Chapter 1
On the official budget of the kingdom of Equestria it is down only as 'operations team 34'. Its official name is the 'Secret Intelligence Task-force for Extraordinary Reconnaissance'; its job is to perform the tasks that the Princesses' need doing. Tasks that need doing swiftly, efficiently and, above all, secretly. It employs ponies that are experts in getting in and getting the job done, regardless of the impossibility. It is the Kingdom's secret hoof. A hoof to be placed in just the right place and at just the right time, to prevent the need to use all four hooves later on. A hoof they can deny exists, if necessary.
And what about the ponies it employs to do these tasks? Well, they call themselves 'SISTERs'.
-----
Zembo slammed open the door to the cell and strode through it. The door rebounded off the wall and nearly hit the flank of the small orange earth pony following close on his heels, but he paid it no heed. He was a minotaur; one of the largest and most powerful creatures that lived in the Disputed kingdoms, and as long as his servants did not spill his drinks he cared nothing for them. The guard came to attention as he marched across the room, but he did not care for him either. He did care for the other pony, the unicorn strapped to the inclined table in the middle of the room.
“Is he talking?” he asked in a growl to the dark coated pony with the hot iron as a cutie mark that stood beside the table.
“My lord, he talks a lot, but he says very little,” the pony said with a bow.
“You sound like my second wife,” the pony on the table said with what Zembo thought was far too much cheer for a pony in his position. “She was never interested in the finer points of the hoof ball offside rule either, but I still maintain that the reinterpretation of it will radically alter the game and may in fact lead to Hoofington beating Dodge Junction in this year’s--”
“Silence!” the interrogation pony screamed at him.
“You know, it is a wonder you have any friends at all with that altitude of yours,” the unicorn on the table went on. “First you want me to talk; now you want me to be silent. You remind me of my third wife -- she could never decide what she wanted either.”
“Well I know what I want,” Zembo growled at the unicorn as he snatched a goblet from the tray the small orange pony carried on his back, before striding over to the bound pony. “And I want you to listen.”
He looked down at the pony. The pony’s coat was a dark blue, almost black, and his mane and tail were the same colour, except for a small streak of white. Despite the dark coat, Zembo could see darker sticky patches where the pony had bled under the attentions of the inquisitor. The pony had been strapped with his back to the table, spread-eagle, a very painful position for his species. His hooves were bound by short iron chains, and around his horn was a spiked iron collar with a magic dampening charm.
“I want you to listen,” he said, leaning over his captive. “I know who you are, Lightning Wit. You are a member of Equestrian Intelligence. I know why you and the pegasus came here.” Zembo was pleased at the expression of shock that went across the bound pony's face. “Oh yes, we know about the pegasus. We will have her soon -- my griffin guards are out hunting her even as we speak. She cannot escape them, and when we have her we will know it all. It was silly for your Princess to send only two little ponies to try to kill me. Better creatures than you pathetic ponies have tried and failed. So why don’t you spare me the trouble of torturing your pegasus friend and tell me now? Tell me why the Princess wanted me dead so much that she sent you two little ponies to kill me.”
There was silence as the pony only looked into Zembo’s eyes.
“Tell me, Discord damn you!” Zembo screamed, slamming the goblet back down on the tray. The orange earth pony gasped at the impact.
“Oh, I thought you wanted me to listen,” the unicorn said. “Well, first off it is Lightning Bolt not Lightning Wit. Lightning Bolt, like my cutie mark, see.” He waved the tip of a fore hoof towards his flank, where a white lightning bolt was half stained by the red of his blood.
“I do not care about your damned cutie mark,” Zembo screamed. “Tell me why Celestia wanted me dead.”
“Oh, Celestia did not send us,” Lightning Bolt replied casually. “I am sure she vaguely knows some ponies are here, and I am sure that she will hear about us eventually. I mean, you do not stay ruler of a country if you have no idea what is happening. But, and I would not mean the Princess any insult, but she is really too kind hearted a pony to send us here. She much prefers to solve little problems like this with talk, rather than actions. No, we were sent by a pony called Snowflake, and he is a changeling of a very different colour.”
“I do not care exactly who sent you. Why did this Snowflake send two ponies to kill me?”
“Oh, Snowflake did not send us to kill you.”
“No?”
“No, he said you are far too, now what was the word he used... oh yes, unimportant. That was what he said. You were far too unimportant to bother with.”
“Unimportant!” Zembo fumed at the pony’s polite smile.
“Yes. Oh, and he did not send ‘two little ponies.’ ”
“No?”
“Nope.” The pony gave his head a twitch and Zembo leaned in closer.
“He sent three,” he whispered.
There was a crashing sound from the outer room and Zembo spun around in shock. Behind him the guard flew backwards and collided nosily with the wall, where he lay, slumped and still. Zembo followed his trajectory back and saw the little orange servant pony reach his head back grab the tray off his back and fling it at the inquisitor. The tray flew through the air, catching the interrogator sharply on the jaw and the pony slumped to the ground.
Zembo was stunned, but he braced himself as the small pony set his head and charged at him. What was going on? Who was this pony? Zembo did not know, but he was not going to be taken by surprise as his guard had been. He could deal with one little pony who was stupid enough to charge him head on.
A shock ran through Zembo, it felt like he had been punched in the back by a giant. He tried to turn and there was a flash of light and the shock again. His legs stopped working and Zembo fell to the floor.
The unicorn on the table, he thought as he tried to push himself back up. His arms collapsed and he slumped back on the floor. He felt as if he had no strength in his limbs. But that is impossible, the anti-magic charm....
“You took your time, Sunbeam,” he heard the unicorn called Lightning Bolt say casually. “I was starting to run out of things to discuss with that delightful pony with the hot irons.”
“You? Never!” a different voice said -- it must be the other pony, and Zembo realised that he had never heard it speak before; it had never said a word in his presence, just followed him around with the tray of drinks and food. “Anyway I had to wait until he decided to come and see you. I had no idea where they were keeping you. Do you need help with those?”
“Nope, I am good.” There was the clicking of chains falling off. “Not only did that pony have no interest in the noble sport of hoofball, he was not very good with chains.” There was the sound of hooves on the stone floor. “Anyway, I assume that you managed to get it all set.”
“It is all set. Once they had captured you and discovered about Dusty, they sent all the guards off to find her. Idiots. Anyway, it was a piece of cake to set things up.”
Zembo saw two sets of hooves walk across to where he lay. One orange, one dark blue. “Well then let’s get going,” the pony called Lightning Bolt said. “I am sure we do not want to keep Dusty waiting; she gets so annoyed when ponies are late.”
“Do you want to do anything about him?” an orange hoof waved in Zembo’s direction.
“Leave him,” Lightning Bolt said dismissively. “He’s unimportant.”
----
Lightning Dust exploded out of the cloud and cannoned into the middle griffon in the line. As they collided she wrapped her forehooves around his neck and bit down hard on his right wing. The Guard screamed as she clamped her teeth onto his flesh, then their combined momentum sent the pair spinning widely.
Welcome to my dizzytron, Lightning Dust thought as she flapped her wings randomly, sending them off on an even wilder course.
The guard flapped his wings madly, trying to throw the pony off, while flailing at her with his claws. Lightning Dust twisted around and brought her rear hooves up, delivering a buck to his chest that left him panting.
She took a moment to try to judge their wild spin, and then with one more kick released her grip on her reluctant dance partner and sent them spinning apart. She had judged the timing nicely, and heard the shouts and crashes as her hapless victim was sent careening across the sky and collided with the rest of his patrol.
With a casual flick of her wings she stabilised her own wild flight and dived back into the cloud bank, just ahead of the cries of pursuit.
As she darted through the cloud, making random turns and swoops to try to keep her pursuers guessing about where she was, she checked her watch again. It was nearly time for her to make another over flight of the Palace and the shipyards. She twisted skywards and broke out the top of the cloud. As she did so she heard the sound of hunting horns; she sniggered as she saw a couple of the griffin patrols turn to arrow in on her.
“You just try to catch me,” she muttered under her breath as she looped out and twisted into another dark cloud bank. “This pony is too hot for even the Wonderbolts to handle.” She had been leading these guards a wild phoenix chase around these clouds for hours now, ever since Lightning Bolt had been 'captured' and she had been 'spotted'. In truth she could have shaken them out of her tail any time she wanted, but the plan had been for her to keep the attention of the guards while Sunbeam dealt with what they had really come to this Luna dammed place for.
She emerged from the bottom of the cloud in time to brush wing tips with the rear griffin in a formation. As she had just flown through a thundercloud, she had attracted a lot of lightning that was delighted to jump off her feathers in favour of the guards more attractive armour. The griffin guard screamed, but before the rest of his formation could turn to get a better look at her, she had vanished back into a different cloud.
She wondered how long it would be before an officer with some semblance of a brain ordered somepony to clear all these clouds. If they did, she would have to be more inventive in how she played with her new friends, but until then the hours she had spent in the bar trading drinks with the local weather mare seemed to have paid off. She checked her watch again. It was time. She would have to temporally ditch her playmates and make a quick pass over the rendezvous point to see if Sunbeam and Lightning Bolt were ready. She hoped they were; she hated it when ponies kept her waiting.
------
The two ponies trotted as casually as possible down the hallway. It was unlikely that they would get away with the paper thin disguise of ponies going about their official business for very long. Especially as Lightning Bolt was still limping. But they were going to push their luck until its wheels fell off, and then some more.
“So you found it then,” Lightning Bolt asked again.
“Yep, your plan worked perfectly,” Sunbeam replied. “As soon as they captured you they put their security plan into action.” Sunbeam had stolen a copy of that security plan weeks ago. “And they concentrated the most efficient of the guard to cover the Shard. Then when they found out about Dusty they sent most of them off after her. Even more once she started knocking them out of the sky. It was a piece of cake. It is all set to blow, but I think we want to be well out of here before we set it off. I rigged the fuse from the roof of the white tower. Dusty should have no problem spotting us from there, and they were keeping the Shard in its basement.”
Lightning Bolt nodded. The shard was what they had really come to deal with. From what they had been told, it was a fragment of a powerful crystal. About twice the height of a pony and a translucent blue colour, it was what made Zembo and his parasprite sized navy dangerous. As far as SISTER's airship specialists could tell, it seemed that the Shard was being used to make smaller, but more powerful engines, so Zembo's airships could be faster and still mount more weapons than his neighbours.
So SISTER 13 had been sent in to deal with it rather than having to send in the army to deal with him. The only problem was that no pony seemed to know where the Shard was being kept, and in the weeks they had been here, they had not managed to find it. It seemed that Zembo, despite his unimportance, was paranoid; the location of the Shard appeared on no documents.
After a few weeks of fruitless searching they had received a cold drop message from Snowflake. It had said bluntly that diplomatic tensions were rising. The Princess was getting worried, and so could they kindly get there dammed flanks moving before he came down there and got them moving for them. So this risky plan had been devised to trip the security and let their own security plan show Sunbeam where it was being kept.
They were half way along the corridor when their world was shattered by the sound of an angry roar from the interrogation room, closely followed by a ringing bell.
“I think somepony recovered,” Sunbeam said as both ponies broke into a gallop. “And he sounds pissed.”
“Yep. I do not know what upset him more. The fact he thought that C had sent us to assassinate him, or the realisation that S did not care enough about him to do that.”
Sunbeam was about to respond when they rounded a corner and nearly collided with a party of ponies in the armour of Zembo's guard.
“Quick, they went that way,” Sunbeam screamed at the guards, waving his hoof around the corner they had just dashed past. “If you are quick you might catch them.”
The guards were just about to run past, when one pointed a hoof at Lightning Bolt. “You,” the guard shouted, “you are the pony we dragged down to the dungeon earlier. You are the escapees!!”
So close, Sunbeam thought as he jumped forward and sideways, leading with his hooves at the ponies. One of these days that will work. He felt his hair stand on end as Lightning Bolt sent a bolt of lightning through the space where he had been seconds before, and then he was on top of the first guard and bucking out at the second. Sunbeam was not a large pony -- he was small enough that he had sometime been disguised as a large foal -- but like all SISTERs he was well practised in the art of mayhem, and the guards had been taken by surprise.
His buck to the second one's head sent him down. He spun in place and swiped his right forehoof across the head of the pony he was standing on, knocking him senseless. This done, Sunbeam turned, looking past where the pony that Lightning Bolt had shocked lay, his legs still twitching and little arcs of electricity running across his coat, to where Lightning Bolt had dealt with the last pony in the guard group.
To where Lightning Bolt should have dealt with the last pony.
Lightning Bolt was down and the guard was standing over him, hoof already raised to strike.Oh horse apples, Sunbeam thought, grabbing at the plume on the helmet of the guard he had knocked silly and flinging it at the guard standing over his friend.
“Hey, you!” he screamed.
The guard snapped his head up, then threw his hooves across his face in an automatic reaction. His hooves blocked the helmet, but they did not stop Sunbeam, who had followed up on his throw and slammed his head hard under the guard's upraised fore hooves and into his chest. The guard ooffed as the air was driven out of his lungs and his head went down in time to meet the upcoming kick from Sunbeam's leg.
The guard slumped to the ground, as out of it as his fellows. Sunbeam stepped over to where Lightning Bolt lay.
“What happened?” he said, gently nuzzling at his friend's front right hoof. The hoof was bent at a bad angle. “I thought you had those guys easily?”
“That dammed charm,” Lightning Bolt said though clenched teeth. “It was stronger than I thought, it took more out of me than I expected to break it.”
Sunbeam nodded as he gently felt around Lightning Bolt's leg. The unicorns that work for SISTER had long ago discovered the little secret about anti-magic charms. They could be broken. Oh, it took a lot of work and a lot of power, but given enough time with it on and, if you know exactly the right trick and if you where strong enough, you could overload the embedded spell and free yourself. Apparently it hurt like Tartrus, but it could be done.
“I just did not have enough left for a second bolt,” he finished. “How’s the leg looking?"
“It’s broken.” Sunbeam raised his head.
“No, really?” Lightning Bolt replied sarcastically, “have you ever thought of giving up this job and getting a job as a doctor. Of the bleeding obvious.”
“...and the bone is shifted,” Sunbeam continued. “I am going to have to reseat it now.” He looked into his friends eyes. “This is going to hurt a lot.”
“Well, as my second wife used to say, 'if you are going to insist on doing that you might as well get it over with quickly.' "
There was a crack and Lightning Bolt screamed sharply.
“Just out of curiosity,” Sunbeam asked as shoved his head under the unicorn and heaved him onto his back. “How many wives do you have now?”
Lightning Bolt looked into Sunbeam's eyes. “It does not matter how many wives I have, Sunny,” he said with a straight face and sincerer tone. “You are the only one I care for.”
Both ponies held their eyes locked for a few seconds and then they broke in to laughter.
“Let’s get going,” Sunbeam said, setting off down the corridor. “Dusty will be waiting.”
-----
Lightning Dust poked her head out of the cloud that was hanging around over the edge of the Palace and glanced around. Good, she thought. She really had managed to ditch those incompetent guards somewhere in that last thunder cloud. Of course, she would need to go and pick them up again if it turned out that Lightning Bolt and Sunbeam were not yet ready to be picked up.
She dropped out of the cloud and set off at a fast glide over the Palace. When they had come up with this crazy plan. When Lightning Bolt had come up with this crazy plan, she corrected herself, but given their choices and the time limits, they had not really had many options. When this plan had been devised there was no way for them to arrange a way to meet up at a set time or place. They had no way of knowing where the Shard was and how well protected it actually had been. So the plan was that she would regularly slip her pursuers and make flyovers of the Palace and shipyard, and they would signal her when they were ready to be picked up.
Of course, she could not let any of her new friends -- who where currently hunting for her in a thunder cloud -- know she was popping back here or they would start to get suspicious, and the whole point of letting them hunt her in the first place was to draw them away from this place. So she could not let them see her head over here or spend to long away from them.
“Better hope that they are done this time,” she muttered, scanning the roofs and ground below her. “not that I am worried about them of course -- I am just annoyed that they are late.”
-----
“I think they are gaining on us!” Lightning Bolt called out.
Sunbeam could hear the sound of the hunter’s hooves on the stairs below them, and he too thought that they were gaining.
“Well, there are two things you can do about it,” he puffed out as he galloped up the spiral staircase. “Either you can get off my back and climb these dammed stairs on your own--”
“Would love to, but I think this broken hoof might have something against that.”
“Well in that case, how about you lose about four stone?”
“You are sounding like my wife again.”
“Which one this time?”
“All of them.”
The spiral stair ended in a door. Sunbeam kicked it open and galloped out on the small flat roof at the top of the white tower. He unceremoniously shrugged Lightning Bolt off his back, turned and slammed the door behind him, then shot the locks home.
“Signal Dusty,” he called as he ran across the roof. “I got to get this fuse lit, and I do not want to be on this roof when it goes off.”
“That would be unpleasant,” Lightning Bolt called back as he screwed up his eyes. His horn lit up and a pattern of coloured lights wove themselves into the air above him.
Sunbeam bent his down to a small grating on the roof and tugged at piece of string protruding form it. The string came up though the grating and attached to the end was a piece of fuse coated in a fine ground powder. From a hidey-hole near the grating he retrieved a small hoof pad with a rough surface. He slipped the pad on his forehoof and, laying the fuse on the ground, he struck the pad savagely across it. The fuse popped and spluttered into life and the flame quickly ran back down it, disappearing down the grating. He unfastened the pad from his hoof and casually tossed it over the wall, then looked at his watch and trotted back over to where Lightning Bolt lay.
“Here she comes,” the unicorn said, pointing a hoof at where a blue streak had just emerged from the cloud.
The blue streak flew closer to the Palace until Sunbeam could make out the shape of the body and wings of a pegasus, then it abruptly swerved off to the right and even at this distance he could see the shape flip as the pegasus performed a double aileron roll the white flashes of the stripes that Lightning Dust had painted under her wings clearly visible.
“She has seen us,” Lightning Bolt said, relief evident in his tone as he let the spell drop.
There was a pounding on the door to the stairs and the two ponies turned to look at it. The door was visibly bending under the impacts.
“So, do you think she will get here before they break down that door?” Sunbeam asked casually.
“While we are asking the difficult questions, how did you get the fuse up here? That is not exactly a large drain.”
“Why are people always dismissing earth ponies?” Sunbeam responded sharply. “’They don’t have magic, they can’t fly’, well I am telling you that earth ponies have plenty of talents. I, for example, am quite small and a very good climber.”
Lightning Bolt waved a hoof calmingly. “Hay, you don’t need to justify it to me. I like earth ponies plenty -- in fact I married one. Twice, actually.”
“Oh really? how did that happen?”
At that moment the opal pegasus appeared from behind another tower and swooped in to land on the flat top of the tower. She was towing the small sports chariot that the team had stashed in a secure place as one of their first actions after arriving in town. One of the SISTER team's little jokes was that no SISTER team would go into a meadow without having at least three exits and a backup plan in case they were blocked.
“Hay guys, you miss me?” she said, fluttering her wings.
“Always, Dusty, always,” Sunbeam said, heaving Lightning Bolt up on his back and half carrying, half throwing him into the back of the chariot.
“What happened to him?” she said, waving a wing at the injured unicorn.
“Little miscalculation regarding a charm, nothing important,” he replied, heaving himself on board. “Now can we get going? We are kind of on the clock here.” As he spoke the door flew open and a group of ponies in armour burst through it.
“Friends of yours?” Lightning Dust asked, as she set of at a gallop for the edge of the tower.
“We’ve met before.”
Lightning Dust hurdled the stone parapet and fell downwards off the tower. Just before she hit the ground she spread her wings, pulling around in a tight circle and Sunbeam could swear that the bump he felt was the wheels of the chariot knocking off the top of a tree.
“Oh, pony feathers,” Lightning Dust muttered under her breath.
Sunbeam looked up. It seemed that some of the ponies that had been following them had also been pegasi, and they had leapt off the top of the tower and were angling down on the fleeing team. He looked at his watch and pulled himself up, leaning on the front of the chariot.
“Hay, Dusty,” he called out over the slipstream.
“Kind of busy here,” she shouted back.
Sunbeam braced himself as Dusty slalomed in and out of the buildings and towers of the shipyards that butted up against the Palace.
“I know, but you know you keep saying that you are the fastest pegasus alive?”
“Yes.”
“Well, would you care to prove that?”
Lightning Dust twisted her head back and Sunbeam waved his watch at her.
“Oh horse apples,” she swore.
Sunbeam fell back into the chariot's body, landing heavily on Lightning Bolt as the pegasus found new wings.
“How long?” the unicorn asked.
“Twenty seconds.”
“Oh fun,” he said and covered his head with his hooves.
Sunbeam climbed off him and also lay flat in the chariot as it sped onwards.
“3... 2... 1...” he called out.
Nothing happened.
“-1?...-2?” Lightning Bolt ventured, peeking out from under one hoof.
“Well,” Sunbeam said apologetically, “this sort of thing is really more of an art than a--”
The air behind the little chariot was ripped apart in an explosion of fire and stone.
----
Celestia, Princess of Equestria and still sleepy goddess of the sun, was sitting down for her usual morning breakfast meeting with Quill Nib, her Personal Private Secretary.
“...and I have an official message from your sister via Apple Bee, your Highness," Quill Nib said, picking the next piece of paper out of his seemingly bottomless file. “She says that there was a complaint about mining rights in the Appaloosan range delivered to her at court last night, and that she requests a meeting with you in order to harmonise your position regarding it.”
Celestia sighed and floated another croissant onto her plate. Her sister was going through another of her formal phases and she was insisting that all Royal Court busyness go through official channels.
“What does my diary for this evening look like?” she asked as she smeared the breakfast pastry liberally with jam.
“You are having an official dinner with the representative from the griffin kingdoms, but you are free after that.”
“Fine. Then extend an invitation to my sister, via Apple Bee of course, that she can meet me in the sunrise room after dinner.”
“Of course, your Highness.” Quill Nib made a note on the paper and moved it to the pile.
“Next we have a request from foreign security Oak Tree to do with the situation in the disputed kingdoms.”
“Remind me,” Celestia said casually, “what is the situation in the disputed kingdoms?”
“Well, as your Highness is aware,” Quill Nib read from a sheet. He was well aware that the Princess was probably not well aware, but the polite fiction made his job smoother. “The disputed kingdoms are a collection of small countries that lie at the junction of East Equestria, Zebrican, and the Griffin Kingdoms. They are home to a wide variety of creatures and many different types of culture; they are also rich in mineral deposits, including the rare ethereal rock. Unfortunately this makes them a particularly volatile area. And while none of the major powers officially claims the kingdoms for themselves, they insist on exerting a military presence in the area, just to protect their citizens that live in them, of course.”
Including us. Celestia thought to herself. We do not want the other major powers to annex them, any more than they want us to, but you are far too polite to bring that up.
“Well, as you also know, for the last few years a minotaur called Zembo, the ruler of one of kingdoms near Zebrican, has embarked on a steady military build up, and for the last few months we have been receiving worrying reports from our consulate in the state and from the Zebrican diplomats. They are worried that he might be getting ready to try to 'unite the territories under their rightful ruler,' as he puts it. And the Zebrican king was requesting Equestrian armed support to help deal with him, if it came to it.”
Largely because the zebras do not have any air force to speak of. Celestia thought. Unlike griffins or pegasus ponies, they are not generally at home in the air.
“If you remember, you approved Oak Tree's request last month to put the forces in the area on high alert in case a strike is needed.”
“I do so remember. Go on,” Celestia said, biting down on her croissant.
“Well, it seems that according to our consulate, there was some sort of accident in their dockyards sometime last week. We are not sure how many beings were hurt, but what we do know is that it seems to have destroyed the majority of under construction airships, and Zembo is now making much less aggressive posturing. Oak Tree thinks that whatever happened has severely dampened his appetite for conquest, and requests that we stand the troops down from alert, as he thinks that a strike will now not be necessary.”
“That is good news,” Celestia said, finishing off her breakfast and looking down to where a small brown file sat beside her plate. The file she had read in detail last night. The cover was plain except for the words 'operations team 34 TOP SECRET Royal eyes only' printed on it, and a stylised drawing of a snowflake on the bottom corner. “Of course I approve the request,” she finished.
“Very good, your Highness.” Quill Nib made another note and moved the paper onto the out pile.
“Next we have a report from the committee looking into the tax regulation of apple farmers in southern Equestria. It seems...”
Celestia dragged her attention away from the small and unobtrusive file, and back to tax issues, which where obviously much more important that whatever that file was about.