Seven
The feeling was nostalgic. Sort of a tantalizing bittersweet pain. Luna rose on her hindlegs, leaned back and moved her forelegs apart, pressing herself into the soft fleecy membrane fabric that covered the insides of the suit. Calm and cozy, like in her mother's womb.
The fixtures on her legs locked, triggering the rest of the armor to start assembling. She kept her eyes shut, feeling the familiar procedures come and go. Cool biometry sensors. An abrupt clang of the latches. A click of the coat closing up on her chest.
“Combat systems... activated,” a familiar insinuating whisper with a touch of aspiration in her headphone.
The princess moved, trying her legs, and the servos followed by turning weak and careful motions into sharp and bold flourishes of hooves.
“Hi, Shadow,” she replied. “Long time no see.”
“Welcome back, Luna.”
She turned her eyes to Serenity. The captain's exoskeleton, a big pony-shaped figure with a tint of ebony lilac, was already assembled, too. The guard was now thoughtfully inspecting the arsenal.
“I wouldn't mind some self-diagnostics,” Shadow whispered. “Much time passed since the last launch.”
“Do it,“ the alicorn replied, turning her attention to another pony who looked at the third prepared exoarmor. Watcher's bloodline, fourth scion... “Flashlight? What are you doing here?”
“Accompanying you,” the stallion scratched his imperial and sighed.
“Flashlight,” Luna frowned, drawing closer. “You're an armourer. A mechanic. Not a fighter.”
“I am a sworn of the Night Watch, princess,” the pony snorted. “The captain believed I could use some field experience.”
The alicorn graced Serenity with a gaze full of significance, but he justified his name. Gazing at a boulder would probably be of equal effectiveness.
“Moreover, it's an opportunity to run some live stress tests on our equipment,“ mechanic added. The latter, is seemed, he was looking forward to with more eagerness than the ‘combat experience’ he mentioned earlier.
“Flashlight,” she sighed but couldn't help but smile. “You're irredeemable.”
“Since when was I broken?” he cast a glance downward. Then he heard guard's steps behind him and hurriedly got into his armor, shifting his shoulders, until the chest parts hid his torso.
“And you,” Luna turned back to the captain. “Serenity, are you going for a tank hunt?”
Captain didn't grace her with an answer but turned his visor to her.
“Yes, I remember,” princess sighed. “The Agreement. Yes, I'm still game,” she confirmed, answering her guard's silent gaze. “Still, I want you to remember. We take weapons for protection only. Protection from real danger.”
“Calibration complete”.
Captain jerked his head. Even if he let out a snort, the glass of his helmet muffled it.
“I have lots of questions,” Luna straightened up, rising in her full height. “I can be quite... persuasive.”
She didn't bother taking anything. Shadow was equipped with a number of autonomous defensive systems, and all fo them, according to the reports quickly scrolling on the sidescreen, were operating smoothly. Mechanic reluctantly stopped on the rearming platform but it confined to attaching a short leg-fixed carbine to his frame. Luna recognized the model: a shortened version of a modular army rifle designed for auxiliary personnel.
“At least he didn't give Flashlight a second ‘Geyser’,” she hemmed.
“Shadow, give me a basic channels encryption.”
She jumped down from the descended ramp of the shuttle's cargo bay and made a few steps to get a hang of it. They say skills like these can't be lost. The armor, though, had some memories attached. The kind she wouldn't mind forgetting.
Enough is enough. No more dreams of blissful ignorance.
“Flashlight. Did you make the changes to the system?”
“Yep, Princess. Everything is as you asked. From what I've heard we're in for a ride. Our energy weapons will be useless. And not the weapons alone.”
“We shall see,” Luna nodded, passing by a shocked guard at the post. “I'll be doing the talking.”
It was no surprise for her when she entered the vestibule and immediately spotted Lash accompanied by a group of moody guards hurrying in their direction. The alicorn expected them earlier, but emergency-caused bewilderment, it seemed, once again did the chief of security a poor job.
“Princess? Where are you heading to?!” he was panting, his gaze jumping from one suit of armor to another.
“We decreed the weather favours a stroll,” Luna declared, weighty and ceremonial, stretching her hoof forward.
“Your Highness!” Lash protested. “There's storm outside! It is gravely dangerous!”
“Indeed, you did say so.”
“Don't you believe me?” Lash pursed his lips.
“Why, no,” the princess replied, circling him and his band of guards swarming behind. She couldn't help smiling casually. “I am confident your information about the storm is nothing but genuine.”
“But that means...” he crossed her path.
“That means nothing,” she skewed at him, now as at an insolent insect. “We have spoken.”
“But I...” even his wide forehead now looked red. He inhaled and blurted. “I can't let you do that!”
“Is that so?”
She arched her brow in her usual royal manner and glared at him. Coldly. Haughty. Weighting. Captain shrank though his massive guards crowded behind his back.
“I mean... that's... You can't...”
“Stop me then,” Luna suggested. She measured him, shrugged as if flexing and clicked her visor shut. Serenity followed her, never farther than a step behind, a large-caliber cannon on his back slightly swinging. The wall of guards backed down and finally gave way, forming a corridor.
“Sealing. Switching to internal life support.”
She stopped at the airlock. Looked up, watching at the mirror glass of the guardpost room, the room built higher than the floor of the hall.
“Open the gates, captain,” there was steel in her voice, deformed by the helmet speakers.
“Boss? What are we gonna do? Captain??”
Her sound sensors caught the voice of security from Lash's intercom. An unseen pony once again called for the chief but got no response. Luna cast a sidelong look at her bodyguard.
“Shadow, RCV amplifier. Give me twenty percent boost.”
“Already on it.”
She straightened her shoulders. Her mane was hidden under layers of composite armor plates but projectors sensed her silent order and cast clouds of starry darkness flying proudly behind her back.
“OPEN THY GATES, CAPTAIN. ELSE I SHALL OPEN THEM MYSELF.”
The walls quivered, the floor shaking under their hooves. The Voice reverberated between plain walls. Manes of the guards rose on end. A mixture of dust and cigarette butts flew from under the benches.
Letting out a single cough in the stretching silence, Luna wondered if Vinyl should become an acoustic physics engineer.
“Let her out,” the alien voice ordered, hardly recognizable as that of Lash.
A toothy door shook and pulled upward, tugged by the hidden rods, folding in itself. The metal was thick, princess noted. Very thick. She hadn't been to the lock yet but stepped inside without hesitation. The alicorn found herself inside a spacious room, its floor covered in slits. One could easily fit a tank or two in here, provided there is a need. The guardpost window continued along the entirety of the right wall, but seeing something behind the reflecting reinforced glass was virtually impossible. She never tried to. Instead looked at the screen to her left, across the room. Revolving yellow lights cast gleams on the metal walls, Shadow timely damping down the blaring sirens.
“Processing,” the short flickering message on the large display stated. “Do not move.”
The princess cast a glance at her guard. Serenity kept his aim at the gate but his pose was rather relaxed. She had a passing thought if he would shoot at her command. She banished the thought. Not now. It's not the time.
The gates behind them lowered with a clank. A message on the display was replaced by another. “Airlock sealed. Shut your windows.” Then the lamps switched to red, the message reluctantly informing, “Outer gates opened.”
It wasn't quite true. The gates were still opening. The wind threw clouds of sand under the rising door, and the princess instantly understood what were the slits on the floor for. She took a step, then another, waiting for the light to come.
It never did. Instead the room was choked up by the sand mist, their surroundings momentarily darkening. She looked around but the flashes of red were now barely visible behind the swirling dust.
“Hold on, princess,” Flashlight's voice sprang to life in her headphone. She recognized a vague armor-like shape to the side and remembered why were the guards unable to identify the missing CRV driver.
“Shadow, enable polarization. Small particles filtering.”
The glass of her visor rippled. Utter chaos of sand and dust didn't go away but grew dull, taking form of shaking, squirming distortions. Still, the exoarmor of her mechanic was more visible now. He offered her a hoof with a carabiner, holding it in his manipulator claw. The carabiner was attached to the end of the rope.
“It may look impressive but I took a chance to read a bit about their storms,” his voice sounded unnatural, disappearing behind the crackle of static every now and then. “We'd better travel chained together. More chances not to lose each other.”
Princess nodded, locking the carabiner on the cringle at her side, just under the wing. The guard took her own rope, although she felt like moving in tapioca when she levitated it.
“Ah, yes. The Agreement,” her inner self snorted. “And here be your leash.”
She harrumphed. Shook her head. And stepped into the storm.
Lash wasn't lying or exaggerating. The sight was truly an impressive one. Dangerous? Undoubtedly. Yet impressive. At the small plateau to where the gates led and in the space beyond, as far as her eyes could see, darkness brewed. Darkness swirled, ran in circles, flowing from one form into another. Darkness blurred any sense of direction. There was no mountains behind the wall of sand, no dark evening sky, no moons. Nothing but darkness... and the rare blinding branching flashes inside.
“It's like a local blizzard,” Luna thought. Yes, just like a blizzard, she agreed. If a blizzard could kill and throw lightnings around.
“Initial analysis complete,“ Shadow whispered.
“Surprise me.”
“Thermal screen, fifteen percent. Conditioning active. Outer atmosphere breathable. Low oxygen level. Recirculation and oxygen saturation, active. Air filters overload. Outer powered systems overload.”
“Overload... care to elaborate?”
“Statics,” Flashlight replied in her place. Now when her eyes grew accustomed to the constant jitteriness of the feed she could even recognize the head inside his helmet. “If we're going to switch any of our external sensors on, the best case is we get some fuses kicked out. And not just the sensors.”
He raised his left hoof to demonstrate. Luna knew the subsystem. “Firewall”. A fragment of his armor flicked out the extending projectors, exposing the generator. Yet the rectangular tower shield she was familiar with from the demonstrations did not appear. Instead the generator started buzzing in exertion, audible even through the muffled howl of the storm, and died out, powerless, throwing sparkles around.
“Good thing I've stocked up on some mechanical alternatives.”
“What else?” Luna inquired.
“Many things,” she couldn't see mechanic's face but felt that he frowned. ”Force reflectors. Jump engines. Beam weaponry. Oh, blasters are still deadly but only if you shoot at point-blank range.”
“That's why captain gave you a simple carbine.”
Serenity's silence was an eloquent one.
“I've never held a firearm before,” Flashlight grumbled discontently, but there was uneasiness hiding behind his displeasure.
“You still don't, Flashlight,” princess retorted. ”It is bolted to your hoof.”
“That's exactly the point,” mechanic groused.
“Enough of that,” the alicorn shook her wings. “Where's our target?”
“I've set the parameters you mentioned,” he replied. Screens of her visors blinked, and a few bright dots appeared on her compass scale. “Take caution, princess. We will have to follow the azimuth, preferably in a straight line. Even the gyroscopes of our armor are not all-powerful.”
“Care to explain?” princess tried to hide her embarrassment. Mechanics was not her strongest side.
“All I did was to point in the right direction based on our relative starting position,” he patiently explained. “Divergence will be minimal while we are moving straight... more or less. But the more turns we make, the more inaccuracies will build up on top of our initial setting. All the magnetic-based devices are currently useless. We can't depend on them, nor can we get corrections based of satellite positioning. Landmarks, maybe...” he waved his hoof around ostentatiously.
“If we are able to find them,” finished Luna for him. She looked around and noticed a dim shimmering bright spot, barely visible in the haze.
“Shadow?”
“I see it,” Shadow hummed in return. “Identification in progress. Radio tower. Control flash beacon Yurga-two. Signal level, medium. Military ranges...”
“It seems Dogrose indulged my small request,” Luna agreed. “Track this frequency.”
“Doubt it will do us much good,” Flashlight grimly noted. “Even at its full power. If the signal is that good when we're close...”
“Don't look a gift pony in the...” Luna started. At this moment the gate started grinding again, and she turned around to see darkening forms in the airlock's scant light. Two of them.
“...ordered us to make you a company, Your Highness,” one of them finished right after Shadow highlighted the frequency.
“Did I ask for an escort?”
“No, but...” the pony stumbled. “Captain will have a lot of trouble if you go missing. That's the least we can do.”
The princess sifted through her memory to identify the familiar young voice.
“Autumn Leaf?”
“Sure am, Your Highness.”
“Glad to have you here,” Luna silently sighed. She doubted she could get rid of them that easily. “And your companion there would be?”
“Lieutenant Trowel,” his neighbor slowly responded in a croaky voice. “I am the chief's first deputy.”
That figures.
“Why isn't the captain here in person?” Luna coldly asked. “He assured me earlier he was honor-bound to accompanying me...”
“The captain has his official duties,” lieutenant replied. Her imagination instantly painted an aging stallion with a wrinkled face. “As the highest ranking officer he could not abandon his post.”
“Naturally.”
‘Shadow, split our comm channels. Make it one for each member of my group and one more for the newcomers. Keep encryption in place for my team.’
‘Done and done.’
“Are you armed?”
“Of course,” lieutenant came closer, showing an adapted pump-action shotgun on his leg. “This one should be enough.”
“I'm not heading for a hunt,” princess informed.
“You sure aren't,” Autumn Leaf looked past her at Serenity's mobile cannon.
“Flashlight, you first,” she ignored the gaze as if it never existed.
The mechanic jerked and started walking, following his nav systems away from the airlock. Luna followed, listening to her senses. The air felt viscid like dirt, coarse sand pouring on their legs and chest. She tried switching her sound filter off but quickly changed her mind. Flat roaring of the storm and the scratching of sand on her armor made her shudder. Their outstretched group plodded on through the desert covered in sand cloud, sticking in the drifts again and again. Luna remembered there ought to be a rock bed somewhere in the base of this plateau, but where is it now? They were barely moving, trying to keep the same pace not to pull on the ropes. The only thought comforting her was that nopony would move faster in this weather.
“Power leakage detected,” Shadow whispered.
“From where? How long?”
“From the very beginning,” Shadow kept silence for a moment as if she was ashamed, then added. “Absolute numbers are low but I can't locate the source.”
“You said all systems were running,” Luna reminded.
“They were when we left,” Shadow confirmed, confused. “I don't understand.”
“Flashlight,” the princess called for the mechanic walking right before her. “Are you losing energy, too?”
The pony stumbled.
“Now when you've mentioned it... Yes, I am. A small but stable loss.”
“Autumn Leaf, Trowel,” the alicorn addressed the mine guards walking in the rear. “We've detected a loss of power in our armour. Can it be that you know the reason?”
“It's the storm, milady,” lieutenant shortly replied.
“The storm is draining our batteries?”
“Sandstorms are not just bad weather. It's a blend of magic and electricity. They can drain energy if the power circuits have weak shielding.”
“Sounds plausible,” Shadow agreed. “The leak is all over the outer circuits. I can't localize it. My advice is to power off all the peripherals.”
She underestimated things. Not the first time she did that, too. Luna frowned and shook her head. Grim reality mercilessly interfered in the perfectly thought out plans. Then again... If a princess cannot change her plans on the fly she should have retired a long time ago.
“Did you hear that?” she asked her followers.
“My outer subs are already offline,” Flashlight snorted. Serenity harrumphed in acknowledgement. “Most systems are now useless anyway.”
“Is your protection also failing?” the alicorn switched back to the general channel.
“It does,” Trowel confirmed, “but at a more slow pace. Our gear has additional isolation layers to work in amber-rich conditions. You better listen to the captain. It's mighty dangerous to be outside in this weather. Much easier to search the escaped pony or her remains after the storm is gone.”
“Who said I'm looking for her?”
“Captain said you were angry. He said it was because of your old clash with the Umbrum.”
“Is that so?” Luna thanked the storm. Nobody could see her eyes dangerously narrowing. “And what else did captain say?”
“He ordered to escort you and ensure your safety. He also instructed to tell you that you need to come back,” the officer patiently explained. Either the princess was hiding the poison in her voice too well or her interlocutor was deaf to sarcasm. “That would be the best course of action, I assure you.”
“Royal considerations don't always follow the common logic, lieutenant,” Luna shrugged her shoulder. “Sovereigns also don't always choose what is best for them. I do not intend to catch the runaway pony, nor do I ask for an armed escort. You may return to the captain.”
“We have clear orders, Highness,” Trowel repeated. “We will defend you until you return.”
“And if I don't?”
“You will,” once again Trowel paid not attention to the sarcasm. “Captain said so.”
“Captain sure knows better,” Luna sighed. She scrolled the hologram of the plateau in front of her. Their position was defined now... But how long will it last?
“Leakage minimized to the programmed limiters. Some systems are still running,” Shadow warned. “I recommend to...”
“Be silent,” Luna hemmed grimly. “We won't see a thing without our lanterns, even if all they give us is several steps. Better bring the charge to my screen and extrapolate for a point of no return.”
She momentarily glanced at the numbers flashed on her display, mentally nodded in satisfaction and returned to the hologram, inspecting their surroundings.
“Couldn't you find a more accurate one?“ she asked Flashlight. “Resolution is ridiculous.”
“It's a classified zone. Someone up there still believes one can uphold secrecy by hemorrhaging high-res state satellite imagery,” he snorted.
“Couldn't you get some private databases?”
“Probably. But princess...” he hesitated, “conversion to the format suitable for our navigators would take too much time. I'm no topographer.”
Technology. At the end of the day it's all about technology.
“Well, you wanted to test our gear in these new conditions. Enjoy,” Luna smiled casually. Then frowned, looking at the diagnostic feedback. “By the way, our bearing assemblies are nearly hitting overload.”
“It's the dust,” Flashlight sighed with guilt in his voice. “Nobody expected us to go sand swimming. A mix of dust and grease is effectively an emery.”
Princess shook her head. Already she began to grew tired, yet they barely moved at all, and even that little progress was mostly due to their armor. Was there any other choice?
“The worst case scenario, we go hibernating,” she jested. The joke didn't sound very funny though. Now when the mountain ridge wasn't shielding them from the wind not one bit, walking was becoming gradually harder. The wind was throwing new portions of dust at her face from its bottomless pocket. They had to push this resilient wall with their chests to keep moving at all.
Their group reminded a fleet of ships to her. Five stubborn chestnut shells, five pony clad in defensive composite armour, the only barrier that separated them from the howling wind. No wonder the first settlers never called this ‘foul weather’. A storm. A sand tempest. Could it be that this place had windigoes of its own kind, a sand variety?
“Is it time to return yet?” lieutenant reminded. “We didn't make much, if we turn back now we can get in for a late supper.”
“Listen, nobody forced you to stalk me, lieutenant,” Luna snapped. She sighed, zooming in on a part of the spatial hologram. “Beg you pardon. FOr what it's worth I am truly sorry.”
“For what?” Autumn Leaf wondered. “It wasn't like you ordered us to gather up an escort team...”
“Still, if I wouldn't be so stubborn with my inspection idea you would be eating now,” she countered. “It's strange that the captain don't pick up some ponies from the next shift.”
“An order's an order,” Trowel echoed, distracted.
“The honor is ours,” Autumn Leaf added.
“I know. Still, I'm genuinely sorry. A whole shift... I imagine you must be very tired.”
“It was a hard one,” lieutenant agreed thoughtfully. Autumn Leaf proudly exhaled into the microphone.
“...Very tired...” Luna continued ingratiatingly, picking modulations.
“Actually...” Autumn Leaf began, unsure.
“...Gravely tired...”
“...Gra-very...” Autumn Leaf weakly confirmed, then grew silent. Trowel wasn't responding either.
Luna wheeled around. The armored suits of both guards stood frozen, one with his hoof lifted. Flashlight and Serenity followed her, surrounding their companions, abruptly stopped.
“But how?..” Flashlight managed, baffled, cautiously stretching his hoof to one of them as if expecting him to jerk and bite in return.
Serenity harrumphed mockingly.
“Flashlight,” the alicorn tilted her head reproachfully. “You forget who I am.”
She stared intently at motionless figures.
“I will need your help. There should be a nice chunk of rock ahead of us,” she sent a marker to them both. “I hope it hasn't sank in sand yet. It will provide them some protection from the elements.”
Moving two ponies took more time than she hoped. The storm raged on, resisting their every step. Statues of exoarmors belonging to their unlucky escort were not the most convenient cargo, the wind struck them over and over. Serenity huffed, concentrated, but pulled his load. Flashlight wasn't that lucky. He panted from the effort, trying not to drop the guard from his back, the princess supporting him with her magic.
“That all?” he asked, still panting, when both guards were on the leeward side of the rock romantically leaned against each other.
“Almost,” Luna added the marker to her navigation system's bookmarks. “We will pick them up on our way back. Mark this point, too.”
“The thing I don't get,” mechanic confided, “is why did we need to get rid of them anyway?”
“I don't know what other orders did Captain Lash give them,” the princess coldly measured the motionless silhouettes, “in addition to posing as my honour guard. I prefer not to tempt fate. The worst case, he wanted them to rid himself of Celekh. As I said, I can be very persuasive,” she shook her head. “But dead ponies tell no tales.”
“So we are looking for the runaway after all,” mechanic faced her. “Why?”
“I want to take a look in her eyes,” Luna replied, ignoring the cold knot in her chest. “We won't be searching for her though.”
She nodded to Flashlight and touched her temple.
“We know precisely where she is.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.015 seconds
Total duration
988 users online
1,903,705 hits today, 2,658,435 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Why are most of the chapters so short?
8300469
. The original has no division on chapters as it is a story, not a novel, like, say, FoE or Horizons. Instead it is divided into "shards".
Cuz they are not "chapters"
One of my old problems when I just started writing was filling all the story time where I didn't know what to write in there. In the end I resolved this by totally skipping the "boring parts". That's where I get to put the magic "***". That's where the "chapters" on FIMfiction end.
I could probably split the story in a different way but decided against it. Every "shard" is logically a separate text fragment anyway. Besides it's easier to translate it like that.