Part 2: Detonate
Lucky Break stood at the head of a dozen marines in the cargo hold of the Wing of Midnight, watching the countdown timer on her screen shrink down. The ship shook violently to one side, then the other, and she heard the constant rumble of gunfire from outside. But what Forerunner and its crew were dealing with out there, he hadn’t said.
Beside her, Lightning Dust stood in gleaming armor of her own—the same armor she’d been given before Othar had fallen. Where even her friends had failed her—or maybe she’d failed them—her adoptive mother never had. They were about the same height now, Lucky a little taller, a little older, and Lightning Dust basically the same as she had been when she killed Celestia. That was the promise Discord had made.
Lightning Dust already had the helmet on, so all she could see through the visor was her eyes. Lucky slipped her own on, listening to the hiss of air as atmosphere pumped in around her. The XE-891 Atlas had nothing fancy like stealth technology, and it wasn’t built for space. But it could go three hours through biological weapons, and stop anything short of high-caliber armor piercing rounds aimed at the face. Forerunner’s computer system suggested many wars had been fought and won in such armor, against terrible enemies and friends all dead.
We’re standing on the shore of an ocean of forgotten history, all washed away. I wonder if any of us has a chance of understanding it.
“You don’t have to come,” Lucky Break said over private channel, just to Lightning Dust. The pegasus had been so little involved in any of the actual war—she just wasn’t qualified. “You’re not a soldier, I know that.”
“And you are?”
She laughed weakly, glancing again at the timer. Less than two minutes until they arrived outside Camp Storm. “I guess not. But I’m a… princess. That means something in Equestria. Even if it’s mostly a babysitting mission for these marines.”
Forerunner’s voice came over the general coms, overriding their private conversation. “Prepare for drop, thirty seconds and counting. Camp Storm is believed to be the most secure facility in all of Equestria. I’ve dealt with as much of its defenses as I can from the air, but my drones are deployed elsewhere. Your mission is to liberate the captives before the guards can exterminate them. This is the place where Equestria’s highest value targets were taken. Resistance leaders, important political prisoners. Among the priority VIPs to recover is the brother of Princess Twilight Sparkle, Captain Shining Armor.”
His image appeared on the screen for a second beside the timer, taken from the last official negotiation with Equestria. Needless to say, he’d probably suffered considerably since then.
“Once you take control of the camp, make it a priority to take prisoners over killing the Storm King’s soldiers. So far as we know, loyalist ponies are not revived upon their deaths, and can be killed at your discretion. Expect heavy resistance.”
The ramp began to descend. Lucky Break saw early evening outside for a second, before the cameras on her suit adjusted and the outside world became a monochrome white.
It was a mining camp alright, with various stations and bits of heavy equipment cutting into the mountain. Much of it was primitive and pony-made, but some parts looked mechanical. There were several forklifts parked in the open-air warehouse. “Squads one and two, down down down!” Davis called, leading the charge down the ramp. Lucky looked out, and tried to make sense of the growing tactical display on her HUD. Every sensor on every suit was meshed together, with Forerunner using them to provide an increasingly detailed map of the battlefield.
The Storm King had gained a few mounted guns, which looked extremely primitive compared to anything they had, but still barked and smoked as they tore up the ground. And it wasn’t just the thick-furred monsters. Griffons swept down from the skies, ponies disguised as slaves suddenly drew weapons and threw Molotov cocktails. The camp went from peaceful to bloodbath in seconds.
“Your turn, Governor! Stick to the center, don’t wander! I don’t want to find you face down in the mud somewhere!”
“That’s us,” she repeated, and together with Lighting Dust charged out into the fray. Bullets pinged all around her, the dirt exploded into little craters. Though it had been going for hours, to Lucky Break the battle for Equestria had only just begun.
“Contact, contact!” Perez’s barked over the radio, sounding stretched and attenuated but still making it through the mesh.
Olivia and Deadlight had been walking for a little over half an hour, moving from one empty inscrutable room to the next. Occasionally they had encountered signs of occupation, but most of those were gone now. Tables were covered with uneaten food, makeshift beds were empty, and weapon-racks had only a few broken pieces.
She stopped walking, shoving Deadlight sideways into a makeshift storage room filled with boxes and crates of food. She brought up her command com, but bright red warnings came up instead of the helmet camera feeds she had wanted.
Bandwidth insufficient.
The internal maps weren’t working either—apparently the material of the Stormbreaker had radar-deflecting properties. The positional estimate of a kilometer of distance had only an 80% confidence score.
“Report, Perez! What the hell—” Mogyla’s lifesigns went out.
“Shit shit shit, Mogyla’s down.” The sound of rapid shotgun-blasts dominated for a few seconds, along with alien shouting.
“How are they hurting you?” Deadlight asked, his voice distant and quiet over the radio. During a command situation, he would be background noise, not loud enough to distract.
“Too many… oh my god, they’re ripping him apart…”
Olivia shivered. “Are you somewhere mission-critical, Perez? Will that bomb bring down the Stormbreaker?”
“The fuck should I know?” There were a few more loud blasts, then the unmistakable metallic click of an empty chamber. “Orders, Olivia? Should I try to bring us down?”
Time slowed. Between each heartbeat, it felt like hours of time might pass. They might be able to end this right now. But they might not. The ship is massive, and it resisted every other kind of explosive. It might not do anything if we don’t get the drive, and they’d know our intentions. The real target of this mission is the Storm King, not his ship. If that bomb doesn’t kill him, he’ll just run off and take over another terraforming ship.
“Do not deploy,” Olivia warned. “Fuse that bomb. Don’t let them get their hands on it.”
“Aye.” Perez’s voice no longer sounded angry, or even his usual amusement. “Won’t be the first time I’ve…” Then he screamed again, and there was a long series of meaty sounds. “You think that’s enough for me, bastards? I’m a motherfucking dragon!”
“It was an honor,” Olivia said. “I’ll join you soon.” She cut the channel.
All that in about fifteen seconds. She watched, frozen in place, for nearly a minute before Perez’s lifesigns vanished from the mesh.
Deadlight was staring at his screen the whole time, glancing back and forth at the doorways. “I don’t… understand…” he said, his voice halting. “How is it… possible they brought down two of your best warriors?”
Olivia sighed, shutting off her screen. “We aren’t gods, Deadlight. We just fight more than ponies do. More experience. It might’ve taken a hundred of them to bring Perez down. But trapped in a confined space like this… where was he going to go?” She glanced back at her satchel. “I hope you understand what this means.”
Deadlight only stared.
“We’re carrying the other bomb. We… probably won’t be leaving this ship alive. And if it looks like we might be captured…” She jostled the saddlebags. “I will ensure that doesn’t happen, even at the cost of our lives.”
The theoretical ability to maybe bring people back from the dead eventually was tainting their treatment of death. Would the real Olivia have flown up here on a suicide mission if an alien ship like this parked around Earth?
She didn’t even have to wonder.
“I understand now,” Deadlight said. “And… I knew what might happen. Melody understood when she allowed me to come. We’re willing to make the sacrifice of our personal happiness in order to secure a future for everypony.”
“That’s an excellent point of view,” said a voice from around the hall, as a unicorn in armor emerged. Olivia’s eyes widened as she saw her face. A scar ran across one eye, and her horn looked painfully broken.
I hope you’re not an Equestrian spy. She knew better than to underestimate unicorns. Olivia fired a quick burst directly at the unicorn—and she dissolved into mist. But her voice still sounded from down the hall.
“We’re only doing as you described. Securing a future for all creatures against the Storm.”
Olivia dropped into a low crouch, switching her stealth systems back on, so much as they worked. Her thermal cameras were confounded by the walls, which got warmer and cooler in patches without explanation. She could see half a dozen pony-sized objects in the room, which held in place for moments before vanishing again.
“Surrender,” Olivia said, her voice commanding. “We will spare you.” Not necessarily true. Not if they had to blow the whole ship before they could find a way off.
“You have the balance of power backward, intruder. I don’t think you recognize the place you stand. You think the craft of the ancients can be undone so easily? Open up your eyes.” Another unicorn was standing in the air in front of her, but now that she was using her thermal camera she could see it was all wrong. Another illusion. “Our king has had centuries to understand the techniques of the ancients. What could four ponies do?”
Olivia could do several things. “Get down,” she whispered to Deadlight, before tossing all three of her grenades. One around the hall, one as close as she dared in the room with them, and one back in the direction she’d come. Then she got down, facing the thick armor on her back into the blast.
The explosions went off all at the same moment, showering broken crystal chipped from the walls and dumping all the food stored in the closet all over the floor. In the monochrome of her night vision, it looked like blood pouring slowly across the room.
Minor acceleration damage. Rangefinder nonfunctional, O2 recovery nonfunctional. Damage detected to various motor and strength-assist circuitry. Attempting to recalibrate.
She rose, surrounded by torn metal and shreds of crystal, and nearly tripped over a bushel of apples rolling around at her hooves. There was no more illusion, no sign of the pony who had been speaking to them.
Deadlight emerged from the wrecked closet another moment later. “We should get moving. I know that pony, she isn’t on our side.”
“You think she’s alive?” Olivia picked a direction at random from the several doorways, choosing the one that didn’t have piles of makeshift furniture now shredded by her grenades. Her armor sparked and creaked a little, but it was still working. Her air was now draining again, but that was fine. She had at least an hour before it gave out on her for good. “That spell looked… complicated. Figure she had to be close.”
“That wasn’t a spell,” Deadlight said, his voice shaken. His armor looked intact, he’d been well out of the blast radius. But the longer they went, the more afraid he seemed. “I didn’t feel any magic, and her horn wasn’t glowing.”
Then what the hell was it?
“I wish to speak with you,” the pony voice said from behind her. Olivia’s thermal camera wasn’t working anymore, so she fired at it anyway. This time she watched the bullets pass right through it without so much as disturbing its steps. “I would’ve rather taken the other intruders alive, but they wandered into the maintenance nest. Changelings don’t really take my orders, or… leave much to chance.”
Deadlight shuddered, strangling a sick sound under his breath. Maybe he knew something Olivia didn’t. And from his reaction, I’m probably better off not knowing.
“About what?” Olivia called, keeping her rifle aimed directly at the figure. “You can’t persuade us to stop. We won’t let the Storm King use this ship against another inhabited city.”
“You mistake his intentions,” said another voice, this time coming from the other direction. Olivia turned, but didn’t fire. The pony coming from that side looked exactly the same as the nearer one. Come to think of it, were they glowing a little? “Equestria was a means to an end. The Storm King isn’t concerned with ruling it for much longer. It has served its purpose.”
“What purpose is that?” Deadlight asked, his voice quavering a little. At least he had the good sense to face the opposite direction she was. He had his rifle ready, though he hadn’t fired it once that she knew. He might soon have to. “Labor, raw materials? You really expect us to believe that he just wanted to build something, then he was just going to let everypony leave?”
“I’m not concerned with what you believe,” she said. “But you might be able to figure it out… I know who you are now.”
The radar in Olivia’s suit flashed with contacts from the hallway ahead of them. Many of them could’ve been ghosts, but they were certainly more real than this projection. She sprayed it with shots for good measure, then tugged Deadlight back the way they’d come.
“Other way!” she yelled. “Fast as we can! She’s slowing us down while they send reinforcements!”
Even so, she didn’t shut the voice out completely—not when she needed to be able to hear the sound of footsteps and who knew what else that might be coming down the hall.
“When we arrived on your island, I thought you were a religious colony. Separatists, who were fed up with the bucking backwards way the princesses’ did everything. But that wasn’t it.”
They ran through shattered crystal, and ran straight out into space.
That was how it looked, anyway. A railless walkway, spanning what looked like an entire kilometer of the void. Only a faint shimmer separated the edge from a plummet down into darkness. But the gravity was still working, and according to her suit so was the air.
It led straight into the cloud of obscuring darkness. Soldiers pounded down the hallway behind them, and the pony’s voice still carried.
“If I had known who you were, the Storm King might have been persuaded to pass you by. You’re far more likely to be our allies than our enemies. You’re Harmony’s prisoners too.”
She stopped running in the doorway, waving Deadlight forward. “I’m doing something, keep going!” She fumbled around in her pack a moment, removing all the conventional explosive she was carrying and slapping it against the hull.
But the speaker apparently thought she’d been interested by her words, because she reappeared in the doorway with a smile. “He’s going to set us all free, you know. What you did with Princess Celestia was bold—impressive work, really. Equestria couldn’t get rid of her for a thousand years, and not from lack of trying. But you weren’t thinking big enough. The real enemy was always bigger than she was. Kill the master, not the slave.”
Olivia took off running another second later, leaving her bomb on remote detonation rather than motion. The hologram might trip it otherwise. But it didn’t seem to be able to follow her out onto the walkway, or it didn’t want to.
“You’re insane,” Deadlight said, out over the suit speaker. “You can’t kill Harmony. If it thought you could, you’d already be dead.”
Only a voice followed behind them. Olivia was running for her life now, not caring about the trail of hydraulic fluid she left behind. The walkway was much wider than a pony, obviously built for some other kind of creature. “You or I, yes. We’re Harmony’s slaves. But the Storm King… he is free. That’s what makes him our king, one who deserves the position. Your greatest achievements were accomplished while you were free, too.”
Deadlight was nearly to the bubble now.
It grew so wide that it swallowed the edge of the walkway completely. But it looked like a conventional material, so it had to be safe to enter, right? It’s just another hologram.
“What do we do, Wayfinder? Run inside? Use our bomb on whatever the Storm King was building?”
“No.” Olivia didn’t even hesitate. Armored guards began pouring out the doorway—the same ones they’d seen before, but packed so close that there was barely space to move between them. A hail of crossbow bolts began following her, but she was far enough away that the few that hit bounced off harmlessly. “We blow that up, and the ship might live to fuck everything we want to save. When I say go, lock those boot magnets as strong as possible and pray to god with whatever soul you have.”
“Uh…” Deadlight muttered, turning to point his rifle in her direction. But he didn’t fire—not with her running down the hallway. There was next to no chance he wouldn’t hit her by mistake. His rifle could still kill her at that range. “My magnets?”
“You shouldn’t go within the field,” the speaker said, her voice distant. “Drop your weapons and surrender. My soldiers will spare you. I wish to meet you physically. If you go inside the—”
“NOW!” Olivia didn’t have to look behind her, the rear camera was enough. The walkway behind them had at least thirty soldiers on it, and more kept coming. It was time to see just how magic the ancients’ metamaterials really were.
She slowed to a jerking stop, engaging all her magnets on maximum hold. Then she smashed the detonation button with her nose.
Olivia hung suspended over oblivion.
For an endless eternity she hung there, her world unfocused and her visor cloudy. I was… doing something. Every thought that drifted across her perception felt as though it had to cross a great distance, grinding so slowly that she could feel physical pain as it moved.
As the seconds passed, she became dimly away of the hiss of air to her mouth. That was good—she would be dead without it. But she couldn’t remember why.
She had been doing something important, something so important that she had been willing to commit her life to the task. Forerunner had told her that she might die on this mission, and now here she was.
Olivia tried to reach up with a hoof, tried to wipe away the thin film of ash and debris from the glass over her face. But no luck—her hooves were glued firmly in place, by a force that cared so little about her motion that she didn’t feel it give even a little bit.
She heard occasional bursts of radio static, and thought maybe there might be words. But every time she thought she was hearing something, her brain would go fuzzy again and the words melted. There had been… an explosion. She was closer than she should’ve been. But the enemy was dead—she saw no motion even through the mostly obscured helmet of her armor.
She was wearing armor—because she was in space. Who lived in space? Ghosts lived in space, and slavers. She knew too many of both.
Something clanked against her faceplate, loud enough that it startled her from her reverie. She heard a voice—clear enough it made it through even her melting brain. Deadlight’s voice.
“Wayfinder, Wayfinder!”
She opened her eyes, and found them assaulted by red lights from the side of her armor. Maybe she could close her eyes and make the beeping stop.
“Olivia Fischer!”
That did it. Olivia hadn’t even known that Deadlight knew that part of her name. But he had, and his tone was desperate. “Forerunner says your suit is out of air. You’re dying! I’m going to hook us up for a minute. Just hold on a little longer.”
Hold on? How could she hold anything without hands? But her legs wouldn’t move, and she didn’t have much strength to fight. So she just grinned at him, and after a few seconds he left her alone.
She rested for a few more minutes, until some loud clicking sounds rumbled behind her. She couldn’t turn to look, but she wished they’d stop. They were making it hard to sleep.
There was a sudden hiss of sound, a blast of freezing cold that shot down her back and directly against her face.
The sirens clarified into something she recognized. “Oxygen critically low. User suffering deprivation sickness. Oxygen critically low!”
Deadlight came back around, and for the second time he rested his helmet up against hers. His voice was muffled, but the fog on her mind was already lifting. “Your armor is mostly fried. We can do an emergency exit once we get back aboard, but I’ll have to tug you in.”
“Sure…” She was still weak, still probably would’ve agreed to anything he suggested. If he wanted to go swimming, maybe hit the beach, that would’ve made sense.
At least Deadlight took the time to wipe off her helmet with one foreleg before he went any further.
The weight of Olivia’s predicament came crashing down along with the pounding in her head.
The bridge across the gap on the Stormbreaker had been disconnected from one side of the ship. From how weightless she felt, the artificial gravity no longer worked, and from her suit not opening there must not be air.
Relative to the ship, they were on the side of a vertical slope, hanging down over an incredible distance to Equus below. She could let go and fall for days. But then thousands of people will die.
Her legs weren’t broken—none of her body was. The magnets were still holding her to the bridge. Without them, she would be as dead as the distant, drifting corpses she could see slowly spinning away. The Storm King’s soldiers sure didn’t do well outside atmosphere, despite all that fur.
“I’m lifting the clamps.” Deadlight said, briefly touching their helmets together.
“Is my… radio gone?”
He nodded. “Mine too. I don’t think it’s from the explosion… the ship is doing something. We’re moving now. Seems pretty slow, hard to be sure. I was talking to Forerunner about you until twenty minutes ago. He explained what to do. So… blame him if I get us both killed.”
“You won’t,” Olivia said. “You’ve got a little boy to come home to. But if I don’t get inside, you won’t be able to get back to him.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Anyway, don’t try to move. There’s still a little juice in your legs, and you might break something. Just save what you’ve got left for the emergency exit.”
“You got it Deadlight.” Then, a little quieter, “Thanks for saving me.”
“Not saved yet,” Deadlight answered. “They won’t keep thinking we’re dead when we get back on. Save your energy, enjoy that air. There won’t be any more.”
“Great. Before we go in, can you… connect the bomb in my vest to the armor using one of the external ports. It needs to be renewed every thirty minutes, or it blows.”
Deadlight’s eyes widened, and he jumped for the pouch so fast that the magnets barely caught him on his landing. He drifted up a bit, then landed more securely, and finally started fiddling with the bag. She couldn’t watch him closely since all she could do was turn her head in her helmet, but after a few seconds the exterior signal from the bomb came on.
There were two minutes left in the timer. She couldn’t move her legs, but the armor had a failsafe in mind for that, and so she used her eyes, carefully selecting the button that would renew the timer. With thirty more minutes on the clock, she could finally breathe again.
“Did I do that right?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I can’t see an air readout. How much do we have?”
“Not very much,” he said. “My suit isn’t broken, but there’s no O2 out here. I should… probably get to work.”
“Yeah, sorry.”
She felt her magnets come undone, and she started to drift. A strange feeling that a metric ton’s worth of armor could float away like a balloon. But it still had the same mass, and when she finally came up against whatever cable Deadlight was using, it jerked painfully against one of her legs.
“There are… fucking anchor points on the back, stupid. I’m not a toy.”
But Deadlight couldn’t hear her. Olivia was forced to watch as he made his slow way up what was left of the bridge. The other side of the ship waited there. She couldn’t even control her orientation, and with his unsteady tugs, she was wrapped around and twisted head-over-heels. She could see where the bridge was meant to lead, with the doorway apparently still open. A faint shimmer of light glowed and there was no blast of air. So either they vented the air, or there’s a shield. I fucking hope we can get through.
With painful steps, the doorway got closer. More than once Deadlight stopped completely as the ground shook, and Olivia wondered if they might start drifting away from the Stormbreaker. There would be no plummet into oblivion the instant it broke—but if the ship was accelerating, they’d immediately be left behind. There was no way Deadlight had the skills to grapple them back before they were lost in the void.
She felt gravity slam her to the deck like a fist in the face from an angry giant. She squeaked in protest, but found her legs still barely worked. She moved a few inches, sprayed bits of hydraulic fluid and chunks of ice all over the ground at her hooves, then gave up.
Deadlight appeared in front of her, his helmet’s visor completely up. He was breathing the air outside, and fog puffed out from his mouth. “It’s okay, Wayfinder… I’ll get you out. Just hold on one second.”
Olivia saw the projectile hit him almost in slow motion. It looked like a chunk of crystal, traveling like it only barely cared about gravity. “Deadlight, Deadlight move!”
But he didn’t hear her, didn’t even react.
The dark crystal struck him in the back, spread over his body like a rapidly growing tumor. He twisted, reaching toward her—then thunked sideways against the deck, a solid semi-transparent block.
Tempest Shadow’s face appeared in front of Olivia’s helmet a moment later, directly between her and the shimmering opening to oblivion. “I’ve been waiting for you, human. Welcome aboard.”
Sarah grew increasingly impatient as the Pioneering Society wasted more of their time. Granted, there was a significant part of her that was just overwhelmed with all that was going on, and couldn’t have made any better suggestions about what they should’ve been doing if she tried. They’d arrived exactly at the start of a war, and they didn’t know the terms. Not only that, but the leadership of the Pioneering Society appeared fractured, their pony allies were off fighting for their land, and their best men were off on some suicide mission to kill a doomsday ship.
How all that had arisen from a little scientific colony underground, where they rented weather ponies from the mainland and gave submarine tours to tourists, Sarah had no idea. Some part of her wanted to give up on her mission completely, just curl up into a corner and go to sleep. She’d stay there for a few months, and by the time she woke up again it would all sort itself out.
She might’ve done that, if it wasn’t for Ocellus. But the changeling that wasn’t a changeling anymore was the one she would’ve wanted to curl up with, and her friend was no longer confident in her own skin. She shifted uncomfortably almost every second, before getting up to pace in front of the window, sit back down, then start pacing all over again. She’d been repeating that cycle every few minutes since Governor Lucky Break had departed.
Now she could hear the sound of a battle outside, and it was loud enough to cover Ocellus’s occasional pouts or strangled sobs. And we’re parked in the middle of it. Does the Storm King have any weapons that can bring down an airship? Sarah found she didn’t actually know anything about Equestrian weapons. They had airships, but beyond that…
“We can’t keep waiting here!” exclaimed the new changeling, whose name she still hadn’t learned. Pretty little thing, but watching her only made Sarah feel guilty about Ocellus. She shouldn’t feel anything for this pony, not when she was with someone who she’d actually adventured with. I can’t believe I miss James. But she did, there was no denying it.
“Sarah, you need to get the AI’s attention. If we don’t get into the air right now, this is all pointless. It’s great you got the diplomats together… but Governor Lucky is off pretending to be a hero, so they aren’t going to do any diplomacy. Get the AI!”
“I don’t know why you think I can do it…” Sarah rose from her chair, shaking herself out. But there was no mistaking her sincerity. The changeling’s emotions were as clear to her as Ocellus’s, yet somehow more… transparent. Like a paler reflection of what pony Ocellus was feeling. I wonder what the black changelings would feel like to me. “You haven’t even told me your name.”
“Photuris” the changeling said. “Now, help me get the AI’s attention. You were always better at it than I was.”
“I don’t know you,” Sarah said, joining Photuris in front of the music player. “You were one of Ocellus’s guards, I’m guessing. It’s great that you made it through the underworld, but I don’t know what mission you think you’re fulfilling.”
“Because you haven’t been listening to me,” she muttered, stomping one hoof on the floor. “Nopony out here listens to me. This whole pretend war is a waste of time if the Storm King still keeps his ship. That’s why I’m here. Nopony but me is going to shut him down.”
“Because… you’re some kind of expert,” Sarah supplied. “Who just happened to show up at the last second, right before we made it out.”
“No.” Photuris’s wings buzzed in annoyance. She spun around, settling down on her haunches for the little extra height it provided. “Because the Failsafe showed an earlier iteration of me what was waiting out here, and Harmony agreed to let me be someone else. Instead of picking a stupid translator that we had a million of and wasn’t needed anyway, past me decided to be useful and pick STEM this time. I know how Equus’s terraforming fleet works. And we just happen to be changelings, so we can get aboard without the maintenance system noticing us.”
But Sarah had stopped listening at “earlier iteration.”
Death had said that James would be coming. She’d been a little fearful that maybe they would be leaving one of their own behind, but… no. That wasn’t it at all. James had been along the whole time.
“You’re James…” she stammered, hurrying forward and pulling the tiny drone up against her chest. “I can’t believe it… I told you not to do something like this!” Now that she looked, she could see the distinct similarity between this creature and the one that had been telling stories on the beach full of Vitruvians. This was a being cut from the same cloth, even if she looked like an ordinary changeling.
But Photuris squirmed the instant she held her against her chest, and she didn’t stop until Sarah let her go. “I’m not James,” she said firmly. “James is an iteration of the pony I am—a previous iteration. Equestrian citizens are made of hundreds, I only have two. Together we’re… someone else. Him, the copied memories from a life that wasn’t his, a few months of agony… then a life of unimportance in a basement.” She looked away, pacing towards the window. But it had gone completely opaque now—they would not be getting any views of the battlefield. “He wanted me to be someone better. That’s what the Failsafe offered. And we are! The ancients are still in there! They taught me how their machines work… and now we have what we need.” She stuck out her hoof to Sarah. “We’re done with changeling diplomacy. We’re here for the Pioneering Society. We have to shut that ship down.”
Sarah remembered a beach, a figure that wasn’t even human but might’ve been close. “He’s loyal to the Pioneering Society,”she had once told Harmony. She’d been right to believe in him. He’d given himself away to accomplish the Society’s mission. Exactly like he did the first time. I stole my way here, but he sacrificed his whole life. Now he did it again.
“You don’t need the one you are calling Sarah to get my attention,” Forerunner’s voice said from the console behind Ocellus’s head. The pegasus jumped, retreating out of the way. But there was no face on the screen, just his voice. “I believe you. Less than an hour ago, I lost contact with my boarding team on the Stormbreaker. Given that the ship remains in orbit and I haven’t detected any nuclear explosions… it appears they were compromised. If I can field a second option before the Storm King has a chance to retaliate against the civilian population, I’m strongly in favor. Lucky Break is otherwise engaged, and Flurry Heart is… compromised. But I can get you to the Stormbreaker. Except that… there are VIPs aboard this ship, and it will almost certainly be destroyed in the process. Give me a moment to see what resources I can allocate.”
Forerunner’s voice went silent, leaving the few of them alone to think about what he had just said. Is not-James roping me into a dangerous mission? Then another part of her mind, If I die again, I know the way back. I could do it as a pony. “Sure, sounds great,” she said. “See what you can pull together, Forerunner.”
“Do not think that this means I have had the chance to validate your identities. You in particular will be extremely difficult, individual who claims to be Sarah Kaplan. The very nature of that template means she cannot be validated easily. But complete this task, and you will at least be trusted for what you are. Not to mentioned rewarded for saving life on the surface of this ring.”
“Can Ocellus come with us?” Sarah asked, turning back to Photuris. “She knows more about this tech than I do. She’s more experienced too.” And I don’t want to go on any adventures without her. I feel bad leaving her behind.
“No.” Photuris didn’t even try to sound sympathetic. But she didn’t sound smug either, just like someone stating a fact. “She chose a pony body, and a pony would be detected. But this newer changeling design didn’t exist when the terraforming fleet was built. Its sensors will see us as sleepers, as will the population there. The only tricky bit will be getting close enough to board without being seen. It has shields… meant to allow it to operate in extremely hostile environments, but effective at stopping us as well. Not our bodies alone, but I can’t swim through space.”
“I am working on that,” Forerunner’s voice said, without hesitation. Despite everything else he was apparently doing—fighting several wars at once from the sound of it. “I had considered what would happen if the initial mission failed. I just didn’t consider that I might have uniquely skilled specialists to deploy. If my best soldiers couldn’t succeed, I didn’t have much hope for you.”
His voice shifted towards the door, which opened with a hiss of pressure. A human figure stood there, with a hairless pale face bearing the most neutral expression imaginable. “I have determined it is possible to get you aboard that ship, assuming I am willing to commit certain… resources.”
Ocellus staggered out of his way, mouth opening and closing several times. She made a fearful squeak, fluttering over towards Sarah and settling beside her at the table. “Holy buzz, what in the queens is that?” she asked. “Why does it look so familiar?”
“Because you used to look a little like him,” Sarah responded, though she couldn’t fight the slight smile that had appeared on her face. Despite her discontent, Ocellus had still come to her when something strange and dangerous appeared. Maybe she was getting over the pony thing. “That’s what I used to be, except… with a better looking face. More hair. Better looking everything really. No offense, Forerunner.”
Forerunner ignored Ocellus’s fear, pulling over a chair across from them. But his eyes were only on Photuris. “I would need to commit serious resources to getting you aboard. The effort might involve the loss of conflicts and personnel. I require more information about your intentions for the terraforming vessel. You are part of its maintenance system—if someone tried to impersonate one of my drones, I would discover it immediately and destroy it. Why will that vessel not do likewise?”
“Changelings aren’t some big computer,” Photuris answered. “I mean, they follow its instructions… but you should think of ants, not your drones. The swarm takes the orders at the level of pheromones and chemistry. Ocellus here can tell you—a swarm of sleepers can always be passed by if you know the right passwords.”
Ocellus nodded weakly, lifting her tail behind her wistfully. There would be no scent glands back there anymore. Probably she couldn’t smell them either, though Sarah couldn’t know that for sure. She’d been awake as a pony without the new implants for so short a time that she didn’t know just how closely Discord had been involved. Maybe they all could, and they just didn’t pay attention normally. “The Equestrian sector of the ring uses all organic changeling drones, and probably lots of other districts too. They ignore us completely if we stay out of restricted areas. Our entire… nation… is built in areas that would kill ponies if they tried to visit.”
“Alright.” Forerunner tapped one finger against the table. “So that’s one threat gone. Suppose you board the Stormbreaker—I already got soldiers aboard once, and I’m quite certain they are more deadly than you. What can you do that they couldn’t?”
“There’s a command…” Photuris said, her voice quiet and a little nervous. Her ears flattened to her head. “One that few changelings know. But I learned it. Once you give it to… a swarm… it’s like a kill-switch for a starship. They’ll go into every critical system on that ship and eat it. Use their own bodies to short circuit plasma conduits, cram themselves in the life support ducts… every gruesome thing you can picture and probably loads worse. All I have to do is tell it to the first drone we meet, and… the whole thing implodes.”
“How do you know about that?” Ocellus’s voice came so suddenly, so angrily, that Sarah nearly fell out of her chair. “You shouldn’t… there was only one changeling who knew that. She wouldn’t even tell me… and she’s dead.”
“Not dead,” Photuris argued. “Just occupying an overlapping probability space. I’m aware that she didn’t tell anyone else. I think Harmony thought I wouldn’t come back, but… shows how much the ancients knew.”
Forerunner glanced between them. “I assume this message can’t be delivered remotely,” Forerunner said. “Or else… you would’ve already.”
“Obviously.” Photuris lifted her tail briefly, and Sarah smelled something she hadn’t before. Like a thousand fish-heads thrown into a huge tub of milk to sit in the sun for a few weeks, with undertones of burning rubber and sulphur. She inhaled—then nearly vomited. Instead she shoved against Photuris so hard that she stumbled right off of the table and away from her.
“Fucking… don’t… do that again,” Sarah spat. Her body was shaking, and felt like she should’ve been drenched with sweat. But she couldn’t sweat, so instead she just felt sicker.
“Well, I’m satisfied.” Forerunner rose, turning away. “Either you’re being honest with me, or you’re a remarkably skilled actor. Which would be proof of your identity in its own way, wouldn’t it?”
Sarah felt the ground rumble under her hooves. Cups spilled off the counter, several computation surfaces went tumbling. Ocellus squeaked in fear, hiding under the edge of the table again.
The window went clear, and Sarah saw what was producing the noise—a massive metal shape had blotted out the sky, and was rapidly descending on them. There was no alien architecture here, and the rumble she heard came not from any alien super technology but from conventional Impulse engines, knocking down some of the ramshackle slave-camp shelters and sending the enemy forces scattering. Cannons mounted along its underside fired into retreating ranks, turning them into distant smears of red mud.
“Time for the Hail Mary pass, changelings,” Forerunner said. “For Lucky’s sake, I hope you can do what you say. If you fail, I will have no choice but to turn to the Agamemnon. You don’t know what that is, but she’ll be heartbroken. Oh, and… maybe a thousand segments are about to be destroyed for no reason. If this was all some clever lie—now’s your last chance to admit it.”
“You’re really willing to… risk a thousand lives on a hunch?” Sarah asked, shuddering. Granted, she could still smell a little of that awful password, clinging to the inside of her nose. Thank god I don’t have fur right now.
“Of course not,” Forerunner said. “I’ve been monitoring every aspect of your reactions to every stimuli since you boarded the Wing of Midnight. I’ve now reached 81% certainty of your identity, Sarah. Photuris remains a conundrum, but if you’ll vouch for her, that will satisfy. It’s either that or wait for the Stormbreaker to kill us all. I didn’t build the Emperor’s Soul to hide it in the dirt.”
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These Cliffhangers ..... ARGH
Is it me or is Tempest Shadow more OP than her canon self?
...This is an interesting development. So James dies, talked to Harmony and...merged with someone else? Who conveniently knows how to take down the terraforming ship.
Wait, you merged James with Chrysalis?
Its time for The Emperors Soul to show its Calibre.
Wonder how well the Teraformers hull stands up to Warp Core Breach or Forerunners best equivalent?
9256193
Better to think of it as reincarnation Photuris is the reincarnation of James. Different mind, body, etc, same soul. The unique thing is that most ponies don't have memories of their previous iterations outside of "Harmony space"
Forerunner doesn't like to roll the dice... but when he commits, he commits HARD!
Time for the big finale!
Such an exciting chapter. I'm loving this. Next Saturday can't come fast enough.
9256037
Outside of having control of a highly advanced spaceship, she hasn't actually done much. Illusions without casting a spell? Holograms. Trapping Deadlight in crystal? Same thing she did in the movie.
Hmm... what exactly does the Storm King plan to do? Destroy Harmony? Take its place? Change the system to make it irrelevant? Or is this all some nonsense he's fed Tempest to keep her in line?
I'm also wondering what Tempest's motives are, if it's not the Storm King's promise to repair her horn like in the movie. Seems like something relatively easy to do, either by surgery or by dying and coming back like the rest of his troops.
Come to think of it, just how tech savvy is the Storm King, really? I recall him being somewhat puzzled by Forerunner's immunity to pain when he attempted to torture him some time ago. Anyone who doesn't know what an android is surely can't do as much as Tempest claims.
If this story was in two hardcover books, Act One and Act Two, I would buy it.
9256872
At the very least I don't think Storm wants to destroy Harmony; God Machine is not only in charge of everything in the Ring, but is also the only thing advanced enough to keep it running.
oh finally someone found the off button.
see now if they had been a little more expedient they could have done an independance day instead of needing to bring a warship
9256872
the storm king is a technopriest, extremely skilled in fixing and maintaining technologies of the highest order but incapable of understanding or improving them. I think he intends to insert his own program into harmony though somehow to change its rule set making him its ruler then he could command the ring to do whatever he wants
9256358
When you have Certain Defeat as one option, and the other option as something so stupidly insanely crazy you have no idea if you can believe it or not, some times you just have to:
derpicdn.net/img/2012/11/10/147731/full.gif
9257556
Guess it's time for the crew to roll the dice...
9257930
Or pick up and throw Flurry Heart at the problem
Oh boy. Lucky's going into a warzone where Shining's one of the prime prisoners? Flurry's trauma marathon isn't over yet...
The Storm King has Tempest by much more than a broken horn. This one seems to have swallowed the hype whole This is going to complicate matters even more...
At least Photuris offers a potential solution... but actually pulling it off will not be even remotely easy. Still, it looks like their best option. We'll have to see what happens.
9256037
Yudkowsky's Law of the Conservation of Conflict: If you give the good guys more toys, it's best to soup up the bad guys as well until the power disparity is where it was to begin with, in order to avoid a boring curbstomp. In other words, if you give Harry Potter a lightsaber, you have to give Voldemort a Death Star.
9260039 Makes sense to me.
9257237
Maybe, maybe not. It'd be incredibly poor design if the ring could not maintain itself without the Harmony AI. Even the humans in Horizon Zero Dawn were smart enough to realize that they should probably have multiple systems backing up the primary AI.
Oh hey, Tempest. Depending on what this Storm King is up to regarding this idea of destroying Harmony, this may be worse that your actions in canon.
Yikes. Well, in time is in time.
Hmn. I've been suspecting James, but I wonder if it's Celestia.
Wait, never mind. My endless Celestia speculation is wrong once again.
Time to send the second string in, Coach Forerunner.
9262331
That is, unless the primary AI is what created the systems in place and thus the creators wouldn't even know how to create backup systems. But then, you could make the argument that Harmony created backup systems in the incredibly unlikely case that it is destroyed or otherwise permanently incapacitated without the destruction of the ring because its primary objective seems to be the maintenance and continued existence of the ring.
I'm suddenly very worried for everyone aboard that ship.
...and Flurry's dad
You just had to use that quote
"O2 recovery nonfunctional" is not what I'd call minor damage
Big Bada Boom!
Why is there ice? Vacuum is literally the best insulator there is.
Semi-transparent? Huh? He was turned to crystal? Not stone?
Booyah. Another iteration of Lucky being absolutely awesome if only they're given a chance.
All you had to do to get Fore's attention was convince them you could disable that terraforming ship. Which you just did
lawl. Forerunner always knew she was an imposter.
Fairly sure being a changeling princess makes her one of the aforementioned VIPs, Sarah
Also fairly sure Photuris planned this to be an outing for just the two of you
"Gimme a minute, and space is your olympic swimming pool!"
Huh? Is he talking about Sarah or 'James' now? James was never much of an actor, was he?
Yea, 'James' went through enough sudden character growth to be quite unrecognisable, ha.
Somehow he's always more bold and daring as a female. As if there's not much more that can bother him after the audacity of pretending to be a woman
Remarks and corrections:
> Perez’s barked over the radio
not sure why that ['s] is there. Unless that should be "Perez’s [voice] barked over the radio"
> loyal to the Pioneering Society,”she had once told Harmony
Missing space after the quote.