The refugees

by Pumpkin-dreams

Chapter 2

The colony on Zerra was as humble and bland as the planet was. The hub of activity was the spaceport, which held a variety of transport ships and trading posts. There were very few merchants who wanted to come out to the corner of known space for a few bits, but they were there nonetheless. At any time in the day one could find ponies hawking wares that had been shipped in from across the cosmos, produce to superstitious trinkets. Beyond the bazaar was the actual landing strip, which was much more clustered. Zerra was primarily a rocky world, and the ores were plentiful; so the Stoneworkers came in droves to gather the plunder, eager to forge the raw materials into much needed metals.

To the south, within easy walking distance of the port was the housing complex, a great maze of buildings that hunched together like travelers against the cold. The average height was a mere twenty stories, paltry compared to the spires of the more populated colonies. Built from inexpensive Quik-steel, it had no remarkable features to speak of. To make matters worse, Zerra was riddled with fault lines, and quakes happened often. The apartments were typically brittle, and most nights the streets would be packed with the suddenly homeless. You got what you paid for, of course.

To the east of this was the recreational zone; a rectangle half the size of the complex inlaid with theatres, arcades, and a park with a single tree. This was not to be mistaken for a small thing, for trees were a rarity in colonies and those on Zerra were immeasurably proud to have one, even if it by accident. No one had ever looked upon their planet and decided it needed any form of fauna. The theatres were lightly used, power being as fickle as their houses, and the arcade had a few games that grew stale quickly.

To the south of the houses was the Terraformer, a behemoth of a machine twice again the size of the complex. Most of what had been embedded beneath the crust, but what was visible still dwarfed everything else on the surface. It’s great vents whined incessantly, pumping breathable air outwards. Pumps deeper inside the framework purified water, filling the basin for distribution. There was a constant line at the dispenser, for Zerra was uncomfortably close to the sun and the temperatures were usually between sweltering and unbearable. Unfortunately for the colony, they had been given an old generation of Terraformer. So the planet remained a desert of bleached grey stone, with thin air and an unsightly and loud metal blemish.

Lastly there was the mines, a few days travel westwards by hoof. There was a set of spartan barracks there, housing both miners and soldiers, situated near a gaping natural chasm. Lifts moved in and out of the hole, carrying ponies and ores. Here was where Zerra earned it’s livelihood, scraping precious minerals out of the depths. Silver, gold, copper, bronze, adamantium, all but the rarest were found within. And the gemstones were as common as dirt, if near lethally dangerous. Almost half the planet seemed to be a humongous geode, awe inspiring chambers of crystals covered by a thin crust. Due to the tunnel like formations these caves took, some ponies took to praising an imaginary crystal making serpent for a good days harvest. This earned the colonists the mocking nickname ‘Wormers.’

This was the world Chalcedony had awoken to every day for as long as her memory would go. She was a comparatively small unicorn, with light blue coat and a violet-white striped mane, and her job was to fix whatever may go wrong in the various machines. A task befitting her wrench and bolt Mark. She spent most of her time flitting to and fro, trying to keep a lid on the problems which seemed to never end.

The day started like any other, a short meal of cheese tasting rations and she was off, her pad already buzzing with alerts. “Arcade’s shorted out. Again,” she read off, using her magic to float the sliver of crystal. “Three lifts have been stalling, the plumbing in section five has malfunctioned, and the aquifer is... leaking waste? Ew.”

As she walked the crowds shifted away, aware of her inattentiveness. A fair amount of the populace had bruises to show off, from when Chalcedony had accidentally kicked them. The mare would immediately apologize, of course, but the lesson had yet to be learned.

“You’d think they would find a few more repair ponies. Or give me a scooter. I can’t travel that fast!” she bemoaned to nopony in particular. She was close enough to district five though. That would be easy.

-

Chalcedony ducked, the hose whipping over her head. The plumbing malfunction had turned out to be a huge backlog of water, stopped by somepony’s unmentionables. When she had tried to loosen the pressure, the stoppage had been removed rather forcefully, and now the water was propelling a particularly ponicidal pipe. The resident, a bulky earth stallion with every appearance of being the studliest of studs, was now wearing frilly, polka dotted undergarments and caught between shock and embarrassment.

“I really am very sorry about this,” Chalcedony said, trying to pin the frisky pipe with her magic. “I hadn’t expected the problem to be flushed panties. I actually have a plan for that, you see, and- hey!” The pipe had twisted round and was now gushing water into her face. The stallion slowly backed out of the door, shutting it behind him. He was going to ignore the curses and crashing emanating from his bathroom, even if it did sound like Tartarus had come to visit.

Chalcedony was back on the streets shortly, if somewhat damper.

“You see the new soldiers they sent in?” said a young colt, catching her ear as she passed. “They got guns! Honest to earth guns!”

“Peh. Guns were old when I was your age, Sil’. What I want to know is why they sent in a bunch of newbies.” The mare had wandered over to the conversation, having heard nothing before of new arrivals. A young colt, a stallion she guessed to be his father, and an elderly pony were gathered round a table, sipping from a pitcher of water. “I’ve heard tell that the Alliance is rounding up her colonies.”

The oldest one laughed, a low wheezing noise. His lungs had suffered in the mines. “Those weren’t no Alliance ships ya ninny. They had the standing pony on their tails.” The others stared blankly. “It’s the mark of the Earthen March. Don’t you lot read?”

“Is that better or worse?” asked the stallion.

“Depends. The March does like to make a presence in colonies of earth ponies, so they’s might just be showing off. Of course, they also like metals, more’n the rest of em’.” The elder shrugged, “I’d havta see their commander for myself, to get a good head on what they’re about.”

“But, but they had guns!” the colt said, put out by the talk of politics.

Chalcedony had already set away, towards the spaceport. Her duties could wait a few hours, she rarely had a chance to see some new technology. Or, well, not new, really. New to her at least. Almost archaic by the rest of the universes standards. But the colt had the right of it; guns! The finest example of pony ingenuity. She trotted happily to the port, squeezing past the crowd that had gathered.

Three new ships had indeed arrived, lumbering things that looked their age beneath the polish. Little more than a square with fifty hoof sides, with a trio of conical engines at the back and a great deal of deployable wings folded into the metal. On the sides was a triangle of brown encasing a black pony, reared on his hindlegs. Sixty ponies were marching off the port, flags bearing the standing pony hanging lifeless. Each had a long rifle made of simple iron on their backs. Chalcedony followed after them, eager to get her hooves on a gun.

They came to a halt by the road leading to the mines, forming neat rows of five. Ponies began to gather nearby, muttering to themselves. Seeing her chance, Chalcedony walked out of the crowd with a smile and a wave.

“Hi the-”

Suddenly there were a dozen guns trained on her, the earth ponies wielding them in saddle carriers. Her smile fell with a gulp. The crowd moved back, barely breathing.

“Explain yourself,” commanded a lemon coloured pony. His gun in particular seemed trained on her head.

“I just... wanted to say hi...” she was shaking now, and her hoof was still raised in greeting. She dared not move it.

“We were told this was an earth colony. What is a unicorn doing here?”

“I, I live here?”

“Identification.”

She didn’t move for a moment, and the pony gestured her over, lowering his gun. It was still pointed at her, and what she assumed was the trigger still close to his mouth. Chalcedony went to him on shaky hooves, levitating her crystal pad towards him. This made him glare at her, as though the act insulted him, and she drew it back, offering it with her hoof instead. He gave it a cursory glance and tossed it back, snorting.

“Very well. But do not get in our way again.” With that, he called a few short orders to the soldiers and they holstered their weapons. Chalcedony scampered back to the safety of the crowd, scared and confused. But even they, who she had spent many years with, regarded her with a new air of suspicion. Some seemed to be just noticing the horn on her head for the first time. And she suddenly noticed that she was the only non earth pony.

Feeling oppressed by their stares, she ran back to her home, locking the door behind her. The aquifer could fix itself; she’d had enough to deal with today. She patted a pile of metal in the corner and it came to life, a small robot made of tentacle like arms and a small sphere for it’s center. A yellow eye flickered on and stared at her with something like curiosity.

“You don’t hate me, do you Sweeper?” The robot didn’t respond, but it’s slow bobbing in the air seemed like a shake of the head. “ I don’t understand. I just wanted to say hi, maybe see their guns. They’re going to be here awhile, they should get a nice welcome just like anypony else!” Chalcedony sniffed, curling up on the floor, dragging her blanket over her. “He called me a unicorn like it was a disease, or something. There’s nothing wrong with having a horn, is there?” Sweeper brushed a few limbs over it’s mistresses face. It was hard to tell if this was a sign of sentience, or just a cleaning droid performing it’s functions.

“I bet,” she said, voice picking up, “that he just never saw a unicorn before. I was surprised the first time I saw a pegasus. Only I didn’t have a gun. Or scare them quite like that.” The mare thought for a moment, then rose with newfound determination. “I’ll just have to show him I’m not a bad pony! He won’t be so rude now that he knows I’m a colonist. I just have to introduce myself properly, and then we can get along just fine, and he’ll let me look at his guns!”

Satisfied with her plan, she set out at once to follow it through. Then yawned deeply, the long night previous catching up to her. “I’ll meet him tomorrow,” she said with a nod, and marched smartly back to her bed. Sweeper just looked about the room and set to work, trying to clean without the tools it had been designed with. Casualties of rebuilding the poor thing, Chalcedony had said.

The next week passed, and the plan remained just that. Her jobs rose with the newcomers, trying to accommodate them in the already tight water rationing. Her excuse for the first few days was that adjusting a low grade Terraformer was tough work. Later, even she had to admit that the soldiers were scaring her. They seemed to lurk on every street, eyeing most ponies with a combination of superiority and passive suspicion. Their open glares and derisive snorts were specially reserved for her, it seemed. And it didn’t help that the mood seemed to grow on the colonists. There were a lot of ponies on Zerra though, and she thought she could ignore the staring eyes; then one day a little foal saw her walking towards him and hastily crossed to the other side.

Chalcedony’s home calls grew in rarity as the days passed. The peak of this epidemic, which she hoped was separate from the others, was when she was called back to the district five. The stallion whom she had helped not four days ago had recreated the problem. From the moment he answered the door with cautious distance, her hope dwindled.

As she was fishing the blockage from the pipes again, this time using the proper procedure for stuck clothing, she tried to joke about him flushing his wife’s underwear twice. He frowned at her, and she forced a smile. Then, with a gurgle, the pipe spewed water, promising a repeat of previous antics. The problem this time was a rock, and Chalcedony’s procedure didn’t apply.

“Sorry!” she shouted over the rushing water, “I thought it was the underwear again. I’m usually a lot better at this!”

“Much better than us earth ponies, right?” the stallion said lowly. Chalcedony blinked, not sure if she heard that correctly, and flashed him a pleading grin.

“Just give me a moment, I’ll get this fixed in a-”

“How ‘bout you just leave.”

The way he said it, she knew it was not a question. Feeling unwelcome, she made a last muttered apology and retreated, leaving the room to be flooded. The stallion’s eyes followed her until she closed the door, and seemed to hover over her shoulder as she trotted dejectedly from the apartment. When she came into the streets, the noise near her seemed to dim. Looking up, she found that everypony nearby was staring at her. What distressed her more than that was that she found herself expecting the behavior.

Walking down the street, Chalcedony wilted under the eyes. Desperate after the encounter with toilet-pony, she tried to strike up a conversation with the ponies she knew; Jitters, who needed her help monthly to fix up his scooter, Applewood who usually bugged her for a spare water ticket. Ponies she had previously been friendly with gave her the cold shoulder. Some growled ‘unicorn’ like a curse behind her back. Finally she fled further away from the small civilization.

She was walking down a deserted side path by the spaceport when the world heaved. Chalcedony yelped and cowered, fearing a quake. Then the first missiles shrieked from above, blasting into some of the docked ships. With a cry of crashing metal they burst into plumes of fire. Still more fell, some missing entirely and creating bursts of flame in the rocky land. Others hit their marks; a thing shaped like a bathtub hurtled down, ripping through the side of an apartment. It settled there for a moment, then exploded with a wave of howling wind. The building folded in on itself, the upper half crushing the lower. Chalcedony was blown backwards by the force of it, and could only watch from her prone position as the devastation continued. The screams of ponies were almost inaudible.

A massive ship floated down beneath the cloud layer, a great sky blue oval with many engines that swiveled to maneuver it. Out of it’s sides flew more missiles, and it’s belly opened to release a flood of small, winged figures. Following the first were dozens of other ships, sleeker, smaller ovals with eagle wings on their sides. These rained bolts of energy and metal down on the scattering crowds.

Frightened, Chalcedony scrambled to her hooves and ran, far away from the slaughter. She had to get help, find some of the patrolling guards, raise the alarm, something! She dodged burning debris from the dead ships and the fleeing merchants, trying to find the newly arrived soldiers. Surely they would be near their ships, ready to repel the attack.

Not looking where she ran, the mare crashed into another pony, sending both to the ground. The other, a hefty earth pony, cursed at her and wobbled to his feet, only to be sent crashing down once more; this time by some new creature. It’s hindquarters had brown fur and paws, with a feline tail. A pair of eagle wings spread from it’s shoulders, and the upper half was similarly eagle like. It’s talons pinned the fat pony to the ground. He wailed, begging for his life with coins. The creature opened his throat with a single talon and left him to die. Then it turned on Chalcedony.

She too began to beg with it, and it only laughed. “Weakling ponies, you do not even fight!” it said, it’s voice harsh as an eagle’s cry. Face to face, Chalcedony could guess that it was female, with stripes of red paint masking her features. She backed up as the creature advanced with a wicked grin. She crouched, and Chalcedony closed her eyes. A bang, and hot liquid spattering on her coat. Opening one eye, she saw that the creature now had a bleeding hole through her chest. She tottered and fell, blood pooling beneath her.

“Are you able to run citizen?” asked a stallion, gun still raised. Chalcedony broke from her stupor to see it was the same yellow coated soldier as before. He had not recognized her, looking into the sky to watch the spreading, winged figures.

“Y-yeah.”

“Then run. The colony is lost, and we need to save as many as we can.” He lifted a forehoof and spoke into a circle of crystal, “Fall back, evac plan alpha. All units retreat.” He glanced about the ruin of the spaceport and started towards the rear, ordering Chalcedony to follow. Too shocked to refuse, she followed as he lead them to the rear of the port.

Standard procedure for every spaceport was to build a set of escape pods, in case of emergencies. The information was generally forgotten by the inhabitants of Zerra, thus this strip was barren.

The stallion stopped at the edge of the concrete, flashing his anklet at an embedded sensor. It lit up, and the stone peeled back, letting a sphere rise up. It was big enough to hold ten ponies, and was the absolute minimum requirements for a space faring craft. He jumped in first, and turning to let her in, finally noticed whom he had rescued. His face hardened, and Chalcedony feared he would not let her on. Then he growled and moved aside.

Within was an array of typical devices for space travel, along with seating for seven ponies. There was a single window at the back, through which Chalcedony watched the invaders destroy her home. “What about the others?” she asked weakly.

“They evacuate, or they die,” said the stallion. He had unstrapped his gun, and was setting up the launch. “The Sky-lords aren’t the type for torture. Likely those left behind will be hunted to the last.”

“The Sky-lords?”

“Not your friends, unicorn,” he growled.

The computer popped up suddenly, announcing that they could depart when ready. Chalcedony stopped him as he was about to send them off, asking if they should wait. Surely there were others who could be saved?

“Soldiers of the Earthen March would not leave their fellows to die if there was a chance to save them. Do not foul their name with such doubts.”

Chalcedony sat back, hanging her head in defeat, for the stallion would not speak to her again. Tears were welling in her eyes as the engines ignited, but she couldn’t help but watch Zerra as they were whisked away. The pod shuddered and lurched into the air, breaking through the atmosphere in less than a minute. Other streaks of silver told of the few who had escaped besides them, barely a fraction of the former colony. Chalcedony looked sadly on the only world she had ever known. Smoke and fire were visible even from space, a testament to the ruthless Sky-lords. The yellow stallion huffed, refusing to witness the destruction. But both were equally afraid, for adventure had come upon them; and the roads were more treacherous than ever before.

Comments

[Chaotic Mind]

Interesting.

I'll be watching to see how this pans out.