13. What's Done is Done
Planet Hell
Solocitizen
13.
What’s Done is Done
13th of Planting Season, 10,056 AC
Present Day
Through darkness, metal, and the screeching of sirens, Thunder Gale fumbled. His hooves turned over loose glass and burnt-out wiring while his chest and legs fought for more wiggle room between him and the wreckage of their sensor assembly. With every breath a million little metal teeth nipped at his belly.
“Where is it,” he muttered to himself. “Where is it!”
“Major, sir, I need help.” That was Corporal Rain Dancer. There wasn’t any telling how many of the Spitfire’s crew had made it to the escape pods in time, but she was only one who scrambled into Thunder Gale’s. She had carried another in on her back, whom might have even been a corpse. “I can’t get—Major, help me!”
“Ten seconds, marine. Give me ten seconds.”
At last, Thunder Gale’s hooves struck a coldsilver star. It was his pendent—the star of Shining Armor’s mark—of that he had no doubt, but it was just out of his reach. He knew he needed to have left five minutes ago but that pendent was just about all he had left of his family. He kicked against the crash seats behind him and pushed against the metal until he wrapped his hoof around his pendant, and squirmed his way out.
He put it around his neck before hurrying to help Rain Dancer with the escape pod hatch. It was jammed shut, so they had to trigger the emergency release sequence to get it to open.
The explosive bolts along the hatch popped, and the door flung off the escape pod. Thunder Gale, battered and soot covered, climbed out of the open hole, carrying the front of the unmoving marine over his shoulder while Rain Dancer helped with the rest of him. Then he got his first look of where they had landed.
Burning metal lay scattered over the basalt scabs and the dust in between. In the dark, the fires left a flickering trail all the way to their crumpled escape pod, half buried at the bottom of an impact crater. Chemical fumes and black smoke bled out of its broken hull. No sign of any other pods.
Rain Dancer bounded out ahead of him, and once she was on the ground, she reached out her front hooves to take the crewpony slung over his shoulder.
He transferred the limp marine to her. As soon as he did, the escape pod’s emergency floatation device hissed and swelled and uppercut him so hard that it launched him out of the pod to the ground.
“Sir! Are you alright?” Rain Dancer galloped up to him. Her turquoise coat and pale mane were stained black from soot.
“Just my pride, Corporal.” Thunder Gale covered his mouth and coughed up smoke. He stared into the charcoal sky while he waited for the ringing in his ears to stop.
She raised an eyebrow, and helped him up.
“How’s our friend doing?” He pointed in a nod at the marine lying on the ground.
“He’s unconscious, Major, and he probably has a concussion. We need to get him to the doctor.”
The mention of her. It was as if he lost something that he carried around with him so much he grew as accustomed to its presence as his own breath, and often forgot about it. For the first time he realized it was gone.
“We need to regroup with the rest of the crew.” He shook the thoughts from his head. “If we do that, then we’ll find Breeze Heart too. Let’s salvage what we can from the escape pod and get moving.”
“Aye, aye, Major.”
They recovered a few emergency rations, a radio, and some rope from the pod’s charred survival kit. From the rope and the hatch door, Rain Dancer fashioned a makeshift sled to carry their supplies and the unconscious marine. While she secured their crewmate, Thunder Gale picked the radio up by his mouth and dragged it up the nearby basalt scab. While the heat wafting off the pod’s hull had kept him reasonably warm, a short distance away the night air cut into his bones.
“To anypony out there, this is Helios, do you read me?” He stood on the peak of the basalt scab with a hoof wrapped around the microphone. Fires burned up and down the surrounding hills, but he had no idea which were crashed escape pods, and which were smoldering debris. So, he kept calling over the radio and watching for movement.
“This is Helios, I have a wounded marine. Does anypony read me?”
Static answered him.
“Hey, Rain,” he said to her. “Do we have any flares? If not, we’ll have to make a torch and wave it around to draw some attention.”
“I’ll make it happen, sir.” She let go of the rope in her mouth long enough to talk, and then picked it up again.
“Major, is that you?” Lightning Fire’s voice broke through the static. “Please copy, over.”
Rain Dancer stopped what she was doing and Thunder Gale’s ears popped up.
“Affirmative, this is Helios,” he said. “I’m reading you five. Have you located any other survivors? Is the doctor with you? Over.”
“I have dropships in the air and conducting search and rescue operations as we speak. I’ve managed to round up about ninety of us so far, including Doctor Breeze Heart.”
“Thank Celestia she’s safe,” he said to himself more than to her.
“I’m not going to lie to you, Major, she’s hurt pretty bad. Over.”
Any sense of relief he had, it vanished. He choked down the news.
“I’m pretty sure she has a head injury, but we can’t find any signs of trauma. We’ve zeroed in on your signal, and it looks like you’re about a klick south of our camp. Do you need dustoff? Over.”
“Negative, we can make it on hoof,” he said. “Hail the Ursa Major and start evacuating the wounded. Once they’re taken care of and we’ve gathered the rest of the survivors, we’re going to start sending the rest of the crew up. Over.”
“Roger Wilco, but we lost contact with Gerard about ten minutes ago. Over.”
“Keep trying. We’re getting off this planet. Helios out.” Thunder Gale clipped the microphone back onto the radio and gazed to the north.
There the side of a tall and jagged hill greeted him. Fires lit up its brow and the crags beneath it. In order to reach the crest they’d need to take a longer, winding route up. He shivered.
Once Rain Dancer and he secured the wounded marine and their gear to the sled, he clamped his teeth on the reins and started the hike north. The weight pulled against his jaw and every bump and chunk of basalt jostled the sled around. It yanked on his molars and screeched as it dragged over every pebble and stone.
“You sure you don’t want me to pull it, sir?” Rain Dancer asked once they put about half the slope of the hill between them and their escape pod.
Thunder Gale let the rope drop out of his mouth long enough to pant and talk. “No, I can get it to the top. I’ve got it this far, I’m not about to give up and admit defeat. Just give me a second. You can carry it on the way down.”
“I know we’re in a hurry, but I think we might be able to spare sixty-seconds if you’d like to rest, sir.”
“No, the sooner we get over this hill and into camp the sooner we can…” He panted for breath, and looked up the hill again; they had a long way to go. “Okay, maybe we can afford to take five.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
While he stooped over the reins of the sled, with his head hanging low and his rib cage rising and falling, Rain Dancer trotted around back to the unconscious marine and checked his pulse. Thunder Gale watched her adjust the straps holding the marine in place, tuck a bladder of their emergency water under his head, and even brush a stray lock of his mane out of his eyes.
“Do you know him?” Thunder Gale asked. “I made it a point when I first took command to be on a first name basis with each member of my crew, but I don’t even recognize him.”
“His name is Gust, and I’m not surprised you’ve never run into him. He’s shy but he looks up to you to the point where he can’t even get up the courage to introduce himself.”
“I had no idea. Were you two close?”
“Yeah, we dated for a while, but you know how hard relationships are on a boat like ours. It didn’t work out, but I still kinda like him.” She held his face in her hooves, just to the left of a bloody crack on his forehead.
“We’ll get him to the camp and get him patched up. It’ll be okay.”
Rain Dancer glanced over at Thunder Gale, but then she spotted something to his left, and pointed into the black sky behind him. “Look!”
He followed her hoof to a comet speeding through the stars and splitting the sky in two with its tail. He squinted. No, it wasn’t a comet; it was way too fast. Several objects split from the head and veered away.
There was a flash and Thunder Gale flinched against the light. After a few seconds he opened his eyes again, and the sky was as blue as day. When it faded back to night, the comet had shattered into dust.
“What was that?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” He blinked; the flash seared blotches of purple and green to his retinas. “Something large and explosive burning up in the atmosphere.”
Then a cold wave of dread hit him and his ears dropped. He knew exactly what that comet was.
“Come on, Corporal.” He picked the reins up and dragged the sled ahead. “We need to regroup with the others.”
They reached the top of the hill in no time and as they began their descent, Thunder Gale still had too much nervous energy pent up in him to pass the sled off to Rain Dancer. It was much harder to coerce a sled to weave along the slope of a hill than drag it up one; every time the weight of his hooves spilled gravel, the marine and cargo behind him threatened to slip.
He kept his eyes on the lights of the camp along the opposite end of the valley below. Soon, the voices of his crew and the roar of their machinery echoed up the slope of the hill.
Snipers spotted him and Rain Dancer long before they reached the edge of the sentry lights, and the marines came galloping out from behind supply crates and the few standing tents to meet them. They carried flashlights that bobbed up and down in their mouths as they ran. The crowd encircled them and picked their sled clean of its cargo. They were just as dirty as Thunder Gale and Rain Dancer were, and the rare uniform among them was tattered and burnt.
A maroon mare wormed her way to the head of the crowd carrying a rifle on her shoulder. There was marine to her left, she shined a light in Thunder Gale’s eyes; he remembered her from the transmat station.
“First things first, open your mouth,” the mare with the gun barked. “We need you to prove you’re one of us.”
Thunder Gale opened his mouth wide, just as she asked, and her friend shining the light on him stepped closer. “What are you looking for?”
“Can’t tell you,” she answered him, and then said to the mare from the transmat station, “One of his molars is a fake. It looks like an implant of some kind. Can I get some more light?”
The light on him grew a notch or two brighter and he heard gravel stir as the mare with the gun crept closer to him.
“Yeah, it’s a transponder implant, right where you said it’d be. He’s the Major.”
The light veered off of him and the tension in the crowd released into a chatter. Thunder Gale shut his mouth and glanced among the crowd.
“Thank Celestia!” The mare from the transmat station exclaimed. “Sir, is the mission still a go? Do you still intend for us to fight these changelings out here?”
Then a marine pushed his way to the front and shouted: “We only saved five working power suits and two of our five dropships. I don’t see how we can fight.”
“Did you see that thing in the sky?”
“We still have thirteen marines unaccounted for and the entire engineering staff. Do you think they could have survived?”
“Are those things responsible for this?”
“Are they going to come back to finish what they started?”
Thunder Gale flapped his wings and leaned on his hind legs away from the mob. He glanced back and forth between questions, but by the time he thought up a response to the first and opened his mouth, another pony had shoved her way to the front of the crowd and asked another.
So many voices and pushing hooves and wings.
“Whoa, everypony, settle down.” Lightning Fire forced past the ponies around Thunder Gale and Rain Dancer, putting herself between them and crowd. She still wore her cuirass, though it had lost its shine under a new set of scorch marks. “Hold your horses and give the Major some room to breath. That’s an order!”
With that raised voice of hers, a rap on a head or two, and a mean look from her one eye she enforced order over the marines and got them to quiet down.
“Thank you, XO Fire,” said Thunder Gale. “Now, I don’t have time to answer all of these questions, but I just want to make it clear: our top priority is to evacuate this planet as soon as possible, not fighting Chain Gleaming.”
A gust of wind kicked in from the dark behind the crowd, and with it the sound of enormous wings flapping beyond the reach of their flashlights. It circled over them twice and gave way to the sound of a pair of hooves trudging across the scablands. The crew turned their eyes and ears to face the source in the blackness beyond their sight.
“Really? After all your lies, I find that rather hard to believe.” That voice, Thunder Gale recognized it immediately, but even as the others cleared a path for the speaker, he was still unprepared for what was stomping up to meet him. “I thought your top priority was finding your father? So how does leaving here weigh up against that?”
As it marched out from the desert, the flashlights and lanterns flickered and faded out. He wasn’t clearly visible until he was too close for Thunder Gale to run.
It was Discord, still partially in the guise of his father—same blue coat and purple mane—but the horns on his head had grown out several feet, and only one of the wings on his back resembled a pegasus’s, while the other looked as though it belonged to a bat. His front right hoof had been replaced with a lion’s paw, and he reeked of sulfur. The most disturbing part of all wasn’t his shape or smell, but in the way he moved. He no longer walked upon four legs like a pony, but on his back two instead, much like how Thunder Gale imagined one of those ape creatures would. There was something so wrong about watching something shaped like a pony stride about on two legs like that. No pony could, that was part of it. Thunder Gale watched Discord’s gait as he marched up to him, and the crowd parted and skirted behind their prince.
“Sniper teams, where are you?” Lightning Fire shouted into her headset and trotted along with the crowd. “Come on. Get your eyes on the target! It’s not that hard. It’s big, blue, and creeping me out!”
Thunder Gale stood there, terrified, with only a few feet between them.
“What do you want, Discord?”
“What I’ve always wanted: to go home, just like you, and every single one of these ponies you’ve so egregiously mistreated. But I’m not about to throw my own friends under a bus to get there. Now, what I have to say I have to say to them. Stand aside, Thunder Gale.”
Adrenaline seeped into his veins and boiled right under his skin. When Thunder glanced over his shoulder, every pony behind him were staring back at him, and whispering. Without thinking, he fell back half-way off his hooves and onto his rear.
While his head was turned, Discord side-stepped around him, and in a blur he positioned himself in front to address the crowd. One hoof held behind his back while the lion’s paw waved to suggest a bow. He turned to his side to give the marines a clear view of Thunder, sitting on his haunches like a dog.
“I’m a witness to every lie and transgression Major Gale has ever committed against you, and I’m here to give my testimony.” Discord pointed at himself with his lion’s paw. “You’ll have to forgive my rough appearance, and I do hope I haven’t alarmed any of you. I can assure you, all I wish for the moment is that you hear what I have to say. My intentions are good.”
“No, don’t you listen to a word that monster says!” Thunder Gale shot up and charged between Discord and the crowd.
“How rude.” Discord slithered past him. “I’ll have you know I am the very Spirit of Order. Now, do you want to tell them how you lied about your friend’s little message or shall I?” Discord passed his gaze to the crowd. “Hilll Born had information regarding his father and spent your retirement money so he could come out here. He betrayed you, and I have proof.”
Watching Discord work the crowd, Thunder Gale realized it was already over. When he waved his claw, their eyes followed, and when he mentioned Thunder Gale, they glanced to him but never looked him in the eye. Discord was a conductor and they his orchestra. Thunder didn’t attempt to interrupt him again, but instead dug his hooves into the earth and seethed.
Discord snapped his claw and in it appeared a holorecorder, the same one Hill Born sent Thunder Gale—how he managed to conjure it up, or from where, he didn’t know. He tossed it to Rain Dancer, who snatched it up all too quickly.
“Thunder, our dearest prince, lied to you all when he said your search was over; time and again he put you in harm’s way to continue a mission he promised was done. But don’t take my word for it, check the message and then look inside your hearts. You know what I say to be true. Take Lt. Cloud Twist for example, or your late companions, Drizzle and Medley. Yes, they’re dead; they were offered up like pawns for some sick game of his. Now, ask yourself, don’t you deserve better?”
No pony in the crowd spoke up as Rain Dancer set the holorecorder on the ground, and let Hill Born’s original message play. Thunder Gale didn’t hear the voice of his friend as any more than a fleeting whisper. He stared into the dust and basalt beneath him. It was so cold out there that he could see his own breath, but he was sweating.
“Is that true?” Rain Dancer asked after the message played itself out.
“It’s more complicated than that,” was all Thunder could say.
Chatter broke out amongst his troops and Rain Dancer shook her head. For the most part, his crew listened and waited in silence.
“Would somepony shoot that damn thing already?” Lightning Fire raised her voice above the crowd’s and reared up on her hind legs, kicking the air.
On her command the swoosh of a rocket swept overhead. They were soldiers, they didn’t scream; they all just ducked. Before Thunder Gale even hit the ground, the rocket met its target. The orange light from its tail flooded the desert and the faces of the gathered marines. Thunder Gale covered his head in his hooves and tucked in his wings and tail.
But the light and the smoke from its exhaust didn’t die with a flash and a boom. It kept burning and lighting up behind Thunder Gale’s eyelids. When he opened his eyes again, he followed the cries and light of the rocket’s exhaust all the way to Discord.
He held the rocket’s nose cone buried in his outstretched lion’s paw while its engine kicked and sputtered in the air. He dug into its metal casing as it gave one final thrust into him, but he didn’t yield, and the rocket tore open and flowed between his claws in ribbons. When the rocket finally detonated his paw muffled the blast down to a whimper. All that it amounted to was an acrid puff of smoke and tattered bits of metal.
Everypony in the crowd gasped. Even Lightning Fire, who never bothered to duck and cover and was standing in clear view of everypony, blinked.
“If you try that again I’ll collect your other eye,” Discord said to her. He flexed his paw, unharmed by the rocket, and strode a bit closer to crowd of marines. “As I was saying before cyclops over there interrupted me, I believe that you deserve better. I know you’re all wondering what I am and what I want, and to answer both those questions, I’m an exile just like you. And all I want is to go home and be with my friends again, just like you. I want the life I used to enjoy before the whole world got turned upside down, just like you do.
“You’ve all glimpsed what I’m capable of, know that I’ve yet to demonstrate more than a mere fraction of my power. Make no mistake that I will leave this planet and when I do, I will forge a new Golden Equestria out of the warring tribes. Now, let me ask you, don’t you want go home to?”
Murmuring spread through the crowd again.
“I don’t know what you want with them, but stay away from my marines.” Thunder Gale tried to yell at the top of his lungs, but only a whimper came out of his mouth.
Discord craned his head around at him, and smirked.
“I think I’ve made my intentions clear enough,” he said. “I’m not nearly as self-centered as you are. I treat my all my friends well, including—remind me, what’s she calling herself now, Breeze Heart?”
“I swear, if you even so much as touch a hair on her head I’ll—”
“What if I already have?” Discord postured closer to him and the temperature plummeted another ten degrees. “What will you do then? Hurl more crude projectiles at me? How’d that work last time? What if, after all the things you’ve done to her, she prefers my company to yours? What will you do then? Ravage me? Please, spare me the petty threats and grow up.”
Thunder Gale shot his ears back tensed to lunge. But he never did, he just stood there in silent rage.
“Now, if there are no more interruptions, I’ll continue.” Discord turned back to the crowd and, with impossible grace for two legs, ambled closer to them.
Thunder Gale was less than three feet from him and staring where his lion’s paw transitioned into his blue coat. The air around him itched with a sense of oppression and claustrophobia. It was just like in Chain Gleaming’s living room before the coffee table blew up, or when he made the cement covering the hatch vanish, only much worse, and the pins and needles pricking at him burned.
“Those of you who want to join me, please come to the abandoned city at dawn,” Discord said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe you have some thinking to do, and a pilot in desperate need of assistance.”
He put his thumb and index claws together and snapped.
Light flashed and all the warmth he’d been sucking out of the air rushed out as a wave of heat. The flickering flashlights several of the marines brought with them shone so brightly that they burst and sizzled, and several ponies shouted in alarm. When it was all over, Discord was gone, and he took the scent of sulfur with him.
For a moment, Thunder Gale stood there staring into the patch of dirt where Discord once stood while his crew slowly started talking again. Judging him. Then he heard Lightning Fire forcing her way to the front of the group. He looked up.
“Alright, everypony, listen up.” She didn’t nod, salute, or even glance in his direction. She simply gave him her back and addressed the troops. “I know how you all want to go home to your families, but I don’t even know what under Celestia’s bright sun that even was, let alone if I can trust it. What I do know is that I have a tent full of injured marines and no medical supplies. Right now, I need some of that marine dedication and your A-game more than ever. Report to your section leaders, I’ve already given them marching orders before that big blue bastard came along.”
They quieted down a little bit and listened.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Lightning Fire marched forward and drove her hoof into the air. “Hop to it, marines! Move like you’ve got a purpose!”
The crowd didn’t dispersed immediately, but instead lingered to stare at Thunder and talk amongst themselves. Once one or two began to hustle, the urgency spread to the rest. Over the next few minutes, the crowd filtered back beneath the lights of their camp. Lightning Fire herded the last of the stragglers together and drove them toward the supply crates. Only Thunder Gale and Rain Dancer remained, and she only lingered long enough to glower at him.
Alone and beside himself, Thunder Gale seized the opportunity to gallop around the side of the camp toward the tents. Somepony called out for him to stop, while others merely stared. In the dark, at a run, the individual voices and faces in the crew all blurred together.
He squinted under the floodlights, but he didn’t let that slow him down. He paused, glancing around the supply crates, the few tents that his crew had managed to put up, and the lanterns poking up between them for anything marked with a medical cross. He didn’t find one, so instead he unzipped the nearest tent and peeked inside. Finding it empty, he moved on to the next.
Somepony shouted his name again, but he didn’t stop to check who.
At last he spotted a tent large enough to house a small herd of ponies propped up beside a dropship still hot from flight; it was either a makeshift infirmary or a huge waste of his time like all the rest, but it was his best bet yet. So he rushed up to it and threw open the flap.
Inside, ponies—bloody, charred, and held together by epoxy—lay sprawled out on mats and the occasional cot. Lightning Fire wasn’t kidding about the lack of medical supplies; with the exception of Lt. Cloud Twist and a grey mare tucked away in the corner, everypony there was wide awake, moaning, and some even cradled burnt limbs still untreated. It smelled like blood and scorched hair in there.
“I’m looking for Doctor Breeze Heart, is she here?” Thunder Gale asked one of the more lucid marines.
She raised her one unbandaged hoof and pointed at the gray mare in the back.
Thunder Gale nodded, and hurried toward her. She was turned over on her side with her face turned down and aimed at the tent wall. Then he noticed the pink hair band in her mane, and his stomach turned. He leaned his head over her to peek at her face, and when he did he jolted back.
It was Breeze. The color had drained out of her pink coat and left her gray, but it was her. She could almost pass as merely sleeping, but her eyes were open and unblinking.
“Princesses, what has that monster done to you?” Thunder Gale crept closer to her and brushed her eyelids shut.
What if, after all the things you’ve done to her, she prefers my company to yours? Discord’s words replayed in his mind.
"I know I screwed up, and I’m sorry for everything, and if I could take it all back I would,” he said.
He grabbed her hoof, hung his head next to hers, and cried.
The roar and glare of thrusters swept overhead and faded out, and after a few minutes Lightning Fire barged in through the front door. She waited and watched him sob into Breeze’s mane.
“Sir, the pilot from the Ursa Major just landed,” she said. “You need to hear what he has to say.”
“Just, give me a second.”
“I’m sorry, Major, but I don’t have a second to give you.” Lightning Fire pointed out the door. “I’ve managed to get the crew back to work, but don’t ask me for how long. In case you haven’t noticed, there are open talks of mutiny. You have to do something.”
Thunder Gale didn’t say anything. Instead, he held his eyes closed and clutched Breeze’s hoof. It was cold to the touch.
“You know what Gerard just told me that explosion in the sky was? It was the Ursa Major burning up in the atmosphere. We’ve lost two ships, we’ve got no way off this rock, and about a million of Chain Gleaming’s closest friends are out for our blood. What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know, okay!” Thunder Gale whirled around at her. He didn’t have anything more to say, and after a moment he collapsed down on his hindquarters beside Breeze’s cot.
“Fine, sulk in your tent.” Lightning Fire turned and marched out.
Some time later, he got up to bandage and clean the wounded. He didn’t have any more than the most basic of medical knowledge, so he did what he could, and didn’t risk harming them more. When he was done, he trotted back over to Breeze’s cot and sank down against the supply crate across from it.
He let his head hit the side of the box, and he let his vision drift into the canvas above him. Fatigue had been seeping into his guts for a while, and now that he had stopped moving, it hit him. He didn’t think he could stand again.
“This is it,” he whispered to himself.
Breeze Heart’s head rolled to the side, and her mouth opened and shaped out words. Her eyes were still closed, and she remained unresponsive, even when Thunder Gale dragged himself to her side and jostled her shoulder.
“Breeze? Breeze!” He grabbed and stroked her hoof. “I’m here. Your Thunder is here. What are you trying to say?”
Soundlessly, she continued to speak, sometimes in long and unbroken strings of syllables that took her a minute or more to get through, and sometimes in bursts.
Thunder Gale lowered his head so close to hers that her breath tickled the hairs on his ears. He waited, closed his eyes, and listened for her to say something.
“Help.”
He jumped back.
Then Breeze Heart stopped mouthing words, and her head rolled away from him.
Thunder Gale watched her for a time, and waited for her to start whispering again. He knew it would only be a matter of minutes before the adrenaline wore off again and the fatigue returned, so unfurled a mat by her cot, and sprawled out with a blanket. He waited, and kept watching, until he closed his tired eyes. He told himself he’d just close them for a minute.
* * *
Blue, green, and orange flashed across the dark behind his eyes and and hinted at a vitality he thought lost. It was the same as he experienced before, but much more intense and unrestrained. Scents of clouds on the verge of rain far above lush forests tickled his nose.
This time he reached out for it, and asked the question: What do I do?
Pulses of purple and red arced across the black and warmth flooded into him. He relaxed his defenses until the rainbow had passed touched every fiber of his sinew, and when the warmth faded, it left in its place the buzz of electricity.
Images of his father’s palace—the office with the papers and the holograms, the room with the vase, and the cherry tree in the garden—flickered through his head. When Thunder Gale tried to pin one down, such as Hill Born’s face after he bailed him out, they all evaporated into the warmth of his eyelids. They rushed back as he drew his focus away from them.
What’s done is done, Thunder Gale, but you still have a choice about your future. The voice flowed through him and with it came the push of high speeds and strong winds, and a fleeting vision of the city in the chasm. You have all the pieces you need to solve this puzzle, but it’s up to you to put them together. Your flesh is your thoughts given form, change is always possible. We are infinite.
He almost felt like he was flying, but that was impossible. It was too familiar.
* * *
Eyes open, he awoke shouting at the lamp hanging from the center pole of the tent. His heart was pounding against his ribs, his chest rose and fell with his breath, and his wings flexed. His mind raced with questions, but as he lowered his head back down to his mat, Breeze Heart groaned.
She was still just as gray as she was before. She was likely to stay that way, Thunder Gale concluded, unless somepony did something about it.
Tossing the blanket aside, he leapt out off the ground and into a full gallop. He charged into the night and glanced up and down the paths of the campsite for any sign of Lightning Fire.
“I don’t care what condition the suit is in!” she shouted from somewhere beyond an industrial-sized container not thirty feet away. “If you can help the injured, then march your flank over to the medical tent and get to work!”
Thunder Gale galloped toward her and found her standing under a fluorescent lantern, barking into a frightened marine.
“And before you ask, yes, that is an order, private!” Lightning Fire turned away from the marine, shooed her away with her hoof, and trotted closer to Thunder Gale. “I have about a billion different problems, so you’d better make this quick.”
“I can’t take back anything I’ve already done, and saying ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t going to bring back the ship or all that lost time or our friends,” Thunder Gale said. “That said, I still owe you and everypony here an apology.”
“That’s all fine and dandy, Your Highness, but I know you didn’t come running over here just to tell me that.” She adjusted the strap on her eye patch and the failing buckles on her cuirass. “Now, what do you want?”
“I want to get every last crewpony off this rock. I don’t know how yet, but before I figure there’s still one pony I need to bring back to us. Everypony aboard the Spitfire sacrificed so much of themselves and have served with nothing short of the dedication and professionalism the Imperial Marines are known for, so I’m not about to leave a soldier behind.”
“You’re going to try to save Breeze Heart and go after that B-B-O.” Lightning Fire’s eye widened and her wings opened. “How in Equestria do you plan on doing that? You saw how good our weapons were against him.”
With his head turned up to the sky and the stars, Thunder Gale thought back to what the voice in his head said about the puzzle pieces, and then to the chasm and the great metal plate. For some reason, his mind circled it, and revolved around its edges.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just have this feeling that whatever’s buried beneath that city is the key to all of this. I know it sounds crazy, but I have to do this.”
“Do not even think about telling me to send in a strike team.” Lightning Fire marched right up to him jabbed her hoof at his chest. Under the lantern, her red-orange mane was nothing short of blazing. “After all your bullshit, I swear—prince or not, I will not let you risk another member of this crew on one of your half-cocked missions.”
“I never said anything about bringing along anypony else.” Thunder Gale stopped her hoof with his own and, without forcing her, lowered it away from him and to the ground, all while keeping eye contact. “I’m going alone.”
Lightning Fire shifted on her hooves and let her eyebrows and ears reach high.
Thunder Gale almost couldn’t believe that anything he said could shock her, but he didn’t flinch; he wanted to make sure she knew he was absolutely serious.
“With all due respect, I can’t let you do that. You’d be up against a superior force alone and without backup. It’s a suicide mission!”
“But I’m going to go through with it anyway,” Thunder Gale said.
She reeled away from him, cursed, paced over to the container behind her, and cursed again. The lantern overhead buzzed and settled back down.
“Shit.” She dragged herself away from the contained and faced him again. “I’m not going to talk you out of this one, am I? Well, if you’re going to do this, at least do it right. If we recovered your power suit, take it, and if any of our nukes survived, take one along just to make sure. And find a pilot to fly extraction. Even if you manage to get in and complete your objective, there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to get out without some support.”
“Any idea of who’d be willing to fly on this mission?”
Lightning chuckled a little. “After that thing’s speech, you’re not going to have much luck with the drop ship pilots. I’d say you only really have one option, and you’re not going to like it.”
“Who do you have in mind?”
* * *
He found him leaning against the patchwork monstrosity he claimed was a shuttle, with a bottle of rum in one talon and a joint lit in the other. Between swigs and puffs, he hummed a tune and shot mean looks at the marines hurrying past him on their way to the dropships. The cabin lights of his ‘shuttle’ were on and leaked pale-orange hues onto the desert around him.
Thunder Gale took a deep breath and pressed on toward him.
“What do you want?” Gerard put out the joint on the side of his ship, tucked it away in his denim flight jacket, and met him halfway.
“I need to ask you a favor,” Thunder Gale said. “A member of my crew is in a coma and I think my only chance of saving her is in the city. I’m not asking you to go with me, all I’m asking is that you’ll meet me there for pickup. XO Lightning Fire will fill you in on the details but I need to know if you’re in or not.”
Gerard laughed, and took a swig from his bottle of rum. “So, tell me, Major, why didn’t you just ask one of your pilots to fly you around?”
“Because none of them trust me any more. That’s why I’m asking you.”
“Allow me to savor the irony for a moment,” Gerard said. He looked up and counted the seconds, and then grinned. “Okay, thank you for letting me get back to you, but no. I’d rather spend my last hours in a cross fade than help you.”
Gerard chuckled and ran a talon through the feathers atop his head. His tail pulled close to his side and wrapped around his legs. He lowered his head a little, and his face was lost in shadow.
“Hey, what happened up there?” Thunder Gale asked.
“They came back,” he said. “Sigil Tech, man, they weren’t wiped out. This operation here, whatever it was, was only just the smallest tip of whatever they are. They have a fleet here, and it’s big enough to make the Battle of Arion look like a skirmish.”
Thunder Gale listened and watched his face; there was so much fear and loss in it.
“Gilda, my AI co-pilot, they killed her.” He raised the bottle for another swig, but lowered it before taking any more. “I hated that toaster, but she was my constant companion since I earned my stripes with The Express, and they sent her a kill code and took control. She didn’t deserve that. I barely got out before they vented my oxygen.”
“I’m sorry you went through that.” Thunder Gale stepped closer.
“Your granddad took my home, my friends, and two of my siblings when he invaded our world. I’m not going to raise a talon to help you.”
He didn’t say another word; he just clutched his rum tighter and marched up the ramp to his shuttle’s open door.
For a moment Thunder Gale let him go, but then he cantered toward the light bleeding from the door to try again. He stopped in front of Gerard’s silhouette and waited for his eyes to adjust enough to see his face.
“I wasn’t entirely honest earlier. She’s not just a member of my crew: she’s all I have left. If you resent me because I have a loving a family and you don’t, think twice. I lost my mother, my sister, and my father on my birthday. To top it all off, every weird thing out there with a bad attitude is copying him.”
That really got Gerard’s attention, but all the warmth he earned amounted to no more than a snort and the fact that he hadn’t shut his door on him yet.
“You can resent me, and I’ll welcome your hate.” Thunder Gale pointed at the medical tent past the supply crates, fuel lines, and lights. “Just don’t let her suffer because of it.”
After some internal deliberation Gerard reached into his ship, set his bottle of rum down, and he told him to “go clop off.” Then he lumbered in and shut the door.
With no other options, Thunder Gale sucked it up and left to go prepare for the mission ahead.
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Wow this story updated again
Why is all the best high space opera I read about ponies?
My little eyes... Do they fool me? Has this abandoned tale hath taken upon the mantle of updating again?
I actually seem to have a hard time finding good pony scifi.... is the search filter completely bogus or something?
7660652
It's awake, it's alive!
This made my month. Thank you, solocitizen.
Wow... Just read both stories in their current entirety.
I'm excited to see what's going to happen next.
You've done an awesome job in continuing this story solocitizen. Keep it up.
7672886
You get all the points; your comments are one of the best things about update-day.
Well, with any luck things can't get too much worse for Thunder (seriously, even sacrificing himself would feel better than what he's going through now).
Discord is so obnoxious when he acts like he somehow has the moral high ground, after all his depredations, whenever whomever he's talking to has gotten caught in a single moment of weakness. Then again, I guess he hasn't done too much onscreen here, though what he plans to do when he gets offworld I can't say....
Okay back to this.. sorry for the delay.. stupid work. Anyway now to see what Thunder and Discord are getting up to. And what is going on after the big boom.
And things are falling apart around him.. but gotta go find that lost little trinket I'm guessing.
Escape pods? Well are the quickest way out of a ship I guess, even one that is on the ground.
Yup, so much more important then trying to help the few remaining ponies you have under your command.
Also very true, and for all the snark.. I DO get what this is about, everything Thunder has done has been for his family, it's all he has left, and now, when things are the worst they have ever been, he needs that one solid reminder of them more then ever, it's the only thing he can think of to try and help get him through all the shit he's having to deal with. It's not rationale... but it does make sense.
..... I am trying so hard not to laugh at that. Just.. the timing on that...... This is the point where you have every reason to feel there is in fact some higher power controlling things... and that they hate you on a very personal level.
Well.. given the implications of her being one of the new Elements, almost certain she survived. Now patching things up with her......
So, range issues, interference issues with the planet/changelings, no one else make it in a condition to respond, or just nopony else have a radio they can use?
Okay, just a bit of a time delay. Also Thunder... quite the dilemma, attracting attention for your crew, good, doing so for Changelings... not so much.
Well some good news.... though how many were on the ship?
...Well horseapples.
Hmmmm.. so I'm not sure I'd call that "Hurt bad" if the issue is just her being unconscious but without any visible or findable trauma. I mean, hurt yes, but "Hurt bad" seems to be overstating it. Especially if she couldn't have been out for more then a few minutes so hard to say it's serious and not just something she'll snap out of after a bit. I mean, glad she's not REALLY hurt but.... still pushing it a bit hard... unless it's worse then it sounds.
Well.. that isn't good. At least they.. might.. have a way off the planet still but.....then again, if the Changelings could take out the ship in orbit, why wouldn't they have done that first? It would keep everypony limited as well.
Unless it's a case of needing to be ON the planet to negate Discord, and even getting him into orbit, or a bit away from here would return his powers.
Unlikely, he'll be seeing it as his fault this happened, and so feel like he needs to do this himself.
And yet even with all that.. he's still mostly rational and able to think things through.. good on him.
Your ride home most likely. So... they just finally decide to do something about it?
Well... looking like helping Discord might just be your only option at this point....
Well... at least they learned their lesson.. bit late of course but......
Now how do you check the rest of them that might not have things like that?
Okay so the majority of the Marines made it.. the Engineers.. given the explosion happened in the engineering section..... don't count on it. And with your limited resources.... yeah you lot are boned.
Very smart... now actually DOING so.. that might be an issue.... and the really funny part, if the 'Lings had just not bothered to blow up the ship, Thunder would have left on his own and not even bothered with Discord.. now however... nice job screwing yourselves Changelings.
Granted.. does not mean he'll LIKE dealing with him at all... and really.. Dissy...... these guys are your one hope now... might want to try and not be a TOTAL ass to him.... I mean I know you have to be at least a bit of an ass, you are you after all, but tone it down a bit dude.
HEY!!! Still... so ever going to get an answer for them with the whole plans to truncate the series? Either way.... so Discord powers still rather limited and that why he can't just revert to his normal form... or he just want to fuck with Thunder?
Odd sentiment coming from Discord... and that whole bit.. could be taken several ways, and some of his other comments... so try to usurp control and get them to turn on Thunder to Follow Discord, or the not tossing his freinds under a bus means trying to keep Thunder... or RD as far as Discord is concerned... safe and yeah far to many ways this could go so... just find out myself.
,,,,,,,,, Still not fully buying that.
True enough..... but not the right way to phrase it... and yeah Thunder.. you did fuck up... but the question is... what is Discord playing at?
That's not the least bit ominous at all..... So he's really just trying to get them on his side after Thunder refused to help him?
You're one to talk... seriously the amount of shit being piled on Thunder is getting ridiculous......
She is one hell of an XO. And after years of dedication.. hard to see many just saying "Screw You" over on incident, and to side with something they have no idea what it even is.
Oh fuck you Discord......
Ship went Boom Boom. So yeah........ this is just such a great trip for you....
I get things are bad but.. this really is pushing it a bit to far into either sadistic, or maybe even farcical territory to have things getting this bad, this quick and just so utterly.. not one single hint of good news. I get the whole "Darkest before the Dawn" thing but..... ehhhh might work overall and be fine just in the moment thought is... "this is getting ridiculous"
Also yes, Thunder really is not helping his case right now at all with how he's acting.
And yeah....... at this point he's been so beaten down, made so many mistakes, and things are just so freaking bad... all with no time to process or deal with even one of the crises.. at some point you just shut down.. and he seems very close to that point.
ouch, even the XO turning on him...... but she does have a point.
Yeah... right..... Still.. what the fuck are you doing Discord?
Typo
Ooookay then.. but still... way to Go RD/Loyalty/Harmony/whatever this is. Hopefully it's enough to get him over the worst of things and start to find a way to get his ponies out of this.
And hell yes... get your rump back in gear and be the Leader you should be!
Okay... several leaps in logic going on here it feels like. Her getting from his "Left behind" that he means Breeze, when she is right there. Yes WE know it's Discord messing with her, because the grey thing, but how do THEY know this, they might suspect but even then.. feels odd they are this certain and she understood just what he means by it. And that she instantly knew he was going after Discord just from that. If anything her first response feels more like it would be assuming he was still talking about his Father or something. Just, oddly fast progression on things that feels like they skipped a few stages of explanation just to get to the point for the reader faster.
And that does make sense.. after what he's pulled.. and the way he was acting.. her loyalty is to the unit, and that includes keeping them together and loyal to each other, but the leader... not if he's being as useless and self-defeating as Thunder has been.
......
You JUsT said you weren't going to send anypony along with him....
Gerard.
And again this whole scene just felt... choppy.. something about it the way she bounced around, the strict ultiatarinness of the dialog, getting right to the point, it... something about it felt off.... rushed, like the story was just trying to get past it and put out the barebones needed.
And again I do get the idea but, it all happened so fast and so quickly with so little time or detail... it feels rushed.
..... Okay then, and things just got even worse... what are they here for... unless... ordered here by the Changelings as backup?
And yeah things are getting worse and worse......
..... And they are able to take stuff out THAT easily? Fuck.....
Typo II Typo harder.
And the Birdie-Cat will turn around at the last moment somehow.
Again this was... it got things moving but... between just how quickly things went from bad, to worst, to shit, to Harry freaking Kim would feel bad for you.. it does stretch things more then a little, add on how quickly things went across and words, dialog and actions feeling father cut and dried... still things are at least moving towards finally getting some answers.