your sci-fi rocks.

[Luna-tic Scientist]

This will teach me to come back here a little more often between chapter posting. Sorry for the late reply.
8787217
"fuzzy plot" Sigh. I didn't notice that!
8803981
Ah, that's the advantage of nuclear power -- no need for refuelling very often. If he discovers his plasma beam breath, well...
8823370
Heh, I did like that track. Thank you!

[PresentPerfect]

Really feeling like the time for cool action scenes has passed. Things should be focusing down toward a finale, not introducing brand new obstacles for them to fight.