EXALT
Twilight Sparkle forced her eyes open, fighting back the throbbing pain at the base of her skull. She’d forgotten how disorienting it was to travel through the mirror. She rubbed her temple with the back of her hoof—no, hand. This would take some getting used to.
“Whoa, nelly,” Applejack said from beside her. “You weren’t kidding about these bodies. Don’t rightly know which way is up.”
Twilight glanced at her friend, who was flexing her new fingers experimentally. Applejack’s body wore heavy orange coveralls, while Twilight’s were a softer blue. Applejack lay propped up against a metal crate, its paint a drab green under the pale fluorescent lights.
Twilight frowned. “This isn’t where I appeared last time.” They were in a high-ceilinged storeroom, filled with rows of shelves interrupted only by the hulking portal statue through which they’d come. The steel shelves held a strange assortment of artifacts: old scrolls, electronic devices that Twilight didn’t recognize, bronze armor, and what looked like a human skull. “Did someone move the statue?”
“Best figure out where we are, then,” said Applejack. “The sooner we get a move on, the sooner we can find the others.”
“Right.” Twilight climbed to her feet. She was a bit shaky, but she remembered the basics of two-legged movement well enough. “Let’s get going.”
“Just a minute.” Applejack pulled herself upright, both arms pressed against the statue for balance. “Let me see how this here body moves.”
A door slammed open. Heavy footsteps pounded towards them.
Twilight spun to see four or five big men running towards her. Bandanas covered the lower halves of their faces. They carried what Twilight belatedly recognized as guns—some sort of dangerous weapon, she’d heard on her last trip, although she didn’t know exactly what they did.
She yelped and stumbled back, losing her tentative balance and landing in a heap. A man grabbed her arms and hauled her upright. “Wait!” she shouted. “Wait, I’m just trying to find my friends! My name is—”
“Twilight Sparkle. It’s her, alright. Let go, Gladius.”
The hands released her, and Twilight whirled to face the speaker. “I should’ve known you were behind this!”
“I’m flattered, but I’m not behind anything.” Sunset Shimmer spread her hands. She was dressed like the men around her, with a white button-down shirt and pale yellow tie, and a bandana over her mouth and nose. Her hair was cut short and dyed black, but the voice was unmistakable. “I don’t know what you think I did.”
“Reckon it’s pretty clear,” said Applejack. “You stole the portal statue and brought it to this here lair, then you set your minions on us as soon as we stepped through.”
Gladius laughed. It was more of a giggle, not at all what Twilight expected from a man his size. The other men joined in. Sunset Shimmer cracked a smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
“Minions!” said Gladius. “You hear that, boys? Guess the new girl’s calling the shots.”
“I’m still something of a junior partner around here,” said Sunset Shimmer. “Relax, Twilight. We’re your friends.”
Applejack snorted. “Don’t reckon you know so much about friendship.”
“I do,” said Sunset Shimmer. “Thanks to you and your friends. Or your human counterparts, anyway. It’s been years, you know. They taught me a lot, before all this started.”
A tall, skinny man put a hand on Sunset Shimmer’s shoulder. “This is not the time for a reunion,” he said. “Your job was to identify them, and you’ve succeeded. Now, we’re to bring them to the laboratory.” He turned to Twilight. “Come along, now.”
That didn’t sound good. “Why?” Twilight tensed, ready to run, but the men were all around her.
“We just want to make a few observations,” said Sunset Shimmer. “I’m the only Equestrian in a human body that’s ever been studied. Even a routine physical might be able to tell us more about how the mirror’s magic works, and I’m sure you want to understand it as badly as I do.”
“Alright, I guess,” said Twilight.
“Good,” said the man. “Let’s be off.” He led them out of the storeroom and into a wide corridor with mahogany-paneled walls and a plush carpet the color of raspberries. The other men made a rough circle around her and Applejack.
“So where are we, anyway?” said Applejack.
“This,” the skinny man said with a flourish, “is Exalt.”
Twilight waited for an explanation, but nothing came. “Okay,” she said. “And that’s what, exactly?”
“We’re a group of people trying to unlock humanity’s potential,” said Gladius. “We’ve been gathering knowledge and power for a while, to make sure we’d be able to steer this planet’s future when the time came. I didn’t think that’d happen so soon, but… well, you ladies chose one heck of a time to visit.”
“It wasn’t really a choice,” said Twilight. “Our friends are somewhere in this world, and we need to find them.”
“How could they be here?” said Sunset Shimmer. “You’re the only ponies to come through the mirror.”
“They…” Twilight swallowed and tried again. “They were…”
“They were captured,” said Applejack. “These monsters showed up and attacked Ponyville. Worst thing I ever seen.”
“The creatures arrived in some sort of flying metal house,” said Twilight. “They just started destroying everything. They, they killed a lot of ponies. By the time I showed up, everything was on fire, and the bodies…” She swallowed. “Anyway, by that point, they were taking some of the living ponies back to the flying house. I managed to save Pinkie from the creatures, but she was hurt bad and I took her to the hospital, and, and when I got back it was too late. They were flying away and I couldn’t stop them.” Her fingernails were digging into her palms. She didn’t remember hands doing that before.
“I saw them put Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash on that house-ship thing, ‘fore they left,” said Applejack. “Princess Celestia used a tracking spell and it led her to the mirror. Don’t know how those creatures got to this world, but they did, so we’re here to find our friends.”
The Exalt men exchanged glances. “These creatures,” said the skinny man. “Describe them."
“They’re a bit like y’all, but smaller. Two legs, two arms. Real big heads, with these big glowing eyes, and no mouth I could see. They’re—”
“Thank you,” said the man. “Interesting.”
XCOM
Rarity flinched as another rumbling tremor rattled the pen. The sounds were growing closer, now, and she could hear the creatures’ chittering shouts. Their chatter sounded different from before. They sounded scared.
Rarity didn’t want to know what could scare something as horrible as the creatures. They didn’t look like much, with flabby gray bodies that barely stood taller than she did on their two spindly legs, but they were utterly without pity.
Another tremor shook the metal floor beneath her hooves. She backed away from the pen’s entrance. The door was the same dull gray metal as the walls. Nothing good ever came through that door.
“It’s okay,” Rainbow Dash said from beside her. She looked as scared as Rarity felt, but she stood fast. “It’ll be okay. I won’t let them touch you.” She draped a wing over Rarity’s withers.
Rarity said nothing. Rainbow had said the same thing to Cheerilee and Fluttershy, before the creatures dragged them from the pen. Rarity never saw what happened to them, but she heard the screams through the walls, and the creatures never brought her friends back.
A string of loud bangs assaulted her ears, too close together to tell one from another. The door rattled in its frame. One of the creatures screamed in pain.
“It’s okay,” said Rainbow Dash. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
The door slid open. Rarity’s jaw clenched so hard her teeth hurt.
A huge monster strode in, standing at least twice as tall as a pony. Its two legs stepped over the ruined body of one of the creatures, tracking yellow blood from a spreading pool. The new monster pointed a long, thin tool at her head.
“W-what,” said Rarity, “what do you want?”
The monster lowered the tool. It took a smaller object from its hip and raised the gleaming metal. There was a bright flash, then searing pain, then everything went blank.
Central Officer Bradford strode into the hangar, only slightly winded from his sprint down the subterranean corridors. He made a beeline for the squad debarking from the Skyranger. Engineers and guards hurried out of his way. The ship’s rotors filled the hangar with a dull roar as they spun down.
Six of his best had left the base. Now, four men and women made their way down the transport’s ramp. The preliminary reports said Hammond was dead and Ekwueme was in critical condition. A swarm of medics surged up the ramp as soon as the troops were clear.
The survivors straightened at his approach. “At ease,” Bradford said. “Captain. How is she?”
Papadopoulos took off his helmet, bright with a streak of alien viscera. “She’ll probably live. No way she’s keeping the leg.”
Bradford was silent. He’d resolved not to curse in front of the troops.
“Congratulations on another successful mission,” Doctor Vahlen said. She had somehow appeared at his side, looking like a ghost in her pristine lab coat. “The commander tells me you brought back some fascinating specimens.”
Papadopoulos glanced at his squadmates before answering. “Uh, yeah, we found something new. All their human test subjects were dead, like always, but there were a couple pens with… something else.”
Vahlen nodded. “Recovered alive?”
“We subdued two and brought them back intact. There were five dead ones that looked like ET was taking them apart to see how they worked.”
Vahlen frowned. “Reports say there were nine of these creatures altogether.”
“Um. Right. There was a second pen, and a couple mutons were using it for cover. We, uh, hit it with a rocket. The captives did not survive.” Papadopoulos swallowed. “I take full responsibility.”
Vahlen hissed. Bradford spoke up before anything untoward could happen. “Understandable. You have to prioritize the lives of your troops. Well done, soldier.”
Papadopoulos stood taller at that. “We recovered some hardware, as well. I think the salvage team has a list. Some kind of flashing—”
“Excuse me,” said Doctor Vahlen. “Where are the living specimens? I should examine them at once.”
Rainbow Dash drifted back to wakefulness. She ached all over, especially her back, where the giant monster had shot her with that weird zap gun. Everything was white and painfully bright, like looking at the noontime sun through a cloud. She squeezed her eyes shut and curled into a ball.
She lay on something hard and cold. The sounds around her were unfamiliar. There was the faint rush of air and a high, almost inaudible whine. Gone was the low hum of that awful pen and Rarity’s familiar breathing.
Rarity! Where was she? Rainbow Dash leaped to her hooves. She was alone in a cell with a big glass window, looking out on strange machines and more of those big two-legged monsters. There was no sign of Rarity.
She knocked a hoof on the glass. “Hey!” she shouted. “What did you do with my friend?”
Several of them looked up. A group of three approached the cage.
“Looks like the specimen is fully active,” said Doctor Pujara. He glanced at his tablet. “Vital signs seem stable.”
Vahlen nodded. The specimen was pounding on the glass and shouting. They all did, at first. Most aliens eventually tired of the display. “I want to see what it does with those wings,” she said.
“Gliding, maybe?” said Pujara. “It’s too heavy to fly. Those wings would barely lift an eagle.”
Vahlen shrugged. They were unlikely to see it glide in the containment cell. She’d have to arrange for tests elsewhere. “What of the other?” she asked.
Doctor MacIntyre glanced at his tablet. “Still unconscious.”
“I don’t understand their polymorphism,” said Pujara. “Between these and the ones the extraterrestrials vivisected, we have some with wings, some with horns, and some with neither. I can imagine uses for the wings, even if flight is out of the question, but what possible use could the horns have? They certainly don’t look like weapons.”
Vahlen frowned. “Are there any specimens with both traits?”
“No,” said Pujara, “but that means nothing. We only have nine specimens. Assuming they’re uniformly distributed between the four phenotypes, odds are about one in three that we’d completely miss one type by pure chance.”
Vahlen pointed at the specimen. “It’s growing more agitated.”
“And its speech is complex,” said MacIntyre. “It could be a language. There might—Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”
The specimen was rising up, continuing to shout as it hovered easily on its puny wings. “Impossible,” Vahlen breathed.
For half a minute, all was silence, save the loudspeaker carrying the specimen’s invective. “This completely invalidates our theories of aerodynamics,” Pujara said at last.
Vahlen allowed herself a thin smile. After everything she had seen—genetic engineering, faster-than-light travel, alien telepaths, human telepaths—she knew how to react to the impossible. She would learn the principles behind this alien’s flight, and she would put them to use building the tools to safeguard humanity’s future.
Corporal Makarov hurried down the corridor, passing under fluorescent lights as he caught up to his quarry. He found himself slowing down each time he was almost there. It was funny. He had no trouble going up against a six hundred pound alien with a plasma gun that could blast through a tank, but talking to officers still scared him shitless.
Too bad, he told himself. This is important.
“Officer Bradford, sir,” he said to the man’s back. “D-do you have a moment?”
Bradford glanced his way without slowing. “Of course. You did good work out there today, son. What’s on your mind?”
“Sir. It’s about the captives we brought back. The, uh, the ponies.”
Bradford raised an eyebrow. “Is that what the men are calling them?”
“Yes, sir. I’m c-concerned about their treatment, sir.”
It was a moment before Bradford spoke. “Their treatment? Corporal, they’re aliens.”
“Yes, sir. But they’re not like the others.” He remembered their faces before he stunned them. “They never did anything! The enemy just grabbed them and did those fucked-up experiments on them.” He swallowed. “Like they’re doing to us, sir.”
Bradford shook his head. “We don’t know that. It could just be another breed of warrior we haven’t encountered before. I was just discussing them with the commander, and the possibility was raised that this is an elaborate feint to plant their agents within our base.”
“It’s not!” Dammit, this was all going wrong. Makarov had seen them, he knew they were just scared and lost. He pressed ahead. “Sir, we just need to talk to them somehow. I asked Doctor Shen, and he said one of our telepaths could do that mind-merge thing with these new aliens, since they’re not hostile.”
“I can’t ask one of our telepaths to risk themselves on a hunch.”
“I talked to Li. She’s willing to volunteer for this, sir.”
“Did she? Hm.” Bradford brought out his tablet and made a quick note. “Alright, son, I’ll think about it.”
Vahlen looked up as Bradford entered the conference room. He wasn’t late, of course. Bradford was never late. He was normally the first to arrive at these meetings, but today he was merely on time. She and Doctor Shen had both preceded him.
“Good evening,” said Shen. “I hope your talk with the Germans went well.”
Bradford shook his head. His face was a mask of calm, but he gripped his tablet hard enough to bend the plastic. “They’re cutting off funding to the XCOM project. Withdrawing from the Council entirely. They’ve signed some sort of treaty with the aliens.”
Vahlen sat in shock. Germany was the third country to abandon the fight. That left only thirteen nations supporting XCOM. Thirteen nations standing up for humanity’s common future in the face of the only real threat they had ever faced. “We shall have to redouble our efforts,” she said. It didn’t seem like enough.
Bradford took a seat opposite the two doctors. “In that spirit, the commander has asked us here to determine what to do with the alien prisoners we recovered on the last raid. It seems the troops are calling this breed ‘ponies.’”
“They have a great deal to teach us,” said Vahlen. “The winged specimen has displayed flight abilities beyond what our current theories should permit. My instruments suggest that the horned one has a great deal of psionic potential, although we have yet to see its capabilities.”
Doctor Shen cleared his throat. “We should be careful with them. Our previous captives have never survived your tests. Losing the ponies would be tragic.”
“I quite agree,” said Vahlen. “The living specimens are invaluable, and it’s possible we’ll never see more. We must preserve them for the sake of our research.”
Shen blinked. “I was thinking of the ponies themselves. They’re not combatants. We found them as victims of our real enemy, much like we are. This is our first chance at peaceful contact with an alien race.”
“Not necessarily,” said Bradford. “This could be a plot to insert agents into our midst.”
“Implausible,” said Vahlen. “The abduction ship we raided was heavily guarded. We were never meant to recover the specimens. I know we’re all on guard thanks to EXALT’s saboteurs, but we must be realistic.” She paused, choosing her words carefully. “However, I must disagree with the doctor. While his sentiments are noble, we cannot afford such luxuries. We are at war. The fate of our entire species depends on our seizing every advantage. If that means subjecting two non-human creatures to testing, then so be it.”
Shen took off his glasses and polished them on his sleeve. “Historians will write about the choices we make here. I hope their books judge us fairly.”
“For myself,” said Vahlen, “so long as humans are still writing books when this is done, I will be satisfied.”
“Enough,” said Bradford. “This isn’t why we’re here. I want concrete proposals, people.”
“Talk to the ponies,” said Shen. “Communicate through pictograms, maybe, or see if a telepath can make contact. If they’re capable of language, start teaching them English.”
Bradford nodded. “I have a telepath who’s willing to help. Vahlen?”
“Communication would be useful. I’ll put MacIntyre in charge of that project. I would also like to examine the winged specimen’s muscular structure. There is only so much we can learn from the dead specimens.”
Shen frowned. “Vivisection? I had hoped we were better than that.”
“No need for such hysterics. Doctor Pujara has already drawn up a proposal. The procedure will be no more invasive than a common hernia repair surgery.”
“Good,” said Bradford. “Do it.”