Fallout Equestria: Blue Destiny

by MagnetBolt

Chapter 125: Unicorn

“Explain it to me again,” I sighed.

Star Swirl grunted in annoyance. He was already pacing around the megaspell cathedral, splitting his time between glaring at the architecture and glaring at me for being stupid and not immediately understanding him when he was being vague about things.

“Where do you want me to start?” he asked. “I could begin with basic math to make sure you don’t get confused about the concept of addition!”

I tried not to get as frustrated with him as he was with me and the world in general. I bit my lip and didn’t snap back at him.

“That was brand new when you were a foal, right?” Midnight quipped.

Star Swirl shot her a look and shook his head in annoyance. “The issue is the power source. How much do you know about the structure of a megaspell?”

“More than more ponies,” I said. “I had to help rewire one. From what I was able to understand, they use something called an incantation lens to force compressed magic through a rune without giving it time or space to break apart.”

“Mm,” Star Swirl nodded. “That’s not the worst start. A spell is something like a balloon. If you don’t put enough energy into it, it won’t inflate and take on a shape. If you put too much into it, the whole thing pops and blows up in your face. A megaspell creates an environment where magical pressure around the spell structure holds it together long enough for the effect to occur despite the internal pressure.”

“That sounds like what I heard,” I agreed. “And you can do that with a ritual, right?”

“The first megaspells were done as large rituals, yes. You need at least six participants. It’s a geometry issue, keeping the pressure even on all sides, that sort of thing. It requires coordination and practice and it’s as fallible as the weakest unicorn involved.”

“Which makes them impossible to mass-produce.”

“It would be like mass-producing an opera,” Star Swirl scoffed.

Midnight cleared her throat. “Which you can do if you make a recording. So that’s what balefire bombs are, right?”

Star Swirl nodded. “Exactly so. That incantation lens you mentioned is essentially a mechanical solid-state recording of spellcasting. Instead of a pony who might trip up or sneeze or hesitate you have a perfect machine. Even better, instead of having to get six ponies together who all agree it’s a good idea to end the world, you only need one pony with their hoof on a big red button. Much more modern and efficient.”

“We’re the ones with our hooves on the button this time,” I reminded him.

“The biggest mistakes of my life happened when I stopped trusting my friends and did things without them,” Star Swirl said. His voice dropped almost to a whisper. “Once you start trusting yourself with that much power, you start thinking it’s a good idea to use it.”

“Are you saying you won’t help us?” Midnight asked.

Star Swirl took off his hat and shook it out, giving himself a moment to collect himself. “I’m an old pony. I’m allowed to be melancholy once in a while. The issue is, we don’t have what it takes to kick this spell off. You’ve got me, that annoying little filly with daddy issues, and that’s where the list ends of ponies who might be able to contribute.”

“I’ve got unicorns in cold storage,” Midnight offered. “That’s a pun! See, vampires are cold, and they’re in stasis. Never mind, I’ll explain it to you later.”

“I very much doubt you’ve got ponies with the talent needed,” Star Swirl said. “Even if you’ve got a dozen candidates, we’d need to teach them the spell. A spell I had to hack together, mind you. It’s never been cast as a megaspell before! For all I know it’ll blow up in our faces and send us to Tartarus!”

“What about…?” I trailed off.

“That doesn’t count and you know it,” Star Swirl chuckled. “If Flurry Heart does something we should just assume it doesn’t need to follow the laws of physics. They get out of the way because they’re smarter than the rest of us.”

I nodded. “Midnight’s mom didn’t use a bunch of unicorns when she was casting that eclipse spell.”

“We are not doing some insane blood ritual!” Star Swirl snapped. “No matter how much good you might think you’re doing, starting off with something like that taints it all. You can’t save the world by burying it under corpses.”

“We can’t afford it anyway,” Midnight added. She shrugged. “Mom really emptied the larder when she killed all those ponies. The thing about being a predator is, you starve if you don’t have enough prey. Ponies make awful prey animals, too. If you want to farm wheat or corn you can harvest it every year. Can’t do that with ponies.”

“That’s why you put most of your family back to sleep.”

“They don’t mind. They’d rather nap until things are more interesting anyway. This is how we’ve always gotten through lean times.”

“Without participants for the ritual, or more… esoteric options,” Star Swirl continued. “We need to build an incantation lens.”

“Okay?” I shrugged.

“I…” Star Swirl coughed. “Can’t do that. I have no bloody idea how. Might as well ask me to fix a bloody clock.”

“So what do we do?” I was starting to get a headache. “Do we need to raid some vault and steal an old megaspell missile? Go on a quest to get six teenage unicorns with attitude who can combine their powers?”

“Mm.” Star Swirl shook his head. “I’m not an expert on the engineering side of this problem, so what you need is a pony who is. You said you helped rewire a megaspell. Get that pony here and we can hack something together.”

“I needed Destiny and her brother Karma for that,” I said.

“You should have been thinking about ways to rescue her anyway,” Star Swirl chastised. “That mare might be a ghost but she knows how to make a pony feel appreciated for their amazing and eternal legacy.”

“What, was she a big fan of fancy hats?” Midnight asked.

“Unless you can find another pony who’s an expert in megaspells and engineering them, I need her,” Star Swirl said. “Make it fast. I’m not getting any younger. Last time I tried that trick I ended up as a baby for a month.”

---

“It won’t be easy to get her back,” Quattro said. We’d gathered on the bridge of the Exodus Black. It was a little bigger than I expected. The ceiling was high over us, with chandeliers and murals decorating the buttresses and arches of the exposed structure. It had to be the size of a hoofball field, and a pony could get a good workout doing laps around the outer walkway.

The captain’s chair was a huge throne of ornate silver, gold, and what had to be bone. Captain Glint stood next to it, with Midnight perched on the seat, her butt at eye level. Quattro paced around us, and flickering displays made of illusion magic showed rough outlines of an Exodus-class ship.

“Cozy Glow has her under heavy guard,” Cube agreed. “The reason she took her in the first place was to get control over Mom. I didn’t get involved because it… felt wrong. Getting Lemon Zinger contained wasn’t a bad thing, but forcing Destiny to do it like that wasn’t right.”

“She hadn’t been able to use the SIVA core to do much,” Quattro explained. “The Exodus Red could only make some spare parts and supplies. It was like ordering off a menu. Want a plasma rifle? No problem. Need a water filter? Sorry, that’s not on the list.”

“Mom was the key to unlocking it. With a living pony as the core, they could make anything they could imagine.”

“As long as she was smart enough to design it,” I mumbled.

“It’s still a big difference between getting a part from a vending machine and getting what you actually want from a pony.”

Quattro cleared her throat. “The point is, Destiny is in the most secure part of the Exodus Red. Even more secure after the emergency repairs. Cozy Glow is a little unhinged after you tried to kill her with those orbital strikes.”

“I told you before, that wasn’t me,” I said. “Mom did that.”

“Try telling it to Cozy Glow,” Quattro countered.

“The details aren’t important,” Captain Glint interrupted. “This isn’t a debate, it’s a military operation. Focus on the goal and work in both directions from there.”

“The goal is to get Destiny off that ship,” I said. “We can’t plan much after that.”

“No, but we know some basic facts,” Glint said. She started pacing in front of the throne. “After you rescue her, we’ll need time to finish that megaspell you’re cooking up. That means we don’t turn this into a big fight.”

“Couldn’t we just tell the Enclave she’s fresh out of orbital strikes?” Emma asked. “I appreciate that you like taking care of things yourself, but the best way to fight an army is with another army.”

“If they attack the Exodus Red they’ll probably end up letting my Mom loose,” I said. “If it was just Cozy Glow I’d grab Destiny and walk away from this and let them sort it out themselves.”

“A covert operation,” Quatto said. “That sounds like my specialty!” She smiled and walked up to the floating panel of light. “Like I said, it won’t be easy. She has to be stationed near Engineering. There’s one advantage to her current situation -- prisons are big and obvious. You can find the outline easily enough if you try.”

“We don’t have an accurate map,” Cube noted. “This is just a mockup based on this ship. All of them are different. Even the bridge is a totally different design.”

“And that limits our ability to plan in detail,” Quattro agreed. “Broad strokes only. Get onboard in secret. We avoid raising the alarm. That gives us time to find her and figure out extraction. As soon as everything’s ready, smash and grab, get out, and get back here. It would be better to get her out without anypony knowing but…”

“But that’s a delaying tactic if anything,” I said. “They’ll notice she’s gone really quickly no matter what we do.”

“Right. So if we replace stealth with speed we might still get out before they stop us,” Quattro said. “But… broad strokes. How do we get onboard? Flying a Vertibuck up to them is asking to get shot down or interrogated.”

“The Juniper is no better. She can defend herself, but somepony would notice Polar Orbit wasn’t around to answer questions,” Captain Glint said. “I don’t trust the crew enough for this either. They might be willing to keep the ship running, but there’s a difference between that and asking them to shoot at their friends.”

“All it would take is one pony with a radio to rip the ‘covert’ part right off the mission,” Quattro agreed.

“I know how to get a pony onboard,” Midnight said. “In fact, Chamomile has even done it before.”

“Teleportation?” Cube guessed. “It won’t work. I thought about it already, but it would show up on the ship’s sensors and without knowing the layout of the ship, there’s a good chance we’d be putting ponies directly into walls and floors.”

“This ship happens to have a very advanced single-pony stealth vehicle,” Midnight said smugly.

“Not again,” I whined.

---

The glide vehicle was shockingly quiet for something going as fast as it was. Wind ripped past me, the air as thick as jelly at this speed, a wall in front of me that shattered. At this speed that part was almost silent, the sound having no chance at all to catch up to me on the ballistic trajectory I was in.

“I hate this!” I whined.

“Don’t complain,” Cube said in my ear. “You’ll be fine.”

“Am I on target?” I asked.

“Sure, probably,” Cube replied. “We can’t track you. That’s the whole point of a stealth system, Chamomile.”

“If we can’t track you, neither can they,” Quattro assured me. “That’s good! You’re good. We’re all good here.” I heard whispering over the radio. “Yeah, confirmed things are good. The Juniper is clearing out of the area.”

“Using it as a spotter to launch from beyond visual range from the Black was a good move,” Cube said. “It can outrun anything Cozy Glow sends after it.”

I’d been fired like a cannon shot from the Exodus Black, launched from an electromagnetic catapult in a shell made of composite materials that were supposed to be radar-invisible. I’d used it before to escape the Exodus Black, and the ride had been just as bad that time, too. I had no control over the hypersonic glide vehicle. There were handles, but they didn’t connect to anything. They were just to give me something to hold on to while I waited for gravity and physics to put me where I was going.

“I can’t believe I agreed to this,” I mumbled.

“You’re the only one who can do this,” Quattro said. “I mean, probably. You’re really good at coming back from things alive! No one onboard the Exodus Red should recognize you. Cube and I would get spotted right away, but with your mane and coat dyed, you’ll be totally anonymous.”

“Did we have to go with red and black?” Cube asked.

“What’s wrong with red and black?” Midnight asked, cutting into the conversation. “It looks great on bat ponies. You look great, Chamomile!”

“You have a bias,” Cube retorted.

“I do have a bias for cute ponies like her,” Midnight agreed. “Try not to seduce anypony. It’s difficult for us. Cube wouldn’t understand because she’s too square.”

“Is that a pun based on my name?” Cube asked. “Because--”

I didn’t get to hear how that argument ended. The world instantly transitioned from trepidation and anxiety into kinetic confusion. The loudest sound in the world shattered my hearing and heat washed over me. A bone-crunching shock slammed through me. This was the real reason they’d sent me alone -- the waverider wasn’t really designed for soft landings. It was barely designed to carry a pony. I was a payload and treated with the delicate touch of plastic explosive.

The shock only lasted a few seconds. I was going too quickly for it to last longer than that. I couldn’t see outside, not that it would have helped even if I could. I was too disoriented to tell which way was up. Smoke trickled past my nostrils.

I kicked the hatch. It was twisted and broken, the frame warped. I could see pretty well in the gloom, more than well enough to tell it wasn’t going to open normally. I kicked it again, and it refused to budge.

“Bucking thing--” I swore and gave it a third kick. The composite panel finally popped free, falling to the side. I pulled myself through the hatch and looked around. I saw trees. For a few moments of mildly-concussed confusion, I feared I’d gone so far off target I wasn’t even in the right country. Things came into focus one at a time.

The trees were carefully tended, like oversized bonsai made by somepony who didn’t quite understand the point of the art form. They were growing in neat rows in raised, gold-edged garden plots, the gilded flower beds built in rounded shapes surrounding paths through slightly blue-tinted grass. The wind whistled around me. I looked back and saw a glass roof, a giant greenhouse surrounding a park the size of a city block. I’d punched a hole through it, and the air pressure was still equalizing.

“I think I made it,” I said. Nopony answered. I tapped the radio piece in my ear, but all I got was static. I was going to have to remember the next steps myself. I brushed myself off. No armor. No weapons. They were too distinctive. All I had were a few things that formed the barest possible bones of a prospective plan and the hope that I could put together something better on the fly.

I reached back into the pod and felt around. The small armored case in the back of the pod pulled free of its protective padding. Nothing in it was particularly fragile, but we knew the landing would be rough and having a bulletproof box was maybe not a bad idea if things went really sideways. I put it down next to me. There was one more thing I had to do.

I pressed the big red button set carefully under a cover where I couldn’t smash it on accident. Beeping started and I ran away, clutching the luggage tight. The pod exploded into flames behind me. That had been Quattro’s idea. The less evidence we left of what happened, the longer it would take ponies to figure out what happened. The demolition charges would burn hot enough to completely consume the composite material of the pod and leave nothing behind except ashes. It would still raise a lot of questions about what happened, but ‘there’s an intruder onboard’ might not be the first thing they thought.

I walked away very quickly but calmly. A pony running draws a lot of attention, but one who’s doing the telltale power walk of ‘I have places to be’ was a mare who ponies would avoid bothering, especially after I’d stepped behind a bush and pulled on a uniform from the Juniper’s stores. Ponies with firefighting gear ran past me, ignoring me and not even bothering to ask questions.

The breeze from the depressurization slowed and stopped. I risked a glance back. The hole I’d made in the glass roof was healing over like it was living tissue. That was worrying. Was I literally inside my mom’s body, in a creepy way? I didn’t want to think about the floor opening up and eating me, but now it was all I could think about. It seemed solid enough, even if the path was made of gold-flecked marble tiles that were almost shaped like natural stone but repeated every few paces.

I forced myself to stay cool and walk casually but professionally. Ponies onboard the ship were used to all this. I couldn’t act like a tourist. I was unarmed and unarmored for a reason. I wasn’t here to get into a fight unless I absolutely had to. I followed the path, just wanting to get distance, and quickly found the edge of the arboretum.

The inner wall of the park had vending machines and tables for ponies to sit at. It was almost like a small cafe. I looked into them, curious despite myself at the temptation of a snack. The Exodus Black was, in addition to being creepy as Tartarus, also not a ship with a gourmet menu. At least not gourmet for ponies who didn’t order drinks by blood type.

And yes, I had gotten curious enough about my new body to try one sip of blood. As a test. Just to see what it was like. It had gone poorly. Blood actually tasted super gross! That is a tip for anypony who’s curious - don’t drink blood unless you’re absolutely sure you’re actually a vampire because you’ll regret it and then you’ll throw up blood which is even worse than drinking it in the first place.

These vending machines had much more tempting offerings. There were snack cakes, for one thing. I tapped the buttons, and the machine asked for bits. I whined and looked around. Would anypony notice if I did a little breaking and entering?

Unfortunately for my stomach, I wasn’t alone. A pony was sitting and enjoying a small coffee in a paper cup, and didn’t look up from the papers they were reading at my approach. I really was effectively invisible in that uniform. Something else caught my eye when I was looking around. Not the pony, but something on the wall. A screen with an outline of the ship.

“A map?” I mumbled, trotting over to look. I squinted at it. There was a tiny star among the tangle of rooms and corridors with a label saying ‘you are here’. It wasn’t as helpful as a pony might hope. The wireframe rotated slowly on the screen and only made it more confusing, like I was looking at a spider’s web.

“If you’re looking for something in particular, ask the computer for directions,” the pony at the cafe table said, as if she could sense my confusion.

“Right, thanks,” I said. I stood there for a few seconds in silence. I cleared my throat. “Uh. Computer? Computer? Hello?”

The screen did not acknowledge my attempts to communicate. It was significantly less helpful than Kulaas. I was starting to wish I’d asked for more help from the super-maneframe, or at least brought DRACO along to negotiate with the local electronics on my behalf, but carrying weapons around would have attracted too much attention, especially huge anti-tank rifles.

She sighed. “I’ll show you how,” the mare said with resignation. She pushed her chair away from the cafe table and trotted over. She was a small pale unicorn, a little younger than I was, with freckles in every color of the rainbow. Something about her was familiar but I was having problems placing it.

“Sorry,” I said. She frowned and squinted at me, then floated over a set of glasses and squinted harder. My ears folded back, and I took a step back under the pressure of that gaze. “Er…”

“...Nah,” she decided, after a moment, lowering the glasses down her nose and turning to the panel on the wall. She tapped the edge with her hoof. “Look, all you have to do is touch it and tell it where you’re going. It’ll give you big, obvious arrows and the internal sensors will track you and continue giving directions on every screen you walk past.”

“I’m not a hundred percent sure where I’m going,” I admitted. “Can it tell me where specific ponies are?”

“I’m working on that,” the mare sighed. “If they signed in with the system, maybe, but getting ponies to change how they do things is hard! And half of them blame me for getting lost! Is it my fault that half the ship got wrecked? No! I put it back together and yes, it was a rush job and corridors got rerouted and things are in different places, but it’s all functional!”

I blinked. “You put the ship back together?” I asked, getting more confused by the moment.

“Yes!” the mare snapped. She took a deep breath and calmed herself down before she said something less kind. She offered a hoof to shake. “Destiny Bray. You can blame me for getting lost. Tell your commanding officer, they’ll let you off the hook for being late to whatever appointment you’re going to and they’ll send me an email.”

“Destiny?!” I gasped. I grabbed her hoof. “Oh my gosh!”

“Okay this is a strange reaction,” she said. “Do I know you from somewhere? You look sort of familiar, but…”

“It’s me! Chamomile!”

“Cham-- but you’re! You’ve got--” she gestured at my wings. “And the face--” she motioned to my fangs. “And colors!”

“I’m in disguise,” I said proudly.

“You have bat wings as part of a disguise?” Destiny asked.

“I got eaten by a vampire dragon and spat back out. Also I used mane dye.”

“That doesn’t explain anything at all but it sure does sound like the kind of thing that might happen to Chamomile,” Destiny admitted. “Prove it’s you!”

“Uh…” I froze up. I didn’t know how to do that. So I decided to ask a smarter pony for advice. “How do I do that?”

“Tell me something only the real Chamomile would know.”

“You’ve got a massive hero complex about Star Swirl even though he’s kind of a jerk actually,” I said immediately.

“That’s-- okay, that’s sort of true.”

“And that time we were in the Alpha game and you had a body, which I’m belatedly realizing looked like this, we went to this one tavern and you got totally drunk on virtual beer and got a room with two cute stallions and--”

“I believe you!” Destiny squeaked, shoving her hoof into my lips and stopping me. “It really is you!”

“And it really is you!” I replied. “You look… well, a lot better than I expected. Actually, I have a lot of questions and I don’t know where to start with them. I thought I was here to rescue a ghost and you’re sort of a whole entire pony.”

“You remember how my brother managed to build a whole body out of SIVA?” Destiny asked. I nodded. “I did the same thing.” She smirked and spun around on a heel. “What do you think? Looking good, right?”

“Looking great,” I agreed. “But, uh… this makes things more complicated.”

“Complicated describes everything in your life,” Destiny said. “Having legs again has been amazing! I did it while I was fixing the ship after that huge orbital strike.”

“I came here to rescue you but my only plan was sort of for a smaller, uh, package.” I opened the armored case I’d brought. It contained a gas cylinder and a square of folded polymer.

“A weather balloon?” Destiny asked.

“I thought it was a good extraction plan, right? Tie you to a weather balloon with a radio beacon, throw you outside, and somepony picks you up a little later.”

“At that point, couldn’t you just fly me out yourself?”

“I made the plan under the assumption that I was going to be blowing things up and raising a lot of alarms as part of breaking you out,” I admitted. “I thought it would be good to have a plan where I could stay behind as a distraction.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Destiny said. “Also it’s really good to see you alive. The last time I saw you, Tetra stabbed you in the chest and everypony said you were dead.” She hugged me. “I was pretty sure you weren’t, but only pretty sure. I’ve been trying not to think about it.”

“And I was sure you were going to be locked up in the engineering section in a big armored bubble,” I said. “I was scared you were going to be tortured and forced to work with Cozy Glow and getting constant electric shocks or whatever they do to torture ponies around here.”

“I’m an engineer, Chamomile. All they had to do was ask me for help so tens of thousands of ponies didn’t die in a giant airship crash.”

“...At least some of which are innocent,” I mumbled.

“Several thousand of which are foals in stasis until things are stable,” Destiny said gently. “There are whole families here.”

“Right,” I sighed. “Is it safe to talk here?”

She looked around and shrugged. “We can walk and talk. I assume you have news you need to tell me? I don’t get much news except complaints about the repair work I did. Ponies are not happy about all the rooms looking the same, but I had to work quickly and copy-pasting the existing assets was the easiest thing.”

I nodded. Destiny motioned for me to follow her and gathered up her papers and coffee, leading me into a corridor.

“Before you say anything, you should know I can’t really leave,” Destiny said. “I’m incredibly glad to see you, but there’s something about the Exodus Red you don’t know.”

“They’ve got my Mom in the basement.”

“...I was setting that up for a dramatic reveal.”

“Cube said they were using you to keep her under control.”

“The details aren’t super important, but we merged her with the core of the Exodus Red and used it to override her security profile. Essentially we trapped her inside her own body without administrator access.”

“That must be where she got the idea to do the same thing to Lady of Dark Waters,” I mumbled. “It’s not a problem. We’ve been working on a plan to take care of everything in one swell foop.”

“Fell swoop,” Destiny corrected. “No offense, but I’m not sure that’s possible.”

“Star Swirl likes my plan,” I said.

“Bull,” Destiny snorted.

“I swear,” I said, putting a hoof over my heart. “He’s even been helping me with the big ritual spell we need to pull it off.”

“You’d need something the size of a megaspell just to put a dent in this place,” Destiny joked. I nodded. “Oh. Oh.”

“That’s one reason I came to get you. We need somepony who knows how megaspells work and I know you can build them. Star Swirl needs your help, if you’re up for the challenge.”

“Star Swirl needs my help,” Destiny mumbled, thinking.

We walked past decorative sculptures. Crystal and metal glinted in the light. I barely noticed it until we passed a second copy.

It was a small twisted crystal shape, like two fangs spiraling around each other, made out of silicon and quarts and infused with an almost chaotic tangle of copper and silver. I stopped and stared at it.

“What?” Destiny asked. She glanced past me. “Oh. Yes, I know it’s not high art. It’s a replication error. Like I said, I was copy-pasting whole rooms and corridors to repair all the damage. I didn’t have time for detailed blueprints, so that included the fixtures and furniture. We’ve got a few hundred identical uncomfortable chairs and just as much bad office art like that desk toy.”

“That’s no desk toy,” I said slowly. “Are you sure it existed before you started making them with SIVA?”

“It’s a chunk of crystal, Chamomile. It’s not exactly a weapon.”

“Have ponies been having problems sleeping?” I asked. I saw something cross Destiny’s face. “Maybe sleepwalking? Bad dreams? Waking up in the wrong place?”

She nodded slowly. “How did you know?”

“Because I’ve seen that exact tech before. That’s a mind control device, and if you’re right, this ship is filled with thousands of them.”

Comments

[Thought Prism]

You keep managing to surprise me in all sorts of ways.

[Reese]

"Quatto said"
"Quattro said"?

"silicon and quarts and"
"silicon and quartz and"?

Oh dear. :D

Thanks for writing!

[howard035]

So glad to see Destiny again!

[FridayPie]

“More than more ponies,” I said. “I had to help rewire one. From what I was able to understand, they use something called an incantation lens to force compressed magic through a rune without giving it time or space to break apart.”

most. Unless Chamomile was going into a tail recursion.