Knight of Wands

by Starscribe

Chapter 6: Judgement

Judgement

Jackie kept her eyes forward and her head down as they approached the cave mouth. She didn’t need fancy sensors or magic to tell that there was heat coming from inside—there were flames burning somewhere, and not far away.

“I know I’ve said this before and you didn’t listen to me…” Sarah began, stretching out one clear wing and blocking the way into the cave. “But I’ve got a bad feeling about this place. Last time I didn’t like somewhere, we gave up our mascot. Who do we give up if we go in there, the robot? I don’t think so.”

“Hey!” Moire hissed. “Nopony said anything about giving up… anyone.”

Jackie sat down on her haunches, frowning between the two of them. Sarah was right about one thing—she had a bad feeling about this place too. Whatever was down in the earth, it didn’t want to be disturbed. But if we don’t go, we won’t learn. This was exactly why there were any big secrets left in her whole world—because learning answers was hard.

“I might die,” Jackie declared. “But if that’s the case, I’m ready for it. I have been for a long time. I’m already dead. I already paid with everything I have. But if… the two of you want to go your own way, I’d understand.”

There was silence for a few seconds, while the pair of them shared a glance Jackie couldn’t read. If the changeling wasn’t clearly real, she would’ve expected some kind of radio messages were traveling through the air around them. But since that obviously couldn’t happen…

“We’re coming,” Moire said, after a minute. “Or I am, anyway. If I had… if I ever find a girlfriend who I loved as much as you love, uh… Ezri. I wouldn’t let anything stop me from finding her again.”

Sarah shrugged. “Guess I’m in too. I’m immortal anyway, so it’s not like I have anything to lose. Neither do any of you, by the way. Or the little one we left behind. Crazy cults break apart, and she’ll be free before we know it. It’s just a matter of time.”

“Then we’re going down.” They did. Deep into a cavern of broken rocks and crags. She found the flames after only a short trip—and knew immediately what the silly riddle had meant. The flames were reaching deeper into the cave, instead of out at the fresh air coming in from above.

This was mixed with a strange combination of dampness and heat. Soon the cavern was populated with thick jungle plants, growing amidst will-o-the-wisps and huge gouts of natural gas. The smell was choking, and Jackie wondered again if she was finally wandering into a familiar part of the dreamscape. She knew the circles of hell, and she could follow them back to familiar soil. She could escape that way, back to her original plan.

But instead, they ended up on the shore of an underground lake. Fires burned all around, making the water reflect bright orange and flickering yellow. There were a set of old docks here, and a few ships moored. Most of them looked to have been anchored for so long that their sails had rotted to ribbons and rags, but not all.

Among them all was one ship that stood apart—like a luxury yacht built during the ancient days of human power. Its hull though covered with dirt and bits of rot, had once been precision-molded. There was a hot tub on the deck, and interface panels everywhere.

“Well I know which one we’re sailing.” Moire Pattern skidded and slid down a rough slope of red dirt, coming to a stop on the old docks. They gave a little under hoof, but held her weight. Which meant the other two were probably fine. “No sails, though. Wonder who built it.”

“The HPI,” Jackie answered, as they crossed up onto the dock. The door to the interior was open, and Jackie could see it had once been luxurious and well furnished. But the bottles of alcohol had all been broken or emptied. The leather and velvet had rotted, and the screens were mostly cracked. This ship had been here a long time.

Yet Moire Pattern marched straight past it all, knowing where the bridge was without being told. She fiddled with the lights for a few seconds and they came on, without much apparent effort on her part.

“You… know how this thing works?” Sarah asked. “That’s strange. I’m not very technical. I only pretended to be an engineer. Military engineer at that.”

Jackie rolled her eyes. “Don’t look at me. Most technical thing I ever did was summon a Soulshear.”

“Shut up you two.” Moire shoved a broken chair out of the way, along with a set of old, corroded armor that might’ve belonged to a seapony captain.

But why on Earth would a seapony be captain of a boat? Jackie couldn’t imagine.

The screen didn’t turn on at first—so Moire ripped it right out, exposing the wires underneath. “Somepony get me tools,” she instructed. “And quick. I think this old girl has security systems. Wouldn’t you all feel safer somewhere that could defend itself? Wait, I don’t care.”

Sarah gave her a look that said: “go right ahead”, and Jackie groaned. But she hadn’t rescued this one, this one had rescued them. She could do a little grunt work.

She found a maintenance closet after a few minutes of searching, and an old toolbox. She brought it over, settling it onto the ground beside Moire with a thump.

The mechanical pony was on her back now under the controls, with the entire plastic shell of the computer open and many of its wires exposed. She seemed to know exactly what she was doing, though for all Jackie knew she was intentionally sabotaging their whole operation. It wasn’t like she had any way of telling the difference.

“Got the tools then? Good.” She slid out, sitting up. “I’ve got news. Good, ship’s working. Bad? Reactor is dead.”

“R-reactor?” Jackie raised an eyebrow, but it wasn’t as though she hadn’t seen nuclear ships before. Even the pre-Event militaries had built them. “On something this small?”

“Yeah, why is that… Nevermind. Point is, with fusion you need a fair bit of energy to get things going. Once you do, things stabilize, and you start pulling out your unlimited free energy. Without that initial spark, your reactor is cold and dead. Like this one.”

“So we… can’t move,” she said. “We’re stuck.”

“We could fly,” Sarah suggested. “But your creepy friends seemed to think that would be a bad idea. We have to keep our wings folded, remember?”

“Yeah, we can’t if they said no,” Jackie said, without hesitation. “That’s… how these things always go. There’s rules about what’s safe and what isn’t. It’s the Dreamlands. If they say we’re allowed to sail and nothing else, then we have to sail.”

Moire sighed. “I was… afraid of that. There’s, uh… there’s a way to get it started.”

Jackie could hear the dread in her voice before she even finished, and she didn’t have to ask what it would mean. It means one of us is going to have to pay a terrible price to make it work, and there won’t be a way around it.

“Because I’ve got my own little RTG in my belly,” she said. “Ship’s capacitors are fucked, but I’ve got my own. If we… wired me to short circuit, we could get the reactor started.”

“And you’d die,” Sarah supplied.

“No!” Moire glared at them. “My capacitors would be fucked forever, no question. The point of having them is to even out an uneven demand against the steady output of the RTG. Without them, I’d… well, let’s call it comatose. What one of you would have to do is wire me up to the ship after that. See that?” She gestured under the cabinet, at the glowing length of wire. “When this is done, you hook me into the ship. It’ll boot me back up.”

Oh shit. It was just like the last time. The Dreamlands was letting Jackie pass, but only at the cost of one of her companions.

“You don’t have to,” Sarah said, without even waiting for her to say anything. “This isn’t your stupid mission. You know there are other fish in the sea. It’s not your fault this one can’t give up on hers.”

Jackie snapped one of her hooves down. “I don’t expect you to understand. But I agree, Moire. I won’t try to force you.”

“No,” the robot agreed. “And you won’t have to. I don’t have anyone, I said so. Guess… the little pipsqueak was alright, but now she’s in her little paradise. Maybe this is mine.” She looked around at the broken ship, its faded walls and cracked electronics. “This thing has the whole suite, you’ve got no fuckin’ idea. Whoever built this thing spent the income of a small nation. And from the sonar maps… this lake is gigantic. Ports, women… spare parts for sale. You’re basically making me captain of the best ship in the world.”

Jackie didn’t have to be the same pony to hear the lie in her voice. Her outlook wasn’t nearly as optimistic as she seemed… but she wanted them to think it was. She was trying to spare Jackie’s feelings.

“Tell us what to do.”

It took several days of work—not just wiring the robot pony into the reactor down belowdecks, but preparing the systems that would let her live on the reactor’s power once she got moving again. The robot pony wrote out a list of instructions for them—which controls to press, how to cycle the reactor through various failure states if their plan failed. Basic stuff.

But Jackie wasn’t worried—this was all just a dream, and in the Dreamlands it was never really about what should happen. It was about bargains struck, and prices paid. The exchange here was not with the reactor, it was with the ocean.

“And that’s everything,” Moire said, settling nervously into a pony-sized chair in front of the reactor. She’d already set all the tools one could want near it, along with a huge spool of spare wire for her umbilical. Her own belly was open in front of them, in a way that should’ve been gruesome but didn’t so much as make Jackie’s stomach twitch anymore. It was all wires and circuits under there, more advanced than anything she’d seen in the HPI. It reminded her more of one of the Wayfinder ships, though she wasn’t technical enough to understand their machines.

“Here we go,” she said. “You have the list, you know what to do if the reactor doesn’t start.” She turned, glaring at Sarah. “I want you to know I’m conscious every moment. I’m watching both of you, I just can’t move. So don’t try and stick my hand in warm water or some shit.”

“Why me?” Sarah asked, indignant.

“Because I’m helping her save her wife,” Moire answered. “She won’t do anything.”

“I won’t forget this,” Jackie said. “No matter what happens.”

“No,” Moire agreed. “You won’t.” She extended a hoof, smacking the emergency start on the reactor.

Her body began to spasm and twitch, and the smell of burning plastic filled the room. Jackie wanted to reach over and yank her free—but she didn’t. Instead she rushed over to the controls, opening each of the interlinks in turn, manually pumping fuel back into the chamber, and watching through a tiny camera as the embers of fusion burst into a vibrant orange glow.

“Damn,” Sarah said from beside her in front of the reactor, her face stained with the bright yellow radiance reflected out through many layers of shielding. “A little star. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised that somebody cracked fusion, but… it’s still fuckin’ impressive.”

“Yeah.” Jackie resisted the urge to say anything snide. Lights came on overhead; air filters began to chug.

“Vessel designation ‘Supership’ entering startup sequence,” said an even voice. “Prepare for departure.”

Holy shit you’re dead. Jackie jerked suddenly alert, staring at the speaker. But there was no more movement from the system—no turrets pointed at them, no threats.

“Well, are you prepared?” Sarah asked, glancing over her shoulder at Moire Pattern.

The pony did not move. Her eyes didn’t twitch, and there was no expression on her face. Smoke rose from short-circuited insides.

Jackie could make no sense of her advanced components, but she hurried over anyway, removing the cables and glancing down at the list. She hadn’t even read it through to the back side.

And there it was—on the back of one of the “emergency” pages, a scribbled note.

“Full prosthetic bodies aren’t made for high voltage overload—when this is over, I’m scrap. But my cortical recorder is shielded, and it should be fine. My skull should come unlocked when I’m dead—there’s a little box inside. If you ever complete this insane mission of yours, take me to Sunset Shimmer.

Find your girl. For both of us.”

She held it up for Sarah to read, biting back her emotions as best she could. It wasn’t a winning battle, though. This wasn’t like staying to cosplay for all eternity—this little piece had just wired herself up to die, all for her.

“Just like that, huh?” Sarah shoved the sheet aside.

She rolled the corpse gently onto the floor, then started fiddling with the head. It didn’t take long for a little metal clasp to open. A dark metal box emerged from inside, smaller than a baseball with the sturdy construction of a tank.

She held it up for her to see. “What will a bat give in exchange for her soul, eh Jackie? That’s two. Don’t think I’m not keeping score.”

Author's Note:

http://silfoearts.tumblr.com/

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

And then there were two. And from the sound of it, Sarah may be a lot less willing to make her sacrifice. Still, the journey isn't over yet. Now that Charon's collected his fee, it's time to see what's on the other side of the river.

[ChaosDX1]

Jackie's minor freak out suggests the ship's systems sound like Athena. I bet the HPI just used the same bargain brand voice synthesizer that every other computer on the market uses. Happens all the time.

Hopefully they can change it once Moire is installed. Doubt Jackie will like her robo-self sounding like the person that repeatedly tried to kill her.
Edit: I think I misunderstood something about putting Moire in the boat

[Alicorn Capony]

But why on Earth would a seapony be captain of a boat?

I see what you did there.