Chapter 1 - Coffee, Cards, and a Lucrative Job
One of the first things I learned as a filly growing up in the lower floors of the Spire was to hate smoke: it never meant anything good. Charry smoke meant a burned meal, but one we still had to eat anyway cause we couldn't afford to be wasteful and "food don't grow on trees lil’ missy". Acrid smoke meant a fried piece of tech or at least a burnt out component; something important or expensive getting bricked if Pa or Ma couldn't figure out how to fix it. Sweet smoke meant a gang scuffle somewhere nearby; on a lower floor if we were lucky, closer if we weren’t.
So where some ponies got the bright idea that they oughta use fake smoke for the sake of ambience is something I’ll never understand. A perk of the rich, maybe, that they'd never had to smell the stuff in real life.
It’s a small comfort that, fake as it is, there’s no smell here. No charring plastic or sweet cordite or, maybe worst of all, that cloying sweetness of cigars that sticks around long after the smoker had left.
Still distracting, though. Maybe that's the intention. Get me focused on the constant looping swirls of movement at the edge of my vision instead of the ponies across the table and the cards in their hooves.
Or maybe I was overthinking things again and the smoke’s just a cheap way to fill the dead space between us. Not everything’s the result of someone trying to pull something. Even if most things were.
“Alright, read ‘em out. Let’s see how lucky y'all are tonight.”
Distraction or not, I made sure to keep an eye on my opponents at all times. They were an eclectic bunch, to be sure, but that was common around places like these where they let any old randos in.
First to lay down her cards was an abominably cute filly. Or maybe a very youthful mare. Hard to say with her huge glistening eyes, a getup that rode the line between indecent and downright silly, and a mane so complex and accessory-filled that I’d wager it’d take five stylists just to keep it together.
But her laugh was a little too deep for her voice. Her reactions a bit too exaggerated and practiced to be natural.
Most distractingly, in every free moment between hands, her eyes kept darting down and to the right, very obviously reading something only she could see and giggling.
Was she cheating? Maybe, but she certainly wasn't winning. Her luck was just downright abysmal. It helped make up for her opposite of a poker face. Hard to judge her real feelings when every hand of cards got one of the same three practiced reaction faces.
I was half convinced the mare didn't have a clue how to play and was just laying out the cards as the voices in her head told her to.
"Mou..." she pouted, jutting her lip out like she was trying to rid herself of it. "Another bad hand, desu." She bared her fan of cards, revealing a pair of sixes and a pair of aces. "Only four points. Again."
"Ha! That makes three times in a row. Are you even trying to win?" The booming challenge came from the seat across the table, occupied by a stallion ripped off the cover of a romance novel and reimagined by every teenage colt who's very confident he understands what mares want.
Namely, muscles. Muscles on top of muscles on top of muscles. Enough muscles that a competent Dr. Friesianstein could build three whole ponies out of him alone. Topped off with a coat black as pitch and a crimson mane that glowed like cooling embers.
It actually did glow, in slow irregular pulses. No doubt he shelled out a pretty credit for that feature (and I had to wonder if he knew they pulsed brighter when he got excited, like from getting a good hand).
"You wanna see how a winner plays this game? Check it! Ten points!"
He tossed his cards on the table. They jittered where they landed before snapping into a perfectly aligned row. A pair of threes, a four, and a five. A double run.
“Lucky…” the mare frowned before once again breaking into giggles at nothing.
“Still better than me,” groused the third player with its stilted monotone voice.
The third was… a robot. Not even in the derogatory slur sense of the term; there just weren’t no other word for it. Riveted metal skin, lightbulb eyes, and a pink brain in a clear plastic headcase. A robot ripped straight from the pages of a two hundred year old pulp science fiction novella.
It was a genius way to hide any body language or other tells. Something I’d have to remember for the next time I played.
"I got bupkis," said the borderline offensive stereotype, throwing down an ace, a two, a seven, and a princess. A trash hand, no doubt about it.
It turned to me, it's inequine muzzle a picture of neutrality. “Well, FarFromTheTree? You got enough to go out or do I have to suffer another round with Squeaky and Beefy here?”
I ignored the cries of outrage from the other two. With everything on the table, there was no more need to hide my smile. “Read ‘em and weep.” I dropped the cards one by one as they clipped through the table and snapped into place. Five. Nine. Ten. Princess. The score tallied up automatically, but I still read out the points just like Granny had taught me to when I was little.
“Fifteen for two, four, six, double run's twelve, pair is fourteen, and her horn makes fifteen.” The glowing peg that represented my points hopped its way to the edge of the board and slid into the sole hole at the end. “And that’s game. My win.”
Chips vanished from the table as their equivalent worth subtracted itself from their accounts and added to mine. Muscles… didn’t take it well.
He slammed his hooves through the table. “That’s it! I quit! This game is for losers anyway!” With a flash of light he vanished and his section of the table reset as though he’d never been there at all.
“Awa…” The streaming filly pouted again. “I guess I oughta go as well. Chat’s getting restless and wants me to play something more kromening. Thanks for the game! Ciao!” And she disappeared as well.
The robot turned to me. “Well, now that they’re gone, you up for another game? I got time.”
I shook my head. “Thanks, but nah. Ah got work to be gettin’ to. Maybe Ah’ll see ya around sometime.”
“Maybe,” it agreed.
Nodding a final goodbye, I reached up and out and lifted the phantom weight off my head as the world vanished.
Light. Blinding and bright that sent a sharp spike of pain straight through my eyes.
The shift from Aetherspace back to reality was always jarring, but you got used to it. There was nothing to do but wait it out as my eyes adjusted from the atmospheric candlelight of the virtual saloon to the softly strobing neon of the VR cafe where my actual body sat.
The VR Blinders quietly hummed and whirred as I unjacked the headgear and hung it back on the rack. Taking it off like that forced an automatic log-out shut-down, which was supposedly bad for the hardware, but the ones this cafe offered were clearly third or even fourth hoof models. They were already years past their planned obsolescence, kept alive by after-market mods and unlicensed patch updates. A little roughness wouldn't hurt them if they hadn't bricked by now.
I stretched the stiffness out of my limbs as I waited for my bridlewear implant to refresh its connections with the physical world. Not that I ever fully disconnected, even while in VR. That was a fine way to invite any enterprising thief to help themselves to your things, or worse, while you were in-sim.
The first notification to come was the ding of a successful disconnect from external hardware. I doubted anything malicious might have slipped in past my firewalls from the public port, especially with the hard disconnect, but I ran a quick systems sweep anyway, just to be sure.
My overlay finally snapped back on as the sweep ran in the background, highlighting details of the world around me while a blinking icon indicated two new messages. The first was a friend request from one “AlmightySteel”, the user with the robot skin. I dismissed it.
Never accept requests from randos, no matter how good their cribbage skills.
The second was a confirmation of the deposit of two hundred credits into my account. Not exactly a windfall, but it wasn't a high stakes game anyway. Enough for a week— no, two weeks of good meals. Nothing fancy, but real vegetables instead of those synthetic substitutes that never tasted quite right.
Meanwhile, my eyes still hadn’t quite adjusted back to seeing the world clearly. Maybe equine eyeballs weren’t designed to have Blinders project a false reality right down the retinas, but I’d always been a bit leery of getting full eye prosthetics. A little post-sim blurriness was a small price if it meant not having video ads piped right into my FOV.
Still, I could practically hear Ma's softly chiding voice, even after so long, warning me not to stay in VR too long lest it ruin my eyesight. And she’d been right, in the end. After Pa died and she had to pick up extra work, she’d spent more hours of the day than not working in a sim until her eyes finally did go. Even in her final moments as I held her hoof, with her last breath she'd called out to the wrong child to thank them for staying till the end.
I shook my head. Thinking about family always got me melancholy. Instead, I turned my attention to the present and the cafe that was finally clear and in-focus.
Pink was the proprietress' color of choice. Pink tile floors, pink vinyl seats, pink tinted walls. Or maybe everything was different colors but the dozens of pink neon lights dyed it all to the same hue.
Pink was also the color of the proprietress herself. A pink mare through and through (and I knew it for a fact since I once saw her outside the rosy light of her shop). Hers wasn’t the biggest or the cleanest or most teched-out eatery on the 1427th floor, but it was still my favorite for two important reasons. The first was that Pinkie Pi was the only pony I knew who could make Love Inc's black-and-pink packaged machine-separated fruit supplement paste actually taste like the apple turnover it pretended to me. The only pony still alive, that is.
As reality finished settling in enough for me to move, I finished off the last dregs of my coffee (cold now) and the remaining bite of a cricket and algae sandwich (congealed and cold) and brought the crockery back to the counter.
Pinkie greeted me with her usual smile. “All done? You've still got another fifteen minutes left in your session.”
I shrugged. “Didn't feel like another game. What do Ah owe ya?”
“Twenty credits for the uplink, five for the sammie, seven for the coffee, and another five for your usual to-go.”
My eyebrow raised as I placed my hoof on the counter, frog up. “Coffee's gone up again.”
Pinkie shrugged sadly as she placed her hoof atop mine. Our bridlewares acknowledged the connection and made the transfer. "Sorry. There's been more gang activity up in the 1700's lately. Lots of raids on Love’s shipments. They hired more security and passed the cost on to us. Typical of the megas, amiright? Anything to save a credit.”
That was how it always went. Nothing we could do about it. “Say, have you got the time?”
“Let me check.”
She froze as her eyes began to dart around. Left, right, left, right, up, down, up, down. There was always a small novelty in watching somepony else flick through their User Interface, but it was one that wore off quickly as she kept going and going and I waited.
And waited. And waited.
“Dang girl, how messy is your home screen that you can't find the clock?”
Pinkie blinked. “Oh, time. I thought you wanted to know if we had thyme, like the herb, so I was checking the shop's inventory.”
“Why would Ah be asking after some plant?”
“I dunno. Customers give me weird requests all the time.” She grabbed my plates and moved them to the sonic washer. “There's one colt who comes in from time to time and buys up all the powdered sugar and cornstarch he can carry. I tried to put him in touch with my wholesaler, but nope, he just wants to buy from me.”
“...Ah see.” I swear, sometimes that mare was just too sweet and innocent for her own good. Would it even be worth telling her exactly what that ‘colt’ was probably doing with those loose and flammable powders? Best not. He’s helping keep my favorite café in business, so there’s no need to mess up a good racket. Unless his gang becomes enough of a nuisance to someone that they’d be willing to pay for me to... intervene.
But that was a thought for another day.
Without warning, Pinkie's foreleg thrust out suddenly and knocked a stack of menus off the counter.
"Aw sugar! Not again."
“Has that been happening often?”
She stretched the offending limb out and it twitched again, nearly hitting herself in the face. "More than usual lately. Would you mind...?"
I checked my own clock. With the game finished early, I was ahead of schedule. "Sure, Ah got time."
With a little mental direction, my uplink cable snaked out from my neck to the joint in Pinkie's artificial limb. Immediately I isolated the connection in a virtual system. It wasn't that I didn't trust Pinkie—more likely it was going to be a hardware issue than software anyway—but I'd be a plum fool to jack anything directly to my own systems on blind faith. You could never be too careful. I'd seen too much malware designed to hide dormant until an out-of-network technician jacked in to fix something unrelated.
Once the connection cleared my checks, I ran a diagnostic. Her hoof jerked and spasmed on the table in rapid pre-programmed motions as the data streamed back to me.
“Looks like the secondary servo's startin’ to go. This is second-hoof?”
“At least,” she admitted. “It's a family hand-me-down. Limestone couldn't use it anymore after she got a security job with NME.”
That tracked. NME was a real stickler for employees using only their brand of implants and augments. Still, it was in surprisingly good shape for a model that old. "Ah can disable it if you want so it'll stop jerkin’ you around till you can get it serviced, but you'll lose some range of motion.”
“Please and thank you!”
Normally, anypony outside the manufacturer would need to break encryption or use company connections to talk to the BIOS of somepony else's implants, but Pinkie was lucky I wasn't just anypony. It only took a few cycles and I was deeper in her leg than anypony since the corporate techie that built it. A more malicious mare could have done anything at that point, but Pinkie was a friend and didn’t have any contracts against her, so I just did as promised and turned off a few internal switches and reflashed her drivers (just in case she had anything malicious lurking in there).
“There. Should be good to go.”
“Thanks! And here's your to-go." She set a bag on the counter. How she'd prepared that while I was code-deep in her systems was a mystery I'd never be able to solve. "Will you be leaving out the front door?"
“The back."
“Gotcha," she confirmed with a wink that was so obvious it circled back around to being inconspicuous.
I snagged my hat off the back of my chair as I headed for the ‘Employees Only’ door in the back. It synced quickly with my implants and a little icon of its remaining ammo blinked comfortingly in the corner of my sight. No one ever suspected a hat gun.
The second reason that I preferred the Pi Cafe was that it was home to one of the lesser known entrances to the Pipes.
The door was impossible to find if you didn’t already know where to look. In the back of the building, inside a disused employee’s lounge where Pinkie stored “lightly broken but not worth throwing away” furniture, at a corner where the walls of the cafe met the interior wall of the Spire itself, behind a loose panel that slid aside with some augmented strength. I stepped through into an old crawl space cluttered with wire and pipes and began my journey.
Through old ventilation ducts as wide as a hallway and service corridors long abandoned. Up old maintenance shafts and down defunct transport tubes that hadn't been used since the Central Skyway opened. Supposedly you could get anywhere in the Spire if you took the right route, but nopony’d ever claimed to have mapped enough to risk it. Sometimes I passed others on their own journeys off the official routes and away from prying eyes; we passed without acknowledging one another, save a moment’s cautious threat assessment. The Pipes weren’t a secret, but you could be sure anyone you did meet would be the kind of folks with a reason to be hiding their business in the dark.
If you knew where to look, you could even find secret rooms and hidden subfloors: off-blueprint places where the original Builders had taken their lunches and breaks.
These days nearly all of them were claimed by gangs or black markets or lumina dens, but there were still a rare few secrets that only a select few ponies knew about.
Such as my destination.
Eventually I came to a spot that didn't exist on any map or blueprint. As far as even a high-end pair of ScanEyes could tell, it was just an ordinary stretch of defunct maintenance tunnel. Checking twice for any tails (you could never be too careful) I pressed my hoof up against an innocuous rusting panel.
My bridlewear interfaced with something that hid itself even from the rest of my systems and a completely normal looking section of paneling slid away to reveal an innocent but dimly-lit barren corridor.
Or so it appeared, but I knew better. There was a treasure trove of technology just around the corner. One that, if anyone else stumbled across it, they'd be set for life. If they could survive the automated self-defense systems and then the wrath of the dragon that slept within.
I made it about a dozen steps in before warnings started flashing in my UI along with the unmistakable whine of manashot turrets revving to ready states. I counted seven, eight, at least ten that I could see. That was a couple more since my last visit.
"Easy S.P.I.K.E.! It's just me!" I shouted down the corridor while blasting my identity code. After a tense moment the growing whine petered out and the numerous self-defense systems began returning to an idle state, so I continued forward with a breath of relief.
When I rounded the corner, I was greeted by a happy chirrup and a small burst of green flame.
“Good to see you too,” I said warmly as I gave the little droid a pat on its head. As much as it had a head.
SPIKE was a cleaning drone (or at least had been at some point) and a real antique at that. One of those old clunky models, little more than a fat disc with some wheels. The kind that you didn't even see in scrap shops anymore. Fifty years out of warranty if he was a day. But since that model predated the Spire-wide droid server uplink mandate, it was easy for foals to nick ‘em from scrap floors and mod them into little rideable drag racers. Something I always assumed SPIKE must have gone through; the purple and green flame decals didn’t seem like his current owner’s style.
All in all, SPIKE looked a perfectly innocent relic to see wandering old halls like this. Something no pony would look twice at and the rest would ignore, which made him the perfect guard dog.
After all, very few ponies expected a cleaning droid to have a flamethrower and twin rotary blasters.
SPIKE followed along at my heels like an eager puppy as the final door opened into the inner sanctum of one of the very few ponies I actually gave a darn about.
The room beyond was a testament to both hoarding and a skill with machines that even I couldn’t hold an LED to. Racks of drives older than I was lined the walls, crammed in next to top-of-the-line gear that looked fresh off a 3000th floor factory. Display screens, both holographic and physical, filled the air by the dozen, hanging from makeshift mounts or hovering from hidden projectors. Tech spanning generations littered every flat surface in varying states of repair, jailbreaking, or cannibalization. Everything was webbed together by miles and miles of cables so dense some areas of the floor needed a foot-high catwalk. As much as half of them seemed to disappear into holes bored through the walls, connected to who knows what supposedly secure mainframes. I imagined that, through one hole with a solid foot-wide bundle of cables exiting through it, I could see a glimpse of the Spire's Primary Fiber Optic Backbone.
The door dropped shut behind me as I knocked some rust off my hat. Keeping the passage filthy was part of its disguise, but it didn't mean I had to be happy about it.
My contact, however, was a much better reason to be happy.
At a center plinth, surrounded by a dozen keyboards and screens sat the mare only known as Midnight. One of the most elusive figures on the dark Aethernet. The Grayhat Fixer. Zero Day Calamity. A pony shrouded in mystery and rumor whose name topped the Most Wanted list of the private mercenary forces of three different megacorps.
“Aha, Jackie! You’re early!“ Her hooves continued to fly across the keys as she spoke, her eyes unseeing as no less than six uplink cables jacked her directly into her machines. “Give me just a moment and I’ll be right with you.”
“Working on a new project?”
She laughed. “Always, but at the moment I am elucidating a sorry victim of the Dunning-Kreuger effect of the true depth of his ignorance and why pointing out grammatical errors in a rebuttal does not an effective argument make!”
I blinked as I rolled the words around. “...You’re arguing with Aethernet trolls?”
A digitized sigh echoed from all around. “For the past two hours, indeed.”
At some unseen direction, the various screens began to move. Pulley systems and waldos moved in concert until dozens of screens met, edge to edge, forming a jagged spiraling line from the top of the room to the floor. Announced by a small fanfare of harps, a white figure appeared at the top. She descended with inequine grace, gliding between screens as if their edges were a grand staircase, each step creating a burst of digitized flower petals and another ringing chord. It was like watching a goddess descend to earth.
An incredibly vain goddess, at that.
The final screen was as large as a full-length mirror with its own dedicated articulating arm and left her standing perfectly on my level. If I didn’t know better, I could’ve almost been fooled into thinking she was a perfectly normal, organic pony merely standing on the other side of a doorway.
The looping animation of a pixelized gemstone meteor shower that filled the space behind her was a helpful giveaway.
Midnight waved a vague gesture as she continued to type. “You remember my computer wife, of course.”
I doffed my hat. “Winrarity.”
Her avatar curtsied in reply, a ruby red dress manifesting just long enough for the gesture before derendering. “A pleasure to meet you.”
My eyebrow rose of its own accord. “We've met before.”
“Not technically,” she corrected with a light titter. “You met my predecessor, Winrarity.exe V6.2.7, and while I do have her memory files, I am WinRarity V10.2.1, a bold new step forward, the cutting edge of creative computing and digital fabulosity!”
“You sure act and sound like the Winrarity Ah know.”
She preened. “Naturally, darling. All the best parts are preserved while the flaws are eliminated.
Midnight yelled again from behind her keyboards and sole remaining screen. "And no more bluescreening when someone asks you for plaid."
Winrarity’s render glitched for a few frames. "W-W-Well could you blame me? Heathens, the lot of them.”
“Love my computer wife.”
Winrarity blushed, the color oddly still pixelated on her otherwise realistic appearance. “Well… yes. Well then. She'll be at it for a while yet, I fear. In the meantime, how have you been, darling?”
“Fine as anybody. Work's been steady, but Ah always prefer the jobs your lady brings." And with good reason. Better pay, better moral code, and not a single doublecross or shortchange in all the years I’d worked with her. "How've you been?"
“Quite well, thank you. Have you seen my latest collection of digital creations? I just released a new line of custom skins.”
It'd be hard not to have seen it. Every time she released something new into the Aethernet it soared to the top of the popular downloads page. No matter if it was digital clothes, custom avatars, or furniture for virtual houses, the mare had a knack for design that ponies flocked to. There were a few rich types on social media that I’d seen boasting virtual apartments decorated solely with her creations. I'd bought a few skins and accessories for different gaming lounges, but most of my money went to more practical needs.
Part of her fame was from her raw skill, but another part was the mystery surrounding her true identity. She’d once told me she considered the rumor grapevine: “more like a bonsai tree, eager to be pruned and directed”. Leading her fans on a false trail with “leaked clues” was her hobby.
“I've also been trying my hoof at physical decoration,” she continued on. “It's much more limiting than working with code, but I take it as a challenge." Her screen rose as she spread her hooves. "What do you think?"
Now that I looked around, there were a few more homey comforts to the cluttered space than I remembered. Some shelves, a functionless curtain, even a few paintings best described as ‘abstract’. But what caught my eye most was the throbbing tangle of lights on the ceiling that snaked their way down the walls like illuminated vines.
“Awful big fan of neon," I commented.
She winced at that. "A concession to practical necessity."
"Neon's cheap!" Midnight called out. "Magically and elementally stable, so I can synthesize it without any toxic byproducts."
"Yes. Quite." Winrarity shook her head. "You can lead a pony to water, but you can't make her appreciate haute couture."
Silence reigned for a moment, broken only by the sound of Midnight’s continued typing. Finally, Winrarity placed a hoof to her brow and gave an exaggerated sigh.
“I suppose if she’s not going to wrap it up anytime soon darling—”
“Nearly done! Closing arguments!”
“—then it falls to me to perform the social niceties on her behalf. It was my original core directive, after all. I believe introductions would be appropriate?”
“Didn’t we just do that?”
“Not all of us.” Her screen rotated so she faced the far corner of the room. “Oh, do stop sulking in the shadows and join us, would you? You’ll have to get to know each other if you’re going to be partners on this job.”
Partners?
I nearly fired off my hat at the sight of that terribly familiar green armored uniform stepping out of the shadows. A Peacekeeper. Why was there a Peacekeeper here? Was this a raid?
No, they would have never made it this close without Midnight knowing and she wasn’t the type to set me up. If one was here, then it was only because Midnight wanted them here. I shouldn't have been surprised she had a couple of them in her pocket.
She crossed the room with the standard stiff PK gait that got drilled into them at the academy and the scowl they got bestowed upon graduation. Half of her mane was shaved close and the remaining three stripes of color were in a tight, regulation-accommodating braid.
There was also something…off about her that unsettled me in a way I couldn’t put a name to. Like watching a character in a sim with barely wrong proportions.
“I want to make one thing clear,” she announced with a pronounced rasp. “I don’t like criminals and I don’t like working with them. The only reason I’m here is cause Midnight made me an offer I couldn’t refuse and she promised that this job wouldn’t get any civilians hurt. I don’t care if we’re knocking over some gang or even sticking it to one of the megas, but I took an oath as a Peacekeeper to protect the law-abiding citizens of the Spire and I intend to uphold it. So try any funny business and I’ll be after you like lumaddict after his fix.”
…what a load of slag. That’s a lot of pretty words coming from a source I wouldn’t trust to ask for directions. I didn’t know what’s crazier; that she expected me to believe her or that she almost sounded actually genuine.
But whatever. I’ve worked with worse types before. As much as I despised the government dogs on principle, I could put that aside and work with one for one job. And if Midnight’s confident enough to bring her in, then she must have some truly heinous blackmail on the mare.
But something about her still left me antsy and it wasn’t just that she wasn’t sticking to the usual PK dialogue tree. Normally, this would be the point in the conversation where she’d read out my full legal name and ID number along with any open warrants. Maybe Midnight had a jammer running that was cutting off her EYEdentifier from accessing the PK facial recognition database.
Then it clicked.
She didn’t have an EYEdentifier. Her eyes were completely natural. Now that I looked closer, I realized she didn’t have any mods or augments at all. No EYEdentifier, no subdermal reactive armor, no retractable wing blades or any of the rest of the standard Peacekeeper kit. Sweet Architects, she didn’t even have any bridleware ports! Aside from a mundane-looking prosthetic hoof, she was the most wholly organic pony I’d seen since Granny.
And why did that make me feel like I should recognize her from somewhere?
“Now, now,” Winrarity chided, “That’s hardly a civil way to start a working relationship, is it, Lieutenant Crash?”
That was enough to jolt the memory into place. “Wait, Crash? As in ‘Captain System Crash’?”
She visibly cringes and comes out of it with a death stare. “No. It's Rainbow Crash. And that's Lieutenant Peacekeeper Crash to you.”
I ignored her impotent anger. “So it is you. That explains a lot. Hey, Ah’ve heard the Aethernet rumors as much as anypony, but is it really true that you can’t help but blow up every piece of tech you try to use?”
“No!”
“But it's closer than she'd like to admit~” Winrarity trilled as her image was replaced by what looked like security footage of Crash at a shooting gallery. Her wrist-mounted blaster—a PK260 Pacifier, judging by the shape— got off one shot, two, then something sparked and it started leeching black smoke. She threw it away before it exploded, obliterating the target she’d been shooting at.
“You can’t—”
The video cut to another clip. Crash in flying pursuit of what looked like a pickpocket. She activated a pair of older-model Peacekeeper BoosterShoes, but instead of sending her speeding forward they immediately exploded, sending her tumbling through the air and halfway into a billboard. A third clip. Crash in a Peacekeeper office, banging her hooves on a keyboard in rage as the terminal turned a deadly blue, followed by all the nearby terminals in view. A fourth—
“Those are private!”
“Public record, actually, darling,” Winrarity crooned as she returned to the screen. Another clip started and—
Crash punched the screen. It didn’t crack, but something sparked and fizzled and popped and the image went black.
“I’d ask you not to punch my computer wife—” At some point during the clips Midnight had brought her hoverchair directly behind Crash and her sudden speaking made the Peacekeeper jump. “—but seeing how you couldn’t possibly actually harm her I’ll consider that merely a demonstration of your unique capabilities. I will be deducting the cost to repair that from your payment, however.”
Winrarity’s avatar peeked around the corner of a different screen, one high enough to be out of reach. Seeing her alarmed face, Midnight’s already stern expression hardened. “And I’d caution you against trying that stunt again.”
Showing she still had some kind of sense in her head, Crash backed down and stepped back with a muttered apology. Midnight clapped and her expression brightened. “It’s time we get down to brass tacks then. I’m sure you’re curious as to the nature of this job.”
“Curious is a word for it,” I offered. Her message had been vague on details, but included a lot of zeroes. Enough to set me up for years.
“Then let me start at the beginning!” Her hoverchair glided back and a holographic display flickered to life in the space she’d vacated. “Rares, if you would do the honors?”
“It would be my pleasure.”
Midnight grinned. “Love my computer wife.”
A hovering image appeared in the blue-tinged light of the projector. A slim octagonal box, about the size of a hoof, with unfamiliar ports along the sides. The massive wing-and-horns logo embossed on one side was unmistakable, even if the tech itself wasn’t.
“Feast your eyes on the latest miracle from Celestech’s most heavily-guarded thinktank: the Alicorn Processor Chip. It is the singularly most advanced piece of technology ever developed in Equestrian history.”
To be honest, I wasn’t terribly impressed. Every few years they released something that was promised to be “the next big thing” but it just made VR graphics a little better and twice as expensive. Crash looked to be thinking the same thing. “It can’t be that impressive.”
“Don’t underestimate it,” Midnight snapped, catching me off guard with her sudden seriousness. “I am not hyperbolizing. The Alicorn Processor Chip is a technological breakthrough on par with the invention of the transistor or the steam engine. It is orders of magnitude more powerful than the current top-of-the-line models.” She paused for a moment, then continued in a lighter tone. “Let me put it like this: you’re familiar with Cadenza? The AI that runs Love Inc.’s marketing department?”
Winrarity helpfully pulled up an image of the mare in question. Not that she needed to. I knew her face from half the food packaging I came across.
I nodded, as did Crash.
“The server banks and processor farms needed to run her higher functions and let her think take up nearly the entirety of floors 2256 and 2257. The Alicorn Processor Chip could run her entire program with flops to spare.”
Silence hung in the room as we digested that. Now the payout made a lot more sense. Whoever this job’s client was had some deep pockets and enormous ambitions.
“At this moment,” Midnight continued, “only one single prototype of the Chip exists. By tomorrow, it will be in Celestech’s deepest, most heavily defended blacksite. That’s why your job is—”
“No.”
My eyes snapped towards the Peacekeeper who was shaking her head like a mare possessed. “You can count me out. I don’t care how many credits you dangle in front of me, I am not going to get myself killed trying to steal the golden egg from the most cut-throat and heavily-armed megacorporation in the Spire.”
“I don’t expect you to,” Midnight quickly cut her off. “And you don’t have to, because someone already did.”
“Huh?”
“Rares? Next slide please.”
The hologram changed to a, frankly, twisted and confusing-looking flowchart with too many abbreviated terms to try and follow.
“Our client isn’t the only one aware of the existence of the Chip, nor the only one trying to claim it for themselves. In the last six hours it’s already changed hooves more than a dozen times.”
The first link in the chain glowed red alongside a timestamp. “It was first stolen from Celestech by a deep cover industrial saboteur working for Sunset Industries. Their agent was intercepted by a special ops team working, through deniable assets, for the Flom Conglomerate. A member of that team was a mole for the Hooffield crime family, who betrayed his partner and delivered the chip to the family's vaults on floor 1878.”
Links of the chain changed color as she recounted the path the Chip had taken, dropping a few floors lower with each handoff.
“The family head used it as collateral to strike a deal with the McColt Gang, only for a disloyal lieutenant to steal it for themselves. She then sold it on the dark Aethernet to an unnamed buyer, but during transport the courier was arrested by a Peacekeeper squadron on 1645 and the Chip was taken into evidence. However, a member of the force there is on the Glow Syndicate’s payroll and arranged to have it diverted from the secure evidence vault on 1500 to gang controlled territory. Some hacking, courtesy of a hired agent, sent it to Crimson Hooves territory instead. Next, it was—”
Midnight’s monologue was interrupted by a surprisingly unprofessional groan from the resident Peacekeeper. “This is why I never joined the counter-gang units. Too much politics. Do we really need to hear every mafia and gangster that this thing has passed through?”
“I suppose it's not mission critical information. I'll skip to the end. After several more thefts and raids between factions that would have been impossible for anyone else to track, I've traced the Chip's current location to the donations chamber of the Lunarists Convocation on floor 1199.”
“What.” Crash blinked. “The Lunarists? How did those wackos end up with it?”
Midnight rolled her eyes. “You asked me to skip to the end.”
“Ah’ve never heard of them. Are they a new gang?”
Crash scoffed. “Hardly. They’re a religious movement, or so they claim.” The hologram shifted aside to make room for a rotating logo of a crescent moon bearing a silhouette of a mare’s face in profile. “A bunch of loonies who think we're building a tower to the moon where some mythical princess is waiting to welcome us all to a new world with no walls and clean air.”
A snort of disbelief escaped before I could stop it. “What a bunch of idiots. Everypony with half a brain knows they only keep buildin’ more floors cause the rich ain't ever satisfied with how many luxury apartments and day spas and bowling alleys they have. Simple greed, no divine guidance needed.”
“Pretty much. Captain Dust’s got a major hateboner for them for some reason, but there’s something irregular with the rules regarding that floor that’s been preventing her from being able to scrape together enough favors to get a raid sanctioned. There’s actually a betting pool at the precinct for which gang they’re a cover for. I got three hundred credits on the Dream Warriors.”
“I thought they got wiped out a few years back?”
“It’s a longshot bet, but the payout will be huge if I’m right.” She paused and turned to Midnight with a hopeful expression. “I guess you’d be the one to know. Is it the Dream Warriors? Please say it is.”
“Unfortunately not. It was a surprise to me as well, but as far as I can tell they’re actually not a front. They’re genuine believers.”
I couldn’t believe it. “Genuine believers? In a pony on the moon?”
Midnight shrugged indifferently. “There are some ancient legends that seem to support their theology, but while much of the congregation genuinely believes, it’s primarily just an untaxable way for the self-appointed ranking clergy to line their own pockets through donations.”
Yeah, that made much more sense with how the world works. “So, however they got the Chip, what are these Lunarists plannin’ on doing with it?”
“According to my information,” she hesitated for a moment, like she couldn't believe what she was about to say. “They plan on giving it back to Celestech as part of their regular donations and as thanks for their continued work to build the Spire closer to their deity.”
“What,” I deadpan.
“That's ridiculous!” Crash adds.
“Agreed. That's why I need you two to go and steal it from them before they can give it back.” The hologram clicked off and she guided her chair towards us. “This is the Chip’s most vulnerable moment. If it makes it back to Celestech’s hooves, it’ll be gone forever. That’s why I’ve called you two, the best ponies for the job, to get it done right and get it done now.”
She made a compelling case, but one thing still nagged at me. Only Crash asked it before I could. “So why us? What makes us the best for the job?”
“That should be obvious,” Midnight stated. When neither me nor Crash said anything, she continued. “There are several reasons, most of which don’t concern you directly and you needn’t worry about, but the two of you have particular affinities with machines that will be critical if things go down the waste chute. A lockpick and a sledgehammer, if you’re feeling metaphorical.”
Well, she was right about that much. I doubted some grifter cult would have any substantial security in place, but a brute force solution was sometimes the best play. And it did sound like an easy job. Dangerously easy. “And Ah assume you’ve got a plan in place to make sure we don’t call down the thunder on our heads from every gang and megacorp from here to the pinnacle afterward?”
“Naturally.” She leaned back in her chair and steepled her hooves. “While you’re on the ground I’ll be managing overwatch. Disguising your digital tracks, laying false trials, obscuring identities. I’ve even prepared a dummy chip for you to swap out so neither Celestech nor anypony will be able to tell when the real one left circulation.”
“So then all the gangs will be tied up fighting each other over a chip that's no longer in play,” Crash summarized, looking much less unhappy about the situation than she had earlier. “Then what happens once we get it back here?”
“You can go on your way, with payment in whatever currency you prefer, and I’ll handle delivering it to the client.”
“And what’s the client going to do with it?”
Midnight frowned and a touch of steel entered her voice. “That's their business and theirs alone. I will say though that I implicitly trust the hooves that it will be ending up in.”
She hopped out of her chair and closed the distance between us, offering a hoof and a devilish grin.
“So, are you onboard to make the biggest payday of your lives?”
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that description.... very nice i cant wait to see what what is here.
Y'know, I've learned that ventilation ducts generally don't go above a certain size, and never anything close to hallway size, because the bigger they are, the more volume of air has to be pushed through them at once in order for it all to work, and the greater the volume of air, the more power and effort the system has to exert just to move it through said vents. As such, it's generally better to keep them smaller (I believe just big enough to crawl through is about as big as they typically get, and most tend to be smaller still) for efficiency's sake, no matter how large the structure they're used in is.
Okay, I'm sorry, Midnight, but I don't care how powerful an AI it no doubt has, there's no way that phrasing will ever make it sound flattering for you.
Anyway, my razzing aside, this seems like an interesting enough AU. Admittedly, cyberpunk isn't my most preferred genre of sci-fi (often tends to be a bit too pessimist for my tastes) but the world-building here is definitely pulling me in, so I'll have to see where this goes regardless.
I see a great story in the making here. I'm in for the ride.
That’s my element of loyalty
I hate you. My heart has been hardened. My rage is eternal. The intensity of the perpetual hatred flowing through my veins is indescribable.
....So they're roommates?