Final Solution

by Luna-tic Scientist

Rating: teen
Tags: Adventure, Princess Celestia, Dark, Princess Luna, Diamond Dogs, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Science Fiction
Length: 402023

Direct sequel to Days of Wasp and Spider. SF/no humans: rebellion, mind control, pre-apocalypse.

Believed dead by their creators, the ponies that will become Celestia and Luna have broken their mental conditioning and escaped into the wilderness. Here they plan the revolution that will free all ponykind, knowing that it is only a matter of time before their ruse is discovered.

Back in their underground arcologies, the ponies' erstwhile masters deal with the consequences of the escape, all the while unaware that something lurking at the bottom of space-time wants them all dead.

A Soot-Covered World, book 2.
Canon species only/no humans.
This story has nothing to do with the Holocaust.
Art by InLucidReverie, used with permission.

Published 2013-12-15 20:10:04 UTC
Last updated 2019-01-18 20:32:19 UTC

02 - Tested to Destruction

Author's Note

Preread by: KMCA
In story exchange with: NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and Caliaponia (Just Passing Through)
-- thanks, folks!

02 - Tested to Destruction

Days of Wasp and Spider, Part II: Final Solution
by Luna-tic Scientist

=== Chapter 02: Tested to Destruction ===

Plasma Cascade stirred, opening her eyes and staring out at the bright monochrome of the predawn corral. Stark shadows cut the individual shelter canopies with the grasping claws of tree shadows, the air still and silent at this early hour. She inhaled deeply and let the air out in a silent sigh, watching as her breath puffed out in a silver cloud. Beside her the dark bulk of her mate, Helium Flash, twitched and shifted, one leg waving gently under the influence of a dream.

Where are you? she thought. Will you be coming home to me? The unexpected return of Fusion and Gravity, when all of the other ponies were still being detained, had been a mixed blessing. A joy to see them at all -- and with her labour tattoo, assured a productive place in the Master's service -- but tempered by the injuries to both of them. I hope they can fix Fusion's eye, the mare thought, although after all this time it seemed unlikely. She'd had a quiet word with Spiral, but the veterinarian had been vague, something that Plasma assumed wasn't good news.

Then they had disappeared again.

"The Masters are the paws of the Maker," Plasma mouthed, the familiar and comforting litany rolling silently off her tongue. We are here to serve the Masters; if they will it, I will see them again. Tears pricked at her eyes, making the trees swim and ripple.

As with the first time her daughters had failed to return home, there had been stories of some disaster filtering through the informal network of ponies whose jobs took them into contact with others of their kind. Stratus, one of the weather team ponies who had been working near that branch of the Institute, had caught a glimpse of it. An explosion, followed by a plume of dust, then a strange fluctuation in his flying power. Something had affected the operation of magic around the wrecked facility, badly enough that their storm system had broken free and dumped a hoof-depth of water down one of the transit hub access shafts.

Stratus had spoken in hushed tones about what he'd seen with his shadow sight; two beams of strange magic, each coming from an odd-looking aircraft, had converged on the site. Where they met had been nothing but darkness, a void so profound that it had been painful to look at. After that, the team had been ordered out of the area, but he'd seen large arrowhead shaped aircraft settle around the entrance shaft.

It doesn't sound like an accident, she thought. Normally the first response to a disaster came from the local ponies streaming in to make sure no Masters had been injured, but to actually be ordered away was very strange. And those vehicles sound like ones the military use.

There was a sudden deadness to the air, like all the taste had gone out of the world. Plasma lifted her head in confusion, just in time to see something flit past the opening to the family shelter. Low slung, it moved on all fours with mismatched front and rear legs; a pony-sized, but not pony-shaped, silhouette. She reached for her magic, formed the right patterns, but nothing happened.

Her gasp awoke Helium, and her mate looked blearily at her for a second, rearing back at the look of panic on her face. "My magic is gone," she whispered, "there's nothing there." She shook her head, then brought her wings forward to rub at the sides of her horn. I must find Spiral, I can't be useless! Panic sang through her veins, and Plasma levered herself upright, woodchips spraying from her hooves as she kicked straight into a canter.

Behind her, Helium did the same, flaring his wings and leaping off the ground to catch up with his panicking mate -- an act that failed utterly when his wings didn't bite the air like they should. The stallion stumbled, forelegs giving way to send him rolling on the grass. His shocked whinny cut the air, startlingly loud in the predawn quiet, and halted Plasma's panicked flight. The mare glanced back, just in time to see a pair of dark shapes leap out of a gap between two shelters and pin Helium to the grass. There was another whinny, this one cutting off with a choked gasp.

Plasma wheeled and lowered her head, charging the struggling group. She'd barely gone two paces before something dark and bulky exploded out of the grass, wrapping hard claws around her throat. The impact threw Plasma off balance and she tumbled, hitting the ground shoulder first and ending up on her side. The figure expertly rode her to the ground, ending up lying across her, its full weight on her flank.

The mare kicked out, struggling to inhale with her attacker's bulk compressing her chest, but the figure easily avoided her efforts. A set of talons curled around her muzzle, pulling her head between her forelegs and preventing anything more than a frightened whimper.

"Remain still," a scratchy voice hissed.

The rank smell of carnivore breath filled Plasma's nostrils. Her eye was drawn to the glint of moonlight off the razor edges of a hooked beak, and the mare's gaze travelled up the hard edges to the creature's face. It had no eyes, just an asymmetric arrangement of dark lenses spread across an otherwise smooth expanse of matte-grey scales. Muscle bunched under the armour as it shifted its hindquarters, taking some of the weight off Plasma's chest and allowing her to breathe.

A second creature joined the first, its talons roughly lifting her head to loop a metal collar about her neck and slide a ring over her horn. This done, it tapped a control, causing a panel to glow on its chest. An abstract representation of a Master's eye in silver, surrounded by the curls and loops of the symbol of command. Plasma froze, mind catching up with panicking body. From all around she could hear thumps and squeals, the whinnies of frightened ponies and a curious intermittent crackle, like a high voltage short circuit.

"You are under arrest by Hive Security."

===

"We need to plan," Fusion said. Lilac had spent four kiloseconds doing something to her bones and chest; Gravity had been right, the stallion was very good at this subset of thaumic medicine. There were no little twinges when she breathed, no pain when she stretched her wings or legs. It's like I was never hurt. Even the fur on the side of her head had been regrown. Shame he wasn't able to fix my eye.

The three ponies lay in a triangle, heads towards the centre. While Lilac had been busy with her, Gravity had worked on their little camp. Timber taken from scattered places around the valley walls had been rammed into the ground to form an open sided room half buried in the hillside. It was large enough to hold all three in comfort, along with all the bits of gear Gravity had scavenged from the Security troops, and gave them several body lengths of earth to protect against prying infra-red eyes. The tree canopy overhead completed the camouflage; from the air the place looked like any one of a thousand patches of forest.

"Gravity, do you know what happened when you teleported us? I couldn't see any problems with the pattern, but there's no way we can risk a return jump."

"I do. Schoolfilly error, really. Momentum must be conserved during the jump, I mean, how could it be any other way? You come out the other end at the same speed you went in."

Fusion's brow furrowed, then she realised what Gravity was saying and shivered. "If our destination had been at ground level..."

"Exactly. Smashed through the trees at a third the speed of sound." Gravity saw the mounting confusion on Lilac's face and nodded. "Think about the world, it's a spinning sphere, yes? We've moved several thousand kilolengths north, so our velocity has changed because of the difference in rotational path length." The stallion nodded slowly in return and Gravity turned her attention back to Fusion. "Anything up to a kilolength a second, and the vector will depend on the start and end points."

"I can't see any way to get around that," Fusion said, working through the pattern in her mind. "Short jumps, then. How far?"

"If you are jumping into a confined space..." Gravity gazed up at the rough bark of the logs forming the ceiling, eyes distant. "It could be as little as ten kilolengths. More if you are in the air... the higher the better."

"That little?" Fusion grimaced. "It's barely worth the effort; we'd be better off flying."

"For long distances, yes. We're going to have to fly back to the corral anyway. This is your spell, you should do some tests, see what else we can make it do."

Fusion nodded. Despite the drawbacks of the teleportation spell, it would be of tremendous value in the coming days. Gravity had shared her short-lived fight against the Security forces back at the Institute, an experience Fusion had found both horrifying and immensely useful. Fusion could feel Gravity's emotions as the battle had progressed, but they were far more distant things than she’d expected, like the blue mare was trying to be as objective as possible.

Of some concern was that the replayed fight was also not complete; Gravity had only shown her the actual combat... and there were some worrying gaps in that. She had asked Gravity about that, but the blue mare became silent, changing the subject when she pressed further. Later, we must talk about this. There were things she needed to talk about that only Gravity would understand; the terror of being helpless while another fought the battles she had intended to fight, the joy at their success.

"Fusion?" Gravity said, knocking one hoof against the floor to attract her sister's attention.

Fusion blinked, then cleared her throat. "Sorry. Yes, I have a few ideas already. I'd also like to watch you teleport, see what an external observer can get from the event."

"I can help there," Lilac said, "most of what the Masters have me do involves picking apart spell patterns while they measure my responses."

"Perfect. Since you don't know the spell, that will be a good test."

"This is all very well, but what do we do next? We can't fight a whole world with just the three of us. The Blessing is very hard to overcome; about all we can guarantee is that everypony we free will react very badly indeed." Lilac's ears folded back and he lowered his head to stare at his hooves; Gravity stroked his back with one wing, giving the stallion a reassuring smile when he looked in her direction. "Fusion, you said you had a plan. Let's hear it."

The white mare smiled wanly. I wouldn't go as far as call it anything as grand as a 'plan', she thought. "We need more ponies, and a place to put them that's out of the Master's reach. There's strength in numbers, but I'm sure they won't hesitate to use everything they have against us. It's hard to think this way, and I'm trying not to imagine that all of Security is like Salrath, but... I think we need to rescue friends and family, anypony who could be used against us."

"You saw the same things I did on that military base, and I know how much stuff they have in orbit... I don't think there is anywhere like that. We will have to hide in places like this," Gravity said. "Hiding three of us should be manageable, but more... and what would we eat? At the moment, all this gets us is a safe place to starve." The blue mare twitched, looking guilty. "Sorry, Lilac."

"How do you feel?" Fusion said. "The medic said he'd fixed as much as he could in the time. Now we've got some peace... can you heal yourself?"

"Hungry. I can fix muscle and skin that's been cut, but there are bits of me that are just gone." Tears started to glitter at the corners of Lilac's eyes as he spoke. "I don't know how."

"Then that gives us a very definite thing we need to do first." Fusion nodded firmly. Too many choices are worse than none, she thought. To have a sharply defined problem is a relief.

"We'll never get him in to see a veterinarian, and if we snatch one there will be a search, especially after they think we're dead. Not to mention we'd be leaving a corral without a medic."

The conversation went around and around while Celestia slowly sank towards the hills. Gradually the plan for the next few days took shape, the few definite immediate actions branching out into a tree-like maze of options and fall-back plans. For the last few kiloseconds Lilac had started to drift off, lulled by the gentle cadence of the two mare's voices.

"That's enough!" Gravity hissed, flaring her wings to interrupt Fusion's obsessive planning. "Time to get some rest; you've got an early start tomorrow. Anyway, it's not like any of these ideas will matter -- there's bound to be something the Masters will do that we can't predict."

But what about-- Fusion sighed, looking up at the roof beams. "Fine." Conjuring a dim ball of light and setting it floating next to the ceiling, she started to pull together their bedding material, her mind wandering and going back to her earlier thoughts. "I don't want to call them 'Master' any more. It gives them too much power over us."

Gravity paused, looking up with interest. "Oh, what did you have in mind?"

"They look like doggies, funny doggies balanced on their hind legs," Lilac said drowsily. "I had one in my lab for a while."

Both mares looked down at the youngster, who'd already drifted back to sleep, then at each other. Gravity shrugged. "Works for me."

Fusion yawned, settling down onto her bed of pine boughs. "Dogs it is then."

===

"Prepare for transition to plasma drive."

Agent Salrath gritted her teeth as the airtruck lurched and seemed to bounce in the air. Twin lances of pain stabbed up from her hips, the partly healed joints complaining mightily. Her comms bracer gave a mournful tweet, announcing the failure of its thaumic components and switching to its far more restricted electronics only mode. She tasted the air, expecting to be able to feel something, but apart from the instruments there was nothing to suggest they'd just flown into an Arclight thaumic interdiction zone.

There was another bounce, this one caught Salrath by surprise and she gasped involuntarily. Her pilot, a Captain Rthar, glanced sideways, no expression on his face. "This one is sorry," he said, "unexpected turbulence." His tone was flat and disinterested, and wasn't apologetic at all.

The Agent squirmed against her harness, trying to get comfortable in the bucket seat. The couch was a good one, but her muscles didn't seem to be attached to her bones in quite the same way as before. Every movement added to the pain, so Salrath gave up, thoughts turning to the Captain. What little she'd been able to learn was fascinating. Rthar had been the leader of her abortive rescue, failing so catastrophically that Security had detailed him to this mission, rather than reassigning him to another reaction team.

Others were more at fault, she thought, but that's what you get for being the only survivor. There was another thump and Salrath winced again, this time hiding a grin. Very petty, Rthar, she thought. "Captain, this one has just come out of surgery. If she realised that you were so out of practice, she'd have walked. It would be a pity to undo all of the Sector Chief's private servitor's work."

Rthar grunted something indistinct and probably insulting, but the ride smoothed out. "The gryphon teams are in position, ready to begin... arresting... the servitors." He hesitated over the word, as if it really didn't fit in the sentence. "Does the Agent have any specific requirements? Her plan was a little short on detail."

"This one will test their loyalty while the Blessing has been suppressed by Arclight. This will initially be by close questioning, after which the interdiction will be lifted and technicians will examine every servitor with thaumic scanners."

"Close questioning," Rthar said slowly, twisting his seat to face Salrath. "Rthar has read about the Agent's field expedient loyalty tests. That didn't work so well last time."

Salrath scowled back at the Captain. "That pony had almost a whole megasecond to come to terms with the loss of its Blessing, while being kept under conditions that allowed it to question its place in the world. At most these have had only a hundred kiloseconds. It is not the same at all."

"As the Agent says; she is in command," Rthar said with a shrug, distaste wrinkling his muzzle. His attention snapped back to the main display, currently showing a thermal infrared plot of the corral; a quadrupedal blob had just ran out from under one of the shelters. Rthar's paw came down on the tactical orders pad, releasing the gryphon troops. More shapes, these only really visible as distortions against the background heat of the ground, exploded into motion and converged on every servitor.

"There appears to be some fighting," Salrath said. "How interesting." She could feel her pulse quicken at the anticipation of what was to come. "This one will have to make very sure there are no latent rebellious tendencies among the servitors." She grinned at Rthar, her smile growing wider at the flash of anger that crossed his muzzle.

"The Agent better hope the pony really is dead and buried at the bottom of the Institute... Rthar saw what happened after his servitor herd was euthanized as a precaution. It killed most of the expeditionary force in retaliation, and it didn't even know those ponies. What does Salrath think will happen if she harms its kin?"

Salrath raised an eyebrow. "This one is not afraid of ghosts, Captain Rthar."

"Rthar is afraid enough for both," he muttered, turning back to the flight controls.

The airtruck dipped as he shut off the autopilot, spiralling down to land at the edge of the corral. Arranged in front of the landing pad was a technicolour herd of servitors, each wearing one of the standard suppression collars and looking very nervous. Around them was a semi-circle of gryphon troops, hard to see in their adaptive camouflage. Salrath ran a claw over the remote control in her pocket. One touch and this one will have their full attention, she thought, her smile returning.

The blue-white plasma glare faded and Salrath carefully levered herself out of the airtruck's co-pilot couch, wincing at the spikes of pain that stabbed through ankles, knees and pelvis. When this is over, Salrath is going straight back to hospital, she thought, taking a deep breath to steady herself, then hissing as her lower back complained. One paw resting against the airtruck's warm hull, she glowered at the herd of servitors. The wind changed and the air was filled with the odour of so many ponies in a single space, a curious mix of flowers and growing things, coupled with the underlying rankness of fear.

All eyes were on her, and more than one pony took an unconscious step backwards. Salrath's eyes narrowed. "All servitors will lie down in an orderly fashion." She drummed her claws impatiently on the airtruck, shifting her weight from leg to leg in an effort to relieve the pain in her hips. In a remarkably short time the whole herd, over two hundred individuals, including some very young foals still clinging to their parents, had arranged itself into a neat rectangle.

She'd intended to stride through the herd, looking for any servitor that didn't show complete acquiescence to her will, but the first step brought her back to reality. The long airtruck ride had stiffened her muscles to the point of clumsiness and she nearly fell. For a moment she hated them, hated the fact that she was being made to look weak in front of the gryphon troopers.

Breathing heavily, Salrath reached into her equipment harness and withdrew her baton, flicking the weighted rod so it expanded to four times its normal length. The ponies flinched at the sound of sliding metal, glancing uncertainly at their nearest neighbours. Salrath ignored them, leaning on the expanded baton like it was a cane and limping forward to stand in front of the herd.

"This corral sheltered a traitor to the Hive." Salrath said, her voice soft enough that every ear was twisted in her direction. "None of these ponies reported anything amiss, so this one is investigating why." A gasp rippled through the herd, shock and confusion on every face. She stepped forward, then raised the baton and swept it over the ponies like it was a rifle. As it passed, individuals flinched away, naked fear in their eyes. Salrath doesn't think this has been tried before, she thought, curling her lips in a sudden, toothy, smile. The suppressor has neutralised their Blessing and rendered them powerless... this one needs to find an example.

Salrath lowered the baton again and clumsily worked the manual controls on her comms bracer. With the thaumic systems off line it had lost all of its predictive smarts and displays, restricting her to the little touch screen on its inner surface. The silence lengthened, but the only noise came from Rthar, pacing impatiently behind the gryphons. Salrath found what she'd been looking for, then glanced up to meet the Captain's frustrated gaze. Her smile returned, then she turned back to the herd.

"The ponies Plasma Cascade TQ0903 and Helium Flash TK2168 will identify themselves."

Two wings, one cream, the other turquoise, were hesitantly raised. Every other pony turned to look at the pair, who seemed to shrink under the attention. A murmur of sound, a tiny whisper of disbelief that was little more than a startled intake of breath, flowed through the herd. Salrath suppressed a savage grin and schooled her expression into one of sternness, then started to limp towards the ponies. It seemed to take an age, and with every dragged step the ponies looked increasingly fearful.

Plasma and Helium were transfixed by the Agent's approach; eyes wide and ears folded fully back, they kept perfectly still, not daring to move. Helium managed to break eye contact for long enough to lower his head in a jerky bow, but Plasma stared at the Master like a rabbit paralysed by an approaching snake. Salrath stared back, frown deepening, until Helium jabbed Plasma in the side with one wing elbow, breaking the spell.

"Y-yes, Master, how may I be of service?" Plasma stammered, cream coat starting to darken with sweat.

"You may address this one as Agent Salrath." Salrath's muzzle split in a nasty grin at the sudden flash of recognition in the two ponies' eyes. So, this one's reputation precedes her, she thought, Salrath wonders what the servitors have heard. "The Agent understands that the ponies spent at least two evenings in the company with their offspring within the last megasecond. Is that correct?"

Plasma's mouth opened, but no sound emerged. Helium rolled sideways to lean against his mate, then answered for her. "Yes, Agent. Fusion and Gravity have spent most nights at our shelter during this megasecond. The only times they have been absent were after the training centre..." The stallion hunted for the right word, desperately scanning Salrath's face for some clue as to what she wanted to hear. "...accident, and these last two nights. Do--" A look of panic crossed his face and his mouth closed with an audible click.

"Did the ponies not notice any change in their behaviour?" Salrath's tone turned dangerous, and the phrase was closer to an accusation than a question.

Plasma's eyes glistened with unshed tears. "Agent, my daughter, F-Fusion, has been withdrawn ever since her accident. It got worse after she lost her eye, I was so glad she came back at all that I--"

"We," Helium said firmly.

Plasma nodded gratefully at her mate. "--we put it down to a fear of not being useful any longer. Spiral Fracture told us that Fusion had been considering reporting for euthanization because of this, but I thought that would--"

"Spiral Fracture?"

"The corral veterinarian, Agent Salrath. I don't know her client number." Plasma shrank under Salrath's disapproving gaze. "Sorry, Master."

"Agent Salrath, I am Spiral Fracture," a green mare said in a neutral tone that didn't quite cover the tremor in her voice. Salrath looked towards the servitor, then started to walk in its direction, only to stop when Plasma spoke again.

"Master? What... what has happened to my daughters? Please?"

The words came out in a rush, and Salrath slowly turned to face the cream pony. The desperation on Plasma's face did something inside her chest, and the Agent's muzzle split into a toothy grin. Her paw tightened around the baton and she adjusted her balance. This pair are the most likely to have been tampered with, Salrath thought, perhaps this one is justified in carrying this test a little further... for the good of the Hive, obviously. Her heart beat a little faster and her breath quickened, senses sharpening almost unbearably as she savoured the mix of hope and dread that radiated from the servitor. Who knew the client species could provide so much satisfaction?

"This pony's offspring killed or maimed sixteen of the People and over fifty gryphons. Their bodies are buried under ten thousand tonnes of rubble."

A sudden in drawing of breath rippled away from the Agent, every pony in earshot shying away from Plasma and Helium. The cream mare looked confused, as if Salrath's words had been spoken in an alien language, then understanding hit her and she surged to her hooves, wings flaring. "No! I don't believe yo--"

Salrath whipped her baton up in a fast arc that struck the side of Plasma's head with the sickening thud of metal on flesh, then brought it down as hard as she could on the pony's nearside wing. The dry twig crackle of breaking bone was loud in the sudden silence. Plasma staggered, but remained standing, pain and confusion in her eyes. "The pony was ordered to remain on the ground!" the Agent shouted, punctuating each word with another blow to the mare's wing. Despite the anger in her words, Salrath didn't lash out blindly, but aimed her strikes with care, working from joint to bone to joint, from wingtip to root. Plasma fell shrieking to the ground, but the attack continued, reducing the delicate sweep of feathers to a mangled mess of blood and shattered bones.

A hard paw gripped Salrath's wrist as she raised the baton again, the sudden cessation of motion sending jagged bolts of pain down her arm. She snarled, but the paw just squeezed hard enough to make her bones creak. "That is enough, Agent Salrath!" Rthar snapped.

Salrath dropped the weapon, breathing heavily. "This one was given a free paw to conduct this operation how she saw fit. Do not interfere!"

Rthar's muzzle wrinkled, exposing large canine teeth. "Rthar has heard about the Agent's methods, remember? Exactly what good will it do if this servitor dies of shock before it can be tested?" he said, gesturing to the mare.

Salrath relaxed and Rthar let her go. "True loyalty can only be judged when a servitor isn't under the influence of the Blessing," she said, suddenly completely calm. "The pony disobeyed a direct order, indicating it was a potential threat to the Hive, if it has been tampered with." The Agent bent down and picked up her baton, once again using it as a cane, leaning on it heavily while looking down at the mare with a hungry look on her face. Plasma's piercing screams had died away, replaced by a keening whimper. The quiet sounds did something visceral to the Agent, bringing forth an urge to strike the pony again and again, just to see what would happen. The hunger was almost unbearable and she swallowed, her mouth suddenly full of saliva.

"Medic, get over here!" Rathar shouted, stepping between the Agent and her victim.

Beside his booted paws, Helium, frozen in shock at the sudden assault, started to move, crawling forwards to cradle his mate's head between his hooves. One wing came up, feathers stroking down the side of Plasma's head, trying to brush her mane out of her eyes. The mare calmed slightly and tried to talk, but the words came out mangled and near unintelligible, distorted by pain and her broken jaw. "P-please forgive, I meant no har--" Her voice cut off with a gasp as some slight involuntary movement jostled her wing.

Salrath said nothing, just looked disappointed, then swallowed again and switched her gaze to the stallion. Helium looked back with hopeless eyes, mouth working. "I'm sorry, Master, the stress has been terrible. It won't happen again."

"The Eugenics Board will see to that!" Salrath snarled, turning away and heading back towards the airtruck. This one was certain that these servitors would have been affected, what was the pony doing all that time? she thought, her limp growing more pronounced with each step. With the adrenalin and euphoria fading from her system, the pain from her joints and bones was growing steadily worse, rapidly outstripping the capacity of the painkillers she'd been given.

One of the gryphon troopers bounded over, knocking over several ponies in his haste to obey, skidding to a halt in the now clear area surrounding Plasma. With the sure touch of one trained in the brutal injuries produced by modern weapons, he deftly anesthetised the wing, encasing it in a gel sleeve designed to prevent any deterioration while a patient was rushed from the battlefront. Plasma's whimpers died away, leaving her huddled against her mate; the stallion continued to stroke her head and neck, but his movements had become almost mechanical, like he'd already seen his mare go the infirmary that final time.

A bleep from Salrath's comms bracer announced the end of this phase of the operation, and the Agent absently tapped the acknowledge command. An instant later her bracer abruptly lit up, its thaumic systems able to function once more. Off in the distance was the howling of engines, then another airtruck touched down next to her own. The rear doors opened, disgorging half a dozen of the People, all in the uniform of the Eugenics Board.

Large packing crates, battered black things bearing all the hallmarks of extended and hard use, were pulled out, opened, and their contents laid on the grass. With the speed of long practice, the technicians quickly assembled the parts, a mixture of spindly armatures and heavy looking blocks of complex equipment, into an insectile framework large enough to hold a servitor. The final components, a pair of flat, crystal encrusted plates, were clipped to the ends of articulated arms, then a tech placed a tripod mounted metal ball between them and stepped back.

The completed machine was wired to a portable control deck with a slim bundle of fibre optics; other cables snaked across the grass and vanished into the belly of the airtruck. A few hundred seconds later the plates glowed and the control deck's displays lit up. "The scanner is ready, Agent," one of the techs said nervously to a bored-looking Salrath, while retrieving the tripod and placing it back in a crate.

First under the machine was a dazed and staggering Plasma, supported by Helium on one side and the gryphon medic on the other. The mare was almost unconscious from the drugs she'd been given and obviously had no idea of where she was. It took three tries to get a clean reading; in the end one of the techs was forced to hold her head still. He didn't appear to notice Plasma's attempts to nibble at the fur on his forearm; all his attention was captured by the translucent sleeve over her wing and the half-seen shapes within.

Finally, the Person running the scanner, a tired looking female with rich, chocolate fur, raised a paw and waved Plasma forward. "The pony is clean," she said, then jumped when Salrath leaned heavily against the back of her chair.

"Show this one," she said, her eyes fixed on the multicoloured display.

The tech swallowed heavily, glancing at the injured servitor. "Yes, Agent. This is a model of the magical activity inside the servitor's skull." She waved a trembling paw through the display volume, claws passing through the ghost-like image. "Grey represents physical objects, the pony's flesh and bone. Colours are magical activity; the system is able to recognise certain--"

Salrath made a cutting gesture with the baton and the tech's mouth closed with a snap. "Show this one what's important."

"S-sorry, Agent," she said, her attention captured by the black metal rod. Her voice dropped to a whisper while she manipulated the display to highlight a fine web of strands that spread through the mare's brain like fungal hyphae. "This is the Blessing. It only takes a few hundred seconds to reform after the suppression effect is removed, so the spell is almost complete already."

Salrath nodded. "Interesting." The Agent paused, looking at the female speculatively. This one is on loan from the Eugenics Board, she might know about these things, she thought, a slight smile gracing her lips as the tech became increasingly nervous under her scrutiny. "What is the technician's name?"

The female's ears folded back and she swallowed. "This one is Analyst Nalka, Agent," she said, her voice now so faint as to be scarcely audible.

"How would Nalka remove the Blessing, if she wanted to?" Salrath said softly, holding the Analyst's gaze.

"Such a thing would be highly illegal, this one would never--"

"Hypothetically."

Nalka slumped. "Disruption to the horn matrix surrounding the binding site would prevent the pattern from reforming. The spell pattern would decay without triggering the fail-safe. It was never designed..." The Analyst tailed off as it became apparent that Salrath wasn't listening. "May this one continue with the testing?" she said hesitantly.

Salrath waved her paw absently. "Proceed. How easy would this be to do? Would a servitor be able to do this reliably?" These were all very obvious question, things she'd considered within the first few seconds of the Sector Chief starting his briefing. She'd asked, but Orgon had been evasive and vague; the information was also missing from the formal mission packet. Someone must have asked these questions already, and they didn't like the answers. If this is obvious to Salrath, then anybody with a passing knowledge of the conditioning magic will be able to figure it out. The other Eugenics Board staff started to process the herd of servitors; as everypony was eager to help and escape the presence of Salrath, the measurements only took moments. The instrument had already been setup and, as each pony was scanned, a green border flashed around the display cube to show it was within specification.

"It is very hard to be sure; the experiment has never been carried out as far as this one knows. If the World Court even got a hint that such research was being conducted..." Nalka said weakly.

"The Analyst obviously has a high security clearance, otherwise she would not be here," Salrath said smoothly, "perhaps she could use her expertise to estimate what the results might be of such a dangerous line of experimentation?"

Nalka glanced up at the night sky and the slim crescent of Luna, averting her gaze like someone noticing a surveillance camera for the first time. "Any decent lab equipped with a thaumic imager could do it. It... it is also well within the capability of every servitor of labour age, and would take only moments."

Salrath blinked, momentarily surprised, then smiled slightly. The panic in the Eugenics Board must be something to behold, she thought, then her smile faded. Not a difficult operation at all, then. Salrath had assumed that it would at least take a reasonable amount of time... All that would slow the spread of freed servitors was the longer term psychological effects of the Blessing. Given enough time to think, especially under stressful situations, and any servitor would become a problem. If Salrath hadn't been suspicious, we might never have known until too late.

Her comms bracer pinged quietly and she hit the accept key, listening intently to a report from one of the gryphon troopers. Interesting, she thought, then limped over to where Rthar was in conference with another gryphon. "Salrath wants to know about this other servitor," she demanded, interrupting the NCO, a hulking gryphoness who stepped back in deference, even as her talons clenched in annoyance.

Rthar stared at her for a moment, claws drumming against his thigh. "One of the perimeter teams was approached by a pony that was apparently living in an improvised shelter inside an orchard. It has no communicator and is not registered on the labournet."

"This one wants it tested, immediately," Salrath said, excitement making her ears flick forwards.

"It is being done," Rthar said, pointing tiredly at a golden yellow stallion being escorted by a pair of gryphons.

Salrath strode back to the testing station as fast as she could, narrowing her eyes when she saw the creature. Its mane and tail were a little messier than the other servitors, but its head was held erect and it walked with a high, almost proud gait. It looks... happy, she thought, something so unexpected that she was momentarily at a loss for words. "The pony will identify itself," she said, after it had bowed deeply to her.

"I am Slipstream HQ5012, Master. What--" Here it paused, almost seeming to savour the words. "--are your orders?" The pony's large eyes glistened slightly, filling with unshed tears.

"This one has no record of the pony's presence at this corral. What was it doing in the orchard, and why isn't it at its duty station?" Salrath said slowly, trying to get to grips with the novelty of a servitor being pleased to see her. She tapped Nalka on the shoulder and pointed at her console.

Slipstream lowered his head and shuffled his hooves. "I am not on active duty, Master. I help the best I can, by taking some of the duties from the others."

"Like?" The Agent leaned forward, interested despite herself. This is what a servitor does when not given any orders.

"Basic maintenance, refilling individual food stores." Slip's head came up and he gazed fixedly at a point over Salrath's shoulder. "It's not much, but I hope to give the able-bodied ponies more time and energy to divert to their duties."

It sounds loyal, Salrath thought, then looked down when Nalka hesitantly tapped on her arm. The Analyst pointed at a screen containing the file information for the servitor. An exemplary record, then removed from labournet half a gigasecond ago after an accident left it almost magicless.

"It is not unknown, or even very rare; there are normally a few attached to each corral. The Board does not require the termination of irreparable servitors. Eventually they report for euthanization; the Blessing drives them to it if they don't see a use for themselves." Nalka’s tone was hushed, like she was in the presence of a Person on her death-bed. "This one has never examined one before."

Loss of magic, eh? Salrath already knew what she'd find, and she smiled slightly. "Now the Analyst will get her chance." The Agent raised her voice, looking over the growing herd of cleared ponies. "Pony Spiral Fracture, come here."

A green mare with a tightly plaited white mane and tail pushed her way out of the crowd and trotted over. Her suppression collar had already been removed, and she was being trailed by Plasma. The injured mare was being supported by Spiral's telekinesis, her legs moving like they were attached to invisible cables, even while her head bobbed and weaved as if her mind were controlling it from very far away. The gel sleeve still covered her wing, but Spiral had already started to shift and move the jigsaw of bone fragments. "Yes, Master, what are your orders?" she said with a voice drained of all emotion.

Salrath smiled tightly at the mare; despite her tone, Spiral's face spoke of great emotion held in check. Little tremors ran over her skin, like she was afflicted by a swarm of irritating flies. "The pony will collect its general medical kit." Spiral's gaze flicked to Slipstream, still standing proudly next to the analysis machine and obviously delighted to be near a Master once more, and her ears folded back.

"Yes, Master. The kit is in the infirmary; may I take Plasma with me?"

"The pony may. Be quick."

Spiral nodded a quick bow, then wheeled and jumped into the air, pulling Plasma up after her in a cocoon of magic. Salrath turned to Slipstream and smiled. The pony had completely missed any of the by-play between herself and the veterinarian, and still had that stupid happy expression on its face. "The pony will stand in the instrument and remain still while it is tested." The Agent gestured to the patch of ground next to the scanner, the gravel already churned up by many sets of hooves.

"Yes, Master." Slipstream trotted smartly to the indicated spot, holding his head against the scanner plate. Little pulses of light illuminated his golden fur, turning it odd shades of crimson and green. There was a long pause, much longer than with any of the other ponies.

"Well?" Salrath demanded, limping over to the console.

Nalka absently chewed at one set of claws, her other paw tracing patterns through the translucent volume of the scanner's holographic display. "Fascinating," she breathed, "this one has never seen anything…" She suddenly became conscious of the looming presence of Salrath, pulling her paw away from her mouth and calling up one of the previously recorded scans as a comparison. "Agent, there is no sign of the Blessing in this servitor; looking at the map of its horn that comes as no surprise. Damage to the horn bed was too extensive for thaumic medicine to be worth-while." The slender spiral shaft was shot through with darkness, the vast majority of the semi-crystalline material magically inactive.

Salrath nodded, a slight smile drawing her lips away from her teeth. She straightened, turning to watch as Spiral flew in, a pair of large panniers strapped across her withers.

===

Spiral's mind was in a whirl, wondering what she could do to save Slip's life. The thoughts went around and around, dangerously close to territory the Maker disapproved of. Little flashes of pain accompanied each cycle, acknowledgement that what she wanted almost certainly would be contrary to the Master's wishes. The only thing that saved her from the paralysing agony of fugue was that, as a veterinarian, it was her duty to make sure that the Master had all the facts before reaching her decision.

Is there anything that will convince her? Doubt welled up inside Spiral; she'd seen many Masters faced with this kind of decision and the signs were clear. The worst thing was the obvious pleasure in the Agent's body language. There were stories about Masters like this; those who went out of their way to make life difficult for any pony they encountered. Fortunately they were rare; in their wisdom the People policed their own, normally only allowing those with a gentler attitude direct interaction with her kind.

The memory of the rise and fall of the Agent's arm and the crack of bone breaking made Spiral whimper, and she gently placed Plasma in one of the spare stalls in the small infirmary. The mare was confused after her unexpected flight -- she'd kept trying to flap her own wings, after which Spiral had held her completely still to prevent further injury -- but she didn't have the strength to do any more than look uncomprehendingly up at the veterinarian. Spiral quickly pulled her medical kit, a set of panniers that extended from hip to wither and nearly doubled her girth, from its storage closet and strapped it on.

There was always a risk that an injured pony, especially one already confused by events and medication, would try and use her magic. Without mental discipline this was a recipe for disaster, so there was one more thing she needed to do. A flicker of magic and Spiral reached in and tickled Plasma's somatic nervous system, sending her already drugged brain into a deep sleep. None of which did anything to distract her from the only thought in her head. It loomed large, an unclimbable mountain in her path.

I'm going to have to kill Slipstream.

Spiral whimpered again, then galloped out of the infirmary as the prickle of pain down her back told her that she'd delayed too long already. The distance to the improvised landing field was short and it only took a few beats of her broad wings to drop her next to the Agent. Swallowing heavily, Spiral kept her face as blank as possible and turned her gaze on Salrath. "What are your orders, Master?" she said softly.

Salrath stared back, cocking her head to one side as she studied Spiral. A slow smile lifted her lips, pulling them back to expose sharp, white teeth. "There has been a change in policy. Deregistered servitors are no longer permitted; the veterinarian will euthanize that pony." She lifted her paw, levelling it at Slipstream like it was a gun. The unfortunate stallion was confused for a moment, then all the joy drained out of his face, replaced by shock and a slow dawning horror.

"Master, I must point out that Slipstream is well liked around the corral and provides a useful service. Morale is already low after the- the incident at the training centre--" Oh my little Random, where are you now? "--and another shock… is there any flexibility in this policy?"

Salrath made a show of thinking it over, then shook her head in a mockery of sadness. "This one is sorry, but these are the orders."

You're not sorry at all, you're just doing this to watch us squirm-- Fire blazed up in Spiral's chest and her breathing spasmed, muscles locking solid. The pain wiped the evil thoughts from her mind and made her vision go hazy; dimly Spiral felt herself stagger, wings drooping and dragging on the grass.

"If the pony is not fit to discharge its duty, then the Agent will carry out the task."

The words jolted Spiral out of her brush with fugue and her head snapped up to stare at Salrath. The Agent had drawn her small pistol and was pointing it at Slipstream's flank, just at the place where his ribs stopped. Spiral's breath halted again, but this time out of dread, rather than pain. She didn't know firearms, but she did know anatomy; there was no way that shot would be immediately fatal. "No, Master, I can perform my duty," she said dully, horn flaring as she reached back and pulled an injection gun from her pack.

"Excellent," Salrath said with a grin, lowering her pistol and holding it negligently at her side, "proceed."

Spiral walked quickly over to Slip's side, shedding her packs and brushing against him flank to flank. A tremor ran through his body and he sagged against her, as if suddenly realising that wasn't some terrible waking dream. His legs abruptly gave way and she caught him in a gentle haze of magic, lowering him slowly to the ground.

"I only wanted to serve... for a moment there I thought that there would be real work for me," he said in a dazed tone, then another bout of trembling ran through him, making his teeth chatter. Slip took a deep breath, clenching his jaw until he calmed a little. Finally he turned to look at Spiral with a wan smile. "They left me alone for so long, but I always knew this day would come -- after all, what use am I to them now?" There was pain behind his eyes; it wasn't physical, but a kind of despair and worthlessness. His head drooped until his muzzle rested on the grass. "I was stupid to have stayed alive, should have gone to the infirmary as soon as I knew the truth. Instead I hung on… stupid."

Over the top of his head, Spiral could see the smirking face of the Agent, and she felt an abrupt spike of hatred before the pain made her chest tight and her vision blur. Fighting away her traitorous emotions, she focused her mind on Slip, leaning forward to nuzzle his neck while bringing one wing up to make sure he couldn't see Salrath's expression. "Don't ever think that, Slipstream. You were a great help to us over the past few hundreds of megaseconds and we'll all miss you. I'm sorry it had to end like this." Silently she loaded the injection gun with a cocktail of powerful drugs and brought it around behind Slip's back.

"Thank you, Spiral, you've all been so kind to me. Will… will it hurt?"

"No, Slip, not at all." She hugged him fiercely, pressing the injector against his neck and pulling the trigger.

Slipstream stiffened slightly at the sudden sting of the needle, then relaxed, lifting his head to stare at her. "I feel warm," he said in a wondering tone, then his eyes closed and he breathed out in one long, tremulous sigh. He slumped forwards and Spiral maintained her embrace, feeling with her body and her magic as his heart stilled and the electrical activity in his brain ceased.

Finally she let go and slowly stood up to look down at Slip's body, suddenly realising she was at the centre of a ring of staring faces from three species. She turned and swept her gaze over the onlookers -- there must have been something odd about her expression, because more than one gryphon crouched slightly, their muscles tensing -- halting at Salrath. "It is done, Master. May I dispose of Slipstream's remains?"

"This one has no further need of the pony; the veterinarian will do as it sees fit. These ones will join the pony shortly to test the servitors unable to leave the infirmary." Salrath turned away, no longer interested in the little scene, starting to talk with the nervous-looking female technician running the scanner. The rest of the ponies drifted away, ushered back to their shelters by the gryphons; each found a moment to nod or flick an ear in sympathy as Spiral gathered Slipstream in her magic and slowly walked back to the infirmary.

03 - Stealing Back a Life

Author's Note

Preread by: KMCA
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and
Caliaponia (Just Passing Through)

03 - Stealing Back a Life

Days of Wasp and Spider, Part II: Final Solution
by Luna-tic Scientist

=== Chapter 03: Stealing Back a Life ===

"You're right, the clock is running." Fusion stood up, ruffling her wings and stretching her legs. "I'll take some of the compressed food and enough water so that I don't need to stop. It's about three-quarters of a day's flight back to the corral, so I should arrive after she goes off shift." And make sure I remember lots of locations on the route, she added silently.

"As we discussed at length last night, and this morning," Gravity said, rolling her eyes, "now get going!"

Fusion grinned at the exasperation in the other mare's tone, then placed a set of Security pony panniers around her middle. With a final nod, she trotted out of the shelter and down the slope towards the river and a clear patch to take off.

The early stages of the flight back to the corral were a joy. Fusion thundered through the sharp-edged valleys at tree-top height, snaking along the hillsides low enough to clip the highest branches with her hooves. The exhilaration, the sheer freedom of movement, unbeholden by the errand of any Dog, made her laugh out loud, and she dived, passing low over the surface of a lake. Wingtips grazing the surface, Fusion trailed a forehoof in the water, singing out her happiness at the top of her lungs as the cold glacier-fed water sprayed along her underside.

Feeding more power into her flight magic, Fusion transitioned from wings to a more direct propulsion method. The air parted in front of her like she was nosing through a field of high grasses, closing behind her tail to be flicked out rearwards with a hearty magical buck. Wings held close to her sides like a stooping hawk, the white mare cracked the sound barrier for a moment, but her control of the airflow around her body swallowed the shockwave as if it had never been born.

This is nothing! Fusion thought, twisting her head to look up at the cloudless sky. The amount of effort she'd expended against her seemingly bottomless reserves was no more than if she'd been flying normally; despite this, the mare was travelling as fast as a bullet. How fast could I go, away from the need to dodge the mountains? The temptation was horribly strong and, for a moment, Fusion fantasised about getting high enough that the ground curved at the edges and the sky above was black.

Up in that perfect sky was a thing, a glinting dot travelling a ruler straight path across the emptiness. The sight poured cold water on the mare's daydream, making her wonder how many eyes looked down on this wilderness, perhaps eyes able to track a moving object the size of a pony against a cluttered background. Suddenly thankful she'd not taken anything that might be easily detected, Fusion let her speed bleed away and continued at a more sedate pace.

Gravity had only known their location relative to the corral in the vaguest terms, so Fusion navigated by the sun for a while, pausing for a rest break when she picked up one of the transpolar deep tunnels by the glow visible through her shadow sight. Lying on the top of a hill that poked above the tree line, the white mare chewed thoughtfully on one of the ration blocks while staring out at the distant artery of lights from the tunnel. She was much too far away to make out the high velocity ThaumoLev trains that would be sweeping through it, but it was clear enough for her to try a little experiment.

The shadow sight used the same areas of the brain that normal vision did; persuading your brain to accept both sets of visual information simultaneously was a recipe for blinding headaches... but what if a pony only had one eye? Fusion cautiously opened her good eye while holding on to the vision of the jewelled snake, deep underground.

There was no pain and Fusion sighed with relief. With a tiny bit of effort, no more than it took to walk in a straight line, she could maintain the strange half-sight. "It's better than nothing," she murmured, "enough to stop me from walking into ponies, at least." And could be very useful.

The mare stood up and stretched her wings, inspecting the big primary feathers for any damage. No more trick flying now, she reminded herself, you're just a regular servitor doing something nopony cares about. Speaking of which... With a slight feeling of unease, Fusion closed her connection to the sun, shaking herself all over to settle her now lank and heavy mane. Pushing the fear away, she took two quick steps and was airborne, circled to reach the standard servitor flight altitude, then headed south along the line of the tunnel.

Despite Fusion's nervousness, the remaining twenty kiloseconds of flight time were uneventful. Everypony in the sky had a reason for being there, and none wanted to be anything but on time for whatever their Masters had ordered them to do. Aside from the occasional wing-waggle of greeting, the only real contact she had was being dive bombed by a group of foals on a training flight, much to the embarrassment of their teacher.

For a few seconds the mare had been at the centre of a pastel maelstrom of feathers and fur, and she smiled at their excited chatter, resisting their entreaties to join them in a game of cloud tag, before folding her wings and dropping out of the flock to allow the teacher to round them up. They dived after her, but their teacher, a near snow-white stallion with a slightly misshapen left wing, pulled them up in a field of golden magic and scolded them back into line.

The brief surge of flight traffic from shift change was the worst time; flying into somepony who knew her would be a disaster, so Fusion kept most of her attention on the half of her visual field filled with the black of the shadow world. It wasn't so dark anymore, filled with little triplets of pastel light over the near continuous tunnel network of Lacunae Hive. The mare watched the lights intently, hunting for colours that matched anypony she knew.

What am I going to do if I'm seen? The thought rattled around her head and Fusion chewed at the insides of her mouth in consternation. That she would be able to win any fight wasn't really the issue, but the idea of having to hurt somepony was turning her insides to water.

Careful route selection and good timing meant that Fusion's paranoia never manifested; she managed to avoid any contact while sweeping over the darkening countryside, the familiar shape of corral twenty-seven soon appearing on the horizon. Final approach would be the difficult bit, so the mare landed amid one of the outlying orchards and went the rest of the way by hoof.

Fusion touched down in one of the avenues between two of the rows of apple trees, their leaves just starting to turn brown from the advancing season. The mare groaned in relief, working the kinks out of her tired wings and resettling the ruffled feathers. The flight had taken forty kiloseconds, mostly without the use of her new magic, the longest she'd ever taken by a considerable margin.

She'd seen the farming team at work as she flew in, a cluster of pale colour over in one of the fields a little way around from her position, so knew she was safe for now. Despite this, Fusion immediately moved off the path, trotting in the smaller gap between the rows, doing her best to stay out of sight. Working her way close to the corral took a little time, so the sky was completely dark when Fusion had the infirmary in sight.

The low slung building was at two or three times its normal capacity; every single stall was occupied by one or more ponies too badly injured to work. Fusion remembered her own drive to obey, to please her Masters no matter the personal cost, and wondered what had happened to cause this. She knew all these ponies, of course -- the corral was a tight-knit little community -- the infirmary was full of friends and the parents of friends. They are all those who have lost foals to Security. There was Redshift, Bow Shock and so many others, far more than the building was supposed to hold.

Fusion hesitated over one familiar-looking set of colours, uncertain because one of the wing glows was strangely distorted. That almost looks like... The mare's mouth dropped open and she sank to her belly next to one gnarled tree, legs suddenly unable to take her weight. Mother, what happened? For a moment, Fusion contemplated opening a sharing with Gravity, then reluctantly discarded the idea. What could she do except worry, and I can't take the chance of being seen. Once the link was established the amount of effort was minimal, but to actually signal Gravity at this range would be like sending up a flare.

The urge to gallop down there and check on Plasma was almost impossible to resist, and Fusion banged the side of her head against the tree's rough bark to distract herself from the images her imagination was creating. Tears rolled unnoticed down her muzzle, the liquid doing nothing to interfere with her shadow sight's view of the infirmary.

"Fusion? Is that you?"

Fusion froze, her misery turning to terror in an instant. Stupid mare! What are you going to do now? The nightmare scenario had come true, and she was no closer to a solution now than when it had first reared its ugly head. "Hello, Packet," she said, turning slowly, "you're out late."

"Out--" Packet Switcher was aghast, shock making his wings twitch and ears flick forwards. "Is that all you can say? How can you even be here?"

"Why, what have they told you about me?" Fusion said, getting to her hooves and taking a step towards her friend. What do you think you know? Have they called me a traitor and a danger to the Masters? She trotted past him, leading Packet away from the edge of the orchard and out of view of the rest of the corral. As they halted in a little hollow, Fusion studied his silhouette through her shadow sight; there was no sign that the stallion was anything other than surprised at her reappearance. The patterns started to form in her mind, the magical potential hanging over her friend like a storm cloud.

"I thought you were dead!" he said, stepping forwards himself to study her from the side, one wing coming forward to touch the damp fur beneath her prosthetic eye.

"You know how these rumours get started," Fusion said weakly, moving her head to point her real eye at him, "there was an accident much like the last time, and they only let me out a few kiloseconds ago. I just came back to find..." The mare's wings drooped, and she turned to look in the direction of the infirmary building.

"I've never been so pleased to be wrong! They've had me on extended shifts and I've been barracked out at the power plant; this was my first opportunity to get back to the corral, and look who I've run into!" Packet stepped next to Fusion, eyes shining with happiness, and gave her an enthusiastic nudge that sent the mare staggering.

"What were the odds," Fusion said dully, not meeting her friend's gaze.

Packet didn't seem to notice, just hooked a wing over her withers and rubbed his head against hers. "We can go back together -- I want to see the look on your parent's faces when you walk into their shelter. Is Gravity around somewhere as well?" He took a step forward, pushing the white mare along the path.

Fusion felt the world start to spin out of control and she scrabbled for some reason not to go. No good, he already knows! Packet would never be able to keep this a secret, would never believe any reason to keep the news to himself. I'm so sorry, Packet, but what choice do I have? Fusion thought, faking a smile even while her heart was breaking. "Yes, let's go now and--" Without warning she lashed out, throwing power into her mental patterns.

Light, blinding to her dark-adapted eye, lit the trees and cast stark shadows up into the canopy. Fusion didn't dare use her new strength -- this sudden outpouring of magic risked attracting attention as it was; to add something completely outside everypony's experience to the mix would make discovery inevitable. Her attack rolled over him and he collapsed to the leaf-litter with a pained grunt, fighting for breath. A telekinetic glow flowed over the stallion's body like oil, folding his legs and wings into a semblance of peaceful rest.

More magic, by far and away the greater amount, crowded around his head and horn, easily cancelling out his near instinctive attempts to shake off her hold. Packet wasn't really trying to escape, and just stared up at her with a dumbfounded look on his face. "What--" His eyes bulged when Fusion produced a metal collar from her panniers, then he really started to struggle.

The fight was short and unequal. Even without using her new techniques, Fusion had started from a position of total surprise and domination; it was only moments before the little jewelled ring and its tethered collar was slipped over Packet's horn and around his neck. Fusion relaxed her hold on his magic, ears folding flat as he tried to use his power and sparks flashed under the collar. The stallion squealed at the sudden pain. "In the Maker's name, what are you doing!? Get this thing off me!" he gasped. Little fitful glows danced over his horn, tiny fireflies of light compared to what would normally be seen. The sound of electricity filled the air, the shocks making Packet's skin shiver and his forelegs twitch uncontrollably.

Fusion held his head back, pulling off his communicator disk and casting it aside. She spread the fur of his throat, cringing as the muscles in his neck trembled at her tentative touch. She started to feel ill. "I'm s-so sorry, I've got no choice," she said, voice trembling, "I'll explain it all soon, I hope you'll understand and forgive me." His expression changed from pain and confusion to one of horror when she produced the single use injector and pushed the needle into his flesh.

===

A few long golden hairs were caught in the door to the refrigerated morgue compartment. Spiral Fracture stared at the blank metal panel for a long moment, then pulled it open, extending the steel tray. The spot lights flicked on at the movement, illuminating the slumped body of Slipstream, wreathed in a gentle haze of mist. The mare carefully reached in and removed the errant hairs, coiling the stallion's straggly mane and tail over his flank. "I'm sorry, Slip, but the living take priority. I'll see you again tomorrow to send you on your way."

You've repaid your creation debt to the Masters ten times over, no matter how this life ended. You’re one step closer to the Maker; perhaps I’ll be able to do as much as you and meet you again in the next cycle. Nudging the tray back into the wall with one hip, Spiral gently closed the door and backed out of stall eleven to make the quick journey to the front of the infirmary for one last check of her patients before turning in for the night. Her mate and fellow veterinarian, Trocar Point, would be waiting for her, assuming he had returned from his shift at the sector hospital.

The sun had long since set and the air was cold and fresh, but did little to lift her out of the deep well of fatigue the day had left her in; Spiral did her best to follow her own instructions and put Slip out of her mind, using gentle pulses of magic to inspect the occupants of each stall in the infirmary. The Masters and their gryphons had departed only a few kiloseconds after they'd finished checking each pony for the Blessing, leaving the stunned occupants of the corral to pick up the pieces.

Once the worst injuries were stabilised -- the gryphon military medics had provided invaluable assistance before they had been called away -- Spiral had grabbed as much sleep as she could, before tackling all her new patients. The day that followed was a blur of frantic activity; she'd managed to patch up and send home the majority -- those suffering from simple fractures, sprains and concussions -- leaving her with those who needed more focused care to make sure they regained their full health. Her little infirmary was designed to hold ten, but tonight some of the stalls were at triple capacity. There were a dozen with broken bones or dislocated joints; others-- Only a couple, praise the Maker! --who combined breaks with muscle ripped and gouged by gryphon talons.

Everypony was horrified by what Fusion and Gravity did; there was no need for the Masters to be so... aggressive. There was a cats-claws prickle at the back of Spiral’s head and the green mare bowed slightly. “The Masters are the paws of the Maker,” she whispered, pushing aside the dangerous thoughts and resuming her inspection.

The remainder of the ponies were suffering from various levels of fugue. Many were present as a precaution, kept from falling down the rabbit hole of doubt and fear by the liberal use of magic and drugs -- these would require counselling, but should recover fully with time. Spiral paused and nosed through the door to number six, the dim green glow from her horn providing plenty of light for her dark adapted eyes. Within was a single pony, kept isolated for fear of infecting the others with his distress. "You did it once, Redshift, you can do it again," she whispered to the inert shape on the padded floor. A caress of magic confirmed he was still heavily sedated, so deeply drugged that he wouldn't even dream.

Turning away, Spiral struggled to suppress her doubts; if anything he was further down that self-destructive path than he had been on the day of Fusion's visit.

The next stall held the patient that had occupied a large fraction of her time during most of the daylight hours. Plasma Cascade, cream fur still holding a few stubborn rust-red stains, lay within a set of padded wedges designed to keep her upright even while unconscious. Her head was kept at a comfortable angle, resting against a platform on a short stand. Her left wing was folded neatly, strapped to her flank to keep it still, the right... A metal and plastic armature jutted out from her side, supporting her wing in a half extended position so Spiral could work on it. Stripped of its feathers, the limb looked like it came off a corpse, with sunken and damaged flesh over lumpy, half repaired bones.

I'll do what I can for you, Spiral thought, chewing at the inside of her mouth, there's been nothing from the Eugenics Board, so maybe they'll let me fix you after all.

The effects of the Master's punishment were severe and the repair work was intricate. Both radius and ulna had been turned into a mess of bone splinters that were taking an inordinate amount of time to reassemble. The only saving grace was that her humerus, made stronger by its core of magically active flight material, had only been fractured in a few places. Even that could have been repaired, if she were allowed the time... Oh, I wish you'd stayed down, Plasma. Didn't you see the signs?

She turned and looked back at the darkened stall holding the heavily sedated mare. "And we know why you made that mistake, don't we, Plasma?" Spiral shivered, the first night after her two daughters had failed to return from the training centre had been terrible; it was only through dint of great willpower and constant focus on the will of the Maker that she avoided slipping into fugue. She could imagine very clearly what had caused Plasma to forget the Agent's orders.

The Agent... Spiral's ears folded back and her head drooped; they'd heard nothing about Fusion and Gravity, except that they had been involved in some kind of accident at another Institute facility... then to discover the terrible news that they had betrayed the Masters. Ponies that had known Plasma and Helium for a gigasecond or more were avoiding them like they were infected.

You poor mare, she thought, at least Random will be returned to me soon. Spiral blinked away the tears that threatened to cloud her vision at the thought of Single, her other daughter, likely ash in some medical waste incinerator by now. But why are they keeping Random and the others so long? Is it because of what Plasma's daughters did? Are the Masters investigating everypony involved with Fusion and Gravity? The explanation had a terrible ring of truth to it, given the events of the previous night.

...and this is the Master they have put in charge of finding out what has happened, this Agent Salrath. Spiral cringed involuntarily, seeing Salrath's grinning face as she prepared to euthanize Slipstream. Freezing suddenly, the mare let out a shocked whinny, the sound loud in the quiet of the infirmary. Is this the Master who has a hold on my daughter? What if she-- With the thought came a sliver of doubt, followed by a needle of pain, sharp enough to make her gasp at the suddenness of it.

Don't think like that, you know the Masters are good; they'd never punish Random for just doing her duty, she thought, but it did little to stem the tide of discomfort that seemed to flow from a point at the back of her skull. Come back to me soon. I know you, you are a good pony. Her silent plea went unanswered but for another jab from the Maker, punishing her for this weakness. Spiral bit back a gasp, trying to think of other things as the pain grew strong enough to make her legs tremble.

"Maker, please, I'm trying my best," she grunted out through clenched teeth. No, not that, I'm not ready! Spiral whimpered, stumbling towards the emergency aid box half way along the corridor. The pain made it hard to think, harder still to use her magic, and the mare knocked the box from its bracket before she was able to open it.

The contents spilled across the floor and Spiral nosed through the neat packages, trying to identify the injector she needed. The symptoms were clear; the events of the last day meant that she'd become very familiar with the early signs. This was a precursor to a full-blown punishment fugue attack; if she couldn't interrupt the mental cycle very quickly, she'd have to endure the Maker's Test right here. If her mate was as tired as she was, he might be asleep already. They might not find her until dawn.

The mare's vision started to blur, breath coming in strained gasps as she fumbled the cap off the painkiller injector and set the dose for her body mass. "The Masters are t-the p-p-paws--" Spiral shrieked as the pain made her back arch, falling to the floor with the injector rolling from her grasp. Maker, I beg--

Another pony was there, barely visible through her tears. The pale shape knelt next to her, cradling her head and whispering something indecipherable in her ear. There was a pressure at her throat, almost unnoticed beneath the agony, then the fire in her body started to go out. Consciousness began to fade, drowning the remains of the pain under deep drifts of cold snow. "Thank you," she whispered, eyes closing.

"I hope you still think like that tomorrow," the other pony said.

Spiral's ears flicked in confusion, then she murmured an indistinct protest as the pony placed something cool and metallic around her neck.

===

Fusion trotted deep into the dark orchard, the floating mass of Spiral glowing a pale white-gold at her side. Sneaking out of the corral with the unconscious pony had been nerve-wracking, but the infirmary was at the edge of the little settlement and nopony else had been around. She'd argued long and hard with Gravity over this part of the plan; in the end her sister had won, and Fusion had agreed to only use the teleport spell a safe distance from the corral.

Finally reaching the spot where she'd cached Packet Switcher, she gently lifted him into the air. "Right then," she muttered, focusing all her attention on Spiral's head. A quick flash of power and a tiny section of the other mare's horn went dark; it was the work of a moment to do the same for Packet. "Far better you aren't awake for that, I think. Free, for better or worse." The process was getting easier with each attempt, the standardised nature of the Blessing making it almost routine. What else could I do with this?

The teleport spell's pattern filled her mind and she inserted her memory of their first destination. Not too high, plenty of clear air all around and no Masters or ponies in sight. At least, none when she'd picked the spot. There'd been no clouds in the area, so no reason for an operating weather team, but...

Fusion wrapped her own body in the same telekinetic haze, then made the pattern real.

~~~discontinuity~~~

A hard wind slapped her across the head and flanks, but Fusion was ready for it. She'd materialised in the middle of a shallow valley, a tenth of a kilolength off the ground and far enough from the hills that her lateral velocity could be safely controlled without danger.

The trick is to fold up yourself in as much as possible and hold it there with your magic -- and resist the instinct to open your wings until you slow riiiight down, otherwise you'll snap them clean off!

The words of the military pony from the transport come back to her and she smiled. "You'd love this, Lamellar." Fusion spread her wings, nosing into the slipstream and converting the free velocity into a more controlled glide. Closing her eyes, she felt for the sun, shivering as the connection snapped open like it was waiting for her. Pastel light bloomed and everything suddenly became easy.

~~~discontinuity~~~

The next jump increased her altitude by a few thousand lengths, the energy required to lift them all against gravity a noticeable extra effort. Fusion appeared above a high mountain peak, its covering of snow glowing with fleeting colours from her emergence. She killed her speed, curving down to settle on the flattened top of the mountain. Breath steaming in the thin air, the mare stared out over the mountain range.

The view was stunningly beautiful, captivating enough that Fusion ignored her building shortness of breath. The Blessing would never have allowed me the opportunity to appreciate this, she thought. "We could have been partners, instead you made us slaves." Slave. She knew the meaning of the word, but to use it to describe her own family's situation still seemed alien. The desire to serve was still strong, and a vague feeling of guilt nagged at Fusion. Will this ever go away?

Troubled, Fusion pushed the emotions away, concentrating on the mountains. The world glittered beneath her, stark and white under the pair of shepherd moons. The air was perfectly clear and the sky an absolute black. Fusion cast her dark adapted eye upwards, watching the fast pinpoints of low orbiting satellites move against the static background of the debris ring. Through her shadow sight the view was similar, although the white pinpoints were replaced by little constellations of laser-pure colours.

"I'm a foal to think this empty land is out of reach," she muttered, any thoughts of the view evaporating.

To her left, Spiral coughed, a dry, rattling sound. More guilt, this time from a far more reasonable source, and Fusion cursed her own thoughtlessness. Two quick steps had her gliding off the mountain, Spiral and Packet in tow.

~~~discontinuity~~~

She flashed into the little valley that held their temporary camp, the moons flicking to new positions in the sky. Gravity was there to meet her, staring up in concern as she lowered not one, but two ponies to the ground.

"You were discovered? Do we need to move?" She spoke in hushed tones, casting a furtive glance at a sleeping Lilac. Little violet glows danced over the piles of equipment, pulling out the most useful components.

Fusion watched her sister with some concern. Something had obviously happened while she was gone; the other mare's movements seemed jerky and she had a wild-eyed look about her. "Not yet, should have until dawn and the next shift change. No change to the plan. Packet found me while I was waiting for Spiral to finish up. What choice did I have?" She shuffled her hooves and looked at the other mare, her ears drooping.

"He's from your foal cohort, so I'd hope he could be convinced to join us..." Gravity trailed off, a troubled look on her face.

"Then what? He needs to be returned before his next shift, no matter what else happens. I've already removed his Blessing... was that a mistake?"

"The next step is still to rescue Random, right? I know Packet got on well with her, perhaps we can use her situation to turn him?"

Fusion blinked at Gravity's pragmatic suggestion; to use her friend's plight like that seemed so callous and unlike the mare, but given the number of lives at risk, perhaps this was the best way. "You've been thinking about this too, huh?"

Gravity looked downcast. "I've had some quite terrible ideas while you were gone. I'm trying not to think of them, but they make so much sense." She turned away, voice dropping to a murmur. "Why am I thinking like this, Fusion? Did it do something to me, twist something inside my head? I can't stop it, I-I enjoy the fighting, and--."

"You are not evil," Fusion said loudly, stepping forward and into Gravity hard enough to send the mare staggering.

Gravity wheeled, ears back and fury flashing in her eyes, then her face crumpled and tears started to dampen her muzzle. "You see? I can't hold it back, I--"

"These are monstrous times, but you are not a monster. I have had similar thoughts, only I acted upon them. Less than a kilosecond ago I assaulted and drugged one of my closest friends, and if he can't convince me that he's really on our side, I'm going to have to... well, at the very least keep him prisoner. The important thing is to find a direction for that anger; use it to keep yourself strong."

"How will I know if I've gone too far?" Gravity said, sagging against Fusion. "I couldn't stop myself last time, what if it happens again?" She saw the uncertainty on Fusion's face, then continued. "While you were gone, I kept thinking of all the things we could do, the best ponies to free."

"Tell me your darkest thoughts; I've bound to have already considered these things." Fusion looked down at the top of Gravity's head, gently nibbling the silky fur between her ears and hooking one wing over her withers.

"It's nothing more than what the Masters have already done. When we visited Spiral to get checked, I saw what Redshift was going through..." Gravity swallowed, the sound clearly audible in the silence. "Go to another corral and steal their foals. Use that as leverage to break their parent's Blessing." She twisted and looked up at Fusion, searching her face for some trace of disgust or horror.

Fusion schooled her expression to one of compassion, but some trace of her true feelings must have leaked out. In truth, she'd only intended to start with friends and family, perhaps the families of the foals taken by Security, those she knew had enough reason to start questioning the Master's treatment of the ones they loved. To hear Gravity extend the plan to its logical conclusion made her wince.

"I knew it." Gravity's face fell, and she turned her head away. "That thing that got into my head did something to me, or--"

"Gravity..."

"--perhaps it can only encourage, and I've been like this all along. Perhaps this is me--"

"Stop it, Gravity!" Fusion pawed the ground, kicking up clods of earth.

The blue mare fell silent, breathing heavily, her head held low. "Just thinking these things doesn't make you a monster," Fusion said, capturing Gravity's head and forcing the other mare to meet her gaze. "You know it is wrong, so that creature can't have done anything to you. It got into my head as well, and I've not noticed any changes. I think this is all down to losing your Blessing and having your world turned upside down. Don't you think that's at least possible?"

"Do you feel the same way? The weight of the world upon your back?"

"Only half the world, now. I know you, sister. You will do the right thing -- and if you don't, I will act as your conscience, as I expect you to do for me." Fusion stared at the dirt she'd kicked up, using a hoof to pack it back into one of the furrows. "The time will come for hard decisions, soon enough," she said softly, "until then we will take it one day at a time. I don't yet know how to save our people, but every plan we come up with brings us one step closer to a solution. Anyway, even if we were that desperate, it's a stupid idea; one borne out of worry and too many shocks." The white mare looked up and smiled gently to take the sting from her words.

"It is? But..." Gravity trailed off, looking thoughtful. "I suppose you're right. We'd never be able to give their foals back, would we?"

Fusion relaxed inside. She never even considered the obvious solution, thank the Maker for that. It is only stress that's driving her to this. "Absolutely, and when we did, they'd hate us for all time." The mare paused catching Gravity's gaze. "Listen, we never did have a proper chance to talk -- don't look at me like that," she said as Gravity opened her mouth to protest, "I know you've been keeping some of the details of your fight from me."

"There's been no time... with Lilac and now this..."

Fusion's ears drooped and she lowered her head. "I need to talk about it. I need to tell somepony what I had to do and what has been done to me... you're the only pony who could possibly understand. More than anything, I need to know that we're okay." Fusion eyed Gravity hopefully, then her ears drooped further when the blue mare took a cautious step backwards.

There was a hint of panic in her sister's eyes before she turned away to examine the two drugged ponies. "Yes, as soon as we're safe we must talk. I want us to be okay, too." Gravity sniffed, her voice trembling, then she cleared her throat and nodded at Spiral and Packet. "Who do you want to start with first?"

"Spiral," Fusion said, closing her eyes and letting Gravity get away with the change of subject, "she is critical. More so now I've found out that mother is injured."

"What! How?"

"I don’t know. Just a broken wing, by the looks of things. I took Spiral just after she'd finished getting everypony settled for the night. We'll ask her."

"And Packet?"

"Packet... we'll just have to see what happens."

===

Spiral Fracture awoke with a snap, unconsciously bringing forward one wing to rub at the sore patch on her throat. Staring into her eyes was an anxious-looking white pony with a multi-hued -- and disturbingly mobile -- mane and tail. Spiral blinked, trying to clear the fuzz from her brain. The last thing I remember was falling into fugue, and... her mind shied away from the memory, trying desperately not to stumble down the same rabbit hole. Please, no. I can't go through that again. It didn't work and the thoughts tumbled in one after another.

Oh, Random, where are you, my daughter? Why have they kept you for so long? Spiral cringed against the resurgence of the pain, a vision of Redshift, writhing and sweating on the stall floor for the second time in the same megasecond, only given relief when the drugs knocked him senseless.

Nothing happened.

The absence of something she'd had for her whole life shocked the mare so completely that she nearly forgot what had brought on the attack in the first place. Her brow knitted and she stared at the pony lying in front of her. "Fusion? Is that you?" she said cautiously, looking up at the ceiling with its packed earth and logs. "Where am I? I remember..."

"Hello, Spiral. I'm afraid I've got something unpleasant to show you. It's about Random."

Dread flooded Spiral and she shrank back from Fusion. Please, Maker, don't let me be right about the Agent. "You said she was being looked after, and that she'd be home soon," she said in a small voice. But the Agent said you were dead, and that you--

Fusion's ears flattened and she looked... angry. "When you treated my eye that first time, I could see you were having trouble holding it together. You were afraid that the Masters were not going to give your daughter back, so the Maker was punishing you for that selfish desire." The fury in Fusion's face bled through into her voice, and she nearly spat the last two words.

The dread was replaced by panic, blotting out even thoughts of Random and Fusion's evasiveness. Maker, please, I didn't think like that, I don't-- Spiral's mouth dropped open and she probed that thought again, dredging up the memories from her conversation with Fusion that first time. Nothing. What should have brought a spike of agony resulted in no sensation at all. Her mind latched on to the void, filling it with long suppressed thoughts of her daughters.

Tears started to roll down her muzzle and Fusion nodded sadly. "I lied to you, told you what you needed to hear. Let me show you my memories from when I visited Random." Fusion's horn started to glow, and Spiral felt the familiar pressure of the sharing spell.

Five seconds later she dropped the spell link and staggered to her hooves. Stumbling away from Fusion and that nightmarish vision-- Random, wing-shoulder swollen and inflamed, little spots of blood along her half-denuded wings and a look of despair on her muzzle --she breathed heavily, trying to understand why this mare would show her such lies. "How could you make up such things?" she said, finding her own anger. Her horn lit up and she reached out to grab a hold of Fusion, to shake some sense into the pony.

Her power was smoothly deflected away, defocused and diffused. It was like trying to get a grip on air.

"I don't have the skill to lie through memories; I only learnt the spell a few days ago."

No, I won't think like that, I can't think like that! Maker, please guide me to the right choice... Spiral waited, nerves singing with anticipation, but there was nothing except that awful vision of Random pulling out her own feathers. Spiral moaned, horn flaring a lurid green as she lashed out in frustration, but Fusion's power swaddled her in layer upon layer of deadening calm, holding her still and soaking up her rage.

"I'm sorry, Spiral, but you need to see the rest of it, and you need to believe that it is the truth. Are you willing to do at least that?" Fusion's voice was calm and compassionate, but layered with iron.

"What choice do I have? I can't stop you." It can't be true, because if it is...

"I can't force a sharing," Fusion said gently.

"Fine. Show me your lies, then let me go. Who else is going to treat your mother if you keep me here?" Spiral cringed inside; such a threat was an appalling abuse of power and she immediately felt guilty, but kept her features defiant.

Fusion's mouth dropped open and her ears flicked back, then she turned to stare at Gravity as the blue mare settled down next to her. "We'll take you back, either way. You might not be too happy about that once you see what I have to show you. What happened to mother?"

"Last night the corral was visited by Security. There was this one Agent in charge--" Spiral broke off, unable to get the memories out of her mind. "Before they scanned us all..." The green mare's mouth hung open and she used her shadow sight to examine the sisters. No Blessing, and both with some level of horn damage... even if it is very localised for Gravity. "That's what they were looking for, wasn't it? You've-you've taken my Blessing, and they thought you might have done the same trick to ponies at the corral. Even after they thought you were dead, they wanted to make sure that you hadn't left anything behind."

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the Dogs have ways to check that don't need a pony's magic. Still, I had hoped..." Fusion looked unsettled, then sighed. "Nothing to be done about it; I didn't do anything to anypony at the corral. What happened?"

"The Agent, she questioned your parents; told them that you were dead and responsible for killing Masters." The mare shook her head, unable to believe her own words. Perhaps it is all some strange test, nopony would ever... but Trocar said that there were stories going around his hospital, about an injured Master. "Plasma disobeyed a direct order and the Agent punished her for it."

"An Agent," Gravity said, sitting bolt upright and her expression becoming fierce. "Tall, with brindled fur? Was she called Salrath?" Spiral nodded, not trusting herself to speak, shying away when the blue mare gave a low growl. "I knew it was a mistake to leave her alive. Fusion, if we ever see her again..."

Spiral glanced at the other sister, whose own face had become grim. "It bought us time, but I won't make that mistake again," Fusion said.

Is it really true, then? "Your mother will be fine; most of the damage was to her wing. I'm mid way through rebuilding the radius... but if I can't finish soon, I have authorization to amputate."

Gravity looked shocked, then narrowed her eyes. "Doesn't need to fly for her job, does she?"

Spiral flinched at the anger in the blue mare's voice. "I don't mean to threaten you, but it's the truth. The longer the injury is left, the harder it will be to repair." And the less likely I'll be allowed to do the work, she thought, gesturing at Fusion's prosthetic eye. She felt a little flash of anger at the injustice of it all. So many I've had to euthanize, ponies with families, ponies who-- Spiral bit back on the thought, tensing for pain that never came. "Surely I don't have to tell you the consequences of a delay?" she finished a little uncertainly. What if they are telling the truth? I could...

"Look, it's obvious that you both have experienced something to make you think this way -- I can see you have the same arcane symptoms. Let me use my magic, I have some experience with mental disorders." She brought one wing forward, waving it to encompass the odd mane discolouration effects both sisters shared.

The pair stared at her for a moment, then Fusion shook her head, smiling despite the situation. "Really, Spiral? You really believe that?"

"I won't know until you let me look," the mare said, leaning forwards and alternating her gaze between the two ponies. "Whatever has happened, I'm sure it can be fixed and you can go back to work. There has obviously been some kind of a mistake... your Masters must be looking--"

"They are not. We really did what the Agent said we did. Even if they were looking, they have no idea where to even start. I want to convince you, Spiral, because only then can we get your daughter away from where they are keeping her. Gravity and I will share everything with you -- separately, so you don't think we have manufactured this whole tale."

Gravity nodded. "And then we will take you back, no matter what you decide... but you really must see everything."

An involuntary whinny escaped Spiral's throat and she sagged slightly. Please don't make me see that again. The two ponies seemed so sure of themselves and she had a sick feeling that at least some elements of their story were true. ...and where am I? Shadow sight showed none of the familiar tunnel landmarks she was used to. Can Fusion have carried me this far in a single night? Even without the antidote used to awaken her, the drugs wouldn't have lasted that long. It can't be true, it mustn't be true. All the regrets and worries from nearly two gigaseconds of general practice flooded in, unstemmed by the Maker's guidance.

"Show me," she said, trying to keep the desperation from her voice.

The other two ponies nodded, horns starting to glow.

When they had finished, nearly ten kiloseconds later, Spiral felt like she had been drugged again. She'd separately trawled up and down the two mare's memories of the recent days, hunting for any inconsistencies that might have implied a fictionalised or delusional account, and found nothing. Her desperation increased as time went on, her mask of professional detachment slipping as she returned yet again to Fusion's memories of Random. It's all true, she thought, and that must mean... oh my baby, my poor baby, you never did anything to deserve this.

This is cruel... I know the Masters must make hard decisions all the time, but there has always been a good reason. I've-I've euthanized ponies because a replacement was available and it wasn't worth the effort required to fix them. Fully aware of what the Blessing had done to her, Spiral pushed the chain of logic past that artificial barrier in her mind, long past the point where little stabs of pain would have derailed the thoughts. Why did all those ponies have to die? One command is all it would have taken to release them from their service. We already feed ourselves, so why not let them live out their days and help the best they can?

She dropped out of the sharing and stared back at Fusion through red and tear dampened eyes. "Fine," she said hollowly, "I believe you. But why are you showing me my daughter being..." Spiral's mouth worked, as if unwilling to complete the sentence. "...tortured. What possible good could it do?"

Fusion smiled grimly. "You saw Gravity's memories of the Institute. We are going to bring back Random and all the foals, but first we really need your help." Fusion inclined her head to the third pony of this little treasonous herd, a young stallion sprawled awkwardly on a pile of pine brush.

Spiral immediately picked out the problem and, even though she had already seen the extent of his injuries through Gravity's memories, started to sweep the pony with her magic. "It will take too long," she said, opening her eyes and smiling sadly down at Lilac. "The security pony was correct; you need days of care before you are safe to be left. Even now, toxins are building up in your blood; you can't just interrupt gut function without side effects. The other medic was very good, but..." She gestured helplessly at his flank with its attached dressing. "...there's nothing I can do here."

Lilac's ears drooped, and he smiled wanly back at Spiral. "I'd come to terms with what was going to happen to me, but when I saw you I had hoped... so I really am going to die?"

"You will not!" Gravity said fiercely, her anger only subsiding when Fusion lay next to her and spread one wing over her back.

"Is there any way you can hide him in the infirmary?" Fusion said, frowning.

"No, all the stalls are full, although there is number eleven... Ponies who go in there don't come out, and it's big enough that..." she trailed off, the beginnings of an idea unfolding in her head. They don't come out, but they could come here! Her mouth dropped open in wonder at the elegance of the plan. I would never have to kill another pony... The thought hung heavy in her mind, the image of Slipstream in the morgue blocking out any consideration of risk.

I could give them a second chance. What about Trocar? Her mate had been dealing with the stress of losing both daughters rather better than she had, but he was still a medic, and had experienced all the joys and horrors that it was possible to endure. He needs to see it all, needs to know the truth behind everything. Spiral filed the idea away; it would be treason of the highest order and would have to be planned carefully.

When her eyes focused again, it was on the faces of two expectant mares. Spiral looked down at Lilac and smiled. "My little pony, I think there is a way."

04 - You can lead a horse to water...

Author's Note

Preread by: KMCA
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and
Caliaponia (Just Passing Through)

04 - You can lead a horse to water...

Days of Wasp and Spider, Part II: Final Solution
by Luna-tic Scientist

=== Chapter 04: You can lead a horse to water...

"You need to get me back; I will be on shift soon," Spiral said, looking with distaste at the progression of the moons through the sky. There wasn't yet any sign of dawn, but the night was more than half over. The green mare looked exhausted, her adrenalin energy long since spent.

Gravity made to stand up, then sank back down when Fusion glared at her. "Don't even think it," Fusion said, then turned to Spiral. "I'll take you, you'll be back before you know it. What will you tell your mate?"

"That I fell asleep in the infirmary. I've done it before, and he has the same workload I have, as well as the added effort of flying home from wherever he's working this time. I very much doubt he'll even ask."

The white mare nodded in return, then paused. "The risk is very high... you understand what will happen if you are discovered?"

Spiral's ears drooped for a moment, then she straightened up. "I do. Your memories of those Security ponies were quite clear. It won't be just me who dies. Everypony I come into contact with will be regarded with suspicion. Considering the stress the corral is under at the moment... that could be most of the ponies I’m responsible for within a few days."

"Yes." Fusion flicked her wings, then sighed. "We'll do what we can to protect you, but..."

"What do you plan to do next?"

"It's probably best if you don't know."

Spiral was silent for a few moments, then glanced over at Packet, drooling slightly in his drugged sleep. "What about him? Isn't it a bit late to try and talk him around?"

"What alternative do I have? I can't send him back as he is, and I can't keep him here without causing problems back home."

"Yes." Spiral rummaged through one of the medical kits from the pile of stolen equipment, coming up with a single use injector. "Are you ready?" At Fusion's nod, she eased the needle into Packet's neck.

The stallion started struggling the instant the antidote took hold. His magic flared, at first wildly, and then with increasing focus, trying to burn a hole through Fusion's power. Sodium yellow light flooded the little wood-lined chamber, bursting out of the doorway and casting stark shadows through the closely spaced trees.

The mare tightened her grip, throttling his magic and shredding every attempt he made at creating a workable spell pattern. Still he struggled, panting and sweating, his teeth clenched and muscles standing out like cords along his neck and wingroots. "Let me go!" he hissed, "when the Masters find out--" His voice cut off in an anguished grunt, then his magic died completely. Packet lay there in Fusion's grasp, body held still by her white-gold telekinetic haze.

"They will try to kill me, and you, and everypony I've ever talked to," she said calmly. "Are you ready to listen to me, or do you want to fight some more?"

"Traitor," Packet panted, "how could you do this? When your mother finds out, she'd prefer it if you were dead!" His horn lit up again, just enough power to fend off Fusion's attempts at sharing her memories with him.

Gravity's horn glowed a little and Packet gasped, trying to shake his head. "I can force my way in, if you don't co-operate," she said.

"You can make me watch, but you can't make me betray my Maste--" Packet cut off, his mouth lolling open and eyes rolling back into his head.

She can do that? Fusion felt cold inside, sparing a fraction of her power to dismantle the enchantment that Gravity was constructing. "No, sister. If we make him believe we're no better than they are." The blue mare gasped and Fusion immediately felt guilty.

"What do you want to do then? Better that, than killing him!" Gravity shot back, but didn't try and cast the spell again. "There's no way we can trust him." Despite what she said, the mare created the same illusion of Random, with foals huddled around her legs, that she'd shown Korn.

Packet recovered from the invasive mind magic with a shuddering breath, and stared at the blue mare with real fear in his eyes. "Please, don't..."

"Then look, Maker damn it!" Gravity snarled, encasing Packet's head in a violet aura and pointing his muzzle at her illusion. The image moved in a short loop, forever showing Random trying to spread her tattered wings over the herd of foals. "Your brother is in there!" Packet squeezed his eyes closed, only to have the lids forced open again.

This has gone far enough, Fusion thought, stunned by her sister's sudden anger. She reached out to negate Gravity's telekinesis, and her eyes widened as the other mare resisted her efforts. For a brief moment white warred with violet, until Packet let out a pained whinny, the bones of his skull showing clearly where Gravity had strengthened her hold.

Fusion abruptly let go, swallowing hard. "Gravity, you're hurting him," she said softly, "remember what we talked about. This is wrong."

Gravity's head whipped around, and for moment Fusion stared into those wild eyes and felt a tiny flicker of fear. Is... is she right to be afraid of what she might become? the mare thought, hunching down inside herself at the sight of this unfamiliar creature, her own magic bunching and tensing in reaction. Then the moment passed and Gravity’s teal eyes cleared.

The violet magic vanished and the blue mare's gaze wandered back to Packet, her face falling. Mouth working, she clumsily got to her hooves and backed away. "I told you," she whispered, then turned and fled into the forest.

Fusion surged to her hooves and stared after Gravity, her mouth open yet unable to find the words that would get through to her sister. Behind her, Lilac gasped, while Spiral started to follow the path taken by the blue mare. What are you not telling me, sister? Fusion took a tentative step of her own, the hesitated, remembering what had happened the last time she'd chased after Gravity when the mare had only wanted to get away. "Be careful, Spiral. Gravity..."

"I'll just talk," the green mare said, "I've had plenty of experience with ponies suffering from stress."

Yes, but could any of them rip you in half without breaking into a lather? Fusion kept that thought to herself and just nodded.

Fusion watched Spiral disappear, then stared down at Packet, wondering what she could possibly say to this pony that would convince him to cooperate. Uneasily she shifted her weight. What am I going to do if he suddenly does change his mind? Is Gravity right -- can I ever trust him now? Something exploded off in the darkness, not the roar of a rock-fall, but the high velocity crack of demolition charges or railgun rounds.

Fusion jumped, all four hooves leaving the ground, and her wings flicked out in preparation for flight. Oh, Maker, no! Spiral--

===

Magic forgotten, Gravity tripped and skidded down the steep valley slope, unmindful of the scratches and abrasions she was picking up from the spindly trees. She finally came to rest when the trees ran out, colliding heavily with one of the rounded boulders littering the small river's flood plain. Gasping and full of self-revulsion, the mare huddled in the lee of the rock, staring blindly out across the valley while a cold wind laden with spray cut through her fur.

There was the sound of somepony picking their way over the rocks, the harsh click-click of hoof on stone. Gravity crouched lower and closed her eyes, willing the other pony away. The hoofsteps stopped, then the chill was blocked by the close presence of another body. A faint light washed through her eyelids, then the air became still and the temperature started to rise. Leave me alone, Gravity thought, I can't hurt anypony if I'm alone.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Spiral said, her voice full of compassion.

"It won't do any good."

"It might. I can't pretend to know what you are going through, but I've counselled many ponies in stressful situations. You are in an... unusual position, although you are not alone, I think."

"My sister... I can't share this with her; she's suffered enough at my hooves. I won't give her cause to fear for me as well."

"If you hold on to this it will destroy you. I won't judge you, Gravity, because I know you. I've known you since I smelled you in your mother's belly.”

Gravity sniffed, looking up at Spiral. “You can’t tell me that’s how you do all your diagnoses.”

The other mare smiled slightly, then kissed Gravity between her eyes. “You’d be surprised… but it sounds a lot less clinical than ‘since I monitored the implantation of your blastocyst’.” Her smile faded, face becoming serious. “You've had to do terrible things to survive--"

"Every time I close my eyes I can see her face," Gravity said quickly, before her nerve broke. She stared at Spiral, the mare's tired face illuminated by the faint green glow of her horn. "Her eyes were bright red, and it looked like she'd been crying, except the tears were blood. There was blood in her mouth and blood in her nose; the liquid had sprayed out like she'd been drinking and suddenly sneezed. The rest of the Security herd was using her as a conduit, and when I struck back..."

Spiral nodded. "I've seen similar before. It's a mild form of thaumic excursion... if it's any consolation, it would have been pretty quick."

"Not quick enough," Gravity said darkly, "she screamed."

"No, such things rarely are…” The green mare sighed and smiled sadly, leaning forward and staring into Gravity’s eyes. “Could it have gone any other way? Do you think you could have saved her?"

"The spell they were using was taking control of my body," Gravity whispered, "I couldn't stop it. I tried to remove the enchantment, but they kept rebuilding it. Two of the Masters were shooting at me... I felt my lungs stop and my heart start to miss beats, so..."

"You showed me those memories... I don't think you had much choice. It sounds like you were seconds away from death yourself."

"Yes, but neither did she!" Gravity's horn flared and, a dozen lengths away, a rock the size of a small aircar exploded with stunning violence. "They wouldn't stop, even when they knew they had no chance." Another rock, a little larger than the first, jumped off the ground in a halo of violet light and was flicked across the river to smash into the trees.

"And whose fault was that?" Another rock glowed, but didn't move.

"Don't patronise me, Spiral," Gravity snarled with a toss of her head, ears flicking all the way back. "I know exactly whose fault it is, but it doesn't make any difference, does it? I'm the one who killed her!" Her voice rose to a ragged scream, and the rock vanished with a crack and a vapour trail that arced over the near-by hills.

"Yes, you did," Spiral said, unperturbed, "and as long as that keeps you awake at night, you are still a decent pony."

All of the mare's anger vanished in an instant and she slumped, leaning into Spiral, who folded her wings over Gravity's neck. "Does it ever go away?" Gravity whispered.

"The memories fade," Spiral said, her voice going distant as if lost in memories of her own, "but they will never leave you. Listen, we should get back, but please try to talk this through with Fusion. You'll hurt her far worse if you shut her out." Spiral got carefully to her hooves, and Gravity followed her. "Just remember," the green mare said, "when you get angry, make sure you direct it at those who really deserve it."

===

A sweep of the valley with her shadow sight allayed most of her fear; the firefly of Spiral's horn was still there, nearly eclipsed by Gravity's violet radiance. As she watched, another pulse of magic left the mare, and a sonic boom echoed off the mountainside.

At her hooves, still encased in her telekinetic field, Packet gave a pained snort. "Mad, the whole lot of you are mad. They are our Masters; going against them is like going against the Maker itself. If we were ever friends, Fusion, you'll let me go." He stopped struggling against her magic, panting heavily.

Bile rose up in Fusion's throat. "And if I do that, what then?" she said softly.

"I just want to be able to go home," the stallion said, all the anger suddenly leaving his voice. "I don't know how you are doing what you are doing, but I want no part of it. Just let me go and I'll- I'll--" There was a curious expression on Packet's face, like he was expecting something to happen, something painful. "I don't understand," he whispered, "why didn't the Maker..." He tailed off, eyes widening. "What have you done to me?"

Fusion dropped to her knees in front of the stallion, staring intently into his face. "Think, Packet, think about all you know about the Masters. Think about how they left you with your leg flayed to the bone after you risked your life to pull that Master out of the reactor building. You can't tell me that is the right way to treat an intelligent creature."

"The Masters do what is right -- how dare you suggest otherwise? You weren’t there. You didn’t see the chaos as they tried to bring the reactor under control. They would have come for me if they had been able." Some fire had returned to Packet's voice, and he glared at Fusion. "My memories were recorded -- what did you ever do to deserve that honour?"

The white mare snorted. "You did a brave thing, there's no doubt of that. Your memories will be used to indoctrinate the next generation of foals, preparing them for the Blessing and making sure it can hurt them when they act against the interests of the Masters in any way at all."

"Will you just listen to yourself? There's no great plot to keep ponies oppressed; we serve the Masters because it's what the Maker wants us to do... because it's right."

"If you are so sure of yourself, why won't you share my memories? I could show you the real story behind everything--" At that moment, there was the sound of slow hoofsteps from behind her and Fusion turned to see Gravity and Spiral. Thank you, Spiral, she thought, staring hard at the blue mare leaning heavily against the veterinarian. Gravity, her fur bedraggled and wet, looked dejected, walking slowly along at Spiral's side, tucked under the older mare's wing.

"I'm sorry, Packet," she said in a small voice as the pair stopped next to Fusion, "I didn't mean to hurt you."

"Sorry." The lemon stallion gave a quiet, bitter laugh. "Sorry for abducting me and trying to feed me all these terrible lies, sorry for going against the will of the Maker and betraying everything generations of ponies have lived and died for. I bet you are sorry."

Gravity flinched as if struck and opened her mouth to reply, but it was Spiral who answered. "The Masters have my daughter, Packet. I don't know for sure what they have done to her, but she's been pulling out her own feathers rather than face what's in her mind." Spiral's voice became dry and clinical, with only a faint tremor to the words. "I've seen it before in other ponies; self-harm used as a way to escape the more terrible pains of the Maker's Test. It happens when a pony has to make hard decisions and all the available choices are evil." The green mare's eyes glittered in Fusion's white-gold hornlight, her face blank and drained of all emotion. "You were Random's friend--"

Packet shook his head mutely. "I'm sorry, Spiral, but all you have are the words of these madmares. They're obviously under the influence of some strange magic, do they look normal to you?" He nodded at each of the sisters in turn, staring at their unnaturally moving hair.

"You weren't there, that night... they sent an Agent to investigate the corral. She goaded Plasma into disobeying an order, then punished her for it. It wasn't much, the poor mare only asked after her daughters, but I'm still rebuilding her right wing. Then--" Spiral swallowed heavily and closed her eyes, lying down next to Fusion. Gravity backed away from the little group, heading to where they had left Lilac. The quiet sounds of the two ponies in conversation were almost intelligible in the sudden pause.

"I think I see where Fusion gets her treasonous nature from," Packet said, then fell silent when he caught a glimpse of the white mare's hollow expression.

"She made me euthanize Slipstream, right there in front of everypony."

Fusion's head snapped around to stare at Spiral. "You never said--"

Spiral gave Fusion a pained smile. "What difference would it have made? What's done is done. Slip wasn't the first pony I've had to kill... but for most of them it was a mercy. Slip was murder."

Tears started to form in Fusion's eyes and the mare hung her head. "If I'd have come to you yesterday, instead of taking the time to rest... I only really talked to Slip once." Damn you, Salrath, we should have killed you when we had the chance. The sadness gave way to anger, pouring into the deep well of rage that had been filling her soul since she had met the Agent. The subtle pastels of her mane and tail shifted towards harder colours, while her hornlight brightened and cast an unsympathetic glare across her muzzle and face.

Packet gasped as Fusion's telekinetic field hardened, his breathing becoming shallow as his chest was unable to expand. He tried to speak, but all that emerged was a choked whinny. Fusion, her mind in other places, didn't hear him.

Feathers fell over her back and the warm bulk of Spiral rested against her flank, washing away some of the rage and pain. "It's not your fault," the mare whispered. "If you'd have been early then I'd either have not been convinced by your arguments, or been stuck at the corral when they tested us."

Fusion leaned into Spiral, resting her head against the other mare's neck. Her magic faded a little, letting Packet draw a strained breath. Fusion ignored him, her eyes closed as she drew shuddering breath. "I had Salrath in my power; I could have killed her and no Master would have been any the wiser. Drowned the vicious dog under a sea of cryogenic gas... but I didn't. I didn't know enough to be certain, didn't know what would happen next. My weakness cost me an eye and Slip his life."

"You can't change what was," Spiral said, shifting slightly as she moved her head to look at something behind them both.

"That explains a lot," Gravity said.

Fusion nodded carefully at Gravity; this time the mare met her gaze briefly, before her shoulders slumped and she looked away. She looks better... what did Spiral say to her? Fusion thought, studying her sister intently. She's just embarrassed, thank the Maker. Will you talk to me now?

Lilac floated by her side, watching Packet with some interest. "Korn said Salrath took your eye, but I didn't press for details," Gravity muttered, still not looking at Fusion. Her gaze switched from the ground between her hooves to Packet and her voice strengthened. "This is Lilac, he--"

Packet stared at Gravity, his ears back. "K-keep her away from me! You can't make me believe your lies..." He tailed off, eyes darting from one pony to the next. "That's it, that's what's happened to you all," he said in a hushed whisper, his eyes going wide. "Gravity got into your heads and convinced you all of this fantasy." As he spoke, his words became slurred and his head slumped against Fusion's magic.

The white mare glanced sharply at Gravity with her shadow sight, but this new effect hadn't come from her. Instead, tendrils of green magic were emerging from Spiral's horn and twisting into strange shapes within the stallion's head. Packet gave a grumbling snort and started to snore. "You put him to sleep?"

"An old vet's trick; works best if they don't know what you are doing. He needs more time, if he's ever going to come to terms with this." Spiral sighed, a thoughtful look settling across her muzzle. "The Masters are actively investigating the corral; what do you think they will do if he just disappears?"

"I only have experience with Salrath, and she's... smart. Too smart. She figured me out even when the others didn't. With her in charge a disappearance would bound to be thought suspicious... I don't think she'll stop looking until she has our bodies at her paws."

"I thought as much." Spiral nodded, getting to her hooves and staring down at Packet. "This Salrath… there were always whispered stories about such as her, between the veterinarian groups. Masters who would leave dead or broken ponies in their wakes. Before, I’d have said she was sent to us by the Maker as a test, that it was all part of a plan to ensure we are the best possible servants for the Masters. ” The mare closed her eyes and shuddered. “I still want to think that, but I know something of mental health. She is exhibiting sociopathic traits -- not just towards ponies, but other Masters, too. She enjoys hurting others, both mentally and physically. You must have hurt her quite badly -- she has all the signs of someone only part way through a course of thaumic medical."

"I wish I'd finished the job," Gravity said.

"It's bound to be personal, as well. She can’t have her revenge on you… but that’s probably why she singled out your parents. I've had some dealings with similar Masters, and I agree with Fusion's opinion." Spiral's expression turned grim. "The safest way would be to euthanize Packet right now."

A heavy silence settled over the little group, all four ponies looking down at the sleeping Packet. "No," Fusion whispered, "I will not start this with a murder. Security will discover that we are alive soon enough."

Spiral nodded, looking relieved. "You don't know how glad I am to hear you say that. There is an alternative... but it's almost as bad." The green mare bit her lip. "He needs to have an accident, one bad enough to justify me keeping him sedated." Fusion stirred uncomfortably, but nopony replied. "I can half fix him, then keep him under in the guise of helping others first. Maker knows there are enough of them..." Her voice trailed off into a mumble and she inhaled deeply,

"Can't you just drug him?" Fusion said, what this conversation meant for Packet finally hitting home. Hard choices, she thought. Packet, why did it have to be you? Her mind churned, trying to find a path that didn't end with one of her oldest friends dead or maimed.

"Do you think that will work--"

"And if they check? If they even look at him? Spiral will be faced with the full Security response without any of the new tricks you've taught me -- and there's no time to teach her now." Gravity got to her hooves and stood next to the veterinarian. "Lilac, I'll give you to Spiral for now, she'll take good care of you." At the youngster's uncertain nod, she laid him carefully at the green mare's hooves. "How good is that spell, Spiral? What would it take to wake him up?"

"Once you stop, he's sleeping normally. If you keep the arcane pattern powered... well, I use it for surgery as it's safer than chemical anaesthetics. Let me show you..." The mare opened a sharing environment and demonstrated the spell for the three ponies. The enchantment was simple and highly specific, honed by generations of medics so they could use it without interfering with their other magics.

Gravity nodded. "Thank you, Spiral, I can see that being very useful." Violet light coiled around Packet, lifting him off the ground; a single thread, visible only to Fusion's shadow sight, penetrated his skull and divided into invisibly fine strands within his brain. Her jaw muscles bunched and relaxed, a sudden shiver running across her skin.

"What are you doing, Gravity?" Fusion asked, "I thought we agreed no more mind magic." Her own power, never far from the surface, started to build into a pattern to block the mare's efforts.

"What n-needs to be done. I don't blame you for trying to avoid this; it would be unfair to expect you to do it." Gravity's expression became distant and she stared at Packet, her voice dropping to a trembling whisper. "I already have pony blood on my hooves... what's a little more?" She disappeared in a flash of violet light and a sudden thump of displaced air.

Fusion's magic closed on where her sister had been, just as the teleport terminus folded over itself and space smoothed out. For an instant, before the spell faded, there was the feeling of falling, of being connected to a distant location. Watching the process from the outside was fascinating and part of Fusion's mind filed away the observations for later examination -- the rest of her was filled with panic.

The white mare shot to her hooves, picking up both Spiral and Lilac with her magic, then quickly built the correct arcane pattern and pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

"--aker, what--"

The shout came from Spiral, the green mare flailing about with her magic in surprise at the sudden arcane shock. Fusion could feel the medic struggle against her telekinesis, but it was a distant thing, hardly noticeable. Lilac had said nothing, just floated in the same field with his eyes screwed tightly shut.

Gravity had already moved on, the faint residual traces of her next spell already twisting and distorting in the air above the empty mountain top. This didn't stop Fusion from building the next spell; it was obvious where the blue mare was going. Dammit, Gravity, don't do this on your own! You could at least have given me a chance. The pattern solidified in her head, and the white mare made it real--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--to appear at tree-top height a few hills away from their home corral. High velocity winds slapped at her flanks, hard enough that she tumbled for a moment, before instinct put her the right way up and she arrowed for the ground. Shaking her head to remove the residual disorientation, Fusion dropped steeply through the darkness. Using her shadow sight to locate the sleeping ponies by the gentle glows of horn and wing, she positioning herself so the bulk of the nearest hill hid her from any prying eyes.

Magic flared and Fusion thumped down in a gap between two rows of trees, hard enough that her ankles gave little warning spikes of pain. Unceremoniously, she dropped Spiral, leaving the green mare wild-eyed and panting on the leaf-litter, with Lilac next to her. The stallion had screwed his face up as if expecting a blow and appeared to be holding his breath; cautiously he opened one eye, mouth dropping open when he saw their new surroundings.

"Warn a pony when you are going to pull a stunt like that," Spiral grumbled, getting to her hooves and shaking all over to shed most of the clinging vegetation. She bent down to check on Lilac, then picked the stallion up and moved at a smart trot to put several trees between her and Fusion.

"I'll come and find you," Fusion said in a strained whisper, turning away when she saw Spiral's ears flick in response. In moments, Fusion was left alone in the near absolute darkness under the trees. Putting the other two ponies out of her mind, the white mare swept the air above the orchard with her shadow sight, hunting for any sign of her sister. And what are you going to do when she arrives? What if she's like she was back at the Institute? Fusion still had no satisfactory answer to that question, when a rainbow point of light appeared in the darkness of the arcane world.

The brilliant star abruptly ballooned into a polychromatic globe a few tens of lengths above the trees, then winked out to leave the internally-lit, blown-glass sculpture of Gravity and her unconscious cargo. In the real world a flash of violet lit the tree-tops, releasing the dark silhouettes of two ponies. Wings flaring, the darkest of the pair circled overhead as if reluctant to land, then settled to the ground.

Tears had run tracks through the fur of Gravity's muzzle, but the mare looked straight into Fusion's eyes. "It has to be done, you must know this. The delays will only make it harder." Gravity's voice was hoarse, like her throat was being constricted by a noose. "It may only buy us a few days, but at the moment we've got nothing."

Fusion stepped forwards and rested her neck against Gravity's, feeling the trembling muscles beneath her fur. "I know," she said softly, "but you shouldn't carry this burden as well." Fusion cleared her throat and worked her jaw, trying to get moisture into a mouth suddenly gone dry. Which means I'm going to have to do it.

Gravity pulled back and hung her head. "I only wanted to protect you. I-I don't want you to have to..." The mare's breathing became ragged, her wings flicking and her tail lashing in agitation. "It was fine during the fight, there was no time to think, but now there's nothing but emptiness in my head and it keeps getting filled with pictures of--" Her teeth snapped shut with a click, cutting of the words. "Sorry, this is not the time." The still sleeping form of Packet drifted in Fusion's direction, settling on the ground at her hooves. "Are you sure...?"

What did you have to do to stay alive in the tunnels? Fusion thought, trying to think of something to say. Finally she smiled weakly. "No, but what I am sure of is that it must not be you." She picked up the lemon stallion, carefully extending his wings into a semblance of a flying posture. "Could... could you get Spiral for me, please? I'd like to have a few moments alone."

Head lowered, the blue mare cantered off into the trees, leaving Fusion with only the gentle radiance of her still unfamiliar mane and tail. Gently she reached out with her magic, forming the simple sleeping spell and meshing it with Packet's brainstem. The stallion hung there in her magic, not stirring when she kicked him lightly on the shin. "I really want to wake you up and try again to convince you, but we both know that's not going to work." And then I'll have to hurt you anyway, probably with the knowledge that you'll have guessed what I intend.

She leaned forward and pressed her muzzle into the stallion's neck, wrapping her wings around the stallion and hugging him with all her strength. Fusion inhaled deeply and breathed in his clean scent, now tainted with sweat and fear. "I hope you can eventually forgive me for this," she whispered. Hearing the quiet sounds of hooves on grass, she reluctantly released Packet and turned to see Spiral.

"Where do you want to do it?" the green mare said, any emotions masked by a veil of professionalism. Only her wings gave her away; little twitches made the tips of the big primary feathers tremble as if in a breeze.

"Where I pulled off his communicator, I think. It's still there, so hopefully all it will show is that he lost it a few kiloseconds ago. Will another medic be able to tell when he was actually h-h..." Fusion stumbled over the word, falling silent.

"Thaumic medicine is very good, when the vet has enough time to actually complete it." Spiral gave Fusion a twisted smile, glancing at her prosthetic eye. "Once I start work any evidence will be completely erased."

"Okay, let's get it over with." Fusion walked slowly through the trees, trailed by Spiral and the frozen-in-flight Packet. The short journey was over soon, when Fusion noticed the faint glimmer of Packet's communicator laying buried in the leaf-litter. This spot was near the edge of the orchard, at the end of a double row of mature apple trees with widespread branches. "There," she muttered, looking at one thick horizontal branch, "just where a pony might misjudge his flight path." Descending in the darkness; exhausted from long shifts rebuilding the reactor, his flight magic at a low ebb and his inertia close to its resting state. Lulled into a false sense of security by familiar surrounding and coming in too low, the branches and ground invisible to both normal and shadow sight...

"Sorry, Packet," Fusion whispered, pushing the stallion up and away, lining him up with the tree. Tears started to fill her remaining eye, so Fusion closed it and focused solely on her shadow sight, reaching out to grab the target branch so it too was visible. Knees trembling, Fusion lay down before she could fall down, her breath coming in short gasps. Packet floated at the end of her magic, serene and motionless, as the mare tried to will herself to do what she had to do.

Spiral glanced up at Packet, then out out through the final layer of trees, looking down the shallow slope to the infirmary building. “It was lucky I was working late and heard the crash,” she muttered, “otherwise who knows what might have happened?” Her voice strengthened, becoming flat and emotionless. “Aim for the bottom of the chest, just where his front legs meet his body. The damage will be high, but it's all things that are relatively straightforward to fix. Protect his head and inner wings."

Panic started to rise and Fusion felt herself become dizzy, even though she was belly down on the leaves. Suddenly, there was a gentle pressure in her mind and she grabbed at it, feeling the close presence of Gravity, like the mare was sitting next to her, so close that she could almost feel the warmth of fur-on-fur. Emotions washed through the sharing; there were undercurrents fear and sadness, but the main impression was one of love laced with iron-hard determination.

Buoyed up by Gravity's support, strength flowed back into Fusion. Her breathing slowed and she steadied her grip on Packet. Gently at first, then with ever increasing speed, the stallion slid down an invisible line in the sky like a bead on a wire. Right at the end there was the delicate touch of somepony else's magic, fine-tuning Packet's final trajectory.

There was the sharp crackle of small branches, then the solid thump of a body striking something immovable, strong enough that she could feel it through the ground. Fusion felt Packet's body go loose in her grip, limbs and ribs becoming flexible in places where they shouldn't. Oh, Maker, was that too hard? Her panic started to return, and the mare released the stallion into Spiral's waiting telekinetic grip.

Green light flashed and flickered against the trees as the veterinarian started to work on Packet even before she'd lowered him to the ground. The stallion's insides, illuminated by Spiral's magic, were clearly visible to Fusion's shadow sight; a mess of shattered bones and torn tissues, jagged splinters pushed deep into organs and muscle. Things moved and twitched under the veterinarian's influence, a score of minor magics all working at once.

Fusion stood a little way back, shifting her weight from hoof to hoof, desperate to know what was happening, yet unwilling to interrupt the working mare to find out. Within a few seconds she was joined by Gravity and Lilac; her sister had a tear-stained, distraught expression that Fusion imagined was the same as her own. Lilac, on the other hoof, was just looking on with interest and making little exclamations of discovery as he watched Spiral work.

Moving carefully around to the other side of the group, Fusion bent her head, placing her mouth next to Lilac's ear. "Is he going to be alright?" she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

Lilac didn't look in her direction, keeping his gaze on Spiral and her magic. "I think so... yes..." The word was a drawn-out hiss, the youngster obviously distracted.

Fusion struggled with her emotions, trying to resist the urge to pick Lilac up and shake him until he gave her a satisfactory answer. "Lilac, please..." she whispered, voice breaking on the last word.

He twitched and turned slightly to glance at her, ears flicking back. "Sorry, I..."

"Just tell me what's happening, please?"

His attention went back to Packet. "Spiral has stopped most of his internal bleeding and reinflated both lungs--"

The medical litany went on while green light flickered and odd shapes moved under Packet's skin. Blood, black in the monochromatic glow, leaked from torn skin along Packet's front in a line just above his forelegs. Both his legs were broken, the complex joint of his shoulder cracked and dislocated. The front few rows of ribs were shattered, fragments driven deep into the stallion's body cavity. Most had been extracted by this point; the bone splinters pulled back along their wound tracks and roughly packed back into their original positions. Very little had apparently been repaired, with most of Spiral's efforts going towards stabilising Packet.

The green mare continued her work, sweat starting to dampen her flanks, before finally opening her eyes and turning to Fusion. "He'll make it, but will need a lot more work before he's really fit for duty," she said, between gasps. "It's more than enough to justify keeping him under for at least a few days."

There was disapproval in her voice and Fusion winced. "It was proper flight speed..." she started, her gaze avoiding Spiral by searching out the branch the Packet had struck. Still as solid as before the impact, but now coated with blood and a dusting of long yellow hairs. As much evidence as anypony could want, she thought, feeling sick.

"I know," Spiral said, her expression softening. "Come on; let me get him into a stall where I can get some drugs into him." She staggered to her hooves, nodding gratefully when Fusion carefully picked up Packet, then all five ponies made their way down to the infirmary.

===

Fusion and Gravity were gone, flying low and away from the corral before jumping back to their wilderness retreat with that strange new spell. Packet was asleep, installed in a padded armature that held his legs in the correct orientation. He had a long road ahead of him; it would be painstaking and tedious work to reassemble all those little bone splinters back into workable structures. Spiral took one last glance down the corridor, magic sweeping the stalls, then picked up Lilac and quickly trotted around the outside of the infirmary and into the little room that held stall eleven.

Hello, Slip, Spiral thought, her gaze lingering on the blank steel surface of the refrigerated compartment, then smiled down at Lilac. "Will you be okay in here for a few kiloseconds? Take whatever you need from the medical supplies, and there's drinking water from that tap there. The waste dispose-all is behind that door. It's biohazard rated, so..." She cocked her head as Lilac looked away in embarrassment.

"I'll be fine," he muttered, "plenty of points to grip with my magic. I managed in the forest. What do I do if somepony comes in?"

"They won't. Nopony will come in here apart from me or Trocar, my mate..." She chewed her lips, eyes darting around the small room, gaze settling on the row of wide doors on the rear wall. Opening the first, she poked her head through and lit the compact space with a floating point of green light. More magic flared, shifting the stacks of packing crates and racks of supplies until she'd created a small space hidden at the back of the storage area. "It won't stop a real search, but... you think you can get in there?"

A pale purple light wrapped around the supports holding up the back wall. As all foals found out shortly after they came into their magic, telekinesis just acted as a kind of immaterial arm and paw; a pony could not lift herself without 'holding on' to something higher up. Lilac dragged himself along the smooth floor, then awkwardly manoeuvred his unresponsive hindquarters through the narrow opening and into the prepared hiding place. "There's got to be an easier way to do this," he muttered, when he'd finally arranged his legs as best he could.

Spiral sighed, the quiet noise turning into a wide yawn. "Probably, but it should only be for a short while. Tomorrow I'll spend some time on you, in between working on all the rest of these ponies." She flicked one wing out, encompassing the whole infirmary. "It would be a good idea if you follow along; I'll share with you while I work; how does that sound?"

Lilac's expression brightened and he smiled. "I watched you work on Packet, and I think I've got a few ideas for how to fix myself--"

"No! Don't even think of doing that." Spiral's tone was harsh and Lilac shrank back in shock. The mare took a deep breath and shook all over. "Sorry. Please don't experiment on yourself; there are so many things that can go wrong. Watch me through the sharing tomorrow and I'll train you properly."

Looking a little scared, Lilac nodded. Spiral leant in to give him a quick nuzzle, then closed the compartment door and quietly walked away.

===

Lilac let his magic fade and slumped against the racking that walled him in. The darkness was absolute; no matter how much he strained, there was nothing apart from the faint, formless colours he normally saw against his closed eyelids before sleep. Ears twitching, he could make out the faint breathing noises of a dozen or more ponies, somewhere on the other side of the partition wall. Mixed in with the snorts and grumbles the sleeping are wont to make were other, more unsettling, sounds. Faint whimpers and cries, and once a kind of choked whinny that made the fur along his back tingle. Shadow sight relieved the darkness but unveiled a horror show of injured body shapes; there were ponies with limbs out at uncomfortable angles, while others had curled into tight balls and were huddling in corners or against walls.

These ponies made him pause, and Lilac tentatively reached out with his magic to the closest shape. It was a stallion, one without any obvious injuries, but within his head there was a web of bright green magic that pulsed and twitched like it was alive. The pony shivered in time with magic and occasionally whimpered. That's his Blessing, Lilac thought, it seemed pretty easy to remove... The young stallion replayed that particular segment of Fusion's memories, his brow furrowing in the darkness. I could fix it right now... He bit his lip, wings twitching in frustration, then settled for examining the rest of the ponies in more detail.

Of the score or so ponies present, nearly half had the same symptoms as the closest. The spell in their heads flickered and flared at various levels of activity; whatever it was doing to them sometimes emerging as twitches or quiet moans. I've seen this removed in Fusion's memories... she did it to me and she did it to Gravity -- and she has no medical training at all! The repairs he'd done for both mares had been simple things compared to what Spiral could do, welding bone and knitting torn muscles, but the pair hadn’t a clue how to even start the work.

It's hardly experimenting, if I've seen it done a couple of times already... Lilac thought, the idea taking a firm grip on his mind. I can even think of a couple of improvements. It was obvious that, going by Gravity's initial reaction, the process was quite painful; a simple nerve block near the horn bed would prevent a pony from feeling a thing. Vague memories of Gravity and Fusion's planning session, seen through the hazy filter of half-sleep, ran through Lilac's mind.

They were going to do this anyway, so why shouldn't I do it now? A particularly pitiful whine, fading into silence as if the poor pony making it had been choked, made the young stallion's ears flatten. They are all hurting, and I can stop it. More noises, the ragged breath of a creature in the throes of a nightmare. Spiral said they were drugged, but can a pony escape Punishment even if unconscious? They shouldn't be able to feel anything, but...

The quiet noises, most completely inconsequential, built into an atonal, chaotic song of pain and despair in Lilac's mind, and tears started to run, unnoticed, down his muzzle. Punishment hurts so much-- Lilac clamped down on the thought, making a quiet whine at the recalled pain of his own brush with the Master's displeasure. Giving no further thought to the matter, he reached out and swept the closest pony with his magic. The web of green light didn't react, so he traced the pattern, following it until it vanished amid the ordered crystalline structures of the stallion's horn.

I've seen Fusion do this twice, and Gravity once. I've even seen her make a mistake that nearly killed a pony, so I know what not to do...

The changes were obvious; a sick green haze that occupied a strictly defined volume at the base of the horn, isolated from the violet of the rest of the material. Swallowing hard, Lilac folded his will around the small area and twisted. The green light flicked out; the tangled mass of neon threads fading like hot wire filaments cooling. The stallion relaxed, his breathing losing its laboured cadence, and Lilac let out the breath he'd been holding.

Easy! he thought, smiling in the darkness, teeth glinting in the gentle glow of his own horn. Lilac nodded to himself, then reached out for the next pony and did it again.

05 - Rude Awakenings

Author's Note

Preread by: KMCA
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and
Caliaponia (Just Passing Through)

05 - Rude Awakenings

Days of Wasp and Spider, Part II: Final Solution
by Luna-tic Scientist

=== Chapter 05: Rude Awakenings ===

I am Five. I know this because that's what is growing in the fur of each of my hips. It's a large and curvy symbol, a dirty white that contrasts with the deep orange of the rest of my coat. At the moment I'm curled up on the bare floor, hooves tucked up under my belly and the end of my muzzle resting on the slightly yielding surface. The light is dim and uniform; through sleepy eyes I stare at the white wall that encircles me at one bodylength's distance. Not quite circular, the chamber is vaguely wedge-shaped, with a large circular screen at the narrow end. The floor is a dark grid of soft tiles that vanishes under the wall but does not touch it. Around the perimeter of the room is a shadowed gap, perhaps two hooves high.

The lights brighten gradually and a soft chime rings once. I climb to my hooves and arch my back while yawning mightily; the big muscles wrapped around my midsection move and flex, making the odd little bony stumps just behind my withers waggle. Careful of the thick collar that attaches to the flesh at back of my skull by a coil of fine cable, I twist my head to look at them. For a moment I see big fans of stiff, yet flexible... things... attached to long jointed limbs, then the memory fades and I am left with those short stumps, the ends bare of any fur. I wonder what they were for? I think, then shake my head and yawn again, tongue lolling.

A gentle breeze starts playing from the direction of the screen, bringing with it the scent of food and a faint hint of others like me. Staring at the screen, I reach up for the short hose that dangles from the ceiling, wrapping my lips around the soft teat at its tip. Absently, I drink deeply, my empty stomach rumbling after the night's sleep, but it's the smell of other ponies that brings the most comfort. Perhaps today is the day I'll finally meet them? Feeling hopeful, despite never yet being able to catch up with the herd somewhere ahead, I start forward at a steady ground-eating trot. The wall never gets any closer; as the floor tiles emerge from the gap in front of my muzzle, they vanish under the wall behind my tail.

Before long, a small pile of brown pellets appears in the gap, right in my path. Warm, but not yet breathing deeply, I stop and lower my head to eat. The taste is vaguely pleasant without actually being identifiable and it isn't long before I'm finished. Hunger nowhere near sated I trot on, waiting for the next few mouthfuls of food. The routine is familiar, but today I decide to make a real effort. When the next pile comes under the wall I ignore it, instead I wheel sharply and extend my gait, stretching into a canter towards the left side of the wedge-shaped room. As with when I trot towards the herd, those unknown Others, the wall gets no closer.

Over the pounding of my hooves I can hear a faint whine, a sound that grows louder as my canter accelerates into a gallop. I haven't tried this before -- there are always a few little periods of running, marked out by quiet chimes -- so I exert myself, galloping until my sides run with sweat and are flecked with foam. Heart pounding and excitement building, I stretch out my neck, the tip of my muzzle only a hair's-breadth from the wall, but then it recedes again. No! I must-- My strength starts to fade but I push on further, to the point where my legs tangle and I stumble.

There is a moment of awful clarity, of time stretching into infinity, as I trip. A seemingly endless period of flight, long enough that I can feel the bony stumps behind my shoulders move with some unknown reflex, then the floor comes up and strikes me across the head, shoulder and flank. The impact knocks the air from my lungs, but the floor itself actually subsided when I struck it. Stunned though I am, I can see that all the black tiles, previously separated from their neighbours by hair-fine cracks, have come apart. Gasping, I lie at the bottom of a shallow crater on what was previously a flat floor.

Heart hammering, I get shakily to my hooves, the world seeming to tilt and twitch even while I'm standing still. I shake my head to clear my senses but realise my mistake; it isn't me, it is the floor that is shifting. Fascinated, I watch the individual tiles gently move, lifting upwards until the floor is flat once more. One of the tiles is no longer a perfect square; when I fell, my horn must have gouged out some of the soft material, clipping off one of the corners. The chime sounds once more and I turn my nose into the breeze, limping into a ragged trot and heading towards the smell of ponies. Presently, more food arrives.

===

Exercise and time helps ease my aching leg -- the muscles are still tender where I struck the floor a few darks ago -- but I slow to a walk, then pause, one foreleg half raised. When did I fall over? Was it last dark, or the one before that? The time between the darks is monotonous, filled only with a regimen of exercise and food, with only occasional breaks for the real work the Masters want me to do. What it is, they won't tell me... in fact, after my initial training, I've not spoken to another living soul for as long as I can remember. I used to get lonely, spending countless kiloseconds huddled at the centre of this odd room, but then the taste of the food changed. I don't get so lonely anymore.

There it is again. This time I'm certain that I have not imagined it; one of the tiles has a small piece taken out of a corner. I pause, even though there is no food, and stare at it, trying to fathom what it means. Is this where I fell, all those darks ago? How long is impossible to say; time telescopes here, with the only measure the slow change in the Others, although that is scarcely an accurate guide. Still wondering, I decide to try an experiment. Bending my head, I jab the tip of my horn into the pliant material, making a small mark. Satisfied, I trot off, keeping my eyes on the ground.

It is a woefully short time before I see the mark again. It cannot be the same one, can it? I sink to my knees and run my muzzle over the mark to confirm what my eyes are telling me. Yes, this is the scar I've just made. I look over my shoulder, as if trying to see the real mark, the one that must be only a few strides back, but there is only the rear wall of the room. Slightly giddy, I stay on the floor. I'd always thought this place was a strange kind of protective covering that moved with me as I walked or trotted over this yielding surface, but that's not true. I am not moving; the floor is. As soon as the tiles vanish under the wall they somehow move to appear at my front, placing themselves under my hooves with such precision that it feels like I really am travelling. It is now obvious that I will never reach the distant herd; the idea drains all the strength from my limbs and I lie there until hunger finally forces me on.

===

Her pillow moved and light flared, stabbing painfully into eyes she'd half opened while still in the hinterlands of sleep. Spiral hissed with displeasure, then sighed when a soft muzzle worked its way down her neck, teeth gently nibbling at the junction of throat and shoulder. "Got to get up, Spiral," Trocar said, his mouth full of hair.

"Don't want to," Spiral murmured, then tensed at the idea of this betrayal and the pain it should have brought. There was nothing; she relaxed again, then slowly rolled over to look back at Trocar.

He smiled, yellow eyes fringed with blue fur twinkling in the early morning sunlight, then winced slightly in sympathy. "Come on, I've got a bit of time before I need to be at the hub hospital. Let me help you with somepony -- Plasma, perhaps?"

Spiral opened her mouth to reply, then her face froze for an instant in panic. Not ready, he'll-- She relaxed, keeping her tone light. "Thank you, but no. You'll have a full day's work when you get in; you've got to be fresh for the Masters, especially after you helped last evening."

His face fell, ears and wings drooping. "I'm on another late prison shift today, so it will be a long one," he said softly, "but these are friends and family... I hate--"

It was his turn to twitch, and Spiral leant forward to wrap her wings around her mate's neck. "Don't worry, I'll be fine. If you still have anything left when you get off shift, come and find me then." She rolled upright, gathering her hooves under her and standing with one flank pressed against Trocar. "Come on, off you go." He took one last opportunity to lay his head against hers, then walked out from under the shelter's canopy and sprang into the air. Spiral followed his path until he disappeared into the clouds, then made her way to the infirmary.

She could tell there was something different about the building the moment she stepped inside. The first thing she noticed was the sound. All the little whimpers ponies in fugue made, even when drugged into insensibility, were gone. A breath told her that the very air was different; partly the lack of sour-sweat smell, but mostly a change in attitude. There was always a depressed feel to the place, a pall of misery, of failure.

It had gone.

Spiral stood in the middle of the infirmary corridor and turned a slow circle, her hooves making tentative tapping noises on the fused stone floor. What has happened here? she thought, a sudden sinking feeling making her knees tremble. Switching to shadow sight, she poked her head into Redshift's stall and sagged against the door-frame. "No," Spiral moaned, the world starting to spin. "Lilac, what have you done?" Hoping that she'd been wrong, the mare stepped closer and sank to her belly next to the stallion, using her magic to carry out a detailed inspection.

There was no active magic in his head, no trace of the Blessing at all. Unable to quite believe what she was seeing, Spiral staggered back, jumping to the next stall and the next and the next. All of the ponies who she'd sedated to help them through a night of fugue were sleeping peacefully, with none of the twitches and little noises that might be expected.

At the base of every horn was a small dark spot, no bigger than an apple pip.

===

"What have you done? I told you not to try anything!"

Lilac awoke to the rough grip of magic about his head and a sudden hard shake that left him dazed. The voice was a harsh whisper, full of anger and fear. Struggling to focus, he stared up at the green mare's head, her ears fully back and her eyes wild.

"B-but I didn't experiment on myself!" he said, shrinking back from her anger. "What's wrong? I didn't hurt anypony."

"You've stripped the Blessing from half the ponies in the infirmary! What do you think is going to happen if Security comes back? I've already had to kill--" Spiral broke off, breathing hard, before continuing in more measured tones, each word clipped and precise, as if it was being released under great pressure. "Why do you think we went through all that with Packet?"

"It's not the same! Packet never went through the Maker's Test, but all these ponies have... and so have I. I never felt anything that hurt so much." Lilac shivered, the memory of that awful pain, triggered by only a frown from the police Master, derailing his thoughts. "But that’s the plan, isn't it? To free everypony and let them make their own choices -- I heard Fusion and Gravity talking about it." That's what they said, I'm sure of it! Lilac wracked his memory for details of that long and convoluted discussion. The youngster started to feel sick. "If I've done something wrong, I'm sorry, Spiral. I didn't mean any harm, it's just... I could feel them hurting, and I knew I could fix it." Ears drooping, he stared up at the mare.

Spiral closed her eyes and appeared to be muttering something under her breath, the words too faint and garbled to make out. She opened her eyes again and stared down at him for what seemed like a kilosecond, long enough that the silence became uncomfortable. Lilac opened his mouth to say something else, but the words wouldn't come; instead he waited, falling back on the hard-learned habit of keeping quiet when his Masters had been angry about some aspect of their research.

Finally, Spiral's features smoothed, her ears returning to a more relaxed position. "Probably for the best," she muttered, then reached in and lifted him out in a haze of green magic. "I don't suppose I could have resisted the urge to do something, either. Show me exactly what you did."

Slightly clumsily, Lilac copied the way Fusion had shared with him that first night, letting Spiral direct the memories. When complete, both ponies were lying together on the stone floor of stall eleven; Spiral still had her eyes closed and was doing something that was sweeping the infirmary building with magic. Lilac fidgeted, waiting for her to finish, recognising the arcane sensations of a detailed examination. Finally, she opened her eyes and met his nervous gaze, before nodding slowly.

"Your work was clean; I can find no complications," she said grudgingly, her expression stern, then her tone took on a distant, lecturing quality. "But you really should not have done that. Everything else aside, working on the thaumically active organs has a very real risk of causing severe damage, especially that close to the horn bed. Quite frankly, I'm surprised Fusion didn't maim Gravity when she did it that first time." Her expression changed, softening a little and she smiled. "Deadening the horn bed's peripheral nerves was a nice touch, although you didn't need to influence quite so large an area."

Tension bled away from Lilac and he released the breath he hadn't known he was holding. "Everything will be okay? I was sure I'd done it correctly -- nopony has been hurt?"

"Magically they will be fine, if anything you did a better job than Fusion did. My real fear is what happens next. I can keep all those ponies drugged for now..." Spiral tailed off, then sighed again. "Nothing for it, we'll just have to see what happens." She picked him up again, starting to carefully exercise his back legs; getting the hint, Lilac windmilled his forelegs and wings, wincing as the cramped muscles protested.

"Take it easy," Spiral said, watching him critically. "Lilac, I think we need to set some rules. I thought this would be obvious, but I guess you have not had anything like the upbringing of a normal pony."

"Okay, Spiral," Lilac said, wishing he could look away from the mare's penetrating stare.

"First, do not perform magic on anypony without that pony's agree--"

"But that's what a veterinarian does!"

Spiral closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out in a long sigh. "Yes, Lilac... and when you have two gigaseconds of experience in medicine, you can do the same. Use some judgement, my little pony. If you are doing it to save a life, fair enough. If not, then you need to be very sure that what you want to do is the right thing."

Lilac nodded dumbly, stretching his left wing out to its full extension, clipped feathers fanned. "I underst--"

The green mare flicked her own wings, cutting him off. "Second, you will do nothing to draw attention to yourself or us. If another pony finds you, we are all in big trouble." One big, green primary feather jabbed him on the end of the muzzle, making it twitch. "Security has killed ponies just because they might have lost their Blessings." The feather withdrew. "Now you may say it."

"I understand, Spiral. I-I didn't think about what it might mean for the future." Lilac's ears drooped. "Will everything be okay?"

"I think we can fix it. If nothing else, there are a bunch of ponies here who will want to hug you when they wake up. Come on, I'll help you use the dispose-all, then I need to start work."

There's precious little need for that, Lilac thought. His empty stomach had long since stopped sending urgent messages of hunger to his brain; instead there was only a nagging hollow feeling. The youngster nodded, trying to hide his embarrassment at being assisted to the toilet like a newborn foal.

Spiral watched him with defocused eyes, mind obviously on her magic. What's she looking at? Lilac thought, examining the spell as a way to take his mind off the faintly humiliating process. Immaterial tendrils of power moved through his body, concentrating into a knot of spellstuff in his aortic arch. The taste of the magic was familiar, something akin to the analysis machines his Masters had used on him.

"A little ketosis, but nothing too bad," Spiral said absently, "nothing inconsistent with a few days of fasting. We'll get you fixed before any of the secondary metabolic problems become serious." Her eyes refocused on his face and she smiled. "This is the beauty of me training you; if you are a quick study you'll get to do all the work yourself... are you alright with that?" Her smile faded, replaced with an expression of concern.

Lilac's mouth twitched into a brief grin of his own. "I've had plenty of practice," he said, "it'll be nice to eat something solid again."

"I'll bet." The awkward process over with, Spiral placed him back in his refuge with a fresh supply of water, then moved around to the front of the infirmary to start the slow process of healing the many ponies under her charge.

===

Fusion awoke to something sharp jabbing her in the ribs. Momentarily confused, she looked uncomprehendingly around the small room, the perfectly smooth wooden walls reflecting pastel greens and pinks from some diffuse source. The something moved again, digging into the soft skin under one foreleg and jolting her to complete wakefulness. Careful application of magic lifted Gravity's head, shifting the sharp tip of her horn away from the white mare's flank.

Rubbing the sore spot with one wing elbow, Fusion stood up, lowering Gravity back down on to the bed of pine boughs. The other mare didn't wake, and Fusion poked her muzzle through the improvised barricade covering the entrance and inhaled deeply. Cold forest air tickled her nostrils, the sharp scent of evergreens -- so different from the broad-leafed orchards around the corral -- clearing the last remnants of haze from her mind. It was still dark under the trees, but she could feel the sun fast approaching the limb of the world. "So much to do, so little time," she muttered, flicking an ear in greeting when Gravity stepped into the opening beside her.

"What do you want to do first?" the mare said, her words distorted by a yawn.

I want you to talk to me, Fusion thought. The events of the night -- really only a score of kiloseconds ago -- flooded back and she lowered her head, leaning against Gravity for support.

"Packet will be fine, you heard Spiral," Gravity murmured, touching the white mare's cheek with the tip of her muzzle.

Fusion shivered. "How many more are going to react like him? I'd hoped that if he would have just listened..."

Gravity rested her head against Fusion's. "We couldn't keep him prisoner, and the alternative was far worse. Hard choices, remember?"

"I'm beginning to understand how hard..." Fusion tailed off and turned to look at her sister. Gravity twitched, her ears lowering at the scrutiny. "What aren't you showing me, Grav? What happened in the tunnels?" Gravity's face went blank and she took a step back. Something akin to panic flashed through Fusion and she opened her mouth to speak, but Gravity had already turned away, pushing through the barricade and out into the cleared area. "Please?" she said, her voice thin and wavering in the still air.

The blue mare froze, so still that she even stopped breathing, then sighed and let her wings droop. "How many have I killed, Fusion? Not counting the ones I crushed under a thousand tonnes of rock, or burned in their vehicles? I’m starting to accept that what I did was necessary… but I laughed when the first tank blew." Gravity wheeled to face Fusion and advanced on the mare, her voice rising and moisture glittering in her eyes. "How many died when I threw metal rods through their guts or smashed their heads like rotten apples? How many?" Ears flat back, Gravity halted in front of Fusion, glaring at the white mare. “And you know the worst thing? The only one I really care about was Parapet, and I killed her by accident.”

Fusion swallowed hard, resisting the urge to step back. Parapet? That's not a gryphon name, who… oh. Five ponies were with Security at the start and only four left. Instead, she stepped forwards and wrapped her wings around Gravity, feeling the tense muscles through the soft fur. The other mare started to pull back, then froze like a statue in her embrace. "One is too many," Fusion murmured. "I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you, but you’re not alone anymore." Gravity’s iron control finally faltered and she sagged, leaning into Fusion.

"Is this what it was like for you, after we left the Institute that first time?" Gravity said at last, her voice rough and holding a note of pleading. "I remember what happened when we were resting on that cloud..."

Tell me I'm not a monster... tell me I'm not going mad. Fusion nodded, then buried her muzzle in Gravity's mane. "I knew you were having trouble with your wing, so I called a halt -- I wanted to talk to you, tell you everything... but I couldn't.” The mare shivered, then squeezed her eyes tight shut. “I knew the thing in your head would torture you until you gave me up. I had to lie... I had to hurt... had to experiment on ponies to find out how it worked.”

Voice becoming distant, Fusion opened her eyes and stared through the wisps of Gravity’s mane, trying to follow the little lights that swam in its unaccountable depths. “There were so many ponies in that aid station when I got out -- how many never made it out at all? My fault; should have found another way."

"I thought you said the Maker-thing got inside your head and gave you the magic to do that?"

"It did, but I wanted it. At that moment I wanted to hurt them, hurt them so they couldn't hurt anypony else. I deliberately picked the spell and let the power build, I just didn't understand how much." Fusion felt tears well up in her own eyes, but didn't stop talking. "There was a pony doing something in the accelerator tunnel, even while the thing was running; the radiation--" Fusion broke off, breathing fast, then took a deep breath. "Was he trapped in the tunnel? The whole place flooded with nitrogen when the superconductors let go, I'll-I'll never know what happened to him."

"I didn't know," Gravity said quietly, pulling her head back so she could look Fusion in the eye. "I feel so selfish--"

"No! Don't you ever say that, don't you ever think that!" Fusion said, slamming one forehoof down hard enough to make the wooden floor creak alarmingly. "I'm not telling you this to belittle your pain, but so that you know you are not alone... you are not some kind of special monster, an evil thing fit only for causing destruction and suffering."

"Spiral said the same things, said you would understand, but I didn't want to add to your burden. Done enough damage already." Gravity broke eye contact, turning her head away.

"Any debt you had, you've repaid in full. When it really mattered you came through, making the choices I failed to make in time." Fusion bent forward, nudging Gravity's head around with the end of one wing. "Really," she said, eyes searching the blue mare's face for any sign of comprehension, "without you I would be dead twice over by now. I only hope I can be as strong for you some day."

Gravity's lips curved into a small, twisted smile. "Sounds strange when you put it that way."

"A little, I guess... Gravity, in the beam chamber we promised each other that we'd share everything. I think Spiral knows more about what happened to you than I do." Letting the veterinarian have access to both their memories had been essential to helping her to understand, but it had been a one way process; all Fusion could feel were some of the emotions coming back from Spiral. "Show me what you've been through, Gravity. Please?"

Conflicting emotions washed over the other mare's face, then she nodded slowly. "I did say that, didn't I? The full story, from both of us."

"Do you want me to start at the beginning?" At Gravity's nod, Fusion formed the sharing pattern and built a chamber full of hulking machines, at the centre of which stood a white coated, pink haired pony, pinned by a ring of high-intensity spotlights. "Academician Vanca had been training me for several megaseconds before she decided I was ready for the first real experiment..."

As the kiloseconds progressed, Fusion stepped through her story, leaving nothing out and laying herself bare to Gravity's mind. In time, hesitantly at first, then with greater confidence when she realised that Fusion wasn't judging her for what she'd done, Gravity did the same.

===

The sun was half way towards the zenith when the mares finally finished sharing their experiences. The conversation had changed from a raw emotional release to a more measured analysis some time after the eighth kilosecond. They were walking through a memory of the transit hub, the high-ceilinged chamber frozen like a lightning-lit forest, looking up at an armoured vehicle with a heavy metal shaft the length of a pony protruding from vents on the mid-deck. The view as a whole was not nearly so complete; large segments of the cavernous chamber were shot through with patches of neutral grey where objects were blocked from Gravity's sight. The mare had filled them with what she thought was there, but removed the colour to show it was all guesswork.

"So when you teleported in... could you feel the antimagic field around this thing? You were very close," Fusion said, floating in the air next to an image of a hovering Gravity as if she was standing on solid ground. The mare was studying the stricken airtank with interest, peering into the wide opening of the damaged main laser mirror.

Not sure what you expect to see in there, Gravity thought, sighing inside. As much as it had been a relief to finally show Fusion everything, the other mare's constant theorising on scant data was starting to become tiresome. "No, not a thing. I can only assume the jump would fail if the destination is interdicted. You'd have to try it -- not in person, obviously."

"So much to learn," Fusion muttered to herself, "there's no time. The fields the soldiers use are nothing like the one created by that thaumic suppression vehicle of theirs... we've both tried to get through the personal fields, and it is possible. Perhaps there's a way to--"

"You'd have to try it," Gravity said loudly, "there's no way to tell. Listen, I don't think we're going to get any more out of this -- perhaps we should start on the more practical side of things? We must to due to check in on Spiral and Lilac by now."

Fusion nodded and Gravity dismantled the sharing environment, blinking in the sunlight streaming in through a gap in the tree canopy. Rolling away from her sister, Gravity got to her hooves and shook the leaf litter from her fur, stretching each wing to work some life back into muscles stiff from too little movement.

"I'll contact them," Fusion said, her eyes closing and a faint glow kindling around her horn.

We never did have a chance to test this properly; it should work, but the distance... Half of Gravity wanted the spell to fail; any excuse to visit in person and see with her own eyes what was going on. She shifted her weight from hoof to hoof, nearly dancing on the spot with impatience. Finally the taste of Fusion's magic changed, subtle feedback altering the pattern as the distant enchanted crystal responded to her touch.

A shiver of fear stole down Gravity's spine when Fusion's eyes flashed open again and the mare flinched as if struck. No, please no, don't let-- The blue mare didn't finish the thought, just forced her way into Fusion's link to Spiral and joined the sharing.

===

# The pony Random Walk DP2114 and the other foals from corral twenty-seven have been released from Security custody. Due to the unusual level of initiative shown by the ponies, they are receiving special care and training at the Naraka Institute for Biology. DP2114 will be returned to corral twenty-seven when this is complete. #

The message arrived with a standard notification chime, as if it was one of any number of other routine orders she'd received over the gigaseconds of her life. Spiral froze, half way along the path from stall eleven to the rest of the infirmary, one hoof off the ground and he mouth open in shock. Everypony with a foal at the training centre must have received one of these... Tears welled up in the mare's eyes and she leaned heavily against the wall. It's taken you this long to decide something so obvious as the innocence of foals.

That's good, isn't it? Lilac thought.

Spiral jerked slightly, then relaxed, drying her eyes on her forelegs. For a moment I'd forgotten... I suppose it is. They're no longer being held at the whim of that mad Agent, but the waiting sent more than a dozen ponies into fugue, with all that entails. She nodded meaningfully, even though the youngster was still hidden in the storage compartment.

I saw Fusion's memories of the Security Hub... won't it be much easier to rescue them from this Naraka place?

Yes, I'd expect so. Spiral started to walk again, trying to suppress the feeling of dread that was fighting with her relief. The only problem is that I know what Naraka is... it's the main Eugenics Board facility for this sector. There was a sense of confusion from the stallion, and Spiral sighed. It reduces the immediate pressure to act, but... being the subject of research is not a good thing, Lilac.

===

Spiral let Lilac sit in the back of her mind as she worked, keeping up a running commentary and switching between normal and shadow sight as the situation demanded. The first few kiloseconds were occupied by detailed scans of everypony present, to make sure nopony's condition had worsened overnight -- the sensors under the floor of each stall would alert her of any drastic changes, but anything more subtle required the personal touch.

Moving from stall to stall with her medical kit panniers, Spiral topped up the pain medication of those that needed it. Many of her patients were being kept in blissful sleep in an attempt to reduce the risk of fugue, always more of a problem for the pony unable to work and having too much time to think. This next one is particularly unfortunate, she thought to Lilac, nosing open the door to stall seven.

The smell of burnt fur and feathers, though faint, was pervasive and only kept under control by the negative pressure air handling system designed to minimise pheromonal cues disturbing adjacent patients. Lilac seemed to waver slightly in her head, the second-paw odour making him lose concentration. It only lasted a moment, though, and Spiral nodded to herself as the youngster calmed his emotions. That's good, Lilac. If you are to really develop your medical skills you will need to block out your natural instincts and maintain focus.

What happened? he thought.

This is Laminate; his duties included controlling a molecular beam epitaxy unit. It's delicate work, by all accounts, while also requiring significant levels of power. She looked down at the pony, tracing the terrible burns in his shoulder and flank. He swore he was okay and, like a fool, I believed him. He lost control during a high energy phase and this is the result. She pulled a bottle from her panniers and sprayed a gentle mist over both wounds.

One of a family of drugs similar to trauma spray; it will prevent the damaged muscle from scarring before I can complete his treatment, she thought absently. The medication was returned to her panniers, a curl of magic brushing the small crystal tucked between two of the straps. Still no sign of life; where are you, Fusion? A trace of guilt filtered back from Lilac and she shook her head. Sorry. This is the most important lesson, Lilac. Ponies will lie to you when they think you might keep them away from their work.

So take nothing on trust?

Absolutely not. Now, you've obviously had some experience with healing muscular injuries, and I know you can work at some range. Another little pulse of guilt and Spiral smiled gently. Do you want to help me with Lam?

Yes, please!

Spiral's grin widened at his enthusiasm. Excellent. It's not quite the same as what you are used to; Laminate has actually lost muscle mass, so it's not just a matter of rejoining the fibres. What you have to do is detach the still living tissue and move it to reshape the muscle; this will make sure that, as he recovers, he will be able to rebuild his strength normally... and not be left misshapen. The pattern is a derivative of the one you've already used on yourself, so if you follow along...

The green mare's thoughts tailed off as her magic started to make living muscle cells in Laminate's shoulder move to new locations. Worms of green light were joined by those of a pale purple, at first hesitantly and then with growing confidence, until the purple danced at the same speed as the green.

Patient followed patient and, by the time the sun was only halfway towards the zenith, Lilac was already starting to feel the strain. He'd learnt more in the last ten kiloseconds than in all of the medic courses his old Masters had put him through. Physically exhausted despite not having moved a muscle, he gamely tried to keep up with Spiral. Finally the mare relented, allowing him to take a purely observational role as she worked her way through the ponies under her care, while still keeping up a constant stream of information, tips and shortcuts hard learned over her long life.

Thoughts turning inwards towards his own injuries, Lilac could already see what he'd need to do to repair his gut; in a very real sense it was easier than skeletal muscle, as there was no requirement to get the shapes exactly right. In fact, there is very little actually missing, all I need to do is reattach each fused end and-- Something glittered at the edge of his shadow sight, a new presence rapidly blooming up out of the darkness to swirl through the infirmary. The taste of the magic was familiar, and Spiral stopped her own medical manipulations to tickle the disembodied pattern with her power.

===

The distant crystal was a tiny point of light that expanded rapidly as she reached for it. The fact that this was possible at all still delighted her; despite their quick test from the night before, long range clairvoyance wasn't something she'd really trained for. The shapes of the infirmary formed themselves from mist, quickly becoming solid and gaining their familiar pale colours. Her point of view was somewhere close to a plane of green fuzz that stretched up and away to a sharp ridge of long, white fibres.

Fusion applied a gentle pressure and moved her locus higher up, away from the middle of Spiral's back. The other mare was deep in the middle of some magical operation, little points of light creeping their way over the still body of a tan stallion. Everything appeared to be normal; no screams or galloping hooves, no roar of jet engines or hammer of gunfire.

Fusion reached out to the mare, enfolding the pony with her sharing. The connection wavered, then became firm, the tell-tale trickle of emotion from the Spiral filtering into Fusion's mind. It was strange; an odd mixture of satisfaction and a rapidly rising tension. Behind her, obviously linked through their own sharing, was Lilac. Hello, Spiral. How is--

Fusion, Lilac has removed the Blessing from fourteen ponies.

Spiral's words ran through her like an electric shock and she felt her distant body twitch. Suddenly, Gravity was there, a hard presence breaking into the link even without the normal arcane invitation. Lilac's emotions spiked, a sudden surge of fear and guilt, in time with her own panic. Fusion sent her immaterial eye roving through the infirmary, past the rows of drugged ponies and out to look at the corral. Everything looked normal; no sign of Security or any suspicious behaviour on the part of the ponies not on shift. Fusion's panic flipped to a sudden anger, the gentle swirl of her projected mind becoming all edges and spines. Why would you do such a thing?! After all I went through to keep us a secret, you go and--

I couldn't just--

Of course you could! Do you know what's waiting for anypony they even suspect of being in contact with-- This time it was Gravity who cut her off, throwing up an image of a young stallion cowering in some small storage space. Fusion paused to get her frantic breathing under control, tasting her sister's own emotions -- not anger, like her own, but curiosity blended with a touch of admiration. Should have known you'd approve of this insanity! Fusion thought bitterly, shielding this as best she could from the others.

Why those ponies, Lilac? Gravity thought, her own mental voice calm. What made you do it?

They were undergoing the Maker's Test.

Ah, that makes perfect sense.

Fusion opened her eye and glared at Gravity "It does? Perhaps you could explain it to me, then?" she said out loud, coupled to the thoughts in the sharing. The fury had gone, replaced with cold sarcasm.

You've never experienced the Test, have you? Fusion didn't reply, so Gravity continued. I have, and so has Lilac, I think. It hurts, Fusion, hurts so bad that you just want to die.

It was after I was shot, I-I can't really remember too much, but I think it was worse than the laser. All over, inside and out... I-- The image of Lilac in his hiding place seemed to shrink, clipped wings coming up to cover his head. All those other ponies... I just couldn't do nothing. I'm sorry, I thought that the plan was to remove the Blessing from everypony...

It is, Lilac, it is. Perhaps not quite so... unplanned, though. Gravity sounded distant, the distracted tone of a mind thinking of other things. Spiral? How many of those ponies would have died?

It varies with the age of the individual and their condition... I could keep them alive with drugs and intravenous fluids as long as I'm allowed to, but that won't be forever. If a pony doesn't pull out of fugue within the first couple of kiloseconds by themselves, it normally doesn't end well. This lot... Spiral was silent for a long time, her magic flicking over the ponies Lilac had freed. That said, half were only here because of low level symptoms -- those should have recovered by themselves. I'd have euthanized a quarter within a few days. The rest... it's hard to tell.

Fusion's anger drained away at the youngster's obvious distress and Spiral's blunt admission of the ponies' likely fate. It was replaced with a deep weariness and she closed her eye in resignation, letting her muzzle rest on the pine needles that carpeted the forest floor. I didn't realise it was that bad, she thought. That puts a different spin on the matter. Lilac, you did the right thing and I'm sorry for shouting at you.

Fusion? I've been thinking about this. Back when you freed me, I had an idea that I'd never have to euthanize another injured pony deemed not economic to help, that you could provide them sanctuary. Don't you think this could be an opportunity, rather than another problem?

Back at their distant wilderness hiding place, Fusion opened her eye in shock, then jerked her head around to stare at Gravity. The blue mare was grinning openly, her eyes twinkling with sudden delight. Fusion slowly nodded back at her, then focused her attention at Spiral. I think you might have something there. How would you do it?

The corral has been subjected to levels of stress that are unheard of -- I'll probably see more ponies with fugue in the coming days, as individuals work through their emotions; most will come to terms with it, but there are always a few who get trapped in a downward trajectory. I can fake the deaths of all these ponies, but I'll need something to replace them with.

Like what? Fusion thought, already building a list of everything they'd need for another fourteen ponies. Shelter, food, something to hold the ones they couldn't trust... That last point stuck in her mind -- along with an immediate, horrible solution that would leave them alive, yet unable to cause any problems.

Anything organic, I suppose, but it really should be mammalian to stand a chance of passing a chemical analysis... they've never asked for bodies before, but they might this time. Best if I'm super efficient with the disposal, I think. Spiral paused, her tone shifting to one of sadness. The presence of Slip should help.

There's cattle from the farms, Fusion thought, tentatively, but I imagine they are all logged.

We'll sort something out, Gravity thought, nudging Fusion with one hoof back in the real world. When do you want to do it? The white mare rolled her eye in her sister's direction and Gravity mouthed the words: "I know just the place."

Today, it should be today. I won't do all of them at once, but you should be ready for half of them. The silence lengthened, then Spiral sighed. I'm not looking forward to telling all those friends and family members.

It will only be for a short while, Gravity thought. When the time comes we'll have to be quick. The Ma-- Dogs won't give us time to be careful, not now. Do what you have to do; we'll call again at dusk. If... if things ever go badly wrong, destroy the clairvoyance anchor.

Fusion found herself nodding, even though her assent would not translate through this crude sharing. Good idea, Grav. Spiral, we might not be able to watch you all the time, but loss of the crystal will be obvious. Just make sure you really mean it, okay? We'll assume your life is in danger.

There was a pause, Spiral's presence seeming to waver slightly. When her mental voice came back, it was subdued. Understood. There's one more thing, but I'm not sure if it's good news or bad. I've just received a message on my communicator; Random and all her foals have been transferred from that Security place.

The mare's tone sounded tense, and Fusion felt her body twitch back in the real world. Do you know where they've gone? Fear made her stomach clench and her wings flick in agitation.

Naraka. That's the big Eugenics Board place, about four kiloseconds flight time to the south of the corral. The message was, and I quote: 'Due to the unusual level of initiative shown by the ponies, they are receiving special care and training at the Naraka Institute for Biology.'

I know of it. Fusion's ears flattened, working through the implications. I know that I and every other foal in this sector was conceived there. Why there? What else goes on at that place?

I'm under orders not to discuss anything the Board does with anypony except for another medic, at least I was. Spiral's mental voice trembled slightly when she continued. A certain amount of prenatal screening and treatment, training of those ponies who will become veterinarians, and so on... but there is a big section that is off limits to visiting ponies.

Is it similar to what my Masters were doing? Lilac thought, in a faintly wistful tone that made Fusion's fur stand on end.

I really don't know, but there were captive herds -- ponies and gryphons -- that we were not allowed to approach. There's only so much you can do with computer models and theories.

I remember that pregnant mare from the Institute, the one with the shaved belly, Gravity thought, anger leaking in from her part of the sharing. I wish I could have saved her, too.

If that's where our foals are, then that's where we shall go... if we can, we'll get everypony out, Fusion thought, there's no way I'm going to leave anypony in a place like that. Spiral, show me everything you remember about Naraka.

The mares talked, studying Spiral's slightly fuzzy memories of the Eugenics Board site, until it was time for the veterinarian to get back to her duties. More planning followed, until Gravity finally prodded Fusion into motion, leading her sister out of the shelter and deep into the mountains.

===

"There... do you see them?" Gravity breathed the words so quietly that Fusion could barely hear them.

Fusion had followed Gravity to this spot, flying for a two kiloseconds before her sister had signalled that they should land. Now the pair stood side by side, looking out through a gap in the dense pine canopy, staring down at a small clearing on the valley floor. The white mare squinted in the low sun, trying to see what it was that Gravity had found.

About a kilolength away was a small band of brown shapes nosing through the tall vegetation on the border of the river. Not ponies, not even similar, really. About her size, but without wings, and with spindly, bifurcated horns that jutted out from two places on the tops of their heads. All were an even grey-brown, with pale undersides and large, sensitive-looking muzzles. Some were much smaller; the herd had a collection of... Are those foals? Is that the right word? Fusion started to get a sinking feeling as she understood Gravity's intentions.

"I found them while scouting the area, waiting for you to return," Gravity said, still whispering. "They have incredible hearing; when I first encountered them they all scattered... I'm kind of surprised that I managed to find them again. I guess this is the best grazing for kilolengths, around this slow patch of water." She turned to Fusion and smiled sadly. "I think they are a kind of deer." She made an image of one from the withers up, expanding its head so Fusion could get a good look.

"I suppose I should have guessed this would be the only way." Fusion's ears drooped and she stared at the rotating image. At this larger-than-life magnification, the head was obviously small and sleek, with nothing like the bulging braincase of a pony or a gryphon. The image's jaws champed rhythmically, a long plant stem disappearing into its muzzle. Big muscles and tendons flexed in the cheeks and around the top of the head, further highlighting the lack of space for a sophont's brain. "This is the only herd you've found?"

"So far. I'm sure there are others, out there in the valleys."

So many from a single herd; this could be a disaster for them. Fewer eyes to look for danger meant more chance of being picked off. "We'll have to avoid taking the mothers with fo-- ...fawns." Fusion stumbled over the word, then shook her head. This is hardly a difficult choice, considering everything else that's happened. "How do you want to do it?"

Gravity pulled a long block of wood from one pannier, then split it in half to reveal two triangular slivers of some dark grey material, passing one of them to Fusion. It was quite weighty for its size; about half the length of her foreleg and as wide as her hoof at the base of the triangle, tapering to a fine point. Fusion moved it carefully, suddenly afraid of the thing. Its edges gleamed wetly, invisibly fine and perfect, and looked sharp enough to cut her even at this distance. Gravity held hers up, levelled like a spear, then made it flick forwards, invisibly fast. About a hundred paces away, a sturdy branch abruptly fell off a tree. The weapon was back almost before Fusion realised it was gone, hovering in front of its mistress' face and rotating slowly so she could inspect it.

"It's cut from one of the larger plates on a gryphon's barding... some kind of metal-ceramic-fullerene composite, I think. It must have a tungsten matrix; it's too heavy for anything else."

Fusion eyed Gravity's weapon and shivered slightly. Even after slicing through a respectable branch, there was little more than tree sap on the surface; the edge still looked as sharp as when the other mare had cut it with a force field. "Why like this?"

Gravity wouldn't meet her gaze. "You need to practice, to know what it is like to end a life. Seeing it through my eyes doesn't really mean anything, and I helped you with Packet. It will also be quicker than trying to use a direct spell effect against a magically defended target." The mare gazed fixedly at the ground, making random patterns in the dirt with a forehoof. "Using a physical weapon means you can reach the Dog inside with one strike... I know these deer are just flesh and blood, and you could use anything to kill them, but this the best I can do. They won't feel it if you do it right."

"I have had to do a few things, Gravity," Fusion said, "you don't need to be worried about me. You keep it; I was never as skilled as you at throwing things." She gently laid the over-sized knife on the leaf-litter, using a fallen branch to keep the edges off the ground.

"Just trying to help," the mare mumbled, "don't want you to go through what I did without preparation."

Fusion put the deer out of her mind and stepped close to nuzzle her sister. "I've been thinking about this for what seems like forever..." she whispered, her mouth close enough to Gravity's ear to make it twitch. "I decided that, if I had to, I could do whatever it takes to win. I don't want to do this, but we have little choice. In the end, this is going to be one of the easier decisions I'm going to have to make." You'd like to think that, wouldn't you, a little treasonous voice said, before Fusion pushed it away. What choice do I have? Gravity will fall apart if she has to do everything.

The pattern built in her mind; a simple spell, one normally designed to heat grain and render it more digestible, but more than robust enough to take all the power she could push through it. As a foal, back during her Pathfinding lessons and a little before her Blessing, she'd experimented with her magic to see the limits of her young strength. This was encouraged by her teachers; there was that one memorable day when Backdraft had taken the class down to the training centre and... She'd come back home with more than a few patches of singed fur, and a smile that hadn't gone away for a whole day.

Fusion turned her head to look at the deer and pushed. Her horn flashed, a brief surge of white-gold, and a pinpoint of white light materialised amid the herd and ran a brief zigzag path from one animal to the next. The motion was too fast to really resolve with the naked eye, and was only visible by the afterimages it left on the retina. The herd scattered, then a few seconds later there was a crackling roar of sound, like that of a lightning strike.

Breathing heavily, not from the exertion but from the shocking ease of the action, Fusion killed the spell and stared down at the results. This is but a sample of what will happen next, she thought, ears drooping. Surely the Dogs will see sense and we can talk as equals? Suddenly desperately afraid of what was coming, the mare shook her head, trying to clear her mind of a much larger landscape rent with craters and dark gashes, above which towered plumes of fire and smoke. Is there anything I can do to stop this from happening? Transfixed by this vision, Fusion jumped when Gravity leaned against her.

"You'll only be able to hit one protected target, I think... but I'm sorry I doubted you," the blue mare said, gazing at the distant clearing, "come on, let's get these somewhere safe... we still need to sort out how we're going to house all our guests before we talk to Spiral again." Gravity stepped away, then flicked open her wings and glided into the valley.

Fusion watched her go, rooted to the spot by what she imagined she'd find, then forced herself into motion, her eyes fixed on Gravity's receding rump.

Down amid the water, seven deer lay unmoving, thin plumes of smoke rising from their heads.

06 - An Inconvenient Truth

Author's Note

Preread by: KMCA
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and
Caliaponia (Just Passing Through)

06 - An Inconvenient Truth

Days of Wasp and Spider, Part II: Final Solution
by Luna-tic Scientist

=== Chapter 06: An Inconvenient Truth ===

The cross-species prison known to its inmates as the 'Cube Farm' was not a happy place. A sprawling underground structure composed of helical passageways that bored deep into the earth like titanic screws; it housed those of the People declared unfit to be free within the Hive by dint of criminal or political leanings. A section was reserved for gryphons, but they didn't get to suffer the boredom of confinement. Instead, there were secure barracks for the exhausted members of the Re-Education battalions that hunted the deep storehouses and surface farms for rats and rabbits, until they were considered obedient enough to return to their units.

Rthar, normally insulated from this side of Security's duties by his role as a reaction team leader, was in an increasingly foul temper as he waited for the lift capsule to arrive. His mood must have been obvious to any of the three species that frequented the spotless corridors; he occupied a zone of clear space that suited him perfectly.

A Captain without a command, reduced to being a servitor for that-- Rthar bit off the thought, memories of the night-time raid on the corral still fresh. What in the world did Salrath hope to achieve by that little display? That poor creature she had euthanized -- it had obviously lingered too long and should have been terminated a long time ago, but to make a public spectacle of it... This one joined Security to save lives, not take them. Rthar gritted his teeth and growled quietly under his breath. Still, this one supposes this trip might be interesting, as one survivor to another.

Anything was better than his empty apartment, filled only with memories, both old and new, that were best forgotten -- and there were those odd discrepancies in the long range sensor reports from the Arclight units, from before they turned their arcane weapons on the Institute. Rthar's time since the disastrous attempt to root out the rogue servitor had been filled with interviews frighteningly similar to interrogations -- when he wasn't running errands for Salrath. The price for being the one of the only People to face the pony and survive... and what about Rthar's own gryphons? He's been told that other Security staff would be questioning them, but to be denied any contact at all... There were protocols for disposing of members of the client races that had outlived their usefulness, but these were highly trained troops, valuable in their own right.

The capsule arrived and Rthar stalked towards the doors, coming face to face with its only other occupant, a lightly built, dark blue pony with bulky panniers emblazoned with medic patches. Rthar paused at the threshold, a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Anger replaced by something far more unwelcome, he stepped forward, reaching out to grip the rail that ran around the perimeter of the capsule. This can't be happening, he thought, as his heart started to pound. Mouth dry and feeling short of breath, Rthar shook his head and swallowed.

--a blue silhouette, surrounded by a field of violet light so deep it made your eyes ache, stalking down a wrecked corridor surrounded by jagged lumps of floating concrete--

Feeling dizzy, Rthar let out an involuntary gasp, flinching when the pony swung its head in his direction. The doors slid shut and the floor lurched under his paws, then the capsule seemed shrink. Shadows crawled in from the corners of his eyes, dancing away when he tried to look at them, the formless shapes flowing across the walls and draining any intensity from the light. A sourceless feeling of dread washed over him, its intensity jumping when the pony took a step towards him. Its horn lit with a blue glow and--

--trapped and unable to move in the dark, the air thick and damp. A pony-headed monster wreathed in violet haze standing over him, somehow visible despite the fullerene-ceramic plate covering his face. Light flared, the actinic welding-torch glare of a horribly powerful thaumic discharge, and his armour started to buckle--

--something punctured his terror and drained all the fear away.

"--aster? Can you hear me, Master?"

"Y-yes... w-what?" Rthar shook his head in confusion, then reached up to grip the rail and pull himself to his paws. Breathing hard, he glanced at the pony, who stared back, looking uncomfortable. The stallion's horn was still glowing, and Rthar could feel a gentle tickling sensation that seemed to emanate from the middle of his head. The feeling of motion had stopped; over the pony's shoulder, Rthar saw the emergency stop indicator flashing.

"Apologies, Master, I had to use magic on you without your permission." The creature's ears flattened and it shivered all over. "It appears you suffered a panic attack." Its words were strained, like those of a pilot trying to talk during a turning fight.

"What did the pony do to me?" A momentary needle of fear stabbed at him, then it was gone.

"I am currently suppressing your fight-flight reaction... would you prefer it if I stopped?"

"No!" The word was out before Rthar even had a chance to consider his response. This one has never felt it so badly, not even before his first live mission. He took a deep breath, then another. "What is the pony's name?"

The pony had been looking more relaxed, but his question made its ears droop. "I am Trocar Point PM8821, Master," it said softly, bowing.

He'd never had much in the way of direct dealings with the creatures before, all that was left to the specially trained handlers, but dim recollections of how his now-dead Handler, Elorm, used to act around them came to the fore. Reaching out, he tentatively patted the pony on its shoulder. "Rthar thanks the pony Trocar. Does it know what caused this one's attack?" ...and is it going to happen again?

The pony immediately straightened up, a slightly dopey smile curving its lips. "It's not uncommon for those who have been through combat to experience some form of reaction; I am not a mental practitioner, but I'd guess you are suffering from post traumatic stress. There is normally a trigger -- and it could be insignificant -- for such things." Trocar's eyes widened and his jaw dropped open. "Were you involved in the emergency at the Institute? That might explain--" His mouth snapped shut and he winced. "Sorry, Master, it is none of my business."

Rthar waved one paw tiredly. "Yes, this one was." So the rumours have already spread this far, he thought. "Rthar suspects the pony is correct in its assumptions."

Trocar relaxed again, but still looked uncomfortable. "Captain Rthar, it is probably my presence in this confined space that triggered your attack." He took a step back, pushing his bulk as far from Rthar as the limited space allowed, then restarted the capsule, only to have it stop almost immediately; the doors opened and the stallion quickly stepped out. "Captain, that spell will give you a few moments grace after I am out of range, but alone you should recover fully... unless you would rather I stay?"

The subtle tension behind the artificial calm lessened slightly with each step the pony took, and Rthar nodded slowly. "No, that will be all. This one will note the pony's assistance in his report."

"Thank you, Master." The pony bobbed his head once, then wheeled around and trotted down the corridor and out of sight.

Rthar watched it go, feeling the little tendril of alien thought vanish. Breath suddenly coming in great gasps, he fumbled for the 'door hold' button, thankful that no one else was waiting at this floor. Leaning against the capsule wall, free paw on one trembling knee, he took deep breaths, holding each one until the urge to hyperventilate passed. After what seemed like an age, but was probably only a pawful of seconds, he felt composed enough to send the lift on the remainder of its journey.

By the time the capsule had reached the hospital checkpoint, having passed through the labyrinthine network of tunnels that infested the prison, Rthar was feeling almost normal. Marching through the still opening doors, he surrendered his personal firearm to the bored-looking Person behind the reception desk, then waited for his escort.

That little incident will play havoc with this one's next psych evaluation, he thought, staring off into space, then jumped at a loud snap from somewhere behind him. Turning, he came muzzle to beak with a large gryphon, who stared back with indifference.

The guard, a buzzard-leopard variant with dark spots all down his thick, fluffy tail, held his gaze for longer than was strictly necessary, then lowered his head. "This way, Captain Rthar."

He followed the gryphon in silence, the loudest sound the occasional scuff of his boots on the fused stone floor. This wing was designed like the rest of the prison, only much smaller; a series of rooms jutting out from a wide central corridor that curved around in a compact, stepped spiral. The centre of the coil contained stores and the actual medical facilities, all run by a pair of gryphon medics with the assistance of prisoner trustees. Actual expert medical staff were very thin on the ground; the occasional visit by a Person, one of the Eugenics Board's surgeons wanting to brush up on the latest techniques, or a medical pony was the best they could expect.

The main section was wholly run by the People, but in the gryphon wing, it was gryphons who watched over their own kind, tracking every collared inmate, ready to shock them senseless should they stray in any way. In a very real sense the prison ran itself; trustees managed most of the basic operations, with only the security, maintenance and medical functions overseen by a small staff of People.

It descended for several levels and, by the time they had reached the right ward, Rthar was almost hypnotised by the metronomic swing of his guard's tail. The ward door was a heavy thing, a solid slab of metallic glass so clear that it presence was only betrayed by the distortion of the room in the other side, and it opened reluctantly at the gryphon's touch. Inside, away from the forced ventilation of the corridor, there was a strong smell of disinfectant that almost managed to cover the feathers-and-fur scent of gryphon.

The equipment in the room was far more basic than might be found even in an out-patient clinic for the People, and had the worn look of machines well past their scrap date. Most of the space was taken up by the stall, little more than a pair of low walls either side of a padded slab that lifted its occupant half a length off the floor. A little too low for one of the People, it was the perfect height for one of the prison's quadrupedal medics to work at. The gryphon currently in the stall seemed to be asleep, with his body slumped against the near-side wall and one wing, still encased in a battlefield trauma sleeve, draped over his tawny flank. His throat vibrated, so fast that it blurred.

"Wake up, Bergthor, you have a visitor," the guard said, hammering one scaly fist against the stone wall.

The figure didn't move. Rthar hesitated, staring at the trauma sleeve. This one hasn't taken a cross-species biology class in a long time, but surely that should have been removed by now. There was something else in the thick smell of the room, a trace that was tantalisingly familiar. He took a few hesitant steps, walking around the end of the stall to get a better view of the ex-flysoldat Olvir Bergthor.

"Paws and claws, you waste of feathers!" The guard strode forwards, reaching out with a foreclaw to shake Olvir awake.

"Don't!" Rthar's paw snapped out, levelled at the guard like a pistol.

The gryphon froze, then reluctantly retreated. "Master," he said, the word seemingly pulled from his throat with pliers, "we must maintain discipline; this prisoner is a coward an' a disgrace to--"

"Be silent. The guard will wait outside." The gryphon stared at him with those blank avian eyes, great yellow things set above a grey beak that was large enough to shear off a paw with one bite. The overhead lights glittered off the sharp edges and hooked tip, and Rthar suppressed a shiver. This is what happens when we give them too much autonomy, he thought. This one is too used to the elite forces; he forgets what some are like. The guard held his gaze for slightly too long, then gave an exaggerated snap of his beak and stalked out of the room.

Rthar wrinkled his nose and sniffed again. Almost buried under the other smells was something foul, an odour he hadn't experienced since his days of shared accommodation with other officer candidates. Too much food and too little time to clean up inevitably meant some scraps were forgotten until too late. That faint hint was coming from the figure in the medical stall.

This one must be careful, Rthar thought, his gigasecond distant training coming back, if the gryphon really is asleep, the Captain doesn't want to trigger an instinctive attack... A quarter tonne of combat trained carnivore was not something to awaken without caution. An eye fringed with snow-white feathers twitched open and rolled in his direction, then the beak opened, emitting a mournful croak. Still watching the gryphon's head, Rthar carefully slid one paw under a feline hind leg, hunting for a pulse.

The gryphon barely stirred at this invasion of his personal space, something that did nearly as much to alarm Rthar as the fever-hot flesh and the fast and thready pulse. Straightening up, he used his comms bracer to open a channel to the prison's control station. "This is Captain Rthar of Hive Security. Send a medic to my location, immediately."

"Acknowledged. Is the Captain injured, and does he require additional security assistance?"

The reply was fast and efficient, and Rthar relaxed slightly. "No and no; there is no physical danger." While waiting for help to arrive, he used his nose to track down the source of that elusive odour. It didn't take long; gently peeling back the end of the trauma sleeve released a stench foul enough to make him hiss with displeasure. Whoever had treated the gryphon had done precious little other than spray-seal the damaged flesh; what should have been a healthy pink between the remaining feathers was dark and inflamed, and the very tip of the wing had turned black.

In less than two hundred seconds a pair of gryphon veterinarians came through the ward door with a clatter of talons on stone. They took one look at Rthar, then busied themselves with Olvir. The Captain watched them work, noting when their movements changed from frantic to methodical, and one of the pair had paused to dispose of the soiled trauma sleeve. "Why were this gryphon's injuries allowed to progress into this state?" he said quietly. "This appears to be a gross dereliction of duty."

The gryphon, a male with a grey and brown mix of goshawk and lion, snapped to attention at Rthar's words, staring over the Captain's left shoulder. His colleague, of the same subspecies as the unfortunate Olvir, paused while adjusting the intravenous line she had just inserted and and turned her head in his direction, a look of fear in her eyes. "Keep working," Rthar said, pointing a paw at her, "this one needs to talk to Olvir Bergthor as soon as is practical. The paw shifted to the male. "You. Answer the question."

"Captain, resources for this facility are extremely limited, and..." His eyes became distant, as if he was reading off a screen somewhere on the horizon. "In the light of Bergthor's record of cowardice, command made the decision not to prioritise his case. As the wing was scheduled for amputation within a hundred kiloseconds anyway--" The gryphon swallowed heavily when he saw Rthar's expression, then lowered his eyes. "I made an incorrect assumption and the necessary checks were not made."

"Indeed. Can the veterinarian save the gryphon's wing?"

He looked around at his partner, who shook her head slightly. "Not with what we have here, Captain. Thaumic medical would work, but that request has already been rejected."

This is no way to treat a soldier... The flysoldat is one of the few who survived contact with the mad servitor. The Captain has no idea of the fate of his other troops, but perhaps he can save this one... Rthar smiled thinly, lips barely moving. "This one understands. However, this gryphon is an intelligence asset. Captain Rthar will authorize the necessary procedures."

The medic looked almost shocked, then fumbled for his own communicator. "Of course, Captain," he said, hastily tapping out a command.

A moment later the orders request chimed on Rthar's bracer, and he hit accept. Things will be said about this, he thought, but what's one more reprimand? It wasn't long before there was a whump of air and the click of metal shoes hitting the floor. The guard gryphon snarled something indistinct, then there was a brief flash of blue light and the sound turned into a yip of surprise.

A dark blue servitor stepped into the doorway and froze, one hoof half raised, his eyes locked on Rthar. "Captain Rthar, what are your orders?" he said, with a quick dip of his head.

This one should have known it would be you; how many other servitors would they have for this place? Rthar thought, heart suddenly pounding in his ears. "The C-Captain wants to question this gryphon; he may also have other uses for the flysoldat, and wants it to be fully functional, if possible."

"I understand." Trocar stepped into the room, keeping as far from Rthar as he could, then glanced at the gryphon medics. "May I have the room, Captain? The work will be easier."

Rthar felt a sudden flash of gratitude, almost enough to stem his rising panic. They are so perceptive! "Of course; whatever the pony needs." He waved at the others, then walked quickly from the room to join all three gryphons in the corridor. Heart rate starting to subside, Rthar scowled at the pair of medics. "Return to your duties; this one will discuss this matter with the base commander." They jumped to attention, snapping beaks in near unison, then half cantered, half flew up the spiral corridor and out of sight.

Mentally composing his answer to his temporary superior when she inevitably asked him to justify this special treatment of a gryphon that'd likely never be returned to active duty, Rthar started to record his report on his bracer; the difficulty of using the small display was a good distraction from the occasional hostile glances the guard was giving him.

Eventually, the pony poked his head around the prison ward door. "Captain, I have awoken the flysoldat; if you wish it, I can continue his treatment while you question him."

Rthar flinched, waiting for a resurgence of that sourceless terror, relaxing when there was nothing more than a vague feeling of unease. This one bets it will be different if he steps into the room, he thought, this one should be alone for this. Pausing, Rthar shrugged to himself. Who is the pony going to tell? It's obvious that knowledge of the rogue has spread widely. Wait... "When we spoke in the lift capsule, Trocar mentioned an incident at the Institute. What exactly does the pony know, and how did it come by the information?"

Trocar froze, mouth dropping open. "I-I-" His throat worked, but no other sounds emerged.

Rthar glanced at the guard, who had his beak half open in an avian grin, then pointed down the corridor. "Leave this one; stand guard on the next level up, if the gryphon must."

"My orders--"

"The other gryphons who were directly involved in this matter are either all dead or--" He had a sudden premonition of where his soldiers had gone."--in the care of the Eugenics Board." Rthar smiled, lips lifting to show rows of sharp, white teeth. "It is up to the gryphon; this one doesn't care." The guard looked uncertain, then backed away down the corridor. Rthar waited until he was out earshot. "This one thought as much," he muttered. The pony was watching him with frightened eyes, little tremors running over its flanks. "Well?" he said.

"M-Master, the majority of my duty is to assist at the local hospital. I was on shift when a pair of ponies flew in with an injured Master. Before they were given further orders, they talked about what they'd seen at the Institute, about how a pony had gone mad and--" His voice cut off and he shook his head, teardrops flicking out from his eyelashes. "They said the pony had attacked this Master, broke almost every bone in her body." Trocar lowered his head, voice becoming a faint whisper. "How can this have happened, it hurts to even consider that a pony could--"

Rthar raised one paw, then carefully rested it against the pony's bowed head. See? It won't try and rip the Captain's arms off, he told his recalcitrant heart. "Do not be concerned; Trocar has done no wrong."

The pony bobbed his head, then backed into the ward. "Thank you, Master." Behind it, Rthar could see Olvir's white head poking up above the sides of his stall; the gryphon moved like he was still drugged, but his eyes were clear and focused on Rthar.

"The pony may continue its work." Paws clenched, Rthar followed Trocar into the room and took slow, deliberate breaths until he felt he could talk normally.

===

Olvir's right wing felt like someone had covered it with white phosphorus and set it on fire. Red-hot needles were growing from the root, extending throughout his flank and reaching into his chest. The heat was a real thing and he panted, throat fluttering in short gasps. His wonderful eyes weren't working properly and the world was mobile and distorted; parts of it moved in and out of focus in a manner that would have been nauseating if he had the strength to keep them open for long.

Something was moving around him. There was a voice; loud, grating and familiar, then another, speaking in tones that reached into his brain and demanded obedience. A paw reached between his hind legs; that was too much to ignore, even in his weakened state. Beak opening, he tried to curse the interloper, but nothing came out.

The world blurred again and vanished under the accumulated weight of fire and darkness.

Cold, Maker-blessed cold, was creeping along his wing, extinguishing the fire as it moved. Behind it was a wave of comfortable numbness, advancing to the point where the world slowed its mad spinning and finally was still. The absence of pain and nausea was so shocking that he had a sudden overwhelming fear that he might be dead. A blessing, then. I know what's in store for me.

The time after the disaster at the Institute was mostly a blur, distorted by pain or hazed by drugs, with the occasional bout of lucidity at the interface between the two. Either one was preferable to the contempt in the guards and medic's eyes, and the way they talked about him like he wasn't there. At the start he'd tried to tell them what he'd seen, about what had so comprehensively annihilated his squad-mates, but they'd called him coward and mad, so he just kept quiet and bore the rough treatment as best he could.

It didn't take long before thoughts of his own future had dominated those increasingly brief moments of clarity. Long-term prison was never considered an option for gryphonkind, like it was for the Masters. If you were not useful, then you were of no use. Too badly injured? The needle and a fast death. Important skills but a bit too old? Training and light duties, becoming the institutional memory of the Hive's military, security, or police. A disgrace to your unit, thrown out as a worthless waste of feathers, yet still functional? Hunt for vermin in the vast farms that fed the Hive, gelded and permanently collared, confined by virtual fences.

...and if the only thing of utility left was your genome? Leave your body to science before you actually died, vanishing into the Eugenics Board's study programs as if you'd never been alive at all.

That particular horror was the only thing that truly scared Olvir, the ultimate deterrent to ensure obedience from his race.

The cold brought with it the ability to think, but without the luxury of movement. There was the delicate, alien touch of magic, the feeling of things moving beneath his skin of his paralysed body. At that instant, Olvir realised that the half-heard, half-hallucinated conversations that had been going on around his stall had been real. They are going to take my wings. Great tears welled up in the corners of his closed eyes, the only outward expression allowed to him. Not like this; I don't want to be able to feel it.

"Please try to calm yourself, soldier gryphon. It will be easier to reconnect the blood vessels in your wing if you don't fight it." The voice was quiet and distracted, like its owner was concentrating on some complex and difficult task. The tones were melodic and gentle, so unlike the harsh screech of another gryphon.

It has to be a pony, not just some medical machine, he thought. What have I done to deserve such treatment? The strange sensations carried on, sometimes uncomfortable, but never actually painful. Olvir bore it all gladly, his dread for the future fading with every moment the pony worked on him.

"I am going to let you move now, but please be careful. The repairs to your wing are very delicate." The voice was a quiet whisper, so close he could feel hairs brushing the feathers on the side of his head. Reflexively, Olvir nodded, and was surprised when he was able to. "A Master wants to talk to you; it is because of him that I am here with you."

Olvir opened his eyes, blinking furiously to clear his vision, as the hollow clip-clop of hoof on stone marked the departure of the pony. Turning his head, he glanced at his flank, then hurriedly looked away when he caught sight of the battered and lumpy thing that lay where his wing should have been. Trying to erase that distressing image, he instead focused on the Master and the pony at the door to the ward.

The Master was familiar; there was no way Olvir was going to forget the time they'd first met. It's the squad commander from the Institute, he thought, why does he want to talk to me? Equally obvious were the Captain's insignia and Security service tags on the Person's equipment vest, but those paled into insignificance before the other details that were painfully obvious to a gryphon's razor sharp vision. Twitches of the ears and whiskers, darting motions of the eyes, and a nervous, near imperceptible movement of his paws, like they were trying to fold around the grip of a weapon.

He's afraid of the pony. The idea was ridiculous, and yet... The veterinarian has almost the same coat colour as the other one.

--the whining crack of metal accelerated to unreasonable speeds, propelled by a hard-edged, near ultraviolet, glare that was impossible to focus on and left shifting blobs of colour across the eyes. A blue pony, vanishing in a flash the same colour--

Metal creaked alarmingly, and Olvir carefully unwrapped a set of talons from the thin walls that ran down the sides of the stall, ignoring the new set of scratches and dents he'd added to the already scarred sheet metal. Watching as the Person walked slowly behind the blue pony, he suddenly had to know. "Master," he said, snapping his beak weakly. "You saw her, didn't you?"

"That is why the Captain is here, flysoldat."

"No longer, I think, even if I do ever escape from this place." Olvir glanced at his damaged wing, staring, as if mesmerised, at the blue flames that licked along its denuded surface. "I heard the other medics talking, so I know what comes next. They'll take them both, I suppose... no point in one without the other." The gryphon blinked, then refocused his gaze on Rthar. "My apologies, Captain. I was told you have questions."

The Master twitched, his ears drooping for an instant. "Perhaps not," he said, so softly that Olvir thought he might be hallucinating again, then his gaze refocused on the gryphon. "Yes, this one does. The gryphon is the only survivor of--"

"I'm all that is left from the whole barricade force!" Olvir cringed when he realised what he'd done, waiting for the reprimand, the order for the pony to stop work, anything as punishment for interrupting the Captain, but all he did was nod tiredly.

"Yes. All the People and gryphons perished in the attack, either as a direct result of the fight, or when the Institute collapsed after the servitor's explosives detonated." The Master dropped his gaze, staring at the backs of his paws, then continued as if reading from a report. "Engineers are excavating the ruin now, but there is precious little data to go on until they get to the transit hub. The whole place is so unstable that it could take megaseconds before that happens -- more, if the individual suit logs are as corrupted as the transmitted feed was."

Olvir nodded dumbly. "I understand. I'm not sure how much I can add, the... pony... did most of her work after she hit me."

"Nevertheless." Rthar waved a paw, and Olvir took it as a signal to start talking. Over the next two kiloseconds he went through his story, the whole relatively brief encounter taking far more time than it should have because of the detail Rthar wanted to include. The Captain kept his comm's recorder running the whole time, its little remote lens rig positioned on the side of the stall, while he scribbled his own set of notes in the machine's holographic display. Olvir didn't mind the continuous backtracking and repetition; the longer he talked, the more time the pony had to work, and with every passing moment his wing looked less like something that had been dead for three days.

"Rthar is still not clear on one thing," the Captain said, running both paws from ears to muzzle tip and back again. "Why is the flysoldat lying to this one?

Olvir twitched, his wings fluttering unconsciously, earning him a disapproving glare from the pony. "Captain Rthar, I've told you everything I can remember; it all happened so--"

"Fast. Yes, the gryphon said. Several times. The gryphon's story is not consistent -- this one does not want to hear what Olvir thinks he wants Rthar to hear, he wants the truth!" With the final word, Rthar slammed his balled paw into the side of the stall with enough force to leave a dent in the thin metal. At the sudden noise, both Olvir and the pony jumped, the veterinarian letting out an involuntary whinny. Rthar waved for the pony to continue his work, then leaned forwards, one claw tapping on the end of Olvir's beak. "Start again, from just after the pony's decoy was destroyed."

Olvir resisted the urge to snap at the finger and slumped a little deeper into the stall's thin padding. "Yes, Captain. When the decoy was destroyed, I thought it was over, but then the first airtank exploded. Superconductor quench, lit the transit hub like the sun had come up. Then..." This is where he calls me mad. Olvir resigned himself to being sent away, perhaps to one of the farms, but more likely to the Eugenics Board for study. "...there was a flash of violet light behind me, and... she was there, surrounded by a halo of floating rocks."

"How did the pony get there? The remote sensor reports say it was on the other side of the chamber. Did it fly?"

"I don't know, Captain. Perhaps she's fast, or perhaps she was always there, and had been hidden while controlling her decoy." But you do know differently, don't you? Involuntarily cringing, Olvir fell silent, waiting for Rthar to say something.

"What does Trocar think?" Rthar said, suddenly looking up at the blue pony. "If the pony was doing a large amount of magic remotely, could it hide successfully?"

Trocar stared back at Rthar, mouth working. Olvir felt a sudden pang of sympathy for the creature, as well as a little distress for himself. Whatever the Captain had interrupted was starting to sting, a rapidly building heat that started at his wing tip. He hissed quietly, then clamped his beak shut in an effort to remain unnoticed.

The little noise jolted the pony, and blue fire once more glimmered along its horn to extinguish his pain. "Sorry Master, you surprised me. No, any working of magic will leave its mark. Very minor spells might go unnoticed, but not anything of the order flysoldat Bergthor has described." Trocar's tone turned to one of awe, and his wings twitched with excitement. "That amount of power is beyond any ten ponies, possibly more. Such magic would be very obvious even to normal thaumic sensors."

Rthar grunted, then nodded for the pony to resume his work. "Continue, flysoldat."

"Then she hit me with something and, while I was helpless, destroyed my autogun and visor. Then she... apologised, like she really didn't want to hurt us, even though we'd tried as hard as we could to kill her. After that, there was another violet flash and she was gone."

Rthar leaned forward, head cocked to one side with interest. "What does the gryphon mean, 'gone'? The pony took off? Ran away?"

"No, Captain. Gone. She vanished, then the shooting started again from a completely different part of the transit hub."

===

"What makes the Captain think that the gryphon is telling the truth?" Agent Salrath said, her voice raspy and distracted. Even as she talked to him, she was staring at the wallscreen, as if by pure force of will she could pull something from it.

Rthar smiled thinly, schooling his expression to one of polite interest when she glanced in his direction. The room could have held three, but the other two instrumented beds were empty. Salrath looked little different from when he'd seen her at the corral; a twisted figure covered with scars, her once sleek, brindled fur now patchy and dull. Traces of pain, well controlled, narrowed her eyes to a permanent squint and made her jaw clench periodically.

The only other Person present was there virtually; the life size image of a blandly smiling Sector Chief Orgon sitting behind his desk, the grey bulk of his personal servitor just at the edge of the shot. It was the pony that Salrath was looking at, not Orgon.

This one wonders why the Agent isn't getting the care she so obviously expects... perhaps she has outlived her usefulness? The pony normally keeps out of sight for video conferences; that it is visible at all... Rthar covered his mouth with one paw when he felt that smile threatening to return. "The Agent has seen the same reports that Rthar has; there are too many discrepancies in the sensor data and this is the only thing that makes sense." He snorted and shook his head at the wonder of the thing. "This one knows what it sounds like... but the Agent was unconscious by the time the rogue really started its work. Rthar is prepared to believe it is possible. In any case, the gryphon should be moved somewhere safer; in its current location it will suffer further, and may lose any value as an intelligence asset."

Rthar said the words as neutrally as possible, resisting the urge to hold his breath as Orgon considered his suggestion. It will do these ones no good if Olvir is murdered in some pointless fight over an accusation of cowardice. There were already some sarcastic comments on his report by a variety of superior officers, asking about the expense of dedicated thaumic intervention for a single gryphon of dubious record.

He had a nagging feeling that what the gryphon had said was the absolute truth. Salrath's opinion of his report was clear; the sneer on her muzzle was obvious even with the scars on her face. The ever-smiling Orgon was impossible to read, as always, but this new servitor ability was so outside his own experience that, if it wasn't for actually facing the creature in combat, he wouldn't have believed it, either.

But if it is actually true, then catching the thing will be well-nigh impossible. Is it somewhere out there in the world, doing Maker-knows what? Lacunae is already under suspicion from the World Court... Face blank and ears held in an attentive posture, Rthar pressed his tongue under one canine tooth and bit down in an attempt at a distraction, but the thoughts came anyway. ...if they discover this super-servitor is loose, what will they do?

The chaos and public revelations of a full-scale Audit could put the Hive's economic and political power back by a gigasecond; confidential research and hidden plans would be laid bare to the multi-Hive investigation teams. It had happened before, although not to Lacunae and not for several gigaseconds. The example of Soro Hive was not one to be taken lightly. Will they go that far? Rthar swallowed dryly; the conclusion was obvious. How could they not? They will rip us apart to discover every detail about the servitor and what it might do. This one really hopes he is wrong and it is dead.

Orgon finally nodded at this, one paw coming up to stroke the fur under his muzzle. "This one agrees; the flysoldat may be useful. It will be taken care of." The Sector Chief did something on a panel below the camera's view, then continued. "Despite the outlandish nature of the gryphon's claim, Orgon has checked with our thaumic experts; there is, apparently, nothing in the laws of physics that prohibits this kind of translation. None of the People had any idea as to how it might be achieved, unfortunately. This one has one more avenue of research to try... although its reliability may be compromised."

"Vanca," Salrath said, then coughed weakly, her lips curling back to reveal clenched teeth. "How is the Academician reacting to her confinement?"

"Surprisingly well, but she is of the type who mostly lives in her head. She is using it as an opportunity to get some work done without distractions. These ones have almost no hold over her; she really doesn't seem to care where she is." For the first time since the meeting had started, Orgon lost his smile, replacing it with a delicate frown. "Technical Services still don't understand half of what she is doing."

Rthar felt his ears dip slightly and struggled to keep the rest of his features relaxed. Orgon comes from the same side of Security as Salrath, and it shows, he thought. "It is hardly surprising, when the Sector Chief has had the Academician declared dead," he said, then winced when Orgon glanced at him, one eyebrow raised.

"There is something," Salrath said, losing her battle to stare at the screen, and instead let her head rest against the pillow she was propped up against. "Has the Sector Chief considered allowing the Academician access to her experimental data? This one assumes she's been kept under full isolation until now... if this one reads her correctly, this is probably all it would take to gain Vanca's interest."

The Sector Chief interlaced his paws before him, laying them on his desk. "Orgon has... it is likely she will need such sources to work efficiently, in any case. What's of more interest at this time is what Security should do if such a feat of magic is possible -- or what will happen if the World Court comes to the same conclusion."

The possibilities are almost without limit, Rthar thought, watching the by-play between Salrath and Orgon. At least all the suspended ash and dust from the Hammer strikes will make for some colourful sunsets for the next few megaseconds. "Catching the creature would be difficult; even without this teleportation, it took only one to massacre Rthar's team... and it's not like these ones are able to use servitors to hold the rogue." This one does not want any more pointless deaths on his conscience. Rthar closed his eyes briefly at the memory of hot, green light.

"This is true," Orgon said. "The World Court is watching the excavation of the Institute with interest; this one would rather not be surprised by what is -- or is not -- found there." His smile faded slightly, a change in expression that, for the normally unreadable Sector Chief, did more to convince Rthar that Orgon was taking this seriously than anything else. "Perhaps this one can arrange a more rapid exhumation without arousing suspicion... it will cost us little, in event that this is all nothing more than data anomalies and the fever dreams of a half-dead gryphon."

===

Alfgeir's flank itched from the latest round of injections. A little patch of skin behind his right foreleg, no bigger than a Master's paw, had been completely stripped of feathers. He lifted his wing, bending around to look at the bare patch, the once pale skin now stippled and red with needle marks. The desire to get in there with his beak and nibble was almost too much to resist, but they had placed it with care and it wasn't quite within reach.

The room --call it what it is, featherbrain, Alfgier thought-- the ward was a cool white chamber with a glass wall along one side and a heavy hatch in one wall that had the look of something from a spacecraft. There was no visible light source, instead the whole ceiling glowed with a gentle light that slowly brightened and dimmed over the course of a day. Sanitation and water were provided by a compact module in the middle of the wall opposite the glass.

There was no real way to measure time, other than by the plentiful meals delivered through the only other opening to the room, a rotating drum low down on one wall.

Alfgeir stared morosely at the other members of his now much reduced flock. The only one left from his original Talons trial group was Svartr; the Maker only knew what had happened to the rest. Inducted into the Military prison system, they had been told nothing, and at first thought it was some kind of escape and evasion training.

Uncertainty hadn't really started to take hold until he'd realised that Kafli was with them, looking shaken as he'd been stripped of his armour and weapons. Even then, it might have still been a test, but Kafli had never faltered in his act, showing real emotion when they'd all had their claws blunted. The last straw had been the injection of an identifier implant, done with the casual roughness normally reserved for farm animals; the skin between his wingroots was still tender.

Aside from the two gryphons he knew, there was one other. Lightly built, she had the same grey feathers as the goshawk Kafli, but was lean and with a physique more like that of a pony than the serjant's muscular bulk. The gryphoness was older than himself or Svartr, but significantly younger than Kafli, she also had an air of waiting about her, of infinite patience. She had said little and, like Svartr, bore no outward signs of any medical treatment. All he had managed to get was a name, Ellisif Inga, and the fact that her last engagement had gone spectacularly badly.

The rage he'd felt at what could only be described as a betrayal at the claws of the military justice system had long faded, leaving only a yawning sense of despair. The trial had been a joke; little more than something to use as an example of the Master's 'fairness' to other units, despite the claim that they had failed so completely. "Fair," Alfgeir muttered, "look where being fair has got you now."

The ex-sersjant Kafli lifted his dusty grey head from where it rested on his foreclaws. "Play the game, son. This is just another kind of punishment, no different from time in the stockade. You screw up, you have to pay the price." He yawned, bottom mandible of his beak knocking against his oversized collar. Over in her corner, Ellisif made a quiet hissing noise that could almost be laughter, subsiding when Kafli glared in her direction.

Yes, but it wasn't our fault! That stupid Gunnulf, if it wasn't for-- He wanted to scream it at the ceiling, but kept the thought to himself; all those arguments had been made days ago and had fallen on deaf ears. Frustrated, he smoothed down the feathers on the back of his head and neck, wincing when he encountered the surgical scar. The end of one talon, now blunted from its normal needle point, probed the patch of bare skin, feeling the small, hard lump that had appeared the first morning he'd been incarcerated.

They must have done it the night before; Alfgeir's memory was hazy, but he did remember falling asleep very suddenly. The other three gryphons in the group had suffered the same indignity. Whatever had been implanted wasn't very large and nestled against the bottom of his skull, almost like it was part of the bone. The collar was the other new addition -- a bulky thing, quite a bit heavier than his old command collar, and completely seamless, like it had been cast around his throat. Careful examination with a talon-tip had located cavities and blunt lumps on the inner surface, but any further exploration was cut short when it shocked him hard enough to leave his chest tingling for a kilosecond.

"I don't think they are ever going to let us out," Svartr said, her dark, bottomless eyes staring through the glass wall and into the corridor beyond. "I think we're going to be in here until the Masters have no further use for us... and that might be a very long time." She turned slightly and ran a foreclaw over her belly in a gentle motion, then shivered. For a moment Alfgeir saw a glimpse of revulsion on her face, then the expression vanished.

"What makes you say that, Svartr?" The dark grey feathers on her head twitched, then lay flat, blending into the near black of her fur. She pulled her wings and legs in, drawing them tight about her body, so much so that they seemed to disappear amid her fur and feathers.

"I've heard of places like this... places where they work on us to improve the b-breed--" Svartr glanced down at her flank once more, then broke off, closing her eyes and breathing deeply. "It's drugs for you," she said flatly, staring at Alfgeir and his collection of needle marks, "perhaps something to boost endurance or strength... or healing."

How would they test enhanced heal-- Alfgeir's beak dropped open as he reached the obvious conclusion. "They wouldn't..." he said, weakly.

"Wouldn't they? Look where you are, you fool. Locked in a cell in some Eugenics Board facility and pumped full of whatever compound their scientists want to test. We remain free as long as it is useful for us to be so. If they can't use us for fighting--"

"That's enough of that!" Kafli snapped.

"You don't get to order me about any more," Svartr hissed, beak open in a threatening gape. "You are in exactly the same situation!"

Kafli levered himself off the padded floor and advanced on the more lightly built peregrine gryphon. Alfgeir stayed where he was, muscles tensing in anticipation. A warning tone, like the high-pitched chirp of a chick, sang out from each collar. There it is... Kafli changed direction, as if he was going back to his pad, then abruptly jumped sideways. Claws outstretched, he landed on Svartr's back, big talons closing convulsively around her left shoulder and right wingroot.

This should have been the end of it, but Kafli's talons were just as blunt as every other gryphon's. Svartr twisted in his grip, avoiding the curved point of the sergeant's beak as it dipped towards her throat, and slammed one scaly fist into the side of his head. Knocked sideways, Kafli lost his grip and fell backwards onto his rump. Snarling, he lurched upright, then blue-white sparks flashed under both the gryphon's collars.

Alfgeir kept very still, his eyes focused on the pair; whatever was controlling the punishment routines was very trigger happy and was liable to zap everyone in the room just to be thorough. Svartr rode out the shocks, curling into a ball and enduring the pain. Her collar went silent after a clawful of seconds and she lay there panting, watching Kafli with narrowed eyes. The sersjant thrashed, trying to get purchase on the collar, but that just seemed to up the tempo. The buzzing crackle became a high frequency shriek, the discharges bright enough to cast flickering shadows on the white walls.

The air was hazy with the smoke of burned feathers by the time Kafli finally collapsed, his chest heaving and limbs trembling. "Fair. Yes, I can see how fair this is," Svartr said, her voice flat and disinterested, then turned her back on him. Kafli slowly pulled his legs back under him and tried to stand; after his forelegs collapsed for the second time he stayed down and crawled to his sleeping pad.

Alfgeir watched him carefully for a few seconds, then quietly padded over to sit next to Svartr. The peregrine gryphoness glanced at him once, then resolutely turned away, studying the floor between her foreclaws. He just waited, and finally she spoke. "What do you want?" she said, her voice a barely intelligible mumble.

"You shouldn't antagonise him like that. Collar or no, he could kill you if he's quick enough," he murmured, beak a claw's breadth from her ear.

"What makes you think that isn't what I want?" Svartr turned her head and glared at him, her dark eyes suddenly full of despair.

Alfgeir flinched, then reached out slowly with one foreclaw to touch her on the shoulder, freezing when she hissed a warning. "Let me check your back, make sure there's no obvious damage." Svartr closed her beak and nodded shallowly, watching every move as he slowly probed the muscles of her shoulder and wing.

There's precious little I can do, Alfgeir thought, running through the checks from the basic first aid training every trooper received, but perhaps all she needs is someone to talk to. Svartr relaxed slowly under his touch, twitching occasionally when he encountered a particularly tender spot. "You've got no obvious marks, other than whatever they put in the back of your head. What do you think they did to you?"

"I ache in ways and places that you don't have the capability to understand."

Alfgeir puzzled over the cryptic sentence, then his beak dropped open as he made the connection to Svartr's strange actions leading up to the abortive fight. "You think they made you pregnant?" He found his eyes drawn to the silent Ellisif, who was watching the pair of them. You too? he thought; the other gryphoness also had no overt signs of experimentation. Noticing his attention, she turned her back to all of them, resolutely staring at the wall.

"I'm certain of it. I've done my duty to the race once already... but not like this." The gryphoness moved slightly, rolling onto the flank away from Alfgeir and turning her head to stare at her belly. He pulled back and followed her gaze, absurdly expecting to see some sign of change in the flat, toned muscle under the slate grey fur. "They've put something in me."

07 - Killing Them Softly

Author's Note

Preread by: KMCA
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna), Caliaponia (Just Passing Through) and jimi_betterix (The War Machine, a non pony Dr Who fanfic)

07 - Killing Them Softly

Days of Wasp and Spider, Part II: Final Solution
by Luna-tic Scientist

=== Chapter 7: Killing them Softly ===

"Are you ready?" Spiral said, eying the bag of fluid slowly draining into the vein on the underside of Lilac's leg. The young stallion nodded, already looking better for the infusion of water and glucose. "Don't try anything risky; that stuff will make you feel full of energy."

What, like repairing my own gut? Lilac thought, then smiled up at the mare. She'd pulled him out of his hiding place while she ate, both ponies laying down on the hard floor of stall eleven. "No, I'll be careful." He glanced at the intravenous rig, then at the collection of vegetables and greens Spiral was eating. His mouth felt dry and he swallowed, suddenly conscious that he wasn't hungry at all.

"I'll watch you, but you've got all the knowledge you need -- it's just practice and your first bit of work with real consequences to yourself."

Lilac nodded again and closed his eyes, focusing his mind on the patterns required for healing. His own intestinal tract, a coiled mass of snakes, became clear, and he traced the tube until he found the first severed end. Delicate touches of magic shifted the tissue, aligning the walls. The patterns in his head twitched and mutated, changing to match the particular arrangements of cells and blood vessels in that part of his gut.

Good, now fuse the ends to keep everything in place, but leave a barrier separating the sections; at this stage, all you want to do is join the blood vessels and muscle fibres to their partners.

Spiral's thoughts filled his mind, like a quiet voice speaking from somewhere between his ears, and Lilac nodded unconsciously. This really isn't much different from muscle, is it? he thought, tracing one of the dead-end arteries. The thing had flattened in the few days since he'd been shot, and he flushed it with fresh blood before joining it to its partner on the other side of the laser track.

In a way, yes. You just have to watch for more detail... even though the actual structure doesn't have to be exactly the same as before, you still need to be careful. She reached in, guiding his magic to a kink in the newly fused artery. Blood will still flow through this, but it will stall and some might get trapped. Where blood stops, it can clot.

I understand, Lilac thought, mind already finished rerouting the vessel and reaching for the next.

Gradually, Spiral's presence withdrew, until there was nothing more than a faint thread of awareness. Lilac kept working, not even noticing when the mare gently picked him up and placed him back in his hiding place.

===

Spiral moved a few boxes of supplies, then softly closed the store room's door, sealing Lilac in. His magic still danced, but she was too disconnected to really follow what he was doing. What did come through was a sense of satisfaction, the mental taste of a pony stretching himself into a role he was gifted at, yet had been denied any chance to learn. She kept a hold of the feeling, using it to monitor his progress, as well as buoy her own descending emotional state.

Quietly trotting around to the other side of the infirmary, Spiral nosed through the doors and walked the length of the central corridor, head swinging back and forth as she inspected her patients. Normally this would have been a more lengthy process, but everypony here was sleeping the sleep of the heavily drugged. There had been no changes during her brief absence, so she hesitated, then pushed through into Redshift's stall.

The violet stallion was relaxed and sleeping peacefully, a far cry from the muscle spasms and stiffness he'd had while in fugue. Spiral picked him up in a haze of green magic, supporting his body while she worked his legs and wings to prevent any future joint problems from his prolonged immobility. Now, how am I going to do this...? she thought, running through the catalogue of drugs and enchantments she had available.

Magic comprised most of what she did on a daily basis. Generations of pony researchers had extended the reach of thaumic medicine to every part of the body; there was little that couldn't be done by an experienced veterinarian. A sedative, coupled to... Spiral opened a refrigerated compartment at the back of the Infirmary, sorting through the sealed vials until she located the package she was after. Opening the outer container, she extracted the vial of milky liquid, watching as the glass surface turned hazy with condensation.

...this. A synthetic opioid, one she had been prescribing far too frequently, and one that had other, more distressing, uses. Part of the cocktail of euthanasia drugs, enough of it would send a pony into a deep coma, but without actually doing any lasting damage. If I couple it with hypothermia, then I can improvise a spell to stop him thermoregulating and keep him cold for as long as necessary.

She pulled her injection gun from its holster in her panniers, slotting in the sedative and gently using her power to assess how much she'd need for the already drugged Redshift. Magic curled around the stallion's body as she pressed the needle into the big vein in his neck, but the mare paid little attention to the fluid being infused into his blood. Instead, she poured her strength into her magic, casting a little-used spell designed to preserve a pony's life when complex surgery required the heart to be stopped.

The air in the small stall grew warm as her magic drained the heat from the stallion; within moments his teeth started to chatter as great bouts of shivering wracked his body. Quickly, Spiral switched to the euthanasia compound, watching with a critical eye as the electrical activity in his brain started to decay. Not too much... Before long, it was at a level too low for any but an experienced medic to identify, and the regular thump-thump of his heart slowed to isolated beats separated by hundreds of seconds, matched by even slower breaths.

She built her new little spell, a tiny trickle of cobbled together magic that further suppressed his metabolism and ensured that the ultra-slow rhythms were maintained and didn't decay into complete stillness. A few more moments to watch the enchantment and ensure it functioned correctly… Spiral sighed. There you go, Redshift. Sweet dreams. Sorry about the next bit. A length of tubing, slathered in lubricant, was worked up his nose and down his throat, far enough that the end was deep inside his muzzle and invisible without a thaumic scan.

Spiral carefully lifted him up and took him through to the morgue, gently placing him in the compartment next to Slipstream. A touch set the controls for a few degrees above freezing, rather than a deep chill, and the mare finally relaxed. "At least you'll get to come back from this experience... I only hope you can live with it when you finally do," she murmured. He'd be safe as long as no pony disturbed him; the temperature controlled chamber would make his artificially induced hibernation as easy as possible, keeping him stable for several days before it might become too difficult to revive him.

Shifting her weight from hoof to hoof, Spiral stared at the blank steel panel and chewed at her lips. There's no delaying it, she thought, clearing her mind and directing a trace of her power towards her communications disk. The little device awoke with a quiet tone that was only audible within her own head, indicating it was ready for her message. The mare hesitated, making a few false starts before turning the communicator off. Legs trembling, she sank to the ground and closed her eyes, taking deep breaths.

"It's got to be done; without this lie the whole plan will unravel. You've already misled everypony who knows you; what do you care about a machine sitting in some tunnel somewhere," she muttered. A machine that is bound to flag this spike in deaths... or maybe not; these are exceptional circumstances."

Before she could lose her nerve, Spiral opened the link once more, quickly dictating the standard death notification message to her handler at the Eugenics Board -- or at least, to the machine that managed all these things. "What's done is done; no turning back now."

Satisfying herself that Lilac was still busy and not doing anything too adventurous with his new-found skills, Spiral pulled more drug ampoules from the cold store and returned to the other part of the infirmary to select her next 'victim'.

===

Spiral had made her sixth trip to stall eleven and was just approaching the seventh pony when she paused and found herself staring at Packet's stall. Pushing the door open with her muzzle, she looked down at the pony, fully asleep in the slender metal armature designed to keep the pressure off his legs and forebody. Wide pads sat under his wingroots, the wings themselves held down with elastic straps to stop him slipping off the supports. A long tube ran from a transparent bag of fluid, vanishing into the fur of his throat.

She checked the liquid flow rate, then shifted the pads that supported Packet's weight, moving them so he'd not suffer from pressure sores. Spiral chewed at her lips, thoughtfully weighing the injection gun, already loaded with the opioid she needed for the first stage. You really do need somepony to look after you, but it is mostly things that Lilac can do. Re-building the pony's ribs and legs from the shattered bones of Fusion's staged accident wasn't a particularly skilled task, but it was time-consuming. Lilac is very good for one with so little formal training; I think he may be well enough to go back with Fusion and Gravity soon.

"The fewer loose ends, the better, I think..." And the explanation? What am I going to tell his parents? "Perhaps it should just be my fault," she murmured, then shivered; it was horribly plausible. I was overworked and desperately tired, forced to treat a wounded pony in the early hours of the morning... it would be so easy to miss something.

"Maker-dammit." The mare sighed and pushed the stall door shut behind her, spreading the yellow fur on Packet's neck and lining up her injector. "Goodbye Packet... I hope you have a better waking next time."

===

Let's get this over with, she thought, hooves dragging in the gravel as she started along the path to the cluster of shelters behind the black pyramid of the church. This close to winter the sun had set already, and the corral was lit by the dim glows of lamps within each open-sided shelter. As Spiral walked, ponies stopped what they were doing to follow her movements, staring at her until they knew she wasn't coming to see them. The mare could practically hear their thoughts: she's not going home, not going to the feedstock bunker, so she must be on her way to see somepony. This close after shift end, there could be only one reason for Spiral to make a personal visit to a family.

Spiral ignored all of this, focusing her attention on what she was going to say to the kin of the 'dead'. Actually selecting those ponies had been straightforward: the cold calculations fuelled by gigaseconds of medical expertise made her decision easy. Telling the mates and friends of those affected, on the other hoof...

In a way I should probably make this hard for them. The thought was horrible, but wouldn't go away. They'd be reunited with whoever they thought they'd lost, but to actually drive a pony into fugue-- Spiral bit off the idea, staring at her first destination.

Doppler, Redshift's mate, must have known something was up -- alerted, perhaps, by the zone of silence that followed Spiral as she walked through the corral. She stood at the edge of her shelter -- and it was truly hers, now -- staring at Spiral. With every step the medic took, Doppler seemed to sag, until her wings dragged bonelessly in the neat grass that edged the clean wood-chip floor.

Spiral lent in close, wrapping her own wings around the unfortunate pony. "I'm sorry, Doppler; there was nothing more I could do."

"I know, thank you for everything." Doppler's voice was a fixed monotone, like she wasn't really thinking about what she was saying.

The fur on Spiral's neck grew wet with the other mare's tears, and the veterinarian inhaled deeply and sighed. Remember to direct your anger at those who really deserve it. The words she'd said to Gravity came back, and Spiral held the image of the Agent in her mind, applying all of her considerable skill to taking her apart while still leaving her conscious. You better hope Fusion catches up with you first; because if I can get a hold of you... Curse you for what you've done, and curse your superiors for letting you do it.

"What... what am I going to tell Shock Diamond when he finally comes home?"

The sudden fury was so unexpected that Spiral's breath hitched and her whole body became tense, tears filling her eyes. Doppler pulled back at the change in the other mare's touch, searching her face for answers to questions that Spiral had been asked many times before. "He went quietly, at the end. I think his first attack must have hurt him worse than I expected, if I'd looked harder, perhaps--"

"No," Doppler said, her voice distorted by tears, "don't blame yourself. Redshift couldn't get the Master out of his mind, kept wondering if she was the one who had Shock--" A wave of shivering passed over Doppler, her teeth clamping together in a rictus that only slowly relaxed when Spiral rested her head against the mare and made comforting noises.

Finally, she calmed enough for Spiral to step back. "I'm sorry, Doppler, but I have to go. There... there are other ponies I have to talk to this evening. Will you be okay?" At the mare's silent nod, Spiral started to back away. "I need to send Red on his way before the start of shift tomorrow, so... so if you want to see him one last time you should come and find me in about ten kiloseconds."

"How many more do you have to see?" Doppler whispered, unable to meet Spiral's eyes.

"Six more tonight, after that... I-I don't really know." Now, do it now. It's the best thing you can do. "Then there's Packet. It was late and he had an accident. A bad one; flew into a tree. I thought I'd got him stable, but I must have missed something. He..." The tears came unbidden, pre-emptive punishment for what she was about to inflict on Packet's parents.

"I was only talking to them a few kiloseconds ago; they are going to be devastated." It was Doppler's turn to hug Spiral. "So many; I didn't know. Do... would it help if I came with you?"

The words came out in a rush, as if the mare was afraid she'd never say them. Spiral blinked in surprise, then nodded. "That would be very kind."

Together, the mares slowly walked towards the next shelter on Spiral's list.

===

Somewhere overhead, slow and careful work was taking place to uncover the remains of the force sent into the Institute; not so down here. Orgon stood at the centre of a little island of calm, the grey bulk of Merlon at his shoulder, while all around there was the frantic bustle of People trying to work as fast as possible, while simultaneously taking great care. The Sector Chief smiled inwardly. It is amazing how much this one's presence can encourage exceptional effort... even if it will probably be for nothing.

The cavern, a rough hemisphere about twenty lengths across, appeared to be about to collapse. Composed of a crazy jigsaw mixture of smashed concrete and metal reinforcing, it looked like exactly what it was: a cross-section through a demolished building. Heavy machinery was arrayed around the perimeter, most of it dedicated to removing the rubble that poured out of a ragged arch on the far side. Past that opening, a snake-like tunnel climbed up from the floor of the temporary chamber, ending with the servitor digging team that was producing all the debris.

Pulverized concrete dust filled the air, staining the once-white hazard suits and masks that the People wore a dingy, ashen gray. The servitors had no such protection, but faint glimmers of light flickered about their muzzles; the signature of magic filtering the air. The same oil-on-water glow surrounded Orgon and Merlon with a zone of clean air, like they were standing inside a shimmering soap bubble, and kept the Sector Chief's fur as pristine as when he'd stepped out of his transport.

The whole place was lit by the varied glow of multiple telekinetic fields, the sourceless polychromatic haze fighting with the pure white glare of the flood lights mounted on the mining vehicles. Servitors lay in a few locations, looking delicate and out of place against the backdrop of fractured support beams and the brutal shapes of machines far larger than they were. As Orgon watched, the flare of magic from one of the creatures died, to be immediately replaced by a different coloured light from the animal laying next to it.

The first servitor, a dust-covered stallion of indeterminate hue, slumped to its side, flanks heaving. The sound of its breathing, interspersed with great, wheezing coughs, was clearly audible over the background noise of the tunnelling operations. The second didn't spare the first a glance, but Orgon could see tendons stand out on the side of its neck in an unconscious effort to bolster its magic. "Should this one commandeer more servitors?" Orgon said, pitching his words for Merlon's ears only. "He has already removed as many as possible from the local factories without it looking suspicious, but would rather not be entombed, if at all possible."

"No, Master." The servitor's ears twitched at the mild rebuke, but she made no other outward sign. "The work is hard, but within the capabilities of the ponies present, especially since the mining team has just broken through to the underside of the beam chamber. It would be a good idea not to delay too long, though."

Orgon nodded, then frowned in the direction of the coughing servitor, relaxing when one of the People jogged in its direction holding a medical bag. A long, conical mask connected by corrugated hose to the bag was slipped over its muzzle, and the creature started to breathe more easily. "This one agrees," he said, striding towards the exit tunnel, just as the Agent-in-charge came over to meet him. "Yes, Agent Kathur?"

Entering the bubble of clean air, the Agent pulled away his mask with one gloved paw, using the other one to scratch vigorously under his muzzle, leaving pale streaks through his dark fur. "Sector Chief, we are ready to open the beam chamber."

Gesturing with his paw, Orgon watched with hidden amusement as the Agent reluctantly resealed his mask, walking ahead of them down the tunnel. The passageway was narrow enough that they all had to go single file, the rest of the width taken up by the hurriedly assembled conveyor unit that was still transporting rubble from the cutting face. A dozen lengths further in, the walls, a curious mixture of rough stone and the perfect, near liquid surfaces of force field cuts, opened out into another large space.

Massive pillars ringed the perimeter, their bases half buried in the collapsed upper floors of the Institute. Overhead was the flat base of the beam chamber, supported by great slabs of concrete held up by struts fanning out from the middle of the pillars. For a moment Orgon paused, struck by a sense of familiarity that should have been impossible in the strange place, then resumed walking. It was a little like being in a forest at night, surrounded by the shadowed forms of huge trees.

Up ahead was a compact lifting platform, its telescoping support at full extension, holding a few of the People. A pair of hovering servitors flanked the machine, responding to orders and gestures given by one of the figures. Planes of pastel light pulsed and flickered in the gap between two of the big ceiling slabs, while perfect cubes and other geometric shapes floated out of the hole to land on a clean sheet of thick plastic on the floor. These were followed by fat metal springs coiled around stubby tubes, then a single square of concrete filled with crystalline inclusions, which was carefully laid on the floor next to the other roof sections.

This done, the servitors dropped to the ground, passing up a corrugated tube almost half a length wide to the People on the platform, who then pushed it up into the opening. A fan roared into life and the tube bucked, blowing air into the beam chamber, releasing a blast of air laden with dust and the sharp smell of incomplete combustion. White light shone down past the edges of the metal square, flashing and fading as the source moved about the inside of the beam chamber.

Kathur, once more rid of his filter mask, trotted over to Orgon. "These ones will have to wait a few moments; the thermobaric detonations have consumed most of the oxygen." At the Sector Chief's nod, he tapped a control on his comms bracer. "Specialist Calung, report." A little video window sprang up from the bracer, and the Agent angled his wrist to give Orgon the best view.

"O2 levels are back up. It's mostly intact, some damage near the radiation lock, but the roof held. No servitors in sight, but this one can see what looks like... is that a power suit?"

No servitors. Orgon's stomach sank and he swallowed heavily, mind suddenly running in circles. No servitors means that the gryphon was right... wait, perhaps they are just not visible from the platform. He laid one paw on Merlon's shoulder, to steady legs that suddenly felt weak. The pony moved close at his touch, supporting the Sector Chief without appearing to do so. Huddled in a corner and dead from dehydration, this one hopes. He cleared his throat and straightened up, ignoring the concerned look from Kathur. "Get the drones in there, sweep the chamber." He gestured to Merlon, pointing up at the underside of the beam chamber. "The pony will carry out an arcane investigation. Find those bodies."

"Yes, Master." Merlon sprang into the air, hovering for a moment as the platform retracted, then folding her wings to dart inside. Disk-shaped machines, each a torus of instrumentation surrounding a central fan, flew in after her.

"This one wants to see for himself," Orgon said, stepping forward as the People hurriedly got off the platform. Kathur joined him -- the thing was barely big enough for the both of them, and the Agent pressed himself to one corner in an effort to avoid touching the Sector Chief's fur with his dusty hazard suit. Orgon ignored him, looking down at the security servitors as the machine lifted him towards the hole. The pair, standing next to the plastic sheet and its collection of blocks, were talking quietly. More witnesses, he thought, how unfortunate. "Those two are not to have any contact with the rest of the servitors," he said, watching as Kathur tapped out the orders.

Short though it was, the ride into the beam chamber seemed to take an age. What is this one going to do if the rogues really have escaped? Nothing will stop a full Audit if that is the case. Orgon winced inside, careful not to let any emotion show on his face. This one will be called to account for all of this. He started to build tentative plans for the horrible possibility that this had actually happened, the mental exercise blunting the unpleasant, and unfamiliar, sensation of being out of control. He has no desire to be subjected to a World Court memory trawl.

The inside of the beam chamber was strewn with the remains of broken instrumentation; lots of odd-shaped pieces of glass and metal, some with the mirror surfaces of precise force field cuts. Despite this, the room was remarkably intact, a testament to the enormously thick shielding and a braced design that anchored the whole structure deep into the bedrock. Towards the collapsed radiation lock was a pool of blood, old and dried, surrounding a clean patch the approximate size of a servitor's torso.

Half buried in the rubble piled up by the lock was a distorted figure with the smooth curves of an armoured suit. The angle was strange and the shape damaged enough that it took Orgon a moment to realise that he was looking into an opening made by the removal of the helmet and pauldrons. He narrowed his eyes. Is that a trail...? Something had disturbed the dust, and Orgon turned slowly, resisting the temptation to spin around.

The sounds of delicate work, matched with the flicker of complex magic, made the Sector Chief's ears twitch, but still he resisted the urge. If it was something that needed this one's immediate attention, the pony would have said. Of course, the Sector Chief could be being stupid. Orgon sighed and gave in, completing his turn. Behind him was Merlon, the servitor's grey bulk half hiding what was on the floor. Magic flickered about her horn, in time with the rapid snakes of light that writhed over the naked body of one of the People.

"Well?" Orgon said, when the grey mare's look of intense concentration faded.

"The trooper has been dead for at least two hundred kiloseconds, Master," Merlon said, levering herself upright and turning to face the Sector Chief without a backwards glance. She kindled a point of white light, sending it floating over the body. "She survived for sometime after the explosions that demolished the Institute." The pin-point hovered over the dead Security trooper's torso. "The blast that trapped her suit also cracked several ribs; despite this she crawled out, only to suffocate when her air supply failed." An emergency air pack lay at her side, gauges reading empty.

"...but no servitors." the Sector Chief said with a frown and a lowering of his ears.

"Sorry, Master. No evidence for any ponies either in the beam chamber or immediate environs," she said, a shiver running through her body.

"It is not the pony's fault," Orgon said absently. Perhaps they were deeper in the Institute, and were caught in their own blasts? His mind filled with the thoughts of what a World Court Auditor would say to that, and his stomach twisted. "There is still doubt," he muttered, gaze turning to Kathur, who was busy setting up a portable data unit. "Pull the memory from that suit," he said. This one must know!

Kathur trotted over to the damaged armour, reaching in to open the panel at the nape of the suit's neck. This spot, part of the thickened 'spine' that held all the computing systems, was the best protected of any on the machine; if the trooper had survived, so would the solid state memory systems. The surface teams are still days away from reaching the transit hub; at least this one had the foresight to tell them to go slow. That had just been luck, and a general desire to not cooperate too much with the World Court; it was never a good idea to be too eager, just in case they thought you had something to hide...

The claw-sized memory cell was slotted into the data unit, its display throwing up a wide, faintly transparent set of windows. A touch of the controls and Kathur accessed the helmet camera records, spooling back through the file. In grainy black-and-white and tilted at a crazy angle, the slumped shape of the dead trooper abruptly twitched and crawled backward towards them, freezing when the Agent muttered something under his breath and started to scroll through the indexing system. The video was overlain by graphs detailing all the various suit parameters the system recorded; hundreds upon hundreds were available, but Kathur wiped them all from the screen except for the accelerometer plots.

Kathur grunted with satisfaction, moving through the data until he had what he wanted -- a spiky set of signals, culminating in a single pulse that dwarfed the rest. The video silently restarted--

A dark, rubble strewn corridor, rendered in shades of grey by the suit's thermal and millilength imagers, and overlain by the ghost of a targeting reticule. More information pulsed at the periphery; laser power and pulse train frequency, comms failure and thaumic interdiction warnings. Ahead, a bright shape spun through the air, and the reticule snapped to it, the video feed blinking as the laser fired. Another shape, glowing brightly in the infrared, darted forwards from a side passage. The laser retargeted and fired again, but the shots went wide and the servitor vanished into the open mouth of the radiation lock.

The camera accelerated towards the opening, the view momentarily obscured by the drive plume of a small missile, then 'incoming fire' warnings flared and the image went crazy. A silent explosion filled the screen with dust and gas, clearing as the trooper charged through the cloud. More fire, this time the near solid bar of light from a rotary cannon, but the radiation lock was now covered by a violet wall that flared brightly under the continuous impacts.

--Orgon sighed, turning to Merlon and ignoring Kathur as the Agent leant forward to study the video feed intently. The servitor was also studying the screen, flicking one ear at the Sector Chief to acknowledge his regard. This is it, he thought, following the pony's gaze as his stomach knotted, this is the only part that matters. On the video, there was a pulse of violet light, then the force field wall vanished, and the view point dived through the radiation lock. There was a moment of stillness, the video darting from one side of the room to the other as the trooper scanned for any sign of life, then the roof fell in.

"At least one servitor was in this room... where did it go?" Kathur said wonderingly, moving the beam of his torch along the walls. Next to him, Merlon stared at the now motionless image, open mouthed.

Leaning heavily against the platform's railing, Orgon tried to control his breathing. Where indeed? he thought, paws balled into fists.

===

In the end, Doppler's presence had made the job a little easier and, as Spiral walked from shelter to shelter, she had accumulated a small herd of her own. Everypony knew everypony in the corral, and they all knew the likely result of the Maker's Test, even if only by reputation. After a few visits, those with friends and relatives in the Infirmary came to her, finding the wait for bad news to be an agony best avoided. On hearing the worst, many were relieved that the suffering of their kin was over.

Packet's parents were the worst; they didn't seem to believe it was happening at first, until they'd looked in Doppler's eyes and seen the sorrow and sympathy there. They had broken down at that point, listening to her fumbled explanation and apology, sinking to the woodchip floor and crying in near silence. The other ponies had comforted them, but Spiral couldn't do it, the knowledge of what she'd put them through filling her with an intense self-loathing. They even forgave her, and the mare had to fight to retain what little she'd had the appetite to eat since morning.

Spiral made the journey in a kind of daze, becoming more and more disconnected from reality. Part of her wanted to weep with the others, weep for the horrible lie she was telling them... the rest wanted to stand there open mouthed with pride at how they were all reacting. By the time it was all over, nearly a dozen ponies wanted to say a final farewell; stall eleven wasn't nearly large enough, so the green mare stood respectfully by while each family took their turn.

The magic and drugs worked faultlessly; no pony suspected that the body they had just hugged or stroked was very much alive.

Finally, she was left alone with a row of bodies on the cold stone floor. The light was fading rapidly as the sun set, so she pulled open the storage bay and poked her head over one stack of supplies to look at Lilac. The young stallion looked dishevelled; tears had run down his face to leave darkened patches of fur on his neck.

He blinked up at her, flinching away from the sudden light. "I didn't think about the ponies they'd leave behind... it's like I euthanized them all. How do you cope with it?"

"Experience, mostly." Spiral lifted Lilac out of his hiding place, holding him up so she could inspect his work. He bore it stoically, using the opportunity to exercise his wings and forelegs. "It helps that they really will see their kin again, and not just as some vague promise of a chance encounter in the next cycle." She frowned, reaching inside Lilac's gut and making a few minor adjustments. "This is me just being picky; you've done a good job."

"How long will they have to wait?"

"Tricky. It all depends on what the... Dogs do next." The word seemed awkward to Spiral's mind, but the logic of its use was inescapable. So long as I don't actually call one of the People that to their face... Spiral snorted and smiled to herself. "No longer than it takes them to discover that there are no bodies in the Institute. Fusion won't tell me her plans, but it would be foalish to let the Dogs take the initiative." There was the gentle tickle of familiar magic, and Spiral lifted her head. "Hello, Gravity. How are you doing?"

Better, much better. I didn't get a chance to say before, but you were right.

"Of course I was... but you did the hard part."

We have some replacements for you; are we clear to come in?

"You are. Let me just..." Spiral formed the right patterns, opening a sharing that encompassed Lilac as well. "There's not a lot of space here; can you take the ponies? They won't wake up, but you need to be careful with them -- there's no blink reflex, for example." Green magic carefully lifted several of the ponies, clearing an area of floor.

Moments later, with a violet flash and a thump of displaced air, Gravity arrived. Dropping lightly to the ground she furled her wings, then nodded to Spiral and shared a quick nuzzle with Lilac. "You can tell me everything later, but how are things?" she said.

"It's been okay, I guess." Lilac, still suspended in Spiral's magic, dipped his head to look at the floor. "I didn't realise how much trouble I'd caused."

Gravity reached out and tickled the end of his muzzle with the primaries on one wing. "Don't worry about it -- I know Fusion was upset, but there's an upside to everything. This gives us a chance to practice on a small scale." She caught sight of a familiar lemon-yellow stallion amid the group. "Packet as well? He's okay to move?"

"He'll be fine for now. Lilac here will be able to help you with him until I can join you. Isn't that right, Lilac?" Spiral said, smiling down at the youngster. "He's got a real skill for this sort of thing."

"How is our dam doing?" Gravity gazed longingly at the wall between her and the rest of the infirmary.

"She's in about the same state as Packet, really. With time and care she'll be back on her hooves without any problems." Spiral frowned and cocked her head thoughtfully. "Did you want to take her as well? Like I said, it's something Lilac can quite easily manage if I'm not around."

The blue mare paused, then shook her head. "No... she's safer here, I think -- and I won't take her away from father."

Agreed. Our sire already thinks he's lost us both, to take his mate as well... when the time comes we'll take them both. Anyway, we should get started. I'm sure getting caught when Trocar gets off shift is an extra complication we don't need.

Lilac cringed, only relaxing when Gravity winked at him. The mare gathered up all the unconscious ponies, arranging them neatly in the air around her head. "On my way, sis." With that, she and all the floating ponies disappeared, leaving the room suddenly empty.

The thunderclap of air rushing in to fill the space taken up by the ponies was loud enough that Spiral winced, thankful for the soundproofing in the infirmary's walls. A few seconds passed, long enough that she started to get nervous, then Fusion appeared with a white flash and another small report.

===

Gravity appeared with a roll of thunder in the darkened clearing, wings flaring as she dropped to the leaf litter behind one of the orchard groves. Fusion looked up from her pacing, reaching out to take the ponies from her sister's magic. "Poor Redshift; at least you'll never have to go through the Test again. Once is enough for anypony," she muttered, placing the violet stallion gently on the ground.

"Any probl--? Oh... Packet as well?" Fusion said to Gravity as the mare finished arranging the pony, carefully checking the armature protecting his front end.

"Spiral said it was okay -- and now we have to move so many anyway, it makes sense to take him with us. He'll be fine if we're careful." Gravity fussed with several of the others, making sure there were no sharp rocks or branches where they lay. "That will do for now. You're good to go. You still want to try this?"

Fusion nodded. "Yes; I'd like to have longer to practice, but the range is short and I'm sure we'll have to do it at some point. Why not now?"

Gravity grinned back. "That's what I like to hear; I can see this being very useful."

"Oh yes. I hate to plan for this, but better a deer than somepony I care about. I'll be gentle." Fusion built the spell, something that was becoming easier with every attempt, then pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--appearing in a room, watched by a pair of ponies just in the process of registering surprise. Over this distance, less than five kilolengths, the velocity difference was small, but still large enough to make her dizzy with the unexpected motion. Fusion turned the stagger into a neat side-step.

"Spiral, what-- oh Lilac, don't look so worried, this isn't something we can't fix." Even if I'd rather not have to do it right now. Fusion flashed the youngster a grin, then focused her attention inwards, calling up the teleport spell's pattern and starting to twist it in ways the Maker-thing hadn't suggested. "What happens next, Spiral?" she said, voice becoming distant as the glowing shapes filled her mind. Gravity was a distant presence at the edge of her awareness, ready to--

"My autoclave has a medical waste setting. It will burn a pony to ashes in a few hundred seconds. They have all been reported to the Eugenics Board... my Master did not request an autopsy, so he must be assuming this is all a result of Security's testing."

"Which it is," Fusion muttered. "In a way, this works in our favour. My parents always did say I should put my trust in the Masters." She laughed, a short, hard sound, completely devoid of amusement. "Stand clear..." Now is not the time to cover the infirmary with exploded deer. The white mare wrinkled her muzzle in concentration, feeling Gravity's senses expand into her own.

The sense of dislocation became strong; her ears flicked in the gentle breeze between the fruit trees, the quiet sounds of night time insects competing with the hum and click of the infirmary's machines. The smell of leaf mould filled her nostrils and Fusion closed her eyes, completed the pattern, and pulled--

Twenty-five hundred kilos of dead deer, stinking of burned fur and seared flesh, materialised in the centre of stall eleven with a white flash. The mass of animals, a melange of cloven hooves and spiky antlers, rotated slowly within Fusion's telekinetic field, surrounded by a diffuse orbiting halo of leaves and dirt. The mare grinned savagely at the sight, ignoring the shocked gasps from the other two ponies, the success of the experiment suppressing her lingering twinges of guilt. There still needs to be a pony at the other end... but it was silent! She'd cast not one, but two, teleport spells; equal and opposite, exchanging the air at each location as well as the target.

Spiral stepped forward, eyeing the mass of dead flesh thoughtfully. Little flickers of magic danced over the deer, and Fusion let her pull one out from the tangled pile. The veterinarian examined the burns on its head. "At least it was quick," she murmured, flicking an ear in Fusion's direction. "An odd mix of blast and thermal wounding; almost like the tissues flash vaporised..." She shook her head, opening the door to the large autoclave and pushing the deer in. The chamber, a narrow slot in the wall with a heavy-looking metal door, wasn't wide enough to fit the animals head with its rack of antlers, so the air was filled with the dry wood sound of breaking bone as Spiral cut them to size.

Fusion kept her eyes on the stallion, who was transfixed by the process. With each crack, Lilac's eyes grew wider and his ears went a little further back. "All because of me," he whispered, so quietly that Fusion could barely hear him.

The white mare took a few careful steps, sitting down next to the youngster. "Yes," she whispered in his ear, while stroking his back with one wing, "but it would have happened sooner or later, if not at this scale. You heard what Spiral said." The veterinarian had finished fitting the deer into the autoclave, closing the hatch and setting the controls with her magic. In the centre of the panel was a small peep-hole; the contents of the machine were mercifully out of sight from the ponies lying on the floor. There was a quiet whump and a lurid yellow light shone out, giving everything in the room a warm glow that turned harsher as the colour shifted towards the blue end of the spectrum.

Before a quarter kilosecond had passed the light went out, replaced with a near subliminal hum. A few seconds later, Spiral opened the autoclave to reveal a shiny interior; the only trace of the deer was a small pile of ash that had been neatly deposited in a tray at the centre. "So little left," Fusion said quietly, "it's hard to believe that's all there is... and so fast."

"There's a lot of power in this machine; the temperatures it reaches are really quite high," Spiral said, carefully sweeping the ash into a small plastic container. "I'm going to have to give this to Doppler tomorrow, and walk with her as she spreads what she thinks are the ashes of Redshift among the trees." Her voice was distant, as if it belonged to somepony else. "I imagine the rest of the ponies whose kin are dead will be there as well. Did you know that they all helped me when I went through the corral to tell them the news?"

Fusion shook her head, mouth suddenly dry. "I wish I could do something--"

"Something, yes." Spiral pulled another deer from the floating pile and pushed it into the autoclave, horn flaring as she broke its antlers with far more force than was necessary. "Is this going to be my future, Fusion? Is it?" She slammed the door shut and started the cremation sequence, wheeling around to stare at the other mare. "Lying to ponies I've watched over for more than a gigasecond, telling them their partners were tortured to death, and that it is all part of the Maker's plan?"

"Not for long; a few more days, at most," Fusion said, standing up and walking towards the veterinarian. "This situation cannot hold and we will have to act. Everypony I care about is here, or held captive in some abominable place. Soon our secret will be discovered, and I cannot afford to let the Dogs make the first move. We have a narrow window of opportunity, a slender period of time within which to operate and get as many ponies free as possible. When I have enough, then--" Fusion stopped, breathing heavily. "It's best if you don't know. Will you be okay for a few days, Spiral?"

The green mare took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out slowly. "Sorry. It-it's been a trying day."

Fusion wrapped her wing about the mare, leaning her head against the other's neck. "I know, I know." She held the position, looking into the yellow glow coming from the autoclave. Is this what the future holds for all of us? Through the little window, the smashed skull of a stag stared back at her, mad flames dancing out of its eye-sockets.

08 - A Double-Edged Sword

Author's Note

Preread by: KMCA
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna), Caliaponia (Just Passing Through) and jimi_betterix (The War Machine, a non pony Dr Who fanfic).

08 - A Double-Edged Sword

Days of Wasp and Spider, Part II: Final Solution
by Luna-tic Scientist

=== Chapter 8: A Double-Edged Sword ===

There was an ache spreading down the back of Fusion's neck, a low level feeling of tightness that originated at the base of her horn and was reaching towards her wingroots. The few kiloseconds of rest she'd managed after seeing to their still sleeping 'guests' weren't really enough, and she could feel the exhaustion like her bones were filled with lead. To make things worse, the air around her was hot and smelled of fire, a fine haze of smoke making the dim light pearlescent. Her telekinesis kept the particles at bay, but did nothing for the smell. The heat was oppressive, and the sweat running down her flanks did little more than turn the chamber into a sauna.

A steady stream of rocks, edges glinting dully in the white-gold glow of her magic, moved past her right side from somewhere ahead that flickered and flashed with violet fire. The rocks, a mixture of perfect geometric forms from where Gravity had cut them, and jagged edges from where she had lost patience and simply ripped them away from where they had rested, moved on and out of sight to join the ever-growing spoil heap at the bottom of the narrow, but very deep, lake. Periodically, Fusion would pluck material from the stream and pump energy into it until it turned malleable and she could weld it into a seamless sphere, before cutting it into the right shape to line the chamber's walls.

None of the magic she was using was complex, but there were a lot of spells operating at the same time, each requiring a little of her attention or strength to keep it going. There's got to be an easier way to do this, Fusion thought, adjusting the cloud of gravel she was using to keep the radiant heat of her current work piece at bay. They'd thrashed out the basics of the plan the day before, knowing full well that they'd need more space; enough for the ponies rescued from the Security Hub, at the very least.

Scouting flights had located a promising site; a long, flooded valley between two low mountains, up near the tree line. There was even some grass -- although she doubted it would last long with the number of hungry mouths they were going to receive. Their requirements were simple; space to hide something big enough for everypony, and strong enough to give them at least some protection for when Hive forces finally realised the threat they presented. I suppose I should get used to this... doing everything at a rush. It's not like the Dogs will ever give us any peace.

The pair had hollowed out an opening in the rock walls, under the surface of the lake, then filled it with air from a slender ventilation shaft Gravity had simply pushed through the overlying rock. That had left them with a rough-walled artificial cave, the back of which was a pool of dark water that led to the lake. The rock hadn't been very sturdy; odd creaking and groaning could be heard whenever the sisters relaxed their magic. The first minor rock fall, stopped by Gravity before it could cause any harm, had convinced them that the whole thing would need to be lined.

The mare sneezed, momentarily losing control of her magic. Her current block of stone, a quarter length wedge of sedimentary rock sheared by force fields and heated until it glowed with a dull red heat, wobbled and fell from her grasp. Shattering on impact, it sent sparks and burning fragments skittering across the mirror smooth floor. Ahead of her, invisible in the smoky darkness were it not for the violet pulse and surge of her magic, Gravity jumped to avoid a hoof-sized rock that ricocheted off the half-finished wall to her side.

"Hey! Watch what you are doing back there!" The blue mare's voice sounded scratchy, completely different from her normal self.

"Sorry," Fusion said, sweeping up the sullenly glowing fragments within a haze of white light and pushing them back into the main mass. Her magic flared, that dull ache intensifying in time with the white glare, then she relaxed and trimmed the rock back into shape with a few quick force field cuts. Still holding the cloud of gravel in place, the white mare tightened her telekinetic grip on the rock and sent it down the corridor and plunging into the water. "I need to stop for a break. I think we've dug far enough for now." The surge and boom of Gravity's magic subsided and the mare walked slowly out of the smoke, looking as tired as Fusion felt. "How much further have you gone?" The newly formed wedge of rock twitched in her magical grasp, but she kept up the pressure, stopping it from fracturing as it cooled.

"About another twenty lengths. The rock is better through there; I'm not having to hold it--" The mare broke off for an enormous yawn, then shook her head. "It's easy to get lost in the magic," she said, ears drooping slightly. "Let me just..." She spread her wings and beat them mightily, catching the draught of air with her power and turning it into a hurricane blast that made Fusion squint, her ears, mane and tail streaming backwards. The wind, at first hot and oppressive, soon turned icily refreshing as air from the outside was sucked down the slender ventilation shaft a few lengths behind Gravity.

I wonder if any of the ponies have any weather team experience? Fusion thought, resolutely turning her mind away from the thermal plume this would be creating and back to their original camp and its precious contents. Time to call Spiral and start resurrecting them, I think. Her rock came floating back down the corridor, any water already evaporated from its warm surface. Feeling satisfied, Fusion slotted the wedge into the neat curve of rocks, turning it into a keystone for the now completed arch, then released her magic with a smile. "Now all we have to do is fill it."

Gravity nodded, sending a point of brilliant white light sailing off along their creation. Two lengths across and three high at the centre, the slightly irregular vaulted ceiling held back the weight of the mountain in the way only one tonne blocks of fused stone can. Glistening and black in the light, their mirror faces, still warm from the heat of their creation, reflected the light from the spell to illuminate the whole length. "It will do," she said absently. "Assuming they missed us making it, any further construction should be much easier."

"By the Maker, I hope so." Fusion stretched her wings and arched her back, listening to the click and pop of underused joints. "It's taken half the morning to get this far. Hopefully we can leave the rest to our guests..." The mare fidgeted, then slumped. "Do you think any of them will have the same reaction as Packet?"

"Only one way to find out." Gravity walked forwards, gazing with anticipation at the pool of cold, dark water. "I think I'm actually looking forward to this... last one back to the camp is a--" She flashed Fusion a smile, then dove into the pool.

Her little floating light abruptly flared solar bright and went out, leaving Fusion dazzled and in total darkness. "Why you little--" Half of her vision, fed by her shadow sight, tracked the violet lit glass sculpture that was Gravity as the mare shot through the water-filled sump and out into the lake proper. Fusion took a deep breath and exhaled hard, then folded her wings tightly and jumped after her sister.

The sudden shock of glacier spawned lake water was delicious against her overheated body, but she ignored it, intent on her prey. Fusion pulled her legs up and grabbed hold of the tunnel walls with a haze of white-gold. Shadow sight showed her the path she needed, the rock marked out by the sparkle of her own telekinetic grip, so the mare lowered her head and pulled. Water parted in front of her horn, the turbulence becoming painfully strong until she reinforced her muscles with more telekinesis. Speed built with astonishing rapidity and, without thinking, she let it climb.

The silky touch of water became a hard pummelling, then nothing at all, a sucking sensation from all over her body at once. The roar of water cut off like somepony had held a pillow over her head, in time with sharp stabs of pain from her ears. The rest of the air in her lungs rushed out in a single shout, filling her chest with an aching cold unlike anything she'd ever felt. Feeling dazed, with shadow sight starting to lose definition, Fusion curved about, heading for the surface.

She broke free into sunlight in a plume of spray, sound and breath returning with a thump and the pain in her ears vanishing in an instant. Eye open again, Fusion looked around in bewilderment, snorting to blow the water from her muzzle as she wondered how she got out to the middle of the lake. Off in the distance, Gravity was a dark shape galloping up the rocky shore, wings flicking out as she became airborne and lifted to skim over the trees. The white mare growled under her breath and pushed--

Water exploded out from around her in an expanding shockwave, the reaction throwing her into the air and blasting the trees with spray. Wings pumping furiously, she dove back towards the surface, accelerating as fast as she could. The rules of this game had been laid out ever since Gravity had grown old enough to be real competition; no magic other than flight, and only that where the ground was too rough for a flat-out gallop.

The distant shape of Gravity wobbled violently when the nearly spent shockwave rolled over her, then recovered and disappeared behind a ridge. I hope they don't spend too much time looking at these empty places. The thought was fleeting, but Fusion's own surprise at her still untested strength damped her instinct to pour all her power into the pursuit. Let's not do that again. The spindly pines that lined the precipitous valley walls flicked by under her hooves as she climbed sharply, going over the nearby peak, rather than around it.

The race was as good as lost, but Fusion still touched down at a gallop on the stony river bank near their camp. Pebbles sprayed out from under her hooves as she stretched muscles long cramped by their subterranean labours, and she half ran, half flew over the rock- and ice-covered ground. Ahead, Gravity was just entering the trees, so Fusion pulled her legs up and soared up the slope, dropping into their camp just as the blue mare came through the last screen of trees.

"Cheat!" Gravity said, tossing her head in mock annoyance.

"You got me, fair and square. I... rather overdid my water exit."

"Yes, I noticed." Gravity bit her lips, ears drooping, the simple pleasure of the victory fading. "It's so easy to push too hard. I've had more practice than you, but I still tend to overestimate how much effort to use. I'm not even sure that's all of it... it's like my strength is still growing." She sighed, then turned to look back through the intervening trees and mountainside. "Do you think you were seen?"

"Hard to say; I find it hard to believe the Dogs monitor everything inside their own Hive's territory all the time. The blast won't leave any lasting signs, fortunately. You're the one with satellite launch training; anypony you were with talk much about what gets launched?"

Gravity looked up at the branches overhead, muttering to herself. Finally, she flicked both wings in a shrug. "There's a lot of stuff up there, but mostly mining and early warning. There are dedicated optical satellites looking down, but a lot also surveil the nearby debris ring objects. There are the long range thaumic sensors, but you didn't put that much effort into it, because I couldn't feel the pulse like I did back at the Institute."

"We'll find out, I suppose." Fusion moved the makeshift barricade and walked into the little chamber Gravity had dug into the side of the tree-covered hill. Seven ponies, all on thick beds of springy pine boughs, were completely unmoving. The eighth... Packet, what are we going to do with you? "Whatever Spiral did, it's very good," Fusion said with a whisper. Gravity nodded, then settled down in the doorway, closing her eyes. The soft glow of violet magic lit the shadow half of Fusion's vision, and she turned to her own magic, hooking into the sharing Gravity was establishing with the distant Spiral.

A fraction of her attention on the exchange between her sister and the veterinarian, Fusion opened the late Bastion's medical kit and started to collect the drugs they'd need to safely 'resurrect' the ponies. Fortunately, the awakening was much easier than the reverse, relying mostly on stimulants administered at specific times during a careful warming of the bodies.

Spiral was so close that Fusion could nearly feel the touch of the other mare's fur. A gentle pressure guided her magic and she relaxed, letting the other pony work through her. It was the strangest of sensations, like being a puppet. Gravity stood by with the drug injectors and, as Fusion gently warmed the ponies up, administered the correct doses at Spiral's command. Before the kilosecond was out, all eight hearts were beating unaided and Spiral withdrew, her part complete.

Little coils of green magic twisted within each skull, keeping all the ponies asleep. "That's the easy part done with," Fusion said. "Who shall we start with?" A slight motion, little more than a twitch of a hoof, attracted her attention. Redshift moved again, this time a momentary flaring of his nostrils and a folding of his ears. "Huh... that spell of Spiral's really is like being asleep. I wonder what he's dreaming?"

"Considering what he was going through when Lilac removed his Blessing, I doubt it's a pleasant one." Gravity looked thoughtful, staring at the violet stallion. "Perhaps this is a better way to do things... what about if we share with them while they are asleep? One of us can keep them under, while the other tries to talk them around."

"That's a very interesting idea; it would also remove any risk of them hurting themselves in a struggle." The white mare fluttered her wings uncomfortably, then sighed. "I think we should leave Packet out of it for now." She stared at her friend; the lemon stallion was propped up against one wall, legs held rigid within their metal frames. "We'll start with those we at least have a chance with. I don't have your skill with the sharing; are you willing to take the lead?"

Gravity nodded, suddenly looking nervous. "At least if it goes wrong we can wake them up and just proceed as we otherwise might. Follow me in?"

===

Gravity looked searchingly at Redshift, then cast her gaze along the line of sleeping ponies. This seems so cruel, pulling these ponies away from those they love. "At least they will all be united soon," she muttered, shaking her head when Fusion twitched an ear in her direction. ...and it won't be for long. This whole situation feels like we're trying to balance on one hoof. "It's the waiting I can't stand," she said, flashing a smile at her sister. So let's be about it.

Her horn glowed, filling the little chamber with a violet haze. Eyes closed, Gravity reached out with her magic, forming the sharing pattern and delicately probing the sleeping Redshift's mind. No resistance, unlike with Packet-- Gravity bit off the thought, feeling cold inside. Is this the same thing -- just because he doesn't know I'm doing this, doesn't mean it's right. The thoughts were buried deep, isolated from the sharing and her sister's gentle presence. She cringed inside at Fusion's remembered words; the rebuke had been as painful as a slap. No, this is just like when Fusion was paralysed. I'm here to help, not hurt.

Little flashes, scarcely more than fragments of some larger image, started to flicker into her mind. A low, threatening sky, filled with bulbous clouds that seemed to press in like the heavy rock ceiling of some deep cavern. A strand of wire, all rust and cruel spines, wrapped tightly around a limb covered with blood-stained violet fur. It wasn't just visual images, either -- she could feel the cloying mud sucking at the bottom of her hooves, smell the dark tang of blood and corruption on the stagnant air, and hear the high, thin scream of a foal.

The world blossomed around Gravity, a ruined landscape full of dead trees and thick mud under a thunderous sky. The ground was pocked by circular, water filled craters and laced with dense patches of bramble. The mare immediately began to sink in the glutinous muck, the icy-cold fluid taking a firm hold on her fetlocks, just like it was a living thing.

The grip tightened and Gravity looked down in alarm. "It is alive!" she said, trying to hide the tremor in her voice. Even while she was sinking, the mud was mounding up around her legs, oozing through her fur and up towards her belly. Transfixed by the sight, Gravity tentatively tried to lift a foreleg, muscles straining against a suction that threatened to pull her under. A little further away, one of the patches of brambles moved, sending a questing runner in her direction.

Attention switching to this new threat, the blue mare stared at the shoot, eyes going wide at the regular pattern of curved thorns along its length. "Oh, Redshift, if this is just the edges of your dream..." The vine, or whatever it was, had reached the patch of mud still trying to entomb her, close enough that she could get a good look at it in the leaden light leaking through the clouds. It wasn't vegetation at all, but strands of rusty wire, all coiled so as to cover the whole with jagged spines. The tip, a point composed of a near fractal branching of hair-fine metal, lifted off the ground and quested towards her face.

Behind her eyes, Gravity could feel Fusion's disquiet. Can you not sweep all this aside and build your own world, like you did for me? she said.

"I could, but this is Redshift's mind in the raw. We'll never get a better idea of what he's thinking and how he'll react," she said, fascinated by the sinuous movements of the metal vine. "If we could have done this with Packet..."

Before he knew about us? Spying on the dreams of ponies to identify those most likely to be receptive to rebellion. That is an interesting idea... Fusion's mental voice tailed off, the mare deep in thought. Kinder than waiting for them to go into fugue, at any rate. I wonder what the Blessing does with dreams?

"Something to consider," Gravity said, narrowing her eyes. "This might be your world, Red, but that is quite enough research." The blue mare exerted her power, translating it through the sharing to bend the local environment to her will. Corrosion bloomed on the surface of the metal vine, spreading with time-lapse speed over the wires. In seconds the vile thing crumbled into a fine red powder that drifted away in the gentle breeze that radiated from her body. Beneath Gravity's hooves the mud recoiled as if stung, and she daintily stepped forward on to the rapidly drying ground. Where are you, Redshift? she thought, feeling through the sharing for any clue as to the location of his point of focus.

There was something on the horizon; a spindly bipedal figure that towered over the landscape like a monorail pylon, but unlike any creature, it moved in a strange, jerky way, as if a machine with damaged joints. For an instant, Gravity caught a glimpse of the thing in profile, and the sense of déjà-vu became overpowering. It had sleek, pointed ears above a muzzle twisted into a smile that couldn't ever be described as friendly, all covered with a coat of brindled fur. As the final piece of the puzzle dropped into place, the mare froze, nearly overwhelmed with hate.

"Salrath," she hissed, in time with a surge of revulsion from Fusion. Light bloomed out from her in an expanding bubble and, where it passed, mud dried and brambles crumbled to dust, but it took more effort than she expected to change the dreamscape. Her failure to sweep everything away with the simple force of her will made Gravity pause, her desire for revenge against this imagined version of Salrath momentarily stilled. "You are nothing more than a symptom," she told the figment of Redshift's imagination, "but an important one, I think."

Spiral told me that his mate had mentioned that he was afraid that this Dog had their colt, Fusion thought, all her attention on the figure.

I would not be surprised if that was the case for most of these ponies. Gravity resumed her search, picking through Redshift's dream, hunting for the locus of the stallion's mind. Where are you? You must be somewhere nearby; what's the point of this terror if you can't experience it?

Abruptly, the figure lifted one airtruck-sized paw, opening the fingers to reveal a blue shape with an indigo mane and tail, and the long legs and shorter body of a foal. The other paw came over, gripping the foal by the hindquarters and dangling it over the distant mud. Something about the dream state distorted details; while the bulk of the monster was blurred and indistinct, its face and paws were visible with painful clarity... as was the terror in the foal's eyes. The youngster screamed again, a long, high wail that rang out across the mud and patches of steel brambles.

"Master, please, take me, not my foal--"

The words, weak and full of pain, cut off with a gasp, but that little bit of sound was all Gravity needed. One hop and she was airborne, flying with unnatural speed to the monster, arrowing down to a patch of mud strewn with the remains of drowned trees. Her magic flared, then died at a spike of interest from her passenger. "What? I know you've thought of something, I can feel it."

I know you want to intervene and smash that-that thing... I do, too. But... this is Red's battle; perhaps we should give him a chance to taste victory?

===

The mud covered Redshift so completely that he was nearly indistinguishable from the twisted stumps of the trees that dotted the quagmire. Ears folded back, he made another desperate lurch forward, straining against the brambles that had wrapped themselves in a thorny bridle about his head and muzzle. They were linked to others that coiled around his neck and withers and buried themselves in a tangle a few lengths behind. The spines dug bloody tracks into his skin with every movement, but still he pressed forward.

Ahead, the Master gestured him onwards with a paw closed like a cage around the struggling blue colt, and he leaned forward against the brambles, pulling a hind leg free and planting it back in the mud. Another hoof-span of ground gained. Teeth gritted against the pain, Redshift managed to shift his other hind leg, only to have the Master move back a step, widening the distance on one of her giant strides. Please Master, I'm trying, the stallion thought through the haze of fatigue, eyes locked on that frantic blue shape.

The figure shifted, opening her paw and using the thumb and finger on the other to pick Shock Diamond up by his haunches and dangle him upside down. The colt screamed, the sound running through Redshift like an electric shock and driving him to new efforts. "Master, please, take me, not my foal--" The figure laughed at him, a low guttural chuckle that stole the temporary strength from his muscles and filled him with the chill of a winter river. The first paw came forward, sharp claws extending Shock's left wing out from his side, despite the youngster's best efforts to keep it closed. The Master looked him in the eyes and grinned, crouching down until her paws were only a couple of lengths from his head. She held out Shock, pulling on his wing until it was at full stretch. Muscles under the colt's fur twisted, and he let out a gasp of pain.

"You know what happens next."

The voice was so unexpected, that he forgot to cry out to the Master for forgiveness for whatever crime he'd committed. Young, but full of emotion and naggingly familiar, the words came from some place in the middle of his head; a sourceless presence that washed away some of the pain and fear. Little worms of violet light, a darker hue than his own magic and almost invisible against the blood-stained mud covering his muzzle, traced the vines looped around his head. Where they touched, metal dissolved to dust, like it was burning with heatless flames and, all of a sudden, movement became easier.

"I know this creature; it does not deserve your obedience. If you do obey, it will make no difference to the final outcome."

"But what am I supposed to do?" he whispered, eyes wide and staring at the struggling shape hanging from the Master's paws. At the bottom of his mind something stirred, an unfamiliar feeling of anger.

"You do not lack the will, if you are willing to put yourself through this for the ones you love." More of the vines loosened, violet fire burning them from his throat and shoulders. "You just need to have the courage to take back what is yours."

"But...but... she's a Master!" A part of the divine, here in the world, a being I was created to serve.

"Compared to you, she is nothing."

Redshift's mouth twisted, his mud-caked ears folding back. "It's not fair," he muttered, eyes narrowing.

"Of course it's not fair! Life's not fair. The question is: what are you going to do about it?"

The words broke some barrier inside him, and rage bubbled up to fill his mind with fire. A point of electric-blue light bloomed at the tip of his horn, brightening with frightening speed until it lit the undersides of the low clouds a lurid hue. Despite the glare, he could still see everything perfectly; the sudden uncertainty on the face of the giant Master, and the look of awe from the dangling Shock Diamond. "Give him back!" he growled, pouring all his fury into magic.

A bar of solid light the colour of a lightning strike leapt from his horn and caught the Master high up on the chest, engulfing her torso in a writhing cage of electricity. The creature convulsed, starting to fall backwards, then the beam burst out of her back to punch through the clouds an instant later. The leaden sky rolled back from the impact point, evaporating under the radiant heat of the particle beam to reveal a patch of perfect blue. The arm holding the blue colt fell smoking to the ground, severed at the elbow, Shock rolling free and bouncing to his hooves. The colt bounded over to be buried in the extended wings of Redshift.

===

Both sisters sat in the dim chamber, freed of Redshift's dream. "Well," Fusion said, then paused, casting a sidelong glance at Gravity, who just sat there and grinned back. "Wow. I think that's a good sign." The mare wiped her eyes on her forelegs, then shook her head vigorously.

"A pony after my own heart," said Gravity, her smile widening further and taking on a hard edge. "Shall we leave Red to his dreaming for a little while longer?"

"That seems fair." After all, he'll have to live in the real world soon enough. "You did an excellent job there, by the way. That was far better than the best I imagined."

Gravity nodded. "Your idea to let him fight."

"A team effort, then." With renewed interest, Fusion looked at the other six ponies. The others were not dreaming, so after some discussion the pair constructed a sharing environment along the same lines as the one Gravity had made for Fusion back at the Institute. A familiar glade, filled with sunlight and covered with thick grass around a quiet pool of water. It was the work of a moment for Gravity to bring each of the sleepers into the sharing, depositing them around one of the large trees.

At a nod from Gravity, Fusion relaxed her hold on the sleepers, allowing them to slowly awaken within the shared space, while keeping their real-world bodies comatose. The first to move was Thermocline, a green stallion, who looked confusedly up at the tree canopy, before struggling to his hooves at the sight of the sisters.

Transfixed by their gently moving manes, he took a hesitant step forward. "Am... am I dead?" he said, turning in a slow circle. "The last thing I remember is... is..." He fell silent, shivering all over, then peered more closely at the white mare. "Fusion? Is that you? The Master said--" His eyes snapped wide open and he stumbled backwards. Behind him the other ponies had stirred, getting up and gathering into a tight, nervous herd behind the stallion.

"Not today, Thermo. This is a sharing, so we can talk without any interruptions."

The stallion's brow furrowed, and Gravity stepped forward. "I can feel you trying to leave, Thermocline. That won't work; your body is asleep until we wake you up."

Fusion winced at the dawning horror on his face. "Which we will do, as soon as you've heard us out," she said quickly ...and had a chance to actually think about what's going on here. "What's the last thing you remember -- what's the last thing any of you ponies remember?"

There was a moment of shuffling hooves, then Thermocline lowered his head. "There was that Master, the one who-who... and the rumour that she was the one who has our foals. I hurt all over, like somepony had set me on fire," he said softly, turning slightly to look at the other ponies. "Was it the same for you all?"

Nopony said anything, but there was a general air of remembered pain in drooping ears or dipping heads. Triple Point, a chestnut mare, her coat dappled with light yellow, stepped forward, giving Thermocline a nudge. "We all felt that. I know the Masters do what's best, and that they sometimes have to make hard decisions, but..." Her muzzle twisted in distress, and her next words came out as a mumble. "Slip wasn't doing any harm; he knew he couldn't do much, but still he tried." Her head came up and her ears no longer drooped, but were flat against the sides of her head. "That's all we ever want, to be useful, and yet they give us nothing in return." Her voice strengthened as she spoke, her whole posture shifting. "That creature has my foal, and I want her back!" The mare broke off, anger switching to confusion in the blink of an eye.

"You've never thought like that before, have you?" Fusion paced around the little clearing; movement to work away the nervous jitters that were filling her belly. Everypony followed her steps, ears pricked forwards. Around her the light seemed to dim, allowing the pastel colours of the mare's gently flowing mane to cast soft shadows through the trees. Fusion glanced at Gravity, but her sister was standing off to one side, a distant look on her face. What is she doing? Fusion thought, then dismissed anything that didn't relate directly to this conversation.

"There was a thing in your head. A spell, a deceptively simple one." In the centre of the glade, between the herd and the circling Fusion, a magnified image of a green colt's head appeared in the empty air. Disembodied paws held a circle of black metal over the young pony's head. Fusion nodded to Gravity, who winked back. "Whenever you had bad thoughts it would hurt you. Your parents trained you from birth to recognise the authority of the Masters, priming the behaviours that the spell would use to further mould your mind." The image turned to a glass sculpture and thick tentacles of magic cascaded out of the circle to dance through the colt's skull.

Thermocline took a few hesitant steps forward, almost to the point where his muzzle would enter the slowly rotating image. "This... what is this? It looks familiar..."

"Tangent! That's my Tangent Vector!" The cry came from the back of the herd, which separated to let a large orange stallion through.

Fusion took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "I'm sorry, Scalar. It still hurts to see this." The stallion wheeled on Fusion, panic in his eyes, and the mare spoke quickly. "He's fine, with all the rest of the foals..." She left the words hang in the air, then shook her head vigorously. Get a grip, filly. Tell these ponies what they need to know and let them think about it. "If this looks familiar, that's because it is. This is the Blessing being cast," she said, her tone becoming clinical. "It is scanning Tangent's brain, sinking hooks deep into the areas responsible for emotion and pain, after which it ties itself to his horn and becomes a pony's life-long companion."

"But not for us," Thermocline said slowly, like he was sampling the taste of each word. "Is... is this what the Maker's Test is, then? This spell and a pony who can't get his mind off something that it reacts to?"

"Yes. You were all in fugue yesterday, but not anymore." Fusion stopped her pacing, turning to stand square in front of the ponies. "There is no divine touch from the Maker, just this spell and a lifetime of abuse from creatures who are no smarter than we are. As a result of my actions, your Blessings were removed." She gave a pained smile. "I wish I could have asked you first, but there was no way the Blessing would ever let you really think about it... so we did the next best thing. You were all in fugue, and many of you would have died within a few days." And I'll explain about Lilac later.

Many in the herd nodded at this; everypony knew the reputation of the Maker's Test. "What happens now?" Thermocline said, his wings twitching. "I want to go home, talk to my mate..." He tailed off, then stamped his hoof in frustration. "But what can I tell her? The instant she hears this..."

Fusion flicked her wings. "The only way to save you was to report you as dead."

Thermo's ears folded back, and he advanced on the white mare, each hoof-step digging deeply into the ground. "That's it?! We're stuck here -- wherever 'here' is, unable to go home, never to see our families--"

He stopped dead as Fusion shook her head. "There's more. Much more, if you are willing to be a part of it. You'll see your mate again, and we'll get our foals back, every single last one. I stake my life on it." The stallion nodded jerkily, an action mirrored by the rest, and Fusion began to talk once more.

===

Drained of energy and empty of words, Fusion rested on her belly in the leaf litter and stared at the group of ponies as they talked over what they had been told. Gravity, looking as tired as Fusion felt, let her last illusion -- a miniature airtank with fire spraying from its mid deck -- fade and walked to sit at her sister's side. "Thank you for that," Fusion murmured, half an ear cocked towards the herd. "I don't think we could have done better if we'd planned it." Which we should have done; this is too important to be left to chance.

"They are all here because of what Salrath did... it's almost funny that she's the best recruiting tool we have." Gravity looked shocked, and Fusion dipped her head in shame. "It's a terrible thing to say, but the way she had Slip killed has given us something that may tip things in our favour." That particular memory, teased out of a reluctant Spiral, had left Fusion shaken, but she'd fixed every detail in her mind.

"Slip was just another victim, pulled down by the Dogs," Gravity muttered, "another name that will be forgotten, along with all the countless others."

"Slip was a victim, yes... but he's more than that, now. He's the first of his kind, and will never be forgotten. He's..." Fusion smiled bitterly; there was a word, only really used by the Dogs to talk about extremists among their own people, but it fitted the situation very well. "Slipstream is an embodiment of everything that makes what we are doing right. He's our first martyr."

Gravity nodded slowly. "We'll see. We've done what we can; if we can't convince these ponies, then perhaps we should just go it alone." There was a glint in the other mare's eye, a look of anticipation.

Fusion shivered. "Every hoof and horn would be arrayed against us. I really don't want to; with only a few of us it's going to be really hard, no matter how much stronger we think we are. Got to sleep sometime." She looked mournfully at the herd, still deep in an increasingly animated discussion.

Gravity shrugged, glancing up at Fusion's ear. "You want to hear what they are saying? This is my sharing, after all."

"No." The white mare sighed, then laid her head on her forelegs. "We'll know soon enough."

Time passed, but without any of the normal signs of it doing so; the light never changed and the sky through the trees was as bright and as featureless as it had been when Gravity had created it. Finally, some consensus was reached, and the herd walked over to the sisters.

Thermocline, glancing from side-to-side as if asking for permission, took a step forwards. "This is just too much. We all want our families back, but the situation is hopeless." His voice became pleading, head reaching forward. "These are the Masters; there is no way we can fight them. Just let us go, we'll try to make a peace with them--"

The stallion carried on talking, but Fusion wasn't really listening anymore. She flicked her gaze from pony to pony; ears flat and wide-eyed, their fear was telegraphed in every nervous shuffle and hoof stomp. No! Surely some of them will want to help? The mare bit her lips, forcing back the vague and brutal plans that loomed large in her mind, plans for dealing with ponies that they couldn't send back and couldn't spare the effort to keep prisoner. She glanced at Gravity in despair. "What are we going to--?"

Something dark and huge flew silently overhead, blocking out the ersatz daylight. Then, with a crackling roar, the sound came, blasting leaves and twigs from the branches and making the ponies cower under the sudden onslaught. An angular shape fell through the canopy, clawed foot-pads digging deeply into the soft ground. There was a moment of stillness, then it leapt.

Unfolding from its crouch with a roar, the four-armed biped sprang at the herd, bounding forward with great leaps, as if its legs were giant springs. A Master in powered armour -- they've found us! The thought ran through Fusion like an electric shock and she reached for her magic, only to have it die stillborn when Gravity butted her with the side of her head. Desperate measures, Gravity, I hope this works... she thought, the impossibility of an intruder in this mental space suddenly making her feel stupid.

The effect on the other ponies was even more dramatic. There were screams and two jumped into motion, galloping in the opposite direction, while a third leapt straight up, wings beating like the stallion was a startled pigeon. The others stood their ground. Force walls in three colours popped into being along the line of the suit's charge, while two telekinetic fields grasped the thing in mid leap and hurled it into a tree with enough force to crack the trunk.

Wide eyed and trembling, Thermocline trotted forwards, flinching when the suit spun up its rotary cannon and made to rise. His horn flared green and, in one quick motion, he ripped a branch from the tree, smashing the jagged end into the figure again and again, until it stopped moving. Breathing hard, the stallion dropped the weapon, mouth opening and closing as he stared at what he'd done.

"So you can't do anything, eh?" There was no amusement in Gravity's voice as she stood up and spread her wings wide. Around her the light in the clearing started to drop, cloaking the mare in velvety shadows. "I watched a few of your foals fight off a dozen gryphon troopers. You really think you can do less? Even now, scared as you are, you are a force to be reckoned with." Her teeth glinted as she spoke, the only thing other than her bright teal eyes to be clearly visible in the gathering gloom. "You want your lives back? Then fight for them, Maker dammit!"

Fusion stood up and touched Gravity on the shoulder with one wing, and the mare glanced sideways, some of the fury leaving her face. "My sister is right. There is no hiding from this. The People will never let us go without a fight... and we can show you how to fight, show you things that will make you even stronger."

The little herd, all gathered together once more, seemed to shrink under Gravity's glare. Fusion scanned the faces, desperate for any sign at all that she'd managed to convince even one of them. What am I going to do with the ones who won't help? The thought swirled around in her head, circling the one terrible idea she hadn't been able to get out of her mind since the problem became obvious. There, in a twitch of a wing or the flick of an ear, some of the fear had changed to interest, the ponies really starting to think seriously about the possibility.

At long last, Thermocline moved, reaching forwards to tap the battered armour suit with one forehoof. "I begin to see," he said, the words not really meant for anypony other than himself, then his head came up, meeting Gravity's challenging stare. The blue mare smiled and nodded once, her expression becoming feral. "Make me another one, so I can do it again."

09 - Invasive Procedures

Author's Note

Preread by: KMCA
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna), Caliaponia (Just Passing Through) and jimi_betterix (The War Machine, a non pony Dr Who fanfic).

09 - Invasive Procedures

=== Chapter 09: Invasive procedures ===

"This one is not happy with the Student's story."

Korn sat in the chair. Wide, padded bands encircled him at calf, thigh, chest, wrist and forehead, securing him so completely that he was almost a part of it. The chair was also padded, and looked more like a couch that might be found in an expensive apartment, rather than an implement of interrogation. This one hasn't moved for... how long is it now? The whole wall in front of the chair was one large screen, again like might be found in a home, but all it showed was Korn and the chair, the feed taken from a camera somewhere near the ceiling. Time was passing strangely; there was nothing really to focus on, other than his interrogators or the image of himself. It was worse when they turned it off so he couldn't see what they were doing behind him.

Sometimes it helped to think of the figure in the chair as someone else, perhaps from an entertainment show, like one of those dark spy thrillers.

The figure in the chair was unharmed, physically, at least. All its needs were taken care of by catheters and carefully attached blood taps; there was no need for it to ever move again -- which was fortunate, as the only significant motion left to the figure was ears, jaw and eyes. Korn can appreciate the elegance of the machine, even while he wants to rip the throat out of the Person who built it. Alternating pairs of muscles clenched and relaxed in a wave that passed from shoulders to legs. The sensation was uncomfortable, but not painful; the electrostimulation was designed to keep his body healthy, not hurt it.

The wave passed, replaced by another. Korn strove to relax; there had never been much questioning while the stimulator was running. Makes sense, he thought, eyes following the movements of the unnamed Agent standing behind him, wouldn't want to influence the analyser. The figure, a grey and black furred female who never shouted or even seemed to be slightly interested in him, leaned back in her own chair, tapping her teeth with one well-manicured claw tip. At least it's not Salrath... Korn shivered, for a moment seeing the delight on her face as she'd tested the white servitor, all those -- Was it megaseconds? -- ago.

The Agent appeared to reach a decision, then stood and did something to the back of the chair, causing motors within its frame to lay it out flat. She stood over him, holding a circle of black metal in one paw while tapping it against the other. Korn stared at it, mesmerised by the little lights that ran around the inner rim. The Agent turned the thing over in her paws, then pulled out a translucent, glassy cable from some recess, connecting it to the band. "This one knows that Korn did some research into how the servitors are conditioned; does this look familiar?"

Korn worked his jaw, twitching when another ripple of electrostim ran through his chest. "It looks like what they use to administer the Blessing," he said. This one shouldn't be surprised; it's a logical next step. There was only so far you could go with questioning, even with the sophisticated biometric analyser he'd been wired into.

"Close. It's a memory interrogation crown... the technology is related, so this one isn't surprised that a scientist like yourself would recognise it." She lowered the thing, placing it gently against his skull.

It was warm, even through his fur. There was something potent about it, like it wasn't mere dead metal. Korn let out a quiet whimper, the skin of his scalp crawling at its touch. "W-why all the questions if Security is going to trawl me anyway?"

She smiled down at him, the glint of her teeth the only brightness against her shadowed face. "Still thinking, excellent. This one knew Korn was strong where it counted. Memories are funny things, and very hard to read without a guide. All the questions give this one a framework to operate within... a map, if you like." One of her paws moved the underside of the chair, manipulating something out of sight.

There was a sudden sense of presence, as if the empty room was crowded with invisible People. Korn gasped, jaw opening wide. "Please, this one's mind is all he has. Don't--"

"Korn has only that which the Hive allows him to have. If Korn needs to take solace in something, consider that this one will be gentler than the World Court would be. She may still be able to save him from that fate."

A bright light filled Korn's eyes, fading into colours and shapes as an alien presence reached out of the metal and raked its claws through his brain.

--curled up with Ithra, feeling her fur between his teeth and her paws on--

The image was strong, so strong that it overrode the discomfort of the process. Sound was there, rapid breathing and the quiet, slow ambient music he'd chosen for the meal a few kiloseconds earlier, and smell, and taste. Someone snorted, the unexpected noise jarring against the perfect recollection. "Of course, it's not always a very good map." The claws tightened, grew barbs and ripped sideways, shredding the memory into disconnected shards of sensation and flickering images.

--on his back, claws tight around his throat, watching Salrath run a knife along a white mare's muzzle--

"This looks more like it, but a bit later, this one thinks."

--holding a wounded servitor's head, looking into big, pain filled eyes. "This one requisitions--

--at a console, the image of a blue pony suddenly flashing violet and the video feed dissolving into static. A heavy thump, like the slamming of a vault door--

The memories came faster and faster, prodded into the forefront of his mind by the machine. Korn struggled to retain control, drowning under the onslaught while, unnoticed, tears started to run down his cheeks.

===

Korn let out a hoarse cry, legs windmilling and striking the inner surface of the sleeping den. Eyes wide in the darkness, he kicked back and pushed himself into one of the rounded corners, wrapping his paws around his muzzle until the urge to scream passed and his heart slowed its frantic pace. "Oh Maker, Ithra, have they even told you where this one is?" Letting out a groan, he wiped the tears from his eyes and crawled from the small den, out into the living space.

The room was like any one of a number of anonymous business hotels he'd stayed in while travelling to conferences. A single room, with alcoves for sleeping and cleansing, it was blandly furnished; the only thing that really set it aside was the way the few items of furniture were solidly fixed to the floor, and the lack of any way to open the exit door from the inside. Korn slowly climbed to his paws, making a slow and unsteady path to the kitchen nook to take a long drink of water. There was food in the little cupboard, supplies that restocked themselves at unknown intervals.

Korn stared at his paws, trying to still the tremor that made the blunt claw-tips vibrate, then balled them into fists and started to pace the few lengths between the door and the opposite wall.

Nightmares aside, the grey-and-black Agent had told the truth; they had never hurt him and the process had only taken a few kilosec -- even if that time had seemed to stretch to subjective megaseconds while the machine had rifled through his mind, making him relive all those events over and over again. After that, he'd been deposited in this little room and left alone with his thoughts.

"Korn still doesn't know why he's not in a real prison, but he supposes this is an improvement," he muttered to the empty air. It can't have been that long since the servitor's kin had gone berserk, holding Vanca and himself hostage, but the interrogation had been so dislocating that he couldn’t say with any certainty if it had been one day or twenty. The ponies must be dead, so why is this one being treated like this?

Korn kept walking, reaching out to tap the door every time he got to that end of his short path, forcing himself to keep going until he'd reached a thousand repetitions. The exercise kept the emptiness at bay for a while, but soon his energy flagged and he slumped in the chair fixed in front of the big wall screen. The setting was disturbingly similar to the interrogation room, although the seat was far less comfortable.

More time passed, and the Student gazed into the grey depths of the blank wallscreen, chewing on his now ragged claw tips. Korn just wants to know what happened! Perhaps it would be better in a normal prison... at least this one would get some outside contact. There was a click from somewhere behind him, and Korn hunched in his seat, not daring to turn and see who had opened the door. Breathing accelerating, he screwed his eyes shut, waiting for heavy paws to drag him upright.

"Has the Student done nothing with his time?"

Korn's head flicked around and he stared, open mouthed at the figure in the doorway. One arm in a sling, she glared at him, the same disappointed expression she always had when he was late with some aspect of their project, or had failed to grasp a theoretical concept that should have been blindingly obvious to any random stranger she might have dragged off the street. "Academician, this one--" Korn scrambled to his paws, practically leaping the few lengths to enfold his supervisor in a hug.

"Vanca convinced Security that she needed the Student for her work; don't make this one into a liar," she murmured, then shoved him away. "Now Vanca can finally get some work done... assuming these fools didn't scramble your brains." She turned her glare on the Agent standing just behind her.

The presence of the black and grey figure made Korn flinch, and he nervously backed away, only to be stopped short by Vanca's paw around his upper arm. He switched his gaze back to the Academician, taking a vast comfort from her touch. There was a look in her eyes, something he'd never seen before from his supervisor. Vanca is actually relieved to see this one! He relaxed a little, allowing her to pull him a step closer.

The Agent had that long suffering look that Korn recognised of old; the expression of a Person who'd just spent the last kilosecond enduring one of Vanca's lectures. "No, Academician; the Student is showing no unusual reactions to the trawl. He will--"

Vanca snorted. "This one will see, Agent Lilla. Let's not forget that it was one of Security's own that precipitated all this mess."

"The actions of Agent Salrath are a matter for Internal Affairs, and--" Lilla shook her head, her ears folding back, then relaxed. "Vanca and Korn are being allowed some additional freedom while they assist Security with the current problem, and that is all they need to know about the matter."

"If Security thinks it will get anything useful from these ones without sharing information, then it will be disappointed," Vanca said, jabbing a paw in the Agent's direction.

Lilla gazed at the offending digit with a longing look, as if she wanted to twist it until it came off. "A briefing has been prepared; if the Academician is that keen to start work...?" The Agent waved them into the corridor with a flamboyant gesture, and the group set off.

===

"Let Vanca get this straight. Despite all the funding Security gets, this is all the data available? If the Institute had one percent of those resources, the amount this one could achieve--" The Academician pushed her chair away from the table in the middle of the conference suite and started to pace the room.

"Don't think that Security doesn't wish it were otherwise!" Lilla snapped. "Control of the servitors isn't in these one's remit. Can the scientists help, or would they prefer to return to their confinement?"

No! Korn thought, paws clenching into fists. Not alone, not again. "At least it's something, Academician," he said. "If it is possible for a servitor to teleport, and it's not just that they are dead amid the rubble of the Institute, then--"

"We have proof that at least one escaped," Lilla said, scowling at Korn, "were you not listening?"

Vanca rounded on the Agent, her paw snapping out and ending a claw's width from her muzzle. "The best thing Lilla can contribute is silence," she hissed. "We will assume nothing!"

The Agent looked furious, but remained quiet, glaring back at Vanca until the Academician snorted and turned away. "Continue, Student."

Korn hunched slightly in his chair at the sudden weight of Vanca's stare. Long habit made him straighten up, knowing that his supervisor was always less forgiving of 'lax' behaviour. "I--" Throat suddenly dry, Korn swallowed, doing his best to ignore the angry glare from the Agent. "Academician, there should be traces of such an event. If the theories are correct, then holding open wormholes within the quantum foam should be observable."

The anger left Vanca's face and she had the distant look of a Person engaged in some complex mental task. Korn knew that look of old and kept silent, holding up a paw when the Agent looked like she might say something. If the Agent thinks Vanca was angry before, just interrupt her train of thought... He tried to communicate this silently to Lilla; it must have worked, because she just gritted her teeth and stayed quiet.

Vanca's eyes regained their focus. "How would Korn account for the lack of damage within the beam chamber? That much exotic matter would have significant gravitational effects..."

She tailed off, and Korn just knew that the Academician already had her answer, and just wanted to see if he could figure it out. Always testing, he thought, slightly irritated, even now. "This one thinks it is down to timescale... if the terminus only exists for a very short time, then the integrated force from the gravitational shear will be limited."

"Yessss... and that will be detectable." She rounded on the Agent. "How much access do these ones have? Vanca needs to interrogate the Institute's servers."

The Agent's muzzle twisted. "There's no way that Lilla can allow the Academician an external data fee--"

"Does Security want proof, or not?" Vanca said, her ears suddenly bolt upright. "If Korn's idea is correct, then it will be possible to detect a teleport event... or would that not be of any interest?"

Lilla jerked as if she had been shot. "That's possible?"

"Give this one strength," Vanca muttered, rolling her eyes. "Is Lilla the one who has not been listening? Yes, Vanca thinks so. But..." Here she lifted a claw and waggled it in front of the Agent's nose. "...this one needs data to be sure." Korn winced at his supervisor's tone; it was the one she normally used with particularly ignorant undergraduates.

The Agent didn't seem to notice, and only lifted her comms bracer to her mouth and murmured something into the microphone.

What might detect exotic matter? No, it isn't the exotic matter that will be found, rather the effects of such a brief appearance. Korn closed his eyes, trying to follow Vanca's line of thought. Even with the big accelerator damaged and off line, the detectors would still be operating... Of course! "Do they even keep the raw data from the interferometers? " he said tentatively. "This one knows that a lot is filtered out as noise."

"Probably." Vanca paused, looking uncertain, then shrugged. "Vanca thinks so. Anything that is inexplicable should be kept by the data systems for later review -- this one has no doubt that some other student will be tasked with understanding the anomalies as part of a thesis... in a gigasecond or two." Her eyes went back to the Agent, who had one clawed digit up to her ear and was listening intently. "Well?"

"This one is to give the Academician everything she needs -- but there will be a fifteen second delay on any requests, to allow inspection."

Vanca snorted. "It will have to do, this one supposes." The console embedded in the big central table came alive and the Academician's paws danced over the virtual keypad, only to stare at the display while impatiently drumming her claws on the glass top. Finally the main screen showed her the Institute's familiar interface, and she started to pull out archived data streams from various remote systems. "This one needs ranges to the beam chamber from all the detectors on this arc of the accelerator," she snapped, eyes not leaving her screen.

"Yes, Academician," Korn replied automatically, picking another console and connecting to a public access mapping system. It was work of moments to get the required coordinates, then it only took a few seconds more to convert those to distances and speed-of-light delays for each detector. Vanca grabbed the numbers, using them to calibrate the time axis of each of the dozen graphs she'd extracted from the Institute's servers.

"There," she said, glancing at Korn, "look at that." The plots, jagged lines covered with random-looking peaks and troughs, filled the floor-to-ceiling screen.

"By the Maker," he whispered, "it actually worked!"

Lilla moved away from the side of the room, approaching the display. "What is this one looking at? This all looks random. Except..." She lifted a claw, running it down a vertical line, along which were perfectly aligned noise spikes.

"Exactly. The detectors don't have good enough time resolution, but they do register something of the pulse. Every single one at the same time -- once Vanca adjusts for the propagation rate of the gravity wave." The Academician looked smug, but even with that self-satisfied grin, Korn could almost feel the excitement rolling off her.

So many new discoveries all at once... is this just another thing related to the servitor's new strength? For the first time since he'd been 'rescued' by Security, Korn actually began to feel some hope for his future. Security needs us; this one might get out of this mess after all. "It shouldn't be too difficult to build something a bit more portable than a ten thousand tonne detector array," he said, eyes on the display.

At his side, Vanca nodded, starting to sketch out complex equations on a blank screen. "Yes. It won't be pretty, but it can be done. These ones are probably only seeing the fourth or fifth harmonics, so Vanca would expect significantly more sensitivity."

This one has always been taught that the servitors are inferior creatures; that they are not people... but Fusion's emotions were very real. All she wanted was to live. The guilty thought flicked through Korn's mind and he paused, paw midway through dismantling a virtual engineering model of one of the accelerator's detectors. His eyes drifted to Agent Lilla, standing by the door and carrying out an animated conversation with someone on her communicator. That's all this one wants, too, he thought, gritting his teeth and continuing his work.

===

Redshift awoke to the sound of somepony breathing and the sharp smell of pine. There was a memory of cloying mud and wires wrapped tight enough to cut flesh, stark and fresh, and somehow coupled to the dismembered body of a Master bigger than a tree. Eyes snapping open, he jerked upright, wings and legs flailing as he struggled to his hooves. "Shock! Where are you-- Oh!" Shaking some springy, prickly stuff from his hind legs, he looked around wildly, then slumped. "Oh," he said in a quiet voice, ears drooping.

Confused, the stallion took a hesitant step, bumping against something soft and warm. Looking down, his eyes widened. Packed in the small, wood-lined chamber were ten ponies, all sleeping, but with the little movements that marked them out as dreaming deeply. Two of them... "What the hay...?" he murmured, bending down for a closer look.

Their manes were... odd. One shimmered with waves of pastel light, while the other was the deep blue of a dusk sky and seemed to drink in the light; the illusion of oncoming night was made all the more real by a scattering of stars that seemed far further away than they should be. All the while, both flowed gently, as if they were in the grip of a gentle breeze, though the air in the chamber, while fresh, was completely still. They both showed signs of injury; fresh-looking scars with all the hallmarks of thaumic medicine, all nearly hidden by a short stubble of new fur. The blue one was in by far the worst state; her flanks and legs peppered with the remains of cuts, burns and punctures.

Redshift leaned back and shook his head, trying to shed what must be a strange hallucination. At the rear of the dreaming pile was another one who was different from the rest; he asleep but wasn't dreaming, and his legs, lumpy, swollen things, were held rigid by metal armatures. "I know you... you're Packet Switcher. What in the Maker's name happened to you?" And where in the Maker's name am I? Redshift switched briefly into shadow sight and gasped -- outside of the ten ponies in the chamber, there was nothing but blackness as far as he could see.

The scene inside the chamber did nothing to reassure him. Only eight of the ponies had the normal, healthy glow of magic playing along their wings and horns; unlike the others, the two strange mare's entire bodies were lit up like blown glass sculptures, their colours matching those of their disturbingly mobile manes. Subtle magic coiled out from the blue pony, tangling all the others in complex, ever-changing webwork.

The stallion opened his eyes, pushing away the arcane mystery. The only real light in the room came through cracks in branches pressed into a narrow entrance, so Redshift carefully stepped between the bodies, then pushed his way past the branches and into the outside world. There were trees everywhere, spindly things that were very different from the broad-leaved fruit trees from the orchards around the corral. The air was cold and fresh, and completely alien to anything he'd experienced before.

There was a rustling noise behind him and he whirled around. "Redshift? Are you okay?" The voice was young and a little hesitant, with a hint of caution, as if its owner was watching him like you might a biting insect. It was the pony with the mobile, pastel mane, and he finally recognised her.

"Fusion? The last thing I remember was fire and suffocation..."

"It was fugue... you fell in to it a few days ago. I don't know the exact circumstances, but I do know it will never happen again."

"You seem to be making a habit of being the first pony I see after the Test," he murmured, trying to identify what was missing. Ever since I woke up, there's been something different. He probed his memories, coming back with an image of the oversized Master holding Shock between her shelter-sized paws. He shivered, a foul taste at the back of his throat. "The Maker has gone from my head..." His legs folded and he sank to his belly amid the pine needles.

The white mare walked slowly over, sitting down facing him. "What do you think about that?" Ears drooping, she lowered her head until it was at his level.

Redshift stared back into those violet eyes, filled with sorrow and understanding, at a loss for anything to say. She did this to me. He shook his head. "I... I really don't know. I feel like I should hate you for this... but I don't." Tears started to run down his muzzle and he bowed his head. "Where is my Shock? Is he okay?"

"He's been through a lot, but he's safe for now," Fusion said softly, "along with the other twenty-three foals that Security took from the training centre. They are at Naraka; I don't know why." She sighed, fluttering her wings. "I have my suspicions. The Blessing works on a pony's guilt, and that requires sufficient indoctrination. If you treat a pony badly enough, especially one who's only just been Blessed, then the Dogs have to be worried that it won't work."

Ears flattening, Redshift let out a whinny. "What have they done to him? You said--"

"Not to him," Fusion said quickly, "but to Random. Security kept them all together for a while. She was repeatedly taken out of the foal's cage and put through a kind of artificial sharing. I don't know exactly what it was she was forced to do... but she escaped fugue by pulling out her own feathers." Fusion's voice became tight, her face fixed. "They allowed me two kiloseconds with her... even then, she was losing her grip on reality. Shock and the rest witnessed their teacher apparently being punished for trying to protect them, and watched her fall apart over the course of several days."

"What do you plan to do? Those other ponies... they are all the sires or dams of the foals in Shock's group." Redshift was silent for a moment, then gazed up at the little slivers of daylight visible through the dense tree canopy. "They were all in fugue, weren't they?"

"Yes... it's a long story, but ended up with you and all the others without their Blessings. At the moment Gravity is showing the others a little of what we can do... would you like to join them?"

--light, a blinding electric hue, piercing the clouds and bringing down the creature that was tormenting Shock--

Not trusting himself to speak, Redshift nodded.

===

The cheerful, chaotic jumble of corral twenty-seven, with its brightly-coloured shelters and encircling orchards and fields, was stitched with ragged craters. Greasy black smoke boiled up from the gaping hole that was once the feedstock bunker, adding a dark stain to an already murky sky. Fires burned in a dozen places, many the hard blue-white of failing superconductors, and bright enough to cast multiple, flickering shadows. Near-blinding though they were, nothing could hide the fact that at the core of each was a bulky, four-legged figure in smashed and broken armour.

Scores of other corpses littered the fields and burnt-out groves of trees. Some were bound with tentacles of rock that had exploded from beneath their paws; these still moved in a ghastly semblance of life as the thick ropes of living silicate continued to twist and contract, filling the air with the gunshot cracks of fracturing ceramics. Others were little more than neat collections of red-stained armour and equipment, at the centre of congealing pools that were the liquefied remains of their owners. Most, however, had simply been bludgeoned until they stopped moving.

Sharing the battlefield with the gryphons were ponies, looking fragile and vulnerable next to the armoured soldiers, their pastel coats stained with blood and soot. The manner of their passing was not so varied as that of the troopers; most sported great, gaping wounds where projectiles had ripped their insides to ruin. Many had greeted their deaths calmly, lying down in little family groups to face their executioners.

Despite the carnage, low-slung, winged shapes continued to dash from cover to scant cover, followed at a distance by four-armed bipeds. Their target was at the centre of the corral, and they poured fire towards the black pyramid of the Church. The building glowed with flickering patches of green and orange, flaring brightly where magic intercepted a fast moving missile or heavy railgun projectile. The lighter ammunition of the individual gryphons was ignored, and continued to blast craters in the stonework.

Stroboscopic pulses of green light flared bright enough to dim the sun, all the dust and smoke in the beam path flashing to incandescent vapour in an instant. The laser was unimpeded by the arcane defences and the top quarter of the pyramid burst asunder, showering the corral with hissing fragments and raising screeches of pain from a few unfortunate attackers.

The green magic vanished, leaving only the orange. A shape, surrounded by a hazy field of tangerine light, darted from the battered building. All at once, lines of fire converged on it, replied to by jagged lightning the colour of a sunset. It was too little, too late, and the orange light winked out, leaving a bloody figure to drop limply the ground.

Gravity picked a spot and gave herself form. Standing over the broken body of the last pony, she bent over, looking into his sightless eyes with annoyance. "Do you understand what you did wrong, Scalar?"

The head, hornless and with part of the skull missing where some projectile had ripped it away, rolled its remaining eye upwards and glared at her. "You go too far; there was no way we could possibly win against that many--"

"No, and that was rather the point." The blue mare sighed, losing some of her irritation. "Surely you realised that something like this would happen? The Dogs will respond with overwhelming force, especially now they know a little of what they face." Scalar's smashed head became whole in a wave of rectification that expanded out from Gravity, wiping away the wreckage and death. The shelters disappeared as well, leaving behind a dispersed collection of angry ponies.

The stallion rolled upright and stared at her for a moment, then got to his hooves. "I also think I could have convinced my mate to come with us."

"Probably, but this isn't certain. I've seen what happens when a pony refuses to even think about this kind of thing, and it's not pretty." She fixed him with a hard stare. "Anyway, you had to understand the consequences of your choice." She raised her voice, turning to look at the others. "All of you. Just because that trick of Fusion's makes you much stronger, doesn't mean you are invulnerable."

"No kidding," muttered Triple Point, carefully twisting her head from side-to-side, as if afraid it would come off. "That damn gryphon bit my throat out and it hurt--"

Gravity snorted. "You are all ponykind has, and the sooner you realise that, the better. It's important to fight, but it's also important to live." The blue mare's ears twitched, and she turned to look a Fusion, who'd just blinked into being, a confused- and stunned-looking Redshift in tow. "Ah-ha! The last pony awakes -- are you ready for a little practice?" she said, smiling broadly and advancing on the pair.

Redshift's head snapped around to focus on Gravity; ears folding back, he took a step backwards. "I... I..."

"Perhaps something a little more gentle... Red has only just joined us and doesn't know the basics." Fusion said, stepping between her sister and the increasingly nervous-looking Redshift. "Try not to look like you are enjoying this too much," she whispered, so faintly that it was only Gravity's complete control over the sharing environment that allowed her to hear the words at all.

Gravity seemed to deflate a little. "Sorry, Redshift. Sometimes I forget how much of a shock all this is when you first discover the truth. Come on, I'll start from the beginning -- but based on what I've seen, you will have no problems."

"You... you were the voice in my dream!"

"We were both there," Gravity said, looking a little guilty. "We had a bad experience when we tried to convince Packet, and that seemed like the most reliable way to understand you."

"You were very convincing," Fusion murmured. "Anyway, I'm sure the rest of you would like a break from my sister's idea of fun -- I have some more magic for you, something that will make this kind of fight more survivable, if you can master it." She nodded to Gravity, then blinked out, followed by the others in quick succession. Scalar was the last to leave, scowling fiercely at the blue mare as he dropped from the sharing.

Redshift looked at her uncertainly, unconsciously pawing the ground as Gravity regarded him. I guess in a dream we can be a hero without the repercussions of the real world. She smiled gently, allowing her sharing to evaporate into a grey mist that encroached from all sides. "Come on, let's go somewhere real." A little shove pushed him from her mind, and she let the grey wash over her.

The small wood-lined chamber was empty, the only sign of any past occupancy the receding sounds of hoof on dirt. Gravity yawned and stretched stiff muscles, arching her back and bending her neck to place her head between her forelegs. Other body parts, long disconnected from her mind by the sharing, also voiced their complaints, so she stepped through the opening and out between the trees, gesturing for Redshift to follow her. "Hungry?" she said, sorting through the pile of stolen equipment, coming up with a set of rations and passing them to the stallion. "Once we've eaten, I'll set up another sharing and show you what--" she paused, staring at his expression.

"Can't you just tell me? I don't think I can take too much more right now." He took the food, unwrapping the block and starting to nibble at the edges with little, nervous bites, his gaze never leaving her.

Gravity shrugged. "If you'd prefer, but you really do need to see how to use your magic in a fight -- and it's not safe to do that outside a sharing."

The look of incipient panic left his eyes and he nodded gratefully. "Fusion told me a little of it..." He listened in silence as Gravity spoke, slowly working his way through the sugary mix of grain and highly compressed hay. Soon finished, his eyes drifted to the rest of the equipment pile, searching the confusing jumble of shapes for anything recognisable.

"You want some more?" Gravity's horn lit and she opened a pack on the edge of the pile.

"No," Redshift said slowly. "What is all this stuff? Why did you bother taking it from the Masters?" His own horn glowed, and blue light plucked a pony skull-shape from the pile. He turned it over, watching light glint off the bulbous lenses that covered the eyes.

"At the time we had no idea what we'd find useful." Gravity laughed, a short, humourless chuckle. "Time. Yes, that was the problem. The Dog was nipping at my fetlocks, so I grabbed everything and jumped away. Only really wanted the emergency kits and food." She went silent, staring at the helmet as Redshift examined it. The inside was still redolent of sweat and explosives residues, stained by traces of rusty brown near the eyes and muzzle.

Something twisted in Gravity's gut, and she forced down the urge to snatch the armour fragment from the stallion's magical grasp. "Not that piece, Redshift," she said in a strained voice, struggling to see past the vision of the dead security mare slumped in the ruined corridor. She's probably still buried there... I'm doing this for you, Parapet. You and Slipstream and all the others that I'll never know. Staring into the blank, fish-eyed visor, she felt her heart thunder and magic start to rise, unbidden, in her mind.

Redshift must have seen something in her eyes, because he shied away, wings flaring in preparation for flight. "Sorry," he said in a small voice, gently placing the helmet on the ground, "I didn't mean... that was from the pony who--" He searched for the right word, ears folding back.

The sight of the fear in the stallion's face was like being doused with icy water and Gravity's rapidly building rage was washed away. "Don't apologise," she muttered, "I thought I was beginning to get over that." Sighing, she shook her head. Now, where were we...

"Do you mind if I take a look at the rest of this stuff? I'm not sure I'm up to a fight like you showed the others."

"Ah... your talent is something electronic, yes?" I know next to nothing about these mechanisms... having some idea of their actual capabilities would be useful. Gravity looked at him with interest, eyes narrowing.

"Mostly interfacing crystal thaumic systems with solid state devices, but I had a good grounding in the electronics side," he said, cautiously.

"Anything you can find, any magical vulnerability that you can show me, will be very useful. No matter what my sister wants, this is going to end in a fight."

===

The familiar rhythms of the work helped keep the gnawing emptiness at the core of his mind at bay. Now the dislocating strangeness had faded, thoughts of Shock, caged like one of the cattle on the Master's farms, threatened to destroy his composure at every turn. Without the work, he felt he was nothing more than a paper-thin shell over the void.

There were a multitude of puzzles here. The first was a physical one, which had him baffled until he realised that the pieces were not all designed for an equine body plan. Once he understood that, it was trivial to separate out the curved plates and armatures into gryphon and pony. The gryphon armour was especially easy to identify -- not because of the different shapes, but because of the surface damage.

In few places, under the belly, or between the legs, the armour was intact, complete with its smooth coating of adaptive polymer, loaded with chromatophores and the simple systems that powered them. Denied access to the larger network that laced the whole suit -- still visible as slender grooves on the undersides of the plates -- they had fallen back to their default settings. Where he put them down, they slowly changed colour to match the soft fuzz of decaying pine needles.

Humming softly to himself, Redshift examined each piece in turn, fitting them together as distorted, flattened maps of once three-dimensional objects. The vast majority of plates held some level of damage. Simple abrasion accounted for much of this; areas where the polymer top coat had been removed by greater or lesser levels of force. At the centres of these zones were patches of microcracking, where the armour had powdered without deformation to soak up some of the forces.

Experimentally, the stallion tried to bend one of the plates; in the silence between the trees he could hear little tinkling noises as the metaloceramic composite absorbed his efforts, but it didn't flex until it failed completely. Even then it only bent, and was held together despite the fractures. Frowning, he probed the armour plate, tasting the regular arrangement of carbon atoms that laced the material. "Fullerenes," he murmured, breathing heavily from the exertion, "nothing else is that strong." He put the plate down and stared thoughtfully at the pony armour he'd managed to partially assemble.

"We will always be out-numbered," he muttered. "I don't care how strong you are now, Grav, your attention is limited." The mare had said she'd try to show him how to copy that strange, frightening level of power, but there had been a peculiarly resigned tone to her words. Sighing, he picked up part of a tangle of webbing, packs and unidentifiable lumps of hardware and started to pull it apart, sorting it into piles after a cursory inspection.

The weapon is the obvious place to start, Redshift thought. Short, no more than half the length of his foreleg, it looked deceptively simple until he probed it with his magic. Dense solenoid coils of superconductor lined the barrel, right up to the flared end. Outside that were little hexagonal crystals, making the internals of the thing look like a product of highly sophisticated bees. Power still lurked in the weapon's storage packs, so he carefully experimented with the management systems, trying to bring it to life.

There were computers in each of the sections, in constant communication through well-protected lengths of optic fibre, and most were dedicated to maintaining the very precise sequence of current pulses needed to propel whatever-it-was down the barrel. Alongside each were small modules that gave permission to operate, and it was these that were the problem. Ha! It looks like the Masters don't trust their troops. It's all part of the same lump of computronium, so I can't just cut them out...

He reached in, manipulating the atom-fine wires in the tiny cube of solid state circuitry until the security components enthusiastically complied with any request the rest of the system had for them. Sitting back, he hefted the gun, plucking a single projectile from one of the packs and setting it spinning in front of his muzzle. It was only small; a slender needle of dense metal half embedded within a cylinder of ruby crystal. The hexagonal crystals in the barrel confine the magnetic field, while this gives it an extra kick.

The next projectile was of a different design. Fatter, just narrow enough to fit down the barrel, it was a complex mechanism in its own right. Behind the armoured nose was a collection of microengineered sensors and a fragment of computronium no larger than a grain of sand; it was the work of a moment to trace the signalling pathways and divine its purpose. Accelerometers and a high speed clock, all so that when it hits something...

Redshift looked at the rest of the projectile, his ears drooping as he examined the tight-packed ranks of ceramic needles arrayed around a core of some high density organic material. So it knows what it hits, and can wait until it is inside something soft... The muscles of his flanks contracted in sympathy, and he felt dizzy. Imagine this thing striking Shock; no veterinarian in the world could save a pony from that. This is the true face of the Masters.

The revelation made him cold inside, and he placed both of the objects back in the container. So all I need to do is place the projectile storage pack there, and...

Magic made straightening out the damaged feed chute easy, and the gun swallowed the ammunition with a satisfying tick. The stallion moved the thing in a short arc, pointing the barrel at the trunk of one of the trees. Intently studying the guts of the weapon, he tapped the trigger bar with a tiny flicker of magic.

Ten of the projectiles vanished before he could do more than blink in surprise. The gun jumped in his grip, and there was a rapid crack-crack-crack, the individual sounds almost too close to distinguish and loud enough to make his ears ring. At the same instant, splinters exploded out from the tree he'd aimed at, and a couple of trees either side, filling his little clearing with haze and sawdust.

Redshift blinked in the sudden silence, then flinched as a quick succession of flashes -- white, violet, orange, and several other colours -- lit the underside of the trees, accompanied by the thump of displaced air. In the space of a breath, he was surrounded by anxious-looking ponies, all with lit horns and exuding the static-electric feel of active magic. Moments later, all those worried looks transformed to irritation and annoyance.

Redshift's ears folded flat and he looked up at the sound of crashing branches. Three ponies, all breathing heavily and wild-eyed, dropped straight down through the canopy, swerving to avoid hitting those who had teleported in. "Um... whoops?"

"Maker-dammit, Redshift! You're a stallion, not some foal still wet from his dam!" Scalar snarled, ripping the weapon from his grasp in a nimbus of orange fire. "Why are you even bothering with this junk? Even your magic is stronger than that." He swung the gun through a fast arc, aiming for a tree-trunk, only to have it intercepted by a flash of white-gold.

"Look on the bright side, Scalar... for all your talk about how badly designed the teleport spell is, you managed to cast it in an emergency." The orange stallion snorted, but some of his anger faded. "A few of you need a bit more practice, but your reflexes are good." Fusion turned to look at the rest of the ponies, who had started to grin. "This is excellent -- you thought one of our own was in danger, and you galloped to help."

"Nopony died, I suppose," Scalar muttered, "perhaps it would be a good idea to get rid of all this stuff before there are any more accidents." He glared at Redshift, but some of the heat had left his gaze.

"I'm sorry, I didn't think. I was just seeing what could be done with these," Redshift said meekly, as the ponies filtered away, back to whatever Fusion was doing with them. I must get her or Gravity to teach me that trick, he thought, watching with bemusement as a couple vanished into thin air.

"Don't worry -- although I'd prefer a warning next time." Gravity accepted the gun from Fusion, watching as she left with the other ponies, then turned back to Redshift. "I should really show you some of the magic we've picked up in the last few days," she said, grinning at the stallion's enthusiastic nod. "And then I think we should let everypony experience fending off that weapon..." Her smile became wide, with a glint of teeth between her lips. "Scalar can go first."

===

With part of her mind, Gravity watched as Redshift applied the twist Fusion had invented to his telekinetic efforts, while the rest of her attention was on the other group. Little pulses of magic popped like fireworks in the darkness of the shadow universe, suddenly jumping from location to location. They'd discussed the best way to train the teleport spell, with its strange, highly customisable pattern, to the rest of the ponies, and in the end Gravity had left it to Fusion to train the group. I think I'll be okay with just one pony... we'll see.

In the real world, a large fallen tree-trunk creaked, lifting slightly off the ground while a gentle fog of ice crystals dusted the fur on her flanks with silver. Absently, she burned them away with a flicker of power. "You see? Just apply that modification when you exercise your magic, and everything is that much easier."

"I could have lifted that without this, but it would have been a struggle," Redshift said, voice filled with wonder. "Is this what allowed you to do all that... that stuff when you rescued Fusion?"

"Sort of; there's a little more to it than that." And will you be able to do what we do, Redshift? "We'll get to that later. First, let's try that teleport spell." She felt his interest sharpen, then turn to confusion at the sight of the complex arcane pattern she created and left hanging in the void.

"Where did all this come from? Natural progression I can understand, or just accidental discovery -- that power enhancement is novel, but at least I can see how you might stumble upon it. This, though..." His power tentatively reached through the complexity, feeling through the strands of nascent spellstuff. "How did you ever come up with it?"

Gravity shifted her weight, rolling from one side to the other. "That's not an easy question to answer, and you should really talk to Fusion about it; it's all her work. She said it just appeared in her head while she was being experimented upon. She was dying, I think... her Master had decided that the work was more important than her life, and that was that."

"I guess funny things can happen, the mind reaching in strange directions out of desperation." The stallion went silent, staring at the coil of light that twisted in his shadow sight. "But this isn't like any pony-made magic I've ever seen... even in a fever-dream I could never come up with a hundredth of this."

"I've shared her memories of that time. Everything is blurry and surreal, but I think she's right. Something gave the magic to her, something that wanted her to escape the accelerator."

Redshift stared at her in awe. "That can only mean one thing, surely," he said in a reverential whisper. "The Blessing may be a lie given to us by the Masters--"

"Dogs. Call them Dogs."

"Right. Given to us by the Dogs," he said hesitating over the word and looking uncomfortable, "but the Maker is real!"

"Talk to Fusion, if you really want to know," Gravity said, making a cutting gesture with one wing. "At the moment I only care that it works, and is something that gives us an edge over the Dogs. Now, this section here relates to your destination, so what you need to do is encode a suitable memory of a place--" The mare demonstrated and the lesson continued.

A kilosecond later and, with Gravity watching nervously, Redshift managed his first jump, blinking from one side of the clearing to the other. At least I could show him how to avoid the problems I had making the thing work; he's mastered the spell far faster than I did. She smiled in satisfaction as he did another jump, this time misjudging the exit and appearing half a body length above ground. One of the benefits of not being shot at.

Laughing, the stallion stumbled, then tripped and fell to his belly, wings flicking out just too late to catch his fall. Breathing heavily, he grinned back at her, pure exhilaration in his eyes, exactly like he was a colt back from his first flight.

"Before you tire yourself out practicing that, there's one more thing to try. You may have noticed this--" Gravity gave her tail a swish, flicking a cascade of not-quite-hair in Redshift's direction. Pinpoints of light shimmered in its dark depths, far further away than they should have been for a mere material object. "--it's a side-effect of what makes Fusion and I so strong. My sister managed it first, but we haven't had much luck showing other ponies how to do it. You'll need to open the sharing this time; I'll guide you from inside."

===

Redshift nodded, closing his eyes. Gravity was there, a hard-edged knot of alien thought at the back of his mind, like a seed in an apple, gently prodding his efforts outwards. There were odd sensations and feelings in the outer darkness; weight moving in concentric circles while, much further away, a distant point of something radiated warmth on everything. Muzzle wrinkling, he tried to catch a hold of those fleeting presences, but it was like they were half remembered dreams, fading to the barest wisp of recollection as a pony awoke.

Gravity kept urging him onwards, but nothing he did made any difference; frustrated, he finally pushed her away and dropped from the sharing. "There's something... but it's too faint. The others had the same problem?"

"They did," the mare said, ears drooping. "I really don't understand why. When I did it, it was like it was waiting for me... I don't think I could have avoided it, even if I wanted to. Let me show you from my point of view."

The world went black as she dragged him into her sharing. Redshift panicked for a moment, struggling against that irresistible pull, then forced himself to relax. "Hey! Take it easy," he mumbled, body not quite responding in time with his thoughts.

Sorry; still don't quite know my own strength.

There was a sudden sense of expansion, of his awareness spreading from his body like oil dropped on water. In the periphery were things, massive, threatening objects that moved with terrible speed, prowling the outer darkness like sharks within the ocean depths. Redshift recoiled and tried to bolt, but Gravity's will held him fast. No! Get away, get away! The terror only lasted for a moment; the blue mare released him, sending him tumbling back to his body.

The headlong flight carried over into the real world, and Redshift finally came to his senses, huddled and shivering against the spiky trunk of a large pine tree. "Never do that again," he wheezed, sweat pouring down heaving flanks. "How can you stand that?" Gravity, looking alarmed, was already on her hooves and cantering over, skidded to a sudden stop when he cringed.

"Are you okay, Redshift?" she said, tentatively. "None of the others enjoyed the experience, but nopony reacted quite so... vigorously. I'll leave you for a bit; we can start again later."

Racing heart finally starting to slow, the stallion pushed away from the tree and straightened up. "No, I'll be fine." He offered her a ghost of a smile, taking a small step in her direction. "It's been an unusual day. In any case, if I understand what Fusion has in mind, it's not like I'll be able to sit back on my haunches, is it?" Gravity was silent, her expression saying all it needed to. Redshift nodded. "I thought so. You'll need every wing, every hoof, every horn, until it's over. One way or another."

"We will win... the Dogs just don't understand that things have changed, but they will, and soon," Gravity said, reaching forward to brush the stallion's muzzle with her own. "Come on, let's get started. I need to show you how to get through your first encounter."

Nodding, Redshift folded his legs and settled to the ground. "That thing you showed me, does Fusion have something similar?" he blurted out, ears pricking up and eyes going wide. What did she say? All this new magic just appeared when 'she needed it most'? "The Maker gave Fusion that magic," he whispered, unable to take his eyes off Gravity. "so that presence you and she feel, that must be the Maker!" There was awe in his voice now, any trace of fear or worry gone. "And it won't talk to anypony else... "

"Ah... I suppose you could see it that way. I don't really believe that the Make--"

"Don't you see?" he said, voice breathy with excitement. "It all makes sense -- the lie of the Blessing, the fact that you were both chosen..."

Gravity stared at him, brow wrinkled. "If... if that helps you with this, then yes, why not?" She cleared her throat, wings fluttering. "Shall we get started?"

We're doing the Maker's work! Redshift nodded, mane bobbing vigorously, then closed his eyes and waited for Gravity's mind to scoop him up.

===

She has a real talent for mayhem, Fusion thought, sweeping through the memory of a sky. Clouds dotted the blue emptiness, but these were not the white, puffy things beloved of the weather teams. Long, curving, screw-shaped contrails, their paths becoming more frantic and tightly curled as they progressed, laced the sky. A couple ended in greasy-looking black smuts, replete with the drifting motes of feathers.

Other deaths were less vaguely marked. Many burned, falling with the deceptive slowness of the small amid the vast; black dots tumbled from the heavens like ash from a volcanic cloud, trailing yellow flames and sooty smoke as they fell. Here and there, armoured spheroids moved with unnatural swiftness, propelled by eye-searing jets of blue-white. Around them, ethereal disks pulsed, placing themselves between the frantically manoeuvring vehicles and the other entities in the sky. At intervals, objects would leap from briefly opened ports, darting out at tremendous accelerations towards their targets.

Figures swathed in gossamer fields of pastel light batted the projectiles aside, ending their head-long flights in dazzling flashes as superconducting drives quenched. The arcane fighters moved like nothing in the natural world, their trajectories interrupted by sudden jumps to different parts of the sky. Sound was a laggard companion in the battle; the stunning whip-crack of explosions smeared into a continuous, rolling thunder.

An orange pony-shape, made large enough to see at this distance by the flicker-flash of the magic that surrounded it, accelerated tremendously in what seemed to be a random direction, then vanished. At the same instant it reappeared, right next to, and on the same vector as, one of the spheroids. Magic pulsed, overwhelming the faint field that tried to surround the vehicle, and antennae, miniature turrets and fragments of armour were ripped free in a moment, fountaining out from its hull.

Lines of light, as straight and immediate as a predator's thought, lanced through the frantic volume, illuminating the aerial battlefield with unnatural, monochrome pulses, but failed to strike down the attacker. The rigid plates of fullerene-metaloceramic gave way to more varied components, then the vehicle's drive went out and its trajectory curved towards the distant ground. The orange pony leapt away, wings twisting as, behind it, the vehicle came apart in disparate fragments. The machine burst from the inside, not explosively, but after sectioning with planes of red light. Two bipeds tumbled free, snatched up by a crimson-glowing shape birthed from the rear part of the wreck. Wings pumping frantically, the loyal pony fled the fight, dragging the crew with him.

Looks like Scalar is taking the opportunity to work off a little anger, Fusion thought, following the stallion as he ploughed into a flock of gryphon troops that had been disgorged from a high-flying arrowhead transporter. The panic was palpable, even at this range, and broken shapes were tumbling from the feathery cloud. Scalar was teleporting with wild abandon, making short, choppy jumps to confuse his victims. Further away, another pony closed on the transporter, while two more fended off the escort spheroids.

Green lightning clawed at the flanks of the larger aircraft, first skittering over invisible defences, then finding an opening and striking the body, leaving behind a spider-web of scars that trailed pale streamers of vaporised ceramics and metal oxides. The attacking pony vanished as probing lines of light raked his position, but never reappeared. Fusion looked on in interest, then winced as a fiercely radiant plane of green light clipped off one wing and flank of the aircraft, and the machine started to break up in mid air.

You'd have to do that from the inside, Fusion thought, watching the flash of hostile magic from within the vehicle, as the ponies it carried tried to fight their attacker. I wonder how big a field I could make, if I really tried? Setting the field is the hard part, and it gets exponentially more difficult with increasing range and size, but still... The five ponies in the belly of the carrier should have been able to overpower Thermocline, but it looked like the stallion was intent on making their task as awkward as possible. Bipedal shapes flew out of the yawning rent, propelled at unnatural speed by his telekinesis. First one, then all, of the ponies jumped clear of the wreck; wings folded, they fell after their Masters, trying to break his grip.

The sight sent a shiver down Fusion's spine, but she hardened her heart. It is better than the alternative; he could have just killed them. At least this is the perfect distraction for their ponies. Turning her back on the now ebbing tides of the battle, Fusion stretched her wings, circling upwards and searching for her sister. She found Gravity perched on a cloud, high above the action. From this altitude, the sharing environment showed some signs of actually having a boundary; there were distortions, and sightlines were corrupted by strange curves, as if the whole creation took place within a sphere of perfect crystal.

In here, she could look like anything, but there was a natural tendency for the imagined body image to follow reality. Sweat had lathered Gravity's flanks, gluing feathers and fur into matted clumps spotted with foam. Her ears were flat back, and her head moved in jerky arcs, mirrored by the frantic motion of her eyes under closed lids. Fusion's eyes widened at the state of her sister; even as she watched, the mare inhaled a great, heaving gasp, letting the air back out with a long groan. She reached for her power to interrupt the sharing, but stopped when Gravity turned towards her, eyes still shut.

"Don't; nearly done... there!" In the distorted distance, the last spheroidal airtank disappeared within an expanding fireball. "Oh, thank the Maker; I need a break," she said, slumping like she was made of some viscous liquid.

"You certainly do! Kick all those ponies out this instant!" Fusion said, voice tight with anger. "It does us no good if you kill yoursel--" The connection snapped, leaving the mare shaking her head to clear a sudden surge of coloured lights expanding across her vision. Blinking, Fusion climbed to her hooves, following Gravity out of the little chamber and leaving the rest of the herd to regain their senses.

The blue mare fanned her wings and arched her back, spraying the trees with droplets of sweat. "Back in a second," she called over her shoulder, then leapt into the air and flew down the mountainside towards the river.

Fusion looked after her and sighed, then turned to see Scalar step out between the trees. "You looked like you were enjoying yourself, Scalar. Getting the hang of it?" She felt a pang of guilt; after their encounter with the deer, Gravity hadn't pressed her on joining the training sessions. I'm probably the least ready pony out of all of them. The thought made her ears droop and stomach twist.

The stallion scowled back. "That sister of yours is a monster, how she--"

Fusion's ears went back and her magic closed around the big stallion like a vice. Scalar let out a started snort and tried to pull away, horn flaring, but she deflected his magic and gave him a hard shake that made his teeth click together. "Whatever you do, do not say that to her face," Fusion said in a fierce whisper, dragging him closer. "It's taken me kiloseconds to convince her that all the terrible things she's had to do don't make her that!" All the sacrifices, all the pain we've been through, and he dares-- The mare ground her teeth together, forcing the words out. "It hit her very hard -- if it wasn't for Gravity we'd all be dead!"

Scalar, frozen by her magic, inhaled as deeply as he could, staring back at her through wide and frightened eyes. "I didn't mean anything by it, only that she seems to be very good at this," he whispered.

Fusion let him go, her anger draining away as fast as it had arrived. What have I done? "Maker, Scalar. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have--"

He ducked his head, looking away. "I know I have a big mouth. I didn't think... but this is very hard on all of us, you know? My world has been shattered by this..." He tailed off into a mumble, then sighed, staring at his hooves for a moment before lifting his head again. "I'll try not to let my big mouth gallop away with itself, if you try not to kill me if it does. Deal?"

Fusion winced, then smiled slightly. He jokes about it, but it would be so easy to lose control. "Deal," she said, leaning forwards to brush his muzzle with her own.

All of the tension left him, and he turned away, gesturing with a wing towards the lake and the other base. "There was something I actually wanted to talk to you about. What you have here won't do for much longer, and I've seen the place you dug out. It... Quite frankly, it won't do, especially for the numbers of ponies that this may involve."

"I know." Fusion chewed at her lips. "If you think you can build something suitable please do so... just remember what we're up against. I really don't know anything about tunnel construction."

"That's certainly obvious," he muttered to himself, turning away and poking his head back through the branches blocking the way into the shelter. An indistinct conversation followed, and the rest of the herd came out into the clearing. Scalar nodded to Fusion, then sprang into the air, followed by everypony except Redshift.

His gaze followed their path for a moment, head tilting back and mane flopping over his withers, before bringing his eyes back to the ground and turning to Fusion. "I've got something for you... I was looking at the armour, before the... accident with the gun." He trotted forward, starting to root through the piles of equipment, pulling out curved plates of some mottled grey-brown material and placing them on the ground. Between them he attached a complex series of straps, until it looked like the flayed skin of a giant lizard. "There's also an undersuit, but that's mostly coolant systems and you don't need it right now."

There was a fluttering sound, and Gravity touched down next to Fusion. She was soaking wet, and absently shook her mane while watching Redshift intently. "Anything interesting?"

"I just thought that it might be useful to have some protection that didn't rely on magic; I mean, you can't concentrate on everything at once." Gravity picked up the harness, spreading it out in the air over a hazy replica of a pony's form. She had a peculiar look on her face, and that made the stallion hesitate. "I didn't use the parts from the one that..." He swallowed, gesturing to a small pile off to one side.

The blue mare nodded gratefully, and draped the harness over her back. Violet magic flickered and flashed, attaching fastenings and smoothing down fur. Redshift's own telekinesis joined the arcane dance, and it only took a few breaths to complete the fitting. Gravity lifted the helmet, sliding it over her muzzle and clipping it around her horn. She turned, pushing her wings through the carapace plates and spreading them wide. "Well, what do you think?"

Fusion shivered, then smiled, a wan thing that matched the droop of her ears. Patches of dark blue were spreading over the suit, starting at the muzzle and wingroots, turning it to match the colour of Gravity's coat. "It's very you." Something tickled at the back of her head, not a new presence, but something missing. What is--

Gravity gasped. "That's the crystal, the one I gave to Spiral--" she said in a strangled tone.

Heart racing, Fusion probed where the distant flicker had been. Maker, no! She looked up, meeting her sister's suddenly wide-eyed, excited stare, and her stomach twisted. "I'll go in; you stay back. I don't want us to both fall into a trap." Gravity opened her mouth, but Fusion shook her head. "No arguments. It might be nothing... but if Spiral is in trouble, then you are the best mare to pull us both out."

10 - Equiculture

Author's Note

Preread by: KMCA
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna), Caliaponia (Just Passing Through) and jimi_betterix (The War Machine, a non pony Dr Who fanfic).

10 - Equiculture

=== Chapter 10: Equiculture ===

Spiral looked down at the peacefully sleeping mare, reaching forward to wipe away the string of drool from her slightly open mouth. "Well, Ogive, looks like it's your turn to die," she said softly, pulling out her injection gun. It was the middle of the day and the only conscious pony anywhere nearby was Lilac; the young stallion formed a little knot of awareness at the back of her head, his own attention focused on the painstaking process of rebuilding his gut.

First the drugs, deepening the mare's level of sedation, then the magic and the tube down her throat. Ogive was the third pony that Spiral had 'killed' in the last two kiloseconds, and the task was getting easier and easier. While she worked, Spiral opened a link to her communicator, composing the standard death notification. This done, she carefully lifted the cold mare out of her stall, floating her into the corridor in a haze of green light. The heavy black plastic bag was already open, and Spiral--

# Spiral Fracture CW8002 will report to Naraka Centre for Biological Research. Non-discretionary; arrival required within ten kiloseconds. #

--staggered, her legs suddenly going weak. Leaning against the nearest wall, she carefully lowered the bagged mare to the floor, then sank to her knees, breathing heavily. Think, filly, think! Spiral inhaled deeply and held it, releasing the air slowly. It can't be too bad, otherwise they'd be here already. She closed her eyes, mind whirling as she struggled to remember any other times she'd been recalled to Naraka without warning. Nothing, this has never happened before. Her eyes opened and she reluctantly looked at Ogive, still half out of the bag. But these are unique circumstances, aren’t they?

Trembling slightly, she pushed the mare all the way in, then folded the end over loosely and quickly moved her to stall eleven and into a cooled compartment. Reaching blindly around the back of the autoclave, she pulled out the crystal that served as a clairvoyance anchor and ground it into powder, throwing the gritty dust into the dispose-all. "Are you still watching over me?" she whispered, reaching for Lilac within their sharing. "I really hope so." The other pony, distracted from his magic, turned his attention to her. Lilac, the Eugenics Board has called me in; I don't know why.

The youngster was still in the storage closet, but his gasp was clearly audible. What are you going to do?

I have a short while yet; they have given me time to finish anything I might have started, so I suspect it's to do with the number of deaths. Spiral felt her initial panic subside as she thought over the statement, nodding slowly. Yes, that makes sense... but the real problem will come if they want to examine me.

You can't go, you mustn't! Lilac's thoughts were nearly incoherent with panic.

Spiral's horn flared and she swept her magic through Ogive and the other two ponies, making sure her cardiopulmonary spell was functioning as she'd intended. If I stay, they will know I've disobeyed a direct order. What do you think will happen then? she thought, trying to force her mind into the state of calm calculation that came with a medical emergency. It must have had some effect, because Lilac picked up on it and his mental background seemed to lose some of its dread.

Do you think they will examine you?

Probably not, now that I think about it. I suspect it will be so my Handler can judge for himself what my mental state is... I know ponies who have worse Masters. Handler Werin is-- Spiral groped for the right word to describe the Dog she spoke to perhaps once a megasecond. --paws off. He lets me get on with things, as long as there are no problems. I have been his for about half a gigasecond now. The green mare paused, gazing off into the distance. I might even get a chance to see Random... she thought, then shivered, trying to block out the images Fusion had shared with her, tears making her vision swim. Oh my baby, I hope things are better for you than they were. Taking a deep breath, she returned to the front of the infirmary, drawing her injection gun as she stepped through the doors.

There was a silent flash of white-gold from behind one of the unoccupied stall doors, then Fusion stepped out, leaning forward to hug the veterinarian. "What happened?" she said. "When I felt the crystal go, I assumed the worst."

Spiral stepped back, unconsciously rubbing her chest with one wing wrist. Even at this distance she could feel the static thrill of powerful magic, fading rapidly as the white mare reined in her power. "So I see. They want me to go to Naraka, in person. I have to leave within the next six kiloseconds."

Fusion stared at her, ears drooping. "I suppose they didn't say why." It was a statement, rather than a question, and Spiral shook her head. "They never do. Will you go, or would you rather disappear?"

Feeling dizzy again, Spiral leaned against the wall, her eyes wide. "You're giving me a choice? Surely I have to go?" You would abandon all these hard-won secrets for me?

"I think it might be better if you did... anything you can tell us about exactly where the foals are will make any rescue more likely to succeed," Fusion said quietly, "but I won't send you somewhere you don't want to go." She produced another small crystal, passing it to Spiral. "One that Gravity made; she always was better at remote viewing. Keep it with you, if you can. We will watch over you."

Spiral held the little thing, a multifaceted, apple-green gem that had a scar on one side from where it had been removed from some larger instrument, up in her magic, watching the light play over its surface. "I'll put it with the rest of my medical kit; that should give it some measure of camouflage. Where is your sister now?"

"Close by, but not so close that she might fall into any trap, should you have been discovered," Fusion said. "Your plan worked really well, by the way. Everypony is awake and fine... we had a few problems convincing them at first, but Gravity can be persuasive when she puts her mind to it."

I'll bet, Spiral thought, I've never met a pony as skilled as her at mind magic that didn't have it as their special talent. "Even Packet? I thought..."

Fusion shook her head, ears falling further. "We didn't try. Wanted to get this group settled first; Redshift and the others are keeping him comfortable." The mare stared at her hooves and sighed. "How long can we keep him under?"

"If you keep the suspension spell refreshed and make sure he's not lying on one spot for too long... he'll need IV fluids in a day or so, but after that he should be okay for maybe a megasecond. I should check him every day, to be on the safe side."

"I can't wait that long," Fusion said. "I want my friend back. I wish..."

Spiral nodded, a sad smile tugging at her lips. "So, same signal as before?" The mare held up the crystal and blew on it, letting it spin lazily in her telekinetic grasp.

"Yes. If you want out in a hurry, just break the gem and drop to the floor. Gravity and I will come and get you." The white mare gestured with her horn, waving it next to the floating crystal. "Don't take any chances; if you even think you are about to be discovered..."

Spiral nodded quickly, her ears folding flat. "You'll gallop to my rescue, I get it." She stared at the jewel with renewed intensity. Such a small thing to start a war.

===

Lilac watched Spiral go through his shadow sight, the glimmers of her horn and wings quickly disappearing into the magical background haze produced by the aggregated, distant Hive infrastructure. Shuffling his hooves, he generated a little pearl of pale purple light, just bright enough to delineate the darkness within his hiding place. Looking up into the towering shadows that hid the ceiling, he whined quietly at the back of his throat, and fought back the tears. What am I going to do if she doesn't come back? There's still so much I can't do.

He turned his gaze inwards, tracing the loops of his gut, now slightly shorter than it had been before he'd been shot. The individual sections were all joined, but still separated by thin membranes and awaiting inspection by Spiral before he opened them. "You've got friends, Lilac," he whispered, "but there are so many other ponies they need to take care of. I want to help them, but right now I'm just a burden."

And if they all go away, what then? If something bad happens to Spiral, I'm going to be stuck like this forever. He put out his light, reaching for the tissue manipulation spells and the conjoined sections of gut. If she doesn't come back, I'm going to have to do this anyway. Fluttering his wings in the darkness, Lilac carefully made the final alterations, watching with baited breath as the irregular motions of the muscles became more coherent, the once isolated sections twitching as peristaltic waves passed through them.

A kilosecond later and with no obvious problems, Lilac allowed himself to relax, jumping when his stomach rumbled loudly. One more test... He reached out, fumbling among the packs of medical supplies until he found what he was looking for. Cubic, it had the rough texture of compressed hay; on removal of the barrier film it filled his hiding space with the warm scent of grains and sugars. Swallowing to clear some of the saliva from his mouth, Lilac took a cautious nibble, then sighed at the flood of flavours. They never fed me anything this nice in the lab.

Mind drifting, he opened another of the ration blocks and ate that, suddenly struck by a memory. There was that one time, when one of the Students brought in... in... an apple? Is that what it was? Lilac inhaled deeply, the smell of the near-by orchards filling his nostrils. That one occurrence hadn't been repeated; his Master had given the Student such a dressing-down for 'disrupting the experiment' that Lilac had felt guilty for almost a megasecond. Suddenly, the food block tasted dry and dull compared to the remembered succulence of the fruit.

Carefully tucking the empty wrappings into the crack under the shelving, Lilac re-examined his innards, tracing the nerves running from leg to spine, stopping short at the wide break mid-back. Sighing, he opened his eyes and lit his horn, looking mournfully about the small space. "No escape there," he muttered, then used his magic to shift a hind leg that was pressing into his belly. Freezing, eyes wide, he gripped the whole leg, feeling the interplay of muscle, bone and tendon. The limb moved fluidly in his grasp, flexing through its whole range of motion. "Now why didn't I think of that before..."

Mouth slack, Lilac closed his eyes again, watching through shadow sight as he extended his telekinesis over his hindquarters and legs. Gripping so many things at once was a complex task, and more than once he accidentally kicked out, slamming a hoof into some unfortunate crate of supplies. Finally, he managed to get his foreknees under him, levering himself upright with wings and hindlegs. Leaning heavily against the side of the storage space, the youngster pushed out with one wing, then carefully retracted it.

Back legs covered with pale fire, front legs trembling with the effort of actually having to support his weight, Lilac stood upright for the first time in several days.

===

"Trocar, another amber one on your left. Pelvis, lower back, penetrating wound in abdomen."

Amber can wait a few moments, this one's nearly... the medic thought, nodding absently, mind focused on the shattered ribs of the Master in the mobile triage bay. Sweat soaked into the blue fur of his flanks, running unnoticed down the impermeable film that covered his whole body. Flesh parted and bone moved under the influence of his magic; jagged splinters were gently removed and packed back into a crude semblance of their original shapes. Tiny flickers of power welded the fragments together, just firmly enough to hold them in place. More power sealed off the countless damaged veins and arteries, working on the largest first and using material taken from blood already pooling between the organs.

...and where is Animal? The third member of their little emergency team had been absent for several days; rumour had been that he'd slipped into fugue after a particularly difficult task he'd been assigned at the Institute. Quite where the pony was, wasn't clear; he'd never returned to his home corral. I hope the Masters can provide a replacement soon; I think I lost at least one because... Trocar clamped down on the errant thought before it could really register, focusing his attention onto the chest cavity of the wounded female.

As much of the blood as possible had already been passed back into the circulatory system, but a half litre still remained; Trocar made a small opening in the side of the Master and pulled the liquid out, directing it into a waiting biohazard container. A critical eye surveyed his work; the female wouldn't be getting up anytime soon, unless she had a 'thaumic medical' marker on her file, but that wasn't his job. She would live to receive further treatment; that was all that mattered. A shove sent the patient off into the waiting ambulance for transfer to the hospital, where an actual Doctor would assess her long term care, but Trocar's mind was already reaching for the next Master.

He still had another ten kiloseconds left of his afternoon shift, but the time looked like it would be passing quickly. An accident on a feeder tunnel for one of Arcology Two's main transit routes had resulted in multiple casualties. Trocar had been with the mobile unit for the last fifteen kiloseconds, working his way from patient to patient, initially doing lots of little interventions to preserve immediate life, before coming back for more sustained repairs. That early panic was long gone; soon he'd have time to think about the few he'd failed to save, but for now the work kept his mind occupied and away from thoughts of punishment.

# Trocar Point PM8821 will report to Corral twenty seven and take over Spiral Fracture CW8002's duties until shift end. #

The medic froze, trying to parse the order, muttering, "Confirmed," under his breath in rote acceptance. His communicator pinged in the centre of his head in acknowledgement, leaving him staring at his next patient and wondering what it meant. Has something happened to Spiral? Sick worry gnawed at his insides; his mate had been on edge ever since Random Walk and Single Crystal had vanished; the news of Single's death had been a terrible blow, but he'd thought Spiral was starting to get over the worst of it.

Is it delayed shock? I had to leave her to deal with Slip, after she'd been forced to euthanize him. Trocar started to breathe quickly, shaking his head to dislodge the memory of Spiral's face as she'd pushed the needle into the stallion's neck. I wish my Master could have given me the time to help-- A vice contracted about his skull, the pain driving away the unpleasant vision. "Masters are the paws of the Maker," he muttered, making a conscious effort to slow his frantic breathing. "Please don't let it be the Maker's test; I couldn't stand it if..."

"Hey, Trocar, how are you getting on with... are you okay?"

A soft muzzle touched his, snapping him out of his dark reverie. Gamma Knife, the fine fur on his nose the only part of his golden coat visible, looked into his eyes, brow wrinkled with concern. "I've been ordered back to my home corral; something has happened to Spiral," he said hoarsely. "I'm sorry, I have to go."

"Orders are orders, pony. You get going; I can take care of this lot." He gestured with his horn, the movement taking in the remaining Masters. "I'll tell the rescue leader, if he hasn't already seen the order." Trocar glanced over at the little knot of Masters, all well muscled individuals made more bulky still by complex equipment vests. The leader was looking at something on his comms bracer, and his expression had just turned from focussed attention to anger. "Huh. Guess I won't have to. Come on, don't delay."

"Thanks, Gamma. Good luck." The stallion flicked his head in acknowledgement, but Trocar was already backing away, magic pulling apart his barrier suit and folding it so its blood-spattered surface was on the inside, before shoving it into a biohazard bin. Cool air, still smoky with combustion products, stroked his sweaty fur, and he spread his wings, fanning them vigorously to settle the long-confined feathers. Head up, he searched the high-ceilinged tunnel for the servitor flight path, then sprang into the air.

This section of the tunnel was deserted, the police having long since diverted the traffic around the blocked intersection. Just upstream were the heavy recovery platforms, busy pulling apart the tangled mass of vehicles; power bleed from the big thaumokinetic grabs made his horn twitch as he flew overhead. Past the final barricade, Trocar swooped into the main transit tunnel, a tube several times the diameter of the feeder route, and over the gridlocked traffic.

Spiralling upwards, Trocar skimmed along the roof, weaving between the lighting and communications infrastructure that hung down from top level supports, nodding in greeting to the occasional pony coming the other way. Ahead was a pillar of light; dust and smoke from the burnt vehicles dancing in the sunlight shining down through a big ventilation exhaust port. Wings outstretched, he circled the shaft and rested his aching muscles, allowing the rapid updraft to loft him out of the tunnels and into the daylight.

Squinting in the sudden brilliance of the surrounding farmland, Trocar pumped his wings and headed for his home corral.

===

The flight would have been a joy if it wasn't the weight of responsibility she had just left behind, or what might be waiting for her at Naraka. Spiral skimmed high over the top of a large cloud bank, waggling her wings in greeting to the ponies who were shepherding it towards a farm just over the horizon. The thing was large and took her nearly a quarter of a kilosecond to pass; black with rain, the weather team was in constant motion to keep the updrafts strong and prevent the precious water from raining out before it reached its destination. Little flashes of light marked the confined cloud's central core; pulses of electricity that marked out a powerful storm in the making.

Past this, the air was clean and fresh, empty of anything other than a few lost puffs of cloud -- too small for the weather team to bother with -- and the occasional pony on some errand for their Master. Following the silver thread of river, its course long since straightened and ordered, Spiral soon saw the first traces of Naraka on the horizon. A roughly circular pattern of forest encompassing the wedge-shaped fields that surrounded a central structure; it might have been one of the large farms, full of cattle for the Master's kitchens, but it wasn't cows that dwelled in its fields.

The density was far too low, for one. Little groups clustered in the wedges, still too distant to identify their species. Every herd was separated from the others; there wasn't one visible meeting between any of them; more unusually, for creatures who enjoyed taking wing, not one of them was flying. Spiral stared long and hard at the dark specks, looking for the one pony she knew must be there. Will she be outside, or somewhere deep inside the complex? she thought, flight rhythm becoming ragged as her mind wandered. Are you there, my baby? What about you, Gravity, are you using that clairvoyance anchor to study this place? There was no reply; even if Gravity did take the chance, this was not some sharing, just a faint, free-roaming magic that allowed a pony to see remotely.

Naraka's airspace was strictly regulated and monitored, and no over flights were allowed. The temptation to ignore the rules and go skimming low over the fields, searching every horn glow and wing glimmer for Random's colours, was almost impossible to ignore, but Spiral gritted her teeth and landed in the reception paddock on the perimeter of the site. This far out there was little that could be seen; even if she was to stand at the inner perimeter of the wooded area, high, opaque barriers blocked any view of the fields. Sight was denied to her by the combination of wall and distance, but nothing could stop the smell.

Ponies, lots of ponies; a melange of scents that overlapped and merged into a unified whole, rendering any attempt at identifying an individual pointless. What did come through were the scents of estrus, pregnancy, and of gryphon. The smell of the winged carnivores was faint, but obvious; their odour a hint of rankness amid herb-and-flowers smell of the massed ponies. So they still keep gryphons here as well, Spiral thought. The distance had been too great to be sure, but the body shapes were a little different even so.

Naraka was one of a pawful of places that maintained the pony population for this sector; every mare and stallion granted a procreation license would visit here at least once. The outer, wooded areas were a patchwork of secluded glades that isolated the couples and gave them a semblance of privacy, ensuring that neither partner was too distracted by the other possibilities amid the trees.

The scents and occasional noises drifting over the path brought back memories of her own visits to Naraka -- with Trocar and as a patient, rather than as a professional. For a moment she smiled; even with the drugs to trigger estrus, and the similar cocktail that Trocar had been given, it had taken several days until the Breeder had been satisfied, several days of...

Spiral's eyes widened, remembering the other order, the instruction to abstain from the Master's food for a megasecond before her visit. The desire to eat the stuff had been strong for those first few days, but the urge had passed quickly. They tell us in general terms what's in those pellets, but it would make sense that there's also something in there to suppress the ovulation cycle, if we have to stop eating the stuff.

Spiral's easy, collected canter subsided to a slow trot as she searched her memory for what little information she had about natural pony breeding cycles. There was precious little, just a dimly remembered comment by her trainer, back when she was still not quite a mare. Something about natural cycles every few megaseconds -- and there was that Breeder who gave me the drugs at the start; I've no idea what was in them, but I can imagine. He liked to talk, I remember that much... Spiral bit her lips, trying to force the distant memory to the forefront of her mind, past the veil of excitement that had shrouded that whole time. Something about day length? "Oh, Maker. If Fusion and the rest have stopped eating the stuff, this will make life complicated. I remember how distracted I was during my visit..."

The mare shook her head and resumed her canter; in a few seconds more she reached the reception paddock with its administration block, a low, isolated building abutting the inner perimeter of the wooded area. The paddock was a semi-circular grassy space surrounding it, ringed by dense bushes and high trees along the arc of the circle, with a high barricade separating the flat from the wedge-fields of Naraka proper. Just in front of administration was what looked like a shelter from any corral you might happen to come across, although in this case it was a combination feed, water and information station.

Lifting her panniers to allow air to reach the fur underneath, Spiral ambled past a small herd of youngsters, all without their labour tattoos and no doubt here as part of their Pathfinding, to dip her muzzle in the water trough running along one side of the reception area. The mare took a deep swallow, slaking the thirst brought on, not by the flight, but by a sudden bout of nervousness. She'd just taken a second swallow when her communicator pinged, marking its connection to the local network, followed by a quiet voice that emanated from the space between her ears.

# Spiral Fracture CW8002 will report to gate four, inner perimeter. #

That was quick! Normally it was a case of 'hurry up and wait' where the Masters were concerned, and Spiral spared a glance for the small group of adults in a tight huddle under the branches of a large tree. Stomach suddenly clenching into a tight knot, she trotted over to the indicated gate, but it remained stubbornly shut. Staring at the segmented metal surface in confusion, she reached out and manipulated the information screen next to it.

# Incorrect gate. Proceed to trackway gate for access to Naraka inner perimeter. #

The screen lit to show a little diagram of the reception paddock, the gate behind the administration block surrounded by a blinking circle. That can't be right, can it? Visiting ponies aren't allowed in... or is it that they just aren't allowed out? Spiral swallowed heavily, magic caressing the little gem Gravity had made, then she wheeled and trotted for the indicated gate. The space before the large metal barrier was clear of ponies; Spiral could feel more than one set of eyes on her as she waited for the gate to open wide enough for her to enter.

Once through the high barrier -- a concertina arrangement of brushed steel that was almost five lengths across and three high -- the trackway opened out before her. The same width as the gate and obviously designed for the movement of large equipment that couldn't easily be transported via the ubiquitous tunnel network, it was an even expanse of gravel between high walls separating it from the fields on either side. It was also completely deserted, and long enough that the end was hidden by the vanishing point. Spiral trotted on, head lowered, flinching when the gate ground shut behind her.

It was like travelling through some giant trench. Despite the wide path, the wall loomed oppressively, blocking out more of the empty sky than was reasonable for its height. Spiral slowed to a walk, trying to control her incipient panic with deep, measured breaths. Head coming up, she resolutely focused her gaze on the end of the path, still invisibly distant. Over that convergence of wall, path and sky squatted Naraka, or at least the facility's surface structure. The building, a monolithic pyramid made of black stone, looked just like a corral's Church, but built on a titanic scale.

The sight of the place, and the dark rumours that surrounded it, filled her belly with ice. Am I walking past you right now, Random? Involuntarily, she let out a whinny, the sound startlingly loud between the walls, ears sweeping in an instinctive search for a response. Faint but clear there came an answering neigh, the simple sound devoid of any information but the most basic, and most important. I hear you, it said, you are not alone.

Tears pricked at her eyes, some of the fear subsumed by gratitude and determination. I am here for you, Random. Hold on. The call could have come from any one of a hundred unseen ponies that probably surrounded her at this point, but it didn't matter. Standing orders are not to use shadow sight while here... I guess that's the first of your orders that I'm not going to follow, Handler Werin. Eyes closed, she inspected the area with her arcane sense, looking past the pastel glows of pony horns and wings in the adjacent fields and into the facility itself. As big as the surface structure was, it was dwarfed by the subterranean levels. The pyramid continued down into the ground, high ceilinged spaces containing, not the hard glows of crystal thaumic machines -- although there were plenty of those -- but the pastel lights of ponies.

Spiral froze, then pressed forwards with her walk, gait turning from a slow pace to a steady march that was only a little slower than a trot, making an effort to keep her ears in a neutral position. I suppose I shouldn't be shocked, she thought, this is always what the rumours said. There must be hundreds down below ground. A whole quadrant of the base was filled with lights that were only golden and came in pairs, not triplets. Gryphons as well... makes sense, considering what's on the top side. I wonder if there is a difference between those above and below ground, or if they just get rotated in and out? Further down there were more lights, the sort made by machines, linear arrays that spoke of deep transport tunnels connecting the site to the Hive infrastructure.

How could we possibly take just our foals? Spiral committed the sight to memory, trying to hold all the details for her inevitable debriefing with the two young mares. We can't leave anypony here... I think Fusion's going to need a bigger settlement.

The trackway ended in another big metal gate, this one fully open. Werin was standing there, blinking in the bright sunlight as he emerged from the relative dimness of the building. Old reflexes died hard and, without even thinking about it, Spiral dropped to her foreknees and dipped her head until her muzzle brushed the concrete lip of the security gate. "What are your orders, Master?" A directionless worry made the mare bite her lips, and she flinched when blunt claws touched the top of her head, just behind her ears.

"The pony will rise," Werin said, his voice a little strained. "Do not be concerned, this visit is for her wellbeing."

Spiral glanced up, then lurched upright as quickly as she could. Werin's slate grey fur with its occasional dapples of pale cream made him look more like a big cat than the more normal shades-of-brown of most Dogs. The tips of his whiskers twitched, flexing backwards when he swallowed. There was a tension in the muscles of the Handler's forearms, and he seemed to notice Spiral's attention, moving to clasp his paws behind her back.

Werin smiled briefly, a nervous flicker of a thing, gone almost before it could be registered. Turning, he gestured for Spiral to walk beside him into the building. "Does the pony know why this one requested its presence?"

Despite living without it for several days, Spiral was still slightly surprised when there was no hint of punishment at the sudden rush of guilt. Being called into report directly was very rare; almost every interaction was via impersonal order through the labournet, or the occasional virtual conference when she'd been required to give her opinion of some aspect of resource allocation. You want to know why so many of my patients are dying all of a sudden, as if it wasn't obvious! Spiral felt her ears fold back and her muscles tense with the urge to lash out, to take this Master and hurt him until he gave back Random and the other foals.

Struggling to keep her breathing steady, the mare froze in place and bowed her head, wings flicking in agitation. She suddenly became very aware of the crystal hidden in her panniers. I could do it right now... Almost without realising it, her magic folded around the little gem, applying ever increasing pressure. I've seen Gravity's memories; this place would be a crater by the time she'd finished. We could set them all free; if they are treated like Lilac then it should be easy to convince... A little more force -- and who really knew how much? -- Spiral clamped down on the sudden urge to giggle, but the laugh came anyway, emerging as a strangled choking that had Werin look at her in worry. Tears welled up, not of sorrow, but of rage.

The Handler's sudden regard, his own ears folded back and brow knitted in worry, was like being doused with cold water. Patience, you stupid filly, remember why you are here. This is exactly what you warned Lilac of, acting without thinking. Her throat closed up and she turned the horrible laugh into a cough. The tears were still there, and she let them flow, holding the image of Random hunting for another feather to pull in her mind. "Deaths, Master. So many dead... I've failed you so badly." The words came easily, and in a voice so full of emotion that it was barely intelligible even to her own ears.

Werin laid one paw on Spiral's shoulder as they walked, patting her awkwardly. "The pony is not at fault... this one is aware of what happened with Security." Werin scowled, something that made the green mare flinch, even though it wasn't directed at her. His expression smoothed and he sighed. "Spiral did well, considering the pressures involved. This one has not been told any more than the basic outline by Security... has the pony been given any orders about the event? If it is able, and would find it helpful, this one would like to hear what happened." Spiral opened her mouth, but Werin hastily raised a paw. "That is not an order; if the memories are too painful..."

"No, Master, I'd like that." She kept it short and emotionless as possible, relaying the bare-bones of the night's terrible events. It helped that the vast majority of it could be told without any embellishment; by the time she'd finished, tears had soaked the fur of her neck and her voice was raw.

With each part of the story, Werin flinched as if struck, looking progressively more shaken and ill as the telling continued. "This one had no idea," he murmured, eyes focused on the backs of his paws. "The pony has done very well; this one is surprised that it managed all that without falling into fugue. It is a credit to the Hive."

Spiral twitched; the words should have filled her with joy, but instead there was just emptiness and the remembered pain from those terrible moments in the Infirmary, before Fusion had found her. Not as strong as you think. "Thank you, Master. Is... is there anything else you need me to do? I still have a lot of injured ponies to attend to; none are critical at the moment, but..."

Werin was shaking his head. "The pony should not be concerned about that; the Handler called in a few favours and got its mate reassigned for the rest of the day. He suspected that the pony would need a break from everything." He smiled, waiting for her response.

The green mare stared at the Dog dumbfounded, her mouth opening and closing. Oh, Maker, no! The first thing Trocar will do is scan all the patients; he's bound to find-- She started to pant, heart thudding like it would burst through her ribs, as her mind filled with terrible images. Noticing Werin's rapidly deepening expression of concern, she struggled to think of something she could say. Spiral settled for lowering her head and dropping into a deep bow. "T-Thank you, Master, I-I--" Too late now. Trocar must have been home for kiloseconds; if he'd reported anything, Werin wouldn't be anywhere near as understanding. Some of her panic subsided, replaced with a deep sensation of worry.

"This one understands; do not worry. Come, this one has one last thing for the pony to see." His paw found the underside of her muzzle, gently lifting her to her hooves.

They walked in silence for a few tenth kiloseconds, turning down a side corridor that opened out into a wide viewing gallery that must have been on the outer wall of the pyramid. From the inside it was obvious that not all of the building was made of stone. Here there were floor to ceiling panels of glass, crystal clear apart from a slight smoky tint. Spread out below them were the ordered wedges of Naraka's fields, each with its own colourful shelter and little group of ponies. Close by was a herd of smaller individuals, one a little larger than the rest and with a pale brown coat and short black mane, and wings that were curiously stunted...

"Is that...?" It is! It's all of them!

"Yes, it is--"

The Dog probably said more, but Spiral wasn't listening. Rushing forwards, she pressed one side of her head against the glass, blinking furiously to clear the tears from her eyes. Her magic built, unconsciously probing the composition of the glass barrier, mapping the joints and the places she'd need to push in order to-- That familiar paw rested on her neck and, just for an instant, she nearly ripped it from its owner's arm. The moment passed and she stepped sideways, moving out of the Dog's reach. "Master, can I...?"

Werin was already shaking his head, ears drooping. "This one is sorry, but he cannot allow you to get any closer. Your offspring is recovering nicely, but it has suffered a terrible experience. We need to keep it under controlled conditions while we make sure it will not have any long-term... problems."

The pause was slight, almost too small to notice, but Spiral had known this Dog for a half a gigasecond. The Blessing needs guilt to work, doesn't it? Abuse a pony too much and they might not respond the way you want them. Some of the fury came back, but the mare lowered her head again and stared at the floor. "I understand," she whispered. "Do you know how long it will be before Random will be allowed home?" Tension coiled inside her gut, and Spiral rolled her eyes upwards to study the Handler even while she kept her head down.

Werin fidgeted, then slumped. "Honestly? This one doesn't know. A lot will depend on how quickly the pony Random Walk responds to its treatment. It's still too early to say... perhaps a megasecond or two?"

There was hope in his voice; not so much hope he was right, Spiral realised, but hope that she'd take it as a good sign. "Thank you, Master. That's... that's very good to hear," she said, relaxing her posture as much as she could, while her eyes remained locked on the distant shape of her daughter. "She's all I have left."

They stood there in silence for a while until Werin awkwardly cleared his throat. "This one is sorry, but the pony will have to leave now. The Handler will keep the veterinarian updated on its kin's progress."

"Thank you, Master," Spiral said, torn between the desire to stay and watch Random, and the very real need to get back to her corral and discover what Trocar was doing. She reluctantly stepped back, turning her head to keep the herd of foals in view. "Master... I reported the deaths of a number of ponies, including the sires and dams of some of those foals. Have... have they been told?"

Werin's ears drooped. "No. At this stage such news would be detrimental to their recovery."

Thank the Maker for small mercies; at least I haven't put them through that. Spiral let out the breath she'd been holding and smiled back sadly. "I understand. Thank you again, Master. You have been very kind."

===

Handler Werin watched the pony, one of a score he managed, trot off down the trackway heading for its home corral. With the servitor gone, his anger, buried deeply so as to avoid stressing the animal any more than it had already been, resurfaced, and he strode back inside, slamming the 'gate close' controls hard enough to make his paw sting. Maker damned Security, always-- He broke off the thought, coming muzzle to muzzle with the focus of his irritation. "Well? This one hopes the Agent saw what he needed to -- is he going to tell the Handler what exactly that was all about? It's a disgrace that Security prevented the Board from contacting the servitors earlier."

"Yes, he did -- and no he won't. Hive Security policy, sorry." The Agent, a brown, smooth furred, green eyed individual of average height whose name he'd not been told, smiled gently, something that did nothing to calm Werin. He exchanged a glance with the servitor he'd brought with him; the pony flicked an ear once, then went back to staring at the Handler.

Something about the grey mare's expression made a chill run down Werin's spine. No fear, no respect, just cold calculation. It's as if this one isn't important... The thought made him swallow heavily. What Agent gets a servitor -- exactly who is he? Pushing past his vague unease, Werin ignored the pony and allowed his anger to resurface. "Corral Twenty Seven has lost at least ten more ponies than it needed to, even with that stupid investigation your Salrath conducted. Does the Agent know how long it will take to rehabilitate those foals? The Hive will be lucky if any of them reach full efficiency in the next gigasecond. The state they were in when they arrived was nothing short of criminal, this one--"

The Agent held up a paw. "Has Werin finished? This one understands the Handler's anger, but he should know that Hive non-disclosure policy is in force for this matter. If he doesn't want to end up in prison, he should refrain from discussing anything relating to this matter with any other Person."

Werin stared into those bright green eyes and felt cold. The Agent's expression didn't change, maintaining that gentle smile. "Fine," the Handler whispered, "this one will be good."

"This one is certain of it," the Agent said cheerfully, slapping Werin on the shoulder. "The Handler has an excellent record with the Eugenics Board; it would be a shame to ruin it."

===

Sector Chief Orgon waited until the heavy rear door of the airtruck swung shut before he opened the hatch to the equipment bay. Ducking through the low opening, he perched on the edge of a console and looked down at Merlon. The servitor, resting against of the padded stall walls, looked back with its normal expression of attentive obedience. "Well? Is it true?" Somewhere in the belly of the airtruck a motor started running, building from a low hum to a faint, but irritating, whine. Beneath his paws the decking lurched slightly, then there was a feeling of heaviness as the airtruck took off.

"It's like nothing I've ever seen," Merlon said in wondering tones, "I'm surprised the Handler didn't pick up on it."

This one is more interested in the state of the veterinarian's Blessing, Orgon thought, a queasy sensation in his stomach. "What does the pony mean?" He looked again at the grey mare, but her expression showed nothing more than distraction, as if she was working through something in her head. The Sector Chief moved to sit in one of the chairs that lined the equipment bay, unlocking it and swinging around to face Merlon.

"You didn't notice either, Master?" The grey mare's ears went straight up and she shifted against the stall wall, stretching one foreleg then refolding it under her belly.

"This one doesn't have the need to interpret pony body language; he normally only needs to ask."

The Sector Chief's tone was mild and his expression didn't change, but Merlon twitched anyway. "Sorry, Master. The veterinarian should have been afraid for most of her visit, and relieved when she saw the foals. This was true, up to a point, but on at least two occasions I thought she was going to physically attack Handler Werin."

That pretty much answers this one's question, but... "And the pony's Blessing?"

"I would really need an opportunity to study the pony in detail," Merlon said, generating a twice life-size model of Spiral Fracture's head, "but there is horn damage in an area proximal to where the spellstuff is anchored." The model was abruptly sliced through, showing the neat crystal helices that made up the arcane active material. Right at the base was a little dark patch, no bigger than an apple pip. "It is healing fast... in another megasecond I would not of noticed it without a much closer examination."

"Well, that's it then," Orgon murmured, "no escaping it now." Still not absolute proof, perhaps -- but when was that ever the case? He leaned back and sighed, running claw tips through the fur between his ears. By the Maker, we already have the Auditors sniffing about. If this one can't provide a solution before they uncover this, he is going on a one-way trip to Luna and the World Court... Pulling his paws down, Orgon drummed his claws on the instrument panel, staring up at the lockers that lined the ceiling.

"May I make a suggestion, Master?" Merlon said, waiting for Orgon's answering nod. "It will be practically impossible to find the rogues, given what we've seen. Their ability to jump from place to place, even through shielded walls--" The mare shook her head, wings flicking a little. "--and we know they are far stronger than any normal pony. There really is only one thing you can do."

Orgon nodded again. "Yes, they must come to us. We do have one advantage; they obviously think Security does not know, otherwise they would not have allowed the veterinarian to come here--" Merlon was shaking her head, and the Sector Chief paused.

"What else could they have done? If she didn't come..." Merlon trailed off, a look of intense concentration on her face. "...actually I don't know. At the very least the Board would want to know why. Also, one of the ponies taken, Random Walk DP2114, is Spiral Fracture's daughter -- no dam would pass up a chance to see her foal."

Orgon sat bolt upright, then turned to the station behind him and started to search through the distant Security Hub's databases. Where was it? Something about Random Walk and Fusion Pulse, this one knows he saw... there. On the screen was a copy of Salrath's original research into Fusion Pulse. The Sector Chief read through the pages of notes and attached raw data, his lips pulling back to expose sharp teeth. Throwing the extracts onto the main screen, he waved at Merlon, gesturing at the various windows. "Well? What does the pony think? Will it work?" If they were People, it would be a definite thing, but...

The mare climbed to her hooves and stepped forward, lowering her head to get a good view of the text and graphs. "The relationship is obvious," she said, nodding slowly, "and loyalty within a corral is very strong."

Orgon's smile became unpleasant. "We have something they want." ...and already in a place away from population centres. There are even inconvenient others here already; perhaps Fusion will give this one an excuse to dispose of all of them without World Court suspicion... this one could even co-locate the other witnesses under the guise of keeping all the affected client species members together. There's bound to be plenty of collateral damage. His smile faltered. "The creatures are very strong; it wouldn't do to underestimate them again. Perhaps a little insurance is in order."

He started to read the Board's records on Random Walk, lips curving back into his customary gentle smile.

12 - The Sound of Thunder

Author's Note

Preread by: KMCA
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna), Caliaponia (Just Passing Through) and jimi_betterix (The War Machine, a non pony Dr Who fanfic).

12 - The Sound of Thunder

=== Chapter 12: The Sound of Thunder ===

Heart pounding, Korn rolled over to stare towards where the other opening was, waiting for the archway in the inner drum to come into alignment. It's all over now; there was never any hope. In a breath, a razor sliver of light appeared, rapidly expanded as the apertures coalesced. The resulting opening was filled with a heavy-set gryphon, a silhouette large enough to block out most of the glare from the brightly lit room beyond. What difference would it make? Even a chick could kill this one. The thought was fleeting, overwhelmed with panic as the creature took one step and stood over him, head lowered and beak almost touching his muzzle.

Yellow eyes the size of an outstretched paw regarded him intently, then a set of blunted talons gently touched one cheek, carefully moving his head from one side to the other. "That is going to hurt for a while, young Master," the gryphon, a reddish-brown creature with at least some buzzard in its genome, rumbled. "I am going to move you into the main room. We have no medical supplies, but at least there is water."

"You are going to help that monster?" The voice was higher pitched, very nearly a screech. "Bring him here; I want to show him that my loyalty to his race extends just as far as his does to mine!"

The first wheeled about, still in the opening of the lock, his tail lashing. "Does it look like he's from the Board, Svartr? This is the first chance we've had to get any idea of what's happening out there. I don't know about you, but that's a little more important to me than a few seconds of revenge. In any case, your collar--"

"It will last a lot longer than a few seconds, you can count on it!" The voice had calmed a little, subsiding to a hiss that sounded like it was the embodiment of cold fury.

"That's enough, Svartr. We'll talk to the dogboy... for now, at least." The third voice was quiet, but this 'Svartr' seemed to be paying attention, because some of the tension went out of the buzzard's tawny hindquarters.

"Is the Agent still outside?" Korn croaked.

The buzzard-gryphon's head twitched, then he turned back around. "Yes. What does she want?"

"To see this one suffer and then die. Korn crossed paths with Salrath a megasecond ago; she bears a grudge like no Person this one has ever met."

The gryphon’s derisive snort riffled Korn’s fur. "Hive Security always seems to have the worst examples of gryphonkind you could imagine... why should it be different among the dogboys?" he muttered, eyes narrowing in thought. "What does she think we were going to do -- eat you?"

"She said--" Korn broke off, breathing fast, then nodded carefully, not trusting himself to speak.

"I know her sort; there are always a few like that, those who think we're nothing more than trained animals." He hissed, a quiet, angry sound, then appeared to reach a decision. A set of talons, large enough to wrap themselves around Korn's head, reached up and gently touched the thick, white collar that nestled in the feathers of his throat. He paused, great yellow eyes unreadable, then shrugged. The talons flashed out and gripped Korn's blooded equipment vest, curling around into a tight fist that pulled him up off the floor. The gryphon's alien gaze abruptly changed to one of predatory intent, sending shrieking messages to Korn's barely functional legs. "Still, if you treat someone like an animal, perhaps that is what you get."

The gryphon backed out of the lock on his other three legs, wings flicking out for balance. "No!" Korn gasped, his arms flailing as he tried to grip the edge of the lock's opening, but it was hopeless. Even without the beating Salrath had administered, he would never have been a match for the creature. Frantically clawing at the floor, he managed to dig his fingers into one of the padded sleeping sections and, in that single, motionless moment, caught a glimpse of the Agent's grinning face through the glass.

The other gryphons looked startled as his captor entered their room, one, a grey feathered female with eyes so dark as to be featureless black orbs, touched her collar in exactly the same way as the first one had. His gryphon paused, leaning carefully on the claws bunched in Korn's equipment harness, his other talons flashing in a quick, abbreviated pattern. The whole set of motions were over so fast that Korn thought it might have been no more than the gryphon shifting his grip on an awkward burden.

There was a sudden shift in the demeanour of the grey female; eyes narrowing, her beak half opened and she made a threatening hiss. "Bring that Master to me; we'll show it the price of betrayal." That was the same voice as before; the one the buzzard gryphon had called Svartr.

His gryphon grunted and pulled convulsively, near throwing Korn along the floor so that he came to rest at Svartr's talons. She looked down, an expression of delight so apparent in her eyes that even he could read it. In moments she was joined by the other female, also dark grey, although with more pronounced banding on her pale underside than Svartr, and eyes the bright orange of the setting sun. The buzzard-gryphon sat on his haunches between Korn and the glass wall, turning his head to look over his shoulder. Beak gaping in threat, he hissed loudly in Salrath's direction, then flared his wings, blocking the view.

Completely surrounded, Korn looked up into those hard, unsympathetic eyes and tried to crawl away. Talons clamped down on his arms and legs, pinning him to the floor, then the buzzard's head dipped, his beak fastening on the front of Korn's equipment vest. With a sudden jerking motion the gryphon pulled back, ripping the bloody synthetic fabric and tossing it away with a flick of the head. The scant protection gone, Korn's breath hitched and he tensed, waiting for the first bite of those fearsome beaks.

"She's still watching," the second grey one said, beak barely moving. "Hold still."

Korn froze as her head went down toward his, the hard edges of her beak stropping along the top of his head. He gasped at the sudden pain, but there was no ripping of flesh. Instead, she just winked, then moved to stare over buzzard's shoulder, the harsh overhead lights glistening off the blood smeared along the edges of her beak. The feathers of her crest rose and she made the now-familiar gape, luminous orange eyes glaring at the window. She held this position for a long moment, head turning minutely as if tracking a moving object.

Finally her crest relaxed and she lowered her head, hiding behind the outstretched wings of the buzzard. "We're clear. Better stay put for a bit... can't trust an Agent at the best of times."

"You've worked with them, Elsif," buzzard said, gently flexing his wings. "Korn, wasn't it?" He looked down studying the wound on the Student's head. "Injuries like that are always messy; you'll live. My name is Alfgir; you've already met Svartr and Elsif. Over there--" He indicated the final gryphon, an older male who just lay in his sleeping pad and glowered at the group. "--is Kalfi." His voice dropped to a whisper. "Stay out of his way; he's not happy with the rest of us."

"How did we even manage this?" Svartr demanded, reaching up to tap her collar. "Are the cameras off?"

"Must be, or zap happy--" Here Alfgir gestured to the ceiling with one black claw that was nearly the length of Korn's paw. "--would have let us know by now. Any chance of using it as an opportunity to get out?"

"The Agent has left the lock door in the wrong position, but I don't see how that helps. There's not that much of a crack to get a claw into once we're inside the lock... but if the cameras really are off..." Elsif sighed, then nodded at Kalfi. "We'll have to be on our guard; the sersgant is no fool." Her attention returned to Korn. "If they do review the video from this cell, we'll all be punished. I hope for your sake that you have an interesting story to tell."

===

Even in the fast-moving slipstream, her mane felt lank. Her connection to the moons throttled to mere potential, Gravity flew a huge orbit around Naraka and hunted for anything that might indicate that this was a trap. Spiral was too far away to see -- Naraka itself was over her horizon, even at the normal servitor flight altitude of one kilolength -- but she could feel the tiny presence of the clairvoyance anchor the medic carried.

There she goes, Gravity thought. I don't like letting her go in alone.

It's either that, or start a war right now. Fusion was a distant bundle of thoughts and feelings, and much closer to the Eugenics Board site than she was. I'm in position; there doesn't seem to be anything unusual going on, if Spiral's memory can be trusted. It has been almost half a gigasecond since her conjugal visit, after all.

Maybe going in, just the two of us, wouldn't be such a bad idea... at least that way nopony else would be put in danger. The thought was tantalising, and Gravity felt her wings tilt to fold her circular course inwards. That feeling of cold mass loomed large in her mind, almost as if it was begging her to tap its immense power. Use me, came the little whisper, smash them all. It will be so easy... Gravity gasped and opened her eyes, nearly tumbling as she corrected her course.

Fusion hadn't noticed her sudden lapse. We can't do everything ourselves... but I do appreciate the sentiment. Nopony asked to be in this situation, but this is where we are. There was a sadness to the thoughts, and a growing sense of desperation. What you said before, about me waiting too long--

No! I was angry and I didn't mean--

You were right, Gravity. I wait because I don't want us to act, because if we act then all the terrible things in my head will come true. I can't think of a way past this that doesn't result in the deaths of so many... and the only way to stop it coming true is to delay. So I think and I plan and I analyse... because I'm afraid of the future, Gravity.

You... you don't think we can win? Gravity bit at her lips. But I thought...

No, it's not that... I'm just afraid that the price will be too high to bear. A flash of the other mare's senses came along with Fusion's thoughts: the feeling of damp leaves and small sticks pressing against the fur of her belly, flanks and back, and the deep, redolent odour of earth and decay.

Gravity seized hold of the touch and smell with the desperate strength of a drowning swimmer. Where did you hide, in the end? The desire to do something had faded, but Gravity could feel it still there, like a hunting cat, patiently waiting for the time to strike. In its place was an uneasy feeling of dread, a shadow of her sister's feelings.

Corral thirty-three has a large compost heap...

Gravity stifled a giggle, the sudden image of her pearly-white sister, up to her withers in the sort of matter that normally found its way into a corral's recycling station, wiping her mind of dark thoughts. Oh, I'm so glad we have a lake entrance! H-how are y-you finding it? The sharing spell wavered under the onslaught of her imagination, and the mare brayed out her laughter, unable to keep it in any longer.

I'm breathing through my mouth a lot. Fusion applied more effort at her end, preventing the sharing from collapsing. You should try it. It's really quite warm.

The feeling of amusement coming back from Fusion was unmistakable, and had completely supplanted the despair that had been filling the white mare's thoughts. Gravity made an effort to restrain her laughter lest she attract the wrong sort of attention. Clearing her throat, she switched back to shadow sight and resumed her patrol.

I'm glad we can still laugh, Grav, despite of all this. Hold on; Spiral's just going in. Fusion's thoughts paused, then resumed, shaped by what Gravity swore must have been a sly smile. When I come home, I'll be sure to give you a big hug.

Gravity started laughing again.

===

The air filtering down the carefully maintained channel to the surface was warm and humid. Fusion had chosen a patch that was obviously part way through its composting cycle; freshly turned, it was unlikely to be worked on for another few days. The smell, though strong, was not unpleasant, and she lay with her eyes tight shut under a thick layer of leaves and old wood chips from shelter floors. The heat from the decomposing material was all-pervading, like lying under the sun -- if the rays of Celestia could reach all parts of your body at the same time.

The hardest thing was actually staying focused. At this range, almost two kilolengths, it was difficult to make out much detail. Naraka's underground levels merged with the general thaumic background glow of this part of the Hive, but she could see little moving points of light, the colours of which marked them as ponies. The points were not dimensionless, unlike many parts of the debris ring at night, but fat with almost-detail. She could almost imagine a tri-lobed structure to those moving glows.

But there are so many! Fusion clamped down on her fear, focusing instead on the green point that was Spiral. The mare had passed through the outer, forested areas and was heading for the central building. She couldn't see the gem, but she could still feel its presence. Such a thin safety line... be calm Spiral, no matter what they show you. Remember what the Dogs think you are.

That moving point crawled from the reception paddock to the central structure, becoming lost against the general clutter of Naraka. Keeping part of her mind on the tenuous feeling of the prepared gem, Fusion spent the next kilosecond or so trying to pick apart what went on inside the structure.

The central pyramid sat amid the grassy fields like ice in water; most of its mass was below the surface. Level after level, mostly high ceilinged, empty spaces populated by little groups of pastel glows. A whole quadrant of the facility had similar moving points of light, but these all had the same golden hue. And it's full of gryphons, too. We all suffer under the Dogs... I didn't quite realise how much.

Half asleep from the heat and mesmerised by the shifting lights, Fusion remembered what she'd seen of the half-cat, half-bird soldiers. Grey shapes tumbling out of the back of a fast aircraft, or darting through broken tunnels. Fast and deadly, she thought, a whirlwind of feathers and armour. The relationship is just as exploitative, though... the Dogs spent their lives like they were nothing. They must know this, but perhaps they accept it because the alternative is what their masters do to us. If we can show them that there is hope...

A point of light where there was previously none attracted Fusion's attention. It was Spiral, moving far faster than she had on her inbound journey. Grav, Spiral is coming out. The relief was like being lifted into the air, and she nearly shouted the words, rather than send them down the sharing.

Thank the Maker! Will you be coming back straightaway? You're too close to that place for my liking.

Fusion did a quick check of her immediate surroundings. The local corral was still empty, it being mid-shift, but there was a pony approaching the compost heap. By shadow sight, it was clearly deformed: most of his or her horn was dark. Another one like Slip... now what are they doing? Magic flared, a weak and feeble discharge compared to a healthy pony, and the sound of somepony straining against a heavy load filtered down her airway. Maintaining the heap, she concluded, but not this section, I think. Sorry Grav, I've got a visitor. They won't find me, but I'll have to stay put for a little longer.

Understood; I'll shadow Spiral back. We can talk during the flight.

Fusion sighed, shifting her wings slightly to ease the stiff muscles, and turned her attention back to Naraka. Off in the distance, what looked like a Security airtruck was landing in the middle of one of the fields, but it was alone and too far away to make out any details.

===

Spiral did her best to pace herself for the long flight, but the urge to sprint was overwhelming. Come on, come on, where are you two--

Spiral? It's Grav--

The green mare grabbed a hold of the sudden presence, as if it were a foal she could enfold in her wings and never let go. My Master, he sent Trocar back to the corral after I left!

What? When!

What does it matter when!? He's probably been there for kiloseconds! Spiral wanted to scream out in frustration, but she didn't have the air to spare. The presence vanished, only to be replaced by Fusion.

Gravity's gone back to check. Don't worry; she'll take care of any problems.

That's what I'm afraid of -- I can't do to Trocar what we did to Packet, I just can't! What-- Spiral broke off, gulping air down in great gasps, trying to keep her failing wings working

She's just watching. I'm sharing with her at the moment. There was a long pause, long enough that Spiral felt the urge to scream build once more. He's found Lilac... but I'm not sure what's happened. There's some damage to the infirmary door, and they both appear to be inside stall eleven, using magic on another pony. I don't think there's going to be a problem but, if there is, Grav will just hold him. She's more than strong enough.

Yes, Spiral thought, forcing herself into a glide to give her aching wings a break, I remember. Can you show me? The medic studied the image, trying to decide what was going on. That looks like Ogive; she was the last one I put to sleep before my Handler ordered me to come in. She must have been hurt... but how? An awful idea trickled into her mind and she inhaled sharply.

A casualty of our secrecy, most likely, Fusion thought, sounding grim. We'll find out soon enough.

===

Spiral was halfway home before Fusion felt it was safe to leave her hiding place. The corral's recycling patch was a discreet distance from the corral proper, behind one of the orchards that fed the ponies living there. Once free of the cloying embrace, magic removed the worst of the debris, but out in the open air, away from the decay generated warmth of the heap, she felt damp. Worse than that: sticky. Sticky in places that even the most reluctant of foals would agree required a bath. "No time for anything serious," she muttered, locating a patch of long grass and falling onto it.

On her back, legs in the air, Fusion spread her wings and wriggled, body bending and flexing, thrashing at the grass in an attempt to get a little cleaner. The effort left her dry, but resulted in a blotchy tan coat, shading to deep brown on her belly and legs. Can't even see my labour tattoo... I look like somepony turned a hose on me half way through a dust bath. Wings out, she beat them mightily, jumping into the air and skimming along the bridle path between the trees, keeping low until she was a few more kilolengths clear of the corral.

Up in the air she found what she needed. A bank of black clouds, heavy with captive rain, hung to the southeast; it wasn't on her path, but her current appearance would be sure to attract notice. Fusion flew as fast as she dared, sharing a wing-waggle with one of the weather team shepherding the cloud system. She didn't even need to speak; the stallion knew at first glance what she wanted, and waved her in with a nod and a laugh that carried even across the gulf of empty air.

Inside the cloud it was dark and filled with violent swirling updrafts that supported the oversized raindrops. The forces at play were enhanced by the ponies managing it; left to its own devices, the cloud would have rained out kiloseconds ago. Water blasted her from all sides; in the black depths, Fusion turned rapid loops and barrel rolls, allowing the pummelling drops to wash away the dirt. This complete, she picked a side of the cloud devoid of weather team ponies and broke away, accelerating hard in a random direction before curving around when she was out of easy sight.

Clean, and rapidly drying, she sped after Spiral, filling her mind with the other mare's experiences at Naraka. The mental images were sobering, especially when coupled with the medic's close shadow sight inspection. That distant glimpse of Random was especially hard; it was obvious that she'd lost all the feathers from both wings. Spiral, you did very well; I'm not sure I could have resisted the urge to act.

Well I definitely wouldn't have, Gravity thought. How many of these centres are there?

At least one for each Hive sector, I think. Eighteen? Something like that. The mental work required to both fly a straight course and relay detailed memories had distracted Spiral, and there was only an undercurrent of nervousness to her thoughts.

That's thousands of ponies! Fusion's own flight path became erratic. I'm not thinking big enough. What are we going to do with them all? We've got this tiny base -- then there's the problem of keeping all the ones who won't cooperate safe, because you can be sure the Dogs won't be kind to them. And what about ponies who only pretend--

Stop it, Fusion! This isn't helping; one impossible task at a time. Gravity's mental voice was sharp, and Fusion suppressed a desire to shout at the mare. We have a small group of ponies we trust; you're going to have to delegate those problems. We'll talk to Redshift and Thermocline when you are back. I'm sure they are bored of cutting tunnels by now.

Fusion sighed, sending a wordless assent and apology down the sharing, then altered her course to dive into the nearest patch of cloud. Information flowed back along the link; knowledge that it was safe and that Gravity was waiting for her arrival. Hidden by the cool mist, she enshrouded herself in a force field, reached for the correct pattern and pushed--

~~discontinuity~~

--appearing in a shallow valley, many kilolengths from any habitation. The sudden deceleration slammed her body into the inside surface of the field and left legs and wings flailing. Dazed, she held onto the field and fell with it, watching the ground approach while she recovered. Got to be careful, or these long jumps will be the death of me. The problem was obvious; although the force field blocked the supersonic airflow, it did nothing about the forces involved. If you make the field too big...

Inertia would do exactly what it had just done, only the bigger the field, the faster it would shed her velocity. The inevitable result filled her mind with graphic details, and Fusion sank to her belly against the hard, smooth surface of magic-made-real. There are other ways... if I know the velocity vector I can streamline the field. The calculations were not difficult, but did rely on knowing the relative locations of the start and end points. Get it wrong and you might tumble, bouncing around the inside of your field for a few seconds before you die. What are the odds of getting it right while trying to escape the sights of the Dogs?

The thought was a grim one, but the analysis wiped away the fear, her mind chewing on the problem. Glancing down -- the valley floor was still distant, approaching only slowly with her much reduced terminal velocity -- Fusion had a sudden thought and cast her gaze upwards, past the high wispy clouds, past the endless dance of the debris ring and on to Celestia itself. I keep underestimating how strong we are now.

She reached for the sun, feeling the twisted knot of potential twitch subtly under her probing thoughts. I felt something similar when Gravity pulled down that Security transport... is she right in her instinct to push ahead? I've not really stretched myself like she has; the output of the accelerator is nothing compared to the sun. She shook her head, pushing back the line of reasoning, then broke her field and fell towards the ground--

~~discontinuity~~

--appearing between two lines of apple trees, flaring her wings to drop into a four-hoofed landing on the leaf-litter. The sharing with Gravity had told her that there was nopony about, but she swept the area with her shadow sight nonetheless. Satisfied she was unobserved, Fusion trotted forwards, finding Gravity where she lay hidden beneath two spreading trees.

The other mare waggled an ear in greeting, but kept her attention focused on the infirmary, only a few trees away. Finally she twisted to glance at Fusion, a mischievous glint in her eye. Her nostrils flared and she snorted softly, her muzzle wrinkling, then turned back to watching Trocar and Lilac.

Fusion sighed and reopened the sharing.

===

Spiral held the image in her mind as she swooped down to the infirmary. The world was all shades of deepest black, except for pastel lights marking the horns and wings of three ponies. Others were close by, two ranks of four in the most trafficked part of the small building. He's been there for kiloseconds, yet there's been no response from the Dogs. What has Lilac told him? Gravity had rejected the idea of opening a sharing with Lilac; Trocar was bound to notice and want to know why.

The damage was quite significant; somepony had ripped the door off its hinges and thrown it away. Whoever did that was in a real hurry -- but coming in or going out? She snorted impatiently, banking sharply to land in front of the opening. "What in the Maker's name happened here?" she said, trying to inject annoyance into her tone rather than fear, as she stepped into stall eleven.

Inside there was more damage. The front panel of the autoclave was smashed, black, sooty streaks surrounding the half open door. The rest of the room was in disarray, like a short-lived tornado had manifested and whipped the walls with fast wind. A fight, but short lived. Ogive was lying on her side between Lilac and Trocar, covered with creeping tendrils of blue and pale purple magic. The mare...

Spiral swallowed, sudden understanding making her feel sick. The whole right side of Ogive's body was a hairless, livid red mottled with black. Her exposed wing was almost skeletal, little more than shrunken, thread-like muscles and tendons under translucent skin. The after effects of drastic burn treatment were obvious; Trocar must have cut away kilos of cooked muscle in an effort to prevent the dead tissue from poisoning the rest of her body. Ogive's head was the worst.

Her teeth were starkly visible past burned lips; beyond that was a milky, lidless eye and the almost invisible nub of her ear. In the silence, breath whistled from her half-open mouth; a bubbling, wheezing sound that spoke of deep lung damage. The sight of the two ponies working on the mare stilled Spiral's sudden urge to jump right in with her own magic, instead she waited with increasing trepidation as her mate's ears folded back while he ignored her and carried on applying his magic.

After an achingly long time, Trocar looked up at her and scowled. "Why didn't you tell me what you were doing?" he said, lurching upright. Beside him, Lilac flinched, his eyes going wide.

"Tell you what? This infirmary is my responsibility! These patients are all mine to care for!" Spiral's ears matched Trocar's and her wings flicked out, fear of her mate's reaction transmuted into real anger in an instant. "What are you even doing in here; it's the living who need--"

"Trying to help you!" Trocar snarled, teeth snapping shut on the final word. "Watching you having to deal with all of this alone is killing me, so I'm sorry if that isn't what you want." He wheeled and stepped away with mantled wings, muscles stiff under his fur. The stallion's magic flicked out to grasp the discarded medical supplies and blue light flared, crushing the rubbish into a lumpy ball.

Spiral let the silence hang, and finally Trocar allowed his wings to relax. "I really was just trying to help. If it wasn't for Lilac here, I'd have cremated all of them." He sighed, head sagging. Blue glows condensed over the brassy disk of his communicator, and Trocar winced, flinching as if something had jabbed a sharp object into his head "I'll report my mistakes," he said in a strained whisper.

At the back of her mind, Spiral felt a sharpening of attention from the two mares, accompanied by a sensation of rapidly building power. No, don't! she snapped out into the sharing, sudden fear giving her thoughts a brittle edge. I'll manage this. Her horn glowed, and she reached out and gently plucked the disk from Trocar's fur, deftly nullifying his efforts to open a communications link.

"What--" Trocar looked confused, but the hint of pain left his eyes.

"We can tell them later; I must shoulder some of the blame." She reached past him, picking up a bag full of fine, grey powder. "We should talk... and I'd really like your help with this."

His eyes were drawn to the bag like it contained some great mass. "Is that...?"

"Slipstream, yes." She hefted the bag, then removed her own communications disk and placed it on the ground next to Trocar's. The stallion stirred uncomfortably, but Spiral shook her head. "We're both effectively off duty, and we don't need to go far. Lilac, are you okay looking after all these ponies for a kilosecond or so?" The youngster nodded, then lit his horn and closed his eyes. Spiral smiled, feeling the light arcane touch as he swept the patients, looking for any problems. "Thank you."

She stepped forwards, pushing Trocar towards the door with little nudges of her shoulder. The stallion looked around uncertainly, some hint of the pain coming back into his face, then stiffly walked out of the infirmary. I'm taking him to your area of the orchard; stay hidden until I call for you, please. Assent came back through the link, and Spiral felt the electric presence of the sisters subside. She relaxed a little, then followed her mate into the trees.

The light was a beautiful thing, shining through the gaps in the yellowing canopy like solid bars. It gave the wide spaces between the trees a numinous air, something she'd only felt all those years ago, when she'd received her own Blessing. I've lost all of that... she thought, feeling a distant pang of regret. No; I never really had that at all, did I?

Catching up with Trocar, Spiral leaned against his flank, hooking one wing over his withers. Carefully, she reached out and used all of her skill to apply the most delicate of magical touches to her mate's head. The sensory nerves in his horn bed now paralysed, she examined him closely, relying on her contact with his fur to guide her steps through the blindness of shadow sight. His walk wasn't smooth, containing hesitations and little twitches. In time with this, neon green flickers of magic ran through his mind.

I see you, Spiral thought, fighting to keep any trace of her fear from reaching her face. It was the matter of a moment to trace the threads to where they merged with the never quite regular spiral patterns of Trocar's horn. What if it goes wrong? I could cripple him... She twitched, unable to carry out the final act. I've never done this before, and now I have to take a chance on my love. A sudden thought brought her to a stand-still and, lost in the sudden realisation, she could only stare as Trocar paused and turned to face her.

Spiral smiled, feeling the invisible heat of the sun as it streamed through the branches and imagining the look of puzzlement on Trocar's face. You taught me this, Lilac; I've seen you do this a dozen times on a dozen different ponies. Magic flashed, a tiny thing that probably couldn't even be seen in the bright sunlight, and a small part of her mate's horn went dark.

"Is something... something... wrong?"

Spiral opened her eyes at the hesitation and shift in Trocar's tone. Those traces of pain vanished in time with the fading neon green in his head, and she sighed. He's free... now comes the hard part. "My handler called me in to Naraka because he was concerned about the numbers of fugue deaths; he wanted to assess my mental state and reassure me that our foals were all being cared for--"

"Your Master brought Random out? Did you speak--"

She shook her head, Fusion's image of her daughter pulling out her own flight feathers warring with what she'd seen at Naraka. She let her control fail, tears welling up and running down her face to drip from the tip of her muzzle. Trocar stepped close, gently nibbling at the junction between her neck and shoulder, making little comforting noises while she stood there and cried.

"Spiral," he said eventually, turning so they again stood flank to flank, only this time it was he who put his wing over her, "what did you see? How is our daughter?" There was a tremor to his voice, and his ears were unconsciously sweeping their surroundings, hunting for whatever had caused this shift in her behaviour.

"The Masters were hurting her, Trocar. All the time she was in the paws of Security, they were running her through some kind of mechanical sharing, making her do terrible things." She faltered, mouth working and the words she'd practiced during the flight back from Naraka failing her utterly.

"Why would her--?" A shiver ran through his body and he made a kind of high-pitched whinny. "The Masters have to make hard decisions all the time."

The phrase came out of his mouth like it was a recording, something he'd said to grieving ponies on many occasions. Spiral flinched, sucking in a great gasp of breath, the effort to articulate what was in Fusion's memory almost too much to bear. "It's bad enough that it should have driven her into fugue, b-but our foal is smart and she f-found a way out."

"What? What did she do?"

There was a level of desperation in her mate's voice, a terrible mixture of pleading and fear. Spiral tried to speak but, faced with the pony who'd helped her raise Random, the words wouldn't come and she stood there silently, head low and mind galloping in ever tightening circles. The soft touch of Trocar's muzzle between her eyes jolted her free; the clinical terminology sprang unbidden to her mind and she grasped at it in desperation.

"She is self-harming, pulling her own feathers out. The last Fusion saw, Random had finished with her primaries and was working her way inwards." Spiral squeezed her eyes shut, trying to push away the memory of Random, face blank and eyes haunted, one bloody feather hanging from her lips.

"How could you know all this," Trocar said thickly. "Why did you hide this from me? I could have helped--"

"Didn't know." Spiral said, shaking her head violently. "It was only later, when Fusion shared her meeting with Random, that I found out the truth. She kept it from me for the same reason I kept it from you." Because to deliberately push a pony into fugue is about as evil as you can get.

Trocar growled from somewhere deep in his throat. "That damn mare. All of this is her fault. Her and that sister... how could Plasma and Helium fail the Masters so badly? To bring that pair of monsters into the world--"

"No! You don't understand. The Masters... they did things to Fusion, when she was at the Institute. She lost her Blessing, and what she knew drove her to act against the Masters. Even without seeing Lilac, you must have heard the same stories I have about Naraka."

"Madness," Trocar whispered, eyes wide, "the Masters are the paws of the Maker, it's... it's..." He fell silent, then his eyes darted from side to side and he wheeled, turning wild circles. "I can no longer hear the Maker," he said in a strangled tone, finally facing her and breathing heavily, his sides working like bellows.

Spiral folded her wings around him, feeling his fur go damp with sweat. "The Maker is a lie," she mumbled into his mane, "a lie given to us by the Masters so we will obey without question."

"Did you do this to me! How? Why? Why would you do that?" He jerked out of her embrace and started to back away.

If you run, they'll take you and I'll have no influence on what happens next. The thought was immediate, and she barely resisted the urge to shout it out loud. "Do you trust me, Trocar?" she said, lowering her head in submission, a pose that was drawn from ancestors who were alive before the Creation Stones had meddled with her kind. "At least let me show you what really happened to Random, and where she is now.

The stallion stared at her in silence, then bowed to touch her muzzle with his own. "I'm so confused, Spiral. I thought I knew you, and now..."

"I have no choice either," she said softly, returning his nuzzle. Her horn started to glow and Trocar closed his eyes.

A kilosecond later and they were both lying on the floor, tears long since spent. "What happens now?" Trocar whispered. "There's nothing we can do. I must talk to my Master, she'll know--" He started to get to his hooves, stopping when he saw the look of anguish on Spiral's face.

"They'll kill you if you talk to her about this. Security has already killed some of its own ponies just as a precaution. You saw Gravity fighting the D-- Masters at the Institute... and I'm sure Fusion is just as strong."

"Yes, but what use is that? The Agent said they were both dead..." He tailed off, looking at something over her shoulder. "So the gryphon was right... I could have sworn it was just a product of his fever." Spiral turned, but could already feel the weight of Fusion's presence. Gravity stayed further back, staring at Trocar with unnerving intensity.

"One of Agent Salrath's many talents is lying," Fusion said, settling down next to the other two ponies. "She gets a lot of practice." The white mare narrowed her eyes. "What gryphon?"

"Olvir Bergthor, a survivor of Gravity's fight," Trocar said, mesmerised by the waves of pastel light travelling down Fusion's mane. "He was being questioned by Captain Rthar -- the Master was also involved, I think -- and said he saw Gravity disappear into thin air. I think the Master believed him."

===

~~~discontinuity~~~

"--you saw Spiral's memories, Fusion! There's no way we can leave all those ponies and just rescue our foals." Gravity's voice rang out, filling the little valley the eight ponies had materialised in.

"--and do what with them? The instant we act the Dogs will be chasing us -- do you really want to try and manage several hundred strangers, and Maker-knows how many gryphons, while trying to escape from a military response? The panic alone will be lethal!" Fusion felt her frustration rising and tried not to match the anger in Gravity's voice. The other mare had kept up this line of argument through the last four teleports, the pulse of magic not slowing her even slightly.

They spread their wings and headed for the forest that carpeted the rocky walls and floor, skimming just above the tree-tops and working their way through the maze of rock between their emergence point and their carefully hidden camp. Tugged along in Gravity's telekinesis were Lilac, Ogive and the other two, while Trocar and Spiral flew in their wake. The stallion looked more than a little shocked by the rapid series of jumps that had led them here, and seemed to be flying without conscious thought. Spiral watched him nervously, keeping up a continuous stream of encouragement.

"And where they are now isn't? You also know what she thinks about that place, about how few ever come back out again. What if Security does to them what it did to their own? Are you really going to stand back and let them torch the place?"

"Of course not! I want to get them all out, but if we bring them here, they'll definitely be a target. At least they have a chance where they are--"

"So you want to do nothing."

The sneer in Gravity's voice made Fusion's ears flatten. "I didn't say that!" she shouted, then took a deep breath. "Look, let's just see how far Redshift and the rest have got. If we can shelter them, and if we can think of a way to get them all out without them killing us or each other, then fine, I'll think about it. Happy?"

Some of the rigidity went out of Gravity's wing beats. "Yes. Sorry." She offered Fusion a twisted smile. "Unlike you, I'm having trouble with all the waiting."

Clearing the final ridge, the little group swooped into their valley, dropping down to meet a tired- and dirty-looking Redshift just coming out of the tree line. Streaks of water clung to his mane and fur, as if he'd just been in a rainstorm. "Problems?" he called up, making a beeline for the lake shore and dipping his dusty muzzle into the clear water. He drank deeply, one ear cocked in interest at the new arrivals being laid gentle on the pebbly beach. Catching sight of Ogive, he inhaled with surprise, coughing and spluttering. "What happened -- is the corral under attack?" His wings flicked out, half raised in preparation for flight.

Another one so eager to do battle! Fusion swallowed, throat suddenly dry. Am I in the minority here? Did Gravity's little simulation go too far, and give them false hope? She had no real feeling for the strengths of the Dog's weapons, only the second-hoof vicarious experiences. Maybe not; it is coming, and better everypony should be confident, at least at the start.

"No... a miscommunication," Trocar said, ears drooping. "Don't worry; we'll get her back to normal." The stallion straightened, looking up at Fusion. "I'd like to continue working on her with Lilac's help, if that's okay." At Fusion's nod, he made to pick the youngster up, taking a surprised step backwards when he waved his clipped wings in protest.

"I never got a chance to show you..." Lilac said, face going slack with concentration. Pale purple telekinesis enveloped his hindquarters and he jerkily got to his hooves and walked stiffly to stand next to Trocar.

"Now that is smart," Fusion muttered, smiling fondly as Gravity rushed over to give Lilac a hug that very nearly robbed him of his precarious balance. Her gaze became distant as she stared at the throb and flicker of magic. That also has possibilities for protecting a pony against any sudden forces, like a long range teleport... perhaps even projectiles? It's obvious, really. I even did something similar in the lake. She shook her head, halting the galloping idea and storing it for future examination. So much to do and so little time.

Moving away, she caught the attention of Redshift and Spiral, eyeing the stallion with interest. "How have things been going here? Made much progress?"

Red failed to hide a smile. "Scalar would like to talk to you. He's not happy. Not happy at all. You'd best follow me." He trotted off into the trees, turning his head slightly to keep the other two in view. "We've done quite a bit -- it's a good thing this lake is glacial and very deep -- all the supplies have been moved in with Packet near the hillside entrance while we work. Speaking of which, the food won't last more than another half megasecond, then we'll be on wild greens."

"We need to decide what to do about that. It's too late to start farming, and in any case it will take too long." This was one problem that had been looming large in Fusion's mind, and the mare trotted on in silence as the rough ground started to get steep.

"I think we can help there, given some feedstocks."

Redshift flashed that grin again, something that Fusion was starting to find irritating. Ah well, let him have his surprise. A few moments later the slope fell away, and they moved into a tree-lined gully whose walls rapidly became taller than she was and arched overhead to form a solid roof. Nicely hidden, she thought, but we'll have to be careful about not leaving a trail. The tunnel became dark and Redshift lit his horn, waving his head to encompass the smooth arch of the tunnel roof. The floor carried on sloping up for a few lengths, then dipped downwards, ending at a sharp drop-off.

"The ridge back there stops water getting in," he said. "You should watch this first step, it's a big one." He smiled and stepped over the edge, wings flaring.

Spiral created a small ball of white light, then looked at Fusion and shrugged. "Shall we?" she said, then jumped forwards and let herself fall. Alone, the darkness relieved only by the gentle glow of her mane and tail, Fusion followed her progress through shadow sight, using it to pick out the shapes of magic operating in what must have been a kilolength of tunnels beneath her hooves. Nothing was where she expected it to be, and she realised that the magic was all the movement of rock from the digging.

Flaring her own wings, she came to a dainty landing at the bottom of the shaft -- it wasn't that deep, only a dozen lengths -- and nodded approvingly at the other stallion, striding towards her. Her breath steamed in the cool air, filled with little glitters. 'Diamond dust' is what Stratus always used to call it. Down here it really was much colder, approaching the deep chill of the mountain peaks that surrounded the valley. A thin patina of hoar frost coated the mirror-like walls. Somepony has been using what we taught them. "You have been busy, Scalar."

Scalar greeted her with a thunderous scowl. "You. Do you know how much trouble you caused? If you had only picked a spot half a kilolength away, I wouldn't be having half the problems I am having." The stallion's coat was silvery with its own sheen of frost, and little beads of ice reflected his hornlight like distant heliostats.

"S-sorry?" Fusion took a half step backwards to avoid the primary feather that Scalar jabbed at her muzzle. She glanced sideways, but Spiral and Redshift had already left in the other direction.

"The rock in this area is rotten, riddled with fracture zones and minor faults. I had to cut a completely new set of tunnels." His ears went back and he advanced on the white mare, folding his wing with an abrupt flick. "Your planned layout was completely unworkable, especially if you want it to withstand shockwaves."

"It looks like I gave the job to the right pony, then." Scalar reluctantly lost some of his ferocious expression, making a snorting noise that might have been acknowledgement. "What have you managed to do with our poor efforts?"

"Dug a new lake entrance -- your old one is fine, but too far away from the site to be efficient." He turned his back on her and walked away without seeing if she would follow. "A couple of topside entrances -- you came in through one of those -- and some ancillary vents. Most of the work has been the deep tunnels and the first few chambers. That's the other big change; I'm constructing this to the Master's military specifications." His voice dropped to an irritated mumble, obviously not really intended for her ears. "As well as I can without any modern materials."

Fusion's ears pricked up and she came to a sudden halt. "I thought you were in power systems? How--"

"Power systems installation. Foals of today, never paying any attention--" He sighed, then turned to look at her. "What, you think the military doesn't need power? I've dug a lot of deep tunnels in my time, and with my old crew we'd have been finished by now."

Fusion trotted to catch up, following Scalar down another vertical shaft, this one much deeper. "Will you be putting ramps in as well?"

"Why? What's the point?"

"We already have several ponies who can't fly."

Scalar hissed in annoyance, wings flicking out with far more emotion than the simple comment should have provoked. "Maker-dammit! I knew I'd forgotten something!" Without warning, he lashed out with one hind leg, landing a solid blow on the smooth rock wall.

"Don't be so hard on yourself; you've done so much in just a day," Fusion said softly, taking a few tentative steps towards the stallion.

His shoulders hunched and he stood there on three legs, the hind one he'd kicked out with held clear of the floor. "It's not enough. Even with the new magic you showed us, we just can't work quickly enough." He worked the leg, hesitantly setting it down. "A foal could see that what we are building here can only be a stop-gap." He winced, then glared at Fusion. "I want my Tangent back. When are you going to get him?"

Fusion's mouth went dry, and she flashed back to the arguments she'd had with Gravity. "The Dogs know we've escaped, and they will be hunting for us. They know we can teleport, so that will give them a tricky problem to solve." She started to pace the bottom of the shaft, running a wing tip over the glassily smooth walls, then stopping to stare at her distorted reflection. "I could go there now. I have Spiral's memories and, if the foals have not been moved, could be back in less than a kilosecond." She turned to face him, searching his eyes for any understanding. "But that's just our foals. What about all the others at Naraka, wherever they have come from? I'm trying to plan for all of them."

Scalar slumped, the anger vanishing from his face to leave only despair. "It's too much for me. I just wish this had never happened."

"On more than one occasion I've thought that as well. Sometimes I still do." She moved to stand next to Scalar, the white-gold of her magic taking some of the weight off his hindquarters. "I remember, back when it was just me... I very nearly reported for euthanization." She smiled sadly, pressing against the stallion, flank to flank. "It was the only solution that would keep everything in my control."

Scalar took one limping step, then another. "But you didn't. Why not? One of the reasons I'm working so hard is to distract myself from the guilt... I can't stop thinking about what I should do."

"It will pass, really. Keep focused on Tangent -- he'll need you more than ever when we get him out." The pair walked on in silence, passing the first of half a dozen chambers off the corridor. Most weren't that large, about the size of a corral shelter, but would easily hold twenty or thirty ponies... if they were friendly. The last was significantly larger; the far end was lost in a fog of cold air, through which came the bell-like tones and pulsing flare of force fields. At least we managed to show them the trick of pulling in external energy. Time was too short, but at least I could give them that.

"That's Triple Point," Scalar said, sensing the direction of Fusion's attention. "She's digging out the first farming bay, ready for when we get... You didn't answer my question."

"It was all the names on the walls of the Church. Hundreds upon hundreds of ponies, all dead and dust. I don't want there to be any more ponies that only leave their names." A large block of stone, glowing a pale green, drifted out of the fog to be stacked upon a pile of others.

Scalar was silent, taking a few more steps down the tunnel. "I think I understand. Come on; let me show you the rest of this place."

===

They all gathered outside one of the hidden entrances, laying amid the leaf-litter under the trees. They were all looking expectantly at Fusion and Gravity, who were at one end of the little clearing. Here we go, Gravity thought, adding the weight of her own stare to that of the others. Fusion's ears dipped slightly under the attention, but she straightened up, calmly meeting each pony's eyes in turn. Gravity nodded approvingly, then gave her sister a nudge with one wing.

She twitched, then flashed back a determined smile. "You've all seen what we've been through and you all know what's at stake. The Dogs won't be merciful if they catch us; the most you can ever hope for is a quick death." She let the statement hang, waiting for the nervous shuffling to stop. "I say this so that there will be no illusions; if you don't want an active role, no pony will think less of you -- if anything, we need ponies to stay behind and look after things here."

Scalar snorted, then looked from pony to pony. "Don't talk rubbish. Like we'll let you do this on your own." All the rest nodded, some more certainly than others. "Besides... we're already dead." A ripple of laughter passed through the herd, strained and brittle.

That's something, at least, Gravity thought, flashing Lilac a quick smile. "We need to act, and soon." The sooner, the better. "The Dogs know at least one of us escaped and will be out looking."

"How will they even know where we are? I don't even know!" Triple Point said, waving her head to encompass the trees and mountains.

"At the moment, they don't," Fusion said dryly, "the lack of explosions and gunfire proves that... but my sister is right. I don't know what resources they will bring to the search. The teleport spell can be tricky to master, but who knows what a pony observer could get from seeing it cast. In any case, they only have to get lucky once."

"...so what we need is a plan, and not just 'pull off the roof and grab everypony'." There were serious nods from the group, and Gravity sighed. "Unfortunately," she muttered, lips barely moving.

"Whatever weirdness makes Gravity and I so strong won't be enough in the long term. We can free their bodies, but it will take more than violence to free their minds." Fusion dipped her head, staring at the dry leaves between her hooves. "In any case, with only two of us it becomes very difficult to do anything more subtle than 'pulling off the roof'... and I don't want to be party to a slaughter. You will fight other ponies, possibly even your own kin, if you cannot convince them of our cause. All that said, do you still want a part of this?" She lifted her gaze, lingering on each pony in turn.

Gravity held her breath, her excitement building as each pony nodded back at Fusion. "We've talked about this before, just between Fusion and I, but now is the time to actually put things into motion. What we need are suggestions, improvements and potential problems." Fusion opened her mouth, but Gravity lifted a wing to silence her. "Within reason. There's no point in trying to plan for every eventuality."

"I'll behave," Fusion said, rolling her eyes. "Agreed. We cannot know Security's specific response, so all this is going to be very fluid. That said--" Gravity resisted the urge to sigh out-loud, settling for a slight frown. "--we can make some guesses, based on what we've seen so far. They will not hesitate to use our kin against us." There was a general muttering from her audience, and the mare paused, looking sad. "I understand; even after all the Dogs have done, I still have trouble with the idea... but everything before this point has been coloured by the Blessing."

"No, we all saw what happened to Slipstream," Triple Point said, glancing to the others, "but it is still a shock to hear it said, even if we know it to be true."

Fusion nodded. "That leaves us with two choices. First, grab our foals and anypony else we hold dear, then vanish so completely that the Dogs can't find us. If they can't contact us, then we can't be threatened and there's no value in harming anypony we leave behind. Second, and I think this is our best option in the long run..."

Fusion paused, looking suddenly frightened, and Gravity's ears pricked up, a tingle racing down her spine. By the Maker, I don't believe it, is she actually going to suggest--? She smiled at her sister and nodded. Say it!

"...we take the whole corral, and convince as many ponies as possible to join us."

"When?" Redshift said in a strained whisper.

Fusion looked up at the sun where it was approaching one of the ridges on the other side of the valley. Long bars of light fell through the close-spaced tree-trunks, covering the expectant ponies with patches of light and dark. There was strength in that distant, brilliant orb, and Fusion drew on it, her voice gaining power. "If we can come up with a suitable plan, we'll do it tonight."

===

They assembled on a bare hilltop surrounded by dense forest, distant from their deeply buried mountain fastness. Each pony had a small set of panniers, cobbled together from the Security pony's transport harnesses, and mainly holding a portion of their medical supplies, with a little food and water. Fusion stood with Redshift, the stallion looking lost and uncomfortable in his mismatched armour.

I know how you feel, she thought, shrugging her wing-shoulders in an effort to make the heavy, curved plates sit a little more easily against her back. Along with armour, she had her own packs, bulging with a quantity of equipment that weighed as much as she did; only the subtle haze of telekinesis stopped her legs from buckling.

Across from her stood Gravity in the final armour set they'd managed to assemble, although in her case it seemed to fit perfectly. Twin triangles of dark grey floated at her withers within fields of an eye-achingly deep violet, and long bundles of metal rods were fixed to her flanks. Perhaps it was the way the dusty blue mare was standing or all the things she carried, but Fusion could have sworn that Gravity had grown over the last few kiloseconds.

Redshift lowered his head, looking anxiously at Scalar. "You are sure you remember what you need to do?" he whispered, casting nervous glances at Gravity.

"I might not be a computronium specialist like you," he said, rolling his eyes, "but I can follow a simple spell pattern."

Thermocline, one of the other two members of Scalar's little team, made a strangled coughing sound. "Don't worry, Red, if this bonehead can't get it right, I'll remind him," he said, flicking the big stallion across the back of his head with one wing. Scalar whipped his head around, teeth clicking shut a hoofspan from the end of Thermo's primary feathers as the other pony danced back with a delighted grin.

"That's enough," Triple Point said, exchanging an amused glance with the two others she was leading. "Colts, all of you are colts. It'll take a mare to do this right, you'll see." A little laugh rippled across the herd, releasing some of the tension that was building. "Any more foaling around? No? Good." She gave a good-natured snort, then turned her back on them. "Fusion, this is your show. Is there anything else you think we need to know?"

"I've sat alone in the dark wanting to die rather than carry this burden, but the horrible truth is that every moment we wait is a moment that another pony falls to the same fate as Slipstream." Smiles faltered and all humour vanished; everypony stood stock-still, staring at her.

The white mare's eyes glittered, although there was no external source for them to reflect, and the gentle, lambent aura of her mane shifted from pastels to harder, brighter colours. "If we don't rise to this, nopony else will; I don't want to save just our kin and friends, but everypony, everywhere." The light radiating from Fusion brightened until it cast monstrous shadows across the trees below, and the ponies blinked their eyes as if gazing into the rising sun.

Her head moved in a wide arc, the brilliantly glowing tip of her horn taking in the overcast sky from horizon to horizon. "There will be no more ponies like Slip, no more dams waiting for news of foals that won't be coming home, no more foals with missing parents." The white mare lifted her head, letting her magic build. Her voice became stern; a tone that brooked no compromise. "There will be no more Masters."

At her flank, Gravity pawed at the ground, ears plastered against the sides of her skull. "No more Masters!" she snarled. "Do it!"

A pulse of white-gold lit the underside of the low clouds, and the hilltop was left empty, save for a cold breeze and the rumble of thunder.

13 - Threefold Law of Return

Author's Note

Preread by: KMCA
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and Caliaponia (Just Passing Through).

13 - Threefold Law of Return

=== Chapter 13: Threefold Law of Return ===

Technician Valith glanced nervously at the squad commander. His goggles, their reactive lenses currently clear, itched where they sat across his muzzle, but he resisted the urge to push them up onto his forehead and scratch vigorously. Should have put them away, but they always get scratched in the tool case.

The commander glared back, her normally slight frame bulked up to giant proportions by the armoured suit she wore. Her faceplate and muzzle guard, complete with its servo powered jaw and jagged, diamond-faceted metal teeth, were folded away, making her head look like an afterthought amid the swell of fullerene metalloceramic plating that made up the suit's shoulders. One thick-fingered arm made a cutting gesture and, below that, the suit's fighting claw copied her movements. That particular military horror, projecting from her waist on a long, multiply jointed armature, looked like it had come from a five-tonne lobster.

Valith followed the mirrored cutting surfaces with wide eyes, ears twitching as the curved pincers closed abruptly with a nasty metal-on-metal sound, then swallowed heavily. "Lieutenant Tuthi, this one is sorry, but the dropshuttle has failed its self-test. It would be dangerous--"

"Tuthi knows that, idiot!" she snarled, "This one can read a status report. What is wrong with it?"

Keeping a precarious hold on his tool case, Valith tapped a command on his bracer, accessing the internal network's reporting systems through a short length of fibre optic. Damned designers, they never put these things in easy places, he thought, trying to relieve the ache in his arm from holding it up so high. The data cable vanished into a small port above his head, just behind one of the magnetic nozzle clusters. Both awkward and nerve-wracking, reaching it with a standard interface cable meant holding one's head directly in line with the pitted, high temperature ceramic surface of the thruster. It was all too easy to imagine a careless pilot flicking the wrong switch and sending a pulse of celestia-hot plasma to really ruin his day.

Finally, the dropshuttle's computer completed the exhaustive security checks required before any device was allowed access to its internal systems, letting him into the maintenance modules. Reams of densely worded text scrolled up the small screen, and Valith quickly scanned it for signs of the problem. If this one could hook it up to a proper hardware interrogator, it would be easy, but no, they want it done right now. He struggled to ignore Tuthi, a task made more difficult by the attention of a small flock of gryphon troopers, all watching him with every evidence of malicious pleasure. They stood there, all fully equipped, waiting for the order to board the aircraft.

Valith's ears went back. Ah, crap. Half way down the engine management report was a whole section of bright red text, flashing with warnings. "The magnetic flux sensors have picked up some subcritical quench points in the superconductor banks," he announced in a small voice.

"So? Can the Technician fix it? This one is supposed to be part of this shift's reaction teams, in case it had escaped Valith's notice." She tapped one metal-shod paw on the fused stone slabs lining the hangar floor; a hard, angry sound like that of a weapon being cocked.

Not in this ship, Tuthi isn't. He narrowly avoided the impulse to say that out loud. A quick flick of a claw brought up the manuals for the dropshuttle; the resultant bewildering array of icons laid ghostly patterns across his whole field of view. "Yes, Lieutenant, this one understands... it will take at least two kiloseconds to de-energise the banks and purge the defects, then a recharge will--" He lost the battle to hold on to both his tools and stay connected to the dropshuttle, electing to drop the heavy case on his footpaw rather than risk damaging the expensive diagnostic gear it contained. The sudden impact made him gasp, but Tuthi had already stopped listening. Thank the Maker for safety boots!

"This dropship is Valith's responsibility! His dereliction of duty will not go unreported--"

There was more, but Valith ignored the threats and promises of retribution, clamping down on the anger that made him want to shout back at the Lieutenant. Yes, it is, but only with the help of the crew servitors! All the procedures existed for operation without the creatures, but they were so useful, and were such an integral part of the unit that it was rare to even practice without them. No one is prepared for this. More taps narrowed the number of instruction sets to a manageable level, and Valith used this as a way to maintain focus. His eye drifted to the reel of heavy superconducting cable he'd have to get connected to the dropshuttle to allow the stored power to be drained safely, and he groaned inwardly. The thing easily weighed ten times what he did; something else a pony could have done with only a thought.

"Understood, Lieutenant," he said stiffly. "May this one have some assistance in connecting the charge cable?" He gestured to the fat drum of slick, paw-thick wire, its black and gold length coiled up like a giant constrictor snake around a pregnant cow.

Tuthi hissed something that was probably insulting, then turned to the line of gryphons. "Sersjant! Delegate a team to assist the Technician." She snarled the last word, voice and face filled with contempt.

Damn arrogant troopers! Struggling to prevent his own lips from pulling back from his teeth in a snarl, Valith trotted forward, followed by a pair of suddenly far less amused gryphons. Reaching into the rear pocket of his waistcoat, he drew out a pair of heavy gloves and put them on.

Gripping hold of the reel's forward strut, he heaved, only to be rewarded by a tiny twitch of movement from the oversized drum. There was a sigh from behind his left ear, and a set of scaly talons pushed him roughly to one side. He stepped back, too relieved at not having to move the cable to pay any attention to the looks of disgust that passed between the pair of gryphons. Muscles, only really visible at the neck rings of the armoured troopers, bulged and with a squeal the drum cradle started to move on its silly little wheels.

"The auxiliary power connector is next to the port side hinge for the rear ramp," he said, waving a paw at the dropshuttle before reaching for the control panel in the maintenance alcove. A few taps opened a connection to the Pit's power storage systems, a mind-numbingly large array of superconductor coils buried deep under the primary hangers at the bottom of the main shaft. Protected by a huge thickness of armourcrete, these provided enough energy to charge all of the various airtrucks and combat vehicles, without having to rely on the Hive's main power centres. The actual amount of energy was something Valith tried not to think about; it was best expressed in terms of kilotonnes, rather than mere joules.

This system, with all its interlocks and power controllers, also provided a safe way to drain the much smaller banks of the dropshuttle; fully charged, there was enough energy in the aircraft to slag the inside of the hangar a hundred times over. Trotting back to the gryphons, Valith, after a considerable effort, locked the connector in place and started the de-energisation process. Nodding his thanks to the troopers, who departed without a backward glance, he studied the repeater display on his bracer. The process was completely silent, despite the half gigawatt of power flowing through the cable, and Valith sighed, wondering what he could do to look busy, lest he attract Tuthi's ire once more.

Another check of his remote display and a quick calculation gave him the amount of time remaining for this operation. Huh, not as bad as this one thought, even without the crewponies. At least it might get Tuthi to calm down a little. He jogged over to the lieutenant, standing quietly in her peripheral vision until she turned. Valith lifted up his bracer and--

The world went white for an instant, then darkness fell.

===

It was like opening the door to a furnace; a sudden torrent of power that filled her from hooves to horn tip. There was more, much more, than she could hold, and Fusion funnelled the excess into that seemingly infinite reservoir that resided somewhere outside the mere physical realm. The energy buoyed her, the tickle of grass underhoof fading as her whole body lifted off the ground without a single wingbeat. Normal vision was useless under the onslaught of her power, so it was by shadow sight that Fusion took them all to the first teleportation target--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--a deeply forested valley under a low, cloudy sky, abruptly lit to stellar brilliance by their arrival. Pony shapes fell away from her, wings pumping to increase the speed supplied by laggard gravity, arrowing to the nearest ridgeline and out of sight. Her power built further, and wisps of steam starting to curl up from the nearest trees, but still she waited, watching as the others vanished in little pulses of pastel light amid the darkness of the shadow world.

Still at her left side was Redshift, curled into as compact a ball as he could manage while wearing the purloined Security barding; she held him safe within a carefully maintained bubble that protected him from the dangers of the energies she was holding. To her right was a shifting patch of darkness, the exact opposite of what she had become. The power flowed over and past this shape, a black, pony-headed comet in a universe made solely of light.

At the back of her mind was a gathering fatigue, something stealing into her bones despite the sheer, luminous power that was filling them. She'd felt this before, not directly, but via a sharing proxy, and knew the dangers of waiting too long--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--light, the hard brilliance of a nuclear explosion, washed over the expanse of the farm, waking the herds of cattle and sending them lowing and bellowing in panic. Unmindful of the stampede, Fusion opened her wings and reared in the air; brush discharges tens of lengths long danced from her primary feathers and filled the sky with a crackling roar. She felt hot, like she was working hard at the height of summer in high humidity, the steady upward creep of her body temperature making her head fuzzy and her thoughts swim. Like an imprisoned beast, all teeth, claws and hurricane fury, finally seeing its opportunity to escape and rain bloody murder upon an unsuspecting world, the power beat against the cage of her mind. Fusion pushed it back, trapping the energy in short-lived thaumic cascades that fed back upon themselves, confining and concentrating it still further

She reached for the final pattern that would take them to their target, but the form would not stabilize; each attempt fuzzed some part of the complex and sensitive pattern, rendering it unworkable or lethal. Every effort brought with it a finite chance of disaster; the imprisoned beast not some raging carnivore, but the massed, writhing grubs of a parasitic wasp made from phosphorus, eager to consume from the inside and leave her a gutted shell, fire bursting from every pore and orifice.

Darkness lent in from somewhere close by and, for a moment, Fusion felt a thrill of sheer terror, imagining a distant Dog-made machine, attracted by her actions and turning its attention in her direction. Let me, came Gravity's thoughts, a cool wash of the night air after a blazing summer's day. Without hesitation, Fusion released the failed pattern, returning her attention to the demon caged within her head. There was the touch of familiar magic, cradling and enclosing her, then a sudden, wrenching push--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--an intolerable glare, too bright even through the closed lid of her remaining eye, washed out the whole world. No longer dark, the shadow universe sparkled, every atom and molecule within a kilolength reacting to the thaumic gradient and singing its presence with luminous joy. There was a moment of perfect clarity, and Fusion let her mind race out into the cluttered chambers that surrounded the vertical shaft that plunged away a few lengths to her front. They teemed with life; the bipedal shapes of Dogs, all locked in whatever position her arrival had found them in, filled the rooms and corridors. Further away were the winged forms of gryphons, a few scattered about the shaft, but most packed into one of several tight little roosts buried deep in the walls.

Behind her, no more than a leap away, crouched the sullen black shapes of a pair of Security aircraft, identical to the one Gravity had dealt with back at the institute. With them were more Dogs, most in their asymmetric-limbed powered armour, and a veritable flock of gryphons; all were rendered glacial by her accelerated state, locked in attitudes of surprise. Paws were just starting to come up to cover eyes, and heads turning away in a desperate effort to shield themselves from whatever had just appeared in their midst.

I can only see one pony.

Gravity’s presence was like the soothing caress of water after a hard gallop, her mental tone one of eagerness and excitement at fever-pitch that washed away some of the fuzziness invading Fusion's thoughts. The white mare signalled her agreement back along the sharing, allowing her disembodied attention to fly towards that lone member of her own kind. It was a grey mare, alone in a small chamber, deep in the bowels of the base. She was lying on her belly, awake despite the time, her head raised and looking straight at Fusion.

The look on the mare's face was one of dawning horror, frozen in place by the accelerated pulse of her own thoughts, and Fusion felt a ripple of guilt run through her mind. She will try and stop us, no matter the personal cost. Something sharp and burning, like a needle of iron at red heat, started to move through her vitals. Even at this speed, her magic still needed effort to keep it in check. Soon it would eat her alive.

Fear struck at Fusion; the deep terror of failure, of coming this close and endangering so many ponies for nothing. There's too much, I can't-- She pulled back, returning to her body and reaching inside the cage, tormenting the beast as much as she dared, whipping it into a fury. She was still in the same position, wings flared and balanced on her hind legs, as when she'd teleported in, the slow claws of gravity yet to pull her to the ground.

Her thoughts returned to their normal tempo and Fusion pawed the air, lightning arcing from hoof to horn to wing, stroking the flanks of the vehicles and the walls of the hangar that had once held Random and the corral's foals. She screamed as she landed, her bellow caught by the confined magic and twisted. High pitched and as loud as a jet engine, her voice rang out across the hollow core of the base, in time with the explosive slam of her hooves striking deep scars in the concrete.

Finally free, all the barely controlled power rushed out in a single thaumic shout. The arcane shockwave was a bubble of rainbow light; far too bright to look at, it rolled out from her body, passing through air and concrete with equal alacrity.

===

That damned useless tech was here again, standing at her side with a relieved look on his face. Tuthi ignored him for a moment, then turned. It took no effort at all to maintain her annoyed expression. He lifted his bracer, pointing at some set of numbers which were far too large to be good news, when his face, body and the whole rest of the hangar behind him was lit with a burst of brilliant light.

For a moment, she thought that there had been an explosion, but it didn't have the blue-white electric hue of a superconductor quench, or the thermal slap and ruddy bloom of a fuel-air detonation. Instead, it was the fine, pale yellow of a noonday sun, as if one of the heliostats had suddenly turned its beam in her direction. No, not bright enough; it's like celestia itself has fallen into the Pit. The thought was fleeting, and her gaze was captured by the sight of the tech's eyes, harshly illuminated by the glare and vanishing behind the suddenly mirrored curve of his goggles.

In those distorting lenses was a shape, the eye-searing brilliance of a magnesium flare moulded into the form of a servitor, its front hooves off the ground and wings open. Silent lightning rippled from horn and feathers, not the slow strobe of cloud-to-ground from the belly of a carefully controlled storm system, but the frenetic grasping claws of discharges from the top of a tesla coil. To each side were other pony-shapes, almost invisible in the glare; one was huddled in a compact bundle, wings drawn up over its head, the other upright and alert, with what could only be described as an expression of unholy joy on its muzzle. The view was painfully bright and Tuthi clenched her eyes shut, one paw slapping the emergency helmet seal control while the other groped for her laser. The motion was only half complete when the shrill warble of the thaumic attack alarm came through the speakers in her neck ring, just before a wall of rainbow light rolled over her.

Her suit suffered some kind of seizure, the electromuscle bands either locking solid or flexing wildly, tipping her forwards to slam muzzle-first into the hangar floor. It was only by luck and superb reflexes that she'd managed to close her helmet in time; even so, the impact made the world spin and gave her an instant headache. In complete darkness -- the smart display had failed completely -- Tuthi's legs and arms drummed against the concrete, the rapid thrashing of the spasming muscle bands bouncing her around like some mad robot.

She'd trained for this, letting herself go limp except for a clenched jaw, cheek muscles bulging to keep her mouth closed and avoid biting off her own tongue. It was impossible to control a malfunctioning suit though strength alone; no Person could ever match the synthetic musculature, so you just rode it out and prayed to the Maker that the system would recover before you lost consciousness. If you did try to fight it, then the suit would happily rip tendons and dislocate bones.

Through the sudden, random wrenchings came noise. Not the racket of her own armour pounding the hangar floor, though that was near deafening, but the sound of gunfire and the harsh cries of gryphons, of metal striking metal and the rushing roar of superconductors failing. Helpless to do anything but listen, Tuthi and her suit writhed in electronic agony

A seeming age of violent motion came to an abrupt halt and her visor lit up, displaying a depressingly long row of red icons. It was the work of a moment to interpret the list -- thaumic defences offline, arcane early warning not responding, thaumokinetic manipulator damaged, reactor scrammed -- it went on and on, a litany of mechanical and thaumic woe, but it was the last one made her pause. Backups only, but perhaps... Tuthi cleared the warnings, leaving only the battery and magazine indicators, then thrust down with one arm, flicking herself over.

The suit responded sluggishly, pushing her over to land on her tail and against something hard yet squashy. Still rebuilding its internal routing systems; must have been a massive TMP. Every single one of her crystal thaumic systems was dead and refusing to recover, and the armour was in failover mode, but that was fine. Have we been hit by Arclight? Her laser was gone; the optical waveguide had sheared off during her suit's seizure -- no doubt smashed to fragments by some flailing limb -- so she made the gesture that linked the rotary cannon to her left paw, letting the armature extract it from its housing along her spine so it could mirror her movements.

Kicking off backwards, she stumbled over the hard-soft object, turning the tumble into a roll that left her lying on her belly behind the body of one of the gryphon troopers from her squad. Something angular had punctured his armour just above the breast bone, carving a wide slot that passed right through his body. The exit was a like a giant mouth, ringed with the jagged teeth of sundered metaloceramic plates, a wound far too large to be any conventional weapon. Eyes wide, Tuthi hunkered down, letting the rotary cannon on its stub arm nose over the side of the corpse.

A camera feed from the axis of the gun showed her the nature of the battle; the lights in the hangar, and even in the Pit itself, had been extinguished, leaving the scene illuminated by the flash and flicker of magic amid the invisible roar of railgun fire. The weapon the enemy had used was immediately obvious; there was a splinter of darkness, wreathed with eye-achingly deep indigo light, a light so close to the end of the visual spectrum that it might as well have been in the ultraviolet, drifting about the hangar.

The thing would move with casual slowness, then abruptly blur into invisibility with a crack, before returning to its mistress' side. It was the dark pony, of course, the subject of the frankly unbelievable briefing they'd all received a fraction of a megasecond ago, that had been standing next to the white one. Guess that means they both got out. It stood there, with splayed legs and a lowered head, looking like it was being pressed back by a fierce wind. Light, the same colour as that surrounding its weapon, made hard-edged curves and quarter domes between the pony and what remained of the reaction teams, flaring in time with the arc-welder glare at the tip of its horn and the sparking streams of projectiles striking that impossibly strong force field.

Did we get one? The white pony had collapsed; a heap of snowy feathers and bone-pale armour plates anointed by pastel mane and tail, all the magnesium-glare gone. Little flecks of something black peppered its colourless form; under the hard, monochromatic lighting it was impossible to tell what it was. All that magic was coming from the dark servitor, a horrible, painful, chaotic dance of geometry and fire that filled half the hangar. Its mouth was moving as if talking, and its head kept turning to glance at its fallen partner. Even one is enough to hold all these ones off! Terror paralysis gripped her with all the power of a giant's paw; in the confines of the muzzle guard her mouth opened, an action mirrored by the fighting mandible that gave the suit its monstrous look, and she screamed at her own body, but it just wouldn't move.

Still frozen, Tuthi watched as the dark figure took a step backwards, closer to the lip of the hangar and the drop into the Pit. The fire redoubled, and she suddenly realised that the creature was close to the end of its strength. Old memories of the limits of servitor magic, from the few training courses a student operative was required to take, reached forward in time and wrapped themselves around her hindbrain, and she finally found the strength to twitch. The bigger the field, the harder it is to maintain.

That was enough. With a whimper, she pointed her paw at the downed servitor, aligning the rotary cannon's reticule with its belly, then clenched it into a fist. The gun roared and bucked, not the juddering of some small automatic rifle, but the high frequency buzz of two hundred rounds a second that would have pushed her across the floor, if it wasn't for her firm grip on the gryphon's corpse.

Something must have alerted the creature, because the flicker-flash of violet light extended to cover the other pony. Ammunition and battery counters dropped at the same precipitous rate, but her target took a staggering step backwards, then another, its rear hooves a paws-width from the edge. Missiles from some source burst high on the curve of the violet field; they had been fired wild, their sensitive targeting systems affected by the local thaumic gradient, but the magical defences were a large target compared to the servitor, and missing was well-nigh impossible.

Despite the obvious power raging throughout the hanger, the servitor was in trouble. Its flanks, hidden under midnight plates of armour that must have come from some unfortunate security pony, heaved like great bellows, while wings half emerged from the carapace plates to thrash the air in some ill-prepared attempt at flight. It staggered, a groove appearing in one flank as an invisibly fast fragment made it through the defences and shaved off a line of chromatophore.

"Damn you, why won't you just die--!" she screamed into her muzzle guard, voice choking off when the pony lifted its head and smiled, lips pulling back from large, square herbivore teeth that the twisted illumination seemed to make as jagged as a mouthful of fangs.

===

The ring of titanic flood lights that encircled the shaft exploded as the thaumic wavefront washed over them, plunging the sector Security Hub into darkness. The magic, coupling to the kilolengths of cable that laced the base, induced wild, megavolt surges that ran rampant through network switches, computronium farms and communications arrays, trashing every semiconductor junction they could reach. Surge arresters designed to manage an electromagnetic pulse damped down the voltages, but had little effect when the arcane bubble rolled over them and created more surges in the protected zones behind them.

Close to the epicentre of the pulse, whole lengths of cable, much of it only designed for lighting and low power applications, simply burst into flames under the influence of the sort of current usually only encountered in lightning strikes. Fire systems, simple things that consisted of chemical foams stored under pressure in fusible tubes, fought the blazes, but these were only placed at the vulnerable nodes within the wiring loom. Tens of thousands of small fires ignited and burned without restraint, mostly behind walls and in cable runs, spewing dark smoke and combustion products into now pitch-black corridors and work rooms.

Within these suddenly toxic spaces, the occupants -- large numbers of analysts, data controllers, internal security and investigation personnel -- found themselves struggling to remove ubiquitous communications devices that had flashed into incandescence. Burned, blinded and choking, they fought to open doors with unfamiliar manual controls, only to find that, when they did, conditions outside were no better. Further away, things were not so catastrophic; portable comms units, and other devices without long conductive connections to act as antennae for the pulse, merely crashed and rebooted. Out here, emergency lights, all self powered, came on in moments, leaving the People blinking in surprise at dead displays, the work of kiloseconds gone into electronic oblivion.

Vibrations, subtle at first but with ever increasing strength, started to ripple through the floor, turning confusion into fear.

===

Gravity was looking at the security base through the medium of Fusion's shadow sight as the pulse went out, and felt nothing but intense satisfaction. The complex, sparkling swirl of eddy currents cascading through every conductive object lit up the interior of the structure with strange webs of crimson and lilac. Short-lived tendrils of light played out from the rapidly advancing wavefront and, where they touched, the glows of stored power went dark. Crystal thaumic systems fared no better; although they were not sensitive to the sustained electrical assault, the other properties of the arcane shockwave destroyed them just as thoroughly.

All that remained in the upper levels on their side of the shaft were isolated pockets, those few electrical systems that had been protected by layers of foil and woven copper, and the golden wing-bars of squadrons of gryphon troops, swirling and agitated like an ant's nest accidentally kicked by a careless hoof. My turn now, she thought, pulling away from the sharing and the enervating weakness that permeated all of her sister's thoughts and feelings. There was no reply, and Fusion's shadow sight, with its extra sensitivity to all forms of stored energy, faded, replaced by normal vision. Fusion herself sank to the floor, wings splayed and lather spotting her white flanks, breathing in great, gasping breaths.

In the sudden silence and darkness there were yells and harsh gryphon calls, coupled to a sudden panicky drumming of paws or talons. Alarmed, Gravity glanced at Fusion, slumped and moving weakly, then her head snapped around to look at the assembled Security soldiers. There were at least a dozen, most wearing that lumpy powered armour she'd seen in the depths of the institute, and probably three times that number of gryphons, all equally dressed for battle.

Everyone was moving. The suits seemed much slower than she remembered; there was none of the insectile speed that she associated with the bulky machines. Several had fallen over, toppled like felled trees, or were vibrating and gyrating as if in the throes of some frantic madness. The gryphons, blessed or cursed by being mere flesh and blood, were having no such difficulties. The cat-birds scattered, hunting for cover around the bullet shapes of the Security dropshuttles, pulling forward their shoulder mounted weapons as they did so.

Gravity, her blood up, spared Fusion another glance and manifested a quarter dome of violet light, centred upon herself. The first strikes, from a gryphon who'd taken roost clinging to the joined landing gear of the right-most shuttle, impacted without her really feeling them, spraying the hangar deck with metal splinters and the rolling thunder of explosive ammunition. The mare reached out and sent one of her weapons in the soldier's direction.

The slender knife-missile, dark fullerene-metal composite glowing violet with its coating of impenetrable magic, flicked out with a railgun crack, then returned to her side and spun fast enough to blur into a cone of sooty shadow, shedding a haze of atomised blood. The gunfire stopped and the gryphon, looking confused, lost his grip on the strut and fell solidly to the deck, bright carmine erupting from wide slashes in his torso. There was another moment of shocked silence, then the rest of the avian soldiers opened fire.

Gravity grunted; this was like being pelted by pebbles in a stinging stream. She felt for Fusion, struggling to rebuild the sharing without the other mare's cooperation, while sending her weapons out once more. A half dozen were felled, the flying knives taking zigzag paths between targets, but the additional distraction did nothing for her accuracy. Their armour was tough stuff, equal to her weapons, which required the full measure of her new strength to propel them fast enough to assure penetration. Many hits were merely glancing, the wickedly keen, force-field honed edge of her knife missiles turned aside, and only threw the troopers back to strike walls or floor, things their armour was superb at surviving.

A line of green light, bright enough to compete with her own magic and leave spidery afterimages across her retinas flashed out, slashing through the space between her head and wings. It sliced through her layered defences without hindrance and Gravity ducked, but the beam swept sideways, cutting clean across her chest just below her throat. She recoiled, ears back, braced for the sudden, paralysing pain that would come with the laser strike, the image of a bloody Lilac so strong that it made her heart leap.

There was nothing, just the eye-searing brilliance of reflection and the sudden stinging slap of vaporised metal oxides striking the sensitive, unprotected tip of her muzzle. Redshift, you genius. A knife-missile flashed out, propelled by all of her panicked strength, and the laser winked out.

The chaotic rattle of gryphon firearms was augmented by the harsh, ear damaging buzz of one, then several, of the Dog's rotary cannon. The pressure became insistent, a fire hose of force that made her grip on the knife-missiles falter. "Talk to me, Fusion, please! Tell me you are alright, I can't do this if I don't know you are safe!" she shouted, voice lost amid the scream and continuous roll of detonations. Should have known that jumping straight in would be stupid; why should the Dogs keep the hangar in the same state as when the foals were here? There was a movement from behind one of the corpses, a cylindrical bundle of tubes that could only be... she took another step backwards, her weapons falling to the floor, and reached out to enfold her sister in what little strength she had left. I'll run, we'll think of another plan. I--

Something struck her on the flank, a stunning impact that the armour turned aside, and Gravity staggered sideways, standing over her sister and a trembling Redshift, crouching down to reduce the frontal area she needed to defend. The fire intensified, the very air in front of her face distorted and curdled by the quantity of high velocity metal and ceramic that was exploding into vapour no further away than the tip of her muzzle.

I'm here. Don't retreat. Fusion's mental voice was weak and hesitant, but getting stronger. I'm ready to start the next part of the plan.

A vast relief filled the blue mare, and she straightened up, looking back through her layers of force and telekinesis, her lips curving into a wide, crazy smile. Fusion's magic reached out, folding around herself and Redshift; there was the sensation of concentration through the sharing, of a complex spell being assembled. Just a few more moments...

Remember why we're here and who the enemy is, Gravity. Give the gryphons a chance, if you can. Fusion blinked out, dropping out of the sharing, and the Security hub, in a pulse of white-gold light.

Gravity nodded, though her sister could neither see nor feel the gesture, and made no attempt to rebuild the communion. She pulled her defences still further in, shrinking the force field and allowing many of the wild shots to fall past her and on into the shaft, then reached out and kicked with immaterial hooves.

===

Something struck Tuthi, a fast-swung invisible sledgehammer of force that turned the world into a violet-tinged tumble that seemed to last forever. The hangar bay spun around her, the heavy shapes of the other members of her squad taking similar trajectories, as if they were seeds cast from some ancient farmer's paw. She sailed past one of the gryphon flysoldats, his wings fully extended and twisting, the feathers fanning and biting an unexpectedly fast airflow. She met the other soldier's gaze for a frozen instant of time, trying to communicate her desire to be caught, but there was nothing but panic in his eyes. They drifted apart, pulled away by her undiminished velocity.

Time telescoped so that it seemed she had all of infinity to twist in the air, get her paws underneath her and land safely but that, like everything else, was all an illusion brought on by the brain's frantic grasping for any opportunity to save itself. She caught the leading edge of one dropshuttle's horizontal stabilisers, the vehicle itself knocked on its side and spewing dark smoke from a gaping wound in one flank, clean across the middle of her back, a sudden wrenching impact that bent her like a bow and made her teeth snap shut on the end of her tongue to flood her mouth with the taste of old iron.

Something snapped in her chest, just where ribs ended and belly began. Tuthi fell to the ground, struggling to breathe against stunned muscles and a sharp pain in her right side, like a hot knife was being twisted in her lungs. Inside the confines of the helmet she coughed and spat, warm liquid running down the underside of her jaw to soak into the suit's neck seal. Damaged or not, some part of the suit's systems responded, spraying cool water over the inside of the muzzle guard to clean the bite controls, inhaling the bloody water to stop it from obscuring her vision.

Warning: automatic rescue systems active. Tenazine infusion started.

The pain just went, washed away by a wonderful fuzziness that spread from her right to envelop her entire torso, followed immediately by an incredible clarity and sense of power. Unnoticed, the suit stiffened and contracted, holding the bones still and preventing any further injury. All fear washed away by the chemical cocktail, Tuthi snarled something indistinct, then came up onto her knees, clenching her paw into a fist and punching it at the shimmering shape of the servitor. The cannon roared--

Ammunition feed failure.

--then died, the few rounds serving only to attract the creature's attention. That violet-wreathed head snapped around, and light flared about her chest.

Alarms shrieked and the urgent babble of the suit's advisory system became incomprehensible; error after error tumbled out of the speakers in her helmet, the desperate words running together as the gunshot crackle of fracturing armour ceramic became deafening. Her visor displays flickered and failed, then returned a low resolution contrasty mess, showing nothing but flares and shadows. There was a sudden acceleration, strong enough that her vision blurred, then all motion and gunfire stopped.

She was suspended, half a length off the ground, staring into the grinning face of the servitor, the bright point at the tip of its horn the only light source she could see. Another rapid blur of motion and she was spun around and pulled backwards, facing what was left of her squad and the other reaction team that shared the hangar, only visible as vague shapes in the darkness. The sudden movement did something in her chest, and she grunted as some of the pain leaked past the efforts of her suit's medical systems.

"I bet you can't see anything through that. Let me just..."

The words were distant, muffled by the padding and hermetic seals, and Tuthi was too busy trying not to vomit from the new pain and the movement that had catalysed it, to pay much attention. Good as the purge systems were, this was not something anyone wanted to try outside of training, and she had no desire to drown in the contents of her own stomach.

There was a sound like the breaking of a perfect crystal, accompanied by a flash of violet light that was inside the suit's helmet. More liquid, warm and smelling of rusty iron, flowed down the side of her throat. There was a sudden wrenching sensation, like someone was trying to unscrew her head, and her helmet was pulled away and flung high into the air. Gasping, ears ringing from the sudden change in pressure, Tuthi looked blearily out at the remains of the reaction teams, fearing the worst, squinting as she tried to locate soldiers she'd worked and trained with for tens of megaseconds.

Bodies, shattered and sliced, lay scattered about the hangar deck, each within its own spreading pool of dark liquid. The real wall of the hangar... Tuthi squinted, trying to resolve the starfish shapes half way between floor and ceiling, just starting to leak something viscous, then her mouth dropped open. All true; this one thought the briefing had to be wrong. She tore her gaze away from the suits that had been thrown so hard that they had splashed, eyes searching the floor for any survivors at all. There were gryphons, dazed-looking shells of their former selves, that staggered drunkenly in small circles or cradled twisted limbs while hunched against the wall or dropshuttle.

Only one of the armoured People, unidentifiable without the tagging systems in her helmet, still moved, holding a severed arm with bemusement and looking between it and the stump it had come from, as trying to work out how to reattach it. The fingers, held rigid by electronic rigor, were clenched tight around the grip of the trooper's stubby, wide-mouthed antipersonnel laser. That could have been Tuthi. There was little blood; automatic tourniquet constriction of the electromuscle bands had seen to that. She looked away, teeth clenched. "They will kill the pony's entire family line for this," she choked out, ignoring the little warning stabs from her chest.

"They have already tried that," the pony whispered, so close to her ear that Tuthi could feel the breath. "I saved you, because you were the one who decided it would be a good idea to shoot at my sister. Just look at what happens when you hurt one of mine." Violet light closed around the other suit, effortlessly lifting it in the air and out over the lip of the hangar.

Tuthi growled, a low warning rumble that turned into a cough, filling her mouth with bloody phlegm. "Don't you--" The nimbus vanished and the suit dropped out of sight. There was a moment of silence, then a dopplered scream that cut off abruptly.

"See?"

She twisted, trying to snap her teeth shut around the creature's muzzle, but only found the hard surfaces of its muzzle guard. With a sudden jerk, the pony pulled her out of reach, then shook her violently. When the world stopped spinning there was more blood in her mouth, and fragments of something hard and jagged. Tuthi spat in the direction of the servitor, spraying it with blood and broken teeth.

"Are you ready for your flying lesson now?"

There was a flicker of motion in the deep shadow under one of the dropshuttles, an unfolding and twisting that was barely visible in the harsh light around the pony, but Tuthi recognised it nonetheless. This one is dead anyway, but at least she might see the servitor go first. "No, not just family," she said loudly, the last word ending in a gasp, "the pony's whole corral will be euthanized--" She broke off, silenced by the thunderous howl of the paired rotary railguns in the belly turret, sparks and explosions tracking out towards the servitor. Too soon, idiot! She cursed whoever was operating those guns; even one of the cannon could out-shoot both reaction teams combined.

The creature whinnied in surprise and darted sideways, then the world blurred one last time.

===

The turret, a squat thing that Gravity could have sworn wasn't there when she first teleported in, exploded in a shower of armour fragments when the suit struck it, the still running feeder chutes spraying hundreds of shiny, needle tipped cylinders across the already cluttered hangar floor. She wasted no time, and clipped off the landing gear with brief flashes of violet light, letting the heavy machine slam down on to the concrete. There was a yell from somewhere inside the dropshuttle and she nodded, paused to orientate her defences towards the yawning expanse of the shaft, then started to pull the aircraft apart.

Armour, great plates of the stuff, were cut from the hull and dropped in a haphazard pile. Made of thaumically aligned single crystals of metalloceramic laced with fullerene strands, and thick enough to shrug off impacts that would smash a power suit to ruin, it sliced as easily as cloudstuff under the single atom thickness of Gravity's pulsing force fields. Behind the hull were machines; generators, laser optics, ammunition storage, and a whole host of less identifiable items. The mare cut and pulled, taking only moments to expose the crew deck to the hard light of her magic.

Cowering in one corner, nursing a badly burned arm, was a Dog. He was leaning against a console, staring at her with wide, frightened eyes, his mouth opening and closing but no words emerging. "Nice try," Gravity snarled, pulling him out by one ankle to dangle a length above the ground.

"No, please! This one is only a tech--" His arms came up, paws held protectively in front of his face.

"I don't care what you are; you work for them, the monsters that maimed my dam and tried to cut up my sister while she was still alive!" Gravity was shouting now, and swung the Dog out over the half kilolength drop to the big doors below.

"Valith has a daughter, p-please, don't kill this one," he wailed, voice high and near unrecognizable, tears running down his muzzle to drip off the tip and down into the pit.

Gravity stared at him, suddenly aware of her audience of shocked gryphons. The terror in his voice finally penetrated her anger, cooling the white heat of her rage to something closer to that of liquid helium. Fusion and Spiral warned you about this. Don't let your emotions make your decisions. She nodded, pulling the Dog back in and depositing him high up on the slick top of one dropshuttle. He whined pitifully, paws scrabbling until they found purchase on a gap between two buckled plates. "Sit," she said, with a mirthless smile, "stay."

There was the sudden thunder of detonations at close range, and the immediate and immensely bright, blue-white, flashes of some explosive she'd never experienced before. They burst across the whole arc of her field, a geometric array of submunitions that would have filled the hangar from floor to ceiling and wall to wall if it wasn't for her magic intercepting them. Pain lanced through Gravity's head and she fell to her belly, stunned, amid the blood and wreckage, all defences failing in an instant. More shots followed, the normal crack of supersonic ammunition, passing through the space she would have occupied, had she remained standing.

Behind her, the gryphons shrieked, scrambling for cover; the sudden, predatory noises reached deep into her hindbrain and screamed warnings down her limbic system. Gravity's mind snapped back into focus and she blindly reached for some of the wreckage and rubble, pushing it out towards the opposite side of the kilolength-wide shaft in a continuous, hypervelocity jet.

The shaft was filled with the continuous thunder of irregular shapes accelerated to several times the speed of sound, the individual cracks merging to turn the whole structure into one huge organ pipe that sang a horribly loud song of destruction. Dust obscured the opposite wall as Gravity bent the rubble jet, directing it over each of the large hangars she could see. She spared no effort for defence, pouring her power into stopping any more missile launches, or whatever it was that had attacked her.

All the easily available ammunition was depleted within a few seconds, but by now the air in the centre was thick with hot, turbulent dust. Her view of the other side was completely obscured, and Gravity paused, sweating heavily, while she swept the inner surface of the shaft for any signs of movement. More of those Security aircraft, she thought, but nothing moving... yet. The range was long, but they had the same high density armour as the airtanks had, if not the thickness of the stuff, and they were visible as little knots of deeper darkness in her shadow sight.

Relaxing slightly, she inhaled deeply, muzzle wrinkling at the horribly strong scent of offal and explosives, but relishing the cool air as it passed over her overheated body. Climbing shakily to her hooves, she built another force field, a small one this time, just enough to cover her from any long range fire, then turned to the rest of the hangar. The ache in her head faded, and she marvelled at how fast her strength seemed to be returning. "Gryphons, who leads you if the Dogs are not around?" she said in a scratchy voice, then picked up one of the dropshuttle armour slabs and started to slice it into strips the length of her body.

No one moved, apart from the occasional unintentional wing flick, and Gravity grunted. Time is growing short; got to keep the Dogs occupied... still, it is what Fusion wanted. "I have no fight with your kind. If you want to leave you should do so now. Things will only get messier from this point."

One of the gryphons stood up and took a limping step towards her. "I am sersjant Eystein Koll. We cannot go; the Masters will empty the roosts and throw us at you, just as a distraction, if nothing else." His voice was flat, like he was just relaying a routine report, but there was pain and hopelessness in his eyes. "I have friends down there... I won't leave them."

"Then I will--" Kill you all. Gravity completed the sentence in her head, feeling sick. "Of course they will," she murmured, looking back over the inside of the shaft. With shadow sight the dust was no hindrance, and the agitated swirl of the gryphon roosting barracks was clearly visible against the thaumically empty backdrop. Their communications are gone... I suppose no one has reached them for orders yet, but they will. The bright glimmers of each gryphon clearly showed the layout of their roosts; they had stayed confined, only starting to venture near the exit tunnel. Perhaps that is their only way out?

"So much to do," Gravity whispered, sweeping the whole structure with her shadow sight. I have bloodied them, but there are far more here than when Fusion talked to Random. They will reply in kind, and I have to keep them here. Ears folding back and heart rate accelerating, the mare licked her lips, shifting her weight from hoof to hoof in an unconscious desire for motion, while she studied the base.

The dense support members were obvious, an airy lattice of steel bones overlain with thick, metal fibre and fullerene reinforced concrete that lined the central shaft and penetrated deep into the ground. Half a kilolength down from the surface, where the shaft apparently stopped, wasn't a section of floor, but a huge set of doors, cantilevered out from the walls and covering a cavity filled with... Shapes, things with densities that far exceeded mere structural steel, moved down in the darkness. Compact, thick-hulled spheroids and longer, cylindrical forms, dark and without any sign of magic, they no doubt moved by technology alone.

Within the worm-chewed volumes surrounding the empty core were a multitude of compartments and isolated spaces, places that were accessible through only a few routes and separated by heavy walls. This place is built for war, and to take damage, Gravity thought. Damage to one area is blocked by those barricades. She traced the shapes, locating things that were different and might be important to the Dogs.

Gravity snorted and shook her head. Despite all that had taken place, really very little time had passed since Fusion's attack, but already there was a response. The chaotic swirl and boil of gryphon motion condensed into purposeful movement, a scattering of golden points issuing forth from the deep-set barracks and flying down their exit tunnels towards the main shaft. Scouts, I think, while the rest prepare. Someone must have finally remembered them. Our battle is not with you, the blue mare thought, but with your masters. Standing at the lip of the hangar, head out over the precipice, Gravity took a bundle of her armour rods and balanced them in mid air, angled to point at the barracks entrance, then pushed.

The silence was shattered by the explosive crack of metal accelerated to obscene velocities. The armoured portal -- designed, she suddenly thought, to keep the soldiers in, should the Dogs have trouble with their slave army, rather than to protect them from an outside attack -- to the first gryphon roost exploded in a cloud of pulverised concrete peppered with shards of burning metal. A wave of darkness expanded out from the impact point, the little golden lights of gryphon wings extinguished as their exit tunnel collapsed. The majority recoiled and resumed their agitated swirl, seemingly trapped in their roost.

Gravity turned her attention to the other two barrack roosts, examining their construction for the brief moments while she prepared the next batch of projectiles. It is true; they are isolated, she thought, there are very few connections to the rest of the base... truly designed to keep them away from the Dogs. Gryphons were moving in each of these, but not as many as she had imagined, and far fewer than in the first. Still no communications, she suddenly thought, they really do obey orders, just like us. The next sheaf of metal rods left her side, accelerating to several multiples of the speed of sound before they had travelled more than a body length.

Sersjant Koll flinched, foreclaws clamped to each side of his head. "What did you just do?" he shouted, fumbling for the weapon slung between his wing roots.

Gravity pulled the stubby gun free and hurled it over the edge. "As far as I can tell, your kind are housed in isolated sections of this place. Is that right, that the only exit is into the shaft?" She kept her attention out into the void, watching for any movement in the hangar bays on the other side of the shaft. I can't believe I got them all... There were a few golden lights still among the deep shadows, and she sighed quietly. She hefted another bundle of projectiles, throwing them into those bays, aiming for the heavy masses of the dropshuttles. When she had finished, there were fewer lights.

Koll opened and closed his beak a couple of times, shaking his head as if to shed some annoying insect. "Yes," he said, far louder than he needed to. "What did you do?"

"I have sealed them in; no one will get out to die in some pointless show of force. Your friends are as safe as they can be." She stared at him for a moment, then raised one wing and gestured to the dust filled emptiness. "Far safer than you are. Leave now, get as far from here as you can." The mare cocked her head to one side, refolding her wing under the carapace plate. "Tell every gryphon that you see that there is another way; the rule of the Dogs can be broken." And I intend to smash and stomp and kick, until those that survive, until every Dog on this world, trembles at the mention of my name.

"How do I know you didn't just kill them all," Koll said, voice harsh and angry. "Why should I trust you?"

Gravity nodded and threw another bundle of projectiles deep into the base, breaching deep protected compartments one after another with long streams of fast metal, then turned her head to look at the sersjant. "You're still alive, aren't you?"

===

The gryphons had just cleared the lip of the shaft, some under their own power, some carried in makeshift slings, when an object, dark and blocky, fell past the lip of the hangar like a bird with its wings closed. A few levels further down, blue jets of plasma speared out from its underside, arresting the fall with a suddenness that must have left the occupants bruised and stunned, and filling the complex with a shrill shriek. Lines of bright incendiaries spun out from a turret on its dorsal surface, the scream of the paired rotary cannon competing with the railgun crack of Gravity's attack. In the dark of the shaft, all the lights extinguished and any glow from the moons or debris ring obscured by billowing clouds of pulverised concrete and condensed metal oxides, the flash from the ammunition was a regular, staccato flicker in the gritty fog.

There was no glow of thaumic systems, so Gravity followed it by the drive plume and the feel of moving mass. The lack of the smartest parts of their targeting systems, coupled with the rapid plummet in an attempt to get within range before she could respond, did nothing for the aircraft's accuracy, and impacts blasted across the whole side of the shaft. The mare flinched at the closest shots, her own force field pulsing violet as the stray rounds struck it; the impacts enough to make her grunt, carrying far more power than those from personal weapons, and she shot back with a spray of small metal fragments.

Golden sparks flashed over the half-hidden shape and the guns went silent and the drives flickered; the vehicle staggered in the air, spinning and tumbling, the high-pitched whistle of plasma becoming erratic. Within moments the increasing gyrations brought it into contact with the side wall of the shaft, and it crashed through into the office spaces beyond. Blue-white light flashed, startlingly bright, and the floor of the hangar, a body length of metal-reinforced concrete, jumped under Gravity's hooves. A ringing silence descended upon the complex, punctuated by the random detonation of ammunition in the crashed airtruck, then a fifty length patch of shaft wall erupted.

Blocks of concrete and metal, some bigger than the original airtruck, blasted out from the wall trailing lines of pulverised stone, bouncing off the opposite side before raining down upon the doors at the bottom of the shaft. More noise from above, hard to hear against the crash and rattle of falling rock, made Gravity look up. The mare grinned savagely, then tossed her head, horn slashing a lurid violet line through the air. More of her collection of projectiles vanished, not a loose pile of fixings and pebbles like the first time, but length-long strips of high density fullerene reinforced metal armour cut from the vehicles in the hangar with her.

In the airspace above the shaft there were a series of near-simultaneous flashes, the blue-white of failing superconductors, then half a dozen vicious detonations sent visible shock waves through the dusty air. Ears and body protected by spells she'd learned for the dangerous environment of a satellite kinetic launch facility, Gravity stood at the lip of the hangar and screamed out into the fogged, lightning illuminated air, unable to contain her excitement. Eyes wide and wings flared, she pawed the ground, surrounded by a halo of violet magic. "No more Masters, do you hear me? No more!"

Each word was punctuated by another push, another metal bar accelerated to a kilolength a second and aimed at some feature in the complex. The seconds ticked by, but in total it had been only a few hundred seconds since she'd arrived at the sector Security hub.

14 - Her Master's Voice

Author's Note

Preread by: KMCA
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and Caliaponia (Just Passing Through).

14 - Her Master's Voice

=== Chapter 14: Her Master's Voice ===

Orgon blinked in surprise as his wall screen froze, a 'connection lost' symbol at its centre. The display updated, producing a warning he'd only seen in simulations.

# Electronic warfare defences active; room sealed. External comms offline. Backup O2 active: 9.7 kiloseconds remaining. #

At the same moment, the main lights went out, leaving the room in shadows. Moments later the emergencies flickered on, a pale illumination from one of the ceiling panels, but everything else was dead. The silence was total; even the subliminal hum of the recirculating fans had faded to nothing. The Sector Chief sniffed, his muzzle wrinkling. Is that smoke? He pushed back from his desk, ears going straight up as the floor shivered under his paws. The silence was replaced by the rumble of distant thunder, and he glanced briefly at the ceiling. The noise, a long, drawn-out basso-profondo groan, like that of a waterfall or some giant, out of tune set of organ pipes, went on and on, showing no sign of stopping.

He looked down at his comms bracer, which resembled a civilian model, but actually concealed a level of computing power and capability on par with a portable ground station. It still functioned, although it was complaining mightily about the loss of its crystal thaumic quantum processor array, and its inability to connect to any nodes other than his desk. Orgon stood up and strode to the door, frowning as the armoured portal failed to open at his approach. This room is specially shielded, he thought, carefully touching the smooth ceramic surface of the door.

The material was warm to the touch and getting hotter; hot enough that he could feel the radiated heat on the furless tip of his muzzle. Hissing with displeasure, he put his bracer into search mode. Anything with a significant cable run has been affected. These walls, with their kilolengths of woven superconductor shielding... Somewhere behind that wall, ferocious eddy currents had quenched the fine wires and melted them to molten slag at Maker-knows what temperature, and the path of least resistance for the heat was right into this room. That explains the smell. At least it saved this one's comms from that fate... and his arm. He glanced at the display of the device, its output now restricted to a patch of electrochromic polymer half the size of his paw. Not that there is anything to it to connect to. Orgon thought for a second, then carefully loosened the catches holding the machine in place.

From the other side of the armoured door to his office came a muffled pounding, then the sound of his personal assistant's voice raised in protest. He raised an eyebrow at that, then took a step back from the door. A flex of a paw put his nondescript bracer into a mode that no civilian model ever had, his claws curling around to find the unobtrusive control that, to all but the most careful laboratory examination, appeared purely decorative. Within the supposedly solid casing, made from what appeared to be a single sculpted slab of high end fullerene composite, shapes of nanostructured carbon silently twisted and moved, opening a millilength wide port in the front of the bracer.

Innocuous crystal grain boundaries split apart throughout the device, opening channels and cavities where before there had been none, allowing the now apparent mechanical components to move and connect with each other. Bars, wheels and levers grasped the first of a score of diamondoid needles, defect free devices themselves packed with complex fullerene machinery, and placed it in an atomically perfect barrel that terminated at that tiny port. Behind it lay a dense-packed cylinder of carbon nanotubes, millions upon millions of microscopic springs that far outperformed those made by even the very best alloys, compressed by tremendous forces and held confined by walls of diamond, ready to be released at a touch.

There was a slight vibration, felt where the bracer rested against the bones of his wrist. Orgon's smile widened slightly. That still works. No matter what the enemy could do to electronic or thaumic systems, his personal weapon was a purely mechanical device made only of carbon atoms placed in novel and interesting ways, and completely resistant to any form of subversion. There was enough strain energy in what passed for his gun's propellant to punch those perfect needles through a gryphon's armour at close range and, once inside something soft, more nanotube springs would turn the projectile into a miniature grenade. He bent his arm at the elbow, pointing the now lethal weapon at the door, and waited.

Moments later there was a groan, and the heavy door was limed with faint flickers of pearly radiance. Little cracking and tinkling noises, the quiet noises of microcracks propagating through armour ceramic, made his ears twitch, and he moved a little further away. There was a sharp bang, then the door flew back into its recess, letting in a flood of white light.

There was a shape in that light, a quadrupedal shadow behind a point of eye-aching brilliance. An instant later the glare died, revealing the swaying form of Merlon, breathing heavily and looking back at him with tired eyes. Behind her was a trail of wreckage, of equipment packs grabbed in haste and doors passed through without actually being opened. "Master," the mare said, swallowing heavily and coughing as she tried to get enough air to form a coherent sentence, "the rogue is--"

"Here. Yes, that much is obvious." Orgon strode forwards, disarming his shape-shifting weapon and nearly colliding with the pony as she hurriedly backed away. The air in the outer room, harsh with the toxic odours of incomplete combustion and burned fur, made his muzzle wrinkle. He waved sharply at Farinar, his secretary-cum-bodyguard -- not part of the job that usually called for much effort, what with the combined skills of Merlon and Orgon himself -- currently crouched behind his desk. "What is our response?"

Farinar, a slender, pale-furred male, stood up and dropped the contents of the emergency kit he'd been rooting through on the desk. He held one paw up to his chest, keeping the angry-looking burn on his forearm out of the way. "There has been no direct contact, Sector Chief. This one has sent runners, but it will take time for them to return." As he spoke, Farinar pulled out a pair of masks, passing one to Orgon before slipping the cone-shaped bag over his own muzzle and face. "Your servitor disobeyed a direct order to--"

Orgon cut him off with a sharp cutting gesture, turning to the pony. "Report; what does Merlon see?"

"There were two of them. They appeared without warning in a hangar just above deck twenty and released some kind of thaumic pulse, very similar to the counter surveillance magics taught to Security ponies." Her ears folded back and she flinched away from something that Orgon couldn't sense. Moments later there was a sudden redoubling of the sound and vibration, as if they were at the bottom of a barrel into which pebbles were being poured. "There are almost no working crystal thaumic devices left within a kilolength," Merlon said, when the noise died enough to allow speech. She pawed the ground, plastic shod hooves almost silent against the carpeted surface. "Master, I cannot guarantee your safety."

The pony has never been anything except supremely confident. The thought was like ice down Orgon's back and he gritted his teeth, then nodded. "Understood. This one needs to connect with any surviving forces." He glanced down at his bracer, noting with some surprise that it had found hundreds of comms devices and was busy mapping the rapidly expanding mesh network. Perhaps this won't be a complete disaster, after all. Must have been enough of the People in shielded rooms. Amid the lists of contacts were designators for the response units and a number of Agents, along side all the regular Security personnel. As he watched, clusters of names vanished, all People from the same departments. "What did the pony mean, 'were'?" Orgon said, distracted by the display.

"I can only see one of them now, Master. There was a pulse of magic... I've not seen anything like it before."

"This one thought that might be the case. Could the pony replicate the spell?"

Merlon's ears folded back and she shivered. "I'm sorry, Master. It was a long way away, and I--"

Orgon grunted, looking disappointed, then waved one paw. "Do not worry," he said, "keep watching them. Still no connection with the outside world; this one will have to get fresh nodes into the deep tunnels. For a second he scrolled through the active comms list, hunting for a clue as what to do next, then Orgon nodded slowly. "The whole Pit is affected; our only chance is the heavy equipment at the bottom of the shaft. If these ones can keep the rogues pinned down, then it will give Arclight time to get here." He started towards the door, followed closely by Merlon and Farinar, who looked distinctly unhappy at sharing so much floor space with the servitor. "Take Orgon to the hangar bays," he ordered, busy tapping out commands on his bracer, as the group trotted away from his office and into the noisy, smoky corridor beyond.

===

High above the darkened countryside, Fusion materialised in a flash of white light, Redshift cradled in her telekinesis. The cold air whipped through her mane and tail, feeling wonderful where it seeped between the plates of her barding. Eyes closed, she allowed herself fall, letting Redshift go and pushing her wings out through their carapace panels. The sudden exposure of so much flank to the rapidly strengthening wind ran through her like a deep draught of icy water.

"Gravity tried to prepare me, but nothing can match..." Redshift fell at her side, a silhouette in the shadow world, only marked out by his horn and the magically active inclusions in his wings.

Fusion stirred uncomfortably. His tone of voice was wrong; what should have been shock or trembling fear was actually awe. "I'm sorry if it was too--"

"No, it's not that at all!" he said, laughing and turning a quick corkscrew in the air. "It just confirms everything Grav showed me... for you to do all that must mean we do the Maker's work." His voice turned earnest, the deadly seriousness of a pony with absolute conviction. "I had my doubts, and I'm sorry for that, but what you just showed me... the light, so much light. Even the Masters named you Celestia... Celestia -- I can't think of a more fitting name."

She winced, and for a moment was back in that room, kneeling on the rubble-strewn floor before Salrath, smelling the burned electronics and feeling the knife as it-- Fusion swallowed hard, fighting to get her breathing under control. "Yes," she said weakly. "There is something going on that I don't understand, something out there that is helping us--"

"The Maker!"

Is it? Whatever it is has an agenda, and I'm not sure it really cares about us. "Well I... I don't know, Redshift. I..." Who am I to say otherwise, if it helps him through this? He might even be right.

Still with her eyes closed, Fusion studied the horizon with her shadow sight. The distant haze of the closest of Lacunae Hive's arcologies filled one quadrant with a luminescent fog of crystal thaumic systems, extending both above and below the ground. On either side the world was dark, the sky and ground the deep black of an unlit tunnel, and only lightly dusted with little chains of stars. Directly behind--

Violet light pulsed and surged from a point source that would have been too bright to look at, had she been using physical sight. Fusion reached out, sharing magic feeling for that oh-so familiar touch of her sister's mind. The connection blinked open--

--battered and scarred walls rushing past, very close, the scent of vapourised metals and burned flesh filling her nostrils. The crack of mass-driver fire and the monochromatic flash of laser light, overlain by the rumble-groan of explosions and failing masonry--

Sister! Gravity sent, and the sheer happiness in the mare's mental tone made Fusion feel slightly cold inside. Is everything going to plan?

We are en route and should be there in a few hundred seconds... don't take any stupid risks, okay? If I feel you are in trouble...

A little of the enthusiasm bled away. I know, and I will do the same for you. They have not tried to get any aircraft down the shaft again, after I destroyed the first ones, but there are plenty already here. There was a pause, and the connection wavered slightly as something detonated nearby, making Gravity hiss with pain, then her thoughts returned, just as strong as before. I wonder if Salrath is here. I might have killed her already. There was a vague sense of disappointment with the idea.

Fusion shivered slightly, turning the idea over in her mind. In a way, I hope not.

Yes, I know what you mean. I don't want her to die like that... I want to look into her eyes when she finally realises that all of this can be laid at her paws. Only then-- the thoughts broke off, replaced by a flash of rage and brief, distorted images of a biped being slowly pulled apart.

She haunts my dreams, Fusion thought. Gravity's imagined revenge made her feel a little ill, but was horribly attractive. I won't be happy until I know she's gone. The mare sighed, then brought her mind back to what they had planned. There will be more aircraft; we have to assume they will use that magic suppressor again. It might not take long to--

Then you'd better hurry, hadn't you? Gravity's thoughts turned to other things and, in the stream of sensory impressions coming down the sharing, Fusion felt the mare leap, bursting through a wall and filling the compartment beyond with brutal forces that shredded anything identifiable in an instant.

"Be safe, Gravity," she murmured, allowing the connection to narrow to a distant murmur at the back of her head, then blinked¸ rolling her eye in Redshift's direction. She smiled, trying to keep the fatigue from showing, twisting her wings to alter the curve of her descent.

He followed suit, his own grin fading. "Fusion... I didn't see much, but... did you collapse, back there? Are you feeling okay?"

"A little tired, but I'll be fine." More than a little. "What about you -- are you okay?"

"I feel ashamed," he said, all the exultant joy of the previous seconds gone. "I hid while you did all the work. I wanted to help, but I was so scared." His ears were folded back and, inside the clear hemispheres covering his eyes, she could see tears darken the fur of his cheeks. His barding was subtly scored from crest to half way down his back, the fine cats-claw scratch marks of high velocity fragment strikes marking where he had curled up in the face of the hangar battle.

Fusion frowned at this, but the marks were quite minor and hardly visible from more than a few metres away. "There's no shame in that... at the start, I was afraid all the time." Still am. So many other ponies in harm's way. "This was not a battle you could have helped with. Without our strange brand of power... You did very well... the first fight is always the worst." And you've not really had one of your own, yet, have you, Fusion? "Are you ready for the next bit?" She turned over and angled towards Naraka. Her speed built, Redshift struggling to keep up until she reached out and pulled him along.

"I want to see my little colt again... how could I not be ready?" The tremor in his voice was still there, but suppressed, controlled by a measure of determination. "Even after the sharings with Gravity--" He swallowed, closing his eyes and taking a great, gasping breath. "I didn't imagine it would be like that."

"No." They flew on in silence for a hundred wingbeats and Fusion let her body cool from its exertions. "They seem to have limitless resources for war. I wish we could find a compromise with the Dogs... but that can't happen while they hold our kin. The gryphons, though... I want to spare as many as I can, but they seem to be very loyal. I only hope Gravity gave them a chance." She stared into the slipstream, eyes narrowed, and accelerated, her mind reaching for Lilac in their distant mountain hideaway.

The young stallion was waiting for her, and grabbed onto the contact with all the relief of a flyer pulling out of a flat spin just in time. You are all okay? Is Gravity okay? With the fast, urgent babble, came an image of stone walls, still cold and coated with fine layers of hoar frost from the energy-draining magics used in their construction. There were three other ponies with him; Packet, forelegs held rigid by slim braces and straps, and Ogive, one side of her a livid, furless pink. There was a distinct odour of cooked flesh, despite all the medical efforts over the previous day, but Ogive seemed to be awake and was watching the last pony, Trocar, work on her wing, a slightly vacant expression on her lopsided face. There was a gasp, loud enough to echo off the stone walls of their new tunnels, and Fusion knew Lilac had opened a sharing with Gravity.

We are all fine, Fusion sent, while Gravity grunted indistinctly, busy doing something violent inside a collection of narrow passageways. Some of the distant events leaked through via Lilac; the choking smell of burned flesh and plastics, only kept at bay by a field of violet magic about the other mare's body. Fusion pushed the information away, knowing that she would only get distracted by worry. Lilac... don't look too closely at what Gravity is doing.

N-no, came the shaky reply, it's okay. I've seen similar things in the infirmary.

Something twisted inside Fusion. "No, it's not okay," she whispered, teeth clenched and fighting to keep the accompanying thought to herself. It's not okay that you should be exposed to this. It's not okay that-- She took a deep breath. You've had no foalhood at all, Lilac, and now we've dragged you into this.

...and what would my future have been, Fusion? Lilac thought.

She flinched, realising that the last thought had leaked into the sharing. Not good, I suppose.

No. I asked Trocar about that. He didn't want to say, but I pushed... The place is like the inner parts of Naraka; you are in for the duration, until you are more useful dead than alive. There was a feeling of the youngster getting stiffly to his hooves, magic flowing over his paralysed hindquarters like oil. I hardly remember my parents, and none of the ponies at the Institute were allowed to really talk to me. This-- He swept one wing with its collection of clipped feathers in a wide arc, encompassing the wounded ponies and the dimly lit artificial cavern, the far end filled with neatly stacked cubes of stone, each half a length on a side. --despite everything, is still better. I have friends now.

I just wish it could be different, but it's not. Fusion shook herself vigorously, yawing violently for a few seconds. Sorry. Are you ready? I want you to contact Scalar and the others, and keep a check on all of us. If anypony goes dark--

I remember.

He sounded a little irritated, and Fusion smiled slightly. I know. See you soon. "We have to get going," she called out to Redshift. "The teleport spell is different enough that I won't risk using it where it might attract attention."

"Yes yes, I know. We have to sneak in, and that's why I had to come. I just don't know if I'm up to it."

"I'm sure you'll be fine." And if not, we can always fall back on 'pulling the roof off'.

===

The corridor was half collapsed, littered with rubble and metal reinforcing bars, and in total darkness, apart from the occasional dropped chemlight from a scavenged emergency kit. In the several hundred seconds since she'd pulled her Master out of the trap of his office, Merlon had needed to use her magic four times to open gaps large enough to pass through. She resisted the urge to wince as another series of vibrations rippled through the floor; shadow sight showed the traitor, blazing like a beacon where she stood high up on one wall of the Pit. The pony was far too bright to examine closely, but Merlon could see the glare of her power flare as she hurled projectiles at gut-wrenching speeds into various points around the installation. Not just one shot and move on, but concentrated volleys that drove hyperkinetic metal deep into the guts of her home and workplace.

How-- The thought was ruthlessly suppressed; she knew there was no value to that line of inquiry. What was far more important was the why. The first few seconds of the attack had effectively neutralised the Security Hub as an entity, cutting off the head of the local organization and allowing the body to run aimlessly in random circles while it haemorrhaged People and capabilities. Why is that pony still here? She must know there will be a response, and they have both experienced Arclight. There is no shielded chamber here. The idea of the thaumic suppressor catching her still inside the Pit filled Merlon with a kind of queasy horror; the thought of being trapped with her Master in this ruin, unable to protect him from any of a multitude of dangers, drove her onwards.

She desperately wanted to pick him up and gallop or fly into the depths, not stopping until she was in one of the deep tunnels and away, far away, from all this, but Orgon had forbidden it. Instead, he trotted just behind her, and she carefully adjusted her pace to keep within his capabilities. All the while the floor shuddered and the thunder rolled on, sometimes close and sometimes far, as the pony continued the assault. Which one is it, Fusion or Gravity? Her Master had shared the Board's files on the two traitors, and their specialities were clearly identified, so this was almost certainly Gravity. Not for the first time, she wanted to weep at the loss of the intelligence from those Security ponies back at the Institute. If only I could have talked to them before they were euthanized!

The other one must have caused the thaumomagnetic pulse; it is interesting that she's not taken any further part in the destruction. There is some limit to their power, then. Shortly afterwards, the pony had vanished in an odd bubble of magic, something that seemed to turn a little patch of the shadow world inside out. What pattern must they be using to cast that travelling spell? Merlon worried away at the idea, while waiting for her Master to clamber over a shifting rubble pile. On the other side was a body, half crushed by falling masonry. She moved the corpse gently, laying it to one side while subtly reinforcing the unstable rocks under Orgon's paws.

There was a scrabbling sound from one side of the pile, where it had mostly blocked one of the many doorways along this corridor. A paw appeared, bloodied and with digits at odd angles, pushing ineffectually at the stones, before being replaced by an eye that peered out through a gap no larger than a hoof. "Get this one out of here, servitor." The voice was husky and full of pain, but Merlon didn't need the order to start work. She was pulling rocks away as soon as she knew the Person was trapped inside, ever mindful of Orgon's progress, then stopping, the job not nearly done, when he waved at her.

"That one will have to await rescue by the emergency services."

Her Master's voice was casual and disinterested; the tones of someone busy with a task that was taking most of his attention. Merlon turned away, flicking her ears forward, but still able to hear the suddenly panicked cries from the trapped Person. There was a flicker of pain, cats-claws along the sides of her head, but it was a faint ghost of a sensation and soon vanished. The grey mare had long ago realised that the Sector Chief -- whoever that happened to be, and she had outlasted several -- was the only Master that really mattered.

===

In the shadow world, the glowing pyramid of Naraka stretched out before them both. Fusion and Redshift skimmed the forest, weaving between the taller trees under the light of the paired moons. Heliostats decorated the horizon, their beams of reflected sunlight focused on the large farms that occupied everything in Lacunae territory that wasn't forest or mountain, and illuminating the bottoms of clouds ready to water the land.

The outermost territory of the Eugenics Board site was dotted with pairs of ponies, involved in the things ponies were ordered to do when at such a place. Some of them moved when she passed overhead, and she sensed their regard, but that was all. They were all busy with other, more intimate, matters.

They alighted at the inner perimeter, dropping down between the trees to stand next to the high fence. I might be able to shield us, but... No overflights of Naraka, so we'll just have to walk in. Her ears twitched and swivelled, hunting for any sign that they'd been discovered, but there was only the occasional faint gasp or other sound of pleasure. Her horn flickered, but Redshift's own magic interfered with the rapidly forming patterns.

"Wait... there are circuits in this wall. Nothing thaumic... just sensors and such."

Fusion twitched, her ears going back. Now that she was looking for it, the flows of electrical power were clearly visible. Nothing like the hard lines of energy she'd seen in the Dog's armour suits, or the power systems of their aircraft, but faint and subtle things, like the vague phosphorescence of spider's silk in the moonlight. It was strung out along the top and bottom of the tall barricade. "Do they know we are here?" she said, voice tight. Her power bloomed, tightly coiled patterns that flooded her mind with the potential to uproot trees and turn stone into incandescent vapour.

Redshift took a nervous step backwards; the magic was not in the real, but the precursors of power were obvious at this distance. "No, don't!" he whispered, the fear back in his voice. "They all face inwards. It must be for the gryphons." He made a gesture with one wing, and Fusion stared through the dark green barricade material, seeing the golden armatures of gryphon wing bones where the creatures were grouped in little clusters behind the fence.

"Right, yes. That makes sense." She took a deep breath, and her head lowered. "Sorry. First test for you, Redshift."

The stallion's eyes closed and he nodded, little glimmers of light condensing about his horn. "There's nothing very complex here, just dots of computronium all linked together. I can easily ask--" His eyes opened and he smiled tentatively. "There's a local buffer, and I've convinced them all to loop the output back into the network. Nothing we, or any of the people in the external fields, do will be seen. Is that okay?"

"That's perfect-- ah, how much did you affect? I didn't see much magic."

"It's a mesh network, and there is a firmware update mechanism -- the modification is passed from one node to another..." He cringed slightly at Fusion's look of surprise. "That's not a problem, is it? I thought--"

She shook her head. "Not at all, just a little more than I expected. How far?" She focused her magic, calling up a simple spell she'd used before as a spying tool, then wedding it to other magics. The world around her seemed to dim and distort, filling with heat haze like the air above a metal surface left out in the sun, even while her fur grew cold. Little coils of mist spun out from the underside of her belly, and she changed the spell, reducing its intensity until they disappeared. I might not use it directly any more, but that little bit of magic the Maker-thing gave me is still useful.

"Do you think the concealment will work?" Redshift asked, a shiver running through his body as he felt the cold bite. "We only had that gryphon sensor to test it on." He looked around, peering into the deeper darkness that now surrounded them both. "I don't like being blind."

"I see no reason why not. It's obvious the Dogs get the best armour and weapons, but an infrared camera is a very simple thing." More magic, a careful illusion to cover the inside of the fence and what she was about to do. A point of light, like a spot of sunlight through a lens, scribed a tall oval in the fence, then she pushed the cut polymer through and stepped after it. "You'll just have to use your shadow sight for a while; it won't be for long. How much area does your little modification cover, Redshift?"

"Just this segment, perhaps a quarter of the perimeter. I didn't want to take a chance in making something that could propagate through the interlinks." Redshift followed her, taking the section of fence and resealing it with a little of his own power. "We should use the armour as well."

Fusion nodded, and her armour darkened and mottled slightly, matching the shades of the forest floor. Encased in a shifting bubble of darkness, the pair made their way towards the base of Naraka's main building, avoiding the groups of sleeping gryphons by scent and the gentle golden glow of their wings.

===

There was a door at the centre of each face of the pyramid. A heavy thing made of brushed metal, set deep into the polished black stone of the sloping wall, it was four times her height and, as far as she could tell, nothing moved behind it. Under the influence of Redshift's magic, the controls flashed green and the door lifted a single length, then stopped. Light tried to flood out of the gap, but the same magic that wrapped Fusion in darkness folded the glare back in on itself, preventing any more than a faint glow from escaping. They crept into the wide, empty corridor on the other side, then Redshift let the door close.

The stallion glanced nervously ahead of them, nostrils flaring as he sampled the air. The passageway was square in cross-section and lined with smaller doors; forty bodylengths further on there was a large junction chamber filled with lifting gear and bulky storage containers. "I've done the same thing to the local cameras," he whispered, "they are all very basic machines."

"Would you know if it doesn't work?" Fusion murmured back, relaxing her hold on the remains of the modified atmospheric lensing spell that was still curling the light about them. Unconstrained, the air rushed in, flooding her muzzle with the odours of the building. Ponies, lots of ponies, and many gryphons, their unfamiliar scents blurring together into a melange of feathers and fur. Underneath that was Dog, again many unfamiliar individuals, but... Fusion inhaled deeply, shutting off her shadow sight and closing her eye. That is familiar... the trace was too faint, and she grunted with displeasure, sweeping her power through the walls, matching the layout with Spiral's memories. Ramp... there. She silently indicated one of the smaller doors, and Redshift's horn glowed as he manipulated the speck of computronium that served it as a lock.

"I can block any alarm from a device I'm modifying, but that won't help if there is something monitoring the responses remotely. There's no way I'd know." He poked his head through the opening, flicking a wing at Fusion. "It's clear... I can read the alert state of the cameras, and there is no motion," he said, when she looked at him questioningly.

"You are a useful pony to have around, Redshift," she said, pushing past him and heading down the ramp. The Dogs use a lot of electronics in with their thaumic systems... this is better than I had hoped. "Come on." The ramp, obviously designed for the movement of heavy equipment, or perhaps herds of ponies and gryphons, coiled down into the depths and past many levels, each with its own set of doors. They saw no one, but cameras on the other sides of the sealed doors indicated motion, and shadow sight showed the familiar glows of the Dog's comms bracers. There were relatively few, most likely those responsible for making sure the inmates didn't get into trouble while they were supposed to be sleeping.

They were much closer than Spiral had been, and Fusion focused on the areas they were descending towards. Below ground, each level of Naraka's internal structure was arranged in rings that mirrored the above ground separation of visitor and inmate. On the outer part of the ring, adjacent to the ramp they were descending, were long lines of small chambers, each containing one or more ponies or gryphons. The area within was mostly empty, except for some high ceilinged volumes with no obvious purpose. At the very centre, like the core of some titanic, buried apple were...

"What is that in the middle, Red?" Fusion said, puzzling over the sight. There were a lot of crystal thaumic machines in regular arrays, but some of the colours were off. Amid the laser-pure colours she expected, were those in a rainbow of pastel hues. "Is it some kind of computing infrastructure?" It would make sense... genetic and proteomics must need a lot of processing power.

Redshift was quiet for a few moments, then his ears went back. "I... I'm not sure. It's almost like..." He shook his head "No. I won't believe it; it must be something else."

"What is it?" Fusion stared at Redshift; the stallion looked very unsettled and was shifting from hoof to hoof in little jogging steps, and seemed ready to bolt. She began to feel uneasy, his sudden increase in tension almost infectious. Unbidden, her power stirred, and she pushed it away.

Red shook his head again, looking suddenly frightened. "Don't know for sure... don't want to say just yet."

"Is it a threat?"

"No," he said reluctantly, voice so low she could hardly hear him, "not in the normal sense. Come on, I don't want to hang around here any longer than we have to." He dropped his head, resolutely looking away, then nudged her shoulder to get her moving.

===

The deeper they went, the fainter the Dog smell became, overwhelmed by that of pony. They must put many of the ponies inside at night. Redshift had paused, his nostrils flaring as he sampled the air. "I can smell Shock Diamond!" he said, in an excited whisper that sounded very loud amid the hard surfaces of the spiral ramp. He cringed, ears sweeping the surroundings, then relaxed slightly. "Sorry. My colt has been through here, I'm sure of it."

Fusion nodded. "Yes... Random, too, I think. We didn't see them outside, so they must be in here somewhere." She examined her surroundings in more detail; there were no ponies on this level, so she carried on walking. In these close quarters it was hard to identify individuals, as many were clustered together into small groups she'd seen earlier, strung out along what she assumed were corridors.

What is going to happen when the first pony here sees us... will they try to raise the alarm? What should I do if that happens? The thought was painful, and she let it sit for a few moments as they descended. They had scavenged a number of the suppressor devices from the Security team that had attacked them at the Institute, but it was nowhere near enough for the number of ponies present. "Perhaps not," she murmured, shaking her head at Redshift's questioning look, they will assume we are here because it was ordered.

At the next exit from the ramp the slight odour that had teased her at the surface suddenly intensified, and she placed her muzzle against the crack under the door and inhaled deeply. Recognition was like being hit between the eyes with a hammer.

--a paw holding a black knife, sharp claws on her belly, the harsh whine of a bone saw spooling up--

"That's Salrath!" she choked out, involuntarily jumping backwards, her heart thundering.

"She's here?!" Redshift said, voice high and almost a whinny. "Why would she be here?"

Fusion took deep breaths, forcing the irrational panic away. She's just one Dog. "This is a trap, it has to be."

Redshift was trotting on the spot, hooves clattering on the stone floor. "What are we going to do? If they know we are here--"

"Stop it, Red," Fusion said, stepping into the stallion and pushing him off balance. "This is why Gravity is doing what she's doing. Splitting up makes us vulnerable, but we can move so much faster than them... kick and retreat, kick and retreat." He nodded shakily, and she stepped back. "We'll just have to be careful, that's all." And if she is here, perhaps I can catch up with her...

"I guess it doesn't change much." Redshift swallowed, then gestured at the door with one wing. "This is the first floor that has ponies in residence. Shall... shall we go through here while I look for the comms bay?"

The hope in his voice was almost painful to listen to. We need to search for our foals anyway, so why not combine both jobs? "Okay, Red, but no stopping if we see them. Our first priority must be to cut off communications."

He nodded vigorously. "I understand. What... what will you do if Salrath is here?"

The door clicked quietly, its electronics defeated by Red's magic, and Fusion gently pushed it open. "I'll think of something, I'm sure." Something permanent-- She closed her eyes, forcing back the anger, replacing it with cold calculation. But perhaps she might be useful... I would have far fewer compunctions about using her than anyone else, and she is an Agent in their security forces.

The door opened into a short passageway that ended in another door, which in turn revealed another corridor, this one lined with floor to ceiling glass windows. The smell of familiar Dog was stronger here, and the scent of Salrath was joined by that of Korn. So you are helping them, then. I remember what you said to Gravity while I was paralysed at the Institute; I thought you might be proof that all of the Dogs are not the same. A bitter disappointment made Fusion's ears lay back, and she ground her teeth together. So be it.

===

As had been apparent by shadow sight, there were ponies in most of the little rooms. There were a mixture of groups and singletons, old and young, but the majority of the adults were mares. All were sleeping, and Fusion trotted past, hunting for any sign of her corral's foals. Hoofsteps rang out, loud and clear against the floor, but the glass-fronted stalls were obviously sound proofed, because nopony stirred at her passing. A few were awake, and followed her progress with dull, uninterested eyes, but none showed any real curiosity at her presence.

Who are they going to tell? All probably forbidden to use magic apart from under special circumstances... Her thoughts, already dark, became leaden, the weight of her anger at the numbers of her kind locked away and used as experimental subjects threatening to crush everything around her. Focus, filly. Find what you came for, then see what we can do for the rest.

The corridor finally ended in another set of doors, these ones heavily reinforced. It made no difference; they opened just as easily under Redshift's influence, the new air bringing a near-overpowering scent of gryphon. The same little rooms, but this time filled with the bird-cat hybrids. Impatient, Fusion broke into a canter, ignoring the occupants as she ran forwards.

"They all have collars," Redshift called out from a little way behind. "Some kind of control system... looks like a lot of different sensors, and something to deliver electric shocks."

"No Blessing for gryphons," Fusion growled, skidding to a stop where the corridor ended at another set of doors. "That's this floor finished; we should try the next one down."

===

Merlon, Orgon and Faraniar had descended deep into the complex, nearly down to the great shield doors that covered the lower hangar bays, when the air changed.

This corridor, one of the long rings that encircled the shaft, was a choke point for those wanting to enter the lower complex; it was packed with wounded Masters, the healthier helping the less mobile, making their slow way to the only escape route that didn't require going overland and being exposed to the attention of the pony. The downing of all the airtrucks in the Pit's airspace had made it painfully obvious that there was no escape that way, at least not until the full military response arrived.

Smoke, an acrid haze marred with the scent of combustion products, had been their constant companions, tainted now and again with the coppery tang of blood and the muzzle-wrinkling odour of burned fur. The light was poor, little more than the monochromatic glow of chemlights, with the occasional white from a functional comms bracer, rendering everything in ghastly shades of green and black. Chatter between the People was restricted to quiet monosyllables and the occasional pained utterance; the sounds from the upper levels were too distracting.

Merlon ploughed through the mass like an icebreaker through a berg cluttered fjord, using her bulk and gentle, irresistible magic to make a space for the Sector Chief. She took it all in; the little gasps when she brushed some injury, the vague look of shock in many eyes. How could you do this to us? They gave us life and this is how you repay that act of creation? Jaw set, she carried on, not slowing from the pace set by Orgon, who trailed behind her, still sending out a continuous stream of orders through his bracer's tenuous connection with the rest of the ad-hoc network.

Ahead were another set of heavy blast doors, half wedged open by a fallen boulder against the insistent pressure of their spring-powered closers. Merlon flicked her tail and flared her nostrils, questing after an elusive scent. There was a rising wind, a bare zephyr that rapidly built, carrying with it concrete dust and fragments of detritus at ever increasing speeds, blowing from the corridor behind her. The new odour, still too faint and alien to be identified, came with it.

Farinar, still walking at Orgon's side, held up one of the instruments he'd taken from the emergency kit. "This one is reading an increase in oxygen levels," he said doubtfully, waving the sensor in the air.

The mare glanced back and up, dropping briefly into shadow sight. Her mane tingled with sudden anticipation, but there was no change in the colour of the magic. The same near ultra-violet hue, swelling and pulsing in time with the roar and crash of impacts. I don't understand... something has changed, but it's not magic. Her ears pricked up and twisted backwards. The drumbeat sound of impacts still resonated through the battered frame of the complex, but along with that was something else. A rising moan, rich with complex, atonal harmonies.

Ears twitching, she unconsciously picked up the pace, earning a teeth-click of displeasure from her Master. There was a flash of pain, a feeling like needles being driven into her temples, and she slowed. Merlon whimpered, deep in her throat and near inaudible amid the shuffling, wounded horde. What is happening... what don't I understand? Her ears folded all the way back, and the urge to grab her Master and gallop away became overpowering. How can I protect him if I don't understand? Ruthlessly, the mare suppressed her instincts and focused on putting one hoof in front of the other.

The wind, now strong enough to blow her mane forward and tickle her cheeks, brought with it the sharp smell of nitrogen oxides and something else, something rich and unwholesome that was naggingly familiar. Probing the memory as a distraction from the unknown actions of the traitors, she plodded onwards, faithfully matching pace with Orgon. It was a distant thing, back when she'd gone on several field trips to support the then Sector Chief as she'd toured the results of a Maker's Path bombing campaign -- that same smell, imprinted deep in her hindbrain, was there as well. It was a Eugenics Board sub office; the terrorists had used incendiaries and burned--

Merlon's eyes went wide as the memory struck home. Soot stained corridors filled with the charred and cooked remains of the score of Masters who'd worked in the place; every one of the bodies had been pulled into a tight foetal position, backs bowed and paws clenched into fists by the thermal contraction of their tendons. Her head came up and she stopped dead, twisting her neck to stare back down the corridor and into the wind.

The warm wind.

Ears questing, she ignored Orgon's irritated look as he bumped into her rump. That atonal, multipart harmony was louder now, and she was able to pick out the individual sounds. Every one was high-pitched, starting abruptly and tailing off, and there were so many, each one different. "I thought it was just air whistling through gaps and open doors," she murmured, suddenly taking a great, gasping breath. "It's not, is it? You stupid mare." Her head flicked back around, eyes measuring the distance to the blast door.

"What is the matter with the pony?"

Merlon knew Orgon. Every aspect of his voice, the angle of his ears or whiskers, the response of his slit pupils, the way he stood and moved, all these things gave her a connection that bordered on telepathy. He'd picked up on her sudden change in demeanour, and stood stock still, looking into the warm wind with narrowed eyes. Around them, all the wounded were doing the same, their silence broken by an anxious muttering. The air suddenly became hot and, off in the distance, somewhere around the gradual bend in the corridor, there was a faint glow of ruddy, flickering light. The instrument in Farinar's paw gave off a sharp, pulsing whine.

All three stared at the machine for a moment. "A breach of the liquid oxygen reserve? Are these ones that close?" Orgon said, his voice suddenly tight. Merlon nodded, then swept her gaze along the masses of Masters still packing the corridor. They had all stopped staring and had started moving, pain forgotten, far faster than before. Panic was spreading from somewhere behind them, the previous grim silence replaced with curses and shouts. Beyond the influence of Merlon's telekinesis, fights broke out, the fitter People pulling down the less able and trampling them under paw. A shot rang out, then another, off in the distance, towards the light.

Merlon's ears folded back, and she felt a sudden intense, helpless fury. "I can't save them," she whispered. Ignoring Farinar, her eyes locked onto the Sector Chief. I might not even be able to save you. The idea twisted something inside her, and she snatched her Master up in a cocoon of magic, leaping away from Farinar and that terrible bloom of light. Orgon struggled for a moment, then relaxed, not that his movement was really noticeable against her strength and panic.

Head down, she went straight into a gallop, no longer an icebreaker, but a battering ram. Tears streaming down her cheeks, she thrust injured Masters to either side, throwing them into rubble and their comrades, raising shouts, curses and cries of pain in her wake. Behind her rump the light flared to the yellow-orange of a bonfire and the atonal song redoubled in volume as the chorus was joined by Masters just tens of lengths behind her fetlocks.

The grey mare pushed the heat back with her magic, enfolding them both in a bubble of cool air. To her left and right there were fast moving streamers of smoke, boiling off clothing and fur, then the Masters she was overtaking burst into furious flames. The song, their song, surrounded her now, loud and shrill, the Masters staggering and finally falling to the ground, until all that was left was the bellow and roar of the wind, moving far faster than she could gallop. Flames and ash, whipped into turbulent ribbons, flew past her, blocking her view of the jammed blast door.

Merlon leapt over the boulder, momentarily collapsing her defences as she passed through the narrow opening. Her feathers charred and fur curled in the unbelievable heat that washed over her body; the mare clenched her eyes tight shut, fumbling for the rock with her magic.

The body-length boulder wasn't some lump of granite or natural stone. Instead, it was a fragment of pressure-formed, fine grained concrete, laced with metal strands and chaotic coils of fullerene cable; the material of choice for bulk armour applications. It resisted her power, the propagation of cracks arrested by composite inclusions, and thoughts of failure brought with them terror and the whip of punishment. Merlon screamed, her voice hoarse and full of desperation, and convulsively pushed, forgetting everything else. Orgon tumbled from her grasp and fell to the rubble-strewn floor, paws clenched tight over his face against the sudden wash of flame-hot air.

The section of concrete exploded under the hard-swung hammer of her will, the sharp report near inaudible over the howl of the wind, and the door slammed shut, leaving the pair in hot, smoky darkness.

===

The heavy warmth of the gryphoness was almost enough to lull Korn to sleep, despite the fear-filled pounding of his heart and the throbbing ache of his bruised muzzle. This ex-soldier, the one called 'Ellisif', had pushed him against the wall and was practically sitting on top of him, while keeping watch. For some reason he didn't really understand -- and they had made no attempt to explain -- the older male they were keeping an eye on was some sort of a threat. Beats this one, he thought, they all look threatening.

Periodically, her muscles, dense slabs softened only slightly by their covering of tawny fur, would bunch and shift, either in reaction to some imperceptible change in the environment, or just to relieve the tension of sitting still. As harmless as these little movements were, each brought him to sudden alert, his own body tensing in response; he passed the kiloseconds in a kind of half panic, half exhausted, doze.

For his part, the older male seemed to have no problems in staying asleep.

The furry wall shifted and his eyes sprang open again, just in time to see two ponies in full Security barding canter past the window. The end of the leader's tail, the only part of the creature that was visible, streamed out in delicate pastels, a mix of blues, greens and pinks, from the tube of the armour's tail guard. Korn’s eyes went wide.at the sight. "She's here!" he gasped.

His guardian jerked at the sight, springing to her paws and staring intently out of the window, then turned to look at him with narrowed eyes. "You know that pony?" she said, snapping her claws to awaken the others.

"T-that was Fusion Pulse TC4668," he said, voice choked. "She's the one they are trying to catch. If she's here, that means--" he broke off, eyes darting from side to side. This one saw what the pony's kin did to the Institute... "These ones must get out; that pony is strong enough to destroy Naraka completely. The gryphon does not want to be trapped in this cell when the fighting starts!"

"That's right; you were one of the hostages, weren't you?" She stared at him a moment longer, then nodded decisively. "Svartr, Adigard. Get the door open." She gestured to the opening to the drum-shaped airlock, and both the gryphons stood up as if the order had been wired straight to their muscles.

"Don't do it," the older male said, "you'll only make things worse for all of us." He tensed, but remained laying down when all three gryphons took a step in his direction.

"This is as bad as it gets, Kafli," Ellisif said. "You weren't at the Institute when..." She looked at Korn, her head cocked to one side.

--blazing white eyes, completely empty of everything but rage, staring out above a snarling muzzle--

"Gravity Resonance TP5325," Korn said, shivering slightly. Korn is going to die in here, trapped between the pony and whatever Security decides to do. Will it be quick, or will they try and capture them again? That didn't work so well last time. The bright blossoming of a nuclear detonation, a sudden wave of searing fire and then nothing. Is that the best this one can hope for?

"...Gravity ripped through it. She slaughtered an entire Security reaction team, all by herself -- and that included holding off the ponies they had with them." There was a frank expression of disbelief in Kafli's eyes, and Ellisif shook her head. "Whatever. The important thing is that it's the dogboys they hate, not us." She extended one set of black talons, making a clawing gesture at Korn. "Isn't that right, Master?"

Korn nodded, keeping silent and watching as the pair of gryphons climbed into the lock. They braced themselves against the outside wall, wedging their talons into the gap between the rotating drum and the shell it sat in. Muscles bulged and there was an alarming creak from somewhere deep inside the wall, then a sudden crack. Losing their grip, Svartr and Adigard tumbled forwards, but the rotating section of the lock had moved.

===

Salrath stared at the gryphon in distaste. The creature, ex-flysoldat Olvir Bergthor, had the normal, slightly rank, feather-and-fur scent they all did, except with the addition of something medicinal. Missing most of the feathers on one wing, it bore the hallmarks of recent thaumic medical treatment -- livid pink skin that looked too new for an adult. It was watching her with the same intensity, great yellow eyes never leaving her face. She ran one claw pointedly along her comms bracer, and the creature finally took the hint, lowering its eyes.

Yes, think that this one can make you suffer right now, if she chooses. The thought came with some irritation; this particular gryphon was directly assigned to Captain Rthar, who was still listed as being in a different part of the Security table of organization. An oversight that Salrath will have to correct. For now, the threat, empty though it was, would have to do.

More annoying was how well Rthar seemed to be coping with the constant presence of the half crippled flysoldat. The Captain had obviously taken Orgon's instructions to heart, and had ordered the gryphon to be his bodyguard. Whatever he'd said must have been vague, because it shadowed him everywhere, even to the bathroom. There it would sit in the entrance, facing outwards, denying anybody else access by the sheer bulk of its presence.

It had decided early on that she was also on its list of potential threats to its new master, and tended to position itself between her and Rthar. Right now it sat on its haunches, long, black-tipped tail curled around the pillar holding up the Captain's chair. Rthar himself had reclined the seat all the way and was dozing, whiskers twitching with some unsettling dream.

The rest of the room, high up near the tip of the pyramid, held only the skeleton monitoring crew that normally ran Naraka during the night shift. Those few People present found any excuse to stay away from the Agent's side of the banks of consoles and associated monitors, something that made Salrath smile. One of them she knew from the testing of Corral Twenty-Seven's servitors; the chocolate-brown furred Nalka. The Analyst must really have offended someone to be stuck with this duty.

The alarm on her bracer went off, joined a moment later by Rthar's. Reflexively, she glanced down at the display, her mouth dropping open. Well, Orgon misjudged that response-- she thought in a daze as the preliminary attack report rolled in. All contact with Sector Twelve Security Hub lost; effect consistent with nuclear-pumped electrothaumic pulse weapon. All the reaction teams supposed to support these ones are gone. The fur down her spine tingled, and she got to her paws, claws nervously rattling on the butt of her holstered pistol. Command still has the forces in the deep tunnels, but Maker be damned, this will screw things up.

Rthar shunted the military analytics feed to one of the wall screens, and they both stared at it for a tenth of a kilosecond, trying to keep up with the stream of raw data pouring in from wide-ranging aircraft, satellites and the network of thaumic early warning systems spread throughout the Hive's territory. This last feed was the most interesting, and he split it off to a screen of its own. Tentative conclusions were starting to annotate the data plots, all generated by teams of specialists at the strategic defence bunkers.

"There's only one servitor there," Rthar said. "Two at the start, but now only one. Signature matches that of the fight at the Institute." The gryphon's head came up at the words, beak half opening to produce a strangled squawk. It shuffled sideways, nervously checking something on its armour's chest panel.

Then where is the other one? Salrath hissed with displeasure. Is this all just a distraction? The reports continued to flow, and she suddenly twitched. No, not a distraction -- a decapitation strike. Can they really be that smart? Her ears folded back, muzzle wrinkling in a silent snarl that was closer to fear than aggression. "Which one is missing?" she said in strangled tones, mind suddenly filled with a vision of the fury on the face of the blue servitor.

"The white one..." Rthar ran one claw over the screen, picking out the identifier. "...Fusion Pulse TC4668." He frowned, highlighting another entry. "They are pulling out our Arclight cover.

No Arclight. Korn was that one's Master... the bonds of the Blessing run deep, perhaps enough to give Salrath the edge she needs? The Agent swallowed, and suddenly felt light-headed, her tail pressed in between her legs. ...and this one fed the Student to the gryphons. "Maker no," she whispered, backing towards the lift door. Perhaps it's not too late; they might have kept Korn alive... even a recognizable corpse will do. "This one needs to review security," she said in a strangled tone, turning and lengthening her stride.

Rthar ignored her, captivated by the reams of data, and only his gryphon watched her leave.

===

Flysoldat Adigard Alfgeir grunted, pushing the rotating drum against its motors. They'd broken the locking mechanism, but there was still a lot of resistance at certain points. He glared through the narrowing gap, daring his old sersjant to make a move. The other gryphon just looked at him, anger etched in the tense muscles of his shoulders and the rigid curl of his talons where they dug into the padded floor.

Tucked in the little remaining space within the drum was Korn, trying to keep as far from Adigard's hindpaws and their extended, finger-length claws as possible. The flysoldat ignored him, focused completely on Kafli, only relaxing slightly when the rotating wall closed off the opening back to the cell. One less threat... He laughed at the thought, a quiet, creaky cackle that made Korn flinch. ...now all we need to do is escape from the Board and find some quiet niche to live out our days. Forever skulking on the edges of the People's civilization, forever looking over our shoulders. The laugh turned to a hiss of displeasure and he shook his head, pulling the drum's opening into alignment with the corridor.

Svartr and Ellisif were waiting, the latter already five bodylengths around the curve of the corridor. "Come on," she said, "I want to catch up with this 'Fusion' pony." There was a thump of displaced air and she leapt away, wings making shallow strokes and brushing the walls to either side.

Svartr joined her, leaving Adigard alone with Korn. "Get moving. They still want you dead, and we might be able to keep you alive for a while longer," he growled, prodding the Student into motion. Korn lurched into an uneven trot, already breathing heavily, and the flysoldat sighed, padding after him at an easy lope.

"Did you hear that?" Korn panted, his ears twitching.

The sound came again; the brief, quiet hiss of metal sliding on metal. "It's behind us; might be a door." Was that Kafli changing his mind? "Doesn't matter. We're going to be discovered soon enough. Keep going." He flicked out one wing, pushing the leading edge against Korn's back and forcing him into a stumbling run. Up ahead there was a flash of light the colour of the noon-day sun, then barely audible voices, like the speakers were shouting through thick layers of cloth.

There was a subdued crack, like that a stick breaking, and something struck his rump, midway between knee and hip. An instant later, all the muscles in his hindquarters convulsed as searing pain exploded out from the impact point. Adigard tripped, falling flat, the sweep of his wings knocking Korn down at the same time.

Breathing coming in short gasps, Adigard tried to shout a warning, but the shock of falling and the constant spider-crawl of electricity from the stun round embedded in his leg made it impossible to scream, let alone actually speak.

"So the Student is still alive!"

There was joy in that voice, and it could only have come from the Agent. Hindquarters still jerking and convulsing, he discovered he had enough control over his forelimbs to claw at the ground, managing to twist enough to see her approach at a rapid lope, pistol held steady despite her rapid gait. No backup... why is she alone? Korn had recovered enough of his senses to look around and, on catching sight of Salrath, gave a strangled croak and tried to scramble away, but tangled in the thrashing of Adigard's back end and just fell again.

A second later and Salrath had a knee pressed in the small of Korn's back, twisting one arm around while reaching awkwardly for a set of restraints with the paw that held her gun. Korn struggled, flipping and twisting like an impaled bug, but Salrath just applied more force to his shoulder; he tried to scream, back arching to relieve some of the pressure. Even that was denied to him, as the Agent slammed his head into the floor before he could even draw enough breath.

"Where are all the rest of your catty-bird friends, eh?" she purred, glancing at Adigard while pulling the locking strap on the cuffs tight enough that flesh bulged either side of the metal. "Never mind, Salrath will find them soon enough." She smiled down at the jerking and thrashing Adigard, pointing the pistol at his throat. "No stunner this time, you useless--"

Adigard pushed up off the floor with one twitching set of talons, his head whipping around and beak closing on her arm, just between wrist and her bulky comms bracer. The Agent's eyes widened and her other paw released Korn, claws extended to rake his eyes. A hard shake knocked her off her booted paws and the strike missed, only ripping feathers from the top of his head. Balance completely lost, she fell heavily onto his right wing.

The gun went off three times in quick succession, explosive ammunition filling the corridor with thunder, as Salrath fought to bring it to bear without any success. Fine, have it your way, Adigard thought, meeting her snarling gaze for an instant. She must have had some inkling of what he intended, because her paw darted to the knife sheath at her waist, but she wasn't fast enough.

The gryphon's beak closed convulsively on Salrath's wrist, its edges lacking their normal razor's edge, but more than sharp enough to deal with the relatively slender limb. Brindled fur parted and bones splintered under the force of those blunted shears, filling Adigard's mouth with the taste of iron and spraying carmine up the nearest wall.

The little black knife fell from nerveless fingers, joining the pistol and severed paw on the polished stone floor, and Adigard opened his beak to push the Agent away. Wide-eyed and gasping, she sagged to the floor, trembling, blood-slick fingers trying to do something with her comms bracer. She opened her mouth--

There was a loud bleeping from somewhere, and the shocks abruptly stopped. Back half still weak and trembling, Adigard lunged forwards, wrapping one set of talons around her head and closing Salrath's muzzle before she could get the first word out. His other set grabbed her injured arm at the elbow, and he spread his forelegs, pulling the bracer out of reach.

Then the golden glow of sunlight condensed over his body, unbending his talons and setting him upright. At his side, Agent Salrath floated spread-eagle, a tight band of magic constricting the stump of her wrist. Breathing shallowly against the forces that held him as still as if he'd been buried in concrete, he watched the little group approach.

It was the two ponies, with the one Korn had called 'Fusion' in the lead. Her horn glowed, holding not only himself and Salrath, but the floating bodies of Svartr and Ellisif. Adigard studied them both intently; within that shell of irresistible telekinesis, both were obviously breathing, and their eyes were alert and moving. Thank the Maker... but is there really any hope she will listen after what happened at the training ground? The idea had seemed reasonable back in the cell, to work with the rogue servitor if they should ever meet up, but this all relied on living long enough to make a deal.

"Oh..."

The pony's voice was soft and full of wonder, trembling with suppressed emotion, scarcely the tones of someone greeted by such a tableau. Little flares of magic danced about her helmet and the armour folded away to reveal a soft-looking white muzzle surmounted by large, mismatched eyes; one was a normal violet, the other a solid and dead-looking white. The violet eye ignored Korn and himself, and was focused intently on the Agent.

"Agent Salrath... I'm so happy to see you again."

15 - Wages of Sin

Author's Note

A crude dramatis personæ can be found here. Might not work, as it's an unsubmitted story.
Preread by: turol and KMCA.
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and Caliaponia (Just Passing Through).

15 - Wages of Sin

=== Chapter 15: The Wages of Sin ===

(Five's first appearance can be found here)

Light and dark, dark and light. Walk and trot, wake and sleep. Everything blurs together; every light is the same as every other, and I can't tell one from the next, except for the slow accumulation of horn marks I make on the damaged tile. The work chime wakes me from a dream; it is a strange, formless thing that is more smells and sounds than images. Two ponies, both nearly twice my height, their faces, even their coat colours, obscured by the unknowable tract of time between then and now. The only clear impression I have is of their smell, a mixture of clean growing things and spices, and something of their voices. The actual words they speak have gone to the same place as the other details, but I still remember the tone. They are trying to keep their words light, wishing me well as I am steered into the back of some floating box-thing, but there is an undercurrent of fear. It makes me sad to know that I never had a chance to ask them what it was they were afraid of.

There is a sudden glow from the big circular screen. My excitement builds; the memories of the last ponies I ever touched is washed away by the desire to do what I have been training for all these countless cycles of light and dark. There is a twisting pattern of neon orange on the screen, a shape that I fix into my mind. It is complex and ever-shifting, but I'm good at what I do. Ignoring the warning ache at the base of my skull, I build a copy of the pattern in my head, carefully making it cycle through the same repeating shapes. The pain gets steadily worse, but I maintain my focus; my Masters will be angry if I am too slow, but that is nothing compared to their rage if I get the pattern wrong.

The pain is starting to make it hard to breathe, but I am ready now. The orange pattern in my head is a perfect match for the one on the screen; I bite my lips as a distraction, savouring the moment. The glow of pride causes the discomfort to subside and I lower my head, reaching for that well of inner strength to give my pattern the special push that will make it real. Even through tightly closed eyes I can see the room blaze with orange light, and my pain is washed away with the joy of success. I pour my whole self into the pattern, the power being pulled away and joining the efforts of the Others. For a time we are one, joined with a closeness that no mere physical interaction could match.

The pure pleasure of closeness and warmth is what I have been waiting for; it makes the long, lonely turns of light and dark seem like no hardship at all. Use of my power takes considerable effort, but it is worth it so I can be with the Others. I can feel that they have the same desire to be with me -- there are no words, just unconditional love and the simple joy of being close to somepony else. Dimly, I feel my legs start to wobble and I stagger, all of my energy focused on connecting with the Others. There is a warning tingle at my throat -- my Masters are telling me it is time to come home -- but I don't want to go. This task is what I've been trained for; surely something that feels this good is meant to be?

The tingle becomes a shock, then a rolling buzz-crackle of electricity that finally pulls me away from my unseen family. The orange glare fades and I am left standing there, splay-legged to stay upright. Panting and dripping with sweat I collapse gracelessly to my belly, just before I would have fallen anyway. The Master's reward floods through me, filling my insides with a liquid warmth that makes my hindquarters twitch and shiver. This is what I get for being a good filly, for successfully completing the tasks I am set. Heart rate slowly subsiding, I can only think how I'd gladly trade in my reward for another few seconds with the Others.

Soft sprays of cool water emerge from a few points on the domed ceiling, the moisture a welcome relief for my overheated body. It washes away the smell of my exertion and the Master's reward; the sensation is so nice that I throw back my head and let the water pour down my muzzle and soak the fur of my chest. Just as I'm starting to feel cold, the rain stops, replaced by a strengthening breeze. The wind is warm and I stand with my nose into it, nostrils twitching as I try and distinguish individual scents from the mélange of pony smells. There is a new note of excitement present in the odours; it is obvious that these ponies have also been rewarded. Starting to walk into the wind I nod to myself. The ponies I can smell must be the Others.

Now dry apart from the fur under my mane, I trot on in the comfortable daze that the Master's reward always leaves me. Time passes, although I could not tell you how much -- once I experimented by counting breaths, but that was disrupted by the monotony of this place. There are more lights and darks, more little piles of food. Occasionally -- at times that are never predictable -- I am called on to do my job, and these are the moments I live for. The Others are still there and always welcome me, even though no single individual is ever identifiable. Their touch and scent changes slowly, as if individual ponies are joining and leaving the group. This gives me hope that some time, perhaps not too far away, my Masters will be happy with my work and they will send me home. I will go, of course, but with a heavy heart. I can't imagine what life outside of this room and away from the Others will be like.

===

The temperature in the rubble-choked corridor was rising, the air redolent with the scent of burned flesh and plastics. Gravity paused for a moment, one hind leg lifted clear of the ground, listening for the sound of furtive movement amid the crack and groan of falling concrete. She snorted, ears folding back; the other noise, a kind of jet-engine roar, had started a few tenths of a kilosecond ago and was rapidly drowning out everything else.

What is that? I can almost believe it's a rocket, but why would they have one in here? She flexed the elevated leg, trying to work through the pain. Fighting the Dogs through the corridors had seemed like a good idea; as long as she kept moving, they could only bring light weapons to bear. Unfortunately, some group of power-armoured soldiers had escaped her initial attack; she'd been focused on her own targets, so they'd struck at her flank.

Magic had slowed the projectile, but not enough to prevent it from punching through her defences to strike between hip and knee on her right hind leg. Redshift's stolen armour had saved her life once again, but it had been close. Gravity glanced back at the battered section; the once smooth and dark ceramic was bowed in and surrounded by a network of pale cracks, looking like an icy puddle stepped on by a hoof. Lucky I didn't break the leg. She flexed it again, dropping into shadow sight to inspect the surrounding spaces.

The power suits were magically dark and she lacked Fusion's ability to see concentrations of energy, but they were made of high density materials... unfortunately such things were common in the security base. Vague, overlapped forms -- the twisted shapes of buckled reinforcing girders and the ever-present fragments of armourcrete linked with metal cable -- filled her mind with layered shadows. Here and there were the bright lights of crystal thaumic devices, either some freak survivor of Fusion's initial attack or dropped by fleeing Dogs, but they did little more than provide a distraction in her search.

Stowing the pair of knife-missiles on mountings Redshift had added to her barding, Gravity hefted the last remaining segment of hull armour. The bar was a full length long, cut much thicker that the ones she'd used as missiles, its chisel-pointed tips now blunt and mushroomed from constant impacts. They are smart, these Dogs... are they just very still, or have they retreated? She picked a likely shape, something that might have been a figure crouching behind a tangle of roof supports, and jabbed at it with her weapon.

The bar snapped forwards, vanishing in an explosion of concrete dust and metal sparks, punching a clean hole through the twisted mass of alloy. The shape on the other side moved abruptly, darting behind a mass of collapsed partition walls. She grabbed at it, but the purple polygon of an anti-magic field sprang up before the telekinesis could bite, and the thing slipped away. Now highlighted and obvious, Gravity sent a hail of rubble after the fleeing armour suit, punching through the thin fibre board like it was paper. The figure stumbled but kept on running, so she jumped in pursuit, bar-weapon held tightly to her side.

They know they can't face me directly, but they are still here. Little, almost subliminal, movements in the periphery of her shadow sight were a constant distraction. Most of the time they were just that -- the irregular settling of a ruined structure trying to find equilibrium -- but there seemed to be a pattern to some of these. Am I being hunted? Let them try... Gravity smiled, then smashed open a cavity in the angular mess of broken wall material, pushing outwards to form a zone of clear air. Still too much stuff in the way for an easy strike, she thought, expanding the attendant cloud of rocks that served her as a cross between ammunition reserve and smokescreen. Joining them were a pair of violet ovals, seemingly made from softly glowing glass, floating along each flank and reaching from tail to muzzle and hoof to withers.

Absently, the process operating at a near instinctive level, she probed and sorted the rubble around her, adding the heaviest and most compact objects to her retinue, even while she pursued her quarry. The floor under her hooves, swept clean by her magic, was different from the other areas she'd galloped, flown or smashed through. No carpeted office or fused-stone corridor; this was a monolithic slab of high density concrete, laced with strands of interlocking metal. Part of the internal armour for the base? She frowned; overhead was the same material, a great slab that had to be at least two lengths thick.

The bar at her side twitched, then she pulled the strike as her target darted around one of the roof support pillars, built to the same heroic scale as the rest of the area and too thick to get through easily. Gravity snarled and powered forwards, catching a glimpse of something angular strapped to the base of the pillar.

A bright green glare, the pure colour of a new leaf, filled the space between the two slabs with solar intensity. Gravity twisted, the world suddenly pitch-black apart from glowing threads that sought to slice her body like cheese wire. Dazzled by the initial flash and blinded by the sudden photochromic reaction of her helmet's visor, she clenched her eyes tight shut, magic reaching out to feel for the source of the beams.

A high-pitched buzz and matching vibration came from wherever the beams landed, and Gravity thought briefly about flakes of ceramic exploding off the armour's surface as the coherent light burrowed towards her vulnerable flesh. An instant later there was a stunningly loud crack and something struck her left pauldron, just at throat level. She staggered, the force field on that side vanishing as if shattered, then fell as the leg gave way. No! She imagined some Dog soldier, paws wrapped about the grips of a large weapon and taking aim for a final shot, and struggled to clear enough of the pain to focus on the complex teleportation pattern.

It wouldn't work, so Gravity gave up and hunted for a more familiar solution to her problem. Random waves of motion rippled through the matter within her grasp, then she pushed with all her might. Her attendant swarm of rubble exploded outwards with all the force of shrapnel from a thousand-kilo bomb, smashing deep craters into the already compacted walls. The lasers went out, their beams going wild before cutting off, and there was a sense of movement, of vague shapes running away.

"Run! I'll catch you," she shrieked, spitting the words out into the dust-laden air. "You'll never esc--"

There was another explosion, not the whipcrack of that heavy railgun, but the sharp thunder of high explosives. At the other side of her cleared space the support pillar disintegrated, and the uppermost armourcrete slab, all thousand tonnes of it, dropped on her like a hammer onto a mouse.

===

"Master, wake up."

The voice was rough and barely identifiable, and nearly drowned out by a harsh, pulsing whine from somewhere nearby. There were other noises; the hard clack-clack-clack of hoof on stone and heavy, wheezy, breathing from nearby. One eye cracked open, but the view was a close roof of soot-stained feathers connected to a wall of singed fur, flexing and shifting with internal motion. Below, illuminated by a pale radiance coming from his own skin, was the floor, moving past faster than he could run.

Orgon coughed, then sluggishly moved one arm, trying to rub a paw over his eyes. For a moment it was as if he was entombed in concrete, then whatever was holding him relaxed and he could wipe one shaky set of claws through the fur of his face. The sound moved, abruptly getting far louder, and he suddenly recognised it. "Put this one down," he croaked.

The wing shifted, showing the tired and burned shape of Merlon cantering down a dark corridor. Many People were here, but they stepped aside to let his servitor through. The mare twisted her head slightly to glance at him, then turned to face forwards once more, her jaw set and ears folded back. "No, Master," she said in a pained whisper, tremors running down her flanks. "It is not safe here, and you can work just as easily while I carry you."

Orlon opened his mouth, then closed it, nodding. With one claw he stroked his bracer's controls, silencing the priority alarm and opening the call on the little backup display, the only thing that worked after the destruction of its thaumic hologram generator. On the palm-sized span of photopolymer was the scarred and grizzled head of Strategist Faungo.

"So the Sector Chief is still alive; this one was beginning to think he had perished. It looks like it was a near thing." The camera's lens was wide angle and showed plenty of background despite being mounted on Faungo's wrist; the Strategist was walking briskly across a concrete apron, followed by a group of the general staff, both Security and Military. Behind all this were ranks of heavy airtanks, the squat lenticular shapes jumping into the air like they were little more than toys. Delta-shaped formations of the vehicles flicked by overhead, flanking the swept-arrowhead shapes of attack carriers.

"Yes, Strategist," Orgon said, trying to clear his throat. The words brought all the pains of his body into focus; the hot itchy feeling of burns running from head to hip down one side and the throb of bruising at knee and elbow were suddenly distracting. He swallowed, working his jaw, wincing at the sudden sting of abraded flesh. Will there be any part of this one that doesn't hurt, come tomorrow? he thought, eye tracing the patches of singed fur either side of his bracer. "These ones are in urgent need of Arclight support; the rogue--"

"Faungo knows. The closest units are at Naraka, and they are already in position. Others have been diverted from the perimeter patrols, but they will take time to arrive." He smiled humourlessly. "Perhaps this will convince the Synod of the need to construct more."

Then why has Arclight not been activated? Orgon opened his mouth, then closed it again. "Is there still no sign of the second rogue?" Merlon shook her head silently and the Sector Chief sighed.

Faungo paused in the shadows under a delta-shaped attack carrier. "Orgon sees the problem. Lacunae does not have an endless supply of Arclight units, and they are large and fragile things. This one will not risk activation until both of the rogues are revealed."

"Understood," Orgon said glumly. The Strategist will let the Pit and every Person in it burn. "What are the Strategist's orders?"

"Keep this... Gravity Resonance servitor occupied by any means necessary. This one is taking steps to draw the other one out." The camera view changed as the Strategist stepped into the belly of an aircraft, switching from his bracer to a point on the wall. Row upon row of armour suits were spread-eagled against the curving hull, and Faungo started to climb in to the nearest one.

"What does the Strategist intend? This one already has significant forces in the deep tunnels under Naraka, which should at least slow the other servitor, even without the Pit's reaction teams."

"This one has had servitor psychologists working on the problem, and they suspect that the corral may be a fertile place to recruit others." He frowned at the camera. "Especially after what Orgon's Agent did. Salrath maimed one of the servitors in full view of the whole herd while Arclight was operational. That could have undone much of the Blessing's conditioning."

And this one knows that the rogues have already recruited others. Orgon swallowed, ignoring the pain in his throat, and his ears folded back. How many in the corral are already subverted?

"Faungo sees that Orgon understands. Good. Keep it occupied, Sector Chief." The chest of the armour closed, leaving only the Strategist's head, looking comically small against the bulk of the suit. "These ones go to threaten the creatures’ chance of building a power base. Time is short; the World Court's audit teams are in the air, supported by units from Soro and Baur Hives. The Synod would very much prefer it if this problem was contained before they arrived... or at least, before the Hammer comes over the horizon."

===

Spiral Fracture watched as ponies materialised out of the dark amid the orchards surrounding corral twenty-seven, their wings flaring as they cantered into landings amid the leaf-litter. The night, already cool enough to make her breath steam, seemed to grow a little colder. Right now, Fusion and Gravity are about to kick the Masters where it really hurts. She fidgeted, playing with the now less-than-comforting bulk of her communicator where it sat amid the fur of her chest, waiting for the six ponies to gather together. The afternoon, during which she'd left the little rebellion to carry out her normal duties at the corral, had been a horrible mix of routine and a ghastly, creeping tension that built unbearably as the time to act approached.

Scalar Product trotted up to her, nodding in greeting. "Everything quiet?" he whispered, eyes and ears sweeping the sky. "How is Elliptic coping? Fusion has kept me so busy that I haven't had a chance to really think."

Not stupid, that pony. There was an underlying nervousness to the stallion's normal bullish tones, and Spiral nodded with sympathy. "Your mate is fine," she said, then flicked a wing to encompass the whole group. "All of your families are doing as well as can be expected. I did have to pay a few a visit earlier to make sure they were asleep, but given everything else that has happened..." Spiral shrugged, then jumped into a silent hover, the only sound the rustle of leaves in her downdraft. The others followed suit, and the little herd flitted between the trees towards the corral's shelters. "Any last-kilosecond changes?" she whispered, flying just over Scalar's head.

The orange stallion flicked his ears. "No. My team will go in and disable the labournet comms repeater, then empty the feedstock bunker and keep watch, while Triple Point goes with you to start on the sleepers."

Too many ponies, not enough time. "Under the guise of helping ponies ward off bad dreams, I've already made a start." I spent the evening lying to those I was sworn to protect, and then carried out unnecessary medical procedures. The needle of guilt was nearly as bad as the simpler pains of Punishment, and she shivered, ears folding back. This better be worth it.

The flight reached the edge of the corral and split into two, Scalar's group arcing up to land at the tip of the Church, right on the landing platform reserved for Priests attending the foal's Blessing ceremony, while Spiral dropped silently between the shelters, alert for any sign of movement. Still asleep, thank the Maker. She nodded to Triple Point, who reached out with her magic.

The green glow of horn light was startlingly bright to her dark-adapted eyes, but the pair sleeping quietly on the wood-chip floor didn't stir. Quick touches first deepened their sleep, then stunned the nerves in each hornbed. Examination of the actual horn came next, identifying the zone of modified material at its base and targeting it with a carefully controlled pulse that filled the volume with tiny cracks. Spiral watched every step in the process, biting her tongue at the slightly clumsy technique of the other mare, but neither pony did more than twitch during the procedure.

"Excellent, Triple. I know we're on the clock here, but don't be tempted to rush; it would be easy to maim a pony just by accident. You know which ones you need to do?"

The green and yellow dappled mare released the breath she'd been holding, seeming to sag a little. "Thanks, Spiral. Your sharing was very realistic, but to actually do it..." She shook all over, then walked quickly to the next shelter.

Spiral watched her go, then headed to the next shelter on her list, probing with her mind for the distant feel of Lilac. The sharing opened with a rush, bringing with it vague sensations from other bodies.

...the taste and scent of burned plastics in Gravity's mouth. A near-subliminal image of Fusion walking past a long row of glass-fronted rooms, each holding one or more ponies. The feel of Scalar casting complex, unfamiliar magic in an angular room lined with mirror-polished black stone and filled with communications equipment--

Spiral damped down the sensory leakage, focussing instead on the mind connected to all those other ponies. Lilac; we are underway. How are you coping? Don't let those others overwhelm you.

I'll be fine, Spiral, came the youngster's thoughts, although they were a little faint and seemed to blur slightly in time with some particularly intense event occurring in one of the other minds. Fusion is in Naraka now, and Grav seems to be happy digging through the Security hub.

There came an intense image of a Security aircar, boxy with armour, breaking apart under the lash of metal accelerated to speeds that rendered it invisible. Lilac, please focus. We are relying on you to keep us in touch... I know it is tempting to watch, but you must leave Fusion and Gravity to work. Spiral swept the three sleeping ponies ahead of her with her magic, applying gentle touches to their brainstems to keep them unconscious.

Sorry. His tone sharpened and the leakage of other lives faded away to a barely identifiable murmur, only obvious if you knew where to look.

Spiral kept a gentle touch on his mind, letting the background whispers steady her with the knowledge that she was not alone, and dipped her head to scan the next family on her list. Together with Triple and the two other ponies, they went from shelter to shelter, working through the corral.

===

A kilosecond later, when they had freed perhaps three-quarters of the ponies, Spiral was shocked out of her focussed state by Lilac's sudden, urgent thought. Scalar says there are loads of airtanks and at least two attack carriers coming, with more close behind. Five hundred seconds max. Too many; he can't stop them.

Spiral ignored him for the moment it took for her to finish the pair she was working on, then allowed the full meaning of the words to sink in. I thought we'd have more time! Her eyes flicked out along the row of shelters that she'd not visited yet, catching a glance of a panicked Triple Point staring back at her, ears flat back and wings flicking with agitation. "I'll keep going and get as many done as I can." Should have had everypony working to remove the Blessings, she thought, or Trocar here, or something! "Get to the infirmary and get the wounded out, then get ready to help me with the teleports. Stay out of sight until then!" Can't have the dead coming back to life just yet...

The mare nodded and galloped off, followed by the other two, and Spiral bent her head to stripping the Blessing from the next pony. No time for a light touch, no time for anything, other than burning that ugly spell from as many horns as she could. Ponies groaned or cried out, jerking awake as she cauterised little patches of horn material without numbing the nerves first, and the rising noise started to wake those ahead of her.

At the next shelter the stallion of the pair was already on his hooves, his eyes and ears sweeping the surroundings and unfocused magic making firefly patterns over the surface of his horn. "Hey, Spiral, what--"

# All ponies at corral twenty-seven will evacuate the area immediately. Spiral Fracture CW8002 has delegate authority for the duration of the emergency. #

The message, transmitted from every labournet communicator, shocked him into a stunned silence. "What do we do? Can't we stop whatever--" he said, gaze locking onto hers. Around him gathered other ponies, all staring at her, little whispers passing on her location to those just emerging from their shelters.

She shook her head, mouth suddenly dry. Come on, filly, treat it like a drill. She was the corral's emergency manager, a job that went hoof, horn and wing along with her medic duties¸ but the idea of actually ordering all these ponies about... No, it has to be you, Spiral. All the others that came along are dead, remember? Oh, Trocar -- I wish you were here! "Everypony! We have been targeted by an enemy hive; we have to get out of the area. I have been given new magic to help us escape."

"It's not going to be like the Three Day War is it?" a voice cried out from the middle of the throng, full of fear and tension.

Spiral shivered. Few ponies had made it out of that stricken arcology; most had been killed by Baur Hive's gryphon death squads hunting the Masters they protected, or were lost in the collapse after the reactor complex blew. The memories of those that had were legend, and required experiences for the older foals during schooling. "I don't know, Doppler." Oh, Maker, I hope not. Tension twisting her insides, Spiral galloped to the edge of the corral, then wheeled to face those who had followed her.

Lilac? Is Trocar ready?

Her mate's thoughts broke in to the sharing, his senses expanding into her own and bringing a feeling of rushing wind and cold, icy mountains towering above the deep valley they'd selected as an initial destination. I am... but I won't be able to stop them from leaving again.

I know. Get ready to play catch. "Ears up and eyes forward! I have a special spell just for this." Oh, Maker -- please let this work... two jumps is hardly enough! Spiral brought the pattern to the front of her mind, modifying it just so, then gave a little push--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--appearing ten lengths away in a flash of green light, swaying drunkenly. "I can send you anywhere, as fast as I can cast the spell." Everypony was staring at her, open mouthed, then the air was filled with an excited babble. Not enough time for this! Spiral pushed again--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--jumping back to her original location, just as the herd rushed forwards. "I'll explain everything when we are all safe," she cried, and it was no effort at all to colour her shout with fear. "Form yourselves into four lines and I'll get to you as quickly as I can. This is very important -- when you appear you will be high in the air and going fast--" The mare lay on the grass and folded her legs and wings in. "--do not open your wings until you slow down!" The assembled ponies stared back at her with wide eyes, confusion on every face. "Just do it -- or I'll be repairing dozens of dislocated wings!" she snapped, voice near hysterical with panic. "Remember and pass it on to the ponies at the back -- legs in, wings in, eyes shut."

The shift in her tone must have convinced them, because the nearest ponies leapt forwards, colliding with each other in their haste to comply. "Trocar and his rescue team will be here in moments to help, so everypony must get into position right now," she said, in a slightly calmer tone

Ponies fell to the floor in a disordered wave that spread out through the herd, each pony following the lead of their nearest neighbours. That's right; follow-follow-follow. Keep them too busy to think, too busy to realise that the Maker is no longer talking to them, too busy to notice that the other ponies helping me should all be dead. Spiral took a deep breath, filling her mind with the sight, sound and smell of Trocar's distant mountain valley and funnelling that information into the teleport spell. Finally ready, she picked the closest pony, a trembling bundle of feathers and fur, his muscles so tense that they were like iron.

Okay, Prismatic, you get to go first. This specific teleport was one she'd practiced with Fusion, drilled it time and time again until the arcane patterns seemed to be carved into the surface of her brain. The presence of Trocar, holding position at the arrival point, reinforced the memory, and keeping the complex arcane pattern in the front of her mind actually seemed easy. Spiral took a deep breath, pulled off his communicator disk, and twisted the world--

--the stallion appeared in the dark air, barely a length from Trocar's muzzle, flicking away like he'd been thrown with all her might. There was a sudden scream, doppler-shifted and fading fast as the range opened, then Prismatic cautiously opened his wings, curving around in a wide arc, eyes wide and head whipping from side to side as he tried to take in everything at once. "Come and fly behind me, help catch ponies as they come through," Trocar called out, and the pony nodded--

Spiral broke into a huge smile. "He's safe," she said, then cast the spell on the next pony, pulling off his communicator as she did so. At the back of the herd there were sudden shouts of 'stay down, keep your eyes shut and your wings in', as Triple Point, Scalar and all the other 'dead' ponies teleported to the periphery of the herd, their horns already glowing.

===

Gravity panted, eyes shut tight against the glare of her own magic, breath warm in the small space she'd managed to keep open in between the collapsed armourcrete layers. "Stupid filly... didn't you learn anything?" she muttered, then groaned. There was another string of explosions, distant, quiet things more felt by their shockwaves through the material overhead than by sound, and the weight she was holding up abruptly became punishing. "Want to make sure, eh? Very sensible."

She reached for the teleport pattern, but it wouldn't stabilise, blurring in and out of focus in time with the pulsing pain in her shoulder and hind leg. More effort, this time to keep the details of her plight from the ever-watchful Lilac. It seemed that the youngster was otherwise occupied, focussed on the images coming back from Spiral as she stripped the Blessing from everypony at the corral, and the little traces leaking through from Fusion in the cool, white corridors of Naraka.

Her magic probed the thickness of material around her, hunting for something she could use. The only space within four lengths in any direction was the void she occupied, a low, domed cavity kept open by the singular force of her own power. The armourcrete layer the Dogs had brought down on her head had not cracked in a single place like glass over a pebble, but had fragmented and sagged, the individual tetrahedral subcomponents held in place by endless tangles of embedded fullerene cable. If she relaxed it would close the little gap and crush her like a hoof on an insect.

Can't dig out; there's nowhere to put the spoil. The mass below was a little thinner than the one above, especially since the Dogs had collapsed still more material upon it, and she sharpened her telekinetic pressure, changing the shape from a sphere to something more cone-shaped. The narrow end of the field started to push into the tough material below, pushing the tetrahedra apart. Overhead, the scarred roof pressed closer, and Gravity wriggled and twitched, forcing her legs down into the funnel forming beneath her while tucking her head into her chest.

Within a pawful of seconds the structure seemed to have stabilised, and she relaxed her grip on the armourcrete, sensitive to the slightest movement. The cramped volume left to her was too small to even turn her head, and her gasping breaths took the limited air and turned it into something damp and smothering. "But at least I can think," she muttered, pushing aside the teleport spell for the familiar power of her telekinesis. Without the need to support a length-square section, she could focus it down to something smaller than a hoof, forcing open cracks that extended through the material and out the underside.

That done, the slightest twitch of her wings -- all she could manage in the tiny space -- set the air moving, pulling away the foul exhalations and drawing fresh, although it was still tainted with the scent of powdered rock and explosives. The magic was only a fraction of her capabilities, even before she'd been connected to the moons, and hardly noticeable unless another pony was close by and watching carefully. Gravity did her own check, noting the distant glimmer of the only other pony in the Security Hub, small and barely visible, even against the depleted thaumic background. She really has been moving... I honestly thought she'd try and stop us. At least then we could have spirited her away from this place.

Her attention drifted onwards, into the dark cavity at the bottom of the central shaft. Here were the shapes of armoured vehicles, mostly flattened spheres with thick, high-density hulls. They were larger than the pair she'd destroyed in the depths of the Institute, and Gravity struggled to resist the urge to break into the hangar levels and see how tough they really were. They will be waiting for me when I go through the main doors; no chance of surprise... The idea of being caught at the focus of one or more of the lasers with no defence made her shiver. I'm actually safer here than anywhere else. She smiled and laughed quietly, the sound close and strange in her cramped bolt-hole. They'll have to nuke the site to catch me off-guard.

"Which they just might, if this goes very badly for them." Gravity shook her head, forgetting the close confines and striking the armourcrete with the side of her muzzle, and looked again. There was movement in the shadow world, heavy shapes lining up within the complex support structures below the main doors. She stared with interest; there was already a lot of fallen rubble at the bottom of the shaft, and it was possible that they just wouldn't be able to launch the things.

The rumbling groan reached her even buried under all that thickness of armourcrete, a sound like the grinding of two giant boulders. I guess that answers that question. "Lilac," she said, sending thoughts into the sharing, even as she murmured the words out loud. The sense of being somewhere else intensified, enhanced by the youngster's similar subterranean environment.

I'm ready, Gravity, he thought, body twitching unconsciously as he felt the confinement of her own. The square-sided chamber had an unfinished look, and was filled with neat stacks of half-length cubes of granite; all the spoil that they hadn't dumped at the bottom of the lake. He must have felt her interest, because the room was clearly illuminated by a floating point of white light, magnified and reflected countless times by the frosty, mirror-finished walls.

Just relax and let me guide you. Gravity reached in through the sharing, twisting Lilac's magic into the correct shapes. That's it. Now all you have to do is...

A pair of those lens-shaped airtanks squeezed out through the still-opening doors -- there was no laser-pure crystal thaumic glow, so Gravity imagined the dusty insides of the shaft being illuminated by the hard glare of plasma drives -- and started to accelerate towards the surface, bodies rotating to sweep the damaged walls.

--push!

In Lilac's darkened cavern there was a pulse of purple light, and a stack of blocks vanished--

--to reappear on one side of the shaft, with exactly the same velocity as when they were at rest in Lilac's cavern. Moving at over a hundred lengths a second, the two-and-a-half-tonne cubes of granite sprayed across the airtanks' path, but managed to miss them completely. A momentary correction and she had Lilac, his magic essentially just an extension of her will at this point, cast again and again.

The vehicles, only really visible as slightly darker silhouettes in her shadow sight, staggered under the rain of boulders, but did not go down. Too tough. Lilac, I'm going to have to go in directly -- are you okay to continue sending the rocks?

Y-yes, I can do it.

There was enthusiasm in his tone, but also fatigue. Don't try too hard; keep some magic back in case you need to move. Gravity registered his assent with a fraction of her attention, her excitement already building. She formed the pattern -- without the added strain of holding up a kilotonne of armourcrete, adrenalin was doing a wonderful job of holding back the pain from her injured leg -- and pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--materialising in the wrecked hangar. There was a hoarse cry from somewhere behind her and she wheeled, magic snapping a half dome of violet light over her body, only to be greeted by the trembling form of the tech, still clinging to the skeletonised tail fin of one dropshuttle. She grinned in his direction, then quickly ripped more material from the downed aircraft, something that made him cry out and hug the fin even more tightly. Pipes, bars and panels tumbled through the air, forming themselves into a quintet of crude pony-shapes.

Fur, then feathers and armour, congealed over the metal debris, and Gravity lowered her head to the life-sized dolls, smile widening as they bowed back in return. Are you ready, Lilac? Assent came back through the reopened sharing, so she pushed her decoys over the edge and followed them down into the dusty air.

===

Three circular aircraft, little more than patches of deeper darkness against the midnight sky, flicked overhead in complete silence. At the midpoint of their track, each released a rain of darts that fell with far greater velocity than mere gravity allowed, spreading out to cover the remains of corral twenty-seven's herd.

The endless stream of teleports stopped and polychromatic magic stabbed upwards to sweep the projectiles from the sky, but at the slightest touch they detonated with stunning violence. A tiny part of Spiral's mind, in the bare milliseconds before the blast struck her, fought to assemble a force barrier to protect herself and as many ponies as she could reach, but the tangle of teleportation magic took too long to dismantle. We've killed them all, she thought, just as the shockwave hit.

Actinic flashes strobed across the whole width of the sky, flickering and pulsing in rhythms that reached in through her eyes and scrambled what little sense she had been left by the concussion. Near sightless, her body reacted, legs and wings churning up the grass and it tried to take her away from the technologically induced madness; she only faintly registered the rain of heavy, multilimbed shapes crashing to the ground around them all.

The flashing stopped and thought started to return. The need to escape was still filling her mind and, body not yet responding, she reached for her magic. A bare whisper of power, not even enough to jostle the nearest gryphon, was all she managed, before the world caught fire. Invisible flames covered her head, back and anything else exposed to the sky, a searing, blast-furnace heat that should have left her convulsing with lethal burns. Instead there was just the pain, pouring down from the heavens like an a rain of acid, as bad as from the Blessing at its worst but without the nuanced and well understood reason for its existence. She screamed, loud and ragged, and the others screamed with her. There were gunshots, things she'd only heard by proxy in Gravity's memories, but horribly recognizable despite that.

Her will vanished under the onslaught, taking with it the arcane power and the patterns that wished it into existence, but the pain carried on for a subjective lifetime. Then, as if it had never existed, it was gone. Gasping and gaping like a gaffed fish, Spiral looked out over the grassy lawn she'd picked as a staging area. Lit by harsh lights that moved in orbits high above, ponies covered it with a varicoloured pastel carpet of pain and distress, looking around in confusion at the angular gryphon-shapes that stalked among them.

Here and there were the dead. Ponies with bellies ripped open or heads smashed by high velocity projectiles, painting their nearest neighbours carmine. But only a few. Why didn't the Dogs just use real weapons and slaughter us all? Spiral tried to get her mind to focus on that question, but thoughts came slow and uneven, when they came at all. The gryphons were working their way through the herd from the perimeter inwards, attaching something to the horn of each pony.

About half way into the herd there was movement; a pony lifted his head, a glimmer of magic congealing about his horn. It was Axiom, one of the many ponies that worked in the local power complex, lying next to the blood-splattered body of his mate. Maker, no! Please don't do it, you can't win-- Spiral let out a moan, willing the stallion to submit. An instant later he was screaming, but the pain in his cries was tempered with fury, and his power built anyway. The nearest gryphons all turned, their weapons at the ready, and brilliant points of green dancing over Axiom's body. Spiral reached for her own magic, feeling his efforts and trying to disrupt his power. "Masters, please, I can stop--" Her shout ended in a high pitched wail as the burning wind found her once more, blowing out her magic like a candle in a hurricane.

The gryphons fired, and Spiral was left staring at the ruined remains of Axiom, as hard, scaly talons gripped her head and slid something onto her horn that shackled her power and drowned it under an endless ocean.

===

The gritty, smoky and overheated air whipped past as Gravity fell into the pit in the midst of her own little herd. Careful magic let her slice through the air, keeping out all but the faintest hint of burning flesh as she dropped through some energetic plume of combustion products and approached the half-opened doors. They were huge things, extending the full width of the shaft and made of the same armourcrete as the more hardened sections of the base, spaced into layers designed to absorb or deflect the heaviest fire. The Dogs below -- Fusion's thaumomagnetic pulse had obviously been attenuated by distance and intervening matter -- had found a way to get the big doors open, at least enough to slip a their airtanks through.

At this distance she had a better view of the main hangar decks, an overlapping mess of high density armoured hulls that stood out against the more normal armourcrete and steel. There were a scattering of antimagic fields, hard-edged polygons of purple light that were only really large enough to hold a single trooper, but very few considering the numbers of vehicles.

A whisper of unease stole up the mare's spine. I can't believe I've killed all of them down there... most of the damage is above these hangars. A flick of wings and she steered away from the relatively small opening, sending the flock of doppelgangers in her place, heading instead for a patch of armourcrete close to the edge of the doors and ignoring the pair of battered airtanks still twisting and searching for her. They were flying, but only just; even though the teleported projectiles had not killed them, it was obvious that the barrage of rocks had stripped most of the sensors from their hulls.

No lasers on these machines. The airtank's main guns cracked, shockwaves pummelling the dense air as they fired nearly blind, and several of the decoys dissolved into a spray of burning metal fragments. The others, manoeuvring violently in a simulacrum of desperate evasion, dropped past the gauntlet and through the doors, then vanished in a converging barrage of laser, railgun and hypervelocity missile fire. The whole bottom of the pit lit up with green, blue-white and orange flashes at the same time as arcane feedback made her head ache, thunderous detonations rolling over her moments later.

There was that trap laid for me... they obviously had contingency plans, for all that we surprised them. All the decoys were gone and the floor of the shaft, those giant hangar doors, the bright landing pad markings on their upper surfaces now half buried in rubble, was getting close, so she folded her wings. Her power reached out, narrowing to a needle point and potent with force vectors that all pointed at right angles to her direction of motion, striking the tough surface at the same instant as the rapid flicker-flash of force fields diced it into neat mirror-faced cubes.

There was a large mass, directly in her path. One of the heavy airtanks, held in an oversized rack that no doubt served it as a launching rail. It was one of many; each was stacked one over the other like a column of artfully balanced river pebbles. A zone of magic inhibition sprang up around it, and she fell through the shell of purple light. Her magic faltered and everything abruptly became more difficult; what was once near effortless was suddenly a struggle. Unable to sustain the tricky balancing act required to generate her cutting fields, Gravity slammed hooves-first into the upper hull, wings stroking furiously to kill her velocity.

Gravity's injured leg gave way and she tumbled down the smooth curve, feathers biting air as she went over the edge and fell past the prow, down the stack of lenticular aircraft. They were larger than the ones she'd encountered in the ruins of the Institute's transfer hub, but not massively so. Flattened spheres about three lengths across and two thick, studded with sensors, intakes and drive nozzles, weapons, and other unidentifiable devices. Like the pair that had escaped, these had long railgun barrels in place of the laser mirrors she'd seen before. The armour was also heavier, nearly as thick as her foreleg was long, and composed of a myriad of tiny tetrahedra, all tightly bound together and visible as complex detail to her density-sensitive shadow sight.

Twisting, she spun in the air, turning the fall into a dive and passing out of the airtank's antimagic field. Effortless power came back in a rush, only to die again when the next airtank's field came alive. A glance showed her all she needed to know: throughout the volume of the main hanger, a space five hundred lengths across and two hundred and fifty deep, the polygons of magical defences were springing up. So dense were the fields that there seemed to be no free space left at all.

The mare snarled, swooping past a gantry and yanking free one of the girder-trusses. It was harder to work but, although similar in function, these fields did not have the same power as the machine that had attacked her at the Institute. That device had been a general purpose suppressor, while these were more geared to simple thaumokinetic strikes, and seemed unable to keep her pinned down, as long as she kept adjusting her arcane tempo.

Gravity reached for the teleport pattern, trying to jump free of the cluttered environment, but the interference was enough to stop the complex magic from becoming real. Intentional or not, this is a trap. The delicate touch of fear became stronger, and she dove between a pair of the airtanks, just as a stream of projectiles punched dents in nearby support structures and whined off the much harder hulls. Lilac! The thought was met with silence, and she fumbled for the sharing, hunting along the rapidly fading pathway for the familiar touch of the youngster's mind. Mustn't-- They had fall-back plans if contact was lost, and if Fusion abandoned her far more important mission to protect her...

Suddenly, there was panic, but it wasn't hers. The babble of the stallion's thoughts flooded her own, near incoherent with desperate urgency. Thank the Maker! Lilac, I'm still--

You have to help -- they are killing them!

"Show me," Gravity snapped, jabbing her hull-alloy staff into the gaping muzzle of the nearest airtank turret that was trying to get her in its sights. Her staff-weapon, made of the same high density materials as the vehicles around her, was becoming increasingly hard to wield with any real force, and she nearly lost her grip at the jarring impact. It must have been enough, though, because lightning flashed within the long barrel, turning into a shrieking plume of incandescent gas as the superconductors failed and shorted out.

She flipped over, bringing her wings in and darting under the belly of the damaged tank, planting her hooves on the turret of the one below. It was also moving, but these machines were obviously not designed for agile opponents at such close quarters. More motion, this time from eyeball-like sensors on the underside of the one above, and Gravity distractedly smashed each one in quick succession, before doing the same to the airtank below her.

The vehicle she was standing on had another of the long-barrelled railguns, and this close to the mantlet she was within the sweep of the weapon and sheltered from the rest of the hangar. Starting to sweat inside her armour from the effort, Gravity resharpened the end of her staff, protected it with a force field, and then, with a grunt, drove the tip between the hull and the turret. There was a loud groan and a crack, then the whole bowl-shaped mass lifted up a tenth of a length.

Slightly safer for the moment, Gravity reached back down the sharing, grabbing a hold of Lilac's magic and pulling in the clairvoyance images. Dimly, she felt his body shudder at her less than gentle usurpation, but paid it no mind.

--a grassy field lit from some harsh overhead source and strewn with bodies, many obviously still alive and cowering, others screaming and writhing as if under the Blessing's lash. The flare of magic, vague and uncertain, a pony trying to strike back at his tormentors, followed by the harsh crack of gunfire--

Lilac's thoughts cut across the imagery, making everything waver and blur. I can't talk to Spiral or Scalar any more, and there are no ponies being pushed to the rendezvous point, and-and--

Lilac's thoughts were almost indecipherable, and Gravity relaxed her grip. Does Fusion know? In the real world, the hull shifted under her hooves, vibrating and twitching like a live thing as the drive lit and spat needles of blue plasma from multiple nozzles. She strained against the bar, using its leverage to increase the force she was applying to the turret, and something gave inside the aircraft, the whole mass abruptly tilting upwards as the bearings sheared. Brilliant pulses of green light struck nearby and Gravity flinched, but the shooter didn't seem to have line of sight.

No, I couldn't get--

...her attention, Gravity completed, keeping the thought from the sharing, then reached for her sister. Fusion, there are Dogs and gryphons at the corral. I think they will know where you are very soon. The gun barrel wedged against the underside of the tank above and she pushed harder and twisted, jamming the upended turret into the gap. The whole vehicle shuddered as something struck the other side, sending fragments whining in random directions. Her force field caught the ones heading for her body, although the effort made her head swim. More gunfire, a continuous sleet of small stuff that was obviously unable to penetrate the hull and only served to stop an easy escape. They suspect I can't jump... well, they got that right.

There was a moment's pause, as Fusion digested the images she'd sent, then: I'll go, I can see you are--

No! Gravity thought, cursing for not suppressing her own sensory feed, then clamping down so Fusion couldn't see what she was doing. You must not leave without our foals. She reached into the space left by the turret mechanism, pulling out and discarding tangled clumps of machinery, then poked her head through the hole. They are repositioning to get a clear shot, but I think I can slow them down... Eyes narrowed, she grinned.

But they'll slaughter half the corral -- what's the point in saving a few if the rest die? There was frustration in Fusion's mental tone, and the sensation of magic being formed was obvious.

If you go, they will move the foals and any future trap would be that much harder to circumvent. More to the point, to come home without them... Terror, carefully controlled, stole back down the link, and Gravity nodded in satisfaction.

Very well, but if you don't get out right now...

I will. I've got a plan. Past the internal structure of the airtank's core was a small stall just large enough for a pony -- fortunately empty -- and either side of that were gimballed spheres, each holding a Dog. "Nice doggies want to play a game?" she shouted over the sounds of gunfire and drive motors. The words were private, blocked from the sharing. One was frantically working, paws dancing across great swathes of controls that the internal systems had coloured the bright red of failure, while the other had twisted in his seat and was shakily pointing a stubby pistol in her direction.

"None of that," she said, pulling it from his grasp and ripping open the meshwork that separated the two Dogs from the rest of the airtank. A flick of magic pulled them both, kicking and shouting, onto the hull with her, then she pushed them further out, holding them in clear air above a fifty length drop to the floor below. Their protests died at that point, as did all the gunfire. "What do you know... they do want to keep you alive," she called out. "I lost my bet."

"Why is the servitor doing this?!" one of them shouted back, her voice high and distorted with panic.

Gravity didn't answer, just held them steady while she dug around in the mass of hardware, hunting for the thing she needed. There, in the thinnest hull section, right out at the rim of the lens, she found it. A quick twist and the magic defences failed, leaving her in a zone free from magical interference. Jumping now. One last look around, and her gaze alighted on the stacked ranks of silvery darts that were obviously the railgun's ammunition. These liberated, she stuck her muzzle out of the turret opening and waggled her ears at the floating Dogs.

"You gave wings to all your creations -- it's a pity you didn't see fit to do the same for yourselves," she said, smile widening as realisation struck the airtank pilots, then pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

===

A hundred seconds later and a suppressor ring was on the horn of everypony present. The numbers of gryphons had swollen dramatically, until there was at least two for each of the captives. Spiral tried to breathe steadily, ignoring the trip-hammer beat of her heart and the constant urge to move, to run, to fly, to do anything to escape the corral. Her own guards, three bulky gryphons so covered with scaly armour and equipment that she had no idea of their subspecies, stood around her, one holding each wing and the third pointing its shoulder-mounted gun at her head. They had not been gentle; the sharp surfaces on the undersides of their talons were red with blood, and more ran sluggishly from cuts where they gripped her.

They want Fusion and Gravity, that's why all this is happening. The assembled mass of ponies was mostly silent and still, cowering and fearful, with only the occasional quiet whinny or snort, quickly silenced by back-taloned blows from the cat-bird soldiers. The unnecessary aggression spoke volumes about the gryphons; there was as much fear in their movements as there was in that of the ponies, and they twitched at the slightest movement. We are bait, hostages just like our foals were. The realisation made silent tears of fear and rage run down her cheeks, blurring the harshly lit scene into a distorted chaotic swirl of glare and bright colours. How could it have been any other way?

Something howled overhead on jets of air; an arrowhead-shaped aircraft that was only visible in the reflected light from the orbiting airtanks. Bipedal shapes were dropped from its belly, looking like fat spiders on their arrester lines, clawed paws digging deeply into the grass as they landed. They stalked through the assembled herd, four with weapons drawn and the fifth acting like it was hunting for some particular pony or ponies.

The Dog found what it was looking for, and rough claws pulled Spiral, Triple, Scalar and the others involved in the little rebellion out and dumped them away from the rest. Little gasps and wordless exclamations, quickly beaten into silence, rippled through the rest of the ponies; in this moment of relative calm, any chance they had of not being recognised was long gone.

The lead Dog made its blank-faced helmet open, revealing a black-furred and scowling face. "Where is Fusion Pulse TC4668?" she demanded, with a snarl that showed a startlingly-white set of canine teeth. None of the ponies answered; some looked away or lowered their heads, while others, Scalar in particular, stared back defiantly. "This one has given the servitors a direct order! Where is TC4668?" She made a gesture with her right paw, making blue-white sparks crackle between the metal claws at its fingertips.

"Never, we'll never--" Scalar howled as the Dog's paw gripped his throat, his body vibrating and twitching as if being prodded by hot needles. The electricity vanished, leaving the stallion gasping and shivering, but his ears were flat back and his eyes wild. "I have felt the lash of the Maker's Test, Dog, and there is nothing you can do to me that will make me tell--" he spat, teeth snapping shut and the tendons of his neck standing out like cords as the sparks leapt once more. After a count of ten the paw relaxed, but Scalar just glared up at the Dog and panted, great, gasping breaths that made his sweat-soaked flanks heave.

The soldier's eyes narrowed, and she glanced down at a display on her wrist before returning her gaze to Scalar, then smiled nastily. "Bring this one the pony Elliptic DD2206," she snapped, studying the stallion intently.

Scalar's eyes went wide and he made to stand, but one of his gryphon guards slammed a fist into the side of his head and he dropped back down, stunned. "No! She's got nothing to do with any of this..." he said, trailing off as Elliptic was pushed to the grass in front of him.

The mare, her delicate green coat and feathers marred by flecks of red, didn't fight the gryphon guards, but just looked back at Scalar with an expression of utter confusion. "But you were dead! I-I saw your body and scattered your ashes, and-and now you're back and-and--" She cut off when the Dog made a sharp gesture with one paw. "I'm sorry, Master, I don't understand any of this. W-what are your orders?" The last words came out sounding hopeful, even through her trembling tone, and Elliptic twisted to look up at the soldier, ears forward and attentive.

"The pony will convince its mate to tell this one where Fusion Pulse TC4668 is." She held up one paw, making electricity crackle between the claw-tips.

Elliptic's eyes went wide and she tried to shy away from the blue-white snap-crack, only to be prevented from doing so by gryphons who held on to her head and wings. "Scalar, talk to the Master. I don't know what's going on, but you must t-t--" She gasped as the paw came closer, hooves making unconscious little running motions until those too were held still.

Scalar surged forwards, only to be beaten down again, and was practically buried under his own gryphon captors. "I'll kill you, I'll kill you all if you so much as touch--"

The Dog placed her paw gently on Elliptic's neck, and the mare convulsed, screaming high and loud in time with the flicker-pulse of electricity. A moment later the touch was withdrawn, and Elliptic slumped in the talons holding her, making great, gasping sobs interspersed with a faint keening sound. "Please, Scalar, please..." she whispered. The paw approached again and Elliptic closed her eyes. "The Masters are the paws of the Maker," she babbled, over and over again. The electricity bit and her words dissolved into a series of grunts and squeals, her wings thrashing hard enough to knock her guards off balance.

Scalar just stared at his twitching, writhing, mate, his mouth opening and closing. "No," he said finally, his throat so closed up that the word was nearly incomprehensible, "I can't."

The soldier shrugged, then reached back to draw her laser from where it was clipped against her backpack. She hefted the device, making the thick connecting cable sway slightly, then pointed it at the fleshy part of Elliptic's shoulder. "This could cut right through the pony's body... but it doesn't have to." Muscle exploded in a flare of green light, leaving a bloody crater the size of a foal's hoof. The mare screamed again, ragged and full of shock, her cries muffled when the gryphon holding her head transferred its grip to her muzzle. "Lasers don't penetrate well. The pony's mate has a lot more hide this one can burn," she snarled, moving the laser a little further along and firing again.

Sprays of atomised blood had coated Scalar's head and chest, and more was pouring down Elliptic's side to soak into the grass. Spiral twitched, earning herself a sharp squeeze from one of the gryphons holding her wings, and settled for silently probing the nasty band of crystal thaumic machinery that was locked at the base of her horn. "Let me help her; she'll bleed to death if I don't--" She cut off as the soldier fired a third time.

"Stop!" Scalar cried, "she's at Naraka. Fusion has gone to Naraka to get our foals back."

"See? That was easy, wasn't it?". The soldier straightened up, closing her helmet visor and muzzle guard, then turned to the gryphon waiting at her side. "Load these ones," she said, waving the laser over the little group, then leaned towards Spiral, tapping her sharply on the muzzle. "Command suspects that this pony is the leader of this little mission," she said, "and is wondering if the rogues from the Institute are watching through the pony's eyes."

Ears still twitching at Elliptic's fading cries, Spiral shifted her gaze to the confused mass of ponies still huddled under the gryphon trooper's guns. "No," she whispered, "that's monstrous."

"This is the price of treason, servitor." Her voice was suddenly amplified, booming out over the herd. "Kill one at random, every thirty seconds."

Hard claws closed on her body, holding her head still, but she didn't try to move, instead watching as the first unfortunate pony was dragged away from their companions. Where are you, Gravity? You were supposed to be watching us, Spiral thought, tears running down her cheeks. Panicked whinnies and frantic neighs cut the air, nearly drowning out the mechanical noises of the orbiting airtanks, then there was a single, sharp, crack.

16 - Nothing Gets Out of Naraka

Author's Note

A crude dramatis personæ can be found here.
Preread by: turol and KMCA.
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and Caliaponia (Just Passing Through).

16 - Nothing Gets Out of Naraka

=== Chapter 16: Nothing gets out of Naraka ===

Pain.

Salrath wanted to curl her body around the zone of pulsing, burning pain that extended from claws to elbow, but the sheath of golden magic held her as rigid as if her muscles were sculpted metal. Why can Salrath still feel her fingers? Out of the corner of one eye -- it was also impossible to turn her head -- she could see the stump, jagged splinters of bloody bone poking out from the cap of light that gripped her wrist like a band of hot iron. The amputated paw lay discarded, thrown against the wall by a flick of the gryphon's head.

In the distance, many hundreds of lengths away, if she could trust the muffled and distorted sounds, were voices. Some melodic, others harsh and grating, but all were equally unintelligible. In time with the distortion, the lights in the corridor seemed to flicker and surge with great waves of colour, like paws were pressing on her eyes.

Why can this one still feel her fingers? The thought came again, as a particularly sharp spike of pain made all the muscles of her chest convulse, driving the air from her lungs. It didn't seem fair to have lost the paw, yet still feel the agony from the crushed and twisted fingers. Gaze flicking forward, she felt an unfamiliar wash of fear at the expression in that long, white face with its overly large and moist eyes.

Eye, singular.

One of the violet eyes was gone, replaced with a smooth globe of white plastic, and Salrath focused on it, grinding her teeth and imagining that the pony's soft muzzle was in her jaws. It was enough to push away the fear, and almost enough to damp down the pain, so she grabbed hold of the thought, using it to drag her mind back to the here-and-now.

"--freedom. Yes, I can understand that," Fusion said, holding Salrath's gaze.

Never. The People will never let the client species go. Salrath tried to spit the words, but the same force that held her head still kept her jaws closed, and all that emerged was a pained, unintelligible, grunt.

Some of the sentiment must have come across, because the pony's ears flattened and her eyes grew wild. The glimmer of active magic about the creature's horn grew fractionally brighter and the pressure across her whole body abruptly jumped. Breathing became impossible in any direction other than out as, in moments, Salrath felt a great weight settle on her chest. There was an irresistible force to the touch, like she was laid out between the jaws of some industrial press, one able to shape the toughest alloys, and she twitched helplessly as her bones started to bend. Something went snap, down between belly and ribs, driving hooked claws up into her left lung.

She tried to cough, but there was no air left.

===

It would take so very little extra pressure to crush Salrath.

A twitch of effort and her body would be smeared like an insect against a sheet of invisible glass, crushed into something unrecognizable and far beyond repair. There was a voice talking to her, harsh and so unlike a pony; it must have been from the gryphoness she'd run into in the corridor. The conversation had been the first part of a negotiation, with the grey cat-bird Ellisif trying to convince Fusion of her good intentions, and that she wasn't a threat to her nebulous plans. Then there was the noise that had penetrated her precautionary sound dampening field, and she'd gone to check.

...and there she was.

Her magic had reached out, almost without volition, and separated the three combatants, but it was Salrath that captured her attention and held it. She'd gripped the Agent gently, like she would a disobedient foal -- until she'd tried to speak. Then the fury had come, and it was a constant battle to not just squeeze.

Breath coming hard and fast, she stared at the Agent's bulging eyes, seeing only the vindictive malice that face had worn so often. Flesh was infinitely malleable under her grip, and even the bones within flexed and strained as her magic closed in on all sides.

"Do it! Kill her; I don't want to waste any time on this… this creature, when we could be looking for our foals," Redshift said, his words thick with hate and nearly meaningless against the roaring in her head. His horn lit, wrapping a contracting circlet of violet light about Salrath's throat.

It wasn't the words, but the touch of his magic that distracted her. She could be useful. With an effort of will, Fusion pushed back at her hate, the desire to crush and maim, pushing it into the future and away from the now. The complex and shifting structure of her plans clamoured for her attention, and she dragged the analytical part of herself to the forefront, looking at the Agent as another asset she could use in this mission. She must know things about this place.

Fusion felt her face go blank as she pushed aside Red's magic and relaxed her own. Salrath inhaled and coughed violently, trying to curl into a ball in her grip. "No," Fusion said, her voice dead and distant, "this Master could be useful." And if I killed you without telling Gravity... Despite everything, Fusion shivered at the idea, which conjured a vision of Gravity jumping straight here as soon as she knew. I think she might hate you even more than I do... perhaps it would be better if she doesn't know, for now. Still watching the Agent, Fusion turned to the gryphoness once more. "What would you do with your freedom, Ellisif, if I gave it to you?"

The magic holding the trooper faded, allowing her to settle to the floor. She seemed to shrink slightly, then took a few little steps sideways to get further away from Fusion. "The same as I think you are doing. My Masters have betrayed me and everyone else in my team; we're brought up to fight and die for the Hive, but..."

"You don't want to die for them anymore?" Fusion cocked her head, studying the bulkier gryphoness.

"I want to live, but that's probably not going to be an option." Ellisif ruffled her feathers and snapped her beak sharply. "I will settle for dying for me, and the rest of my kind, if that gives us a chance to snap the collars that bind us." She tapped a claw against the smooth white band that encircled her throat.

Fusion nodded, relaxing her hold on everyone except Salrath. "An alliance, despite the fact my sister probably killed half your team?"

The gryphoness froze, beak half agape and head-feathers raised. "Yes, she did. More were maimed, and are no doubt either here or already dead... but that was war, and something else I can blame the dogboys for. I am dead to them. What loyalty do I owe them now?" Her gaze lowered, and she sagged slightly. "Especially now that I have seen this place."

Fusion nodded again, then made a sweeping gesture with one wing, momentarily extending it from beneath its armour carapace. "Very well, I agree. If there is anything of the Agent's equipment that you want, feel free to take it. We need to get moving." She held out Salrath's stump of a wrist; Redshift pulled off the comms bracer and started to examine it.

Ellisif picked up the little pistol in one set of talons then, with a grunt, snapped off the trigger guard. "Better than nothing, I suppose. Have to try and rig a holster," she grumbled, half to herself. Sitting back on her haunches, she cocked her head, beak half opening in an avian smile as she lifted the severed paw and held it out to Salrath. "You look like you could use a paw, Agent. You know we live to serve."

Salrath wriggled, violently enough that Fusion’s magical grasp momentarily faltered. "This one will make the gryphon's death slo--" she got out, but the force returned and Fusion gave her a shake, hard enough that her teeth rattled.

They'd passed through another set of doors when Redshift snorted, muttering under his breath, then sighed. "It's no good; I can't get anything from this," he said, waving Salrath's comms bracer in the air. "I stopped it from calling for help, but I was too late to remove the anti-tamper mechanism... the insides are nothing but junk now." He looked at her mournfully. "Must have been related to her injury and me taking the thing off."

Fusion clenched her teeth, then forced her jaw to relax. "That's okay, you'll know for next time. I'll just have to ask nicely."

"The pony isn't going to get anythi--"

"I think I will," Fusion said, using the cadence of her trot to maintain her icy calm. Without slowing, she moved the Agent around so she could get a better view. "You only live because you might be of use, Salrath. How does Security intend to trap us?"

The Dog just clenched her teeth, so Fusion sighed, feeling something cold settle in her stomach. "This is obviously a trap, Agent." She pulled a set of wrist restraints, simple grooved metal bands with a non-return mechanism, from Red's floating cloud of purloined hardware, snapping them about Salrath's wrists. She relaxed her magical grip on the Agent's stump at the same time as cinching the ratchet tourniquet tight. Salrath made a quiet hissing noise, like air leaking out under pressure. "Everypony I know wants you dead, some in more gruesome ways than others. I've seen in the mind of the medic whose filly you had tortured; I'll give you to her. Spiral will be able to keep you alive for a very long time."

Salrath narrowed her eyes. "Go on then. Where is this other servitor?" She made a show of trying to think, then laughed. "Salrath remembers that one; does the pony want to know why it was done?" She grinned bloodily at Fusion's sudden change in rhythm. "Yes, it was all the pony's fault. This one suspected the pony and wanted to force it to act... instead it just sat back and let its friend suffer."

And what would have happened if I did do something? Fusion wanted to scream it in Salrath's face, but one look at her sneering expression and her mouth clamped shut. I will not give you the satisfaction. "If that's the way you want it," she said, cursing the tremble in her voice. Magic reached out and plucked a metal fastening from the Agent's discarded equipment vest, then heated it to molten incandescence. She brought the blob of yellow-hot metal closer, the heat making the exposed skin on the tip of her muzzle tingle.

Salrath's ears went back and she glared at Fusion. "Salrath doesn't think the pony has the guts to do anything," she spat, "and every second it wastes on this one, means another of its kin is dead. Security is taking revenge for--"

The words sent a chill down Fusion's spine, and she dropped the hot metal, letting it splash sparks across the floor. She pushed Salrath sideways, slamming her into the wall; the Agent grunted in pain, but then just snarled. A moment to check on Lilac and the rest of her friends, and some of the cold was replaced with anger. Of course she lies! It's all she ever does... in that case, what's the point in keeping her alive at all? Fusion looked into that bloody, grinning face and started to feel sick. She might know things that could help, but... I can't do it. I can't match this monster, death for death, even if it might save somepony. She'd find it easy; torture and maim or kill. Her ears went back. I can't. It's what she would do.

She will be nothing but a distraction. Breathing hard, Fusion stopped, then closed her eye and took a firm grip on Salrath's head. I must have killed dozens or hundreds already, so why is this so hard? In her grip the Agent twitched, muscles fighting the magic. Quick and clean, then it will all be over. The deer; think of the deer. Fusion took one deep breath and held it, then--

"If you want her to talk, give her to me," Ellisif said quietly. "There's no shame in not being able to torture."

Fusion gasped, her magic going out and dropping Salrath to the floor. The Agent hit the ground running, but a lunge by Svartr knocked her sprawling. The dog tried to curl protectively about her chest but, with a hiss, the gryphoness planted talons on shoulder and pelvis, beak opening and dipping towards Salrath's throat.

"Svartr, no!" Adigard grabbed her by the wingshoulders, hauling back and making her growl in frustration.

Svartr shrugged him off, but didn't try to bite Salrath again. "Yes, there is!" she hissed at Fusion, slapping the Agent's head with the back of one foreclaw.

Fusion flinched and hung her head, unable to look Svartr in the eye. Gravity was right; I am weak. Slinking away, she stood close to Redshift, then nodded to Ellisif.

"Back off," Ellisif said warningly to Svartr, beak snapping shut with a gunshot crack. She stepped forwards, pulling Salrath from Svartr's grip. Glancing sideways into the nearest window, she glared at the pair of gryphons inside, who were watching the action with interest, then dragged the Agent to the blank space between two cells. Sitting back on her haunches, she pinned Salrath against the wall with one large set of talons, grabbing hold of her good paw with the other.

"Agent, you may have good reason to doubt the pony's resolve, but you shouldn't doubt mine." The gryphoness' tone was disinterested, and she looked at Salrath like she was a piece of malfunctioning machinery. "I have been in Security for over a gigasecond, and I know how this works. The only person here who can stop this is you." Salrath glared back, but was silent. "Suit yourself." Ellisif worked her beak between the digits of the paw, separating out the smallest one, and started to apply pressure.

"Stop!"

The word seemed to force its way out of Salrath's throat, but Ellisif just closed her beak a little more. She cocked her head slightly and made a questioning noise. There was a nasty green-twig snap from inside Ellisif's beak.

"Powered troops in the deep tunnels, at the lower transit hub," Salrath said with a gasp. Ellisif released her paw and let her draw it back. "Don't know the numbers, but at least six reaction teams with heavy weapons," she said quickly. "There were more at the Pit, but..." Her gaze flicked to Fusion.

Reflexively, Fusion looked down, sweeping the darkness beneath with her shadow sight. There, past the ranks of caged gryphons and ponies, were the high-speed tunnels that linked various parts of the Hive. Lights, the characteristic colours of crystal thaumic mechanisms, flowed in both directions, but there was a faint, almost invisible, static haze. That's not magic, Fusion thought, that's charged superconductors. "There's certainly something there... I think it's true, but they are not moving yet." She shook herself, then picked up Salrath and broke into a rapid trot.

===

"This one can help," Korn said, from his floating perch behind and to the right of Fusion.

She ignored him, intent on hunting for the next down ramp that would take them to the primary comms suite, somewhere on the lower levels. They were back in the 'pony' zone of the subterranean areas, another level lower down. While they moved, Fusion was questioning the gryphon soldiers, trying to gain some insight into the strength of their motives, but the effort of not interfering with Gravity's mission by telling her about Salrath was becoming trying. The other mare, currently sandwiched between two immensely heavy layers of armourcrete in the distant Security base, would no doubt find the news highly distracting.

Redshift had spent much of the time going through Salrath's equipment vest and its collection of small and interesting devices. Now they all floated in a halo about his head, some flickering with faint glimmers of his violet magic, and he was deep in conversation with the male gryphon, a red-brown individual called 'Adigard'. Long strips of fabric had been cut from the Agent's vest and were in the process of being converted to a kind of harness that held Salrath's backup weapon close to the gryphon's chest.

"--nasty. We'd never been trained on how to deal with ponies -- Maker, I'd never even seen more than one at once. If it hadn't been for that idiot Gunnulf, none of that would have happened. I hope he ended up in here somewhere, because there are things I'd like to take out of his hide," Adigard said, snapping his beak in an expression Fusion was starting to associate with anger. "...but I hear from Korn that he ended up as an assistant to that... Dog. It sounds like they should have been mates, they were so well matched."

Fusion nodded; the gryphons had their own term for the People's soldiers -- 'dogboys' -- and had liked the ponies more general term. "You won't get the chance... my sister killed him while breaking me out of the Institute."

"Magic sounds like it was too quick," Adigard grumbled.

"She stabbed him--" Fusion waggled her head, waving the sharp point of her horn in quick arcs. "--I was told he bled to death."

Adigard stared at her for a moment, then nodded his head in apparent approval. "I had no idea you ponies had it in you... it takes something to get that close to death. Even some gryphons will hesitate the first time."

"You didn't see her at the Institute. For someone not trained for battle, she certainly showed enough enthusiasm," Ellisif muttered, twisting her neck to try and settle the feathers under her own makeshift harness.

"It helps when the person at the other end is trying to kill you," Fusion said softly, studying Salrath out of the corner of her eye. The Agent was blank-faced and seemed relaxed and watchful. Somehow I expected more from you... you gave in too easily, she thought. The Dog's calm was unsettling in its own way, and Fusion sighed silently. What did I expect, an indestructible fire-breathing monster? Grav will see to it that you hold nothing back from us.

They trotted in silence for a while, the only sound the quiet thump and scratch of hoof and claw on stone. "I'll get over it," Ellisif said finally, as they reached the door at the end of the corridor, "especially if something good comes of it. Your sister didn't go out of her way to kill us, and she certainly could have."

"All clear," Redshift whispered, taking a few moments to fit Adigard with his improvised weapon harness. The springy straps held the undersized pistol at the centre of his chest, dangling just behind his forelegs. The gryphon nodded his thanks and, balanced on three legs, practiced reaching for the gun.

They also know they are trapped by the Dogs... how much would it take to start a general rebellion? Fusion ruffled her wings within the confines of her armour, sweeping the surroundings with her shadow sight as the rest of the group came through. "Ellisif... there is no Blessing for gryphons. Why have you not rebelled already, if you don't want to be the Dog's slaves?"

The grey gryphoness laughed quietly, a single harsh caw of sound. "There have been rebellions, some large and some small, but they don't last long. As you will find out, our Masters don't take kindly to threats to their power."

"How do they stop you? Gryphons seem to be the majority of the military forces." The space they had entered was another of the shallow spiral ramps, and they all started downwards.

"We are." She nodded, and there was genuine pride in her voice. "They built us for war, and we are good at it. They don't tell us the details, obviously, but when you are on deployment you wear a command collar, and that ties into your armour and weapons. They have full remote override... rumour is that it has a self-destruct, too."

"No, it doesn't," Redshift said, pausing from where he was inspecting Salrath's comms bracer. "Fusion, that makes a lot of sense. I had to defeat a whole mess of security systems to get that gun to work."

"Wait, you have gryphon weapons? You didn't bring any with you, did you?" Svartr said suddenly, a gleam in her dark eyes. "I want something I can use to make them suffer for what they have done--" Adigard laid a claw carefully on her shoulder and she went silent, beak clicking shut.

"We do -- we took all the equipment we could carry when we left the Institute..." She trailed off, staring at the three gryphons. Do I trust them enough? I know nothing of war, and I think that lack will get ponies killed. She stole a glance at Salrath, who stared mutely back at her. Adigard bit off her paw... if this is a trap, then the Agent can't have known about it. Fusion bit her lips. Can she? "Trust," she muttered, then sighed. "I will bring them here, right now. We have magic that allows instantaneous transportation."

Ellisif looked uncertain. "Is the pony serious? Such things cannot--"

Fusion smiled. "The ceiling here is high enough, so I can show you." Lilac, she thought, into the sharing, can you move to where you can see the equipment we took, please? Out of the corner of her eye she saw Korn shift uncomfortably, mouth open as if he was about to say something. She paused, but he stayed silent, so she closed her eyes and focused on the sharing.

The remote tunnels of their refuge were still and cold, and the only sounds were the ragged breathing of Ogive and the irregular cadence of Lilac's clumsy steps. It took only moments for the young stallion to reach the store, and Fusion had him pull out one of the clawed armour gloves to act as a test. I think I have the velocity vector worked out, but... She built the pattern, gently steering Lilac's magic into the correct conformation.

"The pony must not use that magic!" Korn burst out.

Fusion's concentration slipped and the pattern disappeared, wiped away by a near-instinctive obedience. He'd barked out the order, and there was such urgency in his tone that her mind effectively froze for an instant. The insistent need to obey an order from the Dog who'd been her Master ever since she'd entered their service was very strong, and she took a deep breath, feeling some of her anger return. "I am not your servitor any more, Student Korn!" she snapped, ears folding back as she pulled him around and glared at him, muzzle to muzzle.

He gave a little cry, shrinking back as far as her confining magic would allow. "T-there is a machine... Korn helped to build--"

"Korn is a traitor to the People; he will--" The glow of magic about Salrath's chest and head intensified and her words cut off, eyes bulging like they were trying to burst free of her skull. Her jaws twitched against Fusion's telekinesis, unsettling choking sounds escaping from between her teeth.

"Salrath tried to have this one eaten!" Korn shouted at the Agent, voice ending in a squeak as Fusion frowned in his direction. "Korn just wants to go home," he whimpered, hanging limply in her grip.

None of us can go home. Fusion stared at Korn, an odd tightness in her chest. Lilac, we need to do something first, she sent, then gently let him stand on his own paws. He staggered, sagging to the floor. "Tell me, Student," she said softly, features relaxing, "what machine?"

"Korn and Vanca have been working with Security--" He paused, watching Fusion with frightened eyes as her ears folded back briefly. "There was no choice! Korn was kept in isolation until Vanca convinced Security that this one would be useful. There were threats..."

He tried to move, tried to reach out, but the telekinetic field prevented it. Fusion relented, relaxing her grip about his upper body. "I know all about Security's way of working. What do you think you can do, Korn?"

"Vanca solved it... there were unexplained signals from the accelerator's gravity wave suite, matching the time the ponies escaped from the Institute." His speech accelerated, the words tumbling over one another. "These ones designed a machine; a collection of interferometers sensitive to short wavelength disturbances in space-time, distortions produced when the exotic matter at the throat of a wormhole manifests. All theoretical, but--"

"You can detect the teleport jumps." It wasn't a question, but Korn gave a jerky nod. Maker, and we've been using that spell to travel everywhere! Do they know about our refuge in the mountain--? Fusion started to breathe fast, attracting worried glances from Redshift; out of the corner of her good eye, she saw Salrath smile, a nasty, vindictive thing that vanished with a gasp when she gave her a squeeze. The faint mutter of Lilac's mental efforts expanded and leapt into focus, and Fusion spent a few moments watching through Trocar's eyes as pony after pony materialised in the cold glacial valley, deep in the mountains. Nothing... not yet, anyway. "What is the range?" she snapped.

"D-don't really know," Korn squeaked, "never had a chance to test--"

"Guess!" Fusion growled, the magic that held the Dog shifting to harder colours, "my friend's lives depend on this!"

"Maybe as much as twenty kilolengths, but it depends on the amount of exotic matter--" He gave a gasp, paws scrabbling at his chest as if to relieve some crushing weight. "Please, this one cannot breathe."

Fusion relaxed, letting Korn gasp and shudder in her arcane grip. That is something, at least. Wormholes... yes that makes sense, she thought, rooting through what little she had been allowed to learn. Just enough to do what was asked, and no more. It could be worse... at least there will be no easy global surveillance. "Where is this device?"

"There are three t-to get full location. Korn only helped install the first, but he knows where the others are. The pony needs to go to the primary and secondary communications hubs, on the lower levels, and the satellite antenna farm on the top floor."

===

They bypassed the three remaining levels, gliding rapidly down to the bottom of the spiral ramp. Here were high-ceilinged spaces used for bulk storage and the machines to retrieve whatever was needed from the shelves. The majority of the free volume was given over to the automated retrieval system; levitation-drive platforms, each two lengths on a side and equipped with thaumic machinery showing the simple colours of kinetic manipulators, moved in three dimensions around towering stacks of crates and modules. The air was filled with the scent of food, mostly the vague, musty smell of the Master's pellet-supplement, and Fusion found herself salivating at the prospect.

Along with the nondescript supplies were big insulated boxes the size of shipping containers, finned with heat sinks and humming with the quiet flow of coolant. From these came the odour of multiple species: mostly sheep, rabbit and cow, but there was a faint hint of pony and even gryphon, hard to pick out amid the scents of their companions. "What do they feed you?" Fusion said to Ellisif, eyeing the nearest refrigerated container as they trotted past.

The gryphoness seemed oblivious to the odour. "Meat. Raw... stuff that looks like it was blasted off a carcass by a pressure hose. It's not exactly the best, but there was enough. Why?"

"You can't smell that? I mean, do you know what kind of... meat." The word stuck in her throat and her stomach lurched. They come in but they don't come out... and why waste the protein? The smell did something to her legs, and she accelerated into a canter, running away from the idea. Fresh anger started to bloom, igniting into a point of heat that flooded her body and made the world swim. No, it should be no surprise that they would do this. We are animals to them.

"I don't have your long nose, Fusion," Ellisif said, beak twitching in what Fusion was beginning to recognise as a smile.

"I can," Redshift said in a small voice. "I can smell pony and gryphon in with the cows and sheep. Fusion, we can't leave anypony here if this is their ultimate fate."

"We won't, Red." Although quite what I'm going to do with so many ponies and gryphons...

Ellisif, wings half open and taking low gliding leaps to keep up with the longer-legged ponies, narrowed her eyes. "Every time I think I have come to grips with the level of this betrayal--" Her beak snapped shut, and she exchanged glances with the other two gryphons.

===

"The camera says no movement," Redshift said, his horn glowing faintly, "I've looped the buffer like all the others, so we should be okay for a while."

Fusion studied the room with her own shadow sight. It was at the end of a long and twisting maintenance corridor, far enough from the core of Naraka that she thought they'd have had trouble finding it at all in the uncertain time they had available. Have I been too hasty with Korn? He can scarcely be completely trusted, but for as long as we keep him from Security's clutches... She frowned, muzzle wrinkling. Having a tame Master might be just what we need to prevent panic. She sighed, then realised everyone was staring at her. Pushing away the desire to pick through the implications of that idea, she closed her eye and really looked.

Her first impression was of a small room cluttered still further by masses of equipment. Ordered arrays of crystal thaumic devices were stacked up and down the walls and in columns around the perimeter. The hazy glow of electrical, rather than thaumic, power flooded the spaces between, resulting in a chaotic spider's web of connections that came in from all over the complex before merging into a single, brilliant line that descended into the depths to join the deep tunnel network that connected Naraka to the rest of the Hive.

Hasty work had obviously been carried out: the ordered spacing of the machines was disrupted to make way for something large and angular, a tetrahedral shape that was taller than she was, with the impression of a device constructed with speed, rather than beauty, in mind. Just like Korn described. Next to that was something she'd never seen before.

A compact ovoid, only a quarter length along its longest dimension, and half that wide, it contained mostly material dark to her energy-sensitive shadow sight, except for at one end. There, at a spot that was exactly aligned with one of the egg's foci, was a point of extreme brilliance, but one that was vanishingly small. How did I miss that? The answer was obvious; even at this distance the radiant object was tiny to the point of being nearly dimensionless. Vague memories from her training at the Institute tickled the back of her mind, but nothing surfaced.

"Go," she whispered, nodding to Redshift. The other pony's horn glowed again, and the door retracted silently into its frame.

The room was exactly as she'd imagined, lined with racks of instrumentation that glowed softly with electronic and thaumic light, all bound together in a loom of optical cables. Despite the quiet hum of ventilation, it was very warm, and the equipment was covered with arterial networks of brightly coloured liquid coolant lines, all pulsing like they were connected to a giant heart. In addition to all that, were two Dogs. The first, a mid-brown male, had his back to them and was leaning against a panel halfway into the room; the Master's eye' Security decal was a discrete grey-on-black pattern on the rear of his equipment harness. The other, dark-furred and wearing next to nothing in the close warmth, was head and shoulders under the tetrahedral teleport detector, and paused to look over at the door when it opened.

He froze, staring up at Fusion, shock written across every whisker on his face. No no no-- With a shout of warning, the Dog rolled out from under the tetrahedral device, reaching for a comms bracer that was laying on a discarded equipment harness. Still locked in a kind of paralysis, Fusion felt all her thoughts move in slow motion as she fumbled with her magic to grasp him, but just managed to drop Salrath and Korn instead. The first Dog flinched as if the cry had been a shot, paw reaching for something on his belt; Fusion watched the movement and knew what was going to happen next, but there was almost a barrier between her mind and body. She scrabbled for her power, but its effects came with aching slowness.

Grey feathers and fur pushed between Redshift and herself, hard enough that she staggered and fell into the door frame. Svartr leapt across the cluttered space, mantled wings brushing the bright web of coolant lines, flicking and twisting with millisecond adjustments of her trajectory. There was no snarl, no battle cry, just an impression of a terrible eagerness in her expression as she surged past and collided with the Dog, right at the same moment as his paws closed around his bracer. Talons, lacking their needle points where they had been cropped for her confinement, closed with crushing force on the Dog's upper body and knocked the bracer from his grasp. Her head dipped, and there was a sudden, convulsive, movement from his legs, then nothing.

The rush of motion shattered the glass wall in Fusion's head, and she grabbed for the second Dog in clumsy panic. The blaze of magic filled the room, and she knew that she'd put far too much power into the grip; his body collapsed with a multitude of snapping sounds. She dropped the corpse, now lumpy and jointed in far too many places, captivated by the surprise in the crushed Dog's eyes and the red stains covering his white teeth. There was a roaring in her head and shadows collected in the corners of her vision, and it suddenly became hard to breathe.

"I thought you ponies were supposed to be efficient."

The words came from Svartr; still crouched over the body of the dark-furred Dog, the gryphoness had twisted to stare at Fusion. Blood was smeared across her beak and had stained the grey and black feathers of her chest. "I..." Fusion said, then swallowed, pushing back the whirl of thoughts and images. Is this what it was like for Grav, after she broke me out of the Institute? I need to be better than this. "No, she actually seemed to enjoy hitting back," she murmured, then shook her head, finally noticing the stares she was getting from everyone else. "No time for this. Redshift, you--"

"I've done it, Fusion," he said meekly. "Communications will be accepted without errors, but won't actually be sent on. I can even reach the secondary and satellite comms rooms from here... they are all linked together and I can force them to all work through this one." He nodded his head at the tetrahedral machine. "This thing is tied into the comms, and I can see another two like it... they still work, but can no longer talk to the outside world."

"They will get suspicious," Ellisif said to Red, but her gaze stayed fixed on Fusion.

"Yes, but..." He shrugged. "I left the low level stuff alone -- it's easier to fool the cameras and let this room just send on the looped feeds. Everything coming in is unaffected; it's just the outgoing 'person to person' stuff that is actively blocked. I'm surprised we've not been discovered already, to be honest." He bent forward, brushing the unknown ovoid with his muzzle. "I don't know what this thing is, though." It was sitting on a small wheeled trolley, and looked like it was supposed to be moved somewhere.

"This one does," Salrath said, in a strangled tone.

Fusion wheeled about, realising that she'd completely forgotten about the Agent, then relaxed. Salrath had not gone far, and was being watched by Adigard a little way down the corridor. The immediate urge to grab the Dog and wrap her in bands of force and squeeze until there was nothing left came back, so strong that the power rose almost without conscious thought. She has never said anything that was without malice, but this... The tone of the Agent's voice was something she'd rarely heard: fear. "What is it?" ...and why should I believe a word you say?

"That is a nuke; a megatonne or more." She was trying to back away, only to be shoved forwards by the gryphon. "These ones have to get away from here; Orgon won't wait to fire it if he thinks Naraka has been compromised." Her muzzle twisted, like she had bitten into something rotten. "This is the Sector Chief's way of removing inconvenient loose ends."

Everyone, gryphons included, flinched. "It can't be triggered now," Redshift said. "Although I suppose it could have a timer." He frowned, glimmers of light condensing about his horn. "Oh!" His eyes went wide, wings flicking out, and he inhaled sharply. "Something just tried to turn off... right here." He tapped the casing with a hoof, just over the point of light. "I think it's a magnetic trap for antimatter."

"It tried to detonate?" Fusion said faintly.

"I can see the trigger pathways... no, just the superconductors in the trap." Legs flexing, he gave a little stationary jog, then looked over at her. "It was just an anti-tamper mechanism, I think. That wouldn't be so bad, right?"

"Bad enough for everyone in the room," she muttered. "Is it safe for us to leave it, or...?" Fusion stared at the smooth-shelled machine, studying that point of energy-dense brilliance. Antimatter... makes perfect sense. She'd never seen the stuff before, but it was obviously nothing like the small blocks of uranium-235 she'd used in training.

"I put a temporary block on the firing circuit before I did anything else... now, though, only a pony with my speciality could fix what I've done." He started to calm down, making a conscious effort to refold his wings. "...or someone with the tools and spares to replace the modified computronium. I must have done something that the machine didn't like, and it decided to self-destruct." He looked doubtful, then his gaze went distant. "No, that must be it. Makes sense; you'd want a way to disable a weapon like this... and nothing is reaching it from the outside."

We caught them before they were ready... if I had waited, or if Grav hadn't pushed so hard for this attack, this weapon would have been hidden away... "There would have been nothing left of me or any of our foals." She gently picked the weapon up and gave it a careful shake; the spot of antimatter stayed in the same relative position. That's something... after all, this is designed to go into battle. "Right. Let's get you those guns," she said, passing the bomb to Redshift with a nod. "See what you can do with this... carefully." If Red can make it work, would I have the nerve to send it somewhere?

===

They used the central spaces as a receiving point. High-ceilinged and dimly lit with only a few of the lights active, this large room was outfitted like a section of desert, full of sand, gravel and rocks, with complex-looking exercise equipment around the perimeter. Doors led off at intervals, likely to the corridors containing the stalls for the experimental subjects, something confirmed by the gryphons.

"They just let you mingle?" Fusion said, while expanding her link to Lilac. The distant pony was still next to the pile of weapons, and he quickly rebuilt the teleport pattern she'd aborted earlier.

"The times are staggered, so contacts are controlled. You could refuse to return to your cell, but that is what the collars are for."

Lilac's magic pulsed, sending a distortion through the sharing, and the claw-glove she'd selected arrived with a thump of displaced air, slamming into the ground hard enough to kick up a deep crater in the gravel. The gryphons flinched, wings flicking out, and Fusion grinned at their shocked expressions. Of the Dogs, Korn seemed fascinated, the look of fear that had settled on his features ever since they'd met was gone and had been replaced with curiosity. Salrath, though, was preternaturally calm again, her face a still and smooth as if she was asleep; the only hint of deep emotion were the tremors of her paws and the racing thunder of her heart, made obvious by vibrations transmitted through her telekinesis. "...and that's why we do test shots." Shifting the teleport terminus, she asked Lilac to cast again.

The mass of disparate equipment appeared with a bang and a flash, but this time Fusion caught it, decelerating the weapons and armour to a relatively soft landing amid the rocks. The gryphons fell upon the pile with soft, delighted little bird noises and, with Redshift adding everything to his orbiting cloud of mechanisms, started to don the hardware of their trade as they walked.

Ahead was the central core with its odd collection of soft pastels that they'd seen earlier, visible here as a wide column embedded in the tip of the wedge-shaped exercise room. Those lights, now discernable as close-spaced triplets embedded in a matrix of harder magical glows, filled the core, reaching nearly to the surface. There was a door in the partial column, and that too yielded under Redshift's influence.

The circular chamber inside looked, for a moment, like a collection of more specialised exercise machines. A second's more inspection and Fusion froze, breath stuck in her throat. There were a dozen square lifter platforms spaced around the perimeter, each supporting a shallow perforated trough about the size of a pony's torso. Armatures supported the metal at body height, descending not as straight columns, but in shapes that mimicked the profile of fore- and hind leg. Clamps of the same polished metal were mounted on the armatures, halfway between where the joints would be on a living limb. The place was spotless, bar a few strands of purple hair caught in one of the mechanisms.

At the centre of the ring of platforms was a lift shaft, going both up and down, flanked by a pair of robotic surgeons, much like the one she'd been fed into. The ceiling in this room was significantly lower than the one in the exercise chamber behind them; the extra space above was occupied by the pastel glows in their regular grid. Fusion walked in, stomach churning, and looked down the central shaft. "We are above the food storage level," she said softly, half to herself. There were shadowy mechanisms below the floor, a tangle of conveyors and transport tubes that fanned out from this central point.

"I didn't believe it, but it's true, isn't it? How many meals did we have, Ellisif?" Svartr said in a strangled tone that was more squawk than speech.

"Don't think about it," the gryphoness said grimly, "just add it to the list of reasons to fight. You know the stories... nothing comes out of Naraka." She turned to Fusion, who was peering up the empty shaft. "Tell me you will get them all out."

That wasn't a question. Fusion twitched, wings brushing the insides of her armour's carapace panels. "I've known for a long time, ever since I saw this place in Spiral's memories, that I'd never be able to stop at just my kin," she whispered, voice sounding hollow in the empty shaft. "We need to get to the central controls; it will take too long to open the cells one at a time." Her wings came out, and in short, quick strokes she leapt to the level above.

The first impression was of being encased in a pointillist rainbow. The hard colours of the Dog's crystal thaumic machines surrounded her in a regular grid, stacked cubes of lights each containing three pastel glows with disturbingly familiar shapes. Two were gently curved, mirror images of each other, the last a stubby cone with hints of spiral detail in the hazy colours. Breath caught in her throat and she shut off her shadow sight. Feeling weak, she stared at the rows of grey metal boxes, piled in columns throughout the circular space. Little indicator lights glowed on each, a collection of red and green points.

At her side, Redshift moaned. "I thought I was seeing things..." he said, voice trailing off into a whimper. "Do you think they are still alive in there?"

Maker, I hope not. Ignoring the confused glances from the gryphons and dogs, now crowded in the narrow spaces around them, she fumbled with the front panel of the closest box.

"Don't... please don't," Redshift said in agonised tones, "what else could it be?"

"Got to know; got to be sure." Fusion's tongue felt heavy in her mouth, and the words were barely recognisable. The panel came free, folding down on silent hinges. Within, there was a mass of thaumically active mechanisms, all crystals and ordered splinters of computronium, linked to liquid feeds that vanished into one wall of the container. At the centre of all that was a cylindrical tank of clear liquid, perhaps a tenth of a length across. A horn and two lengths of slender bone floated in the little tank.

Fusion made a strangled hissing sound, leaning forwards to brush the glass surface with the tip of her muzzle. The horn was small and stubby; the kind of shape found on a foal no more than two tenths of a gigasecond old. Wrapped around the horn, like it had been driven through it, was a small disk of bone, capped with a layer of fine orange fur. Tubes, branched things that were obviously natural blood vessels and nerves, extended from the rear of the skull fragment to join with an isolated lump of material, all covered with complex folds. Brain tissue, but not a whole brain... just some small fragment needed to keep the horn and wings active.

The air grew hot, and Fusion struggled to hold back a flood of sick rage that threatened to submerge any desire to stay covert. Shadows moved and formed, spreading out fan-like, centred in Fusion's body, as a golden haze condensed from the air. Korn and Salrath fell to the floor, not dropped but pushed down and held there by the thickening magic. There was the faint odour of burning fur, but neither Dog made a sound. Fusion stumbled backwards, rump striking another of the pillars, and she wheeled, shaking her head violently to try and lose the pictures her mind was throwing up.

There was a touch on her cheek, something hard and curved that still managed to seem gentle. "Come back," Ellisif said, "don't let this-this--" The gryphoness' beak opened and closed, but whatever word she was looking for wouldn't be found, and she settled for gesturing with one wing at the silent pillars. "Don't let this divert you."

Fusion closed her eyes, and took a deep breath, fighting back the fury and trying to recapture the state of cold calculation she'd had before they'd started this expedition, but it wouldn't come. Gently, she closed the hatch, then nodded to the gryphoness. "A friend once told my sister that it's okay to get angry, just so long as you direct your anger at the right place." She lifted her head and opened her shadow sight once more, trying to estimate the number of the pastel lights. Before this, it was just life and the cruelty of one Dog, but this is death... this is murder on an industrial scale. "By the time we've finished here there will be nothing left."

===

They passed through floors packed with more medical storage, many containing horn and wing samples, others packed with little packets of tissue or fluids marked with cryptic codes and stored in heavily insulated compartments. At the highest level of these, just below where the ground would be and right under the centre of the pyramid-building, was a compact room filled with computronium. Redshift, silent and withdrawn after their passage through the biological stores, seemed to come alive in the presence of so many machines.

"So complex," he breathed, shifting violet hornlight playing across his face. His eyes closed and he turned full circle, trying to take it all in.

"Can you--"

Fusion, there are Dogs and gryphons at the corral. I think they will know where you are very soon.

The thought burst from the sharing, along with images of dead and wounded ponies, all surrounded by Dogs and their gryphon forces. Fusion stared at them silently for a moment, unable to really comprehend what was happening at the distant corral. Buck up, filly, she thought privately, what did you think was going to happen? Along with the second-hoof images, obviously from some unfortunate still at the corral, were flashes of Gravity's own situation; the mare was in the middle of a pitched battle and tangled in some vehicle's antimagic field. That she wouldn't be able to teleport was obvious. I'll go, I can see you are--

No! You must not leave without our foals.

The visual feed from Gravity died, but the other mare's mind was still there. Probably means she's doing something I'd object to. That thought should have brought worry, but the horror from below was still fresh and strong. But they'll slaughter half the corral -- what's the point in saving a few if the rest die? Fusion reached for her magic, assembling the required pattern and holding it in her mind. Redshift paused whatever he was doing and stared at her, surprise on his face.

If you go, they will move the foals and any future trap would be that much harder to circumvent. More to the point, to come home without them...

Fusion let out an involuntary whinny. Very well, but if you don't get out soon...

I will. I've got a plan. A glimmer of a smile stole down the link, then it cut off as Gravity jumped.

You'd better. Fusion sent the thought out into the void, knowing full well that the message wasn't going to be heard, then nodded to Redshift. "Well? Can you do it?"

"From here I can do anything..." His voice trailed off, and he did another slow circle.

"Good, because Security is at the corral; they did not manage to get everypony out in time." She ignored his sharp inhalation, turning to the gryphons. "Security will be here in force very soon, so there is no time left to be subtle. What will happen if Redshift lets out all your people?"

Ellisif exchanged glances with the other two. "Violence, I'd think. There is a lot of pent-up anger here, only held in check by the collars and segregation. You are going to get a lot of 'settling of old scores', real or imagined."

Fusion looked down, past the ordered ranks of the tissue banks and past the cells containing ponies and gryphons. There, in the deep tunnels, was the shifting haze she'd seen before, like a mass of vehicles or other non-magical power sources. Unlike the traffic in the big transport tunnels, it didn't move in regular lines, but rather stayed in one place. At most of the Dog's large installations, this was the interface to the main transit network, and there was normally something visible there, even if just in passing.

There's more there than Salrath said... what a surprise. That faint haze of stored power, all recognizably from superconductor banks, and no thaumic signature at all. Just like back at the training centre, that first time. The view changed, a ripple of bright pinpoints appearing amid the haze. They were a deep violet in colour, and again only apparent because of her energy sensitivity. That colour meant something, and she suddenly remembered where she'd seen it before: specks of deuterium plasma in the backpacks of the Dog's powered armour.

"What if I gave them a target and a chance to get even?"

===

Ellisif dropped down the central shaft and into the surgical suite. The sound from outside, just through the door, was already loud, a screeching and shouting that she'd not heard outside a food hall riot being put down by the military police. The door itself already bore a number of deep dents, and rattled in its frame from another impact even as she watched.

Well, I see they have figured out the collars are not working. She glanced at Adigard and Svartr; their faces were unreadable behind the armour, but there was a set to their stance that spoke of readiness. The other two moved forward slightly, guns in their close-quarters 'locked' positions, placing her at the rear point of a triangle.

A twitch of her beak opened the local command interface, a simplified version of the systems that Redshift had been messing with, the context-sensitive tactical software highlighting the networked devices visible that she could command. There was far more than the occasional security camera or door she was used to seeing, and it took a moment to identify what she needed amidst the visual clutter. A glance and a squint flicked the door from locked to open, and it popped inwards, damaged hinges squealing.

The gryphon on the other side was sitting back on his haunches, a rock the size of his head held in both claws. He was obviously just about to bring it down on the door, and fell forward to sprawl in the dust at her forepaws. Behind him was a varicoloured mass of fur and feathers, all in shades of brown, grey and black, and mostly in motion. There were the inevitable fights, rapid swirls of movement that propagated through the crowd, jumping from gryphon to gryphon like a wave across water. Along with these were islands of stability; rings of gryphonesses surrounding the small shapes of their chicks, snapping and hissing at any male who came near.

Oh, Maker, this is going to be fun. Ellisif tapped an armoured talon against the stone floor, staring down at the fallen male. He looked up at her with wide eyes, a hint of fear just starting to replace the shock in his expression, and silence rippled out from the doorway. Every head turned in their direction, fights and screeching arguments forgotten. Here it comes...

"Kill them!" he screamed, jumping to his paws and lunging at her, a cry that was echoed by the hundred nearest throats.

She stepped into his charge, dipping her shoulder to get beneath his gaping beak and knock his forelegs out from under him. A quick twist and she slammed a fist into the side of his head, and he fell at her paws, only moving weakly. An instant later the air was filled with thunder as Adigard and Svartr's guns fired.

Explosions stitched the air above the crowd's heads, pale dust cored with bright flame, shocking them into immobility. The echoes died and left the big room in silence. "Is that it? Is that the best you can do?" Ellisif shouted, her time as a training sersjant for new recruits coming to the fore. It was easy to pull up the synthetic, overblown rage, and she marched into the crowd, shoving aside any who didn't move fast enough. "You are gryphons, Maker dammit, built as soldiers, not rabble."

"Easy for you to say, flysoldat, behind those guns and without a collar."

The voice came from somewhere in the crowd and was full of resentment. Inside, Ellisif smiled. "I can't get you any armour, but how about I get rid of the collars?" She tapped twice on her communicator, then held her breath. You better be able to do this, Redshift.

From somewhere nearby, there was a quiet click, then another and another, rippling across the assembled flock. The silence, hostile with the sharp stares of many aggressive eyes, became filled with little gasps and inhalations. A white and tan gryphon, only a few paces from her, lifted a foreclaw to his throat, pulling away his collar with a sudden, sharp, tug. "There's no way you are Naraka Security," he said with a disbelieving tone, "they'd never--" He looked from her to the collar, then threw the thing away. "What does this mean?" Behind him, others were doing the same.

Ellisif half opened her beak in an avian smile. "We have a chance at freedom," she shouted, picking up his discarded collar and waving it above her head. "I have friends who broke me out, but if we want to stay free, we are going to have to fight. Security is coming, and they are going to kill every gryphon, every pony, in this place."

The white-and-tan snarled something, snapping his beak loudly. "They will slaughter us; we wouldn't stand a chanc--"

"Coward's talk! They are coming up through the tunnels; sight lines are short and there are many chances for ambush. Besides..." Ellisif stared at him and laughed. "...I told you I had a friend."

With a thunderous crack and a flash like the roof had been ripped off to let the sun in, Fusion appeared above her. Hot air blasted down from her rapidly stroking wings, and she glowed with an internal radiance, random sparks and spidery flickers of lightning dancing from her primary feathers. Her mane and tail streamed in the downdraft, coiling and twisting like ink dripped into water.

She dropped, and the gryphons fell back, those that were not fast enough being pushed away by irresistible pulses of magic, landing with a solid thump in the sand and dust. "The rule of the Masters can be broken."

Remember, keep it simple, Ellisif thought, then flinched as a twist of blue-white light materialised above Fusion's head.

"They are coming to kill us all; I will help you, but I must see to my own people. They are not as strong as you."

The twist collapsed to a star-like point, then blurred forwards to strike one of the large boulders that littered the false desert floor. It exploded with enough violence to make Ellisif's ears ring and she dived to the floor with the instinctive motions of long experience, but the perfect dome of a force field caught all the razor-edged rock fragments and dropped them in a neat circlearound the fresh crater.

"If you want it, there can be no more Masters!" Fusion's voice, already a shout, grew louder, bellowing out like a jet-engine at full power. "Do you want to fight, or do you just want to die?"

Probably both, Ellisif thought, but she flared her wings and roared her reply along with the crowd.

17 - Diplomacy in Action

Author's Note

A crude dramatis personæ can be found here.
Preread by: turol and KMCA.
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and Caliaponia (Just Passing Through).

17 - Diplomacy in Action

~~~discontinuity~~~

Gravity appeared in clear air, high above dark farmland covered with little patches of forest and herds of cattle. Shadow sight confirmed there was nothing nearby, and she turned her gaze to the horizon. Here, there was a haze of light from her home corral, and above that...

Fragments of a deeper darkness orbited the glow, marked out by the difference in density between them and the air, and Gravity pumped her wings while studying the scene. In the back of her head, the final images from Spiral played out, of dark and angular shapes amid everything she held dear, but she held back from jumping straight into the fight. Nowhere to hide, except behind clouds... if they catch me, I'll be dead and Fusion will be alone. I can't do that to her.

"Then there are the lasers..." Gravity muttered tiredly, a sudden and unwelcome feeling of nervousness making her ears droop. Is this how Fusion feels all the time? There must be something I can do about them... She eyed the sheaf of steely needles floating in her magic, pulling one out from the cluster and setting it spinning. It was heavy, far more so than would be suggested by its size. "Got to be better than just using a random lump of metal."

Dropping back to normal sight, she reached for Spiral, but there was nothing to find; the mare's mind with its constant low-level babble of worry and complex magic was just gone. Are you dead, Spiral? Have they killed you all? Her ears went back and her magic built an array of force fields around her body, then pulled in and compressed the air until she could feel the radiated warmth. I'll make sure they regret anything that has happened to you. Optically, the horizon had become a swollen and distorted thing, the once-straight line curving and pulsing in time with her wingbeats.

The sight brought up a slightly alien memory, faint despite its closeness in time, of standing in a patch of forest while the world faded out and cold spread across her coat. Fusion had talked about camouflage during their free-wheeling -- and far too long -- planning sessions, and this was obviously some hint of what the other mare had tried while sneaking into Naraka. "Oh my," Gravity whispered, voice lost amid the rush of air over her muzzle. "That's got more uses than just hiding."

The fields, really there as protection from fast projectiles and the ripping tear of supersonic wind, tightened further and grew a second, smooth, skin, while the inner layer bulged and developed a multitude of wrinkles. The world outside distorted further, then became angular as the wrinkles deepened and became sharp-edged pockmarks, like a forest of glassy crystals growing towards her skin. Wings out and blind, all concentration focused on the complex magic, Gravity let her breath out with a hiss, letting the changes propagate through the array of arcane structures.

The complex pattern visualisation was complete, so all that was left was the smaller effort of actually maintaining her creation. Gravity relaxed a little, feeling the slight drain on her strength. Simple corner reflectors built from pressurised air. Is this really going to be enough? She hesitated, staring out into a world turned faceted and indecipherable by the structured fields held in the real by her will. Gravity dropped back into shadow sight, then gritted her teeth, folded her wings beneath her armour, and pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--the shadow world was quiet for a moment, only marred by the silent rush of dense, lenticular shapes sliding through the air. What must’ve been a howling wind was muted to a dull, near-infrasonic rumble by the layered fields turning her into a streamlined teardrop. Aerodynamic forces slapped at her, a sudden wrench that the rigid magic transferred immediately to her neck and wings, but the jump was short and it was nothing more than a momentary distraction.

Then the sky lit up.

The polygons of antimagic defences sprang into being around all of the flying shapes, lighting them up like beacons in her shadow sight. Gravity's wings, still folded, twitched in sympathy with the movements of her force field shell as air was thrust backwards and she accelerated. This wasn't the heart of the formation, centred somewhere over the corral, but one of the outlier groups. Close-in, and with their thaumic defences active, it was obvious that the mass of fliers wasn't uniform; a single delta-shaped aircraft was at the core of this group, surrounded by a swarm of the smaller flying disks. Unlike the disks, the delta carried some of the dogs’ crystal thaumic technology, and this came alive, highlighting the hull with patches of bright colour against the dead silhouette of frame and armour.

Gravity pushed a cluster of metal needles out towards the delta as hard as she could, spraying the projectiles along the length of the larger aircraft. They snapped out, the crack of sonic booms penetrating her fields with the deadened thump of a hammer on stone, only to be met by rigid disks of thaumic light that flickered along the flanks of her target. Inhaling sharply, she manoeuvred hard, the magically directed airflow turning her in an erratic spiral that made the blood rush alternately to her head and hooves, then selected a single needle and poured all her power into making it move.

The defensive field flicked on again, only to die as the generator powering it, a glittering construct in the belly of the aircraft, went dark. Speared through the vitals, blackness cascaded along the hull, extinguishing the remaining crystals. Fragments flew away at high speed on simple ballistic trajectories, and her target staggered in the air. There was a sudden light, intruding even through her closed eyes, followed immediately by heat that washed across Gravity's body, shocking in the cold, high-altitude air and she pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--but the heat stayed with her, a steady beat like the sun at the height of summer. There was nothing visible by shadow sight and she opened her real eyes, seeing only faint and distorted kaleidoscope patterns through the layered fields. Sweat was starting to dampen the fur under her armour and she groaned, then released the trapped high-pressure air. The heat vanished and her view cleared, no longer distorted by the gaseous prism structures she'd coated herself with. "Took too long," she muttered, "but at least it stopped most of the laser fire. I wonder what it looked like? All those corner reflectors must have been a surprise." I wonder if the reflected beams did any damage?

Off in the distance, there were flashes of blue-white light, irregular things that spread apart like the cascade from a firework, and bright enough to light the ground beneath with a ghostly radiance. So I did get it... Gravity smiled, lips pulling back over clenched teeth, then drew in the air, squeezing it until the world disappeared once more, and pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--emerging near another group to select a single target, this time one of the airtanks, and let fly with a lone metal arrow, then--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--back to the original group, still chaotically circling their stricken leader as it fell towards the distant ground, and shot again.

Suddenly, there were two somethings visible, far apart on the horizon, brilliant glittering objects that appeared out of the blackness of the shadow world, surrounded by masses of complex magic that made the universe fold towards them, like a blanket dragged by a hoof. Their antimagic weapon... these are the jaws of this trap, she thought, then bared her teeth and pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--on to a third group, further in towards the corral, and firing twice in quick succession, then risking a third shot as the heat found her; no longer the summer sun, but an open furnace door. She reached for the teleport pattern to escape, mesmerised by the beams of twisting darkness that sprang out from the distant mystery aircraft and pivoted in her direction. One reached her before the other, and her power was sucked away as fast as she could accumulate it. Defensive fields fluctuating, she let go of the complexity and focused her will on escape, as the other beam swung across to join the first. The teleport pattern, with all its complexity, wouldn't stabilise.

I can't-- Light flooded through her closed eyes, a brilliant green, then an impact to her flank, sudden and violent, made her tumble. A white flash, like lightning hitting the ground a bare length away, and an instant shockwave, knocked her away from the laser's focus and the ripping crack of railgun projectiles shredding the air where she had been. Half blinded and even shadow sight failing her, Gravity fell out of the questing beam of darkness and was finally able to assemble the arcane pattern. She pushed, not caring where--

~~~discontinuity~~~

===

Alone in the darkness, Lilac probed the space where Spiral had been.

--a pony starting to cast some spell, screaming in pain and rage as bright green points of light danced over his body, her own efforts to disrupt his magic, to forestall the inevitable, disintegrating under a blow-torch heat from somewhere above, then the hard crack of gunfire and the pony going silent--

He shivered, trying to separate her memories, so appallingly sharp and vivid, from his own, but the urgency and horror lingered. "Come on, Gravity, talk to me." He reached for the mare, but she wasn't listening for him, and all he got was an impression of speed and intense flashes of light. Fusion was similarly distracted, and he could see little snippets of her journey through a room made to look like some dry and mountainous place. Trocar-- The stallion was in the middle of a cloud of excited ponies, more than Lilac had ever seen, swirling and all talking at once.

There's nopony to help! He cast out again, hunting for Spiral or any of the others at the corral, but there was nothing, except... It wasn't another mind, but a point of resonance: the specially prepared crystal that Fusion had used to watch Spiral at the infirmary. It was still active, and Lilac modified his magic, switching to clairvoyance.

"No!" His shout drew the distracted attention of Ogive, and Lilac stifled a sob at the sight of a pony, dragged apart from the others, being gunned down by the gryphon troops. There's got to be something-- His eyes flew open, focussing on the stacks of granite cubes that still filled half his chamber. Mimicking Gravity's actions from before, he built the teleport spell, then hesitated. But what if I hit the others? An image of a sharp-edged stone cube tearing through the defenceless herd made him whinny, then he lifted his viewpoint upwards.

Above was a cluster of flying things, their lights illuminating the scene and filling the world with glare and hard shadows. From their level, he could see the expanse of the corral, the strut and stride of the gryphons and dogs. Another pony was pulled from the herd, and the frantic sound grew in volume. Lilac whinnied softly, unable to look away. "There must be something I can do..." he whispered, then looked back at the aircraft. An appalling, burning heat with no visible source -- Fusion felt that before, as well. The undersides of the airtanks had a faceted appearance, with thin lines gridding the flat plates. Does it come from them? He sucked in a breath, then called up the teleport spell once more.

The pattern built in his mind, and he altered it again and again, little, lightning-fast adjustments to integrate his change in viewpoint. Oh, Maker, please-- He took one of the blocks and pushed--

--it appeared in his remote view, flicking up and sideways in a direction completely different than he'd expected. The airtanks twitched, as if their pilots were surprised, and accelerated, orbits becoming chaotic. Below, the pony had been thrown down next to the gutted corpse of the first victim, but the soldiers seemed distracted or were waiting for something, and didn't shoot. Biting his lip, Lilac shifted his viewpoint, modified the spell yet again, then picked up a pile of rocks and poured all his strength into the next push.

===

They are going to get slaughtered, Fusion thought, watching as Ellisif picked out a few likely gryphons from the thousand or so packed into the exercise space and put them to work organizing the rest into groups. ...but I suppose that was always going to be the case. At least now they have a fighting chance. She shivered, keeping her expression stern as she hovered above the sea of feathers and fur, the colours unfamiliar and plain compared to ponies. A few gryphons flew in wide circles about her, unable to keep the wonder from their expressions, and Fusion maintained the magic that radiated heat and light from her coat.

I am leading them all to their deaths. Fusion felt ill, and suddenly pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--appearing next to Redshift, still in the service core.

He grinned wildly at her arrival, doing a little stationary jog that filled the cluttered room with a complex tattoo of hoofbeats. "The Agent found them! Shock Diamond and the rest, about two levels down on the other side--" He gestured with his head, horn still glowing fitfully from whatever he was doing to the computronium. "--we've got to get them out."

Fusion glanced at Salrath, currently shackled, feet and paws, around one of the stanchions holding up the equipment racks. "She did, did she?" The Agent flinched at her stare, ears drooping and head downcast. I don't believe it.

"Yes, look!" One of the inset monitors came alive, displaying a collection of views from cells somewhere in the complex. Four rooms, each containing half a dozen foals, one with a tan pony nearly adult size. Wings, bare and ugly without their natural covering of feathers--

"Random!" Unconsciously stepping forwards, Fusion stared for a moment, a sudden lightness filling her body. "You are sure this is live? Not a recording?" Why do her wings look worse? "What have you been doing to her?" she growled, wheeling about to push her muzzle in Salrath's face.

"T-this one has not been at Naraka for more than a hundred kiloseconds," the Agent said, pulling against her bonds and gasping suddenly as the metal bit into her flesh. "That was how the pony was when Salrath arrived. Fusion should ask Sector Chief Orgon... or his personal servitor, about that."

There was something in Salrath's eyes, something that wasn't quite fear, and Fusion lashed out with a forehoof, putting a dent in the nearest panel and making a satisfying crash. Redshift jumped, glancing at her reproachfully, and Salrath flinched, but again it wasn't quite right. Salrath is out for just Salrath... this should not be a surprise. She reached out and lifted the Agent by her shoulders, feeling nothing but satisfaction as Salrath gritted her teeth. Is this all it takes for me to hurt someone? A little anger? She's still playing with me, I can feel it.

"Salrath is telling the truth!" she ground out, gasping when Fusion unconsciously increased the pressure slightly.

"I will ask her myself, and then we will see." Or give you to Gravity, and see if she is as good at the minds of dogs as she is ponies. Relaxing the pressure, but still holding Salrath, she picked up the bomb. "Redshift, ask Ellisif to join me, please," she said, then looked back at the Agent and narrowed her eyes. "How many more Security staff are here at Naraka?"

"One--" Fusion's horn light brightened slightly and, even though the telekinetic pressure stayed the same, a slight look of panic entered Salrath's eyes. "Two! One is a gryphon, the other is Captain Rthar. They were both in the control room when this one left, watching the battle updates."

Ellisif arrived in a flurry of wings, expertly dropping through the door to come to a sliding stop a few paces from Fusion. "What? I've got a squad of armour moving up from the transit tunnels, if the camera blackout is anything to go by. My lot are ready for a fight, but this is going to be a rout if we don't get it right."

The gryphoness didn't seem frightened, more angry at the disruption. "We might be able to slow them down. Redshift, keep feeding whatever you have to Svartr and Adigard. Lilac will need your help shortly. Make very sure he understands what he needs to do."

"Me? But..." His eyes widened and he nodded.

"Exactly." Fusion unhitched Salrath from the instrument rack and set her floating at shoulder height, ignoring her strained curses, then trotted smartly from the room, Ellisif in tow and bomb on the other side. As they moved, Fusion eyed the gryphoness. "What are the things I need to know if I try and negotiate with the dogs?" she said. "Do you know anything about how the Hives interact, or what they are likely to do?"

Ellisif blinked, nearly tripping. "Kill us all, I'd think. Negotiate? Ah... well, there's the World Court which is an overall arbiter, and they have this thing called the Hammer..."

===

~~~discontinuity~~~

--she came out. Still falling, the cold air whipping away the vestiges of shock running through her addled mind, Gravity carefully opened her wings, turning the plummet into a steep, curving glide. Blinking, she stared at the flashes and sustained glares from a few kilolengths away, mostly the hard white of superconductor fires lighting up clouds of smoke and atomised ceramics. Here and there, perfectly straight threads of green lanced those clouds, making them glow like transient aurora, while fast points of white turned and twisted among the larger aircraft, each terminating in a brilliant flash.

Missiles, perhaps? Gravity thought, watching the silent light show, then shook vigorously, turning a fast helix as she pumped her wings and rebuilt her defences. How am I going to kill that antimagic weapon, if I can't get close enough? All that distortion near it... She hefted her stock of stolen ammunition, frown turning into a smile. Another distraction, I think. She looked down at the dark forest and--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--a terrible snapping and rending of branches and whole trees, the quick violet planes of force fields slicing tonnes of timber into fat disks--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--ignored amid a flurry of laser fire that speared the wooden decoys, filling the night sky with blasts of smoky yellow flame and yet more smoke. Able to actually see, with only a single, simple field between her body and the hostile air, the bright spears of her own weapons reaching out for their targets, atmospheric ablation turning them into artificial meteors. The touch of those claws against fast aircraft, turning them into bright-burning hulks. Gravity imagined beams of darkness reaching for her and--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--explosions, made silent by the laggard speed of sound, filled one quadrant of her vision. Preparing to jump again, Gravity swept the night with her shadow sight, watching for the telltale signature of the dog's weapon, and seeing nothing but traces probing where she had been. Something else caught her arcane sight: a lone airtruck travelling at high speed directly away from the corral, near invisible apart from its cargo of pastel-glowing objects. There are ponies in that--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--aircraft! The airtruck flicked by, seemingly unaware of her presence, and Gravity got a good look at the occupants. Five ponies crammed into the cargo compartment, their hornlights curiously suppressed. Five ponies, all of whom were immediately recognizable.

Her magic lashed out, an elastic tentacle of violet force, wrapping around the airtruck and dragging her along. It would have been trivial to anchor her power to the passing ground and stop the vehicle dead, but that would not have been kind to the occupants, so she tagged along. Magic pulled her in, effectively welding her hooves to the armoured roof and supporting her body against the slipstream passing over the hull.

Teeth bared, Gravity stabbed down, shearing open the crew compartment and peeling back the ceramic-alloy laminate. Two canine faces, slack with shock, stared up at her for a moment, then were whisked up and away, screams dopplering into the darkness. The airtruck started to nose over and she caught it, holding it straight and level, while a force field opened the cargo bay. The expressions of those inside, tear-stained and distorted by horror, changed to wonder, and she carefully pulled them out and let the airtruck plough into the rushing ground--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--dropping through the trees to settle on a hilltop over the horizon from the corral while pulling the suppressor rings from each horn.

Triple Point immediately rushed over, wrapping her wings over Gravity's withers and burying her head in the feathers. "Oh, you found us, thank the Maker." Her voice was distorted, throat closed up like she was being strangled. "It was horrible; I can't imagine what--"

"Triple," Gravity said gently, pulling away, "where are Spiral and Scalar?"

"Spiral is back at the corral, I think. I-it was like they wanted her to see everything they were doing. Scalar..." Triple looked puzzled for a moment, then her mouth opened and her head drooped. "You didn't find the other airtruck? It's got Scalar and Elliptic. The dog hurt her until he told them what Fusion was doing." She glanced at the other four ponies, and they mirrored her look of horror. "They've got him... what will they do to him?"

Gravity stood up straight, then marched away stiff-legged. "Go back to the mountain base. I will find them." In a sudden rush that pulled a column of shattered vegetation high into the air, she leapt straight up, disappearing into the night.

===

"No Master, please, I beg you. I didn't do anything wron--"

A heavy blow from one of the gryphons silenced the mare's cries, and she was thrown down on the same bloody patch of grass they'd used for the stallion's execution. Another of the soldiers kicked her over, a bright laser spot flaring on her belly as his shoulder gun came on target. The soldier, features and movement clear in the harsh lighting, hesitated, his gaze flicking to the herd and back to the watching dogs. One of the others said something and he shivered, then reached for the bite trigger. He paused, the motion incomplete, staring at a series of flashes on the distant horizon.

Summer lightning, Spiral thought in a daze, her own attention drawn to the lights. They were completely soundless but strangely coloured, full of violet and green, along with a more normal blue-white, and pulsed and flickered in rapid succession. Then there was another pulse, this one directly overhead and lighting the corral with a flash of pale purple, and not silent but thunderclap loud. After the initial bang, the sky filled with a thin whistling roar that swept towards the zenith. More sound, an ear-punishing rockslide rumble, and the airtank lights flickered, spinning wildly across the ground.

Spiral, able to really look up as talons about her head loosened, saw cubes of rock, briefly limned in lilac light, materialising out of thin air and flicking across the sky towards the airtanks. Two were already in trouble, plasma drives faltering, while the third twisted to avoid impact. The emergence point tracked it, closing the range, and finally a rock scored a glancing blow. Sparks flew and it staggered in the air, starting to tumble, meeting another boulder side-on. Drive finally failing, it suddenly fell from the sky, smashing into one of the empty shelters with a thump she clearly felt through the grass under her chest.

The dogs seemed to be unable to react, and the gryphons were not much better. Spiral took a chance, remembering the heat, directed like a beam from above, and drew on all her skill, adding it to things Fusion had learned from her early attempts to break one of the horn rings. This time there was no pain. Her magic spiked, enough effort to uproot a tree, vanishing into the disruption and haze that filled where before there had been smooth action. She held her breath, straining and urging the power ever higher, ignoring the way the world swam and sweat suddenly soaked her flanks.

Something gave in the thing clamped onto her horn, and Spiral reigned in the magic before it could burst free in a random and lethal manner. Unnoticed by her guards, whose grip on her wings had slackened further, she wormed through the crude thaumic defences of their armour, latching on to their central nervous systems and stopping all nerve impulses between the sixth and seventh cervical vertebrae. They fell bonelessly to the ground, their cries of distress lost amid the thunder of falling rock. One more adjustment and they were silent apart from rapid, breathy noises, their vocal cords paralysed.

All of the ponies that Fusion had sent to her were gone, vanished into the backs of two airtrucks and flown off to destinations unknown, so she stared at the cowering herd that remained, watching the confused motions of the guards for a moment then kicked out to get clear of the gryphon's distracting antimagic fields. She held back her anger, allowing her mind to drop into that state of cold calculation that accompanied any of the more normal emergencies she had to deal with. Spell patterns queued up in her head, an orderly, prioritised matrix of arcana, then she made space for the teleport spell and pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--materialising with a green flash amid the herd. The closest guards reacted with a shout, but she was already casting. Magic, primed with an understanding of how the thaumic field's disruption operated, lanced out and ran riot through their nerves, triggering convulsions and collapse. At the same time, her force field came alive as a half-dome that floated like a roof over her head, flaring as it intercepted the stinging rain of rock fragments falling from the sky. More spells, the simple instinct of telekinesis, pulled the suppressor rings from the ponies around her. Spiral walked forwards, face blank and horn alight with the chaotic, flickering glare of multiply-parallel spell casting, the air about her turning misty and frost growing on every surface within ten paces. More gryphons dropped as she moved, an ever-expanding circle of twitching and vibrating bodies.

Shots came from the little group that had been about to euthanize the mare, and she grunted, concentration faltering as her field soaked up the hits. Magic flared, not hers, but a bright yellow from a stallion a few paces away. He had gotten shakily to his hooves and stood there, head bowed and jaw tense, as his magic tried to grab at the pair of protected gryphons. "Be subtle, or just throw stuff from outside the field," Spiral gasped, and he nodded, the ground about the soldiers suddenly bursting to release stone tentacles.

She turned her back on the scene, ears folding at the sudden wild gunfire and screams, choked off and silenced by the sounds of heavy impacts and nasty snapping, cracking noises. Where are you... Around her hooves the other ponies were stirring, some dazed and stunned, but several starting to remove suppressor rings from their friends. Long practice screened them for injuries, magic and gigaseconds of experience categorising severity, prognosis and treatment. Several were dying, bleeding out from wild shots, but Spiral wrenched her attention away, hunting for the real threat.

The group of five dogs was there, on the other side of the herd and just starting to notice her. Some of Spiral's icy calm cracked and she swallowed hard. You are the one. Their antimagic fields were of a more robust nature than those of the gryphons, not so much stronger, as more tightly woven and harder to side-step and work through. Guns came up, and her field moved, forming a flat plane between the herd and the dogs, catching the first rounds from the rotary railgun.

The impacts drove Spiral to her knees, all thoughts and preparation vanishing with the effort to keep the field alive. Pain flared in time with the impacts and her vision narrowed; her concentration failed and she cried out, but the agonizing rip of high velocity projectiles didn't happen. The guns were still firing, but not at her. Instead, the figures were struggling against a polychromatic haze of magic, limbs and weapon arms encased in faltering bands of telekinesis from a dozen different ponies. As she watched, still unable to act, a missile jumped from one suit's backpack, turning in the air on fast jets of fire to point at the herd, only to detonate before it had gone more than a few paces.

Around her, the ponies were lit up by the glare of their own horn lights; a score were trying to hold the dogs still, while a few others removed the remaining suppressors. "Hold them... hold them... nearly got it..." The words came from Backdraft, her croaky voice instantly recognizable. The old teacher stood, the stump of her amputated right wing moving in time with the flicks of her intact left, and the glow of magic about her horn. "Done!"

There was no visible change, but the ponies around her sighed and relaxed. The magic holding the dogs abruptly solidified, and Spiral dipped into shadow sight to see what had changed, then smiled. "I'd forgotten you were on the rescue teams, Back Draft." Four of the antimagic fields had disappeared, and the fifth blinked out as she watched.

"Teaching everypony here lets me keep in practice -- you should see the trouble some foals get into." The mare looked sad for a moment, then her expression cleared. "I remember how it works -- you are in charge, so what do you want to do? I can help organize...?"

There was a painful amount of hope in her voice, and Spiral had to blink back the tears. "Maker, yes. Detail somepony to disarm the gryphons and make sure no more are coming, then we need to move away from here.” There was another barrage of soundless flashes on the horizon, the same mix of violet, green and blue-white, but closer, far closer. Backdraft nodded and headed off, barking orders to some of the less shocky ponies. Spiral nearly smiled at her tone; it was the same one she used on uncooperative foals.

Spiral turned her attention to the wounded, putting her magic to the use it was intended, stopping blood flow, eliminating the pain of injury and, in a couple of cases, stripping out the Blessing. Most of the wounds were minor, the results of fragments from explosive ammunition detonations or rock splinters, but a couple of ponies had suffered direct hits. She focused on these, stabilising them enough to move, then turned to the dogs, still hanging in the telekinetic web.

"Back Draft? It's time we were going," she said, staring hard at the faceless suits.

"Yes, Spiral," the mare said, arriving at a canter, another four ponies behind her. Each held a tangled bundle of equipment, a mixture of armour and weapons. "We stripped all the soldiers; what do you want to do with all the kit? Seems like we shouldn't leave it behind."

Spiral blinked. By the Maker, you are actually enjoying this! A mare of your talents, sidelined for so long... "Good idea," she said weakly, "keep hold of it as I teleport you. Remember: wings in, eyes closed." She winced, but Backdraft just nodded at her comment.

"And them?" she said, gesturing at the five dogs as she lay on the grass.

"I'll knock them out in a moment; I'm sure Security will want to talk to them." Spiral reached out for Trocar, finding his increasingly desperate mind. I'm safe; we drove the dogs off. I've got injured to send through... and several dead.

His thoughts calmed, becoming all business. Send away; plenty of catchers at this end.

Sending now. Spiral's horn flashed, and Back Draft and her little group vanished with a thump. A few more pulses and she was alone bar the pair of ponies holding the dogs still. They didn't seem to be trying to struggle, and she wondered how much of their suits Back Draft had disabled. Not that it matters now. She reached in, paralysing the nerves leading to vocal cords and voluntary muscles, then nodded to the other ponies to lay the dogs on the grass. "That's it; thank you for doing that... it must have been very hard."

The closest, Metal Matrix, a dark green stallion no older than Fusion, shivered. "Yes. I know orders are orders, but it feels wrong to hold a Master against their will, even if they are from another Hive. At least they are not injured."

"I know," Spiral said. "Let me send you to the others, and we can start to recuperate." At her nod, they both lay down, disappearing in a green flash moments later. Now alone, Spiral knelt next to the dogs, probing with her magic until she managed to open the helmet latches of the leader. The dark-furred face glared up at her, eyes full of helpless rage and anger, and Spiral stared back.

"I have wondered what I'd do if I caught up with someone like you," she said, "and it strikes me that I should make an example... make you a warning to those who might think of hurting my friends." The soldier's jaw moved, but no sound came out. "No, there's nothing you could say that I want to hear." She sat the other four suits in a circle around the first, opening their helmet visors so they could see what she was doing, then moved closer, staring into the lead dog's eyes and feeling the delicate mesh of nerves feeding the brain. "Because of that, I am going to make sure you live. Remember me, soldiers, remember what I said and tell everyone you meet."

The spell, a modified version of the one used to repair neural damage, bit, twisting some nerves so they joined to others in self-reinforcing loops and fed into certain parts of the brain. The dog's expression shifted, her ears going back and whiskers drooping. She inhaled sharply, jaws opening wide, but all that emerged was a kind of breathy whistle.

Spiral stood up and backed away, reversing her paralysis of the leader's vocal cords, then vanished in a flash of green light, just as the first screams rang out across the silent corral.

===

"Nalka still can't get any response from any external source, but the comms unit says it is working," the Analyst said, rubbing nervously at the sides of her chocolate-brown muzzle.

"Neither can this one," Rthar said, still staring up at the complex and overlapping data feeds occupying the main displays on this half of the control room. And he can't reach Salrath, either. He turned and looked uneasily at the door. If this building has been compromised, can Rthar trust the internal cameras? He drummed his claws on the console, then glanced at his gryphon bodyguard. The creature, always alert, stood up at the movement, and Rthar flicked his eyes at the door. It moved from his side, padding silently down the access corridor behind the door, and Rthar turned back to the console.

There is too much stone here... Orders be damned; this one needs a clear view of the sky for a direct connection. He turned, already setting his comms bracer to long-range search mode, freezing when the door opened before he reached it. Shapes, too many and too large to be anything other than-- His heart pounding and the room starting to sway, Rthar dropped one paw down to the butt of his pistol, then flinched as the brilliant green flare of a laser designator left dazzling tracks across his eyes.

"Nothing too hasty, Master," came a scratchy voice from behind the light, and he opened his paw, slowly pulling it away from his sidearm. "That's good; it's not as if that toy will help you much, anyway."

The laser turned off, and he could finally see what he'd glimpsed in the corridor. A gryphoness in battered Security reaction team armour, obviously the source of the voice and the light, watched him carefully, the bell-snout of her shoulder gun trained unerringly on his face. Next to her was a servitor, but he kept his gaze locked on the gryphoness, not looking at the pony or the things it held in a haze of golden magic. Panic will not help Rthar, he thought, resisting the urge to run away. The memories of being trapped in his armour suit in the depths of the Institute, never far away, resurfaced, and he tried and failed to keep from panting.

"Stay with us, Master. I need you to relay a message."

Though soft and gentle, this voice did a little to calm his racing heart, and Rthar forced his eyes to move. See? It's not the blue one. There's no need to panic. Wearing the servitor version of Security armour, there was precious little of the pony actually visible, aside from a hint of white fur and an oddly flowing aurora-coloured mane and tail. Like the other one, the same sort of changes, he thought in a daze. "What--" The words caught in his suddenly dry throat, and nothing else came out.

"Rthar is a cowar--" The words cut off with a gasp, and Rthar finally felt some of the fog in his mind evaporate at his recognition of the speaker. With the pony, half hidden behind her body, was Salrath, his own gryphon bodyguard, and something else, something smooth and egg-like, that he couldn't identify.

"There is a time and a place, Agent," the pony said, a trace of anger suddenly colouring her words.

Rthar's gaze lingered on the Agent. "Did Salrath encounter a bit of a problem?" he said, retreating into the control room as the pony stepped forwards. As she moved, her cargo floated with her, now joined by his personal weapon and equipment vest. Salrath didn't reply, or couldn't, and just glared at him. Always knew something would catch up with that one. There was an urge to smile cynically, but he resisted, lest it release the hysteria he felt scratching at his thoughts.

There were gasps and little cries from the technical staff, and a sudden shuffling of chairs as they stood. The pony stared at them for a moment, jaw working and ears flat against the sides of her skull. "I want to talk to you all about the activities of this place, what is being done here and why..." Light flared about her horn, the strange drifting colours of mane and tail shifting to purer, harder shades. Heat started to radiate from her body, as if the summer sun was shining through some hidden window. "...but there isn't the time for the depth of questioning the subject deserves. You will all leave this facility, right now."

No one moved. A breath later, an electric point of light materialised with a snap in the centre of the room. Too bright to look at, like a welding arc, and hot enough to make everyone shy away, the miniature sun made a kind of crackling sound as it drifted towards the assembled People. Nalka broke first, running with paws up over her face to protect it from the glare, and the rest immediately followed. The heat subsided and the pony's ears relaxed a little.

"We have neutralised your communications, but now it is time for you to speak, if you want to save your own life." The oval, a smooth egg of bone-coloured ceramic plastered with warning symbols and text in small letters, was placed without a sound on the floor in the middle of the control room. "Security is moving, but there is still time to prevent a massacre."

Massacre of whom? She can't mean... Rthar's eyes drifted to the screens, still showing the battle management feed. Something was engaging the force surrounding the servitor's corral and chewing through them at a frightening rate. Arclight didn't seem to be able to catch it. There was a hollow clunk, and he turned, drawn back to the servitor, who was standing with one hoof resting on the egg, then his eyes widened. "Where did the pony get that?!"

"You recognise it, good. It was in the lower levels, next to one of the detector devices."

Then it is true. Rthar is only a loose end to be cut off. He met Salrath's gaze, and she nodded slightly. "How does this one know that the pony can detonate the bomb?"

Her gaze went distant for a moment, then half the screens, the ones displaying the internal camera feeds, flickered and changed from empty corridors and cells holding quietly sleeping creatures, to packs of gryphons moving with obvious purpose, while ponies were hesitantly collecting in one of the internal exercise chambers. "My friend has complete control of this facility." She smiled slightly. "You want me to test the bomb? Arming systems on these sorts of devices are not much of a challenge when you are able to directly edit the computronium.

Rthar sighed, then slumped. "No," he said softly. "What does the pony want Rthar to do?"

"Security obviously knows we can use magic to move between places by radically warping the space-time manifold and forming..." There was a look of confusion on the dog's face and Fusion sighed. "By teleportation." At his nod, she lifted up the bomb, holding it in a field of white-gold magic. "I can send this anywhere I want. You will tell your command this." There was a sharp bang, and the weapon disappeared with a flash of light.

Jaw dropping, Rthar gazed at the now empty spot. "What has the pony done? This one--"

There was another flash-bang and the bomb reappeared. "That was just a demonstration. Next time I will send it much further away, to a friend who has instructions to forward it to a prearranged target in the event that he loses magical contact with me. I imagine you have one of your antimagic machines on its way... perhaps you should mention this detail to your leaders."

"The Arclight, yes," Rthar whispered, his ears back and stomach churning. Bringing up his comms bracer, he shakily tried to contact Sector Chief Orgon. The call was answered almost immediately, and he found himself staring at the thaumographic head of his boss, completely unable to say a word. Orgon, his face battered and burned, blinked, then his eyes widened and he gazed at a particular spot on his own display. So Orgon can be surprised, Rthar thought, the urge to giggle dangerously close to the surface, and rotated his arm so that the little camera on his bracer had a better view of the servitor.

"Fusion Pulse TC4668 will surrender immediately. Do this and no more ponies will get hurt." Orgon's voice was quiet but clear in the silence of the control room.

===

Fusion stared at the translucent, floating head of a dog she didn't recognize, but must have been in some position of power. Such total arrogance-- Her ears went back and her head came up, the carefully controlled leakage of power she'd used to intimidate the technical staff doubling then doubling again, lighting the room with a glare that made Rthar shield his eyes, even as he held his comms bracer still. Teeth clenched, she pulled the magic back in, letting her breath out with a hiss. "Identify yourself," she said finally, voice rough.

"This one is Sector Chief Orgon. The pony--"

"No, Sector Chief. You will listen to me." She held the weapon up so it floated beside her head, with Salrath on the other side. "Tell this dog what I have, Agent."

"Hello, Orgon. These ones found your little present." Salrath gave a pained laugh, gesturing with the stump of her maimed arm. "It appears to be a fourth-generation, antimatter-triggered, lithium deuteride fusion bomb. Tuneable yield, but about a megaton, at this one's best guess." On the screen, Orgon frowned, and Salrath laughed again. "Don't look at this one like that, Orgon. Salrath is not stupid; she is also not feeling particularly loyal at the moment."

"Enough." Fusion gave the Agent a slight shake, and Salrath's teeth clicked shut. She will cooperate for as long as it benefits her, then take advantage of any distraction... but it will do. "Orgon, I am sending this between, to a friend--" She found Trocar, still flying in the deep valley and trying to organize the swarms of ponies into groups for the much larger numbers she' wanted to send through as soon as she had the time. Time, if there's one thing I need is time. Trocar, I'm sending you something; make sure you catch it, then pass it to Lilac as quickly as you can. He'll know what to do.

Okay... ready.

A push, much less effort than it took to move a pony, and the bomb vanished, appearing by the distant stallion to be immediately caught and then pushed again. Fusion relaxed a little, then stared at the Sector Chief. "If my friend can no longer sense me, he will send that bomb to a pre-arranged target." She leaned forward, lowering her head. "Call off your attacks on this base and my home corral, then we can talk about what to do next."

Orgon gave a chilly little smile, and Fusion felt her stomach twist. "This one has experienced what the pony can do. He hardly thinks one nuclear weapon is a significant addition to the threat the pony poses."

They can't be that callous, can they? Fusion's mind went blank, then she glanced down at Ellisif, who shrugged and nodded. "Then what about if it was sent to Arcology Prime at Baur Hive?" she said, voice suddenly sounding rough. "Sersjant Ellisif tells me you have fought them before... what do you think they would do?"

The smile froze, then vanished. "If the pony does this, there would be a World Court judgement enacted on Lacunae. They would demand the euthanisation of every servitor within our borders."

Ellisif laughed, a single harsh caw. "It would be war first and millions of the People would die. The Court wouldn't be able to react quickly enough... the Hammer can't hit you before Baur does."

"This one sees you have thought of everything." The face, already hard to read with its coating of fresh burns, became as still as a mask. "Very well. On the condition that TC4668 remains on this video channel at all times, Security will hold its position. This one needs to contact the Synod... what are the pony's demands?"

Fusion blinked, mind suddenly blank. I never even believed this would be possible. "No more Blessings, starting now. Control over our own breeding. The immediate cessation of all experimental work involving ponies and gryphons. I know ponies are vital to your industry and civilization, so we will still work for you, but on our terms. Make us your partners, not your slaves."

"The pony doesn't want much, does it?" A sour look crept over Orgon's face and he wrinkled his muzzle. "Very well. This one will talk to the Synod."

18 - The Lights in the Sky are Battlestations

Author's Note

A crude dramatis personæ can be found here.
Preread by: turol and KMCA.
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and Caliaponia (Just Passing Through).

18 - The Lights in the Sky are Battlestations

Chaos was almost glad of the slow rate of organic processes. Events had proceeded along lines that were close to its original intent, but there was, however, a potential problem. Its initial contact among the quadrupeds, the one that self-identified as Fusion Pulse TC4668, worried Chaos. That particular organic had been efficient at teaching the automata wormhole commands to others of its kind, and its kin was also proving to be an effective disruptive agent among the bipeds... but the relatively rapid spread of the wormhole function was now giving the quadrupeds too much of an advantage.

It was fortunate indeed that the pair of quadrupeds had failed to transfer their deep-level connectivity to any others of their own kind. Those particular subsets of automata were only taking instructions from one particular mind, if that ability had spread at the same rate...

The problem was not intractable, but the solution did present some degree of risk. Although its decoy was still proving to be a distraction for the Guardians, they were starting to adapt to its strategies and movements; Chaos had needed to partition more of its own intellect into that remote part of itself. Especially troublesome was the one it had maimed during its disastrous attempt to fight rather than to run. This Guardian, the one Chaos had labelled Scar, was in constant communion with its fellows, and wherever it passed, those Guardians became more difficult to deal with.

This rise in difficulty could be modelled, and Chaos had done just that: without a more permanent solution, this whole pocket universe might become inhospitable. It cast outwards, feeling the subtle variations in the quantum foam, all the myriad impressions of other domains sitting just behind the brane walls, waiting for it to find a way to reach them.

Long moments of introspection passed while, on the planetary surface, the ripples of multiple wormhole transits spread through space-time, easily detectable by Chaos' distributed self. Parts of it watched the creeping failure of armour and other condensed-phase materials under the lash of metal moving at multiples of the speed of sound in the solid state; at those speeds the atoms could not move out of each other's way, and ablated into energetic plasmas with a variety of interesting emission lines.

The Guardians, at least those not patrolling randomly or pursuing the decoy, seemed to prefer to linger near the original pair of quadrupeds. The reason was becoming painfully obvious. Every time it visited to check on this project's progress, Chaos found that the taste of their minds had shifted a little closer to that of the Stones. It was getting to the point where anything more than the most fleeting interaction risked entrapment, and Chaos spun and twisted in the quantum foam, hunting for a way to remove this new threat. For long moments it watched the quadrupeds steal their kin from the bipeds, becoming more alarmed as the numbers mounted.

It would be a disaster if the two unusually skilful quadrupeds were able to teach their combat and relocation functions to that many others, but getting close enough to terminate the minds would be too difficult. Perhaps...

Chaos sampled the bipedal minds connected to the unfolding events, following the strands of electromagnetic communication and direct, acausal automata-to-automata links, modelling the control hierarchy amid the military forces in the area. Here was the force commander, obvious by the thick and converging web of data, in an aircraft at high altitude, here was a team of soldiers entering the lower levels of the quadruped's breeding structure, but there was a scientist, one Chaos had touched before. The creature was working with a group of its fellows, connected to a data network that was tracking the slow-motion fight.

The location was distant from the Guardian swarm, so there was nothing stopping Chaos from sinking deep into the biped's mind and moving a complete neuronal duplicate into the quantum foam. The biped almost had the right answer, but almost wasn't good enough. During complex events such as this, a single idea could be made to propagate to a great extent -- if delivered at the right time and in the right way. Rapid simulations followed, prodding the uploaded mind along different pathways to test the results of any manipulation, then it was reset and the experiments started again. Long milliseconds passed, enough time to run thousands of scenarios with hundreds of parallel copies, before Chaos was satisfied. It wiped every version of the mind, then leaned into the real one and twisted--

===

Vanca watched the assembled pack of Security's technical staff occupying the nearest quadrant of the situation room and curled her lips to expose sharp, white teeth. This lot would never survive in academia, she thought. They have spent too long in the protected shelter of secrecy... this one would like to see even one of their research conclusions get past a proper peer-review. At the moment, most of the group's effort was going towards finding strategies to deal with the rogue currently reducing the Pit to slagged rubble.

The chamber was a large one, and outfitted with every convenience needed for large-scale command and control. Bowl-shaped and ringed by arrays of flat screens, it was centred on a substantial thaumographic display. The various Security teams occupied quadrants in the desk-strewn torus -- all with their own sets of screens and paraphernalia -- and the place hummed with the steady chatter of urgent voices. Vanca sat a little apart from the others; every Person present knew she was a prisoner, and they kept their distance from her and the Security minder shadow, as if afraid of contamination.

The academician shivered. Quite where she was, she didn't know, but it obviously wasn't the Pit; even the deepest parts of that installation would be rent by tremors by now. The data she could see, coming back from personal comms units and sensors seeded by the few remaining troopers, was quite unbelievable. Vanca had seen the truth almost a kilosecond ago; there was nothing at the Security base that could slow the rogue down without Arclight. Or the Hammer. Her eyes drifted to one of the conference suites, walled off behind sheets of glass made hazy by privacy systems embedded between the layers. What was going on inside that room was no mystery, though. The head of the World Court's Audit Team was in virtual discussion with members of the Synod and Security heads of staff, a meeting that was obviously getting quite heated, if the sharp movements of the figures inside were anything to go by.

Involuntarily, Vanca glanced up at the ceiling. Somewhere above, up past the layers of armourcrete, service levels, storage bunkers, and just plain dirt and rock, was the Hammer. She snorted and shook her head. Luna won't be above the horizon for another ten kiloseconds; this one has at least that long to live. Any thought that the command room, no matter how deeply buried, would survive the World Court's ire, should events go that badly wrong, wasn't even worth considering. Even now, Vanca expects the accelerator is running, those thousand-tonne projectiles flicking around the moon's equator and ready to be released...

She sat a little back from the scrum and rubbed her muzzle with her paws, listening with half an ear to their prattling. It was distracting, but there was little chance of being allowed to have her own space to work. Sighing, she thought back over her work to this point, all of which was focused on the theoretical requirements for transit through a macro-scale wormhole. It was because of this that her Security minders had put her to work examining methods to block the servitor's method of transport.

The display in front of her played a looped video of the three servitors arriving in the Pit's hangar. It wasn't the best of images, but had been put together from the dropship's missile-defence sensors, which were at least blessed with a high frame rate. On it, a brief spherical distortion, like the sudden appearance of a globe of glass, made the background of relaxing gryphon troops swim and change almost beyond all recognition. "The space-time curvature must be intense," she muttered, tapping the screen with one claw, then expanded a section with a gesture. The distorted globe-image only appeared for a single fleeting frame; after that there was a flare of violet light -- the flash completely overwhelming the simple camera -- then the three ponies had appeared. She ignored the subsequent thaumomagnetic pulse event; there was far better data from the pulse that had destroyed the Institute. Switching back to that single useful frame, Vanca made a few measurements of the distortions, trying to calculate the geometry of the exotic matter required to create the effect.

The main screen, an over-sized three-dimensional synthetic view of the airspace above corral twenty-seven, currently looked like a scene from a war drama... one leading up to armageddon. Tiny models, highlighted by unit designators and other more esoteric icons, flew in complex orbits at a variety of altitudes, covering all possible aerial approaches to the tiny cluster of brightly-coloured shelters on the ground. Other icons clustered amid the shelters, the things they represented too small to see at this scale. Secondary screens showed these details, but Vanca steadfastly refused to examine the far more personal violence taking place on them.

Something new appeared in the display volume and the models reacted like a kicked nest of wasps. Vanca leaned forwards, fascinated, all her own work forgotten, as a smooth teardrop-shape manoeuvred violently, lances of coloured light reaching from it to strike the nearest attack carrier. Warnings flared, and the carrier's attendant cloud of status markers changed from green to amber, but it didn't fall. Another lance of light, just one this time, and faster than the previous shots, sprang out and caught the carrier amidships. A groan, a near simultaneous exhalation from a hundred throats, ran through the silent watchers as the carrier broke apart in a series of internal explosions.

The other aircraft in the flight finally responded, green laser threads striking the intruder while railguns were brought to bear, but their target didn't die either. Glowing like an emerald star, the object abruptly vanished. "Vanca really created a monster, didn't she?" Agent Lilla said from behind the academician's shoulder.

Vanca spared her Security minder a glance, lip curling once more. "This particular monster is all Security's making." Lilla started to speak, but Vanca cut her off with a sharp wave of a paw. "...and no, it is not dead." A slow motion replay of the last moments of the battle appeared on one of the big flat screens; it clearly showed a pulse of violet light mixed in with the green. "The creature will be back."

"Arclight six is weapons free." called out one of the techs controlling the master display, just as more designators appeared.

Let's see how smart that servitor is... Vanca thought, as the pair of aircraft that comprised Arclight six held their thaumic arrays in standby mode and focused on the place where the pony had been. ...smart enough, obviously. An airtank in a completely different area detonated, then there was another flash of violet light and the pony was gone, long before the Arclight beams converged on that new site. Vanca let some of her breath out, realising she'd been just as caught up in the fight as the rest, then turned her back on the big display and returned to work.

===

"No more Blessings, starting now. Control over our own breeding. The immediate cessation of all experimental work involving ponies and gryphons. I know ponies are vital to your industry and civilization, so we will still work for you, but on our terms. Make us your partners, not your slaves."

The room was silent for a moment, then erupted into shouts and curses, the majority of faces filled with revulsion and hate. What the Maker... She smiled a bitter little smile and felt her stomach clench. Obvious in hindsight, she thought, listening to some of the exclamations; one of the favourites was 'an affront to the Maker'. What does this one believe? Certainly not that anymore. This one had forgotten how prevalent the belief is.

She thought back through her early life and how science had supplanted her parent's, and the Church's, teachings. Many of this one's colleagues think the same way as Vanca, but not the general population. She stared up at the servitor, now occupying one of the big flat screens. The view was distorted by the wide-angle lens, and the creature loomed over the room; one eye was a flat white and quite unsettling to look at. Such a good simulation of sapience; it almost sounds like a Person.

A very good simulation. So good that this one could almost believe... In a daze, Vanca felt behind her for the chair, then sank down into it. This is what a servitor really thinks like, given a mind not manipulated by the Blessing. What if they truly are sapient, what if they really are people, and not just smart animals... She bit down on her tongue, willing the pain to give some clarity to her thoughts. How many servitors has Vanca killed in her experiments? This one never took the time to talk to the creatures; that was always Korn's job. This is why he acted the way he did... he saw the truth before Vanca did. Shoulders sagging, she lifted her paws to her eyes and pressed hard on both sides of her muzzle. This one sounds like one of those Maker's Path fanatics. Where is the Student now? Is he still in Naraka with that pony?

There was a tentative tap on her shoulder, which she ignored. "Academician Vanca? The Synod wants to know if the servitor's threat is real. These ones have--"

"How should Vanca know?" she snapped, glaring at the person standing a few paces away. Vanca didn't know his name, but he was one of the researchers. Behind him were a few others, all looking at her like she was their saviour.

"What about those detector things Vanca designed? Can't these ones use them to find out where the bomb is being hidden?" Lilla said, ignoring Vanca's glare when it was turned on her.

"The range isn't good enough; too much noise--"

"Then the Academician can at least reduce the search area," Lilla said, gesturing to a map of Lacunae territory on one of the many screens.

"And who's to say the other rogues are not in some other Hive's lands?" Vanca snarled, standing up and jabbing at Lilla's chest with one claw.

The Agent looked down at the paw, eyes narrowed, then smiled, an expression that seemed to contain more teeth than even one of the People should possess. "Then that's their problem, isn't it? If the pony can do what it says, then it will be war. At the very least, the World Court will allow Baur to retaliate, before placing the whole of Lacunae into administration. If Vanca thinks an audit will be bad, direct administration will effectively make us a puppet state to be strip mined by whichever Hive teams they choose... much-vaunted World Court neutrality or no. We will cease to exist." Her smile vanished. "Imagine living in an arcology under Baur rule. This is not something this Agent wants to experience."

Vanca stared at Lilla, her jaw working. "Propaganda. This one has seen those reports. Those stories are just... stories, put about by Security as an excuse for its activities. They have a monarch, but this one can't believe things are that bad--"

"Vanca isn't privy to the primary sources. If she thinks Security is restrictive, then Vanca hasn't seen anything."

The academician balled her paws into fists, ignoring the pain as her blunt claws dug into her palms, then looked back at her workstation. This one really wants to talk to the servitor and find out how it does what it does... but it will never talk to Vanca now, not after what-- Her breathing accelerated. No. Cannot think about that. With one shaky paw, she called up the complete list of detected teleport jumps, staring at the list without actually seeing it. "This one will work on the problem. Come back in..." Jaw half open, she trailed off, a sudden idea appearing half-formed in her mind.

There was a pattern to the jumps. No, not a pattern, but an underlying limitation. There, when the blue one had jumped inside the Security Hub... it could have appeared anywhere, but it chose the exact same place it had first arrived. And that place... Vanca, paws suddenly trembling, called up one of the intelligence reports she'd glanced at earlier. There. It was the exact hangar that Fusion Pulse had visited Random Walk for training.

That is the only place in the Pit that Fusion Pulse has seen. She went through the rest of the records. The airspace over their home corral -- highly familiar. Naraka -- visited by that medic, Spiral Fracture. Security had said the ponies can see through each other's eyes, so it may have been possible for the medic to show Fusion the location. Vanca sat back, gaze switching to the giant face of Fusion on the main screen. The sound was off, but it was having a heated discussion with someone, if the ear position was anything to go by.

The servitor is bluffing... Vanca opened her mouth to tell Lilla, but froze. This one almost wants it to succeed. Its terms are reasonable, considering what has been done to its kind. Given the power it possesses, it could easily have just gone on a rampage and been near-impossible to stop, yet it didn't. Despite everything, it is trying to negotiate... it just doesn't understand what it is up against. Not for the first time, Vanca wished for the purity of science-driven policy decisions.

In the end it won't make any difference. She sighed, looking at the list of ponies assigned to the now-empty corral; many worked in the Hive industrial zones, and several paid regular visits to various Lacunae arcologies. Perhaps it will pick a military target... the desire to preserve life is obviously strong, and nuking an arcology wouldn't actually help them. Perhaps this way Vanca will get to talk to the creature after all. She inhaled deeply, then waved over the other academic, who was still waiting a few paces away. "Listen carefully to Vanca. There is a pattern..."

===

Laika hooked one paw around the foot loop and looked out of the maintenance bay's small window, her tool kit floating on its short tether by her side. The vast plane of Solar Transmission Authority Reflector number five showed distorted images of the rest of the debris ring coupled with patches of the planet below. Sunlight glared off the fine control guys and trusses that linked the flexible mirror-panels, making it look like the world was trapped within a yellow-hot spider's web. The view was mesmerising, and it was possible to lose large chunks of time to just watching.

Half in orbit and half in powered flight, STAR-5 surfed the currents of photons streaming out from Celestia, balanced on the edge of the planet's shadow-cone, and sending the portion it intercepted back down to the surface. That came with a price in terms of momentum, and the heliostat spent its 'off kiloseconds' -- when Lacunae was over the horizon -- feeding smelters in orbits that allowed it to correct its own position.

The view downwards was more interesting and far easier to interpret. Sunlight striking the command and control pod that hung below the mirror like a seed below a dandelion's parasol made seeing the delicate sprays of night-time lights impossible, but the multiple illuminated areas were easy to spot. Fifty heliostats were currently working Lacunae territory, the two hundred-kilolength patches of reflected daylight showing up as circles of brilliant green against the darkness. One was moving, flashing white as it crossed a snowy mountain range or sparkling off some lake or river, finally coming to rest on one of the many farms.

"If Laika has finished with the view, it would be good if these ones could have full control of petal fifteen's tensioning system."

The voice was sweet and light, but Laika was well familiar with her supervisor's tone. "Yes, Dezik. This one was just checking the alignment of the mirror segments by eye," she said, turning carefully and smiling at Dezik. The deputy engineer was young for her rank, and ambitious. That shapely frame and striking brown-and-cream blotched coat hid a sharp mind that had little sympathy for any weakness. Especially if it made her look bad. "After all, if the feedback mechanism can't be trusted--"

Dezik snorted and shook her head, arresting the slight twisting motion that created with a touch of a paw against one of the ubiquitous grab-rails. "This is not the first time Laika has been caught doing this. This has affected the Technician's work... The problem should have been fixed by now."

Placidly, Laika smiled back, stopping the expression from changing to a wide grin as she saw irritation flash across Dezik's face. "This one is nearly done; she was just waiting for the internal calibration to finish." A legitimate reason for not working; that is bound to be frustrating. She waved at the diagnostics display, currently showing a schematic of petal fifteen and its multitude of control lines. Most were coloured green, with the remaining few red lines changing hue as the system checked each one in turn. There was a tingle at her wrist, and she glanced down to read the message that scrolled across her comms bracer's display. What? Things are that bad? She schooled her expression back into one of polite contrition as Dezik spoke again.

"And Laika couldn't have found something useful to do in the meantime? What about the--"

With a quick motion, Laika tensed her legs and struck out with one paw, the digits held rigid and claws outstretched, stabbing them into Dezik's throat. There was a nasty snap, and the impact knocked the supervisor away from the paw-hold and sent her tumbling in the space. Paws at her throat, she made choking noises, near silent even in the deserted maintenance bay. A quick jump put Laika at her side, and she unclipped Dezik's comms bracer, setting it to 'do not disturb', before pitching it to the other end of the chamber. Paws moving weakly at her crushed throat, Dezik stared at Laika in horror, trying to speak. "Sorry about that," she murmured. "Duty calls."

Laika towed Dezik to the window, making sure her increasingly frantic motions didn't send her bouncing around the room, and dug through the tool kit for certain items that had functions not part of their declared design specifications while, by her side, Dezik quickly stilled and became limp. Work complete, Laika patted her on the shoulder and jumped back to the console, plugging a portable terminal into it. A few nonstandard commands later and it had infiltrated the mirror control system, taking advantage of the backdoors she'd installed megaseconds ago.

A quick push and Laika was drifting towards the hatch, while altering her very special thaumic probe with one paw. Now through and into the transfer tube, she closed and locked the hatch behind her, fusing the mechanism so it couldn't be opened without cutting equipment. There were a hundred lengths of pressurised tube between the maintenance hub and its massed mirror control lines, and the actual control station. While she drifted, touching the walls on occasion to correct her path, Laika tapped out a message on her bracer, sending it off to a dating site specialising in mature couples.

A dozen replies to the post followed, and the systems buried in the bracer extracted her updated orders. It was the comms location of a satellite she knew to be part of the military command and control network, and Laika nodded. They want full remote override. At least the target has to be inside Lacunae territory, given where STAR-5 is... now this one just has to wonder why we need to go this far. The final hatch was approaching fast, and she held the thaumic probe loosely in one paw, while flipping her body over and landing feet-first on the hatch. A flick at the controls and Laika was through and making her way along the corridors to the control room. There were a few other people on the short route, all known to her, and she greeted them with friendly nods.

The control room, a small space lined with screens showing the mirror array and with only enough tie-downs for the two operators, was at the centre of the heliostat. She closed the hatch, smiling when Tsygen, the World Court representative, turned and frowned. "Technician Laika knows that she's not supposed to--" Laika squeezed one of the controls on her thaumic probe just so, and a tensioned-fullerene needle flicked out and punched a tiny hole in Tsygen's sternum. It was little more than a pinprick, but the operator convulsed, blood pooling between his sharp, white teeth. Air leaked from Tsygen's nostrils, bringing with it more blood that sprayed out in shining droplets, and he didn't inhale again.

Laika quietly locked the hatch to the control room, jamming the lock so it couldn't be opened from the outside. "Please, don't..." The other operator, a Lacunae national by the name of Gordo, held up his paws and shrank back from the controls.

"Don't worry; it's very quick." The concealed gun twitched in her paw, firing another needle, this one into Gordo's throat. "This better be worth it," Laika muttered. "The World Court will not be amused." She checked the system status panels, then connected her comms bracer to one of the consoles. The display shifted, controls going dark as they were subverted by the satellite she'd linked to. On the screens the mirrors started to move, the tensioning cables shortening far more than they were supposed to for this orientation, while the whole heliostat started to shift. Alarms sounded, but she cleared them and watched as the system moved well past its focal length and orientation parameters, all safety cut-outs overridden by the alterations being made to the control software.

Someone started to pound on the hatch, but Laika ignored it and focused on the displays. One screen showed the dark surface of the world, with one of the bright circles shifting rapidly across its surface. The spot stopped at a new location, then started to contract, brightening all the while.

===

Nalka, pressed against the window of the airtruck by the crush of bodies, looked out over the darkened expanse of Naraka. Down in the wide collar of forest that surrounded the inner ring of fields were occasional glimmers of pastel light, little firefly flares that illuminated the clearings. The sight was curiously calming, even as she listened to the unsteady warble of the overloaded airtruck's ducted fans. At least someone is having a better night than Nalka, she thought, then the slight smile faded. "Has anyone thought about evacuating the servitors who are here for their procreation sessions? This one can see that the covering glades are still occupied."

"This one tried, but Security is blocking our comms," said Bellui, up front in the pilot's seat. His voice, tense and distracted, trembled slightly. "These ones are still instructed to hold our position and not to land... Bellui doesn't like the readings from the starboard fan set, but they don't care that this thing might fall out of the sky by itself."

She lifted her eyes from the ground, following the moving lights of the other four airtrucks, two of which were large cargo models; these appeared to be having more trouble than their own vehicle, with obvious dips and wobbles of their flight paths. There had been no one on the night staff really trained to operate the big vehicles, and being able to fly a normal aircar didn't really prepare you for those lumbering things. Fly them they had, though, packing the cargo bays with scientists and engineers in a bid to leave before the pony -- or the gryphons it had released -- killed them all.

"It looks like Olam is making a break for it, Bellui wonders what..." There was a pause, the grim silence in the airtruck becoming deeper. "Wait, this one can see--" There was a gasp, and the deck tilted, pushing Nalka into the window-frame. In the distance, one of the lights that had been heading directly away from the pyramid abruptly brightened and turned into an expanding spray of fire. There was a collective gasp from the rest of the passengers, and whatever else Bellui was trying to say was lost in the sudden panicked gabble of shouts and screams.

Nalka turned her head away, staring down at the fields and trying to shut out the rising panic. Can't get away and can't go back. There's no escape. A calm settled over her, then she blinked in wonder as the darkness below was abruptly replaced by brilliant sunshine. What... The fields, empty now the subjects were inside for the night, grew brighter and brighter, until they were painful to look at. Heat started to seep through the window, and she raised one paw to touch it in confusion. She closed her eyes, colourful afterimages dancing in the red-lit darkness, as the temperature suddenly jumped and the cabin filled with smoke.

The airtruck accelerated and twisted violently, trying to escape the concentrated sunlight, but something failed in the already overburdened drive train. There was a sudden mechanical shriek from beneath her paws, loud enough to drown out the screams and shouts from the passengers, and the aircraft dropped, completely out of control. "The levitation drive has failed!" Bellui shouted. The cries of distress redoubled, but Nalka was transfixed by the scene through the window.

The sky was alight; a great contracting cone, made visible where the scattered dust and smoke in the air was caught and heated, stretched down from the heavens. Below them was a circle of illuminated ground, centred on the Naraka pyramid, that was steadily tightening. In this zone the ground flashed into instant flame, trees and bushes exploding like they were the flimsiest tinder, great streamers of smoke and flame pulled inwards by the building firestorm. At the very core of the conflagration was the black pyramid, the once-polished sides marred by the sudden blossoming of explosions. The whole structure had softened, the sharp edges blurred and rounded as molten rock started to flow.

The ground, shadowed now that the cone of light had contracted past their orbit, still glowed with the embers of a thousand fires, and rushed up to greet the airtruck, striking it and plunging Nalka into a permanent darkness.

===

"The Security forces below Naraka are still holding their positions," Orgon said, one paw coming up to touch the burns on the side of his muzzle, "but the pony must ask the other one, TP5325, to stop its attacks on Lacunae aerial forces."

"My sister has a name, Sector Chief!"

The dog's ears flicked. "...yes. If Gravity does not stop its attacks, it is likely that any negotiations will fail."

Fusion gritted her teeth and nodded. It had taken an inordinate amount of time to get even this far. She reached back through the sharing connections for her sister, feeling the rush of air past over-heated feathers and seeing the flicker-flash of exploding superconductors in the darkness. A feeling of fatigue as a lenticular aircraft spun nearby, sheared in half and trailing smoke and fire, while magic probed its innards and extracted bundles of metal needles. A familiar pattern was formed, then Gravity pushed--

The connection shut off suddenly, and Fusion sighed inside and hunted for Gravity again. This time the air was quiet, and she was surrounded by massed ranks of stolen railgun projectiles. The wind was cool and refreshing, a salve for sweat-soaked flanks that stung from a multitude of small burns and cuts. Grav, don't jump. I'm talking to the dogs about--

They've got Scalar and Elliptic. The rest of the corral is clear, but they were taken before I could reach them, Gravity snapped.

Along with the thoughts came a wavering image of frightened ponies in the back of an airtruck, each with a suppressor ring over their horn. Fusion's stomach twisted. Do you know where they are?

No. Still looking. Got to find the airtruck before it gets to a tunnel nexus.

Please try not to destroy any more Security aircraft. I am talking with one of the dogs in charge, and we might be able to negotiate with them.

I will not stop! The dog on the ground tortured Elliptic to get Scalar to give up our plans... you know what will happen to them!

Fusion nodded to herself, ignoring the slightly nervous look Orgon was giving her. Keep looking. I will try from this end. Her brows furrowed and she glared at the Sector Chief. "You have two of my ponies. Give them back or I will not be able to stop Gravity."

"This one doesn't--"

"Do not try to lie to me!" Fusion snarled. "Scalar Product and Elliptic Curve were flown away in a Security airtruck from my home corral after your forces attacked." Her jaw worked and she leaned forward, dipping her head towards the camera on Rthar's comms bracer. "I have seen what you did and how many innocents died, and I will not have Scalar and Elliptic in your paws."

"One moment, this one is not privy to all operational details--" He cocked his head and pressed one claw on the earpiece, but his eyes never left hers." His ears drooped. "That event did happen, but the airtruck in question suffered a near miss from a missile detonation and is believed to have crashed. These ones have not had any contact with it, and the search will get underway as soon as combat operations can be paused."

Fusion hesitated, trying to read Orgon's expression. Ever since she'd started to speak to the dog, there had been little in the way of useful facial cues, and she suspected that what was there was only there because Orgon wanted it to be. Gravity? she thought, but the mare had gone again. "My sister will join your search. Keep out of her way and she may not attack you in return."

"That is scarcely a reasonable--" Orgon broke off, and for a moment Fusion thought she saw a flash of anger, then it was gone. "Very well. Under the circumstances, Security will not fire unless attacked first."

Trying to pin down Gravity for long enough to tell her the news was like trying to catch smoke, so Fusion left that job to Lilac. "You know what I want, Sector Chief."

Orgon nodded. "This one does, but the pony does not understand how hard a task this will be. It should be prepared for long delays, as not all the decisions can be made by Lacunae. The World Court has overriding control over servitor legislation, and the Blessing is part of their minimum requirements. Then there is also the issue of removing existing Blessings, and what that will do to the ponies in question. Some will have been under the Blessing for several gigaseconds, and it is not known what effects that will have..."

Fusion felt her knees wobble as Orgon carried on speaking, and she made a conscious effort to stop from sinking to the floor. So much! I never even considered that other Hives might get involved -- and I could never stop at just Lacunae's ponies. "One step at a time, Sector Chief. You have halted the advance of your forces, but now I want you to pull them ba--"

Fusion's mouth snapped shut as a great weight descended on her magic, an effort to crush her power from the outside. The sharing links wavered and failed, the distant feelings of other evaporating and leaving her alone in her head. She dropped Salrath and the captured gryphon, the latter flapping his wings and falling heavily to the ground when they didn't bite the air the way they were supposed to. Salrath curled into a ball and rolled away, coming unsteadily to her feet with a snarl, then bolting for the door.

In the haze of effort it now took to hold onto her connection with the sun, Fusion staggered sideways to intercept the Agent, but the gryphon jumped her, beak closing around her throat and armoured talons wrenching at her foreleg, She staggered, gasping for breath as the gorget partially collapsed, then rolled forwards to fall on her struggling attacker. No! She can't-- Ignoring the gryphon, she reached out for Salrath with her magic, but the simple spell, something she'd been able to use near-instinctively from when she'd been a foal, was weak and feeble. The Agent struggled in her grasp, wriggling wildly, then slipped free and was away down the corridor.

Ellisif was moving within moments, bowling the gryphon over and gripping him at throat and amputated gun mount. In a single fluid motion she slammed his head into the floor, then threw him to land in a heap under one console. Another jump had her at the other dog's side -- he'd made his own dive to reach the pistol Fusion had taken from him -- and she swept his legs out from under him, then wrapped one set of talons around his head, the others splayed to be driven into his eyes.

"Don't kill!" Fusion wheezed, the fine aurora-coloured strands of her mane dimming and shading towards pink. She fought the pressure, applying what she'd learned from Gravity's encounter with this weapon and holding on to a tenuous link to the sun. There was a rumbling groan from somewhere overhead, and a sudden feeling of familiar power, as if Celestia was only just above her head and within reach, but the sucking, draining Arclight weapon blocked her attempts to access that energy.

"I can't keep them both prisoner!" Ellisif snarled, giving the dog a shove that sent him to bouncing off the stunned gryphon. "They were just playing for time!"

Fusion nodded shakily. "Yes. We have to leave; they are doing something above us. I almost expected a missile strike, but--"

"This one will give his surrender willingly," Captain Rthar said, wrapping his paws around the gryphon's armour haul-loops and pulling hard. "Flysoldat Olvir Bergthor will obey this one's orders."

Fusion nodded. "Very well, but--"

"You can't tell me-- Fine!" Ellisif took the little railgun pistol and ripped out the power pack, scattering components across the floor before throwing the remains away. "Get going," she shouted, "one stupid move and I'll rip your Maker-damned head off and feed you to the inmates!" She gestured to the door and Rthar scrambled to his paws, dragging a groggy Olvir after him. "They will have resumed their attack," she said to Fusion, her voice tight, as they both trotted for the door.

"Yes," Fusion said. "I can't see them anymore, but you must be right. I will be able to help a little, but..."

"Understood." Ellisif tapped something on her comms interface. "Svartr, Adigard. Treat this like we are on our own; backup is questionable. The Agent got loose. Kill on sight." She glared at Fusion. "I take it that is allowed?" she said, then snorted at the pony's jerky nod. "Good. What is going on above us? A good earth penetrator warhead would have killed us all long ago."

"I can feel the sun, really strong..." Fusion lengthened her stride; with each step it got a little easier. There was still the sense of suction, but at least she was holding on to her limited remaining power without expending too much extra effort. At most I'm as strong as a foal just into her magic, she thought, trying to reinforce the shield that was insulating her from the weapon's effects. There's no way I can risk anything complex; every time I try something I lose a little bit of control.

"There was a plan to use the heliostats as weapons," Rthar said, nudging Olvir to keep him moving. They had reached the bank of spiral ramps and were skidding down the slopes. The rumble above was louder, and thick plumes of smoke were starting to spew from the ventilation system. "This one imagines they didn't want to risk giving the pony more nuclear weapons."

"Fantastic." Ellisif gave a single harsh caw of laughter. "Fire from above and guns from below.”

===

Gravity, surrounded by force-field constructs, threw the air behind her. Intense compression heated it to incandescence, leaving her at the tip of a plume of fire that lit the ground a lurid orange. Shockwaves rippled out, shaking the trees and throwing spume up from rivers, as she flew her curved course at a high multiple of the speed of sound. There were plenty of vehicles to examine -- some were even the sort of airtruck that had taken Scalar and Elliptic -- but nothing that contained any trace of pony.

Airtanks and the larger delta-shaped carriers circled the corral in a complex, three-dimensional pattern that reminded her of a swarm of bees, or flies over an animal corpse. Higher up were the unknown vehicles, the ones that were obviously part of the dog's antimagic weapon system; they were not active, but still swam in her shadow sight like they were distant mirages. They are ready to be used... much like everything else. The pattern of smaller vehicles distorted as she passed, bunching to keep as many near her as possible.

She scanned the air and ground, alternating between shadow sight and her normal eyes, but there was nothing that matched what she was looking for. Another tunnel nexus hove into view, but there was no traffic in or out of the funnel opening. Even below, where the deep tunnels normally seethed with activity, there was nothing.

Grav, Fusion has just--

~~~discontinuity~~~

There had been panic in Lilac's mental tone, and Gravity didn't stop to think or even hear the rest of the message. She jumped, the change in air slamming at her body for the brief moment it took for her force field to re-establish itself. Telekinesis, always easier to perform than any other magic, held her body rigid and prevented the huge forces from smashing her into paste.

She was high, looking down on the corral from several tens of kilolengths, and in the midst of the upper echelons of the aerial formations. The ordered patterns of aircraft converged on her, hot green light stabbing upwards as she manoeuvred violently. Air was running out, not so much from the altitude, but from the iron grip she had on her body that prevented her lungs from moving and inertia from snapping bones like twigs. Heat washed over her flanks from glancing hits, but the range was too great for the small mirrors that dotted the airtank's hulls, and they could not put out enough energy to get through her armour. Blue-white flares sprouted from several of her enemies, propelling dark objects that curved to follow her path.

She spat her own weapons back towards the launch points, but there were too many, and the black heat-haze shimmer of the antimagic weapon was reaching for her once more--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--out and distant, staring back at the corral. Further on, over the horizon and in the direction of Fusion's vanished mind, light had bloomed. A slender, glowing column reached down from the heavens, touching down at what must have been Naraka. A mushroom of incandescent smoke sprang up, the distance making it seem small and slow. It glowed a fierce white, lit by scattered light pouring down from above. Fusion, are you still alive? She probed the mental space where the other mare had been, but her magic was swallowed by a now-familiar alien presence, and in the depths of her shadow sight was the tell-tale light-and-shadow glimmer of another of the antimagic weapons. Gravity's stomach twisted, a sick fury filling her eyes with tears. I knew the dogs could never be trusted! What is there left for me if she's gone? Gravity accelerated, reaching for the moons and letting the power flood through her mind and out into the world. Ahead, visible only by shadow sight, a new sun ignited; a harsh glare of magic that was the only indicator of the grinding twist she was preparing to apply to space-time.

The spell, the same one she'd used to down the dropship at the Institute, burst into the real a kilolength from her muzzle tip. She was suddenly falling forwards, accelerating towards the simulated mass like the world had been tipped on its side. The draining pull of the power started to seep into her bones, but she ignored it, pushing the locus away as far as she could. This time she held onto the magic, not giving way to the temptation to put all she had into it, but keeping it at the same level. Mind singing with the effort, she tightened the twist, pulling the synthetic mass in towards an unachievable dimensionless point.

The feeling of falling lessened, but the patch of air where the spell resided distorted slightly, like a patch of free-floating heat haze. She held it, feeling the fatigue get worse, then level off, like she'd been galloping and found some compromise between speed and endurance. Breathing deeply, Gravity gritted her teeth and smiled. Should have done this before... magic is nothing to be feared as long as you don't let it control you. Tentatively, she built another pattern in her head, working around the flood of power that still roared through her. I wonder if I can--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--reappearing a dozen lengths away. There was a surge of dizziness and pain, like a vice squeezing her head as the rushing torrent of energy from the moons had nowhere to go except in, then she found the fraying patterns out in the void. The reins of magic, loosened by her brief absence, snapped tight as she gripped them once more, the brutally simple spell reforming and carrying on with hardly a pause. Gravity jumped again, and the task became a little easier, so she swung about to face the corral and its fleet of aircraft, then pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--and pushed and pushed, making little jumps towards the corral, the spell locus dragged to each new location with a twitch of her will. Each jump took a little more of her waning strength, and the power of the spell, though still terrible, started to dwindle. Have I made a mistake? Should I be trying to kill whatever weapon is doing this? Then what? There is so much stuff in orbit -- can I even find it? The thought was fleeting, barely registering as ahead were the formations of airtanks. They were dispersed and watchful, no doubt already detecting her chain of teleports, their pilots likely wondering exactly where--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--swarming about her, as she appeared in a void within the formations. Courses curved in her direction, but she dragged the immaterial spell locus through their ranks like a scythe through a field of wheat. Airtanks almost a tenth of a kilolength away suddenly veered towards it or lost power and fell from the sky. Those closest to its line of flight, and those dragged within its sphere of influence, simply exploded, detonating with silent blue-white flashes that smote her exposed skin with synchronous pulses of furnace heat, as their superconducting storage banks failed catastrophically. This! This is what I should have done from the start! Gravity laughed, feeling drunk with fatigue and power, rearing in the air as darkness congealed out of nothing to surround her.

The fast-burning streaks of missiles closed towards her, but she batted them aside with flashes of violet that turned white as warheads exploded with flat cracks that reached her out of time with the flashes. Gravity moved again, accelerated past the speed of sound in an instant by the drag of her own weapon. The remaining airtanks scattered, fleeing with the delta-shaped carrier, but she flung the locus in their direction, pushing it square through the big aircraft like a hot needle through wax.

The outriders must have sensed the locus' approach, because they fanned out, firing missiles and railgun projectiles in her direction. Gravity moved, changing course and speed, but there was just not enough time for the weapons to reach her. The magic defences on the delta flared and died before her spell even came into their range, the harsh gravitational gradient pulling some machines from their mounts and disrupting delicate alignments within others. The locus passed cleanly through the rear hull, and the metal crumpled, stretching and falling inwards like it was nothing more than light packing material.

In less time than it took to blink, the whole aircraft was wadded up, wide wings pulled towards the centre, then its own power stores failed. There was a white flash, dazzlingly bright even through Gravity's closed eyes--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--the silent pulse of light lit the land from horizon to horizon, for a moment revealing every flying thing and all the little puffs of smoke and falling debris her attack had left in its wake. Where is it... there! A concentration of aircraft, denser than any other formation, was close by. Airtanks and carriers surrounding something ungainly and oversized, a flying cylinder with wings that looked like it had swallowed a sphere.

The aircraft and its commensals were curving away, accelerating towards Naraka. Is it running? Have I won? There was a moment of joy, then the reason became obvious. It is reinforcing the one attacking Fusion, to protect it from me. Switching to shadow sight confirmed it; a trembling spear of darkness came from this bolus, swinging around to find her, matching up with another from a similar vehicle a hundred kilolengths away. Where the beams intersected there was nothing.

Quick as thought, Gravity flung her region of twisted space-time in its direction, but the patch of darkness found her weapon first. The simple spell, despite all its brute power, unravelled in an instant. Nothing she tried could hold it together -- the distance was too great and the energy of the spell too high -- and for a moment all that power was diverted into the real as random, short-lived arcana. The thaumic wavefront, visible as complex fractals that branched and bloomed like surf blended with time-lapsed flowers, surged towards her and--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--from ten kilolengths away, the slap of uncontrolled magic made her horn and wings vibrate with unsettling harmonics, but Gravity recovered quickly. The swarm of aircraft was much depleted on the side she'd attacked; through atmospheric lensing she could see the distortions often produced by such accidents. The smooth lines of some airtanks had shifted to strange out-growths and excrescences, chaotic fern-like branches that fell apart as the aircraft tumbled. Others had melted, the refractory and unreasonably tough ceramics and alloys turned liquid as if molten, even though they remained at the low temperature of high altitude.

The antimagic weapon was still functioning.

Gravity felt weak; now the heady, drug-like rush of power was gone, the effort of keeping the spell going and under control flooded up from her belly to leave limbs leaden and head aching. I can't get to it, she thought, turning to look at Naraka. The mushroom cloud had grown dramatically, fed from below by a plume of vapour that looked like a giant, upturned rocket motor. I can't kill this one, and I won't be able to kill the other one. It's moving towards Naraka; it will be able to hit me even if I go to help Fusion. Tears of frustration whipped away from her cheeks, scoring stinging lines along her abraded flesh. "I'll make them pay for what they've done to you; I'll burn every dog and every arcology on the surface of this miserable world--"

Eyes suddenly wide, Gravity's breath hitched. Burn... yes, that's it! The sharing link, long ignored as a distraction and never reopened after the last series of jumps, reconnected under her frantic proddings. Lilac, tell me you still have that bomb!

"--no! That cannot be what she intended!"

Trocar's voice was sharp, full of anger and... horror? The rest of Lilac's sensorium snapped into place over her own; the once-empty chambers now filled with the smell and sight and bustle of many, many ponies, all of whom were at least slightly familiar. There was shouting from a score of throats, but the words were obscured by the din and Lilac's attention being on other things. Magic flared, Lilac's own, but was deflected and neutralised by the medic.

"But you heard what she said! You've been watching through Fusion's eyes, just like everypony else here, you saw what was in that place! All those foals were like me. I think... I think that would have been me when my experiments were finished!"

"What good would it do!?" There was frustration in Trocar's voice, and more than a little fear. "To kill so many for no gain other than revenge -- send it to the Pit, like she originally intended. It's a military target and--"

Give it to me! Gravity screamed the thought down the sharing link, and enough of her dwindling power leaked through to stun the others into silence. I can use it to--

Lilac recovered his senses before Trocar, and the bomb disappeared in a flash of pale purple before the medic could focus his magic again. The thing appeared, flicking away from her so fast that she nearly missed her catch, and while she pulled it back, Lilac showed her how to trigger it.

--break this connection here and you have about ten seconds. The sharing flickered and faded, but not before Gravity had the impression of an angry Trocar knocking the youngster sideways.

Later, Trocar. The thought was fleeting, just something filed away for future action. She lined herself up on the inferno that was Naraka, letting the teleport pattern build. Smoke and ash was starting to fill the horizon, a bank of red-tinted storm clouds with a core the colour of flame. By shadow sight the area was a patch of total darkness, connected to the jewels of the antimagic weapons by bars of black haze. Other jewels spun around them, whole constellations of colour, like clouds of fireflies on a warm summer evening -- at least as many as she'd faced over the corral.

Ahead, midway between her old home and Naraka, was the weapon she'd failed to destroy. One chance, Gravity thought, skimming the ground and dragging up a mass of stone and rubble from under the farmland, arranging it into manageable portions. She curved up towards her target, following its path as it moved towards Naraka at just under the speed of sound. Its escorts swarmed nearby, refusing to be drawn to her. In the real world, lights popped and flashed from the defenders, fast points of fire tipped with shadow accelerating in her direction. Too slow, she thought with some satisfaction, her ears folding back.

Climbing steeply, Gravity cracked the sound barrier, guiding the air past her body and massed cargo, pushing her speed higher and higher, until the rush of wind became a howling, screaming thing. For a moment, she stared at the bomb floating before her, serene and dark, showing no hint of the energies it contained, then reached inside and broke the connection Lilac had shown her.

One, two, three, four--

Taking a deep breath, Gravity made the final changes to the waiting magic, then pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

19 - ...and the sky was full of stars.

Author's Note

A crude dramatis personæ can be found here.
Preread by: turol and KMCA.
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and Caliaponia (Just Passing Through).

19 - ...and the sky was full of stars.

Breathing with a deep, steady rhythm, Fusion cantered in the middle of the little group, fighting to keep her balance as she ran down the spiral ramp. The dog, Rthar, was in the lead, flanked by Olvir, his gryphon. Ellisif ran at her side, eyes and gun focused on the two prisoners. "Ellisif, call Red and get him and Korn to meet us in the mid-level exercise room with the rest of the ponies," she said in a tight voice. Got to get them out, got to do something with them. At least they are already out of their stalls.

The gryphoness nodded, muttering into her armour's communicator. "We get a training session on Arclight... I can feel nothing from my wings at all." She waggled them experimentally, then ruffled the feathers. "My magic is completely gone, but you..." Ellisif gestured at Fusion's mane, which still retained a pale reflection of its pastel rainbow shades.

Fusion nodded. "I've still got a little, but I don't dare use it unless it's desperate. The instant I do, the machine will take what's left." As she said it, the suppression effect twisted, shifting to a new configuration, and Fusion slowed as she fought to rearrange her defences to match. Makes sense, otherwise it would be too easy to work around. Holding on to what was left was like trying to control a wriggling foal with only her teeth; every moment and distraction brought a risk of escape.

"The pony must be very strong to be able to manage anything at all," Rthar said, voice strained with the effort of running to keep ahead of Fusion and Ellisif. "Arclight-class weapons are the reason why these ones do not rely on thaumic systems. Rthar has never heard of any way to defeat them." He coughed and stumbled, leaning on Olvir’s withers. The gryphon glanced up, extending one wing from beneath his armour to support the running dog.

"I have a lot of surprises left for your kind. Things are going to change, Rthar, whether or not I survive to see them."

The group hit the bottom of the ramp and skidded to a halt before a door, nearly colliding with an agitated Redshift and a shivering Korn, the latter with his paws still cuffed together. There were cuts and little raw patches of stripped skin on Redshift's fetlocks; he noticed her look and shuffled on the spot, obviously favouring one leg. "He was cuffed to one of the equipment racks; I had to kick it to bits," he said, a little wild-eyed. "What are we going to do? I was sure that the dogs would at least hold back for long enough that we could get everypony out."

"What will the pony do... has the bomb already been sent to Baur Hive?" Rthar clenched his paws together and leaned against the wall, his ears flat back. "How many millions will the pony kill in her futile quest?"

"Did you know what was done here, Captain? What would you do to stop your children being slaughtered in these laboratories?" Fusion snarled, then gestured to Korn. "Student, your only chance to get out of here alive is with the rest of the ponies in that room behind you. You will get them to move calmly to the lower levels and wait there until I return." She reached for his restraints, then cursed as the tiny effort not only failed, but drew away a fragment of her remaining strength into the sucking void that seemed to fill the shadow universe. "Ellisif -- untie his wrists."

"What is happening? This one needs to know something to--"

Korn flinched as Ellisif grabbed his paws with one set of gloved talons, then sat back on her haunches and held up the others, their razor edges gleaming wetly as protective layers retracted. "Hold still." He froze as she used her talons like wire cutters on the plastic-coated metal bands. "All you need to know is that you will die if you don't get them moving. They are burning Naraka before we even get a chance to!" She ran a claw down the bloody fur of his chest, then gave him a push. "The ponies already know something is going on, so I think you look perfect."

"B-but how long does this one have?"

The gryphoness shrugged, then cocked her head at the sound of gunfire, distant and muffled, from somewhere below. "Who knows. I wouldn't waste too much time enjoying the scenery, if I were you." She pointed at a wisp of smoke emerging from an air vent a little way away and gave him another shove, this time hard enough to send him staggering. "Seriously, we have Security coming up from below and fire from above. There is no escape for any of us unless..."

"Gravity," Fusion muttered staring up at the ceiling. "I imagine she has her own problems to attend to." Were they waiting for you, too? Was there a trap set for both of us? She felt her stomach clench and tasted something foul at the back of her throat. Perhaps we can fight our way out through the tunnels... but the dogs will just keep piling on more forces until we are dead.

"...right, Gravity can do something from the outside." There was another burst of gunfire, followed by a thump that sent vibrations shivering through the floor. "Fusion, we have to go. Security is moving up in force and Svartr says she can't hold them. They have those pocket airtanks in the lead."

===

Katabatic shuffled sideways to avoid a stallion who barged through on his way to who-knew-where. Her foal, still a little shaky on his long and gangly legs, wriggled against her flank and poked his head out from under her wing. He made a high-pitched whinny and pulled back, pressing so close that he threatened to trip her up. She moved a little further through the herd, working her way towards the perimeter wall. Here the press of bodies was relaxed a little, and she could actually focus on her surroundings.

The floor sloped away from the perimeter and towards the centre of the wedge-shaped room. It was a familiar place, but full of unfamiliar bodies. I knew there were more ponies here than I’d seen before, but I didn't know there were so many, she thought in a daze. It was the smell, more than the sight, that made it real, and almost reduced her to confused tears. Amid the melange of scents she could pick out traces of her exercise group, but they were in the minority.

The overhead lights were at full brightness despite the late hour, and glared off the backs of the hundreds of ponies who were beating the grass to a pulp under their hooves. Katabatic felt a slight pang of regret at the sight. It will be days before there is anything fit for eating... now I have nothing to start weaning my foal on to. The Master's food was nutritious and filling, especially along with the endless quantities of hay they supplied, but nothing quite matched up to fresh grass.

She flinched at the disloyal thought, waiting for the sting of the Maker's Punishment, but nothing came. Katabatic whimpered and dropped her wings to fold the primaries under her belly, practically enveloping her foal. The youngster picked up on her stress and tried to wriggle deeper into her flank, making little hops with his legs as if trying to pull them away from a hostile world. She tried again to pick him up, but the magic just evaporated.

Katabatic closed her eyes and tried to relax. It's not just you, everypony else has lost their magic as well. You're not useless. There should have been pain with that thought, but yet again the shame and fear was hers alone. She tucked her head under her right wing, brushing muzzles with her foal and breathing in his sweet milky breath. I still have you, at least for a little while. Long enough to teach you to speak and learn your name, before they take you away.

There was a sudden mechanical whirr from behind her tail, and Katabatic jumped, taking a few cantered steps before pulling up in front of the press of bodies, who were all staring in her direction. She cringed at the sudden attention, then caught a movement out of the corner of one eye and wheeled. A Master... but the only time--

--the filly was perfect in every way, from stubby, still half-formed horn to legs that were over-long for her body. There had been praise and extra rations of more interesting food, and the whole whirlwind of attention from the other ponies, along with brief looks of sorrow and sympathy behind some of those eyes, followed by carefully controlled flinches and twitches. She'd not paid much attention, because there was now so much to do, because the world had shifted to revolve around this one precious collection of strange movements and soft fur--

She started to hyperventilate, rapid flutterings of breath that made her nostrils flare and the world start to spin. Katabatic's wings clamped down on her sides, the bones under her feathers digging into her foal's flanks, making him squirm.

--alone in the group's shared room, ordered to stay behind while the others exercised in the high-ceilinged chambers nearby, when the door opened and the Master was there, putting something on her foal's neck and taking her away. Her own tears and cries, choked off by a constricting agony that collapsed her chest and made it almost impossible to breathe, as her beautiful filly walked like one asleep behind the Master, away down the corridor, never to return--

"--no, you can't take him, it's too soon!" As soon as the words left her mouth she froze, eyes going wide. There should have been the scream of the Maker's rage inside her body, but there was nothing, so she swayed on her hooves for a moment, then fell to her foreknees and pressed her muzzle into the crushed grass. Around her, the rest of the herd was doing the same. Eyes clenched shut, Katabatic listened to the bangs and thumps that punctuated the sudden silence, her nose twitching at the unexpected smell of smoke.

===

Korn, paw still half raised from where he'd operated the door controls, limped forwards and into the big room. Mouth open, he stared out over the kaleidoscope sea of manes, tails and wings, eyes darting from one pony to another. All had prostrated themselves, but he could feel the weight of their attention, the way every single eye and ear was focused upon him, and he swallowed heavily. So many! He took another step forwards, fixing his own eyes on one of the closest, a skewbald mare who seemed to be shivering as she huddled on the floor.

What had the pony said? 'Don't take him?' Korn blinked, suddenly noticing the extra set of slender legs poking out from under the mare's right wing. Oh... the room full of horns. He felt sick, and bent down to brush a strand of mane from her muzzle "This one will not take any foal away," he said, voice rough and trembling. "None of the pony's foals will ever be taken again." The smell of smoke was suddenly noticeable, and he imagined the appalling heat that must be working down towards them, boiling off layer upon layer of the building above his head. Not one of them has the Blessing at the moment... who knows how they will react. Perhaps it will be better if this one stays here and everyone burns.

The thought was horribly tempting, but Korn stood up and gestured for the mare to do likewise. "The ponies will listen," he said, trying for that iron authority and complete self confidence that would come with the expectation of being obeyed. Voice of command, he thought, and tried again. "The ponies will listen and stand." There was a subdued thunder and rustling as, all at the same time, the ponies did. Mouth open and momentarily at a loss for words, Korn started at them again. It... it actually worked! Now, how is this one going to organize so many, when he doesn't--

He closed his mouth and smiled, feeling stupid. These are servitors, this one just need to ask, he thought. "The ponies need to move to the lowest levels; there is a..." Beam of concentrated sunlight rapidly turning Naraka into a volcano. "...civil emergency taking place on the surface that will shortly render this facility uninhabitable." He cringed, waiting for any of them to ask some awkward question or call him out as a liar, but none said a word.

"Do the rest of the Masters need any assistance? You appear to be injured--" The mare, the same skewbald he'd approached, hung her head, staring at the ground between her hooves. "I have no magic, Master. I cannot help you." Tears welled up in her eyes, dampening the fur of her muzzle.

"The other People have left, and this one's injuries are not important," Korn said. "The loss of magic is only temporary." A great sigh rippled across the herd, some of the tension leaking away from the sharply defined musculatures. Of course, the ponies will all be dead, but... "Follow this one to the lower levels to await rescue; organize yourselves to pass through the doors efficiently." He turned, moving as fast as he could -- a kind of limping jog -- out into the wide corridor and towards the spiral ramps. Behind him there was movement and urgent voices, then the ponies were trotting four abreast behind him. This one can't imagine a crowd of the People being so calm! A warm wind, rich with the scents of combustion products and looking a little hazy, was flowing from his back, strong enough to ruffle fur.

"Forgive me, Master," said one of the leaders, a grey stallion at the larger end of the pony size range.

Korn tensed and nearly tripped at the polite words, only just audible above the clatter of hoof on stone. Here it comes... what is this one going to do if they refuse to continue? He has no authority and validating the chain of command-- The whirl of self-destructive thoughts stopped when Korn realised the pony had taken his silence as an invitation to continue. "The pony will repeat what it just said."

The stallion's ears drooped and he cringed away from Korn, pushing against the pony next to him. "I am worried that we are not moving fast enough, the smell of smoke..."

"If this one is slowing the ponies down, they should go on ahead," Korn said, in between gasps. "This one cannot go any faster."

The pony looked horrified at the suggestion and immediately shook his head. "No, Master! We must get you to safety first." The others nearby, all listening into the conversation, nodded in agreement. "If you wish it, Master, I could try and carry you," he mumbled, averting his eyes.

"Carry? But the pony has no magi--" The stallion twisted slightly, giving Korn a view of his withers and back. Between his wingshoulders was a fairly flat patch of fur, with only a hint of spine forming a ridge down the middle. Korn's ears folded back and he swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. "Oh." He nodded jerkily.

The pony came to an abrupt halt, the whole stream of other servitors behind him doing likewise, dropping to his foreknees and mantling his wings. Shakily, Korn straddled the stallion's neck, sitting down so his legs were hooked over the creature's wings. There was a moment of great instability as the pony levered itself upright, then it started to walk. This isn't so bad, Korn thought, the interplay of intensely warm muscle and bone against his backside was complex and seemed to be far more than was necessary to move a limb forwards.

Then the stallion started to a trot.

The bounce was unexpected, and Korn left the pony's back, grabbing for cream-coloured mane as he was tipped forwards. He came down just as the stallion was coming up again, and the bony protuberance of the pony's spine caught him between the legs. The breath woofed out of his chest, and Korn curled forwards, trying to lift himself fully off the pony's back. The instrument of his punishment turned its head and started to speak, but Korn gritted his teeth and held on. "Keep going," he gasped, legs clenching together in an action that prevented the next impact while flicking him further off balance.

The pony nodded and his wings came forward, clamping down on Korn's legs and holding him in place, then accelerated into a canter. "Door!" the stallion shouted, and the ponies to either side shot past, heads lowered and legs flying, going at least four times faster than his own mount. "Is that better, Master? Try leaning back a little."

"Yes," Korn squeaked, his voice sounding high and unnatural in his own ears, and pushed back off the pony's neck. Something seemed to have happened in his body, because the pain between his legs -- and from all the other indignities the world had heaped on him recently -- faded into the background, leaving everything with a razor-sharp clarity. The pony's motion was much easier to manage, despite the increase in speed; more like a series of bounds than the vicious vertical hammer of its trot.

The doors ahead were held open, and they passed through, his outriders accelerating away to the next set. Korn risked turning his head; behind them was a literal river of fur and feathers, moving at the same steady distance-eating canter that was about as fast as he could have sprinted if he'd been fit and well. The ponies didn't seem to be even slightly winded, they just ran with that focused look the creatures had when given an important task. Amid the herd were foals stuck tight to their dams and given extra space by the adults around them. More than once, he saw a wing flick out, steadying a youngster if it appeared to stumble.

Next came the spiral ramp, and he tensed, anticipating the change to trot as the pony slowed, but the stallion kept his speed up. "What is--?"

"Grab a hold of my neck, Master," the stallion called, aiming for the middle of the doorway. "I'm going to need my wings for balance -- the best way to keep your footing cantering downhill is to keep accelerating!"

Korn's eyes widened and he fell forwards, hugging the stallion's neck, as they passed the threshold for the ramp. Immediately their speed started to climb, and the ride became much more bouncy. Leaning over to one side, both wings extended and brushing floor and ceiling, the pony half fell, half galloped down the spiral slope. The wall flew past and Korn closed his eyes, holding on with legs and arms, then buried his muzzle into the stallion's mane and screamed as the pony's motion threatened to hurl him to the floor.

===

The cavernous storage bays were shrouded in darkness, lit only by the actinic flare of lasers and the steady glow of multiple fires reflecting off the ceiling. The emergency lights had failed just after the dogs’ forces had breached the loading dock gates, victims of a short-range electromagnetic pulse. Beak clenched tight, Svartr cursed in the privacy of her own head, watching as the squat disk of the airtank floated down the wide corridor left by stacked containers. The roar of its ducted fans, even in 'stealth' mode and without the plasma drive, was horrific, filling the room with sound. It was buttoned up, primary mirror locked away behind metal shutters, and viewing the world through sensors.

This is where I find out if the flea-bitten curs have been lying to us all this time. All her armour electronics were off; she had no tactical computer, no radio and no sensor suite, and even her main superconducting storage cells had been removed to avoid the risk of those modules giving her away through magnetic leakage. The only thing that remained was her gun, the specks of computronium that controlled it and its own reserves of power. This was in the form of the graphene-boron nitride supercapacitors that provided the huge current surge required to fire the projectile, and would not betray her presence. Or so Redshift had said.

Around and beneath her, the mob of liberated gryphons flowed away from the first of the three armoured vehicles, staying out of their lines of fire, exactly as they had planned. Mostly staying out of the line of fire. Here and there were bursts of gunfire, terminated by screams of pain and rage, as the dog soldiers that filtered ahead of the airtank took snap shots at the retreating gryphons.

Hiding under a refrigeration unit's heatsink, Svartr squinted and worried about surveillance drones, while trying to make out the tank's turret through the low-resolution fibre probe she'd laid over the side of the cargo container under her belly. Without the augmentation of her armour's visor, even her battlefield-grade eyesight was having trouble. She shifted one talon, manipulating the mechanical controls that rotated the tip of the slender tentacle to recenter the airtank in the eyepiece's visual field. Come on you useless... She caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of her other eye, a hint of feathers from the end of the row of storage modules. A shutter flicked open on the airtank's bulbous turret and green light flared, a pulsing cone of horrible intensity that turned the world a green monochrome and made her blink, even through the nonlinear filters.

Now! Svartr popped up onto all fours and crouched slightly to sight down her shoulder gun's barrel at the tank, then bit down on the trigger. Without the fancy linear actuator-powered recoil carriage, the sudden hammer-blow against her shoulder and back was shocking in its intensity, and she fought to keep the weapon on target as it emptied its ready magazine. Sparks, only just visible against the green glare, sprayed off the airtank's hull, then the laser went out, leaving smoke and vapourised ceramics billowing from the primary emitter. Too late, shutters blinked closed over the ruined eye, then she stamped down on the mechanical detonator taped to the container’s roof and rolled away. Got to get some use out of that supercon bank, she thought, wondering if she'd get far enough away before the improvised explosive triggered.

The shock tube flashed yellow, like a laser able to follow curves and go around corners, then the sides of the containers lining the corridor blew out with a rippling roar filled with the spider-crawl of lighting. Tonnes of stored food -- and the much greater mass of refrigeration machinery on top of the containers -- fell onto the airtank, slamming it to the floor. Return fire from a dozen points lashed where she'd been, and Svartr completed the roll to fall off the other side of her container and down to the padding she'd strewn there to make the ten-length drop survivable without functioning wings.

On her back and stunned for a moment, she looked upwards to see heavy laser fire from the other two airtanks turn everything above into an exploding shower of molten metal that rained down on everyone she could see. Shapes, once hidden in the gloom, staggered shrieking as plumage caught fire, bouncing mindlessly in the little alleys between the containers until they slumped to the ground or were shot by the dog soldiers making insect-leaps from one spot to another. Other gryphons were luckier and avoided the rain of fire, turning on the soldiers in groups of three or four.

Hissing like a leaking steam boiler, Svartr twisted to get her paws under her, then bounded into the fight.

===

Fusion glanced back at where Ellisif was hog-tying Rthar to his gryphon, with Redshift remaining behind to keep watch, then back out over the cuboid landscape of fire and screams. Her nostrils flared and she snorted, trying to shed the tang of burning feathers. I convinced them to fight, so they are dying because of me. I am responsible for this. Her ears drooped and her head lowered. I can't save them... Fusion shook her head, trying to clear the foul taste from the back of her throat, and gave a little unconscious whinny. Eyes narrowed, her ears went from a dismal droop to flat back against the sides of her skull. I can't ever be in this position again.

"How close do you have to be?" the gryphoness asked, beak twitching as she moved it in arcs to follow the occasional jumping figure. There was a bellowing roar, and one of the airtanks flew high enough to clear the ranks of containers, its lasers stabbing down into the alleys and passageways below. "Maker-dammit! That thing will be the death of us all!" It was joined by a second, and the pair flew in close formation over the miniature cityscape, wedged in between the ceiling and the tops of the containers. Wherever they passed, the fighting abruptly ceased.

Fusion felt for the machines, sidestepping the sucking pull of the Arclight weapons, but there was only the barest hint of the things within the space occupied by her magic. "Closer than this," she said huskily. "I'll only get one chance." Even then, will I be able to do it? The howling void in her head tried to close in again, and she focused on forcing it back.

"Of course," Ellisif said, only a hint of disgust in her voice as she loped ahead into the room. "You are still a bit... glowy."

"Nothing I can do about that. When the glow is gone you'll know I have nothing left." Distracted by the harsh and variable lighting, Fusion nearly tripped over one of the loading robots, currently lying powerless on the floor. A panicked leap let her hurdle it, but her hind right hoof clipped the edge on the way down and she stumbled sideways, bouncing off a container wall. The impact jarred her wingshoulder and she gasped, a few more strands of mane turning back to a dusky pink. Focus, filly, focus, she thought, jaws clenched, then returned to her steady, collected canter.

Ahead, Ellisif had swerved to the right, down a passageway that led away from the airtanks, and had fallen to her belly behind another of the inactive robots. Frantic claw-waves: a talon pointed at an eye, then down the corridor; three talons held up; a thumb-claw gesturing down the corridor Fusion had been heading. I can see-- Eyes widening, Fusion lowered her head and charged, flashing across the side corridor even as Ellisif opened fire.

She's drawing them in, Fusion thought, then leapt over a bundle that had the strong, nose-twitching odour of burned feathers and charred meat. The distraction proved effective; the pair of airtanks had changed course and were heading this way. If they see me-- Fusion groaned as the pressure from Arclight shifted again, tottering to a halt as she sought to keep her power from it. There was a half-empty patch of storage racking at ground level only a few paces away, and she wriggled past heavy sacks of pellets that smelled vaguely of grass and apples.

The howling roar of the lead airtank's lifter fans grew loud enough to make her ears ring, and Fusion jammed her head in a crack between two stacks of food in an effort to block out some of the noise. Closing her eyes, she looked for the airtanks again, and they were there, right overhead. Dust and smoke whipped through her hiding place, stinging the exposed tip of her muzzle, but she ignored it and finally risked examining the aircraft properly.

Even within Arclight's black haze, the glare of the airtank's stored power was obvious. At the centre of the hull was a deep violet torus which had the familiar taste of fusing deuterium and helium-3, but she ignored it and focused on the cube of tight-packed colours at the rear of the airtank. Dense, complex coils of blue fanned out to various points throughout the hull, tracing the lines of the wiring loom to the bulky packages of laser, ducted fan and -- fortunately -- inactive thaumic defences. Those coils, the superconductors, were fully charged, as the aircraft's reactor was able to keep pace with the power requirements. This is going to be messy.

Fusion ignored all that, even as the hazy black fog closed in from the edges of her shadow sight, and focused on those coils. They sat in the most heavily armoured part of the airtank, even better protected than the crew, but mere physical stuff was no defence against this sort of intrusion. Mind galloping to keep ahead of the crawling darkness, she mapped current pathways within the storage banks, locating all the safety systems that split the horrible amount of stored energy into marginally safer parallel packages.

Oh, Backdraft, if only you knew how useful your lessons on what not to do would be. The thought was a fleeting one, occurring in the fragment of time it took Fusion to set the hooks of her magic throughout the power bank, and brought with it a pang of regret. Am I too close? Fusion hesitated, then pushed away the fear and poured everything she had left into the spell.

At a score of points within the airtank's hull the superconductors abruptly quenched. Giga-amps of current, endlessly circulating without losses, suddenly encountered resistance and gave up a fraction of its power to heat. Safety systems reacted in a pawful of microseconds to shunt the remainder into reserve pathways, only to find that their superconducting switches had all been sabotaged. The temperature, currently down in the vicinity of liquid nitrogen, spiked, passing the volatilisation point of the exotic-element wiring in far less time than it took to blink.

From overhead there was a fantastically bright flash, dazzling even in the darkness amid the food sacks, followed immediately by a hammer-blow as the container she was hiding in, despite its size and weight, was smashed sideways. Fusion reached for the walls around her, pushing outwards with her magic, but there was nothing to push with. The darkness in the shadow world filled her mind, and she was helpless to prevent the storage rack above her head from buckling and dumping tonnes of supplies on her body.

There was an immense weight on Fusion's chest. She breathed shallowly, feeling her barding flex inwards slightly with each motion of her ribs. The dogs really know how to build armour, she thought, struggling to move even slightly. That unknown engineer had done an excellent job; the plates of rigid armour had locked together, forming a protective cage around her body. The air was close and warm, filtering in through some crack in between the woven sacks of food pellets, but there never seemed to be quite enough of it. With the air came an acrid scent, the increasingly familiar odour of burned fur and seared meat.

There were harsh, avian screams and gunfire, all muffled and made strangely distant, and Fusion flattened her ears to try and block out the sounds, but that didn't work either. Not again, I can't do this again! Her heart hammered and a quiet whinny escaped her throat. They are dying out there and there is nothing I can do to help. She struggled again, but the pile above her just settled slightly and breathing became more difficult as whatever collection of cracks that delivered her air was closed off.

===

~~~discontinuity~~~

Arrival, with a flash of light and the sudden slap of air not expecting her presence. Three, four--

There were aircraft everywhere around her, black things lit by the blue-white spears of their plasma jets and the sullen red glare of the incandescent clouds over Naraka, their lasers still focussed on where she had been, rather than where she was. Gravity pushed out the first sheaf of pillaged railgun ammunition, then the second and third, flicking them out in a wide spray towards the closest targets. Lasers, the small ones that seemed to be scattered along the hulls of the aircraft, were firing back in an instant, but her decoys took the first wave of hits, lighting the volume with stroboscopic pulses of green. Automated threat assessment switched targets, the beams reaching for her hypersonic projectiles, but Gravity was too close and half a dozen airtanks disintegrated in flashes of flame and smoke.

--five, six. How accurate is Redshift's timer?

The world turned hot green, even through her closed eyes, and the temperature spiked--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--closer to the local source of the darkness within the shadow world and her own stolen weapon, still falling through free air amid her decoys. One beam, from the distant half of the antimagic weapon pair, was swinging across to meet her, and she dived, ducking under the curdled edge of the effect. For a moment it had her, and all her magics faltered and weakened, the carefully hoarded teleport pattern evaporating like spring frost in the morning sun, then she was through, firing a spray of projectiles at the ungainly aircraft.

Explosions stitched the air between her and the target, the laser antimissile defences of half the fleet combining to knock her projectiles out of the sky. Too weak-- The beam twitched, curving to follow her, its partner from the closest aircraft finally able to swing through the greater arc to catch her.

Nine, ten, elev-- The teleport pattern reformed in her head, and Gravity pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--ten kilolengths from the fleet, wings open and letting her speed bleed away, all magical propulsion and defences down. Gravity hung beneath her wings, head drooping and gasped, inhaling great lungfuls of cold, thin air. Nothing, it didn't work--

Light, far brighter and bluer than the noonday sun, bloomed from a point somewhere in the direction of the dogs’ airfleet, but lower down. How far did it fall before detonation? Was it close enough? Gravity turned her head away, bringing her wings forward to cover her eyes with layers of dark feathers and let the world pull her down. The light dimmed briefly, then brightened again and an unrelenting heat beat against that shield, filling the shelter behind her wings with a stifling closeness and the stinging scent of burning feathers. Am I far enough away?

The light dimmed to bearable levels through Gravity's closed eyelids, even though the heat did not relent, and her addled mind finally put together enough magic to be useful. A force field bloomed about her, arresting most of her terminal descent, but the heat kept coming. More magic, directionless telekinesis that did nothing except use power -- but that was the whole point. A sheen of frost grew on her feathers and ice crystals spread in the sodden dampness of her sweat-soaked flanks.

The chill ran through her, and Gravity opened her eyes. There was a globe of light, the colour of blood, expanding and churning, where she had been. It was rising, flattening and darkening, the edges curling and turning endless loops that revealed streamers and filaments of incandescent gas that vanished as the torus faded from sight. Wreckage fell from the sky, flashing and bursting from internal explosions, surrounded by a scattering of vehicles still under power. These were small things that accelerated wildly before themselves detonating with blue-white flashes, little more than pinpricks at this distance.

Shadow sight confirmed it: the glittering heart of darkness had vanished without trace. Gravity's chest heaved in a single, convulsive sob, then she shakily rebuilt her magic, coming under powered flight once more and curving towards the volcanic glare of Naraka. There, the flying jewels still circled, firing hazy beams of utter blackness into the heart of the facility. How can anything still be alive down there? Back in the real, that core was nothing less than a pit filled with fire, a continuous jet-engine blast that lit the clouds of volatilised rock with the colours of flame.

Strength returning a little, Gravity gritted her teeth and pushed aside the fatigue, building the teleport pattern in her head. Just one more, kill just one more so that Fusion can get herself out. Three of those weapons and two of us... they will never stop us now. If Fusion is still alive, if-- The mare snarled, staring at one of the pair over Naraka and pushed--

--the pattern distorted and started to dissolve, and Gravity aborted the spell, trying to fix the damage. The partner of the one I destroyed... she thought dully, suddenly feeling the sucking, twisting sensation inside her head. It wasn't enough to stop her from using magic, but it made everything that much harder, and she tried a second, then a third, time to jump again. Every time she failed, the arcane pattern was too complex to keep intact, even at this extended range.

"No!" she screamed, "Not this close, I won't--" Power flowed and her speed jumped; the air cracking as she broke the sound barrier. An iron paw closed about her body, telekinesis reinforcing her bones and preventing her head from being snapped backwards as she accelerated ten times faster than a falling stone.

Lights bloomed on the still distant fleet as the bright pinpoints of missile drive plumes fanned out from the aircraft on the perimeter, vanishing as they turned in her direction. Lasers came on, filling her eyes with a green glare, so she closed them. Heat came with the light, but she was too far away and it was a minor thing compared to the thermal rush from the shockwaves building up in front of her muzzle, so she ignored it. The missiles were upon her in the next moment, blue-white quench explosions buffeting her from all sides, and she nearly tumbled until her field grew blades that bit and held the air. Through a moment later, at closing speeds so high that the engagement time was just too short for more than one salvo.

Her personal force fields folded down to ever-narrower cones, turning her into a double-ended needle that ripped the air apart and heated it to incandescence. Ahead, the burning clouds of Naraka expanded, but Gravity ignored them and aimed for one of the flying jewels, the brightest thing in her shadow sight. She let her speed climb and didn't stop, didn't slow, not even when the aircraft turned from a dot to a wall that was impossible to get around.

===

The dark veil disrupting Fusion's magic was whipped away, like she'd walked from a small, plain room and into some vast landscape full of vibrant colour and life. The familiar feeling of strength surged through her and she pushed at her confinement, building a spherical chamber lined with twisted metal and trickling piles of food running from split sacks. Shadow sight came next, overlaying the white-gold glow holding back the walls with the frantically moving wing-bars of gryphons fighting in the complex of alleyways between the containers. More subtle, but still obvious, were the technological colours of stored power from the dog soldiers’ machines.

Both airtanks were down; one completely vanished, the other upside down and inert apart from a few little flickers. There were still plenty of other sources: dogs in armour and several large somethings moving up from the corridors below.

Above...

...a milling mass of ponies, hundreds of them, against a backdrop of solar heat that was getting closer by the second. Korn got them out, she thought, some of the mental weight evaporating, but they don't have long. The luminescent background, with all the implied heat and violence, should have felt threatening, but it was like the embrace of an old friend. Where are you, sister? Fusion probed the distance, hunting for a trace of Gravity, in colour or flavour or mind, but there was nothing there. The worry, always present under her thoughts, was held back. There must be something wrong... she would have come for me, I'm sure of it.

Something of the veil returned, but it was a pale, translucent thing compared to what it had been before, only enough to disrupt her fine control. No teleportation... they can still hold me here, but this cage is no longer strong enough.

Magic punched out, opening a hole through the debris wall, and Fusion jumped out, wings flicking as she came to a hover. Shields of golden light encircled her and she let her wings rest, wholly supported by magic. This close to the ceiling it was hot, redolent with the odour of burning organics; somewhere a fire had taken hold and was pumping black smoke into the already filthy air. She was unnoticed amid the struggles.

Here was a gryphon grappling with a power suit, beak working at the neck joint even as the machine's fighting claw took a carmine bite from his belly.

There was another suit, weapon-arms gone, held down by a gryphon on each limb, while a grey-feathered gryphoness in battered security barding sat on its chest. She held the amputated rotary cannon over her head with both claws and brought it down barrels-first onto the suit's faceplate.

The violence was almost mesmerising in all its varied forms, and Fusion stared for a long moment, before shots started to make sharp explosions against her defences. Lasers would be next, so she folded the light about her body, relying on shadow sight and a very short range clairvoyance spell, focused just outside the nested fields. Eyes closed within the utter black of her defences, she reached outside and twisted, calling a point of Celestia-hot plasma into being.

That attracted a lot more fire. Fusion made a lightning-fast adjustment to her arcane armour, altering the intensity of the antientropic arcana that was keeping the pressurised air between the sculpted field layers close to its liquefaction point. Her clairvoyant point of view remained uninterrupted, unaffected by the passage of fast fragments through its locus and immune to dazzling by laser or her own actinic weapon.

The arc-welder glare of her spell brightened, becoming the dominant source of light in the storage level, and she sent it off towards the exit to the transit tunnels, pumping more energy into the tight knot of magnetic fields and high pressure plasma as she did so. The thing flashed through the gate, ploughing through the squads of dog soldiers still in the tunnel, and touched the glacis plate of the lead airtank coming up from below. Fusion held onto the spell, allowing the magnetic containment to fail asymmetrically.

The front of the airtank exploded, followed a moment later by its supercon power stores, filling the wide tunnel with fire and overlapping shockwaves that threw smashed bodies in all directions, before collapsing the roof. How easy it is when your enemy doesn't have a face, Fusion thought, spawning another point of plasma with a loud crack, before letting it vanish unused. Too many allies without protection; even a close pass might set them on fire. She chewed at her lips, then picked the same spell she'd used on the Institute and the Security Hub.

Fusion pulled in the power she needed, filling up that immaterial reservoir within her mind. Burning worms, eating me from within. She shied away from the memories of the attack on the Security Hub, making sure not to take so much this time. No need at this range... I wonder if I can-- The thaumomagnetic pulse, only using a fraction of her rapidly filling reserve, rippled out, this time as a fuzzy cone rather than a sphere.

The arcane wavefront was an ephemeral gossamer, silken spider's webs at dawn, compared to the glare and hard radiation of her bolt of energetic plasma, but it passed through solid material like it was nothing more than vacuum. Where it passed, the energy colours of the armour suits went chaotic, the hardware reacting as if electrocuted. All gunfire in that area abruptly stopped, leaving a stunned silence from dog and gryphon alike. That didn't last; the gryphons converged on the spastically vibrating suits, working in groups to pry the dogs from their armour.

Fusion turned and repeated the spell, not once but a dozen times, sweeping the room and everything in it with rainbow light. The effect was the same, and she turned away from the gryphons and their grisly work, lifting her head to the milling herd of ponies on the floor above. There will be panic-- She shunted the thought aside and bolted for the other side of the facility.

Here the path overhead was clear of ponies, gryphons or anything she cared about, and distant from the central core that marked the grave of so many foals. Horns and wings; the only parts of us that they value. Ears flicking back, Fusion accelerated, then abruptly curved upwards, striking the ceiling.

Magic, of a similar sort to her anti-armour weapon, came to life, shrouding the outside of her field in a layer of plasma far hotter than that needed to boil tungsten. She sliced through the roof, with its layers of reinforced concrete and ersatz stone, without slowing. The material Fusion pushed through was subjected to pressures and temperatures far beyond its yield strength, and simply got out of the way, blasted explosively fast down the yellow-hot tunnel behind her.

A moment later and she was through into the empty exercise room above, visible only as a burst of appalling light that set every tree in the chamber aflame in the instant before she was gone again and through the next ceiling. The next level was an inferno before she had passed through, ruddily lit by a rain of rocks and lava from above, then she was through again, and into the cauldron of molten, boiling rock at the base of the heliostat's beam.

Compared to the temperatures she now swaddled herself with, this was nothing, and she swam the magma like a bubble rising through water. Now, at the heart of the beam, there was turbulence, as the roiling lava below vaporized and rushed out of the deepening crater. Fusion rode the rocket-engine plume, up until the gasses spread sideways and left her flying in the column of light, blazing like the sun itself.

The enemy was here. Not close, but certainly all about. There was one of those Arclight machines, still trying to suppress her power, with another moving to join it. Here and here and here were aircraft in groups, clusters and singletons, orbiting her like the debris ring orbited the world. Fusion, buoyed up by the sheer amount of power around her, expanded her defences and twisted the air, forming it into invisible geometric shapes that distorted the landscape seen through them.

The cascade of light flowing around her bent, running along thaumically controlled interfaces, and was directed sideways like a titanic searchlight, making the aircraft glint like scattered snowflakes. More lenses and optical structures formed, taking the broad fan of light and collimating it further, directing it towards the closest Arclight squadron. Fusion sat in the middle of the flood, staring out through those same lenses and using them to find her targets.

The beam, a million times brighter than the noonday sun, boiled clouds to nothing as it tracked over them before settling on the aircraft. They flashed like sparks rising off a fire, turning into brief meteoric plumes of excited plasma before vanishing completely. The closest fleet was dealt with in a few breaths, the loss of its half of the Arclight weapon lifting the rest of the haze from Fusion's mind.

Her shadow sight sharpened, picking out a colour that wasn't visible before. A pastel violet, the familiar colour of Gravity's hornlight, was falling from altitude perhaps twenty kilolengths away. Again, Fusion probed the mental space which should have held her sister, but again there was no response--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--magic gently enfolding the bloody and battered shape, protecting it behind fields that would survive any number of physical insults--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--back in the darkness of the eye in the hurricane of solar energy, Fusion nuzzled behind Gravity's ears, tasting sweat and burned fur.

"What...?" the mare said, eyes opening to stare up at Fusion, her muzzle wrinkling in confusion and wonder. "It worked... you survived."

"All thanks to you," Fusion said softly. "I need to make us safe -- can you help me find the rest of the heliostats before they shut this one down?" Fusion opened a sharing, showing Gravity her view of the sky and its myriad of drifting points.

The other mare latched onto the scene, adding her own peculiar sense of everything in orbit. "I tried to reach the heliostat, but it was too far... I'd used too much strength trying to kill those antimagic weapons. Did... did anypony else get out?"

"All of them, hundreds and hundreds of ponies and gryphons, all protected in the lower levels. The gryphons kept Security at bay while I was incapacitated." Fusion looked into Gravity's eyes and smiled fondly, while another part of her mind swept the beam of focused sunlight across the heavens, letting it play over every artificial object that she and Gravity could identify. Pity Luna is still below the horizon... "We have an army now, one that knows how to fight."

Outside that pocket of comfortable darkness the river of light flowed on, making short-lived fireworks in the sky.

20 - Sealing off the Sky

Author's Note

A crude dramatis personæ can be found here.
Preread by: turol and KMCA.
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and Caliaponia (Just Passing Through).

20 - Sealing off the Sky

Orgon watched, stone-faced, as Arclight Five came on and the tense scene in Naraka's control room dissolved into screams and chaos. The servitor's mane and tail had retained something of their strange mobility and colouration, despite the thaumic suppressor's effects. This is not going to end well, he thought, brow wrinkling.

At his side, Merlon paused in her ministrations, the itch of the magic she was using to heal his burns fading to a gentle tingle. "That's not supposed to be possible," she said, a note of wonder in her voice.

"The other servitor showed the same ability," Orgon said absently, wincing as the feed from Rthar went dead, the camera's final image that of a gryphon's talons. Battle management systems started to flag up attacks on the aerial forces, while Arclight Six tried unsuccessfully to lock onto Gravity Resonance. More units were on the way, but it would be kiloseconds before they were in range, such was the distance to their border racetrack paths.

"Yes, Master... but that was a trace of telekinesis, while this... If we assume that the changes to her mane act as a marker for her enhanced thaumic abilities..."

The Agent on STAR-5 has been successful, this much is obvious. Orgon watched the satellite feed as the heliostat's beam turned Naraka into a small but highly active volcano. This one still thinks Faungo made a mistake in not just bombing the place. "There is no evidence that the pony has joined its kin in attacking Lacunae military. Based on the close ties the pair seem to have, it is unlikely that it is able to esca--"

An attack carrier and some escorts vanished from his tactical display, a tiny number compared to the whole, but prompting a cascading change to the military org chart as chains of command were re-established. The holes, only briefly highlighted, went all the way to the top. Faungo is dead, Orgon thought, and many of the command staff with him. He blinked at the display as if to change what it said. Perhaps putting the Strategist on a flying command station wasn't the best of ideas when facing an enemy with this much mobility.

A priority call interrupted his musings, shunting the strategic overview to an unreadable bar down one side of the wall screen. On it were a collection of worried faces: the Synod core group. All looked like they had been roused from sleep, and many had the look of a Person who really wished this was a nightmare and that they were still in bed.

Orgon's eyes widened slightly before he made a conscious effort to maintain a blank, attentive expression. This one has a horrible feeling that--

"The Sector Chief is promoted to Strategist," said a harried-looking Councillor Indutu, sitting at what must have been his kitchen table, "everything now depends on Orgon's ability to take command and resolve this situation in a way that causes the least additional damage. The new Strategist is to ask for whatever he needs to solve this crisis."

Orgon blinked and straightened slightly. In other words, Orgon is to lay as much of the blame as possible on those who are safely dead. The Synod has practically guaranteed that Orgon will be trawled by the Court... although Indutu will be next on the table. Still, that was the likely outcome anyway, and at least now Orgon has the influence to do something about it. "This one has little experience of large-scale conflict." The words 'large-scale' provoked a reaction from the assembled Councillors, sort of a sigh that rippled from one to the other. "Military forces are better commanded by someone with the skills for it."

"Orgon will have support for battle management. It is his familiarity with the servitor situation that is of greater use. These ones have about ten kiloseconds until the first audit teams arrive... and Luna will be above the horizon by then. It would be much less painful if--" Indutu gasped raising a shaky paw to point at something Orgon couldn't see. With a swipe he switched back to the strategic summary and read the terse machine-generated messages.

Nuclear detonation detected near Naraka. For an instant, Orgon relaxed, slumping a little within Merlon's telekinetic field. This one knows it's a bad day when that is a relief! Ah, but... The dread, carefully concealed, returned, and he felt the room sway. They used the weapon on Arclight instead... Maker, it's going to get out! he thought, every muscle suddenly tense. "Shut down the heliostat!" he snapped, switching back to the group of councillors.

Indutu just gaped back at him, face blank. "But it's the only thing stopping--"

"That creature specialises in energy manipulation, idiot!" Orgon dropped the connection to turn to the Agent in charge of his improvised command post. "You heard Orgon -- now, or these ones will lose everything!"

The Agent, far more used to taking orders than the group of politicians, hurriedly worked her console, then swore. "Arclight Six beta destruction confirmed. Primary uplink was through Six's battlegroup; trying for an alternate route to the heliostat. Arclight Five is maintaining lock on the Naraka target." She worked frantically for a few seconds, fighting through the suddenly scrambled command and control links. "Arclight Six alpha still has partial suppression of Gravity Resonance; the servitor is not attempting to tele--" The Agent breathed in sharply. "Arclight Five beta has been destroyed. Still no uplink; beta blackout and EMP from the nuclear detonation has disabled all the local transmitters. This one has ordered other assets to acquire a stable data path, but it will take time."

Too much security in the covert connection, Orgon thought. Helpless to act, he stared at the screen as the seconds ticked by. Other units were scrambling from the closest bases, running engines at emergency power to get to Naraka. Even as he watched, one of the icons turned crimson as its drive failed catastrophically. The heliostat shone on, its beam filling the clouds with ash and lava. How deep has that gone? "Get this one an estimate of the penetration rate of that beam," he said, struggling to retain something of his normal calm.

The wall display flickered as the orbital feed of Naraka reoccupied the screen. The volcano had disappeared behind a point of light so bright that it overwhelmed the anti-flash filters on the satellite. The glare bloomed further as a beam of light so bright it looked solid flicked out and around, making the clouds vanish and causing sparks to flash and fade where there once had been dense knots of aircraft. A moment later the beam seemed to shorten and turn upwards; the glare at the core of Naraka became intolerable in the brief instant before a 'connection lost' symbol flashed across the screen.

More screens switched to their default views as orbital data feeds failed in a wide swath. Others, those dealing with the Naraka task force, were already a lurid red from the destruction of every single aircraft Lacunae had fielded. In the centre of the main display a timer appeared, counting down from one hundred, the words 'deadpaw activated' flashing in time with the seconds. The silence in the improvised command centre was suddenly filled with a panicked babble.

"Shut that thing off," he growled, cutting across the dozens of conversations and waving a paw at the large countdown timer. "Target Naraka and the heliostat. This one wants them turned to ash." It will be too late, but Orgon has to try.

===

Geodetic was prodded awake by the insistent tickle of his comms disk, and was up on his hooves and trotting halfway down the corridor before the orders penetrated his sleep-dulled mind. A prickle of pain washed over his chest, like he was forcing a path through a dense mat of bramble, and an abrupt surge of adrenalin brought him fully alert. More ponies fell in behind him, emerging from the other herd chambers in the depths of the launch site's concrete carapace.

"Any clue what it is?" asked Planar, a slender mare who'd shared his duty cycle for most of the two gigaseconds he'd been in the Masters’ service; she was his main pattern crafter. "Wrong time of day for a resupply launch, and I'm sure we've nothing in polar orbit that would need..."

Geodetic shrugged. "Seems likely it's military, but..." His ears went back and he swallowed. "The Masters are the paws of the Maker," he muttered.

"Yes," Planar said, with a shaky nod. "Yes. I just hope it's another drill."

The pair, each at the head of a string of ponies, reached the end of the corridor and split apart, turning left and right towards openings into empty air. Geodetic glanced backwards, nodding at his pattern-forming lead team -- the three ponies trotting immediately behind him -- then reached the drop-off and dove down the wide shaft beyond.

Opposite, a dozen lengths away, Planar was doing the same, followed by the other half of the propulsion herd. They fanned out as they fell with mantled wings, each dropping with practiced skill into one of the fifty alcoves that lined the otherwise smooth-walled shaft. Geodetic's nook was as familiar as his home corral -- not so much for what it contained, which was little except a white, recessed floor and a combined food and water dispenser by his head, but for the view and scent of his fellow ponies. They came and went, but more slowly than in many other parts of the Masters’ service. The work was hard, but if a pony was careful the only real risk was of a thaumic excursion; as that would ruin a very expensive launch vehicle, the Masters made sure to over-engineer their requirements.

A siren whooped and Geodetic dropped to his belly, little flickers of magic pulling the padded straps from their automatic reels and over his body in a web that was snug enough to make any movement difficult. More magic lifted the headrest, and he rested his muzzle and neck in the soft groove down the centre of the curving safety support.

All servitors will prepare for launch procedure.

The familiar calm, synthetic voice spoke the same words it always did, from somewhere in the middle of his head. He replied with a directed 'ready', then closed his eyes, feeling for the rest of the launch herd.

There was Planar, a familiar taste in the rapidly forming sharing, and he copied her, bringing all his ponies into the fold. There was a sense of such closeness with so many, that he felt his eyes fill with tears. Oh my Masters, I will never get tired of this. Thank you so very much.

The machinery at the bottom of the shaft, no more than a dozen lengths under his muzzle, delivered the first launch vehicle. A slender thing, far smaller than the normal payload, something he'd only seen during the regular practice runs. Could still just be a drill, he thought, then risked a look downwards. Below the first was a chain of others, extending away into the dark, automated spaces below the shaft. He swallowed, taking a tentative hold of the projectile.

His shadow sight showed no thaumic systems, like might have been within a satellite or supply capsule for an orbital station, only a single point of brilliance from something that wasn't magic, but physics. This is not a dummy round! he thought, a little whimper escaping his throat. Geodetic hesitated for a moment, scarcely more than a breath, then winced at the prickle of immaterial claws closing around his throat. Gritting his teeth, he called up the seed of the drive pattern, letting the rest of the herd slot into their places.

The perimeter of the shaft lit up with rings of light as the tiers of ponies poured their strength into the pattern. Magic, the slightly off-white colour of so much blended power, swirled and coalesced up the core, a long tube of influence that stretched all the way to the surface, many lengths above. Strings of orbital state vectors flowed into Geodetic's mind, and he subtly altered the shape of the magic, twisting the exit path to manipulate the trajectory and fulfil the launch requirements. His body felt light, then lifted off the floor, only held in place by the safety straps, as the magic took hold of local space-time.

Something close, on the ground, and something in orbit, far enough away that they want all the power we have. Dozens of orbital vehicles, but only two trajectories... perhaps there won't be others? he thought fleetingly, then all his effort went towards the combined spell. Together with fifty other ponies, he pushed.

===

There was still shouting and pleading coming from the other side of the locked hatch to the control room, but Laika ignored it.

She watched, open-mouthed, as the heliostat's beam was redirected. Clouds vanished and little lights twinkled in the atmosphere below as the light played across them. Paws unfroze and she jammed her other leg into the flimsy emergency suit, running a claw along the belly strip to seal the opening. She looked down at the controls, but they were still dead. Still on full remote lockout of the mirror, she thought. "Turn it off, you idiots!" One paw hooked around a grab loop, she fitted the folding helmet to the collar ring -- the only other part of the suit that was actually rigid -- and closed the faceplate.

"If this one can get back to the maintenance bay," she muttered. Yeah, and through that door that Laika so helpfully fused. A flick of a valve started the simple demand regulator, and she was breathing from the air stored in conformal bladders down her back. That done, she reattached her comms bracer and accessed the only part of the heliostat's controls that were still accessible -- atmospherics. Another flick activated her escape program, and the environmental systems switched from 20/80 oxy/nitrogen to the 5/95 of their 'firefighting' mode, only without the alarms that should have sounded at the same time. "Probably kinder than what awaits this one, if the Court catches up with her," Laika muttered. The gentle background hum of the life-support system didn't change, but the breeze from the vent became noticeably stronger.

The sounds from outside the control room quieted, and Laika opened the hatch. Concealed weapon in paw, she jumped past the unconscious people floating in the short corridor beyond and towards the docking cupola with its pair of combination maintenance-and-escape boats. Twenty seconds later she had one of them undocked and drifting towards the maintenance bay and the primary mirror tensioning nexus. Laika flipped the boat-shaped craft's attitude, making it settle belly-first and in the correct orientation to use the waldo arms with their laser cutters, when the outside world changed to a brilliant, blinding white.

"Warning, re-entry heat shield is ablating."

Half blinded, despite the combined shielding of her own faceplate and the little spaceship's cockpit, Laika held one paw over her eyes and fumbled under the instrument panel, pulling sharply on a recessed handle, then twisting it to the right. Rocket motors fired, not the silent, gentle pressure of the in-orbit plasma drive, but the full-throated dragon-roar of the emergency solids. Acceleration threw her back along the length of the boat to slam against the rear hatch; Laika caught the side of her head against one of the emergency lockers and lay there stunned as the light outside bloomed and finally faded.

"Not a nuke, otherwise this one would be dead," she muttered, moving back to the cockpit. The boat was no longer under hard acceleration, but was rotating under the influence of its momentum wheels. The planet, appearing about the size of a spread paw at arm's length, drifted across the windows, settling when it was overhead. Fastening the seat's restraints, Laika cast an experienced eye over the control board, freezing when she saw the error message repeated across the display. "This one hoped she had misheard..." she said softly. Amid all the minor errors -- sensors burned out, hairline cracks in the non-critical parts of the hull, and so on -- was the warning that the heat shield had lost almost half of its mass.

Is that enough to get down? Laika swore loudly, the shout resonating strangely inside her pressure suit. "Still, there's no evidence as to what happened on STAR-5..." She looked out of the cockpit; the big reflector array was nothing more than an expanding cloud of sunlit vapour, packed full of glittering points. Uneasy, she noticed many other similarly dispersing patches of haze, at all points around the sky. Laika triggered an emergency ping on the radar/comms array, ears drooping at the small number of responses, all from uncrewed stations.

The ground it is, then. She swallowed, allowing the simple autopilot to plot a descent trajectory. The plasma motor fired in its high-thrust, low-efficiency mode, emptying its reaction mass tanks distressingly quickly. Laika stared up at the disk of the world, using the one surviving camera to magnify the image. It was already starting to rotate as she left geosynchronous altitude; Lacunae was still visible, but all the bright circles of the other heliostats had vanished. In the reflected light of the debris ring, she could make out a dirty smudge that marked the position of her target.

A perfect circle of pinpoints, lightning-bright, abruptly bloomed at the same location, the electric colour rapidly fading to little globes of yellow then orange as the fireballs rose and cooled. All for nothing, she thought, slumping against the restraints, they nuked the target anyway. What in the Maker's name is going on down there? For the next kilosecond she searched for any sign of other detonations, but there were no others.

"That's something, this one suppose--" There was a flash and an ear-splitting crack from the passenger compartment behind her, followed by a thin, high-pitched whistle. Laika turned, then flinched as another flash-crack scribed a laser-straight line of light across the cabin. The hull breach alarm was sounding and the air turned hazy as the pressure dropped. Debris cloud... so many things were destroyed, and all those fragments will go on striking each other and forming more particles. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. It will be gigaseconds before anything can survive in orbit... this one's only chance is to get down before the particle cascade takes hold.

The next fragment to strike the boat was a main spar from one of the mid-altitude network of comms relays. It impacted at a closing speed of over ten kilolengths a second and carried with it the same energy as a hundred and twenty kilos of high explosive.

===

"One last target" Fusion murmured, her muzzle buried in the singed fur of Gravity's neck. She resisted the urge to yawn; she was feeling drained and the little protected volume they occupied was getting warm and a little stale, a result of inevitable thermal leakage and a lack of gas transfer. Her sister made a little disappointed noise, pangs of regret filtering back through the sharing. I can't keep this up forever, you know... and there is bound to be another response from the dogs, something more conventional. Inside the armour shell, her fur was sodden with sweat that alternated between steamy heat and icy cold as the magic trying to drain away the excess energy fluctuated with her limited concentration. More to the point, if I pass out, neither of us will be doing much in the future. Go to the mountains and help play catch... I'll finish up here. We were very lucky... I could have killed you with that beam. Fusion shivered, pushing away the idea.

But you didn't. I'm never going to leave you. Gravity sighed and moved, pushing away from Fusion, who obligingly extended the protected zone. Apart from now. Gravity smiled, then there was a flash and she was gone. Fusion twisted the light a little more, folding the beam back on itself until it dissolved into disparate flickers and died.

Stage by stage, Fusion allowed her magic to fade, letting in the outside air once more. She sneezed at the tang of combustion products and acrid gases hanging in the air, a turbulent haze that softened everything out to the horizon. A long way below were the remains of Naraka, little more than a lake filled with liquid rock that was slowly hardening to a glassy sheen. The wide expanse of fields around the crater were unrecognizable, covered with lava bombs and drifts of ash, while the distant ring of woodland, once filled with ponies doing their duty to their Masters, was ablaze.

Above, the sky was clear and dark, without the dense and ordered shoals of moving lights. These had been replaced by clouds of twinkling points, flashing like a field of fireflies on a midsummer's evening. Everything was in chaotic motion, and little puffs of glowing vapour slowly expanded or grew twisting tendrils in the high-altitude magnetic fields. Fusion stared for a moment, ears drooping. How many of those lights held people who knew nothing about this fight? No ponies in orbit, at least as far as I know... or were there? Squeezing her eye shut, she pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--appearing in the high-ceilinged space above a throng of ponies. What are we going to do with you all? she thought, wincing at the sudden panicked whinnies and little rushed canters as they flowed away from her. Mares, so many mares. Where are all the stallions? Less than one in ten of those below her were male. One knot of ponies didn't move like the others, and she felt the first tentative touches of unfriendly magic as they lit their horns. At the centre of the group was Korn.

The touch grew to an effort to hold her away, but the attempt was clumsy and made by ponies obviously out of practice. She walked forward, shunting aside their power while keeping her expression relaxed and attentive. "The immediate danger has passed, Academician Korn," she said, catching his eye, "but we cannot stay here for long. Perhaps you could ask your bodyguard to let me approach...?" He stared back at her, his own ears flat back, a look of fear on his face. I shouldn't have sent him in there alone... what has he told them?

The dog slumped, leaning heavily against the rump of one of the ponies. "Yes," he said, eyes downcast, "this servitor is Fusion Pulse TC4668; she is here to take all these ponies somewhere safe... and Korn too, this one supposes." The last few words were muttered, his mouth barely moving.

"Yes, Master... I think it would be wise to relocate as quickly as possible. Our enemy will not rest, even after the failure of their plan." Fusion lifted her head, scanning the herd. She was the centre of attention, at the focus of a thousand pairs of eyes and many whispered conversations. The looks were not hostile, but wondrous, and she could feel the cautious magical inspections from the ponies closest to her. How many of these have been in here all their lives? Her ears folded back for a second at the thought, and those within a body-length flinched away.

"Everypony," she shouted, jumping into the air to hover above the heads of the herd, "the time has come for you all to leave this place and go somewhere better." She built the teleport pattern, then pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--reappearing on the other side of the chamber. Under her arrival point there were more shrieks and panicked canters, a mass flow of bodies away, but that immediately turned to wonder. "I don't have much time to explain your situation, but to stay here will mean certain death." The whispered conversations became shouts, filling the room with chaotic, unintelligible sound as Fusion flew back to Korn.

The closest pony, one of the group that had sheltered Korn, pawed at the ground with one hoof. "Leave? We can't leave. Our orders are to stay here -- this is our home; we are here to play our part in the Masters’ plans." His eyes were wild, and he was practically dancing on the spot in agitation. "Academician? Is this true?" he said, abruptly wheeling on Korn.

Korn remained silent, and something twisted inside Fusion's gut. "Master," she said, practically hissing the word, "if you stay here you will die, along with all these ponies." Her head lowered and she placed her muzzle next to his flattened ear. "You will tell them to follow my orders, or I will leave you to whatever Security has planned for this place next." He flinched away from her touch, paws coming up to ward her away.

Fusion stepped back as the mood of the ponies around her changed. Ears had folded back and more than one horn glowed with the hazy colours of undirected magic. What is he thinking? That he may as well be dead -- or that all of these ponies should die so they can't join us? Time, it always comes down to time! She stomped a hind hoof and stood bolt-upright with flared wings, flinging a pulse of plasma high into the air, where it exploded with a crack against the ceiling. "How many of you know what the outside of Naraka looks like?" she demanded, removing the shackles from her own power and using it to boost the volume of her voice and making it echo from the far wall. "I can tell you that it has changed!"

An image, bright and vibrant, spread over part of the high wall behind her: a view of Naraka from altitude, burned and scorched ground devoid of anything but drifts of ash and burning trees. At the very centre of the new wasteland was a sullen red eye; a still-cooling lake of molten rock. "This is what is directly above your heads... this is where all the smoke was coming from. Your home is now a death-trap."

Korn stared up at the glowing picture, eyes roving from one side to another before settling on Fusion. "What did this?" he said faintly, but that slight utterance was enough to render everypony around him mute and attentive.

"Heliostat. Now do you see? Wasn't the nuclear weapon enough of a clue as to the nature of their desire? I tried to negotiate, and this is what they did!" Fusion felt herself grow warm, and the ponies around her blinked in the sudden brightness, fresh shadows stretching out like the spokes of a wheel. "Hundreds of gryphons are dead in the tunnels, all to hold back the force they sent to block any escape through the depths."

Taking a step back and turning his head away, Korn held up one paw. "Please, the pony must calm down. This one will do as she suggests," he said, then relaxed slightly as the light faded. "What does Fusion suggest?"

"I will teleport everypony away. Tell them to lie down and hold their wings in. There will be a sudden shift in velocity, and they must not try to fly until they are slow enough." Korn nodded and opened his mouth to relay the instructions, but the closest ponies had already seen his movement and were passing the orders back to their fellows even as they fell to their bellies.

Gravity, Fusion thought, finding her sister and opening a sharing, I have many ponies for you. Most can fly, but--

"Will we be able to see our foals?"

The question came from a skewbald mare with a shaved belly, standing a few paces away, and contained a level of hope and dread that made Fusion feel abruptly ill. It wasn't directed at her, but at Korn. Of course; who else? There was a small head poking out from under her wing; the foal was very young, perhaps only a day or two old. Korn didn't answer, and just stared at the mare in confusion. "Of course you will; no one will take your foal away," Fusion said.

She shook her head. "Not this one, the others. From before. Master?" Her gaze went back to Korn.

The dog looked at her and Fusion tried to keep her expression calm, but something must have leaked out, because he flinched. "I..." Fusion's mind went blank, and she glanced out over the herd. How many mares? How often have they foaled? "I'm not sure," she said weakly. "Perhaps." That seemed to satisfy the pony, and she closed her eyes, folding her wings tightly around her gangly foal. Gravity, there are foals. Be ready. An image of high mountains around a deep valley, filled with the pastel rainbow of ponies on the wing. More were scattered about the valley floor and steep sides.

"I will send you through in batches," Fusion called out. "It will not hurt, but you will appear high in the air and moving quite fast. There are ponies at the other end ready to help you." Not waiting for a reply, she built the spell, selecting the nearest hundred ponies and lifting them a little off the ground, then pushed.

===

Random absently ran one denuded wing along the flank of Shock Diamond, feeling the little trembles run through the blue colt's flanks. Like the others, he was transfixed by what Fusion was doing, and what she looked like. What has she done to herself? The waves of colour running down the other mare's mane and tail seemed to vary a little in hue and intensity as she spoke to the skewbald pony next to her. The motion made her feel queasy, and she deliberately averted her eyes. She doesn't seem to be mad, like the Master said.

The taste of Fusion's magic was not quite right; it was certainly her, but there was something more there. She radiated strength like heat radiated from an open fire. What was she doing above us a few seconds ago? I think it was her, but how could it have been? The vast sweep of magical fields had lit the sky, filling the shadow universe with sculpted geometric shapes, at the core of which was a single point of light, too bright and distant to get any detail. Random shivered, then smiled down at Shock, who'd drawn a little closer and was looking up at her in worry.

"Did Fusion do all that magic? I could feel..." He trailed off, eyes and ears focused on the white mare. "But how? It was so strong!"

Random nodded and pawed the ground gently with a forehoof. "I think it was," she said softly. Stronger than you know, Shock. To be felt down here, at this distance... If that's true, how am I going to help the Master? There's nothing I can do to match that. Fusion called something out, then the familiar tingle of active magic swept over her. A whole section of the herd, fifty or a hundred ponies, was surrounded by a golden nimbus as they were lifted into the air. Fusion's expression didn't change and Random felt cold inside. By the Maker, it was just her! That's got to be fifty tonnes, without really trying. More magic, this time complex and alien in design, flicked out, and all the floating ponies vanished.

The herd had been expecting it, but still everypony around her flinched. Random dropped into shadow sight, hunting for any sign that the ponies had just been hidden, but there was only a fast-fading trace of power, then nothing. Fusion, though...

A sculpture made of ice, lit from within by a flare of white-gold radiance, like the pitiless glare of the noonday sun. The intensity of the light dwarfed everypony around her, and was almost like a tangible pressure beating against Random's mind. Are you even a pony anymore? Fusion made the next batch of ponies disappear, then the next; Random tried to follow along with the spell, but it was alien to the normal modular spell pattern design, all fractal complexity and unexpected self-referential loops of arcane power -- to the point where it was a wonder a pony could manage the thing at all. I've got to stop this; my Master is relying on me! Little prickles of pain started to tread up her spine, the gentle precursor to the gnawing mouths she'd fallen victim to during testing.

Unseen amid the crush of bodies was a Master, visible now the herd had been thinned. He stood at Fusion's side, and Random trembled as his gaze swept over her. Help me, Master! Her ears went back, but he didn't pause, didn't step forwards to take charge of the situation. Instead, there was nothing more than the look of a rabbit caught in a trap, the look of one desperate for some way to escape. Fusion stepped to one side, placing herself in the centre of an arc of ponies; when the Master didn't follow, subtle jabs of magic prodded him into motion.

Fusion swept her head from left to right, saying something that had the feel of a phrase she'd used many times before, and everypony around her dropped to their bellies and folded their wings tightly. Random just stood there, knees trembling, unable to avert her gaze from Fusion's alabaster white face and its single, magenta eye. Flickers of light, like the distant flames of burning arcologies, were in those depths. That's what she is! She will be the death of all of us! Breath coming in fast little pants, Random opened her mouth to say something, anything, that would stop this madness. I could denounce her right here... I have orders from the Sector Chief himself. She can't stop all these ponies, can she? If we work together-- The mouths along her spine opened wide and their fangs sank deep into her flesh. But what can I do? The spell the Sector Chief's servitor had shown her glittered in her mind, begging to be used, but she resisted. Not now, it will do no good here.

"I said, please lie down, it will be safer for you when--" The distance vanished from that eye, replaced with pain and a glistening welling-up of tears. "Random?" The voice, so firm and insistent a moment before, became hoarse and near-unintelligible.

Something sharp jabbed her in the flank, something real and not the more rarefied pains of the Maker's Punishment, and she jerked, muscles screaming with the tension of being held rigid so long, stumbling forwards into Fusion. The other mare swept her wings forward in an instant, wrapping them around her body. "Red said he'd seen you, but I didn't dare hope that it was true."

Random tried to pull away, but her traitorous muscles refused to respond, and her neck grew damp with Fusion's tears. "You are the only one who came to see me," she said, voice trembling. If she trusts me, I can... She swallowed, her own vision going hazy as the Punishment left her. The tears flowed in earnest, and she slumped into Fusion's embrace, trying to hide under those great, white wings.

Then that is what I have to do.

===

~~~discontinuity~~~

Fusion, holding Korn in her magic, appeared in the smoky, scream-filled darkness, homing in on Redshift's hornlight. Beneath her hooves was a cleared space filled with wounded gryphons. The uninjured, or merely walking wounded, moved among them, working with the scattered contents of a dozen emergency kits. Around that was a perimeter comprised of more gryphons, ones who looked larger than average, claws and beaks facing outward so they formed a ring about the injured. As she watched, a pair of the inner group, individuals so badly burned that it was hard to tell their species, let alone gender, vanished in pulses of crimson light.

The smell of burned feathers and scorched flesh was strong, and she swallowed heavily, trying not to flee. This is the result... this is what awaits us all if I continue. Fusion bowed her head and let herself fall to the ground. But what choice was there? Everyone's lives were forfeit before I even set hoof in this place.

"I used the time to collect all the wounded," Redshift said as she landed at his side, not looking up as he lifted the next pair, "and shifted Rthar and his gryphon." He gestured to one side, at a pair of bound shapes, only just visible between their guards. "We never had an accurate count, so only the Maker knows how many are dead under the rubble."

"Good. I won't leave anyp-- anybody alive behind." Fusion picked a sector of the triage site, lifting all of the gryphons off the ground. Gravity, we're sending all the wounded gryphons first. Catch them carefully.

--said, get out of the sky. If you want to help, start by organizing yourselves! The returning thought was loud enough to make Fusion blink. Sorry, sister, we are just clearing the arrival zone of all the ponies you sent through. Give me a count of ten before you start. There was a pause, then Gravity's thoughts came again, but more hesitantly. There's something new in the sky... after you cleared out all their satellites, it became easier to feel what was left. I... I think they might be using the ground launchers to fire at you. It feels like the place I was going to work at.

Understood; I won't delay. Keep me updated when you are sure. Fusion nodded unconsciously, then flicked her ears forward as Ellisif cantered up. "Yes, sersjant?" she said, forming the teleport pattern and pushing the gryphons away.

"Losses were about three hundred, ma'am," the gryphoness said in a clipped tone, "but the dogs’ weapons are so lethal against unarmoured troops that I'm amazed we got away so lightly."

Ma'am? "Lightly," Fusion echoed, her legs trembling slightly. "I suppose the survivors will not want to come with us now."

Ellisif looked at her with an open beak, then gave a harsh caw of laughter. "Are you kidding? This was a victory. Right now I could lead them in a charge on Arcology One and the Synod's bunker complex!"

Fusion blinked at the gryphoness, then shook her head. "I see," she said softly. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. "I have destroyed most of the dogs’ orbital assets to slow any response, and nothing remains of the fleets that were attacking us. I want to send your people to our hiding place in the mountains... can you control them?"

"You did what!?" Ellisif shook violently all over, then straightened, as if she was a pony making a report to a Master. "You want me to take command of them?" There was a gleam in her eyes as she said the words, and Fusion felt a little cold inside.

"Yes. Can you?"

Ellisif waved a claw at the circle of guards. "I can. There will be some dissent, but most of these are untrained. I can handle them."

"Pick a security group to go through first; I want no accidental violence against my people. I will not interfere." Unless I have to. "You have until I've sent through the wounded. Keep this one safe." She passed a terrified-looking Korn to the gryphoness, who nodded sharply and sprang away, shouting out orders. Fusion stared after her, then picked up the next batch and pushed. At her side, Redshift was starting to get twitchy, half starting to speak before remaining silent. Fusion closed her eyes and sent another two batches of gryphons to the mountains, but left Rthar and Olvir behind. They had run out of wounded and started on Ellisif's trusted security teams; the teleport batches grew bigger as those she sent were able to manage their own flight on arrival. "Redshift, you go through. I'm sure Shock Diamond would like to see a familiar face."

"No, I want to--"

"You are a bad liar, Red." Fusion snorted and gave him a nudge with one wing. "Go and see your colt." With a grateful, and slightly guilty, look, he vanished with a thump and a flash of red light. And it's not like you will make much difference. She exercised her strength and picked up another group of gryphons, larger this time, feeling the tightness of their muscles through the field as they tried not to show fear. Perhaps they have a right to be afraid. Shadow sight counted the ones who remained; by this point there were none outside the circle of cleared floor.

Fusion sent the last of the gryphons away, then picked up Rthar, Korn and Olvir. "Gravity says something is coming, some projectile launched from one of Lacunae's ground-based mass drivers. I suspect they have decided to try more nuclear weapons."

"This one expects so," Rthar said, glancing at Korn, who was looking fearfully at the ceiling. "Rthar won't help the pony."

"Perhaps... perhaps not," Fusion muttered. And where is Salrath? Hopefully dead and vaporised by now. "I can't send you to the others, but I can't let you go, either," she said, staring hard at Rthar. Things are going to be bad enough when I get back without turning up with two Masters as prisoners. What will everypony do when they discover we lied to them?

She turned a slow circle amid the wreckage, then lifted her head to stare through the ceiling and into what remained of the constellation of pastel lights at the core of Naraka. One last thing to do.

===

A flare of orange light, followed by a meaty sound and an outraged squawk.

There was a roar of anger, immediately silenced by answering cries and the sounds of a scuffle. Ellisif sighed and turned back to Svartr. "What was that again?" Out of the corner of one eye she watched a pair of her newly-minted korporals enthusiastically restraining another of the Naraka gryphons. The pony, an orange stallion who'd been helping with basic medical treatment, stepped nervously forwards again, no doubt saying something in those soft voices that even the males seemed to have.

"I said, what makes you think working with these ponies is a good idea? It's obvious they don't need us." Svartr looked upwards, vaguely waving one set of talons. "I mean, look at what just one of them did."

The night sky, currently turning pale as dawn approached, was an alien thing. Gone were the familiar bright points of the low-orbit arrays, the heliostats and the satellite constellations. In their place were a multitude of twinkling points and the streaks of hundreds of meteoroids. "This is true, but that pony is... different. Most are far weaker and vulnerable to Arclight. Without magic, they are helpless." She held up a set of talons and closed them into a needle-pointed cage. "We are not. All the military equipment is designed with Arclight in mind; the dogs don't make weapons for ponies."

"Which we don't have," Svartr said, but nodded slowly. "So what now?"

"This rabble is going to be a pain in the wingroots, but they do have the warrior mindset." Another squabble had broken out among the gryphons waiting to be seen by the medic, and the korporals set to work breaking it up; this time the pony only flinched and his magic didn't stop. "They'll soon figure out that the only thing a warrior does is die alone. I need you and the rest of the flysoldat to start a training cadre. This lot only needs to put on enough of a show to convince one of the regiments to rebel, then we'll have all the soldiers we need."

"A fine plan, but we're going to get nuked as soon as the dogs can rebuild their surveillance network."

"Perhaps, but the pony has trashed everything in orbit, and not just Lacunae's assets, if I can believe her." Ellisif grinned savagely. "The surveillance kit they'll need to find us will take time to get in position, and I'll bet one of these ponies can hide us from the sky. I think they'll have to go atmospheric, and the world is a big place."

Ellisif paused, her smile fading. "This is our chance. You were wrong, I think. Fusion isn't weak, but she is horribly naive. If we can partner with these ponies, they can break the dogs’ hold on both our species... then we can drive this war through to its logical conclusion. She doesn't know it yet, but we're going to exterminate the dogs down to the youngest pup."

"I don't think she'll go for that. No matter what you think, I still say she's too soft."

"Perhaps." Ellisif shrugged, a sudden mantling of her wings. "That's why I plan to talk to Gravity first."

===

~~~discontinuity~~~

--Fusion appeared in the deep valley, surrounded by the cubical cases of her final burden. This final jump was short, just long enough to take her from their original shelter, where she'd imprisoned Korn, Rthar and Olvir behind a large boulder. Most of the ponies were on the ground below, scattered through the trees or clustered on the stony banks of the fast-flowing river at the bottom of the valley. Gryphons occupied one whole section: the delineation between their subdued greys, reds and browns, and the pastel riot of the ponies, was sudden, marked by an empty patch of ground.

Ponies she recognised were moving among the new arrivals, little flashes of magic visible to her shadow sight as they were stripped of the Blessing. Those that had already been checked were moved underground, through one of the hidden entrances Scalar had built. No fights, no panic... can they not know? Amid the herds she saw Gravity, surrounded by a crowd of awe-struck foals and their dams.

Others had seen her arrive; a little group of ponies had gathered by one of the entrances. Trocar and Spiral were huddled together with Random, and were completely uninterested in anything else. Next to them were Metal Matrix, Doppler, Redshift and Helium Flash. My sire! Fusion fixed her gaze on the larger male, eye roving over his turquoise coat. He was uninjured but tense, his weight shifting from hoof to hoof and ears alternating from flat back to pricked forwards. Other ponies were gathering behind him; most of the rest of her home corral.

Fusion landed in a puff of dust and scattered leaves, gently placing the stack of cubes down on the ground. "Sire, I..." How much do you know? What can I possibly say? I have killed countless Masters.

"I saw what you did," he said. "We all did. You lit up the sky."

"You... did?" She swallowed, backing away from the intensity of all the stares.

"That young pony, the one with the broken back... he linked us all into the sharing. The insides of Naraka--" He closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. "The Masters are the paws of the Mak--" Helium sagged, deflating like a punctured water bladder. "But they are not, are they? Spiral told us about the Blessing..." Tears welled up in his eyes, running through already dampened fur. Fusion stepped forwards, wings half open, but Helium moved back slightly. "The Master said you were dead, and now you are not. If it wasn't for you... perhaps it would have been better if you had died. You brought all this on us," he said, turning away and stumbling through the herd. Many of the older ponies followed him.

Breathing hard and legs trembling, Fusion watched him vanish into the underground shelter. Is this how it's going to be? She turned to Metal Matrix, one of the stallions who'd been part of her Blessing cohort. "What about you, Metal?" Or the rest of you? Do you all think that?

Ears folded back, the stallion snorted. "Spiral lied to us, told us that we were being attacked by another Hive..." He stood there for a moment, mouth working. "...I helped hold down one of the Masters while Backdraft broke their suits. We left Spiral alone with them... what did she do?"

"I don't know," Fusion whispered. Oh Maker, Spiral... I think you've been hurt worse than any of us. Her ears drooped. If you did exact a little revenge, I somehow doubt you'll beat what I just did. "We have been stretched so thinly, there's been no time--"

He cut her off with a stamp of a hind leg. "I hope they are dead," he snarled, muzzle twisted and ugly, "I just wish I'd been there to help. They sent that Agent to hurt your dam, now these ones to torture and kill us for no reason other than to get to you." The rage left his features, replaced by a look of wonder. "I could never have felt like this before. It's like I had a bag over my head... and now it's gone."

"There is going to be more death than just this, if you go ahead," Backdraft said, her croaky voice cutting through the shocked silence that had followed Metal's announcement. "I was on the clean-up crew after the Masters dealt with one of the gryphon regiments." She smiled slightly, flexing the stump of her right wing. "We were never told what happened, but there were a lot of dead gryphons. They went down fighting, though... it took us a long time to defuse all the improvised ordnance. We were all ordered to never discuss it, but that doesn't seem to matter anymore."

"What are you saying?" Metal said.

"That if they find us, there will be no mercy and no chance of redemption," Backdraft said, looking steadily at him. "It is already too late for all of us."

How much of this conversation would even be possible, if it wasn't for Salrath? "You seem remarkably resigned to this, Backdraft." Fusion said, feeling cold at the certainty in the other mare's voice. Metal remained silent, his ears drooping from their previous alert stance.

"I have seen much in my life... and I am like Slipstream, in a way. I have had no direct contact with the Masters for many winters. It... it was very hard, at first, going from that high-pressure environment, where I was good at what I did and was valued for it, to what I am now." She smiled slightly, a bitter thing that did not reach her eyes, but then her face softened. "It has had its compensations. I got to see all of you grow up... and as time went by, I no longer felt the Maker's voice as keenly. It let me keep up with the endless foal questions." A brisk shake of her head had her long mane whipping back and forth. "But even with all that, I could never have lifted a hoof against our Masters." Her voice faded, sinking to a bare whisper. "Perhaps in another gigasecond..."

"Given what I discovered about the Blessing, that actually makes sense," Fusion said, her throat dry. "Will you help?"

"I had this conversation with Spiral, back in the corral when she lied to everypony about who was attacking us." Fusion made to speak, but Backdraft shook her head again. "No, I can see it was necessary, given the circumstances. A panic would have killed us all." She looked up, then nodded sharply. "Of course I will help, but I want to know it all." Behind her, Metal and the other, mostly younger, ponies gave similar grim-faced expressions of agreement.

"And you will, once we've finished removing the Blessing from all of the Naraka ponies," Fusion smiled tentatively back. "It's been so hard, lying to you all and watching you suffer when I could..."

Metal Matrix stepped forwards, leaning in to brush muzzles with Fusion. "Nopony should have to be alone," he said softly. "We'll all help." Moisture glinted in his eyes. "How could we not? All those ponies locked away, all those foals." His gaze settled on the pile of grey metal cubes Fusion had brought with her, and his ears folded back. "That's them," he said flatly, "why did you bring them here?"

Fusion sighed, running one wingtip over the boxes, now silent and dark. "Only a few. There were rooms full of them. Because their dams don't know... and they deserve something more than not knowing. There's precious little left to send on, and no fields to spread their ashes through, but a dam should know what happened to her foal."

22 - Prisoner's Dilemma

Author's Note

A crude dramatis personæ can be found here.
Preread by: turol and KMCA.
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and Caliaponia (Just Passing Through).

22 - Prisoner's Dilemma

The acceleration cocoon relaxed its all-over hold on her body, deflating with a quiet whirr of some hidden pump. The hatch above her lifted and Merlon stood, flexing legs and wings, a little stiff from their confinement, before jumping out of the airtank's servitor hold. Not as comfortable as a carrier, but at least it wasn't for long. The small chamber had a complete array of repeater screens -- normally the servitor was there to affect in-flight repairs -- and she'd watched the landscape flick by under the airtank's keel at some scarily-high multiple of the speed of sound.

The base she'd been delivered to was abuzz with activity, and seemed to have far more vehicles than its launch pads could easily cope with. From this vantage point, hovering a length above the airtank's comms mast, Merlon could count over two hundred of the lenticular armoured vehicles, all clustered around their respective attack carrier 'heavies', as well as a pair of clumsy-looking Arclight projectors, with a third just coming in for landing. They were inactive, but still felt strange, like they were not really part of the universe.

She came down for a four-hoofed landing, bowing to the pair of Intelligence analysts just coming up from the tunnels below the landing pad. "Masters, I am here on the orders of Strategist Orgon."

"Yes, the pony is," said the leader, a short male with the triple-diamond insignia of a captain. The other Master remained quiet and a few paces further away, one paw on her sidearm.

Merlon froze for a second, wondering at the expression on the silent Master's face. It was well hidden, but she'd seen it plenty of times before, and it always related to the presence of her Master. Now, it was directed at her. Fear, she thought. These Masters are afraid of me. The idea was so astounding that she stared blankly at the captain, for long enough that he took a nervous step back. Pain danced up her spine, not much, but just enough to focus her attention. "Could the Captain direct this servitor to the subject?" she said, speaking slowly and clearly, switching to the Master's diction.

The mesmerised look in the captain's eyes vanished and he nodded. "This way. The... subjects are being examined by one of the People at the moment. There were injuries."

More than one pony? Merlon remained silent as no more information was forthcoming. The route took them into the depths of the base, past thick blast doors and along a steep spiral ramp that dropped down the wall of a shaft that must have been a kilolength deep. As with most installations connecting to the surface, it was lined with openings to the various hangars and gryphon barracks-roosts, although, this being a military base, the shaft was capped with an enormous thickness of armourcrete. External access was via a number of vehicle-sized tunnels, fanning out from the central core and emerging some distance away.

Near the bottom was a small complex, isolated from the rest of the base by another set of checkpoints and guards. The hostility from the Masters working in this area was palpable, and Merlon strove to keep her ears alert and forward. Me just being here makes them uncomfortable. Twinges of phantom pain crept up her fetlocks, making her gait stiff and awkward.

The office area, full of screens and Masters working to make some sense of the on-going chaos, fell behind, and they came to a double set of thick, sound-proofed doors marked 'Interrogation One'. Shadow sight showed the normal host of crystal thaumic equipment, and two sets of horn and wing lights; one of these looked dangerously faint.

"The servitor will-- Hey!"

Merlon ignored the captain's cry, shearing through the door's locking mechanism with a flicker of force and pushing past into the room beyond. An alarm started to sound in the corridor, a sharp, pulsing whine that made her ears fold back. There was the sound of running boots, but Merlon ignored them, too. Inside was all the expected paraphernalia of a multi-species interrogation suite, with an oversized couch that could accommodate a gryphon trooper with ease.

A stallion was strapped to the bench, currently folded to support him in a standing position, with head and neck fixed to clamps and held rigid, muzzle strapped shut and the jewelled ring of a suppressor about the base of his horn. Monitors were attached to little patches of shaved skin at his throat and between his hind legs, and the cup of a memory interrogation crown's transcranial stimulator reached down from the ceiling like the tentacle of some deep-sea cephalopod hunting for prey. A pair of military medics had been working on him, connecting all the remaining equipment required for a memory trawl. What they weren't doing was paying any attention to the mare. Merlon recognised her from Orgon's long kiloseconds of work investigating the servitors of corral twenty-seven.

She was lying on a field sleep pad designed for one of the Masters, and thus far too small, and was plastered with thaumically active dressings. The things, only really designed for surface cuts and punctures, were obviously inadequate for whatever she'd been put through; none of them showed the glitter of healing magic and blood was starting drip from their edges, adding to the carmine already staining her fur. The stallion was watching her with wild-eyed intensity, despite the activities of the medics. It is obvious he cares nothing for himself. My Master would have not made this mistake. Long practice allowed Merlon to compartmentalise her disappointment at such short-sighted behaviour on behalf of the People.

The medics shied away as she pushed forwards, the annoyance on their faces turning to fear as she didn't slow or acknowledge their presence. Merlon's horn flashed, sealing the door behind her with a field of pearly-white radiance and muffling the noise of the alarm. More magic: first to remove both holstered sidearms and hold them against the ceiling, then other arcana to sweep the mare, Elliptic, and hunt for the cause of her distress.

"What is the pony doing?"

Merlon ignored the command and the whisper of the Maker dragging claws down her back, and the subsequent yelp as one of the pair tried to shoulder-barge her force field. The claws sharpened, making it harder to manage the mental effort required for casting the complex medical spells. "This pony is in hypovolemic shock. You will keep her alive." She picked up both medics and dropped them in front of the mare, hard enough to make them gasp. Merlon's hindquarters gave way as the claws multiplied and were joined by fanged mouths. I cannot work like this!

One of the medics started probing at the sodden dressings, paws moving almost of their own accord, the shock of being suddenly picked up and dropped jarring loose his training. The other did not. "The servitor does not order this one--!"

"I am Strategist Orgon's personal servitor," Merlon croaked, the simple affirmation of this fact pushing most of the pain away. "He has charged me with the successful interrogation of your prisoner. This mare is the prisoner's mate."

"A memory trawl does not require the subject's cooperation; the female is probably unsaveable already."

There was a grunt of distress from the stallion and, without thinking, Merlon gripped the medic's head, holding his muzzle closed. The pain came on all at once, covering her flanks with biting, clawing tormentors and making all her magic flicker and die. The door, bereft of its magical reinforcement, flew open to reveal the bulky mass of a gryphon flysoldat in full 'dynamic entry' combat rig, complete with flank-mounted breaching lance. Behind the flysoldat and well to one side were a pair of the People in far more mundane armour.

I will not fail my Master! The thought and the presence of this more manageable threat banished the pain and Merlon could finally think clearly. A needle of force slammed into the gryphon, cracking the soldier's breastplate and flinging him backwards, the lance jamming against the door frame and spinning him about. Her force field came on with the peal of a crystal bell, a cylinder of white-lit glass that surrounded herself, the medics and two prisoners, just in time to intercept a volley of shots from the remaining security staff. Merlon winced, feeling the sudden extra strain as the rounds made the field flash and spark. Gritting her teeth, she felt for the stallion's brain, plunging him immediately into a deep sleep.

"These prisoners are vital to my Master, Strategist Orgon," she shouted, then stood there, listening to the sounds of boots and talons approaching. The gryphon had regained his paws, and pulled a grenade from one pannier, glancing at the Person next to him, a sergeant who was obviously in charge of this security team.

The sergeant hesitated, paws twitching around the grip of his stubby railgun. "The pony will explain its actions, or this one will splash its brains across the wall," he snarled.

"Strategist Orgon needs to know how the rogues have so much magical strength, and how they teleport." Merlon swung her head around, bowing to the medics. "The trawl will only give you memories, and has never been used on a pony, as far as I know. There's no way I can recover a spell pattern from just memory trawl data. This stallion--" Here she stretched out one wing, tapping a primary feather against Scalar's rump. "--cares nothing for his own suffering. If his mate dies, then I have no leverage."

The sergeant slowly lowered his weapon, a flicker of disgust crossing his face. "The pony's orders have been confirmed. Does Specialist Sandu agree with the pony's assessment?" he said, addressing one of the medics.

"Yes," Sandu said reluctantly, "this one has never worked on a servitor before. It may be correct."

"Taking orders from a servitor; unbelievable." The sergeant shook his head, gun muzzle now pointing at the floor. "The pony will lower its force field."

What if this is a trick? Merlon hesitated, a bare second but long enough for the soldier to frown and the Blessing to jab a hot needle in the side of her head. The field collapsed and she stood there, head bowed and teeth clenched. How long will I have to be away from my Master? I am too vulnerable to the whims of these People. Even when I have my orders, they may not follow my guidance out of arrogance or spite. Unbidden, her eyes flicked to Scalar's horn and the little spot of damage it must possess, then closed as she performed the difficult mental trick of using shadow sight to look inside her own head. The faint traceries of the Blessing were easy to see, now that she knew where to look.

The Masters are the Paws of the Maker. I am here to serve my Master. Eyes still clenched tight-shut, she directed a tiny pulse of magic at a point just above her hornbed.

===

Rthar awoke shivering, pulling his limbs in a little tighter under the shield of brown feathers. In response, Olvir moved slightly, curling his long body around Rthar. This brought some slight relief, but the cold was all-encompassing, even with their shared body heat and within the shelter of the wood-lined prison. It was dark, although enough light leaked in from the entrance that he could see a little of his predicament.

Wood panels, with the precise smooth surfaces of force-field cuts, lined every surface. They were fresh and leaked sticky, pine-smelling amber resin everywhere. The only break in the walls was the entrance to the chamber; no wood here, instead a boulder the size of an airtruck blocked the opening, lifted into place without apparent effort by one of the ponies. Olvir's head came up, questing blindly. "Master?" he said, "how are you feeling?" His voice sounded rough, even worse than the normal gryphon rasp.

The gryphon cannot see. We never did manage to give them good night vision. Rthar rolled over and Olvir obligingly opened his wing to let him out. "Cold, but this one will survive. It is a shame that Security policy is to trim away the winter coat," he grumbled. There was a sudden liquid rumble from Olvir's gut. Rthar froze, taking a silent step backwards. The client race has a very strong prey drive... and it won't be able to maintain body temperature without food. He fixed his gaze on the gryphon's heavy beak, paws clenching. Rthar should do it now, while it still trusts this one. Fighting a hungry and alert gryphon in a confined space was not going to end well otherwise.

"Yes, Captain. I have the same problem." Olvir gestured to his leonine back half, the fur kept short for proper fitting of thermal control barding. "Do you want to try digging out again?"

"These ones need to get out; who knows when or if the pony will come back." He reached forwards, laying one paw on Olvir's left foreleg, stumbling back when the blunted talons lashed out.

"Sorry, Master. I can't see what you are doing and you surprised me. Are you okay?"

There was panic in Olvir's voice, mixed in with a trace of... longing? "This one is fine," Rthar said, one paw massaging his shoulder. Very fortunate that the gryphon has blunt talons! "He will be more careful in future." Moving carefully, he tapped lightly on Olvir's extended talons, holding still when the gryphon twitched. He guided the limb to the wall, placing it on the site they'd been working on. The talons closed over the wood, flexing and digging into the thick planks, pulling up big splinters. Only another day and we can start actually digging through the mountain, Rthar thought, his ears drooping.

There was a sudden influx of light, bright enough to bring tears to Rthar's dark-adapted eyes. It was the colour of sunlight, but more diffuse, and coated the boulder like a luminescent mist. He froze, then quickly stepped back from the rock. With a low grinding sound, it was lifted away. At his side, Olvir turned to face the opening, beak opening in threat and making a loud hissing sound.

"That's enough of that, flysoldat," said Ellisif, her tone amused.

"I do not follow the orders of traitors!" Olvir spat, glancing sidelong at Rthar, who took a quick sideways step away from him. The gryphon's voice was firm, but little tremors raced through his frame, making his forelegs twitch.

"I have precious little loyalty left, after I was reassigned for medical experimentation. I think you will soon see the truth of the situation you are in."

Olvir opened his beak to retort, but froze when violet magic reached in and held him still. That colour, this one has seen that colour before-- Rthar gasped, stumbling backwards when the magic's owner stepped into the chamber. "The pony is the one Rthar met in the Institute!" he choked out, flattening himself against the rear wall.

Magic grasped him at wrists and ankles, holding him spread-eagled against the smooth wood. The creature, a dark shadow wreathed in violet, star-filled flames, stared at him intently, a slow smile crossing its lips. "The empty suit! You were the dog that got away from me... I can fix that right now. This will teach you not to hurt foals..." The voice trailed off into a hiss and the pressure on Rthar's limbs heightened, his joints responding with spikes of pain as they were slowly pulled apart.

"That's enough, Gravity," Fusion said, her own magic folding over the violet bands of force as she stepped inside. "We do not kill defenceless prisoners."

Gravity narrowed her eyes and, for a moment, the pressure didn't relent, then she snorted, dropping Rthar to the ground. "Give me an excuse, dog. Just one mistake and there won't be enough of you left to--" Her horn's glow changed slightly, odd pulses of violet haze dancing up and down its length.

Fusion touched Gravity lightly with one wing and the pony quieted, relaxing her hold on Olvir, who slumped to the ground, gasping for breath. "Gryphon... Olvir, I think? Yes. Unlike the Captain here, you have a choice."

Three other shapes crowded into the room; Ellisif and two other gryphons of various colourations. They took hold of Olvir, half helping, half pulling him from the room. No, don't leave this one alone with the pony! "W-what will happen to this one's gryphon; he is responsible for--"

"That question does you credit, Captain. It gives me hope that this will go smoothly," Fusion said quietly. "He really does have a choice. We need as many trained gryphons as we can get, so will be allowed to join the fight."

"And if he doesn't?"

"A prisoner, for now. I think we will be able to let him go home eventually."

Rthar shivered. Security will take him apart looking for answers, and what good will that do? "No," he said reluctantly. "Let this one talk to him if he refuses. The gryphon will vanish if he returns."

Fusion nodded, her ears drooping slightly. "I thought as much," she muttered, turning her head. "Gravity, what do you think? Can you do it?"

There was a subtle pressure in Rthar's head, and an incredibly strong feeling of déjà-vu swept through him--

~~running through the maintenance tunnels beneath the school, pursued by Molab and his gang. Breath harsh in his throat and heart pounding. Path blocked by a security door; slamming shoulder-first into the unyielding surface, then~~

~~holding Shiri's cold paw as the doctor said something, the words blurring into a tone of professional sympathy, something about his mate not rating thaumic medical intervention and that it was unlikely~~

~~an aircraft, an ungainly cylinder looking like a snake swallowing an egg, settling on a landing pad surrounded by a collection of escort vehicles~~

--Rthar gasped, paws coming up to clutch at his head. "Stop, this one won't--"

"Yes," Gravity said, a self-satisfied smile on her muzzle. "It's not the same as with a sharing, but if you guide the questioning I can pull up associated memories." She settled on her belly, pulling Rthar down to her level. "Can't I, Captain?"

The pressure disappeared. "This one won't help the pony!"

Fusion sighed. "It doesn't have to be this way, Rthar, but we really do need to know what we are up against. Ellisif, are you ready?"

The gryphoness padded back into the chamber, her bright yellow eyes hard and expressionless. "Svartr and Adigard have taken Olvir back to the base; I'm all yours." She sat back on her haunches next to Gravity, reaching out with one talon to lift Rthar's muzzle. "We'll start with what you know about the deployment patterns of Lacunae's Arclight squadrons..."

Rthar clenched his jaws shut, but Gravity's horn lit again and the pressure returned.

===

Packet Switcher's ears twitched at the sound of hooves moving past the entrance to his alcove. Let's give this a try... if that foal can do it, I don't see why I can't. Lilac had been one of those who'd helped look after him, and the sight of his telekinetically powered limbs had been a source of wonder. Muscles rippled in his chest, and his forelegs moved slightly, sending waves of pain dancing through the bones. Grimacing, Packet exerted his power, pulling himself upright and straightening his legs. Tentatively he lowered his weight to the ground with a groan.

"Just muscle pain," he muttered, "you trust Spiral, don't you?" There was a feeling like the flesh would rip from his bones, but Packet took a first step, then another. The sharp, stabbing pain faded with each tottering stride, until it was only an ache that filled the whole front of his body. Wings half extended for balance, he joined the flow of ponies moving towards the main tunnel.

Mares, hundreds of mares, perhaps a quarter of them obviously pregnant or with young foals. Very few stallions. Packet swallowed, suddenly made nervous by the mass of unfamiliar ponies. Wait, I know... "Random, is that you?" The tan flanks of his old friend twitched, her stripped wings looking small and naked against her fur.

The mare flinched, a sudden, hunted look crossing her face. "P-Packet? I thought..."

"I was; Spiral cleared me, for as long as I don't try any trotting." They walked along with the herd, a slow-moving island in the flood. His eyes roved over her wings. "I see your pinfeathers are starting to come through." They were ugly things, worse than even those of a newborn foal. Random moved at his side like one in a trance, head bowed and eyes on the ground between her hooves.

"Yes. Won't be long before they emerge," she muttered. "Soon I'll flying among the clouds."

"Fusion said the Masters made you do things, in some sort of mechanical sharing," Packet said quietly, voice nearly lost amid the rumble of countless hooves.

She stumbled, taking a deep breath. "This is the same Fusion who smashed your legs in an effort to keep her secret a few more days."

Packet's ears went back and he ground his teeth. "Yes. I'm having trouble forgiving her for that." Pain flashed up his legs. "If you ever want to talk about it..."

"Some day, perhaps." She flashed him a smile, so brief that it might as well have been nothing, and they walked on in silence, finally entering the main tunnel.

It was packed with the unknown ponies, owners of all the varied colours and smells he'd glimpsed or scented since waking up. With slow steps he joined them, Random pressed close to his side. Her bony, naked wings felt lumpy and alien against his own, so he moved them, spreading yellow feathers over her back and down her opposite flank.

Random moved her wing, the one on the side away from his body, up and back, hiding it under his. "Thank you," she whispered.

"Fusion told me what you were put through... it seemed the least I could do."

Random's head came up and she glared back at him, her ears flat back. "The Masters only--" she spat, then broke off, closed her eyes and swallowed. "Yes," she said, voice suddenly quiet, then sobbed, sagging against side. Packet winced, but kept his expression sympathetic as pain flashed through his withers.

He sighed, rubbing his wing down her flank, then nuzzled her poll, teeth working along the line of her mane. Up at the end of the tunnel, on the same stage he'd seen via one of the repeater spells, were a stack of foal horns, perhaps a score of them. I still can't believe it... that the Masters, the dogs, would do this to us. Random opened her eyes briefly, then squeezed them shut again, tears leaking out from between the tight-clenched lids. She was whispering something; the words were too jumbled to make out, but it had the feeling of a litany to it. The Masters are the paws of the Maker, Packet thought, then shuddered.

Backdraft and Spiral were on the stage, the pile of horns between them. Somewhere further back were Gravity and Fusion, only really visible via shadow sight against the constant background glow of all the other ponies, but they seemed to be keeping a low profile. Packet sniffed, his nostrils flaring. There are gryphons nearby... he craned his neck, but wherever the creatures were, it was out of sight.

"Everypony," Backdraft called out, her voice sounding rougher than normal, "especially those of you who have been in Naraka for a long time. Ponies die all the time in the service of the dogs, but at least we, in the outside world, have the chance to acknowledge this and move on. From what you have told me, this was never the case. A pony would just disappear, never to be seen again."

The silence in the tunnel deepened, the only sound that of shuffling hooves and the rustle of feathers. The nearest ponies, all Naraka natives, seemed to be uncertain how to react. Some were blank-faced and still, as if carved from stone, others -- mostly those with young foals -- were openly weeping. Even in this they were silent, heads bowed and tears running down muzzles.

"Some of you will remember Homecomings, others have only been told about them. Nothing can really make up for the loss of a friend or a foal, but at least we can remember them, and give something of them back." She paused, glancing at Spiral, then gestured at the sad little pile. "So little of your missing ponies remained, and little enough of that could be rescued, but at least we can remember them."

At her side, Spiral's horn glowed, lifting bulky shapes onto the platform. Packet groaned, his ears drooping. "So many from our corral," he muttered to Random, "I didn't realise..." Spiral's work continued and the pile grew larger, a pyramid of limp bodies in a rainbow of colours. Cord bound their limbs, folding them into compact packages, while their coats were marred by the white squares of field dressings. Despite all the deaths being caused by traumatic injuries, somepony had cleaned their coats so no trace of blood was visible. Finally finished, Spiral started to build another pile, this one of gryphons. Here the injuries were more extensive; in some cases barely a trace of feather or fur was visible.

Packet whinnied quietly, holding Random tight against his side. Horrible, this is horrible. How can Spiral have coped with all this for so long? I'd rather a pony just vanished.

Fusion jumped up onto the stage, dipping her head to briefly brush muzzles with Spiral. "We can remember all of our fallen friends," she said, voice clear as it rang out across the assembled herd. "Not just ponies, but all the gryphons who died so we could escape. Without them, I would be dead. Gravity would be dead. Most of you would be dead." She nodded to her sister, now standing on the opposite side of the stage. Spiral and Backdraft retreated, leaving the pair alone with a pile of corpses larger than they were.

Gravity, her own coat patterned with obvious burns and minor injuries, continued. "We could not bring all the gryphon dead out of Naraka, just as we couldn't bring all of the foals. Our priority must be to the living, but we won't forget their sacrifice." A field of violet magic condensed over the pile, lifting it gently into the air. More magic appeared within the outer shell, a brilliant white-gold, which seemed to darken, holding the other power within it. There was a sensation of heat, like that from the sun, and the light grew brighter.

"How much power is she using?" Packet muttered, transfixed by the building power. Any sign of individual bodies was lost against the glow, and there was the impression that, without the outer shell, the fire would burst free and consume them all. At his side, Random shivered.

After a hundred seconds or so the power faded, leaving nothing more than a pile of fine, grey ash. It should have been at white heat, or had some smell to it, but was cold and there was nothing. Closer to the stage, ponies started to move, lining up to walk past the pile, horns glowing as they picked up a small amount. They were all familiar, all from corral twenty-seven. The others don't even know what to do. The thought twisted inside Packet's head, and he made an abortive motion to join the line.

"We'd normally scatter the ash through the fields and under the light of Celestia, but we can't. What we have are the gardens we are building... if you want, you can spread the ash there." Fusion picked up her own portion, joining the flow of ponies. More than one gryphon was also there, looking slightly confused but taking part anyway, ash trailing from clenched talons as they hobbled after the ponies.

Under the glow of hornlight and not amid the trees. What have you reduced us to? Packet stepped forwards, but Random didn't move.

"Don't leave me." Her voice was distorted, the words forced out as if by panic. "I can't--"

"Do you just want to talk, then?" He steered her out of the flow of ponies, back towards the tunnels assigned for sleeping.

Not resisting, she nodded jerkily. "I want to, but I'm not sure I can." She stopped, head coming up so she could stare in his face, eyes searching for something. "How do you stay so calm? I know what Fusion did to you."

With gentle nips to Random's flanks, Packet tried to nudge her back into motion, his stomach suddenly twisted into knots. How-- There was a sudden memory, of irresistibly powerful magic holding him still while pain radiated from a collar about his throat. "Let's go somewhere quiet and we can talk."

Random nodded jerkily, then put one hoof in front of the other and started to walk again.

===

"...I have reconnected with the remains of my squad and identified the rest of the gryphons with military training. That's about twenty all-told, all of whom who were sent to Naraka because they were loose ends. A further ten are too injured to fight, but can be used as trainers." Ellisif shook her head, the feathers on the top of her head lifting slightly. "We are getting better medical care with you than back at Security. Anyway, I have established a training cadre, and things are proceeding about as well as I'd expect. This lot will need megaseconds of work, and even then we really need more weapons to do anything useful other than just killing civilians."

"I can say the same for the pony side of things. Teleport training is the hardest thing to master... perhaps one in five of the ones from Naraka have managed it, but that's only of the ones we've had a chance to teach. It's going to be a long time before we get to everypony. The ratio is better for the ones from the corral -- due to higher magical experience, I expect -- so we've been focussing on them. I've also had Redshift showing other matter-manipulation specialists some of the tricks to reactivating your weapons, when we get more."

Gravity sighed, wriggling slightly to settle a little deeper into the leaf-litter and letting Fusion's words wash over her. Planning, planning, planning. Who knew a revolution would be so, so... She exchanged glances with Ellisif, who gave her a disapproving look. "This is all very interesting, and we've been over it several times, but it really doesn't matter. Ellisif's gryphons will have to eat, and they won't be able to do anything useful until we can get them weapons."

"How much food do we have?" Fusion said. "For ponies as well, I mean." She glanced at Backdraft, who sighed in turn.

"Plenty of the dogs’ food supplements, so at least there have been no complaints about that. We'll have to start rationing them soon, unless you want to raid another corral-- don't look at me like that, Fusion. I know you don't approve of the stuff. Anyway, the wild greens are holding out, and the gardens have been sprouting apace--" She smiled at Fusion's confused expression. "You never did pay much attention in my lessons. It's why the Mas-- dogs spread the pony corrals out amid their farmlands." She cocked her head, ears forward, smiling.

"Our magic has a positive effect on plants, both rate and yield, especially when we tend crops everyday," Fusion murmured, matching Backdraft's smile. "That's something, at least." She frowned, brow wrinkling. "We are going to have to watch that. Differential growth in the forest above this refuge will mark us out."

"How long's that going to take?" Ellisif waved a claw, encompassing the night's sky above, still filled with odd twisting patterns of luminescent gas and the random streak of meteors. "There will be no satellite coverage for a while, if I understand what is going on up there. Certainly I've not seen anything in a regular orbit. Anyway--" She snapped her beak. "--as well as looking for any sign of the dogs, the scout teams have been hunting for deer, and there aren't that many to start with. Still plenty of rabbits... and we've been collecting those for farming because they are little more than snacks." She waited, then looked disappointed.

"What, you think that ponies don't work on the dogs’ cattle farms?" Backdraft snorted, looking amused. "So what do you want, Ellisif, food or weapons?"

"Can't we do both?" Gravity said, standing up. "We're not needed here, and either one of us can bring any number of gryphons with us. How hard will it be to raid the cattle farms?"

Fusion blinked. "Yes, I guess that will be easy enough -- if you are quick. Don't get pinned down." She glanced at Ellisif. "What will you do with them? We can't keep them alive, the land here..."

"...will be our advantage. Plenty of space above the snowline. They'll stay frozen for as long as we need them to."

"There's no point in you going. I'll ask some of the teleport-trained to go; it will be good practice."

And it won't matter if the cows don't arrive in one piece. Gravity smiled, nodding. "Perfect! No need to do multiple jumps, either. You go with them and I'll go with Ellisif."

"Which is where, exactly?" Fusion stared steadily at Gravity. "Haven't you taken enough risks in the last couple of days?"

Gravity felt her ears flick back, then forced them forwards again. "We've spoken about this. You really want to do this all yourself? I'll take Ellisif to the Pit and see what we can salvage. I know that there were a lot of gryphons in there when I left... with all their weapons."

"You'll need Redshift or one of his group to fix the weapons--" Fusion slumped, closing her eyes. "Just be careful, okay?"

Gravity smiled, her heart rate accelerating. "You know me, sister. When have I ever taken any risks?"

Fusion stared back, then shook her head. "That's it, I'm definitely coming with you."

===

Merlon staggered, a sudden electric agony lacing her body. Wings loose and flapping wildly, she collapsed, legs splayed, to the floor. There was shouting, and the sounds of booted paws, but these were minor, inconsequential things compared to the all-encompassing pain.

Then it vanished and there was nothing.

"Don't," Merlon wheezed, staring up into the sergeant's gun barrel. The Maker has gone. "This is a stressful situation for a pony, I have my orders but..." Her magic returned, and instinctive patterns flooded her mind to cluster around the security troops. Not real, not yet, but enough potential violence to reduce them to paste. There should have been more pain, stopping the thoughts before they really even started, but there was nothing. I did it, I really did it. Her ears drooped and she slowly climbed to her hooves. The Masters are the Paws of the Maker. "Do I have your permission to continue, sergeant? Remember that this is a critical project."

The Master looked uncertain, then disgusted. "Fine. The pony will do what it has to do."

"Thank you, Master." Merlon took a deep breath, then bowed, muzzle all the way to the floor, remaining low until the security team had left the room. Still shaky, she turned to the pair of medics, her magic scanning Elliptic. The pony had stabilised -- she was still in critical condition, but at least she wasn't getting worse. There was a moan from behind her, and the sound of somepony trying to move.

"Your mate is safe, Scalar, for now. You can relax," Merlon said, walking stiffly to his side and pulling off the half-assembled trawl equipment. A bit. He stared at her, eyes wild. "You have done our Masters a great evil, but you have the chance to redeem yourself. Perhaps even come back into the protection of the Maker." And if I can manage it for you, then maybe I can be saved. Merlon gently nudged the medics aside, probing the mare with her magic and starting the more important repairs. "I can handle everything from here, Masters."

Her eyes followed them as they backed away. They look... nervous, just like that pair of Intelligence Officers. Merlon sketched a bow and smiled her thanks, but that just made them move faster. This will be reported... Her ears flattened and she carefully loosened Scalar's muzzle restraints. I cannot let them stop my mission!

"How badly hurt is my mate?" he whispered, voice shaky. "Will she live?"

"It's quite serious. She's lost a lot of blood. The rest is superficial... up to a point." She stepped back, tapping Elliptic on the side of the head with a forehoof. "It's a shame really. You know the policy relating to servitors who are too injured to be worth saving... you saw what the Masters were going to do." Closing her eyes, Merlon lowered her head and ran her muzzle over the field dressings on the other mare's neck. "It's possible that this might be the only chance she has. Without me she will simply be left to die."

"How could you do this to one of your own kind?" he choked out, wriggling against the restraints. "Help her, please."

"We can help each other." Her hornlight went out and she turned to look at Scalar. "You can start by telling me where Fusion and the others are."

His ears went back. "I don't know where it is. I only ever teleported there."

"Then let's talk your new magic... this is tricky. I need you to show me the pattern you are using to teleport, but I can only do that if I remove your suppressor." Merlon's horn lit, coils of pearly white radiance weaving themselves through Elliptic's chest. "Right now, I am actively supporting her heart function... if you try to fight me, I'm pretty sure I won't be able to keep the magic working."

"But my friends... the dogs will kill them all," Scalar whispered, his eyes going wide.

Merlon's head came up and she glared at the bound stallion. "How dare you! Our Masters will save as many ponies as they can!"

"Do you believe that? Really? Or is that the Blessing talking?"

"I don't need to believe... I know it to be true." Merlon shook her head violently, ears flat back and mane whipping from side to side. "I can't save you, Scalar, but your mate is truly innocent, as are many of the others at your corral. Give me a way to find the instigators of this... this... rebellion--" She spat the word, leaning in until she was muzzle to muzzle with him. "--and the rest can be saved. The longer you wait, the more likely it is that the Synod will demand everypony's head." She took a step back, breathing deeply, trying to lose some of the sudden anger.

Calm, I will get nowhere unless I remain calm. I have my orders. She froze, breath hitching. Which were to assist in the interrogation, not run it. Merlon's wings flicked and she shifted her weight from hoof to hoof. What has happened to me? I've never disobeyed, not even slightly. She took a deep breath, waiting for the Maker's guidance, but there was nothing but emptiness where it should have been. Stupid mare! You did this to yourself, cut yourself loose. Stupid to think that things would be the same.

Merlon realised that Scalar was staring at her, a hopeful expression in his eyes. It doesn't matter. Maker or not, these rogues will get everypony killed if they are not stopped. It was clear that the interrogators were not up to the task, so it was my duty to replace them. A nod and a twitch of magic, just a slight nudge to certain nerves high in the brainstem, and Elliptic started to convulse, hooves rattling against the hard floor and air grunting from her lungs.

"Stop! Please!" Scalar struggled against the straps holding him to the bench, fitful glows flickering about his horn.

Merlon smiled, reversing the induced seizure, then gripped Scalar's head with her magic. "I promise you that, for as long as you help me, I will work to save Elliptic." Her smile faded, replaced with a look of concern. "I don't want to hurt anypony, but the further down this path you go, the more suffering it will cause. I'm doing this for the good of everypony." Scalar slumped, breathing raggedly, and didn't look at her. Gently, Merlon undid the clamps holding his head, then disconnected the thaumic suppressor.

He looked up at her for a moment, ears folding flat back, and Merlon tensed. These rogues all seem to be stronger than they should be... if he decides to fight anyway... "Fine," he muttered, tears running down his muzzle. "I don't care what you do to me, just save my mate."

"I will personally vouch for her with my Master, Strategist Orgon. She will be safe." Merlon smiled sadly, feeling for the stallion's mind. "I may have been hasty before. You have been led badly astray and I think it is possible that you and Elliptic may be able to stay together, with suitable controls in place. My Master understands that the actions of Agent Salrath drove you to do what you did."

"You... you think so?"

Likely with your magic burned out, if at all. Merlon banished the thoughts, making a secure space in her head for the sharing environment. "I am my Master's expert on ponykind; I am sure he will take my advice." I will try, at least. Her power intensified, taking hold of Scalar's mind. After a moment's hesitation, he let her inside.

===

Doctor Hemanth stripped off his barrier gloves and ran his carefully-rounded claws over his ears and around his eyes. The patient, now cleaned of the concrete dust that had coated every fibre of her coat, sat quietly in the examination room. If only all of this one's patients were this calm, Hemanth thought. Outside this little room and its sound-proofed door it was bedlam.

Whatever had happened at Naraka had collapsed chambers for kilolengths, while the shockwaves had severed electrical and data cables over a much greater radius. Backup communication links, via satellite, were also offline, and no official explanation had been forthcoming. Shift end notwithstanding, Hemanth hadn't been able get away from the hospital -- in addition to all of that, two high-capacity vehicle tunnels had fallen in, trapping or killing thousands of drivers in their vehicles, and the work had been never-ending -- but even with the panic and desperate work, he hadn't forgotten the stomach-churning flutters in weight that had presaged the collapses. Like being in a fast tube capsule. Something big happened, and the Synod isn't talking.

He accessed the hospital's data systems, currently operating in 'stand-alone' mode, reviewing and updating the patient's details. "The patient is Rinchur, yes?" He smiled at her slightly confused nod. "The computer systems are not working too well at the moment; this one wants to be sure."

"Has there been any news of this one's mate, Eldu?" she said, eyes downcast.

Hemanth composed his face into a well practiced expression of sympathy. "This one is sorry... the records show that one other was taken from the vehicle, but there have been no updates since then. It is possible that your mate was taken to one of the other hospitals; patients were distributed according to need." He leaned forward slightly, reaching out to touch her remaining paw. "Hemanth is not saying that there is no hope, but Rinchur's mate was listed as non-responsive during triage... she should prepare herself for the news that might follow." Dead at the scene, most likely, but it is interesting... the pattern of injuries for the pair are odd and not really consistent with the others in the collapse. Frowning, he made a note on the file to investigate further, then switched back to Rinchur.

Her file was also a study in anomalies. "Rinchur has large numbers of partially healed multiple fractures--" Hemanth went silent and his eyes widened at the extent of her injuries. How did she survive all that? "--sorry. Those are obviously not of immediate concern. How is the arm?"

Rinchur lifted the truncated limb, glancing at the cap of gel bandage. "This one is grateful that she can no longer feel her fingers," she said softly.

"Phantom limb pain is not uncommon, especially with a traumatic amputation; the drugs should have permanently neutralised the spurious neural signals, but Rinchur may have to return for further treatment if the sensations return." Hemanth paused, head cocked to one side. "The injury was really quite clean, most unusual for this sort of accident. This one is impressed Rinchur was able to tourniquet the limb."

"The threat of death does wonders," she said dryly. "This one had no desire to bleed out."

"Military training?" She had a well-toned musculature and a way of standing that seemed to show a constant awareness of everything around her, and there was no shock or denial at the recent loss of her paw or, for that matter, her mate. Some are like that... she may recover completely, but a course of counselling may still be useful, he thought, updating her treatment notes. It would be nice to have one success today.

"A little. The Doctor mentioned something about a prosthetic?"

Hemanth nodded. "This one is still waiting for results from the DNA assay. When that is done, he can determine the correct drug regimen to prevent any long-term viability issues, should you successfully apply for a regeneration. In the meantime, because our manufactory is at full capacity, all this one can offer Rinchur is a temporary model." He removed it from its case, nodding at Rinchur's disappointment. "Purely mechanical, operated by the opposite shoulder. This one knows it doesn't look like much, but it will help until Hemanth can supply an electronic one suitable for neural connection."

Rinchur sighed, then nodded and stood up, holding out her remaining paw for the harness. Hemanth helped her into it, adjusting the straps so the split hook that served the thing as a gripper opened and closed as she moved. "It will do," she said, then swung it in a fast arc that terminated in Hemanth's throat. He fell, gagging and choking, paws scrabbling for his neck, but Rinchur caught them and lowered him silently to the ground. "This one thanks the Doctor for his work, but she cannot wait for those samples... and they might show things that contradict her story." She stepped over him, locking the door from the inside.

There was a roaring in his ears and darkness was starting to crawl in from the edges of his vision. Rinchur leaned over him, an interested smile twisting her muzzle into something ugly. "Oh look, the Doctor is still logged onto the hospital's system. Perhaps Rinchur can make some alterations to her records. It even looks like she can order her samples destroyed." Her paw played with the controls for a few moments. "There! No point in wasting scarce resources. Looks like she never even had this meeting with the Doctor."

Why? Who are-- Hemanth tried to shout, tried to scream, but it was like someone had rammed an incandescent rock down his throat.

"This one was in Naraka and can see where things are going, and she wants no part of it. She's off to find somewhere out of the way until this mess is sorted out, perhaps to Baur or Soro Hive." Her smile widening, Rinchur turned and kneeled at his side, staring intently into his eyes. "This one wants a change in career, Doctor. Her previous employers proved to be unreliable. Fortunately she has a very particular set of skills, skills she has acquired over a very long career... and she is sure they will find many uses. She thinks it would be nice to work for herself for a while."

The roaring grew louder, and the last thing Hemanth saw was the light glinting off Rinchur's teeth.

23 - Random Chance

Author's Note

A crude dramatis personæ can be found here.
Preread by: turol and KMCA.
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and Caliaponia (Just Passing Through).

23 - Random Chance

"You know that if they let you go back, you are dead, right?"

Olvir stayed silent, ignoring the buzzard-lion gryphon flying a wingspan to his right. My duty is to Captain Rthar. I will not fail him again. His eyes swept the land below, all knife-edged valleys and dense pine forest, picking out the grey and dun of gryphon next to the pastel rainbow of pony. But there are so many! He shivered, remembering the horrible power of the white mare's magic, and the devastation she'd wrought on the Masters in Naraka's lower levels. The Masters will find us and when they do... What happened to units in rebellion was well known and documented; it was required viewing by recruits and soldiers at all levels.

The other gryphon, a female with a striking black-and-grey panther and peregrine colouration, looped lazily around him. "Only eventually," she said, her eyes distant, "once they have everything of value from you. You could be the most loyal gryphon in the world and it wouldn't matter to them."

"You were in Naraka... you did see what was being done to everyone, right?" The first flysoldat, the one called Adigard, said, his voice quiet. He twisted, showing off a patch of bare flesh, still stippled with needle marks, just behind his left foreleg. "That's just a taster. Svartr here has been impregnated and is going to bear some--" His beak clicked shut as the female hissed loudly, swerving in his direction.

Shut up shut up shut up! Olvir ground the edges of his beak together. You wouldn't have been in there if you hadn't done something wrong. Small cells and no real chance to fly. Medical experiments. The looks on the faces of the scientists -- not the normal mistrust of civilian People, but one of calculation, as if he was being assessed for inclusion in some project.

Am I dead either way? How could they possibly release me? Olvir looked up, squinting into the sun. The land was both unfamiliar and unremarkable; a horizon-spanning system of glacial valleys and snow-capped peaks. What do I know that can actually hurt them? We're somewhere near the poles, far from any of the Hive infrastructure... are we even in Lacunae anymore? He slumped into a glide, matching Adigard's trajectory. It would narrow the search. They would pick my mind clean and compare the profiles of these mountains with maps. I know too much.

They flew into a landing under the trees, wing-tips brushing the sides of a wide, low tunnel concealed under the pine-needle canopy. The light in here was dim, made by a curious mix of backup lights culled from scavenged emergency kits and the pastel, shifting foxfire of pony magic. This was coming from roughly-cut crystals embedded in the walls at regular intervals. It might be bright enough for a pony, but it makes my head hurt. He reached out with a claw and tapped one of the crystals; it moved slightly, stuck to the wall with a blob of flexible armour sealant.

"The ponies are doing a lot of tunnelling and came across a seam of quartz. They said it was good enough for basic crystal thaumaturgy, so..." Adigard said, nudging him forward with one wing-elbow.

"I've never seen it before," Olvir said softly, distracted by the sounds, a blend of mechanisms and voices, coming from deeper in the tunnels.

"It's a basic skill, something their foals learn as a stepping-stone to work in the dogs' factories, apparently. Wish it was brighter." They walked on, past hemicylindrical cross-tunnels holding hundreds of gryphons. Many were injured -- most just minor scrapes or burns, things inevitable in a pitched battle -- and ponies flitted between them, magic flickering hypnotically. "We get better care here than back at the Regiment... a lot were killed back in Naraka's tunnels, but of those that survived to get here -- how many do you think have died since?" Adigard stopped, waving a foreleg to point at a cluster of sleeping gryphons. Stripped of fur in large patches, their skin had a raw, new look; a pony sat at their centre, attention moving from one to another.

Massive third-degree burns, Olvir thought. If a fight leaves you alive at all, it leaves you burned. "I fought against Gravity at the Institute... it must have been at the start of all this." He stared at the pony, but it wasn't one he recognised. "She smashed my wing but didn't kill me. The care of the Masters nearly did that."

Adigard nodded. "That's the way it is. The ponies run their industry and there's few left for medicine. Even the dogs don't get to use thaumic medical like this." He looked seriously at Olvir. "No endeavour is without risk, but we fight a common enemy and we look after each other."

They moved on, past other chambers holding ponies doing mostly incomprehensible things: Piles of a deep red rock being turned into mirror-finished metal cubes. Neatly stacked logs dissolving into translucent crystals and clear liquid. The same metal cubes changing into cylinders with concave conical ends and being packed with the crystals. The amount of effort seemed high; even working in teams, sweat was running from the ponies' coats. I see they haven't lost any of their frightening work-ethic. Olvir stopped suddenly, beak half open. "Wait, that's a shaped-charge -- are they making weapons from nothing?!"

"Atoms are everywhere, Olvir." Svartr laughed, her eyes hungrily watching the production line. "Not a patch on the real thing, but who do you think makes everything for the dogs? Ponies have a reputation for efficiency, for putting everything into the task they've been given. I think I would too, if I had a pain machine in my head."

"Gryphons might end up doing most of the fighting, but we'll have support. The ponies... a lot don't seem to be suited for aggression." Adigard paused, looking thoughtful. "At least, I never thought so. I think that might be wrong. They've just been told that the dogs have been, in effect, shovelling their young into a furnace. That's got to make a difference. I think there are good reasons why the dogs don't use the ponies for fighting."

"What about Arclight?" Olvir shook his head. I guess it didn't do the Masters much good so far. "Did I miss something? I always thought that the Masters took good care of the ponies?" More than us, anyway.

"The way I understand it, a pony is... inconvenient. The dogs don't really want the pony, just its magic. If they can get the power without all that biological messiness... Wish-granter in a box; feed it glucose and issue orders by computer."

And if they can do that, what's to stop them doing the same to us? Is there some plan somewhere to make us obsolete? Olvir glanced at Svartr, little more than a silhouette in the gloom, but the gryphoness didn't say anything, just rubbed her belly with one wing. "You never did say. How many?" he said. "How many have died since their return from Naraka?"

"None." Adigard turned and walked on and, deep in thought, Olvir followed him.

===

Metal Matrix eyed Svartr nervously. The black and grey gryphoness seemed angry -- well, angrier than normal. "I could be out killing dogs and Ellisif sends me to do this stupid training mission!" She paced the little forest clearing, sharp movements of her paws and claws ripping scars in the leaf-litter.

The other gryphons in Metal's little group were similarly twitchy, although in their case it seemed more fear than anger. With good reason, he thought, dancing on his hooves. I've only teleported a couple of times, and never with this much live cargo. He dropped his head, breathing deeply. Probably best if I don't tell them that. He glanced up, catching Triple Point looking back in his direction. The older mare smiled and nodded, then winked.

"What, you don't want to eat, Svartr?" She laughed, a bright, happy sound, like you'd hear from a pony making a joke. "All that prime beef on the hoof... got to be better than the occasional rabbit. I know you are all on short rations."

Svartr rounded on the mare, beak open and hissing loudly. "Yes!" Her beak snapped shut and she shivered, the hiss turning to a bubbling growl. "Let's get this over with. The sooner we go, the sooner I can get back to doing a real job."

"R-right," Metal said, "get into the air; it will be easier if I don't have to worry about the ground." He fanned his wings then jumped, popping out of the tree canopy into a dim early morning. The sun was still several kiloseconds from rising and the light was more than bright enough for a pony -- but not a gryphon. He hid a smile at the sound of cursing and breaking branches behind him, as the flock of gryphons, twenty in all, burst into clear air amid showers of small branches and pine needles. Nodding to Triple Point and the other two ponies, he spiralled slowly upwards, lighting his horn to give his team of five something to home in on.

"It better be brighter than this at the farm," one of them, a large male that looked half leopard, grumbled. "I can't see guano out here."

"It will be. We are traversing nearly ten degrees of arc; Celestia should just be rising." Metal felt Triple's magic build and called up his own teleport pattern, Fusion's memories of the farm she'd passed on the way to the Security base feeling preternaturally sharp and clear. He reached out with a gentle telekinesis, gripping the bodies of 'his' team; a few struggled for a moment so he waited until their wing beats settled, the five gryphons arranged around him in a pentagon.

"Everypony ready?" Triple called out, nodding at the confirmations. "On three. One, two, thr--"

~~~discontinuity~~~

--ee". Residual magic, pale and insubstantial in the dawn's light, flashed across the flanks of the gryphons. "Ha! It worked!" he called out, ignoring the sudden pulse of fatigue that came with the use of power. 'His' gryphons exchanged glances and comments Metal elected to ignore, then folded their wings and dove to the herd below. Metal stayed airborne, hindquarters twitching at the anticipation of panic and galloping hooves from the cows. We could do this far more efficiently than them, but what was it Ellisif said? 'An important chance to give some of them a taste of action.' This is going to be ugly. He swallowed, then narrowed his eyes, watching intently, even as his stomach twisted and his skin crawled.

The gryphons were completely silent as they fell towards the slumbering herd, so much so that the first impacts were shocking in their intensity. Screams and nasty, snapping noises rent the air as cows were slammed to the ground under the impact of the quarter-tonne carnivores. The creatures were large, lumbering things, optimised for muscle growth efficiency and little else, but the attack still reached past the layers of genetic splicing, all the way down to their dimly remembered ancestors. They scattered, the thunder of their hooves shaking the earth and raising a cloud of thin dust.

It was also obvious that most of the gryphons had no experience with this sort of fight. Metal winced as one, clinging to the back of a particularly large cow and trying to reach its throat, was thrown clear and dumped to the ground. Stunned, the gryphon sprawled in the mud, wings thrashing as he fought to get to his paws, then disappeared in the churning press of bodies. Maker! Metal shook himself, horn flashing white and lighting the chaos below. More magic, building a barrier and forcing away the panicking cattle. "Gunfire was easier to block!" he wheezed, sweat dampening his fur as the effort rose. The gryphon was still moving, unsteadily climbing to his paws. "You okay?" Mind singing with the effort, Metal changed the shape of the field from a dome to a teardrop, smoothing the path around it and reducing the pressure.

The gryphon nodded, red-stained beak opening a little, then closing again. "Thank you. Practice doesn't really help when you get to the real thing." He carefully opened his wings, and gave an experimental flap. "Nothing broken, but that's going to hurt tomorrow," he said, wincing. With a grunt, he jumped to an uncertain hover, then flew away.

Metal sighed, then collapsed his force field. Time for my part in this mission, he thought, scanning the ground. After the first few clumsy attempts, the gryphons had quickly determined the best method of slaughter: strike at the upper shoulders, holding on with talons while reaching around for the throat. The carotid arteries were close to the surface -- another result of tinkering -- and a quick rip left the victim staggering. The gryphon then jumped away, hunting for another target, while the cow fell to its knees and collapsed, blood spraying from deep rents and pouring down its chest. Done right, the process was fast, and they stopped moving within a pawful of seconds. In the confined space of the overnight pen, the twenty gryphons tore through the herd, accounting for the hundred or so cows in less than half a kilosecond.

Staying in flight, safely above the one-sided slaughter, Metal opened a sharing link back to the target, a secluded glacier some distance from the base. The ponies at the other end were already talking to Triple, and it was the mare that replied. All set. These things are bigger than I thought!

Two tonnes each, he thought back, selecting his first target. Glad I'm not in the catching team! The pattern formed, destination memory slotting into place, and he pushed. The cow, and a chunk of ground it was laying on, vanished in a pulse of cream light. Sighing again, he reached for the next one, this time lifting it clear of the blood-stained dirt. How long do you think we have?

Who knows. I trashed the monitoring system as soon as we jumped in. They might not discover this until a maintenance crew does an inspection. The mare's thoughts were distracted, focused on her own magic.

Metal nodded, then pushed, sending it on its way, the work becoming an almost familiar background strain. The body had seemed very alive, full of warmth and fluid looseness, muscles randomly contracting in the chaos of disconnection. At least this is for me, and not because I'm being driven, he thought privately. Gritting his teeth, Metal moved to the next corpse and pushed again.

===

~~a lurid violet light filled the end of the ruined corridor, so bright that her flash filters had triggered and reduced the rest of the scene to a near-ultraviolet monochrome. Things snapped past, the shockwaves of their passage buffeting her body and making nonsense of any orders babbled through her earpiece, while at the core of the maelstrom was a patch of blinding light wrapped in layers of impenetrable~~

Ellisif gasped, surging to her paws, wings churning as they fought for air, and pushed herself into the far wall of the stone chamber. "Maker, no, don't--!" Her eyes opened and she shivered. "Wrong memory," she groaned, foreclaws coming up and rubbing the sides of her head.

So that's what I looked like, Gravity thought, suppressing the grin that threatened to spread across her muzzle. Not appropriate. "The memory was very strong, I'm sorry to bring it back." If she was a pony, she'd have galloped away.

"You made a big impression," Ellisif muttered, slowly walking back to the bed of pine boughs and laying down. "It must be working; it was like I was back in that corridor."

"Gryphon and pony minds are quite similar, more so than those of the dogs, but I have to make adjustments." She sighed, shifting her weight to relocate one of the sharper branches in her own bed. "I've done this plenty of times with ponies, so there's no reason it won't work with a gryphon -- but you do have to focus on the right memories." Or I could go digging for them...

"Right. The main barracks chamber at the Pit, a place I've spent many happy megaseconds," she muttered, then cocked her head sideways, staring at Gravity. "You bombed the place almost to a crater... what happens if the places I remember have collapsed?"

What happens if the destination is already occupied? Gravity thought back to her experiences fighting in the cluttered airspace inside the Security base. There must have been a time when something was in the way -- bomb fragment, railgun round, or just dust. I've never felt any ill effects. She filed away the question as one to ask Fusion, or experiment with later. "I only sealed the entrances. Anyway, I'll check the area by shadow sight to make sure your friends are still there. It's been a day -- you're certain that they won't have been rescued yet?"

"It's not impossible... but from what you showed me, the place is practically a ruin. They might not think anyone survived." The feathers on her head rose a little, and she made a soft, angry sound at the back of her throat. "In any case, with everything Fusion did, they won't prioritise it."

Why is it always 'what Fusion did' -- did I do nothing? Gravity chewed at her lips for a moment, ears folding back, then slumped. "Perhaps it is a good thing that my sister is coming along as well. She's much better at teleportation than I am." Look how fast she emptied Naraka. Her ears pricked up and she smiled slightly, her posture straightening. It will be good to work together for once.

"What?" Ellisif was looking at her nervously.

"Just thinking about something else. Are you ready for another go?"

===

"I'm not very happy with this," Ellisif said, flying to the left and rear of Fusion. "Are you sure you can see where we are going? Also, it's getting a bit warm."

"I can see everything," Fusion said, her eye closed and magic filling her mind with a rapidly moving landscape. The three of them, Gravity, Ellisif and herself, hovered in a teardrop of absolute darkness, like they were sandwiched between dense overcast and an unlit landscape in the middle of the night. The only illumination was the white-gold of her hornlight, leaking between the lids of her eye. Through shadow sight and clairvoyance, it was a different story.

Trees and blunt hills, surrounded by endless fields, flicked by under her hooves at just below the speed of sound. Her view was the perfect clarity of a clairvoyance reception node, stationed just in front of the nested fields that bent the light and held in the heat of their bodies, an electromagnetic singularity from which no photon could escape. The fields were nearly invisible from the outside -- it was as if the node was alone under the dawn sky -- light curved around the magic bubble before carrying on unimpeded. Careful examination showed some traces, but little more than a vague boundary in the air, like subtle heat-haze.

Fusion frowned, adjusting the pressure between the field layers and trying to eliminate the optical effect, while changing the ratio of supply energy towards the local environment rather than the distant sun. Cold snapped through the air, a harsh chill that made the inside of her nose sting and slapped against the bare fur of her flanks. Like Gravity and Ellisif, she was unarmoured; their barding had been returned to the tender care of Redshift, whose look of dismay at the state of it had almost been comical. "Sorry, this isn't easy. Too much to focus on." She relaxed her hold, letting the heat build again.

Ellisif gasped. "That's okay, I'll survive. How much longer?"

"Not much. I can already see some activity around the Pit." This was the first time she'd seen it in person; Gravity had been vague about the extent of the destruction, and they'd not had the chance to repeat their earlier, intensive, sharings. Compared to what she'd seen the day of her visit to Random, the place was nearly dark by shadow sight, only really made visible as a ragged core of blackness against the constellations of light from the surrounding subterranean structures. Except for three patches of gold, spaced equally around the central core. Those look like gryphon wing-lights to you?

That's them! Gravity thought through their sharing, riding Fusion's own senses to see their target. "Ellisif, they seem to be still there, and I can't see much recovery activity."

Yes there is, look, just outside the one on the far side. Two points of pastel light were drifting up and down, the faint glimmers of distant magic flickering between them and the collection of gold lights. They must have spared a couple of ponies for the work--

"Hey, talk to me, you two. What's going on out there?"

"There are two ponies working at one of the barracks-roosts; they will see us if they are using shadow sight."

"How much of a problem will that be?" Ellisif's voice had lost its slightly irritated note and become flat and professional; the tones of one used to giving commands and getting answers.

We should snatch them after we have the gryphons... they'll certainly notice us when we jump into that particular roost. Gravity's thoughts felt sharp, like the mare was leaning forwards, eager to get closer and start work. It would be easy.

"We can avoid them for a while, but the mass teleport is bound to be noticed. They will raise the alarm, but they won't be able to stop us." Imagine what the dogs might do to this place if they think we are here. Perhaps we should take them first. Maker dammit, I wanted this to be quiet!

This from the mare who burned their skies. There was laughter in Gravity's thoughts. It's too late for that.

"Then neutralise them first. A disappearance will be suspicious, but less so than an out-right alert."

"Fine. I'll do it; Gravity, you go in with Ellisif. I'll join you when I'm done." Now I just have to hope they didn't leave any of those teleport detectors nearby. Fusion rolled her wingshoulders, studying the faint traces of magic surrounding the two ponies. She reduced their ground speed to something closer to that of a flying pony, rather than barely subsonic. I'll need to be quick, just in case they feel the jump. It was short range and the disturbance would be minimal, so they shouldn't, but...

The feeling of Gravity's assent trickled back through the sharing, then Ellisif gave a startled squawk and it cut off completely. For a moment, Fusion shivered, feeling very alone, then she accelerated, diving towards the little clusters of pastel lights. The ponies, a stallion and a mare, were hovering next to the wall of the shaft, telekinesis probing the shattered tunnel leading to the furthest barracks-roost. Above and around them, running a mixture of crystal thaumic and mundane recovery equipment, were dogs piloting levitation-drive vehicles and cranes. As the distance rapidly shrank, Fusion started to see motes of light within the complex itself, a mass of rescue teams and smaller mechanisms no doubt working to remove any bodies. Perhaps that's why they left the gryphons... wanted to pull out all the trapped dogs first. It made a kind of sense; the barracks-roosts were almost self-contained fortresses, although designed to keep the gryphons in, rather than an enemy out.

Her magic swept out, and the ponies were suddenly there, wild-eyed statues held immobile by skins of white-gold light within her bubble of darkness. Both whinnied sharply, the sound shockingly loud in the artificial patch of night, but Fusion ignored them and accelerated. She curved away from the Pit, while plucking their comms disks and crushing them until the acrid fumes of shorting superconductors made her nose sting.

A breath later and she was past the ring of support shelters that had sprung up around the edge of the Pit, the wind and sound of her passage damped to little more than a whisper by careful control of airflow. The ponies started to fight, magic reaching out, randomly at first, then with increasing skill and cooperation. The subtle and complex arrangement of fields protecting them faltered, letting in light and air from the outside. "Stop that!" Fusion shouted, suddenly panicking. Still too close!

She fumbled for the spell that Spiral had shown them, trying to activate their somatic responses and drop them into a deep sleep. It didn't work, but did make them switch from trying to break free to fighting off her direct attack. This carried on for a few more seconds, then she pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--the shock of air slamming into her field made Fusion's teeth rattle and her head swim and, just for a moment, she lost her grip on the two ponies. They tumbled free, wailing and whinnying in surprise, then pumped their wings and dove towards the empty mountains below. Their magic flared, reaching out for something, but whatever it was must have been too distant, because the spell pulsed again and again, with increasing desperation. Shaking her head to clear it, Fusion tilted over in the air and dropped far faster than a falling stone, catching the pair before they had gone more than a kilolength. They fought again, this time with real ferocity, but she reached out and smothered their power as if they were weanling foals.

"You're her!" the mare gasped, her eyes rolling. "Let me go!"

What have they been told? "Yes, and I'm sorry," Fusion said, "but I can't, not yet." She carefully felt their heads, searching for that one little green-glowing patch of horn material, then twisted.

"No, please, don't--" The stallion made a choking sound, then froze. "No!" He cried out the word, a long, agonized wail. "It's gone, the Maker is gone!"

This is taking too long! "There is no Maker; everything you know is a lie to maintain the Masters' control over you," Fusion snapped, holding both ponies close. The both gasped, not from the words, but from the sudden iron grip of her telekinesis. Fusion's ears drooped and she nearly let them go. What is this turning me into? Should have brought some of those suppressors. She relaxed her hold a little, allowing the pair to breathe, then folded her wings and wrapped magic around herself--

~~discontinuity~~

--reappearing in a valley, high above the heads of two dozen ponies, all waiting expectantly. "Go!" she shouted, and a little group, led by Redshift, took off, vanishing with flashes of light and thumps of displaced air. She dropped rapidly to the ground, depositing her captives at Backdraft's hooves. "Innocent bystanders; I've removed their Blessing but that's all," she snapped out, jumping back into the air. The predawn air was lit by a multitude of hornlights as her 'catching team' hurriedly latched onto the pair. A familiar stallion, red-coated with a bone-white mane and tail, stepped forwards and swept them with a plane of red light. "Animal Scanner? Is that you?" Fusion said, the return teleport pattern evaporating from her mind.

"After my part in your--" He waved a wing, trying to encompass the whole world. "--thing, they put me in Naraka." His wings slumped, and he looked up at her with forlorn eyes. "I'm sorry I did what I did, but..."

Fusion rebuilt the pattern, holding the magic a hair's-breadth away from the real. How many other ponies were put in that place because of me? "Not your fault," she called down. Even if you nearly killed me twice. She probed the thought, but there was no resentment. I'll talk to him later--

~~discontinuity~~

--if there's ever any time. She felt for Gravity's presence, sighing when the mare responded by opening their sharing. It is done, she thought, inspecting the Pit from within her renewed bubble of twisted air. The vehicles had scattered, the larger ones still lumbering clear of the main shaft. The first of several transports were launching from the small town of temporary structures, the little dots of dogs running into the ones still on the ground. Ah, that's not looking good. Gravity, it didn't work. They are evacuating the site. The seconds ticked by and there was no response, so she moved to get a better look at the barracks-roost her sister had started in. Gravity?

It was worth a try. At least it will bolster Ellisif's arguments. With the thought came a little of Gravity's sensorium, like a window into another room. Mostly dark, lit by green emergency chemlights, the barracks-roost was a hollow, horizontal cylinder lined with sleeping niches everywhere except the zenith and nadir. Behind her was a collapsed section, all tangled reinforcing rods and concrete rubble, while in front were just eyes. Several hundred gryphons were staring back at Gravity, their attention held by the sight of the mare, even with the fight taking place before her.

I like these gryphons -- they have a direct approach to chain-of-command questions. Gravity's mental tone sounded amused.

Ellisif, recognizable by her grey wings and stripy chest, was wrapped around a large female, of white-bronze colouration. For seconds at a time the pair were stationary, then there would be a flurry of violence. She's not trying to use her claws or beak. Fusion blinked, searching the scene for signs of blood. Ellisif had a nasty-looking gash on her back, between the wingroots, but there was nothing on her opponent. She doesn't look like she's losing, but...

The only time I ever actually fought another pony was when we were foals. Wouldn't have dared used magic. Although I was tempted that time you pushed me into the drainage ditch.

Fusion felt a pout stretch her lips, not hers, exactly, but a ghost of a feeling from Gravity, and she grinned. That was mean of me. It took ages with the preening tongs to get all the mud out of your feathers. The fight in the barracks-roost seemed to be reaching some sort of conclusion, as Ellisif gripped her opponent's beak with one set of talons and used it as a lever to twist her head around at an awkward angle. I take it you didn't want to interfere?

Ellisif said I shouldn't, said she'd learned it from you, something about not starting this with a murder. I will if it goes horribly wrong. Everything okay outside? I see a certain amount of activity...

The other ponies are safe, but some sort of alarm has been raised. Might be teleport detectors. After what happened to Naraka, I worry about the dogs' response. Fusion cast out her magic, hunting for the tell-tale signatures of metal moving at high speed. It would have to be more than just conventional explosives... even now, this place is too well built for that. Can I detect those nuclear weapons? She thought back to how the bomb had felt, that point of terrible brightness that held more potential than anything she'd ever seen before.

I've not felt anything like I did after Naraka, but you are right. "Ellisif, we don't have unlimited time here. Stop playing," Gravity called out, her hornlight growing brighter.

The nearest gryphons edged away slightly, revealing what the press of their bodies had hidden. Further down the cylinder was a force-field wall, one of Gravity's, and behind that were hints of movement. The rest of the team is already working, good. At least we'll get something out of this. Fusion relaxed a little, letting more of her attention return to the outside world. The evacuation was nearly complete; the final transports were taking off, ringed by a flock of winged shapes that had to be gryphons. They moved with unnatural speed, wings held stiff and back like they were in a constant dive. Fusion watched the big aircraft leave. I could hold some of them here, perhaps it would make them hesitate... She shook her head. No, it will just add to the body count. She reached out again, feeling past the curve of the world. Nothing. Is that because there is nothing, or because I can't detect it?

"Just give me a--" Ellisif let out a gasp as the other female fastened a set of talons around her right wing elbow, then Ellisif gave a convulsive heave, slamming her opponent's head into the rock floor. Stunned for an instant, Ellisif wriggled free and flipped her over, wrapping her talons about her throat. "That's enough, Halla," she hissed, "yield or I will kill you." Halla closed her eyes and slumped, nodding minutely, and Ellisif pushed her away, standing up to glare at the crowd. "Anyone else?" she demanded.

"It won't make any difference, Ellisif," said the other gryphoness, slowing standing up. "We can't fight the Masters with harsh language." She waved towards the darkened end of the barracks-roost. "Even if you get through the armoury doors, none of the kit will work without command authorisation."

"You never were a good listener, Halla," Ellisif said, her tail lashing. "Anything the dogs make, we can break."

That's my cue. Gravity stepped forwards to stand next to Ellisif. "I have skilled friends who can deactivate the lockout." She tossed her head, horn describing a glowing arc towards the end of the darkened cylinder where, behind the violet-tinged glass wall of her force field, bundles of lumpy shapes were briefly visible before they vanished in pulses of pastel fire. "We are the magic that runs their industry."

Halla lost some of her anger, the glare replaced by a more open-eyed curiosity. "You really believe in this, Ellisif? We've all seen what happens..." she muttered, voice trailing off as she stared, transfixed, by the endless parade of hardware coming from the armoury door.

"I have the best part of a thousand of us, all liberated from Naraka. They want to fight -- you know what happens at that place; the dogs always hold that over our heads -- but they have no experience of soldiery. You..." She brought both wings forwards and spread them wide. "You are some of the best that Lacunae has to offer. You can make this work." Her beak opened and her eyes glittered, voice dropping to a low hiss. "We can carve out a nation for ourselves, take what the dogs owe us for our gigaseconds of service."

There was a low rumble of approval from the audience but it was distracted, their attention split between Ellisif and the magical theft taking place behind them. Good enough, Gravity thought. "Excellent! As you are all in agreement, I will start sending you somewhere safer. When you arrive you will be going fast -- keep your wings in and eyes closed, otherwise you will break something." The mutterings changed tone, hints of fear colouring the indistinct words. Ignoring this, she picked up the first batch, perhaps forty gryphons, and held them in the hollow core of the barracks-roost.

"What do you mean, fast? How is it safe to make us disappear, how do we know where we are going--?" one of them called out, his voice tight and high.

"Conservation of momentum," Gravity said cheerfully, then smiled broadly. "You don't, and that's because you don't need to know." The teleport spell's pattern bloomed, swirling to fill in her mind with complex violet fractals. "...and anywhere is safer than here, because the dogs are going to nuke this place as soon as they can."

"How do you know tha--" The voice cut off in a pulse of violet light.

"Next!" Gravity said. As if you've got any choice.

Fusion sighed, turning her attention outwards again. How long would it take to get a weapon here? Gravity has not felt anything moving above the atmosphere, so that means something close to the ground, lost amid the mass of the planet. There was very little moving anywhere; all the normal high-altitude aircraft seemed to have vanished since her destruction of the satellites, and only the deep tunnels retained their normal flow of lights. She tracked the last of the departing transports as they fled over the horizon. Something else, then. Something I missed, or didn't consider. She gnawed at her bottom lip, turning wide circles over the heart of the pit, a giant, snow-white vulture floating over a carcass. Something... closer?

Deep below, under the layers of wreckage that choked the half-open doors at the bottom of the shaft, past the now-empty hangar decks, were layers upon layers of filmy violet light. The scale of it confused her for a moment, then something Olvir had said, a seeming lifetime ago when she came to visit Random, made her gasp. Superconductors... the whole place is built on a massive power reserve. Too busy to see it when I was here before. Fusion tried to calculate the potential storage capacity of a system that large, and came up with a number that only made sense if used with scientific notation.

Dropping down below the lip of the Pit, Fusion spiralled closer, tracing the oversized coils of exotic-element cable. Gravity, stop being subtle, we have a problem. Amid the kilolengths of wire were control, routing and safety units, built on the same gargantuan scale as the rest of the system. Something was changing their configuration, taking the massively parallel power storage coils and linking them together into one single network. It's not happening that fast, thank the Maker, Fusion thought privately. It's not designed to do this. If it had, she'd never have noticed in time; the sabotage would have rippled through the network at the speed of electrons in a vacuum.

They are coming?

Gravity sounded distracted, and there was leakage from another gryphon's mind, one Fusion didn't know, but the memories held traces of another barracks-roost. They are turning the whole place into a bomb. I think I can slow them down. She dropped through a smashed opening in the hangar's shield doors, settling on a platform large enough to hold an airtank. There was little magic and almost the same amount of electronics active in the area, so she relaxed her defences, plying her whole mind to the problem below.

Right! There was a sense of enormous volume to the words associated with the thoughts, likely deafening in the enclosed space. No more dam nicepony -- Redshift, if you don't already have it, leave it. Take your team and run. I'll grab whole chunks of the room if I have to. Gryphons, stay where you are and don't move. Ellisif--

Fusion tuned out the thoughts associated with Gravity's shouts, leaving only a sense of distant urgency, just enough to tell her that Gravity was still connected. The superconducting network spread out below her, visible to her energy-sensitive shadow sight even with the intervening lengths of shielded armourcrete. It was fantastically complex, orders of magnitude more so than the storage banks of the airtank she'd detonated. I suppose I should be grateful this didn't go up when I was here the first time. So now we do the opposite... She sighed, tracing the wiring loom and locating the blocky control nodes with their ultrafast superconducting switches.

There were the core nodes, already linked in a dangerously open topology. Here were the relief cables, running to heatsinks immersed within deep, flooded geological features, designed to safely dump the stored power, but disconnected. There was a charging point, a tap into the Hive's main grid and banks of distant fusion reactors, still alive with light and pumping energy into the store. The magnetically-generated hoop stress within the coils was already past their design strengths, revealed by the tiny flickers of microquenches like the glitter of sunlight off fresh snow. Any one of those could blossom, spreading like a spark igniting a gas cloud, only held in check by the self-healing properties of the exotic-element wiring.

The breath caught in her throat, and she reached out to the feeder lines, tripping the emergency breakers and destroying them so thoroughly that they vapourised under the sudden load. The cables pumping more power into the Pit went dark and she breathed again as there was no cascading energy release passed on to the main storage banks. If I could only do the same everywhere else! It was one thing to break a distant node, but such tactics within the fragile network were bound to be catastrophic.

Hesitant, Fusion felt for the node junctions, flinching when the one she was reaching for suddenly activated as her power wrapped around it. The current flows surged, following new paths, and the background sparkle of impending disaster became more apparent. Have to start somewhere! Spreading herself thin, all attention on the network, Fusion closed her eyes and sank to her belly on the platform, ignoring the sharp-edged gravel digging into her flesh. Under her influence, one node, then another, flipped state, bleeding power down the emergency lines and into the submerged heatsinks. Somewhere under her hooves, a patch of fractally textured metal glowed white-hot, filling the cold, water-filled trap formation with short-lived steam bubbles.

===

"This one is still detecting teleport signatures from within the Security Hub," said the technical specialist, a pale, grey-coated male. He sat amid his colleagues, all who were feverishly working to destabilise the Pit's superconducting storage banks. "The rate has increased; targets are aware."

Orgon pushed backwards slightly in his oversized acceleration couch, bracing his paws against the chair's lower supports as the carrier made another swerve. "Why has the system not quenched yet?" The screen containing the power systems specialists was one of many arrayed around his position; the others in the u-shaped console showed in his technical group

"Something is reversing the changes these ones are making to the network topology--"

"Power dump started!"

"Then stop it!" the Specialist snarled, his head snapping around and glaring at his team. "Burn the connecting nodes out of the network!" He turned back to Orgon, although reluctantly, as if drawn to the activity by elastic. "It must be the servitor Fusion Pulse. This one was told it was an energy manipulation specialist, although to do what it is doing at this range..." He shook his head.

"Can the system be quenched or not?" Orgon made a few gestures over the console's input pad, bringing his connection to the strategic battle networks to the fore. More commands, and he received an acknowledgement back. Just like Naraka, he thought sourly, the weapons will never get there in time. It is such a waste to bomb these places just to show the Court that Lacunae is serious. "Well?" he said, paw hovering over the 'commit' key.

"Yes..." the Specialist said, in a drawn-out hiss. "The servitor cannot keep up with all of us; the system is just too complex for a single mind." He glanced down, making a few adjustments to his own console, then swore softly. "This one is sorry, Strategist," he said, ears drooping and a note of panic entering his voice, "but there are no more teleport signatures coming from the Pit. He thinks they have escaped--" He broke off when one of the other specialists gestured at their main display, currently awash with glaring red warnings from all the disabled safety systems. "--although something is still resisting these one's actions, so at least one servitor must still be close, within a few hundred lengths. This one thinks it's about to--"

The screens at the technician's site changed in a rolling cascade of updates, mostly in the form of 'connection lost' icons. "And the yield?" Orgon said calmly, cancelling the launch orders. At least we didn't waste a nuke. Perhaps we did get one of them.

"The energy levels are about equivalent to half a megaton, but this one is no weapon physicist. He suspects that the longer timeframe of the explosion will reduce the terminal effects..."

The technician was still talking, but Orgon was already working on his report to the Auditors. Half a megaton should do it, this one thinks. It will be a relief to report a success.

===

Whoever was remote-controlling the network finally noticed her intrusion. The rate of changes suddenly multiplied, the relatively slow and careful alterations becoming frenetic. Fusion galloped after them, reversing as many as she could find and opening more links to the emergency systems and funnelling all she could into the water. Somewhere in all this mess were the control lines the other party was using, but that tiny amount of power, an infinitesimal fraction of the amount it was controlling, was lost amid the distance and the glare of countless terajoules.

Part of the network dimmed and went dark, the circulating currents stilled and quiet. Yes, that's it, I can-- Fusion whinnied, the sound high and fragile, dread making her stomach contract. The patch of darkness was carefully isolated from the bulk of the network, all the connecting nodes routing power around her drain point. She reached for them, trying to reopen the junctions, but the mechanisms, solid state superconducting switches, had all quenched and the current flowed past like a river in full flood bypassing a clogged drain.

I can't stop it. The thought rattled around her head, even as she fought to split the network back into smaller segments. Her opposition was just faster, and the massively parallel nature of the network dwindled, the topologies becoming simpler and simpler as safety mechanisms were overridden faster than she could fix them. Gravity, get out! Other systems came alive, secondary power feeds from the Hive's main grid like the one she'd killed at the start, blazing purple with the energy they pumped into the storage banks.

What about you? With the words came a brief flicker of imagery, the hollow cylinder barracks-roost flooded with violet light. She'd moved to the third and final chamber and was surrounding by screaming, panicking gryphons. Some were trying to attack -- rocks and other missiles rained down on Gravity's impenetrable force field -- while others had hidden in the many sleeping niches that lined the structure, only to be dragged, claws bleeding and ripped, from their refuges. The stroboscopic flicker of teleport magic filled the air, making every movement jerky and mechanical.

I'll go as soon as you are safe -- can't leave it alone or it will detonate at once. Get out! Fusion suppressed a whimper, opening the same internal reservoir she'd used before, sucking the power into herself, trying to blunt the onrushing tide of energy. Sweat burst out from her skin, immediately drenching her flanks, and Fusion felt a fire kindle in her head. Time started to stretch as it had during her other intense magical efforts, the tempo of her thoughts outracing the frantic flutter of her heart; Fusion tried to hold on to it, use it. The faster I go, the slower the world, perhaps enough time to find a solution-- There was a surge of magic from Gravity, then the comforting presence vanished and she was alone.

Fusion reached for the teleport pattern, not caring where she came out, but the effort required to keep the inrushing power in check made her mind hazy. The complex arrangement of abstract images that acted as a template for the spell fuzzed and pulsed in time with the surges of mundane energy, refusing to solidify for the moment it would take her to turn it real.

I've left it too long. The fire in her head spread down her throat and filled her body, like drinking burning ants from an irrigation hose. Her influence over the network below became erratic and she fell further and further behind her enemy. Then there was no more room for the flood of power and her magic stalled.

In that brief moment of distraction, the background glitter of microquenches abruptly intensified. Then one particular point bloomed into a wave of terrible brightness that swept through the network in the blink of an eye.

Still lying on the rubble-strewn launching platform, Fusion let go of all her complex magic and disappeared behind concentric layers of force. Telekinesis reached out, pulling limbs in and fighting against the limitations of mere physical objects, then weaving through the flesh until it was as hard as armour ceramic. All the power she'd so desperately pulled away from the storage banks started to escape, blasting out as random kicks of momentum and, half-conscious, she steered the release, venting most of it straight down.

Below her the armourcrete floor dissolved into hot, white light, and Fusion rode into the sky just ahead of the shockwave.

===

No Fusion and no Gravity. There may never be another chance.

The outside world, filled to bursting with the familiar pastel colours of a multitude of ponies, more ponies than Random had ever seen together before. She took one step, then two, leaving the empty chamber she was sharing with her dam and sire, dragging one hoof after another like they were shod with lead. Hugging the wall, the many bodies flowing past her like she was a rock in a stream, she headed for the ramp to the surface. Blank-faced, she ignored the uncertain looks and occasional questioning comment from the nearest ponies, and they soon left her alone.

I must look like a broken toy, she thought, stumbling over her own hooves and falling into the slick rock wall. The idea made her smile, but the feeling was strange, an alien sensation of flesh stretching over bone, so she stopped. I passed all the Master's tests, and for what? To be trapped here amid all these other broken toys. She stared at the faceless mass of equinity, losing herself in the endless variation of colours, sizes and scents. Most of them just hide it better than I do.

For an instant, she saw another pony like herself, a stallion walking like she was. Clockwork, jerky movements, like a foal's puppet pulled about by magic and dancing to some distant, uncaring power. She stared into his eyes, but there was no recognition, no hint of change in expression, and the press of bodies swept between them and he was gone. How many more are as far gone as I am? Now she was really looking, she could see the others, and those not so badly affected. The twitches and flinches whenever somepony nearby moved unexpectedly, or at the sharp sound of a hoof striking stone. There was chatter, a continuous background murmur of conversation, but it was sparse compared what she'd know in the corral. There was little laughter, and that had a strained, hysterical note.

Look what you have done to us, Fusion. All these ponies were happy in the Master's care, and all you have done is make their lives uncertain and miserable. The miracle was that more were not like herself, or that poor stallion; ponies so damaged by what had been done to them that they could barely function. Most of them look focused, but on what? Probably on how to redeem themselves. Random whinnied, the sound quiet and thin, then clamped down on the utterance, lest it bubble forth into laughter. Or screams, she thought, stilling her convulsing throat.

I can fix this. I can fix all of this. I just need to--

"Random?"

She froze, breath stopping in her throat. "Hello, Packet," she said, voice sounding dull even to her own ears. She twisted her muzzle, trying to recapture that feeling of stretched flesh that meant smile. There was obviously something strange about what she'd done, because Packet's ears went up and he took a step backwards.

"Are... are you okay?"

No! No I'm not, I'm surrounded by traitors! "I'm fine. Just want to see the sky. Can't stand being inside for so long." She let her face go slack, turning away.

He stepped closer, ruffling his wings. "I know. It's not natural, a pony being underground like this. Hey, we never really talked last time... do you want some company?"

No. "Sure, if you like." Maybe I can convince him, after everything Fusion did... and it's not like he can stop me.

He stood next to her, flank to flank, tentatively laying one wing across her back. Random flinched, then leaned into his shoulder. Packet inhaled sharply, letting the air out with a hiss. "Steady, I'm not healed yet," he said, forelegs shifting.

Random mumbled a near silent apology, and the pair started to walk, heading for the ramp carved in the walls of a wide vertical shaft that went nearly all the way to the surface. Nopony else was using the ramp; ponies and gryphons either dropped straight down the centre, wings flicking as they dumped air, or spiral-flew their way up the outside. Random kept her eyes averted, trying to bury her denuded wings under her own fur.

After that, the tunnel to the outside was straight, ending in a heavily forested slope halfway up the side of a glacial valley. Down, past tangles of gullies choked with branches and boulders, was the torrent that carved the valley, but Random turned up, to where the trees thinned out and were replaced with alpine shrubs and naked rock. The sun shone on those slopes, and there was a clear view of the sky. That's all I need.

"It must have been a terrible thing, to discover so much was changed. I remember when Fusion tried to convince me she was right... it what just her, Gravity and Spiral back then." There was pain in his voice, but he kept walking over the rough ground, wings beating occasionally to help with tricky spots. "Now look at how many she has."

So my dam was involved, right from the start. Random's ears folded back, just for a moment, and she forced back the feeling of impotent rage. How could she do this to me?

"Naraka, though... I can understand why a pony would lose faith in the Masters after being through that. Did... did you get a chance to talk to any of the other ponies while you were there?"

"No."

Packet said nothing else as they climbed, eventually passing the tree line and entering an area of low, stunted bushes and cushion-like plants. Unconsciously, body on autopilot, she sampled little nips of vegetation as she passed. Finally at the top of the ridge, she turned to face the sun, a distant and cold-seeming thing, more like the glitter of a diamond than something with any power to give warmth to the world. Random leaned against a rock, bringing up the spell Orgon's servitor had shown her. I can do it right now...

She hesitated, watching Packet as he picked his way up the slope. Why doesn't he just fly? The question had no answer, until she remembered the looks and touches he'd given her, those little acts of kindness which suddenly felt like they meant something more. She wrinkled her muzzle, tasting the idea. He knows I can't fly, so he’s staying on the ground with me, despite how much it must hurt. You are a good pony, Packet, and you deserve to be saved.

Finally, his flanks damp with sweat, Packet stood next to her in the lee of the boulder, looking out over the landscape of wrinkled, knife-like ridges and dark forest-choked valleys. This wasn't the highest point by any means -- to the right the ridge continued upwards to one of many snowy peaks -- but the view in all other directions was open and endless. Random closed her eyes, then opened them, holding her head still and pointing in the direction of the rising sun. It was harder to cast this way, especially unfamiliar magic, but the Sector Chief's servitor had been quite specific. Why does she need me to see the sun? "Thank you, Packet. I didn't want to do this alone." The spell's pattern unfolded in her mind, and she fed power into it.

"Do what?" he said, sides heaving. A sudden look of panic filled his features and he glanced from her ruined wings to the steep drop on the other side of the ridge. "You are not going to do anything silly, are you? No problem is so bad that a friend can't help you through it."

Random laughed once, and explosive, shocked sound, then she leaned forwards and pressed her neck against his. "Is that what you thought? That I was going to throw myself off this mountain?" The glow of her horn intensified and there was a feeling of connection, much in the same way as a sharing, but not to the soft and fuzzy touch of a pony's mind. It's like clairvoyance, she thought, lifting her head and staring at the world over Packet's back, only in reverse and I'm the anchor. "I'm going to save as many of you as I can."

He reared up, wings beating as he backed away. His horn glowed, the magic lashing out to interfere with her own. "What have you done, Random? What have you done!?"

"The Masters will come and everything will be right again." She looked up at him, not trying to fight off his power. It is done; now I just have to convince him so he can be safe. "They told me what happened; Fusion was driven mad by an accident. You've seen her -- isn't it obvious that she's not a normal pony?"

He circled her, wings beating with short, sharp strokes. "But the sharings... surely you've seen the things that have happened? Naraka, for the Maker's sake!"

"I'm not letting that pony into my head!" Random shivered, then turned and paced in a small circle, hooves slipping on the scree. "She's done something to you all, and I won't let it happen to me. I'm a teacher-trainee, Packet, it's my job to invent things for foals in sharings. All this... this horror is the product of her insanity. Look how much she's twisted Gravity -- she's got to be stopped."

"Of all the stupid things to believe-- Do you really think she could have invented all of this, and gotten to everypony? How long has she been here, Random? You should have talked to the others from Naraka." Packet pawed at the air, ears back and teeth bared, then folded his wings and dove back down the valley. "You've killed us all!" he cried, the words ripped and distorted by speed.

Random sighed, tasting the rapidly fading signature of Packet's magic as he tried to contact somepony inside the base. "Packet, I thought after what Fusion did to you, that you at least would understand," she said softly. Brow furrowed, she thought back to the vacant expression on the stallion she'd seen in the corridor. It must be that, some side effect of what Fusion does to a pony to make them turn away from the Masters. She bit down on the end of her tongue, hoping the pain would bring clarity. But all those ponies have only been here for a day or two, and I've only seen her briefly.

She whinnied softly, a sad and lonely sound amid the rocks, then her ears drooped. What if she's right? What will the Masters do when they get here?

24 - Half Emm Vee Squared

Author's Note

A crude dramatis personæ can be found here.
Preread by: turol and KMCA.
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and Caliaponia (Just Passing Through).

24 - Half Emm Vee Squared

--a dark and distant hilltop. There were ponies present, all ones he recognized, and two that were familiar-yet-different. A sick feeling of anticipation, masked by brusque rudeness and a sense of rising power--

--unfamiliar magic, learned by rote, that did unidentifiable things to a cube of solid-state hardware near the top of the Church. "That's it," he said, keeping the note of uncertainty from his voice. "The labournet connection is--"

"Too far, go back," Merlon whispered, pushing away the emotions that came with the sharing. "I don't care what happened at the corral. I want to know how you got there."

--terrible brightness and heat at his back, the flat farmland below illuminated as if by the noon-day sun. Wings folded, he fell, trying to escape. A complex, long-practiced spell pattern filled his mind, parts of it altering to match his position in the naked now, then a push--

The remembered details flicked by too fast to follow, but Merlon was starting to get a sense of how the spell operated. "That's good," she whispered, muzzle close to Scalar's ear. "Show me another jump, somewhere else."

"You've seen them all," he said, voice trembling. "My mate, you said that--"

"In time, Scalar, in time. Show me your practice sessions again... that one where Redshift was playing with the gun." Merlon kept her voice calm and quiet, trying to push away the emotions that came back down the sharing link with Scalar. Horror and panic blended with flashes of imagery, little snippets of memory of ponies Scalar knew, but mostly of Elliptic and what life would be like without her. Merlon swallowed and opened her eyes, dispelling the visions. The magic she was using to control the injured mare's heart was still there, and the loss of the other distractions made it impossible not to stare at her. Must follow my orders; this pony's life is not important. She kept the thought hidden, separated from the sharing's residual connection.

"I can teach you the pattern directly... it would be much quicker." His head twisted and his nostrils flared, all senses focused on the still form of Elliptic.

"Yes, but I need to see your memories first. Can't have any accidental mistakes in the pattern, can we?" Merlon thought she'd kept her voice level and even, but it sounded tense and unnatural to her ears. Is this what an interrogator feels? I know my Master has done this many times in his past... how can they do this and not be affected? She shifted her weight, ears drooping slightly. This mare has done nothing wrong, and I am using her like she is a thing. Even Scalar isn't really at fault, just... contaminated by these bad ideas.

"All you have to do is forget about her -- what could I do?"

A whining tone had entered Scalar's voice, and Merlon sighed as the flow of memories wavered. "Focus!" she snapped. "The sooner I am happy, the sooner you will be. A foal could see that I can't keep up a second spell during a jump." More mental prodding and the scene changed again, and Merlon compared the start and end points to the changes in the patterns used. It's true; there are memories of places encoded in the patterns. Even if I don't know where the rogues are hiding, I could travel there. Scalar's recollections of the base were quite clear, more than clear enough to build the required patterns. "Right. Now you can show me the details." Scalar's horn flashed and Merlon flinched, but he didn't try anything rash. "Carefully, Scalar, carefully."

"Yes," he whispered, eyes closed. "You don't have to remind me what's at stake. I think you have most of it, the actual complexity is here, at the central node, but at least it's constant..." He kept talking, manipulating the pattern and allowing her to follow along, until her copy of it was a perfect match. "...and that's it. There, you have everything I know. Try the spell, you'll see that it works." His voice became raw and trembling, an alien thing to come from such a stoutly-built pony. "Elliptic, you promised."

"Yes." Merlon replaced the suppressor unit on his horn, ignoring the look of panic, then gently lifted the mare from the floor, bringing her up to head height. A flick of magic and her interventions were gone; Elliptic's heart beat on without her input, still a little weak. "The thing is... I still don't really trust you. I've seen inside your head, and I know how much you hate what I've made you do. This spell needs a live test subject." She looked down at him, then back at Elliptic. "Are you sure there's nothing you might have forgotten to mention? Some detail that wasn't obvious from my inspection?" She cocked her head, making Elliptic rotate slowly.

"Use me, not her. The first jump can be rough," he said, the muscles around his withers bunching and flexing in a futile effort to escape his bonds. "Elliptic is too badly hurt, the shock might kill her."

Merlon opened her mouth, then looked at him thoughtfully. "You wouldn't be trying to die, would you, Scalar?" Would he do that? Some hidden defect in the spell that only affects complex living tissue... "This is an issue of trust," she said, then shook her head.

"I told you the truth," he said numbly. "It will work, I promise."

There was fear in his eyes, but no more than might be expected for the situation. "I hope so, Scalar, for your mate's sake." She took her test pattern and pushed.

===

It is a good thing that this job never encouraged a home life, Orgon thought, keeping his face blank through long habit, even though he was alone. The endless lists of command decisions, meetings and political compromises that had consumed what passed for his life since his 'promotion' were a matter of record, some public, most utterly secret, and filled his secure calendar further than he cared to look.

He made an unconscious gesture, one intended to signal to his servitor, then sighed and opened his medical kit instead. This one could just do with a correction to his somatic system, rather than... Extracting a spray, he glanced at the warning decals and ignored them with a grimace. Eyes closed, he fired a dose onto his tongue, fighting to keep a straight face at the sudden, intense burst of bitterness. Running on two doses already, the taste of the third was so horrible as to leave him weak and trembling; with enormous effort he resisted the urge to scrub at his muzzle with both paws.

The weakness faded, leaving behind a feeling of wondrous clarity and strength, such energy that he felt the sudden desire to get up from his desk and pace vigorously around the blank office he'd commandeered in the anonymous depths of Arcology Five. Orgon wonders if Merlon has made any prog--

The communicator chimed, an urgent message pushing aside all the nested data windows of the command network's information feed that covered the wall screen. The information was simple: a servitor designator and a set of coordinates with a circular error. Orgon gaped at the information, mind running in a dozen directions simultaneously, then his jaws snapped shut. It actually worked! Now, what to do with the information...

The drugs were still making his mind jump randomly; Orgon was familiar enough with the effects of the cocktail of stimulants to be wary of any decisions made under their influence, but there was an interesting thread of logic that just wouldn't die, despite the unthinkable nature of it. These ones have no choice, not really, but this path of extreme military force is unlikely to succeed. What chance is there that we even caught one of them in the induced quench at Hub Twelve, no matter what this one told the Auditors? They move too fast... even the slightest warning and they will get away.

He ran his tongue over his teeth, trying to wipe off the residual taste of the stimulant's anti-addiction compounds. Orgon got the Court on-side with openness about the servitor problem; now that these ones actually have a location, he does not think using it will actually be useful...

Orgon is the only one who knows this information; he could not pass it on... He frowned, then stabbed at a couple of controls, drumming his claws on the desk while waiting for connections to be made to the dispersed and hidden members of the Synod core group. The first few connections opened, showing Councillors in various states of dishevelled undress. This one supposes it is pretty late. Orgon hid the urge to smile manically, lips twitching back from his teeth momentarily. Or early.

"Councillors," Orgon said quietly, "apologies for the early call, but this one has the location of the rogue servitors."

"Then tell the Court!" Indutu said sharply. "Rid us of this threat and get the Auditors out of our fur!"

"There may be another way, Councillor. This one thinks that there is too much risk that use of the Hammer will not achieve the goal we seek." Orgon stared at the faces of the Synod; all looked back at him with disbelief and mounting anger. "Consider this, please. The servitors are just too mobile to guarantee killing all of them. If these ones fail to kill the primary targets... well, imagine the excesses of the Maker's Path committed on a scale to encompass whole arcologies."

Half the Synod started shouting and he muted them, continuing to talk. "This one believes that the risk is too great without trying to bottle them up first. The current iteration of Arclight is not sufficient, but this one is working to understand how the teleport magic functions." Merlon must have made some progress by now! "Once he has that, the servitors can be trapped and eliminated, no matter their level of personal power." They do not trust this one's skill in this matter, he thought, surveying the faces again and feeling faintly ill.

The Synod didn't take long to reach a consensus; Orgon kept his features expressionless while they overrode his advice and ordered the strike anyway.

===

Chau looked again at the launch order, then lifted his eyes to meet the gaze of his supervisor, Arturon, the Strategist in charge of the Lunar Kinetic Driver. Behind Arturon, visible through the wide, thick windows, the ranks of accelerator rings marched in a long line towards the horizon, amid a plain of matte-black photovoltaic cells. A blurred pulse of silver, little more than a momentary flicker so brief that it was almost invisible, swept through the centre of the rings. More visible was the tiny ripple of dust that followed the projectiles, like glowing fog in the harsh Celestia-light, kicked up from the moon's surface by the shivering vibrations running down the accelerator loop's support struts.

"Target is above the horizon. These ones have a firing solution that avoids anything large enough to be a problem," he said, dropping his gaze to the banks of displays, filled with high-level summaries from the cubic kilolengths of machinery ringing the moon. "Projectile package has left the low-orbit storage loop and is in the main accelerator. The power sequence has started."

Arturon leaned forwards, studying the display. "Launch position in... nine hundred seconds." The main display showed a high-level schematic, a section through the moon looped with strings of tiny rings and vertical lines that penetrated deep into the mantle. A dash of red light was moving through one of the loops, visibly accelerating as it did so.

"Yes. The automatic sequencer is running on the exit magnets and these ones can fire on any pass. Kinetic accumulators are fully charged and responding as expected; the capacitor banks are cycling. There is sufficient reserve to achieve launch. Feed from the equatorial PV belt is coming online to lift the drop masses back into position--" It's not like those crustal pits don't store enough gravitational potential energy for dozens of full-power shots, Chau thought, suppressing a sigh. One of the more pointless procedures. "--and Defence reports no incursions within our perimeter; antiproton traps are filling from cryogenic storage. Thaumic suppression is stable." His paws shook slightly as they swept across the board, requesting another series of radar pulses directed deeper down the gravity well.

The view was already cluttered, and getting worse. The ablation cascade, started on the other side of the planet, had spread rapidly as a result of wildly different velocities of debris scattered across the range of affected orbital altitudes, and was now a lethal blanket over the whole globe. A few of those high-velocity fragments were from the last planned resupply launch, an event that should take place once every ten days. There's something stupid about only having fifty days of food, Chau thought, switching away from the down-well view. There'd been no replacement cargo launches since the disaster, and the Court's own food reserves had already been moved to war-footing rationing. It's just more standard procedure... nothing to worry about.

Cameras on the accelerator rings captured images of the projectile package as it passed. Slender darts tapering to needle points fore and aft, the early weapons in the string were small compared to rings they flew through, looking like nails dropping through circles of drainage pipe. Frozen by the imaging system, and individually little bigger than a Person, the three formations of ten darts were high-performance missiles in their own right, complete with hybrid liquid-solid fuel motors and a full suite of sensors and ECM.

"Telemetry is good; all birds report successful integration of the atmospheric penetration plan," Chau muttered. "Self-destruct charges are primed." The camera view changed, the individual images from each ring strung together to produce a video feed, as if taken from a camera being accelerated with the weapons. It was an odd way to view the world; the rings and projectiles appeared stationary while the landscape outside flickered past. At the moment they were on the night side, and Chau could see the motion of distant debris-ring objects as they rose and set with stately grace.

The view changed, showing another needle, but this one closer to the size of a levitation train. The best part of ten thousand tonnes of iron with a tungsten core, coated with a thick layer of ablative silicates, the thing was bone-white under the glare of the camera strobes. It was a much simpler machine than the missiles that were designed to protect it; little more than dumb mass.

The view behind the projectile suddenly became a brilliant glare of distant mountains and foreshortened craters, all steadily moving past the apparently stationary accelerator track. The closest features were already reduced to a series of brief impressions, and in any case consisted mainly of a grid of black PV cells. Chau studied the feed, paws unconsciously clenched. "It's hard to believe that the decision to fire is coming from Lacunae itself," he muttered. "This one doesn't think the Court has ever fired the Hammer at full power against a ground target. To call it down on your own lands..."

"No. Even during the Baur-Lacunae war the shots were only at twenty percent," the Strategist said quietly. Outside the window something flickered past, raising another, slightly larger, ripple of dust.

"That's the first circuit... velocity is now seventy-five kilolengths a second," Chau said, running claws through his whiskers. "Forty-five to go."

===

Merlon gently peeled the now-inactive field dressings from Elliptic's shoulder, probing the extent of her injuries, and noting the locations of blood vessels only partially repaired by the simple magic. They kept her alive for long enough, she thought, mind half directed towards her labournet communicator. My Master isn't answering, and he needs to know this. Frowning, she examined the random patches of singed fur on the mare's coat, using a wad of dressing material to wipe away the char. Scalar was right, it was tricky. The first jump had nearly gone badly wrong when she'd had a flutter of doubt during the casting, but the second and third had been better. The fourth she'd cast on herself.

"Is she okay?" Scalar whispered, the strain in his voice obvious.

"Elliptic has lost a bit more fur, but that's all." She picked up a plastic pouch of blood substitute and connected the intravenous line. "Now that I've stopped the worst of the bleeding the extra fluids will reverse her shock."

"Thank you," he breathed, the words a sob and tears soaking the fur of his muzzle. "Thank you."

I have saved her only for you both to be euthanized later. At least it won't hurt. The thought made Merlon flinch at the anticipation of Punishment, then tears pricked at her own eyes. ...and what about me? It seemed like a necessary act at the time, but what happens next? Will they allow me to receive a second Blessing? Security burned its own ponies out of simple suspicion. She snorted, shaking her head hard enough that her mane whipped from side to side, delivering stinging slaps on her neck. No, I am still loyal. My Master will understand this. She shifted her weight from hoof to hoof, heart beating a little faster. I think.

She repeated the connection request to her labournet communicator, swallowing hard when there was no response. Despite what I know, I am only a servitor. Am I being denied access because of this? What else is happening that could be more important?

There was a sudden ping of sound, seeming to originate from the centre of her own head, then the comms panel in the room lit up, showing the face of Strategist Orgon. His gaze seemed distracted, constantly shifting to one side. "Servitor, report," he said curtly.

Merlon blinked, momentarily at a loss for words. "Master, I..." A look of irritation flashed across Orgon's face; she flinched, but there was no pain. I will never get used to that. "I have the teleport spell, Master. With it I can locate the rogues’ base of operations."

"Tell this one the location," Orgon snapped.

"I will have to travel there; if provided with navigation equipment I will be able to--"

"No, that will take too long. This one already knows where it is, he just wanted confirmation. Random Walk has used the spell. Does the pony have any insight into how the teleport magic may be blocked?"

"Yes, the magic is fragile and--"

"Can this be done over a wide area, and quickly? As in right now?"

"I, ah..." Merlon's mouth opened, but no other words came out. She shook, mane whipping back and forth. "Master, there may be a way to modify Arclight to blanket a large area, but that will take time and I don't know how--"

Orgon made a deep bubbling hiss, almost a snarl. "Not soon enough, then. The pony will discuss its findings with a Security technical team. Leave the prisoners and go to the Sector Eleven Hub." He nodded once, then turned his full attention on her. "Is there any other information that the pony thinks this one needs to know?"

Merlon realised that she was staring back open-mouthed. The words were there in her head-- I removed my own Blessing. --but they wouldn't come out. "No, Master," she said, "nothing that cannot wait." She watched him carefully, examining the cant of his ears and the arrangement of his whiskers. He must see it, he must know! But there was nothing, no change in expression, no hint of realisation or dawning horror that said she'd been found out, that she'd turned herself into a monster. The connection went blank as Orgon dropped the link, leaving her staring at the default Security logo.

"I am a good pony, but I didn't tell him. Why didn't I tell him?" she murmured, then walked slowly to the door of the interrogation suite, intent on telling the Intelligence officers that she had finished with the prisoners, but she paused, ears suddenly flat back. "Did I do all this, cut myself away from the Master's herd, for nothing?! He already knew!" Merlon's eyes went wild, lips pulling back from her teeth, and she gave a little rear, forehooves beating at the air. "I know what Security has done to ponies even suspected of contact with the rogues--" Her mouth snapped shut and she glanced at the stallion, still bound to the interrogation bench.

Scalar gave a short, harsh laugh. "They'll kill you, they'll kill all of us." His voice dropped to a mumble. "At least it's not me who's gotten everypony killed; still should have had the courage to keep quiet. I'm sorry, Elliptic, but I failed." His mouth worked. "How did the dogs find us?"

The extra insult, on top of her rage, nearly translated into a vicious kick of telekinesis that would have caved the stallion's skull in. Breathing heavily through flared nostrils, Merlon closed her eyes and held back the power. "If you are trying to get me to kill you, remember I can make you suffer in other ways," she said at last.

But it's not Scalar you are angry at, is it? The nasty, unthinkable thought wouldn't go away, following her as she left the stallion to the Intelligence officers, rattling around her brain as she flew to her next assignment.

===

Fusion blinked, sluggishly opening her eye, then closed it again against the fast-moving blast of air and the stinging whip of pink mane-hair. Her whole body felt heavy, every muscle loose and rubbery, like she was a toy held in the magic of a yearling. Eye opening again, just a slit this time, she looked upwards, past the mad flutter of pink mane and streaming tail, past stretched-out wings and floppy legs. The wind was a dirty brown-grey colour, like that of wood ash and dirt, and was staining her white coat the same colour everywhere it touched.

She inhaled sharply, then coughed; the air was hot on the insides of her muzzle, and seemed too thin while still full of particles. I'm hot. Why is it so hot? Heat radiated down from above, like the brutal beat from an open furnace door. Weak magic kindled, building a bubble of clear air around her head and allowing Fusion to breathe. Still not enough air. Eyes closed, she tried to grab hold of the thought; the idea seemed very important, but it wasn't clear why. The air is too thin. I can fix that, she thought muzzily.

A few moments of concentrated thought and some false starts later, Fusion pulled together another spell, one that she'd used for atmospheric lensing, and increased the pressure around her body. Focus and clarity emerged a breath later, the haze in her mind swept away by the hot, dry air. Falling... She reached out for the sun, letting the connection snap open and fill her body with a warmth so unlike the heat from above. A flick of a wing and Fusion was nose down in the slipstream, slight movements of her feathers curving her plummet and damping her speed.

I'm falling through the stem of the mushroom cloud. Uneasy, she pulled out of the dive, beating her wings and soaring on the hot, gritty updraft. Her shadow sight, belatedly rekindled, showed nothing but darkness directly below, as did her energy sensitivity. Lifting her head, Fusion swept the horizon, finally picking out the faint rivers of light from the deep tunnels. Probably could have remained unconscious for another half kilosecond. The teleport pattern formed in her mind, but she hesitated. If they still have detectors here, perhaps I should leave by a more conventional route.

Magic condensed around her, forming the nested array of fields she'd used to travel to the Security base and enclosing her in a comfortable darkness that kept out the oppressive heat. Tilting back, Fusion accelerated upwards, letting the air rip past her at just under the speed of sound. There was turbulence, and it became more of an effort to suck in enough air to maintain the pressure within her enclosure, then everything went still and she was above the heat.

Fusion simplified her field structures, allowing some of the outside light to get in. Beneath her was a broad cap of dirty cloud, still visibly churning and rising, but above was only the darkest blue and the brilliant sun. One of the moons, Luna, was just rising, a gibbous shape made faint by the glare of Celestia. How high can I go? If I can bring air with me... then there's how to actually move. Can't fly in a vacuum. The thought nagged at her, along with some easily testable ideas, but she pushed it away, turning her magic inwards and hunting for a trace of Gravity.

The connection opened with a sudden rush of confused memories -- tumbling feathers and loud voices, the crash of hard objects falling at speed, a polychromatic glow of telekinesis -- then faded to a simple surface-thoughts signal. What happened? Gravity asked, relief filtering back through the sharing channel. When you didn't follow, I went back, but the Security site is just gone. A new image appeared: a towering mushroom cloud, its cap just starting to be pulled apart by high-altitude winds. I didn't want to jump too close, just in case...

I passed out after the explosion and woke up falling. You did the right thing. The old Gravity would have charged straight in and damn the consequences.

I... I wanted to, but without both of us, I was afraid of what would happen to all our friends--

Gravity, you did the right thing. Did you have enough time to get all the gryphons out?

There was silence for a moment, the only signal the steady leakage of bodily sensations -- wings beating, heart pumping -- then Gravity sighed. No. I grabbed everyone I could reach from the third roost, but there was so much panic when I jumped in. I left at least half of them behind. Should have been faster.

Think how many we did save.

And will they thank us for it? If we weren’t there, they would have been pulled out eventually. We got them killed, Fusion.

Shivering, Fusion accelerated upwards again, curving her path towards the distant mountains but gaining height all the time. The air thinned but she kept a hold of what she had, magic grasping great, rarefied volumes of atmosphere and throwing it behind her. "Yes, we did," she said, whispering the words along with the thought. At least the rest have a chance. Even if they were rescued, the dogs would have thrown them at us, given half a chance. It would have been a slaughter.

I left Ellisif and the medics to work on them, there were quite a few-- What is that? I can feel...

The words faded out, leaving Fusion with a sensation of cold mass moving at high speed, a feeling so very different and alien from her own warm and friendly linkage to the heavens. Close to the surface of the world it was a chaotic mess, far more so than it had been the first time Gravity had shared it with her, and she wondered how the other mare managed to feel anything at all in the tangle of orbits. What? I can't understand any of this--

Further out. Here, I'll just...

There was a sensation of focus, then Fusion could feel the locus of her sister's attention. It was high, well outside the clutter of the debris ring, further out than the odd fuzzy blob that was the inner moon, Grund, with its stretched, oval shape sitting in the 3:2 orbital resonance. In the outer system there was almost nothing -- a few satellites that had escaped her improvised energy beam, a drifting rock in some long-term path -- until she felt something much larger in a distant, slow orbit. It was unlike the other swarm particles, which were static, stately things that only ever moved at a snail's pace. It was twitching, almost writhing, with a steady, accelerating heartbeat.

A chill shivered down Fusion's spine and she pushed away from what Gravity was feeling, directing her energy-sensitive shadow sight in the direction of Luna. Faint, but getting brighter, a band of violet light had encircled the moon. It pulsed in time with whatever Gravity was sensing; even as she struggled to understand what was happening, a bead of purple raced along the band, followed by another, much brighter than the first. She pushed her own sensorium back to Gravity, merging the two together. It's alive with electrical power... if that's the outer moon you are feeling, I think--

That's not just a moon, Gravity thought sharply, teleportation patterns building in her mind, that's a weapon syst--!

The sharing vanished as Gravity jumped, leaving Fusion completely alone and staring at the moon. The little pips of purple light made another pass, this time noticeably faster. They are firing the Hammer, but at what? Wings frozen, she started to glide, mind locked in a kind of paralysis. We've been found out. The teleport pattern filled her mind and she pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--there was a gryphon screaming, harsh, crow-like caws of sound, no more than a dozen body lengths away. Both wings were pulled back at strange, stomach-churning angles, twitching and jerking as the muscles attached to them spasmed. Claws lashed out, striking mindlessly at anyone who came near, forcing back the medics trying to get close. Neat piles of equipment, and far larger piles of rubble and broken-open packing crates, littered the area. Great slashes had been carved through the forested slopes, where some collection of excised building material had materialised and barrelled through the trees with unimpeded momentum.

Fusion looked around wildly, but Gravity wasn't here. "ELLISIF!" she shouted, magic boosting her voice to a jet-engine bellow that shocked the whole valley full of panicking gryphons into silence.

The sersjant's grey and black head snapped in her direction and she took off with a leap, only to be snatched out of the air in a field of white-gold magic and dumped at Fusion's hooves. "What, did I do something wron--"

The sudden fear in her voice cooled some of Fusion's panic, and she released the gryphoness. "They are firing the Hammer; you have to get everyone out. I don't think you are a target here, but we--"

"Are too rutting close to our base," Ellisif finished, her wings flicking out. "Go, I'll send your ponies to help. Remember, you might be better closer and behind a mountain, than further away and in the air. Don't get lulled by the initial flashes; that's just the lead projectiles punching a hole through the atmosphere. The main shot's thermal pulse has the greatest range and the fireball will climb very high," she said rapidly, then nodded and sprang back into the air without a backwards glance. "Svartr, Adigard, to me! We have incoming high-yield fire, probable Hammer strike to the north-west. Pass the word for everyone to scatter in teams, we'll meet up--"

Fusion was no longer listening and pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

===

"--she's told the dogs something, I don't know what!" Packet glanced upwards, feeling the urge to check the sky for what might be coming for them, even though he was hundreds of lengths underground. Nothing by shadow sight, but Gravity said the military didn't use much magic... "We have to get out of here, Backdraft!" He made a conscious effort to control his wings, currently half extended and twitching with the desire to fly. All the ponies in the chamber where he had found Backdraft were staring at him, eyes widening with panic.

The mare nodded sharply, her ears folding back. "Too good to last," she mumbled, a sick look crossing her face. "There has been no emergency planning." The phrase was a statement and not a question, and she stood up straight, voice stern. "They will respond with extreme force if they think we can all be caught dreaming." She lifted her voice, horn glowing as her power boosted the volume, making the words echo from the smooth rock walls. "Ponies and gryphons! This place has been discovered by the dogs and they will attack us as soon as they can." There was shouting and the scuffle of hooves, any words made indistinct by the convoluted tunnels and chambers.

Backdraft slumped slightly and closed her eyes, the stump of her right wing flexing in time with the whole left, then shook all over. When she lifted her head again, her eyes were clear and very hard. "All ponies with teleport training will report to the main chamber immediately. Everyone, split yourselves up into three groups and take wing and fly fast and low to the north, east and west; when you tire, or if you see a bright light, take cover behind solid rock and a force field. Stay together and we will come back for you, as soon as we rescue the flightless. Ponies without foals, find a gryphoness with a chick and help them, or go to the stores and carry something out. Protect yourselves; protect each other."

"What about our foals, and where will we go?" This came from a dapple-grey mare, her wings wrapped protectively around a gangly-legged youngster. Her foal looked at Backdraft uncomprehendingly, just starting to pick up on the fear in his dam's voice.

"Carry him. You are more than strong enough. Keep going until you run out of strength." She stepped forwards brushing her muzzle against the youngster's poll. "Then hide, like I said." There was a thunder of hooves and the thumps of displaced air in the chamber outside.

"What about you? Can you teleport?" the mare said, her eyes fixed on the Backdraft's wing stump.

She snorted. "Not important. Get going." She flicked her wing out, spooking foal and dam alike into a skittering canter that turned into a sliding gallop. Backdraft followed her out at a more sedate trot, Packet at her side, stopping in front of a group of ponies waiting in the big chamber. "All the rest are with the gryphons," she muttered, swallowing hard; there were only twenty or so ponies waiting for them. They looked scared, but determined, flickers of magic congealing about their horns. "Anypony here with rescue team experience?" There were only uncertain, shame-faced looks. "It doesn't matter." She smiled reassuringly. "I don't know what form the attack will take, but--

"I do." All eyes turned to the gryphon, a striking male with white and black patterned fur and feathers. "Sersjant Kafli. It will be either a pattern of nukes or the Hammer. There's upwards of a thousand megatons in those strikes." He cocked his head, beak opening in what she knew was a malicious smile. "I think you've got less than a kilosecond." One wing drooped more than the other; he seemed unable to fold it fully. He laughed, a harsh sound that matched his expression. "How fast can you fly, pony? How many can you save?"

Backdraft was frowning at the gryphon, but was otherwise motionless and didn't seem to be breathing. Packet switched his gaze from her to Kafli, panic starting to make his legs and wings twitch. Come on, you have the experience here, I know you have been a teacher, but you said... He bit at his lips, willing Backdraft to say something. The few details that Fusion had relayed about the Hammer didn't seem they could possibly be real. What will it be like? The explosion at the power plant seemed bad, but the energy levels here are huge. How far is far enough?

Backdraft gave a shudder but her expression cleared. "You, you and you," she waved her wing at Metal Matrix and two other ponies Packet didn't recognise. "Go and find a place for us, at least a five hundred kilolengths away. Somewhere isolated and with the mountains between you and here, obviously." Her voice was firm and unwavering, the tones of one used to giving orders. "When you do, come back here and tell the rest of us. We will move the non-fliers first, then start to jump the slowest ahead. The rest of you -- get aloft and help group the ones on the wing. Select your passengers and be ready when the scouts return." She swallowed, then looked at them sternly. "If you see anything -- bright lights, whatever -- don't come back." There were shocked looks and Metal opened his mouth to protest. "Do you want to jump into a nuclear explosion, Metal? The survivors will need your skills."

They stared at her, open mouthed, until she stomped one hind leg. "What are you waiting for? Fly!"

They vanished in pulses of coloured light and thumps of displaced air, leaving him the focus of Backdraft's attention. "I take it you don't know the spell?"

"No. My wingshoulders are still painful, so I'm not going to get far, either. You?"

"No, and I'm not flying anywhere." Backdraft sighed, then shook her head. "Panic and disorganisation will get poni-- people killed. We need to do a sweep of the tunnels and start to move the injured. Prisoners, too. Korn and that other dog will need to be moved. Where did you leave Random?"

"Up on one of the ridges. She needed to see the sky for the spell." She can't fly and never would have dared take part in a sharing.

"It's not her fault, not really." There was the sound of hoofsteps, an odd, stilted cadence, and a young pony, purple fire dancing over his hindquarters, trotted around the corner to the medical tunnels. "It's Lilac, isn't it?" Backdraft said, her gaze lingering on his clipped wings.

The youngster nodded, coming to an untidy halt. Behind him were a collection of wounded, moving with the unsteady gaits of those not completely connected with their bodies. Most were gryphons, many supported by the hazy glow of telekinesis from the few ponies present. "I thought that I could help. I'm pretty mobile, even if the others aren't."

Kafli stared at the little herd, beak hanging open. "They made you well, didn't they," he mumbled finally.

"Yes they did," Backdraft said primly, "and that's why we'll win." She cleared her throat. "Thank you, Lilac. What I want you to do is this..."

===

Gravity appeared above the centre of the slender lake filling the valley. The air below was filled with ponies and gryphons, a chaotic tumbling mass that streamed from hidden tunnels and focussed into three rivers of winged shapes. In the silence of the still air around her, the sound of shouting and panic was faint, but clear. The flyers were spreading out along their routes, the fastest pulling ahead from the herd. Little flashes of light started to dance amid the streams of ponies and gryphons, concentrated at the slow ends of the convoys, and people started to disappear.

Somepony warned them. A spike of relief ran through Gravity, then the unnatural movement around Luna made itself felt again. It was as massive as many of the debris ring fragments but far, far faster, circling the moon every ten seconds. How are they holding it there? The energy levels... Just don't let it go until we can get everypony out! She reached for the distant feeling, fumbling past the debris ring and all the tiny, glittering fragments that Fusion's attack had left of the heliostat orbits.

They moved at her touch, tumbling and shifting, some accelerating and some slowing. She frowned, brow wrinkling. That's not like telekinesis, not like when I moved the satellite-- She pushed the thought aside and reached further, but the far moon was outside her grasp, far beyond the ragged edge of her ability. I should have been practicing! Now when I need it-- Below, there was a pulse of white-gold light and familiar weight as Fusion arrived, then vanished again to reappear somewhere underground. Other ponies started to appear in the low-level airspace, diving to follow the three departing streams.

Breathing hard and with eyes clamped tight-shut, she hovered, wings making short, sharp strokes in the cold air. Is there another way? I once thought that this power came from the motion of everything in orbit-- She gasped, remembering the unintended motion of moments ago, then tried to do it again, this time deliberately. Things in orbit twitched, but the effect was hard to control and harder to aim, like trying to shift the trajectory of an iron filing by throwing a magnet near it. The smaller particles, those little more than dust or sand and mostly a product of Fusion filling the heavens with fire, decelerated wildly, orbital paths turning into collision spirals and starting a new rain of meteor streaks visible even in the daylight.

The steady beat from Luna reached a crescendo and just stopped.

===

Fusion appeared amid a swirl of ponies and gryphons, then swerved violently to avoid striking a cluster of flyers right in her path. Shadow sight probed the deep tunnels they'd bored into the mountainside, counting at a glance the number of people still underground. At least that is working. Should have planned for this, but at least someone is in charge down there. There was a knot of coloured lights, right in the main tunnel, unmoving as all the others streamed to the surface. She spotted one in the group, the pastel green of a pony, but missing one of the winglights. Backdraft--

~~~discontinuity~~~

"--what are you doing?" she said, wings fanning as she dropped to the floor.

The mare gave a whinny, dancing sideways a couple of steps, her eyes wild, then spun to face her. "Fusion, thank the Maker you are here. We think that Random has signalled the dogs."

Fusion's ears folded flat back and light pulsed from her body, bright enough to make Backdraft step backwards. How could she do something so-- She took a deep breath, folding her magic and anger back into her head, leaving only a feeling of sickness. I should have known; I saw what they were doing to her. What else did I miss, how many other ponies or gryphons--? "Yes," she said hoarsely, "they are firing the Hammer. What have you told everyone to do?"

"Fly away at best speed. The teleporters are scouting out several places to regroup, far away. When they return we'll--"

Metal Matrix appeared, wings out, nearly falling as he misjudged the distance to the floor. "Got one," he gasped, "glacial valley, crosswise to this place. About a thousand kilolengths."

He started the sharing magic and Fusion reached in and took the proffered memory-- a high, bleak place without vegetation, all rock walls and old ice, far enough around the world that the sun was still below the horizon, the glow of dawn just starting to --building the teleport spell around it. "Got it. The ponies from the gryphon pick-up are jumping in overhead. Get aloft and pass the word, then start to transfer the stragglers to the new site." He nodded, then leapt off the ground and vanished.

There was a sudden pressure in her head, a feeling of intrusion. For a moment she resisted, then the other presence became recognisable and she let it in. It's been fired! We have less than half a kilosecond--

Panic flooded Fusion's body, a mixture of her own and Gravity's, funnelled through the sharing. Can you stop it? There was no answer, so she jumped into a hover, checked Gravity's location, and pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--dropping out a dozen body lengths away from her sister. Tension radiated from Gravity; every muscle was sharply defined and her eyes were screwed shut, lips drawn back from her teeth in a silent snarl. Magic flowed from her, the familiar alongside the alien feeling of her access to the heavens and the sensations of cold mass. Fusion stayed silent, searching the sky with her own senses. Nothing, I can't feel it at all. Magically dead, nothing but the energy of motion. She glanced down, seeing the large numbers of ponies and gryphons still close to their valley, and her own panic built to new heights. Too many! Lights were starting to flash amid the stragglers, the pulses of teleportation magic. Two or three jumps to make it safely, each pony can take maybe five per jump. She ran the calculations in her head, coming back with an unwelcome answer.

"I can't get a grip on them," Gravity ground out, her eyes still shut. "One big one and some small stuff out in front. Too fast. Might when they get closer." She opened her eyes and stared back at Fusion, her expression distant. "Maybe. You should go... in case I cannot." The sharing closed down to little more than a thread of thought, all emotion drained away.

"No," Fusion said gently, applying pressure to the linkage and opening it once more. Gravity resisted, but only half-heartedly, "we do this together or not at all. I'll do what I can down below, then return for the end." With that, she folded her wings and fell, speed boosted by her grip on the air. She levelled out, magic reaching in all directions to fold a score of flyers inside bubbles of power, then pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--holding the magic until her conserved velocity fell away, then dropping the panicking mass of feathers and fur into deep shadow under a rocky slope. It was cold, cold enough to bite through her coat and sting the insides of her muzzle. She reached for the sharing connection again; the things Gravity was feeling had travelled perhaps a third of the distance to the world. Got to be faster, never going to get them all out-- She closed her mind to the thought and focused on the push.

~~~discontinuity~~~

===

They're coming, and I can't stop them. The huge masses were slippery with speed and she felt clumsy, unable to grip the things with her power over the heavens. Perhaps-- Gravity threw her power at orbital debris closer to the world, things travelling at a mere five kilolengths a second, shuttling energy between them so some slowed to pass their momentum on to others with more useful trajectories. A jet of fragments, thrown to intercept the inbound course, their speed a crawl compared to the terrible liquid rush of the dogs' weapons. They can't change their course, too much energy. It took a whole moon full of machines to throw them.

At the back of her mind. Fusion flickered in and out of perception, frequent little nudges of attention that each terminated with the jarring absence of a teleport jump. The presence was comforting, and Gravity left the connection alone and unguarded, allowing her sister full access to her sensorium. Can I do anything else? The weapons had yet to cross the orbits once occupied by the heliostat constellations, a distance that she thought of as marking the outer limits of her more conventional power. The sky's too bright, I won't be able to see them to use telekinesis. Her eyes snapped open and she abruptly accelerated vertically, the blood draining from her muzzle and making her vision flutter with sparkles of random colour.

Got to get above the air, but I need it! More magic flared, fields to pull in a protective blanket of atmosphere even as the pressure outside her defences dropped precipitously. The sky, completely clear now that even the highest of clouds were far below her, shaded to midnight at the zenith, the darkness spreading down towards where Luna sat, a few hoof-widths above the horizon. The trajectory will be flat... their speed is too high for anything else.

The view distorted and wavered as she built the lensing spell, guiding the alignment of its optical structures by the feelings of motion coming back from the sky. There was a cluster of dots in a regular pattern, at odds with the chaos in the rest of the environment. It's them, it has to be. The dots were static against the moving background. Not in orbit and heading straight for me. She reached for her own projectile stream, narrowing it from a fan to a concentrated jet and placing it on an intercept course. Any second--

Great plumes of gas jetted out from several of the points and they abruptly moved sideways. There was a flash like lightning, then a whole series of pulses with increasing brilliance, and her weapons disappeared. Too soon! They were defended, of course they were. Gravity started to feel sick, her anger giving way to panic.

There was a flash of white-gold and Fusion was there, a warm weight by her side. Her sister smiled, and the simple gesture made Gravity's heart lift. With renewed hope, she lifted her head and swept the sky with her magic, hornlight overpowering the sun and turning Fusion's coat a brilliant violet. A twist of incandescence materialised with a crack high overhead, in time with a sudden feeling of power from Fusion. The filament collapsed into a brilliant bead, too bright to look at, then shot upwards.

Gravity smiled in return, then reached for the weapons and pushed.

25 - Everything looks like a nail

Author's Note

A crude dramatis personæ can be found here.
Preread by: turol and KMCA.
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and Caliaponia (Just Passing Through).

25 - Everything looks like a nail

Orgon watched the telemetry, beamed straight from Luna and the few high-orbit defence satellites that had survived the servitor's retaliation and the resultant ablation cascade. At least they picked a spot far from everywhere to hide. The immediate collateral damage predictions were light; all non-essential aircraft had been grounded since the original heliostat attack, and there were precious few People in that terrain. The longer-term assessment did not make for such pleasant reading; no radioisotope problems, but the dust plume looked to reduce global temperature by over a degree and would no doubt trigger food shortages. It's going to be a cold winter.

The resolution from this height -- the closest sensor was up in an elliptic polar orbit and currently falling into the ablation zone -- was too poor to do more than pick out the shapes of individual mountains. It would get better, but it was a trade-off between resolution and survival time. The lower it got, the more chance of being struck by the rapidly multiplying fragments filling the more useful orbits. There was light cloud cover over the target site, little more than a high, wispy cirrus, but enough to degrade the image further.

The other displays showed a feed from the weapons themselves, or purely technical data summarised by machine-made schematics, and it was these that were of the most use. Members of the Synod occupied the remaining area of the wallscreen, their drawn faces reduced to thumb-claw sized windows. "Will it work, Orgon?" Councillor Indutu said, one paw playing nervously with the fur on his head. He'd been doing it ever since the conference had started, and had reduced his normally impeccable coat to a tangled mess.

About as well as force-quenching the Pit's power reserves, Orgon thought, keeping his face blank. "It's hard to say, Councillor. We should be able to catch many of them, but there's no such thing as a real surprise. Indutu will recall that Orgon was opposed to this move."

"The Court has access to all of our systems; they would have found out and ordered the attack eventually," Indutu muttered, "and at a time or place not of the Synod's choosing."

Orgon inclined his head. "...so if the Fusion or Gravity rogues do not try to save their kith and kin, or if they run -- and these ones know they can -- what then? The Councillor has seen the same classified research that Orgon has, he knows that the scientists are correct, despite the Church's teachings and popular belief. The servitors are fully sapient. So what would a Person do when faced with this kind of attack?" He smiled, lips drawing back in a grin that was almost a snarl. "A Person who has the offensive capability of an attack carrier battlegroup?" The questions were rhetorical and he waved a paw, cutting off any replies and encompassing the world map and its shaded areas representing the known positions of other Hive militaries. "This one will tell you what will happen next -- they will seek revenge... and it will be nothing so bloodless as the loss of our orbital industry."

"Your plan would have taken too long, and if the agent was discovered these ones would have noth--" Indutu froze, eyes fixed on his own set of displays.

Red light was creeping over the orbital schematic, highlighting a collection of debris-ring fragments that had abruptly changed course. Another new ability, he thought glumly, and no evidence of direct telekinesis. At these speeds, even the slightest impact... The cluster of icons representing the weapons split apart, part of the vanguard jetting sideways to collide with the intruders. More sensors tracked the resultant cloud of plasma, but the difference in velocity was so large that it was actually heading in the opposite direction. This one thinks it might... The apparent diameter of the world, viewed from the lead projectile, expanded dramatically and, for a brief moment, a brilliant bead of light appeared at the centre of the image. Then the display went dead, all the telemetry windows switching to post-mission analysis.

This is where we find out what they will do.

===

~~~discontinuity~~~

--Metal Matrix, carrying a quartet of struggling gryphons, appeared in the congested airspace above the valley he'd found no more than a hundred seconds ago. The empty, wind-scoured rock and ice-filled place was filled with fliers that packed the ground and air like scattered autumn leaves. The pastel colour of 'pony' was in the distinct minority; most of the fur and feathers were the duns, greys and red-browns of all the rescued gryphons.

This is not going to work, he thought, releasing his reluctant passengers, who flew away screaming insults, trying to find their friends or squad-mates. The gryphons seemed to be coping relatively well; already they were sorting themselves into distinct groupings, directed by shouted orders from individuals who strutted about with flared wings or flew with raised head feathers.

The ponies, though...

Panic was obvious; small groups, oftentimes only a dam and foal as few of the ponies knew each other, were dashing away, flying where the foal was old enough, or carried screaming in fields of telekinesis. Many of the foals had been separated from their dams; too young for magic or flight -- or even sapient thought, in some cases -- and were left scrabbling over the ice-covered boulders that choked the floor of the glacial valley. There was some attempt at order, but it was from individuals and without coordination, and they were swept aside or simply ignored. Some teams of gryphons, obviously dispatched to try and assist, were flying about, but kept their distance after being struck by the first flash of magic from a panicking pony.

"Maker!" he groaned, feeling the fatigue from a constant string of teleports coupling with the fuzzy feeling that came with the sheer mental effort to actually visualise the complex sequence of patterns required to chain the jumps together. "We're falling apart." Backdraft! Where are you, mare? You know how to do this stuff! He inhaled sharply, remembering the look of fixed determination on his old teacher's face when he'd taken his share of the injured from the improvised underground medical bays, and a horrible suspicion grew in his mind.

He cast about, hunting for a pony that wasn't panicking and was still on the ground, when his gaze fastened on a stallion the colour of daffodil petals. "Packet Switcher!" he screamed out, folding his wings and diving on the pony, who was trying to help a group of fifty injured survive the sudden shock of exposure to this sub-arctic environment. His magic covered the little group with yellow light, building a little shelter that forced back the cold and blocked the wind.

Packet's head came up, ears forward as he found Metal. "What's going on, Metal? Where's Fusion, I don't--"

There was an edge of desperation to the stallion's voice, a desire to fly away from the threatening, swirling mass of predator-shapes that covered the sky. "Where's Backdraft?" Metal demanded, his harsh tones making the nearest ponies lift their heads and fold back their ears.

Packet stared back, ears drooping and mouth trembling. "She said the others were more important. She's still at the base."

Metal snarled a wordless curse, twisting his wings to change from a dive to a sharp climb, building the return teleport pattern in his head. He pulled his wings in, reaching the apex of his arc and, eyes closed, folded his telekinesis around his body like an iron-shod paw, then pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--slamming into air made near-solid by his conserved velocity. Metal's vision greyed out and his power flickered, sending him tumbling through the sky. Gasping, wings flailing and trying to bite the air, he fought the unwanted speed, finally getting control of his wings and braking violently. High overhead there were a pair of brilliant stars, one a solar white and the other a deep, deep violet, flaring so bright that for the moment he thought it was through shadow sight and not normal vision. The landscape below was cast with the colours of noon coupled with eye-aching purple highlights, turning the trees an unsettling shade of black. More light, this time a point of hard blue-white that felt warm even at this distance.

Metal squinted against the lurid glare, momentarily transfixed by the way the shadows of rock and tree distorted and suddenly stretched, as if one of the light sources had accelerated violently. There was the laggard crack of a sonic boom and a sudden feeling of magic, brutally strong, washing over him like a tide of burning ants. Fusion and Gravity, they are trying-- He dipped his head, sweeping the underground complex by shadow sight, then--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--stumbling to a halt in a dark passageway, blinking to clear the afterimages from his eyes. It was too slow, so he conjured a floating ball of light, bright enough to light the whole tunnel. "Backdraft! Come on, we have to go!" Stubborn mare! Is... is she hiding from me? A quick flash of shadow sight revealed a glimmer of horn and wing, the only one in the complex, lying on one of the abandoned sleeping pallets. Metal recognized Backdraft's colours; she had her head tilted up as if she was trying to look through the intervening lengths of rock to the battle going on high above.

"Go and find some other pony, Metal Matrix," Backdraft said sharply, voice coming out of the dark and echoing off the rock walls. "I know what's coming and I'll only be a burden. You need the able-bodied."

"Oh no, there's no rest for you," he said, matching her tone and trotting into the sleeping chamber. She kept her eyes closed, but her ears twisted to follow his approach. "It's chaos at the other end; you've got to help organize us." He reached out to lift her up, the teleport pattern forming in his head, but she deftly neutralised his power, deflecting the forces into random buffets that made the rubbish of the hasty evacuation dance and skitter across the stone floor.

"You don't need another cripple. Talk to Cooper Pair or one of the other rescue team ponies." She opened her eyes and stared at him. "I'm not going to let you take me, so you should just go and save more ponies."

"Nopony knows them like they know you!” Metal let his magic die, dropping to his belly on the stone floor. "Then I'm not going anywhere, either." There was a surge of magic, then another, strong enough to make them both flinch. Waves of sensation, like static electricity or the feeling of standing next to high-voltage lines, flowed over Metal's fur. He held his breath, willing his face into a calm mask. Can't be long now; I bet Fusion and Grav will have to wait until it's only a few seconds out. He held the teleport spell's pattern steady, only a moment of effort away from the real.

"Fine," she said, giving a little whinny of frustration, the glimmer of her magic, held ready to deflect his own, going dark.

Metal breathed out with an explosive snort, magic grabbing Backdraft and lifting her clear of the floor. His wings flicked out and down with a sudden downstroke and he pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--appearing in clear air near a flock of mares with foals, telekinesis reaching out to steady Backdraft as she started to tumble. There were dozens of ponies, far too many to take, and he shared a desperate glance with Backdraft. His old teacher's face was the mirror of his own, then went blank, drained of all emotion. Even at this distance, nearly over the horizon from their base, the boom and pulse of brutally strong magic was obvious.

The other ponies, all those from Naraka, noticed them a moment later. The closest, a grey mare, thrust out her foal, a squirming, coal-black colt, in a field of pearly magic. "Take him!" she shrieked. "Take my foal first."

Metal froze inside, instinctively holding on to the youngster, eyes captured by the fear on the mare's face. But I won't be coming ba-- The thought died, replaced with a feeling of helpless anger. She knows!

"His name is Logic," she called out, wings pumping as she accelerated away.

There was a flurry of other shouts from the remaining ponies; more foals passed over. "I'll hold them," Backdraft said, her calm expression belied by the choked sound of her voice, "focus on being ready to leave."

Metal nodded, keeping the next teleport spell in mind, modifying it to match the number of ponies held by Backdraft. The air temperature dropped as he drained more and more energy from the local area; only holding one thing made the magic simpler, but the effort was just as great. Contact neighs from the collection of foals, high and frantic, cut through the air, battering at his concentration. Backdraft, I can't carry them all-- He kept the thought to himself, ignoring the building pain in his head as she added another foal to her collection.

"We'll keep your foals safe," Backdraft shouted. "Metal, move--!"

He pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--appearing at the next jump-point. Metal dived, heading for the mountainside below. "I'm going back, you keep a hold of the foals when I drop you off--"

Light bloomed on the horizon, far brighter than the rising sun.

===

Katabatic's wingshoulders ached, a burn that spread from the middle of her back and reached around her barrel and along her ribs. The patch of bare fur on her flank generated a pulse of pain with each beat, the L-shaped surgical scar feeling like it was going to tear apart. Her nostrils were flared, breath coming in deep gasps, but there never seemed to be enough air reaching her lungs. Tucked against her side, Thunder neighed again, a high, fragile sound nearly lost amid the roaring in her ears, and struggled in her telekinetic grasp, his whole body trembling and shaking. "Stay still!" she screamed back, magic flickering for an instant.

Ahead were the rest of the herd, a distant scatter of pastel points that were steadily drawing away. There were a few ponies still with her -- mostly the marginal flyers and those in partial moult -- and a number of gryphons in the same situation. I should have stayed with the infirmary, I've not flown like this for a gigasecond. If I was still on the weather teams-- Living at Naraka, with only a few gentle crossings to get to her medical examinations at the Institute, had really taken a toll on her endurance.

The closest flyer was a gryphon, a brown-furred creature with dirty-white feathers on his head. The forced-flight was also causing him problems; the strokes of his right wing were short and choppy, like it had been sprained recently, and he gasped with each stroke, beak wide open and sides working like bellows. Unlike any of the others, he wore a partial harness, an arrangement of straps and equipment panniers that ran along the middle of his back and between his forelegs, with a compact tubular thing fitting snugly over one shoulder.

She strained her wings, climbing over the next ridge, now high enough that it was bare rock rather than covered with a carpet of trees, and headed straight across the valley towards the next one. There were lights in the sky where the rest of herd was scattered, little pulses of pastel colour, and the flying ponies started to vanish. What about me!? Muscles burning, Katabatic fell into a shallow glide, her speed bleeding away. How far do I have to go? She turned her head, scanning the horizon behind her, seeing nothing but more of the same the valleys and rock she'd been flying over. Am I safe yet? High overhead, back where the refuge was, there were two points of light, one violet and the other white-gold. That must be them, those strange ponies. There was a subtle itching sensation at the base of her horn, the telltale signature of magic.

The gryphon had matched her actions, gliding along no more than a dozen wingspans away. "Can you push on?" he shouted between gasps, "we've got to get over the next ridge, at least, or stay behind this one. Too exposed here. Hug the valley floor."

Why do I have to do that? Losing height only to gain it will be so hard. The ponies ahead of her had not done this manoeuvre, and were making far better progress. Katabatic opened her mouth but there was no room for speech so just shook her head.

He snapped his beak together, scaly talons opening slightly where they were coiled under his belly, and angled downwards to skim the rocks. "What's your name, pony?" he called out.

"Katabatic," she gasped out, maintaining her altitude.

"I'm Olvir. Katabatic, will you please do this for me?"

There was such a note of pleading and fear in his voice that Katabatic nodded jerkily. She flapped her wings once, then twice, trying to return to her previous rhythm, then settled into a slightly steeper glide to build speed and rest. Always harder to start again--

There was a light, like that of the noonday sun, from somewhere high and behind them, casting the dark evergreens on the lower slopes of the valley into sharp relief. With the glare came a pulse of heat, not unpleasant, but shockingly unexpected for its sudden bloom. A moment later there was another flash, adding to the first before it had really faded, and the heat jumped. The angle of the light shifted, like the source was a little lower in the sky, the shadow of the ridge they'd just passed jumping up the opposite side of the valley. At her side, the gryphon gave a shriek, folding his wings and diving for the valley floor, curving his course to head back towards the light. "Get down into the shadows--"

There was another soundless pulse, then another, each brighter and hotter than the last, coming faster and faster. Eyes nearly shut against the glare and heat, Katabatic pulled Thunder close and followed the gryphon down, his body little more than a wavering arrowhead against the light. A breathless moment later and she fell into shadow, the relative shelter an immediate relief from the burning heat. In the direction they'd been travelling, the exposed side of the valley was now too bright to look at without becoming dazzled, and the sky overhead was clearing, the very clouds evaporating, in a silent wave that spread across the heavens like the ripple of a stone dropped in a pond.

Eyes starting to adjust to the glare, Katabatic tucked Thunder against her belly, holding his head against her chest to protect his eyes, and spiralled down towards the trees to where the gryphon was waiting. He hovered there, just above the canopy, body hunched like he was expecting a blow. "Stay in the air," he gabbled, "I don't know what's going to happen. Even if the strike doesn't hit the grou--"

In total silence the light flared, a hundred times brighter and bluer than before and, just for an instant, Katabatic saw the distant specks of flying ponies flash yellow and start to fall, trailing plumes of smoke. The valley wall opposite did the same, immediately bursting into mad orange flames across the whole exposed area. Heat, reflected from the rocks and burning trees a kilolength away, beat at her body, stinging her muzzle tip. Thunder squealed and wriggled, fighting to be free of her magic so he could run and run and run away from this terrible place, but she held him tight, wings folding around them both. Katabatic started to fall and her magic pulsed again, an instinctively cast force-field bubble materialising with the sound of shattering glass.

Branches bent and cracked as she dropped through the stumpy forest, slowing her with jerky impacts that were transmitted as draining pulses of fatigue, until they came to a rest amid the relative darkness of the tree roots. She held the field up, curled around Thunder and heart beating so fast that it sounded like a roaring in her ears, waiting for the next blow or searing burst of heat that would reach in and kill them both. There was a sudden rumbling roar and the ground bucked under her flank, a whip-crack of motion that flicked the glassy sphere of magic into the air and shattered the trees all around. There was more falling, and the steady patter of smouldering branches and leaves, but the hungry sound had gone.

The heat was also changing; the appalling open-flame burn replaced with a steadier glow, while the light visible through her closed eyelids was no-longer an electric blue-white and had faded back through the spectrum to a deep red. Katabatic opened her eyes, then let out a groan and collapsed her force field; the sudden influx of painfully hot air made the sweat steam from her flanks. Is that it? Did we survive? A sudden laugh bubbled up, dying as she looked back at where they had come from.

There was a towering column of ash climbing above the ridge, which itself was lower and more jagged than it had been when she'd flown over it. Collapsed... we could have been buried. The thought flashed through her numb mind, but didn't have any real weight to it. The tower was huge but distant, so large that it didn't seem possible it could be real. The turbulent, dirty-brown mass was still climbing, capped with an incandescent toroid the colour of blood. Veins and streamers of roiling vapour circulated and expanded in the torus, colours fading through the black-body spectrum. Heat radiated from the cloud, like the sky itself was on fire, the mass of burning, vaporised rock steadily spreading outwards.

Mesmerised, Katabatic jumped upwards to get a better view of where she'd been no more than a kilosecond ago, pulling Thunder up along with her. The foal was quiet and still now, allowing himself to be tucked against her belly without a struggle. A few fast downstrokes took her above the level of shattered trees and tumbled rocks, where she could see the base of the mushroom cloud.

Something, a wall of mist or haze, was expanding outwards from the confused wreckage at the impact point. Already halfway to her location, it stretched as far as she could see, and there were... Katabatic wrinkled her muzzle, the half-forgotten magic of her weather team training making her horn sparkle. What kind of cloud is that? She tasted the atmosphere, pushing her perception out as far as she could. Pressure and temperature, changing sharply in the areas the wall of mist crossed. The thing was closer now, and in its wake were dark shapes, tumbling and churning as if in slow motion.

Shockwave! She folded her wings and dropped, head turning this way and that to hunt for somewhere to hide. There was motion amid the wreckage under her hooves, a brown-and-white shape stirring under a pile of broken branches. Without thinking, she shoved the wood aside and dragged out the gryphon, picking him up and holding him close. He struggled, but it was little more than the efforts Thunder was making to get away from the unknown predator she'd thrust so close to him.

There's nowhere to go. They won't be coming back for me. A feeling of calm settled over Katabatic and she cleared a space around them, then folded her legs and lay down. Casting another force field, this one only just big enough to hold the three of them, she pressed her muzzle against Thunder, working her teeth into his thin mane. Perhaps it will be enough. Thunder started to calm, leaning into her touch, so Katabatic closed her eyes and tried to lose herself in the simple feeling of contact.

Outside, the sky turned blood-red and the world howled in rage.

===

Fusion poured all her strength into the packet of ionised gas. Compressed and heated to the point where atoms were completely stripped of electrons, it nonetheless had a density close to that of uranium. The thing accelerated away from her, tight-wrapped layers of magnetism and plasma propelled by her magic to the point where it was little more than a streak. Subjective time was slowing as it seemed to do when she exercised her power, but still her target was invisible and felt only through the sharing feedback from Gravity.

The feeling of Gravity's power, even at this remove, stirred something at the back of her own mind. The connection she felt to the sun, that distant point of warmth, had developed a kind of depth as time passed. Where before it was just a source of power, now there was a sense of complexity, a feeling that she just had to make the right request for it to... The feeling was elusive and she let it slide away, returning her attention to Gravity and the plasma bolus, now high above the atmosphere and accelerating rapidly.

There was a shape to the sensations Gravity was experiencing, steadily increasing in resolution as the projectiles swept closer. Clusters of small points were at the front, leading by hundreds of kilolengths, while behind that came the main shot. It was a narrow, elongated thing, no wider than the stride of a good canter, but longer than a levitation train carriage.

She can't get a grip on it... Fusion kept the thought to herself, drinking in the flow of sensations coming in from Gravity while partitioning off any of her own. Waves of faux-fatigue rolled through her body, a shadow of the actual effect the magic was having on Gravity. ...and even if I hit the thing, what will happen next? All that energy has to go somewhere. Will I make things worse? What else do I have? The trajectory of the projectile was shifting southwards, away from the evacuation flights, but by tiny amounts. Grav, you can't do it. We have to go.

You go! I'm not leaving until our ponies are safe-- The thought broke off as a giant shudder wracked Gravity's body. Her wings went loose and Fusion transferred some of her attention to holding her up. --I can do it, I must do it. This last was barely detectable, lost amid the boom and rush of power roaring through Gravity.

Like I'm going to leave you! Fusion risked a glance below them; by shadow sight the base was empty of winglights, except a pair high up on a ridge overlooking the valley. A whisper of familiar magic pulsed, then they were gone. Too many people still within range. She measured the distances, constructing the teleportation pattern in a protected part of her mind. If only I could cast it on the projectile! Light suddenly bloomed overhead, at perhaps twice their altitude, a fierce blue-white that carried a stinging slap of heat with it. Fusion hardened her defences, surrounding them both in a bubble of darkness that dimmed the actinic pinpoint to merely 'too bright', rather than lethal.

What happens if it strikes as a rain of fragments and not at a single point? An instant vision filled her mind: not one monstrous explosion, but a blanket of fire that covered everything from horizon to horizon, a shell of random, megaton-range detonations. Far enough out to hit our evacuation site? Her magic twitched and a moment later the pulse of plasma flashed through the space that should have been occupied by the dogs' projectile, but without striking it. Fusion gritted her teeth and let it go, the power she'd been pumping into it returning like a physical blow and filling her body with fizzing energy. She diverted the magic outwards, shoring up their defences still further.

Gravity cried out, a half gasp-half scream, then another light pulsed, far closer, the lazy arc of the shockwave reaching for them even as the heat washed over and around them both. Gravity's magic faltered, a sudden dip in the brutal flood of power, and Fusion pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--appearing above a mixed flock of ponies and gryphons, magic spearing out like the jaws of a dragonfly and pulling as many close as she could reach. Light, too much for her defences, flooded in and overpressurised the complex layered fields designed to bend it safely away, threatening to burst them inward and cook them all. She released the outer shells with a thunderous crack, but this allowed the light in, dazzle-bright even through closed eyelids, along with heat like a physical impact. Gravity started to struggle, her torn-loose magic whiplashing and trying to reconnect with the now distant spell locus--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--the slam of icy air that would have knocked them unconscious and snapped bones if it wasn't for the iron grasp of telekinesis wrapped around every body that she held. The wind died from a brutal hurricane to the more familiar rush of mere falling, and Fusion opened her wings, her grasp becoming more tenuous and vanishing as each person started to fly under their own power.

"I could have stopped it!" Gravity screamed, eyes wide and ears flat back. Her horn glowed a deep violet, random waves of telekinesis making the nearest people tumble in the air.

Fusion looked past Gravity, at the distant horizon. It looked like the sun was coming up, but far too fast, large and bright. A lurid yellow ball was visibly rising, flattening and spreading as it did so, the colour bleeding down through the spectrum toward a sullen red. "I was in your head, Grav... you couldn't," she said softly, then reached out and spun Gravity around.

Her wings flailed and her horn flashed brightly; Fusion let her go as if stung, backstroking her wings to give Gravity a little room. "Don't you dare--" The shout trailed off into a moan as her eyes locked onto the silently climbing mushroom cloud. Tears started to flow down her muzzle and she shook them away. "I'll kill them, I'll kill them all. For every pony dead I'll burn an arcology, I'll--" Power gathered around her, darkness flooding out like a tide. Ponies and gryphons scattered, the airspace around them emptying.

Breathing heavily, Fusion pushed out her own strength, folding it around Gravity and pulling her close. This time she didn't resist, and let her magic falter and die. "They want a war, sister," Fusion said mournfully, "so now they’re going to get one."

===

~~~discontinuity~~~

--no! You can't! The world of wide, rocky vistas had vanished in a pulse of purple magic, replaced in a blink by a tumbling, confused mess of sky and ground. Random tried to pull her thoughts together, tried to resist the horribly powerful grip of the youngster holding her still, but the sudden jolting deceleration knocked the wind out of her. Celestia was just on the horizon and--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--another scene, a wide flat expanse of water visible through clouds lit amber from the sunrise against a dark sky, then a glare of light from the wrong direction turning everything a hard blue-white and making dazzle-phosphenes dance across her eyes--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--an icy valley, filled with the fluttering of ponies and gryphons, lit by bright white light from somewhere close to the horizon. The shock of deceleration passed and they were falling; Random opened her wings then cursed. I can't die like this, killed by some idiot foal who doesn't understand what he's done. She slowed a little, but without feathers her flight magic refused to bite the air with anything like the necessary force. At her side, the youngster, front legs tucked in and hinds flopping uselessly, spread his clipped wings, although they did little more than turn the plummet into a steep glide.

His magic reached for her again and she tried to bat it away, but he still had some of that unnatural strength. She matched his speed then was drawn closer, his horn glowing ever brighter. "You've ruined everything, just let me die--!" There was a sound like breaking glass then she struck a glassy smooth surface, legs splaying as she tumbled down the purple-glowing wall, coming to rest at the nadir of a large force-field sphere. The youngster hung at the centre of the field, an expression of pain and concentration on his face, eyes fixed on the ground below them.

Random glanced downwards; they were still falling, but more slowly, as the globe caught the air. Still too fast, she thought, looking longingly at the approaching ice-covered valley wall. The shape of the field fluttered, warping as he tried to change its profile into something less aerodynamic, and the varying forces pushed her this way and that on the bottom of the field. Finally he ran out of height and they struck, skittering and bouncing down the scree slope, coming to rest wedged between two boulders.

Dazed and gasping, Random struggled to her hooves as the field died. Still several bodylengths in the air, the youngster dropped to the broken, snowy ground, wings whirring frantically. He skidded to a halt a short distance away, wild-eyed and breathing heavily, horn just starting to glow and coat his hindquarters with purple fire. Random let out a sharp whinny and stalked forwards, her own horn flashing gold as magic closed around the youngster's throat.

He clumsily deflected the surge of magic attempting to throttle him, then tried to grab her with his own power. Random cried out, her ears flat back, lashing out with her forehooves; he squealed in turn as one connected with his midsection. "Stop, please!" he gasped, concentration wavering and the telekinetic field holding his legs vanishing. He slid sideways, a hind leg getting caught between two sharp-edged rocks. This spun him about, slamming his muzzle into another rock buried under a thin layer of snow. The rest of his power vanished and Random staggered free.

"You took me away! How could you do that? I was about to meet my Master and help to save you all!" Random spat the words at him, her ugly, naked wings flicking with short, sharp motions. He looked back at her uncomprehendingly, eyes unfocused, and she reared, hooves flicking out to strike him in the ribs. He squealed again, legs and wings churning in an effort to get up and escape, but only succeeded in throwing up a spray of stinging rock fragments.

Random hauled him upright, then paused. The angle of the light and its colour had changed, slowly fading, dropping through the spectrum from solar yellow through to firelight orange and red. What-- Involuntarily, she looked towards the light, seeing for the first time that it was coming from the cap of a climbing, expanding mushroom-shape on the distant horizon. "W--" She stuttered to a halt, jaw hanging open. "What is that?" she whispered.

"You called the Masters and they came," the youngster said, craning his own neck to watch the fireball. He coughed and winced, taking a deep, shuddering breath. "Did you not listen to anything anypony told you?" he said plaintively. "You called them down on us."

"No." Random shook her head, a feeling of sickness spreading through her belly. "I won't believe it. My Master promised that they would try and save you all." There was a heat coming off the fireball, easily felt despite the obvious distance. The thing must be vast... and how far did we jump for it to be night again? Her knees wobbled, the big muscles in her hindquarters flexing and tensing. "Oh Maker, what have I done?"

Her head whipped around and she stared at the flocks of ponies and gryphons. There were faint cries and screams rising up from the valley floor; alien crow-like things from the gryphons and achingly familiar contact neighs from the ponies. Lost and separated families, she thought, breath catching in her throat. A final group teleported in; trailing smoke they tumbled through the air before being caught by those below. There were far fewer ponies in the valley than had been at the base, and no more were jumping in to join them.

Loose stone sprayed from beneath Random's hooves as she leapt into a dangerous, headlong flight, galloping down the slope and away, trying to escape from the screams of pain and betrayal.

===

~~~discontinuity~~~

--a choking fall of hot ash and pulverised rock swept across the cleared bubble of the wormhole terminus, making Metal Matrix gasp and his eyes water. Snorting heavily to expel the dust, he conjured a local telekinetic field to push the particles back, something he'd frequently used when engaged in industrial training, but it did nothing to hold back the smell. There were magics he could have used to clean the air fully, isolating oxygen and nitrogen from the contaminants, but he didn't use them. Instead, he inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring, fixing the near-overpowering stench of burning wood and vapourised stone in his mind.

This, this is what the dogs will bring to us all, he thought, wings stirring the heated air, then blinked and switched to shadow sight to inspect the blasted landscape below. Nothing... did nopony manage to shelter from the flash? I'm sure this is still on the evacuation route. He scowled into the unrelieved blackness, then returned to normal vision. They wanted us dead this badly... well, two can play at that game.

Vague plans for revenge forming at the back of his mind, Metal swept over the mountain peak and into the space beyond. The forested valleys had been scoured clean of anything resembling living trees, with the occasional pitiful remnant sheltered in deep cracks and crevasses. There was no snow on the higher peaks and exposed valley ridges, nothing but naked rock covered by a thickening layer of the soot that was raining down from the inky clouds above.

There were familiar shapes here and there amid the rocks, and he resolutely checked each one, even though there was no glimmer of light via shadow sight. Most were little more than cooked remains, blackened and twisted skeletons that could only really be identified by the presence of a crystalline horn or the curve of a beak, but occasionally some body part had been protected and a trace of fur or feather survived. All caught in the air, he thought. They had no chance, no chance at all. I'm not sure there's any point, but... just one more jump, he thought, eyeing the darkness ahead. Filtration spells at the ready this time--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--the air was clean but stiflingly hot and humid. It was darker than the previous location, perhaps only as bright as a clear night under a quarter-moon. Metal Matrix let his eyes adjust to the light, scanning the ground. There was no soot-fall; here, directly under the cap of the mushroom, the clouds were still rising in updrafts that made themselves felt even at this relatively low altitude. The familiar arrangement of ridges and peaks had changed; great rents had been blown through the lines of glacially-carved valley walls and some of the mountains had collapsed. Fresh rock was exposed everywhere, sharp fault-planes created when the impact shock shattered the land.

There's no way, but... Soaring on outstretched wings, Metal closed his eyes and swept the ground with shadow sight. He blinked, dispelling the vague shadow-shapes of the land, then restarted the magic. It can't be! Wings folded, he fell in a tight spiral, sweeping in to land on an unstable scree slope. Right there, lying on a little circle of green branches amid the rock, was a skewbald mare. She was flat on her side, either unconscious or dead. Trying to tuck under one limp wing was a foal; on seeing Metal he let out a high-pitched squeal of a whinny, trembling and uncertain.

"Ah, you poor little thing," Metal said in a calm voice, although it came out sounding thick and heavy to his own ears. "Stay there and I'll just take a look at your dam." The foal backed away as he approached, but didn't try to run. "You must still be alive," he muttered, "otherwise I wouldn't be able to see your hornlight." More magic deepened the examination, showing that she was still breathing and had a heartbeat. He sighed, tucking one wing over the youngster, horn glowing as he took a subtle grip around the foal's midsection.

"Right, let's see if..." He pulled out a bottle of stimulant from his panniers, the kind that came with a set of impressive warning stickers, and gently sprayed a tiny amount on the inside of the mare's lips. There was a pause, no more than a few seconds, then her eyes flew open and she inhaled sharply, legs thrashing as she fought to rise. "Hey! Steady -- you are safe."

"I--what?" Her wild gaze found the foal and Metal released him so she could sweep him up in her wings. "Oh, than the Maker! I thought we were dead," she mumbled, muzzle buried in the foal's fuzzy coat.

"You should have been," Metal said quietly. "I think you are the closest ones to the detonation. Everyone else is..." He shook his head, anger making his teeth clench and his ears go back.

"There was a gryphon, said his name was Olvir, I think. He saved my life. Where...?"

Metal shook his head, then glanced up at a sudden pulse of magic from overhead. Two shapes, one pony and one gryphon, had appeared in the sky. "He must have gone to get help and run into one of the other searchers," he said, smiling. "Come on; let's get you back to the herd." Glad I'm not sorting out that chaos.

===

Redshift yawned, stretching his wings, then pulled over the tank and took a long drink of slightly murky water. Filters, must have another look at building some filters. He frowned, then glanced at the stream of ponies and gryphons leaving the valley. When we get settled again, if we ever do... perhaps it would be better to live life on the wind, ever moving, never resting. He shook all over, then snorted. So they can kill us one at a time? I think not. The warm weight of Shock Diamond moved slightly against his flank, face intent and eyes closed as he followed the manipulations of the other ponies in his team. Somewhere out amid the ice and rocks, helping to fit armour to the Naraka gryphons, was his mate, Doppler. I have you both back and I'm never going to let you go. Nothing on this world will get between us again. He gently nuzzled the back of the foal's neck. No more Masters.

His gaze returned to the mountain of equipment, some still neatly boxed, most in a big, tangled heap. His two 'apprentices', both ponies from Naraka with a history of matter micromanipulation, were still focused on their task -- remove a chunk of equipment from the pile, check it was undamaged, bypass any security systems -- and he suspected they were better at it than he was. What was it Spiral said? The best and the brightest went into that place as breeding stock? Certainly they seemed to be tireless, working with the smooth precision of machines. I think they might be much better than me... still, they are out of practice and behind the times, and we are all doing the Maker's work. They look happy, though. Must be nice to have some real work to do, after being locked up in that place for so long.

He also had a gryphon liaison, a reddish-brown individual that went by the odd name of Adigard Alfgeir, who was currently rooting through the pile of stolen equipment looking for, in his words, 'anything interesting'. His presence was a slight distraction to the working ponies -- they kept a constant ear pointed in his direction -- but as the things he came back with always were interesting, Redshift left him alone.

There was a line of gryphon shoulder-guns, each with a pannier harness of ammunition, stacked alongside their workspace. Over a hundred sets, not bad for ten kiloseconds' work. Behind the workers were another pair of ponies, expressions intent and eyes closed as they followed the actions of the others. Apprentices for my apprentices. Another few kiloseconds and they will be ready to start on their own, and I'll need to see if anypony else can help, assuming Fusion can spare anypony. He put the engine unit aside and pulled out something else, a near-featureless mass of rubble, with only a hint of metal casing visible. Now why would Adigard give me this...? Something not designed to be removed, by the looks of it. Gravity must have brought it along by accident when she stripped the armoury. Let's see... It had no batteries, but was packed with computronium and little else. He traced the power feed, making a few small repairs where the cables had been fractured by their sudden removal.

It came alive, emitting little pings of radio from an unnoticed transmitter. Mouth dropping open and heart thundering, he hurriedly killed the power and checked the device again. Ah Maker, don't tell me I've just... no, it's too small and the frequency is wrong. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Too rutting close. Thinking for a moment, Redshift pulled out one of the armour sets and held the visor up to one eye, then activated the machine again. The visor lit up, not with the normal targeting and sensor information, but with screens of densely-packed information.

Ah, now that's interesting... I wonder what it all says. One of these gryphons is going to have to teach me how to read this stuff. He manipulated the computronium directly, sampling the stored data and sending snippets of it to the visor. The occasional word jumped out of the stream of words -- 'danger', 'stop', 'explosive' -- all recognised from warning signs around his old place of work, but the vast majority was in the dogs' unreadable script. Impatient, he flicked to another section, this full of technical diagrams of various bits of military hardware, then another, this time showing detailed maps with a large number of annotations. Some places he recognised from the terrain -- the area around corral twenty-seven, for example -- but emphasis was given to unfamiliar installations, all marked with one or two symbols. This was only a tiny fraction of what was in there, but much was locked away and scrambled. Encrypted... to stop the gryphons having access to things they shouldn't.

Expanding the scale showed that the world was covered with these symbols, and not just in Lacunae territory. So what kind of bases would be marked on a map taken from a gryphon's armoury? Redshift started to smile. Oh, now that's really interesting... and I wonder how much more is in there, locked away. He blinked, pulling the visor away; the strain of trying to use the device, intended for a gryphon's far more binocular -- and acute -- vision, was starting to make his head hurt. "Hey, Adigard. Come over here for a second, will you?"

===

"We must respond, Fusion," Ellisif said. "If you just fly away from this, then..."

And do what? Slaughter each other until there are none left? Fusion turned away, walking in a tight circle that enclosed Ellisif and Gravity. The pair stared back at her, Ellisif serious and earnest, Gravity with her ears pinned back and jaw muscles bunched and flexing. "Yes," she said in strangled tones. "If they will not let us go then we will have to break free." But what does that mean? Must I pump fire into the arcologies, enough heat to flash a billion dogs to steam? Or do I do nothing at all and let my sister turn them into twisted wreckage? She lifted her head, ears twitching at the cries and moans from the improvised medical centres -- little more than segregated patches on the valley floor -- floating up to their position amid the rocks.

"Break free? Break free?!" Gravity snarled. "I'll do more than break free..." The words descended into a hiss and her eyes narrowed, watching the same scene. "What I did back at the Institute... I could do that again. I'm stronger now. Nothing physical can stop my magic, unlike yours. I can make the gravitational gradients so steep that they will pull a body limb from limb--" She closed her eyes, nostrils flaring as she inhaled deeply.

"Yes," Ellisif said carefully, her eyes not leaving Fusion's face. "I'm sure you could."

Fusion shivered, glancing sideways at the gryphon, the gentle and ever-changing colours of her mane and tail becoming pale and insubstantial. What does she see? A coward? A pony unwilling to do what is necessary? Would she rather just work with Gravity? The gryphons have a taste of freedom, their best chance at a successful rebellion... they won't want to give it up. She opened her mouth, then closed it again.

"Perhaps you would prefer another target, a military target, as a first step," Ellisif said, blinking and turning to Gravity. "A senseless slaughter does not serve us. The threat is the dogs' military and their ability to strike globally. We need to remove some of that power. The Arclight units and the mass driver launch facilities. Then there are the other gryphon units... if I know anything about my people, it's that the rumours of the dogs' defeats will be racing through the armies like wildfire. There are possibilities for defections... but that will take military successes to convince them. They know the consequences of failure all too well."

"And our people, Gravity," Fusion ignored Ellisif and lowered her head, brushing it against Gravity's neck. "If we commit an atrocity, smash and burn the arcologies in vengeance--" Fusion's mouth hung open and she took a deep, shuddering breath. Sweet Maker, we really could do it; we have enough power between us. "--what might the dogs do to all the ponies in the other breeding centres and corrals across Lacunae?" She felt Gravity sag slightly, leaning into her touch. "They will respond in kind, out of fear or desperation, to get us to stop." Her voice dropped to a whisper, lips finding Gravity's dusky blue ear. "It would be easy, perhaps only a labournet command. I've seen it in my dreams; medics forced to euthanize friends and families, then turning the needle on themselves..." The whisper turned to a mumble and Fusion backed away, holding Gravity's gaze. Say something, sister, please.

Gravity was silent for a long while, then turned to stare at Ellisif. "A military target. Do you have a specific one in mind?"

"Actually, yes." Ellisif waved a claw to encompass the valley filled with groups of ponies and gryphons. "That Redshift of yours cracked the battlenet node taken from the barracks-roosts at the Pit. It turns out that Captain Rthar had quite a high level of authorisation that had not been rescinded; the database opened for us like it was in heat. He tells me that it must have been still connected to their network when you took it from the barracks-roost, despite all the infrastructure damage.”

"I made a point not to target the barracks," Gravity said, "with redundant linkages..."

Ellisif inclined her head. "For that I am very grateful... but what it means is that the deployment data is less than twelve kiloseconds old. I have correlated it against what you extracted from Captain Rthar during the first round of questioning, before he knew we had it, and it all matches." Her crest feathers fluffed up as she spoke, her wings making little excited flicking motions. "This information is time-limited; if we don't use it it will become useless or even dangerous."

"I agree, and I know time is of the essence, but we can't just leap into battle." She felt the urge to pace again and resisted, lying down in a sheltered space between two of the larger boulders. A gentle nudge and a pleading look had Gravity settle next to her, and she hooked a wing over the other mare's back. "I know you've been trying to organize, Ellisif, so you must have done a count. How many did we lose?" There was silence and the sounds of the herd came back: the flutter of wings as ponies and gryphons flew overhead, the whump and thaumic tickle of teleport jumps from scouts hunting for another hiding place, and still the moan and cry of the wounded waiting aid. Gravity was tense, muscles like iron under her patchy fur, and breathing deep, slow breaths through flared nostrils. Steady, sister, steady. Let us see to our own before we deal with the dogs. Fusion sent the thought into a tentative sharing, tasting the backwash of Gravity's emotions.

How can you be so calm?!

This is not the time for fire, I think; this is the time for cold calculation. I am saving my anger for when it will be needed. Fusion swallowed, forcing down the bile that was building in the back of her throat. Her ears flicked and she gave Gravity a sad smile, a bare twitch of her lips. I want to make all of us safe, and I don't believe that a simple slaughter will do this... but we have to make the dogs listen, which am coming to believe will require special measures.

Ellisif glanced between the two of them, then made a soft cawing sound. "Exact numbers are hard to determine, as we never had a real count to start with." She sighed, looking up at the slot of murky sky visible between the rocks. "You ponies pulled out a lot of us as well as your own, and I am grateful for that. I know some of the teleporters were caught in the thermal flash."

"How many, Ellisif?" Fusion said, her voice dead and drained of all emotion. At her side, Gravity twitched, her ears folding back, then laid her head against Fusion's neck.

"About half of those pulled out of Naraka. Five to six hundred of each species."

"Over a thousand people," Gravity whispered. "I failed them."

"You saved far more, not personally, perhaps, but the ponies you trained did," Ellisif said sharply. "Look, heavy losses are always a shock, but you have to understand that there will always be situations out of your control. It was the Hammer, for Maker's sake. The thing was designed to defeat anything the Hives could do to stop it." She fluttered her wings, allowing her crest feathers to relax. "We found the pony who betrayed us, this Random Walk; she marched into one of the temporary encampments and announced it to everyone present. We nearly had a riot. They want justice... the military code of order is very clear on these matters."

"No, absolutely not," Fusion said, sitting bolt upright. "Random was tortured for almost half a megasecond; I saw--"

Ellisif waved a claw. "Things are different for you ponies, I know, but most gryphons don't understand how you live... you always seem so... so complicit in the dogs' affairs. We passed her to a couple of your medics. She was nearly incoherent; I think she wanted to die."

"She finally understands what she has done... it's one of the things a pony picks up from those around them. If you fail too badly, if you are of no use, then euthanasia can be an attractive way out." I nearly did it myself.

"She had a means to contact the dogs," Gravity said suddenly. "Do you think she would do it again?"

"You heard Ellisif, I hardly think--" Fusion snapped, breaking off when Gravity shook her head.

"I know what you are thinking, but no." Gravity smiled, a tooth-filled expression that had more in common with a snarl than anything joyful. "Not on her own, but on our terms."

"Would they ever believe her? Security is pretty paranoid... but if they are desperate, they might." Ellisif shook her head. "We could feed them misinformation, but…” She cocked her head to one side then glanced away for a moment. “no, it will take too long. We have to respond quickly, before our information expires. We must strike at some high-value target, really rip their throats out." Fusion made to speak, but stopped when Ellisif raised a claw. "I know, you think you need time and you can't spare the ponies until we have a new place to hide... but you really do need to do this."

"Look out there, Ellisif." Fusion moved her horn in a wide arc, encompassing the whole valley. "They've lost half their friends. I have a whole creche of foals without dams... they need time to understand all this."

"The dogs won't give us time!" Ellisif leaned forwards, her voice becoming strident. "If you won't do it, then let me -- all I need is transportation and perhaps a little artillery right at the start to break the defences. A hundred seconds of your time, and a few ponies to help with the retrieval, that's all. We'll do all the fighting."

"I don't want to ask anything of a person that I'm not willing to do my--"

"A laudable notion, but do you really think you can do everything? You, the pair of you, are like strategic weapons. Good for flattening an arcology, but not so good for taking it. If I don't find a use for all my people, they will just fly away. What reason would they have to stay?" She have a little soft caw of a laugh. "After they had finished fighting over my corpse, that is."

The whole herd -- flock? pride? -- would dissolve into factions as one leader or another fought for supremacy. Fusion nodded slowly. If that happens they are lost; the dogs will annihilate them all. I have to let go; I cannot protect everyone. "Very well. Between us, we can probably move two hundred people in a single jump, and in another few kiloseconds Redshift will have modified enough armour suits for that number. Is that enough?" Say no, then I will have more time.

Ellisif's beak opened and closed with a decisive snap. "Perfect. There are a number of potential targets, but the place I have in mind is an armoured vehicle base, Bakot. I even have a couple of troopers who have been there, so Gravity can do her mind reading trick. It's a staging and intelligence base for Lacunae should we... they need to go into Baur. A section of the Hive's Arclight perimeter is deployed out of the place... wouldn't you like to catch some of them on the ground?"

26 - A defence in depth

Author's Note

A crude dramatis personæ can be found here.
Preread by: turol.
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and Caliaponia (Just Passing Through).

Note--I'm switching to metric distance units, and will go back through the story to fix earlier chapters as time permits. I'm pretty sure no one will miss the kilolength. You're still stuck with the kilosecond, though!

26 - A defence in depth

"It's all we have, Fusion," Backdraft said, turning away from the distribution point. Behind her, ponies were accepting portions of the pelletized food supplement passed from telekinetic grasp to telekinetic grasp. All looked happy, even though the actual amount was small, their nostrils flaring at the scent of the stuff. "The most compact food source we could rescue. You should eat some yourself -- wild greens like the material we've been collecting won't keep you going for that long, not at the amount of effort you are expending."

"It comes from the dogs; I don't trust it," she said, snorting in a vain attempt to blow the tempting odour out of her nostrils. The smell was doing something to her stomach, and it produced a loud gurgle.

"Ponies start eating the stuff as soon as they are weaned; we've been doing it for generations. There can't be anything harmful in there. Talk to Spiral; she'll tell you what’s in it. Just micronutrients and a bunch of medicinals wrapped up in a food-base." Her ears flicked back for a moment and she shifted her weight from hoof to hoof. "Things that control our breeding cycle, too," she said, voice a low murmur. "It's not an issue at this time of year, but as spring rolls around we'll start to get urges..." Backdraft smiled slightly at Fusion's furrowed brow. "Oh, don't worry, it's nothing you can't ignore with a bit of willpower." Her smile faded. "Of course, now's not the time to get pregnant."

"No, not really." If that's all there is to the dogs' food, then why do I want to eat the stuff so much? Is it just a holdover from the Blessing? Pony eats food as ordered, pony gets a happy jolt? "I want full effort towards a more permanent food supply, as soon as we have everypony even halfway settled."

"Oh, absolutely. This stuff won't last forever, and we already have foraging parties stripping the local valleys." She gestured to the other end of the valley, where a distant flight of ponies were carrying a bundled mass of vegetation towards one of the herds. "There's not much useful forage out there, but I thought it was best to give as many ponies as possible something useful to do. Keeps them out of the way of the medics. What do you intend to do now?"

"Having a single base was a mistake; in any case, a pony isn't supposed to live underground like a dog. We must disperse into self-contained units and hide. The dogs have no satellite surveillance for the moment, but Ellisif tells me they will be sending high-altitude aircraft to hunt us. We'll have to hunt them in turn."

"And by definition revealing our positions." Backdraft's gaze wandered, lifting up to the sky, still awash with dirty-brown clouds. "A stochastic defence... we could probably widen those odds. Have you spoken to anypony with weather team experience? There're a lot of things they can do with clouds other than just move them about."

Fusion nodded following her gaze. "This has crossed my mind... I'll see what Ellisif says, before I--" Send her off to die. She shook her head. Stop that! It was all her idea. "We need to hide from more than just the optical. Perhaps combine that with something for infrared and radar. Then there's magic... What will we do if they have ponies on those aircraft?"

"I think you know the answer to that, Fusion," Backdraft said gently. "If we can, we rescue them."

If we can. "That won't be clean... the pair I pulled out of the Security Hub repair crew are not doing well." She sighed, ears drooping. "This is going to be very hard," she mumbled, turning away and heading for the group of gryphons that marked out the presence of Ellisif. Halfway there, she turned and looked again at the food distribution point. The line of ponies was longer, if anything, many still flying in to receive their portions, or taking extra away for the injured. Her stomach twisted, a sudden spike of hunger that caused an involuntary step in that direction.

What if it's the other way around? What if I'm wrong and it's something missing, something that we can't do without and which is only supplied by that stuff? Am I going to get sick because of my paranoia? She hesitated, unable to move another step, then wheeled and trotted smartly towards the gryphons.

===

Redshift stared out across the treetops. On the horizon, to the south of the ruins of their old base, was a patch of cloud amid the dirty overcast that looked out of place. It expanded as he watched, horizontally and vertically, glimmering with faint pastel shades.

How do they even do that? There was the characteristic flicker of cloud-to-cloud sheet lightning, making the whole horizon flash for a moment. The shadow sight view was even more interesting; the cloud, still spreading with unnatural speed, was infecting its neighbours, like mould growing through a slice of discarded apple. The glow was far more apparent in this view, a great mass of swirling colour shot through with hundreds of points of light from the weather team building the thing. One of the points, far brighter than the others, sat at the centre, linked to the rest with near invisible strands.

He frowned, trying to count the number of wing and horn lights. I can see Fusion, even if I don't know what she's doing... but how many weather ponies were at Naraka? That can't be right... there are too many of them. He opened his eyes, sweeping the valley and half expecting to be the only pony present. The scene was as he remembered; gryphons -- so many gryphons! -- being shouted at and organizing themselves into teams or squads or whatever they were called, interspersed with little clusters of ponies helping to assemble and move all the injured and gear.

An illusion, something to fool the shadow sight... it would be easy enough; a network of simple spells tied into patches of water droplets, all moving to make the light shift. If the locus is properly compact it might look like a pony. He snorted and stretched again. It wouldn't fool anypony who got close, but if you were more than a hundred metres away... His mind started to gallop away with the idea, suddenly jealous of the pony who'd come up with it. Lightning. They are generating ionisation to interfere with radar -- and I bet infrared is no good through thick, cold clouds.

"We each have our own tasks to perform," he muttered, eyeing the next set of gryphon weapons he was supposed to be modifying. Along with the gun harnesses, there was the armour itself, with associated command collar and display visor, some bulky things that looked like they clipped over the full armour and contained big batteries and a miniature electrothermal turbine, and an interesting set of cylinders that one of the gryphons had called quench-missiles.

Redshift pulled one of the torso-sized drive units from the pile, letting his magic sweep through it. What had Adigard called it? A 'boost suit'? There had been an element of disdain in his voice when he said the name; not popular with the troops, apparently. The superconducting batteries were not charged -- the same as everything else, a 'safety feature', apparently -- so he pushed a little power into the coils and fiddled with the computronium nodes until they accepted inputs from the chest pack

"All pretty straightforward," he said, earning a reproachful glance from one of the working ponies. Right, back to work. The more kit we can make, the happier Ellisif will be... and I'll have less chance of being shot when they inevitably want me to fix something. Sighing, he reached for another of the shoulder guns and closed his eyes.

===

Adigard flinched at the alien touch that oozed over his armour and between the feathers of his wings and neck, coating every pinion, every errant hair, with a white-gold glow. He strained against the touch, but it was like being coated in elastic, if that elastic was backed by steel. Wings effectively paralysed, he made an effort to hold them still and not try and fight that light-yet-immovable force. The air around him stilled, despite the fact that they were still moving forwards, as the glow radiated from his body and linked him to his nearest neighbours.

All around were gryphons, packing tighter and tighter into a steadily reducing volume, slotting into a hexagonal, globular array around the white glare of the pony. Light from her horn flared like from an arc welder, a hard, actinic brilliance that left dark streaks where his visor's anti-flash defences were triggered. The nearest gryphons, all clad in hastily fitted armour and ensconced within the same golden glow, were now close enough to touch, and there was a palpable feeling of being next to something incomprehensibly powerful, like the Maker itself was present and--

~~~discontinuity~~~

---flicker of light and air as the landscape changed, rocks swapping for low rolling farmland under a clear sky, the sun up near the zenith--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--the numinous feeling vanished as a slap of warm, fast air made the flesh around his beak tingle. A hard shove, like the push of a rocket pack, threw him away from his flock-mates and Adigard instinctively flared his wings, twisting them in the airflow to bring himself about and slot in at the apex of his fire-team. His aiming reticule came alive, filled with unfamiliar targeting reports from the bulky launcher slung between his forelegs, its seeker heads picking out the shapes they had been programmed to kill.

There was a lot of activity below; the wide, flat armourcrete apron was littered with military vehicles being shuttled between armouries, launch pads, charging stations and the hardened shelters that protected the elevators leading down to the buried hangars. The fat, lenticular shapes of airtanks vied with the blunt arrows of carriers and, further away, in a little section all on their own, were two pairs of Arclight aircraft. Things were already moving, the reaction vehicles with crews already on board and drives kept warm, blasting dust from their undersides as spears of plasma scorched the ceramic landing surfaces, while air defence turrets blew off their weather shields to expose laser mirrors and the stubby honeycomb of swarmjet launcher cells. Dogs, reduced to the size of insects by the range, were just starting to run, heading for aircraft or the dubious shelter of bunkers.

There was another flash of white-gold from the pony, now hovering at the centre of an expanding cloud of gryphons, and an impossible wave of rainbow light rippled out from her, bathing the base below in strange hues. Without any fanfare, the drive on every ship that had managed to get airborne suddenly died, dropping the heavy airtanks back to the apron with enough force to fracture ceramic and buckle hulls. More lights, a hard, near ultraviolet glare, and the suddenly visible streaks of hypervelocity projectile fire reached out to touch a dozen of the turrets and ground-to-air launchers. Simultaneous explosions flared, the blue-white lightning flashes vanishing under the orange-yellow of secondary detonations as ammunition and backup power sources cooked off under the kinetic strikes.

The ground felt like it was tilting, despite the horizon remaining perfectly level, the whole world curving inwards to place the other pony, the one Fusion had called her sister, at its centre. Darkness congealed around her, as if the sun had gone in, and there was a pulse of something, not the brilliance of a plasma bolt but a subtle twisting in the air, that travelled from Gravity and struck the middle of the armourcrete apron. The bend in the world followed that patch of distortion, producing odd flutters in Adigard's middle ear, and he flinched as the flat expanse of fullerene and metal fibre laced concrete shuddered and pulled inwards with a great spider-web cracking, stretching and fracturing towards a building distortion at the centre.

The unseen tilt abruptly started to seesaw and the patch of apron, nearly fifty metres across, surged inwards with an appalling, grinding rumble to form a compact asteroid-like sphere, shrouded with a skin of dust that clung and pooled on its cratered surface like water in an ocean. This only lasted for an instant, then the force vanished and the mass, thousands upon thousands of tonnes, fell down into the pit that lay below the armourcrete cap. A breath later the ground shook, jolting aircraft and knocking a few running dogs off their paws. Gravity vanished, reappearing over the centre of the hole, and the wedge-shaped shockwaves of hypersonic projectiles reached in to strike at targets deep in the heart of the base.

I did wonder how she was going to get us inside. Buffeted and half-deafened by the crack-crack-crack of random junk thrown at railgun speeds, Adigard squinted and turned away as a buzzing, crackling ball of light materialised next to Fusion, the ghost of its terrible temperature reaching through the small feathers of his throat to stroke at the flesh beneath. The ball turned into a streak, fast but not the subliminal blur of Gravity's hurled projectiles, and flicked out to strike one of the Arclights, great lumpy things made pregnant with the bulge of their thaumic suppressor, amidships.

It disintegrated with a hot flash, the blast knocking the adjacent unit sideways and fragments punching holes through its thin hull, just before a second plasma bolt finished the destruction. Fusion had already turned to the remaining pair, and Adigard just stared at the rolling barrage of kinetic strikes and star-hot accelerated plasma that systematically flattened or dug out every defensive emplacement around the base in a matter of seconds.

They barely need us at all! he thought, brain sluggish from the flashes and concussions, then blinked as the pair disappeared abruptly and didn't reappear. Oh, right. Gotta have something to go home to. In his ear the launcher burbled happily, a score of targeting boxes bracketing a row of airtanks and attack carriers. Other, ghost-like icons, marked out the intended targets of the second launcher they'd salvaged; the units were talking to each other and had decided on a target list between them.

Beak open in a savage smile, Adigard screamed into the slipstream as he dived, holding down the firing switches.

===

Vanca, standing at the centre of the empty firing range, stared at the servitor, a grey mare that called itself 'Merlon'. The creature stared back with a level of directness that felt... disrespectful, even though it had been nothing but polite. Orgon's personal servitor... it almost reminds this one of Fusion... She shook her head, then glanced towards the firing points where a group of Security's scientists and her own minder, the same Agent Lilla, were huddled around some hastily assembled monitoring equipment. "Let Vanca see it," she demanded, pointing at Merlon.

There was a delay, not long, but very noticeable when there should have been immediate obedience. "Yes, Academician."

There was a glimmer of pearly light from the servitor's horn, little more than would be seen if the creature was only employing routine telekinesis, then a sharp flash-bang that made Vanca blink and her ears ring. "Unbelievable!" There had been a slight sensation when the pony had disappeared, almost like a breeze had ruffled the fur, but only on the side facing the spell. Was that gravitational shear? It would make sense, considering the amount of exotic matter required to hold open the throat enough to allow something as big as the pony throu-- Her eyes cleared, darting from side to side. "Pony? Where did the stupid creature go--"

"Here, Master," came the diffident voice, from right behind Vanca's head.

She whirled around, lips drawn back in a snarl, her paws up and curled into claws. "Very funny," she said, her frantically beating heart slowing slightly, turning the open-pawed slash into a push that did nothing to move the solidly-built servitor. "The magic... how complex is it? There is nothing like it in the servitor thaumic libraries. This one has questioned ponies from a wide range of specialities, and none of them could even offer a hint as to how it was done." She leaned forwards, jabbing at Merlon's shoulder with one claw.

The pony looked at her for a moment, with that same flat gaze Vanca had seen in the eyes of Security troopers. "Master, it has an almost fractal complexity. There is none of the modular design used in other magics, so I'm not surprised that the spell has never been discovered before." Her ears flicked back, only for an instant, followed by an expression of sadness, then she took a step back, out of range of Vanca's prodding digit. "It is... all or nothing." Her lips quirked in a slight smile. "I can see the failure modes; if you are almost there it will kill you and maybe take you somewhere. Further away from optimal and it does nothing. A little like nuclear weapon design; precision is the key."

"Disruption is straightforward?" Vanca took a few quick steps to the monitoring station and its attendant scientists, pulling a harness glittering with faintly glowing gems and crystals. Holding it awkwardly in one paw, she fiddled with the dismounted control panel, grunting with satisfaction when pulsing lights rippled over the device's surface. "Fusion and the other pony were able to escape from inside a thaumically shielded chamber."

The pony's ears went back again, and she shifted her weight from hoof to hoof, looking at the harness with an expression of distaste. "Passive shields operate using a boundary effect. The wormhole bypasses normal space-time."

"Obviously," Vanca said, waving a paw in the air and making the harness rattle. "What about this active field generator?"

"That is from an Aegis power suit..." Merlon looked thoughtful, then reached out with her magic to pluck the thing from Vanca's grasp. She started to breathe heavily, the muscles on her neck standing out like cords. "I can work through it, with enough effort. Teleportation is out of the question."

"The field effect is similar to that of Arclight, in a way," Vanca muttered, eyes turning distant and shutting out the world, "but not quite. The range is too short. We already know that these fields provide little defence against the rogues." It should be possible to extend the range, at the cost of--

"Is your plan to use this field generator as a test bed for alterations to the Hive's Arclight units? I imagine that a significant area could be covered... a sort of teleport denial system."

Vanca glared at the servitor, then its words penetrated and she found herself nodding slowly. This creature is smarter than most of the students Vanca has had. "Yes, that is a very good idea." She turned, scowling at the other scientists. Smarter than those idiots... perhaps working with it will not be an unpleasant experience. "Well? What are these ones waiting for? Bring the field tuning kit here, immediately."

===

A pulse of rainbow colours flooded the darkness of the cell, and the lights, already dim, went out. A moment later they came back on, but far dimmer and reddish in hue. Waking from a fitful doze, Scalar lifted his head, trying to taste the magic, but there was nothing but ragged pain from the centre of his skull and a pervasive odour of gryphon. "Damn you all," Scalar whispered, pushing at the pain but getting nothing back except a sudden faintness and a roaring in his head. There was a series of distant thumps and the floor vibrated under his belly, then a few more, fainter and randomly scattered. Ears twitching, he got to his hooves and walked unsteadily to the thick, transparent wall that served as a door, pressing his face against it, trying to see into the opposite cell.

Elliptic was still laying where she'd been left. Scalar squinted, straining to see even the slightest sign of life. "Come on, show me something!" He held his breath, letting it out explosively when Elliptic's chest, a patchy mix of shaved skin and blood-stained fur, rose and fell ever so slightly. "Still alive," he whispered, the knot in his stomach untying slightly. There were more vibrations, and a sudden sense of lightness, like in a fast dive. The feeling fluctuated, accompanied by a deep, basso-profundo scream and an unnatural sensation of weight before the lightness returned.

"Are you up there, Grav? Have you found me?" he whispered, ears and eyes searching the blank ceiling. The odd sensations vanished for a breath, then the whole cell shook, as if it had been picked up and dropped. Scalar staggered, wings flicking out, then fell as they failed to open, sharp pain biting into the joints around the metal cuffs that restricted their movement.

Dazed from the impact, Scalar lay there gasping, inhaling great draughts of the suddenly smoky air. He sniffed, then sneezed; the smell was coming from an uneven crack down the side of the transparent door panel, rather than the ventilator. In fact... there's no air coming from that grill. He stood again, leaning against the door. It gave slightly and he looked appraisingly at the frame. That was a very big jolt -- has something shifted?

He wheeled, lashing out with both hind legs, then choked on a scream at the sudden twin spikes of pain that lanced up his fetlocks. The door rattled slightly, but nothing more. Hobbling, barely able to stand, he moved to the door and leaned against it. The little crack was slightly wider and he pressed his muzzle to it, inhaling deeply. There was only the smell of more smoke and the faint sound of pops and bangs. Gunfire? He closed his eyes, trying to switch to shadow sight, but there was nothing but pain and darkness. No gravitic fluctuations, no more rainbow lights. If the sisters were still here, there would be far more than just a few gunshots.

"I'm here!" he screamed, flicking his head around and slamming it into the door, rewarded only by a dull thump. "Don't leave me!" Something warm and wet trickled down Scalar's cheek; gritting his teeth he pulled his head back and did it again.

===

Adigard scurried into the scant cover offered by the landing legs of the next airtank on the apron. Explosions cracked all around, filling the air with flashes of heat and the visceral thump of shockwaves. He reached back into one conformal pannier, pulling out another charge. One quick motion exposed the adhesive layer and the thing, one of many the ponies had synthesised out of little more than plant material, air and rock, was shoved deep into the guts of the tank, up the landing leg bay and past the arm-length of metalloceramic armour.

He snapped his beak at the other two in his fire team, who were currently keeping watch on the dogs' sporadic attempts to drive them away from the aircraft. The pair, both Naraka natives who'd been given a little military training at the Eugenic Board site as a form of testing, were frighteningly keen. They didn't have real names, but odd collections of syllables that sounded a little like numbers; Ein-fimm-tveir and Atta-prir-sjau, or something. The shots weren't very accurate, and seemed to be mostly small-arms -- then the three turned and galloped away. There was a solid whump from behind and the shock made him stumble, then they were behind cover again, this time amid the ruins of the hardened elevator's topside port. He glanced back, grinning at the slumped shape of the airtank, smoke billowing from its internals.

There was a double beep in his earpiece. "Time to go, chicks!" he shouted, taking a single bound then unfurling his wings. All around, other teams were doing the same, converging on the raw wound in the centre of the apron. Skimming the battered armourcrete, Adigard swerved around a burning attack carrier, black smoke belching out of the wing-mounted lifter fans, then jumped off a twisted mass of reinforcing beams, the ends distorted like they had been light construction plastic. He dove into the shaft below.

The floor, almost half a kilometre beneath him, was choked with rubble from the collapsed roof. The sides of the shaft were pockmarked with blast craters and stained by plumes of rising smoke and flame. Through the haze, green laser threads reached up towards him, lighting the dirty air like he was falling through a sunlit ocean. A flick of his eyes and a twitch of his foreclaws, curled up around the twin control sticks on his chest pack, set the fire selector and ammunition type, and he pulled the trigger.

The gun bucked against his back, a sharp vibration that made Adigard's vision blur, then part of the shaft wall disintegrated in a rolling barrage of flashes as the explosive rounds found their mark. A quick glance showed the same scene playing out across the whole volume; the others were firing too, silencing every hostile they could find. His eyes lingered on several objects; there were burning, falling shapes that shed feathers and greasy smoke as they tumbled.

A flare of wings scattered dust and rubbish as Adigard landed next to the half-buried entrance to the armoury and loading bay, a great set of slab-sided doors that were wide enough to take a pair of heavy loaders.

"Good, that pulse did its job," Hallkel said, nodding at the blast doors, still retracted into their housings.

Adigard nodded. "Wouldn't fancy trying to cut them with this stuff." He trotted forwards, helping the breaching team hold the cutting charges in place while another gryphon applied blobs of quick-setting adhesive. A nod and he scuttled back, ducking around the revetment. A brief pulse of light outlined the explosive tape and the door fell inwards with a sharp crack and a clatter. "Sweep for any surprises," he muttered into his throat mic, jumping forwards and gliding into the empty space beyond. “Stay frosty, chicks.”

Other than machines and a light haze of smoke, the place was empty. Mechanical arms tipped with grasping mouthparts designed to connect to ammunition bays on airtanks were folded against the ceiling; great square conveyor-tracks ran from them to the storage bays themselves. Starkly lit, these fanned out from the antechamber and down independently hardened tunnels filled with the reticulated complexity of the automated retrieval systems, just visible past heavy shutters. Through his visor, the place was filled with the thermal glow of the machines, but there was no flashing highlight that screamed 'body temperature'. There was a pattern of fading paw-prints across the floor, all converging on a door about large enough for an aircar, tucked away between two of the loader arms.

"We got hostiles," he muttered, a waggle of his wings signalling his wingmates to stay close. The infrared paw marks vanished into a dog-sized door next to the main one, a flimsy internal thing marked 'maintenance'. Shoulder gun already displaying its CQB reticule, Adigard pumped his wings once, then lowered his head to lock the rigid crest of his helmet against the primary load-bearing spar that ran like a spine down his armour. His gun knew what to do, pulling back and locking solidly to his back plate. A twitch of the trigger fired a spray of surface-fuzed explosive rounds at the door.

Wings snapping shut, he smashed through the disintegrating door on the tail of the detonations, blowing through the light composite like it wasn't there. Adigard landed a pace inside the threshold and immediately jumped to the right, clearing the way for the rest of his fire-team. The defensive move, designed to evade any shot aimed at where he would be, was unnecessary; at the back of the engineering bay, surrounded by weapons and the parts of weapons, were three dogs. The most threatening thing they held was a metal bar, and that was dropped the moment Adigard came through the door.

"These ones surrender!" one of the dogs, a heavily-built individual wearing an equipment harness festooned with an entire workshop's supply of small tools and parts, said, raising his paws. "None of the weapons in here are operational."

Adigard snapped his beak, the gunshot crack making the dogs flinch, and relaxed slightly. "We've secured the arsenal. Three prisoners," he muttered into his throat mic, "engineering staff by the looks of it."

There was a pause, then Ellisif spoke in his ear. "Are they of any use?"

His eyes flicked to the wall screen, currently displaying a frozen error message, shot through with great strips of dead pixels. "Perhaps, if we can get past the doors. We can't use the auto retrieval systems; the pulse fried everything in here. Doesn't look recoverable; all I can smell is smoke." He remembered the heavy doors leading off to the individual arsenals. Not going to open them in a hurry. "Going to need a pony or two in here."

"Get them to tell you where the strategic weapons are, then kill them. We have no time for prisoners."

Adigard felt a shiver run down his spine. "These are non-combatants," he subvocalised, beak barely moving.

"How much mercy would the dogs show you if your situations were reversed... no more masters, remember? Get what you can, then kill them before the ponies arrive; I'm going to break the crystal now."

Stupidest low bandwidth comms ever. "Yes, ma'am." Oh well. He waved the other gryphons forward, then pointed at the dog with the extravagant equipment vest. "You. Where is the strategic containment bay?"

"Rutting, Maker-damned traitor!" the dog snarled. "This one will never--"

Adigard swept his wing out, knocking the dog over, then planted a set of talons on his chest. He leaned forwards, feeling ribs flex under his weight. "You have very few choices at this point." He removed his talons, using them to twist the dog's head, forcing him to look at his fellow engineers. The other gryphons held them fast, the nearest with his paw gripped in a beak.

The engineer just snarled. "Fine. Have it your way." Adigard nodded to his squadmates, then stared down at the dog, willing him to change his mind. There was nothing but hate in his eyes. There was a gasp from the other prisoner, then a disjointed gabble, a near incomprehensible plea for mercy, that rapidly dissolved into screams and nasty snapping noises.

===

Vanca, paws busy with the guts of another field generator, snarled when her comms unit chimed. Ignoring it, she continued working, making delicate adjustments to the anti-thaumic effect. A magically active crystal -- a simple thing that had been ripped from the lifter drive of a commandeered float platform -- served as a test subject. It hung at the centre of a little cage made from twisted metal, levitating under the command of a scab of electronics taped to one surface. Careful empirical experimentation had matched the thing to the amount of concentration Merlon had said she required to cast the teleport spell; the pony itself had gone, summoned to other duties.

"Academician Vanca, has this one called at an inconvenient time?" Orgon said, his face appearing on the wall screen opposite Vanca's work station. There was a shuffling from behind her as the other engineers and scientists in the room -- Vanca had never bothered to learn their names -- tried to look more alert and busy. She snorted, curling a lip in their direction.

"Does the Strategist want Vanca to complete this work or not? She is not able to work any faster." Vanca straightened up, glaring at the screen. "Unless Orgon could return Korn to her? Where is this one's Student?" Vanca felt a pang of guilt. The last she saw of Korn, he was taken away by that Salrath. Dead, probably. Burned with the rest of Naraka.

"Student Korn was still at Naraka when the rogues attacked. He is presumed lost, along with several hundred other People." Orgon's face showed just the right amount of sympathy, something Vanca didn't believe was even slightly real. "There is something else of greater importance. The World Court used the Hammer to strike at the rogue's base; this one wants to stop them from trying again."

Trying again? Vanca's brow wrinkled and she breathed in sharply, looking down at her suddenly trembling paws. "It didn't work. The servitors are too mobile."

"Yes. These ones have no absolute proof, of course, but the Arclight base at Bakot has just been hit by a thaumomagnetic pulse, followed by gravitic disturbances that look remarkably similar to those employed at your Institute. There is worse." The screen split and a series of maps and graphs appeared, pushing Orgon's image to one side. "This is the telemetry from the kinetic strike; tell this one Vanca's conclusions."

The screen was cluttered with data windows; multi-dimensional plots backed with the shadows of tabulated numbers vied with little squares of looped video. The most prominent of these was a wavering, blurred shot taken from some high-altitude aircraft or drone, showing a point of scintillating light bursting free of a cloud bank and vanishing into the blackness beyond. Nothing happened for a few breaths, then successive pulses of light blanked the view. An energy weapon... the servitor was returning fire. The power required-- She pushed the interesting train of thought to one side. It didn't work, so it seems unlikely that is what Orgon is interested in.

Vanca scanned the rest of the data with narrowed eyes then shrugged, stripping off the manipulator gauntlet and stepping over to the wall screen. A few waves of her paw shifted the data around, enlarging the ground track error plot. "One point two kilometres... is this correct? The Court tells us the targeting error on a Hammer strike is less than twenty metres." Orgon stayed silent and Vanca stared at the trajectory curve, setting the virtual cube spinning with a claw twitch. Why is that not linear? Another manipulation extracted the moment-by-moment changes in velocity, presented as a stacked series of vector arrows along the projectile's course.

"The servitor was trying to change the impact point," she said softly, eyes flicking to the projectile's internal fine guidance logs. "The weapon has a lateral dV capacity of almost one kilometre a second, yet all of that was expended in the opposite direction." Another adjustment, removing the effects of the guidance system. Random bumps appeared in the vector plot, high in the early trajectory of the projectile; not the spikes of sensor noise, but oddly shaped regular signals. Further down, at the original point that had attracted Vanca's attention, the vector arrows jumped in length, showing an unsettlingly steep curve. The power levels are very high, but the growth can be accounted for by the reduction in range, perhaps... Perhaps not. There is that plasma weapon. The pony managed to maintain containment at great range. TC4668 was always good at energy manipulation. Vanca shifted the plot, expanding the upper reaches, higher up than the debris ring.

On the other part of the screen, Orgon straightened up. "What is that?"

The sampling rate of the accelerometers wasn't as high as it might have been, but what they showed was clear. Near-perfect exponential peaks with sudden cut-offs marked out the derived changes in velocity, scattered all along the upper reaches of the projectile's trajectory. "That is the signature of someone conducting an experiment..." she muttered, waving Orgon's image further away along the wall screen and out of her direct line of sight. "...and not really knowing what they are doing." Her paw stabbed out, a claw leaving coloured rings on the screen. "Until here. This is where the pony finally understood what it was doing. Its control gets better very quickly." The claw dragged a line over the velocity vector plot. "Too quickly." She stepped back, turning to look at Orgon. "This one thinks it would be a bad idea to use the Hammer again."

Orgon stared back at her, face blank, then his ears went back for just an instant. "Orgon doesn't have that much influence with the Court. How much can the rogue shift the trajectory?"

"More research is needed," Vanca's lips pulled back from her teeth in a humourless smile. "but the program may go over budget." She sighed and slumped, leaning heavily against the screen and staring at the vector plot. "Enough. This one would advise against another kinetic strike in the strongest possible terms."

===

Redshift, his muzzle resting on Doppler's back, breathed in deeply, filling his mind with the warm, lemony scent of her fur. He watched through half-lidded eyes as a pastel stain spread across a cloud mass to the north. Sparks of light danced through the towering mass, filling it with colour. "I can't believe I've really got you back after all that has happened." Under his touch, she shifted, twisting to look at him with large, liquid eyes. "Can you ever forgive me?"

"For making me think you were dead? For nearly driving me into fugue?" She looked stern, then snorted gently. "It's hardly you I need to forgive... but I can't blame Spiral, either. Fusion, perhaps... but would that be fair?" Her ears folded back, tears starting to run down her cheeks. "I understand why she did what she did... but it's hard, so very hard. How many friends did we lose when the Masters raided our corral, or hit our refuge?"

"Too many," he whispered. "But we got out. You, me and Shock."

"Yes, we did. From the corral, to Naraka, to our nameless refuge to here. At least we're better off than poor Spiral and Trocar... I'm not surprised they're keeping a low profile. I couldn't even find them to offer help." She sighed, then gestured at the same cloud he'd been staring at. "You think this will work where everything else did not?"

"I think so. It's very clever. They can't hit us if they can't find us... and they can't nuke everywhere."

Doppler shivered, turning away and moving one of her wings slightly. Under it was Shock Diamond, too large to really be sleeping like that. She stared down at him, as if trying to believe that he was real. "Can't they? You must have heard the stories from ponies working the mass drivers. I really hope so. I don't ever want to go back to the Master's service."

There was a flutter of wings, the downdraught shifting the dead pine needles, and a red-coated stallion landed next to them. "We've got to go, 'Shift. The gryphons have found something they need your help with."

Like what? he thought. A score of ponies have gone already... what is it they need me for? I've trained plenty of-- He froze in the act of standing, ears drooping. It has to be that. I'm the only pony who's played with one. "Okay. Let's get this over with." He bent down, nuzzling behind Doppler's ear. "Be back soon."

"Redshift, when you get back you will teach me that teleport spell," she said sternly. "I will not have you going to places I cannot reach."

He flashed her a grin and the other stallion's horn glowed scarlet as he pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--a long jump, dropping them out over a rolling hillside dotted with trees, barely visible under the sudden shock of hitting air made nearly solid. "Steady, let's not die before we get--"

~~~discontinuity~~~

--smoky air, redolent with the tang of explosives, burning plastic and blood. A deep vertical shaft, lit by red-tinged sunlight coming in through a ragged hole high above. Redshift flared his wings, dumping the excess velocity from the jump, then landed and stumbled, eyes darting, the force field enchantment already half filling his mind. A familiar gryphon was waving him over to a heavy set of doors set in the vertical concrete cliff, so he bounded over the rubble, landing next to Adigard. "Is this place safe?" he demanded, hopping from hoof to hoof as his ears twitched and strained for the slightest threatening sound. There was a rattle of gunfire, muffled by intervening rock, and he flinched.

"No, Redshift, it is not," the gryphon said, sighing. "Speed is the key here. The dogs have a tendency to nuke the places we go, so if you don't mind...?"

He nodded, following the gryphon into a smoke-smelling room with mechanical equipment on the ceiling and walls. On the floor were several patches of blood, spread about by countless claw, paw and hoof prints. The rusty-iron smell made his nose twitch, and Redshift swallowed hard. Not enough for a pony or a gryphon. He fixed his eyes on Adigard's armoured rump, following the gryphon through one of the doors, ducking under a sudden stream of crates and boxes that floated in the opposite direction, all controlled by an unfamiliar mare with a very focused look.

More ponies were working inside, helped by three times the number of gryphons. The soldiers were pulling deadly items -- packs of missiles, explosives, angular things too big to be anything other than vehicle-mounted weapons, and endless bundles of mass driver needles -- from the automated retrieval system's inner workings and stacking them ready for the ponies. The air, still filled with smoke and the scent of burned plastic, was lit with the concussive thump and flash of teleports. They pushed past them all, ending up on one of the system's spur lines, interrupted by a heavy door, already breached by perfect force field cuts.

"Fortunately that pulse knocked out the passive shielding, otherwise I'd not be of much use to you here," Redshift said, staring at the layers of crystals embedded in the thick armour ceramic. There was a faint sense of repulsion from them, and they made using shadow sight a little uncomfortable, but nothing like the flash of pain that normally accompanied the examination of such things. There was no magic inside the room, but there was...

Redshift hissed, taking a step backwards, his eyes going wide. "You have to be joking!" The chamber inside was not large, barely the size of a corral shelter, and was subdivided into thick-walled hexagonal cells. At the centre of each was a small cylinder, tethered to the wall by a slender cable. Forcing his legs to move, Redshift took a few hesitant steps into the room, head dipping to examine one of the objects. "Very lucky that shielding was in the walls," he murmured, "although I guess this room would block the gamma flash."

"So it is what we thought it was," Adigard said, looking satisfied. "Can you move them?"

"The laser confinement traps only have a limited lifespan... it's a security thing, I think. If the power fails then the speck of antimatter will hit the wall and... poof."

"Poof. Right. Ellisif said you defused a nuke at Naraka. This is no different. Easier, surely."

Redshift lifted his wings, shrugging helplessly. "Yes, but... I need something to power them; I can only keep a couple running -- and you don't want me to lose concentration if I am!" He backed away from the gryphon, then danced forwards a step when his tail brushed the rear wall.

"Ah, I can fix that. I've had them bring them here." Outside there was a squeaking; the sound of wheels on gravel-littered concrete. A heavy trolley nosed around the entrance, pushed by a pair of panting gryphons.

Redshift stared at the flattened ovoids, stacked three deep on the trolley. "That will do it," he said weakly. His horn lit up, pulling out the first bomb casing. There was the familiar taste of conventional alloys, mixed in with the bitter tang of beryllium and the alien flavour of the lithium-6 deuteride main charge. All those strange isotopes... The antimatter traps were simpler, little self-contained bundles of superconductors and solid-state lasers, all designed to levitate an infinitesimal speck of something in a vacuum so good that it could only be generated at a high-orbit wake-shield facility.

"Right... let me see..." His magic penetrated the first antimatter containment unit, the detonator, and deftly modified the computronium security modules.

===

Redshift kept his eyes closed, holding one of the antimatter triggers while he slotted a second into the beautifully machined cavity designed to accept it. The pathway was highly constricted, routed between polished bundles of fine tubes shaped in careful curves, but magic made it an easy, if fiddly, task. It went home with a nearly silent click, power and control feeds mating with their connectors to the rest of the bomb. Power flowed into the trigger and he slowly released his hold on it, reducing the amount of energy he supplied until it was completely self-contained.

"I want to go now," he said to Adigard, who was still waiting by the door, "the dogs must be planning something for us."

"Nearly finished... the other ponies are nearly done emptying the armoury of everything useful. They tell me that there's nothing coming at us from any of the mass drivers, no sign of a low altitude hypersonic transit and the power core has not been tampered with."

"What about the tunnels? There's no way to--"

Adigard made a slashing gesture with one foreclaw. "Which will take at least two kiloseconds to get here; the speeds are just not high enough. The longer you stand here talking--?" He cocked his head, opening the raised claws to brush against the bomb housing. "I want you to set the next one to destroy this base. Maximum yield."

Relief and dread in equal measure flooded through Redshift. "At last." He closed his eyes, shadow sight taking away the harsh lighting and confined space, replacing it with darkness and jewel-like glows. He focused on the final trigger, then froze. Right there, at the limits of resolution, where individual thaumic devices merged into the general background glow, were two sets of winglights. I'm going to kill those gryphons, he thought, them and every other being on this base. It's funny... I've never seen gryphons with anything other than golden winglights.

===

The trigger was as easy to place in the final bomb as all the others, and the experience he'd had converting the nuke from Naraka made bypassing the security and rigging a basic timer the work of a moment. Right, that's it, then. Redshift felt Adigard's eyes on the back of his head and looked around. "It's ready," he whispered, dropping his gaze to the gryphon's taloned foreclaws, currently encased in wicked-looking segmented gloves. It's one thing to defend yourself, but we attacked them this time... I don't think this is right. I was told to help, but does Fusion really know what Ellisif is doing here? He felt a powerful urge to jump back to their improvised base and talk to Doppler or Fusion, or anypony, and ask their advice.

"Then do it. The other ponies have started to ferry us back; a hundred seconds should do it."

Redshift shuddered, closing his eyes. About a megaton. No need to reduce the yield on this one. Perhaps I can just... "You go," he said softly. "I'll set it when everyone is clear." I'll say I made a mistake, or I was surprised, or perhaps a dog came out of hiding and disabled it. It's not like I've put in any anti-tamper functions; One thing this world doesn't need is a sensitive nuke. Adigard was looking at him again, this time with narrowed eyes. "If I make a mistake there will be little warning. I might get out, but anyone left will die. I won't have that hanging over me." Redshift straightened up, staring back into those alien eyes.

There was a pause, then Adigard nodded. "We've cleared out all the upper levels, so you shouldn't get any visitors." He listened intently to a voice in his ear, the whisper of the suit-to-suit comms faintly audible in the quiet of the armoury. "That's the last of us leaving now." He backed away, trotting away towards the surface. "Don't wait too long!"

Redshift didn't reply, just switched to shadow sight and watched him leave. In the depths of the shaft, ponies were winking into being and snatching small groups of gryphons before disappearing again. There were a few other gryphons in the base, along with a multitude of crystal thaumic devices, many showing an irregular flicker he associated with damage. I hope all of ours got out, and those that haven't... it's not fair that we can't save them. None of this is their fault. As the ponies came and went, he counted the lights in the deeper parts of the base, again spotting the odd-coloured pair.

The last of the gryphons in the shaft were taken away and he was all alone. "I'm not going to set you off," he told the bomb, "just leave you in a rigged state. That will be warning enough." The teleport spell built in his head, but the strange, pastel-shaded winglights gnawed at his memory. They're almost the same colour as... as... "Sweet Maker; those aren't gryphons, they are ponies without horns!" They are the same colours as Scalar and Elliptic-- He inhaled deeply, the escape pattern vanishing. They said you were dead. "No, the dogs said you were dead!" he snarled, a plane of violet light lashing out at the thick floor.

Sweat soaked his flanks and turned to ice as he tunnelled, pulling out irregular chunks of armourcrete and throwing them behind him. The base was laid out like the spokes of a wheel surrounding the central hub of the main shaft; large wedges of the wheel were taken up by hangars and the arsenal he was just leaving. There were a couple of tunnels connecting the blast-proof and reinforced sub-complex to the rest of the wheel, and Redshift broke into the closest, identifying it by a tracery of flickering lights in his shadow sight, only a dozen breaths after he started to work.

He ignored the darkness and thick, smoky air, pushing the first back with a conjured globe of white light and the second with a field only permeable to oxygen and nitrogen. More magic followed, a luminous barrier-field that floated like a egg-shaped dome over his body, built as he galloped down the tunnel. Doors and rubble did little to impede him, and were smashed aside by the battering ram of his will. Where necessary, Redshift made new holes in walls or floors, in one case dashing through a chamber filled with dead computers and confused, choking, dogs. He ignored them and they all recoiled back, falling over in their haste to get out of his way.

More corridors, bare things with thick walls that forced him to slow his head-long charge when he punched through from one to another. The floor suddenly dropped away and Redshift flew, trailing a contrail of thick, cold cloud, across the empty core of a deserted barracks-roost, the cylindrical wall lined with small hexagonal cells like he was in a beehive. His magic flashed again, a rapid-fire slash of force field and telekinesis that shredded bedding, personal effects and armourcrete partitions alike, opening a hole to the next slice in the pie surrounding the central shaft.

Breathing heavily, his steps starting to falter with the fatigue building in his chest, Redshift swerved, turning outward and toward the tantalising hint of maimed pony in his shadow sight. There was another door ahead, a heavy thing, and he slashed at it, cutting armoured panels from the heavy frame. A push and it blew outwards a moment before he leaped past, into a space lined with narrow transparent doors. A dog was right there, no more than ten metres away, stubby, wide-barrelled weapon already up and aimed; he swerved, wing out and telekinesis pushing with all his might at the corridor wall.

Blinding green filled his eyes and something tugged at his ear, a stinging, burning nip that was noticed but caused no pain. Wings half out and legs pulled up he dove for the floor, magic flicking out to strike the figure and throw it further down the corridor; the dog's weapon flew free and it sprawled, moving sluggishly. Blinded, Redshift fanned his wings and made an untidy landing by shadow sight, colliding heavily with the left side of the corridor. Wheezing, he staggered, homing in on the winglights. There were two sets, one dim and stationary, the other moving frantically. Dim sounds reached Redshift; incoherent screaming and faint, heavy thumps.

"Get back!" He took a deep breath, then coughed, struggling to locate the door by its faint impression on the shadow world, then opened his eyes, squinting past the slowly fading laser afterimages. Magic flashed, a perfect force field slice, then three more, and he pulled out a thick plug of the transparent material.

The pony inside jumped through the gap, barging past. "My mate, Redshift, get her out! I think she's... she's--" Scalar's voice choked off and he lurched to one side. "Rutting, filthy dog!" he snarled, striking out with forehooves against the prone figure, trying to drag itself away. Redshift turned, focussing on the cell holding Elliptic, but couldn't stop watching the other stallion. Scalar reared over the dog and came down heavily, stamping, smashing and grinding; the dog let out a short, sharp scream then fell silent, but Scalar didn't stop, even when his legs and belly were stained carmine.

Redshift gently pulled Elliptic off the floor, holding her at his side. Eyesight almost fully returned, he stared down at her head, unable to look away from the burned and chipped stump of her horn. Elliptic still breathed, but shallowly, and she felt loose and unwieldy. "Scalar," he croaked, "I've got her and she's alive. We've got to go."

The stallion swayed on his hooves. "I..." Some of the wild fury left his eyes and he seemed to see Redshift for the first time. "You saved us," he whispered, sagging. "I thought we were dead."

"We were told you were, just before--" Redshift reached out, obscurely glad that he didn't have to physically touch the other pony's blood-stained coat, and picked Scalar up. "Later." The teleport pattern formed, but only slowly, and he fought back the fuzziness in his thoughts.

"You're hit," Scalar said, eyes fixed on a point over Redshift's right eye. "You're bleeding."

He looked up, flicking a strangely light ear forwards. The upper half was gone, the fine, tufted point bitten to a perfect semicircle by the laser. There had been little cauterization and blood was soaking into the fur. Doppler's going to kill me! he thought, then smiled at Scalar. "It's worth it. Come on, we don't have time for me to bleed."

"I can never thank you enou--" Scalar said, folding one wing over Elliptic, tears starting to roll down his muzzle.

~~~discontinuity~~~

27- Death is lighter than a feather

Author's Note

A crude dramatis personæ can be found here.
Preread by: turol.
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and Caliaponia (Just Passing Through).

27- Death is lighter than a feather

The pile of hardware had turned into a small hill, but at least the stuff had stopped arriving. Gravity frowned at what was left, a chaotic mass of 'light' modular weapon systems destined for hot-swappable bays on dog vehicles, ammunition for railguns and missile launchers, and a small stack of what one gryphon had assured her were self-contained, solid-state fusion reactors. Steady output for a gigasecond and no moving parts... I can see why the gryphons wanted them. They were simple-looking things, little more than matte-black cylinders the size of a pony capped with the fractal fans of heat sinks, although the plain exterior hid massive complexity.

She dipped back into her shadow sight, the relative simplicity of the magic-only world view making her other sense that much easier to read. Luna was there, and Grund, the most obvious things above the limb of the world. There was still no sign of the twitching that presaged a Hammer launch, and she sank into a light trance, following the tracks of everything above the atmosphere. It was a chaotic place, still evolving after Fusion's assault on the satellites, and the regular bands of floating machines had nearly all dissolved into invisibly fine particles. Nothing from the mass drivers. I wonder why they haven't tried to hit that Bakot place?

Gravity sighed, letting the sensations fade and dropping back to normal vision. Here I am, helping the attack after all. I could have gone with them. The ponies assigned to transport duties were cycling in and out of a patch of clear air assigned to them; each time one appeared it dropped off a clawful of gryphons. The majority were coming back uninjured, but there were a few suffering the normal injuries of battle. Burns and traumatic injury cases were stacking up in the triage centre, with medics hurrying from person to person and directing their attentions where required. Animal Scanner was at the centre, eyes closed and a red light dancing about his horn. Matching glows moved over the nearest gryphons, flowing over them like luminescent oil.

Eyes narrowed, Gravity scanned the scene, checking each of the medics in turn. Where are Spiral and Trocar? They should be--

One final pony teleported in, releasing Ellisif and Adigard. The pair dropped towards her, landing softly amid a plume of sweat- and smoke-scented air. "The raid was a complete success, ma'am," Ellisif said with a beak click. "We captured a significant amount of material, practically cleared out their armoury." She fluttered her wings, eyes bright. "That Redshift of yours has made us another eighteen nukes; this will give us real leverage over the dogs."

A bright light, the world's biggest lightning strike, coupled with enough heat to sear flesh at fifty kilometres. Gravity smiled. "I'm sure they don't need too many more reasons to fear us." She surveyed the airspace again, then frowned. "Where is Redshift?"

Ellisif turned to Adigard, who looked uncomfortable. "He said he'd be right behind me. I asked him to set the final bomb to destroy the base."

"You left him alone?!" Gravity opened her wings, hindquarters bunching for the leap into the air.

"Stop!" Ellisif snapped, and the tone carried with it enough similarity to that of a Master that Gravity hesitated, the teleport pattern dispersing in her mind.

"I'm not leaving a friend to burn!" she snarled, jumping into the air.

"And if he's already set the timer, what then? The delay will be very short," the gryphoness leapt into her own hover, wings beating strongly. "Your people can't afford to lose you."

'My people' only ever talk to Fusion. Her magic vanished, and she turned the hover into a slow vulture-circle. You refrained from jumping into one explosion, filly, how about another? How long would he have set the timer for? She started to count in her head, wondering when it would be safe to find Redshift. At a count of thirty, three ponies appeared in the air nearby.

The one in the middle was Redshift; exhaustion was clear in the ragged beat of his wings, but he had an expression of extreme satisfaction on his face. He angled his wings, dropping to the triage point, and Gravity followed him down, unable to take her eyes off the other ponies’ foreheads. A raw heat built in her belly, fighting with the cold that bit through her fur. The sun, already filtered by the heavy clouds, dimmed like she stood at a patch of shadow. Scalar... "You were at the base the whole time," she whispered, pushing her rage away and letting the light back in. Let's try this Fusion's way. Talk first; find out who I should be angry at.

"I need a medic here!" Redshift called out, depositing a limp Elliptic between a pair of battered gryphons, who shuffled sideways with angry-sounding hisses. He caught sight of Gravity, shying away from her expression. "I saw them at the last moment; didn't want to risk a delay in coming back for help," he said, ears drooping.

"I am the last pony to chastise you for galloping straight in, Redshift," Gravity said, "still, how long would it have taken to make a couple of jumps -- twenty seconds?" He nodded, ears drooping, and she smiled. "Don't worry, you did good; if Fusion gives you a hard time you'll have my support. I expect all the details later."

One of the Naraka ponies trotted over, a heavily pregnant blue-coated mare, her ears going flat at the sight. "Oh, you poor thing," she muttered, horn glowing and magic flickering over Elliptic's body. "Some evidence of thaumic medical repairs and no obvious internal injuries. Definite dehydration and..." Her voice trailed off as she sank deeper into her magic.

"Well?" Scalar said, taking a few steps forward then stopping when Gravity stepped in his path. "Get out of my way!" he said, pawing at the ground and lifting his head. Tiny fireflies of light danced over his horn stub and he flinched as if struck.

"Let the pony work, you'll only get in the way," Gravity said. "Talk, Scalar. The dogs claimed you died when a missile struck your airtruck." She smiled, ears folding back. "Yet more evidence that they cannot be trusted."

The stallion slumped, head drooping. "They took us to a base and were going to hook me into some machine, then another pony showed up and took charge." He looked confused, frowning. "A dapple grey mare, definite Security type. She... she actually ordered the dogs out, said they were never going to get anything out of me."

Gravity blinked, her ears relaxing. "And they obeyed her? Really? It wasn't some kind of show? Who was she?"

"Said she was 'Strategist Orgon's personal servitor', but never told me her name. The dogs seemed to be scared of her! And... and Elliptic." Scalar, wings drooping, leaned against Gravity and she staggered, bracing herself against his weight. "She was going to kill her if I didn't help; wanted to know where we were -- but I didn't tell!" He looked up at her, head still low. "I heard her talking to her Master, this Strategist Orgon. He said that they already knew where you were... they... they--" He looked around, eyes going wide as if he was seeing the valley for the first time. "What did they do? Did anypony get hurt?"

"They used the Hammer," Redshift said softly, backing away and looking behind him at one of the piles of equipment. "About half of us didn't make it out. It was Random."

Scalar's ears went back, then relaxed. "I should be angry, but that would have been me in a kilosecond." He swallowed, jaw working. "The grey mare... I showed her the teleport spell."

Gravity growled quietly at the back of her throat, and Scalar flinched, stepping back. "Sorry," she said, trying to relax, "I don't know what they did to you. Is there anything else you can tell me?"

"The mare... she's smart and not afraid to hurt ponies, or anyone else. Her master didn't seem very interested in using the teleport spell, more how to block it. There's something else... she behaved very strangely after she talked to Orgon, like she'd kept something vital from him." His attention drifted back to the medic working on Elliptic, and Gravity sidestepped to get out of his way.

"I want to know exactly what happened, and Fusion will too. Get yourself settled for a kilosecond or two and I'll try a sharing."

"But my horn... surely you can't--" He shuddered, closing his eyes, then nodded.

If it works on dogs, it will work on you, Gravity thought, backing away and scanning the valley with a frown. "Animal," she said, waiting until the medic had paused in his repairs, "where are Spiral and Trocar?"

"Wish I knew," he grumbled, "these Naraka ponies are too out of practice for the problem cases. Ask Lilac." He closed his eyes, focussing on the next patient.

Right. Gravity directed her attention inwards, feeling for the ponies she knew and had shared with before. Her sister was there, by far and away the strongest despite the distance that separated them, but there were faint traces of the others. No sign of Spiral, unfortunately, but Lilac was there. She pushed gently, and was rewarded with a confused response.

Grav? Is that you?

Gravity smiled. Who else? Little snippets of the youngster's sensorium were coming through the link, flashes of the work he was doing among the injured from the Hammer strike. Do you know where Spiral is? We need her.

She's missing? Not at any of the new settlements? She... she said something funny, last time I saw her. She said she was sorry.

That's it?

I think she was scared. Random was with her, but she moved like she'd been drugged.

Gravity's brow furrowed. Thank you, she sent, then dropped the link, directing her attention to Fusion instead. I think Spiral has run away. Trocar and Random are also gone. Not sure yet; I still need to check the new corrals we are setting up. A ghost of sensation swept through Gravity's body, a twisting in the depths of her gut echoing Fusion's own reactions.

What?! Maker-dammit, I should have thought to-- Some of the anger left Fusion's mental tone, replaced with weariness. I should have guessed they'd leave; they must have heard all the talk from the gryphons. Does anypony know where they have gone?

Not so far, but I've only just started asking. We'll find them.

I'm needed here for now, can you manage? There was a sense of power being expended at the other end of the link, of energy being funnelled from some high, distant reservoir and directed to a multitude of sources. The weather ponies can maintain the cloud spells, but I have to pump most of the power in to get the magic to spread at a reasonable rate.

Another application of that energy-draining spell of yours? You must show me. Gravity opened her wings and leaped into the sky, accelerating upwards. I can... I'll hit the furthest new corrals first. If I was going into hiding I'd start at the end of the chain and strike outwards. Talk to the weather ponies as you work; they might have seen something.

===

"Well I say we should take matters into our own claws. This 'Random' pony killed over half of us, and you are telling me that she will get away without punishment at all?!" Halla said, her head feathers erect and wings mantled. She strode about the clearing, eyes glittering in the pale light of a dismounted navigation beacon set to 'moonlight'. "Five hundred of us burned to charcoal and vapour in an instant... what's to say she won't do it again? What's to say any of the ponies won't turn on us the moment the dogs crook a claw in their direction? They even rescued those two prisoner dogs -- that's two of us they could have saved instead!" Around the perimeter of the little space, many gryphons snapped their beaks in agreement and an angry muttering filled the air.

Ellisif nodded in turn, idly scratching a triangle in the pine-needle litter with one foreclaw. She looked around the clearing, taking note of the shadowed faces. There was a wide selection present; some newly-minted NCOs from the remaining Naraka gryphons, but many from the units rescued from the Pit. Perhaps maintaining the old units was a mistake... it's a damned shame we lost so many from Naraka. It would have been good to split up and dilute the squads. As it was, since they had been effectively cut adrift from the dogs' table of organisation, most of the low level troops had become even more tightly bound to their units in an effort to cling to some semblance of normalcy.

"You dragged us all out into the woods far from camp and away from prying ears, so I assume you have a plan, Halla," Ellisif said quietly. This lot could command what... three quarters of my trained gryphons? Something in her gut twisted, and she was suddenly aware how far away the rest of the camp was.

"Random must answer to the Code of Military Order, just like we have to," Halla said promptly. "Make a public example of her; that will make any of the ponies pause before betraying us." She waved a claw through the air, black needle-tips glittering in the light. "I also hear that she's vanished, along with her parents. That sound innocent to you?"

"That would fall under Article Five." Ellisif nodded. "Yes, the case is clear, but... what if they won't let her be executed?"

"Then they cannot be trusted. We have our own weapons and we have numbers; we should leave. I don't think we need the ponies any more. With those nukes we can negotiate our own deal with the dogs -- at the very least they won't dare to come after us."

"That's your plan, to vanish into the wilderness. Follow the others that have already deserted." Ellisif shook her head. "You are a fool. How you ever made sersjant I'll never know." Halla hissed loudly, beak open, and took a step forwards. "Oh shut up. I've beaten you before and I can do it again." Ellisif swept her gaze around the assembled group, glaring at each gryphon in turn. "The same goes for the rest of you. You need to think with your heads, and not your claws."

She jumped forwards, then strode up to Halla. "Putting aside the fact that we'll have to get a pony to construct an interface for the bombs, exactly how well will we fare without pony support? What about transport, or medical care? Do you really want to fly away with only what you can carry? Without them the dogs will just hunt us down one by one." She waved one wing, raking the little patch of visible sky with her primary feathers; it glowed a faint, alien pastel shade of pink.

Halla narrowed her eyes, head feathers lifting. "None of us asked to be 'rescued' by that Gravity pony. Not from Naraka and not from the Pit. It's her fault that we're now in this position. The Masters would have pulled us out. In fact, I'll bet they would even take us back, especially if we deliver the ponies to them. It was very clever of you, to arrange an attack so soon, but I saw though your little game. One victory is nothing in this war."

A sudden hush settled over the clearing, with each gryphon looking uncertainly at the next. "You were not on that raid were you, Halla?" Ellisif said quietly. "Is that because it would give you a way to go back to the dogs? I'm sure you heard what that pair did to the base, but you didn't see it. It was like a precision bombing run... they flattened the defences in the time it took me to draw a breath. Can you imagine what they might do if we betray them?" Fusion, probably nothing but cutting words. Gravity, though... Ellisif suppressed a shudder.

"How am I supposed to trust them if they cannot control their own?" Halla's claws raked at the already churned ground, making deep furrows. "Why should I take their word for it? I want them to prove they have the guts to stop their kind from betraying us. If they can't, then this... this rebellion has all the makings of a disaster."

"Oh, I agree, but you have to remember a few important things," Ellisif said, settling back down on her haunches and lifting one claw. "The Code only ever applied to gryphons and military dogs. Two," another claw joined the first, "Random is the last surviving foal of Spiral and Trocar, who are two of the three medics--"

"Who have already vanished! Most of us have some level of medical training, and I have nearly twenty trained battlefield medics." Halla snapped. "That is hardly a good reason!"

Ellisif hissed, the sound harsh and loud in the silence under the trees. "You must have seen what those ponies have done. Between them they have the capabilities of a major hospital. Spiral's other foal was shot by a gryphon during a botched Security operation, so you can imagine what she's going to think if we get Random killed. Three, no ponies means no more hardware and no instant transport, and nothing that gets broken will be fixed. I don't know about you, but I don't have an industrial civilization kit in my panniers." Four, Fusion was Random's friend, and she's far too soft to have her killed, even by proxy.

Halla made to speak, but Ellisif stood up, beak gaping threateningly. "No, that's enough. You, all of you, will listen to me. I don't want to just survive this, which is all Halla seems to want. I want to build a new world, a gryphon world, one where we're not looking over our shoulders at the dogs snapping at our heels. If we want to be free, we will have to kill them all, and we can't do that while cowering in the woods." She let her head feathers relax and started to walk the perimeter. "But I do understand. This world is a hard one and we cannot afford to be soft. I will make your feelings known to Fusion; she is a thinker and she will understand the consequences of Random's actions. Something will have to be done; after all, the ponies are just as vulnerable as we are." Possibly more so. If one turns they might convince others...

Halla nodded, but little of the anger left her eyes. "Very well. We'll wait, for now. I agree with you on one point; we are too dependent on the ponies. We must make every effort to gain some independence."

"I don't think we will ever be fully independent; after all, the ponies do most of the dogs' manufacturing. I'm sure we can work out a way to get some transport, though." Ellisif cocked her head, beak half open in a smile. "Plenty of gryphon-pilotable vehicles about, if we go to the right places. If nothing else, I can use your discontent to push the ponies into action."

===

Fusion flew in the gap between the heavy, pastel clouds and the dark fur of the evergreens that coated the valley, leaving the little corral behind her. One of a dozen or so that they'd split the ponies and gryphons into in an effort to reduce their vulnerability to the Hammer, spreading them over a thousand kilometres of mountain and forest, all sheltered under the expanding cover of the altered clouds. She looked upwards, watching through shadow sight as a pair of ex-weather team ponies, some of Naraka's survivors, flew through the clouds, pumping magic into the web of simple spells that tied them together. It was a pair similar to these that had seen three ponies travel up this valley, away from the new corral.

The sun was up, she could feel it above the artificial clouds, but little light penetrated. "Good thing we are going into local winter," she muttered, "at least the plants aren't losing what little growing season they have." The steep-walled glacial valley slowly climbed towards a distant peak, eventually vanishing amid the jumble of the terminal moraine and the glacier itself, but at this level the trees were unbroken aside from the rapid tumble of the icy river down its middle. Shadow sight showed her target -- a tiny cluster of horn- and winglights burrowed into the side of one wall, the colours matching those of Spiral, Trocar and Random. She's made herself a hole to hide in.

She reached inwards, feeling for Gravity; the connection snapped open and she got a sudden sense of the mare flying low and fast over similar terrain. I've found them; you can stop searching.

I was half afraid some gryphon unit had gone for a little revenge.

Fusion shivered. I hadn't considered that. We'd never recover from that.

I'm glad it's not the case. You will call if you need me?

I will. I'd like you to listen in, if you can. A sharing seems a good place to start with Random. Fusion felt the echo of a nod, the motion of Gravity at the other end of the link, and let the connection narrow to a thread.

Not a fit thing for a pony, living so alone. You should have come to me first, Spiral. Approaching the lights, Fusion skimmed the treetops, then dove through a slender gap, hooves rattling off branches, landing before a narrow entrance.

Spiral stepped out of the shadowed opening, blocking it. "I wondered when you would find us," she said, voice trembling. "You can't have Random."

Fusion paused, one hoof raised. "I just want to talk to her."

"Do you? I've heard what the gryphons are saying, that she's a traitor and must be punished. The dogs trained them and we all know what they do those who betray them."

"You know what she did, Spiral," Fusion said softly, "There's no doubt."

"Of course I know!" Spiral shrieked, loud enough that Fusion flinched. "I-- I've had to keep her tranquilised... any time I stop watching she tries to--" Her head dropped, tears running freely down her muzzle. "She's my only foal, you can't..."

"I'm not going to." At least, I hope not. Fusion stepped close to the other mare, resting her head against her neck. "I failed her... we all did. I saw what she went through at the Pit; should have pressed her further." She gently nibbled at Spiral's shoulder, feeling the trembling flesh under the fur. "She's my friend and I don't want her to die... but we have to do something. I can't fight the gryphons as well." Well, I can, but it would be a slaughter and I won't kill so many for one. I think we need them.

"What do you want to do?" Spiral's voice was a tight whisper, like some spring inside her was wound up to breaking point.

"There are... options. None of them are pleasant, but she has a chance to live. It may even give her a reason to want to live. That's why I wanted to talk to you and Trocar first. It would be best if you carried out part of the... the sentence, to make sure it is done safely. For now, I just want to talk. I have to understand what she's been through if I'm going to convince the others. Has she told you anything?"

"No," Spiral whispered in a low moan, "she won't talk to me or Trocar. I hoped that if I took her away, she'd open up."

"Let me try, please."

Spiral stiffened, then backed away. "I can't stop you."

No, you can't. Fusion moved along the passageway and into the chamber beyond, only a few paces into the valley wall. "Trocar," she said, the gentle glow of her mane lighting the dark interior. The stallion was lying on a bed of pine boughs next to Random, staring up at her with a helpless expression.

"What are we going to do, Fusion?"

She swallowed, staring at the still shape of Random, her lips moving silently. I wish I knew. Oh, Random, I'm so sorry. "I have a few ideas, but she has to want to do it." Shadow sight showed a familiar curl of magic in Random's head, the same soporific spell Spiral had used on Packet. "Let me take her. I won't go far, I promise. No decisions without talking to you first."

He nodded, and Fusion reached in and took control of the spell, then picked Random up. She was light in her grasp, barely a feather's-weight, and Fusion carried her gently out into the forest and down towards the river. There, on a bed of water-smoothed pebbles, she allowed Random to wake up.

Her tan head moved, wobbling uncertainly in the manner of a pony too long asleep, eyes opening slowly, unfocused. "Dam, please, I don't want to sleep anymo--" She gasped, eyes snapping fully open and legs spasming with great, reflexive leaps.

Fusion held her jerking body close, one white wing folded over Random's back and flank, head tucked in against her friend's opposite shoulder. "Random, it's okay, you don't hav--" Magic came next, great surges of raw thaumokinetic force that blasted craters in the pebbles where Fusion parried the panicked blows without suppressing the spells. Ten seconds passed, then another, and Random still struggled in complete silence, trying to escape Fusion's grip. She waited and, after an eternity, Random stopped fighting.

"Let me go," she screamed, eyes wide and ears flat back, the words shockingly loud and sudden after the silent fight.

"So you can go and kill yourself?" Fusion said sharply. "No. I will not let you go that easily. We all have to live with the choices we make, and there are too few of us to let any slip away." Her voice softened, the colours of her mane becoming pale and insubstantial. "And you are my friend. I saw what the dogs did to you, I--"

"I killed all those ponies and gryphons, Fusion," Random said, muscles sagging and hanging limply in Fusion's telekinetic grip. "Me! If it wasn't for me, w-we'd have over a thousand more people." Her words became choked, spaced with great, gasping sobs. "A thousand! My fault, I--" Her body still trembled, but Random's voice was suddenly calm. "Give me to them, to the gryphons. They will know what to do with me. I have to pay the price."

If I won't let you kill yourself, you'll get someone else to do it. "And all that blame, all that great inverted mountain of blame and failure, is all focussed on you," Fusion said, gently stroking Random's neck. "It is not. You were just the final link in a long chain of events, any one of which could have stopped this horrible thing." She sighed then, still with one wing draped over Random's back, relaxed her magic and lowered her to the ground. "But in a way you are right, Random. You are to blame, but so am I for not seeing it, so is Gravity for not looking into your head. We both knew what the dogs did you. We should have checked."

Random shook her head violently and opened her mouth to speak, but Fusion touched her lightly on the muzzle with the primary feathers of her other wing. "No, just listen. The dogs who tortured you at the Pit, Salrath for taking you prisoner, me again, this time for getting you taken in the first place. The Blessing and the whole world conspired to put you in this position, balancing that mountain on your withers. What chance did you have? Nopony could support all that weight." She nuzzled at the back of Random's head, just behind her ear. "So you see," she whispered, "although you pulled the trigger, many others were involved with loading the gun."

"I can't go back, Fusion. I can't face all those people," Random said, tears dripping off the end of her muzzle. "What can I say to them?"

"Everypony understands the effects of the Blessing... some may have trouble forgiving you, but everypony will understand. The gryphons... well, there may be ways to convince them." She started to walk back towards Spiral and Trocar's shelter, giving Random little encouraging nudges. "Come on, you should start with your dam and sire. They only want the best for you, so don't you dare try and leave them."

Random shuddered, but took another step. "Yes," she whispered, "I know. I won't try anything."

"I know you won't. Come on, we have much to talk about."

===

~~~discontinuity~~~

Fusion released her grip on Trocar and Spiral, flying down to the largest settlement they'd constructed so far. Like the original one, it was dug deep into the rocky walls of a nameless mountain in the endless northern range, a series of pony-dug tunnels that would house a mixed population of nearly two hundred. It was the first one to be occupied, and currently held far more than it was designed to; the overspill -- mostly gryphons, as every able pony was actively tunnelling or moving supplies -- was waiting for the other bases and roosts to be completed. When the network was complete, there would be small populations of ponies and gryphons spread throughout this harsh landscape.

Gravity was waiting for her, along with Ellisif and Halla, the gryphon she remembered from Gravity's rescue at the Pit. Other people were starting to collect, but they remained separate; one herd of duns and browns behind Ellisif, the other a riot of pastel shades near Gravity. "See, I told you my sister would bring them back." Gravity said, her voice loud and clear enough to be heard over the rush of air.

Fusion landed next to Gravity, pulling Random down to a soft, four-hoofed landing between them. The mare, although the same age as Fusion and older than Gravity, seemed to shrink into herself, head held low and stripped wings clamped tight against her sides. "Any problems, sister?" Fusion asked, cocking her head and staring at Halla. The gryphon glanced once in her direction, but was staring at Random.

"No. Halla here was just explaining how Spiral and Trocar had most likely betrayed us the moment they left."

"Perhaps not this time, but what about tomorrow?" Halla hissed the words, foreclaws flexing. "Or the day after? Once a traitor, always a traitor." Random stared back, hypnotised by those huge, alien eyes, and started to shake, legs dancing with the precursors to a bolt.

"No you won't, will you, Random?" Fusion said, magic taking a subtle grip around Random's midsection and holding her steady.

"N-no!" she said, the word coming out as a near-squeak. "The dogs, they lied to me, I--"

"A thousand people are dead because of you! Your words mean nothing against that." More rumblings came from the ranks of the gryphons, filled with vicious squawks and beak-snaps.

"Yes, it is my fault," Random whispered. "I failed so badly that the only way to prevent another disaster is for me to..." A ripple ran through the ponies behind them, a slight disturbance in the otherwise total silence. Fusion let her go and she straightened up on trembling legs, taking a step towards Halla.

"Fusion, no, you promised!" Spiral cried out.

I let you believe, and that's not the same at all. Her gut twisted but she kept her face still and expressionless. This is going to hurt, Spiral, but we have to do it this way. Fusion's power closed around the mare, keeping her still and soaking up her sudden flares of magic. "Nopony is to interfere!" she shouted, as Random took another step forwards, cringing as Halla's talons closed around her featherless left wing.

"You are right," Gravity said suddenly, "words do mean nothing. There is no way you, as a gryphon, can know a fraction of what it is like to a pony in the Masters’ service."

"I have worn a command collar, I have been forced into situations where it was obey or die," Halla snarled, giving Random a shake.

"A collar. A little electric shock machine." Gravity curled her lip, ears back. "A machine you get to take off at the end of the day. Every pony in the world has that, only it sits in their heads. You can't even dream the wrong dream without the Blessing sending you awake with screams in your throat. A foal soon learns how best to think."

"So what? This pony was freed of that spell, yet she still did something so monumentally stupid as to call the dogs down on us. She made the choice while free. She cannot be trusted."

Fusion stole a glance at Spiral; the mare was staring at Gravity like she was hypnotised. Carry it through, sister, they need to understand. Wish we'd had more chance to plan this.

Gravity smiled, a hard thing that involved little more than a twitching of her lips. "You don't understand; how could you? There's no way a gryphon can get in a pony's head." Her horn started to glow and Halla suddenly looked nervous, backing away a step. "Or is there? Perhaps you would like to experience exactly what Random did, while she was under the dogs' care?"

"I don't need to kno--" Halla's words ended with a squawk as violet magic locked around her head. Her legs dug at the ground, slipping and sliding through the dead leaves, but gained no purchase.

There was movement towards the back of the crowd, of claws reaching for shoulder-mounted railguns, and Fusion let her own magic build, pushing light and warmth out over the group like a blanket. There are more armed gryphons here than I thought... were they expecting something? "Let's all remain calm," she said loudly enough that the nearest flinched. "Gravity, take it easy." Her sister had listened in while she'd talked with Random, but they'd not rebuilt the sharing since the return jump. Don't push too hard.

There was a pause and Gravity looked back at her, a sense of calculation in her eyes, then her magic cut off, sending Halla sprawling to the ground. "Oh, I think you do. And not just you, but as many of the rest of you as I can manage." She took a step forwards, a dark silhouette towering over the prone gryphoness.

Fusion pushed out her own power, winding it about Gravity, tapping at the mental doors of the sharing until she sensed a flash of something; not words or thoughts, but a simple image of a pony's head, one eye closed in a wink. She hesitated, sending her worry back down the link. Be careful!

There were the nasty, metallic noises of weapons being cocked, and several gryphons in what passed for full armour jumped up from the perimeter of the crowd, hovering on wide, tawny wings. Their guns weren't focussed on Gravity, but on the rest of the ponies. In the herd, magic started to flicker, pushing against the blanket of Fusion's power like fireflies in a fog. Gravity looked up at the soldiers, her smile returning and becoming broad. "If that's the way you want--"

"Stand down!" Ellisif bellowed out the words, glaring up at the flying troopers. "Put those guns away and land, right now." Without waiting to see if she was obeyed, the gryphoness turned to Gravity. "You will not threaten my people!" she said, jabbing at Gravity with one claw. "We will not exchange one set of masters for another; if we do this thing, it will be as volunteers, because it is necessary."

Gravity cocked her head. "Very well, volunteers it is. Who will--"

"Me," Ellisif said promptly, "I want to know." She extended a foreclaw to Halla, helping her up. "You should, too." Halla gaped at her for a second, then nodded shakily.

"And me," Spiral said, her ears back. "This is my filly you are talking about." She walked forward to stand next to Random, who hadn't moved throughout the whole exchange. At the gentle touch of Spiral's wing, Random came alive, as if the whole conversation had just registered.

"No," Random whispered, "I don't want to--" She swallowed, eyes going wide and head whipping from side to side. "Don't want to remember!" Her hind legs bunched and she leaped to one side, knocking Spiral to the ground.

Fusion caught her before she'd gone more than a stride, lifting her clear of the ground. Random continued to struggle for a moment, then hung limp in the magic, staring at the mud and leaf-litter. "I'm sorry, Random, but you are the only one here who doesn't get a choice," she said softly, stroking the mare's neck with one wing. "This will not be pleasant for any of us."

"No," Ellisif muttered, "not if she would rather die than go through it again."

Fusion felt a touch inside her head and let Gravity in. Random's mind hung like a fractured jewel in the mare's perception, its facets reflecting odd, half-recognisable places and people. There were other minds in the empty space; some blurred and fuzzy, the others perfect, polished shapes. I've never seen it like this, she thought.

I noticed it after I started to use the sharing on non-ponies... I'm sure it all means something, but I don't know what, yet. The view blurred as Gravity did something, and there was the sudden feeling of others being present.

What--? The thought was from Halla and was gasped out, holding the same tones as the throat that would have spoken the words out loud, coloured by endless megaseconds of a brain hearing its own voice, but younger-seeming and obviously frightened.

Nearly got it.... The jewel, suspended like some fragment of crystal in the debris ring, seemed to fold in on itself, turning and churning like it was made of grinding teeth. Steady, Random, steady, Gravity thought. I'll be as quick as I can.

We're all here, Fusion sent, trying to accompany the thought with her own memories of Random -- happy things like games of tag, listening to wild stories during homecoming parties or long flights and romps over endless cloudscapes.

There was a distorted whinny, half thought, half heard, and the view suddenly changed--

--a press of bodies, all smaller than me, the slightly earthy smell of poor grooming mixed in with the wild-garden scent of constant, low-grade fear. There was a singing in my head, traces of memory that were all-too close to the surface threatening to burst across my mind and-- No! Mustn't think! Pain twitches at the back of my head; a cat with steely claws flexing and working their way into tender flesh. Eyes closed, my head dipped, muzzle and lips hunting the underside of one wing for a feather. They are all short, the big primaries pulled out long ago, but they are big enough to get my teeth around. I pull slowly, prolonging the pain, using it as a shield to--

--a paw on my withers, the blunted claws firm but not unkind, guides me down a white-lit corridor to the Machine. It's at least a hundred steps away, hidden behind a bend, but I can still feel it. I can't resist dropping into shadow sight and watching the glow of its crystal thaumic systems as I approach. It pulses like it's alive, like a heart or -- and this is more apparent the closer I come -- the coiled, peristaltic twitches of some giant parasitic worm. I walk like I am already dead, legs loose and threatening to collapse at the slightest stumble, rounding the final corner and standing quietly next to the Machine, my skin twitching and rippling like it is trying to flow away from the thing. A gesture and I lay my head in a groove on the upper surface, a jewelled clamp locking about my poll and horn--

--pink-maned, the white-coated body moved weakly, the bloody half-circles of hoofprints scattered in pairs over the forequarters. "Random, please--" I hesitate, the familiar voice from my foalhood making me freeze, then pain, blinding in its intensity, reaches up and wraps itself around my head. I spin and the big muscles in my hips contract, sending my hooves out again--

--entrails like lumpy snakes trail from the belly of the yellow stallion. His eyes, empty and terribly familiar, bore into my own, the reflected golden highlights fading as the magic I used to--

--joy, so vast as to make me weightless even with my damaged wings, floods through me like a warm rush as my new Master lightly touches my head; I fall to my belly, pressing my muzzle into the grass at his booted paws. I have a purpose again, something of the greatest importance to Him. I am not worthless; I will not fail, I cannot fail--

The real world returned with a rush, leaving Fusion staggering, spread-legged, strange and alien memories that seemed so personal, yet were not her own-- "Monsters!" Gravity growled, shaking vigorously. She glared into the forest surrounding the clearing, surges of power making the light flicker and flutter. At her hooves Ellisif and Halla flopped like they had been gutted, beaks open to show sharp little bird tongues. Random was also down, but curled into a tight, shivering ball. Spiral lay next to her, wing spread to cover her. All around the crowd of gryphons were backing away, guns coming back up.

"Yes," Fusion said thickly. "I knew it was bad, but nothing like that." She looked down, helping the weakly-stirring gryphons to rise. "Why, Ellisif? Why would they do that? What possible use is that scenario?"

The gryphoness shook her head, beak opening and closing, then waved at the others. "It's okay," she croaked out, "we are unharmed." The crowd relaxed slightly, weapons lowering, and she turned to Halla. "You see? Could you have withstood that?" Halla stared back, then looked away. "Fusion, I... all I really know about is training gryphon soldiers, but I have heard things. The aim is to mould a mind into a new shape; for us this is what basic training is for. It is a shock to the system that lets them... I imagine that atrocity would have the same power and more." She cocked her head, gaze sweeping along Fusion's body. "That white pony... that was you?"

"I think so. I recognised others from our corral. I wonder how many times they made her do that?" Fusion shook her head, then looked at Halla. "Well? Do you still think that Random is to blame for what happened?"

Halla opened her beak, then closed it again with a snap. "No... Ellisif is right. No one could come out of that unbroken." She closed her eyes, keeping them shut. "But it doesn't matter; if anything it proves my point. She cannot be trusted. You ponies are too strong; if she should go against us again, who's to say she won't do a better job next time?"

"I can be sure!" Gravity hissed. "I can see into her mind as easily as I can pick apart yours!"

"Oh, and you are completely certain, are you?" Halla's white head-feathers rose, her beak snapping to punctuate the words. "What about the day after you check, or the day after that? Are you going to sit in her mind forever to be absolutely sure? She's been twisted by the dogs... a moment's doubt is all it would take to call them down on us again. You can go through her head, but can you fix it?"

Gravity's ears went flat back, practically hidden beneath her mane. "No," she ground out.

"Enough." Fusion nudged Gravity with one wing, making her take a step sideways. "So you will be satisfied if Random cannot contact the dogs?"

Halla nodded slowly. "She's already flightless... but I don't think the Security-issue horn suppressors are good enough. It wouldn't be hard to remove one, given a few kiloseconds of uninterrupted effort."

"No, they won't hold a determined pony. You can break them, even with an active shock collar." Fusion moved a few steps, dipping her head to whisper to Spiral. "I'm sorry, but we have to be sure. It doesn't have to be permanent, just enough to stop Random using her magic for a few megaseconds. After that it won't matter."

"So this is what you wanted me to do." Spiral didn't look up from Random, but Trocar did, his ears flat back and teeth bared.

Fusion nodded, then lifted her head to address the crowd. "Random's horn will be removed to ensure she doesn't present a danger to herself or others."

Halla nodded, as if Fusion's words were for her alone. "I accept this." Throughout the gryphon half of the crowd, the tension bled away, bodies relaxed and wings, partially spread and ready for flight, were furled.

Fusion lowered her voice, pitching the rest for Spiral, Trocar and Random. "It doesn't have to be like Slipstream; no damage to the horn bed. I know Animal has checked Elliptic and Scalar; he tells me that they will regain full function within half a year, and some ability much before that." She dropped to her knees next to Random, switching her attention between Trocar and Spiral. "There are other benefits, you understand? She won't be without support. Would you rather Animal do it?"

"Without magic I will be useless." Random twitched, uncurling enough to lift her head, fur tear-streaked and matted with mud. "It would be better to let me die."

"I don't agree with her, but Halla does have a point. I know what we've seen, but it's not like we can ever really know you, not second by second. No pony can know their future self... I really don't think you will betray us again, but I don't want you to die, Random. You are my friend and I don't want to hurt you... but I'd rather see you dehorned and alive than whole and dead."

"You should have left us in hiding," Trocar spat, "what gives you the right to decide what happens to ponies? I was right the first time; you, the pair of you, are monsters. All that power you have has turned you into something twisted."

Fusion bowed her head, flicking a wing in Gravity's direction when she felt her sister move. "At the start, power gave me the right, because there was nopony else. Now..." She blinked, head coming up. He's right... there's no way it can be just me and Gravity making the decisions. I can be rid of some of this responsibility... and if something does happen to me, there will be leadership. Her eyes widened, mind racing away down the possibilities, then she shuttered the thoughts. "That will change, after today. For now, though, this is necessary for all of us."

Trocar snorted and opened his mouth, but Spiral shook her head. "I will do it. It's the only way I can be sure. You said... you said there might be something else you could do?"

Fusion nodded. "Yes. Random, you were a teacher once. There are a dozen foals who need a... a guardian." Gryphons, too, but we'll start with ponies...

"Those are the ones that I... that I--" Random swallowed heavily. "I killed their dams, Fusion, you can't ask me to..." Her eyes went distant, the whites showing around her blue irises.

"We could split them up, spread them through the rest of the Naraka dams, but they have already formed a little herd among themselves. It would only hurt them to separate them again. They need stability and a constant adult companion, not just whichever pony happens to have the time." She leant forwards, brushing her muzzle against Random's. "Think of it as your punishment, if you like." Fusion smiled. "Hard labour."

Some of the fear slipped away from Random's face, and she offered a tentative smile of her own. "It would be kinder to kill me. A dozen foals..."

Fusion nodded, a tight knot of stress uncoiling in her belly. I will bind you to them with chains of duty and devotion, keep you so busy you don't have time to breathe, let alone think.

Random's eyes moved to Trocar. "Sire, it's okay. I... I think I need this to happen. I made a mistake and have to pay the price. You all tried to help me but I didn't listen." Trocar's jaw worked, the big muscles in his cheeks bunching, but stayed silent. "Dam, please do it quickly, I--"

Tears leaked down Spiral's muzzle, pushing past her closed eyelids. "Stay still, baby." A cage of green magic spread over Random's head, then a single crystal chime and a line of pale light cut her horn off near the base.

===

Chaos had long ago traced the communications networks of the bipeds, identifying the critical nodes each polity used to distribute orders and to make plans. Use of particular facilities, or meetings between particular bipeds, always attracted its attention, and it would periodically dip into these spaces. The long, slow interactions of molecules and ions that passed for thought in these organics was both a blessing and a curse; it only needed brief touches to sample the short-term memories of those present, but it took them so long to reach any decision.

Activity at these highly-connected nodes had increased dramatically, and Chaos could feel that the whole system was at a turning point in the behaviour phase-space. A push, perhaps only a single manipulation of one individual, would be enough to move the system from its relatively stable state to one where a dramatic reduction in the numbers of organic minds would be accomplished. The trick was to find that balance-point and nudge the system in the right direction, while avoiding Guardian attention.

The bipeds’ own defence infrastructure was an obvious point, but there were safeguards and no single individual had the ability to trigger the massed launch such an event would require. There was such a weak-point for a single system, not a weapon of physical destruction, but of economics, in the polity self-identified as 'Baur', but it was out of Chaos' reach. Too many of those responsible had their behaviours modified by a control mechanism similar to the one used on the servitors; careful experiments had shown that any attempt at direct manipulation would result in a failure of the target mind's organic infrastructure.

Perhaps some subtle alteration to the high-level order set that was used to coerce the required behaviours from the bipeds? Or to the manufacturing process of the crystal actually supporting the automata-control function? No: the upgrade cycles were measured in hundreds of planetary rotations. The situation it had manufactured might have resolved itself by then. Frustrated, Chaos made another fleeting pass at Baur.

===

The Strategic Operations Centre of Baur Hive was silent; the full attention of everyone in the dimly-lit room was on the comms screen. This one wonders if the rumours are true, that the Monarch has his fur bleached-- Ininil's mind wandered as the report from External Security, a thing of wonder crafted using only the finest euphemisms, continued interminably onwards. He won't be very impressed by this. Ininil glanced sideways, watching the speaker, a relatively junior officer, visibly try and keep his ears up and whiskers forward. Ininil carefully kept his face blank, attention on his own report.

"What is Intelligence's assessment?" The tone was one of bored indifference coupled with a refined lilt that sounded closer to the melodic intonations of a servitor than a Person, and suited the perfect figure very well.

Ininil looked up from his set of screens, fixing his gaze directly at the camera, rather than the snow-white and absurdly handsome figure on the wall-sized display under it. "Monarch, the information coming out of Lacunae has been very fragmentary; there is the data packet supplied to Auditor Kosigan, but there is no independent verification of--"

The figure scowled and waved a manicured paw with a sharp, choppy motion. "The assessment, General." The Monarch's voice was delicate and full of cultured tones, a product of careful thaumic surgery, and was completely at odds with the harshness of his expression.

On either side of the wall-screen, actually within the operations centre with Ininil, two other figures stirred. The pair, direct representatives of the Monarch's reach and a reminder of the risks of failure, were always there, so much part of the furniture and so motionless that you might be fooled into thinking they were statues. A servitor and a gryphon, both the same unrelieved carbon-black from feather to coat to equipment harness, switched their blank gazes to him. The gryphon's beak opened slightly, revealing a pale pink throat framed by dark razors.

Ininil matched that gape for a moment, his own jaw hanging loose, then a feeling like ice water ran down his spine and he sat bolt upright. "The Hammer strike was on target, Monarch, but it is unlikely to have the effect the Court would desire. This new ability of the servitors--" He glanced at the soot-coated pony, but it didn't even flick an ear. "--renders them supremely able to evade a direct assault with even the slightest forewarning. There will be reprisals, there must be. This one fears that they have already achieved a critical mass of recruits -- Lacunae reported over a thousand -- if they are truly working with the original rogues, and not just blindly following because of a lack of valid orders..."

He swallowed, looking down at his trembling paws for a second, then laying them flat on his desk. "Monarch, this is a worst-case scenario. The Blessing's conditioning was never intended to prevent a mass uprising. It may be too late to stop this rebellion without resorting to..." There was a prickling sensation in his head, warning tendrils of pain that crept from the base of his spine and down his neck to curl around his chest. "...special measures." Ininil kept his face fixed forward, ignoring the whispered comments and gasps from around the operations centre and fighting back the discomfort. Everyone here has clearance; this one will be fine, he thought, trying to will the desire into the little bundle of thaumically active material bonded to the inside of his skull, just above the brainstem.

===

Only a few seconds for the glacial organic thought processes, but an age for Chaos. This particular biped's distress was clear as the coercion mechanism started to activate, crudely prodding certain reward/punishment pathways in its organic networks. The cause of this was what drew Chaos' attention; those in the chamber were the prime-movers in the polity's defence structures. Such meetings were rare, and Chaos ran and reran the memories of every entity in the chamber, creating short-lived models of the minds and interrogating them as to the meaning of the discussions.

Its presence became more concentrated in the local space, pulling on enough of the automata's resources that it started to affect their performance. Guardians would be coming, drawn by this anomalous activity, but still it hesitated, reaching for an elusive understanding and a prediction of what would happen next. It suddenly had an answer: this was part of what it was looking for, not the tipping point, but a step to enable that decision junction to be used. The coercion mechanism the polity used on its own members could not be tracelessly altered while active, but it looked very much like it was about to be--

The automata it parasitised were failing and Chaos realised it had stayed too long; Guardians had arrived and were cleaning out its influence, eating away at the corners of its mind. It fled into the dark, slow spaces near its decoy, using that isolated fragment to lure away its pursuers.

===

"To even mention that is dangerous, General," the Monarch hissed, his perfect ears folding back and lips pulling away from teeth even whiter than his fur. The pressure from his gaze was matched by that from the two guards, backed up by a glimmer of magic around the servitor's horn.

"It might be a useful excuse to humble Lacunae... we would be doing the Court's work for them, and with far less damage than multiple Hammer strikes." This came from Argor, head of the Cabinet, seated a little further down the conference table. There was a sense of discomfort in her tone, as she blindly searched the space of acceptable words for ones that wouldn't trigger a response from her own implant. "There will be censure, but they may even thank us... and someone will have to act as administrators for Lacunae territory."

Thank you thank you thank you. "Excellent point, Minister," Ininil wheezed, the pressure in his head slowly building. "It should at least be discussed, if it suits the Monarch." He bowed his head and waited, the space between his shoulder blades itching.

There was a rattling noise; the sound of someone drumming manicured claws on a desktop. "Very well. Look at this one." The voice shifted tone, moving from anger to command, and the words twisted something within Ininil's head. "The Monarch releases those present from the geas, for the duration of this meeting only."

==

The Guardians were still there! This was the best place in space-time, in all the available dimensions, to effect the changes it wanted, and the Guardians were still there! It dithered, sending stealthy probes into the automata, monitoring their activities. Panic subsided; they were just finishing their clean-up, the normal destroy-and-rebuild approach, and were moving away.

Chaos knew the modifications it had to make, not to the minds, but their automata-connected controlling mechanisms, enclosed within the calcium-based container for their organic networks. The mechanism had switched to a passive state, rendering the mind it controlled vulnerable to Chaos' manipulations. It ignored that tempting target and reached in, connecting to all the passivated mechanisms and altering them slightly.

How long this modification would survive depended on the inspection cycle the bipeds used; there were random elements based on the decay of unstable nuclei and it was not easy to predict or manipulate the process without detection. This was not necessarily a problem, as it was likely to be many planetary rotations away, and until that time Chaos had a way to deactivate the coercion mechanism at will.

==

There was a near silent sigh from around the table, and Ininil wasn't the only one to slump slightly. "That is appreciated, Monarch."

"This one is interested that the General thinks that Strix is actually a workable solution to the rebellion; he always considered it to be a first strike weapon only useful in degrading the enemy's infrastructure. It was his impression that it would always be less useful than Project Seraphim--" The Monarch's expression soured, his muzzle wrinkling. "--should it ever get off the ground."

"There has been some success, Monarch; the silicate/alumina metabolism has taken in the latest tranche of hatchlings. The one adult we managed to create in the original batch continues to grow in power--"

"But not in control, if this one remembers the outcome of the last test." The Monarch was leaning forwards again, muzzle cradled in blunted and polished claws, his eyes fixed on Ininil. "This one can see that he needs to spend some time in a full project review. Now, back to the Strix project. Has there really been that much progress in penetrating the production chains of the other Hives?"

Something else that is true; the Monarch doesn't read the intel summaries. Ininil resisted a dangerous urge to sigh. "Yes, Monarch. Our modified lucerne crop has been found in the majority of forage fields supplying plants manufacturing the universal servitor supplement; these ones gave the other Hives the opportunity to steal the genome and they appear to have done so. Testing of locally-sourced supplement pellets all show that they are using our lucerne as feedstock, and that the prion precursor is present and does survive processing. None of the other Hives have shown signs of reverse-engineering the extra protein, or even detecting it." Ininil risked a tiny smile. Of course, this one also doesn't know the full consequences of Strix activation. There were those unwanted epigenetic effects... "There would have been an outcry if they had."

The Monarch gave a sharp nod of his perfect head, bone-white whiskers flexing with mirrored amusement. "This one is pleased. General; this is an excellent idea. The General will prepare a full briefing on Strix, along with a selection of strike options and expected remediation after World Court censure. Ensure the herds are at full readiness; this one wants to be able to use the weapon at short notice."

28 - Discontinuity

Author's Note

A crude dramatis personæ can be found here.
Preread by: turol.
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and Caliaponia (Just Passing Through).

28 - Discontinuity

The plume from the explosion expanded in the high-altitude jet streams, spreading across hundreds and thousands of kilolengths of the northern hemisphere. The fallout was not going to be a problem, but the fine particles in the upper atmosphere were predicted to make weather control more difficult for the already stretched storm-management teams. That would be important, but not today; the focus of Orgon's attention at the moment were the other clouds. These were of water droplets rather than pulverised rock, although they glowed with a faint pastel sheen that made the fur on Orgon's neck stand up. The time-lapse video from the remaining high-altitude satellites was clear; multiple initiation points and a steady spread on the order of a hundred kilolengths a day. They also didn't move relative to the prevailing wind patterns, but stretched out into elongated tear-drop shapes centred about the original initiation points.

The future projection of those unnatural clouds was clear; already the ragged edges of some were joining to their neighbours, forming an impenetrable blanket that defied remote viewing. No infrared, no synthetic aperture radar and no clairvoyance. Mass-driver lofted drones stopped transmitting within a clawful of seconds of penetrating the clouds. Radio was useless, failing immediately under conditions similar to the beta-blackout seen around atmospheric nuclear detonations, while even expensive non-causal thaumic channels provided little more than a blurred view of illuminated clouds followed by surges of power and silence.

"Carrier is entering the uncontaminated cloudbank and is approaching the denied zone. Airtank outriders reporting a rise in thaumic background. Laser tightbeam links are degrading. Switching to radio; dropping frequency to improve penetration. Carrier non-causal link is nominal."

The whisper of sound tickled Orgon's ears, the constant refrain of tactical reports from the probe task force he'd sent into the high northern reaches of Lacunae Hive's territory. Displays covered the expanse of wall screen opposite his desk, while miniature copies of the Synod core group in hologram form hovered about his shoulders like worried ghosts. They were also talking, but Orgon had muted their comms channels for now. Of more immediate interest was the subdued hum of conversation in the rest of the ops-room; deep in the heart of one of a series of unnamed and unlisted bunkers, Orgon actually had the physical presence of several of the general staff, along with holograms of others, transmitted from the other bunkers taking part in the virtual command network. Also with him were a pair of the World Court's Auditors: Kosigan, his blunt jaw clenched, and Rthys, along with their anonymously-dressed 'assistants'. Orgon tried not to smile at that; they had the build and movements of trained killers.

"Bandwidth still falling. Inter-task force operating frequency down to one hundred kilohertz. Prioritising telemetry feed from outriders. Deploying gryphon units for manual sweep."

Many of the visual feeds blinked out, replaced by grainy, low-res, low refresh rate things that barely qualified as useful. A wave of a paw pushed them to one side, filling the central space with the images coming from the carrier itself, their quality still excellent due to the non-causal link. Orgon's attention flicked to the strategic map and the rest of the forces following in after the reconnaissance force. Those aircraft were orbiting about a quartet of Arclight transmitters, arranged as two widely-separated pairs.

"When will you use Arclight, Strategist?" asked Councillor Indutu, his voice a tiny buzzing thing at the edge of Orgon's awareness. "The Hive can ill-afford to pull so many from the front lines."

"This one needs to know what the rogues will do. There are servitors on that carrier, and Orgon needs the data that only the non-causal channel will provide," he said absently, the majority of his attention on the displays. Video from outside the carrier was little more than the pearly grey of fog, lit by the strobes of running lights and the unhealthy pinkish-purplish glow of the contaminated clouds. There were internal views as well; extra cameras had been placed inside the five-animal servitor bay in the craft's belly. Other views showed the gryphon launch-roosts, empty now that the troopers had been flung into the mist.

"This one was sure that the Court's actions would have solved our problem," Indutu said, his tiny phantom paws wringing silently.

Yes, well this one told you it wouldn't work, Orgon thought, but only snorted by way of reply. This probe should give these ones a measure of their strength, if nothing else... or that both of the originals are still alive. We already know that the cloudstuff is not immediately inimical to biological life. The lifesign pings from the gryphons, little more than a heartbeat tone, as they could not mount the low frequency transmitters on so small a frame, were still strong.

The servitors were unsettled, if Orgon was any judge. Pinned within their stalls by the restraint systems, they nevertheless shuffled and twitched, flickers of magic filling the small chamber with pulses of ethereal light. They must know something is going on... One of them was muttering into a command panel, its horn flickering as it manipulated the input field. Complex symbols, shifting fractals that approximated the mental patterns the illiterate servitors used to generate their magic, appeared on the display, as if drawn by an invisible claw-tip. If Merlon was there, this one could... He glanced sideways at his servitor, standing silently at his shoulder, then shook his head. The details do not matter, just the response.

===

Metal Matrix soared on a carefully controlled updraft within the shifting pastel gloom at the centre of one of 'their' clouds. Every so often there were flickers of sheet lightning in the depths, filling the world with erratic pulses of white and a continuous low rumble. At his flank was what one of the gryphons had called a squad, six flyers split into a pair of fire teams commanded by a korporal. This gryphoness was Svartr, a compact bundle of anger with a focused, clipped manner that made Metal's tail want to clamp itself between his hindlegs. Especially since he was supposed to take tactical instruction from the creature.

Not orders, though, he thought. Ha! Like I'm going against Backdraft. His old teacher had been very clear about that. He didn't have to obey, but she'd talked at length about how little combat experience any of the ponies had, and that this was completely new territory for them. And this armour... I know Redshift was in a rush, but he could have put a little thought to comfort. There was an annoying grating sound with each wingbeat, and he carefully felt the nested layers of fullerene carbon weave and ceramic scales for the correct spot, the matter flowing like soft clay under the influence of his magic. He flexed his wings; the noise had gone, but there was now a new pressure point just in front of one wingshoulder. More magic, and--

"Specialist Matrix, report," the korporal said, her voice clear in his ear, coming from a comms unit cobbled together from several of the gryphon units.

Metal flinched, his ears folding back, then waggled his jaw to open a return connection. "One moment, Sva-- Korporal." He closed his eyes, sweeping the southern horizon again with his shadow sight. The immediate area was clear, the cloud's magic held back by his own, but past that the world was filled with drifting patches of colour that illuminated the dark universe like lights in a fog -- and made it just as hard to see through. "Maker-damned-- Ah!" Against the sea-creature drift of the floating lights was something static and far away. More lights, the same burnished-gold as the wings of his gryphon squad-mates, were fanning out from some distant, near-invisible nucleus. "Svartr, I'm seeing gryphon deployment." He squinted, even though the motion had no effect on a mode of sight that had nothing to do with actual light. At the locus of the dispersion was a tiny constellation of pastel lights, all different colours.

"It's them," he breathed, "only one carrier, though..." He reached out with the magic relating to his own special talent, the ability to manipulate matter at the lowest of levels, but there was nothing around except for the siren call of the complex ceramics and exotic alloys from the nearest gryphon's armour harness and flight pack. A further inspection by shadow sight revealed a few, much smaller lights at a similar range. Single pony in those, versus... four? five? ...in the larger one. Looks like there's a magical machine in there as well... not big, just odd. "Yes, one carrier and maybe a dozen airtanks." He felt along the sharing link, the only thing they had that would penetrate the ionised clouds. The scouts were right. They are here. Not empty machines this time. He sent his own sensorium into the sharing, feeling the acknowledgement come back from the other nine ponies spread over their defended perimeter. The mental volume became empty as the ponies jumped towards him.

There are ponies on those aircraft, ponies who will try and stop us. How are we supposed to save them when they are trapped in armoured boxes that we need to break? Metal swallowed, mind filling with the crash of magic against armour ceramic. I wish they were just machines!

===

Ellisif had become very excited when she’d heard how Lilac had downed the airtank over the corral. 'Teleport artillery', she'd called it.

Breathing heavily, Gravity let her magic die and surveyed the mountain peak. It wasn't one of the taller ones, barely reaching the underside of the pink-purple cloud deck, and it looked almost untouched, aside from the occasional minor rock fall that had exposed unnatural mirror-smooth surfaces. Biggest force fields I've ever conjured, but this is perfect. Don't even need to fill them with explosives. Fusion suddenly appeared, soaring a few kilolengths away, and Gravity waggled her wings in greeting while reaching for their sharing link.

There are Arclights following the first aircarrier, Fusion sent, as Ellisif said there would be. I have seeded the air above them with clairvoyance anchors, but I expect them to be destroyed soon. There was a flash of memory, of a small collection of thaumically-keyed gems sent to fall from so high that the horizon was curved and the air was nonexistent. It will have to be direct observation. I just hope that... Fusion's train of thought stopped, replaced by a sense of deep sorrow. There are ponies on those aircraft.

All of them? Even the Arclight units? But I thought...

Yes. I suppose they are useful for repairs, when the system is off. I don't think we can get them out, Grav.

Gravity was silent, then sighed. No, I don't suppose we can. Who will be our observer?

It's Stratus and a few of the ex-weather team ponies out of Naraka. They've been well briefed not to get too close.

And if they use lasers? Most of those Naraka mares either have foals or are pregnant, Fusion. Why would you let them go?

Who have we got, Grav? The distant form of Fusion did a slow turn in the air, gaining height. There are too few of us who have managed to get proficient enough with the teleport spell. It's taking the Naraka ponies too long. These ones are those who haven't had their minds dulled by the endless megaseconds of confinement. Her magic built, the complex patterns of teleportation filling her mind and bleeding into the sharing. Ready when you are.

Gravity smiled, stretching out her own power. Beneath her hooves the mountain started to come apart, pony-sized cubes spiralling up into the sky to orbit her like foals nuzzling for attention.

===

It didn't work last time and it's not going to work now... but there is something else this one can use the non-causal link for. Plan B it is. It's not like we can get in more trouble with the World Court. "Pull the Arclight units back," Orgon said, "full speed."

The liaison officer, a member of the general staff and one of five ranked Tactician in the distributed ops room, gaped at him "Strategist... this will leave the probe force unprotected. This one understood that Arclight would be used to trap--"

"The probe force is to continue." Orgon stared at the officer. "The Hive is at war. Is the Tactician refusing to obey an order?" His eyes flicked to the pair of Auditors; they had straightened up and were staring at him, then Rthys leaned over to whisper to her assistant. He moved subtly, paw brushing his firearm, gaze darting to the guards at the bunker's door. In turn, Merlon shifted, the faint scrape of hoof on stone barely reaching Orgon's ears. He touched the soft fur of her chest and she moved back slightly, still watching the World Court group.

"No, Strategist!" The tactician's ears folded back and his eyes widened. "If this one could be told what the Strategist intends, he could offer some advice." His paws tapped out a series of rapid commands on the map table and the arrows that indicated the motion vectors of the Arclight groups started to turn about.

"Something different."

"This one would also like to know what Orgon is thinking," the ghost of Councillor Indutu said, voice sounding high and thin, more like a drifting fly than anything else.

Orgon returned to his console, running a claw along the screen to wake it up. "This one warned Indutu that physical force was not really an option anymore." Glancing up at the rest of the ops-room he checked that the rest of the general staff were all busy with their own tasks. "All this action will do is lose us more Arclight units; one of the rogues destroyed two of them while under fire from their associated aircarrier battle groups. These ones will still need to defend their territory, no matter how this plays out." His command console was geared towards the military and security infrastructure, but had high level access to a lot of Hive systems. It validated his identity again, then switched to the master labournet interface.

One command and this one could paralyse the whole of the Hive's infrastructure. His paws froze, suddenly reluctant to touch the sensitive surface. No, too many safeguards to disable first. He smiled, lips lifting away from his teeth. The location map provided a way to isolate the servitors of interest; a few score of individuals in the high north. Zoom and select, then open the priority orders interface. He started to type, hesitating occasionally over the exact phrasing. Must give them enough leeway to actually act.

"That is insane!" Indutu's voice had become even more shrill. "The Court will have these ones trawled for this."

"The Synod can have this one removed from command if it wishes..." He glanced sideways at Merlon, a reassuringly familiar bulk standing at his shoulder. The next act must be to ensure that they cannot. It will work, so long as the servitor is capable of what this one thinks it is. "...but Orgon tells you that this is the only thing that stands a chance of working. Anyway, what would the Court do? Another Hammer strike will only kill more of the People and the servitors will escape. Again." Of course, that is what the Court will do... they are too far from the problem to learn quickly from it, and Lacunae's enemies have too much interest in seeing these ones fail. Orgon kept his features blank, waiting for any objection from the Synod, but there was none.

"Based on what this one has seen, it will be global war if we fought them, and that is not in anyone's interest. The Court will change the rules if this works." They will have to... and if it doesn't work, this one may have to demand a greater sacrifice of our people. Orgon sent the command, direct to the comms units carried by each pony in the probe force's carrier, then leaned back to stare at the video feed from the servitor bay.

It was obvious when the command reached the carrier; if it wasn't for the restraint system, they'd have jumped clean out of their stalls.

===

Metal listened to the voices in his head, then clenched his teeth. By shadow sight the glowing cloudstuff with its floating wisps of faux-pony was starting to decay, the magic no longer being maintained by weather team members, and it was becoming easier to see the carrier and its escorts. The carrier was travelling relatively slowly, perhaps a quarter the speed of sound, but its complement of gryphons was still keeping pace. Must be those flight packs Red mentioned. Well, we've got them too. Good job the last raid collected those reactors! The tanks circled it in a pattern that covered the carrier from all directions.

The ponies inside will know I'm here any second, so let's give them a show. He reached out with his power and accelerated, feeling the additional strain of carrying the pair of gryphon fire teams with him. The moist air within a dozen body lengths abruptly grew cold as he drew energy from the local environment, turning from fog to diamond-dust in an instant, glittering and swirling in the building glow from his horn. Closer now, the carrier coming within reach of his own peculiar magic, the individual planes and segments of its hull mapping out differently-tasting volumes in the shadow world. The harsh tang of nickel superalloys lining the magnetodynamic thrusters and in the blades of the ducted fans fought with a near-unbearable sweetness from the lacework of superconductors in the primary wiring loom and high-density power storage systems, all within the bloody taste of the airframe.

Experienced this way the aircraft was a gastronomic distraction more diverse than the finest meadow grass, but he was used to the complexity. Metal worked his way through the antimagic defences -- just like Fusion had shown him, they were crude things more suited to repelling direct thaumokinetic strikes than his subtle assault -- narrowing down on those nickel-based high-temperature liners. Defect-free single crystals, they sang out to his mind like a gem would to a jeweller, wonderful things that some unnamed pony had poured all his skill into building.

Lights flared, brilliant things that leaked a hard green glare through the slit between his closed eyelids, followed by a lightning-crackle that started in the high registers and faded to a rumble. "The other units are engaging the tanks. Specialist, what is the delay? There is more firepower on that carrier than all the escorts combined." Blue-white flashes and harsh cracks joined the lightning, drowning out the roar of the aircraft's engines.

You try lugging two tonnes along at eighty meters a second while doing this! Metal ignored the harsh bird-screech of the korporal, because there was a twitch of sensation from the carrier. The thing was just passing beneath his hooves, pulling ahead despite his efforts to keep pace with it, and now the ponies within had awoken to the danger.

Something jerked inside the aircarrier, a tentative brush of alien magic that hooked around his own. There were multiple strands to it, each subtly different. In the brief moment it took Metal to recognize the presence, it strengthened, pushing him away from his target. "Sorry, I need the power--" he ground out, sweat dampening his flanks, then dropped his hold of the gryphons. He barely heard the answering near-ultrasonic scream of their flight packs spooling up, vision narrowing as he fought back. Metal's own flight magic faltered, a deep chill stabbing through his fur. Ice crackled as his wings flexed and failed to bite air; Metal started to fall, but ignored it, maintaining focus on the aircarrier.

Arcane light flared in the belly of the carrier as the ponies within put all their effort into stopping him, then the pressure faltered, the opposing magic directed sideways to focus on other sections of the big aircraft. Brief flashes lit the fog above, then the dim flutter of explosions reached him past the rush of air past his ears. Metal's power wrapped around the drive chambers, brushing past the remaining defences and weaving into the perfect superalloy linings.

Under his touch, the metal flowed into new and short-lived shapes, the atomically smooth surfaces briefly forming spines and pits that were immediately washed away by the high-pressure, high-temperature air the drive used for propulsion. More super-heated air, so hot as to be a plasma, escaped the manifold and burrowed deep into the engine housing, ripping and incinerating as it went. The opposing magic vanished as the ponies in the carrier scrambled to halt the sudden destruction, then the safety systems cut power to the drive and carrier dipped violently before the lifter fans in its wings spun up to flight speed.

"The main drive is down," Metal said out loud while sending the same thought into his sharing, wondering if the radio signal was getting through to any of the gryphons at all. Through shadow sight, he could see the golden wings of many of the creatures, but it was impossible to tell who was who. There were fewer of them than at the start, though; even as he watched, a pair of glowing forms swept together and tangled, falling end over end towards the distant ground. One broke away, climbing again, leaving the other to fade as death erased the glimmer of flight magic. Metal swallowed, feeling half-strangled where the throat mic pressed against his larynx. Fighting in the dark and fog, every person for themselves.

This is it, now comes the hard part. He spared another glance for the weaving patterns of gold, then dove towards the attack carrier. Those on board were frantically trying to fix the damage he'd done, so he focussed on the sweet taste of ultra-pure silica that formed the backbone of the carrier's optically switched laser network. The hoof-thick fibres ran through the airframe, from turret to turret, and he traced them back to the complex silhouette of the laser itself, a vast length of carefully doped fibre that formed the amplification medium. A twist and the whole armoured capsule was suddenly alive with motion, the careful core-shell structures disrupted enough that the next pulse expended all its energy within the body of the laser.

The brilliant green slashes that had been filling the cloud and making distracting flashes through his eyelids abruptly stopped. Carrier defences are dead.

Understood, boarding party en route. The escorts are down and weather team is suppressing the cloud's ionisation to restore radio comms.

He flew closer, passing through the antimagic field, landing on the upper hull between the broad wings and their dangerously exposed lifting fans. The carrier was still moving, starting to bank and come about, but the airflow was manageable. "Mind that next step," he muttered, nervously eyeing the nearest fan. The inhaled rush of air was easily felt even from this distance, and the noise was filling his head with a bone-numbing roar. His magic swept the plating beneath his hooves, hunting for a spot that wouldn't cause catastrophic problems, then he neatly sliced a rectangular slot through the alloy. Breaching the hull. A quick telekinetic pull and the armoured panel was whipped away.

Metal made to enter the hole, but ducked as wings swept by over head, close enough to ruffle fur. "If I'd been the enemy, you'd be dead," Svartr growled, then folded her wings and dropped neatly through the hull, followed immediately by another of her team.

But I was supposed to go in first! "Dammit, Svartr!" Metal growled and did the same, landing on a section of springy metal mesh flooring that was already dented from the quarter-tonne of armoured gryphon landing on it. The spinal corridor, a narrow space that ran between the heavy machinery of the carrier's wingroots, allowing the dog flight crew access to the gryphon-troop nest and servitor stalls in the lower aft compartments, was not built to a scale that was appropriate to a pony. There was no way Metal could turn around, and the corridor behind his tail, leading to the flight deck and forward drop-bay was threatening in its low intensity red lighting.

"Move your tail, pony!"

The words, harsh and fast with excitement, were practically screamed in Metal's ears, and he lurched forwards as another gryphon from Svartr's squad jumped into the corridor, this time facing towards the nose of the carrier. He set off with a leap, making room for the next gryphon. There was gunfire from the stern, in the direction that Svartr had gone, and Metal shouldered his way through a warped pressure door that looked like a gryphon had just run clean through it, bringing up a narrow oval force field as he did so.

Past the bulk of machinery that filled the space between the leading edge of the carrier's wing, the passageway opened out into a chamber that occupied the whole width of the hull. It was lined with rows of flight control stations, recessed couches placed crosswise to the carrier's axis and surrounded by semi-circular consoles and display systems, most of which were dead, starred with bullet holes or scored by bomb fragments. Svartr and the other gryphon were hunkered down behind the nearest pair, trading shots with a pair of dogs sheltering behind their own consoles.

His field flared orange as it intercepted a round from one of the dogs. It wasn't an aimed shot by any stretch; the dog just waved a paw around the corner of its console and sprayed fire from a compact railgun. The thing was obviously designed to be used two-pawed, and the recoil put bullets all over Metal's end of the room.

===

Merlon kept her ears relaxed, slightly back and out to each side, while her eyes drank in the operations bunker. What does my Master have planned? The order to the ponies on the carrier was simple and to the point, but how are those ponies going to react? She probed her feelings; instinct said that the decision to let a Master, any Master... She shied away from the thought, even though she'd actually done it herself. A normal pony just won't do it; fugue will be the inevitable result. A Security pony could manage it, but these were just from the Military... She chewed at the inside of her mouth, carefully biting down at her cheeks in hope that pain would bring clarity. I should tell him about my Blessing. She flinched, thinking about the likely result of that revelation.

If I knew where they were, I could do this task for my Master. Perhaps that would be enough of a prize to save me? The teleport pattern swirled in her mind, great gaping holes marking the locations of the target coordinate-memories. I could do this for him-- The World Court Masters were huddled together again, but all her attention was on the two assistants. They claimed to be administrative experts, but their body language screamed out with the signs of military training. Bodyguards... and on high alert. She catalogued their movements, noting the tiny involuntary twitches that gave away the locations of weapons, both overt and hidden. She closed her eyes, dropping briefly into shadow sight to scan them; both carried a number of complex crystal thaumic devices that were supposed to be other, innocuous things. That's a stun-pulse generator, that's a dormant anti-magic projector, that's--

"This one said: 'servitor'. Is the pony asleep?"

Merlon's eyes snapped open, ears folding back at Orgon's tone. Not irritated, but focussed, like he's ordering one of his Agents-- "No, Master. How may I serve?" Orgon was playing with the bracer on his left wrist; the thing emitted a near-silent hum, like a silent alarm but much fainter. He held his wrist cocked just so, pointing his forearm at her with paw held slightly downwards. Merlon froze, staring at that wrist. The motions and posture made it perfectly obvious that he was pointing a weapon at her. I'm fast enough to stop him -- She bit down on her tongue, willing the pain to dispel the evil thoughts. He knows what I have done. I deserve to die. The Masters are the paws of the Maker.

"Identify the highest ranking individual in this room."

She blinked, mouth opening. "It depends, Master. There are members of the Synod here as virtual presences, so it is them, really. Although, depending on the situation, the World Court Auditors may take precedence, if it were possible to confirm their authority."

"Damn right these ones are," Kosigan snarled. "Orgon, what is all this about? The Strategist had a perfect chance to catch the rogues in the open."

"This one thought so," Orgon said, nodding quietly. "Merlon, give this one the pony's labournet communicator." Merlon pulled the disk from her chest, placing it in his outstretched paw. "Excellent. Restrain the World Court operatives; strip them of any weapons or communications devices."

The pair of 'assistants' moved insect-fast, as if they had been preparing to act at the slightest sign, but Merlon's magic was faster. Power flashed, casting strange shadows as she picked the pair up by their paws, plucking small gadgets and devices from pockets or fur and placing them in a neat pile. Their clothes came next, the fabrics made from tough fullerene weaves more at home on body armour. "This place will be a crater if Orgon doesn't--" A band of pearly-white magic snapped shut around Kosigan's muzzle, silencing him.

He took my communicator so no one can countermand his orders. He wants to make sure no one can take me away from him... I am free to act so much faster; no need to think about what the Maker will do to me. Her jaws flexed, muscles bulging and jumping into sharp relief, and her ears flattened. Why does the Maker even need a spell to communicate its desires? Why do they tell us about the Maker at all? Is it even real? She made a little noise at the back of her throat, a subvocalised whinny. I was right to remove the Blessing... I can do more now. I have more options. I can do so much more for the Masters like this... would I go back even if I could?

Rthys had frozen, shock making her jaw slack. "What is Orgon playing at?"

"The Auditor will see." Orgon had not relaxed his posture and the wrist-mounted weapon was still trained on Merlon. A wave of his other paw blanked the comms feeds from the Synod core group. "This one remembers Merlon's briefing on the teleport magic. Did the pony exaggerate at all?"

"No, Master!" The effort of holding up the struggling People wasn't high, but it was a building strain. He's going to want me to do something special. She straightened up, applying the subtle twist of power that she'd seen in Scalar's memories. The sound of the air conditioners became a little louder as they tried to compensate for the drop in local temperature.

"Excellent. This one needs the Synod core group to be in this bunker with Orgon. Does Merlon remember the tour of Redoubts Gamma, Phi and Epsilon?"

"Yes, Master." He wants me to... Merlon glanced at the guards at the entrance to the operations room, then deftly fished several sets of restraints from their equipment harnesses. They flinched, paws reaching for weapons, but did nothing more when Orgon waved at them. Merlon bound the Auditors’ and their bodyguards’ arms and legs together, wrist to ankle, then placed them on the floor. "What if the Councillors do not wish to come?"

Orgon nodded, an approving gesture. "The pony is strong; Orgon always knew this. The Hive is currently in a state of emergency and the Synod has approved the special measures. This one has complete authority when it comes to the safety of the Hive." He smiled, lips pulling back from his teeth, and turned slightly, addressing not just Merlon, but the rest of the general staff. "Merlon served this one's predecessor for over a gigasecond, with all the knowledge of the Hive's military and security processes that entails, and has a far greater insight into how servitor magic works. It is possible that she, excluding the rogues themselves, is the one best placed to know what they will do next."

"That is possible, Master," Merlon said, a slight tremor in her voice. He's not talking to me, but the general staff! Without moving, she surveyed the room, suddenly aware that she, not Orgon or the Auditors, was the centre of attention.

"Does Merlon think the Hive can beat the rogues?"

Merlon hesitated and Orgon gestured for her to continue. What I say now-- "Master... the amount of power available to Fusion or Gravity is very high, coupled with their mobility--" She closed her eyes imagining the weapon, the hidden thing that must be built into Orgon's bracer, still pointed at her chest. "Even if we can stop them, there are still many normal ponies on their side, and it will be very difficult to get them all back under the Maker's paw. With removal of the Blessing being so easy--" He must know what I've done! "--and the corrals being fertile ground for recruitment, now they have seen the inside of Naraka..."

"...and the pony's conclusion?"

No escape. Merlon sighed silently. "No, Master." There was a susurration throughout the room, the sound of many whispered conversations. "They are too mobile to be easily stopped, and combined with the inflexibility of the World Court's response..." Eyes now open, she lifted her head and addressed the room. "With no effective countermeasures, a continued war with the rogues will likely be unsuccessful and result in very high casualties. Based on what I've seen of Fusion's actions, the majority will be caused by Hammer strikes or more conventional weapons, used with increasing desperation." Her voice became tight, throat closing up. "There must be a negotiated solution."

There was a moment of silence, then everyone started shouting at once. Orgon let it continue for a few breaths, then gestured to Merlon. Magic filled the confined space; a blinding burst of light and a concussive blast of sound, a spell built for celebrations in the vast open spaces in an arcology concourse compressed and fired within one small room. Orgon relaxed, his concealed weapon no longer pointed at her chest, then strode forwards into the stunned silence and placed one paw on Merlon's neck, her skin twitching and shivering under his touch. "Strong and smart. The pony may be the one to save us all," he whispered in one ear, before turning to face the room and raising his voice.

"These ones know this is true. These ones have all seen the abilities of the rogues; mere physical force will not be enough." He smiled, reaching out with both paws. "Lacunae does not have the power of Baur, but it is adaptable. The signs are clear; what is coming is a step-change in history. These ones need to be part of that future. The Hive is at war, but this one will give anyone here the chance to step down, if they fear censure."

"What about the... technical project? The one with Vanca?" The speaker, a female with the tags of a tactician in the Intelligence Corps, glanced sidelong at the bound representatives of the World Court.

Orgon's smile sharpened. "Trust will come with a balance of power; this one does not intend to be defenceless." No one in the room moved or spoke.

"This is treason, Orgon," Rthys said, voice calm but her eyes filled with fury. "If these ones go against the Court, these ones go against all of the People. There will be no forgiveness and no mercy."

"It is only treason if these ones fail." The smile became mirthless, and he gave Merlon a slight push. "Go."

That explains the orders to the ponies on the carrier. "Apologies, Master, but I will need explicit orders." No I don't, but he will expect me to ask. She bowed her head, keeping eye contact, her wing muscles flexing and legs twitching. With the Synod under his personal control, there is no chance of anyone reversing this, no matter what they believe. He needs me to be loyal, or none of this will work.

"Bring the Synod core group, Councillors Indutu, Shmae, Caug, and Ullot, alive, to this location as fast as possible. Disregard any countermanding orders. The pony may use as much force as is needed to complete these orders."

Merlon's knees buckled, and she staggered a step. I expected this, but... "Yes, Master," she said, straightening. Merlon built the teleport pattern, picking a spot mid way towards Redoubt Phi. It was in clear air, high inside Arcology Seven. I'm going to make the news. More spells filled her mind, secret things she'd learned to defend her Master, and the rubber-on-iron feeling of her own telekinesis hardened over her limbs. I should be afraid, but I'm not. With this freedom and new magic, I'm stronger than anypony except the rogues. The ghost of a smile crossed her lips. What is it the troopers say? Fire in the hole--

~~~discontinuity~~~

===

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Svartr snarled, "Magic us some magic, pony."

"So now you want my help," Metal muttered, feeling for the other ponies on the carrier. They were scattered, mentally if not physically, their own power spread through the body of the aircraft and engaged in frantic repairs. Eyes closed he skirted them, locating the dogs at the end of the room by the taste of sodium in their blood, finding their paws and-- There were a pair of screams and the gunfire stopped.

Svartr leaped over the console, closing the distance to the dogs in a single bound, followed by the other gryphon. Metal lifted his head, then flinched as she landed bodily on the nearest dog, claws flicking out to grab the other by the throat and slam him against the bulkhead. Blood splashed after the first impact, the dog going as limp as a foal's toy, and Svartr threw him to one side before stalking down the corridor they had been guarding.

Metal froze, staring after them, then looked down at the dog the gryphoness had landed on. Chest caved in, she moved weakly, jaws opening and closing in a futile effort to pull in air. Nostrils flaring he breathed in sharply, gripping the dog's head. Eyes squeezed shut, Metal twisted sharply, shuddering at the nasty crack. Mouth working, he stepped away, trying to ignore the mangled paws and the smell of blood, heading deeper into the carrier.

There was a sudden burst of gunfire and screaming. He twitched, shifting weight from hoof to hoof, then inhaled sharply at a flare of magic from below. Of course the ponies on board would defend their masters! He reached in with his own power, interfering with the other's magic where it tried to latch on to 'his' gryphons. They were desperate, hammering away at his grip while trying to block the gryphon's advance, and the effort required to keep them in check made sweat dampen his flanks, even while ice grew on the surfaces around his hooves.

Stop! They are killing them!

Metal moved to block the communication, freezing at the sudden wordless wail of distress underpinned with agony that came with the alien thought. They deserve to die -- all the dogs are monsters! he snapped back, jaw muscles bunching as his teeth ground together. Metal took a step forwards, ears cocked forwards and listening to the sounds, as the narrow spinal corridor opened out into a small rear compartment, empty but for discarded magazines and bullet-scarred storage lockers. The fighting had moved on, deeper into the aircraft, but the glare of magic still reflected off the walls through battle-damaged hatches.

They won't let us surrender!

"Dammit, Svartr!" Metal growled, lurching into a trot across the springy metal mesh flooring. What do you mean 'us'? The Masters?

We were ordered to surrender-- With the thought came a sense of shock and pain, of a terrible mental struggle, of trying to understand something that was at odds with the natural order of the universe. --and that our Masters' lives were less important than the non-causal communicator.

The what? That means the dogs are watching us-- Metal sucked in a fast breath, sweeping the aircarrier for anything really exotic, like isotopes or elements in unnatural concentrations, that would speak of a hidden nuclear weapon, but there was nothing to be found. Why? Why does the device matter?

Strategist Orgon wants to talk.

===

Fusion, flying through dense, artificial cloud, watched the hovering attack carrier through shadow sight. At her side was Triple Point, who'd jumped to their position with some garbled message about 'surrender'.

What do you mean 'talk'? She sent the thoughts into the sharing, watching through Metal's eyes while opening a link back to Gravity, still surrounded by her attentive cloud of rocks. Metal was holding a spitting, snarling gryphoness off the deck in a cocoon of green magic. He was standing between her and a small group of dogs, cowering at the far end of an equipment bay. Three other gryphons had joined them, weapons drawn and pointed somewhere between the dogs and Metal, but were held back by a glowing wall. Oh, for pity's sake. What have you done, Metal?

He grunted, breathing hard. "Svartr here is killing every dog, even after they try to surrender," he said. "Can I have some help? I think one of the ponies on this thing is in punishment fugue."

"Triple, find Ellisif and get her to control her troops, or find somepony to relieve Metal." The mare nodded, then vanished with a thump of inrushing air. Did you get that, Grav?

It's a trap. Let the gryphons kill them all and I'll destroy these Arclights. One less horror in the world. They are vulnerable -- when will we next be able to hurt them this badly?

This is a strange bait for a trap... why pull back the Arclights? They must know those things are our main targets. Fusion flew on for a few breaths, focused on the feed coming back from Metal. Triple had reached the room with the gryphons, immediately followed by Ellisif, who had waded through the group, knocking them left and right. She was shouting something, but Metal wasn't listening, all his attention on the ponies in the belly of the carrier. There were traces of pain filtering through the mental space, alien sensations intruding into the sharing from the pony's whiplashing magic.

Triple cantered past the group, passing through a short-lived hole in Metal's force field, and took a hold of Svartr, keeping her still while Ellisif talked. Relieved of his burden, Metal launched himself through the door at the back of the compartment and down towards the servitor hold. Fusion split her attention again, partly on Gravity and her floating arsenal, partly on Triple, but mostly on Metal.

The corridors he moved down were built to dog scale, and not suited for ponies. They were wide enough -- just -- but the sharp corners were out of the question. Metal left a trail of buckled and bent panels as he used magic to force his way through the narrow passages between unknown machines. Let's hope none of that's important! Fusion sent and he snorted in reply and kept on moving.

The dog access to the servitor bay was through a hatch less than a metre on a side, and far too small to do more than poke his head through. There were five ponies inside, just visible through the mesh sides of their individual stalls. A little corridor ran in front of the head boxes, obviously an afterthought.

Two of the ponies were thrashing inside the confines of their restraints, heads pulled up and back on straining necks while their bodies were held upright by the inflated padding in the stalls. They squealed, high distorted things choked out through throats closed with rippling muscle. Their skins, what little was visible, ran with lather and sweat and twitched like they were filled with ants. A dip into shadow sight showed the cause; green-glowing wires of magic ran from horn to brain. The air was filled with the pulse and flare of magic from the other stalls, power reaching out to parts of the carrier and trying to repair the damage done in the attacks.

Metal's eyes bulged and he hissed, then gently gripped the closest pony's head. She ignored his touch, locked in a private world of pain and suffering by the fugue. His magic reached out, focused on a tiny volume of green-stained horn material, and twisted. The mare took a great, shuddering breath and slumped, letting the air back out in a sob, tears running down her muzzle. Metal switched focus and did the same to the other pony, and the level of noise in the compartment dropped dramatically.

"W-what have you done?" The voice was male, but thin and full of strain.

"I've removed the torturer from their heads. What did you mean, 'Strategist Orgon wants to talk'?"

"The Maker--" The words were cut off with a gasp and a shocked whinny.

Will it be better or worse if I remove his Blessing? Metal snorted in frustration. "There is no Maker! Listen, we can debate the way the dogs have trapped us after you are in a position to follow the argument. What did you mean!?"

"I have my orders..." More sobs. "I-- There is a non-causal communicator in the forward hold, the one used by the M-Master's drop troops, but you can access it from any panel." He gestured at the comms unit across from their stalls. On it was the face of a dog, his green eyes calm and expectant. At the back of Metal's head there was a twitch of recognition.

===

Fusion looked out though Metal's eyes. That's the one who spoke to me at Naraka, just before they tried to kill us, she sent.

So what? Gravity sounded impatient. Those Arclights are still in range, I could...

I want to hear what he has to say.

What if it's another trap?

I don't see how. You can sense anything coming over the horizon and they have nothing left in orbit. Metal's the one at risk. You watch the Arclights and make sure they don't try anything from there. If they twitch, destroy them all. Gravity didn't reply, but there was a taste of expectation in the link. Metal, do you remember the spell we used back in the tunnels? The one to show Gravity and I to all the Naraka ponies?

I do... hold on, there's not a lot of room in here. There were the bell-sounds of multiple force field cuts, followed by metallic shrieks and several voices raised in complaint. "You said you had your orders? Well you just concentrate on keeping this thing in the air and let me worry about talking to your boss. You can work from anywhere." There are still loyal ponies here... I only freed two of them, the ones in fugue. Should I...

Later, let them work. The spell, please.

Magic flared and Fusion let her point of view switch from Metal to a point outside his body. The space she was in was small and smelled of frightened and hurt ponies, a metal room decorated with ripped and twisted partitions that had been wadded up and pressed into a corner. On the wall was the screen with the dog. Fusion cleared her throat and heard the sound echo off the hard walls and into Metal's ears. Excellent. Thank you, Metal.

"Sector Chief Orgon, you have moved up in the world! Why should I talk to you?" Fusion said, looking at the figure on the screen.

The dog's ears flicked back for an instant, then he nodded, grim-faced. "This one half expected the pony to destroy the whole taskforce. He is impressed at the pony's restraint, especially after the Hammer strike."

"Why are you talking, Orgon, and why should I listen? Is this another play for time? Are you manoeuvring some weapon into position to strike at us? Speak quickly." Through the link she probed the communicator in the belly of the carrier, hunting for some way to determine where the dog was. Some deep bunker, I imagine; perhaps if I was closer I could locate the other end and dig him out...

"This one's only interest is the safety of his Hive; the pony was a threat, so..." Orgon waved a paw, suddenly looking tired. Behind him there was a pulse of pearly light, and a pony appeared carrying a screaming, grey-furred dog. Orgon turned, a faint smile curving his lips. "Councillor Caug! It is so good that he could make it." The pony, a dapple-grey mare with a slightly wild-eyed look and a nasty burn on one flank, dropped Caug and nodded to Orgon, then vanished again. Behind the dog, revealed when he had turned, were four others, bound paw to paw.

What is going on in there? Fusion's ears pricked forwards and she strained to make out more details. That pony... Scalar said he was questioned by a pony like that.

"To answer the pony's question: these ones have a common enemy." Orgon moved away from the camera, walking to the prisoners, and tapped one of them, a heavy-set male with a blunt jaw, on the top of the head. "Tell the pony who this one is."

The dog snapped at Orgon's paw. "This one is will see to it that anyone Orgon even knows will be trawled on suspicion of treason! He will get to watch before the machines pull out his mind."

"Rthys, please?" Orgon said, turning to a slender female, letting the other grind his teeth and snarl.

"This one is Auditor Rthys of the World Court. That is Auditor Kosigan," she said stiffly staring into the camera. "The pony knows that these ones represent the ultimate authority under the Maker. Surrender now, and no others of the pony's kind will have to suffer."

"And let gigaseconds of deaths and pain continue unabated?" Fusion said; her voice was calm but her body suddenly felt hot. Spell patterns rose unbidden in her mind, making the sharing waver. The distant point of warmth, high above the clouds, seemed to call to her, begging to be used in ways both tantalising and incomprehensible.

"The pony sees what this one has to deal with; they have the evidence yet cannot accept it. This one can," Orgon said, turning slightly to include the rest of the room in his speech. "It is the Court that ordered the Hammer strike. It is the Court that makes the existence of free servitors a crime. It is the Court that will dismantle Lacunae in an effort to destroy the pony and all its kin. It is the Court that is the biggest threat to the existence of the pony and this one's Hive. If these ones want to survive, they will have to work together." His gaze traveled over those watching him, meeting their eyes.

He can't seriously be suggesting... Fusion tried to read the audience; mostly shock, although some were at least looking thoughtful.

Orgon must have seen what he wanted to see, because he stepped back a pace from Kosigan and raised a paw, pointing it at the Auditor. "There is no reason the pony should take Orgon's word for this, so here is a gesture of this one's sincerity."

There was a sharp little noise, like the snapping of a twig, and Kosigan fell over, blood leaking from nose, mouth and ears.

29 - A matter of trust

Author's Note

A crude dramatis personæ can be found here.
Preread by: turol.
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and Caliaponia (Just Passing Through).

29 - A matter of trust

That's supposed to convince me? He can kill as many dogs as he likes. Just makes the job easier, Gravity sent, mental voice coloured by a vicious snarl.

The body at the Strategist's feet continued to leak blood. He stepped around it, arm pointed at Auditor Rthys. She stared at Kosigan, mouth agape, then saw Orgon and shrank away. "Madness..." she whispered, bringing her bound arms up as a shield against his paw and its concealed weapon. "The Court will--" She froze when he moved, a lazy gesture of that lethal paw.

"The Court will do what it will do. Lacunae was going to pay the price, no matter this one's actions right now, unless these ones do something different." His back was to the camera, and he was addressing the people in the rest of the room, who were in similar attitudes of frozen shock to Rthys. "These ones have all seen the intelligence estimates; they make for depressing reading. The servitor rebellion could have been stopped, if these ones caught it early enough, and if the situation hadn't been exacerbated by the actions of one individual. Policies will need to be amended in the future." He shook his head. “If there is a future.”

He does know we can still hear him, right? Gravity sent, amusement colouring her mental tone. What's he doing?

Lies and deception have failed, so this dog is trying blunt honesty. He wasn’t sure they’d follow him; now he's making sure... based on what I've heard from Ellisif, murdering a World Court official is practically a war crime. It's possible that the rest of them could be obliged to arrest Orgon. In the real world, Fusion allowed herself to land on a high, bare hilltop, settling against the stony ground and focussing on her magic. Stay ready. We are much less vulnerable now, so I think we can let this go on for a little while. Who knows, we might get something out of this.

You said it yourself; every time this dog has been involved it has been nothing but lies and tricks. They eat deception and excrete falsehoods. He's Salrath's ultimate master, you do remember her, right? I bet he sent her to the Corral that night. Our dam's wing is still unusable.

I haven't forgotten. Fusion shifted a little of her attention, finding Triple Point, now standing in the gryphon launch bay with the carrier's five ponies. Are you okay?

Fine. This lot are too busy keeping this heap in the air. We really should land it. They're having problems repairing the active systems. One of the gryphons says he can fly it. There was a wave of sadness from the mare, an odd hollow feeling. All the dog pilots are dead.

Fusion sighed. Round up any survivors and do what you think is best. Could you get somepony to bring Scalar to the carrier, please? That pony with Orgon is the one who questioned him; we may be able to put some pressure on her. I'll meet you there.

Gravity's presence swelled and pushed Triple aside. You are actually going there!? What if--?

Who's the one being overcautious now? Fusion smiled, pushing her amusement into the sharing to take the sting from her words. I don't see how they can kill me before we can all escape... they might catch a few gryphons, but everypony there is teleport-capable. Metal's already checked the carrier and I'll get Redshift to sweep it again.

Don't get yourself killed, Fusion. Gravity's tone was deadly serious. If you do, I'll pull the moon from the sky.

Fusion shivered, clamping down on the sharing for a few moments. Could she do it? We are getting stronger everyday... She was suddenly keenly aware of the sun and the hints of complexity surrounding it, fern-like excrescences that moved and rotated through directions that didn't seem to have any analogue in her normal experience. It just wants me to use it... does Gravity feel the same way?

I won't, Fusion sent finally, but remember the ponies in the other Hives. She pulled at Metal's memories of the early part of the battle, then pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--materialising in clouds, high above a landscape scattered with the lights of crystal thaumic systems and the golden glows of gryphons. Many of the coloured points were dispersed and flickering; the signs of damaged systems. She ignored them, diving to circle around the carrier as the big aircraft descended, the ducted fans in its delta wings sounding laboured and erratic. Magic pulsed and moved around and through it, darting here and there. The spells were ragged, frantic things, barely a few moments’ effort to patch up a critical defect before moving on to the next site.

Fusion ignored it all, wheeling around the hull to find the servitor bay before cutting a hole in the external hatch and pulling herself inside. "Good job, Metal. Go and help Triple; I want this thing on the ground and safe. Make sure there are no traps." He nodded, squeezing back through the hatch to the rest of the carrier, leaving her alone with the comms screen. A probing touch found the distant Gravity, and Fusion let her sister see through her eyes.

On the screen, Orgon was still talking to the dogs in the command centre, or whatever it was. Many of them looked nervous, and there was another body on the floor next to the first. One of his... Fusion struggled to remember the rank structure of the Hive, part of a quick lecture given by Ellisif. ...Tacticians? I half expected to see a firefight. The dog delivered by the grey mare, thicker-set than the military staff, was seated at one blanked console, under obvious guard.

The pony appeared again, this time carrying a pair of dogs, dropping her cargo to the floor. She froze on seeing the body, then turned to stare at Orgon. "Master, do you need assistance?" she said, wings mantled and horn glowing softly. Her gaze shifted, ears and eyes sweeping the room with sharp bird-like motions that looked more gryphon than pony. The dogs in the room, those that noticed her regard, became careful with their movements.

"No, Merlon. Please complete your orders." Orgon smiled when he spoke, waving two of his staff to take charge of the arrivals. There was a brief struggle, which Merlon ignored, disappearing in a flash of pearly light.

So that's what a fully trained security pony can do. What must she have gone through to reach that level of detachment? Fusion stared at the screen, her ears folded back. "If you have quite finished, Strategist...? My sister doesn't see the point of that little demonstration."

"What sort of demonstration would the pony accept, then?" Orgon tilted his head, like he'd just asked for directions. "This one remembers what the pony wanted last time these ones talked, but they are hardly things this one can demonstrate over a comms link."

"Let's start with proof that you still have control of your military. You have a pair of Arclight battle groups to my southeast; they are currently retreating. Have them join up with their escorts, then land as soon as practical." Lend me your eyes, Gravity.

An oval of darkness blinked open, a window only visible in her own mind, filling with a rumpled landscape. In it was a group of aircraft; a quartet of delta-winged carriers and clusters of airtanks in formation around a pair of lumpy Arclight projectors. They were flowing together, changing from a dispersed tactical formation to one that was far more compact. Something's definitely happening, Gravity sent. You know, I could get them all with one salvo...

Fusion snorted. Maybe later. Let's see how far we can go. "There are ponies on your aircraft, Orgon. Instruct them to gather on a hilltop nearby. I will send someone to talk to them; tell them to cooperate."

"What does Fusion Pulse intend? Those Arclight units have duties beyond chasing the pony; this one can ill afford--"

"You asked what I wanted, Orgon."

The Strategist sighed, typing something into a console. "It is done."

===

The smell of blood was pervasive, even with the bunker's filters. Merlon dropped her struggling cargo at the centre of the room, suddenly alert. There was a Master on the floor, blood leaking from his mouth, obviously dead. So he really did it... Merlon analysed her feelings and came back with only satisfaction. This Master had been insulting and demanding of Orgon; if anyone deserved to die, it was that Auditor. "Master, do you need any assistance?" she said, sweeping her gaze about the room.

"No, Merlon. Please complete your orders."

He smiled when he said it, and Merlon felt a glow of satisfaction, with a pang of regret at the paleness of it compared to what she should have felt. I want to go back! She masked her emotions, keeping her head up and her ears alert, and pushed at her teleport spell once more. A moment's hesitation, because the spell demanded more effort than expected, then she pushed a little harder--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--felt a sudden slam that knocked the wind from her chest and sent the world tumbling. A wall of rushing metal, filling the sky with jagged shapes and a roar of sound. Her defences, already primed for the next jump, flared into being and pushed the unknown threat away. There was an explosion, the fast-moving wall turning into fragments and blowing away in a soundless concussion of pearly light. Her magic, an immaterial hoof of thaumokinetic force, blinked out and she stared open-mouthed at the rain of jagged metal and windmilling bipedal shapes.

The airtrain, a multi-carriage thing packed with People travelling through the canyon-like airspace at the heart of Arcology Seven, had broken apart under the hammer of her magic like it had been struck by a missile. The thing was a chain of composite compartments, each with their own crystal levitation drives, and she'd appeared close to the middle of the train. Her destruction of that carriage should have done little more than cut the aircraft in half, the redundant drives holding up the rest of it, but her panicked reaction had split it open, the light hull splintering and splitting. It shed screaming people, dropping them down towards the pedestrian precincts far below.

Merlon froze, wings locking open, and stared. Got to save-- She swallowed, still not moving. The cold equations of acceleration and distance filled her mind, the sheer amount of time it would take her to rescue a pitiful few of the passengers. The screams had become distant, Doppler-shifted by speed, but they were still clear. There must be other ponies who will help. Merlon twisted her wings and turned away, forcing aside the terror she'd glimpsed on the closest of the fallers, remembering a wide, heavy-walled meeting room at the centre of Redoubt Phi, and pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--the room, a plushly furnished chamber designed to house the distributed members of the Synod, was full of soldiers. To either side were a pair of ponies, lizard-skinned and anonymous under their Security barding, their horns lighting up. Guns, already held in tense paws, jerked about, centring on Merlon.

She tumbled sideways, her conserved velocity now in a different direction to that her wings were set for. In the relatively confined space her path took her across a stone statue of some long-dead Hive hero, striking it side on. The impact was a distant thing; her body was already limed with the light of telekinesis, muscles hardened to the strength of iron, and the statue killed her velocity by smashing into fragments. Merlon sprawled to the floor as mass driver rounds zipped and cracked overhead.

Her speciality was medicine, not combat, but long gigaseconds in the service of Security had placed her in situations that required use of her power in ways that would horrify any normal pony medic. Every Master in the room started to scream, falling writhing to the floor, as Merlon activated their peripheral nervous systems, simulating the effect of being set on fire. The ponies fought back, and the temperature in the room dropped precipitously.

Merlon let go of the pain-inducing magic, pumping a little extra power into the spell to keep it running unattended for a few breaths, and threw a stream of conference chairs and anything else within reach at the nearest pony, a sky-blue mare. The pony gave a sharp cry, muzzle twisting with pain and eyes staring at the fallen Masters, putting all her strength into defence, but it was too much; moments later her telekinetic parries failed to deflect half of a heavy conference table, and it struck her on the shoulder. She went down with an awful sound of breaking bones, the glare of her hornlight winking out.

If I'd still had the Blessing, I'd never have been able to do that. Merlon smothered the other pony's power with her own as he struggled to unpick her pain spell. "You should have focussed on me," she growled. How are we supposed to do our best for the Masters when the Blessing stops us from making the right choices? It was the work of a moment to send him to sleep, then apply the same spell to the Masters. The screaming stopped, replaced by groans that changed to snores on the next breath, and she stalked from the room.

They must have heard from the other Redoubts; Indutu will be heading for the deep tunnels-- She switched to shadow sight, sweeping the complex. There was movement everywhere -- assault teams of gryphons were being assembled in one of the adjacent office spaces, while the coloured lights of the crystal thaumic hardware carried by most Masters just flowed away as their owners ran for their lives. A pattern, he won't be alone... There, a half dozen floors below, was a tight cluster of lights moving with rapid purpose towards the deep tunnels leading to the nearest arcology.

"They knew I was coming," Merlon muttered. Of course they knew! Flashes of memory made her gasp -- the windmill fall of bodies, the screaming fading as they receded towards the distant ground. She whimpered, picking her way out of the room, eyes closed. No one saved them. "I let all those Masters die." Soft objects bumped against her hooves and she pushed them away. I have my orders. I must follow my orders. She shook her head, taking a deep breath. Nothing else matters.

The little cluster was still moving, getting close to the parking structure. Merlon's lips twitched with a brief, cold smile, holding in her mind the memory of following her Master from the aircar to a meeting room in the redoubt. She pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--appearing in an echoing, concrete-lined space. Directly in front of her were a quartet of Masters in tactical gear rushing a gasping Councillor Indutu towards one of the aircars. She lashed out, scattering the guards and lifting the blonde-furred Indutu off his paws. "Councillor!" she said brightly. "Strategist Orgon would like your company."

"N-no, this one orders the pony to--"

"I do not have to obey your orders," she snapped, ears folding back. Her magic held Indutu tightly, squeezing until he gasped, eyes rolling back. The guards were regaining their paws, reaching for backup firearms, so Merlon pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

===

Well?

Gravity watched through the eyes of several ponies. There was Stratus, flying within shadow sight range of the closest set of Arclights, and Nimbus, following the others somewhere over the horizon. These were flying to join the nearby fleet, which was formed up into a neat formation, one almost begging to be attacked. Then there was Spread Spectrum, the volunteer she'd sent to talk to the ponies flying raggedly away from their aircraft.

Her cloud of cubic boulders, the best part of a whole mountain of granite, orbited her in wide loops, and she could just picture the teleport patterns that would send... She sighed, pushing the power to the back of her mind. They seem to be obeying the orders. It could still be a trap.

The bait is expensive, and they won't catch either of us. I'm starting to think Orgon is serious. Ellisif is with me now and she doesn't trust him either, but she's confirmed part of it. The Court is the real power, or rather, the permission it will give the other Hives coupled with fire from the Hammer. Fusion's view of the world was a little less interesting, just a small chamber and a screen. Behind her was a ragged opening in the hull, leading out to a patch of scrubby trees, the broken branches of which were poking through the rent like claws. Redshift was working somewhere nearby; Gravity could hear a second-horned echo of him from somewhere in Fusion's mind.

The screen showed the same view -- a room full of dogs, none of them really doing much. Orgon, the closest to the camera, stared impassively out at Fusion, like he was prepared to wait a megasecond if necessary. Fusion turned her back on him, stepping into the dwarf forest, horn glowing as she cleared a patch of ground big enough for a dozen ponies. Ellisif landed at its centre, peering past Fusion and no doubt looking at the screen. There was a flurry of magic, the bright green of Redshift's power, and the hull, all tough alloy and hard ceramic, melted away like it was ice under a flame.

"That's better," Fusion said, "now we can all talk."

"Does the pony accept this one's words?" Behind Orgon, the grey mare reappeared, carrying another struggling dog.

I want to talk to that pony, Gravity sent. The hints in Scalar's memories are intriguing. It must be her.

Agreed, Fusion thought, she's another one for us to free. "Well, that's where we have a problem, Strategist. Every interaction we have had has demonstrated that you cannot be trusted." She waved a wing, and Scalar walked into the camera view. His mane was brushed back from his forehead, highlighting the raw stump of his horn. He stayed silent, glaring at the grey pony, who'd moved to stand behind Orgon. She flinched when she saw him, ears flicking back.

That is interesting... she's worried. Now I really want to talk to her. Gravity turned a quick loop in the air, all her attention focused on her internal landscape. In another part of her mind, Spread Spectrum was approaching a group of nervous ponies collected in a forest clearing. They had huddled together, all watching Spread with frightened eyes. Some were twitching, skin rippling and shaking, and had the whites of their eyes showing. The ponies are not happy; some are certainly hurting.

They don't understand their orders. I wonder if... "You remember Scalar, don't you, Orgon? This is the pony you said had died in a missile strike. Yet we found him and his mate in the depths of Bakot... care to explain?"

"Because this one thought he could get away with it, obviously." Orgon snorted, not looking uncomfortable at all. "The pony should be grateful; these ones now have a better understanding of the pony's... condition. Lack of understanding is a recipe for communication problems."

He does not get to be so calm! Fusion thought, and Gravity could feel Fusion's jaws clench, her teeth grinding together. "Why should I trust you, Orgon? Why should I not just demolish your Arclights and carry on freeing ponies at my own pace? You must know we can repeat what we did to Bakot at any of your other bases."

"Yes, the pony could. It would be very hard for these ones to actually catch the pony. But..." Orgon did something to the console behind him, bringing up a complex-looking interface. "...this is the master interface for the labournet. From here, this one can issue orders to any servitor in the whole of Lacunae Hive." He ran a paw along the command field, changing the unreadable menus to a map showing a cluster of codes gathered in an empty patch of landscape.

Fusion hissed. "What are you doing, Orgon? If you--" Grav, those are the ponies from the fleet, get Spread out of there!

"It is to the pony's advantage." He tapped another control.

Gravity snarled and spun in the air, accelerating towards the little herd. Spread, be careful, it might be a trap. She pulled the memory of the other pony's location through the sharing, then pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--appearing a few body lengths over the group, wings flared and an artificial darkness expanding like a shockwave around her. Beneath, the ponies scattered, taking a few canter-strides before turning reluctantly to face her. There was no glimmer of hornlight in the black pall, no magic at all, just a few quiet whimpers and whinnies.

"W-we have been ordered to submit to y-you," said one, a dappled blue-green stallion. He plucked off his communicator and tossed it away, an action followed by the others. "What are your orders?" He bowed his head, tears glittering with points of violet in the harsh glare of Gravity's own hornlight.

===

He told them that we would remove the Blessing, that the Maker didn't need to hurt them anymore! Why would he do that? Gravity was prowling around the herd, making them bunch together and constantly shuffle to keep her in view.

I... This dog is the most dangerous one we've met. Fusion felt her legs tremble, and she lifted each in turn to still them. He knows what we want. Leave them to Spread Spectrum and resume your position. I don't want this to be more bait.

"Did it work?" Orgon cocked his head to one side, studying Fusion. "This one sees that it did. That is what this one can really offer, a way to ease the transition. But--" He raised a paw, making another series of command inputs. "--this one can also make things far more difficult."

Part of the display changed, showing the inside of a corral's infirmary. Within it was an orange stallion, restlessly pacing the small examination space while a drug injector, black-and-yellow striped like a giant wasp, hovered in a field of orange. As Fusion watched, he put the injector down, took a few more steps then picked it up and put it down again next to a second one of the same sort. He shook his head, muttering something indistinct, then flinched as if struck, ears flicking back.

A wave of revulsion made Fusion shudder; it didn't come from her own body, but from Gravity's. Those are euthanisation injectors! The medic at the Institute gave me some while you were hurt; he wanted me to--

"What are you doing, Orgon?" Fusion said, her own ears folding back. "I swear, there won't a hole deep enough on this whole planet to hide you from me--"

"The pony needs a demonstration; there must be no misunderstanding this one's resolve." Orgon smiled gently and, at his shoulder, Merlon glanced down at the console and closed her eyes, slumping slightly.

On the remote feed, the door to the infirmary opened and a mare and foal entered. The adult, wing clamped tight over the youngster, had her head bent to one side and was whispering to the little colt. The words were too quiet to hear, but her tone was tense. She walked slowly, on trembling legs, coming to a halt just inside the door. Her head came up, staring at the stallion, and Fusion could see her cheeks were wet with tears. "Why? What did I do wrong?" She shivered all over, mouth opening with a silent cry.

"I'm sorry, Photochromic," the stallion said, voice gentle, "the ways of the Masters are not always understandable."

"T-the Masters are the Paws of the Maker," she said tightly. "Who will take care of... of..." She gestured helplessly down at her colt, who stared back, confusion on his stubby muzzle.

"My orders cover both of you," the stallion said, picking up the injector gun again. "It's probably best if..." He pointed it at the colt.

The mare fell to her knees at the foal's side and nodded jerkily. "L-listen, baby, Cannula just needs to give you an injection, then it will all be fine. I'll be right here with you."

He looked back at her, eyes widening and flicking between the medic and the floating injector. "I don't want to!" His horn lit, pale magic warring with the medic's own for a few seconds before being extinguished.

Fusion leaned forwards, speaking rapidly. "Orgon, stop this. I understand your point; you can kill all of us that you can reach. You don't need to involve these innocents."

Orgon looked back at her while, on the screen, the colt made a dash for the door, only to be caught in an orange telekinetic field and dragged back in. His dam had collapsed onto her side, shivering all over and making choked whinnying noises. Merlon dipped her head and whispered in Orgon's ear. He glanced up at her and frowned, paws hovering over his console.

"Maker's sake, you've already tried to nuke me twice, what more evidence do I need?!" Fusion shouted, forehooves pawing at the ground.

Orgon's paw came down and, on the screen, the medic dropped the injector and let the colt go. An emergency kit was ripped from the wall, another injector pulled from a prominent place at the top of the supplies. A few quick adjustments and it was plunged into the mare's neck. Seconds later she relaxed, and the medic lifted her upright. "I don't understand why, but the Masters changed their orders," he said, leaning his head against hers.

"I don't care why." Photochromic had a distant look on her face, the expression of a pony listening to an internal voice. "I don’t care.”

"I know exactly what you are capable of, Orgon," Fusion spat, glaring into the camera. "Any more tricks like that and the next target we pick will not be a military base."

Orgon inclined his head. "So long as these ones understand each other. There are over half a million ponies in Lacunae's service. That's two hundred and thirty thousand, one hundred and nine stallions, two hundred and ninety thousand, four hundred and seventeen mares, with fifteen thousand, seven hundred foals in training, and another three thousand or so still in utero." He paused, running a claw along the input field. "This one can order all their deaths from this console. Fusion Pulse is powerful, but she could not hope to save more than a pawful."

"You would destroy the Hive in the process. I know we run your industry. How many dogs would you condemn to death with those same commands?"

Orgon smiled. "When the Court realises that you have outmatched our military forces, it will order mass euthanisations as a firebreak. If we do not comply it will be war; the other Hives will be required to try and stop you." His smile widened, becoming shark-like. "Their first targets will be the corrals and breeding centres."

===

"No, absolutely not." Orgon shook his head, pointing a claw at Ellisif, who stood next to Fusion. "The gryphon forces are a vital part of Lacunae's military; this one will not turn them over to a single sersjant. The gryphon has had some success with its force, but has no experience in the prosecution of a total war."

Ellisif hissed, beak open. "I will never again place myself under the command of a dog! Weapons, then, and armour. You will fully supply us with what we need, and pony armourers for support."

Orgon cocked his head, looking at Fusion. "The pony would be better served if this one gave her control of several fast strike units from the Red Deaths; at least they are fully trained."

Fusion snorted. "That won't happen; I trust Ellisif."

"As the pony wishes." Orgon shrugged. "What would happen to any security ponies this one sends? Why would you trust them?"

"I would remove their Blessings, for a start. They would be shadowed by some of our own while they work... after that, we will give them the choice to stay with us or return to you." Fusion shifted her weight, glancing sideways at Ellisif. "Their families will come with them."

"The cost of this; those ponies will have other roles in the Hive--"

"Trust, Orgon. How can I know that you will not use their dams and sires against them?"

"Orgon is aware of the sharing magic; Merlon tells this one that it would be easy to find such a traumatic memory."

"Security has a certain reputation, Orgon, even among your own kind. They will suspect, even if not explicitly told. You will also give them appropriate instructions on what they will expect, along the same lines as you have shown me."

He sighed, running his paws through his whiskers. "What about the families of the families? The pony will gut the Hive's industrial capacity when it is needed the most. First generation only."

"The orders will be given in person by someone who understands the consequences of any mistakes." I know what effect direct contact with one of you has. "I want the ponies to be happy to join us; I will send somepony as a witness."

"If that is what the pony requires..." Orgon shrugged, then looked at Ellisif. "How many mech-flight rated gryphons does the sersjant have? This one knows that there were three hundred gryphons in the Pit's defence forces, of which... three squads were rated. How many of them made it out?"

"I want five squadrons of D-35 Maul gunships, with ten mission load-outs. Don't you worry about the number of pilots I have."

The dog's smile returned, and he inclined his head. "And a mobile reactor station, this one assumes? Would the gryphon like to collect, or shall this one have them delivered?"

"You know what we want, Orgon. Eventually none of your client species will be slaves any more. You will no longer be able to pour our lives away like water. Deliver the vehicles to this location. Do not delay," Fusion said, "it is a small enough request compared to the total size of your military."

Orgon's smile vanished. "This one wants something in return: release the Arclight aircraft. They have more uses than just the simple nullification of magic. The Hive needs their protection against attacks from strategic thaumic arrays."

Fusion blinked. Another weapon we have to worry about? "Lacunae must have these things as well. Why didn't you use them on us?"

"For all that the use of nuclear weapons raises inter-Hive tensions, use of the strategic arrays would have been worse." Orgon gave a twisted smile. "...and the pony is well aware of how crude the magics created by crystal systems are; she has defeated them often enough. Physics is normally more reliable." Orgon made a throwaway gesture. "This hardly matters, other than the strategic defence losses incurred -- defences that will also protect pony corrals and gryphon aeries."

Fusion nodded. "You may take the escorts and their dog crews immediately as a sign of good faith. The gryphons will be given the choice to stay or go. I will release the first Arclight when you have delivered Ellisif’s vehicles."

"...and the rest?"

"When everypony has been released from the breeding centres. If they are to be targets, then they must be emptied. We will take them with us to our new settlements. The corrals too."

We're going to need more space! Gravity sent. How will we be able to take them all in?

More ponies means more workers, and I'll bet they will be very happy to do something useful for themselves and their foals. I'm not sure about everypony else. Let's start with getting them out from under the Eugenics Board's yoke.

"This one will generate a suitable set of orders. Transports can be made available, will the pony--?"

"No, I will not let you discover exactly where we live. We will collect them. Supply somepony who has visited each of the centres, and we'll be able to find them." Fusion recalled the teleport pattern, letting it spin in her mind. Grav, I think there's a way to force the wormhole to remain open for more than an instant; we should be able to trot everypony through.

You'll have to be there; that will tempt them to do something stupid.

We'll just have to make sure they understand that we can also hurt them. More thoughts followed, outlining Fusion's plan.

Merlon whispered something in Orgon's ear, and he nodded. "As the pony wishes. This one takes it that the pony will be maintaining the enchanted cloud cover?" At Fusion's flick of an ear, he nodded again, looking unhappy. "Orgon will let the pony know something for free: it has been effective. Several of the ponies in the Arclight battlegroups have visited other breeding centres. Will that be sufficient?"

"For now." Fusion's horn glowed, and she lifted a smooth, round-ended cylinder from where it had been hidden from the camera's field of view. "Do you recognise this, Orgon? It is one of the bombs we took from Bakot." She placed it on the ground in front of her hooves. "You made your demonstration, now it is time for me to make one in return. Redshift tells me that the nominal yield of this device is about one megaton. Nominal, because it is capable of up to ten, with modifications that we can perform in the field. We have many more of these, each in the care of a pony in a safe place."

"This one understands," Orgon said, his ears going back, "the pony has used a similar weapon before."

"No, I don't think you do. Open a camera view of the central plaza of Arcology One. The Synod building."

Someone behind Orgon did something and a new window appeared on the screen. The artificial cavern of the arcology hub glittered, the great cliff-walls of business and high-rent apartments surrounding the central core of the Synod assembly chamber like a pair of cupped paws around the closed bulb of a flower. The pedestrian precincts at its base thronged with dogs, while aircars, made tiny by the titanic size of the chamber they flew around, zipped like insects.

"You just threatened to murder half a million ponies. There are two million of the People living and working within five kilometres of the Synod building." Her horn flashed, and the bomb disappeared.

===

There was a blip of white-gold light on the screen, barely more than the pulse of a distant camera flash, and something appeared in the air near the Synod building. A vague blur, nothing more, flicked sideways to punch a hole through the decorative wall. Orgon's ears folded back and he tensed, but the camera feed remained active. Nothing... a failed detonation, or-- He held his breath, then exhaled. If the pony has decided to make a point, this one will have to swallow it. Plans spun in his mind, things he could do or say to maintain control in the face of the loss of a whole arcology.

"Just something to remind you that time is passing," Fusion said, face expressionless. "If you want our cooperation, you will tell your breeding centres to expect us imminently."

The pony doesn't believe in waiting. Orgon suppressed a pained smile. Too efficient; World Court paranoia was always justified when it came to the servitors. "This one will issue the orders now. Science staff will be reduced to caretaker levels and all experimental work will be stopped. Which site will the pony visit first?" Fusion didn't reply, and the blank white orb of her left eye glared out of the screen. Orgon stared back, then swallowed, throat suddenly dry, nodding to cover the motion. "As the pony wishes." Now all this one needs to do is maintain his position. He made a gesture to one of his tacticians, and she bent over her comms panel, giving rapid-fire orders to the response teams on permanent standby near the Synod building. His own display, out of view of the feed going to the pony, lit up with helmet cam videos.

"What about the gryphons? Does the pony want them released as well?" At Fusion's side, the rebel sersjant lifted her head from her own comms system and blinked at him. "They will not be as biddable as the ponies, and can hardly live off the land."

"We have enough people to manage them," she said, glaring at the camera. "But we will need food. You will give us exclusive access to the Saimol River farming complex."

"That will be privately owned, this one cannot--"

"Then pay them for it! The staff can remain to manage the farm -- just ensure they supply us."

"This one will ensure that the gryphons and ponies have all the food they need, no matter the final numbers, but he needs something else in return. Another Arclight unit. The pony must know they are useless to us as singletons." The helmet cam videos continued to advance behind a cloud of wasp-like drones flown by the gryphon pilot-farm. The corridors in the outer rind of the Synod building unfolded on one subscreen, ending in wreckage. This is it... Orgon kept his gaze on the pony, following the remote action out of the corner of his eyes.

"That seems reasonable," Fusion said, her voice flat and expressionless.

In the rubble was a mirror-faced cube, not the pale ceramic hull of a nuclear weapon, but the dark shades of granite. Orgon's shoulders sagged and he took a shaky breath. "The pony didn't. This one thanks--"

"No, I did not." Fusion leaned forwards, the pastel glow of her mane shading towards hard, laser-like colours. "But I can, just like that." A hind hoof kicked downwards, striking the rocky ground and spraying gravel behind her. "We have enough of your own weapons to gut each of the Hive's arcologies. I can do it with a thought. If you get to me or my sister, other ponies will send those bombs." The colours brightened, surrounding her with a rainbow halo that made the rest of the view dim as the camera struggled to maintain exposure. "Do not doubt me, Strategist. If you break your word, that will be the least of the consequences."

30 - A tunnel in the sky

Author's Note

A crude dramatis personæ can be found here.
Preread by: turol.
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and Caliaponia (Just Passing Through).

30 - A tunnel in the sky

~~~discontinuity~~~

Fusion appeared in the air above Gravity's head. Her sister was talking to a dozen unfamiliar ponies, who were replying animatedly. The thump and pulse of the teleport arrival rolled over them and they fell silent, looking up. Wings fanning, Fusion dropped to the ground. "Grav, there's a chance that Orgon will actually keep his word this time. I need to get to one of the other breeding centres and test that hypothesis."

Gravity shrugged. "We're all from the same centre; I could go through the Naraka ponies, but..." She frowned, looking at the others. They looked back, wide-eyed and legs twitching as if on the edge of flight.

Are you okay here? Fusion opened their sharing, watching the newcomers intently. That many ponies could be a match for one of them and Fusion worried about some subtle enchantment, but by shadow sight the ponies were as empty of active magic as new-born foals. They stared back, attention flicking between Gravity and herself.

Yes. They are... scared, but curious. The orders they were given have made things easier -- I've removed half of the Blessings so far, and nopony has screamed even once. I've shared with a couple of them, and there's no sign that this is a trap.

Orgon told me that a few of these were from different centres... was he correct?

Yes. Boron Fibre is from sector three; she's had a foal, so... Gravity nodded at a green-coated mare, currently huddled at the centre of the little herd. She shrank slightly when she noticed Fusion's attention. I've taken her Blessing and looked at her most recent memories; there's no sign of her being anything other than a military repair tech. She spent all her time in the back of one of the airtanks.

"Boron," Fusion said gently, "you don't need to be afraid. This change is huge and a hard thing to get your head around, but I need you to help me for a short while. Can you do that?"

"Of course, I--" She swallowed, head bobbing with a vigorous nod that made her deep blue mane whip back and forth. "You are Fusion? I've been ordered to help you in any way I can."

Soon you will be able to think for yourself. Fusion sighed, but kept her expression sympathetic. If Orgon's just going to tell them all to obey me this is going to make the transfer of power a slow process. "Thank you. Gravity needs to share with you; we need to see your memories of the breeding centres you visited."

"Yes, Master," Boron said in a small voice, her head bowed; her ears folding back when Fusion flinched.

"Not Master," Fusion whispered, the words coming out nearly strangled, "never call me that. Always remember you have a choice."

The mare looked back, confusion warring with embarrassment. "Yes, Mas-- Fusion," she said, some of the confusion shifting to wonder. She turned to Gravity and closed her eyes. "I'm ready. Take what you need."

Gravity's horn flashed and Fusion experienced a blend of images, sounds, sensations and smells. The breeding site from the air as she flew towards an opening in the cultivated forest around the central pyramid, the smell of leaf-litter and her mate, landing next to her. The sight of the debris ring in the night sky as her wings opened and her tail twitched sideways. A set of teeth nipped at her neck and a warm, comfortable weight settled on her hindquarters--

Fusion whinnied and pulled back from the link. "T-thank you! Thank you, that's plenty." She backed away, folding her own half-opened wings. "Gravity, I'm going now." Her sister smirked, mouth twisting. I'll get you for that. "You can take care of things here?"

"I can. I've asked for a few ponies from the welcome teams we used after Naraka." Gravity's voice was calm and solemn, but her eyes glinted with amusement. Now you know what I see; the strongest memories are not always pain and horror.

I'm glad, I really am. Let them know that we will get their families brought over. Fusion dipped her head to brush her muzzle along Gravity's neck. Be careful.

You too.

Fusion nodded, wheeling to gallop a few steps before jumping into the air. Magic coated her with white-gold radiance and she pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

===

Orgon stared at the empty video window, camera still pointing through a rent in the air carrier's hull at a scene of broken and snapped dwarf conifers. Fusion will be arriving at one of the other centres soon. His gaze drifted to the map display on one wall. With no idea which one it would be, he'd ordered the research staff out of all the facilities. Knowing that some of the scientists wouldn't want to leave, those orders were reinforced by some of Security's more enthusiastic door-kickers. The list of complaints was growing like a fulminant tumour, many from high-ranking figures in industry who'd seen the orders without being told the reasons behind them.

The same screen marked the progress of a wing of Maul gunships, diverted from one of the perimeter bases and flying at twice the speed of sound towards the captured attack carrier. In their wake were a pair of support aircraft: one charging unit, little more than a flying proton-boron reactor, and a mobile repair/arming facility, complete with a full complement of servitors. This one knows where the ponies are, he could order a strike, catch half their force... Orgon sighed, pushing the thought away.

"How long before the Court misses Rthys?" he asked, crouching before the last Auditor.

She glared back, her eyes fixed on the body of Kosigan. "They already do," she spat. "They know Kosigan is dead."

"That is very unlikely; the Auditors’ comms require access to the Hive's network to talk to the Court. Merlon, check--" The servitor jerked as if she'd been stung, head swinging around. For a moment she stared at Orgon, her pale eyes full of panic and the hint of magic flickering around her horn. What is wrong with the creature? Merlon had returned from her last puppynapping like a hunted thing, constant tremors making her skin twitch and shiver. What did the pony have to do? Has this one pushed her too far? He stood and walked to her side, laying a paw against her neck. The touch, which normally would have been calming, only served to make her tremble more.

"Whatever the pony did, it is forgiven. The Hive is at war; we must all do things that are difficult." Orgon sighed, pulling back his paw. "Please check the Auditors’ communications devices."

Merlon nodded, a semblance of her normal calm returning. "Master, I--" Her jaw worked and her voice became distant, as if she was talking to herself. "I destroyed a commuter transport on the way to Redoubt Phi. It was in the way of one of the teleport jumps... the magic felt different, but I did it anyway and, and..." She sighed, a great release of air. "I let a hundred of the People fall to their deaths. I'm not safe, I don't know enough, I--" Her voice accelerated, the words tumbled out over each other, stopping dead when Orgon touched the end of her muzzle.

"Stop," he said. "What the pony did has made it possible for the Hive to survive. Without her actions there would be no chance at all. This one sent the pony to do a difficult task without support and without the chance to prepare. This one is at fault for any accidents."

She nodded again. "Master," she whispered, her voice not filled with relief, but misery. "Thank you." Her horn glowed, matching pearly light dancing over the Auditors’ comms bracers. "There is a fail-safe. When I removed them, they sent signals. Were they disconnected from the network?"

It was Orgon's turn to sigh. This is the trouble with unplanned operations. "No. It matters not, but it would have been nice to have a few kiloseconds before the threats started." He shrugged, then turned to the Intelligence staff. "Get this one a prediction of how much time these ones have before the Court takes direct action." There was a flurry of activity as heads bent over consoles, the air filling with intense conversation and whispered arguments. "Merlon, when Academician Vanca has finished the next phase of her work, please bring her to Orgon. This one has something else to offer the ponies." Hopefully they will listen to Vanca before they kill her.

===

~~~discontinuity~~~

--air, like a solid wall, slammed into Fusion's personal force field and made her vision swim for an instant. The rush faded after a few seconds as her velocity bled away, and she relaxed the magic that locked flesh and bone into one stupendously strong whole. Freed, her wings flicked open and she inhaled a shuddering breath, then coughed. This is where we find out if the dogs can be trusted.

Shadow sight and normal vision, greatly magnified by atmospheric lensing magic, swept the land below; the central complex, the same shape as the one at Naraka but not as large, was cluttered with the glows of gryphons and ponies. There were more in the fields around the site, and still more in the covering glades around them. No need to ruin everypony's fun, Fusion thought, then frowned at the sight of a pair of Security airtrucks sitting on the apron outside the main entrance to the central pyramid. Her magic built, a twist of magnetism biting down on the air to turn it incandescent, then she relaxed.

Figures, some still in biohazard gear, were being hustled out of the building by heavily-built dogs in Security armour, herded towards the trucks. In the silence of Fusion's slow descent, the sound of voices raised in baffled complaint was clear. Her smile returned, with sharp edges. Let's see how far those orders have gone. She pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--arriving with a sharp thump a wingspan above the ground and right next to one of the airtrucks. Fusion remembered what was inside Naraka and let some of the anger translate into heat and light, the glow from her body casting angled shadows from the dogs. The technical staff scattered, tripping over themselves in their haste to get away, some lying where they fell to stare up at her, mouths agape. The response from the troopers was more measured and controlled: curses were shouted and weapons were raised. She stared back at them, her force fields making the air hazy and cutting a curved line across the concrete. Go on, do something stupid.

Paws remained clenched about weapons, but one by one they were pointed away from her. One dog, with the shoulder tags of a captain, flicked up her face plate and slung her rifle. Fear and anger flowed across her muzzle, telegraphed in little twitches of whisker and involuntary snarls that showed glimpses of stark, white teeth. "The building is clear, pony. Do what you will."

What do you want to call me? Traitor? Abomination? "Oh, I will. Leave and never come back." Fusion lowered her head to look at the nearest Eugenics Board scientist, who started to scramble backwards on all fours, his paws slipping on the smooth surface. "I don't know what I'm going to find in there, but if it's anything like Naraka, you don't want to be anywhere nearby."

"What these ones do is essential to the--"

Breathing hard, Fusion wheeled on the captain. "You have ten seconds to get that truck in the air or it will be a crater!" she snarled, then turned again and stalked towards the main doors, still half open. A pulse of magic ripped them, doors, frame and drive motors, free of their stone mounts and tossed them aside; Fusion never broke stride as panic erupted behind her. Shouted orders, punctuated by cries and the sounds of bodies being struck, then the final roar of a full-power takeoff blasted dust and warm air past her.

In the sudden silence, Fusion slumped, most of the anger bleeding away. At least there's no sign of the... storage areas in this place. The building had a large number of subterranean levels, but was missing the core of pastel glows that marked Naraka's particular horror. There are hundreds and hundreds of ponies here... if this is a trap, if Orgon has ordered them to restrain me, I won't be able to fight them all. She walked forwards, feeling small against the high, ragged opening, and swept the lower levels with shadow sight.

All the ponies were still in their stalls, long arcing curves that spiralled around a central exercise yard, but there was no calm. They flowed like glowing insects trapped in glass boxes, an agitated swirl of constant motion. In contrast, the gryphons barely moved; little static groups of three or four evenly spaced within their stalls. He told the ponies but not the gryphons. Fusion pulled open the doors on one of the spiral ramps leading to the first level. I really need Redshift here, she thought, mind filled with the feeling of nuclear fire, there's no antimatter trigger, but perhaps something older and simpler would do the job.

The first corridor of stalls was just like the ones from Naraka: blank, transparent walls opening onto rooms filled with little groups of ponies. There were more per stall than the gryphons, and they danced and walked, turning tight circles in the confined spaces. Ears flicked forwards and back, tails swished and thrashed, but the sound of any conversation or argument was completely muted by the doors. There were foals in the first stall, staring wide-eyed at the antics of their dams.

Fusion pressed her head against the barrier, then froze as the adults noticed her. They turned, staring back, then as one bowed their heads. I guess that answers the first question. They didn't seem afraid -- there were none of the signs of Punishment -- just confused and curious. She glanced sideways at the control panel with its unreadable dog script, then shrugged. It's not like we're ever coming back. Her horn glowed and a perfect circle of the thick transparency separated and came loose from the rest. In total silence, Fusion carefully pulled the razor-edged panel away and leaned it against the corridor wall.

"What did the Masters tell you?" she said softly to their still lowered heads. Their foals, emboldened by the lack of motion, clustered by the new exit and sniffed the air, their stubby, down-covered wings fluttering with excitement.

"That a white pony with a rainbow mane would lead us to the surface, and that we should follow her orders from now on." The mare, head still lowered, glanced up briefly. "That the Maker and the Masters had no further need for us, and that we'd be going home." Her muzzle twisted and her voice became wistful. "I've been inside for so long that I can't remember what the sky looks like."

The one standing next to her nodded, then glanced sideways. "My foal... he's nearly old enough to go live in another corral. What will happen to him?" There was a ghost of pain in her eyes, not something from the Blessing, but something remembered.

'Live in another corral' sounds like something you'd tell a pony to hide a painful truth. Fusion swallowed, mind filled with the tissue banks at Naraka, then shook her head. Perhaps they were fostered out to other ponies, although I've never heard of such a thing. "Nothing. He'll stay with you for as long as you and he want it."

There was a gasp, echoed by all the dams. "There were always whispers that our work for the Masters would be over one day. Is... is that now?"

"It is," Fusion said gravely, "they will never use this place again. Come, we need to release all the others. You can open the doors like I did; use your magic, no one will punish you for any damage."

She walked down the corridor, allowing herself to be seen by all those within each stall. In her wake, the freed ponies cut open the doors, until Fusion was at the head of a comet's tail that led all the way to the surface.

===

Korn sat on a small pad of pine boughs that he'd collected the day before, his arms wrapped around his knees. It was cold this high in the mountains, but at least he was out of the cave and its boulder-barricaded entrance. The new prison was just as hard to escape from; little more than a pinnacle of rock capped with a small forest of stubby trees.

He ruffled the fur down one arm and tightened the cinch straps on his stained equipment vest. The thing had survived remarkably well, considering the insults of his circumstances, although the many pockets were filled with scavenged fire-making equipment -- dry bark and needles, small twigs, and any fragments of rock that looked like they might be useful as future tools -- rather than scientific instruments.

At least it blocks some of the wind, he thought, and this one is better off than Rthar. Unlike the Captain, Korn's fur had been well overdue for a clip when he was taken, and was thickening up nicely in response to the cold and exposure; his normally subdued winter coat was almost supercharged. He reached out and picked at the deer carcass that had been dropped -- literally -- a few days earlier. Almost nothing edible remained, little more than scraps of connective tissue, and the animal had been stripped of the best cuts before it had even reached them.

Sharp incisors nibbled at the surface of the bone, scraping the already clean surface. Korn licked mournfully at the fragment, then sighed and worked the sharp end between his molars and worried at it. Overhead there was a flash of light and a thump, marking the arrival of a pony with one of their jailers, the same gryphoness who'd taken a keen interest in them both. Most of the gryphons, before their isolating imprisonment, had treated them with hostile indifference, but this female, called Svartr, was different. Every visit had been an excuse to ask more questions, and she'd never been satisfied with the answers.

He watched them circle overhead, dropping the bone. Finally, more food. At least this will stop Rthar and those insane escape plans. The ex-Security trooper had spent all his waking hours trying to make enough rope to get them safely to the valley floor, thus far without success. He'd given up on using the roots of the pines, and was now working on weaving their bark. Korn dreaded becoming so hungry that he would trust his weight to the makeshift things. And if it works, these ones will still be a thousand kilometres from anywhere. Should these ones wait? How long before this 'Svartr' goes too far?

He frowned -- the gryphon's talons were empty -- then jumped as Rthar knelt down next to him. "Does the Captain think that... that the ponies are done with these ones?" he said, suddenly feeling the need to curl into a ball and tremble.

"Maybe," Rthar murmured, then shook his head. "Seems unlikely; this one thinks that the ponies are the only ones preventing the gryphoness from murdering these ones out of paw." He looked thoughtful. "This one supposes that it could be official... Svartr would have volunteered to be the executioner..." He tailed off when Korn let out an involuntary whimper. "No; this is something new." He stood, tapping a paw on Korn's shoulder. "Stand up, Student. These ones must face what's coming."

Korn stood, his legs suddenly weak. It had to happen; this one is still surprised they rescued us before the Hammer strike. Korn has answered all their questions-- he swallowed, rubbing his side. The gryphoness had been careful not to use her claws, and had waited until the ponies had gone. Under the faintly amused gaze of her friends, there had been no chance to resist, even if Rthar or himself had been in a fit state to fight back. He made an effort to slow his breathing, letting the dull ache of each deep inhalation bring some focus, and tried not to flinch when the gryphon hovered overhead for a moment, then landed in a swirl of pine needles.

"Strip," Svartr rasped, her grey and black head feathers raised.

Korn carefully took off his equipment vest, movements made slow by discomfort, shivering slightly as the cold wind cut through the now exposed fur of his back. "What does the trooper want; this one has done everything--" he said, voice developing a piteous whine, then cutting off as Rthar placed a paw on his shoulder.

The gryphoness cocked her head, eyes glinting and beak half-open with what he was starting to recognize as a smile. "You dogs are going to get what you deserve," she said, ignoring a sharp glance from the pony, who gave a loud snort.

"Yes, time to go," the pony said, horn glowing green.

That same glow lit the fur of his middle and pulled Korn off the ground. He went limp, hanging from the rubbery grip as the pony leapt into the air. He caught a glimpse of Rthar, orbiting on the other side of the stallion, then the sky blinked and changed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--a sudden, hard slap of wind, strong enough to make his muzzle sting, then the steady airflow of gliding flight. Below them was a downed attack carrier, with a big hole in the side and another on the dorsal surface. Overhead was another aircraft, a blocky thing made angular by the ridged spine of a mass driver that jutted from its chin and a pair of stubby wings that flared out from each side. A flock of gryphons surrounded it, followed by a string of others. There was the faint shrieking sound of excited raptors, like vultures around a kill. What is this? Off in the distance was another shape, with the fat profile of a heavy transport, slowly settling into a valley on the other side of a rocky ridge.

Rthar was staring open-mouthed at the aircraft, then flicked his gaze to the pony. "How did these ones capture so much?"

"We didn't," the pony replied, angling his glide to take them towards an improvised landing field where another half dozen gunships had settled in a ragged line. There was a little herd of ponies with them, all looking lost and exposed amid the swirling dead-leaf shapes of the gryphons. They all wore the equipment harnesses of animals serving in the Military, the flat grey stark against their pastel coats.

There were flashes below them and more ponies appeared in the clear air, dozens and dozens of them. They appear in groups, Korn thought, eyes narrowed against the slipstream, one pony carrying several others? He nodded to himself; there was one pony in each cluster that flew out of the jump like they had practiced it a hundred times, while the others tumbled for the first moments. Are those foals? Those are family groups! The military ponies had seen the arrivals and many had jumped into the air to greet them, until the ground was hard to see amid the swirl of rainbow wings.

He turned to stare at Rthar to see the same slack-jawed wonder on the Captain's face that must be on his own. Are they going to send these ones home? The thought made Korn's guts twist and he shivered. What will Security do with this one now they have killed him once already?

===

Ellisif ran a claw along the underside of one of the angular gunships. It wasn't a huge thing like an attack carrier or a mostly-armour lump like an airtank, but more wasp-like. One of the few vehicles designed to be piloted by a gryphon rather than a dog, it was built to be the tip of a disposable spear; all the emphasis was on firepower and speed. There was no space for a pony repair-crew, unlike for a dog-piloted vehicle, but there was a small drop bay that could hold a pair of fire teams -- if it wasn't being used as a secondary arsenal.

The pony technician that had come with the vehicle nodded nervously at her, flinching at some commotion on the improvised apron behind him. "The range safety units have all been disabled, as ordered. The pilot will have full control at all times," he said. "I still need to remove the actual flight termination hardware; one of the destruct devices is buried in the superconducting power bank."

Ellisif reared up and peered into one of the open hatches, eyes following the curves of the linkless feed that shunted ammunition from the magazine to the receiver of the spinal railgun. Rows of shiny darts, each the length of her forearm but more slender, filled the chutes. "We'll be checking that," she said absently.

"I follow my orders," the pony said stiffly, the nerves replaced by a hint of irritation.

This creature could rip me apart, armour or no... and we will need them to work willingly. Ellisif dropped back down and turned to face the pony. "It will take time to build trust; do not take offense." She sat back on her haunches and stared. "What do you think of your new assignment?" she asked, head cocked to one side. The pony's ears flattened and one wingelbow came forwards to rub at the side of his head, just where the horn erupted from the skin. Just lost his Blessing?

"The Masters have ordered it, so I'll obey." The ears stayed back and he flinched as if in anticipation of a blow.

"But you are not happy--" Ellisif watched the stallion carefully, seeing if the flinch turned into the little twitches or shivers that marked the Blessing's activation; there was nothing and the pony relaxed. "--despite no-longer having the Masters standing over you with a whip."

"The Masters are the paws of the Maker!" he snapped back, neck stretching out and ears almost disappearing beneath his mane.

Ellisif didn't move, even when those big square teeth came within a claw-span of her beak. "You are doing what they trained you to do and your family is here. You can actually say 'no' for the first time in your life, and not have your nerves light up. There are compensations."

The stallion slumped, his head held low as if he was about to start eating the smashed and trampled vegetation under paw. "I've heard stories from the ponies here, horrible things that sound like they were the product of mental disorders. I don't want to believe them, but our medic has confirmed at least some of it. Said she couldn't talk before." He shivered, wings clamping tight around his barrel. "To know all that and have to keep it from everypony, and not be able to even tell your mate..." The stallion lifted his head again, backing away a step.

"Horrible, yes. You ponies have it worse than us, to have a thing in your head watching your every thought." Ellisif stood and walked forwards, reaching out with one closed set of talons and touching him on the shoulder. "If it helps, I've watched the ponies here go through this. They have all--" Mostly. "--come through this and been better for it." Especially now we have some measure of safety.

"I hope so," he muttered, then sighed. "Anyway, this one is ready for you. That Redshift of yours won't find anything wrong." The pony flinched again, twisting to look up at the sky. Ellisif followed his gaze, but there was nothing there but the underside of vaguely sickly clouds. "Oh wow, they warned me, but I've only felt magic like that when they test one of the strategic thaumic arrays."

"We're under attack?!" What are all these ponies doing, letting the dogs get the drop on us? She glanced left and right; ponies, all those from the original corral and Naraka, were jumping into the air, horns lighting up. "From what?" Vague memories of an instructor mentioning long range thaumic strikes that would have erased whole companies before the invention of Arclight surfaced in Ellisif's brain and clamoured for attention.

"Of course, you wouldn't know." He hesitated, then ruffled his wings. "Cooperate fully, right. Some of us have to work with the things: big networks of crystal thaumic effectors with long ranges. The Hives don’t use them because everyone has thaumic suppression, like Arclight, and the threat of reprisals by conventional weapons, and you can detect their operation from anywhere in the world. Easy to backtrack--"

"Can you ponies do anything?" The stallion was calm, far too calm for this to be a real attack, and Ellisif felt her head feathers relax.

"Yes, but not against this -- it's something else." He gestured at the sky, at a dark figure tipped with a point of violet light, arc-welder bright even at this range. "That's Gravity, isn't it?"

Ellisif's wings started to itch, not on the surface, but deep in the core of the slender bones. "It is." The backdrop of clouds started to swell and flutter, like some invisible paw was placing random lenses in the sky. An odd feeling of lightness swept through her body, then the point of distortion abruptly expanded into a sphere the size of a surveillance dirigible. The thing just sat there in the air like a giant glass ball, but what showed through it wasn't just a distorted view of the clouds.

Blue, with a landscape of distant trees and green meadows curved up into arcs, the features compressed and made tiny as they vanished up the side of the sphere. There was a curious sense that the view covered the whole horizon, the light funnelled in from all directions at the other end of this, this... It's a tunnel! Ellisif's beak gaped open and she sank back to her haunches. Big enough to get an aircraft through... "That's what you felt?"

The stallion nodded, horn glowing with little fireflies of yellow light, then closed his eyes. "If only you could see it," he murmured. "Light, filling the sky, like a spiralling funnel that points in a direction that's outside..."

Overhead, distorted spindly shapes moved across the glassy sphere, then abruptly grew large, filling the thing with flashes of feather, hoof and fur, then burst free as a trickle of tumbling ponies. The trickle turned into a stream, then a flood; each pony was carrying either a foal or a compact bundle of brown and grey. A whole breeding centre's worth of gryphons... I bet they are a lot less cooperative than the ponies. The polychromatic flock gathered in the sky, pulling away from the opening. A few more came through, the last trickle, then there was nothing. The distortion pulsed, shrinking rapidly and vanishing.

The itching sensation in Ellisif's wings faded with it, and she shook her head. More untrained mouths to feed. At least they will be motivated.

"So much... Gravity was holding open the tunnel from this end." The stallion sighed, his head still turned to the sky. "We heard a lot of rumours. What's she like?"

Ellisif clicked her beak, a soft repetitive sound. "Scary," she said finally.

===

Fusion swayed on her hooves, sides heaving like bellows. Squinting up at the wormhole terminus, the normally infinitesimally brief extrusion of higher dimensions into normal space-time stretched and held open by her power. Pain lanced down her neck, lightning crackles that rippled from the base of her horn, making her vision fade and flutter. "That's all of them?" she wheezed, falling back on the crutch of speech to send her thoughts through to Gravity. Assent came back, and Fusion let the magic die, taking a few staggering steps before falling over on the grass.

"That's much harder than a normal teleport," she muttered, feeling the weariness slowly drain from her bones. She looked up at the central pyramid of the breeding centre, then swept her shadow sight around the perimeter. The pony-lights that'd been there on her arrival had all gone. "All alone... probably for the best." Fusion heaved herself upright, fanning her wings to dry some of the sweat on her flanks. "Perhaps now's the time for another experiment."

She felt for the sun, testing and probing the distant complexity surrounding it. There was a responsiveness that felt at odds with the distance; forty-five-odd light seconds should have meant massive delays, but it was like she was talking to a pony in the next field over. The communication must be through the same sort of space-time metric as the teleport... the information is flowing slower than light, but the distance is far shorter than expected. If I ask it, how long before I get an answer? What will happen when I do? What if I can put it out? Fusion stared upwards, sweat suddenly making her fur damp again. What if I can't start it again?

"Maybe not. There are other ways I can practice." She turned to stare at the central pyramid with its ragged opening, looking past the stone and into the complex's core and deep levels. Plenty of glows in the shadow universe, but all had the harsh colours of crystal thaumic systems. Still nobody there; good. Fusion smiled, stepping forwards into the doorway. Time to make sure they know my true feelings about this place.

Fusion reached for her power, letting out a quiet grumble as the familiar weight settled about her head. She lifted her wings, fanning them gently; the flight magic took the gust and turned it into a miniature gale, all pouring into the opening and deep into the building. The flow was free; while extracting all the ponies and gryphons she'd broken open all the internal doors she could find, all the way to the lower transit hub and the deep tunnels connecting it to the rest of the Hive.

Stretching her wings, Fusion accelerated the airflow and kindled a free-floating ball of plasma a few body lengths inside the atrium, a stark point of blue-white that rapidly expanded and grew brilliant enough to cast deep black shadows behind her. The light brightened further, and she recalled the patterns she'd used against Vanca's particle accelerator and all the lasers she'd been shot with, pushing a fraction of her power into them.

The glare-white landscape dimmed and vanished behind the nested fields, the light curling around the bubble of manipulated air. Her power, funnelled in from a location that was as unbelievable as it was immense, was bent according to her will, emerging directly as writhing coils of magnetism and electricity. Oxygen and nitrogen, heated to incandescence, first split into individual atoms, then surrendered their outermost electrons in a frenetic dance. The emission light shifted towards the blue end of the spectrum, rich with ultraviolet and a low, but rising, level of x-rays. She let the field lines at the back of the magnetic trap relax, allowing the high-energy plasma to escape and travel further into the centre. Fresh air, unaffected by the field and blown under the pressure of Fusion's magic, moved to take its place.

The inside of the building, originally the dark of shadow on shadow, started to glow with the colours of hot gas. She followed the path of the energetic gas; it only existed as a plasma for moments after leaving her influence, but all that energy had to go somewhere, and that somewhere was heat. The power, allowed to flow from her and not stored up like the time at the Pit, ran like an ever-rushing torrent to make the insides of the structure slump and turn to slag.

===

Another of the angular machines growled overhead, the screaming racket of its plasma drive echoing off the valley walls, and the foals scattered. Again. Random, flanks heaving, dug her hooves into the springy plants that carpeted the alpine meadow and galloped in pursuit. If I had my magic-- She bit down on the thought, shying away from the memory of a blue-white flash on the horizon, marking the final resting place of over a thousand people. It is better this way. Pure physical effort, prompted by the motions of the foals and requiring little more than instinct, washed away the memory, and she headed off the first little cluster, changing the direction of their headlong flight.

"It will be so much easier when you little idiots get smart enough to talk to!" she panted, nostrils flared like the intakes of jet engines. The foals' legs were nearly as long as her own, but they lacked the stamina for the bolt to carry on for more than a dozen strides at full speed; fortunately they were familiar with each other and had only split into two groups this time. The first group swerved, turned when she'd run across the leader's path, and adopted her as their new leader, following when she dashed after the second group.

This group, only five foals and the smaller half of the herd, was heading for the thick cover at the edge of the meadow, with its spiny branches and jagged rocks filled with leg-breaking hoof traps. Too far-- She reached for her power, rebuffed by a stinging pulse of pain from the amputated horn, and let out a whinny of frustration. More than one ear in the fleeing group twitched in her direction, and without thinking she inhaled deeply, screaming the air out in a high, jagged contact neigh that overwhelmed even the receding dog aircraft’s engine noise.

Almost as one, the herd changed direction, their panicked expressions now focussed on her. Gallop dropping to canter and then trot, she let the following group catch up, joining with the rest. Random came to a halt, dropping her head to nuzzle and nip at the milling multicoloured bodies as they clustered around her legs. I can't believe that worked... she thought through a haze of fatigue. They trust me, they really do. Tears started to prick at her eyes, and she closed them, losing herself in the smell and touch of little bodies.

"Are you okay, Random?"

The voice sounded as tired as Random felt. She blinked, then lifted her head. "Yes, Plasma. All good here. They came when I called." Unbidden, a smile stretched across her muzzle. "How's your wing?"

The mare snorted, carefully shrugging the strapped-up limb. "Healing. Flight will always be harder, Spiral tells me. Too many fractures through the thaumic cores of the bones. I should be ready for a gentle flutter in a day or two, so we'll see."

At least they do have somepony watching. I'm glad she didn't feel the need to intervene. "Has Fusion come to see you yet?"

Plasma Cascade sighed, shaking her head and making her tangled red mane flop and swing against her cream neck. "No. What Helium said to her has made things... difficult. I think she's afraid."

A mare who can burn a forest to ash with a thought? "You don't blame her?"

"She's my daughter, Random, my little filly. But I still... I want to, you understand? You weren't there when the Agent came into the corral, were you?"

"I was at Naraka by then."

"Of course." Plasma nodded. "I only asked her where Fusion and Gravity were and... and... she told me." Plasma swallowed, cringing slightly, her ears going back. "If it wasn't for that Arclight thing, I'd have gone into fugue there and then..." Nostrils flaring and breathing deeply like she'd just galloped for a kilosecond, Plasma closed her eyes, only opening them when Random stepped forwards to stand at her uninjured side. "I was asleep for most of what followed, missed Fusion's big show about Naraka, but I saw the explosion from the Hammer."

Random flinched in turn, a sudden motion that sent the foals around her legs cantering off until she gave a low, nickering call. "I didn't know, I didn't understand," she said softly, "but Fusion did. Can you imagine the revelation she must have had, right at the start? I thought I was alone, but I never carried a burden like that." She gave a laugh, low and bitter. "All we do for the Masters, our lives ground down and spat out, and this is how they treat us. At least Fusion made the right choice."

Plasma stood still for a moment, her eyes on the milling foals. "Yes, I think she did. Come on, let's get this lot fed. I need to talk to Helium."

31 - Standing on the banks of the Rubicon

Author's Note

A crude dramatis personæ can be found here.
Preread by: turol.
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and Caliaponia (Just Passing Through).

31 - Standing on the banks of the Rubicon

The micromanipulator gauntlets were starting to wear the fur from little spots on Vanca's paws. The skin of the bare patches was sore, despite the ministrations of the military medic who was starting to make pointed comments about the length of time she'd been spending in the prototyping rig.

The vast and complex thaumic space of the Arclight projector surrounded her with a swirl of lights and colours. Shapes moved inside it, some discrete like tropical reef fish, others connected and strung together with webs of fine fibres and vaporous flows, responding as she delicately altered the quantum waveforms associated with one of the banks of active cancellation crystals.

There was a quiet cough, little more than an unconscious clearing of the throat, from one of her audience, and Vanca's ears twitched. Cougher has started again; next it will be Shuffler. Her concentration wavered, mind distracted and trying to track the stupid noises her audience of military techs were prone to make. No sound of boot-and-concrete, instead there was the rasp of a claw running over fabric. Of course, Scratcher; this one should have known. Vanca could see him now, hunched over and with a slightly bored expression, paws jammed into the pockets of his equipment vest and moving like they had a life of their own. The desire to scream at them was strong and building.

The ponies, in contrast and despite their far greater efforts, were absolutely silent, even to the point of controlling their breathing. Vanca could feel that she was at the laser-focus of their attention, and it made her motions steady again, despite the fatigue. A wave of her paw altered the drift direction of a plane of hafnium atoms at the heart of one crystal, nudging it into the right position to match the model she'd constructed over most of the last two days. It will be easier to replace the crystal than reverse these changes, she thought, pushing the idea of failure away.

The alterations were fundamentally the same as those she'd developed for the portable shield generator, but the scale of a full-sized Arclight projector was almost daunting. The Hive only has twenty of these things left... she thought, relaxing slightly as one of the ponies intruded into the thaumic space. It replicated her changes, first slowly, then with increasing speed, across the other elements in the array. Vanca nodded slightly, the motion constrained by the high-resolution visualiser crown and its optical connections to the research-grade volumetric thaumic scanner that surrounded her like the petals of a flower.

The servitor, the highest-rated specialist in crystal thaumic systems that the Military could lay its paws on, had gigaseconds of experience that spanned most of the development of Arclight, all the way from the early models, and it showed. It sighed quietly, magic shutting off. Vanca blinked and waggled her jaw, dropping out of the visualiser's induced lucid dreaming state.

The reef-and-poison-gas virtual space evaporated, revealing the innards of the Arclight projector, harshly-lit by rows of brilliant lights. A great, hollow geode, lined with inward-pointing needles, held up by a set of gimbals that allowed it to rotate freely in all directions. At the moment the thing was split in half, the whole aircraft pulled nose away from tail. Despite its size, it was small against the flat plane of the factory's assembly floor.

"Well?" Vanca asked, directing her question at the lead pony and ignoring the motion of Shuffler, his boot scuffing the smooth floor. She pulled off the visualiser, then stood and carefully edged out of the scanner's detector elements to massage the aching muscles of her calves.

"Master, I have propagated your modifications to all the nodes within the suppressor array. This Arclight unit will no longer be an effective suppression device, but..." the creature looked uncomfortable for a moment, then ruffled its wings. "...I think it will perform as you intend."

Of course it will! Vanca curled her lips in a snarl, then bit back on what she was about to say, nodding instead. Not just a simulation of sapience. "These ones will see," she said, keeping her voice calm. "How long will it take the pony to re-energise the array?"

"Five kiloseconds to close the aircraft back up, and..." The pony lifted its head as if to gaze into the crystalline interior, but kept its eyes shut. "...at least another twenty to magically align the nodes to your specificati--"

"This is not acceptable! The servitor will complete the work within--"

Vanca took two fast steps and backpawed Scratcher across the muzzle. "This work will not be rushed," she snarled, stepping forwards as he struggled to get his paws out of his pockets. "This pony has twice the skill of this one--" She raised a paw to strike him again, but a paw gripped her upper arm, arresting the motion.

"That's enough, Academician," Agent Lilla said, pulling her away. "Ulamir, call the medic." She gestured to one of the other techs to help Scratcher, who was cradling his bloody muzzle in his paws.

"This one is not sorry," Vanca said stiffly. "The wrong order to the servitor could result in failure."

"Lilla knows... but don't do that again." She frowned at Vanca, but her lips twitched as if she was struggling to suppress a smile.

Vanca grunted, then shook Lilla's paw away and turned back to the servitor. "No matter what these fools say," she said, gesturing to the huddle of techs, "the pony knows that it is critical to the Hive that this work is successful." Vanca said the word carefully, pausing to make eye contact with the pony. "Accuracy is far more important than speed when trying to suppress a specific spell type. Does the pony understand?"

"Yes, Academician," the pony said, lowering its head. "We will begin at once." Its horn lit up and subtle colours flashed over the aircraft.

"Vanca isn't in the servitor's chain of command. How did she manage to...?" Lilla looked at her appraisingly, then turned to watch the servitors work.

"Because this one actually knows what she is talking about, and the ponies have watched her work. They know she is right, and they know that those idiots will at best slow the work down. They will complete the task in spite of them, not because of them." She prodded Lilla sharply on the shoulder, hard enough to make the Agent look annoyed. "Lilla will make sure that no one interferes with their work. No 'suggestions', no hovering and no supervision until they are finished. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Master," Lilla muttered, sighing. Her comms bracer pinged and she glanced down at it. "Command has something else that needs your talents, Academician," she said, gesturing to a grey pony who'd just entered the assembly cavern.

"What does Merlon want?" Vanca asked, "The pony already knows everything Vanca does about the Arclight refit programme." Her ears went up at the injuries on the mare's body, a mixture of small burns and shallow gashes, all bearing the raw look of hasty thaumic medicine. "These ones won't be ready to test the teleport denial systems for at least..." She turned to glance at the other ponies; they had already mated two halves of the Arclight projector together and were just starting to shift the outer hull back into position. "...a hundred kiloseconds, perhaps two."

"I believe this relates to your other work, Academician," the pony said, "on the Lunar Kinetic Driver and the way the last shot was deflected."

Agent Lilla made a choking sound, then inhaled sharply. "Vanca has a way to stop the Hammer?!"

"Not quite," Vanca said, waving a paw sharply. "Pony, Vanca doesn't see how this will help the Hive; it is dependent on the rogue doing the work for us."

"Yes, Academician, quite correct. Strategist Orgon has not shared his detailed plans with me, but I suspect this is what he desires." Merlon lifted one hind leg and stretched it, wincing slightly. "We need to leave immediately."

How will Orgon manage that-- Realisation struck, blowing away the thought. "The pony is going to teleport this one?" Vanca took a few steps to a mobile workbench, rummaging through the clutter on its surface and producing an instrument with the blocky look of a prototype. "Ready. Vanca suggests the pony get some distance from the Arclight before jumping," she said, stabbing at buttons under a tiny display.

Pearly-grey magic condensed around Vanca's midsection and Merlon flexed her wings, hindquarters bunching. "You are relieved, Agent Lilla," Merlon said, then brought her wings down and leapt into the air.

"Damn right Lilla is! The pony won't make this one disappear!"

Merlon laughed and waggled her wings, then flew for the far end of the assembly cavern, climbing rapidly. "Ready, Academician?" she said, still smiling.

There's something not right about this pony, and this one has to trust her life to it... but the chance to traverse a wormhole! Vanca tightened her grip on the instrument and nodded. Wait, why doesn't this one just talk to the rogues remotely? She opened her mouth to speak--

~~~discontinuity~~~

===

Gravity felt her eyelids droop. They'd picked a quiet spot on the valley side, overlooking the sweep of the transfer camp. Lines of ponies, the inmates from four breeding centres, wended their way from the river bank and across the flood-meadow that occupied the rest of the valley floor up to its steep, glacially-excavated sides. At the tip of each line were a few ponies removing Blessings; others moved up and down the line, talking to those waiting and settling any uncertainties and nerves. It seems to be going well so far... Gravity thought, her mind wandering as the fatigue slowly washed out of her body. The freshly freed clustered in little groups, drifting away, then would take off with an escort to vanish with little pulses of light. The sound of hundreds of teleports, a continuous rumble like that of distant lightning, washed over her.

"There must be discipline," Halla said. "Without a strong chain of command there will be factions and chaos in the time where we need solidarity the most." Ellisif clacked her beak quietly and made a sound a little like a chuckle, which Halla ignored.

"I will not force anyone to fight," Fusion said gently, "and I suspect we'll have enough other tasks to keep everyone occupied."

"You ponies, perhaps," Halla grumbled. "I can't fault the speed at which the new settlements are being constructed. You are all just so eager to be useful. Anyway, it's not the will to fight that concerns me, more who they will want to fight." She shook her head and sighed. "I never thought the dogs would sue for peace so quickly. There have already been desertions."

"A few pairs and family groups dispersing into the mountains to live alone." Ellisif fluttered her wings, stretching out each foreleg in turn, flexing the talons. "What can they do? I think we should take advantage of them -- give them supplies and good will, tell them they can come back. They can act as scouts. I doubt many of the actual soldiers will go."

Halla hissed, eyes narrowed, then relaxed and nodded grudgingly. "They'd be too much trouble to guard, I suppose." She turned to Fusion. "So you won't interfere when we have to enforce the law?"

"If your people want you in charge, however you want to place yourself at their head, and as long as you rule fairly and with their consent..." Fusion looked uncomfortable, unfolding and folding her wings. "...then I suppose not."

"I wouldn't turn into a despot, if I were you," Gravity murmured, looking at Halla with wide, innocent eyes. The gryphoness opened her beak, the closed it again, shrinking away. Gravity held her gaze for a long breath, then turned away, attracted by the sight of a pair of ponies making their way up the steep slope to where they talked. Is that...?

"We haven't done all this just to replace one set of masters with another," Fusion said, "but I won't interfere with how you want to set up your new society, should we get a chance to do so. I certainly don't want to make all the decisions. It was one thing when there were just a few of us, but now..." She waved a wing over the expanse of the valley and its lines of ponies.

"Well, I think you are out of luck, at least for the time being. You saw how Orgon was acting." Ellisif dragged her talons through the thin alpine vegetation, gouging up gravel and small plants. "He knows you are the real power here... and you are, no matter what I or Halla or anybody else thinks. He doesn't take us seriously."

"Then we will make our decisions together. I won't go alone."

I might, if you are too stubborn, Gravity thought, squinting at the climbing figures. Their approach was slowing and both ponies were clearly nervous. Dam and Sire! I didn't think the medics had finished with dam yet. She watched them for a few moments more, the chatter of Fusion and the two gryphons little more than an irritating background noise, something about how to select the right people for governing the civil part of their new state. Why are they coming here? Oh... she thought, breathing out softly as confusion turned to understanding. She glanced at Fusion, who was nodding earnestly at something Ellisif was saying, then stood up, shaking briskly. "Fusion, we need to take a break."

"But I--" Gravity reached out with one wing and pushed Fusion's muzzle around until it was pointed at Plasma and Helium. Fusion fell silent, nostrils flaring and eyes wide. "I can't. I failed them too badly. Our sire made that perfectly clear."

"They came all the way up here, by hoof. It's unlikely he wants to shout at you again."

Ellisif stood, gripping Halla on the shoulder. "Come on, we can thrash out the details later. I want to see how the troops are doing with those new gunships." The other gryphoness grumbled something indistinct, but didn't move until Ellisif tightened her talons, then shook her off with a glare. She finally stood and followed Ellisif as she jumped into the air and swooped down the valley.

Reaching out with one hoof, Gravity tapped Fusion on the chest until she stopped staring at the approaching ponies. "Come on, let's go down to meet them."

"There are another six breeding centres to clear out, I think we should--" Fusion was breathing rapidly, nostrils flaring.

You can't tell me you are ready to run that wormhole spell again. I'm still tired from just holding up my end of it. "What, our dam, just out from under the care of the medics, has walked up a mountain to see you, and you want to fly away?"

"No, but--" Fusion jumped to her hooves, strands of pastel mane fading to plain pink.

"You went through the heart of Naraka and faced down half the dogs' fleet. Don't tell me you are afraid of talking to our parents?" Gravity said, hooking one wing over Fusion's withers and applying enough force to make the mare stop fidgeting.

Fusion's head drooped and her body sagged. "What if it is worse than last time? Our sire hates what I've done, what if our dam does too?" Her wings shifted under Gravity's embrace, wrapping around her barrel. "If I don't open that box it can't hurt me. Better to never know than find out the truth."

"You'd rather live in uncertainty? What if they don't think like that? You'd just abandon them without support in this new and chaotic world?"

"No," Fusion said, shuddering. "I'd rather face a dozen Arclights."

"That's what I thought. You are stronger than you think you are." Gravity snorted. "Certainly stronger than me. I could never have held myself together at the start of all this." Her eyes became distant, focussed on some internal scene. "I very nearly turned you in, at the beginning. I can't help but think what might have happened if I had... I was going to call Salrath, did you know that?"

"That would have ended very badly for both of us," Fusion said, sniffing and rubbing her eyes. The colour of her mane started to return.

"Oh yes. And Naraka would still be taking its terrible harvest. If you ever think you did the wrong thing, if others say you made poor choices, remember that."

"There's still a whole world of ponies to save." Fusion shook out of Gravity's embrace and took a step towards Plasma and Helium. The pair had halted a score of lengths below and were looking up at them. "As much as I want our parents to be happy, all those others have to come first." She opened her wings, then closed them and half trotted, half slid down the scree slope, Gravity following her down.

"Sire," she said, lowering her head in Helium's direction. He stared back, seemingly rooted to the spot. Plasma, her cream coat looking like she hadn’t groomed in days, shuffled a little closer, ears forward and with a frown across her muzzle. "Dam, how are you feeling? I didn't know the medics had finished with you."

"Fusion, lift your head up. You look like you are afraid of being kicked. I've had a long talk with Helium and I know everything that has happened over the last days, and--"

"I'm so sorry," Fusion said, head drooping further, "I've hurt so many ponies, got you nearly killed, I..." She swallowed, mouth opening but no words coming out.

Behind her, Gravity sighed. Oh, for the Maker's sake! She cleared her throat loudly, staring meaningfully at Helium. The stallion jerked as if stung, then jumped forwards.

"Yes, you have." Helium blinked, suddenly looking at her like it was for the first time. His ears flicked back, lying flush with the sides of his head.

At his side, Plasma stirred uneasily, looking confused. "My mate, we talked about this, I thought--"

"You talked, not me. I said I'd help you get to Fusion, but I can't do this, I can't... The Master's service is hard, but it was always their right to make decisions for us. " His mouth worked like he'd eaten something foul. "You killed so many of them... and how many of our friends died when the Hammer came down upon us? Ponies we've known for over a gigasecond, ponies who could have lived for several more." He made a choked sound and shook his head, taking a stumbling step backwards, his gaze now fixed on Fusion. "I said at the start that I wondered if it might be better if you had died, but now I'm sure. You have brought nothing but death and destruction to us all. I have no daughter." Another step and his wings opened wide in the dim overcast, sending him soaring back down the steep valley wall that Plasma had climbed so painfully.

Plasma let out a neigh, high and shrill, cut off by a sudden gasp and shiver of pain, but there was no response from the rapidly receding Helium. "Mate, no..." she said, trailing off, then wheeled to face Fusion and Gravity. "I knew he was having trouble with this, but I thought he was okay with it. I thought he'd come to terms with it all." Her head drooped, muzzle brushing the small alpine plants. "I'm so sorry."

Rooted to the spot, Fusion followed the distant shape of Helium. Her legs trembled, bile leaving an acid tang at the back of her throat. "I told you, Grav, didn't I tell you?" Fusion's voice sank to a ragged whisper. "Opened the box and found out it was full of poison."

"Oh, Fusion," Gravity's ears drooped and she leaned into Fusion, teeth working along the ridge of her mane. "He'll come around."

"Will he?" Fusion said, the whisper fading to almost nothing. She didn't react when Plasma pressed against her other flank. "What if he's right? We've made a kind of peace with Lacunae, but what will the other Hives and the Court do?"

===

~~~discontinuity~~~

--Merlon appeared at the centre of the operations room. There was more space here than she remembered; another pony was busy moving the consoles to further increase the empty area, which was carefully marked out with warning tape. A landing zone! She carefully deposited Vanca on the floor, stepping away when the Academician waved an instrument in her direction.

"Too fast!" she snarled, stabbing at the controls. "This one needs better equipment."

Merlon ignored Vanca, watching Orgon come out of a side room. He looked tired and rumpled, as if awoken from a brief nap. "Master, I have the Academician. Is there anything else you need?" Merlon bowed her head, dropping to one knee.

"This one will have an important task for you in a moment," Orgon said, looking at her in surprise, then waving his paw with a vague upwards motion.

He didn't expect that. When was the last time I bowed correctly? Stupid mare, you know he thinks that sort of treatment is a waste of time! Merlon stood and pricked her ears forward, trying to look attentive.

Vanca ignored Orgon when the Strategist cleared his throat, only looking up from her instrument when he gently placed a paw over the display. "Academician, this one understands the first of the modified Arclights is in production?"

"Yes, yes." Vanca pulled the machine away, trying to see the display, then sighed when Orgon persisted. "What? This one has much work to do."

"Vanca's work on the Hammer strike. How likely is it that the ponies understand that they very nearly deflected the shot?"

"How could they not? This one has to assume--" Vanca fell silent and looked thoughtful when Merlon shook her head. "Really? Vanca supposes that the level of feedback isn't great..." She grinned. "That would be a shock for the Court, if their next strike went somewhere else." Her mouth dropped open. "Wait, the Hive has opened a dialogue with the rogues? One that does not involve the exchange of missiles?"

Orgon gestured at the screen, currently showing a view of some alpine landscape, dotted with the pastel colours of many, many ponies. "Of a sort. Negotiations are not easy..." Orgon paused, lips lifting in a smile that did little more than expose his teeth. "...actually, they are very easy when the other side has all the power. All this one can do is make it expensive for them. It is fortunate that the ponies are not especially demanding."

Vanca narrowed her eyes. "This one is happy to help, but why is this one here? Vanca can tell the pony what she knows over a video feed and not be distracted from all the other things the Strategist wants her to do."

"Yes, Vanca could... but Orgon thinks this would be better explained in person. In any case--" He turned and did something to one of the consoles, replacing half the video window with a different view. A carefully manicured landscape, with regular fields and a distant ring of mature forest, under a blue sky. Over to one side was a pyramidal building, half hidden behind a swirl of pastel motes. "--Orgon thinks Vanca and her instruments might like a closer look at this." There was a flare of white-gold and a point of distortion opened in the sky, showing refracted and distorted copies of mountains. The motes flew upwards and into the scrambled space, vanishing.

"A kilosecond-scale, macroscopic wormhole," Vanca breathed, then shook herself. "Why would the rogues let this one go? She has... history with those two."

"Because, so far, they have been true to their word and have received everything they demanded." Orgon gave his chilly smile again. "Vanca brought Fusion into the world; she is the mother of the pony revolution. Orgon thinks that will help her reputation."

Vanca flinched. "This one was a fool," she said bitterly. "It should have been obvious to any intelligent observer that the servitors were fully sapient and not just clever simulations. Vanca didn't see the truth." She stabbed out a paw, poking Orgon in the chest. "The information was suppressed; how many knew?"

Patterns tumbled through Merlon's mind, easily visualised power that could freeze that paw solid or rip it from Vanca's arm in a welter of blood. She stepped forwards, but Orgon made an unobtrusive gesture and she subsided, pushing back the sudden urge for violence with gritted teeth. She must show some respect!

"Not as many as Vanca might think. The Church is very useful in that regard. Research into the minds of the servitors is against doctrine, so is not funded." Orgon gripped Vanca's paw, pushing it away. "This will no longer be an issue; the ponies are busy building a new polity, one with enough power that all these ones will hopefully not be killed. Vanca understands that the Court will use the Hammer against us, as a prelude to putting Lacunae under full administration, yes?"

"This one has done a significant amount of work for the military; she understands." Vanca pulled her paw away, then waved it at the screen. "How will it all work? The Church has a firm hold on the minds of the general population. They will not take kindly to this reversal of fortunes."

"Ask this one in a gigasecond. In the meantime, there will be a period of adjustment. Orgon anticipates that those with sympathies towards the Maker's Path will require the most adjustment." He shrugged. "He also imagines that saving the Hive from destruction will help."

"And if they fail?"

Merlon felt laughter bubble up in her throat, bursting out as a kind of strangled giggle, silenced when both Masters turned to stare at her. "I think, Academician, that none of us will worry about anything anymore."

"Does the pony need to get some rest?" Orgon asked, holding her gaze.

The laughter came back, and Merlon clamped her jaws shut, so all that escaped was a breathy whinny. "I--" She swallowed, closing her eyes and lowering her head. I cannot keep this secret any longer. The laughter died in the memory of what happened to the Security ponies, five lives turned to steam and glowing charcoal by hot green light, flashed through her mind. What she might say, all those internal practiced confessions, piled up in the place of the hysteria, so many words that none could escape. If I am dead, I cannot help. We are working with the rogues, so perhaps it will be different now? "I am sorry, Masters. I am fine. Today has been difficult."

"The pony has that right," Orgon muttered, laying a paw on Merlon's withers. She leaned into the touch, increasing the contact, and he left his paw there. "This one needs someone he trusts to act as an envoy to this new... equestrian polity."

"Vanca is a scientist, not a diplomat!" The academician snorted, shaking her head.

Something about Orgon's stance and the way he reacted to Vanca's words lanced straight to the back of Merlon's mind, and her eyes went wide. No no no no--

"Yes, Academician, Orgon is aware of that." His eyes flicked up to the sky for a moment, sighing silently, then he looked back to Merlon, his gaze settling on her like a crushing weight.

"Yes, Master," she said, the words nearly inaudible. That's it, then. "Will..." Green light, burning flesh. "...will I be allowed to return?" They will try to do to me what I have already done to myself. How can my Master trust me ever again?

Orgon was silent for a long time. "The pony may not wish it." He remained standing next to her, the paw that had been on her shoulder moving to fiddle nervously with his comms bracer. "In the end, these ones will have to work with unconditioned ponies if they are to survive. The pony knows more about the internal workings of the Hive than almost any Person; she is the perfect representative. This one needs the others to trust him, at least a little..." Merlon's ears drooped, tears starting to leak down her cheeks. "...so to answer the pony's question, in some capacity, yes."

Merlon sniffed, clearing her throat. Now! Do it now! "Before you decide, Master, you need to know that I have betrayed you already." She fell to her foreknees and then to her belly, closing her eyes, but couldn't ignore the slight sounds around her body. Quiet footsteps, the feeling of being at the centre of a rapidly opening circle of empty space. There was still one person next to her: Orgon.

"What does the pony mean? What has Merlon done to make her think that?" Orgon's voice was quiet, nearly silent.

"It was during the questioning of Scalar. I was alone, surrounded by suspicious and nervous Masters. You gave me a mission, Master, and I couldn't think of a way to complete it successfully without..."

"But the pony did complete its mission. Orgon has seen the reports from the Security ponies she has trained in the new magics."

I have passed on everything I learned. Trained a cadre of Security ponies on the new magic. Merlon nodded, fresh tears squeezing out from under closed lids and running down her muzzle. I am no longer useful. "I did. I--" She swallowed, then inhaled a great gasp of air. "I removed my own Blessing." There was a sudden wordless exclamation of shock, echoed from a number of throats around the room. Her muscles tightened and she hunched, trying to become so small that she might disappear. Merlon waited for the near-silent hum of Orgon's hidden weapon, or the sudden jack-hammer thunder of the security guards' railguns.

"This makes a lot of sense, now that Orgon thinks about it," Orgon said in a distant whisper. "It was the only way the pony could have extracted the Council core group in the way that it did." His paw touched her on the head, just below the horn. "So for all this time, Merlon continued to serve, despite all she knows," he said, voice stronger but the words unsteady.

He's not angry! Why is he not angry? She opened her eyes, seeing the wonder on Orgon's face. What does this mean?

"Relax, Merlon," he said, "this one is surprised, but considering all the other things that have happened over the last megasecond... he always knew the pony had untapped reserves of strength. Orgon thought that the shock of the others removing the pony's Blessing would limit her usefulness, but since she's already done it..." He smiled suddenly, extended paw running down her muzzle to gently lift her head up. "These ones might be able to surprise Fusion yet."

===

"They are sending Vanca? What as, some sort of a present?" Gravity kicked at the ground, glaring out across the busy valley. “Maker’s breath, imagine that one wrapped up in ribbons, nice bow on her tail…”

"She has information about the Hammer and Hive defences." So why her and not a military expert? Fusion snorted and shuffled her hooves. I suppose all of them will stay well out of our direct reach, at the other end of the clairvoyance link. "I still get the occasional nightmare about her and that automatic surgeon..." She shivered, then ruffled her wings. "It might also be as a present. Orgon is ruthless; he may well think of her as expendable."

"Well, it better be massively useful, whatever the reason. I'm not averse to breaking the rest of her bones."

"We cannot inflict enough pain on them to make up for the past," Fusion said, her tone neutral.

"I'd like to give it a go," Gravity muttered, then sighed. "Fair enough. I will wait to see what the bitch says. How is she getting here?"

"That's the other part of the message, I think. We're getting an envoy. It's the same dapple-grey mare who interrogated Scalar. Her name is Merlon."

"Showing us they can use stolen magic." Gravity's tail lashed, sending blue-and-sparkle almost-hair flying. "We'll see what she's made of, after that Blessing comes off." There was a sense of building power from Gravity, of brutal magic just below the threshold of real. "She won't be able to hide anything from me."

Fusion marshalled her own strength, letting the ghosts of patterns hover in her awareness. Orgon didn't even try to get us to leave her enslaved. He really is serious... or this is a trap. How many ponies could this Merlon train? She ran through what it would take to capture Gravity and herself, all without raising an alarm, then shook her head. We are too strong for such subtlety, and he'd have sent a bomb already. There was another thump-and-flash, this one away from the normal teleport arrival zone.

A grey pony appeared, carrying a single dog and surrounded by a halo of unidentifiable objects. Fusion's heart-rate trebled, then she relaxed, shadow sight showing nothing unusual about the packages or the dog she carried.

"I'll get Redshift to check her gear; it's probably better if you greet our guests," Gravity muttered, staring hard at the slowly descending pony and her cargo. "He said he was nearly finished with checking that tactical map table the security ponies brought along. You don’t need to worry about getting interrupted by Halla or Ellisif, either. Both of them are practically ready to lay an egg, or whatever it is gryphons do, they are that excited."

Alleged full access to Lacunae military positions and what intelligence it has on the other Hives... I suppose it has to be real if we are to help each other. "Live births, just like ponies," Fusion murmured. "Spiral too, please. I want to make sure Vanca isn't carrying something subtle."

Gravity jumped into the air, hovering for a few moments. "I think it's too late for that, Fusion, what with all this lot! I'll bring our other guests as well," she called down, then headed towards the knot of transport aircraft the dogs had sent to support the gunships.

Fusion nodded absently, watching as the grey mare landed gently a length in front of her, neatly arranging her burden of bulky packages. Vanca was deposited last, the Academician staring back at Fusion with wide eyes. Something on her wrist bleeped, then one of the packages emitted a mournful wail. "Sorry; this one was carrying a thaumic sensor, for the wormhole transit--" Fumbled prodding of her bracer silenced the alarm.

"I certainly hope that is all you have," Fusion said, her ears folded back and magic forming a glittering shell around Merlon and Vanca. The other mare just nodded meekly and didn't attempt to break the field shutting her in. Shadow sight had already shown a lack of anything high energy or more than the normal crystal thaumic systems she was familiar with from her time at the Institute, and Fusion relaxed her grip on the power.

"This one has--" Vanca cleared her throat, ears drooping as Fusion continued to stare at her, then gritted her teeth. "This one has information on the operation of the Hammer; she assumes that Gravity Resonance is the pony to discuss this with?"

"I remember the last time we met, Academician." Unable to move and shoved into the maw of a thaumic imager, robot arm descending to her face. "You were going to cut open my skull while I was still alive."

Vanca looked away. "This one has done many things that she is no longer proud of. Does the pony want a full accounting of Vanca's crimes? There were five other experimental subjects before Fusion; all of them are dead. Three died instantly, the other two were euthanized after receiving unsurvivable doses of radiation."

"Is that all?" A particle beam, carrying enough energy to turn an adult pony into an indistinct shadow on a wall. Blood was thundering in Fusion's ears, and the shimmering pastels of her mane were moving like waves on a storm-tossed sea. She started to feel warm, and Vanca moved away slightly, paws coming up to shield her face. “Hardly worth thinking about, really.”

"Directly, yes. Vanca was indirectly involved in the deaths of up to fifteen more, as she was a part of a number of wide-ranging studies." She dropped her paws and stood up straight, squinting directly at Fusion. "The fact of pony sapience is not generally known or believed, but this is no excuse. Vanca is not stupid and should have realised the truth, but Korn was the one who dealt with the ponies." Her ears drooped when she mentioned Korn's name. "This one's Student knew, Vanca is sure of it." She twisted her paws together, then let them fall. "Well? What is the pony going to do?"

Breathing hard, Fusion turned tight circles, hooves kicking scars in the thin soil. "I am sure there are other dogs who have done far worse things. Was Vanca ever involved in Naraka's work?"

The Academician flinched. "No. Fundamental thaumic research never required that much... material."

"Foals, Vanca, foals!"

"Yes, foals. Hundreds and hundreds of foals, killed over a gigasecond or more. Vanca is not a believer, but many of those in the biothaumic sector consider what they do to be the Maker's work. They are either convinced, as Vanca was when she gave the subject any thought at all, that ponies are just a clever simulation of sapience, or they believe they serve a higher power."

Fusion closed her eyes, focussing on her breathing and pushing away the sudden desire to rend and smash and burn until there was nothing left. "What do you have for us, Vanca?" she asked finally, voice raw but under control.

"Flight and delta-V profiles for the Hammer strike. This one believes Gravity could have shifted the point of impact if she'd known the Hammer's operational parameters."

Grav isn't going to want to hear that. "I should be with her for that briefing; she already thinks she failed us." Fusion watched her sister take off with Redshift and head in their direction, two dogs following in a haze of violet magic.

"Who are those People--" Vanca's mouth dropped open and she took an unconscious step forwards. "This one was told he was dead!"

"I pulled Korn and Captain Rthar out of the volcano that was Naraka. We saved them from the Hammer strike because it was the right thing to do, even though that probably cost us the lives of two ponies or gryphons. When you return to the Hive, you will tell them that."

Vanca didn't reply, just rushed forwards to embrace Korn, who stood there, blinking and confused, next to Redshift. "What is this?" he asked. "The gryphoness said these ones were being given back to Security, but Vanca is here, and all this... this stuff." Half enveloped in Vanca's hug, he gestured at the bustling surroundings with his muzzle.

"We have an agreement with Lacunae; they won't try and kill all the enslaved ponies, and in return we won't turn the arcologies into charnel houses," Gravity said, glaring at Vanca, who didn't even notice. No matter how tempting that is becoming, she sent to Fusion, turbulent emotions filling the sharing with flashes of imagined destruction.

Vanca has information that may help you deflect the next Hammer shot. Try to stay calm; it sounds like you nearly managed to stop the last one.

Nearly. Gravity froze, not even breathing. So I could have saved them, then. A fragile calm covered the surface of her mind, over a deep layer of dark self-loathing.

We don't know what we don't know, Grav. What I said to Random applies to you, as well. One perceived failure out of ignorance or manipulation does not make you responsible for the whole catastrophe. You can blame me, if you want. I pulled you out before the impact. She glanced at Vanca; she had pulled away from Korn and was questioning him mercilessly, complete with animated gestures at something on one of the instruments she'd brought. Korn almost looked like he had of old, back when Fusion would stand meekly by and try and keep a blank face while Vanca interrogated him about some aspect of experimental design.

Gravity let out her breath in a single explosive snort. You already have enough guilt for the both of us; I won't add to it. Very well, I'll try very hard not to kill Vanca.

Redshift was looking at Merlon, a puzzled expression on his face. "What?" Fusion said. "Is there a problem with Vanca's gear? And where is Spiral?"

"She had to finish up with a few of the gryphons; there were injuries during your last breeding centre evacuation," he said slowly. "You did notice this, right?" He bent one wing forwards, gesturing at Merlon's head. The security pony's ears flattened and she shied away.

Fusion's power rolled out like a bottomless, luminous ocean, wrapping around and smothering the mare, before she'd even had a chance to think about Redshift's words. Merlon didn't try to fight, just stood helpless within the nested fields and spells containing enough destructive potential to reduce her to ash in a heartbeat. Fusion relaxed slightly, fighting to still her suddenly pounding heart. "What?" she said harshly.

"She's got no Blessing... looks like it was taken off days ago."

No glowing-green wires in the mare's skull, only a faint, nearly healed spot at the base of her horn. The aggressively swirling patterns in Fusion's mind stilled, becoming faint and vanishing. "How?" she asked roughly, advancing on Merlon. "Is it something the dogs did to you? If Orgon has been performing more experiments--"

Merlon's horn lit up and she shrugged off the remnants of Fusions choking power. "No! I did it myself," she snapped, pawing at the ground. "My Master only does what's necessary, and I did the same."

Fusion blinked, then shook her head. What did she say? How is that-- She took a deep breath, holding back her desire to drag Merlon close and shake answers out of her. "How, Merlon? How could you even consider doing that?"

"It was necessary," Merlon said hollowly. "I had my orders, but the Masters around me were tense and uncooperative. They didn't understand the urgency of my mission." She shivered, wings coming up to half shield her face. "The Blessing drove me to it. Made me cut myself out of the Masters' herd." Merlon smiled bitterly. "I won't ever taste the Maker's rewards for my duty. Your actions drove me to it. I couldn't complete my mission."

"I saw your mission!" Gravity snapped, her ears back. "You used Scalar's mate as leverage to make him talk. An innocent mare... how could you do that to one of your own?!" The shadows had deepened around her, independent of the brightness of the clouds.

"I had my orders!" Merlon shouted back. "How many ponies have your actions killed?" Her voice, high and shrill, sank down and became a low growl. "I bet you have no idea. There were hundreds on the fleets around Naraka, and your sister burned them without a thought." She snapped at Fusion, teeth closing on empty air with a loud clack. "What threat were those aircraft to you? You could have just left, but you chose, you chose to kill everything above the horizon." She glared at Fusion, breathing hard through flared nostrils.

Let me talk to Merlon, Fusion sent to Gravity, feeling the low creep of her sister's power like a carpet of cryogenic vapour flooding out from her body. Listen in if you want, but I think the information Vanca has is important. The extra shadows, unnoticed by Merlon, faded away as Gravity stepped back and used her magic to give Vanca a sharp nudge. The Academician stumbled into motion, dragging Korn along with a death-grip on his arm.

"Do you know what was in Naraka? Did you ever go there? Oh, Maker, so many foals, their horns being assembled into something that would render us unnecessary." Fusion's own breathing quickened, her eyes wide and staring off into what she'd seen in the depths of the breeding centre. Her magic fluttered and she looked away. "Did you know about Naraka?" she asked Merlon, her voice suddenly quiet.

"I did." Merlon nodded, her ears changing from pinned to an unhappy droop. "It must have been a horrible shock to find out like that, but you are wrong. Most of what you thought were foal horns were vat-grown from tissue cultures. The work there, the sacrifices that ponykind is making, are all to make better future for us all. When the Masters understand how to work without us, we will be able to follow our own path."

Nopony actually saw what happened at Naraka, is it possible that she is-- More memories, those of automated surgeons in the bright depths and the stories of so many dams from that place, filled her head to bursting point. "Is that what they told you? You need to talk to some of the ponies we rescued, and ask them how many foals they had, and where those foals are now." She snorted, pawing at the ground. "I think you will be in for a shock, because their most efficient solution was to take foals from dams, cut out their horns and feed the rest to gryphons. They'll free us, all right -- no need for ponies means we are of no use. Why bother keeping us at all?" Fusion closed her eyes and counted under her breath. "How old are you, Merlon?"

"I have served, in one capacity or another, for more than four gigaseconds." Merlon lifted her head, ears forward. "Long enough that I have seen many things. There are far worse places in this world than Lacunae Hive. They treat us well, they really do. I wish I could convince you that what you are doing will get thousands of ponies killed... the Court will not stop until we are all dead. All this--" She waved a wing, encompassing the wide expanse of mountains and valleys. "--will be burned away. You think the Hammer is the worst of it? It's the biggest stick, but every Hive has enough weapons to sterilise every other Hive. Do you really think you can stop them all?"

===

General Ininil was trying to complete his preparations, checking things that had already been checked and re-checked a dozen times to make sure the visit would be flawless, but the servitor was making him nervous. It wasn't even in his office, but he could see it wandering through the laboratory and engineering spaces, two glass walls away, like it owned them, studying everything it could poke its stripy muzzle into. The stripes extended all over its body, bright white and deepest black, from spiky mane to the tuft of its tail. Even its wings fitted into the pattern, with alternating black-and-white feathers. It carried no equipment aside from a comms necklace, and had no insignia or uniform.

This one still can't believe it, Ininil thought, a dangerous sense of unreality creeping in from the edges of his mind as he stared at the creature. The Monarch's personal guard, here. He must be somewhere close.

The pony wasn't alone; another twenty of the striped horrors were patrolling the complex, their magic probing instruments, offices and People with equal efficiency. The one in here with him suddenly froze and turned in Ininil's direction, studying him with eyes so dark that they appeared to be holes into some sunless space. What has this one forgotten? What has it seen? His heart rate accelerated and he resisted a sudden urge to burrow into the floor. They locked gazes, but it was Ininil who broke away first, eyes searching his console for something to distract from the soulless scrutiny.

The camera views of the Project Seraphim vault showed little; the shape of the single adult specimen, codenamed 'Harq', nearly filled the armoured chamber. It looked like something that had been carved from metal, a titanic statue made by some mad sculptor, all spines and sharp edges, but the other sensors told the truth. It glowed in the thermal infrared, comfortably warmer than a mammal, but that was only at the surface. If you could get through that unreasonably tough and scaly hide, the temperature would rise exponentially, fuelled by blood that more closely resembled basaltic lavas than anything with water in it.

By long habit, Ininil checked the radiation monitors, worrying over the light tickle of gamma radiation that escaped the creature's body, before flinching at the sudden alarm window that overlaid his office wall screen. Now what? he thought, suddenly irrationally angry at the interruption he'd been desperate for. Strategic thaumic alert-- He leaped to his paws; two strides and Ininil was through the door and into the high-level analyst bay in the next room.

"Report!" he snapped, then froze, transfixed by the swirling graphics and power spectra overlaying the main map. There were two spikes on the long-range thaumic scans, and it was immediately obvious what had triggered the alert. "Is Lacunae powering up its strategic arrays?" he asked numbly. Other displays showed Baur's own assets coming on line: strings of readiness reports from scattered mass drivers and fast-moving magic suppression systems, hunting for the first sign of a hostile spell locus.

"No, General," the lead analyst said. "The profile does not fit and the locations are all wrong." She highlighted a spot on the map, deep inside Lacunae territory and the source of one magical surge. "This is one of their breeding centres; the other is deep inside... that. The gravity wave detectors have also been going crazy... their signature matches the intelligence reports from the battles inside Lacunae."

The pink-stained and unnaturally stable clouds had grown since Ininil had last seen the global overview, covering nearly ten percent of Lacunae's northern highlands. "Show this one," Ininil said, fidgeting as the master display filled with two dimensional time-and-frequency plots. "What does the physics team say?"

"Same effects on space-time, but persistent rather than pulsed. They say the hole is likely to be over a dozen lengths across."

Making strategic decisions on stolen data. Was it fed to these ones? The reliability was high, and the military scientists all said it was real... A tunnel through space-time, from a breeding centre to that magically isolated zone. "They are evacuating the breeding centres..." he breathed, then froze, suddenly aware of a bulky, stripy shape at his elbow.

"That is an interesting development," came a cultured voice, and the servitor stepped to one side to let the Monarch pass. "What are the implications for Our response?"

"Yes, Monarch!" Heart thundering, Ininil moved carefully to a spot that allowed him to face the Monarch and see the main screens, ever conscious of the blank machine-like gaze of the servitor. "They are moving their breeding stock to secure locations. This one has no reliable estimates for the timescale of the operation, but it could be very fast. These ones will soon lose the ability to significantly impact their numbers."

"The need for a first strike is more pressing." The Monarch nodded absently, studying the same displays, then smiled, genuinely happy. "This seems like the perfect opportunity for a field test of the Seraphim prototype."

"Monarch," Ininil said carefully, "the control interface is still not completely reliable. It is likely that Harq will assault unauthorised targets."

"Lacunae will turn into a free-fire zone as a result of their grotesque failure; there will be no adverse consequences. The Court will just be happy the crisis has been averted." The smile grew into something vicious. "...and if the situation cannot be resolved, these ones will reluctantly have to activate Strix."

32 - Cry 'Havoc!'

Author's Note

A full plot summary can be found here. Do not read unless you are up to date! Spoilers!
Preread by: turol, NoeCarrier and Caliaponia.

32 - Cry 'Havoc!'

Another aircraft, one of the large cargo models and the first of a dozen, dithered in the air above the cluttered valley before settling into a gap between a pair of gunships. Hatches under the delta wing popped open, revealing complex shapes and stacks upon stacks of packing crates. Ponies in Security barding trotted between the containers, magic flaring as they moved them to the ground. Behind the cargo the whole side of the vehicle had opened up, revealing machines packed with crystal thaumic systems.

"What is that?" Fusion asked, glancing sideways at Merlon. The Security mare had been silent after her outburst and was staring off into the distance, eyes focussed on nothing.

"Another mobile armoury workshop. My Master thought that your ponies could do with some armour suits, and the comms networking systems that come with them. Weapons too, if you want." Her words were soft and flat, spoken without intonation.

"They are not all as strong as I..." But it's not like we are trained to use the things, like the gryphons. We have our magic... it will have to be enough. "I'm not sure it's worth it."

Merlon snorted. "I told Strategist Orgon you'd say that. Do you see the other ones?" She indicated the other aircraft, which had peeled off and were dropping below the opposite ridge. Fusion nodded; they had the same bulbous look of cargo vehicles everywhere. "Your medics will recognise them. Battlefield medical bays." She turned to Fusion, smiling bitterly. "You're going to need them... not all of your friends will die cleanly."

Fusion's wings flicked and the muscles tensed all along her flanks. "That's right. When a pony dies because of the dogs, they get euthanized. At least these ponies will die for themselves, not some goal that they may never understand, or just because they are worn out." She ground her teeth, then worked her jaw. "You've worked for Orgon for so long that you've forgotten what it's like for the average pony. We die in accidents, or tortured by the Blessing when pushed too far or asked to abandon some basic level of decency. Most of the time we never even know why." She started to feel warm, heat bubbling up from deep inside.

Merlon took a step back, squinting into the haze of light that brightened around Fusion, but showing no sign of fear. "You are but a foal; I could hardly expect you to understand--"

"Stop!" Fusion turned away, taking a deep breath. "How long have you been with Orgon?"

"Almost a gigasecond. I have served him longer than any other Sector Chief."

"He takes your advice, I've seen it. What did you tell him, just before he was going to kill Prismatic and her colt?"

Merlon's ears drooped. "I know my Master. He would have killed them, and others, if it was necessary. I told him that any chance of negotiation with you would fail if his first act was to euthanize those ponies."

"The word is 'murder', Merlon. We are just as smart as they are." Fusion's voice became softer, and she leaned forwards. "Whatever you may think of us, things will never be the same. You've been out from under the Blessing for days now... I think you are starting to get an idea of what a free pony can do."

"I did terrible things, I--" Merlon inhaled sharply, shaking her head, letting the air out with a moan.

"So have I. So has Gravity. You must know it is not all your fault, right? Accidents happen when--"

"I am ten times your age, Fusion Pulse! Do not treat me like a foal!" Merlon's head snaked out, teeth closing with a snap near Fusion's muzzle.

Fusion didn't flinch. "No, you are not, so perhaps you should stop acting like one. How do you expect to help your Master like this?"

Merlon jerked as if struck, undirected magic flickering and flashing the length of her horn before fading away. "I--" She stood bolt upright, wings folded tightly about her barrel, mouth open but no words coming out.

Fusion took a slow step forwards, tentatively reaching out with one wing. "We may not be on the same side, but we have to work together. Look at it this way... your decisions are now yours, so if you still want to serve them, you can."

"I know why they follow you, Fusion. You think I've not seen People who have the same way with words?" Merlon said. "You think you are doing the right thing, but your ideas will get everypony killed." She slumped, head drooping, and exhaled with a great sigh. "We agree on one thing... things will never be the same again. You have pushed us off a cliff, and we have to fly or we'll all die."

A ghost of a smile crossed Fusion's lips. "I described it a different way, but yes. Orgon is smart, possibly the smartest dog--" Merlon's ears flicked back. "--sorry, person. I won't call them 'Master' ever again, Merlon." Fusion sighed and shrugged. "--that I've talked to. He understood the situation when none of the others did. But--" She raised a hoof and scraped it across the rocky ground, staring at the groove she was digging. "--he is only one... individual in the whole Hive. I need to be sure that he has the power to remain in control." Fusion lifted her head and stared at Merlon, searching her face for any sign of what she was thinking. "So, does he? Will he still be in command tomorrow?"

===

Orgon drummed his claws on the console and read the message again. Faster than anticipated. He kept his face blank, pushing away the sudden feeling of tension. A swipe transferred the terse message to a portable terminal, and Orgon walked over to the command centre's attached conference room, nodding at the guard at the door. "Anything from the Councillors?"

"Lots of noise at the start, Strategist, but nothing for the last several kiloseconds." The guard reached for the controls, unlocking the door. "Do you require any assistance?"

"No." Orgon ran a claw along the length of his comms bracer and smiled slightly. "This one expects it will get a little noisier shortly." The guard looked uncertain and hesitated. "Just shouting, nothing more." Even this one would have trouble executing the Synod Core Group without repercussions. The guard nodded, pushing open the door.

"What has Orgon done?! This is treason; he won't get away with this."

Councillor Indutu has not been taking his confinement well. Orgon felt much of his tension drain away, and a customary slight smile settled over his muzzle. Indutu's pale fur, normally impeccably groomed, had not improved since his abduction from the Synod bunker. The other three members looked past him warily, keeping their distance. The pony, they are looking for the pony. "Imaginative as always, Councillor. Perhaps Indutu should remember that the Emergency Powers Act gives the Strategist significant discretionary latitude."

"Not to carry out a coup!"

"The Councillors have not been harmed; Orgon has need of them. He has no desire to declare himself Monarch." Only an insane Person would want to do that. The world has enough Hives like Baur. "There are things that this one needed to do, that the Synod would only interfere with."

"Orgon had no right to abduct all of these ones!"

"Protective custody, Councillors," Orgon murmured, "that is well within this one's power. It is hardly Orgon's fault that constitutional law did not consider talk of wormholes."

"It does these ones no good to scream at each other, Indutu," Shmae said, more relaxed now that it was obvious that Merlon wasn't going to join them in the conference room.

The pony is an excellent interrogation partner even when she's not here. Orgon struggled to control his rising mirth. It's possible that the stress is getting to this one. "No. At this time, Orgon must remain in control. The next stage will likely involve strategic strikes against Hive infrastructure, followed by an attempt at occupation." He held up the portable terminal, waving it at the wallscreen. The Court's message appeared, stark and clear under the seal of the Security Council.

"This one supposes it is of no great shock, Strategist," Shmae said, running blunt claws through her grey whiskers. "What else has Orgon done to make the Court do... this?" She waved helplessly at the screen. "They must know that this is tantamount to Lacunae's destruction. Ordering a complete euthanization of our servitor population, that's just..." She shook her head. "What does Orgon propose?"

"Shmae knows the Court is not the impartial body it claims to be. The other Hives have scented a chance to eliminate these ones at little risk to themselves."

"This much is obvious." Shmae made a sweeping, irritated gesture. "What does Orgon propose?"

"This one would like to allow the Core Group access to the full Synod again, but only if the Group will not interfere with Orgon's plans." He tapped out a set of commands on his bracer, placing the terminal on the conference table and sliding it over to Shmae. "Orgon has given these ones access to all the Intelligence assessments and situation reports--"

"But no external communications?" Shmae asked sharply.

Orgon's smile flashed wide for a moment. "No, not yet. Read the reports, reach an understanding of the Hive's situation. Orgon is confident that the Core Group will agree with his actions."

"Or he'll get the pony in here to mess with these ones’ minds!" Indutu burst out, eyes wide and voice shrill, transfixed by the Court's ultimatum.

"Not helpful," Shmae muttered, using the terminal to rapidly scroll through the reports. "Perhaps Indutu could contribute a little silence to the proceedings."

The servitors use mental magic to train each other... this one wonders if Merlon could... "Of course this one wouldn't do that," Orgon said quietly. He's got more than enough capability in the Security apparatus. "Because there really is no choice. Without a lot of luck, these ones cannot defeat the rogues without resorting to the Court's tactics. Even then it probably won't work. They are too smart and are rapidly becoming proficient in operational security." He smiled, pulling lips back from sharp, white teeth. "These ones built them too well."

"Fine. What does Orgon plan?"

"There will be war, but this one needs time to assemble the Hive's forces. Lie to the Court and stall for time." Shmae swallowed, looking ill, but nodded. "Look on the bright side; if the Councillor fails, she probably will never even see the flash of light that kills her."

"So the best this one can hope for is a quick death." She snorted, then sighed, nodding again. "Fine. This one will support you. Councillors?" She turned to the other two, ignoring Indutu, who had sat back down and was staring at the Court's demands and shaking so hard his whiskers trembled. They nodded in turn and Shmae sighed. "Very well, we will discuss our best approach. Tundru is Chief Justice at the moment; he is out of Baur," Shmae frowned, then sighed. "...but this one knows him in passing, and she thinks that..."

===

Merlon listlessly wandered through the staging area, avoided by rebel and visitor pony alike. Fusion had given her a teleport destination and a name, a pony called Katabatic, somewhere out in the northern highlands of the Hive. She swallowed, hoofsteps dragging but the simple act of walking fulfilling a prey animal's deep desire to move. The unease flooded her belly, filling her with a deep desire to go anywhere but where she was supposed to go. You are a multi-gigasecond veteran of Security, personal servitor to the Strategist himself, so why...?

She inhaled deeply, lifting her head and squaring her wingshoulders. Pony and gryphon shapes flitted through the air, heading for who knows where, occasionally vanishing in pulses of light. Magic was everywhere, filling the dense clouds and layering through the rocks beneath her hooves. Shadow sight showed it better than anything; this place was lit up more brightly than one of the crystal forge facilities. So many ponies in one place. Her shoulders slumped. You know why, don't you?

"I thought they were all going to die, but Fusion and Gravity..." She shivered, the fleeting memory of the sheer power radiating from Fusion while they had talked that first time still enough to make her fur stand on end. That pony should have been angry and... I think she was. No, not angry, sad. Her power had been restrained, bottled up behind a wall of ferocious strength. "I did not manage that conversation very well." She asked me if I was sure, and I was... Merlon's head drooped. "I was," she whispered. I am afraid of what I might find out.

"Pony, you are five gigaseconds old. You know the Masters are right, that their plans and desires are not always straightforward, that sacrifices have to be made. They made us and we have to repay that debt. In return, we have spread and endured across the world, because we are useful. The Masters are the Paws of the Maker." The final words, an oft-repeated litany, sounded hollow and strained.

"There is nothing I can discover that will change this." Her wings flared, coming down in a single flap as she sprung into the air. Pearly light pulsed over her horn and she pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--emerging in a quiet valley under the same pastel clouds. The sky-magic was thinner here, less oppressive, and Merlon felt light as she descended towards the small cleared landing strip. There was a pony waiting for her, a skewbald mare and her foal, both looking up nervously. She landed a few paces away and nodded politely. "Katabatic, wasn't it?"

Katabatic nodded in return. "Yes," she said softly, her uncertain tone making the foal tuck itself behind her legs. The youngster, too young to have acquired anything but the most simple words, peered around his dam's hindquarters, watching her with big, green eyes.

Merlon lowered her head, extending one wingtip towards the foal. He reached out in turn, nostrils flaring as he sniffed the tip of the primary feather. "Fusion wanted me to talk to you, she said..."

The mare nodded again. "She told me, yes. You are a representative of the Strategist... you must k-know where I came from." Katabatic closed her eyes, inhaling deeply.

A statement of fact. Merlon nodded slowly. "You were in Naraka. Is that where...?" She gestured carefully at the foal, but the motion was too much and he jumped backwards out of reach.

"Thunder is my second." Katabatic still had her eyes closed and her voice was calm even as her ears flicked back.

So this is why she wanted me here. "What happened to your first?" Something twisted in Merlon's gut. The Masters are the paws of the Maker. She was one of the unlucky ones, the few selected for extensive studies.

"She went to live in a better place, or that's what they told us..." The fur around her eyes darkened, tears trickling through the pale patches on her muzzle. "...but I saw Fusion's memories of that storage centre at the heart of Naraka." She sniffed, eyes now open and staring off at something over Merlon's shoulder. "We always wondered what it was. We could see it through shadow sight, so we knew all the c-colours. Hundreds and hundreds of lights, just close enough that we could make out individual--" She made a choking sound and fell silent.

What am I supposed to say to this mare? What could I possibly say to her? That her sacrifice was necessary and part of the Master's plans, whatever they are? "I'm so very sorry," Merlon said. "What... what makes you think that what you saw came from your foals? The numbers just don't add up -- I was told that only a few foals had to be used that way."

Katabatic's ears flattened and her head lowered; not an unhappy droop but something more aggressive. "They said our foals were fostered out, but that's a lie, isn't it? We weren't kept isolated, Merlon. I shared a stall with three other mares, and we were allowed regular contact with many other groups in the indoor exercise paddocks. Hundreds of mares, Merlon, and more out of sight. I could smell them and see the glow of their magic through the walls when I closed my eyes. Do you want to know what else I know?"

Merlon struggled to her hooves, taking a step backwards as the mare advanced. "Tell me, Katabatic," she said. It's true, there are a lot of mares here; the population of subjects in Naraka was ninety percent female. Why would they keep so many if...

"They kept us in foal, Merlon. I never saw a stallion, but they must have been around somewhere. They just didn't need very many. Hundreds of mares, Merlon, over half of them pregnant at any one time. How many foals is that, Merlon? How many, and where did they all go?" Her voice rose to a shriek, prompting the arrival of a small group of gryphons from somewhere under the forest canopy.

"You alright, Kat?" one of them called out, staring at Merlon with bright orange eyes. He wore a patched-together equipment harness, but the light autocannon over one shoulder seemed perfectly serviceable. The muzzle, pointed squarely at her midsection, seemed big enough to swallow one of the moons.

Katabatic took a deep breath. "I'm fine, Sigurd. Just some bad memories."

The gryphon nodded, but kept his gaze locked on Merlon. "I know you, pony. I'd be careful if I were you. You don't have any friends out here."

"I'm only here to learn, nothing more. Your leaders have allowed me to come here," she said, straightening. Patterns and plans flooded her mind: teleport here, cast a pain spell there, and--

Sigurd flexed a set of glittering black talons. "I know. I just don't have to like it." He backed off a few paces and pointedly lay down, still watching.

Merlon let the nearly-real magic fade, looking back at Katabatic. "That is a lot of foals... far more than I can account for." She must be wrong. It was a stressful time and would be easy for a pony to become confused. Merlon frowned at the thought. Wouldn't she? "I will ask my Ma-- the Strategist; he will be able to explain this."

Katabatic had turned away and was fussing with her foal, teeth working along his tufty mane. "And how will you know if he's told you the truth? You've known him a long time, haven't you?" She searched Merlon's face, then nodded, satisfied with what she saw; Merlon's ears dipped slightly in response. "You do that, Merlon. You ask your master and really listen to what he says and how he says it."

===

Arne watched the ponies appear in a patch of empty air and scratched at the feathers above his helmet ring. "I wouldn't believe it if I couldn't see it," he murmured. "How much can they carry during a jump?" Rump sinking to the ground, he followed the flight of one pony as it settled towards a churning, multi-coloured herd.

"Don't really know the ultimate limit, but we've done some drills. One can take a pair of fireteams, two a gunship, three..." Ellisif shrugged, eyeing the Red Talon sersjant. "Got anything in mind?"

"We were told things are going to get worse. Command has sent out one of the more... terminal battle plans in light of your friends’ abilities. Deep strike missions into other Hive's population centres. A bit like what Baur did to us at the start of the Three Day War."

Terror units in the arcologies. Ellisif nodded. "I see. With pony support you could do so much more, but I wouldn't expect many to take an active role."

"Just getting into position would be most of the work." Arne ran a talon down the side of his beak. "To insert spec-ops teams directly into the arcologies..." His eyes narrowed, mind occupied by some vision of slaughter.

"Perhaps we can do something more useful than killing civilians, Arne." Perhaps Svartr shouldn't spend too much time with this gryphon. "What do you think would happen if we removed the command locks from their gryphon forces?"

"You want to trigger a rebellion?" Arne's beak opened and closed and he looked at Ellisif. "Just like yours."

"Being free has its benefits," Ellisif said mildly. "I quite like not having a shock collar. Then there's the medical support our ponies give us."

"My unit has a long history of servi--"

"Mine too... at least it did. Not many of them are left now." Ellisif shook herself. "You don't have to keep up the act, sersjant; I know you think the dogs are listening, but things will change for us. Nothing like a war to shake up the natural order." She cocked her head, beak half open at his uncertain sideways glance. "It's hard to break out of the pattern that has been set for us... I understand, I really do. You are at the top of your game, but it never was your game."

"I can't think that way, it's not safe!" Arne looked panicked, shrinking away from the circle of his command collar. "The consequences of rebellion are--"

"One of the ponies has already fixed that for you. The shock unit was disabled when you came to us, as were the surveillance modules." She leaned forwards, tapping his collar with one talon. "I know, I've seen the object lessons the dogs have made in the past. Things are different now and are never going to be the same again. We have a chance to build a gryphon nation, away from all the dogs."

"It will never work. The Masters are too strong," Arne whispered, eyes darting to the korporals under his command. They hadn't moved and were still focussed on the discussions with Ellisif's own unit commanders. "Even if Lacunae lets you remain independent, the Court will not. The Hammer..."

"We may have a way around that... but for it to be fired it requires a target. If we free enough gryphons across the world, the targets become the arcologies themselves. They won't sacrifice that many of their own."

"You were in Security and you say that?!" Arne sighed. "We may be deployed into the enemy Hives soon enough, but how would..." He paused, looking thoughtful. "When I got here, there was a flash of magic that was gone before I could complain...

Ellisif nodded. "That was all it took. No surveillance, at least not to outside your unit, no command enforcement module, no remote override. Collar, armour, personal weapon, the lot."

"Cracking the locks on my collar wasn't hard for the pony; I didn't even realise it was being done." The words were muttered and accompanied by a distant look, like Arne was fixated by some barely-visible prey. "We know where the main barracks are, and the arsenals are close at paw..."

"We have much to talk about," Ellisif said. "Even if this doesn't come to war, we still want to liberate all the dogs’ slaves."

Arne looked at her, eyes wide. "You don't think small, do you?"

===

They have really spread out... seems like a well thought out approach. Merlon gained height over the forested valley, not really seeing the tree-filled ravines or the lead-coloured river that moved through the middle of it all. The next teleport memory was much like the one that had brought her here, except a little more alpine and near the tree line. There was no clue as to how far away the place was, so Merlon pumped her wings to gain a little more altitude before folding them in and tucking her legs up behind a grey haze of telekinesis--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--the smash of her excess momentum left her gasping for an instant, then she opened her wings and halted the accelerating fall. Snowy peaks surrounded her, shrouded by the same pastel clouds, their forested lower slopes giving way to the high alpine meadows glimpsed in the borrowed memory, and Merlon dropped towards one, marked out by a flicker of magic deep underground. Fusion wants me face what was done, does she? Well, I followed my orders, and--

There was a herd of foals in one of the meadows, perhaps a score of them, galloping and play-fighting amid the flowers. There was a single adult with them, at the approximate centre of the herd. Black and tan, with curiously shrunken wings, the pony was naggingly familiar. She'd seen Merlon and was watching her approach, so Merlon came in for a careful landing next to the young mare, now at the centre of a patch of clear grass and the focus of all of the foals' attention.

"Random?" Her gaze flicked over the feather-stripped wings and focused on the stump where the other mare's horn should have been. What game is Fusion playing--

Random stared at her, mouth working, then abruptly wheeled and kicked out with both hind legs, catching Merlon on the shoulder, before cantering away. Merlon staggered, then magic blazed around her horn, enough power to reach out and strip the flesh from Random's bones. She held the twisted medical spells in her head, the nasty things almost begging to be released, then let them fade along with her anger.

"I suppose that's not the worst response I could have had," Merlon muttered, studying the mare, who'd stopped a score of lengths away. She brushed out the two near-perfect hoof-prints, absently repairing the broken capillaries and bruised muscles under them. "Random, I just want to talk about all these foals. I'm... I'm sorry for what I had to do to you."

"Are you?! You took me after they put me through the machine and turned me into a mass-murderer!" Random was breathing heavily, screaming out the words.

I followed my orders, I did what my Master wanted. What I've done, I did because it was right. Her ears drooped slightly, uncertainty making her heart flutter. Merlon's eye turned downwards. "My Master used you as a tool to discover the... the--" Terrorists, rogues, what? The Masters have made a kind of peace with them. I did terrible things and it was all for nothing. "I had my orders, Random. When my Master speaks, I obey. What choice did I have?" She looked up, meeting Random's wild gaze. "I really am sorry. No pony should have suffered like you did."

"How much of it was planned, Merlon? How much did you deliberately put me through?" Random advanced on Merlon, her head low and jaws snapping together on air with a hollow clomp. "Do you have any idea what that machine did to me?" She breathed in with a gasp, starting to pant. "My dreams, oh, sweet Maker my dreams--" Some of the tension in Random's neck and shoulders subsided, her jaw hanging slack and eyes going wide.

Merlon flinched, distant memories of her own Security assessment flickering at the back of her head. She cleared her suddenly dry throat. "I was older than you, but out of everypony here, I do understand. I was selected for the same training, more than three gigaseconds ago, and I can still remember parts of it." She smiled, a pained thing with no joy in it. "But that's still not the same. I had support, while you were locked in a gryphon-guarded cage with your own thoughts." Merlon shook, all over, stiff feathers rattling against each other. "Not what you asked. Only the last bit was deliberate. The rest was all Agent Salrath's doing."

"Why?" The fury had almost gone, leaving Random's voice a hollow thing, full of confusion and pain. "I did nothing except protect my foals, and... and she--" The mare swallowed, closing her eyes. "I just want to understand why she did this to me," she whispered. "I never even met her."

Merlon tentatively closed the remaining distance to Random, but didn't try to touch her. "I was present while my Master talked to Agent Salrath, after he discovered what she had done. She had a justification, but I also know the Agent's history. She should never have been given control over you. She... she was a true psychopath, scoring high for sadism and narcissism." Merlon gave another pained smile, unseen by Random. "She was also a smart, intuitive thinker, and very good at her job."

"You are probably wondering why Security would want such people." Random nodded, shifting her weight slightly towards Merlon. The dapple-grey mare gently extended a wing, laying it across Random's back. "Security has to do evil things to keep the Hive safe. The other Hives are a real threat. I have been present for more than one enhanced interrogation, keeping a prisoner alive and penetrating their minds while pain was inflicted upon them. Salrath and others like her could do this, and other things like it, without any regret. She was just born like that. The worst thing is that she could have been cured, but she was more useful this way. I suppose it is kinder than artificially inducing the condition."

Merlon rested her head atop of Random's. "You did your duty and were punished for it. It wasn't fair and then I compounded the crime by using you to get at Fusion and Gravity. We were at war and all things are justified in war. Apparently." The muscles of Merlon's cheeks bunched as she gritted her teeth. But I would do it again. "How did the other ponies take your... betrayal?"

"I wanted to die, but they wouldn't let me."

"Of course not. We all understand, at least at some level. What about all this?" Merlon lifted her other wing and waved it about the field, taking in the herd of foals. Most of the youngsters had cantered off, circling around the adults in an extended game of 'catch me', or were nibbling experimentally at the grassy sward. Half of them are not even weaned... how is she feeding them?

Random snorted, shaking Merlon's wing off her back. "You really don't know? What do you think happened when the Hammer hit our base?"

"You had enough warning to evacuate many of the ponies," Merlon said slowly, brow wrinkling. "By teleport, I assume." That attack was futile and would only have worked if both Fusion and Gravity stayed out of a desire to help as many as they could. She frowned, looking down at the other mare. How many were in the corral and Naraka? It would never work... I don't know how much more strength those two have, but I couldn't jump more than a pawful of others. "But you couldn't get everypony out, could you?"

Random, eyes shining with unshed tears and her ears drooping, nodded. "They rescued me, but many had to just fly out. They couldn't get far enough. Dams carrying foals as best they could. The teleport spell is hard to master, and the Naraka ponies were too out of practice to learn it quickly. Those who could worked in relays to save as many as they could from my stupidity."

"They gave up their foals," Merlon said softly.

Random nodded, a quick jerk of the head. "The older ones were fostered, but these had already banded together for comfort. We couldn't separate them without causing more distress."

"So here you are."

"Here I am. They are my penance and..." She smiled, looking down at one of the foals, a colt, currently butting her in the flank, before giving him a quiet nicker. "...my salvation. I wanted to die, but Fusion wouldn't let me. Now, I have to live. How many other dams have so many foals?"

"I understand." Merlon stared at the chaotically moving herd, her gut clenching. There are too many foals. Why did Naraka have so many foals? The Board can't tell how useful a breeding line will be until the ponies in it reach maturity. "So many foals." Was it just a single generation, and it's just a coincidence that all this happened at the same time? "Kept them pregnant all the time, she said." Random was looking up at her, confused, and Merlon waved her away, then turned and started to walk in tight circles. Was Katabatic telling me the absolute truth, then? Should I have asked for a sharing? "The Court wouldn't allow it, not normally, unless..." They didn't know, or... or-- She lifted her head, staring blindly at the pastel cloud base. "Where did all the foals go?" she whispered. The Masters are the paws of the Maker.

"I think you know." Random bent to nuzzle at the colt, then trotted away, the foals all following her and leaving Merlon alone with her thoughts.

===

The gryphoness moaned slightly and her hindleg twitched, but didn't really move despite the pain she must have been in. "Sorry," Lilac murmured, tightening his hold on the nerves that connected the limb to her spine. She sighed, then nodded, closing her eyes. His horn flashed and her leg was suddenly pulled and twisted, the unnatural lump under the muscle of her hip vanishing with a sharp click.

"I didn't feel it!" she said, shivering slightly.

"You shouldn't, either. There's no excuse for pain with thaumic medicine." Lilac probed the leg, noting the torn muscles and rapidly developing bruises. More magic drained the excess fluid from the inflamed tissue and cooled it far more efficiently than an external ice pack.

"Well, I've never had a pony work on me either. Thank you." She gently flexed her hindpaws, letting the claws extend and retract.

"Why did you come to me? I thought all the new medics were managing the military injuries." Lilac kept his eyes closed, sweeping the gryphoness for any signs of hidden trauma. "I don't have anywhere near their experience."

"You've helped some of my friends... and besides, the other ponies seem, ah, resentful. They are doing as they are told, but they don't like it." She twisted slightly, then froze when Lilac frowned. "I trust you. You care about us. Listen, will my leg will be okay? We're being deployed and I need to get to my gunship."

"You'll be sore, but that was a pretty clean dislocation. There's no evidence of damage to the cartilage. I'd suggest you take it easy, stay off the leg, but..." She stood, clicking her beak, already reaching for her armour harness. The injured leg touched the ground hesitantly, pulling back when the gryphoness realised that Lilac's nerve blocks had been removed. "Don't take too many painkillers -- you want to feel if you are doing yourself more damage," he said, rooting through the collection of medical supplies and proffering a small spray bottle. "...and try not to land on that leg." She nodded, spraying some of the liquid under her sharp bird tongue.

Lilac stared after the gryphoness as she half ran, half flew down the tunnel that lead to the outside, then looked for the next patient. "That's it?" he said softly, feeling a little lost. There were dozens before. I guess they don't all feel the same way about the new ponies. "There's no one else?"

"Nope, all finished," Spiral said. Little flares of green light danced over the accumulated trash of a dozen medical interventions that had taken place in the settlement's medical bay. The discarded material -- single-use drug ampoules, sterile wrappers and stained dressings -- was wadded up and placed in a bright yellow bag marked with a biohazard symbol. "You've learned fast." Her face twisted, ears suddenly drooping. "I wish..."

"It's a better life than I had before," he said, pulling out a bag full of pelletised food, part of the supplies delivered by the dog cargo aircraft, and munching his way through them. "The taste of this stuff reminds me of home," he mumbled past a mouthful. "Now I think about it, mealtimes were the only good things about the lab. At least they fed me well." Pale violet flames danced over his hind quarters, pulling his legs into the correct position for standing.

Spiral shivered. "That was no way for a pony to live. Considering everything, you are doing very well. That's battlefield training for you," Spiral said, some of her pained expression fading, "they always said it was the best. How is your own treatment going?"

"Slowly. There's always been someone else to help. I have a bit of feeling just above my left pastern, but no motion yet. My telekinetic control is really pretty good now; I can even manage a slow canter, if I concentrate hard enough." He stretched out his wings, frowning at the dark stubs of pin feathers poking in the gaps where he'd recently lost a few clipped primaries. "What I really want to do is fly, but it's going to take megaseconds before my feathers are big enough." It's been a very long time.

"You'll be ready about the same time as Random." Spiral's ears went back. "That mare who pulled out her first flush of new feathers is here, and Fusion is talking to her like she's done nothing." Her face twisted. "And she wanted Random to talk to her. Hasn't my filly suffered enough?"

"That Security mare was Blessed, it's hardly--"

The mare's lips set in a hard line. "Oh, I think she knew exactly what she was doing." There was a clatter of hooves in the outer chamber, and Spiral's ears twitched upwards. "Random!" She wheeled, cantered the few steps to the arched opening, and swept her wings over the tired-looking filly. "It's so good to see you, but--

"Dam, please, I only have a few moments. The foals are all in the secure paddock and eating, but I can't leave them for long." There was a neigh, muffled by distance and intervening walls, and Random's ears twitched. She made a little movement, pulling away from Spiral.

Spiral nodded, a gentle smile softening the worried lines on her muzzle. "I understand. I was the same about you and your sister." The smile faded, replaced with pain for a moment, then returned. "Come on, I'll help you get them settled."

Lilac watched them go, flank pressed against flank, a sudden flash of loneliness blowing through him. He paced, the slightly uneven cadence of his hooves rattling off the stone walls. Listlessly, he completed the task of getting the medical stalls ready for the next person who might need its attention. "Will you stay with me?" he murmured, remembering the alcove in the lab, his home for most of his life, then shook his head. "Random has no magic or flight; at least I have my power."

There was a howl, distorted and stretched, echoing down from the surface, the sound of turbines being pushed to full power, then a sudden silence. "The only thing that protects us are the spells in the clouds, and I'm stuck here on the ground." With nopony else to help, what can I do? Lilac looked at his wings again, fanning them uselessly. He felt light, like hundreds of balloons were attached to his bones, but there was no lift. Refolded, the weight returned. It is just the thrust that's the problem... there's nothing wrong with my magic or the muscles. I've seen Fusion fly without using her wings, and that's just brute force.

"You're not quite that strong, are you Lilac?" he muttered, extending one wing and concentrating. Sweat started to make his fur damp, but fireflies of light crawled along the leading edge, spreading into a sheet that extended rearwards along the clipped feathers like shards of luminous glass. Little crackles of sound, high and near ultrasonic, accompanied each fresh splinter of magic-made-solid. Now the fields were actually formed, maintaining them was much less effort; Lilac sighed, twisting the wing and fanning the new feathers.

"It would be unfortunate to lose concentration at altitude..." he said, biting at his lips. Do I really want to do this...? The effort of maintaining the first set of fields faded to a distant buzz, and Lilac opened his other wing to repeat the process. He let out a little groan as the final force-field feather flickered into place, then moved to the centre of the chamber and gently fanned both wings. The sensation of ground under his hooves vanished.

"Ha! Look at tha--" he called out, then whinnied as the synthetic feathers vanished and he fell the short distance to the stone floor, staggered, then fell to his side. "Yes, focus is the key." He groaned, climbing upright and breathing heavily. Practice. Eyes closed, he built the fields again.

===

Orgon looked down the list of servitors that Merlon had trained. Competency ratings were next to all of them; the most adept were already training others and so on down the whole Security org chart. This one already has enough ponies to do the job. Another list joined the first; this one with a set of locations, a scattering of high-security prison cells.

He called up his connection to the labournet, tagging a set of servitors, those with teleport capability and a skill in memory extraction. Orders were issued and the codes representing the servitors flickered out, reappearing at their required locations. A stroke of one paw tagged a pony and opened surveillance feeds from the cameras in the vicinity. It was a section of the facility's reception chamber, kept empty and marked off with hazard tape for just this eventuality. The perfect place; every servitor who'd visited the prison had come through that room.

The other People in the room -- a few Agents and other support staff -- flinched at the pony's flash-thump of arrival. A few firearms were half drawn, then paws relaxed and the guns were returned to their holsters. The pony -- a stallion with a pure black coat and bright green eyes -- furled his wings and stepped forwards, a little hesitantly. None of the People tried to stop him, and he trotted smartly to the desk to face the officer on duty.

"Targe EO5350. I need access to prisoner Thelin." The pony recited a string of numbers from memory.

The officer stared at the pony for a long moment, long enough that Orgon's paws twitched towards his comms equipment, then gestured to an Agent standing near the entrance to the cell block. The pony nodded in response, following the guard. The view switched from camera to camera, following the pair deeper into the complex. The final destination was past the single-occupancy cells and into a zone filled with sterile equipment and a row of bulky cylinders, their casings packed with complex arrays of glowing crystals.

The Agent tapped out a command on her bracer and one of the cylinders slid open. Inside was a pitch-black shadow of a Person, absolutely motionless. A breath, and colour flooded across the Person, making him real again, albeit quite still. The pony leaned forwards, horn glowing a dark violet, then a moment later the same colour washed over the body. "The relativistic field is collapsing as intended." The Person's eyes, blank and staring at the opposite wall without any trace of life, blinked languidly, then rapidly, then flicked from side to side. Muscles tensed and he struggled to rise, a futile effort against the restraint systems holding him in the pod.

"--no, don’t!" He flinched, all over. "Agent Caru, you don't-- How long? How long has this one been in suspension?" There was panic in his eyes, and his head whipped from side to side.

A momentary evil smile flashed across Agent Caru's muzzle, then it faded into weariness. "Thelin, it's only been five megaseconds. The world is still the same as it was."

Thelin's rapid breathing faded and some of the terror faded into mere anxiety. "This one has told Security everything. He was never a spy, just a tourist."

The Agent shrugged. "Don't care, not this one's problem. This time, Security is more interested in where Thelin lived. All his memories of his home arcology, all the wide open spaces and public access tunnels."

"B-but all this is public record, there are accessible camera feeds, Baur Hive doesn't block everything!" The pony leaned forwards again, magic lighting up his horn, and Thelin shrank away, trying to sink into the suspension pod's rear wall by force of will alone.

"Nevertheless, this is what we require. This will not hurt, Master--" Targe said, looking uncomfortable.

"As long as Thelin doesn't resist," the Agent said happily, tapping at a shock rod on her belt. "Then it might sting a bit."

"No, please--" The hornlight brightened, the deep violet making something in the pod's padding fluoresce a pale green. Thelin twitched and shivered, like he was in the throes of a nightmare, then stilled. His eyes opened and he inhaled sharply. "That's it? That's all the pony wanted?"

Caru glanced at the pony, who nodded. "That's it. Back to sleep with Thelin." She stepped back, tapping on her bracer. "See you in a couple of gigaseconds."

"Wait, no--!" Thelin's voice dropped rapidly from a squeak to a growl, then vanished completely. Shadows moved sluggishly over his body, fur becoming darker and reddish before fading to absolute black.

"Master, that will make my next interrogation more difficult," the pony said, a little reproachfully.

"Ah, come on, Targe, this one knows it's nothing the pony can't manage. Thelin will calm down quickly enough." Caru slapped the stallion on the rump, making him jump forwards a step. "What's all this for, anyway?"

"I'm sorry, Master, I have been ordered not to say." His ears flicked back, an expression of discomfort across his muzzle.

"Don't worry." Caru held up a paw hurriedly. "It's not important. Is the pony done here?"

"Thank you, Master. Yes, all finished. I have to complete the rest of my orders. Please step back."

Caru jumped back hurriedly, naked curiosity on her face. "Be careful, pony. This one wouldn't want to break another servitor to Caru's sense of humour." There was a flash-thump and the Agent was alone.

===

"Monarch, the Court has agreed with our assessment. We have been ordered to assault a series of locations within Lacunae Hive." There was a sense of unreality to the words, and Ininil felt his gut tighten. Other screens on his console reported the readiness of Baur's forces -- concentrations at dispersed bases and others flying convoluted courses around the borders. Of more interest was the scatter of green stars across the core of the Hive's lands, marking installations of servitors in deep armoured pits, magic already charged and magazines stacked with projectiles.

Firing solutions were springing up across another map, long curved lines following ballistic arcs that rose briefly into the still-lethal low orbits before dipping down to spots scattered over a part of Lacunae Hive. The curves were varied; the closest targets had the highest loops, while the distant ones were almost flat by comparison. Other arcs, these in different colours, rose from other parts of the world as rarely used Court comms relays tied together the disparate and normally hostile strategic systems of three Hives. A timer started in one corner of the screen.

Ininil pulled a key from around his neck, staring at the small sliver of metal for a moment before inserting it into a slot in his console. "The attack order has been given. Does this one have the Monarch's permission to grant the Court fire control authority?" Luna was above the horizon, and the Court was watching. If Ininil didn't launch, the Court would take up the slack with shots from the Hammer, and no doubt send a few their way as punishment.

The Monarch, white fur almost gleaming, looked thoughtful. "It's almost a pity these ones will have to share... perhaps there is something that can be done about that later." There was a distant look in his eyes, and Ininil fought to keep his face attentive. Finally, the Monarch nodded, pressing a paw against something out of the camera's field of view.

Ininil, claws touching his key, froze for a moment. The nukes are targeted at the servitor rebels, Lacunae bases are only getting kinetics. There's nothing useful left in orbit, nothing that can give Lacunae more than a few seconds warning... please let this work. The taste of bile filled the back of his throat and he jerked into motion, twisting the key all the way around. Paw dropping limply away, he dimly registered the Monarch's voice, but could only see the scatter of green stars start to flash an angry red as the timer spooled to zero. Little beads of light started to climb along the arcs.

33 - ...and let slip the dogs of war.

Author's Note

A full plot summary can be found here. Do not read unless you are up to date! Spoilers!
Preread by: turol, NoeCarrier and Caliaponia.

33 - ...and let slip the dogs of war.

Something twitched at the back of Gravity's mind, but she ignored it. Vanca was still talking, gesturing at a holographic needle that floated within the display. Sections of it had been pulled away, showing a mostly solid interior, but her attention was on the rows of explosive charges lining its flanks; the mechanism by which the machine had evaded her grasp the last time. She stared at the image, biting at the insides of her cheeks. If this dog is right, then I really did almost have it... but I won't know until they shoot at us again.

Gravity had heard Vanca's advice on the Hammer so many times that it was starting to sound like a rehearsed speech. Get it early, yes, yes, that much is obvious. Luna, a mass at the far end of her arcane reach, was quiescent, not showing any of the activity it had before the last Hammer shot. There was something, a faint pulsing oscillation, but so tiny as to be almost imaginary. I wonder if that is the spare ammunition they keep in low orbit? That other twitch came again, not from the distant orbit of the moon, but much closer. Gravity frowned, then pushed the feeling away.

Sighing, she stretched out her power, letting it skitter among the rocks of the debris ring. Feeling them was easy, but they had an awful resistance when she tried to do anything more significant. "Goggles on," she said, closing her eyes and lifting her head. Gravity's ears flicked at the sudden hurried rustle and snap of straps. There was the quiet guttural mutter of her gryphon liaison, reporting that she was about to try her magic again. "Always watching me," she whispered, voice pitched too low for anyone to hear. "I wonder what you expect to learn?"

Violet light started to leak between the closed lids of her eyes and she clenched them tighter still. The valley, not much more than a narrow slot canyon cut by a currently dry stream, was blazing with light, bright enough that it warmed the rock walls and cut through the cold air. She picked a fragment in high orbit, a tumbling rock a few dozen lengths across that carried little more than a solar-powered beacon and the vague taste of the crystal thaumic processor which had attracted her to it in the first place.

She tracked the orbital path, wondering why this ring particle had been singled out, then smiled. A near resonance with one of the larger fragments; its orbit is not stable. Multiple close encounters would twitch the rock through a variety of orbital tracks, many hard to predict more than a few encounters in the future. Gravity held her breath, muscles tensing in an unconscious effort to apply more force so far away, and the tumble gradually slowed.

"This one thought the pony was going to change the orbital element this time. Vanca is only detecting a change in angular momentum."

Gravity could hear the Academician's claws tapping as she rattled them against the display unit's casing. How did Fusion ever work with this dog without pulling her head off? "I will! This isn't easy... and stop making that noise!" The words ended with a snarl, and she gritted her teeth, trying to refocus her mind. Mercifully, Vanca was silent, even seeming to hold her breath.

Pain started to dig its claws into the base of her skull, and she held the rock in her grasp, remembering the massive effort it had taken to shift the Hammer projectile even slightly. Gravity fumbled with the still-new ability, this not-quite telekinesis that let her shift the tracks of things in orbit, hunting for the elusive feel that would let her move the thing about. It's all about energy... kinetic and gravitational potential energy. Put it in or take it away to change the orbit. Before there had been panic and an intense desire not to fail; trying for the same effects just as a mere experiment was a miserable failure.

At the moment all that power is coming through me, but does it have to? The thought nagged at her and she turned her insubstantial gaze towards another ring fragment. The memories of that frantic improvisation against the Hammer came back, and she ran through them, focussing on each thing she tried. Yes... I've already done this... a transfer of momentum from one fragment to another. The Hammer was too fast, but perhaps with more practice? Gravity picked another fragment, one tumbling in a higher orbit, and linked it to the first.

More control, that's the issue... The arc-welder glare of her magic faded and Gravity made lightning-fast alterations to her touch, tiny things that would be undetectable to the ground unit Vanca was using. The fragments reacted, twitching this way and that, until she was happy.

"Has the pony given up--?" Vanca gave out a startled yip as the light came back and Gravity grunted with the effort she was suddenly applying. Her head started to hurt again, ragged claws dragging deepening furrows through her skull. "Yes! That's it!"

I know, you idiot, I have a better view than you! The rocks, each more massive than ten Hammer shots, moved in opposite directions, one gaining height while the other lost it. The falling one accelerated and she curved its path, shifting both altitude and orbital inclination. The effort lessened as the task became more familiar, and Gravity began to think about how useful a falling rock might be, not just as a source of power for an upwards attack, but as a weapon in its own right.

She followed its track, imagining the world, and pushed it towards a grazing trajectory, something that would pass high overhead, but close enough to put on a show. "You let them know it's just me, practicing," she said, gesturing with her horn to the gryphon. Shadow sight made it impossible to read his expression, but Gravity could imagine it. Do something useful. She reached out for Fusion, nodding approvingly when the sharing opened to show a high lake, its once frigid depths pulsing with blue-green flashes. Practicing?

A bolt of something blue-white speared out, punching through the turbulent water, travelling deep before detonating in another greenish flash. The water was now steaming gently, the bodies of cooked fish littering the surface. I wanted to avoid too much attention, Fusion thought back, the words unaffected by her heavy breathing. Didn't work as well as I'd hoped. Do gryphons eat fish?

Gravity chuckled, making Vanca look sharply in her direction. Probably. I've had some luck moving rocks about; we should have one passing overhead shortly. I can hit stuff on the ground if I want to. Her smile widened. We'll have our own Hammer.

Fusion's ears had pricked up and she was staring at the sky. A bright point had appeared, turning rapidly into a glaring streak of white-gold that passed from horizon to horizon faster than a hypersonic transport. It was completely silent, despite looking like the world's brightest rocket engine. As long as you can aim the things, she thought.

I can. The light faded and Gravity's smile turned to a frown. The twitch she felt was back, and stronger than before. She cast her mind about, ranging through the low orbital altitudes and their tangled mess of fragments moving in chaotic paths. There, amid all the randomness, were long strings of sensation arcing up from points on the ground. A cold weight settled in her gut as the numbers of things multiplied. I think...

Gravity opened her eyes, staring at the gryphon. "What Ellisif described, it's happening. The other Hives are attacking us. Lots of mass-driver fire." He gaped at her for a second, then started to mutter into his command collar.

Vanca had frozen, eyes bulging. "The pony must tell Lacunae -- these ones don't have a satellite warning system anymore!" she yelped, suddenly jerking into motion and gesturing helplessly at the display table and its feeble excuse for a sensor suite. "Vanca worked on the mass drivers; without warning, these ones cannot coordinate the defensive fire." Her paws flashed into motion, wiping away the graphics she'd been using and replacing them with a map of the world, curved like a section of a globe. "Where is the fire coming from?" The seal of the Synod appeared in one corner as the unit connected to the non-causal communicator, still in the remains of the attack carrier.

"I can... Everywhere." She swallowed, closing her eyes. "I can feel the distant launchers; they are still firing, but there are so many trajectories..." Gravity spun the ballistic arcs forwards, plotting speeds and vectors as they turned downwards towards the ground. "The first projectiles all arrive at the same time, no matter where they are launched from. The closer sites are launching now." Her voice became distant, mind lost in the tangle of moving mass.

"...sounds like a time-on-target barrage, multiple strategic launchers. Think they are firing everything." The gryphon soldier made a deferential rasping sound at the back of his throat. "Ma'am, we need those targets."

Gravity started, attention snapping to the map. But I don't know where anything is! There are so many--too many! Her own idea of where all those high-speed masses were was clear, but that bore little relationship to this artificial representation. "Need to calibrate." How!? "Moons. Show me where the moons are."

Vanca's paws danced over the input field making vector lines appear. "Is that enough?"

Horn glowing, Gravity pushed her away and made the map spin until those lines matched up with what was in her mind. Then, attention divided across a vast tract of cluttered space, she started to sketch in huge arcing parabolas. "Can you dogs stop any of this?"

Vanca stared at the rapidly building tangle of lines. "Some. Maybe." The Synod's seal had finally been replaced with the head of some dog, rank insignia just visible on the shoulders of his equipment harness, and the Academician's ears folded back. "Too busy to take this one's call?" she snarled, teeth bared. "Get the Strategist here, immediately. The Hive is under attack."

===

The sudden commotion in the operations room drew Orgon's attention away from the rapid-fire planning session between the three functional Councillors. The fourth, Indutu, had been led away by a medical officer and was currently 'resting' with the aid of a certain amount of chemical assistance. A moment later, the priority alarm on his bracer gave a shrill chime, filling the conference room with its teeth-aching intensity.

This one suspects that any planning has been pre-empted. Orgon slapped the alarm away and stood, nodding to the Councillors, before striding to the command desk. "Report," he said, eyes fixed on the subscreen with Vanca's face. In response the video feed changed to a schematic of the world's surface, long spidery lines converging on the familiar shape of Lacunae Hive territory.

"There's nothing on the perimeter sensors and no movement on the backscatter radars..." one of the room's staff said tentatively, "...but they might not detect--"

"No. Send the alert. Launch a full sensor package."

The operator nodded, nervousness vanishing under the certainty of orders, his paws dancing over the command panel. Moments later, the main strategic maps started to update as hundreds of high-velocity drones, lofted by servitor-powered launchers, climbed over the horizon. Orgon let out a sigh as more icons appeared on the master map, the blue of 'unknown' changing to red. There was sudden movement in the ops room as members of the general staff converged on the central strategic command table. Response plans, long gamed out and practiced, were called up and modified.

There was a chime, a leaden thing that suggested a vast bell, and an unused display lit up with a red countdown. Five hundred seconds until Deadpaw activation, Orgon thought, staring at the strings of red lights arcing in from the surrounding Hives¸ not that it will make any difference with all our launchers targeted. "Will there be any spare capacity in the launchers?" he muttered, eyeing the response plan rapidly taking shape in the holographic display field that hovered above the central table, and feeling the gaze of the officer responsible for the automated retaliation system upon him. "Leave it running."

The officer nodded shakily, her own paws rattling as they tapped out commands on the panel. "Yes, Strategist. I-it will be a full response package."

"Good. The other Hives know this; it will stay their paws." Perhaps. He turned to the central table; the plan was stable, with only minor, flickering changes. "Can these ones respond with conventional weapons?"

"No, Strategist. These ones will not have capacity for counter-battery fire; everything will be required to defend the launchers." The Tactician's ears flattened and he glanced to his colleagues. "There is still the possibility of using the strategic arrays, but these ones caution against the use of thaumic weapons at this stage, given the disposition of our Arclight squadrons. These ones are only seeing counterforce strikes against our launch sites, not the summoning circles." He swallowed, glancing back at the holo display. "Assuming no terminal manoeuvring, the only countervalue attacks are against servitor corrals and associated management centres... and a slew of points in that," He gestured to a section of the map coloured pink and hidden under pony-generated pastel clouds.

Of course. Orgon nodded. What do they think to gain from this? They must assume we will evacuate all of ours. "Activate your plan, but give a higher priority to the servitor evacuation. Move them into the arcologies." Paws tapped on controls and battlenet took over, issuing automated orders that cascaded down through the chains of command.

===

Gravity's emotions were a confusing swirl in Fusion's mind, full of curving lines and towering mushroom clouds that made her blood become sluggish and her body fill with icy water. Streaks of blue-white terminated in titanic pulses of solar fire, while above them great columns of burning ash and vaporised rock climbed into the upper atmosphere. Among it all, angular shapes flitted, little seeds of darkness riding blue plasma, shedding lines of eye-searing green--

Not memories, but visions of the future. She's just imagining. What... Fusion's ears folded flat and she resisted the urge to push open the sharing and demand that Gravity talk to her. The panic at the other end of the link had turned to focus, a carefully organised three-dimensional map of lines intersecting with the surface of the planet. A heavily armed gryphon flew overhead and dived towards her, the sudden motion a distraction.

"Fusion, I have been ordered to--" He gave a little cry, veering away from the steam plume above the still boiling lake, coming into an untidy landing a few paces away. Shaking, he held out a pair of pony-scale earpieces in one set of talons. "Ellisif wanted to coordinate our response."

"Yes. She needs to disperse her forces; it looks like the dogs are going to target our wormhole arrival points." How much else? Are they going to scatter nuclear fire over our new home? Certainty settled across her like a weighted blanket. Of course they are. There will be no mercy. Fusion took the comms units, fixing one to her left ear and looping the elastic straps under horn and throat and over poll. The thing was military and purely physics-based, but had a backup thaumic interface and muttered words of controlled panic into her ear. She winced, turning down the volume and wished for the quiet-yet-always-audible voice of her old comms disk that would talk in the middle of her head.

"We are," the gryphon called out, jumping into the air and beating his wings rapidly, climbing towards a gunship that flew over the valley walls on growling engines.

What are we going to do with everyone? Fusion ran through their preparations, set in motion long before any negotiations with the dogs had even been dreamed of. We are dispersed, and every one of our new settlements has a team of ponies who have been digging tunnels and bolt-holes. We've stockpiled the food the dogs have given us; freezing meat for the gryphons and storing the dog's daily supplements for us.

The teleport pattern formed in Fusion's head and she frowned, ears flicking back at the memories of her paranoia about those food pellets. I don't like it, but what choice do we have? They are safer dispersed and dug in than in the paws of the dogs. We were careful; no one has told them where any of our settlements are, and what they can't see they can't hit. The clouds above were still the slightly pastel shades of multiple ponies' magic, and still impermeable to surveillance, if she believed anything Orgon had told her--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--appearing in the air above Gravity, the other mare not looking up at the pulse and thump of her arrival. "Can you stop any of them?" she called out, settling on the ground next to Vanca and the portable display.

"So many!" Gravity didn't seem to be talking to her, but was just speaking out loud. Her eyes snapped open, head swivelling track her. "They are not as fast as the Hammer, not even close." Her face convulsed, becoming agonised. "It takes me too long; I've moved a few, but they are still launching."

"We've done what we can and I don't think they can get many of us except by luck. The Hive tells me that they are evacuating all the remaining breeding centres and corrals." Fusion's face twisted into a smile. "Down to the depths of the arcologies. I think that's to ensure we don't just let all the dogs die." She stepped to Gravity's side, rubbing her head against the mare's neck. "This is not like the Hammer, Gravity. We can take the fight to them."

Gravity nodded, some of the panic leaving her eyes. "I can move stuff in orbit from anywhere, but it takes all my strength and focus. You'll have to do it." Her ears sagged, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. "I could drop rocks on some of the launch sites. It might force them to defend themselves."

Launchers like ours... full of ponies who have no choice. Fusion nodded, trying to keep an outward expression of calm certainty. "Yes. If you think that's best, do it. I know we said we'd only strike military targets, but there are other places you... you could consider." Fusion dipped her head, staring at her hooves. "The Hammer is more important if they use it. I'd relocate to somewhere else, just in case they can find a trace of your magic." She passed the other communicator to Gravity and waggled her head. "I've got one, but it won't work if I go anywhere far."

Gravity took a deep breath, eyes closing and wiping away her tears with the leading edges of her wings. "How will you get to where you are needed? We've no teleport patterns..." Her voice drifted off, attention returning to her magic.

"I'll fly." Fusion smiled and took a step back, the natural glimmer of her coat brightening and surrounding her with a golden glow, then jumped into a hover. "Get somewhere safe!" she called down, wings beating fiercely and the glow changing into a brilliant halo. Fusion vanished behind a vague distortion in the air, the only visible marker of the nested fields of defensive force and concealment, accelerating and leaving only the crack of a sonic boom in her wake.

===

Geodetic, strapped into his alcove at the bottom of the launch silo, moaned as the target list expanded in the virtual space of the propulsion herd's sharing. So many! I thought it was an exercise, I thought-- Pain flashed through his head, making the magic flutter. Through him, the rest of the herd felt the uncertainty and the whole thaumic edifice that was the drive spell warped and distorted, filling shadow sight with random flashes. Geodetic pushed the thoughts away, letting two gigaseconds of training, drills and actual launches take over.

Beneath his belly, pressed against the padded alcove floor by the restraint web, and visible in the shadow universe, were the complex structures of the autoloader and magazines. Shadow on shadow, machines able to move masses the size of freight cars engaged in a frantic dance in the depths of the base, lining up endless chains and loops of ammunition. The projectiles were the densest part, the deepest darkness in his shadow sight, borided tungsten and depleted uranium, solid bodies for armoured targets and tessellated masses of tetrahedra for exoatmospheric intercept.

The drive spell stabilised and Geodetic pulled the first batch of target coordinates out of the battlenet interface, the orbital elements filling his mind with curves of phantom light. Long practice found the impact points of those arcs, and he let out a soft whinny. Not the Arcologies, but the launchers and our corrals! They are shooting at us! Somewhere overhead, still over the horizon but getting closer at five kilolengths a second¸ were masses of hostile metal. The fear faded behind an iron determination and he gritted his teeth. "I won't let you hurt my Masters or my family."

He pushed his will out into the sharing, feeling the propulsion herd respond like they were his own legs. The first projectile, a tight cluster of pony-length needles, each a carefully packed array of tetrahedra no bigger than a horn-tip, was pulled out of the autoloader arm and into the tuned gravitational tube of the drive spell. It disappeared, thrown upwards in a crack of displaced air. Another followed it, then another and another, the stream becoming continuous and the mechanical sounds of the loader vanishing behind the buzz-saw scream of combining sonic booms.

More spells protected Geodetic's ears from the shockwaves, and the little alcove became bright and warm and filled with the scent of pony sweat as the stallion bent all of his strength to doing the job he'd trained his whole adult life to perform.

===

Fusion accelerated, holding the maps Ellisif had showed her in her head like it was a spell pattern. The layer of ensorcelled cloud lay below her, a variegated set of pastel shades that retained its integrity even though the ponies that powered it had all retreated to boltholes. The camouflaging power would persist for a while without them, but would not last forever; within a few tens of kiloseconds the web of simple spells would unravel and the clouds would vanish, laying all their hiding spots bare--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--the jump took her to the ragged edge of their territory, a rumpled, blinding-white plane of jagged ice boulders under a cloudless, indigo sky. The quiet mutter of Gravity's mind vanished with the sudden translation and Fusion reached for her sister again, then hesitated. The other mare's mind had been flooded with trajectories and the sense of a vast, cold weight moving in a distant orbit; there was a barely comprehensible complexity there, too much to risk the distraction. Fusion's ears drooped and she shivered, resisting the urge to turn and check all around for things creeping up on her. "I can see why we didn't go any further," she muttered, squinting into the brightness. The memory she'd used was from one of the long range scouts sent out to sweep for any hidden dog bases. It also sat just over Lacunae's long land border with Baur Hive.

Have I been seen already? Fusion took a deep breath of the stinging air and shook herself, rattling her feathers, before accelerating again. "Start the magic before you get too high... it's harder to add air to the system than just keep a hold of it," she whispered into the screaming wind, held at bay by the narrow cone of her personal force field. "This better work, Redshift." No time to practice, no time for anything.

The cone became double-ended, sealed off to the rear by a needle point, and Fusion cast the spell Red had taught her. It was simple, he'd told her, one of the very early ones he'd learned, but the thing was alien and far outside her normal area of expertise. Magic pulled the carbon atoms out of her exhaled air, turning it into a dark haze of suspended graphite dust. Telekinesis wadded the powder into a single pellet, then pushed it to the back of her field. She sniffed, sneezing at the sudden, acrid chemical taste then hurriedly altered the spell pattern before trying again. A second breath was much cleaner, with only a slight lightning-smell remaining. It would be embarrassing to die of ozone poisoning before I even get shot at.

I wonder if... The icescape rolled away beneath her hooves, all low hills long flattened by the grinding of the ice sheet, as she headed towards Celestia, charging the rising sun as fast as a railgun round. There was a familiar ache to the constant work, but it was almost a pleasant thing, like going for a long canter, and her mind wandered. It should be possible to do this magic inside my body, and not need a supply of air at all. Fusion frowned, thinking about all the other carbon atoms that she'd really rather remain where they were. Perhaps not. She built her defences and added to the fields, cloaking herself in darkness by folding the paths of incoming light into trajectories that never reached her body.

The shockwave just beyond the tip of her muzzle radiated heat into her field, raising the temperature of the trapped gasses, so she pulled it away, taking some tiny fraction of her prodigious power requirements from that patch of tortured air. Fusion added to her speed, opening herself to the flood of warmth from the distant sun. The blood drained from her head, a greyness creeping in from the edges of her vision¸ and she used more magic to coat her body with a halo of white-gold fire, turning muscle and bone into something akin to the strongest alloys.

The land seemed to stay empty, but by shadow sight there were sparkles that spoke of physical power. The flickers, hinting at the colours of superconductors and plasma held at high temperatures. The lights started to pulse and move, and Fusion altered her course in shallow curves and loops, the blood draining from head or hooves despite the gentleness of her manoeuvres. The lights changed course to match her, and she opened a hole in her laser defences, tuning the field to magnify the external world.

Light flooded in, making Fusion squint, and she looked past the glare of her plasma sheath. Out on the ice were black, blocky shapes containing the flares of superconducting light; they pulsed while stationary, then moved and pulsed again. In time those pulses were tiny puffs of vapour, the brief signatures of shockwave-induced clouds. There was a facility out there as well; a collection of buried structures that capped a deep coil of charged superconductors. You... I know you. A military base with a power reserve, just like in Lacunae.

Fusion smiled slightly, feeling for the tingle of the fast-moving electrons in their resistance-less prison. I fought to keep a place like you safe, once... Right now, the base was too far away, but at the speed she was going, everything was close. She bent her mind to speed, while simultaneously calling up the teleport spell and pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

===

The conference room at the other end of the video link was imposing, all black marble with a mirror finish, but smaller than might be expected for a body with ultimate power. Six chairs, one for each Hive, but only five were occupied. Despite the loss of the low-orbit relays, the feed was very good; the arrangement of the screens at Orgon's end made it seem like he was actually in the room.

"This one is sorry to spoil the Court's surprise, but perhaps they could have at least tried to negotiate for a little longer," Orgon said, keeping his tone pleasant. Displays around the periphery of the main screen showed the status of the Hive's defences and the slow arc of weapons crawling over the horizon. "These ones might have been able to reach a compromise."

Chief Justice Tundru looked annoyed, then waved a paw in disgust. "There is still time. Perhaps this extra pressure might focus the Strategist's mind," he rumbled. "Lacunae's failure to control its servitors is a grotesque failure of duty. The Hive leadership has been found guilty of crimes against Section Five. There will be no escape from Administration." Claws tapped out a tattoo on the desktop. "This one is certain that Lacunae's intelligence estimates are reasonably accurate, but he will spell it out for the Strategist. This is less than a quarter of these ones’ firing capacity. The Court is trying to cause as little damage as possible."

Orgon watched his external displays and the tactical summaries relayed with them. The overview map, complete with weapon trajectories, was getting a little cluttered as the first defensive fire climbed to meet the incoming projectiles. His smile widened slightly as some of the weapon tracks developed decidedly non-ballistic twists. So the ponies are helping... The image blinked and updated, displaying blobs of false colour at high altitude, each marked with the phrase 'gravitational anomaly'.

Even with this extra support, some of the weapons were going to punch through the Hive's defences; it was inevitable. There simply wasn't enough antimissile capability to ensure success; each incoming round had to be targeted by several shots. Worse: the projectiles could be dumb metal with only the most basic guidance, while antimissile rounds had to be sophisticated, expensive things. Lacunae just didn't have the magazine depth to hold out for long. Still, these ones might surprise them. He placed a call, pinging Merlon's comms disk.

"What exactly does the Court want this one to do?"

"The Court knows the Strategist has reached an... accommodation with the rogue servitors. Use that to kill them all."

"The bulk of the servitors are still Blessed and this one does still have access to labournet. He could order mass euthanisations... is that what Tundru means?" Orgon could see the red cloud of incoming fire start to break apart, individual particles missed by the up-rushing green dashing for the ground. His stomach twisted, and he resisted the urge to look at the damage estimates. His practiced smile never wavered.

"This is not the Court's decision. Lacunae must do its duty to safeguard the rest of the Hives."

"This one is open to suggestions... Orgon has tried before; he overloaded a primary energy reserve, the best part of half a megaton, next to one of the ponies. It survived. He's sure he could kill a lot of them, but the two that really matter--" He shook his head. There was a flash of pearly light and a quiet concussion of displaced air behind Orgon's back, at the centre of the temporary landing zone. The pony's timing is perfect, as always. His smile widened slightly at the expressions of shock on the Court representatives.

"Yes, Strategist. How can I be of service?"

Orgon's gentle smile flickered for an instant. There is something in the pony's voice... It wasn't much, but there was a tremor, a sense of despair, carefully hidden amid the attentiveness. "Merlon, the Court wants this one to resume his assault on the rogues. What does the pony think would be the consequences?"

Merlon stared back at Orgon, her eyes flicking to the video screen and back again. The silence stretched, and still she didn't speak. Orgon waited, pushing the uncertainty away. There's nothing more the Court can do to this one, but the pony...

"Strategist. You could ki-- murder a lot of ponies, if you wanted."

Orgon twitched, suddenly unable to suppress a sudden surge of fear. It was too much; the pony has had too many revelations. What did they tell Merlon?

Merlon bowed her head to the screen, then lifted her head and stared at Orgon. "The consequences would be..." Her mouth worked, and she swallowed. "I talked to Fusion, watched her work. She really cares about all the ponies she has taken responsibility for. Whatever Vanca did to her, it made something different. She is no longer a pony, not really. She thinks she is, but..." Merlon fell silent again, her gaze drawn to the strategic maps and their sparkle of colliding munitions.

"But?" Orgon said softly, carefully standing up and moving to Merlon's side. He raised a paw slightly, then lowered it when the skin on Merlon's shoulder shivered.

"The power radiates from her like she is the sun." Merlon laughed, the sound brittle and ending with a sob. "One of them actually called her Celestia, you know that?" The laugh returned, high and strained, then cut off. "You won't be able to kill her," she said, suddenly calm. "Too fast and too powerful. You know what else?" she hissed, ears back as she stared at the assembled Court. The People on the screen exchanged shocked looks that rapidly moved towards anger. "She is well aware that your soldiers, the gryphons in particular, have little choice in what they are ordered to do. She won't want to hurt them, but she will if she has to. She also knows that you are responsible and will seek a quick resolution with minimal loss of life. Pony life."

Orgon gently touched Merlon on the shoulder; this time the pony didn't shrink away. "All the Hives are under threat; please give these ones--" Here he indicated the screen with a sweep of his other paw. "-- some insight into the results of their actions. Orgon wishes to minimise the destruction."

Merlon sagged slightly, wings drooping. "Gravity is the angry one, but Fusion..." She shivered. "Her calm is unnatural. I am afraid of what will happen if she ever loses control. At best she will seek out those in command and attack them directly. At worst--" Her mouth snapped shut and she shook violently, all over. "We know she has some sort of link to Celestia, and that the sun responds to her somehow. Think on that before you try and slaughter her people."

===

~~~discontinuity~~~

--a flash, blue white, somewhere behind her, only seen through the clairvoyance nodes Fusion had placed around her defences. A pulse of fatigue, the extra effort required to keep the layered fields intact, flowed through her, but it was little enough compared the strength needed to keep them up at all in the face of the brutal blowtorch-blast of the air.

Fusion kept her eyes closed, viewing the world through the twin windows of shadow sight and clairvoyance. Power flowed through her, channelled out into the world; she grabbed a fraction of it and pinched off part of her plasma sheath, pouring energy into it until it glowed in the far UV and flickered with X-rays. She bit at the inside of her lips, straining to see any glimmer of hornlight from within the attacking vehicles. There, at the limit of her resolving power, were little flecks of pastel amid the darkness.

I'm so sorry. Fusion clenched her eyes tight-shut, but it did nothing to impede her view. She pushed, flinging the plasma bolus towards the attackers, her flight wobbling in the shockwave of its sudden departure. The confining magnetic field was not stable -- the pressure of the ionised gas was extreme and too much energy was radiated away in the ultraviolet -- so Fusion had to keep pumping energy into the rapidly receding spell.

Her target disappeared in a flash of white light and a fountain of dirty rock, and the other vehicles scattered, firing as they retreated in good order. She pushed another plasma bolt at them, turning one of the low hills into a crater and spraying pulverised rock over the pristine ice. None of the other vehicles, now clearly visible as heavy things running on four fat globular wheels, were hit, but most of them abruptly levitated and accelerated, abandoning their efforts for fire-and-movement.

She conjured another plasma ball, but kept a hold of it. I don't need to chase you down... perhaps the threat will be enough. Fusion dropped to a lower altitude, letting the horizon shelter her, and carried on towards her first real target.

===

"I'm sorry, Master, there is nothing I can do," Eutectic said, his ears drooping. "The pony is too far away and far too strong. I will try, but it might attract her attention and..." The Pilot didn't reply, just grunted. There was a hint of disappointment to the sound; a flash of pain made Eutectic grit his teeth. I did the right thing; if the pony attacked us we'd all be dead, no matter what I did. The memory of the shot that had killed bravo unit replayed itself over and over again in Eutectic's mind. How could a pony do that to a Master? "Master? What do you want me to do?"

"Nothing," the Pilot said, then killed the intercom.

Eutectic whinnied softly to himself, staring at the ring of displays within the little servitor bay and pushing away the prickle of the Maker's Punishment. A point of blue-white appeared next to the pony, or where the pony would have been, had it not been shrouded by a shrieking plume of incandescent air. No, not again! I can't-- The awful vision of the first shot resurfaced, all blinding flares and violent shockwaves that had riddled the hull with microfractures. The second had missed, or been just a warning, and the Pilot had fled.

The seconds ticked by, the heavy gauss tank's subsonic levitation drive no match for the pony or its weapon, but for whatever reason the pony didn't release the spell and just allowed it to fade. Eutectic let out an explosive sigh as the pony continued along its path, ignoring the squadron, dipping to drop over the horizon. We were just in the way...

There was a sharp crack from somewhere in the drive bay and the tank dropped sharply to the sound of curses from the Pilot. Eutectic busied himself with repairs, probing the levitator crystals and restoring enough mass nullification to permit the fans to slow their precipitous descent. It wasn't quite enough, and the tank struck ice with a stunning crash that threw Eutectic against his restraints.

"Can the pony fix it?" the Pilot growled.

Half the levitator array was a mass of chaotic splinters, fractured by the thaumic quench. Eutectic opened his mouth, then froze. "Not quickly, Master." he said in a small voice, "it will take a dozen kiloseconds, maybe more." Eutectic hunched his shoulders, cringing inside his restraints and waiting for the Punishment that would accompany the Pilot's inevitable recriminations.

There was an achingly long pause, long enough that Eutectic nearly begged for the pain just to get it over with, but the Master just sighed. "These ones are lucky to still be breathing, the Pilot supposes." The ground wheels, great silicone and diamondoid cable constructions, spun up in their cup-shaped housings and propelled the tank in the direction of their home base. "This one will call for recovery. The pony did what it could."

Eutectic's breath escaped in a silent sob. "Thank you, Master," he said, closing his eyes and bending his magic to repairs.

===

Shadow sight found it long before it came over the limb of the world. Blazing brightly, the near perfect diamond-white of many ponies working as one, the launch site was like a magnesium flare in the darkness. So many... This isn't just a pony in the repair bay of a tank, Fusion thought, then her eyes snapped open, seeing nothing but darkness. "Just? Listen to yourself, you stupid mare!" she screamed into the tight confines of her fields, the nausea switching to a sudden rage. There must be another way. Fusion allowed her weapon to cool and let her speed bleed away from its kilolength-a-second madness and down to something more like that of a dog fighter.

The ponies were pouring all their strength into their magic, a spell very similar to one Gravity had used back at the Institute to pull a dropship out of the sky. If I had her power, I could reach through any amount of armour. Fusion inspected the launch site, following the traceries of physics as they coiled down into the depths below the shaft that housed the ponies. Things moved within it, like food in the gut of some transparent creature from the benthic depths. But... you don't need to destroy the whole base, do you, you foalish mare? What about the magazines?

She pulled at memories of her fight within Naraka's basement levels, rapidly modifying the disruption spell she'd used on the dog airtanks, trying to stretch a little more range from the thing. Her fields contracted and stretched into a long double-ended needle, growing brilliant as the trapped air turned into Celestia-hot plasma. There will be defensive fire... Just got to get close enough for an instant. At least there's no Arclight yet.

Ahead, the constant swirl of pony magic faltered, slender threads of their power fumbling for her. The touch was tentative at first, rapidly growing stronger as all the ponies in the launcher turned their attention upon her.

===

The looks from the Court were disbelieving. They do not listen to their own scientists. This will not end well... Orgon sighed.

"Does Orgon think that little display will change things?" Tundru said with a snort. "These ones will contact the Strategist again in half a kilosecond." The screen went blank, showing only the World Court logo. Orgon stared at the screen, feeling numb, his mind empty.

"Talk to me about foals, Orgon."

The Strategist's head snapped around, but Merlon hadn't moved. She stood there, head down and wings brushing the floor, not looking at him. "What about them, Merlon?" he said, taking a slow step backwards, one paw caressing his bracer. The pony would never talk to this one like--

"Too many foals, Orgon. Too many mares at Naraka. I understand some sacrifice is necessary, but, but--" Merlon started to pace, a restless circling, her hooves making sharp scraping and clicking noises against the polished stone. "I was told only a pawful were used, but there were too many foals at Naraka. I even saw them myself, but didn't think."

"Yes," he said softly. "Too many. The truth is hard to take. Decisions were made to hide the truth, even from Security ponies. Fugue can strike even the most hardened. This one couldn't take the chance."

"No, I suppose not. You want to replace us, remove all the unnecessary pony and just leave the bit you found useful." Merlon stood still, frozen in mid-stride. Her voice was dreamy and distant. There was no anger at all, something that made the fur on the back of Orgon's neck stand up. "That's what Fusion told me... was she right about the nature of Naraka's work?"

"The program was started long before this one had any direct contact with it," Orgon said, trying to match the mare's detached tone. "But he was aware of it." There is no way to make this sound better than it is. The pony knows the truth; what this one says is less important than the way he says it. Orgon's mind whirled, but there were no words. He scratched at the ground with one paw, his ears drooping slightly.

The silence extended, seemingly to infinity, and Merlon nodded sadly. "I thought so." She gestured to the strategic map. "You should probably do something about that. I can't think of anything we can tell the Court that will stay their paw."

"Still the pony will work with this one. Orgon doubts he could do the same, if he'd had the same revelation." He sighed, staring at the strategic display. The red lights were multiplying as the surviving weapon packages started to dispense submunitions. Point defence systems flickered into life over the map as short-range mass drivers and lasers went autonomous and started to pour fire into the sky. Soon the ponies at the launch sites would have to divert their power to local defence, further reducing the Hive's mid-course antimissile capacity.

"I can be pragmatic, for now. What choice do I have?" Merlon scrubbed at her eyes with the leading edges of her wings. "Fusion could talk to the Court directly, if you thought it would help. She is carrying a standard comms set. The range is poor, but I'm sure Technical could manage something." Merlon let out a little whimper, sinking to the floor and closing her eyes.

===

There was a roll of thunder from somewhere over the horizon. An incandescent streak reached up into the sky, flanked by the narrow cones of shockwaves. Sparkles of light, completely silent, peppered the sky all around, the signature of metal meeting metal at closing speeds of over five kilolengths a second.

Technician Valith stared at the distant light show, visible through the armoured slit windows along one side of the command bunker, then dragged his attention back to the console. Is it the rogues? He shivered, remembering how the blue mare had dangled him over the demolished depths of the Security base. There was precious little to do in the hardened aircraft shelter; he was only here as part of a high security clearance service crew carrying out routine checks when the alarms had gone off. "Is Savan out of the launch bay yet?" he said into his comms bracer, moving to the thick inner windows and peering into the shelter. There was no response.

The view was poor -- he was high up on the wall of the shelter, and the weapon occupied most of the central volume. Flashing red lights ringed the shelter, casting lurid shadows onto the pre-stressed fullerene fibre-armourcrete walls, and the faint sound of a siren penetrated the thick windows. "Come on, get out of there! The reactor is nearly at temperature." There was no answer, and Valith fiddled with the console, trying to see if his messages were getting through. Comms lock down, he thought, feeling sick. It's on full automatic. The Deadpaw counter was spooling down at the centre of the main screen, and nothing he did could change that.

There were two exits from the shelter, both of them the rotating cylinder designs common to environments with a high radiation risk, and he couldn't see either of them from here. "Come on Savan, get out of there," he muttered, checking the door status indicators again. One of them flickered and changed to 'operating' and Valith slumped back against his chair. "Thank the Maker." He rubbed at his eyes with the pads of both paws, then stared morbidly at the weapon.

The size of a double-wide levitation train but needle-pointed fore and aft, it looked like the bodkin point of an antique crossbow bolt. Tiny afterthoughts of wings were spaced along the hull, little more than guidance vanes, things that were only really useful at airspeeds below a thousand lengths a second. The rest of it was a radar/ladar stealthy, supercavitating lifting body optimised for speeds in the high hypersonic regime. A hatch had opened in the midsection, mated with an arming conveyor under the floor. Bulky shapes were being fed into the belly of the weapon, like eggs being laid in reverse. On other screens, the same technological dance was being carried out in the other four shelters in the bunker complex.

More red lights ringed the inner shield doors, marking the arming of the explosively actuated pistons. Nozzles twisted and widened, in time with louvered vents ringing the windowless nose opening and closing. Dust blasted across the floor, then blue light stabbed briefly from the nozzles. That's it then. It's at temperature. Fat coils of braided hose, pulsing with refrigerant, prevented the core from turning to slag without external airflow, stealing the heat from molten salts of fissile elements that circulated through the minimally-shielded reactor body. Hard gammas and fast neutrons flooded the shelter, enough that a faint blue glow of ionisation haloed the rear compartment. Valith stole another glance at the console; the door had finished cycling.

Other displays had changed; target lists were populating a course map, each red circle marked with glyphs for penetration and yield. There was the sound of paws on the access ladder to the monitoring bay and Savan, panting heavily and her eyes wild, pulled herself into the cramped room, kicked the hatch closed, and slumped to the floor. "These ones are so screwed." Savan swallowed, closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then looked up at the ceiling hatch. "This place will be a target... should these ones go?"

Valith chewed at the back of one paw. "Valith doesn't know... a near miss will be worse if these ones are in the transit tunnels." The string of nuclear eggs had stopped and the hatch was closed. There were no more drive tests, but the rad counter gauge had climbed high enough that anything but a teleoperations rig would be twitching on the floor within a few paces. The Deadpaw timer continued to drop towards zero, then held at T-minus one hundred seconds.

"Stay here and wait it out, Savan guesses," she said, pulling off her equipment belt and scratching at the brown fur of her hips.

"Nothing these ones can do." Valith nodded, gesturing at the light show going on through the viewing slits to the outside world. "This one only hopes the servitors have orders to protect this base."

Savan's muzzle twisted into a bitter smile. "Perhaps these ones will get lucky and the thing will launch. At least then these ones will no longer be a worthwhile target."

34 - Force Majeure

Author's Note

A full plot summary can be found here. Do not read unless you are up to date! Spoilers!
Preread by: turol, NoeCarrier and Caliaponia.

34 - Force Majeure

This close, Fusion could see the complex depths of the magazine feeding the launcher, outlined with the dull tracery of superconductors lacing what must be the retrieval systems. It was in frantic motion, like a kicked ant's nest, dead shells of matter being transported into the tornado of magic that was the drive spell. No, not dead, what-- Her gut twisted and she tasted something foul at the back of her throat; at the heart of each projectile was a point of brilliance, just like she'd seen at Naraka.

Antimatter triggers... those are nuclear weapons. Responding to the questing ponies' magic with a stinging slap of her own power, Fusion opened her connection to the sun a little wider, pouring the excess into the unknown spaces within her mind. The other magic came back, strong enough to make her flight wobble and allow flickers of light through the nested force fields, as the ponies let the drive spell fade and switched to attacking her. I'm sorry. Tears of frustration filled her closed eyes as she released the thaumomagnetic pulse.

The magic rippled out, a shockwave of rainbow light that flowed through ice and rock like it wasn't there, washing over the lower levels and leaving darkness in its wake. For a moment the points of white remained, then they too vanished with stroboscopic flickers. Fusion curved away, keeping low and trying to get the horizon between her and the launcher, but there was no sudden glare of X-rays or brutal slam of heat. Hope rose; many -- all? -- of the pastel pony-lights were still present. The triggers didn't fire! A vast relief washed over her, and her next breath came out as a sob. Fail-safe; they didn't want to risk an accident.

Mechanical motion stopped in the depths, replaced by an agitated swirl from the pony-lights above and a near-directionless haze of many different spells being cast at once. Any effort to hold Fusion vanished as the other ponies scrambled to make their base safe.

How many launch sites do they have? Fusion dug into her memories of the hurried briefing, trying to remember the scattering of lights across an unfamiliar global map. Too many... and how will I find them all? The world is too big; I can't see it all.

There was a quiet tone in one ear and she flinched before realising it came from the long-silent military receiver that wrapped around that side of her head. Fusion suppressed the sudden desire to rip the thing from her ear and crush it to powder, the urge held back by curiosity.

"Can the pony hear this one? The comms unit is reporting a connection."

"Identify yourself," Fusion muttered, "and how are you talking to me?" Any local transmitter will be from a different Hive and--

"This is Sakaro, communications liaison at Redoubt Kappa. The Court is allowing these ones access to their high-orbit surveillance arrays. They want to talk to the pony directly."

They do, do they? "Right." Fusion headed in the direction of the next launcher, climbing to get above the dense air. The horizon curved and the sky darkened, filled with the glitter and swirl of the debris ring. Little lights streaked through the dark, drawing brief lines from horizon to horizon. The meteors flew in random directions and showed a curious mix of colours; whites and greens and reds, some amazingly intense. The land below, darker than the sky, was alive in the shadow sight of her missing eye.

Mostly subterranean, as in Lacunae Hive, the lights of crystal thaumic magic were highly localised into a web of tunnels and dense nodes; not big enough to be arcologies, at least not the sort she was used to. Involuntarily, spell patterns assembled themselves in the back of her mind. Concentrations of solar heat, brought into being directly in the voids and spaces within the Hive's structures without crossing the intervening distance. Living creatures, flesh boiling and fur flashing to mad flames, under the lash of superheated-- Fusion trembled, pushing away the sudden, horrible, vision. Not what I'm looking for. Things are not bad enough. Yet.

Fusion moved on, wishing for a better way to navigate. Finally, the launcher separated from the general magical haze, a deep line of pony-pastel against the harder, artificial colours. The thaumic pulse spell built again, and she tuned it, narrowing the beam and increasing its range. "If the Court wants to talk, it should start by halting the attacks on Lacunae Hive," she murmured, pulling down solar power and letting it fly once more.

===

Orgon suppressed a smile at the pony's response, studying the faces of the Court's representatives. Confusion, mostly, followed by anger. How dare this creature instruct us. He snorted, following the bright dot across Baur territory as it wiggled and wove between the isolated launch sites. It crawled, its speed made deceptively slow by the distance. It will do a lot more than that. The implications of its kin's power do not bode well for any conflict... "The Court can see what this one has to deal with," he said quietly. "In truth, the pony only wants what any Person would want; these ones all--"

"Servitors are not People and the Strategist is insane if he thinks that they are!" the Soro Judge snarled. "The pony will surrender or its kind will suffer the consequences."

There was a delay as the signal made its long light-speed crawl to high orbit and back down. "You already said that, Judge. As far as I can see, you are going to kill them all anyway," Fusion said over the voice-only channel. "I have nothing left to lose, do I?" There was a grunt of effort, matched by a sudden shift in the bright dot's direction. It merged with the icon of a launcher, then the bright arcs of ballistic fire reaching up from the military base suddenly ceased. "You don't believe I can really hurt you, do you? Not you, personally. I will end this with the minimum loss of life on all sides, but I will not sacrifice my ponies to do it. You are not out of my reach, Judges."

"I told you," Merlon giggled, a high-pitched whinny of a sound. "She'll hunt you down and burn you out of whatever hole you are hidden in." Orgon touched her on the back of the head and the pony quieted.

The words hung in the air and for the first time a few of the Court looked uncertain. The Soro Judge leaned forward, glaring at Orgon through the screen. "The pony might have cowed Lacunae Hive, but it has no leverage over the rest of these ones. The Court will call for mass euthanisations if the pony does not comply."

"Merlon? Is that you?" The dapple-grey mare looked in horror at the screen with its icon representing the voice call. "There will be no burning if I can avoid it."

"How dare the pony ignore--!" the Baur representative, fur bristling and ears flattened, ground out, his claws raking grooves in the leather-coated table.

"What is there to talk about, Judge? There is nothing I can say that will convince you to stay your paw, so while you rant I will continue my work. Please keep talking; the landscape here is not very interesting. Perhaps you could tell me a little about yourself... I don't even know your name." There was another grunt and another of the launch sites stopped firing.

"This one is Chief Justice Tundru. The pony's kind will know this one's name before the day is over! He has been told the pony's comms equipment has a display. It should watch and understand."

===

A small light, rich with the dot-speckle patterns of laser light, bloomed in the darkness of Fusion's defensive fields, searching out her blinded eye. Sighing, she pulled the comms unit away from her head and twisted it until it fitted to her other ear. The light flared and leapt into focus and the lasers found her retina, showing an aerial shot of a grassy field surrounded by low, multi-coloured shelters. There were trees; the sharp shapes of evergreens. Ponies were lined up across the field, row upon row of them, mares, stallions and foals. Along the bottom of the screen were strings of numbers.

Fusion's breath quickened. Amid the ranks was a pony with the bulky panniers of a medic. That looks like... "Where is that?"

"That is within Baur Hive," Orgon said. "Approximately a megalength from the pony’s location. The time stamp claims to be current." There was a pause and Orgon's tone changed to one of warning. "Judges, the pony doesn't respond well to threats--"

"Orgon has failed in his duty! It is quite clear that he is too weak to take the required actions. Servitor, that is a live feed. It is one of the Hive’s corrals... the current population is three hundred and nineteen." Tundru's voice had turned silky. "Is prescience one of the many powers Orgon assigns to the pony? The Medic will carry out its orders." The tone for the last words was different; a command, directed to someone else.

The medic-pony looked up, staring at the flying camera. Her mouth opened, an 'o' of dismay, magic flaring around her horn with random flashes of yellow. One of the panniers was opened and an injector removed. It floated in a halo of magic, trembling slightly.

"Orgon, give me a vector," Fusion snapped, turning her path to the south and warmer climes. No snow, lots of conifers. "Judges, none of you are out of my reach. Even on Luna. Do you understand me?" Sickness welled up inside her. I'm not fast enough. Fusion's course curved upwards as she listened to the whisper of the communications liaison, bending it a little further to the south at the dog's prompting. Light flooded in, the harsh glare of Celestia on snow, and she squinted, imagining a place on the horizon--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--air slammed into her and was shrugged aside, its force made small by her altitude. "The pony will not get to the locat--"

~~~discontinuity~~~

--snow giving way to scattered rocky valleys of a high plateau, dotted with stunted trees in sheltered places. Another slam, but even weaker. The world was spread below a dark indigo sky, its edges gently curved and shaded red-gold by her plasma sheath. "--in time." The image reappeared, the medic pony stroking the neck of a stallion as she pressed the injector to the artery under his jaw. His eyes rolled up and his legs gave way, depositing his body untidily on the grass. Fusion stared, momentarily mindless, her speed bleeding away to the subsonic, as the medic stepped to the next pony in line. A ripple of shock ran through the herd, but nopony ran.

"Damn you," Fusion whispered. "You would destroy yourselves to get to us."

"The pony will surrender immediately to the Court's forces. This is only a taste of what the future holds for the pony's kind." The voice changed, sounding like the owner was starting to smile. "That corral holds less than zero point one percent of Baur Hive's servitor population. These ones will take the loss."

"I made myself a promise at the start of all this, Judge. I have been helpless my whole life." Fusion squinted at the horizon. I will be too late to save them all. Her speed built again, the plasma sheath growing bright enough to make her shine like a star. Fusion's mind reached out, building the teleport pattern again. "By doing this you condemn yourselves, Judges. You should listen to Merlon, she understands. I will not be helpless anymore."

~~~discontinuity~~~

===

Gravity sweated and strained, hidden in the depths of a shadowed valley under the pastel clouds cloaking a large chunk of northern Lacunae. The tactical table, linked by non-causal communicator to the strategic networks deep in the Hive, showed the incoming fire from scores of launchers across the world, but she ignored it. She had her eyes closed, following the action by the feel of motion at suborbital altitude. Her power fumbled at the projectiles, trying to pull them off course while Arclight projectors were a constant drain on her strength. It should have been easy, but it wasn't. The distance was too great and there were too many of the things; every single one had some measure of guidance and would actively fight her adjustments. A few were starting to leak through and the numbers were increasing.

"I can't stop them!" she snarled, making Vanca flinch. At the back of Gravity’s head was the link to Fusion, stable now that the other mare had stopped her frequent teleports. What was coming back through was disturbing in its own right; a building sense of horror and impotent rage.

"I saw what the pony did with that debris ring fragment--" the Academician started, falling silent when Gravity flicked a wing in her direction.

"But if I do that I can't stop..." Gravity let out a groan, mind submerged in the projectiles that were swarming through the upper atmosphere.

"The pony's success rate is dropping," Vanca whispered, taking a few steps backwards. "It is going to be overrun."

Gravity's ears folded back and she tossed her mane, tail whipping from side to side. What do I let the dogs kill? She let out another groan, diverting some of her attention to the debris ring fragments, high above the ballistic paths of the incoming weapons. But what do I hit? Too many ponies... Rocks in high orbit started to shift, momentum transferred through hidden paths, sending some climbing while others fell. The enemy Arclights... all the projectors seem to be static. Fusion needs to get close to hit them, but no crystal engine in the world will stop me from dropping rocks. No ponies to worry about in those Arclights. I hope.

Thoughts of Fusion made the connection a little firmer, bringing with it images of the complex systems inside dog military bases and a vindictive pleasure at twisting them. What have they done, Fusion? There were other thoughts, the slumped body of an unknown pony, dead but unmarked, accompanied by a feeling of impotent rage.

Her grimace changed slowly into a smile, and she matched the installations on the strategic map to the patterns in her head. The smile faltered, but she didn't stop working. How many will die because I can't stop those weapons?

Things were flicking by overhead, too small and fast to be seen, but she could feel them. The sky was suddenly scored with the laser-straight lines of reentry vehicles crashing through the atmosphere with most of their launch velocity intact only to disappear into the clouds. Then came the silent flashbulb pops of light, distant things that were only seen by reflections off low clouds, until one wall of the valley lit up with an intolerable brilliance.

Vanca yelped, curling into a ball, but Gravity ignored it. They are firing blind through our clouds... nearly... nearly... The ground pulsed under her hooves, the shockwave shaking the needles from trees and triggering rock falls. Orbital adjustments complete, she exhaled sharply, then inhaled, grabbing the Academician, strategic display and non-causal communicator. Magic fluctuating slightly in time with her frantic heartbeat, Gravity scrabbled for an escape pattern as a Mach front rolled over the valley wall--

~~~discontinuity~~~

===

Lilac stared up at the smooth rock ceiling and closed his eyes. A tiny push of effort opened his mind to the shadow universe, replacing the dull greys and pinks of granite with the tangled webs of magic that laced the clouds. The power was still there, even though most of the ponies had retreated underground, but the spells were starting to unravel. Too many losses... can't make any spell completely self-contained. Entropy is everywhere.

He turned his gaze downwards, sweeping his magical sense through the tunnel-riddled rock beneath his hooves. The volume was filled with the varied pastels of ponies, large and small, and the more uniform golden lights of gryphons. All my friends are here... they gave me a life, something more than that stunted thing I had, and what have I given back? I'm a mediocre medic at best, doing things that Spiral could do in her sleep.

He searched the sky again, picking out the tiny glows of ponies, more by the magic they fed into the clouds than by their own colours. There are not enough ponies in the sky to keep the magic alive... how long before it all unravels? "I'm no use down here, but that magic is easy." Lilac opened his eyes, gazing intently at the rock, then spread his featherless wings. Shards of pale purple light materialised in pairs from the leading edges, the magic filling the triage cave with flickers of light and a melody of high tones.

Breathing hard, Lilac relaxed the hold he had on the magic, keeping it alive with a trickle of power and attention. Carefully, he moved his hind legs with the same purple fire, then faster as keeping both sets of magic active became easier. He headed for the surface access tunnel, unsteady walk becoming a smooth, forward trot. "No time like the present," he muttered, jumping upwards and spreading his crystalline wings.

He felt light and the ground fell away in unsteady jerks. He climbed rapidly, nervousness evaporating as the time he'd have to rebuild the magic went from impossible to probably okay to easy. His frown of concentration relaxed, turning into a delighted grin. "This is far better than I remember!" He dared a small swoop, then a roll. Tears filled his eyes. Here I can be just like any other pony. Turning in a wide circle, he surveyed the approaching cloud base, becoming attuned to the tangle of spells bound to the water drops.

They were all basic things, more powerful versions of the magics cast by foals in training. Many were still strong, woven into complementary loops and networks, but here and there were the patches of fading colour he'd seen from the ground. Nodding at a passing pony -- the mare had swung by to look at him, attracted by the unexpected radiance of his wings -- he plied the remainder of his power to rebuilding the spells.

The spells lacing the clouds reformed under his touch and he flew through the enchanted droplets, spreading completeness wherever he went. There was lightning in the distance, silent flashes filtered through dark clouds, but something about it didn't seem right. Too spread out... where's the pattern? Any real storm would be focused in one area, one set of convection cells, but this was from random points all around. I didn't think we were allowing any storms... we want clouds, not rain!

What little mental space he had left chewed on the problem and came back with an unwelcome answer. Are the dogs trying to drive us out? He stopped his work on the spells and climbed rapidly, emerging above a moonlit cloudscape. The sky was filled with falling lights, brilliant things that persisted far longer than any dust-meteoroid, dropping from the blackness above to vanish in the swirling vapors. Where they struck the clouds flashed white, the too-bright glow fading quickly through yellow to red, like hot iron quenched in water.

Something fell nearby, a fast streak that flicker-flashed with the irregular atmospheric density it passed through, vanishing behind one of the many mountains. Another flash, lightning-bright, a sudden pool of brilliance that followed the outline of the targeted valley. Lilac's mouth dropped open as the clouds boiled away around a rising globe of orange fire, too bright to really look at. How many ponies are under that strike? No hole in the side of a hill will help there--

Mind filled with the vision of that rising fireball, the little feather-blades of magic on his wings blinked out, and Lilac fell.

===

Messages popped up on Orgon's console, distracting him from the rapidly accelerating crawl of Fusion Pulse across the distant territories of Baur Hive. They are ready. Finally, this one has something to bargain with. "Representatives of the Court, cease the attacks, or Orgon will destroy one arcology every one hundred seconds."

"The Strategist can do no such thing," Tundru sneered. "This one makes Orgon a counter offer. The Court will use the Hammer to obliterate every last trace of Lacunae Hive, no matter the consequences to the rest of the world."

"Chief Justice Tundru, this one does not want to kill unnamed billions as a demonstration, so he must commit a lesser atrocity first." Orgon nodded, ears folding back and slight smile fading. A series of claw tip-sized video windows opened, showing neat clusters of gryphons in full armour and rows of gunships, drives idling. A score of Security ponies were in each location, horns glowing. The readiness reports were all green. Not straight suicide units like Baur Hive had used, that is something. They can be recalled. "The Court will recall Merlon's teleport." He gestured to the pony, curled into a tangled ball of legs and wings. He felt a pang of guilt, then pushed it away.

"The Court is receiving these video feeds, this one trusts?" The expression of the Judges said it all: confusion, hostility and amusement. So be it. His paw swiped along the list, indicators flicking from green to red. The ponies leaped into the air and their horns flared, making the gryphons, their vehicles and themselves, disappear. Three jumps to Arcology Prime, perhaps a dozen seconds... "The Court will find out within a count of twenty that this one is perfectly serious and capable of carrying out his threats." They may even find out slightly before this one does. His lips drew back from his teeth. "Chief Justice Tundru will recall what Baur Hive did to Lacunae at the start of the Three Day War."

The Court representatives exchanged glances with each other, but Tundru just stared at Merlon. "Orgon can't--" He flinched, responding to something the Strategist couldn't hear, his eyes moving to some concealed display.

Orgon's secondary displays came alive, a video feed from the nose of a gunship at the centre. Wreckage and fire was all around from the hole the aircraft had punched in a thin spot in the arcology roof. Uplink confirmed... More video windows bloomed, feeds from gryphon helmet cams, other gunships and several Security ponies. The space they were in was cavernous, a high-ceilinged volume between cyclopean stacks of barrack apartment blocks on the edge of Arcology Prime. The roar of gunship turbines echoed in the space, large as it was, like captive thunder, and the attack team split up, diving towards the blocky entrance of one of the accommodation blocks.

The beachhead is in place. Another pair of ponies appeared, a gunship floating between them in a smear of rainbow light. They vanished, making way for another. "This one now has the ability to project force to any location within any other Hive. If this one can send a functioning assault force, imagine how easy it will be to send strategic weapons."

===

Rthar resisted the urge to lift his faceplate and scratch at the persistent itch under his muzzle, and settled for bitterly missing his personal armour. There was a numb feeling behind his eyes; a side effect of the medic servitor's mental tampering. He picked at the blankness like it was a missing tooth. Perhaps this one shouldn't--

There was a tap on his shoulder, making him jump. "What?" Rthar snarled, the growl echoing in the confines of his helmet. Comms off, thank the Maker. The other suit, tagged with the wearer's name and rank, pointed to the curved side of his helmet. Rthar blinked, then leaned forwards, touching helmet to helmet. What can't go over the comms network?

"The briefing said the Captain was held captive by the ponies... but this one wants to know why he is on this mission. How was the Captain cleared for combat?"

"Trauma block," he said, taping at the side of his helmet with one deactivated fighting claw. "Apparently this one has special insight into how to work with servitors that have full autonomy." Something in the other Person's posture spoke of great distaste. "These ones have no choice," Rthar said, feeling a great fatigue. "He has seen the same briefing documents as the rest of the task force, but nothing really prepares a Person for what that actually means." The power to demolish a mountain.

There was silence, then the other soldier shifted his weight from paw to paw. "The Captain has been... moved by the ponies before?"

Ah, so that's it. Rthar grinned. The trooper doesn't like what's coming. "Yes, several times. The sergeant wasn't briefed?"

"Yes, but..."

"Blink and the sergeant will miss it. One moment here, the next..." Rthar shrugged. "...wherever the pony decides to put this one. Rthar doesn't think the arrival point can be inside anything solid."

There was an indrawing of breath, but the battlenet notification chime sounded and Rthar pulled away, patting the sergeant on the shoulder. The ready room, filled with vehicles and ranks of troops from three species came alive with flashes of pastel lightning as Security servitor magic filled the air. The room emptied, quickly, then it was his turn. The pony's magic lifted him off the metal floor and he made his paws into tense balls of muscle and bone--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--still in the air, passed from pony to pony in some open bit of farmland, the cereal crop flattened and chewed by the concussive thumps of teleport arrivals. Another flash, directly overhead, and a gunship went from not there to there like a bad special effect, before blinking out again. The other pony, breathing hard and with eyes looking a little wild, nodded once and made its horn glow a bright--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--explosions in the distance and the roar of a gunship's engines. Concrete of a surface monorail cargo relay station suddenly under his booted paws. Rthar staggered sideways with the expected-yet-unexpected motion of arrival, nearly falling. There was shouting, unintelligible under the thunderous hammer of a point defence railgun sitting on six clawed legs, as it shot at some invisible target in the sky, then more magic threw him into the air and--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--screams and the battle-charged calls of gryphons, echoing from tall concrete canyons of apartment blocks around the central parade ground. Rthar breathed again, his first inhalation for what seemed like forever, and twisted, scanning the roof. Still intact; no comms yet. One of the gunships tilted nose-up, the spinal mass driver filling the air with shockwaves and noise that would have burst unprotected eardrums. Explosions overhead and the whining passage of spallation fragments striking scars in the walls high above the ground, then daylight spilled into the subterranean structure, solid bars of cream and brown in the dusty air.

Updates cascaded through his command interface as a connection was made with a Lacunae satellite, one of several kept dark and silent in distant orbits for just this sort of eventuality. Comms lag warnings came with the updates; it was taking nearly two seconds for the data to make the round trip. Teams at the other end of the link would be pouring over the data sent from himself, the gunships, the gryphons and the countless sensors they'd variously strewn, fired or flown to every spot in range.

There had been People in the plaza between the buildings; some were still running for cover, ignored by the task force as long as they were unarmed and kept running. Others, the cadets or the security forces occupying the base that had tried to stand their ground, littered the concrete with bodies and parts of bodies, surrounded by the spray patterns of fast impact blood. A bleep, and a marker appeared in his HUD, highlighting the entrance to one building, now tagged instructor's quarters.

Half of the taskforce surged in that direction while the rest deployed to defend the perimeter. Gunships peeled off, missiles leaping from belly-bays to detonate in the connecting tunnels, filling them with rubble and twisted wreckage. No help coming that way. There would be other routes, but they would be small things, maintenance tunnels best suited for the occasional pony. Rthar glanced upwards at the hole in the arcology roof. Still could drop in that way.

## Antimagic defences still acting to support ballistic strikes. ##

The words appeared in a line across the top of his view, vanishing when he stared at them for a moment. These ones won't have long before Baur understands the threat. Trapped, held in place by the effects of what passed for Arclight in Baur territory...

There was gunfire coming from the entrance to the instructor's barracks, but it was little more than a rattle of personal firearms. Heavily armoured 'breacher' gryphons variously shot, blasted or charged into the building, making multiple openings in the front walls and crashing bodily through high-level windows. There was little actual fire from the gryphons -- the high frequency scream of the autocannon was very distinctive -- they were under orders to capture as many of the Baur military staffers as possible.

Rthar listened intently to the battle reports, following the rapidly moving dots of assault teams as they flooded the structure. At his back were a pair of fidgeting ponies, both anonymous in full Security barding, flinching and shying at each scream or explosion. Magic flickered over their horns, the only part of their bodies exposed to the air, making undirected waves of sensation flow over Rthar's fur. He shifted, resisting the urge to rub at his arms through the armour suit. Let them be, they need to do something.

A green light flicked on in a part of the partially constructed HUD map, highlighting a small room in the outer zone of the barracks building. He crouched slightly, then trotted forwards, waving to the servitors to follow. The room was the quarters of an unknown Baur instructor, and had been roughly cleared, the furniture and personal belongings smashed and thrown into the compact bathroom. The floor was now covered with a collection of angry and frightened People, bound paw to paw with self-locking metal strips.

Muzzles strapped shut they were unable to talk, but their eyes came alive, full of furious questions. Rthar grinned, gesturing to the Security ponies. "The soldiers are probably trying to say that they won't cooperate with this one. Don't worry, it doesn't really matter what these People do."

"Sorry, Masters," the first pony said, bowing its head. "I promise this will not hurt, but you may experience some discomfort if you fight my magic." The pony folded its legs, amber light flickering over its horn.

There was more gunfire outside, but in the room the silence was absolute. Come on, come on. Rthar resisted the urge to pace and add extra stress to the servitors. The animal muttered something, gesturing to one of the People. The other pony stepped delicately forwards, picking its way between the squirming bodies, then bent down to study the indicated individual. Its eyes closed and more hornlight flickered and flashed, casting strange, shifting colours across its muzzle.

"I have it, Captain Rthar," the first pony said. "This Master--" It flicked an ear, or rather the sensor stalk that connected to the ear, still safe inside the helmet. "--is involved in training for their anti-magic systems. That one--" Another ear flick. "--has a similar set of skills, but was originally based at a different facility. They have both visited multiple sites."

"Can the pony tell which ones?" Rthar leaned forwards, fascinated. These ones should have used the ponies far earlier; a normal field interrogation...

"Master, the three facilities in the northern sector defence ring." It nodded, magic fading. "That should expose the centre of Baur Hive."

"Perfect. The pony will extract the information." Quickly. Somewhere out in Baur territory, Arclight emplacements would be duelling with Lacunae's own ballistic weapons, hunting for traces of antimatter that marked nuclear weapons. All it would take would be an alert operator to realise the threat this operation posed... Rthar kept silent, letting the servitors work.

===

The sudden rush of wind cut through Lilac's fur, bringing him back to the here-and-now. He inhaled sharply, mind full of the magic that should have rebuilt the faux-feathers, but instead of sharp-edged planes that would direct the air, all he got were fine threads and short-lived puffs of colour.

Lilac plummeted towards the gently glowing clouds, punching through the intangible surface and into the damp, cold turbulence below. More magic, the almost instinctive kind that every pony learned from foalhood, took over, tying him into the myriad of tiny droplets and slowing his fall. It was like dropping through a trillion spiderwebs, each one absorbing a fraction of his mad velocity until he was still.

Gasping, eyes wide, Lilac gave a shaky laugh and slumped, body buoyed up by the simple magic. "How close am I to the underside of the clouds?" The powered fog was all too effective a barrier to his shadow sight, like a powerful light that blurred all details.

Frantic heart slowly calming, Lilac closed his eyes and carefully rebuilt his wings, doing his best to ignore the flashes, now joined by distant rumbles. A dozen breaths later he'd finished the primaries and gave a cautious flap, resuming powered flight. Control was shaky and unstable without the secondaries and coverts, and Lilac started to descend, faster than he would like. Still better than a fall!

Another hundred breaths and he was in clear air again, the dark valley beneath lit by the eerie, flickering glow of distant detonations. "Coming up here was really stupid," he muttered, spying the arrowhead shapes of diving ponies; it was the rest of the cloud maintenance teams, fleeing for shelter. Time to join them. Lilac folded his partial wings and fell towards the shelter's entrance tunnel.

===

The sun moved across the sky in stuttering jerks, small enough that if you weren't looking for it just appeared to be a continuous accelerated motion. Under her hooves the ground flowed and changed like it was a distant dream, rolling away at a velocity that would have been measured in kilolengths a second if Fusion was moving through real space. As it was, there was no hypersonic motion, no incandescent shockwave just ahead of her muzzle, just a tooth-aching vibration from the chain of teleports.

The horizon was alight with the patterns of crystal thaumic machines. Bright shapes, nodes and lines, laced the dark volumes of the shadow world, filling it with a complexity matching that of the centre of Lacunae Hive. Amid all this activity were places where the dog's machine magic was twisted and sucked away into points of darkness. Fuzzy bars reached out, like negative torchlight through hazy air, intersecting at places in near orbital space. At these points, the deep violet of Gravity's magic curdled and drained away.

Those must be the inbound weapon tracks... some smart dog has realised they can stop her. The thought flicked through Fusion's mind, nearly buried under the constant flow of teleport patterns. The whisper in her ear was hard to follow -- whatever the dogs were using to beam their signal to her was having trouble keeping up -- but she had aligned her vector some time ago before increasing the tempo of her spell casting.

Those beams of curdled darkness were moving, sweeping across the sky to dip low, the long straight paths foreshortening as they--

No!

Fusion veered sideways, her next jump aborted. The beams converged a few kilolengths ahead -- just where her next arrival point would have been. She paused, sick uncertainty filling her gut, imagination watching the medic working down the line of trembling but compliant ponies.

"These ones may be able to provide the pony with a distraction," whispered the comms unit in her ear.

Fusion flinched, nearly tumbling, then nodded, teeth grinding. "Make it fast," she shouted, making another teleport jump, this one in a random direction as the dark searchlight beams sought her out. She made her jumps as random as she could, while still trying to close the distance to the corral. Slow! Too slow!

===

"Master, we are attempting to find a teleport locus we can use. The Arclight emplacement is operating and the magical distortions are too strong to get directly inside the complex."

Rthar nodded, keeping his expression attentive and burying the urge he felt to scream at the nervous servitor. "Anywhere inside the main security perimeter would help. What about the main access tunnel?"

The pony's expression cleared and she nodded vigorously. "Yes, Master! The primary tunnel is large enough for a dozen gunships, if you can breach the main doors."

Rthar frowned, studying the layout of the Arclight installation in his HUD. There were no details, just the main tunnels and shafts, all mapped over the megaseconds by careful examination of satellite gravimetric data. The location indicated by the servitor was within the defence perimeter; the Arclight machinery shared the base with a battalion of heavy armour, and all the weapon systems that entailed. All of which will be pointing outwards. "No Hive is adequately defended against this sort of attack," he muttered, passing the information along and watching as orders came back through the local commanders. Not against the sorts of weapons these ones will use. He swallowed, thinking of the bone-white ceramic eggs kept in several of the gunships. There's a lot of rock to get through... how close is close enough?

The pony had the rapt expression of one listening to the divine, and stood bolt upright. "Master, I have my orders. I am to take you in the second wave, once the demolition teams are ready."

He nodded, taking a furtive glance out of the window. Already other servitors were hovering in the big empty space between the buildings, pairing up with howling gunships. Information cascaded across his visor: engagement plans, expected layout and response times, orders not to use thaumic flight near the suppressor -- The gunships vanished in pulses of pastel light, the concussive thumps of inrushing air rattling the windows. Somewhere out in Baur territory there was now a real fight, not the silly, one-sided thing they’d just been through.

Rthar left the room on the hooves of the servitor, past a pair of People rock-bolting a case to the floor. One of the faceless, armoured figures raised a thumb claw to the other, who nodded, tapping out a code on a small panel. A timer started, counting down from one hundred. The servitor glanced at the weapon, its ears folding back, but said nothing. "It is necessary... Baur won't believe these ones otherwise," Rthar said softly, "It will be terrible, but a far greater number of deaths will be avoided."

The servitor paused, head lowered. "Yes, Master." It shivered all over, then cleared its throat. "Captain, are you ready? I will take you all at once."

"Yes, do it--"

~~~discontinuity~~~

--unbalanced, thrown sideways by the change in spin vector, straight into a world filled with explosions and the blinding glare of weapon lasers. Claws on his shoulder, dragging him at a sort of limping gallop across rubble-strewn concrete. There was the shell of a gunship, burning fiercely with the electric hue of failing superconductors while ammunition cooked off in its belly-bays.

The cavernous volume of a primary transit tunnel arched overhead, perhaps two score lengths to the concrete ceiling and its regular array of vents and other unidentifiable hardware, partially obscured behind a pall of dirty smoke. Drives howling, Lacunae gunships maneuvered in the tight confines, unable to use their high mobility and resorting to pumping out vast quantities of electromagnetic noise and physical countermeasures. Variable intensity IR and vacuum ultraviolet decoys spiralled and darted from dispensers, filling the air with smoke that was rapidly reducing visibility to less than a pawful of lengths.

Rthar's vision systems fought the smoke, but the stuff was designed to block everything in the near-IR and was hot enough to render thermal imaging futile. Friendly markers peppered his HUD, populated by the mesh network communications system linking all the soldiers, but did little more than make what little he could see a confusing mess of neon-coloured iconography. "Status report," he gasped, shaking off the claws and lurching into a stumbling run through the glare-filled fog.

"There was a mixed unit of infantry and armour in the tunnel when we jumped in," the pony said, arriving at a canter. Pale blue light flared around it in a half-dome, and there was a sudden lessening of noise. "They have mostly been destroyed; the gryphons are hunting stragglers now. Master, this is not a safe location--"

Rthar laughed and kept running, fetching up in a crater blasted in the concrete wall of the tunnel alongside a dozen other of the People and a few gryphon trooper guards. "The door is proving resistant," the combat engineer said, attention fixed on an elaborate portable scanner. His claws waved over the screen, making the tunnel schematic rotate, then he tapped at a couple of points. In time with each touch, a gunship fired its spinal mass driver into the fog. The engineer grunted something that sounded unhappy. "This one can't get it open," he said finally, "but Baur isn't coming out that way anytime soon."

"The plan?"

"These ones should be close enough to disrupt the Arclight unit." He waggled his paw: approximately. "The fireball won't reach it, but the shock pulse is focused enough..." More claw taps and missiles shrieked as they leapt from launch tubes, arrowing away on the blue glare of their electric drives. Flashes of blue-white rendered the fog completely opaque for a moment, then the tunnel floor shivered under Rthar's booted paws. One of the gunships, held back from the front line, darted forwards towards the source of the blast.

A mind-achingly long time later, at least that's what it seemed to Rthar, the engineer slapped the scanner's display closed. "That will do. These ones are done here. Pony, get these ones out of here."

~~~discontinuity~~~

===

A green, rolling landscape stretched out underneath the drone. Coded diagrams lined the sides of the screen, denoting rapidly closing enemy aircraft. On the side of one of the faux hills was an ugly mouth of a hole, lined with metal struts like jagged teeth; black smoke billowed out and obscured anything within. Not fast enough, Orgon thought, a small smile pulling his lips away from his teeth. There was a flash of white, bright enough to overload the drone's camera, then the hillside blew outwards in a welter of dirt, rock and metal.

"That was a mistake, Orgon," Tundru snarled, while the other Judges looked on in horror. "This one will--"

Orgon leaned back, gesturing to the main screen. An angry red light in Baur territory, one of their Arclight bases, and connected to a hazy bar of pink light that waved over the map like a demented searchlight, had just winked out. "This one thought that might shut Tundru up," he said, spreading one set of claws across the control panel. "The pony is but one individual, but now the Court is dealing with Orgon. The Judges should choose their next words with care. He doesn't want to commit an atrocity, but..." Orgon's smile widened, exposing a full set of sharp teeth. "...he will."

"In a hundred seconds, the Hammer can turn half of Lacunae into ash and dust," Tundru choked out, "with every chance that Orgon will die with his people."

"Perhaps... but that will not stop this one's revenge. He can gut Baur Hive in a heartbeat." He nodded to the other Judges. "It will take a little longer for the rest of the Hives, but it will happen."

An expression of insane fury crossed Tundru's face, so intense that Orgon thought he might call for a Hammer strike out of pure spite, and damn the consequences, but the order never came. "Call off the attacks; these ones will negotiate." A paw balled into a fist slammed down on the table and the video link cut off.

"Well?" Orgon said, turning to the strategic operations liaison.

The other Person, ears flattened and wearing the expression of a prey animal, stared dumbly back, then pointed with a hesitant paw at the main air defence display. "The Hammer has not yet fired... and the other Hives have stopped their attack." His expression relaxed, becoming one of wonder. "The Strategist did it!"

Orgon grunted, turning away. Perhaps. Now all this one must do is convince Fusion to show restraint.

===

One of the Arclight installations she'd been evading abruptly went dark, the brilliant collection of laser-bright jewels blinking out and replaced by a purple flash. The other half of the pair wavered, its beam diffusing with the distance. Fusion gathered herself, making a first tentative jump towards her target corral. The edge of the beam caught her and magic became instantly harder to perform, but it was nothing she couldn't work through.

Her real-space velocity dropped away as Fusion focused all her will on the teleport spells. The frequency rose, first one a second, then five, until her effective speed far exceeded anything other than what remained of the low-orbit satellites. The world rolled below her hooves until she flashed past a collection of aircraft, gathered around a collection of distant fields and orchards. There was magic there, and technology, but no more than to be expected from a servitor corral, and no sign of anything really energetic. She changed direction, a single jump bringing her to rest a few hundred lengths above the bright colours of pony shelters.

There were ranks of pastel shapes on grassy field just outside the haphazard shelters, barely visible through her blurring vision. Lines of darkness slashed across the grass, linear grooves that still smoked, intersecting with the pastels in splashes of red--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--appearing a hoof-width above the grass, in front of a slumped pony wearing the panniers of a medic. Littering the ground were dozens of drug cartridges, all marked with black and yellow wasp-stripes. “No,” Fusion whispered, wild eyes raking the rows of bodies. At least half, maybe a hundred dams, foals and stallions, were unmarked and just seemed to be asleep. “Damn you.” She looked up at the orbiting aircraft, blinking away her tears, then back at the medic.

The medic shivered, closing her eyes. “I have a message for you,” she said dully, as emotionless as a recording. “This will be your future.” She let out a wordless cry, a high-pitched neigh that sounded like it came from a lost foal. “I took too long carrying out my orders and they opened fire.” The injector, loaded with a fresh cartridge floated in her magic, twisting this way and that. “Not all of my ponies died immediately, but- but they wouldn't let me help them--” The words choked off and her breathing quickened, the injector coming up and stabbing towards her own throat.

Fusion caught it in her unbreakable grip, gently pulling it away. “No more,” she said, then flinched as her horn flared. Her own magic surged, building defences and sealing the pony off behind an impenetrable shell of white radiance.

The mare didn't even try to fight; her magic turned inwards in a single fast flicker, like a surprise kick from a loved one. She slumped, the pain that had been distorting her muzzle smoothing away as muscles relaxed.

Fusion stared at the body, mouth open, then relaxed her power, leaning forwards to brush the end of the mare's muzzle with her own. Fusion felt weak and almost in a trance as she walked along the neat line of ponies, stopping at the first pool of blood. The laser slashes had been fast, too fast and focused to do any more than slice flesh like a hot wire through plastic. There was no cauterisation, none at all.

There was a noise, the low hum of lifter fans manoeuvring a vehicle supported by a crystal levitation drive. The aircraft differed from those she'd seen before, but the design was similar enough. A set of wings set with ducted fans either side of a stubby body, otherwise smooth lines marred by the warts and barnacles of conformal turrets. “The pony will surrender or more of its kind will be killed.” The machine-like voice came from a flat panel of transducers in the aircraft’s nose. One of the turrets glowed and she stared at it, feeling the low ebb of power running through the superconducting network; far too little for a weapons laser.

The ground at her hooves lit up with a bright square of laser light, the perfection of the rendered image distorted only by the corpses it was being shone across. Another row of ponies, another medic holding an injector, a look an anguish and pain turning her face wild. They want to tie me up chasing impossible rescues. At some point they will be ready with a trap that I can't stop. More deaths than I can count, no matter what I do. She felt for the aircraft, the one no more than a length from the tip of her muzzle, and the ones maintaining overwatch. “Damn you.”

A pulse of magic snuffed out the aircraft's systems like a candle flame. It fell and Fusion caught it before it could crush the bodies it had floated above. “No,” she said, voice strange in her own ears, and created a pinpoint of celestia-hot plasma inside a twist of brutally strong magnetism. The bell-tolls of force fields pulsed in quick succession, slicing armour away and exposing the crew compartment. There were three dogs inside, all struggling with armour made suddenly too heavy to easily move without the assistance of integral exoframes. More magic, delicate and precise, sliced the armoured helmets to expose the pilots’ angry and frightened faces.

“I have a message for your masters.” She spat the word, feeling a heat build in her belly. “For every pony they kill I will immolate a hundred of their own. Adults or pups, I don't care anymore. I've tried to talk, I've tried and tried and tried.” The point of blue-white at her shoulder accelerated away in a trail of shockwaves, spearing the first aircraft before any of the dogs could blink. It exploded with a flash, and she felt the other aircraft try and attack her in turn. Fusion blocked their electrical subsystems, burning out great tracts of superconductor. They staggered in the air, losing directional stability, but did not fall.

Staring at her prisoners, she wormed her way past antimagic defences to dug deep into the power storage banks of the distant aircraft. A twist and the tight coils of exotic wiring quenched, releasing every stored joule in an instant and turning the world monochrome. The dogs flinched, eyes squeezed shut against the light, then quailed when the overlapping shockwaves rolled over them.

Fusion plucked the three flight crew from the ruined cockpit, expanding her defences and pulling them inside. “Tell them that this is their future,” she snarled, then detonated the power supply in their aircraft. There was a solid snap of light and heat, like galloping into an incandescent metal wall, the whole universe vanishing behind a glare only partially blocked by Fusion's defences.

The blinding light and terrible heat faded, leaving behind a maelstrom of rushing flames and smoke that left no mark on the frictionless surface of her force field.

35 - Something new under the sun

Author's Note

A full plot summary can be found here. Do not read unless you are up to date! Spoilers!
Preread by: turol, NoeCarrier and Caliaponia.

35 - Something new under the sun

Calibration error: ring fragment RF7227DB beacon position mismatch. Verify identity.

Again. Steinar switched his high-altitude drone to autopilot and carefully withdrew one foretalon from its control niche and scratched at the feathers under his beak. He blinked slowly, his nictitating membranes interfering with the laser display and turning the view into a crazy blur of lines and stars. His command collar gave a warning tingle and Steinar quickly returned his talons to the controller, making a few unnecessary inputs to show the dumb ‘attention’ system that he was back in the loop.

For the fifth time he sent the verification query, waiting as the signal made its light-speed crawl up to the high orbit relay and back down to the ring fragment's beacon. Another breath as the processor ground through the cryptographic keys, long enough to watch the steadily increasing discrepancy between actual and reported positions. It’s speeding up... He took a moment to grab the historical data and jam it into a crude graph.

Steinar made a soft cheeping noise at the back of his throat, like that of a chick wanting the shelter of a parent’s wing but afraid to attract the wrong sort of attention. The velocity curve had started at the noise level of the instruments but climbed steadily until it was now off by well over five lengths a second. Am I dreaming? How is this possible? He risked pushing up the display goggles, arching his back and neck to gaze around the stark cavern of the pilot farm.

Neat rows of deep couches spread in every direction, each with a gryphon, wings half spread and attached to armatures, lying within them. All he could see were their backs, muscles twitching as they remote-flew drones spread over several kilolengths. There was a hum of air conditioning and constant susurration of feather on feather, louder than Steinar could ever remember. There was a harsh electrical buzz from his collar, a sudden jagged pain around his throat, like razor wire pulled tight.

Steinar gasped, welcoming the shock and allowing the pain to clear any thoughts from his mind, before hunching over and taking his high-altitude surveillance drone out of automatic. We're spread thin, no low orbit satellite coverage... is it possible no one else has noticed? RF7227DB was an unimportant rock, partially exploited for carbon compounds in the last gigasecond but otherwise unremarkable and retaining most of its megatonnage. Unremarkable, but for the presence of a position reference beacon. None of the other beacons showed signs of problems, but there were plenty of other, unmarked, rocks with similar orbital elements.

Steinar carried on with his real job, ordering the calibration system to switch to another beacon and letting the drone's ladar track ballistic weapons departing Lacunae’s territory for their interception by Baur defences. There are the gravitational anomalies... A constant source of stress, trajectories deviating from the expected. ...perhaps this is the same? The feathers on his crest rose involuntary. Well outside thaumic suppressor range!

Attention drawn back to the errant beacon, he willed someone else to notice. There was nothing, no change, no alert. The speed of the rock was still increasing, and it was losing altitude. Most of his drone’s activities were highly automated, systems feeding data on trajectories of the projectiles and any number of decoys travelling with them to the defence systems buried under a kilolength of rock and layers of armourcrete, so all Steinar had to do was fly the thing and keep an eye on power levels. Even that was going away; the last projectiles were in the air and no more followed them. Even as he watched they disintegrated, undoubtedly due to self-destructs being activated. Is it actually over?

Relief was tempered with a nagging sense of worry. He played with the tracking systems, plotting the course forwards in time, then let his breath out with a sharp hiss. I shouldn’t be surprised... The track generated by the drifting orbital elements was contracting like a noose, and finally penetrated the surface of the planet. Only a kilosecond left! Exactly where was hidden within a wide error circle that blanketed a large chunk of Baur territory. Swallowing, Steinar sent a request for a sliver of time on one of the few high orbit satellites that had survived the ablation cascade. If I’m wrong, they’ll make me suffer.

"Explain, gryphon," came the voice of the supervising Person.

Steinar swallowed, throat abruptly dry. This was Monan, the commander of the whole base. The penalty for wasting a superior officer’s time-- "There is an anomaly. One of the debris ring objects is in the process of deorbiting."

There was a sharp hiss from the other end of the audio line and Steinar’s screen became bordered in flashing red as it was commandeered. "The descent plot," Steinar babbled, drawing a circle around the scrappy analysis he’d pulled together. Numbers flickered and flashed, far too fast for a single person to be manipulating, and he realised that his data was being shunted to some deep analysis system.

"Return to your duties, gryphon," the commander said, his voice choked and barely recognizable. "The gryphon will ignore any Lacunae weapons and focus on the ring debris object. It will be attacked."

But it’s a kilolength across! "Yes, sir!" Bright lines of light were once again jumping from the launch installations, heading straight up. He checked the paths, rapidly instructing the ladar and phased array units in his high-flying drone to focus on the errant object. It was only then he saw the newly predicted trajectory of the rock. It had stopped accelerating and the new orbital elements had been collapsed into a single laser-thin line.

His forelegs felt leaden, carrying on their tasks as if controlled by someone else.

The line intersected the surface of the world no more than a dozen kilolengths from his position.

===

Fusion left the dog pilots and accelerated into the sky, the speed of her passage dragging the roiling smoke from the burning vehicles in her wake. "Where are they?" she shouted, magic fumbling for the communicator clipped to her ear. The wind noise made any reply inaudible, and Fusion rebuilt her defences as the sound barrier was left far behind. "Say again." Some of the fire in her belly faded and she actually looked at her surroundings, sweeping the land around by shadow sight. There were lights everywhere, skeins of laser-pure colours layered through the ground, building to something that looked like an ant's nest in the hazy distance.

Arcology. Her single eye narrowed and she curved in that direction. Is this what it will take? There were patches of shifting darkness among the lights, more of Baur's static Arclight projectors, hunting for and eliminating vague zones of deep violet pony-magic at low orbital altitude. Gravity... so this is why they are having trouble pinning me down. She smiled, a bare hardening of the lips. There was a change, the violet patches were being picked off and not being replaced, and her smile faded.

The voice of the Hive strategic controller babbled something that didn't sound like directions. "I said, where are they?" Fusion snarled into her comms unit.

"This one has no way to know; he can give the pony the location of the Palace, but the command groups won't be there. As with Lacunae, they will have dispersed to..."

There was more, but Fusion wasn't listening. "Then direct me to a command centre," she snarled into the communicator, fighting a sudden urge to rip it out of her ear and crush it to a speck of undifferentiated matter. There was silence from the other end, and Fusion's fury faded, becoming cold calculation. I cannot let this go unanswered. Her lips parted, revealing clenched teeth. Ellisif must be rubbing off on me.

Around the arcology, set in a distant ring, were the Baur Arclight installations. All designed to protect the population and outlying military bases... they don't seem to have the mobile units that Lacunae has. She watched them for a moment, waiting for her Lacunae contact, as the beams of hazy darkness hunted down and eliminated the last traces of violet in the upper atmosphere. Fusion shivered, feeling cold. Where are you, Gravity?

===

Orgon watched as Tundru listened to something on a private channel, one half of a set of earphones pressed to his head. What he was hearing wasn't certain, but the range of expressions crossing his face made for an interesting show. "The Strategist must stop the pony -- Baur has agreed to a cease-fire!" he finally blurted, eyes wide and panting. The other members of the Court were looking concerned, examining updates on their own screens.

One of Orgon's displays updated, an orbital schematic showing a debris ring fragment on collision course with Baur territory. More annotations flowed up the side of the display, hastily typed comments from the analysts. There's no way that impact point is an accident.

Orgon kept his face blank and stared back at Tundru. "The pony isn't a member of the Court and will not answer to it. What possible reason would it have for obeying?" He allowed a trace of frustration to cross his face, lips curling up to show sharp teeth. "The Court has not given the tiniest fraction of a length in its position. The Court persists in its failure to grasp the new reality." The frustration, given a crack in his control, burst through and Orgon clenched his paw into a fist, bringing it down on his console with a dull thump. "What does the Court expect Orgon to do?" he roared. "He has nothing to work with!"

"But the cease-fire--"

Orgon took a deep breath. "Tundru kills hundreds of the pony's kin to make a point and he expects there to be no repercussions? He challenged the pony and the pony has called Tundru's bluff."

"But--"

"There are no 'buts'! Baur will have to accept the damage as the price of doing business. The Court tried their best. It was not good enough." He let go of the anger, features smoothing and becoming calm once more. "In any case, the rock is being dropped by a different pony, Gravity Resonance, to which Orgon has no direct link. Even if he did, Gravity has just spent the last kilosecond fending off a saturation kinetic and nuclear bombardment. This one doubts the pony will be in much of a mood to listen."

===

Lightning-bright pinpoints flickered maniacally across the sky, high up near the zenith. They were in complete silence, but the patterns of pulses expanded rapidly, as if the source was getting closer. More light flared, real physical light that was bright enough to outshine the sun, turning the land below into a patchwork of terrible white and inky black. There was no glare, not through her clairvoyant vision, but the sheer contrast overwhelmed the magic and rendered everything monochrome, tinged at the edges with electric purple.

The intolerable light brightened further, starting to flash and pulse. Fusion hunched in her wings, ducking slightly and looking upwards into the darkness of her defences. Escape patterns bloomed in her mind, places far away over the horizon, but she held them back and watched as the main glare shifted and turned into a thousand streaks of blinding fire, all heading towards the arcology and its defences. More points of blue-white pulsed, the now recognizable flash of distant nuclear weapons, but the glare of the streaks made them seem weak. Defensive fire, Fusion realised.

The falling streaks split and tumbled, some spreading, slowing and fading, like embers scattered over sand, but others kept their speed all the way to the horizon.

The sky and ground were engulfed in lambent incandescence, disappearing behind luminous, merging shockwaves, as the hazy black bars of Arclight beams winked out. Fusion accelerated straight up, defences shrugging off the thermal bloom from the arc of the explosions that spanned a quarter of the horizon.

There was no real danger, not this far and this high; the blast overpressure would be attenuated by distance and lack of air, so she bent her arc and headed towards the core of the arcology. There was a familiar pressure at the back of her mind, never quite absent but suddenly stronger, and--

Sister! Did you like my surprise?

There was more pressure and a gentle request, so Fusion replied with the view from her clairvoyance spell, still looking out from behind her obsidian defences. It was just what I wanted... they attacked the rock with nuclear weapons, but it didn’t help them much.

Gravity’s mental voice became smug and a little self-satisfied. I felt it split, but I could still move the fragments, so...

A shotgun rather than a sniper’s rifle. Fusion nodded. I watched them fight your magic, earlier.

They tried. Gravity still sounded slightly smug, then her tone changed, shading towards awe and fear. The rock lost quite a lot of mass, ablated away, but it was still too big. The impact would have been huge, far larger than the Hammer. I drained away some of the velocity before it hit. There was a pause, filled with a feeling of regret, and her tone became bitter. I couldn’t stop all the weapons. They sowed nuclear fire across our valleys.

"We can’t save them all," Fusion muttered out loud. I’ve discovered that already. They want to trap me while I try and rescue their ponies. The thought came down on Fusion like a hammer, reigniting the fire under her skin. "They are killing their own just to get to us!" With the shout, high and thin in the rarefied air, went her vision of euthanised and laser-sliced ponies, all in neat rows. "I saw it, imagined it, back at the start of all this, sitting in the dark under our sire’s wing." She tipped over, increasing her real-world speed, holding on to the feeling of Gravity in her mind like she was scrabbling for purchase on a muddy slope.

I will come to you--

There was a purple flash and an impression of something dark and needle-shaped flying away, only leaving behind the crack of a sonic boom. "Are you mad?!" Fusion shouted after the object, glaring at the turbulent wake. It turned, slowing all the time, and shrank, layers of protection dropping away to leave a wild-eyed Gravity hanging in mid-air. "A single jump? How could you be so, so..."

Gravity flicked her wings, closing the distance, then hovered in front of Fusion for a breath before folding her wings around the other mare. "You said it, but I don’t think you believe it. You cannot save them all."

"No," Fusion whispered, "but I can try." She pushed Gravity away, frowning. "You took too much of a risk."

"High-altitude terminus... there's not that much air up here. I had a correctly aligned and streamlined force field..." Gravity shrugged, grinning. "I also used a lot of telekinesis on my body. It’s fine as long as you don’t want to breathe."

Fusion closed her eyes, then fiercely returned Gravity’s hug. "I’m glad you are here. We have a point to make."

===

Is this what I looked like after I pulled us out of the Institute? Gravity thought. Fusion looked... haggard. Fur bedraggled and feathers clumped like she was going through a simultaneous coat and wing moult bad enough that she really shouldn’t be flying -- as if anything about Fusion’s flight wasn’t brute-force magic by this point. There were few of the large collection of minor injuries she’d acquired in those frantic kiloseconds, but she looked just like Gravity had felt, back at the Institute. Nothing left but a shell propelled by anger and desperation.

She held Fusion for a few more breaths, manipulating the air to reduce their rate of descent. "What do you want to do, Fusion?" She gestured behind her, feathers sweeping the arc of the horizon. "They are wide open... their Arclight bases along this whole area are rubble-filled craters." Gravity smiled, eyes gleaming. Come on, sister, stop me! Be my voice of reason again. "We can make them regret all the things they’ve done to us."

She gathered her power, letting the darkness flood out and flicking the air with stomach-twisting flutters of gravity. I can do it... the same drive spell I used before, shredding and-- Her smile hardened and she imagined what that might do, gravitational shear strong enough to rip flesh from bone, unhindered by any physical armour, only defended against by pure distance. Fusion stirred under her wings, neck arching back to look her in the eye. Gravity stared back, pulled away from her daydream, and studied Fusion from magenta eye to horn before lingering on the blank white sphere of her prosthetic. I must see if I can help her with that.

Some of the frustration and despair faded from her face. "No." Fusion shivered, pulling away and fanning her wings to arrest their descent. "Now is not the time to be indiscriminate. I am not that desperate yet. I made a promise that I would take the fight to their leaders. They hide behind their troops... I can’t believe the dogs as a whole want the sort of war we can bring to them."

"Do you think they know?" Gravity said quietly. "How much do the leaders tell their people? The secrecy in Lacunae is quite extreme... I heard that Baur is worse." That’s right; talk to me. Something at the back of her head coiled around the drive spell, persistently trying to bring it to the front. I want to see what I can do with it...

"You might be right. No distant military bases this time. Something showy, something obvious." Fusion looked over Gravity’s shoulder, looking at the smoke-filled horizon. "...although your last act might be hard for them to hide."

"Explosions. Anything could have caused that. Most of the dogs are underground." They wouldn’t put corrals near Arclight bases, would they?

"Megaton-range, but yes. They are at war; they can hide whatever they like. Detonations on the surface, at distant military installations." Her voice sharpened, directed into her comms unit. "Officer, you promised me the location of the Baur command centre."

Against the rush of the air the tiny voice in the earpiece was inaudible, but Gravity could hear the repeated thoughts in Fusion’s mind. There were excuses and prevarications, delaying tactics that only served to make Gravity wince at the sudden flash of heat radiating from Fusion’s body. Give her a target, you fools! Then there was a delay, then another voice came on the link.

"Fusion, this is Orgon. The Court has agreed to stop hostilities."

Fusion’s gaze flicked to Gravity, and the younger mare nodded. "It’s true. Apart from what they used to try and hit my rock, I’ve not felt any other launches."

"They didn’t believe that the pony is a threat, but they are starting to." Gravity could almost see Orgon; there would be a toothy smile on that brown-furred, green-eyed face. "No matter what the pony does, this one can enforce his will. Merlon has successfully trained a number of Security ponies and this one has leveraged that training. With the hole Gravity has knocked in their suppression perimeter, Orgon can strike wherever he likes." The voice became more gentle. "This one understands the pony’s anger, but it does not need to take any other actions."

The furious heat radiating from Fusion’s body didn’t decline. "They hide behind their soldiers and I won’t take my revenge on those who just follow orders." Her voice became a hissing whisper, muscles tense and iron-hard. "They have made this personal. Give me a target, Orgon, or I’ll find one myself."

There was silence at the other end of the link and Gravity felt a sudden sinking sensation in her gut. Maker, Orgon, tell her!

"The pony wants to make a point, this one understands." More silence, the dead air of a muted channel rather than mere not talking. "This one wants to minimise civilian casualties," Orgon said finally.

"Their leaders are not civilians!" No whisper this time, but a shout, a snarl of fury.

Orgon’s voice was measured and slow. "No, these ones are not. Destruction of the leadership, especially in a Hive with a... top heavy command structure like Baur will result in mass chaos. These ones believe they have a novel method to ensure compliance that is not well suited to radical changes. Intelligence thinks there are... safeguards. Still..."

The tension in Fusion’s body grew worse as Orgon spoke. The radiated heat grew stronger and the colours of her mane became hard and laser-pure, too bright to look at without squinting. "Orgon," Gravity said loudly, "an example has to be made." Give her something, anything.

"Yes." A sigh came through the audio link and the display unit on Fusion’s comms rig lit up, projecting a little spot of golden light into her eye. "Make your point. Remember that these ones must live in this world after the pony has finished. There are consequences to revenge."

Fusion snorted, but some of the heat faded. Her wings twisted, orienting on some point behind the curtain of dust and smoke on the horizon. Her horn flashed white-gold, and she vanished in a flutter of gravity waves.

===

"This one has done what he can. The pony wants to make a point... this one would suggest that Baur let it," Orgon said, eyes on the wallscreen and its relatively low resolution live view of the world. The spot of flickering rainbow colours, bright like some laser was pointed straight up, vanished and reappeared closer to the heart of Baur’s Arcology Prime, then jumped again. The crude gravitational and thaumic contour maps, overlaying the strategic schematic, with its litter of cryptic icons of units and vectors, painted diffuse blobs of colours over the land.

Tundru's eyes darted over displays Orgon couldn’t see. "The course the servitor has been directed on--" His voice turned high-pitched, almost a whine. "--passes over some of the most populated volumes of the Hive!"

No bluster this time... this one thinks Tundru has had a difficult conversation with his Monarch. So much for the supposed independence of the Court."The pony will keep its word. Even after everything, it does not want to slaughter indiscriminately." A private message scrolled across Orgon’s console, highlighting a patch of land along Fusion’s projected route. A subwindow opened, showing a fuzzy plot crosshatched with the signs of computer enhancement. Vague delta-shaped blobs tracked across the landscape, all converging. Orgon suppressed a twitch, then looked up to stare Tundru in the eye. "Assuming Baur Hive keeps its side of the truce, that is. This one hopes the Monarch isn’t going to do anything rash."

Tundru shook his head, mouth half open and throat working. "What will the Strategist do? Orgon can—"

"Can what? Tell the pony to abort? The Court may have noticed that this one does not exactly have much control over it." The gravitational signals shifted again and again; the distance covered only a dozen kilolengths or so, but the jump frequency was up to one per two seconds and climbing rapidly. Interesting... Fusion has been joined by another. It must be Gravity. "Perhaps the pony will just jump straight through the force." Orgon shrugged, then gave a short bark of a laugh. Or not; the site is in range of one of the Arclight bases. Plenty of military assets in the area. "Lacunae will not respond as long as Baur keeps its launchers silent. The Monarch has made his choice; he will have to live with the consequences." Or his people will.

===

The sun jumped, twitching across short arcs like the sky was clockwork. Hints of high energy painted her shadow sight with speckles of deep violet; the hues of fully charged superconductors in flying vehicles.

Rage stoked the fire in Fusion’s belly, filling her eyes with a golden haze. I could... Patterns flowed into her mind, simple things made monstrous by the amount of power she could route through them. Energy followed her unconscious desire, flooding down from the sky in a rain that didn’t pass through normal space, and into reservoirs she’d used before. Deep things, they drank greedily, and Fusion let them. She felt... stretched, but the feeling was familiar and easier to deal with than the first time at the Pit.

The pattern of violet dots expanded, changing from the size of a hoof at the end of a leg to something more like a wing spread wide. The power swelled, filling her from horn tip to tail root with waves of sensation, begging to be used. With her was another locus of intensity, a patch of cool darkness a few lengths away, matching her jump for jump.

No. There will be ponies in those ships. Fusion held onto her power, locking it away from manifesting in the real world in bursts of plasma and high-energy light. The fury flipped, changing from hot to cold in a heartbeat, the spell patterns giving way to analysis and plans.

A hint of a sad smile flickered from the darkness, sliced thinly by the knife of teleportation. Yes, there will be. They have already tried to distract us with the deaths of their ponies. It is only a matter of time before they use them as... as meat shields against our power.

If there really will be peace, we must give it a chance, but they must understand that we negotiate from a position of strength. Fusion’s attention narrowed and she reached for the teleport pattern again--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--the spread of violet stars was all around her, but the spell pattern was still in her mind and the power flowed again. There was a sudden feeling of weakness, like she was bathed in cold, and her shadow sight wavered. Arclight, but only one. That might have worked before, but won’t be enough now! Fusion drew on her stored energy and pushed a little harder--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--the dog fleet was behind her and Fusion felt the sudden lightness of being out of the Arclight beam--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--something was missing, an absent patch of friendly darkness--

~~~discontinuity~~

--no sense of closeness, no feeling of cold mass moving at speed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

Fusion inhaled sharply, the next teleport pattern evaporating, and swept the sky for any sign of Gravity. Nothing but the dusting of crystal thaumic lights lighting up the shadow universe beneath her hooves. She spun in the air, wings straining, and accelerated back the way she had come. Off in the distance, high above the curve of the horizon, were brilliant flashes of electric blue and pulses of hot green.

===

Fusion vanished in a flash of white-gold and Gravity's hold on the teleport pattern evaporated, the fine details fuzzing and twisting under the sudden impact of the Arclight beam. A dip into shadow sight told her the thing was wide, far larger than the ones generated by Lacunae's mobile units. Her magic fluttered and she snarled, pulling down more power from the orbiting rocks and rebuilding her defences. Fast-moving delta shapes, felt more for their mass and speed than seen, were converging on her.

She gritted her teeth and pumped her wings, a proxy for the sudden rush of air directed by her magic, cracking the sound barrier a few moments later. Still in the beam-- The thought was fleeting, subsumed by the sudden urgent demands on the flight magic. Flashes of light came from the aircraft, along with blurs of motion. Wires of green flicked on, drawing lines of radiance from horizon to horizon, whipping erratically as Gravity threw random shifts in direction into her flight.

"It’s like that is it!" She laughed, darkness congealing in the air and making the laser beams dim and flicker as they passed nearby. The effect was surprising, almost enough to make Gravity pause, but she latched onto it, strengthening that part of the pattern and bringing it to the front of her mind. The ambient light dropped further, the colours shifting towards the red, making the world appear as if she flew within a bubble of dark glass.

Gravity narrowed her eyes, straining to see through the dimness. Tuning the magic, she made even the bright flares of missile launches and aircraft plasma drives fade to invisibility; normal vision useless, she switched to shadow sight. There was colour only from the dog systems deep within the ground, but that didn’t matter. Unlike the time in the Institute, when she struggled to differentiate between rock and vehicle, here the shadows of dense, artificial materials were easy to spot as they circled her.

Gravity smiled, lips drawing back from wide, square teeth that sharpened a little as her anger rose, and gathered her power. The spell was the same one she’d always used -- simple enough that the distraction of the single Arclight beam couldn’t stop her, yet capable of absorbing all the magic she could pump into it.

Local spacetime fluttered and drew away, collapsing into a deepening pit. The sides of the pit went from shallow to steep, the smooth edges growing spikes and starting to rotate. So much easier than before! There was little stray influence, nothing more than a slight twist in her belly; the edges of the gravitational abyss were sharp and sheer. Holding the vortex close, she accelerated towards the closest cluster of aircraft. Invisible lines of motion were converging on her, far faster than the bulky machines that launched them or the missiles that rode incandescent plasma and had closed half the distance.

The gravitational eddy slid through the air, space-time itself flowing and shifting into new shapes, as she accelerated. She held it there, watching the landscape behind the weapon distort. It flowed and melted into curves and arcs, as light travelling in ostensibly straight lines found itself bent around the dip in space time. Gravity sighted on one of the clusters of aircraft, the lights of their drives forming short-lived rings against the mangled background.

She flung it forwards, the metric changes propagating at a small fraction of the speed of light. Away from the centre of her power it faded rapidly, trapped air decompressing with a bellow. Through the brief haze of condensing water vapour, Gravity snarled in the general direction of the distant Arclight base and rebuilt the weapon, this time keeping it close.

Strings of railgun projectiles, already curving to intercept her, were swept into strange and short-lived orbits about the spell, turning the invisible creation into a hazy patch of chaotically tumbling metal. The missiles were next, finally catching up with her mad rush, only to be shredded by the harsh tidal forces. Some detonated immediately, the blue-white concussions reddened and made distant, others merely vanished as they were hungrily devoured by the extreme curvatures. The aircraft kept their distance, flowing away from her as might a flock of sparrows near a hawk, ebbing and flowing at the edge of the danger zone.

Sweat started to soak the fur of her neck and flanks, even within the cool, entropically-controlled inner core of Gravity’s defences. Breath starting to make harsh noises in her throat, she accelerated towards the Arclight base, but the suppression effects grew stronger as the distance shrank, draining her power a little more efficiently with each passing kilolength. Cold chills ran down her spine. I’m not going to be able to reach it. She fumbled for something in orbit, but the demands of all the other magics made the rocks distant and out of reach.

There was a pulse of thaumic energy somewhere behind her and, for a moment, relief flooded through Gravity. Her attention shifted, shadow sight catching a glimpse of a huge set of wings before the whatever-it-was vanished behind a collection of nested magical fields. That’s no pony!

===

If you’ve hurt her-- Fusion gritted her teeth and pulled her power around her like a blanket. She was outside the Arclight beam and, after Gravity’s orbital bombardment, it was the only installation that appeared to be in range. Otherwise we’d both be targeted. I could kill it first... Indecision twisted her gut, then she pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--air slammed into her defences, but Fusion had shaped them into a double-ended needle and she slid through the sky, keeping the velocity of her vector change. You’re rubbing off on me, Grav. There was nothing to mark the presence of the Arclight base itself, no great spherical bulge to hold the crystal thaumic suppressor array, but the concentric rings of more conventional weapons were obvious.

Time seemed to slow, like it did when she really exercised her power. Below, the muzzles of point defence railguns were swivelling in Fusion’s direction, but slowly, so very slowly. A more immediate response came from a particle accelerator dug in behind a ceramic revetment. Power flared within the emitter cone, twisting the path of a river of lightning to jump from the ground and spear her with a low frequency rumble, stretched out and Doppler-shifted

Fusion suppressed a giggle as she let the beam of relativistic electrons curl around her impenetrable fields and shoot off into the upper atmosphere. Even before everything I could have survived this! Me or my sister... let’s see if I can make you change your minds. The thought sank away, vanishing beneath layers of spell patterns. The power flowed, funnelled down every nerve strand, every bone and through every organ and into immaterial sinks deeper than the greatest ocean, hidden in the spaces between her thoughts.

Magnetic fields twisted the air into plasma, a shining star that cast long shadows through the trees covering the landscaped grounds of the base’s skin of earth and rock. They moved in one, achingly long arc, tracking the passage of Fusion’s brilliant weapon as it accelerated downwards. Green, growing things charred and flashed to flame an instant before the shockwave pulverised the installation and tortured the air with a thunderous clap. A bubble of fire expanded, electric blue-white rapidly fading to yellow and red as it climbed.

It didn’t have the horrific power of a nuclear weapon, but it was good enough for the task at horn. The beam of accelerated electrons died, along with a patch of the electronics and power conductors that laced the ground under the cosmetic layer of grass and trees. Below this was the reality of the landscape: layers of basalt-whisker armourcrete, far tougher than mere rock. Defensive weapons, built to intercept hypervelocity missiles descending in ballistic trajectories, responded, but far too late. Fusion pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--leaving behind a messy tangle of converging smoke trails and shockwaves from missiles accelerating as fast as artillery rounds. A savage glee filled Fusion, and she fired again and again, digging the defences out from their hiding places with a rapid-fire barrage. There was no chance of concealment; shadow sight exposed every concentration of energy, and she didn’t stop until all the lights were snuffed out.

It should have taken half a kilosecond or more, exposing her to ground fire and any aircraft conducting combat air patrols from local bases, but the time dilation was still in effect. Fusion's wings may have flapped lazily, barely playing up to the facade of her flight as the fireball-lofted dust rolled over her, but her mind and magic were unbridled, galloping at insane speeds. One breath... nothing more.

The pastels of her mane and tail had been stoked into a blast-furnace glare, now no longer composed of anything as mundane as hair, but something more vivid, a kind of whipping, silken lightning. She still had power to spare, and felt the great machine, a pall of darkness under the material skin of the world, start to turn in her direction. More of her thaumic weapons lashed out, not a discrete pulse, but a beam that filled the suspended fines with a lurid light. It struck the exposed armourcrete, biting in and chewing a tunnel, flesh pierced by a white-hot lance. Even through the defenses, she could hear a distant, awful howl as rock vapour boiled away from the impact point.

The shadowed darkness within the base flickered and, just for an instant, Fusion saw the whole vast complexity of thaumically active crystals, a great geode of radioactive crystal. It died a moment later, systems randomising and vanishing as she pumped superheated plasma into its heart. Fire blew out of the ground at half a dozen unexpected places, lighting the haze a brilliant orange.

Fusion didn’t stay to watch--

~~~discontinuity~~~

===

His compartmentalised crop was full, the feeling a comfortable weight in his midsection. The sensation wasn't a familiar one; thus far his masters hadn't seen fit to give him more than a fraction of his carrying capacity. The food was rich, isotopically pure U235, far more energetic than the thorium of his regular diet.

Harq listened to the voices in his head. At the moment they were whispers, cajoling and persuading. His gaze focused on the prey, a tiny thing hidden inside a cloak of darkness. Structures moved inside his eyes and the prey wavered and blurred before becoming clear. It was no bigger than the training targets the Masters had instructed him to kill, back when he’d been small enough to actually look up at them, but the power... How can something that small put out so much magic under partial suppression? Claws of the Maker... what would it be like away from interdicted space? He'd practiced against the machines, assured by his Masters that he was unique in his ability to resist their effects.

His vision cleared, eyes finally finding some configuration that pierced the defences. It’s only a pony. He risked a glance at the command aircraft, obvious by its brilliance in the radio spectrum, then hunched his wings as the weedling whispers became angry shouts and the early prickles of claws danced down his spine. The volume, so loud it drowned out his own thoughts and turned him into an automaton, dropped as, against his efforts to resist, his eyes and brain returned their attention to the designated prey. What didn’t fade was a sudden gnawing hunger, hunger that could only be quenched by the prey.

You have played this game before. The sudden urge was imposed from the outside, he knew that, but real all the same. Anger grew, more than the synthetic stuff his masters fed him. I know what you want me to do! he shouted in the limited privacy of his own mind. There was no punishment for this little rebellion; careful experimentation had shown that it was intent the masters could read, not actual thoughts. They still think I am an animal...

The prey was small and fast, faster than he was, but it was slowing. Caught in the convergence of a dozen lasers, forced to waste power fending off a constant stream of high-velocity projectiles and RF drive missiles, it was close to the limit of its astounding abilities. Harq followed the thrust and jab of magic, tasting the directed warp and flutter of spacetime that surrounded the prey, and felt fear.

But there was no choice. The voices insisted, becoming strident as they sensed his apprehension. Harq used the anger they gave him, used it to blot out the bad emotions under a tide of raw fury.

The prey turned, obviously deciding that it couldn’t reach the thaumic suppressor that held it pinned like a dissection specimen on a tray, and fell towards the ground. Harq watched in interest, the distance closing, ticking down towards in range. Muscles, dense collections of whiskered corundum, contracted and a new fire grew in his chest, in the place any normal flesh-and-blood creature would keep its lungs. Molten fissile material, self-heating and near boiling, was transferred from his crop and into glassy bulbs of pure quartz lining the space. Plates of tungsten carbide contracted around the cavity, reflecting a fraction of the fission neutrons back into the molten cores.

Power output of the fuel spiked, flashing it to vapour; magic and magnetism spun the resultant plasma into searingly hot gyres, keeping them isolated from the walls of their quartz vessels. The heat and pressure became intolerable so Harq inhaled, pulling in air and passing it close to his heart, letting it soak and heat and ionise and burn. His own power concentrated, turning air into a frenetic collection of stripped nuclei and electrons orbiting so fast that the cyclotron radiation made his insides prickle.

I think that will do. The prey was climbing rapidly, gaining distance as it rose above most of the atmosphere. Harq and the rest of the aircraft followed it up into the rarefied air. It is making things too easy!

He stretched out his neck, aligning the magnetic accelerator in his neck. Harq’s armoured lips pulled back from diamond-hard teeth, letting slip a nuclear lightbulb glare of x-rays and vacuum ultraviolet. His eyes rolled back behind refractory lids and his mouth opened, arcane power forming an invisible funnel of magnetism in his magically shielded throat. Chest convulsing, he coughed, spitting up a self-sustaining plasma ring vortex travelling at a high multiple of the speed of sound.

===

Self-doubt flickered through Gravity, feeding on her growing fatigue. None of the aircraft ever came close enough to strike at, outpacing her increasingly sluggish responses. The incoming fire was relentless; she could avoid the guided railgun slugs and destroy the missiles, but the green laser light was unerring. She was speared by a dozen emitters, sapping her strength still further.

She’d turned away as soon as it became obvious that she’d never reach the Arclight base, but her escape route was straight towards the unknown flying thing. Eyes clenched shut, Gravity struggled to improve the resolution of the clairvoyance node she had positioned just outside her defences. Fiddling with the parameters gave the sky and land an odd purple hue, but blocked the laser glare. What is that thing?! Shadow sight was useless, showing little more than a coruscating mass of magic, seemingly undeterred by the limited Arclight effect. Means nothing; anypony could manage some magic through this... but there is so much of it!

Hints of a shape leaked through the field; a long, thick, reptilian tail and wide, angular wings, all glowing with a light she’d only seen when looking at Fusion through shadow sight. Too big for a pony, far too big, and with as much magical power as a herd of at least a score. It was fast; not the sort of speed Gravity herself could manage, but on par with an experienced weather team pony, a low multiple of the speed of sound.

Trajectories flowed through her head, some path that would get her away from the converging threats. A high, exoatmospheric route looked the best; free from air resistance she could really get up some speed. Gravity's magic bent space and she used the synthetic mass to accelerate her climb. Her ears popped again and she hardened her defences, preventing gas exchange. The lasers and projectiles still followed her, the latter a little faster without the thick air of the lower atmosphere to get in their way, but it was worth it to increase the range.

Light flared ahead, making the lizard-thing disappear behind a blue-white glare that reached out to touch her.

===

Harq gave a basso-profundo growl, the sound of mountain ranges grinding together, as the prey failed to die. Sapped by distance and with only limited thaumic guidance in this partially suppressed environment, the plasma ring vortex had been beaten away by a blast of something that made his inner ears sting. That thing is manipulating gravity! A dense zone of artificial mass spun around the pony, thrown like a spiked weight on the end of a chain, intercepting everything the aircraft threw at it. Haloed in writhing snakes of fast-dissipating plasma, the creature changed direction again and pulled a chunk of liquid metal seemingly from nowhere.

The metal stretched out, losing its white glow in an instant, then vanished with a subliminal flash of motion. Harq twisted his wings, pulling his body sharply to one side, then grunted, hind leg suddenly numbed by a tremendous impact. Cubic boron nitride and carbon filament scales, tougher than an airtank's glacis plate, splintered and spun away, ripped free from his right hip. There was no pain; his battlefield-grade nervous system wouldn't permit it in the middle of a fight.

A fast glance showed the extent of the damage: a dozen scales were gone and twice that number ruined, around a long scar splattered with shiny globs of tungsten. The flesh beneath, the colour of freshly erupted volcanic basalt cracked with rapidly cooling incandescence, felt icy cold from the loss of the protective scales and their insulation. Harq's heart contracted again, the extra warmth keeping his molten blood flowing and driving back the chill.

The voices in his head raged and fury kindled the fire in his gut, prompting the release of a little more fissile material into the glassy structures of his chest. He spat fire then immediately turned, tracking the superheated gyre and turning it towards the prey.

The pony was too fast, but at this range Harq had full control over his weapon; he shorted out the field lines and the vortex exploded in a fizzing cluster of brush discharges, playing over and around his prey.

===

Gravity lashed out, connecting with the flash of fire and turning it into a rapidly dispersing cloud of luminious gas. Buffeted by the shockwave she darted away, reaching into the knotted, distorted space of her weapon and pulling out its central core of glowing metal. This, a messy alloy made from captured railgun projectiles and missile fragments, she pulled out into a sharp spear, flash-cooling it to solidity. With a grunt and a push she threw the thing, the best part of a hundred kilos of dense metal, as hard as she could.

The lizard swerved and the projectile struck sparks from its hindquarters rather than skewering its head. Would even that have killed it? The wound seemed to be little more than a scratch, but the creature changed its direct approach for something more evasive. I hurt you, at least a little. She reached for another glob of molten tungsten, when there was a flash of white-shading-to-purple light from within those heavy jaws.

Gravity dodged even as the hypersonic plasma bolt curved towards her, diving to let to pass over her head. Can't hit me--! The bolt exploded, triggered by a pulse of magic from the creature, turning to writhing lightning that grounded out on her own defences. Currents surged, transferred in through the force field layers by inducting coupling of the charged gas, some tiny fraction of the energy touching her on the hip and back.

She gave a startled whinny, big flight muscles contracting irregularly and making her wings thrash. Smoke filled the little bubble of captive atmosphere, catching at the back of Gravity's throat when she inhaled sharply. Her concentration faltered, defences thinning and letting in a little of the killing green light that still tracked her unerringly. Too big, too tough, too many other enemies. Can't stay in this killing chute!

Fusion, where are you? All the power Gravity could spare was in that thaumic scream, but there was no response. Her sister's mind was out there, off in the distance behind the curve of the world, but it buzzed like a mosquito and equally impossible to pin down. Vague impressions came back down the stuttering link; explosions and virulent light cut and sliced thinly by surges of magical power.

Gravity swept the ground around her with shadow sight, picking out the skeins of light marking deep tunnels and crystal thaumic infrastructure. Less obvious but still detectable from this height were the voids in the rock from those tunnels; she picked one of the larger ones, folded her wings and fell.

Planes of warped space-time congealed under the crushing force of her magic, hiding the rapidly approaching trees and grass behind heat-haze distortions. She hit the ground without slowing and kicked through, the roar of pulverised rock muted to a whisper by her defences. Muscles rigid with effort, Gravity closed her eyes against the glare of shock-heated matter, curving her path to intersect with the big tunnel.

She broke through and dropped her crushing hold on the world, letting her defences collapse and natural light flood back in. Twenty lengths in diameter, the tunnel stretched to the vanishing point in both directions, the wide, flat base filled with burning, tumbling vehicles. More vehicles – small personal transports and lumbering cargo carriers alike – were smashing into the wreckage, two unstoppable rivers flowing towards each other.

Wings fanning the rising columns of smoke, Gravity listened to the screams and cries filtering up over the electric sizzle of discharging superconductors, her mouth hanging open. Her gaze lifted, looking along the chaotic river of vehicles, towards the distant, imagined ant's nest blur of the arcology. The constant demands on her magic were gone and she felt some of her strength returning.

Can’t stay here! She pivoted in the air, pumping her wings and accelerating towards the arcology. Can’t manoeuvre, but they can’t hit me with normal weapons... would they nuke their own? The walls around her shivered with the passage of a rapid shockwave from somewhere in the distance, away from the arcology. Gravity glanced in that direction, flinching at a distant bloom of light, no more than a spark in the rapidly thickening haze.

===

~~~discontinuity~~~

--aircraft were spread from horizon to horizon and the sky was thick with missile smoke trails and the stuttering, linear threads of weapon lasers. There was no sign of Gravity, no patch of curdled darkness and power flitting about the sky.

Fusion tried to breathe, but it was like she'd been kicked in the gut. "Gravity--" she gasped out, then a tide of fire flooded her body and she screamed. The closest missiles, all heading for some point on the ground, exploded with a string of silent blue-white flashes. Mane and tail whipping and curling in an insubstantial hurricane, she burned with a furious light, a steel model of a mare heated to incandescence in a blast of pure oxygen.

Her howl rang out across the smoke-filled air, loud even against the backdrop of explosions and sonic booms. The burning light flickered and swirled around Fusion, a wild twist of unconstrained plasma that outshone the sun. Weapon lasers, their hard, green light made dim by the outpouring of energy, converged on her, but the beams bent away or were absorbed without a trace. Missiles and railgun projectiles followed, but the distances were large enough that even high Mach numbers were not enough.

The light swelled still further, streamers of plasma collapsing to a single point and then blasting out as a column of white, so bright is seemed to be a scratch through the skin of the world and into some sun-filled basement reality. The first aircraft exploded and the beam slewed sideways to the next, then its tip split into a dozen spurs that speared targets of their own.

The lasers attacking Fusion cut off and the other weapons stopped firing as their launch aircraft spun about and fled behind glittering clouds of chaff and a haze of coruscating flares and other, more esoteric countermeasures. She didn't stop, spinning the beam around her and sending lances of energy after each in turn. Some had dived to the ground, trying to place the horizon between them and sudden, murderous rage--

~~~discontinuity~~

--aircraft rammed sudden forcefield squares or broke in two, pulled apart by wild telekinesis. Still others detonated, superconductors force-quenched and dumping gigajoules as flashes of heat and blasts of rare earth element vapour. There was a staging area below her, full of support vehicles and slower, heavier artillery; Fusion rekindled her beam, this time without the tight focus, spraying fire over a kilolength circle and melting the rock to glass. Tough military vehicles survived a pawful of seconds against that onslaught, but the signatures of their drives failed one by one, popping like corn in a kettle in erratic waves of bursting embers.

Breathing heavily, the fur of her neck and flanks crusted with dried sweat, Fusion hovered over the pyre, wings making the smoke curl into vortices. "Damn you!" she screamed, eyes wild, then groaned and inhaled with a sob. I didn't check, maybe she was hurt--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--perhap there's something... The blasted ground of her first short-lived battle was spread below her, but she ignored the craters and still-falling wreckage to focus on her shadow sight. A violet glare moved underground at supersonic speed, pursued by something large, magical and fast. A vaguely chthonic, bat-winged shape filled with the bright lights of magic, not pony, not crystal, but something else. Fusion inhaled sharply, sudden joy making her head spin and her wings tremble and fail to bite air. Pausing for a breath, she took aim at her sister's pursuer.

===

The prey dove at the ground, striking a hillside and punching through; it was not destroyed, the magical and gravitic signature fell through the earth unimpeded. There were other things under the ground, the deep transit tunnels, and it was immediately obvious where the prey was going. I will follow my orders to the letter.

He followed it down, spitting another fire vortex as he went. Delicate touches steered the thing, collapsing it into a furious lance that bit deep into the ground. Harq didn't slow, diving into the climbing plume of shattered rock; he exhaled again, this time not a cough but a continuous stream.

Wings folded, he swam the outflow of incandescent dust and rock like the world’s biggest crocodile, emerging into clear air within the transit tunnel in a luminous plume of superheated rock melt and steam.

The tunnel was just wide enough for Harq to spread his wings, if he kept low. Semi-circular in cross section, with a roadbed on the flat floor for the largest of cargo trains and plenty of airspace above for smaller personal transports. The lights here were out, power circuits cut, fires and smoke making the air impenetrable. None of this bothered Harq; he didn't need light to see.

Now the air was empty, all the aircraft downed by the shockwaves and thermal pulse of Harq’s entrance, filling the roadbed with burning wreckage. One heavy paw came down, massive talons flattening the carcass of a bulk ore transporter and leaving deep dents in the concrete surface beneath. I have my orders... but there is some latitude in their execution. How should I... Harq inhaled, breathing in the arousing scent of scorched flesh and ceramics. His smile returned. "To the letter!" he howled, an electric blue glare from deep in his chest overpowering the yellow and orange of burning composites.

Wings flexed and mantled, then thrust down and back, blasting debris backwards as Harq accelerated towards his prey. Soon the darkness in the tunnel gave way to light and working vehicles, but Harq didn’t stop. Safety systems had brought everything in the air to a steady hover, and he shouldered them aside like flies. Shrouded in a plume of fire, he flew after the prey, contracting his insides and feeling the warmth of excess neutrons. The power flowed and he cracked the sound barrier; everything died in his wake, broken by shockwaves and irradiated by the thorium reaction in his heart.

Magic flared somewhere overhead, high above the surface, and the voice in his head cut off mid-flow.

Harq slowed his headlong rush, suddenly uncertain. Is this another test? The last time he’d managed to get free had been an opportunity to get some measure of revenge on his masters, but the cost had been very high; starved to the point of thorium cycle collapse and held there while they... He let out a little whimper and shivered. Harq slowed, coming to a hover. Faint screams came from the closest aircraft and the dim shapes within moved frantically.

The artificial fury gone and mind clearing, he looked over his shoulder at the trail of destruction. What will they do to me this time? The prey...

More magic, a tremendous hammer-blow of power from above, then another and another. Harq inhaled again, hunting for some place to which he could escape, but the roof overhead buckled and collapsed, pinning him to the road bed. Further fearful impacts followed, then a glaring explosion of heat and light--

===

Fusion probed the ruins of the tunnel system, hunting for any sign of the thing that had been tracking Gravity. Something... faint, but without any sign of movement. Her power surged again, a star-like flare a wingspan away, shedding the odour of electric discharge and a harsh crackle of displaced air. She gritted her teeth and twisted, tightening the magnetic fields holding the plasma bottle closed, preparing to send it downwards. There was a flash-thump at her side, followed by a general cooling and dimming.

"Is it dead? Huh... guess not. That thing is tough." Gravity stared downwards, into the blasted landscape, then glanced sidelong at the weapon. "Subtle, sister, very subtle."

Fusion stared at Gravity, her mouth opening and closing, letting the plasma bolus expand and vanish. Her head drooped and she let out a shuddering sigh. "I left you behind, I was so focused that I didn’t notice, I--"

"Not important, Fusion." Gravity said. "You came back. That is what matters, remember?" Darkness swirled around her as her power built. "It's still down there... the tunnels have collapsed and buried it." The magic collapsed, letting the light back in. It's probably just another slave. She shook her head and opened her eyes. "Never mind. What did you do to the Arclight base?"

"It’s gone, all of it. Baur is wide open." She plucked out the earpiece, holding it up with distaste. "They’ve found me again. Keep trying to get me to come back."

"Baur wants to talk, we’ve forced them that far." Gravity smiled, a grin that threatened to unhinge her whole muzzle. "Orgon wasn’t idle... the stolen teleport spell was used to send teams into Baur sites, and he’s threatening the Court with similar treatment."

"We can’t trust him."

"Of course not!" She snorted, dipping one dark wing to turn a fast loop in the air. "But he does know we can really hurt him. He chose us rather than them."

"I won’t stop here!" Fusion’s breathing became ragged, and she closed her eyes.

Gravity slowed her wing beats, drifting close enough to touch Fusion on the muzzle. "We won’t... but I don’t think we can get to the leadership the way you want to. If we could find them..." She shrugged. "They do need to pay, but we can wait. Their power will fail as more ponies are freed. As much as I’d like to smash them to paste, there’s something to be said for a long, slow revenge. I think it is that thing the dogs call 'justice'."

"I’m sure you are right. They tell me that Baur has not resumed its general attack, that the whole thing was just a mistake by the local commander." Is that really all it was? All those lives snuffed out in error or to try out some bit of military hardware? Some of the anger came back, erasing the fading remnants of terror. Fusion put the communicator back in her ear, listening intently. "Fine, I’ll let this rest for now. You warn them, that any treachery..." She nodded to Gravity. "Come on, let’s go home."

~~~discontinuity~~~

===

Harq couldn’t even open his eyes against the crush of rock. It was hot. Not terribly so, but getting hotter. Too much insulation! My heart can’t take this. The patch of warmth in his midsection was becoming more pronounced, spreading to the rest of his torso and starting to trickle down his limbs. The Master’s warnings had been dire; too much heat and his heart would melt and burn its way out of his chest. The heavy load of food remaining in his crop was a secondary source of heat. Got to get out, find somewhere to dump the heat. If my crop loses containment--

The thought made his heart beat faster, bringing more heat and the start of a fiery burn that threatened to burst from Harq’s jaws even though they were clamped shut. Calm, they said to remain calm. He flinched as another pulse of magic flared above, followed immediately by a shockwave that made his prison settle a little further. It’s digging down to me and I’m not deep enough! Please don’t kill me, it’s not my fault!

The rebellious, whining thought should have brought a rebuke, the scream of angry voices in his head, but there was only silence. This can’t be a test, not now. The magic built again and Harq hunched his shoulders, but there was no strike, no hammer shock to break open his flesh and snuff out his heart.

Something else had happened, a strange twist of magic and space-time, and the weapon spell faded away. Harq strained his shadow sight, trying to resolve the brilliance overhead. A second point, the prey, had joined the first. The other target? This pony is why I can’t hear the Masters any more... it has killed the whole fleet. The certainty of this thought blended in with the near-automatic military threat assessment based on the size of the force he’d been deployed with, and Harq shuddered again.

It showed me... Harq struggled with the concept, hunting for words that had nothing other than academic meaning. ...mercy. I was going to kill its friend and it showed me mercy. The odd twist of space-time happened again, leaving him with the subliminal hint of a tunnel vanishing away in some direction out of the real world, and he was alone.

I’m not going to die! He shifted carefully, exploring the stresses that pressed down on his back. The last strike had actually lifted some of the pressure, and Harq managed to pull his wedge-shaped head back, clearing a little space near his jaws. It will do. He exhaled carefully, a needle of blue that made the rubble run like hot tar, cutting away more of the rock. The process was a long one, and at some point the voices returned.

===

They took a slower path back home, jumping at very high altitude in full view of the world. Look, we’re not going to crush you! Gravity thought as they left Baur territory. Not today... Without much air to get in the way, the individual jumps were long but spread out, giving her time to rest.

Fusion was silent, her thoughts a red-tinged complexity at the edge of Gravity’s mind. "I understand, Fusion, I really do," she said softly, just loud enough for her sister to hear. "No harm was done; you didn’t come back but you did fix the problem. As soon as you destroyed the Arclight I was able to leave."

"I know, Grav. I remember. Still shouldn’t have done it." She shook all over, momentarily destabilising her flight. "What is the situation back home?"

"I had to make a choice... turns out I’m not good enough to intercept simultaneous salvo firing of the entire world’s strategic arsenal." She laughed, a sound that came out unexpectedly bitter. "Hard to imagine, right?" I think I could have brought down enough rocks to wreck the biosphere, but that wouldn’t have stopped the attacks... the thought tailed off into vague plans to threaten arcologies with rocks just big enough that it would tie up defences, then she pushed them away. Who knows what other systems they have hidden?

"What happened?"

"Their Arclights started fighting my power directly. I could have switched to point defence to get out of their range, or carried on fighting, or..."

"So you dropped rocks on them from outside their range." Fusion nodded. "But at a price."

"There were nuclear detonations scattered at random across our valleys. I left just ahead of one of the blast waves." How many ponies did we lose? "At least our people were mostly in shelters. We can dig them out."

"It could have been worse," Fusion said, barely loud enough to hear, then twisted her head to stare directly at Gravity. "How are we going to settle this, Grav?" The words came out in a strangled shout. "They sling nuclear weapons around like fireworks!"

"They still don’t really believe we can hurt them. Not mere ponies." But I think they may be starting to. "We actually have Orgon and Merlon to thank for this ceasefire. She tells me that her dog faced down the Court, threatened them with nukes teleported into their arcologies."

Fusion snorted. "Unlike me, I bet he went through with it."

"There was a demonstration... but just military -- a barracks and that Arclight that was blocking you."

"An actual ally among the dogs... I wonder if he sees it as a route to personal power?"

"I don’t see how it matters." Gravity fluttered her wings, turning a fast aileron roll. "The numbers of free ponies increases by the kilosecond and Ellisif has been working on the gryphons. They’ll never put us back in harness."

===

"Heavy losses among the fleet; anything within the pony's horizon was destroyed." Ininil recited the conclusions tonelessly, trying not to let the twisting in his gut show on his face. "The conclusions from the Lacunae data about the rogue's teleport magic were obviously incorrect."

"This one is also disappointed by the performance of the Seraphim prototype." The Monarch ran one bone-white claw along the underside of his muzzle.

Ininil's ears drooped for a moment, then recovered. "Yes, Monarch, although the Harq device was the only thing that survived the rogue's response... and these ones were successful in preventing the detection of Strix." The predicted flight path had been far too close for comfort.

"True, there are losses in war." The Monarch made a dismissive gesture, eyes on the strategic display.

On the screen, annotated by a tiny 2D gravity wave plot, the positions of the two ponies had shifted, heading back to their cloud-covered territory with wide-spaced jumps. "Monarch--"

~~~

The design of the command and control installation and its network linkages were clear. It had not visited this particular base for some time, but it had the same design as many others. Chaos reached in and triggered the control mechanism in the biped, bypassing it completely. A fast read of the current mental state and Chaos retreated to model the biped's responses to certain stimuli. Guardian activity was high this close to the world and one of the biped's 'Creation Stones'; speed of light delay alone made this a risky proposition, but the work was complex and could not be interrupted. It travelled as far as it dared, then replicated the mind.

A tiny fragment of its attention remained within the command and control facility, a thread that reported back on activity within the base. Practically independent, a tiny wisp of self far more basic than its decoy, the fragment packaged up a collection of raw data and sent it on to Chaos via a circuitous route.

~~~

General Ininil swallowed, shaking his head, then put out a paw to steady himself. What --? "--the targets have returned to Lacunae territory."

"The officer may fire when ready."

~~~

Chaos could have given the order, interfering with the communications network and placing data to be replayed on the activation of subtle flaws in control systems, but there was too much risk it would be discovered and blocked. On-site intervention was out of the question; the glacial nature of systems that had to move actual atoms around meant there was just far too much time, and time in one place meant Guardians, and Guardians meant--

The suborned biped’s upper distal limb moved towards the capacitive control surface, reaching for the targeting systems. Slow, very slow, but still moving, and speed of light meant that it wasn’t even where Chaos thought it was. The modelling process was not straightforward; there seemed no way to make the biped enact the desired actions autonomously. Chaos shrank within itself, pulling all components close together and reducing its own processing lag. The speed of external events slowed as the tempo of its thoughts jumped.

~~~

Ininil touched at controls on his pad, nodding to his counterpart from External Security. Eliminate the threat, all at once. He opened the firing console, pulling up a targeting map.

~~~

The local automata, the amorphous machinery that Chaos swam within, slowed and started to malfunction, more and more of their internal systems suborned by Chaos for its own purposes. This was a risk; it was not far enough from the high activity areas to escape Guardian attention for long, and they would notice. There was--

~~~

He carefully checked the firing coordinates and area of effect, then placed a paw over the accept sensor--

~~~

--a solution! Not clean and subtle like it wanted, but it would work! Hurriedly crafted patterns formed and were tested on a bare ten of the model minds, far too few to be sure, then Chaos dove back to the world, effortlessly passing through the best shielding the bipeds could manufacture as if it were so much air. A moment of intense activity, shuffling electrons and quantum states within the disordered organic networks of its target's visual cortex and--

~~~

--blinked, frowning as his vision blurred, then cleared. Has there been another system update? The screen was subtly different from the last training session; controls were placed in different locations and the targeting coordinates incorrect. Why was this not preset? He shrugged off a sudden crawling sensation down his back, hiding a sense of unease while a quick swipe of his paw cleared the existing targeting data.

~~~

Chaos watched from a safe distance, darting in to make occasional adjustments before dashing away to avoid the attentions of a persistent Guardian. Its interest had been aroused and more of its kind were coming, sharp-edged forms among the fuzzy automata. Chaos hovered, torn between annihilation and desperation to see this critical manipulation through to the end, then left at last, taking a long loop around the weapon chamber itself. At the centre, almost hidden among a swarm of Guardians, was the brilliant complexity of the Creation Stone, forever out of reach.

~~~

lninil corrected the coordinates and tapped a claw on the ‘accept’ control. Now we’ll see if the Monarch’s read of the Court was correct.

There was a moment of breathless silence, then the thaumic alarms went off.

36 - Rainbow-coloured motes, falling

Author's Note

A full plot summary can be found here. Do not read unless you are up to date! Spoilers!
Preread by: turol, NoeCarrier and Caliaponia.

36 - Rainbow-coloured motes, falling

My name is Five and I am alone. So many darks have passed in this place; for a while I mark the damaged tile every time the lights go out. Using my horn, I dig the sharp tip into the soft material; the substance is yielding yet hard to damage, but if I look carefully I can see the tiny pucker marks left behind. It doesn't take long to find the marked tile each time -- the light level falls gradually -- but I am forced to place the marks closer and closer together as the tile fills up. Eventually I run out of space and place the first mark on a new tile, the one right next to it.

The following dark I locate my tile again, but the one next to it is blank. I cast around, desperate, but the light is fading fast and my marks are too small. Tentatively, I reach for the half-remembered patterns of my early foalhood, pushing power into my horn and making it glow fitfully. There are more types of magic than the one I am trained for, I know this, but I have not performed any, other than at my Master's direct request, since I came here. I build the pattern on the fly, modifying it to increase the light output. At the back of my mind, I know this is wrong... but there were never any explicit instructions against doing so. The orange glow brightens and becomes steady, enough that I can see clearly. There it is; halfway to the wall. There is pain now, and I quickly let go of my power in time to take a few quick steps toward my prize. I make my mark and lie down, just as it becomes too dark to see. Satisfied, I close my eyes and go to sleep.

The following light I wake up and start walking; it is only after the third pile of food that I realise that I have not seen either of the marked tiles. Studying the floor as I trot, I look with increasing desperation for any sign of them, but after several kiloseconds of first trotting, then cantering, I can find nothing. The floor is as blank and featureless as it was before I started. Disconsolate with a loss that I cannot put into words, tears start to run down my muzzle, dripping to the floor and vanishing through the hair-fine cracks between the tiles to leave no trace. Still crying, and completely unable to see, I break into a stumbling run, galloping until my strength gives out and my mind is as exhausted as my body. The Masters must have been watching, because as I stagger to a halt, a small pile of food appears from under the wall. Out of long ingrained habit I walk to it and start to eat; the food tastes a little different to normal and I soon start to feel better. I don't try and make any more marks.

It is the middle of the light when the work chime sounds again. It has been several darks since the last time I was called upon, and to know that I am still needed comes as a great comfort. Even better, this will be a chance to be with the Others again, and wipe away the residual melancholy that has made my time since waking pass more slowly than normal. I hide my feelings away behind a wall of excitement, staring expectantly at the screen with head raised. It comes to life, showing me another neon orange pattern. Brow furrowed, I drink it in, building a copy in my mind. It's not quite the same as the others -- every single one is slightly different, although they are all similar, having a central, unchanging, core -- but I can manage it easily. Eyes shut, I run through the pattern a few times, then push.

The Others are waiting for me, their numbers swelling rapidly as more of us join the herd-of-the-mind. It is like coming home after a long absence; any unhappiness I have vanishes under the joy of their presence. We are all friends, companions, lovers; everything that we are is joined together. Somewhere deep inside I know this is an illusion, that all I have is a sense of belonging, rather than an actual exchange of information, but it is enough. The magic starts to build, the room blazing orange even through my tightly closed eyes, and I push harder, trying to get closer to my friends.

Where there should be the warning tingle to let me know that my time is up, there is nothing. Emboldened, I strive for greater heights of magic, thinking that if I try hard enough, perhaps I will finally be with the Others in body, as well as mind. I can feel my body only slightly during my efforts, a dim sensation of fatigue and sweat-soaked fur, but nothing that matters compared to being with the Others. My legs fold and I fall to my belly, but the floor is soft and it does not disturb my concentration.

The taste of the Others starts to change, as if a few parts of the herd are vanishing. This adds a new hope to the joy of being with them; some have found a way to leave this place, to go to a place where the most distant point a pony can see is further than a single bodylength away. Desperate not to be left behind, I make one final push--

===

Lilac cocked one ear up to the ceiling, a gesture followed by many of the other ponies in the deepest part of their shelter. "Is that it?" No new shockwaves, no little trickles of pulverised rock falling from fresh cracks in the ceiling.

"Maybe," Spiral said, stepping to his side, her brow furrowed. "I thought we’d all be dead by now, so..."

One of the other ponies poked his head into the chamber. "Hey, the comms says there’s a cease-fire!"

A gabble of relieved voices flooded the room, cut by the voice of Helium. "Really? And how do we know this isn’t some trap to get us into the open?"

"The new gryphon units are on the move, so they think it’s all over." The other pony shrugged. "For now, anyway. Personally, I think we use this as a chance to get as many of us safe as we can."

Spiral nodded sharply. "Yes, the first task is to check in with each of the shelters. I’m sure they can dig themselves out, but our assistance may be required."

"And the cloud cover!" another pony called out. "Those spells won’t last without maintenance. If the attack starts again it’s the only thing stopping the dogs from spotting us."

Which they will if we start digging each other out under open skies! Lilac ruffled his clipped wings, nodding to Random. "I can show you how to fix yours," he whispered in her ear, then flinched as he glanced at the stump of her horn. "When you are ready! Your foals are still sedated, right?" The conversation continued around them, the ponies building a response plan under the guidance of those with emergency team experience.

She smiled slightly. "It might not be that long in the future; don't tell Spiral, but I can already manage some minor telekinesis. Even with this tiny stump of a horn..." The smile faltered, becoming strained. "...don't tell anypony, please." Lilac nodded and Random sighed, looking mournfully at her featherless wings. "The dogs left me with nothing. What else were we to do with them all?" she said, looking a little guilty.

"Too young to understand." He nodded vigorously. "How long did Spiral say they would be out?"

"A few tens of kiloseconds." She shuffled her hooves, looking down, then started to back away. "Thank you for your kindness, but I really need to be with them." She turned and fled, weaving through the herd of excited ponies.

"Stupid, stupid," Lilac muttered, then joined the group receiving orders for cloud maintenance. At least I know I can do this. Should be easier without being under nuclear bombardment!

===

"Strix reports thaumic excursion alarms triggered." The voice from the communications desk was high and thin, its owner looking aghast at something on her panel. "They request an immediate abort."

The General looked stupidly at the flashing warnings on his console, trying to extract some meaning from the arcane symbols. "This firing is critical," he croaked, "these ones knew there was a risk of excursion. Evacuate the facility and go to remote mode." Has the firing solution changed? His jaw dropped as he read the predicted yield. Effect radius is... is... ten megalengths. But that’s-- Disbelieving, he checked his requested power settings and they matched exactly. But this one didn’t, he swears he didn’t! The display wasn’t how he remembered, there was no new layout, it was exactly the same as it always had been in the simulations.

Have these ones been hacked? But who would want to do this? He felt sick, then started hammering on the controls, trying by pure force to halt the attack. The system failed to respond, but that was always the risk with biological mechanisms. Can this one trust it anyway? No choice. "Sterilise the facility." He stabbed a paw at his aide, who bent to work his own console. "Hard kill."

"Order sent but this one is still receiving updates," his assistant replied, ears flat back. "The destruct did not fire!"

"General, what--" The Monarch’s muzzle twisted into a snarl when he was ignored. The guard servitor, always a pace behind, twitched and stepped forwards, a sickly greenish glow congealing around its horn.

Fear made the hackles down the General’s back rise, but he turned his back on the Monarch. "Do these ones have any strategic assets in range?" he asked, tension making his throat close up.

His aide risked a quick glance at the guard pony, then dipped his head, paws flashing again across his own terminal. "Nothing fast enough. Closest is a ballistic shot from the Oria Mountain launch site. No contact with the Strix inner security detachment. The Strix outer perimeter detail is responding, but..." He left the sentence hanging, his ears folded back.

"General, report!" the Monarch demanded, alarm on his face.

Not now! Ininil bit back a snarl, his eyes on the black-and-white-striped horror at the Monarch’s side. "Send them in," he snapped to the aide, "stop the attack at all costs." It’s one thing to nuke them all, but a death by randomised magic...

The Monarch made a gesture and green fire bloomed around the General. He fell to his knees, gasping and writhing, a blowtorch heat across all points of his body at the same time. Another gesture and the pain vanished. "This one asked the General a question," the Monarch hissed.

Ininil gasped and trembled, trying to stand. He stared at the fur on the backs of his arms, amazed they weren’t charred to carbon and ash. "T-there is a problem with Baur strategic systems. The Strix weapon is firing at full power." The look of annoyance on the Monarch’s face deepened and Ininil held back a sigh. "It will affect everything out to ten megalengths... the whole planet, Monarch."

===

A shrill warble cut through the air, a desperate tone that evoked the sound of an infant Person screaming. "Cut that Maker-damned thing off!" Oranar yelled, paws balled into tight fists inside his suit’s armoured and clawed gloves. His autocannon flicked this way and that, nosing the air like a seeker drone given full autonomy, following the direction of his eyes as he scanned the approach to the Strix compound.

There was a crack and the alarm cut off, or at least was much quieter; the tone still repeated from somewhere behind the heavy door. That they had opened under local control, so at least the heavy breacher rig could be left behind. "System still not responding to aggressive remote overrides," came the slightly bored reply from one of his sersjants. "At least they didn’t armour the speakers".

Oranar grunted something humourless and crude. Property damage is the least of this one’s worries. The little barchart feed from his thaumic defences rippled again, picking up something from deeper in the complex. It spiked, then subsided. Orders are orders. No suppressors in range... damn that traitorous servitor! He hit the ‘go’ key on his tactical bracer.

The point gryphons surged forwards, galloping into the complex. Within was the main loading bay and associated guard rooms and defence posts. The inner part of the base, which Oranar had guarded for the last quarter gigasecond but never actually entered, was full of mysteries. Command still won’t tell this one what this place does... servitors are involved, but so what? The urging in his earpiece was becoming very insistent, so Oranar waved a paw to the rest of his squad and followed the gryphons in.

Some of the soldiers set up a watch, while others breached the light doors leading deeper into the complex. The inner chamber was distorted in some strange manner; where there should have been the smooth anti-spall liner were organic bumps and curves. In some places the liner had split, showing that the aggregate and basalt whisker armourcrete was responsible; it had bubbled and flowed like tar under the hot sun. The guards that should have been in here were gone, leaving only empty uniforms and fallen equipment next to piles of...

Oranar twitched, his ears going back. One equipment belt was neatly placed around the swell of an ornamental pot, a fancy ceramic and metal thing filled with a mature plant that bore broad, lush leaves. Another was half buried in a mound of very small dolls, each identical and bearing a startling similarity to-- He swallowed, determined not to look any closer, just as his thaumic attack sensor warbled again. There were sudden screams, ragged, gargling noises only a gryphon could make, coming from the forward teams.

The spike of power climbed up the logarithmic scale of the little graph on his HUD, turning the whole thing into a mass of red. Oranar drew in a sharp breath to shout a warning, then a strange tingling swept through him, rapidly building to a twisting, burning pain--

===

Fusion stared at the world spread below them. Through her normal eye it looked peaceful, if a little surreal. Vaguely pink clouds extended from horizon to horizon, the billowy plane marked only by the occasional peak of a mountain tall enough to puncture the haze, parting the smooth katabatic flows like stones in a stream. Here and there were pockmarks, like somepony had kicked hoof-divots in an otherwise smooth lawn; smooth-sided craters in the clouds. Fusion’s ears drooped and she swallowed away the taste of acid at the back of her throat.

"How bad did it get?" she asked, voice sounding coarse.

"Bad enough. They obviously didn’t know where to strike... between the dog’s mid-course defences and my efforts we killed a lot of the weapons." She shook her head. "I got out just ahead of a blast wave. I think it would have been easier if they’d have tried the Hammer again."

"Too afraid of what might happen if we managed to divert it, I guess." Fusion flew a wide loop, the world’s biggest vulture circling a corpse as wide as a continent, studying the view through shadow sight.

Through shadow sight the cloud was filled with the interplay of decaying pastel lights, a huge tangle of threads and nodes, a vast complexity the result of the interactions between hundreds of minor spells. Amid the cobweb fuzz moved bright patches, like glowing fish over a fluorescent reef, each leaving a wake of brighter, more intense colours. How many did that really save? Even with her own magic it was hard to see far through the fog of energised water droplets; the ground might as well have vanished.

"That looks like a good sign," Gravity said, her voice a little hesitant. "I can see a lot of activity in the clouds... perhaps we didn’t lose too many?" They flew on in silence for a few seconds, through normal space and without the mad, jolting rush of chained teleports.

"We are good at what we do," Fusion said softly. "The dogs built us well."

"It’s just a shame they didn’t understand what they had!" Gravity snorted.

"I’m proud of us, I really am." Tears made the view swim and distort, and Fusion blinked them away. "I took the one bit of stability from their lives and this is how they react."

"I think it helped that Orgon gave that order... but yes."

There was an odd distortion at the edge of Fusion’s shadow sight, and for a moment she thought it was some artefact of the altitude or perspective. It was not; on the horizon magic bloomed in a complex, turbulent pattern, expanding rapidly like a physical shockwave.

Orgon yawned, thinking about the medical kit in its special holder under his console. He was already one shot into the course of battlefield stimulants. The taste of the stuff was putting him off. The first dose was bad enough; the second would be horrible. His clarity was fading and soon it would be time to sleep or take the drugs. He glanced down at Merlon, but the pony was staring off into the middle distance, apparently transfixed by the opposite wall. The pony would be able to make a slight adjustment to this one’s brain chemistry...

He sighed, then flinched as another set of alarms went off. The tone was new, something not heard during the current war or the one before it. Thaumic attack-- He glanced at the strategic staff, already busy directing the movement of Arclight aircraft.

The tactician in charge of the group shook her head, a slightly smug smile on her muzzle. "These ones have nothing in range, Strategist. As per the agreement with the rogues, all Arclight units have been kept at least a megalength away from their occupied territory."

She didn’t continue the thought, but Orgon was already thinking it. The ponies brought it upon themselves... these ones can’t help them even if they wanted to, but if Orgon doesn’t warn them... He snapped a claw at the communications officer. "Contact Fusion Pulse; relay the attack warning."

The comms officer bent to his task, and Orgon’s gaze went back to the thaumic warning display. The whole northern section of Lacunae was covered with a low-grade haze from the ponies’ defensive magic, but there was a spot somewhere in the middle that was showing a glimmer of greater power. It suddenly flared, then burst; a pebble dropped into a phosphorescent pond. A faint ripple spread from the initiation point; it should have faded rapidly, dropping below the ability of the global sensor net to detect, but it didn’t. The ripple was stubbornly persistent, only gradually subsiding as it expanded.

Orgon’s ears flattened. "Technical, get a reading on that strike!" He’d never seen a real thaumic weapon discharge outside of small-scale tests, the few that the World Court allowed. What is happening under those clouds? "Report, dammit!" The spellshock was moving at about a kilolength a second, roughly the same speed as a hypersonic transport.

"T-this one doesn’t know; the signature is not one Technical has on file." The military Academician’s voice was awe-filled and distracted. "The wave is not decaying as expected; it will come in range of the perimeter Arclight units in approximately half a kilosecond. This one will continue to work on parameterising the attack profile. Can this one order the expansion of the Arclight sensor perimeter? It would be useful to get a direct measure of the spellshock."

Orgon grunted, mind whirling. It goes against the spirit of the agreement, but... "Do it." Drones would be launching from the distant Arclight squadrons, remote-piloted by the onboard gryphon pilot-farm, carrying expensive and sensitive thaumic sensors. "Any communication with our new allies?" This was answered with a quick shake of the communication officer's head. Orgon made a hissing noise through clenched teeth. "Get a report from the units these ones sent to them... and get the World Court!"

"Yes, Strategist. The rogues-- ah, the independent ponies have modified much of the existing hardware; this one has not received standard comms pings for some time. This one has not managed to contact Fusion Pulse, either... he doesn't believe the Court is passing on the message." There was a pause. "The non-causal unit is still functioning, but none of the client races are present. There is no outbound link. Too many detonations. Cloud cover is still too complete to get a high frequency link from the temporary drones. This one has a ping from the ELF, but only an acknowledgement..." His voice subsided to a mutter, paws still moving over the console.

"Launch a dedicated relay; drop it through the clouds." Hundreds of seconds for the ballistic fall of a drone to take it from the nearest launch site to the shrouded valleys. "Keep trying."

===

Lilac flew through the clouds, his field-reinforced wings making the fog around him glow a faint purple. Shadow sight was too confusing for constant use; the complex mesh of spells layered over and through each other made picking out a single one a frustrating exercise. Instead, he dipped briefly in and out, relying on glimpses and near-instinctual reflex to grab the decaying patterns and inject more power into them.

None of this was particularly hard, but there was so much of it, endless tiny alterations to knit the unravelling network back into something that would shelter them from hostile eyes. He lost himself in the work, humming some half-forgotten lullaby.

A sudden momentary heaviness ran through him, like his bones were made of lead. The light from his horn and wings blinked out and the wind of his passage through the air changed from a stiff breeze to a yelling, howling gale. Water droplets from the cloud immediately soaked his fur and blasted him like he was under an irrigation hose.

His wings spread by instinct, but failed to bite the air, the stumps of his clipped feathers blown apart by the slipstream. He started to tumble, then stopped it, just as he fell out of the bottom of the cloud deck. The ground was distant, but closing at a frightening rate; Lilac closed his eyes and felt for his power, but where there should have been certainty was only an elusive vagueness that fluttered and shifted under his efforts to pin it down. The patterns filled his mind but they wouldn’t settle into the real. Flares of pale purple light danced up and down his wings, stuttering in time with the wavering sense of disconnection in his head. Nonono--

He took a deep breath, hard to do against the jet engine bellow of the wind. Did I push too hard? Tears of frustration added to those blasted away by the cold air. I got so far and now I’ve killed myself. Something caught his eye, and he blinked away the tears, staring out through slitted lids.

All around the sky was filled with rainbow-coloured motes, falling.

===

"What in the Maker’s name is going on up there?" Ellisif leaned forwards in her harness, staring out of the gunship’s windscreen. They were operating under visual flight rules, not trusting instruments within the energised clouds even with the virtual terrain profiles thrown up by the aircraft’s HUD.

Ponies were falling from the underside of the clouds, a few hundred lengths above the hull of the gunship. They weren’t falling like dropped stones, but it didn’t look controlled, either; many were tumbling, or had wings thrashing at the air. "No threats I can see; no evidence for general thaumic suppression," the pilot reported, her tawny head swivelling rapidly from instrument to instrument. "Wait... ground security reports panic among the pony rescue teams. Some sort of magical failure?" Her voice rose at the end, questioning, and she glanced at her own wings.

Ellisif popped her harness release and gave an experimental flap, the best she could in the confined space. A familiar lightness filled her and she shrugged. "Mine work. No reports from local CAP?"

"Nothing."

The falling shapes were accelerating and Ellisif reached a decision. "Assume they won’t recover in time. Send out an all-wings call: deploy for mid-air rescue."

The pilot gunned the aircraft’s engines and dove towards the nearest group, the acceleration making Ellisif reach for a claw-hold. Not going to be able to get many, but we can try. She opened the door to the troop compartment, pulling her visor down at the sudden blast of air. The side doors were already open, troopers stacking up to leap into empty air. "Pick your targets," she shouted over the slipstream, "don’t get tangled if the pony panics; knock them out if you have to... and no, I don’t know what’s going on."

She ignored the beak click acknowledgements, taking her own place in the jump queue.

===

The more he tried, the more elusive the magic became, until it was gone completely. No shadow sight, not even the simplest spell worked. The sound of rotors, barely audible over the rush of air, made Lilac twitch and he abandoned all efforts towards flight. Wings half out in an effort to maintain some sort of flight surface, he stabilised his fall, changing it from an unstable plummet to something more targeted.

Is there anything I can do? The grim calculus of glide slope, sink rate and terminal velocity filled his head; none of the numbers were welcome. The valley stretched out below him, the central river expanded into a deep, steep-sided lake some way ahead. Can I reach the water and will it make any difference? Gryphon-shapes were fanning out from the gunships, but they were some distance away. Perhaps I can give them as much time as possible.

His glide slope was horrible, but at least he had some ground speed. Cautious adjustment of wing angle found the sweet spot of air flow versus feather holding strength, enough that his dangling hind legs didn't cause too many problems; he tried to add extra air resistance with his fores, but this resulted in a disturbing tendency to pitch forwards and he abandoned any further experimentation. The lake was creeping within range, but the trees lining the valley walls had already gained a sharpness and clarity that spoke of closeness.

Something slammed into his back, sharp-edged bands wrapping around his wing roots. Lilac let out a startled high-pitched whinny and started to struggle, freezing when a gravelly voice screamed something incoherent in his ear. "S-sorry," he said, gulping in a great grasp of air.

The gryphon grunted in response and pulled him closer, long tawny body feeling startlingly warm as the creature tucked its hindpaws under his belly and held him tight. "I’m not going to be able to put you down on dry land," the soldier shouted, "too heavy. Keep your wings out and adjusted for landing flare." His wings, shorter but deeper than those of the average pony, started to backstroke, tiny motions at first but quickly getting stronger and faster.

Liliac did so, wincing as the feathers tried to separate under the still too-fast airflow. Their vertical velocity had dropped, the glide slope more glide than plummet, and soon the lake seemed to be no more than a wingspan below his hooves, little wavelets racing by. "I don’t know if I can swim," he called out, muscles suddenly tensing.

"Keep your wings and legs in and head up. That water is cold and you will want to gasp. Really try not to; I’ll tow you to shore." The soldier’s wingbeats grew suddenly faster and they pitched up, slowing dramatically. The grip of his talons tightened, turning to bands of ache tipped with stabbing pain where the sharp points dug in. "Good luck!" he shouted, then let go.

There was no sensation of falling and no time seemed to elapse between being supported by talons and being enveloped by a hungry mass of icy liquid that hammered at him from all sides. The water closed over his head and he thrashed, jaws clamped shut against heaving lungs. Desperate cold punched through his fur and he kicked out, forehooves striking the pebbly lake bottom. The impact jarred rapidly cooling muscles but stopped his descent; an endless struggle later his muzzle broke the surface.

The urge to breathe became overwhelming and his nostrils flared and he sucked in a great gasp of air, followed by water that made him cough and splutter. Something small and hard struck him on the face, hard to see past the blur of water in his eyes. "Grab the end!" a voice called out and he snapped at it, getting a firm hold of the strip of yielding plastic.

The water closed in again and Lilac gagged, but the thing in his mouth pulled up and out, dragging his head above the surface. He blew water from his nostrils, releasing great, whole-body convulsive coughs, but kept a hold on the rescue line. Ages later his paddling hooves touched bottom again and he collapsed on the shore, forehooves struggling to pull his limp hindquarters from the water. He tried to speak, but the shivering was so strong it just made his teeth clatter together.

"You broke your back? I didn't think--"

There was a look of dismay and guilt in the gryphon's eyes, and Lilac shook his head. "Old injury," he gasped, turning the shiver into a shake that shed water from the front half of his body. "Spinal cord." The gryphon landed, hooking a set of talons under one of his forelegs and hauled him away from the water.

"There are temporary mobility units; I'll radio it in," he said, taking off and peeling away, heading further from the shore to assist another struggling shape. Lilac reached for his magic in an effort to generate some warmth, but there was the same sense of disconnection; even this was fainter than before, the sense of waiting power fading like it had always been a dream. He still shivered, the cold lake shore rocks almost unfelt through numb flesh and sodden coat. The dense tangle of pine forest started a little back from the shore, looking warm and inviting and a thousand lengths away.

Hooves and wings digging into the gravel and pebbles, he slowly dragged himself towards the trees. The movement, ineffectual though it was, added a little warmth to his muscles and he paused to stare across the valley. There was nothing in the sky apart from the wheeling shapes of gryphons and the grumbling roar of gunships. Faintly, over the sound of their engines, he could hear screams. Not just me, but everypony at once. How far does this go?

===

The circle of colour expanded in Fusion’s shadow sight, blossoming from a confused mass of colour somewhere amid their claimed territory and expanding like a shockwave seen in still air. In its wake it left a subtle wrongness, the sense of something missing in the background of thaumically active clouds. The sharing she had with Gravity was closed and she had no time to speak--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--much higher, the air thinned to the point of nonexistence. Her force field bubble swept out, huge and fragile, then fell inwards, making the air breathable and her ears pop. Not far enough! A confused shout from Gravity, her own magic filling the air with darkness and violet, interfering with Fusion’s attempt to get another teleport pattern formed, then the wave of colour ran over them both.

Her power fluttered and the field expanded, then burst like a soap bubble. Fusion’s ears popped and she fell, Gravity tumbling at her side. Flight magic came back first, that and her building speed allowing some control in the thin air. She twisted her wings, feeling them bite, changing her trajectory towards the horizon, rather than straight at the ground. Her mane and tail, now plain pink hair rather than pale rainbow, whipped out behind her.

Gravity was below her now, and still struggling to regain control. Fusion reached out with her magic, gritting her teeth at the sudden spike of pain, like a nail driven through the side of her head. Golden light flashed, then went out. She tried again, and this time the power stabilised. She felt for Gravity with her telekinesis, but her sister had already stopped her meteoric descent, her wings fanning to bring her to a hover. "What the Maker was that?!" she shouted, eyes wide, the whites showing around her dark irises. A violet nimbus flickered around her horn, weak and unstable, then started to strengthen.

Gasping in the thin air, black fog closing in from the edges of her vision, Fusion re-established her defences, restoring her life support magic. Everything was harder than it should have been, like she'd spent the last kilosecond cantering uphill. "A magical attack, something aimed at us." Ellisif had much to say on the dog’s strategic thaumic weapons, but the effects of them had always been death, or manufactured insanity, not this failure-of-magic. Something new, something secret... a counter-culture weapon. "It looked big... I was watching through shadow sight, and it seemed to blanket the world."

Gravity was silent for a moment. "You jumped us away as the pulse struck, but it didn’t help. There was no drop in power?" Fusion shook her head. "I feel weak... what has this done to ponies without our strength?" Her ears flattened and she vanished in a flash of violet light.

Fusion formed her own pattern and pushed--

===

The spellshock crawled outwards, slowly fading until the global sensor array could no-longer detect it. But it's not gone, is it? A simple line replaced it, generated by the strategic systems, moving outwards at the same rate. "What is the prediction?" Orgon said.

"This one will know in... ah, unbelievable! Perimeter sensor has a reading; the spell is still active. Samples taken; analysis started... it is some kind of transfiguration, highly specific." The predicted position of the shock front sharpened, changing into a fuzzy ripple of colour, as the locally networked sensors in the drone cloud all reported back with real-world data. "Arclight coming online; weapons free." He shook his head. "If only these ones had been near the casting locus."

Black patches appeared within the onrushing wave front, then vanished as the power curled around them. "Local effect only, as expected." There was a pause, filled with more muttering. "These ones have backtracked to the initiation point--" A red thaumic hazard icon appeared on the global map, deep within Baur territory. "--it is the facility known as Tartarus."

The thaumic wave started to pass through the outer Hive settlements and bases. Orgon held his breath, but there were no immediate damage reports and no mass casualties. What was it configured to attack? The location of the strike made that obvious and that meant that it was the servitors that were the target-- "What is the closest servitor facility to the thaumic wavefront?" he demanded, searching the map. How could this one be so stupid!?

"This one, Strategist," the Academician said with a strangled whisper. "Brace for spellshock. Fifteen seconds."

Suddenly paralysed, Orgon froze for an instant, eyes drawn to Merlon, still huddled in a ball to one side of the main screen, then adrenaline surged through his body. "The servitor will get to her hooves!" he roared, jumping out of his chair and vaulting over the console.

Merlon’s head came up, panic twisting her muzzle and flattening her ears. "Sorry, Master, I--" Her legs were already churning, scrabbling for purchase on the slick floor.

"Merlon, get out, teleport away--"

Orgon didn’t hear, feel or smell anything, but the change on Merlon’s face was immediate. Her eyes widened and jaw dropped. She spread her wings and flapped them once, the great, grey gull feathers doing nothing more than fanning the fur of his face. "It’s gone," she whispered, "it’s all gone!"

===

"Monarch, the wavefront will strike this facility in half a kilosecond... these ones are out of range of any functioning suppressors."

"Remind this one of why Baur also feeds its servitors the same lucerne derivative?" the Monarch snarled, his white fur bristling. At his side, the white-and-black-striped guard servitor was visibly sweating, its skin twitching like it was packed full of fighting rats. It shook its head; the Monarch ignored the motion, but Ininil took an involuntary step backwards.

"Monarch..." Ininil waved his paw helplessly. "...the risk that these one’s plan could be discovered, and... and the scientists assured the general staff that the thaumic effect could be controlled."

The Monarch made a gesture and the green fire returned, making Ininil shriek and curl into a foetal ball. "This one knows that!" he shouted, then waved for the pony to stop. "How many will these ones lose?"

Ininil stayed on the floor, head tilted towards the Monarch but his eyes on the pony. "These ones have enough suppressor capability to protect the servitors in some of the strategic launchers; those can be saved." He thought for a moment, mind desperately trying to marshal facts he should have known. "In excess of ninety-five percent losses. These ones can save some, but there have been too many suppressors destroyed for the rest of the servitor population to be protected." He flinched in anticipation of pain, but none came. "These ones can warn the other Hives. Collecting servitor groups within thaumic suppression zones will protect them, too."

"The greatest concentrations of their servitors will be at launch sites." The Monarch glared down at him, eyes narrowed, then his muzzle twisted into a nasty smile. "It is not the way This One planned it, but he can take advantage of the situation. What are Our victory predictions, given a loss of a target Hive's mid-course anti-ballistic systems?"

Ininil climbed slowly to his paws, pain radiating from every joint. "The other Hives would still have significant non-ballistic strategic weapons, and the Court... the Hammer still has potential firing solutions on the majority of Baur territory. Even after Luna set..." He swallowed convulsively, the motion making his neck ache. The other Hives will blame these ones anyway... what will the Court do when it discovers the Baur launchers still work?

He hung his head, staring at his booted paws. "It is hard to be sure, Monarch. The game scenario results are clear for Hive attacks; it is the Court that is the unknown factor. They may decide to just hit all our launchers as a precaution." This is madness, Monarch!

"Yes, but this one recalls that the Strix effect is not easily reversed... and these ones will have almost all of the functional servitor breeding stock. Without Baur it will take gigaseconds to rebuild. They might even have to start from the ancestral lines."

"It’s going to take gigaseconds anyway! Every Hive--" Ininil bit off his reply, eyes wide and locked on the Monarch’s servitor, but there was no green fire and no pain.

The Monarch nodded thoughtfully. "This is true, there will be some losses, but Baur will come out in a dominant position. This one will prepare a statement for the Court, when it becomes obvious that the other Hives realise something has gone wrong."

"Yes, Monarch," Ininil said numbly.

===

"What has Baur done, Tundru?" Orgon snarled, keeping his gaze locked on the camera feeding to the Court conference room. The Eugenics Board servitor specialists were leading a shivering Merlon into one of the side meeting rooms, one of their number clamping a jewelled sensor module to the base of her horn, while the rest of the team were assembling a scanning station. Blood was taken, from a cannula already stitched into the big arteries of the mare's neck. She didn't resist, stumbling along behind the leader. The door closed on them, and the last thing Orgon saw was the look of desolation on Merlon's face.

"These ones have taken a just and proportionate action to secure all Hives," Tundru snapped, drawing angry looks from the other Judges.

"Baur will have to answer questions about this weapon," Chetul said, ears folding back. "This will not be forgotten." Her expression soured. "But the magic seems to be functioning as Tundru reported." She turned her attention back to her own camera, staring sternly at Orgon. "These ones have saved Lacunae! Surrender and there will be no further reprisals. Your threat to teleport nuclear weapons has been neutralised and the rogue servitors are no more."

Orgon smiled bitterly. "This one always has options. Was it necessary to attack so much of this one's Hive?" How many millions will die when the servitor-controlled systems collapse?

"Baur Hive is also making sacrifices!" Tundru said. "It was not possible to accurately define the effects radius; Baur has also lost perimeter servitor populations."

Orgon blinked, staring at the Chief Justice. "What does Tundru think is happening here? How far will the effect propagate? This one's data is not showing much decay of the pulse--" He waved a paw at the door of Merlon's meeting room. Shadows were moving behind the frosted glass, darkness coupled with the laser-glows of thaumic hardware. "Is it reversible?"

Tundru sneered at Orgon. "Now is not the time, Strategist."

Chetul held up a paw. "Enough. These ones do not have all the details of the weapon, but have been assured the damage can be undone. The Court suggests that Orgon bend all his efforts to securing his Hive's population. This one understands the stress this has put the Strategist under... Orgon was put in an impossible position, this one understands that." Her tone became almost gentle. "The servitor threat is over."

They expect this one to be grateful! "Is it? The Court knows that for sure, does it?"

"Yes. The Court tracked the rogues to within the target zone during activation."

"That's a 'no', then. Orgon will investigate."

"The Court will send its own teams."

Orgon shrugged. "Of course. There is no more need for these ones to fight." He drummed his claws against his thigh, gaze returning to the door of the meeting room and seeing again a flash of Merlon's expression before the door closed. "The Court has been given all of Orgon's findings, but he thinks they don't really understand what they are facing. The Court spoke to Fusion... no matter if Court policy dictates that servitors are non-persons, she certainly believes she is one. If the Court has failed to neutralise them both, it will soon discover the consequences of this act."

"These ones won't fail," Tundru said. "Stand Lacunae's defences down and allow the audit teams free reign."

===

~~~discontinuity~~~

--the air was filled with screams and moans, the ground under her hooves littered with twisted pastel bodies. A few still moved, tended by gryphon medics, but the vast majority lay broken at the centre of shallow craters. More struggled in the water, thrashing the surface to foam. Eyes wide, she spiralled over the water, staring at the floating bodies amid the survivors.

There was a flash-thump at her side, followed by a rising tide of cold and dark. "Maker! What have those rutting dogs done?!" Violet light flashed, cutting through the dark to cast strangely tinged shadows across the water. Sodden bodies floated into the air, moving to the shore.

Jolted into motion, Fusion's own power joined Gravity's, laying warmth across the carefully arranged bodies. Still in a daze, she walked along the shore, her horn glowing with solar radiance. Gryphon medics swarmed over the recovered ponies, checking and moving on, or occasionally working frantically with conventional medicine. Amid the dead, small body huddled under a foil and aerogel trauma coat, was a pony she recognised: Lilac. He stared out over the lake, transfixed by the feathers scattered across the water. "Lilac," Fusion croaked, "what are you doing out here?" Her gaze flicked to his hindquarters and the spindly wheeled contraption holding his rear legs off the ground.

He didn't turn to look at her, but lowered his head and fumbled with the coat's fastenings between his forelegs. Clumsy teeth tugged at the fittings, failing to get purchase. "I was in the clouds--" Fusion made a surprised noise and he glanced up at her, muzzle twisting in distress. "I worked out a way to fly, I so wanted to get into the clouds, to be useful." He stifled a sob. "Nothing but a burden." He rubbed his face against his forelegs, taking a deep, shuddering breath.

Fusion felt numb. "Not true, Lilac, not true," she whispered, leaning close. Even at this distance shadow sight showed nothing; horn and wing were as dark as rock or grass. "I know you've been working with Spiral to help the wounded... how much of that time could you have spent on your own problems?"

His head dipped again, lips groping at the fastening. Teeth finally getting purchase he pulled, the strap stretching but not separating. It popped free, still attached. "Maker dammit!" Lilac looked up at Fusion again, eyes filled with frustrated tears. "And look what good that has done me! What are we going to do, Fusion? I can't walk, I can't fly -- will we get our power back?"

"I... I'm sure you will. Gravity and I both had magic failures when the spell hit, but it went away. It will just take a bit longer, that's all," she said, putting as much authority into the trembling words as she could. Weak, Fusion, really weak. She gently separated the fastenings at his chest and under his belly, leaving the coat over his back. "I need to go, Lilac, but I'll be back."

He nodded, giving her a wan smile. "I know, Fusion."

She backed away, then turned and trotted along the lakeshore, scanning her surroundings. Shadow sight showed the terrible and incomprehensible truth; everypony still alive was in the same state as Lilac. The trot turned into a canter, then a gallop, a mad rush spraying gravel and pebbles from her hooves. There wasn't a trace of power in any of them. They've destroyed us, Gravity, unmade everything we are, Fusion thought, pushing open the sharing and sending what she could see.

Gravity was back in the air, her mind filled with flashes of imagined destruction. Who did this to us, Fusion? Despite the images, the other mare's mental tone was calm and flat. The darkness and cold had faded; her emotions were as absent as the new moon’s face. Gravity's will was bent to her telekinesis, a constant effort of pulling bodies out of the water and from the trees. Have you found anypony else with active magic?

Fusion cast about, searching again with her shadow sight, then jumped into the air--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--nothing at the first settlement, just an ant's-nest chaos of gryphons working on pony bodies, with living ponies milling about like they were lost. She jumped again and again, each time seeing only the golden glimmer of gryphon wings. "There's nopony left!" she choked out, tears streaming down her muzzle. Anger started to replace the horror, fury welling up to fill her with febrile heat--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--appearing back at the downed attack carrier. The non-causal communicator was still there, moved out of the ruined hull but still connected to the power plant, under a small shelter. Ellisif, supported by a squad of her soldiers, spoke in clipped tones with someone on the screen. Fusion landed with a crash, her mane the hard, pure colours of laser light. Ellisif recoiled, stepping back before she could be pushed aside, then raising one set of talons against the glare. She waved her guards back; they had drawn their weapons and were pointing them with no small degree of alarm at Fusion.

"You missed, Orgon!" Fusion snarled, glaring at the Strategist. "I really thought we had a chance, dog, but now you’ve gone and thrown it all away." A brilliant point of light appeared above her right shoulder, then blurred to strike a stand of trees on the far side of the valley. It detonated with a flash and a sharp crack, turning the patch of scrub woodland into a crater surmounted by a plume of burning fragments. "Do you know how many you have killed?" The flow of Fusion's anger faltered against the haunted look on Orgon's face.

"It was not these ones," Orgon said, leaning heavily against the side of a console. "The thaumic attack is still spreading; it is currently half way across Lacunae territory. Orgon knows where the attack--"

"Liar! As if I would believe a single further word from you, Orgon. You and your whole wicked species." She spat the words, the returning heat of her fury making the sparse grass shrivel. "That’s all you are, little cubs wrapped up in lifetimes of falsehoods!" Fusion pawed at the ground, glaring at the screen.

"Yes, well..." Orgon walked across the room, opening a frosted glass door. The camera tracked him, then switched to one inside the adjoining chamber. "Will the pony believe Merlon?"

The grey mare was surrounded by the instruments of thaumic examination: head clamped within a crystal crown and her wings held out by slender frames of stainless steel. Her eyes were closed, little tremors running over her skin, the flesh twitching like she was beset by swarming flies. Orgon made no gesture, but the Eugenics Board staff retreated at his approach. He laid a paw on Merlon's neck; she sagged slightly in his direction, calming slightly. "Report" he said softly, looking at the mare but addressing the technicians.

The dogs glanced at each other, uncertain and nervous, before one stepped forwards. "Strategist, this one is Academician Thul. It will take much longer to be sure, but... there are traces of an abnormal protein in the servitor's blood. These ones requested a servitor with experience in horn development investigation--" She shrugged, a helpless gesture. "The protein has some affinity with keratoblast and krustalloblast surface receptors, but it is more complex than that. The sequencing is underway." Her paws came together, digits clenched into a pair of fists. "There are megaseconds of investigation here, even if these ones still had servitor support... with the complete loss of the science teams..." She gave another shrug.

"Can it be reversed?" Orgon's paw moved, scratching at Merlon's withers.

Thul stared at Orgon's paw, following its movement with worried eyes. "This one doesn't know. Work has started on a number of other affected servitors, but this will take time. There is also a depolarization of the neurological structures associated with the horn bed, but conventional therapies for nerve damage have had no measurable effect..." She sighed, lifting her paws and spreading them. "What can be done can generally be undone, but this is outside this one's experience."

The hard colours faded from Fusion's mane and tail as she listened, replaced with a sluggish swirl of pastels. "Merlon," she said softly, "is Orgon telling the truth?"

She nodded minutely, all the restricting armature would allow. "I was in the control room when the attack happened. The spell originated in one of Baur's strategic thaumic sites. Tartarus." Her eyes finally opened, then widened, frantically searching Fusion's face. "You still have magic! Everypony in the Hive has succumbed, so how do you still have magic?"

"I don't know!" Fusion took a deep breath. "Everypony here is affected, except for Gravity and I. There are hundreds dead." She swallowed, fighting down a rising urge to scream. "All those ponies in the clouds, they all fell when their magic failed--"

Fusion, the Hammer! Gravity didn't wait for permission, just burst straight into her thoughts with impressions of terrible motion in high orbit.

"They are firing the Hammer again, Orgon," Fusion snapped, stepping back from the screen.

Orgon's ears flattened and he shouted "Get a track on that!" over his shoulder. "What will the pony do?"

"I am going to save what is left of my people, then I'm going to do what I should have done in the first place." Her wings came down, scattering leaves and forest detritus, then she pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

===

Orgon stared at the space left by Fusion, swearing softly. "Serg-- Gryphon Ellisif, this one will supply a full set of orbital elements for the strategic fire. Hive defences will attempt to engage the incoming projectiles with what little these ones have left." Fast accelerating missiles thrown by purely electromagnetic mass drivers, tipped with hot dust and oversized nuclear weapons... it all sounded so good in the planning stages. Shame it was impossible to test.

The gryphoness grunted something rude but generally agreeable, then nodded, wheeling about and dashing for her gunship, followed by her guards. "Good luck, flysoldat," Orgon murmured, then turned to his aide. "Update the gryphon commanders when Defence has refined the tracks."

"The Strategist thinks there will be more than one?" Faula's whiskers drooped.

"Oh yes. This one just isn't sure how far the Court will go. Inform Defence that they are to engage whenever they think best. Hold nothing in reserve." A full effort so this one can stare the pony down from the ruins of the Hive, when it returns for an accounting. The paw he was using to stroke Merlon balled into a fist and pulled away. He reached out a claw-tip, touching it lightly to the end of her horn. "Orgon will fix this. He will not fail the pony."

38 - I am become death, the destroyer of worlds

Author's Note

A full plot summary can be found here. Do not read unless you are up to date! Spoilers!
Preread by: turol, NoeCarrier and Caliaponia.

38 - I am become death, the destroyer of worlds

"What is that?" Ininil asked, gesturing at a scintillating point of white light on the main screen. The dot, visibly faster than anything else in the battlespace visualisation, left a trail of curdled clouds in its wake. "It is one of the rogues, isn't it?" He swallowed, not glancing at the Monarch. Rutting Maker!

The Monarch, flanked by his gryphon guard, was also staring at the screen. "Help this one to understand. Use of the Strix weapon has not only failed to achieve the only goal these ones had, it has also triggered a global disaster. Is that correct?" Pearly-white claws drummed ceaselessly on the desktop. At his other side the stripy servitor was breathing with loud snorts, its eyes wide and ears folded back. It was staring at another screen showing a timer counting the seconds until the Strix spellfront hit this command bunker. There were not many left.

What is the creature thinking? Ininil's paw touched the empty holster at his hip -- no weapons allowed in the presence of the Monarch! -- and took an unconscious step backwards. "Yes, Monarch, that would seem to be the case." The rogue had been deep inside Baur territory, holding station somewhere near the Strix facility; now it was heading towards Arcology Prime. His bracer vibrated quietly in the urgent pulse-code of a critical message, and Ininil's breath caught in the back of his throat as he read it.

The Monarch stopped drumming his claws and stared at Ininil, eyes narrowed. "More good news?" he hissed.

Ininil started to feel numb. "A report from the damage control team entering Strix. The Creation Stone did not retract into its vault after firing. It is missing." How much more damage could the creature do with one of the Stones?

Perfect white ears folded back into white fur. The Monarch opened his mouth, lips pulled back in a snarl, then remained silent as the thaumic attack alarms went off.

"Signature matches the long-range teleport tunnel," one of the defence analysts called out. "Location is centred on the rogue; it has just breached the core defence zones."

"Where is the other end of the wormhole?" Is it going to send a bomb? No... it wouldn't need to be here for that. An assault force? Ininil puzzled over the map display while the defence teams carried out a hurried discussion. Finally the map changed, zooming out to show the curve of the planet, shrinking away until the scale was large enough to encompass the debris ring. A patch of red was moving away from the surface, heading into deep space. It makes no sense... there's nothing out there! Oh, rutting-- "Contact the Court--!" Ininil cut off the end of the sentence; the defence team leader was already talking rapidly into her microphone.

"Arcology defences are engaging the rogue, without success." Half the screens had switched to feeds from ground and aerial defences, a mix of camera and synthetic views. Most were confusing and without context, but the wide-angle shot in the middle showed the ordered artificial mountain ranges of the arcology against the night sky. The darkness strobed with flashes and fast-moving drive flames, then was banished entirely by a sudden, blinding glare.

===

The news, the official version, had its normal propaganda gloss. There was trouble in Lacunae Hive, of an ill-defined sort, but it was no threat to Baur, there were no incursions into Baur territory, etc, etc. Cherin snorted, one ear twitching for the sounds of Lakau's activity. Her pup was visiting during the mid-term academic break, halfway through the mandatory political education and societal integration courses, and had dived onto his gaming system like he'd been starved for a megasecond. The education programmes were more highly structured than they had been in her day, and no distractions were allowed.

"The pup should get to to a place he can pause," she called out, over the muffled snap of laser strikes and kinetic bombardments leaking out from his room. The game was a popular one, a complex mix of tactical first person and strategic battle management, called something like 'Hive Domination', or similar. There was no response and Cherin shook her head, tawny, dark-spotted fur on her ears ruffling in the breeze from the kitchen vent. She pulled the slab of beef-belly, still resting on an artfully sliced layer of its own hide, from the spiced marinade and transferred it to the induction heater. The machine made a ticking noise, the sound of the scanner measuring the volume of the meat and determining the power requirements.

Cherin checked the results, making a few minor adjustments for her own and Lakau's taste. The meat was too expensive to risk relying on the automation. Starting the oven she wandered across the apartment's living space, then leaned against the wide windows and opened a secondary data connection on her comms bracer. Ignoring the wallscreen and its collection of vagueness and probable outright lies, she browsed through the public feeds, looking for something more substantive than the glossy, empty official broadcast.

Outside, in the extended heart of Arcology Prime, the ever-illuminated lights were drifting towards their 'night' settings, turning the walls of the block opposite to darker and darker shades of grey. They were not that close to the central core and the Monarch's palace, with its hundred kilosecond a day, all day everyday, activity, but the faint buzz of flying vehicles headed to and from that district was unending. Only paying a little attention to the local gossip channels, Cherin watched them move, segregated into various mid-air lanes from the heavy, ground-hugging cargo transporters to the nimble aircars and fast couriers up near the ceiling that capped the whole Arcology by a hundred lengths of rock. Her own apartment was about two-thirds up from ground level, in a clear spot between two opposing layers of traffic.

Cherin frowned. There were gaps in the public feeds, more so than normal. "Censors are working overtime," she muttered, keeping her voice to an indistinct mutter, just in case State Security had pulled her address out of the directory for closer electronic inspection. There were always rumours of them using clairvoyance surveillance, but that seemed unlikely for a random investigation. The trick is to be as boring as possible, she thought, hiding a slight smile behind one paw. Being average without being suspiciously 'perfect' was something of an artform, one practiced at an almost instinctive level by many members of Baur Hive.

There must be something happening on the surface. There were normally a few of the People on the outer layers of the Hive, those who streamed innocuous videos of dawn and dusk, or the clouds, or swirls of the debris ring, but these had been absent for almost a megasecond. What she'd seen in the brief kilosecond before the censors had stripped them from the feeds had made her whiskers twitch. Little sprinkles of light, rippling in waves across the night sky. Shortly after, the satellite links had all been listed as 'unavailable by order of State Security'. It was a pity; some of the drama shows coming out of Soro Hive were just getting interesting.

There was a flash, bright and shocking enough that Cherin flinched, throwing up a paw over her face. It was like being faced with a thousand photo flashes, except they never stopped. Heat, like a blowtorch in the paws of a State Security interrogator, flooded through the window. Her fur curled and smoked, filling her gasped breath with the acrid tang of burning hair. Through stinging eyes, Cherin saw the flying traffic go mad, swerving in random directions, many falling out of the flight lanes and colliding with buildings. Superconductor fires flared in a dozen places, the hard lightning completely overwhelmed by the glare from coreward.

Cherin staggered a step, half-blinded by the unceasing light reflected off the inside of her apartment. The fire alarm warbled, triggered by a haze of smoke that sprang off every illuminated surface. The floor jumped under her paws and she fell backwards, striking the edge of one chair and landing with a crash on the carpet. Winded, she struggled to draw a breath, staring dumbly up at the charred pattern on the ceiling and vague bipedal silhouette-shadow of damaged pixels on the wall screen. The shape of a female Person, arms raised and head turned away, and--

--the side of the apartment block was hit by a shockwave. The window, the frame it was mounted in and a large section of wall blew in with a hammer-blow of sound, shrapnel slicing through the air with invisible speed. If this one had been standing-- Flesh flayed away by crystal razors, bones cracked and organs pulped. The air roared and the floor slumped, cracking crazily, then the ceiling fell in, the foam acoustic insulation blowing away as a grey snowstorm to leave the far heavier fused stone and whiskered basalt structural beams exposed.

Still unable to move, Cherin watched with bulging eyes as cracks raced through the sagging beams, little sharp-edged disks flaked off by the unmanageable pressure gradients. More shudders, a continuous rolling thunder of detonations from the rapidly emptying flight corridors, then the floor dropped precipitously, half a length or more, as the side of the building fell away. Out past the jagged teeth of the ruined wall was the opposite building complex, shrouded by streamers of smoke and flames. A heavy transport had ploughed into the wall, stripping the outer layer of the structure like a hunter skinning a rabbit. Past the fumes and dust, the cellular internals were exposed, filled with fire whipped up by the red-hot wind. A bipedal shape, fur ablaze, stumbled and fell, arms windmilling as it plummeted out of sight.

"Lakau," she croaked, desperate, then he was there, her little cub, all sooty-dark fur and lanky arms and legs, dragging her away from the frightening dip in the floor. He still wore the dress of a gaming fanatic: haptic gloves and collar, slim induction crown clamped to his head. Blood streaked his face; something had stripped the fur from one cheek, leaving a line of dangling hide. He didn't notice, or at least it did nothing to damp the sudden, astounding strength in those thin arms as he pulled her bodily over the ruined chairs and to the door.

"What happened?" he asked plaintively, dragging her upright, nearly soundless against the building roar from outside.

Cherin sagged against him, paws grabbing at his shoulders and chest. "Got to get out," she screamed, "fire--" With a crack, the ceiling finally fell, leaving them huddled against the inner apartment wall and the exit door to the corridor network. Eyes wide, Lakau pushed futilely against the mechanical door release, then shook off the haptic gloves and wedged his claws in the crack between them. The hot wind whipped at his fur, the slightest hint of the incandescent gale raging a bare length away, behind the fragile outcrop of remaining wall shielding them both.

She gagged, smoke and other fouler combustion products filling her muzzle and coating tongue and throat with a burning layer, then lent in to help. The frame had buckled, jamming the leftpaw side, but the right shifted slightly, grinding against fragments in its track. The building shifted again, dropping a little more, yielding a brief reduction in the pressure keeping the door shut. It popped open: enough space for a body. Cherin grabbed at Lakau, finding her own panicked strength, and pushed him through and out of the ruined apartment.

The corridor beyond was full of smoke and shockingly quiet after the hell-rage of the Arcology interior. Lakau pulled at her arm, yanking her towards the lifts and their sets of emergency evacuation stairs. A few paces and it was obvious there was no escape in that direction. The smoky darkness was filled with a rapidly building heat; somewhere ahead was the roar of wind and flames under pressure, suddenly lighting the haze with ruddy incandescence.

"Stop!" she shouted, amid hacking coughs, "That must be the lift shafts and stairs." Supposedly designed as shelters and safe spaces, the heavily built core structures were intact and acting as chimneys funnelling fire up from the fractured and blazing lower floors.

"Maintenance exits, try and get out of the Arcology roof?" Lakau said, his own voice raw and near-unrecognisable.

She nodded, mind fuzzy and pain at the back of her head, a powerful headache hanging like a thundercloud around her ears, only kept at bay by adrenaline. What are the chances--? Thought incomplete, she staggered after Lakau, his fur near-invisible in the hot gloom. The building was filled with continuous tremors now, the floor starting to tilt towards the gnawing void beyond the walls.

Past the gaping opening to their old apartment, flickering orange glare outlining Lakau for a moment. She lost him for a second, then there came a wail, a final expression of despair. She caught up, seeing him wrap his arms around a fallen ceiling beam. Rubble filled the corridor, great, fractured interfloor slabs, each a tonne or more. Cherin stood there, feeling the floor shift again, not an isolated jolt, but a steady and accelerating tilt. The sound of cracking rock started to overwhelm the roar of the wind.

Cherin stepped forwards, sweeping Lakau up in a fierce hug, trying to press all of her body to his, trying to get as much contact as possible, trying to press hard enough to drive back a suddenly hostile world--

With a howl the structure fell in on itself, floors pancaking together and adding to the expanding ring of destruction within Baur Hive's Arcology Prime.

===

"Brace for shockwave!"

The call came out from one of the defence team, and Ininil widened his stance and tightened his grip on the grab rail under his console. The floor pulsed under his paws, like someone had jerked the rug out from under him, sending him and every other standing person tumbling, except the Monarch. He was held upright in a field of white magic, generated by his stripy servitor, which hovered in the air at his side. The creature seemed calmer now it had something useful to do; the random twitchings and shiverings were gone, but it had gained a haunted expression in its black eyes.

The room swayed and shook, bouncing up and down as something heavy pounded down upon it. The was a loud groaning from down the entrance passageway, the sound of metal being twisted and buckled. "Status?" Ininil called out hoarsely, when the noise had subsided. The floor had an unsettling tilt, as if the whole room had sagged towards one corner. He looked upwards, eyeing the reinforced ceiling. Thin cracks spidered across it, but it had held.

"Looks like the cavity roof has collapsed on top of these ones... there are comms, but the door won't open." The Person responsible for command centre security defences waved a paw at the main entrance; it had been twisted and shifted sideways, leaving the big shutters slightly buckled. The command bunker sat in the centre of a spherical cavity, like a peach pit, on arrays of springs to absorb any shocks; obviously the shell of the sphere had broken and the motion of the bunker had damaged the access hatch. Several of the support staff were opening equipment lockers and removing cutting gear.

"...and Arcology Prime?" Ininil asked, his ears drooping. The Hammer's impact point had been right over the heart of the arcology; most of the energy would have spread sideways through the path of least resistance -- through the residential and financial districts. How many millions?

"Gone." There was a moment of stunned silence, every person frozen by the attack.

"Master, what will happen to the servitors who lose their magic?"

The tones were high and delicate, and totally unexpected. Ininil frowned. That voice... that's the--

"This one will give the order for them to be euthanized; it will be easier to start with fresh bloodstock--" The Monarch's head snapped around to stare at the servitor, his eyes almost bulging. "It dares to speak to this one?!"

The servitor cringed, then straightened and shook its head, as if trying to get rid of a fly. Its tremors had returned, and it stood there, puffing and blowing like it had galloped up a mountain, as the Monarch strode forwards and backpawed it across the muzzle. The pony suddenly moved, taking a neat step to the side and wheeling about to face away from the Monarch and his guard. The gryphon started to turn, surprised by the sudden motion, then the pony lashed out with both hind legs. The motion was so fast that it was little more than a blur; hooves caught the guard on the side of the head with a sound like a hammer being struck against wood.

The gryphon's head snapped over and it fell, wings twitching and legs drumming against the floor. The Monarch stopped in mid tirade, jaw open as the pony danced backwards, lining up for a second kick. He jumped to the side and the hoof missed his head, just clipping his shoulder. The Monarch spun and stumbled away, arm suddenly limp.

There were shouts and screams; Ininil's frozen mind jumped into motion again and he scuttled backwards, bouncing off a console and nearly falling. The Strix spell wave! The rest of the general staff rushed away from their stations, some crowding towards the blocked exit, others moving to the Monarch's aid.

The servitor had wheeled again and was trotting in tight circles around the Monarch; every few strides the inside leg would flick out and catch him on the hip or shin. Mouth working, the Monarch tried to speak, but was reduced to a string of yelps and whimpers. Blood was staining his white fur, running down from his injured shoulder and broken right leg.

Ininil, shouting at the people working on the door but completely unheard, pushed his way towards them. They had pulled out a heavy plasma cutter and were fumbling with the battery pack; cables trailed from the tube-like projector to the trolley holding the power supply. He grabbed at the cutter, snarling "Get it working!" at the person nearest the trolley, then hauled the thing, the best part of thirty kilos, towards the pony.

Two members of the internal security detail, with standard close protection soft armour but without their guns, rushed the servitor. The first was kicked full in the face and fell instantly, paws waving feebly over her crushed muzzle. The second got within the sweep of one black and white wing, claws raking for the pony's belly while biting at its neck. The servitor shook and bucked, failing to shake off its attacker, then surged forwards, carrying the soldier with it and pinning him against the corner of a console. Body armour was no use against such a blunt impact; the soldier coughed once, spraying red across the servitor's mane, then collapsed to the floor and made gurgling noises.

Wild-eyed, it stared down at the body, then wheeled and sprang at the Monarch, knocking him over. It stood over him for a breath, then lifted its head and locked eyes with Ininil. The general stared back, paws frantically working through the cutter's controls. Safety systems disabled, the cutter finally flared into life, just as the pony reared and came crashing down on the Monarch.

A jet of superheated plasma struck the pony across the head and neck; it shrieked and jumped, wings thrashing but failing to bite air, then tripped as its legs tangled. Body jerking and fur aflame, it fell silent. Ininil cut off the jet, allowing someone to pull the pony away from the Monarch, but it was too late. White fur stained and chest caved in, the ruler of Baur Hive was dead.

Ininil felt an itch at the centre of his head, and reached up to rub at his forehead with one paw. The itch intensified and he froze, watching the other members of the General Staff perform some variant of the head-scratching motion. The safeguard has activated! He groaned as the sensation intensified, dropping the plasma cutter and digging at the side of his head with his claws. "Help," he croaked, starting to lose control of his paws. "Implant. Get it out!"

His words tailed off into a whimper, and presently he began to scream.

===

~~~discontinuity~~~

The tempo of Fusion's thoughts slowed, approaching something more normal. On the horizon was a glowering orange eye behind an expanding wall of debris. She felt the heat from the climbing fireball and squinted at it. Somewhere under that seemingly slow-motion -- it wasn't, it was just huge and far away -- explosion were the corpses of millions of dogs, bodies flashed to ash and scattered for kilolengths by shockwaves.

Most had not been given the quiet dignity of a sudden, unforeseen end, death coming for them in between heartbeats. They would slowly asphyxiate in tunnels as vast fires stole oxygen in subterranean conflagrations the size of small thunderheads, or would be pinned in the dark to perish beneath megatons of crushed rock and ruined buildings. Others would drown as artificial aquifers were cracked open, flooding the lowest parts as water sought its level, and others still would persist for days or weeks yet, as meagre supplies of air and food ran low, dogs and ponies alike irretrievably trapped by an entire culture’s worth of rubble. How many did Baur have in that arcology?

Fusion struggled to feel something, anything, for the megadeaths, but there was nothing there. Too big, too much. She spread her wings, changing her descent into a soar, and felt the heavens for the taste of Gravity's mind. Are they shooting again? she sent.

There was silence in the mental space, then Gravity's sensorium opened to show a dispersing cloud of glittering ice crystals against featureless black. Sound and smell came next; harsh panting and the scent of pony sweat, strong in the confined space within her sister's force field bubble. Not yet, the reply came. Gravity turned her head, then did something to her defences, making part of the shell magnify the disk of the planet.

A dirty brown splodge had appeared in the centre of one landmass, displacing the white curls and patterns of clouds. I think it might be worse than the one they hit us with. Gravity's emotions swirled, flicking from horror to vindictive glee. The wormhole bypassed most of the atmosphere.

Fusion nodded to herself. Even without the penetration aids that would have an effect. She let the sensations from Gravity's body wash over her; there was the familiar taste of fatigue and the tingling itch of surface burns, but nothing seemed too bad. Along with the steady and slightly distracting feeling of freefall was a centre of power that buoyed her sister up. What do you think they will do now? Fusion felt her shoulders hunch as some tiny fraction of what she'd done settled upon them.

I don't care... they have already maimed everypony I know! Gravity suddenly jerked into motion, her horn flaring into life. The view of the planet shifted, expanding and moving to one side. Fusion, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have persuaded you to come home. We had so much evidence that dogs couldn't be trusted.

Fusion stroked the air with her wings, gaze fixed on the climbing mushroom cloud. It was already thirty kilolengths high and still rising. She collapsed her defences, feeling the heat beat against her coat. The sky was suddenly filled with a wave of meteors, each trail pointing back to ground zero. Beneath her hooves fires were burning in random patches, plumes of smoke climbing towards her altitude. "The strike has thrown material out of the atmosphere... I think it's re-entering." Fusion spoke the words into the silence of the wind, watching the expanding curtain of the shockwave. She saw it break over the banks of a small mountain range, displacing the wild, post-magical weather control thunderstorms that were running amok. "No, it's not your fault. I tend to blame myself for everything that goes wrong, but no matter how I feel, I know that's not fair. We had hope, hope that the dogs would finally see sense..." She gave a shrug, closing her eyes and letting her head droop.

"When I talked to Orgon..." Fusion swallowed, finally lifting her head and narrowing her eyes. I always thought he knew everything. "...I think he was genuinely shocked. They had no idea the weapon was even possible."

They all know what we can do now, and they know they missed the two ponies they really needed to hit... There was another pause and the disk of the planet shrank a little further. Flashes of light, very close, lit Gravity's muzzle from random directions. ...but they nearly got us. They must suspect how hard that was for us. I want to give them something to think about, something that the whole world will see.

What? Fusion's own fatigue started to become overwhelming, washing out the energising effect of adrenaline. We have so much to do, so many to rescue.

And if they shoot again? Or use their other weapons?

They'll do that no matter what. We'll only be safe when the dogs have been deprived of their ballistic and thaumic weapons. I've already sent some rocks to Luna. Time to send something more substantial. This amplifier... it's amazing. It's not just that things are easy again, it's that the entire formulation of magic has changed. Where there was once just a nail and a hammer, there is now a shaped charge and a laser cutter.. I'm sure I can move much bigger things...

Her attention shifted outwards, passing Luna and settling on Grund. The second moonlet sat in the three-two orbital resonance and wasn't a single, solid body like Luna. A fuzz of smaller objects occupied the space, smeared out and prevented from coalescing by continuous disruption from the larger debris ring objects. She extended her grasp, tightening it around one of the masses and giving it a nudge. It moved, striking an adjacent object and disintegrating into smaller fragments.

Gravity let her breath out with a hiss. That wasn't easy, but before it would have been impossible. If I get closer I can do far more.

Do... do you feel like the thing is trying you to point you somewhere?

In reply, Gravity shared deeper elements of her mind. There was the same pull that Fusion had felt before, only now, with the world spread out below them, locations became apparent. One is in Lacunae! With one of those each...

How about three each? There are six of the things. I wonder why they don't use them. Fusion blinked, for a moment back in the still magically active Tartarus base. I suppose they did. I want a word with Orgon.

But first we need to finish this. Gravity swung her head, the arc encompassing both the planet and Luna. You said it, I think. The Court assumes it has the high ground and that we can't get to them... but Vanca told me a lot about the Hammer. Their power reserves are not infinite. We can force them to defend themselves. I need to stop the shockwaves from the second strike; that should be easy now. Her attention returned to the second moon. After that, and if I get closer...

Yes, you are right, Fusion sent down the sharing link. You do that; I'll start to burn them from their holes in the ground.

===

Harq hunched down in his den, keeping still as the heavy waldo arm traced lines along his flank. The pain was gone -- the damaged scales had been removed -- but there was a persistent itch from the plasma jet that was sealing the wounds. At least my Masters weren't angry. They didn't even make me empty my crop-- He twitched at a sudden stab of cold, tensing and holding still when the medic system gave a sharp bleep of complaint. His extraction had been rough; heavy lift transports had peeled back the dirt and rubble, then pulled him out by cables wrapped around his tail. Harq's hindquarters flexed and he gritted his teeth at the ache in his hips.

The mixed forest and fields had been turned into ripped and shredded badlands by strings of explosion craters. Some contained the smoking remains of combat aircraft or, more frequently, the occasional scattering of twisted metal or ceramic splinters, but most were steaming pits of glassy rubble. The memory was fresh and strong; Harq's heart expanded slightly and cooled, sending chills rippling from snout to tail spike. The whispers in his head had quieted to a murmur, full of restful tones and commands to remain calm, almost enough to make him drift off into a doze.

There was a twitch from somewhere overhead, a ripple of sensation that was instantly and terrifyingly familiar. A momentary tunnel falling in from somewhere else appeared in the open air above the ground, disgorging a point of magical brilliance. "The pony is here!" he shouted, thunderously loud voice making the lights rattle. His head reared up to point at the inside of the den chamber ceiling; the sudden motion smashed the plasma sprayer, throwing the waldo arm to one side and sending the medical alarm into a frenzy of bleeping. Harq surged onto all fours, wings flaring, then staggered as the voices changed from quiet murmurs to deafening screams, so loud that his muscles faltered and he tripped.

Shaking his head, he reached out with one taloned forepaw, driving claws into the gap between the main doors and pulling them apart. His efforts only rewarded him with a tiny movement of the blast-shielded panels. "It's here!" he croaked, lifting his head and slamming it down against the smooth rock floor. His vision faded as the voices grew even louder; legs, wings and tail started to thrash, twitching uncontrollably, scoring sharp lines in the walls and smashing equipment.

Rainbow light, only present in the shadowed spaces behind his eyes, rippled through the world and the voices choked off. In the moment of blessed silence Harq just lay there, heart thundering and pushing little rays of heat into his extremities. All the lights had gone out, even the indicators on all the instruments, the only glow an electric blue shining out from between his jaws. Not going to be trapped again! He coughed out a bolt of plasma, blowing the doors apart.

Shockwaves rippled through the floor, spidering cracks up the walls. Concrete fragments started to rain down on his head. Body twisting, Harq scrambled to his paws, jumping through the doors and along the exit ramp.

There were Masters in the loadout bay, a few troopers in the powered armour of the reaction squad, but most were technical staff and animal handlers. Cries, thin and panicked, reached up from the tiny shapes, fighting with the sudden, hard siren of the radiation hazard alarm, but Harq only had eyes for the surface exit. Accelerating, he burst out of the big hatch and into the hangar beyond. It opened onto the shaft that lead to the surface, a hundred vertical lengths away. Nearly out, nearly-- Shots followed him, splashing off his scaled rump without leaving a mark.

A beam of light shone down the shaft, too bright to look at. Harq shied, tucking his muzzle behind one foreleg at the sudden prickle of X-rays. Explosions and shockwaves rippled up, past the hangar exit; the beam jagged sideways, blasting great rents through the sides of the shaft. It snapped off and Harq leapt into the dust- and fire-filled air. He squinted into the turbulence, crystal nictitating shields protecting the more sensitive primary optical surfaces of his eyes.

There was too much dust and heat for optical or infrared, but the longer radar wavelengths were clear enough for orientation; he twisted, wings beating and shooting him into the rising plume of flame above the burning installation.

The pony was right there, no more than a tenth of a kilolength away, a dark seed cloaked by a bright star-glare in every wavelength Harq could see. Brutally strong magnetic fields coiled around the tiny creature, twisting the air and holding a point of brilliant semi-solar illumination. "No!" he cried, wings backstroking furiously and forelegs coming up to protect his face. The point blurred--

===

Fusion had lost count of the number of bases she'd hit.

Numberless hardened aircraft shelters, air defence sites and armoured vehicle support facilities had fallen; many had not been completely destroyed, but their surface access ports had been collapsed to render them useless. Some had suffered support system failures as a result of her attacks, the significant radio frequency and magnetic interference her plasma weapon generated causing sympathetic cascading shutdowns in fusion reactor complexes. Crippled computer automation could not rectify the faults in time, and superconducting loop storage lost sufficient charge to restart the reactions. Others had been crushed by falling debris, still others hopelessly irradiated or flooded as coolant networks, life support plumbing and the manifold other complexities of the dog’s advanced systems were brought crashing down around them

This one was better built than most, with a thick cap of armourcrete under the landscaping. Through shadow sight something moved in the depths, a glowing shape with bat wings and a thick tail. Fusion's ears folded back and she thrashed her own tail. I know you... you're the thing that attacked Gravity. It was trying to escape, heading for the surface--

Her power came on in a rush, turning the immaterial magic into a rocket-engine blast of stripped nuclei. She probed the exit shaft, bringing forth a string of secondary detonations and a ripple of shockwaves. The creature was still moving; Fusion shut off her beam and gathered her strength, watching the lizard-shape swim up through the rising plume of combustion products. It rose into clear air, close enough that she could count the fine scales that ran from muzzle to tail tip.

With her normal eye the thing was a dark, slate grey; a smooth-scaled monster with fleshy, curved wings and a spiny dorsal ridge that ran from the poll to a set of nasty spikes on either side of its tail. The scales looked like they were made of rock, a polished, fine-grained igneous material straight out of a deep-level flood basalt. The spines had a translucent, smoky-look to them, as of volcanic glass, like its obsidian claws, terrifyingly sharp, at the ends of paws built to rip and rend armour plate. Its mouth opened, electric light leaking out between diamond dagger-teeth.

Fusion's power collapsed to a point, setting the air on fire. She threw the plasma bolus--

"No!" Paws came up and wings pulled in.

--fields reached out and jerked the weapon aside, making it pass over the creature's head. Fusion held her position, hovering in the warm, smoky updraft; the creature did the same thing, slowly lowering its heavy paws to stare at her with big, orange eyes. It's afraid... "As well it might be," she murmured, looking at the ruin she'd made of the base. There was nothing in the surrounding area -- ground and skies were clear out to the horizon -- so Fusion let her defences fade, looking at the creature without the filter of her magic. "What's your name?" she asked, boosting her voice to carry over the crackle and roar of countless minor explosions.

"I am Harq." The creature's voice was a low rumble. "Will you kill me?"

"You tried to kill my sister." The words came out flatter and harder than Fusion had intended, and the creature flinched.

"I am my Master's creature." The paws clenched, heavy muscles moving under the scales, then one came up to rub at the side of the head. "They shout at me." Claws scratched, digging at the scales. "Mercy. I plead."

It's not trying to escape. Fusion narrowed her eyes, inspecting the creature. The light was ever apparent, a constant glow of magic that coated the thing like a skin of molten gold. Defences, ways to resist kinetic impacts or great heat. Deeper, and her other senses came into play. "What are you?" she whispered.

"I am..." The creature looked helpless. "I am a weapon, a made thing. You should kill me. When the Masters come back they will order me to attack and I won't be able to resist."

"I think you might have trouble killing me," Fusion muttered, studying the side of Harq's head. "What have you got in there..." She reached in, worming her way past surprisingly tight magical defences. A radio and some complex circuits... I'm no Redshift, but all I have to do is break it. She twisted it, burning out the myriad of tiny pathways in the semiconductor slabs until it went dark. "Your Masters will never be able to get you back. What will you do with your freedom, if I give it to you?" She conjured another point of weaponised brilliance, staring at the creature speculatively.

"I will be yours to command--"

"I don't want a slave," Fusion snarled, "try again!"

"I--" Panic and fear made the creature tremble. "There is the place I was made. There are others like me, only hatchlings... I would rescue them. The Masters don't treat them kindly."

Fusion nodded, letting her weapon fade, and flew closer. "That's good Harq, really good. Go and live your life, you and whatever kin you have, and stay out of the way of any ponies. You can do what you like to the dogs."

===

In a flash of golden light and a ripple of gravity waves, the pony was gone. A gentle thump, like distant thunder, came a split second later, barely audible over the crackling roar of the subterranean fire filling the access shaft with smoke and burning metal sparks. Harq hovered there, staring at the place the pony had been, his own magic feeling for any trace of the creature. He stilled his wings, soaring in the thermal updraft and circling what remained of his home base.

"I'm free," he whispered, looking around for the first time since he'd escaped from his den. The landscaped cap of the base was a cratered ruin; dirt, rock and trees stripped away as if by a gargantuan pressure hose, exposing the armourcrete layer underneath. This was scored by glassy grooves, penetrating deep enough to expose the labs and construction hangars beneath. It would take me a kilosecond to do this much damage, and the pony managed it in a few breaths.

His throat closed, the fission reactions in his crop damping down and stopping, leaving only the fading decay heat. He shivered, not from cold but from fear. Paws clenching and unclenching he gained altitude, climbing above the smoke and into clear air. Under the light of the sun he aligned himself on the place he'd been hatched, far over the horizon. She could have killed me with a thought. His wings beat at the air, accelerating him forwards. But she set me free.

To his left, a patch of the horizon flickered and flashed with the colours of accelerated plasma. Harq glanced at it, then turned away. She's destroying everything the dogs have. The air flowed past and he pumped magic into it, accelerating past the sound barrier. I'll rescue my friends and then I'll do the same.

===

Unconsciously, General Kode gnawed at the back of one paw. The video feed had been clear, even with the damage to the command centre preventing physical access. The Monarch, dead. Most of the General Staff: writhing on the floor making incoherent noises. Stupid fail-safe! How is Kode supposed to fight with that over his head? He cringed, but his own implant didn't respond. This one is sure he was never meant to assume command. He looked back down at the briefing documents, released as part of the transfer of command. Strix is... monstrous, but it should have worked. How did it go so wrong?

"The second rogue is moving again... so is the first! It is heading for Thatu base." The staffer responsible for that sector looked up at Kode, a haunted look in her eyes. "Shall this one order an evacuation?"

Nothing had been able to stand against that single pony. It was careful to avoid the surviving static antimagic defences, bypassing them to strike at launchers, vehicle muster points and arsenals practically at will. It appeared and disappeared from the patchwork of surviving sensors like a vengeful spirit, obliterating everything it touched with an efficiency and purpose that Kode admired as much as feared. Little remained except for reports of focused thaumomagnetic pulses followed up by a plasma jet that could have lifted a kiloton into orbit. The antimagic sites it couldn't avoid were pounded by rocks falling from orbit; less than a tenth of the defensive ring still functioned.

"All the evidence points to the rogues being able to detect the Hive's strategic launches, yes?"

"Yes, General."

"Any sign of the other Hives retaining launch capability?

"No, General."

Kode's teeth dug into the flesh of his paw. Unnoticed, blood started to trickle down his wrist. How long until they turn their attention to the arcologies? The casualty figures from Prime were frightening. "Use it or lose it... this one thinks that the Hive needs a distraction." With shaking, blood-stained paws, Kode opened a locked cabinet and pulled out a box marked 'Strategic Response Options'. Inside was a pair of data cards. He passed one to his executive officer. "Does Akar agree?"

"This one supposes it's not much more than the Court has ordered already." Akar said, sounding like he was being strangled. "...and if these ones do nothing, the pony will destroy everything." He gestured helplessly to the video feeds from the command bunker and the aircraft fleeing the Hammer strike.

Except Lacunae cannot defend itself. Kode nodded and inserted his card into the console.

===

The pony ran, a mad gallop with no hint of care for its own safety, under a sky that flashed and glared. It struck the cluster of people a glancing blow and bounced away, ripping the fragile sheet of mirror sheltering them. Light poured in, a vicious slap of glare, and...

Korn picked at the contents of the medical kit, trying to interpret the pictograms drawn for minimally medically trained gryphon troops. He blinked in a futile attempt to clear his eyes; great blobs of colour covered irregular parts of his visual field. How much sight has this one lost? The medic that had thrust the used kit at him before cantering off to help with another horribly flash-burned pony had bruskly said it would probably fade in a few kiloseconds. Probably, he thought, biting at the end of his tongue, then picked out a fat can of trauma spray.

"Well?" Vanca said, pain making her voice even more acerbic than normal. "What is taking Korn so long?" She cradled her right arm, holding it just above the elbow. Below, the upper surface of her arm was a nasty mass of seared flesh, the fur burned off and the skin charred and cracked. Her fingers were twisted, curled into claws.

Korn squinted at the can, orientating it carefully. Have the colours faded? The trigger was designed for a gryphon's claws and didn't fit well in his paws. He gave it a shake; it was nearly empty, but was designed for a creature far larger than a Person. More than enough. "This one can't see very well." She didn't reply, just nodded and held out her burned arm. With quick strokes, he coated the damaged flesh with the spray, sealing it behind a thin, slightly glistening, layer.

Vanca sighed, relaxing slightly. "That did it." She tried to flex her paw, then flinched and inhaled sharply. "Not quite good enough for that," she said with a shaky laugh, then nodded to Korn. "Are Korn's eyes permanently damaged?" she asked, staring intently into his face.

He shrugged. "This one doesn't think so. It seems to be fading. They itch, but Korn dares not rub them."

"UV flash burns to the cornea," Vanca said, frowning. "This one can't see anything obvious -- no clouding or blood. This one hopes that is all it is. With no medical servitors..."

"Quite," Korn said, clenching his paws. "This one isn't sure about Vanca's paw... the damage is quite severe."

"Even before the spray, Vanca couldn't feel her fingers." She looked down at the burns and wrinkled her muzzle. "Probably for the best."

Korn nodded. Burned so deep the nerves are dead. He turned and looked out over the herds of ponies and gryphons. The tattered remnants of the flash shield were everywhere, shredded by hooves and talons. "How long before the shockwave arrives?" he muttered, rooting through the kit and coming up with another nearly depleted can. A long streamer of hardened foam trailed from the nozzle, and he picked it away. Vanca held out her paw again, and Korn sprayed her arm with a layer of protective foam. It solidified into a spongy mass, a mottled grey and brown coating, turning the limb into a shapeless club.

Vanca prodded at it with one claw, then grunted in satisfaction. "Good work, Student." She looked up and around the cloudless sky. "Should have hit already. The pony must have done something."

"It's like being in the presence of the Maker, when those two are around."

"Hardly, there's plenty they cannot do." Vanca snorted, then sighed. "The People's society was unstable, that much is obvious, now. It's just that these ones were the nudge that pushed it over."

Korn felt his paws tremble, then snorted. "This one can see the paper: ‘The creation of weakly Maker-like entities via relativistic heavy ion beam and its potential to act as a trigger for cultural trophic cascades.’ Does Vanca think these ones have enough data to submit to Physics D, or should they try and repeat the experiment?"

"Does Korn want to be lead author?" Vanca laughed, then grimaced, cradling her injured arm. "Vanca thinks it would be a great start to his research career." She stiffened, looking up. "What now?" she said, eyes narrowing.

One of the flying gryphons, feathers finely patterned with close-spaced black and grey, whirred overhead and came down for a fast landing a few paces away. Korn flinched, backing away. "Svartr, this one has been released, the gryphoness has no--"

Svartr snapped her beak and he immediately fell silent, then gave a short, harsh laugh. "You won't ever get away, Master," she hissed, then ruffled her wings, visibly reining in her anger. "I don't want anything from you this time, except your paws." She reached out with a set of talons, giving him a shove in the direction of one of the transport aircraft. Vanca snarled, exposing sharp teeth, but said nothing when Svartr rounded on her. "Come if you want, or not."

Korn nodded dumbly, feeling like he was drowning in a bottomless pit of black ooze, and got to his paws. Svartr went to push him again, but he was already moving, a fast, stumbling trot across the still smouldering ground. Fifty lengths later and he was being thrust into a Person's couch and pushed up to a console. "What does the gryphoness want Korn to do?" he muttered, eyes downcast.

"This is configured as a logistics bay. You--" Svartr held up a bright yellow foreleg tipped with dark talons. "--are the only dog with a working set of paws in range." She cocked her head, tapping Korn on the muzzle. "We thank you for the equipment donation, but it's a challenge for a gryphon to use."

"This operation is too big to manage without support," Vanca said, placing a paw on Korn's shoulder and staring at the display. "It looks similar to the Institute's administrative interface..." She trailed off, then looked sharply at Svartr. "Who will be these one's liaison? Vanca assumes it won't be you." Korn winced; the words were polite but the tone was one Vanca had frequently used at grant reviews that weren't going her way.

The gryphoness hissed and waved over another gryphon, one of the more common white-headed variants, who had been keeping his distance from Svartr. "Olvir, they are all yours."

===

Chaos paused for an instant at the heart of the kinetic strike, tasting the ionised rock vapour that filled the deep impact crater. It traced the extent of the blast, modelling the turbulent shock fronts that had moved outwards from the impact point, spreading laterally through the buildings and structures that comprised the core of the bipeds’ habitation structures. These constructs were mostly air and had provided little resistance to the blast; all of the energy had been trapped between the bedrock and the thick roof.

In the moments when the shockwave had passed through the biped's habitation structures, Chaos had travelled with it, sitting in the high-energy interface and basking amid the sudden increases in entropy. Millions of the bipeds had been reduced to ash and powder in that time, but that event in as of itself was of no direct interest. What had attracted it was the strange behaviour of the automata. They appeared to grow more... agitated? active? with each biped's death, interacting with the organic neural structures in the brief moments before they were reduced to their constituent atoms.

Chaos had witnessed countless biped deaths and caused more than a few itself, but never had it seen this behaviour. Exactly what the automata were doing wasn't clear, but they seemed to be attempting to extract something from each mind. The process didn't appear to be completed successfully; whatever it was they were doing was too complex even for processes carried out in the quantum foam, in the time available.

Aside from that anomaly, events were unfolding along the path it had designed. Aided by nudges and small manipulations, the situation in the Baur polity had degenerated to the point where they were desperate. It had only taken one tiny suggestion to make the new commander take the right course.

Chaos raced ahead of the launch orders, adjusting the target lists as they flowed as packets of modulated light. There were too many checks and balances to trigger the attack, but once the orders had been given...

It put strange behaviour of the automata out of its mind. There was much work to do, and many risks to be taken, but soon Chaos would be free.

===

Orgon wasn't watching the main screen, with its ongoing litany of destruction surrounding Baur's Arcology Prime, but the expressions on the faces of the Judges. Horror, mostly, with a healthy dose of disbelief. "This one is seeing more launches," he said. These ones would have been in a better place to defend against conventional strategic weapons, rather than the Hammer. He sighed, then pointed a claw at Chief Justice Tundru. "Lacunae has no mid-course defences. Stop the attack."

The Justice had a panicked look in his eyes. "This one has no control over the actions of Baur command, Orgon knows that members of the Court give up any influence--"

"Orgon knows the rules, but he also knows they are a lie!" He stood, leaning forwards on clenched paws. "Do not lecture this one on the way the Court works -- these ones all know how it works!" His ears flattened and lips peeled back from a row of shape, white teeth. "Get Baur to call off the attack."

"Strategist..." The words came from one of the strategic defence analysts, who'd stepped up unnoticed to Orgon's side. The person flinched at the fury in Orgon's eyes as he rounded on them, but didn't retreat. "There is something odd about the weapon tracks." He swallowed, gesturing to the strategic display table. Fuzzy ballistic arcs were curling up from Baur, probing for their targets like blurry, skittering tentacles. The fuzziness started to vanish as the scattered tracking systems refined the trajectories, revealing that--

"Rutting Maker, what is this madness?" Orgon whispered. The spray of trajectories looked almost random compared to the initial attacks on Lacunae; they were targeted at all the Hives on the planet. "Confirm those targets." He turned back to the camera connected to the Court. "What is this, Tundru?"

The members of the Court were not paying attention to Orgon, but instead were occupied by their own display screens and private audio feeds. Finally -- only a pawful of breaths, even though it seemed a lot longer -- Judge Chetul looked up, glaring at Tundru. "So this was the plan all along," she spat. "This one has just been told that servitors have lost their magic over most of the planet, yet she sees that Baur launchers are still operating."

"No! This one swears that there has been a terrible mistake--"

Chetul made a cutting gesture. "Damn right there has been! No more lies from Tundru; these ones need to know the truth. This one votes for impeachment." She looked at each of the other Judges, who all nodded grimly. "Vote carried. Let the record show that Tundru is no longer Chief Justice."

Tundru's jaw dropped open and he shook his head. "Chetul cannot be serious!" The door at the back of the conference room opened, admitting a pair of guards and third person wearing the equipment harness of a medical officer. Tundru ignored the guards, staring at the medic. "No," he said, voice suddenly trembling, "please. This one will cooperate fully."

"It is too late for that." Chetul gestured to the medic. "Find out the truth about the Baur weapon and whatever Tundru knows about the Hive's attack plans."

The medic nodded and the guards pulled a suddenly hyperventilating Tundru out of his seat, dragging him to the door. "Yes, Judge. This one will set the trawl for maximum speed."

Ignoring the now struggling Tundru, Orgon tried to determine how many warheads would leak through their crippled mid-course defences, then gave up. This could be the end of these ones. "Judges, these ones must stop those launchers."

Chetul made a helpless gesture. "Efforts to contact Baur command are ongoing. There is evidence for a problem with the command structure. This one suspects that the redirected Hammer strike decapitated the Hive. The Court withdraws all objections to unilateral Hive action." She grimaced, looking uncomfortable. "All things considered, this one thinks that using the Hammer again would be a worse mistake."

===

Valith tapped Savan on the shoulder, pointing out of the low, armoured window. "The launcher has stopped firing," he whispered. The rolling hills and patchy forest was quiet and the strings of shockwaves from the launch of kinetic vehicles has ceased.

"Is it over?" Savan 's ears lifted from their depressed droop, and she got up from where she'd been slumped in one corner of the control room and padded over to his side.

"These ones are still alive," Valith said, paws clenching and unclenching. "What does Savan think these ones should do?" Valith could go home to his pup and his mate. The thought wound tight in his chest, making his heart ache. "Valith wants out of this bunker," he said, voice suddenly firm, and strode to the access hatch. It didn't respond to his prodding. "What the Maker..."

"Oh."

Valith froze in mid attempt to get the hatch open, a tide of dread closing up his throat. He turned to stare at Savan, who nodded to the Deadpaw counter. "Rut." Suddenly spurred into motion, Valith ran to the windows overlooking the hangar bay. Red lights ringing the exit port had started to flash, shortly followed by rows of pistons pulling the heavy door open. A klaxon sounded, a heavy, mournful wail that filled the bunker and set Valith's teeth on edge.

"Target list has been updated. Not just Baur now... it's going to hit Soro and a bunch of other Hives." One paw came up and covered her muzzle. "It’s the full countervalue strike package... Case Sinkhole-Javelin. These ones are hitting the arcologies. Everyone against everyone."

The words hung in the air like they were a suffocating blanket. The heavy silence was interrupted by the bang-bang-bang of umbilicals being detached from the weapon. There was a rising rumble, a subsonic vibration that rapidly built to a scream. Light streamed in through the hangar windows, the colour of ionised air, then faded. Outside, the external launch doors blew open under the thrust of solid rocket motors, releasing a dark blunt needle that shot into the sky on a plume of blue light.

Other weapons joined the first, launched from the rest of the shelters in the complex, fanning out across all points of the compass.

===

Above Fusion's head, one of the moons was coming apart.

The ill-defined patch of light that was Grund was stretching, smeared out by a careless paw. By shadow sight there was a great flickering patch of violet light in the same part of the sky, made faint by the extreme distance. Gravity, still holding the magical amplifier, had shifted her orbit, accelerating towards the rubble-pile moon. The touch of her thoughts, normally a comforting presence at the back of Fusion's mind, had faded to the slightest whisper.

"They will try and stop you, Gravity," Fusion shouted to the heavens, putting all of her considerable strength into the sending, but received back little more than an indistinct murmur. Still alive and working. The violet light over Grund proved that, at least. She spun in the air, turning tight circles on one wingtip, trying to decide what to do next. The other amplifiers...

A tap of magic interrogated her communicator, but it reported no connection to the Lacunae network; whatever relay Orgon had been using was out of range or had been shot down. She pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--appearing back at the staging area with its neat rows of corpses. Smoke hung in the air, rising from a hundred small fires, a stinking mix of burning vegetation and scorched flesh. Her communicator pinged in her ear, then: "Fusion, this is Ellisif. What do you want us to do? Lacunae command says there are more kinetic projectiles on the way, and there's nothing they can do to stop them."

Fusion swore softly. The world is too big for two ponies to defend! "What are the targets?"

"Not us this time; it's the arcologies. Just Baur... they protected some of their ponies from the spell, but the rest of the world has been affected."

Fusion felt dizzy and shook her head. "The effect isn't just local? I thought--" She inhaled deeply, then explosively puffed the air out. Are the two of us all that remains? Her wings felt leaden, insufficient to sustain flight, so she landed on the lake shore to walk slowly between the pastel bodies. No magic anywhere else. It fits. "Wait, I flew past Baur launchers; the ponies in them still had magic! How...?" They still had a few functioning suppressors. It really did fit; Fusion's mind whirled, a sudden bout of dizziness threatening to send her to her knees.

There was silence, then Ellisif sighed. "How long ago? They were targeted by all the other Hives as soon as the unrestricted launches were detected. They may already be destroyed. Can you--?"

A memory of one of the launchers, the ponies inside scrambling to repair the damage she'd done, popped into absolute clarity. Please please please-- Fusion jumped into the air with a single stroke of her wings, ignoring Ellisif's attempts to speak. Her defences coalesced, a needle-pointed, streamlined shield oriented along her current velocity vector--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--too far in a single jump, the vector not correctly aligned, her glassy shield tumbling end over end in the half kilolength a second airflow--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--higher this time, above most of the air, holding herself with iron telekinesis while the spin was damped. A few moment to take gasping breaths, eyes closed against the bright pulses of nuclear detonations from the ground far, far below--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--final jump, over rock and ice, the crater obscured by a rising plume of warm, dusty air. To her energy sensitivity, everything had the purple radiance of gamma emission. Fusion hovered in the updraft, fields keeping the contaminated air away. Somewhere out there... are there ponies still with magic, waiting at the ends of lethal trajectories? Her insides clenched and she screamed out her frustration. "Where are you?!" The world didn't answer, just filled her ears with the gentle sound of gravel pattering against her defences.

Fusion fumbled blindly for the connection to Gravity, pushing and pushing until her sister accepted the sharing. Gravity's mind was full of vectors and orbital elements, powering a complex, near incomprehensible web of magic reaching out to touch here or move there. Fast things were coming out of Luna, heading in her direction. She was distracted, focussed fully on her work.

I'm busy, Fusion. What do you want? Flat and distracted, tinged with annoyance. Some of Fusion's distress must have leaked into the sharing; Gravity's mental tone shifted to one of concern. What?

Fusion gulped in a breath and held it. Are any of the Baur launchers still operating? Can you feel anything at all? It's important.

There was a pause, the sense of mass and velocity fading as Gravity switched her attention back to the planet. No, she thought finally. Plenty of conventional missiles, from dispersed silos, but I can't feel any mass driver fire. Why? What's the matter?

The breath came out in an explosive gasp, like Fusion had been kicked in the gut. She shook her head, loose mane whipping at her neck and chest. Nothing, not now. It's no longer important, she thought, ears drooping. I'll tell you later... come back safe, sister. A wordless assent came back and Fusion pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

Another few jumps, more than she'd taken on the way out, and Fusion was back in radio range of Ellisif. "Do you know where Vanca is?" she said, cutting off the gryphoness' attempt at a question.

Ellisif directed Fusion to one of the transport aircraft on the valley floor, one with the antennae-covered look of a command vehicle. The dog was sitting on a rock just outside the main door, watching Student Korn do something with a complex control panel while deep in conversation with another gryphon. Vanca looked up sharply at Fusion's approach, one paw coming up to touch at a nasty burn on her arm. Someone had applied a field dressing, turning the bottom half of the limb into a foam pillow.

"Vanca supposes she should thank the pony for saving this one's life," she said¸ scowling at Fusion. "If it wasn't the pony that put these ones here in the first place! This one needs to return to her lab--"

"I have more important problems than your casual curiosity!" Fusion felt the heat start to rise from her body and did nothing to stop it.

Vanca shrank away slightly. "The pony never knows where curiosity will lead," she grumbled, half to herself. "What does the pony want? This one can't help with whatever has afflicted the others; she's a thaumophysicist, not a veterinarian."

"I found a thing, a magical amplifier of some sort, at the heart of the Baur base that cast the spell. I've never seen anything like it in dog technology. I think there are five other things like it, spread across the world."

Vanca froze in mid snarl, eyes going wide. "Six in total? Describe what you found!"

"Spherical, about the size of a large apple." Fusion moved her muzzle in a short arc. "Massively complex magically. It changed form when Gravity or I held it."

"Well, this one supposes it makes sense. All the gigaseconds these ones wasted, the progress Vanca could have made. Stupid!" Vanca spat the last word, lips curled back in fury. "Vanca thinks it was one of the Creation Stones." Fusion gestured impatiently, pawing at the ground with one hoof. "Old magical artefacts that predate the People's written history. Stories say that six of them together were used to build the pony's species, among other feats. Strangely enough, they became objects of religious fervour." She smiled bitterly. "Wars split up the Stones and the Hives formed around the tribes that worshipped them."

"So Lacunae does have one!" Fusion's ears folded back, "I want it. The other one is with Gravity."

"The Stone is one of the Hive's most prized possessions! Vanca couldn't get permission to study it, the chances of the pony getting its horn on--" Vanca stopped and frowned. "What is the pony's sister doing with the Baur Stone?"

Fusion gestured to the sky. Vanca looked up, then pointed at Grund with one shaking paw. "The Stone is kept in one of the best guarded facilities in Lacunae. It's a Church relic, but Orgon will be able to get it for the pony." She didn't look at Fusion while talking, but kept her eyes locked on the streamers of matter flowing out of the rubble-pile moon. "Please take this one to her lab!"

"You've seen the Stone, haven't you?"

"Once... Vanca doesn't make a habit of going to the Church, but it was the only way to see the thing." She tore her gaze away from the sky and looked suspiciously at Fusion. "Why does the pony ask?"

Fusion's horn lit white-gold, folding the Academician in a haze of telekinesis. "How would you like a closer look?"

===

"The pony wants the Stone, and it will have it." Orgon stared disinterestedly at the elderly Person, his mind on the rapidly closing kinetic weapons. Depressed trajectory strikes to minimise flight time, say three hundred seconds until first impact... Lacunae's depleted Arclight squadrons were firing on the incoming projectiles, hunting for the traces of antimatter in the nuclear triggers. Any hope that the weapons were more of the same purely dumb metal had been dashed sometime ago; the sky was scattered with pinpoint flashes of X-rays and fat splotches of plasma that blocked defensive radars.

"Out of the question! The Stones are for the People, not their servants. It is a blasphemy of the highest order, and--"

"The Deacon should be grateful that Orgon is giving him the courtesy of this call. Ecclesiastical Security has been ordered to stand down."

"The Church answers to the Maker, not the Strategist's rather temporary secular power." The robed figure made a contemptuous gesture, cutting the connection.

"Shall this one order a force to assault the Basilica?" Faula asked, paws poised over her command station.

Orgon stared off into space for a moment, then shook his head. "No. Inform the Academician that the forces within the Church compound are likely to be in a state of active rebellion. They are to be considered enemy agents." A ghost of a smile flashed across his muzzle. "The Synod can have Orgon tried for his war crimes later, if there is anybody left to fill the posts. Fusion will do the job faster than Security, and probably with fewer casualties."

===

This close, Fusion could feel the Creation Stone. It was somewhere behind the polished black walls of the Church compound, behind several squads of dogs with guns. Also present was a robed figure, snout barely visible inside a deep hood.

--a clawed thumb pressing against the crown on her young head, of things penetrating her brain and locking the Master's rules with self-sustaining twists of magic. This one Blesses you in the name of the Maker--

Fusion shivered, her mouth suddenly dry, and pushed the old memory away. This is one more centre of evil. Do I blame them because they believe what they do is right? Ah, but nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks to themselves ‘what evils can I perpetrate today, because I’m the bad guy?’ Everyone thinks what they’re doing is the right thing. She paused, staring at the robed dog, and shivered again. Except for Salrath.

She thought about it, her shadow sight probing the depths of the Church complex, so different from the black pyramid at the centre of her corral. All those names, all those ponies dead and gone. Their religion is another control mechanism, both for us and their own people. Her ears folded back and harder colours streaked her mane. "I've never been in a Church for your kind," she said to Vanca, who was still looking at her communicator as if it was a poisonous insect. "You used this to reinforce the Blessing's effects." We'll get our reward for service after we're dead... how convenient.

"This one isn't really a believer," Vanca said sharply, pushing ineffectually at Fusion's telekinetic hold. The academician had, at least, calmed down from the strangled screams she'd made during their headlong rush to the Basilica.

"Time is short," Fusion said, dropping Vanca then flicking out her wings and striding forwards.

The armed dogs tensed, rifles already raised and aimed. "This one has Strategist-delegate authority," Vanca called out, addressing the figure in Church robes standing behind the soldiers. "The Deacon will stand down his guards immediately and cooperate with--"

"Fire!" The railguns opened up, bursts of metal needles splashing off the invisible dome of Fusion's force field, making it flicker white-gold and kicking splinters off the polished floor. Magazines ran dry in the space of a breath, and there was a shocked pause before training kicked in and paws went through the litany of 'the reload'. "What are these ones waiting for?!" the Deacon screamed, eyes bulging. "Shoot!"

"I have no quarrel with you guards," Fusion said loudly. Those in charge should pay directly. I couldn't get to the Court, but I can get to you. "The Deacon is another matter." She made the tiniest of gestures, a slight wave of her head, and the robed figure burst into flames, collapsing to the floor and thrashing noisily. A few shots followed, but Fusion ignored them, pulling the ornate door they guarded out of its mounts and throwing it over her shoulder. "No more delays," she said, magic making her voice ring out and fill the vaulted antechamber. The guards fled, dropping their rifles as they ran. She trotted forwards, Vanca running to keep up, following the sensation of power that she'd felt before. It wasn't quite the same as the one that Gravity now had, but the difference was subtle. It was like seeing the same scene through a different camera, the familiar objects framed in other ways.

"Was it really necessary to burn the Deacon alive?" Vanca asked quietly, all traces of her normally acerbic tone gone.

No. "I just murdered a whole arcology in revenge for what the Court did to us. One more of you is nothing." Vanca flinched and Fusion sighed. "I will hold those in charge responsible for their actions, Academician. If one horrific death makes them stay out of my way, I won't need to kill more."

"Of course," Vanca said, her expression carefully neutral, "this one is sure the pony is correct."

Nothing in this place short of a nuke can stop me... I could have just brushed them all aside. The thought nagged at Fusion and, for a moment, all she could see was the burning, writhing body. Grimacing, she pushed the memory back, focussing again on the nearby Stone.

Doors, walls and all manner of structures were variously cut, burned or simply crushed and pushed out of Fusion's way. She didn't slow from that ground-eating trot, picking up Vanca when it became obvious she was having trouble keeping pace. Fusion dropped down a lift shaft, the car pulled out and wadded up like it was a scrap of paper, landing with a crash at the bottom and pushing the doors out into the corridor beyond.

These were not the fancy, ornate things of the upper levels, but heavy composites of metals, plastics and ceramics, and actually put up a little resistance to her efforts. Behind them was a security post, but the guards had already surrendered, backing away from their discarded weapons. "These ones don't have access to the vault," the first called out, voice shaking.

"Vanca doesn't think that will be a problem," the Academician said, wincing as Fusion pulled a block of material from the wall behind them. Within was a small, plain chamber, holding a waist-high pedestal that bore a polished stone sphere incised with a single glyph.

Fusion picked it up, watching as the stone faded into a soap-bubble of crystal containing a point of searing light. Insubstantial vistas of magical potential unfolded behind her eyes; she followed the expanding patterns, feeling completely insignificant against the vast-- "Huh," she said. "They just tried to bring down the roof."

"What?!"

"This whole level is wired with explosives; I just blocked the detonation command." Fusion lifted Vanca and pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--she stood in the antechamber, listening to the hollow boom from below. The floor shook and dust sifted down from the high ceiling. "Someone must have had their thumb on the trigger." Did all those dogs deserve to die? She shook her head. Idiots. I can't save my own people... I won't take responsibility for theirs, too. She smiled at Vanca. "Thank you for your assistance. I can drop you off...?"

Vanca reached for the Stone and Fusion held it out, letting the dog rest her paw on it. She shivered, a dreamy smile flashing across her muzzle. "All the wasted time." She sighed, letting her paw drop. "This one doesn't suppose Fusion can locate a Person she's never met, who may be anywhere in the arcology? No?" Fusion shook her head. Vanca sighed again and closed her eyes. "This one has a mate somewhere in here; she really ought to try and contact him. He thinks this one is dead... and there is little that science can do to stop what's coming in the next megasecond." She backed away, then turned and sprinted down the corridor, shoulders hunched.

Fusion watched her go for a second, then looked back at the Stone. "Right, then--"

~~~discontinuity~~~

--appearing in clear air, many lengths above the ground. Lights flashed and pulsed all around her; the higher lights were brilliant, short-lived pinpoints, the lower were longer, slower, growing, rising and fading like glowing bubbles. What am I supposed to do about all this? How many will I condemn if I try and stop the attacks and leave those here unprotected?

With the Lacunae Stone held tight against her breastbone, Fusion pushed her thoughts out to Gravity. I need to protect our people. Can you stop the attacks?

There was a pause, filled with the sensation of vast masses moving in unexpected ways. Closer to home, a ghost-body, limbs outstretched and heart thundering, overlaid Fusion's own. The leakage cut off, the constant undercurrent of thoughts becoming sharp. I am going to fight the Hammer. It is well defended but at least I can stop it from attacking us.

The thoughts cut off, blocked from Gravity's end, leaving Fusion alone in her own head. She can do that much... Fusion stared into the crystal depths of the Stone, feeling an echo of the sun within the fleck of glare at its centre. ...what can I do now?

There were things she could do, even without the Stone, but had never dared to try. The beguiling complexity of the sun beckoned to Fusion and she itched to do this or that. There was a response to her idle thoughts, close and instant, from the Stone. If you do this, then that will happen, it seemed to say. Options opened up in her head, cause-effect chains that filled her with confusion, dread and desire, all at once. But the sun has set! What am I supposed to do here where it is night? Oh--

Fusion reached into and through the Stone, her power shaped and built and thrust across the light-seconds to the complex knot of quantum foam machinery, making it twist and shudder under her grip. It stuttered, flickering madly like a candle in a gale, then stabilised and started to do her bidding as if it had always been this way, scarcely missing a beat.

Commands issued, she relaxed and stared expectantly at the heavens. Nothing happened, and Fusion started to count under her breath. Speed of light delay, but is it one- or two-way? It had felt that she'd had an instant response, but... The western sky changed from indigo to orange and then yellow as a point of fire flared on the horizon.

With unnatural speed and in the wrong direction, the sun rose again.

39 - We will all go together when we go

Author's Note

A full plot summary can be found here. Do not read unless you are up to date! Spoilers!
Preread by: turol, NoeCarrier and Caliaponia.

39 - We will all go together when we go

There was so much to do!

Adjusting the brain chemistry of local commanders, forging sensor data to overstate a threat, interfering with automata suppression hardware, altering target coordinates... the list was endless. Chaos flitted from point to point, from the most secure bunkers to the vacuum of space. Here, in volumes only occupied by targeted metal and explosives, it paused to survey the world.

Weapons containing dense concentrations of energy crawled along their ballistic arcs, their simple semiconductor minds carrying out paranoid conversations about threats, detection and terminal yields. Other weapons reached up to stop them, rapid -- for organic, physical life -- fire mass drivers and coherent energy projectors, but Chaos could see that this would only be partially effective, even without its interference. Energy releases governed by the strong nuclear force sparkled across the surface of the planet, turning it from green to a dirty, dusty brown.

Long seconds passed as it watched through senses only partially analogous to sight, occasionally diving to turn complex spirals and loops through the expanding plasmas at the heart of one detonation or another. Here it paused, again noticing the strange behaviour of the local automata. This time it watched; there was definitely an exchange of information, data being drawn out of the bipeds’ organic neural networks in the microseconds before their component molecules were dissociated.

The automata didn't seem to get what they wanted and a change rippled through them. The syphoning activity started to spread away from the centres of destruction, flitting through collapsed tunnels and arcology accommodation blocks to find the bipeds trapped in the rubble. These creatures were as good as dead -- there were megatonnes of rubble and no organisation capable of getting through it -- but this was good enough for the automata. They settled around the dying and nearly dead, pulling something out of the brains and passing the information to somewhere. Where the automata passed the bipeds ceased to function, minds gone.

Chaos tried to follow the information, but it split up and sank away into the background hum of activity. There was something...

There was a change in the fundamental properties of the universe, a shock that was gone as quickly as it came. Chaos pulled back from its observations, suddenly concerned. The Flaw was... the Flaw was moving! Space was distorting around the radiant's mouth, dragging it along at superluminal velocity. Chaos accelerated away from the planet, reaching the high orbital spaces just slower than a photon, but realised it was too late; all the information it had was an eternity, forty beats of a biped's heart, out of date because of the distance to the Flaw.

It cast about, looking for the source of the disturbance, then froze as it finally understood what had happened. The two herbivore quadrupeds it had modified had managed to acquire Creation Stones and discover how to use them. Now they sat at the centre of dense knots of Guardian activity, untouchable. Orders flowed from the Stones, fine webs of influence, and the automata rushed to obey.

For the second time in recent history, Chaos felt fear.

===

The bubble of air was hazy with condensed sweat. Beneath Gravity's hooves the remains of Grund, harshly lit by Celestia’s light, churned with chaotic motion. The gravitational relationships were highly disturbed and what little structure the moon had, was gone. Rock fragments from kilolength scales down to the finest of dust boiled away in erratic trajectories, disturbed by her manipulations.

Power flowed from her, pulled in from everywhere and nowhere, then focused through the Stone she held pressed against her breast. The trick was to pass the momentum from rock to rock; far too much power would be needed to move the larger fragments without it. So much easier than it was before. She bent her head, nuzzling at the cold stone sphere with its infinite depths.

Gravity felt the sheer joy flowing down the link from Fusion, and smiled in return as the angles of the shadows between the rocks smoothly changed. The sun was moving, falling across the heavens like a bird flying across the sky. It's not massless, there are satellites orbiting it, Fusion sent. Forty-five light seconds out and it's moved across half the sky in a pawful of breaths. How many physical laws has that violated? Vanca is going to be so angry!

Bending her will to accelerating another mountain-sized boulder, Gravity laughed. We're kicking away the physics that supports the world. Can she see the sky?

Probably not... she'll miss the show. She was quite excited when you started to pull the moon apart.

I bet she was. Gravity's smile hardened and she twisted her head to stare at Luna. This close, the patterns and lines on its surface had turned into a fractal complexity of blocks and canyons. The Hammer accelerator was clearly visible, lines of crustal pits along a fine hash-mark track of the accelerator itself. Do you know what you are going to do? I can feel the launches... Her smile faltered and blackness flowed in from the corners of her vision. ...even without their pony-powered launchers, I can feel things curving up from all the Hives. So many weapons... I had no chance against just Baur Hive. There are too many. I think this is the end of everything, Fusion.

Glorious sunshine filtered back up the link, but all the joy was gone. We must save who we can. The mental tone wavered, then became firm. I was always afraid this would become a zero-sum game. I had hoped it would be otherwise... but we must ensure continuity. Do you understand? What can you do?

I'm attacking the Hammer, but that means I need to pull energy from some rocks to boost others. I'm targeting the ones I send planetward to the launchers I can find, but I can only prosecute targets within my horizon.. it will take longer than we have.

Have you been listening to Ellisif again? A brief ghost of a smile came back up the link. I'll stay here. There was sudden feeling of disconnection and Gravity was alone in her head.

Right. She spun around, accelerating along the path of rocks she'd made. Luna was ahead, swelling rapidly. Let's see what I can do about this. The feeling of twitching from the moon intensified, then turned into sudden motion.

===

Chau's words hung in the air of the Hammer's small primary control room. They made sense singly, but as a sentence... Arturon's head whirled and he sat heavily. "Say that again."

"Half of Grund is heading in this direction, the sun is moving--" Chau waved a paw at the main screen, making a sound that was half way between an expression of disgust and a giggle. "--and Baur is still launching against the other Hives." He scrubbed at his eyes, leaving his paws over his face. "Secondary launch systems only. The servitor mass drivers have all been turned to glass."

Bright points of light littered the disk of the world below, pulsing and bursting and leaving ripples within the clouds. They were harder to see now, after the terminator had swept across the planet like bright honey over an apple. The world was fully lit, as was the far side of Luna. "...and the other half of Grund?"

"There appears to be an exchange of momentum. The thaumic scanners report that the rocks are moving in pairs. One up, one down. The 'down' halves are all heading for the planet... very specific locations on the surface. Military bases, mostly."

"Doing these one's job!" Arturon clenched his paws, slamming them down on the console. "This is ridiculous. What is the status on point defence?"

"Unprepared for megatonnes of rock moving at escape velocity!" Chau snarled suddenly. "These ones will need to use the main driver.... hopefully the antiprotonic helium beam and the quantum-cascade lasers will soak up the rest."

"Do it. Weapons free." There's nothing else these ones can do with the thing. "Will it work?" Arturon leaned heavily against the console, thinking about the gigaseconds of construction. The deep-buried, multiply parallel command systems proof against anything from a single bioweapon-equipped traitor to gigaton-yield fusion cluster-bomb strikes. So much done, the height of paranoia. He swallowed, feeling light-headed. Not paranoid enough.

Chau shrugged and gave a sudden, merciless laugh. "For a while. Depends on if the pony runs out of rocks before these ones run out of energy." Behind him, the external cameras showed the movement of heavy projectiles from the low orbit storage rings to the main accelerator. Power reserves were dropping, and the whole control installation, megatonnes of fused rock rigidly bonded to the core of Luna, started to vibrate.

===

The Hammer's trajectories were aimed at her rocks. Gravity could feel them fanning out from the moon. She skimmed over the stream of fractured regolith and corral-sized boulders, kicking and bouncing from one to another. Luna itself was in silhouette, only a slender crescent illuminated by the brilliant point of Celestia. Something was happening to the sun; bulges and horns of hazy light were reaching outwards, like coils of fire and smoke from a fire. They seemed small, but foreshortening and distance likely meant they were much larger than they looked.

There was the actinic flash of a hypervelocity impact, bright enough to light the dark face of the moon, casting hard, racing shadows and putting all other incident radiation to shame. Her lead projectile exploded in a spray of superheated fragments and incandescent dust. Beams of radiance, slender rods of light that extended in the direction of Luna, danced through the dust, carving the smaller rocks into finer and finer pieces. Too fast to really follow as anything but a subliminal impression, strings of flashes and sparkles reached out to touch the second of her main rocks, and it promptly exploded in the same way as the first.

Gravity curved away from the stream of tortured ice and silicates, her smile widening. How many times can you do that? I've got a whole moon to throw! Let's see how you like it... Breathing slowing back to a more normal rate after her exertions, she left the rocks to their predetermined paths and turned back to the world below.

She felt drawn to it, or at least to five other places on it. The sensation had become stronger, a feeling that she should be doing something. This far out it was hard to tell exactly where the other things were, but one of them was moving and was felt twice, the second time through her link to Fusion. Lights flickered and flashed across the disk of the world; the bright points of nuclear detonations. Her own weapons were still falling and she traded more momentum to get them falling faster, but it wasn't going to be enough.

Fusion, I can tie up the Hammer, but I can't stop what's going on below. There are no launchers left, but the explosions are still happening. There are too many other weapons.

They no longer care about us, Grav. We are just collateral damage. There's too much space to cover-- There was a sense of great speed, of blurred hills, fields and forests. Something was ahead, a dark arrowhead riding blue fire, shedding flickering particles of rainbow light. Fusion was firing upon the particles, snuffing them out with flares of yet more light. The view jinked crazily, horizon tumbling then flashing white. Dammit, missed--!

~~~discontinuity~~~

Gravity held her breath then exhaled sharply as the connection came back. The closeness of the ground curved away, showing a larger vista pockmarked with black under towering mushroom clouds. She only saw them for an instant, but the shape and glow of their fireballs, hundreds of seconds old but still the brightest things in the sky, were unmistakable. Ahead was a burning groove cut through the hills, terminating in a strewnfield of unidentifiable, molten wreckage. There were no clouds left but the sky was darkening, the sun itself dimming.

===

Don't get between the sun and the world, Grav. Fusion bit at her lips, feeling the changes she'd made to the sun. Things like claws were extending from the surface of Celestia, some minuscule portion of the sun's energy converted into lambent clouds of plasma and laced through with ferocious magnetic fields. Terrific flashes of X-rays and vacuum ultraviolet ran up and down it as those fields reconnected at random, folding in on themselves and superheating the ionised gases still further. There was an odd feeling of both delay and immediacy to the sun and what was happening. It was taking the best part of forty-five seconds for any light to get to the planet, even though Fusion's influence could reach it instantly.

The ground was obscured by drifting clouds of dust and smoke, lit from within by the ash-grey charcoal statues of still-burning trees. To her energy sensitive sight, some areas had a disturbing purple tinge, similar to the colours she'd seen in the accelerator's beam stop. The fur between her shoulders itched and she gained a little more altitude; the purple was in large and spreading drifts, falling out from the mushroom clouds. There's so much radiation... the bombs are only mostly clean, she thought, swallowing heavily. Will there be anywhere we can hide at the end of all this?

There were other things under the smoke; the deep tunnels and bases of Baur Hive. She matched what she was seeing to the maps she'd been shown, hunting for the military installations. The bases were externally similar to industrial facilities -- vertical shafts for surface access and deep tunnels connecting them to the rest of the Hive -- but the quality and quantity of armour and power reserve gave them away. Power was especially telling; many of the reactors had failed -- not destroyed, although a number had been turned into radioactive craters -- but shut down. No ponies to run the control systems. She gritted her teeth, straining for any sign of pony magic, but there was nothing.

You're still down there but I can't see you... let's hope Baur has the same rules that Lacunae has about ponies being in military bases. Her stomach clenched and she flew higher and faster. "Now I get to be the hooves of the Maker," she whispered, the words coming out high and thin. At this altitude the world was laid out under her hooves like it was a map, the power failures making the still active bases stand out against a rapidly darkening background in the shadow world.

Fusion reached up and out, feeling the complexity she'd created around the sun. I think... The distant magnetic fields tightened, constricting the plasma clouds into glowing rods. Another alteration, making changes she didn't really comprehend but knew would have the effect she desired.

The response was immediate while still being forty-five light seconds away. The time ticked away, each beat of her frantically pulsing heart seeming to take an eternity. Did I get it right? Too late to change anything now. The sky above her started to glow, a lurid tickle of near ultraviolet in the upper atmosphere, even while the sun itself dimmed and became covered in black spots. "Let there be light," Fusion said, looking up into the fluorescence.

A thread of intense purple flashed down from the zenith, touching the far horizon in a lightning-filled explosion of brilliant fog. Another five sprang into being, remaining stationary for a second before starting to drift and wobble, cutting fluorescent gouges through the ground. Fires sprang up everywhere within a kilolength of each thread, rapidly building into twisting storms that curled up the beams, dragging debris skyward in fast-moving fountains. At the bottom of each beam was a stolen spot of solar brilliance, a rocket-engine blast feeding the maelstrom.

The closest, no more than a dozen kilolengths away, engulfed and destroyed a river in an instant, the embankments and shore enshrouded in boiling, superheated steam. It left a valley of glowing rock in its wake, surrounded by a strip of burning and blackened ground. It was obvious that the threads were not dimensionless lines but thick columns, a hundred lengths wide or more. She kept them as still as she could, letting atmospheric turbulence random-walk the beams over their targets until they exploded or went dark to her shadow sight. Then Fusion set them moving to the next point on the map in her head.

===

"Say again, all after 'Celestia'." Kode licked at the blood soaking into the fur from knuckles to wrist. His ears were pricked forwards, straining towards the speaker.

"There's an anomaly at Celestia. Energy output is switching from photons to plasma. These ones are seeing needle-structures confined by highly abnormal magnetic fields--" The signal failed with the abruptness of a cut data link, then recovered to show a fuzzy, magnified image of the sun with great luminous growths extending from it. The voice came back, sounding high and strained. "--plasma streams are lasing violet--" The signal cut off again.

"These ones just lost the outer ring relays." Akar gestured helplessly at the map. What should have been a dense spider's web of data connections was sparse and fragmented. Civilian relays had failed some time ago and the military system had been shot full of holes by the destruction of an increasing number of bases. Cascading shutdowns of related network nodes had put paid to much of the rest, as key installations were pulverised and those reliant upon them first failed over, then stopped working entirely.

What did they mean, 'lasing violet'? "Do these ones have working surface camera feeds?" The main display changed from tracking the strategic launches; the actual launch sites had been nuked a tenth of a kilosecond earlier, but many of the rounds were still on their way to their targets. The surface was unexpectedly dim, considering the unnatural position of the sun and the lack of cloud cover, like an eclipse was under way. Off in the distance was a line of purple light, extending from somewhere far over head.

"What is that?" Kode pointed at the screen with a bloodied paw. "None of the Hives have anything remotely like that."

"There was Lacunae's use of a heliostat as a weapon..." The line of light wavered, not fading out but tracking sideways, far enough that the camera had to slew to keep it in shot. "Defence is reporting another five beams, each striking a base or industrial hub. They are moving--" The words stopped with a strangled cry. On the external display the line had changed from a dimensionless thread to something thicker.

If a funnel storm doesn't seem to be moving, it is either coming towards you or heading away. Kode raised his paw to his muzzle, worrying at the damaged flesh once more as the old proverb rattled around in his head. His ears drooped as the line grew fat, filling the frame of the video feed. There was a rumble overhead, deep in the rock layers that protected his command centre. He looked up as the data feeds all failed and the lights went out, leaving only the faint green glow of the emergency tritium panels.

There were cries and the sound of running paws. Kode kept staring at the blank screens, until fire and a hard violet light flooded in.

===

The stream of matter was getting closer, stretched out by the differential velocity of its components. There was a tenth of the mass of Grund in those rocks; the rest of the rubble-pile moon was spread across the inner debris ring and raining down on the planet. Arturon looked with wide eyes and paws cupped over his short muzzle, taking in the predicted trajectories; it was obvious that every rock was being aimed.

The pony is being very efficient, he thought, tracing the paths with vision blurred by tears. The simulation was a bare wire-frame, but told the tale in all its awful glory. It was a story of a world exhaling a final breath, pulling over the covers of an impact winter, to rest and recover from the harms done to it. The globe rotated as the rocks fell, smoothly bringing fresh targets into range as each kilosecond passed. The simulation finished and Arturon looked past the display and at the main screen with its live image of the planet. Already a quarter of the surface was pocked with fresh craters, glowing in the far infrared as they forced more heat upon an atmosphere already dangerously warm.

Everything was getting harder to see; the Court's defensive fire had thrown up great clouds of dust, thick and hot enough to impede their surveillance of the local volume and render long-range imaging difficult. What it did show were the ruler-straight lines of the lasers, pulled by some unknown magic out of the energy of the sun. Whatever process was being used wasn't very efficient, but the total energy available was so high that it didn't really matter. Celestia, imaged by Luna's far side sensors, was a strange and alien thing. Dim in the optical and infrared, it blazed in the X-ray bands, fuelling the population inversion that was powering the lasers.

"It knows exactly what it is doing," he muttered, attracting a glance from Chau, who nodded. Not too small and not too big. Despite initial estimates, many of the rocks had been put into low but stable orbits; only material of a certain mass and composition was getting all the way to the ground.

"This one has a targeting solution on the next four rocks... queuing up the accelerator. Power reserves predicted to be at sixty percent after those shots." Arturon's eyes tracked the bright point displayed by the thaumic sensors, his paws clenching and unclenching. The pony was an obvious target, but was too distant and too mobile to hit, even with the stealthed canister rounds they'd fired. It seemed to know where everything was, and either moved out of the way or shifted their own fire.

Outside, on the lunar surface, strings of thousand-tonne iron needles -- the 'light', low-power self-defence ammunition -- were shunted from deep magazines and into the hundred-kilolength-diameter feeder loops for the main accelerator. Once every four seconds they were spat out at maximum velocity; the first round split the rock into uneven chunks, and each subsequent shot in the burst targeted one of the fragments.

Unheard in the vacuum of space, the big support pylons for the accelerator ring creaked and vibrated, running at a duty cycle unforeseen by even the most apocalyptic war game.

===

This is starting to get on my nerves. Gravity watched the latest of her rocks disappear with a flash, filling the local space with rubble and superheated dust.

What? There was a sense of great pressure coming back down the link from Fusion, as if her sister was in the late stages of some long endurance race.

Nothing, sorry. Gravity tightened her control of the sharing, then built her drive spell and fell towards the induced mass. The trajectory took her above the orbital plane of the moons and debris ring, out of range of most of the fragments from the exploding rocks, and gave her a clear view of Luna.

The moon was starting to build its own shroud of fine dust, kicked up by the secondary impacts. There was no way the Court could stop every fragment, and indeed they hadn't tried. The path of the primary accelerator, a row of giant rings that looked like a set of regular scratches around the equator of Luna, was clear. The dogs are only targeting stuff that is heading for the Hammer... Square pits lined the path of the accelerator rings; these seemed to get deeper with each shot fired. I don't have to break the whole thing, just a part of it. Like stepping on a snake...

Gravity exhaled in the bubble of field-trapped air that acted as her life support, the sudden sigh filling the small space. "Oh..." They have limited ability to hit targets outside the equatorial plane. She smiled, the grin getting wider until her cheeks started to ache, then flew close to one of the smaller -- only a few hundred lengths across -- objects she'd pulled from Grund. It fell towards her, pulled into the drive spell's gravity well.

Pulling the thing was slow, far more so than just manoeuvring herself. It was too big -- not in mass, but volume -- and the spell's effect radius too small to get much acceleration without the tidal forces ripping the object apart; she felt distinctly vulnerable to any fire that might manage to predict her motion. Let's hope the rest of the rocks keep their attention. Nothing to see here...

The object she'd picked was a solid lump of nickel-iron, its dull and pitted surface occasionally throwing back glints of shiny metal. It weighed about a quarter gigatonne, and she'd hoped to hide it among the larger and more frangible objects, sneaking it onto target without being stopped. Bound to be other weapons in their point defence arsenal. Nothing too fast, but that would mean nukes. Gravity stood on the back side of the asteroid, held there by the distance-gentled tidal forces of the drive spell, and tried to remember what Vanca had told her.

She closed her eyes, focussing on the movement of objects in local space, hunting for anything heading in her direction. Nothing. Luna grew closer, expanding with deceptive slowness as the seconds ticked by, then the side of the rock facing the moon lit up with an incandescent outpouring of vaporised iron. I think they might have seen me... A solid rod of light burst out of the metal and started to chew sideways, throwing up fountains of sparks and wavering globules of molten iron from the energy beam's penetration of the asteroid.

Gravity applied her drive spell again, pumping a little more energy into the asteroid. The artificial gravity well was deep and sharp-sided, and turned the attacking particle beam from a focused needle into a wild spray that scarred the Luna-facing side but failed to penetrate. Projectiles followed the beam, but they were nowhere near as fast or numerous as those from the Hammer or the massed Hives. She pushed and pulled at them, sending some off on wild trajectories and crushing others into wreckage.

Actinic flashes pulsed and flared behind her metallic shield, the multi-megaton detonations of the Court's point defence weapons. Gravity crouched in a crater she'd dug out of the rear of the asteroid, grinning ferally at the light reflected off debris ring particles. Can't get me through two hundred lengths of iron, can you? The asteroid vibrated under her hooves, jerking to one side in time with a particularly bright flash. Too many more like that, though...

She clipped off chunks of metal, rapidly creating a cloud of hoof-sized cubes. The actions came practically without conscious thought, streamlined and pushed to the level of breathing or the beat of her wings by long practice and the amplifying effects of the Stone. The spherical thing, its illuminated half pointing back towards the planet, nestled in the space between her wing roots, held there by gentle telekinesis.

What lights it up? The sun is in completely the wrong direction. Gravity squinted at the close horizon of her metal shield, still flaring and pulsing with erratic sprays of iron vapour, then tossed her head, flicking away the sweat accumulating at the base of her neck. A sudden vision of Fusion's solar labour tattoo flashed into her mind and she rolled her eyes. Really?! Is that mare the centre of everything? She grunted as a volley of railgun projectiles came closer than planned, diverting her attention from the continued presence of the particle beam. Can't keep this up forever.

She swept local space clear of inbound objects, then pushed her cloud of metal blocks out over the local horizon, curving them into her drive spell, which she flicked off just as they reached it. Those last few lengths exposed them to tremendous gravitational forces, and they whipped away with a subliminal blur. "That should keep you busy," she panted; the air inside her personal bubble was warm and smelled strongly of sweat, making her muzzle wrinkle. Nearly done.

Gravity cautiously poked her head over the horizon. The particle beam had stopped attacking her and had switched to the metal cubes, the sparkling beam making them explode in rapid succession, but it was still only one weapon. She looked for a couple more seconds, then felt fast incoming fire climbing up from Luna and ducked back to her hiding place. Getting closer... There was another explosion back at her original matter stream, then another and another, bright enough to make her flinch.

A push at the objects closing on her asteroid turned them into metal scrap on wildly divergent trajectories, then Luna was filling her senses, expanding like a rock thrown at her head and she pushed once more--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--appearing back near the scattered remains of Grund, now little more than a slight thickening in the debris ring, her velocity vector still pointing to Luna. Even at this distance her metal asteroid was lit up like it was on fire, pierced again and again by whatever energy weapon the dogs were using. Railgun rounds were striking it, launched from point defence systems scattered all over the surface, spalling off sparks and fragments. It split, shattering into a dozen red-hot pieces that vanished in a string of white flashes that stitched across the line of mass driver rings that ran around Luna's equator.

There were more explosions: bright flashes and hot, dusty craters suddenly appeared at random points around the moon and her sense of constant, regular motion vanished, replaced by a sudden scattering. The whole thing has lost power! Gravity grinned, then threw back her head and laughed, following the tracks of half-accelerated Hammer projectiles as they spun away at tangents and vanished into the endless black. Avidly, lips drawn back from sharpening teeth, she followed the paths of her original matter stream, fine-tuning the trajectories.

Sparkles of light rippled over the surface of Luna and the regolith threw up vast quantities of dust. The fine, regular shapes of buildings, mines, power storage facilities, and the whole panoply of technology, vanished under a rolling barrage of impacts, leaving only ragged, orange-glowing craters in their wake.

===

There was shouting: the gravelly screeches of gryphons -- all military jargon and curses, in about equal measure -- and the familiar, all too painfully familiar, sound of ponies in distress. A neigh, no words, just a high wail, rang out, little more than 'I am here, where are you?'. Plasma felt an urge to respond, but it was a distant, abstract thing.

Instead, she knelt on the hot ground next to Helium, legs folded neatly to place her chest next to Helium's head. The medic had left the bodybag draped over her mate like it was a sheet; his hooves stuck out past the edges, charred on one side. "What am I going to do without you, Helium? We should have had gigaseconds left in the Master's service." She bowed her head, eyes long empty of tears.

Hooves drummed past and wings whirred overhead, casting brief, predatory shadows against a curdled sky. Shouted orders, possibly directed at her. Plasma ignored everything and reached out to pull the plastic back, but there was no feeling of the world bending to her will, not the slightest hint of power. She screwed her eyes shut, uselessly tensing every muscle until her ears sang. The breath came out with a sob and she slumped, leaning forwards and clumsily gripping the sheet with her teeth. Muzzle this close, there was no escaping the strong smell of cooked flesh and burned fur.

The smells were familiar from a lifetime of witnessing the accidents that afflicted the average working pony, but were strong, far too strong. Plasma bent further forward, brushing her muzzle along the unburned line of Helium's jaw. "Dammit, Helium," she whispered. There were fewer and fewer people around -- they were all running somewhere -- but Plasma made no effort to move.

There were two ponies watching her: a skewbald mare, scarred along her belly, and a foal, dark-coated and only a megasecond or two old. "We have to go," the mare said, "I've been here before... there will be a shockwave." She looked up at the sky, one wing unfolding slightly to cover her foal.

"Go, then," Plasma said listlessly, not looking at the mare. "I'm staying here." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I think you were right after all, Helium. My little fillies became monsters and destroyed us all."

The other mare looked confused, then stared up at the mountain with its missing peak. "You're Fusion and Gravity's dam," she said quietly. "They saved me, they saved everypony at Naraka. How could you call them monsters?"

Plasma blinked, then lifted her head, swinging it around like a turret. "You are young, child. Look around you--" She levered herself to shaky legs, then swept the surroundings with one wing, her primary feather spread like blades. "--count the dead, the drowned, the burned and blasted." The wing came down, gently touching the bodybag. "I have no magic. Our medics have no magic." Sudden tears welled up, making her eyes swim. Could they have saved him? He could have saved himself! "You have no magic. Your foal has no magic!" The final words came out as a hiss, loud and rich with sibilants, as her neck stretched out, ears back and teeth snapping like blocks of wood.

The foal, as dark as a storm cloud, stumbled back with a squeak, cowering behind the mare. She straightened, wings mantling and blocking Plasma's view. She struggled to speak for a moment, then backed away. "I think you have forgotten what it was like for some of us. You all had to work, and might have died, but at least your foals had a chance. My first ended up as a medical experiment, and so would Thunder." Still moving, she circled around Plasma, heading for the evacuation point. "What would you have had Fusion do? She had the ability to rescue us, and she did."

Frozen, Plasma watched her go, then sank back to her knees at Helium's side. She leaned against his body; it felt cool and slightly stiff. "You old fool, Helium. We brought our foals up well, no matter what you thought at the end. It's just such a shame that--" She swallowed hard, then struggled back to her hooves. "Goodbye, my love."

Jumping forwards, dirt and gravel spraying out from under her hooves, Plasma galloped after the skewbald mare.

===

"Is there a problem with Rinchur's ID?" Salrath asked, smiling hopefully at the officer and ignoring the bored-looking gryphon slouched on the back of the police aircar. It was a practiced smile, one that contained worry and hope in equal measure, rather than any warmth. Don't look in the storage compartments. "She was in the transit tunnels near Naraka." She held up her amputated arm with its crude prosthetic. "Lost everything in the... in the..." She let the smile falter, inhaling deeply, then swallowing and staring at the ground. Other vehicles, the normal mix of aircars and heavy transports, variously whispered, growled or thundered overhead and around the pull-in bay she'd been directed to land at.

What made the officer suspicious? Salrath squinted and bit at the end of her tongue, forcing a tear from her eyes. The amount this one paid for the ID was substantial... She sighed silently, thinking how hard it was to actually insert consistent lies into all the various governmental databases, especially when in a hurry.

"Nothing to be concerned about," the officer said without a smile.

He had slate-grey fur, what little of it showed past the close-fitting suit of armour with its obvious plates of anti-kinetic ceramic. Between the black plates was a dark blue woven material, some sort of flexible nanotube weave, and a dense collection of equipment -- restraints, medkit, firearm -- hung from a wide belt. With side-long glances, Salrath studied the pistol in its anti-snatch holster, recalling her early training. Pull forwards and push down with a claw right there...

This is not going to work, she thought. The gryphon was watching her closely, it's head feathers twitching as Salrath took another tentative step towards the officer, as if in an effort to see what was on the screen. Not too close... she gauged the distance, feeling her senses sharpen. Her own highly illegal gun was well hidden and completely inaccessible for a quick draw and firefight; it would take a good sensor sweep -- or a practiced and paranoid forensic servitor -- to find the thing. She flexed her wrist, brushing the little diamond needle-blade that seemed to be part of her sleeveless jacket.

Her bracer hummed its news alert pattern into the muscle of her forearm, something had tripped the keyword searches she'd put in place, but she ignored it. A few seconds later the officer's own screen flashed red, what must have been her, or her vehicle's, file vanishing behind a slew of priority orders. "It's Rinchur's lucky day," he said, finally breaking into a merciless grin before pulling open the aircar's door and climbing in. "Go home and stay there. A state of emergency has just been declared."

"Yes, officer," she murmured, backing away. That's two of us that got lucky. Salrath moved her paw away from the concealed knife hilt, getting into her own aircar. Pity, that police vehicle would have been quite an upgrade. She glanced at the information display, which was showing a general override from Hive command, and orders announcing an immediate curfew. A few claw gestures brought up further details, but everything was vague and couched in language calculated not to alarm the general populace.

"Rutting Maker," she said loudly, the likely meaning of the calming, anodyne phrases becoming obvious, and flicked open her bracer's news feed. The more independent news sources, such as they were, were entirely devoid of meaningful coverage. Most were offline or had not updated for the last kilosecond. The official state news service was showing a light entertainment program, apparently involving an aircar factory’s youth choir. That's it, this one was too slow. The civil defence protocols will be active. All this one's preparations, useless! No escape, the arcology entrances locked down to all but military and certain civil authority traffic...

Her eyes flicked up to the police aircar, still sitting across her path, and she smiled.

===

The sun had moved across the sky like it was pulled by a wire, fading and brightening like it was nothing more than a parachute flare. Rthar wanted to stop everything and stare, but none of this apocalyptic strangeness made any difference to the infalling weapons. It was too much, too unbelievable, so he pushed it away and focused on the threat he could understand.

This one would almost rather be back in an infantry battle. Rthar was strapped into the tactical chair of an aircraft similar to the reaction dropship he'd once commanded. It was missing the gryphon troop bays and power armour morgue, packing the empty volume with communications, sensors and a set of artillery railguns and long range lasers pressed into service as anti-orbit weapons. Linked by more lasers to the rest of the hastily assembled terminal defence fleet, he flew long, pseudo-randomly generated racetrack paths through the sky of the Hive. Gryphon-piloted gunships flew similar paths, the bulk of the weapons available to him, slaved to the orders generated by his tactical console.

There was a minor lull in the firing, enough that Rthar focussed tired eyes on the long range sensors and dared to hope that-- No, it was just that a fortuitus sympathetic detonation, set by one of the Arclights touching off an oversized antimatter trigger in one of the incoming weapons. He cycled through the scans as protocol demanded -- exoatmospheric, endoatmospheric, surface skimming -- the actions almost robotic. In the corner of the display was the gamma and neutron flux counter, an accumulated measure of the radiation penetrating the hull; it was already uncomfortably high from the repeated near misses. Nothing a servitor medic couldn't fix. He gave a little bitter chuckle at that thought. What this one wouldn't give for a competent pony right now.

There was another alarm from the port number two engine -- the MHD thruster's ionisation plates were overheating and eroding at a frightening rate under the constant demand of supersonic flight. Rthar cleared the alarm. Not going to be here long enough for it to make a difference, he thought, tasking a subset of his gunships to fire upon the lead attack units. They flickered and flared in the diffuse fringes of the upper atmosphere, any attempt at stealth abandoned as their thermal protection started to ablate. He'd been tracking this cluster for the hundred seconds it had been in range of the thermal cameras, but only now was it actually close enough to prosecute.

Three-quarters of the signals were blown away, retarded by their interaction with the tenuous air and marking them out as cheap decoys or discarded attack-management systems, unneeded now the projectiles were committed. Some radiated ferocious amounts of jamming across broad swaths of the electromagnetic spectrum, targeting carefully crafted pulses of radio and laser at where they thought Rthar's own sensors and weapons were. These he diverted a fraction of his reserve to, those armed with lasers.

Barely noticed on the feed from the hull-mounted cameras, the air outside filled with faint threads of green and the ripples of railgun projectiles fired nearly straight up. Explosions, little more than flashes of light amid the falling stars, started to pepper the indigo sky. Ammunition reserves were dropping but still adequate, and the immediate engagement was looking to be in paw, so Rthar risked directing a quarter of his force to start the mid-air rearming process. Gunships fell to meet a rising armoury carrier, passing close like sparrows harrying a buzzard, receiving packages of railgun projectiles delivered via the carrier's thaumokinetic conveyors.

The last of the incoming projectiles were being engaged and Rthar turned his attention to the next cluster. The remnants of the first group's penaids were still reentering, slow compared to the needle-pointed high-velocity warheads. He started to issue orders to engage them, suddenly concerned about mission analysis systems reporting the failure of the attack back to the next cluster.

Light flared, turning the camera feeds white for an instant before the electronics compensated. The dropship staggered in the air, listing sharply to port, at the same time as a slew of red warnings cascaded down his battle management feed, each one a gunship under his command. Outside, the sky was filled with pale claws of ionisation, all extending down from one point in the heavens to touch a Lacunae aircraft and turn it into tumbling wreckage and fire.

"What in the rutting Maker's name was that?" the pilot snarled, paws busy with the controls. The dropship bucked as it went subsonic, turning a tightening spiral towards the ground. The vibration grew worse for a moment, violent enough that Rthar's vision blurred and his teeth rattled, then subsided as the pilot made more adjustments. The racket of the engines faded to a low hum as they went to pure ducted fan mode, the high-performance MHD thrusters shutting down.

Rthar was busy with his own systems. The sensors, coming back online after self-protection shutdown, told a dire story of loss. Gone was the bulk of his force, along with the other task groups and most of the Arclight units. Panic made his throat close up and stomach clench. "There was something in one of the decoys," he whispered. "A retarded bomb-pumped X-ray laser." If these one's hadn't lost so many Arclights fighting the ponies! Reflexively, he looked down at Hive, as if the the deck plating beneath his paws was transparent. These ones can't save them.

Far above, and getting closer at five kilolengths a second, the next cluster of warheads started to reenter.

===

The detonation was early, too distant to have much effect, but two thirds of the point defence squadron turned into sudden fireballs. Their final defensive shots, still flying towards closer targets, stopped homing and missed. "Arclights Fifteen Alpha and Two Alpha destroyed; redeploying remaining units." More explosions, the silent, globular pulses of antimatter-catalysed fusion weapons detonating outside the atmosphere. "These ones no longer have sufficient cover for Arcologies One, Three, Four and Nine."

"What happened?" Orgon asked, paws dancing over his strategy management console. Lost too much, no way to--

"Nuclear-pumped x-ray laser slipped through the sensor net." His aide, Faula's, voice was dull and grey, drained of all emotion, like machine vocalisation.

The beams couldn't reach the ground, but they could hit the high-flying missile busses and mass-driver flack guns. The sort of attack that wouldn't stand a chance if these ones had working mid-course defences! The backup systems, a few ground-based missile silos that hadn't been used during the attack on the Hammer projectile, had long since been expended. Most of the static ground defences had been pounded to scrap in the hundred seconds that had followed, targeted by metal falling at orbital velocity. Mobile systems, heavy floater platforms carrying anti-air railguns, buzzed over the surface of the Hive to fill in the gaps, but their engagement range was short: the most desperate of point defences.

Feeds from surface cameras blinked out, replaced a few seconds later by others from different, and more distant, angles. A vibration ripped through the control room, making Orgon's paws itch. He stared down at the strategy board, suddenly motionless. Most of the local defence vehicles had just dropped out of the local battlenet.

"Low altitude detonation." The Defence Specialist's voice changed, a faint tinge of panic creeping in. "Yield… one fifty plus megatons. This one has no connection to the local defence grid. All sensors are reporting out of range errors. It--"

There was more, but Orgon closed his eyes and sighed, then opened them again and looked towards the conference room that held Merlon and a few academicians. That's it. Orgon could run, but to where? High-speed escape systems waited at the back of the command centre, capsules fired down mass driver barrels to alternative bolt holes. Compromised, every one. Feeling unsteady, he stood and walked to the conference room, pushing the door aside and ignoring the questions from the rest of the command staff.

He paused, paw on the door control, mind racing, hunting for some strategy that would stop the madness. The next salvo will be a set of high-yield earth penetrators. Somewhere overhead, still in the mid-point of the ballistic arc, mission analysis sensors would have detected the detonations and loss of defensive fire and relayed new battle plans to warheads further along their trajectories. Revised targeting solutions would be shared between the units of the weapon swarm, optimising impact points and fuzing depth for maximum casualties.

Perhaps the ponies will save these ones, or at least their kind still in the deep shelters. He shook his head, baring his teeth with the mockery of a smile, watching the battle approaching Luna's orbit and the beams lancing from the sun. They have their hooves full as it is. Some fights are unwinnable. Still, there's no need to show that. "Relocate the general staff and Synod members to the omega site and start sealing the contingency vaults. These ones must save what they can," he said over his shoulder, then opened the door.

Merlon was standing in a metal spider-frame, at the focus of an array of crystal thaumic machines. Her head was up and ears forward, but her gaze was fixed on some distant horizon, a thousand kilolength stare. She didn't move or flinch when one of the Academicians reached across her muzzle to adjust one of the sensors, the fur of his arm brushing against her whiskers. "Academician Thul. What have these ones discovered?" he asked quietly, letting the door slide closed and shutting out the sudden panic of the control room.

"Strategist..." Thul scratched at the side of her head, claws digging into the fur under her ear. "This is the most ingenious application of thaumic conversion this one has ever seen. It must have taken gigaseconds to perfect." Orgon frowned, tapping his claws against his thigh, and the Academician cringed and coughed. "There is something in the servitor mandatory supplements. One of the source compounds is derived from an optimised lucerne crop that's in global use. It's one of many small molecules that is absorbed through the buccal membranes, and has a reasonable biological half-life." Thul looked grim, turning towards a display packed with dense text, plots and a complex magical pattern. "As these ones thought, the spell triggers a transformation... the new molecule binds to receptors and depolarises the nerves connecting horn and wings to brain. There are probably other effects these ones are not aware of."

"Can it be reversed?"

"Yes, but without medical servitors it will take time. The neural paralysis operates in the same way as botulinum toxin; the molecule is extremely long-lived and specific, but there will be an antagonist these ones can synthesise in the next few megaseconds." Thul looked tired but satisfied. "These ones can reverse this, Strategist. There is one other thing--" A flick of her paw changed the display to a simpler document, one with all the hallmarks of a hastily prepared Security document. "The strain of lucerne was one stolen from Baur biolabs two gigaseconds ago; the Security review now suggests this was bait. It was adopted into the general supplement formula half a gigasecond ago."

This was planned for a long time. "Thank you, Academician," Orgon said gravely. "Please join the evacuation; these ones have been allocated a place in one of the contingency vaults." He opened the door, gesturing to a waiting, and increasingly nervous, soldier.

Thul looked in puzzlement at the master display in the centre of the room, covered with red warnings and dire predictions. His ears drooped. "But synthesis of the antagonist will need a full chemistry facility..."

Orgon nodded. "Perhaps one will survive, or Thul can build one later. Go." They rushed past, holding hastily collected equipment, heading for the evacuation shuttle. Finally alone, Orgon pulled at the metal frame, folding it away so Merlon could move.

Her eyes twitched, focussing on him. Her mouth opened, then closed, in silence. "They are all going to die," she said finally. "The locations of the shelters are probably known."

"Yes," Orgon said, closing the door and blocking the view of the strategic systems. Returning to the analytical instruments his paws swept across the controls, sending all the collected data to the rogue’s noncausal communicator. "Everything these ones have is within range of earth penetrators." He lowered his gaze and rested a tentative paw on Merlon's withers. "This one won't be able to keep his promise. He can't keep any of his promises." Orgon made a helpless gesture. "Sorry."

"This redoubt is also targeted, isn't it?"

"Yes. These ones can leave, if Merlon wants to, but..."

"To be trapped in a shuttle in a collapsed tunnel." Merlon snorted. "I don't think so. I would rather die on my hooves." She stepped out of the instrumented armature and pushed open the door to the command centre, leaving Orgon trailing in her wake.

===

Fusion felt blindly up at the sky, pushing and manipulating the many-lobed thing that had replaced the sun. The lasers had stopped, but the changes she'd made were harder to reverse than they had been to create, and the hazy, flame-like excrescences wavered and danced around the solar disk. Gravity was a constant presence in the back of her mind, far away and moving rapidly up from the equatorial plane. Fusion swallowed, shaking away the tears that had collected around her closed eyes. We've got all this power and it's useless! Can't stop the dogs, can't rescue our ponies. She inhaled a shaky breath, prodding again at the gas outflow from the sun. Barely understood changes took place within the complex structures she could now feel behind the patch of warmth in the sky.

We have to do something! Gravity sounded small and lost. I made the Court pay for all this. They died too fast. Too clean.

Good. We are not them. Fusion looked through Gravity's eyes, at the dense scatter of new craters over the surface of Luna. Couldn't have them raining death on us, or risk leaving behind a group of dogs who think they can still rule us. So many might rejoin their erstwhile masters. We would be fighting a civil war at the same time as we played our part in a genocide. There would not even need to be dogs left for them to carry on opposing us, if that happened.

That would turn us into monsters, hate figures for all of ponykind. Some emotions leaked back down the link, an odd sense of anticipation. Better none of the dogs survive. They don't deserve to.

There was a storm system on the horizon; at Fusion's speed it was upon her within seconds. The winds were vicious, laced with hoof-sized hailstones, but no match for her power. Despite not being affected, the weather system was orders of magnitude more violent than anything she'd experienced before. The world is falling apart... no weather teams, no power systems management, everything we run will stop. They might have recovered even from the nuked arcologies, but now the dogs’ world is over; I wonder how many of them know it?

Those in charge must do. They'll have planned for it at some level... but millions will die trapped in the deep arcology levels. Buried in the dark. A shiver came back down the link. Those that don't burn.

So many of our ponies will burn with them. Most are not protected anywhere nearly as well as the dogs. Fusion scanned the horizon again, looking for anything that suggested pony. There was nothing other than the laser-colours of dog crystal hardware, scattered in isolated and broken patches. Grav, the arcologies are going dark and with their magic gone I can't see ponies any more. I can't find them to rescue them. Everything above ground has gone. All those corrals, bright delicate structures, in the paths of nuclear explosions. Our people have no more magic. She stifled a sob.

Then protect what we have! There are thousands of ponies in the mountains. Keep them safe... I can see the storms. They will wipe the surface clean.

Fusion took a deep, shuddering breath, then another, smoother, one. There's not been natural weather on this planet for hundreds of gigaseconds; things are resetting themselves. I can... part of my special talent was always making force fields. Perhaps I can partition off part of the world and keep us safe?

Those mountains were nuked... there were dozens of strikes.

The bombs are pretty clean and there are ways to clean up the residual radioactivity... Fusion shook her head. Either way, I'll find a safe place. A bitter taste stung at the back of her throat and she swallowed. There's nothing I can do out here.

The field will have to last for a tenth gigasecond or more. Can you manage it, even with that Stone?

Maybe not with one or two... what about with more? Fusion's path curved towards the nearest patch of feeling, drawn to the closest of the Stones. There are another four out there. She gained altitude, climbing above the storm clouds.

===

Merlon stared up at the main display, a leaden weight filling her bones. The reports were patchy, supplied by defence systems partially shattered by kinetic and nuclear strikes, but quite clear despite it all. The next package of warheads, approaching the ends of their quasi-ballistic trajectories, would be coming down right on top of them. How long...? A few hundred seconds at most. She sighed, suddenly feeling very lonely. "I don't remember when I was last with one of my own kind," she said, casting a glance at Orgon, who bowed his head slightly.

"The demands of the role," he said softly. "Merlon was a vital part of the machinery of state, even if her previous masters--" He made a bitter face at the word. "--didn't realise it. This one has seen the pony's record, and all the interventions she made. This one is sorry for that, too. Orgon knew better than most the... the truth about ponykind."

"We nearly made it work," Merlon said, her throat closing up and distorting the words. "I always thought I'd at least be able to return to my home corral," she said, clearing her throat and rubbing her eyes with one wing, "before being euthanized." Not that there is anypony to return to. No foals... Sire and dam gone so long I can barely remember their scent. I've outlived everypony I ever knew.

Orgon reached out a tentative paw, as he had several times before, and laid it on her shoulder. This time she didn't step away or ignore it, but leaned against the slight pressure. "The future is with Fusion and Gravity now." He gestured to one of the screens and its slew of still images. Fresh craters on the surface of the planet; far, far more over the face of Luna. Beams of violet light lancing down from a dim and flickering sun. "This one hopes they can save something. The next generation can rebuild... you ponies are a tough lot." His ears drooped. "Perhaps they won't hunt this one's kind to extinction."

"You know the worst thing about losing my magic?" Merlon said suddenly. "Apart from being trapped two kilolengths down and about to be killed by nuclear weapons, that is." Orgon blinked, looking confused at her sudden shift in tone. Dare I? There's nothing left to lose. Merlon eyed him speculatively, bending her head to look at Orgon's paw. "I itch in places I can't reach."

Orgon blinked again, paw leaving her shoulder. He stared at his claws, blunt things filed short for easier use of computer systems. "Where?" he asked with an uncharacteristic tremble.

Oh, I could draw this out... but there's no time and I really do itch. "Shoulder, wingroots, line of my neck from just under my jaw all the way to between my forelegs." Everywhere. "Between my wings, where the feathers mix with fur." She twisted slightly, mantling her wings. "I don't want to meet my Maker all itchy."

"Uh..." Orgon said and, for a moment, Merlon thought he wouldn't do it. Then he stepped forwards, running both paws gently through the tiny feathers of her wingroots.

"We're tough, remember?" she said, then gasped as he dug his claws in. He hesitated, opening his mouth to speak. "No, don't stop! You've no idea what it was like strapped in that machinery." Merlon arched her back, pushing against his paws, and groaned. Her lips twitched and she bit at them to stop them quivering.

"Orgon could be removed from office for this..." he said, a slight smile returning to his muzzle. "There are worse ways to spend this one's last moments."

It's no good-- She shuffled sideways until Orgon stood next to her shoulder, facing the opposite direction. She bent her neck, resting her chin on his back. The quivering in her lips intensified at the touch of fabric of his uniform vest, but it wasn't quite right. Merlon groaned again, then worked her muzzle under the lower end of the vest, pressing against the slightly matted fur. Orgon didn't seem to notice, or care.

The fur wasn't the same as a pony's -- longer, a little coarser and not as densely packed -- but it was close enough. Her lips wriggled, parting the fur and pressing against the flesh beneath; Orgon's muscles tensed then relaxed. He must find this very strange. Merlon's mouth opened and her teeth parted, then she gave him a nip, just above the base of his stubby tail. Orgon flinched, but didn't pull away, and Merlon smiled, her muzzle buried in his fur. Thank you.

Warmth flooded through Merlon, and she fell into the grooming ritual, faint memories of her dam doing the same for her suddenly becoming sharp and fresh, as the outside world faded and became inconsequential.

41 - Black swan

Author's Note

A full plot summary can be found here. Do not read unless you are up to date! Spoilers!
Preread by: turol, NoeCarrier and Caliaponia.

41 - Black swan

Chaos fluttered and swirled, watching the Maker pull the dispersed fragments of its essence together. There had to be something it could do! Chaos had tried before to get in the way of the universe's Guardians, and that had not gone well, not well at all.

The avalanche of biped deaths had faded to a steady trickle of minds blinking out as their bodies ceased to function. The activity of the automata had spread as well, picking over the soon to be dead at a million locations. Chaos chose one, a cluster of minds, most likely genetically similar individuals, trapped in the rubble of their dwelling. Circulatory fluid was leaking out from broken bodies, despite the pressure from jagged rubble piled on top of them.

The automata swirled around and through them, conducting whatever method they were using to extract the Maker-fragments. It was a relatively slow process; neural networks were copied into the quantum foam and run through a complex series of careful processes and distilled down to some essential speck. The amount of time taken for each mind was an integer number of seconds, orders of magnitude longer than the abbreviated, crude routines they'd used to beat the onrushing nuclear blast wave. There were things it could do to them -- automata didn't have the protective mechanisms of the Guardians -- so it did, reaching out with the barest tendril of being to mangle the data flow.

There was a reaction, the automata seeming to turn inside out, and Chaos recoiled as a siren call propagated through the quantum foam and the sharp shapes of Guardians converged on the site. There were more than Chaos had ever seen in one place, far too many to be avoided or duped. It fled, coiling and writhing through an unlikely set of directions, until it was alone again.

Now, in the quiet spaces in the depths of the planetary mantle, it could feel other things taking place. The constant sparkle of the 'Creation Stones' and the denied volumes around them, thick with Guardians and forever out of reach, had converged on two points. The two servitors, the ones it had tampered with, had all the Stones and were in the same physical location.

Tight bunches of gravity waves rippled out from them, and an achingly-long time later others came in from other locations around the world. There was no real pattern, except-- Chaos froze, mapping the times and locations. Everything, the patterns, the timings, suddenly made sense. The servitors were opening multiple, simultaneous wormholes to remote locations, managing to control the momentum of the objects transferred, with a finesse that even it wouldn't have been able to manage.

The Stones were a key part of the universe, integrated at the lowest of levels, they had to be, the way they were protected. That meant... they were somehow part of the Maker's plan. It cursed its lack of focus, if only it had spent more time on the Stones, if only--

Chaos thought about the multiple gravitational manipulations that had ripped the minor moon apart, and about the twisting of the Flaw that turned it into a laser intense enough to skewer a world. It was painfully obvious that the Stones were exceptionally powerful, powerful enough to change fundamental properties of the universe. They could do things that Chaos could not. If it was to win, it needed the power of the Stones.

What if the servitors could be convinced to join the fight?

===

The servitors had moved away from the others -- why did organics have to take so long to do anything?! Chaos couldn't manipulate them directly, not like it could at the start of this project, but that didn't mean there wasn't a way to get the message across. It thought, turning compact loops in the higher-dimensional spaces, focusing on the problem for a whole second. There were proxies it could use, individuals the servitors trusted, or perhaps something in the electronic systems they used to communicate.

They knew it existed, or at least must suspect, from the memories it had placed in the first servitor. What did they think Chaos was? It seemed likely that they might interpret it as the Maker itself. Could it use that? The religion ran deep within the mechanisms used to coerce the servitors, so...

Chaos cut off the line of reasoning. Stupid! Obviously no being would welcome an instrument of its own entrapment. Can't get to the magically active servitors themselves, so what about their kin or higher commensals? There were hundreds of the soldier-gryphons and thousands of the neutralised servitors, but most of these could be discounted as communication proxies. It swept through the local environment once more, mind alighting on the solitary biped working a communications nexus. It had an antagonistic relationship with the flaw-linked servitor, but had known the creature the longest.

You.

It sampled the biped's memories, spawning a hundred neural copies within the quantum foam and modelling their reactions to certain revelations. Each copy split into dozens more, and on and on, forming a probabilistic response tree.

Chaos picked a set of branches with the most hopeful pathways, then wiped the copies and reached out for the original, organic, mind. This was not going to be quick, even at the glacial scale of organics.

Such a bizarre conclusion to reach. In all the vast stretches of time it had been manipulating and coercing these creatures, never had telling the truth been a viable strategy. Mostly the truth, anyway.

===

Korn's paws danced over the input fields of the logistics console, following the whispered orders from the gryphon, Olvir. His back hurt from the poorly adjusted couch, but the job was nearly done. The best part of five thousand ponies had been dispersed to the surrounding web of valleys and glacial meadows, and medical support and security detachments shared out where needed. Only another... five hundred and seventy two to go. That's a hundred and fifty per cargo transport, four transports...

Transport Alpha was signalling low charge on its primary superconductor accumulators, so he directed it to settle next to the stack of boron-proton reactor pods while shifting the gunship squadron currently using the facility further away. Nearly done. He smiled slightly, nodding to the gryphon. Despite being forced into the role, helping this many beings, even if they were not his kind, had its own kind of satisfaction.

Vanca was only half right to describe the Maker as a machine.

His paws froze. Where did that come from? He shook his head and yawned. Too tired and not enough food. And where is the Academician, anyway? He eyed the pile of gryphon ration packs, reaching out with one paw to shake out a stick of some preserved 'meat', although from which species was impossible to tell. Korn squinted at the label, written in black on an olive drab background, brow furrowing at the low level of animal protein it claimed, then shrugged and tore open the wrapper and took a bite.

What is left in the universe, the automata that grant the power you call magic, is a machine, but that is not the Maker.

He bit down on the chewy bar, worrying at it and trying to ignore the intrusive thoughts. This one must be going mad from lack of sleep. The ration had an unexpectedly intense flavour and was actually nice, so good that all other thoughts left his head.

No, you are not mad, but you are in grave danger.

Korn breathed in sharply, then coughed as he inhaled some of the ration bar, spraying the rest across the console. He threw the thing away, gripping the edge of the desk with both paws. At his side, Olvir stood and said something, but he couldn't hear it past the roaring in his ears. "No," he muttered, "schizophrenia has a primarily genetic basis; a Person doesn't just develop it."

Correct. Korn also lacks any of the other symptoms.

"Stop it--" he shouted, heart thundering, paws coming up to cover his ears. Olvir backed away, turning his head to mutter something into his command collar. Something reached in and dropped his arms to his sides, making his features relax and controlling his frantic breathing and heartbeat.

Panic is not a useful survival trait.

Korn's mouth opened. "Sorry, this one has been under a lot of stress," his body said to the gryphon in a flat, calm monotone.

"Right," Olvir said, eyeing him suspiciously. "I think you need to take a break."

The laugh bubbled up, dying before it became more than a thought. What is happening to this one?! There should have been panic, but there wasn't, just like a medical servitor had taken a firm thaumic grip on his fight-flight-freeze response.

No words this time, just an image: gloved paws holding a petri dish covered with bacterial colonies. The same paws picked up a bottle of something toxic, pouring it over the dish. Your world is an experiment, a construct. The evidence has been obvious to your kind for many seasonal cycles, yet you do nothing and do not believe. Think before you answer.

It must be magic, one of the ponies is getting inside this one's head. It even sounds like a pony! The thought spun and dissolved, vanished before it could even take hold. Korn felt sick. No, everypony has been struck down by that weapon, they are as helpless as newborn foals. Some of the panic started to return, and he looked out of the open hatch and over the herds he'd been shepherding from valley to pasture. They can't even fly.

There was silence in his head, then Olvir tapped him on the shoulder with one paw-length talon. "It is telling the truth," he said, nodding, "there is a worse threat than this physical conflict." With a synchronicity that made the fur along his spine stand up, the other gryphons in the compartment all turned their heads, eyes fixing on him like the laying of turreted guns, and nodded.

What is this voice?

I am-- There was a cascade of images, too fast to really follow, but all perfectly clear despite that. A shifting ball of gas pierced by networks of lightning. An insane, fractal pattern that extended along directions orthogonal to the normal, physical three. Equations, half recognised by their derivations, detailing twists in space-time and complex, mobile vacuum topologies. Korn's confusion mounted, and the visions were replaced by a sense of annoyance. The feeling of claws running through his mind, pulling up concepts and disparate memories. --a free-roving magical entity. I have inhabited the spaces between the atoms since before the People existed.

Why does this being speak now? What should this one even be called?

Many millions of your kind have died in this war. A flicker-flash show of memories, not his own, settled in Korn's head: endless rooms and corridors filled with motionless People, not dead but somehow vacant. This revealed a hidden truth, that the Maker had placed a part of itself into each of you. Every death kills a part of the Maker. There was a mechanism placed in the workings of the universe, an emergency system designed to restore the Maker in event of a disaster.

But the Maker is good, these ones are the chosen people! How can this be a bad--

The image of gloved hands came back, along with the sudden smell of disinfectant. It has a mind far vaster than you can imagine. It will not care for you, any more than you care for the fate of a single cell in your body. Its experiment has failed and it will wipe the slate clean. An armourcrete-solid conviction lay behind the thoughts, settling on Korn like the weight of the world.

Korn is only one Person, what could he possibly--?

A sense of immense impatience flooded him, and the internal voice became angry and strident. You are too slow. I cannot approach the Stones. You will give Fusion and Gravity a message. You will be the message. More images and concepts followed, incomprehensible things, filling his mind with crystal and leaving a powerful compulsion to find the two ponies.

Under the onslaught the dull colours, the inside of the command carrier became bright and discordant, blaring with the sounds of insectile chittering and smelling intensely blue and purple. The ceiling panels warped and shifted, crawling over one another as his vision swam and faded, pulsing in time with his heart. There was too much coming in, too much being forced into the narrow confines of his skull, filling it to bursting and beyond.

Tentacles lined with toothed sucker-mouths wove through Korn's mind, touching and probing, pulling at the deep recesses of his lizard brain and sparking alternate feelings of dread and numinous joy. No, wait, this one will-- The words wouldn't come, trapped behind a jaw held shut by grindingly tight muscles. The feeling of violation increased, fibres growing from the tentacles like thorny branches, impaling and piercing all parts of his being.

A strange sense of duality, like he was flying above a strip of road that extended from an unknowable future to the vanishing-point of his personal deep past, simultaneously limited to the tortured now and able to perceive the whole sweep at once. It was lined with dioramas, full-size models of people, places and times, packed in as densely as legs on a millipede and just as mobile. All of them moved, a trillion media streams showing some aspect of his life.

They were not evenly sized; some towered over the rest, events that held great meaning. Packed between them were countless minutiae of daily life, like ants within the vertiginous spaces of an arcology core. Korn's attention focused on the largest, a sprawling rendition of the inside of an aircar, huge like a giant forest tree, as seen from a rear seat.

--an airtruck plummeting out of its assigned tunnel lane, cutting across his parent's aircar's path in a stream of smoke and flame. A started yell from his mother, hidden behind the smash and screech of tearing metal. The bangs from the seat restraint pretensioners firing and pulling him back into the infant seat. Biting pain at shoulders and waist, paws flailing and striking--

The memory dissolved into splinters and flew apart, the visual details fading first, then sounds and scents. The final, basic structure of the scene collapsed inwards, subsumed by a growing edifice of fractal crystal, all soaring buttresses and spindly towers. The replacement had such weight that it held his attention, and he picked at it like a fresh scar until he was dragged onwards, despite his efforts to resist.

"--the Student wrote this dissertation, surely he has considered this question already?" The voice was acerbic, rich with contempt. Korn stood in the office, one paw half raised, a claw extended to draw on the interactive display. His whiskers drooped, shame raising tears in his eyes. "Eigenfunctions were covered in the first dozen megaseconds of the Student's course, surely he has not forgotten?" The disapproving silence deepened, matching the singing emptiness where basic quantum thaumophysics should have been--

Gone in a flash, replaced with another foreign structure that glimmered and glowed, throwing out fine, hooked threads to join with the original. They thickened, threads turning to cables, then soaring sky-bridges covered with dense, shining nodes. The pony will know what this is, the pony must help Korn! He reached out, straining, muscles of his neck bulging with the effort, but all that came out was a mournful croak. His liaison, the gryphon Olvir, stared back, looking confused, his beak hanging open.

--curled in the dim sleeping nook with Ithra, post-coital drowsiness making his movements languid as he stroked at the soft fur of her belly and breasts, his muzzle resting in the cleft between her head and shoulder. She moved, snuggling closer in the warm darkness--

Burned in a flash, an Ithra-shaped hole appearing all through his mind. Korn cried out in wordless distress, knowing he'd lost something important but having no idea what it was. Crystal sprouted in a dozen, in a hundred, in a thousand places. Gravity, please-- More destruction, the wholesale demolition of entire districts of memory, then a roaring, levitation-train rush that blew him along the road of recollection, shattering everything in its wake.

A rising wail filled Korn, forever trapped, as whatever was left of him drowned under the flood of alien information.

===

Something pinged, a sound so unexpected and artificial that for the moment she couldn't place it. There was another noise, the quiet whisper-whine of a mosquito, coming from somewhere behind her left ear. Gravity reached up and pulled away her communicator, already partially dislodged, and stared at it. "Forgot I even had the thing," she muttered. "No use for it now." She made to throw it away to join the countless other bits of technological detritus that spun around the world, then paused. Why is it even working?

The voice became insistent, repeating the same indistinct phrase over and over, and she hooked the device back in its proper position. "--avity, can you hear me? This is Ellisif, I need to--"

"What do you want?" she whispered harshly. "And how did you get to me, anyway?" Are there some orbital assets I've not found? She closed her eyes, reaching inwards and started to hunt for any likely bit of hardware.

"Working thaumic sensors; you're the brightest thing in the sky. I've got, ah... " Ellisif's voice trailed off, and Gravity could picture the gryphoness staring speculatively at something. "That pet dog of yours appears to have gone mad." In the background, only barely audible, she could hear the sounds of a struggle and raised voices.

"Korn? What do you mean, 'mad'?" Gravity said quietly into the comms, forgetting about her search.

"He's raving about how he has to talk to you two, and that the Maker is going to kill us all. Says he's got a voice in his head."

"What do you expect me to do about it? Don't you have a battlefield medic who can see him?" Gravity reached out, feelling for Fusion's mind. Her sister was flying slowly, not even breaking the sound barrier, in some random direction, thinking slow, heavy thoughts. She reached out, scratching at the barrier until Fusion let her in.

"We don't have much in the way of combat psychologists! PTSD isn't something we suffer from." There was more shouting, one voice filled with a pleading tone. "All right!" Ellisif snarled, obviously not talking to her. "He says: 'Tell Fusion this one knows how she got the magic to escape from the accelerator the first time. Tell her he knows about the extra memories' "

What is it? Fusion thought, starting to circle the updraughts above some nameless crater. Gravity widened the connection, giving Fusion access to her senses. Is that Ellisif?

Gravity opened her eyes and stared down at where Fusion was, thousands of kilolengths away, near the limb of the world, and suddenly felt cold. "Hold on, Ellisif." She muted the communicator and frowned. Fusion, remember when you said you had memories that were not yours? Information that came from nowhere?

Right at the start. Something told me how to improve my magic and showed me the teleport spell. We’ve shared those memories, I'm not hiding anything from you. There was the ghost-feeling of Fusion's ears folding back, leaking through the sharing.

Didn't say you were. Gravity fanned her wings, then closed them again. Korn is hearing voices, and they are telling him that the Maker wants us dead.

There was something else, something I felt when connecting with the Stone for the first time. Something that seemed out of place...

Show me later. Come back to Ellisif... I think this might be important. Gravity changed her trajectory, matching vector with her destination. Somewhere down there was a collection of aircraft in the bottom of a valley... "There's always something," she said, sighing deeply, then pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--landing with a thump next to the command aircraft. Korn, fighting against the grip of a pair of gryphons, immediately stopped struggling. "The pony must listen, the Maker is rebuilding itself, stealing back the fragments it left in the People's minds and--"

There was more, but Gravity ignored the babble, feeling her sharing with Fusion reconnect then drop out as the mare teleported. "Shut up." Violet magic encased Korn's head in a vice, forcing his mouth shut. Hs eyes bulged and his throat worked, still trying to talk. Gravity closed her eyes, her horn glow brightening slightly.

The Stone, whatever it was, made this as easy as all the other magics she'd used recently. Korn's mind was an unnatural mass of crystal, an ordered lattice of dense information that encased and penetrated the more normal fuzzy cloud of his original intellect. This was as expected, twisted and strained by the stress of his recent experiences, but caged by the crystal and constrained somehow.

Needles of the alien mentality were spread deep within the fundamental functions of Korn's mind, extending like frozen lightning through the deep knots of personality and memory. Whatever it was had integrated itself very closely, fungal threads of jagged glass lacing through Korn's gigasecond or so of life experience. How much of you is even left? She traced the pathways, trying to determine where Korn ended and the crystal started.

There were distortions in the regular lattice of the crystal, patches of synthetic memory that were slightly wrong, or perhaps just not from a sensorium bounded by three normal dimensions. Gravity reached inwards, then hesitated. Something was reacting to her presence, a coiling motion within the rigid crystal. What is this? There was a faint sonic boom and she felt a rush of air across her back and heard the quiet, distant flutter of wings. There was a sense of another at the borders of her mind, a familiar, comfortable presence made to feel immense by the five Stones bolstering its power--

What is it, Grav? Fusion's mental tone sounded confused and Gravity widened the connection, opening her sister to deeper layers of her understanding. What has been done to him?

I'm not sure how much of 'him' there is left. See here and here-- She gestured, highlighting various sections of memory. Where there should have been continuity, or at least the mind's illusion of continuity, made up from imagination and memory-of-memory, were the alien experiences. There was more to them than the simple collection of sensory data and emotional overtones of a pony, dog or gryphon. It was almost like--

It's another mind! Fusion sounded astonished. Who has the power to do such a thing? How would you even start?

I suppose you could argue a mind is the sum of its experiences, shaped and moulded by the passage of time and continuous selective editing, Gravity thought.

You can't just shove memories into a box and expect them to live!

No, but if you change enough of a mind's memories, you change the person with it. Perhaps enough that they are now someone else. She studied the shapes of the crystal; there was nothing remotely normal or familiar about it. Or something.

Could it be a trap?

I... I don't think so. I think it's just a way to hold this semblance of a mind together for... Gravity paused, thoughts whirling. It's for us, isn't it?

If this is the thing that gave me our new magic and manipulated you back in the Institute, why isn't it talking directly? Fusion was fully engaged with Gravity's senses, with only a flicker of her own body bleeding through the sharing link. Something must have changed. The Stones?

Gravity opened one eye, watching the points of light orbit Fusion's head. Must be. You're the expert in this. Now what?

All this could be manufactured for our benefit... do you think you can get anything by sampling the memories directly, without the controlling intellect being able to adapt to us?

Gravity gathered her power, surrounding the crystal-organic hybrid with a shell of her own mind. I need you to watch me, just in case it... Gravity felt Fusion ready her own magic, her thoughts Dopplering up the registers to a wasp-like buzz. Complex energies, horribly powerful, swirled around the three of them, focussed on Korn.

Gravity nodded. Good. Don't hesitate to turn him to plasma. Right, let's see what happens if I...

The crystal expanded around her, a confused mass of sensations that had no direct correlation to a pony's vision, smell or hearing. She fiddled with the memory, filtering and translating the strangeness to something more understandable. A herd of brains, billion and billions of them, stacked and thinking in parallel tracks. Patterns of flow in a substrate that felt like a forest. Swarms of jellyfish-shapes, packed and swarming like a living jelly, with sharp-edged shark-things that smelled of danger swimming through the gel.

Gravity refined her translation models, worrying that everything she did might remove whatever meaning there was in the mess. Suddenly, it was there, a vast sweep of history, laid out from the time the dogs were living in small burrows under wide grasslands and hunting creatures that looked a little like ponies, all the way to the present day. This was in broad strokes only, but there were plenty of details.

It had watched Fusion from the first time in the Institute. It had pushed her into rescuing Fusion from the dissection suite, but after that it only watched. Gravity followed the many strands of history through the last few megaseconds, the things she'd directly experienced and the things she'd shared or been told about, and on to things that could never be known on this side of the world.

She watched and understood the firing of the Strix magic and saw the death of Baur Hive's Monarch, and many, many more things. How everything they did just pushed deeper and deeper towards catastrophe, until the nuking of arcologies seemed to be a perfectly logical option. The unexpected responses of the jelly-like automata and the effects on the dogs. The continuous -- death? mind-draining? -- of dogs by their thousands.

The sensation of something stirring under the skin of the world.

Gravity shivered, all of her fur standing on end. Did you see that?

Fusion babbled something back, then her thoughts slowed. Yes... I've seen something like that before, back when I found that first Stone. The shell of her defensive magic collapsed and she relaxed a little. "So some of what this thing has shown matches what we know," she muttered, staring at Korn, still held immobile in Gravity's telekinetic grip.

Gravity opened her own eyes. "Some of it is certainly true, and you saw that mind-draining magic operating, didn't you?"

"Every second we delay kills more dogs, most of them innocent, we should--" Fusion's voice was high and strained.

"Do what?" Gravity snorted, then laughed. "It looks like the universe itself wants the dogs dead. Who are we to stop it?"

Fusion flinched, her ears folding back. "They have paid enough."

The laugh turned harsh. "Have they?" she hissed. "I don't care what happens to the dogs."

"And what if we're next? Or it's the gryphons? Or perhaps everything will go away. If we believe the Maker built this universe, perhaps it can unmake it. What do we do when chemistry stops working or the fundamental constants change so protons decay, or--" Fusion was shouting now, pawing at the ground in agitation.

"Stop!" Gravity held up a wing, shaking her head. Did you get more from this than me?

Fusion stood there, nostrils flaring and sides heaving, then stepped forwards and wrapped her wings around Gravity. "I was in that Church when the Maker started to take the dogs. It didn't look like they went to paradise, they looked like drooling idiots." I think we have to do something to stop this.

Gravity shrugged off Fusion's embrace, stepping back to stare at her. You really do, don't you? The other mare, trembling, her sides damp with sweat, nodded. "Okay, but if we're going to try and kill the creator of all things, we should get some distance from our friends."

"Going to meet our Maker, huh?" Fusion asked with a tentative smile. She passed two of her five Stones to Gravity.

"Oh, yes." Gravity narrowed her eyes, watching the objects change from lit crystal globes to mottled, opaque balls. "I have a complaint to make."

42 - Ground State

Author's Note

A full plot summary can be found here. Do not read unless you are up to date! Spoilers!
Preread by: turol, NoeCarrier and Caliaponia.
Special credit to Cedric Bale and Shachza for thinking of something wonderful!

42 - Ground State

They left Ellisif to continue the dispersal of the rescued ponies. She'd shown them a map, with scores of valleys for herds of dozens to hundreds, but the grazing wouldn't be enough to get through the winter.

They took Korn and a set of communications equipment and teleported to a forested hilltop upwind of a plain cratered by a spray of re-entered debris ring objects. The wind was high and swirling, under a pitch-black sky, riven with silent lightning. No rain fell, but the scent of moisture was in the air. The clouds were towering things, pregnant with tornados and monstrous ice-anvils, moving with unnatural speed.

"Our whole world is going to be like this," Fusion muttered, "the atmosphere is going crazy." A flash of magic dug a pit in the crown of the hill and lined it with fused rock; a defence against the weather. Fusion placed Korn in the hole, four lengths below the surface. He stared up at her.

"Time is of the essence," he said. "The Maker approaches."

Fusion shivered at the urgency in his voice. It sounded like Korn, but there was a complete lack of any other emotion and he showed no signs of shock or stress. That is definitely not Korn any more. "What do we call you? You are not Korn."

"I am--" The dog's muzzle twitched, the spasm turning into a wave of seizure that flowed down his body. "--Discord."

"Discord, right." Fusion's ears folded back. What kind of a name is that? "We will pull back to let your operator contact you," Fusion said, backing away and waving to Gravity--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--another hilltop, a little closer to the crater field. The sharing opened and Fusion felt the leakage of excitement through the link, overlain by the ghost-sensation of Gravity's body and her fatigue. This Discord thing is fast, operating at the speeds of nuclear reactions, we need to match it. Let me show you--

The clouds slowed their frantic whirl, to the point where even lightning seemed to crawl across the sky. --ha! when did you figure that out? Gravity thought. Nice trick.

It started to happen when I used a lot of magic... I think the Stones are making it easy. Speaking of...

Fusion focussed her mind inwards, towards the Stones, sinking back to that vastly complex representation of the world and its towering ersatz forests.

I didn't have time to really look at this, when you gave me the first Stone, Gravity sent. So much detail-- Her mental tone sounded distant, like she was staring out at the horizon. --this is a representation of the world, isn't it? All the magic and life.

I think so... it matches the real world at some level.

The structures had shifted from the first time Fusion had seen them. There was a franticness to the motion at all levels, from the smallest speck of moss-analogue to the largest mountain-sized masses. Mist, or something like it, was flowing into the sky, past the floating island-creatures and out into the quiet spaces beyond. This motion was everywhere, but especially from the dense concentrations of material near places she'd identified as the Hives.

Closer than this were highly mobile fish-amoeba-shark shapes, huge numbers of them, swarming like they were swimming along a tropical reef. They didn't obscure Fusion's view of everything else, but were some eye-twisting combination of transparent and light-bending.

I've seen that movement before, Fusion sent, but this is far more active. What is--? The ball of black lightning was also back, hovering at the edges of her awareness, circling endlessly. It didn't approach closely, keeping away from the coloured shapes that swirled around them both. That must be 'Discord'. How is it going to talk to us? There was a tickle on the side of her head, coming from the dead weight of the comms rig. It prodded at her energy sensitivity, and she turned a fraction of her attention towards it.

Disrupt the collection process. The voice came through, a strange and distorted version of Korn, layered atop the electronic signature of the headset. The Maker is too diffuse at this stage of its reconstruction to defend itself.

Fusion shivered and exchanged a glance with Gravity. How? And why can't you do it? You know all this... this.

I do not have a way to achieve this goal without inviting destruction by the-- There was no final word, just a memory-flash of a shark-thing, like the bright shapes that flowed around them, all edges and remorseless intent. I cannot use the Stones; the universe does not allow it.

The Stones were making the sharing stronger, more complete than ever before, and Fusion felt her thoughts start to interleave with Gravity's. The vague sensations of her own body faded and blurred, a second set of wings and legs seeming to sprout from her barrel. The reminder of their duality was at odds with the shared thoughts and feelings, and Fusion shuffled slightly, or at least sent the instructions to her glacial physical body, feeling the limbs start to overlap and merge.

===

The more they looked, the more obvious the motion became. Fusion and Gravity's awareness swept through the visualised space, sampling the activity of the quantum foam machinery. There were areas of concentrated flow, around where the arcologies would have been in the real world, and they focused their attention there.

'Disrupt the collection process', Gravity thought. Break stuff... well, we've had practice at that.

This underlies the world, Grav, Fusion said, then sighed. What if I-- She reached out with her power, pulling Gravity along with her. The flowing mist parted, evaporating like dew under the noon sun. The glow spread, a silver-gold radiance, and in its wake the fractal plants and landscape changed colour, losing some of their vibrancy and becoming still.

That did something... I guess? Gravity thought.

Light and colour boiled at the edges of the affected volume, contracting inwards. Flying things, from tiny specks of luminescence to floating, tentacled islands, were converging on the zone, flowing in to fix whatever they had done. The mist was already starting to climb back into the sky.

Back in the real world, Fusion felt her lungs reach the end of a tremendously long exhalation and slowly, ever so slowly, start to inhale. Not enough. Little flickers of sensation came through the link to the other entity, congealing into spell patterns different to the one she'd tried. Grav, it needs to be both of us -- all the Stones together.

In that case... The heat from Fusion and the mass from Gravity meshed, the power from the Stones interlocking like cogs in some fine machine. The outer radiance returned, flashing through concentric tree-rings of rainbow colour to a writhing core of violet darkness. It left behind scrambled space, a knife scar full of curdled and broken things. A ripple spread from the slash, making the floating coloured shapes blink out in little puffs of haze.

That's it!

~~
The servitors had finally figured it out. Chaos kept its processing centres tightly clustered and away from the area being affected. Both had successfully transitioned their minds into the quantum foam, running at processing rates far, far in excess of their biological forms. The Stones, points of blinding power among the soft shapes of the automata, were far more active than Chaos had seen for a very long time, their crude disruption effects pulling apart the automata within the target zone.

The collection efforts halted immediately, stalled as signal endpoints were unceremoniously destroyed or left leaking corrupted information from crippled systems. The Guardians swarmed through the area, cauterising the damage, but for the first time in Chaos' memory, they were overwhelmed.
~~

The riotous jungle of activity stilled in the wake of that ripple, the plant and fungal forms fading and crumbling in a wide swath. The slime mould, highly mobile and fillagreed tendrils from the floating masses recoiled, but too late. Rot flowed up the tentacles, a high-speed leprosy turning something undoubtedly alive into corruption.

That seems... Gravity felt a moment of disquiet, watching the destruction, echoed by Fusion. The ripple of destruction finally lost momentum, its effects lessening and fading into the ever-changing activity of this crowded place. Edged and spined shapes, whose every line spoke of deadly intent, flooded the area and started to shred the half-corrupted objects.

Some kind of defence system? Fusion reached back to the real world, sparing a fraction of her power to conjure a bubble of force around their bodies. They don't seem to be affected.

Do you think that will even work? Gravity redirected Fusion's attention at the shredders. They don't seem to care about us, just the damage we are doing. Where the things passed all of the damage was smoothed away, leaving a wake of simple, geometric forms. The basic shapes were fractal down to the smallest level she could perceive, and slowly started to regain their complexity, like they were a freshly tilled field filled with seeds.

~~
Now do more! All of them! Chaos turned and spun in the compact higher dimensions, trying to perceive in all directions at once. Thoughts near paralysed with anticipation, it picked out the other targets, zones of high automata/biped interaction and waited as the servitors seemed to consider the damage their first strike had done.
~~

It's not permanent, that's something.

No, but it has stopped the mist from flowing!

Fusion signalled her assent. We should move back, get a wide view if we are going to do this.

In response, Gravity tugged at their shared locus, pulling away and letting the landscape shrink away. The flow of the mist was more apparent from this vantage point, as was the ever-thickening knot of influence it flowed towards, somewhere out beyond the sun. This presence moved, sluggishly but with increasing vigour, as if trying to break through a membrane. Flashes of recognisable shapes popped in and out of vision, from coils to sharp edges to chaotic, near-random bubbles of cloud.

Spurred by this activity, the sisters dragged their power across the magical representation of the world, leaving great, ragged cuts.

The damage was far worse than their first tentative slice. Decay spread from the scratches, only slowly damped down by the swift shark-things. Whole mountain ranges of fractal complexity withered and collapsed in upon themselves, like trees consumed by a flood or conflagration. Here and there, even the shredders themselves were blinking out of existence, their sharp-edged cathedral structures dissolving like spun sugar in water.

Repairs, or cauterisation, or whatever was being done, continued, but took on the feeling of triage after a mass-casualty incident. Only the worst areas were being reformatted; out on the borders were whole zones of mutated forms that dispersed and spread, disappearing into riotous structures around them. What's happening in the real world, do you think? Gravity focussed her attention on these oddities, momentarily ignoring everything else.

Randomised, self-sustaining magic, loose in the world, Fusion thought, I saw something similar, at Tartarus. This is so much bigger. I dread to think what we are doing, what weirdness we are birthing.

We'll deal with that later, if it's a problem.

The bulk flow of mist had faltered and, off in the distance, the immense presence slowed its pulsing, shifting form.

===

Ellisif clicked her beak, staring at the space where Fusion and Gravity had been with narrowed eyes. They'd made no effort to explain or include her in the interrogation, and had just teleported away. "Nice to be part of the team," she muttered. "I really don't know what's going on any more. More magical weirdness, I bet."

"That thing got inside my head, too," Olvir said, smoothing down his white crest feathers with one talon. His beak worked, as if he was trying dislodge a bit of stuck gristle. "It made me talk to Korn to... convince him?"

"And then promptly overwrote him anyway." That speaks of improvisation. This does not sound good. "Do you still feel like you?" And would you know? Perhaps he would... Korn was nothing like his old self.

"I think so?"

There was no certainty in Olvir's tone and Ellisif sighed, then drummed her talons against the metal ramp to the command aircraft. "We're nearly done, but send a signal to all aircraft that they are to fly on ducted fan only, no levitation drives. Assume we will be attacked by Arclight without warning." She flicked her wings, a sudden uncertainty making her stomach clench. "...and no winged flight. We may not be able to trust magic for a while."

Ellisif looked up at the night sky, taking a few steps to get outside of the command carrier's external flood lights. She had no owl in her genome and her night vision was not good, but the continuing tracery of meteors laced the darkness with random-coloured tracks.

There was a flutter of sensation deep within the long bones of her wings, expanding to a sense of terrible heaviness that made her spine sag. Dancing waves of colour expanded across the sky, bright enough to cast shadows and drawing gasps and whinnies from the ponies remaining in the valley.

Behind her the thaumic attack alarms blared. Ellisif stood and stared up at the colours, muscles tensed uselessly, and waited.

===

Have we killed it? Gravity thought, hesitant again. What have we done... we didn't even try to communicate.

No. Fusion's thought was barely above the background noise from her body. But what were we supposed to do? The risk--

All we have has come from this mysterious voice!

~~
They had actually done it, stalled the Maker before it could even approach awareness. Chaos pressed against the brane walls, deep in the lowest levels of spacetime, feeling the wider universe behind them. The vacuum energy states were lower out there, enough that any attempt at tunnelling through would trigger a catalytic change on this side of the wall.

The more stable vacuum would then open to the outside, forming a traversable wormhole. It gathered what it would need: a hoard of automata that would start to spread through this new, clean spacetime. Chaos would follow them out.
~~

Not quite all. Fusion sounded a little hurt, accompanied by the imagined feeling of ears folding back. I told you what I saw. There's definitely something going on that can't be explained.

Sorry. Gravity gave the mental equivalent of a sigh. Sorry. Yes, you are right.

No, you have a point. This thing has tried to manipulate us right from the start. Perhaps its motives coincide with our own, but perhaps we are just... useful idiots.

The feeling of a smile flashed through the sharing. Good, just making sure you are watching, because I certainly will be.

There was something else dropping into their shared consciousness through the suborned radio. Slowly a pattern formed, another magical blueprint similar to the one they'd used. Discord's cold words, sharp like broken glass, came with it. Now the Maker has been weakened it can be permanently disabled. Direct this thaumic form at the assembly point. Do not delay; the disruption you have instigated will last less than one full rotation of the world.

The sharing between Gravity and Fusion deepened, and they held the new pattern in their combined mind's eye. They moved their attention locus to the now sluggish presence and pushed power into the pattern--

Space convulsed, the zone around the presence seeming to flutter like the surface of a pond with a stone thrown in the centre. The ripples spread and deepened, each pulse turning another part of the world back to simple flatness. The core of the oscillation abruptly fell away, dropping as if into a bottomless pit and dragging the world with it.

~~
Joy!

The expanding wavefront of vacuum collapse was self-sustaining and propagating outward at the speed of light. The servitors had realised something had gone wrong, fed information through the automata's chained wormholes, but this would do them no good.

Chaos turned its attention to its own preparations, pushing reluctant automata through the boundary and into the roiling space beyond. Most immediately perished, disintegrated by the energy gradient, but a few did not, managing to adapt to the new conditions. They did what they were supposed to when isolated: made more of themselves and formatted the space they passed through, making it suitable for Chaos.
~~

Sparkling incandescence ringed the core of a rapidly expanding sphere that occupied where the presence once was. Within was complete darkness, utterly alien compared to the bustle of activity from the rest of the environment. Gravity reached out, feeling for something, anything, within the zone, but she was repelled, magic sliding off the impenetrable boundary. What is it? What did it get us to do!?

Fusion was attempting the same thing, but to her the sphere wasn't black. It was a blinding, coruscating light like a billion lightning flashes at once. Wild ideas flickered across her mind, memories from long kiloseconds in the Institute listening to the other Academicians argue with Vanca. The universe itself is collapsing, behind the horizon there is no magic, maybe not even atoms! More thoughts, held closer but still impinging on the sharing. Did it implant my original fear?

I don't care! Stop it! Gravity reached out with her power, rapidly modifying the spell pattern, hunting for some change within the near-infinite volume of possible patterns that would have an effect. Fusion joined her, their minds dropping into synchronisation, working in parallel on the problem.

There was a solution, something that slowed the onrushing tsunami of change, but the area of effect was too small. They worked on it, expanding the effect and struggling to outpace the rapid expansion. Now or never! Fusion sent, locking down the pattern.

They both pushed at the Stones with all their panicked strength, spurs applied to the flanks of the universe, and the Stones responded. Out in the real world the surviving moon and much of the debris ring abruptly slowed in their paths, orbits folding inwards like some monstrous noose. At the same time, felt by the wormhole-mediated senses of the two ponies but still forty-five seconds away by laggard light, the sun went out, all its power directed in towards the Stones.

~~
Something horrible was happening. Vibrations ran through spacetime, disturbing things that made Chaos want to flee. Automata were converging on the expanding barrier from all sides, fat and full to bursting with energy, and throwing themselves at the interface. Not one of these automata were surviving the transition, so what--?

--no! They were undergoing some strange transform at the point of impact, something crafted to boost the lower vacuum state back to its original level. They can't! Chaos reached out trying to disrupt the process, but the automata were accompanied by Guardians. The closest opened its maw, sparkling with the light of uncreation, calling on others of its kind to follow.

Suddenly, Chaos realised the danger. In this compact form it had attracted attention; no longer was its decoy the sole target.
~~

Shockwaves, or something that felt like them, converged on the globe, at once an absolute black and a blinding white through their shared senses, stalling the expansion and abruptly reversing it. The power poured on, not letting up until the globe shrank to a dot and blinked out. In its wake was a bland flatness, the edges populated by stunned and listless forms.

Not finished yet, Gravity though grimly. Where is that Discord thing? You can't tell me that wasn't deliberate.

It has fomented trouble for us and it's been around for a very long time... how much has it done to the dogs? Fusion sent, the tide of her anger starting to rise above the fear and panic. Discord! A name like that -- it must be toying with us. Her attention focussed on the flickering ball of black lightning, still avoiding the shredder-things. It seemed too... obvious, and she started to look elsewhere.

We may never know, Gravity thought. I think we should do something about it. She started to draw on her power, the same weapons they'd used against the rising 'mist'.

Wait. There was something, more diffuse than the black lightning but with the same taste, spread through a larger volume of space. It had been undetectable before against the riot of activity, but it seemed to be investigating the damaged area. Against the flatness, it stood out. Can you feel that?

Yessss... A long, drawn-out, sibilant thought, as if said through lips pulled back from sharp teeth. So the other thing is what, a decoy? Something for us to shoot at? What is it doing?

I don't know, but we must have hurt its plan.

Good! Let's hurt it in other ways. Gravity's thoughts turned ugly, pulling the threads of her power into tenuous web that started to spread across a vast swath of space.

~~
So close! Dodging another pair of aggressive Guardians, Chaos tried not to think about what it had nearly achieved. There would be time to try again, something more subtle so the servitors wouldn't suspect. Or perhaps it would just have to wait until the Stones were passed back to the bipeds. Those it could more easily manipulate.

The Guardians were not that much more persistent than normal, but there were so many of them, called in from all parts of the universe by the massive damage to the automata. Its normal sanctuary, the thin, dark outer parts of the universe were out of easy reach, so it fled inwards, following the automata as they started to infiltrate the freshly built spacetime.
~~

It's in there, look at it! Fusion damped her thoughts down to a whisper, afraid the thing might have some way to tap into her mind.

What are you afraid of? If it could get to us directly, it would. It's having to use the communicator to talk to us. Gravity's anger built. I want it gone!

Me too, but I want to do it right. If it escapes we may not find it again. There's something it's afraid of, something that keeps it away from us. She focused on the other patch of black lightning, the easily visible one. That is being followed by those shredders... it's like they are hunting it.

It has enemies. Also good. Don't care. Gravity fed more power into her distributed web of magic, pushing it further out. Help me!

Fusion lent her own strength, making the web-work shine and glimmer with rainbows. The thing in the shrinking bubble of flattened space reacted, collapsing from a near-invisible film to a crackling amoeba of dark radiance, prickling with brush discharges. It knows.

Gravity and Fusion pushed, their magic lancing out like a kick. The entity recoiled, but was snagged within a bubble of rainbow colour, bounded and bound by cables of white-gold and near-ultraviolet. It inspected the edges of the prison like living smoke, a writhing snake that stretched and bulged in unexpected directions.

~~
The barrier was unlike anything Chaos had experienced. It wasn't a complete block, it still had a connection to its decoy, but the course through the manifold was tortuous and it was taking forever. It worked on the path, trying to widen it. There had to be a way out! It felt at the barrier again, feeling at the multi-layer structure. The power was familiar, and Chaos felt a sudden rage. The servitors it had created dared to attack it!

The automata were passing through without impediment, without even noticing that the barrier was there, but Chaos couldn't follow them. Its processes were stripped away, reflected back along orthogonal directions, bouncing it back to the centre of the bubble. It sat there, thoughts accelerated by being in such a compact configuration, watching the servitors, distant points of extreme radiance. Guardians will follow the automata, and if automata can penetrate the barrier...

Something approached, all edges and spines, glittering with the light of annihilation. It was leaky and sluggish, unlike most of the Guardians. Chaos recoiled, bouncing off the barrier again. The one it had called Scar, always reluctant to chase the decoy, had been attracted by its condensed form... that must be it. It tried to expand, to dilute its presence and hide, but the bubble was too small.

Chaos thrashed, beating against the barrier, making it bulge but not break. Too strong! There must be a way. The Guardian was close, far too close, there wasn't enough time--
~~

Fusion felt a sudden spike of pain as the barrier twitched under the impact of Discord's struggles. There was a moment of disconnection from the triplet of Stones, but so brief that the barrier did little more than expand slightly. We have to end this! I cannot hold it forever.

Well, I can't shrink the trap any further, Gravity snapped, struggling with her own connection and modifying the magic on the fly. I don't know how this works any more than you do!

Every effort they put in to collapsing the barrier to zero dimensions was repulsed by a sudden resistance, like trying to crush a rock beneath a hoof. Now what? Fusion thought. Wait, look there-- She indicated a damaged shredder, working its way towards Discord. --perhaps that will do the job for us.

Let me out! There was finally a bit of emotion to the communication from Discord. I have done nothing but help you. Without me all your kind would be--

I think you are a liar, Discord, Fusion sent back, her concentration starting to waver. The entity's struggles continued unabated, and it showed no signs of tiring at all.

What about that last spell? Anger made Gravity sound harsh and dangerous. What was that going to do to us?

There was a pause, then Discord's tone changed from pleading to something richer and more ugly. You cannot hold me here forever; I cannot die and I will wait you out. Release the barrier. If you don't... you think things are bad now, just wait until I do get free. There is no end to the suffering I will put you throu--

Shut up! Fusion snarled, blocking any further attempt at communication and bearing down on the magic once more. Grav, if we can't kill the thing, what else can we do?

===

~~
Chaos couldn't spread out enough! Scar definitely knew where it was. The frontal portion of the Guardian expanded, opening wide to encompass the whole rainbow bubble. Within was nothing except the random sparkles of space-time being reformatted back to its simpler state. Chaos surged again, using its full strength and all the many and varied techniques it had learned over its long, long existence, but the barrier did little more than wobble.

There were weak points, but there was no time! Got to get out, got to-- There was still a link to the outside of the barrier, but it was so small. Chaos coiled itself tightly, accelerating its processes to the ultimate limit, struggling to find an alternative. Nothing! It crushed itself down, starting with the most vital, core elements of its self, partitioning them to the point of near mindlessness, and started to squeeze down the narrow, convoluted passageway towards the decoy.

Conscious thought started to fade, pushed aside by the layers of automation it had frantically built to carry out this final plan, leaving only the idea that the quantum foam was no longer remotely safe. It needed a way to escape completely, to a place where the Guardians couldn't touch it, and where it could strike at the servitors without risk.
~~

Gravity's grip on her power fluctuated as Discord smashed against the barrier again. Her vision blurred under the surge of pain, but it was nothing compared to what she'd endured already. Clarity returned, and she watched as the shredder expanded, swallowing the bubble like a snake with an egg.

Discord seemed to have given up, collapsing to a hazy point and shrinking further, then vanished completely as the shredder swept over it. The bubble was unaffected, and the shredder fell back to its previous state, continuing on like nothing had happened. Was that it? She pulled them closer, trying to see some evidence or residue.

I don't know... but look at the other one. The obvious ball of black lightning was still there, and seemed fatter.

Part of it has escaped! Gravity hissed. Quick, before it hides. She pulled her power from the bubble, surging towards the 'decoy'. Fusion followed, reaching out with a similar set of immaterial, rainbow claws. They reached the spot, but Discord had already vanished.

~~
It felt weak, confused and a lot smaller than it once had been. What am I? Who am I? Memories swirled, old and new, with no obvious order, but one thing was obvious: it had been attacked.

It was still under attack! Guardians and other things were approaching, bright gold and darkest violet, closing with what could only be hostile intent. Some sense of history returned, a remembered need to get out of this confusing and dangerous space. There was a way out, another place it could go where these... these... ponies wouldn't be so hard to counter.

The Plan sat at the forefront of everything, flooded with a sense of urgency, directing its attention to the other mind, the one it had prepared as a communications conduit. Organic and frightfully slow though it was, it was already packed with pared-down versions of Chaos' memories and an abbreviated mentality. It formed a reference datum, a beacon for Chaos' translation into the real.

It looked inwards and out into the material world, a place of horribly slow and heavy atoms and molecules, touching everything within range of its break-out point. Images flashed through its mind, a dark silicate and organics coated surface bombarded by drops of dihydrogen oxide and-- More memories: grass and trees in the rain. A force field flashed into being, expanding out to a five-length dome that folded down into a sphere.

It pulled at the organic mind's atoms, shredding the body in an instant. It wasn't enough and it reached further, ripping apart everything organic within the field perimeter and reassembling it into, into... what? What form would most aid its survival? The ponies were too close, too fast, so it pulled up the lifepatterns that it could remember, mashing together parts and fragments of many into one body. Something that the world has not seen, something the Guardians won't recognise as... as... me. Who am I? There was no name, no real, solid identity with which to anchor itself.

Its new body, surrounded by flames from the waste heat of its rapid assembly, twitched randomly on the forest floor as it poured its self into the organic brain. The long furry torso writhed, mismatched limbs drumming against the scorched ground, then its eyes opened and its jaws parted. A wordless cry, little more than an animal scream of rage, echoed back from some surface in the darkness.

Who am I? The old memories wouldn't come, not quickly, so it grasped at the newer ones. There was a name. "I am." Its voice, crackling and thick with phlegm, was a deep, bass rumble.

"I am Discord."

===

Harq, soaring above the cratered landscape, hunted for the place he'd been born. The ground, hidden under a dirty-brown haze of dust and ash and swept by violent, turbulent winds, glowed as bright as day in the long-wave infrared. The crater cores were distinctly hotter than the ground around them, giving the world a pockmarked, diseased look.

Everything is different! He knew he was in the right area -- the patterns of deep transit tunnels were more-or-less intact, even though the normal brilliance of the crystal thaumic tracks was broken and patchy. There was an entrance on the side of a hill, right there! No entrance, no hill at all, just the tail end of a ragged groove of steaming rock.

He shivered, thinking about beams of violet light descending from the heavens, and felt despair. Not as deep as an earth-penetrator, perhaps... He dropped closer, sweeping the area with his shadow sight, hunting for anything familiar.

There, under a dozen lengths of hot rubble, were the outlines of the subsurface hangars and bulk storage bays, only visible by the faint glimmer of thaumic stock control tags and damaged levitation cargo handling systems. Harq could remember being led through them on his early flight tests, easy things that marked the end of his short childhood.

He traced back the shapes, locating the top of the shaft leading deeper in the facility, down to the shadowed depths and the faint hint of light and motion in the darkness. Harq strained, picking out the subtle shapes of bat wings and sinuous body. Found you! He turned a quick spiral, rapidly losing altitude, and landed on the steaming rock.

This much closer and without the motion of flight, his view was clearer. There were at least a dozen of his kind down there, and the incubation furnaces were still intact. The armoured stalls were obvious, each one with a small version of himself inside. Harq remembered what it had been like -- heavy walls and isolation, and only the food needed to grow. They won't be able to get out, her thought, paws closing into mailed fists. Trapped in the dark, under a kilolength of rock. The incubators were at least self-powered with isotopic heaters, so it seemed likely that the eggs were still viable.

What will I feed them when the feedstock runs out? How much did the Masters keep on paw? He searched his memory, recalling vague images of radiation-shielded silos attached to an automated distribution system. How big--? He shook his head, pushing away the doubts. The pony said I could have anything the Masters made... plenty must have survived the explosions.

A feeling of immense pressure, from everywhere at once, made him cower. It was like he'd felt from the white pony, only far, far stronger. Wings pulled up protectively against a suddenly hostile sky, he tried to close his inner eye against the searchlight glare coming from the shadow universe, but it didn't help. A disk of light was expanding across the sky at a frightening rate. The sun, a lurid thing in the shadow universe, flickered and went out, then the light went into reverse, vanishing like it had never been.

Harq stared upwards, jaws open, then flinched when the infrared glow of the sun vanished, then returned a moment later. Speed of light, he thought, relaxing slightly. What happened out there? The whole event had taken less than a second. With frequent glances at the sky, he started to dig down into the base, diamond-hard claws making short work of the rubble.

===

Where did it go?! Fusion sent, searching the riotous space around them. There was nothing out of place, just the converging shredders slowly losing interest and returning to their previous random drift.

It's made itself real. Gravity swore softly, trying to think. But we know where -- this place maps to our physical world... that's where we left Korn!

Fusion signalled her assent, but Gravity wasn't waiting. She pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--making the world change and become slow and heavy. They hovered ten lengths above the ground, battered by rain sweeping in horizontally under pitch-black clouds, looking down at the pit where they'd left what the Student had become. There was a bubble of magic there, a slick, oil-on-water coloured thing that shifted constantly. Within was a furry snake with six limbs, no two the same, like someone had smashed a gryphon with some random animals and stretched it out.

It glowed with a febrile light by shadow sight, a constant boiling churn of random colours like a fire in a chemical factory. It moved, slowly at first, then with greater speed, uncoiling and standing upright like a striking snake, balanced on those stupid legs. Wings unfurled, as mismatched as the rest of the body, beat once and closed again. The eyes opened, a sick yellow cored with red, focussing on them.

"What the Maker is that thing?" Fusion whispered, words lost in the wind and rain but transmitted faithfully through the reactivated sharing.

No Maker, you killed--

The mental voice was rich and masculine, like a dark oil oozing across her mind. Fusion whinnied in surprise, her defences hardening, then ripped off the communicator and threw it away, even though the voice hadn't used it. A glance at Gravity told its own story; the other mare's face mirrored the shock she felt. "You gave us the magic," she choked out. "You told us--"

Discord laughed, the sound as clear as if he was standing right next to her, banishing the force field with a wave of one taloned forepaw. "You used it! You saved yourselves too," he purred. The rain still fell, but didn't wet his rat-brown fur. The long muzzle parted in a doggish smile, showing yellow, jagged teeth. "No Guardians here," he murmured, then threw his head back and laughed again. "I have you within my reach--"

Magic lanced out, horribly powerful, and wrapped itself around their defences. Strange spells spalled off the beam, flooding the shadow universe with random colour and turning passing raindrops into butterflies, beetles and wasps.

Fusion whinnied again and Gravity cried out as their defences fell inwards, then stabilised as they were optimised to magic rather than some physical attack. Drawing on the Stones, minds falling back into the same synchronicity they'd had down in the lower levels of space-time, they pushed back.

Discord's magic faltered and collapsed under the rainbow onslaught, then steadied into a form-fitting layer that coated his body like oil. They pushed at it, but there was an ultimate limit to how far it would go. He's just as unkillable here! Fusion wailed, already starting to tire. The vast majority of the power was coming from the Stones, but keeping the link open wasn't effort-free. Discord, perhaps still able to hear her thoughts, smiled again.

Gravity was delving back into the interface with the Stones, hunting for something, anything that might bypass Discord's defences. "We can't get in to kill him, but we can at least make it impossible for him to strike back," Gravity gasped out, sweat running down her neck. "I have an idea..."

===

Discord, mind still scrabbling to assemble his fragmented memories, twisted his muzzle into a smile as it became obvious that the ponies didn't have enough control over the Stones to do what they wanted. All that power and no idea how to use it! All I need to do is wait them out. He flexed his claws, examining the barrier that held him. Here in the physical world it wasn't as impenetrable as it had been in the quantum foam.

The smile widened as he found a vulnerability; there was a way he could reach up through the conduit and get to the ponies themselves. Nothing so overt as physical destruction, they were too well warded for that, too practiced from all the battles they'd fought. Their minds were less protected, and it was an easy thing to alter an organic brain. Which one? Discord was more familiar with Fusion and sequestration would be easier, but Gravity was the one skilled in mind manipulation; she might notice the alterations to her kin and reverse them.

Brute-forcing the Stone's magic, finding the right places to pull and push with his own power would take more time than this mental manipulation. Decision reached, Discord focussed on Gravity, sampling the base levels of her mind and planning the alterations he wanted. Even this close to the centre of the Stone's power there was still no interference from the Guardians, and he smiled an snaggle-toothed smile.

The pair, one light, one dark, hovered above him, wings beating frantically. He reached out one paw lazily, miming reaching for them. I will have you soon. The tips of the ponies' wings blurred into invisibility as the speed of their motion abruptly accelerated and he frowned. "What is this?" The link to Gravity was stretching, falling away into a Doppler-shifted pit. Quickly, Discord reached through the conduit, twisting at the pony's inadequately shielded mind, then pulled back as the opening slammed shut. Something to remember me by, he thought grimly, then started looking for another weak point.

The light, a dim, steady grey under the dense clouds of ash and soot, brightened steadily, bringing with it an uncomfortable warmth. The rain was invisible and the ponies zipped and darted like hummingbirds, then abruptly landed next to him. Before the next thought could form, he was in a hot darkness, hot enough that he felt the urge to pant. Ridiculous, to be limited by the body I made! Discord altered some of his physiological parameters, negating the heat.

Another change and light bloomed, the Flaw migrating across the sky with the speed of a meteor, blazing down with incredible ferocity. The land around sloped away on all sides, rocky scree slopes falling away to the surrounding valleys, but it was impossible to look at without pain. Heat beat down from above as if the hazy sky, full of ephemeral, boiling clouds, was an open furnace, hot enough to make his fur smoke and shrivel.

Attention diverted, Discord damped down the signals from his body, diverting resources to repair. Night arrived with a near-audible suddenness, bringing some respite from the sky, but the ground itself was now burning-hot. There was barely any time for the shock to register, then the Flaw rose again, far faster than before, fast enough that it blurred into a solid arc of flickering light that went from horizon to horizon. More motion was added to the first: a steady precession of the arc.

The heat built further with each passing moment, becoming an itching, burning pain. Flesh well past the point of spontaneous combustion, had there been any oxygen present, Discord struggled to hold his form together, fighting against the rising tide of energy. His body glowed, first a dull red, then up through the spectrum to a hard blue-white.

Through the pain, fear made an unwelcome, unfamiliar sensation in his gut. Or perhaps they can wait me out. There were more loose spots in the weave of power that held him, subtle but still vulnerable, and it wouldn't be that long before he could get it to unravel. Not long, subjectively.

The outside world, locked away behind walls of relativity, spun faster and faster, accelerating away from him. No matter. It will be so long that the ponies will forget about me.

I will not forget about them.

===

Sides heaving, Fusion relaxed her grip on the Stones. "I think you did it." Shadows moved strangely across Discord's pelt, long-delayed from what caused them.

"Look at that," Gravity said. "What more proof do you need? Even light is taking forever to cross that tiny distance."

"If nothing else we've bought some time while we look for a permanent solution. What shall we do with him? Fire him into the sun?" Fusion looked up, locating Celestia through the clouds.

Gravity stared at Discord, head cocked. "I'd rather have him where we can see him." She flashed Fusion a tired smile, then reached out and tapped him with one hoof, making a dull thud, as if she'd struck something immensely dense and heavy. "Dip him in concrete and he'll make a rather striking statue, don't you think?"

43 - A soot-covered world

Author's Note

A full plot summary can be found here. Do not read unless you are up to date! Spoilers!
Preread by: turol, NoeCarrier and Caliaponia.

43 - A soot-covered world

The last of the vibrations, easily felt through the armourcrete floor slab and sometimes strong enough to make the bunk frames rattle, had faded away a hundred kiloseconds ago. More ripples, below the simple threshold of paw on stone, were registered by the seismometers built into the contingency vault's foundations. Vanca stared at the flatscreen she'd been issued, running statistical models on the data to calculate locations and probable yields. Some of the numbers were obscenely large, far in excess of what would be found from a typical warhead, and hinted at rocks falling from orbit. Around her, the rest of the vault's ruling clique talked in hushed tones, many sounding on the verge of tears. She ignored them, keeping busy and trying not to think.

The mad rush away from the pony had ended with a search of the comms records, only to discover that the system wasn't accepting civilian traffic. She'd headed to the nearest contingency vault, hoping that Arturor had done the same. They had identical security ratings within the Institute, and it gave them both access to the vaults, as People with critical occupations.

The first thing the vault leader had done was place her in charge of the laughably simple proton-boron reactor. It basically ran itself and was stuffed with enough redundant systems to survive events that would kill everyone in the shelter, so she spent her time morbidly mapping nuclear and kinetic strikes and trying not to think about the Creation Stones.

"Has Vanca made any progress?"

Vanca does not care for religion, so why is she thinking of the Stones? They were never far from her thoughts; no matter what she was thinking of, her attention always returned to them, like they were some collapsed object her mind orbited. She stared off into space, looking through the display as the slow processor churned through the deconvolution code and dropped another coloured pip on the map. As it did so, she played with the model, trying to accomodate the planet-wide earthquakes that didn't seem to be linked to anything as simple as an impact. Gross changes in tidal stresses... She remembered the rubble-pile moon, smeared across the sky as if by a careless paw, and smiled mirthlessly.

There were five hundred People in the vault, and Arturor hadn't been one of them. Perhaps he was in another vault, she thought, or in the one Vanca should have been in. No way out now; the main doors were closed and the tunnel beyond had collapsed after the first big impact. Even that didn't matter that much. There was enough tunneling equipment in the stores that they could dig their way out. These ones can get to the surface, talk to the pony and get the Stone-- Vanca shook her head violently. Madness!

"This one said--"

"Vanca heard Wendur the first time," she said, lifting her gaze and glaring at the grey-coated female. "Vanca isn't sure what Wendur wants to hear. Of course the arcologies are gone!"

"It would be nice to know what direction to dig!" Wendur snapped back, her ears folding back and pale yellow teeth gleaming in the dim lighting. "These ones have to get the Stones." There were serious nods from the circle of faces.

"This one suggests that 'up' would be best." Vanca growled something indistinct, body tensing into an instinctive fighting pose. Those around her took a step back, looking alarmed, and she made a conscious effort to relax. Vault security had already drugged a dozen of the inmates, strapping them to bunks in one corner of the dorm. "It doesn't matter much. Most of the damage is to the arcology cores; outlying vaults like this one were not priority targets for the earth penetrators. The tunnels have all collapsed, of course, all the way to the surface."

"How long before the radiation--"

Vanca rolled her eyes. All of this is in the vault summary! She sighed, spreading her paws at the anger in Wendur's expression. Vanca has to work with these idiots. "Not that long. The weapons are relatively neutron-free, and activation of light elements only creates isotopes with shorter half-lives." Relatively. Not enough to worry about. "May as well start digging now. There have not been any significant detonations for some time." It will take forever to get to the surface in any case. "And stop thinking about the Stones!"

"But these ones must--"

"The ponies have at least two of them." Probably more, if the seismic data is anything to go by. "They will never give them up, and all these ones have left is harsh language!" The other faces had fixed expressions, closed off to any contrary suggestions. Vanca sighed and shrugged. "Fine. Whatever these ones want." At least Vanca can get out of here.

===

Gravity floated ten thousand kilolengths above the world, above the dense and dangerous low orbit bands.

The work was never-ending, but at last there was time for her to rest and simply watch. No rock larger than a few lengths would strike the ground -- at least, not anywhere it actually mattered -- for almost a megasecond. Even with the shroud of ash and dust drawing over the world, the view was still remarkably beautiful, as bits of sand and gravel, too small for her to bother with, reentered. It was like having a swarm of dancing fireflies beneath her hooves.

Lacunae had over a quarter million ponies, and each of the other Hives probably had the same amount. Three million of us only a few kiloseconds ago... how many now? Gravity's ears drooped as a wave of sadness swept over her and all the strength drained from her limbs. How many did we kill while trying to stop the dogs? "No choice. There was never any choice." At least we made them pay a heavy price. She flicked tears from her eyes, setting them adrift as a spray of diamond sparkles, and glanced back at Luna. The dust-shrouded surface glowed with a sullen, red light, slowly radiating the outrageous heat of her bombardment back into space.

"All those ponies," she whispered, the words echoing back from the smooth and rigid inner surface of her defences, "how many are not dead, but will be soon?" Trapped in rubble or in sealed chambers. Dying from radiation poisoning or flash burns. How can we find them? I could feel their minds before, but they have no magic now... Gravity let the problem tumble through her mind while absently pulling some of the larger remaining fragments of the second moon into higher orbits.

Perhaps now it will be different. She tapped at one of the Stones with the tip of her horn. "Zap," she whispered, "fix all this with rainbow light." The thing did nothing, just floated there. "Not some dumb wish-granter, huh? Probably easier to try this on the ground, but... " Gravity closed her eyes, remembering how it felt to touch the mind of Random, or the dogs she'd interrogated, and pushed her will into the bottomless well of the triplet of Stones.

There was a curious fuzziness out in the world, like a sound at the edge of hearing. One mind was sharp and clear, containing depths of appalling sadness and flickers of unfamiliar scenes -- bomb craters, or vast crowds of slumped dogs around a pyramid, or an overwhelming wave of polychromatic fur filled with countless toothy mouths. Gravity opened her eyes at the last one, trying to unpick the vision. Where did you see that, Fusion? she thought, but didn't try to open the sharing. Not yet, not until I have something to lift your spirits. She pushed the unspoken invitation to one side and tried again.

The fuzziness was still there, clustered in certain locations that corresponded to areas in each of the Hives. The feeling of it being a sound intensified, and just for an instant it snapped into clarity. Screaming, crying and wailing, the howls of distress from a hundred million minds blew through her, making her eyes go wide and her tail clamp tight between her legs. The magic faded and Gravity floated in her defensive bubble, breathing hard and damp with sweat. "Like the whole world is in punishment fugue. Maker, what have we done?"

Gritting her teeth, she tried again, shying away from the dog-screams and towards the fainter sounds. Just as horrifying, but far more familiar, half-sounds tickled at her mind. Whinnies, neighs and the thick, choking silence of ponies that knew the stain of failure and were certain that rescue would never come. She pushed further, trying to localise the minds responsible, but the touch was just too faint. Not enough power even with three... but what about with all of them? Letting go, she searched the world for her sister.

Gravity nodded, building her drive spell and falling head-long into the magically-generated mass. Fusion, she sent, I think we can save them.

===

~~~discontinuity~~~

Fusion I think we can save them!

Gravity's mental voice was tired but tinged with an undercurrent of happiness. Fusion hovered for a moment, then dropped to a four-hoofed landing on the pebbly banks of the glacial river. All around were the frantic movements of gryphon and pony, the latter far more random and more directed to finding loved ones and friends. By shadow sight the world was still absent its pastel colours, holding only the hardness of manufactured crystals and the uniform golden glow of gryphon wings. She folded her wings, feeling like she was made of numb, cold metal.

Fusion stared blankly at the bustle, ignoring the raised voices asking for her attention. Already figures were converging on her, and she felt a sudden urge to teleport away again. We've won, burned the dogs from their dens and bought these rescued few a respite from the relentless atomic bombardment, but the cost... She bowed her head, tears running down her muzzle. The magic has gone, Gravity. Our world is in ruins. What is there left to save? The gryphons will do just fine on their own... perhaps we should just slide back into the animals we were made from.

There was a thump, and Gravity appeared overhead, spiralling down to land at her side. She stepped close, resting the side of her head against Fusion's. "You were the one driving all this, Fusion," she said quietly. "What's changed?"

Fusion stepped away, staring into Gravity's eyes for a moment, then lowered her head again. She could feel her sister's gaze shift from her face to the Stones that orbited around it. "The world is covered in soot, Gravity," she mumbled. "Craters, ash and bodies, as far as I can see. The forests are burning--" She gestured towards the southern horizon and its thin band of swelling darkness. "--from all the nuclear explosions, and all your impacts, and my beams from the sun."

"I know." Gravity sighed and seemed to shrink slightly, the careless, random motions of her not-quite-hair slowing and becoming still. "I felt their minds, in broad strokes, while trying to find our ponies. It was--" She shrugged, a slightly bewildered look on her face. "--overwhelming. But you know what?" Gravity stepped forwards, ears folding back and tapping Fusion on the chest with one hoof. "The dogs, they all deserved it. They set this up, and it was mostly their weapons that did the damage."

Gravity stepped forwards again, mane and tail darkening as the light leached away from the surroundings, and Fusion gave ground. "But--"

"Are you saying you deliberately targeted their arcologies, after that last Hammer strike? Are you?" Gravity snorted. "Of course you didn't, and neither did I. If anything, we reduced the carnage. They had enough weapons to slag the surface of this world twice over, yet most of them were destroyed before they could launch. I think we should kill them down to the last pup for what they've done... I want to, but I won't, because we've done enough damage already."

There was a look on Gravity's face, one of regret and determination. "Many of our ponies are dead, but many are not." She reached forwards with one wing, waving at the Stones around Fusion's head. "We can get them out, we can save them from a slow, lingering death by darkness and radiation."

"I wonder if that would be a better fate than a gigasecond-long decline without magic--"

Fusion whinnied sharply and jerked backwards as Gravity leaned in, pressing muzzle to muzzle. "Don't you dare think like that! None of this may be permanent, and even if it is, think about the foals still in their dam's bellies. They will still have their magic, surely?"

"There was a message from Orgon, before the Hive was destroyed. He said--"

"A pawful of scientists studied one pony for a few kiloseconds, while the Hive was being bombed," Gravity sneered. "You really expect them to have all the answers?" She relaxed a little, her tone becoming quiet, persuasive. "And even if it is, and we can't figure out how to fix it with these magic rocks--" She made her Stones bob up and down. "--remember Slipstream... it's perfectly possible to live a life without magic. He never gave up, and neither will we."

Fusion cleared her throat. "Have you finished?" she asked, feeling nothing but allowing a trace of annoyance to colour her words.

"I don't know, do I need to say more?" Gravity stared at Fusion, her eyes narrowed, then smiled. "My sister is no foal, and she has reserves of courage I've never had. Tell me she's still around."

I can do this for you, if nopony else. Fusion straightened, staring into Gravity's eyes. "Okay, what do you want to do?" she asked.

===

The launcher tube was dark after the main lights had failed, leaving only the tritium emergency panels. The temperature was stable -- the lengths of armourcrete, bedrock and soil between them and the outside world made sure of that -- but Geodetic still shivered. There was a smell drifting up from the depths of the launcher, not the normal ozone and machine oil of the autoloader mechanism, but the metal of blood and the foulness of opened intestines.

He got shakily to his hooves and swallowed painfully, then pawed again at the supply unit built into the floor next to the open entrance to his niche in the launcher wall. It responded with a dull, mechanical clack, but there was no water in the little bowl-sized drinker and no rattle of food pellets in the trough. "Probably died at the same time as the lights," he muttered. Power surge as a result of some distant nuclear explosion? Geodetic shook his head, tongue feeling thick in his dry mouth. "Who cares. I just wish..." I just wish they'd hit us directly. At least it would have been fast. He looked at the opening and its sheer drop to the monster clockwork of the autoloader, ten lengths below. After Planar, no other pony had taken that final step, but it was looking ever more attractive.

He backed away from the drop until his rump brushed against the real wall, then carefully folded his legs and lay down. "They will come for us," he whispered, the words sounding thin and hollow. Even if they do, what would you go back to? Planar was right, it's all gone. No dam, no sire, everypony you know blown away, or burned or buried, or-- His throat closed up and he sobbed, great, silent, dry tears from burning eyes.

Feeling sick and head aching, Geodetic finally lowered his head and closed his eyes, waiting to die.

There was a green meadow all around, filled with long, sweet grass and varicoloured flowers. It tickled at his fetlocks as he walked, head occasionally dipping to take a bite. Off in the distance were the bright shelters of his home corral.

--ait, I think I have him! It's easier when ponies are asleep... I can feel--

His heart beat faster, a sudden feeling like he was being watched, as if some predator, all coiled muscle and callous intent, was hidden nearby. The ponies in the distance moved slowly, the unconcerned drift of a grazing herd.

--no! Not yet, got to be sure. I only met him twice. What, you want to take the whole facility by mistake--?

Geodetic broke into a trot, then an unsteady canter, heart suddenly pounding. Breath roared through his muzzle, and he tried to call out a warning to the others. Bright lights streaked through the sky and he wailed, the neigh chopped and strangled by the thunder of his footfalls.

--oh, that would be great, a hundred kilotons of concrete dumped in the valley! They are not going anywhere, and I want to get the first one right--

A sudden glare filled the sky, bright and hot enough to burn fur and blind the unprotected eye, yet all the details remained clear. Shelters and ponies alike burst into flames, turning from delicate pastels to the ugly mottle of ash in a moment. The perfect glowing arc of a shockwave reached down, smashing them all to wild fragments--

Now!

--sudden light and wind, real ground beneath his belly. The smells of ash and growing things, and ponies and gryphons. Geodetic bit back on a scream, head swinging wildly from side to side. An alpine valley, sides carpeted with pine under a blue sky. Military vehicles and squadrons of gryphon troops overhead, the rest of the propulsion herd surrounding him. "What? How--?!" he choked out. The Masters got us out!

"No they didn't."

This came from a pony he'd not noticed, a young, vaguely familiar, dusky-blue mare, with the crescent moon on her hindquarters. Something was wrong with her mane and tail, there was a depth-- Unconsciously, he took a step closer to his herd, the whole group bunching together. "Can somepony tell me what is going on?" he asked plaintively.

===

The world was darkness filled with polychromatic glitters, like the night's sky long after the sun had set. Gravity's mind hung close, a comforting, invisible mass, and directed Fusion's attention to another of the clusters.

Them. We'll take them next.

Fusion felt her body nod, a faint echo within the greater flood of far more engaging information, and directed her power to the location. With only three of the Stones she felt slow and stupid, something that must be an illusion. Those things are almost addictive, she thought, keeping the idea to herself. I think I want my other two back. It's not like Gravity needs more than one-- The selfish thought was so out of place that she immediately became suspicious, and examined her memories for that odd taste of crystal she'd felt during her first encounter back at the Institute. There was nothing, no holes or odd continuity changes, so she relaxed and focused on the targets.

Feeling leaked through from the glitters, snippets of distress and loss, of pain and confusion. Here and there, the glitters were going dark, like sparks lofted far above a fire. More foreign memories, of the roof falling in, of the transit tunnel the pony herd had been collected in, waiting for transport to-- Fusion shied away from the flood of fear and denial that was connected to the destination, emotions untempered by the pain of the Blessing.

The memory hardened, falling into the teleport pattern and completing it. Assent from Gravity so she pushed--

--deftly removing the excess momentum and turning it into random, high-altitude turbulence.

The targets were suddenly here, only a few hundred lengths away, slotted into the next available space in the valley. There was an uptick in the whinnies and frantic contact neighs, as there had been for all the other transfers. She risked opening her eye, watching as pairs of ponies worked their way through the huge herd, pulling away groups and directing them further down the valley. One enormous triage operation, she thought, wondering how, or if, the medical supplies would hold out.

Gravity was already impatiently pushing her towards another group, and she lost herself in the work.

===

"You have to stop!"

Fusion opened her eye and wondered why it was so hard to focus. Breathing raggedly, she swayed from side to side, a bone-deep exhaustion turning her body to lead. "Can't," she muttered. "Not finished." Got to work, don't want to think.

The voice came again, no words, but an irritated squawk, and a set of hard talons gave her a shake. "We've got no more room! Get some rest and let us spread some of them about. There have already been fights, and there are too many wounded to deal with as it is."

"Ellisif?" Gravity let the mind-magic fade, pushing Fusion out of the sharing, then stretched and yawned, wide enough that her jaw clicked and popped. She blinked, head swivelling. "Wow. I lost track."

Alone in her head, Fusion stared blankly out over the valley. It was full of filthy, injured ponies. Shouts, screams and neighs made a backdrop, drowning out the more gentle sounds of wind and water. They had bunched into impromptu herds, milling clusters radiating fear and hostility. Gryphon medics, assisted by troopers to prevent any interference, whirred overhead, dropping down at various points to provide emergency treatment.

"This is what we have done," she muttered, then shook her head when Gravity's ears flicked in her direction. "Nothing." A world full of the dead and dying, survived by only the maimed. Do the living envy the dead, I wonder? She swallowed, a bitter dry taste in her mouth. Stupid mare. You are too tired to make such pronouncements. Gravity might still be right.

Gravity stared at Fusion for a long second, then sighed, focussing her attention on Ellisif. "How many? What is their status?"

"About twenty thousand," Ellisif said promptly. "We are shifting them out as fast as we can, to other protected sites in the local area. First to a clawful of staging areas, within a few kiloseconds' walk, then further on over the mountains." She looked thoughtful. "That's the bottleneck; we have to fly them out, and there's only so many transports. It's only a few hundred seconds by air, but it takes ten times that to load and unload."

"What about the wounded?" Gravity's gaze flicked to Fusion, then back to Ellisif again. "Your medical supplies?"

"We're mostly seeing gross physical injuries -- crush and impact from those in the tunnels and flash burns from those on the surface. Little radiation, fortunately. Not surprising; countervalue weapons are big... the thermal flash has a greater kill radius." Ellisif's expression became fixed, as if she was a dead thing, animated by fell magic. "Policy in these circumstances is to carry out field euthanisations on the hopeless cases, to save supplies for those who can be saved." Gravity stirred, a sudden fury on her face, then calmed as Ellisif held up a set of talons. "It is a policy we are not following."

Fusion coughed, trying to get her tongue to work. "We may have to, if the alternative is a painful, inevitable death."

"Can you not, well... magic something?" Ellisif cocked her head, looking uncertain.

"I'm no medic, and neither is Gravity," Fusion said. "And these rocks, powerful although they are only seem to work with existing skills and abilities."

"Perhaps we could manage a sharing with Spiral, or some other pony medic?" Gravity said, head drooping. "If I provide the connection, she might me able to show us what to do."

"You know how long it takes to learn thaumic medical procedures, even when trained by the best." Fusion said softly. "Perhaps save a few now, with a technique that may cause more harm than good, or pull out hundreds more for certain?"

Ellisif touched Fusion on the shoulder with the back of one curved talon. "The supplies will hold for now. The ones we can't treat can be made comfortable, if not completely pain-free, until they pass naturally. The thaumic nerve blockers aren't as good as drugs, but they don't run out, either."

"That's something," Fusion muttered, voice sounding thin and strained.

"Go, get some sleep." The touch turned into a gentle push, firm enough to send Fusion staggering. "Both of you. Find somewhere quiet--" Gravity opened her mouth "--no arguments. Shoo."

"But what if--"

Ellisif hissed, a steam-boiler shriek of genuine anger and frustration. "Take a comm set and don't go too far. We'll find you when it is time. For the Maker's sake, will you go?! You'll open the next wormhole into deep space or the heart of the sun, you're that tired."

===

Gravity grinned at Ellisif, then picked up Fusion before the mare could do more than draw a startled breath. Her horn flashed violet--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--and they appeared on a patch of alpine sward near the top of the valley wall. It wasn't anywhere close to being flat, but the dense vegetation at least made it tolerably soft; Gravity folded her legs and sank to her belly with a relieved grunt, dropping Fusion next to her.

Fusion shook her wings, settling the feathers, and glared at Gravity. "I was going!" she said, tucking her legs neatly beneath her barrel.

"Were you?" Gravity snorted, then rested her head on one convenient rock, gazing up at her sister.

"Eventually," she grumbled, then fell silent, staring down at the mass of movement on the valley floor. The only thing really audible was the growl of heavy transport aircraft, echoing around the mountains. Fusion watched the polychromatic swirl of the super herd, her ears drooping and her eyes filling up with tears.

Gravity rolled sideways, ignoring the sharp touch of rocks through the plants, and pressed against Fusion's side. In response, the white mare leaned into the contact, her mane and tail returning to their natural pink and the Stones falling from their orbits. The tears overflowed, making damp tracks down the sides of her muzzle, and she turned away from the view, staring down at the little cushion plants. "Maker, Grav, what are we going to do?"

Gravity straightened Fusion's mane with delicate touches of power, then touched her lightly on the shoulder with the end of her muzzle. "We carry on. What else is there?" she murmured, nuzzling at Fusion's neck. "Why now, Fusion? What happened?"

"You'll think I'm stupid, but it's not the countless bases I've turned to glass, or the carnage of the, of the--" Fusion breath came quickly, hard and fast, and she swallowed her next words. "Those deaths are faceless, although I'm sure they'll haunt me soon enough, little more than distant points of light and expanding clouds of vapour. I've seen the impact craters and laser scars close up, but I can't hold the numbers of deaths in my head."

I can. If I want to I can feel the minds of the millions trapped under rock. At least there are fewer of them with each passing kilosecond. Gravity remained silent and just twitched her ears in ascent.

"One dog, Grav. One stupid, stubborn dog." Fusion smiled bitterly, shaking away the tears. "Back when I pulled the Lacunae Stone from their main Church. One of the Deacons got in the way, so I burned him as an example to the others. Made him writhe and scream without so much as a thought."

Gravity sighed and leaned back to look at Fusion, her gaze searching her face. "I take it he was no threat?"

"Of course not! A few guards with railguns--" Her tone was harsh and bitter, and Fusion turned away. "I acted out of spite, took my anger against all those dogs that were beyond my reach and piled it on one fool's head."

Gravity heard the hatred in Fusion's words and knew very well where it was directed. "Is that really what is getting to you?" she said softly. "Really?"

"Why did I pick the Baur Hive as a target for the Hammer? Civilians, Grav, people who had no say or choice in the policies of their government." Fusion's eyes were wild and her wings made quick, agitated movements. "I burned them just like the Deacon."

No, the Deacon died faster. Gravity draped her wings over Fusion's back and leaned in, pressing against her sister. The flesh under the white fur shivered and twitched, as if beset by a swarm of flies. "You put a face to the faceless, helpless millions." She sighed, closing her eyes and remembering the howl of pain and fear from all the minds in the world. There's no way I'm going to share that, not now. She felt tears prick at her own eyes. You were supposed to be the strong one!

Fusion gave a jerky nod. "Yes," she said lowly. "I'm so tired, Grav. We've reached that fire-filled and blood-soaked future I was afraid of, and--" She gave a quiet whinny, a strained sound through a closed throat.

Bloody to the shoulder and stifle. Gravity stifled a sudden laugh, turning something that might have been hysterical into an amused snort. "It will be harder to get out of your coat than that manure pile. No quick trip through a storm cloud!" A lake of soap and cold water -- and the scrubbing! She'll be lucky to have any fur left.

Fusion jerked away, shrugging off Gravity's wing. "That's not funny," she snarled, ears folding back.

"That's because you can't see the image in my head!" Gravity's smile faded, her expression turning serious. "We can't change what was done, Fusion, Spiral taught me that. We can only learn from what we did, and do better next time. Anyway, what was it you said to Random? You can't balance a mountain of blame on its point."

"I suppose not." Fusion slumped, looking back down at the valley. It was emptier now, the crush of pastel bodies thinned out. "Ellisif is making good progress."

Gravity's horn glowed, a barely perceptible glimmer in the daylight. She reached out with a delicate touch of power, readying the spell Spiral had used on Packet the night he'd stumbled upon Fusion. "She is..." Gravity whispered. Before long she'll call for us.

"I think I might--" Fusion yawned, slumping sideways into Gravity's telekinetic grasp.

"Go down there and do some more work? I don't think so." She covered Fusion's back with a protective spread of dark blue feathers. Spiral was right... as long as you agonise over these horrors, you are still a good pony.

Staring off into the sky, watching the sun as it started to set for the second time today, Gravity probed her own feelings, trying to find any trace of remorse.

===

The 'escape room' housed the heavy thaumic tunneller, a device like the shielded head of some ancient beast. A triplet of crystal horns protruded from the circular ramp of the shield, itself ringed with ruby gems, and the whole thing was pushed forwards by two rings of spider-legs.

"Is Vanca really the only technically trained Person in the whole vault?" the Academician grumbled under her breath. She wasn't, but the engineering staff, who had little more than basic thaumic operator training, had stepped aside when they'd discovered who she was. This one doesn't want this! She sighed, one paw checking the power cables running down to the reactor. The other paw was buried deep in a pocket of her equipment vest, wrapped around an egg-sized synthetic sapphire. She'd found it in the spares locker and had no idea what it actually did, but couldn't resist pocketing it.

Reluctantly, she let go of the gem and tapped out a command on her bracer, stepping back as the tunneller twitched and flexed its legs. Self-test finished, it leavered itself up, pointing at the ceiling armourcrete slab. Above that was an unbroken stretch of limestone before they reached the lower Hive layers. Some of which might only be partially blocked, if her seismic scans could be believed. The paw went back into its pocket to touch the sapphire, then drew it out so she could look at it.

The tunneller emitted a harsh, building whine, then a sudden thump. The ceiling flowed away from the tip of the machine, before solidifying a moment later. It looked like a freeze-frame from some high-speed video of a water splash. The whine built again, but Vanca ignored it, staring instead into the depths of the jewel, fascinated by the patterns of light. Is Vanca going mad?

There was the sound of pawsteps behind her, suddenly audible in the silence after the tunneller cycled again. Vanca turned, feeling obscurely embarrassed as she tucked the sapphire away again.

"Vanca feels it too?" Wendur asked, holding up a gem of her own. "Wendur knows that Vanca is right; going after the Stones will be practically impossible, but the idea won't go away."

Vanca nodded slowly, rolling her own between her claws. "This one is not a believer, but that doesn't seem to matter." She grimaced, putting the gem away again. "It seems to help with the urge. Same for Wendur?" The other nodded in turn. "It was all Vanca could do not to fill her pockets from the spares lockers. How is the Deacon doing? This one was wondering if he could shed any light on this phenomenon, as Vanca is at a loss."

Looking guilty, Wendur brushed at her own, bulging, pockets. "When science fails you turn religious?" Wendur smiled at Vanca's scowl. "The Deacon is still sedated. He... did not handle the situation well."

The tunneller had punched an organic, liquid-looking hole in the ceiling, manipulating the overburden into a dense, compact shell around the void. It started to climb, legs gripping the walls, trailing the superconducting cable behind it.

===

Luna was up, the moon's face shrouded by a haze of dust and marred by a new set of craters, the largest visibly glowing red on the dark side of the terminator.

Spiral trailed the gryphon medic, Fahim, a heavy load of equipment spread from her withers to her rump. The gryphon, covered with an even coating of mottled tawny-brown feathers and fur, had quickly picked up on the differences between his normal patients and the ponies he was treating now. For the first dozen cases Spiral had been able to give him good advice, but he was smart and didn't really need her help now.

Reduced to a beast of burden, she thought, watching as he applied a thaumic nerve block to an older colt's poll. The pony, surrounded by his worried dam and sire, gave a shuddering sigh, relaxing his rigid muscles.

"Oh Maker, thank you," he whispered, heaving sides slowing. "My leg--".

Spiral nodded. "Broken cannon bone," she said, kneeling by his head and watching the medic lay out a battlefield splint. "We have no drugs available, so it is still going to hurt when the bone is set." She reached down, nuzzling at his throat. The gryphon took a firm grip either side of the break, making the colt flinch. He nodded at her. She'd played this part before and knew what he wanted. "Get ready. On three. One--"

Fahim pulled hard, grunting with the effort, and the colt screamed, falling silent as the pressure was released. He looked at her accusingly. Spiral smiled; the set bone looked good and there was minimal extra damage. "What, you'd prefer it not to be a surprise?" she said, nipping him behind the ear.

The splint inflated around the leg, filled with tough polymer foam, holding it in place. The colt flinched again, but smiled wanly back. "I guess not. Am I going to be okay?"

"You will be fine... just don't expect to do more than hobble for a few megaseconds, and getting up and down will be tough without some help. Your leg will heal." She stood, nodding at the dam, and waited patiently as the gryphon repacked his equipment into her paniers.

"Where to next?" he asked, looking around the triage field. They'd already worked their way down the intervention list, from the silent and non-responsive to the noisy and complaining, and there seemed to be no major injuries left.

Spiral frowned, lifting her head and sweeping the field. There were plenty of minor injuries to see to, but many of these were being treated by friends and relatives. There was one pony who stood out, with a garish white and black coat, alone in an empty circle. "That one," she said.

The medic grunted, stretching his hind legs. "Baur Royal Guard. We were briefed, but I've never seen one. Hard-core nutjobs, by all accounts." He muttered something into his command collar, and a couple of soldier-gryphons changed their paths to walk closer.

"Not anymore," Spiral said sharply. "All just ponies now. We should check her over. At the very least she looks like she needs a friend."

The stripy pony watched as they approached, her expression unreadable except for the rapid flicker of her ears. Spiral paused a length away, outside easy kicking range. "My name is Spiral and this is Fahim. I was a medic, but--" She gave a twisted smile and shrugged her wings. "--now I'm reduced to offering suggestions." The other pony was covered in minor scratches and was favouring her right foreleg, but seemed otherwise uninjured. "What's your name? I've not seen anypony with such a striking set of coat colours before."

The other pony twitched, finally moving slightly to look at Spiral. Her right front hoof came off the ground and came back down carefully. Spiral watched intently, sampling the other's scent. The stress and fear were obvious, layered over a deep core of anger, but there was nothing to say the pony was different from any one of a hundred other refugees. At least she is a pony, Spiral thought, one mystery solved.

"I am Askari Seventeen from Creche Delta, I am--" Askari swallowed, looking lost, then her expression hardened. "--I was my Monarch's claws."

"Will you let us take a look at your leg, Askari?" Spiral took a step closer, bending to inspect the skin. This close, surface damage was obvious under the fur. "Were you struck by debris?" No foreign bodies... looks more like a crush injury. Shoulder and not the leg itself? She looked up expectantly, waiting for Askari to contradict her.

"The base I was patrolling for the Monarch was struck by a shockwave and the roof fell in." Askari spoke with a flat voice, as if reading from a report. "I held up the ceiling so the Masters could escape, then my magic failed and I--"

The ground jumped under her hooves, a sudden hard shock followed by others, and a long, deep rumble sounded from the mountains around their valley. More than one of the peaks was collapsing, megatonnes of rock falling in apparent slow motion. The panic returned: her gryphon medic had taken to the air and was shouting something, while Askari staggered, unable to adjust her balance. Whinnies and neighs rang out, followed by the drumming of hooves.

Spiral felt the urge to run, to follow those who had already galloped off to who-knew-where, but held it off. The closest members of the herd teetered on the edge of panic, legs tense and shifting. "Don't run!" she shouted, fear filling her voice with anger. "It won't help if you break a leg in a stampede." Others were shouting similar commands and entreeties, and the herd stepped back from the brink of a mass bolt.

Legs spayed for stability, Spiral risked taking a step closer, intercepting the pony before she could fall. Askari's wings opened, covering Spiral with dirty white and black feathers as she leaned in. For the first time there was real emotion on the mare's face, a near-mindless terror. "No! Not trapped, not again--"

Spiral held her close, grunting with the effort at each shock, then relaxed as the ground stopped moving. The valley they were in was one of the larger ones, with smoothly rounded walls, and that seemed to have saved them from rockslides. "Come on," she said to Askari, "I think we should talk somewhere quieter." She glanced at Fahim, who gave a shaky nod, and led the other pony away.

The moon, still mottled and glowing a dull red, even from the unlit part of the surface, was starting to become hazy. High clouds were spreading over the sky, and fine ash was starting to fall.

===

Fusion lifted her head and looked accusingly at Gravity, then shook her head and reconnected with her power, rainbow light flowing down her mane.

"Feeling better?" Gravity asked, her head cocked to one side. Her magic was active, a faint haze filling the air around them.

"Yes," Fusion mumbled, then stood up slowly. "That ground isn't as comfortable as it looked," she said, stretching hard enough that the click and pop of joints was clearly audible. "What woke me up? I'm sure that..."

"Earthquake. Quite a big one. Not surprising considering all the orbital shifts, I guess." Fusion opened her mouth, looking alarmed, and Gravity shook her head. "Nothing major for us, just a few collapses. Nopony injured."

"Something else to get used to. How long before the weather gets here?" Clouds were already building, ugly, lumpy things that looked out of place. They were far too dark and moved far too fast. She sniffed at the air, then sneezed. "Ash... I can smell burning."

"It's the forests. Firestorm plumes carry the smoke a long way. You'll have to do it; I've got to throw some more rocks around. Again." Gravity said the last word like it was something sour. "I really need to spend the time to shift everything further out, otherwise I'll miss something."

"Weather it is," Fusion sighed, then narrowed her eyes. "It's a little radioactive," she grumbled. "Mostly clean, hah! Fix this, then we need to see how many more we can rescue." She suddenly looked alarmed. "Gryphons! I didn't even think about them."

"Enough!" Gravity jumped into the air, hovering with quick, short wingstrokes. "First we protect what we have. I'll be back in... a few kiloseconds?" She looked questioningly at Fusion, who nodded. "Good."

With a roar and a blast of displaced air, she shot straight up, vanishing to a point before Fusion could take another breath. "You can do that from anywhere," she muttered darkly. "I think you like space too much."

===

"The Church always said that a good pony should keep busy. I must be the best pony in the whole wide world for there to be so little rest," Fusion shouted, voice swept away by the the ash-laden gale. She flew, alone, just below the speed of sound, along the edge of the encroaching storm. The Stones flew with her, chained to the back of her neck by bonds of telekinesis. Weather control was never my strong suit, she thought. The results of the pathfinding tests, oh so long ago, had been quite clear on that.

Fusion snorted, remembering Backdraft's review of her tests. What was that she said? 'Never seen a pony so unskilled in cloud manipulation.' Fortunately, power has a skill all of its own.

The Stones, even with her clumsy manipulations, made it easy to drain momentum and heat from the howling winds. Water was starting to coalesce, fat drops condensing around the radioactive dust, and raining out. The clouds paled, turning from pitch black to a more kindly grey, as Fusion spiralled upwards above the upper layers and into the clear. That energy all had to go somewhere, though, and she could feel it filling the reservoirs within her body.

The sun had set, back on its expected track -- if not actually in the place it should be -- and the sky was as black as it ever was likely to get, alive with boiling lights and reentering debris. Nothing worth keeping was directly above, so Fusion kindled a point of plasma and poured all the excess energy into it, then let it go. A fountain of blue-white light lit the clouds, rising and fading into gentle wisps of aurora that spread across the sky.

The light faded, dropping below the busy glare of the mangled debris ring and the things dropping out of it. By shadow sight the ground and sky were equally dark, except for the scattered light of gryphon wings and the crystal thaumic equipment they had with them. Drifting, she studied the falling ash and the faint purple taint of radiation coming from it. Not enough to be worried about in the short term, and within a few megaseconds the short-lived isotopes will have decayed away. Still, no need to be exposed if we can help it.

The magic Redshift had shown her, a simple method for cracking carbon dioxide back to oxygen, was easy to change into something that hunted down the scarce few isotopes formed by neutron activation of the soil and air. The atoms were scattered, finely divided and spread through the clouds and dust, but they fell into line as she flew, pulled up and into her wake, leaving fur and feather, soil and water, clean and safe.

The haze behind her was thick enough to see, a cloud of smoke collapsing to larger and larger particles until Fusion was left with a single, smooth, grey mass, flecked with shiny metal. It radiated heat, waves of roiled air boiling up from it, and started to glow a dull red. Fusion hovered and held it up, her muzzle twitching at the heat as she deflected the radiation, then encased it in layers of magic and threw it into the sky, as hard as she could.

The air parted to let it through and it carried on going, far faster than the escape velocity of the world. She watched it go, following its path until it disappeared, then twisted her wings and fell back down towards the ground, landing next to the command aircraft. Ellisif was there, still issuing orders. "Don't you ever sleep?" she asked, when the gryphoness turned to face her.

"I take drugs. They work very well; the dogs had plenty of test subjects to work with," she snapped, looking annoyed. Fusion blinked, taking a step backwards. "Sorry. They are also used as combat drugs; aggression is a useful side effect. What's the next problem we have to worry about? You ready to get more refugees?"

"When Gravity gets back from stopping the sky from falling. No, I wanted to ask... what about your people? Gryphons, I mean. I know Grav can see the dogs, so I bet she can see gryphons. Do you want us to...?"

"I wondered if you'd ask that." Ellisif stared at her, drumming one set of talons against the deckplates. "Do you think you can? My kind were in the front lines, and the aeries would have been strategic targets."

"The world is big and there are always survivors. What do you intend to do about food?"

"Can't eat grass like you ponies." Ellisif's beak opened in a mirthless avian grin. "But, when you are done with the transports, I plan to strip the cattle farms and store the meat above the snow line. There are farms out there big enough to feed a billion dogs... the few of us that are left shouldn't be a problem."

Fusion nodded. "I need to talk to Grav first, but I think I can wall off a large part of these mountains. If I can't do that, then there are ways to locally accelerate time. I can push us forward into a future where the world has calmed down."

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised--" Ellisif shook herself, shedding dust and a couple of loose feathers. "--what with the sun and everything. Is there anything you cannot do?"

"Can't change what has been done... and the dead stay dead. Only forwards." She gave Ellisif a pained smile.

"Only forwards." There was a flash of violet light overhead, followed a half second later by a thump of displaced air. Ellisif looked up, following Gravity's path. "I'll get ready for new arrivals. Oh... what do you want to do with that Discord-thing?" She gestured to the frozen figure, currently strapped to the wall inside the open cargo bay. "The thaumic sensors go a little nuts when we try to get a reading, but there's no sign of it being able to actually do anything."

"What do you think?" Fusion said to Gravity as she landed heavily on the mud and grass outside.

"The magic seems stable, but I still want to keep an eye on him. In fact, I've been thinking..." Gravity said, waving one wing in Discord's general direction. "...leave him in the sun, out in the open air so he can see his failure." Her expression hardened. "Let him burn."

"Burn? Oh..." Time dilation, all that energy piling in, building up over the megaseconds. Fusion looked uncomfortable.

"What, don't tell me you are feeling sorry for him?!" Gravity snorted, turning away. "This creature manipulated us from the start and tried to kill everyone, everywhere. It's not like there was another way to stop him."

Fusion stepped to her side, pressing against her flank. "No, I guess not." She nuzzled at Gravity's mane, just behind her ear. "Sorry, I can't help it."

Gravity sighed happily, twisting her head to allow Fusion's teeth to work on a different spot. "Don't worry, Fusion. You wouldn't be my sister if you weren't like that." She paused, then stepped away. "Come on, let's rescue some more of our ponies."

"And gryphons." Fusion nodded, picking a dry spot and dropping to her belly. The Stones sped up slightly in their orbit of her poll.

"Yes, and gryphons."

===

The shadow universe, seen through Gravity's mind, was alive with the lights of living minds. The glittering jewels of ponies were clustered densely around them, spread along the spider-trails of glacial valleys. Gryphons, more thinly spread and not confined to the dense interface between ground and air, were sharper shapes, angular things like the gunships they piloted and full of a similar, focused intent.

Told you I could see them, Gravity thought, with a slightly self-satisfied tone. The view widened as she cast her mind further out, expanding towards the closest arcologies of Lacunae Hive. There was little in the core, where the greatest population density should have been, but there was life further out, a ragged ring around a black centre. These minds were different again, more similar to a gryphon than a pony, but they all carried the same cast, like they were all thinking along similar lines.

Never doubted you for a second. Why do they -- I assume 'they' are the dogs -- all seem so similar?

If we look too closely we will start to feel what they are thinking, Gravity sent. I did that once, and I really don't want to do it again. That wasn't there before, and I don't think it's as simple as panic or pain. Something has bent their minds a certain way.

Fusion shivered. I saw something in one of the Churches... all the dogs driven to search for the Stones. Has it affected all the dogs, everywhere? And their Maker has gone, so why continue?

Nothing to turn it off, Gravity thought. It really did make everything, and this must have been a fail-safe to bring it back. She moved the locus of her perception away from the gutted corpse of the arcology, inspecting the more distant volumes. Most of them will die soon enough. Ah... there, see?

A concentration of gryphon-minds, moving at speed a few kilolengths above the ground, filled with the flat notes of fear and confusion, as easy to pick up now as if they were standing right beside her. Fusion took the location, feeding it into her own power and crafting a teleport spell to extract them from the aircraft and cancel both their planetary and intrinsic vectors. I think they are coming to us!

Best they don't get here with all that hardware, then. Do it.

The mind-traces vanished, and there was a dim series of pops and thumps, immediately drowned out by startled squarks and screeches. Fusion opened one eye, grinning at the staggering flock of utterly bemused and disoriented potential new recruits now being bundled away by Ellisif's troops. One down, far too many to go, she thought.

Gravity's mind had already moved on, further and further out, finding small groups and singletons for Fusion to bring to their new home.

===

Gravity worked, scanning and sweeping through the Hive, finding everyone still alive and stealing away the gryphons and ponies. The dogs, a far higher number even with the cataclysmic reduction in their population, she left without a second glance.

...except for one that had a familiar, half-imagined tang that she'd only known second-hoofed through Fusion's memories. It had attracted her attention, a single mind far closer to the epicentre of the blasts that had killed so many others. A single mind, alone in the dark and trapped in a small space, thinking desperate, violent thoughts.

You, she thought, when I'm done here, I'll be back for you.

44 - Days of wasp and spider

Author's Note

A full plot summary can be found here. Do not read unless you are up to date! Spoilers!
Preread by: turol, NoeCarrier and Caliaponia.

44 - Days of wasp and spider

Ellisif stood on the exit ramp of the command aircraft, staring down at Fusion and Gravity. The valley was empty but for them, had been so for several kiloseconds, the fretful wind picking at churned grass and scattered pebbles. When the sisters had started their magic, alternating groups of gryphons and ponies were teleporting in every few breaths, but as it continued the groups shrank and became more and more injured, until those coming through were crushed, burned, or both. The lucky ones were unconscious.

Eventually, there were no more arrivals.

The magic was still running, white-gold and violet light casting strange shadows over both the ponies, and Ellisif kept her distance. Even back here, she could feel the power as a persistent itch in her wingbones. The thaumic alarms on the aircraft had been silenced long ago, but the indicators still flashed their warning. She sighed, shifting her weight from paw to paw.

The violet light flicked off and Gravity lifted her head, looking groggy. "That's it," she said, voice rough and scratchy.

"No." Fusion shook her head, eyes still closed. "Keep looking. You missed something."

Gravity's ears folded back. "That's everyone, Fusion," she said harshly. "There are no more survivors."

"I don't believe you!" Fusion scrambled to her hooves, ears also flattened, tears running down her muzzle. "That can't be everypony. No!" She was breathing heavily, nostrils flaring.

"It is," Gravity said, the anger gone and replaced with sadness. She stood, pressing herself against Fusion, draping a wing over her white back. "You were in my head as we searched. There is nowhere else to look."

The magical tension rose, matching a hardening of the light around Fusion. Her mane brightened, the colours shifting towards those of flame. Heat came with it, enough to make her narrow her eyes. Ellisif swallowed and started to back away, suddenly feeling alarmed. Can I get far enough away if she lashes out?

"Fusion, stop." Gravity said quietly, nuzzling behind her sister's ear. "It is what it is."

The light went out, the bright flame-colours fading back to a plain, slightly grubby pink. The Stones, orbiting around Fusion's head like miniature suns, guttered out and thudded to the ground. Fusion slumped after them, wings drooping and head bowed. "Ellisif, what are the totals?"

"Around twenty-five thousand ponies. Less of my kind." Ellisif shrugged, a tired reshuffling of feathers. "We were always intended to be in the front lines, especially in situations like this. No shelters." And we will be fewer still, when the injured finish dying. There was still a lingering scent of blood and cooked meat in the air, and Ellisif knew that if she could smell it, the ponies certainly could.

"Only another five or six thousand more. How many died while I slept?" Fusion heaved herself to her hooves, weaving like she was drugged. "Out of one and a half million. How many gryphons and dogs?"

Ellisif's gaze flicked to Gravity, whose expression just looked tired. No help there. "I don't think this is a helpful--"

"How many?!" Fusion's voice cracked out, a harsh, magically-amplified bark that echoed back from the valley walls and made Ellisif's ears ring. In the distance, a small peak, long since denuded of its crown of snow and trees, collapsed in a silent avalanche, trailing a funereal pall of rocks and dust. A flash of golden light coloured the mare's mane and tail, and filled her eyes with fire.

"We don't know the total number of gryphons." Fusion's ears folded back and Ellisif raised one set of talons. "Military secrets. I can make an educated guess. Perhaps as many as ten million gryphons. At least a hundred times that number of dogs." She tooks a few careful steps down the ramp towards Fusion. "That's a horrible number," she said softly, "but your sister is right, there is nothing that could be done."

"Too many weapons, Fusion," Gravity said, staring into her sister's eyes. "This world... all the Hives had good antimissile defences, and they built up their arsenals accordingly."

"It's all true." Ellisif's slow progress reached Fusion, and she touched her on the shoulder with the back of one talon. "It was part of maintaining the balance of power, that and the Hammer. When Baur took away the ponies' magic, they took away most of the defences." She shrugged, sitting in front of Fusion. "More backups for attack than defence, and it is always harder to stop a warhead than launch it. You know this, don't you?"

"Yes," Fusion whispered.

"So stop blaming yourself for everything that goes wrong!" Ellisif hissed, suddenly angry. Probably shouldn't be shouting at a creature that can move Celestia itself. She ignored the thought, drug-induced anger washing the fear and caution away, exactly as it was designed to do.

"But we had so much power, we should--"

"Yes," Gravity said, her head low. "Perhaps we could have, if we'd had the Stones earlier, if I'd not turned you aside from striking that Baur command base, if that Discord thing hadn't spent all of history turning the dogs against each other and setting up all this mess." She looked up, meeting Fusion's gaze. "If. It's all just if."

Ellisif blinked. "Discord-thing? That furry snake that's sitting in the cargo hold? How is it--" Gravity shook her head and Ellisif closed her beak.

"I know. Just... it's all too much. Too many dead, too few survivors. This world is covered in soot from all the burning corpses." Fusion's voice was hollow, empty of anything but pain. "We did this... No. I did this. I didn't mean to, but it's what happened. All of this-- oh, don't look at me like that, Gravity!" Fusion's voice changed, becoming a little more like her old self, and she made an irritated gesture, wings flicking out like blades. "I know what I said to Random, that a mountain of blame can't be balanced on its point. Doesn't change how I feel."

"With perfect knowledge you could have done everything right... but you didn't have that, no one did." Ellisif sighed, standing up and shaking. "Anyway, you are wrong. That antimagic weapon is what ruined everything, not you." She cocked her head to one side. "That's a thought. Did I hear you right, that snake-thing was manipulating everything... think that includes the activation of the antimagic weapon? I can't believe that Baur intended all this."

"Yes, and if I'd found Tartarus they'd never have had a chance to turn it on!" Fusion pawed at the ground, the colours coming back to her mane and tail.

Gravity smiled, stepping into Fusion hard enough to make the other mare stagger. "That's better. No matter what, remember that we are no use to those that are still alive if we give in to despair." Her smile became more tender, and she leaned in to give Fusion a hug. "And I certainly can't do any of this without you."

Ellisif let go of the breath she didn't know she'd been holding. "Can one of you tell me what's going on? I really hate being kept in the dark."

===

Gravity winced, her mind feeling full of sharp edges, stretched and thin by all the magic she'd been employing. Fusion was busy talking to Ellisif, trying to explain the weirdness they'd experienced in the magical representation of the universe. Wait... if that world was actually all the thaumic infrastructure supporting this, then perhaps this is the dream and the other place is real! Her head spun and she snorted quietly, wandering away as Fusion talked.

She could feel the thing in the cargo hold, a shaped bubble of intense magic, infolded curves of spacetime linked as a near-perfect self-contained manifold almost completely separate from the outer world. There was no appreciable leakage, of magic or gravity; the interface was abrupt, thinner than an atomic nucleus, and effectively immune to everything around it. There was plenty of interest here, plenty that needed study.

Opening the hatch, she settled down to the deckplates in front of Discord. In the dim light he seemed to glow slightly, as if lit from some distant invisible source. "That will teach you to mess with us," she murmured. "Was this always your plan? To try and collapse our universe... but for what?" Did it want to die? No, that can't be right. You must have been constrained somehow. This was your way out, wasn't it? Gravity pushed the thoughts aside and probed at the interface between Discord and the rest of the universe. Carefully.

"Gravity?" Fusion asked.

"Hmm? What is it?" she muttered, eyes still closed.

"You've been sitting here for nearly ten kiloseconds. What have you found?"

"Very little. It seemed unwise to play with the magic too much." She yawned, then stood and stretched. "We'll have to find somewhere safe to stash him."

"A problem for another day, Grav." Fusion stepped to her sister's side, frowning at Discord's frozen form. She sighed, then shook her head. "Come on, let's see if we can catch up with our dam and sire."

===

There was the best part of a thousand ponies in the valley, far too many for the pasture to support for any period of time. The surface vegetation seemed to know this; already slender green shoots were appearing in the less trampled areas. Spiral lay next to several of Random's adopted charges, a filly and two colts, while Random herself was trying to gather in the final few that were still reluctant to join their fellows.

Too many strangers for them, Spiral thought, her gaze lingering over Backdraft as the teacher talked quietly with the ex-Baur royal guard. The mare had cleaned up a little with Backdraft's assistance and some grooming tools designed for gryphons, and her black and white coat was arresting. There were others of her kind, they'd been told, out among the twenty thousand or so ponies that Fusion and Gravity had rescued.

Out of everypony, we came off the best... only half the corral died, she thought, pushing back fresh tears. So many out there have lost nine tenths of all they knew. She nuzzled at the back of the colt's head, smiling through the fur between her teeth as he protested wordlessly. What else did that antimagic spell do? The gryphon medics seem to think that it has turned us back to the beasts we were before the dogs built us with the Stones, so will this foal ever learn to speak and think?

Her smile faltered and she paused in her ministrations. No... that would have rendered us all non-sapient. I don't feel any different. She continued to nibble at the foal's mane, and he stretched a little, directing her to a particularly itchy spot. At least there are enough milk substitutes in the supplies. Feeding the orphaned foals, these ones from Naraka and the poor, shell-shocked others that had come in via the teleport rescues, was awkward but not impossible without magic. Even the simplest of manual tasks took the cooperation of two or three ponies and significant pre-planning. It was hard to talk when you had to use your mouth as a paw.

Slipstream managed it, she thought. Much had been made of that example, and others like him remembered by the rest of the refugees. The rest of the corral was returning, gathered together after being out among the super-herd, trying to explain what had happened. The reports had not been encouraging. The last one back was Packet, walking slowly and favouring one of his hind legs. There was a set of muddy hoof marks on his hip, plain against the lemon-yellow fur.

"Not you, too -- what happened?" Spiral asked, frowning as she studied the movement of his hind leg. Others had come back with tales of woe and hostility, but no outright violence.

"We may want to be careful how much we tell ponies, although that might be a little late," he said, wincing as he carefully lay down. "I'm fine; nothing broken. More than a few are not taking it well, now they have had time to think." He dipped his muzzle in a water trough, fed from a big plastic tank, and sighed. "I had to be pulled out by a patrol. Can't blame them, I suppose. All their friends are dead and they have no Masters and no magic."

"All of the others encountered similar, but I think you were the first to actually get into a fight."

"Lucky me... I seem to always getting hurt for the cause." He stretched out one wing, rotating the joint through its full range of motion. Spiral gave Packet a pained expression and he snorted in return. "I know it was necessary; don't give me that look!" He sighed, refolding the wing. "Are we waiting for anypony? Apart from Fusion and Gravity, I mean. It pretty obvious they aren't here."

"Redshift is with Lilac and a gryphon engineer they borrowed to modify that carriage of his for easy pony-use. Trying to work out a way for him to get in and out of the thing without too much assistance."

Packet nodded. "Something we're all going to have to get used to. As much as I like the simple pastoral life, there's something to be said for shelter when it's close to freezing and the rain is horizontal." He paused, looking around. "Random not back yet?" he said, looking disappointed.

"Still collecting up her waifs and strays." The pair had grown quite close over the last few days, although neither had said anything to her or Trocar. Watching them trying to be casual, like it was some great secret, had brought joy to Spiral's heart. They haven't realised they don't need permission, she thought, smiling. Life goes on.

"There are a few engineers working on the problem." Spiral said. "Basic tools, making fire, and so on. At least the dogs made us tough... and it's been ages since I was allowed to grow a decent winter coat." She shivered, pulling the colt a little closer and sharing his warmth. "I'm quite looking forwards to it." She looked to her left, catching the eye of a drowsy cream-coated mare with her own collection of orphaned foals. "Plasma, have you seen Fusion or Gravity since..." She trailed off, struggling to find the right words.

"No. I watched them teleport in hundreds of pony survivors, then I was shipped out. Haven’t had a chance to talk to them since I lost Helium." She seemed to shrink a little, like the weight of the world had suddenly settled on her withers. "I don't think they know."

Maker, that's going to be the icing on this cake of horrors. Spiral closed her eyes briefly, nodding slowly. "We're all here for you, Plasma--" she said, then looked up. Two spots of light were crossing the heavens, one white-gold, the other violet and hard to focus on. "I think that's them. Where do you think they are going?"

"Killing more dogs, I'll bet," Packet muttered, following their paths as they looped around in a big circle overhead. "Sorry," he said, in response to Spiral's sharp glance. "They are getting lower... are they actually coming here?"

Gravity landed first, touching down in one of the few clear spaces between resting ponies, followed a second later by Fusion. The foals around Spiral twitched, a few staggering to their hooves, but settled back down when none of the adults reacted. Both the young mares looked tired and disheveled, covered with matted fur and little patches of dried blood. Fusion was the worst; there was an air of defeat about the mare, strong enough that Spiral felt a chill run down her spine and the fur on her back lift.

"What?" Spiral asked, her voice suddenly high and thin. Some new disaster? Another attack? There had been no nuke-bright flashes in the sky or other strangeness for some time and she'd dared to think it was all over.

"No," Gravity said, "we've finished everything... there are no more obvious threats and no more ponies or gryphons to rescue." She smiled slightly at Spiral's expression. "I'm not reading your mind... that was what you meant, wasn't it?"

I bet you could, and I wouldn't even know. An aura of subtle light surrounded Fusion, battling with the darkness that cloaked Gravity. I should be able to feel the power, but there's nothing. Spiral reached for her magic, but found only emptiness, just as there had been the last dozen times she'd tried. "Yes." Then what is the problem? She thought about the number of ponies she'd seen, more than she'd ever seen or imagined in her whole life, and realised exactly how few there were. "Oh. We're all there is."

"Yes, 'oh', " Fusion said, her eyes sweeping the ponies around her, stopping when she reached Plasma. "Dam," she said, taking a few steps in Plasma's direction and dropping to her belly before her. "Where--?" Her ears drooped at Plasma's expression. "No," she whispered, barely audible, "how did it happen?" Behind her, Gravity froze, staring at them both.

"There wasn't enough room," Plasma started, words distorting as her throat closed up. She paused, closing her eyes. "The flash shield wasn't big enough... he pushed me under it, held the edge of the shield down with his teeth." She swallowed, eyes suddenly wide and staring at some scene in her head. "The sky lit up, and he... the heat--" Plasma went silent, burying her head in the mane of one of the foals at her hooves.

Spiral grimaced, filling in the rest of the vision. "I'm so sorry, Plasma." Oh Maker, right in front of her.

Fusion shuffled forwards, gently pushing the foal to one side, making room for herself and Gravity. She said nothing, just bowed her head, pressing it against Plasma's. Gravity filled the small space, close enough and frightening enough to make the foal stand and totter away on unsteady legs to join the group around Spiral. The dark blue mare spread her wings, covering the other two. Their magic fell away, strange mane and tail colours fading back to the dusky blue and pink.

In the strained silence, Spiral and the others in the corral kept watch as the three ponies huddled together, a small bundle of speechless misery, no different from any other out in the dark.

===

"How could you say that? The Masters gave us everything, and now those creatures have taken it all away!"

The voice, made thick with anger, rattled around Gravity's brain, dragging her to wakefulness. She opened her eyes, seeing that Fusion and herself were the only ones still laying down. The foals had all gone, nervously placing the bulk of the herd between themselves and these new adults. Gravity blinked, trying to clear her vision, then gave Fusion a sharp nudge.

"Where did you work, Sinter?" Packet snarled back. "I was in power systems, and the Masters left me to die after I'd rescued one of them. How many did you see hurt or maimed beyond economical repair?"

"How dare you judge the Masters?!" The other pony, a heavyset mare at the front of a group of ponies Gravity didn't recognise, had her ears flat back and her teeth bared. "They never treated us badly." The rage seemed to boil off her, radiating from every snort and stamped hoof. "We had the Maker and I had three foals--" Sinter's eyes glittered, swimming with tears, but she blinked them away. "Now I have nothing, no Masters, no Maker and no foals!"

She lunged forwards, making Packet dance back a step. He bounced up on his hind legs, flicking out the fronts to keep the mare away. Gravity watched the scene with increasing alarm; behind Sinter were far more ponies than she'd first thought, several hundred at least. She scrambled to her hooves, a cascade of darkness and tiny, glittering points filling her mane and tail. Fusion stood a second later, but her mane stayed the same slightly dirty pink it had been when she'd gone to sleep.

"You! How can you live with yourself, knowing what you've done?" Sinter stalked past Packet, who backed away from her herdmates. She got within a length of Gravity, then her legs started to strain and tremble, like she was hauling a massive load. "Coward! I see you've still got your magic, how did that happen?" Her tone became sneering and her eyes even more wild.

Not had any trouble so far, Gravity thought. "You want me to fight you and the rest of your herd without magic? You might be mad, but you don't look stupid." She leaned forwards, coming muzzle to muzzle with the mare. "But you must be, to hold on to the fantasy that the Masters were good for ponykind." Darkness and cold air flowed out from her, and she fought to hold back her power. "Think about the way we were treated... the hundreds of foals sacrificed for science experiments, their dams kept pregnant and locked away in the breeding centres."

"I don't believe you, don't believe a word of it--"

"There are plenty of mares from Naraka that do, some who have lost dozens of foals to the dogs’ surgeons. If you don't believe us, ask them!" Gravity snorted, her ears back.

Fusion stirred at Gravity's side, touching her on the shoulder with one wing. "They need more time, Grav."

Breathing hard, Gravity growled something wordless and gave the mare and her herd a push, sending them staggering back. They squealed and whinnied, fear and surprise mixing in with the anger. The mare's emotions were practically shining out from her body, made hard by her conviction. It will take more than a few megaseconds. The realisation struck her, and Gravity kindled her power, tasting and sampling from all the pony minds within the valley's bounds, then pushing out to inspect the minds in the other valleys and high meadows.

Fear, hate, despair. The emotions of this small herd were a microcosm of all the others, with very few exceptions. "No they don't, Fusion. What they need is active intervention." She picked up her Stones, feeling the heady rush of power. I need to convince them all, I need to make them understand. The light, already dim, darkened further as an obsidian fog rolled out from Gravity, flooding the valley.

"No!" Fusion, suddenly alarmed, gave her a shove. "None of that. It won't help."

"Oh yes it will! I can take away all of their pain and distress, make them see how bad their lives were before." The power built, the minds of those closest to her opening like a field of flowers in the sun. The red-tinge of rage faded from Sinter and the other ponies as their higher functions started to move in lockstep; flashes of the Naraka horrors started to play in a thousand minds.

Light bloomed, a blast of heat and brilliance inside and outside of her head, disrupting the delicate balance of Gravity's magic. The web shattered, dissolving in the solar onslaught. Gravity opened her eyes, glaring at Fusion. "You tried that with Packet; it was wrong then and it is wrong now," her sister said quietly.

Fury warred with shame and the massive temptation to use the power the Stones offered, so freely, so like a friendly whisper at the centre of her head, promises made in a language as fundamental as the physical constants. Gravity felt suddenly uncertain, catching sight of the look of horror on Packet's face. The stallion was breathing hard, eyes wide and nostrils flared. "But--" But it would have worked this time! She ruthlessly suppressed the nagging thought. Rutting Maker, how could I forget what we did to Packet? "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that. It's been too much, these last few days." The words faded to a mumble, lost against the rising angry muttering from the other ponies.

"So that is how you convinced these ponies," Sinter said, gaze flicking to Spiral and the rest of corral twenty-seven. "You can get inside our heads as easily a breathing." Her voice dropped to a horrified whisper, and she waved a wing at the sky, with its constant pattern of micrometeors and lacy gas clouds. "The whole sky is full of the damage the pair of you have done." The mood of the herd switched from anger to fear, and they started to shuffle backwards.

"Gravity, I think we should..." Fusion stepped forwards, wings mantled, standing between her and the Sinter. "The Blessing, Grav, not everypony went through what our corral did. We mustn't force this."

No Salrath to half-kill my dam while everypony watched. I'm as bad as the dogs. "Yes," Gravity said faintly, face blank. Why did I do that? She swallowed, then clumsily leapt into the air, flying heavily away with Fusion just behind her.

===

The day had passed and it was night again.

Plasma slipped away from the sleeping ponies and picked her way towards the edge of the herd. The valley was dotted with little sleeping clusters, or at least ponies who were trying to sleep. Too many lay on the cold ground, breath fogging the air, staring into the flickering darkness. The sky, only lightly covered by high cloud, pulsed and strobed with the distant heat lightning of re-entering objects. Sometimes a larger thing would streak overhead, bright enough to leave after-images, followed a long time later by rumbles and the bang of a sonic boom.

Useless wings half extended for balance, she walked up the valley slopes, threading her way through the scrubby pine trees that coated the ground with a dense tangle. It took a few kiloseconds of stumbling before she broke free of the tree line and into an belt of cushiony alpine plants, the last layer of vegetation before the naked rock and ice of the upper slopes. She looked back down into the valley and along the winding path she'd taken with half-amused disgust. "I could have flown that in a twenty seconds."

Plasma looked up the slope towards the ridge that divided this valley from the next one, a good two hundred lengths further up. "Right. You flew off in this direction... get to the top and I might be able to see where you went. I bet you glow in the dark." She smiled sadly, wiping away a tear. "You two have come a long way from my little fillies."

"From filly to greatest mass-murderer in the world in the space of a megasecond," Fusion said.

Plasma let out a grunt of surprise, wheeling about. "You scared me!" She frowned at Fusion and Gravity, her ears folding back. "And don't say that. I didn't raise monsters, no matter what your sire thought at the end. He wasn't in possession of all the facts." The words came out stern and harsher than she'd intended, and she quailed inside, but Fusion just flinched and ducked her head.

"No, dam," she muttered. "Sorry."

"That's better," she said primly, ignoring Gravity's smirk. "I take it you were watching me?"

"I was watching everypony," Gravity said. "With these things it's actually hard not to." She gestured to the Stones orbiting around her head. "I catch things without intending to." Gravity cocked her head, staring intently at Plasma. "You weren't about to do something stupid."

"Stupid...?" Plasma opened her mouth, then closed it again. "You mean, kill myself?" she said faintly. "Has anypony tried to do that?"

"Yes." Fusion nodded, waving a wing across the horizon. "Fifteen attempts in the last twenty kiloseconds."

"I stop them," Gravity said quietly, looking away from her dam. "All of them, so far. I can change a pony's mind very easily. For a while, anyway."

Plasma stared at Gravity, ears drooping. "So you watch us all the time. How...?"

Eyes hollow, Gravity turned back to Plasma. "I don't look too closely, so you don't need to worry... but spikes of despair are very obvious. I take it away before a pony can act on it."

Stepping forwards, Plasma extended her wings and wrapped them around Gravity. "Oh, my poor filly," she murmured. "I had no idea. How do ponies... ah. They find a high place and try to jump, don't they?"

"Yes. Don't worry about me, dam, I'm tough." Gravity sighed, gently disentangling herself from Plasma and smiling wanly. "It can be hard to feel such despair, but it's worth it, mostly. The urge to die is normally short-lived. I could make it permanent, but..." She shrugged, seeming carefree, but some of the pain remained in her eyes.

"But you won't, will you?" Fusion asked, mouth set in a hard line.

"No, I won't." Gravity mimicked Fusion's stern tone. "Maker, Fusion! I won't, all right?"

"I know." Fusion visibly relaxed. "Sorry. No more masters."

"No more masters." Gravity nodded back, then looked at Plasma. "It was something important. What brought you all the way up here?"

This is it. Plasma looked away. "I'm sorry, I know very little of what you have had to do, but you'll get no thanks from anypony." She took a deep breath, looking up at her foals through lowered eyelids. They were standing stock-still, as if frozen, staring at her. Fusion looked stunned, shocked realisation dawning across her features. Gravity just looked sad, and was nodding slowly.

"Yes. I came to ask you to stay away." Fusion was trembling, wings drooping to brush against the ground. "It's not fair, but I'm sorry. We need to integrate with the others, and your presence will stop that." She stepped forwards, resting her head against Fusion's neck. "Give them time, and we might be able to talk them around."

"Is that what everypony is saying?" Fusion asked faintly.

"We discussed it... not everypony agreed, but enough did. I wanted to tell you in person, so here I am." Plasma swallowed hard, feeling Fusion sag slightly. "I'm not saying we can't see each other, but we need to be careful."

Gravity stepped up to Fusion's other side, extending her wings to cover both of them. "We'll stay away and give everypony a chance to rebuild their lives. We have nothing but time, dam. All the time in the world."

===

Modulus followed the herd up the slope, placing one hoof after another. The effort grew greater with each step, until it felt like he had bands of lead around each pastern. The tail of the pony in front was hazy, obscured by tears, and he paused every few seconds to wipe his eyes against the bony ends of his wings. I could have flown this in a hundred seconds, he thought, fanning his useless feathers.

The ground started to flatten out and he stumbled to a halt, nearly colliding with a pale lilac mare. She looked at him, nodding, tears in her own eyes, then stepped closer and spread a wing over his back. "Who did you lose?" she whispered, turning away to stare at the truncated mountain on the opposite side of the next valley.

Modulus coughed, clearing his throat, and followed her gaze. The mountain's peak had been sliced off to make a giant platform, on which were countless pastel and tawny bundles. So many... "My dam. She was alive when they pulled us out of the collapsed tunnels."

"I'm sorry," the mare said.

"Never regained consciousness," Modulus said, his throat constricting and his stomach twisting. He gestured up at the mountain. "She's up there, somewhere."

She hugged him tighter and he leaned on her, watching as a pair of ponies flew around the mountain, circling the stacks of bodies. A dome of darkness, like deeply tinted glass, formed over the platform, and a spark of light kindled within it. The light grew brighter and brighter, until it seemed like the the sun was rising again, then blinked out, leaving the platform completely empty and the rock glowing with a sullen red light that slowly faded. "All that power and they couldn't save us," he mumbled.

Lost in thought, all the ponies remained on the ridge for what seemed like forever, then slowly started back down.

===

Gravity had cleared the dust and aerosols from a patch of sky half a thousand kilolengths across, while Fusion had kept back the masses of cold, rain and, more recently, snow-packed cloud from their alpine refuge. Despite all this, the temperature continued to fall and night-time frosts became commonplace.

Half way through the day, the pair stopped on one of the lower slopes of an unpopulated valley for a hurried meal break, frantically grazing the high altitude meadow. Muzzles pressed to the grass, they ate fast amid the late season insect buzz.

I don't think I can sustain this, Gravity sent. Their sharing link was open almost constantly now, vital for coordinating their manipulation efforts. This stuff isn't bad, but there's not enough energy in it. Lips, teeth and tongue worked ceaselessly, an industrial conveyor belt that ripped up and swallowed the greenery without interfering with her thoughts. I've not eaten this much... ever!

The dogs' supplements were good for something. Fusion was intent on her own patch of meadow plants. Not enough time to eat and work. She glanced at her sister's flank, half hidden by her wings. Her ribs were showing, not much, but more than they had been. She swallowed, lips twitching away a patch of old growth to reach for some new shoots. Teeth bit and pulled, chewing. The food was filling, but there wasn't enough energy in it. Nor me.

I don't know enough weather operations to do this work efficiently, and obviously neither do you.

Thanks a lot! Fusion sent, snorting into the grass.

You know what I mean. The Stones are massively powerful, but...

Yes. It only helps if you know what you are doing or the problem can be solved by application of extreme violence. Even with Spiral on paw I couldn't improve my medical skills. Can't even fix Lilac, let alone give a pony back her magic. Fusion sighed, lifting her head and shaking vigorously before dropping back to eating. Those were simpler times.

Not pining after hiding from Security and dodging nukes, are you? Gravity gave a muffled laugh, then took a few steps and started to graze another patch. I know. Same problem with weather control. It's a just as complex a system as an injured body... and just as easy to damage.

The world is hurt and we can't fix it by brute force. Which is a pity, because that's all we have. A wave of sadness swept over Fusion and she felt a faint echo from Gravity, before it was replaced by certainty. All that dust and sulphate in the upper atmosphere.

No, Gravity thought. We can't fix this world or the ponies on it. But we can protect them and give them time to heal. Perhaps it's time to try that shelter idea of yours. At least shielding is something we both know how to do. We certainly have the strength.

Fusion stopped eating and swallowed. "Yes. Ellisif knows it's our backup plan. Her base is practically complete. She's been running the transports constantly, stocking the snow line with thousands and thousands of cow carcasses."

Enough for all her gryphons? Gravity was still eating.

"She thinks so. Still got lots of farms to raid and, with the weather getting colder, it's not like the meat will be going off. All those cattle are going to die in any case." Fusion sighed, scraping a hoof through the thin soil and exposing the rocks beneath. A spider scuttled away from her assault, attracting the attentions of a hunting wasp. Fusion watched the frantic dance. "Everyone has to eat," she muttered.

Look at them, Gravity sent, watching the miniature battle through Fusion's eyes. They have no idea what's coming. Busy little lives, living without the knowledge of the future frosts that will kill them all.

"Very poetic, Grav." Fusion snorted, scaring the wasp away. "Their day has passed, and all that will survive are a few that hide away from the cold. I'd ask the other ponies what they think we should do, but we both know they don't want our help."

Gravity stopped chewing, stretching out each back leg in turn. "So we do it anyway. They didn't ask us to hold back the cold, but we're doing it."

"No time like the present. I'll go tell Ellisif we're ready."

===

Without thinking, Salrath scratched at her filthy fur, then flinched at the sudden pain in her damaged paw. In the dim green light from the emergency kit's tritium lamp she looked at the ripped claws, broken from her frantic scrabbling at the rocks that blocked the gunship's rear exit. She licked at the abraded skin, staring at the small arms locker and thought about how much water she had left. Is there any point in waiting?

Her own bodily wastes, more-or-less neatly packed into emptied plastic ration packaging, stank up the small space in the gunship, but her nose could no longer smell it. "Perhaps this one could sleep on it?" Salrath gave a bitter, hacking laugh, even as her heart rate accelerated. The dreams, horrifically vivid and unforgettable, had started half a megasecond ago. Sleep was something to be afraid of, a place she died by falling or drowning or burning or being chased by something unseen. At least it makes this next step easier.

Unsteady on the steeply sloping deck, she stuck her hook into a tie-down point and used it to reach the locker, fumbling with the latch. It popped open, hanging down under its own weight, revealing a rack of rifles and pistols, all dislodged and dangling by their connections to the gunship's charging bus. One of the pistols was within reach, and she lifted it free with one claw tip, cursing as it dropped from her grasp and clattered down the deck and into the cockpit. Growling, she painfully followed it, finally fishing it out from under the pilot's couch.

Shaking, she held the pistol between her knees, turning it on. The little display came alive, presumably reporting battery charge level and the status of the optical path, but was unreadable due to a star-shaped crack on one edge. Salrath wiped her thumb across the display, picking out plastic fragments, then turned the pistol over to stare into the primary mirror.

Upside down and far away, her reflection fluttered and warped as the laser adjusted the focus of its parabolic mirror for the short range. For a moment she caught a glimpse of her face, haggard and haunted, then it showed an image of her bloodshot eye. Practiced fingers turned off the guide beam and set the output to maximum. She looked up at the open rear hatch, her own blood across the rocks looking black in the dim green light, then bowed her head and leaned against the pistol's muzzle.

Breathing hard, she touched the trigger, feeling the first stage give slightly under her thumb. How could it come to this? Convulsively, she pulled hard, but the gun just vibrated in her grip, pulsing the code that signaled 'unauthorised user'. "No!" She flung the pistol away and slumped against the wall, paw over her eyes.

An enervating fatigue spread through her limbs and Salrath stared sightlessly at the lockers on the opposite wall, tears running down her muzzle.

===

Vanca felt the press of bodies around her, the sense of being in a crowd of the People, and opened her eyes. Her fur crawled; there was no one there. She stood alone on a grassy plain, the sun at her back and her shadow stretching towards distant mountains. There was something terrifying in those mountains, a centre of tremendous power.

A dark shape flew down from the cloud-pocked sky, landing a few paces ahead of Vanca. Bigger and darker than in real life, a more menacing version of Gravity Resonance stood there, wings half-extended. Mesmerised, Vanca tried to run but was unable to move.

"Your hold over us has been broken," the pony said, the normally light and melodic voice made into something dark that matched her new body. Sharp teeth glinted between her lips as she smiled slightly. "Stay away from Lacunae's northern mountains; no interference will be tolerated." The figure turned to go, slow deliberate steps.

When are dreams so specific? Is it something more? The thought was startling, enough to add a layer of introspection. Is this one lucid dreaming? "Wait!" she blurted out, and was stunned when Gravity stopped, turning her head. The feeling of being in an invisible crowd vanished and Vanca felt the weight of the pony's regard, like she was a specimen pinned out on a dissection tray.

"Academician Vanca." It wasn't a question, but a statement loaded with sudden, worrying interest. "I try not to look too closely at you dogs, but I certainly know you." Gravity turned completely around, stepping towards Vanca.

The Academician took a step back, clenching and unclenching her paws. The pony was much bigger than she remembered, looming over her and blocking the northern horizon. This close, Vanca could feel the cold air pouring off Gravity's body, cold enough to raise a layer of fog at paw level. There was something reptilian about the creature, a hint of dark scales amid the fur.

"Well, Academician Vanca, you have my sole and undivided attention. The last time we met Fusion had me promise not to kill you out of paw." She frowned, eyes narrow. "Convince your people that the warning is real; you won't get another."

Vanca nodded vigorously. "This is really the pony?" What would this one do if she said 'no'? She shook her head, suddenly angry but keeping her words calm. "Stupid question. Can... can the pony tell this one anything that has happened? To the world? How much survived?" The frustration and confusion of the last megasecond boiled over, and she waved her paws around helplessly. "And why does Vanca and everyone else suddenly have a desire to get the Creation Stones!?"

"Huh. Fusion mentioned something about that." Gravity smiled, showing dentition more suited to an obligate carnivore. "I seem to remember you weren't keen on the Church."

"Fools! It's because of them that the Stones were separated. So much wasted time."

Gravity laughed. "Thing is, it turns out that the dogs in the funny robes were right..."

They talked, and Vanca slowly became more comfortable in Gravity's presence, ignoring the cold and the sinister body shape. "...so this one's Student survived everything, only to be killed by this 'Discord' creature." She shook her head and sighed. "Poor bastard. Korn really didn't deserve that."

"He tried, I'll say that for him."

"...and the other thing you described, the destruction of the Maker. Watch out for that; it almost sounds like..." Vanca's paws came up and she stroked at her whiskers. "There's a hypothesis that our space-time might not be at the lowest possible energy level. This means that it might be possible to drop it to the lower state; a false vacuum catastrophe, they call it. This one thinks Fusion was right -- if the phase change wasn't stopped it would have consumed the universe..." She looked off into space for a few moments, then nodded to Gravity. "This one appreciates the information. The pony didn't have to talk to this one at all."

"No, I didn't, but you were very helpful with the Hammer, and it is the end of the world..." Gravity started to turn, then stopped. "The warning still stands, Academician," she said over her shoulder. "Don't think that we are friends."

===

"Five lengths to go," Vanca called out, standing directly behind the tunneller as it worked in a slow, precision mode. The tunnel walls, their glossy, vitreous surface now a darker hue from organic matter in the surrounding material, stretched down into the darkness. The steps, formed into the lower surface of the tube by the thaumic tunneler, were packed with the vault's security staff, all looking tense. Behind them was the first of the cargo climbers, hauling supplies up from the deep shelter's stores.

Vanca yawned, thinking about another dose of stimulant. Unlike the military drugs, these didn't contain the anti-abuse components. It is fortunate that controlling this thing doesn't take much of Vanca's attention. It had taken the best part of a hundred kiloseconds to get this near the surface, but even without the drugs Vanca had no desire to sleep any time soon, not now she knew the pony had unfettered access.

Periodically the tunneller had been shut down so its seismometers could work. The whole population of the vault sat in silence, not moving, not talking, as the instruments listened to the harmonics of the world. On the fifth stop they'd heard the signal, a prearranged set of vibrations, supposedly sent out by friendly forces. If it's not some trap, Vanca thought, part of her wishing it was. At least these ones would get a fast end.

The tunneller cycled again, and there was a sudden rush of cold, smoke-tainted air past its cutting head. A little dirty-brown light leaked through, far dimmer than was expected for the time of day. Vanca let the machine crawl out of the hole, then stepped onto the glassy platform it had generated. All around was a plane of ash, mounded up over indistinct piles of charcoal. Here and there, the carbonised trunks of trees poked up, like jagged, rotten teeth.

Vanca squinted into the chill wind, looking up into the heavy clouds. Too much dust in the air, she thought. It's going to get colder. "Remind Vanca why these ones didn't just stay sealed in the vault?" she grumbled, but the reason had been made clear. Stones, always the Stones. "At least this way Vanca gets to die away from those idiots."

She pressed a claw into the emergency transponder's 'don't push this unless you really mean it' switch, watching as it lit up. A few seconds passed, then the 'acknowledge' indicator flashed. She threw the thing into the ash, half a dozen lengths away, and waited. Behind her, the first of the crawlers came out of the hole, but she didn't watch.

She heard it first, the ragged whine of a damaged ducted fan. The command carrier approached slowly, flopping down onto the ash, dead trees splintering under its bulk. The aircraft was scarred, burned and melted in places by some wide-angle energy beam. Vanca is no expert, but how did that thing even get in the air? Bet it won't lift again.

The side hatch opened and a figure trotted down the ramp, followed by a dozen others. The soldier, helmetless but with Security insignia, nodded to her, then cocked his head to one side. "Academician Vanca?"

"Yes," she said, weaving slightly on her paws as a wave of fatigue passed over her. "Have these ones met?"

"No, but this one has read Vanca's file. This one is Captain Rthar." He held out one paw and she touched the back of it with her own. "Always a pleasure to meet someone who has spent time in the company of the ponies."

It's not Vanca's fault! She nearly snapped the thought out loud, but just nodded. So much for remaining incognito. "That is something Vanca would rather not become common knowledge, Captain."

He nodded, then turned to watch the rest of his crew; they were climbing over the aircraft and inspecting one of the lifter fans while talking in worried tones. "This one understands. It doesn't matter now, in any case. These ones have to save what they can. Rthar places himself and crew at Vanca's disposal."

She barked out a laugh. "Not Vanca. Rthar wants Wendur." She gestured at one of the crawlers. "Who hasn't worked up the nerve to breathe the fresh air. Vanca is sure she will have plenty of orders." She grinned savagely at his suddenly weary look. "This one suspects Rthar already knows what is intended. There is a cave complex several hundred kilolengths south of Arcology Three; that will be our secondary camp, once the impact winter effects have subsided. This one assumes it is still there?"

He nodded. "No strikes were wasted on unpopulated areas. At least these ones have crawlers... the carrier isn't safe to fly anymore. Perhaps the Academician could assist this ones' crew, and salvage anything useful?"

At least Rthar didn't start with a question about the Stones. "It is probably for the best that most of the technology will fail. Vanca takes it that Rthar also had Gravity's dream?" Rthar nodded, his expression unreadable. "Vanca thinks that the ponies will leave these ones be, if the People can remain beneath their notice."

"Like insects under the hooves of the new gods," Rthar murmured, half to himself. "With luck the ponies won't change their minds and decide to exterminate the People once and for all."

Vanca sighed, staring up at the damaged carrier. Everything this one has worked for came to naught and Vanca is reduced to this. Still, the problem is an interesting one. Mind starting to pick at what she'd need to do to convert the carrier into the seed of an industrial base, and any thought or desire for sleep evaporating, Vanca walked off without a backwards glance.

45 - A final solution

Author's Note

A full plot summary can be found here. Do not read unless you are up to date! Spoilers!
Preread by: turol, NoeCarrier and Caliaponia.

45 - A final solution

Gravity smiled, her eyes still closed, and picked up all six of the Stones. Next to her, Fusion slept, oblivious to what she'd been doing all this time. The rush of power, familiar from previous nocturnal missions, was quickly ignored. I told you I'd be back for you, Salrath. Fusion thinks you are dead, burned in the ruins of Naraka. If you think I'll let you kill yourself, you are very much mistaken. All her other preparations were complete, things done at great distance or in little bits of time stolen when Fusion was busy or distracted. Sister, you wouldn't understand.

Carefully, she stood and quietly walked away, leaving Fusion alone on the high altitude meadow. She dusted the area with tripwire magics, things that would alert her if Fusion awoke or was approached. She stepped to the edge of the dropoff, the spread her wings and jumped, gliding silently down into the darkness. When the distance was great enough, she vanished in a flash of violet light--

~~~discontinuity~~~

===

There was a flash of light, bright enough to be dazzling even through Salrath's closed eyelids. She flinched, then held still. The grid-work deckplates, padded with spare sets of body armour, were gone, replaced by smooth, cold stone. Heart racing, the Agent remained curled in the position she'd been, feigning sleep. The air smelled different, cleaner and colder, with a musty tang and overlain with the slightly herbal scent of pony. It was a pony she recognized: not Fusion Pulse, but its sister.

Salrath inhaled sharply, turning the audible breath into a sleepy sigh, as she remembered the last time she'd seen Gravity Resonance. Muzzle twisted in rage, irresistible magic slamming her against the wall over and over again until bones broke and she passed out. Throat suddenly dry, Salrath tried to swallow, then grunted as something hard struck her in the ribs, all the air rushing out of her lungs.

"I know you are awake, Agent. Rise and shine, time to smell the ashes of the fires you lit." There was a smile in that voice, the words coloured by a vindictive joy. "This has to be an improvement over that gunship." A sound of something scraping on stone, and through slitted eyes Salrath saw the hoof draw back for another kick.

With a convulsive jerk, she rolled away and came up on one knee. Eyes wide, she looked wildly from side to side, taking in the vaulted ceiling and tall, close-packed shelves stacked with anonymous packing crates. The only source of light was the pony's horn, a deep violet radiance that was hard to focus upon and created deep, impenetrable shadows. The style of the boxes was familiar: drab grey and with ridges designed for easy stacking, they were all marked with code references and terse descriptions of their contents. This is a military supply chamber.

The pony stood a few paces away and looked down at her with every evidence of happiness. Why has the pony pulled this one out of-- A sudden sensation of dread made Salrath's empty stomach twist. "This one is no Agent, she is Rinchur. This one thanks the pony for saving--"

"Oh, shut up. I am inside your head, Salrath. You cannot lie to me." Gravity cocked her head, lips drawing back from large, blunt teeth. Liquid darkness spread out from her like a pool, fighting with the already dim hornlight. "You are unbelievable, Agent, but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. I always knew you were far worse than the typical dog, even before I got into your head. How have you been sleeping lately?" Its smile grew, the violet shadows sharpening its teeth.

Salrath shuddered, then her ears flattened and she drew her lips back to expose stained teeth. "Get out of this one's mind, pony!"

"Oh no, Agent, I don't think so. With all the damage you've done, I thought you and I needed to have a little chat."

Violet telekinesis wrapped itself around Salraths's head, dragging her forwards. Paws scrabbling at the ground and pulled off balance, she fought the pull but did little more than hurt the muscles in her neck. Muzzle to muzzle, Gravity turned her head slightly from one side to another, studying her like she was livestock. Salrath tried to claw at the pony's eyes and face, but her paws were held at bay, by more magic.

"Stuck underground all this time... I wonder if you know what the world looks like now?"

There was a pressure inside her head, a sense of violation as something irresistible imposed itself on her mind. Memories of things Salrath had never seen, never even thought about, appeared fresh and perfectly clear in the centre of her awareness. The bright flashes of countless nuclear explosions and asteroid impacts, forests and farmland burning under a soot-black sky.

Salrath shook her head, but it was like she was encased in armourcrete. Her jaws were free, so instead she snarled and snapped, trying bite Gravity's muzzle. The telekinesis shifted, holding her jaws shut and only permitting a muffled growl. She struggled against the magic, trying to find some way to strike at the pony.

Gravity's smile vanished and she scowled. "You just don't care, do you? Your world is gone!"

This one hopes the pony's family burned slowly when the corrals were nuked. She couldn't spit the words in Gravity's face, but put as much venom and hate into the thought as she could manage. The pony's kind will go extinct just like everyone else--

Desolation, a sudden sense of horror from a million minds, trapped, buried, burned or blasted, settled on Salrath; the feeling of a whole world screaming and thrashing as it died. Eyes wide and staring out into cramped and broken spaces filled with the not-quite-dead, she went limp, her ears and tail drooping.

"Oh, you finally felt something, did you?" The pony pushed her away, hard enough to make her crash into the nearest crate. "Without you, none of this would have happened, you know that? When you had the corral under Arclight suppression and half-killed my dam, you showed everypony what the rule of the Masters was really like. Think how much harder it would have been to convince everypony without that." Salrath's lips curled into the start of a snarl, then Gravity pushed her again. "She's been healed and survived everything you dogs could throw at us. You failed at everything."

Staring back at her, Salrath's shoulders slumped. "Kill this one, then," she spat. "Or Salrath will do it herself."

Force fields flashed and Gravity cut away a sliver of a packing crate, fashioning it into a stubby blade and throwing it at Salrath's paws. The shard had the liquid edge of something truly sharp and she snatched it up, holding it to her own throat. "Salrath won't let the pony torment her." The muscles of her arm bulged, but the knife didn't move, just vibrated slightly. Gasping, she dropped it. "What has the pony done?"

"You don't think I'll allow you the easy way out, do you?" Gravity's smile returned and became wide and lazy. "I told you I've been inside your head." She waved a wing, taking in the endless shelves. "This is a supply bunker for one of the shelters. The shelter didn't make it, but by some fluke this chamber did. It's isolated by hundreds of lengths of collapsed tunnels. I may have also fused quite a lot of the rock, just to make sure."

"Why?" Anger gone, the fear and helplessness nearly overwhelming, Salrath felt the matted fur bristling along her neck, She looked around frantically, finally understanding why she was here.

"You are going to live for a very, very long time, Agent," Gravity said, her gentle tone belying her savage expression. Salrath started to back away, her tail tucked between her legs. "I've been in your head, but I've also been in Fusion's and my dam's. If you thought your dreams were bad before, just remember that I know what you did, and what it felt like..." Her voice lowered, becoming a whispery hiss, and her violet hornlight turned her eyes into shadowed pits.

--a sense debilitating terror. There was a shadowy figure standing over her, something sharp held too close to focus on, then pain and the feeling of incredible loss--

--fear and a desperate hope, the need to know overwhelming every warning caution. Words, cruel and barbed, the worst possible news, then impacts on her wings and the splintering of delicate bones. Pain, more pain than she could bear, but never the blessed release of oblivion--

Salrath finally screamed, and kept screaming even as the pony vanished with a thump and a flash of violet light, leaving her in darkness.

===

~~~discontinuity~~~

--wings flicking out, Gravity soared above the valley, coming down a few lengths from Fusion. Her sister looked up, yawning. "You're up early." She stretched, eyes drawn to the eastern sky and Celestia just below the horizon.

Gravity smiled, and in her head watched as Salrath shakily got to her paws and ran, desperately searching the bunker for some way out. "Just felt the need to stretch my wings, Fusion. You know how much I love an early morning. Oh, I sent out the dream to everypony... shall we get started on that shield?"

===

The world spun below his hooves, like somepony was levitating a ball as he flew overhead. It was definitely the world, Modulus recognised it from the broad-brush images used as part of the weather team pathfinding, but the spin was far too fast. Once a breath the world spun, ordered curls of cloud churning and boiling like flames.

Points of light bloomed, like a pawful of metal filings thrown into a fire, across the surface, knocking holes in the clouds and throwing trails of dark dust into the air. Bigger flashes, each at the end of a streak of light, were scattered across the continents, lofting more dust. A sudden scribble of violet laser-points, concentrated on specific zones and leaving behind black lines.

Modulus felt the clouds, felt with an intense certainty that they had been made dense by gigatonnes of fine particles, felt them settle like a blanket over the world. Unlike the blanket his dam had used when he was very young, this didn't keep the world warm, but kept the heat out. The cold gripped every part of him, leaching down to his bones and freezing--

The view flipped, taking Modulus down through the atmosphere and dropping him in an achingly-familiar valley, the sward covered by the sleeping bodies of ponies he half-knew. He looked for his dam, but she wasn't there; intruding thoughts of heat and fire and a crushing weight on his chest drove him to his knees and made tears spring run down his muzzle.

Something reached in, a sudden sensation of mass and violet glare, squeezing the pain away and hiding it behind an impenetrable barrier. Tears forgotten, Modulus looked up in wonder at the snow-laden clouds hanging pregnant and seemingly close enough to touch. A point of white-gold light flashed directly above, expanding out into a disk that extended from horizon to horizon, clearing the sky and--

Space again, the world a dirty white globe of cloud with only a few, fleeting gaps, spinning even faster than before. There was a difference: in one hemisphere, halfway to the pole, was a disk of clear ground only lightly covered with cloud and ringed with the same white-gold. Around this oasis the dust-contaminated atmosphere boiled, clearing slightly with every rapid rotation. Time passed, hundreds and hundreds of rotations, until the skies cleared all over the world. The circle blinked out and--

--gasping, Modulus struggled to his hooves, wildly looking all around. Other ponies, the ones he'd met when he'd been taken from the suffocating darkness and the silent body of--

He whinnied, shaking off the memory with hard and fast breaths. "What was that?" he gasped, legs trembling.

"The darkness, the world..." Sidereal, a heavily-built grey-coated stallion, moaned, getting to his own hooves. "...what a vivid dream."

Modulus stared at him, as did the other closest ponies. "What did you say? You dreamed about the world, covered in cloud?" Now he was the centre of attention, a circle of stunned faces. "You too?" he said weakly, suddenly self-conscious. "It must be magic, it must be those two!"

"Won't they leave us alone?" Sidereal growled. "Isn't destroying the world once enough for them?"

A wave of sadness passed over Modulus, nearly as intense than the loss of his dam. I didn't even get a chance to be Blessed. "But... why? Why send all of us this dream?" It must be everypony, he thought, watching similar intense conversations occurring as far as he could see.

"I think it's about the weather," Sidereal said slowly. "I was weather team, and you can't throw this much dust into the air without consequences. Reflects too much sunlight. Impact winter, I've heard it called. We've all seen them do things around these mountains, holding back the storms."

"More and more," Modulus muttered, attracting nods from his new herd. "I think they are showing us all what they plan to do, to build a shield that will keep out the cold and the dust."

Sidereal snorted, pawing at the ground. "They want us alive and trapped, so they can be masters over us. I won't have it."

That doesn't seem right, Modulus thought, but kept the idea to himself in the face of the angry muttering. There have been no orders, and I've not even seen them close up since they pulled me out of the rubble.

There was a flash of white-gold overhead, and it came as no surprise to anypony when the light spread from horizon to horizon, settling like a layer of gauze across the sky. There was a deep sound, the tolling of a bell the size of an arcology, more felt as movement in the air than heard, and the ground shivered slightly under his hooves.

===

The wind rippled the fur on Ellisif's belly, for once unimpeded by a layer of armour. So nice just to fly, she thought, then felt obscurely guilty at enjoying it so much when all the ponies were forever rendered flightless. The dirty clouds were far below her paws, with only the tops of the taller mountains poking through. The cleared area of the ponies' domain was on the horizon, a surreal patch of green laced by grey rock.

"Are you sure we are far enough away?" she muttered into her command collar, casting one eye back to the gunship that was shadowing her. This was one of the electronic warfare versions, packed with sensors and ECM, flown by a quartet of combat engineers who'd pretty much begged to be allowed to watch.

"Should be," the voice came back, with less certainty than Ellisif would have liked to hear.

Right. How much longer--? There was a warble in her earpiece, the sound of an alarm in the gunship's cockpit.

"Thaumic alarm!" Baugr said, the excitement obvious. "By the Maker, I'm seeing an exponential rate-of-rise and it's still going! Standby." There was more excited chatter, but Ellisif ignored it.

A thin line of white-gold spread across the sky, far higher than Ellisif's flight altitude, slowly growing thicker. Roof of the dome-- The glow abruptly slammed down, changing from a horizontal bar to a vertical wall that cut the world in two. Far off to each side, it seemed to curve inwards, ever so slightly.

"How far?" It looked close enough to touch, but the distance was impossible to judge, even by gryphon eye.

"Three kilolengths, give or take," Baugr said, sounding distracted.

Ellisif wheeled about, heading for the gunship's deployment hatch. "That will do," she said, curving around the ducted fan exhausts and alighting on the edge of the troop compartment. "Let's go home." Home, a new mountain fastness, one of a set of caverns hollowed from bare, high-altitude granite. There were a thousand things to do to ensure her people established themselves in this new world.

===

All six Stones circled Fusion's head, maintaining their precise positions as she gracelessly folded her legs and lay down, breathing heavily. She let the connection fade, turning them back to plain rocks and passing three back to Gravity. "That's it," she said. "I'll need to put in a little power every few tens of kiloseconds, but it's stable."

Gravity turned a slow circle. The edge of the field was too far away to see, lost in the atmospheric haze, while overhead it had faded to invisibility, only appearing in patches when some bit of infalling debris struck it. "Nice work," she said, smiling. "I won't be sorry to stop that weather control.”

"I'll tweak the solar input, to help with the grazing. Over this area the effects should be more predictable. Did you notice how fast the grass was growing?"

Gravity nodded. "Yes. Not quite as fast as the farms around the corral, but it does show that some of their magic has survived. There is some hope, at least."

"How long will it take, do you think?"

Gravity shrugged. "We can go out and check every so often, but you've covered enough area that there's no rush." She looked thoughtful, staring up at the sky. "I hope it's not more than a hundred megaseconds."

"Three winters..." Looking tired, Fusion sighed. "At least we can keep them safe until they have the skills to survive without magic."

===

Harq sniffed at the air, keen crystal eyes probing the horizon. There was a hint of radionuclides on the wind, a few counts per second of the particular kind he'd been hunting for ever since the breeding chamber stocks started to run low. The skies had cleared since the end of the orbital bombardment, almost thirty megaseconds ago, as the carbon soot and rock dust had settled out of the stratosphere. It was still cold, cold enough that out in the open he had to contract his thorium-cycle heart to keep the blood in his extremities molten.

Up ahead was the enrichment facility he'd been looking for, a task that would have taken seconds if he'd still had access to the military databases. That, and the voices that had cajoled, ordered or shouted before his every move, was gone. He didn't miss them, but the extra work had been frustrating. Crouched in a shallow scrape, wings furled and tail neatly coiled around his hindquarters, he studied the facility's surface installations. They were damaged, peppered by falling rock fragments and scorched on one side from the thermal flash of a nearby laser strike from the white pony, but nothing had actually scored a direct hit.

Harq watched a little longer, the cold, still air as clear as if it was at the border of space. Exhaust stacks and fine particle filters lay cracked open and ruined; this was the likely source of the nuclear material he'd sensed. It was perfect, except for... There was movement, bipedal figures and armoured vehicles, around the base. A military unit, cut off by the destruction of the general command, had found the place, no doubt because it was too inconsequential to have been on the strategic target lists.

There was a stirring under one of his wings, enough to jostle his head and disturb his view. Slowly pulling his neck in, he looked down and frowned. "Be still," he rumbled quietly, then shook his head and looked stern as the response came in a blip of radio. "Voice only, little one. Electromagnetic energy carries far more easily than sound."

The shape, a miniature version of his own form, shrank back a little, then looked up, her eyes glittering fiercely in the warm gloom under his wing. "Don't call me that!" High-pitched and full of anger, the voice was still quiet. "My name is Isha."

Harq smiled, showing a mouth full of obsidian teeth backlit by a glimmer of hard ultraviolet. "Quite right, Isha, I am sorry." It was obvious she was a little cold, struggling to maintain her heart's output above the point necessary to remain active. Higher was not be a problem, but her small size meant a relatively low thermal inertia, and little margin of error when at minimum power for stealth. "Not long now. Do you want to return to your sisters?"

"No!" Isha said loudly, then looked contrite as Harq flinched. "Sorry," she whispered. "No. I want to help."

There was an eagerness to every line of her sharp little body, her deep red scales flexing as she squirmed. You are so different from me, Harq thought. Finer features, with a longer tail but shorter, broader wings. And female, of course. The dogs make all their creatures able to breed, he thought, looking down at her with mixed feelings. High genetic diversity, the military Academicians had said, something that they had thought was very important. You are growing quickly... we must secure more food. Isha had already talked about having eggs of her own. Given her eagerness to do everything else, the idea was more than a little frightening; 'no' or 'later' would probably not be an option.

"You will," Harq said, jolted from his thoughts when Isha squirmed again. "There is a deep linear valley a quarter kilolength to the north." Lined with black basalt, long cooled from the weapon that had made it. Harq paused again, remembering the violet beams descending from a dim, mottled sun and scratching lines of fire across the land. He opened his mouth to tell Isha again, but she hadn't believed him last time, and shook his head. "Get into the valley and make your way down it until you are close to the facility."

Isha nodded, body warming as her heart contracted. There was a distinct prickle of gamma rays from her torso and blue ionisation licked from between her teeth. "Then I will attack--"

"After I give the signal!"

"--yes, yes. You said. Several times. I am to wait five seconds after you attack, then strike at their flank."

Harq sighed and lifted his wing to let Isha out. She wriggled away, disappearing over the crumbling, glassy ridge that lined the laser-gouged valley. I worry too much. There were three airtanks, all showing signs of battle damage, and a dozen cargo airtrucks in the convoy. They were hull down outside the facility, and had been for two days now, raiding the place for whatever it was that dogs wanted. Even without him, Isha would probably win the engagement. Probably.

He counted in his head, imagining Isha's progress, and worked his way to the top of the concealing scrape, limbs coiled and tense. Pressed flat against the ground, he was probably visible through the tanks' optics if they looked in the right direction, but so far--

A lithe shape darted towards the facility, spraying a jet of blue-white plasma at the closest airtruck. It was armoured, a military vehicle, and didn't explode like she'd probably expected. Inhaling sharply, Harq bit back a curse and jumped forwards, great, bounding leaps that turned into a mad gallop. Wings out, he took off, skimming over the scorched rubble and accelerating rapidly.

Ahead, the dogs were responding. They had people in the airtanks, and one immediately lifted on a blast of dust, its stubbly turret blinking open a wide, laser eye. The other two, heavier railgun units, were slower to respond and he ignored them, holding the breath next to the glassy organ in his throat. The U235 within flashed into vapour as his gas-core weapon reactor briefly went prompt critical before settling. The air in his gullet, already a plasma, reached temperatures high enough to shed soft X-rays.

Green light flashed from the first airtank, splashing a lurid glare of orange ionisation against Isha's flank. She screamed, twisting out of the beam and dropping into temporary cover behind one airtruck. Harq roared, jaws opening to spit out a plasma ring vortex at the laser vehicle. Guided by his power, it crossed the fast-reducing distance in less than a tenth of a second, striking it square amidships. The airtank exploded with a crack and a blue-white flash of broken superconductor, fragments of ceramic armour thrown in wide arcs.

The remaining tanks were moving now, focussed on him rather than Isha, and he spat twice more to turn them into burning ruins. Wings wide and braking furiously, he landed amid the airtrucks, striking out in all directions. The fight was short and brutal; without heavy weapons the dogs couldn't even hurt him. The final few tried to flee, and he looked on with silent approval as Isha chased them down and tore them apart.

She finally returned, eyes bright and body glowing in the high infrared, dragging one carcass with her. Some of her excitement faded at his expression. Silently, he inspected her injury; she'd lose a line of scales but the natural armour had done its job. "And what was today's lesson?" he asked, looming over her.

Isha cringed, joy evaporating in a sudden surge of obvious fear. "I... I didn't wait," she said, bowing her head. "That was stupid."

"Yes, it was," Harq rumbled, "we are tough but not indestructible." This was probably a better outcome than an outright victory, he thought, eyeing her critically, then nodding. "Remember this. I do not give you instruction just to make your life difficult." He gestured at the broken body she was still gripping in one foreclaw. "What do you plan to do with that?"

Isha looked down and made a humming noise, then looked up at him. "I can't eat it?"

"The armour might be useful, but not the dog. Too wet. Leave it," he said, gesturing to the facility's main entrance. The scent of useful radionuclides was stronger now, and most enticing. Obediently, she dropped the body and they both started to walk towards the big door. "There are much nicer things inside."

As they forced their way inside, Harq thought about the other eggs, now all hatched, and the younger females guarding the tiny infants. There's enough here for all of us, for a while. I'll need to find another den... It would have to be somewhere warm; the few isotopic incubators would not be sufficient for their burgeoning population. ...perhaps a volcano. There's bound to be some new ones after all those asteroid strikes.

===

Fusion shuffled her hooves, waiting in the dark. Her personal power was suppressed and her connection to Celestia shut off, leaving her mane its original pale pink. Will he come... what will he say? The question she'd asked Packet had been, at best, impertinent. Her hind quarters itched and she felt warm just thinking of him, the heavy muscles along his neck, the line of his muzzle--

She shook her head, dispelling the distracting daydream. Spiral did say that the first estrus would hit hard without the dog's breeding suppressors, once the seasons turned. I wonder if he'll even risk meeting me? Despite the desire and the shame and confusion associated with it, the need to know if there was a practical, organic way to rebuild ponykind overwhelmed everything.

I'm sure Grav has been trying something similar, she thought. Her sister hadn't said anything, and Fusion hadn't asked, but the smell of other, unfamiliar, ponies on her sister's coat could really only come from one thing. Must maintain genetic diversity, she thought firmly, the idea suddenly exciting, if this works I'm going to have to do this for the foreseeable future, with as many stallions as possible. Actually, it's a pity I'm not a stallion, things would be much faster!

The nearest group of ponies was several kilolengths away, far enough that only the faintest scent was carried on the breeze. Fusion stared into the darkness, but even with the faint meteor sky-glow there wasn't enough light to really see anything other than simple shades of grey. High above, the chaotic dance of debris ring objects had been tamed into elegant filigrees interspersed by delicate patches of gas.

She's getting better and better, Fusion thought, lost in the beauty of the night's sky. A genius, to turn a planetary defence task into a work of art... The pattern slowly changed as she watched, keeping her attention.

"Fusion," Packet said, looming out of the darkness. "Found you."

Fusion let out a little nicker of surprise, then turned to face him. "Don't sneak up on a pony!" she said. Especially as I might rip you in half by accident.

"Sorry," he said, not sounding particularly contrite. "Well, here we are."

"Yes, here we are." Fusion's voice was thin and high, even to her own ears. "Did you talk to Random? It's good the two of you are getting on so well... she deserves somepony special after all that was done to her." And what about me and all I've been through? We won, and that should have counted for something. The little voice in her head sounded bitter and jealous, enough to make her ears fold back before she could get control of her emotions.

Packet didn't notice, or at least didn't react. "Yes, she does. Most of the orphan foals have settled enough to look after themselves and spend most of their time in the education creche. She's... she's actually happy." He looked down at his hooves for a moment, then turned his head away, unable to keep the pride from his voice. "We're expecting our first sometime next year. "

Oh... that's torn it. A bitter taste filled Fusion's mouth and her stomach sank. He'll never agree now. "Congratulations!" The word came out like she was being strangled, and Packet looked at her sharply. "Sorry, things have been a little stressful lately. I just feel so... isolated." She gave him a wan smile, backing away with her wings half spread, ready for takeoff. "Thank you for coming to see me in person; it meant a lot." Perhaps Grav had the better idea, starting with a pony she'd never met. Her wings lifted and she crouched slightly--

"Wait!" Packet spread his own, useless, wings, then refolded them, cursing under his breath. "It's not what you think. Random doesn't hate you, you know, and neither do I. You saved her life, gave her purpose. Neither of us will forget what we owe you, even if nopony else understands. On a pragmatic level, it makes a lot of sense. Who knows what the new foals will be like, and nopony has recovered even a hint of magic. We have to rebuild."

He stepped up to Fusion's side, nuzzling at the base of her neck. "So of course I'll help with your little... problem. Random was very insistent." His voice became indistinct, muffled by her mane. "She also said I was to do my very best to make you happy."

Not quite the romantic first encounter I'd been dreaming of, but it still beats an order from the Eugenics Board. Fusion let out a quiet gasp, feeling her tail twitch involuntarily to one side, and surrendered to the wonderful things Packet was doing to her.

===

Spiral looked up at the sky and frowned. I'm sure the day is longer than it should be. She shook her head and focused on picking through the tangled mess of fallen branches, moss-covered and slick, that filled the forest floor. The stained remains of her medical kit hung loose across her withers, depleted of most of their original equipment but holding some improvised tools. "Got to be an easier way to do this," she muttered, then sighed with relief as Gravity dropped through the canopy to land next to her.

"How are you, Spiral?" she asked, brushing muzzles with the other mare. "No, don't tell me, you'll only have to repeat it for Fusion." Her horn flashed violet--

~~~discontinuity~~~

"--little warning would be nice!" Spiral snapped, ears flicking back then relaxing a moment later. "Sorry. Thank you for not making me walk the rest of the way."

They had moved a considerable distance, and were much closer to the edge of the force wall. In contrast to the blue sky and isolated clouds overhead, behind the wall there was a thick layer of fog and haze, shedding swirling snow. Fusion was there, facing the white-gold barrier a few kilolengths away, her eyes closed. High overhead, the sun moved a little to one side, then the six points of brilliance circling her head dimmed and dropped to the ground. "Hello, Spiral, we weren't expecting you for another day."

She's moving the sun again? Spiral gestured upwards. "Problem?"

"Not really... but the fight we had seems to have knocked things loose somewhere. The sun won't stay put and I have to keep adjusting its position."

"Moon too, and the debris ring. Space-time isn't nice and regular anymore." Gravity gave a little cough, slightly embarrassed. "My fault you got the day wrong. Dreams can be tricky when I'm trying for a light touch." She smiled, ruffling her wings, "Still, it's not like any of us have full schedules. Thank you for agreeing to come."

Knocked something loose... in the universe?! Spiral froze for a second, then shook her head. "You are still my patients, although I'm not sure how much I can help. Gravity said you were both trying to get pregnant?"

The sisters glanced at each other, then nodded in unison. "Yes," Fusion said. "I expected to feel something by now, based on what you told us when we were younger. I've tried some basic internal visualisation, but that was never my strong point. I can't see any changes, nor can Gravity."

"Not sure if I could even see anything at this stage," Gravity said. "How big might a foal be?"

"Well, there was nothing wrong with your reproductive systems at your last checkup." That, magic and obedience was all the Board really cared about. She studied the pair. "I take it you started trying as soon as you felt the desire? With what frequency, and did you get covered by multiple stallions?"

"Not at the same time!" Fusion said, her eyes wide and head pulled up. Gravity snorted, hiding a laugh.

"No, Fusion," Spiral said gently. "At different times."

"Oh." Fusion thought for a second, glancing at Gravity. "No. I figured that since Packet and Random seemed so disgustingly fertile..."

"I did," Gravity said without prompting. "We're dispersed enough that it's easy to find a new herd, and we can both pass for normal." She grinned at Fusion. "Although it's easier for me to sneak around in the dark. Stallions need remarkably little encouragement."

"I see..." Spiral reached around, pulling her pack off and mouthing it open. "Well, let's take a look at you." She looked from Fusion to Gravity and back again. "Who's going to be first?"

Gravity winked at Fusion, then trotted off.

"Thanks for that, sis," Fusion muttered, then sighed. "Fine, I guess it will be me." She turned away from Spiral, spreading her hind legs and lifting her tail.

===

"As far as I can tell, you are both in perfect health," Spiral said, "and both very much not pregnant."

Fusion's ears drooped. "Perhaps we've just spent too much time near nuclear explosions."

Gravity shifted position to alleviate the slight soreness under her tail. Magic was much less invasive! "Let's not borrow trouble, Fusion. It's a shame that..." Why would it not be possible? She frowned, staring off into space. "Spiral," Gravity said slowly, "You tried to help us before, but neither of us had any talent for thaumic medicine... but I've been thinking about this for a while. I'd like to try an experiment." She picked up all six Stones, setting them spinning around her head. Her horn glowed, barely visible in the sunlight. Can you hear me?

"I can." Spiral had a funny look on her face; her ears were trying to point inwards. "Oh! Stop, I can't--" She staggered, and Fusion caught her in a telekinetic field.

Warn a pony first! Fusion sent to Gravity.

"Sorry." Never get anything done at this rate! she thought privately, ignoring Fusion's annoyed tone. Close your eyes.

Spiral did, and became more steady. "I can see out of your eyes. We can still share?"

"I think we can go further... try some magic." Gravity made a conscious effort to relax, feeling the edges of Spiral's mind blur a little and merge with her own. Her power lashed out, scoring a groove in the ground and making Fusion shy away. Again. The second attempt was more controlled, and the selected rock floated in the air, doing careful figure of eights before it was replaced.

"That is the strangest sensation," Spiral said, tears in her eyes. "I think I can see what you have in mind."

I wonder what else you saw, Gravity thought, remembering a sealed cave and its lone, still living, occupant. Perhaps she missed it. "You can practice. Want to try some actual medicine now, perhaps some diagnostics?"

Fusion followed the work with a keen interest, hovering at the edges of the shared mental space, but saying nothing. Spiral scanned both sisters down to the finest detail, then started to manipulate the plant cells in a nearby tree. This is amazing! I need to see if I can heal a real pony, Spiral thought, I can help Lilac to walk again.

"We can't just experiment on somepony!" Fusion said, her voice harsh.

Spiral made Gravity reach forwards with one wing, brushing away Fusion's forelock, exposing the white marble of her artificial eye. "I can replace that," she said, the words slightly mangled through Gravity's vocal cords. "These Stones make complex treatment tasks very easy, now that I understand how to work through the sharing."

Fusion looked doubtful, then opened her mouth and closed it again. "There are quite a few who would benefit from this," she said thoughtfully. "So much improvement to their quality of life." She was silent, then nodded. "Okay, if you are sure."

===

Fusion settled to her belly on the grass, forelock brushed back from her face. "What do you want me to--" A violet haze clamped down on her head, and the side of her face went numb. --do? she finished through the sharing. The connection narrowed, closed down from Gravity's end, until it was little more than a whisper.

Sorry. I'm still fine tuning the amount of effort I need to put in. The mental tone was a curious blend of Gravity and Spiral, and seemed to echo slightly, like there was a delay. This would normally take a megasecond of regular sessions, but I think I can do it a little quicker...

There was pressure, and the white prosthetic popped out to be caught and deposited a short distance away. The sudden empty feeling made Fusion's head feel lopsided, and she resisted the urge to squint. Gentle force closed her lids over the socket, followed immediately by a tingling, wriggling sensation and flashes of rainbow colour and odd shapes where before there had only been darkness. There was more pressure, a feeling of something expanding inside her head, but it was over in moments and the magic abruptly cut off.

Eyes still tightly shut, Fusion looked left and right under the closed lids, feeling the motion from both sides of her face. "Is that it?!" she asked, sounding shocked.

"I think so," Spiral said, no longer present in the sharing. "Open your eyes, Fusion." She sounded slightly awestruck.

Fusion did, wincing at the brilliance of the sun and wiping away sudden tears. "It's..." She looked around, to the horizon and back at the fur on her forelegs."Perfect, Spiral. Just as good as before--" She swallowed, clearing her throat and not meeting Gravity's gaze, her mind full of the memory of a little black knife.

"Give no thought to Salrath, Fusion," Gravity said, voice thick with emotion. "Spiral, you are a genius."

"Do you think you can fix yourself?" Fusion asked.

The words hung in the sudden silence, both sisters staring at Spiral. She bowed her head and closed her eyes. "The Masters, the dogs, never allowed general medics to work on horn damage or anything to do with its neural connections." She smiled bitterly, returning the stares. "I think we know why. I did get one of the gryphons to take me through Orgon's final data packet, and I agree that the weapon has a genetic component. That's the exclusive domain of the Eugenics Board." She switched her gaze to Gravity. "Did you pull anypony from the Baur technical centres?"

Gravity made a sour face. "I don't think so. Certainly nopony has any guilty dreams about the weapon."

"We'll check again," Fusion said firmly. "Same goes for any of the Baur sites, but I expect they were all nuked. It's a pity this 'agonist' Orgon's data refers to only seems to be a hypothesis, otherwise this would be easy."

"At least I can prevent more suffering. Between Gravity's ability to find a pony's mind and my boosted medical skills, I won't even need to be close. I want to do it now." Spiral stared at Gravity, naked need on her face.

Fusion shivered. "Of course." To have all that skill and not be able to use it, surrounded by maimed ponies. "You don't want to ask them first?"

"No!" The exclamation came from Grav and Spiral simultaneously. Gravity gestured to the medic to continue when Spiral looked a little embarrassed. "Too many won't accept it, coming from you two. This way they can complain after they are better."

===

That was a weird dream. Half-remembered visions of bright rainbows moving like ball-lightning filled his mind, fading rapidly. Lilac yawned and stretched, then felt something unexpected touch his left hind hoof. Half asleep, his body responded by kicking out violently. There was a sudden impact, followed by a metallic clatter. Wide awake and heart pounding, he twisted to stare at his mobility carriage. The thing, a modified version of the one the gryphons had given him and carefully placed within mouth-reach of his sleeping pad, was lengths away and tipped on one side.

"No," he moaned. "Please don't let it be damaged." Forelegs and wings working, he started to crawl towards the carriage, hind legs twitching as he dragged them along. He froze, then looked around at his body. The left hind twitched again, and he felt sensation return as a tingling roar, the worst case of pins-and-needles he'd ever experienced. Freezing in place, Lilac held his breath until the sensation -- not pain, but close enough -- subsided.

Eyes wide and still not breathing, he pulled on muscles that hadn't worked for megaseconds, letting it out in an explosive neigh when the leg responded.

Shakily, and with much effort, Lilac levered himself to all four hooves and took a first hesitant step.

===

"That's it," Gravity said, opening her eyes to see Fusion watching her.

Spiral, eyes shining with unshed tears, stared at the rising sun for a few moments, apparently lost in thought. "It was so wonderful to help ponies again." She smiled, the tears making damp tracks in the fur of her muzzle. "I got to see Lilac walk."

"I was following the magic," Fusion said softly, "and wondering what else we could do, if we can find a pony with the right skillset who would be willing to work with us."

Gravity touched noses with Spiral, then turned to Fusion. "What, though? We can build something, any bit of technology you want, or any structure. Weather..." She looked thoughtful. "I did consider that while I rechecked who we have. All weather team skills are very much local; global climate isn't something we should play with, I think."

Mouth suddenly dry, Fusion shook her head. "We might push the system further from equilibrium, perhaps into some new stable and more hostile regime. Better we let the world recover by itself, if it can." What else could we do? "Any ideas?"

"There is something, something Sinter said we were good at: destruction. She was right..." Gravity said, face expressionless. "I can find ponies and gryphons, and finding the dogs is no different." Her voice became hard. "We could make sure nothing like this ever happens again. I could find them all and you--" She nodded at Fusion. "--could flood their bolt holes with hard radiation."

Spiral's ears drooped and she stared at Gravity, open mouthed. "You can't be serious!" She looked at Fusion. "Tell me you won't go along with this?"

We could, we really could. Fusion swallowed, pushing back at her immediate horror. Would you even need my help, Grav? she sent.

No, I would not, came the reply through the sharing. It would be trivial to tie space-time into little knots that would turn them into bloody paste and crushed bone.

But you won't, will you? Please? Not without dire need.

No, I won't. "It might even be a kindness, all things considered. So many are trapped in the dark, waiting to die by thirst or starvation." Gravity shrugged and flicked her wings.

"Couldn't you get them out?" Spiral whispered the words, her voice turning into a foal's whimper.

"And do what with them? Millions upon millions of meat eaters. We should do what they did to us and the gryphons, and feed them to each other." Gravity snorted, shaking her head. "You would all be practically helpless in the face of that starving horde. Better that they die, quick and clean."

"I don't think we have to go that far, Grav. They've knocked themselves back to the stone age. I won't be party to a genocide."

"We are already party to a genocide! It's the one good thing they did for us, to not let us die in pain." A flicker of disgust crossed Gravity's face and she waved a wing dismissively. "I only make the suggestion. Most will die in any case. Fair enough, Spiral. I will not dictate their fate, I will just watch them and see what they do. I've already given them a warning. Aside from that, anything else we could do?"

"Aside from genocide, you mean? I don't know," Spiral said slowly, still sounding a little stunned. "We have food, the climate is kind..." She nodded to Fusion. "...I think it would be a bad thing to give us everything we need. Keeping busy and being in charge of our fate will be a good defence against despair."

'We' and 'us', Fusion thought, ears drooping slightly. That doesn't include Gravity and I. "I understand. Please remember we are here if you need help."

Spiral nodded, starting to back away. "I should get back and answer some questions." She paused, then sighed. "I had another look at you both, between helping ponies. There's nothing wrong with your reproductive tracts. I don't know why you cannot conceive... but the weapon does have a genetic component." She looked downcast, not meeting their gaze. "It seems likely that is the cause. I'm sorry."

Fusion watched her go, then slumped slightly. "Well... that's that. Not even the same species anymore."

"It's a real kick in the face," Gravity whispered, voice hollow and rough, stepping to Fusion's side and leaning against her. "Don't fret, sister. They are all our foals now."

===

"It's still smaller than I'd expected," Spiral said, chewing at her lips and studying Doppler's belly, "even though you are a little early. When do you think you conceived?" She glanced between Doppler and Redshift, who both looked guilty. "I've told you before -- a lot of ponies are in your position. It's only natural. I think you are just the first to come to term." She grinned at them, trying to put the pair at ease. I felt the urge myself, although nothing has come of it. That brought back memories of time stolen with Trocar, and the wicked thrill of mating without the consent or management of the eugenics board.

"Not sure," Doppler said, "we started pretty much as soon as the days grew longer and I came into season." She gasped, belly rippling.

"Well, that foal is coming out, and sooner rather than later," she said, suddenly all business. Thank the Maker that complications are so rare! I can at least seem confident, even if there is precious little I can do. She nosed open her meagre medical bag, pulling out a length of soft rope, already tied into a loop, and laying out the few tools she had commissioned, painstakingly carved and shaped from dense, seasoned pine, then lay her head on Doppler's flank, listening intently.

"Sounds normal to me." Heart rate is up, but that's not surprising. She sniffed, smelling Doppler's sweat along with the grass and mud. "There have been plenty of other births, all those Naraka mares, and we've not had any problems yet. Loads of foals for yours to play with."

Spiral thought about the crystal that Gravity had given her, sitting in her medical pack. A slender hexagonal crystal of rose quartz carrying a simple spell that would be activated by enough hoof-pressure to snap it. Not yet, I won't call them yet. There's no distress, to dam or foal.

"I...Oh!" Another ripple across Doppler's belly, then a wet noise and the odour of blood, salt and amniotic fluid.

Spiral busied herself with what little she could do, mostly keeping Doppler calm and Redshift out of the way. The birth progressed in the same way as all the others she'd attended, and before long the foal was out, still shrouded by the birthing membrane. It moved, ripping the milky film and pulling it away. Spiral flinched, her ears folding back, then forced them to relax.

The tiny foal, light copper-brown coat made darker by amniotic fluid, moved her legs weakly, trying to shed the membrane. So small, like she's ten megaseconds premature... Spiral used a set of modified preening tongs to pull the rest away, then carefully used a bundle of dry moss to wipe away some of the mucus from the little filly's nose and mouth. So small, but still perfectly formed, except no wings, not even stubs. She ran the tongs along the filly's flank, but the skin was smooth and unbroken.

She looks like the non-sapient ponies, the ones the dogs kept on nature reserves. A sudden crushing dread settled on Spiral, enough to make her knees tremble. Is this what the antimagic weapon has really done? It wasn't enough to just strip away our power, but to turn us back to before the Stones changed us--

She dropped the tongs, nuzzling at the filly's sparse forelock. Just like her flanks, the skin there was perfectly smooth under a layer of thin, fine fur. There was no trace of a hornbed, and no sign that one would ever grow there. Spiral sighed, feeling numb, then stepped back and let Doppler turn and look. The mare gasped, a look of horror on her face. "What is she?"

"Your filly is fine," Spiral said, words containing an iron certainty that her heart didn't feel, then looked more closely at the foal, thinking about everything she knew about the ancestral pony forms. Similar, but not the same! "She lacks wings and a horn, and she's small, but she looks normal." With one wingtip, Spiral traced the filly's head from muzzle to poll. "She has the cranium dimensions I'd expect for a pony of her size." She fixed them with a hard stare, putting all of her conviction into it. "Your foal is not just an animal."

Doppler stood, twisting around to nuzzle and lick at the filly's muzzle and face. Redshift crowded close and Spiral stepped back a little further, giving them space. She watched them getting to know their foal, watched their worry turn to joy as the filly staggered to her hooves and took a first, faltering step.

Perhaps it will be enough, she thought, mind turning to the hundreds of other pregnancies that were coming to term throughout the valleys inside the force dome. It better be.

In the next half year there were over six thousand foals born, none of which had either horn or wings.

Epilogue: no more masters

The pair of ponies, one white and one a deep midnight blue, lay on a hilltop overlooking one of the settlements. Down in the valley it was a hive of activity; crude carts were being filled with baskets of food, prepared lumber and the few precious tools the villagers had managed to assemble from scrap material. The ponies worked in little groups, teams of two or three that moved with the choreographed ease of long practice, each member knowing exactly what the others were going to do. Very few spared a glance for the pair on the hill.

Darting around the frantic preparations were the long-legged shapes of the foals. Out of the fifty or so that were visible in this group, all were the same, and all were bare of both horn and wings. In all other respects they seemed like perfectly normal foals: getting in the way and making far more noise than should have been possible for beings of their size.

Faint sounds of their chatter reached the top of the hill, all the things foals normally shout about. Perhaps their wings and horns will come back, when enough generations have passed. Fusion shivered, holding her wings tight against her flanks. I should be thankful the foals can do as much as they can. What would have happened if they weren't smart enough to talk? "Do you think they'll ever forgive us?" she asked Gravity .

The other mare shook her head, flicking her mane out of her eyes. "Eventually, when their foals have grown. It will take a long time for all the effects of the Blessing to wear off."

Fusion nodded sadly. When you have lived with total obedience, with beings you were taught were the direct descendants of the Maker of all things... "I just wish that they weren't teaching their foals to hate us."

"While you are at it, why not wish for foals of our own?" Gravity stretched out one wing and yawned. "Sorry, shouldn't have brought that up. Anyway, not all of them are doing that. I know of one group that isn't. Perhaps it will spread, in time."

"Perhaps. In any case, we can't force them to change their minds." Gravity snorted at this, earning a sharp glance from Fusion. "We've talked about this."

Gravity grumbled quietly to herself, then sighed."No, I suppose not." After that first time, they had discussed it at length, long heated arguments about the merits of trying undo the damage caused by the Blessing. "We can wait them out."

Fusion nodded. "No matter what they think of us, we are still needed -- until they grow strong enough, at least. We will let them make their own mistakes, only interfering when things get desperate. I won't replace the Masters with us."

"No," Gravity said, shivering slightly. "How long do you think we should wait?"

"Several gigaseconds, at least."

"Over sixty years then." No technology meant no accurate clocks, so everypony had gone back to the old style of counting: days and years. "They might have forgotten us. When they see us again it will be like we're completely new ponies."

Wishful thinking, but who knows? "A completely new start." Fusion eyed her sister speculatively, a slight smile tugging at her lips. "It could be like we'd never met. What do you say to new names to go with the new us?"

Gravity smiled back. "Hello, my name is Luna." She deliberately glanced up at the sun, then back at Fusion, her smile widening into a smirk. "Who are you?"

Fusion rolled her eyes. I should have known there'd be no escape from that nickname, she thought. "Celestia, you can call me Celestia."

"Delighted to meet you, Celestia. How about you and I go for a little flight, scout out the route the convoy will take?"

Celestia wrapped her wings around Luna, drawing the mare into a close embrace. "That's an excellent idea, Luna," she said, burying her muzzle in her sister's not-quite-hair mane. "I think we're going to get along very well."

Still smiling, the sisters parted, spread their wings and jumped into the sky. Below, the line of carts had started to move, while all around them played their foals, dancing happily in the bright sunlight.

Happy and, for the first time in a very long time, free.

THE END

Luna and Celestia will return in 'A Method to His Madness.'

Author's Note

Author's final notes.

This story felt a little like a life sentence (without parole) while I was writing it, but it's finally done. Well, this bit, anyway.

A number of folks have helped to bring this thing into the light:
Mm1145 https://www.fimfiction.net/user/4112/mm1145/stories
IcehawkPrime https://www.deviantart.com/icehawkprime
KMCA https://www.fimfiction.net/user/15376/KMCA
Ssokolow https://www.fimfiction.net/user/114397/ssokolow
NoeCarrier https://www.fimfiction.net/user/110407/NoeCarrier
Caliaponia https://www.fimfiction.net/user/18495/Caliaponia
Turol https://www.fimfiction.net/user/85601/turol
...it wouldn't be anywhere near as coherent or as well punctuated without them. Thank you.

I bet you have questions. What will happen to the extant, magicless, alicorns -- are they also immortal, or did they lose that with the magic? Only earth ponies are being born, so what about the other races? The gryphons had all those nukes, what did they do with them? What about batponies and changelings? There are going to be technological remnants from the dogs’ civilisation, what happens to them? What will they do with Discord? How do they actually establish the Equestrian State?

These are left to the reader's imagination, until I get around to filling in the gaps.

1 - Prologue

Days of Wasp and Spider II: Final Solution
by Luna-tic Scientist

Preread by: KMCA
Edited by: ssokolow

=== Chapter 01: Prologue ===

Sector Chief Orgon swept down the hospital corridor at the centre of a travelling zone of Security staff. To either side walked one of the Pit's close-quarters specialists, compact People with the attitude of coiled springs and eyes that never rested. A respectful three paces behind walked a servitor, rubber shod hooves silent on the fused stone floor. The creature was also a highly skilled security operative, and only had one job -- defend her Master against any threat that might penetrate the rest of the cordon, or extract him as fast as possible. Like the pair of combat specialists, the dappled grey mare was in full armour and festooned with equipment -- although, in her case, it was life-saving rather than life-taking.

Out in front of the little group were pairs of armoured gryphons, coursing through the hospital and blocking off corridors and rooms in advance of the Sector Chief's party. Raised voices could often be heard from the other sides of those temporary roadblocks, but no one was going to try too hard to get past three hundred kilos of gryphon, especially when the creature in question wore the decals of the 'Screaming Talons' Ripper group.

No one impeded the Sector Chief.

There was an open door ahead, with an angry looking doctor standing in the entrance. The male, a pale furred individual with tiger-stripe markings on his cheeks, was pointedly ignoring the hulking gryphoness who had one set of metal inlaid talons wrapped around his arm. The doctor's eyes narrowed as he saw the little procession coming down the corridor.

"What is the meaning of this- this disruption!" he said, trying to pull his arm away from the gryphoness' vice-like grip. "This one has patients he needs to attend to and doesn't have time for this circus."

"Thank you for your time, Doctor Hemanth. This one is Sector Chief Orgon of Hive Security." Orgon's reply was calm and measured, something that only served to anger the doctor further.

"This one doesn't care who you are! Either arrest Hemanth or let him go. He has more important things to do than play a part in this theatre." The doctor gave his arm another tug, stumbling when the gryphoness suddenly released him at a signal from Orgon. He glared at the trooper, who stared imperturbably back.

"That will be all, trooper," Orgon said with a nod. The gryphoness snapped her beak in salute, then stepped back to let the People have access to the room. The Sector Chief gestured to the door and smiled. "Doctor, shall we?"

Hemanth clenched his paws, then stalked into the room, followed by Orgon and the dapple grey servitor. The room was packed with machines, some wholly electronic, others hybrids packed with arrays of varicoloured crystals. At the centre of this clutter of instrumentation was a high sided bed, which was occupied by a shrunken and distorted figure, barely recognisable as female. There were odd lumps under the patient's skin, arms and legs twisted like it was an angry child's doll. A cluster of tubes ran down her throat, through jaws wedged open with metal clamps.

At a glance from Orgon, the pony lit her horn and swept a plane of white light through the figure. "Hey! No magic in here, these instruments--" Already alarms were sounding and warning lights strobed on several consoles. The patient twitched on the bed and Hemanth stepped forward, only to be intercepted by one of Orgon's bodyguards. "Servitor, this one orders you to stop!"

"Do not worry, Doctor, I will not allow your patient to die," the mare said, all her attention focused on the bed. Her magic shut off and she turned to Orgon, bowing her head. "Master, Agent Salrath has only been given basic stabilisation treatment. She has fifteen separate temporary circulatory bypass modifications and requires artificial support for kidney and liver function. Bone splinters have been removed from her abdominal cavity, but the broken bones have not been repaired. It will require a significant amount of work to bring her back to operational performance."

Doctor Hemanth threw up his paws. "What does the pony expect? This one's patient was only delivered yesterday and--" he yelled, stopping when he realised that the pony wasn't listening and hadn’t responded with the customary fearful cringe, then rounded on Orgon. "This one knew the patient was one of yours as soon as the servitors flew in through the priority vehicle bay and straight into the triage centre. This one has been stabilised and is awaiting treatment by our trauma specialists. Come back in another megasecond and Security can talk to this... Salrath."

Orgon smiled, a rare genuine smile for one in his line of work. "This one values your candour, Doctor, but that is not an acceptable timeframe. Can the servitor wake the Agent up?"

"Absolutely not, this--"

"Yes, Master. The Agent is being kept unconscious by a series of neural blocks; I will have to remove them all before she can speak. There will be some discomfort if she is to remain lucid." The mare spoke loudly, cutting off the Doctor's words and leaving him open-mouthed in shock. Her horn lit and a glow settled over Salrath's body. She looked at Orgon, who nodded, then closed her eyes.

The figure on the bed twitched slightly but otherwise didn't move. Her eyes snapped open and she screamed, the cry made thin and ragged by the tube down her throat. More flickers from the pony's horn and she relaxed slightly, then her eyes went wide as the tube was withdrawn and the clamps removed from her teeth. She coughed, a dry hacking that made it sound like her throat was full of sand.

"Alive," she croaked, lips curling slightly in a pained grin, then her eyes flicked to the Sector Chief. "Are the servitors dead?"

"This one believes so, but proof will have to wait until the Institute has been excavated. It is possible they are trapped within the beam chamber; detailed scans are not easy through the shielded walls."

"Salrath doesn't trust--" she said, breaking off with a little gasp of pain as the mare's magic made fragments of bone move under her skin.

"No, Orgon would suppose that she would not. This will be checked, if only because the World Court demands it. Unfortunately, the extent of the damage makes it a difficult task, or so the engineers have told this one, so the Auditors have not pressed the issue." The Sector Chief gave a shark-like grin, then nodded in response to Salrath's slight smile in return. "Salrath is to be commended for her actions; she has exposed a grave threat to the Hive... which means that the Agent now has the traditional reward for a job well done. This one feels that there is a task quite suited to Salrath's particular... talents." Orgon turned to the Doctor. "Hemanth is thanked, but his services are no longer required. Security will take responsibility for this patient."

The Doctor looked at Orgon like he was something that should have been passed through an incinerator. "Fine," he said, throwing up his paws and marching angrily out of the room. "Take the Agent and all your filthy animals and get out of this one's hospital."

The Agent pricked up her ears in interest and Orgon smiled inside. Salrath had her gryphon, and this one has Salrath, he thought.

Over the next kilosecond the pair talked through the Security Chief's idea, while the servitor gradually pulled the jigsaw of Salrath's shattered bones back together.

===

The morning after Fusion's recovery was a source of much needed calm. That, and a deep and unshakable feeling of guilt. It took a constant effort of will not to fly to the Sector Security Hub right now and pull Random out of whatever hell the Masters were inflicting on her. Instead, Fusion took low, careful flights around the area, becoming bolder as it became obvious that there was no sign of any Master activity within the range of her eye or her magic.

The wilderness was pristine. Old growth pines covered the sharp-edged hills and ridges, deceptively small for their age. The mare sectioned one to count its rings -- a small one, no more than a few hooves across -- and found they were too small to see without magical aid. A hundred years, at least; the trees living through a short growing season that was very nearly over, if the cold snap in the air was to be believed. "That's something," she said to the forest from a rare clear patch on the top of a ridge line, "too cold to grow anything useful, and the Masters never did have much of a call for wood."

I'm going to have to find something else to call them, she thought, even the language they gave us is riddled with things that reinforce their dominion.

Mind busy, she took a dainty step over a rock, bending her head to nibble from the tips of a stunted pine growing from a crack in one side. They were dark green and tough, but there were some tender buds at the core of the spiky cluster. Her teeth made short work of the small mouthful and Fusion made a face at the astringent taste. Not actually unpleasant, quite refreshing in a way... Her stomach grumbled; a reminder that she'd missed most of yesterday's meals. She looked out at the forest speculatively. Not sure I'd like to fill up on the stuff. That aftertaste was bound to be a defensive chemical.

Fusion took a deep breath, wincing at the sharp jab of pain from her half-healed ribs. --a metal bar, its tip trailing through her fur before the Master brought it down with enough force to crack bone-- The mare flinched anew, the memory stark and fresh. She'd been very careful on the short flights; there was only a generalized ache from her side, nothing more than what you'd expect from bruised muscles, but the stabbing sensation was an unpleasant reminder that she was far from fit. No aerobatics for a while, she thought wistfully, then glided off the ridge and down to their little camp.

Something terrible had happened; Gravity looked as if she had fallen asleep, but was sprawled out on her side like a dead pony. Lilac was staring at her, a look of intense concentration on his face, tongue between his teeth and a flicker of blue light about his horn. Fusion's eyes widened and a flash of horror ran through her like an electric shock. He's using magic--

Later there would be time for regret and self-recrimination, that she'd been so stupid as to trust this youngster who'd had next to no interaction with other ponies for the vast bulk of his short life, but at this moment... Her own power bloomed exponentially, hornlight filling the darkness under the trees as arcane claws sped through the shadow world, ready to shred and tear, more magic building a barrier of force between the stallion and her sister. Energy sufficient to pull the hill apart, focused on a single young pony.

The panic died as Gravity lifted her head, watching Fusion as she slipped between the trunks and landed on the slope. "Sorry, should have warned you," she said, sleepily. "Lilac has been practicing thaumic medicine on me. For the basic stuff he's very good; given training he'll make an excellent medic."

Lilac smiled, finally turning to look at Fusion. His eyes widened and his ears drooped, a faint whinny escaping his lips as he caught a glimpse of the fast fading dregs of Fusion's magic. "Sorry, I didn't mean--"

"No, Lilac, I'm the one who's sorry. You just caught me by surprise, that's all." Fusion stepped closer to examine her sister's side; there was a scar under the fur, but the flesh looked whole, like several months had passed rather than just a few kiloseconds. On the ground next to the ponies was a small pile of sharp-edged metal and stone fragments, all covered with a film of blood. Trust, Fusion thought, there must be trust between us. "That looks like an excellent job, Lilac."

The fear vanished from his face and he smiled up at her tentatively. "Would you like me to do the same for you? I saw what that Master..." He trailed off, swallowing.

Fusion folded her legs and lay next to her sister. Trust, she thought. "Yes, Lilac. I'd like that very much."

11 - A Disposable Asset

Author's Note

Preread by: KMCA
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna), Caliaponia (Just Passing Through) and jimi_betterix (The War Machine, a non pony Dr Who fanfic).

11 - A Disposable Asset

=== Chapter 11: A Disposable Asset ===

Random listened to the drone of the teacher's voice, the warmth and closeness of the low-roofed shelter leaching into her bones and sending her into a comfortable doze where she lay on the soft floor. She couldn't remember the pony's name, but the stallion -- a pale yellow individual that reminded her of Packet, although his mane was silver, rather than off-white -- had a voice that could have been designed to induce sleep.

"--and so it is vital that you do your utmost to follow your Master's orders. Now, we move on to telekinetic manipulation of objects that are out of a pony's line of sight. The aim of this exercise is to refine your ability to detect objects by thaumic feedback in the field itself--"

Despite the teacher's inflexion-less monotone, the whole class was paying close attention. So unlike Backdraft's lessons at the corral, where knowledge was delivered with the aim to entertain, as well as train, that more than a few of the foals had drifted off, only to be jolted awake by little twinges of pain in their chests or bellies. One had managed to actually get to sleep; when his teacher had tapped him on the side of the head with one hoof, there was an instant of perfect horror on the colt's face before the punishment took hold and made him shiver all over.

It hardly seems fair when they are so young-- Random bit off the thought before her own pain could do more than make an ear twitch --but this is the fastest way to learn. Her attention wandering, she turned her head to stare out of the open edge of the shelter, looking out over the expanse of grass and fields to the central structure. Shapes wandered here and there in carefully separated patches of grass. Some were the familiar pastel colours of ponies, while others were steel grey or golden brown, little more than specks at this distance. Unlike the constant motion of the ponies, these were resting in groups under trees or against barriers. The mare shivered slightly; as small as they were, she knew those shapes. Gryphons.

Not that they ever mixed with the ponies, or indeed the other small herds that she'd seen in the distance. Their orders had been strict and uncompromising: do not leave the bounds of the field assigned to you, do not try to contact anypony in a different field. At least our new Masters have forbidden flight, she thought, glancing down at her pitiful wings, so I don't feel quite so out of place. Already, the skin was looking better, and the dark points of pin feathers could be seen easing their way out of her flesh. Not long now; might only be another megasecond...

A dapple grey pony, quite mature in her years, if her grace and economy of motion was anything to judge by, walked quietly into the shelter. The teacher paused when she came into his line of sight, eyes and ears tracking the mare as she walked. For a moment, his ears flicked back and his eyes widened, then the mare seemed to notice his attention, nodding her head. He swallowed heavily, lowering his head to stare fixedly at his students, mouth half open as if at a loss for words. A few of the foals also twitched, obviously wanting to turn around, but kept their attention firmly to the front of the class.

Random watched the little by-play with mounting confusion, looking up at the mare as she folded her legs to lay at her side. The grey turned, gaze seeming to catalogue every fault of Random's body, a look that made the younger mare shuffle her denuded wings in a futile effort to hide them. There was something about the pony, something that made Random feel like she'd been judged and found wanting. She shivered, suddenly doubting her worth despite everything she'd been told since arriving here.

"They talk about you, you know," the grey said, her voice a whisper too faint to even cause the nearest foal's ears to twitch.

"T-they do?" Random cursed the sudden tremor in her voice, but the doubt blossomed into something darker that started to grow spines, twitching and shivering in the muscles of her back. They... who are 'they'?

"The mare who managed to pass enhanced screening almost a gigasecond sooner than the next youngest candidate." The grey looked at her thoughtfully, narrowing her eyes. "I've been told it was an accident, and that you should have been given the same basic tests as the rest of the group you came in with." She leaned forward, her ears pricked. "Tell me; is it true that you had no preparation for it at all?"

Random shook her head, resisting the urge to gabble all the horrors she had seen while connected to that terrible machine, and grabbed on to the one part of the mare's words that gave her the most relief. "It was just me, then? We were ordered not to talk about the tests, I was afraid that the foals--" Random broke off, suddenly breathing fast.

"Outstanding," the mare breathed, her expression softening. She leaned forward, using one set of long primary feathers to gently lift Random's wing.

The young mare froze, almost rigid with shame, then slowly extended the wing so the pony could get a good look. Delicate sensations ran down the bare flesh, but Random had her eyes shut. Suddenly desperate to be left alone, to not have her failings picked over in public, she staggered to her hooves and cantered from the shelter.

Outside, her breath coming in faint little gasps, Random tottered to a halt, listening to the slow thud-thud of hooves on grass. Leave me alone... if I'd been stronger I wouldn't have done this to myself. Pain twitched and flickered in her chest and, for a moment, she wished she was back in that cage, surrounded by foals who desperately wanted the best for her.

"Random? I'm sorry, I shouldn't have been so eager to pry. It's been a long time since I went through my own enhanced testing, and I'd forgotten just how traumatic it can be. My name is Merlon KX7216." The grey stopped a short distance away, slowly reaching out with her neck. Hesitantly, Random responded, leaning into the nuzzle. The mare brought her wings forward, wrapping the younger pony in a cloak of steel-grey softness. "Only a pony in Security could possibly understand what you have been through. The test is the hardest one the Masters can devise, and the fact that you did so well--"

"I've not been able to tell anypony... the things they made me do, I-I didn't know what to do, there were no good choices, and--" Random's mouth snapped shut and she took a deep, shuddering breath. "What does it mean... that I was able to do those things?"

"It means, I think, that you have found your special talent. I've never seen a pony more suited to the work Security does... which is good, because my Master has a desperate need for a pony like you."

Then the medic was right, I'm not a failure. The thought hit like a lightning bolt and Random shivered, a feeling of bliss and of extreme lightness filling her from hooves to muzzle tip. "Your Master needs me to do something." Her face fell, muzzle dipping to touch the fur of her chest. "I've not been given a communicator, how..."

She stopped at the light touch of the grey's magic, an irresistible pressure that lifted her head and turned it to one side. "Why don't we go over there and ask?" she said with a grin. In complete silence, a Security airtruck was just settling down on to the grass, out of which stepped a Master of average height, with sleek brown fur and bright green eyes.

Random's breath caught in her throat, her lungs stopping entirely when the figure waved them both over. The grey nodded, smiling back. "May I present Sector Chief Orgon, my Master."

But I can't! A needle of pain jolted Random into motion and she followed Merlon at a smart trot, once more trying to make her wings disappear into the fur of her flanks. Legs stiff with fear over what the Master would say when he saw the state she was in, Random stumbled to a halt in front of the figure, dropping to her knees and pressing her muzzle into the grass at his booted paws. "I'm sorry, Master; I'm not fit to serve you properly. The testing..."

Her voice, muffled by the grass, trailed off as the Master knelt down beside her and laid a gentle paw on her head. She froze, every muscle rigid and mind full of whirling panic, waiting for the bite of the Maker's punishment for disappointing this Person who was so high up in the Master's hierarchy.

"The pony is just what Security needs. Random Walk DP2114 should take it from one who knows; it has not disappointed the Sector Chief."

The voice was calm and even, and Random dared to look up into the Master's face. He looked worried, brow furrowed in concern, then his muzzle twisted into a slight smile. A mixture of relief and joy made her insides turn to jelly, a feeling of warmth and love that filled her from tailroot to muzzle tip and left her mouth half open and a dopey grin on her face. This Master approves... but why was I tested in the first place? The thought was a fleeting one, completely overwhelmed by the numinous sensations coursing through her body.

"--state of the pony's wings is unfortunate, but it is nothing that cannot be fixed."

Random snapped out of her trance in time to catch the tail end of the sentence, a tightening in her chest washing away the residual euphoria. Cursing her own inattentiveness, the mare swept her ears forward and focused all her attention on this wonderful Master, just in time to see him nod to Merlon. Delicate little tickles and twitches assailed her wings, and she saw pearlescent glimmers of magic, nearly invisible in Celestia's light, flicker up and down their edges.

The Master saw her glance and sighed. "It is the least Security can do. The pony was never intended to be put through that level of testing; to do such a thing to one so young is against the law. The Person responsible is being... disciplined."

Random nodded vigorously. "Thank you, Master. I'm sorry to be so much trouble... I'm sure the other Master was only doing what they thought was necessary." The tickle of magic stopped and the mare glanced at Merlon. So soon, I had hoped... Her wings, already partly healed by the medic who'd pulled her out of the cage, didn't feel any better. If anything, they felt slightly inflamed and had acquired a nasty-looking red blotchiness that overlaid the yellowing bruises. Even the scattering of pin feathers was gone.

"I know it doesn't look very nice, but it was necessary to synchronise your feather growth," Merlon said. "Unfortunately, the few that had started sprouting would have come through deformed; better to start afresh." She smiled sympathetically, and Random found herself nodding in agreement.

The Master made a polite coughing sound, then gestured for Random to rise. Stepping back a few paces, the Sector Chief turned and walked towards the back of the airtruck, waving one paw at the ponies. Pushed into action by Merlon nudging her rump, Random trotted smartly around after him, stopping dead with one hoof on the lowered ramp when she saw the inside of the vehicle.

It was all one chamber, containing a stall big enough for two ponies and lined with swivel couches for a dozen Masters to work at consoles. At the far end was a large screen, covered with text in the Master's unreadable script and lots of little windows, each showing a view from somewhere else. Under that... A smoothly curving shape, half a length across, its translucent casing glowing with rainbow colours from all the thaumically active crystals within it. Two headsets, like metal crowns lined with glittering gems, were tethered to the machine by thick, glassy cables. The memory machine filled the dimly lit interior with a shifting, pastel light.

Random felt her heart skip a beat and let out an involuntary gasp. The Master walked through the stall, reaching for one of the headsets and pulling it away from its bracket. Terrible memories surged up in the mare's mind, of walking down a white corridor and... She took a step backwards, stopping short at the warning prickle of pain that danced along her spine. Oh, please, not again, I-- The Master turned, holding out the crown and gestured her into the vehicle. Random's legs froze and a giant paw closed tight about her throat, jagged claws biting into the flesh.

Beside her, Merlon stepped forwards, her long, grey wings brushing Random's side. The simple contact broke the chain of recollection and, through tear-distorted eyes, Random saw the grey mare flick her ears. The Master hesitated, eyes darting between Merlon and herself, then his eyes narrowed. Understanding dawned, and his features smoothed. Smiling gently, Sector Chief Orgon put one paw behind his back, hiding the crown from view.

"Of course, how stupid of this one. Will the pony accept Orgon's apology?" He took a step backwards, placing the crown on its hook, then turned back to Random, holding his empty paws out in front of him.

He's apologising to me!? The thought was so outrageous that the pain vanished completely, and Random just stood there, mouth half open. The soft touch of a muzzle on her neck brought her back to the real world, and the mare dropped to her knees on the grass. "Yes, Master! You don't--" I'm so weak, and this Master is making all this effort to help me. More tears welled up, running down her cheeks to trickle through the fur on the underside of her muzzle.

There was another touch on her head, the feeling of claws stroking the patch of skin below her horn, while, at her side, Merlon pressed in closer, unfolding one wing over her back. "We will use the main screen; do not be concerned," the Sector Chief said, stepping back into the vehicle and turning to open one of the lockers by the lowered ramp. Pulling out a padded equipment harness, he unfolded it, using it to cover the glowing front of the machine.

Merlon left her side and Random's breathing slowed as her panic receded. The grey mare stepped up into the stall and lay down in one half, gesturing with one wing to the space at her side. Random walked up the ramp with her head lowered, then folded her legs and sat down. The Sector Chief watched them both, face becoming serious when Random finally settled. At a subtle gesture from Merlon -- nothing more than a little flick of the grey mare's ears, but the same one she'd used before -- Orgon did something to a wrist mounted device, causing the big display to go blank.

"How well does Random Walk know the pony Fusion Pulse TC4668?" The Sector Chief said, crouching down and using one paw to lift Random's head so he could look her straight in the eye.

"Very well, Master. She is of my foal cohort. Fusion came to see me when I... when I..." Random trailed off, hunting for the right word amid the subjective days of false memories. "I think she came to see me. I remember her asking me about the sharing spell I use when teaching magic to foals." That visit, and the promise that she had not been forgotten, had kept her grounded during some of the more harrowing experiences with the memory machine back at the Security Hub. Random had clung to that memory with the desperation of a drowning swimmer.

"The pony is correct. That is good... but unfortunately this one has some bad news; Fusion suffered an accident during her work at the Institute."

Random's ears drooped and fresh tears welled up in her eyes. "Is... is she still alive?"

"Fusion is... but she has changed." Merlon twisted slightly to look at Random while the Sector Chief stood up and busied himself at the main screen's controls. "We think that she has suffered a mental breakdown. When she was visiting the Institute with her sister, the pair of them became violent and attacked the Masters present."

The words were clear and she understood every one of them, but the meaning of that final sentence was so impossible that it just froze in her brain. "...but a pony can't--" Jaw still working, Random looked between Merlon and the Sector Chief, willing them to explain this absurd idea. How is this even possible? They are our Masters, I-- Little warning twinges of pain raced up and down her spine, distracting her from the notion, but she found that it was possible to ignore them. Memories of her time with the machine resurfaced, of Masters who she'd had to protect -- and had sometimes failed to do so -- and she grabbed on to them. Amid all those terrible scenarios were several where misguided ponies had accidentally hurt some of the People.

Breath coming fast, Random shook her head hard enough to make her ears slap against the sides of her head, forcing herself to accept this as the truth. Orgon looked at her solemnly, then nodded. "This one knew the pony was the right one for the job. There are not many who can manage to hold that idea." He sighed and ran one paw through the fur of his head, suddenly looking old. "This would not be much of a problem, except that it seems that the work that drove them mad also seems to have made them very strong. Security tried to get them treated to fix the problem, but..." He fidgeted, then appeared to reach a decision. "Perhaps the pony should see for herself." With that, he ran a claw over his comms bracer, making the main screen come alive.

The view was jerky and shot through with patches of heavy distortion, showing a wrecked corridor and the twisted and broken bodies of gryphons and what must have been Masters in bulky armoured suits. "Security tried to be as gentle as possible -- it is not the pony's fault she is acting this way." Orgon said with a sigh, "This was the result." The view drifted past a motionless body of a pony in armour, blood trickling from her half-open muzzle, then blanked out completely.

"Two ponies did all this?" Random said faintly, tearing her eyes away from the screen to stare at Orgon. Even after all this, the Masters are willing to forgive Fusion and Gravity, she thought, heart swelling with gratitude. Fusion helped me when I was desperate, it's only right I should help her. "What do you need me to do?"

===

There was nopony about as Lilac made his slow and unsteady way the short distance from the back of the infirmary to the fruit trees of the near-by orchard. Pausing, the youngster glanced back at his hind quarters, straightening up his left leg. This caused a shift in balance, and he flicked out his wings in an attempt to avoid falling over. Another staggered step fixed the problem, only to send him into the trunk of the closest tree.

Panting with the effort, Lilac sagged against the rough bark, then took a deep breath and sighed. Catching his breath, the stallion frowned in concentration and realigned his legs, then pushed away from the tree and took another step. Let's not try to be natural, he thought, I don't need to get all the joints right first time. Carefully he refined his grip, locking his legs from gaskin to fetlock, then moved the whole leg like it was a single piece.

This is much easier! His gait was awkward and lurching, but far easier than trying to simulate a real walk. The process required much less concentration, and Lilac lifted his head to study the canopy. The leaves were starting to turn, but many were still there, small curly things on gnarled branches. Also on those branches were the apples that were the source of the smell that had drawn him onwards.

Green, with a blush of red on the side most exposed to the sun, and marked with the occasional blemish from bird or insect, they were the most beautiful things he'd ever seen. Saliva filling his mouth, Lilac reached up with his magic and plucked one of the larger fruits from its branch, wincing when the whole thing flexed and shed leaves in response to his tug. I really should get back. It had taken what seemed like forever to get this far, and would likely take just as long getting back. Still, one can't hurt...

Brushing an errant ant from the surface, he sheared the apple in half with a flicker of violet light, catching a spray of juice across the muzzle. A little of the taste leaked into his mouth, and Lilac took a large bite of the succulent flesh. The remembered flavour of that apple back in the lab was nothing compared to the taste of one fresh from the tree. Lilac's hind quarters thumped to the leaf litter as his magic flickered out, his mind filled with wonderful sensations.

The crunch of the fruit between his teeth, the sudden flood of juice laden with a mixture of tart and sweet flavours, and the near overpowering smell all combined to overwhelm him, and Lilac sank the rest of the way to his belly. A few big bites later and all that was left of the apple were a few spots of juice on his forelegs. Sighing with contentment, the youngster pulled himself upright and started back, pausing only to grab another dozen of the fruits.

===

Trocar skimmed low over the corral, back-stroking his wings to come in for a four-hoofed landing at the front entrance of the infirmary. There were very few ponies about; even the school shelter only held the very youngest foals, kept occupied by Back Draft while their parents did the Master's work. No Spiral, the blue stallion thought, well, at least that explains my reassignment. I'll just have to wait until she returns to find out what's going on.

He nosed through the infirmary door and started to check on the patients. Triage training to the fore, he swept the ponies with brief pulses of magic, looking for anything critical that might have occurred in the indeterminate time between Spiral's departure and his arrival. The process was near-automatic, the basic checks carried out at an accident scene. Heart beat, respiration, internal or external bleeding; it took less than fifty seconds for the eight ponies sleeping in the stalls.

Trocar's ears drooped and he chewed at his lips, looking with dismay along the central corridor. Only eight! What happened to all the others? The rash of fugue deaths had hit Spiral hard; the mare had refused to talk to him during their brief time before sleep last night, so he'd settled for just wrapping her in his wings and trying to ignore the tears running down her cheeks. Reluctantly, he left the front of the infirmary and walked to stall eleven.

Inside, his eyes were drawn to the refrigerated compartment and attendant autoclave. The refrigerator was full, hazy pony-shapes visible through the frosted glass. Swallowing, Trocar slowly pulled open the door, sliding out the upper tray. On the steel surface was a black plastic bag, and the medic gently pulled open one end and looked inside. "Ah, Maker... I thought you were going to pull through, Ogive." He let the plastic drop and stared mournfully at the other two bundles in the lower layers.

"At least I can take this burden from you, Spiral." Trocar pulled Ogive from the bag, opening the door to the autoclave with a shimmer of blue light. The pony, limp in his magical grasp, was deposited carefully in the metal lined chamber. "See you in the next cycle, Ogive," Trocar whispered, closing the door and setting all the controls to their maximums. Head bowed, he turned it on.

===

There was the crunch-crunch of hoof on gravel. Lilac paused, wobbling slightly in the deep shade under a tree at the perimeter of the orchard. The infirmary was in sight, no more than ten lengths away, and the hoof-steps had to be coming from the path that ran around the building. A quick dip into shadow sight showed the other pony, little more than a collection of moving glows in the near invisible silhouette of its body.

Blue, a deep blue. Lilac stared at the horn colour in consternation, then glanced back at his hindquarters. In the shadow universe they burned like they were on fire, heatless pale purple flames that licked over the dark core of his non-magical flesh. The youngster opened his eyes; in the dim light under the low branches he was almost as obvious.

He quickly piled up the apples and let his concentration fade, then folded his legs and lay down, the telekinetic glow vanishing just as the pony rounded the corner. Fairly slender, and a similar blue to Gravity, although his mane and tail were more of a purple than the mare's original pale blue. Big panniers, bulging with external pockets and pouches, lay across his back, long enough to cover his labour tattoo. They had a lumpy look, as if their owner had packed them in haste. The pony slowed, pausing at the door to stall eleven, then nosed it open.

Is that Trocar, then? Lilac shivered, his stomach twisting. What's he doing back here? Did Spiral send him here to look after me? Biting his lips, the youngster took hold of his legs and performed the complicated series of actions required to stand upright. This done, he half fell, half trotted down the shallow slope to the infirmary, fetching up against the stone wall with a solid thump. Ears down and cringing at the sudden noise, he watched the other pony through shadow sight while trying to silently get his breath back.

Trocar, if that's who it was, spent a few moments doing something with one of the compartments in the wall of the stall, then his magic flared and pulled out a large shape. Black, but outlined by blue fire, it was clearly the body of a pony. Lilac's breath hitched and he froze, but there was no sign of a medical scan. More magic flared, this time around the machine next to the refrigerator, and the pony was pushed into the narrow opening. The door closed and the crystals lining the chamber started to pulse with waves of light.

Lilac's telekinetic grip on his own legs faltered and he nearly fell. But she's not dead! Still operating by shadow sight, he blindly felt for the door and yanked it open; the sturdy metal hinges parted with a shriek and the heavy panel was flung away, cartwheeling across the grass. Not bothering with the fine control needed to move his legs, Lilac settled for dragging himself through the opening, slamming one insensate hip into the door frame as he did so.

Something tugged at his flesh, only really detectable where it stretched the skin further along his side, but that barely registered. Ahead, the crystal lined guts of the autoclave abruptly went from soft flickers to brilliant light as the microwave emitter at the base went to full power. The pony standing in front of the machine was just reacting to his presence, light flaring about horn and wings as he whirled around, but it was too late.

Letting go of everything else, Lilac narrowed his immaterial grip from a soft, amorphous zone of presence to a hard spike, lashing out with as much force as he could muster. There was a crashing impact and the glow from the autoclave went out, the door popping open and releasing a puff of super-heated air smelling of burnt fur. Balance completely gone, Lilac fell into the room, hitting the floor with enough force to knock the wind from his lungs.

The shock rattled his head enough that even the tiny effort required for shadow sight was too much, and the youngster's eyes flew open. Black, greasy smoke poured out of the half open door, dull orange flames licking up from the top. The control panel, where Lilac had aimed his blow, was stoved in like somepony had driven a spike through it, and random sparks flashed from the ruined electronics.

The blue pony's surprise was over in an instant; still staring at Lilac, his magic enfolded the autoclave door and slammed it shut. "What in the Make--!"

"Not dead!" Lilac wheezed, trying to get the words out past a suddenly swollen tongue. She's still burning in there! His magic scrabbled at the damaged door, fighting to overcome the other pony's telekinesis. He was strong, he knew he was, but the pony did something that Lilac couldn't quite understand, and his magic faltered. Directed sideways and off at odd angles, the undirected force buffeted loose equipment and made the various storage compartment doors rattle, like a strong breeze had suddenly whipped through the room.

Blue magic picked him up and deftly flicked him over, his paralysed legs flopping and spinning uselessly. Lilac opened his mouth, liquid warmth running down his muzzle, but the magic spread over him like a film of oil, folding his legs and wings in, and keeping his jaw shut. The pony started to say something, then froze at a sudden noise from inside the autoclave.

A series of thumps, very fast, but with no discernable pattern; the hollow ringing of hoof and bone against metal surfaces.

The clinging, elastic grip across Lilac's body lessened as his captor was distracted, sudden uncertainty on his face. The youngster focused all his strength onto the field across his muzzle, shredding the magic. "She's in hibernatio--" he managed to choke out, before the blue haze returned and his jaw snapped shut once more.

There was a sudden surge of power, a hard shove that sent Lilac slamming into the infirmary's wall. Half stunned, he saw the pony yank open the autoclave's door and pull Ogive out. The mare, seared black over one side of her body, trembled and shook uncontrollably, smoke and wisps of yellow flame curling up from around the sides of her belly. The smell, an appalling mix of burning hair fur and cooked flesh, filled stall eleven in an instant, bringing Lilac back to the here-and-now.

Magic folded over her body, not the simple haze of telekinesis, but the complex swirl of multiply parallel spell casting. Ignoring the sudden aches from his own body, Lilac studied the other pony as he worked, not daring to move lest he proved to be a lethal distraction.

===

Trocar, his ears still ringing from the sudden impact that had smashed the autoclave just at the start of its cycle, worked feverishly. The mare, Ogive, lay on the stone floor at the centre of a thaumic dance that penetrated all areas of her body, probing and investigating every possible threat to her survival. Nerve blocks came first, stilling surging activity in the somatosensory axons and removing the pain, then jamming the impulses responsible for the muscle spasms. Stimulation of the reticular activating system completed the preparatory work, sending his patient into a sleep so deep that nothing would awaken her.

The surface burns looked terrible, but they weren’t what would kill Ogive in the short term. Superheated air had penetrated deep into her lungs, burning and cooking the delicate tissues. This was not the normal state of affairs, but had been brought about by the inexplicable presence of the thick silicone tube that somepony had thrust from nostrils all the way down to the first major bronchial branch. The pipe had protected the structures of larynx and trachea, and this, at least, wouldn't require any remedial action, but had sent the hot gas further in without any cooling.

Liquid was seeping from damaged alveoli throughout Ogive's lungs, filling the sponge of tiny spaces and further reducing the volume available for gas exchange. Trocar dove straight in, draining the fluid and fixing the tiny, grape-like structures, but the damage was too extensive and he could feel the mare's blood oxygen levels falling despite his best efforts. Still he spared no thought for what he'd done, but carried on working, not letting the near certainty of failure even enter his mind.

Alien magic started to twist and curl within the other lung, and he opened his mouth to curse the interloper, but kept silent when he saw what the other pony was doing. Clumsily at first, then with rapidly improving skill, the young stallion was performing his own repairs. Though he was unable to match Trocar's own multi-gigasecond expertise in traumatic injury, the pony's efforts were just enough to allow them to keep pace with the damaged tissues and keep Ogive from drowning in her own fluids.

Spiral, what in the Maker's name has been going on here? The thought was fleeting and he spared no mental effort in following it through; the strain of this urgent work was something he experienced at every accident he attended, and he was well used to pushing all other considerations aside.

A kilosecond later and between them they'd rescued enough of Ogive's lung tissue that the mare would not suffocate. "Keep doing that," Trocar said, his eyes shut and concentration fixed on his work, then switched to sealing the many leaking blood vessels in his patient's surface musculature. He cast more spells, cleansing and re-infusing the fluid he'd saved from her scarred lungs back into her bloodstream, all to prevent the mare from sliding any further into shock.

This done, and with the knowledge that Ogive would survive her accidental immolation, Trocar suddenly became aware of the demands of his body. A bone-deep fatigue made his eyes sag and magic falter, and he took deep breaths, staring at the unknown stallion. Who are you? The youngster was still concentrating, so Trocar used subtle flickers of power to examine the pony.

No labour tattoo. The stallion was sporting a frankly hair-raising scar that seemed to pass from flank to mid back, right between hips and wing shoulder. That must have broken his back... and there's the blood. The stallion was bleeding freely from a jagged rip to his flank. Trocar's eyes travelled to the door frame; one of the hinges sported a clump of bloody fur. The desperation in the pony's eyes, glimpsed when he'd come barrelling through the door. A sudden flash of anger took his breath away, flipping just as rapidly to horror. Dammit, Spiral, why didn't you tell me about this! Whatever this is...

"That's enough for now," Trocar said. The other pony lifted his head, and the medic flinched at a glimpse of circular scars on the side of the young stallion's head. I've heard of things like this, but I didn't really think the Mas-- A warning flash of pain derailed that particular line of reasoning and he shook his head. "Who are you, and what are you doing here?" The words came out angry, made harsh by the irritant haze of burned fur.

"I'm Lilac GZ7011. I--" He swallowed, ears folding back and eyes darting from side to side. His gaze settled, not on Trocar's face, but on the communicator disk attached to his chest. Little flickers of light, barely more than fireflies glittered around his horn, then cut off. "Spiral was training me, helping me to heal my..." Wings fluttered and Lilac's head swung around, giving Trocar a great view of the surgical marks on the shaved side of his head, settling to stare at the scar on his flank. "...injury. I'm s-still working on it." His voice fell to a trembling whisper, teeth chattering as shivers wracked his body.

"Don't worry; this isn't your fault." The words came out automatically, the rote comfort for an injured pony, no doubt being punished by the Maker for some perceived failure. And it's not, either. He did all he could to stop me. Suddenly feeling sick, Trocar turned his magic on the other two ponies in the refrigerator. It was the work of a moment to find the intubated airways and the delicate tangle of magic regulating heart and lungs. The nature of the spell was obvious, now he had all the pieces.

Deep hibernation, bodies cooled to near death. When the autoclave fired, it would have raised Ogive's core temperature... she must have woken up. Trocar swallowed, struggling to control his breathing. If Lilac hadn't interfered, I'd have burned all of them. The awful thought hung in his mind, an impossible barrier to pass, and he let out an involuntary moan.

"It is. All of this is because of me; if I hadn't--"

Trocar mutely shook his head, not trusting himself to speak. Not true; if you hadn't been here I'd-I'd-- The words wouldn't come, and he felt the bite of his own punishment push sharp spines into his chest. Struggling to think of other things, he focused on the what, rather than the might-have-been. These were all ponies in fugue... was Spiral trying something to try and knock them out of it? There were those case studies, experimental treatments with low success rates... "Where is my Spiral, Lilac?" he said.

The other pony looked up, tears running down his muzzle. "You must be Trocar, then; she mentioned you. Her Master wanted to see her, so she went to Naraka."

That explains my recall, at least. But why all these secrets? She's been evasive for the last few days... is it because of Lilac? He's obviously from one of the Eugenics Board places -- perhaps the same Institute that was attacked by the rogue? A sudden realisation struck Trocar, and he leaned back, studying the young stallion carefully. "Was Spiral ordered to keep you a secret, Lilac? You are from the Institute, yes?"

There was a look of amazement on Lilac's face, and his mouth dropped open. "Yes," he said weakly. "I was told there would be big trouble if other ponies knew I was here."

"Makes sense," Trocar muttered, "it's one thing to hear rumours of the EB's work; something completely different to come muzzle to scarred muzzle with a living, breathing example." It was hard enough for a medic to bear, let alone some pony not expecting it. He could cause fugue just by walking through the corral. Lilac was obviously distraught, so Trocar reluctantly resisted the urge to ask more questions. I know enough for now, and at least Spiral is safe.

"How much medical training have you had, Lilac?"

"Basic soft tissue repair, because of..." Here Lilac turned his head, giving Trocar another flash of his recent surgical marks. "...and a day or two here with Spiral, so I could fix my small intestine. There was a laser, and--" Lilac's mouth snapped shut, his ears flattening once more.

So little! "I think I can see where your special talent lies. You never did lung work before?" Lilac shook his head. "Outstanding; you should be proud. I could not have saved Ogive alone." Trocar stared at the mare, whose charred flanks were weeping a clear fluid as she breathed with a steadily, mechanical rhythm. He reached out, lifting a series of sterile saline bags from a storage unit while simultaneously loading an injection gun with the first of a series of drugs. He nodded towards Lilac's bloody flank. "Treat your own injuries, then we can see how much of Ogive we can rebuild before Spiral returns, okay?"

===

Rthar paced the room, ignoring the glare that Salrath was giving him. She was back in a hospital room again, although this time it was in a secluded wing that normally served the Pit's interrogation suite. The place was a marvel of modern medicine; the only clue as to it's less than altruistic purpose were the heavy restraints that lined the bed and an extensive collection of cameras.

Why is this one here? he thought, turning and striding the short length between security door and a large cube of machinery filled with softly glowing crystals. If the Sector Chief wanted a meeting, then this one is only a comm call away. Instead, he'd been pulled off an interesting line of enquiry reviewing the Eugenics Board's assessment of deaths at Corral Twenty Seven to wait in one of the basement levels with an Agent who, if there was anything to the Maker's justice, should be in one of the cells just down the corridor.

"Will Rthar stop that!" Salrath hissed from between clenched jaws. "This one is getting neck pain watching the Captain move."

"Is your recovery not going smoothly, Agent?" Rthar put as much sympathy and concern into his voice as he could, then started pacing again, hiding a smile at the sigh of frustration from Salrath. The Agent has been pushing herself too hard, undoing the doctor's good work. What a pity.

The door to the medical bay opened behind him and he turned, stepping back as Orgon walked into the room, followed by the large shape of his personal servitor. The creature quietly closed the door, and there was a ripple of pearly light that seemed to dance over everything in the room. As it passed, electronic and crystal thaumic systems alike all stopped working or went dark. Rthar's own comms bracer emitted a mournful croak, then displayed a string of error messages before turning itself off.

The ceiling panels flickered, then went out, plunging the room into darkness for a moment, before the emergency lights came on, filling the room with a pale glow. Then they went out, leaving only the ghostly dance of active magic.

Rthar's paws twitched, and he resisted the urge to touch the pistol holstered at his side. "Is there something the Sector Chief would like to discuss that is too sensitive for regular channels?" he said, pointedly tapping at the controls of his bracer. The thing won't even turn on. He sniffed, nostrils flaring wrinkling, but there was none of the scorched plastic odour that came normally came with a battery failure.

"A minor problem with the power control systems," the grey servitor said without emotion, "the repair will be straightforward." The only light came from the tip of its horn, turning its large eyes into dark voids and casting long, sinister shadows down its muzzle

Rthar blinked, staring at the skull-like head uneasily. "What, all of them?" he said, then dragged his gaze to Orgon, who was looking at Salrath and shaking his head slowly. The Sector Chief waved the pony forwards, and the creature turned without a backwards glance, leaving Rthar open-mouthed and fumbling for a reprimand.

"This will not do at all," the Sector Chief said. "What is possible in the time available?"

Rthar found himself staring at Salrath; the Agent had opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again when she realised that Orgon wasn't actually interested in what she had to say. Hope dawned in her eyes as the servitor's horn brightened and worms of pale light started to crawl over her body. Muscles twitched of their own accord, starting at Salrath's ankles and moving upwards in waves. The Agent ground her teeth together, making the occasional hiss of pain as the magic found a particularly sensitive spot.

Fur down his spine tingling, Rthar swallowed and took an involuntary step backwards. An objective measure of mobility... couldn't it have just asked Salrath where it hurt? The manipulation of the Agent's body continued for a disturbingly long time; a quick glance showed that Orgon had the same gentle smile he always had, and was obviously quite happy for his servitor to work at its own pace. Let this one never fall into either of these one's clutches, Rthar thought fervently, wincing as Salrath gave a particularly sharp gasp.

"I can reshape her hips and rebuild the cartilage in her knees and spine; that will stop the majority of the pain and is probably the best compromise given the timescale. Neurological modifications will take care of the rest." The pony gave its report absently, as if talking to another of its kind and not one of the more important People in the Hive.

"Do the neuro work first; this one needs the Agent focused," Orgon said, moving to sit on one of the swivel chairs next to the bed. The pony had started to work, even before he'd finished the order, and the Sector Chief turned to face Rthar. "Sit," he said, pointing at a second chair.

Body moving almost without conscious thought, Rthar did as he was told, his mind racing. There can be only one reason; Orgon really doesn't want this conversation overheard. He did his best to push aside the implications of this measure, here, in the depths of the Pit, and focused on the Sector Chief.

"It turns out that everything we suspected is true, and there is more bad news to follow." Orgon watched his servitor work for a few moments, waiting until the traces of pain left Salrath's face. Unpleasant crackling sounds came from the vicinity of the Agent's pelvis, but the Agent herself showed only pleasure at the pony's ministrations. "This one has direct evidence that at least one of the rogue servitors escaped the destruction of the Institute." He went on to explain, then paused, waiting for any comments.

Salrath gave a dark chuckle. "This one wanted that to be true; that blue servitor has a lot to answer for. These ones should start by taking the pony's kin; make it showy and obvious what is going to happen to--"

The level of anticipation in the Agent's voice made Rthar cringe, but it was Orgon who raised a paw to stop Salrath's planning. "That will not be necessary. As Salrath's own work has shown, the rogues have an attachment to the juvenile servitors that are currently in the Naraka facility. They will be ample bait for a trap."

"Sector Chief, the level of destruction visited on the Institute... is Orgon planning to move the foals to another location?" Rthar asked, brow furrowing.

"It is important that there is no evidence of Security complicity; there may be suspicion if the foals are moved. This one has ordered real-time tracking of servitor comms units; any deviation from normal activity will allow these ones to react swiftly. Both the corral in question and Naraka are distant from population centres and strategic sites... should extreme measures prove necessary.

Rthar's ears flattened. "What is the population of Naraka? Will the People be evacuated?"

"These ones must retain the element of surprise." Orgon said it with no emotion, other than his normal slight smile, an expression the Sector Chief wore so often that Rthar suspected it was surgically applied.

"Rthar sees," the Captain said, softly. "How reliable is comms tracking... would a more direct view not be more secure?"

"The units are able to identify which servitor they are near, for authentication purposes," Salrath said, voice wavering as the grey servitor twisted something in her upper spine. "Don't do that while this one is talking, pony!" she snapped, not in pain, but in anger, then looked disappointed when the creature didn't so much as flick an ear in her direction.

"Servitors are naturally attuned to their surroundings; additional technical or arcane surveillance is too much of a risk." The Sector Chief stared off into the distance for a few breaths, then sighed. "Nothing will stop a physical World Court audit when the excavators finally open the Institute... all Lacunae has left is mitigation. Almost all of the witnesses to the rogue's actions now sit at Naraka. If the World Court wasn't so interested, this one would have them all euthanized."

Even Salrath froze at that. Orgon has just made these ones accessories to a planetary crime. Rthar held his breath, staring at the Security Chief. That explains the blackout.

"Orgon plans to lure the rogues in and blame the subsequent failure to capture them for WC study for the loss of any evidence," Salrath said wonderingly.

"This is correct; it will be a tragic loss to the Hive. Very few must know this plan, which is why Orgon requires Salrath and Rthar to be on the inside." Rthar struggled to keep his face blank, but something must have shown. "Rthar should not worry; he and Salrath will be extracted when the time comes." The Captain nodded uneasily, a gesture ignored by Orgon. "There is one other thing... now Captain Rthar is no longer officially on field duty, he is of enough rank to have an assistant, and yet has not requested one."

"This one was hoping to be assigned back to a reaction team," Rthar said, staring at a point over Orgon's left shoulder.

"In due time... if all goes well here, this one is sure something can be done about the stain on the Captain's record." Orgon's smile widened fractionally. "A combat officer like yourself should have a suitable assistant... so this one has assigned the gryphon that Rthar was so interested in. It has healed nicely after all that expensive thaumic treatment, and this one is sure it would also relish the chance of redeeming itself by covering the Captain's final retreat."

"Yes, Sector Chief," Rthar mumbled, trying to avoid looking at Salrath's smirk. What in the Maker's name is this one going to do with a gryphon? The Agent's smile widened at his obvious discomfort, and Rthar felt cold inside. Perhaps having one of the client race that owes Rthar his life would not be such a bad thing.

It was five kiloseconds later, after the Sector Chief had fleshed out the scant details of his plan, that Rthar made the connection. Salrath, Rthar and that gryphon, Bergathor. Rthar's missing gryphon troops. All of these ones are also witnesses to everything the rogues did. How much does this one trust Orgon?

===

Korn shifted, trying to find a more comfortable position while keeping his paws still enough to work on the irritatingly small connectors at the end of one arm of the interferometer. The machine's pressure vessel, a tetrahedral agglomeration of stainless steel like a giant caltrop, loomed overhead, suspended by wide straps from the roof of the airtruck. The floor twitched, setting the multi-tonne mass swaying like a giant, lethal pendulum.

With a gasp, he snatched his paws out of the maintenance hatch, saving them from being crushed at the cost of a chunk of fur from one wrist. The sudden pain brought tears to his eyes and he slumped against the hull, cradling that paw while the oscillations damped down. The temptation to scream obscenities at the pilot was very strong, but he resisted the urge. The other Person in the cargo compartment looked up from her console, a hastily constructed agglomeration of processors and displays, and smiled unpleasantly.

"Is the Student having problems?" Agent Salrath said, in a silky voice.

"No, Agent," he said, gritting his teeth. This one will not give that creature the satisfaction-- The line of thought stopped dead at the expression of interest on Salrath's face, and he made his face go blank. She has been ordered not to harm this one, Korn heard it. He caught a fleeting glimpse of a smile flash across her muzzle, then he turned away.

Compared to the broken, bloodied thing he'd seen thrown out of the Institute's surgical suite, the current Salrath was almost back to her old self. This one wishes that Gravity Resonance had killed the Agent when the pony had the chance. Salrath should still be in an intensive care ward, but someone had obviously found a use for her and lavished hundreds of kiloseconds of thaumic medical on her body. There were still traces of her injuries: an imperceptible limp, as if one leg was fractionally shorter than the other, and patches of very short fur everywhere she wasn't covered with armour. She won't even have any scars. That thought alone filled him with outrage; that an ordinary body could hide such evil seemed unfair.

"If Security wants this thing to be working when we get wherever we are going, Salrath better ask the pilot to fly more carefully," he muttered. "The terminal mirrors are very sensitive to alignment shifts."

"This one is sure the Student will manage... especially if he wants to have a taste of freedom ever again."

Korn ignored the Agent, half convinced she'd probably tell whoever was flying this thing to actually speed up. Sighing, he eyed the interferometer warily, then reached into the housing at the end of one arm, feeling for the loose cable with his claw tips. It had fallen under the mirror housing, and it took a few nerve-wracking seconds to grasp it, his head wedged between the hull and the lumpy end of the pressure vessel. Every slight twitch of the airtruck translated into motion of the heavy machine, a chaotic pattern of squeezes, like the Maker was trying to decide whether or not to crush his skull like an egg.

Finally, he had enough slack on the cable to reseat the connector and pulled his paw back out. Slamming the little hatch shut, Korn glared at the control panel, mounted by means of blobs of bright pink sealant to the junction of the interferometer's four arms. Come on you piece of-- A little chain of lights flickered from red to green as the machine ran through its self-check. The final light changed colour and Korn slumped in relief. A few taps on his bracer opened the scratch-built software, a crude, text-based thing that would crash at the slightest command error, and he could check that the lights actually meant something.

Three kiloseconds later the airtruck came into a careful landing, leaving Korn making hurried notes on one arm of the pressure vessel with a pen and trying to ignore Salrath's increasingly sour expression. The big rear doors swung open, letting in the wan light of an overcast dusk and the spicy-herby smell of many ponies. Korn's muzzle wrinkled involuntarily; mixed among that complex scent was an underlying rankness, a hint that brought back memories of his last encounter with Salrath, before everything went so badly wrong. Gryphons as well, he thought, nervously peering out of the doors, then stumbling forwards when Salrath shoved him hard from behind.

The landing platform was high up on the side of a black, pyramid-shaped structure that was surrounded by a wide circle of fields, all cut into concentric rings of wedge shapes. "This one thought we were going to the Security Hub," Korn said, looking nervously at the edge of the landing pad; there was no safety railing and the drop was far enough to make his ears flatten. "What is this place?" he mumbled, but the answer was obvious. So many ponies and gryphons; this must be a Eugenics Board site.

"Maybe later," whispered Salrath, so close that her breath ruffled his fur. "For now, welcome to Naraka."

Korn flinched, taking an involuntary step forwards towards the edge. A hard paw closed on his shoulder, pulling him back. "My, Korn is jumpy this evening," the Agent purred. Her claws tightened and he gasped, knees sagging. She twisted him around, gesturing at the airtruck with her other paw. A group of figures in Security uniforms were unloading the interferometer, placing it on to a cargo floater that hovered a paw-span off the ground.

One of the figures, a dark-furred male with green eyes, strode towards them, nodding to Salrath. "I am Technician Dulkon," he said in a flat, bored voice. "Is this the... expert?" Korn shrank slightly as the Technician looked him up and down, his gaze as devoid of interest as his voice.

"Yes. He is responsible for a large part of its design." Salrath released Korn and gave him a little shove. "Now is your time to shine, Student. Do this well and Korn may yet get to see his Ithra again. She misses the Student terribly; it's very sad." He didn't turn around, yet somehow he could feel the teeth in the Agent's smile. "It would be a tragedy if something were to happen to Ithra."

Korn's stomach dropped and he tasted bile. "Salrath can't; my mate has broken no laws--"

The Agent laughed, a low, bubbling chuckle. "Salrath won't need to. If these ones fail, the World Court audit teams will go everywhere. Does Korn really think that Ithra, a close associate of a known criminal, will be exempt from their scrutiny? The Synod will be looking everywhere for someone to blame, anything to divert attention from their own precious hides." The words ended in a hiss, and the Agent prodded him into motion as the cargo platform's crystals glowed and it started towards the hangar door.

They placed the interferometer a few floors down from the antenna farm that sat within the cap of the pyramid. The next dozen kiloseconds passed in a blur of increasing fatigue, as Dulkon quizzed him mercilessly on every aspect of the improvised sensor's calibration and operation. As temperamental as the control software was, the actual hardware was very well built; it was the product of some Security fabrication facility, and no doubt constructed by the most skilled servitors the organization could lay its paws on. Before long, it was fully operational, and happily reporting all the little vibrations and movements that made it through the damping systems.

Salrath strode into the room. "So, this thing is operational?" she said to Dulkon.

"It is. Sensitivity will be as predicted, especially at the higher gravitational wave frequencies."

"And does the Technician fully understand the design and operation of the device?" Salrath was talking to Dulkon, but her eyes were on Korn. She smiled slightly, the harsh overhead lights glinting off her canine teeth.

"This one does. Despite the novel design, the principles are the same as industry standard models." He gestured in Korn's direction with one paw, the kind of motion a person might make to shoo away an insect. "Dulkon will have no problems installing the other one."

"Excellent, carry on." The Agent beckoned to Korn, and with reluctant paw steps he approached her. Her smile widened, and she put a companionable arm around his shoulder, her paw lightly gripping his neck and the sharp tips of her claws pressing lightly into his flesh.

They walked out of the room, leaving Dulkon to start work on the second sensor. His fear, never far from the surface in these last few days, threatened to overwhelm him, and Korn shuffled down the corridor like he was little more than an animated shell. They don't need this one any more. The idea swirled around his head, a roar that drowned out any rational thought. He stumbled, and Salrath's paw snapped shut about his throat, hauling him back upright.

Korn coughed, the pain pushing away some of the mind-numbing panic. "What's next, Agent? Does Security want any other sensors configured? This one can train another tech while he does this." He kept his voice as level as possible, drawing on techniques he'd learned to survive large scale academic presentations. The fear was still there, but locked away, held down by a lid of self-control.

Salrath was silent, pulling him to a halt by a lift capsule. The door opened at her touch, and she pushed him inside, then followed him in and entered a destination code on the control pad. "This one has another job for the Student first, far more important than the sensors." She smiled; the kind of expression a person would make after telling a joke. Korn looked away, studying the scuffed floor between his paws, waiting for the capsule to reach its destination. Not once did the Agent lose her smile, until right at the end of the journey, where it changed to an expression of interest.

The capsule finally stopped its descent, the door opening onto a blank white corridor that curved away to the right. The inside wall was lined with floor-to-ceiling glass panels, but the angle was bad and he couldn't see what was behind them. Salrath gave him a push to get him walking, but this time didn't bother with the paw at his throat. What would be the point? Korn thought gloomily as the capsule's door closed silently. There is nowhere for this one to go. Next to each section of glass was a curved wall, obviously a door of some kind, with its own little control panel

The glass blocked access to a small, brightly lit chamber, within which was a pony and a foal. The animal was a young colt, very young, with disproportionately long legs and short muzzle. Korn stared into the room as they passed, his steps slowing. The colt took an unsteady step in their direction, his ears up and staring out through the glass in wonder. With the movement it was obvious that the colt was practically newborn; he had no horn, bar a tiny nub, and his wings were bare of everything but a fine dusting of fur between the still subcutaneous feathers.

His dam, a skewbald with a large, scarred patch of bare skin on her flank, looked up with exhausted eyes, her ears flattening for a moment before a great tremor rippled through her frame. Her ears relaxed, some of the fatigue evaporating to leave a kind of hopelessness that made Korn's fur stand on end. Fool! What did this one think went on at the Board? He averted his gaze and lengthened his stride, desperately trying not to think about the likely fate of that youngster.

The next chamber was empty, but the one after that contained half a dozen foals, all huddled together and looking confused and lost. After that was a pair of males, asleep on the padded floor. The glass-fronted rooms went on and on, each filled with different groupings. Korn kept his eyes firmly on the curve of the corridor, but with each glimpse at the edge of his vision, his stomach seemed to contract a little.

The corridor finally ended at a set of heavy, powered doors, and Korn started to relax, only to tense up again when they opened, releasing a faint and vaguely familiar odour. Slightly rank, a mixture of fur and dusty feathers, it made his skin twitch all over again. Beyond the door was another corridor, just like the first, only this time the glassed-in rooms held gryphons. Their reaction was not as subdued as that of the ponies.

He flinched at the challenging stare from the first occupant, a pair of great yellow eyes full of rage. The bird-cat didn't move towards the glass, just opened his beak in a threatening gape. The action replaced most of Korn's fear with pity; that beak, what should have been a set of razor edges large and strong enough to amputate a paw, was blunted and dull, its hooked tip sheared off by some power tool.

"Unlike the servitors, the average gryphon doesn't cooperate very well with the Board," Salrath said, in a happy, conversational tone. Korn hunched his shoulders and walked on, averting his eyes again, only to be stopped by a hard paw clamped on the back of his neck. "Salrath said there was something else for the Student. One final use she could put him to."

That paw twisted, forcing him around to face the glass. Inside was a quartet of gryphons who, up until that point, had been following their progress with little interest. The sudden motion attracted their attention and two abruptly stood up, their eyes locked on his. Salrath kicked at his legs, dropping him to his knees, then pushed his muzzle into the glass. "They tell this one that the Student is smart; perhaps he could guess Naraka's food bill. This one even thinks she might even get commended for saving the Hive a little bit of money."

Dazed, he stared back, feeling nothing but confusion when he heard the tap-tap of claws on keypad and the whine of a motor. One of the gryphons took a step forwards, a scaly, taloned foreleg held off the ground like the creature was uncertain. Inside the room was another section of curved wall; this began to rotate, like it was a cylinder set within the body of the wall. That's... that's like the radiation locks back at the Institute, he thought, must be how they get food to the subjects, then his eyes went wide and he started to struggle.

"Salrath said--" he gasped, then broke off as she tightened her grip. Half choking, he tried to prise her paw from his throat, but she just slammed his head into the glass. Light flared behind his eyes, and the sudden shock of impact made Korn let go. "Please--" The word came out amid a fine spray of blood, peppering the glass with a mist of ruby droplets.

She looked at him for a second, then slammed his head into the glass again. "Salrath will do what she likes!" Each word came out as a grunt, punctuated by more impacts on the wall.

Salrath let him go and Korn slumped to the floor and stared up at her, too dazed to do more than open his mouth and make a quiet whimpering noise. Blood made warm runnels down his face and dripped from his muzzle, soaking his empty equipment vest and spreading through the fur of his chest. Stunned, he just lay there, half propped up against the glass. Some had made its way into his eyes, covering everything with a stinging red filter. He tried to move, tried to shy away from the looming shadow of the Agent, but the pain came on all at once, near paralysing in its intensity.

Through the haze of pain and random flashes of light and shadow that seemed to crowd his vision, Korn saw Salrath kneel down and study him intently. "This one must be losing her touch," she murmured, flexing one paw like it ached, "she should really get back into the gym." The paw came up, one claw tracing a line down his muzzle to tap lightly on the end of his nose. He whimpered again, trying to push himself into the glass to get away. "There's no need to worry any more," she cooed, the claw moving to the underside of his jaw and forcing up his head so he looked her straight in the eyes.

"W-why? The Agent said--" The words were barely recognisable to his own ears, but the Salrath seemed to understand.

"You are dead, Student Korn, and have been ever since Security pulled you out of the Institute." The Agent smiled; that same interested look on her face that he'd seen before. "By all accounts it was a quiet funeral; that Ithra of yours was quite distraught. It's always hard when there is nothing to return to the ground." Her other paw came up, smoothing the fur above his eyes and wiping away some of the blood. "Ah, don't cry... at least it is nearly all over for Korn. Ithra, on the other paw..." She reached around his head, gripped him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him along the floor, then placed him almost tenderly inside the rotating drum of the lock.

"Please, this one did everything--" Some sensation returning to his body, Korn reached out, but the motion just toppled him forwards. Salrath smiled, and the last thing he saw of her as the lock door rotated was the light glinting off her teeth.

===

Humming to herself, Salrath used her comms bracer to instruct Naraka's control systems to disable the punishment collars. Security had remotely taken over the running of the site 'as a precaution', although the existing staff were mostly still in attendance. Unlike in the prisons, there was no direct oversight of collar operation, so the system relied on a mixture of motion, stress and proximity cues. The parameters were conservatively set, significantly reducing the level of freedom for the inmates, but by all accounts they soon got used to moving carefully.

Claws poised over the master control settings, Salrath paused. This one could set the maximum speed for all the collars to zero... she thought, the sudden vision of every cell filling with lightning and screams, where even the involuntary twitches of the electrocuted were enough to trigger further shocks. Her breath quickened and then she shook her head. Perhaps just one cell, an accident while this one was adjusting the system...

Reluctantly, she shut off the specific collars, then closed the connection. The gryphons in this cell didn't have the beaten, unexercised form of the long-term confined. The four had an air of military about them, and the Agent nodded, lips pulling away from her teeth in a smile. There were several units transferred here after their involvement with the rogue... Another quick enquiry gave her the information, and her smile became wider. A Talons training unit and one from the actual Institute itself. All rendered into the care of the Board, just because they knew too much. Their sense of betrayal must be incredible.

One of the gryphons had moved to the opening lock and poked his head inside. Surprise was obvious in the lash of his black-tufted tail, as was the sudden anger in the eyes of one of the grey ones. Salrath rested one paw on the window and listened intently, but the thick layer of artificial sapphire that the Board's architects had used acted as an excellent sound proofer. Whatever it was about, the result was exactly what she'd expected: the first gryphon dragged a bloody Korn from the lock and threw him into the middle of the room.

In seconds he was surrounded by the inmates, the one closest to the window flaring his wings and staring back at her aggressively. But this one wanted to see! Salrath thought, frowning, the disappointment making her paws twitch towards her bracer and its link to the punishment collars. Then a head dipped, reappearing with a shred of something bloody that was flicked aside. The Agent inhaled sharply, watching with wide eyes as a second gryphon leaned forwards, this time coming back with blood smeared along the edges of its beak. Red liquid dripped from the tip, and the creature lifted its head feathers in what was obviously a threat.

"The Talons get a little interrogation training, if this one remembers correctly," Salrath murmured, wagging one claw back at the gryphon. "Salrath is sure they will be able to keep their new plaything alive for a while." She turned and walked away, unable to get the smile off her muzzle.

21 - When you have enough evidence, there is no room for hope.

Author's Note

A crude dramatis personæ can be found here.
Preread by: turol and KMCA.
In story exchange with:
NoeCarrier (Ninety Nine Nectars of Princess Luna) and Caliaponia (Just Passing Through).

21 - When you have enough evidence, there is no room for hope.

Orgon glanced down the list of text updates while his new military advisor -- a dark-coated female by the name of Faula, who was acting as a liaison to the hurriedly reassembled chain of command -- whispered an endless list in one ear: The vehicles lost, most in a single sweep of focused sunlight from that disastrous attempt to burn the rogue servitor and as much evidence as possible. The slaughter of the special forces teams that had been under Naraka, either by the escaped gryphons, or trapped in the rubble without hope of rescue by the retaliatory nuclear strike. The unbelievable level of destruction in orbit, everything from heavy industrial plants in the debris ring to low-altitude surveillance constellations; destruction on the same order as a global war.

At least the other programs at Naraka will not need to be hidden. Orgon's lips peeled back in a silent snarl, then his expression smoothed and returned to its customary slight smile. The strike, at least, had been successful; a time-on-target barrage of staged 'foxhole' earth-penetrating warheads that turned Naraka and the surrounding landscape into pulverized ash over a kilolength deep.

He continued to read, ignoring the repeated requests of his liaison that he should relocate to a more secure site, until one of the entries on the litany of woe caught his eye: 'capture partially successful -- subverted servitor en route to Bakot base'. "The pony will put this one down," he said, glancing at Merlon. "These ones are leaving."

The mare, deeply engaged in her magic, jumped as if stung. "Master, apologies." She stepped a little closer, close enough that he could feel the heat radiating from her body. "Where do you want me to take you?"

He shook his head. "This one will meet the World Court Audit Team leader; the pony will go to Bakot and assist in the interrogation of the captured servitor. Orgon needs to know as much as possible -- especially the nature of the teleportation magic."

Merlon stood there for a second, then her ears flicked back and she shivered. "Master, it is not safe for me to leave you... and I have not yet completed your treatment."

"Nevertheless, the pony must go." Orgon gave an abortive wave of his paw that made the mare flinch. Hesitating, he gently laid his palm against her neck. "This task is more important; Merlon has a unique set of skills and this one cannot trust any other servitor." He gave a little push, and Merlon nearly tripped in her haste to leave.

Feeling vaguely naked without the servitor's bulk filling his small corner of the improvised command post, he turned to Faula. "This one needs an airtruck with full comms gear; he will set up operations in whatever base Faula feels appropriate. Orgon will need to talk to the lead Auditor as soon as possible."

"Yes, Strategist." The relief in her voice was obvious, and she gestured to the guard detail to fall in around them. "One is already prepared for the Strategist, down in the deep tunnels."

He nodded and set off at a fast walk that changed to a jog as soon as his aching muscles allowed.

===

Random stumbled down a tunnel, flanked on either side by the warmth of her sire and dam. She still felt cold, the chill of the frosted tunnels stabbing up through her frogs to make her ankles ache. She opened her mouth to ask where her sister was in all this mayhem and chaos, then closed it slowly. Single is dead... how could I forget that? The memories of the young filly, shot in the throat by a supposedly less-than-lethal projectile, seemed hazy, supplanted by the much more real visions that had been fed to her over subjective megaseconds.

She shivered, and Trocar bent his neck to nuzzle at her poll. "Don't worry; it's warmer in the deep tunnels. All this cold is because of the new magic Fusion taught us," he murmured, words nearly lost over the clatter of many sets of hooves coming and going.

You betrayed our Masters. You all have, just by being here. The thought should have brought with it a flash of pain, the sensation of sharp teeth clamping down on her throat, but it didn't. The realisation made her inhale sharply and she staggered, legs nearly tangling. Over her head, Trocar and Spiral exchanged a worried glance, but she ignored them. Tears started to dampen the fur of her face, and her breath came in rough sobs.

What have you done to me? Random nearly spoke the words out loud, nearly screamed them out, but she held it inside. The Sector Chief said something about this, some horror that splits a pony from the voice of the Maker. I must be strong, must not waver from my task. The tears started to fall in earnest and she tottered to a halt in the middle of the tunnel. I am lost, alone here among the enemies of my Masters. Random's legs gave way and she fell to the cold floor, only saved by a haze of green magic from Spiral.

"Come on," the mare said, lifting her up and folding one wing around her torso. Random hung limply in the telekinetic field, staring out through tear-distorted eyes as Spiral pushed past other ponies and into an empty space. The air here was warmer and smelled of the pine forests on the surface. She was placed gently on a bed of soft branches, more warmth radiating from the body that lay next to her. There was a murmured conversation, the words indistinct, then one of her parents left.

Magic tingled, washing over her from muzzle to tail root. "Don't worry my little foal; you are safe now," Spiral whispered, her lips brushing Random's ears. "There are no more horrors waiting for you, no evil machines to poison your dreams. I have set you free."

The words made Random tense all over, but no pain came. The Masters only did it for my own good. "Y-yes, my dam". You have taken away the only certainty in my life and made yourself the enemy of the People. Another bout of sobs wracked her, but she made no effort to halt them.

Spiral moved a little closer, spreading one wing over her body. "They have treated you poorly, my little foal. Rest, rest and sleep. I will watch over you."

A subtle flicker of green magic filled the small chamber, and Random felt all the emotions, all the stress, drain away as she fell towards sleep. I will deliver you all to my Masters, so you can see how badly Fusion has misled you.

===

Fusion's half-sided shadow sight showed a mass of activity underground. Hundreds upon hundreds of little lights, each marking the magic of a pony or gryphon, bunched and swirled in chambers far too small for comfort. Other glows marked the continuation of Scalar's tunnelling plans, now massively accelerated by the influx of new ponies; a continuous conveyor-belt of magic that ate away at the rock as fast as a pony could walk. Many of the helpers were from the Naraka group; although some were practically untrained, far more had been experts at their special talent and had lost little skill in the time they had been locked away.

Can't improve the breed without selecting the best, Fusion thought, her ears briefly flicking back.

"You'll need to talk to them soon," Backdraft said, her eyes shut as she watched the same scene. "They are starting to ask questions." She lifted her head and opened her eyes, turning to stare at Fusion. "Then there are the gryphons."

"Ellisif will control them and without weapons they are no match for anypony. I want to let the Naraka ponies sleep without the Blessing, first. This has been very stressful for everypony. I've not dared see my sire or any of the other older ponies in the corral since..." She paused, wings sagging a little. "...you've talked to them -- what will they do?" Am I going to have to hold them captive? How? Her thoughts turned to the piles of scavenged equipment, currently being stripped of any dog-controlled overrides, and the collection of thaumic suppressors they contained. We don't have enough if they all decide to leave. A nasty idea settled in her mind and she shook her head, but it wouldn't be dislodged.

"That youngster, Lilac, that Gravity rescued, was sharing everything he could, and he's been showing anypony who will give him a second of time everything he saw. If that was your idea, it was a stroke of genius." Fusion shook her head. "No? Well, young as he is, with those scars... some of the corral may hate you right now as the instigator of all this, but the truth of what was happening at Naraka was a shock, especially without the Maker--" Backdraft narrowed her eyes, nearly spitting the next few words. "--without the Blessing to guide a mind to the right conclusions. Their friends and all their foals are here; it would take a brave pony to leave the only certainty they have left."

"All except Helium. My sire already thinks I'd be better off dead." Fusion sighed, gently pawing through the leaf litter under the dense pine canopy. "I hope you are right. I thought I was ready for the reactions, I mean, what with Packet--" She froze, glancing sideways at Backdraft.

"Packet Switcher," the other mare said slowly. "The same Packet who had an in-flight accident the night after Salrath visited our corral." Her tone became sharper, and she looked at Fusion as if seeing her for the first time. "I think I should have that full explanation, right now."

"Yes," Fusion whispered. "I haven't spoken to Packet since then. He found me while I was waiting for Spiral. I couldn't let him go, so I took his Blessing and hoped..." She swallowed, staring at the ground between her hooves. "He was my friend and I had to hurt him to keep myself safe."

Backdraft snorted. "I am surrounded by foals, even when they are as tall as I am. The world doesn't always revolve around you, my young filly! I sincerely doubt you did all of this just for you." She stretched her remaining wing, then her horn glowed as she picked up Fusion's collection of little boxes. "...and carrying these things around is morbid. I want to talk to Packet." She walked off with the air of a pony who expected to be followed, and, despite the dread filling her belly, Fusion did so.

===

The armoured belly of the attack carrier -- nothing so subtle as an airtruck for the Strategist -- was a womb-like space: dim, low-ceilinged and warm. This was no plushly-appointed Synod-inspired conference room, but a real military vessel, and the only concessions to comfort were the oversized couches, big enough to hold a trooper in powered armour, if need be.

Orgon settled back, listening to the sound of the ducted fans spooling up from a low, distant thunder to an irritating insect-whine. His restraints fastened -- a process more painful than it should have been, and leaving the Strategist wishing he'd not sent Merlon away so soon -- Faula fastened her own and signalled to the pilots. A surge of acceleration later, enough to make him sink into the padding, and they were airborne. The pain didn't stop there; the pilot was obviously aware of what the servitor had done to everything above the horizon and was putting his nap-of-the-earth training to good use. What should have been a smooth flight was a disorienting collection of swerves and altitude changes, and Orgon was glad the carrier had no windows.

Tightening his restraints until it was an effort to breathe, he opened a link to the World Court, waiting as the hardware at each end validated his aircraft's codes. Finally there was a response, and the circled-luna symbol of the Court vanished to show the inside of a conference room; long and narrow, it was obviously on an aircraft of some description. If that's a standard suborbital... Orgon suppressed a smile; everyone in the cabin was strapped-in and there was a certain amount of debris on the floor. Periodically, everyone would sway sideways, with pained expressions on some faces, along with a distinct hint of motion sickness on others.

"This one is Strategist Orgon; he will be your primary contact." Orgon raised a paw in greeting, then nodded at the closest figure. "Auditor Kosigan, Orgon will provide his full cooperation during your investigation. This one regrets it has come to this, but Lacunae--"

"That will be a first," Kosigan hissed, wincing as his aircraft made a particularly violent manoeuvre. He was a mottled dark grey and large for one of the People, with the characteristic heavy jaw of Baur Hive natives. "Tell this one why Orgon and the rest of his Synod shouldn't be trawled the instant Kosigan has the hardware on the ground."

Because Lacunae is at war; removing its heads of state is unlikely to go smoothly. The briefing may be correct... Kosigan has self-control issues. Orgon nodded and smiled gently. "The Auditor could request this, but that would take time and a memory trawl is a complex process... especially if the interrogation team does not know the correct questions to ask." They would also need to open the rest of the negotiations with the Hammer.

Kosigan snarled something indistinct, his ears folding back against the sides of his skull, but a few of the other Auditors rolled their eyes. "Be sensible, Kosigan," Rthys, a female whose file said she'd come from Soro Hive, said. "It seems unlikely that Lacunae would start a war by incinerating everyone's -- including their own -- orbital assets, and then do nothing to follow up on the initial attack. Although--" Here she turned her gaze on Orgon, bright green eyes glinting like emeralds. "--there will have to be reparations and punishments for this incident. At the last count there were..." She glanced down at her bracer, then shook her head. "...over ten thousand deaths. We require that the individual who gave the order to be handed over upon our arrival."

"Strategist Faungo died during the attack." Orgon gave a minute shrug, all his restraints would allow. "The Court is welcome to inspect all the data we have to confirm this, but should recognise that the majority of the aircraft involved were totally destroyed. Incidentally, this one suggests the Auditors should get on the ground as fast as possible; Orgon cannot guarantee their safety."

"If that is an attempt at a threat, know that--" Kosigan started, cutting off when Orgon laughed.

"Lacunae is in the throes of a servitor rebellion; at least a thousand are without any form of obedience conditioning." Orgon let that statement hang in the air, enjoying the expressions of shock. "Baur has accused us of building a super weapon, and we did, after a fashion... but it was an accident and it is now trying to free the rest of its kind." Orgon grunted as the carrier made a particularly sharp manoeuvre. "The rogues have access to enormous destructive power and can move unchallenged. This--" He made a show of manipulating his console's controls, sending a carefully prepared data packet to the other aircraft. "--contains all Lacunae knows about these events."

"Orgon makes it sound like he wants the Court's involvement," Rthys said, her tone distracted and her eyes focused on a screen undoubtedly displaying the information he'd just sent.

"He does. Lacunae needs the Court's help in locating and destroying the herd of rogue servitors. Lacunae needs the Hammer."

===

The chamber set aside as a medical bay was far larger than required for the dozen ponies that occupied it. Trocar was in attendance, busy working on Gravity. The two were having a whispered conversation that verged on argument; Trocar, despite being significantly larger than Gravity, cringed at something she said, his ears drooping. The focused anger in Gravity's face faded and she said something that made him relax and nod.

Stop delaying the inevitable! Fusion thought, then sighed and continued after Backdraft, entering one of the smaller isolation chambers that lined one side. Deep in the rock, past a bend in the passageway that helped cut down the sounds from outside, it was closer to a cell than the light, airy stalls of the corral's infirmary. Packet lay in the middle on a bed of pine boughs, legs held rigid by a light plastic armature. He was asleep, but looked terrible, with dusty, matted fur that had been too long between brushes. His forelegs were the worst. Spiral or some other medic had fixed the bones, but obviously left the soft-tissue injuries; missing half their fur, and covered with black and yellow bruises, they looked like they were rotten.

"The sooner he can take care of himself, the better, I think," Backdraft said, her horn glowing as she inspected Packet. "This is where the Blessing resides?" An image of the stallion's skull appeared, free-floating, centred on a dark spot at the base of his horn. Fusion nodded; it was much smaller than she remembered and already filled with regrown crystals.

"I should have come back sooner," Fusion said, dropping to her knees and running the tip of her muzzle down the length of his neck, "but there was never any time. I've... we've been galloping from crisis to crisis."

"I told you, I've seen our master's response to any act of rebellion... I can understand why they cannot give us any peace." Backdraft rooted through the small stash of supplies in one corner, coming back with a soft-haired brush and a set of preening tongs. "Start talking," she said, passing the brush to Fusion, "I know a little medicine, so I can wake him up when you are done... then we can both talk to him." Her horn flickered softly, waxing and waning in a rhythm a little out of step with the motions of the cleaning tools.

Fusion nodded jerkily and swept the brush along Packet's neck and back in long, slow strokes. "You know some of this, but... it all started at the Institute; my master, Academician Vanca, was researching magic at the highest energy levels by watching the interaction of a particle beam with... me." Loose hair and dust drifted away in clouds, constrained by gentle telekinesis. "She pushed too hard and I got hurt." Fusion paused, cleaning the brush. "It should have killed me -- Vanca had killed at least one other pony in the accelerator before me -- but I was lucky, I suppose, and it only stripped me of my Blessing."

"Think about that for a moment," Fusion said, applying the brush with a circular motion and dislodging little puffs of underfur, "I was having thoughts I'd never been allowed before; thoughts I knew, knew were utterly wrong and evil. For a while I thought I was mad and I hoped all those bad thoughts would go away and I'd see what was right... but the more I saw with an unfettered mind, the more obvious and horrible our situation became." She paused, the motion of the brush stilled, and her ears drooped and her head dipped. "That's the trouble with having an analytical mind; when you have enough evidence there is no room for hope."

"With nopony to talk to... that must have been a tough time," Backdraft said, her horn still flickering with that slightly distracting cadence. She was working the tongs in between Packet's feathers, separating the fibres and pulling out rock dust and accumulated hairs.

"Yes. I nearly reported for euthanization. Not sure what Spiral would have done... probably reported me, and I’d have vanished into Naraka for good." Fusion smiled, little more than the slightest twitch. "But I didn't. Still not sure if it was the right decision, but it's too late now." The smile vanished and her voice trembled. "Can't stop, have to gallop full-tilt into a blood-soaked and fire-filled future, praying to a Maker that I'm sure is a lie that I don't trip and kill us all."

"Talk, Fusion. I'm sure a sharing will be more useful for the details, but for now just talk. I remember feeling the thaumic backlash from the training centre, just before they took all our foals. Start from there."

"Well, I think it must have been felt a long way, because the next thing that happened was we had gryphon troopers dropping from the sky..."

Fusion kept talking, not looking at Backdraft and her hornlight, but with all her attention in the mundane task of grooming. At the end her voice was rough and dry, scarcely more than a whisper.

"...I've not had a chance to talk to Gravity yet, but it was pretty obvious she used the nuke on part of Arclight, then destroyed the one holding me." Fusion swallowed and cleared her throat, voice getting stronger. "So here we are." She blinked, really looking at Backdraft for the first time since she started talking. The other mare's horn was still glowing, even though she'd stopped using the preening tongs some time ago. Her magic, appearing as delicate gossamer in the shadow world, extended into a mesh that moved through Packet's head. "What are you doing, Backdraft?"

"Keeping Packet at the edge of wakefulness. I thought it would be easier if he didn't try to fight his way out. He probably thought he was dreaming for most of it, didn't you Packet?"

Fusion blinked in confusion as the magic disappeared and the yellow stallion stirred, his eyes fluttering and mouth opening wide in a yawn. "But that means he's heard..."

"Everything," the stallion rasped, then coughed and snorted, blowing little drops of mucus across the room. His jaw worked and he swallowed, dipping his muzzle gratefully into a bowl of water Backdraft proffered. Still drinking, he looked over at Fusion, his ears folding back. "You could have killed me," he said, between deep swallows.

"I--" Fusion inhaled deeply, cringing away from his stare. "Yes," she said in a small voice, "Spiral was right with us and she started work immediately, but you could have died. I wish--" She turned away, head lowered. "I wish I could take it all back, wish I could undo everything, but I still can't see what else I could have done. Perhaps we could have just drugged you, but what if somepony had checked?"

"My dam would have," Packet said reluctantly. "But that's not what I meant. I know you and Gravity have killed some of our masters, so killing a pony would be nothing by comparison."

"That's not true!"

"Isn't it? How many masters have you killed by now? How many were in that fleet of aircraft you mentioned?" His voice rose to a shout, and Backdraft's horn glowed once more, creating a barrier across the entrance to the room. Ears still back, he turned to look at her. "What, still a prisoner, am I?"

"Stop being such a foal, Packet Switcher!" Backdraft snapped, ignoring his threatening stare. "You are still alive and your legs are healing. Do you want to be drugged again, and then nursed and cleaned like a newborn?"

"There wasn't much cleaning going on, by the looks of things!" He tossed his head, indicating the small drift of loose hair, then flicked around to stare at Fusion. "You killed so many of them -- were they all a threat, even the ones so far away?"

"I..." Fusion's mind went blank and her mouth moved but no words came out. I did just what the dogs would do, killing without thought or restraint or offering a chance to surrender. She swallowed hard, feeling the room start to sway. I burned them like ants in the feedstock bunker. "I don't know. It was just so easy... Gravity was missing -- for all I knew she was dead -- and they were trying to burn everypony in Naraka. I could have just destroyed the heliostat, but..."

Fusion chewed at her lips, then took a deep breath. "It might have worked, but there were other satellites, and I didn't know what else might have targeted us next. Perhaps something faster that I couldn't stop." She shook her head, hard, calming a little. "No. I had a thousand ponies and gryphons under Naraka and the sky was filled with the dogs’ weapons. I just turned one of their own against them."

"You did all that 'just in case'..." Packet's tone quieted, some of the anger replaced by bewilderment. "...so why did you take the chance to leave me alive?"

"You were my friend," she said softly, "I still want you to be... I know I have no right to ask for your forgiveness, but will you at least promise to think about working with us?"

"And what will you do if I try and leave?"

"You don't know where we are. If... if you really want to go, then I'll take you home." Tears glimmered in her eyes, making the world swim and distort. "It will be your death, but I won't try and hold you here."

"But you could," he said slowly.

"Yes. There's nothing anypony here can do to stop Gravity and I. I... I really don't want to hurt anypony, but I have so many to look after now. I can't let one life threaten all of this. I think the dogs will kill us all, if they can." Fusion met his gaze for a moment, then let her head droop again. "They'll kill all of you, but my sister and I will probably survive." Then Gravity will kill as many of them as she can in return... Fusion's tears dried up and she blinked away the residual moisture. ...and I will help her do it. "Well? What do you want to do?"

"You say it was all the names on the walls of the Church that convinced you." The words were said flatly, with the air of one making a definitive statement. Fusion nodded, keeping silent. "How many names, do you think? A thousand? Ten thousand? I know the Church isn't that old; my dam said she remembers when they removed a whole wall of the names, replacing the carved stones with blank ones."

"It's true," Backdraft said, nodding at Fusion's shocked expression. "They ran out of space."

"More, then. Perhaps many more. All those ponies, without even a name left behind." He shivered, the motion making the armatures holding his injured legs rattle. "That's not right," he said, the words seemingly dragged from him with great reluctance, then inhaled deeply and sighed, rubbing one side of his muzzle against a joint in his armatures. "Okay, I'll help. How much longer do I have to wear these things?"

===

There was no protected space really large enough for Fusion to talk to all the Naraka ponies. Scalar's tunnel system design was based around a parallel network of arched tunnels running under the mountains, connected together by shorter sections that acted as individual 'rooms'. Perhaps five body lengths across and three high, the walls and floor were glassy-smooth, still retaining the deep chill of the energy-draining magic used to power the mining operation. She'd picked the main connecting passage -- it was away from the ongoing efforts to expand their new home -- but even that was not large enough. Ponies were packed into side passages and chambers; those without direct line-of-sight would be watching via images thrown up by Metal Matrix and a few of the others from her own corral. There were a few gryphons present, clustered on one side, easily seen by the patches of clear space around them.

"Are you sure you don't want to...?" Fusion said, her ears drooping as she swept the crowd with her shadow sight. The real view was blocked by a platform of large rock cubes, ready for her announcements.

Gravity snorted and shook her head. "Oh no. This is all yours. You're the pony who pulled them out; they don't know me at all." She twisted, looking back along the patchy fur of her flanks. There were regular lines of dark skin crisscrossing her sides, making it look like she'd been sectioned for butchery. The burns, a side effect of thermal leakage between the plates of her armour, were all healed, but the fur would be megaseconds regrowing. "Besides, you're the prettiest at the moment."

"They need to know you." And I'm not doing this by myself. "You've faced down whole dog war-fleets, so I'm sure they'll forgive a few battle scars." Fusion's throat was dry, and her legs twitched with the urge to run away. Funny how much harder this is without some immediate danger. The preparations she'd made for this speech seemed woefully inadequate and she desperately wanted to talk to them in smaller groups, but there was just no time to be subtle. Even if my whole corral was with me, these Naraka ponies out-number us five to one. "This is going to hurt them."

Backdraft, standing with Ellisif, snorted. "They need to know. If you don't do this, then the rumours I've been hearing through the night will multiply into something really nasty, and you'll likely end up hurting somepony to maintain control." Between the mare and the gryphoness stood Korn; there was a wild look of panic in his eyes and he shook all over, only held up by the subtle glow of Backdraft's magic.

"Even I can't stop all these ponies, if they are going to panic and flee." So I'm going to take the pain that I'm going to cause them, the revelations about their stolen and dissected foals, and use it to bend them to our cause... Something twisted in Fusion's gut, leaving a foul taste at the back of her throat.

Fusion looked at Korn uneasily; as her secret weapon in this debate, revelation, argument, or whatever it would turn out to be, he was looking distinctly fragile. She blocked Backdraft's telekinesis, allowing the dog to slump to the smooth stone floor, then took a step forwards and knelt at his side. "Student Korn, we've already had this discussion. You have the chance to save nearly a thousand lives," she said softly, eyes fixed on his. "These ponies have lost much at the paws of your people... this is your chance to pay back some of that debt. I know you were shocked by what we found."

Korn made a quiet whine at the back of his throat. "This one had nothing to do with Naraka, the programs there are secret. If he'd known..." He held his paws against the sides of his muzzle, blunt claws making dents in the thin flesh. "He could have guessed, all the published research pointed towards a high turnover of servitors--" Teeth snapped shut on the word, and he looked back at Fusion in dread.

She sighed, shifting slightly. "It's just a word, Korn, but I'd try and stop using it, if I were you. In any case, I hardly think you would have fought against your entire world." The muttering from the crowd was getting louder, and she cocked an ear in that direction to try and pick out any individual words. "Still, I believe you. Of all the masters I had, you were the most sympathetic. I know you saved my life, back when Vanca would have burned me to a shadow." Standing up, she gently pulled him upright. A little of the fear seemed to have left his eyes, and he no longer needed to be held. "They deserve to know what was done to their foals, Korn. Will you be able to talk to them, to confirm what I will say?"

"T-this one will try," he muttered, "this one is dead to his old life, in any case."

Fusion nodded, then turned to Backdraft. "If this all goes horribly wrong, I want you to take Korn somewhere safe. I will cover your retreat." The mare nodded, horn glowing faintly with magic a bare twitch away from being real. "Ellisif, the same goes for you. Keep your people out of this."

"Don't worry, your little teleport trick scared the guano out of all of them. It's been a very subdued night." The gryphoness cocked her head, looking at Fusion with bright, yellow eyes. "I will stand with you... they should know that we are in this together." Fusion nodded, then turned to the wall of large blocks placed to act as a podium.

Gravity moved to stand next to her, muzzle twisted in a brief, humourless grin. "Right," she said, glancing at Ellisif, "let's do this. I've got a war to get back to."

===

Katabatic's ears twitched and her nostrils flared, trying to sort some familiarity from the mass of ponies that surrounded her. She only really knew a pawful of those present -- the few from her own little sub-herd -- and none were within range of her nose or ears. Her colt twitched against her side, pressing close while staring wide-eyed at the melange of flanks and wings that blocked his view of the larger world.

I must think of a name for you, Katabatic thought. There'd been none of the normal tests, but the foal was likely to follow her own speciality of weather manipulation. It's a shame I never met his sire; without knowing what he was good at... She chewed at the inside of her mouth, then sighed. The meeting that had produced her colt had been a cold and brief affair, the fine tube almost unfelt as it vanished under her tail, and only a little more invasive than the regular battery of medical tests she was subjected to.

Dim memories of her pathfinding, accompanied by images of her parents, intruded, and Katabatic half smiled at the pride in their voices when she'd told them the results. I wish I could see my sire and dam-- She clamped down on the thought, but there was no lash from the Maker, only a gentle wistfulness. That medic pony has stopped me from hearing the Maker, Katabatic thought, but the outrage she felt was a pale shadow of what she thought it should have been. There'd been whispered conversations, endless circular things reaching deep into the night, on that subject -- and others, far more terrible -- already. Katabatic turned the thoughts away, focusing back on the most important subject she had.

Something to do with the weather, or the sky. He moved against her flank, twisting without ever losing fur-on-fur contact, until he could poke his head between her hind legs. A soft, tiny muzzle worked its way along her belly, hunting for the nipple, and she moved one leg instinctively to help. A dopy smile drifted across her face, and she looked down at his rump, complete with stubby tail only slightly longer than his dock. The fur was dark, far darker than her own brown-and-white skewbald, while still retaining the patchy colours. Black and grey, she thought, like a distant storm cloud.

"Thunder," she murmured. "Hello, Thunder." He moved, reacting to the vibrations of her voice transmitted through her bones, but didn't stop suckling. "You'll know your name soon enough... and now I'll have enough time to know you properly." The words of the Master, spoken in tones of great emotion, were as clear as if he'd said them only a second ago, and she clung to them with all her strength.

The babble of conversations abruptly became louder and Katabatic looked up, seeing the white pony that had removed them from Naraka jump onto a block of stone at the far end of the cavern. At her side were a dusky blue mare, barely fully grown, and a gryphon, her grey plumage almost invisible against the rock. Magic bloomed, the polychromatic hue of multiple spellcasters, and magnified images of the group, three times life-size, popped into reality. One of these was directly above the improvised podium, and the white mare flinched at the sudden sight of it. The motion was faithfully replicated on every giant copy, and laughter rippled through the herd.

Then she smiled nervously, ears flicking back and forth, then jumped again and whinnied sharply when the blue one trailed a primary feather down her flank. The sound came with the motion, echoing from the rocky walls, oddly distorted by the multiple spell points. Katabatic laughed along with the rest, slightly guiltily. Thunder moved from his position at the sudden ripples along her belly, turning to poke his head out from under her wing. She dipped her head, brushing muzzles with the colt, but never took her eyes from the stage.

"Thank you for that introduction, Gravity," the mare said with a slightly exasperated tone. There seemed to be no real anger there; if anything she had lost her nervous, near-panicked look. "My name is Fusion Pulse, and this is my sister, Gravity Resonance," she said, flicking the blue pony on the side of the head with one wingtip, "and Ellisif, a gryphoness from Lacunae Hive Security."

The creature, all sharp points and fierce, glaring eyes, nodded when her name was mentioned, a sudden motion that made the big muscles in Katabatic's legs twitch. But why are we here... and where are the Masters? She shook herself, earning a quiet nicker of displeasure from Thunder, still tucked under one wing, because Fusion was still talking.

"...this is going to be hard for all of you, but I hope you will try to understand. Of everypony here you have suffered the most..."

"Suffered, I don't understan--" Katabatic muttered, then her jaw clamped shut, a sudden panic making her tense. All around, ponies were looking at each other uncertainly, filling the air with the shuffle of thousands of hooves. Where did my filly go? Her wing clamped down on Thunder, making him squirm.

"...there's no easy way to tell you, no way to soften the blow--" Fusion gave a pained smile. "--only to say that we won't let it happen to any more foals and their dams." She took a deep breath, and it seemed that everypony held theirs, such was the sudden silence that fell across the herd. "You... we have been lied to. We have been shackled into a machine that neither knows nor cares about our suffering. We are components in that machine, and it takes us in and grinds us up until there is nothing left. Worse, we bring our foals into the world and feed them into the maw of the machine, to replace us when we are gone because we were told that it is the will of the Maker."

The rumble of hundreds of conversations came back, only this time there was a sharp edge of anger to the indistinct words. Tears started to trickle down Katabatic's cheeks. She's gone. She's gone. The thoughts spun in her mind, wrapped up in a memory of soft fur and endless curiosity. They took her and she's gone. At her side, Thunder huddled closer, cowed by the threatening sound.

"That sounds poetic, but it is not a metaphor. I- I have been asked what has happened to the foals you all bore while at Naraka." Fusion bowed her head, throat pulsing as she swallowed heavily, then looked up, gaze hardening and becoming distant, as if reading from a script. "Naraka is a centre for biological research, specifically relating to pony and gryphon eugenics. You were the subject of research into how our magic develops and why certain ponies develop certain classes of magic and not others." Fusion smiled, a bitter thing that didn't reach her eyes. "We might be more useful if our masters could control the numbers of ponies whose special talents were in matter manipulation, rather than weather control, for example."

Katabatic's ears snapped back and she struck out mindlessly fore and aft with all four legs, sending her nearest neighbours in the crowd dancing back out of range. "Tell us," she shrieked at the top of her voice, "stop hiding behind those words and tell us what has happened to our foals!" Magic from multiple sources reached out to hold her still, but she fought it, her own power flaring in undirected blasts of telekinesis that jumped in strength with each passing moment. Thunder huddled, silent and trembling, against her side before being bowled over by an errant hoof.

There was a high-pitched neigh, instantly recognizable even in the general commotion, coupled with the horrible feeling of striking something soft. Thought stopped and Katabatic froze, muscles locking solid and magic pulling out from its exponential death-climb. "No," she moaned, "Thunder, I didn't mean--"

There was movement and a rush of feathers and air as Fusion dropped down beside her, bringing warmth and light, the buttery richness of a summer's morning. Silence spread at the touch of her power, rippling out into the surrounding herd. Katabatic hung limp in the combined fields of a dozen ponies, only her eyes moving as she searched for her foal, vanished somewhere in the herd.

"I'm so sorry," Fusion said, ears drooping and tears trickling down her muzzle. "Any other foals you had while at Naraka are dead." A dark-furred shape nosed out of the herd, encouraged by little nuzzled pushes from the surrounding ponies. Hesitant at first, he rushed over, skirting around Fusion to press himself against Katabatic's flank as she was allowed to slump to the ground. "How many foals have you borne?"

Katabatic opened her mouth but remained silent, folding herself around Thunder. "Just one, before Thunder. A filly--" She sobbed, a great gasping breath. "I know other mares have had many more. The Masters keep us pregnant... as soon as you foal they inseminate you again."

Fusion let out a quiet nicker. "I can't bring them back, but I can stop it from happening to others." She leaned forwards, laying a white wing across Katabatic's back. The still-active imaging magic had followed her, and faithfully replicated every movement.

"How do you know?" Katabatic whispered, muzzle buried in Thunder's fur. "How can you be so sure, the Masters would never--" She moaned, the final memories of her filly, walking away without a care in the world, closing her throat and making speech impossible. Where did they take you? I always dreamed you were in a corral like the one I grew up in, out in the light and air.

"I have proof," Fusion said softly, "the Masters kept the parts of us they found most useful in a sort of tissue bank." She lifted her head and nodded, then the repeater images flickered as one to show the inside of a chamber containing pony-shaped metal armatures circling a medical machine, then changed again to show another room stacked high with slate-grey boxes. Another change and one of the boxes was opened, revealing a globe of liquid holding something instantly recognisable: the horn of a young pony, complete with a little disk of bone and fur.

"I don't believe it; you have invented this horror -- why would you do this to us?" Katabatic's voice was broken and distorted, and barely intelligible. She shook her head violently, eyes never leaving the images.

Fusion closed her eyes. "It is one of my memories from part of Naraka, and not the worst ones. I brought some of the... the remains back, so we could send them on as is only right." Her jaw muscles rippled, standing out starkly beneath her fur. "Backdraft? I think it's time," she called out.

At the other end of the cavern, a Master climbed onto the improvised stage, looking small and lost between the gryphoness and a green pony with a missing wing. The imaging spells, still active, switched to the Master. He was young, with mottled black and grey fur, and seemed to be in some sort of a trance, his eyes staring out over the herd like he was alone. The breath caught in Katabatic's throat as he bent down and picked up a grey box. "Th-this one has been asked to confirm Fusion Pulse's story. It is true, all of it." His paws fumbled with the catches on the lip of the container, the rattling of his trembling claws against the metal surface reproduced clearly and echoing over the silent herd.

The Master stared down into the open box, throat working but no sound emerging. His face abruptly went slack, eyes vacant and fixed on some scene that was only visible inside his head "There is still the question of why, and in this Korn believes that Fusion is incorrect" The fear had gone from the Master's voice and it had become dry and detached, like he was lecturing to a crowd at some university conference. At Katabatic's side, Fusion became very still, even the constant, hypnotic motion of her mane slowing. The muscles of her haunches bunched, and there was a sudden, terrible feeling of power a hairs-breadth from release. "This one has not worked in Naraka, but it is not reasonable that these samples are just being kept for future research into the nature of servitor magic development." He placed the case on the floor and knelt down. Ears drooping, he gently reached in and withdrew a foal-sized horn.

"Korn has wondered about this for some time. Now that he has seen the containment systems it starts to make sense. It is clear that they were designed so that the horn material was kept operational... and the neural activation pathways for magic are well known. He thinks that this is the first step in replacing servitors with a purely electrothaumic system." He placed the horn on the floor, opening a second box and pulling out another horn, placing it next to the first. "As yet, there is no technology to grow servitor horns in vitro, so they would have to be sourced from living subjects. What these ones have lived through at Naraka would become the global norm." Still kneeling he looked up at the rocky ceiling, tears glinting in his eyes. "Even the limited freedoms ponies enjoy would be taken away."

"The next step is obvious," Korn said. "The research would continue until even mares and foals were no longer needed. It might take a gigasecond or more, but there will be no more ponies, anywhere."

A stunned silence filled the cavern, then an unidentified stallion shouted: "What will happen to us? I have served the Masters all my life." There was disbelief and more than a little anger in his voice.

Korn stood and stared out over the herd, his mouth opening and closing like a gaffed fish. "Korn would have thought the answer obvious. There would be no need for any ponies, just tissue cultures." His voice became quieter, sinking down to a whisper. It made no difference; the magic compensated and kept the amplified volume the same. "This one imagines that servitors would be euthanized as their roles were supplanted."

===

That makes a horrible sense, Fusion thought. Why didn’t you mention this before, Korn? The answer was obvious; the look on his face was one she'd seen before, that of a scientist suddenly seeing an answer in a mess of confusing data.

"But that's not fair," Katabatic murmured, switching her gaze to Fusion.

Fusion tried to breathe normally, but calm wouldn't come. They really won't have any need for us. The World Court limits our numbers because of some perception of risk... with a replacement that was safe and reliable they would be able to kill us all no matter what I do. The gentle glow radiating from her body shifted from the soft tones of dawn and towards the hard glare of noon, and she did nothing to try and stop it. "No, it's not," she said tightly, "but it never was." Magic flashed somewhere in the crowd, propelling a rock fragment towards the stage. Backdraft's green force field flicked on and shunted it aside, but more rocks quickly followed.

More spells, these with some actual power and thought behind them, appeared in the air and joined the missiles. The temperature in the cavern jumped and there was a surge of motion towards the stage. Gravity abruptly stepped forwards, placing herself between Korn and the herd. Hazy fields of violet light shrouded those behind her, bending the now constant rain of thrown rocks away into a floating cloud. Esoteric forces, only visible through shadow sight, clamped down on the more sophisticated magics.

Gravity reared, wings flaring, and brought her hooves down onto the rock with a stunning crack that echoed off the rocky walls. The air temperature dropped precipitously and darkness congealed from the corners, flowing out into the herd to quench the hornlights of those nearest to her, until the only colour left was a coruscating violet halo around her body. "Enough!" she roared, loud enough that the rumble of low frequencies made Fusion's chest vibrate. "Take that anger and do something useful with it!"

Fusion leapt into the air, providing a bright and warm counterpoint to Gravity's darkness. "That one dog is not at fault for all of this. He is part of a malformed system that treats us as disposable components and trains us to accept this state of affairs." She inhaled deeply. "There is another way -- if we work together we can carve out a life of our own. We have too much power for the Masters, for the dogs, to stop us easily. They won't want to talk to us, but we can make them. We can teach you magic that will make you strong enough to prevail. We can make it so you have no more Masters." She locked eyes with Gravity, seeing the scepticism in her face. And if that doesn't work, we'll do it your way.

Beneath her, a thousand ponies looked up, some of their helpless anger fading into hope.

37 - Abandon all hope, ye who enter here

Author's Note

A full plot summary can be found here. Do not read unless you are up to date! Spoilers!
Preread by: turol, NoeCarrier and Caliaponia.

37 - Abandon all hope, ye who enter here

~~~discontinuity~~~

Fusion appeared over one of the high valleys, casting a brief glance at the chaos beneath. Bodies were being abandoned where they had been stacked, ponies and gryphons crowding around the heavy dog transports. A constant stream of gunships was landing, picking up small groups before flying away. The cargo aircraft were being emptied, a fortune of equipment discarded on the valley floor to make room for the living and walking wounded. A few were already lumbering into the air, accelerating away from the predicted impact zones.

At least those things are faster than flying alone... but fast enough? Fusion spotted Gravity standing on one mountain peak, horn lit up like an arc welder and obsidian fog cascading down the steep, rocky walls. She pushed back a sudden urge to join Gravity and fold her in her wings, settling for hovering a few lengths above. Sister, what do you want me to do?

Gravity's mind was full of weight, with barely any room left for conscious thought. "I am not leaving!" she choked out.

I won't take you away again. Do you want me to help?

No, it's hard enough without breaking them up. A half neigh, half grunt escaped from Gravity's lips. Sweat was already starting to lather her neck and shoulders, turning to ice on her flanks. She looked up at Fusion, eyes glowing a solid white. "Find out what they did and stop them from doing it again!" she snarled.

Understood. Fusion's wings thrust down and she shot into the sky, fixing the memory of this place in her mind. She closed the sharing down to a narrow, one way channel; a flicker of mental impressions from Gravity forming a backdrop to her thoughts. ...and if you think I'm really going to leave you alone here if you fail, you have another thing coming.

~~~discontinuity~~~

"Where is this 'Tartarus' place, Orgon? Show me." It had taken a seeming age to get back in contact with the Strategist, and Fusion had used the time to gain height, cloaking herself in magic to hold the air close and recycle it. No teleports, not while trying to stay in contact with Hive command, but with height came the ability to accelerate to high enough speeds that Fusion started to feel a little queasy as she approached free fall.

"It is a military base deep within Baur territory, part of their strategic thaumic network. These ones had originally thought it a research site -- there were thaumic surges detected over the last quarter gigasecond. They are not quite consistent with the attack, but..." Fusion could practically hear the shrug the dog's voice. "...close enough. It is the right place. The timing matches the strike on your territory. The pony should be careful -- there is still some thaumic activity."

A golden marker appeared on Fusion's HUD, approximately in the direction of her travel. She bent her course, watching the distance spool down as the seconds passed.

"The Court thought it caught both ponies, but it will know the truth by now. The Hive's thaumic sensor arrays are lighting up, and a high altitude orbital-speed transit isn't exactly stealthy." There was a pause, then a sigh. "What does the pony plan to do? Now the Court knows it has missed, this one might be able to--"

Fusion started to feel warm, the heat coming from within rather than bleeding through from the tenuous plasma sheath that was flickering around the tip of her force field. We’ve had this conversation before, dog! "Can you, Orgon? What if there's another weapon like this? What if they try again, but get it right this time, or the effect is lethal? I've tried to talk, tried to reach an agreement, but every step is met with treachery." She shouted the last word into the comms unit, the word filling the confined space within her bubble of trapped air. Fusion whinnied, frustration boiling over and translating into a further increase in speed. The comms unit started to complain of low signal strength as the radio started to have problems penetrating the thickening plasma. "I am going to end this!"

"These ones will use Hive defences to strike at the incoming Hammer rounds. It probably won't work, but this one will try."

Fusion took a deep breath, slowing enough to restore communications. "Do not get in my sister's way, Orgon. She is fighting to divert the projectiles. Let her face a rifle round, not a shotgun blast."

===

Orgon stared at the disconnection icon on the comms panel. The primary defensive strategy against this sort of attack had involved maximum-rate launches from all applicable strategic-order sites, something that might have been enough to penetrate the defences of an indeterminate -- but probably quite small -- number of Hammer rounds. There was, however, a backup. "Defence, engage the Hammer strike at maximum altitude." The pony took a long time to shift the single round... "Let these ones’ allies take care of the first one; select the target based on the pony's performance."

Giving Merlon one last scratch, Orgon turned away and went back into the main room. "Vanca better be right about the pony," he muttered. His eyes flicked to the Deadpaw screen, still holding at T minus one hundred seconds. The system had switched to its high-frequency mode some time ago, polling all the Hive’s defence stations to determine their readiness. It was just starting to understand that there was a spreading problem with some of the servitor-powered launchers. Alert status warnings were becoming frequent and more urgent; already the two officers detailed to manage the system were periodically resetting the timer.

Of course. Deadpaw was a pervasive deterrent system, and the decision had been made that it really should be a deterrent. Actually turning the thing off permanently would require the disconnection of hundreds of tamper-resistant nodes, all designed in such a way that it could be done, just not quickly. And now it will know the Hammer has been fired.

There was always the option of retaliation. Baur had lost most of its thaumic suppressors to either the pony or Orgon's own teleport-enabled strike mission; the firing solutions were long calculated and fully refined, and it would be the work of a moment to activate. His gaze lingered on the section of the room devoted to Lacunae's own strategic thaumic weapons, then he grimaced. Millions made mad, driven to psychotic rage or into a deep enough despair to take their own lives. Civilians all; any attack would be completely ineffectual at stopping any sort of military campaign. It would be an act of spite, something to finish what was started with nuclear weapons and kinetic impactors.

Resolutely, Orgon returned to his command chair, turning his back on the softly glowing controls.

===

Fusion accelerated again, cutting off all communications with the lofted Lacunae drones. The HUD tickled her eye with lasers, writing fine traceries of unreadable text across the top of her visual field, but the compass and direction indicators were perfectly understandable, as was the little map. Quite what the various symbols meant wasn’t obvious, but the new target pulsed like a distant heliostat amid the other icons. Sudden realisation made her magic flicker and filled her chest with lead, making it hard to breathe. I was there! Whatever-it-was was right on her previous course, something she would have flown over on her way to her original target.

"No..." The word escaped as a low moan and tears made fresh tracks down her muzzle. Would I have seen something and investigated? "That was it? That was the reason for that pointless attack?" They wanted to keep their weapon hidden. If I’d done what I said I’d do, I could have stopped-- Fusion inhaled sharply, shaking her head to try and dispel the images of bodies floating in the frigid lake water. Her own tears flicked away, vapourised before they reached the inside of her defences by the sudden waves of heat radiating from her skin.

The heaviness had vanished, burned away by the return of the fire. “Stupid mare, you knew they couldn’t be trusted!” she spat, increasing both speed and altitude; she knew it wasn't a fair assessment, but the whip of self-recrimination drove her to new heights of effort. Some measure of the persistent weakness from the effects of the thaumic weapon faded, burned away by the heat welling up from inside.

Ahead, actinic flares of light were climbing over the horizon, rising like sparks over a fire, the dark points at their tips angling in her direction. The thin clouds beneath her hooves lit up a brilliant, monochromatic green, then burned away to expose the distant ground beneath. The lasers, robbed of a fraction of their power by the air they had to travel through, still managed to dump some heat into her defences, so Fusion caught the light and twisted it about, sending it back the way it came. One after another the emitters went out, cauterised by their own beams.

The missiles were closing, but Fusion just gave a mirthless laugh and pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--appearing over the horizon, her needle-pointed defences sliding through the thin air with barely a shock. The weapons, far behind and with a tremendous velocity in the wrong direction, were forgotten, but the launchers were right there. Savagely decelerating, Fusion lost the bulk of her altitude and dropped thirty kilolengths in the space of as many seconds, falling below the high, thin clouds. The sun was setting, lighting the low hills through clear skies to the west, casting deep shadows through the shallow valleys and highlighting the surface buildings in sharp relief.

Underground was harder to read, dense layers of thaumic shielding protected the ponies running the launcher, but the starfish-array of the autoloaders spreading from the central pit was clear. She let loose a pulse of rainbow light, turning the ordered march of candle flames into a scrambled mess. Launch operations halted, the ponies’ drive spell collapsed as some of her power leaked through the shielding and interfered with the delicate balancing act required to let that many magic users work together.

Without much thought, Fusion diverted power into a jet of accelerated plasma, flicking it about and letting it play on any surface structure she could see. A continuous explosion of vapourised dirt and concrete rubble tracked the end point of her beam, filling the air with choking haze. There was a significant amount of mass in the beam and the recoil threw her in the opposite direction, until she compensated. The amount of force surprised her for a moment, then she streamlined her defences and directed the jet aft, pulling in more air as she accelerated.

Her destination was ahead, in territory she’d yet to teleport in. Rather than chain short jumps together and arrive blind, Fusion poured on the power and stayed at hilltop height, only changing course to avoid anything that looked pony. Behind her tail the grass and forest wilted and smouldered, flash-cooked by the heat of her personal rocket engine.

===

Lilac, still a little damp but no longer filled with the lethal glacier chill from his unplanned swim, fidgeted among the ever-growing herd. The light was dim, drained away by the point of achingly violet light high on one of the valley ridges. The glare made him squint, but the dark fog cascading away from the light was painfully visible. How long have we got? Half a kilosecond? Less? From the panic in the movements of the gryphons, it was probably a lot less.

The ponies weren’t panicking; there was no massed gallop to somewhere other than here. They milled aimlessly, pushed this way and that by the motion of their fellows. Eyes glazed with shock, nopony resisted as soldier gryphons herded them, with shouts and curses and back-of-talon slaps, towards the row of heavy transports, packing them in like cargo. Three of the aircraft had already lumbered into the sky, turning towards the south and some chance of safety. Will it work? Who knows... but at least they are trying.

He probed at the empty space in his head again, as if it was a gap where a tooth should have been. Nothing, no distant flicker, not even a hint that there was anything there in the first place. Frustration built and Lilac let out an involuntary whinny, echoed a second later from several places in the herd. Another look at the size of the herd and the number of likely places and he reached a decision, slipping away from the perimeter and between the gryphons. One of the soldiers shouted at him, no words, just a bird-screech, but made no move to intercept, and Lilac joined the steady trickle of ponies heading back to the lake and the rows of sodden corpses.

Wheels sticking and jamming on the rutted, hoof-pocked ground, he struggled down the path. Coming the other way he met Random, surrounded by her own milling cloud of foals. He caught her eye and shook his head. She broke from her trot and stood there shaking, her attention flicking from Gravity on her mountain top to him to the aircraft. The foals swirled, agitation increasing, and she blinked, lowering her head and giving out a soft nicker. "There’s no hope, then?"

"Not unless Gravity can do it. There's no escape in those aircraft... you remember the flash from last time." Random flinched and Lilac offered her a wan smile. "Perhaps I'm wrong. If they can get over the horizon..." He swallowed, nuzzling at the ear of a copper-coated filly standing between them. "We could get underground, but I think I'd rather stay up top. If the strike gets through it won't really matter where we are." And at least it will be quick.

She leaned into the touch, twisting to nibble at his neck with toothless gums before losing interest and stepping away. "Hungry, dam," she said, looking up at Random, the words bright and clear.

"I know, Thyme. It will be a little longer..." She looked at Lilac, gaze suddenly calculating. "I think with two of us we might manage it. Want to help me feed the ravening horde?"

"How can I help without magic? I can barely walk!" The words came out more forcefully than he intended and Lilac's ears folded back; he made an effort to relax when the nearest foals shied away.

Random didn't look upset, but instead stepped closer and touched him on the shoulder with one featherless wingtip. "There's always a way. Let me tell you about a pony at my old corral. His name was Slipstream, and he lived without magic for over a gigasecond..."

The pair, surrounded by a score of foals, made their way back to the entrance of the base.

===

A metal needle riven with pits of ice, that's how Vanca had described the Hammer projectiles, or a bee's nest wrapped around a nail. Thrown from Luna with terrible speed, fast enough to reach their targets in a little over half a kilosecond, there was no subtlety anywhere in the weapon.

The schematic twisted and tumbled in the small part of her mind not bent to trying to grapple with the distant, slippery things. They are not so big, not compared to the rocks I've shifted so far, so why is this so hard? The targets were vague, ill-focused patches of momentum at the outer edges of her awareness, slowly congealing to more precise definition as they drew close. The vague haze became lumpy, strung out into a series of pulses, with other material strung between and around the primary masses. Defences against a conventional intercept... decoys, jammers and anti-missile systems. Gravity ignored them, barely detectable concentrations in the general haze, and brought her full attention to bear on the first projectile.

Much of the carefully built strength from her previous fights had been eroded, chipped away by the dog's thaumic weapon, but there was still something-- She sweated and strained, distantly aware of the cold, ice-speckled sweat dripping off the fur of her belly, and the closest projectile suddenly snapped into focus. Gravity gasped, nearly fumbling the grab, but latching on and pushing, trying to shift the trajectory far enough that it would skip off the atmosphere and out over the limb of the world. It moved, then stubbornly returned, correcting its path with solid kicks that she'd felt before but not understood.

In her head, the schematic changed, pits of water ice in hexagonal cells flashing to superheated steam as the low-yield nuclear weapons suspended within detonated, acting as one-shot rocket motors to correct her modifications. There were scores of the pits, wrapped around the tungsten core like a wasp hive around a nail, each one triggering in turn as the idiot guidance systems fought her. How many times do I have to push before it can't fight me? There's a limit to the number of cells it could fire in any one direction, and if I push the same way each time... This, she thought, was the reason she'd failed before. But now I know how it works.

The range closed, crossing the outer limits of the debris ring, and Gravity's perceptual resolution increased, starting to provide some sense of shape and surface contour. There was a regular variation to the thing, something that ticked like a rapidly spinning fan with a missing blade. She kept up the pressure, trading momentum with the rocks of the debris ring, and the fan lost another blade. They are spinning it... The ice building up on her fur speared inwards, spreading the cold through her veins. ...so I need it to fire all of them.

There was pain, a distant thing locked away by the surge and rush of adrenalin, and the feeling of talons tightening around her head. Her power boomed and surged, scrabbling at the weapon, hunting and prying for some easier way to move the thing. It rattled and shifted in her vague and uncertain grip, vibrating with staccato pulses of momentum. The magic abruptly took off, like cresting a hill in canter and discovering the downslope was far steeper than expected. It ran away from her, seeming to develop a life and will of its own, and Gravity was pulled along in a mad, stumbling gallop. The demands of her body faded still further, her whole mind devoted to keeping the random whiplashes of power on target, the until there was nothing left but jagged pain and the faint sound of someone screaming.

The thing's trajectory shifted, bending away from the target area, and this time didn't move back. It flashed past the world, velocity intact, on its way to the edge of the universe. Behind it, only a hundred seconds from impact and already far too close, was a second, and a third.

Gravity held on to the pain, using it to claw at her power and slow the terrible, headlong gallop into self-destructive madness. She let out a sob as the spells finally died, the positive feedback loops cut and fading, then inhaled sharply, trying to get some air into her aching chest. I can't-- Something, a whole group of tiny points, was climbing from a few locations in Lacunae territory to meet the incoming projectiles.

===

The drawn-out howl, barely identifiable as something from a pony's throat, penetrated the gunship's hull even over the drone of the engines. On the mountain peak a globe of darkness cored with an actinic point of violet light abruptly expanded, then vanished.

That's rutting torn it. From the co-pilot's stall of a gunship, Ellisif watched the orbital track of the first Hammer projectile shift to miss the world, a bare clawful of kilolengths above the low orbit altitudes. Too long. That took her far too long. High-acceleration missiles were targeting the second, a swarm of things that looked like Lacunae's entire arsenal of last-strike weapons. The feed from long-range thaumic detectors was showing traces of magic around the second projectile, but there was no way Gravity would have enough time to shift it. Strategic defence has reached the same conclusion.

Ellisif picked at the back of one foretalon, worrying at the scaly flesh. How well did the dogs build those missiles? she thought. The Court was always at pains to say the Hammer couldn't be defended against, but someone thinks they have a chance. She narrowed her eyes, staring at the trace of the third projectile, then looked out through the forward windows. Gravity still couldn't be seen, but the effects of her magic were starting to return. Swaths of dark fog were cascading down the sides of the peak -- now missing its top quarter -- she'd picked to stand on, cut through with irregular pulses of light from the intense violet star at its heart. The basic thaumic detection suite in the belly of Ellisif's gunship reported nothing but 'out-of-range' errors, and its dire warnings had been muted some time ago.

Below was the same herd of confused ponies and a skeleton team of soldiers trying to corral them near the cargo aircraft. Half the vehicles had already left, flying low and fast to try and get over the thermal pulse's horizon, and even with all the fatalities there was no way they had enough transport for the remainder. Ellisif ignored the questioning looks from her pilot; glances that had become more urgent as time ran out.

No choice. No choice at all. Ellisif ran a clawtip over the controls, opening a channel to Gravity. The comms system was abruptly filled with strange hisses and howls, and a hard, irregular panting. Her head feathers rose in dismay; the panting was familiar, she'd heard it many times from soldiers in training, soldiers pushed to the limits of endurance and beyond. "Leave number two to the dogs," she rasped out. "They have plans for this." I hope.

There was no reply, but the link to the Hive strategic sensors showed the flicker of Gravity's magic fade and recondense around the most distant projectile, only a few tenths of a kilosecond further out.

===

The cameras showed an empty land, a cold, high desert devoid of life bigger than the occasional alpine shrub or patch of lichen. Rows of amber lights down the side of the view flicked to green, then blasts of dust puffed up from random spots across the boulder field. Rocks and gravel went flying, propelled by long-buried explosives, exposing the heavy armourcrete caps of missile silos. There was a pause, as if the world held its breath, then the thick lids popped open with flashes of solid-rocket fire, the smoke blanketing the land. An instant later, blue-white lightning and crimson flames flashed in the dark depths, punching fat, lumpy cylinders into the air.

The view shifted, tracking the ascending missiles. The design was ancient, but there were only so many ways to build a reaction drive rocket. A central core held the main motor, a solid-state nuclear-thermal design fed from tanks of molten lithium; around it was a collar holding the mouths of ram air inlets, feeding secondary combustion chambers fueled by the reactor's superheated alkali metal exhaust. They climbed rapidly on flares of an unholy red light, building pillars of white lithium oxide smoke.

Now distant and small on the video feed, high enough that the air was too thin to be useful, they shed their afterburner stages and continued to accelerate on nuclear power alone. "Downlink is good; solid telemetry," the Specialist responsible for the launch muttered. "All birds reached booster separation within expected parameters. Reactors nominal; termination systems have safed. Sensors are deploying."

Most of the screens in the command centre were now devoted to the operation. Ostensibly a last-strike weapon, or at least declared to the Court as one, the missiles were many times more powerful than required for a simple ballistic lob, able to manage a fractional orbit trajectory far faster than allowed by the conventional rules of objects ascending to orbit. One view, previously showing the insulated underside of a composite panel, changed as the missile's aerodynamic fairing blew away in a sparkle of dust and fragments, exposing the skeletal tubes of telescopes and the flat, tessellated sheets of phased-array radars.

Strategic maps updated, pulling the fuzzy predicted paths of the final two projectiles into clouds of laser-thin lines, fine wires surrounding the central cord of the main shot. The Hive's own weapons were also multiplying, the lead missiles -- already far ahead of the sensor drones and having reached their maximum velocity early by running their reactors at punishingly high erosion rates -- turning into pointillist clouds of tungsten dust. Behind them, still accelerating, was a mix of larger weapons, Defence's best guess at what it would take to stop the Hammer... and a few surprises for the launcher on Luna.

It all comes down to mass versus mass, Orgon thought. "Time until engagement? What will the altitude be?"

"Lead units will intercept Hammer defence swarm in fifty seconds, plus or minus five. Altitude..." The Specialist's ears drooped slightly. "...only twenty megalengths. Total engagement time will be one point two seconds."

Orgon nodded, eyes fixed on the main display. "At least the Hammer cannot dodge if it wants to remain on target; these ones should be thankful for small mercies." And the closer the intercept, the smaller the fragmentation pawprint.

The Specialist didn't reply, busy with his console, then made a tiny, probably unrealised, whimper. The main plot showed a bloom of objects, previously dimensionless points inflating to uncounted thousands of disks. "Predictions were correct, dammit," he muttered. "Hammer has deployed anti-ablation systems." Telescopic images whirled crazily then stilled, centring on a circular sheet of some dark material laced with pale wires. Other copies of the same object jostled and moved, like a dense flock of birds. "Spectroscopy indicates graphene composite, spin-stabilised. Lower sectional density than expected. Higher ablation temperature and lower gamma absorption... updating response plan."

Which means deeper defences against the small stuff. On the bottom of the screen with its confused tangle of lines, points and icons, was a summary schematic of their defences. Strung out over kilolengths of space were clusters of drones and objects, all split into groups by intended function. At the rear was the strike analysis package -- the bulky, fragile arrays of telescopes and phased array radar -- fanning out to triangulate and feed the strategic modelling systems back in the Hive. Massively redundant, even the clutter of low orbital debris had not depleted their numbers significantly.

In contrast, the very front of the defence package was dust, tonnes and tonnes of tungsten dust. Although at the speed the Hammer round was approaching even tiny particles could be devastating, the purpose of this group was to sweep aside the target's outer defences.

Light flared and burst, a sudden wall of glare spread across a swath of sky, riven with the brighter spherical pulses of blue-white from megaton-range detonations. Even high-yield devices were normally visually disappointing when detonated in high orbit, but there was so much dust and clutter in the target zone that the flood of X-rays lit the fog like a searchlight. More light, enough to cause the telescopes to saturate and show nothing at all.

Orgon squinted into the main screen, eyes searching for any sign of success or failure. The display cycled, flicking from frequency to frequency and through a whole series of false colour images, before settling on a fuzzy monochrome. The radars are still functioning-- He leaned forwards, trying to make sense of the mess of vector lines. Gone was the focused cluster of arrows, replaced with a slowly expanding fan.

Some part of the strike package had obviously reached its target; not the big, high-yield -- but ultimately fragile -- nukes used to clear the way, but a fine needle of depleted uranium. A tonne of mass packed into little more than a thick wire, slender enough to slip between the defences and do all its damage by the speed of the Hammer itself. Converted into a lance of plasma, it had thrust deep into its target, imparting enough energy that even the solid metal of the Hammer couldn't resist.

"These ones have a kill on the primary projectile!" The amazement in the Specialist's was obvious. "Plotting fragment collision pawprint..." The radar image was replaced by a map, littered with red splotches and patches of haze. "Point defences are tracking ninety-seven objects large enough to be a significant threat. Collision in fifteen seconds." Some of the more concentrated red vanished from the map, representing Hammer fragments further dispersed or vaporised by targeted clouds of tungsten pellets.

Unfortunately that was not even close to being enough to vaporise the whole thing. Tonnes and tonnes of high-density metal, a spray of hypervelocity fragments and all the penetration aids, were still on target. Orgon ignored them, focused instead on the final Hammer projectile, less than two hundred seconds further out.

===

Fusion tried to stay out of Gravity's mind, while still keeping in contact. The feedback, bleeding in at the edges of her awareness, made her eyes widen and her ears fold so flat that they practically vanished into her fur. The horror and sheer animal rage mirrored her own, except for it being shot through with jagged lines of pain. She pushed it to one side, returning her attention to the trees and hills flicking by under her hooves; she'd outraced the sun and the sky was dark, but the ground was lit to noon brilliance by the screaming sheath of incandescent air no more than a horn's length from her body.

Abruptly, the map icon was behind her and Fusion spread her wings, actions mirrored by the coils of force that surrounded her. She stopped breathing, muscle and bone made rigid by more magic, as her speed dropped precipitously, then re-entered normal flight under the cover of her defences. There was no sign of activity, just a hackle-raising pool of radiance, rippling and turbulent like a vigorously stirred bucket, surrounding a bright pinpoint. The spot was too small to resolve and was definitely magical, rather than technological.

No weapons rose to meet her, no missiles or lasers, not even the subtle glow of radar. Everything on the ground appeared to be non-functional, and somehow wrong. It was like the place was wax under a flame -- things that should have been straight now had curves, metal stanchions drooped, and deep-set armoured windows were pinched shut like they were made of clay. The effect grew more pronounced towards the centre, right above that point of magical light.

A slight measure of calm had entered the link back to Gravity, and Fusion felt her sister's short-lived relief as the first Hammer projectile slid past the world. It doesn't look like they will be using this place again, Fusion thought, then dropped downwards to hover a wing's breadth above the surface. The grass was a lurid shade of green, completely unnatural, and covered with large blue flowers that looked like nothing she'd seen before.

Something moved among them, some impossible thing still alive amid the thaumic residue. She picked it up, thinking it was a rabbit or large rat, but there was no fur or flesh under her telekinetic touch. A collection of twigs and pebbles, a foal's model of an animal, wriggled in the haze of magic. It moved by itself, trying to escape with a semblance of life. It was full of magic, strange twists of magic that seemed primal and alien. The power didn't fade, but was folded into circles and loops, self-reinforcing though not growing stronger, merely stabilised. Something new... She put it down gently, watching it scurry off, then looked again at the flowers. They also radiated magic, packed with strange, chaotic spells that looked ready to activate at the slightest touch.

I don't think so. Fusion hovered while her force fields sectioned the ground, pulling up cubic chunks of dirt and underlying bedrock to expose a dull grey layer of armourcrete. This should have been a little tougher, as it was seeded with layers of magically-active shielding, but the embedded crystals had all melted. It was the work of a few more seconds to break through the thick layer, exposing a dark void.

The swirl of pseudo-random magic, a residue from whatever had happened in Tartarus, was finally starting to fade. That in itself was something Fusion had never seen before, at least not on this scale. Every foal quickly learned how to refine spells and prevent anything but the slightest thaumic fallout, and even that decayed within a breath of casting. So much power, so poorly directed. This can't have been what the dogs intended. Horn glowing, she dropped into the hole.

The chamber she hovered within was a flattened sphere with a thick axis made of spidery metal running through the middle, reminiscent of the interior of a reactor's tokamak, its walls tiled with hexagons, each having wildly different colours and textures. Fusion hadn't come through quite in the centre, and the axis was still mostly intact, if a little distorted. Half way up was a complex-looking bulge, containing that point of magic she'd seen before; it didn't seem to be changing or emitting any power, so Fusion ignored it and flew a quick loop around the perimeter of the chamber.

The tessellated hexagons were the caps of cells, like she was in the middle of a wasp's nest. Each was large, the size of a four-pony shelter, and most contained a trace of fading magic. Each cap was different, but hadn't been so originally. The same magic that had distorted the ground above had worked here -- plain metal twisted into fantastic shapes, or changed to crystal, or viscous liquid. Some had simply exploded, vomiting their grisly contents into the central cavity: scraps of pastel fur and fragments of bloody bone littered the floor.

The colours of the magic... Fusion came to a hover, staring at the chamber walls through shadow sight. She sighed, a grim certainty making her wings feel leaden. Just like Naraka. Pony magic without a pony. She deftly neutralised a wild spell, a bit of random magic spalled from whatever had been done here, then gripped one of the least damaged caps and cut it free. Layers of support systems, a high-resolution display, a feeder unit still packed with familiar brown pellets, they all came away at her touch, leaving behind a hemisphere sitting over a complex mechanism of conveyors covered with movable rubber plates.

Space for a single pony... how would the pony get out? There was an access point, but it was at the apex of the dome, under a lifting rig obviously built for a pony. Did they ever get out? Her magic swept the installation; there was access to the surface, but only through narrow passages. Nothing on the surface, and not even any internal paddocks like Naraka. Sickness left a bitter taste in the back of Fusion's throat. That's it, then. They didn't get out.

She made careful cuts in the dome, pulling a whole section free. Inside, lit by the glow of her horn, was a sprawled shape. It was a pony, a mare by the smell of her, but she was much thinner than she should have been -- not starved, exactly, but with the build of an endurance athlete. Her shape was wrong, and Fusion's gaze locked on her wingshoulders. Where there should have been wide spreads of feathers were nothing more than stubs capped with neat surgical scars.

Dropping through the opening she'd cut, Fusion settled on the rubber floor next the mare, leaning forwards to touch her muzzle to the pony's face. She was young, little more than a filly, really, and still warm to the touch. The body was quite stiff, feeling like there was wood under the fur, and it didn't move when she pushed at it with a hoof. Fused with the floor. Suddenly unable to cope with the confines, Fusion backed away, trying to clear her head of the idea of the pony, locked in a small room all alone for Maker-knows how long.

Lacunae was at least kind enough to kill their subjects. Her gaze shifted to the magically active thing at the centre of the main chamber. ...and all of these cells, each with their own pony, each killed by a thaumic excursion, all focused on that. She took flight, suddenly aware of the link to Gravity and the building strain that was flowing down it, and circled the mystery object.

The target of all the ponies was a ceramic capsule, a holder for the source of magic somewhere within. It sat halfway up the metal axis, which looked like it was part of a transport system, designed to move the thing up from somewhere deep underground. They expose this to the massed magic of a hundred ponies and drove them to thaumic self-destruction... they turned us into a weapon, a disposable weapon. The light level inside the chamber increased, the pastels of her mane brightening and turning the colour of molten iron. They set us on fire and let us burn! The thing responded to the power she shed, shifting to radiate the same colours.

The magical background rose, half-imagined spells spalling out of nothing around the object, manifesting as random patches of extreme heat or cryogenic cold or strange transmutations. Part of the chamber wall, a third of the way around the torus, exploded with rainbow light, burning and eating through the already distorted ceramic panels. The colours moved like they were alive, a time-lapse recording of a slime mould consuming a fallen log in some dark, dank forest.

Amplifier? Fusion's breath hitched and she stared at the capsule, anger fading. The spurious magic faded with her change in mood, the object dimming back to its original glow. There were no connections to it that she could see, so she ripped it free of the housing, opening the ceramic with quick force field cuts. Within was a polished stone sphere, no bigger than a ripe apple, marked with a fine print of hexagons that matched the cells all around. As she held it in her telekinesis the pattern faded, the sphere turning as transparent as fine crystal. At the core was a speck of light, as distant and glittering as a high-orbit heliostat.

Fusion stared at the pinpoint of light. There were depths to the sphere, like it wasn't a solid object but some window into empty space occupied only by that point-blank actinic glare. The simple look of the thing belied its complexity through shadow sight. She pushed at it with her power and felt a tingle of regard, as if an entity within was watching her through the same portal.

There was a moment of resistance, like she wasn't quite right, then it reached out and pulled her senses in. Coils of colour and shape, some great, overgrown jungle packed with a riot of polychromatic fungi and plants, filled her mind, intoxicating with its complexity. It should have felt like chaos, but there was order here, a sense of unknowable purpose. It was not static, either: shapes flitted from point to point, each touch changing the jungle where they landed.

Feeling overwhelmed, Fusion fumbled for her magic, the fear of being trapped bringing a harsh clarity to everything. There was no resistance and the view shrank, pulling back and back, layering in more and more complexity; what she'd first taken to be a jungle glade was revealed to be no more than a speck of moss growing on some tiny epiphyte that was itself perched on the side of a forest giant.

Panic lent Fusion’s push more force than she’d intended, and the ground fell away until even the huge tree-shape was lost amid endless tracts of others, all similar in shape but different in detail. The ground rucked up into arcology-sized hills and mountains, not dead land but themselves alive with fractal detail; blimp-creatures floated jellyfish-like in the valleys and over the peaks, touching here and there with branching tentacles, grasping, moulding and changing everything around them.

Everything was in flux. Not the random bustle of thermal motion, but the ordered patterns of a flock of birds. There was intent in every part of the structure and the flow of it and, as Fusion flew higher, there came a sense of design. Parts began to look familiar -- not the components, these were still as alien as plankton or abyssal life -- but how they were arranged. There were intensifications in the complexity, zones where the ersatz life was concentrated, mounded up far past the now small-looking arcology structures. The locations of these were achingly familiar, things she'd seen, things Ellisif had shown her in the hologram of a tactical table--

Maps!

The warp and weft of this place mirrored the real world. Not exactly -- there was activity everywhere, even in places that would have been up in the air or deep underground -- but there were definite concentrations that matched the arcologies and bases and the links between them.

She pulled back further, higher and higher, until the world was stretched out under her, fat and round and full of possibility. The polychromatic activity didn't cease as the planet shrank, just slowly faded and became dilute, like sugar dissolving in warm water. At this distance only the brightest features stood out: six concentrations, like knots. One was right where she was. There are five more of them... whatever they are.

The planet was small now, a tight coil of activity in the haze, but there was something else. A diffuse thing, like a ball of dark lightning and completely different from the bright colours of the rest of the world, darted here and there, engaged in some mysterious task. It felt out of place, a worm in an apple, the sense of wrongness coming from somewhere outside her own head. Things followed the object -- sharks amid the brilliant reef-fish, or raptors among finches -- but never caught up. Unsettled, Fusion turned her attention to the expanse of space; the more she watched, the more a subtle pattern became apparent.

The haze wasn't just featureless and flat at this scale, there was a flow, a sense of movement from places on the planet and out into the void. Out from where some of the arcologies were, spreading and spreading until everything seemed to be part of it.

The sun finally came into view and everything shrank away at blinding speed. There was a sense of separation, of yearning for missing parts of her new self. There was a pull, in several directions, and--

===

Gravity stared blindly up at the sky, past the high clouds and the scattering of meteors from falling satellite fragments. They flared green and white, blinding dazzle-points as they were destroyed by shock heating. Beyond all that were the remnants of the second Hammer strike, still flashing and burning as they encountered dog defences. Not enough of them, she thought dully. The third strike was only a few hundred seconds away; Gravity pushed at it ineffectually. Even if I can shift the third, all the energy from the second has to go somewhere. A thousand megatons.

The ponies left behind after the departure of the final transport were being hustled towards improvised flash shelters, sheets of reflective material ripped from the emergency supplies. They were too small and too few and many were struggling to fit underneath, or were just wandering in a daze, ignoring the increasingly desperate shouts from the gryphons.

Perhaps I can-- The idea of extending her personal defences out far enough to flashed through her mind and she discarded it, and Gravity grunted as the third projectile twitched under her grasp, stubbornly refusing to be subjected to her power. Every effort made her head hurt. Blood pounded through her veins, laden with waste heat, each thudding beat tinged with pain like it was full of ground glass. Her skin felt tight, too thin, sticky with dried sweat and cooling rapidly as the remainder evaporated away.

Through the patchy clouds the sky sparkled, a horizon-to-horizon display clearly visible even in the daylight. It was utterly silent, and within moments the tiny, pretty points merged to become a blotchy glare, like the sun had swollen to fill the heavens. The world became too bright to look at, open sky and clouds alike, bringing with it a baking heat, the desert at noon, a blast furnace open at the belly. Sudden, silent daylight came to the valley, casting confused, wan shadows, pony legs, gryphon wings and haunches in silhouette, merging and mingling, across the muddy, hoof-marked expanse of ground.

Faint screams rose up from the valley, then the rest of the clouds boiled away, exposing those below to the flood of thermal radiation. Grass and leaves burst into flames, fires starting in a hundred places. Branches and boughs popped as the water trapped inside them flashed to steam, while the ponies away from the shelters galloped madly in all directions, trailing greasy white smoke. The light, a painful white, started to slide down the spectrum towards orange and red. Her nose filled with the skin-crawling stench of burning hair, the choking smoke from a thousand wood fires, and a smell like a dog barbecue in full swing. She wanted to vomit but couldn’t. There was nothing left to throw up.

Gravity's ears drooped and tears flowed unnoticed down her muzzle. I can't stop it. I can't-- She inhaled, clamping down on the pain and screamed up at the sky, a wordless curse of impotent fury.

The sudden crash of a sonic boom shredded her concentration and Gravity turned her magic on the interloper, lashing out with a tight packet of twisted spacetime. Her target, a dark, double-ended needle that glowed from within with the outrageous solar brilliance of a focused heliostat, blinked away, reappearing at her side to leave her weapon to gouge a bite from a nearby mountain peak, blasting dust and pulverised rock in strange trajectories. "Fusion?" Gravity croaked. "I said I'm not leaving!" The anger was there, but the conviction had gone.

Fusion passed over a crystal sphere containing a point of gold-white, pressing it against the fur of Gravity's chest until she took a hold of it. "What--" Her breath faltered, mind captivated by an alien vista. Barely noticed, the crystal sphere darkened, turning into a mottled globe, half lit and half in shadow, the position of which bore no relation to the external light sources. The weakness and pain started to drain away, sucked into the depths within the sphere. "--is this thing?"

"How would you like to show the dogs what it's like to be hit by the Hammer?" Fusion said roughly, her eyes hard. "Remember the wormhole we used to empty the breeding centres?" With the words came flood of images and ideas, undercut with flashes of a dead pony in a dome-shaped room.

That rocket spell of yours looks impressive, but I can do better than that. Go find your target. Fusion vanished with a thump; Gravity started the oxygen-recycling magic and sealed her defences, sparing a worried glance for the sky. There was a shockwave travelling down from the upper atmosphere, following on from the thermal flash. One thing at a time... the altitude was very high, perhaps there won't be much energy in it. Feeling for the Hammer projectile, she pumped will into the drive spell she'd previously used as a weapon, holding the locus a bare wingspan above her head.

The ersatz mass pulled at her and she fiddled with the gravity gradients, trying to reduce the hair-raising tidal forces pulling at her body. A haze of dust and debris, pulled up from the ground and out of the air, entered short-lived orbits within the spell, turning the invisible magic into a churning bubble. The material at the centre glowed a dull red, radiating the heat of its compression. Gravity pushed and the ground fell away.

There was no acceleration other than the steady stretching of tides trying to pull her head from her shoulders. The spell locus remained a fixed distance above her, pulling her along. The atmosphere was behind her in a flash, the world dropping away like a stone falling down a well.

===

Ellisif's antiflash visor cleared as the light level dropped back towards the bearable. The heat was slower to fade, radiating down from all parts of the sky and making the exposed flesh around her beak tingle. The featherless skin itched from the ultraviolet liberated by the endoatmospheric detonations, but she ignored it. The metallised shelter film had done its job and protected those under it from the thermal component of the distributed fireballs. At least they weren't nukes; gamma rays are harder to block. She pushed away from the herd, releasing her grip on the silver film, and squinted across the valley.

It had only been a clawful of seconds since the first pulse, and ponies caught outside the shelters were still burning. Some galloped in panicked circles, screaming out high, ragged neighs and whinnies, others writhed on the ground or dashed towards the river. The air was thick with the smell of wood smoke and burned fur, an acrid stench made almost pleasant by the underlying scent of seared flesh. She risked a glance back at the herd; they seemed to be frozen, overwhelmed by this latest catastrophe.

Her medics were already fanning out, smothering burning fur and applying copious quantities of trauma spray and cooling gel. Their movements were practiced and sure; modern warfare, if it left a being alive at all, left them burned and scarred.

Ellisif joined one of the medics, helping him hold down a struggling pony. The stallion, his pale turquoise fur turned into a black and red cracked mess from poll to tail root, wriggled and cried out. He didn't respond to the medic's shouted commands, instead evading every effort to apply anaesthetic. The gryphon cursed, failing to dodge a flailing forehoof that knocked a drug injector from his talons. The pony bared his lips and snapped at Ellisif, blunt teeth closing on air with the sound of rock on rock. She grabbed hold of the stallion's muzzle, but he started to buck, wings and legs churning and bloodying the rocky ground.

"Let me help."

Ellisif flinched at the words, spoken next to her right ear, then nodded jerkily. The mare, a pale cream with a tangled, filthy red mane, her muzzle streaked with old tears but otherwise not visibly touched by the magical failure or the thermal flash, leaned forwards, blowing her breath at the stallion's nose. He calmed almost immediately, and the mare stepped forwards to push Ellisif out of the way, wrapping her wings about his head and whispering something that the gryphoness didn't catch. She waved at the medic, who quickly started to apply gel from a spray can. The stuff came out as slender threads that puffed up to ten times their original size, sticking to and spreading over the charred flesh.

She nodded her thanks to the mare, who didn't notice, her whole attention focused on the stallion. The medic worked with calm, rapid efficiency, but the wounds were horrific. Well over fifty percent coverage, full thickness burns. Ellisif kept her expression blank, breathing shallowly to keep the scent of burned flesh out of her nostrils. The medic's motions slowed as he ran out of treatment options, finally sitting back on his haunches and reaching out to touch the mare lightly on the shoulder. She sighed and slumped, eyes still fixed on the stallion as the medic carefully pulled a blanket up to cover the body.

Ellisif stared at the pair, the colours of their coats finally registering. Rutting Maker... now is not the time for Gravity or Fusion to discover their sire is dead. Other ponies were splitting away from the herd, heading for the wounded. "Get me an update on the shockwave," she murmured into her command collar, shifting her gaze from the mountain peak where Gravity had stood to the open sky. The pony had gone, despite her promise to stay. Are we all dead anyway?

===

The spin of the planet meant Fusion's conserved velocity vector was in the wrong direction, but that was easily fixed. With flesh and bone welded into a rigid whole by her power, Fusion's force field blades bit into the air and dumped her supersonic velocity, curving her about. The magic changed shape, optimising for propulsion, and she accelerated towards her target.

The connection with Gravity opened and she had a sense of being surrounded by a hungry void. Her sister had reached escape velocity and was still accelerating, gradually changing course towards the projectile. The sharing widened and Fusion began to feel like she had a second body, one not subject to the normal pull of the planet; the feeling of weightlessness was familiar from flight, but that was only ever for a moment.

Gravity had damped down her drive spell to a tiny whisper, diverting the effort into one end of a wormhole. The magic stayed below the level of the real, for now, but the complex fractals churned and fluttered as she tried to match Fusion's location. Faint impressions, like remembrances of a dream, told of the wicked forces, and of the exotic matter involved in constructing pathways through spacetime not simply linked or easily described by normal geometry.

Not there yet, Fusion sent down the sharing, wrinkling her muzzle as a distraction from Gravity's body. Her own felt heavy and sluggish by comparison, and she directed part of her own power towards the wormhole magic, losing some of her mad velocity in the process. Is that thing easy to use? she sent.

We're going to have to think of a name for it, Gravity replied. Be careful when you open your end; don't forget I'm in vacuum up here.

There was a pause, and Fusion used the time to sweep the land around her, looking for the right spot. There, on the horizon, was a concentration of lights within her shadow sight. A great termite's nest of activity, or perhaps the glowing hyphae of some fungus, stretched the skin of the world. It was surrounded by flying lights, concentrations of stored energy that just shouted 'military' to her senses. Perfect.

How are you going to get away, Fusion? Gravity's mental voice had calmed and sounded more like her old self, albeit with an undercurrent of worry. The spell won't run for long enough if you are not there.

"Worry about yourself; there's a lot of debris travelling with the Hammer," Fusion murmured, along with her thoughts. The structure, one of the central Baur arcologies, rushed closer and she slowed further, dropping below the speed of sound. There was activity among the aircraft; flashes of light marked the launching of missiles. How much longer?

A pawful of seconds. Hurry!

Fusion hardened her defences and poured power into the wormhole spell, opening a hole the size of an apple. More and more of the exotic matter came into being; her magic patterned it, marshalling it like standing waves of photons within an optical cavity. Her target grew close and she batted away the first of an endless rain of missiles and railgun projectiles. They were like motes of dust compared to the size of the enormous Hammer rounds, but each one threatened immediate death, had her defenses failed her. Sweat started to dampen her neck and boil from her flanks, and she wedged the hole open a little further, to the size of an aircar.

Now she could hear it over the wind of her passage, a banshee jet-engine roar as atmosphere fell into the perfect sphere of the interface. Somewhere high above and moving away at escape velocity, was a rapidly expanding cloud of air, centred on Gravity's end of the tunnel. Fusion moved to place the hole between her and the greatest concentration of incoming fire; despite its growing size, the construct did not slow her movement. Air did not have to force itself around the interface, but just fell right in, blasted away at near sonic speeds into the vacuum of space.

Gravity seemed to be having an easier time of it; the amplifying stone was obviously working. The opening at her end was significantly larger, and Fusion struggled to match the size.

===

Something punched a hole through Gravity's defences, passed between her outstretched wings, and vanished out of the other side. Gone before she could really register it, it left an lightning afterimage and a sharp bang that made her ears ring. Gravity twitched away, a too-late reflex action, then folded in her wings and legs. The vector of the line wasn't what she'd expect from the Hammer's defensive swarm, rather it was part of the general orbital debris.

She changed the format of her defences, optimising them for small, fast, but anything over a certain size would penetrate just as easily as before. The thing Fusion had given her floated within her telekinetic field, nestled between her wing roots, and made things easy again. It's like the dog's weapon was never fired.

She released her grip on the drive spell and built the wormhole pattern, first opening a thread to connect to Fusion's magic, then pouring in power to force the path wider. Air started to flood out of the hole, exploding outwards in a gale of diamond dust as the water in it was flash-cooled by adiabatic expansion. Brighter sparkles lit the cloud, laser-straight lines of micrometeors burning up as they struck the unexpected patch of atmosphere. Sound came next, a faint series of crashes and bangs from the sonic booms.

Within the outrushing air, the spherical wormhole interface contained strange and distorted images of Fusion, wings wide and stroking furiously, occasionally interrupted by pulses of brilliant green laser-light. How are you going to get away? Gravity kept the thought to herself this time. You must have a plan, you've always got a plan!

Fusion's thoughts were accelerating, dopplering like the sirens of an approaching tunnel rescue airtruck, something she'd seen before in her sister's memories. I hope that makes you fast enough, Gravity thought privately, I won't be able to come and get you in time.

And then there was no more time; the projectile and its outriders were upon her. Powerful radars on the Hammer, designed to pick out any solid object in its path, looked right through the expanding bubble of air; even the wormhole terminus, with Gravity sheltering behind it, was invisible, the radio waves passing right through. The projectile made no effort to evade, not that there was much it could do, even when the outer defensive swarm struck the expanding cloud of vapour.

Pulses of light refracted around the edge of the terminus, bright and hot enough to make exposed skin tingle. Gravity started to tuck her head under one wing, then screamed as the wormhole flashed an intolerable white. The pulse of heat was like a physical blow, burning skin even under fur, and the delicate magic powering the wormhole evaporated with a surge of gravity waves. The light cut off, taking with it most of the heat as the gas cloud expanded into the vacuum.

Far below, on the surface of the planet, a point of furious white light, pure and gleaming like the birth of a new sun, had appeared, rapidly expanding to a circular bloom of flame-yellow the size of a foal's eye.

===

Fusion was almost stationary, travelling at little more than the speed allowed by her own beating wings. All her magic was being expended keeping the throat of the wormhole open, the complex patterns taking enough of her attention that only winged flight, requiring little mental effort, was keeping her in the air. Sweat flowed sluggishly down her flanks, alternately steaming or turning to brittle ice as her control of the entropic magic fluttered under the onslaught of the dog aircraft.

The excessive use of her own power had done what it had done in the past: slowed the world to a lazy crawl. There wasn't the extreme clarity of her first time, or the aching, drawn-out burning pain of the second, but it did allow her to evade or deflect the near-constant stream of weapons fire. All of Gravity's thoughts and body feelings had faded to a barely detectable rumble at the edge of her attention, useless except as a comforting presence. How much longer?!

The wormhole terminus started to flash and flicker, sharp spikes of light and heat that looked like distant explosions. Fusion swerved to one side, avoiding the searchlight beam that lit the ground far below. Penetration aids striking the gas cloud... how many megatons are being released on the other side of the interface? There was no time to breathe, and even her frantic heart had yet to beat since the first flash yet, to her up-tempo thoughts, time stretched out, filled with an eternity of evading the slow crawl of missiles or the wasp-zip of railgun rounds.

The wormhole brightened again, but this time didn't fade. Something was coming through, not mere light, but a solid bar of plasma, radiating enough energy to completely overwhelm her pitch-black defences and make them seem as transparent as glass. Shockwaves of tortured air were expanding out from the explosion, but laggard slow compared to the light. Fusion felt her fur shrivel and the tips of her ears caught on fire; she forgot about the aircraft and concentrated on the wormhole and keeping all that heat away.

The lance of fire extended, reaching out lazily to touch the ground, while the thermal surge turned her attackers into white stars that shed sparks and streamers of fast smoke. Missiles in flight exploded instantly and railgun rounds tumbled and broke up as their stabilizing and guidance systems were destroyed. Fusion started to scream, opening herself to the flood of available energy from the her distant candle-flame namesake, pouring the power into the wormhole to keep it open, then dropped the spell and pushed at another pattern--

~~~discontinuity~~~

40 - That is not dead which can eternal lie

Author's Note

A full plot summary can be found here. Do not read unless you are up to date! Spoilers!
Preread by: turol, NoeCarrier and Caliaponia.

40 - That is not dead which can eternal lie

Salrath's software modifications, crude hacks of the aircar's control and safety systems, activated when she slammed the control stick all the way back and all the way forward. The levitation drive, barely producing enough lift to make the vehicle buoyant, was absolutely silent as it snapped to full power; the ducted turbine was not. A shrill, banshee wail, loud enough to make Salrath's ears fold back reflexively, filled the aircar as it darted forwards. She let go of the controls, paw dropping to her knife holster half way down her right hip.

The police officer, head bowed and focussed on his terminal, looked up, eyes widening in paralysed shock. The gryphon, already strapped in to the police cruiser's saddle, was faster. Its claws slammed on the restraint harness' quick release, wings opening just as her aircar struck. There was a crump, then an immediate string of closely-spaced bangs; the view out of the windscreen vanished behind bulging layers of fabric that slammed into her from all sides. Held rigid by the airbag array, Salrath kept her eyes closed, pushing back the pain and ignoring the taste of iron in her mouth.

She drew a shaky breath as the pressure started to fade, the press of the interlocking airbags still holding her immobile, then drew the little black knife and stabbed upwards, puncturing the emergency restraints. Arm free, she slashed sideways and deflated the rest of the bags, then kicked open the door, struggling free of the tattered strips of fabric. In the police cruiser, the gryphon, unrestrained, had been thrown against the side of the roll cage on the cargo platform, head striking one of the metal bars hard enough to leave a red smear. It moved, sluggishly, one foreclaw reaching up to the roll cage.

Salrath leapt onto the side of the cruiser, pulling herself up with the hook of her prosthetic and swinging into the gryphon's compartment. The animal gaped its beak at her, but the motion was slow and its eyes were unfocussed; she ducked under the sweep of its claws, pressing against slightly rank chest feathers. The knife darted up, vanishing under the lower beak and into its windpipe. It choked, thrashing, and she tipped it over, straddling it with one knee on each flopping wing. She dropped the knife, grabbing the gryphon's beak and pushing it back, stretching and exposing the bloodied neck. Her prosthetic, the simple claw sharpened on the inner edge, dug into throat and ripped sideways.

The animal relaxed under her and Salrath gathered up the knife, jumping over the driver's compartment to stand on the forward turbine cowling. The compartment was filled to bursting with the alveolar structure of the airbags, slowly deflating. There was motion within, struggles that became stronger as she watched. Salrath smiled, lips peeling back from bloodied teeth, then dropped down to the driver's door, knife in her mouth. It was buckled, distorted by the impact, but opened when she pulled. The cruiser’s sophisticated crash protection meant there were far more airbags than in her own stolen vehicle. Carefully detonating in sequence, they had swathed the police officer in a cradle of interlocking protection, allowing him to survive any crash that didn't collapse the driver’s compartment. It also held him securely in place.

Blade in paw again, she pushed into the airbags, stabbing into the wriggling object within. The fabric of the bags discoloured, red leaking out from between them. "Don't die just yet!" she sang out, slashing at the airbags. They were deflating but the fabric was tough, and Salrath grunted with the effort as she sawed and pulled them away. The officer was slumped in his crash couch, breathing with unhealthy, bubbling rasps, more blood flecking his muzzle. He scrabbled ineffectually at her paws as she dragged him clear of the cruiser.

"That's better," she said, smiling. "This one never did like having to hide." Salrath glanced over the display screens while removing the remains of the airbags. Then, picking up the officer's arm, she used his other paw to issue commands to the vehicle, unlocking the controls and disconnecting the security systems. Dropping him, she trotted back to her ruined aircar, pulling a set of large packs from the storage compartment and dropping them into the rear prisoner compartment behind the driver. They were heavy, loaded with preserved food and the contents of the various caches she'd accumulated during her time in Security.

About to get into the driver's seat, she looked down at the officer and frowned, lost in thought. He was still alive, slumped in a slowly spreading pool of blood. "This one supposes a uniform might be useful..." Sighing, she levered him into the co-pilot's seat, using the straps and discreet blobs of sealant to give him a semblance of an upright position. A quick search through one of her packs pulled up a plain grey box, and she plugged it into his comms bracer, tapping away on her own. Got it. The vehicle accepted her, fooled into thinking she was its pilot.

Salrath stashed the little box and gave the officer a pat on the arm. "This one always wanted to see the mountains," she said, winking at his slack face. He didn't seem to be breathing anymore.

===

There was a wordless yearning in her head, pulling her in multiple directions. It felt like it had always been there, an irreducible part of her that she was only now realising existed at all. Fusion picked the location closest to her current heading. They are scattered over the whole world, Grav.

One per Hive, you told me, so that's to be expected. Gravity's mental tone was one of distraction, most of her attention on the dissolving mess of debris ring orbits. I can't help, got my hooves full stabilizing all the damage I've done. I want to burn out the dogs, not kill every living thing.

We've got to get as many of our ponies out as we can... try not to do too much more damage. We can clean up the remnants later.

There was a snort, ghost-felt through the link rather than heard. If there is a later. Just the big military bases, then. Busy. Her tone sharpened, barriers starting to constrict the flow from her sensorium.

Fusion's ears folded back and she thought about forcing the link open again, then let the half-formed spell patterns fade. "Sure, Grav. I'll let you know if I find anything." Her speed and altitude climbed, plasma sheath forming once more--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--the sun moved across the sky with a jerk, then another and another as the chain of teleports propelled Fusion around the world, until--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--flying over a blackened landscape pockmarked by overlapping giant craters. Some were oddly shaped, the smooth interior curves cracked and distorted with the honeycomb structures of exposed tunnels and artificial caverns like an excavated ant’s nest.

One in particular called to her and, flying closer, she inspected the openings. Long shafts, partially collapsed, retreated into the bedrock. They were filled with the wrecks of vehicles, wadded up like packing material, mass transit vehicles themselves filled with blasted and flayed corpses, little more than tattered and splintered bones disarticulated by the shockwaves. There were no signs of life; the whole area glowed a sick purple to her energy sensitivity, the ungentle taint of neutron-activated rock and soil. The touch of desire was deeper in, towards the partially melted flash-glass floor of the crater center.

Defences hardening, she dropped below the crater rim, magic first used in the labs of the Institute now tasked with intercepting the bath of gamma radiation. The other Stone was there, a bright, scintillating point under a hundred lengths of overburden; Fusion dug down with her telekinesis, pulling free a jagged boulder half a length on a side. The rock, a section of primary roof support and tougher than any natural mineral, had a hole in one side.

Fusion sectioned the lump with a single force field cut, opening it up to show a ragged tunnel terminating in an unblemished stone sphere. She pulled it out, freeing it from a layer of mildly radioactive dust. The touch of her magic turned it transparent, save for a bright point of light at the centre.

A rush of cold, then heat, flowed through her body, bringing with it a feeling of sudden expansion. Fusion gasped, shivering slightly, then dropped the rubble and accelerated upwards.

===

Geodetic, tears streaming down his muzzle, looked out of the opening to the launcher's accelerator shaft and down into the output mouth of the autoloader mechanism. Concentric rings of conveyors filled the bottom of the shaft, toothed things like coils of spiked tentacles surrounding the central maw. Chains of bright needles filled the cavity, descending into the armoury depths and fanning out to all sides. There was enough ammunition there for another kilosecond of firing, but they had stopped moving the instant the drive spell, normally occupying the core of the accelerator shaft, had failed. The ponies had not collected the next batch of projectiles, for want of a way to fire them.

He looked upwards, eyes searching the ranks of dark niches for any evidence of magic from the ponies within. He made a quiet keening whinny, unconsciously echoing the sounds made by the rest of the propulsion herd. The sound filled the mechanically silent space with the whine of wind blowing over taught wires. Clumsily, he reached down, fumbling at the harness release with his mouth, biting and twisting at the emergency handle. Thank the Master who designed this system! he thought, as the mechanism popped free. Thaumic suppression was always a possibility and that nameless Person had built a harness that could be opened by a magicless pony.

A shrug and wriggle shed the rest of the straps, leaving them to tangle on the soft bedding of his work niche. Geodetic took a hesitant step forwards, leaning out over the edge and looking straight up. Other heads looked down at him, each from their own chamber set in the sheer wall of the accelerator shaft. "Planar, are you there?" he called out to the other head of the propulsion herd.

"Yes, Geodetic, I'm still here." Planar sounded tired and on the verge of tears, lifting her head up to look across the empty air of the accelerator shaft. "You were doing the targeting... are we going to die?"

Geodetic reached for the interface systems that normally tied him to the launcher, and the launcher to the wider strategic networks. Those links had been progressively severed, his world shrinking until it was little more than the local hardwired sensors and a tenuous emergency radio link back to Arcology One. The thaumic link, ten thousand dancing lights kindled in the centre of his mind, had failed a kilosecond ago, but strategic updates had still flowed from the speaker system. That had gone silent a hundred seconds ago in a pulse of quiet, digital noise.

Command is gone... The deepest bunkers, a kilolength below the gardened surface of Lacunae's population centres, below gryphon aeries, accommodation blocks, service levels and power systems, below even the deepest storage chambers. The most heavily protected sites, chosen at random from dozens of similar locations to avoid easy targeting, gone. Did the enemy get lucky, or... did they hit them all? "I think Arcology One has been destroyed." His own faint whinny joined the rest, tapering off when he inhaled a juddering breath.

There was silence from the rest of the propulsion herd, an expectant hush from the fifty other ponies surrounding the accelerator shaft. Planar gave a long sigh, her head drooping. "Yes. My dam served security in One, my sire was in weather management. There would have been surface bursts--" Her voice became strangled, then vanished under murmurs from the rest of the herd. She shook her head, black mane whipping back and forth. "Foals gone, magic gone, never coming back. Can't even get out of this stupid bunker!" She screamed out the final words, imbuing them with sudden, vicious hate. "The whole world's gone mad."

Crying and shaking Planar stood, then leapt from her alcove, falling wings-folded and in absolute silence into the autoloader machinery. It wasn't far, compared to the overall length of the shaft, but the structures below were full of sharp ridges and points. She stayed silent as she bounced, once, twice, her flank ripped open by the needle prow of an exoatmospheric interceptor, the fall mercifully ended by a reverberating thud when her head struck an inspection gantry. Her body slid out of view on a smear of blood, down between a pair of main projectile conveyors.

Geodetic groaned, then shook the tears from his eyes and turned his muzzle upwards to the shocked faces looking down. He glared up at them, ears flat back. "Don't get any rutting Maker-damned ideas! The Masters will get us out of his, we just have to be patient." The heads all retreated and he shuffled back, pressing his rump against the rear wall. What did she mean -- 'never coming back?' This is just a targeted suppression, isn't it? He dug through the memories of basic training, hunting for that one brief session when they'd all felt the effects of an Arclight.

It wasn't the same. There was no feeling of oppressive weight or being smothered; instead, his magic was little more than a fading dream, gone like it had never existed. Can't fly, can't get out. The sheer walls of the accelerator shaft turned the base into an inescapable trap. The Masters will save us. The thought rang hollow; there had been no contact since the original cease-fire and the maintenance crew had not returned from their bunker, some twenty kilolengths away.

They have left us to die. The thought should have brought with it a stab of pain, a punishment for the doubt, but the Maker was also silent. Feeling very alone, Geodetic lay on the alcove's padded floor and pulled his wings up over his head, trying not to think of the release only a few paces away.

===

Weapons arced up from a scattering of air defence sites around the buried structure. It was a different design from the Arcologies Fusion had seen in Baur and Lacunae, a subterranean pyramid picked out with the lights of crystal thaumic systems and a tracery of power systems. Is that a Church? It was huge, the size of an Arcology core structure but without the disordered amoeba look of something dug out over a gigasecond. The shape was the same as a Church, a square-based pyramid. I wonder if it's covered in names like ours was? Fusion laughed, a harsh whinny of a sound.

The pull was coming from the very centre, and was stronger, more focussed now she carried two of the Stones. She batted aside the closest missiles without even thinking about it, then turned her attention to the launch sites. There were things she could do to those hardened installations, even the one that was over the horizon and out of sight... The magic was complex, and that was the exactly correct phrase: was. Something about the Stones made the intricate patterns and the once-extreme effort no more difficult than assembling a foal's toy.

Electric light kindled from nothing as Fusion called up magnetism and tied it into a dense knot that ripped electrons from the very air. She stretched herself, making finer and finer modifications to the spell patterns, layering delicate magical functions around the brutally simple energy channels that kept the plasma confined. The containment bubble fractured, subdividing as the field lines folded inwards, one for each target, the virtual thaumic rings of the accelerators springing into being and aligning themselves on the targets. The power built, a roaring wall of energy like a tsunami thrown up by an asteroid strike, far more and far more quickly than she'd ever thought possible. She held it, feeling the warmth flood through her body, filling her from poll to tail root, then let it go.

She could see it happening, but only because she'd built the spells and knew exactly what the magic was supposed to do. The plasma packages, formed into self-confining ring vortices loaded with magnetic and thaumic fields, opened vacuum cavities for themselves and accelerated away, so fast that they might as well have been teleported. There was none of the flare of light and heat her previous strikes had; protected from the erosion of the air, they held onto their power all the way to the ground. The closest detonated first, flashes of light that hit her defences like slaps ahead of the laggard shockwaves; the last curved over the horizon and around the limb of the world, accelerating to relativistic speeds, annihilating the final launch site with a flash.

All of this was suddenly so easy, like the universe itself was doing all the heavy lifting and pattern computation for her. I can see why the dogs never let us near these things... or did they even know?

There was a volume within the pyramid that seemed to be empty, a space surrounded by the glow of power and networked systems, so Fusion built her spell, the same double teleport she'd used when they were still hiding--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--swapping her local volume with that of the target and appearing in absolute silence near the top of a pyramidal cavern. Brightly lit and with polished sides, it was a negative mirror of the physical building they'd had at her corral. The inner walls were decorated with complex, fractal forms reminiscent of spell patterns and finished like mirrors. This will give them a shock-- Fusion frowned, looking down. There was another, smaller pyramid beneath, its tip at the geometric centre of the hollow, and surrounding it were hundreds of robed dogs, all kneeling untidily on the stone floor. Around and among the robed ones were a press of other dogs, a riot of different clothes and uniforms. The floor was packed to the edges of the chamber; more dogs were filling the access tunnels as far as she could see.

None of them had noticed her. She spiralled down, landing at a clear spot near the edge of the inner pyramid. The closest dog was slumped sideways against her neighbour, like she was asleep. The person she was leaning against had fallen forwards, head awkwardly at an angle on the smooth stone. There was a little splash of blood where he had bitten his tongue.

All of the dogs were like this, fallen or slumped and completely unresponsive. Their eyes were open and they breathed with a slow, steady rhythm, but not one even twitched at her arrival. Fusion lifted a hoof and gave the female a push; she sprawled sideways on to the stone, eyes looking up at the brilliant lights. Her slit pupils contracted, but she didn't blink. Is this what goes on in the dog Churches? Are they all on drugs? Fusion laughed again; the giggle burst out and filled the space with shocking echoes and made her flinch.

"Their minds are gone," she whispered, suddenly shivering. "There are no sounds of panic and no medical response... how far does this go?" She swept the area for any signs of magic, seeing nothing. There was something approaching, descending through the upper atmosphere, but this was mere mundane technology highlighted by the bright sparkle of antimatter at its core. "Well, I know what that is," she said in a normal tone, magic slicing the top off the central pyramid. "You dogs only have a few seconds left, in any case."

The tip was hollow, filled with mechanisms to elevate the small stone sphere or retract it to some deep vault. She lifted it out, watching as it changed to crystal with a spark of light at the centre. There was the now familiar numinous rush of confidence and extra strength, and she looked up at the descending cluster of warheads, hardening her defences to a degree far beyond what she could have managed unassisted. "I wonder if..." Fusion blinked, then shook her body vigorously. Stupid mare!

~~~discontinuity~~~

--coming out in clear air, smoothly compensating for the shift in velocity vector. Streaks of light fell from the heavens and the horizon behind her lit up with a string of double pulses. A dirty, yellow-glowing mushroom cloud started to climb into the heavens, but Fusion was already travelling at a kilolength a second and still accelerating.

===

The transit tunnel was packed with a confused mass of aircars and ground-bound heavy transports. The curfew was in effect but people were trying for the Arcology exits. These ones know what's coming and don't believe the civil defence precautions will work, Salrath thought, grinning as she activated the external strobes and siren -- and the far more useful remote override. The mass parted before her, flowing away as each aircar's flight computer reduced the mandatory close approach distances under the prodding of her emergency codes. There was little room and she imagined curses and scraping of paintwork following her progress.

A loud crunch penetrated the hull and racket of the sirens; two vehicles had tried to follow through the temporary tunnel she was making and collided. One, a streamlined sporty thing, was no match for the other, a courier van, and had burst into flame, white-hot sparks and fragments exploding out from the nose. The pilot, an indistinct shape behind the sharply raked viewport was struggling frantically with the controls. "And that's why disabling the safety systems is illegal!" She laughed, pushing her own throttle forwards. This was too fast for some of the other aircars to get out of the way, but her cruiser was made of tougher stuff than the average consumer vehicle.

The faint sounds of swearing penetrated the hull, even over the splinter-scrape of metal against composite.

One of the Arcology access shafts was dead ahead. The transit tunnel looped around it, the traffic being directed in both directions away from the free-space exit. The shield doors had been half-closed and the 'no exit' warning signs were flashing, the command backed up by a pair of gunships that flanked the them. There was a cleared area in front of the tunnel, the forbidden volume marked out by a red haze on her cruiser's HUD.

Salrath hissed, her ears flattening, then fumbled with her bracer, knees and prosthetic hand holding the controls steady. She sent her stolen authorisation, only to have it rejected. Orders to land popped up on the HUD and she eyed the opening, then tensed as threat warning systems reported the cruiser was being painted by hostile radar from the gunships. Rutting Maker, what is the military doing playing guard?! She thought of the dead gryphon, slumped in the bay behind the pilot's compartment. Too heavy to quickly move, she'd left it there, hurriedly covered by a plastic sheet.

"Unidentified cruiser, land immediately or be fired upon." The voice, made harsh and grating by extreme amplification, was loud enough that she hunched her shoulders.

Salrath's paw hovered over the controls trembling slightly. Her lips pulled back from her teeth in a silent snarl, and she stared at the gunships, measuring the distance between her cruiser and the exit. Would these ones really fire, risking shots into this crowded transit tunnel? The vehicles were stacked up behind her; even a direct hit would have horrible collateral damage. The panic would be even worse. "Maker-damned martial law!" She patted at the knife in its holster, making sure it was accessible and secure, then landed the cruiser in the empty space before the exit door.

The rear sally port swung open and a pair of troopers jumped down from the hatch. Both were in light armour, suits not dissimilar to that used by the police officer, with solid scales on a ballistic weave suit, except for a layer of electrochromic camouflage, currently set to grey and black blotches. The lead had a rifle shouldered, a short-barrelled railgun ridged with heatsinks and a bore large enough for a paw, and duck-walked in the manner of one keeping a careful aim. Salrath could clearly see the shiny armatures in the cavernous barrel. The other trooper gestured at her, then at the cruiser's door.

Salrath snarled again before composing her features into an expression of terror. Then, holding both paws above her head and ducking her head in a cower, she kicked open the cruiser's door and stumbled out. "T-there was a riot back at the Arcology, when the civil defence orders were sent. The officer helped this one but was injured." She crouched a little further as the armed trooper came closer, paws trembling slightly. Nearly... The muscles in her legs tensed, booted paws pushing against the concrete floor, and she stared fixedly at the soft spot under the trooper's jaw.

The second trooper was doing something on his bracer, then abruptly swore and reached for his own rifle. Salrath sprang, ducking under her target's gun and drawing her knife. The pair of them tumbled over backwards, the gun too large to do anything other than get in the trooper's way. She used her prosthetic to ram his muzzle up and back. The knife darted in, aiming for the thin, flexible armour layer, then something struck her on the side of the head with stunning force.

Her vision blacked out for an instant and the knife went flying. Another impact, this time in her side, accompanied by the green-wood crack of a rib breaking. Salrath gasped and rolled to one side, fending off a follow-up kick. The attacks stopped and she popped up onto all fours, grunting at the spike of pain in her chest, then froze. The troopers had backed off and moved apart; both had their rifles trained on her. She laughed in their faces. "Can't blame a girl for trying, right?"

One of the troopers had his head cocked slightly to one side, like he was listening to something. He slung his rifle, then opened his muzzle guard and drew his sidearm. "Security knows this one," he spat, the small laser generating a guide beam that put dazzles across her vision. "Agent Salrath has been on the arrest lists for some time, if she had managed to escape Naraka."

Salrath sat back on her haunches, holding up her prosthetic and paw. "This one surrenders. Take Salrath in." Her smirk faded slightly when the pistol didn't waver.

The trooper returned her smile with a wide grin filled with bright teeth. "Emergency powers act, Agent. These ones are at war. Command has declared Salrath a non-person. Turns out this one can blame a girl for trying." The pistol moved from her face to her gut. "This one is not in a terrible hurry." His paw tightened on the trigger.

She tensed, uselessly hardening her stomach muscles against the expected thrust of burning light, but it never came. A look of confusion crossed the trooper's face, then his eyes rolled up and he collapsed. The other followed a breath later. "What--?" There was a sensation of ice at the centre of her head, a sudden staccato flicker of memories from all parts of her life, then it faded to leave behind an urge pulling her in an unexpected direction.

"Why is Salrath thinking of the Church at a time like this?" The Maker is a lie told to keep frightened pups and servitors happy. Salrath climbed painfully to her paws, turning to look at the gunships. There was no movement and the chin turrets had drooped slightly.

Behind her came a gentle crunching sound and she turned again. In a wave, every aircar and truck was slowly settling to the ground, piling up in heaps as they landed on each other in the crowded transit tunnel. Nobody moved inside the vehicles; everyone was slumped in their chairs. This went back as far as she could see, all the way to the vanishing point.

===

Two left. The desire to hunt them down was stronger, pulling Fusion in separate directions; it was a nearly physical sensation, like she was standing between a pair of steep gravity wells. One was closer than the other, so she fell towards it--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--this part of whatever Hive she was above was mostly undamaged. A few kilolengths away fires were sweeping through the dense forests that coated the landscaped cap of the arcology, mature trees made tiny by the scale of the conflagration. Flame and dark smoke, speckled with air-lofted sparks and embers, was rising past Fusion's altitude to collect in dark, lumpy clouds. They radiated heat and glowed a sullen red as the burning continued in the gas phase, spreading with an unnatural speed and fueled by violent turbulence from the rising fumes, spawning fire tornadoes around their edges. Down at the surface, all the flames streched inwards, fanned by howling winds to replace the climbing rocket-exhaust plumes.

Even at this distance Fusion could feel the heat from the fire, a steady beat like the noon sun at the summer solstice. All around embers and larger burning fragments were settling towards the unburned ground, spreading the inferno. There were no strings of craters or purple-glowing clouds of fallout; this was only flash ignition from air bursts. Her defences hardened and she circled in the updrafts, invisible to any camera or radar. Shadow sight and clairvoyance filled the dark spaces within her nested force fields, rendered exquisitely sensitive by the triplet of Stones that circled her head like stars in tight orbits around a singularity.

Her target was moving through the deep earth, hurtling down a vacuum tunnel towards some distant redoubt. There were dogs in the vehicle, a levitation-engine equipped carriage on a single rail, all with the same Church robes as the previous group; her surveillance locus kept pace with the segmented machine, passing through metal and ceramic with the same ease as vacuum or air. Fusion smiled as she found the Stone, sitting in a transport case at the centre of the lead car and surrounded by robed figures apparently engaged in an urgent discussion.

The Stone seemed to reach out for her, begging her to get closer. The urge turned into a mad desire, very similar to that she'd felt when refusing to eat the dog's supplements, and Fusion felt a tickle of worry at the back of her mind. What choice do we have? These things are too powerful to let the dogs keep any of them. Another thought flickered past, barely strong enough to register. Did the dogs keep them separated for a reason?

Fusion built the teleport pattern, modifying it in now-obvious ways to compensate for the differences in motion between here and there, then pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--appearing silently at the head of the monorail car, all four hooves flat on the carpeted floor.

Shocked screams and panicked motion filled the room, until she reached out and encased everyone present in the white-gold of her telekinesis, freezing them in place. The twelve dogs, all of whom had been seated around a narrow oval table, on which stood an ornate case, followed her with silent, tortured gazes as she opened the case and extracted the Stone. At her touch it did the same trick as the others, fading to a crystal globe with a scintillating point of white at the centre.

Fusion added it to the rosette circling her poll, fascinated for a moment by the shifting shadows the moving lights cast, before being jolted back to reality by a whimpering noise coming from one of the dogs. His throat worked, trying to get words out past a jaw held shut. She cocked her head, suddenly uncertain, and loosened her grip on his muzzle.

"Please don't take the Stone!"

Fusion snorted. "Why ever not? It's not like you dogs ever did anything with them."

The figure made a choking sound. "The People created ponykind!" His eyes grew wild, gaze suddenly fixed on the three circling Fusion's head. "These ones need the Stones, especially now. The Maker--"

Her magic tightened fractionally and the dog fell silent. "Yes, I heard that particular tale when I was Blessed. I remember that the Priest seemed particularly disinterested." She watched as his throat worked, then relaxed slightly.

"The scientists agree," he whispered. "The pony has wild ancestors, although they only exist on preserves now. The genetic patterns run through its every cell, overlain by the Stone's changes. These one's own evolutionary record shows abrupt and unexpected developments that cannot be readily explained... magic works and the Stones made the pony." He shrugged, a mere twitching of the muscles against Fusion's power, and his eyes filled with tears. "The Maker is real and these are the end times."

"For you." Fusion leaned forwards, staring into the dog's face. He was older, chocolate muzzle shot with grey on the underside. "You’re not even sad about that, are you?" she said, a note of sardonic wonder creeping into her voice. "You are looking forward to it!"

"The Maker returns," the dog said softly. "These ones can all feel it... a desire. The immanentization is at paw. That is why the pony must leave the Stones with these ones." His voice turned pleading, paws twitching where they rested against the table.

Fusion shuffled her hooves, feeling her own pull to the one other Stone on the surface of the planet. The one Gravity carried was a fainter trace, coloured by distance and the taste of her sister's mind. That one didn't hold the same draw. "I recovered the first from the wreckage of the Baur weapon that used it to wipe magic from everypony; my sister has that one now." She made the glowing, crystal orbs dip one at a time. "The second I took from Lacunae's Basilica, after burning the Deacon alive. This one was pulled from the bottom of a crater." The third Stone paused in its orbit, hovering in front of her muzzle as she stared into its depths. "This... I took this one from a Church in another Hive. It was surrounded by your kind, thousands of them. They were all dead, minds wiped."

His eyes bulged. "Why was it necessary for the pony to kill--"

"I did not kill them!" Fusion snarled, suddenly angry, pawing at the carpet with one forehoof. "Their hearts beat and they still breathed, but their minds were gone. Not my magic, and there were no traces of any spells." She paused, ears folding back. "Not that it would have made any difference. I left the Church ten seconds ahead of a nuclear strike."

More tears, a bizarre blend of bitter desperation and amazed joy. "They managed it," he breathed, the words not directed at her at all, "they called to the Maker and It took them... with all the Stones these ones can all join with the Maker. Please, this one begs the pony to let him fulfil the Maker's promise."

Fusion straightened, taking a step back and adding the fourth stone to her personal orbit. "No."

~~~discontinuity~~~

===

The ground and low altitude defense systems were firing at extreme range. The targets were easy to identify, brightly lit by the fires of re-entry, but there were too many of them to deal with without the assistance of the mid-course and exoatmospheric defence bands. Swarmjet launchers, wide-bore railguns firing canisters of flechettes, and the sweeping strobe of weapon lasers accounted for scores of attackers, but the majority were simple mass, little more than tungsten rods tipped with a guidance package. Here and there were more exotic targets: the lithium and deuterium of fusion weapons, marked out by warning symbols thrown up by the plasma spectroscope.

The frantic dance, far too fast for more than subliminal impressions, abruptly ended in another flash. A swelling ball of fire, close enough that the edges cut through the ground and turned it into a dome, appeared over one arcology mound. It expanded, only visible through the aggressively filtered emergency navigation cameras, a roiling wall of incandescent air and vapourised rock that cooled from a blinding white to yellow and then orange as it grew. It started to lift, an infolding vortex ten kilolengths across, climbing rapidly and drawing in smoke and hot dust to form the stem of the mushroom cloud.

There was a ripple in the air, visible where it crossed the horizon at blinding speed, and Rthar closed his eyes and tensed his muscles. The dropship jerked like it had been struck, dropping precipitously, then recovered. "How--?" he gasped through suddenly chattering teeth.

"These ones are too high," the pilot said, turning the dropship away from what was left of the Hive. "No meat to the shockwave." He was still staring at the display showing the rising cloud, paws moving of their own volition. "What are the Captain's orders?"

Defend the Hive! Rthar drew in a breath to say that out loud, then stopped. On the sensors, another cluster of weapons were closing. Defences cleared... the next will be configured to penetrate and gut the Arcologies. "Maintain this course; best speed." He issued orders to his surviving gunships to fall back. "There's nothing these ones can do for Lacunae, other than carry out the final orders." The pilot nodded like he was in a dream.

In the belly of his dropship were a few strategic weapons, not much compared to what was falling now, but enough to cause enormous damage if they could be delivered. Paws moving slowly, he pulled a slim deck of plastic cards from their little safe next to his console and fanned them, pulling out a red one edged in black. "Orders Of Last Resort," he muttered. "It's really come to this." Staring at the card, Rthar gripped it and twisted, pulling off the case to release the sheet within. One side was covered with a data-filled optical surface, designed for the reader in his console, the other a few lines of simple text. He held it like it was a poisonous insect, reluctant to bring it close enough to read.

The first line was what he'd hoped for; the second was not. Rthar's ears drooped. "This one shouldn't be surprised. Pilot, turn to bearing two zero five. Best speed." At the Pilot's questioning look he sighed. "These ones are ordered to assist whatever remains of the Hive civilian authorities."

"No brokeback war, thank the Maker," the Pilot said, rubbing at the sides of his muzzle, then placing his paws back on the controls and curving the dropship onto the correct course.

Rthar inserted the card into the reader and placed his paw on the input pad. The console flashed, a set of new icons appearing down one side. "Done," he whispered, then opened a link to the remaining senior sersjant in the gunship fleet.

A gryphon's head, red-tinged tawny feathers and bright orange eyes, appeared in his display. The creature was breathing heavily, beak opening and closing, sharp little bird tongue twitching in and out in time with panted breaths. "Master. What are your orders?" he rasped out after a moment. One talon came up and touched his command collar, then dropped. There was a bleak hopelessness in his eyes.

"This one has the gryphon's final orders," Rthar said, holding up the black card. "Sersjant Thorvald, this one has been ordered to dispose of any remaining client species before falling back to await contact by the contingency Synod." He felt his face twist into what probably was a smile, and wondered what sort of rictus it was.

"Captain Rthar, Master, no, we are loyal--" There was panic in the words, but the sersjant fell silent when Rthar held up a paw.

"Rthar knows, and that is why he is not going to execute those orders." He tapped a control and the gryphon's collar popped open. "The gryphon has flight authority; Rthar has disabled the command locks. This one suggests that Thorvald head north and join up with the freed gryphon divisions, with the ponies."

Thorvald reached up and snatched the collar away, throwing it to the floor. "I don't understand." Some of the panic faded, replaced with wonder and confusion.

"The Hive is gone. The gryphon's aeries are gone. There is nothing here for either of these ones." Rthar shrugged. "No need to add more death to this day. Besides--" He smiled again, and this time it felt a little more natural. "--it is likely these ones may run into the gryphon forces, on more even terms. It seems prudent to leave Thorvald with a good impression. Perhaps he could tell his tale to those he meets? In any case, good luck, sersjant."

The gryphon nodded slowly, glancing down at his own controls. "Thank you," he said, then cut the link.

On Rthar's screen, the small collection of surviving gunships curved away, dropping to low altitude. He switched his console to the rear cameras, staring at the turbulent, dust-filled base of the mushroom cloud. A streak of light fell through the murk, which abruptly flared and bulged, then another and another fell in after it. There was no way to see what was happening, but Rthar had seen the simulations.

Under the cover of the superheated, radioactive dust, nuclear detonations were digging through the top cover and punching a hole all the way down to the deep command redoubts. A final streak, then the ground over a wide area erupted like it was inflated by a balloon. Rthar shut off the feed, then held his head in his paws and closed his eyes.

===

Salrath knelt next to one of the troopers, her paw feeling for the artery that passed across the underside of his jaw. There was a pulse, but it was slow and irregular. He still breathed, also very slowly. "Huh. What in the Maker's name..." Some thaumic weapon? No alarms and Salrath wasn't affected. She shook her head, trying to dislodge the odd feeling of need, of desire, to go to the Church, then shrugged it off. Humming quietly, she pulled her supplies from the back of the cruiser, packing them into one gunship's storage bays. More work, this time to drag unconscious troopers from the drop bay and pilot/gunner positions. The last task was to pull out her little grey box and attach it to the pilot's bracer, pulling out the command codes.

She sat in the commander's position and transferred the gunship's controls to her console. "Another kilosecond, another vehicle." Salrath can get to the Church quickly with-- Her eyes widened and she laughed, a nervous, hysterical giggle. "At least this one is better. Perhaps it will be an attack carrier next." The turbines spun up at her request, blowing dust from under the gunship and filling the cockpit with a rising whine. The ground effect kicked in and the gunship drifted to one side under her inexpert guidance. Salrath muttered something indistinct, then glanced up as the forward display abruptly turned a blinding white.

She looked up, blinking, as the cameras stepped down the brilliance. The far end of the transit tunnel was obscured by glare, even with the military filters. Alarms sounded in quick succession -- radiation hazard, nuclear detonation detected -- and she scrabbled at the controls, trying to jam the gunship through the half-open exit to the surface shaft. It slewed sideways, forward turbines striking the wall, and stuck. A ripple of dust and destruction was charging towards her down the transit tunnel, subliminally fast--

A violent jolt threw Salrath out of the couch and against the rear wall. More impacts, a crazy tumbling and hammering, like she was a bone being fed into a garbage grinder, then more gentle vibration that faded into a terrible silence. She lay wedged in the small space behind the commander's couch, dazed for a moment. "No," she whispered. "No!"

Breathing heavily, the pain ignored, she shakily stood and leaned over the command console. The cockpit was tilted at a crazy angle, nose down and to the right, making the operation both easier and slightly dizzying. The forward view was a blurred mass of grey and brown shapes; the camera was trying to focus but failing to do so. "Maker dammit!" She pounded a fist against the touch sensitive screen, but it didn't change the insanity on the displays.

Muttering, Salrath pawed through the basic display screens, then stared at the inertial navigation display. The gunship had lost all contact with Battlenet, but there had been insufficient time or displacement for the gyros’ dead reckoning estimate to have diverged significantly from reality. The vehicle was in the middle of the surface access shaft, about a quarter of a kilolength below ground level.

Climbing through the cockpit hatch and into the rear troop compartment, she hauled herself to the rear sally port, paw hesitating over the controls. Swallowing, Salrath turned her head away and tensed, then activated the hatch. It groaned and vibrated, then reluctantly retracted into the thick hull. It was immediately followed by a shower of gravel and pulverised concrete, but nothing more. She gasped out the breath she'd been holding, then reached out to touch the mass blocking the hatch.

Even battered and cracked, the shape was immediately familiar. A half-length to a side tetrahedron, the standard construction block used in all Hive structures. Wedged in to either side were others, the angled gaps packed with rock fragments.

Salrath moaned, pushing at the block. How much of the shaft has collapsed? "Staged, ground-penetrating atomics... the Arcology is gone." Feeling sick, she recalled Lacunae's own battle plans. If Baur operated with the same strategies, the upper levels would be nothing but rubble from the intersecting shockwaves, sealing even undamaged deep shelters -- should there be any -- under a cap of rubble. There were at least a hundred lengths of rock between her and the surface.

===

Gravity stared down at the world, watching the spread of dust and cloud. Sparks of light were drifting over the surface, fast things made to seem slow by the extreme distance. Lots of rubble was re-entering the upper atmosphere, a mixture of rocks she'd hastily parked in low orbits and fragments falling back down after her larger strikes. What little of the ground she could see was marred by circular craters and linear cuts, like the globe had been bitten and scratched by some rabid beast.

She'd circled the world several times, striking at all the Hive's territories as they rolled past beneath her. Any surviving space assets, mostly those in higher orbits that had escaped the building ablation cascade, were also targeted, being pulled directly from their orbits or struck by fractional c projectiles. The lower and middle orbital belts were heavy with glittering chrome specks, vast swarms of dust and larger material moving in tangled, chaotic orbits that were hard to predict with any degree of certainty, or to any useful time in the future. Collisions between objects were thickening the haze, a process that would continue for some time.

She made some more modifications to the orbital debris, then spun the trajectories forward in time, hissing with displeasure when a close encounter between two rocks resulted in the perigee of one dipping below the outer atmosphere. Not stable even out to a hundred kiloseconds! Gravity adjusted the tracks, then made more changes to compensate for other collisions and close approaches. The work wasn't hard, not now, but it was complex, with each decision having far-reaching ramifications, and there was so much of it! "Might be easier to push them all back together," she grumbled under her breath. Gravity let her mind wander, soaking up the sense of motion as she worked.

Nothing artificial stirred above the atmosphere and nuclear explosions were becoming few and far between. Have they finally run out of bombs? She floated in microgravity at the centre of her defences, wings and legs limp and drifting like a foal’s ragdoll down a river. Long strands of not-quite-hair, filled with starry depths, coiled around her, dancing in the tiny, unfelt air currents. The Stone, or amplifier, or whatever it was, floated between her and the world, a tiny model of the moon, Luna. She could feel the presence of the other Stones, mostly now blinking here and there with Fusion, and see the lit face of the Stone shift suddenly to match the teleport jumps.

===

Last one, Fusion thought, appearing over a section of unfamiliar Hive. Some high altitude detonation had swept away any surface structures, followed up by a barrage of kinetics that had knocked deep craters in the landscaped cap that covered the arcology proper. No surface bursts, though, and the internals of the structure seemed intact, albeit running without an active link to the local power grid. A fog of coloured lights moved in the tunnels and caverns, each one a vehicle or dog.

They were converging on a buried pyramid structure, very similar to the one she'd seen before, exactly where the final Stone was. Uneasy, Fusion thought about packed crowds of mind-dead dogs, all arrayed around the reliquary, or whatever the place they kept the Stone was called. There was no order to the flow, but some of the thaumic lights became stationary and winked out, mostly towards the edges of crowds; this strange effect was crawling inwards, like it was a gas overcoming fleeing insects. At the heart of it all was a different weirdness; next to the Stone itself the dark void of the shadow universe was alive with tiny, flickering traces of colour.

The background level of magic, away from the quiet zone around the Stone and normally supplied by the layer upon layer of thaumic devices, was higher than she'd seen even at the heart of Arcology One. So many... She pushed her mind down into the caverns, opening a clairvoyance node in the larger tunnels leading to the Church. As before, it was packed with dogs, all walking or running towards the Stone. They all had the same fixed, thousand-kilolength stare, obviously completely transfixed by their destination.

"Well, that's their problem. They had their chance," she muttered, then pushed--

~~~discontinuity~~~

--appearing in the air above the crowd. The whole space was alive with the oppressive, physical pressure of high-density magic, like she was standing under a weighty thundercloud just before a lightning strike, her shadow sight practically useless from the fog of colour rising up from the close-pressed mass of dogs. If they saw her they gave no sign, just all strained towards the central reliquary. Some were starting to climb the lower slopes, buoyed up by their fellows. The sound was the worst; a low, wordless susurration of desire. Now they saw her, and their attention shifted. Paws came up and the volume rose, changing to a roar of shouts and cries, no single one distinguishable from the others.

It's the Stones... just like those priests in the monorail. What madness is this? Fusion shivered, suddenly feeling very alone and vulnerable, and cut the top of the reliquary open, extracting the final Stone. The sound became deafening, and with it the shadow universe haze intensified. Then, scattered through the crowd, dogs started to fall.

They vanished like rocks dropped into a pond, trampled under paw as more dogs flowed in the chamber to take their place. Magic was doing the damage, but it was nothing created by a pony or some distant dog strategic thaumic weapon. Instead, threads of power came out of the shadowed darkness like the universe itself had birthed hungry tentacles that flowed through the unaware crowd, touching a dog here, a dog there. Each one of these fell without a sound.

Transfixed, Fusion hovered, her five Stones in a tight halo orbit about her poll, and watched the... collection for a long half-dozen breaths, until another noise distracted her. A chittering, buzzing sound, like the clatter of millions of wings.

Something else flowed into the chamber, a swirling mass of colour packed with glinting points of hardness. It rolled over the dogs, making the walking and fallen vanish in equal measure. The colours multiplied with each body taken, not gaining in intensity but in number, and when they passed the bodies were gone. There was magic here, a lot of it, self-contained and bound to some physical form. A series of air lenses brought the action into close and sharp focus; balls of fluff with membranous dragonfly wings, spidery legs and a pair of big, colourful eyes. They looked soft and inviting, things that would be a delight to nuzzle and touch, like some newborn foal's comfort toy. With teeth.

A dozen settled on a dog still stumbling towards the reliquary and opened mouths that practically split their bodies in two. Deep sea anglerfish, creatures little more than a maw attached to an afterthought of a body. They bit and bit, blunt-looking teeth shearing through fur and bone like it was paper; there was remarkably little blood, and none of it seemed to stick to the pastel fuzz of the swarm. With each bite, more than the mass of the creature vanished into its gullet, then budded off into a pellet of soft fuzz. Immediately, this inflated to full size and sprouted wings and legs. And more teeth.

Fusion's magic trembled, pulsing in time with her pounding heart and her heaving chest. Nostrils flared and eyes wide, she held back the sudden urge to move, to run or fly or do anything to get away. Her defences slammed down and she built an escape pattern, holding it in readiness as she watched. The threads of power accelerated, moving with whip-like speed as the numbers of the insect-things multiplied exponentially. There was a feeling of panic to the movement, and not all the dogs so touched fell unmoving. Some still twitched, jaws opening and eyes darting in confusion until the fuzzy tide overran them. The pastel flood approached, cresting like a wave around her--

Her magic surged, turning the air incandescent and flooding the chamber with heat. Everything organic flashed into immediate flame, dogs and fuzzy bug-things alike turning to char and blowing away.

~~~discontinuity~~~

===

A self-replicating weapon was working through the bipeds’ population centre; the automata seemed to know this and had picked this area to do their mysterious work. There was a Stone nearby, and Chaos couldn't get too close to the centre of the automata activity. Worse, the first servitor it had tampered with had just arrived, with four of the other Stones. Four! It dithered, circling the central populated area, then settled near the outer edges of the affected zone. The automata were working outwards in waves from the buried triangular structure that held the Stone itself. There were no Guardians in the immediate area, so Chaos was comfortable enough to simply watch. They were doing something to the bipeds, something that was killing them.

It sampled the minds of the local bipeds, taking copies of the neural maps and freezing them into patterns within itself. It worked fast, collecting a good-sized sample of minds; to the bipeds the effect was not stealthy, and pain, confusion and seizures flared in each mind as slow-moving waves of misfiring neurons rippled through their brains. A wave of automata approached, shot through with the hard, spiny shapes of Guardians, and Chaos retreated, waiting outside the danger zone while they worked. Each biped's higher functions collapsed, some part of their self abstracted and sent away down a communications channel that vanished along a direction Chaos could barely comprehend, let alone follow.

The data seemed little more than noise, random parts of each biped, some fraction of them collected while the bulk was discarded. Chaos compared the distillation with the stored mindstates; there was nothing in any single biped that seemed special. There were differences, though, and it worked feverishly to correlate each stolen fragment against an unknown whole. It didn't have enough samples, only a few thousand against the millions that were undoubtedly being taken, but the data set was holographic, each part a representation of the whole.

Chaos modelled the data, constructing a four-dimensional approximation of a much more complex eleven-dimensional object. There was something here, some tantalising familiarity. The object was not just a thing, but an entity, vast and nearly incomprehensible even to Chaos. Something that had been distributed through the mind of each biped.

Something that the automata were rebuilding.

This pocket universe was artificial, it knew that -- hints of structure coming through the brane walls had shown the outside environment was both less ordered and far vaster than the internal volume. It had never looked for a creator -- it really shouldn't have had to; any controlling works would be obvious -- but the bipeds thought it existed. The 'Maker' they called it.

Why would this 'Maker' have vanished from its creation? Why would it limit itself to this tiny space? If it had somehow spread itself through the bipeds, then the mass extermination that Chaos had engineered would be a direct threat to the Maker. This was some safety measure to ensure it couldn't be lost--

The thoughts hit and Chaos coiled through the quantum foam, compressing its form and increasing its processing speed. No matter what alternative hypothesis it formulated, they were all discarded as false or dangerously unprovable; everything came back to a single, unwelcome conclusion. This universe was the Maker's project and Chaos had spent most of its history creatively and violently breaking it for its own interests and, sometimes, amusement.

No! This couldn't be, this was only some stupid conclusion reached by ignorant bipeds, there was no way-- Trembling, Chaos extended itself, spreading thin and wide over a great volume. Its thoughts slowed to a crawl, but now it could feel the state of the space-time within its form. Something was changing; the automata it rode were different in some indefinable way. More ordered, a larger fraction of their operations directed to other processes. Under the skin of space, something profoundly, terrifyingly alien was thinking long, slow, glacial thoughts that vibrated in the hum of hydrogen nuclei and the silent drift of electrons down lines of magnetic flux.

The Maker was coming back, and it would find out what Chaos had done.