Chapter 49: Pulled the Trigger
Summer had long suspected that breaching the control room would be the beginning and the end of their escape attempt. After all, how hard could it be to switch on the experiment? She still had her instructions bouncing around in her mind, the same ones she’d used on that first night. Nothing could dust the cobwebs out of her memory quite like a little life-and-death terror.
The control room showed her the error of that assumption in the first few moments. There were a dozen different computers up here, each one connected to base hardware in a centralized interface that hadn’t even existed during her time here. She picked a single system at random and touched it with a delicate claw.
The screen flashed a login, then did absolutely nothing. She picked another machine, with a similar result. “Uh… Corey?” She glanced over her shoulder, eyes widening with her increasing fear. “Do you know… any of this?” She gestured around at the other computers. Each one had the same user interface screen now from her prodding, without any useful controls. “This doesn’t look like what the array had in the computer building.”
Corey rested one hand on the projection table in the center of the room, expression darkening. “I’ve never been in here, Theo. As soon as they knew I’d seen your picture, I was practically under arrest. There were three parts of the old building they’d let me visit.”
He dug into a pocket, exposing the USB drive he’d been given. “Let me get this uploading. I have a password, maybe we can use the system while it’s unlocked.”
Summer followed him to the nearest console, and watched with bated breath as he logged in. Corey had always been frustratingly slow with technology, but in this case, she didn’t try to take over for him. Her claws could work a keyboard, probably. But it had been built for fingers.
A few seconds later and the desktop appeared. There was almost nothing there in the way of interface, certainly nothing that suggested control over the aurora experiment. “Okay, so… how do I send these again?”
Summer winced, running over the possibilities in her brain. Sending to her old school was good, since it would be outside the US—but digging up how to do that in time was going to be too slow. “Plug in that USB, then get ready to type what I say,” she muttered. “I know somewhere we can send this. We’re… gambling they do anything with it, but…”
“Any odds are better than zero,” Corey countered, plugging in the drive and spreading his hands out over the keyboard. “Say when.”
She did. It took less than a minute to confirm the IP she remembered for the secure drop was right. It was proudly advertised all over the group’s website, after all. Then the little progress bar was ticking up, showing their files copying over one at a time.
The doorway opened a crack, then banged shut against the pile of furniture there. Sharp darted over as it began to rattle, and shouts echoed from the other side. But then he planted his hooves, and the movement settled. The door kept shaking but didn’t budge an inch. “Maybe we should… focus on getting out of here?” he asked.
Summer turned back to the computers, and she could see distant lights moving through the snow outside. Still on the other side of the base but moving closer.
Shit. They realized where we’d be. So far, no one had tried to come in through the central building either. Maybe they’d guessed the doors would be blockaded. “Okay, we’re running out of time…” She picked the central screen, then ripped the plastic cover on its backside clean off.
“Can you open the portal in time?” Sharp asked, kicking the last of the chairs firmly into place. “If we can’t do it from here, perhaps we should flee into the snow and return when we have a new plan.”
“No,” Theo and Corey answered together, though it was Corey who explained. “They’re going to have drones with thermal cameras. There’s nowhere we can reach they can’t find us. And if we went into town… I low-key predict whoever’s coming might start shooting people who know about you. We’re far enough north they could cut out every connection to the outside world. Cover it up as a gas explosion or something… who knows.”
Summer wasn’t sure she could be that cynical, but that might just be because of all the time she’d spent in Equestria. The world over there was a kinder place, certainly not the kind that would blow up a town to keep a few secrets from getting out.
“There are a few things I could try.” She looked over the cables, squinting in the dim light. Even if this control center unified every instrument in the base, she could guess that most of its focus would be on the observatory tower. The cables she saw here reminded her a great deal of the computer room’s interface. Maybe she didn’t need the computer at all.
“I think I know what to do,” she said, ripping away more plastic shields one at a time. They weren’t really meant to be secure, just to keep stupid people from tampering with things they shouldn’t. The more she exposed, the more familiar it all looked. It was the same emitter design, repeated identically three times. If you don’t know what we were doing, just do it yourself but moreso.
“Good,” Corey muttered. “Because we’re going to have company soon. Holy shit she’s loose!” He pointed, and Summer followed his gesture. Ahead of the flashing lights, a figure darted through the snow, cutting between snowdrifts far swifter than any human feet could manage. Because she wasn’t.
It was Kate—there was no mistaking the only other hippogriff in the world, carrying something heavy across her back.
“Stay down, everyone!” Summer shouted, picking the first cable. She had to slice through several zip ties before she could get it free, quarter inch copper wrapped in bright green with a strange industrial-looking plug on the end. “She could have a gun! We can’t give her anything to shoot at.”
“The bird knows how to shoot?” Corey asked. Then the glass around them splintered. A web of cracks appeared along it, from a single central point. Summer could see the lump of metal there, reflecting the light of the moon. Bulletproof glass!
“Yes she knows how to bucking shoot! She was human, like me! And apparently she knows a few things about how guns work!” The air rang with a few more shots, and the building shook slightly with each impact. But most didn’t even strike the glass. Those that did failed to penetrate any further than the first. “Okay, uh… I think we should…”
“Let us worry about her,” Sharp interrupted. “Get the Doorway open, Summer. Nothing else matters if we can’t do that.”
Summer couldn’t keep her head below the windows, not when the cables she needed were behind each system in turn. She had to climb up, conscious with each one she removed that there was only Kate’s garbage aim and some bulletproof glass between her and instant death. “Emerald! I need… sharp,” she yelled. “Knife, cut!” Her Ponish was poor, but Emerald still seemed to get the message. She crawled out from under a table, searching with the rest of them.
The little pegasus was obviously scared of the gunfire, and the accompanying explosions. But she was brave, and she set to work.
“Drive is done over here!” Corey said, just loud enough for Summer to hear through her concentration. “What should I do?”
“Logout, then break that stick into as many pieces as you can!” Obviously they had a friend with the Americans—the one who’d enabled this whole escape. Best to leave the smallest trail leading back to him as they could.
Summer dragged over her cables, three from each array. “Okay, so… there’s a chance this blows the emitters completely. If I do this wrong… we’re fucked. Do I try anyway?”
“Yes!” Sharp answered. “I trust you, Summer! If any bird can do it, you can!”
You have no idea what I can do with electronics! “Boss, I need some wire. There, that alarm shed there! Those things use hundreds of little wires! We don’t want the security working anyway.”
He flung the little cabinet open, exposing the switchboard-looking interior. Lights still glowed inside. “You’re going to use these little things on those?”
She nodded grimly. She was already prying away at the first plastic shield, which became far easier once Emerald put a knife in her hand. It looked military, with a fat plastic handle. It would do. “Not much current is flowing through here, or we’d be doomed. We just have to bridge a few pins, and… hope it doesn’t melt. If we had two hours, I could do this clean.”
“I don’t think you have five minutes,” Sharp said. “Not to alarm you, but… Kate is joining up with several others. They’re approaching more deliberately this time.” He couldn’t travel far from the other doorway before it began to rattle again, and he had to dart back to reinforce it. “It appears we have death approaching from multiple angles. If she traps us in here…”
He didn’t have to finish the thought, the “then we’re doomed” was self-evident.
Even if I do this right, if Kate’s ponies on the other side blew up the bridge, it won’t work. It still might not work for no reason we understand. We barely even know what caused it to work the first time!
There was nothing she could do but lower her head and go back to work, stripping contacts bare and wrapping them around one wire at a time.
Kate’s voice boomed from outside, stretched over a megaphone. You stole that from the rec room, you jerk. How dare you steal from the observatory. Of course they had bigger problems, and Summer probably shouldn’t be getting hung up on something stupid. She couldn’t let herself be distracted, even for a moment.
“Leave the tower now, and we’ll let you live!” Kate demanded. “You can’t possibly operate the Doorway! You can’t get past us. But if you act smart for once, you can walk away from this.”
“Won’t happen,” Sharp whispered, before she’d even finished what she was saying. “Kate was willing to kill us before, even my apprentice. I’ve known her for years—she can’t even experience mercy.”
“We’ve got time on our side,” Corey added. “The wind is really picking up out there. Hard to tell in the dark, but it doesn’t look like they ran out here in winter gear. They might already be getting close to hypothermia.”
“They have reinforcements on the way, remember?” Summer called. “Didn’t you say they were handing over this place? Their friends will be fresh. They’ll have people dressed for the weather.”
The door into the base banged again, rattling in its hinges. Sharp didn’t budge, but the sturdy metal did, caving in a bit near Sharp. Were they trying to shoot through it?
He winced, backing abruptly away. “Okay, that… that stung.” He reached back, rubbing at his side. Summer glanced up briefly but couldn’t see an injury there. So the bullet hadn’t gone through the door. Makes sense. You wouldn’t put bullet-proof glass on a building that could be easily entered through the doors.
Summer finished with the first array. She knew something was different when she heard the spark. Corrosion appeared on the exposed copper tips of her wires—but they held. Was it her imagination, or had something started to glow in the darkness, entirely apart from the moon?
“I’m running out of patience!” Kate went on. All illusion of neutrality was gone, now she sounded furious. Her voice barely carried over the wind rushing through a hundred different tiny cracks in the window. If it was already feeling cold inside, how much worse would it be for the furless humans out there? “If you don’t come out in ten seconds, we’re coming in! I promise my friends won’t be as kind to you as I would!”
I can’t listen to them. Opening the Doorway is all that matters. She carved easily through the plastic shell on another cable, already preparing a few lengths of wire in her other hand. She’d already done it once—and the lack of a distant explosion suggested she might’ve done it correctly. Or at least correct enough not to destroy the Doorway and strand them here.
Sparks flashed briefly as she connected the final set of pins. The distant glow became more pronounced, along with a low humming. The same one that had shaken the building when she first landed. But where the storm during her arrival had been a largely natural thing, with only a little help from the experiment—this one was mostly artificial.
The experiment had been upgraded to three emitters, and without the computer regulating them they could do nothing but dump all their juice directly into the bridge.
It was as though Summer had reached up with her claws to yank the aurora down from the sky. Purples and greens crackled, striking the snow with bolts of lightning that lit up the dark base for a few seconds.
Summer heard shouting from outside again, though now even the megaphone seemed unequal to overcoming the force of the wind. Something like “Get them!”
Summer looked up, through the cracked bulletproof glass. There was Kate, standing knee-deep in the snow with humans on either side. Maybe she was imagining things, but Summer swore she could see her glance between the distant tower and the control room.
You wanted to go back so badly. Stop chasing us and go. Things would probably be worse for them in every way if they did. Feather probably still had its army on the other side, waiting for their master. It hadn’t even been a week, after all.
But instead of turning for the tower, she charged after her human soldiers, straight at the steps.
“Give me the knife.” Sharp was suddenly directly over her, inches from the still-sparking conduits. At least he was careful enough to avoid them, and disrupt the delicate kit bash she’d put together. “Now.”
She held it up, eyes widening. “Sharp, those people have guns. We can’t fight them.”
“Everypony, get back. Human Corey, that’s you too. Emerald—back. I’m the only earth pony here.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Corey had removed the handgun from his jacket, though his hand shook so much Summer was halfway convinced he might shoot someone by mistake. “We can’t let them get up here! That glass isn’t going to survive being up so close!”
“Stay back,” Sharp urged again. “They’ve been in the snow. I haven’t had to use my magic in a week now.” He took the offered knife, though he only had his mouth to hold it.
Summer crept along behind him, though not to the door. She went as far as a table covered in computers not connected to her work and shoved up against them. “Help me get some cover, Corey!”
“It’s insane,” he muttered. “Your horse boyfriend is going to get his ass shot.”
I never told you he was my boyfriend. The thought came entirely unbidden and no sooner had it come than she cursed it for the sheer stupidity. We might be seconds from death, stupid! Who cares if he figured it out?!
Emerald couldn’t understand Sharp, but at least she’d taken his advice. She glided behind the overturned table beside Summer, clinging to one of her forelegs with both of hers. She shivered in desperate fear. This is so unfair to you, Emerald. I’m sorry I had to get you involved with me.
Sharp let go of the door a second before the first of the soldiers collided with it, and so he went staggering into the room, spinning wildly off-balance for a moment.
Not a soldier in the traditional sense—he didn’t wear the flag of any nation, and she didn’t recognize the gun. From the way it had been firing before, probably a submachine gun. His face was completely obscured in a thin black wrap, exposing only brown eyes beneath. He raised his weapon, aiming at Sharp.
But in the time it took him to draw the rifle, Sharp had been moving. He spun gracefully, braced his hindlegs on the floor, then smacked into the soldier with bone crunching force. Summer heard the terrible impact and knew that the soldier’s bullet-proof vest had done nothing to protect him.
He jolted backward across the room, landing painfully beside the door. He dropped his gun, which landed with a plasticy thump on the floor beside him. He didn’t move again.
The remaining human soldiers came through the doorway beside one another, far more coordinated. One pushed the door aside with an arm, while the other dropped to one knee with a practiced formality. He took aim, and sprayed Sharp with a roar of gunshots.
It was loud enough, anyway. Smoke rose from the edge of the gun, and brass sprayed out all over the floor.
Instead of falling in a bloody heap, Sharp charged, knife gripped absurdly in his teeth.
The gun shot wildly, sending up a shower of sparks as most shots went into the rack of servers behind Sharp. But the pony didn’t care. He reached the humans and acted almost as smoothly as they had. He bucked directly into the legs of the one in front, sending them spiraling backward out the stairs and knocking over their companion. Before they could reach their gun too, Sharp jammed the knife into their side, up and under the vest. They dropped, moaning.
“Get away!” Sharp roared. Summer had only been squinting over the table, but… hadn’t they sprayed him point blank? He wasn’t even bleeding. “We’re leaving! Just get out of the way!”
For a second, Summer wondered if they would. The banging on the base umbilical had stopped, perhaps the ones inside decided to go around. Or maybe the sound of slaughter on the other side made them think better of rushing into danger.
But they’d forgotten about the most dangerous adversary of them all.
Kate pounced on him from the doorway, glittering claws outstretched. Apparently she’d forgotten about the gun, forgotten about anything aside from her simple desire for blood. Her claws did more than the bullets, digging deep gouges in his shoulders and sending him tumbling to the floor.
“You think… I didn’t think this could happen?” She wasn’t even using English, but Ponish. Summer could only understand some of it. “Ready for… kill you.”
Summer screamed, lunging forward over the desk. She didn’t know what she was doing any better than Corey. Much worse than Sharp, who’d apparently known all this time how to fight in ways that she’d never imagined.
But now wasn’t the time to wonder at his past, and just how he’d gotten his name. Now she attacked.
Summer was all instinct now, and she latched on to one of Kate’s legs, biting hard with her beak in a way that tore coat and filled her mouth with something disgusting and metallic. But she didn’t care—she couldn’t let Kate kill Sharp!
Kate hadn’t practiced flight, but apparently she’d been better about fighting. She spun around so fast Summer couldn’t possibly react, tearing Summer away and flinging her backward onto the ground. Her eyes went wide with simple, animal rage.
But this time she spoke English. “You think you’ll get any better?” She jumped, bearing her claws, and Summer could barely roll out of the way in time. “You’re fucking dead, Theo! This whole thing… it’s all your fault!”
Summer rolled over the projection table, glancing desperately across the room. Sharp lay on the ground, blood oozing from his shoulders. Had Kate slit his throat? She couldn’t see! “Why do you care?” she screamed, desperate tears streaking her face. “We just wanted to leave!”
“They’re monsters, Theo!” she raged. “Both of us! Every time we meet it turns out like this!” She nodded towards one of her fallen soldiers, probably dead. “We’ve been going back and forth for longer than we’ve been writing! It’s always the same! Oil and water! Can’t mix! People like me have to stop people like you!”
Bang! The report echoed through the broken control room, far louder than the little sputtering sounds the plastic machinegun had made. Summer’s ears rang, and she turned to stare in near deafness at Corey.
Kate wobbled on her claws, backing away from the projection table. She left a bloody trail behind, oozing from her side. It might be true that earth ponies were bulletproof—hippogriffs clearly weren’t.
She turned towards Sharp, mouth opening and closing. A faint gurgling sound was all she managed, before she flopped to the ground, trailing blood from her beak.
“Holy shit I killed an alien.”
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Oh boy, I hope they make it out of this with most body parts intact
Halle-fucking-lujah, ding dong the witch is dead.
...Hopefully we get some clarification on Kate's goals soon.
So this implies that she knew about the Templars. It also implies that it was happening LONG before the Templars. I cant wait to find out what exactly.
Ding dong the bitch is shot!
Finally! Kate got tue justice she deserved. Now they need to get back to Equss.
The Templar’s will probably now destroy the observatory and have it look like an accident.
Since information may now be online at a wiki leaks style sight they might as well destroy everything so that no one can use facility , replicate experiment, or discover that the information was actually real. If it was my project information that got leaked I would probably go scorched earth on whatever project I was working on that got leaked.
If everything is destroyed then there is no evidence that the information is real.
I truly hate having to wait a week for another chapter, but I will if it comes with this quality of writing! Cannot wait to see the thrilling adventures of our band of misfits!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7moK2PiNqxo
This means they're not gonna go through the doorway again now right?
My first thought was, "Yes, finally."
10065709
that made me spit my drink out
Excellent comment in response to this chapter though, bravo!
I don't think this is the last of Kate. But it seems that her organization is really helping to perpetuate the violence. Now to get the hell out of there and somewhere safe. Maybe repair another portal facility and get it up and running.
Well. That honestly worked out better than expected. Sharp may need medical attention and there's still the matter of the shadowy anti-incursion organization, but things are actually looking up. Kind of. In areas.
Look, point is, it could be worse. Looking forward to seeing where it goes from here.
Until its confirmed shes dead, I cannot count Kate out in this matter, especially since she was INSIDE and not OUTSIDE where the elements wouldve done her in
This actually reminds me of FF. I’m sure there’s countless stories here that have done this, but from what I have read, FF is the first to make Earth Ponies invulnerable. Not only that, it’s intuitive they simply know they have no susceptibility to bullets. One who had no point of reference fro having seen it is so certain about it, she’s willing to take a forty five square to the face to prove it. That’s actually an upgrade from PAP, where twenty twos are like pinpricks, they sting, but deal no serious injury out. Anything else is no less lethal than it would be to any creature.
That’s obviously an incidental thing. FF did not have any blatant identity overwrites. Whoever you were before is exactly who you will be afterwards, save gained wisdom and the like. Things like name changes and identity issues like what this story and many like it deal out was practically nonexistent there. Only practically non canon side stories would imply such, which are evidently experimental.
Double tap please.
10066867
2 more to the brain would solve that
coreykopedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/double-tap-2.jpg?w=500&h=500&crop=1
10068555
What's FF?
10071150
It’s Friendly Fire. More of my silly rambles.
10071228
It gets revealed later in the story that the problem is with the translation spell in his necklace. It's not translating Theo into Ponish/Mareian/Equus/whateverthelanguageiscalled, so Sharp and Emerald picked a word that they could pronounce. This wasn't made evident until much later in the story, and worse that Theo never once considers that could be the reason for it.
The problem with the translation spell failing with his name is is especially ironic, given the connections Equus has with the Greek culture AND the fact that the name Theo has the meaning of "divine gift" and literally translates into "god" from the root origin of theos (θεός).
10068555
Well the author of this "Starscribe" is also the author for the Friendly Fire universe, of which there are three books currently.
10065389
Narratively? Nah. No chance. She'll come after them again before being more comprehensively killed.
50/50 on whether there's someone above her in her Earthside organisation who will become the next Big Bad for the protagonists. I can't think she managed to be the CEO of both Feather and something back home without any way of traveling back and forth.
Oh no. Edward Snowden he isn't.
That's a good plan.
Probably something evil.
Nice, that's one important step finished.
It might send them to the island, at which point everyone dies in the cold.
Let's not blow it up?
Time for Sharp Edge to finally come out to play.
Oh shit, apparently earth ponies high on their own magic are bullet immune.
It'd be more convenient for nearly everyone if Kate doesn't live through this fight that she just threw herself into unarmed except for her claws.
Interesting.
Nah, only a pretend one.
I love Corey, he's special for a different reason.
10423126
He's definitely grown on me. I hope he also becomes a cute little hippogriff. Time to find out!
hahahahahahahahahahaha.
yes but actually no corey
Wow, this really does run a lot deeper than anyone ever thought. She's just one in a line of many people working to "keep the order". A valiant effort... If it wasn't so misguided.