Flashpoint

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!”