“Surely even the heathen Ascended knows the glory of Equestria!”
I quirked an eyebrow and set down my drink slowly, fixing my mechanical eye on the raving equestrian before me. I admit I kind of enjoyed the way my augments made other beings squirm, especially those that I ostensibly shared a species with. I smiled, revealing the jagged grinders that replaced my teeth. “Excuse me, could you repeat that?”
“Um, surely even the Ascended knows of Equestria.” She gulped visibly, and I smiled even wider at the sudden omission of heathen from my title. True, we Ascended were taught to treasure all life as precious beyond measure, but technically a limbless torso was still ‘alive.’ A fact I made sure my smile conveyed. "T-the blessed homeland of all ponies? Watched over by—"
“Never heard of it,” I lied as I picked the drink back up in my claws, relishing the way the pony’s eyes flicked to their razor sharp points. Of course I'd heard of Equestria, and I was all the sorrier for it. Who names their homeworld after themselves? Morons, that's who. “Sorry.”
“A shame,” she smiled, though it was a sickly imitation of my own. Then again, she was a sickly imitation of me, so that fit. “Perhaps I could—”
“No,” I cut her off, still smiling as I popped an icecube in my mouth, my grinders shredding it to dust with a whining crunch that made her flinch. “Thank you.”
She gulped and made some sort of mumbled apology, but I wasn’t paying attention anymore. Honestly, I tried to pay as little attention as possible whenever I found myself in the equestrian quarter. Such a den of saccharine sentimentality I’d never seen anywhere else, a gigantic candy-colored stain in the Queen’s City, which was already painfully gaudy. Figures it had to be the Vesstic that took a shine to equestrians.
“Servant Ironclad?” Speak of the devil. The Vesstic servant skittered up to me, forcing me to fight down the urge to squish her for referring to me as ‘servant.’ Among the the Vesstic, big rainbow bugs they were, to be called a servant was an honor, but it still made my blood boil. I’d rather be an individualist anyday, even if that was technically equivalent to ‘monster’ in their minds. Then again, ‘monster’ to the Ascended meant ‘misunderstood genius,’ so to each their own.
“Half right,” I muttered, downing the rest of my drink. “You the contact?”
“Please don’t use that term,” the glittering beetle clicked at me, working its antennae nervously. “It sounds so illicit.”
“That’s because it is,” I couldn’t help but grin as her antennae nearly tied themselves in a knot. I reached down and hefted the container onto the table with a noisy thunk that made her wing covers jump. “Here’s the goods. You got the payment?” I was having far too much fun.
“Get that out of sight!” She half-wailed half-whispered, before catching my words and freezing stock still. “You never agreed to payment! We tried to contact you several times!”
“Oh, really?” Of course I’d gotten the contacts. I just never responded because I thought it would be funnier to just show up with the package. “Must not have gotten it. Oh well.” With a wicked grin, I pulled open the top of the container. “I’m sure you’ll agree that the goods are of the highest quality.”
I never thought I’d hear a bug choke, but somehow my contact did. As soon as I’d opened the lid, she slammed it closed, and I was briefly sad that compound eyes couldn’t widen in panic. I’d been additionally disappointed that the Terran child hadn’t made a noise through the whole thing, but one couldn’t have everything. For a few seconds, she sat stock still as several ponies glanced curiously at us, and I briefly wondered if she’d just had a heart attack and died on the spot. Arthropods were hard to read like that.
“Anything! Name anything! Just stop trying to sully us!” Her voice was a strangled squeak when she finally spoke, and it was all I could do not to burst out laughing.
“Hmmmm, considering the quality of the specimen…” I trailed off as I feigned thinking. Honestly I didn’t need a thing, being augmented beyond petty mortal concerns, but as I sat there, my eyes fell on that raving pony from before. She was still going on about Equestria, that goofy mythical paradise ponies came from, and a thought popped into my head. A thought that tickled me absolutely pink. “Do you keep records of past transactions? For the whole bloodline?”
“No!” She said. The way her antennae tried to detach from her head, however, said yes.
“Oh, that’s a shame.” I picked up the container. “Well I’ll just have to take my exotic pet somewhere else then. I don’t suppose you’d know anyone interested in this sort of thing?”
“Fine!” She blurted, trying to snatch the container from me, only for it to not even budge from my grip. Did I mention how much I love being superior to everyone around me? It's a lot of fun. Out of pity I let go, nearly making her fall over. “You can have our records! Just take them and go away!”
“Deal.”
Oh, I was having a terrible amount of fun. When I’d taken the job, I’d only intended to make my contact squirm, and maybe her queen if I’d bothered to take it that far. After all, what the Vesstic considered exotic pets most other species considered slaves. But now I was getting to rifle through their family records, a right usually reserved for male drones, and I could positively smell how much it bothered them.
I casually took out another data lattice, my mechanical eye reading the input raw, then proceeded to put it back out of order in its hexagonal shelf. I’d been doing this for the better part of an hour now, and I thought the drones on duty were starting to catch on, their scents of confusion and dismay slowly turning to rage. Not that the rage of a drone meant much. There was a reason they were all relegated to functionary work.
Eusocial societies sucked. Well, all societies sucked, but eusocial ones even harder than most.
So far, I hadn’t found much useful. Though the Vesstic’Kra line appeared to be particularly avid in their collection of pets, I hadn’t found any records of equestrians so far. Admittedly, it had crossed my mind that equestrians had been brought over by another family exclusively, but it was more or less a rule that if one line found some new pet, another would pay a queen’s ransom to keep pace. A queen was measured by her subjects after all.
I’d thoroughly destroyed about half their archivists’ life’s work (literally) when I finally heard a throat cleared behind me. I turned to find, of all things, an equestrian behind me. Interestingly, she was of the degenerate hornless variety like I had once been, a fact that actually made me devote some space to remembering her physical details. She was a bright sunshine yellow, with a tightly braided mane of burnt umber, but it was probably her violet eyes that had caught her master’s attention. Vesstic did love their colors.
“Can I help you?” She asked, her voice conveying a false sense of superiority.
“Why yes!” I said cheerfully. “I was just looking for some records on equestrian purchases.” I loved saying that word, even though the pony before me probably considered it an honor to be a piece of property. “Would you happen to know anything about that?”
“Yes,” she replied tersely, stalking past me. The way her eyes flicked to the shelves, I could tell she noticed the disarray I’d caused, assuming the drones hadn’t told her already. I relished the way her jaw tightened at the sight. There’s was something special about knowing someone would smack you if only you wouldn’t take their limb off in response. “There are several records of such purchases, under queen Vesstic’Kra’Ir.” She trotted over to one of the many hexagon studded towers, climbing up the shelves with a grace that surprised me. There were stories of ponies being strangely talented in certain regards. I noticed that the picture on her butt depicted the very shelves she clambered up right now.
I didn’t know anything about that personally though. My own rear legs had been replaced specifically to avoid such a thing. We Ascended answered to no one, especially not random magic butt art. I was good at what I wanted to be.
“Here.” She leapt down, a lattice in her mouth. “Vesstic’Kra’Ir made one bulk purchase towards the end of her reign, ostensibly to polish her otherwise dubious legacy. She was generally considered successful in this regard.” She passed it to me. “Do you need anything else?” she asked in a voice that clearly hoped I didn’t.
I looked over the data lattice. Sure enough, there was a purchase of 200 equestrians, but beyond that the details were sparse. The seller was unlisted, but all that told me was that it was a foreign source. After all, the Vesstic considered any outside the queen’s family to be little more than animals. What name mattered that didn’t lead back to the first queen, Vesstic herself?
What an arrogant bunch of pricks.
“Any idea who they were bought from?” I asked, slightly relishing the way her teeth ground at the request.
“Not explicitly, but…” She hesitated, clearly reluctant to actually help me beyond fulfilling her duties. “Back in the era of Ir, few species were deemed worthy of trade with the queen’s children. As such all business was enacted almost exclusively through the Guild, and occasionally though your own agents, but I’m sure you already knew that much.” She was silent a moment, and a question entered her eyes. “What are you doing here? Don’t tell me you’re searching for Equestira.”
So she’d heard as well? I suppose it wasn’t surprising. I very much doubt I’d run across the very first pony to start raving in the streets. “And why wouldn’t I be?”
“Some of us remember the… display one of you individuals put on during the coronation of Vesstic’Ils’Va. You respect nothing.” She snorted. “Why should you care for a legend of your own species?”
“Maybe to prove it’s just a legend?” Her sour expression just made me grin harder.
“Ah, hunting a legend just to crush the dreams of others. That does sound more like you. All done for your own amusement I trust?” My smile just made her frown grow even larger. “Of course. Are our debts paid?”
“Thoroughly.” I tossed the lattice back to her with a smile and a mocking salute.
“Then get out.”
I took a deep breath, relishing the smells of the spaceport. It was one of the few places in the queen’s city that smelled right, which is to say, not like bugs, bugs, and more bugs. No, here were the smells of lubricants, volatiles, and all the delicious scents of industry, progress, and machinery. Nowhere was better for witnessing the ascent of organic life to the stars, and to the greater destiny technology provided. Of course, most species just elected to build ships designed to accommodate their pathetic fleshy forms, but where there was progress, there was hope. Maybe someday they’d see the light.
I trotted over to my own ship, the Ironclad. Of course we shared a name, since we were extensions of each other. In truth, I would have rather that she was my body through and through, but since most organics built structures on their own scale, there was a reason for keeping some of my own flesh and blood around, if only for social purposes. Maybe I could have just communicated through transmissions like some, but then I would have missed out on all the wonderful people to annoy in my travels.
I trotted up to my greater body, and felt a sigh of relief as the control bay opened up to admit my lesser body. As I slotted in, I felt the blessed shift of perspective as eyes became sensors, limbs became vectored thrusters, and my throat became a ram-scoop feeding right into my reactors. It was good to be a ship.
Absently, I started pinging flight control for clearance as I pulled up local star charts. If I was really going to disprove Equestria, I was going to have to find the origin of ponykind. My own bet was a research lab squirreled away somewhere, but you never knew. In any case, I’d have to follow the trail back to our origins, prove that there was no magical paradise, then take the evidence back to that one shouting pony in the street and crush all his dreams like cheap chitin.
As I charted in a course to the nearest Guild hub, I reflected that I was basically crossing the galaxy on a spiteful whim. I smiled.
Life was good.
