Part 2: Atreides Class
The bridge of the Wing of Midnight was a far less impressive place than many other ships she’d commanded. It might’ve been a modest conference room on Earth somewhere, with its many reconfigurable interfaces and holosurfaces on the walls. There were two chairs near the front for pilot and copilot—the rest of the seats they’d brought were camp chairs. From what Olivia had seen so far, the ship had been well supplied at the moment it departed—but for such a tiny ship, that didn’t mean much.
In a way, sitting around the folding table reminded Olivia of the early days of this expedition, when it had just been her and a few specialists. Only difference is I’m not the governor anymore.
It was mostly the same people here now, with the addition of Forerunner’s synthsleeve, Deadlight sporting a cast on one wing, and Lightning Dust lurking behind everyone and never taking a chair of her own.
Every spot on the table had a computation surface filled with data, and Olivia pulled hers closer, scanning what it contained. Mostly images from the destruction of Othar. There were images taken of the battle as well, along with the auto-generated field report.
Damn. What the hell kind of ship was the Storm King flying, anyway? That was the real wildcard in this conflict—his soldiers had been nothing special, and their weapons were downright primitive. But that ship…
“Alright, we’re all here,” Lucky said, settling into the captain’s chair. “Thanks to Deadlight for lending us his ship for the time being.”
Deadlight nodded once, his good wing resting protectively on Melody’s shoulder. “Othar’s future is my future.”
“So it is.” Lucky straightened. “I’m going to get everyone up to speed as quick as I can. We don’t have much time to decide what to do next. As of this moment, General Qingzhi is preparing to withdraw from operations in Barbary. But I have not yet given him the order to rendezvous with us. We’ll decide if that’s appropriate in the next few minutes.”
She couldn’t wait any longer. “What the hell happened to our defenses, Governor? I built that place armed to the fucking teeth. We could’ve taken on an entire bombing wing without scratching the paint. Now my beach looks like…” She zoomed in on the image. It was hard to say what part of the island had been her tropical retreat. “A shithole. Like the rest of it.”
Lucky nodded to Forerunner. Olivia had heard very little from him since waking up. Even now his tone was somewhat subdued, as though he were in mourning. “Against enemy landing air units and landing craft, our defenses were modestly effective, but that was not the primary threat Othar faced during that engagement.
“The enemy carrier was impervious to every form of subnuclear ordinance Othar possessed. The dragons they used as fighters and interceptors were surprisingly resilient as well, with performance roughly equivalent to X-class hypersonic interceptors, except that they have significantly better handling and greatly reduced range.”
“Did we not have anything atomic?” Olivia asked. “I doubt even the Ringbuilders could survive anti-capital torpedoes. Just rip the whole thing to pieces in the upper atmosphere.”
“It wasn’t in the upper atmosphere,” Forerunner said, in a voice he might’ve used to explain something simple to a child. “It wasn’t even half a kilometer above the ground. It dropped to a hundred meters when it was firing its main weapon. We had four missiles with atomic payloads in reserve, but firing them would’ve destroyed Othar and also killed every survivor I was trying to evacuate.”
“Why didn’t we see it coming?” Dorothy asked. She was wrapped in a blanket, and looked like she’d been dragged out of her bunk by force. In some ways, she had changed the least of all their generation. “We have satellites, don’t we? Radar, lidar, sonar, whatever other shit those military guys cooked up after I got scanned. That ship was fucking huge.”
“I did see it,” Forerunner said. “And thousands of other such vessels moving all over Sanctuary at this moment.” Their screens all changed in unison. It looked like a reconstructed patchwork of many satellite angles, showing the ring from orbit with the star in the center removed. At this scale they never could’ve seen it, but bright circles appeared on the image. Many of them, each with a long string of hexadecimal next to it, along with measurements. Approximate mass and dimensions. They seemed to be most focused on the further ring sections, passing over it in layered line formations.
“Ooooooooh.” Martin almost sounded excited. “They’re terraforming ships, aren’t they? That’s what it did to Othar. It wasn’t an attack… or its original purpose wasn’t to attack. They terraformed the island.”
“These vessels are capable of repositioning themselves at speeds that defy their apparent mass and acceleration,” Forerunner went on. “I had been tracking this one along with all the others. It only changed direction to approach Equestria about ten minutes before it arrived. It remained in high orbit for most of that time.”
“Shit,” Olivia muttered. “That’s a spacecraft. It can fly right up and massacre us even if we get out into orbit too.”
“Well… no.” Lucky sat back in her seat, looking away from the tablet. “That thing doesn’t have any weapons, at least not any we saw.”
“Their soldiers do not have weapons either,” Forerunner said, his voice quivering. “That was what their leader wanted from me. He knew I had an extensive armory and wanted to use it to supply his soldiers. He threatened to destroy the island if I didn’t give them up, as well as joining his army.”
And we didn’t. But that made sense. After everything they’d done together, Olivia didn’t imagine that Forerunner or Lucky would just roll over, even for a superior enemy who might cost them terribly to defy.
“That’s the basics,” Lucky said. “They’ve got a stolen Sanctuary terraforming ship. We can’t so much as dent the shell of that thing. Might not be able to touch it even if we had anti-capital weapons, though we’re not sure. But their only weapon is the ship’s ordinary function. Anyone below it when it switches on…”
“How many did we lose?” Olivia didn’t want to know, but at the same time she had to. Ignoring the dead wouldn’t bring them back.
“Not counting those in the weather substation, eleven. Mostly staff on leave somewhere on the island when we discovered we were under attack. Hopefully the dragons or the griffons picked them up for the slave ships.”
“Anyone I know?”
Lucky shrugged. “M-my… my first generation self. The others were either Equestrian contractors or ponies from the 75th who weren’t deployed for whatever reason.”
A long silence. Olivia could see the pain on Lucky’s face. Hearing about the second death of her first-generation self seemed like it was wearing hard on her. Then again, maybe it was for the best. There wasn’t supposed to be more than one version of someone at a time. Living in Othar’s top floor had sometimes felt like living in a world ruled entirely by one person.
Lucky cleared her throat. “Anyway. They have a ship we can’t stop. They can take anyone hostage they want—just park that over a city and demand almost anything. Nothing I know about Equestria suggests they have what it takes to stop that. Every time something goes wrong, they just gather up a handful of heroic ponies and send them out to deal with it. But I don’t think there’s anything they’ll be able to do about a capital ship.”
“Uh…” Martin sounded nervous at first. “Why is Harmony letting some crazy people climb into one of its ships and terraform places with people on them? Melody, just call up the ring and tell it to please shut the ship down. No way the primitives fighting with spears are going to be able to build their own. Just park it, and have our general fly in and melt them from space.”
Melody finally spoke up, her voice apologetic. “I… already talked to Harmony. It doesn’t care how much fighting we do, or what we fight about, or what tools we use to fight. Harmony only intervenes if the fight is between two nations with Alicorns in charge—with citizens. So if we went to war with Equestria, he would…” She shivered, and only stopped when Deadlight pulled her briefly close to him. “Well, we can’t do that. But the Storm King—he’s not an alicorn. His soldiers aren’t. No citizen permissions, Harmony doesn’t intervene. We have to deal with it ourselves.”
“Damn.” Olivia sighed. “Would’ve been simple. In the short term, this sounds an awful lot like a stalemate. The Emperor’s Soul is our whole world now, yeah? No way the terraformer can hit it. And the dragons… our weapons can kill them. The Emperor’s Soul didn’t trade its defenses for extra vending machines or some shit, right?”
Lucky winced, then nodded. “What are you thinking?”
“Well, a few things. Can’t just kill the bastard while he’s on the ground. No fucking way his guys won’t just rampage all over the place if we do.”
Forerunner nodded his agreement. “He confirmed this to me when we first met. I overpowered him and his bodyguard, and he informed me of the death that would come for Othar if I harmed him.”
That explained what Olivia had overheard about their conflict. “So what do we have, then? The Emperor, Wing of Midnight. The 75th basically came out intact thanks to that drill… anything else? I thought our installations were meant to survive a nuclear blast.”
“Manufacturing is,” Forerunner agreed. “But that isn’t what happened. That… device… stripped away material all the way down to Sanctuary’s superstructure. I am not receiving signals from any mesh-networked devices within the island that used to be Othar. The greatest loss is my central processing node—I had more hardware concentrated in that location than anywhere else on this ring. Most of my redundancies were meant to be small enough to escape detection if Celestia attacked. There are only three with any real processing capacity—the consensus node aboard the Emperor’s Soul, a half-dozen synthsleeves distributed in various locations, and the exploration module aboard the N.E.S. Agamemnon. I have instructed a significant fraction of my backup redundancies to begin construction, so that I may rebuild my network in a totally decentralized fashion. But unassisted, they will require years to accomplish this task. I don’t believe Equestria has that much time.”
“It doesn’t,” Deadlight said. His English was so good Olivia probably would’ve mistook him for a native speaker. “I’ve been…” He gestured vaguely with a wing. “Reading Equestrian telegraph messages. Your monitoring system…”
“You know about that?” Olivia frowned at Lucky, as if to ask, ‘Was telling him a good idea?’ But she didn’t say it out loud. Certainly not with so many ponies around.
“Obviously,” Deadlight said dismissively. “Anyway, word is that the Storm King is headed straight for Canterlot. Lots of ponies seem to think they’ll be surrendering.”
“No way.” Lightning Dust had been quiet for most of this discussion. Maybe, like Olivia, she felt a little out of place. But now she sounded indignant. “Just give up? Did they even send the Wonderbolts?”
“We don’t know,” Deadlight admitted. “But the Storm King’s terraforming ship is already halfway to Canterlot. Nopony’s stopped him yet.”
“They’ll do something,” Lightning Dust said. “Luna’s fought before. She’s not going to let some jerk enslave everyone.” Her eyes snapped to Lucky. “We’re going to do something about that, right? I want my damn ponies back. What’s the plan?”
The governor glanced to the side. “Forerunner. What did you and Qingzhi come up with?”
“Delay does not work in our favor,” Forerunner said. “The Emperor’s Soul is a pacifier class supercarrier, which means it’s capable of remaining deployed for six months at a time before each resupply. We could probably stretch that with emergency rations since we don’t need to spend reactor time to fly. But ultimately the infrastructure we were counting on to fight a war in Barbary no longer exists. This means we have until our supplies run out to either find victory or be destroyed.
“The same is true for Equestria. Particularly if she surrenders, any delay would only increase pony suffering and allow the enemy to become more entrenched. We must act as quickly as possible. Our plan involves an approach from two fronts. Qingzhi would deploy a special forces team to penetrate the carrier and take control. Their troops are getting back aboard somehow, we could use that same method. We, meanwhile, would return to Transit and attempt to commandeer one of the warships docked there. If we can’t break into that terraformer, we’ll have to destroy it. Failing that, we could use the Emperor directly—and hope that her anti-capital weapons are sufficiently powerful to bring down an Equus maintenance vessel.”
Olivia frowned. “What does the Emperor do during the first part of that plan? Special forces aren’t going to want to ride in on a capital ship with their asses in the breeze. We’re going to leave our biggest weapon just sitting there?”
“No,” Lucky said. “Othar is gone. The island is completely uninhabitable. We need somewhere else to live. That means we can’t pull it back unless we don’t have a choice. If we want a home… if we don’t want to starve… we have to win.”
“Win two wars at the same time,” Dorothy said. “Sounds like a shit plan to me. Olivia, any better ideas?”
Olivia frowned down at her computation surface, pulling it a little closer so she could flip through a few things. There on one of the deeper pages was the information she was looking for—the list of resources they were carrying. She skimmed it quickly enough to be certain of her answer. “Forerunner, why don’t you tell us what you’re actually planning?” She looked across the table, smiling weakly at him. “I know you by now,” and more than that, I know Qingzhi. But she didn’t say that part.
Forerunner raised an eyebrow. If he decided to keep his mouth shut, there wasn’t really anything Olivia could do. Would he even obey Lucky’s instructions if she demanded honesty from him? How would they even know if he had? “Are you certain you want to hear what I have to say?”
It wasn’t a question for her. Lucky nodded. “Please, Forerunner. We’re all on the same side here. Tell us.”
He sat stubbornly still for several long seconds. Olivia began to doubt that he even cared about his orders. But then he answered. “The cylinder orbiting at some distance, the N.E.S. Agamemnon. Many of the components appear to be later-generation versions of my own modular construction pieces. If Qingzhi’s plan fails… I intend to strip the vessel completely. To build this.”
Their screens flashed again, the image of the ring replaced with an outline unfamiliar to Olivia. It seemed positively enormous, though from the aerodynamics of it she could guess it could fly in atmosphere as well. “This is an Atreides-class Fleet Carrier. It will carry a complement of 1.3 million human Synthmarines, twelve fighter wings, an entire detachment of engineering corps…” Forerunner rose to a standing position, and Olivia could see him glaring at her. “Equestria’s method of protecting Sanctuary will have failed if I reach this point. Keeping themselves ignorant, appointing a class of elites to deal with existential threats… I find it insufficient. If Harmony will not protect us, I will.”
Beside Olivia, Deadlight was zooming in on the carrier. Zooming in, and in, and in. The damn thing must be at least five kilometers long. He looked up, whistling softly. “I don’t like this,” he said. “I mean no disrespect to you, Forerunner. But this… even in your hooves, this is not good. There is no threat that justifies such a response.”
“There have been many,” Forerunner snapped, as though he’d been ready for this. “The universe is vast, and its dangers are terrible. I will not allow creatures like the Storm King to destroy this colony. I will not allow him to subjugate my population.”
Lucky tapped the table impatiently. “Let’s not argue about that right now. Forerunner, I’m guessing that will take time, won’t it? Months?”
“Decades,” he responded. “I will need a shipyard. Probably some majority of the debris orbiting the ring.”
“And if we solve this our way, you don’t do it,” she said. “I want the Agamemnon to be intact. I want to use it to establish our first colony.”
“Or visit Earth,” Martin added, his voice so small it was almost immediately drowned out.
“Yes,” Forerunner said reluctantly. “I will begin with the shipyard. I’ll need it to construct the orbital drones necessary to deconstruct the N.E.S. Agamemnon anyway.”
“Alright.” Lucky tapped one of her hooves on the table again. “Let’s put that aside. I’m sure the rest of us agree that Equestria can’t wait that long. If they’re really surrendering the way it looks like they might…”
“You think maybe someone else saves them?” Martin asked. “I mean, it isn’t our home. Maybe the ponies have a plan. Maybe they’ve already got someone on this.”
“Maybe.” Lightning Dust didn’t look convinced. “We’d have to get in there to know for sure. Seems to me we should be working on our plan to stop them from enslaving everypony while we’re there.”
Olivia nodded. “Qingzhi is doing his job—he’s respecting our interests. But there’s something you should know about his plan, Lucky.” At the Alicorn’s nod, she continued. “He’s the hero of Europa. He’s the one who liberated that colony from the Vultures. This whole ‘we need to take some garbage patch and not commit any of our resources’ thing, that’s not the only plan. Might not be the best plan, either.” She sighed. Qingzhi wasn’t going to be happy with her if he ever found out she had been involved in convincing her to change her mind.
“What do you mean?” Melody asked. “We are running out of supplies, aren’t we? Forerunner can wait them out from space, but we can’t. The Emperor’s supplies will run out. Equestria might be occupied. We can’t wait and be patient like you wanted us to do for fighting Celestia.”
And you idiots stopped that plan from bearing fruit. But she didn’t say so. It was hard to berate Lucky when her plan had ultimately been a successful one. The winner got to write the history books. “Qingzhi’s strategy is the one that minimizes our losses,” she finally said. “That’s the reason he wants to fight out there. Not because it’s best for Equestria. Not because the odds are the best that way. But because fighting some slaver tribes out in the dirt isn’t likely to give us high casualties. He isn’t thinking about saving Equestria now; he’s thinking of building our own nation that can resist if this Storm King ever shows up. Or maybe about liberating Equestria a few decades down the line. Think about it—the only troops he’s sending in are special forces. Bet you all the booze I’ve hidden in…” She trailed off. Her hidden still was gone now, along with everything she’d ever made with it. “I bet the special forces he’s planning on sending in are Perez and my former team. He doesn’t want to put a single soldier into real danger.”
“She’s right,” Lightning Dust repeated from behind her, glaring at Lucky. “Kid, what the hell? Equestria’s my home!”
Olivia cleared her throat, and Lightning Dust fell silent. “Qingzhi’s strategy will give us the best chance of survival. Those resources out there might be shit, but there’s not as much fight for them. If we can colonize the asscrack of Ganymede or Phoebe we can manage in a desert. But there’s another option.”
She took a deep breath. She didn’t just know Forerunner—she knew Lucky too. Lucky Break, whose best friend was an Equestrian princess that would certainly be a target. Lucky Break who was as much an Equestrian in her outlook as she was a human governor. “There’s another place we could go for land and resources—Equestria. The Storm King has a carrier we don’t know how to kill right now… but I don’t think he wants Equestria dead. If so, he’d be doing to it what he did to Othar, trashing the whole thing as he goes. That would crush resistance faster than anything else he could do, at the point where ponies are the least prepared to defend themselves. But he hasn’t. I think he wants to rule.”
“What difference does any of that make?” Dorothy muttered, annoyed. “You already said Qingzhi’s strategy is our best bet, didn’t you?”
“No, she said it was stupid,” Lightning Dust snapped. “It doesn’t help Equestria. Most of our stuff doesn’t even get used.”
“I’m saying—” Olivia continued, raising her voice over both of them. “I’m saying that capital ships don’t hold cities. Back in the Solar System, we might not have had inertia-defying terraforming ships, but we had capital ships that could throw rocks down into gravity wells. We could’ve destroyed anywhere we wanted just as badly as the Storm King wrecked Othar. But we still had wars. Why? Because the threat of destruction might work on leaders, but it doesn’t work on whole populations. People don’t take shit forever. They don’t keep working if their lives are ruined. They don’t want to see their whole world turned over to some asshole with a fancy starship just because he threatens them collectively.
“You need troops for that. You need a bureaucracy to collect the taxes, to keep the resources flowing. You need organizations to make the subjugated populace do what you want. And in that department, he’s not invincible. Whoever this Storm King is, he isn’t one of the ancient Ringbuilders coming to rule the survivors out on the surface. If he was, he wouldn’t arm his soldiers with pony sticks and string. He wouldn’t need to raid us for armor and weapons.”
“What are you saying?” Lucky asked. She had levitated up her computation surface, and the lights on her face were changing rapidly.
“I’m saying… I’m saying Qingzhi’s plan works, if you don’t care much about how Equestria looks at the end. But we won’t need to build our mines out in the ass of nowhere if we’re the liberators who saved Equestria. I’m sure ponies will be happy to help feed us once we liberate their towns. All that while we’re doing everything we can to find a way aboard the ship. Skip taking control, I say we just get a few nukes in there and make the whole thing into slag.” She tapped the computation surface in front of her, displaying inventory. “You’ve got two with us now, don’t you Forerunner? Let’s put them to use.”
Sarah sat tucked against one wall, watching with James as their changeling host dug around through the old metal crate. Nothing she dumped on the floor looked anything like what Sarah would’ve expected primitives might keep. It was all wrapped, or else stored into pressurized containers that looked dented and scratched with many years.
“I don’t understand what she’s saying,” James muttered, sounding almost ashamed as he said it. “How do you know her language? I’ve never heard anything like it before.”
Ocellus stopped right then, looking up from within the container and staring at him. “Do you know Eoch?” It didn’t sound any different to Sarah, but he relaxed immediately.
“Eoch,” he repeated. “Yeah, I learned… from… God you’d never believe that. But yeah. I figured it out.” There was a little bitterness in his tone, and Sarah knew why. It hadn’t been this him that figured it out. This James had died of some disease before he finished. “What are you looking for?”
Ocellus glowered at him. “You would not understand. Ponies on the surface are so… ignorant. Your princess keeps you trapped. Keeps you blind. And so we who want to know are down here in the dark.”
A silvery canister bumped against Sarah’s hoof. She blinked, scooping it up with one hoof and turning it around. There were symbols on the reverse side, a looping circular script that she found she could read as easily as English. “Liquid Hydrogen—propulsion grade.” She set it down on the table, pushing it well away from her. “Nice trick keeping it liquid in there. I hope you’re not making a bomb.”
“I don’t want that!” Ocellus glared at the canister, levitating it away in her magic to rest it on a shelf behind her, practically at random. “I’m looking for the… reagent. I don’t produce it naturally anymore.”
“Of course,” James muttered, glaring around the room. “That makes perfect sense. I love reagents. My favorite thing.”
“Do you love being alive, ignorant pony? You’re in dangerous territory now. Even if my uncle ruled this place without resistance, there are still so many he would not command. So many still sleep. They are on their way here now, or will be. If I do not find it, they will find you an intruder and break your body down to its constituent atoms. Stay quiet and let me search.”
James winced. “Just me? Not her?”
“Not her,” Ocellus agreed, lowering her head back into the crate. She emerged with another container a moment later, one marked with familiar yellow and black warning logos from one end to the other. The shapes weren’t quite the same as the ones Sarah had grown up with, but the implications of danger were clear enough. But as Ocellus set it down on the table, she could read more of the circular script. “Extreme hazard—active bioforming agent. Do not tamper.”
It was the same style of canister as the liquid hydrogen, only this one had been punctured. There was something green inside. Ocellus levitated it up, shaking it around in her magic. The insides were liquid all-right, and thick. “This is for you,” she said, shoving it towards him. “Drink the whole thing. Ingestion is the fastest way. If I were still… but I’m not. I can’t change you myself. You can use this.”
“I don’t want to change anything,” James argued. “I’ve already been changed.” He held up one of his hooves, glaring at it. “You see how ridiculous I look? Petting zoo animal? Isn’t this enough?”
Though his glare wasn’t really for her anymore. His anger was entirely directed at Sarah. She could practically hear his thoughts. You got me into this. If I die it’s your fault.
And maybe he wanted her to think that, but Sarah wouldn’t be bothered. She’d done everything she could to keep him from following her. If he’d stayed behind… well, he wouldn’t be safe in Othar. They didn’t know what had happened to it. But he wouldn’t be here.
“It is unfortunate,” Ocellus agreed, the first sign of sensitivity from her since they’d begun. She pushed the container a little closer to him. “But you can solve your dependence on pony affection eventually. That’s my uncle’s whole secret, the one he learned on the surface. I can teach you if you aren’t dead.”
“Great.” James levitated over the canister, inspecting it with a critical eye. Then he lifted it over his head, and dumped the green stuff down his throat. “Well, I’m already immortal. I guess I don’t have anything to lose.” He collapsed within seconds, dropping the canister and beginning to gurgle and splutter.
Sarah might’ve been a little more concerned about him, if they hadn’t already done this once today. Maybe this is a more advanced form of how Discord gave me the implant. But why didn’t he give one to James too? If he planned on not sending me alone…
“Help me get him into bed,” Ocellus muttered. “It takes a few hours. While he rests, I can take you into Chroma. Show you my world ending.”
It took a few minutes. Neither of them was particularly strong, and James wasn’t exactly light. But they got him into place amid the pile of nesting material. His coat already felt a little strange to Sarah as she touched him, as though he were sweating some kind of solvent. When she looked down, she could see him twisting and turning in his unconscious state. “What the hell did we just do to him?”
“Nothing… bad,” Ocellus said, utterly unconvincing. “I’ve only ever seen this happen to a pony once before, and I don’t want to watch. I don’t think you do either.” She nodded towards the tunnel out. “He won’t be awake again for at least a day. We can be back before then.”
“Right.” Sarah followed her up through the tunnel. She didn’t do exactly the same thing James had done to her earlier, not even a little.
They returned to the darkness, and with it any of the details she might’ve been interested to see dissolved back into sounds and suggestion. “But that doesn’t tell me anything. Bioforming… is that like what happened on our way down? Are you making him into a fish?”
“A changeling,” Ocellus said. She looked down at her hooves, transparent fins drooping around her face. The strange reverberating quality of her voice made it easy to see her features when she spoke. I wonder if you can see with sound too, or if that’s just bats. “Yes. Like our predecessors. Whatever gift Discord gave you that saves you from his fate, he did not share it with your friend. Perhaps he was displeased with his service.”
“I… have no idea,” Sarah muttered. She squeaked a few times for good measure, visualizing the massive stalks of fibrous material, the huge deposit of vaguely-organic crystallite that Ocellus had been living in. “I hope your whole civilization doesn’t live in frozen shit. Because your house stinks.”
“My house,” she repeated, rubbing her wings together. It sounded almost like laughter. “I would never live here. A few kilometers away the swarm is recycling, they will get it all eventually. But I was expecting ponies and the smell is strong. Strong enough to keep him alive, I hope.”
She looked up suddenly, buzzing into the air a few inches. “There is another advantage to not bringing him. We can fly there. Chroma is an important place—the second most important place in the world. Only Irkalla is better… but we must swim to get there, and your friend would die if we tried that right now.”
Sarah shifted uneasily on her hooves, squeaked a few times to make sure the space in front of her was clear, then took off in a run. She flapped her wings, kept moving forward. “So, uh… I can’t really stop or I’ll fall!” she called back. “Catch up with me? And tell me where I’m going before I hit a damn wall!” She kept squeaking, heart racing as she flew. It was a little like sprinting through a forest with her eyes closed, or would’ve been without sound. At least she had a way of imagining what was around her.
Despite how fast it felt like she was going, Ocellus caught up with her easily. She buzzed along beside with a sound like someone walking. This speed was not nearly as difficult for her as it was for Sarah. “Your wings looked so strong,” Ocellus said, not even a little winded. “Why are you such a weak flyer?”
“I’ve… only… had them a week…” Sarah made it another few meters before she felt her hooves drag up against the ground. She gave up, skidding to an awkward stop. A huge shape rose up in front of her, and she tried to swerve—but the pillar was simply too wide. She smashed into it with a squelching sound, sinking into it as though it were bread dough.
If the house had smelled bad, this really stunk. She screamed in panic, kicking and squirming to try and get free, but no good. It was holding her, and it wasn’t letting go.
Something gripped her firmly along her body, almost even. It yanked, and Sarah came tumbling backward onto her ass. She felt her shirt and saddlebag straps come tumbling away in front of her, along with some of her fur. Yikes.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Ocellus sounded panicked. “If this node was active… if it didn’t have to warm up…” She shuddered. “What the hell did Discord tell you when he sent you down here? He didn’t even warn you about the reprocessors?”
Sarah shuddered, running a hoof down her front where she’d collided with the pillar. She didn’t feel any blood at least. “He told me you guys needed some friends. Told me you might be about to get into a civil war. That was… about it.”
Ocellus stood just beside her, though she kept glancing up nervously at the trunk of the “tree.” She stood well away from it, and didn’t seem willing to get any closer. Sarah imitated her, retreating a few more steps. As she watched, the hole she’d made gradually subsided, as the strange semi-membrane of its surface filled in the gap.
“That’s even less than he tells us,” she muttered. “What help does he possibly think a few ignorant ponies are going to be? Like we couldn’t solve our own problems…”
“We’re not ignorant.” Sarah turned her back on the tree. “Okay, I’m ignorant about your world, obviously. But I’m not ignorant about everything. We’re not from Equestria, for one. James and I are from somewhere new—a city called Othar. We aren’t even ponies. Or we didn’t use to be, I guess. I grew up on a planet light-years from here, and so did James. We’re trying to rebuild a spacefaring civilization.”
Ocellus’s eyes widened, and she rested a nervous wing on Sarah’s shoulder. “You have to stop!” she squeaked, wings buzzing in agitation. “Please, right now! You have to get a message back! If you launch a single starship…”
“Oh, we know about that,” she said. She wouldn’t have, except that her week of instruction had included a great deal of history about Othar and the mission so far. “Harmony used to restrict travel off the ring. That was one of his magical triggers to fly in and kill everyone. We turned that off. Well, our governor did, and some ponies helped…”
Sarah trailed off, unable to process what she was hearing. It was coming from Ocellus, but what was she…
The little changeling had started crying. “All this time… we’ve been down here… and we’re finally free.”
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Wake up , you are free , Wake up , you are free , Wake up , you are free , Wake up , you are free , Wake up , you are free ,
Careful what you wish for, James. Now you get to be a petting zoo xenomorph.
Yeah... free to get involved in the war.
Like it or not, they're going to have a stake in the outcome if they want to move onto the surface anytime soon.
hmm seems like harmony should have put out some flyers or maybe giant 100 foot tall holographic heads proclaiming such and such...
anyways, lucky's plan is the best long term one, the storm king is a one hit wonder while othar can start rebuilding fairly quickly. a long drawn out conflict is exactly the worst thing he needs as fighting a war from an occupied country is quite a drain. if celestia hadn't destroyed landfall base they might have been able to even fight from there, directly controlling a chunk of Equestria and covertly waging a gorilla warfare campaign
Jeez, I don't know why, but the name of this chapter (and, I suppose, also Forerunner's Plan Z), really is poking at my memory...
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/67/Dune_House_Atreides_%281999%29.jpg/220px-Dune_House_Atreides_%281999%29.jpg
...Oh, right.
Terraforming as a weapon, huh? Kinda reminds me of the fastest way to defeat the Grox from Spore: Terraform their planets to be inhospitable and they all die instantly. I'm thinking this is less like that and more like a beam that recycles anything under it into Base Ring Material.
Uh... modern railguns have a range of 220 - 300 miles. Even if we assume that the railgun technology has not improved at all in the last 100 - 150 years, why they don't just shell the Storm Breaker from range? They should be able to dump an nearly unlimited amount of ordnance into that ship with no real repercussions, so why don't they? I suppose that they don't want to kill their own citizens, but then they could just resurrect them immediately anyway, so I don't really understand their hesitation.
Hmm...the previous chapters had said that prior to the terraformer firing there was an aperture opening up in the bottom of the carrier, right?
(I can't seem to link to a specific time; skip to 2:07.)
8988679
Ha, petting xoonomorph. I'm calling changelings that now.
8988721
Harmony was a little butthurt about losing her grasp on the Ring and its Citizens, if only slightly.
That sounds like a really arbitrary reason not for Harmony to attack.
Lucky - "Yo, massive AI. Citizens in peril, plz fix."
Harmony - "Citizens in danger?! Defenses online."
8988817
I can probably help you understand some of that.
It is extremely likely that Othar had railguns of its own, and probably a bigger reactor to fire faster projectiles. They were not effective.
Brushing aside all the questions of continuity of consciousness and whether the people would really consider themselves the same after being resurrected, they cannot do this. Take a glance back at when Lucky revived ponies for Discord. The power to accomplish that task was loaned to her by Discord, since it was doing his work. It is very likely a method to do this without his help could be discovered eventually, but Othar and its citizens do not have that method now. Though it might be argued the minds of the dead are safe, they cannot resurrect anyone.
Hopefully that helps.
A ring terraforming ship? That's not good.
Neither are any of these options as presented.
It's like they brought James along just to be the mad science test dummy.
I wonder if that exact bit of knowledge was what Discord actually sent them to deliver.
8988817
presumably the hull is built out of whatever makes up the ring, and its probably magically shielded. Think giant chunk of metal with a big terraforming laser
8989273
or just "yo harmony they hijacked one of your terraforming ships"
"...changing passwords....password change complete."
-----
"SIR IT ALL JUST STOPPED WORKING!"
"Did you try 12345!?"
"We did it says invalid ID!"
8989273
I suspect Harmony would consider it more like putting everyone involved in time-out by revoking their physical-world privileges. Let the citizens in the virtual world sort it out.
8989282
I think I can accept that.
Thanks for clarifying.
How in fuck did the Storm King get ahold of Othar’s location? I can’t wait for his head to be cut off for many reasons, especially for invading Othar and making promises he can’t keep.
Haha! Sarah, you just became an oracle.
The changelings have been hiding from Harmony's idea of proper management by living in the walls, and now you show up and tell them Harmony's finally been stood down from Crisis Mode and they can come out.
That's gonna earn some bonus points for sure!
8990071
Equestria's been sending ships to Othar for a while now; Luna asked to be on the first official trip from Equestria to Othar, and Flurry Heart visited Othar and came back. It's not hard to imagine that the knowledge spread from there.
8988956
They are essentially cute versions of Gigeresque creatures, aren't they?
8990951
I could see an argument for half bug, half corpse, but on the other hand I'm picturing changedlings as neon horxenomorphs. It's just a question on style and details.
"we’re finally free.”
i love that quote.
In which we learn that the forerunner probe had the opportunity to kill the Storm King and declined for some reason. That certainly wasn't bright.
The proper (and successful) response to situation would be as follows:
"You can't kill me!" Snarled the Storm King, "If you do, instead of just enslaving you I'll kill everyone! I'll kill them all!"
The processing for the correct answer to this problem didn't even take microseconds, and before he'd even stopped speaking Forerunners local body had be begun to laugh, at first deep and heartily scornful, but then faster and faster like a record played at increasing fast forward, all his body motions keeping pace as he laughed faster and higher. With the kind of speed only a machine could match the display ended in the middle of a maniacal squirrel laugh and the storm king found himself slammed against a wall that had been several body lengths away as the Forerunner pinned him hard.
"It does not understand." Said the voice they'd begun to associate with the forerunner.
"Death is freedom." Said forerunners body in a sultry feminine voice.
"Death is Freedom." The body repeated again, this time in the slightly crazed voice of a teenager.
"Death is freedom!" The PA system in the desk crackled to life, chanting along in a chorus of foals.
"Death is freedom!" Forerunner said, this time in the bellow of a drill Sargent as his head began to turn, his eyes never leaving the Storm King's horrified expression.
"Death is freedom!" The Forerunners head had now made a full 180 rotation and stared at the king inverted.
Another solderer in the room fired her crossbow dangerously close to her boss, but made the shot, the bolt exploding out the front of the empty skull on Forerunners body, showering the Storm King in gore. All noise stopped, and the collection of guards and their king all let out a soft sigh of relief.
"DEATH IS FREEDOM!" Shrieked the body as it's eyes shrunk to pin-points and it's head completed it's 360 rotation, snapping up into the kings face. As everyone else screamed or fumbled for weapons, the Forerunner worked quickly. It was shear dumb luck that the closet body to the emergency had been a medic, but so much the better. The cutters snapped out and went quickly to work, deftly cutting through leather, armor, flesh and bone. He really didn't need a long lasting result, just enough to preserve the blood pressure to the major arteries long enough to convince the rest to leave. The speed and sloppiness of the work would probably kill this body from blood loss in ten minutes, but at the rate it was accumulating crossbow bolts that hardly mattered; he had several more bodies after all.
In under a minute the job was done, and Forerunner's local body slowly, ponderously turned to face the solders and hopefully seconds in command as blood dripped from numerous wounds. The still extended blades of the bloody surgical tools clanked against each other as he strode slowly towards the intruders.
"Heeellllpp meee..." The former storm king's head managed from it's place sewn onto his right shoulder.
Actually, Forerunner wasn't entirely sure that's what he was saying; he hadn't had time to connect up a working voice box, let along a trachea to this bodies lungs, but that was neither here nor there. The important thing here was to ensure the immediate departure of invading force, and as he lacked the hardware to bring down a transforming ship, or the time to hack into it, a simple terror campaign would have to do while the rest of him continued the evacuation. By the sudden spike in atmospheric methane in the room, he was apparently doing rather well.
"No no," He said soothingly as he stroked the flopping head that was obviously trying to escape, "No help, just freedom. Freedom for everyone."
The two pin point eyes that had begun to wander independently of each other suddenly spun and locked onto the nearest low ranking solder - the leaders had to escape alive after all if this was going to work.
"Are you ready for freedom?!"
Then the screaming started in earnest.
I find it really hard to believe that superhuman AI would make such silly mistake. The only reason someone may make threats to you is that threatening party wants to influence your behaviour in a way that benefits threatening party, and as so your decision-making procedure should disregard any threats. (Actually, it's strange that anything Storm King could say may influence Forerunner's behaviour: Forerunner should have received a lot of new information from Storm King to change behaviour, on the other hand, Storm King may as well lie and Forerunner should already have most part of that information to verify that.) So, yeah, if Forerunner's priority is preventing the island from being blown up right now to finish evacuation, the only thing he cares about is what actually prevents ship's captain from blowing island up right now. And unless there's something else Forerunner knew that we don't yet know, those things are: hope to get weapons and presence of Storm King down there. Then the plan looks like (subject to change on new received information of course):
Wasn't othar free to wage war with whoever or do whatever it's sees fit as long as it doesn't damage the ring ?
News travels slow in the Underdark. But it gets there eventually.
Also, this certainly explains the Storm King's ability to both assault Othar with impunity and turn it into a winter wonderland. I, for one, am in favor of Operation: Big Damn Heroes. I just hope nothing ever necessitates a Harkonnen-class vessel. Whatever it is, it can't be pleasant.
8992578
I thought that too. I thought it was stated that Harmony wouldn't care less about an equestria othar war.
And I also thought that harmony only allowed limited space travel at least until it could create portable versions of its AI and soul cycle machinery. Did harmony finished its miniaturization? I'm worried Sarah might have given ocellus some misinformation. I doubt there's anything else good for colonization in the system outside the ring.
8988799
Terraform to be hospitable*
Ironically, the grox can only live on T0 worlds. You have to improve, not damage, the planet to kill the grox.
8997158
Well I kinda just meant that it was inhospitable to the Grox, without going into specifics.
8988799
Technically, you made the worlds hospitable; Grox only live on T0 (uncolonizable) worlds.
8991848
Holy shit...
"I say... we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit..."
Also, it's kind of amazing to imagine a metal outer structural hull strong enough to shrug off nukes backfiring on the ship by making the nuke ten times as intense by trapping it inside.
9116563
Aliens FTW!
Someone gave them a sock?
Wait, Storm King is an alien?
8991848
) but it will likely have problems when the dragons realise the big boss is dead. At which point I suspect their thoughts playing out a bit like;
A good plan (I wasn't going to sleep tonight anyway
Boss is dead, top spots open so time for new leadership.
Ships ours.
Lands ours.
Anything the land has is ours.
And as for the small freaky metal pony with its small metal knives? There is no problem that can't be solved with enough fire.
So unless Forerunner has a way to carve them up enough to scare them off as well (we know he doesn't) this plan is unlikely to work in any way that would have been better than what was done.
I think Olivia was being unfair here. How were they supposed to follow that plan when she didn't bother to share it with anyone before getting herself captured and then killed? Her soldiers didn't think to share their plan either. So she only have her own secretivity to blame.
I know this is a late comment but I’m confused- how is the James with Sarah the first-generation James? If he was created from the same neuroimprint as the others, wouldn’t that make him fifth-generation, after the original James, the first clone, Lucky and Melody? Or if he was made from the Gen-2 original clone’s neuroimplant, and not the Gen-1 original James, wouldn’t he be the first and only clone of the second-generation clone, and not a direct clone of the James from Earth?
10443373
His imprint is 2-week-of-life different. He convinced Forerunner to make the new imprint of him right before he died, the last of the Gen1.
He is then produced by Lucky's order, as male unicorn.
Atreides, huh? That's an interesting reference.
How the hell did that Storm King get control of a terraformer?
The ability to terraform a place is probably quite destructive when used as weapon
Heh. They had three. With two of those elevated to what Equestria called "princesses"
That's bullshit. There's no way some primitives could just take over a system directly controlled by Harmony. It should be way too complex for them. In fact, there's no reason for it to even have physical controls that they could use. Harmony itself is interfering by giving them that thing
And, I assume, the backup Forerunner probe that he hid away. But that's not something he can use. It's a final contingency plan in case everything is destroyed.
Ooof, that's true. And unless they actually get control of that terraforming ship, they can't even reverse the damage.
Well, if the Mane Six' little black ops plan with the Seaquestrians works the same way it did in the movie, this problem will solve itself.
Though it would be infinitely better for the Forerunner colony if Equestria did not end up with the terraforming ship in its hooves at the end of all this
Ahh. Yea, that's actually sensible, with Othar down the drain.
Holy crap they're carrying nukes?
Huh. A fuel cell.
Wasn't that secret to give affection? I dunno, this broken pony may not manage that. And we all know Sarah doesn't have much to give him, either
So then why was it mentioned before that Harmony wouldn't let them make space ships?
Wait a minute, I thought they weren't allowed to build starships?
11072572
They arent allowed to build interstellar spaceships. Intra-solar ships are fine