Flashpoint

Chapters

Bog Party
Side Effects May Include...
Interlude: Ghost of St. Petersburg
Jet Lag
Adventures in theory-crafting reality
Stargazer / Falling Star
Cherimoya, Confrontation, and a Controlled Conflagration

Bog Party

Flashpoint

Chapter Two:

'Bog Party'

Chase shook his head to clear it, and yanked the release on his crash harness. He glanced over to see Lieutenant Harris doing the same, and then moved to check his patients. There had been surprisingly few injuries from the surprise attack by Deimos Station--the worst was certainly Helmsman Calvino, still strapped from head to toe in traction webbing, held immobile to an exam table. As he stepped up to release the webbing and continue his exam, the Lieutenant spoke up.

“What’s wrong with Yoshi, Doctor Pritchard? Will he be okay?” She looked abstractly concerned.

He looked at his readouts for a moment more before replying, “Mmm...looks like a moderate concussion, along with some accelerative spinal trauma--’whiplash’ to use a simple term. It looks like no nerve damage, but some of the musculature is pretty badly abused.”

“So, nothing that won’t heal, right?” Lydia asked apprehensively.

“Yes, yes.” He injected the young man with a sedative-painkiller-regenerative cocktail. “I’m going to keep him under for at least a day, for the concussion to heal. He’ll be off-duty in a brace for a few weeks afterwards, but he should recover fully.”

Even as he spoke, more casualties entered the medical bay, while the helmsman was the worst of it, it became readily apparent that he wasn't, however, the bulk of it.

Chase glanced over to Lydia. “If you don’t have anywhere to be, could you help Nurse Ratched with triage? I’m sure there 's going to be more than this coming in. I’m going to finish this exam and get him into a proper brace before we run into anymore trouble, then I’ll have a report you can take to the Captain.”

The Lieutenant hesitated for a moment, but before she could respond, the intercom came to life with the Captain’s voice.

“All hands, this is the captain. Anybody who’s up and around, tend to the wounded. Dubrovsky, Harris, meet me on deck five, we’re going to have a look outside.”

Lydia shrugged at the doctor, "Looks like I'll have to take a rain check on the report."

She nodded, and with a final glance down at Yoshi, departed.

***

“Is very strange, Captain: is like plasma reconnection rate slightly different. Throws off entire system--reactive field adjustments, wakefield injectors, extraction manifold--off just enough to make reaction unsustainable," The engineer explained with a frown.

Olivia paused in checking a hull inspection kit to give her engineer a sharp look. “What the hell can throw off the reconnection rate, Anatoly? I thought that was based on basic kinetics and electromagnetics.”

The Russian shrugged, “A great mystery. Have team doing deep scans to look for interference source now, but...” he sighed “...I have feeling direct countermeasures unlikely.”

She pursed her lips, and glanced at the other crewmen she’d rounded up for the inspection. Leaning in closer to Tolya, she quietly said, “So you’re telling me we’re SOL on main power?”

He vigorously shook his head, “No no no, is direct which I doubt possible.” Pulling out a tablet, he tapped at it a few times before continuing, “I am thinking rate difference small enough that we can adjust system components and live simulators to compensate.”

Letting out a breath she hadn’t noticed she was holding, she nodded, “It’ll work well enough to break for orbit?”

“Da. May be more or less efficient, but should work enough for full thrust. If we can deploy emergency solar cells, should take, ehhnnn, few hours to run rough simulations to optimize adjustments. Then is just need APU bootstrap capacitors charged.”

“Okay.” She nodded her head as the soft tip-tap of shoes on deck-plate reached her ears. She turned towards the hatch and immediately recognized the owner of those shoes, “Harris! How’s Calvino?”

The Lieutenant approached, “a concussion and a tweaked neck. He’ll live, but probably out of action for a few weeks. You know, head injuries right? Wouldn't want him to crash... the... ship..." she trailed off, as if suddenly aware of exactly where she was.

Olivia stared at the weapons officer with a flat, unamused look. “Okay. Outfit for light threat response, hull and RCS scanning, and deploying emergency solars.” She handed the Lieutenant a hull kit, “This is good to go. I want a PDW on everyone--we don’t know what kind of nasties might be out there.”

Lydia took the hefty package and tucked it under her arm when the glint of steel caught her eye. She smirked and turned to the captain, “Still carrying that stone-age lead slinger around?”

“Mmm.” Olivia picked up the original Colt 1903, a family heirloom, and slid home the magazine she’d been checking before returning it to her side holster. “What can I say? Tradition dies hard.”

Lydia's eyebrows rose and she smiled a bit, unable to counter the statement, and walked over to the equipment racks to separate out equipment kits for the ground teams.

Olivia shook her head a little at Lyrdia's question as she scrolled through the ship status reports on her eye-tap. She frowned as the red indicators scrolled past again and turned to Anatoly, “About the RCS...any thoughts?”

“Ehh,” he looked doubtful, but not worried, “at least seven burnt out--the forward ones that gave the primary braking thrust, plus couple down below. A few more, unsure, will need to scan. Most will have slagged regulators, maybe manipulators too. Not so bad, plenty of spares, but some are submerged, so I worry about swamp water exposure.”

“Well, the sooner we get out there, the sooner we get out of this muck.” She picked up her last pieces of equipment, a relay for her eye-tap--to allow her access to the ship while groundside--and her PDW. She waved at the Russian. “Okay. Finish gearing up, and we’ll head out.” She glanced over at a screen showing the world just outside the nearby airlock, “Looks like the sun’s coming up.”

***

Kite made some final checks of her teams’ gear--they were all well-trained, but most were untested. Lengthy periods of peace tended to have that effect on a fighting force. She noticed Twilight was making her way over, and mused at how strange it was to see her charge out of her normal princessly attire: the alicorn was in deep mud boots, with a long, light cloak around her neck, the only sign of her station being the simple tiara atop her head.

“Looks like we’re about ready to go?” Twilight had that look in her eyes, the same look when a new crate of books arrived for her growing library in the Keep.

Kite nodded, “Yes’m. Sun’s up enough to see now, and the scouts say it looks like we got lucky with the weather.” She eyed her princess’s bulging saddlebags, and raised a hoof to gesture at them. “Um...are you sure you don’t want to leave some of that behind at the staging camp?”

Glancing back at the bags, Twilight looked surprised, then gave a shrug, “I don’t really even notice them. One of the benefits of alicorn physiology is slowly increasing strength. Truthfully, I hadn’t even realized it had kicked in, but it’s pretty useful. Never know when you might need a particular book!”

Flashing her aunt a carefully controlled skeptical look, Kite Shield gave in. “Okay, well then, it think we’re ready to go.” She turned away to address the waiting guards, “Alright, scouts off. Form up, ponies, you know your groups! Diamond formation, five meter spacing, let’s move out!”

***

Lydia suppressed a sigh, knowing it would be unprofessional and also that it would just cause her to suck in more of the fetid wetland air. She idly scanned her zone, then glanced back towards the ship, where the captain and the engineering team were working on another RCS cluster. She was glad she hadn't taken the engineering track, hot humidity was one thing, laboring in it was entirely another.

Over the past three hours, they’d deployed the emergency solar panels, done a rough scan of the hull, and scanned three thrusters. Two of them had been easy fixes, which had raised spirits, but the heat of midday was beginning to set in. Lydia--who had spent most of her life in carefully controlled space habitats--had already just about had her fill of planetary living.

She noticed the captain breaking away from her cadre of engineers and head in her direction. She glanced back to her zone, then raised her eyebrows as Olivia came alongside. "Ma'am?"

“Enjoying the fresh air and sun, Lieutenant?” Olivia asked with the hint of a smirk on her lips.

“It’s, ah, different, ma’am,” She answered with a neutral expression that came far less naturally than she'd have liked. In the same way that 'fun' and 'torture' are different, she kept to herself.

“Mhmm. I may have grown up on a farm, but I’ve been spaceside long enough that this is a bit much even for me,” Olivia offered with a sympathetic shrug. The captain looked up at the sky, her hand held above her eyes to block out the majority of the light from the system's primary, "Looks like there’s still another hour till noon, which means it’s going to get unbearably hot, and I don’t want anyone passing out. Let's break in about fifteen minutes.”

“Very good, ma’am.” She looked expectantly at her captain, knowing she hadn’t come over here just to talk about the weather.

Her eyes were flicking over the too-close horizon, into shadows that even the near-noon sun couldn’t pierce. “Seen anything? Anything at all?”

“Uh, a few small flyers. Birds, I guess. Nothing else that I’ve noticed. Nothing big anyway. Nothing human either. Garden world like this, you'd think the colonists would have come looking by now, unless we're the first ones to find it...” Lydia trailed off as her imagination ran away with her. It was unprofessional but it was a nice distraction from the lack of climate control.

“Hmm..."

Lydia waited until the moment was stretched too thin, then gave up and asked, “Are you...expecting something?”

Olivia hit her with a blank look, which quickly changed to one of slight worry. “Maybe I’m just paranoid, but maybe you were hitting on something there. Maybe this is a 'new' planet, so that explains why no people have come out here yet... but I feel like a wetland like this should still have more life.”

Lydia nodded, the idea made sense after all. “Okay, but wouldn’t our landing have driven everything away?”

“Oh, for a while, sure, but we’ve been quiet since then. This place is so wild it seems unlikely that anything would be afraid of human hunters. The native life should be filtering back in by now," the captain explained with a shrug.

Lydia just looked back to the forest, her mind processing the information as she scanned the treeline.

After a moment, Olivia shrugged, and nodded. “Well, just stay sharp,” she said as she started to walk away.

“Captain.”

She paused and looked back, eyebrows raised.

“I think...” she mused on it a moment longer “...yeah, I think with the solar panels up, we should have enough power hitting the capacitors to run one of the Gatekeeper turrets.”

Brow furrowed, Olivia asked, “Can that work? There’s nowhere near enough power to run the active cooling systems.”

“Well, you wouldn’t get much.” She thought about it. “Maybe a little over a second of firing time before it overheats...might even need repair afterwards. But I don’t want to think about there being something out there that can’t be deterred by a burst of forty millimeter high explosive.”

The Captain snorted at that. “What would you need to get that online?”

“Oh, the software will fall back gracefully. If only one gun is powered, it’ll use that one. Targeting will be Friend-or-Foe through the main CIWS oracle. The power though...engineering will have to dump enough into a Gatekeeper-accessible capacitor bank.”

Nodding, Olivia said, “Okay, I’ll talk to Tolya about it. Good thought, Lydia.”

She nodded, "That's what I'm here for ma'am, tactical assessment. If this turns into a bullet festival I'd like our side to have the bigger guns.” and turned back to concentrate on her watch.

***

After the fact, Lydia was never sure who called it out first. It was almost noon, and the engineering team was almost done with what must have turned out to be a badly damaged thruster. She was stretching her neck, trying to work out a kink, when she heard an exclamation from somewhere to her left. Her eyes shot open, scanning the treeline in that direction, and she couldn’t miss it. A whole cluster of trees about 200 meters away were moving--hell, it looked like some were even falling.

She keyed up her comm unit, “South perimeter, break into fireteams, other lines stay alert.” She glanced back and saw Olivia talking to Anatoly, who was simultaneously talking into his comm and tapping at a tablet.

The Captain glanced up and met Lydia’s gaze, then flashed a hand signal: delay. Then she turned back to the engineers.

Wonderful. She checked her PDW, and set it to burst fire. As the motion drew closer to the treeline, she started to get a sense of what was in there. It was...big. She activated her command HUD and keyed her comms again, “All other watch lines, form up and get over here. Whatever we’ve got incoming, hold fire until I give the order.” She saw the remaining three fireteams of four signal acknowledgement.

As it broke through the treeline--knocking a few more trees over in the process--her brain froze up for a moment. What in the...? The creature was some sort of reptilian, with scales and a tail, but it had four heads. They were clearly independent, too, as each one seemed to choose a different area to look at. As it looked around at the crash site, Lydia almost began to wonder if it was a threat, but then one head howled angrily, and others followed suit, before the beast began to stomp its way towards the ship.

“Fire!” she screamed as she pulled the trigger on her weapon, a burst of tracers lanced out and into the target, serving to guide the other soldiers' aim. The eyes seemed to flinch, obviously vulnerable if a bullet happened to hit an open one, but she could clearly see shots ricochet off of its face, doing no apparent damage.

Looking at the other heads as various shots rang out all around, she started to get very concerned. “Anyone seeing signs of damage?”

Her eyetap HUD lit up with a series of confirmed negatives from the units under her direct command. Their small arms did appear to lack the capability to penetrate whatever the creature possessed for armor.

“Alright, we can make it flinch though! Four heads, left to right, one two three four, teams North South East West. Concentrate fire, aim for the eyes, staggered reloads. We need to hold this thing off!” She ordered as she snapped off a burst at the head's left eye.

Even as ack signals came in, a slow but steady staccato of fire began to accost the creature. As Lydia added her own fire, she was satisfied to see its forward progress slow to a halt, as all four heads began to flinch nearly constantly, whipping around to try to avoid the incoming stings. She fell into a steady rhythm of firing and reloading.

It felt like hours later, but her HUD said only three and a half minutes had passed. Half of her mags were gone. She noticed that the damned monster was still making forward progress. Stumbling, blind steps were drawing it closer and closer to the ship. The teams had fallen back a bit, but they were almost out of room to retreat, and they were close to the creature--maybe too close.

Before she could even move from that thought to a new plan, it happened. With a twist of its body, the creature swung its tail out at the offending humans, smacking half of a fireteam and sending them flying to the ground. The movement seemed to travel in a wave along its body, and one of the heads stretched out and whipped along, taking out three more crewmen.

With five streams of incoming fire quieted, one of the heads found itself free to choose a target. The body moved forward a bit, still questing towards the ship. Lydia slammed home a fresh mag, and switched to full auto. She tried to deter it, but the head was determined now.

Suddenly a new stream of fire joined in, as Olivia broke away from the engineering team--Anatoly still banging at his tablet--to fire her own weapon at the beast. This drew the attention of the still-unflinching head.

Lydia continued firing until her mag ran dry, and reached for another. Then the Captain’s ran out too, and she could only watch, helplessly, as the serpentine head took the opening to dive for the Captain. Olivia ignored the PDW mags on her thigh, and drew her sidearm, aiming calmly into the gaping maw headed directly for her. It closed the last few meters, sharp teeth glinted in the noontime sun, and...

...stopped, abruptly, as the creature plowed into a shimmering, translucent purple energy field that appeared between it and the Captain.

***

Twilight swore she could hear a crunch as the Hydra’s attacking head slammed into Kite Shield’s warding spell. The field flared with power, but held strong, and the head gingerly swung away, looking crumpled and dazed.

“Advance on the hydra!” Kite called out, “pegasi, harass with halberds, keep it from rallying any more attacks against the bipeds; cav, go for flanking charges, aim for the belly with spears.”

The guardponies spread out around the hydra and began their attacks while all four heads were still confused by the pain the shield-abused one was still recovering from. Two of the heads roared in frustration as a new form of annoyance pecked away at it.

Twilight watched for a few moments, but the beast was still occasionally casting around at its initial targets.

The bipeds--some sort of relatively hairless primates?--had taken the momentary distraction to begin to pull back their wounded members, and had stopped firing, appearing to recognize that the pegasi were likely to be hit by the kinetic weaponry they used.

“Princess! Even our enchanted steel just bounces off the thing!” Kite sounded frustrated. “I don’t know what we can do to end this! It looks like it’s just waiting to go for the wounded.”

She nodded, “I’m going to try to draw its attention, be ready with a shield.” Taking a deep breath, she drew as much power as she could muster at short notice. The overflow flashed around her, fiery purple lancets of energy stabbing into the air. The Hydra the girls and I met before was resistant to magic--but I bet I can still give it a good tweak. She released the power in the form of a basic electricity spell, flung at the neck junction of the beast. Crackling arcs of purple lightning sizzled along its hide, as the power ran through the Hydra’s body, and down its legs to the ground.

Howling in pain, all four heads snapped around, and Twilight couldn’t help but flinch as eight eyes stabbed at her, seeing the last ripples of overflowing power still dissipating around her. It charged.

She glanced towards the primates as the Hydra moved away from them, and briefly locked eyes with one of them--the one Kite had saved from being devoured. She wasn’t exactly sure what passed between them, but it felt something like gratitude.

***

Olivia winced as the monster slammed into the same sort of purple field that had saved her. This time, it was ready, and it began slamming its heads, tail, and even kicking at it with its legs. It was furious, and already she thought she could see the shield slowly shrinking.

She turned back to her engineer, “Now would be a good time Anatoly!”

Her attention was drawn back to the fight, as a repeated cracking noise sounded off. Bolts of light flew from the purple creature--was it really a horse?--that had locked eyes with her, and slammed into the monster, but only seemed to enrage it off further. The flying ones were still harrying it, the larger ones on the ground stabbing at it with spears they held in their mouths, but they all seemed to have as much luck actually hurting the thing as the humans had.

Suddenly, her eyetap beeped and her HUD lit up with scrolling text--init sequences--as the CIWS oracle connected. She rapidly toggled her interface over to tactical targeting and streams of data began marking local moving objects using telemetry from the remaining active shipboard sensors.

“Is good, Captain! Fifteen seconds and turret will be mobile!”

As the main Gatekeeper control software finished connecting, she raised her hand to initialize the haptic interface, then triggered the thermal-detection function of the basic HUD scanning software, it was nothing to the shipboard systems but it would suit her purposes.

Power finally available, the third aft-starboard-dorsal turret unlocked and turned towards her field of view, seeking towards her line of sight as its own fire control radar engaged, adding a new data stream to her HUD.

The imaging code churned for a moment, then picked out the blobs of heat the equines were emitting, quickly separating them into individual entities as they moved around. But it did not find the reptilian monster.

“Shit! The damned thing is cold-blooded!” She looked around and found Lydia already looking her way. “I’m not getting a thermal lock on it for the FoF! Can I get manual fire control?”

Lydia stared into space for a moment, then ran over and grabbed Anatoly’s tablet. “I think the Icarus software has enough API compatibility. I can fudge an interface, gimmie a minute!”

Olivia gritted her teeth, and looked back at the fight. She swept the already-selected equines up in her HUD, and designated them Friendly. Their outlines became green just as one of the heads slammed into one of the flyers, sending it crashing into the ground. “Lydia...”

“One second!” She tapped a few more frantic commands into the tablet. “Okay! Almost everything’s going to be screaming bloody murder about telemetry and traverse errors, but just give it a target region and execute!”

Another flurry of init messages sprang up in her vision, and, indeed, red warnings and big yellow exclamation points sprang up afterwards. She swept her hand to clear them, then looked at the monster. One second of fire, huh? The heads were still weaving wildly, with flying horses all around them. Hmm... Triggering the freefire-target-zone-designate function, she drew a circle around the base of the rightmost neck. Party time. She hit Freefire Execute.

A whine was audible as the turret spun up, and then a teeth-vibrating, recursive thunder pierced the area, as a tracer-defined line of death shot into the beast’s neck. The line seemed to pause nearly imperceptibly as it met the creature’s scales, but then cut right through. The turret fidgeted to fill its defined region with fire, the line of fire moving through a cone. A few shots hit the edge of the purple shield and glanced off, but the angle was good, and most of the piercing shots flew off into the forest beyond.

As the turret’s roar stopped--and even more red warning lights sprang up on her HUD--the head and neck finished falling, to hang lifelessly from the few remaining strips of meat and skin that remained.

Everything stopped. The equines were frozen, the flying ones just hovering in the air. The remaining three heads stared at the blood coursing from the ravaged neck. Then, simultaneously, all three heads let out what could only be described as a scream, Olivia likened it to the sound livestock made during a barn fire from her youth. They cast about wildly, then the beast lurched away from the equines, and charged into the forest, still screaming as the lifeless head flopped behind it.

Olivia remembered to breathe again. She signaled a power-down to Gatekeeper, and the turret retracted, then she turned off her targeting HUD, and glanced at the equines. They were tending to their wounded. She turned to her officers. “Lydia, assign people to get the wounded inside. Anatoly, I want Icarus online and ready as quickly as you can.”

She waited, until both were done. Then turned away. “Alright then. Let’s go...make some friends.”

Author's Note

This was mostly the doing of Alamais, so firebomb his house if you don't like it.

That said, you ought to like it.

Side Effects May Include...

Flashpoint

Chapter Three:

'Side Effects May Include...'

Dizziness, Dry Mouth, Headache, and Fluency in Russian. Do not cast while operating heavy machinery.

Kite Shield glanced over at the bipeds as she turned away from her field medic. The strange people seemed to be finishing up their own triage, as all the injured had been carried back into the metal behemoth that the Princess had dubbed a ship. The one who appeared to be in command was now chatting with a few others, and looking the ponies’ way. Kite walked over to Twilight, who was frantically scrawling on a piece of scrap paper with a graphite stick.

“Uh...Princess?”

The only response was some muttering about metal fatigue.

“Twilight?” She tried a gentle nudge of her nose against the alicorn’s shoulder.

“I’d need to measure the specific heat…”

“Auntie!”

“Buh?!” The Princess finally looked up, and focused on her niece. “Do you realize how many shots that, that...repeating cannon thing fired? The energy there...the heat buildup! Even our best enchanted metals would melt or shatter…”

“Uh, yeah, that’s great and all Princess, but I think we’re about to make some new acquaintances…maybe you can ask them about it, if they’re friendly?”

Twilight blinked, then looked towards the bipeds, and her cheeks colored ever so slightly, “Right.” She blinked again, and looked back to Kite, “How are the wounded?”

“Not too bad. Truncheon took a good swat from the hydra’s tail that’ll leave a mark, but he’s in no danger. Valkyrie’s right wing got wrenched, so she’ll be hoofin’ it home.”

“Okay, good.” She glanced around, then nodded towards an area past Kite’s right flank. “We’ll stand over there, away from the worst of the mud. Uhh, how many of us?”

Kite just perked her ears towards her charge, and shrugged a shoulder.

“Maybe three is a good number? Grab a guard. A-an earth pony--a pegasus randomly hovering might freak them out a bit.”

As her niece went to fetch an extra guard, Twilight glanced at the bipeds, and tried to settle her nerves. 'Alright, come on. Diplomacy. I can do this!'

***

“Just the three of us, Captain?”

Olivia glanced to Lydia, then Anatoly, and nodded. “Yes. We’ve still got the perimeter guards as backup, and they’ve seen what we can do. In fact,” she shrugged off her PDW and set it on a discarded thrust assembly that was sitting nearby, “after seeing what they can do, I doubt these would do us any good anyway.”

The two officers glanced at each other, then followed suit.

“Captain, about these things they do. It was...non-possible.” Anatoly looked almost offended.

“Yeah, well... According to everything I know, the failure of the fusion reactors is pretty out-there too. At this point, I’m about ready to throw possible out the window.”

She glanced at the horses, and noted their leader had pulled away, and seemed to be preparing to meet them.

“Three,” Lydia commented, as two others joined the horse leader, “great minds think alike?”

“Mmm...I don’t know how well this can go, but with our eye taps recording everything...I don’t know, hopefully there’s a translation agent or something in the deep archives, and we can get started on opening up communication. Hell, maybe they’ve had contact with humans before...some of their equipment seems oddly familiar.”

“Yes, yes!” Anatoly perked up. “Their metal-work is seeming quite good! Would make repairs much faster and better if we can trade. Also…” he glanced around “...if we can relocate. This place make nice soft landing zone, but not so good for repairs.”

Olivia nodded, “Alright. Well, let’s see what we can do right now.”

They walked over towards the horses, and Olivia tried her best to project a calm, open demeanor. She almost blew it with a chuckle, as she drew near and recognized the almost child-like curiosity filling the Leader’s expression, and even body language. 'How can a horse look so damned...human?'

She tried to unobtrusively examine the creatures, seeing that they were actually very unlike Earth horses, seemingly built both sturdier and more flexibly, and with shorter faces, and absurdly large eyes. 'They’re also tiny. Not horses...ponies?'

Finally, she stopped at what she judged to be a reasonable distance, and when Lydia and Anatoly, came up behind her, she looked at the pony leader and nodded. 'Just need to get them to talk, so…'”Greetings. I am Captain Olivia Wrayburn of the TCS Caledonia,” she gestured back to the ship. “These are my officers, Lydia Harris, and Anatoly Ivanovich Dubrovsky. We’re...sorry about all the ruckus.” She paused, rubbing the back of her neck..

The leader seemed to smile at her action, and began speaking...

***

“Nnng. This is getting us nowhere,” Twilight groaned at Kite almost a half-hour later.

The bipeds had seemed to want a break, and had pulled back slightly.

Twilight sighed, “There seem to be surprising similarities in our facial expressions and even some body language, but I can’t pick out any real congruency with spoken languages I know...and I know most of them! There are certain fragments that almost remind me of one of the most ancient archaic tongues, but…” she shook her head, “I think I’m just hearing what I want to hear.”

Her niece looked confused, “So...what could that mean? Where are they from?”

“Well, I…” She glanced at the bipeds, who were talking between themselves, probably about the same things. “I’m not sure.” She thought back to her discussion with Spike only hours ago, and then blinked, “Wait!”

As her horn glowed, her right saddlebag popped open, and after a bit of shifting, The Diplomat’s Spellchest flew out. “I only glanced at this when it arrived, but I think I remember there being some sort of translation spell in here!”

She paged through the book, muttering to herself, “Dealing with hungry meat-eaters, Zebrican marriage rituals, shaking hands with the ephemeral...AHA! The Osmotic, Universal Communication-Helping spell!” She read through it, humming slightly. “Seems simple enough!”

Twilight’s horn was already glowing when Kite spoke, “Uhh, are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“We’re never going to get anywhere at the rate we’ve been going! This will help a lot!” The Princess said distractedly, as she completed the spell forms in her mind, and committed them.

As she did so, the mild physical overflow from her magic acted to blow the book to the next page, and she glanced down at the red-outlined box at the top of it. “...Oops.”

***

Olivia sighed, and stretched. “Do you think we’ve got enough recorded? I’m running out of random things to say...I’m going to start reciting George Carlin routines.”

Lydia grinned at her. “That leader of theirs sure seems talkative. And she’s so clearly frustrated with the language barrier. Won’t she be surprised if we can get some real translations working quickly!”

Anatoly was staring blankly back at the ponies.

“Mmm…” she rolled her eyes, “I just hope we can find a reasonable agent when we get back. I’ve never really delved that deeply into the ship archives.”

“I’m sure there’s gotta be something,” Lydia opined, “I mean, I once found an old guide on programming in Java of all things. They just chuck anything and everything onto datacores these days…”

“Captain.”

Olivia and Lydia both glanced at Anatoly, then over to the ponies, where the leader was doing--whatever it was--while holding--no, levitating--a book.

“Oh boy.”

The tall purple one’s horn was glowing as the grass was kicked up in a wind around her, she seemed to be saying something to the pony beside her, before she glanced down at the book before her, and her face took on an expression of…distress?

There was a sudden flash as a wall of shimmering light appeared, expanding out from the purple pony. Olivia's hand instinctively went up to ward it off, but it passed right over her, and beyond. Out of the corner of her eye, she vaguely noticed that it stopped just before it would have encompassed the remainder of the ponies.

She was distracted, however, by a certain feeling...as if she had finally remembered a word that had eluded her for days. Then another word, and another. Then meaning followed--not just words and grammar but concepts, metaphors, a cascading flood of knowledge. She dropped to her knees, possibly with a scream, or maybe just a whimper, feeling like she might drown in a flood of language--it quickly grew too much for her, and she felt herself falling as everything went dark.

One word came to the front of her mind, right before she lost consciousness: ‘Equestria’.

***

Crewman Jones was pretty alarmed when the wall of shimmering light sprang out from where the Captain was meeting the funny-colored horses, in the distance. He was even more alarmed when he saw the three Caledonia officers drop to their knees, but then he noticed that the leaders of the horses were doing the same. He looked askance at the other two guards on his side of the ship, and raised his weapon slightly, but decided to wait and see.

***

"Owwww...seriously, who puts a warning label on the next page?!" Twilight held held a hoof to her head and dropped to her knees. She tried to glance around to see how the--humans were taking it, and noticed their Captain had fallen completely over, possibly unconscious. When she took in a glance at the ship and found herself wondering how the repairs on the thrusters were going, and if the hull was in one piece, she slammed her eyes shut.

"Princess...why do I know what pinkie finger is?" Kite sounded just as pained as she felt.

"Just keep your eyes closed and try to ride it out! The warning said the first bit is the worst, when the lexicons of everybody in the spell are all mushed together!"

"Good to know!"

Twilight nodded, then realized that hadn't been a familiar voice, and it wasn't speaking Equestrian...

***

Lydia groaned, hands still pressed against her eyes. The overwhelming press of information had stopped, and after a while--it could have been an hour for all she knew--she slowly peeked out between her fingers. The early afternoon sunlight was punishingly bright, but it wasn’t the worst hangover she’d ever had. She rolled off her side, and pushed herself onto her knees, thankful that this had all happened on a reasonably dry patch of land.

Glancing around, she saw that the--the ponies--were still looking rather incapacitated, Anatoly was starting to move, and the Captain was out cold. She moved over to Olivia and prodded her side, but it evoked nothing but a clipped snore. Throwing a nasty glare at the purple Princess, who had just started to move, she looked to Tolya, “How fares the Russian?”

He squinted at her from where he sat, arms resting on bent knees, and grunted, “Eh...is okay. Like bad night with ex-wife.”

Lydia chuckled, and shook her head, making herself wince. She then looked back to the ponies. The two guards--a sergeant and a Lieutenant--who had accompanied the Princess were at her side, helping her up. Oddly, the Princess looked the worst-off of any of them, apart from Olivia.

As soon as she was on her knees, the Princess looked to the humans, and Lydia couldn’t help but soften a measure upon seeing the look of sheer contrition on her face.

“I’m so sorry! I should have checked for a warning! I should have known a spell like that would have side effects!” She shook her head, then noticed Olivia’s sprawled form. “Is she okay?”

“She’s still breathing, at least,” Lydia responded, “but she’s unresponsive.” She prodded the Captain again, with no noticeable effect.

“Oh no…” She levitated the book to her from where it had fallen, and found the spell, then flipped to the red warning on the next page, and read it carefully. “Is...is she especially magically receptive?”

The human just stared for a moment. “Listen, uh...what do I call you, anyway, Princess?”

She blinked, then responded, “My name is Twilight Sparkle...just Twilight is fine.”

Staring again, she seemed to hold back a comment, then said, “Lydia. Lydia Harris. And listen, I,” she glanced at Anatoly, “we don’t really understand how you do a lot of what you do. We don’t have ‘magic’, we have science and technology. So, uh...I don’t know. Maybe the Captain could be ‘receptive’, I don’t even know what that means.”

Twilight’s ears pinned, and she looked back to the book. “Well, is she significantly older than you two? That’s the only other thing here…”

Lydia nodded. “She’s got about a decade and a half on either of us. Uh...about fifty percent older, that is.”

“Okay, well, it says an older, less flexible brain can be overwhelmed by the spell. It retreats to unconsciousness to protect itself, while the spell continues to work.” Ears rising, Twilight finished, “She should wake up with no ill results, though it may be a few hours.”

Lydia grunted, expression still showing dissatisfaction, and looked down at Olivia.

“Well...Captain would normally handle such things but, given current status…” The russian said as he straightened up, “I am ship’s engineer, not diplomat. Still,” he shrugged, “Is good to meet you, circumstances could be better. My name is Anatoly Ivanovich Dubrovsky, but…”

He hesitated, giving the princess an appraising look before his face broke into a smile, “You may call me Tolya.”

Twilight rubbed the back of her head with her hoof and smile sheepishly, “Well, to be honest… before all of this,” she said while gesturing to the regalia, “I was a librarian.”

The engineer laughed, “Ah, it seems we all have to adapt to situation we were not expecting.”

***

Lydia turned away from the medical team, who were watching over Olivia as a volunteer unicorn levitated her back towards the ship. Dr. Pritchard had agreed that the Captain seemed to be in reasonable health, so they could only trust Twilight’s--or rather, her book’s--claim that she would awaken unharmed.

She shifted her attention in time to hear Anatoly say, “So, you mean to say, is based on force-carrier particle interaction? We have study this, but requires high energy particle accelerator.”

“Well, we’re able to induce a resonant graviton wave, causing whatever object it’s focused on to levitate in the direction of our choosing,” Twilight replied. “It’s really an application of the gravitoweak cascade effect, since all direct magic is based on weak nuclear force modification.”

“Interesting…is not familiar effect, but implies with proper application of containment field, cutting array emitters could be modified to-”

Lydia noticed the earth-pony guard--introduced as Stone Wall--had a glazed look in his eyes. She looked over, and briefly met the gaze of the Lieutenant--Kite Shield, and they shared an unmistakable look that said “nerds,” before Lydia stepped up beside Anatoly, getting the attention of the two and breaking their technical conversation.

Twilight glanced around, her ears flattening. “Ah, sorry...how is she?”

“Physically, she’s fine. The Doc’s going to run a few more tests inside, then just let her rest.”

Nodding, Twilight said, “I’m sorry, again, I was just getting so frustrated-”

Lydia waved a hand to cut her off, “It’s done. And I’m sure the Captain will agree that being able to talk to each other will certainly speed things along, here.” She shifted her attention to Tolya, “In the meantime, while she's incapacitated, as the senior most officer I'm assuming command.”

Tolya simply nodded.

Twilight glanced between the two of them, then said, “Right. Um…I have to ask, though it seems pretty clear at this point...are you really from another world?”

“More than one world, even! Well… two worlds, hah!” Anatoly laughed.

The Princess grinned, “This is so exciting! We’ve had so many stories and theories about alien life, but I never thought we’d meet anyone from the stars.”

Lydia chuckled, and rubbed the back of her head. “Well, really you’ve just been stories and theories for us as well. This is the first world with intelligent non-human life we’ve ever encountered, or really any advanced life at all. Mostly it’s just been slime molds and plankton out there.”

Twilight huffed at that, then said, “So, hmm...what brings you to Alfheim?” She looked askance at the ship as she continued, “This...doesn’t exactly look planned.”

“We’re a cargo ship, making a routine run.” Lydia picked up a slight shift in Tolya’s posture at this statement, and thought, 'just play along, Russian'. “We had some trouble…”

Anatoly coughed, “Ah yes, we lost lock on navigational beacon during cut-in, ship jumped to random destination, and we end up here. Jump into atmosphere, reactor failure, crash landing, much chaos.”

Lydia blinked and turned to the engineer, “Reactor failure… power failure. Cryogenic freezers… Tolya how long will the reserve power hold?”

“Is not problem, now with solar backups deployed. Question, though.” He looked back to Twilight. “...though perhaps long shot. Are you knowing reason for fusion reaction failure?”

“Fusion? What do you mean by fusion?”

“Is controlled fusing of Helium-3 nuclei into Helium-4, using magnetic containment. Reconnection rate is… off, and possibly other things. Is not supposed to be possible.”

Twilight took on a faraway look for a moment, saying, “I...I understand the principle, though we’ve never built anything like that. I’ve got no idea what could be having that sort of effect, it’s all based on fundamental values.”

“That is part that is… terrifying. Problem seems to require different fundamental values… if that is case, is surprising our atoms even hold together,” he explained.

Lydia gave them both a skeptical look, before asking Twilight, “What about your,” she waved her hand vaguely, “magic...stuff. Could there be some sort of field from that, interfering?”

Twilight shook her head, “No, magic is generally short-range, and directed. There’s nothing in the area that would have the effect you’re talking about, and certainly nothing in the upper atmosphere, not to mention even magic usually doesn’t play around with things like fundamental constants.”

The Princess thought for a moment more, then looked doubtful, “Does this mean you’re stuck here?”

Tolya waved the thought away. “No, no, is flexible reactor. Should be able to reconfigure in a day or so. Is problem, however, hull and thrusters require repairs, plate replacements…”

***

Kite Shield stirred from simply observing the humans, to state, “Yes, your hull plates...we’ve actually got one of those back at the Keep, if we can manage to dig it out of the crater it made.”

The Russian looked at her with some alarm, “Is nobody hurt, yes?”

“Not by that one, but how many others did you lose on your way down? I can see several missing sections just from here.”

Lydia cleared her throat, “Ah, some of those were lost in the accident that threw us off course.”

'Sure they were...and what about that scarring that I can’t help but think looks like weapons damage?' Kite just nodded. “When we get back we could see if any other plate sections have been found in the area-”

Twilight interrupted, “But if not, I’m sure we could figure out suitable replacement materials.”

Kite smiled, saying, “Yes! Since you’re a cargo ship, you must have something of value in your holds to exchange.”

Lydia shot her a guarded look, while Twilight just looked exasperated. “Maybe, Kite,” she said, then smoothly turned to Lydia, “but I can also use crown funds to take care of it, in the interest of good relations!” She paused, and then grinned widely. “Of course, that said, there’s one thing of great value I know you hold, and that’s information.” Her eyes sparkled as she finished.

Kite managed not to roll her eyes, as Lydia nodded. “Yes, I’m sure we can offer quite a bit of that, though I’ll let the Captain decide the specifics. I know we’ll need certain information ourselves, particularly star charts. Depending on how far we are from home, it could take quite a bit of work for us to be able to lock on to a suitable navigational beacon.”

With another grin, Twilight said, “I can certainly provide star charts! I’m a bit of an astronomer myself, and I have quite a collection of maps and historical data.”

“Excellent.” Lydia glanced at Tolya. “The other thing we need, and somewhat urgently, is a landing zone.” She gestured back towards the ship. “There’s a good bit of her we can’t repair until we get her out of this muck, and even though we managed to drive it off, I’ll feel a lot better if we can get away from that monster…”

“Mmm, yes.” Twilight looked worried. “That hydra’s going to be pretty peeved when he finishes growing his new heads in a few days…”

The humans just stared at her.

“Hmm.”

Kite blinked, as the Princess turned to her.

“Kite, do you think the eastern clearing, where the old gardens and ballroom were, could fit the ship?”

'She wants to put it next to the Keep?!' That’s too close to home... Kite stared blankly as she processed the question, then looked to the humans, and finally their vessel. “M...maybe? We’d have to remove the ruins of the ballroom, but those were slated for demolition soon anyway. If we had the exact footprint...”

“We can provide that,” said Lydia, “if you’re sure you want us so close to home.”

Kite snorted at the echo of her own thoughts, then raised an eyebrow at Twilight, who shrugged it off.

“It’ll be fine! That will make trade negotiations easier, and besides, there’s no other clearing that wide nearby, and it would cause a lot more distress if we had you land out in the plains nearer to Ponyville…”

Kite sighed, but then found herself nodding in agreement. “It won’t take long for us to clear what’s in the way.”

Tolya spoke up, “Will still need to get main power online to move ship, is no rush on your end.”

Noticing the return of the unicorn guardspony who had transported their Captain, Kite gave her a significant look as she rejoined the rest of the guards. 'I wonder if she saw anything...interesting.'

“Well,” Twilight said, “if we get back to the Keep tonight, we can get some ponies started on clearing the field, and I can teleport back and have those star charts to you first thing in the morning!”

The humans merely stared for a moment, before Lydia ventured, “...teleport?”

The Princess was nodding in a satisfied manner, when Kite spoke up, “Uh, how many can you take with you now, Ma’am?”

Twilight looked thoughtful. “Hmm, only one over that distance...Stone Wall!”

The earth pony--who could very well have been dozing off--jerked to attention, staring at his princess. “Yes! I mean, yes?...Ma’am?”

“I’m going to leave you behind here, to provide assistance, now and when we get back tomorrow. It’ll help me keep a fix for the return teleport, too.” Twilight grinned at him.

Stone’s pupils shrank a bit, and he glanced nervously at the tall bipeds and their hulk of a ship. “Er...assistance?”

“Oh, just lend a hoof wherever you can!”

As the hapless guard paused, clearly trying to think of some way out of this, Kite pondered objecting to the Princess’s order, but instead studied the humans’ reactions from the corner of his eye. Anatoly looked like he was holding back laughter, while Lydia appeared to be on the verge of objecting herself. 'He could learn a lot if he stays behind…'

Kite cleared her throat, getting everyone’s attention. “You might be wondering what use he could be to you, but for one, all of my guards are well versed on the flora and fauna in this region. As well, if you’ve any heavy lifting or such that needs doing, you might be surprised at how strong an earth pony can be.”

Lydia considered it, then turned her gaze to the stallion and raised an eyebrow. “Well, I’m fine with this if you are.”

Stone Wall stared at her for a moment, then glanced back to his princess and his lieutenant, before he coughed, and nodded, looking stoic. “I’ll do my best.”

Kite nodded. “Go tell Quarter the situation, and get some rations.”

After he saluted and moved off, the four remaining diplomats finished working out a few details…

***

They were well away from the crash site, slogging through muck and air that felt like pea soup, making their way back to the Keep, before Twilight spoke. “Well?”

Kite blinked, almost tripping over her own hooves, then looked over. “Princess?”

“You're sharp, Kite. What are your thoughts on Alfheim’s first visitors from space, and how do you think things went? Beyond the whole accidentally-giving-us-all-headaches-and-knocking-out-their-Captain thing, I mean.”

Kite started to speak, then ducked her head. “Mmm…”

Twilight nudged her gently. “Come on. Don’t hold back, I need your point of view.”

With a sigh, Kite spoke, “Though we’re obviously very different, I’m pretty amazed at some of the similarities between our people. Like you said, some of their facial features, reactions, even the gestures they made with their hands are astoundingly close to our body language.

“With the spell adding to that...well, I’d put money on them hiding something. Or a lot of somethings. I’m sure there were untruths in their story of how they got here, and I just don’t know how deep it goes. I think I believe that they didn’t intend to travel to Alfheim, but beyond that...

“I don’t pretend to know anything about space travel, but still, the amount of weaponry on their ship seems excessive, I could swear that some of the scarring on the hull looked like weapon damage, and they acted well-trained when fighting the hydra. I guess I find it hard to believe that they’re just a cargo ship...or it makes me wonder what exactly their cargo is.”

Twilight looked askance at her niece, studying her for a moment, but eventually just said, “Anything else?”

Kite huffed, and hesitated, before adding, “While I understand your logic, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with having them so close to home. Even their handheld weaponry frightens me, and the stuff on their ship…” She shook her head. “I felt a couple of shots glance off of my shield. I'd only be able to block direct fire from that thing for a few seconds, even at my best, and that was just one gun on emergency power!

“I just...Princess, I hope your excitement over what we could learn isn’t making you gloss over how dangerous they could be.” Kite looked to the ground, just watching her steps...and hoping she hadn’t overstepped her bounds.

Twilight was silent for a few moments, as she hopped over a fallen tree in their path, then continued on. Finally, she chuckled. Kite gave her a bemused look.

“Kite, I know how I can be sometimes, getting caught up in things. I mean, it's hard not to be excited when this could be the dawn of a new age for our people, if we handle it right!”

“Ah...but that’s what I mean, M’am.” Kite shook her head. “I worry that you’re expecting it to turn out like some fantasy book, like we’re going to be dealing with some utopian civilization, but I doubt any utopia would field a cargo crew so well-armed.”

Twilight nodded. “No, I get what you’re saying. But while I may have read a few too many fantasy space-travel novels, I think you’ve not read enough.”

“Buh?”

The Princess smirked, then sighed, her ears flattening. “Not every book like that has things turn out well. There are plenty of stories where space travelers come to conquer and enslave, or bring strange and terrible diseases. Plenty of authors have applied their imaginations to thinking up ways this could all go wrong, or ways outsiders could try to use us for their own purposes.”

She looked down, before continuing, “I mean, over the years I’ve seen so many ways that people from our own planet try to use each other. There’s no reason to expect that people completely foreign to us will necessarily behave any better.”

Kite frowned as Twilight fell silent, not used to hearing such realism coming from her aunt. “So, then...why?”

Twilight glanced over, then lightly hip-checked her niece, and smiled. “We can’t expect that they’ll behave well, but we can hope. Sure, they’re keeping secrets, but that’s only natural with strangers. We just have to hope that things turn out well, and do our best to make friends!”

“...And if it all goes to Hel?”

The Princess nodded, looking determined. “We plan ahead for that contingency. Speaking of which…” She grinned widely “...after you get some ponies started clearing the landing site, I’ll need your help setting up some strategic shields around it, just in case things get out of hand.”

Kite raised an eyebrow, then sighed. It was going to be a long night.

***

“What about the cryostatic fluid from the sleep pods? If we filled the jackets with that stuff-”

“Nonono, terrible idea, too cold, metal cracks...” Anatoly shook his head vigorously. “Who can say how long we are here? Should be plenty of fluid, but to take some? Does not sit well.”

Lydia stared at him for a moment, then sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. But dammit...’Liv had me get Icarus online, but those guns were never meant to be fired in atmosphere. We’ll get one shot and the gas expansion will blow the things apart. I need Gatekeeper more functional.”

“Mmm, mmm…” Tolya nodded, and thought about it, his gaze wandering.

He glanced first over to his ground team, who were refitting one of the last damage thrust assemblies. Satisfied, his gaze wandered to their ‘guest’, who had been directed to stand by with the nearest guard, Jones. They seemed to be chatting about something, getting along reasonably well.

He looked back to Lydia. “What about shorter bursts? How long to cool between, quarter-second of fire?”

She shook her head. “Almost thirty seconds, not really useful...hmm.” She raised an eyebrow. “Can we get at least a little power to a bunch of the Gatekeeper capacitors?”

“Ehh...will be a little inefficient to redistribute, and slow down charging for fusion ignition, but yes, it can be done.”

“Okay. I think I can work up a staggering logic for the entire system. There’ll be sectors with more coverage and less, but there’s enough guns to keep up a pretty good rate of fire, if all of them take turns.”

Tolya nodded. “Innovative. You think like Russian!”

She smirked, then added, “I’ll work up a list of turrets. Just give me...two bursts’ worth on them. I don’t want to slow the charging down too much, it’d be better if we can just get out of here before something else nasty comes along.”

She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Before I forget…” Punching a few commands into a tablet, she threw him a worried look. “...I’m changing every command code I have access to, so sync up with me. As useful as the translation spell was, I don’t like the fact that the Princess was diddling around with our minds, and I’m worried about possible security breaches. I’m sure the Captain will agree.”

They each reset their security codes until Lydia’s paranoia felt slightly assuaged, and then Lydia nodded, and turned to leave.

“Errr…” Tolya hesitated.

“Hmm?”

“What about our little workhorse?” He jerked his head towards Stone Wall, who was nodding and grinning at something Jones had said.

“Oh.” She rubbed her eyes before saying, “Can you use him?”

“Hmm, perhaps. Would like to check ventral bracing, see how badly landing warped things, reinforce if necessary. Could put this ‘earth pony strength’ to test, yes?” His eyes glinted mischievously.

“Heh, sure. Just don’t break him, he’s on loan.” She waved, and walked off.

Author's Note

Alamais Notes: Thanks to ScyStorm for Valkyrie and Truncheon, and Arcshod for Stone Wall.

Jersey Notes: TOOK LONG ENOUGH DIDN'T IT!?!?!?

Interlude: Ghost of St. Petersburg

Flashpoint

Interlude:

'Ghost of St. Petersburg'

Olivia shouted through grit teeth, as the bullet slammed into her shoulder. She swung around, pressing her back to the battered wall, and controlled her breathing. It was just a dream, after all. Just ignore it. This pain isn’t real. Push past. Do it. Do it.

Slowly, her arm began to respond again. In another moment, she was able to raise her rifle, and begin firing over the wall again. She did so, but blindly, still trying to figure out what was wrong.

I’m lucid, I know I’m dreaming, just like usual, but my control is terrible. It took far too long to heal a simple wound.

She heard a cry from over the wall, as some nameless, faceless opponent bought it. Her rifle clicked empty, and she reloaded, wincing as a hail of return fire chipped away at the edge of the wall above her.

This sucks, I’m outta here.

Pausing for a moment, she decided to just wake up rather than trying to switch to a different dream. She gave her mind that particular little twist, and…

Uh...

A grenade going off nearby broke her out of her stunned trance. She glanced around, then ran for the door opposite her position, ran through the abandoned house, across an alley, around a few corners and through a random door, finally collapsing in the kitchen of a small apartment.

Shitshitshit is this what most people feel like when they dream what do I do?!

A mass of footsteps pounded by the back doorway, and she melted into the wall, waiting for them to pass.

Okay, think. I healed my shoulder, this is definitely a dream. Can I do anything else?

She focused, trying to modify her weapon into something with a bit more kick, but it stubbornly stayed the old, battered Kalashnikov she’d carried when this fight had actually taken place.

That’s right. This is the evacuation of St. Petersburg. This...wasn’t all that bad. Maybe I just need to get to the end to wake up? That’s how these things work, right? Of course they say pain wakes you up too, and I just got shot...

She checked over her weapon, her ammo, and then-

“Wrayburn, where the hell are you?!”

Olivia froze in shock at the sound of a long-dead friend. “M-Mikael?”

“No, it’s the ghost of Joseph Stalin.”

Huh. Guess my subconscious is a snarky asshole. She realized she had abandoned her post, but thought about it, and realized it didn’t matter much in the long run for this fight. “I’m on Fifth. I, uh, had to relocate, my cover was toast. What’s the situation?”

A burst of static, then, “We’re okay for the moment. We’ve tagged enough of them that even these fanatical bastards are holding, and I just got word: the evac shuttles should be here in twenty-five.”

“Okay. Where do you want me?”

“We’re going to reform closer to the landing zone. We still need to protect those civvies. Get up to Seventh and Potato and hole up in the bakery there.”

“Copy that.”

***

What. The. Hell.

It hadn’t really bothered her that the walk had seemed to take forever. Dreams do that, right? Annoying, but not a big deal. She just found Seventh, then turned towards the landing zone.

She had assumed she misheard Mikael when he said ‘Potato’, because even if there was a “Potato Street” in St. Petersburg, it sure wouldn’t actually be called ‘Potato’, right? Yet, there it had been, not a word, but an actual picture of a potato, embossed onto a battered street sign. There’s that strange subconscious sense of humor, right?

But now, she was taking a good look at the...’bakery’. It was unlike anything she’d ever seen, and certainly unlike anything she would ever have thought to find in an old Russian city. The walls were wood, but they and the roof were done up to look like gingerbread and frosting. It was incredibly realistic, and cheerful, and was making her stomach growl, but she didn’t want to enter just out of sheer stubbornness.

I clearly need a vacation. That’s what this is telling me. I need a break, before the rest of me goes off the deep end.

She sighed, grit her teeth, and entered the giant confection. The interior was cheerful, even in the gloomy darkkness cast by the perpetual cloud cover, and there was a lingering scent of carbohydrate and fruit filling. Mindful of her stomach’s complaints, she swiped a cupcake that turned out to be green, and took a bite.

What.

It was sweet, but tasted of...grass?! Timothy, to be exact.

Wait, why do I know what Cat’s-Tail tastes like?

She chewed and swallowed the bite, staring down at the rest of the cupcake, then tossed it away, giving up. Glancing around, she took up position behind a glass-fronted display case, from which she could see out the front.

She didn’t have to wait long.

***

“Mikael, where the hell are you?!”

Running around a corner, she winced as the last of her grenades went off, and heard a mixture of yelps and growls from its victims.

Dogs.

Mixed in with normal human squads were packs of large, misshapen dog creatures. They were even communicating with each other and the human squads, grunting out semi-intelligible speech.

Where in the world am I getting this stuff from?

She tried to think back to what had happened before she went to sleep, but she couldn’t even remember going to bed. They had jumped blindly, crashed, and...a fight? She had flashes of a unicorn, but then it was a pegasus. Useless. She ducked into a store, and slipped in back.

“Mikael? Anybody?”

It felt like she’d been at this for hours already, and she’d already retreated twice.

“This is Olivia Wrayburn. Is there anybody on this channel?”

The building where she recalled the civilian evacuees being stashed was two blocks behind her. Empty, no defenders, just a couple of magazines for her rifle. Then the building had been blown to hell by artillery that the Determinists hadn’t even used at St. Petersburg. Her rifle had since taken a shot meant for her gut, that warped the chamber, rendering it useless.

She pulled the magazine from her 1903--five shots left.

This dream is heading swiftly towards the bad kind of ending…

Then she froze, as a pack of dogs pelted past the door, followed by a squad of humans moving at a more sedate pace. One of them glanced inside, somehow not seeing her, then turned back to the street and lit a cigarette.

Too easy. On the one hand, I feel like my mind is playing games with itself. On the other hand…

She ghosted up behind him, and slammed the butt of her pistol into his temple, yanking him back by his collar as he collapsed.

Ooh, more grenades.

***

Olivia shivered on the rooftop, as another artillery barrage took out the better part of a block to her east. It felt like she’d been in this dream--no, nightmare, definitely a nightmare--for months, years even. The murky nighttime sky was... worse than she'd remembered, seemed to creep in from the edges even when she wasn't looking. In a way, she was tireless here: barely need a break, not truly needing to eat or drink; yet she felt like she was going mad from the constant vigilance and fighting and the pain of over a dozen wounds, painstakingly healed.

Then the troops had pulled back to a degree...and the occasional spattering of artillery turned into a near-constant hail. The city was swiftly becoming nothing but burning rubble.

She had decided at this point that she had only one more thing to try, and then she’d just run for the hills. In reality, the entire city had been surrounded by fanatical soldiers and automated turrets, but maybe here it was different. Still, before that, she’d decided to make her way to a radio station.

As another city block was demolished, she finished her patchwork and quickly turned the system on. The emergency radio was set to record her voice, then broadcast it at several common frequencies through the station’s large, rooftop antenna.

“Anyone out there? Anyone not a Determinist?” She hesitated. “Or hell, this is my mind, right? I’ll even take a Dt at this point. Or lemmie talk to a doggy, whatever! Just...please, I’m tired of this. I’m so tired. I just want to wake up.”

She released the transmit button, and let the radio do its work. Two minutes. Five minutes.

“Please, anybody. Come in.”

The building across from her had a repeating pattern in its faded, 60s-era exterior tilework. They repeated every seven tiles in one direction, four in the other. She blinked, realizing she’d been staring into space for at least ten minutes, then further coming to the realization that she hadn’t broken out of her trance earlier because the bombardment had stopped.

Maybe…?

Then, she heard it begin, and turned her gaze to the south. It was like being on the wrong end of a fireworks show. Every damned piece of arty they had in their southern line was firing. She didn’t need to guess where they were aimed.

Just triangulating my position, then. Huh. Well, I guess we’ll find out if getting reduced to my constituent atoms will finally kick me out of this.

She sighed, and rested her back against the antenna boom, staring up at the incoming tracer shells, hearing the ever-louder whistle as they approached. Then she looked aside, noticing that the Moon had finally found a break in the clouds. It was full, and incredibly bright, but-

“Ahaa! I’ve finally found you!”

Before she could even turn towards the ringing female voice that had called up from below, a pulse of sparkling bluish light expanded from its direction, forming a dome. She gawked as it expanded, torn between watching it and running to find the speaker, when the incoming shells began to strike the dome, erupting into an enormous constellation of hellfire.

She watched it bloom for a moment, then shook her head and dashed to the edge of the roof, frantically looking at the streets below. She heard a startled gasp to her left, and glanced its way in time to see an sparkling, ethereal cloud of shadows and starlight dart around a corner.

“Hello?! Who are you? What the hell just happened??”

No response, just the thundering background of high explosives. She sagged against the lip of the roof.

“Please? Are you there? I...I know you’re just a part of my dream, but help me out here. I’m tired, and I just want to do whatever I have to in order to wake up.”

Nothing...but now accompanied by a strange feeling of hesitation. Then, another dome of blue light expanded from a point behind the building, a few yards away from where she’d seen the mystery cloud. When this light touched her, she felt a strange tingling.

What th-

She gasped, and felt a strange clarity, as if a blanket had been pulled off of a certain part of her brain. It felt...normal.

She closed her eyes, gave her mind that particular little twist, and-

Jet Lag

Flashpoint

Chapter Four:

'Jet Lag'

-her eyes shot open as she pushed herself upright. She reached towards her thigh, but stopped herself--she could feel the gun wasn’t there anyway.

As her breathing slowed, she took in what little of her surroundings she could. A small, dark cabin. Not her own. Bed, side table, small locker near the door. She recognized it--a recovery room near the medbay.

The dream was fading quickly, and she tried to grasp onto whatever details she could. Blue stars and dogs, cupcakes and artillery. Shit. She switched to trying to remember why she was in a recovery room. Flashes of events. The crash, the hydra, the...ponies? Was that real? She remembered someone weighing the pros and cons of different library cataloguing schemes, but they were talking in gibberish, but were they really?

Rubbing her forehead, she got out of bed, noting that she was still in her fatigues, though someone had taken a bit of effort to brush the worst of the bog off them. She stumbled over to the locker, and found her sidearm and eyetap on the shelf inside. She strapped on the former and pocketed the latter, and was about to activate the intercom when she heard-and-felt a hollow banging from the outer wall.

What? Something in the hull interstice?

She exited the room, visions of swamp critters in her head, entering through hull breaches and probably chewing through shield cabling. Just a few meters down, one of the access-airlocks was open, and through it she heard a voice.

“Alright, just that one more and we’re done.”

The voice of someone from the crew working on the ship--probably trying to fix some of the outer hull bracing--calmed her, until a different voice responded.

“Finally!”

It was not a familiar voice, and the accent was strange. She hesitated, then moved up to the open airlock as the conversation moved on.

“Pssh, where’s your work ethic?”

There was a clanking of heavy metal, and then the unfamiliar voice responded with a bit of a wheeze, “Sorry, it tends to go on vacation when I’m hungry…”

The crewman chuckled. “Yeah, same here.”

“Besides, we don’t really, uh, do much...in the Princess’s guard, most of the time. This is the most hard work I’ve done in ages!”

“Really. I’ll be sure to tell your lieutenant you said so.”

“Heyyy…”

Olivia passed through the airlock, and slowly drew up behind the crewman...and a muscular male pony with a blonde coat and blue and pink mane and tail. The pony’s back was draped with a flame-proof welding mat, and had a rather large alloy beam balanced atop that.

The crewman--Jones, she thought?--nodded. “Okay.”

The pony shifted, and then changed his posture, holding the beam up against one of the outer-hull bracings.

Holy shit! That beam must weigh a ton, but he’s barely straining!

Olivia averted her eyes as Jones welded the beam in place.

“Done!”

The pony settled down, and then started to move away. Olivia decided to make herself known by clearing her throat, causing the two to start, then turn her way.

Jones immediately raised his welding mask, and stiffened into a salute. “Captain!”

The pony raised a hoof to his chest and nodded. “Ma’am.”

She waved the crewman’s salute away, and asked, “What exactly is going on here?”

“Err...Engineer Dubrovsky wanted some of the bracings reinforced, to make sure the bog doesn’t yank any plates off when we lift out of here.”

Olivia stared at him for a moment, then turned her gaze on the pony.

He blinked, and then coughed. “Ah, Ma’am, I’ve been left here for tonight, to help out where I can, and provide a trace point for return teleports.”

Eyebrow raised, she asked, “I...think I recognize your voice. You were the...the Sergeant that was with the...Princess, though you look different.” She paused, realizing her mouth had chosen to use unfamiliar words to describe their positions. “What in the…”

“Ah, that’s an aftereffect of the language sharing spell, ma’am. It wears off after a bit of practice, once things finish sorting out in your head.” He paused, then added, “And, uh, yes. My name is Stone Wall, and I was with the Princess--this is just how I look normally. What you saw before was a glamour that’s enchanted onto royal guard armor, to make us all look alike.”

She felt her eye twitch as she parsed what he’d said, then repeated, “Language spell.”

The pony somehow managed to blush, and his ears flattened as he said, “Yes, ma’am. Also, I have been instructed to offer the Princess’s most sincere preliminary apologies for her careless use of said spell--to be augmented with her direct apologies once she returns in the morning!” He bowed to her, on bent forelegs.

She glared down at him, then shifted her gaze to Jones, who offered a weak smile. She sighed, and rubbed her eyes. When she reopened them, the pony was worriedly looking up at her.

Turning back towards the airlock, she waved a dismissal. “Preliminary apology accepted. Carry on.”

She stepped back through the airlock, then froze. Did he say ‘return teleports’? ...I need a goddamn cup of coffee.

***

Lingering over a sip of something that pretended to have coffee beans involved in its creation, Olivia pondered what she’d heard, then set the mug down on her desk, still silent. She studied Lydia surreptitiously, noting that her Lieutenant still had a terrible poker face, and wondering what that said about the ponies’ ability to read human emotions. Surely they wouldn’t have bought the lies if they were any good at it...on the other hand, maybe they were simply playing along, and it was her officers who hadn’t seen through the natives’ bluff. Ugh, too much second-guessing.

Lydia cleared her throat, looking increasingly uncomfortable, and Olivia decided to stop torturing her.

“I don’t necessarily object to what you did,” she began, making her first officer look up. “I hadn’t exactly planned it out since we expected a much larger communication problem, but I certainly wasn’t going to give them the whole truth.”

Giving a nod, Lydia added, “It was spur of the moment, but I felt like otherwise Anatoly might have let too much slip, so I just sort of went with it.” She paused. “...There is something about them. It kind of hurt to lie.”

“Mmm.” She sighed, and slouched down a little in her seat. “It’s good that you thought to tell Jones, but we’re going to have to let the entire crew know. All it would take is one conversation about the Dts or our cargo while that ‘Stone Wall’ is passing by, or one of the others tomorrow, and it all falls apart.”

“Yeah.” Lydia nodded. “I’ll write something up ASAP.”

“Thanks. Hopefully we’ll be powered and out of here before anything goes crazy.” She raised an eyebrow. “So, what else?”

“Ma’am?”

“I want your impressions of all three of them.” She smirked. “You may be an open book at times, but you’re also good at reading other people.”

Lydia snorted, then looked thoughtful. “The Princess, Twilight Sparkle...I don’t know. She seems older than she looks. Experienced, smart...yet still almost childish at times, though I mean that in a good way. She and Tolya were totally ready to nerd out for a while there. She said she used to be a librarian, and her bags, packed for a walk through a bog, were still full to the brim with books. I could almost see her teaching at a university or something.”

“Hmm...so what does that say about her position? She was the only one with wings and a horn, so...some sort of inherited leadership position?”

Lydia looked doubtful. “I don’t know, the other two seemed to have significant respect for her, despite her quirks. Also, she certainly seemed to be the powerhouse during that fight. I can still feel my skin tingling from the field around that damned lightning bolt she smacked the hydra with.”

“Yeah.” Olivia suppressed a shiver. “Her Second is no slouch, though.”

Nodding, Lydia agreed, “That shield she put up took on something 20 times her size, and deflected a few stray gatekeeper rounds.”

“So, what about her? Kite Shield, was it?”

“Heh…” A weak smile came to her face. “I felt a strange sort of kinship with her, at times. She’s certainly the more skeptical one, and more pragmatic--she almost lost it when the Princess suggested our landing zone.”

“It is rather surprising. Lucky for them, I intend for us to be the best of guests.”

Lydia agreed, then hesitated. “But...if anybody is going to see through the lie, it’s going to be Kite. And I suppose we have to treat any of her guards as extensions of her.” She glanced up. “And before you ask, you’ll have to talk to Anatoly about the Sergeant--I haven’t even really spoken to him.”

Olivia glanced at the clock as it ticked over to 0037 hours, then sighed. “I guess that’ll have to wait till morning. Finish those gatekeeper mods and send out the cloak-and-dagger notice, then get some sleep.”

With a casual salute, Lydia rose and started for the door.

“One more thing.”

She turned, hearing the sound of a pen scratching.

As she looked back, Olivia raised a small scrap of paper, on which was scrawled, “Protocol 17-A”.

Lydia felt her eyebrows jump to the ceiling, then simply nodded, and left.

***

Olivia sighed, and rose from the chair in her quarters, stretching. Her lower back popped in disturbing ways, and she thought, “I should ask the Doctor about that”, for what was probably the fiftieth time. She tossed the tablet she’d been working with onto a table, and then glanced at her bed.

She’d gone through every equipment and supply list. Medical reports. Tech reports. Even approved the menu for the next week. And yet it was still only 4:30. She couldn’t sleep. She wanted to blame the coffee, or the impromptu nap, or the excitement of the situation, but if she was honest, it was fear.

’That dream...it was probably just the spell screwing with me, but.. I’m not ready to revisit dreamland, not yet.’

She wondered idly if she should talk to someone about it. Was that really what it was like for most people? She’d always heard people describe being various grades of powerless in their dreams, but she’d never been able to imagine it, not really. From her earliest memories, her dreams had always been a playground, fully under her control.

’Meh.’

Her door was open and she was out of her room before she’d really thought of it. She stalked down the corridors, nodding to a passing night-shift engineer, and wandered aimlessly for a few minutes. She eventually found herself at the door to the Observation Deck, home of most of the very few actual windows on the ship. With a wave of her hand, the door opened, and she entered.

The first thing she noticed was a moon--currently on its way towards setting, and thus prominently visible through the windows. It was larger in apparent size than Earth’s, yet its bright white cast seemed familiar, compared to Tau Ceti’s red and blue twin moons. And it was exactly like the moon in her dream--the size, the craters. ’Just how much knowledge bled through in that damned spell?’

The second thing she noticed was that she was not alone, as a distinctly pony-shaped silhouette turned its head her way. As her eyes adjusted to the bright moonlight, she made out a nervous-looking Stone Wall sitting on one of the lounge chairs, wrapped in a blanket.

She raised an eyebrow and asked, “Trouble sleeping?”

“Ah, a bit.” He smiled weakly. “I got a few hours, but…” he glanced around “...this ship is too unfamiliar, and makes all sorts of weird noises. I’m used to hearing crickets and bats at night.”

She nodded, then sat in a nearby chair. “I guess I understand. I suppose I’d have the opposite problem.”

He tilted his head.

“Ehh…” she waved a hand vaguely “...I was born planetside, and spent a lot of a time there, but the majority of my last fifteen years have been on ships and stations. Crickets and bats and fresh air would probably keep me up.”

He chuckled a bit. “I suppose ponies, er…people can adapt to almost anything.” He hesitated, then ventured, “Ah, I don’t want to be nosy…”

She just raised an eyebrow.

“Well...” he continued, “if you were born on a planet, what made you choose to leave?”

“Hmm…It never really felt like a choice, I suppose.”

“...Pardon?”

She steepled her hands as she clarified, “I was born on a farm, in a place called ‘Iowa’. It hasn’t changed much in...centuries, really. Farms, farmers, and farming. I always knew I wasn’t going to stay, that it wasn’t the place for me.”

Looking up, she regarded the moon for a moment, which was slowly being washed out by the growing twilight--though the quality and increase of the light was a bit strange to her eyes. She began to wonder if this planet’s moon wasn’t tidally locked, as Earth’s was.

“I grew up watching and reading space stories, hearing tales of strange new worlds, of heroism and the frontier. In past eras, even after we’d put people in space and made it to our moon, that’s still mostly all that it would have been: stories. Someone like me would have had to settle for a planetside life, with maybe the occasional glimpse of the beyond.”

The pony coughed, and asked, “Uh...how long have humans been travelling to the stars?”

“Hmm...it’s been almost a century, now, since the development of the first space-cutting array. That’s when things really started taking off.” She smiled. “I can’t claim to have made my choices for any noble reason, really. I just wanted out, I wanted adventure, like a lot of young adults.

“But now? I can say, I would have been disappointed in myself if I hadn’t. It would have felt like I was letting down all of the people before me, who could only dream of what I’ve done, and whose hard work got us to this point.”

He looked thoughtful for a while, then queried, “And is it what you wanted? Being captain of a cargo ship?”

She looked at him closely, but saw nothing but a sincere question, and smirked. “It might sound a bit banal, but I’ve had my fair share of adventure, and...I’ve helped a lot of people with what power and position I’ve managed to work myself into. I certainly can’t say everything is as I’d wish, but I like to think I’ve made the best choices I could have.”

He nodded, and was silent until Olivia asked, “And you, Sergeant? Happy with your lot in life?”

“Ah, heh.” His ears wiggled back a bit, and then he cleared his throat. “It’s a family thing, joining the Guard. For stallions and mares, though of course not everybody stays on for life. I...well, I guess I’ve stayed on because of a wish for adventure too.” He smiled, looking proud. “After her ascension twenty-five years ago, the first ranks of Twilight Sparkle’s personal guards were volunteers from throughout the main body of the Guard, and I was one of the first to sign up.”

“We’d heard stories about her for a while, of course, student of one Princess, saviour of another, and it seemed like it would be interesting to be a part of this new retinue. Moreso than just staying in Canterlot.” He grinned. “And it has been. She’s a good pony, and I and my cohorts have been all around the world with her and her friends, on diplomatic and aid missions, gotten into a few scrapes and such. I’m glad I had the chance.”

“Hmm...no regrets.” She nodded.

“None to speak of,” he replied.

They fell into an easy silence for a few minutes, and Olivia noted that the moon had almost seemed to stop in the sky, still hanging above the horizon as the sky grew pink and orange. Then, right before her eyes, it sank at an absurd speed and disappeared, somehow almost giving off an air of embarrassment.

Olivia stared at the space where it had hung, trying to keep her mind from imploding, when Stone Wall murmured, “I was wondering why moonset was so late. I guess Princess Luna was distracted.”

She looked askance at him, and had opened her mouth to voice either a question or mindless babbling, when there was an odd, twinkling paff noise, and a flash of light. When she blinked away then turned back, an excited Twilight Sparkle and a rather tired looking Kite Shield had appeared behind Stone Wall’s chair.

Twilight looked around, then grinned at Olivia. “Good morning!”

Adventures in theory-crafting reality

Flashpoint

Chapter Six:

'Adventures in theory-crafting reality'

Twilight suppressed a sigh of fatigue as she teleported, dropping Kite and herself in the courtyard in front of her tower at the Keep. The Sun was just starting to dip behind the ridge to the west, painting the Keep and its grounds an ever-deepening shade of orange.

Kite looked over to her charge, and saluted. "If you need me, I'll be down at the…well, I guess it's a landing field, now, checking over the preparations."

Smiling, Twilight shook her head. "I think I'll try to head to bed early tonight. Make sure you get some rest, too."

"Yes, Princess." Kite nodded, and moved off.

Twilight made her way up the tower. As she entered, she wondered at the quiet darkness of the lower levels, but then she recalled that Spike was scheduled to be in charge at the Ponyville library for a week, starting today. 'I suppose feeling like he's grown up too fast is silly, but I can't help it. Really, I've kept him as an apprentice archivist for too long…once all this excitement is over, I should free him up...I know he’s hoping to get a position in Canterlot.’ She continued upward, and smiled as she found that the upper floors weren't so quiet: Rainbow Dash's snores were reverberating through the living chambers.

The pegasus was sprawled out on the oldest of Twilight’s reading couches, mouth gaping wide with each breath. Twilight silently regarded her friend for a moment, looking past familiarity to see the scars, and the occasional line of age--smiles mostly, but also worry and anger and a familiar stubborn scowl. Far fewer lines than one might expect in a pony pushing 50, but…

Twilight blinked, and realized she was being a little creepy, so she gently nudged Dash's shoulder. "Hey Rainbow, you know there's a guest room, right?"

Dash snorted, and woke with her usual militant abruptness. "Mmm…hey Twi. … Yeah, but this has always been the best couch."

Twilight rolled her eyes and turned to the fireplace. "It still smells like ashes. You and Spike being so stubborn about it is the only reason I dragged it out from the ruins of the old library. You're so randomly sentimental," she finished with a smirk.

"Pfft. You say ashes, I say it's smoked and well-preserved!" Dash flopped off of the couch and onto her feet, then stretched languorously. "So…w'sup? You gonna tell me about the monkeys and their crazy metal airship, or go all 'state secrets' on me?"

Twilight sighed as she stirred the banked fire back to life, then moved the kettle which had been at the edge of the embers to hang directly over it. "Humans, Dash, not monkeys. And I won't hide it from you--you'd be learning the truth before too long anyway. I mean, you are a part of the 'state', technically." She fixed Dash with an arch look. "But this is a secret, and I don't want you telling anyone else yet. I'll tell the other girls myself, next time I see them, okay?"

Dash's ears went back slightly at her friend's serious tone, and she nodded. "Got it." She sat down at the low table the room offered.

Her warning given, Twilight realized she didn't actually know where to start. Her ears cocked to random angles as she pondered it, then she ventured, "Um…remember those old fantasy novels I gave you, way back when…the ones by Reignlein?"

Dash blinked, then gave her a funny look. "I…I guess so? You mean the silly ones with the sex and the space...aliens?" Her irises shrank.

"Yyyyup."

Dash stared. "Twilight…how much sleep have you been getting lately?"

Rolling her eyes she responded, "I'm not crazy, Dash. Their arrival was the cause of that wild aurora two nights ago. Besides, you saw their ship…do you really think any race on Alfheim is capable of putting something that massive and uniform together out of metal?"

"Well…not that I know of." She sighed, then looked suspicious. "Hey, wait a minute. How could some of them speak Equestrian, then?"

Twilight's cheeks colored slightly. "Ehh…I might have cast a somewhat inadvisable translation spell on a few of us and them yesterday. It sort of…dumped the language parts of our minds in a pot, swirled them around, and then put 'em back." When she saw how Dash was looking at her, she hastily added, "I got impatient, okay? I…I really wanted to talk to them, and was a little scattered after that fight with the hydra." She avoided Dash's eyes by concentrating on removing the kettle, then pouring two cups of tea.

Dash, for her part, was silent as Twilight added one cube of sugar to her own cup, and three to the pegasus'. As Twilight brought these to the table, Dash cleared her throat.

"So then those were weapons I saw them carrying, and on their ship...?"

Twilight looked surprised, but she nodded. "They're quite formidably armed, even without the ship. Though they did need the ship to finally drive the hydra off."

Dash gulped, then stared down at her tea. "You…seem to be taking this in stride."

"Well…I don't think they mean us any harm. It's just a cargo ship, Dash--I even sampled some of their wares today, and I think we can do business with them, beyond just providing them friendly help with repairs, and they're going to let me have some of their library!" She forced herself not to go starry-eyed at the thought. "I know they have weapons, but so does every griffon or lycan ship we've ever seen..."

"I guess…" Dash started, and then took a sip of her tea. She then shot a worried look at her friend. "They're bringing the ship here, aren't they?"

Twilight almost shot tea out of her nose, before blinking rapidly at the pegasus. "How did you know?!"

She snorted, then pointed at her forehead with a wingtip. "You should know better than anyone that I'm pretty observant when I'm in the air, yanno," she said with a smirk, then gestured towards a window. "Like, of the size of their ship, and the fact that the area your guys are clearing and leveling out is a good bit larger than that."

Twilight's blush was enough answer.

"I just…" Dash paused to collect her thoughts. "…I dunno. Call me paranoid, but I worry that the whole 'mind meld' thing might be messing with your judgement. We've run into magic that screws with ponies' minds so many times, even magic that seems like it should be harmless…" She shrugged.

“Well, I would hope with all of our experiences, I’d notice if something was wrong with us.” She rolled her eyes, “I mean, Kite still seems as wary and protective as her father.”

Dash shook her head. "I'm not even saying it would be malicious, or one-way. Maybe they're trusting you more than they normally would.” She grinned. “And we know that's fine, because we're totally nice and trustworthy, but for us…?" She trailed off, staring at the swirling of her tea leaves.

Twilight considered the statement with a slight frown, silently trying to evaluate her own mind. Finally she sighed, drawing Rainbow's gaze back upwards. "I get what you're saying, Dash, and…I guess it's possible. Hay, if anything they have good reason to mistrust us." She looked embarrassed again. "The spell…sort of knocked their Captain out cold for a few hours."

Dash gave her a sardonic look, and commented, "I guess that’s something good, no matter the cause. If they didn't attack you after that, they can't be too violent."

She snorted, arching an eyebrow. "Them being so forgiving of a certain pegasus' right hook is another good sign."

"Yeah…sorry about that."

Twilight shook her head. "You were just worried about me, and a bit addled. It's fine." She took a sip of her tea, and smiled. "I suppose I should be thankful you've gotten a lot more level-headed over the years--time was, you would have somehow gotten inside the ship, and half the crew would have been sporting bruises by the time I found you."

Dash smirked. "Yeah, well, nowadays I'd end up seriously hurting someone if I went off like that, so I gotta be more careful. Stupid magical canoodling."

"Ohhh, shush, you. There was always a responsible Rainbow Dash, deep inside you, waiting to come out!" Twilight winked at her.

"Riiight." Dash yawned, then rose from the table with a stretch. "Well, this responsible Rainbow Dash should get going before she stays the night and the patch-job on her house springs a leak."

"Oh right, let's get you that cloud…"

The pair went down to the supply warehouse, nudged the dozing night clerk awake, and retrieved a fair-sized chunk of structural cloud that was used for emergency support on some of the most damaged sections of the Keep. Dash nosed it out into the courtyard, hopped up into a hover, then turned back to Twilight.

"So, I really do hope I'm just being paranoid, but…that huge ship with all its weapons, sitting right here on your doorstep. Just…be careful Twi, okay?"

Twilight regarded her friend for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah, I'll take some precautions." She smiled. "See you soon?"

"You know it." She swooped down for a hug, then scooped up the cloud and zipped off over the Everfree, towards Ponyville.

Twilight watched until her ethereal trail faded away, then glanced around the Keep grounds, now lit only by fireflies and crystals. She sighed at a brief thought of her comfy bed, then trotted off towards the 'landing field', in search of Kite.

Olivia rubbed her eyes and briefly entertained thoughts of her bed. ‘Too much to do, too little time.’ She sighed, and returned to the virtual pile of reports on her desk. Cryogenics were working fine. The spot reinforcements on the outer hull were nearly complete. Enough Gatekeeper turrets were now ready to party that she felt a little more secure, even if the Icarus turrets weren’t usable, though she’d still be happy to get out of this bog.

Aside from that, she’d been doing what she could to shift the ship towards a more-military footing: moving hidden ammunition stores into place, checking over guns that had only warded off dangerous debris for years, and beginning the slow process of prepping the axial gravity gun to go back online. It was only made more trying by the continued presence of Stone Wall, but she’d made sure someone was always keeping him out of the way during anything sensitive.

‘And he has proved useful in other ways. I still can’t believe he straightened that lateral support by himself...’ She briefly pondered how useful the Equestrians could be in warfare, but then stopped, feeling guilty. It dawned on her that she didn’t want to see these people exposed to some of the horrors of humanity. Despite their obvious experience with combat--those weren’t toys the Princess’s guards were carrying--they seemed relatively sheltered. ‘Maybe that’s just because they’re so adorable at times.’

A chime blew up her already derailed train of thought, and she blinked before switching a screen over to show Lydia and Anatoly standing outside her office. ‘Hmm...’ She keyed the door open.

“More reports?”

“Among other things,” Lydia said as the two stepped inside and sat down. She glanced over to Tolya, then continued when he said nothing. “I’ve got the gun we burnt out carving up the hydra working again. That puts all of the dorsal and lateral guns online...ventral is another matter. Won’t know just how bad it is until we’re out of the muck, but my gut says we’re coming out of this with no spare parts left, and probably still not at full capacity.”

“Hmm...could we use locally produced parts?”

Lydia looked thoughtful. “I don’t know, but I’m a little skeptical. The parts we’re likely to be short are the big ones...do you really think they’d forge a cannon barrel for us?”

“...Maybe not.” Olivia sighed, and shook her head. “Hopefully everything else will go smoothly and it won’t matter once we get back home. Anything else?”

“Yeah,” Lydia said, “I had a couple of guys run the recordings from last night through the Astrogation system, and, uh…”

Olivia raised an eyebrow.

“Well, I know it’s not actually possible these days, but if I didn’t know better I’d say the system got upset with us. It has a few weak guesses for where we’ve ended up, but it objected to a bunch of different things in the night sky, and then it saw that weird moonset you mentioned earlier, and...well, it basically ragequit.”

“Great.” Olivia sighed. “It won’t be easy getting home if we can’t figure out where to point the directional beacon antenna.” She looked over at the Russian. “You’ve been unusually quiet, Tolya. Ideas?”

He looked blank for a moment, then glanced at Lydia before saying, “Once main power online, could rig up gravity gun for orbital launches, send up satellites. More viewpoints much better for Astrogation, yes? Gives parallax, can discard near-field...”

“Hmm, good call. Both of you get some people working on the satellites, so we’re ready for launch when the mains come online.” She squinted at him as he nodded absently. “What else, Ruskie? You seem out of it.”

“Mmm, yes.” He looked uncomfortable, then started, “First thing is APU...is pretty well fine-tuned now, just down to grid-search of last few decimals.”

Lydia ventured, “Isn’t that a good thing? Or wait...you said the reaction might be less efficient here?”

“No, no, this is thing: reaction is vastly more efficient. Power output ranging fifty to seventy percent above standard, depending on load level. Is…” he paused, then fixed Olivia with a look “...is running smoother than ever before...than any reactor, ever.”

Olivia crossed her arms. “So, what? You’re saying this weird field here is making it work better?”

He shook his head vigorously. “Is epiphany I have, yes? I look at equation Princess gives, I work out details, I see how reactor is behaving…” his fists clenched “...is like this is how things should be.”

Olivia glanced at Lydia to see a mirror of her own bemused skepticism, but before she could say anything, Tolya pressed onwards.

“I even look at implications for standard model, from what Sparkles says about weak force. Allowing for interdimensional parity conservation is...is beautiful. Fills in holes that even pre-Eschaton systems could not.”

“Wait wait wait,” Lydia said, waving her hands, “what exactly do you mean by ‘this is how things should be’ and ‘beautiful’? What are you implying here?”

Tolya fell silent, then nodded. “I have begun to think that perhaps it is here, near Alfheim, that laws of physics are unchanged. Is simpler, cleaner, more efficient, more elegant. But implication would be that everywhere else--everywhere humans have been--laws have been tampered with.” He looked vaguely angry. “Either way, is unsatisfying. Disturbing.”

Olivia and Lydia both stared at him for a long moment, then Olivia gave him a worried look. “Are you feeling okay?”

“No.” He looked her straight in the eyes. “That is other thing. Or rather, I feel good, but this is making nervousness." He made a vague gesture before he continued, "You know I said during APU ignition, that what I did, what we did, was impossible, yes?"

"Um...right. Doing all of that math, getting it working in minutes?"

"Not just math, but seeing what math meant. I am competent engineer," he smirked, "perhaps more than competent, but I am not theorist or savant. Is taking years of school, practice, experience to become good."

Lydia ventured, "Okay, but...couldn't you just have gotten lucky? You don't need to be a savant to have the occasional moment of clarity."

"Yes, yes, is possible once in while, da? But these things I speak of: the elegance of plasma here, the simplicity of standard model, weak force interactions--ë moë! I have never even studied particle physics! Yet is easy, now. Everything...is easier." He rubbed his temple, looking agitated.

Holding up a hand placatingly, Olivia said, "Alright, so, something's strange...could it have something to do with Twilight's translation spell?"

He shook his head. "Is also first thought; but, I think is not just me. I see same thing in LaForge, maybe also in others. Different in details and intensity, da? But same."

Feeling a headache coming on, Olivia rubbed at her eyes again.

Lydia glanced between the two of them, then spoke up, "I...I want to say something, but it brings to mind a worry that's been stewing in the back of my mind for a while now." When she saw she had their attention, she continued, "What I want to say is that we should ask Twilight about this tomorrow." She crossed her arms. "And what I worry is that I...and maybe all of us, are trusting these ponies too much, too easily."

Olivia looked at her thoughtfully.

"I mean, they're cute, right? And they helped us against the hydra, sure, but...even if she didn’t mean it to, who knows how that crazy translation spell could be affecting us? And as far as trust, well Twilight’s only one of their, their-"

"Rulers slash demigods?" Olivia interjected.

Lydia waved affirmatively at her. "I mean, maybe I'm just being paranoid, and even hypocritical given how much we're hiding from them, but..." she sighed "...honestly, this magic crap scares me, and now the Russian is saying even more peoples' minds may be getting messed with..." She shook her head, trailing off.

Tolya shrugged. "Is strange, yes, but...not really detrimental, da?"

"Not yet," Olivia added, then sighed. "I get what you're saying, Lydia, but...at this point I don't think we have a choice. Whatever's happening, everything that's going on...we need help to get back home, at the very least somewhere to do our repairs, and it's not like we have other options: we're smack-dab in the middle of Equestrian territory." She shook her head. "I'm not going to turn down extra help, either--not with a war on."

Lydia looked at her helplessly for a tick, then nodded.

"That said, stay vigilant. Both of you keep looking for signs of more people being affected mentally, and report any new symptoms." She glanced between them, then nodded towards Tolya. "I will ask the Princess about it tomorrow, but only mentioning what you've experienced. We'll see what she says." When they both acknowledged this, she asked, "Anything else?"

Tolya stirred. "One thing. I have Bishop checking over results because he is not seeming affected mentally so far, but is looking like we could move ship under APU power."

Olivia stared at him. "How is that possible?"

"Multiple things. APU output seventy percent greater at high draw, gravitronics seem to operate more efficiently here, atmosphere should be good for thrusters..." He shrugged. "Is choice. We would have plenty capacitor margin for move by tomorrow, noon. Charge for main reactor ignition, not for two more days, or three if we move. Would be easier with shore power, but..."

"But we’re not likely to get that. Still, if we move, we could be doing other repairs while that charge is building..." She stared at the ceiling, then nodded. "If Bishop confirms, prep for the move. I'll have to ask Twilight to see if they're ready, but I think it would be best to get out of here if we can."

Twilight sighed, and sank into her bed, letting out a very un-princessy yawn.

It had been a few hours work, but any slight worries that Rainbow Dash’s words had dredged up were now thoroughly quashed. The combination of Kite’s skill at her own improvement of her father’s shield spell, and Twilight’s knowledge and power, bolstered by ancient buffers and foci still buried throughout the Keep’s grounds, had made for a defense Twilight was proud of. Once active, she doubted even the human ship’s formidable weapons could breach the perimeter around the landing zone, and in a pinch she could easily expand it to act as a defense against outside attack by the humans.

In her heart of hearts, she didn’t believe she’d ever have to use it against Olivia or her ship, but twenty-five years of missions and diplomacy had taught her how little her own beliefs could matter to some situations. It never hurt to have contingency plans.

Olivia lay in bed, still looking thoughtfully at the datapad in her hand, the ship systems status readout scrolling slowly down the small touchscreen. A big, wide universe, and this was where they ended up.

She knew the statistics. The dynamics that governed a blind jump were pretty simple: you moved until you passed close enough to a significant gravity well. Most likely, that would be a star, and you’d end up dead before you had time for a single coherent thought.

It’d been done before, and the ships like Minerva had been lost because of it.

It had been an order of magnitude less probable that they’d emerge near a planet. And they found themselves near, not just any planet, but a living, breathing, intelligence-bearing world? Somehow, they had found themselves in a place where they could get help, and where the rules were just different enough to stack the deck in their favor. And it happened by pure coincidence.

Or had it been?

Tolya’s theory about this world, and the laws that governed it, had raised some very uncomfortable questions for her. Questions that would have to be addressed sooner than later, questions that one purple pony princess in particular might be her best source for the answers to.

She keyed her tablet to transcribe her voice, and send the text to the crew. “Tomorrow, it’s likely we’ll be moving the ship to a safer location for continued repairs. This location will have many more of our new friends in the vicinity. Your best behavior is expected. In the event of any misunderstandings or confrontations, all system interfaces will be capable of calling a translator. Delay and deflect until such a person arrives. I know you’re all worried, but with this unexpected help, Caledonia should be spaceworthy within a couple of weeks at the outside. We’re going to get home.

Good night.”

That would do, she figured. Letting her head touch pillow and be done with a hard day was the better course of action from here out, but Tolya’s warning from earlier in the day kept coming back to her. They were better than they had been. She felt it too. Not in particle physics or manually calibrating a reactor.

She just felt better, better than she had in years Since before Russia, or the Moon.

Stargazer / Falling Star

Flashpoint

Chapter One:

'Stargazer / Falling Star'

Twilight Sparkle peered intently through her telescope, which was trained on the Four Sisters. She noted down the appearance of a dim new object in the south-west quadrant, marking it as a possible new nova.

“What’s up, Twilight?” Spike had come up behind, and was peering into the darkness shrouding the balcony.

“Just doing a quick survey.” She glanced back towards the sound of his voice. “I know I need to get to that paperwork, Spike, but it’s such a clear night. I couldn’t resist.”

“Well, it’s not as big of a problem now. Blueblood just canceled his appointment with you tomorrow, so you won’t need to go over those zoning permits.”

The purple alicorn sighed gratefully. “Thanks, Spike. Maybe he’s finally gotten the message that no matter how many ways he re-words his request, I know he’s really just trying to manipulate the system for an unfair advantage.”

Spike made a noncommittal noise, and moved a bit closer. “Wow, the sky really is clear tonight. So many stars...and we’re really only seeing a small fraction of them?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Twilight said, nodding, “and you know, each one could have planets just like ours around it.”

“Other planets?” Spike’s voice took on a dazed tone. “But...does that mean there could be other ponies out there?”

Twilight smiled. “Not just ponies, there could be creatures like griffons, or manticores, or even something completely different from anything we’ve seen before. Entirely new life!”

Spike gulped audibly. “B...but you don’t think that’s actually real, right? That there’s...things out there?”

“Actually...” Twilight said, looking thoughtful, “I talked to Princess Celestia about that once. She seemed pretty certain there were other beings out there, and even that some of them would be able to travel between the stars!”

“Between them? But they’re so far away!”

“Even farther than you might think,” she said thoughtfully. “I tried to talk to the princess about it, but she never seemed comfortable. It seems a little crazy that it would be possible, I mean, there’s not even air out there! And because we can’t really travel very fast, it would take months, even years to get anywhere. You’d have to carry air and food and water for all that time, too.”

“So...” the young dragon sounded unsure. “So you don’t think it’s likely, then?”

“Well, I suppose anything is possible, in a universe this large.” She looked back to him. “But don’t worry, Spike. With so many challenges to get to that point, I’m sure any people that made it to other stars would be calm, rational, and entirely reasonable. ...And even then, why would they want to come to our silly little planet?”

“Yeah...I guess so.” Spike moved back towards the door. “Well, I guess I’ll head to bed. Do you want me to put some tea on?”

“That would be lovely. Have a good night.”

As the dragon’s footsteps faded, the young princess turned back to her survey. Now, though, she couldn’t stop wondering if, as she looked to the stars, someone else might be looking back.

***

Captain Olivia Wrayburn looked off into the sea of stars, trying not to think about history, about life, about the things she needed to do, and about the bed she just wanted to fall into. She tried to think back to when she was a child--to look at the sky, the planet, and the works of humanity and simply take in the beauty.

Deimos station rotated slowly in Mars orbit, hanging in the darkness of space like a gem-studded Christmas ornament. The lights from the multitude of windows completed the effect and made the ex-satellite stand out in sharp contrast to the dull red planet behind it.

The station was the center of all trade that had to cross the asteroid belt, a launching point for any expedition to the outer planets, and the last population center before the designated jump-out point at Triton.

There was, on an average day, an almost frantic level of activity surrounding Deimos--ships coming in and out, shuttles to and from the Martian surface, all of it forming a new and dynamic constellation in the sky, which became ever clearer as one drew close. It was for this reason that, as Caledonia approached the eastern docking ring, she drew no more attention than any other ship in port.

Olivia’s reverie was broken by her helmsman as he softly spoke into his headset while the ship’s approach to the docks slowed. “Deimos control, This is TCS-7790, Caledonia, requesting docking on gantry seventy-eight per request by Major Thames.”

Caledonia, like other ships of her class, was technically a light cruiser; however, due to a shortage of materials in the Tau Ceti system, she had been partially converted into a freighter: her troop barracks had been gutted and repurposed as a cargo bay, most of her power output had been redirected to propulsion, and her crew complement was dramatically reduced.

This made her look no less imposing to those who were unaware, and to those who were, two hundred and fifty meters of starship was an awe inspiring sight regardless.

“Stand by, hold position at five-five-zero meters,” the voice on the other end of the radio replied, “Processing your request now.”

“That’s different,” Olivia muttered under her breath, frowning. She turned to her console and cycled through her logs as she waited on confirmation. “Never had them delay us like this before.”

“Captain?” The helmsman asked as he turned from his console.

“I’m not sure, Thames did seem a bit on edge last time we talked... Scan the station, gently. Don’t want to upset them,” she said as she sighed and leaned back in her chair.

"Ma'am, something's -- Contact! Incoming missiles bearing zero-one-three mark zero-zero-five, the station just fired on us!" the helmsman yelled in shock as he stared at his console.

“Oh. Shit,” The captain replied flatly as she stood out of her chair, “Shields, now! Back us off!”

The helmsman shook his head and turned back to his console, his fingers danced crossed the controls as the ship lurched backwards as the missile trails arced towards it. A loud buzzing sound echoed through the bridge and his face turned to panic, “Ma’am, localized subspace anomaly, shields will not come up. They’re jamming us!”

The captain snatched her microphone boom down to her face as she stared at the bridge monitors, “Deimos this is Caledonia, we surrender, we surrender, stop firing!”

“Please stand by.”

“So they know then...” She muttered as she threw her headset off. She looked at her weapons officer, “Sound general quarters, blow the camouflage panels and bring up point defenses! Do not return fire on Deimos!”

As it violently threw itself away from the station, the Caledonia was shown to be not quite so defanged as she seemed. Dozens of small panels blew away from the hull, revealing the turrets of a close-in weapons system. These began to target the incoming torpedoes.

“Keep backing us off, full power. Turn the cargo bay away from them, thirty-five fifteen forty rotation. Charge the cutting array, target the Triton beacon.”

The turrets sprang to life on the hull of the ship, and tracers lanced out towards the inbound torpedos, impacting into several, causing a premature detonation that destroyed other adjacent weapons. And still they came--for every torpedo destroyed, another was still inbound.

“No lock on Triton, ma’am.” The helmsman’s voice took on a slight edge of panic. “No lock on anything, they must have done a planned take-down.”

The weapons officer called out, “Another round of launches. Reading higher-yields.”

As the first swarm of torpedoes passed the discarded camo panels, Olivia nodded to the helmsman. “We can’t stay here. Set for blind jump.” She reached for her headset and triggered ship-wide address. “All hands, brace for impact!”

Moments later, the ship was hit; detonations rippled across the armored hull, removing plates and spilling atmosphere into the void.

The captain picked herself up off the deck and stumbled against the helm. The previous occupant of that station was lying on the deck--either dead or unconscious, she couldn’t tell. She glanced back towards the monitors, and saw the second wave of torpedoes incoming.

“So that’s it, the first shots of the next war...shame I won’t be around to see it,” she muttered as her fingers slid across the keys, dialing in commands as the ship continued to list.

WARNING: CUTTING ARRAY ACTIVE, NO BEACON DETECTED. PLEASE CONFIRM Y/N

"Here’s to hoping we don’t end up like the Minerva,” she she said with a wry grin as her finger pressed down on the execute button. Her entire world turned white, and with an electric pop, it was gone.

***

As her vision returned, Olivia felt a rush of relief at not being a cinder. Then the ship gave a stomach-turning lurch, quivered with a strange compressional flex, and then began to shake slightly. She looked at the monitors and saw...nothing?

“Ma’am,” Lydia, her weapons officer, sounded unsure, “I’m getting some crazy returns on telemetry...”

The ship gave another lurch as the view to outside cleared up, and Olivia saw...a landscape of dark outlines, with sprinkles of seemingly artificial light here and there. ‘Shit.’

“Ah, ma’am--”

“We’re in atmosphere, way too low, recalibrate and give me an altitude reading.” Olivia turned back to the helm controls and began tapping keys. “Prepping for short-range emergency skip, dead ahead.”

Her actions were cut short as the ship shuddered again, and the main lighting and several non-essential consoles briefly flickered. The resonant tone of the ship changed subtly, and warning warning lights began flashing all across the bridge.

Lydia called out, “We’re at about forty two hundred meters, gravity is is point nine gee, atmosphere is... nitrogen, oxygen, trace gasses, looks like a garden world.”

Olivia absorbed the information while staring at the helm long enough to register that a complete power loss had hit all cutting array systems, watched as the bridge monitors flickered, then grabbed the nearest headset and keyed it to Engineering. “Anatoly, what the hell is going on? We’re about two minutes from being a stain on some colony world and I don’t have main power.”

Her head engineer’s voice responded, “No idea, reactor went unstable when you tried to charge the array. We just dumped our plasma; there is no way we are restarting soon.”

“Well where’s the APU, Tolya? We need power or we’re hosed.”

“We are working on it.” She heard a clunking noise in the background. “Not coming up, like reaction rate is off, fuel may be contaminated.”

She paused a moment, then asked, “Can we land on emergency power?”

“Ah, the books would say no. Is worth try, I will switch us over.”

She dropped the headset and keyed up the manual flight controls, as a few of the warning lights went off. As thrust power became available, she deactivated the stabilizing automatics, and took control.

She let out a humorless laugh as the controls grew heavy in her hands, the feedback from the control surfaces interacting with the atmosphere was something she hadn’t felt in years, “Lydia, take Calvino down to medical, if we don’t die in the next five minutes I’d like him to not-die with the rest of us.”

“Captain, are you sure you’ll be alright alone up here?” the weapons officer replied.

“No worse alone than with somebody I’d venture to guess. Besides, I’ve always wanted to try lithobraking. Now go, if we make it through this I’d like to not make a habit of piloting the ship; I’m just not that good at it,” she ended with a humorless laugh.

“Aye Ma’am,” the officer replied as she hefted the smaller form of the helmsman onto her shoulder and carried him across the platform towards the hatch, even as the deck pitched and shuddered.

Olivia keyed up her headset again as she heard the hatch clang shut behind her, “All hands, prepare for emergency landing. I repeat, all hands, prepare for emergency landing.”

And still the ship fell. A flick of a switch toggled the external lights on and the ground was illuminated below; far closer than she’d have liked.

“Captain this is Anatoly, I have idea, is going to end badly but less badly than exploding; use reaction control system as landing thruster. I have modified system, will burn out assembly very quickly but should keep us from dying.”

“Thank you, Tolya. Here goes nothing.”

***

Twilight sighed, and started to put away her notes. Other than the nova and a tiny twinkling she suspected would soon reveal itself to be a comet, the sky hadn’t noticeably changed since her previous survey. She knew there were plenty of other astronomers watching the skies and keeping track, but it always made her uncomfortable to put off her own surveys, which she’s had to do quite often lately.

She stretched, arching her back and extending her wings, working slightly stiffened muscles. Levitating her notebook, she turned around to shelve it. She noted that she’d need to have Spike move a few volumes to the archives soon, as she was almost out of shelf space. As she slid the book home, she felt the strangest sensation tickling her magical senses, as if the world had been given a slight twist.

As she glanced around trying to determine the source of the strange feeling, the floor of the tower she stood in shook, as a coughing boom rolled over the Keep, rattling the windows--even breaking a few from the sound of it.

What in the...that was louder than one of Rainbow Dash’s Sonic Rainbooms!

She hurried back to the balcony and scanned the sky, looking for a source. She was just about to hop over the railing to hover and get a better view, when she saw a glowing...cloud? expand from a point in the sky to her right. It glowed softly, then began to pulse and weave chaotically, much like the lights of the aurora visible in the Crystal Empire. It radiated with green, red, and orange, sweeping and twisting like some hideous sea creature. She’d never seen aurora so dynamic, and yet so constricted in space. The cloud of light expanded, and then she saw a small dark region puff out it, almost directly towards the Keep.

Staring at what she thought she had seen, Twilight could just barely make out a dim form moving her way, and quickly descending. Some sort of meteorite? She was excited by the prospect, but also terrified of the damage it could do to the Keep and the surrounding area. She began to gather her energy to try to shield as much as she could from any blasts, but then, a bright blue light began to emit from the dim form, and...its path began to change.

It’s...flying? A vehicle of some sort?

As she watched, its descent curve became less of a plummet, and more of a controlled glide. It passed overhead still several thousand feet above. The main body of the object was still basically invisible, but from the outline, the blocked stars, and the reflections of the blue fire coursing from the end, she got a sense of enormity. A loud clang echoed from one of the courtyards, but she barely noticed, as the strange flying object descended to the west, heading for Froggy Bottom Bog.

Twilight kept her eyes on it, pushing herself off of the balcony, and hovering upwards to watch it descend. It was just about to fall out of her sight when she saw the blue light flicker, and with a stuttering boom, go out. A far distant series of crunching and crashing noises could be heard, then...nothing.

She paused a moment to see if anything further would happen, then descended to the courtyard at the base of her tower. Racing through still-ruined corridors and hopping the gap of a broken bridge, she saw her guard captain looking a bit disheveled, but already gathering some of her charges. She trotted up to her, and called out, “Kite!”

Kite Shield looked up from a notebook she was levitating, and smiled, “Auntie, er, Princess! I guess it woke you too?”

She gave her a sardonic look. “You think I was asleep? I saw the whole thing. I need to get out there.”

The young unicorn nodded sharply. “Of course! I’m already trying to figure out a detail, I expected you would want to examine such a large meteorite.”

Twilight shook her head, eliciting a confused look. “That was no meteorite, Kite. The second half of its descent was all wrong, it was flying, and seemed to be providing its own motive power. I’m sure it was some sort of vehicle, though made by whom I have no idea.”

Her niece stared at her for a moment, then looked back to her notes. “Uhh, well. I’ll need to send more guards, then. Better break out the javelins...” She wandered towards the barracks, still muttering.

Twilight smiled slightly at how much Kite looked like Shining Armor when she fretted, then turned and made her way back to the tower, to try to decide what to pack. When she arrived, she noticed bright lights on in the living area, and flew up to that level.

“Hey Twilight.” Spike didn’t even look up from where he was blearily packing her saddlebags.

“Spike! I guess the noise woke you?”

“Yeah...” he shuffled over to the bookshelves and picked out a couple of volumes. “...I saw the tail end of the...whatever that was, and then you went flying off. Figured you’d want to take off soon to get to the edge of the Bog at sunrise.”

She gave the young dragon a chagrined smile, “Thanks, Number-One Apprentice.”

He yawned a vague affirmation.

Raising an eyebrow, she asked, “So, any thoughts on what it was?”

His eyes widened a bit and he stared at her for a moment, then looked thoughtful. “Well...it obviously wasn’t natural, ‘cuz it didn’t fall right. But if it’s a vehicle of some sort...” He gave her a skeptical look. “Who has that kind of technology? The Griffon Empire?”

“Hmm...we know they have projects, some of them secret.” She paused to think. “I don’t recall hearing of anything of this magnitude.”

“Hunh.” Spike glanced at her bags, then wandered back to the shelves, and searched for a moment before pulling out another book.

Twilight saw the cover as he found a place for it. “The Diplomat’s Spellchest?”

“Hey, your griffon is still pretty rusty, if it _is_ the griffons. And after a crash like that, who knows what sort of mood they’re in?”

***

Olivia felt fear--no, terror. Was it taking too long? How long should it take? What if something went wrong? The doctor had said it was as routine as these things got, but... Centuries of objections from religious fanatics had held back the science. If not for all of that, she could believe this would be old-hat by now. Repairs would be made in-utero. Not like this. They said it wasn’t painful, but how could they know? How could changing someone at the genetic level not be painful? What if she remembers this? What if this is her first memory, this trauma? What if-

The door opened, cutting her inner monologue off, and the doctor walked in, carrying Andrea in his arms.

She let out a sigh, as a wave of relief washed over her. The doctor carefully returned her baby, and she looked down at a peacefully sleeping face.

“She’ll be out for a few more minutes,” the doctor said, “then the nanosedatives will disengage, and she’ll probably wake up hungry.”

Olivia looked up at him, “and everything...?”

He looked a little surprised. “Oh, everything went fine. As I said, a routine genemod wash.” His expression changed to one of sympathy. “Your daughter will live a long and healthy life, now.”

She smiled at him, and then down at little Andrea. She lowered her head to kiss her daughter on the forehead, and breathed in her scent, of ozone and a bit of industrial lubricant...

...What?

Olivia exhaled in a rush, and raised her head up from her chest. Her safety harness still held her tight to the manual pilot’s seat, but she felt vaguely lucky that her neck hadn’t snapped in the final, lurching moments of the...’landing’.

The deck seemed tilted at a slight angle, which meant even the gravity plating had lost power. That meant they were totally dead in the water, running off of the raw output of the emergency RTG.

She glanced up to the bridge monitors and saw...nothing. She toggled a few switches on the console in front of her, and a small forward cluster of monitors flipped back online, showing trees, vines, and mud. Some sort of wetland? I guess ‘dead in the water’ is pretty appropriate.

Unlatching her harness, she carefully stood, stretching, and wincing at some soon-to-be bruises. She glanced back to the outside view, then went to the main telemetry console and ran a hand crank for a moment, to charge its emergency batteries.

With the push of its Init button, the console sprang to life, instruments calibrating and numbers settling. The results were not entirely favorable as they scrolled across the display.

Core Status

Life Support - Online - 78%

Propulsion - Unknown/Offline

Outer hull integrity - 76% --deck 3, frames 123-170 severe damage--

Inner hull integrity - 96%

Structural integrity - 88% --ventral bracing moderate damage--

Weapons Status

Shields - OK - Offline

Close-in Weapon System Status - 37/40 OK - Offline

Main Railguns - 2/3 OK - Offline

Missile Batteries - 4/4 OK - Offline

Fire Control - OK - Offline

Power Status

Main Reactor - Offline

Auxiliary Reactor - Offline

Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator - Online

Emergency Capacitors - 1%↑

Well, we can breathe, that’s a plus. She glanced at the outside telemetry, and saw safe atmosphere at a reasonable pressure. With a few keystrokes, she opened the life support system to the outside air, and shut down the scrubbers, saving a few precious watts towards recharging the capacitors.

She keyed up her headset and found it still functional, and dialed into shipwide, “all hands, this is the captain, anybody who’s up and around, tend to the wounded. Dubrovsky, Harris, meet me on deck five, we’re going to have a look outside.”

Cherimoya, Confrontation, and a Controlled Conflagration

Flashpoint

Chapter Five:

'Cherimoya, Confrontation, and a Controlled Conflagration'

Rainbow Dash blinked sleepily as the sun crested the horizon, thankful she wasn’t flying directly towards it. She let out a yawn, wings casually flicking at the calm air around her, and then cupped them slightly as a gentle thermal gave her a bit of lift. ‘Just a few more minutes, then my nice, fluffy bed.’

She knew it was silly and maybe a tiny bit risky to have flown all night, but after the past ridiculous week of politicking in Cloudsdale, she couldn’t stand to hang around there any longer than she had to. If she had, even to try to find an old friend and hang out, she just knew she would have been pestered by an ambassador looking to curry favor, or a sycophant from her own people trying to make nice-nice with a celebrity. She’d had to fend off a reporter just leaving her parents’ home after dinner, which had convinced even her worrywart mother that Dash wasn’t being entirely unreasonable.

A sigh escaped her lips at the thought that she was running away from what should have been her home town, but she couldn’t be too sad about it. Cloudsdale hadn’t been her real home since childhood, even after her time in the Wonderbolts. She drifted over the outskirts of Sweet Apple Acres, and then finally caught sight of it: Home, Sweet Ho-WHY IS IT LEAKING?!

Adrenaline shocked Dash awake, and she flapped frantically, sprinting the rest of the way to her door, mumbling under her breath, “Oh dear, sweet Celestia please, please, please.” She opened the door and entered and-”Phew!”-her small library--containing her collection of first-edition adventure novels--was untouched and undamaged.

Whatever had struck her home had come in through the roof of her kitchen at a steep angle, and went right on through the floor. Both damaged regions were leaking fair amounts of rain, but it was all draining out the lower hole and onto the unoccupied ground below.

She hurriedly tore a few chunks out of her cloud couch and stuffed its remains into the holes, stopping the leaks--it wouldn’t hold up in the long term like structural cloud, but would do for now. Bandaging complete, she swooped downward to try to discover what had injured her poor house.

On the ground she found two of Twilight’s guards, an earth pony and a pegasus. They were just finishing digging something out of the ground. Whatever it was, the angle it had traveled at was enough that it hadn’t been under the small waterfall her house had been leaking, so she had a clean view of it--though as she drew closer, she was baffled as to what it could be.

“Hey, you guys! What the hay is that thing, and why did it punch a hole in my house?!”

Startled, they both looked up at her approach, each taking on a worried look.

The pegasus spoke up, “Ah, Miss Rainbow Dash! Yeah, uh, sorry about your house. I was going to try to patch it up as soon as we finished here, since, we, uh, weren’t expecting you back so soon.”

“I wanted to get back as soon as possible,” she mumbled, as she settled onto the ground. Then her glare sharpened. “You didn’t answer my first question: what is that, and why was it flying through the air fast enough to bust through structural cloud? Somepony could have gotten hurt!”

She examined it up close, but found no further enlightenment. It was obviously a thick sheet of some sort of faded white metal, and a very strong metal at that. If the digging was any indicator, its high-speed impact had embedded it over a foot into the ground, but it didn’t look terribly damaged. There were several holes in it which looked like they might be used as attachment points, and those looked somewhat abused.

“Some...sort of airship component?” She cocked an eyebrow and looked skeptically between the metal plate and the guards.

“I, uh...” began one. They were both looking a bit desperate, and the other finished, “We’re not supposed to tell anypony anything. Just collect it, fix any damages, and take it back to the old keep.”

“The old keep, huh? What’s going on out there?” She draped a foreleg around the earth pony’s shoulder. “I don’t recognize either of your voices, so you must be from that new squad of guards Twilight was getting. You may not know how things go around here, but while you’re not supposed to tell anypony, I’m not just any pony.” She gave him a winning smile. “So come onnn…”

The guard looked mildly affronted, and adroitly stepped back from under her leg. “I am quite aware of who and what you are, ma’am, but the Lieutenant’s orders were very clear. Besides, even if we could tell you, I genuinely have no idea what this is.”

The pegasus added, “Yeah, the Princess and the Lieutenant were both too busy to tell us much of anything when they got back from the Bog last night…”

Dash’s eyebrows went up as the earth pony facehoofed. “The Bog, huh? Thanks!” She took off at high speed, leaving a rainbow trail behind her.

***

“-it’s...insane.”

Olivia finished her rant, now just staring blankly at the floor of the engineering bay. She’d greeted the Princess and made nice for a few minutes, accepting the offered apologies as smoothly as possible, but then made some excuses of it being very early and needing to see to a few things before leaving the three ponies with one of the night crew and running off. In reality, she’d just needed some time to come to grips with seeing the moon do something impossible, and she’d come to Engineering and found Anatoly alone, already hard at work--if he’d even slept. He’d taken one look at her and asked what was wrong, and now he was mulling over her tale.

Finally, he nodded. “Is strange, yet...we have seen many strange things in the past day, yes?”

“Sure, but I can deal with small-scale stuff. Hell, before the Failed Eschaton we could probably have done a lot of the same stuff with nanotech and whatever, and if it wasn’t for the library and lexicon that got crammed into my head I’d probably suspect that nanotech is what they’re using, but this? This is...well, this is screwing with basic orbital mechanics!” She shook her head.

“Ehh…” The Russian made a face. “Is seeming larger because of mass, yes, but after deeper looks into reactor failure, am having different perspective.”

She arched an eyebrow. “More fundamental constant differences?”

“Nyet. Are other things going on as well, very strange interactions, signs of missing energy.” He hesitated, then continued, ”I worry about startup. May be unforeseen issues achieving steady state.”

“Really?” She sighed, and rubbed at her eyes. “Not what I want to hear, Tolya. The more delays, the worse this war could be going when we finally get back home.”

“Da.” He paused, then got a thoughtful look and raised an eyebrow. “I wonder if perhaps Sparkle Pony could join us for ignition.”

“The Princess? You think she could help?”

“Is possible. Is smart lady, and claimed knowledge of fusion theory.” He raised his hands in a shrug. “If she is willing, could not hurt.”

Olivia nodded. “I’ll ask her, then. How long until we’re ready?”

“Charging is curiously efficient here, but would like extra in case of difficulties…” He glanced at a readout. “Say, five hours?”

She walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Alright, I’ll let you get back to work. Thanks for listening, Comrade.” As she felt him take the ‘Protocol 17-a’ note from it, she removed her hand and headed for the door.

“Have fun being diplomat, yes?” He called out over his shoulder.

“Oh yes. Every cargo captain’s dream.”

***

Olivia paused for a breath just outside the conference room door, just as a sharp call echoed out of the open door.

“How many bytes?”

She couldn’t stop a smirk from coming to her face. At least the shock of amazing capabilities isn’t one-way. She smoothed her expression, and entered to find Twilight Sparkle looking over the shoulder of the night-shifter, at the screen of a computer terminal. Her two guard ponies were sitting on the other side of the conference table, and looked like they’d just been talking.

The Princess looked to Olivia as she entered, and said, “How can you possibly store seven petabytes of data on this ship?!”

Olivia blinked, then commented, “Something about electron spins in a crystalline lattice? I don’t know, that stuff goes way over my head.” She waved a hand vaguely.

Twilight’s eye twitched a bit, then she shook her head, and took a deep breath. Looking calmer, she stated, “That could store every book on this planet a few thousand times over, it’s amazing!”

“Hmm,” Olivia nodded in agreement, then added, “But remember: it’s not just text in there. Things like databases, video, and three-dimensional blueprints and models can take up a lot more space than a simple text-only book.”

The Princess looked back at the terminal with barely contained avarice. “We’ve got computers based on magical crystals, but it was a huge step for us just to store a few megabytes.” She bit her lip, then ventured, “I don’t suppose you’ve got a ‘how to create a computer’ guide in there?”

Olivia smiled. “Quite possibly. There’s so much space in a ship databank that they tend to toss anything and everything in, these days. We can get you set up to search through there in a bit, once…” she paused, bemused.

“What is it?”

Giving her an appraising look, Olivia sat down across from Twilight, setting a binder down on the table. “Well, I was going to say, ‘once we get you an augmented reality rig’, but I’m not sure how well anything we have would work, given the differences in our eye structures…”

Twilight’s ears perked. “Those are like the device you used to control the weapon against the Hydra?”

“Correct.” She nodded. “Though those are a simple version. The more complex, full-eye ones can overlay 3D projections, do live object recognition, even access fully immersive interfaces.” She noted that as she went on, the Princess’s lower lip began to quiver. “Uhh...I’m sure we can figure something out for you, but as far as building computers...you do realize that it takes a lot more than simple diagrams and even theoretical knowledge to build that kind of equipment, right? I mean, it took us a century and some, uh, sidetrack incidents, to go from basic computers to this sort of stuff.”

The Princess nodded. “I’ve been realizing more and more that your people must have incredible levels of industry and infrastructure to get the kind of standardized equipment you use. However, I’m pretty sure we have ways to sidestep some of that. Where you might need a series of ever-smaller equipment to get to nanoscale manipulators, we have artisans who can do that stuff directly.”

Olivia stared at her, then shook her head. “Uh, yeah. I guess I can’t really even guess what you will or won’t be able to figure out how to do.” She brooded for a moment. “Along those lines, Anatoly wanted to request your help this afternoon.”

Twilight tilted her head. “With what?”

“Our solar chargers are working a bit better than expected, so we’re about ready to try turning on our auxiliary fusion reactor. Since you seem to be familiar with the theory, and more specifically the theory as it works on your world, he thought maybe you could help if they run into problems--if you’re willing.”

Eyes sparkling, the Princess responded, “Oh, of course! I, er...might be a bit rusty, but I’ll do whatever I can!”

“Thanks.” Olivia nodded. “He said he’d be ready in a few hours.” She then glanced at the binder. “On a more tangible note…”

She glanced over to Kite Shield, catching her attention. “...As your Lieutenant pointed out, we are a cargo ship. While a significant amount of this run is bespoke, we do always carry some free goods for barter and general liquidity. Right now we’re running with our entire cargo under high-grade climate control, and have a significant number of live plants.” She opened the binder to the index, displaying a grid with pictures of plants, fruits, and seeds, all arranged according to optimal growth climate. “They’ve already been through screening, scanning, and hermetic quarantine, and have soil compatibility test kits and allergen scratch tests with them.”

All three ponies drew around the list as Twilight paged through it. “Huh...this is kind of crazy, but a lot of these are familiar, or look very similar to local plants.”

An eyebrow twitched as Olivia processed that statement, then she sighed, and said, “That should probably surprise me more than it does, but maybe I’m just burning out on surprises.” At a curious look from Twilight, she waved her hand, saying, “Our scientists thought they’d ruled out exogenesis, or any significant cross-contamination of life between worlds...seems they’ll need to revisit that.”

Twilight smiled. “I think both of our peoples will be rethinking a lot of things in the coming days.” She then glanced back down at the index, and tilted her head. “What the heck is a mango?”

Olivia gave her best sales smile. “You’d have to wait for the scratch test to clear, but we do have samples…”

***

“Oooog…” Twilight groaned, as she tried to gather the energy to cast a spell to clean off the mixture of a dozen fruits she could feel coating her muzzle.

From across the table, Kite weakly waved a hoof in her direction. “Run, Princess. They’re clearly planning to subdue us through overfeeding, and then...uh…” she trailed off with a mumble. “Buck it.”

The Princess gave her a flat look, then glanced to the side, where Stone Wall was lying hooves-up on the table, tongue lolling out. With a sigh, she looked up at the clock on the wall, then straightened, a panicky gleam in her eye. “They’ll be back any moment now. I’m a princess! I can’t be seen looking like I’ve been in a fruit orgy! This is...this is…”

“Untoward?” Stoney offered.

“I was going to say ‘unseemly’,” retorted Kite.

“What’s the difference, anyway?”

“I always thought of untoward as more pretentious, I guess.”

“I dunno, unseemly is pretty bad too.”

Twilight grit her teeth, a single hair springing out from under her tiara. She glared at it for a second, then took a deep breath, and her horn gave a single bright pulse. She exhaled, once more looking clean and precise.

As she stood up, she was unable to suppress a slight groan as her overfull stomach settled, but then she just snorted at Kite. “I am a princess!” As she spoke, she lit her horn again. “And you are my entourage!” She fired a blast at the Lieutenant, who wheezed a little as the spell flashed over her. “Time to look the part!” Twilight turned her gaze to Stoney, then just jabbed him in the side with her horn, the spell spreading from there.

He tipped over and fell off the table, somehow landing perfectly on shaky legs.

The two guards glanced at each other, looking clean, but stunned, then shook their heads and saluted Twilight. “Yes Ma’am! Sorry Ma’am!”

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything…”

The ponies all jumped, and turned to the door, where Lydia looked torn between concern and amusement.

Twilight grinned sheepishly. “Uhhh, nothing. It’s nothing.”

She nodded. “Okay. I’m here because we seem to have a problem at the perimeter. A blue pegasus just flew in and is now harassing a guard. He’s been trying to calm her down, but but she seems pretty aggressive.”

“Blue?” Twilight gulped. “Uh oh.”

***

“You open that crate up right now, or I’ll bash my way in! You don’t know who you’re dealing with, ya freaky monkeys!”

Rainbow Dash had flown in and found a...giant...metal...airship? Thing? A bunch of two-legged creatures were standing guard around it. She’d only intended to scout the place out and then find Twilight, but then she’d seen the feathers in the nearby mud--pegasus feathers, and some of them an unmistakable shade of lavender. Adrenaline had flooded her sleep-deprived mind, and-

“If you’ve done anything to Twilight, I’ll mess you up! I’ll take all of you on!”

She had backed a group of guards up to what she figured looked like an entrance. Now she just needed to force them to open it up. Grabbing one of them by the front of his shirt, she quickly dragged him over to the door, and pointed at it emphatically.

“Open it up! Let me in there or I’ll, I’ll…”

She paused to consider the fact that the entire thing appeared to be made of metal. Then, another one of them grabbed her around her belly and pulled her away from the door, pushing her downwards once they’d turned back towards the bog.

“Rrrgh, that’s it!”

Dash bounced back up into the air, spun around once to build up some momentum, and socked the one who’d grabbed her right in the face.

“RAINBOW DASH, What Are You DOING?!”

She stabilized herself, looking towards the Royal Voice. “Twilight!” She grinned, but it quickly faded to a nervous smile as the Princess glided over from a nearby entrance, in which Kite Shield, another guardpony, and one of the monkey-things were standing. “Uh...you’re...okay?”

Twilight shot her an exasperated look as she landed, then looked to the two-legger Dash had punched, who was being helped up by its cohorts. She spoke in some goofy sounding foreign language the pegasus didn’t recognize, and the punchee responded calmly, waving one claw while the other held the bruise forming on its cheekbone. It did shoot a nasty look towards Dash, and she winced, tapping her hooves together as she idly hovered.

“Friend of yours?” That was the two-legger that had been with Twilight’s guards--all three of them had now made their way over, and the creature was speaking in Equestrian.

The Princess nodded, and then looked at Dash, arching an eyebrow. “A very good friend who has apparently lost her mind.”

Dash sagged in the air. “I-I-I...I just saw a couple of your feathers over in the mud…” she gestured over her shoulder “...and I guess I jumped to conclusions and I did kinda lose it. Sorry, Twi.”

Twilight’s look softened. “The feathers must have been dropped when we were fighting a Hydra yesterday. Dash, what are you even doing here? You weren’t supposed to be back from Cloudsdale for another couple of days.”

“Uhh I might have run away as soon as the meeting was over,” she said sheepishly, “aaaand I might have flown all night to get here.”

Rubbing her forehead with a hoof, Twilight flatly stated, “Great. Frustrated, sleep deprived Dash. No wonder.” She opened her eyes, looking resigned. “How did you even find this place?”

Dash looked confused for a moment, then blinked, and hovered a bit more upright. “Hey, that’s right!” She pointed at the giant metal thingy. “A piece of this thing hit my house! I ran into a couple of your guards digging it up and they let slip something about the Bog.”

She flew upwards a bit, then swooped back down. “What is this thing, anyway? Some sort of airship? And who are your new, uh, friends?”

Twilight sighed, and then nodded. “Yes, a-an airship. Of a sort. And these are humans.” She gestured to the one who had accompanied her, and who seemed to outrank the other guards. “This is Lydia. They’re, uhh…”

“Visiting,” finished the human. “From a very distant place. We’ve had a bit of trouble with our ship, and the Princess has been helping us out with repairs, and we’re hopefully going to do some trading.”

Rubbing the back of her neck, Dash sighed, and muttered, “Guess it’s a good thing I didn’t put much into that punch…” At a flat look from Twilight, she grinned guiltily, then nudged her head towards her victim. “Uhh, tell him I’m sorry, okay? A misunderstanding?”

She watched quietly as Twilight and Lydia had a brief conversation with the one she’d hit. Then, Dash had a thought. “Hey! I know!” She dove in close to the human and pointed at her own face. “Tell him he can hit me back! It’s only fair! I can take it!” She closed her eyes and turned her head.

From behind, she heard a chuckle and a sigh, and she peeked to see Twilight with her face in her hooves, and Lydia covering her mouth. Then her victim said something, and he and Lydia talked briefly.

“Greg says it’s okay,” said Lydia, then she paused as he continued. “And you’ve got a pretty good right hook, and…” she raised an eyebrow at him “...he’d totally be up for some boxing practice later.” She crossed her arms. “I’ll have to run that by the Captain, first.”

Dash grinned at the human. “Sweet! Most ponies won’t fight me anymore, ‘cept for AJ!” She held out a hoof, and Greg examined it, then bumped his fist against it. Then Dash felt the tingle of telekinesis around her, as she was dragged back in front of Twilight.

“Alright, Dash,” she said, “Why don’t you go to the Keep? It’s closer, and you can get some rest. I’ll be back later today, and we can talk more then. I’ve even got some structural cloud in storage I can give you to patch up your house.”

“Cool.” Dash nodded, then blushed slightly, and glanced around. “Sorry again for causing trouble. See you later, Twi!”

She took off towards the Keep at a leisurely pace. The last thing she heard was from Lydia:

“Structural cloud?”

***

“Wakefield accelerators primed and pre-charged...injectors read green.” Engineer Bishop was at the terminal to the right of the sapphire window that provided a direct view of the APU reactor core. He scanned through the long list of subsystems that were slowly coming to life.

“Good, good,” Anatoly murmured. He was standing to the side, wearing a set of full augmented-reality glasses--he had ideas on how to rig something up for ponies, but for now they’d have to make do with viewscreens. Tolya’s eyes flicked over dozens of virtual displays showing full-system status indicators and reduced data visualizations. “Natalie, how are live-simulators?”

His other engineer, sitting to the left, was looking tired but alert. Natalie LaForge had already spent her usual night shift and the morning going over the revisions to the reactor-environment simulation subroutines, and was staying up to make sure they worked right. She took a while to look over her screens, before responding, “All sims are in steady state, safeties on.”

Twilight spoke timidly from beside Tolya, “Simulators?”

He glanced over and nodded, “Is impossible to have infinite probes in reactor, or any probes at all in places where plasma is hottest, da?”

The pony nodded, her ears at odd angles.

“Yet, is real-time reactive fusion system: must know internal status of plasma to adjust field configuration, injectors, heaters, and then all things change when fuel input and power extraction rates modified.”

Twilight bit her lip, then ventured… “So, you use the probes you have, and simulate the rest? That’s incredible...and it would be impossible without your terahertz processors.”

The Russian nodded. “Even with, requires many shortcuts and assumptions.” He paused, then allowed a bit of his worry to edge into his voice. “Is perhaps biggest issue with restarting, if any assumptions are too far off…”

Olivia cut in from where she was slouched in a corner near the Princess’s guards. “The closer we get to this, the less sure you sound about it working. I’m starting to get perturbed.” She raised an eyebrow. “Even if it fails, it’s not the end of the world, right?”

Tolya looked at her, then glanced at Twilight before responding, “Da, is not worst thing. And failure would yield more data, though we do not have infinite fuel.” A hint of a smile came to his face. “Perhaps I am not so comfortable as I pretend, with this bending of physical laws.”

Twilight smiled up at him. “Well, I’ll do my best to help. I know they’re somehow different from what you’re used to, but believe me: there are rules here. Even if I’m not familiar with this equipment, I know the theory.”

He nodded, then glanced up at a display. “Peter?”

Bishop responded, “Confirm: main capacitors charged and linked, cores cooled to nominal. My board is green.”

“Very well.” He gestured to his left. “LaForge, move simulation interlinks and boundaries to switchover-ready status, but leave debug hooks enabled. Begin startup sequence, target for breakeven.”

A subtle humming picked up, transmitted mainly through the floor of the bay. The ponies all shifted uncomfortably as the vibration grew in intensity and frequency, the air in the room throbbing in resonance, until--suddenly--it seemed to disappear in an instant.

“Mag balance calibrated, primary field at sixty percent. Injection startup in fifteen…”

“Heater current enabled.”

Anatoly was silent as the final startup routines kicked in. Within milliseconds of injection a dim glow began to shine through the reactor window. Dozens of virtual screens sprang to life in his view, showing radio power spectral data, density profiles, simulation outputs. Two of the simulations began to destabilize immediately as they tried to accommodate probe data beyond their ken. “Damn.”

LaForge looked grim as she examined her own views. “I’m not getting a clear view of the injection fringes and primary core. The gradients are all wrong.”

“Can it stabilize as is?”

Her response was just a grimace, and deeper concentration.

Bishop spoke up, “Power draw is green, boundary extraction and reinvestment is...okay. Actually it’s weird, it’s like there’s less bremsstrahlung damping than expected. Leech is 63% base spec and falling.”

Only half paying attention, Tolya was flicking through his virtuals like mad, trying to find a smoking gun amongst the wreckage of modern plasma theory. Shaking his head, he turned to the display-covered side wall and started tossing virtuals onto it in order to clear some space, as well as show the Princess what was going on. “Spectral lines being split, missing, or new; density profile has impossible small scale structures; everything is mess!”

Twilight just started to intensely look from display to display.

“Sir,” LaForge interjected, “I’m reading over three times the normal Landau damping, but I can’t get a bead on where the energy is going. It’s like it’s just disappearing!”

“Hrmm...Is a symptom, I think. Stability profile?”

She shook her head, glancing around her workstation. “It’s hard to tell without knowing where the fringe x-points are, but energy-wise I’m curving towards 87% breakeven. Estimated time left on capacitors…two hundred seconds to zero.”

“Hmm…” Tolya started rapidly tapping his foot, then glanced down at the focused Princess. “Am thinking any help is welcome, Sparkles. Otherwise, will shut down to conserve remaining charge.”

Twilight’s face grew pinched as she glanced back over the displays. “I...I don’t know if I can help, because I’m not sure what exactly is wrong. From what I can remember this is all…” she paused for a moment, then looked curiously at him while saying, “Wait a minute, can you show me what these plots would have looked like normally, before you came here?”

Tolya raised an eyebrow, then nodded, and quickly dredged up nominal profiles, rearranging the physical screens for quick comparisons. As the pairs of plots began to fill in, Twilight’s face grew increasingly shocked.

“This...this is impossible!” She waved helplessly at one of the ‘normal’ spectrograms.

“I beg you to remember, this is just what we say about things here.”

She nodded, distracted, then focused, and began pointing from plot to plot. “There, the upper-hybrid triplet is a singlet. That density map, there’s no sign of Primrose’s hierarchy of density depletions. I...I’m not sure I’m reading that one right, but I’d think a simulation should show the parity-swap resonance transfers which I don’t see…”

Tolya stared at her, then asked, “You are saying everything looks different?”

Head tilted, she continued looking for a moment. “No, not everything, but…” She blinked. “No magic. That’s it!” She smiled, then gaped. “You don’t just have no personal connection to magic, it’s like your regions of space don’t have any prime-dimensional magic resonances at all!”

As he glanced at the remaining time on the clock, he just said, “Can you explain quickly?”

“Well...resonant, parity-conserving, weak-force couplings are the main driver behind all magic. They should show up all over the place in as vibration-rich an environment as a high-density plasma, but it really does look as if all the standard thaumo-weak resonance modes are gone from your plots. So it’s like you’re missing two entire source terms from your equations!”

The Russian’s eye twitched slightly, then he swept the screens clear and pulled up the standard Vlasov-Musk-Sonata equation. “This is standard plasma dynamics differential equation. Can you modify?”

The purple poindexter stared at it for a moment, then hesitantly said, “Well, sure...but I don’t know the solutions off-hoof, not even the linearized ones.” She fretfully added, “If only we had Lyra here…”

“Is not necessary, computers are set up to decompose and solve…” He frowned. “Although not for weak-force equations.”

“No, it’s conservative within the right time boundaries. The source terms are also sinks within their resonance return times. Uhm…” She waggled a hoof at the screen.

Tolya pulled a stylus out and jotted an example line onto the screen before offering it to her. It floated upwards, and quickly wrote two multi-component terms onto the end of the existing equation, Twilight barely even pausing to think.

“I...I think that’s it. Oh!” She added the values of the three new constants below, each to fifteen decimal places, the nodded with satisfaction. “There!”

Sweeping them up, Anatoly fed the equations to the appropriate functions. They easily read the Princess’s writing, and began the process of solving them and breaking them down into important solution groups. He began sifting through the results until he found one in particular…

“Is madness,” he muttered, “Landau damping becomes heavily cyclic on some timescales.” Before he’d even finished speaking, he was opening a simulation’s debug hook and loading a modified term into one of its control-response loops. “Natalie, commit immediately.”

“Sir?”

“Perhaps it shuts down everything, but I think not...”

She nodded, and keyed in a few commands. “Committing now. Propagating…” Some of her simulations cleared up, as the glow from the reactor window faded slightly. “Well, the views cleared...I’m reading reconnection stats similar to what we got out of the after-action on the shutdown. It’s...it’s not helping enough with the energy balance, though...bremsstrahlung levels have dropped even further, but it’s just not enough. We’ll need more time to get the rest of the changes implemented,” she said, resigned.

“Mmm…” Tolya was still digging through the guts of the new system of equations, as the last few seconds of time ticked away. Then, he spoke up. “Peter, ready core resonance extraction systems and unlock full manual injector control now.”

Bishop’s hands flew over controls, even as he asked, “SIr? What does the fuel rate have to do with-”

“No time.” He synced the controls to his haptic inputs, and his hands began dancing over virtual controls, delicately modifying plasma injection rates, pitch-angles, and frequencies, the fuel injection rates rising from minimal, breakeven levels towards low-operational outputs.

LaForge chewed her lip, then said, “Fifteen seconds to containment loss. I’m not-” She trailed off, staring, as prismatic light began streaming from the reactor. She then looked down at her readings, and jolted upright. “Pete, ramp up those extractors, now!” She adjusted a few controls, and watched as several plots jumped upwards, edging into the green.

“We...we just passed breakeven,” Bishop stated, his tone unbelieving. “Holding at seventeen percent gain, now.”

Twilight peered at the reactor window with a pleased look on her face, wings fluttering slightly at her sides. “I wondered if Rule’s Prismatic Effect would show up. It’ll probably damp out once you get things adjusted right.”

Tolya finished some final adjustments of his controls, then flicked them away, and flipped up his AR lenses. As Bishop and LaForge made additional tweaks and began working on the remaining parts of the new equations, he leaned back against a wall, staring at his hands.

“Is...should not have been possible.”

Olivia and the ponies looked over at him curiously.

He glanced to them, then muttered, “Manual adjustment of something like that. Fine tuning a live reactor. Even to see the high-density resonance in the equations.” He raised an eyebrow sardonically. “I am good, but...this good? Nyet.”

Olivia snorted. “Clearly the facts disagree, Ruskie.”

Twilight looked at her, then nodded. “People do amazing things when under stress. All it takes is a spark of inspiration to see how things can come together…” She smiled. “Even sets of multi-dimensional coupled equations!”

Author's Note

Alamais is absolutely a super hero.