• Published 21st Feb 2017
  • 8,531 Views, 1,327 Comments

The Skyla Pseudonym - iisaw



Young Flurry Heart has no interest at all in being a prim and proper princess, and would much rather have wild and dangerous adventures like her Aunt Twilight.

  • ...
19
 1,327
 8,531

12 Plan D

Chapter Twelve

Plan D

"Ring, ting-a-ling! Ting, ding-a-ling"

"Ding—dong, ding—dong!"

"Good, good!" I said. "Now the verse!"

"Canterlot town,
Come gather round,
Here we are found,
Hark to the sound…"

The Bells of Canterlot is one of my favorite Hearth's Warming carols. It's an old song and a complex round that takes quite a bit of practice to sing well. That is probably why it's far less popular than modern novelty songs such as Grandmare Got Trampled by a Yeti, which is a shame, because it's a very beautiful tune. And it had the perfect rhythm for my nefarious purposes.

The rebel unicorns picked it up fairly quickly, and soon we had three squads of five ponies each, ready to sing it on a moment's notice. Some could even tap out the odd dual tempos of 80 and 120 beats per minute with their front hooves, and I made those ponies the leaders of each group. I try to be prepared for any conceivable situation, but I'm afraid there were no metronomes in Nebula's stores.[1]
----------
[1] I'm sure that if Pinkie Pie had been aboard, she would have been able to provide a few… from somewhere.
----------

"Ms. Nightshade!" Sirocco called out from Nebula's rail. "We're ready to shoot you now."

"I'll be right there!" I called back, setting a small box down on the grass before my singers. "Here are the suppressor rings. They'll look just fine unless somepony examines them close up. They're just plain rings, no cams, so don't tilt your heads too far down, or they might slide off your horns."

I left them to put on their phony suppressors and went to get earthified. Because of the anti-magic protections on my armor, I had to put it on after I was disguised, and that occupied my time while the rest of the team assembled.

Stalwart Lance led the first group of "captured" rebels with Swift Wing at his side. Together, they looked like a proper earth pony thug and his fanatic bodyguard. Skyla led the second bunch, and I brought up the rear with the third squad and our little supply cart. Our plan didn't call for us to undergo more than a cursory examination, so I had only added a light cape and a pair of blue wigs to make myself look a bit different from Skyla. The disguises would be dispelled if either of us used our wings or horns, but if that became necessary, we would already be well into Plan C.

I made a final check to make sure everyone else was ready and understood the plan(s), and we were on our way.

We took a slightly diagonal path to the road which hid us below gentle rolling hills for most of the way—about a league and a half. The last few furlongs were exposed, and we didn't want to be seen coming cross-country from the direction of the forest. Fortunately, I had a friend "up there."

I fumbled the dedicated raptor set[2] out of my saddlebags and pressed the call button three times with the edge of my hoof. There was a brief crackle of static and a tinny approximation of Ao's voice said, "No traffic on the road or in the sky. You are clear to proceed."
----------
[2] RAPid amplitude-deviation interpretive oscillaTOR, or far-talker thingie, as Pinkie likes to call it. Another piece of hideously expensive gear that was often incredibly useful.
----------

I pressed the call button twice to signal that I had received the message and waved Lance ahead. With nopony around, I could have answered her in the clear, but being slightly paranoid[3] has never done me any harm.
----------
[3] Slightly paranoid.
----------

We had traveled west about a league when we first caught sight of the top of Redkeep's tallest tower, and within another half hour we could clearly make out most of the fortification. Canterlot, it wasn't. Honestly, I could appreciate the functionality of its brutal military architecture, but I think Rarity might have actually thrown a hissy-fit at the sheer ugliness of the place. They could have painted it, at least! The red sandstone blocks were dull, rough cut, and stained in streaks and splotches.

The highest tower had a mooring mast above it and what appeared to be a circular gantry and movable boarding ramp attached. Sugarpine couldn't tell me anything about the interior of the fortress, but had detailed knowledge of the factory, which was our primary target.

"It does look like they've stacked a lot of crates on the loading platform," Sugarpine said, lowering his spyglass. "That probably means an airship will be here soon to pick them up."

"How long, do you think?" I asked him.

He shook his head. "I'm not sure. Big shipments almost always go out by road. When ships come by, it's usually just for their own supplies. But maybe..."

"Yes?"

"Look, this is wild speculation, but if they really did send the whole Western Fleet out to chase after your fictional pirate ships, they've got to be burning a lot of juice. A caravan would take over a week to get to the territories."

I nodded. "It makes sense. You said that your ponies haven't seen a ship or pegasus for about a week, which makes the timing work out right. They'll need a steady stream of charged crystals just to keep their engines turning."

"Which means a warship might be arriving exactly when we don't want it to! Maybe we ought to retreat and…"

"No!" I cut him off. "If we start over every time something unexpected happens, we'll never get anywhere. Adapt and adjust; an inflexible blade is the first to break."

"Ah… if you say so," Sugarpine said, doubtfully.

I contacted Ao with the raptor set and told her to pay particular attention to the sky to the west. Then I put some serious thought to a new scenario. I called a brief halt just before we began to descend into the low vale where the rows of barracks that housed the unicorns of Factory 5 lay, and spoke privately to Skyla.

"Okay, ponies!" she called out to the group. "Ms. Nightshade has a slight adjustment to our alternate plan. Please give her your attention."
I cleared my throat and said, "For simplicity's sake I will call this Plan B-2…"

= = =

"Governor Gray said you'd need them for the accelerated charging schedule," Lance said to the guard at the town gate. "There's gonna be another, larger bunch coming in a day or two."

"Everything's all messed up," the guard said with a frown. "First they switched over to double shifts and big gems, and now they want more? Do you really think there's a fleet of pirates attacking the Western Territories?"

"Don't know, don't care," Lance grumbled. "I just need to get this lot settled in and then go back for more."

The guard shrugged. "Well good luck with the overseer. He's spitting fire right now, and he's gonna hate another change to the setup."

"Orders are orders," Lance said, shrugging.

"Yeah," the guard snorted, waving us through the gate. "And explanations are for officers."

Plan A, step 1: complete!

The wall around the barracks and charging buildings was clearly designed to keep ponies in rather than out, and it wasn't a very imposing structure. A group of adventurous foals could have gotten over, under, or through it with a minimum of effort. A single bored guard at the gate also implied that the imperials didn't think a mass escape attempt was likely. The unicorns of the town weren't technically prisoners; they just didn't have any other options.

According to Sugarpine, there was a taller, more serious wall separating the charging buildings from the keep itself. Guards with weapons patrolled the parapets. Evidently, the imperials were much more worried about revolt than escape, and that made some sense. As Sugarpine had proved, runaways had little in the way of choices, and less in the way of hope, but a group of coordinated unicorns could do a lot of damage. Even though an attack from an individual was less than a bee sting, a determined group, concentrating their spells, could overwhelm a smaller force of earth ponies and pegasi. As Sugarpine's rebels had proved even before they had gotten their hooves on proper weapons.

And that's why the earth ponies had put most of their effort into defending against just that sort of coordinated attack. Thankfully, their threat-assessment had some culture-based blind spots.

The overseer and his two pegasus bodyguards were easy. They came to us as soon as we had gotten as far as the first assembly point between the barracks.

"What in the Holy Hoof is this?" he shouted at us, trotting into the square.

"You asked for more unicorns," Lance said, placidly. "Well, here they are."

"I asked…? What? Are you crazy?" He advanced on Lance, his bodyguards scowling and lifting their wings in aggressive gestures.

The first group of unicorns parted to make way for the overseer, looking away and down, like good, submissive ponies. The fact that they were also then partially surrounding the official and his pegasi didn't seem to occur to him.

"I've got the written confirmation right here," Lance said, reaching back as if to pull something out of his saddle bag with his right hoof. When the angry overseer looked down, all he saw was an empty hoof. What he didn't see was Lance's left foreleg swing around his neck, and he was in a vice-like headlock before he realized what was going on. Two love-taps from Lance's empty hoof put him out cold.

The pegasus guards immediately went for their weapons, but four well-thrown bolas wrapped them up almost instantly and they disappeared under a pile of not-very-gentle unicorns.

We dragged them into a barracks room that Sugarpine had assured us would be empty at that time of day and thoroughly trussed and gagged them.

Plan A, step 2: done!.

Then came the waiting. We wouldn't be able to substitute in the rebel unicorns until the next shift change, more than two hours away. Anypony moving around near the charging buildings before then would attract suspicious attention. The evening change-over would coincide with meal time, and as the whole town had to go to a central mess hall to be fed, we would have more than enough cover then to move around freely. And start the rumors circulating, of course.

It was a long two hours. It was a relief to finally hear the rumble of hooves approaching from the charging sheds, and our unicorns slipped out of the door to join the crowd. Since many of the rebels had escaped from the place, it was certain that some of them would be recognized, and Lance, Skyla, and I walked along with them to head off any problems. Swift Wing stood in front of the door to the room where our prisoners were, with instructions to deny entry to anypony.

The rebels got several odd looks, but only once did we have to interfere.

"S-Sugarpine?" a young mare called out timidly, just before our first group reached the charging sheds.

Lance stepped between them, doing his best landslide-about-to-happen impersonation, and rumbled, "Move along."

The mare shied away, and as Skyla and I went past her, I said quietly, but not too quietly. "It'll be great when the governor lets us use the mind-control spell on all of them, not just the runaways."

The mare's eyes went wide and she trotted over to a friend and began whispering urgently.

Plan A, step 3: check!

Our teams entered the largest of the charging sheds. Despite the name, it was a fair-sized warehouse-like structure and the interior was set up to accommodate three lines of five unicorns working together. Exactly the number we had provided. The rest of us stopped outside to put the cart in an inconspicuous place and to turn back the unicorns that were actually supposed to be working there. Most didn't question being given a shift off, but there was one young stallion who frowned and asked for an explanation.

We didn't answer him. Skyla gave him a nasty smirk and then turned to me and said, "Won't it be nice when they can't ask any more stupid questions?"

"Hope it's soon," I said back, not even looking at the stallion. "I like it when they don't talk." Every little bit of reinforcement helps. I made a second mental check mark next to step 3.

Lance, Skyla, and I positioned ourselves behind the building as the streets began to clear after the shift change—putting us out of sight of the guards on the wall of the keep. Sugarpine had been right; the wall was well-built and well-protected.

Some of the guards on the wall had portable guns, and there was a huge stationary one mounted directly over the gate. It was twice the size of the main guns aboard Ironhoof and had six barrels that seemed to be set to rotate around a central pivot. I had no idea exactly how it operated, and Sugarpine said he'd never seen it fired, but I knew it was something to avoid at all costs.

The situation was made worse by the layout of the town. Despite his flair for improvised leadership, Sugarpine had never had any formal education in military tactics, so he hadn't realized it himself, but all the main streets converged in a fan shape on the gate to the keep. That meant that the big gun had a clear field of fire straight down all the avenues of approach, which more significantly for our purposes, were also the avenues of escape.

We needed to do the job and get out without any fuss or anypony realizing what was wrong until it was too late. I reluctantly gave up on Plan B-2 altogether.

About five minutes into the shift, there came a triple knock on the wall behind us. I knocked back, two taps, a pause and then two more taps, and the ponies inside the shed began prying boards off the wall. They made an opening big enough to pass out several large gems.

"These are the ones with the least charge," Sugarpine said quietly. "Should we get more?"

"Yes, get at least another dozen of the biggest ones," I replied. "Keep any sized for an airship's guns or engines. Those are the ones we need to sabotage."

As more gems were passed out through the hole in the wall and stowed away in the cart, the soft, lovely notes of The Bells of Canterlot floated through the air. I smiled.

Plan A, steps 4a and 4b: well under way!

Long after sunset, about seven hours through the ten-hour night shift, my raptor set buzzed three times. I motioned Lance and Skyla to crowd close to me on either side to muffle the sound of the speaker and pressed the transmit button. "Nightshade here, over."

"Airship approaching fast from the west. Large and brightly lit, over."

If I had known how much worse things were going to go for us that night, I might not have cursed so emphatically. "Understood. Stay safe. Out."

"Here to pick up the gems on the loading platform?" Skyla asked.

"Must be," I replied. "And if they're in a rush to get loaded and get back to the west, they might work through the night…" I leaned into the hole in the wall and hissed for Sugarpine.

"What's up?" he asked, appearing at the hole a minute later.

"The airship's here. Do they ever use ponies from the town to help with the loading?"

"No, never. They don't ever let a unicorn into the keep."

I had started to relax when he added, "But they'll want to take as many gems as possible back, won't they? That'll mean they won't wait for the end of the shift to collect the fully charged ones. We took a lot of gems, and they might spot that."

"Celestia trample it! We need to get ready to pack up and run for it."

"Won't that make them suspicious?" Skyla asked.

"Plan C, with a little B-2 flavor," I said.

Skyla's expression clouded over. "Improvised massive property damage?"

"That's the one! I'm thinking that one of the booby-trapped gems, dropped onto the loading platform, might detonate with enough force to crack and explode some of the others. If we're lucky, it might set some of the crates on fire. Aside from denying good gems to the fleet, that ought to provide cover for the rest of us to escape and provide a plausible reason for unicorns panicking and abandoning their posts."

She nodded. "Sounds good. Sugarpine, get your ponies off the line, and get them back here. We'll enlarge this hole so that you won't have to leave the building where the guards on the wall can see you."

We were helping the unicorns out of the shed, and Skyla was carefully taking one of the bad gems from Sugarpine, when the little snag in our plans turned into a full-out disaster.

Swift Wing suddenly dropped down out of the night sky into our midst. "Captain! They're coming!" he hissed urgently.

"The airship?" Skyla said. "We know—"

"No! Not a ship! The caravan! It's real!" He took a few deep gulps of air before going on. "The governor really did send more unicorns for the factory! They just got here and woke up the town looking for the overseer. There are a bunch of guards with them, and they busted into the room where I was guarding the prisoners—"

"You there!" a voice shouted from the air above us. "What are you—"

The bola hit her pretty far back, but it was a good enough shot to trap one of her wingtips and she squawked in surprise before crashing onto the roof above with a thump.

"Who's there? What's going on?" shouted a guard from the wall.

"Roadapples, roadapples, festering roadapples," I swore under my breath, as I risked a peek around the corner to see if the main road was clear.

Aside from the four huge, armed earth ponies rushing towards us, it was clear.

"I'll cause a scene here!" I said to Skyla, while hurriedly pulling off my mane and tail wigs. "That'll draw the attention of the gun crew, and you and the team can escape down one of the smaller streets."

"You can't!" Skyla protested. "They'll shoot you!"

"There are guards coming up the street. They won't fire in close quarters for fear of hitting their own. As soon as you're away, I'll fly after you."

She almost agreed. Almost, but then she scowled and said, "I've got wings too! We'll face them together."

"But—"

"That's an order, Ms. Nighshade," she said.

"Roadapples… Captain," I snarled.

She smiled at me and drew her cutlass. "Meet us back at the ship, Sugarpine. Ms. Nightshade, on three. One..."

We both jumped on one, of course. I flung off my cloak and drew my blades as I leaped into the street, flaring my wings and screaming, "DIE!" with all the force of the Royal Voice.

The earth ponies skittered around in surprise as our disguises melted away, colliding with each other but managing to maintain their hooves. Their leader, a massive brown stallion with a livid scar across his muzzle recovered first, clearly noting our horns and floating weapons.

I expected some sort of challenge, but he called out to the gun crew on the wall. "Shoot these things!" he shouted. "We'll finish them off!"

That wasn't good. Was he stupid? We were close enough that—

From behind me I heard the crisp order of the gun crew leader. "Suppressing fire, barrel three!"

There was a loud metallic ratcheting, a sharp clank, and then another voice cried out, "Barrel three, ready!"

The guard ponies faced us with smug grins and ready blades. Well, even a foal would have known what was next.

I leaped sideways, slamming my shoulder into Skyla's and knocking her behind the cover of the charging shed.

"Fire!"

I didn't quite make it, and the shot hit me square in the back.

= = =

=

Author's Note:

Thanks to Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for pre-reading and editing!