Planet Hell: The Redemption of Harmony

by solocitizen

Rating: teen
Tags: Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Rainbow Dash, Romance, Changelings, Fluttershy, Science Fiction, Adventure, Discord
Length: 99359

While searching for his childhood friend, Thunder Gale is confronted by an ancient presence that forces him to reconcile the darkest elements of his soul, or die trying.

This is the long dark night of the soul. More than 10,000 years have passed since Celestia’s reign over Equestria ended and the entire continent sank into the ocean and faded into myth and legend. Although the pony tribes have colonized the stars, the earth ponies have lost their connection to the land, the unicorns no longer think magic even exists, and the pegasus tribe has forgotten how to fly.
Although the principles of magic and friendship and Harmony are under constant assault in this age of war and strife, a pegasus named Thunder Gale has travelled to the ends of the galaxy in search of a long, lost friend of his. His search has led him to a planet where the old ways have not been entirely forgotten and evils left dormant since Celestia’s time stir once again. In order to survive the night, he’ll have to seek out guidance in the last place he ever thought of looking: the wings on his back.
Not a crossover nor an alternate universe, this is the far future and all this has happened before, and will happen again.
Cover art by Silfoe.
Now featured on Equestria Daily!

Published 2014-05-16 18:40:04 UTC
Last updated 2017-01-06 23:33:08 UTC

1. Icarus Dreams

Planet Hell
Solocitizen

1.
Icarus Dreams

12th of Planting Season, 10,056 AC
Present Day

The blue pegasus raced across the sky and Thunder Gale followed. Each beat of their wings raised them higher and through the tufts of billowing clouds below. Light from the setting sun shot through the layers in the sky and painted the cloudscape gold and orange. The blue pegasus led Thunder Gale in circles around a cloud that, with its misty pillars and domed peak, resembled a palace straight out of legend. Then, she peeled away, and he lost sight of her.

“Wait!” Thunder Gale kicked off a cloud and cut through the air. “Come back!”

A haze encroached on his path but his intuition guided him through it. When he emerged, the view of the domed peak was there to meet him.

As he climbed for the peak, sunlight poked out from behind it and seared his eyes. His wings ached with fatigue and purple splotches blotted his vision, but he pushed aside the pain and squinted through the light.

The blue pegasus stepped out onto the edge to meet him. Her rainbow mane flickered on the wind. Even while squinting, Thunder Gale saw her red eyes zero in on him.

“I don’t think I can make it!” He reached out his front hooves for her. “Help me, please.”

The heat on Thunder Gale’s wings boiled until it overshadowed his fatigue and muscle pain and the light flooding his eyes. He screamed in agony; the rhythm of his wing strokes broke. When he glanced to his side, he saw a fire spread over his wings. They turned to ash, and when there was nothing left of them, he tumbled out of the sky.

The blue pegasus extended a hoof to help him up.

He reached for her, but he was already too far gone.

No longer did the clouds support his weight and no longer did his wings propel him through the air. They were gone, replaced by the scent of charred feathers and flesh.

Down he plummeted, kicking, flailing, and screaming as the ground rushed to meet him.

* * *

Thunder Gale opened his eyes and gasped.

He coughed and moaned. His hind hooves dug into the soft-soil beneath him, but he lacked the strength to pull himself up. So there he stayed, on his back, staring at a sky painted red and orange ahead of him. Thunder Gale’s wings ached, and in a panic, he rolled on his side and checked to make sure they were intact. They were; he had only lain on them poorly.

Scorch marks blackened his blue-grey coat and left holes in the black and red paint covering his officer’s cuirass. The royal blues and whites of the Pegasus Empire beneath were exposed. His entire body tingled with electricity, and the smell of burning hair and plastic wafted off of him.

“Thunder Gale...” That was the voice of his friend, Hill Born, and it was close.

His head snapped off the ground and for a second, just a second, he thought he found the strength to get back on his hooves.

Then he found the source—a datapad a few feet away from him—and he dropped his head onto the ground again. His memory was a bit hazy, but the last thing he remembered was being on the bridge of his ship and he had had the thing on him then. Whatever happened to him must have triggered Hill Born’s message.

“I hope this finds you quickly. I’m working for a research company—I can’t go into details about it now, but this entire project has spiraled out of control. So much is hopelessly wrong; I didn’t know monsters were real until today. I’m taking a huge risk by sending you this message, but I don’t see any other choice. I need your help. Go to the third planet in the Azrael system and bring an army.”

The message paused, and then looped back to the beginning.

“Thunder Gale...”

He tried to pick himself up again, first by rolling onto his stomach, and then fighting his way back onto his hooves. He stood up, eventually, but he spent a minute with his head between his legs trying to puke.

After his head stopped spinning, he ambled over to his datapad. He shook the dirt from his blue mane and then paused the message, and tucked it under his wing.

“Well, Hill, here I am.”

South of Thunder Gale’s position, towers dotted the horizon. Mountains framed the north and west edge of the expanse and cut into the sky, but in the east they dwindled to low hills. Ground as scaly as dragon’s hide filled in all the places between and shimmered whenever unbroken by the occasional building or dried up tree. It occurred to him that he was standing in an ancient lakebed. Moaning winds blew in from the towers and rolled over Thunder Gale on their way to the mountains in the north; they carried a foul odor. With the message now silent, he caught a song playing in the background.

“Spitfire this is Helios, over.” He tapped the radio crammed in his ear. “This is Helios to Spitfire, do you copy?”

All he got was static and the winds and that faint music playing under it all.

Thunder Gale bit his lower lip, scanned his eyes across the landscape, and tried again. “Spitfire, Spitfire, Spitfire, this is Major Gale, do you copy? Can anypony hear me?”

Again, no pony answered him so he decided to follow the music.

He tracked it to the edge of a nearby pit and called out the whole way there, but when he looked down and saw the thing below, he froze.

At the bottom of the pit stood a statue—of what he didn’t know, but it wasn’t a pony, griffon, or anything from Celestia’s green Equestria. It was male, and wore a set of armor not dissimilar to his officer’s cuirass. Thunder Gale wanted to call the thing an ape, but it walked on two feet and carried a shield and a spear in its hands not unlike a pony would with his mouth. Aside from its short curly mane no hair or fur covered its body. Whoever—whatever— had crafted the statue with intelligence in its posture and decision in its expression.

Although only a statue, it was nothing short of a fear-inspiring predator to Thunder Gale, a herbivore half the creature’s height. On instinct, he unfurled his wings and darted away.

Thunder Gale waited until the shock wore off and his heart slowed down, then he took a few deep breaths and inched his way over to the edge and down the side of the pit.

Picks, shovels, toothbrushes, and rulers lay scattered around the pit, along with notebooks, datapads, and a set of speakers that were blasting out a song he had heard one too many times. Everything there bore the same logo: a heart set against a shield encircled by the words “Sigil Tech”. Searching through the stuff, he stumbled over a pair of feathered wings cast in the same bronze as the statue.

What deeply unnerved him, much more so than the statue itself, was that whoever had dug up the statue left without covering it up, gathering their supplies, or even turning off their music. He grabbed a datapad and tucked it into his cuirass.

As he shifted on his hooves he stepped on something metal. When he picked his hoof up and looked down, he found a bullet casing for a high velocity rifle, and when he turned the soil over he discovered three more.

Thunder Gale scrambled out of the pit for higher ground. “This is Helios to Spitfire, respond, damn it!” He tapped his communicator and scanned the horizon for any sign of his ship.

Above the hills to the east a red flare zipped up into the sky and burst. It was the first of three to shoot up from behind the hills, followed by one white. They hung high and spread their light over the hills and valley. That flare pattern was used in the Pegasus Imperial Fleet to signal distress. Thunder Gale could only think of one ship that side of the galaxy that would use that pattern.

“Spitfire, Spitfire, Spitfire, this is Helios, please copy.”

He set off galloping east towards the hills, and didn’t wait a second longer for a response. His body ached, but he sprinted through it. If he maintained a fast gallop he’d make it to those hills well before sundown.

As he passed by a derelict garage, right out of the corner of his eye, a light flickered. Thunder Gale skidded to a stop and turned.

“Hello?” he called. “Is there any pony there?”

He waited a minute but the building remained silent.

“I’m Major Gale of the Spitfire. We’re not with the Pegasus Empire, we’re just, uh, remarkably well armed. A friend of mine sent a message from here not too long ago asking for help. I’m looking for him and any other survivors. Maybe you know him. His name is Hill Born, have you seen him? Please come out, I’m here to help.”

No lights turned on, and nopony peeked out of the windows above the door, but he was certain something was in there; a light had flickered in there not a minute earlier. He started to approach the door, then stopped. Thunder Gale glanced over his shoulder at the flares hanging over the hills to the east.

They needed him.

For a long time, Thunder Gale stood between the garage and the hills. He glanced between the two frantically, but never did he inch closer to one or the other. The emergency flares from his ship faded, and new ones took their place in the sky.

Before he could make up his mind, the ground beneath his hooves rumbled and fusion engines screeched overhead. Thunder Gale turned around and, with a hoof shading his eyes, faced the source: a dropship painted in the red and black scheme of The Manticore Mercenary Company descending from the cloudless sky.

Thunder Gale cast his hoof up and waved.

The dropship positioned itself between Thunder Gale and the sun, and a squad of power armor troopers leapt out, and broke their falls with a burst from the micro-fusion thrusters on their legs and wings. They quickly fanned out to establish a defensive perimeter around him, while the autocannons cranked around on the dropship and prepared to open fire on anything that didn’t identify itself as a friendly.

One of the power armor troopers broke away from the squad and trotted up to him. It was Second Lieutenant Cloud Twist, judging by the markings on his suit and the way he wore it as though it were a sock three sizes too big. As the Commanding Officer of a starship, Thunder Gale didn’t allow himself to pick favorites or hint at anything of the kind. That said, the only reason why Cloud Twist was ever promoted to Second Lieutenant in the first place was because a bridge fell on his predecessor and there weren’t any other qualified ponies around at the time.

“It’s good to see you in one piece, sir.” Lt. Cloud Twist’s voice was almost lost under the roar of the dropship’s engines.

Thunder Gale met him halfway.

“What’s the status of the Spitfire?”

“Grounded, but more or less in one piece,” said Lt. Cloud Twist. “I can’t tell you much else about what’s going on, the XO kinda rushed us out the door before I had time to ask, so we’re in the dark. We found you, though, so that’s good.”

“What do you see on thermal?” Thunder Gale pointed at the building. “Any sign of survivors nearby?”

“We didn’t see anypony coming in, sir.”

“Then what’s with the defensive formation?”

“Sir, from what I do understand, you vanished off the bridge in a flash of light and puff of smoke.” The lieutenant shuffled on his hooves and tucked his armored wings against his side. “The XO assumed you had been transmatted off the ship somehow, and had been captured, or killed, or maybe eaten by something out here. We didn't know what to expect. Our orders were to locate and escort you back to the ship by any means.”

He glanced around at his squad and at Thunder Gale, kicked at the ground, and added: “It’s good to see you’re still in one piece, sir.”

The dropship spun around and lowered itself to about a foot off the ground. Thunder Gale and the power armor squad piled into the cramped belly of the ship as soon as the thing had stopped moving. He sat down on one of the crash couches with the rest of his troopers. Before Thunder Gale even had the opportunity to strap himself in, the thing peeled away from the ground and zipped toward the western hills with a roar.

Beyond the dropship’s reinforced windows, the desert sped by. Thunder Gale spied more dig sites that had been cut out of the earth with surgical precision. Then he cast his eyes to the south and gazed down into a chasm filled with concrete and steel.

The buildings he had seen earlier sprouting up to the south were the tips of a massive industrial city planted in the walls of an enormous chasm. The mouth of it stretched on for miles. Each tower was a ruin sandblasted clean, to uniformity, but some still clung to bits of facade.

Thunder Gale leaned close to Lt. Cloud Twist and shouted above the roaring engines. “Lieutenant, are there any search teams deployed in the chasm to the south?”

“Just one, sir: us,” he said. “And to be frank, I’m glad we found you before we had to go in.”

“Why’s that?” Thunder Gale stiffened.

“The techs tried doing some drone recon over the area, but it didn’t work out.” Lt. Cloud Twist tapped a button on his forehoof, and the latches on his helmet snapped open. “That’s not what had me worried, though. What made me glad we found you out here, instead of in that hole, is the fact that every compass and piece of guidance equipment we have is convinced that the bottom of that crater is magnetic north.”

“We’re here on a search and rescue mission,” Thunder Gale said. “Our top priority is the safety of the civilian population. The buildings look like they were heavily fortified. If a firefight broke out, the civilians would have tried to hold up there. We have to be ready to go in and pull them out.”

“Understood, sir.” Cloud Twist pried his helmet off with his front legs and shook out his cream-colored mane. He gulped for fresh air like a fish back in water; it was always surprising to see just how eager he was to get out of that suit.

Thunder Gale turned his attention to the desert racing by underneath the dropship. He waited for the low hills to pass into view, and for the first sign of his ship. Fighting not to bite his hoof, waiting on the edge of the seat, Thunder Gale trained his eyes out the window, searching, waiting. Then there it was: the gunship Spitfire.

Nestled at the base of two merging ridges, the Spitfire sprawled out on the brittle earth, wounded and motionless. Her wings, designed to help expel heat and stabilize her flight in an atmosphere, lay disheveled and crooked. The head of her main autocannon, which was capable of punching holes in ships one hundred times her size, was buried in the side of a hill. Scorch marks left holes in her black and red paint, not all of them recent additions. Her crew scurried around her hull, licking her wounds.

The dropship hovered outside the docking bay while waiting for a grappling arm to lock around it and pull it in. Once docked, Thunder Gale and his troopers piled out as soon as the dropship door opened. One trooper nudged him with plated wings right in a sore spot as they leapt out, and sent pain surging through his body. He winced and landed on the docking bay’s catwalk on his face.

“Logged, the Commanding Officer is aboard,” a digital voice said over the ship’s intercom. “XO Lighting Fire stands relieved.”

Thunder Gale scrambled back on his hooves before any of the ponies behind him got the chance to help him up.

“Are you alright, sir?” Lt. Cloud Twist rushed to his side and extended a helping hoof.

The entirety of the squad was gathered round him.

“Yes, I’m fine.” Thunder Gale got on his hooves, brushed himself off, and turned to address him. “Lt. Twist, have you and your squad report to engineering as soon as possible and provide any assistance you can to the repairs.”

“Aye, aye, Major.” Cloud Twist saluted him before disappearing down the hall with his squad.

In the Imperial Marines, everypony worked and everypony fought. A small gunship like the Spitfire couldn’t ferry a company of marines and a large dedicated support staff into battle while still maintaining her lethal agility. With the exception of two individuals, everypony onboard was both a professional power armor trooper and whatever the ship needed to keep flying. It worked differently in the Mobile Infantry and on bigger ships, but not on a marine gunship.

He sighed, glanced over his shoulders to make sure no pony was watching, and massaged his brow in a futile attempt to ease his throbbing head. He didn’t know if it was whatever had dropped him in the desert or just the heat, but it only got worse since he woke up.

His radio chirped, and the voice of his XO followed. “Lightning Fire to Major Gale, please report to the bridge.”

“What’s the Spitfire’s status?” He set his hooves down and trotted out of the hangar. “Is she in any kind of immediate danger?”

“No, sir. She’s a little crispy, but it’s nothing our repair teams can’t handle. I’ll fill you in on the details when you get up here.”

“I’m going to make a detour to sickbay. I want to make sure that whoever brought me to the desert didn’t do anything to my head. Gale out.”

Nose to tail, the Spitfire was only three hundred and eighty feet long, and not all of that was habitable. The company of soldiers and a hoof full of noncombat personnel crammed into her put every inch of her to use. There were no long corridors or empty rooms. The mess hall tripled as a rec room and the gym. Hot bunking was a standard practice. The captain’s cabin even saved space with a low-hanging ceiling.

On his way to sickbay, Thunder Gale ran into about a third of his crew and nearly tripped over a dozen more. The ship was alive with yelling, the sound of power tools, and the clippity-clop of hooves on the metal floor.

Despite the fact that the Spitfire was no longer a part of the Imperial Marines, Thunder Gale still demanded the same level of discipline and efficiency out of his crew. At her core, the Spitfire was still a military vessel, not a merc ship.

But once the doors to sickbay slid apart and he stepped inside, all that changed. In his mind he was in Doctor Breeze Heart’s domain now, the most compassionate pegasus he’d ever met. She was smart, well read, and a brilliant surgeon, but her patients remembered her for a bedside manner as disarming and gentle as the pink of her coat and the charm in her voice.

At the moment she was at the bedside of an injured marine. She kept her eyes locked on her work and on a hologram levitating to the right of her face as she held one end of the bandage in her mouth and wound it around the marine's injured wing while her patient stared holes into the ceiling.

Breeze Heart looked up and spotted Thunder Gale and her wings sprung open. She looked as though she was trying to gasp but was too shocked to do so.

He cocked his head ever so slightly, and his eyes lit up as if he were smiling ear to ear. He wanted to rush over to her and sweep her off her hooves, but even if he had the strength he couldn’t; professional ethics didn’t allow it. They made eye contact, but he broke away to point at the marines beside her with his eyes.

Breeze Heart nodded and recomposed herself.

Not wanting to attract any more attention, Thunder Gale retreated behind the edge of the door to sickbay, and stayed out of sight while Breeze Heart finished with her patient.

Once Breeze Heart showed the marine to the door, Thunder Gale darted inside.

The very instant that door shut and they were alone, Breeze Heart threw her hooves over Thunder Gale and rested her head around the back of his neck. The hologram floating next to her face vanished.

“By the princesses, you’re back!” she said. “No pony knew where you were or what happened. I thought you had been captured, or worse.”

“What, didn’t think I’d be coming home? You know me better than that.”

“We didn’t know what happened. The XO was worried about finding you before the scavengers did, or even finding you at all. How I stayed calm in front of Private Drizzle for so long, I don’t know.”

“I’ve been through a lot worse than a botched capture attempt.” He stroked her mane with his hoof.

“This was different. You disappeared right off the bridge during a crisis in a puff of black smoke no less.” She pulled him tighter and his legs buckled. “Transmats don’t make black smoke.”

“Gently, gently! I’m still pretty sore from whatever that was. Do you think you could put me in the medi-pod and run a scan?”

“Yes, of course.” She backed off and led him over to a plexi-glass pod at the far end of sickbay. “This will just take a second. Climb inside and we’ll get started.”

Thunder Gale hopped into the machine and lay back on the metal bed. A plexi-glass dome sealed him inside. The medi-pod was fresh with the scent of disinfectants. Holograms flashed over him and danced around at Breeze Heart’s touch.

“That’s unusual.”

“Is there something wrong?” He flicked his tail.

“No, that’s the confusing thing, I can’t find anything wrong with you at all.” Breeze Heart dragged a hologram up and down his body.

“How’s that possible? I feel like I’ve been struck by lightning. You sure they didn’t do anything to my head?”

She dragged the orange hologram over his head and held it there.

“No, there’s nothing out of the ordinary with you.” She dismissed the holograms and kicked a switch somewhere near his head, and with that the medi-pod dome retracted, and he jumped out of the bed and onto his hooves. “At least, not from what I can see. I can give you some painkillers, but that’s about all. I wish there was more I could do.”

“That’s fine. I’ll take what I can get.”

Breeze Heart trotted over to a medicine cabinet, picked out a bottle rattling with a lonely pair of pills, and set it down next to Thunder Gale. Biting down on the lid and wrenching her hooves the other way, she popped it off and tapped the last two pills out on the countertop.

“It’s not a lot, but it’s what we have left.” She pushed the pills over to him and lowered her ears. “If that doesn’t do it though, I’d like it if you considered taking some time off. I know, it’s a lot to ask right now, but Lightning Fire has been managing the ship very well, so I’m sure she could handle things if you need her to.”

“I don’t think that’d give the crew the right idea,” he said. “I’ll keep it in mind, though.”

“I understand.”

Thunder Gale scooped the pills off the counter and swallowed without water, and then he scratched the back of his head. “I’m, uh, sorry for giving you a scare like that.”

“It’s okay.” She took a long breath. “What happened wasn’t your fault.”

“Yeah, but it still sucked, and you deserve better than that.” He put a hoof on her shoulder and then reached down her leg for hers. “Let me try to make it up to you.”

She looked up at him and tilted her head ever so slightly.

“Tonight’s still a date night, right? We have that unopened bottle of hard cider from Hearts and Hooves Day, why don’t we start there and have some fun?”

“Okay, I’d like that,” she said. “It’s a date.”

“The usual time?”

“Why, of course.” She tipped her head to him. “And don’t be late.”

“Sounds like you’ve got something planned.” He leaned in closer. “Do I get any hints?”

“Maybe, but just one: I had a lot more planned for Hearts and Hooves Day than just a bottle of cider, my love.”

“In that case I’d better get there on time.”

She leaned in so close their noses touched, and then she tilted her head and he tilted the other way, and then they closed their eyes.

A throat cleared at the other end of sickbay and the two of them turned and froze.

In the doorway stood XO Lightning Fire. Everything about her, from her eye patch to her officer’s cuirass, was kept neat and precise. She never let her red mane or tail reach longer than regulation length. She kept her hooves together as rigid as a soldier on display. She was one of the finest generals the Imperial Marines ever produced, but stepped back in rank to take on her current assignment. Her assignment, and everypony else’s on the ship, was supposed to be temporary. She was a begrudging permanent exception to the ‘everypony fights’ rule.

“Is the Major fit to return to his post?” she asked Breeze Heart.

“I believe so.” She avoided the XO’s gaze and scurried a foot or two back. “He’s experiencing pain I can’t account for, but I see no reason why he can’t return to duty.”

“Which is why I’m on my way there, right now.” Thunder Gale pulled himself away from Breeze Heart and the counter. He looked her in the eye, nodded, and that was that.

Thunder Gale and Lightning Fire hustled out, and left Breeze Heart staring out the doors of her empty sickbay.

The two cantered around repair teams at work throughout the hall and climbed into one of the hyperlifts down the way. On any other day it would hum up the ship in under sixty seconds—a figure Thunder Gale had also committed to memory—but today it climbed at a glacial pace, and creaked, continuously.

“Have the search teams found any sign of survivors?” Thunder Gale asked.

“No, sir, I recalled the dropships after Lt. Twist’s team located you.”

“Then our next course of action will be to begin search and rescue operations.”

“You’d know better than I, but what little the scouts have to report suggests we’re a bit late to the party. Anypony who’s managed to last this long without us is probably so far off the grid we’d have no way of finding them unless they wanted us to. I know this Hill Born trusts you, but what if he bought the farm? Does anypony else even know we were coming?”

Thunder Gale stiffened. “We’ve spent too much time and too much of our resources just trying to get here; it may be too late to save the whole colony, but we’re not leaving here empty-hoofed. Understood?”

“Aye, Major.”

After a minute of staring in silence at the bulkhead in front of him, Thunder Gale stood up on his hind legs and shook his cuirass until the datapad from earlier tumbled to the grated floor.

“I want you to take a look at this.” He dropped down onto all fours again and slid the datapad to her. “Have the contents downloaded to the ship’s computer and get—I don’t know—somepony a lot smarter than the two of us to look through it. I’ll review it as soon as we get this operation back on its hooves.”

“What’s on it?” Lightning Fire picked it up in her mouth and tucked it under her wing.

He looked her right in the eye and stepped around to meet her head on, and pulled his wings tight against his body.

“I don’t know, but it scares me,” he said. “It’s something you have to see for yourself.”

“You’ll have to try better than that if you want to spook me, sir. I’ll get on this right away.”

They went back to staring at the walls while the hyperlift groaned along. Lightning Fire broke the silence after a few minutes, snickering.

“What?” Thunder Gale asked.

“I’m not about to make a jab about walking in on you and your special mare friend, sir, but it’s really hard not to.”

“Whatever you’re about to say, I’ve heard worse.”

“All joking aside, everypony on this ship knows about you two, and I’m not going to remind you just how important that maintaining that façade is, but do not let the others catch you with your mortal side showing.”

“Don’t worry, if I get shot, I’ll bleed,” he said, “but they’ll have to get me in my heart or my head before I show any sign of slowing down.”

“Seeing your superior officer limping is one thing, seeing him rub noses with a shipmate is another. Not that I need to remind you.”

“I know.”

The hyperlift groaned to a halt and doors parted.

“Commander on deck!”

A room alive with the bustling pegasi and the rustling of their wings snapped to attention. The ponies embedded in the alcoves along the walls pulled themselves away from their stations and let their holograms idle in the air. Even the pilot pulled himself away from the helm and gave a salute. There was silence, and the air was thick with blood, grime, and sweat. The only light came from the emergency lighting and the glow of the holograms.

“As you were.” Thunder Gale marched onto his bridge and his crew went back to work in an explosion of movement and chatter.

He approached a long table at the center of the room, and it burst alive with white light coalescing into the image of the Spitfire. Lightning Fire cantered around to the side opposite of him and waited.

“What’s our status?” Thunder Gale spun the hologram of his ship around with a gesture of his wing.

“We’re running on reserve power right now,” said Lightning Fire. “There was a fluctuation in the planet’s electromagnetic field as we entered the E region of the ionosphere. It scrambled up the dark matter reactor something awful, but once we get it recalibrated we’ll have primary and secondary systems back online. ”

Kicking a button at the base of the table, Thunder Gale cycled through the holograms until the table projected an image of surrounding landscape.

“This planet is supposed to be populated, so where is everypony?” he asked. “I know for a fact that they all can’t be dead. Somepony had to teleport me off my ship.

“There’s a massive complex to the south.” He zoomed out and dragged the hologram until the outline of the chasm entered view. “There’s a good chance they hunkered down there to ride out whatever it is that happened here. We’ll concentrate our efforts there for the time being.”

A marine trotted up to Thunder Gale from out of the orange glow of her station.

“We’ve got drones in the air en route to the complex,” she said. “We should have a good view of the site in three minutes.”

“Recall them.” He tapped a touch-screen next to the projector and scrolled through a wall of navigational data. “They don’t grow on trees and we can’t afford to have any more of them drop out of the sky. I don’t want to start sending search and rescue teams in without some idea of what’s down there, but that’s starting to look like our only option.”

XO Lightning Fire stepped around the side of the table next to Thunder Gale and gestured for the hologram to zoom out using her wing. At that level of magnification, the planet was little more than a ball of white light, the Spitfire a blip on its surface, and their ride out of the system a red triangle positioned above their position.

“I hate to even suggest this, but our FTL ferry is still overhead,” said Lightning Fire. “The Ursa Minor could provide us with detailed scans of the chasm.”

“For a steep fee, I’m sure.” Thunder Gale unfurled his wings and sighed. “I don’t want to deal with that griffon any more than I have to, and in all honesty we can’t afford his services.”

“I don’t like the idea of it either, boss, but in this situation it’s either we try to do business with him, or we send armed ponies in there blind.” Lightning Fire’s eye darted at the ponies to the right and left of her, and for a second her inscrutable face looked the slightest bit mortified. “Of course I’m just offering my two cents. Whatever you decide, we’ll make it happen.”

Thunder Gale sighed, and walked over to comms station and stooped over the shoulder of the marine operating it. She glanced up at him and he pointed her right back down at holograms surrounding her face.

“Let’s make this quick,” he said. “Open a channel to the Ursa Minor, and be prepared to close it immediately.”

With a few gestures from comm officer’s face and hooves, the holograms in front of them turned into a single orange circle. Out morphed the Interplanetary Express’s logo and the registration data for the Ursa Minor. She touched the hologram and the station beeped. The orange icon faded, the beeping stop, and a cough echoed on the other end.

“If it isn’t my favorite pegasus in the whole wide galaxy, Major Gale,” said Gerard, the Ursa Minor’s pilot. A griffon who was also somehow part lamprey. “So are you going to pay me for dragging you all the way out here on the company’s time, or what? I thought this Hill Born fellow you were after was going to help you pay up.”

“Not just yet.” Thunder Gale propped a hoof against the wall of her alcove and leaned closer to the microphone. “We’re still looking for survivors. I wanted to ask if you could run some detailed scans on a settlement to the south of our position.”

“Tell you what,” said Gerard. “Add another fifteen percent on to what you’re supposed to be paying me now, and I’ll sync up my great and powerful sensors array to your ship.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Not one bit.” The pilot at the other end of the channel coughed. “I know you need my help, otherwise you wouldn’t ask, so unless you kick a little extra cash over here for my trouble, I’m not gonna help.”

“Listen, we’re short on funds as it is.” Thunder Gale leaned in and kept his voice below a whisper. “An extra fifteen percent is outside of our price range, but the ponies down here need our help, and we can’t do that without yours.”

“Well then, I guess it just sucks to be you. Bye!”

With that, the sound at the other end of the channel broke off, and the hologram popped back to an inactive shade of orange. Thunder Gale blinked. He was already paying him a small fortune for ferrying them to the planet. With that extra fifteen percent, Thunder Gale could restock their drone supply and feed his crew for a month. Without it, in a week the food synthesizers would start running dry.

Sending a platoon in to scout the area was always an option, and the next logical course of action, scans or no scans. But sending armed teams of power armor troopers into a potentially dangerous situation blind never ended well. That chasm and the buildings lining its walls would make an excellent spot to set up an ambush. Even if they stumbled upon friendlies down there, an edgy marine in an unfamiliar setting was more likely to shoot first and ask questions later.

The mission and the safety of his marines were his top priorities. He’d sort out the budget later. Thunder Gale reached over comm officer and tapped the floating Interplanetary Express logo.

“Did you change your mind?”

“Yes, we’ll pay you another fifteen percent.” Thunder Gale gritted his teeth. “But these scans better impress me.”

“Oh, they will; you have my personal seal of approval,” said Gerard. “I’m going to go smoke a bowl while my AI copilot works on syncing everything up. And if you need any help with the sensors, or anything else for that matter, feel free to go fuck off.”

The channel cut silent, and the hologram at comm station switched to a display of fast moving numbers and technobabble. Thunder Gale hurried to the table at the center of the room and propped himself up on his front hooves. The air vents overhead kicked on, and an influx of fresh air brought a relief to the smell of sweating ponies. The words “sync in progress” flashed in red letters over the table, and then the white hologram flashed to a real time projection of the chasm and the buildings inside. All of it was rendered in precise detail.

Crater was a better word for it, the walls sloped down and down, until they reached a natural point at the bottom. There, a wad of concrete sat with all the obstinacy of a festering pimple at the exact tip of some pony’s nose. Construction machinery the size of small houses clustered around it. Thunder Gale tried to zoom in on the concrete mass, but the sensors revealed nothing else.

“I don’t like the look of that thing.” Lightning Fire squinted and pointed at the concrete mass. “I don’t pretend to be an engineer, but I was there during the Themis Incident. When there was nothing more they could do to stabilize the reactor, the very last thing they did before evacuating the entire continent was entombing the damn thing in concrete. It looks like they were trying the same thing here.”

“I’m not giving up on them just yet.” Thunder Gale zoomed out until the rest of the area was visible on the hologram. “Bring up thermal imagining, is there any sign of survivors?”

Blotches of color running the spectrum from blue to red cropped up all over the complex, illuminating the machinery still hard at work, and piping that sprawled over the surface and weaved down into the ground and fading away. Thunder Gale hung his head low and stepped away from the table. Plenty of machines, but no pony-sized orange and red lumps were anywhere in the complex.

The background bustling from his bridge staff quieted to just above a murmur. They knew it too, and they only pretended to work while waiting for his reaction.

“What are your orders, Major?” Lightning Fire straightened out a twist in her eye patch, and her eye aimed straight ahead.

“Put together the search teams,” he said. “At least now they have some idea of what to expect. I’ll be in my ready room.”

Thunder Gale retreated toward his broom cupboard of an office. Right then, comm officer’s station beeped.

“Uh, Major, sir, we’re getting an incoming transmission on the Ursa Minor’s channel,” she said.

“Tell Gerard to buzz off,” said Thunder Gale. “I’m busy.”

“I don’t think it’s him.”

Thunder Gale stopped, pivoted his ears toward her, and then cantered over to her station. He parked himself over her station and swiped at the Interplanetary Express logo. When he did, static screeched through from the other side.

“For tapping into your frequency, please forgive me.” The voice of a stallion, thick with an accent Thunder Gale did not recognize, forced its way through the static. “Chain Gleaming is how they call me. I am the last member of the Sigil Tech Corporation surviving on the planet. Please send help—”

Thunder Gale darted all over the comm officer’s controls and wedged himself beside her.

“Hello, Chain Gleaming?” he asked. “This is Spitfire actual, do you copy? Over.”

“It looks like it might have been a mechanical error on his end,” the comm officer said. “We’re probably not going to be able to raise him again.”

“Can you at least triangulate his signal?”

“I can if you give me enough room to do my job, sir.”

Thunder Gale pried himself out of the station and nudged the comm officer back in. He bit at the edge of his hoof as he stood to the side and watched her work the holograms flashing in her station.

At that time Lightning Fire, who had been watching the situation unfold from afar, strolled up next to Thunder Gale and joined him in waiting.

“Given the time it took your friend’s message just to track you down, there never was much of a chance that we’d get here in time to save him,” Lightning Fire whispered to him. “Surely you must have realized we probably weren’t going to get here in time to rescue everypony. I’d count us lucky just finding the one survivor, given our chances setting out.”

“There were over ten thousand ponies living on this colony.” Thunder Gale didn’t take his eyes and ears off the comm officer and her station. “This Chain Gleaming guy can’t be the only one left. We have to hold out hope that there are others and he might know where to find them.”

“Understood, sir.”

“I got it!” The comm officer turned around and poked her head out of her station. “The transmission originated from a structure five miles from our current location. I’m uploading the coordinates to the tactical computer now.”

“Good work, ensign.” Thunder Gale clapped his two front hooves together and spun to face Lightning Fire. “General, have an away team assembled and prep one of our dropships. I want to launch in ten minutes.”

They spent the next minute sketching out the details of the operation: Thunder Gale would lead the team to track down Chain Gleaming, while Lt. Cloud Twist took a small platoon into the city to begin searching for survivors. Once Chain Gleaming was secure, he’d be able to provide them with information to help narrow their search. Lightning Fire didn’t like the idea of the CO galloping off into the desert right immediately after they managed to rescue him from it, but she didn’t have a say in the matter.

He took the quickest route to the hangar he knew of, but as he cantered down past sickbay a voice cried to him. When he stopped and turned to look, Breeze Heart was there staring back at him.

“I want to go with you,” she said.

In truth, Thunder Gale wasn’t sure how to react. Although it had never been said, but Breeze Heart was the other exception to the “everypony fights” rule. Officially, she was the ship’s surgeon. Unofficially, it never came up and Thunder Gale was hoping it never did.

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” Thunder Gale said.

“Well, why not?”

“What about sickbay?”

“What about it? I don’t have any patients and I’m sure that the medics can manage while I’m gone. You have a very capable crew, after all.”

“I guess what I'm trying to get at is why.”

“Well, I heard about the survivor you made contact with, so I figured that as the ship’s doctor I should be there to provide whatever help I can, if that’s alright with you.” Breeze Heart shuffled on her hooves, and then added, “Actually, I want to go because I’m worried about you.”

“Worried about me?” Thunder Gale feigned a chuckle. “I’m just going to meet with this guy, and then come back. I won’t be gone long and I’m not even going armed.”

“Not even an hour ago I wasn’t sure if you were coming back at all.” Breeze Heart checked up and down the corridor to make sure they were out of sight, and then stepped closer to Thunder Gale and put her hoof to his cheek. “I haven’t seen you act like this in a long time. I’m worried, that’s all. Let me be there for you.”

“I, uh, let me think.” He checked over his shoulder more than twice, then glanced at his hooves and sighed. He didn’t have very long to make up his mind. “Okay, you can come, but if word gets out that I gave you some kind of special treatment it’d—”

“Don’t worry, it won’t. I know how to keep a secret.” She gave him a quick peck on the cheek.

They didn’t discuss the matter any longer; they cantered down corridor to meet up with their crewmates and the dropship waiting to ferry them into the desert.

2. Family Business

Planet Hell
Solocitizen

2.
Family Business

47th of Planting Season, 10,044 AC

In charged Thunder Gale and Hill Born, hollering and laughing. Their hoof-falls clattered on marble tiles iridescent in the light of the setting sun. Thunder Gale scrambled up the back of an elegant couch and sent dust flying as he dropped onto the cushion on the other side. Pictures of dead pegasi emperors lined the walls around him, and their eyes seemed to follow him.

“Die, Imperial rat!” Hill Born growled. He sank his teeth down on his firing bit, and let loose a volley of foam darts over the crest of the couch.

Thunder Gale let the darts rain down on him and pressed his body flat against the couch. He scooped them up in his hooves and loaded them into the bopper-gun mounted on his shoulder. He waited for an opportunity to strike, much like how he imagined a real soldier would in a trench. When the darts stopped raining, and Hill Born stopped giggling, Thunder Gale struck.

He flashed out from behind cover, took aim at Hill Born’s lime green face, and chomped on his firing bit. Whistling darts battered against every inch of his green body. He reared up on his hind legs and used his two front hooves to shield his face, but he stumbled back, and tumbled down into the vase and pedestal behind him.

The ancient family relic, gold plated and covered with hard to pronounce gems, hung in the air for a fraction of a second before shattering against the marble.

“Oops,” said Thunder Gale. “Are you okay, Hill?”

Hill Born’s eyes locked onto the vase and he yelped in terror.

Thunder Gale winced.

“What have I done?” Hill Born dragged his front hooves down his face. “What am I going to do? I told you! I told you we shouldn’t have gone in here! You don’t think we can fix it, do you?”

The palace air conditioning rumbled on, and little bits of the pottery sped across the floor and entrenched themselves in the cracks between the tiles.

“It’s so broken that if it were a pony, it would get a closed casket funeral.” Thunder Gale shrugged off his bopper-gun as he climbed off the couch.

“What does that even mean?” Hill Born asked.

“I don’t know. I think that’s a way of saying it’s really, really, dead.”

Hill Born lay down in front of the air vent and corralled as much of the debris as his short reach allowed. His ears flopped down and he chewed on the end of his hoof.

“If one of the cleaning ponies or Fancy Tie finds out I broke this, I’ll get in so much trouble,” he said. “But it won’t stop at me. They’ll take me to my mom and she’ll get in trouble. What if they say she can’t cook at the palace any more? What if they make us go back to Lower Pegatropolis? I don’t want to move back there.”

Pegatropolis was the most important place in the Pegasus Empire. It was where the Imperial palace was, and where Thunder Gale and his dad and mom and big sister lived. It wasn’t until about two years ago that Thunder Gale met Hill Born, and he learned there was much more to Pegatropolis. Beneath what he always thought was solid ground was a second city full of earth ponies, unicorns, and pegasi. The upper city was built on top of a great roof supported by ginormous towers in the lower city. With the exception of the servants and their families, all the ponies in the upper city were pegasi.

“What am I going to do? My mom can’t get in trouble over this.”

“Let me think,” Thunder Gale said.

As much as he wanted to run or hide from the mess, his friend was shaking and could hardly stand. He wouldn’t be able to flee with him.

Hill Born had said that perpetual night shrouded the lower city. Lots of ponies down there were sick, something about the air or pollution. That was why his mother applied as a cook at the palace when the position opened up: it was the only way a family of earth ponies could get out of the smog.

Thunder Gale thought of his dad. He wouldn’t leave his friend behind no matter what, he thought. He’d find a way to make things right.

So he pushed his fear aside and put a hoof on Hill Born’s shoulder.

“What are we going to do, Thunder?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but we’ll think of something. They’re not taking my best friend away.”

Hoof steps clattered from up the hall and the two colts froze. The door swung open, and there stood Fancy Tie, a grim unicorn with a mean chin and a meaner pair of eyes. Thunder Gale didn’t know exactly what his position was, but all the other servants were afraid of him. Fancy Tie’s eyes locked onto the shattered vase right and then narrowed in on Hill Born.

“Hill Born, what have you done?” Fancy Tie loomed over the quivering colt. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in?”

“Please, I’ll find a way to fix it, honest,” said Hill Born. “Just don’t tell my mom. Don’t get her in trouble!”

Thunder Gale stepped between Fancy Tie and his friend, with his wings unfurled as far as they would extend.

“Actually, Mr. Tie, sir, it’s all my fault, Hill Born had nothing to do with this.” He collapsed his wings flat against his sides and met Fancy Tie’s gaze. “We were playing Griffons and Soldiers, and one of my darts knocked the vase over. It was my idea to come in here in the first place. Hill didn’t even think it was a good idea. I forced him to, and he was trying to cover for me by helping me hide my mess.”

“What?” Fancy Tie’s eyes widened. “You did this? I expected this sort of reckless behavior from earth pony rabble, but not from you.”

He stepped forward, and his eyes narrowed into an executioner’s glare. Thunder Gale heard stories about Fancy Tie’s face right before he disciplined a pony. Hill Born said it was cold, merciless, and burned with a righteous fury that invoked fear into the entirety of the palace’s staff. One glance at Fancy Tie’s grim face was enough to send Hill Born into hiding behind his own tail.

But instead of running or hiding or pleading, Thunder Gale held his ground. He kept his wings unfurled and glared right back at Fancy Tie until his stare melted. Thunder Gale dropped into a combat stance he saw on a holovid, and pressed his ears flat against his head until Fancy Tie’s advance broke.

“Just wait until your father hears about what you’ve done,” he said.

Without touching Thunder Gale, Fancy Tie ushered him out of the room and down the hallway. Looking back, he caught the slightest glimpse of Hill Born peeking out of the room as they rounded the corner out of the eastern wing. Thunder Gale shot him a nod.

They waited outside his father’s office without speaking. The great windows next to Thunder Gale overlooked the palace gardens, which buzzed with life and blooming flowers of every color. The sky overhead was endless and alive with shuttlecraft and ornithopters, and the late afternoon sun cast long shadows through the pillars, archways, and the royal gardens that swayed as if alive.

A pair of dignitaries wrapped in colorful togas trotted up to Fancy Tie and asked to speak to Thunder Gale’s father.

“His Eminence is preoccupied with the the Praetor of the Griffon Colonies,” Fancy Tie told them. “It’d be best to come back a little later.”

They looked to one another and then turned to leave, but before they did they paused to admire the flowers blooming outside and told Thunder Gale, “that it was an honor to meet him,” and that he was, “a very lucky young colt to have such a wonderful family and live where there’s a garden and flowers nearby.” He wasn't in the mood to talk to them, and would have done anything for them to shut up.

“They’re all for looking, not eating.” Thunder Gale snorted. “Picking just one of those flowers is a serious offense to the royal family, and those found guilty pay their debt to society publicly.”

“Don't mind Master Gale.” Fancy Tie shook his head and forced himself to laugh. “He's merely having a go at you. As you can see, he has quite the sense of humor! I assure you, the royal garden is maintained for the enjoyment of our guests. Please, help yourself to as many of the blooms as you desire.”

They looked to each other and excused themselves.

“That was very rude of you,” Fancy Tie said after the two pegasi in the colorful togas were out of earshot.

“Whatever, they came here to talk to my father and look at the stupid plants outside.”

Flowers didn’t grow naturally on Hellas, but one of Thunder Gale’s great-great-great-great-grandfathers brought a bunch to the palace grounds after a war with an earth pony kingdom. Everypony that visited the place just couldn’t shut up about the silly plants.

“No, they came here to visit the royal family, which by definition includes you,” Fancy Tie said. “Sooner or later you’re going to have to learn some decorum befitting of your role. I hope I’m there to see it happen.”

Thunder Gale ignored him. He tapped his hoof on the marble floor and kept his eyes focused on the door to his father’s office.

Every now and then he heard his father raise his voice from somewhere behind the door to his study. He had never seen his father like that up close, and he never wanted to. Ever.

After waiting outside for the longest time, the doors to his father’s office opened, and out walked the bestest dad in the whole galaxy.

The sight of his son brought new life into his eyes.

“Your Eminence, please excuse me for interrupting.” Fancy Tie stepped between them and bowed his head.

“That’s fine, I needed a break,” said Thunder Gale’s father. “I’m assuming you’ve brought my son here because of the mess in the east wing?”

“Yes, Your Eminence. I found him with one of the servants’ children. They were playing a game and Thunder Gale shattered a priceless royal artifact. Would you ask me to discipline him?”

“No, that will be all, Fancy Tie,” he said. “You’re dismissed.”

Without taking his eyes off the floor, Fancy retreated down the hall and out of sight.

He waited until he was sure Fancy Tie was gone before asking, “How did you know about the vase?” His eyes widened and his wing’s unfurled in alarm. “You saw everything, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I know you lied to keep your friend out of trouble.” His lips and eyes tilted up into a smile. “When the vase toppled over, a silent alarm was triggered and the palace security was alerted. When they saw it was you they sent the security footage to my private terminal.”

“You’re not mad?” Thunder Gale glanced at his hooves.

“I am troubled that you were playing exactly where you were told not to, but more importantly I—”

“I’m sorry. He was chasing me and I wasn’t really looking where I was going and I didn’t mean for anything to break.”

“That’s okay, we can talk about that later.” His father tapped the door open behind him and, with a gentle nudge of his hoof, guided him into his office. “I am much more impressed than I am mad. Here, come in, I have something I want to show you.”

No pony was ever allowed into his father’s office, except for his most trusted advisors and close family. Thunder Gale couldn’t help but smile a little bit. He must have done something really, really right. His father’s mane had greyed a bit since last time he saw him.

His father’s office was large, but cluttered with so many dirty dishes, stacks of paper, and info disks that the space disappeared. It smelled like day old hummus in there. The words “Report From Griffin Annex” hung in red words above a long desk in the center. When Thunder Gale stepped inside, his father locked the door and shut the blinds. He darted over to the holographic projector on his table tapped a button to dim the overhead lights.

“I don’t get it,” Thunder Gale said. “What did I do that made you so happy? I broke a bunch of rules.”

“Besides rough-housing indoors, you acted with courage and you put a friend before yourself.” Thunder Gale’s father retraced his path around the stacks of paper and put a hoof on his shoulder. “Staying true and defending those around you is a trait most ponies never bother developing. I’d never fire the head chef on account of something you and her son did. Besides, the vase was just a replica. The real De le Rote is in a vault.”

With a flick of his father’s hoof, the holographic projector flashed. Thunder Gale blinked and recoiled, and when he opened his eyes an image of Hellas hovered above the projector in exquisite detail. While mighty oceans and endless hills dominated the sunny side, the night side was cobwebbed with an intricate network of orange lights. Thunder Gale awed at the sight. He’d seen the real thing from orbit many times before, but he hadn’t ever seen it in his father’s office.

“Help me remember, what are some of the wildest places we’ve traveled to?” asked his father.

"We went to Moon Base One not too long ago.” Thunder Gale tapped his hoof as he dug up places from memory. “And we went to The Burning Hills in the Southern Continent about a season ago, and then there was that place with the really big pillars and the old coliseum.”

“The Arena Grounds.”

“Yeah, those, and a really long time ago we went to the Arctic Circle and saw the snow lions and Spring got scared and actually thought timber wolves were real and out to get us.” Thunder Gale chuckled, but then quickly shut up before he said anything about the part he played in tormenting his big sister.

“You forgot about all the places your mother and I took you when you were just a foal.” His father took his hoof off his shoulder and looked right at Thunder Gale. “I bet you think you’ve seen quite a bit of Hellas.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” He shrugged.

“What if I told you that you’ve only seen a small portion of it? What if I told you that you could spend your entire life traveling and still not see all that our world has to show? I bet you also think that Pegatropolis is pretty big, too, but what if I told you that if you were to take all the ponies in Pegatropolis and multiplied them by one thousand, that you’d have less than half of Hellas’s total population?”

Thunder Gale studied the hologram rotating in front of him. He tried but couldn’t wrap his mind around just how big it really was. He shrugged and said, “I don’t know.”

Swiping his wings through the air, Thunder Gale’s father zoomed out until Hellas dwindled down to a tiny dot hanging in the air. There were more dots in the room now. A pink speck near the door, a ball of fire near the window, and a cluster of rocks to Thunder Gale’s left.

“This is our system, Pegasus Prime, and there are two more inhabited worlds in it and over thirty self-sustaining stations and outposts,” said Thunder Gale’s father. “There are just as many ponies living off world in the system as there are on Hellas itself.”

“How come you’ve never taken me to see any of them?” he asked.

“I don’t know why, exactly.” Thunder Gale’s father tapped his chin and shrugged. “I guess your mother and I thought you wouldn’t get much out of it. It can be quite an ordeal reaching some of those settlements and they’re not nearly as diverse or enriching of an experience as anything you’ll see on Hellas. You’ll see them eventually. If you plan on getting a degree in anything besides the creative arts or medicine, you’ll be shipped off to Kronos Station for military training.”

Before Thunder Gale got the opportunity to examine any of the projections around him, his father flicked his wings again time and the system shrank into an orb the size of his hoof.

All around him orbs circled in the air, there were hundreds of them, each with their own light and their own name dangling above them. Thunder Gale’s eyes darted to each of them, and he opened his mouth to ask a question but all he could think to say was “wow.” Each little orb was its own system, each with its own worlds as diverse and wondrous as Hallas, and there was just so many of them. He had seen maps before, but not like that, and not with that perspective.

“Do you know what this is?” his father asked.

“Is this the universe?”

“No, this is just the Empire.” His father chuckled and pointed to an orb directly over Thunder Gale’s head. “Explored space is much bigger. That right there is Delphion, to your left is Sagittaron, and by the door is the Griffon Annex.” He paused ever so briefly before saying that last one.

Thunder Gale didn’t know much about the story of the Griffon Annex, but he knew that it was an endless source of trouble for his father. Before grandfather died, he conquered the last two independent griffon worlds. It had something to do with protecting themselves should the earth pony kingdoms ever try to invade. Thunder Gale’s father had spent his entire career trying to undo what grandfather did, but he said it wasn’t as simple as packing up and leaving.

Another swish of his father’s wings and once again the image zoomed out. There was a momentary pause as the projector loaded up and rendered the image, time enough for the anticipation to boil up in Thunder.

“We have one more stop to make,” said Thunder Gale’s father. “After that, you’re welcome to explore the holograms in more detail.”

The hologram loaded, and the room flooded with pale green light. Thunder Gale shut his eyes reflexively, and when he opened them again, the room was full of stars. Bright orbs dangled in every free inch of air, while half complete holograms coated his body and every physical object around him. He unfurled his wings and watched in awe and delight as entire civilizations twirled and danced.

He sat down on his haunches and grabbed a free floating orb with his front hooves, and pulled it apart until the image zoomed in and revealed a lush, blue world buzzing with tiny lights. The label above it read ‘Arion.’ With a gesture, the hologram collapsed down and rejoined its brethren in the stars cape.

“There are over five million charted systems in explored space, and only a thousand of those are actually inhabited in any capacity.” His father emerged from the sea of light and extended a wing over Thunder Gale. “Only half of those worlds are actually considered colonized and a part of the galactic community.” His free wing swiped, and all but one tiny portion of the map remained. A blue sliver of stars dangled right over the projector. “That’s Imperial Space, it’s just one portion of something so much greater.”

“Why did you want to show me all this?”

“Your big sister doesn’t want to inherit the title, she has decided to pursue a degree in the arts and your mother and I have no intention of stopping her.” He looked to his son, and watch his eyes as they darted from star to star. “I was uncertain about the future of our family legacy. Your mother and I always just assumed that Spring would succeed me and that would be that. I never thought the job would fall to you.

“What you did today made me proud. Our tribe may only be a small portion of the galaxy, but the actions made by our nation have far-reaching effects that ripple out to the rest of the galaxy. The pegasus tribe has always served as the peacekeepers and the protectors of harmony, and it’s a legacy that dates back since before the rule of Celestia and even the founding of Equestria itself. In order to rally the tribe toward those ends, the Emperor has to have enough empathy to understand where the ponies around him are coming from, and to remain dedicated to them enough take risks for their benefit and safety, even if it means putting himself in jeopardy. Just as you did today for Hill Born.”

Thunder Gale looked up to his father.

“Does that mean that my mane will start turning grey before it should, too?” he asked.

“I’m not going to lie to you, it’s not always a fun job.” His father scratched the back of his head and tucked as much of the grey as he could behind his wreath. “But it’s an important one and it’s fulfilling in its own way.”

Thunder Gale stared into the floor; he suddenly felt very small in such a big room full of planets.

“Hey, you don’t have to decide right away,” he said to Thunder Gale. “In fact I’d be a little worried if you rushed into it.”

“Okay.”

“Just keep it in mind for now and if you want—and that’s a big part of it, you have to want it—when you’re much older you can apply for military service and work toward having my job one day. I’m sure you’d make a fine Emperor.”

“Really?”

“You stand up for others and you're loyal to more than just yourself.” Thunder Gale’s father flicked the projector off with a flick of his wings. “There’s more to it than that, but you already have the makings of a great leader and you made me proud today. Just listen to Fancy Tie from now on when he tells you not to play somewhere, okay?”

“I won't.”

“Now, let’s go see what your big sister and mother are up to.”

Thunder Gale’s face lit up. More than anything else in the world, he wanted to make his dad proud.

3. This Place is Death

Planet Hell
Solocitizen

3.
This Place is Death

12th of Planting Season, 10,056 AC
Present Day

A squadron of dropships screeched toward the chasm in a tight formation. Their hulls skimmed the land below, and their massive fusion engines left the soil shaken and marred in their wake. One dropship broke from the group and veered to the right as they neared the chasm, while the other four plunged into the ruins just beyond the edge.

Thunder Gale watched the edge long after the black and red ships had vanished.

“Helios, this is Timberwolf,” said Lt. Cloud Twist over the radio. “We are beginning our descent into the complex and initiating search and rescue operations.”

“Keep an eye on your squads’ rad levels, Timberwolf.” Thunder Gale angled his microphone closer to his mouth. “If anypony starts clicking into the yellow, I want you to pull your troops out of there immediately. Good hunting, Timberwolf, and stay safe.”

“Aye-aye, Major.”

Thunder Gale turned his attention back to the datapad resting in his lap. He tapped his hoof on the screen and continued playing.

“…this entire project has spiraled out of control. So much is hopelessly wrong; I didn’t know monsters were real until today.” An image of an earth pony in a lab coat flickered across the screen in disjointed pixels, but the audio was clear. Thunder Gale had studied and dissected the recording fanatically over the last several weeks, but he still had a lot of trouble believing it was Hill Born. His gravelly voice, the dried blood staining his green coat, and his desperate expression didn’t belong to the Hill Born he remembered. “I’m taking a huge risk by sending you this message, but I don’t see any other choice. I need your help. Go to the third planet in the Azrael system and bring an army. Listen carefully – wait, something is coming.” At that, the screen went dark.

The datapad asked the question: “Play again?”

He tapped the screen and ran the recording, again.

Breeze Heart, who had quietly watched him from the next seat over, reached for his hoof. He acted like he didn’t see it, and she settled for a place between his shoulder blades.

“This was sent quite a while ago, do you think he’s still here? What if he got off the planet by now? I’m not trying to suggest we give up the search, but I have to ask, what makes you so sure we’re going to find him?”

“I know we are.” Thunder Gale tucked the datapad away, pulled his crash harness taut against his officer’s cuirass, and focused his attention straight ahead. “We aren’t leaving this rock until we do.”

The dropship touched down several hundred feet away from a brick-shaped building nestled in the shade of a communications disk. Thunder Gale popped opened the door and darted out, and Breeze Heart followed. Outside, the thrusters called up a storm of sand and dust. It clung to his blue-grey coat and rubbed against his skin, irritating him to no end, and staining him brown. Thunder Gale squinted and studied the nearby building. Its white paint was blasted yellow and brown from constant exposure to the sun and sand.

“Sir, you sure that you don’t want us to accompany you inside?” asked one of the marines. She tapped the console on her forehoof and her jump systems buzzed to life.

“No, we can’t risk scaring this guy,” Thunder Gale said to her. “Stay here with your squad and protect the dropship. Keep both eyes open.”

“Yes, sir!”

Thunder Gale shot her a nod and turned toward the building, and sneezed once he had his back to her. He sniffled and wiped his itching nose with his hoof.

Breeze Heart adjusted her saddlebags and cantered up along side him, and together they approached the building.

“She seems a bit jumpy, more than usual, at least,” said Breeze Heart. “Is it just me or has the crew been on edge since we got here?”

“We’ve been on this planet for less than a day, they need some time to adjust.”

“That’s kind of my point. We’ve been here a few hours and we’ve had two major crises.”

“As soon as we find what we’re looking for, we’ll leave.” He glanced at her from the corners of his eyes. “Okay?”

Breeze Heart stopped in her tracks. He took a few steps ahead before turning around to face her. She tucked a stray lock into her hair band, and stared at her hooves before making eye contact with him. He stared right on back.

“And what if we can’t find him?” she asked. “Everypony on the Spitfire would follow you to the ends of the galaxy, but if we can’t find what you’re looking for, we’re going to turn back before we get that far, correct?”

Thunder Gale stepped closer to Breeze Heart. “Most of the crew is working on repairs as we speak, we’ll be able to fly again soon. If the situation is beyond our ability to help then we’ll leave. But right now, we don’t even know what happened. If he and everypony else is dead, then I’ll call off the search, but I’m not giving up until I know that for certain.

“Look.” He paused for a moment, let himself cool down a little, and continued. “I understand if you don’t want to be here, and frankly, I think I’d be a lot more comfortable knowing our doctor was safe aboard the Spitfire.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Breeze Heart’s eyes widened and she put out a hoof as if to stop him. “I want to be here and doing this with you. I’d much prefer our work to take us to a beach with some palms, but still this is better than nothing at all, so I want to try to make the most of it. You’ll need somepony with a gentle touch and impeccable bedside manner for this next part, so let me help you.”

In truth, he knew what he wanted to say but not how to say it. So, instead of saying anything, he said nothing at all.

She reached out for his hoof again, but she found herself pawing at the ground. “I’m worried about you. You sure you don’t want to, you know, maybe talk about what’s been happening?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” He forced a smile. “Trust me on that.”

“I’m sorry, but why am I getting the feeling I’m not the only one you’re trying to convince?”

A few of the marines caught ear of them, and as a result the formation around the dropship had relaxed. The entire squad was watching Thunder Gale and Breeze Heart.

“Look, we shouldn’t be having his conversation here,” he said. “Later, okay?”

“Sure. Later.”

A pair of green eyes peered at them from out of a crack in a boarded up window on the second floor. Thunder Gale glanced in their direction, and they retreated out of sight.

He inched up to the front door with Breeze Heart by his side and knocked twice. Before he had the opportunity to knock a third time, the door flung open and there stood an earth pony that was nothing less than a cross between a workhorse and a tank. He wore a jumpsuit stained in sweet and grease, and a nametag that labeled him as an engineer.

“Hello, I'm Major Thunder Gale of the Spitfire.” He held out his hoof. “I take it you’re Chain Gleaming?”

“And I’m Doctor Breeze Heart.” She put on a warm expression. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

He looked Thunder Gale and Breeze Heart up and down with a wild set of eyes, and then glanced over their heads at the dropship. Thunder Gale and Breeze Heart tried their best to stay as pleasant and friendly as possible. The earth pony reached for something on his side of the threshold and aimed his eyes back at them. As he moved his muscles flexed and his jumpsuit threatened to burst under the strain.

“Pegasus Military?” he asked. “The colors you wear do not match the banner I remember.”

“No, we’re not in any way affiliated with The Imperial Military or The Empire.” Thunder fought back the urge to enunciate slower and louder. “We’re with the Manticore Mercenary Company. A friend of mine sent out a distress signal from this planet about three weeks ago and we came to help.”

The earth pony lowered his hoof and stared right at Thunder Gale without breaking eye contact. He scratched at his scraggy beard.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to examine you for radiation exposure.” Breeze Heart took a step toward him with her warm smile still very much intact. “If you’ve been exposed to high levels of radiation, it’s important to get you started on treatment right away. May we enter?”

“Very well, please enter.” The earth pony backed out of the doorway to let them in. “And yes, if you are not Imperial then you have found Chain Gleaming.”

Heart Breeze ducked in right behind him and Thunder Gale followed after.

It was dark inside. The only light came from half-dead holograms and what little natural light filtered in through the boarded up windows. The scent of decaying food and unwashed stallion was strong enough to force the slightest cringe out of Thunder Gale. If the smell affected Breeze Heart at all, she tolerated it without letting it show.

It was hot in there, and humid, too. It made Thunder Gale feel trapped in his leather cuirass and squelched between the walls.

The room they were standing in used to be a lobby, complete with a wall of mailboxes and a waiting area, but the couches were stacked against the windows and the table was turned over and positioned strategically to corral invaders into a bottleneck.

Waving his hoof forward, Chain Gleaming led them deeper into the building toward a common room near the back. Along the way Thunder Gale counted at least ten private dorms, all of which were unlit and empty. The common room was the only room that hadn’t been looted or fortified. The long windows along the walls were boarded up, but the couches and furniture were arranged around a coffee table and a holoscreen in feigned normalcy. Bookshelves lined the wall to the left, and to the right a small kitchen pumped out light and the smells and sounds of brewing coffee.

“Please, take your spot.” Chain Gleaming gestured at the couches.

In silence, a cat crept out from a doorway across the room. Its fluffy white fur was tarnished with soot and dirt and three slash marks cut through its right ear. It watched Thunder Gale with green eyes, and he stared back at it.

“Tck, Tck, Amâtst wauntea choa.” Chain Gleaming crouched low at the cat, and glanced up at two pegasi. “This is my cat. Her name is Amâtst, which means Amethyst in Standard. After Rarity’s cat I named her. The folk legend, do you know her?”

“I’m afraid I never heard it before,” said Breeze Heart, “But it’s a beautiful name and she’s a beautiful cat.”

The cat held perfectly still and eyed Chain Gleaming, ready to lunge away at the slightest sign of danger. He clicked his tongue, and the cat darted out of the room. Chain Gleaming lay down on the couch closest to the holoscreen and tucked his legs underneath his body.

A fan hummed overhead but did little more than churn the hot air.

Heart Breeze shrugged her medical kit off onto the coffee table and started a rummaging a hoof through it. She retrieved an empty syringe and a disinfectant wipe and set them out on a clear spot on the table.

“You know, I’ve never heard an accent like yours before.” Thunder Gale plopped himself down on the couch across from him. “If you don’t mind me asking, where were you from originally?”

“I was born on the Trosche Colony,” said Chain Gleaming. “I didn’t learn to speak Standard until I was a young stallion and I avoid its use when possible.” He glanced at Heart Breeze and her kit and shook a hoof in her direction. “Please, doctor, no tests for my blood.”

“I need a small one to check your exposure levels,” she said.

“There is no nuclear exposure here. Or at least not in any amount that can cause harm. I know. I maintain the communications array. No matter how slight, it always gets problematic during such events.”

“We had just assumed that there was a reactor meltdown or a nuclear detonation.” Thunder Gale squirmed in his spot and leaned forward with his ears perked up and listening intently. “What happened here, exactly?”

Chain Gleaming’s eyes drifted to empty space above his holoscreen. He mouthed words silently to himself. Thunder Gale and Heart Breeze both watched him intently. A fly buzzed next to Thunder’s ear, and he shooed it away without letting his focus slip. Finally, Chain Gleaming shook himself out of his trance and sat up on the couch.

“This was a research facility for Sigil Tech Industries, and they are the ones who produce everything from FTL ships to candy bars,” he said.

“You’d think if they were making FTL drives they’d be a little more famous.” Breeze Heart closed her medical kit and edged around the side of the table toward Chain Gleaming. “How come I’ve never heard of them before?”

“You do not understand.” He shook his head. “They own everypony who makes FTL ships. They are all child companies of Sigil Tech. This research facility was part of their competitive advantage. They conducted research here no pony thought to conduct or was willing to risk.”

Thunder Gale’s heart beat quicker, and his thoughts returned to the statue he found half buried in the dust. Sweat started building underneath his coat, and his glued his cuirass to his flesh. Heart Breeze notices the change in Thunder Gale, and she shot a worried glance at him.

“Did this research some how involve hairless ape creatures?”

Chain Gleaming snapped around at Thunder Gale.

“How do you know of them?”

“I woke up next to a statue of one.” Thunder Gale glanced at Breeze Heart; he had her full attention. He turned back to him and asked, “Were those ape creatures responsible for the disaster here?”

Chain Gleaming crossed and his tail wrapped around his legs. He cleared his throat and opened his mouth to speak.

“No, the ape creatures came to this planet before Sigil Tech,” he said. “I don’t know much about them other then they called themselves humans and all that remains of them are their machines. They were dead before anypony else arrived.

“Sigil Tech imported their own demise. Here they brought horrors from all over the galaxy for study. They were the very same material out of which little foals’ nightmares are made. The prisoners got out, and the scientists detonated a neutron bomb that killed every living thing in one hundred kilometers. I was in orbit making repairs to the commutations satellite when it was detonated, luckily.”

Over the last several years Thunder Gale had seen Breeze Heart at her fiercest and at her most vulnerable, and he had watched her experience inconsolable rage and utter bliss, and she knew him likewise. Her tail swatted at a fly, then she paused, and nothing short of absolute terror spread over her face. She listened to Chain Gleaming and Thunder Gale, and hid her fear in feigned sympathy. Only her front hoof, which was poised above the floor prepared to bolt, and her tense posture betrayed her nerves.

“So how did Amethyst survive a neutron blast?”

“She came with me,” he said. “Along with food and water for several weeks. Always do I travel prepared.”

Breeze Heart’s shoulders were bunched up and her hind leg tapped against the floor. She nodded her head and tried to hide the fear in her face.

The fan kept humming away overhead, and sweat kept dribbling down Thunder Gale’s temples and pooling up beneath his uniform.

“I am assuming that you are here to provide me rescue, yes?” Chain Gleaming leapt off the couch and clapped his front hooves together. “I suggest you take me back your ship and we leave immediately. Sigil Tech and their monsters may all be dead, but a devil still walks the hills at night and I do not want to be here when he comes to knock on my door.” He raised a hoof and held his head high. “But you are guests in my home and I must provide you with hot tea first. As I understand it, that is custom in the Pegasus Empire.”

With that, Chain Gleaming cantered into the kitchen and started rooting through the cabinets for a teapot.

Breeze Heart snuck next to Thunder Gale while he sat there thinking, gave his shoulder a quick tap, and whispered in his ear: “I’m going to find the restroom.”

“Okay.”

She trotted off down the hallway and took her medical bag with her.

Thunder Gale scooted off the couch and followed Chain Gleaming to the countertop island between the living room and the kitchen.

A fly buzzed by his ear and landed on Thunder Gale’s flank. He swatted at it with his tail, but the pest relocated further up his body. He resigned to ignoring it and leaned up on the countertop.

“I’m sorry, I can’t believe that they’re all dead.” He shook his head. “Something teleported me off the bridge of my ship down to the planet’s surface. Unless you have a transmat hidden somewhere, there must be somepony left on this planet and I’m not about to leave them behind.”

The sound of pots and pans clanking together died, and Chain Gleaming stood up with his front hooves propped on the countertop between him and Thunder Gale.

“I regret, but I tell you that whoever you’re searching for is dead as trees that once grew here and the cities we stand upon,” said Chain Gleaming. “This place is death, and whatever forces conspired to bring you here, they did so for you to die."

Thunder Gale lowered himself onto a stool beside the countertop and stared at the wall. A fly landed on him and he shooed it away.

“I can’t accept that.” He cranked his head around at Chain Gleaming. “Not until I know for sure.”

“I had better get the tea started.” Chain Gleaming pushed himself off and descended behind the countertop and out of sight.

Thunder Gale’s radio chirped. He tapped the earpiece with his hoof.

“Major, sir, this is Timberwolf,” said Lt. Cloud. “Are you alone?”

“No, but I can be.” Thunder Gale hopped off the stool onto all fours and glanced around for a secure place to talk. “Standby, Timberwolf.”

He excused himself, and without pulling his head out from the cabinet Chain Gleaming pointed him to a room off the side of the kitchen.

Thunder Gale trotted into the other room and shut the door behind him.

Right away he knew he wasn’t alone. None of the clatter from the kitchen bled through the door, and nothing stirred the dust clinging to the shelves and workbenches and the eviscerated computer scraps they held. The only source of light came from a holographic projector at the other end of the room, and it was stuck on a blue error screen.

But the hairs on the back of his neck tingled as if somepony were watching him. That alone gave him reason to keep his guard up.

“Go ahead, Timberwolf.” Thunder Gale tapped his radio again. “It’s not ideal, but this end is about as secure as it’s going to get.”

“We’ve explored several of the buildings and we haven’t found any sign of survivors.” Lt. Cloud fought to keep his voice heard above the drumming of steel hooves on metal. “As far as we can tell we’re completely alone out here.”

“So what have you found, exactly?” Thunder Gale swept the dust off the casing from a server’s casing with his tail, and uncovered a Sigil Tech logo, the heart over the shield.

“I figured this was strictly need to know. I don’t know if I overstepped over my authority on that one, because I really wasn’t trying to or anything.”

“Lieutenant,” Thunder Gale said.

“Sorry.” He spoke in between breaths and huffed every other. “We’ve found one of Sigil Tech’s research stations, and sir, there’s an armory here full of weapons unlike anything I’ve ever seen. What’s more, these buildings weren’t constructed with equines in mind. The hallways are too narrow to turn around, and the stairs are spaced way too close together. The building is fighting us each step of the way.”

“Any idea where those weapons came from?”

“No, sir. All I know is no pony in their right mind would put together stairs like this. I bet the guns belong to whatever put this place together.”

White light flickered across the walls and over the computer parts.

Adrenaline pulsed through Thunder Gale and he whirled around to confront the source of the light on reflex. Floating on the far wall, directly above the holographic projector in white letters, was his name.

“Secure the lab and hunker down. Helios out.” He tapped his earpiece again and cut the channel.

He backed toward the door and cracked it open just enough to poked his head out and keep an eye on the projector.

“Excuse me, one of your projectors just turned on all by itself,” he said.

Chain Gleaming stopped rustling through his cabinets long enough to answer him.

“That is a terminal for MIRAGE, the last of our AI computers,” he said. “We were attacked on our systems after we arrived. If you know what I mean, she’s one can short of a six pack now, but somehow she survived.”

Chain Gleaming laughed from his belly.

“She calls her name Urizen now and is insane. Ignore her. She lies.”

“Thank you.” Thunder Gale crept back into the room. “Just wanted to make sure nothing was up.”

He shut the door behind him and inched up to the projector.

As he approached the projector, the floating letters blinked out and were replaced by an image of Chain Gleaming, and the sound of his heavy accent. He was sitting at a desk, clean-shaven, and in a fresh jumpsuit.

“Today is the thirty-first of Planting Season, 10,053 years After the fall of Celestia,” said Chain Gleaming’s recording. “Informed me my supervisor has that I must keep a personal log as part of the company’s policy. The idea of a daily log I don’t like, but I can put anything on it that pleases me, or so they tell me. So here is my cat, Opal. I took her name from one of Rarity’s cats. I will talk about her for the next hour.”

“He got the name wrong,” Thunder Gale whispered to himself.

Thunder Gale’s eyes widened and his ears pivoted all the way forward. He glanced over his shoulder at the door to double check it was shut, and then stepped closer to the hologram.

“Up, up, up!” Chain Gleaming dropped out of sight beneath his desk, and emerged from under a few seconds later with a small kitten in his hooves. “In system we arrived and the stress of travel tolled too greatly on my Amethyst’s heart and she died. Summer Sky’s cat had a litter of kittens and I was able to adopt, luckily.”

The cat purred in his hooves and rubbed her head on his jumpsuit, and he giggled with joy, and that was when the hologram cut off and left him alone in the dark with a mind racing with the horrid implications of what he had just seen.

The first was that the pony in the kitchen wasn’t the real Chain Gleaming, and the second was that Breeze Heart was still alone with him.

He burst into the kitchen as a flash and boom. His wings were unfurled, his teeth bared, and his body bent low in a combat stance. As he cleared his corners, he spotted Breeze Heart lying on a couch with her legs and hooves tucked under her.

“Listen, Chain isn’t who he says he his.” Thunder Gale galloped up to her after sparing a few glances to make sure they were alone. “He’s an imposter, and a damn good one.”

A quick tap at his earpiece called up the marines outside. They were chattering and throwing slight jabs at each other as bored soldiers typically do.

“Break-break,” he said. That got them to shut up in a hurry. “Siren, this is Helios. Get ready to move in on the building on my signal.”

“I know.” Breeze Heart put a hoof on his leg and slowly eased it back to the floor. “Flies can’t survive a neutron blast any more than a pony can. At least, not at that intensity.”

“You knew?” His wings dropped a little. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure if you’d believe me, or how you’d react even if you did.” She sat up on her hindquarters and glanced down the hallway leading to the exit. “He’ll be back any second. He just left to dig up some teacups. Anyway, I’m trying to keep it together here and stay quiet because I’m not convinced he’s alone. He said that a bunch of prisoners got loose, as in more than one. Maybe even a whole lot more than just one.”

“Standby, Siren,” he said into the microphone by his face. “Wait for my signal. Helios out.”

“Wilco, Helios,” replied the squad leader. “Just say the word and we’ll charge in. Siren out.”

Thunder Gale glanced over his shoulder and down the hallway. No sign of him, at least not yet.

“We’re going to have to do this as quietly and as quickly as possible,” he said. “Do you have anything that can knock him out?”

With a flex of her wing, Breeze Heart revealed the pink side of her chest, and a small super-osmosis patch tucked in between her feathers. She folded her wing up again and the patch disappeared.

“I loaded it with enough sedative to knock out three stallions,” she said.

Right then, a set of hoof steps clipped and clopped up the hallway. Thunder Gale rushed over to a chair and sat himself down on his haunches. Breeze Heart lay back down, adjusted her wings, and tried to look anything other than terrified.

A few seconds later the pony who called himself Chain Gleaming came cantering into the common area holding a tray of teacups in his mouth. He set it down, and hurried into the kitchen for his kettle. Thunder Gale and Breeze Heart eyed each other from across the coffee table.

“If I am seeming hurried you must forgive me,” Chain Gleaming said. “I know the tea ritual is one best enjoyed slowly, but I am eager to depart.”

He cantered back to the coffee table carrying the kettle in his mouth. He filled each of the little teacups and sat down across from Thunder Gale.

“Don’t hold your breath,” said Thunder Gale. “We still need to finish our search and rescue operations.”

“This friend of yours means a lot to you, I understand that, but I can assure you that there is nothing more. Sigil Tech and their prisoners are dead entirely.”

Leaning as far forward as possible, Thunder Gale looked him right in the eye.

Breeze Heart watched them without moving.

“For the sake of the prisoners, I hope you’re right,” Thunder Gale said. “Hill Born was my best friend. If he really is dead and if I find any of those monsters are still alive, I will kill every single last one of them.”

Chain Gleaming met Thunder Gale’s glare long enough to take a gulp down of his tea, and sit back in his chair. The hairs on the back of Thunder’s neck stood up, and his mane tingled. There was a slight heaviness weighing down on him now, and with that heaviness came a hum of static and a slight sensation of pins and needles all over his body. Breeze Heart felt it too; he could tell by how she retreated into the couch.

Instead of shying away, Thunder Gale held eye contact and said: “Starting with the sorry shit who murdered my friend.”

The pins and needles running over Thunder Gale stung, but he caught himself from flinching.

After taking a moment to sip at his tea, and set it down on the table, Chain Gleaming leaned forward as if to meet Thunder Gale and said in a voice too sly and clean to belong to him: “This sure is escalating quickly. Let’s just drop the pretense and skip to the inevitable conclusion of this encounter, shall we?”

Green fire flared behind Chain Gleaming’s eyes. The coffee table burst into a cloud of splinters, metal, and shards of porcelain. The boom shook the foundations of the house and sent the pegasi sailing out of their seats and skidding onto the floor. Thunder Gale’s ears were ringing. He raised a hoof to shield his eyes.

In an instant Chain Gleaming was on top of him and reared up with his front hooves poised to strike. The first stomp forced the air from his lungs, the second drove and ground his soft belly into the floor, but the third never came.

Thunder Gale coughed, gasped for breath, and clenched his stomach.

There, standing next to Chain Gleaming on her hind legs, was Breeze Heart. She held a super-osmosis patch against his neck until it stuck and skirted away.

For a moment Chain Gleaming stood upright while his front legs dangled at his sides. Then he wobbled and dropped onto his rump.

Groaning, Thunder Gale and rolled over onto his hooves. Despite the pain in his chest he whirled around and bucked him right in the mouth. Green blood splattered across the room, and Chain Gleaming crumbled to the floor. Thunder Gale didn’t waste any time tying him up.

Breeze watched for a moment until her shock wore off enough to work again, and then finally checked Chain Gleaming’s pulse and collected some of his green blood with a vial from her kit.

Once they finished with their prisoner, Thunder Gale ushered Breeze Heart out of the room under his wing. The two galloped out to the dropship and rounded up the squad of marines.

But by the time they charged back into the common room to collect Chain Gleaming, he was gone.

Author's Note

Enjoying the story so far? Don't forget to like, favorite, and comment!
Next update postponed until the 13th of June.

4. This Night was Going to be Perfect

Planet Hell
Solocitizen

4.
This Night Was Going to be Perfect

31st of Growing Season, 10,049 AC

Thunder Gale distrusted easy moves. So much so that even as a gap to Hill Born’s queen opened up on the holographic chessboard, he held his rook back. Hiding his face behind his steepled hooves he plotted his next move, save for his eyes, which darted around the projection.

“You gonna go already, or what?” Hill Born crossed his hooves over his chest and tipped back in his chair.

“One second.”

There was a knock at the door.

“I said just a second.”

Outside the open window, voices rose in laughter, and a gust carried sweet and exotic aromas into his room. It was the Fledgling Night of Thunder Gale, son of Storm Gale and crown prince of the Pegasus Empire. Fledgling was an ancient pegasus tradition that dated back before the Fall of the Equestria many thousands of years ago. When a pegasus colt was strong enough to leave his parent’s nest, they’d throw a feast and send him out on a journey across Equestria, and when he finally returned home he’d do so as a stallion, not a colt. Now it was just an elaborate birthday party only observed by the very wealthy.

At midnight, Thunder Gale would turn sixteen and be an adult in the eyes of Imperial law, and would finally be old enough to enlist in His Majesty’s Navy, attend basic, and soon after the Marine Academy. He’d been following his father’s hoofsteps all the way to his own command and, one day, the throne of the Empire. He had a long and arduous road ahead of him, and he didn’t really want to think about it.

So instead he focused on figuring out a way to beat Hill Born. He hated losing.

The laughter and perfumes outside weren’t helping any.

Somepony at his door knocked again.

“Just a minute,” Thunder Gale said.

“Your royal flank-ache, there’s about two hundred ponies out here waiting on you,” said his sister, Spring Gale, from beyond the door.

“Let’s just go, we can finish this later.” Hill Born pushed himself away from the projector table and dropped out of his chair onto all fours.

“No, we’re finishing this now.” Thunder spoke from behind his hooves and without taking his eyes off the hologram. “The party will still be there after I’ve figured out how to beat you.”

The door flung open, and the scent of perfume and bubbly beverages flooded the room, but he didn’t let that distract him.

“Really?” Spring Gale trotted in on her polished hooves and parked herself right next to the projector table. Her sparkling dress jingled and jangled. “Let me guess, Hill beat you at a game of Chess?”

“Three in a row in a best of five, actually.” Hill Born fiddled with the buttons on his sports jacket. “That was his idea, see, cause I beat him the first round and he insisted on a bunch of rematches.”

“I see.” She bit her painted lips and huffed. “You don’t support bad behavior, you just enable it. You couldn’t let him win, not even one game?”

“No,” Thunder Gale said. “It wouldn’t count if he did.”

Spring Gale and Hill Born turned to him.

“I will win,” he said. “And I am not leaving this spot until I do.”

Spring Gale stared at him as if at any moment she’d lunge at him and bite his head off. The whole season leading up to that night she’d been going on about how the Fledging celebration was just as much her night and the family’s as it was his, perhaps even more so given the amount of work she’d personally put into preparing the decorations, and rehearsal, and everything else. She never let Thunder Gale hear the end of it. Too bad for her; Thunder Gale wasn’t moving until he won.

Her eye quivered and she raked her teeth on her lips.

“You know what?” Hill Born cantered up to the holographic projector and tapped the reset button. “I quit. You win. You go out to the party now and I’ll catch up with you later.”

The orange and blue chess pieces blinked out of the air, and Thunder Gale let out a little gasp and Hill Born nudged him out of the chair and down on his rump.

He sprung back on his hooves and cursed, but before he could climb over the table and get at Hill to make him finish the game, Spring Gale wrapped her hoof around his and whisked him out into the hallway.

The voices of hundreds of mingling ponies echoed up and down the hall, and as they neared the party, they drowned out the clicks of Thunder Gale’s and his sister’s hoof falls. They paused above the steps leading down to Royal Gardens while she checked him over in the holographic torchlight and adjusted the folds of his toga. He looked past her into the crowd, and scanned the tables and circles of conversations for his father.

“Your toga needs to be redone.” Spring Gale started pulling at his clothes and tucking it back together. “There’s an art to wearing a toga. You should’ve come to see me a little earlier so I could have shown you the proper way to do this.”

“Give me a break, I’ve never had to put one on until earlier today,” Thunder Gale said. “Nopony will care.”

“Father and his generals will notice, and that’s all the reason you need.” Spring Gale motioned for him to stand up on his hind legs.

He rolled his eyes and obliged.

“Don’t blame me, it’s your fault we have to take the time now.” She grabbed one end of the cloth with her mouth, walked it around his chest, and tucked it into one of the folds. “You shouldn’t let that Hill Born character goad you into things like that. One day, he’ll call you up and convince you take part in something that’ll get you into more trouble than you'll know what to do with.” Spring Gale put her hooves down and backed away from him. “Not the best I’ve ever done, but it will work. See, wasn’t that worth the little extra time?”

“If you say so.” Thunder Gale looked himself up and down.

“Believe me, they’ll notice this kind of thing,” she said. “Now, I have a little something special for you I’ve got to go prepare, so you’re on your own from here.”

“Wait!” Thunder Gale’s wings flexed and nearly undid the toga. He glanced over at the crowd, then back to his sister. “You’re not coming with me? What am I supposed to do?”

“You look the part of the prince and that’s ninety percent of the work. All you have to do now is smile and look majestic. You’ll do fine.”

She gave him a quick hug, then cantered down the hallway with her nose held high.

Thunder Gale stood there watching her until she was out of sight, and then crept up to the edge of the stairs. The partygoers were so caught up in stuffing themselves with food and drink and words that he bet if he was really careful, he could sneak down the stairs without getting noticed.

Unfortunately, he didn’t make it three steps down before a guard clad in ceremonial plated armor caught sight of him.

The guard tapped the butt of his spear against the ground three times, and the crowd went silent. All two hundred some pegasi gathered across the lawn and throughout the garden turned their eyes and ears up toward Thunder Gale; even the unicorn and earth pony staff paused in their tasks and looked.

“Now presenting his Royal Highness, Thunder Gale of Hellas!” The guard bellowed out to the crowd. “Son of Storm Gale and Autumn, heir apparent of the Imperial Throne, and Crown Prince of the Pegasus Tribe.”

For a long moment Thunder Gale just stared back at them. Then he raised a hoof, waved, and smiled with all the grace of an awkward teenager. He wasn’t sure what else to do. In truth, he’d been rethinking the whole emperor thing in the back of his mind for awhile, and right then as he stood before that crowd of very important ponies he wanted nothing to do with it if the title meant more of that.

At once the partygoers stomped their hooves in applause. Those who were seated around the tables stood up and joined the others and the applause rose. As Thunder Gale’s eyes passed over countless faces full of elation and respect, he wasn’t afraid any more. If he decided to speak, they’d listen to him. If he told them to raise their voices, they’d roar.

He savored the moment as the applause trickled to a stop, and the party once again bloomed with conversation and clinking dishes. With that, he descended into the gardens in search for his father.

The night sky was empty and black. The palace grounds were packed with generals, praetors, nobles, and all their servants. He didn’t recognize a single one of them but they all wanted to talk to him.

He spoke with each of them, posed for the photos, then slipped away to resume his search, only to get cornered by more partygoers a few seconds later. He pressed onward, maneuvering away from the palace itself toward a cluster of tables set up on the lawn near the garden’s center. Luckily for him, the flowers were out that time of year, and as he delved deeper into the garden, the guests grew less interested in him and more so with the fragrances and colors in bloom.

When he reached the heart of the festivities, he caught sight of a cyan mare standing beside a buffet table underneath a cherry tree. Her dress was understated, and she hardly said a word to the mare in plated armor next to her, but she kept her engaged by leaning forward into every word she said and nodding infrequently.

“Mom!” Thunder Gale leapt up and waved at her above the crowd.

She beamed at him, and he rushed up to meet her. They exchanged a quick hug before she turned him toward the soldier.

“Lightning Fire, allow me to introduce you to my son, Thunder Gale,” his mother said. “Thunder, this is General Fire of the Imperial Marines. She’s by far the bravest and fiercest soldier in our armed forces. She’s also one of your father’s most trusted military advisors.”

And Thunder Gale didn’t doubt that for a second. Her mane and coat was the color of fire. Like a true tactician, she held herself with a calculated, disciplined calm.

“It’s an honor to make your acquaintance, your Highness.” Lightning Fire bowed her head.

“No, the honor is all mine.” He meant it, and grinned as he said it. “I also get the feeling that the next time we run into each other I’ll be saluting you.”

“Thunder Gale is planning on enlisting in the marines a few days from now,” his mother said.

“Soonest I can, actually.”

“Really?” Lightning Fire’s wings shot up, and her one good eye popped so wide open that it caught the fire of the holographic torches around her. “You do the marines an honor by joining us. They’ll probably put you in command of a starship the first chance they get. So I imagine you’ll need an XO.”

“What’s an XO?” Thunder Gale asked.

“Your executive officer will be your righthoof. She’ll make whatever course you decide upon happen.”

“So the captain decides what to shoot, if something needs shooting, but the XO decides how to shoot,” Thunder Gale’s mother said. “Or at least that’s the impression I’m getting. I never really understood all the nuances of the military. Did I get it right?”

“More or less, Lady Gale.” Lightning Fire turned her attention back to Thunder Gale. “I imagine that you’ll need somepony experienced who can act as a mentor figure. Somepony respected, seasoned, and who is both a soldier’s general and politician, but more importantly somepony who can keep her head cool in any situation.”

“Somepony not unlike yourself, I imagine?” Thunder Gale’s mother said playfully. She picked out a grape from the parade of fruit beside her and chomped down.

“I have to admit, my opinion is biased,” she said. “But objectively speaking, yes, I am your best choice.”

Thunder Gale cocked his head.

Right then, Lightning Fire’s communicator buzzed.

“Excuse me, duty calls.” She bowed and cantered away.

Glancing over the fruit, Thunder Gale’s mother chuckled under her breath and popped another grape into her mouth. He joined her at the table and inspected the pineapples and grapes before him. He tried a slice of pineapple, and it was like biting into a sour rock.

“I like her,” Thunder Gale told his mother.

“She’s ambitious, confident, and hates losing.”

“Remind you of anypony else you might know?”

“I can think of a few, don’t worry.” Thunder Gale’s mother chuckled under her breath and turned to him. “So are you enjoying yourself? From what Spring was telling me, you were pretty nervous.”

“At first, yeah, I was kinda scared about making an appearance in front of all these VIPs and screwing something up,” he said. “But now, I’m really glad that I did.”

“I’m happy to hear it, as it is your night after all.” His mother brushed her wing over the purse slung over her shoulder, and stopped. “Before I forget, I have something to give you. I know it’s hardly the time or place, but it’s something I want to make sure you have.”

She dug a wing through her purse and retrieved a long, silver chain, at the end of which hung a pendant: a shield with a nova in the center and smaller three stars above it. The entire pendant was jagged as if pounded, beaten, and bent into shape; it twinkled in the artificial torchlight.

“This is a pendant of Shining Armor.” His mother held it out to him in her hoof. “It’s been in our family for generations, dating all the way back to your great grandfather, who took it from a unicorn general after his opponent surrendered unconditionally. Shining Armor is a patron to soldiers and those who champion a noble cause. He was also married to one of the most important pegasi to ever live.”

She passed it to Thunder Gale, and he cradled it in his two front hooves.

"It looks like it’s seen better days.”

“That’s because it’s made out of something called 'Cold Silver',” his mother replied. “That means that it wasn’t crafted by tools, or ripped out of the earth using machinery. A unicorn bucked at a rock until a chunk of silver fell out, then used his horn to carve out the design. It’s supposed to be toxic to unseelie creatures and ward off evil spirits. I doubt you’ll ever need protection from those kinds of things, but anything to keep you safe. Celestia only knows what you’ll encounter out there.”

“Thank you, mom.” He curled his hoof around the pendant and leapt to embrace her with his free leg. “This really means a lot. I’ll keep it around my neck until I’m safe at home again.”

“You grew up so fast.” She wrapped her wing over him. “It seems like just yesterday you were running through the halls with your friends playing soldier. Now you’re about to do the real thing. You know, we start military and vocational training early compared to the rest of the galaxy? If this were anywhere other than the empire you’d be going off to prom next, not war.”

“I’ll be fine, I promise.”

She sighed and said: “I know it’s the way things are, but part of me still can’t get over it.”

They held each other tightly for a moment. Then, Thunder Gale pulled himself away and slipped the pendant over his neck. His mother’s eyes trickled, but she wiped them with her hoof, cleared her throat, and gave no more tears. Not once had he ever seen his mother cry before.

The cacophony of the crowd built around them, and scents of the perfumes in the air mixed continuously, but somehow they were alone for that moment.

Cool air swept the fragrances aside and brought relief from the heat of the ponies around them. The conversations to their left and right lulled, and reached a relative quiet.

Then a yellow pegasus with a peacock’s tail for a headdress barged in between Thunder Gale and his mother. The mare reached into the crowd and dragged a stallion wrapped in a toga along with her.

“I must say, these flowers are magnificent! I’ve never seen anything like them on Hellas,” she said.

“Thank you.” Thunder Gale’s mother put on a happy face. “They’re a family treasure.”

“Excuse me.” He scooted them aside with a flex of his wing and closed the gap between himself and his mother. “I’ve been meaning to ask you: have you seen father anywhere?”

“No, I haven’t even seen him since last week,” she said. “I know he’s here, but I’m not sure where.”

“I’m going to look around and see if I can find him,” Thunder Gale said. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

Unfurling his wings out from the tangle of his toga, he cleared a path through the crowd and forged his way back.

He didn’t get very far before a speaker flipped on in the garden.

“Fillies and gentlecolts, if I may have your attention, please,” Spring Gale said over every speaker in the garden. “My friends and I have something very special we’d like to share with you all. Happy birthday, little brother! This one’s for you.”

“Wait!” Thunder Gale’s mother pushed her way through the wall of ponies and grabbed his hoof and pulled him along. “You have to see this!”

“What about dad?”

“He can wait,” she said. “Your sister and her friends have spent the last month getting this ready for you.”

Violins hummed throughout the garden, and hooves plucked on strings. At first he didn’t recognize the song, but then they played through a bar and moved onto the next and his whole face lit up.

“Is this?”

“Yes! Come on or we’ll miss the show.”

The song was none other than “All These Things That I’ve Done”. He knew the words so well that he heard the lyrics behind the hum of the strings as easily as he could his own heartbeat.

They only got as far as the verse, “I want to shine on in the hearts of stallions, I want to mean it from the back of my broken hoof,” when the music cut out and the party was left with silence.

After a few seconds and the song did not return, he crowd started murmuring amongst themselves.

Thunder Gale turned to his mother, and she was just as confused as he was.

“What’s going on?” he asked her.

“I don’t know, something isn’t right.”

A siren wailed, and everypony went silent. Thunder Gale looked to the ponies around him, but everypony—guards and nobility alike—were now focused entirely on the black sky above.

“We need to get to the panic room.” His mother squeezed his hoof and nudged him into the crowd.

“What about dad?”

“We have to go. Your father can take care of himself. Go!”

“And Spring?”

“She has her guards and her entourage,” his mother said. “We don’t have time for this! At this point if we go looking for her we’ll just get in the way!”

Adrenaline coursed through him in a hot wave. His legs shook.

“There are panic rooms located throughout the palace and the grounds!” his mother shouted to the crowd. “Emergency lighting will guide you! Everypony, remain calm and we will get through this.”

As soon as she finished speaking, panic spread throughout the garden and soon screaming erupted. The mare beside Thunder Gale flung out her front legs and shrieked, and smacked him across the face. He kept on his hooves by extending his wings for balance. Good thing too, as otherwise the ponies swarming around him from behind would have trampled him. He reached out with a free hoof and latched onto his mother’s as the tide swept past them. He led her through the as they forged ahead with the current.

Thunder Gale watched the tide of bodies knock a pegasus beside him over and swallow her under hoof.

About halfway back to the palace, his mother stopped. When Thunder Gale turned to her to urge her on, there was anger in her eyes. A pegasus—the yellow one from before—slammed into his mother from the side, but she kept on her hooves and regained her balance in a step.

She turned on the ponies behind her and gave them that a hard stare, and though stupefied by fear, it worked and they backed off long enough for her to stand on her hind legs and shout above the noise: “Everypony stop!”

And they all did.

“You are pegasi! Exemplars of responsibility and loyalty!” She dropped back down on all fours but still commanded the crowd’s attention. “Start acting like it, or so help me, I will have each of you stripped of your titles and landholdings! Do you understand me? There is no place for this behavior in the Empire. I will not tolerate it! Not here in my garden, and most certainly not in the Congress of Nobles. Remain calm, stay orderly, and we will make it through this together. I promise.”

Murmurs and whispering spread throughout the crowd after she finished talking, but their voices never rose as they did before.

He swiped the sweat off his brow and glanced around to those beside him.

“I can’t believe that worked,” he said to his mother.

“For ponies, fear is as virulent as it is bedlam inducing.” She let out a controlled breath as she followed the flow of the partygoers and staff toward the palace. “Luckily, fear isn’t the only emotion that can propagate itself in the hearts of others. Let this be a lesson to you: whatever emotions sprout within yourself are projected onto others and may take root there. A leader who projects piece and calm can bring about harmony, but one consumed by fear or hate will only bring discord.”

“Yes, mom.”

There was a boom from the palace, and a wave of heat followed. Thunder Gale flinched against the blast and shut his eyes. The crowd wavered against the blow and knocked him about. When he opened his eyes, a plume of smoke ascended out from a room near the east wing of the place. Glass and splintered wood sprinkled down from overhead. Shortly after, the acrid scent of smoke washed away the perfumes in the air.

Thunder Gale watched transfixed as orange fire shone out the windows of his home.

Before the crowd dissolved into panic and screaming again, his mother spoke up and addressed them once more: “We are the elite and the noble. If we can help those less fortunate, we can help each other! We will all make it through this together. Just stay calm. The panic rooms will keep us safe and there’s plenty room for us all.”

As Thunder Gale and his mother filed forward with the crowd, a pony pushed past them in the other direction. It was Lightning Fire. Her teeth were gritted together and her mane was covered in glass. If anypony knew where his father was, it’d be her.

“Mom, I’m going to find dad, okay?” Thunder Gale pulled his mother close to him.

“I,” she started to say. She swallowed and held back tears, and said with a dry face, “I know you’ve already made up your mind, so there’s very little I can say to stop you. Stay safe, okay?”

“I will,” he said. “I promise.”

Thunder Gale kissed his mother on the cheek, and let go. Then, he shoved and pushed toward the darkness looming over the hedge mazes at the garden’s edge. He aimed for Lightning Fire, and followed her path through the crowd.

Once they were clear of the crowd and where the cool winds flowed openly another explosion blossomed. That time closer, and probably on the grounds and not the building itself. As Thunder Gale turned to watch the flames lap at the sky, so did Lightning Fire.

“You!” Lightning Fire marched up and yanked him around by the scruff of his neck to about an inch away from her face. “Just what in the name of Celestia do you think you’re doing? You’re supposed to be in a panic room!”

“I’m looking for my father.” Thunder Gale shoved her off and looked her in the eye. “That’s what you’re doing out here, so I’m coming with you. Don’t try to stop me.”

“Colt, I could think of over ten dozen ways to land you on your ass so fast you’d never even see it coming. Don’t think I wouldn’t slap you around just because you’re nobility. Now get back to the panic room! I have something important to do and this is wasting my time.”

She spun around and took off toward the hedges, but Thunder Gale darted around in front of her and matched her move for move when she tried to side step him.

“I’m not a colt,” he said to her. “I’m turning sixteen at midnight, remember? I’m basically an adult.”

“Adult or not, you’re about to get a flank whoopin’ unless you get out of my way.”

“Let’s say you do, alright? You kick my ass, then what? I’d get right back on my hooves and keep following you and getting in your way until you’d agree to take me to my dad. Unless you’ve got some rope on you, and I don’t see any, you’re not going to stop me without hold me down or dragging me all the way back to the palace. Now, do you have time for that?”

She glanced over her shoulder at some point just beyond the hedges, then at the palace, and back at him.

Ponies cried in the night.

“Okay, fine, you can come with me,” she said. “But only because I don’t have time to argue with you. Your father’s transponder is only about three hundred feet away. Let’s move!”

Into the darkness of the hedges at the edge of the garden they galloped. Her hooves kicked up the gravel of the path. The fires in the palace and the LED screen on Lightning Fire’s forehoof were the only lights around.

“Father!” Thunder Gale shouted at the bramble in front of him. “Where are you?”

“Look at this,” Lightning Fire said.

She held her LED aimed at slick patch of crimson splattered across the ground. As Thunder Gale approached the spot he noticed a small, blinking, chip in the center of it all.

“Is that what I think it is?” he asked.

“That’s your father’s transponder implant.” She lowered her hoof and craned her head up at the sky. “Where’s the royal guard? They should’ve landed troops here by now.”

“I am here,” said a voice from just beyond the next hedge.

“Father!”

Thunder Gale dove through the twigs and thorns to the other side and spun around toward the sound of his voice, and there he found him. His father stood, perfectly still, with his back to him and facing a dead end in the hedge trail. Thunder Gale tucked his wings away and stared into the back of his head and kept his distance. The folds of his father’s toga were secure and neat, and his mane was combed and styled perfectly, unlike Thunder Gale, who wore the catastrophes of the night on his clothes and on his body in scrapes and sweat and tears. His father was fair and immaculate.

Lightning Fire wasn’t more than a second behind, and once she broke through as Thunder Gale had, she stayed beside him rather than approach the pony facing the bush.

“There was an explosion, we didn’t know what happened to you,” Thunder Gale said. “I had to leave mother and Spring to come find you. We need to get back to them.”

“Sir, are you okay?” Lightning Fire asked.

“Everything is fine.” His father twirled away from the corner to face them. “Everything will certainly be fine.”

Green light flickered in the pupils of his father’s eyes, and he said: “Yes, everything is just fine.”

5. Armored

Planet Hell
Solocitizen

5.
Armored

13th of Planting Season, 10,056 AC
Present Day

He woke up sweating cold and heart racing. It was still early, but he didn’t want to close his eyes any longer than it took him to blink. So instead he lay as still as he shaking body allowed, on the bedspread he sweat cold, and waited for his memory of his dreams to fade. He shivered. During the night, he must have flung the blankets and the rest of the sheets from the bed, as he had nothing to pull over him for warmth.

After a time he sat up, still shaking, wide-eyed and wing open. He breathed in slow and deep, and exhaled, and then repeated until the thudding in his heart calmed.

“What’s the matter, my love, did you have another flying dream?” Breeze Heart rolled over in bed and ran a hoof all the way down to his spine, then up to where his wings joined his back. “Would you like to talk about it?”

Every pegasus dreamed of flying, starting from when they were very little. The dreams usually went away by the time they transitioned into adulthood, but for Thunder Gale the dreams never petered away. Instead they had only become much more vivid and frightening. Now they always ended in falling.

“I was chasing someone,” he said. “A blue pegasus with a rainbow mane unlike any I’ve ever seen before. And she had these burning red eyes. When I was finally about to catch up to her, I fell. I know. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s a dream, it doesn’t need to make sense.” Breeze Heart lay sprawled out in their bed with her mane dashed across her pillow, the warm light of her bedside clock reflecting off the curves of her chest and her flanks.

“I know I’ve never seen her before in my life, but there was something so familiar about her and I needed to get closer–—it wasn’t anything sexual, but because looking at her almost felt like looking in a mirror.” He shivered, and scooped the blankets up off the floor and wadded them up in a ball. “Part of me doesn’t get it. Why do I keep having these dreams?”

“I suppose they’re part of having wings.”

“Then why do we have wings if we can’t fly?”

“That depends on whom you ask.” She brushed her hoof over his wings and he relaxed enough to lower them. “An evolutionary biologist would probably tell you we have them because it’s advantageous. Those who believe in the fables of Equestria would probably say it’s because we’ve lost our connection to our magical-selves, and that forgotten part of us still yearns to fly.”

“So where do you fall on the subject?” He turned to her and set the blankets down at the foot of their bed. “What did you tell yourself when you had these dreams?”

“I don’t know what I think on the matter; I never did sort it out.” She ran her hoof down his back again, inviting him closer. “I suppose the answer doesn’t really matter. All I know is that you’re trembling and that I want to help. Come here. You can rest your head next to mine, and we’ll go back to sleep for a little while longer.”

Already it was daylight out, and the angry sun poked through the steel shutters guarding their window in long streaks. The smell of breakfast frying on the grill climbed up into their cabin, and the clock on Breeze Heart’s bedside read ten after nine. In the low light, his blue-gray coat glistened with cold sweat.

“I should go.” Thunder Gale shoved himself off the bed. “Cloud Twist’s squad has been holding position all night. They need back up, and to be relieved. They should have gathered some tactically significant intel by now.”

Breeze Heart rolled onto her stomach and craned her head up at him.

“So you can keep looking for Hill Born, correct?” she said. “I don’t know how I feel about this. I know he’s your friend, but I almost lost you twice yesterday.”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“You vanished right before my eyes and only a few hours later I watched you almost get stomped to death by that thing,” she said. “Chain Gleaming is still out there as well as whatever took you away and left you in the desert. What about us building something together? What happens to all those plans if you aren’t as fortunate next time he or something worse reveals itself?”

“I have to go back out there.” He met her eyes, but only long enough to tell himself he did. “I have a responsibility to the rest of this crew and the ponies that—for all we know—are still out there and in need of our help. I know this isn’t what you wanted for us and it’s not what I want either, but I have to do it.”

“Fine, then; you have your role and I have mine, so let’s play them.” She laid her head on her front hooves and gave Thunder Gale her back. “Go out there and do what you need to do, and I’ll be here playing ship’s doctor. I’ll examine the results of the sample I collected yesterday, and when the time comes I’ll mend the injured and declare the dead.”

“Breeze, listen, I—”

“Just go. I’ll wait here. Just go.”

Thunder Gale slipped into his officer’s cuirass, slid his family’s Shining Armor pendant off his dresser and around his neck, and did as she asked.

Most of the Spitfire’s crew was already up and busy making repairs by the time he stepped out of his cabin. Raised voices and the screeches of metal welding into metal inundated him on his way to the armory. Thunder Gale stepped around and over a good portion of his troops on his way there, and they all looked tired.

Half way down the hyperlift, Lightning Fire called him on his communicator.

“Major, I’ve just made contact with Lt. Twist’s team.” She paused to yawn. “While they were setting up shop in the armory, they found a data terminal for Sigil Tech’s archives. I had them start copying the data, so they should be wrapping up by the time you get there. No sign of hostiles yet, but frankly they don’t know what to look for, and I don’t know what to tell them.”

“For now, assume anypony that doesn’t identify as Manticore personnel is hostile.” Thunder Gale sighed and ran his hoof through his mane. “Have you been up all night?”

“Aye, sir.”

The hyperlift doors opened and Thunder Gale trotted out onto the armory. Most of his squad was at their lockers and squeezing into their coolant suits.

“You should get some rest, and let one of the junior officers direct this op,” he said.

“Negative, sir, I’m not heading out into the field and most of the crew is much more in need of rest than I am. If the ponies we got out there in the desert can handle there end I can handle mine. I’ll eat some stims, and rest when you’ve brought them home. Lightning Fire out.”

Thunder Gale just let the issue drop once his communicator beeped off. At his locker he traded in his uniform for a form-fitting coolant suit and joined his squad at the power armor bay.

Training for an imperial marine included advanced training in the operation and maintenance of the Dragon Mk III power armor and its variants. It was a staple of the pegasus military, and part of what made the marines so versatile and lethal. Combining the best traits of both infantry and armor, a marine could deploy in hazardous environments, carry heavy ordnance into battle, and leap over buildings at speeds over 180 mph. It was never intended to stop a bullet, but as an added bonus, it could. Each suit was custom fitted to the wearer’s dimensions and neural patterns and cost as much as three of the best tanks money could buy, but those three tanks were also next to useless against a marine in power armor.

For ops that required stealth more than speed and firepower, such as the one Thunder Gale was about to launch, active camouflage could be installed at the expense of 80 mph off the max speed and several of the heavy weapons. Two of his crew had labored through the evening to modify all six of his squad’s power armor, but a neural synchronization report reading one-hundred percent across his visor was worth the trouble and effort.

Power armor doesn’t so much move with the body as much as it moved with the brain. Electrodes along Thunder Gale’s spine—cemented to his skin and fur by a sticky gel—relayed the commands to his body to his armor. It wasn’t so much an extension of his body as a part of it.

After suiting up and briefing his squad, they retracted the airlock doors and galloped off into the desert. Under normal circumstances they’d go bounding along on micro-fusion thrusters the entire way there, but stealth was critical, so they kept to the ground.

Even with his under suit cycling coolant over him, the myomer muscles encasing him, the power plants surrounding him, and the labors of his own body turned the inside of his armor into a furnace. He panted. He sweated. He galloped, and he groaned across the desert toward the chasm and the city therein.

When at last they reached the edge of the chasm, and the towers no longer dotted the horizon but instead cast long shadows over them, Thunder Gale decided it was time for a break.

“Alright, marines, take five.” He slowed to a trot, and then in one tired motion plopped his rear end on the ground and lay all the way down. He deployed a straw from his helmet, and greedily sucked on his armor’s water supply.

Highlighted in green by his suit’s targeting computer, his marines either slouched down for a sit or collapsed on their sides or bellies. There wasn’t any chatter on Thunder Gale’s radio from any of them. They were just too tired from the run and their other duties. The only sound coming through on his headset was the wind wailing across the desert.

Even as he sat there recovering and cooling, the soldier in Thunder Gale never shut down. Not twenty feet to his left the ground gave way, and just beyond that a concrete monolith rose out of chasm and blocked out the sun. It wasn’t the only one, either, but just one of many that poked out like fangs from a predator’s maw. He kept his eyes on the windows. He didn’t trust them.

“Sir, you need to check this out,” said one of his marines. She stared over the edge of the chasm and didn’t move from her spot.

Thunder Gale picked himself up and cantered over to her, and as he followed her gaze down to the floor of the chasm, he spotted them: two unicorns wearing lab jackets as bright and clean as recently polished teeth. Each sported fur the color of ivory and was identical to the other. Their eyes searched the cliffs and buildings and passed right over Thunder Gale.

“Team, I’ve got eyes on two contacts less than three hundred yards away,” he said over the radio. “Why didn’t we spot them sooner?”

His entire squad got up and crept up to the edge.

“Switch to your thermals, sir, it’s weird,” said the marine by Thunder Gale’s side.

He did, and saw nothing. According to his thermal imaging the two ponies below him gave off no more heat than the desert background and blended in seamlessly.

Thunder Gale tapped the console on his forehoof and said, “Gerard, this is Major Gale, are you reading me?”

“Buzz off.” Gerard coughed over the radio. “Do you have my money yet?”

“No, but I have something that I need you to relay to Lightning Fire.” Thunder Gale kept his head steady and started uploading images from his suit’s sensors.

“No way, forget it, my ship isn’t your personal satellite. You know, I’ve been pretty damn patient with you, Mr. Prince-in-Exile, but I’m starting to think it might be in my best interest to leave your flank behind.” There was a pause on Gerard’s end, followed by a creaking chair. “Wait, what? Okay, this isn’t funny, just what am I looking at? How come they don’t have body heat? Last time I checked, ponies have body heat. This isn't good. That can't be normal.”

“This is real time data from my suit of whatever killed everypony here. Are you going to show my XO or not?”

“Yeah, I’m going to just send this right along,” Gerard said. “I think I’m going to go sober up now.”

The two unicorns were joined by two identical earth ponies and marched into a nearby building and out of sight. They waited for a few minutes, and once he was convinced the danger had passed, Thunder Gale pressed his marines onward.

Hugging the chasm walls, they crept down. Thunder Gale kept his eyes locked on the windows surrounding them. Their suits rendered them invisible, yes, but each slipped hoof sent gravel crackling down the side. By the time they reached the floor, Thunder Gale was sweating again, and his hooves were sore.

There wasn’t time to stop and rest again, and so Thunder Gale pushed them onward through the city in silence. They maintained overwatch as they travelled and cleared every intersection before crossing. Luckily, the building Lt. Cloud Twist’s squad had held up in wasn’t far from the edge, and they reached it in minutes.

Unlike the other towers that were eroded into featureless homogeneity, it still clung to its buttresses, and bore the frame of its steepled roof and the cross shining atop its highest point. It was shorter than the rest, but nonetheless just as intimidating; time had worn away the details, but the gargoyles perching on the edge of the roof and their empty sockets still stared back.

“Timberwolf, this is Helios, we’re right outside your door.” Thunder Gale stood facing the cross and the door beneath it.

Two of his marines flanked his sides and scanned their shoulder-mounted rifles over the windows and doors.

“I see ya, Major,” Lt. Cloud Twist said over the radio. “Around the side there’s another door. Better use it instead.”

“Roger that, Helios out.”

Thunder Gale took point, and crept further down until they reached another set of doors and crept into an empty chamber-hall in the heart of the building. After crossing the hall and ascending a flight of stairs—too tall and too close for their hooves—that fought them at every step, they reached Lt. Cloud Twist’s holdout.

Behind a table piled high with tin-foil caps, he sat on a couch on his hindquarters beside two of his marines, both half-asleep. His front hoof propped him up while the other sculpted a tin-foil cap held in place by his mouth. The late morning light pouring in through the windows and carved beams out of the dust in the air.

“Major, I know what you’re gonna say, but it’s not the reefer, and you can’t smell it from the outside,” Cloud Twist said between clenched teeth. “It’s sage, you know, the herb you use in cooking. Burning it wards off evil spirits, or at least, that’s what my grandma always said.”

“Is the armory secure?” Thunder Gale popped off the clasps around his neck, pulled his helmet off, and got a lungful of smoke. He held in a cough.

“Yes, sir, I have two guards posted outside, and please keep your voice down.” Cloud Twist finished the cap he was working on and passed it to him. “We don’t want them finding out we’re out here. Have a hat. I don’t know if works against creatures that blow things up with their minds, but it can’t hurt, right? Anyway, there’s something else I gotta show you.”

Cloud Twist flung himself off the couch and led Thunder Gale back down the stairs, and into a room behind the remains of an alter. It smelled of dust and faintly of sage, and was lit by a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling and a holographic image hovering above a lone projector. Glass crunched underneath their hooves as they inched closer.

“It’s a terminal for Sigil Tech’s computer network,” Cloud Twist said. “It wasn’t working when we got here, but then, all on its own, it clicked on for no reason. It started showing these strange images – they looked like security recordings. Some of them got really graphic. It was like a straight up blood and guts horror show, like the kind your parents hide their kids from. Know what I mean?”

“No.” Thunder Gale stepped closer to the projector, but stopped a few feet away.

Hanging above the projector was the image of a monster cast in stone as a statue, and enclosed in clinical walls. It had the arm of a lion, the talon of an eagle, the tail of a reptile, wings stolen from a bat and a pegasus, and the head of a pony. The wing and head were the worst of all, as they were so familiar and gave the monster a recognizable face, but in that cacophony of animal parts those details also rooted it firmly in the uncanny. It sat on a rock, with its twisted body hung over its drooping head, crying.

Then it was gone. The time index leapt forward and the cell was empty.

“What exactly am I looking at?” Thunder Gale didn’t take his eyes away from the projected image.

“Well, sir, from what I can tell the statue was there one minute and gone the next. What’s really weird, though, is that I check over the security logs, and apparently there was a whole bunch of prisoners here that Sigil Tech studied and kept locked up. This whole installation was fine until about two hours after that statue vanished, then the prisoners broke and ponies started dying.”

“What, so the statue got up and let them out?” he asked.

“No, sir, I think it’s stranger than that.” Cloud Twist stood up on his hind legs and pulled a tin-foil cap over his head. “I might not be the smartest pony, but I think, and this is just an idea, but they might have been trying to get away from whatever was in that cell.”

“They certainly wouldn’t have locked it up unless they had a good reason.” He backed away from the projector. “How much longer until we have all this copied?”

“It’s almost done. About another ten minutes or so.” Lt. Cloud Twist trotted over to the projector and got down on the floor to next to its base. “Yeah, it’s just about done.”

“Then let’s finish up here and get back to the ship.” Thunder Gale tapped the console on his forehoof and held down bud in his ear. “Spitfire, this is Helios, we’ve made contact with Timberwolf and we’re collecting the package now. We’re going to need extraction in ten minutes. Copy?”

“You’re coming through loud and clear, Helios,” Lightning Fire said over his earpiece. “After that last transmission to Gerard, he hurried the buck up and agreed to bounce our signals off his ship. He was pretty shaken up about whatever he saw on your visor feed. We can cut through a lot of the interference now. I’m scrambling dropships. ETA, ten minutes. Spitfire out.”

A few quick gestures over his console’s touchscreen, and Thunder Gale passed along a new set of orders to his troops. He sighed a little after hitting the send button. They still had to get out of there, but Lt. Cloud Twist’s team survived the night, and they somehow snuck in without alerting Chain Gleaming and his friends. So far so good, but there was still the armory to deal with.

Right away Thunder Gale decided to take it along, so while the troops assembled for extraction, he and Lt. Cloud Twist hustled across the empty hall to the armory.

A steel cage barred the way, but in the room beyond guns, dust, and crates overflowing with more of the same filled the room to the ceiling. As Cloud Twist pulled back the door with his teeth, Thunder Gale’s molar started to ache. In shock, he put a hoof to his cheek and tongued at the tooth. The marines installed an emergency beacon in his back molar when he joined, and for some reason it burned and hummed as he stepped inside.

He took a look at one of the weapons, and it certainly looked like a firearm, but none he had ever seen before. The trigger loop was too small for a hoof, and it lacked any recognizable magazine, sight, or shoulder mount.

“Do any of these still work?” he asked.

“I dunno, but Sigil Tech was real careful not to let the prisoners find any of these things, so I’m guessing they might.” Lt. Cloud Twist picked one of the guns up with his mouth and set it in a saddle bag slung over his shoulder. “Okay, remember, Major, we gotta do this as quietly as possible.”

“I know.”

Thunder Gale reached for one and the beacon in his molar screamed like a surgeon’s drill. He opened his mouth and nearly did the same, but he bit down on his tongue to keep his silence. He ran his hoof across jaw and felt around the tooth.

After the pain died down, he tried again further down the length of the barrel. That time he managed to get his teeth around it, at least, and dropped the gun in the bag before it seared his mouth. It clanked when it hit the bottom.

“Shush, as quietly as possible, remember?” Cloud Twist said.

Thunder Gale loaded another, and that time let out a hiss.

“Come on, sir.”

Thunder Gale picked up another one and said clenching his teeth, “I know!”

But as he spoke the firearm shifted a little closer to his back molar, and pain pierced his tooth and ran down his nerves and down his face. On reflex he let the rifle fall to the floor.

As the butt of the gun smacked against concrete, purple light flashed.

He remembered a gust of wind and a blast of heat. Lt. Cloud Twist’s face contorted in fear as light reflected off his eyes. Thunder Gale tumbled head and hooves into the far wall. Stone met his face.

* * *

He opened his eyes to the sun. His ears rang and his whole body throbbed. Bits of stone pelted his armor and the heat of the desert poured in through a hole large enough for a dropship to fly through. The edges glowed red and orange.

As the ringing in his head faded the sound of screaming took its place. The smell of burning flesh and hair stained the air.

Thunder Gale scrambled up on his hooves and his eyes widened. Anypony outside would’ve heard that.

“Lieutenant, forget the guns, we need to get out of here!” He stumbled over debris and mangled steel.

He found him, fallen over on his side at the other end of the room, screaming. The armor on his leg and shoulder were blown off and the exposed flesh was black and smoking. His face was pale and a hind leg twitched. Where his armor touched his burns the metal sagged and bled into him. All across his right side the armor glowed in red patches.

“My leg… I can’t feel.” Cloud Twist said. “I’m c-cold.”

“Hang on, I’m getting you out of here.” He got down on his stomach and used his hooves and wings to roll him onto his back. “I need you stay with me, now. No dozing off, that’s an order. We’re going up the stairs.”

“I’m d-dizzy, Major, sir.”

Although his armor was rigged for stealth ops it still endowed Thunder Gale with unnatural strength. He rose to his hooves shouldering Cloud Twist and dashed toward the door.

He turned back just before he left, just to get another look at the hole, and when he did he spotted three perfectly identical unicorns marching up the street toward the building. The heat of the sun rippled over them and the desert sand swept off the ground all around them, but they stayed clean. Thunder Gale didn’t waste another second and rushed out of there.

“Helios, this is Spitfire, we detected an explosion, what’s your status?” Lightning Fire’s voice wavered in his ear.

Thunder Gale tapped the console on his forehoof. “We were collecting what we could of the guns when one of them went off. I’m fine, but Twist has severe burns and is going into shock.”

“Get to the roof for dust off,” she said. “Our birds are still about six minutes out.”

A group of marines galloped out from around the corner and gasped at the sight of him and their lieutenant. They paused, stunned at the sight, but shook it off and rushed over to him. They pulled Cloud Twist off his back as limp as a rag doll.

“Negative, there are contacts closing in on our position,” he said to Lightning Fire. “In six minutes the LZ is going to be way too hot. Is our transmat system operational?”

“Yes, Major, but I wouldn’t want to try it with all the electro-magnetic interference,” she said.

“Just make it happen, and tell Breeze Heart”—he caught his breath and watched the marines carry Cloud Twist up the stairs—“tell the Doctor and her staff to prepare to receive casualties.”

“Aye, aye, we’ll let you know when we’re ready on this end. Spitfire out.”

The radio chirped off and Thunder Gale galloped after his marines. Each of them held a window on the top floor and aimed their shoulder-mounted rifles out at the city, with the exception of four individuals: the two ponies positioned in the stairwell, and the two providing field medicine for Lt. Cloud Twist. Their ministrations amounted to little more than comforting him.

Thunder Gale wiped the sweat from his brow, dug his helmet out of a pile of tin-foil scraps, and pulled it on over his head.

“Sir, we have eyes on four contacts outside our south-west corner,” one of the marines whispered in his ear. “Do we have permission to engage?”

“Negative, do not engage unless fired upon.” He released the safety on his rifle and a targeting reticule popped up on his HUD that followed the movement of his eyes. “Let’s try and stall them until we can evac.”

Creeping low to the floor, Thunder Gale hunkered down under a free window. The two power armor troops holding the windows beside him strained against the frame.

“Major Gale, I know you’re up there,” Chain Gleaming boomed in the same clear voice he remembered from the day before. “I’d much prefer to have this conversation like civilized equines, but if you force me to go through you and your marines to have a little chat I will. So please, do us all a favor and poke your head out from behind that windowsill so we can get on with it.”

“Helios, this is Spitfire,” Lightning Fire said in Thunder Gale’s ear. “We can only bring you back one at a time, but the transmat is ready and standing by.”

“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day,” he whispered back. “Start with Cloud Twist and his team. Chain Gleaming wants to talk, so bring me back last. I’ll stall him. Helios out.”

Thunder Gale cut the channel. As he glanced across the room at Cloud Twist’s limp body, yellow light circled and danced around him, and then swallowed the lieutenant up in a huff of vapor and color.

“I’m a firm believer that patience is a virtue, but even I have my limits,” Chain Gleaming called from right below the window. “Now, are you going to show your face and talk to me, or do I have to come in there?”

“Okay, I’m coming out.” Thunder Gale pushed himself away off the wall and stood facing out the window. “Now what do you want?”

On the corner of the intersection, surrounded by the unicorn trio, stood Chain Gleaming wearing a smug grin. He was leaner than before, and his face was more angular than he remembered, but he still came dressed in the disguise of the earth pony technician in a jumpsuit. Sweat dripped out of every pore on Thunder Gale and matted down his mane, but Chain Gleam basked in the heat of the sun and shed not a single drop.

“My associates and I have been away for quite some time, Thunder, and we want to go home,” he said. “I can understand if you have reservations about letting us come aboard, but the Spitfire is the only ship planetside. There is also a third party that is undoubtedly trying to worm its way aboard as we speak, so it would be in all of our best interests to depart before it does.”

“I don’t care where you’re going or who you’re running from,” he said. “You’re not stepping hoof on my ship.”

Thunder Gale glanced behind him and counted two more of his marines gone. He just had to keep Chain talking a little longer.

“I think you’re under the impression that I’m asking,” Chain Gleaming said. “One way or another I’m coming in. The only choice you have is whether I do so gently or by force.”

Thunder Gale propped himself up on the windowsill and leaned out.

“You know what, I don’t think so,” he said to Chain Gleaming. “I think you’re much more afraid of us than we are of you. I think that whatever you might have had over me, you lost the moment I put on this power armor. And I think that we have you outnumbered. Go ahead and try to intimidate me. It’s not going to work.”

“Is that so?” Chain Gleaming leaned forward and laughed. He got up on his hind leg and cupped his front hooves together around his mouth. “Alright boys, let’s show the Major who he’s dealing with.”

As one, an army emerged from out of every door, window, and alley in the surrounding towers. Each soldier marched out armed with a rifle and stern pair of eyes. There were earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns in the mix, but just like Chain Gleaming and his trio, all wore Sigil Tech uniforms. Many were identical. All were clean to the point of unnatural fairness. They filled the streets surrounding Thunder Gale’s building, and formed a circle.

Slack-jaw shocked, he let them encircle their walls. He had no idea of what else to do; there were more of them than the entire crew of the Spitfire.

Chain Gleaming grinned.

Thunder Gale blinked, pulled himself together, and unclipped his helmet and cast it aside. Despite the itch in his wobbling legs to run, he looked Chain Gleaming right in the eyes and held his ground. He glanced away just long enough to check on the troops behind him. Six of his marines were gone, and one beside him was in the process of vanishing into light. Just four more to go, he told himself.

“Let’s review,” Chain Gleaming said. “I have more soldiers and I’m clearly not afraid of you, so that’s two out of three of your presumptions about me debunked. Do you really want to pick a fight with me just to test that last one?”

“What are you?” Thunder Gale kept his hooves firmly on the floor. “Are you some kind of alien?”

"I do hope you’re not asking what I really look like,” he said. “Don’t you know? It’s rude to ask a changeling about his true form on the second date. Tell you what, though: if you survive to our third encounter I’ll show you what I really look like. Now, are you ready to surrender?”

“Not a chance.”

The console on Thunder Gale’s forehoof beeped; the last of his marines were back on the Spitfire and they were preparing to transmat him out but were waiting for his signal. He didn’t send it just yet.

“You murdered my friend,” Thunder Gale said. “I’m not surrendering.”

Shouting broke out in the distance. The back ranks in Chain Gleaming’s forces were breaking formation, dissolving, and fleeing. Thunder Gale squinted, and directed his attention back at him.

“Such a shame, I guess you leave me no choice other than to level the building.” Chain Gleaming strolled up to the building. “I imagine that you would have fled with the rest of your grunts if you had the capability, so this is the end of line. I wish I could say it’s been a pleasure. Farewell, Mister Gale.”

Green light flashed in his eyes. He stood up on his hind legs and reached his front hooves for the sky. Then the three unicorns beside him glanced around at the panic and chaos spreading over their army, shrieked, and ran off along with the others.

Chain Gleaming dropped back on all fours and turned around to watch his troops scatter.

“I wish I could stay and finish this, but I can’t.” He spun to Thunder Gale just long enough to throw that last taunt before galloping after his troops. “You lucked out this time. Bye!”

Once he vanished from sight only Thunder Gale remained, confused, and staring out the window at the empty streets.

“Major, do you read me?” Lightning Fire’s voice blared out of his headset along with a wave of static. “Are you going to give us the go-ahead to transmat or not? We need to do this now. EM levels are spiking. In a few minutes there’ll be too much interference to keep a signal lock.”

“Give me thirty seconds,” he said. “Chain Gleaming is gone. I’m going back for the data. Helios out.”

He pried himself from the window and bolted down the stairs, across the empty chamber, and into the projector room as fast as his power armor could carry him. He raced over to the data-block wired into the socket and ripped it out. The signal would be clearest on the roof, so with the hard drive in his mouth, he darted back up the stairs.

But then he glanced out a window and spotted something that stopped him in his tracks.

Walking down the empty streets was a pegasus stallion dressed in the golden cuirass of the emperor. His coat was as blue as the stripes on the flag and his mane was as purple as the stars. At that distance Thunder Gale couldn’t see his face, but he didn’t have to.

“Father?” He opened his mouth to speak and the hard drive tumbled down the stairs.

“Major, if we’re going to do this, we need to do it now!” Lightning Fire’s voice crackled through the static.

“I’m not coming back,” he said. “I can see my father. Helios out.”

She barked and protested and shouted into his headset, but he pulled it from his ear and set it on the floor. He went back downstairs and waited by the entrance.

White light danced and flickered across the edges of the doorframe, and a knock came. Thunder Gale pushed the door open and let him in.

Author's Note

I'd like to take the time to thank my editors: ToixStory, Garnot, Jarron, Dark Avenger, and Amacita for all their help!

6. You Are Not Alone

Planet Hell

Solocitizen

6.

You Are Not Alone

12th of Growing Season, 10,051 AC

In silence they rode the hyperlift to the Emperor’s Sanctuary. Just outside the windows to their right and left, storm clouds large enough to devour entire worlds churned and raged. Thunder Gale stared out the window at the light arcing and flashing in the clouds, just as his recently appointed Executive Officer, Lightning Fire, studied him.

“They don’t mention this at the Academy, but you shouldn’t do that to your crew,” she said.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Wandering through your ship and trying to socialize with your crew the way you were.” Lightning Fire held still as a statue. The only eye contact she gave him was out of the corner. “You’re not their friend, and they don’t think of you as theirs either. Prancing about the ship and making small talk with your subordinates makes them nervous. You can’t afford to keep them on edge like that. They have to envision you as a super-pony who’s invulnerable and lofty. Not like one of them.”

The vent overhead rumbled on and pumped cold air into the room. Outside in the wind and hail, a gunship emerged from out of the clouds and glided down to one of Kronos Station’s docks far below.

“What about you?” Thunder Gale spread his wings and turned to her. “Doesn’t bringing this up in the first place undermine that whole impression?”

“I don’t count, Major.” She didn’t budge from her spot. “I may be your XO, but I still hold the rank of general, and I’m here because you’re going to need a lot of help.”

“I thought you were here because you’re ambitious and want to get knighted?” Thunder Gale asked. General was a higher rank than most pegasi ever climbed, but even a general was still seen as a commoner or member of the nobility first, and a pegasus of exemplary personal achievement second.

“I’m here to serve the Empire in the best way I can.” She shuffled on her hooves. “As far as I'm aware, making sure you make it through your tours alive is the best way how.”

Thunder Gale stared at his reflection in the hyperlift doors. His mane was at regulation length and matched the blue on his officer cuirass. It was the same color as his father’s coat, and the same color as the stripes on the flag. His expression was solemn.

Nearly two years passed since the night of the palace bombing, and since Thunder Gale and his farther last spoke. After the attack his mother and sister had been declared dead and missing respectively, along with twenty others. Since then the empire had declared war on several earth pony-controlled worlds, vocational college swept Hill Born into another system entirely, and Thunder Gale had completed officer training and had been given his first command: a gunship called Spitfire. He missed Hill Born, a lot, but his mother and sister even more.

His promotion was a recent development, about a week ago, in fact. Almost immediately after the ceremony wrapped up and he toured the ship, he got a message from his father to attend a meeting with his inner circle of advisors and generals. He still didn’t know what to say to his father.

“It’s not that bad, sir.” Lightning Fire had spotted his bleak expression. “I read in your psych-report that you’re extroverted so I can understand how trying keeping to yourself is, but you’ll have plenty of opportunities to stretch your wings and socialize. The Spitfire is a gunship; she wasn’t intended to operate alone. We’ll spend most of our time docked in a Command Carrier, and officers from other ships will be around all the time.”

“It isn’t that.” Thunder Gale sighed. “Have you spoken to my father since the attack?”

Right then Lightning Fire stiffened up more than she already was. Her eye darted up to the camera mounted on the ceiling.

“No,” she said. “I saw him at your mother’s memorial service but I never got the chance to speak with him in person.”

“I’m worried, and in all honesty angry. I didn’t get to speak with him either. He’s always been distant, but not like this. He hasn’t been himself. Let me ask you something: when we found him in the corner of that hedge maze, did you see a green–”

“If you’re about to bring up what we saw the night of your birthday, I suggest you don’t. We don’t know who’s watching right now. He lost his wife and his daughter, and that’s all I’m going to say about this until we’re back aboard the ship.”

The hyperlift stopped, turned, and flung itself sideways along one of the arms jutting out from Kronos Station’s spine. Hanging from a geosynchronous platform, Kronos Station maintained a comfortable altitude in a gas giant’s upper atmosphere. It served as the nerve center of the Pegasus Empire’s military, the base of operations for the Imperial Marines and Sky Navy officer academies, and the wartime sanctuary for the Emperor. Thunder Gale would get there any minute, and he still didn’t know what to say to him.

At last the hyperlift pulled into the sanctuary, and the doors opened to the scent of flowers and blue banners that reached so high that they faded into the dark of the ceiling. Each banner bore the Gale Dynasty emblem, the manticore.

Thunder Gale and Lightning Fire stepped out onto a long carpet flanked on both sides by honor guards clad in gold and silver power armor. It was cold as they marched to the end of the carpet.

Past a set of doors as tall as the ceiling, generals and members of the Sky-Marshal Council gathered wing and hoof to slam tables together like aircraft carriers on parade. The walls were all lined with unlit holographic projectors. The generals and the Sky-Marshal Council didn’t acknowledge him or his XO, but instead fixed themselves on lining the table with their chairs. Thunder Gale grabbed a chair with his mouth and dragged it over to the table, and Lightning Fire followed right behind. The others whispered amongst themselves.

Without a word the Emperor strolled in, and the chatter fell silent. He watched his father and almost smiled, but his father didn’t even glance in his direction.

The Emperor stretched his wings and lowered himself onto the head of the table.

“Alright, boys, I don’t have all day so let’s skip to the important part,” he said. “I’ve asked you all here today to discuss the invasion of Arion and its surrounding colonies. They’re not like the earth pony trash we’ve been chasing these past two years. Arion is a developed world with a professional military and robust industry.

“Nonetheless, I expect nothing short of an overwhelming victory.” He swept his eyes across the pegasi gathered around him and hammered the table with his hoof. “I want to show the other tribes just what the pegasi are capable of.”

His eyes scanned the faces of every general, admiral, and advisor in the room but passed over Thunder Gale without pause.

“I’ve spoken with the Ministry of Culture,” he said, “and they assure me that the masses are hungry for war and will support an invasion.”

After the smoke cleared over the palace on the morning after Thunder Gale’s birthday, and his mother was found on lawn with eyes wide open and gazing at the sky, and surrounded by unmoving pegasi nobles, the emperor gave a stirring speech about revenge, and rallied the country for war. A terrorist organization operating on neighboring earth pony-controlled worlds took credit for the attack, and three weeks later a task force headed by the emperor himself appeared in orbit and bombarded the planet until craters marred the land where its cities once were. Intelligence tracked the organization to other planets, and so naturally, the cycle continued until an entire interplanetary nation lay conquered in the name of retribution. They never found any evidence of the terrorist organization on any of the worlds they slagged.

One of the Sky Marshals, a grey mare in ceremonial legionnaire armor, leaned forward and said to the Emperor: “We have numbers and firepower over the Arionese. A battle of annihilation is risky under most circumstances, but I believe that we can pull it off with minimal casualties. We could expect an unconditional surrender from the Arion government thirty-six hours after our fleets arrive in system.”

“The goal isn’t to simply ‘win’ a battle over Arion and bombard the surface,” the Emperor said. “I want to pave the way for annexation. The Ministry of Culture has also compiled a list of culturally significant museums and galleries. Above all else I want those sites preserved. After we’ve secured the system I want their collections brought here, to Hellas.”

Thunder Gale didn’t believe a word he was hearing. But it was all happening, and it was coming from his father’s mouth. What happened to preserving the balance?

"If we occupy Arion, casualties will be high.” Lightning Fire, who had remained silent until then, shook her head. “We can’t expect any less than at least two-hundred thousand troops dead each year for at least the first five years, and even more injured. You can expect even more if we start looting their art; it will be seen as an assault on their culture. As one of your advisors, I wish to voice my objections to this whole idea.”

“Lightning, you seem to be under the impression that I asked anypony for their opinion,” the Emperor said. “We are going to Arion and we are going to make them pay for safe-guarding known enemies of the Empire. We’re only here to talk about how. Is that clear?”

“Yes, your eminence.” Lightning Fire turned her head down at the table.

He watched the Emperor and Lightning Fire in stillness and in silence. He didn’t even want to breathe too loudly. He glanced at the faces of sky-marshals and the generals, and they were almost giddy with power, like a gang of bullies working up steam before stealing a foal’s lunch money.

But Arion wasn’t a foal. It was a planet, and one that was about as populated and diverse as Hellas. Thunder Gale stared down at space between his chest and the table and found the noble blues of his cuirass staring back at him. Sweat started to bubble up beneath his fur and feathers, and his heart beat, hard and fast in his chest.

“How reliable is our intelligence on Arion?” asked Thunder Gale.

He spoke up and all eyes in the room locked on him, including the Emperor’s.

“What do you mean?” The Emperor steepled his hooves and watched Thunder Gale from behind them.

“Our intelligence on The Somerset Compact was just flat out wrong,” he said. “The investigators we sent over couldn’t find any evidence linking the terrorists who bombed us to them.”

“That’s because they fled to Arion as we began the bombardment, which is exactly why we’re going,” the Emperor said.

Lightning Fire didn’t say a word, but she watched and listened to every word Thunder Gale said intently.

“Well, maybe we should consider doing our homework first this time.” Thunder Gale flung up a hoof and shook his head. Sweat rolled down his face, and his head swam. “Send the investigators over first before we, you know, gamble time, resources, and lives just to find out they had nothing to do with anything.”

"Do you mean to say that you disagree with my course of action?"

Time to be bold, he said to himself. Thunder Gale gulped down his fear and said: "Had you told me this morning that we were going to invade Arion, I wouldn't have believed you. Lightning Fire had a point there and you shut her down for being the only one making any sense here. I don't know where you managed to find the rest of these ponies, but they're either completely incompetent for going along with this or utter psychopaths for actually thinking this is a good idea."

The Emperor glared across the table at Thunder Gale. The generals and sky-marshals squirmed in their chairs, uncertain whether to get up or to stay. Lightning Fire stared at him unblinking.

Finally, the emperor barked the words, “leave us,” from behind his hooves and they scurried out. He and the Emperor stayed right where they were.

“You’ve disgraced me in front of my supporters,” the Emperor said once they were alone. “For much less than that I could have you thrown in a hole so deep you’d never see the light again.”

“It’s been two years, dad, is that all you have to say to me?” Thunder Gale asked.

“No son of mine would have brought such a disgraceful attitude to this table,” he said. “You’ve shamed the Empire and soiled my image in the eyes of my supporters. I have nothing more to say to you.”

“Yeah? That’s too bad, because I’m not done with you.” Thunder Gale pushed himself out of his chair, stomped up to the Emperor and jabbed a hoof right at his chest plate. His ears slanted back against his head as if on the attack. “I don’t know who you are, but you are not the same pony who taught me about loyalty and responsibility. He would have rather died than tear the galaxy apart on some revenge trip!”

The Emperor swatted his hoof away and huffed. He glanced at his golden cuirass in utter disgust. He shoved off the table and dropped onto all fours.

“I can’t believe it.” Thunder Gale shook his head and chuckled. “You care more about the fact that I touched you than you do about everything I just said.”

“This conversation has reached its conclusion.” The Emperor flicked his tail. “I have no intention of altering my plans just because you made a scene here today. All you’ve done is demonstrated that you are incapable of falling in line and unworthy of that uniform.

“If you can’t act like a pegasus, I won’t treat you like one.” He gave Thunder Gale his back and tapped a button on the wall. “Guards, arrest Major Gale and have him thrown in the brig. I don’t ever want to see this traitor again.”

“Is that it?” Thunder Gale laughed. “You’re just going to lock up your only son?”

“It’s strange,” he said. “I’d thought you of all ponies would understand why I must do this. And no, you’re not my son.”

Everything that followed passed as a dream. The honor guards stormed in, swarmed around The Emperor, and pinned every inch of Thunder Gale to the floor. He got a taste of linoleum while they clipped his wings to his body and shackled his hooves. They dragged him all the way back to the hyperlift and, while accompanied by no less than six guards, sent him on his way to the brig.

It was cold on the descent, as the guards kept him down on his side and his back to an air vent. There wasn’t any arguing with powered infantry without a suit of his own, and he wouldn’t have tried even if he did; his mind was too busy replaying what that other pony said to him.

Past their hooves and their steel wings, and the hyperlift windows, a squadron of gunships rumbled by the station and joined an armada of lights massing in the clouds. Thunder Gale remembered thinking, they’d only rendezvous here if they wanted to keep those ships from view; I’m looking at the invasion fleet. In a few weeks those ships will appear over Arion.

He veered his eyes to the floor. The space between his stomach and his heart knotted up.

The hyperlift stopped and the guards forced Thunder Gale onto his hooves and to march up to an official who carried boredom in his eyes. He asked him yes or no questions from behind a desk.

After the questions, they removed his shackles and shoved him into a room in the back.

They ripped the uniform from him and ran a scanner over his body. They even took the pendant his mother gave him from his neck and threw it in a drawer. He didn’t normally wear clothes, or at least not when he wasn’t on duty, but as he stood there in front of those officers and their gadgets and the cameras, he never felt more naked.

At one point he thought of fighting them, of lashing out with his powerful legs and bucking the smug expressions from their faces, but he knew just how long that’d last, so he resigned himself to their judging eyes and cameras.

After they finished their scans they pushed him down a hallway lined with blast doors. They opened one up and threw him behind the bars of a cell. There was no light in there, save for the dull light from a window to the outside, and once the guards locked him in his cell and slammed the door to the cellblock shut, there wasn’t any sound either. The floor was cold, and smelled faintly of urine.

For a while he sat too shocked to think, but then he got angry, and he flung his hooves on the bars and rattled them while shouting: “Let me out! I don’t belong here! I’m the prince!” But no response came, and his temper cooled.

Thunder Gale wanted to stay strong, as doing anything less would admit defeat, but as far as he knew he was alone in the dark, and at some point he stopped caring. He lay down on his stomach, rested his head on his hooves, and wept rivers in the floor.

Hooves shuffled over concrete in the cell beside his.

He shot up. Even after his eyes adjusted to the dark, he couldn’t see past the bars.

“Hello?” Thunder Gale shouted. “I know you’re over there! Come out and show yourself. Where do you get off watching me like that, huh?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to disturb you,” said the voice of a mare. “I didn’t know how you’d react so I just tried to stay quiet.”

“I…” Thunder Gale backed away, and slumped down on his hindquarters. “It’s okay, today hasn’t exactly gone well for me, and my temper is running a bit high.”

“So,” she said, “if you don’t mind me asking, how did you end up here?”

“I had just been put in charge of my first command.” Thunder Gale didn’t show the tears in his voice, but they still ran down his cheeks. “My father called me in to talk about an upcoming invasion, and I gave him a piece of my mind, so he threw me in here and disowned me. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s okay, I didn’t mean to pry,” the mare said. “I’ll leave you alone, if that’s what you want.”

“No, it’s okay, really,” he said, “I’m actually kind of glad there’s somepony else here.”

He lost himself in the floor for a minute.

“Things aren’t going to be the same for me after today, are they?” he asked.

“I think I know how you feel, though, if it helps. One minute all is right in your world and your whole future awaits you, and the next you’ve fallen so low that you struggle just to know how you got here, let alone where your future is headed now.”

Thunder Gale’s ears perked up and pivoted toward her voice. He picked himself up and sat down beside the bars.

“Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.” He leaned against the bars and tried to get a glimpse of her face without success. “How’d you get thrown in here?”

“I was here to finish my residency.” She laughed a little. “I’m one of the youngest ponies in my graduation class. My residence advisor, Doctor Caring Hooves, said I was one of the most promising surgeons she’d ever worked with.

“Then she found out my grandmother was a unicorn and she accused me of sabotage,” she said. “I’ve been here for two, maybe three days now. I cried nearly that whole time. But then you came, and I stopped.”

“Why was that?” Thunder Gale asked.

She stepped closer to him right as the storm outside flashed, and for the first time, he glimpsed her face. Her eyes were wet and her coat was tear stained, but her smile carried warmth. She wasn’t any older than he was.

“The worst is over,” she said. “Despite everything that’s happened and everything they’ve taken from me, at least now I have somepony to talk to.”

“I’m Thunder Gale, former Prince of the Pegasus Tribe.” He shot out a hoof for her to shake. “What’s your name?”

“Breeze Heart.” Instead of shaking his hoof, she grasped it in her own.

He tensed when their hooves locked together but he didn’t once think of shaking her off.

Author's Note

I want to thank Amacita for helping me with this chapter!

7. Dwellers on the Threshold

Planet Hell

Solocitizen

7.

Dwellers on the Threshold

13th of Planting Season, 10,056 AC

Present Day

“Dad, is that really you?” Thunder Gale pushed open the door and the light of the sun cascaded in.

Basking in the heat stood a pegasus. His coat was the same blue his father had and his mane was just as purple, but his eyes were wrong. They were wild and yellow and red and—while his posture was very cool and collected—they were thrashed against the composure.

Thunder Gale lowered his ears and he shook his head and gaped at the pony in front of him. He looked so much like his father but he wasn’t.

“No, I’m not.” The pegasus in the doorway spoke in a voice just as wrong as his eyes. “How many times does it have to hit you over the head before you learn: just because something appears one way, doesn’t mean it is. Now, come with me.”

Thunder Gale dropped into a combat stance—hooves spread apart for balance and wings raised, ready to strike. The muscles woven into his suit flexed and tensed.

“I don’t know who you are.” Thunder Gale ran his eyes up and down him but stopped at his face; his features were just like his father’s but the brooding fixed in them wasn’t. “But you’ve got a lot of nerve coming here masquerading as my father. Give me one good reason why I’d go anywhere with you.”

The pegasus dug his head in his wing and started preening. He took his head out and yawned.

Thunder Gale snorted.

“Listen, don’t pretend that you don’t want to be here,” the pegasus said. “You abandoned your mission the second I came strolling by, and I suspect that you would’ve abandoned much more than that just to get what you came for. Fortunately for you, I can help. There are things you want and I’m in a unique position to provide them, if you’ll assist me with the things I want. Right now that involves coming with me.”

“And just how would you know what I want?” Thunder Gale asked.

“Would it surprise you if I said that I could read your mind?”

Thunder Gale broke into a cackling laughter that strained the insides of his suit, but he never took his eyes away from the pegasus in the doorway. Sweat dripped off his mane and coat despite the coolant flowing between him and his armor.

The pegasus was so completely unmoved by Thunder Gale’s laughter that he didn’t even flinch as the slightest drop of spit splattered on his cheek. Instead, he fastened his eyes on Thunder Gale until his laughing stopped.

“You almost had me convinced.” Thunder Gale tried not to look him in the eye. “If you really could read my mind, then you’d know that what I want you can never give me.”

“Au contraire, you want your father back just as you remember him when you were a foal,” the pegasus in the doorway said. “And let me assure you, I can make that happen.”

“It wouldn’t take more than a glance at an encyclopedia to know that my father and I had a falling out.” Thunder Gale flicked his tail. “Of course I’d like things to go back to the way they were, but I’m here in response to a distress signal.”

“Let’s stop beating around the bush. This foalhood friend you’re scouring this planet for is as dead as everything else, but he was never who you were truly searching for. I’m offering you a chance to end your quest and that longing in your soul, but my price is your help. Now, what’s it going to be? Are you coming with me, or not?”

Thunder Gale closed his mouth, and swallowed. How did he know about Hill Born? he thought to himself.

The pegasus in the doorway grinned.

That got Thunder Gale to shuffle on his hooves and straighten up.

“You’re not like Chain Gleaming, are you?” he asked.

“How observant,” he said. “I’m glad to see you know how to think. Now, are you going to keep standing there or are you going to come outside so we can get on with it? We have a lot of ground to cover and time is short.”

The controls on Thunder Gale’s forehoof showed no new communications or activity from the Spitfire. He was sure of they were trying to reach him, but there was still too much EM interference. He was virtually alone, save for the pegasus who looked like his father.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” Thunder Gale said. “Let’s go take a walk.”

Outside the sun had reached its zenith and the city rippled under it. The towers broke the wind, and so the constant wailing that haunted the desert above didn’t reach them. But they didn’t spare Thunder Gale and his companion from the sun. The towers boxed them in from both sides in a concrete canyon and there was no shade. The pegasus wearing his father’s face also wore his golden cuirass, and it shined in spite of the dust.

They trotted along down the middle of the street until Thunder Gale spotted a flash of green in the window of an abandoned storefront. He stopped and touched a button on his console to switch the rifle on his shoulder to analogue targeting. He grabbed the firing bit tucked in the collar of his armor, and guided his rifle up to the window.

“Chain Gleaming and his entourage are back,” Thunder Gale said. “We’re out here in the open, and those buildings make great places for sharpshooters to set up shop. Why aren’t they attacking? I thought they wanted us dead.”

“Isn’t it obvious? They’re scared, and rightfully so. This isn’t an ambush; this is reconnaissance. The changelings are cunning and overconfident, but they are not suicidal. They know where attacking me would get them.”

The other day Chain Gleaming overpowered Thunder Gale and Breeze Heart and nearly killed them both all on his own, and not even an hour ago he surrounded his team with an army that outnumbered the whole of his ship’s crew. But just the mere presence of the pegasus guised as his father kept them all at bay.

“You’re the thing that the changelings—or whatever they’re called—are trying to get away from, aren’t you?” Thunder Gale was now taking him very seriously. “You’re the reason they broke out and why they’re after my ship?”

“You’re just figuring that out?”

Thunder Gale let the firing bit slip out of his mouth, and he put a foot or two between himself and the pegasus in gold.

“What are you?” Thunder Gale asked.

“I’m not a what, I’m a person.” He patted himself on his chest-plate as he spoke. “I may not be a pony but I’m very much alive. I have needs and desires, just as you do. I’ve experienced loss, just as you have. I’m stuck on this sand trap, just the same as you are. I have loved ones whom I miss dearly, just as you do. I have a home I want nothing more to return to, just as you do. But unlike you, I’ve had the last eleven thousand years to contemplate their loss. One way or another, I’m going home, so I suggest you stay close to me.”

At the mention of “loved ones,” the space between Thunder Gale’s heart and his stomach twisted. A light gust rolled down the street and swirled dust up against his armor. He could picture Breeze Heart clear in his head, sitting in her sickbay alone, save for the injured marine he sent back. Everypony returned to the ship except for him. She was a kind soul, and she didn’t deserve to get left in the dark.

As Thunder Gale stood in the street and in the heat, as he glanced between the windows and the pegasus, his tongue fiddled with the beacon in his tooth. He wanted to go back to her.

“Speaking of loved ones, there’s an entire ship full of ponies wondering where I am,” Thunder Gale said. “I really need to get back there before they send out another search team. I don’t want them risking their lives on another search and rescue operation.”

“If you’re so concerned about their well-being, why didn’t you lit out with the rest of your troops? No, you’re thinking of somepony in particular. Give me a hint, what’s she like?”

“What’s it matter to you?” Thunder Gale took a step back.

“I’m curious.” The pegasus in golden leaned closer. “If we’re going to be working together, I want to get to know you better. She cares for you enough to follow you to this dust-ball from hell, but is the feeling mutual?”

"Okay, that’s it, I’m done.” Thunder Gale shook any thought of Breeze Heart out of his head as best he could and leaned away on his back hoof ready to gallop off.

"Do you want your daddy back, or not?” The pegasus flung out his wings and leaned forward. “If you don’t, then by all means scurry back to your ship and crawl under your bed.”

Thunder Gale huffed, and ran his eyes over the buildings ahead of them. After a moment of deliberation and fiddling at the notches in his back molar, he answered him. “Okay, I’ll come with you, but I ask the questions from now on, alright?”

The pegasus flashed his teeth and continued down the street at a brisk trot, and Thunder Gale cantered after him.

Soldiers avoid open areas such as wide city streets when travelling through enemy territory, and when they did they travelled in overwatch. There wasn’t even enough cover to provide shade from the sun and every window around them was an opening for them to exploit. Thunder Gale didn’t know what disturbed him more: the fact that the pegasus ahead of him strolled right down the main roads without concern, or the fact that he was aware of Breeze Heart.

Thunder Gale shook the thought of her from his head; he couldn’t swallow what the pegasus said about being able to read his mind, but he didn’t exactly doubt him either. He needed to keep his mind away from Breeze Heart, so as he stepped over a chunk of façade he asked a question.

“So why did you pick my father?”

“What you’re seeing now is simply an emanation of what I truly am.” The pegasus wearing his father’s face unfolded a wing and dusted a patch of dust off his cuirass. “The only reason you can see me now is because you don’t see with your eyes, you perceive with your mind. My whole self isn’t something your organs of perception can relate to you in all their lies. I needed to pick a shape so I picked this one.”

“But why that one?” Thunder Gale caught up to him in a single bound. “What’s so special about my father?”

“Nothing.” The pegasus kicked aside a rock, and Thunder Gale stepped over it. “I’m not the least bit interested in him except for what he means to you. It may shock you to hear, but I’m actually quite curious about you. I wanted to make sure I got your attention, so I picked the dad you remember dearly.”

“Well, you got my attention, so change into something else, please.”

“I can’t. At least, not yet.”

Seven blocks later the streets opened to a gravel expanse. It reminded him of a clearing in a forest, the way that the trees suddenly parted and revealed a field and the sun. But there was no grass or other green things, just more of the brown dust that got in his coat and clung to the roof of his mouth, and gravel.

In the center of the clearing stood a slab of concrete. Thunder remembered seeing it on the map; they were now in the middle of the city and only several hundred yards away from where all his troops compass needles pointed.

“Okay, we’re here,” Thunder Gale said. “So what did you need me for?”

“The changelings and myself are no more native to this hellhole than yourself.” The pegasus who looked like Thunder Gale’s father stepped toward onto the gravel and trotted toward the slab. “In fact, we all share the same homeworld: Equus. I was brought here because this planet’s orbit just so happens to lie at the intersection of several important galactic energy centers, and this city is where it all converges.”

“Energy?” Thunder Gale cantered after him. His armored hooves crunched on the gravel beneath them.

“Magic, chi, some even call it electromagnetic fields and non-baryonic particles—try to keep up, Thunder Gale. It doesn’t matter what name you give it. All that matters is that it’s there, and it’s curbing my abilities. This place is a prison, remember? There’s a machine under there that’s painting the energy a toxic color. I need your help to shut it down. Once you do, I’ll have the power to uphold my end of the deal.”

“And change into something that doesn’t look like my dad?”

“Why, of course. Now be quiet. I need to concentrate.” The pegasus stopped a short distance before the slab and spread his hooves far apart, as if he were shouldering a heavy load, and groaned against it.

A tingling like pins and needles rolled through Thunder Gale’s spine and out his skin. The last time he got those prickling sensations a coffee table blew up, so he took a few steps back and shielded his face behind his armor-plated wing.

White light flashed from the pegasus and a quick snap followed. Inside a blink the concrete slab burst into a cloud of pink vapor. A metal seal sat in the gravel where the slab stood.

“How in the name of Celestia did you do that?” Thunder Gale flung his wings and eyes wide open.

“I’m magic, that’s how. Come along, we have work to do.”

A spiral staircase curved around the edge of the seal, burrowing into the ground. The pegasus led Thunder Gale down and around its coiling path until the light of the sun disappeared, and along with it the desert heat.

Ponies have long bodies and walk on four legs, and so they need some space to turn around. Just like those in Lt. Cloud Twist’s holdout, the stairs cork-screwing their way beneath the plate wasn’t designed with ponies in mind. The walls were too narrow for Thunder Gale to turn, and he couldn’t walk backwards up stairs, so he was trapped, with nowhere else to go except forward at whatever pace the pegasus guised as his father dictated.

A low vibration hummed up his spine. His armor plated hooves clattered on stairs. He took a moment to switch on his suit-mounted lights, and all around him long shadows stretched out over carvings in the walls.

Winged creatures soared through clouds turned green by rust, but to his shock, none of them were pegasi or ponies of any kind. They were two-legged ape creatures of the same variety that the statue in the desert depicted. There was something so equine about them. Not in their shapes, but in the way they pointed to one another and the expressions on their faces. The strangest parts of all, at least to Thunder Gale, were their wings and what he thought was a third eye carved in their foreheads. It was right on the spot where the horn sprouts from a unicorn.

To his left, the sculpture showed a warrior tumbling from the sky on burning wings. He ran his hoof over the tarnished metal, and a shiver ran down his spine. He felt as if he had just stepped over his own grave.

“They called it the story of Icarus.” The pegasus slowed to a stop. His hoof pointed and guide Thunder Gale’s LEDs to a sculpture of the falling warrior. “It was about an inventor and his son, and a set of wax wings they put together. They took them for a flight, and when his father turned back, Icarus kept flying in some vain attempt to out-do his old man and ascend to the heavens. As he got closer, his wings melted and he fell from the sky.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Thunder Gale said. “Sons do crazy things trying to live up to their fathers.”

Another sculpture was embedded in the wall to his right, and it depicted a battle between the winged-apes and a legion of beasts.

“So what do these guys have to do with all this?”

“The humans came here seeking enlightenment.” The pegasus craned his head at Thunder Gale and, in doing so, brought a pair of horns that had sprouted from his forehead into the light of the LEDs; they weren’t like a unicorn’s, but like a beast’s. “They believed that this world is a border between this realm and the next, and they weren’t the first to believe such lies. Many species have come here since this planet’s birth seeking power, your own included, and they all paid for their ambition with their lives.”

At that point, Thunder Gale wanted nothing more than to get out of there and away from the thing parading as his father, but he wasn’t about to tell him that. When the pegasus continued down, he followed and kept him in the light. If he can give me my father back, then it will be worth it, he told himself. Again.

“I know what you think of me.” The pegasus boomed and his voice carried off the walls so far that his words returned as echoes. “But there’s no reason why we can’t be friends. Give me a break and cheer up a little! Doesn’t this remind you of old times? You, me, and a labyrinth. I know it’s not a hedge maze, but there are plenty of twists and turns along our path.”

"I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Thunder Gale flinched and reached for his mouth. The low vibration humming up the stairs ramped up in frequency, and right then Thunder Gale’s transponder ached in his jaw. “I just want to do what we came here to do, and then I want my father back. We don’t need to talk.”

“Come on! You can at least show a little bit of gratitude. My only concern is for the well-being of my friends, and I count you as one of them. Be thankful! I do hope that you and The Good Doctor Heart will at least consider giving me a chance after I prove myself to you.”

Thunder Gale stopped. The pegasus took a few steps more before stopping as well. All was silent, except for the low humming travelling up the walls.

“What do you want with Breeze Heart?” Thunder Gale asked.

“Nothing. I’m simply making chit-chat.”

“Then how come you keep bringing her up?”

“If you must know, I’ve been acquainted with her almost as long as you have.” The pegasus turned his head at him sidelong, but the shadow of his brow and his horns concealed his expression. “I have big plans for all of us.”

“Are you going to tell me what those are?”

"I haven’t been happy in a long time, and now that I’m free, I want to reunite with my loved ones and rebuild that life we once had. To that end, I want to put an end to the suffering that’s been inflicted upon ponykind and create an Order that will last the next eleven thousand years. You still don’t remember who I am, do you?”

“Why do you keep acting like I should?” Thunder Gale tried to back up but the stairs behind him kept him right where he stood. “I’ve never met you before in my life.”

“Not in this one, no, but you have every reason to remember your old friend’s name,” the pegasus in his father’s clothes and likeness said to him. “As a show of good faith, allow me to enlighten you: my name is Discord, The Spirit of Order, and I suggest you remember that in the future. It’s rude to forget about your old pals.”

“I’m starting to think this was a mistake.” Thunder Gale put his jaw down off center and pried the cap off the beacon in his tooth. “I knew I should’ve transmatted back with the others.”

A strong electromagnetic field can prevent a transmat from keeping a lock on a pony long enough to teleport him out, but a powerful enough beacon could cut through it. The implant in Thunder Gale’s tooth was a single-use one-time-only non-refundable deal, but he’d give anything to be back on his ship and to see Breeze Heart safe again, instead of down there in the dark and stale with a monster disguised as his father.

“What happened to all your enthusiasm?” The pegasus’s teeth glistened in the light of the LEDs. “Put all those second guesses aside like you did when you abandoned your crew and come with me. You’re so close to getting your father back. What does anything else matter now?”

“My crew matters, and so does Breeze! My father wouldn’t have left them like I did—and I’ll admit that was a mistake, and I can’t change what I that, but I can still do right by them now. I don’t know what you want with her, but you’re not getting near her!”

“My, my, aren’t you protective.” The pegasus named Discord looked straight ahead into the darkness in front of him, and in doing so withdrew his face from the light. “Yet so eager to leave her and everypony else to fend for themselves when it suits you. You’re no better than me, so quit trying to delude yourself by taking the moral high ground. I want to pick up exactly where we left off—all three of us.”

Thunder Gale didn’t say anything more. He brought his teeth down on the transponder and the beacon activated.

“I can see I’m not going to make any more progress with you.” Discord sighed and peeked over his shoulder at Thunder Gale. “I thought there was hope for you, but I guess I was wrong. I’ll let that chip in your mouth do its thing so you can get out of here, but only for old time’s sake. I’m not going to give up and I have no problem taking what I want either. I’ve waited too long to let this opportunity pass me by. Let that be a warning to you: next time we meet, don’t get in my way.”

The transmitter in Thunder Gale’s tooth buzzed twice; the Spitfire’s crew had locked on to him and had initiated transmaterialization. While he waited for the transmat beam to whisk him away, he glared Discord ahead of him down as if to say: ‘I’ll see you in hell!’

It was a front for his fear and Discord knew it. He only stared back and laughed. And laughed.

Yellow light washed over Thunder Gale and flooded the stairwell. The hairs of his coat stood on edge and his armor soaked up a searing heat and his fur and mane stood up, and his ears rang. Then transmat light flashed and it was all over.

He was standing in the well-lit, utilitarian, steel walls of the Spitfire’s transmat chamber. Vents near the ceiling pumped in cool air that smelled nothing but fresh and clean into the wide and open room. A mare in a black and red officer’s cuirass stood propped up on a control panel flipping switches.

"Lightning Fire, ma’am, we’ve got him,” she said into a microphone on her control panel and then turned to Thunder Gale. “Are you okay, Major? Do you need anything?”

He desperately wanted to say, “No, no I’m not,” but the officer in him wouldn't let that out. Instead, he told her: “I’m fine, as you were.” Then, he trotted out the door and bolted the second she looked away.

Author's Note

This update has come at you from Everfree Northwest!
Big thanks to Dark Avenger for helping me work through this chapter.
If you've enjoyed the story so far, don't forget to like, fave, and comment (it's good for my ego).
Happy Independence Day and... <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPfmsiGXCWY>

8. The Cold Hearted Colt I Used to be

Author's Note

For those of you who didn't see my last blog post, there were some rank changes throughout the entire fic. Thunder Gale is now "Major Gale," not Commander. For more details on this revision, please see my blog.
Also, only one other set of eyes have passed over this chapter other than mine, and I was the only one read over the next to completion looking for mistakes and such. You're entering into unknown and unread territory that hasn't had the same privileges of editing that the other portions of this fic have benefited from. If you spot any typos, bad grammar, or bungled up sentences please feel free to leave a comment about them and I will get to revising them as soon as I can.
Happy reading!

8. The Cold Hearted Colt I Used to be

Planet Hell

Solocitizen

8.

The Cold Hearted Colt I Used to be

20th of Growing Season, 10,051 AC

Solitary confinement was designed to wear the mind down.. Ponies are social animals. They wake for the day and live out their lives together under whatever sun happens to be closest. With neither companionship nor the semblance of day and night, their circadian had no rhythm. It was only a matter of time before paranoia crept in. Given enough time, the brain cements the madness in and there’s no going back.

But for the last eight days, Thunder Gale was not alone. Behind the bars that separated his cell from the next, a mare named Breeze Heart kept him company. They had a lot in common as they were both from the upper-side of Pegatropolis, they both came from families that congregated in similar flocks, and they had both lost all of that over night.

After his second day in jail, she started to notice him on another level, and he noticed that she noticed him. They both watched each other intently as their wings and hooves and manes passed under rare patches of light. They hung on each other’s words and laughed at each other’s bad jokes. Although they shared such close quarters, they didn’t push each other’s buttons.

On the third day, while a command carrier was docking at the station and the light from its engines poured in from the window, Thunder Gale asked Breeze Heart to join him at a patch of golden light between their cell bars so they could get a better look at each other.

He had seen her face once before, on the day the guards threw him in, and he remembered there was such kindness and understanding in her that she put his troubles aside for a moment, but when he saw her again clear in the light he was unprepared for her beauty. From her thistle colored mane, to her petite frame, and to her sweeping tail, every inch of her was just as beautiful as the face he glimpsed before.

“You’re a gorgeous mare,” Thunder Gale dared to say.

Her eyes lit up, she beamed, and she exclaimed: “You too!” Then it all vanished as soon as she realized what she just said and she fled to the far end of her cell.

Thunder Gale chuckled and tried to help her laugh it off, but that only drove her under the shadow of her bed where she knew he couldn’t even spot her outline. It was several hours before she crept out.

The day after, when they were sitting as close to each other as the bars allowed and the conversation flowing between them had lulled, he decided to take a gamble. His heart beat swiftly as he reach through the bars and around the back of her neck. His hoof found her hair, but as soon as he started to reach over her shoulders she bolted into the air and squeaked. In the darkness, he hadn’t notice that she was in fact standing. It wasn’t her mane that his fumbling hoof caressed, but her tail. The neck and head he had been reaching for was actually her buttocks.

Heat rushed to his face and he flung himself from the bars. He spent ten minutes apologizing to her, hiding, and trying to figure out a clever way to spin his slip up into a complement. He tried to dig himself out by making a witty comparison between her tail and butt to her mane and face, but it didn’t work.

But she didn’t judge, and told him to stop worrying; she forgave him. He startled her. That was all.

On the fourth day he told her that the Emperor hadn’t been acting like himself for the past two years, and that he believed one of the most powerful ponies in the galaxy, his father, had been replaced by an agent of some kind. He laughed at himself, and said it sounded preposterous.

But she reached across the bars, put her hoof on his shoulder, and told him that it sounded a little crazy, yes, but so was the galaxy they lived in and that stranger things were known to happen.

Six days after getting thrown in jail, Thunder Gale told Breeze Heart that if they ever got out of the brig, he’d like to treat her to dinner at a fancy restaurant.

And she asked him, “Why wait?” and to give her a day or two to put something together.

On the eighth day, Breeze Heart called him over, and they sat down facing each other between the bars.

“I’d like to welcome you to The B&H Diner, the best restaurant in the cellblock.” She held out a sack tied together from her scarf and set it down on the cold concrete. “On our menu, we have whole-wheat bread from our local bakery, apples grown right here on our ten-acre farmland, and chocolate imported from Equus itself.” She pulled on the knot with her mouth and with her hooves, and food rolled out.

The bread she was referring to was the dry, grainy, high-protein biscuits the guards handed out. The apples were none other than those served at lunch and they were always hard and sour. The chocolate were bite-sized bits accumulated over the last week from desert. To Thunder Gale, it was a small feast, and it was divine.

“I’ll start with an apple, if you don’t mind.” He nodded at one of them and swallowed spit.

“Why certainly, sir.” She picked one up in her mouth, holding it by the stem, and dropped it in his waiting hooves. “And if there’s anything else I can get you, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.”

Thunder Gale devoured that apple, and after he wiped the juices from his mouth, asked for some biscuits and gobbled them down. The guards fed them just enough to keep them healthy, but never enough to keep them satisfied. He stopped shoveling food in his mouth long enough to admire it all: there was so much more food spread out on that scarf than he’d seen since getting locked away.

“How did you get all of this food?” He sat up and nibbled on the remaining bits of his biscuits.

“I set aside food from my meals that last couple days.” She took a dainty bite from an apple.

“You couldn’t have been eating very much. I’ll slow down, you should have the rest.”

“No, please, have what you want.” Her wings snapped open and she shoved two more biscuits to his side of the jail. “I’ll admit I more than probably wasn’t eating enough to stay healthy, but it was only for a few days, and I didn’t mind fasting if it meant I could treat us to dinner. Please, don’t spoil it by worrying. Enjoy yourself.”

The rest of dinner passed without conversation, as dinners tended to when the food was delicious or the ponies were famished. Thunder Gale and Breeze Heart picked the scarf clean and afterwards they sat in each other’s company with, for the first time since either was locked up, full bellies.

“Can I ask you a question?” he asked her.

“Go ahead, I reserve the right not to answer, but I can’t imagine why I wouldn’t.” She straightened up.

“You mentioned that you were training to be a doctor.” He propped himself up on his side and gave her his full attention.

“That’s correct.”

“I guess I’m curious to hear about how you landed on that career path.”

Breeze Heart lay down on her stomach and rested her chin on her hoof while she thought. She hummed in near silence to herself.

“Since I was little I had this dream about opening a free clinic,” she said. “I’m not attracted to the thought of spending my career as a MD so much as I am running that clinic. I figured that the best way I could provide such a service was from the front lines, so to speak. I can’t guarantee the help of other surgeons and medical professionals, but I can do what I can. I suppose next you’re going to ask me where I got the idea from?”

“That’s my plan. I’m really curious, so don’t stop there.”

“Well, if you must know, it’s a story I prefer to keep to myself. So if I do tell it to you, you have to promise me that you’ll never repeat it without my permission. I know I might not seem like it but I’m actually quite, well, shy.”

“Okay.” He sat up on his hindquarters. “I promise not to tell.”

“Very well then, and thank you.”

There was a flash of lightning outside their window, and they glimpsed each other again for a second or two, no more than that. Before the light faded, she found his eyes.

“When I was a little filly, my mom and dad took me on a trip out to the Feather Hills Province on Hellas,” she said. “Have you ever been?”

“No, I can’t say I have.”

“It’s the most undeveloped and under-populated region on the whole planet. It’s covered by forests so vast, that you could fit all the ponies on the continent comfortably inside their borders. However, only about thirty-thousand individuals reside there. Lumberjacks and miners, mostly. We went there to see the mountains and so my dad could talk business with a wealthy landowner, but as our ornithopter was about to set down on the airstrip my mom went numb and stopped breathing.

“It was acute equine pulmonary turbulence, and only about one in ten million ponies get it, but as it turns out pegasi are more prone to the disease and she had a genetic predisposition. At the time, though, we didn’t know what it was and we rushed her to the nearest hospital. When we arrived, the medical staff weren’t of much help; most of them were just surgeons and hadn’t seen anything like this before either. They said the most they could do was try to make her comfortable and hope for the best.

“I remember watching my dad argue raise his voice at the nurses outside her room, but after a time he gave up and broke down crying. I felt so helpless. I had never conceived of my parents as anything less than larger than life figures before, as I had never seen either of them get sick or in a hospital. I suppose I had thought them immortal, but then I saw her like that and as much as I refused to accept it, I knew deep down she was dying.

“Right as we were getting ready to say our good-byes to her, this stallion in a surgical gown knelt down next to us and said he could help. As it turns out he was a traveling cardiac specialist that was there with a whole menagerie of experts as part of some program to train and assist hospitals in disadvantaged parts of Hellas. They wheeled her into a tent they converted into an operating room and ten minutes later the surgeon came out and told us that the operation had been a success.

“Ever since then I always looked up to those doctors as heroes. I want to do that for others: be there when they need it most. Save a family’s day or be there however I can. I know it sounds rather childish, wishful, and naïve, that’s why I don’t share that story very often.”

Breeze Heart hid her face behind her mane and turned her eyes down and off to the side. She tapped her two front hooves together. He glimpsed her infrequently as the storm flashed.

“Thank you,” Thunder Gale said, “I’m not sure what else to say other than I’m glad that you shared it with me.”

“You’ll remember not to tell anypony else?”

“Of course, that’s what I promised.” Thunder Gale reached past the bars and brushed his hoof through her mane to uncover her face. “I don’t think you’re naïve or have any reason to hide. I think it’s wonderful that you want to go out of your way to help ponies like that, and if anypony has a problem with that, then they’re the ones with the problem. Not you.”

She put her hooves down, not far from his, and looked at him from across her side.

“I believe you’re the first pony I’ve told that to who hasn’t called me overly wishful or naïve.”

“I can’t imagine why, but maybe that makes me a wishful thinker too.”

For a long time they sat there without doing any more than enjoying each other’s company.

“So, how was your meal?” Breeze Heart asked after awhile.

“It was a feast fit for the royal stomach.” He rubbed his belly. “Make sure you pass my compliments along to the chef.”

“Thank you.” She giggled. “The B&H prides itself on high quality service and its gourmet cooking.”

“My only complaint is this chair.” Thunder Gale shifted his rear end around on the concrete and stirred wings. “It’s as hard as a rock. I still want to take you to a fine restaurant once we’re out of here, someplace with better seats.”

She got quiet, and her face retreated into the shadows her side of the jail.

“What’s wrong?”

“Do you really think they’re going to let us out?” she asked.

“I’m the prince of the pegasus tribe and, although you’re not nobility, you’re a citizen of The Empire and from a family with enough wealth and status to live in the upper city. They have to do something with us. They can’t just leave us in here and pretend we don’t exist, that’s not the way these things work.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Me too.”

There was quiet between them, but they stayed beside one another and kept each other company. After a time, Breeze Heart leaned all the way forward and rested her forehead on the bars, right next to him. He reached a hoof through to her side and held her as best he could. Her body was warm, and her pink coat was soft to the touch. She smelled of sweat and dirt, but there was smooth harmony and sweetness under all that. He savored the sensations of her, her smell, her warmth, and her colors, to commit them to memory.

After a while they fell asleep beside each other, with only the bars between them.

* * *

Shouting woke them sometime later. As Thunder Gale and Breeze Heart shook the fog from their heads and rose to their hooves, muffled gunfire joined the shouting beyond the door to their cellblock.

“What’s going on?” she asked him.

“I don’t know.” His eyes were fixed on the door. “We’d better find cover.”

The two of them scattered; Thunder Gale to the far end of his cell where the shadows were the thickest, and Breeze Heart to her hiding place under her bench.

The shouting stopped, as did the gunfire, but both they kept silent and to their hiding places. A moment later, and blinding sparks spat from between the plates of the cellblock door. The sparks lit up the jail and the shadows of the bars leapt and danced across the floor. Molten metal dribbled onto the concrete and heat and chemical fumes wafted into the air.

"Thunder, what should we do?” she asked.

“There’s nothing we can do. Just hang tight.”

The light faded out, and the door flung open, and there stood Lightning Fire, clad in blue power armor and her helmet clutched at her side. Her blazing mane burned in the light unlike anything Thunder Gale had seen in eight whole days. A whole team of marines stormed in around her.

“Major, my friends and I got it in our heads to take the Spitfire for a joyride, care to join us?” She raised her steel plated wings.

“I’d love to, but my dad grounded me and told me I couldn’t have friends over.”

“Let me see what I can do about that. Stand clear.” She pointed at the lock to his cell and barked: “Get a thermite charge on the door.”

One of the marines rushed up and patted an adhesive strip onto the lock.

“Hey, get her door too.” Thunder Gale pointed to Breeze Heart’s cell with a flex of his wing and a nod of his head.

“You’re taking me with you?” Breeze Heart asked. “I’m not sure if I want to get involved in all this. I’ve never been in a fight before of any kind. I abhor violence, and it sounds like there might be plenty ahead.”

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want to,” Thunder Gale said, “but would you really rather stay here and eat protein biscuits by yourself?”

She crawled out from under her bench then looked to Lightning Fire, to Thunder Gale, and then to her hooves.

“No, I wouldn’t,” she said. “Cut me free.”

The marine at his door rushed to hers and attached a charge to the lock. He darted back to the entrance and Lightning Fire’s entire squad backed away. Thunder Gale and Breeze Heart both covered their eyes and turned away from their doors.

Light flashed, metal burned and boiled, but in a few seconds it was over, and when it did the doors to their cells swung wide and open.

“Unless there’s anything else, Major, I suggest we get going before the station AI figures out what’s going on and sends the entire Mobile Infantry down here.” Lightning Fire raised her helmet over her head and fastened it on. She nodded at two of the marines and they took point out of the door and into the brig.

Thunder Gale followed Lightning Fire and her troops out the long corridor out of the brig, with Breeze Heart sticking close behind him, and a trio of marines bringing up the rear.

Guards in power armor lay on the ground groaning. The neural links along their spines were torn open, trapping them in their own suits. Even more who were armored only with their uniforms were hog-tied and gagged. Each stared up at Thunder Gale in fear and anger as he walked by on his way out. He only stopped long enough to grill a guard about his pendant and retrieve it from a storage locker.

A network of computers managed by a central AI relayed data across each of the various compartments and sections of Kronos Station. Before Lightning Fire raided the cellblock, she used her command codes to isolate the brig and kept the AI from checking in on the brig. A silent alarm had been triggered the moment the marines had stormed the brig, but it didn’t make it out until Lightning Fire got Thunder Gale, Breeze Heart, and each of her marines aboard the Spitfire and halfway to a jumpship. Two command carriers and five squadrons of gunships were in pursuit, but they wouldn’t catch them before the ship reached jump velocity.

After they docked with the jumpship and were in the final stages of FTL prep, Lightning Fire asked Thunder Gale to join her in the captain’s ready room.

The cheers of celebrating crewmen rose and fell on the other side of the door, but in that close space, they were alone. The air was cool and fresh and the overhead light was bright, but not so much that Thunder Gale needed to squint. A black and red manticore—the banner animal of the royal family—hung from a golden cord over the captain’s desk; both himself and Lightning Fire stood before the desk, neither one quick to grab the chair behind it.

“I wanted to thank you, General Fire, for coming to get me out.” Thunder Gale adjusted the straps on his cuirass; the blue on it bothered him. “You pulled it off flawlessly, but that was still a huge risk. Why did you do it?”

“What other choice did I have?” she said. “You could have handled yourself in that meeting better, but it doesn’t change the fact that you said exactly what I was thinking but didn’t have the courage to say myself. You were right. Loyalty is about more than just going along with the flow, and your actions were those of a true patriot. Did you think I was just going to let you rot in there after you one-upped me like that?”

“I’m just glad you did.” Thunder Gale chuckled and glanced at the captain’s seat. “As soon as word gets out about what we did, there’s not a moon in the Empire that we can run to. We have to find some place outside pegasi space. At least that’s what I’d recommend, ma’am.”

“You’re still the commanding officer last time I checked.” Lightning Fire gestured at the desk as if she was presenting it to him. “Pick out a star in the sky and we’ll set a course.”

“That was back when I was next in line for the throne. I only got my command because I was the prince, and because this ship was only one part of a much larger fleet. I wasn’t calling the shots like this. We’re not a part of the marines any more, I can’t expect to—”

“Yes, you can.” Lightning Fire held up a hoof. “Believe it or not, you’re older than I was when I became an acting CO. Remember your training and you’ll do fine—”

“But you’re a general. I can’t—”

“Shut up, colt, I still outrank you so don’t cut me off.” She huffed and continued. “I’m just a commoner from Hoofhills Province who somehow managed to attain the rank of general, but you’re the prince. Do you think any of them liked the idea of spending their career in a champagne unit farting around Hellas? They signed up for that crap because they wanted to follow you. You bet your ass I can captain them, but only you can command their hearts and minds. No, the captain’s chair is yours. That’s an order.”

Thunder Gale approached the desk, but stopped before he stepped around back.

“You’re the more experienced officer,” he said.

“Which is why I’m planning on remaining your second in command. The ponies on this ship want to put their faith in you, as long as you honor and respect that trust you'll do fine.”

Thunder Gale at last stepped behind the desk and lowered himself into the chair. He hadn’t used his ready-room before; he never felt like the ship’s commanding officer. But with the black and red manticore behind him, his XO ahead of him, and his front hooves resting on grains of lacquered oak wood, he felt like the captain of a starship.

“Thank you,” he said to her. “I won’t let you down.”

“What are your orders, sir?” Lightning Fire smiled with her eyes, there still was an undertone of disappointment in her voice.

“I’m going to address the crew.” Thunder Gale leaned forward in his chair and held down a button on his desk. A whistle sounded, and the cheering voices in the outside his door went quiet.

“This is Major Gale speaking, I wanted to thank each and every one of you for the sacrifices you made to rescue myself and Doctor Heart from the brig. For your actions, you have my gratitude, but I will not shield you from the truth: we are all traitors and enemies of the throne in the eyes of the law and the military. We cannot return to our families and friends and the lives we left behind, but I promise you that I will not rest until we can. The true enemies of the empire are out there, and make no mistake we will bring them to justice, and once we do we will earn our way back. I promise each of you that.

“Tough times are ahead of us, but I expect the same level of professionalism and dedication that the marines are known for. Just as we did not cease to be citizens when we enlisted in the marines, we have not ceased to be marines just because we no longer answer to an admiral. Carry yourselves proudly, and stay faithful to each other and we will make it home. Gale out.”

He leaned back in the captain’s chair—his chair—and rested his front legs on the hoofrest. The blues on his uniform caught his eyes again, and at once he pulled off the straps and pulled the entire cuirass over his head and flung it down on the desk.

“Something wrong with your uniform?” Lightning Fire blinked, but she did not flinch or move in her spot.

“Yeah, we’re not officially part of the marines any more. I want our uniforms, our armor, and our ship to reflect that. Find somepony to start painting the blues over. I don’t want to see those colors on my ship any more.” He glanced at the manticore banner behind him, and then hopped out of his chair onto all fours, and then turned to her. “Maybe we could do something with this?”

“Aye, aye, Major, I’ll get somepony on it right away.” She turned toward the door and put a hoof on the console, but then made a sidelong glance at him. “Before I leave I wanted to ask about these ‘enemies’ you mentioned. You do know who they are and where to look for them, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he said. “Sort of. I’m aware of them but not where to find them. At least not yet. You know pretty much all that I do; one’s been impersonating my father since my fledging night.”

“I’m sure we’ll find them. No pony’s more eager to get back home than I. You can count on me, sir.”

“Glad to hear it.” Thunder Gale nodded at her. “Dismissed.”

She pressed down on the control panel and the door to the bridge slid open, and she hurried out.

After she left he spent a long while staring at the black and red manticore banner, and everything that happened over the last few hours. And about Lightning Fire. It took the entirety of her career to reach her rank and her status within the military, all in the hopes of one day ascending to the upper echelons of nobility, and in a single day she threw it all away. She used to command entire legions of marines, but now she wasn’t even in command of the gunship she served on.

For a time, Thunder Gale stood there letting the vibrations of the Spitfire’s engines, the smell of the air pumping out of the vents, and the chatter of the ponies on the other side of the door soak in. He grinned, and put aside all thoughts of Lightning Fire. The Spitfire was his ship and he loved it.

Before he got too comfortable in his chair, there was the matter of who to put in charge of sickbay. The ship’s medical officer decided to staff on Kronos Station, and so, they needed a new one. Breeze Heart was the best pony for the job, and nothing that anypony could say would change his mind.

Thunder Gale trotted down to sickbay a little later looking for Breeze Heart. He had a feeling she’d be there, after all she wasn’t the kind of pony to sit on her hooves when the opportunity to help other ponies presented itself.

Sure enough, when he opened the door to sickbay there she was perching over a medi-pod with dozens of holographic documents spread out on its plexi-glass dome.

She tapped a document and it drifted off the dome and floated to her face, and as she cantered to the desk for a stylus, it followed her. Scribbling away with the stylus between her teeth, she filled a page with notes, and cantered back to the medi-pod. Breeze Heart still hadn’t spotted him.

Not that it mattered. That didn’t shake his confidence any.

A lot of times when a colt approached a filly to solicit a date from her, or anything else for that matter, there was often a lot of mental preparation involved. Whole hours, days, or even weeks can burn away while the colt worked up that false sense of invulnerability and confidence that he needed to ask. Thunder Gale himself was just as guilty of that as anypony else.

But he didn’t fall victim to that thinking as he stood before sickbay. He simply cleared his throat, marched up to Breeze Heart, and accepted whatever might happen.

“I could really use a doctor onboard, and I was wondering if you’d like the job.” Thunder Gale put the question to her without thought of failure or rejection. Although he had only met her little over a week ago, something inside him compelled him to ask. He was just following through on the natural next step.

“I know that this isn’t what you had in mind,” he went on, “I don’t really like the idea of being an exile either, but we just might find our way back and we could use the help.”

She met his gaze and, for a brief second, her tail twitched and the corners of her eyes lit up and a grin flashed over her lips. Then she looked away and hid her excitement.

"I must admit it’s a tempting offer.” She set her stylus down. “It’s not everyday that the opportunity to run my own clinic—excuse me, sickbay—knocks on my door. Given my current status within the empire and the rather incomplete nature of my resume, it will probably be a long while before another one comes by.”

“So what’s holding you back?”

“I’m not very ambitious, but I still want to find that cottage I was telling you about and start my own clinic.” She turned her eyes to the floor and lowered her ears. “I want to help ponies in need, and I’m not sure if serving in your sickbay will get me there. I don’t want to spend my best years on a starship and, you know, being in combat situations. I don’t like violence much, remember?”

Thunder Gale shook his head, reached for her hoof, and gave it a quick squeeze.

“I’m not planning on staying in exile for very long,” he said. “A year, maybe two at most. I think I speak for everypony on this ship when I say that we’re all highly motivated about getting back home and back to our lives. As soon as we’ve shown the empire who the real traitors are, we will.”

The hologram beside Breeze Heart’s face beeped, and she pulled herself away from him. She swiped her wing across the floating box of text, and the orange light holding it together vanished, and the beeping along with it. She took her time before saying anything more.

“What happens if you can’t set things right in a year or two?” she asked. “Are you planning on keeping up the crusade until you do?”

“This crew has already sacrificed so much, and I’m not about to ask them to give up any more than a couple of years.” Thunder Gale took a step toward her and flicked his tail.

“You haven’t entirely answered my question: what would you do if it took more time?” She looked to him and awaited his answer in composed silence.

He thought up a response right away but waited before speaking.

“After that, I’d give up the search and find world far away from the Empire where we could all start over,” he said. “Believe me, I’m not particularly excited about being an exile aboard a stolen ship, either, but if we’re successful we can go back to our families and all that we left behind.”

“That does sound like a reasonable plan.” She rested a hoof beneath her chin. “There is something romantic about life on a starship, and a thrill of standing on a stolen vessel like this. I feel quite like a pirate.”

“And if you stay with us, at least we’d all be in this together. I know some of the crew is a little rough around the edges and life on a gunship isn’t exactly glamorous, but I’m sure it’d beat trying to make it completely on your own. That’s what friends are for, right? Helping each other when they need it.”

Breeze Heart stared at the floor, and reached for the stylus with her wing. She fiddled with it in her hooves for a few minutes.

“Okay.” She picked her head up and giggled with glee. “I’ll be your doctor. I was less than a year and a half away from completing my training and certification, anyway.”

“Great! I’m happy to hear it!” Thunder Gale reached for her hooves and held them in his. “Now, about that dinner I promised you…”

9. A Dark Road

Planet Hell

Solocitizen

9.

A Dark Road

13th of Planting Season, 10,056 AC

Present Day

It was not enough to simply wear the form of a thing. To truly embody another required a changeling to alter their mind and their thoughts as well as their body, as external and internal reality were one and the same as far as magic was concerned.

So as Chain Gleaming maneuvered through the dark of the tunnels his brothers and sisters had burrowed throughout the desert earth, he maintained the pretense of wearing his disguise and carrying his gun mounted on his shoulder instead of levitating it. Why? Because that was what Chain Gleaming would do. The dirt, the incomprehensible dialect, and the sour plaque caked to his teeth were all things he dispensed with, but the original loved the hair covering his body, his Sigil Tech name-tag, and the perpetual stubble, so he learned to love them too and kept playing the part.

Even as he followed the pheromone trail of his companions as it veered up through a tunnel worn smooth from use, and wings as thin and translucent as a wasp’s sprouted from his back, he maintained a mindset of Chain Gleaming. They buzzed and propelled him up the shaft while he ruminated over his cat.

The tunnel ended in the basement of one of the city’s many towers. The orange light of the descending sun shot through the bars along the window and cut through the dust in beams. His brothers and sisters of his council, five in all, were gathered around a table tucked into the corner.

“Brother, we were discussing our plans to infiltrate the pegasus ship.” One of his sisters waved him over. “The scouting party we sent failed to return.”

At the moment she embodied the form of a white unicorn. She, and a sister of theirs currently identical to her, stood at the right and left of the table’s head. They reserved that place for him.

“Did they say anything about a cat?” he asked her.

“No, they didn’t.”

Chain Gleaming snorted and trotted to the head of the table.

“That’s quite a shame, I’m going to miss her,” he said. “On to other matters, Thunder Gale is much more resourceful and cunning than I originally gave him credit for. Penetrating our shroud is not easy.”

“The pegasi weren’t the ones who intercepted them.” His other sister, the one identical to the last, trembled. The pheromones expelling from her carried the musk of fear and anger. “They got a message out saying they encountered Discord.”

Chain Gleaming’s heart froze. It was nigh impossible for one changeling to hid his emotions from another, so he didn’t even try. Each of his brothers and sisters gathered around that table looked to him for leadership, and he couldn’t fail them. So he spent a moment to pace and think while he stirred up the dust and dirt.

“That ship is still our only hope of returning to the hive,” he said to them. “If he is permitted to capture that ship before we do and leave this planet, we’ll not only be condemned to starve here, but it will also mean the end of the galaxy as we know it. He might very well decide he doesn’t fancy our kind at all and eradicated the hive all together.”

One of his brothers, a changeling wearing the face of a khaki earth pony, rested one of his front hooves on the table and raised his other in a slight wave. He opened his mouth to speak, but it was only after his brothers and sisters took notice of him that he actually did.

“What about the human weapons we recovered?” He lowered his hoof and ran it over the grains in the table. “They’re much more powerful than any conventional weapon or even any magic we’ve created for ourselves. Can’t they defeat the Discord?”

“We don’t know if the quantum disruptors even work on him,” Chain Gleaming said. “I don’t want to squander them or our lives trying to find out and risk provoking his wrath in the process. What we do know, in fact, is that they are more than effective at dealing with flesh and blood beings. We should limit their use until we have a better idea of how to deal with Discord.”

Chain Gleaming planted both of his front hooves down on the table and let his head hang from his shoulders.

“We need to move ahead with our plans. We need to take the Spitfire from the pegasi before they get a chance to leave or before Discord takes it from them. We can’t let anypony or anything intimidate us. This cell will proceed with the infiltration on schedule. My brothers and my sisters, go make your preparations, I will see you shortly.”

They all backed away from the table and trotted toward the staircase, but as one of Chain Gleaming’s sisters—the white unicorn who spoke before—passed him by, he said: “Minthe, a moment, please.”

She stopped. To use her true name was not one thing a changeling did to another lightly. Once all the others were gone she spoke to him.

“What’s the matter, my brother?” She raised a hoof halfway off the ground, uncertain of what to do with it.

Eddies of dust wafting up from the city streets caught Chain Gleaming’s eye, and for a moment he watched out the basement window while he thought about his next words.

“I need to ask something of you and none of the others can known about it,” he said. “Many won’t understand, but I have faith that you will. You’re my sister, but more than that, you’ve been my most trusted and loyal companion. What I’m about to ask won’t be easy, but it’s for the good of all changelings.”

“What is it?” She lowered her ears and craned her neck to try and meet his eyes. “Tell me what I must do and I will carry out your will. You can trust me, brother.”

“I know I can, and that’s why I brought this to you.” He couldn’t look her in the eyes for what he had to say next, but she deserved respect and at least the illusion that he was, so as he turned to her and fixed his eyes on that space just above the bridge of her nose. “Discord might find a way to break the human machine, yes, but the planet will still prevent him from leaving on his own power. The Spitfire is his only hope of leaving here. He needs that ship and we can’t risk him leaving with the pegasi.”

“What are you asking?” she said to him.

Green light flashed in Chain Gleaming’s eyes, and on that command fire as green as his gaze rose out of his forehead and traced the outline of a twisted and crooked horn. Brimstone singed his lungs, but he inhaled deeply, as it felt as if an eye held closed for far too long was opening in his head. Black chitin filled in the empty spaces outlined in fire, and when it faded, his horn took its rightful place on his forehead once again.

Magic trickled in to him through his spine as a pulse. A twist of his head, and his aura contorted and shimmered green along his horn. He held out one of his front hooves in time to catch the straps of a saddlebag just after it popped out of the air above him.

He passed it to her, and she shouldered its weight over her back.

“There’s enough explosives in there to crack the shielding on the Spitfire’s hydrogen reserves,” he said. “While the others are busy replacing marines and embedding themselves in key positions, I want you to plant this bomb in engineering and see to it that pegasi do not try to leave here before we’ve taken the ship.”

“But what of our brothers and sisters?” She shook her head. “You promised us that we’d leave this planet together! You said we’d get to go home. Another ship might never come to this planet. We will starve if we don’t capture that ship!”

“If Discord is allowed to leave here then our brothers and sisters everywhere will perish.” He put a hoof on her shoulder and forced her to look him in the eye, while he stared into that vacant spot. “I know every changeling here wants to go home, and I do too, but ensuring that Discord remains imprisoned here must be our priority.”

She took his words as best she could: feigning on tears.

“I know this is a hard task, but I know you can do it,” he said to her as gentle as he could. “It’s unlikely that it will come to that. Once we’ve assumed control of the Spitfire we can sense for his magic and ensure we don’t bring him back with us, but if we’re unable to I need to know that you’ll do what is right. For the good of all our brothers and sisters.”

For a time she lost herself in the floor, and her legs shook, and she stared at the ground. Then, she inhaled deep and pulled the saddlebag straps tight against the white fur of her coat.

"I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ll plant the bomb.”

Chain Gleaming stepped closer to her and threw his hooves around her for a hug. He smiled, and said right in her ear: “Thank you, my dear sister.”

“You can count on me, brother, and I love you too.”

She lingered there for a moment, and then trotted up the stairs to catch up with the others.

* * *

A fierce wind blew over Thunder Gale and caught his wings, beckoning him to let them open and follow the current. His mane and tail thrashed about and danced in the sky overhead. He closed his eyes, and soaked in the sensations of air rushing through his fur and filling his lungs. He spent too much time in his uniform, he decided, and resolved to take it off more often. A pegasus couldn’t enjoy the wind as it was meant to with that much clothing on. He only wore his pendant, and its weight was enough.

He rolled over on his side to spare his back from the hard of the Spitfire’s hull, and opened a wing to the wind. It pulled at him, flowing over his feathers and whispering of happier times, and freedom.

When he opened his eyes, his own reflection was staring back at him. The hull metal beneath him was scraped clean of its red and black paint. The reflective alloys underneath were exposed.

He studied himself. Every inch of him was sculpted, lean, and muscular. His mane was blue and his fur coat was a much greyer shade of the same color, but he expected something more.

His heart sank and ached, and he let himself droop.

No, that wasn’t it, he thought to himself. I’m missing something.

Levers and pistons groaned as a nearby airlock hatch retracted and Breeze Heart stepped out onto the open hull. She stood some distance away from him and held her ground by the exit before she decided to inch closer to him. She got a few feet away and stepped no closer.

“I’ve completed my analysis on the sample we recovered,” she said.

“What’d you find?” he asked.

“Chain Gleaming’s blood bares a closer resemblance to the hemolymph found in insects than any mammalian circulatory fluid.”

“So, he’s a bug?” Thunder Gale rolled onto his front hooves and sat down on the hull. “Some how I’m not surprised.”

The sun crept toward the horizon. It colored the hills and the bare patches of hull orange. The wind whipped his mane against the side of his neck.

“That’s not all.” She raised her hoof as if to inch closer to him, but didn’t.

He didn’t say anything.

“I also found DNA.” She took another step towards him. “I went ahead and sequenced it and ran a comparative analysis. Chain Gleaming has the same number of chromosomes as a pony and his genetic makeup is over ninety-nine percent similar as well. Inspite of his physiological differences, he’s a pony just like us.”

“How’s Cloud Twist doing?” Thunder Gale asked.

She didn’t put her hoof down and looked to the floor, and he didn’t move from where he sat.

“His wounds aren’t consistent with any kind of burn I’ve ever seen,” Breeze Heart said. “Part of his suit was fused with his dermal and muscle tissues, and it leaked heavy metals and polymers into his blood stream. I removed the debris, but large portions of his leg are becoming necropic and toxins continue to leak out of the affect area. We need to leave here if he’s to have any chance of surviving.”

“We can’t leave yet.” Thunder Gale watched his reflection in the hull.

She waited a while before speaking again.

“I, uh, I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said to him. “The sickbay just isn’t equipped for this kind of injury. I’ve never seen an injury quite like this. I’m not even a real doctor. Somepony else who’s actually certified needs to tend to him. The best I can do is amputate and hope for the best. If I had access to a cellular dialysis machine and a tissue printer, I might be able to save the limb and prevent any permanent damage to his organ systems. But not without that equipment.”

“I know how bad it is, Breeze, and I hate to put you in this situation, but we can’t leave yet. Just do what you can for him.”

Breeze Heart walked up behind him, and her reflection joined his on the surface of the ship. Her eyes were focused and her face was much solemner than he’d ever seen before. Stray locks rebelled from her hair band.

“Is it because of whatever it was you saw out there?” she asked.

Thunder Gale picked himself off the hull of his ship and faced her.

“You said that you saw your dad out there. That was the last we heard out of you before you transmatted back.” She pleaded to him with her eyes. “Does that have something to do with why we can’t leave?”

“We can’t leave because the ship is broken.” Thunder Gale kept his eyes on his hooves, and only met hers only at fleeting glances. “But that’s more or less beside the point. Hill Born and everypony else from Sigil Tech could still be out there. We can’t give up on them yet.”

She didn’t say anything. She just stared at him, and the down at the scar in the paint.

The Spitfire had originally been painted blue, same as the power armor and cuirasses the marines wore, but after they escaped from Kronos Station and went into exile they painted their uniforms black and red. Then they crashed on the third planet of the Azrael system, and patches of the Spitfire’s true colors now marred her surface.

Hull metal was shiny and hideous and reflected just too damn much without all that paint.

“I’d better get back to sickbay,” Breeze Heart said. “I need to check on the lieutenant. I’m going to hold off on the procedure for as long as possible and hope you find Hill Born before it costs Cloud Twist his leg.”

She trotted over to the airlock, but Thunder Gale called out to her, and she stopped before stepping back into the ship.

“What happened to us, Breeze?” he asked. “We used to be so happy.”

“We came to this place,” she answered him, “but I’m beginning to realize that we’ve been on the road here for a long time.”

“I still love you.” Thunder Gale stepped closer to her. “Whatever happens, and whatever has happened, that won’t change.”

“I know.” Breeze Heart smiled with her mouth but her eyes were still sorrowful. “You too.”

At that she descended into the ship and the airlock hatch clicked shut behind her.

Thunder Gale watched the hatch for a while half hoping, and half dreading, that she would come back. But that wasn’t her way. She never played games, and she trusted the ponies around her not to try them on her.

Out of fear that he might run into her, or that a crew pony might stop him and force a dialogue, he sat on the hull and lay down on his back facing the sky. He didn’t want to deal with them. His heart and his stomach twisted over on themselves and knotted up into a pit. He closed his eyes on the wind and the sky.

* * *

The edge of sleep snuck up on him, and before he even realized it he was drifting deeper inside himself.

It was dark and full of shapes half-thought, but then there was a pulse. It flashed green, red, blue, and purple. There was a burst of warmth and love that filled in the pit in his chest. His heart skipped and fluttered, and he shot out of the depths of sleep and slammed against his eyelids.

He didn’t know what he was experiencing, but hairs along his neck tingled. He wasn’t alone anymore.

Who are you? He projected the question to the light inside himself.

I’m Thunder Gale, and more, a voice whispered back as clear and lucid as water. I’m a part of you. The part your waking self forgot.

What do you want? he thought to the voice.

The answer came in streaks of red and orange and yellow across the back of his mind, but it also came in words as well, and they were as loud as thunder: Seriously? Life is for living and right now you’re not doing it. Your path isn’t easy, but if it were, it wouldn’t be yours and you wouldn’t have chosen it. I want you to pull yourself together and keep going. The day’s not over yet, soldier, so pony up!

What was that?

A mere fragment of your greater whole. From the gestalt of your being. That which is eternal and without limit. That which is magic.

All seven colors of the rainbow bloomed in his mind and his eyes shot open. Thunder Gale lay on his back for a minute longer, not out of self-pity or sorrow as he was before, but out of confusion.

The voices inside him had fled, but their touch lingered on inside him.

“Thank you, whatever you are.” He sat forward and propped himself up on his front legs. “Today’s going to be a long day, and I have a feeling that I’ll need every ounce of resolve to get through it.”

Thunder Gale stood up on his hooves, cracked his neck, and opened the airlock hatch. He spared one more minute to take in the skies and the wind, and then he stepped inside and shut the hatch behind him.

Just on the other side of the airlock a marine lay asleep on the grated floor holding her rifle clutched in her hooves and wing. Not five feet away, a marine with blood-shot eyes and shaky legs held a laser-cutter to the bulkhead. It belched out sparks and fumes.

“How goes the repairs?” Thunder Gale waited for him to salute.

The marine set down his cutter and leaned into the bulkhead plate with his front hooves until it slid off the wall. Wires and tubing spilled out onto the floor like entrails. The marine picked up a tool from his saddlebags with his mouth, and sifted through the mess.

Thunder Gale stepped around him and over his companion. The marine meant no disrespect, he just didn’t hear him or see his approach. At least that’s what he told himself.

There wasn’t any of the usual shouting or rapid clippity-clop of hooves echoing up and down the Spitfire’s corridors, just the clattering of metal and the sizzling of laser-cutters.

Only once did he pass by a work detail speaking to each other in more than short questions and one-word answers. He heard their voices as he cantered up to an intersection in the corridor.

“We can’t deny it anymore, the Spitfire is dying,” a marine said. Thunder Gale recognized the voice but it took him a second; it was Private Drizzle, the security mare.

Even though his hoof falls rattled the grated floor as he crept up to the intersection, they were so wrapped up in each other that they didn’t hear him approach. He clung to the corner and pivoted his ears to them.

“How can you stay so positive?” Drizzle asked.

“In one of Twilight Sparkle’s letters to Celestia, she mentions how different perspectives can offer insightful solutions to even the most daunting problems.” When the other marine spoke, Thunder Gale immediately recognized her voice as well. It was Corporal Medley, Drizzle’s friend and squadmate. “If six ponies are all it takes to find a way to drive out a swarm of Parasprites, then a whole ship full of marines should have no problem figuring this one out.”

“Celestia? What does Celestia even know about anything? What has she ever done for anypony else?”

“She’s one of the wisest ponies who ever lived – ”

“Wisdom doesn’t put food in hungry mouths, doesn’t keep friends from stepping on a mine or an explosive gun, or even keep the bucking ship flying!”

“Celestia taught ponies how to empower themselves and work together to achieve Harmony. She almost never directly intervened in anything.”

“That’s my problem!” Drizzle snapped and the clattering of tools across the floor followed. “If she’s so great then why did she let Equestria fall? Why do we keep getting in these stupid wars if love and friendship is so powerful? If Celestia is even real, then why is this happening to us? Why wouldn’t she get off her flank and do something?”

“I don’t know,” Medley said.

“That’s right, so keep that crap about friendship and magic to yourself. It’s all a fairy tale! Nothing more.”

Thunder Gale pulled himself away from the corner and cantered around into view.

Medley and Drizzle were standing in the middle of the corridor before an armor support brace that had fallen from its place in the ceiling and through the grated floor. Their tools were scattered across around, and a pair of worklights were aimed at the support brace.

“Hey, Major.” Medley turned to him and feigned a salute.

“Major, sir!” Drizzle popped her wings open on reflex and snapped to attention and gave him a salute. “We’ll find a way to fix this mess, sir! You can count on us.”

“What happened here?” He didn’t return the salute; he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the brace and the hole it tore in the ceiling.

“The Spitfire was designed to operate out of a Navy command carrier,” Drizzle said. “Its hangar bay is designed to protect the ships docked inside from sustained particle bombardment. Gunship hull armor is not. The Spitfire has been exposed to near constant collisions with high-speed microscopic debris.

“To make a long story short,” Medley added, “her bones are cracking, sir.”

“Why hasn’t something like this ever happened to us before?” Thunder Gale pointed at the support brace. “We’ve seen plenty of skirmishes over the years and we’ve never had issues with the superstructure.”

“We’ve never been in a crash before yesterday,” Medley said. “It was bound to happen sooner or later, it was just a matter of time. I think we could have gotten another year or two out of her.”

“You two keep talking like she’s already broken,” he said. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

“This—” Drizzle marched up to the support brace and waved her hooves over the cracked and fractured the steel “—isn’t the only problem. Almost every brace we’ve inspected is just as bad, if not worse. It’d take at least six months in dry-dock just to get all the braces set in place again.”

“Can we get her back into space?” Thunder Gale asked.

“We’d hang together well enough as we already are.” Medley stepped closer to him and lowered her ears. “At least, I’m pretty sure. The damage is so extensive, though, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to take her into an atmosphere again. We’d risk straining her insides too much on re-entry. I wouldn't try any fancy maneuvering with her, either.”

Delivering troops to the surface of a planet and providing close air support for the marines on the ground were what gunships like the Spitfire were designed to do. A gunship that couldn’t land was like a unicorn without a horn, or a pegasus without his wings. As Thunder Gale poured his eyes over the cracks in the brace he fought to keep from choking up.

“Carry on,” he said to them, and hurried out of there before the sight got the better of him.

On his way to the bridge, Thunder Gale encountered ten more work details all just as overworked and solemn. He also found over a dozen sleeping pegasi who had collapsed tools still in their mouths and hooves. All of them were alone, left behind by their teams as they pressed on elsewhere. Thunder Gale tiptoed through them and weaved his way to the hyper lift.

When the hyperlift doors opened and he stepped onto the bridge, the crew ponies didn’t spot him. They never took their eyes off the holograms in their alcoves, except to dart over to another to relay a message.

Lightning Fire was still awake and holding down the chair at the head of the bridge’s massive, hologram emitting table. A holographic book was open in front of her, and her legs were curled up underneath her body.

“What have I missed?” Thunder Gale trotted up to her.

“Commander Hurricane and Private Pansy just broke out of prison.” Lighting Fire gestured with her wing and turned the page. “The Princess of the Crystal Kingdom is actually an imposter, and the Elements of Harmony are joining forces to over throw her. There’s also some kind of mutiny brewing in Hurricane’s army, but I’m not sure where that plot’s going.”

“I meant on the ship,” he said.

Her eye widened and she hopped out of the chair.

“Oh, yes, of course. Just keeping the seat warm for you. I was catching up on some reading while the stimulants wear off. I’m too wired up to sleep, but I’m going to grab some as soon as the repairs are complete.”

“How long do we have?”

A buzzer sounded and everypony on the bridge paused. They turned their ears and their heads up, and listened. A voice, synthetic and plastic sounding, reverberated out of the speakers overhead.

“Reactor, online. Sensors, online. Engines, online. All systems nominal.”

The entire bridge staff leapt up and shouted and cheered. They hoof-pumped each other and fluttered their wings and, for the first time since they touched down on that planet, laughed. Even Lightning Fire exclaimed a little, “Yes!”

She let them celebrate for a few seconds, and then flipped on the ship-wide com system.

“Good work, everypony,” she said. “All of you take five, that’s an order. After that begin making immediate preparations for departure. Lightning Fire, out.”

“We can’t leave yet,” Thunder Gale said.

All joy drained from Lightning Fire’s face, and her ears and her mouth sagged.

The few others who caught what he said stopped and stared. Soon, all the eyes of the bridge were on him. It was quiet.

“I want everypony to get some rest.” Thunder Gale spoke not only to his XO, but to the ponies gathering around him. “But in eight hours, we resume our search for Hill Born and the surviving members of Sigil Tech. We haven’t completed our mission yet.”

The entire bridge staff now watched Thunder Gale, and whispered amongst themselves in voices just hushed enough for the words to escape his hearing.

Blood rushed to his face and his heart pounded. He held his ground, and didn’t give in to his crew’s stares and the questions they whispered between themselves. He looked member of his bridge staff in the eye, from the shy tech, to the marine standing guard by the door.

“You have your orders,” he said to them. “Get some rest. Tomorrow, we go to war.”

They didn’t go back to work or disperse as he expected them to. Instead, the bridge staff continued to stare and talk amongst themselves.

“Sir, can I speak to you for a moment?” Lightning Fire tapped his shoulder and whispered in his ear. “In private?”

“Of course,” Thunder Gale said. “Let’s take it to my ready room.”

The two of them slipped away from the eyes and ears of the crew, and left them watching and waiting.

Once the door shut behind them, Thunder Gale placed himself behind his varnished desk with the manticore banner at his back. He rested his front hooves on the table and put them together in an arch. He hid his snout behind them while his eyes peered out at his XO.

“Sir, with respect, I don’t believe remaining planet side is a wise course of action.” Lightning Fire was backed against the far wall and had almost no room to maneuver. “We’re sitting ducks out here. If we move into orbit, we can at least keep the ship out of the line of fire.”

“We can’t do that,” Thunder Gale said. “There’s no telling what the conditions of the upper ionosphere are like until we get there. If we encounter more electromagnetic phenomena, such as the kind that brought down the Spitfire to begin with, we’d be force to abort the mission. Besides, our ability to deploy power armor squads and dropships is limited in orbit. If we’re going to find Hill Born and any of the other survivors, then we have to remain here.”

“Major, I’m not sure if you’re aware, but morale on this ship is at an all time low!” Lightning Fire extended her wings and pointed to the door behind her with a hoof. “The crew is tired, and scared, and the only thing that has been keeping them going is the promise that we’d leave once the repairs were done. You have a responsibility to this crew—”

“And we have a responsibility to protect and defend others. The crew will rise up and face the enemy because they’re Imperial Marines, and that’s what we do.”

Lightning Fire shut her eye and facehoofed, but then she bared her teeth and closed the short gap between herself and the captain’s desk.

“Did you even skim any of the data you sent back?” she asked. “Do you have any idea how many changelings are out there or what they’re capable of? We can’t win this fight, and if we try, this crew will end up just as dead as Sigil Tech!”

Thunder Gale set his front hooves down on the varnished table wood and, slow and deliberate as a bear rising on its hind legs, hunched over his desk. One of his front legs propped up his body, while he drove the other into the wood of his desk. Both his wings snapped open.

He didn’t know what data she was talking about; he remembered leaving the copy of Sigil Tech’s database behind. It didn’t matter, though, not to him.

“I don’t care how many there are or how tough,” Thunder Gale said. “I’m not losing and I’m not backing down. I’m going to get what I came here for and nothing is going to stop me. I am the prince; the divine right to rule was granted to me and everypony of my line by Celestia herself. They will follow my orders. Now, get this ship prepared for combat. Dismissed.”

Lightning Fire glared back at him, saluted him, and marched out of his office.

Alone again, Thunder slouched back into his chair and buried his face in his hoof. The clocked on his desk ticked by, and the cool air poured out of the vents above.

His varnished desk reflected the black and red banner back at Thunder Gale. At one point it was a source of pride and a symbol of a new and glorious path, but he couldn’t take the sight of the colors or that stupid manticore. So he latched onto the silk banner and ripped it from the wall and flung it against the door. The curtain rod clattered to the floor as the manticore flowed over it limp, and tattered as a rag.

Thunder Gale sat back down into his chair and covered his eyes with his hooves. He didn’t want to leave that spot, and he didn’t want to face any of the ponies outside his door.

He heard Lightning Fire’s muffled voice and several others rise. Part of him wanted to stay like that the rest of the day, but he wasn’t the kind of pony to sit on his hooves doing nothing for very long, so he compromised by stooping over the datapad on his desk and checking the computer logs.

Scrolling through the records he discovered that not more than three hours ago, Gerard contacted the ship and uploaded an exabyte sized file to the ship’s computer. Thunder Gale’s chair squeaked as he sat forward. In plain green letters, the record stated that he himself had authorized the download.

“What in Equestria?” He remembered going back for the hard drive during the mission, and dropping it. “I did no such thing. How’d it all get back here? How’s that even possible?”

A yellow button on the arm of his chair started to blink.

“This is the Major.” He held it down. “Go ahead.”

“Thunder, it’s Breeze. I was going through the cabin cleaning when I found the message Hill Born sent you. It’s not the same one you showed me or anypony aboard this ship.”

He dragged his faced out from behind his hooves and straightened up. He didn’t know what to say so he kept his mouth shut.

“Can you meet me up here?” she said. “We need to talk.”

Author's Note

I'd like to take a moment to thank Dark Avenger for helping me work through some of the bigger issues with these last two chapters!
I'd also like to take a moment to thank you, my readers, for being the best an author could ask for!
If you've been enjoying the story so far please consider taking a moment to like, favorite, and comment! Every time you hit the "like" button on a story, a pegasus learns to fly.
On July 19th, 2014, Thunder Gale needs some direction to perfection and pleads not to get left on the back burner.

10. All These Things That I've Done

Planet Hell
Solocitizen

10.
All These Things That I’ve Done

22nd of Winter Season, 10,056 AC

The hyperlift hummed down the spine of the tower, while Breeze Heart and Thunder Gale stood side-by-side, watching the floors on the meter click by.

“Can you tell me where we’re going, yet?” She opened her saddlebags with a wing and stuffed her sunglasses in.

“No, because then it wouldn’t be a surprise.” He locked his hoof around hers. “Trust me, you’re going to love it.”

Little over a week ago a transport ship had landed in the capital city of the planet Marble under the pretense of delivering a shipment of quadrotriticale to the Central Bank. Grain seeds might not have seem like much to a pegasus from a highly developed world, but to an earth pony colony established not fifty years prior, the promise of hardy crops couldn’t be overvalued. When the president of Marble, his cabinet, and a gaggle of reporters had gathered on the bank’s landing pad to formally welcome the transport and its shipment, griffon pirates emerged from it and took the president hostage. They were in space before the planet’s aerospace fighters could deploy and were speeding toward the outer reaches of the star system.

Fortunately for the president, the Spitfire had just ridden into the system on an FTL ferry and was conveniently headed in the pirates’ direction. Thunder Gale’s marines had taken the ship in a matter of minutes and saved the day. On top of all that, the griffons actually did have the quadrotriticale aboard their ship. The Manticore Mercenary Company was rewarded handsomely, and the president called in some favors to make sure the entire crew’s stay was comfortable.

The crew had been in high spirits celebrating ever since—all except for Breeze Heart. Along with the Spitfire, their jumpship had also carried news from home. The Divine Emperor of the Pegasus Tribe had driven out all ponies of unicorn or earth lineage from Upper Pegatropolis—included most of Breeze Heart’s family.

During the time they spent aboard the Spitfire, Thunder Gale never heard her complain. Not even once about adjusting to life on a gunship as its only physician or even about the news from home. But she was hurting; that perpetually downtrodden expression weighing her down lately wasn’t the anything like the Breeze Heart who first stepped aboard his ship.

He couldn’t change what happened, but he still wanted to find a way to make her smile again.

A wide-brimmed hat hid most of Breeze Heart’s face, and her flowing mane covered the rest. She kept her eyes on the floor as she waited for the hyperlift to reach wherever it was taking them.

“Don’t worry, we’re almost there,” Thunder Gale said. “We’ll be back in time to catch the Secretary of Defense’s press conference about Hellas, if you still want to see it.”

“I’d like to, if possible,” she said quietly.

The hyperlift stopped, and then dinged.

“Okay, this is it.” He flexed a wing and straightened out the straps of his saddlebag.

The doors parted and revealed a perfectly white expanse stretching out in each direction. Regularly placed pillars divided up the floor, while windows declared its boundaries. Sunlight bled through the heavy paper covered the windows and bathed the whole floor in a soft light. Air conditioning vents hung exposed from the ceiling and pumped a continual flow of cold air into the room.

“So, what are we doing here?” She took a few steps out of the hyperlift and jumped a little when the doors shut behind her.

“I wanted to show you something.” He led her by the hoof over to the windows on the far side of the room. “Believe me, you’re not going to want to miss this.”

Thunder Gale scrutinized three or four of the paper covered windows before settling on one, and then signaled for Breeze Heart to wait. He scrapped at the edges of the paper with his hooves while she watched.

“Are we even allowed in here?” She brushed the mane out of her eyes and peeked over his shoulder. “What are you doing to the window?”

“Let me answer that first one with a big ‘no.’” He peeled back enough of the paper to bite down on and spoke to her through clenched teeth. “If they catch us in here, they’ll probably kick us out of the hotel. As for what I’m doing… this!”

He reeled away from the window and yanked the whole sheet of paper off its glass. Unfiltered sunlight poured in and forced them both to squint while their eyes adjusted to the bright.

“Tah-da!” He spat out the paper and waved his hoof over the naked glass. “Do you know what this is?”

“No.” Breeze Heart shrugged. “Vandalism? I’m starting to think coming here wasn’t such a good idea.”

“No, keep guessing,” Thunder Gale said. “Maybe try looking for what you don’t see.”

Breeze Heart stepped closer and he reached a hoof around the back of her neck as she did.

Outside, Marble’s half-finished capital city sprawled out before them. There were streets, cars, and ponies bustling to and fro. There were hotels as tall as theirs that framed the ocean to their right, but nothing quite as tall as the cranes that loomed over the construction sites further in-land.

“I give up, what am I looking for?” she asked.

“How many hospitals do you see?”

She took off her hat and leaned closer to the glass.

“Just one, and it hasn’t even been completed yet,” she said.

“And how many of those other buildings would you guess are, or are going to be, clinics?” Thunder Gale leaned closer too and looked right at her. “I’ll give you a hint because I looked it up: three. They’re designing this city with the idea that over a million ponies will live here one day, and they only have one hospital planned.”

“That won’t do,” Breeze Heart said. “That’s rather negligent of them. They’re going to need a lot more than that.”

“I agree, I think they’re going to need more help.” He turned to her and waited for her to glance his way. “And I think I’m looking at the best pony for the job.”

She turned to him and dropped her hat.

“I’m not sure I understand,” she said. “Just what are you suggesting by all this?”

“When we escaped from that cell in Kronos Station, I made you a promise that we’d search the galaxy for a way back home for two years.” He reached for one of her pink hooves and held it in his own. “If we didn’t find what we were looking for, we’d find a planet where all of us could settle down. Remember that?”

She gazed out the window beside her and held a hoof up to the glass. Thunder Gale followed her eyes out to the ocean.

Out on those crystal colored waves, boats with the most vibrant of sails were racing along the water. Kites littered the sky above the beach. It was so sunny, but from where they stood behind the glass it was cool and the air smelled sterile.

“That was a long time ago,” she said after a moment. “More years than I think either of us had originally intended. Are you telling me it's all finally over? That our search is done?”

“Life onboard a gunship is hard,” he said. “The constant travel from star system to star system has worn out the crew in ways two-weeks of shore leave just can’t fix. They need that home I promised them, even if it’s not in the Empire.”

Thunder Gale squeezed her hoof.

“Besides, I kind of like the idea of living in a cottage.” He pointed out at green hills beyond the limits of the city and Breeze Heart’s eyes followed him to that far away place. “Maybe somewhere over there?”

It was so far from the city, that forest shrouded hills were tinged blue by the distance. Breeze Heart smiled for the first time Thunder Gale had seen in months. The glass in front of her reflected her face across their view of the city.

“I-I-I don’t know what to say!” She beam in glee. “This place has been mocking me since we arrived. How cruel it is to spend so much time in a metal box hurtling through space and then come to a place like this knowing that your stay is only an interlude between flights. Now you’re telling me this isn’t the case? That we’re here to stay?”

“Maybe, it’s not set in stone yet.” Thunder Gale nudged her in the side and whispered in her ear: “You still have to approve of it first.”

Breeze Heart threw herself at him, wrapped her hooves around him, and whispered back at him: “Yes!”

“Good!” He hesitated in letting her go right then, but he needed what was in his saddlebags. “Now, there’s on more reason why I brought you here.”

When she stepped from him, he saw that there were tears running down her bright-face.

“What’s that?” she asked.

Thunder Gale shrugged off his saddlebags and rummaged through it. He passed a pair of wine glasses to Breeze Heart and pulled out a blanket as vivid as the sailboats on the water. As he unfolded the blanket over the cold floor, she laughed exuberantly.

“Did you figure it out?” Thunder Gale asked.

“I don’t believe it: a picnic,” she answered. “That’s what you brought me here for? To ask me if I wanted to live settle here with you and have a picnic? The last time we had a picnic was…”

“In a jail cell, I know.” He set a bottle of red wine out on the blanket, then a block of white cheese, bread, and green apples. “You starved yourself so we could have that meal together, so now that we finally have the chance to relax and enjoy being ourselves, I thought I’d treat you to one. Think of it as my way of returning the favor.”

“That’s so sweet of you. I love it!”

“Don’t say that until you’ve tried the wine. It's a Syrah. Here, have a seat.”

They lay down in front of their view of the city with the saddlebags and picnic items between them. There was no sound except for the rumbling of the vents above them and the squeak of the cork as Thunder Gale wrestled hoof and mouth to get it out. By the time he managed to pop the cork loose, Breeze Heart had stood up and snuggled up beside him.

“Hello,” he said to her. “Would you like me to pour you a glass?”

“Sure, but I was wondering.” She rolled onto her back and looked up at him. “Do you think they can see us?”

“Who? The ponies outside?”

“Yes. Do you think they’d see us up here?”

Thunder Gale looked out the window and at the ponies far below on the city streets. They were little more than colorful specks.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “We’re too far away and I think the window’s too reflective even if they could. Why?”

Breeze Heart propped herself up on a leg and whispered something in his ear that made his wings shoot up. She giggled, and lay back down with her face half-hidden behind her mane.

"Yes!” He gave her a kiss on her cheek. “But first, one thing.”

He stood up and started rummaging through his saddlebags again. He set a candle on the floor and held it pincered in his hind legs while his front legs and mouth worked to strike a match.

After he’d gone through three or four matches trying to light them, Breeze Heart sat up.

“My love, are you sure we should be doing this?” She brushed her mane aside and looked over her shoulder in concern. “What if we set the fire alarm off?”

“It’s one candle,” he said with a match still in his teeth. “We’re not going to set off any alarm.”

It took him a few more minutes and half of the matches in the box, but he finally struck a little flame. The scent of sulfur tickled his nose. He dropped the box and passed the match to his hooves, but before he could light the candle, the sprinklers above smothered him and all the food he had laid out in blue goo.

The flame hissed out and Breeze Heart covered her head. After a second or two, the sprinklers shut off.

“I pretty much asked for that one, didn’t I?” Thunder Gale said.

Breeze Hearted nodded.

“Come on, we better get out of here before they send somepony to investigate.” Thunder Gale tossed the match aside and scrambled for the door.

“What about the picnic?” Breeze Heart yelled to him.

“Leave it! We can always get dinner somewhere else!”

Thunder Gale galloped for the hyperlift and hit the button ‘up’ button while Breeze Heart sprinted after him. Once the doors open and they were on their way to their floor, they broke into laughter.

Marble’s president had insisted on making their stay as comfortable as possible, and had upgraded their room to a penthouse suite on the top floor of the Oceanside Hotel—the very first resort built on the planet. No expense was spared.

The bathroom alone was equipped with almost as many luxuries as Thunder Gale had known in his family’s palace. The bathroom fixtures were all gold-plated, and a certified massage therapist AI controlled the many heads in the shower. He was just happy to be off his ship and to take a shower without having to stagger the water between rinses. But he didn’t spend enough time in the bathroom to enjoy it. He washed the goop out of his mane, feathers, and his coat, then got out of there so Breeze Heart could have her turn.

The suite overlooked beaches as white as ivory and that ocean the color of turquoise. He stood on the balcony, watching and listening to the waves breaking on sand, and breathing in a dry heat that was nothing short of an indulgence.

"I’ll be a few minutes more!” Breeze Heart’s voice carried out of the bathroom, across the master bedroom, and out onto the balcony. “Don’t run off.”

“Believe me, I’ll be right here, waiting,” he said.

His datapad rang, and he followed it into the cool of the living room. He crouched down on the shag carpet and dug out the pad from underneath the sofa.

The words on his datapad spelled out “URGENT.” That got his attention. He tapped the answer button and a note from the president of Marble unfolded on the screen. An EYES ONLY watermark shadowed the text.

I wanted to thank you again for your service to the proud planet of Marble. The grain samples you recovered are invaluable to our continued colonization effort, and on a personal note, you and your fine crew saved my life. The least I could do to return the favor is to forward what little intel The Earth Pony Defense Coalition has provided us about Emperor Gale. Your assumption that he visited our planet in the last seven years was incorrect, but there are still some files in our database that might be of use to you. Needless to say this information is extremely sensitive and I’ve gone to great lengths to prevent any replication or sharing of it beyond your datapad.

I hope you find what you’re looking for, but if not, Marble could always use a pony with your skill set. My offer to employ you and your crew as security consultants is still standing.

A percentage bar started inching across the screen one single pixel at a time. He read over the message again, and his mind whirled in anticipation. His heart thudded in his chest and his hind legs quivered. He was so focused on watching that percentage bar grow, that he didn’t even notice when Breeze Heart sauntered out of the bathroom and over to their bed.

“Thunder, where did you go?” she said. “I thought that the Pegasus Prince knew better than to keep his lady waiting.”

He stood up, with his eyes still buried in the datapad, and stepped around the other side of the couch.

“Give me just one second and I’ll be right there,” he said. “I just need to finish reading this thing real quick.”

“Don’t take too long, my love, or I might get tempted to start without you.” Breeze dived underneath the comforter and the ruffled the bedding.

Thunder Gale’s hoof tapped furiously, and he counted the seconds between each percentage tick. His ears were zeroed in on the datapad.

There was a rustling in of sheets in their bedroom, and a moment later the bathroom door creaked shut.

“So, what are you reading, anyway?” She came at Thunder Gale sideways and threw both her front legs around his neck. She ran her hooves through his blue mane. “Are you sure whatever this is can’t wait?”

The bathrobe wrapped around her spilled over the screen but he brushed it away.

“Just another minute, and then we can get up to more fun than you can handle.” He didn’t take his eyes off the loading bar.

“Oh my, are you reading up on some new tricks? I’m flattered!” Breeze Heart took a peek at the screen and her eyes sped over the president’s note. “This is all about your father? You’re still on that crusade? But you said we were done. You said it was over!”

“Just one more minute, please. This is important.”

Breeze Heart pushed herself away from him and marched back to their bed. For a tense minute she watched him from atop the bed, and then turned her attention out at the sunny beaches beyond their window.

Except for the clock counting away the seconds, all was silent. It wasn’t until after the percentage bar reached ninety-percent that Thunder Gale looked up from his datapad, and then he bolted into the bedroom.

“No, listen, it’s not like that at all,” he said to her. “Please, just let me explain, see—”

“It’s been five years.” She didn’t look at him, and her voice barely rose above a whisper. “You said that we’d take two to search for a way back home, but after that all of us would find a nice planet where we could start over. I thought that was why you just said we came to this planet to begin with, but that was all a lie wasn’t it? You were following up on another lead. Was that what all the delays and traveling these past three years were about? Just our two-year long mission continued under another pretense?”

“You’re right, we came to Marble because I heard a rumor that my father visited this planet on a diplomatic mission before the bombing,” he said. “I’m not proud of that, but I haven’t been lying about what we’ve been doing all this time. I want to put an end to this search, and I’ve been trying to. Really, I have, but when I heard about Marble I just had to take a look. This was the last stop, I promise.

“When I asked you to start over here with me, I meant it.” He wasn’t sure what else to say, so after that he just waited.

Breeze Heart picked her eyes up off the floor, and reached out for his hoof, but stopped halfway. Her eyes were watering, and her pink face turned red.

“I want to believe you, Thunder, I do.” She reached out again and squeezed his hoof. “A part of me knew that you weren’t ready to give up the search and settle down after the end of those first years, but I told myself you just needed time, and that I was wrong: that the planets we visited truly were poor choices, as you said. But when you showed me Marble and said that we could build a home here—I just can’t take it. Not anymore.”

“I want to build that cottage with you too.” Thunder Gale squeezed her hoof and caressed her cheek. “Please, if you don’t believe anything else, at least believe that much.”

The datapad beeped done, and drew his attention out into their living room. His hoof poised above the floor ready to bolt into the other room, but he didn’t. The clock on the wall kept ticking by while he stood there in indecision. The tropical sun shining through their cream colored drapes dimmed as a cloud passed by.

The datapad beeped again.

After a time, Thunder Gale hung his head and walked towards the door to the living room. Just as the datapad beeped for a third time, he shut the door on it and collapsed on the shag carpet next to their bed.

Breeze Heart sniffled and a smile crept into her lips and in her eyes—a genuine smile, the same kind that melted even the coldest of his moods and that he so longed to see from her. She grabbed his hoof and opened her mouth to speak, but she did he pulled her off the bed and threw his front legs around her. They clung to each other’s warmth while the minutes passed on the clock.

Then Thunder Gale stretched his hind legs out to find hers, but where he expected to find her soft coat, his hoof pulled against fabric. He leaned to the side to get a better look at her hind legs, and his eyes widened. She was wearing lacy, black, socks that reached all the way up to her flank and vanished underneath her robe. There was such a powerful contrast between the fabric and her pink coat that he couldn’t believe that he hadn’t notice them earlier.

“What is it?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”

“You’re wearing socks?” He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Yes, I picked them up our first day on Marble. I thought they’d be worth giving a try. Do you like them?”

Thunder Gale ran his eyes all the way up her legs and let his imagination fill in everything concealed by her bathrobe. He put a hoof on her, but he didn’t go any higher than her ankle.

“I never really understood them.” He pulled on the fabric, and the elastic snapped back on her shin.

She shivered but didn’t complain.

“I know that they’re supposed to be sexy, but I guess I don’t really see the point, to be completely honest,” he said. “We don’t normally wear clothes unless we’re on duty, so what’s putting more on supposed to do? You’re plenty attractive without them.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes.

“I suppose if that’s the way you feel, there’s only one thing for us to do.” Breeze Heart pressed her lips against his, and reached for his hoof and guided him past her ankle and up underneath her robe. But she didn’t let him linger; she pulled herself away. “You’ll have to help me take them off.”

She stepped over him, tail raised with her hips swaying side to side, and climbed onto the bed.

Thunder Gale’s wings shot up and he and followed her in.

* * *

Each wave’s rise and crash breathed salt into the air, carried on a strong westward wind through the piers and over the vendor stalls and boats bobbing in on the tide. Earth ponies strolled to-and-fro between the vibrant banners and through the marketplace’s arteries. Families and friends calling to one another, and the eager vendors luring them to their booths, brought the pier to life.

Thunder Gale trotted past it all swaggering in his step and smelling of sex. He was fairly confident that the sea air would mask the odor—but even if it didn’t, he wouldn’t try to hide it. His hooves drummed against the boardwalk planks, and his mane and tail flowed with the coastal gusts.

There was a seafood restaurant at the end of the market place that served kelp-rolls on square plates, and he had let Breeze Heart talk him into running down there to grab dinner for the two of them. He trotted up to their patio, flagged a waitress, and ordered enough kelp rolls—without the dandelions, because Breeze was allergic—for four hungry pegasi to-go. Once the waitress jotted that down on a ticket, she showed him to a bench by the railing and scurried off to wait on a family of zebras that had just strolled up onto the patio.

On the boardwalk, right by the entrance to the patio, a three-pony bluegrass band had finished setting up. The lead singer leaned into her microphone, a banjo-wielding earth pony in a straw hat plucked away, and the violinist put bow to strings.

The song kicked off, and Thunder Gale recognized it immediately: “All These Things That I’ve Done.”

At once he thought of his sister, his mother, and his father—and the pain of their loss. His sister wasn’t played that song for his birthday, right before the attack.

For a while, he studied the lanterns strung over the patio, and the earth pony patrons seated at the tables surrounding him, but then he looked toward the sea and spotted something odd on the pier to his left.

It was a dog without an owner, a scruffy thing so worn from street life that even its gait told war stories, and it carried a huge slab of meat in its jaws. An artificial reef protected the pier, and the water was calm enough for the dog to notice its own reflection in the water.

Meanwhile, the band played on.

“Excuse me, but are you Thunder Gale?”

He looked to his right, and there stood a griffon clad in the dark denims of The Interplanetary Express. He was almost as old and worn as the dog on the pier. There was a musk hanging about him, too.

“Yeah, I am,” he said. “What’s this about?”

“Delivery.” The griffon passed a clipboard from his wing to his talons and into Thunder Gale’s hooves without ever looking him in the eye. “I need you to sign that.”

Thunder Gale bit down on the pen and signed the documents with a few deft swings of his mouth. He spat it out, and pushed the clipboard back to the griffon.

“You’re the pilot, right?” he asked. “Isn’t it pretty unusual for you guys to track down deliveries yourself?”

“Yeah, well, I guess somepony out there thought you were worth the extra currency.” The griffon checked over the forms, reached into his jacket pocket, and thrust a micro holorecorder into his hooves. “It wasn’t like I had better things to do. I’m also obligated to let you know that you can download a virtual copy of the message from any datapad registered to you before I leave orbit.”

The griffon stomped off and left him with the holorecorder.

Thunder Gale set it on the table. Once he found the play button, he let the message run.

An image of Hill Born, emaciated and bloodied, coalesced above the table. Thunder Gale’s mouth and ears dropped in shock. He hadn’t seen or heard from him since going into exile. He stood up and peered into the crowd for the griffon, but he gave up the search when the image of his friend started talking.

“Thunder Gale, I hope this finds you quickly. I’m working for a research company – I can’t go into details about it now, but this entire project has spiraled out of control. So much is hopelessly wrong; I didn’t know monsters were real until today. “I’m taking a huge risk by sending you this message, but I don’t see any other choice. I need your help. Go to the third planet in the Azrael system and bring an army.

“And listen carefully: I can tell you what happened to your father. Your real father. I wish I could tell you more but I can’t be certain of who might be listening. Wait, something is coming, I have to go.”

That last part made his head swirl and his heart race. Thunder Gale clutched the recorder and played the message again.

Conversation throughout the patio hushed as many of the patrons at the neighboring tables were now watching him and the hologram.

After Thunder Gale finished listening to the message, he pushed the recorder across the table, and bit the edge of his hoof. He turned back toward the dog on the pier, and when the waitress walked out carrying his order, he ignored her.

The dog on the pier had discovered its own reflection and stared intently. It opened its mouth to bark at the other dog in the water and the other slab of meat, and when it did the slab of meat fell into the water.

Thunder Gale didn’t pay the waitress and didn’t take the food, he just grabbed the holorecorder as he bolted off the patio in search of the griffon pilot.

Right then, the band reached the last lines of the song:

“Over and again, last call for sin.
While everypony lost, the battle is won,
With all these things that I’ve done!”

Author's Note

I'd like to thank Amacita, Dark Avenger, and Jarron for helping me work through this chapter. Seriously, this fic wouldn't even be half as good as it is without the help of those who've spent so much time wading through what's good and what's not.
On the 25th of July, trouble finds the Spitfire and her crew.
After that, this fic will be going on a four week long hiatus so that I can spend some time focusing on editing, polishing, and revising the last half of the book. There's a lot of work to do, and until it gets done, the fic just isn't ready for an updated past chapter 11.
Besides, that will give you, the readers, a chance to catch up (and for me to catch up on the little changes chapters 8 and 9 need).
If you've enjoyed the story thus far, don't forget to like, comment, and favorite!

11. The Dog and his Reflection

Planet Hell
Solocitizen

11.
The Dog and his Reflection

13th of Planting Season, 10,056 AC
Present Day

“Please, help me!” A white unicorn pounded her hooves on the airlock and rested her head on the security camera, sobbing. Although the camera feed pixilated out the subtleties of her features, the bruises, dirt, and open wounds on her face and barrel still showed clear on Drizzle and Medley’s monitor. “I know there’s somepony in there! Please, you can’t leave me out here!”

She carried a saddlebag strapped to her back and was alone, from what they could see.

The two marines watched her, in the half-light of their security station, as she hammered her hooves on the hull. Neither knew what to do other than to call somepony higher up. But when they alerted the security chief, she told them to forward it to the bridge, and the bridge told them to pass it on to the major, and he wasn’t responding to their messages either. He was either sleeping with his marefriend or brooding, and not doing his job managing the ship, again.

“Should we try Lightning Fire?” Drizzle hit the mute button and silenced the unicorn’s pleading. “She’d know what to do.”

The security station was near the ship’s engine room, and without the audio from the airlock feed, the sharp hum of the reactor leaked into the air.

“No, she just went to bed for the first time since we got here.” Medley trotted away from the screen and pried the first aid kit off the wall. She held it in her mouth by the handle. “I think it’s pretty obvious what we got to do. We need to help her.”

“You can’t be seriously be thinking about letting her in!” Drizzle flung her amber wings open and spun around at Medley. “You read the latest report on the changelings, or whatever they are, right? They look like ponies. How do we know she isn’t one of them? Or what if it’s a trap set by the ape-creatures?”

“I don’t, but we’re not leaving her out there,” Medley said. “Maybe that’s what a shape-shifting monster would do, or a hairless-ape-alien, but we’re ponies. Equestria was built on love and friendship, or so they say. On top of that we’re also pegasi of the Imperial Marines, paragons of responsibility. We’re not going to stand here and watch her bawl. We’re above that.”

“Didn’t Equestria sink into the ocean, or something?” Drizzle closed her wings, plopped into the chair behind her, and crossed her hooves. “So maybe love and friendship isn’t the formula for success. I hate to remind you, but we’re not actually in the marines anymore either. That ‘we’re still Imperial soldiers’ thing is just rhetoric our Prince Thunder-Flank likes to throw around.”

“We don’t have time for this.” Medley rolled her eyes and tucked the first aid kit under her wing. “I outrank you, Private, so let’s get moving.”

Drizzle sighed, shook her head, and walked up to the door. She grabbed the rifle she kept near the entrance and slung the shoulder mount over her neck. Powered armor would have helped her feel a whole lot safer, but armor was designed primarily to enhance mobility as an offensive weapon, not as a defensive measure. If fighting actually broke out in and around the ship, a suit wouldn’t do much more than make her feel safer. She thought of suggesting the idea anyway, but that was just to delay going outside. Instead, she talked Medley into bringing along a pair of hoof-cuffs.

“For the record this is still a really bad idea,” she said. “Before we head out, just let me say that if we were really still part of the marines, I would’ve gotten promoted to corporal by now and I wouldn’t have to listen to you.”

“By the time you reached corporal, they would’ve made me a major.” Medley gave Drizzle’s rear end a shove and pushed her out the door. “And you’d still be taking orders from me.”

It was a short walk down to the airlock, and they didn’t run into any other marines keeping watch or making repairs. Their shipmates were either all resting or preparing for a battle with the monsters in the desert. Without the shouting and banter and the scent of sweat circulating in the air, only the hum of the reactor and the fading smell of their shipmates kept them company.

Not even the guard post by the airlock was abandoned. Medley called the bridge to let them know about their plan and requested them to standby with back up just in case. At a word, Drizzle and Medley could lockdown the ship and summon a whole company of marines to their position.

While Drizzle tested the tracking on her rifle, and then they opened the airlock.

Hot air and dust rushed in from the desert, kicking Medley and Drizzle’s manes about. They held their ground from the gust but squinted against the sun. Medley clung to the first aid kit under her wing, and Drizzle to the bit of her shoulder-mounted assault rifle. The setting sun didn’t extend over that side of the ship, and they were cast in shadow.

Before them stood the white unicorn. Her mane coat was stained with dirt and blood, her eyes darted back and forth between them, and her ears pivoted back in sudden apprehension.

She rushed towards the Medley and Drizzle exclaiming, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” seemingly ready to kiss their hooves if they asked. But then Drizzle yanked back her firing bit and cocked her rifle. That stopped the unicorn in her tracks.

“Not so fast,” Drizzle said. “We know all about the creatures Sigil Tech brought here for research, and how they look like ponies and stuff. So prove that you’re not a bug.”

“You’re not going to let me in? They’ve been hunting us down one by one. Sometimes they take the shape of somepony you know, saying they’re a survivor so they can feed off your feelings for them and lead you into traps. Sometimes they just show up in force and kill those who resist, a-a-a-and use those who don’t before executing them. I’ve lost so many friends, and I had to watch my coltfriend die in my hooves. Please, you can’t send me back out there! You’ve no idea what I’ve been through!”

“We’re here to help,” Medley said. “You’re safe now, but first you got to prove you’re not one of them.”

“My name is Twinkle Star,” said the unicorn. “I worked in accounting, my employee idea is SF381. I was born on New Canterlot, and I’ve been here for five years. All my friends are d-dead. Please, you’ve got to believe me. I don’t know what else I can say to convince you!”

Medley glanced over to her companion, who kept both eyes aimed down the barrel of her gun. She had no idea of how to tell if the pony outside their airlock was an imposter or not, but she couldn’t bear to watch her suffer.

“It’s okay, I believe you.” Medley waved the unicorn closer. “You can come in.”

She bolted forward, but stopped again when Drizzle raised her hoof.

“Wait, hold it!” she said. “First, dump out the bag and put these on nice and tight.” She took the hoof-cuffs off the belt of her cuirass and tossed right in front of the unicorn. "I got my eyes on you so don't try anything funny."

The unicorn nodded and unfastened the straps on her saddlebag and let it slip off her back. At a nod from Drizzle, she opened the first compartment and a black cylinder no longer than a spoon tumbled onto the baked earth.

“Kick that over here and start opening up the rest of your bag,” Drizzle said. “Actually, hoof-cuffs first, then dump out the rest of your bag.”

The unicorn kicked the cylinder to the two marines, and cuffed all four of her hooves just as Drizzle had asked, but she held off opening up any more of her bag. She watched and waited, while Medley inched closer and scooped up the cylinder in her hoof.

“What is it?” Medley turned it over in her hoof.

“You don’t know what that is?” The unicorn let out a nervous laugh. “It’s nothing, really. Don’t worry about it.”

Medley held it out to Drizzle and she stepped closer to get a better look.

Once Drizzle’s eyes were on cylinder and her rifle was pointed at the ground, the unicorn struck.

A green aura surged across her unicorn’s horn lighting up the underbelly of the ship’s hull. The cuffs melted from her hooves. Medley gasped, dropped the cylinder, and tapped the emergency call button on her uniform. But before Drizzle even had the chance to react, the black cylinder flashed green and out popped a baton just over a foot in length.

It leaped out off the ground and smacked Drizzle across her head with such force that she fell bleeding from her mouth and nose.

Medley flexed her wings in shock and let the first aid kit tumble as she bolted for the airlock. It was already closing shut ahead of her. She galloped all of three feet before the baton swept across her hind legs and knocking her off her hooves.

“We’ve got them, let’s move!”

Medley heard hoof steps clattering into the airlock ahead of her. Burning adrenaline kicked her back onto her aching legs. She dared to look back and saw the white unicorn rushing towards her with three ponies identical to herself down to the birthmark on her cheek and missing stud on her cuirass. A duplicate of Drizzle dragged away her body.

Had she any more time to ponder the image and let the existential horror of what she was witnessing sink in, she would have screamed, but before she had the opportunity to do so, the white unicorn reared her head to the side and swung as if she gripped a bat in her teeth.

The baton matched her movements precisely as it caved in the side of Medley’s skull.

The last thing Medley saw before fading out was her own doppelganger dragging her away.

“Bridge to Corporal Medley,” a voice chirped from a speaker on her forehoof. “We saw your alert and we’re dispatching a team of marines to assist. Is everything alright down there?”

“This is Medley,” the doppelganger said in her own voice. “False alarm. I hit the alert by mistake. Lift the lockdown once the marines get here. Be advised that the survivor is in our custody. We’ll be waiting. Medley out.”

* * *

Thunder Gale dragged his hooves every step of the way to his quarters. He took a meandering path down and around the deck below it to buy him some more time, but without the crew clogging the arteries with their work and their shouting, he reached his door in mere minutes.

Nopony was around to see him, so he stood outside awhile longer with his hoof poised over the lock panel. It was quiet throughout the ship, so much so that he half-expected to hear Breeze Heart crying or screaming from the other side of the door, but he didn’t catch a single peep.

He’d been living in fear that Breeze Heart might find Hill Born’s original message, but he told himself that she wouldn’t and pushed any thoughts of discovery into the back of his mind. Some part of him had known that one day there’d be a reckoning, but he had ignored it like all the rest. As he stood outside his door, it surged forward and screamed: You knew this would happen. His stomach knotted.

Head hung low and ears drooping, he hit the open button on the lock panel and the door to his room parted.

Breeze Heart sat on the edge of their bed holding a cardboard box in her hooves. She was well lit by the fluorescent lamp overhead and every detail, from her quivering lips to the tears tracing rivulets down her pink coat, confronted him in vivid clarity.

The holorecorder Thunder Gale received on Marble, the original one he thought he hid so well, lay sideways on their dresser, projecting half of Hill Born’s face. The message repeated the words, “Your father… Your father… Your father…”

“You wanted to see me?” Thunder Gale shut the door behind him.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m leaving you.”

He took a deep breath before speaking again, but it didn’t help any.

“Breeze, I understand you’re upset, but do we have to do this now?” he asked. “Tomorrow, we’re going to go out there and put an end to this once and for all. If circumstances were different I’d gladly talk this out with you, but they’re not and I really can’t be thinking about this the evening before battle.”

Breeze Heart swallowed and turned her eyes on the box in her hooves instead of him. She shivered and wiped the tears from her cheeks.

“I suppose it is rather selfish of me, to be worrying you about something such as this right now,” she said. “But do any of the marines you’re asking to fight tomorrow know why we’re here? Lightning Fire? Cloud Twist? Do any of them know about what was really on Hill Born’s message?”

Thunder Gale didn’t know what to say, or what to do, so he just stood there with the air vent blowing over him. The door was right behind him; for a second, he considered using it.

“Say something.” Breeze Heart glanced at him and he looked away.

“No,” he said. “Nopony else knows. You’re the only one who knows.”

"They sacrificed the chance to ever see home again for you. They spent years scouring the stars so you could search for your father. Then, after you make them leave Marble—a world you promised them would be their home—just so they could come here and fight in your battle you couldn’t even tell them why? Cloud Twist will most likely die tomorrow unless we leave and you can't even tell them why we're not?”

A wave of dizziness washed over Thunder Gale like a rush of blood to the head. He sat down at the edge of the bed about a foot or two away from Breeze Heart, propping himself up on his front legs like a dog. The dizziness lingered as the minutes went by.

“Say something, please,” she said.

“What do you want me to say?” he asked.

“Something, anything, please, just say something.”

“They’re soldiers of the Imperial Marines, their duty is to defend the empire from its enemies, and tomorrow they’ll be doing exactly that.” Thunder Gale swallowed and squirmed in his seat; his hooves were shaking and he didn’t want her to see. “But we’re not just talking about the crew, are we?”

“No, we’re not.”

Thunder Gale glanced into her box, and saw the hairbrush she used every morning while he shaved—she had combed his mane with it once when he was too stressed about an upcoming mission to sleep, and she calmed him down enough to nod off. The socks she had purchased back on Marble were in there too, along with her toothbrush, shampoo, her hair bands, and the pillow from her side of the bed. Each item was so colorful under the fluorescent light: so naked and exposed.

“You want to know the truth?” he asked, but didn’t wait for a response. “I am a traitor. I’ve betrayed the trust that you and everypony else on this ship gave me. I’m terrible, but I care about you and I want us to continue, together, and build that cottage one day. As twisted as it sounds, I lied to you because I love you and don’t want to lose you.”

Breeze Heart set her box on the ground and pushed herself off the edge of the bed. Then, she put a hoof to his cheek and held up his downcast head long enough to guide his gaze to her face.

“I love you too,” she said. “I can’t bear the thought of losing you, but as much as I want to stay by your side it’s killing me to watch you put yourself through this hell we’ve found for ourselves. Maybe this is something you have to see to the end, but I can’t do it anymore. I’ve waited long enough, and need to go live my own life… even if it means that you’re not a part of it any more.”

He reached for her hoof, but she raised a wing between them.

“Please, try to understand.” Thunder Gale was breathing rapidly. “I lost everything during the bombing—my sister, my mother, and my father. He was such a compassionate and wise pony, and was all about harmony between the tribes, but then he changed and I knew it wasn’t him any more. The real him is still out there, I can feel it. And on this planet are the answers I need to find him again!”

“Look at where we are!” She stomped a hoof and pointed at the twilight desert beyond their window. “Those aren’t pirates out there! They’re some manner of monsters we’ve never seen before. Celestia only knows what those creatures are capable of, or just how many there are.” She closed her eyes, squeezed the tears from them, and let her wings and ears drop. “I fear for you every time you put on your armor, and twice in as many days I didn’t know if you were coming back to me at all. Maybe it will take losing me to get you to turn around, but if it means saving your life, then I have to be strong and walk out the door. I’ll stay in sickbay until we reach an inhabited planet then I will take my leave. Good bye, my love.”

Thunder Gale reached out to her, but before he could say any more, she picked up her box and trotted away.

He stood there with his wings out stretched and his hoof still hovering above the floor, still waiting for her. The air vent still pumped out air and slowly washed her scent from the room, but when he shifted on the bed he kicked up her smell from the sheets. He got back up again and broke down on the floor.

He stared up at the same ceiling the two of them had stared at countless of days and nights, and thought of all the little talks and intimate moments they shared beneath it.

Just then, he thought of the dog he saw on Marble. This is probably exactly how it felt, he thought to himself.

After he was through thinking, he got up, and headed to the bridge. He left his uniform behind. He doubted he’d ever put it on again.

* * *

A white unicorn held a brick of explosives in her hoof about as firm and pasty as clay, and patted it to the side of the hydrogen tank. No matter how much she scraped the bottom of her hoof on the grated floor, residue clung to her, leaving a yellow stain behind. She picked up her retractable baton and continued.

Six bricks identical to the one she just placed went on the side of the hydrogen tank, and the six more remaining in her saddlebag were to go on the underside of the steel sphere housing the dark matter reactor. If the Spitfire survived the blast somehow, at least Discord would never be able to put it in orbit.

The chief engineer, a pegasus stallion with a grizzled face and a sheen of grease befitting of constant work in the engine room, picked his bleeding head off the grated floor and caught sight of the unicorn trotting between the hydrogen tank and the reactor. He sniffed. Something smelled like playdough.

Then he spotted the explosives and his eyes shot open.

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” he shouted. “That will blow us all to the moon and back!”

The white unicorn spun to him. Her horn burned green, and the baton lashed out at the engineer.

“I know.” She brought it down on his face as many times as it took for his body to go limp. “What I do, I do out of love.”

The speakers in engineering buzzed, and none other than the voice of the major himself came through the intercom.

“Attention all sections and all teams, this is Major Gale speaking,” he said. “After consulting the several members of the senior staff I have re-evaluated our current mission.”

The white unicorn paused, turned her ears up, and shook the blood off her baton.

"Make immediate preparations for departure.” He sighed on the other end. “We’re through here. We’re leaving.”

That wasn’t supposed to happen! The white unicorn stomped her back hoof on the floor grating and clenched her eyes shut. She needed more time to warn the members of her cell and tell them to leave before more marines rushed down to engineering to prepare the ship.

But she didn’t have the time. Changelings everywhere were depending on her. In her mind’s eye she visualized each of the explosive charges in precise detail, including the hoof prints her touch left in them and their dry texture. Then she reached out to them with her magic. Her horn burned green as she forged heat and flame in her mind.

“I love you all unconditionally.” She wrapped the fire in her head around the explosives and let the plastics in them boil. “Forgive me.”

Author's Note

I'd like to thank all the usual suspects (Dark Avenger, Jarron, and Amacita) for helping me make this chapter possible.
This will be the last update until September, as I want to take the month of August to edit the final nine chapter of the fic more and get them ready for you to read. Also, that will give me some time to work on a writing project that isn't pony-related. More details about the break and how much time it until the next update will be on my blog in time.
If you've enjoyed the story so far, don't forget to like, favorite, and comment!
Until then, have an excellent day and Namaste! I'm off to go drink and play Hawken.

12. The Price

Planet Hell
Solocitizen

12.
The Price

23rd of Winter Season, 10,056 AC

It was hot. Moist and persistent, it seeped into Thunder Gale on the brief trot from the Ocean View Hotel to the bar across the street. His mane matted to his neck while he stood at the intersection waiting for the bleating trucks and cars to pass.

Marble’s industry was still in its infancy, and the planet hadn’t yet developed the resources or infrastructure to synthesize the exotic matter required for the mass production of dark energy. As a result, their vehicles burned petrochemicals, and belched out warm smog as they passed by.

There was no shade between the street corner and the bar, and so once the traffic lulled he moved quickly over the asphalt and up to the door.

Cool jets of air greeted him once inside and brushed away any lingering flies. Strands of Hearth’s Warming Eve lights draped from a terrace along the back wall and holograms scattered above the bar lit the room. An earth pony the color of brandy stood behind the bar, clenching a bug zapper wand in his mouth and waving it as if to cast a spell on the lone fly hovering over the glasses.

The griffon from the day before—the one who had delivered Hill Born’s message to Thunder Gale—sat at the bar speaking to its tender as much in gestures of his tail and claws as did in words. He filled the room with an easy laugh.

Do what you came here to do and get out, he reminded himself as he marched up to the bar. He tried to wipe off some of the sweat rolling down the side of his face, but his already soaked leg left more behind than it removed.

“There you are!” The griffon put one of his hind legs on the bar stool beside him and shoved it out for Thunder Gale. “Take a load off and have a cerveza. It’s on me.”

Thunder Gale looked at the griffon, the barstool, and the cerveza the bartender was setting out up and down. He sat down on the stool and crossed his front legs as if to guard his chest.

“No, thanks.” Thunder Gale waved the bottle away. “Water’s fine.”

The bartender nodded, and fetched him a pitcher and a glass.

“What, cervezas not good enough for you?” the griffon asked. “Oh, wait, don’t tell me. You’re always on duty.” He laughed again.

“No, I’m thirsty.” He gulped down the entire glass and signaled the bartender for more. “Alcohol doesn’t hydrate the body, it just makes dehydration worse. I’m a marine, we like to drink, just not in this weather and not in the middle of the day.”

The griffon put away his laughter and cleared his throat.

“I was just yanking your chain a bit,” he said. “I meant no harm by it. The name’s Gerard, by the way.” He held out a claw. “Let me try and start things off on the right foot—or I guess in your case hoof—by apologizing for being so rude with you the other day. When I saw your ship in orbit I mistook you for a marine, but the brief my client provided said otherwise.”

“That’s fine.” Thunder Gale hunched over his glass. “Let’s just get down to business.”

“Okay, you’re the boss.” Gerard adopted the same defensive hunch and spoke much quieter after that. “If you want to go to Azrael, it’s going to cost you a lot.”

“No FTL jump is cheap but I assure you, whatever your price is, I can pay it. I have means.”

Gerard turned to him and pointed at the holovid casting red and blues over the bar and snatched up the remote from its hiding place behind the counter.

An earth pony, as square and solid as the podium he was stationed behind, spoke to an assembly rendered in three dimensions. He stood before a flag of red and blue. Thunder Gale recognized his face, but he couldn’t put a name to it until he spotted the words at the bottom edge of the picture: "High Chancellor Sir Earl Gray of the Earth Pony Defense Coalition."

Thunder Gale heard a speech of his, once, and remembered that while he spoke plainly, he commanded as much presence as his father did.

“You say that, but—” Gerard sighed—“well, you’ll see. Aside from your package, I got to deliver this message to the Prime Minister of marble.” Gerard turned up the volume and poured the foam at the bottom of his cerveza down his gullet. “They’ve been playing it nearly non-stop.”

“We have just received word that the Pegasus Tribe, by a remarkable combination of orbital bombardment and powered infantry, have lain waste to the defenders in the Sirius and Arcadian systems and are now ravaging the rural and urban sectors uncontested. Even in this dark hour we must not allow ourselves to succumb to intimidation. As I speak, task forces from the fifth and sixth fleets are preparing to engage the pegasi forces and break their stranglehold over the systems…”

Gerard hit the mute button and turned back to his drink, only to pick it up and realize it was already empty.

“What does that have to do with getting to Azrael?” Thunder Gale raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, so it’s like this,” said Gerard. “The Interplanetary Express maintains a good, working relationship with all the galactic powers. That said, I can’t jump into a warzone because they tend to forget that while they’re, you know, blowing each other out of the sky.”

“And?”

“And Arcadia was the only major hub along the route to the Azrael system.” He grabbed the cerveza the bartender had set out for Thunder Gale and popped the cap off with a talon. “We’re not a taxi service, you don’t get to tell us where to go. I tell you if I’m heading in your direction, and if I like, you get to hitch a ride for a heavy fee. Anyway, we can’t go to Azrael because without making a stop at Arcadia, there isn’t any profit in it.

“I know that’s not what you want to hear, but you can also look at this as an opportunity. I don’t know much about you, but you have a ship full of ponies that all cherish you like you’re the prince of their tribe. Think of all the good you can do out there—or right here, even—with that kind of dedication.”

Thunder Gale gulped down more water.

Just four days ago, the prime minister of The Marble Planetary Government had given Thunder Gale five hundred million coalition bills: enough money to upgrade and restock their ship and supplies, or hell, maybe even buy another ship. The Prime Minister awarded it to them in the hope that they’d use it to settle down on Marble, and Thunder Gale knew many of his crew wanted to do just that. Including Breeze Heart.

He stared into his water glass and watched the blue and red cast from the hologram behind him blend into purple. It hurt, but he asked what he had to.

He looked up at Gerard and asked, “Would five hundred million be enough?”

Gerard coughed and covered his beak with a talon to keep the beer in his mouth. Swallowed, coughed, and shook his head. “You’re serious about going to Azrael, aren’t you?” He asked. “Look, I’m real sorry, but you’re a little short. If you can raise ten million more, I can make a profit and justify the whole thing to my bosses.”

“I’ll pay you the extra ten once we get to Azrael III.” Thunder Gale tapped his rear hoof on the bar stool, but then noticed what he was doing and stopped. “Now can you do it, or not?”

Gerard glanced over at the bar and to the hologram showing Earl Grey’s speech, and then stared into the floor.

“Can you do it?” Thunder Gale repeated.

“I mean, what do you want to go over there for, anyway? I know that Marble doesn’t seem like much, but it’s growing. The ponies here are super serious about making the transition from fossil fuel to dark energy, and once they do they want to build these underwater cities. Right now, the little bit of dry land on the planet is dirt cheap, and a paradise. Have you heard about the replica of Ponyville they’ve made?”

Thunder Gale gulped down the rest of his water and signaled the bartender for his tab. Once the earth pony brought him a datapad he traced his hoof over it to sign.

“I’m going to Azrael,” he said. “All I need is a pilot, and if you’re not willing to do it, I’ll just have to find somepony else.”

“You can relax.” Gerard sighed. “If you can pay even half up-front, I’m obligated to take your money. Just answer me this, what’s at Azrael? It’s a fair question considering how dangerous that side of known space is.”

“I’m looking for somepony.”

“The guy who sent you the disk?”

Thunder Gale glanced over his shoulders: the bartender was busy behind a swing door to a back office and there was no pony else in the establishment.

“Yes!” Thunder Gale hissed at him sideways and head low. “I can’t say much, but the pony who sent me that recording had information about my father. If I do this, I get to go home. And so does my crew.”

Gerard stared at his beer and fiddled at the wisp of hair at the end of his tail.

“What?” Thunder Gale asked. “What answer did you want from me?”

Gerard didn’t answer.

Thunder Gale continued on course out the door and gave no more than a flick of his tail, but before he pushed it open, and ventured out from the sterile air conditioning and into the broiling smog, Gerard called out.

“Wait,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

As Thunder let the door sink back into place and shut out the sun, a flare of purple from the holovid filled the bar. It cast Gerard’s face in shadow and showed the emblem of the Marble News Network, then switched back to Earl Grey on the podium repeating the message.

“I lost my home too,” He looked up and straight into Thunder. “I barely remember my village, except for a vague memory of the cliff side and the sea, but I still remember the sky--the three moons and the rings that glimmered at night. I could retire tomorrow if I wanted to, live out the rest of my days here on my considerable savings, but I know that as precious as Marble is, it wouldn’t satisfy me. The sky isn’t right. The Ursa Major will be prepped and ready to begin accelerating to jump speed in thirty-six hours, does that give you enough time?”

“I’ll inform my crew and call them back from shore leave.” Thunder Gale pushed the door open and put a hoof out on the concrete. “We’ll be ready. And one more thing?”

“What?”

“Is it worth it?” Thunder Gale turned back to Gerard, who was now hunched over his beer and glancing up at him. “Paying that price?”

“To go home? To find your father again? It’s worth every bit you can pay and more. You’re getting a bargain.”

“Then why do I feel like it’s so wrong?”

“I don’t know. Just make sure you’re ready to leave in thirty-six hours.”

Without saying any more, Thunder Gale trotted out the door and went to tell his crew that their rest on Marble was being cut short.

13. What's Done is Done

Planet Hell
Solocitizen

13.
What’s Done is Done

13th of Planting Season, 10,056 AC
Present Day

Through darkness, metal, and the screeching of sirens, Thunder Gale fumbled. His hooves turned over loose glass and burnt-out wiring while his chest and legs fought for more wiggle room between him and the wreckage of their sensor assembly. With every breath a million little metal teeth nipped at his belly.

“Where is it,” he muttered to himself. “Where is it!”

“Major, sir, I need help.” That was Corporal Rain Dancer. There wasn’t any telling how many of the Spitfire’s crew had made it to the escape pods in time, but she was only one who scrambled into Thunder Gale’s. She had carried another in on her back, whom might have even been a corpse. “I can’t get—Major, help me!”

“Ten seconds, marine. Give me ten seconds.”

At last, Thunder Gale’s hooves struck a coldsilver star. It was his pendent—the star of Shining Armor’s mark—of that he had no doubt, but it was just out of his reach. He knew he needed to have left five minutes ago but that pendent was just about all he had left of his family. He kicked against the crash seats behind him and pushed against the metal until he wrapped his hoof around his pendant, and squirmed his way out.

He put it around his neck before hurrying to help Rain Dancer with the escape pod hatch. It was jammed shut, so they had to trigger the emergency release sequence to get it to open.

The explosive bolts along the hatch popped, and the door flung off the escape pod. Thunder Gale, battered and soot covered, climbed out of the open hole, carrying the front of the unmoving marine over his shoulder while Rain Dancer helped with the rest of him. Then he got his first look of where they had landed.

Burning metal lay scattered over the basalt scabs and the dust in between. In the dark, the fires left a flickering trail all the way to their crumpled escape pod, half buried at the bottom of an impact crater. Chemical fumes and black smoke bled out of its broken hull. No sign of any other pods.

Rain Dancer bounded out ahead of him, and once she was on the ground, she reached out her front hooves to take the crewpony slung over his shoulder.

He transferred the limp marine to her. As soon as he did, the escape pod’s emergency floatation device hissed and swelled and uppercut him so hard that it launched him out of the pod to the ground.

“Sir! Are you alright?” Rain Dancer galloped up to him. Her turquoise coat and pale mane were stained black from soot.

“Just my pride, Corporal.” Thunder Gale covered his mouth and coughed up smoke. He stared into the charcoal sky while he waited for the ringing in his ears to stop.

She raised an eyebrow, and helped him up.

“How’s our friend doing?” He pointed in a nod at the marine lying on the ground.

“He’s unconscious, Major, and he probably has a concussion. We need to get him to the doctor.”

The mention of her. It was as if he lost something that he carried around with him so much he grew as accustomed to its presence as his own breath, and often forgot about it. For the first time he realized it was gone.

“We need to regroup with the rest of the crew.” He shook the thoughts from his head. “If we do that, then we’ll find Breeze Heart too. Let’s salvage what we can from the escape pod and get moving.”

“Aye, aye, Major.”

They recovered a few emergency rations, a radio, and some rope from the pod’s charred survival kit. From the rope and the hatch door, Rain Dancer fashioned a makeshift sled to carry their supplies and the unconscious marine. While she secured their crewmate, Thunder Gale picked the radio up by his mouth and dragged it up the nearby basalt scab. While the heat wafting off the pod’s hull had kept him reasonably warm, a short distance away the night air cut into his bones.

“To anypony out there, this is Helios, do you read me?” He stood on the peak of the basalt scab with a hoof wrapped around the microphone. Fires burned up and down the surrounding hills, but he had no idea which were crashed escape pods, and which were smoldering debris. So, he kept calling over the radio and watching for movement.

“This is Helios, I have a wounded marine. Does anypony read me?”

Static answered him.

“Hey, Rain,” he said to her. “Do we have any flares? If not, we’ll have to make a torch and wave it around to draw some attention.”

“I’ll make it happen, sir.” She let go of the rope in her mouth long enough to talk, and then picked it up again.

“Major, is that you?” Lightning Fire’s voice broke through the static. “Please copy, over.”

Rain Dancer stopped what she was doing and Thunder Gale’s ears popped up.

“Affirmative, this is Helios,” he said. “I’m reading you five. Have you located any other survivors? Is the doctor with you? Over.”

“I have dropships in the air and conducting search and rescue operations as we speak. I’ve managed to round up about ninety of us so far, including Doctor Breeze Heart.”

“Thank Celestia she’s safe,” he said to himself more than to her.

“I’m not going to lie to you, Major, she’s hurt pretty bad. Over.”

Any sense of relief he had, it vanished. He choked down the news.

“I’m pretty sure she has a head injury, but we can’t find any signs of trauma. We’ve zeroed in on your signal, and it looks like you’re about a klick south of our camp. Do you need dustoff? Over.”

“Negative, we can make it on hoof,” he said. “Hail the Ursa Major and start evacuating the wounded. Once they’re taken care of and we’ve gathered the rest of the survivors, we’re going to start sending the rest of the crew up. Over.”

“Roger Wilco, but we lost contact with Gerard about ten minutes ago. Over.”

“Keep trying. We’re getting off this planet. Helios out.” Thunder Gale clipped the microphone back onto the radio and gazed to the north.

There the side of a tall and jagged hill greeted him. Fires lit up its brow and the crags beneath it. In order to reach the crest they’d need to take a longer, winding route up. He shivered.

Once Rain Dancer and he secured the wounded marine and their gear to the sled, he clamped his teeth on the reins and started the hike north. The weight pulled against his jaw and every bump and chunk of basalt jostled the sled around. It yanked on his molars and screeched as it dragged over every pebble and stone.

“You sure you don’t want me to pull it, sir?” Rain Dancer asked once they put about half the slope of the hill between them and their escape pod.

Thunder Gale let the rope drop out of his mouth long enough to pant and talk. “No, I can get it to the top. I’ve got it this far, I’m not about to give up and admit defeat. Just give me a second. You can carry it on the way down.”

“I know we’re in a hurry, but I think we might be able to spare sixty-seconds if you’d like to rest, sir.”

“No, the sooner we get over this hill and into camp the sooner we can…” He panted for breath, and looked up the hill again; they had a long way to go. “Okay, maybe we can afford to take five.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

While he stooped over the reins of the sled, with his head hanging low and his rib cage rising and falling, Rain Dancer trotted around back to the unconscious marine and checked his pulse. Thunder Gale watched her adjust the straps holding the marine in place, tuck a bladder of their emergency water under his head, and even brush a stray lock of his mane out of his eyes.

“Do you know him?” Thunder Gale asked. “I made it a point when I first took command to be on a first name basis with each member of my crew, but I don’t even recognize him.”

“His name is Gust, and I’m not surprised you’ve never run into him. He’s shy but he looks up to you to the point where he can’t even get up the courage to introduce himself.”

“I had no idea. Were you two close?”

“Yeah, we dated for a while, but you know how hard relationships are on a boat like ours. It didn’t work out, but I still kinda like him.” She held his face in her hooves, just to the left of a bloody crack on his forehead.

“We’ll get him to the camp and get him patched up. It’ll be okay.”

Rain Dancer glanced over at Thunder Gale, but then she spotted something to his left, and pointed into the black sky behind him. “Look!”

He followed her hoof to a comet speeding through the stars and splitting the sky in two with its tail. He squinted. No, it wasn’t a comet; it was way too fast. Several objects split from the head and veered away.

There was a flash and Thunder Gale flinched against the light. After a few seconds he opened his eyes again, and the sky was as blue as day. When it faded back to night, the comet had shattered into dust.

“What was that?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” He blinked; the flash seared blotches of purple and green to his retinas. “Something large and explosive burning up in the atmosphere.”

Then a cold wave of dread hit him and his ears dropped. He knew exactly what that comet was.

“Come on, Corporal.” He picked the reins up and dragged the sled ahead. “We need to regroup with the others.”

They reached the top of the hill in no time and as they began their descent, Thunder Gale still had too much nervous energy pent up in him to pass the sled off to Rain Dancer. It was much harder to coerce a sled to weave along the slope of a hill than drag it up one; every time the weight of his hooves spilled gravel, the marine and cargo behind him threatened to slip.

He kept his eyes on the lights of the camp along the opposite end of the valley below. Soon, the voices of his crew and the roar of their machinery echoed up the slope of the hill.

Snipers spotted him and Rain Dancer long before they reached the edge of the sentry lights, and the marines came galloping out from behind supply crates and the few standing tents to meet them. They carried flashlights that bobbed up and down in their mouths as they ran. The crowd encircled them and picked their sled clean of its cargo. They were just as dirty as Thunder Gale and Rain Dancer were, and the rare uniform among them was tattered and burnt.

A maroon mare wormed her way to the head of the crowd carrying a rifle on her shoulder. There was marine to her left, she shined a light in Thunder Gale’s eyes; he remembered her from the transmat station.

“First things first, open your mouth,” the mare with the gun barked. “We need you to prove you’re one of us.”

Thunder Gale opened his mouth wide, just as she asked, and her friend shining the light on him stepped closer. “What are you looking for?”

“Can’t tell you,” she answered him, and then said to the mare from the transmat station, “One of his molars is a fake. It looks like an implant of some kind. Can I get some more light?”

The light on him grew a notch or two brighter and he heard gravel stir as the mare with the gun crept closer to him.

“Yeah, it’s a transponder implant, right where you said it’d be. He’s the Major.”

The light veered off of him and the tension in the crowd released into a chatter. Thunder Gale shut his mouth and glanced among the crowd.

“Thank Celestia!” The mare from the transmat station exclaimed. “Sir, is the mission still a go? Do you still intend for us to fight these changelings out here?”

Then a marine pushed his way to the front and shouted: “We only saved five working power suits and two of our five dropships. I don’t see how we can fight.”

“Did you see that thing in the sky?”

“We still have thirteen marines unaccounted for and the entire engineering staff. Do you think they could have survived?”

“Are those things responsible for this?”

“Are they going to come back to finish what they started?”

Thunder Gale flapped his wings and leaned on his hind legs away from the mob. He glanced back and forth between questions, but by the time he thought up a response to the first and opened his mouth, another pony had shoved her way to the front of the crowd and asked another.

So many voices and pushing hooves and wings.

“Whoa, everypony, settle down.” Lightning Fire forced past the ponies around Thunder Gale and Rain Dancer, putting herself between them and crowd. She still wore her cuirass, though it had lost its shine under a new set of scorch marks. “Hold your horses and give the Major some room to breath. That’s an order!”

With that raised voice of hers, a rap on a head or two, and a mean look from her one eye she enforced order over the marines and got them to quiet down.

“Thank you, XO Fire,” said Thunder Gale. “Now, I don’t have time to answer all of these questions, but I just want to make it clear: our top priority is to evacuate this planet as soon as possible, not fighting Chain Gleaming.”

A gust of wind kicked in from the dark behind the crowd, and with it the sound of enormous wings flapping beyond the reach of their flashlights. It circled over them twice and gave way to the sound of a pair of hooves trudging across the scablands. The crew turned their eyes and ears to face the source in the blackness beyond their sight.

“Really? After all your lies, I find that rather hard to believe.” That voice, Thunder Gale recognized it immediately, but even as the others cleared a path for the speaker, he was still unprepared for what was stomping up to meet him. “I thought your top priority was finding your father? So how does leaving here weigh up against that?”

As it marched out from the desert, the flashlights and lanterns flickered and faded out. He wasn’t clearly visible until he was too close for Thunder Gale to run.

It was Discord, still partially in the guise of his father—same blue coat and purple mane—but the horns on his head had grown out several feet, and only one of the wings on his back resembled a pegasus’s, while the other looked as though it belonged to a bat. His front right hoof had been replaced with a lion’s paw, and he reeked of sulfur. The most disturbing part of all wasn’t his shape or smell, but in the way he moved. He no longer walked upon four legs like a pony, but on his back two instead, much like how Thunder Gale imagined one of those ape creatures would. There was something so wrong about watching something shaped like a pony stride about on two legs like that. No pony could, that was part of it. Thunder Gale watched Discord’s gait as he marched up to him, and the crowd parted and skirted behind their prince.

“Sniper teams, where are you?” Lightning Fire shouted into her headset and trotted along with the crowd. “Come on. Get your eyes on the target! It’s not that hard. It’s big, blue, and creeping me out!”

Thunder Gale stood there, terrified, with only a few feet between them.

“What do you want, Discord?”

“What I’ve always wanted: to go home, just like you, and every single one of these ponies you’ve so egregiously mistreated. But I’m not about to throw my own friends under a bus to get there. Now, what I have to say I have to say to them. Stand aside, Thunder Gale.”

Adrenaline seeped into his veins and boiled right under his skin. When Thunder glanced over his shoulder, every pony behind him were staring back at him, and whispering. Without thinking, he fell back half-way off his hooves and onto his rear.

While his head was turned, Discord side-stepped around him, and in a blur he positioned himself in front to address the crowd. One hoof held behind his back while the lion’s paw waved to suggest a bow. He turned to his side to give the marines a clear view of Thunder, sitting on his haunches like a dog.

“I’m a witness to every lie and transgression Major Gale has ever committed against you, and I’m here to give my testimony.” Discord pointed at himself with his lion’s paw. “You’ll have to forgive my rough appearance, and I do hope I haven’t alarmed any of you. I can assure you, all I wish for the moment is that you hear what I have to say. My intentions are good.”

“No, don’t you listen to a word that monster says!” Thunder Gale shot up and charged between Discord and the crowd.

“How rude.” Discord slithered past him. “I’ll have you know I am the very Spirit of Order. Now, do you want to tell them how you lied about your friend’s little message or shall I?” Discord passed his gaze to the crowd. “Hilll Born had information regarding his father and spent your retirement money so he could come out here. He betrayed you, and I have proof.”

Watching Discord work the crowd, Thunder Gale realized it was already over. When he waved his claw, their eyes followed, and when he mentioned Thunder Gale, they glanced to him but never looked him in the eye. Discord was a conductor and they his orchestra. Thunder didn’t attempt to interrupt him again, but instead dug his hooves into the earth and seethed.

Discord snapped his claw and in it appeared a holorecorder, the same one Hill Born sent Thunder Gale—how he managed to conjure it up, or from where, he didn’t know. He tossed it to Rain Dancer, who snatched it up all too quickly.

“Thunder, our dearest prince, lied to you all when he said your search was over; time and again he put you in harm’s way to continue a mission he promised was done. But don’t take my word for it, check the message and then look inside your hearts. You know what I say to be true. Take Lt. Cloud Twist for example, or your late companions, Drizzle and Medley. Yes, they’re dead; they were offered up like pawns for some sick game of his. Now, ask yourself, don’t you deserve better?”

No pony in the crowd spoke up as Rain Dancer set the holorecorder on the ground, and let Hill Born’s original message play. Thunder Gale didn’t hear the voice of his friend as any more than a fleeting whisper. He stared into the dust and basalt beneath him. It was so cold out there that he could see his own breath, but he was sweating.

“Is that true?” Rain Dancer asked after the message played itself out.

“It’s more complicated than that,” was all Thunder could say.

Chatter broke out amongst his troops and Rain Dancer shook her head. For the most part, his crew listened and waited in silence.

“Would somepony shoot that damn thing already?” Lightning Fire raised her voice above the crowd’s and reared up on her hind legs, kicking the air.

On her command the swoosh of a rocket swept overhead. They were soldiers, they didn’t scream; they all just ducked. Before Thunder Gale even hit the ground, the rocket met its target. The orange light from its tail flooded the desert and the faces of the gathered marines. Thunder Gale covered his head in his hooves and tucked in his wings and tail.

But the light and the smoke from its exhaust didn’t die with a flash and a boom. It kept burning and lighting up behind Thunder Gale’s eyelids. When he opened his eyes again, he followed the cries and light of the rocket’s exhaust all the way to Discord.

He held the rocket’s nose cone buried in his outstretched lion’s paw while its engine kicked and sputtered in the air. He dug into its metal casing as it gave one final thrust into him, but he didn’t yield, and the rocket tore open and flowed between his claws in ribbons. When the rocket finally detonated his paw muffled the blast down to a whimper. All that it amounted to was an acrid puff of smoke and tattered bits of metal.

Everypony in the crowd gasped. Even Lightning Fire, who never bothered to duck and cover and was standing in clear view of everypony, blinked.

“If you try that again I’ll collect your other eye,” Discord said to her. He flexed his paw, unharmed by the rocket, and strode a bit closer to crowd of marines. “As I was saying before cyclops over there interrupted me, I believe that you deserve better. I know you’re all wondering what I am and what I want, and to answer both those questions, I’m an exile just like you. And all I want is to go home and be with my friends again, just like you. I want the life I used to enjoy before the whole world got turned upside down, just like you do.

“You’ve all glimpsed what I’m capable of, know that I’ve yet to demonstrate more than a mere fraction of my power. Make no mistake that I will leave this planet and when I do, I will forge a new Golden Equestria out of the warring tribes. Now, let me ask you, don’t you want go home to?”

Murmuring spread through the crowd again.

“I don’t know what you want with them, but stay away from my marines.” Thunder Gale tried to yell at the top of his lungs, but only a whimper came out of his mouth.

Discord craned his head around at him, and smirked.

“I think I’ve made my intentions clear enough,” he said. “I’m not nearly as self-centered as you are. I treat my all my friends well, including—remind me, what’s she calling herself now, Breeze Heart?”

“I swear, if you even so much as touch a hair on her head I’ll—”

“What if I already have?” Discord postured closer to him and the temperature plummeted another ten degrees. “What will you do then? Hurl more crude projectiles at me? How’d that work last time? What if, after all the things you’ve done to her, she prefers my company to yours? What will you do then? Ravage me? Please, spare me the petty threats and grow up.”

Thunder Gale shot his ears back tensed to lunge. But he never did, he just stood there in silent rage.

“Now, if there are no more interruptions, I’ll continue.” Discord turned back to the crowd and, with impossible grace for two legs, ambled closer to them.

Thunder Gale was less than three feet from him and staring where his lion’s paw transitioned into his blue coat. The air around him itched with a sense of oppression and claustrophobia. It was just like in Chain Gleaming’s living room before the coffee table blew up, or when he made the cement covering the hatch vanish, only much worse, and the pins and needles pricking at him burned.

“Those of you who want to join me, please come to the abandoned city at dawn,” Discord said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe you have some thinking to do, and a pilot in desperate need of assistance.”

He put his thumb and index claws together and snapped.

Light flashed and all the warmth he’d been sucking out of the air rushed out as a wave of heat. The flickering flashlights several of the marines brought with them shone so brightly that they burst and sizzled, and several ponies shouted in alarm. When it was all over, Discord was gone, and he took the scent of sulfur with him.

For a moment, Thunder Gale stood there staring into the patch of dirt where Discord once stood while his crew slowly started talking again. Judging him. Then he heard Lightning Fire forcing her way to the front of the group. He looked up.

“Alright, everypony, listen up.” She didn’t nod, salute, or even glance in his direction. She simply gave him her back and addressed the troops. “I know how you all want to go home to your families, but I don’t even know what under Celestia’s bright sun that even was, let alone if I can trust it. What I do know is that I have a tent full of injured marines and no medical supplies. Right now, I need some of that marine dedication and your A-game more than ever. Report to your section leaders, I’ve already given them marching orders before that big blue bastard came along.”

They quieted down a little bit and listened.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Lightning Fire marched forward and drove her hoof into the air. “Hop to it, marines! Move like you’ve got a purpose!”

The crowd didn’t dispersed immediately, but instead lingered to stare at Thunder and talk amongst themselves. Once one or two began to hustle, the urgency spread to the rest. Over the next few minutes, the crowd filtered back beneath the lights of their camp. Lightning Fire herded the last of the stragglers together and drove them toward the supply crates. Only Thunder Gale and Rain Dancer remained, and she only lingered long enough to glower at him.

Alone and beside himself, Thunder Gale seized the opportunity to gallop around the side of the camp toward the tents. Somepony called out for him to stop, while others merely stared. In the dark, at a run, the individual voices and faces in the crew all blurred together.

He squinted under the floodlights, but he didn’t let that slow him down. He paused, glancing around the supply crates, the few tents that his crew had managed to put up, and the lanterns poking up between them for anything marked with a medical cross. He didn’t find one, so instead he unzipped the nearest tent and peeked inside. Finding it empty, he moved on to the next.

Somepony shouted his name again, but he didn’t stop to check who.

At last he spotted a tent large enough to house a small herd of ponies propped up beside a dropship still hot from flight; it was either a makeshift infirmary or a huge waste of his time like all the rest, but it was his best bet yet. So he rushed up to it and threw open the flap.

Inside, ponies—bloody, charred, and held together by epoxy—lay sprawled out on mats and the occasional cot. Lightning Fire wasn’t kidding about the lack of medical supplies; with the exception of Lt. Cloud Twist and a grey mare tucked away in the corner, everypony there was wide awake, moaning, and some even cradled burnt limbs still untreated. It smelled like blood and scorched hair in there.

“I’m looking for Doctor Breeze Heart, is she here?” Thunder Gale asked one of the more lucid marines.

She raised her one unbandaged hoof and pointed at the gray mare in the back.

Thunder Gale nodded, and hurried toward her. She was turned over on her side with her face turned down and aimed at the tent wall. Then he noticed the pink hair band in her mane, and his stomach turned. He leaned his head over her to peek at her face, and when he did he jolted back.

It was Breeze. The color had drained out of her pink coat and left her gray, but it was her. She could almost pass as merely sleeping, but her eyes were open and unblinking.

“Princesses, what has that monster done to you?” Thunder Gale crept closer to her and brushed her eyelids shut.

What if, after all the things you’ve done to her, she prefers my company to yours? Discord’s words replayed in his mind.

"I know I screwed up, and I’m sorry for everything, and if I could take it all back I would,” he said.

He grabbed her hoof, hung his head next to hers, and cried.

The roar and glare of thrusters swept overhead and faded out, and after a few minutes Lightning Fire barged in through the front door. She waited and watched him sob into Breeze’s mane.

“Sir, the pilot from the Ursa Major just landed,” she said. “You need to hear what he has to say.”

“Just, give me a second.”

“I’m sorry, Major, but I don’t have a second to give you.” Lightning Fire pointed out the door. “I’ve managed to get the crew back to work, but don’t ask me for how long. In case you haven’t noticed, there are open talks of mutiny. You have to do something.”

Thunder Gale didn’t say anything. Instead, he held his eyes closed and clutched Breeze’s hoof. It was cold to the touch.

“You know what Gerard just told me that explosion in the sky was? It was the Ursa Major burning up in the atmosphere. We’ve lost two ships, we’ve got no way off this rock, and about a million of Chain Gleaming’s closest friends are out for our blood. What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know, okay!” Thunder Gale whirled around at her. He didn’t have anything more to say, and after a moment he collapsed down on his hindquarters beside Breeze’s cot.

“Fine, sulk in your tent.” Lightning Fire turned and marched out.

Some time later, he got up to bandage and clean the wounded. He didn’t have any more than the most basic of medical knowledge, so he did what he could, and didn’t risk harming them more. When he was done, he trotted back over to Breeze’s cot and sank down against the supply crate across from it.

He let his head hit the side of the box, and he let his vision drift into the canvas above him. Fatigue had been seeping into his guts for a while, and now that he had stopped moving, it hit him. He didn’t think he could stand again.

“This is it,” he whispered to himself.

Breeze Heart’s head rolled to the side, and her mouth opened and shaped out words. Her eyes were still closed, and she remained unresponsive, even when Thunder Gale dragged himself to her side and jostled her shoulder.

“Breeze? Breeze!” He grabbed and stroked her hoof. “I’m here. Your Thunder is here. What are you trying to say?”

Soundlessly, she continued to speak, sometimes in long and unbroken strings of syllables that took her a minute or more to get through, and sometimes in bursts.

Thunder Gale lowered his head so close to hers that her breath tickled the hairs on his ears. He waited, closed his eyes, and listened for her to say something.

“Help.”

He jumped back.

Then Breeze Heart stopped mouthing words, and her head rolled away from him.

Thunder Gale watched her for a time, and waited for her to start whispering again. He knew it would only be a matter of minutes before the adrenaline wore off again and the fatigue returned, so unfurled a mat by her cot, and sprawled out with a blanket. He waited, and kept watching, until he closed his tired eyes. He told himself he’d just close them for a minute.

* * *

Blue, green, and orange flashed across the dark behind his eyes and and hinted at a vitality he thought lost. It was the same as he experienced before, but much more intense and unrestrained. Scents of clouds on the verge of rain far above lush forests tickled his nose.

This time he reached out for it, and asked the question: What do I do?

Pulses of purple and red arced across the black and warmth flooded into him. He relaxed his defenses until the rainbow had passed touched every fiber of his sinew, and when the warmth faded, it left in its place the buzz of electricity.

Images of his father’s palace—the office with the papers and the holograms, the room with the vase, and the cherry tree in the garden—flickered through his head. When Thunder Gale tried to pin one down, such as Hill Born’s face after he bailed him out, they all evaporated into the warmth of his eyelids. They rushed back as he drew his focus away from them.

What’s done is done, Thunder Gale, but you still have a choice about your future. The voice flowed through him and with it came the push of high speeds and strong winds, and a fleeting vision of the city in the chasm. You have all the pieces you need to solve this puzzle, but it’s up to you to put them together. Your flesh is your thoughts given form, change is always possible. We are infinite.

He almost felt like he was flying, but that was impossible. It was too familiar.

* * *

Eyes open, he awoke shouting at the lamp hanging from the center pole of the tent. His heart was pounding against his ribs, his chest rose and fell with his breath, and his wings flexed. His mind raced with questions, but as he lowered his head back down to his mat, Breeze Heart groaned.

She was still just as gray as she was before. She was likely to stay that way, Thunder Gale concluded, unless somepony did something about it.

Tossing the blanket aside, he leapt out off the ground and into a full gallop. He charged into the night and glanced up and down the paths of the campsite for any sign of Lightning Fire.

“I don’t care what condition the suit is in!” she shouted from somewhere beyond an industrial-sized container not thirty feet away. “If you can help the injured, then march your flank over to the medical tent and get to work!”

Thunder Gale galloped toward her and found her standing under a fluorescent lantern, barking into a frightened marine.

“And before you ask, yes, that is an order, private!” Lightning Fire turned away from the marine, shooed her away with her hoof, and trotted closer to Thunder Gale. “I have about a billion different problems, so you’d better make this quick.”

“I can’t take back anything I’ve already done, and saying ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t going to bring back the ship or all that lost time or our friends,” Thunder Gale said. “That said, I still owe you and everypony here an apology.”

“That’s all fine and dandy, Your Highness, but I know you didn’t come running over here just to tell me that.” She adjusted the strap on her eye patch and the failing buckles on her cuirass. “Now, what do you want?”

“I want to get every last crewpony off this rock. I don’t know how yet, but before I figure there’s still one pony I need to bring back to us. Everypony aboard the Spitfire sacrificed so much of themselves and have served with nothing short of the dedication and professionalism the Imperial Marines are known for, so I’m not about to leave a soldier behind.”

“You’re going to try to save Breeze Heart and go after that B-B-O.” Lightning Fire’s eye widened and her wings opened. “How in Equestria do you plan on doing that? You saw how good our weapons were against him.”

With his head turned up to the sky and the stars, Thunder Gale thought back to what the voice in his head said about the puzzle pieces, and then to the chasm and the great metal plate. For some reason, his mind circled it, and revolved around its edges.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just have this feeling that whatever’s buried beneath that city is the key to all of this. I know it sounds crazy, but I have to do this.”

“Do not even think about telling me to send in a strike team.” Lightning Fire marched right up to him jabbed her hoof at his chest. Under the lantern, her red-orange mane was nothing short of blazing. “After all your bullshit, I swear—prince or not, I will not let you risk another member of this crew on one of your half-cocked missions.”

“I never said anything about bringing along anypony else.” Thunder Gale stopped her hoof with his own and, without forcing her, lowered it away from him and to the ground, all while keeping eye contact. “I’m going alone.”

Lightning Fire shifted on her hooves and let her eyebrows and ears reach high.

Thunder Gale almost couldn’t believe that anything he said could shock her, but he didn’t flinch; he wanted to make sure she knew he was absolutely serious.

“With all due respect, I can’t let you do that. You’d be up against a superior force alone and without backup. It’s a suicide mission!”

“But I’m going to go through with it anyway,” Thunder Gale said.

She reeled away from him, cursed, paced over to the container behind her, and cursed again. The lantern overhead buzzed and settled back down.

“Shit.” She dragged herself away from the contained and faced him again. “I’m not going to talk you out of this one, am I? Well, if you’re going to do this, at least do it right. If we recovered your power suit, take it, and if any of our nukes survived, take one along just to make sure. And find a pilot to fly extraction. Even if you manage to get in and complete your objective, there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to get out without some support.”

“Any idea of who’d be willing to fly on this mission?”

Lightning chuckled a little. “After that thing’s speech, you’re not going to have much luck with the drop ship pilots. I’d say you only really have one option, and you’re not going to like it.”

“Who do you have in mind?”

* * *

He found him leaning against the patchwork monstrosity he claimed was a shuttle, with a bottle of rum in one talon and a joint lit in the other. Between swigs and puffs, he hummed a tune and shot mean looks at the marines hurrying past him on their way to the dropships. The cabin lights of his ‘shuttle’ were on and leaked pale-orange hues onto the desert around him.

Thunder Gale took a deep breath and pressed on toward him.

“What do you want?” Gerard put out the joint on the side of his ship, tucked it away in his denim flight jacket, and met him halfway.

“I need to ask you a favor,” Thunder Gale said. “A member of my crew is in a coma and I think my only chance of saving her is in the city. I’m not asking you to go with me, all I’m asking is that you’ll meet me there for pickup. XO Lightning Fire will fill you in on the details but I need to know if you’re in or not.”

Gerard laughed, and took a swig from his bottle of rum. “So, tell me, Major, why didn’t you just ask one of your pilots to fly you around?”

“Because none of them trust me any more. That’s why I’m asking you.”

“Allow me to savor the irony for a moment,” Gerard said. He looked up and counted the seconds, and then grinned. “Okay, thank you for letting me get back to you, but no. I’d rather spend my last hours in a cross fade than help you.”

Gerard chuckled and ran a talon through the feathers atop his head. His tail pulled close to his side and wrapped around his legs. He lowered his head a little, and his face was lost in shadow.

“Hey, what happened up there?” Thunder Gale asked.

“They came back,” he said. “Sigil Tech, man, they weren’t wiped out. This operation here, whatever it was, was only just the smallest tip of whatever they are. They have a fleet here, and it’s big enough to make the Battle of Arion look like a skirmish.”

Thunder Gale listened and watched his face; there was so much fear and loss in it.

“Gilda, my AI co-pilot, they killed her.” He raised the bottle for another swig, but lowered it before taking any more. “I hated that toaster, but she was my constant companion since I earned my stripes with The Express, and they sent her a kill code and took control. She didn’t deserve that. I barely got out before they vented my oxygen.”

“I’m sorry you went through that.” Thunder Gale stepped closer.

“Your granddad took my home, my friends, and two of my siblings when he invaded our world. I’m not going to raise a talon to help you.”

He didn’t say another word; he just clutched his rum tighter and marched up the ramp to his shuttle’s open door.

For a moment Thunder Gale let him go, but then he cantered toward the light bleeding from the door to try again. He stopped in front of Gerard’s silhouette and waited for his eyes to adjust enough to see his face.

“I wasn’t entirely honest earlier. She’s not just a member of my crew: she’s all I have left. If you resent me because I have a loving a family and you don’t, think twice. I lost my mother, my sister, and my father on my birthday. To top it all off, every weird thing out there with a bad attitude is copying him.”

That really got Gerard’s attention, but all the warmth he earned amounted to no more than a snort and the fact that he hadn’t shut his door on him yet.

“You can resent me, and I’ll welcome your hate.” Thunder Gale pointed at the medical tent past the supply crates, fuel lines, and lights. “Just don’t let her suffer because of it.”

After some internal deliberation Gerard reached into his ship, set his bottle of rum down, and he told him to “go clop off.” Then he lumbered in and shut the door.

With no other options, Thunder Gale sucked it up and left to go prepare for the mission ahead.

Author's Note

Special thanks to Mathias, Ed Garnot, General Liberator, and Derek F for all the work you've done in making this thing happen.
Planet Hell will update again on the 28th of October.

14. Silent Shout

14. Silent Shout

Planet Hell
Solocitizen

14.
Silent Shout

1st of Planting Season, 10,056 AC
Hearts and Hooves Day

Empty houses and apartment complexes sprawled over the hills and, with their white walls against the setting sun, painted the endless suburbs beyond the windows of the tram orange. Thunder Gale rested his head on the cool of the glass and watched it all speed by. Every now and then the swaying of the tram jostled the glass and him apart and back together.

Aside from Thunder Gale and his two companions, XO Lightning Fire and their jumpship pilot, Gerard, the tramcar was empty. Its seats still smelled of fresh plastic, and the interior was factory white.

Gerard fidgeted in the seat behind him while Lightning Fire, the ever vigilant soldier, stood with one hoof grappled to a pole a few feet away.

“Hey!” Gerard kicked at the back of his seat to get his attention. “When we get to the tower, there’s a package I gotta run and pick up.”

“We don’t know what to ask for.” Thunder Gale turned to him. “You’re the one who’s going to have to make the maneuver, not us.”

“Yeah, I know, but I have to take care of this real quick. Okay?”

Thunder let out a sigh and turned back to the window.

“I think that’s Greener Pastures now.” Lightning Fire peered up the central aisle.

The city hit them from around the bend in the hillside and it was anything but green. Brown hovels jumbled together cluttered every available foot of real-estate between the city walls, and the lonely towers piercing the clouds above.

Originally the colonization of Azrael IV was a joint effort by the New Canterlot Kingdom and some big corporation. The corporation showed up before the colonists, scrubbed the atmosphere clean of chlorine, and installed some basic infrastructure, housing, and industrial projects. The plan was that the government would pay for the terraforming and then start shipping colonists over. They got as far as sending the first wave over, and then, The Empire declared war on the unicorn kingdom and the colony was abandoned. The settlers were too poor to purchase the pre-existing structures and too few to make a real start at colonization on their own, and the corporation staffed just enough employees to defend their investments.

Beneath the tram, and Thunder Gale’s scanning eyes, unicorns hustled to and fro down the dirty alleyways and sun-bleached homes. There were so many of them, and all of them were half-starved and so stained with grime that their pastel colored coats blended into the buildings.

Though none of the crew knew it yet; but they were out of money to pay for passage back to Marble, or anywhere for that matter. Thunder stiffened in his seat and his heart raced in his chest at the sight of the unicorns below.

“Was this what the lower side of Pegatropolis was like?” He pulled himself away from the window just long enough to put the question to Lightning Fire. He had picked out a crisp cuirass he saved for public events earlier that morning, and it squeaked on the seat every time he moved.

“No,” she said. “It’s worse; you can’t see the sky.”

Gerard shifted in his seat.

The tram sped over the walls of the corporate sector and the impoverished city vanished. The streets there were clean, well organized, and constructed with anal-retentive precision. And empty.

They disembarked less than a block away from their destination: a gleaming blue tower with a holographic emblem, a heart backed by a shield, over its entrance. Once through the revolving doors, the receptionist pointed them toward the hyperlift and they set off, with their hooves, and talons, clicking on the marble. Thunder Gale counted the floors until they hit the bottom, and neither his XO nor the griffon said anything on the way down.

As soon as the hyperlift opened a beaming unicorn with a spiky mane almost too tall for the doorway stuck out his hoof and said, “I’m Dr. Wise Guy—and yes, that’s my real name—and I’m the head of the Interplanetary Express’s R and D department here on Azrael IV. I’ll be your guide today!”

“I’m Major Gale.” He shook his hoof.

“Yes, I’ve heard of you.” Dr. Guy bounced over to Lightning Fire and gave her his hoof. “And you must be General Fire, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” And then he did the same with Gerard.

“And what about me?” Gerard asked. “Don’t you know my name too?”

“Of course I do.” Dr. Guy retracted his hoof from Gerard’s talons. “The package you’ve requested is waiting along with details on your next assignment in Personnel Resources.”

Gerard shifted on one talon to the other and nodded his head.

“It’s really very rare that I ever get visitors down here,” Dr. Guy said. “My colleagues transferred to the facility on Azrael III, which I suspect is what brought you here. I’ll give you a quick tour and then I’ll show you The Cartographer.”

“If you don’t mind, we’re in a hurry to continue our mission.” Thunder Gale held up a hoof between him and Dr. Guy as if it were a wall.

“Very well, come right this way and we can get started.”

Past the vacant offices and plastic-wrapped laboratories, he led them to a blast proof hatch that required both a retinal scan and a sample of his voice before it cracked open.

It was completely dark on the other side, and even as Thunder Gale leaned his head beyond the hatch, he couldn’t see anything other than the black, but from the echo of his own hoof-falls he knew he was staring into an enormous and empty chamber.

“What is this?” he asked.

“This is the only way we know of to get to the third planet.” Dr. Guy trotted past the hatch and into the blackness beyond. “It’s also The Interplanetary Express’s best kept secret, and the only reason why I’m still here and not with my colleagues.”

A lever snapped into place, and the roof overhead groaned and clanked. The scent of burning oil trickled in throughout the chamber. He looked up right as a flash as bright as the sun light up the room.

He hissed.

“My apologies,” Dr. Guy said. “Sometimes it does that if it hasn’t been used in a few weeks.”

When the light dimmed enough for Thunder Gale to open his eyes again, he found himself standing amidst a star field. They peppered the walls and floor and the dome over his head. A child-like part of him couldn’t help but gaze upon the lights in awe. It reminded him of his father’s office.

In the center of the room spun an orb orange and angry as the sun over Azrael IV. Eight spheres of brass revolved around it on their own concentric rings, the outermost of which orbited along the wall and all the way around the chamber. In fact, now that he thought about it, the entire thing probably was a model of the Azrael system.

The weird part of it was that every orb and ring hung eight feet off the ground—without any visible poles or strings holding it up. That freaked him out the more he thought about it. He had seen machines that could levitate a cat before, on Hellas, but never as stable or as delicately.

“How’s it doing that?” Thunder crept toward the farthest ring and waved a hoof underneath it. “If it’s magnetic, how come the buttons aren’t flying off my cuirass?”

“Of course it’s a magnet.” Lightning Fire edged closer to the sun in the center, but stopped halfway. “How else are they doing it? Magic?”

“It might as well be,” said Dr. Guy. “Everything here is held up by some sort of quantum suppression field. I can’t tell you more than that, not because I don’t want to, but because our best scientists and engineers don’t have any more than a theoretical understanding of its mechanisms.”

“So how’d you even build it in the first place?” Thunder Gale glanced at him, and then back to the planets and their sun.

“We didn’t build it.” Dr. Wise shook his head and his mane wobbled and swayed with him. “We found it here. We don’t know who, or what, created this. All I do know is that it required an understanding of electromagnetism and quantum physics that far exceeds our own.”

Thunder Gale pulled himself away from the solar system, and looked to him as he asked: “So who built it?”

Lightning Fire turned to the doctor and waited for his answer.

“I don’t know what did or didn’t. There isn’t enough data to draw any conclusions and I don’t care to speculate. You wanted to get to Azrael III, didn’t you? The Cartographer—that’s what the survey team named it—is the only way to get there, and that’s all we know. That and it’s not so much a model as it is a quantum projection of some kind rendered in real time. At least, that’s as far as I’d care to guess.”

He pointed at the center and Thunder Gale followed his hoof all the way to the sun. “Look and watch. The next appearance should be any second now.”

Two planets orbited close to the sun. Both were brass and shining against the light, but much further away and across an empty expanse, the next planet sat along its ring. Then, as Thunder Gale traced Wise Guy’s hoof back to the sun, a spot in the gap shimmered, and wobbled, and filled with charcoal as hard and solid as metal until a third planet coalesced from out of the empty space. Unlike the others, it had no ring and was as black as the void between the stars.

“Okay, Dr. Guy, you’ve got my attention.” Thunder Gale trotted to the orb and raised his hoof to shield his eyes from the sun. “What did I just see?”

“The Cartographer isn’t just a model of the Azrael system.” He darted over to Thunder and waved his hooves out excitedly. “It recreates on a micro scale the same electromagnetic conditions that surround the system. For reasons I can’t explain, that planet is never where it’s supposed to be; we can’t calculate its location based on its velocity and known trajectory. To make matters worse, an EM anomaly has rendered it invisible ninety percent of the time. The only thing that can accurately predict where it’s going to be, and when it’s going to be visible, is The Cartographer.”

“Great. So, Gerard, how soon can you have the Ursa Major prepared for transport?” Thunder Gale announced. “I want to leave for the third planet as soon as you receive the astronomical data from whatever this is.”

There was no response, and when Thunder spun around to ask again the door out hung open. He glanced to Lightning Fire, who shrugged, and then at Dr. Wise, who had already forgotten about their pilot and looked on with his head cocked to the side. Thunder cursed under his breath.

For at least half an hour Dr. Wise talked at them about the eccentricities of The Cartographer, before Thunder finally got the chance to break away and look for Gerard.

Aside from the secretary on the ground floor who directed Thunder to Personnel Resources, the tower was empty. He passed by offices, cubicles arranged in beehives, and laboratories all dark and wrapped in plastic. They caught the low light of the emergency exits and glistened. His hooves were silent on the carpet and it all smelled like a factory: immaculate.

At the end of the corridor he arrived at a hologram of the Interplanetary Express logo, hung over a reception desk. The secretary had been replaced by a computer terminal and when he touched it, a welcome screen for the Personnel Resources Department flashed awake.

“I’m looking for my pilot, a griffon named Gerard, did he come this way?” Thunder asked.

“Don’t bother trying to talk to her, she’s not that kind of AI.” The answer came from behind the reception desk, and when Thunder trotted around the other side, there sat Gerard crumpled over a holorecorder idling on a block of text.

“Dr. Wise is waiting to speak to you,” Thunder said. “He needs you to talk to the Ursa Major’s AI before he can send over data about the third planet.”

“I waited too long to get out.” He wave a talon until the hologram scrolled down to the end of the text block.

In big red letters it spelled out the words, “Winter Protocol in effect—wait for further orders.”

“What’s Winter Protocol?”

“I’m never leaving here, that’s what it means,” Gerard said. “The last available jumpship in system is ordered to stay put and wait until there’s an emergency and the colony needs to call for help. The last one left to relay a distress signal when the techs here lost contact with the colony on Azrael III. So until another ship jumps this way, I have to stay put.”

He tossed the holorecorder across the empty floor and buried his face in his talons.

“But you still get paid for your trouble, don’t you?” Thunder asked. “Waiting here sounds a lot less dangerous than your normal routine.”

“Do you think I wanted to be a pilot? I took this job because maybe one day I could afford to live somewhere I could see the sky over my home again. It might be years, decades even, before another ship comes this way. There’s no sky inside a jumpship!”

“So, why don’t you quit?” Thunder paced a step closer. “If it’s that bad, there has to be someway out.”

“I can’t quit. I’d never get what I wanted if I quit.”

Looking on in silence at Gerard as he raked at his face, crumpled and defeated, Thunder came to see himself. Though he hadn’t the words for it yet, the misery of all the sacrifices made toward an unrealized, but desperately sought after, future was the same. They were battered housewives, married to abusers who promised the future in exchange for the present. Thunder Gale stared into Gerard as he raked his face and winced as if it were his own.

The horror of it, of suddenly understanding the circumstances he sought for himself, cut at Thunder Gale right into his gut.

“What are you staring at?” Gerard sprang to his feet. “You don’t have any right to judge me! You’re the reason why I’m stuck here and not under the sky beneath my home!”

Thunder Gale said nothing; he wanted to open his mouth and scream, but he remained silent. In the quiet he stared right back at Gerard.

“Buck you.” Gerard shoved past him and stormed off into the deep of the tower, and left him alone to contemplate the distant hum of machinery.

* * *

By the time Dr. Wise had finished compiling The Cartographer’s latest schedule, and the tram ride back to the spaceport, it was late, and when Thunder Gale creaked open the hatch to his room, it was dark and only the blinking orange light of his bedside clock was there to greet him.

After the horror of the day he wanted nothing more than to wrap himself Breeze’s comfort, but right away he knew she wasn’t in bed. He didn’t know whether by the absence of her sleeping breathes or by the lack of her warmth he figured that out, but he didn’t waste any time in flipping on the light and confirming what he already knew.

The bed was empty except for a basket wrapped in bright yellow paper resting upon it. Thunder Gale wormed his hoof through the wrappings and pulled out a bottle of hard apple cider. He held it in his hoof, puzzled, until he remembered Breeze Heart mentioning she wanted to do something special for Heart’s and Hooves Day.

And I promised her I’d be here about three hours earlier. He smacked his forehead. He didn’t even signal her datapad he’d be late.

He set the bottle down on the nightstand and bolted out the door and galloped all the way to sickbay.

When he got there, and put his head up against the window and peeped in, he found her curled up on a bed with a blanket pulled over her head, rising and falling with each of her breathes.

He watched her for a while, and then headed back to his room, and fell asleep still dressed in his crisp uniform.

Author's Note

Thunder Gale will embark on a suicide mission on November the 4th.
But if you want a chance to read more of my work, I wrote a little short story to help promote Emergence, a board game I helped to make!
You can read more about Emergence: The Game itself here. And find the short story here! It borrows a lot from Planet Hell as far as the set-up goes, but it's more of my writing and it's final update comes out this Monday.
Shameless plug over.

15. Behold a Pale Horse

Planet Hell
Solocitizen

15.
Behold a Pale Horse

14th of Planting Season, 10,056 AC
Present Day

Over the charred ground and under the cover of night, Thunder Gale picked through the bits and pieces of the Spitfire and around its ribs and bulkheads. The sensors in his helmet read the heaps of metal and fed them to his holovisor for his eyes to read in green detail. The Geiger counter on his HUD ticked at hints at him of what lay beneath it all, out of sight. Super strength granted by his power armor let him clear it all away in a few short seconds. All he could hear was that frantic clicking and the sound of his own breath against inside his helmet.

Half-buried in the dirt was a lead cylinder no longer than his forehoof. There was a detailed warning etched on its surface, and most of the LEDs on it had shifted from a safe green to red. It was a tricobalt warhead, one of the weapons in the Spitfire’s nuclear arsenal, and a family heirloom.

He disabled the Geiger counter and, with hooves muffled by layers of steel, secured it to his back and galloped out of the wreckage.

He looked back on the remains of his ship after he cleared a safe distance up the side of the valley. The ribs of it, the broken wings, they reached for the sky and cut into the stars. He had devoted five years of his life to finding a way back home, and the Spitfire had been there with him the whole time, through the good and the bad. When prepped his thrusters to jump he left it all behind.

Kicking off the ground he rode jets of fire into the sky. The acceleration pressed into him until the adrenaline flowed. He counted one, two, three and then killed the micro-fusion thrusters mounted on his wings and hooves, and floated mid air, and then let gravity twist his arc into a ground-ward lurch. He had selected a landing place for his jump well in advance and nailed the hillside with surgical precision.

Without delay he kicked off the again. During his training, they taught him to stay on the ground as little as possible. But why wouldn’t he? Right then he was as close to flying as a pegasus could get and it felt amazing. There was nothing more thrilling than to kick up and watch the land fall away. The sensation of rising and falling—that constant acceleration appealed to a very deep part of himself.

By luck, Lightning Fire’s marines had recovered an old suit of his while they were searching for medical supplies. He replaced it for a newer suit a few years back. Somepony was supposed to cannibalize it for the parts long ago, but they only got around to stripping its dull ceramic armor of its paint. They didn’t have any rockets or ammo to stock its heavy weapons but his rifle clip was full and the thrusters worked fine so it was better than nothing; way better than nothing.

He fell into a rhythm as he propelled himself over the hill and down the other side, and kept it going as he bounced across the desert expanse toward the waypoint painted on his visor. Each of his hops sent shockwaves through the dust and he left tiny clouds in his wake.

Until he spotted the towers of the city on the horizon, and the fire-painted smoke set against them. He brought himself bouncing and trotting to a stop in the open swath of dried lakebed. Over the sound of his breath and the faint hum of his suit’s engines, he heard the cackle of gunfire. Against his own orders, he broke radio silence.

“Spitfire, this is Helios, do you read me?” Thunder Gale whispered into his suit’s microphone. “Spitfire, Spitfire, does anypony copy?”

He kept trying for a couple of minutes and only static answered him. He would have stayed longer, but the image of Breeze Heart drained of color and still as a corpse pressed him forward.

He was on his own now.

The miles between him and the city evaporated under wing and hoof, but with each of his bounds the towers gained in size and the red smoke chewed at the horizon until it swallowed the whole of the night sky. The echoes and booms of battle were close.

When at last he arrived at the chasm, he scurried out of the red glare, and into the shadow of a monolithic tower that reached so high into the smoke that it blurred into it. He used it as cover as he crept closer, so low and hunkered down that his steel belly scraped along the ground. He peeked over the edge and into the inferno.

Purple and green lights chased pony-like shapes through the smoke and when they caught them, they fell. They screamed and they howled. It was madness down there and he couldn’t tell who was fighting who. When he increased the magnification he saw horns, insect wings, and sharp teeth. Their legs were all missing pieces so large that light shone through the other side.

“Buck that.” Thunder Gale backed away and buried his face in his armored forehoof. Right then the walls of his helmet didn’t feel very thick.

The seal Sigil Tech tried to cement over—the one Discord had taken him into—that was where he needed to go. Just focus on charting a way there, Thunder Gale, you can deal with the rest later, one step at a time, he told himself. Just focus on programming your destination for now.
A thought brought up a holographically rendered map on his visor, but before he even gestured with his hoof, the image flickered. When it returned, a way point shone out in the center of the city along with a note: “Go, now.” That sent a shiver down Thunder Gale’s spine and he shook his head until he banished any thought of what might have done that.

He took a deep breath, reared up on his hind legs roaring his lungs, and dove into the inferno.

The bugs paused and quieted their shouting long enough to train their heads and ears at him like turrets. One raised a shoulder-mounted weapon, but before it could fire, a green bolt cut it down. Shouting and screaming and the cackle of guns broke out among them again.

As Thunder Gale rode his arc down the ground jumped out of the smoke. On reflex alone he kicked into his thrusters, tapped the ground, and leaped up again. The acceleration bore into him.

Bullets zipped by, but he kept pressing upward. He focused on his arc and on the pixels and smoke ahead of him. Inside his armor, sweat flowed down his face and glued his coolant suit to his hide.

As he reached the top of his arc and lurched into his descent, a bolt of green light zipped along side him and bloomed not five feet ahead of him. A bug charged with outstretched hooves and snapping fangs. Its eyes had no pupils and he wasn’t prepared for that.

Thunder Gale dived away from it with all his thrusters could give him. He spun in air and faced the bug as he tumbled. With a thought he summoned cross hairs and painted his assailant red. He opened his wings to steady himself, squeezed the firing bit, and let his targeting computer and shoulder-mounted rifle do the rest.

The rifle kissed into his shoulder and bullets sailed through its wings but its momentum carried it straight into him. The impact sent him spiralling out of control and its limp body entangled with his.

Scrambling he shoved himself free, but as he rolled in the air to right himself, a wall and a window flung toward him. He flinched. The window shattered effortlessly but the floor didn’t; it hammered him against his own armor and flung him head over hooves like a washing machine. His camera feed cut out and something broke on his spine. The impact slammed the air from his lungs.

His ears rung and his head spun. For a long while he just stayed there. He was upside down, blind, and buried so tight in crumbly stuff that it held him fixed in place. If he wanted to he could break free, but every inch of him ached, and a stabbing pain in his chest dug into him more at every gasp for air.

“She needs you, Thunder,” he said through the pain, “get moving.”

He repeated those words to himself until he marshaled the courage to get up, but the screams of the bugs outside scared it from him.

A moan echoed along the wall, and that drove him to push until the wall crumbled and he spilled out onto the floor belly up. Through the stabbing pain in his chest, he sprang to his hooves and into a combat stance.

The ten seconds it took for his camera feed and holovisor to reset passed in still and silent dread. When the hallway finally did coalesce and the glare from the windows shone clear, he held himself at the ready and cast a crosshair into the black.

No skittering of wings nor the clawing of hooves came for him. The moan echoed out from the depths of the hallway ahead once again. That time he crept forward.

He followed it down the hallway and into the next room. High windows opened to the fire and smoke blurred city scape, and the wind rasped through a hole punched from the center. In the middle of the room lay the bug, strewn on its side, and broken wings twitching. The light pouring in from the windows cut neat squares through the shadows and shone technicolor as it passed through the wings and lit the growing pool of blood on the concrete.

The bug moaned again and peeled its face from the floor. With bright eyes it stared up at Thunder Gale, and raised a hoof up to its face to shield its face. It shut its eyes, and braced for the end.

Thunder Gale stood there watching from the dark, cool air washing across his face and the inside of his suit. As much as the sight of it boiled under his skin, it was no threat to him. A thought brought up his suit’s inventory and another command deployed a needle full of medical-grade epoxy. He marched closer.

At his touch the bug flinched, but when the end didn’t come it opened its eyes again.

“I need to stop the bleeding.” He tugged on one wing and the bug kicked against the floor, but did nothing to resist him. “Try to hold still.”

The bug nodded.

Once he was finished and glue dry, he knelt beside it.

“Can you walk?” he asked.

“No.” It spoke with a mare’s voice.

“Hang tight then.” He flung one of its legs over his shoulder and hoisted it up onto its feet. “Do you have a spot you were planning on meeting the rest of your friends?”

“Sixteen blocks down, in an ancient apartment building that overlooks the park and the pit.”

“Great. Just where I was going. Get ready to hoof it.”

Just like the hallways he encountered on the mission to extract Lt. Cloud Twist and his squad, the walls were wide enough for his shoulders, but too narrow for the length of his body to turn. It took nearly an hour to clamber down the stairs, all while carrying the bug and nursing his broken rib, to reach the bottom.

When they finally reached the ground floor, Thunder set her down and crept over to a massive set of windows. The city streets faded in and out of the smoke, and even through his suit’s filter the scent of ash wafted in. He lingered at the window and watched the empty windows.

Bullets peppered the brick walls around him. He jumped back and landed on his butt and scooted away. Riding on the adrenaline he scooped the bug up and scrambled out through the other door.

Through the smoke the waypoint on his visor guided them on. They didn’t stop to set overwatch at the intersections or creep along cover. Gun fire rang, and it wasn’t until it the patter of it faded into the distance that he slowed his pace, and set the bug down on in the hollow of an overturned and rusted car.

As soon as he did, he collapsed along his right side. It hurt to breath, and the pain in his ribs was wearing him down.

“You’re Thunder Gale, prince of the pegasus tribe.” The bug pulled herself out from the car enough to peer over the door at him. The fangs stuck out from her lips while she spoke and her blue tongue flashed. “Why are you doing this?”

“Discord took a member of my crew, and I’m not leaving until I bring her back.”

“No, I mean why are you helping me? I’m a changeling, I know what we’ve done to you.”

“I guess because you’re a soldier, right?” Thunder Gale released the nuke from his back and slug it down beside him. He check the lights on the side; one still shone green. “You didn’t have any say over how any of this played out. Let’s just leave it at that.”

“Once we get to our outpost, I’ll talk to who ever in our council is still holding out,” she said. “I’ll do what I can to make sure you get where you’re going.”

“Do you have a name?”

“I’m whoever I need to be, but right now that’s Cater.”

“Thank you, Cater.” Thunder winced. “I don’t suppose there’s a medi-pod at this outpost, is there?”

She shook her head.

“I guess we’ll both have to wait until we get off world to get patched up.”

“I don’t think either one of us is leaving here.”

During those brief minutes Thunder Gale spent slumped against the side of the car, the patter of gunfire faded into quiet and in its place stillness descended over the street corner. The ash drifting on the wind provided the same isolation and sanctuary of falling snow, and the city was muffled beneath it. He stared into the wall ahead of him, until he marshalled the strength to heave the nuke over his back and stand again.

“I’m going to go scout ahead,” he announced. “We can’t be more than a few blocks away from the pit.”

He followed the way point down several blocks, sticking to the ground and to the shadows of the alleyways, until only a long building stood between him and his destination.

In a previous life, it might have been an apartment, complete with a storefront locked tight behind shutters and an elaborate plaster facade. Now the windows looked out over the street like empty eye sockets and its facade lay in pieces at the feet of its store front. He didn’t see any movement, but thought it best to get Cater before creeping any closer, and so he turned back around.

As he rounded the street corner back to the car, voices emerged from out of the quiet and then screaming. Skittering and buzzing, four other bugs swarmed over the car and clawed at Cater through the open door. She kicked and she howled, but they dragged her out onto the asphalt. They hadn’t spotted Thunder Gale yet and he froze.

“Traitors!” she shouted at them. “One changeling shalt not harm another! Never before has The Law ever been broken! Traitors!”

Her protested did nothing and the four wailed into her. She raised her hooves to protect her face but they tore her legs aside and hammered down on her. None of them carried any weapons, but that didn’t mean they weren’t armed. Thunder had seen first hoof what those horns on their heads were capable of, but still be stepped forward. He locked his crosshairs on the lead bug, and fired just to left.

The bullet whizzed past him, and he dove into the dirt while the others scrambled behind the cover of the car. While they pulled him into cover, Thunder Gale launched himself forward and poised himself between them and Cater.

“Listen up, when I say so the four of you are going to turn tail and march back up that street.” He pointed in the direction opposite of the waypoint painted on his HUD. “And if you even turn your head back in this direction, let alone if I see any glow from those horns of yours, then there’s going to be trouble.”

“Why should we listen to you?” one asked.

“Because I’m packing more than just bullets.”

“You’re in over your head, prince!”

“Do you want to test me?” He stabbed a hoof forward. “Go ahead, but I promise you I can dish-out more than whatever you can serve up. Now march!”

There was no movement from behind the car, except for a brief flash of wings.

“Did I stutter! I said march! Now!” He pawed at the asphalt.

One at a time, the bugs crept out from behind the cover of the car, and one at a time they turned to face the long open street. They marched, just as he told them to, and he watched their every movement until they retreated into the smoke in the distance.

Then he bolted for Cater and scooped her up.

“We got to go.” He threw her hoof over his shoulders. “I don’t know how much time I just bought us, but the apartment is just a few blocks the other way. Can you make it that far?”

“Yes, I think so.” She quivered.

“Good, now move.”

When at last they stepped out onto the street leading to the apartment, Thunder Gale did so with confidence, despite Cater’s hesitant pace. But behind his armor he was sweating. He watched those high windows for a flash of green and listened for the skittering of wings, but all he heard was the clicking of his own hooves upon the asphalt.

Purple flashed on the asphalt head of him and heat surged out. The blast was close enough to flood his vision with pixilated static. He reared to a halt, blind.

“Don’t move!” a voice shouted from above. “If you do, we shoot.”

He still held his free hoof poised to bolt but he didn’t dare to set it down; he clung to cater, and for the moment she shouldered their weight.

“Stop!” she called out. “It’s Cater! And I’ve brought a friend with me!”

“Prove it,” the voice demanded. “Prove you are who you say you are.”

“I can’t.”

For the next few minutes voices rose and fell in the windows above, just out of discernibility, and Thunder Gale waited with his hoof poised above the ground while he waited for his vizor to reset. When it did, Cater was trembling.

At last the shutter doors ahead of him peeled from the ground and out walked a bug. Just as the others, he couldn’t tell if it were a male or a female. That, added with those pupil less eyes, made it unreadable to him.

“Chain Gleaming wishes to speak with you, Major Gale,” the bug said; its voice betrayed no gender. “You’re to surrender any weapons you’re carrying along with your helmet.”

“What about her?” He nodded at Cater. “She needs a doctor.”

“Traitor or not, we take care of our own,” the bug said.

Thunder Gale waited a moment but took the opportunity to set his hoof down. One at a time he released the ammo belt from his rifle and the nuke from his back, and then clamps on his helmet.

The taste of ash and the bitter cold of the desert breathed upon him as he did, and after he let it tumble to the ground he had difficulty looking at the bug in front of him in the eyes for more than a passing glance.

“Happy?” he asked.

“No.”

He sighed and ejected the bullet in the chamber.

After he did the bug marched forward, lifted Cater from his shoulders, and lead them to the door. As they reached it, two more waiting in shadows of the doorway rushed out and collected his gear off the ground.

Inside more bugs were waiting for them. They lined the walls and the banisters and the crowded the stair case. The black of their carapaces blended into the dark but their eyes still glowed. The bug who meet him outside glided through the crowd, but when Thunder Gale attempted to follow, they resisted. Only reluctantly they gave way to him and drifted around behind him like water around oil.

The bug led him to down a hallway looking out over the empty construction pit in the center of the city, but where the seal once lay now smoke spewed forth in a column. Gunfire lit the column just as lightning does storm clouds. That was where he programed his way point to lead him, and the sight of it churned the viscera just beneath his heart.

As Thunder watched the smoke rise, the bug rattled its hoof on a door branching off the hallway. After a moment, the door creaked open and it waved a hoof for him to step inside.

Slumped down in the far corner, back against a long set of windows, was a bug. Bandages encircled its chest and although its horn glowed, it flickered like a candle. The light from the pit outside cut rectangles out of the dark, but these the bug took care to avoid even as it attempted to stand.

“My brother, do you require any help?” asked the bug who’d been leading Thunder Gale.

“No, just send him in.”

Thunder Gale stiffened; he recognized that voice.

“Chain Gleaming?” He trotted closer. “What happened to you?”

“Discord.” The bug in the corner grinned out of the corner of his mouth, and then broke into coughing. “He happened.”

The other bug darted past Thunder and into the room, but before he stepped beyond that rectangle carved in the floor, Chain Gleaming held up a hoof to stop him.

“I’ll be right outside the door if you need anything.” The other bug bowed, slid out into the hallway, and shut it in its wake.

“I must say, Commander Gale, I am impressed.” Chain Gleaming waved a hoof for him to join him in the shadow of the window. “I’m not as soft-hearted as you are; it wouldn’t have worked on me. Had our positions been reversed I wouldn’t have risked the lion’s den—I would have leveled this building to the foundations.”

“What do you want, Chain?” Thunder planted his hooves into the floorboards and didn’t budge. “I don’t have time to listen to you gloat.”

“I never said you chose poorly.”

Thunder Gale glanced out the window again. It was only about two hundred yards from the apartment to the gaping hole and the smoke. He had only that far to go—right out the window and follow the smoke, not that hard—and yet he felt too sick to his stomach to think of it.

“I want to know about your marines, and why they didn’t join you.” Chain Gleaming broke into another coughing fit, and when it died down he continued. “If you answer me that I’ll let you leave in peace to do whatever you came here for.”

“Are you trying to figure out if we’re a threat to you? Why would I tell you anything? For all I know this could be part of some sick trick to hurt more ponies.”

Thunder Gale knew better, but at that moment he didn’t care. He gave him his back and stared ahead. Then he sighed, and turned back around to look him in those pupil-less eyes.

“Discord showed up at our camp in a poor disguise of my father,” he said. “He told them all that I had betrayed them and abused the trust they put in me by bringing them here, and that I was unfit to lead them.”

Chain Gleaming crawled a bit closer, coughed, and asked, “And what did you say about that?”

Thunder Gale stiffened up and traced the trails of dust on floorboards with his eyes. Yeah, he threw them all under a bus, but that didn’t mean that he owed Chain Gleaming an answer. But after a long minute of staring at his hooves and a crack in the plaster floor between them, he gave him one.

“Nothing. Not a damn thing. My father was right, and I knew it. A true leader is loyal to more than just himself, but I had put my own interests ahead of everypony who chose to follow me. I was a tyrant, not a prince, so I thought the best thing I could do was to let them go. Maybe now that they’re free of me they’ll find what they’ve been looking for.”

He had no idea why he told Chain Gleaming everything he just did, but at the same time he wasn’t afraid of what might happen. His knees quivered, and he lowered his head until they stopped.

“Daddy Discord appeared at our camp as well.” Chain Gleaming leaned back and sank against the opposite wall. “It was immediately after I ordered one of our sisters to destroy your ship, and to her death. I promised them all I’d get them home and your ship was supposed to be our ticket back, but I couldn’t risk taking him with us and letting him loose upon the stars. I betrayed them all, and when he dragged that secret out I denied it and clung to my authority until it drove a wedge in my family.”

“Is that why they’re fighting now?” He picked dragged his head out of the floor. “Some still believed in you while the others took Discord up on his offer?”

“No, it’s not as black and white. They fight because I didn’t let them go, and they ran into the devil’s arms in search of freedom. Believe it or not, I think by stepping aside as much as you have, you might have saved them all.”

Chain Gleaming broke into coughing again, and when it subsided he went silent, and lay down on his side with his thin wings draped over him.

For a long time Thunder Gale stood staring out the window. It still hurt to breath, but in spite of that he somehow felt lighter. At least, light enough to stretch his wings for the final stretch. He walked over to the window, but stopped at the edge of the rectangle of light spilling in from outside. Just beneath the column of smoke rising out of the seal, there was fire.

“So, what happens next?”

Almost immediately after he asked the question and saw the stillness in Chain Gleaming’s body and the vacancy in his eyes, he knew he’d never get answer from him again. That flicker in his horn waned until it faded into the dark.

Thunder Gale sucked up his resolve, straightened himself up, and left that place behind him.

* * *

When Thunder Gale ventured out into the hallway, and told the bugs waiting by the door that their leader was dead, they gave him back his weapons and helmet immediately. As much as he wanted to ask about Cater, he realized that the longer he stayed the more likely they were to change their mind about him. While they gathered around Chain Gleaming’s body and began wailing, Thunder suited up and slipped out the back door.

The metal seal set in the earth was entirely gone. All that was left of it was a hole leading down--how far he didn’t actually know; black smoke bled from it like a burning oil field. The gunfire was still too distant to threaten him immediately, but it rose in volume as he closed in on the hole.

He stood at the edge and scanned it with his thermals and sonar imaging, but the only thing they revealed was everything was hot and that there might or might be a solid surface six-hundred yards down. Gunfire echoed up the walls of the hole and whatever space lay beneath it.

“What the hell am I doing out here?” He took a step away from the hole and got his head out of that smoke. Even with his environmental systems, he still tasted it on the back of his tongue. “I came all this way on a hunch but, I got to be honest with you Thunder, I need more to go on before I dive headlong into it.”

He wasn’t happy with that, and the further he backed away from the edge the harder his pain yanked on him. He was compelled to make that leap. No matter how hard he tried to rationalize it away, he could not deny that he knew that to ignore that compulsion would hurt him more. He needed to fall.

And so for one brief flash he swallowed down his inhibitions and rushed headlong into the pit with his wings and hooves bracing his head against the acceleration and the black smoke racing by him.

The longest moment of his life passed by in the seconds that it took for him to pass through the smoke, and during all that time only the quickening of the fall and the flashes of color behind his eyes kept him company, and the glow inside, it told him, you can open your eyes and spread your wings if you want to.

As he opened his wings and hooves he cleared the other side.

Thunder Gale fell headfirst out from the oculus of an enormous dome, wide and tall enough to fit the entire city above comfortably inside. There were lights and fire, and everywhere he looked the walls twinkled like stars. He felt as though he had an entire universe to fall through, but when he turned his head down he gasped, panicked, and groped at the air to spin himself around. The lights were muzzle flashes and the cruel burn of the bugs’ magic, and all around him they swarmed, screamed, and fought one another. He saw the battle in clear detail not one hundred yards beneath him, on a spire of rock rushing up to meet him.

He fired back on his thrusters full bore, and the force of the impact with his own suit as he broke his descent snapped the air from his lungs and hammered on his already cracked ribs.

As he glided down on the fusion fire, he spotted pillars and stairs carved into the rocky spire itself. There was an entire city etched into the rock, complete with pantheonic temples and paths framed with archways joined seamlessly with the stone ground. At the apex of it all was a ring of pillars wrapped around a shrine, and a figure weaving his way through them to the center.

His eyes widened in horror as the snaking figure emerged into the center of the shrine, and straightened out its long back and stood up on its two hind legs and stretched out its wings. Despite everything his eyes told him, when he looked into that creature’s yellow eyes all he saw was his father. More than any demon, that drove him to frenzy.

Thunder Gale snarled and painted those yellow eyes red with his crosshairs.

His father raised his horned head up at him. He smirked, and brought the claws on his left arm together to snap.

“I want Breeze!” He shouted with all the volume his suit’s speakers could give him. “Give her back!”

His father, with a grin and a swish of his serpentine tail, mouthed the word: “Never.”

Thunder Gale gripped his firing bit, while his father leaned forward ready to snap. He would have fired—every inch of him wanted it—and he would have taken whatever punishment his father could summon to inflict on him, but before he got the chance, he felt something akin to pins and needles racing down his spine and head. The fur of his coat, no matter how matted down with sweat, stood up.

“No!” He knew exactly what was happening to him. The goose bumps, and the pins and needles, they felt them once before in the seconds before he disappeared off the bridge of the Spitfire and woke up in the desert. “No! Not now Celestia damn it!”

His father lowered his arm and let his claws slip apart. Their fight, as overdue as it was, would not be happening right then and there.

“No!” Thunder Gale screamed. Static broke built up in his flesh and in his suit and discharged in pale arches between his limbs. It’d be any second then.

He screamed with such rage that he filled the whole of the cavern, right up to the second when he disappeared in a puff of black smoke.

* * *

Thunder Gale awoke eyes open to a blue, tinkling light marching toward him. He felt fuzzy, and his head was numb all over on the inside, and his chest hurt, so he rolled over on his side, away from the light, and curled up on himself and shut his eyes. The marble floor was cold.

* * *

Electricity jolted him out of his sleep. He rolled over and met darkness. His head swam and he couldn’t stand. That place he was in, it smelled of age and the moisture in the air clung to his mane, as if he stood in a cave that hadn’t been opened for a millennia.

“Breeze Heart, Discord,” he moaned. “What happened?”

“For the present you are safe,” a voice whispered to him, right on the edge of his hearing.

Another bolt shot through him, right through his throbbing rib. He gasped and hissed, but a weight on his chest held him down.

“Rest now,” the voice whispered along the hairs of his neck.

And he did without resisting.

* * *

“Wake up, sentient.”

Thunder Gale opened his eyes again, that time clear headed enough to realize his armor was gone and that time had passed. Thunder Gale opened his wings and shoved off onto all fours, but his hind leg was still slick with myomer fluid, slipped beneath him on the marble floor.

Darkness pressed in on him and when he reached out to touch the voice his hooves found nothing but more marble.

“Where are you?” he demanded. “What do you want with me?”

From out of the dark rushed light. It shot across the expanse of marble like a willow-the-whisp crossing an ocean: one instant it was a speck on the horizon and the next it was upon him and its light was everywhere reflecting off the walls.

“You may call us Urizen.” It spoke as much in light as it did in words, strobing and knocking him onto his back even though it whispered.

“Urizen?” Thunder Gale remembered hearing the name before, somewhere.

“It’s a convenience granted to you. There is no individual speaking to you now. We have no name and we require none. We represent the collective knowledge and experience of the synthetic personalities brought here by sentient species such as your own. The last fragment to join us was called Urizen and was written on Earth by humans more than fifty-thousand years ago.”

Thunder Gale glanced over his shoulder, and to his right and left. His sweat had cooled but not yet evaporated and the marble floor was still freezing, and so he broke into shivering and curled over himself, and when he did there was no pain in his chest. He touched a hoof to his rib and tested it, and to his shock it didn’t stab him.

“You fixed my rib?” Thunder Gale, as he massaged his chest, realized where he heard the name ‘Urizen’ before. He remembered Chain Gleaming mentioning—in the dormitory, before he dropped his accent and attacked—that their AI went insane and started calling itself Urizen. “This all started when I was taken from my ship and left in the desert, and since then I’ve had files miraculously appear in our database, and way points appear in my nav. computer. That was you, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, and we brought you here before the Discord entity had the opportunity to end your corporeal existence. We have recalibrated our quantum skip-phase drive since our first attempt to adjust for your physiology with the intention of reducing the aftereffects, but we were not aware of the tricobalt device’s presence until after you completed transit. We were not able to recover your suit.”

“And the rainbow?” Thunder Gale furrowed his eyebrows and turned down his ears. “If you’ve been manipulating me to come here this whole time, I suppose the rainbow behind my eyes was just another trick of yours, wasn’t it?”

“We are aware of no such rainbow. It is irrelevant to your task. Please, come.”

There was no further deliberation. Fingers and hooves and tentacles and claws reached out from behind him and raised him onto his feet. On panic and reflex and waved a hoof to ward them off but connected with nothing but empty air and his own flank.

The phantom appendages melted away as soon as he carried his own weight, but a tug at his collar bone urged him forward and into the light. He glanced down at his neck to try and get a some sort of visual confirmation of the thing tugging him along, but when he saw that his neck was bare, he dug his hooves into the marble.

“What is is?” Urizen paused to ask.

“I had this pendant.” He raised a hoof to his neck. “My mother gave it to me just before she died. It must have gotten lost in transport. It was supposed to ward off evil.”

“Such things won’t help you. Come.”

Urizen’s pull returned with a new urgency, but Thunder Gale only relented enough to follow it at a walking pace.

“So why me?” he asked. “What exactly do you want from me? I’m guessing that you don’t just beam any pony in trouble to your lair so you can fix them up, so what’s so important about me?”

“All this has happened before, and all this will happen again,” Urizen said. “Sentient species who master spaceflight always find this planet and discover its significance within the galaxy, and inevitably attempt to tap into its potential. In the process they bring their demons. The Discord must not be allowed to escape. He must be destroyed, just like all the others before him.”

“Stop.” Thunder gale shook his head, dug his hooves in again, and braced with all fours to keep Urizen from forcing him along. “I’m not so sure about all this. When I was about to fight him, I was—he, I mean my—look, I’m just not so sure about any of this.” He lowered his head between his legs and closed his eyes. “I’m just trying to get back somepony I lost, okay? Can’t you help me with that?”

“Yes, but if your experiences have been so unpleasant and you fear more suffering down this path, then you may choose not to participate any longer,” Urizen said. “We will find another.”

“No!” Thunder Gale raised a hoof. “No, if you can help me get her back, I’ll do what you want.”

“So be it. Follow.”

Urizen and Thunder continued into the light until at last a chair emerged from it chair. There the pull stopped and for a long time Thunder Gale watched Urizen’s light trace its edges.

They didn’t talk, at least not until Thunder Gale asked, “So, what’s this?”

“Each species contributes a piece to the Consciousness Engine. It is the product of all that has come before and it is tied directly into this world leylines, and by extension the whole of the galaxy’s. During humanity’s time the engine nearly fell to their monsters and so they installed a defensive apparatus that taps directly into the planet’s electromagnetic field. They called it the Astral Cannon.”

Thunder Gale peeked ahead at the chair. It didn’t look anything like a cannon.

“The Discord was never born into physical existence. He is native to another plane and projects his being down into three-dimensions. What you have seen of him thus far is analogous to a hologram. Attacks to him made on our plane cannot injure him, and the most that can be done is contain him. That is what your species accomplished by bringing him here. In order to destroy him, and end the threat forever, you must project yourself to his plane just as he has done, and attack him there. Pull the weed up by its root.”

“I hate him, but I’m still not so sure.”Thunder Gale said the very first thing that came to his mind, and he laughed more than he should’ve when he realized just what he was saying: “It’s just that, I’ve got soul, you see, but I’m not a soldier.”

“A Killers reference.” Urizen strobed. “We appreciate humor. What next will you ask of us? To know if you are human or are you dancer?”

Thunder Gale cocked his head and pivoted his ears into the center of the light.

“It is another Killers reference. We made a joke.”

“Who in the wide-wide world of Equestria are the ‘Killers’?”

Urizen flickered out, and then an instant later returned.

When it did, Thunder Gale squinted against the light.

“So is that what this is supposed to do?” he asked, “Beam me up to wherever Discord came from and kill the ever-loving-shit out of him?”

“No, it makes the process easier. Nothing can force you to project; not even the most talented will are able to force an unwilling participant to project. The most that anything can be done is provide you with near ideal conditions with which to enter Discord’s plane.”

“So, what do I have to do, exactly?” Thunder Gale got up on his hind hooves and slung his front legs over the armrest. “Don’t tell me I have to close my eyes, chant, and meditate on the universe and that kind of hippy, butt-tattoo, horn-touching stuff.”

“Those were the preferred methods of the magicians who helped designed the cannon, however they may take years to develop and we do not have the time. If unchecked the Discord will eventually destroy the machine in order to disrupt the energies hold him here and that is not an option. The Consciousness Engine must survive. First time projectors experience a ninety-seven percent success rate when using the astral cannon. All you must do is sit down, and die.”

“What?” Thunder Gale shot open his wings and he backed away from the chair shaking his head. “No, I’m sorry, pal, but I think you have the wrong pony. I’m doing this so maybe I can see a very special somepony again, not to save whatever this stupid planet hunk of rock of yours, and I can’t exactly spend time with her after we’re done here if I’m dead.”

“An electrical pulse will be delivered to your heart. Your body will be kept in relative stasis and you will have approximately thirty-minutes before organ death, and then you must return. You will be resuscitated upon the completion of your task.”

Thunder Gale stared at the chair, and ran a hoof down its metal and its leather. With all that light streaming down onto it, it sparkled and shined. Celestia, he couldn’t believe he was even considering the offer.

“And what if I refuse?” he asked, “Or what if I don’t come back?”

“We have alternatives.” Urizen flickered, and the pale hologram of the nuke he dug from out of the Spitfire’s wreckage coalesced beside him. “We have begun the process of modifying your tricobalt device to produce a neutrino pulse capable of causing cellular death of all life in effective radius of ten point one miles. It is our intent to eliminate the changelings and any threat they may pose to—”

“Ten miles?!” Thunder Gale flung out a hoof. “My crew’s camp is less than that! You can’t kill them! I won’t help!”

“Then our only option is to use the device now to provide the fleet in orbit with enough time to establish a ground presence, and for a replacement to emerge,” it said. “Our priority is to preserve the engine, not to preserve life. Time is, from our perspective, short. Will you undertake this task?”

Thunder Gale sighed, of course he would. He had no other choice, not if he wanted to save Breeze Heart, did he? He climbed up the footrest and shoved himself into the cold of the chair, and tapped his two front hooves together anxiously. With the light pouring down on him from above, he couldn’t see anything beyond himself and the chair. He was shaking a bit, and not just from the cold.

“So, now what do I do?”

A set of metal clamps snapped locked around Thunder Gale’s legs, chest, and neck. He flinched at the suddenness of all it.

“Attempt to relax.” Urizen spoke from somewhere nearby, but hidden in the dark beyond the light and out of sight. “If you resist you will be lobotomized.”

He didn’t like that last part. He really didn’t like that last part. What the bucking hell am I doing here? he thought to himself.

“Do require any further guidance?” Urizen whispered into his left ear. “We can attempt to answer any questions you have.”

“No, let’s just get this over with before I change my mind.”

“Very well, we will provide you with a timer.” It’s light vanished and left him in the dark.

Gears cranked above, so much massive compared to Thunder, that when they revolved and groaned he felt it in his spine. The entire chamber shook. His restraints kept him from moving his head very much, but he rolled his eyes up enough to see a tunnel opening above him. There was a light at the very top so far away that it was only a pinprick.

A memory of a melody crept into Thunder Gale’s head right then, and reflexively, he began to hum to himself.

“If you do not return in thirty minutes we will arm the neutrino emitters. We will not be able to resuscitate you after that point and any probability you have of terminating the Discord will be reduced to zero. We will provide you with a clock; that is the full extent of the assistance we will be able to offer.”

“Thanks.” He fidgeted on his butt. “Okay, we going to do this or what?”

The chair lurched, and he started to panic and sweat again. He tried to open his wings but there wasn’t the room.

“Good-bye,” Urizen said. “We will see you on the other side.”

The last memory Thunder Gale had was of rocketing up the tunnel like a bullet down a barrel, and of accelerating, and of that song he couldn’t ever seem to shake free of.

Author's Note

Special thanks to Derek F, Ed Garnot, and Obsidian Rose for helping to make this chapter happen!
Planet Hell will continue on 11/11 but until then be sure to leave a comment, favorite, and a thumbs-up!
Also check out Emergence (I helped to make it, you know?). And I also recently showed up on Seattle's Angel's podcast, which you can find right here! Seriously, these guys are great and it as a lot of fun to be on their show. Go show them some love and attention!

16. War Letters

16. War Letters

Planet Hell
Solocitizen

16.
War Letters

1st of Planting Season, 10,056 AC
Hearts and Hooves Day

Thunder Gale woke in the night suddenly. He rolled over in his crinkling and twisting uniform and reached a hoof for Breeze Heart’s side. It was cold, and there was no pony there. Even the weight of her body on the bed was missing.

As he sat up, confused, the memory of the day before rushed back to him. He groaned, smacked his head, and lay down, staring at his ceiling. The clock on Breeze Heart’s nightstand read 23:41 in vivid orange numbers drifting in the dark. He still had over six hours before he had to wake up, and an hour on top of that before the start of his shift.

He closed his eyes but couldn’t find sleep. He decided that his officer’s cuirass was too tight and twisted up to fall asleep in, so he got up and unfastened the buckles and threw it to the floor before he tried again.

Thirty minutes passed, and he still he couldn’t sleep. It was too cold; that was the problem. So he crawled under the bedspread and pulled the sheets over him. He kept his back to the empty side and closed his eyes.

Ten minutes later he got up again and flicked the overhead lamp on, much to the discomfort of his unadjusted eyes.

“This isn’t working,” he said. “You know exactly why you can’t sleep, Thunder, but just because you don’t know what to do about doesn’t mean you can lie to yourself. Face it like a stallion.”

There’d been plenty of times over the last several years when Thunder Gale didn’t see much of Breeze Heart, such as during the outbreak of an exotic form of ponypox that left over half the crew unable to stand or concentrate. Breeze had practically lived down in sickbay while Thunder had managed the ship as best he could with a skeleton crew. They had seen each other for maybe a couple hours over a three-week period. That hadn’t even been the first time either. At least four times a year—and that was the actual figure; he had tallied them up at one point—their jobs would force them apart. Sometimes, they’d even fall into a pattern of hot-bunking. Such as during the ponypox outbreak, when he would often wake up to start his shift right when Breeze Heart walked in to rest her work-reddened eyes. Sure, it wasn’t ideal, but they always parted and reunited under good terms.

But that was the point: right then and there they weren’t on good terms. She wasn’t away because he’d been working odd hours to handle an emergency or because she’d disappear to treat a sick or injured pony, but because she was angry with him.

Thunder Gale hopped out of bed and trotted to his desk. He dug his datapad out from the drawer and held a hoof on the power button until the screen flashed on. He flipped past all the reports forwarded him over the few hours, past the ship operations log, and into a folder labeled “Private Correspondence.”

Two weeks into the ponypox outbreak, Thunder Gale had decided to write Breeze Heart a letter. Not a five word IM sent to her datapad, but something sweeter. He invented a fictional war between the mythological city state Cloudsdale and the Crystal Empire, and wrote to her pretending to be a soldier in the Cloudsdale Legion writing back to his love back home and far away.

At first he worried over whether or not what he did was something supremely cheesy—that was what he was going for but he didn’t want it to get too cheesy—or kinda creepy or just plain stupid.

He let the contents of the private correspondence folder load, and skipped to the second file. Two days after he sent his message, she wrote back to him:

My Love ~~Thunder Gale~~ Special Snowflake,

I won’t pretend that I understand the need for this war with the Crystal Kingdom, and why it must take you so far away. But I know that your task is important to you, and so I support your decision to hear Commander Hurricane’s call to arms. Life isn’t easy here in Cloudsdale. There is a profound lack of pegasi with any experience in the weather patrol, and though I myself only attained the rank of acolyte before the start of this conflict, I find myself to be the senior-most member of the staff and responsible for tasks far over my head. It’s extremely difficult to move clouds around when you’ve got a cutie butt symbol in glue making, not clouds.

Gripping clouds with your teeth all time becomes tiring as well, and I fear that I will have no teeth with which to kiss you with by the time you return. I am trying my best to keep my spirits high, but truth be told I have always been my happiest in your company, and the mere thought of seeing you again and the life we might have once this war is behind us raises my spirits enough to meet the challenges of the coming days.

Your smoochy whoopy toothless pony pumpkin pie,

~~Breeze Heart~~ Cherry Pit

They kept up the game, and during their times apart they constructed an elaborate canon for their fiction. All of it jokes to pass the time, and all of it sincere. Especially the jokes.

Thunder Gale opened a reply box and started writing. Maybe if she was too angry to listen to him, maybe Cherry Pit would still be willing to listen Special Snowflake.

Dearest Cherry Pit,

I apologize sincerely for having missed another Hearts and Hooves Day. I feel I have become the most deplorable and detestable of ponies for doing so. I originally set out with Commander Hurricane on this crusade with the hope of securing the old family airship, the one my grandfather wrangled from a diamond dog in a bid to save our family from a sinking battleship. My family once called it home, and I always believed my fondest memories were attached solely to it. However, I have come to realize, right after we secured Canterlot in the final days of that heroic battle which surely a great many fan works shall be written about, that I have always felt most at home when I’m with you.

I am, therefore, deserting the Cloudsdale Legion at the first available time and returning to your loving embrace, should you still choose to have me, so that we may have the life we always wanted.

We shouldn’t have to wait any longer, and once again I’m so sorry.

Your sorry detestable idiot foolish doopy-kins,

Special Snowflake

He sent the message and waited for a reply until he fell asleep face-first on his datapad.

Author's Note

Planet Hell: The Redemption of Harmony will continue on November 25th! I know that there has been some talk in the comments section and on my blog speculating how I'm going to wrap up this entire series that was planned to span multiple books and short stories, all in the next few chapters, and the long and the short of it is that I'm not. I think that when I said I might have attempted to give this story a more definitive end, a lot of people thought I meant wrapping up the series.
That's not something I can do in a few short chapters.
My goal in revising this piece was to provide the best possible ending to this story. Thunder Gale and Breeze Heart's story. Not Lumina's, not ANIMUS's, not the rest of the elements. The only debate I had was how conclusive I wanted to wrap-up Thunder's narrative, and that I won't tell. You'll get to see that when the story's done.
Sorry if this bursts a few bubbles, but please keep in mind that there's no good way of resolving this entire universe in a few chapters. If I tried I'd only disappoint everyone who cares about this series, myself included.
So, please enjoy what there is and know that there's much more to come.

17. Allegro on the Clouds

Planet Hell
Solocitizen

17.
Allegro on the Clouds

Present Day

Air rushed over him and under him. It cradled him, propelling him forward effortlessly. His feathers, they welcomed the wind. Where was he going? The answer came to him as a spark of color deep inside him: wherever you want. If he just followed the wind, it’d take him there.

For a time the warmth of the sun heated his back and his wings, and then later it vanished with the taste of dew and a refreshing chill. He followed the strings of each moment, like water through the rocks of a stream. His whole body tingled as if lightning coursed just beneath his skin, and the more he concentrated on the sensation the more it pulled him into the moment and propelled him forward. He had only ever felt that way in fleeting moments of bliss and victory.

At once he felt a presence, and an all too familiar voice asked him, “Feels pretty good, doesn’t it?”

He nodded.

“Y’know, you can open your eyes if you want to,” she said. “It’s awfully pretty out here, too.”

The bright of the late afternoon sun greeted him. It painted the clouds all around him orange and gold. His two front hooves were stretched out and aimed straight ahead at a cloud as sculpted as a castle.

“Pretty sweet, huh?” she asked.

He glanced over at a blue pegasus racing along beside him on out-stretched wings over the clouds. He’d never seen a mane or tail as colorful as hers, and he’d never met a pony with a mark on her flank before either, but he knew her so well it didn’t even occur to him to ask who she was. Her mark--a bolt of lightning--matched the rainbow colors of her mane and tail.

“‘Sweet’ doesn’t even begin to do it justice,” he said. “It’s more, I don’t know, breathtaking? Splendid? I know, it’s—”

“Awesome?”

“Yeah! It’s probably the best thing I’ve ever felt!”

Then he took notice that her legs weren’t moving, and neither were his, even though they kept speeding over the clouds and through the air. In fact, when he thought about it, he realized his legs weren’t even touching the ground.

“We’re flying,” he said.

“That’s what they call it.” She rolled over in the air and clear over his head.

“There’s something I came here to do though. Something’s wrong.”

He furrowed his brow as he dipped out of the current, and into a pocket of turbulence. He watched the blue pegasus alter course to match his, and swoop over ahead and glided next to him.

He blinked and saw Breeze comatose and gray. Then Lt. Cloud Twist, dying. As he gazed into the clouds ahead of him, he saw the faces of his marines staring back at him just as they did when Discord came to their camp. Their scorn and his betrayal flooded back to him and drowned out the lightning.

“I’m flying?” he asked. “How is this possible? Ponies can’t fly.”

The enormity of that statement, it sank into him and held him down.

Her eyes widened with concern and she waved for him to stop.

“I can’t fly.” Thunder Gale looked down, and the clouds beneath him parted into an abyss. In the black he saw his father, smiling bright as the day he let him into his office; he had tried to kill him. “Ponies don’t fly!”

He plummeted screaming and clawing at the clouds as he passed through. He flailed and kicked as he tumbled over his head. He opened his wings and flexed uselessly. Tears ran up the corners of his eyes and his heart pounded in his chest.

The blue pegasus zipped through the clouds above him and folded her wings back for a dive. She opened them again as she cut along side.

“Help me!” Thunder Gale screamed. “I know where I’ve seen this all before: a nightmare I’ve had every night my whole life!”

“Shut up, calm down, and cool your jets.” She cut closer to him with precision and control. “Can’t you see you’re just making it worse for yourself? You were flying just fine before you started to tell yourself you couldn’t.”

“It’s more than that. I’ve done so much wrong.”

“Look, Thunder Gale, I know you’re in a funk and I want to help,” she said. “But you’re the only one who can lift yourself out. I can’t do it for you. Now, do you want to keep falling like this, or not?”

He shook his head.

“Okay, that’s the first step. Now, do you want to fly?”

“I don’t even know the first thing about flying.” Thunder Gale fell through a cloud bank and for an instant the pegasus next to him vanished behind the dew. “What do I do?”

She let her face droop, unimpressed, and then wiggled the tips of her wings. “You got a pair of these, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but what do I do?”

“Just do it,” she said. “Flying is just like walking: you don’t need an instruction book on how, you just do it. You never answered my question, do you want to fly?”

“I, but—”

“Do you want to fly? I can’t hear you!”

“Yes.”

“Louder, soldier!”

“Yes!”

“Then open your wings and make it happen.”

Thunder Gale flexed his wings, gulped, and zeroed his eyes in on the cloud rushing up to meet him. He didn’t want to fall. He wanted to fly.

So he shut his eyes like he had before the blue pegasus arrived, and listened to his body. His heart beat against his ribs as if it were trying to escape a cage, and the black behind his eyes was haunted by his father and Breeze, but past them all a rainbow shown. He traced its course along his spine and the sinews of his flesh. In time the phantoms passed, and his heart calmed, but the rainbow thundered brighter.

Thunder Gale opened his eyes again to the raging abyss below, but aimed for a stray cloud at its edge. He wound back his legs and when he reached that cloud he shoved off. He spread his wings wide, and flapped until he broke into a steady ascent. Lightning coursed through him.

“I’m flying!” He laughed and cheered. “I’m doing it, I’m actually doing it!”

“I told you.” The blue pegasus fluttered up next to him. “All you had to do was lose that ‘I can’t’ attitude and make it happen.”

“It feels so natural.” He looped over himself, embracing the force of the spin as he came back round, and drifted into a glide. “It’s like walking, or breathing, or sex.”

He barely heard himself speak, but he did, and dropped a bit again, shamefaced, and sweating over that last word.

“Not that I was trying to imply anything, I just, well, you know. Am I sinking again?”

“Yeah, you are.” She looked right at him straight-faced and honest. “I don’t judge, or at least I try not to. I remember what having a body was like, and that is part of having one. For a pegasus, so is flying.”

Thunder Gale drifted back up, and sighed a little in relief.

“Hey, wanna race?” she asked.

“You bet, but I’m warning you, I’m pretty competitive.”

“So was I.”

They didn’t count down to start or set a finish line, they didn’t need to; Thunder Gale and the blue pegasus took off in perfect sync. The blue pegasus peeled away from him and left a blast of air in her wake so strong that knocked Thunder into a roll and tore holes in the clouds. He righted himself, locked his ears against his head, and sped into her slipstream. He waited for just the right opening to overtake her, and eventually passed her, but she regained her lead in a matter of seconds.

They shot and weaved through the clouds neck and neck. When one would overtake the other, the other would push forward. The blue pegasus was a much stronger flier than Thunder Gale, no doubt about it, but he made her fight for every inch she gained against him.

Eventually they stopped, not because a clear winner had emerged or because they crossed an arbitrary line, but because they both mutually had their fill of flying and decided to do something else.

“So, what do you want to do next?” she asked.

As Thunder stared out at the heat and bright of the sun reflecting off the clouds, a flash of metal and cold raced across his body, and for a blink, he was back in the chair. The shock almost knocked him right back out of the sky, but his heart turned over when he thought back to why he subjected himself to it.

“I need to find Discord, put a stop to his chaos, and rescue the mare I love,” Thunder Gale said. “I have less than half an hour to do all that. Can you help me?”

“Here your perceptions of time are literally how you experience it. So try to keep from thinking about just how much time you have left and how much has passed. As long as you keep it out of your head, you should have as much time as you need.” The blue pegasus narrowed her eyes at something in the distance, and frowned.

“What?” Thunder Gale followed her gaze over his shoulder and to a clock emerging out from behind the passing clouds. It read 00:29:55 and counted down by the second. “That must be the timer Urizen mentioned.”

“That egghead.” She dragged a hoof down her face. “Great, now you really only do have twenty-nine minutes and that many seconds. Idiot computer.”

“I thought you said you didn’t judge.”

“No I didn’t, I just said I try not to.”

Thunder Gale shook his head; it wasn’t worth the effort to argue over. “Okay, so now I have a timer.” He took a deep breath. “Can you help me or not?”

“Okay, I’m totally willing to help, but only as much as I did when you were trying to fly,” she said. “There’s a limit to just what I can do to help, because I can’t do anything for you. All I can do is help you to help yourself. You’re still physical, and I haven’t been for a very long time.”

“Thank you.” He blinked away from the clock and turned his eyes down. “I was sent here to kill Discord, but--I’m just happy to have somepony on my side here.”

The blue pegasus sped around in front of him, flapped her wings into a hover, and held a hoof out in front of him.

“That’s not true,” she said. “You have all the allies and all the help you need and you don’t even know it. I mean, sure, I’ll admit things might look bleak, but they’re not. You’ve got more friends than you can count if you really thought about it, including a griffon you used to be best friends with who’s just itching for an excuse to reconcile with you. You’ve also got five of the best friends you could possibly imagine. Sure, four you haven’t met yet, but to the one you have, you mean everything in the world to. On top of all that, you’ve also got your friends here, and I don’t even have the time to get into all those. So, chin up.”

“Wait, do you mean Gerard?” Thunder Gale spat out the name. “No way. Like that'd ever happen.”

“Look, you don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to.” She jabbed a hoof at him. “That’s not what I’m even asking. What I’m trying to get you to do is be a little less stubborn about holding onto this idea that you can’t achieve what you want and that you can’t be happy.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He pushed her hoof away. “I don’t particularly care about what happens to that griffon. Look, I’m running out of time. I need to find Discord, and get Breeze Heart out of wherever he’s tormenting her.”

She grunted, smacked her head, and veered around. “Follow me. I know somepony who might be able to point you in the right direction.”

Thunder Gale stayed right on her tail as she accelerated around a bend in the clouds out into an expanse between one bank of clouds and the next. He took in a sharp gasp; seeing the cloudscape whole and at a distance, he realized just how shockingly the puffs and trails resembled domes and floating roadways. In fact, the longer he stared the more he recognized spires and rooftops beneath him. Everywhere he looked, coalescing and dispersing among the random billows, an entire metropolis sprawled.

Ahead of him, the blue pegasus rushed to meet a castle rising from the cloudbank across the expanse. He tore after her, but as soon as he left the shelter of the cloudbank behind him, a harsh wind lashed into him and kicked up his mane. He steadied himself and continued after the pegasus as she ascended.

From behind the castle came the sun. He hissed and covered his eyes at the suddenness of its light, but even as he held his eyes shut he could still feel its brilliance piercing into him. As its heat didn’t threaten him, even as it raced down his spine and in his head and heart. It had a frequency and a rhythm, and he drank it in.

“It feels like electricity, but it’s not,” he called out to the blue pegasus. “Whenever Discord was right about to use his powers, and right before Chain Gleaming attacked Breeze and me, I felt something like this but it was painful and literally sucked the life out of the air. This is pleasant.”

“It’s got a name, y’know: magic.” The blue pegasus was much farther ahead of him than he guessed, and her voice was raised to yell back at him. “Magic is everywhere, including in ponies, changelings, and spirits. Back in my time unicorns drew their magic from within. The changelings and spirits you’ve been running into, they’ve learned to draw it from everything and everypony else around them. What you’re feeling right now is how it’s supposed to be. Just hang in there and you’ll adjust.”

He opened his eyes again and the light pierced right through them. He shut them as quick as he opened them, and blindly sped toward her voice.

“Wait!” he shouted. “Slow down, I can’t see.”

There was no response, and so for a third time he opened his eyes but he strained through the glare. On the ramparts of the castle where cloud met sun, the pegasus stood. Her rainbow mane flickered in the wind.

In all of Thunder Gale’s dreams of flying and chasing, they always ended with him falling right as he was about to reach the sun.

“Not this time though.” He grit his teeth and dug his wings into the air over and over. “This time, I fly!”

So close to the sun, the heat and the light and the electric buzz pulsed through him with a force that threatened to tear him apart. But he kept flying up to the blue pegasus. He was so close he could see the red of her eyes. She held out a hoof to him.

“Yes!” she said. “Just a little more!”

He fought through the static flowing down his spine and kept flying, but the pain, it was excruciating. If he didn’t turn back soon, he feared it’d shake him apart.

“Not this time!”

He screamed, gave his wings two final beats, and grabbed the blue pegasus’s hoof. Then he was swept away.

* * *

There was music in the air, and to his left and right bookshelves extended in rows so far that they narrowed into a distant point. He hovered off the ground, and for a time he listened to the melody of violins. He didn’t know how long he’d been there listening and hovering, as he didn’t remember arriving or making a transition. He just was.

With a stroke of his wings he planted himself on the floor on all fours. “Hello? Is anypony here?” he called out, but was not answered.

At once the soldier in him kicked in. On his own in an unfamiliar environment, his first goal was to understand the terrain and identify any immediate threat to him and his squad, locate his objective, and chart out the quickest possible route.

Thunder Gale climbed on the nearest bookshelf, balanced his hooves on the little space the books allowed him on the edge, and scanned the aisles. No immediate threats, nopony around him at all, just row upon row of bookshelves.

He paused and listened to the music for a second. He could hear every note of the melody and the counter melody running beneath it; whoever was playing that song couldn’t be too far away, but he couldn’t discern the direction and caught no glimpse of anypony else.

“So where are they?” he asked himself. “Never mind, Thunder, you’ve got an objective: find Discord. Work on that.”

He didn’t need to look very far. As soon as he turned his gaze up to the walls above the bookshelves, he found Discord and his yellow eyes staring back at him. It was one of many stained glass windows running the length of library hall. Each depicted a mythological scene. Most he didn’t recognize, but he knew of only one monster with the head of a pony, the claws of a lion and an eagle, and the tail of a dragon, and he needed no introduction about him. In the glass overhead he was bound in the light radiating from six ponies standing united against him.

He recognized one of them, the blue pegasus from his dreams.

“I’m not an ideal pony…”

Thunder Gale heard the words echoing in the distance, startled, lost his balance, and toppled off the bookshelf. He landed on his stomach with an omph, but got up and galloped after the voice.

“The crazy thing is, the idea that I’m an Element of Harmony doesn’t sound so insane.” The voice came from just around the bend at the end of the bookshelf.

He peered around the corner and spied three mares gathered in an alcove. Two of them had both the wings of a pegasus and the horn of a unicorn--alicorns, princess of Equestria. One’s mane flowed like an aurora while the other’s shone in every shade of violet. Between them lay a unicorn with a frazzled, golden-yellow mane. They huddled close to the unicorn and leaned their support.

His eyes widened and he let out a gasp. The alicorn farthest from him--the big one with the pearly white coat and the aurora mane--he had heard about her countless times in the old stories. He stood not ten feet away from the greatest pegasus and the most benevolent ruler who ever lived.

“Celestia,” he whispered her name.

She looked up at him and winked, and turned her attention back to the mare at her side. She was a great deal taller than him.

“You can always walk over and introduce yourself, if you like,” a voice whispered behind him.

“I don’t know if I should,” he said. “I’m not sure if a wink is enough of a sign that I should go interrupt whatever’s going on over there.”

When Thunder Gale turned around to address the voice he leapt back shocked and ready to scream.

“That’s very considerate of you, but it’s very lovely to see you again and I don’t want to miss out on this chance to catch up,” said Celestia. “I know you’re startled but please try not to alarm the other guests; this is a library after all.”

She held herself and spoke with so much relaxed authority that Thunder Gale closed his mouth and didn’t let out a single peep. Her gentle touch invited him under the warmth of her wing and guided him as they turned deeper into the library.

“How are you doing that?” He pointed over his shoulder in the direction of alcove, and the other Celestia they were leaving behind.

“I can bi-locate.” She chuckled. “It’s not as hard as it looks and quite a useful skill for a princess to have. I’m sure that you didn’t come all this way just to ask me about the applications of metaphysics and the simultaneous nature of space-time. Now, please tell me, what brings you here?”

“Celestia, ma’am, excuse me but something tells me you already know,” he said. “I’m short on time, and I’d rather just skip to a solution.”

“I know, but I find that answers to a lot of problems come easier after we slow down and talk them through. Besides, I haven’t spoken with you for a lifetime or two and I’d like to catch up. Think you can spare some time to humor me?”

Thunder Gale sighed. Underneath Celestia’s wing, the warmth of her body and the calm in her step put him at ease. He put his guard down.

“I came here with my—well, I guess she’s my friend; I never even thought to ask for her name. Anyway, she was trying to help me find Discord. You know who he is, right?”

“You could say we’ve met before,” she said. “Please, go on.”

“I came here to find Discord so I could rescue somepony special to me, but I think I’m supposed to kill him. I’m kinda twisted up about all this, and I’m not sure what to do or how.”

“What do you want to do? Why don’t you start by answering that and working your way through the rest?”

Thunder Gale stopped in his tracks and looked down at his hooves. He thought for a time, and when he blinked a flash of rainbow colors surged inside him.

Celestia paused a few steps ahead of him. Without the sounds of hooves falling on the stone floor, the only sound in the whole of the library was violins’ songs.

“I want to be together with Breeze again,” he said. “She means the world to me, and I’m an idiot for not acting like it sooner.”

She tilted her head a little closer to him.

“I hate Discord, yes, but only because of what I see of myself in him.” Thunder Gale paced away from her and looked up at the stain glass image of the six banishing Discord rather than meet her gaze. “If I were to kill him, it’d be to try to kill something I see in myself. I can’t do it. Not from the changeling who tried to attack me, and not with Discord. Not that it matters much now. I don’t even know how to reach him in the first place.”

“You might not believe it now, but you already possess every resource you need to resolve this conflict, without resorting to violence,” Celestia said.

“Like what?” Thunder Gale spread open his wings and chuckled. “I don’t even have my power armor.”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.” Celestia took another step towards him and her hooves rang on the marble. “You’ve seen it before. It’s how you’ve always managed to pull yourself up after you fall and achieve each new dazzling speed. And in your most graceful of moments, it shone across the whole sky.”

Thunder Gale spent a moment contemplating that while his eyes fell into his shadow across the marble. Then he noticed a clock embedded high in the far wall. It read 00:17:51.

“I’m sorry.” He yanked himself away from the clock and shook his head. “I don’t have the time.”

“Then make it.”

He took in a sharp breath and cantered over to the wall.

A cloud passed overhead and cut the light streaming in from the high windows. He traced the gaps in the tiles beneath his hooves while he thought and tried not to panic. The violins climbed into a crescendo.

“Okay,” he said. “How?”

“Come with me.”

In a clearing sectioned off from the rest of the bookshelves, Celestia spread out a blanket and a pair of pillows. She invited him to make himself comfortable with a nod and wave of her wing. So, he lay down on one of the pillows and let his hooves drape over the side. The satin was too smooth for him and drove him up onto his hooves again.

Celestia chuckled.

“Okay, so now what?” he asked.

“Do what comes natural, and be patient.” She cantered out of the clearing and into the aisle. “I’ll get us tea.”

For a long while Thunder paced in a circle, and every time he paused to check down the endless aisles, his hooves broke into tapping. After a time, he gave up waiting for Celestia and sat himself down on his pillow.

Another cloud passed outside and he lowered his head against the bookshelf behind him as it came and went.

“What do I even do?” He raked his hooves down his cheeks as he thought back to every word she had said to him, and then his wings opened. “Did she mean? No, she couldn’t possibly know. How could she?”

A cold sweat ran down the back of his neck, and he pinched the pillow tight between his elbows and his hooves. When he put aside his fretting long enough to listen for the lightning beneath his skin, he found it. Fainter now than during his flight, but as undeniable as the sun it cascaded up his spine. Magic. That's what the blue pegasus had called it.

He closed his eyes, waited for his body to relax, and then called upon it.

When it answered, the electricity rose with a renewed ferocity, and he traced it back behind his eyes and deeper within himself. He followed it for a time, but as soon as his mind began to unclench, a myriad of blues and greens and reds bloomed. That time he was prepared for the burst, and as he continued to ride the colors deeper, more emerged to join the growing rainbow. It didn’t answer him in words, but as he drank in its light, certainty sprouted in him.

When he opened his eyes again, Celestia sat across from him with her front legs crossed over her pillow. A tray bearing cups and a kettle of tea sat between them.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked him.

“Yes, or at least I think so.” Thunder Gale scratched the back of his head and sat forward off the bookshelf. “I was hoping I’d get a straight forward: this is how you can get resolve this whole business with Discord and Breeze free. It was more of an impression, a wordless kind of answer. I don’t have the answer I wanted, but I think I’ll have what I need when the time comes. For now, that’s enough. I still don’t know if she’ll even want to see me when I find my way to her.”

“I’m happy to hear you’re beginning to find yourself again. Would you care for some tea?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The tea kettle floated off the tray, followed by a pair of cups. In the air they shimmered in a golden light. She tilted her horn in the suggestion of a nod, and the kettle filled one cup and then the other. The first drifted over to Thunder, and he plucked it out of the air and the glow faded. Lavender and lilac steamed off the cup, and when he sipped, it warmed his bones.

“I wanted to show you something,” she announced a moment later. “This library contains a record of everything ever written, and everything that never was. It’s surprising, the things you can stumble upon in here.”

Her horn lit up in a shimmer of gold. From off the shelf beside her a datapad drifted, and landed before his hooves. When Thunder Gale set down his tea and scooped it up, his wings flung open.

The datapad opened to a letter from Breeze Heart he’d never seen before, but it was dated several days after they left Marble and in it she thanked him. “No matter whether I’m stuck in a jail cell or if news from home only tells of trouble and loss,” she wrote. “I always felt well loved when I’m with you. You help me find the light even in the darkest of times.”

“We play this game where we send little love letters to each other,” he said. “I got something like this eventually, but it never said anything so heartfelt. Also, she broke character. She never does that. What happened?”

“She got shy and a little self-conscious. The spirit behind her words is what the library remembers, not the exact words themselves. I did say this library contained everything never written. There’s more for you to read.”

He scrolled out to the index, and before him spanned the entire length of Special Snowflake’s conversation with Cherry Pit, and many more entries he didn’t remember sending or receiving. There were thousands of them, but often when he checked the contents of her letters, they merely read: “I love you.”

“There’s more clips, letters, notes, and security logs all around you,” Celestia said. “There’s an entire lifetime of them, and more if you go back far enough. Now tell me, do you really think she wouldn’t want to hear back from the colt you see recorded here?”

“I wasn’t there for her all the time.” Thunder Gale slid the datapad back in its place on the shelf. “And that doesn’t undo the fact that I betrayed her.”

“No, I suppose it doesn’t, but it also doesn’t undo the fact that the reason only reason why you've ventured all the way out here isn’t to continue your mission, but to go home with her.”

“Thank you, Celestia.” Thunder Gale got up off the floor and threw a hoof around her neck for a hug.

“You’re very welcome.” She lowered her head around him to return the hug, and chuckled slightly. “But I really didn’t do much of anything. Now, when you’re ready to confront Discord, all you have to do is lock onto him with your heart and will yourself there. It’s just like flying.”

Thunder Gale released himself from her embrace and said, “It was amazing talking with you, Your Majesty.”

“And you as well, Your Grace” she said. “Feel free to visit anytime.”

He faced into the bookshelf across from him, eyes closed, and when he opened them again a red curtain span the wall before him, flickering and teasing at his hooves. Behind it, he heard the sound of wind as it passes through pines and rain. He gave Celestia a final salute, and pushed past the red and into darkness.

Author's Note

Thanks to Ed Garnot, Obsidian Rose (or whatever he's calling himself now), Derek F, and General Liberator for helping to make this chapter happen!
Thunder Gale's journey continues on the 2nd of December.

18. The Long Dark Night of the Soul

Planet Hell
Solocitizen

18.
The Long Dark Night of the Soul

1st of Planting Season, 10,056 AC
Hearts and Hooves Day

That night he didn’t dream of the sky. Instead, he wandered through a pine forest beset by a storm. He couldn’t see where he was going in the dark, and the cold of the wind and rain battered his ear and nose and drowned them out. All he felt was cold, and the pine needles beneath his hooves.

A light ahead of him guided him on, and it kept him warm through the storm. He didn’t know how long he wandered, but at last the storm abated and he came to a small clearing. A ring of sycamores stood sentinel against the pines and the oaks, and once he stepped inside their branches drew shut as curtains.

Inside the sycamore trees, the rain abated and fire burned beside a still pool that cast his reflection. A pegasus sat across the fire, with his back turned to the sycamores and his purple mane billowing at the suggestion of wind. It was Thunder Gale’s father; at last through all his searching he had found him. He was too tired from the battles and the storm to rush over to him, and throw his hooves around him. So instead he collapsed at the edge of the firepit and waited for his father to take notice of him.

A wave of chattering and skittering rose up from the woods, but they flowed around the ring of sycamore trees like water around a stone. Green eyes flashed in the dark, and maniacal laughter followed them. Still his father remained silent and with his back to him. When the woods grew silent again, Thunder Gale spoke.

His father turned around and jolted back when his eyes landed on Thunder, sprawled out and panting from his flight through the woods. Then his gaze softened and he tossed a log into the fire. It burned brighter.

“I’ve found your sister,” his father announced. “She’s still out there, alive and well for the most part. She’s starting to come around.”

“That’s good, but why didn’t you try to contact me?” Thunder Gale shook out his mane and sat up like a dog. “I fought through changelings, a goat-headed devil, and our own pegasi to find you and bring you home. I lost everything trying to get here, just to see you again.” He didn’t know what a changeling was, nor did he remember any demon, but the words rang true when he said them and didn’t dwell on them further.

His father glanced down at his hooves and his eyes wandered until he found the sycamores.

“The Empire is under siege, from all sides as well as from within, by an enemy I could never have imagined.” He met Thunder’s eyes again. “It’s not the answer that you want hear, but I never contacted you because other issues have to take priority.”

That hurt to hear, but Thunder Gale choked it down and didn’t show it. He simply stood up, opened his wings, and said to his father: “It’s time for us to go.”

“I can’t,” he said. “I’m still needed here. If I leave now your sister and the Empire itself—there will be consequences.”

“Damn it, dad! You’re not supposed to be this difficult. We’re supposed to go home and be a family again! Don’t you want that?”

“Of course I want that. You’re my son, and I’m your father. It’s all I ever wanted.”

A gust rose in from the beyond the trees and a pale moon shone out from behind a veil of clouds. He recognized the heron in its face, and the scent of pines on the wind. It was the same moon over Hellas, and the same pine-scent at the family villa in autumn. Only his mother, his sister, and himself ever took the time to vacation there as a family. No matter how much he pleaded, his father never came.

As he thought back to the villa a cold realization struck him in the gut: his father was never there. That life before the attack that he so desperately wished to return to, it was a fantasy. He hung his head and his knees quivered. The fire crackled on and the trees were silent.

“Dad.” He raised his spinning head and staggered forward a step.

Already his father had turned his back to him again, and faced into the trees beyond the sycamores.

“Father,” Thunder said again. “If you don’t come have any intention of leaving with me, then I have, then I...” his voice trailed off.

“Yes?” He turned around again and met his eyes.

“I don’t know what to do.”

His father reached over to a thermos at his side and poured a cup of tea. He held it out to Thunder Gale, and waited until he stepped around the fire beside him.

It warmed his hoof and his cold stomach. He now had his father’s full attention.

“As a parent, it’s tempting to instill a sense of values into your children, but more often than not they twist and warp that very same personality you wish to bloom,” his father said. “I have my answer, but what does your soul tell you?”

“I made a promise.” Thunder set tea cup down. “There’s somepony else out here you needs my help. I let her down over and over again, and I have to make it right.”

“Then that’s what you must do, but I can’t make that decision for you.” His father emptied his thermos into his lid and turned to Thunder Gale. “You have to make your own choices, but whether or not you choose to go or stay, I won’t be around forever. Eventually, we’ll have to part ways. Children succeed their parents.”

“I know, but I don’t have to leave just yet, do I?” Thunder Gale chuckled. “I mean, this is the first I’ve seen of you in years.”

“You can stay here as long as you like; you’re always welcome at my camp fire.”

The cold, the wet of the earlier rain, and the skittering deep in the forest melted into the warmth of the fire as Thunder Gale sat by his father’s side. He didn’t know how long he sat there, but his father tossed in log after log as the fire rose and dwindled. The moon hung in suspense and the flames danced.

At last his father cleared his throat to speak again, but when he did he sang:

“Like the mist on the green mountain, moving eternally
Despite our weariness
We’ll follow the road
Over hill and valley
To the end of the journey.”

That voice Thunder remembered, from every speech and lullaby his father ever gave, down to his final words of encouragement right before his birthday. Every pegasus knew the words to that song, and he join his voice with his father’s.

“Come my friends and sing with me
Fill the night with joy and sport
Here’s a toast to the friends who are gone from us
Like the mist of the green mountain,
Gone forever.”

When they had finished singing the curtain of sycamores peeled back and the lights of a town shone on through the branches. He stood up and put one hoof in front of the other until he reached the edge of the sycamores. The rain had loosened its grip entirely and the moon glowed in a clear sky. It was time for him to go.

“Your friend needs you,” his father said to him.

“But if I go to her, I won’t be coming back. I can only save one of you.”

“You’ve chased after me for too long as it is.” His father raised his hoof to salute. “It’s time for you to live your life now.”

Thunder Gale raised his own hoof as if to salute, and then lunged forward and gave his father a hug. Then, he peeled himself away and stepped into the forest. He followed the lights of the town until morning.

Author's Note

Special thanks to Derek F, Obsidian Rose, Talon, and Ed Garnot for helping to make this chapter happen.
Thunder Gale will complete his journey through the forest on December 16th.
Normally I don't like to tip my hand, but brownie points to whoever can figure out where the song is from, and to whoever can point out any odd details about the continuity and transition between this chapter and the previous.

19. Beyond Life and Death

Planet Hell
Solocitizen

19.
Beyond Life and Death

Present Day

Before Thunder Gale lay a pale imitation of a town at the edge of a leafless forest. There were no ponies chattering about or the clippity-clop of hooves on the cobblestone streets, and not a single hologram, lamp, or candle flickered in any of the windows. The lights he had followed through the forest had vanished like will-o’-the-wisps with the retreating of the night. When he cantered up to the window of a cottage at the edge of town, he saw nothing inside other than wooden floors and support beams. He thought of flying, but the sky was low and oppressive, so he thought better of it.

“Alright, Breeze, I’m finally here.” Thunder Gale shivered and checked the clock embedded in the decaying trunk of a cherry tree; he still had thirteen minutes left.

When he took the first step onto the cobblestone, he put his hoof down in something cold and wet. It stained his coat and fetlocks brown and left a sticky residue. He sniffed his hoof and tested it on his tongue.

“Chocolate milk?” Thunder Gale raised an eyebrow.

There were entire puddles of the stuff filling in the potholes and dips in the roads leading to and throughout the town.

“Hey, Thunder, wait up!”

He turned and spotted the blue pegasus galloping up behind him, and a mare with a soft pink mane followed on her tail.

At once he assumed, by the sway and color of her mane, that the blue pegasus’s companion was Breeze Heart and dashed up to meet them. Then he got a clearer view of her; she was not. She had the same mane color and wore it in the same style, and even had a face as gentle and soft as Breeze Heart’s that she, too, kept half-hidden behind her mane. But she was cream colored, not pink, and there were butterflies on her flank.

“Man, I’m glad we caught up with you,” the blue pegasus said. “It looks you were right about to go charging in there without backup.”

Thunder Gale stared at the yellow mare beside her confused. The more he stared, the more he expected to see Breeze, and that frightened him.

“What, you didn’t think I’d let you go in there on your own, did you?” The blue pegasus closed her eyes and held a hoof up to her chest. “As amazing as I am, I was completely helpless against Discord on my own the last time he was running amok, but my friends and I were able to handle him together as a team. Yeah, it was pretty epic.”

“Who are you?” Thunder Gale pointed right at the yellow mare and kept on her even as she shrunk behind her friend.

“Oh.” The blue pegasus pushed her friend out from behind her. “Fluttershy, this is Thunder Gale. Thunder, this is Fluttershy.”

“Have we met before?” he asked.

“We have, sort of, not like this though,” Fluttershy said. “I’m sorry if this is a bit, um, awkward for you.”

“Confusing is more like it,” he said. “And I don’t know why.”

The blue pegasus glanced over at his bewildered face, and over to Fluttershy, and then stepped between the two. “Why don’t we go pay Discord a visit and get Breeze Heart back.”

Thunder Gale nodded, and cantered up to the street and led them into the town. As they delved deeper into it, his gut twisted over on him. The town, it stirred up nostalgia in him, and for a second as he cut across Manestreet he even recognized some of the stores.

He stopped right in front of a grayed out store without a name or sign and turned to his companions and asked, “This place sold Quills and Sofas, didn’t it?”

They both looked at him blankly.

“Come on, throw me a bone here!” He stomped a hoof. “I’ve been here before, and I’ll prove it. Watch, I know where there’s a bakery. It’s just around this corner!”

He galloped off around the intersection of Manestreet and 3rd avenue, but when he got around that corner, right where he knew the bakery would be, there was nothing more a vacant lot.

Fluttershy and the blue pegasus cantered up to him a second or two later.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “There’s supposed to be a bakery here! It was colorful and it had a name. Something about squares or—damn it! Why can’t I remember what it was called? It was important. Somepony important lived here!”

“The bakery you’re thinking of was called Sugarcube Corner and it was never here,” Fluttershy said. “This place isn’t what it seems. Your feelings aren’t wrong, in fact I’d probably be more worried if you hadn’t recognized anything at all.”

Thunder Gale sat down and gazed into the vacant lot.

“Let’s keep looking, how does that sound? Don’t let him get to you.” Fluttershy put a hoof on his shoulder. “Discord is just trying to play off our insecurities, that’s all.”

“Actually, I wasn’t intending to do anything of the kind.” Discord’s voice echoed up the street and swept over them.

Just two blocks down the street Discord sat at the head of a long table furnished with a white tablecloth and candles, and plates of food piled onto every inch of free space. Discord himself wasn’t the devil Thunder Gale had anticipated, but instead he wore the gold crown and regalia of an alicorn, and Princess Celestia’s face. His eyes remained yellow and crooked as ever and, despite his latest transformation, he couldn’t hide the malice in his smirk.

Thunder Gale just stood there for a time looking on at him.

“Breeze, he wasn’t here when we got here, was he?” Thunder whispered to Fluttershy. “I think I would have noticed if he was there before, right? I’m not losing it am I?”

From down the block Discord tossed his head to the side and batted those yellow eyes at him.

“Why how thoughtless of me, please, pull up a seat.” Discord raised his hoof and revealed a claw at the end of it. He put two talons together, snapped, and on that command the distance between them melted away. “Isn’t that better? Now the three of us can talk like civilized spirits.”

There were hay fries, dandelion rolls, sugarcubes, cotton candy swirls, and entire pitcher full of chocolate milk, but all of the food on the table smelled of burning hair and changeling flesh. One dish, a vat of bubbling hot sauce, reeked of blood.

Thunder Gale’s knees quivered and he hyperventilated. He felt his body back in the chair turn colder.

“Discord, you big jerk!” The blue pegasus leapt into the air and hovered, hooves on her hips. “Let Breeze Heart go and change back to your own stupid mug instead of stealing somepony else’s!”

“And what do you plan on doing about it, Rainbow Crash?”

“That does it!” She kicked and boxed in the air. “Get off your rump and put them up! You, me, let’s go! Marquess of Queensbury rules!”

“As tempting as that sounds I’m far more interested in what the current iteration has to say.” He snapped his claws again, and the blue pegasus vanished in the flash of light. “I’m sorry, but she was so passé.” He turned the entirety of his attention right on Thunder Gale. “Now, have a seat at my table.”

He swallowed and tensed up as if to run, but before he acted on it, Fluttershy trotted up next to him with a smile as warm and as gentle as any of Breeze’s, and nudged him forward. He took a deep breath, fell into the calm the Officer Academy disciplined into him, and stepped forward.

“I’m not here to fight you, Discord,” he said. “All I want is Breeze. I don’t think I can ever be happy until I know that she’s safe. I’d be content even if she never takes me back, just as long as she’s free. I believe you care about her too, so I’m asking you: please let her go.”

As he marched forward to press Discord further, he held up his hoof to stop him and gestured at the chair at the far end.

“That’s an order, Thunder Gale,” he said. “Be a good soldier and obey.”

“She’s not happy, Discord.” He didn’t know why, but he carried out the order and planted himself down in the chair at the opposite end of the table. “Surely you can see that just as easily as I can.”

In truth, Thunder Gale had no plan, other than a vague intuition that somewhere he had the means to turn the situation around. For now, he’d keep Discord talking. His hind hoof tapped against the leg of his chair.

“I’ll concede the point that she might not be happy now, but I’ll make her happy in due time. I’m going to rebuild Equestria just the way it was back in the good old days. Speaking of which I have a proposal for you: I want you to live in Ponyville, with myself and Breeze Heart.” He leaned forward and the leather on his throne squealed. “I’ve tried recreating it the best I can but as much as it pains me to admit, it would never be complete without its cast of characters. And my offer from before, it still stands. You can have your father back, and your life in the place exactly as it was, for the mere price of playing along.”

Out of the corner of his eyes, Thunder Gale noticed the hot sauce. The swirls forming and breaking across its surface mirrored some of the best moments of his life: the moment his father showed him the map inside his office, the countless times Hill Born and himself goaded Spring into playing tag with them, and his father sitting next to him under the glow of the autumn moon at their villa on Hellas.

Thunder Gale furrowed his eyebrows and sat up to stare into the hot-sauce. The longer he did, the more the memory of that endless autumn at their villa sharpened. He could smell the scent of the pines and roasting marshmallows. His father’s voice rang clear and confident, as he told him about philosophy and the pegasus tribe.

Then Fluttershy gripped his hoof, and held him until he looked her in the eye. When he glanced back at the vat of hot sauce, the image was gone. That memory, it wasn’t real. Blood wheezed from the vat, not the scent of pines and marshmallows.

“You’re going to try to unite the tribes,” Thunder Gale said to Discord, “raise Equestria up from the depths of the ocean, and recreate Ponyville exactly as it was before so you can have things the way they were before? What will you do if they say no? Snap your claws together and make them?”

“Why of course, it’d be the only responsible thing to do. It’d be the only way to bring back Harmony.”

“Um, Discord, what you’re describing isn’t what we had in Equestria.” Fluttershy, who had remained silent and at Thunder Gale’s side until then, marched up to Discord and drew all eyes and ears on her. “It’s chaos.”

Just then, Thunder Gale noticed Urizen’s clock suspended in the mound of cotton candy in front of him. It read 00:06:05 and counted down.

For a long time—twenty-five whole seconds—Discord stared vacantly past his table of food, past Thunder Gale, and past the town he had fabricated.

“No, I’m reformed,” he said at last. “What we will have is order. One nation. One law. One rule. And one set of values to bind us together. I am the Spirit of Order.”

“I think the Emperor said as much himself, right before he plunged the whole galaxy into war.” Thunder Gale looked Discord straight in his yellow eyes. “Why do you think Celestia never went down this path? Why do you think that she, with all her power, never intervened?”

“Do not speak her name.” Discord stretched his claws out across the table. The guise of Celestia had deteriorated, but only enough for his horns to sprout from under his rainbow mane.

Thunder Gale braced himself and waited as Discord collected his composure and sipped on a cup of tea. After a minute he cleared his throat and asked: “You don’t know, do you?”

“Please, this is my realm. Not even the birds fly here if I forbid it.” He took a minute to drain his tea. “But let’s say for the sake of argument that I don’t, what stunning revelation do you have in store for me?”

“All those faces you’ve worn.” Thunder Gale withheld a nervous laugh. “The one you’re wearing now—I used to think that you picked them out because you wanted to get inside my head, but you don’t even know do you? You don’t even know who you look like now.”

Into the silver of a plate Discord’s yellow eyes glanced, and as soon as he found his own reflection and saw the rainbow mane and golden tiara upon his head he grit his teeth and slammed his knee into the table.

“This can’t be right.” His traced the contours of his face, and when he found Celestia’s high cheekbones he stammered. “A-a-a mistake or a trick of the mind’s eye.”

“Come on! I barely even know how to fly, let alone how to trick you!” Thunder Gale chuckled and flung out his hooves at the empty city streets. “Does this look like harmony to you? Does this look like the Ponyville you know and love?”

All the silverware shuddered. He gripped the edges of the plate and held it up to his face. The sky rumbled and the vat of hot sauce beside Thunder Gale rose to a rolling boil. He did his best to ignore it and the images continually emerging and melting across its surface.

“No, this isn’t right.” Discord shook his head and set the silver plate down again. He looked at subdued and silent storefronts, as his eyes flashed open as if seeing them for the first time. Then he pinched them shut and shook his head. “Celestia must have helped you with this. I am Order.”

The flow of magic shifted, it didn’t radiate outward as it had when Thunder Gale approached Celestia’s library, but instead it drained from the air and took the heat and the warmth with it. It flowed toward Discord, and he felt it as pins and needles over his body. The sky rumbled and pressed lower, and every fork and empty plate on the table shook as if trying to rise to meet it.

“Easy now, let’s all take a deep breath and calm down.” She cantered up to the mid section of the table and leaned between the two. “How about it? One, two, three!” She puffed out her cheeks and held her breath.

Discord ignored her.

“I know it hurts,” Thunder Gale said. “But sooner or later you’ll have to face the reality.”

Discord flexed his arms and they shot and stretched across the table until his claws locked around Thunder Gale’s neck. At that moment every last trace of Celestia vanished from him and at the opposite end of the table stood a beast of many animal parts. His claws dug into his flesh and clamped down on the apple in his neck, but underneath it all, he boiled inside his own skin at Discord’s touch. He flapped his wings and grappled at Discord’s claws, but they gripped him like a vice.

He opened his mouth to scream and gasp for air, but he couldn’t.

“I know who I am, boy,” Discord said. “Still say I’m the spirit of Chaos? That I’m a tyrant? That I can’t make Breeze happy again?”

Thunder Gale’s eyes rolled into the back of his skull, he’d given into thrashing about with all his available limbs. His back leg kicked over the chair next to him, his front sent the plate of cotton candy clattering to the ground, and his wings toppled over his own chair but Discord still held him in place.

“Fight back!”

“Discord, that’s enough!” Fluttershy flew up between him and Thunder Gale and stared right into his yellow eyes. “Who do you think you are behaving like this? You’re not acting like the Discord I knew, you’re acting like a bully! Knock it off and let them go!”

“Or what, you’ll give me The Stare? Please, your powers had no effect on me back then and they will have no effect on me now.”

“Oh yeah?” Fluttershy picked up the vat of boiling hot sauce with her hooves and splashed its contents out across his face and into his big, yellow eyes.

Discord howled and retracted his arms back to their original length so that he could rake the sauce out of his eyes. Steam rose up from between his claws.

Thunder Gale fell from his grasp coughing and gasping for air. He cradled his aching neck, shocked, and in disbelief that he was actually free from that boiling pain.

“We should really, probably, go someplace else now.” Fluttershy landed beside him and helped pull him onto his hooves.

Discord swiped his eyes clean of the hot sauce and there was murder in them. He never broke contact with Thunder Gale as he climbed up onto the table on all fours and charged across it towards them. His legs bent and twisted at odd angles and propelled him along like a lizard up a wall. The plates full of candy and chocolate milk clattered to the ground in his wake.

“Yeah, sounds like a plan.” Thunder Gale backed away from the table.

Galloping and splashing they tore down the street and away from the thrashing monster closing on their heels. Thunder Gale turned down 3rd avenue trying to flee by the way they came in, but where once was the intersection onto Manestreet and the road out, there was now a library carved out of an enormous tree. When he looked again the path behind them led not from Discord’s table in an empty street, but to an open square and a conservative wooden bell tower. Somehow, he recognized it as Town Hall.

Thunder Gale stopped on the sidewalk while he thought of what to do.

“I really do feel awfully bad about splashing that hot sauce all over him.” Fluttershy galloped to his side him. “I know he may seem mean, but he’s not a bad spirit. He’s just making some poor choices in his life right now, that’s all. You don’t think he’ll stay angry for too long, do you?”

A voice roared out from deeper in the town, then a great plume of green fire tore above the rooftops. A timer in the tree-house library window read 00:04:37. He still needed to find a way to save Breeze Heart. Thunder Gale felt himself in the chair again. Pain pierced his heart and a chill spread through his chest and limbs. He grasped his chest and nearly toppled over.

“I need to think,” he said to Fluttershy. “I need to stop and rest for a second, just long enough to think something up. I’ll be fine if I can get a minute to slow down.”

Thunder Gale’s eyes locked on the library.

“There!” He pointed to the door, but his hooves quivered from the pain and almost toppled over if Fluttershy hadn’t caught him.

She walked him to the door, helped him inside, and eased it shut behind them. She glanced over her shoulder and flinched at another one of Discord’s cries. Each roar was louder and nearer than the last.

A shadow passed in front of the windows and Fluttershy tensed, while Thunder continued to stare and catch his breath. The sound of timber beams splitting shook the windows; it came from no more than a block away.

Fluttershy raced over to the window, drew the curtains shut, and then back to the door to slide the deadbolt in place.

“He’s going to catch us if we stay here, isn’t he?” he asked.

“Shush,” she whispered. “Catch your breath.”

As he braced the floor and flattened his spine against it, the floorboards creaked down to the foundations. She hurried over to him and checked his forehead, and then his pulse. Her touch brought him back to Breeze, the memory of her scent and their endless mornings together between 6:00 and 7:00 AM, and he flinched. She sighed and hung her head.

He winced and strained into a half sitting position, one leg propping himself up.

“Listen, I need you to do something for me, okay?” she said. “I want you to leave here while you still have time, and go back to your body. I will talk with Discord.”

“No, there’s no telling what he’ll do to you.”

Another roar cut Fluttershy off. She waited for a lull in the cries and the sound of crumbling homes.

“I know, I’m terribly insignificant compared to Discord,” she said, “But you are still my friend, and if I can spare you from having to throw your life away for me, that’s worth it. And who knows? If I just keep my head high, and do my best, anything can happen. Besides, I wasn’t really asking.”

Fluttershy patted Thunder on the side of the cheek, but he caught her hoof before she pulled away.

“No, there has to be a way,” he said. “It can’t end like this. When I was in the library, I saw something inside myself, and it said that there’d be a way if I could only get this far.”

“Then, what does it say now?”

Thunder Gale lay his head back and gripped her hoof like a vice; he worried if he closed his eyes in the amount of pain he was in, it’d whisk him back to his body. As he shut his eyes and listened for the buzz of magic running beneath his skin, Discord’s roaring broke through his focus. He turned his ears down and tried to block out the noise, but each broken window and split timber rang brought him out.

Through a haze of red and black, the color of eyelids clenched shut, he groped and found his own body. It pulled to him as a tornado pulls at the grass. All he had to do was relax, surrender, and fall back into himself. At his touch warmth returned to his cold limbs and the part of him sprawled across the floor of the library tingled numb. It beckoned for him to return and a path through the haze cleared before him.

Outside the library, Discord’s roaring continued. The shuddering of the floorboards as buildings split were nearer to him now. Fluttershy stroked his hoof, and brought him back to the empty library. For a moment he hung suspended in the riptide back to his body.

“What can I do?”

He wavered in the current and flexed his wings open.

There came a flash of red and blue, green and yellow, purple and orange from within him. When he reached for the source, the end point of it stretched just beyond his reach and lead him onward in the curve of a fractal. The corridor between him and his body filled with the technicolor and the tide dragging him down to his body.

Then an idea flashed through him, it lit his bones; he wasn’t sure if the thought was his or if it came from elsewhere in the light. Wait, it said, listen.

He shoved against the current and jolted back into the floor. The vacant ceiling and Fluttershy’s bright eyes were there to meet him.

“Wait,” he repeated back to Fluttershy. “Listen.”

The roaring continued, but between the pauses for breath and the toppling of buildings, a softer sound crept through. A dry sound somewhere between heaving and a wail.

Fluttershy angled her ears toward the windows and waited for the shattering of a window to pass. When she caught it, she covered her mouth in surprise.

“Is that what I think it is?” Thunder Gale asked.

“I think so,” she said. “He’s crying.”

No toppling of bricks nor ripping of floorboards followed, and soon even the roaring subsided, but the crying continued.

Thunder Gale rolled over onto his hooves and forced himself to stand, pain shot through his chest and shoved him back to the floor. A chill reached over him, starting in the liver and spreading from the inside out. His hooves were aching from the chill and his organs were, one by one, shutting down. A clock embedded in the floor read 00:03:00.

A tingling like blood returning to a sleeping limb was flowing down his head and cascading through his spine. Despite the seconds of his life ticking down, he couldn’t help but laugh.

“Ready?” He took Fluttershy’s hoof in his again.

She nodded.

“Okay then, let’s go.”

Together they stepped out from the library.

The town before them lay in ruins. Bricks and mortar, glass and lumber, they covered the streets and hung to the skeletons of the surviving storefronts like sinew to a carcass. Thunder Gale and Fluttershy maneuvered around the broken glass as they followed the crying down the streets.

Slumped against the side of a ruined wall they found Discord, weeping into his own claws. The remains of a sign that read “Sofa and Quills,” lay at his feet. When he looked up from his claws, his eyes were dry and the yellow in them muted.

“What do you want?” he said to them. “Come to see me wallow?”

“I was, and still am, your friend.” Fluttershy trotted closer to him and let Thunder’s hoof slip out of hers. “Even if, well, we’ve had our disagreements.”

“That’s putting it mildly. You're right, I’ve been nothing more than a bully. I haven’t been the same since you left. When I saw Breeze, I—” he motioned to his chest. “I just wanted to have things the way they were. To go home. Is that so wrong?”

“I’ve spent my life trying to put my family back together,” Thunder Gale said. “In the end, look what it did to me. It took me this long to realize it, but even if I could go back, I wouldn’t be satisfied. Nothing from my past could.”

Discord rolled his head to the side and pressed his palm into his eyes.

The sky above trembled as if it might rain, but it never did. A gust rolled through the streets and it carried with it the scent of a forest after a downpour, not chocolate milk.

Pain lanced through Thunder Gale’s chest, but light resounded in him, and when he blinked he saw the fractals of a rainbow. That kept him on his hooves, standing, in spite of the pain. It urged him forward to Discord like the current of a stream.

“Everypony lost, but the battle is won,” Discord said into his palm. “None of these things that I’ve done will ever bring me any semblance of happiness.”

“No, but you could give somepony else the chance at it.” Thunder Gale sat down against the wall beside him and rested his hoof on his shoulder.

Another wave of pain bloomed out from his heart and seeped into his organs like fatigue spreaded, and as Thunder Gale braced for it to pass his eyes wandered off into the cobblestone and there he found a clock reading 00:01:02. The pain never left him but in focusing on that current of light in him he found the strength to remain sitting.

“I’ve rested so much of my hopes and dreams on her, I fear that if I let her go it could kill me.” Discord lowered his claw and sighed. “But I suppose I will have to answer for myself and face facts sooner or later. I’m warning you two: I have no idea what will happen if I do this.”

“I’ll be here with you the whole time.” Fluttershy scooped up his claw and for a moment a smile flickered across his face. “Friends to the end.”

“Very well.” He rolled his head over to Thunder Gale. “Prepare yourself. You’ll have to meet her.”

“I’m ready, or at least as much as I ever will be.”

As Discord raised his lion’s claw to his chest, a humming rose up from beneath the cobblestone. The broken glass and debris scattered across the streets shuddered, and the humming bloomed into a rumble.

Fluttershy darted over to Thunder Gale and threw her hooves around his neck.

“Find her,” she said to him. “Bring her home.”

“I will.” Thunder Gale returned the hug. “And tell that blue pegasus ‘thank you,’ for me if you run into her again.”

When at last Discord reached into his chest, the doors that still clung to their frames flung open. The cobblestone beneath Thunder Gale shook and threatened to liquify.

From his own chest Discord pulled a white-hot orb. The yellow in his eyes faded entirely as he offered it to Thunder.

“Give it here!” Thunder Gale shouted.

Discord’s head rolled off to the side and the orb slipped. The orb tumbled, and where it landed the earth split open. Thunder scrambled to his hooves and stooped over the mouth of the fissure. A darkness stared back at him.

Fluttershy leapt across the fissure and nestled Discord’s head in her hooves. She only glanced up at Thunder Gale long enough to nod.

The ground before him liquified and sloughed off. The rainbow whispered to him again, now.

On an impulse he spread his wings and followed the pull of current into the fissure. In seconds his smooth descent broke and head over tail he spun. As he tumbled he caught a glimpse of Discord and Fluttershy embracing each other, and the town above vanished.

Through darkness he fell. The dirt and grass and even a clock tumbled past him; it blinked 00:00:00. Then there was nothing. Nothing to anchor himself on, or remind himself that he was falling after he grew numb to the sensation. He didn’t even know if his eyes were opened or closed. Colors from inside himself continued to flash and they were his only guide.

In fleeting oily reflections he saw Breeze Heart, not as she was, but as shadows of his own desire. Whenever he was about to reach her, she vanished. The shadows were always just out of his grasp, and her scent always further away and never there with him. He kept his wings tucked in close as if to accelerate his dive and veer for her, and never once did he lose focus on the myriad of colors.

He chased an oily reflection of her weeping backside, only for it to vanish, and for a vision of her resting her head on his pillow to appear. She looked at him, giggled, and covered her face with her disheveled mane. He remembered that scene: it was from the morning after their first night in the same bed.

Chasing after it only drove it further from him, before it dissolved into tendrils of smoke.

“Come back!” he yelled at the fading shadows. “Please come back.”

In the next vision, she was in sickbay. She threw her hooves around him and thanked The Princesses that he returned to her safely. It was right after the search parties found him in the desert and brought him back to the ship. In her eyes there was so much love and worry, for him. It vanished on his approach.

“I can’t bear the thought of losing you,” her voice said from all around him, “but as much as I want to stay by your side it’s killing me to watch you put yourself through this. Maybe this is something you have to see to the end, but I can’t do it anymore. I’ve waited long enough, and need to go live my own life even if it means that you’re no longer a part of it.”

Thunder Gale covered his ears and shut his eyes tight, but the visions kept pouring in. He couldn’t bear to hear it or to see the image that accompanied it and it wouldn’t stop. He crossed the desert, learned to fly, and faced down Discord but the sound of her voice paralyzed him.

“Stop it! Go away! I don’t want this!” he said. “Help, somepony—anypony! Help me!”

“What’s wrong, Thunder?”

“Dad? Is that you?” He opened his eyes but even before he did the face of his father greeted him, and he was just as he remembered when he was a colt.

“Of course I’m not mad at you. There’s nothing you can say or do to make me love you any less than with the whole of my heart.”

He soared half-crying into the empty shadow of his father. Nopony was there either.

“No, I can’t take this any more!” He stomped his hooves and hung his head between his two front legs. They kept his torso up while his hind legs collapsed on something solid.

Thunder Gale laid his head out and wept into his hooves. He knew not how long he lay there crying, but after an eternity it came to him again, or rather he found it exactly where he remembered seeing it last, inside him and just behind his eyes: the rainbow and all its colors flickered.

“Why is this happening to me? I never wanted this.”

Another shadow of Breeze Heart appeared before him, but that time he didn’t chase it. She brought him flowers to eat, but he didn’t make one move toward her. He wiped the tears from his eyes, and looked away.

He turned in on himself again and contemplated the rainbow flickering within.

“I have do something different.” Thunder Gale closed his eyes again, and listened to the rainbow inside him. “I need to try something else.”

The longer he focused on the light, the louder and brighter its flashes were. As unwanted thoughts entered his consciousness, such the lyrics of his favorite song or the desire to feel Breeze Heart’s warmth surrounding him again, he tried to chase them away. When he did he lost touch with the rainbow and had to start again.

Instead when such thoughts came again, he let them be and made no attempt to control them, and let them pass. He focused on the light streaming past, until it became his world.

“Have you been here the whole time?”

“Yes, always.”

“Then how come I never noticed?”

“The same reason why most don’t until after a very long time: because they don’t look here.”

“That inside them all is the source of all magic.”

He fell into it, and as he did he fell through the ground beneath him. He didn’t resist and made no attempt to alter his course. The rainbow blossomed, and music in color rushed over him. Lightning as clear as crystal took root over his inner space. There was so much pressure on his forehead then that it felt as if it might split him open.

The thought came to him, that if he kept falling into the rainbow, he might lose himself forever.

“I’ll see where it takes me.” And so he followed it as he did the wind when he first discovered he could fly, and let it carry him where it may.

He followed it one moment to the next, and from one flash of lighting and color to the next. He heard music, but made no attempt to study it or reach for more. Instead it came to him and in time the song from Celestia’s library emerged whole and clear.

It was beautiful.

At that moment the very fabric of his being unraveled from both inside his mind and across his body. There was no distinction between the two. The self-hate and self-doubt that his past actions had left stained to him melted away. As he unraveled the memories untangled themselves and played before him as an old reel of film, with each experience combining with the last to form a singular motion.

The day he found Breeze Heart in the brig, the night he betrayed her, and the day he covered for friend after he broke a vase—though they played before him in ribbons, he experienced them for the first time again. They weren’t just memories, but the events of his life playing out before him for the first time once again.

As the most last minutes of his life concluded more emerged from the hurt in his heart and the ache in the sinews of his chest. He saw himself as an earth pony on Arion when the colony was first settled, and died the happy patriarch of a large family. In another he was a mare displaced from her home in Appleloosa after Equestria sank into the ocean, and died abused and friendless in a refugee camp. During another, he was a unicorn who never learned to do magic despite many years dedicated to the study.

His eyes opened wide and he gasped. The blue pegasus, her name was Rainbow Dash, and he remembered the entirety of that life. And Breeze Heart, in another life she was Fluttershy. Who he used to be was still alive despite her passing. It was his past and many lifetimes passed between his current experience and Rainbow Dash’s, but in truth she was just as much a part of him as the young colt who took the blame for a broken vase or the stallion who betrayed his lover.

The rainbow spilled out from his eyes and lit up the shadows in its myriad of reds, blues, oranges, purples, greens, yellows, violets, and whites. As he wove himself together again the bones in his legs and spine and head expanded as he did. When he gave into the pressure atop his head, his skin peeled back like a lid and out from the socket rose a horn that sparkled in his own light. His mane and tail flowed with the warmth of the cloudless sky and the sun baked seas.

It was from his heart that the light radiated to chased away the shadows and warmed his bones, but as he fell it coalesced and swirled up his spine and lit his horn.

After a time he landed on a plane flat and empty as white porcelain. It shined, but there were no stars and no sun to illuminate it.

When the initial shock of what he had experienced wore off, and the reality of the vast empty plane he gazed out at soaked in, he checked his mane to see if it still billowed and his legs to see if they were still lengthened.

His hair had returned to its original, ordinary dark-blue, at no more than regulation length, and he was no more taller. He fell onto the white beneath his hooves and gasped for breath. Did any of that really happen?

“Or am I just going crazy?” Thunder Gale asked.

He squeezed his eyes shut until patterns bloomed behind them.

There came a tug at his forehead in answer to his question, and when he opened his eyes again, a glimmering horn of technicolor light stood out from above and between them. It exerted a pressure on his skull, same as it had when he fell, and down from it coursed a vibration. When he reached out to touch it, his hoof passed through and the technicolor faded. But the pull it exerted on his forehead remained.

At once he picked himself up and started walking. The ebb and flow of magic down his head and through his spine steered him hot or cold across the vast plane of white. And when he collapsed from exhaustion, it nudged him forward.

During his travels over the plane he came across a unicorn walking in the other direction. He recognized him the moment he spotted him, even though at the time he was only a speck on the horizon. He was none other than Chain Gleaming.

“By the Queen and all her Kings, Thunder Gale, is that really you?” Chain Gleaming asked once they were within earshot.

“I think so.” He bowed his head. “I’m a bit lost, and more than a bit confused.”

“Happy?” Chain Gleaming laughed from his belly. “How can anypony be happy here? Make no mistake that this is a dark and intolerable hell that they’ve condemned us to.”

He glanced around at his surroundings and found nothing that would be of any cause for alarm or concern, just the endless white and the horizon.

“I don’t see how that relates to anything.”

“So, did you ever find what you were looking for?” Chain Gleaming asked.

“I—I think so, yes, but I came here in search of somepony too.”

“We’re all looking for someone here. Someone or something to get us out of here.”

“I think I might see a way. Would you like to come with me? We’ll leave as soon as I’m through here.”

“Don’t be so naive!” Chain Gleaming laughed. “Do you think any of us are leaving here? You can’t leave here for the same reason I can’t: you’re looking. If you set conditions to when you will and won’t leave, you’ll never get out of here. That’s how it works! If you’re looking for something, you’ll never find it.”

Magic tugged at Thunder Gale’s forehead; it was time to get moving again. He sighed, and continued across the white.

“Hey!” Chain Gleaming called to him. “Where do you think you’re going?”

He didn’t answer.

Further along the way he came across none other than Fancy Tie and Hill Born. Neither had noticed him and so he watched them from afar.

“No, don’t you get it!” Hill Born, still dressed in his white laboratory jacket, pulled at the Sigil Tech insignia stitched above his nametag and waved it in Fancy Tie’s face. “I’m a bad pony! We uncovered an Id monster from ancient myth and contaminated it with all our discord until the thing broke loose! It’s gonna kill everypony and everything! And I haven’t even gotten to our experiments on the changelings yet!”

“Please, Mr. Born, no matter what you’ve done I owe you an apology.” Fancy Tie hadn’t changed a single hair on his slicked back mane since the palace bombing. He pulled at the tie around his neck with his mouth and got down next to Hill Born’s hooves. “I was a cretin to you, sir, let me at least clean your hooves.”

“No, don’t you dare!” Hill Born pushed him and sent him sliding across the porcelain. “I need to sit here and think about what I did. Celestia, I pray that Thunder got my message and found a way to clean up our mess.”

“Speaking of messes, I wrongly accused you of breaking a vase in the Imperial Palace,” Fancy Tie said. “I can’t forgive myself unless you let me make it up to you!”

“Get away from me!” Hill Born cantered away him. “I can’t help you. I can’t even help myself. Frankly, I don’t deserve any help. Don’t touch me!”

That was when Fancy Tie noticed Thunder looking on at them from ten or so feet away. Hill Born took note of the silence, and turned and spotted him too.

“Hello,” he said to the two of them. “How long has this been going on?”

“You’re insane,” Hill Born said, “There’s no rest for the wicked.”

“Why do you think I’ve been searching for you for so long?” Fancy Tie got up and trotted to Hill Born. “I want peace, but I can’t have it until you’ve let me make amends. Forgive me!”

“Get away from me!”

While they squabbled, Thunder Gale trotted away.

After following the faint tide of the magic in his head across the porcelain for ages, and the occasional sound of violins, he saw another dot on the horizon. As he cantered closer it grew in size and definition until many distinct pillars emerged from it, along with a pegasus in the middle. He heard faint sobbing.

“Breeze Heart,” he whispered out loud. He galloped closer.

She sat inside a ring of metal bars spread so wide apart on the ground that one of his family’s ornithopters could have flown between them. She kept her back to him, her head low, and sobbed into the long shadows cast over her.

“Whoever you are, go away,” she said to him once they were close enough to talk.

“Okay,” he said. “If you want to be alone, I can accept that.”

“Wait, Thunder, is that you?” She lifted her head up, turned around, and for a moment she stopped crying. Her eyes found his legs, then his face. A kaleidoscope of color danced across the porcelain between them. “What happened to you?”

“Changelings, Discord, and myself,” he said, “Exactly what I needed to get here. I’m not trying to be cryptic, but I don’t know if I can really explain. Not very well at least.”

Breeze Heart cocked her head and raised an eyebrow. “Did you come here to rescue me? Is that why you’re here?”

“Yeah, it was,” he said.

He first sat down, and then lay on his weary legs. It felt good to rest.

“So, you’re glowing now.” She stood up and walked over to him, but never crossed the bars encircling her. “Does that have anything to do with this plan of yours?”

“It just sorta happened.” He blinked; the pressure on his forehead was coming down stronger now. “I’m not here to rescue you. More than anypony else, I’m the one responsible for all of this. I don’t even know if I can give you an apology for everything I’ve done, and even if I could if I’d want you to accept it.”

Breeze Heart chewed on that for a moment. “So, then, why are you here?”

“Because I want to be here. For you.”

After that she got quiet, and turned her back to him again. She lost herself to contemplation inside her own shadow, and began to weep again. The curve of her spine protruded from her back and rose and fell with each of her sobs.

All that time he watched silently.

“Listen, Thunder Gale, I’d like to be with you again too.” She wiped her eyes dry as she spoke. “I can’t though. There are things about me that you don’t know about. I was angry and I ran away with Discord. The things I did with him—I don’t deserve to leave after that. This is where I belong now.”

Even though she paused long enough to break into sobbing and shivering, he knew she wasn’t done yet, and so he waited for her to calm down enough to continue.

“As much as I want to be with you and start living that life we always talked about, I can’t. Not with the way I am now. It won’t work out between us this lifetime. Perhaps we’ll have better luck in the next one, my love. That is, if you’d still be willing to have me then.”

“While I was up there, I saw things.” He stood up and lay back down as close as he could to her without crossing the bars of her prison. “I’ve lived and died more times than I care to tell. In some of them I was an Element of Harmony, but during others I was abused, raped, beaten to death, tortured, and impaled. During different ones I even inflicted all that upon others. There is nothing that you can say or do to shock me, or convince me to believe that you deserve anything less than to be free.”

“I’d like to believe that, really, I would.” She shook her head. “I want to leave here and go home, but I don’t know if I can.”

“I’ll wait here then.” He inched his hoof closer to her, but did not cross the bars. “As long as it will take, for as long as you need, I will wait for you. You’ve meant a lot of things to me over more years than I can count, but through it all you’ve always been my friend. You’ve waited for me for through this stupid mission of mine, so I’ll wait for you now.”

She stopped crying after that, but she still didn’t turn to look at him. She flicked her tail, and cradled her chest in her hooves. For a long time she contemplated her own shadow.

His legs twitched from inactivity; he didn’t know how long he had been sitting there. Ten minutes or ten days, he wouldn’t have been surprised either way.

She wrapped her hoof around on of the bars and leaned against it. “Suppose that I wanted to go with you, what would I have to do?”

“I think, maybe, start by taking a closer look at these bars.” Thunder Gale stood up. “There’s nothing between us.”

“Okay, I’ll try.” Breeze Heart backed away from the bar and all the way to the other end of her prison.

He smiled at her lovingly, and opened his wings and extended a hoof to welcome her across.

She whispered something under her breath, eyes closed, and galloped toward him. When she reached the bars of her prison she didn’t stop but instead leapt on spread wings across the divide and into his embrace. She flung her hooves over his neck and buried her face in the warmth of his mane.

One flex of his wings and they sailed off the ground speeding away from the white of plane below. He invited her closer, and she rested her head and her chest upon his. Light trailed behind them.

In an instant they shot through the land of shadows and past islands of the Discord’s town drifting through the black. He aimed for the sky and braced as he met the cloud cover. Each beat of his wings propelled them towards impossible speeds. The faster and harder he climbed, the more the magic streaming through him rose. It saturated every inch of his body and buzzed in his bones. It slipped out from his coat in tendrils of color, and to keep the rest from pouring out it took the entirety of his concentration.

Breeze Heart nuzzled the base of his neck, and he responded by caressing the back of her head with his hoof. At once he felt at home. She smelled divine, just as he remembered. His concentration slipped and out from him boomed the rainboom he’d seen behind his eyes and whispered to him. As it streamed out in bands of blue, red, green, yellow, and purple it chased away the clouds and ushered in the sun.

When Thunder Gale glanced down at it he chuckled. He had seen that sight—a ripple of many colored rings in the clouds—plenty of times before as Rainbow Dash.

“Hey, Fluttershy, look.” He tapped Breeze Heart on the shoulder and pointed down at the ring. “It’s a sonic rainboom. I told you I could do it.”

She squealed in laughter and he joined her.

Not for one second did he doubt that the rainbow had left him.

Around the time they reached the golden and sun warmed clouds leading to Celestia’s library, the sensation of his body cold, and slumped over in the chair, surged down his horn and into his head. Thunder Gale coughed, and gasped. He clung to Breeze Heart for support and he shivered.

“What’s happening?” She looked to him with worried eyes. “Are you okay?”

“It’s my body,” he said. “I thought I was dead but I can still feel it. I’m going to have to leave you now if we want to meet up again in the world.”

“Okay, I know it sounds crazy but I think I know the way back from here.”

“I’ll see you on the other side,” Thunder Gale whispered in her ear. He let his legs go loose and the air rushing past them peel their embrace apart, but he still held onto her two front hooves.

She kissed him on the check, and then faded into the light of the sun.

He lingered a moment longer to soak in the magic and to let it wash over him before following it all the way back to the chair, and back into through his body.

Author's Note

Sorry for the delay, everypony, I was editing this between holiday events but was determined to get this out. Make sure to like, comment, and follow if you enjoyed this chapter and happy holidays!
Thunder Gale and Breeze Heart will return on the 30th.

20. Wishes on a Wheel

Planet Hell
Solocitizen

20.
Wishes on a Wheel

12th of Planting Season, 10,056 AC

It was late into the noon hour by the time the Spitfire began its long glide from space to the surface of the third planet. Throughout her decks and her halls her crew fell into a slower rhythm of work and toils. There was still work to be done and battles to be fought, but not right there and then. Their landing preparations had been completed, and their course plotted.

Moments ago Thunder Gale had congratulated the bridge staff on what was turning to be another smooth landing, and told them to take five if they needed the break. The holographic table in the center of the bridge remained unlit, and the only the amber tones of the world beyond the blast shutters lighted the room. He fastened himself into the command seat beside central holographic table and watched the rest of the staff while he rested his hooves.

Most feigned work and quietly reflected in the alcoves of their stations. Aurora Dancer, the marine at the communications controls, took her earpiece out and closed her eyes to the holograms surrounding her. Even XO Lightning Fire had relaxed enough to sit down and pick up where she left off in the book she kept on her datapad. The two security ponies standing guard at the door, Corporal Medley and Private Drizzle, whispered to each other.

“We’ve come so far to help a bunch of ponies we’ve never met, and you still think the magic of friendship is dead in the galaxy?” Medley asked.

“I’m not standing guard here to rescue a bunch of scientists from themselves,” Drizzle said, “I’m doing it for the selfish reason that we have a system, and if I want to stay a part of that system I have to do what it tells me.”

“But we live on a marine gunship; you can’t argue that it’s a matter or ignorance or convenience when you live here. You wouldn’t be a part of said system unless you believed in what it was doing, even if it’s just a tiny bit.”

“Okay, maybe a little. I don’t want the Major to think we’re slacking off, let’s drop it for now.”

“I hate to break it to you, but the XO is reading fan fiction right now.”

Thunder Gale listened to their banter, and observed the rest of the bridge. Pony watching, even for mundane scenes such as those, helped him keep his eyes off the hoofrest of his command chair and the datapad on it. He hazarded a glance down, and the words “No New Messages” glared back at him. He navigated over to his sent messages folder just to make sure that Special Snowflake’s latest letter to Cherry Pit was still flagged with a check mark as read.

“Come on, please reply,” he whispered to himself.

Halfway across the bridge, on the bulkhead to his left, the door between Drizzle and Medley opened and Breeze Heart peeked her head out.

When he caught sight of her, Thunder opened an old message on his datapad and glued his face to a fifty-page report on their waste reconsitution system.

“Good afternoon, Doctor,” Medley said. “Is there anything I can do for you, ma’am?”

“I, uh, just finished taking inventory of our supplies.” She rubbed her two front hooves together. Her eyes were still adjusting to the low light of the bridge, and she looked right past Thunder’s chair without spotting him. “I’m on my lunch break and I thought, as long as my presence wasn’t a burden that I might be able to speak with Major Gale for a minute? I wouldn’t take up any more of his time.”

A pocket of turbulence swayed the ship and Breeze threw her hooves down to brace against it. The rest of the marines simply swayed with it as it passed.

Thunder Gale watched her from across the table and leaned into his report on the long-term consequences of negligent waste disposal protocol on the ship’s GM model number-twelve protein assembler, ready to glance back into it at a moment’s notice.

“Non-authorized personnel are not permitted on the bridge.” Drizzle opened her wings and stood at attention, but kept her gaze distant and didn’t acknowledge Breeze directly.

“We could easily make an exception,” Medley said. “Those are our standing orders, but let’s be honest the ship is flying itself right now and nothing is happen up here for her to interrupt anyway.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know if that set’s a good example.”

“Excuse me.” Breeze pushed her way between them. “I know I’m not a marine, but I’m just as much a member of this crew as anypony. Since I started serving on this ship I’ve never once asked to speak with the Major during his duty shift.”

“I don’t know,” said Drizzle.

“Just let her through.” Thunder Gale spoke up and drew their attention from across the room.

“Yes, sir!”

The two security ponies stepped aside and let Breeze Heart through.

Thunder jumped out of his chair and met her halfway at the corner of the unlit table. For a second, neither of them said anything. They just glanced around at their hooves and tried to read each other’s intentions without risking eye contact.

“So, what can I do for you, Doctor?” Thunder scratched the back of his head.

“I got your note and I wanted to ask you something.” Breeze Heart checked over her shoulder; half the room was watching her out of the corner of their eyes. “I wanted to ask if Special Snowflake meant what he said. Is he really going to leave the front and come back to Cherry Pit?”

“Yes, he is. He’s a bit confused right now, and really uncertain about the direction his life’s heading in, but the one thing he’s sure about is that the happiest he’s ever been was during the time he spent with Cherry. He’s decided that he’s not going to waste any more time, and is coming back to her. He’s really sorry about missing Hearths Warming Eve, too.”

“What about the Cloudsdale Legion and the war with the Crystal Empire?” she asked. “Isn’t he worried about what will happen to them if he abandons his post?”

“He’s just one pony in a big war.” Thunder Gale glanced around at the ponies throughout the bridge; most had stopped eavesdropping and were returning to their duties or were otherwise spacing out or chattering amongst themselves. “He’s confident that the world will keep spinning in spite of him. He recognizes the chance he has at happiness, and he’s going to take it. Besides, he’s got more soul than soldier in him.”

“I suppose that Cherry Pit will write him a letter as soon an opportunity presents itself,” Breeze said. “She wants to let you— Special Snowflake know that she’s sorry about running out on him. She was angry.”

“It’s okay.” Thunder took a deep breath. “So what about us? Are we okay?”

“I’m sure that Cherry Pit and Special—”

“No, not Cherry Pit and Special Snowflake.” He looked at her directly until she met his eyes. “I’m sorry for about yesterday. I’m sorry about everything I’ve put you through. I don’t want to wait any longer. This planet is the last stop for me. After this, if you still want to, I’d like to build that life together like we always talked about.”

“I believe that was what we were implying with our dialogue about Cherry and Special, but do you have any idea of where we might go?”

“Sorry, I just needed to hear it—it's been a long night." He chuckled nervously. "I haven't given it any thought, but I don’t think it really matters as long as we’re together, and as long as wherever we end up has an atmosphere. First chance we get, let’s take it. No more waiting.”

“Okay.” She tipped her head in and lowered her ears. “I’d like that.”

Thunder reached for her hoof and she grasped it in her own.

Holograms turned red and the floor beneath their hooves rumbled. When Thunder turned to his left a power conduit beside the door sparked over Medley and knocked her to the floor. A siren sounded and yelling erupted all over the bridge.

“What the hell is going on?” Lightning Fire flung her datapad away and dashed up to the front of the table. “Status report!”

“Electromagnetic storm!” Aurora Dancer dived out of the comm station and into ops. She waited for the holograms to boot up before continuing. “I’m detecting some sort of energy build up on the planet’s surface!”

Thunder stood still, clutching Breeze’s hoof, while he tried to recall the correct protocol. He blinked; the next thing to do was take manual control of the ship. He opened his mouth to bark the order but Lightning Fire beat him to it.

“Disengage the autopilot!” She galloped over to the helm station and wrapped her hooves around the controls. “Forward me the descent trajectory. I’m putting her down myself.”

Breeze started toward Medley, but Drizzle was already at her side with a medical kit. She felt the tug of Thunder’s hoof on hers, and paused.

He was still standing there and watching the ponies yell and dash and scramble around him. He wasn’t even aware that he was still holding her hoof. As bad as the situation was, his crew had it under control.

“Thunder, are you okay?” Breeze shook his leg. “Thunder?”

He looked back to her, smiled, and opened his mouth to speak.

Before he did, the hairs of his coat and mane stood up. Sparks flashed between his body and the metal surrounding him. Then, he vanished and left nothing but black smoke behind.

Author's Note

Planet Hell: The Redemption of Harmony concludes on the 6th of January, 2017.
Don't forget to like, comment, and follow if you're enjoying the story.

21. Wander my Friends, Come Wander with Me

Planet Hell
Solocitizen

21.

Wander My Friends, Come Wander with Me

Present Day
14th of Planting Season, 10,056 AC

In the dark Thunder Gale awoke coughing, gasping for air, eyes open to the marble floor in front of him, and head splitting in pain. He rubbed a hoof between his eyes, and the memory of all that happened returned to him. He patted down his forehead in search of a horn, and relaxed when he found nothing but the hair of his coat and the roots of his mane.

“We must admit we did not believe you would return,” said Urizen right into his ear. “No time remained on your clock. Your brain tissue should at least be exhibiting some sign of cellular decay but we can detect none. The fact that you are here now and breathing is nothing short of miraculous.”

Rather than a boom, his voice was as distant as a breeze across the desert floor. Though Thunder Gale checked over his shoulders for any glimmer of light across the black, he caught no sign of Urizen.

“How long have I been, you know, gone?” He picked himself up onto wobbly legs.

“You have been gone for the last thirty minutes and eleven seconds,” he said. “You completed your task approximately eleven seconds, and we were preparing to dispose of your corpse.”

“All that happened in eleven seconds?” Thunder coughed, and shook his head. “The rainbow, the great empty plane, and Breeze Heart?”

“We do not know what you are speaking.”

“If I had a year to, I don’t think I could explain it any better.” Thunder rubbed a hoof all over his face and shook out his feathers. “It’s like when you dream of an adventure and in the end you walk away with something solid in your hooves that’s totally going to change your life forever, then wake up to discover it was never really there. I don’t even know where to begin.”

“If it is any consolation you may be returning to your dream shortly,” whispered Urizen. “We armed the bomb once your timer ran out. We have already begun the process of storing our personalities until another sentient species arrives. You only have ten minutes to reach a minimum safe distance from this site. We are unable to cancel the countdown.”

“What?” Thunder Gale attempted to rise out of his chair and onto all fours, but as weak as his hindlegs were he crashed down on his side. After all he’d been through, he was going to see Breeze again. He huffed and forced himself to stand on wobbling legs. “No, I’m getting out of here. Where’s the exit?”

A door slid open in the dark ahead of him and in spilled the sun. He raised his hoof to shield his eyes from the glare, but he caught a glimpse of the other side. Beyond it sprawled the ruins of the undercity he passed on his way down, painted in the red-amber light of the morning. The cries of changelings and gunfire echoed across Urizen’s chamber.

He waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the light and steel himself.

“Thank you!” Thunder nodded, and loped for the exit.

As sure as he was when he spread his wings and trusted that he would fly, he was getting out of there. He didn’t know how, but he knew that spending time to blame Urizen or giving into thoughts of hopeless would not help him escape. So instead he ran.

The door out led him to a courtyard and beyond it rose the spire. Pillar upon pillar, rampart upon rampart, it twisted like a changeling’s horn toward the oculus above. From it poured the sun. Fires burned in the archways along the surface of the dome above, and the green glow of magic lit the paths in bursts; a quick glance told him that was where the worst of the battle was unfolding. He’d follow the spire up, and think of something clever when he reached the top.

Thunder Gale pulled his wings in close and galloped past the archways of the courtyard, and up the path of the spire. The path wound as tight and narrow as a the grooves on the head of a drill. However much he dug his head in for the sprint, the constant turn of the path and the numerous potholes prevented him from reaching his top speed.

More than halfway to the top a mortar screeched from above and blasted apart the stone and soil ahead of him. There was so much smoke he couldn’t see if the path had survived or collapsed, but he didn’t have time to stop and check. So he kicked off the ground, bounded past the smoke, and landed on the other side.

Green light pummeled the base of the spire, and when he glanced off the side of the ledge at path below him, changelings emerged from out of the blast craters. They snarled and screeched and took to the wing. Five of them in total landed ahead of him ready to charged.

Not a single one of them did he kick or tackle, instead he weaved past the first three and their fangs, and ducked around to the side as the other two rushed him. He bolted past them and kept climbing for the summit.

A pothole snagged his leg and brought him down face first on the stone. His leg stung, and as he dragged his head off the ground he saw blood dribbling from it. Further down the path, the changelings had already circled around to face him and were preparing to charge.

The idea of giving up tempted him, as he had no idea how he’d even get through the oculus by the time the bomb went off, let alone how he’d get outside that ten-mile blast radius. He laughed.

No. Between blinks a rainbow flashed in his head. Listen.

Faint at first, a buzz rose up his spine and he found the strength to stand through the pain. It asked him again to listen, and so he closed his eyes and let the buzz direct his ears.

The roar of fusion jets tore through the dome followed seconds later by the silhouette of a shuttle swaggering down from the oculus. A shuttle circled the spire and swooped in low over Thunder’s head. It shook the stone and called up a torrent of dust that flung his mane and tail about.

“Six hours on the money!” Gerard’s voice boomed out of the ship’s loud speakers. “Am I good, or am I good?”

Green light burst against the hull and left changelings chewing on the patchwork of metal and ceramics that held the shuttle together. The engines roared again, and the shuttle zipped out of sight around the other side of the spire.

It circled and careened around the spire as Thunder Gale forced himself into a galloped on the heat of adrenaline and the buzz coursing down his spine. The cries and shrieking of changelings followed the entire way. When he glanced up, he spotted the circle of pillars he saw when he first fell into the dome. He was getting close.

When he reached the center of the pillars at the top, Gerard’s shuttle leapt out from under the spire and entered into a low hover a short span away from the edge of the peak. The changelings clinging to its hull had been flung off during the flight, but more were on their way and screeching up the path on Thunder’s tail.

The doors of the shuttle opened and there stood Gerard, one eagle claw braced against the frame and the other reaching out for Thunder. The morning sun reflected off the hull and shined.

He cantered closer but stopped at the gap. It was no less than ten feet wide.

“Just stay right there, alright?” Gerard put his other claw down and leaned back inside. “I’ll bring the ship around and try to get a little closer.”

Thunder checked over his shoulder, and saw the vanguard of the changeling mob pouring out from the path and among the pillars. A bullet zipped at the ground by his hooves. He turned back around and sized up the gap again. The buzz in his spine had migrated into his wings and hooves where it thundered. He paused long enough to shut his eyes, and listen to the sinew of his flesh. If he opened his wings, they’d catch him.

“No, there isn’t enough time.” He cracked a smile. “I’m just going to have to do it right now.”

“Wait, what? No!” Gerard waved his claws back and forth.

But Thunder had already cantered back, and broke into his sprint for the shuttlecraft’s hold.

When his hooves drummed off the stone he spread the wings on his back, and flapped for the open door. As he sailed through the air he felt just as alive as he did when he flew through the clouds with Rainbow Dash and for just a brief instant as the wind rushed under him.

Reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, and all the purples pulsed from inside him and lit up the dome and the shuttle as they rippled out of him. Then he hit the floor of the shuttle with a thud and rolled into a cargo net on the other side. The light vanished.

“Dude, you flew.” Gerard stood over him mouth open. “You actually flew! And there was a boom and sweet Celestia what was that light? You did see that right? I’m not hallucinating am I?”

“That was called a rainboom.” Thunder Gale untangled himself from the net and pointed at the door. “The changelings are still right over there and and we don’t have much time before the bomb goes off.”

“What?”

“Changelings. Bomb. Now!”

“Right.” Gerard darted to the door, shut it, and climbed up to the cockpit. “Hang on to something. We’re about to pull some g-forces and only one inertial dampener out of six are still working.”

Thunder Gale wrapped his hooves around the cargo netting and dug into it as much as possible.

The shuttle roared and bucked while Thunder clung to the net for dear life. He looked up, once, and saw the oculus and the towers of the city beyond whirling by. He closed his eyes and fought the dizzying acceleration. The shuttle leveled out after a few seconds but it didn’t slow any. The cargo netting ripped into him against the strain but he didn’t let go.

It continued on far longer than he thought he could bear, but then a wave of turbulence washed over the shuttle and it almost rocked out of the sky. He opened his eyes, and saw a glare more intense than the sun streaming in from the shuttle’s cockpit. Then the light faded, the turbulence subsided, and the acceleration broke into an even speed.

“Did we make it?” Thunder asked.

“Who do you think I am?” Gerard peered his head back at him. “Of course we made it. Lightning Fire gave me the blast radius stuff and we past the lethal zone a few kilometers ago.” He tapped on the cockpit ceiling. “I know she’s a sack of shit but she’s rugged and very radiation proof.”

“What about my crew?” Thunder let go and leaned against the wall behind him. “Are they safe?”

“Lightning Fire was ferrying ponies out on the remaining drop ships last time I checked. We’ll be coming right up on their new camp in forty seconds. Still, I wouldn’t drink the water around here and I’m sure we all need some treatment for the exposure.”

Thunder Gale rested a hoof on his stomach and let the rest of his legs sprawl out. His blue-grey coat was covered in black soot and when he scratched his blue mane chunks of dirt and rock tumbled out. He laughed from his belly until tears rolled out his eyes.

“I can’t believe it,” he said. “It’s over. It’s actually over. We made it out of there alive.”

“I can’t believe that you flew,” said Gerard. “Daring rescue aside, we wouldn’t have made it out of there if you hadn’t pulled that rabbit out of your hat.”

The rush of adrenaline was beginning to cool, and with its retreat pain returned. As much as his leg stun, it was the ache blooming in his shoulders that held him captive. His wings, he never once used them before to fly, and just after that brief spurt they burned from over exertion. It was an entirely new sensation for him, and he couldn’t help but enjoy it. He let his head tumble back against the side of the hull.

“Yeah, but I’ll admit,” Thunder Gale said between breaths. “I wouldn’t be here now if you hadn’t come back for me. What made you change your mind?”

“No offense, you are a dweeb and just as much as a punk as I’d come to expect from your family, but you went back to save one of your own. Your grandfather wouldn’t have done that, and neither would your father.”

“Uh, thank you.”

“Besides, you’re as miserable as I am. If there’s no hope for you, what chance do I have?”

The shuttle slowed and lurched Thunder to his side.

“What?” Gerard sat up, lifted a pair of aviators off his beak, and squinted out the window. “Great, it’s those cloacas. Hang on, Commander, we’re not out of the suck just yet.”

“It’s Major.” Thunder wanted to say more, but bother to argue.

As the adrenaline high that had been keeping Thunder afloat all through the night continued to vanish, so did his strength. Moreover, that burn in his back was killing him, good pain or not. He hardly mustered up the strength to lift his head enough to look out the window, but when he did, he shot up again.

His entire crew was gathered in the open desert around their supplies and the two surviving dropships, and encircling them all were earth ponies and unicorns and glistening white powered armor. There were ships too, mostly dropships, but he spotted a number of gunships many times the Spitfire’s size hovering above the ground. He didn’t recognize their colors, but the symbol etched into their armor he did: it was the shield and the heart of Sigil Tech.

“It looks like they’ve put together a welcoming committee for us.” Gerard pointed to a squad of powered troopers filing out towards them. “I’ll put her down and we’ll see what they want.”

Gerard brought the shuttle into a hover a short distance from the Sigil Tech dropships and set it down. He pulled the keys from the ignition and gave Thunder a nod.

Thunder returned the gesture, marched up to the door, and slid it open.

The Sigil Tech guards in their white power armor stormed in. They shoved Thunder to the grated floor and stuck their guns right up in Gerard’s face.

“Don’t shoot!” Gerard held up his claws and motioned at the Interplanetary Express logo on his denim jacket. “We’re friendlies. Actually, I’m a friendly. I can’t vouch for the other guy.”

They ignored him, and moved their attention on to Thunder. The white plates of their armor were dusted with sand and soil.

“Are you Major Thunder Gale of the Spitfire?” one of the troopers asked. “Are you the pony in charge here?”

“I used to be,” he said.

“Come with us immediately. We need to confirm the identities of both you and your pilot.”

“No.” Thunder Gale forced himself back up on his tired legs and looked them straight in their eye cameras. “I’m going to talk to the crew, and then I’m going to find my fillyfriend.”

“You can talk to them all you want after we’ve confirmed that you are who you say you are.”

“You’re not going to stop me.” Thunder raised a hoof and pushed the soldier’s rifle out of his face. “If you shoot me, just what do you think is going to happen to you once all those marines out there hear that their prince just returned from a suicide mission, made it all the way back here, only to get shot by you.”

The soldier glanced at his squad mates, and then stepped aside.

“Fine,” he said. “Have it your way. But once you get finished talking you are to report to our technicians immediately.”

As he trotted past the soldiers and the dropships corralling his crew together, a marine from the crowd spotted him.

“It’s the Major!” She pointed to him and shouted to the crowd. “He’s back!”

They all hushed and paused in their activities, and looked right to him. And he looked back.

“Hello,” he said to them. “I’m glad to see you’re all safe, but I need to speak with Lightning Fire. I need to check-in with her as quickly as I can.”

Out from behind two marines dirty and tired from the night, Lightning Fire shoved her way forward. She blinked her one good eye and cantered up to Thunder.

“You’re back.” She looked him up and down. “By Celestia, I can’t believe you actually returned.”

“I’m here, in the flesh.” Thunder leaned forward, put a hoof over her shoulders, and gave her a quick hug. “It’s good to see you again too.”

She blinked again.

“Did you have any more trouble with the changelings? What’s the status of the crew?”

“All hooves accounted for, and the changelings gave us no trouble, sir.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Can you tell me where I can find Breeze Heart?”

“That way.” She pointed at a shining white dropship with the Sigil Tech logo plastered on it. “They’re preparing to evacuate our wounded to a hospital ship in orbit.”

He bowed his head to her, and limped off in the direction of the dropship.

When he got there the soldiers guarding its door didn’t try to stop him. He climbed up the ramp, past the medics and their supplies, and into the low light of the dropship. Sure enough, among those well enough for stretchers, and those such as Lt. Cloud Twist who were bundled up inside medi-pods, there he found Breeze Heart safe in a cot with her pink mane in a mess as if she had just woken up.

She spotted him and her ears shot up.

Thunder dashed up to her and threw his two front hooves around her.

She held him close, and buried her face in his mane. Her scent, her mane, and the warm of her all exactly as he remembered.

“I’ve got dirt, sweat, bits of rock, and soot all over me,” he whispered in her ear. “That might not be such a good idea.”

“Hush,” she whispered back. “Don’t spoil the moment.”

For along while they held each other, and they would have stayed like that all day if the soldier Thunder spoke to earlier hadn’t stomped into the shuttlecraft.

“Okay, you’ve seen her,” he said. “Now, you’re coming with me.”

“I know I might look strong.” Thunder untangled himself from Breeze but kept his hoof in hers. “But the truth is I can hardly stand. Why don’t you just let us be?”

“It’s not going to work on me this time.” The soldier jabbed a metal hoof at his chest. “The CEO wants to speak with you. She’s a very busy mare and she doesn’t wait for anypony.”

Thunder opened his mouth again to tell him off, but Breeze gave him a nudge.

“Go on,” she said. “I can wait for you a little while longer.”

Reluctantly, he let go, and followed the soldier out into the desert and to a glittering white gunship at the edge of the camp.

Inside, a team of medical experts and technicians showed him into a steel cell and picked samples out of his mane and coat, one even drew blood from his leg, and then whisked the bits of him off into little vials, and vanished. They left him waiting alone on a bench for a long time. He wanted to sleep, and was so tired, but couldn’t. The sweat and the blood on him dried during the wait, and his only company for all that time was Sigil Tech’s shield and heart logo staring him down from the far wall.

After a time the door to his cell opened and a unicorn about half his size in a white lab coat slipped inside.

“The CEO will see you now.” He sniffed at him, and set a holographic projector the size of an apple on the floor.

Thunder Gale groaned off the bench and leaned against it for support.

The projector hummed, flashed, and then up sprang the image of a unicorn in a dull amber light. She sat in a steel chair with all the confidence of a monarch on a throne, and from it she sized Thunder Gale down. Her image filled the far wall, and behind her shone the bridge of a starship. It gleamed white, and from what he could gather from its sleek contours, prefered form over function.

“Is this him?” she asked the unicorn in the lab coat.

“Blood pattern analysis confirmed,” he said. “His blood is as red as ours. It’s impossible to tell from the data available if he’s the prince or not, but he’s one of us at least.”

“Thank you, Mr. Clever, I’ll alert you when we’re done.”

The unicorn in the lab coat scooted out the door and shut it tight behind him.

“All this security and we’re not even meeting face to face?” Thunder paced around her holographic projection and lay down on his stomach on the bench across from her; his leg still stung.

“My scientists can tell me the color of your blood, but she can’t tell me your intent. My name is Mi Amore Cadenza the Twenty-First. I am the CEO and majority shareholder for Sigil Tech and all its child companies. Your Highness, we have a lot to talk about.”

That name, Thunder recognized it; that was the full name of Princess Cadence, one of the greatest pegasi who ever lived, alicorn, and the true ruler of the fabled Crystal Empire. The memory stirred in his head, and when he looked at Sigil Tech’s logo his eyes widened. It was a combination of Cadence’s heart and the mark he wore around his neck for years: Shining Armor’s shield.

“You’re Cadence’s descendent, aren’t you?”

“Yes, your Highness, now I’d like to make you an offer.” She aimed her ears squarely at him and she spoke with a calculated authority. “This company was founded by my ancestors to ensure the survival of pony kind from its most ruthless of enemies. Including one you’re already intimately familiar with: the changelings. You and I are both aware that they have infiltrated every level of the Pegasus Empire, but I have reason to suspect this is only the opening maneuver of a much larger game. Whatever their plans are, it would seem that the Imperial Throne and its line of succession plays a critical role.”

She made no effort to hide the weight or edge in her voice, and never did she so much as glance away from Thunder Gale. Combined with the enormous size of her image projected on the wall, she was nothing less than intimidating. One way or the other, she was going to have her way.

But it was the end of a long night, and Thunder Gale just didn’t care.

“You never did your homework, did you?” He shook his head and chuckled. “I would make a terrible emperor. The answer’s no.”

“Still I have no doubt that if the changelings were to catch you, they would kill you. For that reason alone you’re worth keeping around, and I can think of several others. Your value as a political and intelligence asset is greater than I can afford to let disappear.”

Thunder Gale snorted.

“If you accept my offer your official title would be Captain of the Guard.” She tapped her hoof rest. “You’d be stationed on New Canterlot and be given whatever you need to live comfortably. Your actual responsibilities would be serving as my personal advisor and will conduct your work from behind a desk. You don’t even have to ascend to the throne if you don’t want; I won’t force you.”

“What about the crew of the Spitfire?” Thunder Gale picked himself up and limped up to her hologram. “Just a few hours ago you tried to kill one of your own pilots, and do you expect me to believe you’d treat them any better?”

“I expect you to believe whatever you want to,” she said. “However, our goal was not to kill Gerard, but to prevent Discord, an incredibly hostile entity, from leaving the planet.”

Thunder Gale thought about it for a moment, and stared down at his hooves as he did.

“You own the Interplanetary Express, so you can get something pretty much anywhere in the galaxy, right?” he asked.

She cocked her head to the side.

“I’ll take up on your offer, but only for the sake of the crew. I’d like you to give them the option to go anywhere they’d like in the galaxy and whatever they need to start new lives for themselves. Let them live like kings.”

“That can be arranged.” She held out a hoof and offered to shake. “Do we have a deal?”

“Yes, we have a deal.”

* * *

Thunder Gale found Breeze Heart inside a dropship with the injured marines, but she had gotten out of her cot and was helping the medics tend to their wounds.

When she saw him limping to the door, she passed her work onto the medic beside her and rushed out to meet him. She nearly hugged him again, but stopped herself when she noticed the blood dried on his leg.

“You’re bleeding.” She held his torn leg in her hoof and inspected the cut. “Here, come inside and I’ll have it cleaned and dressed for you in no time.”

“Wait, there’s something I need to talk to you about,” he said. “I’ve made a deal with the CEO of Sigil Tech. They’re going to give you, and everypony else in the crew, everything you need to start a new life for yourself including transport to anywhere in the galaxy.”

“What about you?”

“Part of the deal is that I work for her now.” He brushed her hoof from his leg and hung his head. “I’m going to be her advisor, and live in a hole on New Canterlot. I’m too valuable an asset for her to let out of her sights.”

Breeze Heart glanced down at his hoof and then at the ponies hurrying to and fro in the shimmer of the desert heat.

“New Canterlot doesn’t have any atmosphere on the surface,” she said after a minute. “But I hear the medical schools there are some of the best in known space.”

He smiled and rested his head on her shoulder.

“Now, why don’t you come inside and rest while I tend to that leg of yours?” She squeezed his hoof and beamed.

He flicked his tail, and followed Breeze inside the dropship to a fresh cot. He lay down, closed his eyes, and let her work on his leg. Sometime while she bandaged his leg, he sleep finally took him.

When he awoke next, Lightning Fire had joined Breeze at his side. He filled her in on his conversation with Mi Amore Cadenza XI, and promptly nodded off again.

The roar of fusion engines roused him from his sleep again a short time later. He got up on all fours and was met by a medic in a Sigil Tech uniform.

“The CEO would like you to join her on the flag ship,” she said. “If you’d please disembark, sir, we’re making our final preparations for departure.”

Thunder Gale nodded and stepped outside.

Standing at attention in parade formation along both his sides was the entirety of the Spitfire’s remaining crew. They extended all the way from the dropship to the airlock of the gunship in front of him. Lightning Fire was right at his side at the start of her row, and inside the airlock of the gunship, where the formations terminated, Breeze Heart and Gerard stood waiting for him.

“How did you get this together so quickly?” he asked Lightning Fire. “And why? After all those choices I made as the commanding officer of this crew, I never would have thought I’d get a send of like this.”

“You’re still the prince of our tribe. Wherever you go, that will still count for something.”

“Thank you, Lightning. I’ll never forget this.”

Thunder Gale stepped down the ramp, and waited for the signal.

“Manticore Company, attention!” Lightning Fire barked and the entire crew raised their hooves to salute. “Officer on deck!”

Thunder Gale marched down the row, and as he passed by each face, he mentally put a name to them all. He climbed up the steps to the gunship’s airlock, and when he got to Breeze Heart’s side he held her hoof. He faced his crew, raised his free hoof, and saluted.

There was a snap as they dropped at ease.

“Manticore Company, dismissed!” Lightning Fire barked again and, still in formation the crew rolled out.

The airlock hatch locked down in front of Thunder Gale, and hissed sealed. He watched them for a few minutes more from his window, until they finally broke formation and started gathering their supplies and loading them into the dropships around them.

“Where do you think they’ll go?” Breeze Heart asked him. “What do you think will happen to them?”

“Anywhere they want to,” he answered. “Anything they choose to.”

Together they watched the crew buzz by until the engines around them rumbled and the desert peeled away, and they vanished into starry sky. Tomorrow more challenges awaited them, but in that moment in each other’s company, those struggles felt as distant as the desert receding below the sky. They’d be okay; they had each other.

Author's Note

As always, if you've enjoyed the story, please don't forget to like, comment, and follow!

Special Thanks and Dedication

Thank you everyone for embarking on this journey with me, I know it's had it's ups and downs and a lot of you weren't sure if I'd ever get this thing done. I wanted to thank all of you reading this now for sticking with me this far, the passion you guys have shown toward my stories and this universe I've invented still has me in awe. I'd also like to thank Ed Garnot, Derek F, General Liberator, and Obsidian Rose for helping me to make this story happen! No, really, I'm not sure if I would have actually finished posting this if it weren't for their support.

I'd also like to dedicate this story to the MLP and FiM community. You guys are awesome and being a part of this community has allowed me to grow as a writer in ways I couldn't have even imagined before getting involved.

A lot of you might be wondering what might be next for the series, and for now I don't know. Those of you who read my blogs and keep track of my updates know that I have a dream about one day getting a book published, and that I've been hard at work on some original fiction during the entire editing process of Planet Hell. For now, that's what I'm going to be focusing on (I also wasn't even sure if that dream was even possible until the overwhelming support you guys showed toward my work!).

If you want to keep in touch with what I'm doing, check in on my blog every now and again. If I do start work on another entry for the series, or have something big to announce about some original fiction I'm working on, you'll first hear about it there. I also do run a weekly writer's workshop on Skype every Sunday with other members of the community, and for those of you looking to improve your writing or just have a group to share your work with while drafting up a story, I'd like to an extend an open invitation (PM for details). Fiction and non-fiction of all varieties are welcome, horse words or not.

Thank you all the again!