Part 2: Breach
To Sarah, coming back to life felt similar to becoming an alicorn. There was an invisible barrier of energy, and she had to drag herself through it to the other side, like her body was being printed one layer at a time. But it was more than simple fabrication: there was an interface here. Despite going through the gate with Ocellus, she dragged herself towards the light alone.
Until Harmony found her, a metallic pony that towered over her even as an alicorn. Its words were a blur of emotion, and it didn’t seem to struggle to walk as she did. “You are making a mistake,” it said.
“All the time,” Sarah responded, not even looking at it. The featureless abyss she dragged herself through had an end soon, swallowed in light at the edge of her vision. “What mistake am I making this time?”
“You wish to stop Raiju, yes? You wish to prove to me that Equus can protect itself. That we do not need to wait for the end of the stelliferous to end the Quarantine.”
“Yes,” she croaked, straining against an invisible wind. She leaned into the force, squinting towards the light. She was so close now, just within reach. “And you’re… trying to stop me. Tried to trick me into staying. Tried to make it so I would want to stay. That means I’m… not wrong. Or you would be making it easier.”
Harmony tilted its head slightly. “Our desires are not so simplistic. The Harmony sings of the truth, ‘Sarah.’ If you truly can protect yourselves, then you will not be returned to isolation state. We believe your resistance is needless, however. Remember what you have seen. The race called changelings are driven explorers as yourselves, from a more degenerate age. Yet they have come to embrace the universe that lies within Equus—infinite complexity, indistinguishable from the physical universe you are accustomed to. The Pioneering Society you know could join them, as the last generation of explorers has.”
“We won’t,” she said. She could almost reach the exit now. It was mere inches away, but pushing through here was hardest of all.
“We are trying to help you,” Harmony said, its tone becoming frustrated. “The changelings co-opted the latest generation of our maintenance system. If you wish to defeat the Storm King, you should be like them.”
Sarah reached the light, and for a few seconds her mind was overwhelmed with possibility. She saw within her own body—every tissue, every tendon, every cell. The complex, purposeful construction that had been made of her genetics—every strand carefully chosen. She could choose something else.
The infinities of life on Equus expanded before her mind, far beyond what she could comprehend on her own. But she wasn’t alone—for a single infinitesimal instant, she had the entire computational power of a civilization within reach.
She could be human again, if she wanted. The old ones had all died, but there were designs for improvements, with the biological hardware to correctly interact with Equus. But was that what she wanted? Sarah would get her body back, but she’d be the only one who had it. She’d be her own flavor of freak. I can always come back here. She knew the address, thanks to Celestia. The Underworld would always be waiting if she could avoid the persuasions of its guardian.
Harmony wanted me to be a changeling. Why? Because it would make things harder for her? Certainly she would have a harder case proving her identity to Forerunner. If it quizzed her about the real Sarah’s life so she could prove she’d been given a new body, she would probably get most of the questions wrong.
It was obviously trying to make them fail their mission, and keep their societies separate. Did it really think that it could tempt Sarah to give up everything she’d been working for to be closer to Ocellus?
Of course it could. Fuck Discord and his mission. What was the Pioneering Society going to do to her while the planet was being ruled by an evil despot and their city was rubble?
If she came back a changeling, that might even let them make their own alterations to the story. She’d never been an Alicorn, that was obviously a lie. Pharynx would be politically ruined.
You only win because I don’t care about the Pioneering Society. I don’t care who rules the surface. Maybe if she came back as a changeling she wouldn’t mind the dark as much. James hadn’t seemed to.
Sarah didn’t have to create this changeling template from scratch—there was already one in here. She didn’t get to choose the cooler-looking black design though, as that wasn’t open to her. Any time she tried to shift the design of her body in that direction, her changes would drift back. She could feel the inexorable will of Harmony all around her, the sea her mind drifted within. Your body must be designed for an intelligence. No others are permitted.
She couldn’t design her own species, either. No giving it hands instead of hooves and bat wings—she’d liked those.
Maybe as a changeling Ocellus will be able to teach me how to fly.
Eventually she settled on a finished design, ignoring the pulsing warnings that surrounded her. This body is incompatible with citizen-level physical manipulation. Significantly reduced physical and mental ceiling.
Whatever, she hadn’t been an Alicorn for more than a few hours anyway. She didn’t know what she was losing.
There were no user interfaces to interact with, no buttons to press. As soon as she became confident that she was finished, her world erupted with light. The incredible power of Equus’s mind fell out of reach, leaving her so much less for losing it that she didn’t even understand what she no longer had.
She coughed a mouthful of slime onto a rough stone floor, stumbling forward. For the second time in the space of a day, she found herself standing in a crypt.
Unlike the crumbling ruin in Canterlot, this place seemed well-kept. She stumbled through a passage towards the light, a polished bronze figure of a sun in the center.
She emerged from a low tunnel into a room that was perhaps fifty meters across, built of a single dome like an ancient Roman building. There were pillars holding it up around the outside, and each one had the carved figure of a pony along with an inscription. She ignored all of that, focusing on the reflection in the bronze marker.
It was a changeling all right—shorter than she’d ever been, with a purplish body and pink fins a few shades lighter than Ocellus’s. Her cutie mark was gone, and her eyes had lost their slits, becoming multifaceted and insectoid. She shivered at a chill breeze blowing in from outside, which reached her shell without any coat of fur to insulate her. It had worked—she was a changeling.
She sensed her companion before she saw them, like warmth she could feel through the wall. She felt drawn towards them, whoever they were, like smelling a distant, delicious meal. James is back. And he’s a pony again. There was still some shred of the changeling emotional dependence, mentally if not physically. Makes sense. Ocellus always seemed to know how I was feeling. This must be how.
The pony was stumbling forward through another tunnel in the crypt, on the other side of the monument. Sarah galloped around it, feeling her paper-light wings lift a little in the brief breeze. Not as sensitive as the old ones. Probably for the best.
A pony emerged from within, though she wasn’t the one Sarah had been expecting. She was a pegasus, with a yellow coat and pastel green mane. She was at least half a head taller than Sarah, and compared to her own spindly limbs, she was as thick as a building.
“James?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. That had to be it, right? Her friend had done the incredibly stupid and decided to come back female, so he could win her over. But why would you give up being a unicorn? You gloated so much about that damn horn.
“Sarah?” the pony asked, her voice betraying what Sarah could already feel in other ways. It was like smell, but her nose was not involved. An unbalanced, unpleasant smell she immediately attached to pain, regret, and unease. “Sarah, why are you… why are you a changeling?”
She didn’t have to imagine how those emotions might feel, because she immediately echoed them herself. That wasn’t James’s voice, or any female modification of it. That was Ocellus.
“Y-you’re…” Sarah stumbled up to her, stopping just out of reach. “You’re in disguise already,” she said. “You thought we would… be coming out in pony territory, so you’re already impersonating one of us.
She was impersonating something, alright. This was one of the forms that Sarah had always felt was appealing. She’d imagined all the different things she might do with those wings. Oh my god. Had she just been cockblocked by a superintelligence?
“No,” Ocellus whispered, though Sarah didn’t need to be told. She could already sense her pain, her disagreement. And a little anger. “What the buzz are you doing, Sarah? Why didn’t you tell me you were…?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Sarah countered, flaring her transparent wings and baring her pointed teeth. “It doesn’t matter what I am! All I really had to do was get you in touch with the Pioneering Society, it doesn’t matter if they believe me or not. But you… what were you planning to do when we finished up here?”
A few more ponies emerged from the passage behind Ocellus, all colorful changelings. They looked a little bewildered by it, since they’d all been black before. But it wasn’t like they could have resisted the mind at the exit. Sarah had already tried that, she knew how it ended.
“I’m going to be an ambassador to ponies!” Ocellus dropped back onto her flank, whimpering. A cold winter breeze blew in through the opening in the ceiling, carrying a few flecks of snow. Far away, Sarah could hear something rumbling. But she no longer cared what it was. “Great queens I’m an idiot.”
“Ocellus?” one of the soldiers asked, staring between the two of them. Her eyes settled on Sarah, but she only shook it off, pointing.
“Your ears aren’t deceiving you. It’s her.”
“With pony emotions?” She shook her head. “Not even our first queen was that convincing. You can be honest with us, princess.”
“She is being honest with you,” Ocellus muttered. Her voice had become distant, ears flat to her head. She was trying to hide her tears, but it didn’t matter. Sarah could still smell her despair. Over me. You wanted us both to be ponies.
Somewhere far away, Sarah heard the rapid pulse of railgun turrets. She’d heard them plenty of times before, mostly at airshows and on television. But now they were joined with the unmistakable crack of impacts. Ponies screamed, the ground shook, and a bright orange flash appeared briefly on the horizon.
We don’t have time to get emotional. Someone’s fighting a war, and we’re in the middle of it. Sarah didn’t have to wonder about who was doing the fighting. Death had said she would send them back as close to the Society as possible. And who would the Pioneering Society be fighting except for space Hitler?
“We should get back underground,” said one of the other soldiers, watching the sky nervously. “We don’t want to meddle in open conflict.” There was a brief flash, and he changed into a pony guard, complete with gold armor. No weapons, though.
The others didn’t need instructing, and they turned to gaze at her, tapping one hoof on the ground expectantly. “Go on then.”
“I’ve been a changeling for all of two minutes,” Sarah squealed, exasperated. “I can’t change!” Though even as she said it, hope returned. Just because her and Ocellus had been thinking the same thing didn’t mean they couldn’t still be together. She would just be the one taking a pony shape, that was all. She could still make this work.
But maybe the politics is a little more important. There was apparently a war going on. The safest they could be during a war would be back with the Society. Forerunner will know how to win a war better than these changelings.
“Err… princess. What do you think we should do?”
“I don’t know!” Ocellus squeaked. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way! We didn’t come here to fight!”
“Your original plan,” she said. “You three need to get back to Irkalla as quickly as possible. Tell them what happened with the expedition, and where this is. Ocellus has stayed behind to be an ambassador, and I was never an Alicorn. I was a changeling the whole time. They can verify it for themselves once we join you. We’ll come to you.”
The soldiers took a few moments to deliberate over that. There were more explosions, along with the sound of crumbling stone. The ground under their hooves shook a little, and Sarah found her wings opening reflexively, ready to take off and fly to safety. But she still couldn’t fly.
“Ocellus, do you… approve of that plan?”
“Yeah,” she whispered, sounding like a wet kitten. “Get to safety. Whatever’s going on, you don’t want to be here.”
“The pony disguise should be good,” Sarah added. “Those soldiers. Last I checked we had a truce with Equestria—they won’t shoot you.”
“What about the ones shooting them?”
She shrugged. “Don’t let them see you.”
“How about you go first.” He nodded towards the door, and the unknowable chaos outside.
Sure, fine? It’s not like we all can’t respawn that way. It isn’t just me. She paced briefly past Ocellus, lowering her voice as she spoke into her ear. “This place might not be safe. Temple like this… might be a target if they’re bombing up there.” There was one thing she was supposed to be waiting for. Death implied that James was still coming. Maybe we should give him a few more minutes, just to be sure.
“I’m going to scout it out first,” Sarah said, eyeing the ramp that led out onto the roof. “You can all stay here if you want. If I die or whatever, then… well, I guess you’re just fucked. But hopefully I’m not about to die.” She hurried up the ramp before any of them could protest.
The temple itself was a roughly round structure constructed along a mountainous slope. It looked a little like a Swiss village in the Alps, except that there was no sign of any humans. There was a central path running through the town, paved and surrounded by a safety rail. It was needed—the town was built into such a rough slope that anyone who stumbled drunk out of a pub at night might be taking a swift tumble to their deaths.
Sarah had no bar to measure what Equestrian villages were supposed to look like. But if she had to guess, she didn’t think they would have several houses with roofs folded back, with Iridium autocannons blasting into the sky every few seconds. A few structures had been blown apart, and there were a few bodies on the trail.
None of them were human—they all looked like the strange furred creatures she’d seen during her brief time in Canterlot. They sent soldiers here?
If only she still had her computation surface, she could’ve called home for help. Where in all that chaos was the swiftest way into the Pioneering Society?
They must be underground. That’s how Othar was. And it would make sense if they were trying to stay hidden. Maybe there were entrances hidden in some of those other buildings. The real trick would be finding them in such a way that they didn’t get their heads blown off in the process.
The sky above was a warzone far fiercer than anything on the ground. She couldn’t make out the details from this height, particularly with all the obstructions of the mountains, but she could hear the roar of gunfire. Every now and then a flash would light up somewhere in the distance, and something would tumble out of the air.
The ground maybe a hundred meters away split open like a hatching egg. The footpath and everything around it was torn in half right down the middle, spreading further and further apart. Sarah could see white light beneath, and the plain gray walls of what was unmistakably a drydock. There’s our ticket in. Launch bay like that would have security, but probably not the kind that would shoot at unarmed civilians. Didn’t Governor Lucky still have an order on the books that Forerunner couldn’t kill ponies?
Was she willing to bet her life on her faulty memory of a single day’s training a month ago? Those classes felt like another life, a life that had long since drifted away into the past.
Might as well. What’s the worst that Forerunner can do, kill me?
She turned, hurrying back down the ramp and into the temple. “Looks like the battle is mostly in the sky. There might’ve been some fighting on the ground earlier, but it’s over. Drydock just opened, probably for some launches or landings. If we get in now…”
She trailed off. Another pony had joined the group, one she couldn’t place. A bright orange changeling with yellow accents on her frills. She carried a well-worn satchel of tools, wrapped so tightly around her that it looked almost like it could’ve fused with her body. “Maintenance Midway Alpha White Virgil,” was written on the bag.
“Oh, good,” said the young mare, sliding past Ocellus and the staring guards. “She said you’re in charge of this expedition, is that right?”
“Yeah,” Sarah said. “I guess I am. You one of Ocellus’s guards? Latecomer, I guess. You didn’t happen to see a stallion back there, did you? Lanky, kind of a loser…”
“No and no.” She pawed at the ground, obviously impatient. “What did you say about our way in?”
Ocellus stared at her, something like recognition on her face. But she didn’t volunteer whatever she had figured out, and Sarah didn’t want to ask. Maybe she recognized this stranger. At least she was prettier than James. I hope you didn’t get yourself into too much trouble. I don’t have time to keep saving you.
Machinery ground together just outside the temple. She heard the roar as a drone fighter shot into the air, and then another only moments later. Squad should have a dozen of those. After that, it probably won’t stay open. She would probably know more about the specifics if she wasn’t a con-artist.
“Anyone going with me to the Pioneering Society, it’s time to go!” She pointed towards the noise, her ears still pressed flat to her head. Thank god I don’t have bat hearing right now. I’d probably be bleeding. “Ocellus, that still means you, right?” She didn’t give the pony a chance to second-guess, just yanked her to her hooves and dragged her towards the doors. “The rest of you should get the word back to Irkalla about what happened. Try and convince Thorax to join us up here. Oh, and maybe mention to him that the fucking monster he’s afraid of is a changeling now working in the garden of your virtual colony ship? If I could get double points for being right, I would.”
But that was at least eight distinct fighter launches. They were out of time.
Ocellus didn’t fight her, and neither did the soldiers. After a few steps the pegasus was the one pulling her, far stronger and sturdier than Sarah. Are ponies really that strong? Her emotions sure felt strong—she had gone from heartbroken to resolved. Good girl. Finish your mission. All my promises are good, what about yours?
But they weren’t alone. The newcomer chased just behind them, flying along more than walking. She watched the launching ships with far less emotion than Sarah would’ve expected, even from the changelings. As much as they had pretended their society was advanced, she hadn’t seen much evidence of it left in their lives.
The opening was a near-perfect circle a hundred meters across, formed of four distinct segments. From the look of things, it had used the contours of the walking path to conceal itself, and even had a (presumably) hollow house built on one of the sections to add realism.
Through the opening was a shaft leading almost straight down, with layers of stone and fiber-seal for reinforcement. She stopped on the edge as a wave of hot air blasted past her, along with the deafening roar of another fighter. I’m lucky as hell these things are made to launch from carriers, or I really would be deaf right now. Instead her ears ached like she had just got back from a rock concert, and would only get worse as more ships launched.
“We should fly down,” said the stranger, glancing only once between them. “Wait until the doors start to shut, then make it down before they can seal.”
It was a solid plan, with one minor exception. Sarah wasn’t sure if she could’ve made a glide that long before her wings had completely changed. Now they were transparent and paper-thin, and moved rapidly instead of with sweeping gestures. “I’m, uh… not sure I can do that. Ocellus either, she’s not used to flying with pony wings. We’ll have to find another way.” But as she looked, she could see no other way. There was no helpful catwalk, no ladder leading down that had been exposed. This wasn’t meant to be an entrance. All the interior surfaces were spread towards the place where ships blasted past.
Another came roaring by, loud enough that she didn’t hear Ocellus’s reply at first. But she felt her annoyance, and that was almost refreshing. When it was gone, she spoke again. “I’ve been a pegasus before. I can fly with their wings. You really just mean you.”
“Okay yeah that’s exactly what I mean.” She paced nervously forward, to the edge of where the path had been. She didn’t dare lean over even a little, for fear that another ship might somehow catch her with an aileron and rip off one of her delicate bug-limbs.
Then the ground started to close in. The four sections wrapped inward in a curve, like a delicately closing flower. “Okay maybe there’s no time for a better plan!” Sarah leapt onto the edge of the cover, which shook slightly with her weight. There was no give to the rocky ground, or the metal superstructure underneath. But the opening was closing.
Ocellus dove past her, angling her wings downward like a bird of prey who’d spotted a mouse. The other changeling followed close behind, though without any grace. Sarah’s hooves shook under her, and she was nearly knocked right off them by the closing door. She jumped, before she could second-guess herself.
She screamed, wings buzzing furiously behind her, but they weren’t doing anything. Stone blasted past her, illuminated with light strips that all blurred together.
Sarah tried to catch herself on her new wings, and they gave out from under her almost immediately. She smacked into the side of the shaft, whimpering as one of her legs crunched from the impact. She blurred past the others, and the ground came rushing up to meet her.
It was a hangar all right, she could see the intricate walkways and supports for drone fighters. There were ponies here—an audience for her bug-on-the-windshield impression. She screwed her eyes shut. It’s okay I won’t die it’ll be over quick I won’t die I won’t die for real—
The Stormbreaker had obviously not been built to be boarded by spacewalk. They walked along its surface for what felt like hours, long enough that the crane dropped back out of the bubble of strange space and down towards Sanctuary as empty as it had fallen last time. And they’re still taking in cargo? She checked her watch display—it would probably be morning in Motherlode. Shouldn’t they have been attacked by now?
Maybe he doesn’t care that there’s a rebellion after all. Maybe he’s close to finishing whatever he’s been building. None of them knew for sure what he wanted, though she’d listened to Flurry Heart’s ideas about it. She thought—and maybe Celestia thought, it was hard to tell for sure—that he had some idea for destroying Sanctuary itself.
They couldn’t allow that. It was their home too.
“I think that might be an airlock…” Deadlight said, gesturing up ahead. “Okay, not exactly an airlock, but it should do.”
Olivia followed his ping. It didn’t look like an airlock to her, but the sealed vein of a living creature, covered over with crusted green slime. Deadlight had almost reached it, where it emerged from the surface of the Stormbreaker like a tumor. Compared to the vast scale of the vessel it wasn’t much of anything, but here—it looked like the whole thing might cover a passage large enough for a pony, if barely.
“The fuck is this thing?” Perez was by far the fastest on their little spacewalk—if only because two legs meant he could take larger steps. “Does the ship have an infection?”
“No.” Deadlight stopped beside it, fiddling around with the tools on his suit. “This just means his ship was probably in for repair when he took it. This is a passage left by the maintenance system. Either that, or there are changelings helping him. For our sake I hope it’s the former.”
“Don’t worry, fae aren’t real,” Mogyla said. “They can’t steal your baby without stealing some existence first.”
Deadlight ignored him. “I could cut our way in, Wayfinder. But this passage was left by maintenance—and we’re not repair drones. If we use it…”
“I’m not seeing lots of options, ma’am,” Perez said. “Don’t get me wrong, I’d just love to test out my immortality by getting freeze dried and vacuum packed out here. But last I checked our esteemed Governor doesn’t know how to bring us back again. Maybe we should plan on living through this.”
“We know the Storm King has competent soldiers,” she said. “Are we willing to alert them?”
“I don’t see any other choice,” Mogyla said. “Look at the radar map Forerunner gave us. This is the largest protrusion on the hull for three kilometers in any direction. You want to risk our air lasting through three more kilometers of spacewalk?”
Olivia glanced at her supply. Forty-five minutes of oxygen, plus ten more on the emergency reserve. For all they knew the Storm King and his minions preferred to breathe methane when they were at home relaxing, and they’d need that air for the inside.
“Alright, we’re going in. But don’t start cutting until everyone is here. We’ll get in as quick as we can, then seal it up behind us. Maybe this Storm King doesn’t know his own ship all that well, and he won’t realize what the alarm is until it shuts off.”
“Wishful thinking,” Perez said, removing a torch from his own equipment belt. “Allow me, batman. I’ve cut my way through more ship hulls than you have. There’s a technique to it.”
Olivia reached them a few seconds later. She rose up briefly onto her hind-legs, using only the lower two boots to hold her to the hull. But she could see no intrusion-bots scampering along the hull, or soldiers flooding out to repel boarders. She settled back down, keeping her rifle-leg elevated off the ground to be sure.
And Perez wasn’t exaggerating. Once he started cutting, he moved with the practiced precision of one who was only following their training. Her visor tinted dark whenever she looked at the torch, a single hair that could cut through thick steel.
A cloud of gas began to lift from around the green slime, getting larger and larger as Perez worked. “Dammit, this thing is… trying to seal closed behind me. We’ve got meta-materials, commander.”
“Let me through, she called, moving past the watching Mogyla and Deadlight. This wasn’t the first time they’d had to cut through something like this—many of the most expensive ships had exotic adaptive armors. This stuff wasn’t being burned at all by the torch, just melting out of the way and slowly hardening again behind him.
“What do you think, commander? We go for a condom, or something more dramatic?”
“What’s the force tolerance?” She reached out with one hoof, shoving against the center of the partially-opened shaft. It yielded quite a bit, tearing free from the side of the airlock that hadn’t re-sealed yet.
“Looks weak enough to blow open. But that will be the end of stealth for certain. Even if this wasn’t a warship, it’s going to detect a fucking bomb going off. We were going to have to use the condom anyway.”
She fumbled with her satchel, removing the sealed pouch and tearing it open and setting to work. Perez nodded, though there was something disappointed on his face as he set to cutting. “His soldiers aren’t that good, commander. You should see what I did to them.”
“I heard. From Flurry Heart, who already needed fucking counseling.”
“What am I missing here?” Deadlight asked. “I don’t think I learned that word.”
Olivia was now fully concentrating on the work, and she didn’t have any spare concentration for answering dumb questions.
But Perez had plenty, as usual. “Think of… an emergency portable airlock. They’re old shit from the days when the ESA and NASA didn’t have the same docking ports. Some plastic as thick as a condom, a little foam to get it secure, and a prayer to your favorite god. But they can be pretty good for holding the door open, too. Lots of these emergency-type systems only measure pressure. Once we plug the hole, they think the job’s done.”
They were nearly halfway through now. Olivia moved just beside Perez, sliding the thin plastic membrane in place behind him. He could go much quicker now that he wasn’t trying to dig a trench deep enough that the membrane wouldn’t heal. The slime was already straining slightly against the plastic, but it held for now. You don’t have to work forever, just long enough to hold the door open.
“Seems like a gamble. There are maintenance drones that don’t care about hard vacuum. Their repair might not either.”
“Well it’s working so stop distracting us,” Perez barked. “Watch our fucking backs for a few seconds. I’ve already created a cloud big enough to see from Australia slicing through this stuff. Active camouflage is shit in smoke. Oh, and it doesn’t do much good at covering up my fucking plasma torch either. If there’s anyone out here, they know we’re here.”
Olivia didn’t think Deadlight’s eyes on them would be much good, but they had Mogyla to watch and he would know what to look for.
“Looks like we’re almost inside,” Olivia said. “Mogyla, stick a tracker on the hull and add this location to our datagram. If we die here, Forerunner is gonna need to know where to find a hole.”
“What, so he can trench-run a nuke through it? There’s no way that works if we get caught.”
Their brand-new airlock was looking just about complete. The slime strained against it around the rim, but for the moment the little titanium band was holding it open. Obviously, this slime wasn’t meant to fight off intruders.
Olivia was the first to push her way in, expanding the inner section of the airlock as she went. There would be enough room for all of them inside, even in their armor. Ponies just weren’t very big.
“Get in,” she called. “And zip it the hell up behind you. It’ll be a bitch to get the door open if that slime punches a hole in us.”
She felt someone’s armor crunching her up against the front of the airlock. She made sure to stay close to the single section of hard plastic with its bright red button.
“Door’s closed,” Perez said. “What’s up there?”
She could see through the clear plastic front of the airlock, though there wasn’t much to see. The interior of this section looked like the inside of a vein, dripping with some kind of moisture that hadn’t boiled away in vacuum. There was another layer of green in front of them, though this looked far thinner. She could see something orange beyond, like a distant tunnel light. “We’ll have to do some more cutting up ahead. Brace, Deadlight. Don’t panic.”
She pressed the button, and the little canister of gas concealed inside vented into the airlock. The chill vapor formed a fog that made it impossible to see for a few seconds, filling out the temporary chamber. If they were actually making an emergency repair, this would be the moment where the crew on the inside of the ship came out with their own mate to the condom and sealed them together with foam.
The Storm King probably wouldn’t be so considerate.
Deadlight didn’t panic, though he didn’t seem to understand. No matter, they didn’t need him to. He was here to help them control the airship, or maybe to bring some local knowledge if they had to negotiate.
“Prepare to breach,” Olivia said. “Perez, take point. I’ll be behind you. Deadlight, just stay close and don’t get killed. Mogyla, bring up the rear. Get those drones up as soon as you can.”
She waited for the acknowledging answer from each of her people in turn before unzipping the airlock. There was a slight hiss of air, but only for a second. Pressure in here was normal.
Not that she would be trusting it yet. They might lose their back door any second as the sealant crushed it.
She couldn’t feel gravity yet—maybe the starship didn’t have any. If that ended up being the case, that would be their advantage. They’d been fighting in zero-g for their whole lives. “Cut through with me,” she said to Perez, extending her suit’s tactical blade with a little pressure from her left foreleg. It shot out the end at about sixteen centimeters, glinting in her amber spotlights.
Perez took the knife off his belt in his right hand. “Ready.”
The thin layer of slime gave easily under her knife, though it was a little like cutting a thin layer of caramel. After a few seconds it gummed up around her blade, requiring a little more force to make it through. She braced herself against the wall, then shoved forward, tumbling right through it.
The world spun around her. Her suit whirred, then came down on her legs with a thunk.
She was standing in a corridor, with a ceiling three meters tall or so. There was no walkway, just a thin coating of more slime covering every surface. There were no electronics at all, just fleshy-looking membranes that seemed to contract and release with regular time. Like the room was breathing.
She got out of the way quick enough, making room for Perez and then the others to land in time. The dragon looked like he barely fit in the corridor, his helmet dangerously close to scraping the ceiling’s fleshy protrusions.
Something roared over her suit-mic, something that sounded nothing like the war cry of one of the Storm King’s men. It was far too animal, like the shriek of an enraged insect that was soon joined by thousands of others.
“Looks like they heard us, boys!” Perez appeared beside her to her visual sensors, more than just the vague suggestion of her IFF outlining his position. He removed the massive Richter shotgun from his back, taking it in both hands.
“We’re in the maintenance duct,” Deadlight said, glancing up and down the corridor around them with growing panic. “We’re not supposed to be here. Those don’t sound like awake changelings to me.”
Olivia saw the first flicker of motion ahead of them, a pair of shimmering insect eyes and a black carapace. It looked a little like a pony, if it had been given to the props department of an alien invasion movie. There were openings in its body seemingly at random, weeping greenish pus. It wore nothing, carried no weapons, and looked like it wanted to eat them alive.
Also it had about a thousand friends. They poured in around them on both directions, crawling along the walls and ceiling as easily as the ground.
Olivia raised her rifle, switching over to anti-personnel rounds. “Mogyla, change in priority. Pop our balloon. I want my bugs vacuum fried.”
“Anchor up then, everybody,” Mogyla called over their coms, appearing in the back of the group. He took careful aim at the opening in the ceiling with the large tube over his shoulder. “Boarding spikes, now!”
Then there was a flash, and the enraged animal sounds were replaced with a roar of air.
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Why is everyone giving flak to Perez for performing a Fatality on the asshole who was about to mount Flurry?
Same for his other targets. The moment you start displaying impaled civilian corpses in your occupied territory, you lose the right to whine about the enemy not following Geneva Conventions.
Well, it looks like nothing's going to plan on either end. Doesn't look like Sarah's new life is lasting very long
9229137
I suspect it's the difference between killing enemies and torturing them.
9229947
Pérez already explained it: since Storm King's soldiers keep returning just killing them is not effective enough. Ergo the need of a psychological tactic.
9230226
It's still entirely justifiable to give him shit for it.
I can't say I feel bad for Sarah. This is all her fault. It seems that James is stronger against manipulation than she is.
9230280
I don't think so. The newcomer changeling has got to be James, who picked a form to woo Sarah. So he did the exact same thing.
James?
But if she is James, she acted a little weird
I feel like not coming back as an alicorn is a mistake, but I suppose Sarah is the con artist and not me.
Hahaha, oh my god. All along I've been expecting James to change gender, and instead Sarah and Ocellus both change species in some sort of twisted Gift of the Magi situation. Nice subversion of expectations.
Oooo, time to move on from being excited and upset about who is what species, there's a war on.
Hey, they must be in Motherload? What with the mountains, and I can't imagine those retractable roof rail gun houses being somewhere else.
Brilliantly planned. Though to be fair, maybe it'll be helpful soon to have a changeling member of the Pioneering Society and James is still apparently MIA. Or is that one changeling and is keeping his or her head down.
No kidding.
Huh, changelings in the Storm King's ship? Or at least, maintenance drones? The Sarah and James changeling side plot seems immediately more relevant to the rest of the war.
Why does Harmony keep trying to convince Sarah to give up? right now the human-changeling alliance seem to be the only thing which could prevent the Storm King from finishing his project. Isn´t the God Machine a teensy tiny bit worried about something big going on from which not even He has any idea?
The Gift of the Magi species swap is tragically hilarious. I don't know what Harmony's game is—there may be some manner of n-tuple bluff at work—but when this is all said and done, it's going to need to have a long talk with its citizens and failsafe.
I'm not sure if that's an attempt at humor or a frightening paucity of imagination.
Cliffhangers all around. Or, in Sarah's case, a cliffdropper. Looking forward to more.
9230407
My money's on Celestia.
Why is there no gravity?
9232797
In Earth culture, changelings are the infants of demons or fae, which has replaced a human family's newborns. (So, more accurately, Exchangelings). And often grow up to be either supernaturally talented or beautiful, or hideous and/or malevolent. Or all of those. Occasionally the children kidnapped are released once the fae grow bored with their prize. Or their own spawn has reached some form of adolescence.
In pony culture, they're shapeshifting insectoid soul-drinkers.
In the Sanctuary manifest, they're listed as a semi-organic maintenance system drone.
Mogyla probably just missed a briefing. Thankfully Sanctuary Maintenance Drone #????? through #?????-? will fill her in. With biodegradable industrial strength sickly green resin.
9299523
Emotivores, not soul-drinkers. Also similarity with fae is in that adored and beloved ones (or envied, in case of some folklore) were replaced by fae, changelings supposedly replace a pony to steallove.
Haha. cheeky
So wait. Does that mean it revokes her citizenship? Not really clear.
Oh, ha.
Oh nooo they both changed forms to match the other?
It's James, isn't it?
Yup. James
Hey now. He restrained himself in front of the lady, and explained to her exactly why he did it that way
They may actually be rated for vacuum. On the plus side, the hole might be all they care about.
Remarks and corrections:
> so you’re already impersonating one of us.
Missing closing quote