• Published 1st Apr 2017
  • 26,846 Views, 7,127 Comments

Message in a Bottle - Starscribe



Humanity's space exploration ultimately took the form of billions of identical probes, capable of building anything (including astronauts themselves) upon arrival at their destinations. One lands in Equestria. Things go downhill from there.

  • ...
85
 7,127
 26,846

PreviousChapters Next
G6.3850: Welcome to Othar

Lucky was falling—falling straight up into the air. She squealed in surprise, though she needn’t have worried long. Around her, the suit rotated entirely on its own, tugging her along with it until she could see the horizon straight ahead. She was still rocketing upward, but not over land. Far below her was a clear blue ocean, and not at all far away, the black sandy beach of an island. She scanned the air around her, pushing the helmet out of the way so she could hear and see better. The familiar roar returned, and she found herself spreading her wings exactly as she’d learned.

She began to slow, resisting her incredible upward acceleration. Beside her in the air, Lightning Dust was doing the same, and better. Whatever strange effect Discord had brought to cloud her mind was gone. If anything, she was far better at this than Lucky, and wasn’t going up nearly as fast. She hadn’t removed her suit so much as torn through it with her wings, leaving behind a trail of stray wires and torn fabric. I didn’t know wings could be that strong.

Then a chair plummeted past them both. A single pony’s terrified screams filled the air, if only for a moment.

“What happened?” Dust called, tense. “Where are we?”

Lucky ignored the question, pointing down at the chair. It wasn’t moving very fast—it was just foam and a pony after all—but it didn’t matter. If it smacked into the water with a pony still strapped to it… “We have to save me!”

Lightning Dust didn’t have to be cajoled or persuaded, but immediately angled herself down and dove for the chair. Lucky followed as best she could, but she had no chance of catching her mother in her element. The suit had not been built to aid in flight—it’s wing-covers seemed more like the gloves human space-suits had for astronauts. Just enough mobility to accomplish basic tasks, but still incredibly disadvantageous for getting anything done. Lucky couldn’t make fine adjustments with individual feathers. Well duh. All my feathers are covered.

By the time she caught up, Lightning Dust had already removed James from the chair and was holding her with her forelegs, flapping as hard as she could to slow their descent. The chair vanished into the ocean water with a splash. “Help!” her mother shouted, extending her other hoof. “We don’t have… quite enough… space…”

Splash! Lucky didn’t know how fast they were going at impact, but it was fast enough that her suit protested with another line of bright red text. “Acceleration warning, impact detected. No damage.” No water got in around her neck, though she was momentarily blinded by the stinging spray against her face. Lucky kicked and struggled her way to the surface, flapping her wings instinctively to keep her buoyant.

She needn’t have fought so hard. After thirty seconds or so of struggle, she felt a wave wash over her, then she smashed against something solid. Her legs went tumbling over her head, around and around… then she stopped.

Waves still crashed, and for a moment she was too dazed to move. She had failed to help Lightning Dust, failed to save Karl. Failed to keep her stupid head down and not cause trouble for the ponies she loved. I can’t second guess myself now. They still might need me. When she got to the Forerunner, then she would be judged. But not now.

Lucky sat up. She was on the beach all right, water lapping around her body without much energy. Fifty feet away or so, a thick jungle began, filled with the calls of strange birds. Laying in the surf were both the ponies she was looking for. Dust was on her back, occasionally coughing up more sea water. Beside her, James had gotten to her hooves, but hadn’t moved out of the water. She stood frozen, completely catatonic even as the water hit her.

“Mom!” Lucky croaked, rising to her own shaky limbs and making her way over. “Mom, are you okay? Do you need help?”

“No,” Dust groaned, then twisted her body sharply to one side. The rip along her back widened in a harsh protest of fabric, and she pulled herself through the opening, shaking her legs out of the rest of the pressure suit. She kicked it away into the water. It floated, and began to drift slowly away in the current.

Dust, meanwhile, crawled the rest of the way up onto the black sand, before dropping again less than a meter from Lucky. “Serious question, sweetie.” She rolled onto her back, looking up at Lucky. “You aren’t trying to become Daring Do, right? Cuz’ this is how a pony becomes Daring Do.”

Lucky couldn’t help herself—she dropped down beside her adoptive mother and clung to her in the sand. She wanted to get the suit off just as Dust had done, wanted to press herself to that familiar coat and cling there until she felt safe again. It didn’t matter that her clone was watching. Let her watch.

But she still didn’t know how to get it off, or get it on again once she had. Out in the wilderness, far from the help of friendly ponies, it was more rational to leave the space suit firmly in place. Until she figured out where Discord had sent them.

Lightning Dust held her close anyway, even though the thick fabric of the suit made it difficult to enjoy the contact.

“I’ve heard… ponies say they’d met Discord… some stories came out of Ponyville after he took over for a few days. I think now I believe them.”

Lucky nodded. “I think I do too.” She remembered what the suit had said. All the warnings about exposure had been gone when she appeared out in open air. So, whatever he had done, the effects hadn’t lingered. Did he attack Dust intentionally, then? And a deeper, more disturbing thought: What if the suit wasn’t protecting me at all. Maybe he let it work so we could talk.

On the one hand, Discord had just saved their lives. On the other, he had only planned to save her. The others he’d been willing to throw away as though their lives were irrelevant.

“So, what happened?” Dust asked. “My memory is fuzzy. Can you remember?”

She nodded. “Discord said he wants me to help with something. He was vague on the details, but I think that’s why he saved us. Something to do with Flurry Heart, but I don’t know what.”

Lightning Dust shivered visibly, even as she rose to her hooves. “That’s a dangerous game to play, Lucky. He’s even worse than the princesses. Dangerous, but doesn’t care about us. The best thing to do is stay away. Going on playdates with a princess who also wants to pretend she’s Daring Do is one thing. There are lots of cute stories about things like that. But if you start doing what Discord says…” She lowered her voice, glancing around as she leaned in close, whispering into Lucky’s ear. “Ponies wonder if he’s sincere. We thought he was, but then Tirek attacked, and he didn’t stop it. And that wasn’t even the last time...”

“I’m not going to side with him against Equestria,” Lucky said, though she wasn’t completely sure what that even meant. I’ve been trapped here, Discord had said. We’re going to set them free. She could only hope Equestria’s god of chaos intended to explain things in depth next time he appeared.

“We’re not on the jumper,” James said, from not that far away. She stumbled away from the ocean as though she had only then woken up, her hoofsteps unsteady and her whole body shaking slightly as she did so. “H-how are we back on the island? Did we crash?” She looked down at her own suit, which had taken some damage as Dust ripped her free, or maybe as she hit the water. There was no way to know for sure. “I don’t see wreckage.”

Lucky blinked, then reluctantly got back to her hooves as well. “It’s not going to be easy to explain,” she said. “Something shot us down. One of Equestria’s powerful… agents… intervened and saved our lives. But he couldn’t save Karl. She was already dead.”

James blinked, taking that in. She looked between Lucky and Lightning Dust, then back out at the ocean. “How could someone save our lives if we’d already been shot down? And save us, but not Dr. Nolan?” She shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Lucky shrugged one shoulder. “That’s how it was. Maybe my suit has video, and we can get it to play back for you. That’s not really a priority right now.” She paused, looking the pony over. “You don’t have a radio, do you?” Lucky’s old helmet and trusty computation surface would be burning in a fiery aircraft wreck about now.

“Nope.” James shrugged her off, impatiently. “We don’t need one. We’re back at Othar.” She turned, pointing at the soft soil near the edge of the jungle. “See that? Hephaestus tracks. We can follow those back to the base.”

“What is the pony saying?” Dust asked, annoyed. “I forgot how frustrating this was.”

Lucky turned to her mom. “She says this was the island we were trying to get to. We can follow those tracks back to the village.” Not quite the word anyone living there would want to use for Othar, but it was the simplest translation.

Dust laughed. “Walk? How about we just fly over the island and follow the smoke?”

Now James was the one watching without comprehension. There was a little annoyance on her face, but far less than Dust. Lucky knew exactly what she would be thinking at a time like this. Hearing two fluent Eoch speakers have a conversation in front of her would do more for her understanding than weeks of reading notes. Lucky wondered how much of it she could understand—probably more than she could speak.

“I don’t think she can fly,” Lucky said. “Which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. Let me see what she thinks of the idea.”

She turned back. “Me, walking would be dumb.” She held out her wings, flexing them one at a time to make her point obvious. “Between the two of us, we could probably carry you.”

No,” James answered, so firmly that even Dust seemed to recognize the answer. “I just fell out of a plane, little clone girl. And even if I hadn’t, Othar has an anti-air system. If we were on the other side of the island, it probably would’ve shot you… or her.” She pointed at Lightning Dust, who was already spreading her wings and preparing for takeoff. “She doesn’t have implants, so…”

“Stop!” Lucky turned, reaching out to put both hooves on Lightning Dust’s shoulders. “It’s not safe!”

Dust frowned, though she didn’t fight to try and take off anyway. “What?”

“There’s dangerous magic here,” Lucky explained. “On the island. We can’t fly here.”

It was a good thing Discord had dropped them somewhere they wouldn’t be noticed. But then, if he’d known enough to know about the island, he probably knew its defensive capabilities as well. Olivia won’t like that. At least one of the aliens knows where we live. He could get us here without any resistance. If he wanted to send an army of ponies here, or God-forbid a bomb, there would be no way to stop him.

Then another thought, even more disturbing. Discord knew how my suit worked. Is he… related to the builders? It would fit—a godlike being, beyond the comprehension of ponies, with goals completely inscrutable to them. He could’ve killed us! Throwing us out like that, completely unprepared…

Lucky was shaken out of that thought by something far more urgent—she noticed Lightning Dust had started shivering. Her clone was too—hadn’t ever stopped since she got out of the water. And it was getting dark.

“We need a fire,” she said, completely unprompted. “We can think about getting home once we get warm.” She took the time to repeat the instructions twice—first in Eoch, then in English.

“Good idea,” Lightning Dust answered. Her clone didn’t argue, either. But her clone was probably thinking along the same lines anyway. She’d had all the same training, after all.


Lightning Dust rested atop the folded wreckage of the suit Lucky Break had given her to wear, warming herself before the fire. They’d found plenty of wood on this uncharted island—lots of it dry enough to burn. Whatever else might happen to them in the night to come, at least they wouldn’t do it cold.

This break was the first time Lightning Dust had to think, without being interrupted by some new disaster or even Lucky. What’s the difference?

Her filly had finally removed the strange outfit she and the princess had been wearing, though that process itself had taken her well over an hour to figure out. She wasn’t sitting beside Dust, though she suspected that she would’ve come if called. But Lucky was busy speaking to the mare they had saved. Dust couldn’t understand a word they were saying, as the mare didn’t seem to speak much Eoch at all, but it was very clearly an emotional conversation.

It was then that Lightning Dust noticed something, something she had thought she had imagined when Lucky had been fighting her way out of the suit. In the bright orange glow of their campfire, Lightning Dust could see Lucky Break’s cutie mark had changed.

That’s impossible, that’s impossible, that’s impossible…

Everything Lightning Dust had ever known about cutie marks made that fact absolutely clear. It wasn’t like a name, which a pony could change if they needed to. A cutie mark was sacred.

“Lucky.” She struggled to form words, clearing her throat, coughing, trying again. She could still taste seawater. “Lucky, what happened to your…” She couldn’t even get the word out, just stared at her flank. “Where’s the guitar?”

“Oh.” The filly’s ears flattened, embarrassed. “There was some kinda… magic, in the ruins. It taught me the language by giving me this mark. I guess it replaced the one I had.”

She didn’t sound upset—certainly not the way anypony else might’ve sounded, if their whole life had just been taken away. For that was exactly what a cutie mark was—it was a pony’s past, present and future. It didn’t just indicate their special talent, but it decided what doors had closed and which would open. For the rest of a pony’s life.

She’s just a filly, she probably doesn’t know that. And she hadn’t had the guitar very long. Maybe she just wasn’t attached yet. “Do you think it will go back to normal?”

“I dunno,” Lucky answered. “It doesn’t feel temporary. But I don’t understand magic that well, so maybe. It might wear off.” She didn’t seem in a hurry to go into more detail, and so Lightning Dust didn’t press her. Not now, anyway.

Dust settled back into the sand, trying to relax. Her whole life had been upended once every few years or so, but this… this one day had been stranger than all the others combined.

This peace was exactly what Dust needed to consider what she’d done, and how she’d gotten out here. No pony turns from harmony to evil with a single act, Lightning Dust. Accidents and carelessness escalate, and each new hoofstep puts you ever-further away from other ponies. Princess Luna had told her that. Dust hadn’t believed her—who was the Night Princess to lecture her, after all she’d done to Equestria?

But now the princess’s words rang truer. Should I have left Celestia to take care of Lucky? Was I playing into forces I couldn’t understand?

There was no questioning that Dust was outside the realm of things ordinary ponies understood, and not just because the wildness of this island clearly spoke of land outside Equestria. On the other side of the fire, Lucky Break was talking to a pony who sounded almost exactly like her. Not only that, but she was an adult mare without a cutie mark, something that shouldn’t be possible.

Lightning Dust had told Lucky she didn’t remember anything that had happened while they flew inside the metal airship. She had only been partly lying about that. Dust couldn’t remember very much, but what she could…

She had tried to stand bravely against Discord, a demon out of the worst nightmares. She had crumpled before him without a fight, overwhelmed by his strange magic. On the other hoof, her little filly, barely old enough for her cutie mark, had stood bravely before the dark god and defied him to his face. How many ponies in Equestria could’ve done that? A few, if the stories were right. The princesses had done it, along with a single group of ponies who had earned her dislike.

There are two ways to see it. Either Lucky is like them, or she’s like a princess. It was hard to say which was the more disturbing thought.

That wasn’t the only strange thing about Lucky. Dust wasn’t stupid, however much she might lack interest for the things that fascinated the filly. She realized just how quickly Lucky had learned Eoch. She noticed her obsession with her strange devices, both the flat slab of metal she called a “computer,” and the stand that moved and always pointed out the window.

Now she gets us teleported outside of Equestria, now she’s making deals with a god…

Dust watched Lucky across the fire, feeling the slight bubbles of suspicion in her chest. She fought them back, but not entirely successfully. Have I been taken for a ride? Dust had been alerted to the possibility early on that maybe Lucky was part of some changeling plot. Some new, even more dangerous tribe, with machines and magic Equestria had never seen.

Yes, Lightning Dust resented the powers in Equestria for ruining her life. Even today, she’d been put in danger—apparently almost killed, if what Lucky said about the encounter was true. Her near-identical older sister seemed to think it was. But no matter how much she resented Equestria’s leaders, she had no intention of turning on its ponies. Even if they so often turned on her.

It couldn’t all just be an act. She’s been my daughter for months now! It couldn’t all have been a lie.

Then another thought, from that same part of herself she hadn’t heard since the trial. Just wait and see. She doesn’t need you anymore. She’s going to get rid of you.

Lightning Dust didn’t believe the voice—but she didn’t forget it, either. She hadn’t believed it when it told her that Rainbow Dash’s friends had put themselves in danger knowing the exam was going on, hoping to somehow make a fool of her so that Rainbow Dash would get the position instead of her.

She didn’t really believe it, but she didn’t forget either. She would remember this too.

Almost as though Lucky could hear her thinking, the filly rose from where she’d been sitting on a large rock, storming over to Lightning Dust. Without invitation or prompting, the filly sat herself down in a huff, glaring at the fire.

Lightning Dust managed to stop herself from recoiling at her touch, but only just. “What’s wrong?”

Lucky Break was oblivious to her discomfort, and settled herself in beside Dust as she had on many nights before. She didn’t say anything until after she’d tucked her legs under her body, and had relaxed a little.

This isn’t how a monster acts who’s going to take over Equestria. This is an ordinary pony that others just don’t understand. She’s like me, only… more ambitious. Bigger enemies.

“I’ve been learning about how things have been going while I’ve been gone.”

“Bad news?” Dust asked, keeping her tone as flat as she could. “You sounded upset.”

“Yeah,” Lucky answered. “I mean, we’re coming back with worse news. Equus can shoot down hypersonic aircraft like it’s nothing. And there are people on this ring who think we’re about to invade or something.”

She can’t read my thoughts, right? Dust looked at the filly intently, as though by doing so she might see through the little pony’s eyes and see if she noticed the moment Dust had been thinking about her.

Lucky didn’t react, though, just glared at the fire as though it was somehow responsible for their misfortune.

“Well, are you?” Dust asked, keeping the emotion out of her voice. “Equestria’s been through a lot since I’ve been born. More invasions and coups and rebellions than the whole thousand years before.” It would make sense for you to be just the next part of that, she added, but did not say aloud.

No,” Lucky said, a little exasperated. “Mom, we’ve talked about this before. All we want is to have a place to live and to make friends with ponies.”

She had accepted that reasoning before. Before she’d seen a strange machine of metal appear from thin air and carry them so fast she couldn’t move. Before she’d seen a foal stand defiantly in the face of a god. “If that was all you wanted, why that whole, uh… ‘adventure’ with Flurry Heart? Scaring half the country won’t help you make friends.”

She expected Lucky to argue, particularly with how angry she smelled. Instead, the filly only slumped to the ground, covering her face with one hoof. “I know. I can’t believe I was so dumb.” Her ears and tail flattened, and she moaned quietly to herself.

Dust didn’t know what to say to that. She would’ve comforted the filly, on any other day. But just now, she wasn’t sure she should. It had been every bit as dumb as Lucky said, and more.

“We spend thousands of years getting here,” the little pony went on, her voice only partially muffled by a foreleg. “And here I am, generation three, thinking there’s somehow urgency to solving this mystery. Like generation four couldn’t work it out, or generation fifty million. I bet they could’ve cut through that door with a plasma torch and enough time. Or… hell, through the stone. It didn’t have to be me. But no, I just had to go anyways.”

Lightning Dust didn’t know what all those words meant, even though they were all in Eoch. She let the silence linger for another few minutes, wondering if the pony would say more. She didn’t, and eventually Dust spoke.

“What are you, Lucky? I know, we talked about it once. You came from far away, you aren’t a slave, I remember all that. But what are you, really? Maybe now that you speak Eoch, you can explain it properly.” She reached down with a wing, lifting Lucky’s face until she was looking up at her. “I think you owe me that, after this.”

“Yeah,” Lucky said. “It might be easier to show you some of this. My, uh… my aunt says we’re almost home. When we get there, you’ll be able to see lots of things that might make this easier.”

Dust rose to her hooves, lifting Lucky too and sitting her down on her haunches, as she might’ve done to discipline her after eating a whole week’s worth of sweets. “Maybe, maybe not. Tell me anyway. I want to hear it from you, kid. After all this…” She glanced back at the ocean, a hundred meters away. “Let’s just say it’s getting harder and harder for me not to worry about being on the wrong side. Equestria is my home, no matter what it’s done to me. I don’t want to be part of the next invasion.”

Lucky whimpered, looking away. But what had hurt her, she didn’t say. As before, Dust resisted the urge to comfort her. She would get no excuses this time, no easy outs.

Eventually the filly stopped crying, and had collected herself enough to speak again. “Remember the time we talked about what Equus was like? We talked about the stars.” She looked up, gesturing with a hoof above them. With only a campfire for light, there were lots of stars to see.

“Yes,” Dust answered. “What about them?”

“Well… most places aren’t like Equus. Most of those stars have planets around them. Huge, round balls, so big you can stand anywhere on it and think it’s flat. There are so many of them you could never count them all… and if you could fly all the way to one, you’d only see more.”

“Okay, I believe you. So what?”

“So way out there, I don’t even know how far… but so far you could fly for thousands and thousands of years and still not feel like you were getting any closer… is a little yellow star. Around it is a little planet called Earth.”

“What, that’s where earth ponies come from? A whole planet of just ground?”

“No!” Lucky stomped one hoof. “Do you want me to explain or not?”

“Sorry.” Dust gestured with one wing. “Go back to explaining.”

“There are no ponies on Earth. Instead of all the different tribes, and other things that live on Equus… dragons and minotaurs and all that… there’s just one tribe, called humans. I think I’ve told you that word before.”

She nodded, but didn’t interrupt this time.

“Yeah, well. Humans had been living a long time on Earth, long enough to come up with all the wonderful inventions you see me use sometimes. My computer, airships, lots of other things you have no words for. But that wasn’t enough. We were spreading out far—building domes on Mars, colonies in lava tubes. Research outposts all over our solar system… Right, you don’t know what that is either. Forget about that part, then.

“Point is, building alone forever is okay, but we wanted more than that. We wanted to know if, somewhere far away, on some other planet, there might be other kinds of people. We didn’t know what they’d look like, or where they would be, but we wondered.”

“So, you came here?” Dust supplied. “Got into a… metal airship, and flew so fast you got here before thousands of years were up? Or maybe you turned yourselves to stone, and only changed back when you got here? But then somepony would have to stay awake the whole time…”

“No,” Lucky said. “But not that far off. We can go much faster than you can, but not fast enough. There’s a… speed limit. Nothing in the universe can go faster than three hundred thousand kilometers per second. Doesn’t matter how magical you are, or how smart. Well… that’s what we thought when I left, anyway. There were some theories… but I’m getting distracted.”

She started pacing back and forth in front of the flames. As she spoke, Dust watched carefully for any sign of deception. She had the advantage of many months living with Lucky—she knew how she lied. Whenever Lucky didn’t want to tell her about something, she’d change her tone, or maybe look the other way, while her tail swished quickly back and forth. She’d be a terrible cards player.

Lucky Break did none of those things now as she spoke. “This part is hard to explain. The point is, we didn’t know where to go to find you. There might be lots of different people living out there, but they all might be easy to miss. We had to go to as many places as possible. Let’s, uh… imagine Equestria gets bigger, and it wants some new cities built past the border to have weather. It could just send the clouds and stuff full of water ready to go from factories it already has. But that might take a long time, and lots of water would be wasted on the way. It would take far fewer ponies if they set up a new factory somewhere closer. They could build the factory in Cloudsdale and just fly it in…”

Which is what they do, Dust thought, but she didn’t say so.

“But now let’s say the new city is so far away that Equestria can’t even do that. There are… dangerous windstorms or something. Factory can’t get there. So instead, they send a smart pegasus to move into the new town. She knows how to make a weather factory, and after a few years, she teaches all the locals, and they harvest the metal and water and things, and they build one right there.”

“Okay…” Dust said. “I guess that makes sense. But how is it related?”

“That’s what the humans did,” Lucky said. “But we couldn’t even send a pony, because it’s so far away. Thousands of years, maybe more. So we sent a spell instead. A… machine. Not just one, but lots of them. Dozens, when I heard about the project. But each of those was supposed to send out more.

“Think of the spell like… writing a letter, putting it into a bottle, and throwing it into the ocean. It drifts for years, until somepony finds it. If nobody finds it, the spell inside lands on the beach, turns the sand into more bottles, and throws itself back into the ocean. The message floats along until it finds someone friendly.”

“Then what?”

“Then it… makes me,” Lucky said. “Not just me. Her.” She pointed across the fire. “That’s why we look so alike. The spell only knew how to make one type of pony. And we’re not the only ones.”

“A spell makes ponies?” Dust asked, unable to restrain her disbelief. “Not even Celestia can do that!” At least, she didn’t think so. There were some ponies who acted like the princesses had created Equestria. Dust dismissed such superstitious ideas. “So you’re… not real?”

“It’s not a very good analogy,” Lucky admitted. “It doesn’t use magic at all really, and… it’s more like it grows us. Like imagine if I could take a picture of you, then plant it in some special soil and a copy would grow. Kinda like that? Except…” She shook her head. “There’s no way to explain! All of this, it’s one stupid rhetorical device after another.”

She stopped pacing, breathing heavily. “Look, is it enough to say that we’re a powerful alien race from far away? Everything I’ve ever told you about us being friendly is true. There’s just one thing I haven’t told you. We can’t leave. Equus is our home now, and so I’ve been very interested in learning as much as I could about it. What its history is, its dangers… By tomorrow morning they should’ve found us, and you’ll see our whole city. Everything we have. We’re building more, but…” She trailed off.

Dust didn’t say anything, so there was another long silence. Lucky’s story sounded about as crazy as it had the first time she heard the pieces of it. But at the same time, it did make sense. It fit with what she’d seen—how helpless and confused the pony had been. Where this new language had come from, even though they were all ponies. Why Lucky cared so much about things that most ponies would’ve dismissed as academic questions they didn’t need to worry about.

It left some holes. For one, did the princesses know about them? If so, why try so hard to capture Lucky when she’d first arrived? And what had the monsters been that attacked Dodge Junction, and apparently killed a pony exactly like Lucky?

But the question that troubled her most wasn’t that one, even though it probably should’ve been. “What about you?” Dust asked. “The pony I know as Lucky Break, who is she?”

“I’m… a lot younger and a lot older than you think,” she answered. “I was only born a week before you met me. But… I have memories that are older.” She pointed with her wing across the fire, at her older sister. “She has the same memories. Until the moment we were both born. Then I went off, lived with you, you took me in… made me different. I’m the oldest one here, actually… except for you.”

“Not changelings?”

“No.” She laughed, sitting back down on her haunches. “Have you ever seen me change? The others can’t either. It’s our home, and we look how we look.” She sighed. “After living with you, I want more than ever for humans to get along with you. I’d like a few of us to be able to make a home here. Maybe on this island—doesn’t look like anypony else is using it. And I had to go and mess it up.”

She lowered her voice, glaring at the ground again. “Of course, we wouldn’t know about a whole dead civilization if I hadn’t done anything… wouldn’t know the ring-builders’ language… but we wouldn’t have pissed off the princesses either. If they ever find out that I was the one… and everypony here looks exactly like me.” She moaned, covering her face again. “I know, I’m not very smart. I’m a rotten filly. You probably don’t want to see me again. I wouldn’t blame you. We can… probably get you a ride back to Equestria. Anywhere you want. Without my tracker on the damn jumper, it shouldn’t get shot down…”

She was crying now. Lightning Dust could never mistake her pitiful squeaks, mixed in with her words.

Lucky isn’t a bad pony. She’s not trying to use me. She’s a scared foal in a bad situation that nopony else understands.

This time, Lightning Dust did pull her in for a hug, wrapping the filly up with both her wings. “Shh… quiet down, kid. I don’t want to get rid of you. Actually, it’s kind of impressive how much of a mess you made.” That didn’t help, and she only started crying louder.

“H-heh, well… that probably wasn’t… look, I forgive you. And from what I remember, Princess Flurry Heart really liked adventuring with you. Maybe she’ll smooth everything over. If she really takes credit for it all, Celestia won’t blame the other… humans. What’s a human, anyway?”

Lucky ignored the question. “If,” she muttered glumly. “Now you sound like Sparta.”

“I have no idea what that is,” Dust said. “But I don’t care.” She lowered herself close to the ground, covering Lucky back up with one wing. “This doesn’t work as well with sand as it does in the clouds. You sure we can’t just fly up there and…”

“Yes!” Lucky’s voice was instantly fearful. “I’ve seen how good anti-air systems are. Until I can get Olivia to shut them down, you can’t fly here.”

Lightning Dust grunted. “Whatever. Fire’s warm. Now, troublemakers like you need to get some sleep. Tomorrow you can show me all these things you wanted me to see. Maybe what you said will make more sense once I have something to look at.”

Lucky only laughed, breaking into a tired yawn near the end. “Y-yeah.” She shivered, adjusting herself. Looking down at the filly, Dust could find no more place in her heart for suspicion. It didn’t matter what the little voice said. This wasn’t a monster. Lucky might not be a pony the way she knew them, but why should that stop anything? Lightning Dust was friends with dragons, and griffons, and other things. Why couldn’t this one be her daughter?

The filly in question was asleep within minutes, as overwhelmed by the day as Dust felt. She watched the pony on the other side of the dying campfire, tossing and turning as she tried to find a comfortable position. Are you the pony Lucky would’ve been if she hadn’t come to me?

She might’ve asked about it, but without her daughter to do the translating, they could only exchange a few simple words. It was best just to wait until morning. Things would feel less insane then.


Olivia leaned slightly into her seat aboard the Chariot hovercraft, resting one hoof on the restraints that kept her firmly secured even during the Chariot’s near constant changes of direction. Othar’s (currently unnamed) island had no roads yet, nothing that might be seen by passing flyers as signs of civilization. A Chariot could make for quite a comfortable trip over such rough terrain, if you were willing to sacrifice speed for comfort so the pair of drones flying ahead could scout out the best path.

Under her uniform, both flanks were still covered with bandage. Her body appeared to be healing well. Unfortunately, even total healing could do little to erase what she had seen.

Olivia was unwilling to sacrifice speed, or indeed, much of anything. They wouldn’t even be waiting until they got back to Othar to have their debriefing. The Chariot had no cockpit, was just an armored version of a civilian hovercraft, so there was plenty of room inside for a few ponies. Ponies like Lieutenant Diego Perez, the head of her new Special Forces unit, as well as Dr. Dorothy Born, leader of her scientists.

“I know you don’t want to talk,” Dr. Born was saying even now. “But this is earth-shattering stuff. You need to hear it.”

Olivia grunted, and reluctantly looked away from the window. She’d taken medication for the motion sickness inevitable with such a rough transport, but like all medication its effect on a pony body was spotty at best. Not nearly as useful as she remembered the drug being back on Earth. “I’ve had my understanding shattered every few hours lately, doctor. I’m sure whatever this is can wait.”

“No,” she insisted, “it can’t.”

Perez balked at such obvious disrespect, but said nothing. Civilians were afforded luxuries that no one in a proper chain of command could get away with, and he knew it. He looked as unhappy as Olivia was about the idea, at least. Olivia was already impressed with the conduct of her team. Even Lei was adapting to her awakening remarkably well. She might even be ready for light duty in another week or so.

“Fine,” Olivia said. “Forerunner, how long until we arrive?”

“Two minutes,” its voice answered, almost immediately.

“That’s how long you have,” Olivia said. “You have my undivided attention.” A complete lie. Born was lucky to even get half of it, given Olivia’s discomfort. Both physical, and over the images Othar’s security drones had sent back. Three ponies, and one of her crew missing.

“I know how native cells can survive on the ring and why transplanted cells can’t,” Dr. Born said, without preamble. She held up her tablet in her mouth, which displayed some image an electron microscope had taken, with some parts of the cell colored and others not. Olivia could make no sense of it, and didn’t want to try while constantly bumping and shifting. I will not vomit in front of Perez. Or Dr. Irwin once we get her, for that matter.

The translator was different from the other civilians Olivia was forced to tolerate. She followed directions, such as the way she’d started sending regular reports. She put herself at risk to accomplish her mission. From what little Olivia had read, the translator could’ve taken some books and ran back home with her tail between her legs. But she hadn’t. Maybe the grown up one is defective. Puberty ruined all her good traits.

Dr. Born had been talking this whole time, explaining something that made no sense. Olivia cleared her throat. “Try that again,” she said. “No, wait. Let’s skip right to the conclusions. Can we grow humans yet, or can’t we?”

“We, uh…” Hesitation. “The organelles work a lot like mitochondria, like I said. They have their own independent reproductive cycle, their own DNA. They seem to be self-regulating, reproducing or allowing themselves to die according to prion levels in the host cells. My initial trials with transplanted Born bodies… that’s what I’m calling them for the time being… has proven tentatively successful. But there might be long-term side effects. Ideally, I’d like to start a large cell line, grow as many human tissues as we can. Then have the Forerunner grow us a body without a mind, see how they live. If it works the way I think it will, we could have our first humans in… twenty years?”

If Olivia had been drinking anything, she would’ve spit it all over the car. “Two decades?” She shook her head vigorously. “Doctor, I don’t think you understand the scale of what you’re talking about. We have two genetic samples to work with right now. I don’t need to tell my team’s geneticist what implications that has for the success of Othar.”

Dr. Born looked unconcerned. “Then we go out and get more samples, or we wait. There’s no rush about this—we aren’t on a deadline. But if I’m wrong, and we scale this up…”

Olivia cleared her throat. “I don’t think you understand the dangers we’re in. Going back into ‘Equestria’ to gather samples subjects us to unaffordable risk. Waiting without increasing our readiness for eventual attack, while growing a population that’s not viable long term… No. Can’t the Forerunner just run all your tests in simulation?”

“Well… yeah, I’m already running those. But just because—”

The hovercraft came to an abrupt stop. “We have arrived,” said the Forerunner, its voice as flat as ever.

“I expect to know the result of your simulations as soon as they’re complete. If the results are good, then we’ll make sure we’re the last pony generation. Understood?”

“Yes.” Dr. Born settled back into her seat, folding her hooves together and glaring. But she didn’t argue. At least she understood their relative standing well enough to know that what Olivia said, the Forerunner would do.

Except when I told it to stop killing Lei. That could’ve gone better.

“Open the door,” she ordered, rising to her hooves. Olivia wasn’t wearing a formal dress uniform, as she might’ve done to greet a returning operative in better circumstances. She was armored, just like Perez in the corner. Her helmet hung from a bungee on the armor, but otherwise she was ready to fight at a moment’s notice. If this was some kind of trap, well… she’d be ready for it.

The Chariot settled slowly down onto one of four stainless steel legs, then the pressurized door hissed open.

They’re at my beach, she thought, and her tail twitched slightly in irritation inside her armor. But just a little—she wasn’t going to say anything about that. None of the scientists even knew about this beach. Let alone the remote translator.

She saw exactly what the drones had shown her—a makeshift campsite, with gathered fruits from the island none of them had eaten on her order. The translator and her guest obviously didn’t know about that, because they’d grilled several large spits of them, and most were eaten. The older clone had clearly eaten too, judging by the slime in her fur. Honestly, you’re on the beach. Take a bath.

“Dr. James Irwin, generation three,” she said, stepping down out of the hovercraft with a nervous glance to one side. There were two dozen drones circling this location, each of them armed, so she didn’t anticipate trouble. But she hadn’t anticipated the jumper getting shot down the day before. She hadn’t anticipated the Forerunner trying to kill one of her soldiers before they were even finished cooking.

She didn’t salute, but she did stick out one hoof to shake. Despite her armor, James G3 was taller than she was, and a little more mature. She also had a symbol on her flank.

The translator returned the gesture, grinning with apparent nonchalance. “Good to finally meet you, Olivia. But I know I’ve got another clone here, so how about Lucky? It’s just my name in Eoch.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Me and I had a great time getting confused about it the first few times we spoke.”

Olivia shrugged. “Lucky,” she repeated, probably botching the pronunciation. It wasn’t one of the two languages that mattered. “Yes, well.” She looked around. “Is Dr. Nolan around somewhere? We need to return to Othar as quickly as possible.”

“No.” That was Dr. Irwin, the adult-aged one. The defective one. “She’s dead.” The mare shifted uncomfortably on her hooves, looking back towards the ocean. “We’re the only ones who made it.”

“Where’s the body?” Olivia asked, her voice going cold. “Did you bury her?”

“No,” Dr. Irwin said. “We couldn’t find her. But we know she couldn’t have survived. As fast as we were going… we shouldn’t have lived. But Lucky says there are reasons for it, they just didn’t make sense to me.”

“I expect to get that explanation as soon as we are moving. I will trust your assessment for the moment.” Now she had to deal with what Dr. Irwin had brought back for her. There were three ponies—two translators, and the native.

That pony was taller than any of them, with a whole body of lean muscles, a mane swept in several different colors, and confident eyes. Even the bigger translator clone acted a little intimidated by Olivia, but not this pony.

“One last thing before we leave.” She gestured at the new pony. “Who’s this? Your message mentioned you would be bringing someone, but you were light on details.”

“This is Lightning Dust,” Lucky said, stepping a little closer to the off-green pony. “She’s the one I’ve been living with all these months.”

Olivia leaned forward, lowering her voice to a whisper and speaking directly into Lucky’s ear. It didn’t seem likely that a native would’ve been able to learn English or Mandarin as quickly as Earth’s best translator had learned their language, but she couldn’t be sure.

“Lucky, one of our hypersonic ships was just shot down. I cannot allow anything into Othar that might put my crew at risk. Your native friend is a potential liability, no matter how much she’s done to help you get this far.”

Olivia expected the translator to recoil, to cower as civilians always did to her demands. She was disappointed, however.

The filly tensed visibly, her expression getting almost as cold as Olivia’s had been moments before. “My friend gave up her entire life to protect me, Olivia. She defied the princesses of Equestria. I’d have been captured and my mission would’ve failed months and months ago if it wasn’t for her.”

“That may be,” Olivia hissed back. “But we’re under attack. No matter what you think she’s done for you, she’s a liability. Until we figure out what’s going on, she has to go back.”

Lucky instantly stepped back, towards the stranger. “If she goes, so do I,” she said. “Lightning Dust has nowhere to go. She can’t go back to Equestria right now any more than I can. You won’t find a pony more willing to give another society a chance than she is.

Olivia thought about ordering her—or ordering Perez to just toss Lucky into the Chariot and be done with it. Instead of that, she took a single deep breath, looking sidelong at the older translator. Maybe you weren’t defective after all. You both have too much compassion and not enough sense.

“Lightning Dust” had apparently been helping their mission for months now. She was still a risk, but a risk with the potential for a huge payoff. They’re just primitives, how dangerous can they be? Besides, this one came with a competent translator. They could learn all sorts of things about the pony society their negotiator could…

Their dead negotiator wasn’t about to use anything they learned. And we’re still in danger. Even standing here on the beach we’re at risk.

How long had she been standing there considering, everyone watching her say nothing and not move? Olivia didn’t care. “Fine.” She walked calmly past Lucky, until she was looking up at the one her translator cared so much about. The pony did not seem to have understood much of what was said, but she did seem to have grasped the tone. She watched Olivia with obvious suspicion.

“Hello, Lightning Dust,” she said, extending a hoof. “Welcome to Othar.”

The native looked down at her hoof. There was a long silence, Lightning Dust obviously comprehending the gesture, but unwilling to cooperate.

Then she did. “Hello,” she said back, her accent as thick as when Olivia had tried to say her name. “Lucky—” something something nonsense words.

“Good enough.” Olivia turned away from the native, facing the open vehicle. “Everyone get your asses into the Chariot. Debriefing begins as soon as we’re on the move.”

PreviousChapters Next