• Published 12th Jan 2012
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Days of Wasp and Spider - Luna-tic Scientist



No humans. In Equestria's past, ponies exist only to serve their creators. One such pony is accidentally released from her mental chains, but how can one mare save herself and her people if she doesn't even know she's a slave?

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30 - A precautionary measure (2)

Days of Wasp and Spider
by Luna-tic Scientist


=== Chapter 30 (remastered): A precautionary measure (2) ===


Fusion was a comfortable presence at the back of Gravity's head, watching through her eyes and making suggestions as the blue mare placed the first bomb in the engineering spaces above the armoured roof of the beamline chamber. The second went halfway up the tunnel she'd excavated down to the lower levels, more pulses of violet magic used to push the razor edged fragments deep into the surrounding floors, opening out a cavity that made the tunnel look like a snake swallowing an egg. The last sat not two lengths from where Fusion and Lilac lay, an innocuous box glued to the floor with something she'd pulled from the equipment pile.

Gravity worked quickly, using more magic to cut and weaken the primary support pillars that rose from the bedrock beneath the lowest levels. As she did so, she watched the progress of the defeated Security team, seeing them finally meet up with the blockade at the upper level transit tunnel junction. She couldn't really see what was happening there -- only the gryphons and ponies were readily visible, everything else was shadows and silhouettes. In this she had a better view than her sister; their diverging magical specialities also manifested in their shadow sight.

Where Fusion was sensitive to stored concentrations of energy -- especially things like reactors with their loops of energetic plasma -- Gravity could get a sense of mass. In her shadow sight this appeared as a feeling for three dimensions, an enhanced ability to separate things by density and distance. It was this that let her notice the take-off of the Security vehicle from the surface shaft, an event which had prompted a few nervous moments until they'd realised it wasn't going to attack the facility with heavy weapons.

The Security team had started moving again, splitting up to leave the ponies in one place while the gryphons moved through the blockade, to be whisked away down the transit tunnel inside the angular shape of an airtruck. There were plenty of other vehicles there, along with more gryphons; any Masters were invisible at this distance. Distinct from the airtrucks were a pair of things like flattened spheres, each with a streamlined lump on the top. Obviously built for speed, these were larger and much heavier than the airtrucks, standing out because of their thick, high density hulls.

She'd seen those before, too. A whole field of them after they'd been released from the attack carrier, able to move with frightening speed for things so big and heavy.

The sight of them brought back her unease; what they'd seen so far was a small fraction of the Master's power. If they'd had any real understanding of what they'd faced, she very much doubted they'd have led with such a small force. And why didn't they just use their magic suppressor? she thought.

Although she hadn't articulated it, Fusion picked up on the question. I think that Security and the Military don't like each other. We were Security's prisoners, so their responsibility. Perhaps they don't have the suppressors?

Gravity grunted something in response, busy laying lines of shock tubes to the thermobarics. The bombs had any number of sophisticated remote control options, none of which were of any use to the ponies, but some thoughtful designer had incorporated a basic timer and an external trigger. All three had their timers running, synchronised by the simple expedient of Gravity simultaneously pressing 'start' on each before setting them in place. They now had four kiloseconds left.

"Makes sense," she said absently, "the Security vehicles had crystal levitation drives as well as their jets; the attack carrier didn't. Either way, they're bound to use it eventually, although I get the feeling we really surprised them, so I think it will be some time yet," she said. The manual trigger had already been glued to a wall inside the radiation lock, and Gravity carefully inserted the shock tube into the port at the bottom, making sure the thin plastic pipe wouldn't pull free. A few quick brushes of magic and the tube was hidden under dirt and debris.

Think it will work? My pathfinding never went as far as demolitions.

"The scans look good, but we'll probably never know. I think so... it should be a nasty surprise if it does."

Gravity had been dipping into her shadow sight every few seconds, making sure nothing nasty was trying to creep up on them. During one of these forays the wing and horn light of the Security ponies disappeared. One moment they were there, all clustered together in a tight huddle, then they were gone. A half second later there was a faint crackling roar from that direction, distorted and attenuated by its passage through the intervening mess of walls and rooms.

They killed them all, Fusion said faintly from the back of her head. Why? Why would they do that?

"Contamination," Gravity said thickly, stepping outside the beam chamber to get a better view, "they're afraid I did something to those poor ponies. After all I went through to keep them alive... I should have freed them, at least they would have had a chance." Fury was bubbling up inside her, her power building like an unbearable pressure inside her chest. "And rather than take the chance to check--" Gravity broke off, calling up another pattern, one she'd only ever used as part of the fifty strong launch team during training, ten days and a lifetime ago.

The thing was brutal in its simplicity, but required a horrible amount of power to use. With it, a team of ponies could launch a satellite into orbit, creating the gravitational gradients needed to fling tonnes of material at the kilolengths a second required without exposing the cargo to high acceleration forces. The full complexity of the spell was beyond her -- there were simply too many parts to the pattern for a single pony to hold in her head -- but the drive section...

What are you doing? Fusion said nervously, I don't recognise--

"I will not let them get away with that unpunished," Gravity spat, igniting the spell's locus a hundred lengths away, somewhere inside the surface shaft. She let her anger funnel into the pattern, priming the enchantment with energy before she brought it into the real world. "The sooner they understand that actions have consequences, the better it will be."

She compartmentalised the sharing spell, protecting it from her new magic. With Fusion still sitting at the back of her mind, Gravity opened herself to the power that was ultimately derived from the motion of everything in orbit about the planet. She'd had a little taste before, but during the fight the main limit had been her own mind, her ability to hold multiple, complex spell patterns in her head. This spell was a simple thing, just requiring an enormous amount of energy to cast. The mare pulled in the power -- cool and fast, like a mountain river in flood -- then fed it straight back out and into the pattern she was crafting. The locus coalesced at the centre of the Institute's entrance shaft, energy transferring from the arcane to the real.

All at once it seemed like her body was strung with a hundred little balloons, like she was slightly buoyant. At that instant she knew that the spell was working; she'd created a gravitational point source, a virtual mass that she could manipulate at will. To be felt out this far, the spell was simulating millions of tonnes of mass, more than enough to distort local space-time and pull the Security aircraft out the sky.

Made reckless by success and anger, Gravity let the power rise like a tide and channelled it straight into the pattern and the rapidly swelling arcane locus. The spell was working far better than she had imagined; as the power surged through her she actually thought about reining it in, to make sure it didn't break free of her control and hurt those close to her, but in the heady rush of being able to do so much the thought was discarded like it belonged to somepony else.

There was no finesse here, no intricate spellwork; it was all brute strength. She was dimly aware of the demands of her body; a bone deep weariness spreading from her head and along her chest, sweat streaming down her flanks from the effort required to keep the spell active. Somewhere deep inside she knew this was a problem, knew that it wasn't right that she couldn't really feel what the magic was doing to her. Her conscious mind disregarded the nagging worry, completely focused on revenge and the sheer joy of the power.

Her manipulations caused the carrier to brush with the edge of the shaft and spin wildly; another adjustment and the green crystal glow of its drive vanished, the aircraft falling with unnatural speed. Gravity moved the locus to keep the distance constant and maintain the acceleration. She could feel her body getting lighter as the spell came closer, heard the terrible groans from the already weakened structure being exposed to forces from directions it was never designed to experience, but none of that really registered.

Grav, stop!

Gravity felt a flash of pity at the worry in her sister's cry, and it was easy to ignore the tiny voice, nearly drowned out by the power flooding through her body. Fear has made you weak, sister. If you had acted rather than tried to remain hidden, we wouldn't be in this mess. I'll do what you cannot, she thought.

You'll kill us all! Please!

These words were inconsequential and barely registered; it was the emotional feedback that came with them that made her pause. The roaring in her head faded enough that she could think about what she was doing. The spell flicked out and weight returned, bringing with it a crushing burden of guilt. How could I think that, I-I- she thought, mind nearly paralysed. Awareness of her body returned with a rush, flooding her with an enervating weakness that almost made her legs give out.

The shockwave arrived an instant later, completing the task of knocking her to the floor.

She'd put little thought into where the carrier was going to hit; in the end it was only luck and the strength of the shielded beamline chamber that saved them. Accompanied by an explosion that seemed to go on forever, the floor rattled and shook, more cracks racing over the already damaged walls and ceiling. Large beams and slabs shifted above Gravity; she stared at them by the pale and flickering glow of her horn, too weak to do anything to protect herself should they fall.

===

Dropship Pilot Namak looked again at the long range radar plot; he was supposed to be keeping all his attention on the ground sensors, alert to any attempt at a break-out by the rogue servitor and any ponies it might have with it, but his weapons officer and her suite of antipersonnel sensors and weapons could do that. The three squadrons of aircraft were rapidly approaching, the third group he suspected of being a heavy weapons response package having caught up with the other two and was heading straight for him.

The other two had separated and appeared to be diverting around the Institute, getting no closer than a couple of hundred kilolengths, something that confirmed his suspicions that they were Arclight units. For something to do he set the computer to crunching the data from the radar, integrating the return signals taken at various points of his own little circuits of the exit shaft. The resultant synthetic image was distorted, but perfectly recognizable.

A swarm of flying things, too small to resolve beyond fuzzy points, orbiting a much larger vehicle that looked like a bird that had swallowed an egg. Stubby wings on a body distorted by a central sphere, the aircraft looked ridiculous, doubly so if you knew how much it cost to make. Namak checked the tracking plot, extrapolating the route and making an estimate of the time before Arclight came in firing range. The flight paths were already starting to curve into a wide circle; each vehicle would take up station on opposite sides of the target, giving them the most accurate control over the suppressor's volume of effect.

A warning light flashed on his HUD, the threat detection system throwing up a steeply climbing graph in his peripheral vision. By reflex he reached out and slapped the thaumic defences into full active mode, glancing at the graph to check the readings had dropped. They hadn't, and seemed to be climbing still faster. The fur started to rise on the back of his neck as he realised the impossibility of it; the levels had already surpassed those from a ground mounted thaumokinetic array, and were still rising.

Thaumic spike, somewhere inside the Institute, he thought, one paw coming off the controls to bring up the real-time mapping data from the intelligence systems distributed through the facility. An exploded model of the site, spanning from the depths of the lower tunnels all the way to the surface, started to rotate in the lower part of his HUD. Another quick claw tap and the map was filled with shifting blobs of colour, a measure of the thaumic activity as determined by the relatively crude 'arcane early warning' sensors in the airtanks.

"AEW's tagged it as having a high gravitational component," he muttered, trying to understand the display, "ah, Maker, that's not good." Right next to the beam chamber was a patch of intense colour, rapidly shifting up through the spectrum, shading to white at the centre. The computer rescaled the thaumic plot, then rescaled again as the magic kept building.

He'd seen something like this before, no more than ten kiloseconds ago as part of his briefing package. Another servitor, another beam chamber, another Institute facility. A similar plot, one taken with instruments actually designed to measure such things, but showing the same readings: a near exponential rise in thaumic power density. That event had resulted in the blackout of a large chunk of the surrounding tunnel network. If this was the same...

Yet there's no sign of any arcane effect, just the readings, he thought. And where is it coming from? At these levels the forces should be enough to knock the dropship about the sky, even if the antimagic field would stop them from punching holes in the hull. The readings jumped and the thaumic alarm shrieked, just as a shudder ran through his aircraft.

A second zone of arcane potential had appeared on the plot. It bloomed into an even stronger signal than the first, rapidly forming something that looked like a miniature sun, somewhere inside the Institute's entrance shaft. A high gravitational component, he thought, a slight shiver of fear running down his spine. Namak’s eyes flicked to the arrival times of the Arclight units -- still hundreds of seconds from firing range. "Under for magical attack, possible TK effects," he snapped out, the broadcast routed back to the command post and thence on to Security control at the Pit.

Everything grew suddenly heavy, just like he was pulling out of a shallow dive. Compared to the forces felt by a fast jet pilot it was nothing, maybe three or four times normal gravity, but the effect on the hovering dropship was devastating. More alarms blared: sink rate, ground proximity, structural failure in the lowest parts of the carrier, a sudden fire in one of the auxiliary power units. Namak struggled to regain control; something was pulling the dropship off course. How is it affecting this one through the field? he thought fleetingly, then all his attention went on trying to keep the dropship in the air.

He was dropping like the engines were off, even though all four were running at maximum emergency power. Despite orders he activated the crystal levitation drive, cursing as the downward motion didn't quite stop, changing into a relatively slow drift. He bared his teeth, fighting the magic for control and trying to ground the dropship on the surface, rather than have it fall down the Institute's entrance shaft. There just wasn't enough power to spare; the belly of the dropship floated down past the edge, clipping the lip as he descended.

The port side number two engine was sheared off by that seemingly minor contact, the ducted fan exploding into a thousand fragments as the blades hit the inside of the housing. Bits of high velocity single crystal blade, each one enormously strong and designed to withstand the centrifugal forces inside the engine, were flung out at speeds high enough to drive them deep into the concrete walls of the shaft. The dropship, already unbalanced by the unnatural forces being applied to it, started to spin wildly.

Namak's training had been the best the Hive could manage; he had megaseconds of actual flight time logged, with more megaseconds in the simulator, being run through whatever disasters his Security trainers could devise. He'd even been through this kind of drill -- colliding with tunnel walls was a constant threat when reaching the deeper parts of the Hive in a hurry -- but the time was too short and the distances too small. The view out the cockpit windows was useless and an instant recipe for disorientation, so he kept his head down and fought the chaos by instruments alone.

The hard spin was making his vision blur, but he'd trained for that and it was no worse than one of the high G centrifuge runs. The HUD systems compensated for his half closed eyes, painting their laser patterns onto his retinas and allowing for his drifting focus. A three dimensional model of his ship in wireframe spun against the unforgiving walls of the entrance shaft, all non important details removed to present him with a clean picture of his environment.

The wireframe marked out the damage with a spectrum of colours starting at green and descending into crimson. Aside from the number two engine pod, the hull looked like a rainbow, pure green at the top and shading to orange and red near the landing gear. As Namak fought the controls, that band of orange crept ever higher, tendrils of red threading through the lower hull. A nasty groan of stressed metal echoed through the cabin and the thrust indicators for the crystal drive suddenly went dead.

The sensation of extra weight vanished and, just for a moment, Namak thought the magic had released his ship. Reality came crashing back in with the sight of the shaft walls rushing past, and he realised what had happened. Free fall, he thought, still calm, and still trying to restart the crystal drive, when the carrier struck the bottom of the shaft.

The floor of the shaft was a set of big doors. They had been unopened for almost half a gigasecond and were only installed to allow large machinery to be passed into the accelerator tunnel at the lowest level of the Institute facility. The outer surface of the doors was used as a landing pad for the occasional guest well connected enough to warrant their own air vehicle and needing to travel with the speed that only a suborbital hop could provide. They were strong enough to support a half kiloton bulk cargo vessel, should one ever be needed.

The carrier hit the doors at almost a third the speed of sound, slamming into the tough metal and concrete with enough force to shear off the main locks -- each the size of a tall Person -- and collapse the supports. Battered and trailing smoke, missing all its external engine pods, but still mostly intact, it fell through empty volume reserved for heavy lifting gear and punched into the cluttered equipment shaft below. Fragments and debris filled the cavity with a dusty cloud of lethal shrapnel. Lightning flashed deep inside the haze, illuminating the dust with blue-white flickers.

===

Olvir stared at the patch of concrete, still able to feel the radiant heat on the few exposed surfaces he had. His mind ran circles, forever replaying the moment when that hot green light had filled the corridor with fire. It all just seemed so wrong. Those ponies probably saved most of the injured soldiers, and would have ensured that all of them made it back to the medical centres alive.

He was used to the idea that he might be sent on a suicide mission, to die for some abstract gain during a fight he didn't understand, but this seemed to be such a waste. What did they do wrong to deserve that? he thought, trying to come to terms with what he'd just seen. No matter how he approached the idea, he couldn't come up with a satisfactory answer. He'd had the standard training courses in how to interact with the creatures; every single one had emphasised their total loyalty and how that was magically enforced.

Yet this 'blue pony' has managed to kill four of the Masters and at least six Rippers, he thought. What must have been done to it to make it act like that? Olvir had heard rumours about what went on in places like this, the experiments carried out by the Eugenics Board on gryphon and pony alike.

For a moment he wondered what the world would be like without any Masters, where a gryphon could fight for what he wanted, or -- and here was the really mind blowing idea, something that was very nearly blasphemy -- not have to fight at all. Then the floor seemed to tilt under Olvir's paws, an odd and unsettling sensation that made it feel like the whole complex was somehow teetering on the edge of a cliff.

Alarms sounded, the shrill warble of a thaumic attack, and he looked about uncertainly, running a talon over the control pad for his antimagic defences. His HUD reported that the arcane locus was several hundred lengths away, so whatever he was feeling was a minor side effect, not the actual attack itself.

The effect vanished and the alarms stopped. Olvir let out the breath he hadn't known he was holding, relief washing over him as he realised it was over. What was that? Was it the blue pony or something stranger? he thought. There had been large scale uses of offensive enchantments in the past, and these were what his antimagic systems were supposed to defend against -- spells able to aggressively affect organic matter had been common, now out of favour with the advent of modern field technology. The only real use these days were the big thaumokinetics used to defend surface facilities.

The arrival of the shockwave startled Olvir out of his musings, surprised him so badly that he forgot discipline and jumped off the ground and into a hover before his conscious mind caught up with his actions. His wide eyes took in the scene in an instant; cracks darting across the ceiling with the speed of lightning, the whole surface rippling like it was water. Instinct reasserted itself; with a single desperate down stroke of his wings Olvir turned over in mid air, arrowing away from the zone of destruction.

Rocks rained down around him, and he split his attention between watching the ceiling and navigating a path through the chaos to the tunnel leading back to the main transit route, out beyond the clustered Security airtrucks and mercifully clear of any roof damage. A flicker of motion triggered the part of his raptor brain normally on the look-out for attack by another bird, and he twisted his wings for a hard turn.

A concrete block the size of a small aircar caught Olvir a glancing blow on his right hip, sending him tumbling through the air. At this altitude there was no chance of recovery, and Olvir ploughed head first into the concrete, taking all the impact on his shoulder and head.

He awoke in darkness, a great weight pressing down on his back. With a groan, Olvir lifted his head, feeling gravel and small rocks tumble away. A quick look over his shoulder showed the problem -- a large beam, almost the width of his torso, balanced on a nearby boulder, leaving him trapped in the gap. Breathing out, Olvir twisted and worked his body closer to the rock, finally getting enough freedom to wriggle out of the small space.

Trembling all over from the shock and adrenalin rush, Olvir inhaled deeply and tried to suppress the feeling of shame that washed over him. I left my squad, he thought, feeling sick, left my post. They'll never forgive me for that. A charge of cowardice would follow him for the rest of his life; no chance of promotion or extra responsibility, no opportunity to breed, never trusted by another gryphon.

Nearly in tears, Olvir turned to head back to his place in the line, stopping dead when he saw what had happened. Where his squad had been was buried under enough rock to half fill the high ceilinged tunnel; the vehicles were barely visible mounds, but there was no sign of any of his squadmates.

===

The shrill warble of the AEW swallowed Hakon's anger at his Gunner; silencing the alarm, he brought the airtank's defences to full active, then watched open mouthed as the tactical repeater showed the fate of the dropship. As the aircraft fell towards the bottom of the shaft, the Pilot increased power to the engines and lifted the hull off the ground. It's not just falling, that's far too fast! he thought, taking a firmer grip on the controls. The dropship was accelerating downwards like it was in a power dive, taking less than three seconds to drop the hundred or so lengths. "Brace for impact!" he called out, eyes darting nervously to the ceiling.

The shockwave arrived and he didn't feel a thing, but the ground outside jumped in response, throwing many of the bipedal powered troops to their knees. The gryphons fared better, wings popping out from under their barding panels and dancing to keep their balance. The rumbling growl transmitted from the external microphones didn't die away, instead it built and built, dust and rock starting to rain down from the ceiling. The facility is collapsing! Hakon thought, heart thundering. He gunned the engines, intending to retreat back to the main tunnel. The first impact put paid to that idea.

One of the ceiling blocks came crashing down on the front of the airtank, unbalancing the drive and causing it to grind glacis plate first into the concrete floor. The noise was horrific, the immensely strong hull ringing like a badly tuned bell. Half deafened, Hakon struggled with the controls, but more blocks and rubble followed the first, slamming the airtank into the floor and blocking the intakes. Lazgo was shouting something, but the Pilot neither knew nor cared what he said.

The safety system killed the air breathing turbine, closing the foreign object shutters before anything could penetrate the screens and wreck the ducted fan. The airtank's limited reaction mass kept the drive working, but it would only last for seconds in this mode. This close to the ground and friendlies, Hakon didn't dare route the feed through the plasma drive, so he dropped the airtank to the ground and hunched down in his seat, tensing against the final blow that was sure to follow.

The roar of falling rocks subsided and Hakon dared to open his eyes. The imaging system showed a fuzzy, out of focus jumble of large and small shapes, bright in some areas and dark in others. It flickered as he stared at it in confusion, the display cycling to a false colour image as the tactical awareness system tried to make sense of its surroundings. Taking a deep breath, Hakon reached out a trembling paw, resetting the mad colours back to a comfortable greyscale.

Buried, he thought, but not crushed. The airtank's hull was built to withstand energetic plasma, high density long rod penetrators and radiation at power densities only found close to Celestia, but a thousand tonne primary ceiling beam would be more than capable of smashing it, especially if it fell from the high roof of the transit tunnel.

"Mantlet, how deep--" Hakon paused, feeling stupid. This was the sort of thing the servitor would do, custom magic to augment the airtank's sensors. Grumbling, he fiddled with the wall penetrating ultrasound, trying to persuade it to work with the sensor clusters packed with gravel and dust. The readings were crazy, fluctuating wildly as the system tried to adjust to material within the resonating cavity, slowly settling as Hakon eliminated the most ridiculous solutions the computer came up with.

He kept one ear open to the local battlenet channel; the high bandwidth link was still up so the command vehicle hadn't been flattened, but the only response to his situation report had been a terse 'sit tight'. The procedure under these circumstances was clear; if you are safe for now and the unit isn't under attack, don't dig yourself out until ordered. The last thing he wanted was to cause a further collapse if it turned out that the airtank was now a vital part of the roof support structure...

To take his mind off the situation, Hakon started flicking through all the surviving local cameras to get an idea of the situation. One side of the tunnel had collapsed, burying a pair of airtrucks and his Firebug; underneath the tonnes of rubble were also a quarter of the powered troops and at least a squad of gryphons, those who chose to shelter next to the vehicles rather than fly for the exit.

The People had probably survived; their armour was self contained and would recycle air and water until the deuterium-helium three fuel ran out, which could be megaseconds. The gryphons... He could see at least one golden brown wing sticking out of the rubble, its owner somewhere under one of the half length wide interlocking tetrahedral blocks that made up the ceiling.

The protocols for this sort of thing were well established, and someone on the command team was organizing the recovery operation. Heavy lifting gear was always on call when Security performed this kind of operation; ceiling supports were a favourite terrorist target. Servitors would normally be providing the grunt work, but all of theirs had been ordered away after the true nature of the threat was suspected. Or burned, Hakon though grimly. How many more will die because of that stupid order, killed by the clumsy crystal thaumic systems used to dig them out?

Lazgo had nothing to occupy his time and wasn't taking the waiting well. "How could one servitor do all that?" he said, voice sounding loud now the thrum of the airtank's engines had been silenced.

Hakon's lips pulled back in a mirthless smile at the nervousness in his Gunner's voice. Lazgo was on his first tour and it showed. First taste of an opponent actually fighting back, eh? he thought. "Lazgo will see all sorts as he gets older. This one cut his teeth fighting Baur sleeper cells during the run up to the Three Day War. He also remembers when the King sent assault teams into arcology four. They collapsed the primary entrances and the deep tunnels; it took our servitors almost a day to get a big enough opening."

"What happened?"

Hakon's voice went dreamy, lost in the memory. "By the time we got in, the gryphons had slaughtered the Security forces and the police, and had been hunting civilians for almost fifty kiloseconds. This one must have spent half a megasecond buttoned up, trying to get all of them... They'd done something to the birds, some kind of conditioning. None of them surrendered... and every single one had a bomb vest. After the first few blew themselves up while faking a surrender we didn't bother asking again."

Lazgo said nothing, but the air in the vehicle held a kind of expectant hush, and Hakon knew he had the Gunner.

"The last of them were cornered in the power core, it was only a matter of time before we had them, and they knew it. You see, that was the plan all along. Some Baur scientist had figured out a flaw with our power plant designs, and they'd rigged the reactor for when the war went hot. Eighty percent casualties; Hakon's airtank got caught in the arcology collapse when it blew.

"How did Hakon survive?" Lazgo asked, still too loud for the small space.

"The airtank was ruined, but still had emergency power; Hakon knew it was only a matter of time until the rescue teams dug then out. What he didn't know was that the airtank had fallen to the bottom of an equipment shaft... and that no one was looking at all."

"Why not?" Lazgo sounded outraged, and well he might. That rescue would come was something drummed into all aircrew.

"There was a war on," Hakon said dryly, "they were busy."

"Then what happened?"

Hakon's voice dropped to a whisper. "After the first megasecond this one's Gunner had to be restrained by the crew servitor. He'd given up; couldn't stand the thought of being trapped. He waited three days, until the pony fell asleep from exhaustion, then opened his wrists with his own claws."

"Did- did Hakon manage to save his Gunner?"

The faint tremor in Lazgo's voice maked Hakon grin, even while the memory made him shiver. "By the time Hakon awoke, the crew bay was awash with blood and the Gunner was cold. It was another two megaseconds before Hakon and the servitor were found."

"Hakon is a bastard, he had this one going for a moment."

The Pilot gave a cold smile. Lazgo won't get away that easily, he thought. "It's a matter of public record; why do you think this one was transferred to Security from the regular Military?" Hakon let the silence hang there, ears twitching at Lazgo's rapid breathing. He smiled again, genuinely this time, when the order to shake free of the rubble popped up on his screen. "One more thing," he said, reaching forward to start the crystal drive, "the rogue servitor pulled a whole dropship out of the sky moments after Lazgo pulled the trigger on the Security ponies; that sounds like revenge to Hakon. What does the Gunner think it will do to us?"

The airtank vibrated suddenly as Hakon fed a quick pulse of power into the plasma drive, blasting the lift vents clear of debris. A quick shake and he could drop back to turbine mode, making rocks cascade from the top of the airtank and exposing the sensors to give him a look down the half collapsed tunnel. His orders updated, and he floated the airtank down the corridor to the upper level nexus point, in the middle of a formation of gryphon and powered infantry.

The routine of the work occupied Hakon’s body, leaving his mind to ponder the other information that had come along with the movement order. Arclight was still nearly a kilosecond from deployment; the faster heavy weapons units had been ordered to stand off until it could be activated. If the servitor makes a move, we’re all that stands between it and the main transit lines, he thought, if it gets into those, there’ll be no stopping it before it reaches the arcology proper. The big twenty lane transit lines were always very busy, and for a moment Hakon imagined the creature flying down the centre of the main tunnel, pulling the roof down as it went.

===

The shocks and vibrations became irregular, slowed, and finally stopped altogether. Gravity took a deep breath and climbed shakily to her hooves, never taking her eyes off the ceiling. The slab directly above her head had cracked clean in two and was drooping drunkenly, only held up by a few unbroken reinforcing bars.

She staggered back into the beam chamber, dropping to her belly next to her sister and enfolding the other mare in a hug that she couldn't return. "I'm sorry, I don't blame you, none of this is your fault, if I'd just believed you..." she said, voice muffled where her muzzle was pressed against Fusion's dust and blood stained fur. "I don't know what came over me."

Don't worry, Fusion said, it will take time to adjust to your new strength. Do... Fusion tailed off, the pause extending out for several seconds. ...do you think it was the Maker-thing again? Did it feel like it was you?

Gravity thought back to the flash of anger that had overwhelmed her despair, back when she'd seen the surgical robot move over Fusion's paralysed body. There was an odd taste to the remembered emotion; it was too clean, too perfect in her mind, and not at all like the fury she'd felt when the Security ponies had been killed. Was that all me? she thought, doing her best to shield that terrible idea from Fusion. You enjoyed that, didn't you? The traitorous thought wouldn't go away; the more she tried to suppress it, the more obvious it became. The rush of power, the ability to hurt those who'd mistreated her sister and had made the world so very unfair.

"I think so," she said, burying the shame of the lie within the guilt she already felt.

Are you ready to go? Fusion said after a few moments, sounding troubled. We should leave while we can. They must have sent for the suppressor vehicles by now, and I've no idea if the shielding will work after all that structural damage.

"Easy way to find out," Gravity muttered, standing up again and walking slowly around the chamber to get the blood flowing in her still shaky legs. She looked into the shadow world, examining the walls of the room. Only a few sections of the walls and ceiling were dark, the carefully designed panels split by fine cracks that disrupted the precise patterns of crystals.

This place is very well built, Fusion said, I thought it would be far worse.

Gravity hummed in agreement, her attention on something else. "I think the force near where they killed those ponies is on the move," she said, anger stirring once more. She looked down toward the lower transit tunnel access, a wide chamber at the very bottom of the Institute; where the second group of Security vehicles had been was now a chaotic mass of metal and stone, only really identifiable by the few remaining crystal systems around it.

There is only one way in now, she thought, turning her gaze in that direction, through the upper tunnels. The access through the shaft itself had been thoroughly smashed; even though the high level access points were still open, the connecting ramps and lifts had all collected near where the carrier had crashed.

"I'm going to have to stop them," Gravity said, fanning her wings and jumping up through the control room windows.

Why? Fusion's mental voice sounded angry and more than a little scared. We can just leave; reset the bomb timers and teleport away.

"It's going to be hard for me to do the long jump," Gravity said, "I want to make sure we're not interrupted while I'm building the pattern." That was the truth; carrying two other ponies to a half remembered location would be difficult -- not so much for the amount of magical effort required, but for the preparation that would go into the pattern. And because... because I want to hurt them some more, get the Masters who killed those ponies. She kept that to herself, ruthlessly suppressing the thought. The mare trotted through the control room door and out into the corridor, telekinesis clearing a path through the passageway made by the Master, once again a mass of sharp edged rubble.

Please don't leave me, I- I don't think I can stand being alone again. You- you promised...

Gravity flinched at the fear in Fusion's voice, a faint and tremulous whisper in her head, so different from the determined pony who'd taken the chance to confront her about the Masters, then felt a flash of irritation, followed by another burst of guilt. Doesn't she realise I'm doing this for her? she thought, again keeping that from the sharing. "Be brave, Fusion," she said soothingly, then her tone turned to iron, brooking no arguments. "I'll be quick and won't take any chances, but I will not leave an enemy at our back again, not after what happened last time. There's no way they'll get past me."

But what about--

"No," Gravity said sharply. There was desperation in Fusion's mental voice, the tone of a mare grasping for any excuse to prevent the inevitable. Gravity felt more irritation, but this time without any guilt. "Sister, you are not thinking clearly. If they were going to use their suppressor, where is it? I think they have badly underestimated what we can do, and that the thing will be far too late to stop me. I am going to take this opportunity to be certain they don't take us by surprise."

There was a long pause, so long that Gravity started to check the sharing spell, worried that the link had been lost. Keeping it open wasn't too much of a problem, but she'd have to go back inside the beamline chamber to reconnect.

Okay... I-I trust you.

Fusion sounded so small and lost that Gravity paused, half turning back towards her sister. Then she lowered her head and hardened her heart, heading at a brisk trot towards the still deploying Security force.