Last Flight Out Kakadu
About one hour before Event...
First Lieutenant Oscar Reyes stood on the edge of the loading gantry of the Albatross Semiautonomous Heavy Carrier. The sun had set less than an hour ago, leaving enough of a glow for him to still see some of the vastly expanded mine infrastructure. What had been only a few dozen slowly rusting buildings a few years ago had changed enormously since he'd started making these runs. Well over a billion dollars had been spent here in almost total secrecy, as it had in dozens of other black projects across the globe.
In Ranger Uranium Mine, the product of that expenditure was being loaded onto the back of his carrier. Just over a dozen large crates, made from steel and not lead. They were so hot that only autonomous robots could wheel them, the same sort of palette movers that now worked in many Amazon warehouses. Flat robots rolled up the ramp, deposited their loads in his cargo bay, then returned the way they'd come, avoiding him and the other members of his crew as they rushed in to secure them.
The crates were so radioactive that he could feel the warmth coming through the steel. But with the constant, low-level protection of a miniaturized CPNFG, he and every other member of his crew would not suffer ill effects. Without that machine running, no human could fly within an Albatross.
A small black truck wheeled up from the end of the tarmac, and a pair of Australian Army officers stepped out. One carried a clipboard in her hands, the other nothing but the sidearm on his belt. They avoided the line of robots rolling in from the factory, coming in from the other direction. Lieutenant Reyes walked down from the ramp and along the side of his ship to greet them. They stopped a few feet away, exchanged salutes. "We deliver Fuel Shipment 97," said the woman, her accent so thick Reyes had to strain his ears to understand what she was saying. She offered the clipboard.
"We accept Fuel Shipment 97," he echoed, taking the clipboard and signing with the practiced stroke of one hand. He passed the clipboard back.
Just like that, everyone relaxed. "How's the weather been, Kelly?" Well, not enough that they stopped using last names.
"Oh, beautiful some days, perfect on others," the male officer responded. "The usual. How's Virginia?"
"When I left? 84% humidity."
The female officer winced. "Shit, Reyes. You should stick around. We're going diving later, once the shift is over. I'm sure we could scrounge an extra set of gear somewhere."
He laughed, "That would be wonderful, Nguyen. But you know how particular they are about deliveries being on time." He glanced over his shoulder, back at the Albatross. "I get leave in another month. I'll see if the fish still hate me then."
There was a quiet, awkward silence then, as they all exchanged a dark look. No one knew if the world would still be here in a month's time. Their calculations had predicted January, and then March, and here they still were. Living on borrowed time. Unless the whole thing is shit wrong. Interuniversal practical joke. Please God, let it be that. The economy of the first world would probably come crashing down when people realized just how much money had been spent on this, but at least there would still be people to pick up the pieces. Instead of a few hundred of us living in a hole. Reyes had a spot in that hole, and these officers didn't. By the numbers, almost nobody who worked for the HPI would actually survive the end of the world. Like the rest of mankind, they would die in agony.
"Well, it looks like the shipment has been loaded," Reyes said, clearing his throat. "I'm sure my guys have everything packed in by now. Best be off."
They all straightened, saluting again. "Survive for us," Officer Kelly said.
"Because of people like you," Reyes replied. "We will."
He hurried back into the carrier, black uniform flapping along with the pleasant breeze. He could feel it even here, blowing off the coast. There were white sands, clear waters, and inviting resorts filled with beautiful women in too little clothing. Shame he couldn't stay.
The cargo bay had been packed, though thanks to the density of refined uranium and the lifting power of the engines, that meant it looked less than half full, Crates had been distributed throughout so as to even the load, not all packed into the front.
"How are we doing?" Reyes asked, stalking up through the cargo bay, through the machine room to the reactor, then up the cramped staircase to the second floor. He was tall enough that he had to stoop.
His NCO, Technical Sergeant Violet Gates, followed him up the tight hallways like a determined ghost. "Reactor nominal, shielding stable at 5% average load. Tray tables are folded and cargo's been packed."
They passed through living areas, crammed in as tightly as they might be on a submarine. There would be no privacy here, no separate living areas for men and women. Every inch of space was precious. The cockpit had no doors for that reason, though unlike the smaller Hummingbird, it did have a copilot seat. Everything inside was digital, every display, every readout, even the windows. "Excellent work, as always," he said, loudly enough that the other members of the crew would hear. "I'm sure we're already a few seconds behind schedule. Raven will be expecting us."
"Aye, sir," Gates said. No salutes, though—there wasn't enough space to move their arms that far on the upper deck.
Reyes strapped himself into the pilot's chair while Gates secured herself beside him in the copilot's seat. He fastened his headset, positioning the clear microphone just beside his face as he reached his hands into the holofield. No moving parts in the entire cockpit, as it happened, except for on the chairs. It wasn't the same as flying conventional aircraft, but Reyes had gotten used to it by now. "This is Albatross Ganymede calling from Ranger Procurement," he said, switching into his flat radio voice. Not that their communication actually used radio. "Requesting departure clearance."
"Reyes," came the voice on the other end, approximately two seconds later. Taylor's voice sounded annoyed. "You're behind."
Another pause. Long enough for Reyes to mouth “what did I tell you” towards Gates.
"Aussies give you green for trans-pacific departure, relay point Granny."
"Roger, Ganymede out." He clicked the radio off, focusing his attention on the controls. Almost everything the Albatross did was actually controlled by advanced guidance computers, like a more expensive version of the consumer drones everyone was flying these days. The whole cockpit was a glorified backup system.
The Albatross Heavy Carrier lifted vertically into the air, carrying shipment 97 of humanity's last hope.
3234 years later...
"Machspeed, could you come here a minute?" Amelia asked, gesturing urgently. She was the current controller on duty for the A.R.R.R.S, a position that included with it responsibilities as Melbourne's air traffic control. Not a particularly difficult job, considering they were lucky to get a single flight in or out every few days, but one Amelia ordinarily seemed to resent.
There was nothing of that feeling to her now, nothing but urgency as she gestured at the console in front of her. It was the display of their newly installed radar system, the latest in post-Event engineering. Compared to the pre-Event world it was a children's toy. Of course, nopony would know that based on the price it had cost to install. "What is it?"
She pointed down at the screen with one hoof just as the sensor rotated around. He heard the silight pinging sound as a dark shape appeared there, then faded away until the dish rotated back around. Again the shape appeared, exactly where it had been before. "Five hundred kilometers," she said, without prompting. "And yes, I checked the dish. It's not broken."
Machspeed narrowed his eyes, focusing on the glowing lump on the screen. "Navy lifting helicopter, maybe?" Whatever it was, it was as big as a C5 Galaxy, and it was holding still in midair. "I'll get a spotter, hold on."
"Sure thing, boss," she waved with one hoof. "Can you get a sub up here while you're at it? I wanna come."
He nodded. "I assume you've been calling them."
"Yeah, and I haven't heard back. Either there's nothing out there, or they aren't listening."
A few hours later and Machspeed had learned only bad news. The object remained where it had been, drifting less than a kilometer. Much more interesting, his spotting team reported there was apparently nothing there. Even his sharpest eyes could find nothing more than "the air looks a bit weird."
"So... what?" Flashpoint asked, when they'd assembled at A.R.R.R.S. HQ. "Something returns out over the ocean, something we can't see?" She shrugged one shoulder. "I bet I can still get us there. Position, heading, altitude... that's all I need."
"That's assuming we should," Machspeed said, expression serious. "It might be returnees, but it might be something else. We can't ask them if they need help if they don't pick up."
"If they don't pick up, they need help," Amelia offered. "I still remember how crazy it was. Passengers hysterical, barely able to work the controls... imagine what you'd think if you were military. What if we were under attack?"
"I've thought about it," Machspeed said. "They're burning fuel fast to keep something that big airborne. I'd say they have an hour left, if I wanted to be generous. But it might be less." He cleared his throat. "Listen, everypony. I don't know if this is safe. Maybe it's nothing, and we'll just end up coming right back. But it might be ponies in danger, with hardware at their hooves that could seriously hurt ponies if they think we were attacked."
"So what you're saying is, we're going," Flashpoint said. "Great! Ever since the space thing I'd worried I'd never get another real challenge."
* * *
It appeared that Reyes and his crew had witnessed the end of the world. It had come in a flash, so bright he might've been blinded were there a real window. He had opened his mouth to shout instructions to boost the CPNFG's protections to full, jerked towards the panel to carry out that order himself in case Gates failed to do so in time—and then found himself on the floor. Somehow he'd been small enough to slip out of his restraints, though how that was even possible he couldn't guess.
The alarm was sounding, the same alarm he knew to expect in the event of even a brief failure in the CPNFG. Yet for all that, the cockpit appeared intact.
A shame he wasn't.
His uniform had mostly slipped out, in the same time it had taken him to struggle out of the seat, flopping onto the floor. There was no need to worry about the Albatross falling out of the air—without connection to route control, it would just hover in place without his manual input. Until the reactor ran out of fuel, and they tumbled from the sky. It might take months.
Gates appeared to be unconscious in her seat, though he also couldn't see any of her actual body in her seat.
If the CPNFG went down, we're all dead. The reactor would take hours to give them a fatal dose, but the Thaumic field would not. Even seconds could be enough. Assess the damage, Reyes thought, forcing himself to be cogent. Look for necrosis of the soft tissues. I already have the disorientation. Something made it feel like his uniform trousers had slipped right off, and that his jacket hung over his body as badly fitting as a child's first Halloween costume. Obviously he couldn't actually have shrunk that much.
He shoved on one arm until it came through the sleeve, staring down. What he saw made no sense—it was like looking at some kind of lizard, dark orange scales broken with an occasional red. The hand was shrunken, with sharp claws instead of fingernails. "This isn't right."
Nobody answered.
Except the computer. "Danger: Critical Failure in CPNFG. Unsafe interior radiation levels detected. Manual restart required."
That explained why he hadn't heard anyone—the level of ionizing radiation produced by the reactor even at idle was enough to disorient in under an hour and kill in a day. His cancer risk was probably ticking up by the second.
"Is anyone alive?" Reyes shouted, stumbling out of the cockpit and into the hall. "Fields, are you down there in engineering?" No response. No time for him to wait. He ran.
Ran might've been a tad generous. He tripped over himself, smashing into walls and floors and digging huge scratches into the metal with his claws. Something moved behind him that might've been a tail, he ignored that. Halfway down he finally managed to get the uniform jacket free from his body, so that he was down to boxers and pale cotton top. That meant less to impair his movement, though the top was long enough that it was almost a kilt.
He reached engineering, the most dangerous part of the ship. The reactor itself was sunk into the lower level, but even down here he could hear the steady hum. Sergeant Fields was still strapped into his flight seat, though the face hanging limply from within the uniform did not look human. Reyes ignored that for the moment, dashing past him to the CPNFG.
The machine meant to save humanity did not look very impressive. A single dark canister of exotic matter, which was fitted into a dynamically scaling coil of a thousand electromagnets. Their specific function was beyond him, though he knew it had something to do with charged plasma and super magnets. Something to do with the negative-energy-density mass stored in the container. That single canister was worth more than many countries.
That was why it ejected from the system in the event of a crisis, resting at the edge of the mechanism. It was worth more than the lives of his crew—unlike the rest of the machinery of the CPNFG, it could not be replaced.
It now stood out of reach, a full foot over his head.
Reyes stopped at the edge of the machine, before crouching down and jumping with all his might. Something moved on his back entirely without prompting, getting tangled in his thin tank-top, but it didn't matter. He reached the control panel, and pulled himself up. He wasn't wearing his black shoes anymore, but had clawed feet like his hands. That didn't matter. He reached out towards the container, taking hold of it with both claws, and pushed.
It slid along the tracks back into the machine, where the inner vial would be exposed. A faintly greenish glow emerged from within. The coils contracted around it like they were alive, and the ground shook under him. Reyes felt an awful constriction in his chest, like the world was pressing in around him. He stumbled backward onto his back, falling several feet to the ground. The metal dented instead of him.
Yet the awful feeling remained, despite the lights all going green. "Initialization cycle complete. CPNFG field consumption stable at 30% nominal output."
Reyes lifted his head one last time, staring up at the readout. The CPNFG was running at nearly its full capacity now, just like the unit in Raven. That could mean only one thing. The world had ended.
But that was too much. The strain of his run down to engineering and the radiation and the pain finally caught up with him. He slumped to the ground, unconscious.
* * *
The A.R.R.R.S. team appeared aboard the strange aircraft with all the grace of a set of fine china falling down the stairs. Instead of her ordinary impeccable skill, Flashpoint dropped them two feet in the air with aching ears, aching lungs, and bodies covered in a thin layer of frost.
Machspeed was the first to collect himself, scraping the icy layer from his eyelids and rising to shaky hooves. "What happened, Flashpoint?"
His wife grunted, and her voice sounded enormously strained from the floor. "S-something... didn't want us in here! Like a counterspell! I really... really had to push." She rolled onto her back, looking up at him from the floor. "Sorry. It's hard to mind the creature comforts with all those other numbers in my head."
"Yeah, creature comforts," Sunbeam repeated, shaking frost from his wings. "Like atmosphere."
"Breach detected," came a flat, mechanized voice from above them. "Sterilizing."
Nothing visual happened next, no change to the cramped hallway they'd appeared in. Even so, Machspeed had been less staggered by hooves to the face. It was suddenly like all the life had been squashed out of the whole world. His horn felt heavy and useless, his mind sluggish and pained. The glow in his horn went out, and he nearly fell over completely. No amount of effort would bring the light spell back, or any other for that matter.
"Thaumic breech contained," said the flat voice from overhead. The sirens stopped, and the lights went from flashing red to white again.
Machspeed hadn't been the only target. If his crew had been dazed by their arrival, now they looked positively miserable. "Damn," Amelia said. "What is... that... feeling..."
"Get us out of here," he said, reaching over to help Flashpoint to her hooves. "Now!"
"I can't!" she whined. "I'm trying! My magic isn't working!"
"Damn," he muttered. "I guess we know what you had to punch through to get us here."
"It's a..." She whimpered, gritting her teeth. "It's a generalized anti-magic field. I've heard of spells like this. Pretty advanced magic, though. This must not be a returnee aircraft after all."
Machspeed had been so concerned with their arrival he hadn't even thought about his surroundings. He considered them now, listening for the sound of the massive rotors he expected to be holding them in the air and not finding them. Big airplanes always had big engines, which could be heard even from within a pressurized cabin. Yet he could hear almost nothing here, only a rumble through his hooves.
But it did look a little like an ancient aircraft. Or... maybe submarine. Aircraft aluminum walls and floors, with tiny stowage areas here or there. The hallway stretched in either direction, though he couldn't say which was fore and which was aft. He picked a direction at random. "If we can't teleport off, we'll have to escape," he said. "Find a way to depressurize the cabin and open it from the inside."
He started wandering in the direction he took for forward. Yet he hadn't made it more than a few steps before he heard Sunbeam. "Hey, captain! I think maybe we might've judged too soon. Looks like I found the returnees." Sunbeam had gone the other direction, forcing Machspeed to turn and hurry to follow. Or walk quickly, since anything that required more motivation seemed impossible. His whole body felt crushed, crushed by an invisible weight of lethargy that came from everywhere and overwrote everything.
There was a set of slim chairs on one of the walls, the sort many a crew on non-passenger aircraft used during takeoff and landing. There were three ponies strapped in here, the restraints only loosely holding them in place. But they didn't look good—little rivulets of blood dribbled from their mouths, their eyes. Vomit was congealed on the ground, and other unpleasant bodily fluids. They weren't conscious, but they were breathing.
"Have you ever seen this before?" Amelia asked, straightening the military uniform one of them was wearing so they could read the markings. Machspeed didn't recognize a single symbol on it, except for the three letters on the collar. "HPI."
"This isn't how the Preservation Spell works," Flashpoint said. "Everypony comes back perfect. Disabilities missing, illnesses cured... it doesn't hurt ponies like this!"
"Then something else did," Sunbeam said. "And we're trapped with it."
"Alright," Machspeed said, speaking slowly and clearly. "Flashpoint, with me. Sunbeam, Amelia, explore those stairs that way. Keep your eye out for more returnees who might need our help. And if you could find the way out, or a way to disable the spell that's trapping us here, that would be great too."
"More than great," Flashpoint added. "Whatever this is, it can't just float here forever. If the anti-magic doesn't get us, the fall will. And these ponies clearly need a doctor. They're beyond any first-aid we could give them."
"Right." They split up, Machspeed leading the way past the stairs towards a tiny dead end, which had to be the cockpit or the aft of the plane. Assuming we aren't walking around on a UFO or something. But it seemed unlikely that UFOs would have English writing on everything, or that the ones flying one would be ponies in ill-fitting military uniforms with little flag pins.
The tiny room beyond looked a little like a cockpit, with an aerodynamic slope, instrument panels running along the outside, and a pilot and copilot's chair. But the similarities ended there—there was no glass, no window, nothing but strange flickering projections that appeared when he neared the wall and switched off again as he moved past. The very front became a projection as well, and he could see a washed-out version of the exterior sky, clouds drifting slowly above and the ocean far below. It wasn't just the top of the aircraft that looked suddenly transparent, but the bottom as well, superimposed with a status HUD like the interior of an advanced fighter jet.
Some of what it displayed looked familiar to him, though there were an awful lot of zeros that couldn't have appeared on any of the aircraft he had flown back in the Royal Air Force. But other things; "Reactor Status: Nominal", "Fuel: 2% Entropy" were entirely unknown. He could at least guess at what "External Thaumic Field: 5.67 Sievert/hour. Within acceptable tolerance. Internal Thaumic Field: 1.07 Sievert/hour. DANGER! EXTREME HAZARD! CPNFG AT MAXIMUM OUTPUT! Internal radiation source detected!"
The thaumic field was what passed through everything and gave ponies their magic. From the look of the display, he had just figured out why he was so uncomfortable: there wasn't enough magic in here.
"Ughhh," someone moaned from beside them. While he had been fiddling with the controls, Flashpoint had been extricating a pony from her restraints. An earth pony with a light blue coat and darker mane had been strapped into the copilot seat, though her pony limbs would not be long enough to reach what passed for controls.
"Can you hear me?" Flashpoint asked.
The pony nodded blearily. "I'm... experiencing... symptoms of... thaumic poisoning..." she said, a little drool and blood oozing from her mouth. "Disorientation... hallucinations... Kill me before... I die on my own."
"There's no such thing," Flashpoint said, stern. "I don't know what’s actually wrong with you, but I'm sure we can treat it. Melbourne has some excellent doctors."
The pony made a vague, pained gesture with one hoof, then slumped to the floor again, breathing heavily.
"Damn." Flashpoint sighed. "Guess we won't be learning how this works from her. If we could just figure out how to dispel whatever's grounding us, we could get the returnees out."
Machspeed lifted one leg towards the side-panel. The space above filled with controls, one of which even looked a little like that he'd see on any other aircraft, except that it wasn't connected with anything. Numerous other dials, switches, and readouts appeared beside it, any of which he might manipulate if he wanted. Save that for a last resort.
"Machspeed!" came Sunbeam's voice from down the hall, urgent and getting closer. "We found somepony awake!"
He turned in time to see them struggling up the stairs, helping a young orange dragon stay on his claws. The dragon looked a little dazed, a little confused, but compared to the ponies, he was far more awake. Not terribly surprising. Dragons can take more punishment than ponies.
"That's not all," Amelia added, gesturing down the stairs. "There's a cargo bay down there. It's filled with, uh... more nuclear warnings than I've ever seen in one place."
They stopped in the cockpit, the dragon's arm wrapped around Sunbeam's neck. That seemed to be enough to keep him standing, if barely. "That's... our cargo," the dragon said. Unlike the pilot, his accent had a trace of Spanish in it, rather than American. "Raven city needs it..." he said. "World must've ended... people dying... maybe me too, but it doesn't matter if the shipment gets through."
Machspeed walked over to the exit, sitting on his haunches so he would be at eye level with the dragon. "My name is Machspeed, captain of the A.R.R.R.S. We're here to get you and your crew to safety. Who are you?"
"Reyes," he croaked. "First Lieutenant Oscar Reyes. Captain of the Ganymede. Why are you horses?"
"That's... a bit of a long story," Flashpoint said. "Short answer is..." She paused. "Wait a minute, how do you know the world ended?"
The dragon slumped to the floor, though it wasn't clear if it had been fatigue or just lack of coordination with his new body. Machspeed didn't know enough dragons to know for sure. "We've known for years. All the big countries..." He tapped the metal wall beside him with one claw. "My aircraft is bound for Raven City, our central bunker. It's... specially shielded against thaumic radiation. The confluence... must've overcome my Albatross’s shields... but Raven's are much stronger, and they're running all the time. The city is still there. They'll need the fuel we're carrying more than ever. I have to get there."
"I hate to be the one to tell you this..." Machspeed said. "But your shipment is going to be late. Over three thousand years late. Whoever these people are waiting for you in Raven, they either got along without you or they didn't.
"What? No! I have to... can't..." He made to rise, reaching for the empty pilot's chair. Then he fell on his face.
"Easy, easy," Amelia said, as Sunbeam reached down to help the dragon to his claws. "You're still disoriented. That'll pass, you'll get your bearings. Take it easy."
Machspeed stepped to the side, right into his way. "Listen to me, Reyes. Your aircraft... is unsafe for your new body and the bodies of your crew. We need magic to survive. I need you to tell me how to switch it off. Then we can get back to the ground..." And let this thing sink to the bottom of the ocean, where it belongs. But he didn't say that part.
The dragon stared up at him. He glanced to one side, at the state of the pilot where she still rested bloody and unconscious. He looked around at them, at their strange bodies, at his clawed hands. "We can't," he eventually said, defeated. "Even if you're... right, this ship is... full of radiation. We use an unshielded reactor to fly. We're carrying highly refined nuclear fuel. If I turn off the thaumic shield, we'll be dead in minutes. I... I suspect my crew and I are dead already. When the confluence occurred... it overwhelmed the shield. I had to go down and turn it on manually. There's no treatment for radiation poisoning."
Machspeed looked again to the pilot, at the slow trickle of blood from her mouth and the disorientation on her face. That did explain the symptoms of the returnee crew.
"There is now," Flashpoint corrected. "There's a spell for it. Unicorn magic. It's not an easy one... well beyond what I could do. But there are doctors in Melbourne who can. We need to get you and your crew back to the ground."
"I don't know..." Reyes muttered, staring down at his claws. "I don't know if I can fly it like this. The guidance computer is gone... there's no way to have it do the routing for us..."
"Oh, I've got an idea for that!" Amelia called, smiling slightly. "We already tested the loading ramp—it works. We could jump."
And that was exactly what they did. It took well over an hour, between gathering up the crew and tying everypony together, so that they wouldn't drift apart once they left the aircraft. A few of them woke up, stumbling around or struggling a little against their bonds, but none was healthy enough to fight.
"This won't be too hard, right Flashpoint?" Amelia asked, peeking out over the edge. They weren't moving forward at speed, but even so the open ramp was enough to let in the sound of howling air and the roar of the rotors. Though silent from either side, the massive blades were incredibly loud when you were underneath.
"No problem," Flashpoint responded, tied at the front of the group. "Getting rid of inertia is always part of a teleport. The only real question is how far we have to fall before we get our magic back."
"Not far," Reyes called. "The generator has a range of 30 meters in every direction. Once we leave it, we'll be..." His wings twitched uneasily on his back. "Well, no idea. We were supposed to be cooked alive, but some horses came to save us. I guess we were... I guess we were wrong about magic. Somehow."
"Not exactly," Machspeed said. "But we can talk about that once we get you to a hospital. You can hear the whole story if you want."
"Good," he replied. "My crew and I will... want to come back, once they get care. We still have a delivery to complete."
Machspeed opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again. There was no reason to upset this pony by telling him how impossible that was. Soon enough the fuel would run out, and it would go tumbling into the ocean, taking its toxic cargo with it. But he didn't say that, because now it was time to jump. "Stay close, everypony! Sunbeam, be ready to catch any stragglers."
"You know it!" The pegasus grinned, dashing the few steps and out. He fell immediately away from the ship, gone from sight.
"Alright!" Machspeed shouted, bracing against the backs of the tied-together ponies. "Three... two... one!" He shoved. Flashpoint and Amelia did the same, even the dragon helped. Together they went tumbling away into the void.
A few days later...
With the faint flash of a teleport, a pair of figures appeared in the cockpit of the Ganymede. Unlike the ponies, they were not dwarfed by the high ceilings, but instead stood so tall they nearly scraped against them. Both dressed in loose-fitting cloth, which began to billow about in the air aboard the ship. Both looked female, though the differences were far less pronounced than they often were for humans. Without a word, both hurried to the pilot and copilot's chairs, securing themselves. Hands flew through the holographic controls, skin pale from lifetimes in the dark.
One retracted the ramp, and the air stopped billowing. She reached up, straightening her long greenish braid. The other picked up the headset hanging from the rack, putting it on and fiddling with the controls. "Midgard, this is Retrieval. HPI-Ganymede has been secured."
Pause.
"No crew. Ponies got them. Probably A.R.R.R.S."
Another pause.
"Roger, retrieval out."
The other kept tinkering with the display, its contents blanked, leaving them briefly in darkness. The words "EXTERNAL GUIDANCE OVERRIDE" appeared, and at once they veered sharply left, rotors roaring as they began to accelerate towards supersonic.
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So two women of Jacob's tribe commandeered the ship?
Kakadu is 84% humidity on a nice day. In the dry season! And you don't swim there. All the things will eat you (Sharks in the rivers, both Bull and Saw, leaches, Crocodiles, mosquitos, giant snakes, Pigs, Water buffalo... that are carnivores??? Well maybe not the last two, but you don't mess with them...). It is not a nice place, unless you are traveling in a air conditioned car, on your way to the resort. After paying $16 to get into the park. Not dark about that last bit AT ALL!!!
Wow. I didn't think dragons would dent metal just from a few foot fall, or gouge it so easily. Giving me ideas left and right for my own story.
Using energy shields for shielding is all well and good, until thngs get disrupted. Then again, Albatross were never designed as front line weapons platforms, and they never had Brains to design the metamaterial light shell shield that was used in the Thunderbirds?
Someone gets to be a dragon, with wings? Gets difficult to work out the geneology as to which had what bits first and how they spread through the rest of the population, especially when you throw in occasional accidental temporal confusion.
Interesting. I wonder, will they search for the HPI members who became ponies? Or will they leave them for their ponyfied future?
Damn.Wonder what that toxic piece of radiation does. Maybe it's dark matter
This chapter only raises more questions
#1 This is AMAZING!!
#2 GREAT to see more stories with the "Pirate" crew! <3
#3 There has GOT to be more stories with this crew!! SO MANY QUESTIONS!!
Heh, glad that plane-salvaging crew got into the confirmed canon of the Ponies After People.
And also, magical humans to the rescure~
8299366
Sundivide him into oblivion
Something tells me that the radiation and the CPNFG are actually partially responsible for the deaths of people. Running a device to interfere with/magic and standing next to it while being swamped by a massive amount of magic and a complex spell seems almost certain to be fatal. Presumably aborted or incomplete transformations are the cause of death...
Where on Earth are they mining uranium at dangerous levels of radioactivity?
It's fairly commonplace stuff, but four billion years in the crust is enough to have it all settle into fairly stable, long-lived isotopes that don't emit huge amounts of radiation until someone comes along and does something stupid like enrich it.
In a real uranium mine, radiation isn't the danger. It's toxic heavy metal dust. Breathe that in, or swallow it, and it'll poison you long before radiation sickness can dream of setting in!
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They are not mining high radioactivity uranium ore, there appears to be a refinery located neraby. More importantly, take a glance back at Founders (I think) for how the HPI's nuclear aircraft work. The aircraft would've been a radiation hazard even if it were transporting boxes of sandwiches.
Neat! i think this is the first time we get a bit of a direct glimpse at the pre-event prep the hpi was doing. Also really cool to see the A.R.R.R.S showing up. I havent read safe landings yet but i intend to. Also finally a bit more of a timeframe again. Aaaaand its 2000+ years since the last one i remember