The Skyla Pseudonym

by iisaw

Chapters

1 The Heart of the Problem
2 Traditional Pursuits
3 A Slight Miscalculation
4 This Isn't What I Had in Mind
5 Captain Skyla and Ms. Nightshade
6 Different Cultures, Different Customs
7 Property Damage
8 Ironhoof
9 Making New Friends
10 Legends and Profits
11 Into the Empire
12 Plan D
13 Surprises, Pleasant and Otherwise
14 Following
15 Slow-burn Serendipity
16 The Comforting Lie of Justice
17 First Blood
18 Vanishing Act
19 Unexpected Complications
20 Running for the Gate
21 Falling Into Shadow
22 Philosophy and Mutiny
23 Unexpected Passengers
24 Three Conversations About One Thing
25 The Brightness at the End of the Tunnel
Epilogue
Appendix 2: Maps (Warning: Possible Spoilers)
Appendix 1: Diagrams
Publisher's Note

1 The Heart of the Problem

The Skyla Pseudonym

by iisaw

Sequel to The Celestia Code, The Luna Cypher, The Twilight Enigma, and The Cadenza Prophecies

Chapter One

The Heart of the Problem

I love my darling niece with all my heart, but….

When she was my little Furry Burry and I was her Auntie Twi-wi everything between us was simple and delightful. But foals grow up, and the only known natural-born alicorn, Her Exalted Imperial Highness, Heir Crystalline, Princess Flurry Heart had some difficult[1] phases in her teenage years.

[1] That isn't the precise word I want, but there is no good word in Equuish for the concept of constantly dancing on the knife edge of catastrophe, so it will have to suffice.

The heart of the problem wasn't something terribly unusual in teenage ponies, or teenagers of any other sapient species for that matter. Rebelliousness is a perfectly natural way for a young pony to begin to form a personality and interests separate from those of her parents. Experimentation with outré music, clothing, and such-like is usually harmless, no matter how irritating it might be. Usually harmless.

Unfortunately, Flurry wasn't a typical teenager. She was the most powerful natural sorceress in recorded history, and inextricably bound to the Heart of the Crystal Empire by destiny, blood, and magic. Her connection to the Crystal Heart that literally sustained the Empire and fed the gentle magic of the Pax Equestria, made her emotional instability a matter of grave concern to everyone in the entire hemisphere, and I'm afraid that the unfortunate direction her rebelliousness took was at least partially my fault.

I suppose I should explain.

With some modifications to the spellwork, the intra-dimensional warped space that King Sombra had added to the Crystal Palace made a fairly secure place to store sensitive material, and Cadance kindly let me use it to squirrel away some of the books, scrolls, and artifacts that I aquired on my travels.

The space had the added benefit that it was convenient for Sunburst when he wanted to do research. He was unable to cast the dark magic required to reveal the hidden archive, but I provided him with a précis of each document I added to the collection, and he called on me to retrieve any particular item he wished to study.

It was on one of these occasions, when she was still my little Furry Burry, that I exposed my niece to a side of me she had never seen before. I had come to the Empire straight over the pole from the west coast of Zebrica to lessen the chance of being ambushed by pirates, while pushing my airship Nebula's engines hard to make sure I wasn't being pursued. The item I was intent on sealing away had caused a great deal of trouble, and several ill-intentioned individuals would be more than eager to get their hooves, claws, or hands on it.

I had learned from hard experience not to dilly-dally before containing such things, and so, immediately upon arrival, I moored Nebula directly to the Crystal Palace and marched into the throne room looking more like a back-alley thug than the Princess of Friendship. I was in aeronaut half-armor, goggles askew on my forehead, mane and tail whipped into tangles by high-altitude winds, wearing my two trusty and battered short blades slung across my barrel.

Unbeknownst to me, Flurry Heart had made a fort on the dais behind the throne with some tapestries, a hoofstool and a couple of ceremonial trumpets, and was involved in a whispered conversation with the nuzzled-to-rags plush bear that Fluttershy had given her. Separated by the throne, we couldn't see each other, but Flurry could certainly hear the boom of the throne room doors being flung open and my clanking hoofsteps. She must have peered around the throne just in time to see my eyes suddenly blaze with dark power and the hidden stairway stand revealed by the black miasma that boiled from my horn.

I hadn't yet dropped the dark magic matrix when a half dozen Crystal Guardponies rushed into the room in response to Flurry's scream of fear, and so I'm sure my appearance was more than enough justification for their unhesitating attack. There were several seconds of confusion before I had gotten them all—including the two who had fallen into the open pit—subdued and securely wrapped in my magical grasp, and was blurting out a hurried explanation. Somewhere in there, Cadance teleported into the room, stuffed her daughter under one wing and teleported away.

As you might imagine, several awkward apologies and explanations to several different groups of ponies occupied most of the rest of my day. The most important of all, of course, was with Flurry Heart herself.

I cleaned up and put on my crown before meeting Cadance, Shining, and Flurry in their private apartments. Little Flurry had been given a light supper and had settled in next to her mother with a mug of hot cocoa in the parlor. Her parents had told her I would be coming and that I was Auntie Twi-wi, and not that scary thing she had seen in the throne room. She was still doubtful, but at least she didn't burst into tears when I made my appearance.

In fact, her reaction, given a few hours to think about the incident, surprised us all.

After I had settled in and said my soft and totally non-threatening hellos to everypony, Flurry wormed her way out from under her mother's wing, trotted over to me, pressed her soft little nose against mine, and frowned in that adorable manner that only completely serious small foals can manage.

"You scared me, Auntie Twi-wi!" She stomped a tiny forehoof that made no sound at all on the plush carpet.

"I know, and I'm very, very sorry, Furry Burry! I didn't mean to. You know I would never, ever hurt you, right?"

Still frowning, she said, "I guess. But you looked super-scary. Like a bad old monster."

No armor could have protected my heart from that barb. I winced. Monsters were real. We all knew that, and ponies who tried to deny the fact did their foals no service.

"Sometimes good ponies can look like monsters. You know how Auntie Luna plays pretend on Nightmare Night?"

She looked at me for a moment and then said, "You weren't pretending."

Ouch. Second touch to Flurry Heart. Cadance gave me a particular version of the stink-eye that suggested I turn the conversation around right now.

"I—I have to fight monsters sometimes. They're strong and scary, so sometimes I have to be strong and scary to stop them. I just forgot to… uhm… to be not scary when I got here."

Her frown became one of puzzlement and I let her think about it, while grinning apologetically at her parents. They didn't smile back.

Flurry poked me in the chest with a dainty hoof to get my attention. "Mummy and daddy are the strongest and bravest ponies in the world. They said they will save me from any monsters. They said I have a whole bunch of guards to help keep me safe."

I sighed with relief. "That's right, Furry Burry; they will always keep you safe."

She frowned again. "You stopped all those guards. They couldn't even move."

Oh roadapples. Third touch and match to the diminutive Princess Flurry Heart.

I made a distressed sort of gugh noise as Shiny winced and Cadance glared. "I… uh… they...uh…"

Ever gracious in victory, my niece suddenly reared and threw her forelegs around as much of my neck as she could. "That means you gotta be Monster Twi-wi for me an' help fight all the bad monsters and did you bring me back a present from Zebrica?"

She was delighted with the little mechanical elephant, and I was not banished from the Crystal Empire.

One must savour narrow escapes as well as victories.

= = =

That day may have seemed like a small incident, but it was the turning point in my relationship with my niece. Sometime thereafter, Flurry added a set of guard ponies to her collection of toys and appropriated their armor to use on my doll from her Equestrian Royals figure set.[2]

[2] I've always been vaguely embarrassed by the toys (or "collectable action figures" as Spike calls them) based on myself and my friends, but I suppose they are no worse than some of the hyperbolic works in the Royal Portrait Gallery.

To add veracity to her make-believe sessions, Flurry began asking all sorts of inconvenient questions about my adventures. I quite correctly discussed with Cadance what would be appropriate to share with her daughter, though the look I received as an immediate answer was a more helpful guide than the rest of the discussion. I tried to stick to travelogue-style descriptions of foreign lands and peoples, but Flurry would inevitably ask something along the lines of, "Were they bad people? Did you fight them?"

I carefully explained to her that there was no such thing as a bad race or culture, and that only individuals could be considered bad, and only if they consistently persisted in bad behavior.

Thereafter, her massive toy battles were fought only against creatures that had consistently persisted in bad behavior. Well, it was something.[3]

[3] And Spike getting Flurry a toy aero-dreadnought for her birthday took a lot of the heat off of me, even though I was a bit miffed that she obviously appreciated it far more than the puzzle box I brought her from Abyswhinnia.

= = =

Flurry's fantasy adventures came to a sudden halt after the battle against Grogar. The appearance of an ancient evil being intent on the destruction of Equestria was a shock to everypony, but it had happened before and the Equestrians are a strong and resilient bunch. After the struggle and devastation, they cleaned up and went on with their lives.

But Cadance had been directly involved in the fight and instrumental in Grogar's defeat.[4] We kept Flurry safe, as promised, but we were unable to keep her from witnessing the brutality and hard truths involved in fighting real monsters.

[4] A popularized account of the incident can be found in the novel The Cadenza Prophecies. It is fiction, but the details of all the major events are correct, if simplified for the sake of readability.

Flurry Heart didn't seem unduly anxious or fearful after the event, but her imaginative play took a disturbing turn. After Cadance found several of her daughter's toy figures disfigured and broken, she asked her what had happened.

Flurry replied with uncharacteristic petulance. "They're just dumb toys. I didn't like them, anyway." And she refused to say anything further about it.

Cadance arranged a meeting with Luna and me. Luna, because she hoped to get some more information via the Dream Realm, and me because she somehow got it into her head that I was an expert on abnormal psychology. Or personally experienced in the subject. Or something.

"Well," I said, holding up one of the trampled toys, "this is a little goat that she went to the trouble of painting black before smashing. It's clearly supposed to be Grogar."

"May he rot in Tartarus," Cadance growled.

I ignored her curse and went on. "I think Flurry's just trying to express some sort of retroactive control over a situation where she felt helpless. Perfectly understandable."

"To her credit," Luna put in, "she was most fearful of losing you and Shining Armor, not for her own safety. She occasionally has nightmares, but they are mild, and I intervene quickly when they occur."

Cadance frowned. "But she's broken some of her favorite toys as well. Ones that are… well, good ponies."

Luna and I exchanged a glance, and that brought a smile to Cadance's face. "No," Cadance said, "they were guards and some dress-up mares. All the princess figures still have a place of honor on the shelf above her bed. You two have nothing to worry about."

We pretended that we weren't inordinately relieved by the news.

"Give it some time," I told Cadance. "I'm sure she will be just fine. She's growing up quickly and soon she'll be more interested in boys than toys."

Luna grinned and said, sotto voce, "Or girls."

Cadance's eyes widened. "Do you know something—"

"No, no!" Luna hurried to reassure her. "She hasn't had any of those dreams yet. But it won't be long before she does, I believe."

Cadance sighed and rolled her eyes. "Then it will be Shiny I have to worry about trampling things!"

= = =

And, indeed, Flurry's destructive behavior was only another phase that she quickly outgrew as she matured into an accomplished and beautiful young filly with much more worrisome phases.

The appearance of her cutie mark, a blue crystal heart overlaid by golden swirls representing magic, was a wonderful climax to the 243rd Crystal Fair, and reassured her family that her destiny was secure.

Cadance relaxed, and her husband turned into one big knot of worry.

Shining Armor threatened each of the Crystal Guard personally and individually with dire consequences should any lowly soldier dare to even look at his daughter, the princess, in "that way."

Yes, my darling brother turned into quite the hypocrite, as I never got tired of pointing out to him.

"Just you wait until you have a daughter of your own, Twi!" he rumbled at me after a particularly pointed teasing session. "You'll… oh, wait. Uhm… I guess you won't ever… uhm…" His pale coat was absolutely worthless at hiding a blush.

"Oh, we've no plans at the moment, but I've come across some very interesting old spells that would make it possible," I said, twisting the knife he had stabbed himself with. "In fact, they sound like fun, even if they don't…"

He fled before he had quite achieved the same coat color as Pinkie Pie.

It was easy to find the situation humorous when I wasn't personally involved, but that didn't last long.

= = =

"Oh, Aunt Twilight!" Flurry Heart called to me as I came to a landing on a Crystal Palace balcony about a month after her fourteenth birthday. "I'm so glad you could come!"

"I got your message and came right away." As I hugged her, I couldn't help realizing that she had gotten quite a bit taller than me without my noticing.[5]

[5] Not counting her amazingly long horn, of course. By that measure, she had overtopped me sometime around age eleven.

"I hate to bother you," she said as she broke off the hug and smiled down(!) at me. "But this is really important and personal, and I just don't feel comfortable discussing it with Mother."

Uh-oh. I was certain that Cadance must have given her The Talk by then. Why was she coming to me?

"You can talk with me about anything, Flurry! You know that." I replied, mentally steeling myself. "But surely, your mother…"

She sighed and glanced over her back at the towering spire of the Crystal Palace. "If I was a normal filly, maybe. But I'm not, Twilight! I'm the Little Princess, heir to the Empire, and so stifled by protocol and manners and what's expected of me by a thousands ponies who don't even know me, that I feel like I'm being strangled sometimes." She tossed her head, and her nostrils flared in anger. "If I hear, 'nice fillies don't do that,' one more time, I swear I'll scream! And I don't care if mother has to glue the accursed Crystal Heart back together again or not!"

I suppressed a sigh and promised myself that I would help my niece no matter how awkward or troublesome it might be. "It'll be alright, Flurry. I will do whatever I can for you. And I think you'll find that ponies who pontificate about what nice fillies do or do not do are usually dreadfully mistaken."

She threw her forelegs around me again and squealed in happiness. "Oh, I knew you'd understand, Twilight! I love you so much!"

"I love you, too, my darling niece," I replied, feeling warm all the way down to my hooves. "Now let's go inside and you can ask me your questions."

"Well, I don't have a lot of questions, actually," she said as we walked together into the palace. "I've read everything about it I could get my hooves on. What I really need is a mare with experience." She glanced shyly at me from the corner of her eye. "Somepony who knows, you know?"

All the dry, mechanical advice I had been mentally preparing evaporated. "Uhm… what, exactly—"

She turned to me, blushing slightly. "I want you to teach me; to train me. I want to be better than any other mare, ever!"

I froze. "Uh… that may not be—"

"Oh, I know you're busy and couldn't spend all your time with me! But I know a few other ponies here who aren't too afraid of Daddy to help me practice. And I've heard that Rarity is really good, so maybe you could ask her if she could help me sometimes, too? Yes, Daddy's going to be a bit upset, but he'll get over it. Oh yeah, I forgot! I've saved up to buy all the proper equipment, but I wanted to wait until you could tell me the right things to get."

"Things?" I managed to get out.

"Yes," Flurry said, looking at me questioningly. "I need to get it all fitted, right? And I've always heard that the best fencers always get their blades custom-made."

Blades? Oh, sweet Sun and Moon, blades! A huge wave of relief washed over me. Flurry just wanted me to teach her how to kill ponies with a sword.

On a moment's reflection, my relief began to wane.

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks to the fastidious Fana Farouche and the judicious Jordanis for pre-reading and editing!

Thanks also to the perspicacious Present Perfect for casting a professional eye on the project.

Special Thanks to the serious Singularity Dream for the title! It sounds so much better than The Flurry Heart Hullabaloo.

And, lastly but not leastly, thanks to the original Oliver for sparking the idea of how to challenge insanely powerful characters.

2 Traditional Pursuits

Chapter Two

Traditional Pursuits

It took a lot of convincing and negotiating. Rather more ponies were involved than logically should have been. There was shouting. Considerably more shouting than was necessary... or comfortable. Unexpectedly, Sunburst was the pony who settled the matter.

One afternoon about a week into the debate over Flurry's martial education, Cadance and I were… let's call it "exploring options" over tea, when a guard interrupted to announce the arrival of Sunburst. As Flurry's crystaller, he absolutely had the right to be part of the discussions, but I was not looking forward to yet another point of view being thrown into the already over-complicated and contentious mix.

It turned out that what he had to contribute was purely practical. "Flurry is affecting the Heart, and not in a good way," he said bluntly as he entered the room.

I looked up from my notes. "She's not going to break it again is she?"

"It might be better if she did," he replied. "As it is, her emotional turmoil is feeding into the Pax Equestria spell. Rather than being given happiness and contentment, ponies are feeling unhappy and dissatisfied. Whenever Flurry Heart throws a tantrum, actual fights break out!"

Cadance set her cup down with an unsteady clatter that slopped tea into the saucer. "There must be something we can do? A spell, or maybe..."

Sunburst shook his head. "Her connection to the Heart is just as strong as yours. There isn't a suitable magical solution to this problem."

I cleared my throat.

Cadance stiffened, then sighed and turned to me. "Yes, Twilight?"

"If you aren't willing to banish her to a distant land, you might want to consider making her happy."

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before replying. "And is teaching her to do violence really the best way to do that?"

"Jousting is an activity your ponies enjoy a great deal. It fosters sporting conduct and camaraderie. It is violent, yes, but many sports are. Sword arts are no different." I glanced down at my notes. "Statistics show that ponies who train in martial arts are actually less prone to use violence to—"

"Stop," Cadance said squeezing her eyes shut. "Please, stop."

"Uh… I'm sorry Cadance," I said, not quite sure what it was I was apologizing for.

She sighed. "It's become a matter of state now... if it ever wasn't. I have to do what is best for my ponies, the Empire, and Equestria. Would it be possible to start her with jousting? That's at least traditional."

= = =

There's something about seeing a beautiful young mare with a black eye that is inherently wrong. The fact that I'd paid a lot of money to the stallion who had done it to her didn't really sit well with me.

The ponies in the stands watching the practice session didn't much care for it either. They booed the stallion who had tumbled their young princess in the dirt, and he made a hasty exit from the lists as I helped Flurry up and led her into the tiring house.[1]

[1] For those not native to the Crystal Empire and unfamiliar with the sport, the "lists" is the ground separated by the central barrier where ponies make their lance passes. It is a single place, despite the word appearing to be plural. A "tiring house" is the enclosed shed at both ends of the lists where opponents put on their armor and equipment.

"It's okay. I know what I did wrong," Flurry told me while I applied palliative and healing spells to her swollen eye. "I was too concerned with getting my hit in. I got over-confident. Defending my chest with my face wasn't such a good idea, either."

I nodded. "You're so tall, a lot of the standard techniques don't work very well for you."

She chuckled. "I've been doing okay up until today!"

I sighed. It was time to tell her. "That's mainly because your opponents have been holding back, if only subconsciously."

"What?"

"I promised Bon Passuer five thousand bits if he knocked you on your rump. I had to pick him because any crystal pony would have thrown the money back in my face."

She stared at me in surprise for a long while and then her expression hardened.

That was the moment I'd been dreading. It happens to every student of any serious martial art. The moment when they realize that despite all the moons of hard work they've put in, they're still years away from mastery. That realization usually goes one of two ways. I held my breath.

"Alright, then." Flurry Heart floated a new lance over from the rack and snapped it into place on her barding. Then she put her helmet back on. "How about a few more practice passes before supper? If you go easy on me, I swear I'll tell the chef to serve you her infamous Beet Surprise."

I let out my breath and smiled. Crisis averted—at least until Cadance got a good look at her daughter's shiner.

= = =

Life went on, and the other mileposts of disillusionment went by in a regular fashion, Flurry weathering them all with poise and determination. Despite my brother's certainty that she would quickly tire of the rough-and-tumble practice of combat and return to more lady-like pursuits, she only got more enthusiastic as time went by, and added several more weapon styles to her repertoire.

She never competed in a public jousting tournament. It was nearly impossible to find any jousters willing to try to break a lance on their beloved Flurry Heart no matter the circumstances. But the all-princess exhibition matches between her, Luna, and myself were very popular.

Flurry's first taste of real battle came during the Chrysalis Disaster when a swarm of drones discovered that a young alicorn, deprived of her magic, was nowhere near as helpless as they assumed she would be. It also gave her the final test of her determination. Magic can be deadly, but it's usually clean. Nopony can truly be prepared for what a sharp blade or lance does to a living being. And the pony wielding that blade… well, it takes some getting used to.

We all helped her through the aftermath as well as we could, but I knew from hard experience that only distance in time would soften the experience. It was nearly half a year before she picked up a sword again.

One afternoon Flurry unexpectedly showed up at my castle with a matched pair of practice short blades, nearly identical in length and weight to the set I'd carried for almost two decades.

"Last year, you said I was ready to start learning this style," she said, before I'd even properly greeted her. "If we could train here, that would be good. Mother doesn't think I'm ready for... " she trailed off and shrugged.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

She thought for a long moment before replying, which I took as a very good sign. "Yes, I am. I hated what I had to do, and I still shudder every time I walk down Tourmaline Avenue toward the palace. I didn't save a bunch of ponies like you and Starlight did, but I saved myself. And I think that's what I need to remember."

I nodded. "Good. No time like the present. The basic stance is the same as tierce for saber, but your near front hoof goes here," I said as I floated the blades over to her. "The pastern grip is the same as for a cutlass, but the hoof is different; I'll cover that later."

Steel rang on steel as my niece and I danced.

= = =

Everything went along fairly smoothly for a while until Flurry asked to accompany me on one of my clandestine missions abroad. I thought it would be a good experience for her, but Cadance and Shining absolutely forbade her to go.

When I wisely refrained from entering into the debate about the matter,[2] Flurry got even angrier with me than she was with her parents.

[2] Yes, I can learn complicated, non-verbal, and completely unscientific social skills… given enough time and repetition.

She decided (and made it widely known) that Luna was her favorite aunt, and she began wearing a lot of black clothing and moon and night themed jewelry. I was hurt by this, of course, and it was my turn to receive inadequate reassurances that this was "only a phase."

I did my best not to worry too much. Flurry kept up her practice, just not with me. There were several crystal ponies who she could train with—and even teach, which I thought would be very good for her. She also began to pay much more attention to classical magic training, spending a great deal of time with Sunburst and Starlight Glimmer.

I tried to enjoy her progress vicariously through gossip and a couple of occasions where I secretly observed her training sessions, but it just wasn't the same. Starlight told me about the forgotten old spell they'd rediscovered with Sunburst that had the singular and unusual effect of keeping heavy makeup from running into a pony's eyes when they began sweating from hard exercise. Not something that would have gotten much use in most circumstances.

If only I had enquired more closely into what other types of magic she was studying.

= = =

For me, it all began when a Solar Guard barged into the library at Ponyville Castle, gasping for breath. Spike was away on a visit to the Dragonlands, or I would have received a scroll, but as it was, Celestia sent her fastest pegasus with the news.

Somepony had stolen my airship.

I don't know if I can adequately convey how much Nebula meant to me. She'd been badly damaged in many battles and misadventures, and any non-obsessed pony would have sent her to the wrecker's yard years before. I'd certainly spent a great deal more money repairing, reengineering, and refitting her than it would have cost me to build three new craft. My castle in Ponyville had become as comfortable and pleasant a place to live as can be imagined, but Nebula was… even more than a home to me. She was comfort food, a refuge, a familiar and well-loved storybook written in sprung planks and scarred timbers.

Am I being ridiculously sentimental? Perhaps. But that's the reality of my feelings, and so, even though it's understandable, I'm rather ashamed of my initial reaction to the guard's news.

"WHAT?!" The reflexive magical energy that surged into my horn leaked all over the place, throwing sparks and scattering my books and papers across the floor. Arcs of mana snapped and crackled from the ends of my mane and tail, and I'm sure I frightened the poor pegasus half to death.

He barely showed a reaction though; Celestia's Elite aren't chosen for how good they look in their armor. He calmly adjusted his helmet from where the Royal Voice had blown it askew, and went on with his message.

"It happened yesterday evening, Your Highness. A small group of ponies arrived at the Canterlot Yards just before they locked the gates for the night. The thieves told the pony on duty that they were a delivery crew, and that you'd sent them to pick up the ship and fly it here. They even made the payment on the new equipment and rudder repair."

I calmed down a bit as he spoke, but I was still barely in control of myself. "And the Yard just gave her over to these ponies?"

The pegasus pulled a roll of paper out of his saddle and and offered it to me. "They had convincing paperwork and what appeared to be your signature and seal."

Sure enough, the scroll looked perfectly authentic. It was watermarked with my cutie mark, as is all of my official stationery, and the seal and signature looked genuine even to my eyes.

"It was old Mr. Gudgeon who realized what had happened," the guard continued. "When he arrived at the Yards in the morning and heard the news, he told everypony that you'd never do such a thing, that you always made the final inspection yourself and took Nebula out for a shakedown before signing off."

I nodded. "Always."

"Well, the city guards were skeptical, but he kept insisting, so they flew him up to the palace. Her Majesty sorted it out in about a minute and sent me to give you the news. She also sent pegasus patrols out in all directions, looking for your ship."

I had to breathe deeply before replying. "Thank you, sir. Would you mind waiting in the antechamber before you return to Canterlot? I need to cast some complex spells now, that may take a moment. Afterward, I will have a message for Princess Celestia."

He bowed. "Of course, Your Highness."

When he'd gone, I scribbled down a note to Periwinkle, my secretary, and teleported it onto her desk. By the same method, I summoned the saddlebags containing my essential travel gear onto the table and rummaged through them for a particular item. It may or may not come as a surprise to the reader that an adventurer can sometimes become unwillingly separated from her ship, and that a way to locate that ship quickly and accurately can be incredibly useful at certain times.

The little brass compass didn't look any different from the usual magnetic kind, but it had a hidden crystal-powered mechanism beneath the face that would respond to a bit of pressure on the correct part of the housing. A glowing arrow formed above the compass, turning to point toward Nebula and lengthening to show her approximate distance.

West by South and a good hundred leagues at least. Deep into the Forgotten Lands. Fleeing into the lawless Undiscovered West wasn't going to do them any good. In fact, they might regret not having the protection of Equestrian rights when I caught up to them, depending on how they'd treated my beloved Nebula.

I teleported my light suit of aeronaut's armor into the room and went about putting it on. I was settling the saddlebags over it when Periwinkle and the guard entered the room.

"Ah, good! Peri, write out a message for this guardpony to take back to Canterlot. I know where the thieves are and am going to go deal with them now. Cancel court and appointments for the next two days… no, make that three. If they've hurt Nebula, I'll need some time to dig a pit beneath Tartarus to put them into."

Periwinkle took it in stride, but the guard's eyes widened just a bit, because he didn't know if I was kidding or not.

I wasn't.

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks to Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for pre-reading and editing!

3 A Slight Miscalculation

Chapter Three

A Slight Miscalculation

Two long-range teleports got me within a couple of leagues of Nebula's estimated position. When I paused to take another reading from the locator and confirm my course, I realized I was in familiar territory.

The pass through the jagged granite peaks below me was guarded by a little stone tower flying a red banner marked with a black aurock's head. I was at the edge of the territory claimed by the free city of Twilight Town.

Despite the designation and name, it was neither a city nor a town. It had grown substantially in the years since I'd unintentionally founded it, and it was rather too large to reasonably be called a town any longer. Nevertheless, the name stuck because Baroness Buzzy—who was really no more than an elected mayor despite the title—was fond of the alliteration. The term "free city" simply meant it was self-governing and unaffiliated with any larger state.

I quickly took another reading and found that Nebula was either very close to, or actually over the town. It made no sense. The people of the town knew Nebula. I'd visited them on many occasions, and strangers showing up in possession of her would be instantly suspicious. Perhaps the thieves didn't know that, and had merely headed for a refuge with a reputation for lawlessness?

Not that my town was a hive of criminal activity! I would never have countenanced an outright den of iniquity. It's just that the founding of my town was in circumstances that were… unusual, and there is a certain free-spirited culture in the Undiscovered West that can be misunderstood by ponies in more settled lands. Twilight Town was a free-wheeling trading hub, so naturally a significant proportion of its transient population could be considered to be on the less-than-legal side of commercial activity. It was perfectly understandable, and it was going much too far to label the less respectable ponies as thieves, pirates, and smugglers.

Still… I will admit it isn't the sort of place a wise pony walks around with her saddlebag flaps unfastened.

The folk of Twilight Town knew me well, but they knew an aspect of me that was very much at odds with my usual appearance. When I'd founded the place, I'd been under the influence of an appalling amount of dark magic, and I had looked quite... unpleasant. Not the simple dark magic using vagabond that had frightened Flurry as a foal, but an all-out, nightmarish monster.

But to the Twilight Folk, that monster was me. I had once tried to visit appearing as I normally do, and they took me for an imposter. They called me a Canterlot ponce and threw rotten fruit at me, actually. So, if I was going into town to claim my airship, I was going to have to look the part.

I landed on an outcropping out of sight of the guard tower and brought up a dark magic adaptation of Petunia's Polymorph spell. With all the strange and wild magic that was typically used in Twilight Town, a simple illusionary disguise spell wouldn't be suitable. Even if nopony detected the disguise spell, the flow of mana needed to keep it going would be a red flag to any magically sensitive and suspicious ponies… of which, there were more in the town than one might expect.

So I used an actual transformation, physically morphing myself into my "Nightmare Twilight" body. It took a great deal of energy to make the change, but required none to maintain. By any test, I would truly be that terrifying dark alicorn that the Twilight Folk loved so much. The spell worked perfectly, and within minutes, I was on my way again.

I buzzed the pass and called out, "Not sleeping on the job, are you, my little subjects?"[1]

[1] No, they are not my subjects, and I have never (well, hardly ever) exercised any royal authority over them after I'd managed to rid myself of the corrupt mana. But they still insist that they are my subjects and I am their queen. I indulge them, that's all.

There came a cheer and shouted greetings from the guard tower. A griffin courier flew up to greet me. "Welcome, Your Majesty! It's so good to see you again! Shall I escort you into town?"

I smiled back at him, not bothering to hide my jagged fangs. Griffins eat meat; they understand. "That would be kind of you," I said. We banked onto a heading for the town and began to slip down into the lower, warmer air. "You haven't seen Nebula recently by any chance, have you?"

"Oh, yes, Majesty!" the griffin chirped happily. "Your crew brought her into town early this morning. There was a bit of a delay getting the gate ready, but Captain Skyla helped out and they ought to be passing through… well, any time now."

"Gate…?" A younger, less experienced me would have wasted precious minutes sputtering and asking futile questions. The older me teleported an instant after suspecting what sort of gate the griffin was talking about.

I appeared over Twilight Town in a flare of light and a burst of dark vapours. It took me a second to orient myself and grasp what it was I was seeing. I was seeing half of Nebula. Her bow had already disappeared into a shimmering surface, framed by jury-rigged metal beams and cables. It was crude and inelegant, but it was undeniably a dimensional portal.

"STOP!" I bellowed. "REVERSE ENGINES RIGHT NOW, AND I'LL SPARE YOUR LIVES!"

The town below me and the area around the improvised gate became a buzz of activity and shouting voices, but the crew aboard Nebula didn't obey. In fact, the slowly spinning props suddenly ramped up to full speed. Nebula was shielded from magical attack in a half-dozen different ways, so trying to grab her or even teleport aboard was futile. I dove for her quarterdeck screaming in outrage.

There was a flash of white to my left and an old friend called out to me. "Majesty! Is this not what you commanded?"

I didn't answer Ao. There was no time. The kirin asked no more questions, but arrowed down alongside me, her aura sizzling.

A blast of magic shot up from Nebula's quarterdeck, startling in its sheer power. Ao dodged left and I dodged right, and we kept on. I would have formed a conic shield in front of us for protection from further blasts, but as I wasn't planning on slowing down before I was on the deck, it would have hit the planks with damaging force. I made do with snap-defence planes against the two shots that came before we crossed over Nebula's stern. They packed such a wallop that I darned near got a chunk of shield energy in my teeth.

If I hadn't been so enraged—or desperate to get on board before Nebula completely disappeared into the portal—I would have recognized the energy signature in those blasts. If I had, I would have been less brutal about taking down the green unicorn mare that had been trying to knock us out of the sky. As it was, I had slammed her into the deck and had one blade pressed against her throat and one against her belly before she could react.

"Order the helmspony to back engines or I'll carve you li—" The shimmering plane of the gate washed over us, and we were twisted through the substrate of the multiverse. "—ke a… Oh stars! Flurry Heart?"

Her kohl rimmed eyes were huge in terror. The green mare had been a disguise spell! My own hooves were still as black as a tax-collector's heart, and I realized that Flurry might not even recognize me in my current form. I got off of her and flipped my blades back into their sheaths. "It's me, Twilight. The owner of this ship."

Her apparent alarm didn't abate much. "Oh… uhm… Aunt Twilight… really? Ah... this isn't what it looks like."

It turned out that it was exactly what it looked like. But we didn't have the luxury to debate about it right then. Nebula's engines jittered and slowed. I looked to the telegraph, but the indicators matched the position of the handles. All four engines should have been at full ahead.

I know how Nebula behaves. Perhaps not quite as well as Fluttershy, but better than any other living creature. Something wasn't right. At full speed she should have run steady and smooth, but she was wallowing and yawing like a hot air balloon.

I shouldered aside the pony at the helm and took the wheel. Slow. Unresponsive. Celestia trample it, my ship was in trouble!

I shoved the helmspony back toward wheel. "Keep her straight and steady!" I snapped, and took my first good look at the world we'd entered.

Over the stern rail was a huge arch of red sandstone, with three deep markings near its apex. It must have been the congruent connection to the portal in Twilight Town, but there was no shimmer of thaumic distortion beneath it. The gate had been closed. Around us was a maze of more arches and pillars of the same sedimentary stone. For an airship unable to maneuver well, we were in a very bad place. Nebula was considerably tougher than she looked, but a collision with a stone bluff, even at moderate speed, would do severe damage.

I grabbed at the ballast controls and began dumping tanks 1 and 4, at the bow and stern, respectively. We began to rise but the tanks went dry long before they should have. If Nebula was short on ballast in her end tanks, the same might be true of her center ones, and I didn't want to take the risk of flying without any ballast at all.

"Ao!" I shouted. "Go forward and see if we're going to clear those cliffs!"

The kirin arrowed up and around the envelope and returned almost immediately. "Nebula will be above it in time, Majesty!" she called out.

I turned to the ponies on the main deck. They were all staring up at me, wide-eyed. "Drop the ground anchors as we top the crest," I ordered. I took hold of the telegraph handles and rang for slow ahead. The engines slowed, sputtered, and almost died. I rang for half ahead, and they steadied, but at a rate that would have barely equaled dead slow.

When I turned back, the crew ponies hadn't moved. "READY THOSE ANCHORS!" I bellowed.

Two of them fainted, and a third fell to the deck, gasping out, "Please don't kill me," over and over. None of them moved to obey.

I didn't have time to roll my eyes or smack my forehead with a hoof, so I reached out with my magic… and got a nasty surprise. I could feel the anchors, but I couldn't lift them. They were barely over a half ton each, but I strained at them like they weighed as much as mountains.

I tried concentrating my levitation field on only one; it didn't budge. I leaped over the wheel and flew across the waist to the fo'c'sle deck and landed beside the capstan. Whatever was affecting my magic, I could still lift relatively light objects, and I was able to loop an anchor cable around the barrel of the capstan. I took up the slack and began to lift the larboard anchor from its place. It took a ridiculous amount of effort and I was sweating in minutes.

Fortunately, Ao had a better time persuading Flurry's ponies to tend to their duties and, eventually, four of them took over from me at the bars of the capstan.

I flew forward over the bow and made sure the ground anchor set well, and judged the wind calm enough not to require a second. My wings felt heavy and I began to think there might be something seriously wrong with me. I returned to the quarterdeck, rang the telegraph for All Stop, and turned to face my niece.

"Flurry Heart," I said, in as calm a voice as I could manage, "I am very disappointed in you."

"I just wanted to… to... " She squeezed her eyes shut and turned away from me. "Could you please drop the disguise? You… you're kind of wigging me out."

I almost refused, but as angry as I was with Flurry, I still loved her, and bolstering a righteous lecture with a terrifying visage wasn't fair. I was absolutely certain that the facts of the matter were entirely sufficient condemnation. So I concentrated on the matrix for Petunia's Polymorph and got another unpleasant shock. I could hardly keep the structure stable, let alone power the cursed thing.

I felt the tiniest bit of panic nibbling at the back of my mind, but Flurry's deepening frown of worry focused my concentration. What was happening? I didn't feel bad, just magically weak. What else was wrong? Nebula's engines...

Nebula's engines ran on mana-charged crystals, which is why it took me so long to suspect what had happened, but their control system relied on active thaumic flow. Coupled with my own magical strength seeming to be terribly reduced... "Flurry, shoot a blast of magic at one of those rock spires. Use all the strength you can muster."

She was confused and still skittish, so it was understandable that she hesitated. I repeated my request again, in the softest, most reassuring voice I could manage. "Please, Flurry," I added. "This is important."

She nodded and let loose with a bolt of energy. It should have blasted a big chunk out of the hoodoo, but it spattered off the rock like water.

That pretty much confirmed it.

"What's wrong with my magic?" Flurry asked me. "That should have…" she trailed off, looked back over her shoulder at me, and winced. "Could you please change back now?"

I shook my head, sadly. "I'm sorry, but I tried; I can't. This isn't a simple disguise spell like yours was. It's a true polymorph, and I can't gather enough mana to make the transformation."

"What's happened to us?"

"Oh, we're just fine," I told her, despite it being almost entirely untrue in the general sense of the phrase. "It's this world that's the problem. I'm pretty sure its natural cycles are sparse and not very robust. We're capable of channeling just as much thaumic force as usual, but the substructure of this universe isn't able to provide us with more than a trickle."

"But I researched this world with Sunburst's mirror! I saw unicorns using magic just like they normally do!"

I shrugged. "Typical spells don't require much energy. I can do some tests to determine the exact flow limit, but that doesn't change the essential facts. You, my darling niece, have stranded us on a low-magic world."

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks to Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for pre-reading and editing!

Twilight Town's slightly unofficial queen:

4 This Isn't What I Had in Mind

Chapter Four

This Isn't What I Had in Mind

I was actually pretty impressed by the thoroughness of Flurry Heart's planning, once she had admitted the extent of her little escapade. She had magically scrubbed all the text except my signature from some of my letters to make the phony release order for Nebula and the orders for Mayor Buzzy. She "borrowed"—her word, not mine—the core nexus from Sunburst's scrying mirror to get around the three-alicorn lock on our home dimension. She even employed a suitable disguise and nom de guerre to avoid any chance of recriminations reflecting back on her parents or the Empire, though the name itself...

"What was that name you chose, again?" I asked her. I knew full well what it was; I just wanted to hear her say it.

"Captain Skyla…" She hesitated before coming out with the complete name, and I do believe that there was the faintest hint of a blush on her cheeks. "Skyla Windsong of Shadows Dancing."

"Mmn," I said. Nothing more, but it was the way that I said it.

Flurry scowled. "Aunt Luna said that in your junior year at the academy, you called yourself Darkness Nightshade and wore black—"

"And the crew," I rushed on, my self-indulgent smugness evaporating.[1] "How did you manage to find ponies that were willing to steal a princess's airship and fly to another world?"

[1] I made a mental note to have a word with dear Luna about sharing pillow-talk.

She shrugged. "They're mostly friends. Fencing partners and some crew from Mother's yacht."

That explained their less than stellar performance in the face of… well, me. All stallions, too, I couldn't help but notice. I was thankful that Flurry hadn't yet consciously realized (and weaponized) the effect she had on the opposite sex.

"I didn't really steal Nebula," she continued. "I was going to return her after I'd had a little adventure. I thought you understood! I thought you'd be on my side! But no, you agreed with Mother and didn't even consider—"

"I am on your side, Flurry," I said, quietly enough that she had to derail her incipient rant to hear me. "I would gladly have taken you on a little clandestine jaunt to Zebrica or Neighsia. But I knew that it was an argument I couldn't win with Cadance. All it would have led to was hurt feelings and resentment."

Flurry sighed and hung her head. "Instead it led to this! Why does everything always have to go wrong for me?"

I had enough of a grasp of the workings of the teenage mind to realize how useless it would be to point out that nearly everything imaginable had gone right for her. Flurry was one of the most beautiful and powerful mares in existence, she was heir to an Empire, and her impulsive High Crime of air-piracy was likely to be punished by no more than losing her desserts for a week.

"When we get back, I think it would be a good idea to have a serious talk with your parents and Celestia," I said. "I'll keep my horn out of it, because I'm sure to do more harm than good, but I will make it understood that I think you'll truly benefit from… an apprenticeship, shall we say. Nothing dangerous, just some foreign travel and experience not being a princess."

Flurry sniffed and forced a smile. "Thanks, I guess. But how are we going—" She looked up at me then, and grimaced and broke off. "Sorry, but it's going to take a while to get used to… Aunt Darkness Nightshade."

"Captain Skyla Windsong was a bit of a shock for me, as well," I said dryly.

She gave me another sheepish grin, and in that instant I forgave her for everything. "So… the gate closed behind us. That wasn't supposed to happen. How are we going to get out of here?" She gave me a thoughtful look. "I bet you've got a plan, right?"

"Yes," I said, being careful not to grin. "The plan is to wait here until we're rescued."

"What? You don't have some clever way to get the gate back open or something? Don't you have one of your famous mechanisms, or—"

"I have only what I left in my travelling kit from my last voyage, I'm afraid. I might be able to work something out, but in three days, when I don't return, Celestia is bound to send out patrols to look for me. And that's only if Baroness Buzzy hasn't sent off a message already. They'll figure out what happened and easily open the gate from the other side. All we have to do is stay near the arch and wait."

"That doesn't sound like a lot of fun."

I bit my tongue. Metaphorically. With the teeth I was sporting at the time, to do so literally would have involved rather a lot of blood. What I am saying is that it took an effort to refrain from mentioning that my cabin had a very well-stocked little library. "Well, maybe in the meanwhile, we can have some flying lessons? I'm pretty sure I can get Nebula's engines working properly again."

"I've piloted the imperial yacht several times," she said with a sigh.

After another metaphorical chomp, I casually said, "Did they ever let you do high speed evasive maneuvers?"

Her eyes went wide. "Really? Oh, you're the best, Auntie Darkness!"

I made up my mind right then that my darling niece was going to experience the worst air sickness of her life, or my name wasn't Twilight Sparkle.

The engines were a simple but inelegant fix. The telegraph itself was purely mechanical and would have worked on a completely non-magic world. The engines had purpose-built waveguides coupled with highly charged ruby crystals and a simple valve that fed mana directly into the engraved matrix on each driveshaft. They depended on their own power source and weren't affected by the meager supply of the world itself. They, too, would have worked on any world where only the usual laws of physics held sway. It was the magical linkages from the telegraph to the engines that were crippled by the lack of mana flow.

I could have created physical linkages if I had my usual strength, or laboriously cobbled them together out of spare parts, but the quickest solution was to assign a pony to each engine and have them watch the telegraph needles, then manually cant the engine and turn the valves as indicated. It was exactly the system that was used on old steam-powered craft.

I would not have liked to depend on such an inaccurate method in actual combat, but for practice, it was good enough.

"Ready?" I asked Flurry as I joined her on the quarterdeck after instructing the ponies at the engine pods.

She nodded with a comically determined look on her face.

"Alright then." I grinned. "Imagine we are being pursued by two ships when a third suddenly appears from behind a cloud, close on our starboard beam. Ordinarily, Nebula can't turn fast enough to avoid being rammed, but if we reverse both larboard engine pods…"

I deliberately picked the most abrupt and violent maneuvers to perform. Flurry set her hooves wide and used her earth pony magic instinctively in an attempt to weld them to the deck. It only made things worse for her. She grimly held onto the wheel as we jittered all over the sky, and didn't ask to stop even when she had to throw up. She just turned her head to one side,[2] did what was necessary, and went back to concentrating on the maneuver.

[2] To leeward, bless her. She might have been inexperienced, but she had the instincts of a good aeronaut.

My resolve to enjoy her suffering didn't last long. "Lift your wings a little bit, Flurry," I told her. "Just enough to feel the airflow under them."

"How's that… eugh... going to help?"

I did have the slightest impulse to let her go on enjoying the fruits of stubbornness, but the stronger impulse to teach won out. "Do you get sick when flying yourself? Of course not. That's because your pegasus magic is active while you're in the air. Get some wind through your feathers and it'll kick in."

Once she took my advice, she began to enjoy herself again. The crew ponies stationed at each of the engines to respond to the orders relayed through the telegraph did not enjoy themselves. Neither did they do their jobs very well. I called a halt to the exercises too soon for my niece's taste and much too late for most of her followers.

"Those three were Pole Stars?"[3] I asked, incredulously.

[3] Aeronautical tradition has it that an airship's crew members should be called after the name of the vessel they serve. Therefore, a pony serving aboard Pole Star, the Crystal Empress's yacht, would be called a Pole Star, and more than one would be called Pole Stars. Nebula's crew were called Nebulas even though the correct plural would be Nebulae, and that's always been a bit of a sore spot with me. But there's only so far a captain's authority can stretch, and it certainly isn't far enough to overrule tradition or ignorance of Proto-Equuish plurals.

"Pole Star's controls are all autothaumic! They're not used to old-time stuff like this!" Flurry said, sweeping a hoof at the main deck. "Besides, Cream Puff was in the Stewards Department."

"I don't suppose any of them have actually sailed an airship?" I asked, knowing full well what the answer would be. I was less than impressed that they hadn't properly prepared Nebula for the journey. The engine crystals were only three-quarters charged and they hadn't topped up the ballast tanks. The galley was certainly well-stocked though.

"Pole Star doesn't even have sails, Twilight!"

"Alright," I said, steering away from a potential argument. "Why don't we take a break while your crew anchors and cleans the deck. I'd like to take a closer look at the stone arch."

She gave me an odd look for some reason, but nodded and gave the orders to her ponies.

Ao had been observing us from the top of a hoodoo while we flew around like madponies, not caring to be aboard for such antics. She joined Flurry and I as we flew down into the canyon.

"Majesty," she said to me as she approached. I'd tried to get her to call me simply by name for years, but authority had lost to her internal tradition time after time. "This one saw five burros to the south. They bore heavy packs and paused in their journey to watch Nebula as she flew."

"Just a normal caravan?" I asked.

"This one believes so, Majesty. But this is a strange world and what things appear to be, they may not be in fact."

"It's a close analog," I replied. "No bald monkeys or squid-people, but you're right to be cautious. We've already had one unpleasant surprise."

"This one would have gone to examine them more closely, but here this one cannot use the magics of disguise, and flying is more tiring than this one is accustomed to."

Being a kirin, Ao didn't have wings, and her channeling of flight magic was less efficient than that of an average pegasus pony. The effect of the world's limited magic flow was significant and noticeable when I took to the air. It had to be even worse for her.

"You've actually been to a world where the people are squids?" Flurry asked me as we approached the arch.

"Squid-like, yes," I told her. "Such worlds are more common than you might expect."

"Ewwww!" Her muzzle wrinkled in distaste.

"Oh, you'd be surprised how quickly one gets used to having tentacles and slime glands," I said casually.

"Ewwww, ewwww, ewww! Just no!" Flurry responded exactly as I'd hoped, and I felt a little guilty about teasing her, but she really should have known that squids don't have slime glands. She huffed and tossed her head. "That's why I made sure to pick a world where the people were ponies. I didn't want to be something creepy like a squid or a monkey!"

I considered telling her that the Sunset Shimmer she knew had grown up as a monkey or rather, a "human," but I'd teased her enough... and we had arrived at the arch.

To my surprise, the natural-looking stone arch was anything but. Close up, the marks made by the tools that had shaped it were visible, and the inside had a cut channel that carried an inset bronze cable. The three deep markings at the apex of the arch were faceted and symmetrical, and I could make out bronze contact pads at the back of the depressions.

The greenish patina of corrosion on the contact points suggested they hadn't been used in a fairly long time. I pushed a pitiful little pulse of magic into the system to confirm my suspicion, but the purpose of the construct was immediately obvious to me.

"What is this thing?" Flurry asked.

Ao turned to look at me. "Portal, Majesty?"

I nodded. "Yup. Portal."

"Portal magic takes a huge amount of energy!" Flurry protested. "If this is a low magic world—"

"Gems," I said.

Ao nodded. "This one agrees, Majesty."

I reached out and tapped one of the depressions with a hoof. "Three high-quality, fully-charged crystals set in these holes could power the gate mechanism easily enough. From the cross-connections, I think they were designed to harmonize with each other to amplify the power output. Very nice magical engineering, in fact."

"So…" Flurry frowned. "This isn't just a passive congruent point?"

"No… and that may be why… oh, let's go back to Nebula; I'm getting tired of hovering here." I didn't want to tell her what my magic pulse had revealed. At least not until I'd had some time to think over the situation.

The deck was sparkling clean when we returned. I could have rubbed a white cloth in the scuppers and it would have come away spotless. It seemed Flurry's crew had some merit, after all. Cream Puff had made a pie.[4]

[4] He'd intended to serve it à la mode, but the cooling spell on the cold locker had failed and the ice cream had melted. Seasoned adventurers take such misfortunes in their stride.

Watching a creature with emphatically carnivorous teeth eat—even something as innocuous as a cherry pie—is a sight that disturbs most ponies, so I took my slice all the way forward to stand beside the bowsprit on the fo'c's'le deck where I could survey the landscape while enjoying the treat. The twisting sandstone canyon was quite beautiful in the golden light of the afternoon sun.

"Majesty?"

I sighed. "I really wish you would just call me Twilight, Ao. There, I've said it for the umpteeumpth time, and for the umpteeumpth time, you'll refuse. What's up?"

"This one is concerned about the gate…" She tried, she really did, but it was just as necessary to her as breathing. "...Majesty."

I gave her a sour grin. "Yes, I thought you'd spot it. I would have thought less of myself as a teacher if you hadn't."

"You did not tell the young one."

"No… no, I don't think it's a good idea. She's feeling guilty and defensive, and if she knew how well and truly stuck we are, I don't think she would react well."

"What is to be done, Ma… ah, this one cannot abandon the habit of a lifetime, Majesty."

"It's alright, Ao. I know you don't really mean it."

The snakey-bodied kirin almost tied herself into a knot before convincing herself I was teasing her. Which I was.

"Ah! Truly, you are a dark and evil goddess, Most Exalted Divinity!"

Teasing could go both ways, it seemed. I laughed and said, "That I am, Ao, that I am." Then I pegged a goopy cherry at her, which she snapped out of the air. She had some pretty impressive teeth herself.

We sat together in silence for a while, simply taking in the spectacular view.

"Even though the feedback from this gate mechanism collapsed the portal and hardened the veil between worlds," I said, thinking aloud, "its presence indicates a civilization capable of overcoming the limits of a low-magic universe."

Ao nodded, watching me closely.

"I'm betting that somepony made off with the gems that once powered it. They'd be too valuable as mana storage to cut up, particularly on this world. They'd be big and showy… not easy to disguise.

"You think it would be possible to locate them, Majesty?"

"Yes, and I think finding them would be the quickest way to get back to Equestria. Based on my little probe, at a rough estimate, the veil won't be permeable from beyond for a couple of years… and when it is, a portal from Equestria would just collapse again within minutes of opening. So my original plan isn't workable. We really need to open the gate from this side."

Ao got all twisty again. "It is as this one feared. They who hold the gems will not part with them for less than a fortune. What have we to offer?"

Dark and evil goddess, huh? I grinned. "Well, the ponies who have them now obviously stole them from the gate, so I think we'd be justified in stealing them back."

"Ah," Ao said. "This one begins to grasp your intent, Majesty."

"Feathering right you do!" I said, standing up and brushing crumbs of pie crust off my chest and forelegs. "I'm going aft and telling Flurry that I've decided it's too boring to hang around here, and that we're going to rescue ourselves and have some fun in the process. Go down to the flag locker and see if you can find a Jolly Roger, would you, please?"

Just because we were being forced into an adventure didn't mean we couldn't enjoy it.

= = =

Author's Note

Nebula's Jolly Roger, known and feared wherever pugnacious rapscallions can be found.

Twilight's goth phase and the name Darkness Nightshade is mentioned in Eakin's brilliant story Hard Reset, and (since I can't improve on perfection) that perfect geek-goth name is used here with his kind permission.

Thanks to Bleakness Abyss (Fana Farouche), Raven Bloodtear (Jordanis), and Anguished Soulcry (Present Perfect) for pre-reading and editing!

Oh, also:

My Little Squid: Ink Clouds are Magic

5 Captain Skyla and Ms. Nightshade

Chapter Five

Captain Skyla and Ms. Nightshade

That night, when everypony else except Ao was asleep, I flew down to the top of a mesa near the arch gateway with a couple of items from my personal supplies. One was a delicate necklace of rubies and barred silver chains.

When worn, the necklace loosely looped asymmetrically three times around my neck. When unlooped and set out on the ground, it circumscribed an area large enough for a pony to stand in. The bars of the chain were inscribed with runes and flow matrices, and the rubies were superb specimens, each charged with as much mana as they could hold.

It was a parachute of sorts. The inscribed spell and alicorn sigils were designed with one purpose; to punch a dimensional gate through to Equestria from wherever it was located. It would work without any magical input. All that needed to be done was to twist and push the clasp in a certain way, and whatever was within the loop of chain would be transported back home. To account for unforeseen situations, it was deliberately overpowered, so I thought it might be strong enough to briefly overcome the "thickened" nature of the interdimensional substrate we had caused.

The second item I carried was a sealed letter to Luna with a note promising five thousand bits to whoever delivered it to her. I hoped that my explanation would lessen Luna's concern. After all we'd been through together, I assumed she'd trust in my ability to look after myself, but I couldn't help feeling guilty for giving her cause to worry.

I put down the necklace on a spot that I figured would be congruent with the central square back in Twilight Town and placed the envelope inside the chain. I left it in three loops to magnify the effect; it didn't need to transport something pony-sized. Then I twisted and pushed the catch in the correct way and hurriedly stepped back.

The rubies flashed into life and the tiny markings on the chain glowed with a silvery light. The air above the metal began to distort and waver with the heat the chain was throwing off. That was not a good sign. I backed further away.

Just when I thought the necklace was going to melt itself, there was a muffled hiss, and the letter disappeared into a shimmering little patch of ground about the size of a small saddle. The light from the necklace died away, and when I tried picking it up, the rubies shattered, some crumbling to glittering sand.

That may have been the most expensive letter ever sent, but it was worth every bit if it eased the minds of Flurry's parents and Luna even a little.

I sat on the mesa for a while, letting the silver chain cool down and playing at making constellations out of the alien stars. When I got to the point where they didn't remind me of anything but the specks in the mane of a certain alicorn, I gave up and flew back to the ship.

The next day, the first thing I did was make some castings of the crystal sockets in the arch. There wasn't any plaster aboard, but paper-mâché worked fairly well. I hated to lose the paper, and Cream Puff protested at the loss of the flour, but I wanted to make sure that we knew the exact size and shape of the gems we were hunting for.

Flurry was delighted that we weren't going to simply float around waiting for rescue, and she immediately agreed with my plan to search out and "acquire" the power crystals. She would have gone along with the scheme anyway—it was very similar to what she had intended when she made off with my Nebula, except for the intended larceny—but she was positively ecstatic that my plan necessitated making her captain of the airship.

It was just barely possible that Ao could have served as the commander of Nebula's crew, but she had a strong preference for avoiding any sort of command position, we had no evidence that there were any kirin in the world, and ponies would be most comfortable communicating and negotiating with someone familiar anyway… which emphatically excluded me. Captain Skyla was the obvious choice. With a greatcoat to hide her wings, she would appear to be an exceptionally statuesque unicorn mare.

I wished we hadn't wasted energy from the engine crystals practicing, but there was no help for it. I tried charging one of them myself, and calculated that it would take many working days for Flurry, Ao, and I, along with the single unicorn in the crew, to bring the gems all back up to full charge—and we'd only manage that if we weren't using them in the meantime.

It was time for the crew to learn how to sail.

Of the five ponies that had accompanied Flurry, only two had any aeronautical training at all, and they only had experience with the most modern craft. They were used to having big engines and automatic systems that could power them out of any adverse conditions with brute force alone. I was beyond dismayed to find that they had hardly any innate feel for an airship's character.

I took on the role of Nebula's sailing master.[1] I moved my things into the first mate's berth, even though Flurry generously offered to let me retain the use of the captain's cabin.

[1] And éminence grise. Flurry was only captain on my sufferance, after all.

Ao made a little nest in the cupola on the forward dorsal line and served as a general lookout while I got things shipshape and trained the crew. I told her to keep an eye out for any more pack trains. Travelling ponies or burros would be able to provide us with a lot of local geographical information. I had enough money on board to pay for such if necessary. The coins were Equestrian bits, but gold is gold and it has at least some value on any world.[2]

[2] Except on the Planet of Gold, of course.

The two pegasi, Swift Wing and Sirocco, were assigned to do the work of setting out the fore and aft studding sail booms, the bowsprit yard, and their attendant sails. The keel mast and yard could be lowered from on board by winch, and the staysails were so simple even a foal could set them. I stationed Stalwart Lance, the big earth pony, where he could easily reach the winches and capstan. Cream Puff, our other earth pony, and Filigree, our sole unicorn, would handle whatever braces and sheets I directed them to. That left the top yards and sails and the keel top mast, yard, and sail, but those would only be used when there was almost no wind, and needed more crew than we had to use safely.

They were smart and competent ponies despite their inexperience and took to the work readily enough. The most difficult part of the training was to get them to learn the individual names of all the sails and the lines required to operate everything.

The spell that provided a magical keel that would enable us to sail into the wind, was just as enfeebled by the lack of flow as every other active spell. That didn't mean it was useless, but we couldn't make more than three points to windward and so our upwind maneuvering would be severely restricted at the best of times, and non-existent in heavy weather.

When everything was set to my satisfaction, I went aft to the quarterdeck and positioned myself next to Flurry… no, Captain Skyla, as I would get used to calling her thereafter.

"Nebula is ready to sail, Captain," I said.

"Oh… uhm… good?" she said uncertainly.

Oh. Right. "Skyla" also needed a little schooling.

"Just tell me to set sail," I told her in a near whisper from the corner of my mouth. "Say, 'Very good Ms. Spa...' Oh stars, you shouldn't call me Sparkle."

"I shouldn't call you Ms. either! You're a princess!"

"It's aeronautical tradition. You call any mate or midshippony Ms. and use their last name if they have more than one." I frowned. "I'll have to come up with a pseudonym."

"Nightshade fits you pretty well right now," Skyla said, only smiling a tiny bit.

We needed to get going, and I couldn't come up with anything better on the spur of the moment. "Fine. Say it loud enough for the crew to hear it."

Her grin grew wider. "Can I say 'avast there'?"

"No! Avast means stop," I told her. "You can say 'if you please' which—counterintuitively—means it's an order, not a request."

"Sailors are weird," she said. Then she turned forward and said in a much louder voice, "Ms. Nightshade, set sail if you please!"

"Aye-aye, Captain!" I replied. Then to the crew standing by the sheets and halyards, "Loose stu'n'sls! Haul out and sheet home! Tighten up there, Sirocco! Cream Puff, make fast the starboard fore stu'n'sl outhaul!"

Well, they tried. And after a bit, when they had gotten Cream Puff untangled, they actually got Nebula moving. Slowly.

I turned to Skyla and saluted. "Nebula is under way, Captain."

She nodded imperiously. "Very good, Ms. Nightshade." Then she leaned over slightly and whispered, "That was kind of fun!"

"The comedy isn't over yet," I whispered back. "Tell me to increase sail."

"Increase sail, Ms. Nightshade!"

"Increase sail, aye, Captain!" It really was fun. I hadn't sailed in ages. "Loose sprit'sl! Take up on the starboard sheet! Loose the kee'sl and sheet home. Look lively there, you lubbers!"

Eventually, with more than a few telekinetic nudges from me, all the sails were set and drawing well, and Nebula began to move along at a decent speed.

We had no idea where we were going, but at least we were going.

= = =

We followed the trail the burros had taken, assuming they would be heading for some sort of settlement, if not a town or city.

The rugged terrain below us flattened out into a rocky desert cut with arroyos and dotted with strange spiky trees. We had a fair wind to follow the beaten dirt path and only wavered from our course a little bit, now and then.

An hour or so after noon, the whistle plug in the speaking tube from the cupola blew a shrill note, making Swift Wing jump a bit. He was at the wheel and Skyla was standing beside him. I was lying further back on the quarter deck, near the stern rail, with some notebooks and instruments spread out on the deck around me. I looked up to see Skyla glancing back at me. I nodded toward the speaking tube.

She pulled out the plug and spoke into the tube. "Yes?" Then she put her ear to the tube and listened for a moment before replacing the plug.

"Hold your course," she said to the helmspony and turned toward me. "Twi… uh… Ms. Nightshade? Ms. Ao has sighted the burro pack train."

"Ah," I said, rising to my hooves. "Then you'll no doubt want the crew to slow Nebula when we're above them so that we can hail them."

"Yes," she said. "That is exactly what I want." She paused a second and then added, "See to it, Ms. Nightshade."

"Very good, Captain," I replied. And then to Swift Wing, "I will take the wheel. Go forward and prepare to shorten sail."

The sail working went much more smoothly than it had in the morning, and we shed speed in a nicely controlled fashion. But the burros didn't stick with the plan. The tube from the cupola whistled again and Skyla relayed Ao's report that the burros had scattered when it became obvious we were headed toward them, and had taken cover behind the largest nearby outcroppings of rock.

It didn't matter all that much except as an indication that a friendly airship was not what burros in the vicinity expected as a matter of course. I made a mental note that they had run off the trail in the upwind direction.

Skyla took a big megaphone out of the deck locker and went to the windward rail. "Greetings!" She spoke through the cone, not needing to magically amplify her voice. "We mean you no harm! I am Captain Skyla Windsong and I would like to—"

The megaphone went spinning across the deck and she let out loud yelp of surprise as I tackled her. There were several dull thumps as a half-dozen crossbow bolts hit the hull, mast, and underside of the envelope, but, thankfully, no cries of pain.

"Why can't it ever be easy?" I muttered to myself. Then, at full volume, to the crew, "Everypony stay down! Let go the sheets and let her drift. Sirocco, steer downwind. Don't worry about a specific course."

I have no idea what was going through the minds of the burros below, but they didn't shoot at us again. I hated to be driven off like a lowly highway pony, and the odds of running into anypony else anytime soon in this wasteland were pretty low. I thought it over for a moment, then went to the speaking tubes. "Ao? You okay up there?"

"This one is disappointed in the character of certain caravaneers, but otherwise fine, Majesty."

"I think brute force isn't going to work in this situation," I replied. "Do you remember the minotaur reivers?"

There was a pause and then she replied, "Ah! Yes, the taijitu trick! That may serve well, this one thinks."

"Good! Come down to the quarterdeck and keep the envelope between you and the burros. We don't want them to see you before our grand entrance."

"On the instant, Majesty!"

Ao slithered down on the far side of the envelope, then used the mizzen mast as cover to reach the quarterdeck. She crouched beside me, and we went over the plan, quickly and quietly. I told Skyla to have the crew turn Nebula when she was out of crossbow range and hold station until we got back.

The burros hadn't taken anything for granted. After Nebula turned away from them, they had gathered up their loads and galloped upwind, across the rough terrain away from the trail.

Glancing back, one of them saw Ao and I swooping down on them and cried out a warning. His companions dropped their packs again and took what cover they could. The click and snap of crossbows being cocked and loaded was clear in the still desert air.

That was our cue.

"We forgive you…" I began in a sibilant growl.

"...little ones," Ao completed the sentence in her softest, bell-like voice.

"You did not know…" I said.

"...that it was us," Ao finished.

We landed on a high point where the burros could get a good look at us. That was the critical moment. They'd either fire in blind panic, or listen for a few seconds more. Fortunately, those burros were just as curious as their cousins back home. With griffons, it would have been a very different story.

I mantled my wings slightly, letting Ao twist around my body. Up over my rump and around under my belly, then across my shoulders until her head rested right next to mine. I snapped my wings fully open then, the primaries making a sharp pop as they flicked out.

"We come to…"

"...bless you."

"And also to…"

"...enrich you."

Finishing each other's sentences was a simple thing, something that could be seen in a comedy routine in a music hall. But when executed by such an outré pair as Ao and I, it had quite an effect.

There was a hurried, whispered exchange between a couple of the burros and then one said, "Can ya elaborate on that 'enrich' part… uh… ma'am?"

"We don't rightly know who y'are," put in one of the others, who was immediately hissed to silence by the rest of the group.

"We are the spirit…"

"...of balance and harmony."

"We lift up the downtrodden…"

"...and cast down the exalted."

That line always went over well with people scrabbling to make a living no matter what their species. Burros hauling heavy packs through a scorching desert had to fit that demographic. And, sure enough—

"Well, we's jest about as downtrodden as they come, Ms. Spirit, ma'am!"

"'Cept mebby the unicorns," another put in, almost beneath his breath.

That was an interesting comment, but we couldn't let ourselves be sidetracked from the routine. I levitated a few dozen gold bits out of my mane where I had quickly stashed them before leaving Nebula.

"This is but a part..."

"...of what we will give you."

"Come forward and…"

"...claim your gold."

There was a fair exchange of looks between them, but the one that had been doing most of the talking put down his crossbow and slowly stepped forward.

Ao and I moved our heads to either side as he approached. He nearly went walleyed as he walked up to us and tentatively raised a hoof to take the floating coins. Without looking away, he put one coin between his teeth and bit down.

"Well, ain't that something," he muttered, convinced the gold was not only real, but of high quality.

"What is…"

"...your name?"

"I'm called Cuarzo, ma'am," he replied. "I'm right pleased to meetcha. Sorry about the little bit o' shootin' back then. Like ya said, we didn't know it was you. Actually, I'm sorry to say that we hadn't heard tell of ya before now."

Talkative. Good. Also remarkably adaptable. He'd calmed down quickly even in the face of the strange chimeric creature Ao and I appeared to be.

"Thought ya was earth ponies. Mebby imperials, mebby just raiders, but not folks we wanted much truck with."

"That is…"

"...perfectly understandable."

"Thanks a heap for understandin', ma'am." He glanced down at the coins in his hoof. "Uh… are ya fixin' to do any more upliftin' hereabouts?"

"Oh yes…"

"...we are."

"But first we would like…"

"...a little information."

Cuarzo's expression turned wary. "What sorta news are ya interested in?"

"The stone arch…"

"...near where you first saw our ship."

"What happened to the gems…"

"...that were set into its top?"

His expression cleared. "Oh them? The imperials took 'em right after they beat the old king and took over the kingdom. Did they belong to you, ma'am? 'Cuz them imperials could use a bit of gettin' cast down, if'n yer so inclined."

"Do you know exactly…"

"...where they are?"

"'Fraid not, ma'am. Imperial palace or treasury would be my guess. Them rocks were worth a heap, as I reckon you must know. Mebby they've fitted one or two to some device or set them in a war machine, but I can't say for sure. Folks in the capital might know more."

"And which direction is the…"

"...capital from here?"

He frowned in thought for a moment. "I ain't never been there, but it's east of here a fair piece. Take more'n a month to hoof it, as best I can figure."

We had gotten as much information from him as could be hoped for, so I levitated the rest of the coins out of my mane and floated them over to him.

"Take these with our blessings…"

"...and our thanks."

"May you and your companions…"

"...travel safely."

"Thank you kindly, Ms. Spirit. I hope ya get yer gems back."

Ao unwound herself from me and we took to the air.

"And give them imperial stompers a bit of down-castin' for me, will ya?" Cuarzo called after us.

We didn't reply, but I caught one last exclamation from him as we flew back to Nebula.

"Well, don't that beat all!"

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks to Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for pre-reading and editing!

6 Different Cultures, Different Customs

Chapter Six

Different Cultures, Different Customs

"That was… bizarre," Flurry said as Ao and I touched down on the quarterdeck. "What was Ao doing all wrapped around you?"

"Black and white entwined is a common symbol of magical harmony in many cultures," I told her. "Apart, we're a couple of strange, probably dangerous creatures. Together, we're iconic… and probably dangerous, yes, but still something that usually inspires more awe than fear."

"O—kay. Did it work?"

I hesitated. I didn't want to criticize Flurry, but I found myself wanting to ask if her "research" into this world had been anything more than a glance or two through a mirror portal. "Yes," I said. "It worked like a charm. We got some very good direct information, as well as quite a bit of interesting hints about the culture of this part of the world."

"The gems?"

"We got a clue where to start looking," I told her. "Let's get Nebula headed east, and then hold a strategy meeting in the chart room."

A direct easterly course was near the limit of how close to the wind Nebula could sail. Sirocco seemed to have the best feel for steering, so I put him at the wheel. We luffed and slowed a few times, falling off and regaining speed before coming back on course, but he seemed to be learning quickly. "Watch the edge of the sails. When they start shaking like that, fall off just a hair. Half a spoke or so should do it."

"Yes, ma'am! Uh… Ms. Nightshade, I mean." He shuffled his wings in embarrassment.

"Don't be nervous, Sirocco," I told him. "Either is correct, but when we get back to our own world and I get my monster suit off, I want you to call me Twilight, okay?"

He didn't relax at all. "Yes, Ms. Nightshade!"

"Good!" I said, as cheerfully as possible, and then turned to the huge earth pony that I'd assigned to all the "lift heavy things" tasks on board. "Stalwart Lance, will you please join the rest of us in the chart room?"

He blinked in surprise, and his ears flickered uncertainly. "Me? But I'm just a ground-pounder. I don't know anything about airships or magic."

It was almost amusing seeing the big brute shift his hooves uncertainly. Ten years and several periods of posing as Nightmare Twilight ago, I might have laughed. "Just? You took the silver medal in jousting at the last Equestria Games, if I recall correctly. And aren't you part of the new league that's trying to promote the sport all over the kingdom?"

He forgot his nervousness and grinned. "That's right! I saw you run a few passes with Princess Luna at that exhibition we did in Ponyville the year before last. I didn't think you'd remember me."

I rolled my eyes. "Lance, I guarantee that every mare in Ponyville remembers you."

"Oh...uh…" His blush was amusing. And instructive.

I wondered for a second or so if I was getting too devious for my own good, then said, "Come on." I tossed my head in the direction of the short companionway that led down to the chart room and went ahead. After a few seconds, I heard his hooffalls behind me.

The chart room could have easily accommodated four average ponies, but cramming in two alicorns, a hulking athlete, and a kirin (who was considerably bulky despite her snakey appearance) took a bit of work. We had to fold up the chart table.

I explained to Flurry and Lance what the burros had told us, then I went into the implications of what they hadn't said directly.

"They automatically assumed that an airship crew would be earth ponies, whether pirates or representatives of the local government, and that those ponies would be hostile, regardless," I said.

Lance frowned. "Most aeronauts are unicorns, right? Maybe a quarter of airship crews are pegasi from what I've seen." When Flurry looked at him with a surprised expression, he added, "I travel a lot with the team."

"That's true back in Equestria," I confirmed. "But things seem to be very different here. We're dealing with an expansionist empire. They conquered this area within living memory of the burros, and are not kind to their subjects. In fact…" I paused for a moment. My next supposition was based solely on a muttered aside, but my experience in several less-than-pleasant worlds gave statistical support to my working hypothesis. "I think there is a good chance that this empire considers unicorns to be a servitor class, if not outright slaves."

When the resulting commotion died down, I went on. "So, we have a stratified society with earth ponies at the top. That's where you come in, Stalwart Lance. You may eventually have to front for us. Cream Puff isn't nearly as imposing as you are, and appearance is more important than ponies like to admit. But more critical is the need to arm ourselves, and you may be the only one of the crew who can safely achieve that."

Lance frowned. "But we've got plenty of weapons on board."

"I'm sorry," I replied. "I wasn't clear. I know you're a great athlete, but how are you at library science?"

= = =

The first town we came to was a small settlement around an oasis. We anchored a few furlongs outside the town, and Cream Puff and Stalwart Lance went in to gather information with the excuse of trading gold for supplies.

As neither our pastry chef nor our professional athlete had any experience in espionage, they were given very clear instructions to merely keep their eyes and ears open, and under no circumstances were they to get clever or ask leading questions. They were to say that they were traders and give no more information than that about themselves or the ship. As somepony who was experienced in espionage, I knew that being less inquisitive was more likely to get a pony to loosen up and talk freely.

It would have been so much easier if Flurry or I had been able to manage a disguise spell. I half expected some curious pegasi to fly up to greet us and perhaps try to do a bit of trading, and Flurry wore her greatcoat against that possibility. But there were no ponies in the sky at all. All we could do was wait and hope nothing went wrong in town.

"I wondered where that mark had come from," Flurry said to me as we stood watching the town about three hours after we'd sent our ponies in. She pointed down to a spot on the deck just behind the speaking tubes.

I lifted my hoof away to see a deep groove in the thick oak plank where I'd been unconsciously rubbing the fore edge of my shoe across it.

"It must have taken a long time to wear it that deep," she said.

"Years." I gave her a sheepish grin. "Nervous habit. I never like sending my ponies into danger."

Flurry grimaced. "Does it help? Because those two are my ponies, Ms. Nightshade, and I don't like it at all."

Well. "No, Captain, it doesn't help," I replied. "I've also been going over several rescue plans in my head, which helps only a little."

Captain Skyla turned away from me and resumed her vigil.

Two hours later, just as I was preparing a mental checklist of weapons and tactics we'd need to assault a fortified building, our wayward crewponies returned.

Their mission had been much more enjoyable for them than it had been for Skyla and me.

The town was called Rocas Rojas and was primarily a way-station for caravans. It didn't have any sort of library, unfortunately. There may have been unicorns or pegasi in town, but Lance and Puff didn't see any. The Equestrian bits didn't get so much as a raised eyebrow. A money-changer in the market quickly weighed them, checked their displacement vs. weight, and passed over the equivalent in local currency.[1]

[1] Less his rather exorbitant fee, of course.

Not much trade went on in town, but there was a small marketplace where the locals shopped, and it was there that Lance and Puff had spent most of their time.

"It was weird," Lance said to Skyla. "One of the merchants asked what I traded, and I had no idea what to tell him, so I shrugged and said, 'Oh… this and that. Nothing special.' He got really friendly after that. Said he'd be able to get me a good price on my cargo if I didn't feel like dodging the imperial revenue cutters."

"Good, good!" I said. "That tells us a lot!"

"It does?" Skyla asked.

"It makes it obvious that smuggling is rife here, Captain," Ao put in. "The common ponies take it as a matter of fact and are united in the disobedience of laws regulating trade."

Skyla tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. "How is it that you know so much about smuggling, Ms. Ao?"

"Ah… this one has… mm… been exposed to some…"

I laid a wingtip on Ao's shoulder to stop her. "Take it from me, Captain," I said to Skyla, "She's an expert."

Skyla gave me an elegant version of the stink-eye that had more than a little bit of her mother in it. "I'm beginning to think that your bedtime stories were heavily edited."

Poor Cream Puff and Stalwart Lance were looking back and forth between the three of us in complete puzzlement.

Puff broke the awkward silence by opening a package he had brought back from town."They make a really great pastry here! It's lots of really thin layers of dough with chopped almonds and date paste in between. I don't know how they bake it to get it so crispy and flakey, and the mare just laughed when I asked her for the recipe, but the final touch is to soak it in honey, and it's really, really good! Try some!"

It was good. But not as good as what Stalwart Lance had brought back.

"So, there wasn't a library, but there was a stall in the market that sold books and stuff. Also the stallion who ran it wrote letters for a fee." Lance paused and thought for a moment. "I guess that means that a lot of ponies here are illiterate?"

Good. He was starting to think. I told myself I'd make a spy out of him yet.

"Anyway..." He set a big bundle down on the deck and untied the cloth. "I bought all the maps he had and several books that looked like they might be of help."

"Oh Lance, I could just kiss you!" I breathed, levitating the top map up and unfolding it.

Skyla snickered and that made me look up. Stalwart Lance had half reared back and his eyes were showing white all the way around the irises.

I was a bit surprised to find that I was kind of miffed at his reaction. "Oh come on! I'm not that horrible looking, am I?"

Lance began to stammer out something but Ao interrupted him with a snarl. "You should be grateful for Her Majesty's slightest sign of favor! This one will allow no—"

"Wait!" I shouted shoving my wings between the two of them. "Stop! There's no need for a stupid fight over nothing!" Lance froze and looked to Skyla. Ao looked to me.

Okay. I should have known better, I suppose. The situation needed to be fixed immediately. I sighed and said, "There are no princesses aboard this ship, is that clear? No majesties or highnesses. There are the captain and the officers and the crew. We are in a very tricky situation and we need to work together without any divided loyalties or petty rivalries. Is that clear?"

There was some embarrassed mumbling and then Skyla said, "Well, you're the one with all the experience, Twilight. And this is really your ship. You should be the captain."

It would have been easy to agree. It might have been safer for everypony aboard. But I took the time to try to think about the situation from a more long-term point of view. Flurry's upbringing had provided her with everything a pony could want... but not everything a pony needed. That was a subtle danger of wealth and privilege... and an over-indulgent aunt, I suppose. I sighed and refolded the map, setting it back on top of the pile.

"No, you are the captain. I haven't regretted that decision for an instant. But I haven't wholly embraced it, either. I've held back some important information, and that was a mistake. If you're going to be responsible for Nebula and her crew, you need to know everything."

That got Skyla's attention. "What information?" she asked in a carefully neutral tone of voice.

"There won't be a rescue party coming from Equestria. The portal is jammed in a way that means it will only open from this side, and only with a huge amount of power. This isn't a game. We've got to get those crystals or we'll never see home again."

There was a very long silence, and then I asked, "What are your orders, Captain Skyla?"

= = =

Everything went perfectly smoothly from then on.[2]

[2] It's odd, but I actually felt a slight twinge as I wrote that down.

No, of course it didn't. But the incidents were fairly negligible, and we got more cohesive as a crew with each passing day. It would be wearisome to chronicle each minor bit of friction, so suffice it to say that we all did much better than the average green crew. Under the circumstances. Considering.

I think I may have had the worst time of it. I am not "bossy", as Rainbow Dash often accuses me of being. I am knowledgeable and experienced, and therefore I usually have a knowledgeable and experienced opinion about any given situation. It is only natural that I give voice to that opinion in order to give other, less knowledgeable and experienced ponies the benefit of my knowledge and experience.[3]

[3] Another, slightly stronger twinge, there. I wish it was simply the consequence of so much close repetition.

Let's just say it was a significant learning experience for me as well.

The maps and books that Stalwart Lance had bought gave us a much clearer, if less pleasant, picture of that foreign world. It was definitely a stratified and racist society. Earth ponies ruled in a hereditary feudal structure. There were absolutely no wings or horns among the nobility. Pegasi were a specialized warrior caste, and groups served individual noble families rather than the empire as a whole. It wasn't clear from the books how that worked, or why disaffected individuals didn't simply fly away if the whim took them, but there was a solid assumption of absolute loyalty underlying all of the texts.

The worst part was the fate of the unicorns. Being ponies, they were technically superior to the "subject" races,[4] but in actuality, they were slaves in all but name. Because of the limitations of the world's magical flow, they could only do simple and low-powered spells. No teleportation, no battle magic, or anything of that sort.

[4] I had forgotten how horrifying it was to first discover that ponies could treat each other like that, but the reaction of Nebula's crew brought it back to me, afresh.

But, however it had happened, thaumic engineering had developed to nearly the degree it had back home. The principles were well understood, even though no single unicorn could power the higher-level matrices. But those matrices could be engraved as mandalas on waveguides, and mana storage crystals could power those constructs.

And so, the unicorns of that land existed for one purpose only; to charge the gems that ran the technology of the Empire of Earth.

"We've got to do something," Skyla said, when the full magnitude of the situation hit her.

I didn't want to lecture her, and I certainly didn't want to advise her to ignore a great injustice, but the impulse to do both climbed up my throat like… something unpleasant and unhelpful.

"We will do what we can," I said quietly, "but cultures are harder to fight than empires."

She scowled at me, unsatisfied, but unable to disagree.

I understood. Back home, there was always something that could be done. Love and Truth and Justice—not to mention Friendship—were tangible forces that could literally move mountains. But the multiverse was a huge expanse, filled with places much colder and less caring than our own cozy little world.

Fortunately, I had a little experience at toppling corrupt regimes, as Sultana Rarity of Marezambique could attest. "What we can do is damage. Damage to their image, damage to their myth of innate superiority, and quite honestly, I'm not averse to a large amount of property damage incidental to retrieving those crystals."

Skyla's expression softened. "That sounds good, but I wish we could do more."

I floated over her greatcoat and settled it over her wings. "Don't discount the ideas our little adventure will sow in the minds of the oppressed. When a unicorn pirate captain defies the Empire of Earth, steals their treasures, and kicks some rump in the process…" I paused to straighten her collar and to do up the gold buttons at her throat. "...that is inspiring!"

She was grinning by the time I'd finished. "Then let us go inspire, Ms. Nightshade!"

I snapped off the cleanest salute I think I've ever delivered in my life. "With pleasure, Captain Skyla!"

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks to Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for pre-reading and editing!

"Oh Lance, I could just kiss you!"

7 Property Damage

Chapter Seven

Property Damage

I was delighted to learn that Filigree's talent was for intricate metalworking. He had specialized in decorative work on weapons and armor because his passionate hobby was rapier fencing— which was how he'd met Flurry Heart—but he had done apprentice work with both a high-end toymaker and a clockmaker, so he knew quite a lot about mechanisms.

"If we are going to tweak the nose of the Empire, we have to get some accurate and durable linkages between the engines and the telegraph. Do you think that's something you can do?" I asked him.

"Certainly, given the tools and materials, Ms. Nightshade," he replied with confidence. "But I didn't bring any of my own with me."

I led him to the little cubby on the crew deck where a couple of big chests held full sets of wood and metalworking equipment. "There's a bellows that attaches to the galley stove's firebox that can make it useful as a small forge. You'll find ample wire, sheet metal, and barstock of several types stowed under the companionway in the sail locker, and there are planks and sawhorses that can be set up as a workbench for you."

He stared in amazement at the selection of tools. "I take it you often travel far from repair facilities?"

"As we are doing now," I agreed. "You are excused all other duties, including engine-charging, until you've completed this work."

"I'll start on it now," he said, levitating various bits and pieces out of the metalsmith's chest.

I left him to it and went below to the cargo hold, where I took inventory of our lift gas and other critical stores.

We weren't as well-supplied as I would have liked, but we weren't too bad off, and I was pleased to discover that all of my "specialty" cargo was right where it ought to be. I began to feel better about our situation until I remembered that we had no doctor aboard and no cockatrice box for seriously wounded ponies.

"Well," I grumbled to myself, "We'll just have to cheat, won't we?"

= = =

"Three days to fully charge the engine crystals, if all three of us give it twelve hours a day," I told Skyla and Ao at our after-supper strategy meeting in the captain's cabin.

Skyla shrugged. "With this world's tiny trickle of mana, we should be able to do that without getting tired at all. The only problem might be dying of boredom while sitting next to the engines all day."

"We still need to drill the crew, and it's quite possible to give orders while on our rumps. Just ask any Royal Air Service admiral."

Skyla snorted. "I suppose I could also read up on airship tactics at the same time; I've been looking through some books in yo… my cabin, but I fall asleep if I read in bed."

"That's not a bad idea, but don't turn the pages with your magic."

"Really? That would hardly waste—"

"Uneven charging can result in a lot of problems," I told her. "Uneven flow when you're drawing on the mana later is a common result, and a rhythmic gap in the charging flow—like pauses to turn pages—can induce power voids, or worse if you're unlucky. You need to concentrate on keeping the flow nice and even."

"So what you're telling me is that I've got an excruciatingly boring few days ahead of myself."

I grinned. "Welcome to the life of an adventurer! Days of routine grunt work and then everything happens at once."

"Perhaps," Ao put in, "the Captain could order that handsome pegasus to turn the pages for her."

"No distractions," I said, poking Ao with a wingtip. "Of any kind!"

Skyla rolled her eyes. "Why don't we go over the plan again? Is it really necessary to fly all the way southeast and then back north again to make it look like we're coming from the opposite direction? It adds days to our travel time!"

"Until we've had a good look at what Empire forces can do, we need to be ridiculously over-cautious, and confusing them as to where we've come from is a wise tactic." I said, unfolding the territorial map. "The town of Palo Verde is within a bend of the river and 'Outpost 12' is on the north side. It's more exposed, so we have to assume it was built later, probably after the conquest."

Skyla put her wingtip on the map. "So we sail around to the other side of the mountain pass to make it look like we've come from the east, and then go through on engine power. We take out any force at the outpost and then hit an imperial warehouse for resupply and information. Simple."

"As concise a summary as this one has heard, Captain," Ao said.

I forced myself not to snort. Most ponies didn't think Ao had a sense of humor. I knew better. She would never have directly criticized a superior, of course, but she had some very subtle ways of making her disapproval known. I told myself I'd give her a word or two of reassurance later.

= = =

Things went very smoothly for the first two days, which meant Flurry was bored and restless. Any guard captain in Equestria would have given his least favorite body part for troops as eager to get to grips with the enemy as she was.

We kept Nebula on a broad reach east-southeast, rotating the crew at the wheel to get everypony some practice steering in good conditions. I had the crew set some of the sails they hadn't dealt with yet, and the light but steady wind drove us along at a good pace.

Filigree completed his first linking mechanism and fitted it to the aft larboard engine. It was very stiff and wouldn't move to Full Astern, but otherwise it seemed to work well enough. Filigree didn't seem bothered by the failure. He dismounted the work and marked out the places where the parts rubbed or stuck. "Just a few adjustments and it will work smoothly, I'm sure," he said. "We're lucky all the engines are identical. Once I get this one perfect, all I have to do is duplicate it."

It had nothing to do with luck and everything to do with a kindly old genius aeronautical architect back in Canterlot. I took the time to show Filigree the workings of the steering gear and other precision systems aboard Nebula. It was nice to give Gudgeon's work an appreciative and knowledgeable audience.

Near evening on the second day, the wind became uneven and showed a distressing tendency to shift without warning. I had the Nebulas shorten sail, and recommended to Captain Skyla that we anchor for the night when we reached the river marked on the map.

"We can flush and fill the ballast tanks and top up our drinking water," I told her. "Then we can all get a little rest before crossing the mountains in the daylight."

"Yes," she said, tapping a hoof on the deck impatiently. "I suppose that's the wisest thing to do."

I was a little surprised she had taken the delay so well. I felt a bizarre urge to pinch her cheeks and coo, "Oh, my little Flurry Burry is growing up so fast!" But as I had no desire to have to fight for my life that evening, I merely thought about it and smiled to myself.

It was a good thing we waited for daylight to make the crossing. The mountains were low this far south, but they marked the edge of a plateau, and beyond them, the land fell away to a plain a couple of thousand feet lower. That meant the warm desert air rose and pulled the air from lower down right into our teeth.

"We'll have to use the engines if we don't want to spend a week beating against headwinds to the plains," I told Skyla.

"How much energy will that burn?" she asked.

"It depends on how rough the winds are. At least half a day of charging I would think, but it may be more."

"How dangerous will it be to use the engines with crew ponies manually relaying the telegraph commands?"

I was seriously impressed. Skyla was asking all the right questions. "More dangerous than I care for, but our alternative is to anchor here until Filigree has finished his mechanisms. It might be another two days."

"Nevertheless, Ms. Nightshade, that is what we shall do. In the meantime, I wish you to instruct the crew in cutlass and boarding pike techniques, as well as picking teams to operate the big catapults. Every hoof may have its use on the day!"

I'm afraid I outright gaped at her for a few seconds.

"Have I not made myself clear, Ms. Nightshade?"

"Perfectly clear, Captain!" I saluted and went about arranging matters. "Every hoof…" I muttered to myself. "Where have I heard that before?" Then it hit me.

It was from Ms. Midshippony Breezie. I had about a half-dozen of Captain Merry Yacht's sea adventure novels in my (now Skyla's) cabin. Oh stars! If she was modeling her behavior on the old commodore… well, when I thought it over, I decided she could do a lot worse. Besides, firing catapults[1] was a lot of fun.

[1] Ground forces or powered ships that didn't have to worry about an envelope overhead typically used swing-arm catapults such as onagers, springalds, mangonels, or trebuchets, but Nebula's catapults were essentially huge crossbows that threw bolts about as long as a pony, and as big around as a supermodel's waist. They had a single-piece bow rather than the more complicated and difficult-to-repair set of levers and torsion springs that were typical of the antiquated ballista design.

The passage off the plateau was rough. Very rough. It became obvious to us why the only pass marked on the map was the one to the north. But we made it unscathed and were rewarded by cooler temperatures and a nice steady breeze over our starboard beam once we reached the plains. Filigree's linkages had worked perfectly, but once we had set sail again, he dismounted them to check for wear or weakness.

Things went so smoothly on the run north to the pass that some of the crew had time to get nervous.

"I'm not sure I can do this," Cream Puff said to me after morning cutlass practice. Judging by the way he was holding his blade and heavily sweating in the light armor he was wearing, I felt inclined to agree. He'd done much better on the catapults.

"It's for form's sake, Puff," I told him. "To get to you, they're going to have to go through me." I leaned forward and grinned my jagged razor grin right in his face. "How do you think that's going to work out for them?"

He actually laughed.

= = =

We'd been over the plan a dozen times, and practiced the more difficult aspects twice by the time we reached the pass. I expected some rough air, though nothing like what we ran into on the southern crossing, and the wind would be with us this time. My estimate of the crossing time was two hours instead of half a day. I left the fore and mizzen staysails up to help steady us, and went aft to report to Skyla.

"All crew at stations, Captain. They're as ready as they'll ever be."

She didn't reply for so long that I began to think she hadn't heard me. "Captain?"

"Yes," she said, tightly. "Take us through."

I rang for three-quarters ahead, and we entered the pass.

The air was tricky enough that Nebula needed our full attention, but there was nothing terribly difficult or dangerous about the passage. Ao left us as we started to descend and scouted ahead. There were some scattered cumulus in the sky and her white coloration—not to mention her very non-pegasus outline—would help make her less noticeable.

She was so inconspicuous, in fact, that nopony noticed her returning until she flew in over the bow. "Captain, Ms. Nightshade," she bowed as she touched down on the quarterdeck.

"Report, Ms. Ao," Skyla said, her voice sounding just the slightest bit tight.

"It is as we surmised, Captain. The outpost is a tall fortified tower with a more slender tower and mooring mast affixed to its top. Two buildings only stand near it, and they are timber affairs, not strongly built. From the tracks on the ground, this one believes that they are a warehouse and a barracks."

"Any long-range weapons in the tower?" I asked.

"This one fears so, but they were not visible. The top of the tower was surrounded by timber… ah… the word…"

"An enclosure? Hoardings?" I prompted.

"Yes! Hoardings! A platform and shutters to keep out the weather, but may be easily opened. If this one may venture an opinion, Captain?"

At Skyla's nod, Ao continued. "From everything this one saw, it seems they fear attack from the ground and discount it from the air. Our plan is a fortuitous one. When Nebula passes that peak, the tower will be visible to starboard."

I gave Skyla a moment to issue the order herself, but when she merely nodded, I said, "Good work, Ao. To your station."

The kirin bowed again, not quite facing me, and snaked her way through the air toward the cupola.

"Can you give the orders when the time comes?" Skyla asked me quietly.

I grimaced. "I will call out the maneuvers, direct what I can when the action starts, but you've got to lead us."

She said nothing for several seconds.

"What are you orders, Captain?" I prodded her.

"They could get hurt, Twilight," she said to me softly.

"They know," I whispered back. "But they all want to get back home again."

"All because I wanted to play pirate…"

"Yes. But nopony's playing now, Flurry, and you need to fire them up, or they are going to lose heart, and that's the surest way to lose a battle that I know of!"

Her eyes rolled and her hooves shifted nervously on the deck. "I-I don't know… What do I say?"

"You've been quoting old Commodore Hayseed for the last few days, Have you read as far as the battle against the Zebra corsairs?"

"What has that got to… oh… you mean..." She stared at me incredulously. "But that's from a book! This is real!"

"Inspiration is nothing but breath, yet it can turn the tide of a very real fight," I quoted, as I glanced up at the mountains that were falling away to starboard. "And unless I miss my guess, the time is now, Captain. Here comes that peak."

"Stealing speeches? Alright, then…" Skyla snorted, stamped the deck, and gave me one last look before slamming one hoof down on the rail and calling out to the crew. "Nebulas! These Celestia-forsaken ponies we face today have wallowed in their own evil for far too long! For too long they have feared only the loss of some comfort or high position. Well, today we come to teach them something new to fear, and that is this ship and this crew! We will show them what true fear really is! We will show these nags what brave, free Equestrians can do! What say you, my ponies?"

I found myself honestly cheering along with the rest of the crew. Holy stars, Captain Skyla Windsong looked magnificent in that moment. Her mane and tail streamed in the wind, and her neck arched in elegant perfection as she beamed down at her Nebulas with a tight, feral bearing of her teeth. "Let fly the colors! Full speed ahead!"

The second round of cheers died away, and I paused for a moment to enjoy the smooth, familiar vibration of the deck as all four engines roared with power. Then I began shouting orders. "Catapult crews, load and stand ready! Swift, on the boom! Lance, to the capstan!"

The tower came into sight, and it was a couple of long minutes as we closed the distance. At first there was no evidence of activity, then a series of signal flags were hoisted up the mooring mast. Through my spyglass, I confirmed that the flags were not the sort that were used back home. I knew I wouldn't have been able to read the message in any case, but I could make a good guess. The ponies in the tower had no idea what was going on and they were asking, "Who the hay are you?"

"Sirocco, signal 'Happy Birthday,' if you please." He gave me a look, but went about efficiently clipping signal flags to a weighted line and then heaved it over the larboard rail.

Our unreadable flags confused them enough to buy us another precious minute or so, but then the big wooden shutters on the hoardings began to swing up.

"Catapults, target the enemy's weapons," Skyla called to the crews on the fo'c'sle deck. "Fire on my command. Wait… wait for it… FIRE!"

There was a deep, double whump as both catapults fired, and then metallic ratcheting as they were cranked back to be reloaded. The lower tower was stone, but the platform and housing surrounding their weapons was only timber. The first shaft hit near the end of the hoarding and went through the wooden shutter like it was paper. I couldn't see what happened inside, but the bolt must have hit stone and ricocheted to the side, because its fragments exploded out of the other end of the hoarding and there were hoarse cries and a screech of metal from within.

The second bolt went high and hit just under the eaves of the roof. Shattered tiles fountained up from the impact point, but likely did no significant damage.

I counted out the seconds as we bore down on them and was delighted that they hadn't returned fire, until I managed to make out the wreckage of the weapon we'd disabled. It wasn't a catapult, or an onager, or anything as mundane. The twisted metal I saw was the remains of a thaumic waveguide.

"Look lively on the catapults!" I called out, hurriedly. "Target the right side of the hoardings and fire as soon as you reload! All crew! Goggles on and shades down!"

Skyla shot me a questioning glance as she pulled her own goggles into place and flipped down the dark lenses.

"Magical weapons!" I told her, my voice low. "I don't know how strong they are, but we do not want to get hit by one."

She nodded and turned back to the action, her jaw set and her nostrils flaring.

"I can fly over there," I offered. "I can hit that second gun crew first if it looks like our catapults won't reload in time."

"I don't want you hit by one," she hissed out of the corner of her mouth. "Wait."

I did. But I didn't like it.

It was a very near thing. As we came within their field of fire I saw the glimmering golden barrel of the second weapon swinging to bear on our hull just as the first catapult fired. It missed, but struck not far above the weapon, and that was enough to disrupt the gun crew long enough for the second catapult to fire. That bolt went through the lower planks of the hoarding and must have struck the pivot of the gun, because it swung wildly up and away before it fired.

Without our dark goggles, the flash would have blinded us. As it was, I heard the gasping and cursing of the Nebulas as the crackle of the discharge faded away.

I couldn't give them any time to think about it, because we were about to pass the tower and had reached the point where we needed to unleash our big surprise.

"NOW, SWIFT!" I bellowed.

The pegasus jerked at the sound of the Royal Voice, and then heaved away at the line attached to the big boom we'd rigged behind the mainmast. It swung out to larboard, carrying our biggest anchor hanging from the end. As soon as it was roughly parallel to Nebula's beam, Lance let go of the cable supporting the anchor and it ran out through the blocks so fast they began to smoke.

I leaned over the rail and saw a beautiful sight. The anchor, trailing its cable, swung all the way around the tower, disappearing from view. I couldn't wait for it to reappear; I had to trust in physics that it would continue to behave as I had intended. "MAKE FAST AND BRACE FOR IMPACT!"

Lance hauled on the winch's brake lever and there was a shriek as the cable jumped between the jaws, bucking to a hard stop. Everypony else grabbed for something solid to hang on to.

The anchor cable went taut with a subsonic thrum that hit everypony on board deep in their bones. Nebula groaned and slewed to larboard, starting to swing around the tower like a ball tethered to a pole. But the "pole," though made of solid blocks of granite, wasn't designed to take the shear force required to stop an airship running at full speed.

We came close enough to see the terrified expressions of the ponies struggling to bring their damaged gun to bear on us once again before the stones of the tower shattered where the anchor had struck them and the cable pulled the whole structure over.

As a demonstration of potential energy being converted to kinetic energy, nothing beats a tall building suddenly undergoing complete collapse. The sharp return pull on the anchor cable heeled Nebula over about fifteen degrees before Lance was able to unjam it and let it run out.

We flew on to get out of the dust cloud and then came about to wait for it to dissipate. Earth ponies are ridiculously tough and stubborn, but I expected that the ones that would have to dig themselves out of the rubble of the tower would be too battered to be much interested in fighting. Hopefully the rest would be too awed by the sudden destruction to put up much resistance. The plan called for dumping a couple tons of water ballast on them as a disincentive if necessary.

"Make all gear fast," I ordered. "Ready launchers and dropstones. Keep sharp. Watch the buildings as the dust clears."

I rang for dead slow to hold us against the light breeze, and began mentally reviewing the action. I didn't get much time to do so, because almost immediately, the speaking tube from the cupola whistled. When Skyla lifted her ear away from it, her expression was grim.

"Ms. Ao reports another airship coming through the pass. It's big and fast, and it's headed right for us."

= = =

Author's Note

...the stones of the tower shattered where the anchor had struck them and the cable pulled the whole structure over.

<INSERT WILHELM SCREAM HERE>

Thanks to Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for pre-reading and editing!

8 Ironhoof

Chapter Eight

Ironhoof

I lowered the spyglass, collapsed it, and carefully stowed it away in the custom pocket on my saddlebags.

"Well, that's going to put a crimp in the looting part of our plan," I said, calmly. "If I may offer a suggestion, Captain?"

If I was any judge, Skyla was on the verge of screaming, "What do we do, Twilight?!" which would have been less than helpful at that point. We had gone over several possible tactics to deal with Imperial airships on the journey from the little caravanserai where we'd gotten the books, but they were all hypothetical. The unpleasant discovery that the Empire of Earth had high-powered magical weaponry made most of them unworkable—most of them.

"I think it's unwise to reveal our altitude capability yet, so I would suggest we try Wounded Mother Bird. We obviously can't outrun them on the level—not with four engines to their six—but they won't be at all surprised if we appear to make the attempt."

"Yes," Skyla said, still staring wide-eyed at the onrushing airship. "The bird thing. That's good. That will work, right?"

"Very good, Captain," I said, and saluted as if she had actually given the order to proceed. "Sirocco, we are going to execute the Wounded Mother Bird maneuver. Steer northeast, engines full ahead. Don't climb unless they do. I'll review the steps with you in a few minutes."

The pegasus nodded tightly, and rang the engines up, turning our bow away from the approaching ship. He should have repeated my order back to me, but he was understandably nervous, and that was not the time to admonish him.

The Imperial airship looked a lot like an Equestrian Royal Air Service craft. It had sleek modern lines and an integrated gondola rather than a hull hanging below its envelope. The main difference were the weapons pods. On an Equestrian ship, there would have been rows of ports to allow the unicorns to cast spells from within the armored hull. Instead, the ship pursuing us had four outboard pods, similar to the ones for the engines, but with gleaming metal barrels projecting forward from them. "Rotting guns," I swore under my breath.

"You keep using that word," Skyla said to me, putting out a wing to stop me as I headed for the companionway to the main deck. "You mean those magic weapons?"

Oh sweet, innocent Equestria! Nine out of ten universes knew that word very well indeed. "Yes," I said quietly. "Not part of the original plan for this maneuver, but I'm making some changes on the fly. I've faced them before." What I didn't tell her was that I'd never faced them on a low magic world. Without magic, the best defense against guns was to never get in front of one in the first place.

Skyla seemed to suddenly realize that the crew was watching us. She pulled her wing back and said, in her best command voice, "Very good, Ms. Nightshade. Proceed."

"Aye, aye, Captain," I replied, and trotted smartly down the companionway.

Stalwart Lance and Swift Wing had finished securing the boom they'd used to sling the anchor around the watchtower and were waiting for their next orders.

"Lance, help Filigree relocate his catapult to this point," I said, indicating a bronze sleeve on the starboard rail. "After that, get another one out of the fo'c'sle and mount it on the starboard quarter. Stand by there to operate it if need be. Load all with cutting points."

When he'd repeated it all to me and trotted off, I turned to Swift Wing. "Swift, we're doing Wounded Mother Bird. Get a big smoke pot out of the arms locker and set it up on the stern gallery. Their magic weapons are going to have a pretty big kick when they hit, so stay down. You'll be tempted to take just one little peek, but don't! I don't want to lose you, understand?"

He saluted. "Yes, Ms. Nightshade! Big pot, no peeking!"

While they went about their business, I went below to the unoccupied passenger cabin and pressed a hoof against a section of wainscotting behind the bunk. There was a sharp click and a section of the deck sprung up to reveal the hidden space beneath. I took a moment to survey my collection of dirty tricks, gave a sigh for my lost innocence, and lifted out a box that had been painted with skulls and jagged red lines.

I took the box and a couple of dropstones with throwing lines attached up to the cupola. I found Ao leaning over the aft edge with her own spyglass pressed to one eye. She looked up when I popped out of the hatch, and immediately saw what I carried.

"So, it has come to this," she said, gravely. The phrase could be used on any conceivable occasion, and had become a sort of joke between us, a way to lighten a tense situation.

It didn't really help at that moment. "I'm sorry I have to ask this of you, but we're really in a tight spot," I said, as I opened the box and carefully floated out the sealed glass bulbs. "Try not to miss; we don't have a lot of these."

She nodded and settled the bulbs into a padded bag she hung around her neck. She had already belted on the long curved blade she favored. She refused the dropstones, saying, "This one will seek to insure the matter does not degenerate to the point where this one will need to throw rocks at our foe."

"Good plan," I said. I wanted to hug her and tell her to be careful, but she really wasn't the hugging type. "Good luck, my friend."

Back on deck, I went to each pony on a catapult and explained to them exactly what I expected of them. It was simple; it was easy; anypony could do it; just aim for the target and pull—don't jerk!—the lever. Crank back as quickly as possible and reload. There will be more flashes and noises like at the tower. Ignore them. Do your job.

"Everything's ready, Captain," I reported to Skyla, after I'd explained to Sirocco the changes to the maneuvering. "I will stand by to deal with anything unexpected. Their ship isn't made for boarding actions, so I doubt that will be a concern, but they may have pegasi aboard."

"Ah." She reached up to touch the hilt of her cutlass with a hoof. "Good."

I turned to look aft. I no longer needed a spyglass to see the details of the airship. "She'll be in her range any time, now," I said loudly so that the crew could hear me. "She'll probably fire a warning shot to try to get us to—"

The first blast of magic hit Nebula squarely in the stern, shaking the deck so hard it nearly threw us off our hooves. Sirocco scrabbled at the wheel, trying to keep us on course as the glowing spatter from the shot crackled and hissed all around us. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was shocked at the curse that Skyla had blurted out. Gentlemares, pirates or not, should never use that kind of language.

"Now, Sirocco!" I called out. "Make them think we're scared!"

"Think?" he gasped out as one of the liftstays parted with a thunderous crack and dark smoke began to billow up from Nebula's stern.

But he did his job, swerving us side-to-side like a panicky helmspony might.

I scanned the sky, looking for an attack from above as I stepped to the engine telegraph. "Standby on the steering fins, Sirocco."

"Aye, ma'am," he replied through gritted teeth.

Their second shot hit us just under the tail of the envelope, and the liftstays and masts groaned with the impact. Thick smoke rolled off the lower rudder and elevators.

"Do we still have steerage, Sirocco?" Skyla asked.

He turned the wheel, making Nebula veer away to larboard, setting us up for the big move. "Yes, Captain! She's answering well!"

Skyla turned to me. "We need to do this now!"

"You heard the Captain!" I shouted. "Fins down!"

Sirocco threw the levers at the same time as I rang for Full Astern. The steering fins dropped down to dead vertical as the engines spun down and then roared to life again. The last thing the imperial airship expected us to do was stop. Not only were they suddenly in range of our catapults, they were so hot on our tail they had to swing away to avoid colliding with us.

They managed to avoid ramming us from astern, but as the next part of our plan had us turning sharply to starboard, they couldn't avoid our envelopes crashing together. Our fin was down where it blocked their view amidships, and the thick smoke pouring from the pot on our stern gallery blinded their aft weapon pod.

For a moment, our hull was only a few lengths from theirs, close enough that even our green catapult crews couldn't possibly miss. Both bolts slammed through the forward weapon pod behind the exposed barrel of the gun.

The plan was to disable it and then go for the aft pod, keeping us, the Mother Bird, relatively safe while our "chick" did her work.

If I had been given just a little more time to think about the situation, I wouldn't have been caught completely by surprise by the explosion. Luckily, Puff and Filigree had pulled their catapults up into the loading position and had started cranking back by the time the weapon pod blew, so they were protected by the solid part of the rail. The force knocked us all off our hooves and swung Nebula's hull away at a steep angle.

By the time Sirocco and I had gathered our wits and gotten control of Nebula again, she had veered away from our optimal position.

The gunner in the aft pod either panicked or decided to try a blind shot. The blast of magic erupted through the smoke and hit our larboard quarter at a steep angle. The spatter flew across the quarterdeck in spinning gobbets of blue fire.

I threw out a wing to protect Sirocco and took a hit that felt like a mule's kick. Skyla yelled and swore again, so I assumed she'd been struck as well.

Panic is contagious. Stalwart Lance fired wildly through the smoke at a dimly-seen bulbous shape, and scored a direct hit on an engine pod. There was a crash as the drive shaft sheared off and shed the propellers. One of the blades slammed into our mizzenmast about a hoofspan above my head and stuck there.

I had no idea how often the magic guns could be fired, but we would keep being hammered if something wasn't done. I still had the two dropstones I'd offered to Ao, so I pulled out one and swung it by the throwline until it hummed around my head, then I leaped into the air over the stern rail to get clear of the smoke and let fly. I'd gotten near enough on target that one little telekinetic nudge guided it right into the bronze helix around the gun's barrel with a satisfying crack!

It must have been enough to disable the weapon, because it didn't fire again.

I floundered back to the quarterdeck, cursing my wounded wing, just in time to see Ao flying over the starboard rail with two pegasi in hot pursuit. They were excellent flyers and managed to swerve sharply enough to avoid impaling themselves on my short blades and Skyla's cutlass as they passed over the quarterdeck. I took to the air in pursuit and when the two of them caught sight of me, they broke off chasing Ao and flew all-out for their ship.

"Are you alright?" I called to the kirin as she doubled back.

She landed in the waist, gasping for air, and I flopped down in an inelegant landing beside her, pain lancing through my wing. "When this one was younger," she wheezed between deep breaths, "six pegasi would have been no challenge."

"I only counted two," I said, smiling in relief that she wasn't hurt.

She smiled back. "Six minus four is two… even in this unpleasant place, Majesty."

I didn't ask how she'd done the subtraction; I had a more pressing question. "And the delivery, little chick?"

Her smile grew wider and she gestured at the receding airship. I walked to the rail and looked up. We were far enough away by then that I could see the top of their envelope, which was ablaze with green alchemical fire.

"Nice work, Ao!"

"A pleasure, Ma... " she threw a glance over my shoulder. "Ms. Nightshade."

Captain Skyla had come down to the main deck to thank Ao herself and make sure she wasn't injured. We stood together at the rail and watched the futile efforts of the airship's crew to save her.

The side of the ship's envelope was painted with an insignia involving a horseshoe and the word IRONHOOF in huge block letters. The "I" was beginning to smoulder when the flames suddenly flared brightly, hissing and throwing off showers of flaming debris.

"They just found out that water doesn't work on Zebra Fire," I said, grinning smugly.

There was a whumph and a tower of flame shot up from a rupturing gas cell. Then there was another, more drawn-out hiss as a huge flaming section of the envelope peeled away to reveal the burning interior structure, and the ship began to sink by the head.

I was beginning to worry that the crew had left it too long before evacuating when I heard the thunk of gondola hatches being thrown open and saw the ponies diving out.

I trained my spyglass on the parachutes that blossomed beneath the stricken airship. "All earth ponies," I observed. "Does anypony see any pegasi?" I called out to the crew.

Nopony said anything for a minute or so, and then Lance called out, "There!" and pointed over the stern rail. We galloped up to the quarterdeck and saw an air chariot speeding away toward Palo Verde. Two pegasi were pulling one big earth pony in the open craft, and they were flying as if their tails were on fire.

"We need to stop them!" I flexed my injured wing and grimaced. I'd never be able to catch them even if I could manage to fly more than a few furlongs.

Skyla glanced at Ao and I, and then called out, "Swift, with me! Ms. Nightshade, you have command!" She dived over the rail without waiting for a response, and a bedraggled and sooty Swift Wing flew after her.

"Sirocco! Come left to a course for Palo Verde. Follow that chariot! Full speed ahead!"

His voice, repeating my orders, faded behind me as I ran forward, yelling to the crew, "Keep an eye out for other pegasi! Ao, get topside and give us eyes up there!"

I draped myself over the forward rail next to the bowsprit and brought out my spyglass. The pegasi pulling the chariot had no other pegasi to cover them, so they couldn't do much to fight off attackers without endangering their passenger. The passenger was a different story. As Skyla and Swift approached, he lifted a long barreled weapon that looked a lot like a miniature version of one of the magical guns.

There's nothing worse than helplessly watching a loved one go into danger. The chariot was beyond catapult range. I tried a magical bolt of energy, hoping to distract the earth pony, but it fizzled out long before it reached him. I could only watch in horror as the earth pony carefully sighted his weapon on my young niece.

And that's when Swift Wing slammed into him like a freight train.

Even from half a league away, I winced at the violence of the impact. The earth pony lost hold of the gun and it tumbled away as he and Swift smashed through the forward edge of the chariot and landed on the tongue. The earth pony caught hold of the shaft with both forelegs and Swift managed to hook a hoof onto the harness of one of the pegasi, who immediately began trying to buck him off. One of Swift's wings flopped bonelessly as he desperately flapped the other, trying to keep from falling.

Skyla arrived and dove down, lifting Swift in her forelegs and setting him back in the chariot. Then I caught the flash of sunlight on her cutlass.

"Ah! Don't kill them, Celestia trample it!" I growled out loud.

The earth pony didn't fall, and the pegasi slowed and descended. So far so good, but when they landed...

I galloped back to the quarterdeck and took the wheel from Sirocco. "Get down there and help the captain!" I whistled up the cupola and told Ao the same.

I altered Nebula's course slightly so that the catapults on her starboard side would have a clear shot at the enemy when we got near. "Don't fire if there's any chance of hitting one of our own!"

Despite outnumbering Skyla three to one after they had landed, the other ponies didn't immediately attack her—probably because she was holding her cutlass to the earth pony's throat—and Sirocco and Ao arrived moments thereafter. I let out a long sigh of relief.

I sent Filigree up to the cupola to watch for other pegasi and slowed Nebula as we approached the grounded ponies.

"Why don't you just kill us and get it over with, monster!" was the first thing I could make out as I rang the engines down to dead slow. Deep voice. I assumed it was the big earth pony. I also assumed he had never seen a kirin before.

But it was Skyla who answered him. "I'd rather not kill you, and I'm not a monster, I'm an—"

"Al Leekorn," hissed one of the pegasi.

"Demon!" the other added.

Oh my. That was interesting.

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks to Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for pre-reading and editing!

9 Making New Friends

Chapter Nine

Making New Friends

"Bind their wings, hobble them, and dump them in the hold," Skyla ordered after she had gotten tired of blustering, insults, and general uncooperativeness. (About five minutes from the moment her hooves touched the desert.)

"I am Baron Ironhoof, Imperial Governor of the Western Territories!" the big earth pony shouted indignantly. "You will keep me in quarters befitting my station until my ransom is paid!"

"Gag that one," Skyla said. "Cream Puff, take a boarding pike and keep watch over them. If it looks like there's any chance of one getting loose, yell for help. If one of them does get loose, pin him to the deck, baron or not."

Cream Puff swallowed hard, but saluted her and said, "Yes, Captain!"

I kept out of sight, even though the pegasi had gotten a brief glimpse of me earlier. Whatever they had against alicorns might work in our favor, but we needed to be clever about getting information out of them to make sure we weren't fed a pack of lies.

I settled Swift Wing into the second mate's berth with a splint on his broken wing. I treated him with several spells and a dose of a Zebra potion, with the promise of a more prolonged session of healing after we'd gotten clear of the area.

"I'm sorry I can't use the more powerful spells I know," I told him. "I'm afraid you're going to be off that wing for at least a week."

"That's alright, Ms. Nightshade," he replied. "I'm just glad—"

He was interrupted by Skyla entering the cabin. "How are you feeling, Swift?"

"Hardly hurts at all, Captain! Really!"

"Good." She leaned over and examined his splint. "That was very brave of you, Swift Wing." She turned her head and gave him a rather lingering kiss on the side of his muzzle. "Thank you."

She might as well have hit him over the head with a dropstone for all the sense I got out of him after that. I left the job of getting us back to Palo Verde to Skyla and went back to my cabin, where I studied the baron's broken gun while I cast healing spells on my own wing.

The gun was powered by a crystal about the size of a hen's egg, and the matrix was not overly complex. A simple mechanism closed a contact between the crystal's setting and the waveguide for about a second with each pull of the trigger. The matrix was designed to focus the mana into a tight, hot beam. Nothing fancy, but nearly four times as powerful as an average unicorn guard's magical strike and quite deadly at close range. The gem held enough of a charge for at least six shots.

I wished that I had been able to get a look at one of the crystals powering the airship's guns; it would have given me a good idea of their general capacity, and that was something that I was afraid we would need in the near future. Judging by the force of the explosion of the broken crystal in the forward gun pod, my rough estimate was between five and ten shots.

Thinking about that explosion, I put away the gun and went topside to survey the damage. My poor Nebula was badly scorched at the stern of both her hull and her envelope, but the anti-magic coating had saved her from any significant damage. The coating itself had been degraded and was flaking away in a couple of spots. I made a mental note to get some more of the alchemical goop out of stowage and paint on another layer as soon as possible.

Thanks to massive over-engineering, the broken liftstay could wait until we were done at the town. The damage to the starboard bow seemed to be, thankfully, mostly minor. The shrapnel from the explosion had peppered the planks and scoured away most of the paint and anti-magic coating, but some telekinetic probing revealed that the planks and ribs were sound. Considering we'd been jumped by an unexpectedly powerful enemy, we had gotten off lightly.

"Coming up on the outpost!" Sirocco cried out from the quarterdeck.

I got out my spyglass and scanned the area. There were a score of earth ponies setting up big wooden shields around the buildings and wreckage of the tower. They had set up several tripod-mounted magical guns and well as smaller hoof-held versions, and the now-bandaged and splinted ponies that had been pulled out of the rubble were operating most of the stationary weapons.

I snapped my spyglass shut and trotted back to the quarterdeck, calling out to Skyla, "Captain, may I borrow one of your prisoners for a while?"

= = =

I'm not sure whether the governor was well-liked by his troops or they were just wiser than the average group of soldiers, but in any case, they didn't fire on us as we eased up to the grounds of the outpost with the baron tied to the bowsprit.

He ordered them to surrender and to cooperate with us, but we herded them into the barracks and nailed the doors and window shutters closed just to be on the safe side. We collected the guns and hoisted them aboard Nebula before we broke into the warehouse.

Now… I think I need to take a moment to justify our behavior, both on that occasion and afterwards. An Equestrian pony witnessing the resupply activities,[1] might be forgiven for failing to grasp the ethical niceties of the situation.

[1] Oh, all right, looting.

A pirate is an airborne or nautical thief who pursues her profession solely as a means to self-enrichment. A privateer engages in nearly identical activities, but under the auspices of a government in time of conflict. The former is a criminal, the latter, a legal agent of one of the combative nations.

And that is why I had taken the time to draw up a formal declaration of war before attacking the Empire's outpost. I even had Sirocco look through a couple of the books we'd gotten to make sure that the document was dated correctly according to local usage, though I didn't tell him what I wanted the information for.

Skyla frowned down at the document when I presented it to her for her signature. "Are you sure this is necessary, Twilight? You want me to use my real name on this?"

"It won't be legal unless you do," I explained.

"But… I'm declaring war in the name of the Crystal Empire! How can that be legal?"

"Your mother and father aren't available. You are the highest ranking imperial royal on this world."

"Why can't you do it?"

I sighed. "You are in charge here."

"But—"

"Look, it's just a technicality. It doesn't mean we will actually get involved in an interdimensional war. You see, we don't know enough about this world to trust whatever they have in the way of a postal service to deliver this declaration, so we will have to hang onto it until we can guarantee the emperor will receive it. Now, the likelihood of us meeting him personally is vanishingly small, so we'll just file this away as a little bit of insurance in case of… legal complications."

Skyla tilted her head and raised an eyebrow at me. "You've done this before, haven't you?"

"Uhm…"

"How many times have you done this?"

Off-hoof, I didn't really know. "Quite a few times, actually," I muttered. "I'm technically a queen, so… well, it's convenient[2] sometimes."

[2] It can also be a gigantic pain in the rump. Twilight Town once fought and won a war that none of its citizens were even aware of. When an unexpected delegation of giraffes, offering an official surrender and asking for reconstruction money, arrived in town, Buzzy took it in her stride. But she was a bit cross with me for months afterward.

Skyla frowned and tapped a hoof on the chart table. "Well... if it's worked for you so many times before…" She floated over a quill and inkwell and signed the document. I had a bizarre moment when—for some inexplicable reason—I pictured pasting the declaration into one of my scrapbooks next to Flurry's baby pictures.

At any rate, that document—and a Letter of Marque to authorize Nebula's activities during the conflict—made our attack and acquisition of supplies perfectly legal according to the majority of sensible international treaties.

= = =

The inhabitants of Palo Verde had gotten a good look at us as we toppled the outpost tower, and the fireball that rose from the desert when the airship Ironhoof[3] crashed would have been spectacular, even leagues away. So the townsfolk weren't all that welcoming as we maneuvered to a position above the town square. In fact, they had barricaded themselves inside their shops and homes, and the streets were completely deserted.

[3] Yes, I confirmed that the baron had named his ship after himself. Who does that? It might be great fodder for a comedy act, (e.g., the uncertainty concerning which big flaming gasbag one was speaking of) but it would be bound to cause a lot of inconvenient confusion in practice.

Palo Verde was a charming little town with mostly one and two story flat-roofed adobe buildings surrounding an arcaded plaza. There was a large tiled fountain in the center surrounded by healthy shade trees. The plaza itself was paved with natural stone slabs, which was very convenient for us. The sound of gold coins hitting them from a height made quite a noise.

Doors and shutters creaked open by a narrow amount; just enough for the good folk of the town to visually confirm that their ears had not deceived them. The rush started an instant later.

When the plaza was packed side-to-side, Captain Skyla, her wings once again hidden beneath her greatcoat, stepped to the rail and spoke to the crowd. "Good people of Palo Verde! I am Captain Skyla Windsong of the pirate ship Nebula and the Free Company of Friends!"

The townsfolk looked up with varying degrees of wariness, and Skyla scattered another bucket full of gold by way of reassurance. "What the Empire has taken, I return to you!"

The chest marked "taxes" had probably been a collection from most of the territory rather than just Palo Verde, but most wealth-redistribution schemes are fundamentally flawed in some way, so we were in good (or at least typical) company.

While Skyla gave a stirring, if deliberately vague, speech, I scanned the crowd from a half-open port on the crew deck. Most of the people were burros, mules, and earth ponies, but there were a dozen or so unicorns as well. The only pegasi were a pair that stood on either side of a frowning earth pony on the roof of one of the buildings that faced the square. They had crossbows slung across their barrels.

I examined them and the building they stood on more closely. There was a big wooden sign that bore the same symbol that had been on Ironhoof's side. (The airship, not the pony.)

"The Free Company of Friends holds that all ponies are equals and all people of any stripe stand equal with ponies! Our crews have all the tribes among them and we rise by merit alone!"

That caused quite a stir, and the earth pony with the pegasi bodyguards bared his teeth and said something to them I couldn't make out above the general noise of the crowd.

"You have seen what we can do today!" Skyla continued. "When our fleet returns from the west,[4] you will see even more! The people of this land will be free once again!" She gestured grandly with a sweep of her foreleg, and Lance and Puff upended the tax chest, spilling the last of the gold into the eager hooves below.

[4] A deliberate misdirection, of course.

"Wait! Wait!" somepony cried out from below.

It took me a second to pick out the pony who had yelled at us. She was a buttercup yellow unicorn with a white mane toward the back of the crowd, rearing and waving her forelegs to catch our attention. "Take me with you!" she screamed. "Please!"

The grin dropped off my face when the earth pony on the roof bellowed, "Shoot that screwhead!"

The pegasi leaped into the air and unslung their crossbows, taking aim at the unicorn who had called out to us. I brought my gun to bear on one of them, hoping that Filigree would make burning them out of the air unnecessary, and indeed he did. The deep whump of the net launcher shook the deck and the weighted bundle of unfurling mesh smacked both the pegasi out of the air.

The net launcher was designed to work at a height that would allow time for the parachute attached to the net to open and soften the landing of the captured pegasi. We were well below that altitude. The chute had just enough time to stream out into a festive-looking bit of red and white cloth before the two tangled ponies crashed through a wooden awning over a balcony and landed in a groaning heap.

To register my disapproval, I swung the barrel of my gun to the building where the foul-mouthed earth pony who had ordered the outright murder stood, gaping. I did not shoot him dead. I put a blast into the parapet in front of him. The spatter from the shot and the fragments of adobe shrapnel may well have done some damage, and falling backwards down the hatch in the roof probably did him no good, but that was purely incidental.

"Anypony else want to use that word?" I growled out of the port, leaning forward just enough to let my horn show.

The general murmur of the crowd included no clear insults, and I settled back, reaching out with my telekinesis for the yellow unicorn. She was light enough that I probably could have lifted her aboard by myself, but we had arranged to work in tandem, so Skyla's magic joined mine almost immediately, and the mare floated up and over the rail in moments.

"Anyone else want to join my crew?" Skyla asked, putting a hoof on the rail and tossing her head in a rakish manner. "Even earth ponies are welcome. Isn't that right, Lance?"

Stalwart Lance snapped her a salute. "Right indeed, Captain!"

Ah, theater!

One of the unicorns glanced around nervously, but eventually sighed and hung his head.

"Very well then!" Skyla said, with another carefree toss of her head that sent her mane rippling. "We go now, but look to the west for our return!"

That was Sirocco's cue, and he rang the engines to Half Ahead, slowly turning Nebula above the square to display the huge Jolly Roger flying at her stern, and pointed her nose west.

It wasn't a minute later when I heard the clatter of galloping hooves behind us. Skyla looked over the stern rail, then called out to me, "We've got another one, Ms. Nightshade!"

It needed the both of us to lift the big jack mule aboard. He probably weighed twice what the unicorn mare did.

"Whoo…" he gasped as his hooves came down on the deck. "Thank ya, kindly! I didn't wanna git stomped to death back in the zócalo, so I held my tongue until I could git clear of the crowd. I didn't think I was gonna make it there for a—holy spirits! What in the seven hells are you?"

"This one is a kirin," Ao said calmly. "This one is from a land very far from here. As the captain said, all are welcome aboard her ship." She did not smile; not even a little bit. "Even mules."

The poor guy's ears were flopping all over the place. Glancing around, he caught sight of me, which, even though I was wearing a light cloak over my wings, did nothing to help restore his calm. "Oh… what have I got myself into?" he moaned.

"Please," Skyla said softly. "You won't be harmed. If you change your mind, we will set you down on the road outside of town. But won't you have a meal with us first? The young unicorn who joined us has gone below to meet the rest of the crewponies and to eat some supper. Do you know her?"

That settled him a bit. "Daisy? Uh, yeah… I know her to say hello to, anyways. Nice little filly. Thanks for not lettin' El Jefe shoot her, by the by."

"Our pleasure, I assure you." Skyla said, smiling. "And what is your name?"

"Oh." The mule's ears drooped. "Well… my given name… what they call me… is Barro."

"That means 'mud'," I said, translating for Skyla.

The mule cleared his throat. "Yes… ma'am. That it does. My grandpappy hung it on me. Sorta a joke, I guess."

"You're starting a new life, so you'll need a new name," I said through my teeth, barely able to contain my fury. "What shall we enter into the logbook?"

He looked up at me, obviously thinking that I was also playing some sort of cruel joke on him. "Is that right, ma'am?" He looked to Skyla for confirmation.

"Absolutely. You are free to choose any name you like." Skyla cocked her head in thought for a second. "The crew will likely shorten it for you, so choose carefully," she advised.

"Huh." A slow grin spread across his face as he began to believe we were telling the truth. "Well, I always did fancy the name Star. Would that be alright, ma'am?"

I almost bit my lip before I remembered what my teeth would do to it.

"An auspicious name, this one believes." Ao to the rescue!

"That would be fine, Star," Skyla said, and her smile could easily have been taken for a kind one. "Now… you must address me as Captain Skyla, or just Captain. This is Ms. Nightshade, our first mate and sailing master, and this…"

= = =

The officers joined the crew for the evening meal, and we all got to know our new members a bit better. Skyla and I still kept our concealing clothing on; we thought there were enough shocks to fill the day as it was. Time enough to reveal the full extent of our alien nature on the morrow.

Filigree showed them how to rig their hammocks when dinner was cleared away and the tables stowed. Both seemed nervous but hopeful, and I eagerly anticipated getting to know them over the coming days.

I took the night watch, as usual, and wasn't surprised to see our new recruits walking the waist together, looking out over the moonlit desert and talking. Their lives had been dramatically changed in a matter of moments, and the only familiar things left were each other. I thought I could guess the general content of their conversation, but an unexpected outburst from Daisy proved me wrong.

"What?" she cried out in dismay. "But I like my name!"

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks to Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for pre-reading and editing!

10 Legends and Profits

Chapter Ten

Legends and Profits

Swift Wing took the wheel after midnight while I scouted back along our course to make sure we weren't being followed. He really wanted to take a full watch, and he assured me that his wing wasn't bothering him at all.

"Just until Lance and I have finished with our little sideshow, then it's back to bed with you," I told him. "We will need you whole and healthy in the days to come."

"Uh… sideshow, Ms. Nightshade?"

"Yes, we're going to put on a performance for the baron and his guards," I said, heading for the companionway to the lower decks. "There may be screaming. Just ignore it."

I met Lance in the empty passenger cabin for a last-minute whispered conference. Then I went through the hatch to the cargo hold and worked my way forward until I was near the area where Baron Ironhoof and the pegasi were being held.

I watched them from the darkness for a few minutes. One pegasus was clumsily and ineffectively trying to loosen the hobbles on the baron's forelegs. He'd obviously never been held prisoner before.

I spread my wings and gave them a tiny shake to make the feathers rattle together.[1] The baron didn't notice, but the unoccupied pegasus certainly did.

[1] Yes, rattle. Unlike Luna's soft owlish wings, my own—particularly when influenced by dark magic—were more like a raven's: stiff, and loud.

"What was that?" The pegasus peered toward me, but his night vision was ruined by the lamp hanging directly above the group. "I thought I heard… what… what is that?!"

I'd brought up as much of a charge of dark magic into my horn as I could manage. It wasn't a lot, but it was enough to get my eyes glowing and my horn crackling with greenish electricity.

"Meeeeeeat…" I growled low in my throat. I didn't walk so much as creep into the lamplight. "Fressssh meeeeat!"

Give those ponies credit: none of them screamed. The baron blanched and tried to scoot himself backwards through the bulkhead, and the guards put themselves between him and me as best they could.

"Release me, demon!" One of the pegasi demanded. "Let me die fighting! Let me go to the Summerlands doing my duty!"

I laughed. A long, low chuckle that burbled up out of my throat like blood from a deep wound. "Foolish little bird thinks it's a fighter. No… no… just food." I let my jaw fall open, and thin streams of drool dropped from between my fangs.

And that's when Stalwart Lance rushed to the rescue. He came through the hatch in the bulkhead opposite me and interposed himself, holding up a flat circular piece of brass that he carefully kept obscured from the prisoners' direct view. "Get back! The captain said you're not to have them yet!"

I hissed and flinched away from the instrument as if it were some sort of amulet that had the power to hold me at bay.[2] "I am hungry!" I whined. "Let me feast!"

[2] In actuality, it was a simple nocturlabe from my navigation chest, useless on that world where the stars didn't match its markings.

Lance thrust his hoof toward me again, and I growled and backed away. "Not yet! Get back to your cell!"

I snarled and noisily retreated until I was hidden in the darkness again. Then I settled in and listened.

"You'll be alright," Lance said. "For now."

"You… you… serve those monsters!" One of the pegasi accused.

Lance didn't reply. Neither of us wanted to rely too much on his acting ability, so his few lines were reserved for specific requests.

"Don't leave us! That thing might come back!" That was the baron. "You're a good earth pony! Why would you help those… aleak… al..."

"Al leekornu," the second pegasus said. "The destroyers."

"I don't know anything about that," Lance said. "I don't know what they are. I never heard of them before they descended on my village and took me."

"My guards say they're monsters from another world," the baron said. There was a long pause before he spoke again. "Some sort of tribal legend they don't share with… outsiders."

"Free us!" the first pegasus pleaded urgently. "Let us die on our hooves!"

"Shut up!" the baron snapped at him. "How about we not die at all?" Then, to Lance, "You're an earth pony! You can't let that thing eat us! Help us get away, and I'll make you rich!"

"I don't know…"

"Come with us!"

"You don't understand!" Lance said, and I think he did a very good job of sounding uncertain and afraid. "There's more of them. A lot more!"

"Gold," the baron said. "Mares, servants, anything you want, just help us get away!"

"I… alright. Okay, I will."

"It won't matter," the second pegasus said, almost too quietly for me to hear. "They come to scour the world. They will kill all—"

"Shut up, or I'll leave you here!" The baron snapped.

"Wait here," Lance told them. "I'll be back soon!"

He left via the hatchway and I remained hidden in the darkness, hoping to overhear more of interest.

One of the pegasi started to say something, but the baron cut him off. "I don't care what idiotic superstitions you believe in! You can keep quiet and obey me, or you can stay and feed that thing!"

"I only obey you because of the destroyers!" The pegasus hissed back. "But you stompers have failed us! They have come—"

"How dare you use that word, you flit-wit!" Ironhoof snarled.

I had just enough time to regret that I couldn't conjure a bag of popcorn to go along with the show before Lance returned with the key to the hobbles and a parachute. He released all of them, despite the baron's incensed desire to sacrifice his rebellious guard. Lance led them up to the main deck far enough forward that Swift Wing couldn't see them from the quarterdeck. The baron only realised Lance didn't have his own parachute a second before he jumped.

"I can't come with you," Lance said. "They have my family."

"Too bad," the baron said, swinging his hind legs over the rail. "Good luck." And he dropped out of sight.

The first pegasus followed him, but the other paused to give Lance one last piece of advice. "You will die soon. Die fighting them, and your spirit will dwell in the Summerlands. Serve them, and you will suffer in Tartarus for eternity."

"I'll keep that in mind, thanks," Lance replied. The pegasus was gone before he finished speaking.

"Gee, Lance," I said, slapping a wing across his back in a friendly gesture that made him jump. "If you ever give up jousting, you might have a career in the theater!"

He sort of skittered sideways, not quite enough to shrug off my wing, so I took pity on him and folded it away myself.

"What was all that about, Ms. Nightshade?"

"I can't be absolutely certain," I said cheerfully, "but all knowledge is power, and we just got a little stronger. Conversely, we've weakened them by providing them with misinformation. Not bad for an hour's work. Go get some sleep. We've got a busy day tomorrow."

I took over the wheel from Swift Wing, despite his half-hearted protests, and steered Nebula from her deceptive westerly course onto a South-Southeast heading that would take us back to the southern pass. Then I cast the keel spell, and slowly and laboriously set as much sail as I could manage by myself. I shut down the engines and opened the cover on the binnacle post to check how much charge we'd used, remembering to close one eye to preserve half my night sight.

All four power indicators were well below the halfway mark. That meant about three days to bring the crystals back up to full again. We'd have to run the engines for half a day to get through the southern mountain pass again, too, so tack on another day for that. Considering the time we'd need for repairs, we wouldn't be fully charged until we crossed the border into the Empire itself. I wasn't pleased by that calculation, but there wasn't anything to be done about it.

I spent the rest of the watch mulling over the fruits of our little play while listening to the old familiar creaking of Nebula's rigging.

= = =

In the morning, Skyla and I revealed our true nature to our new recruits. They took it very well, certainly better than the baron's pegasus guards had. Evidently, he'd been right about it being a closely held legend.

"Well dip me in gravy and call me a biscuit!" Star muttered.

Daisy gave me one doubtful glance before staring, wide-eyed at Skyla and gasping, "You're so beautiful!"

"We are alicorns," Skyla said. "Have you heard the word before?"

"Cain't say as I have… uh… Cap'n," Star replied.

"So beautiful…" Daisy's eyes filled with joyful tears. I began to worry that she might pass out.

"We're a blend of all three of the pony tribes," I said. "So you can see why we're naturally more egalitarian than your empire."

"Wait. You got earth pony in you?" Star frowned at me, then pointed a hoof at Skyla. "But not her, right?"

I silently counted to ten before going over the facts again, slowly.

= = =

The traditional three skills required of a professional sailor or aeronaut are the ability to hoof, reef, and steer. That is, they must be able to control sails and lines, reef sails in heavy weather, and steer a ship accurately and safely.

The other essential three skills, rarely mentioned in daring tales of adventure, are scrape, sand, and paint. I will assume that my readers need no explanation of those activities.

I tended to the broken liftstay, with Ao assisting. The rest of the crew, with the exception of Skyla and Swift Wing, spent their day with scrapers, sandpaper and paintbrushes.

"Ah, the thrilling life of a pirate! Invigorating, isn't it, Ms. Ao?" I said, intentionally loud enough to be heard on deck.

"This one can barely contain an inappropriate expression of excitement, Ms. Nightshade," she replied in a deadpan voice as she helped roll my splice smooth with her magic.

We excused Cream Puff early so that he could prepare supper for the crew. Ao, Filigree, Skyla, and I settled in next to the engines and began feeding them mana. The rest of the crew kept on scraping.

After supper, I overheard a very interesting conversation.

Daisy (who had been given special dispensation to keep her non-pirate name), shyly approached Filigree and said, "May I ask you something?"

Filigree smiled at her. "Of course! You can ask me anything you'd like!"

"I was wondering why you don't sing as you charge the crystals. My overseer would have beaten me if I had forgotten to sing."

Just when I thought I couldn't despise that Celestia-forsaken world any more…

"That's horrible!" Filigree gasped. "They forced you to sing for them?"

"Oh, no! Not for them! For the crystals!"

"Ah… what?"

I decided it was time to butt in. "You sing to the crystals as you charge them?"

Daisy jumped and squeaked when I spoke to her. "Oh! M-Ms. Nightshade! You startled me!"

"Sorry. Now what about the singing?"

"Well, it's what we do. All the unicorns, I mean. We're taught the song when we're very young."

"Would you sing it for me, please?"

"Yes, ma'am," she said, and walked away from me.

I was nonplused for a second and then realized she was heading for the forward starboard engine. She settled in next to the open access hatch and began to sing. It was a slow, gentle tune, hardly more complex than an exercise practicing scales, really. The words were just nonsense syllables, Ah na la re, Ah ba ha fe… It was in common time, all quarter notes, something that would be boring for anypony but a beginning student of music.

But it was pleasant and soothing. After the first few measures, Daisy lit her horn and began to feed mana into the engine crystal. The flow of her magic was as smooth as silk.

I was impressed. I hadn't previously taken epithaumic factors into account when dealing with power crystals. Back home, charging crystals was a simple matter of power and time; other elements had so little effect as to be easily discounted. But on that low-magic world, any slight advantage or improvement in the process—like a musical meditation technique—would make a significant difference.

"Thank you, Daisy," I said. "You can stop now."

She let her magic fade, but kept singing for a few more measures afterward. "Was that alright, Ms. Nightshade? I can keep going for as long as you'd like."

"We'll put you on charging duty on your next watch. Go ahead and get some rest now."

"I'll walk with you, " Filigree volunteered. "You might need help hanging your hammock."

A half hour later, Filigree still hadn't returned to the main deck and I heard the soft notes of Daisy's song floating up from the crew quarters... in a duet. Oh, fickle stallions! Forgetting his devotion to his pirate princess so soon? Well, Daisy was quite a pretty little thing.

Thinking of pretty little things,[3] I made Swift Wing return to his bunk in the Second Mate's cabin and cast another series of healing spells on his wing.

[3] Such an observation was in no way disloyal. Luna and I have an understanding. Appreciation of the visual aspects of other ponies was completely acceptable. And since we were both accomplished shapeshifters, mental notes reserved for later reference were not uncommon.

I had about four hours before I went on watch, and it would have been wise to get some sleep before then, but Daisy's little revelation had gotten me thinking. I spent those hours disassembling the baron's broken gun and carefully examining each part of it.

What I found was well worth losing sleep for.

I won't bother to go into details of the chemo-thaumic interactions in regard to metallic contacts involved in mana flow mechanisms.[4] Suffice it to say that the second most suitable material for contact points is gold, and even that corruption-resistant metal degrades over time and wastes a measurable amount of mana with each connection or disconnection.

[4] Somepony has written "Oh, thank Celestia!" in the margin of my manuscript, and the quillwork looks suspiciously like Rainbow Dash's. This is what comes of asking one's friends to act as pre-readers.

The most desireable metal—one that neither degrades nor wastes mana—is an alloy known as orichalcum. Anypony who is neither a magical historian nor a thaumic material specialist can be forgiven for not recognising the name. The secret of its making was lost during the exodus to Equestria before the three tribes united. Even Starswirl was unable to recreate it.

It might seem like a trivial task to experiment with proportions and temperatures until the metal was reproduced, but there was another factor that eluded even the most persistent alchemist. It was some sort of magic, of course, but that left nearly limitless possibilities to be explored.

In the vaults beneath Canterlot, there is a strategic reserve of the alloy, amounting to a little less than five pounds. It's worth somewhere upwards of three hundred million bits.

The contact points in the gun were solid chunks of orichalcum. Nearly two ounces by my rough estimate. When I dragged the other guns out of the arms locker, I confirmed that the baron's weapon was not an anomaly. All of them used solid orichalcum contact points, and the larger ones had the delicate parts of their waveguides made of the stuff. The amount of the metal aboard Nebula could have bought a dozen Canterlot mansions. After sharing out the profit back home, everypony aboard would be remarkably wealthy.

All we had to do was sneak into the heart of a hostile empire, find and steal some ridiculously valuable gems without having access to high-level magic, and get away without being shot to pieces.

Simple.

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks to Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for pre-reading and editing!

Orichalcum (from the Greek, ὀρείχαλκος) is a real thing. Not actually magical, of course, but it is a mysterious ancient metal that—according to legend—was produced/mined on Atlantis. Nobody's quite sure how to make it anymore.. Cicero wrote that it closely resembled gold but was lower in value. The imperial Romans used a simple alloy by the same name (Because they thought it was cool, no doubt.) for a couple of their coins, but it's known that this was a much later imitation, and not the original metal written of by the Greeks. The original formulation is still a mystery.

Also, a nocturlabe, for those who are curious:

(Not guaranteed to repel demons.)

11 Into the Empire

Chapter Eleven

Into the Empire

"Aaaarrgh!" I slammed a hoof down on the table in frustration. "These maps are completely inaccurate! I'd mortgage my larboard teat for a proper chart!"

I looked up at the sharp intake of breath. Skyla and Daisy were wearing shocked expressions, and I did a quick mental review of my last statement. Oops. Unfortunately, spending a lot of time with sailors and aeronauts tends to have an insidious effect on one's situational vocabulary.[1]

[1] I have never used rough language in a social setting or at court, though in the latter case I have been sorely tempted on more than a few occasions.

"Your pardon, Captain," I said.

"So, we have no real idea how long it will take us to get across the border?" Skyla asked, ignoring both my apology and my slip of the tongue.

"Once we sight the mountains, I'll be able to give you a decent estimate, but if we run up on them at night, we might get too close, and the last thing we want is to be spotted by an imperial outpost. If I could only teleport!" I resisted the urge to stamp my hoof again.

"There's no way to use the charged crystals from the guns to power our own magic directly?" Skyla asked. I had mentioned the possibility to her a few days before, but my calculations had led to an unpleasant conclusion.

"It's theoretically possible to build an organothaumic interface, but the accuracy of the flow nodes would have to be ridiculously precise, and the only way to zero in on the proper settings would be trial and error. Unfortunately, errors would probably manifest themselves as exploding gems or horns. I also considered Tirek's spell, but it takes about double the available force to initiate, and dark magic is inherently unstable."

"So we're stuck with low-level magic," Skyla grumbled.

"There's one possible way to power high level spells, but it's not something that going to be easy or convenient," I said. "We can build specialized waveguides for the guns that have spell matrices built into them. Essentially, they would 'shoot' the spell with each pull of the trigger."

"But wouldn't that be worth it for teleportation?" Skyla asked.

"The problem is that the matrix would have to be built into the waveguide." I explained. "The parameters couldn't be changed, so a teleport gun would only operate one-way from a single specific location to another. Also, it's a complex spell, so it would take a very long time to construct."

"Any good news?"

I paused, sensing a slight change in Nebula's behavior. A moment later there was a loud knock on the deck above us and Ao called out, "Captain? This one has urgent news to impart."

We had made the rough crossing of the mountains south of Palo Verde and had headed into the blank space between our maps. Ao had been scouting ahead of us as we ran northeast above the plains, hoping to catch sight of the next mountain range that marked the border of the Empire. Merely locating our goal wouldn't have been a case for urgency, so Skyla and I rushed on deck to see what had come up.

Ao had ordered Sirocco to change course, turning southward and beating as close to the wind as possible. "There is a large fleet of warships to the northeast. Scores of ships and many sky chariots heading for the Palo Verde pass."

"Yes!" I cried, clicking my forehooves together. "There's your good news, Captain!"

Ao raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, right! Let's take in sail and use the engines for a bit to get further south. Don't want them to spot us."

We climbed to the quarterdeck and I gave the sailing orders with a grin on my face. I had expected that rumors of a pirate uprising in the Western Territory would misdirect the attention of the Empire, but I hadn't imagined that they would divert an entire fleet to deal with it. Baron Ironhoof had probably exaggerated the situation to save face after losing his flagship, bless his little hooves.

"So, Daisy," I said, when Nebula had settled on her new course and the three of us had returned to the chart room. "Before we got sidetracked, you were talking about this factory where you were born. You're sure that the gems we're looking for would have passed through it, and you'll be able to spot it from the air?"

"Yes, Ms. Nightshade." she replied. "I was very young when they flew us out to the west, but my mom held me up to the window, and I watched the factory until it was out of sight. I'll never forget it. Factory Five is where the nearest experts are, and they would have wanted the gems evaluated as soon as possible. We only charge small utility units at Palo Verde, and send any damaged ones back to the factory. They're building a new factory at Ursa Negro, but that one won't be finished for a year or so."

"So right now, Factory Five supplies the western territorial military and all these border forts, as well as the military craft of the province?" I asked, tapping the map.

"Yes, ma'am. Also the provincial capital, Grayhold. The villages do their own charging, and there are a few unicorns at the forts, but that's just for everyday things. The Count has several for his bodyguard and household needs, but everything of any significant size goes to the factory."

"Good," I said. "A large quantity of storage gems in one place might make our job easier, Captain."

Skyla regarded me silently for a moment and then said, "Do you think we can use a whole lot of smaller gems to take the place of the original ones from the gate?"

I nodded. "Exactly. It'll take some improvisation with the connections, but it should be a lot easier than trying to find the big ones in the heart of the Empire. I mean, look at this place!" I put the tip of a primary feather on Grayhold. "It looks like a fortress built into a mountain, and it's just a provincial capital!"

"So… a hit-and-run raid on Factory Five? What about this place, Redkeep?" Skyla looked to Daisy.

"It's really all one place," she said. "The keep overlooks and partially surrounds the workshops and charging sheds of the factory. There's a wall around the barracks area, but it's nothing compared to the keep's. Just a fence, really. The two places look separate on the map because the damned stompers don't want to admit they live in the same place as a bunch of unicorns."

"Language," I admonished her.[2]
----------

[2] Yes, I know. But rank hath its privileges, and I did apologize.

"Sorry, ma'am."

"That'll make it more difficult," I said. "Maybe we can sneak in or hijack a shipment instead. What we really need first is reconnaissance."

"That's difficult and dangerous to do without looking like the natives," Skyla said.

I nodded. "If only we… wait."

Skyla and I both said it at the same time. "A disguise gun!"

= = =

As we ran on above the western grasslands, Star guiding us through the gap not covered by our maps, I worked on the spell gun.

It wasn't as easy as I had hoped, and my first attempt produced results that looked like fun-house mirror reflections,[3] but Filigree and I eventually produced a waveguide that would reliably disguise the target as a dull-colored earth pony mare with a generic looking cutie mark of three horseshoes. Unfortunately, every disguised pony would look exactly alike, but we could adjust our tactics to compensate, and we were finally able to put together a workable plan

[3] I kept that faulty matrix ring because I was pretty sure Pinkie Pie would love to add it to her arsenal of party-related devices.

Aside from having Zebra alchemy[4] on her side, Nebula had a couple of significant advantages over the imperial ships. The primary one was that—at a rough estimate—her flight ceiling was about twice theirs. In an emergency, we could climb away from a tight spot. Of course, once the imperials had seen us do it, they could just follow us and wait for us to come down. But before they realized what we could do, they wouldn't look up.

[4] And a very knowledgeable and experienced first mate, of course.

The second advantage might not seem like an advantage at all, but when Star told us that the border forts had listening horns to detect the motor noise of airships trying to sneak by on moonless nights, we knew we could shut off the engines and sail high over the mountains and the line of forts without making any detectable noise.

But that didn't mean we didn't freeze our rumps off on the way. And Cream Puff had such bad altitude sickness that the crew had to make do with cold oats for supper. And we lost about half our volume of lift gas,[5] which we had to make up from our irreplaceable stores when we descended. And… well, no plan is perfect.

[5] The gas expands remarkably at high altitude, and needs to be vented to prevent the cells from rupturing. Nebula's compressors couldn't work quickly enough to get much of the gas back into the storage cylinders because they relied on controls calibrated for her hone universe.

We crossed the mountains south of Fort Death (no, really!), and dropped down into a river that cut through a thick forest of mixed evergreen and deciduous trees. Literally into the river. Nebula's hull doesn't just look like a sailing ship's; she floated as gracefully as a swan, and we were able to spend the day refilling our ballast tanks, bathing, resting, and preparing for the next phase of the plan.

According to the map, Factory Five was about 25 leagues northwest by north of where we had landed. But, given the cartographer's evident lack of skill, the location could be a half dozen leagues and several points off.

We decided to run north-northwest, low over the forest until it started to thin out, and then find a clearing big enough to drop Nebula into. From there, we could put on our disguises and trot north until we found the road to Redkeep.

Because I had the most experience in precise maneuvering, I took the wheel on our night run above the forest. Sirocco stood close by my side, carefully watching everything I did.

Trying to stay just above treetop level by managing ballast and gas alone would have exhausted both in very short order. But Nebula had another advantage over the sleek and "modern" craft: she was very maneuverable. Her big steering fins could lift or drop her dozens of yards in seconds. Opposed, they could roll her far enough to sling her hull around like a dropstone.

Ao curled herself around the bowsprit and used two of our signal flags to warn me of upcoming tall trees and other obstacles. Aside from the occasional ssssshhhhh of an evergreen's top along our keel, the trip went perfectly.

Swift Wing had healed up nicely, and he went ahead to scout for a clearing when the woods began to thin. There was enough moonlight for him to see fairly well, and it wasn't long before he returned with directions to an ideal spot.

I don't want to keep complaining about that world's lack of magic and the inconveniences it posed, but it would have gone so much easier back home. I would have shoved Nebula into place with a little telekinetic nudge and that would have been that.

Instead, we dropped a ground anchor into the clearing to keep us steady while we lowered Lance in a bosun's chair. Then we dropped heavy cables for him to make fast to the biggest trees, and hauled him back aboard so that he could be on the capstan to help winch us down into position. What should have taken a minute or two occupied the greater part of an hour.

Those of us who could fly spent another hour and a half cutting branches from the surrounding trees and tucking them into a net stretched over the top of Nebula's envelope until she was thoroughly camouflaged.

By the time we had finished, the sky was beginning to lighten in the east, and we were all tired and eager to get whatever rest we could before setting off to find the road to Redkeep.

And that's when we were ambushed.

The thunk thunk thunk sounds of multiple grappling hooks hitting Nebula's rails was depressingly familiar to me. Her keel was barely above the grass of the clearing, and so the attackers were up and over the sides almost before I had time to yell, "Boarders! Nebulas, repel boarders!"

Immediately, all was chaos, shouting, and the clash of steel and magic. I leaped into the air to get above the deck and instantly got hit with something very like a bola. The weighted line spun around my neck and left wing, bringing me back down to the planks with a jarring impact.

I rolled onto my back and kicked out at the figure suddenly looming above me. Both my hind hooves hit solidly and my attacker topped over with a wheeze. I drew my short blades with my magic, spun one around me to clear a space, and used the other to cut the cord around my neck.

Almost before I was on my hooves again I heard a strange voice calling out, "Stop! Stop! Back away! They're unicorns!"

"This one isn't!" came another voice I didn't recognise. "He's a bloody huge stom—" An unpleasantly loud and meaty sound of impact was the last we heard from that direction.

"NEBULAS, HOLD!" I bellowed in the Royal Voice. "Back away, but keep your blades ready!"

"Oh holy stars!" The unicorn in front of me cried out. "What are you?"

"We," Captain Skyla said from the quarterdeck, flaring her wings as she floated the unconscious body of a unicorn down to the main deck, "are the worst choice of victims you ever made."

Ao, wrapped with two ineffectual bolas, floated down behind Skyla as if to emphasize the point. Lack of wings could be an advantage, evidently.

"Shall we parley?" Skyla asked. "Or shall I let Ms. Nightshade here off her leash?" She indicated me with a casual wave of her cutlass.

All the strange unicorns on deck flinched and looked at me in alarm. I went with it, baring my teeth and letting dark magic light my eyes.

"Let's talk!" a big, burly unicorn called out quickly, pushing to the fore of the crowd. "This is a mistake! We're not bandits, we're runaways… rebels! When you landed so near our camp, we thought you were bounty hunters."

Skyla turned her cutlass point down and rested a hoof on its pommel. "We're pirates. Big difference."

"Privateers," I hissed under my breath, but Skyla was already continuing.

"I'm going to assume it's the Empire of Earth that's put a bounty on your horns, and since we are here to disrupt, despoil, and demoralize that empire, we really ought to be allies."

The unicorn glanced at Ao and I again, then said, "That might be an option… Can we tend to our wounded?"

Skyla nodded graciously.

Fortunately, nobody on either side was too badly hurt, and when Skyla, Ao, and I lent our healing magic to the unicorns, they relaxed quite a bit. They still avoided Stalwart Lance and Cream Puff, but even Star and Daisy were still a little leery of the earth ponies, so that was a battle for another day.

It may seem like an odd way to make new friends,[6] but it happens more often than most ponies would suspect.

[6] You'll find it (and variations) listed as techniques 237a-237e on page 186 of The Compendium of Friendship, third edition.

It took the rebels a little while to open up to us, and I think it would have taken even longer if not for Cream Puff. After living rough in the woods for many months, a couple of lavish meals aboard Nebula, followed by truly superb desserts, convinced them that we would make excellent allies.

Skyla and I sat down with their leader, Sugarpine, and had a very productive little talk. The rebels had managed to survive on their own and had slowly developed some tactics to enable them to raid caravans transporting gems to and from the factory. Once they had acquired a few guns, they'd become a serious burr under the saddle of the imperials.

But Sugarpine was a bright fellow and he knew that, sooner or later, the Empire would manage to capture or kill most of his ponies. They had been constantly harried by airship and pegasus patrols, and were only safe deep in the dense woodlands. But they couldn't fight the Empire or even feed themselves while under cover of the trees, and it had become a game of cat-and-mouse. It was a game Sugarpine knew they would eventually lose.

He wanted to get his ponies away to safety, as far beyond the Empire's reach as possible. I told him that we could get him further away than he'd ever imagined, but didn't go into details. The information he provided us was invaluable, and soon we had come up with a plan that would, with a little luck, achieve both our goals.

= = =

"Yarr, me hearties! It's the Empire's treasure we'll be havin'! Har, har!"

"Do you think that maybe Star has gotten a little too enthusiastic about being a pirate?" Skyla asked me with a slightly worried frown on her face.

I looked up from where I was transcribing the notes from our conversation with Sugarpine into my personal logbook. "Oh, that happens occasionally. He'll calm down eventually."

We watched the big mule wave his cutlass around dramatically while regaling the rebels with stories of our adventures, embellished, of course. They were eating it up.

"Why do all pirates speak with a Trottingham accent?" Skyla muttered, perhaps to herself.

"Small island," I said distractedly, penning a note in the margin of the Blackwood Province map. "The only way off for non-pegasi was by boat or aircraft, so they built a great number of ships. Naturally, all the crews were from there, and the percentage that went pirate were therefore a very large proportion of the total. Counting Croup claimed that 78.3% of pirates had a Trottingham accent, but his sample size was certainly not big enough to be that precise." I paused for a second to recall the acerbic annotations I'd added to his book The Golden Age of Piracy, particularly at passages regarding a certain Captain Blackmane. "But there were a lot of them with the accent, and that's probably where the stereotype comes from."

Skyla gave me a look.

"What?"

She continued to look at me.

"What… Captain?" I amended.

"Has anypony ever called you a 'know-it-all', Auntie Twilight?"

"Not when I was captain, they didn't, Darling Niece," I said, dryly.

Star paused in his dramatics and lifted his eyepatch[7] to get a better look at the unusual sight of his captain and first mate laughing their heads off.

[7] No, there was nothing wrong with his eye. The whole crew had eyepatches to preserve their night vision (at least in one eye) when going into a brightly lit cabin from the deck on night watch. There were also a number of extras stowed in various places on board.

Laughter is a good way of relieving tension, and we needed it right then. In less than a day, we were going to raid a critical stronghold of the Empire of Earth.

= = =

Author's Note

The wonderful pony name Counting Croup is all Jodanis' fault.

Thanks to Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for pre-reading and editing!

12 Plan D

Chapter Twelve

Plan D

"Ring, ting-a-ling! Ting, ding-a-ling"

"Ding—dong, ding—dong!"

"Good, good!" I said. "Now the verse!"

"Canterlot town,
Come gather round,
Here we are found,
Hark to the sound…"

The Bells of Canterlot is one of my favorite Hearth's Warming carols. It's an old song and a complex round that takes quite a bit of practice to sing well. That is probably why it's far less popular than modern novelty songs such as Grandmare Got Trampled by a Yeti, which is a shame, because it's a very beautiful tune. And it had the perfect rhythm for my nefarious purposes.

The rebel unicorns picked it up fairly quickly, and soon we had three squads of five ponies each, ready to sing it on a moment's notice. Some could even tap out the odd dual tempos of 80 and 120 beats per minute with their front hooves, and I made those ponies the leaders of each group. I try to be prepared for any conceivable situation, but I'm afraid there were no metronomes in Nebula's stores.[1]

[1] I'm sure that if Pinkie Pie had been aboard, she would have been able to provide a few… from somewhere.
----------

"Ms. Nightshade!" Sirocco called out from Nebula's rail. "We're ready to shoot you now."

"I'll be right there!" I called back, setting a small box down on the grass before my singers. "Here are the suppressor rings. They'll look just fine unless somepony examines them close up. They're just plain rings, no cams, so don't tilt your heads too far down, or they might slide off your horns."

I left them to put on their phony suppressors and went to get earthified. Because of the anti-magic protections on my armor, I had to put it on after I was disguised, and that occupied my time while the rest of the team assembled.

Stalwart Lance led the first group of "captured" rebels with Swift Wing at his side. Together, they looked like a proper earth pony thug and his fanatic bodyguard. Skyla led the second bunch, and I brought up the rear with the third squad and our little supply cart. Our plan didn't call for us to undergo more than a cursory examination, so I had only added a light cape and a pair of blue wigs to make myself look a bit different from Skyla. The disguises would be dispelled if either of us used our wings or horns, but if that became necessary, we would already be well into Plan C.

I made a final check to make sure everyone else was ready and understood the plan(s), and we were on our way.

We took a slightly diagonal path to the road which hid us below gentle rolling hills for most of the way—about a league and a half. The last few furlongs were exposed, and we didn't want to be seen coming cross-country from the direction of the forest. Fortunately, I had a friend "up there."

I fumbled the dedicated raptor set[2] out of my saddlebags and pressed the call button three times with the edge of my hoof. There was a brief crackle of static and a tinny approximation of Ao's voice said, "No traffic on the road or in the sky. You are clear to proceed."

[2] RAPid amplitude-deviation interpretive oscillaTOR, or far-talker thingie, as Pinkie likes to call it. Another piece of hideously expensive gear that was often incredibly useful.

I pressed the call button twice to signal that I had received the message and waved Lance ahead. With nopony around, I could have answered her in the clear, but being slightly paranoid[3] has never done me any harm.

[3] Slightly paranoid.

We had traveled west about a league when we first caught sight of the top of Redkeep's tallest tower, and within another half hour we could clearly make out most of the fortification. Canterlot, it wasn't. Honestly, I could appreciate the functionality of its brutal military architecture, but I think Rarity might have actually thrown a hissy-fit at the sheer ugliness of the place. They could have painted it, at least! The red sandstone blocks were dull, rough cut, and stained in streaks and splotches.

The highest tower had a mooring mast above it and what appeared to be a circular gantry and movable boarding ramp attached. Sugarpine couldn't tell me anything about the interior of the fortress, but had detailed knowledge of the factory, which was our primary target.

"It does look like they've stacked a lot of crates on the loading platform," Sugarpine said, lowering his spyglass. "That probably means an airship will be here soon to pick them up."

"How long, do you think?" I asked him.

He shook his head. "I'm not sure. Big shipments almost always go out by road. When ships come by, it's usually just for their own supplies. But maybe..."

"Yes?"

"Look, this is wild speculation, but if they really did send the whole Western Fleet out to chase after your fictional pirate ships, they've got to be burning a lot of juice. A caravan would take over a week to get to the territories."

I nodded. "It makes sense. You said that your ponies haven't seen a ship or pegasus for about a week, which makes the timing work out right. They'll need a steady stream of charged crystals just to keep their engines turning."

"Which means a warship might be arriving exactly when we don't want it to! Maybe we ought to retreat and…"

"No!" I cut him off. "If we start over every time something unexpected happens, we'll never get anywhere. Adapt and adjust; an inflexible blade is the first to break."

"Ah… if you say so," Sugarpine said, doubtfully.

I contacted Ao with the raptor set and told her to pay particular attention to the sky to the west. Then I put some serious thought to a new scenario. I called a brief halt just before we began to descend into the low vale where the rows of barracks that housed the unicorns of Factory 5 lay, and spoke privately to Skyla.

"Okay, ponies!" she called out to the group. "Ms. Nightshade has a slight adjustment to our alternate plan. Please give her your attention."
I cleared my throat and said, "For simplicity's sake I will call this Plan B-2…"

= = =

"Governor Gray said you'd need them for the accelerated charging schedule," Lance said to the guard at the town gate. "There's gonna be another, larger bunch coming in a day or two."

"Everything's all messed up," the guard said with a frown. "First they switched over to double shifts and big gems, and now they want more? Do you really think there's a fleet of pirates attacking the Western Territories?"

"Don't know, don't care," Lance grumbled. "I just need to get this lot settled in and then go back for more."

The guard shrugged. "Well good luck with the overseer. He's spitting fire right now, and he's gonna hate another change to the setup."

"Orders are orders," Lance said, shrugging.

"Yeah," the guard snorted, waving us through the gate. "And explanations are for officers."

Plan A, step 1: complete!

The wall around the barracks and charging buildings was clearly designed to keep ponies in rather than out, and it wasn't a very imposing structure. A group of adventurous foals could have gotten over, under, or through it with a minimum of effort. A single bored guard at the gate also implied that the imperials didn't think a mass escape attempt was likely. The unicorns of the town weren't technically prisoners; they just didn't have any other options.

According to Sugarpine, there was a taller, more serious wall separating the charging buildings from the keep itself. Guards with weapons patrolled the parapets. Evidently, the imperials were much more worried about revolt than escape, and that made some sense. As Sugarpine had proved, runaways had little in the way of choices, and less in the way of hope, but a group of coordinated unicorns could do a lot of damage. Even though an attack from an individual was less than a bee sting, a determined group, concentrating their spells, could overwhelm a smaller force of earth ponies and pegasi. As Sugarpine's rebels had proved even before they had gotten their hooves on proper weapons.

And that's why the earth ponies had put most of their effort into defending against just that sort of coordinated attack. Thankfully, their threat-assessment had some culture-based blind spots.

The overseer and his two pegasus bodyguards were easy. They came to us as soon as we had gotten as far as the first assembly point between the barracks.

"What in the Holy Hoof is this?" he shouted at us, trotting into the square.

"You asked for more unicorns," Lance said, placidly. "Well, here they are."

"I asked…? What? Are you crazy?" He advanced on Lance, his bodyguards scowling and lifting their wings in aggressive gestures.

The first group of unicorns parted to make way for the overseer, looking away and down, like good, submissive ponies. The fact that they were also then partially surrounding the official and his pegasi didn't seem to occur to him.

"I've got the written confirmation right here," Lance said, reaching back as if to pull something out of his saddle bag with his right hoof. When the angry overseer looked down, all he saw was an empty hoof. What he didn't see was Lance's left foreleg swing around his neck, and he was in a vice-like headlock before he realized what was going on. Two love-taps from Lance's empty hoof put him out cold.

The pegasus guards immediately went for their weapons, but four well-thrown bolas wrapped them up almost instantly and they disappeared under a pile of not-very-gentle unicorns.

We dragged them into a barracks room that Sugarpine had assured us would be empty at that time of day and thoroughly trussed and gagged them.

Plan A, step 2: done!.

Then came the waiting. We wouldn't be able to substitute in the rebel unicorns until the next shift change, more than two hours away. Anypony moving around near the charging buildings before then would attract suspicious attention. The evening change-over would coincide with meal time, and as the whole town had to go to a central mess hall to be fed, we would have more than enough cover then to move around freely. And start the rumors circulating, of course.

It was a long two hours. It was a relief to finally hear the rumble of hooves approaching from the charging sheds, and our unicorns slipped out of the door to join the crowd. Since many of the rebels had escaped from the place, it was certain that some of them would be recognized, and Lance, Skyla, and I walked along with them to head off any problems. Swift Wing stood in front of the door to the room where our prisoners were, with instructions to deny entry to anypony.

The rebels got several odd looks, but only once did we have to interfere.

"S-Sugarpine?" a young mare called out timidly, just before our first group reached the charging sheds.

Lance stepped between them, doing his best landslide-about-to-happen impersonation, and rumbled, "Move along."

The mare shied away, and as Skyla and I went past her, I said quietly, but not too quietly. "It'll be great when the governor lets us use the mind-control spell on all of them, not just the runaways."

The mare's eyes went wide and she trotted over to a friend and began whispering urgently.

Plan A, step 3: check!

Our teams entered the largest of the charging sheds. Despite the name, it was a fair-sized warehouse-like structure and the interior was set up to accommodate three lines of five unicorns working together. Exactly the number we had provided. The rest of us stopped outside to put the cart in an inconspicuous place and to turn back the unicorns that were actually supposed to be working there. Most didn't question being given a shift off, but there was one young stallion who frowned and asked for an explanation.

We didn't answer him. Skyla gave him a nasty smirk and then turned to me and said, "Won't it be nice when they can't ask any more stupid questions?"

"Hope it's soon," I said back, not even looking at the stallion. "I like it when they don't talk." Every little bit of reinforcement helps. I made a second mental check mark next to step 3.

Lance, Skyla, and I positioned ourselves behind the building as the streets began to clear after the shift change—putting us out of sight of the guards on the wall of the keep. Sugarpine had been right; the wall was well-built and well-protected.

Some of the guards on the wall had portable guns, and there was a huge stationary one mounted directly over the gate. It was twice the size of the main guns aboard Ironhoof and had six barrels that seemed to be set to rotate around a central pivot. I had no idea exactly how it operated, and Sugarpine said he'd never seen it fired, but I knew it was something to avoid at all costs.

The situation was made worse by the layout of the town. Despite his flair for improvised leadership, Sugarpine had never had any formal education in military tactics, so he hadn't realized it himself, but all the main streets converged in a fan shape on the gate to the keep. That meant that the big gun had a clear field of fire straight down all the avenues of approach, which more significantly for our purposes, were also the avenues of escape.

We needed to do the job and get out without any fuss or anypony realizing what was wrong until it was too late. I reluctantly gave up on Plan B-2 altogether.

About five minutes into the shift, there came a triple knock on the wall behind us. I knocked back, two taps, a pause and then two more taps, and the ponies inside the shed began prying boards off the wall. They made an opening big enough to pass out several large gems.

"These are the ones with the least charge," Sugarpine said quietly. "Should we get more?"

"Yes, get at least another dozen of the biggest ones," I replied. "Keep any sized for an airship's guns or engines. Those are the ones we need to sabotage."

As more gems were passed out through the hole in the wall and stowed away in the cart, the soft, lovely notes of The Bells of Canterlot floated through the air. I smiled.

Plan A, steps 4a and 4b: well under way!

Long after sunset, about seven hours through the ten-hour night shift, my raptor set buzzed three times. I motioned Lance and Skyla to crowd close to me on either side to muffle the sound of the speaker and pressed the transmit button. "Nightshade here, over."

"Airship approaching fast from the west. Large and brightly lit, over."

If I had known how much worse things were going to go for us that night, I might not have cursed so emphatically. "Understood. Stay safe. Out."

"Here to pick up the gems on the loading platform?" Skyla asked.

"Must be," I replied. "And if they're in a rush to get loaded and get back to the west, they might work through the night…" I leaned into the hole in the wall and hissed for Sugarpine.

"What's up?" he asked, appearing at the hole a minute later.

"The airship's here. Do they ever use ponies from the town to help with the loading?"

"No, never. They don't ever let a unicorn into the keep."

I had started to relax when he added, "But they'll want to take as many gems as possible back, won't they? That'll mean they won't wait for the end of the shift to collect the fully charged ones. We took a lot of gems, and they might spot that."

"Celestia trample it! We need to get ready to pack up and run for it."

"Won't that make them suspicious?" Skyla asked.

"Plan C, with a little B-2 flavor," I said.

Skyla's expression clouded over. "Improvised massive property damage?"

"That's the one! I'm thinking that one of the booby-trapped gems, dropped onto the loading platform, might detonate with enough force to crack and explode some of the others. If we're lucky, it might set some of the crates on fire. Aside from denying good gems to the fleet, that ought to provide cover for the rest of us to escape and provide a plausible reason for unicorns panicking and abandoning their posts."

She nodded. "Sounds good. Sugarpine, get your ponies off the line, and get them back here. We'll enlarge this hole so that you won't have to leave the building where the guards on the wall can see you."

We were helping the unicorns out of the shed, and Skyla was carefully taking one of the bad gems from Sugarpine, when the little snag in our plans turned into a full-out disaster.

Swift Wing suddenly dropped down out of the night sky into our midst. "Captain! They're coming!" he hissed urgently.

"The airship?" Skyla said. "We know—"

"No! Not a ship! The caravan! It's real!" He took a few deep gulps of air before going on. "The governor really did send more unicorns for the factory! They just got here and woke up the town looking for the overseer. There are a bunch of guards with them, and they busted into the room where I was guarding the prisoners—"

"You there!" a voice shouted from the air above us. "What are you—"

The bola hit her pretty far back, but it was a good enough shot to trap one of her wingtips and she squawked in surprise before crashing onto the roof above with a thump.

"Who's there? What's going on?" shouted a guard from the wall.

"Roadapples, roadapples, festering roadapples," I swore under my breath, as I risked a peek around the corner to see if the main road was clear.

Aside from the four huge, armed earth ponies rushing towards us, it was clear.

"I'll cause a scene here!" I said to Skyla, while hurriedly pulling off my mane and tail wigs. "That'll draw the attention of the gun crew, and you and the team can escape down one of the smaller streets."

"You can't!" Skyla protested. "They'll shoot you!"

"There are guards coming up the street. They won't fire in close quarters for fear of hitting their own. As soon as you're away, I'll fly after you."

She almost agreed. Almost, but then she scowled and said, "I've got wings too! We'll face them together."

"But—"

"That's an order, Ms. Nighshade," she said.

"Roadapples… Captain," I snarled.

She smiled at me and drew her cutlass. "Meet us back at the ship, Sugarpine. Ms. Nightshade, on three. One..."

We both jumped on one, of course. I flung off my cloak and drew my blades as I leaped into the street, flaring my wings and screaming, "DIE!" with all the force of the Royal Voice.

The earth ponies skittered around in surprise as our disguises melted away, colliding with each other but managing to maintain their hooves. Their leader, a massive brown stallion with a livid scar across his muzzle recovered first, clearly noting our horns and floating weapons.

I expected some sort of challenge, but he called out to the gun crew on the wall. "Shoot these things!" he shouted. "We'll finish them off!"

That wasn't good. Was he stupid? We were close enough that—

From behind me I heard the crisp order of the gun crew leader. "Suppressing fire, barrel three!"

There was a loud metallic ratcheting, a sharp clank, and then another voice cried out, "Barrel three, ready!"

The guard ponies faced us with smug grins and ready blades. Well, even a foal would have known what was next.

I leaped sideways, slamming my shoulder into Skyla's and knocking her behind the cover of the charging shed.

"Fire!"

I didn't quite make it, and the shot hit me square in the back.

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks to Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for pre-reading and editing!

13 Surprises, Pleasant and Otherwise

Chapter Thirteen

Surprises, Pleasant and Otherwise

It was like getting hit with a huge, soaking-wet comforter at high speed. Unpleasant, but immensely less unpleasant than it might have been. The shot still slammed me face-first into the pavement and knocked me silly. The energy sort of wrapped itself around me, but it didn't vaporize me.

Which was a bit of a surprise, given the sheer size of the gun. Oh, my aeronaut armor was of excellent quality, and it had some hefty anti-magic protections, but it didn't cover my legs, wings, or head and wasn't made to stand up against siege-level weaponry.

I heard Skyla scream something unintelligible and I tried to call out to her, but my head swam and it took me several seconds to even think about getting to my hooves.

When I managed to get my head up and take a look around, Skyla was gone, but the thugs were still there. Oddly, they all looked like they'd gotten a couple of taps on the head with a sledgehammer, too.

"Hnnnn… Wow, that was a good one!" The pony with the big axe said through gritted teeth.

The pony with the scarred face hefted his iron-bound cudgel in his forehooves and blinked his eyes rapidly. "Where's the pretty one?"

"Kill this one first," the gray stallion with the saber said, pointing his sword at me.

I went for my blades… and then everything made sense. My magic backed up with an unpleasant pulse, and my short blades remained inert, lying on the street underneath Gray's hooves. Suppressing fire, the pony on the gun had said.

Scarface chucked, a low nasty sound. "Figured it out have you? That ugly screw on your head is useless now. Go on, try your freaky wings, I love that stunned expression on your stupid face!"

I wasn't about to entertain them by flapping uselessly around, trying to get airborne on magically deadened wings, but using them seemed like a very good idea. At four-to-one odds, I couldn't afford to play nice.

I took a half-step forward and flicked the edge of my right wing into Gray's face. I wasn't wearing wing blades, but a stiff feather viciously whipped across an eye can do a lot of damage.

Gray screamed and shied back far enough for me to scoop up my short swords with the tips of my primaries. I flipped them into a forward grip in the first joint of each wing. It was the weakest way to hold a weapon, but it gave me more speed and reach, which was exactly what I needed when outnumbered so heavily.

The best way to fight four ponies at once is to fight them one at a time. I feinted at the one with the longsword to make him hesitate, and then threw myself sideways at the one on the far end of their ragged line. The one with the huge axe.

Axepony reacted as I had hoped, by trying to split me in half with a powerful downward chop. There's no way I could parry it with my light blades, particularly when held with my wings, but all I needed to do was deflect it a little bit while continuing to slide to the left. Doing so put me on the far left of their group, and it was a simple matter to sidestep around to Axepony's right side.

At that point, he was the only pony that could reach me, and I had a couple of seconds of one-on-one time with him.

That was all I needed. His back-bladed return shot was easy to dodge, and before he could stop his heavy axe and start it back in my direction again, I had hit him five times.

He went down with a groan, and his axe clattered to the street. I kept him on my right flank, hoping Longsword would be stupid enough to try to lean across the body to strike at me. No luck there; he covered my right while Scarface circled around to cut me off on my left.

I turned and stepped left, even though I knew I barely had room to get around Scarface. His cudgel swung up, in much the same manner as Axepony's wind-up, but I could tell from the set of his shoulders he expected me to try to get past him, and was prepared to turn his downward blow into a horizontal swing as soon as I stepped sideways.

So I went straight in. The big guys never expect it. I used all the strength of my hind legs to leap forward, and scooped air with my wings as I threw them back to my sides. Scarface swung, but by the time his cudgel had passed the vertical, I was already between his forelegs, my horn rising up under his jaw.

My head slammed to a stop with a sudden jolt, and the cudgel spun out of his grip, painfully grazing my left knee. His lifeless hooves bounced off my shoulders, falling away to either side as I sidestepped and jerked my head to free my "useless" horn.

I spun and back-stepped as it came free, slashing with my short swords in the direction I figured Longsword would have moved to. But he was still standing on the other side of Axepony's body, gaping at the spasming Scarface. Gray was trying to get around to my rear, but was still a couple of lengths away.

I wasn't going to turn down a gift like that. I charged Longsword, bringing my blades up in a crossguard that caught his sword between them near the hilts. He tried to get out of the bind, but he'd obviously had no experience fighting twin blades, and all his instinctive reaction did was allow me to free one sword while maintaining control of his weapon with the other. My freed blade rose in a deep cut through his neck, and he fell.

That left Gray. When I turned to face him, he was backing away from me, holding a hoof to his dripping face, and attempting to keep up a decent guard position with his saber.

I twirled my blades in a fancy pattern that would have had Maestro Flèche scowling in disapproval. "An eyepatch can be kinda sexy," I said, jabbing the point of my left blade in the direction of Gray's remaining eye, making him flinch. "A white cane? Not so much. I'll let you go if—"

There was a flash and a blur, and Gray's head tumbled to the pavement. It was followed by the rest of him a moment later.

"Your pardon, Majesty," Ao said, flicking blood off of her long curved blade. "Did this one interrupt?"

I sighed. I had hoped he would turn tail and run so I wouldn't have to kill him. I wasn't going to criticize Ao directly, but I had to say something. "That was a really clever line. I was hoping he'd remember it."

Ao looked down at the head, considering. "The chances of that are slim, Majesty."

I let it go. "Have you seen Skyla?" I asked.

"She is abusing the few remaining guards on the wall."

"Can you get me up there? My wings won't work."

It was a struggle, but she managed to get me high enough to hook my forelegs over the edge of the parapet, and I hauled myself up the rest of the way.

Skyla was hacking away at a prone guard that was well past caring, screaming, "You! Hurt! My! Auntie!"

"Captain!" I called out to her. "It's okay! I'm fine!"

She looked up, and I flinched. "It's me! Auntie Twilight!" I hurriedly called out to her, and was vastly relieved when the madness drained out of her face.

"Are you hurt? Where—" She dropped her cutlass and ran to embrace me.

"No, no; none of it is mine." I returned the hug briefly and then pushed her away. "We need to get out of here fast, but I want to take a quick look at that gun."

Skyla nodded and wiped at her tear-stained face.

The gun had six rotating barrels that shot different spells. One created a pure blast of deadly energy, of course, but another projected an anti-magic seal, much like the ones used in Equestria for large sporting events. Only much, much more potent. At a rough guess, I wouldn't be able to fly or use magic for nearly a day.

"Curse it!" I growled. "I'm going to have to hoof it out of here. Well, maybe we can get one more gem out of it." I turned the levers that secured the housing at the gun's base and swung up the cover. The crystal that powered the weapon has huge. It was also familiar.

"Ao, check me on this, but does this look like one of the castings we made?"

She peered into the gun housing. "It does indeed!"

I automatically tried to reach out with my magic and then cursed again. "Ao, there's a hank of cord in my left saddlebag, can you get that gem out of the gun and lash it across my back?"

She gave me a nod that was almost a bow and went to work. I turned to Skyla. "Do you still have the booby-trapped crystal?"

She blinked at me for a moment and then turned to rummage through her own bags. "Yes, here it is!"

"Good! Do you still feel up to the little sabotage job?"

"What? Oh the loading platform, yes... Yes, that's a good idea."

I put a hoof to her cheek. "Flurry, are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I just… I'm fine. Really."

I lowered my hoof, leaving a bloody print behind. "Okay then, Captain. I would respectfully suggest that you get a good bit of altitude, drop that gem on the cargo on the platform, and then wait for us a league or so outside the town. Ao and I will join you as soon as possible."

"I… I don't want to leave you."

"Won't be for long… Captain."

She started and blinked at the word. "Yes… yes… half a league down the road. You have fifteen minutes, and then I'm coming back for you, Ms. Nightshade. Understood?"

"Aye, aye, Captain!"

Skyla helped lower me to the street and then she soared up into the night. I galloped down the street, Ao flying above me. The frightened and curious unicorns that had come out of the barracks to see what was going on were only too eager to get out of our way.

Not so the overseer's pegasus thugs. The guards must have freed them, because they swooped down on us before we had made it even halfway to the gate. They screamed, "Demon!" and "Monster!" at us—or more likely, me—as they circled, looking for an opening. When they quickly discovered that I couldn't fly, they made the mistake of rushing Ao. She cut one out of the air almost instantly, and barely missed getting the other. The remaining pegasus went back to circling, darting in and out, slashing and feinting with her wingblades and careful to keep out of Ao's reach.

But not out of my reach. I scooped a dropstone out of my saddle bag, saying loudly, "So, it has come to this."

Ao heard the phrase and curled herself back away from the pegasus. The pegasus realized that something was wrong an instant before the slung stone caught her in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her, and her out of the air.

I grinned at Ao. "Sometimes, throwing rocks works."

She shook her head, chuckled, and opened her mouth to reply.

And that's when the keep blew up.

The massive concussion shattered windows, blasted roof tiles from the barracks, and knocked everypony in the streets off their hooves. Ao and I scrambled upright and gaped at the huge fireball rising over what little remained of the keep.

"I… I think my estimate was a teeny bit off," I said, horrified. I had intended a distraction, not wholesale devastation.

"Even Your Majesty's mistakes are awe-inspiring," Ao said.

"Aww… You say the sweetest things!"

It may seem strange to ponies that have never been through such extreme and terrifying circumstances that a natural reaction to shock and horror is humor. But I can assure my readers that joking and laughter is often a good defense against such things. "Giggling at the ghosties" is an emotional release that can keep a pony functioning rather than breaking down.

So… after some tearful laughter, only slightly tinged with hysteria, we turned and galloped for the gate. Quite a lot of the townsfolk joined us. The guard took one look at the huge herd of ponies rushing down on him and decided that running was a great idea.

Most of the unicorns scattered across the countryside and had no inclination to be anywhere near Ao and I, so we were alone when Skyla met us a half league down the road. Her mane and feathers were slightly singed, and she wore a stern expression. "Some of the gems might explode, I think you said?"

"'Some' covers up to 99%, so, technically, my prediction was only a point off."

"Ha," Skyla said. "Ha."

Ao and I absolutely collapsed laughing, and after a heroically maintained moment of pouty-face, Skyla joined us. Ah, sweet release! We'd have time to be appalled later.

= = =

There was no way I could have made it back to the camp before dawn, especially with my injured knee starting to stiffen up, so we spent the few remaining hours of the night in a small thicket of scrub trees, covered by our cloaks. Ao and Skyla used their healing magic on us, and we got a bit of sleep.

The morning light revealed the smoking ruins of the keep and the imperial airship anchored a few furlongs upwind of it. A dozen or so pegasi flew overhead, scouting the countryside for escaped unicorns, so we kept under cover and watched.

It was difficult to tell what was going on from a distance, but when ponies began to pull carts out of the town to where the airship was anchored, I had a hard time repressing a shout of triumph. "They're loading up the booby-trapped gems from the shed!"

Ao grinned at me. "If we are fortunate, they will be distributed to the whole fleet before the imperials find out what we have done to them."

Skyla shook her head. "I still don't see how a song can turn those crystals into explosives."

I shrugged. "Any highly-charged gem will detonate if it's smashed. The trick is to get an undamaged one to do it. It's not the song that creates the flaw, it's the pattern that's introduced into the unicorn's magic by the rhythm of the song they're singing. Instead of a controlled release of energy, when the magical load on the gem reaches the altered pattern in its matrix, all of the mana is released in one big burst, just as if the crystal had been shattered." A memory suddenly popped into my head that provided the perfect analogy. "Do you remember those popsicle stick 'bombs' that Rainbow Dash taught you to make when you were a foal?"

Skyla frowned for a second and then said, "Oh, right! You bend them and weave them together in a certain way and then, when you drop them or pull out a stick the others all fly apart! It's really that easy?"

"Well, the pattern has to be exact to create that reaction. Most rhythmic voids would just mess up or stop the mana flow." I couldn't help grinning at my own cleverness. "Fortunately, The Bells of Canterlot has an overlapping four-six beat that is ideal for inducing the right thaumic orientation and spacing."

Skyla thought about it for a minute before her face lit up. "We can teach it to more unicorns! As many unicorns as possible... and they can teach others until every unicorn everywhere knows the song! The imperials won't be able to use any gems for fear of them being bad ones!" She turned to me smiling in a rather disturbing way. "We can topple the Empire!"

Oh, Sun and Moon, I'd created a monster! "No, no!" I said. "You don't understand! Doing that wouldn't just destroy the Empire of Earth, it would devastate their whole civilization! Our little scheme to cripple the Western Fleet is one thing, but—"

"If their civilization is based on slavery and oppression, maybe it deserves to fall!" she replied, hotly.

"It's not just the rulers who would be affected." I explained. "All the oppressed people would suffer a host of—"

"At least they wouldn't be slaves any more!" Skyla mantled her wings in anger.

"Might this one make a slight observation?" Ao asked, placidly.

Uh-oh.

Skyla looked at her warily, but nodded.

"If the honored captain wishes to attract the notice of the enemy patrols, she will have to shout somewhat louder."

Skyla scowled at the both of us. "This isn't over," she said in a low hiss.

"I promise we will talk it over when we're safely back aboard Nebula," I said, shifting to make myself more comfortable. "There are... options."

= = =

We slept as much as we could while the sun was up and didn't leave the thicket until full dark. My knee had stiffened badly despite the healing I had received,[1] and I could only hobble along at a walking pace. Skyla and Ao took turns carrying the big gem.

[1] That's usually the way of it. Wounds that seem trivial in combat often turn out to be more serious once one's adrenaline has worn off.

I told both Skyla and Ao that one of them should fly ahead to let the crew know we were okay, but neither of them would leave me.

We didn't pause for rest until we came to a small creek that flowed under a low stone bridge. The water was cold, shallow, and a poor substitute for a proper bath, but we were filthy. It took me at least a dozen times dipping and shaking my wings to get all the feathers unstuck from each other and clean enough to preen, but I felt much better afterwards.

We had to leave the road and hide about an hour later as a large troop of armored earth ponies came trotting toward Redkeep. Lying on the cold ground, still wet, made my knee ache and practically freeze up, so we wasted more time while Ao and Skyla cast a couple more spells on me.

The treatment made my knee feel much better, and I was starting to regain the use of my magic by the time we arrived at the rebel camp, about an hour before dawn. I had expected that a sentry would call out to us as we approached, but we reached the area of the camp unchallenged. It took my exhaustion-fuddled brain a few seconds to realize the implications of that, and a few more to gallop to the big clearing.

Nebula was gone.

= = =

Author's Note

Mere thanks are not enough to reward Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for the amazing work they do on this story. Seriously, they each bring their own remarkable wit, cleverness, and perspicacity to this thing that makes it ever so much better than it would be otherwise!

Presented for your enjoyment, a nuclear-level popsicle stick bomb:

14 Following

Chapter Fourteen

Following

I spotted the discarded cargo net and branches that had disguised the top of Nebula's envelope and went to get a closer look.

"Luna's fury!" I growled, as my forehooves sank into the sodden ground of the meadow.

Skyla came up behind me, looking down. "Mud?"

"They must have dumped ballast," I said, pulling my hooves free with a squelching sound. "Most of it, apparently."

"Ms. Nightshade," Ao said quietly from behind us. "This one has examined the area of the camp. There are no signs of a struggle. This was an orderly departure."

"Why would our crew leave us behind?" Skyla muttered. "Without you to design the connecting mechanism, they can't hope to open the portal, even if they have enough crystals to power it."

I scooped my small compass out of my saddlebags and touched the hidden spot that activated the locating spell. A short glowing arrow formed above the case. It was angled sharply upward. "Yes, they've gone for altitude, but… east northeast. That's directly away from the Western Territory."

Click, click, click, went the pieces of the puzzle. The timing, the direction they'd gone, the altitude, it all added up.

"Tambelon take it!" I hissed.

Skyla and Ao looked at me expectantly.

"Revenge," I said. "They must have seen Redkeep go up, even from here. Because we're a day late getting back, they think we're dead and they're going to attack the provincial capital."

Skyla frowned. "Are you certain?"

"They've got a load of crystals that they can't use for anything much but crude explosives, they're headed in the direction of Grayhold and they're going for altitude that the imperial ships can't match. It's the most likely scenario." I stretched out my wings and gave them a trial flap. Not back to 100%, but they'd have to do. "We've got to stop them."

Skyla snorted. "You want to save some of the monsters that help run this nightmare government? Really?"

"Wh—" I stared at Skyla. "I want to save our chances of getting home! The imperials might think Redkeep was an accident, but a direct airship attack on the capital... This kind of government thrives on direct military action! Bombing them will only strengthen them!"

"That doesn't make any sense, and I'm not afraid of—"

"It's not a matter of fear!" I stalked toward her, trying to resist the urge to get my point across with sheer volume. "It's a city, not a military installation like the keep! Are dead foals something you want?"

"I… I didn't think—"

"We don't have time to argue if we're going to have a hope of catching up to them," I said, gritting my teeth and shaking my head. "Trust me on this, please!"

Skyla grimaced and nodded, then she floated the big crystal over to her back and lashed it to her harness. "I'll take this. I'm the strongest flyer."

We took to the air, and climbed as quickly as we were able. The sky was rapidly lightening, and I hoped that any pegasi would be looking toward the ground, intent on rounding up the unicorn runaways.

We got into thinner and colder air fairly quickly, but the indicator arrow was still tilted at an unfortunate angle. It wasn't long afterwards that I began to strain and breathe heavily, yet Nebula remained stubbornly out of sight. I didn't want to waste energy getting out my spyglass, so I just clutched the compass and flapped grimly onward and upward.

By the time we sighted the ship, all three of us were nearing exhaustion. Ao's weaker, wingless flight magic, Skyla's burden, and my own not-fully-recovered magic had turned an extremely difficult flight into a nearly impossible one, with Nebula still several hundred lengths above us.

It was a good thing that the Nebulas spotted us, or I don't think we would have made it. The engines spun down to let us catch up, and when it became obvious to the crew that we were struggling to gain altitude, they threw a long net over the side. Swift Wing and Sirocco flew down to boost us up to where we could get hold of the rope mesh. It was far from dignified to be hauled aboard like a sack of potatoes, but at that point, I couldn't have cared less about my dignity.

"I can't believe you're alive!" Filigree said as he helped untangle us from the netting.

"Aren't we too heavy to be ghosts?" Skyla replied a bit testily. Perhaps she was just a teeny bit put out by having been dropped on deck like a piece of cargo.

I got to my hooves. "We're fine, Filigree, thank you. Let's call off the plan to bomb the city, okay?"

He blinked in surprise. "How do you know about that?" He looked over at Skyla for confirmation.

"Cancel it!" she said, through gritted teeth.

Filigree nodded. "It would have taken us another half-day to get all the gems fully charged anyway."

"Please tell me you haven't ruined them with the flawed rhythm yet!" I said.

"Uh… only one small one," he said. "We wanted to cram as much charge as we could into them before setting them to detonate."

It was nice to get a little good news for a change.

Sugarpine pushed his way to the front of the crowd surrounding us. "Glad you're alive," he said. "What's the plan, now?"

"We will have to discuss that," Skyla said, giving him a very hard glare. "But it certainly won't involve killing civilians!"

"Back to the original would be best," I said, as casually as possible. "The explosion at Redkeep will appear to be an accident or simple sabotage, and as long as Nebula hasn't been spotted—"

Sugarpine coughed discreetly. "Well, about that…"

Now the bad news, it seemed.

Swift Wing stepped forward. "A pegasus patrol saw us about an hour ago. They came in for a better look, and we… Well, Sugarpine's ponies shot all but two of them."

"It will only take one to put the whole province on alert," I said. "We should prepare for—"

"Oh, it's alright, ma'am," Swift went on. "Neither of them got away. We captured one, and the other… uh… surrendered, I guess."

I flicked my ears in puzzlement. "Why the uncertainty? Either he surrendered or he didn't."

"She, Ms. Nightshade," Swift said, still behaving like a pony who had something embarrassing to hide. "And she said she wanted to surrender to you specifically." He cleared his throat. "Asked for you by name, actually. Your other name."

"What?"

I hadn't even used the Royal Voice, but Swift winced and took a step back anyway. "I think maybe you should talk to her… alone. She's tied up in the sail locker. Didn't put her with the other one, 'cause they were trying to bite each other's faces off."

I wanted to rush down below decks right away, but there were too many other things that needed attention. I gave myself exactly three deep, slow breaths to bleed away as much tension as possible and then began dealing with the more immediate situation.

Nebula couldn't descend without venting precious lift gas, and since the reserve cylinders were nearly empty and she'd dropped all of her ballast, doing so would be a dangerous (and irreversible) maneuver.

"That must be the Swift River below us," I said to Skyla as we stood near the bowsprit with our spyglasses. "If we head into the mountains north of Grayhold, we may be able to anchor in a high valley… get some water or melt snow to fill the tanks." I took another look through my glass. "Seems to be some feral clouds up there. Might make for decent cover."

"What about lift gas?" she asked, chewing lightly at her lower lip.

"If we can find the right minerals, I can design another waveguide to power the spell to extract gas for us. We've got enough unicorns aboard for plenty of recharge capability, at least."

"That will take some time," she said, considering. "If we're spotted before Nebula's ready, we'll be nearly helpless."

"The chances of that are very slim," I reassured her. "Pegasi will have trouble flying that high, and the air currents in the mountains are so dangerous that no airship captain would…" I trailed off, realizing that my reassurance was turning out to be not all that reassuring.

Skyla looked over at me with a crooked grin. "No sane airship captain would try flying through those peaks, right?"

I sighed. "No captain with any other options, at least."

Skyla nodded. "I wish we could just attack an imperial ship and take their supplies, but I suppose your insane plan is the least risky course of action." She paused for a moment, carefully collapsing and putting her spyglass away, then said, "And it will give us plenty of time to discuss exactly how we are going to cut the head off this vile empire."

"That might be a very apt analogy, if we consider the Empire of Earth as a hydra. Cut off one head and you'll get two in its place." I held up a hoof to stop Skyla's angry reply. "To kill a hydra, you have to sneak under its belly and stab for the heart. Tough scales there, but it's just a matter of finding the right spot."

"And what spot is that?" she asked me, dubiously.

"Well, there's certainly a chink in their armor," I replied. "Let's go talk to the pegasi, shall we?"

Skyla gave the orders to get Nebula headed on the right course, made sure the crew and passengers knew what to do,[1] and then we went to talk to our captives.

[1] And, more importantly, what not to do.

We visited the pegasus who had been captured first. I let Skyla precede me into the hold so that I could watch the pony's reaction when he caught sight of her. It was a pretty standard sequence of surprise, momentary disbelief, shock, and then violent threats to cover up bone-deep terror.

Then I stepped out of the shadows.

"You're real," he moaned, going absolutely rigid in his bonds.

I didn't put on the monster act for him; he was terrified enough already, and I hoped to get some sense out of him. "Do you know who I am? Do you know my name?"

"Oh yes, I know you," he said. "I never really believed, but now I do. You are the Thief of Honor, the Replenisher of Graves, the Separator of Friends, the Terminator of Delights, the End of All That is—"

"But what is my name?" I insisted, cutting off the rather dreary CV that showed no sign of ending soon.

"Only that crazy blacklip is foolish enough to speak your name out loud!" he said, shivering so violently that his hooves rattled on the deck.

"Black Lip? Is that your comrade's name?" It couldn't hurt to ask.

He laughed mirthlessly. "Loose Leaf… I should have killed her!"

"Why? Help me understand."

But the pegasus had shut down. He squeezed his eyes shut and began reciting in a low shaking voice. "My honor is the honor of my flock; our hearts beat as one and our sacred duty binds us. My honor is the honor of my flock; our hearts beat as one and our sacred duty binds us. My honor is the honor of my flock…"

"We won't harm you—" Skyla began, but I shook my head and motioned her toward the companionway.

"Best to leave him alone for now," I said. "He won't believe anything we say."

We went forward to the sail locker and I knocked on the bulkhead before entering, calling out through the thin partition, "I hear you've been asking for me?"

There came a strained laugh from the other side. "Not unless you're Twilight Sparkle, I haven't."

Skyla and I exchanged glances.

"And where did you hear that name?" I asked, still keeping hidden.

"I wouldn't be much of a blacklip if I didn't know the true name of the Thief of Honor, would I?"

"Twilight Sparkle. Well, that's interesting. Do you know her cutie mark as well?"

"Of course I…" She stopped and kicked a hoof against the bulkhead. "Go shove your horn through a tree, you miserable screwhead! Stop taunting me!"

I almost snapped back, but held myself in check and said quietly, "Now is that any way to talk to the Replenisher of Graves?"

There was a long silence, and then she asked, "Who are you?"

"You named me only moments ago."

"Show me! Show yourself!" Oddly, her voice didn't sound fearful. If anything, she seemed… eager.

Time for the big entrance. I stepped through the doorway and flared my wings, grinning. I made sure to step slightly to one side so that the mare could have a good view of my cutie mark. "Hello, little one," I said, in my warmest, friendliest tone of voice.

Same sequence of reactions as before, except it ended differently. After looking back and forth between my cutie mark and my face for at least a half-dozen times, the pegasus smiled so broadly I thought her cheeks might cramp up.

"You're real!" she said in a voice of breathless wonder.

Then her eyes rolled up in her head and she fainted dead away.

Skyla gave me a wary, sidelong look. "Does this sort of thing happen to you a lot?"

"More often than it ought to," I admitted.[2] I pulled back one of the pegasus's eyelids and took a look at her pupil. "She'll be okay in a minute. There'll be some convulsions when her blood pressure comes back up. I'll keep her from banging her head against the deck."

[2] The most extreme reaction I ever induced when suddenly recognised (as Captain Blackmane), was from a hulking stallion who had tried to slit his own throat with a belaying pin. It's odd how a reputation can be so powerful.

"She's awfully skinny for a warrior," Skyla observed. "They tend not to faint when excited, either."

I nodded toward the mare's cutie mark, which was a green quill pen over a wisp of white cloud. On closer examination, I saw that the pen was made from a leaf, not a feather. I turned her head in my magic to get a look at her lips. Sure enough, they were somewhat ink-stained.

"She must be a scribe or chronicler," I said. "Probably only up here on patrol because of the all-hooves-on-deck situation. We may be in luck."

The mare started trembling, and I took a firmer grasp on her with my magic as her convulsions became more violent. After a moment she settled down, and she moaned and her eyelids began to flutter.

"It's all right," I told her. "You just fainted. Take a few deep breaths. Don't try to sit up yet."

When she finally looked up, a big, stupid grin stretched across her face. "You're real," she said.

I nodded. "I know. Don't forget to breathe."

She got a very disturbing look in her eyes and tried to reach out and touch my hooves. We had wisely refrained from untying her.

"I will serve you, oh dark one! I will obey you unto death!" she gasped out, still trying to touch me. "I will worship you!"

It was then that Ao floated into the room, carrying in her magic a tray of food and water for the prisoner. She raised an eyebrow and turned to me. "This one is gratified that at least one pony aboard has the correct attitude toward Your Majesty," she said, her expression the furthest from a sarcastic smirk as she could manage.

The pegasus fainted again.

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks to Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for pre-reading and editing!

Belaying pins:

Yes, he was that desperate.

15 Slow-burn Serendipity

Chapter Fifteen

Slow-burn Serendipity

We burned through almost all of the energy in the engine crystals finding a suitable valley high in the mountains and powering down into it. Then the crew struggled with the ground anchors and a dozen heavy cables to keep Nebula held down and steady against the gusty winds.

Skyla, Ao, and I ran ourselves ragged keeping everything going smoothly and lending a hoof wherever it was needed. The unicorn rebels were actually eager to be doing something productive, but they were the greenest lubbers imaginable[1] and needed constant supervision.

[1] I do not mean that in a pejorative way. It is simply the most efficient way to convey that they had absolutely no experience with airships, and any action they took on their own initiative was more likely to hinder than to help.

Cream Puff labored heroically in the galley, producing lots of hot mulled apple juice and savory oat pasties to keep the rest of the crew warm and fed.

Skyla found me below decks, unshipping one of the bilge pumps and forced the hot meal on me.

"Have you eaten?" I asked her.

She held up another pasty. "These are the last two; I'll join you."

We inhaled the food, gulped the drinks, and went back to work. Lance and Swift had built a little rock dam to make a decent sized pool from the rill of glacial melt-water that trickled down the stoney valley. I set up the pump next to it and connected the long hose that stretched back up to Nebula's hull.

"When the pool fills, we'll pump the water into the ballast tanks," I told them, eyeing the basin and making a rough estimate of its capacity and the rate of inflow. "We'll have to repeat that a dozen times or more to fill the tanks, so have Filigree check the pool every couple of hours and get some of the unicorns to operate the pump when it's full. Nebula will ride easier with some weight in her bottom."

"I'd be happy to do that, Ms. Nightshade," Lance said.

"Thank you, but I have another job for you and Swift Wing," I replied. "You guys know the basic concept of good guard/bad guard, right?"

= = =

While the interrogation of Loose Leaf started, Skyla and I settled in on the stern gallery with a nice pot of tea and a plate of biscuits for a preliminary brainstorming session. We both agreed that it would be wonderful if we could transform the Empire of Earth into a peaceful and prosperous monarchy like Equestria or the Crystal Empire. The only other point we agreed upon was that such an outcome was a ridiculous fantasy.

"A widespread program of sabotaging the gems won't work," I told Skyla. "The earth ponies will just institute a tighter system of supervision and tracking, and any unicorn that produced a flawed gem would be severely punished if not killed outright."

"I suppose so," she grumbled. "So what do we do? And, I'm not going to take 'nothing' for an answer! I know you've seen countless worlds that are worse, and there's no way we can save them all, but we are here right now!"

Well, at least it proved that she'd been listening to my counter-arguments.

"We will do something, even if it's just taking the rebels back to Equestria with us when we return."

"And leave behind thousands of others in slavery? That's just not—"

I held up a hoof. "Let's get some more information first. There are a lot of things we can do to help the unicorns to help themselves, at the very least."

"What about the pegasi? What's going on there?"

"We should know a lot more in a few days. Loose Leaf is a goldmine of information if we can get it out of her."

Skyla frowned at me "Why don't you just ask her? She would tell you whatever you wanted her to. She worships you!" And then under her breath, "For some bizarre reason."

"That's the problem," I replied. "A pony that worships me—or is utterly terrified of me, for that matter—might tell me anything they think would please me whether it was true or not. By taking this slowly, and giving Loose Leaf a friend to unburden herself to, we should get some decent information eventually. I can then crosscheck whatever she tells me against our other sources."

"Eventually," Skyla said sourly. "What do we do in the meantime?"

We were interrupted by Good Guard Swift Wing, who came down the ladder from the chart room and through the cabin, shaking his head. "That mare is crazier than a bag of sparrows!"[2]

[2] A traditional pegasus idiom that I've never been able to make much sense of.

"I assume Bad Guard Stalwart Lance is with her now?" I asked.

"Yes, Ms. Nightshade," he said, nodding. "I'll go 'rescue' her from him in a half hour."

"Did you find out anything?" Skyla asked him.

"I learned that pegasi are lick-spittle curs and witless tools of the oppressors," he said with wry smile.

"Present company excepted, I hope?"

That made him chuckle. "Of course, Captain! I also learned that there are thousands of others like her waiting to cast off their chains and flock to the side of the—" He paused to clear his throat. "Dark Mistress. I'm pretty sure she is wildly exaggerating, but I'd bet there are at least a few other crazy cultists among the pegasi." He glanced in my direction. "Uh… no offense, Ms. Nightshade!"

"None taken," I said, and forbore to mention that I had quite a few enthusiastic supporters who were perfectly sane. "Any mention of me in particular?"

He nodded vigorously. "Oh yeah. It seems there's this sort of prophecy—"

I groaned. "Oh blistering sun, not a prophecy!"[3]

[3] Anypony who thinks that prophecies are intriguing, mysterious, or in any way helpful, has never been the subject of one. See my annotated and expanded edition of Predictions and Prophecies for details.

"I'm afraid so, ma'am. Loose Leaf has it memorized." He plucked a folded piece of paper from under the coverts of his left wing. "Here; I wrote it down."

And Twilight Sparkle said unto the pegasi,
"I will be back to check on you.
And if you haven't straightened out,
I will tear your wings out by the roots,
And beat you senseless with them."
And so shall it be when the ponies of the sky
Fail in their duty to the ponies of the earth.

It was amazingly direct for a prophecy.

"She swears it's no joke," Swift said in response to my suspicious frown. "There are several books of commentary on this so-called prophecy, 'explaining' what it means. It seems like it's pretty straight-forward to me, but I guess there's a lot of disagreement among the blacklips. Loose Leaf doesn't have any of the books with her, but she seems to be solidly in the you're-doing-it-wrong-you-fools camp." He cleared his throat and went on. "Evidently, the one thing they all agree on is that you stopped a big war between the tribes about three hundred years ago and set up the empire."

"What?" Skyla blurted out, staring at me, aghast.

I flopped a wing across my face and dragged it down my muzzle, sighing. "Pestilential multiverse! This sort of thing is always happening to me!"

Skyla and Swift just gaped at me.

"I'll fix it! I'll fix it!" I told them.

= = =

A feral storm rolled in that night, and we were all up late keeping Nebula as stable as possible. She bashed her keel against the rocky ground a couple of times and ripped a fairlead out at her starboard head, but nothing else of significance occurred. I checked the keelmast gear and winches by hornlight before I crawled into my bunk for a couple hours of sleep.

That morning Swift and Lance resumed their charade while Skyla spoke with the rebels about their options. I drew up a set of plans for Filigree, and he went to work crafting another gun matrix to extract lift gas from suitable minerals, and Star and I scouted the valley to find the suitable minerals that could produce a decent amount of the gas.

We returned to Nebula about noon, having marked out several promising deposits. We had our saddle bags stuffed with rocks, and in addition, I was floating as much of the minerals as I could along side.

"I'm feelin' a mite low, Ms. Nightshade," Star said, as we unloaded our burdens.

"Altitude sickness, from working so hard in the thin air," I told him. "Go sling your hammock and get some rest."

I was tired from being up most of the night and hauling a double load of stones for miles, but at least I wasn't nauseated. I went down to my cabin and attempted to bring my personal log up to date, but the soft singing of the unicorns who were charging our crystals made me drowsy, and it wasn't long before I 'closed my eyes for just a second' and fell asleep at my desk.

= = =

Nebula was burning. Skyla and I were the only ponies aboard, and there was just one parachute left. Don't ask me why we couldn't both fly away; with the weird certainty that comes in dreams, I knew one of us was going to fall to her death.

Dream logic also told me that if I could cut the parachute in half, we could both use the halves to escape. But the only sharp instruments I could find were my fighting blades, and they were so slick with blood that I couldn't get a grip on them.

With a hissing roar, Nebula's burning envelope dropped on top of us and I woke with a start.

I groaned and tried to slow my panicky breathing. "Oh, Luna! Where are you when I need you?" I muttered.

It was a foolish thing to say, because I immediately realized how much I missed her and began to feel even worse. I thought that I should have written more emphatically about how much I loved her in that last letter. If I had...

My train of thought hit that badly set switch and roared onto another, unexpected track. Parachutes. Huge power gems were common in that world. So was orichalcum. The only problem was that etching the mandalas would be prohibitively time-consuming. Unless...

"Sugarpine!" I shouted, galloping on deck.

He didn't have the information I needed, but it didn't take me long to locate one of his group who did.

She was an exceptionally beautiful sea-green mare named Katydid. She wore her light pink mane very long and combed back to hide the scars criss-crossing her shoulders.

"Amberdale is the nearest metal-working center, but they don't do much specialized casting there," she told me. "They mainly smelt the ore and ship it out in ingots. Some rough foundry work for large pieces that are finished later is about it. They do have a small stamping mill, though. Just trivial stuff like buttons and medals."

"How big can the medals be?" I asked her.

She shrugged. "The Imperial Star of Valor is bigger than my hoof! Stomper soldiers just love their glittery decorations."

It might just work! I was very careful not to grin at her. "Do you know the layout of the town and the buildings? The more details you know, the better."

She nodded, then took a shaky breath. "I was the overseer's... " She squeezed her eyes shut and was silent for a long moment. "He took me everywhere with him, so I know the whole town pretty well. I can draw out a map for you."

I really wanted to comfort her, but a hug from a jagged-fanged horror wasn't likely to do her much good. "Make sure to mark the overseer's quarters and put down a description of him, will you? Also the ponies in charge of the stamping mill and the foundry."

She looked at me blankly for a moment and then slowly nodded. "I'll give you their names and describe them, but you will have to write it down, ma'am. I don't know how."

"You can't write?" I asked, surprised.

"It's illegal to teach a unicorn to read and write," she said simply.

I'm afraid I gaped like a landed trout for a bit, trying to wrap my head around this new atrocity. "What? Why?"

"They say it would be a distraction from our duty to the Empire. I've heard of some who learned, but the penalty is blinding for the unicorn and prison or death for the teacher, so it doesn't happen often."

"Oh, I am going to wreck those miserable stompers!" I growled, unthinkingly baring my fangs.

Katydid's face lit up in a sweet, wistful smile. "That would be nice."

= = =

I explained everything to Skyla and she eagerly agreed to the plan. I spent the rest of the day drawing up a very specific pegasus disguise matrix for Filigree, as well as a mandala that looked a great deal like an imperial medallion. We didn't have the facilities aboard to actually produce a stamp, but Filigree assured me that any competent craftspony could quickly and easily make one from his prototype.

The next day, while Filigree did the metal work, I went over Katydid's drawings of the town with her to make sure I had everything down correctly, and held several meetings with Star and Sugarpine to try to glean enough information to be able to pass for a low-level functionary on business for a high noble.

They both had experience dealing with ponies of that sort, but neither of them had any direct knowledge of all the little details that could trip me up. The only pony aboard that had been part of the imperial hierarchy was Loose Leaf. Well, the other pegasus prisoner also, but he wouldn't be much help.

So I finally sat down with her and had a long chat.

The key to posing as a divine/infernal being is to never answer any probing questions. The only appropriate reply to a pony so impious as to ask, is an expression[4] suggesting that a plague of carnivorous parasprites might feature prominently in that pony's obituary.

[4] It's mostly in the eyebrows, but according to Luna, it's the tiny curl of the upper lip that really sells it.

It was a technique I did not have to employ, because Loose Leaf was nothing if not worshipful. In fact, the main problem with getting any information out of her was getting her to stop praising me long enough to say anything else.

What finally worked was telling her to write down a list of blacklips who were intelligent enough to realize how magnificent and absolutely correct I was, along with where they were posted. After that, she was to give her new friend Swift Wing as thorough a briefing as she could in regard to successfully posing as an imperial official.

Before I left, I laid my wingtips on her shoulders and said, "You have my blessing, Loose Leaf. Soon you will be freed to do my work in the world, and the world will change because of you." Her eyes rolled up in her head, but at least she didn't faint again.

By the morning of the third day, I had cobbled together the Amberdale Operation and Filigree had completed the waveguide that would shoot a pegasus disguise, as well as a prototype for the medal stamp.

There was one last-minute change to the plan, though. It made the most sense for Skyla to be the officer remaining aboard, but for some reason, neither disguise gun would work on Ao. Ao would have to be the one to stay behind. Ao was not pleased by this turn of events.

"This one is uncomfortable being so far from you should you require assistance," she said, after I had been disguised and was gearing up for the flight to the foundry town.

"I'll have the raptor set with me and it's only about four leagues from here,"

Ao got a bit twisty. "This one would require a half-hour or more to cover that distance. Much ill could befall you in less time."

"I promise I will be careful," I said.

She shook her head, sadly. "Always, your intentions are good, Majesty."

I didn't ask her what she meant by that comment because I knew what she meant.

"If we pull this off, it might mean freedom for thousands of these poor ponies. I have to take the risk. You'd do it yourself in a heartbeat!"

She sighed and nodded but didn't say anything.

"Don't worry, Skyla and I will be back by the evening watch change."

She nodded again.

"I'm all set," Skyla called out as she descended from the quarterdeck. "Ready, Ms. Nightshade?"

I nodded.

"Excellent!" She didn't even glance at Ao when she told her, "Take good care of my ship, Ms. Ao!"

Her ship? The flurry of expressions and slight head movements that I traded with Ao behind Skyla's back in desperate silence were rather intense and information-dense. In the space of three heartbeats, we had agreed that immediate mutiny was a very bad idea, given our current circumstances, but the moment would not be forgotten.

"As you command, Captain," Ao said, softly.

Skyla dove over the rail, and I followed her down the mountain.

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks to Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for pre-reading and editing!

See, this is just one of the major problems with prophecies: THE CHOSEN ONE

16 The Comforting Lie of Justice

Chapter Sixteen

The Comforting Lie of Justice

To everypony's surprise, the Amberdale Operation went very smoothly. In fact, there was only one moment when it teetered on the edge of absolute disaster. Well… two moments, really. Fortunately, my niece was a bit more mature and perceptive than I had realized, and the structure of the pegasus military in that world was more feudal than efficient.

Skyla and I flew south for a bit, to make it seem to the ponies of Amberdale as if we were coming from Grayhold. We then flew up the river and landed a furlong away from the gate where the narrow path along the waterside entered the town. I had expected a major road for transportation of ore and smelted metal, but evidently the river provided an easier way to ship heavy material to and from the town. We could have easily flown over the wall of course, but that just wasn't done in the Empire.

We found the stamping mill quite easily,[1] and the forepony swallowed our explanation that the medals we wanted made were a rush job for the immanent glorious victory over the pirate fleet in the west. The fact that we paid in advance got us pushed to the front of the queue.

[1] The deep thud, thud, thud, of the water-driven trip-hammers was a helpful guide.

"I don't see why you want them to be solid sheet orichalcum," the forepony said. "Most medals are plated tin. Lot's cheaper."

"Nothing but the best for our brave stallions out in the territories!" I said, with every appearance of sincerity.

He shrugged. "Well, you're payin' for it." He lipped a pencil out of his apron pocket and scribbled a few figures on a post in the mill that had seen many past calculations. "Fastest I can get you a load of ten thousand would be three days from now, and that'll be working three shifts." He frowned at his chicken scratches. "I didn't think there was even a tenth that many ponies in the Western Fleet."

"Oh, we'll be using these for years to come. New lands to conquer, and all that!" I said, keeping a chipper smile plastered across my muzzle.

"If you say so," he said, and wrote us out a receipt for our payment. "We'll load 'em up on a barge and ship 'em down to Stonebridge when they're finished. You can take 'em from there."

"Perfect! Thank you, sir!"

"A pleasure, ma'am."

Our next stop was at the smelter and foundry, and we had the ready-made excuse that we were checking to make sure there was enough sheet orichalcum for our mill order. What we were actually after was something else entirely, and that was the reason I had crafted the mandala for the pegasus disguise gun so carefully. It was also the reason neither of us were wearing armor.

The phlegmatic mill forepony had been discreetly giving Skyla and I a thorough going over, but the smelter manager outright stared.

"We're twins," I explained,[2] posing oh-so-casually to show off my carefully constructed assets. Skyla did the same, but I assumed that it was simple unconscious grace on her part. I didn't need a mind-reading spell to see the fantasies churning through the manager's imagination. He didn't actually drool, but it was a close thing.

[2] Yes, even identical twins don't have identical cutie marks, but a bit of paint altered mine enough to be plausible.

"I find your work so fascinating," I said, batting my eyes in what I hoped was a flirtatious way and not like I'd merely gotten grit in them. "I mean, turning rocks into metal? That's so clever! And alloys! Aren't they so tricky to make? Unfortunately, my sister and I have never been lucky enough to actually see orichalcum being alloyed..."

The tour was on almost instantly.

I kept up the inane chatter and appreciative comments until we got to the area where the orichalcum was made. It was one of those amazing moments when an unyielding mystery suddenly becomes simple and obvious. The proportions of copper and gold that went into the alloy were exactly what Equestrian researchers had always supposed. They were also correct in assuming that magic was the key part of the process. What they never guessed was that it wasn't unicorn magic.

Seven earth ponies stood evenly spaced around the crucible where the molten metals were being mixed, with their forehooves worked deeply into the earthen floor. I could feel the intensity of the thaumic flow as soon as I stepped onto the dirt.

The manager took my gasp for one of admiration. "Yep, it isn't easy training up these fellas to make the metal xanthosize properly, but I like to think I do a pretty good job of it. I've never delivered a bad batch in my life!"

I didn't say anything until Skyla poked me with a wingtip.

"Huh? Oh, yes! Very impressive!" I am ashamed to admit that I had unfairly neglected my earth pony aspect where matters of magic were concerned. Oh, I could revive a dying houseplant or sweeten an apple past its prime, but nothing much beyond that. So, I couldn't determine precisely what the earth ponies were doing.

But I didn't need to. Now that I knew the basic concept, and that it somehow involved a citrinital process,[3] there were earth pony metal specialists back home who could suss out the exact details without much difficulty.

[3] Citrinitas (sometimes called xanthosis) is the third standard type of transformative phase in alchemical workings, and the one that causes most students of non-methodical dispositions to decide to explore a less hazardous field of study.

I left in a bit of a happy daze. Skyla and I gave the poor old manager a very friendly twin-sandwich hug as we departed that probably fueled his fantasies for months.

We were almost back to the town gate when it happened. I was burbling along barely above a whisper to a (no doubt) disinterested Skyla about how cheap orichalcum would drastically improve Equestrian archanotech. "My raptor set cost me nearly ten thousand bits to build! When we bring back this knowledge, the sets will be so inexpensive that everypony in Equestria will be able to afford one. We could build big sets to send out educational lectures and kingdom-wide news... maybe even music! Yes, that would be possible… Yes, suppose you wanted to go to a concert in Canterlot, but didn't have time to travel there. It could be transmitted to—"

That's when the town overseer and his companion stepped out of a shop and into our path.

I could tell he was some sort of important pony from the gold chain of office around his neck, and began to stand aside and bow courteously, as a good pegasus servant should. Then I recognised him from Katydid's description and caught sight of the beautiful unicorn mare that plodded along in his wake. Her lovely peach-colored mane was very long, and it had been combed back to cover her shoulders.

With mouth, wing, or magic, I can draw either of my blades and sweep it up in a rising diagonal cut that is intended to slice through an opponent's throat in a single lightning-fast movement. After years of training and experience, it is an instinctual move that my body can perform before I even consciously register a threat.

The only reason I didn't kill the overseer and ruin my careful plan, was that Skyla slapped her wing over mine before I could draw. By the time my brain had caught up with my furious reaction, she had smacked me with her other wing and said, "Sister! This is the honorable overseer of this town! Mind your manners!"

"Oh," I said, shaking just a little from the adrenaline rush. "Yes. Yes, of course," I said, stepping back and bowing as shallowly as I thought I could get away with. "Overseer."

He didn't even realize how near he had come to dying. He also missed another close approach when he gave us both a lecherous leer and said, "It's not often I see such intriguing young mares in my town. Would you ladies like to join me for dinner tonight?"

"Oh, we'd love to," Skyla said. "But sadly, our orders are to be back in Grayhold before dark. Perhaps some other time?"

"Ah, you are under the command of the governor? He owes me a favor or two, so maybe I can arrange something… soon." The grin that spread across his face made me want to vomit. The mare behind him squeezed her eyes shut and lowered her head nearly to the ground.

Skyla giggled. She giggled. To my knowledge, she hadn't giggled since she was a filly. "No need to call in a favor, sir. My sister and I will have a day off at the end of the week, and it would be fun to spend it in such a nice little village." She batted her eyelashes at him in a perfectly natural way. "And in such august company, as well! Would that be convenient for you, sir?"

It seemed I had been mistaken, and Skyla knew perfectly well what effect a beautiful female form had on the stallions around her, and was far better at using it to her advantage than I was.

"I will always have time for such lovely ladies!" he said.

I swear, it felt like his eyes left slime trails on me.

"Oh good!" Skyla said. "Now, you'll have to excuse us, overseer. We have to fly!"

We were nearly a half league outside the town and still walking along the path before I could unclench my jaw. "As soon as we have the medals, I'm going to kill him," I said in a quite reasonable tone of voice.

Skyla lifted an eyebrow. "For being a lascivious old goat? If that were a reason to kill a pony, you'd have to do away with a good percentage of the stallions back home."

I took a deep breath and looked her square in the eyes. "I am going to kill him, because he rapes and maims ponies that are his de facto slaves."

Skyla stopped dead in her tracks. "What?"

I explained to her what I had learned from Katydid. Then I had to stop her from flying back to Amberdale and slicing the overseer to ribbons.

"But you're right!" She snorted and stamped a hoof. "He deserves it!"

A lecture on the subject of punishment and redemption sprang to mind and then died away. I had no intention of punishing the overseer or exacting any sort of futile revenge; I only wanted to make sure that no more ponies would suffer because of him. In any civilized nation, he would have been exiled at the very least. If I had had full use of my magic, I would have tried a reform spell. Well, maybe I would have. I would like to think that's what I would have done.

"When we have the medals safely stowed away," I said. "For now, let's get back to the ship."

We would have been better off staying on the path, because not long after we took to the air, we were spotted by a pegasus patrol.

We were about to turn from our southeast course and head up into the mountains, so we did a quick scan of the sky to make sure we were unobserved. We weren't. "Some flyers to the west of us," Skyla said. "At about four o'clock."

I looked over my shoulder. Sure enough, there were some distant figures in the sky. It was difficult to determine their course right away, so we decided to keep heading south and hope that they would ignore us. They didn't.

"Coming in from behind and above," I observed a few minutes later. "Not exactly the most friendly of approaches."

Skyla considered this for a minute. "We should stop. I think ignoring them at this point would be suspicious."

I agreed and we slowed down, banking in a broad curve above the river to face the approaching pegasi. "Seven of them," Skyla observed. "We're okay unless they've got guns, and I don't see any."

With their long brass barrels and thick oak stocks, the heavy magic guns weren't an ideal weapon for flyers, but the pegasi weren't unarmed. "Those crossbows aren't exactly a joke, and we're unarmored," I pointed out.

"I'm as good at snap-shields as you are," she said casually. "Even the little ones we can manage here are good enough to deflect a few quarrels if we act quickly."

I sighed. "Alright. The signal is if either of us uses the Royal Voice. Then we take care of the ones in our own hemisphere as quickly as possible. But let's try not to slaughter them if we can avoid it, okay?"

"Sounds good to me!" she said in a completely inappropriate chipper tone of voice.

"Hello!" I called out to the pegasi as they got near. "What's up?"

Nopony answered me. The one I assumed was their officer made some wing signals, and his squad spread out to surround us.

"What's going on?" I asked again.

"Land in that clearing," the officer said, pointing with a foreleg.

"Listen," I said, putting a touch of irritation in my voice. "We're on courier duty for the governor, and we're expected back in Grayhold—"

"Land or we'll shoot you out of the air!" he demanded. His ponies aimed their weapons at us in a very business-like manner.

Skyla turned toward the clearing, sniffed loudly, and said, "That's not very friendly!"

I followed in silence, keeping to Skyla's right and carefully tracking and assessing the ponies on my side.

We landed and the officer and three of his pegasi surrounded us on the ground. The other three flew overhead to keep us from taking off again.

"What is going on?" I demanded. "Did something happen? Well, I mean other than Redkeep blowing up, as if that wasn't enough. Did the commander—"

The officer stalked forward and took a close look at our mouths. "Well, at least you're not blacklips. Show me your orders. Move slowly!"

We didn't have any, of course. I didn't even know what an official set of orders looked like or I would have prepared a forgery. I got ready to shout, but Skyla interrupted me.

"We are the new assistants to Governor Gray," she said. "The new private assistants, do you understand? We've just been up to Amberdale to—ahem—pay off a favor that the governor owed to the town overseer. Just what sort of written orders do you think the governor would be stupid enough to give us?"

The officer frowned and made a long and not unappreciative examination of us. "You're—"

"Look," I interrupted him. "If you want to verify who we are, why don't you come back to Grayhold with us and ask the governor directly? I'm sure he will be happy to answer all your insolent questions about his private affairs."

"Maybe I don't give much of a damn what some stomper aristocrat thinks," the officer said, sneering.

I knew it was a test the moment he uttered the words. He wasn't a very good actor and his heart wasn't behind his words. "What?!" I cried out in mock indignation. "How dare you say such a thing! The count will have you broken and—"

"Easy! Easy there!" He held up a placating wing. "I apologize for the rude words, but I have to be on the lookout for any disloyal pegasi. I didn't mean what I said."

I shuffled my hooves in an attempt to mimic the adorable way Fluttershy does it when she's uncertain about something. "I—I don't understand. Why would we be disloyal?"

The officer frowned and shook his head. "My apologies again. You're free to go."

"Something's going on," Skyla said softly, glancing around at the encircling pegasi. "Are we in danger? Please tell us, sir."

He hesitated and I stepped to Skyla's side, putting a comforting wing over her back and adding my own soft and totally-not-afraid-because-I'm-a-big-girl, "Please?"

He grimaced and said, "There have been some rumors going around. Some foolish pegasi have taken gossip for truth and deserted, that's all."

"Al leekorn," I whispered.

"No!" he half-shouted. "That's an old legend and there's no truth to it!"

It was a risk. It was a big risk, but I noted the nervous reactions of the squad members to my words and thought it was a risk worth taking.

"But what if it's true? What if Twilight Sparkle has returned?" There was a horrified gasp from several of the pegasi that proved the supposedly secret name had been making the rounds. "I heard she's only come back to restore harmony to the Empire. My cousin from Palo Verde says she just wants the three tribes to be equal and—"

"You shut your mouth right now, do you hear me?" The officer shouted, growing red in the face. "I don't give a damn if you are the count's personal plaything! If you say one more mutinous word, I will shoot you both dead and leave you for the buzzards! Am I clear?"

I did a fairly good imitation of a fearful cringe. "Y-yessir!"

"Now, you pampered whores get your lazy tails back to your master before I change my mind!"

"Yes sir! Sorry sir!" We fled into the sky.

The patrol went on its way, swinging west of us, but never far enough to be completely out of sight. Skyla and I flew on toward Grayhold.

"What was that word he used?" Skyla asked me when we were well out of earshot.

I was in no mood to open that complex can of worms, so I simplified it for her. "Pejorative term meant to belittle us as—uhmn—non-combatants."

She frowned at me, probably sensing that I wasn't telling her the whole truth. But she let it go.

The patrol shadowed us almost all the way to the city, and only lost sight of us when the sun sank below the horizon. It was clear that we weren't going to make it back to Nebula on schedule, so I called up Ao on the raptor and gave her a brief account of what had happened. "We will spend the night in the mountains north of the city and fly back in the morning, over."

"Understood, Ms. Nightshade. Please call at first light, over."

"Will do, Ms. Ao. Out."

We found a sheltered spot under an overhanging crag and settled in for the night. We talked as we shared the oat bars from my saddlebags.

"You did really well today, Captain Niece," I told her, as I passed her a canteen of water.

"Thank you, Ms. Auntie." She chucked. "Is it weird that I think it was kinda fun?"

"Not at all! This sort of thing is fun," I said, opening a bag of dried apples and floating some over to her. "When I was little, I got to know a lot of the Canterlot guards, and sometimes they'd tell me stories of adventures they'd had. None of them were about standing around guarding an empty audience hall."

"So… deadly peril is entertaining?"

I shrugged. "It's complex. Nopony likes being truly terrified, but afterwards…" I thought about it for a second. "The old stallion who was captain before Shiny said something to me once. 'The most wonderful thing in life is to have a spear miss you by a hair's breadth. The worst thing is for it to happen over and over again.'"

She wrinkled her nose in puzzlement. "I'm not sure I know what that means."

"It means we should get this over with and go home as soon as possible," I muttered around a mouthful of apples.

"As long as your plan works," she said. "If we don't help out the unicorns here, I couldn't face going…" She trailed off and looked as if she was thinking hard.

I took a wild guess at the subject of her thoughts. "Speaking of deadly peril," I asked, casually, "who are you going to apologize to first when we get back?"

She scowled at me, then sighed. "I suppose there's going to be a long line waiting for me on the other side of the gate."

"Oh yeah!" I grinned at her. "I'll distract Luna for you, but you're on your own with the rest of them."

"From the look on your face, I'd say you're actually looking forward to that."

"Oh yeah," I said again, my grin widening. "She'll storm at me in Middle Equish for a while, and then I'll cry, and she'll cry, and then there'll be one amazing thunderstorm over Twilight Town."

"Huh? What does a thunderstorm have to do with it?"

I laughed. "Oh, my dearest niece! Wait until you have a very special somepony of your own. You too will discover the wonders of make-up sex!"

"Eeeeew!"

"Oh, please! You're interested in sex by now, surely?"

"Well, yeah! but…"

"But what?"

"You… You're old! Like really old! Mom-old, even!"

I laughed out loud. "But your mom and my brother—"

"No,no no! I don't want to hear it! It's gross!" She closed her eyes wrapped her wings around her head.

I smiled at her fondly. The rough situation we found ourselves in had made me forget how young she was. Of course, I'd battled a plethora of monsters before I'd found my own special somepony, so I could sympathize. It didn't mean I didn't enjoy teasing her, though.

= = =

We actually started out before first light to reduce the chance of being spotted by another patrol. When I called Ao, we were flying low in the shadow of the mountains and had less than an hour to go to reach the valley where Nebula lay at anchor.

Other than some farmers headed out to their fields who didn't even look up, we didn't see anypony on our way back.

"All truly went as planned then?" Ao asked as she helped me stow my gear in my cabin.

"Except for the little hiccup with the patrol on the way back, but that just turned into an opportunity to plant some ideas in their heads. We also found out that some pegasi have been deserting lately. Good news all around!"

"Truly?"

"Don't sound so surprised, Ao! We certainly deserve some good luck, don't we?"

"If we are to receive what we deserve, this one will sleep with her sword close by tonight," she said.

I swatted her side with a wingtip, but laughed all the same. "Lucky for us, there is no such thing as cosmic justice!" But as I said it, I thought about the overseer and my laughter died away.

"You are troubled, Majesty?"

I told her about the overseer.

"After we take the medals from the barge, an uproar in the town will be of no consequence, yes? You may kill the vermin then," Ao said, cheerfully. "Or this one will do it, if you find it distasteful."

"Utterly distasteful, but no… No, I will do it, Ao. This is something I'd never ask a friend to do in my place."

"This one is happy to, if it would ease your mind—"

I shook my head emphatically. "It would only make me feel worse, I promise you."

She nodded sadly. "Often has this one had to accommodate your sense of justice, Majesty. This one does not understand, but will question it not. Kill or do not kill, it shall be as you wish."

"Your morals are remarkably flexible, Ao."

"Thank you, Majesty!" She smiled and dipped her head.

"It wasn't exactly a compliment."

Her smile grew slightly more sly. "This one imagines that it was not entirely a condemnation, either."

I sighed and smiled despite myself. "You know me too well, old friend." I folded the table down and got out my little writing box. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to make a comprehensive list of ways everything can go horribly wrong in the next two days, and make an outline of countermeasures."

Ao floated through the doorway, saying over her shoulder as she left, "Enjoy yourself, Majesty."

She really did know me too well.

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks to Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for pre-reading and editing!

17 First Blood

Chapter Seventeen

First Blood

Our gas reserve cylinders were at 100% full, and there were four large crates of crushed minerals aboard that could be used to completely refill them all. Every useable gem was as full as could be, which was almost 120% of capacity by Equestrian standards.[1] Thanks to Cream Puff's extravagant notion of victualing, we still had about a week of food aboard, even considering our herd of passengers. And with the sheer number of hooves aboard because of those passengers, all repairs were completed by the afternoon of the first day we got back.

[1] The unicorns' little nonsense song worked wonders!

And that left me with nothing to do but wait. I hate waiting.

I set up a watchpost on a crag where the dock at Amberdale could be observed through a spyglass, and I checked in with the various ponies who took turns there so often that the raptor set had to be recharged.

I had a long discussion with Skyla about freeing Loose Leaf, and she reluctantly agreed that it would be the best course of action, even though it was risky. So, I primed Loose Leaf for her mission as well as I could, and left her alone with Swift Wing to say their goodbyes.

They spoke quietly for a few minutes and then hugged each other. Loose Leaf took off and swooped around to hover near where I was standing on the quarterdeck. Her eyes gleamed with joyful purpose. "I will not fail you, mistress! I swear it!"

I smiled softly, showing only a little of my teeth. "I know you won't, my faithful follower. Go well."

She did a couple of wing rolls and a loop from sheer exuberance as she flew away.

"Doesn't it bother you that she's so fanatical?" Skyla asked me as we watched her go.

I sighed, casting my thoughts back across the years. I couldn't stretch the accepted definition of "bothered" far enough to include nostalgia for a simpler time slightly tinged with envy, so I said, "Not really," and left it at that.

Shortly thereafter, I excused myself to go and visit the other native pegasus. After a few of Cream Puff's excellent meals, and being visited by some of Nebula's pegasus and earth pony crew, Cloud Cutter had calmed down quite a lot. As I had nothing better to do except pester ponies trying to do their jobs, I thought it might be worthwhile to talk with him again.

He jumped up when I entered the space we'd set up for him in the hold and backed as far away from me as his shackles would allow.

I lay down on the deck and casually began preening my wings. Pointy teeth made the task a bit easier than usual.

"We're going to release you the day after tomorrow," I said casually, nipping off the broken end of a covert. "You can take whatever action you want, but I'd highly suggest reporting back to your superiors rather than trying to attack or track us. I hold no grudge against you, but there are a lot of armed unicorns aboard who would love to have an excuse to shoot you."

I pulled the feather tip out of my mouth with magic and brought up a bit of the dark stuff to decay it into fine ash. "And that would be a shame."

"You're going to kill us all, anyway, so what would it matter?" he said, sullenly.

"What? Why in Tartarus would I do that?" I nosed at my right wing and gave it a little shake to settle the feathers into position. "I mean, do you have any idea how long that would take?"

He frowned at me warily. "That's what the legends say you'll do."

"Oh yes," I chuckled, stretching out my left wing for inspection. "Beating ponies with their own wings, I think the prophecy says? That's completely ridiculous! Do you know the definition of 'hyperbole?'"

"Uh… no," he admitted.

"Wild exaggeration for emphasis, often comic."

"What?" He was thoroughly confused by then. Right where I wanted him. "It was a joke?"

"Knowing me, it was a fit of irritation at being frustrated, but I can't be sure. It was almost certainly a different me. Oh stars, just look at the state of this secondary!" I got hold of the ragged feather and tried to smooth it back into place as the pegasus sputtered and made inarticulate noises.

"What do you mean, a different you?" Cloud Cutter finally managed to ask.

I sighed and gave up on the secondary. "There are other worlds besides your own—"

"Parallel universes, yes," he said. "What of them?"

"Wait, you know multiversal theory but not the definition of hyperbole? Oh, honestly!" I took a deep breath to calm myself and then said, "So you know that—"

"Yes, we know you came from beyond! That's why the reflex gates were built, to keep you away!"

"Oh." I blinked in surprise. Interesting. "Like the one in the desert south of Ursa Negro?"

He looked a bit surprised, but nodded. Well, that explained the feedback that had trapped us in that world. It didn't seem to have functioned exactly as designed, but it hadn't been an accident after all.

"Well you might have succeeded, because I'm not the Twilight Sparkle that the prophecy is about. I'm one of the other ones. Oh, no! You're not going to faint too, are you?"

"More… of… you?" he wheezed, wide-eyed.

"Thousands at the very least. And I'll have you know that they're mostly very nice ponies![2] Please calm down! I am not going to hurt you!"

[2] And other things.

"Then… Then why are you here?"

It was a reasonable enough question, but I didn't think going into my family dynamics would be very productive. "I'm here to fix an imbalance. The Empire treats its unicorn citizens like slaves, and that's got to stop."

"But they're naturally inferior! The Empire gives them a place and a purpose," he protested.

I tamped down my disgust. "And the reason the earth ponies rule over you is that they are naturally superior to pegasi?"

"What? Of course not! The legends say we were the masters here until you came!" He snorted in righteous racism. "The blacklips are always telling us that serving the stompers is the only sure way to keep you from returning to destroy us. We've been true to our duty, but here you are! So the stupid scribes didn't know what they were talking about."

I had suspected as much. It made sense that another me had stumbled upon that world, seen the terrible imbalance in power and had tried to fix it. All I—or rather she—had managed to do was transplant a different tribe to the top of the power pyramid.

I shook my head sadly and stood up. "Captain Skyla was right," I said half to myself. "All of you have got these awful prejudices so ingrained in your minds that there isn't any way to fix it. I suppose we are going to have to destroy the Empire."

"What? But you said—"

"Oh don't worry," I said over my shoulder as I walked away. "I'm going to kill the Empire, not the ponies in it. The pegasi will survive. I suggest finding somewhere with a nice climate where the grazing is good. Just don't do anything stupid and you'll be fine. "

= = =

Targeted interviews with all the rebel unicorns and incidental activities—such as designing a few specialized waveguides—fully occupied me for a day and a half until it was time to make the grab. In the late morning of the second day, Sirocco called in from the watch post and told us that the barge had been loaded and the riverponies were casting off the lines.

The Nebulas scrambled, some hauling in the anchors and ground lines, and some readying net launchers, guns, and grappling equipment.

Skyla stood on the quarterdeck, and in her armor and goggles, cutlass slung by her side and spyglass to an eye, she looked like a perfect recruiting poster for aeronautical misbehavior. My conscience nibbled at me, and not gently, either.

I stood on the foc's'le deck, to one side of the butt of the bowsprit, checking over my gear one last time. Everything was in place, exactly where it had been the first two times I'd examined it. The speaking tube next to me whistled. It was Ao, reporting from the cupola that Sirocco was returning from the watchpost, coming in a few points off our starboard bow.

I relayed the information to Filigree, who was acting as sergeant for the gunners and catapult crews in the waist. The last thing we needed was for Sirocco to get shot by some nervous lubber on a gun.

Cloud Cutter was brought on deck and I gave him one more bit of advice before I unlocked his hobbles and wing straps. "Be smart. Get your friends and family together and take them to safety."

He didn't reply, and flew straight south over the mountains as fast as he could go.

Nebula's engines turned over slowly, taking us south southeast as Lance carefully vented gas to keep us as low over the sharp crags as was safe. The river came in view below a granite crest where the mountains fell away to the valley below, and I put my spyglass to my eye.

"I have the barge, captain," I said into the speaking tube to the quarterdeck. "I make her half a league below the town, just entering a heavily wooded reach."

"Understood, Ms. Nightshade," came her reply. Nebula's engines came to half ahead, and her bow turned southward.

It took us about ten minutes to line up with a straightish reach of the river and then Skyla gave the order to let fly the colors and we swooped down on the barge.

The riverponies had a couple of guns and they were foolish enough to fire at us as we came down into the water alongside their craft. Fortunately, they didn't hit anypony, and all the Nebulas kept their heads and didn't fire back. Well, not at the barge crew, at least. Two shots from the big guns slammed into the trees on the bank and blew shattered wood and burning leaves into the air in an impressive display of power.

"Drop your guns on the deck and heave to, or the next shots go right amidships!" Filigree called out to the barge's crew. "We won't hurt you if you surrender. We only want your cargo."

There was a hurried discussion aboard the craft and then the guns were dropped. The big ponies with the long poles set them against the current and leaned into them, and the barge slowed and stopped.

We'd rigged a spar as a crane boom and quickly swung all the crates aboard while the barge ponies stared in wonder. We also scooped up their guns, but didn't go as far as searching them for valuables.

"Pirates?" One of them asked of nopony in particular. "On this river? You're all mad! That's nothing but pig-iron and medals! The fleet'll chase you down and burn you from the sky."

Skyla laughed at him. "I hope they'll try it! That'll save us the trouble of hunting for them!"

We finished lowering the crates down the main hatchway to the cargo hold, and the unicorns floated the big wooden hatches back on.

"All secure, captain" Stalwart Lance said.

"Gentleponies, I thank you!" Skyla called out to the barge crew from the quarterdeck, giving them a casual wave of her wing. "Nebulas, let's away! We have an empire to topple!"

The engines roared back to life and we lifted from the river in a shower of water and swirls of spray-filled vortices that set the barge to rocking.

I kept my spyglass fixed on the southern sky as we rose above the trees, and was rewarded by the sight of two blobs in the distance.

The speaking tube from the cupola whistled, and Ao reported sighting the distant airships as well. "It seems Cloud Cutter has done as you expected, Majesty."

"Good thing we discussed the river job where he could overhear us." I grinned. "Are the guns in place?"

There was a short pause, and I assumed she was looking aft from the cupola to check on the crews. "Linwood's team are still working on mounting their weapon at the mainmast hatch, but seem to be nearly ready."

I hated depending on rebel unicorns with only a few days of training to lead gunnery teams, but the original Nebulas were stretched too thin. "Good. With two ships against us, the plan is to do a Horseshoe Punch. It'll be pretty scary for the lubbers, so I'm trusting to you to keep them in line and doing their jobs."

"This will be but a small task. They are sensible ponies and fear this one more than the Imperials," she said. Even through the speaking tube, I could hear the humor in her voice.

I switched to the quarterdeck tube and reported the situation to Skyla.

"Very good, Ms. Nightshade," she said. "Any pegasus support?"

I scanned the sky around the oncoming ships again. "None visible, but they may be staying aboard until we close. We'll have to be ready to switch to Flaming Cow Kick if they have too many fliers."

"That will probably be Ao's call. She's the one who will have the best view of them." There was a moment of silence, and I turned to look aft. I could see that Skyla was still bent over the speaking tube. "Be careful. That's an order."

"Aye, aye, captain!" I replied, and replaced the whistle plug in the tube.

After a minute, I could make out more details of the imperial ships. They were smaller than Ironhoof, but still larger than Nebula, and had only four engines apiece. They each had three gun turrets, one at the bow below the bridge and two about three quarters of the way aft on either side.

Nebula's engines roared to full ahead and we charged toward the enemy.

Long streamers of falling water appeared beneath the imperial ships as they maneuvered to keep the advantage of height on us. The deck under my hooves pressed upward as we released ballast as well, making a show of countering their tactic. It was time for me to draw out their pegasi. "Swift Wing?" I called out over my shoulder.

"Here, ma'am," he said, touching down on the deck behind me. He was wearing wing blades in addition to his armor, and had a sword and a crossbow slung on either side of his harness.

I frowned at the sight of all the weapons. "You do understand the plan? If we are heavily opposed, you run for it."

"I understand the plan, Ms. Nightshade," he said flatly.

"Alright, then! Let's go poke the dragon!"

I leaped over the bow and flapped hard for altitude. Nebula was still a furlong below the imperial ships and, as we intended to preserve that apparent disadvantage, Swift and I needed to climb at least twice that distance before we got in range of the enemy's guns.

The gunner in the bow turret of the lead ship took a shot at us as we closed. It missed by a good distance and had dissipated enough that it wouldn't have done much damage even if it had hit one of us. It was nice to know that their ponies were nervous enough to make mistakes.

From what little experience we had with imperial tactics, it seemed that their ships typically only carried a very small contingent of pegasi. But we couldn't count on them being too stupid or hidebound not to adapt to a new and different threat, and with so few flyers of her own, Nebula was vulnerable to being swarmed. Swift and I had the unenviable job of finding out what their strength was while Nebula was still able to change plans, if necessary.

We got far enough above their ships to be out of effective crossbow range and readied our dropstones. The holes in the stones had been stuffed with chemically treated rags, and I lit them with a spark from my horn before we let them fall.

The stones weren't much of a threat. Most of them would bounce off the airships' envelopes before catching the treated fabric on fire, and any halfway decent crewpony could put out such a fire in a few heartbeats. But the long flaming streaks they trailed behind them looked quite impressive and threatening,[3] and the imperials couldn't assume that it wasn't the sort of alchemical fire we had used to such effectiveness on Ironhoof.

[3] And just to help that impression, I had added a little bit of a finely-ground copper compound to each charge, which gave the flames a lovely green color.

Some useless shots from the ships' dorsal cupolas meandered up in our direction, one crossbow bolt actually coming to a near stop just below me before falling away. Then the pegasi boiled out of the top hatch of the ship below me. There were at least two dozen of them. As I had feared, they had learned their lesson.

So it was time to teach them a new one.

"I AM TWILIGHT SPARKLE! YOU PATHETIC COWARDS DARE OPPOSE ME?"

With that bit of carefully calculated provocation, they all tried to swarm me at once. Having guaranteed that every one of them would focus their murderous rage on me to the exclusion of all else, I turned tail and dove for Nebula. They all followed, screaming war cries and curses.

It's in the nature of airships to carry their primary weapons below their envelopes. That's because there's only so much weight they can place above their gas cells before becoming dangerously unstable. That's one of the primary reasons why gaining the advantage of superior altitude is so important in most engagements.

But because Nebula's relatively heavy hull hung a fair distance below her envelope, she was able to put more weight topside than was typically safe. With the addition of a massively-augmented keel spell powered by the biggest crystal we had on board, and the stabilization of her big steering fins, we had managed to cluster almost all of her main weapons around the three hatches on her dorsal surface.

This came as something of a surprise to the imperial forces.

In their eagerness to be the heroes who had slain the terrible demon Twilight Sparkle, the pegasi had all flown directly at me, clustering in a rough line in my wake as I apparently fled in fear. Previous to that day, the best shot I'd ever seen with a net launcher had captured three pegasi at once. Filigree and Cream Puff each bagged four with their first launches.

They didn't have to slowly crank their weapons back, either. The six unicorns strapped down to the catwalk rail nearby used their combined magic to reload the weapons almost instantly. The remaining pegasi scattered, of course, but still lost four more of their number to the nets in the first minute of the fight. The parachutes floated them down to the forest below where they could entertain themselves by trying to cut through the wire re-enforced netting for the next hour or so.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to be as non-lethal with all our other countermeasures. The pegasi that were clear of me became the target of a storm of crossbow fire. The bolts had crescent bladed heads designed for cutting through lines, netting, and sails. They were far less likely to penetrate aeronaut armor, but would do much more damage to exposed wings than ordinary pile points.

Another half-dozen of the attackers floundered earthward with shredded flight feathers, but there were a couple who cried out and fell like stones.

I tried to strike for wings when I turned on my pursuers, but at the speed of pegasus combat, it isn't always possible to be precise. I had reach on them, thanks to my longer wings and telekinesis, and I easily downed two of them before one wised up and went for her crossbow.

When the first bolt whizzed past my ear, the rest saw it and the smart became infectious. They all unslung their bows. The next two shots, I deflected with small shields cast right in the path of the bolts. The third came from slightly behind me, and unluckily hit right at the joint between two flanchards,[4] penetrating far enough to stick solidly between two of my ribs. I felt the shock and then the pain, and knew I'd been wounded, but I didn't have time to evaluate the damage.

[4] Sliding plates that cover the sides of the barrel and waist.

The hit convinced me I couldn't stand off and keep being a target any longer, so I rushed the remaining pegasi, lashing out with my wingblades and short swords, grabbing and holding my opponents with magic long enough to get in solid strikes. There is no such thing as cheating in combat.

The one that tried to escape met Swift Wing, who hadn't technically disobeyed orders by staying in the air. Swift Wing was very good with his wing blades and finished his opponent before I could join in.

With the pegasi defeated, we landed on Nebula's envelope near the mainmast hatch and I scanned the sky, assessing the situation. Nebula was fast approaching the imperial ships and rising up beneath them. The ship on our right was slewing off to larboard in a sloppy maneuver for some reason, putting her larboard turret out of firing position, but we were still in a very good position to continue with the primary plan, and there was no sign of any more flyers.

"Tell the captain we're still doing Horseshoe Punch!" I yelled to the pony nearest the speaking tubes. He nodded and blew into the one that went to the quarterdeck.

"Uh… ma'am?" One of the gun crew said to me, hesitantly. "Did you know there's an arrow sticking out of you?"

I glanced at the quarrel and estimated that it had only penetrated an inch or two: not immediately life-threatening. I couldn't manage the concentrated flash of high heat necessary to cauterize the wound, so I settled for notching the shaft with one of my blades and then snapping it off close to my body. It probably wouldn't have bled all that much if I had just pulled the whole thing out, but I have a "waste not, want not" policy toward my own blood, and the day was still young.

I didn't really grin so much as bare my teeth at the onrushing imperials. The guns of the ship on our left were swinging to target, and they were only seconds away from unleashing everything they had on us.

"Now comes the fun part."

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks to Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for pre-reading and editing!

18 Vanishing Act

Chapter Eighteen

Vanishing Act

The main problem for us was that our modified spell guns didn't just throw pure energy, and so they had much less effective range than the imperial weapons. We'd have to take a beating in order to get close enough to attack.

The Nebulas had rigged a few small hatch covers as temporary shields to protect the gun crews, and I'd slathered them with the anti-magic goop, but it was nowhere near the careful preparation I would have liked for such an assault. Nebula wasn't designed to carry so many ponies up top, let alone protect them properly.

The first shot hit Nebula over her second gas cell and crackled into a light sparkle of thaumic discharge. The imperials had fired too early, and the blast had been more than half dissipated by the time it had reached us, so it didn't even scorch the anti-magic coating on her envelope. I love it when my opponents make dumb mistakes.

Of course, cleverness isn't all that necessary when one has easy access to overwhelming force, and the imperials were accustomed to "getting a bigger hammer" as a response to most problems.

Nebula surged up hard beneath our hooves. The complete ballast dump was part of the plan: we needed to go from out-of-range to in-your-face as quickly as possible to reduce the time we spent getting shot.

The next blast hit the top tailfin with a roar and the surfaced blackened and bubbled, but didn't catch fire.

The next one hit just aft of the topmast, and some of the ponies stationed at the hatch there got hit with the spatter that sprayed under the edge of the improvised shield. There were a couple of yells of surprise and pain, but nothing to indicate anypony had gotten seriously hurt.

Right after that, two shots hit us simultaneously somewhere forward of the mast. They were hard enough that Nebula shook and swerved, and we all had to grab hold of something to keep on our hooves.

Then the whistle plug in the cupola tube blew three hard blasts: it was the signal for us to prepare for the attack. We all crouched down and held our breath as the big vent panels slid open and the roar of escaping lift gas surrounded us. The gas wouldn't do a pony any direct harm to breathe, but it did displace oxygen, and being light-headed while trying to aim high-energy weaponry was inadvisable to say the least.

The vents slammed shut and there came a single long blast from the whistle. We flipped the hatch covers aside and the weapon crews swung their launchers, catapults, and guns toward their targets.

Sirocco had done his job perfectly and brought us to a near stop between the two ships, with the top of Nebula's envelope just slightly above the enemy's gondolas. That gave us a direct line of fire to their turrets and engine pods.

Of course, that meant that their guns had a direct line of fire at us, but I was counting on their confusion when faced with a situation they couldn't possibly have trained for to make them a lot slower than our own crew, who knew exactly what to expect.

I love it when I'm right.

"FIRST RANK FIRE!" I shouted.

The net launchers flung their loads at the propellers, fouling them with chain-laced nets, while the catapults targeted their turrets with cross-headed shafts to smash the heavy metal barrels of their guns. Even though our green crews missed more than half their shots, we still completely disabled the engines and turrets to either side of us by the second volley, and the few shots the imperials got off missed or only did structural damage.

I looked forward toward the cupola and saw through the haze of smoke that Ao's crew had fired their grappling lines into the enemy's envelopes. It was time to—

I was slammed onto my side by a blast of magic from my right. I hadn't seen the imperials open ports in their gondola so that they could use their light guns. It was a stupid and hopeless tactic, and that's why I wasn't prepared for it.[1]

[1] That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

I started to slide down the curve of the envelope, instinctively flopping and scrabbling to get a grip on the smooth surface. My head and neck felt like they were on fire, and I couldn't think clearly. It didn't even occur to me to use my wings. It was only by pure chance that I hooked the back corner of a forehoof shoe onto a strand of the anti-magic webbing and jerked to a stop. I shook my head in an effort to clear it. The plan… there was something I had to do. Something important. But what?

A moment later, Ao was there, supporting me and saying… something. I couldn't make it out. She must have realized my confusion, because her antlers glowed softly and the image of a green flame appeared in front of my muzzle.

Fire? Yes, fire! I remembered. "FIRE THOSE SHIPS!" I bellowed, using the Royal Voice to make sure the enemy crews heard me clearly. "BURN THEM FROM THE SKY!"

My words sounded strange and muffled to me, and I worried for a second that I'd messed up the voice technique somehow and that nopony had heard me. But then I saw our specially fitted guns firing. I had lost my goggles somehow and squinted in the glare.

The sides of the enemy airships erupted into roaring green infernos. Within seconds, huge burning patches of the outer envelopes tore away and twisted in the fierce updrafts caused by the magical fire.

Well, the imperials weren't so foolish as to continue fighting in the face of the imminent destruction of their crafts, and they began throwing themselves out of every conceivable opening. Parachute canopies popped open like spring flowers under a fast aging spell.

Ao lifted me back up to the mainmast hatch. I lied and told her I was fine, though I may have mumbled my words a bit because I really couldn't hear my own voice. She gave me a worried look, but flew back to the cupola after a moment.

While I blinked and squinted, trying to get my vision to clear, my catapult crews fired a few more grapples into the enemy ships and then attached the lines to winches so that they could pull them in close for boarding when the time came.

And the time came right on schedule. Just as the last earth ponies bailed out of their craft, the illusion spells ran out of energy, and the devastating green fire and apparent damage flickered and utterly vanished.

Gotcha! I thought, with smug self-satisfaction.

Then I passed out.

= = =

When I woke up, I was ravenous.

I turned my head and saw Ao and Skyla having a whispered conversation by the door to my cabin. Ao saw me move and floated over to the bunk. "Ma…Ms. Nightshade, can you hear this one?"

I had enough sense not to nod. "Yes, pretty well, Ms. Ao. Is there any chance of getting some food?"

Ao glanced at Skyla, who nodded and said something to a pony standing outside my cabin.

I sat up slowly, and my head only swam a little. "We did it?"

Skyla nodded as she approached my bunk. "Yes, the prize crews[2] are aboard the airships and the Nebulas are transferring over the gems and crates of medals as we speak."

[2] In aeronautical tradition, a captured ship is referred to as a "prize," and the ponies put aboard her to take over are called a "prize crew."

"So, for the moment," she continued, "I'm in command of three airships. I guess that makes me an admiral, doesn't it?"

"Only a commodore, I think," I corrected her, taking a bit of guilty pleasure in her slight pout of disappointment. "Nopony seriously hurt?"

"Aside from you?" Skyla said, lifting an eyebrow at me. "A couple of nasty burns and one broken foreleg, but nothing else, fortunately. Though…" She glanced at Ao.

"What?" I asked, dreading an unpleasant surprize.

"Loose Leaf is back aboard," she began. "No, just lie there and let me tell you about it. It'll go quicker if you don't interrupt me."

I frowned but nodded at her to go on.

"The second ship had a big contingent of pegasi, too. They didn't make it out to attack you and Swift because Loose Leaf had gotten a group of her own ponies aboard, and they set up an ambush right by the hatch where the attackers would have to exit." She paused, avoiding my gaze and then went on. "It was a pretty terrible fight, and Loose Leaf's bunch weren't interested in taking any prisoners. She actually… ugh!"

Skyla squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. She looked like she might vomit.

I looked to Ao in puzzlement.

The kirin bent down and whispered to me, "This one informed your ardent followers that you would not be pleased by a gift of the severed heads of your enemies."

I groaned and dropped my head back on the pillow. It hardly hurt at all. "I'll try and get it through their thick—" A little voice at the back of my mind warned me, Don't bring skulls into it! "I'll… I'll give them a dose of the old-school Luna style. That should straighten them out," I finished lamely.

The awkward atmosphere in the cabin was broken by Cream Puff arriving with a steaming bowl of soup and a fresh chunk of buttered bread.

"Oh, thank you, Puff!" I said enthusiastically, as glad for the interruption as for the meal.

"My pleasure, Ms. Nightshade!" he said as I began wolfing down the food. "Oh, hey! You've got your ear back!"

"Pfhat?" I managed to avoid a barley soup spit-take by the barest of margins.

"Your… ear," he said, helpfully pointing to one of his own.

Ao turned, and I couldn't see the expression on her face, but it seemed to convince Cream Puff that he ought to immediately be elsewhere. "Uh… I'll come back for the tray," he called out over his shoulder as he cantered away.

"Wafs fis abouf ma ear?" I demanded around a mouthful of excellent sourdough.

Ao sighed. "This one did not wish to distress you unnecessarily."

"And?" It was hard to glare sternly at her with my muzzle practically submerged in the soup, but I managed.

Ao glanced at Skyla. Skyla shook her head slightly and rolled her eyes.

"The shot that hit your head burned away your right ear, and a good deal of your skin," Ao said, bluntly.

I stopped chewing and lifted a hoof to my right ear. It felt sore, but whole. "Really?"

"It grew back," she clarified.

"Really?"

"Yes. The sight was quite—"

She said "interesting" and Skyla said "gross" at the same time.

"Huh." I didn't know I could do that, but it made sense. Even occasional kitchen accidents would leave an immortal pony looking like the victim of a mad slasher after several centuries if some sort of regeneration wasn't involved. I'd lost scars before, but I hadn't realized I could regrow entire parts. Fortunately, I didn't make a habit of losing them in the first place, and had no desire to experiment to determine the extent of the power.

"Also, the head of the crossbow bolt that hit you in the side was squeezed out of—"

"Agh!" Skyla's cry of disgust interrupted Ao, and she pinned her ears back as she turned away. "I'm going on deck for some fresh air!"

When she had gone, Ao allowed herself the slightest of smiles. "This one suspects your niece has not the proper appreciation for some of Your Majesty's more unusual qualities."

"Oh, I think she just would have prefered a glowing aura sort of regeneration involving less in the way of parts coming and going," I said, licking the last of the soup out of the bowl. "Honestly, what did it look like?"

"It was disturbing," she said without hesitation. "For a short time, we did not realize what was happening, and feared some curse or malady."

I shrugged. "Reality rarely meets romantic expectations."

Ao lifted a quizzical eyebrow.

"Romance in the sense of a fictional narrative," I explained.

"As you say, Majesty." It was what Ao always said when she didn't quite understand whatever it was I was babbling on about, but was content to remain unilluminated.

"Is there any more soup?" I asked.

= = =

We were anchored in a forest clearing somewhere north of Amberdale. Loose Leaf's group had made sure we weren't followed from the battle, but there would no doubt be all available pegasi combing the province for us, and everypony was working as quickly as they could. The three airships were camouflaged with netting and cut branches, which would probably be adequate if our pursuers didn't come very close.

I felt worlds better after my meal, so I took a tour of the imperial ships. They weren't built for comfort, but they were well designed, given the restrictions they had to operate under. Most importantly, they were simple enough for the prize crews to operate safely under normal conditions.

The crews weren't going to be fighting any battles. While I was unconscious, they'd stripped out everything nonessential to flight from the captured ships, and that included the guns. So lightened, the airships would be marginally faster than other craft of their class and capable of a greater altitude ceiling. The unicorns also had the advantage of being able to recharge their engines on the fly, which made running away a very viable tactic.

Their mission was to spread out and deliver the medallions to as many unicorns in the Empire as possible. They would drop teams at strategic spots where they could continue on hoof, and near metalworking centers where more of the medallions might be made. If my calculations were correct…

"Ten thousand medallions at six ponies each, with an outside failure rate of two percent—though I'm betting it'll be closer to point two—means 57,600 from the first batch alone," I said to Skyla as we watched the last crate of medallions being lowered over Nebula's side from her quarterdeck. "That's just over twenty-three percent of the unicorn population, in a little under a month. It'll be harder and harder to produce medallions as time passes of course, but with sympathetic pegasi and earth ponies—yes, there are quite a few by all reports—in six months, the Empire won't be able to maintain its infrastructure, let alone any war-making capability."

"But there will still be unicorns left, won't there?" Skyla asked.

"Yes," I agreed. "Even some by choice, I imagine."

"I don't like that," she muttered.

I gestured toward the other two airships. "Unicorn crews will be able to keep ships like those in the air when the imperials can't. That's a big advantage. The rest of the plan will fall right into place because of simple economics. All it will take is for one smart petty noble to realize—"

"But are you sure the medallions will work? Everything hinges on that!"

"Of course I…" I trailed off. I wasn't sure. I had planned on testing a medallion after we'd captured the imperial ships, but the little matter of being shot in the head had upset my schedule.

Skyla lifted an eyebrow at me.

"I haven't tried one out yet, but I'm sure they'll work just fine," I told her

She turned away to look at the lowering sun. "The ships lift at midnight. It would be nice to know all this effort hasn't been a waste."

"You're right." I nodded. "I'll go ask for volunteers for the test."

"And isn't there something else we need to do before we head west?"

I paused, one hoof in the air. I couldn't think of anything else on the schedule. "Remind me?"

"The overseer." Skyla said, coldly. "Amberdale is only a league south of us. It shouldn't take long."

"Oh," I said. "That."

Everypony who knew about the plan agreed. Everypony thought it was not only necessary, but just. Everypony said that, in the absence of the ability to imprison or banish, it was the only rational way to protect his underlings. Everypony but me.

I would have gladly killed him in the heat of the moment and rationalized it after the fact, I suppose. But the heat was long gone, and the thought of a cold-blooded execution, no matter how well-deserved, made me queasy.

In books it always goes like this: the hero challenges the villain to a duel. The hero defeats the villain without really harming him much. Then the hero is satisfied and turns her back, allowing the villain an opening for a foul strike from behind. This morally justifies the hero when she turns and delivers the finishing blow.

Sometimes, in the darker, more modern novels, there is an anti-hero who dispenses justice when the law fails. There is almost always a speech, articulated justification for ridding the world of the undoubtedly evil villain, delivered by the anti-hero to the villain before the final act. Often, this gives the villain a chance to suddenly produce his hidden weapon, further justifying his righteous end.

But the world wasn't going to arrange itself into black and white moral pigeonholes for my benefit. There was going to be no duel, no speech. The overseer was going to fall asleep that night and never wake up again.

Unless…

"I have an idea," I said to Skyla.

= = =

The overseer woke up surrounded by his female servants. He jerked and writhed for a minute before realizing he had been effectively bound. I remained in the shadows of the unlit bedroom, where he couldn't see me clearly.

The unicorn mares silently watched as he cursed, demanded and blustered. I had left him ungagged in the faint hope that he might say something of interest, but it swiftly became clear that all he was going to do was run through the usual litany of a bully backed into a corner.

I floated a power crystal over to the bed and wedged it firmly between his hind legs. "I'm sending you to a place where you will receive justice for what you've done. Wiser ponies than I will decide your fate," I told him. "Who knows… They might even pardon you if you are willing to change your ways."

"You can't do this to me! I am—"

"These mares are going with you to testify as to what you've done to them," I continued, ignoring his outburst. "There is a small chance that the gem will malfunction and explode instead of transporting you all to Equestria, and in that case, I think the meat of your thighs will protect the others. It would be a lucky escape for you, I think."

"You have no right to—"

"No, it's true, I don't," I agreed. "By the laws of your Empire, you could legally do nearly anything short of killing your servants. Because of that, I'm going to give you a choice. You can go with these mares, or you can stay here—" I stepped out of the shadows. "—with me."

He decided to go.

I gave Katydid a map, a letter of introduction, and a royal warrant, along with private letters to Luna, Cadance, Celestia, and Spike. "You should arrive somewhere north of Canterlot, if my calculations are correct. Just ask any pony you see for assistance, even earth ponies. They'll be happy to help."

She hugged me, which was a bit of a surprise. "I'll keep the others from killing him," she said.

"Tartarus is worse, I promise you," I said. I looked down at the medallion in my magic field, turning it so that the fine lines of the mandala glinted in the dim light. Sun, moon, and star sigils clustered at the middle, making a key to a very specific lock. I set it gently on top of the gem. "Time to go."

Katydid nodded and then said to the others, "Gather around the bed. Get as close as you can."

The five of them crowded in, and Katydid raised her hoof over the medallion.

I smiled at her and nodded in encouragement as I backed away, out of range. "Go ahead, pull the ripcord."

She brought her hoof down hard, forcing the center of the mandala down onto the point of the gem, and the unicorns' horns pulsed as the burst of sudden magic flowed over them. The portal spell blossomed around them. It hissed and churned, burning its way through the thickened interstitial medium by pure force. In a few seconds, the connection was made, and the six ponies vanished.

I let out a sigh of relief. It was nice to know that my plan was still feasible. Celestia might be a bit miffed at me when the flood of refugees began appearing in Equestria, but if everything worked out as I hoped, in the long term many of them would return to their homes as full and free citizens.

I was feeling decidedly chipper on the flight back to our little fleet's hiding spot. Everything is going to be just fine, I thought, with a relaxed smile on my big dumb face.

= = =

Author's Note

As always, inadequate thanks to Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for pre-reading and editing!

19 Unexpected Complications

Chapter Nineteen

Unexpected Complications

When I got back to Nebula, I had a little meeting with the rebel pegasi and tried to straighten them out.

"So you don't want us to kill your enemies, mistress?" Loose Leaf frowned, trying hard to grasp the alien concept.

She stood at the center of a score of pegasi, all fervently devoted to the "Terminator of Delights." All were nearly swooning in, yes, delight at being in my presence.

"Only if it's necessary. In battle... or to defend one of the crew, or an innocent bystander. But try to discourage your opponents rather than killing them. Show mercy, understand?"

It was obvious they didn't. A pegasus near the back of the crowd raised her hoof. "But what if they don't—"

"Look, just keep mercy in mind when you have to fight, okay?"

A murmur of what might have been agreement or confusion swept through the crowd.

I took a break from trying to inculcate a radically different culture into my fanatical feathered followers to say goodbye to the prize crews.

Filigree was captaining Death Strike and Stalwart Lance was taking command of Bloody Hoof.[1] They had charts of congruent areas between the Empire and Equestria that I had drawn up, with fairly generous margins of error clearly indicated.[2] They also had 4,500 medallions each, which left Nebula with nearly a thousand to distribute across the New Western Territory on our way back to the gate in the Badlands.

[1] Honestly. If I had been told that somewhere in the Empire was an airship named Grim and Mighty Blood-Soaked Warrior Who Gets All the Cute Mares, I wouldn't have doubted it for a second.

[2] The spell would take care of elevation and material separation, but I didn't want anypony appearing in the middle of places like the Everfree or the Celestial Sea.

"Be careful, you two," I told them. "If you get into a tight spot, use your parachutes."

They nodded, and Lance said, "It was a pleasure serving under you, Princess. If you ever have need for a big lummox like me as crew again, just let me know."

"Well," I said, thoughtfully, "we will be attempting a trade agreement with the Empire once they've become desperate enough to negotiate with an egalitarian government.[3] I'm sure there will be a need for ponies with practical knowledge of their situation. Would you consider a position on an interdimensional merchant airship? It probably wouldn't be aboard Nebula, but I own several other nimble little traders."

[3] And once I'd figured out how to overcome the interdimensional barrier from the outside. Brute force was fine for pushing out of a dome-equivalent structure, but not so good at getting in.

He considered that for a moment and then said, "I think I would enjoy that."

"Good!" I grinned. "We will settle the details when we see each other back in Equestria!" I turned to Filigree. "How about you? Any plans for when you get back?"

"Daisy and I are going to take a tour of Equestria together and pick out a spot to settle down," he said, smiling broadly. "Then we're going to open a workshop to develop new archanotech devices that will make good use of all the cheap orichalcum that will be available soon."

"Ah! Well, I have several old tomes on orichalchic working dynamics that would make the perfect wedding present!" I paused and then let my expression darken. "I am invited, aren't I?"

Filigree made a noncommittal movement of his head. "If you promise to change before showing up."

"But if I scare away all the other guests, you'll save a whole lot on the reception," I said, in a perfectly serious voice. "Think about it."

We couldn't keep it up. We both started snickering at the same time, Lance joining in with his big booming laugh.

"Alright then," I said, as my laughter trailed off. "Midnight is nearly upon us. Go well, and stay safe!"

The pegasi made one last sweep of the sky before we pulled aside the camouflage netting. After they gave us the all-clear, we lifted all together, Lance's ship heading north, Filigree's southeast, and Nebula turning her nose to the southwest.

Our plan was to sail across the border at high altitude again, and then run full-out for the rough passage through the Dientes Blancos mountains south of Palo Verde. Once we had ascertained what had happened to the Western Fleet, we could adjust our plans accordingly, distribute our medallions, and head home, leaving the Empire of Earth to flounder and collapse as its power supply vanished. Simple!

I had all of two hours to enjoy the feeling of a well-crafted plan going exactly as expected before the western sky lit up with a series of colorful flares.

One of Loose Leaf's pegasi, Sharpwing, was on watch, and I asked him if he knew what the signals meant. The answer I got was an unpleasant surprise.

"That sequence means, 'assemble downwind, in line'," he said frowning.

"A fleet maneuver?" I asked, appalled.

"A squadron, at least, ma'am," he replied. "They might be setting up a blockade. If so, we can expect a screen of pegasi, even at night."

Where had those ships come from? Was it the Western Fleet returning, nowhere near as damaged as we had hoped? It wasn't as much of a mystery that they'd strung their line to cut off our retreat to the west. Just a bit of sensible analysis of our movements would have given them a good idea of where we were headed next. Hopefully they would have assumed that our two prizes would be accompanying us, and not guess that they were headed deeper into the Empire.

I tapped the tip of a forehoof against the quarterdeck lightly, thinking hard. "We can go over them, but the chances of being spotted are too great," I said to myself in a low voice. "I want to keep that little trick a secret for as long as I can,"

"I beg your pardon, ma'am?" Sharpwing said.

"Just thinking out loud," I said, hardly louder.

"Pardon me, ma'am," he said tentatively. "May I ask a question?"

"Sure," I said, absently, still trying to think up a way to get more information about what awaited us out there in the dark.

"I don't know if Leaf had a chance to tell you, but others loyal to you have taken the Black Gate. Could you not return to your home for reinforcements?"

"Wait," I said, my half-formed scheme dissipating like a sneeze in a gale. "What?"

He let his ears droop, afraid he had offended me somehow. "A b-band of loyalists defeated the guardians of the Gate. The great gems are back in place, and it is ready for you to use as you please, oh Great One!"

"Just 'ma'am', please," I said almost automatically.

He nodded desperately. "Yes, ma'am!"

"You mean the gate to my home universe?" I asked, fervently hoping he would say no.

"Yes, ma'am."

That meant it was the gate to her universe. "And it's active… unlocked?" I had given up hoping by then.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Roadapples!" I turned and blew hard three times into the speaking tube to the cupola, and then repeated the signal into the one to the captain's cabin. Then I reversed our course, swinging Nebula a full one hundred and eighty degrees so sharply that her hull swung back and forth a half-dozen times before settling down.

"Ao, go roust Loose Leaf out of her hammock and get her up here!" I said, as soon as the kirin floated down beside the mainmast. She turned and went down the aft companionway without a word.

Skyla was on deck a moment later, looking sleep-tousled, but alert. "What is it, Ms. Nightshade?"

"We've got a problem. A big problem!" I gritted my teeth and shook my head. "No, two big problems… or… one big problem and one huge problem—"

Skyla stepped closer to me and said softly into one ear, "Breathe, Twilight."

Screaming in frustration would technically count as breathing, right? And it had all been going so well, too. I made do with a low growl as I exhaled.

Ao returned with Loose Leaf in tow.

"Change of plans, Loose Leaf," I said. "Can you get us to the Black Gate from here?"

"Certainly, my liege!" she replied immediately. No, she hadn't sworn fealty to me, and I had told her a dozen times to call me Ms. Nightshade or ma'am when onboard, but I didn't have any time to spare to correct her. Again.

"Good!" I nodded. "Ao, take the helm and follow the course that Leaf gives you. I need to speak to the captain alone."

Ao lifted an eyebrow about a hairsbreadth, and I replied with a subtle twitch of the corner of my mouth that essentially meant, A manticore has relieved himself above one of our propellers; be ready for anything. She sighed quietly and gave a nod so slight it was nearly microscopic.

Skyla and I flew up above Nebula and followed along in her wake out of earshot as we talked. After I had filled her in on the blockade and what Sharpwing had told me, she asked, "And you think this other Twilight might come through the gate? Wouldn't that be a good thing? She could help us, couldn't she?"

"It's possible, but I don't like the odds," I replied. "Even taking into consideration differential time flows, she's probably a lot older than I am, and certainly a lot more powerful. I'm pretty sure she didn't defeat the old pegasus kingdom by subterfuge. Also, they remember her as… Well, as I look right now. Not exactly a good sign."

"But she's essentially you, right? She wouldn't be a danger to us!" Skyla protested.

If she had ever seen the darker side of her beloved Auntie Luna, she wouldn't have held that opinion.

"Maybe not, but even if she shows up and isn't hostile, the rebel pegasi are going to be very confused by two Thieves of Honor. The only thing keeping them on our side is superstitious belief, and if they decide they're mistaken…"

Skyla nodded. "Right. So we get there as soon as possible and de-power the gate. What about the blockade?"

"We need more information," I said. "I'll ask Loose Leaf if some of her group can find out exactly what's going on. I'm hoping to be out of sight by dawn, but if it looks like the Empire is going to overwhelm us, we can always use the medallions to escape."

She nodded thoughtfully and then her eyes widened. "But that would mean leaving the ship behind! We can't do that!"

I shrugged. "Maybe I can retool the Black Gate to get her home again, but if not, we might have to abandon her, yes."

"Oh, Twilight!" she said, suddenly dropping her captain persona. "We can't! I don't want to be responsible for losing Nebula!"

"It's alright," I said, as my heart twisted in my chest and the wind blew a few stray tears from my eyes. "I've got other airships. Newer ones. I could even build another—" I stopped lying to her because my throat had tightened up too much to talk.

"No!" she insisted. "We're not going to lose her! Come on!" With two powerful flaps of her wings, she streaked forward, diving for Nebula's quarterdeck.

Her sudden departure caught me by surprise, and it took me another moment to compose myself before following. By the time I touched down, she was already giving orders.

"Loose Leaf, pick two of your crew with the best chance of infiltrating the imperial fleet. Get us detailed information on what is going on and what they know about us. No, don't look to Ms. Nightshade! I'm the captain here, and if you think she's scary, it's only because you don't know me! Get moving! I want that information yesterday!"

Loose Leaf fled below decks like her wings were on fire.

Skyla turned toward the fo'c'sle deck and yelled to the unicorn on bow watch. "Linwood! Get full charging teams to the engines right now! We're running flat out until we get to the gate! Move your tail!"

I opened my mouth to make a suggestion, but Skyla was at full ahead and in no mood to heave-to. "Ao, get whatever Zebra Fire we have left ready to use at a moment's notice. Have medallions and gems readied at all stations on board. Remind the crew that they need a unicorn present to use them, but also make it clear that anypony that uses one without being in deadly peril, will be in deadly peril when I catch up with them! Understood?"

She turned to Sharpwing without waiting for an answer. "Sharpwing, get the rest of your group into the air and scout ahead. I do not want to run into any more surprises tonight!"

Sharpwing snapped a salute and went to carry out his orders. Skyla turned back to me. "I hope it doesn't come to it, but what I need you to do is figure out how to defeat yourself. If there's anything I haven't thought of, tell me now."

I was so proud of my niece that I thought for a moment I was going to cry again. "Aye, aye, captain!" I gave her a full wing salute. "I'm on it!"

= = =

After an hour or so, I gave up on designing a set of guns that would duplicate Tirek's magic-stealing spell. It would take three of them fired at exactly the same time and precisely on-target to mesh the release, guidance, and absorption stages of the spell. It was certainly possible to build a mechanism that would automate the process, but even with Filigree's help it would have taken weeks or possibly months to create such a complex device.

A magic-sealing spell, like the one that had been used on me at Redkeep, was a far more practical and easier-to-build device, so that's what I concentrated on for the rest of the night.

At dawn, Skyla was on the quarterdeck with Sirocco at the wheel. Star was looking through a big telescope mounted on the aft rail. More ponies were at each side of the waist and near the bow, all scanning the sky with spyglasses, and there was a group of three unicorns at each engine pod, feeding them power.

"Good morning, Ms. Nightshade," Skyla greeted me. "What progress?"

"I've got the diagrams drawn out for a magic-nullification mandala. I should be able to produce one by tomorrow afternoon at the latest." I glanced down at the rumbling engine pods. "Still running over their rating?"

She nodded. "We throttled back a bit, but Swift Wing still has them at a hundred and ten percent. He's keeping a close eye on them, and they seem to be holding up well."

"I can take over for a while, if you want to get some sleep," I offered.

Skyla shook her head. "You need it more than I do. You'll need a steady horn to engrave that mandala. Why don't you grab some food and then turn in for a couple of hours?"

I hesitated, and she said, "Do I need to make that an order, Ms. Nightshade?"

I grinned at her. "No, Captain. But wake me if there's any news, please."

Of course, it was hard to get to sleep, even as tired as I was, and when I did manage it, my dreams were troubled.

= = =

"Majesty?"

I was instantly awake at Ao's soft word, and I sat bolt upright in my bunk, my horn reflexively coming to light.

"There is no danger," Ao said a bit more loudly from where she curled near the door to my cabin. "But the pegasus spies have returned, and are with the captain now. This one assumed you would wish to hear their report."

"Thank you, Ao," I said, throwing aside my blanket and rolling out of the bunk.

She followed me up the ladder to Skyla's cabin. In my eagerness, I almost barged in without knocking, but caught myself at the last moment. I rapped my hoof against the door. "It's Ao and me, captain," I called out.

"Come in, Ms. Nightshade!" There was some urgency in her voice.

And there was a good reason for that: Nebula had been spotted.

"So the Western Fleet is back unharmed?" I asked, frowning.

Skyla gave a bitter laugh at that. "Oh, no! According to these two—" She indicated the pegasi that Leaf had sent to spy on the blockade with a flick of her wing. "—your plan worked all too well! There are only three ships in the Western Fleet that aren't lost or crippled by engine and gun explosions, and that's after they cannibalized the wrecks to make repairs! Since they can't trust any of their gems, they're still moored at Palo Verde, just swinging in the wind."

I asked the obvious question. "Then what did we see last night?"

One of the pegasi replied, "M-ma'am, that was the First Squadron of the Imperial Fleet! They've mobilized the whole fleet! The Emperor's flagship is moored at Fort Blood right now!"

"Evidently, the Emperor really doesn't like it when other ponies break his toys," Skyla said with a sour scowl. "He was going to throw everything he had at the fictional pirate fleet in the west, until some smarter ponies put it all together for him. They still think there might be one or two enemy ships out west, but they've decided that the one they need to worry about first must be here in Blackwood Province. That's us, by the way."

The pegasus spoke up again. "When they got reports about the captured airships, that made up their minds. They've done everything they can to lock down the border, and they sent out every fast scout they have to search for you."

"And one of them spotted us?" I asked.

"Yes," Skyla said bluntly. "A quick little gem-powered ornithopter. Swift Wing saw it come up behind us, and he just barely managed to catch up with it when it turned and ran. He took out its engine, and the pilot had to ditch it in a farm pond. But the imperials are using line-of-sight coverage, and Swift didn't have a hope of catching the second ornithopter that was keeping tabs on the first. The fleet will know our location in a matter of hours if they don't already."

"What about the prize ships?"

"Well, there's some good news, at least," Skyla said. "Breeze Drifter?"

The other pegasus cleared his throat. "They're into the central Empire by now, and with all the imperial airships transferred out here, they should actually have an easier time of it. Nopony in the fleet has the slightest clue about that part of the plan. They assume you're only interested in attacking and destroying military targets. Maybe going after treasuries."

"Okay," I said, tapping my chin with a hoof. "The earliest we can expect to be attacked is… Drifter, do you think they'll risk a bunch of fast and light craft against us?"

"After Redkeep and the Western Fleet? I don't think so, ma'am. They'll send a swarm of fast scouts to keep tracking you, but they'll stand well off until they can bring up the biggest of the battleships. They won't take any chances, and the Emperor is going to want to be in on the kill."

"What's the top speed of the slowest of those battleships?" I asked.

"Uhmn… they'll probably leave the old dreadnoughts behind, so that means about thirty knots, maybe a bit less," he replied.

I did some quick mental calculations, and growled in frustration. "That means the fleet will catch up with us about the same time as we reach the Black Gate. Unless we get very lucky, I won't have enough time to modify the gate before we're attacked." I hated to say it, and my eyes began to sting just thinking about it, but the merciless math had no regard for my feelings. "We've got to face it. We're probably going to lose—"

"When the time, comes, Ms. Nightshade," Skyla practically snapped at me. "There are any number of things that may delay the fleet. We won't abandon Nebula until the last possible moment, is that clear?"

"Captain," I said. "I am not willing to risk a single pony's life for a beat-up old airship! It would be better if—"

"When the fleet goes home, I want them to find their towns and cities empty of unicorns. The longer we keep the Imperial Fleet focused on us, the longer Filigree and Lance will have to distribute the medallions," Skyla said calmly.

"That… That's actually a very good point." I sighed.

"Good," she said, smacking the table with a hoof. "We have a day and a half left to do everything we can to undermine this ghastly place. Let's be about it!"

"Aye, aye," I said, saluting.

I went forward to the galley to grab a bite before getting back to work, and Ao followed me with an odd expression on her face.

"What?" I asked her finally, as I piled some cheese, biscuits, and apples on a plate.

"The captain's last words were from a book were they not?" she asked.

"Yes. She was quoting old Commodore Cloud from Ms. Midshippony Breezie. It's what ponies nowadays would call his catchphrase."

Ao's little mustache tendrils wriggled in an odd way. "Does it not disturb you that she is imitating a storybook character?"

I smiled slightly. "A very wise old mare once told me that we become what we pretend to be. If Skyla is pretending to be a capable, wise, and heroic naval officer… I'm okay with that."

"This one suspects that capability may not be acquired through pretense…" She glanced around, and seeing that we were alone, added, "Majesty."

"And that's where we come in, old friend," I said, adding a couple of hardboiled eggs to my plate. "We fill in the little gaps and make it look like the happy ending was all her doing."

Ao looked at me sidelong. "And are you certain this story has a happy ending, Majesty?"

I wasn't, but it wouldn't do any good to dwell on the extreme unpleasantness that was our probable future. "As long as it has a safe ending, I will be happy. Give it a few years, and maybe a bit of creative editing, and this will all seem like a pleasant little adventure."

"As you say, Majesty," she replied, but she didn't sound like she believed it.

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks to Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for pre-reading and editing!

20 Running for the Gate

Chapter Twenty

Running for the Gate

I rushed the job on the anti-magic gun, fighting back a compulsion to work on each part until it was perfect. Instead, I put the majority of my effort into completing the mandala and maximizing its range. That meant scavenging a waveguide barrel from another gun and connecting the mandala to the power gem with a cable rather than a purpose-built receiver. It was unwieldy, but it would work, and I finished it with several hours to spare.

I made good use of some of those hours getting some much-needed sleep. Oh, there were dozens of other things I could have done to improve our chances, but I'd learned through hard experience that being sharp and well-rested would improve our chances the most.

According to Loose Leaf, the Black Gate was built high in the mountains to the north of us, and guarded by a hereditary group of pegasi. Or rather it had been guarded by them. Being the primary location associated with the Replenisher of Graves, as soon as word spread that she had returned, Twilight Sparkle's secret followers[1] had infiltrated the place and taken over.

[1] There were a surprising number of them. Less than Loose Leaf had boasted of, but they numbered in the hundreds. I am pretty sure that their prime motivation was resentment at serving an "inferior" race rather than devotion to a centuries-old story of a dreadful boogey-mare.

I stood in the bow, scanning the mountain range ahead of us in the distance with my spyglass. It was hardly more than a jagged purple line on the horizon. Not much in the way of detail was visible beyond bits of white on the tallest peaks.

Loose Leaf was with me, describing what we should expect as we approached. She told me that the gate complex was located at the head of a hanging valley, and if one discounted ponies who were exceptionally skilled in mountain climbing, there was no way to get there except by air. The buildings to either side of the gate were built of the same black basalt that formed the gigantic trilithon of the portal itself, and were the living quarters and central library of the scribe caste she was born into.

"So… what sort of books are in the library?" I asked her, as casually as possible.

"There is a section for each of the great families' records, military history, and genealogy. Otherwise, it's general history and philosophy, mostly," she replied.

Focus, I told myself. You can come back to the books later. Aloud, I said, "And the approach is up the narrow valley? How are the winds?"

"Rough when the valley below is hot and the air is rising. And during storms of course. Otherwise they're mild. It should be easy to sail Nebula right through the gate in the evening."

"What about the imperial ships?"

"Cutters and cruisers would fit easily," she replied. "Are you going to capture some more of them, my liege?" Where a normal pony might be grinning at the thought, Leaf's expression would best be described as unholy glee.

"I'm keeping my options open," I told her. "What about the bigger ships?"

She thought for a moment and then said, "It would be pretty risky with the battleships. It would be an awfully tight squeeze, and I think the imperial flagship might actually scrape the sides of the valley when it got near the gate, even if the air was dead calm."

"But they can fly over the valley?"

Loose Leaf frowned. "I've never heard of an airship doing it, but it should be possible. Not much room for error, though, and no ship could make it over the crest of the range behind it. The stompers always use pegasus chariots or ornithopters to go north."

I nodded distractedly. Her information was useful, but it hadn't triggered a sudden, brilliant plan. "We'll just have to play it by ear," I muttered.

Loose Leaf laughed delightedly. "Very witty, Your Highness!"

"Huh?"

She stopped laughing and began to look a bit uncertain. "Your… hum… pun is it? 'By ear.' It's funny because…" She trailed off with one wingtip pointed toward my freshly regrown right ear.

Fortunately for Leaf, who would have gnawn her own legs off rather than offend me, the speaking tube for the quarterdeck whistled just then.

It was Sirocco, reporting that we were under attack.

I quickly stowed my spyglass and leaped over the starboard anchor, getting clear of the hull so that I could see what was happening. Loose Leaf followed close behind me.

We had gotten used to the cloud of ornithopters that followed just within sight of us and had mostly ignored them as we rushed toward the mountains. I assumed their purpose was to simply observe us and guide the battleships as they caught up. But it seemed that the little machines were to take a much more active role.

They were clustering into three groups in an inverted arrowhead formation. The sides were rushing forward and the central group was climbing fast. It was a classic griffin envelopment; the two "wings" would harass us from the flanks, while the "beak" attacked from above. It was a good tactic for a swarm of flyers that were both quicker, and able to climb higher, than us.

I banked hard and came down on the quarterdeck behind the mizzenmast. I took the big telescope from Star and focused it on the climbing ornithopters. As I had feared, they weren't carrying guns. Instead, there were canisters about the size of a foal slung under their bellies.

"Captain!" I called out, rushing forward. "They're going to bomb us!"

"Will the anti-magic paint hold out?" Skyla asked. We had used that last of the goop on the quick repairs we'd made after the battle, and the coating on the damaged areas of Nebula's upper envelope was nowhere near as thick as I would have liked.

I shook my head. "They've had direct experience of how good our magic defense is. It's likely that those bombs are pure chemical nastiness."

She stared at me for a second and her jaw went tight. "Recommendation?"

"We haven't sighted their airships yet, so I'm betting this is a desperation move to slow us down," I said, thinking out loud. "We can climb faster and further than they know, but I don't think this is the time to reveal that ace in our mane." I lapsed into silence for a few, very long seconds. Everypony on deck was watching me silently.

"Captain," I said. "My recommendation is to out-fly and out-fight them. We've got magic guns up top. That'll make the bombers climb out of gun range, where they'll be less accurate. We can put a dozen unicorns on the dorsal catwalk as fire suppression teams to handle any hits, and everypony else on the deck guns to deal with the wings."

She nodded. "Very good, Ms. Nightshade. Anything else?"

"I'll take the wheel. Make sure everypony has their safety lines clipped on. The ride could get pretty rough."

She began issuing orders, sending ponies to their stations with speed and efficiency. She whistled up Ao and asked her to provide moment-to-moment reports on the position of the bombers. The last command she gave before making sure her cutlass was hanging properly from its baldrick and flipping down the shaded lenses of her goggles was to Star.

"Let fly the colors!"

"Aye, aye, Captain!" the big mule cried out with enthusiasm. The big Jolly Roger unfurled from the sternpost and snapped in our wake.

I took the wheel from Sirocco and unlocked the synchronizing levers that kept the steering fins, rudders and elevators working in tandem. He moved to the telegraph and clipped his line to the brass bullseye on the rail. Sky remained with her ear to the cupola speaking tube.

The little ornithopters were quick; we didn't have to wait long. The wings swept in first from astern, strafing the deck and no doubt hoping to distract us from the bombers moving into position above.

The Nebulas gave back with a will, many of the rebel unicorns screaming defiance as they fired their weapons. Several ornithopters were downed at the first pass, tangled in netting or broken by magical fire. Somepony was even using my improvised anti-magic gun, which had the effect of shutting down the engines of the craft it hit. There were also a few cries of pain from Nebula's waist; we hadn't escaped totally unscathed.

The wing squadrons banked sharply, turning to come at us again, and I shifted my magical grip on Nebula's controls. When they were a quarter furlong out, I pushed the levers hard, switching between the controls as quickly as I could to produce a configuration of her flight surfaces that would have had old Gudgeon tearing his mane out in despair.

Nebula shuddered as her elevators, rudders, and steering fins all went into hard opposition. If she had been a single-pony vessel, she would have spun on her long axis like a drill bit. As it was, she swung the tons of timber and iron of her hull nearly thirty degrees to larboard, right into the path of the strafing ornithopters on that side. The fast little flyers had no chance to swerve away, and shattered against our hull like glass thrown at a brick wall. The noise was appalling.

The squadron on our starboard side missed their shots, which were aimed at targets that were suddenly a dozen lengths from where they were expected to be. Our own crews mostly missed as well, many of them sliding about on deck until brought up short by their safety lines. Some of the Nebulas were wounded by debris that crashed along the deck, and our larboard fore engine started making an ugly grinding noise.

As Nebula's hull swung back into line, Skyla shouted. "The bombers are above us! They're dropping the bombs!"

"Sirocco! Larboard engines full astern!" I commanded. The hull was starting to swing back, rising then on the starboard side, and I slammed the elevators to the full down position at the same time as I hauled the steering fins to full up.

Nebula's nose dipped and her stern rose like an enraged pony about to buck with all her strength. The rigging and masts groaned in protest at the sudden massive torque between hull and envelope that they had never been designed to take, and I heard the sharp cracks of lines parting under the strain. Then I spun the wheel hard left and there were more ugly sounds from above me as Nebula yawed and pitched violently.

The insane maneuver twisted us out from under most of the bombs. They fell past our starboard side like ugly metallic hail. Two hit the envelope at a steep angle and bounced off before they burst, flinging a lacework of fire across the sky. Only one struck fairly, spattering its flaming chemicals just forward of the aft dorsal hatch.

"Sirocco! Larboard aft engine full ahead!" I ordered. The damaged engine had begun smoking, and I tried to ease the strain on it. "Forward engines to half ahead."

Skyla kept relaying a running report of the firefighting effort until Ao broke off, going aft to help put out the flames. Nebula was still oscillating and yawing badly, and I concentrated on getting her back under control. Skyla drove the gun crews back to their stations with insanely cheerful encouragements.

The surviving wing of ornithopters swung wide around us, following their lead pilot, who was no doubt wondering if there was any point in pressing the attack after losing an entire squadron. A concentrated barrage of fire from the gun crews—who had responded remarkably well to Skyla's shouted exhortations to bloody murder—resulting in several more losses, made up the officer's mind, and he led his flyers away from us at top speed.

The cupola tube whistled, and Ao reported that the fire had been put out before any major damage had been done. A repair crew was already patching the holes in the envelope and the number four gas cell. Within a minute, we could see the bombers from the deck as they dropped down to join the other fliers retreating toward the southern horizon.

"Good to see the imperial scum run, isn't it?" Skyla called out to the crew.

They cheered. Even the wounded ones.

The single note of dissent came from our damaged engine which gave a metallic shriek of protest before freezing up entirely.

Sirocco immediately rang both forward engines to stop and cursed under his breath.

"Ring up the fore starboard engine to full ahead, Sirocco," I told him. "A little left rudder will compensate for the imbalance."

He did so and then turned to me. "I've never seen anything like that, Ms Nightshade! I've never even heard of the like!"

I flipped the synchronizing levers back to their locked positions and said, "The old designs can do some things no sleek and modern craft would dream of. Would you kindly[2] take the wheel? Keep her a spoke or two left, and she should fly straight."

[2] "Would you kindly" meant the same to an airship crewpony as "if you please." It was a genteel way of indicating a direct order.

"Ms. Nightshade, please assess the damage to the engine," Skyla said.

"Aye-aye, Captain," I answered, and made for the main deck. Behind me, I heard her calling Star to the telegraph and giving command of the deck to Swift Wing. She was going to tend to our wounded, despite the fact that we had taught and drilled all the rebel unicorns in healing and palliative spells. But as old Commodore Cloud would say, that was "only right and proper."

I opened the access hatch to the larboard fore engine and disconnected the big cable that fed power from the gem to the engine. Then I opened the cowling on the engine pod itself. The damage was bad, but not as bad as it might have been. The props showed impact damage, and the forward bearing had fused itself to the drive shaft. It must have seized up when struck by ornithopter debris. Fortunately, the engine itself seemed to be undamaged, but the shaft, bearing, and propellers would all have to be replaced.

We had spares aboard, of course, but it would take at least a day to make the repairs, or even longer considering that they would have to be done in flight. Long before that, we would arrive at the Black Gate or the imperial fleet would catch up to us; we would just have to make do with three engines. The engine had control rods that would feather[3] the props automatically, but those had been destroyed by the damage to the drive shaft, so I did it directly by twisting the blades with my magic. Then I closed the pod's cowling and the access hatch, leaving the power cable disconnected.

[3] "Feathering" a propellor is a technique used when an engine is stopped to reduce drag. The blades are turned edge-on into the wind, so that air resistance is minimized. Skilled ponies will use this same technique with their oars when rowing a boat.

We had to keep ponies at all the battle stations in case of more unpleasant surprises, but after Skyla had made her rounds—praising and healing the crew to the best of her ability—she ordered Cream Puff to light the galley fires and prepare a generous hot meal to be carried to all the crew at their posts.

Sugarpine and Loose Leaf joined me, Ao, and Skyla in the captain's cabin for a meeting over our food.

"We defeated the attack, but they managed to reduce our speed by almost thirty percent, so it wasn't a complete victory," I said to the group. "We haven't sighted the fleet yet, so we still have a chance of making it to the Black Gate before they catch us."

"The pegasi at the gate will flock to your aid, Princess Twilight," Loose Leaf put in. "You need only send a courier to ask!"

I shook my head. "Enough to fight off the fleet?"

"They would gladly die in your service," she replied, dodging the all-too-obvious answer.

There was a moment of awkward silence in the cabin and then I said, "I'd kinda prefer they didn't, actually."

"Her Majesty is quite tender-hearted," Ao said to Loose Leaf with a wry smile. "Often, entire months go by without any ponies killing or dying for her."

Skyla stifled a laugh with a snort, but Loose Leaf looked stricken. "Is she to be addressed as Majesty?" The deranged little pegasus turned her eyes to me. "Forgive me, Majesty! Oh, please forgive me! I did not know! I will—"

"Just ma'am, please!" I said emphatically, with a glare at Ao.

The kirin put on her best contrite expression, but her little mustache thingies rippled in amusement.

"Can we get the discussion back on track, please?" Skyla said, grinning faintly herself.

"The valley containing the gate is defensible, correct, Leaf?" I said.

"Yes, M—ma'am," she said, still sweating slightly. "At least it would be very difficult for the bigger ships to approach if opposed by even a small force."

"And if we arrived early enough to put gun crews on the rim of the valley above the gate?"

Loose Leaf considered it for a moment. "I think… I think that might make it too dangerous for any but fliers and chariots."

"And how many of those accompany the fleet?" I asked.

She looked very distressed, but managed to choke out the answer anyway. "Still too many to fight. There is no cover for Nebula, and in the narrow valley, no room to dodge their bombs! You must return to your world, where you will be safe! The loyal blacklips will hold the gate until you can return with reinforcements!"

I turned to Skyla. "That still might give me enough extra time to deal with the gate mechanism." I carefully avoided saying anything that would make Loose Leaf suspicious about what, exactly, I was going to do to the gate. "And if I can't make the adjustments I want in time, we will all just go home."

Skyla stared at the tabletop for a moment. Then she looked up at Sugarpine, who hadn't said much of anything during the meeting. "All your ponies have been thoroughly briefed about the gems and medallions. I will give a general order if they are to be used, but tell them that if they are in danger..."

Sugarpine snorted and held up a big hoof. "Like they were in danger just now? Captain, you'll have to give that order before they'll run from a fight with the imperials, and some of them might stick around anyway. For the first time in their lives, they've got the power to get some revenge on those damned stompers and, believe me, none of them want to let go of that."

"Living well is the best revenge," I told him, somewhat sharply.

He nodded. "Yes, ma'am, but blowing holes through the ponies that have oppressed and tortured my tribe for centuries is a really close second."

I bit back an answer to that. There would be enough time when we were back in Equestria to teach them all the inestimable value of forgiveness and friendship.

"One last thing, then," I said. "A serpent without a head isn't much of a threat. If we were to capture or kill the emperor, would that discourage the pursuit? Or throw it into enough confusion that we would gain a significant amount of time?" With help from various friends, I had pulled off a number of operations that were nearly equivalent to sneaking into an enemy fleet and kidnapping a monarch. Perhaps we could—

Sugarpine and Loose Leaf exchanged looks and both emphatically shook their heads. Loose Leaf said, "His barons and the council run the Empire. A lot of them might squabble over the succession, but they would all see his death as an opportunity rather than a setback."

I raised an eyebrow. "Not well-regarded, then?"

"Not regarded much at all," Sugarpine said. "He's… what... seven?"

Loose Leaf nodded again. "Technically, the colt's word is law, but his words are mostly echoes of whatever the regents tell him, and the barons are notorious scofflaws. He wouldn't be missed."

"Oh," I said, abandoning that train of thought. "We will have to continue on as planned, then."

Skyla stopped me when the others left her cabin. "Could I talk with you for a minute, Twilight?"

"Certainly, Captain," I replied, automatically, not really noting that she'd used my name.

"No, not Captain, Aunt Twilight. Just me."

I smiled at her, "Sure, Flurry. What did you want to tell me?"

She swallowed and grimaced. "It's not enough. It's not nearly enough, but I want to say I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry for getting you and everypony else into this mess! I don't know how much it cost you to build Nebula, but I will pay you back every bit—"

I took her head between my wingtips, leaned close to her, and said, "No."

"What...?"

"No, you won't. That doesn't matter. What matters is that you've learned a lot from all this, and even better, you've taught me something very important."

"I don't understand. What could I possibly teach you?"

I let go and paced the deck as I answered her. "I've seen hundreds of worlds, and many that were worse off than this one. So many, that I let it change my thinking. It's impossible to help them all, or even a small fraction of them, so I… I stopped caring. I let things happen that I shouldn't have."

"But, you're right! You can't fix everything!"

"Yes, that's true, and I can prove it mathematically," I replied, nodding my head. "But what you've taught me is that I can fix what's in front of me. At least I can try. It should have been obvious, but some things are better learned in action. And for that, thank you."

I'd gotten her completely wrong-footed, and she had no idea what to say to me, so I saluted her and said, "And now, if you'll excuse me, Captain, I will go inspect the repairs to the envelope and make sure cell number four is sound and fully filled."

"Uh… Yes. Good," she said, her eyes still wide. "Carry on."

For some strange reason, as I prodded at the charred fabric and rough patches on Nebula's upper surface, I found myself humming a happy tune.

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks to Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for pre-reading and editing!

21 Falling Into Shadow

Chapter Twenty-One

Falling Into Shadow

We spotted the imperial fleet in the early afternoon. Ao and I were up top, watching the ships come envelope-up over the ragged forest horizon.

"I count twenty-three," I said after a second sweep with my spyglass.

"This one agrees," Ao replied. "Though there may be more behind the main body of the fleet that are yet hidden from us."

"That one in the center is a monster," I observed. "I'm betting it's the flagship."

"It is of a size near to the Great Panjandrum's air palace, in this one's estimation," she said.

"And here I forgot to pack my Grand Pirate Armada," I said out of the corner of my mouth.

We lowered our spyglasses and looked at each other. "So, it has come to this," we both said simultaneously.

We could afford to laugh, because we were much closer to the mountains that held the Black Gate. We might have as much as an hour on the ground before the fleet became a problem.

We were still chuckling a bit when Breeze Drifter landed next to me and saluted. I saluted him back. "Anything to report, Drifter?"

"Yes, ma'am! the imperials have sent ornithopters to flank us quite a ways to the west. They ran just over the treetops to stay out of sight. Ten light 'thoppers and four heavies with fully armored pilots, all earth ponies. They're armed with guns, but no bombs that I could see. At the speed they were making—" He glanced over his shoulder at the dark wall of the mountains ahead of us. "—they should be at the valley any time now."

"Thank you," I said, my mood souring. "Report all that to the captain, and tell her I will be down shortly."

He saluted again and popped his wings open, letting the wind of our passage lift him off the catwalk. One flashy wingover later, he disappeared below Nebula's envelope.

"Good flyer, that one," I observed. I turned my glass to the east, searching without success for Dust Devil, the other scout we had sent out at noon in the opposite direction. "I have a sneaking suspicion that there's a second group to the east, and that we're going to get ambushed as soon as we get well into the valley leading to the gate."

Ao nodded. "It is what this one would do." She did a barely noticeable little double-take and added, "Not to you, of course, Majesty!"

"That's good to hear," I said with a chuckle. "But if you did have nearly thirty quick and nimble flyers with light magic guns, and wanted to prevent me from getting to the gate, what would you do?"

"They have surely learned that Nebula is resistant to magic weapons, and the flyers from this morning would have reported the relative success of the single firebomb that hit us." Ao paused and rippled a bit more energetically as she floated beside me. "This one is puzzled that Breeze Drifter saw no bombs among their armaments. Ornithopters depend on speed to avoid being hit, and so this one also wonders at the armored—" She broke off suddenly, turning to directly face me as her tail lashed the air. "They mean to board us!"

It made sense. The only other possibility was that they were intending to take over the pegasus fortress at the gate and hold it against us while the fleet came up. Taking a fortified position by direct assault took a lot of time no matter how understaffed it was, and I suspected that the rebel blacklips had brought all their best war toys with them when they'd captured the fort, even if they had done it by treachery.

No, there was no way it could be done with less than thirty ponies. Even if the imperial flanking squadrons managed to take the fortress in time, it would be with heavy losses, and it would still leave them facing Nebula's guns as she came up the valley. "I think you're right, Ao! I'm going below. You keep a sharp eye out up here while I speak with the captain."

= = =

Two hours later, we were nearing the entrance to the valley. It was a dark slash through the mountains leading straight northward. The distant peaks were still in sunlight, but the floor of the valley was lost in darkness, a bit of light only on its eastern rim. Loose Leaf had assured me that, if the sun had been higher in the sky, we would have been able to see the gate and its attendant buildings, a league distant. Ao had gone to her post at the tail hatch, and I was standing by the cupola crew with Skyla.

I checked my gear for the third time as we neared the mouth of the valley. "They will come from the west," I said to her. "They'll dive down with the sun directly behind them. A couple might try to sneak in from somewhere unexpected after the main fight begins, so we will have to keep an eye out for that."

She nodded, her eyes on the western sky, even though she knew there was no chance of spotting the ambushers yet. "The anti-boarding nets are slung between envelope and rails, but I don't think they'll risk our main guns."

I shook my head. "No, I doubt they will. They aren't used to open decks like ours, so it might not even occur to them. They'll go for the top, but we still need a fair crew on deck just in case."

"I've made the assignments," she replied. "Sirocco's on the wheel with Star backing him up. Mostly lubbers on the deck guns, but they've had a taste of battle now. I'm sure they'll do fine."

"I hate to have one of our best flyers out of the fight," I said.

She shrugged. "With Nebula an engine short, we need a good pony on the helm, and he's our best." Then she looked over at me and grinned. "Well, our safest, at any rate."

I flicked my tail at her little jab. "I'm not disagreeing, I just wish we had more ponies in the air."

"We'll make do," she replied. "Be careful up there."

I nodded, once again checking the lanyard around my neck where the raptor set hung as well as the chinstrap of my heavy helmet.[1] I wanted to go over the plan again, but she knew it as well as anypony, and it would be replaced by improvisation soon after the imperials jumped us, anyway. "Be careful down here," I said, and leaped into the air.

[1] I usually only wear my light chamfron while in the air because it affords greater visibility, but being recently shot in the head had altered my thinking on the matter.

I waved to Ao as I swept past Nebula's tail, and she gave me a very formal bow. That crazy kirin was probably going to enjoy this.

I fell back two furlongs to where the team of pegasi was following in Nebula's wake. Swift Wing took up the wingpony position on my right, with Loose Leaf outside of her. Breeze Drifter and Dust Devil flew to my left, completing the V formation.

Nebula entered the valley and fell into shadow.

Dust Devil had confirmed our suspicions about a second flanking group to the east, but I assumed they would have joined up with their comrades on the western side of the valley by then. Swift and Leaf were still under orders to keep a sharp lookout to the east, just in case. I would have liked to be higher than Nebula, but we needed to be as inconspicuous as possible, so my little squad dipped below the valley's rim as we followed her into the chasm.

We made a little more than a mile before the imperials attacked. From Nebula's perspective, they dove right out of the sun, as I had predicted, but my following pegasus group had no problem picking them out against the evening sky.

"Here they come, over," I said into the raptor set.

"Understood, over," Skyla replied. By agreement, she wouldn't use the set again unless there was an unforeseen emergency. I was to be the eyes for Nebula.

"One furlong," I said, indicating their distance from the ship. "Light ornithopters in front, heavies behind. Three quarters. I don't see any guns on the heavies. One half!"

Our guns, catapults and launchers had been ranged for just that distance, and an instant after I had said the words, the crews at all the dorsal hatches opened fire directly at the setting sun. My group flapped hard for altitude, but we could still see the first part of the battle as it unfolded.

A half-dozen ornithopters broke up and tumbled through the sky. The rest scattered and returned fire immediately, concentrating on our crews at the hatches.

"Heavies still inbound," I said into the raptor set. "Nets… Now!"

The net launchers fired blindly on my order, and even with the heavy ornithopters closely grouped, it was a minor miracle that they hit anything at all. One was a great shot that tangled the lead ornithopter solidly and fouled the one behind it when the parachute opened. Another was a half-hit, good enough to jam the wings of a third machine. The rest were clean misses.

"Five heavies left," I said into the raptor set.

Our net launchers reloaded immediately, but the armored pilots were nearly on top of them. "Crossbows on the heavies!" I yelled to my group. "I'll handle the others!"

The gun crews aboard Nebula had realized that the armored ponies were the greatest threat and were concentrating their fire on them. But that gave the light ornithopters free rein to snipe away. Or it would have, if not for me.

The little machines were much faster than an average pegasus, which meant they were very hard to engage ordinarily. But they were faced with a pony who could use magic. It didn't even take much strength: a little twist of one of the buzzing dragonfly wings, and a flyer spun out of control, smashing into the side of the valley before it could recover.

Then I saw where they carried their magic crystals, and spotted the cable that carried the power to their wings. Just a little twist to pop the cable loose and their wings stopped beating. The machines didn't glide very well, but I think several of them made it to the bottom of the valley intact. I really didn't have time to make sure.

When the ornithopter pilots finally realized what was going on, they tried to swarm me. I dodged and spun, doing my best to avoid their shots as I reached out with my magic to disable them. I'm not exactly an acrobatic flyer,[2] but I was still way more maneuverable than they were.

[2] I can just hear Rainbow Dash laughing at that gross understatement.

I was hit twice by glancing shots that my armor easily shrugged off, but a third caught me directly over my right pollex, and even through the wing armor it hurt badly enough that I lost control of my flight for several precious seconds.

The remaining flyers seized the opportunity to dive down on me. It was nearly impossible to grab hold of their power cables or wings when they were charging right at me, shooting, but it was simple to float my blades into their paths and let the pilots run into them.

After I'd cleared the sky, as I pirouetted in the air searching for more targets, my raptor set crackled to life. "Twilight! Get down here!" The urgency in Flurry's voice made me dive for Nebula, ignoring the pain in my wing and heedless of running into friendly fire.

Fire.

Thick, dark smoke was billowing up from Nebula's starboard side just aft of the topmast. A big, tattered piece of her envelope flapped loosely, whipping the smoke into whorls as it emerged from inside the big rent in her side.

Two armored figures were clinging to the envelope forward of the hole, fighting off anypony who approached. I tried to wrench them away with my magic, but they were solidly attached to the fabric somehow. Since they couldn't move to dodge, my short blades quickly made an end to them. Their armor was full and heavy, as the mere scratches left by deflected crossbow bolts proved, but a pony needs eye slots to see.

With the resistance removed, the crew began to battle the blaze. The imperials had ripped big gashes in both the envelope and the number three gas cell, but that was inconsequential compared to their real objective. With Nebula's interior exposed, they'd dropped small fire bombs inside that had spattered burning fluid against the bottom and forward surface of cell three. Nebula was burning from the inside out.

The frantic fire suppression teams threw bucket after bucket of sand into the cell as Nebula began to sink toward the valley floor. The big ballast valves thumped open, and tons of water hissed like a gigantic serpent as it rushed out of the tanks.

The smoke made it impossible to see where the fire was from above, and any delay would give it time to burn through the cell wall and into the next. Nebula might be able to stay aloft with one cell lost, but to lose another would doom her, and she had very little time left.

So I did a very foolish thing: I took a deep breath and dove into the burning cell.

It was very hot for a brief moment as I passed through the ragged opening, then it was almost bearable again, though pitch black. I hit the bottom of the cell hard, hooves-first into hot sand. I didn't know how much time I would have before I passed out, so I worked as quickly as I could to cut a big hole in the bottom of the cell. I peeled back the flap of fabric and a rush of fresh air was sucked in from below.

This had the unfortunate effect of feeding oxygen to the fire above me, but it let me breathe again, and more importantly, it forced the oily smoke up and away so that I could see where the flames were.

I grabbed up as much of the sand as I could levitate and smeared it across the interior of the burning cell, working from bottom to top. I don't know how long it took me, but I did it. I got the fire out. I didn't have any energy to spare for flying, so I squeezed through the hole I'd cut in the bottom of the cell and dropped onto the catwalk below.

"Ms. Ao!" somepony yelled nearby. "She's here!"

My snakey friend was there almost immediately, fussing needlessly. Well, okay, the palliative spells on my burns were very nice.

We had to clear the catwalk so that the repair team could patch up the hole I'd cut, so I clambered to my hooves and let Ao lead me forward to the mainmast ratlines. "Can you fly?" she asked as we approached the opening in the underside of the envelope.

I flexed my damaged wing and winced. "I can glide down to the deck, at least," I replied.

I looked up the interior mainmast ladders and saw that I had been given a lot of help as I battled the fire. A line of unicorns, horn to tail, stretched from the deck up to the topmast truck, floating the buckets of water and mops they had used to cool the fabric from the outside to help prevent the fire from burning through the cell.

I paused to cough up some nasty black stuff from my throat, and then asked, "Where's the captain?"

"On deck, tending to the wounded," she replied.

"I'll go join her," I said. "Get a team to work on the damage topside. Use the keel topsail to fother the hole[3] and get some gas back into the cell as soon as possible."

[3] Fothering is an emergency technique to temporarily close a hole by stretching fabric tightly across it. It works surprisingly well when used on hull damage in sailing ships, and on airship envelopes, but is only marginally effective on gas cells. But it was better than nothing.

"Yes, Majesty," Ao said. It was only then that I noticed the blood staining her pure white coat.

"Are you alright?"

She followed my gaze. "Most of what you see belongs to others. This one is well enough."

"Are you certain?" I said.

"Is anything certain in this ridiculous world?" she asked, lifting her forelegs and turning her hooves up as she shrugged. I had to be satisfied that she was well enough to make jokes.

I floundered gracelessly to the main deck, where Skyla was working frantically on a badly wounded unicorn, and added my magic to her own. Healing magic was too delicate and specific to use mechanization, but the same was not true of pain relieving spells, and Cream Puff went from pony to pony with a small gun designed for the purpose, exhausting and dropping gems in his wake.

Nebula's engines were canted nearly straight up and running at full ahead to help keep her aloft. I don't know how Sirocco managed to keep her moving forward, but he did. I'm sure I heard the scrape of treetops against the keel a few times as I worked, but eventually I felt that little bit of heaviness that told me Nebula was climbing again, and breathed a bit easier.

When I had done all I could do, I climbed up to the quarterdeck, where Skyla and Sirocco were easing Nebula toward the dark bulk of the fortress and the gate.

"How are they?" Skyla asked, her voice barely more than an exhausted sigh.

"Stable," I said. "If we can make it through the portal to home, we'll be able to save them all."

"We're almost level with the gate platform now," Sirocco said.

The sky above us shaded from red to deep purple in the sunset. The buildings to either side of the platform had only narrow vertical slits for windows, and the lamplight from within did nothing to dispel the gloom of the valley. A few unicorns had gone forward inside the envelope to the mooring gear platform and were using their horns to light the way ahead of us. Sure enough, Nebula's bowsprit was rising above the broad apron of basalt that lay directly in front of the immense trilithon that framed the gate.

Two pegasi stood before the gate, motionless. I took it as a good sign, but it was still odd that they hadn't flown to greet us. I whistled up the cupola and asked Ao to join us in the bow. Might as well make our entrance as impressive as possible.

Skyla and Ao flanked me as I flew the short distance to the stone platform, and Swift Wing trailed just behind. When we got close, I could see that both of the pegasi had black stripes tattooed on their lower lips; three on the tall, rangy stallion's, and two on the short, muscular mare's.

The stallion looked me up and down like I was something stuck to the bottom of his shoe, and then nodded to the mare. She trotted off toward the building on our left without a word. I did not like how the encounter was shaping up.

We landed in front of the stallion. "I am Twilight Sparkle," I told him without any preamble or theatrics. "I've come here to use this gate to return home. I would very much like to do so with minimal fuss, if you please."

But by then, of course, I knew that things weren't going to go well. The stallion said nothing. He merely stood in our way.

"Curse it," I swore under my breath, before turning to Swift. "Tell all crew to ready their mandalas. Have the big guns target the power gems at the top of the gate, and—"

At that moment, the two-stripe mare returned, and following her was a tall figure in the most incredible suit of armor I had ever seen. It was layered with oddly shaped plates and studded with gems. There was a big hump between the shoulders and even the sharp black wing feathers were interwoven with bright orichacum wire. Every surface was covered with intricate magical runes and matrices.

Three books floated in her magic as she approached, their pages flipping occasionally as a pencil made rapid notes in the smallest. The grooves in her horn were inlaid with metal that pulsed and glowed gently as she walked. When she came to a stop before us, the two pegasi bowed low and then backed away a dozen paces.

The books disappeared in the flash of a brief teleportation vortex, and then the figure's helmet opened, its plates sliding aside and folding back to reveal her—my—face.

"Well, well, well!" Twilight Sparkle said, grinning widely. She leaned forward, ignoring everypony else, and pinned me with her bright, slit-pupiled gaze. "If it isn't the little imposter!"

= = =

Author's Note

"That sound you just heard was Chekhov's gun going off." -Jordanis

Breeze Drifter's shortening of ornithopters to 'thoppers, is not a misspelling. That's the way the ponies of this world say it.

Thanks to Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for pre-reading and editing!

22 Philosophy and Mutiny

Chapter Twenty-Two

Philosophy and Mutiny

"Oh, you don't know how glad I am to see you!" I said to my leering, over-armored twin.[1] "I've been improvising like mad ever since we accidentally came to this universe! I'd love to compare parallels and commonalities, but the imperial airships will be here any—"

[1] And it was a very good thing she didn't.

"You—you—liar!" screamed somepony from behind me. It sounded a lot like Loose Leaf, but the voice was so distorted by hysteria, I couldn't be sure.

Ao turned and drew her sword in one fluid motion. I desperately wanted to tell her not to kill the crazy pegasus, but I couldn't afford to show an iota of weakness or hesitation in front of the real Replenisher of Graves.

"Meddle not in the affairs of goddesses, fools!" Ao said. "None of you can comprehend what passes here."

The plurality worried me, but I sighed and rolled my eyes as if a rebellion of the native pegasi behind me was only a minor irritation. There was no way I—or the whole of Nebula's crew for that matter—could fight the mare standing in front of me. If I understood the runes on her armor correctly, anypony who even touched her would be killed instantly.

Our one hope would be to convince her to believe we were on her side. I am good at making friends, but the usual techniques were too slow, and many of them weren't appropriate for the situation anyway. That's why I was acting as if we were already close friends.[2]

[2] See Appendix A: Dubious Techniques, page 237, The Compendium of Friendship, third edition.

Midnight Sparkle[3] gave a brief glance at whatever was going on behind me and then turned her attention back to me. "Some of your crew seem to be a bit disappointed in you, little one."

[3] I will use this name for the other Twilight Sparkle from now on in this narrative. It is not meant to be judgemental, merely an appropriate descriptor to avoid confusion.

I grinned at her. "I just smashed the foundation of the Empire to sand for them, and that's the thanks I get! Typical."

Steel rang on steel behind me, and it took every ounce of willpower I had to stop myself from turning around. Midnight sighed and her horn flared briefly. All sound and sense of motion from behind me ceased instantly. "That sounds like an exaggeration, from what the blacklips have told me about your little raids. You wouldn't be lying to me would you?"

I shrugged. "I'll show you," I replied casually and turned toward Nebula. Ao and four pegasi hung frozen in stasis fields below her bow. I ignored them and called out, "Linwood! Get five of your friends around a medallion and tap out, if you please."

"Any hostile action would be very unwise," Midnight said softly behind me.

I looked back at her out of the corner of my eye. "It would be stupid, you mean. Since when have any of us been stupid, sister?"

She lifted an eyebrow at the word, but said nothing.

Linwood gathered five other unicorns to her in Nebula's bow. She raised her hoof above the medallion-capped crystal, but before bringing it down, she called out, "Thank you for everything Twilight!" Her hoof fell and the group disappeared in a corruscating burst of portal magic.

I turned back to Midnight. "See? I mass-produced and then distributed those things all over the Empire. By now, there won't be more than a few hundred unicorns left in the whole place. By the end of the week, there'll be none at all. No unicorns, no power, no problem!" Wild exaggeration came easier to me than outright lying, it seemed.

Midnight smiled slightly, not showing her teeth, which I took for a good sign. "And the mass of airships I see approaching? No problem there?"

"Oh, those," I said. "I was kind of hoping to jury-rig this gate so I could get my ship home before they arrived. Their ships will run out of power in a few days, and that will be the last of the Grand Imperial Fleet."

"Clever," she said, staring at the distant airships and nodding slightly. She continued to gaze at the horizon for a few more moments and then added, "But not really satisfying, you know? As one of the Dark Twilights, you must realize that upholding a reputation is important. Now, an entire fleet smashed from the sky? That would impress ponies!"

Uh-oh. I forced myself to grin, and I waved a wing dismissively. "Who cares what these backwater rubes think?"

Midnight gave me an odd look, and I realized I had misstepped. She reached out toward my head with a wingtip. It would have been a more kindly gesture if she had been intending to touch me with one of her bare feathers, rather than an enchanted wingblade. I could clearly see the death spell etched into the side of the blade. Anypony it touched, other than its owner, would be instantly torn and twisted into a bloody ruin.

The cool metal stroked my cheek, and it was the slow, sensuous way she did it that gave me a sudden idea. I smiled, closed my eyes briefly, and leaned into it as if it were a caress from Luna. Midnight seemed satisfied with her test and began to lower her wing, but I stepped forward, and brought my face closer to hers, whispering, "Mmmm... Perhaps later, we could…?"

"Oh?" She grinned widely. "But first a little battle to get our hearts pumping, and then—"

"Oh, all right," I said, as seductively as possible while trying not to shiver. "We know what we like. Confidence, strength…" I wrapped my wings around her armored neck. "And it's been a very long time since I came across a version of myself who was so deliciously powerful."

Yes, of course I kissed her. I thought of Luna, and I kissed her hard. She kissed me back, putting tongue and teeth into it, and when I drew back, my lower lip was bleeding. I licked the blood away and smiled at her. I showed all of my teeth.

A flash of my horn dispelled the stasis field around Ao, and I screamed, "Cork her! NOW!"

We all hit the deck and Sugarpine fired the full charge of the anti-magic gun straight into Midnight Sparkle's face.

As I had expected, the reflexive mandalas that were part of her armor disrupted the spell matrix before it could affect any of the built-in defensive systems. The orichalcum double spiral around her horn would have stopped the spell from nullifying her personal magic as well, if it had been powered. But it wasn't.

Midnight Sparkle snarled. Her eyes blazed—and then went wide in shock as she realized she couldn't use magic any longer.

"You shouldn't have reminded me that your armor is attuned specifically to you," I said. "When it didn't kill me on contact, I knew that, as far as it was concerned, you and I are identical."

"You… You…" She sputtered in a wholly satisfactory way.

"You wouldn't be able to remove that helmet unless you disconnected it from the big charged crystal on your back, right?" I unfurled my clenched primaries to reveal the short piece of orichalcum power cable that I'd pulled from its sockets as I had kissed her. I held it up for her to see, smashed the connectors at each end, and threw it over the edge of the platform.

"Your armor's defense spells are still working," I continued. "But how long do you think they'll hold out against a series of full broadsides?" She followed my pointing hoof to see that Sirocco had swung Nebula until her starboard side was facing the gate platform. Every gun aboard her was crowded at the rail and pointed in Midnight's direction. "Face it. My friends and I have outmaneuvered you. Return to your world through the gate and let us take care of this situation ourselves. Please."

Midnight Sparkle continued to gape at me for a second, and then she laughed. She threw back her head and let loose a wild and unrestrained laughter that forced a smile from me, even as it made me slightly uneasy. She stomped her armored hooves in glee until the obsidian beneath them was webbed with cracks.

"Oh, oh, yes!" She cried out. "A thousand thousand worlds, and I am never less than brilliant! Oh, little one, you've delighted me beyond your knowing tonight!"

"I'm glad you're happy," I said, no longer smiling. "As long as you leave—"

"When I'm finished," she said, patiently.

"My friends have enough firepower aimed at you to—"

"Your friends?" she asked, raising her eyebrows in mock puzzlement. "Oh yes, of course you have friends!" Her eyes narrowed to slits and her smile turned smug. "So, why in the world would you think that I don't?"

Midnight Sparkle took a second to savor my expression and then lifted her head and called out, "OH, SPIIIKE!"

"Roadapples," I said softly as my ears drooped. She was at least a few hundred years older than I was, and that meant...

The solid stone platform beneath my hooves shook, and a sound almost too low to hear rumbled out from the direction of the library building.

"Take my advice, and don't bother shooting at him," Midnight said, casually. "You'll only make him mad."

The thud of massive footfalls made the platform vibrate beneath us. A deep, rumbling voice called out, "Trouble, Twi?"

Spike's massive head emerged from behind the building, about thirty feet above the ground. His scarred muzzle swung in our direction, and he peered curiously down at us all. He was wearing what would have been considered light armor on a pony. It must have weighed a couple of tons, at least.

"Everything's fine, Spike," Midnight said. "This little Twilight got a bit clever on me, so we'll have to take out the fleet the old fashioned way."

He chuckled as he approached. It sounded like a minor avalanche of granite boulders. "Send 'em to Celestia?"

"Express delivery," she said, smiling up at him.

He bent his neck down and stretched out a wing to provide a ramp for Midnight to walk up to his back. Evidently, he was also impervious to her armor's spells. She climbed up to a spot just behind his head and settled in.

The blacklips had been hanging back, but the stallion stepped forward then and asked, "What do you wish us to do, Your Highness?"

She looked down at him. "Take shelter in the fortress for now. You've been given the Book of Laws. Learn it. Copy it, and send it out across the world." She turned her gaze on us again. "Leave this cute little Twilight and her raggedy crew to their own devices, they are… only flawed avatars of my will." She grinned and leaned over toward me, adding in a near whisper, "That sounds plausible, doesn't it?"

The stallion stammered a bit, but by the time he had collected his thoughts, Spike had leaped into the air with two mighty sweeps of his wings, and climbed into the night.

Skyla glanced at the pegasi still trapped in Midnight's magic, and then at the two standing on the platform staring after Spike. "Don't be stupid," she said to the blacklips, and then disrupted the stasis fields.

Our rebel pegasi joined the two on the platform, looking to the three-stripe stallion for guidance. Well, all of them except Loose Leaf, who focused a poisonous glare on me. "Inside," the stallion commanded. "Seal the doors and get the crews to the guns. Be ready for anything."

Skyla ignored the suddenly bustling pegasi and turned to me. "Can you modify the gate in a hurry? Or maybe we should go through to her world and try to get home from there?"

"She'll have protected it some way," I said shaking my head. "Probably several different ways. We're not getting through that gate."

Skyla shook her head and bared her teeth in frustration. "Then, what do you suggest? I don't want to be here when she gets back. Did you see the look she gave me?"

I hadn't, actually. Midnight Sparkle hadn't even spared Skyla a glance as far as I knew. I turned to Ao. "How well patched is number three? Will it hold a good charge of gas?"

"Sadly, it will hold no more than it does at this moment. With the edges sealed and the sail painted with lacquer, this one would trust it with three quarters pressure at most."

"Ceiling now?" Skyla asked her.

"Perhaps another three hundred feet, but no more, Captain. Given an hour to improve the patch—"

As if to demonstrate that we didn't have nearly that amount of time, a long stream of green fire jetted out across the valley. More natural-colored fire blossomed in its wake. Flickers of magical force spattered the sky to no apparent effect, and another jet of dragonfire lashed the massed airships.

"Three hundred feet will get us above the valley rim," Skyla said. "Maybe we can escape in the darkness."

I shook my head again. "Use the gems. We've got plenty."

Skyla grimaced. "I don't want to abandon—"

There was a movement in the corner of my eye, and I had drawn my short swords before I had even consciously registered the threat. Loose Leaf squawked and back-winged away from my blades, Ao's sword, and Skyla's battered and notched cutlass. She fumbled with the spear she was carrying, trying to change her grip to one appropriate for throwing. It was completely obvious that she had spent her entire life training to be a scribe.

I sheathed my blades and gently pulled the spear away from her with my magic. "I know you feel betrayed, but revenge won't help."

"You lied to me, you nag!" she screamed, and for a second I thought she might attack me with her bare hooves.

"I had one little airship against an empire; of course I used every weapon I could, you idiot! Get your nose out of the books once in awhile and learn something about how the real world works!"

Ao and Skyla gasped. I could hardly believe those words had come out of my mouth, ether. In my defense, I'm hardly ever that curt or unkind, but I was in a fairly stressful situation.

A few more airships exploded into flames behind us.

Then Loose Leaf started to cry, and I felt like a complete monster. "Listen… Leaf, I'm sorry. I didn't—"

"Do we have time for this right now?" Skyla snapped, still covering Loose Leaf with her cutlass.

I turned to look at the one-sided battle. From a mile away, it looked like one of those paper balloon festivals, only in reverse—flickering flames and glowing envelopes sinking instead of rising.

"No," I admitted. "Captain, I highly recommend getting the entire crew mustered around the parachutes and having them tap out. I will stay behind long enough to scuttle Nebula;[4] there are several things aboard that I'd rather not fall into her hooves."

[4] Scuttling is the deliberate sinking or destruction of a ship by her own crew.

"Agreed," Skyla said sourly, but didn't move. "Mr. Sirocco, see to it."

Sirocco snapped a salute and flew up to Nebula, shouting the orders. Skyla stood calmly, still pointing her blade at the weeping Loose Leaf.

"I can manage on my own," I said to her. "I'll be right behind you."

She and Ao just stared at me.

"Oh, Celestia trample it!" I swore at them. "I'm not going to—"

The platform beneath us shook with a boom as Spike suddenly dropped down in front of the gate, and Midnight Sparkle's wild laughter rolled over us like a wave of knives. "Ah! Now that was more fun than I've had in a long time!" she said as she strolled down Spike's extended wing.

Not having learned her lesson about soi disant goddesses, Loose Leaf spun and prostrated herself flat-out before Midnight. Ao rested the back of her blade across one shoulder and settled into a casual-looking stance. I set the spear aside and waited.

Skyla slammed her cutlass against the platform and yelled, "Did you have to kill them all? Are we next?"

Midnight gave her an indulgent smile. "You really are Shiny's daughter, aren't you? So full of righteous indignation and moral outrage! Isn't a return to harmony and balance worth a few lives?"

Skyla gasped and swung her blade to point at the burning wrecks that had dropped into the valley and onto the surrounding peaks. "You call that harmony?"

Midnight shrugged. "It's a step in the right direction. You might notice that we burned them from the top down. There was plenty of time for the crews to bail out if they were smart. I even let a couple of destroyers go; they'll spread the news faster."

Skyla visibly shook with rage. She pointed her battered cutlass back at Midnight and shouted, "You, you—"

Midnight shook her head and made a tsk sound. "You should take better care of your weapons, Furry Burry. That thing looks like a saw!"

Ao tackled Skyla as she screamed and leaped for Midnight's throat. Skyla was much stronger than she looked, but Ao knew some amazing restraining holds that could only be applied by someone with her snakey physique.

"Language, Furry Burry!" Midnight said, pretending to be shocked at the stream of profanity and threats that burst from Skyla's mouth. "What would your mother say?"

"Please," I said, holding up a hoof between them, and glaring at Midnight. "I'd rather you didn't give my niece an aneurysm!"

"She's my niece, too," Midnight said with raised eyebrows. "Sort of."

"Can I talk with you, please?" I asked, motioning toward the shadows at the base of the library tower. "Alone?"

"Alone? Of course!" She grinned at me lasciviously.

"Oh, don't even try that nonsense on me," I said as I stomped alongside her across the platform.

"I'm serious, Twilight," she said, and she did sound sincere. "A good battle always makes me frisky. Haven't you ever—"

"No!" I lied, unable to suppress the memory of the amazing night with Luna after the defeat of Grogar.

"Ha!" Midnight chuckled. " I know that look! How about the kirin? She looks remarkably flexible. Have you ever—"

"This isn't funny!" I growled at her. "We're at your mercy, yes. If I have to surrender to you to get you to let my ship and her crew go—"

Midnight Sparkle rounded on me and I could see real anger in her eyes. "You think I would really make such a demand? Would you?"

"I'm not you!"

"Yes, you are, Twilight," she said, staring me right in the eyes. "You're younger, less experienced, but you know, don't you?"

"Know? Know what?"

"Midnight coat, dragon eyes, tiger fangs, razor-edged feathers… Dressed up to go to a charity event at the children's hospital, are you?" She practically sneered as she went through the list that described her as well.

"T-this?" I glanced down at myself. It didn't help steady my mind that there was dried blood spattered on my forelegs. "It's a disguise. A convenience that I'm stuck with! I'm not really like this."

"Petunia's Polymorph?" she asked, knowing full well the answer.

"N-no. I mean yes, but not at first. Look, there was a situation—"

"And things got out of hoof," she finished for me. "But they always do, Twilight. This—" She slammed an armored hoof to her chestplate with a loud clang. "—is what you know. This is what ponies need."

I opened my mouth to protest, but couldn't find the words.

"Oh, ponies enjoy a maternal, nurturing ruler, even if a shining example of justice and morality sometimes makes them feel a little bit guilty and inferior. But when they are threatened, when their lives and the lives of their family and friends are on the line—" She leaned in close and lowered her voice. "—then they want the amoral, violent bitch who will obliterate their enemies without a qualm! Her strength and ruthlessness are their shield, and they love her for it!"

I took a step away from her. "Of course they want to be protected, but a general's role is different from peaceful—"

"Oh, shut up, Sparkle! You can't lie to me!" She arched her neck and glared coldly down at me. "I know exactly what you felt when Chrysalis stood over a defeated Celestia in her own throne room. Shock, yes. Fear—only natural. But mostly disappointment."

I gritted my teeth and said nothing.

"I don't mean to be cruel," she said, her voice softening. "You're years behind me, but you're on the same road. The fact that you look like you do means you know the way instinctively, even if you haven't admitted it to yourself." She turned and looked back at Spike. I was surprised to see he was sitting on the platform, apparently talking in low tones with a no-longer-restrained Skyla. "We keep our worlds orderly and in harmony. One day, you'll realize that fear and respect always outweigh a shining example, and you will join us."

"I don't want to be like you," I said, pointlessly.

"Well," she replied with a casual shrug, "if you find a more effective way, let me know. I'm always open to logical debate with reasonable opponents." She swept out one wing to indicate the fires dotting the mountainside.

When I didn't respond, she said, "That was a joke."

"Not funny."

Midnight lowered her wing and folded it away with a sigh. "This has already taken up too much of my time." She began walking back toward the ship, leaving me no option but to follow.

She almost tripped over the still-prostrate Loose Leaf as she approached the group under Nebula's bowsprit. She frowned at the distraught pegasus.

I hastened to intervene. "Sister, this is Loose Leaf, one of the pegasi who helped us carry out our plan to undermine the Empire. She's one of the few who remained loyal to your intentions. A true supporter of equality and harmony."

"Oh?" Midnight looked down at the poor, shivering mare. "Well done, Loose Leaf. You may rise."

Leaf looked up fearfully, and began to get her hooves under herself. She hesitantly opened her mouth to say something, but Midnight had turned away from her and was gazing out over the wreckage-strewn mountains.

"This was a great and vibrant kingdom once," she said. "Its trade routes stretched across a dozen worlds and the poorest of its subjects were rich by any measure that matters. All with the barest trickle of magic. Truly a wonder."

"Then you happened?" I said.

She laughed. "Oh, no! It was reduced to a dozen squabbling principalities long before I found it! The collapse was all their fault—greed and grudges; same old story. But don't worry, it will be prosperous and great again someday, under my—or perhaps our guidance?"

"A cozy dictatorship of two?" Skyla put in, glaring at both of us for some reason.

Midnight shook her head. "Sarcasm does not become you, dear, but no. I am far too busy to attend to day-to-day details here. Guidance is the right term." She grinned. "Stern guidance, true, but good advice is rarely accepted on its merits. I'll let things shake out for a few years and then peek back in to see how they're doing."

"What about us?" Skyla demanded. Poor twitchy Loose Leaf was looking back and forth between her, me, and Midnight, probably wondering the same thing on a much more personal level.

Midnight shrugged. "Unless you enjoy floating around here, I suggest you return home. You can probably scavenge enough crystals from the wrecks to power the gate in the badlands. That's where you came in, right? I'd let you use this one, but I've reengineered it to be a permanent link to one of our nexus worlds, and it's set up to annihilate unauthorised users." She gave me a direct and meaningful look. "Or anypony who interferes with it."

"Message received, sister," I said, sourly.

She smiled. "Good! Oh, by the way, we usually call each other cousin. I don't really know how that got started, but it's traditional now." She gestured to Spike, and he once again extended a wing for her to climb. With all that heavy armor on, I supposed it was too difficult for her to fly without a magical boost.

"How many of you are there?" Skyla called after her.

Midnight gave her an evaluating look before replying. "More than there are of you, dear. You would do well to remember that."

Spike reared and Midnight gave me a last wave with her wing. "Look me up when you get a few more decades under your saddle, cousin! We could use another good improviser on our side!"

The wind from Spike's wingbeats whipped our manes into streamers behind us, and then they fell limply as he and my rather unpleasant other self disappeared into the gate.

"That sounded threatening to me," Skyla said, still scowling. "Did that sound threatening to you?" I was still wondering about Midnight's use of the word side.

"This one is of the opinion that everything she said conveyed a certain amount of menace." Ao's tone of voice was the polar opposite of Skyla's, and she seemed to relish the word. She stared, smiling slightly at the empty gateway for a moment longer, and then shook herself and turned and kneeled to my niece. "This one offers abject apologies for laying hooves upon you in such a fashion, Captain."

"Oh, get up, Ao! You were right. She baited me, and I should have known better."

"Well, we should probably—" I began.

"We will shore up the repairs to number three while we wait for dawn, and then maneuver over one of the larger wrecks for salvage operations," Skyla said, interrupting me. "Our presence should be enough to chase off any hostile survivors."

"Didn't you order the crew to tap out?" I asked. "That'll be quite a job for just the three of us."

"Sadly," Ao said, in a voice pitched to carry, "the crew are lax and slovenly lubbers who are unable to complete a simple task in a reasonable amount of time." She twisted her head around to face the ship. "Isn't that right, you scurvy nags?"

A few horns appeared above the rail, and more heads followed, all wearing somewhat abashed expressions. "That must be why you are all still here," Ao continued, "because disobeying an order from the captain would be mutiny, wouldn't it?" The crew looked nervously at each other.

"Wouldn't it?" Ao repeated.

A chorus of over a dozen low, repentant voices replied, "Yes, Ms. Ao."

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks to Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for pre-reading and editing!

23 Unexpected Passengers

Chapter Twenty-Three

Unexpected Passengers

The first thing we did was get the wounded back to Equestria. One healthy pony went with each two that were wounded, and we also sent Swift Wing. I hated to lose one of our few fliers—particularly a pony as capable as Swift—but he knew the geography back home very well from his service aboard Pole Star. He would be able to orient himself and get to the nearest town or city to fetch help as quickly as possible.

I wish I had had time to write a note, telling everypony back home not to worry despite the sudden influx of casualties, but I had other urgent things to do. We were pumping gas from our reserves into cell number three at an alarming rate just to keep Nebula afloat.

Ao, Skyla, and I worked the rest of the night improving the patches, cycling out to keep watch and grab an occasional half-hour nap. By dawn, we had done as much as possible with our limited materials, and though we were still having to add gas to the cell, it was at a much slower rate.

"Will our reserves get us to the gate in the Badlands?" Skyla asked, peering over my shoulder at the figures I'd scrawled on my clipboard.

"Maybe we can salvage some gas cylinders from the wrecks." I chewed on the end of my pencil. "Or some proper cell fabric to make a tighter seal. We might be able to find some large pieces that weren't burned."

"So that's a no," Skyla said.

"It's a not yet," I corrected. "In any case, we can still distribute a lot of medallions before we have to tap out. I'd rather not leave the Western Territories intact if there's any way to avoid it."

Skyla nodded. she looked up at the underside of the envelope and sighed unhappily. "We will find more gas or the minerals to make it from. There's no urgency now that the Imperial Fleet has been destroyed."

There was a thump of a pony landing on the quarterdeck, and a familiar voice said, "There are still many things to fear."

It was Loose Leaf.

She had spent the night lying on the apron in front of the gate. I'd sent Sirocco down to check on her a few times, and he had always reported that she was awake, but wouldn't answer him.

"How are you feeling?" I asked her, keeping a sharp eye out for any sudden movements. She seemed calm, but with Leaf, that really didn't mean much.

"There are still a lot of warships out there," she continued, ignoring my question. "In Nebula's condition, even a couple of revenue cutters would be a threat to us."

Us? Her choice of words was interesting.

"And cutters are exactly what we will run into crossing the border," Loose Leaf continued. "There is a route the smugglers use about ten leagues north of Fort Blood. It's a secret pass that's just big enough for a ship our size. I think it's our best bet for getting across undetected."

Skyla and I glanced at each other. She gave me a tiny shrug.

"That sounds good," I said to Loose Leaf, keeping my voice carefully neutral. "We're going to see what we can salvage from the wrecks first. How long will it take to reach that crossing?"

"There's a waning quarter moon tonight, so we can't risk the pass until it's up to give us light. We can spend four or five hours and still make it by midnight when the moon rises," she replied.

"You should get some rest now, if you're going to be up late guiding us through the mountains," Skyla said.

Loose Leaf saluted her, said, "Aye aye, Captain," and went below.

Skyla turned to me when Leaf had gone and said, "Any idea?"

"Not a clue," I replied. "Last night, she was trying to run a spear through me, and now she's... well..." I waved a hoof in the general direction of the crew's quarters.

"Did anypony from the fortress talk with her last night?"

"Not that I know of," I replied. "Sirocco flew down to check on her a couple of times, but she wouldn't speak to him. Maybe..." I trailed off in thought. "She's a believer. She needs something to be a focus for her."

Skyla nodded. "Big Bad Twilight went home, the Blacklips didn't care enough to come out and see if she was okay, so all she has left—"

"Is us," I finished for her.

Skyla gave me a shrewd look. "I think you're only included because you're part of Nebula's crew, Ms. Nightshade. I doubt she's forgiven you so soon." She stared off toward the dawn-lit peaks for a moment. "Of course, the other possibility is that she's decided to commit suicide and take us with her. Betrayal for betrayal, as she would see it."

"No, I don't think so. I'm pretty sure she just wants something to believe in. She isn't really a devious pony."

"Unlike some I could name," Skyla replied.

Ouch. I frowned and gave her a non-committal grunt.

"Well, let’s get to it, Darkness Nightshade," Skyla said, using my full sophomoric nom de guerre. "Take the helm, if you please."

At the time, I had no idea why she was in such a prickly mood. But with everything we had been through, allowances had to be made. So I simply said, “Aye aye, Captain," and stood to the wheel, reaching for the ballast levers.

We lifted out of the valley and made for the largest wreck we could see. It seemed like a good choice, both because it was on lower ground and because a couple of large sections of its envelope were still intact. Ao made a scouting flight to make sure there were no imperial troops lingering in the vicinity, and then reported back to Skyla.

"It appears she made a relatively soft landing, Captain," Ao said. "This one believes we should be able to acquire many usable gems from her."

"No soldiers?" Skyla asked.

"No, Captain," Ao replied. "The nearest this one observed were a league distant and heading for the foothills. This one examined several discarded parachutes against the possibility that the enemy might be using them as cover for an ambush, but such was not the case." She sounded distinctly disappointed.

"Well then," Skyla said, happily clopping her front hooves together. "Let's go shopping!"

I took us in close, and we dropped our anchors and set out spring lines to keep Nebula steady in the uneven breeze.

It turned out that the wreck wasn't completely abandoned after all. About an hour after we descended on the broken airship like parasprites on a molasses spill, Sugarpine galloped over to where Skyla and I were carefully cutting away a section of gas cell fabric.

"Captain!" he called out as he approached. "I think there's somepony trapped in the wreckage!"

We followed him to the place he had heard the voice, and used our magic to carefully tear away the jumble of debris. I couldn't help noticing that a lot of what we lifted was highly carved and gilt paneling.

What we discovered was a young colt in a military uniform. There were so many medals and decorations on his jacket that it would have made fairly decent armor. Evidently, the Emperor's troops had deserted him.

I stepped back and let Skyla precede me, because I thought that the poor kid had been through enough without having my gruesome visage looming over him. If I had known what a brat he was, I wouldn't have bothered.

He wiped at his grubby, tear-stained face with a foreleg, and looked up at Skyla. When he noticed her horn, his expression went cold and disdainful. "You will assist me out of here, and then summon a sky chariot!"

Skyla lifted him carefully in her magic and spun him slowly around, looking for any obvious wounds. He sputtered in indignation and cried out, "How dare you touch me with magic, you filth! Put me down at once, or I will have you whipped!"

A couple of weeks before, I might have thought such behavior from a tiny tyrant amusing, but at that moment, I would have obeyed his command by dropping him on his head. Skyla merely floated him out of the wreck and set him down gently.

He stomped his little hooves, which made all his medals jingle musically, and shouted, "Don't you realize who I am? I am Emperor Fauvel the Seventh, and I—"

Skyla snapped her wings open with a loud whump of displaced air, and said, "I am Captain Skyla Windsong, the most feared alicorn pirate in the world,[1] and commander of the fleet that has conquered your miserable empire![2] You are my prisoner, and you will conduct yourself as such if you wish to avoid being chained in the bilge. Do you understand?"

[1] Taking into account that she was one of only two alicorn pirates in that world, and had been our public face for most of our stay, this assertion was eminently defensible.

[2] Not so defensible.

He flinched back and then visibly collected himself. "I see," the pint-sized Ironhoof said coldly. It was difficult to look down his nose at a pony so much taller than himself, but he managed it. "Very well. I acknowledge that I am your prisoner until such time as my knights rescue me and chop you to pieces. Show me to my stateroom and have a servant bring me breakfast."

Skyla smiled. Her smile was not a pleasant one. "Of course, Your Imperial Majesty! Ms. Nightshade, attend the emperor."

He hadn't really noticed me until then. When he got a good look at me, he gasped and tried to hide behind Sugarpine's legs, which almost got him stomped into jelly. I rescued him from the resentful rebel by subjecting him once again to lowly unicorn levitation, and things went rapidly downhill from there.

I floated the kicking, squalling brat aboard and locked him in the passenger cabin. Having seen the looks on the faces of the crew who witnessed the loading of the loathsome cargo, I gave strict orders that no unicorns were to go near him. I strongly disliked the nasty little colt, but I certainly didn't want him murdered. I even had Cream Puff bring him some food.

We got several large power crystals and enough fabric and gas cylinders from the wreck to get Nebula back into fair shape. The only problem was that it would take us a couple of days to make all the necessary repairs.

"We can't stay here, Captain," I said. "There are at least two destroyers out there, and even though they might be too afraid to attack us now, they might well decide to shadow us, either looking for an opportunity for a quick strike, or waiting to gather reinforcements. Our best defense is to disappear as quickly as possible."

"That means trusting that Loose Leaf is telling the truth about the smuggler's passage, and isn't out for revenge on you," Skyla pointed out. "How did a scribe hear about something like that, anyway?"

I sighed. "I'll ask her about it when she wakes up. I need to talk to her, anyway. I don't know what good an apology will do, but I do owe her one."

Skyla nodded. "In the meantime, we get underway. We'll set course on a heading north of Fort Blood. That's the general vicinity of Leaf's supposed secret pass, and well away from any towns."

Star took the wheel, and I went down to check on the brat. I met Cream Puff in the companionway outside the second mate's cabin. He was carrying a tray of food for the emperor that looked liked it could have been the chef's special at the Hayloft.

"That's quite a meal, Puff," I said, taking in the delicious aromas. "I'm not sure the kid is worth the effort."

Puff scowled at me. "This morning, he said that my fabulous primavera omelette was 'quite adequate.' I'm going to get some honest appreciation out of him, or he's going to get oat rolls and water for the rest of the trip!"

"Well, if he turns up his nose at this, you know where my cabin is. Don't…" I trailed off, struck by sudden inspiration. "Wait here for a second. I've got to get something out of my cabin."

I rejoined Puff a moment later, and we entered the Imperial Suite together. The colt's eyes went wide when he caught a whiff of the sumptuous meal. "Ah, supper! You may place it on the table, my good pony." Despite his affected casual air, I could swear I saw a bit of drool on his lower lip.

I held up a wing to stop Puff, and said to His Imperial Condescension, "There's just a small bit of business to take care of before you eat, sir."

"It can wait!" he snapped, already climbing into the chair at the table.

"Very well," I said, calmly, motioning Cream Puff out the door. "We will return later."

"I'm hungry!" he squalled.

I took two ships biscuits that had been sitting next to my writing desk for a week or so, and floated them over to the table.

"Here you are, sir. Wouldn't want you to starve, would we?"

He went red in the face and raised a hoof to sweep the biscuits off onto the deck. I watched him calmly. He sneered at me, but lowered his hoof. "What business?" he muttered.

Ah! I thought. The child can be taught! "Just a tiny bit of paperwork, Your Majesty!" I took the folder out from beneath my wing and set it down as I removed the biscuits. "If you will just sign here… and here…"

= = =

Near sunset, Sirocco found me in the bow scanning the countryside ahead of us. "Ms. Nightshade? Loose Leaf is awake and asking if we have any tools for tattooing aboard."

"Oh?" I stowed my spyglass away. "Is she… Does she seem—rational?"

He shrugged. "Well, she's not actually raving or spraying spittle, but she was saying something about a conspiracy against you."

I sighed. "Send her forward. I need to talk with her. Would you also fetch a bottle of ink, some clean rags, and a sail needle from the stores, please?" He saluted and turned to go. "Oh, wait! Also a set of hobbles—discreetly. Just in case, you know?" I added.

"Are you sure you don't want to start with the hobbles, ma'am?" he asked, only half-joking.

I stifled an ungenerous chuckle by forcefully clearing my throat, and went back to scanning ahead of us.

Loose Leaf approached a minute or so later, began to bow, then changed her mind and saluted me. "You wanted to see me, ma'am?"

Behind her, Sirocco quietly set the requested equipment down on the deck behind the capstan.

"Yes, Leaf," I said, indicating with a wing that she should sit next to me. "I hear that you want a tattoo? I can do that for you, if it's not too intricate."

"No ma'am. Just a couple of stripes on my lip."

I thought it might be something like that. "I don't know the symbols the Blacklips use. That would make you…?"

"A senior archivist. High enough that most would automatically defer to me, but not so high that they would expect to have heard of me. It will makes things a lot easier for us depending on who we run into on the way west."

"I'm sorry, but I have to ask," I said. "I did lie to you. I pretended to be your Twilight Sparkle, and I used you in a fairly horrible way." I looked down and I scuffed a hoof on the deck. "So—why? Why would you want to help us?"

"I… realized that you really do want equality of the tribes." Her voice softened and she looked down at the deck. "You come from a place where that's something that everypony takes for granted, don't you? I know I don't deserve it, but..." She paused and swallowed hard. "That's someplace I'd like to live."

I reached out and curled my wing around her shoulders. "Loose Leaf, you would be welcome in my kingdom."[3]

[3] Notice that I didn't say which kingdom. Though Loose Leaf might not fit in very well in Equestria, Twilight Town was jam-packed with "characters", and mere eccentricity would go completely unnoticed there.

She sniffed and wiped her eyes with a foreleg. "I can't thank you enough, Majesty."

"Oh. no!" I said quickly. "I get enough of that from the crazy kirin! Unless it's a formal setting, I want you to call me Twilight, understood? Uh… Well, except here, and then it's Ms. Nightshade or ma'am, okay?"

She sniffed again and nodded. "Understood, ma'am."

"Good!" I said, levitating the ink and needle up in front of her. "Now, how far apart do I make these stripes?"

"They should be a pin feather in width, separated by the same distance. One in the center and one to the right… Oh, wait!"

I assumed she was having second thoughts about getting her lip impaled a few hundred times with a sail needle, but this is the very aptly named Loose Leaf I'm writing about.

"I almost forgot! Before you begin, I should tell you that, after what the big dragon said to her last night, I'm pretty sure the captain is going to try to kill you. You probably should take her out as soon as possible."

My wing slid off her back and the ink bottle and needle dropped to the deck as I stared at her in shock.

"I can wait, if you want to do it now," she said, pleasantly.

= = =

Author's Note

Special thanks to Fana Farouche and Jordanis for heroic last-minute pre-reading and editing! And thanks to Present Perfect for (im)moral support!

24 Three Conversations About One Thing

Chapter Twenty-Four

Three Conversations About One Thing

I was fairly sure that my niece wasn't planning on assassinating me, but she had been acting a little distant since the confrontation with Big Bad.

"Uhmn… What exactly did Spike say to her?" I asked Loose Leaf.

She squinted and twisted her mouth to one side, thinking. "The first thing he said was… 'I'm a lot more than that, now!'"

I blinked in confusion, and then realized my mistake. "Leaf, why don't you just tell me the whole conversation as best as you can remember it."

She nodded, enthusiastically. "Of course, ma'am! First, the captain said, 'You're a good dragon, Spike! Why do you serve her? Why be the servant of an evil creature? You're a hero of the Crystal Empire and you could—' and then he interrupted her and said, 'I'm a lot—'"

"Right," I said. "You can skip ahead."

She nodded again. "Well, then the captain said something about you—I mean her being evil again, and the dragon said that they were partners and peace-keepers, and how could that be bad? Something about it was better to stop a war by killing a hundred ponies and making the rest fear a fiery death rather than letting thousands kill each other… And I've got to say that that makes a lot of sense to me, ma'am, but the captain didn't seem to think so."

"Go on," I prompted. So far, I hadn't heard anything that would warrant—I suddenly realized that, though I knew the term for killing one's uncle,[1] I could not bring to mind the specific one for killing one's aunt.[2] It's odd and irritating how gaps in my knowledge turn up at inopportune moments.

[1] Avunculicide.

[2] I believe my confusion to be understandable, even though amitacide is now widely used in modern Equestria. Because there is no single word for aunt in Ancient Equuish, until recently, only the catch-all word for murder of a close relation, parricide, was used. There is some debate about which term is "correct," with purists favoring parricide. I prefer clarity to tradition, at least in regards to language, and so will use amitacide henceforth. (Hopefully, I will have little cause to do so.)

"Well, they went back and forth for a bit like that and then the dragon said, 'This isn't just a philosophical debate, Flurry, this is serious!' and she said, 'What are you going to do, kill me if I disagree with you?' And he got sort of quiet and said, 'No, but…' and then he stopped talking. So the captain puts a wing on his muzzle and I was sure he was going to eat her, but I guess they know each other or something? I mean, she called him Uncle. That's not possible, right?"

"Long story," I said, remembering the day when little Flurry had first called him Unka 'Pike, and how proud he'd been. "Go on."

"She said she always admired him, and that he should be open with her. He still didn't say anything for a minute, and by then you… uhm… both of you had started to walk back, so he told her really fast and low about how one day a Bright Sparkle will show up, and ask her to work against you. He said not to do it. He repeated that and said how serious it was." She paused for a moment in thought. "Really serious. He told her she didn't have to join the Dark Twilights, but whatever she did, don't oppose them! Then he said, 'I hate it when I hear that one of you has been—' and then you were really close, so he stopped talking, but it was kind of obvious what he was going to say." She drew a hoof across her throat and made a shhhhhhkt sound just in case I was an oblivious idiot.

"So, from the way she was talking," Leaf continued, "I saw that she wasn't going to be sensible about it, and that if you were going to kill her sometime in the future, she could just avoid that by killing you now, and I thought I ought to warn you." She stopped talking long enough to draw breath and let her brain engage for a moment. "Which is a shame, because she's a really good captain, and you two seem to get along so well otherwise. I considered not getting involved, but after sleeping on it, I realized that if it's a choice between the two of—"

I held up a hoof to stop her flood of words. "Thank you. I get the picture." I lifted the needle in my magic again and held it up in front of my face, watching it shake erratically. I decided to put off the tattoo session as I had no desire to watch Loose Leaf bleed all over my deck.

I added the ink bottle and cloths to my field and passed them to Leaf. "Here, hang on to these. I'll do the tattoo after we get through the mountains. Wouldn't want to misunderstand any directions you gave us because of a swollen lip, would we?"

She took the items and stashed them under one wing. "Good thinking, ma'am!"

"Please go aft and report to the captain," I continued, in a remarkable steady voice. "Give her and the helmspony all the details about the approach to the pass. Tell Captain Skyla I will await her pleasure in the matter of a planning session to determine how we will manage the passage, if she cares to include me."

"Uh…" Leaf shuffled her hooves uncertainly. "Aye aye, Ms. Nightshade." She waited a moment to see if I had anything to add, and then turned and trotted for the quarterdeck.

I blew into the speaking tube for the cupola, and when Ao answered, I asked if there was anypony else up there with her. When she told me she was alone, I stoppered the tube and flew up to join her.

"Did you happen to overhear the conversation between Skyla and Spike last night?" I asked her.

"Only the very last part," she told me. "Until you came back to the group, this one was in the air, keeping watch on the pegasi in stasis against the chance that the spell might fail."

I nodded. It was just like her to self-impose that sort of watchfulness. It was one of the many things that made her such a good adventuring companion. Another of her sterling qualities was an excellent memory.

"Ao, can you tell me exactly what you overheard?"

She did so, and my budding suspicion of a multi-dimensional Bright/Dark war evaporated, only to be replaced by a much stranger hypothesis. In that context, what Midnight Sparkle had said to me took on a whole new meaning that staggered me with its implications It was insane, unimaginably ambitious, and utterly mind-boggling… But it was also very much me.

"Are you well, Majesty?"

"Huh? Oh… uhmn… yes, I'm fine, Ao, just fine. I… I think I ought to go down and convince my niece not to assassinate me now."

"Majesty?" Ao's right forehoof had reflexively gone to the grip of her sword, and a bit of its blade shone clear of the scabbard in the evening light.

"What? Oh, right… no, it's fine." I stared off into space, wishing I could grip the cosmic wheels of that world and pull them to a stop for a while. Just a year or so. Time to think. But you know what they say, "If wishes were fishes, there'd be trout in the hayloft."

"Trout, Majesty? This one becomes concerned."

"Oh, did I say that out loud?" I asked.

Ao nodded, cautiously, still gripping her sword.

"No, honestly, it's okay. I just figured out something, and it's a bit of a shock." I shook out my wings and shuffled them back neatly at my sides. "I think Skyla's gotten the wrong impression about the... situation, and I need to go fill her in."

"Shall I accompany you, Majesty?"

I shook my head wearily. "No, and please stop with the 'Majesty' bit for at least a little while. I'm not a queen. I don't think I'm even a pawn… not yet, anyway."

Ao pushed her sword fully back into its scabbard with a little click. "As you wish, Twilight Sparkle. But you are not yourself, and this one will accompany you until this one is satisfied nothing untoward will occur as a result of this shock you have suffered."

I opened my mouth to reassure her, but she interrupted me. "If you are not a queen, you may not command this one."

Well, I was first mate, and she was… second mate or bosun; we'd never really formalized our positions. Because none of us had ever actually signed on, her argument for disobeying my orders had some merit, and I was much too tired and muddled to argue the point.

I sighed. "Hoist with my own petard," I muttered.

"As you say, Ma… Twilight," Ao replied. One glance at her aggressively neutral expression told me that she had not the slightest idea what a petard was.

Ao called up one of the unicorn rebels to take over the watch, and we flew down to the quarterdeck together.

Skyla looked up as we descended. "Trouble?"

Trouble? What an understatement! It was trouble on an enormous scale. "Not really, no," I told her. "I just need a couple of minutes to clear something up with you. Alone, if possible."

She gave me a wary look that made my heart ache. Loose Leaf was standing on the deck behind her, and gave me a little surreptitious high-sign with the tip of one wing. I wanted to smack the bloody-minded pegasus.

"Very well," Skyla said. "Ms. Ao, take command. I will return shortly. Keep us on this course; east by north." She turned to me. "Will my cabin do?"

Ao obeyed, but gave me a very stern look, which I understood to mean, "Try to keep a lid on the crazy, please, and yell if you need me."[3]

[3] My readers might think it unlikely that I could divine such specific information from a single look, but Ao and I had a lot of history together, and unfortunately, she'd had occasion to use the same expression a few times previously.

Skyla led the way down to the captain's cabin. She walked to the desk and turned to face me, unsmiling.

"I would never, ever hurt you, Flurry," I said. "I know what Spike said to you and he's wrong. This whole—"

"War isn't nice and neat, Twilight," she snapped. "Ponies get hurt. Ponies get killed, even if—"

"It's not a war!" I shouted. I hadn't meant to to raise my voice, and Flurry's reflexive start made me ashamed of myself. "I'm sorry! But honestly, I've figured it out. It's not a war."

She raised an eyebrow at me.

"Didn't Big Bad Twilight seem kind of wimpy to you?" I realized what I was saying and shook my head angrily. "Okay, yes, she and Spike burned a fleet from the sky, but why did she do it? And why did she give them all a chance to parachute to safety? Why didn't she kill us for trespassing in her world?"

My niece was frowning at me now, but in puzzlement rather than anger. "Why don't you just tell me," she said.

"According to Ao, Spike said, 'It may be just a game to them, but it's deadly serious to the ponies around them.' Is that correct?" She nodded and I went on. "That wasn't hyperbole. It actually is a game."

Her head went back and she gave a little whinny of surprise. "What? That doesn't make any sense!"

"Big Bad isn't a simple villain with a hyper-developed appetite for power. She wants this world to be peaceful and egalitarian. So what does the good side want?"

"That sort of sounds like what we were working towards," Flurry admitted.

"Yes, and I'm betting the Bright Sparkles are no different. The two sides don't have different goals, they have different techniques." Flurry's mouth worked a bit, as if she were searching for words, but I rushed on. "I've travelled the worlds enough to know that if there were a war of that scale going on, I would have seen some sign of it. The two sides, bright and dark, are competing, but not fighting."

Flurry's expression softened, and I could see she was thinking it over. "But a game? With ponies' lives at stake? That still doesn't make sense to me."

"If there are two competing theories, their respective predictive abilities are what ultimately determines which is correct. Stern and ruthless authoritarianism focused on punishing wrongdoing, or shining examples of high moral character and a scrupulously fair government. Which approach is more effective at making the best world for ponies?" I opened a drawer in the desk and floated out my chess set. "Set up the boundaries," I said as I placed the board on the desk. "Lay out the chessponies, bright and dark" I said, as I placed the pieces on the board. "Play the game… and see who's right."

She shoot her head. "That's… That's… Even if you're right, that's monstrous!"

I shrugged. "Maybe I'm wrong. Ask the Bright Sparkle that comes to recruit you."

Her expression fell. "If I say yes, what will—"

"Nothing!" I hissed through my teeth. "The answer is nothing! I wouldn't harm you for any reason, Flurry. I love you, and I will protect you from any number of Dark Twilights if they try to remove you from the board."

"Remove? You mean kill me, right?"

I shook my head. "I don't think so. Maybe Spike gave you that impression, but I just can't see her being so ruthless with a family member when she had concern for enemies she didn't even know. If Big Bad was that callous, she would have killed us for interfering, rather than saving us from the fleet. Exile to a low or non-magic world for the duration of the game would be just as easy. For such a huge contest, the rules must have a lot of leeway in them, but I imagine that employing such a powerful magic user as you to tip the balance in borderline worlds has to be way over the line."

"I… I'm still not convinced," she said slowly. "The bright side has to be obviously better, right? Why would they need a game to figure that out?"

"Call it an experiment then. Science doesn't accept obvious answers, it only accepts hard evidence." I swept the chess set back into the drawer. "Equestria is a bright world, don't you think?"

"Of course!"

I nodded. "The old changelings, Discord, Sombra, Tirek, the Nightmare, the Storm King, Grogar… shall I go on?"

"But we beat them all! Reformed some of them, too!" She was actually so indignant that she stomped a hoof at me.

"Only by a hairsbreadth, and I've seen timelines where we didn't." I chuckled mirthlessly. "Random chance plays a part, so only in the aggregate can the most effective method be determined. First pony to ten thousand peaceful and prosperous worlds wins."

"It's nothing to be sarcastic about, Twilight! Even if they are trying to make things better, I don't like the idea of something so cold-blooded at all!"

"Well, maybe I'm completely wrong," I said, shrugging. "Time will tell. I just wanted to let you know that I'll never, never be a part of what you thought Spike meant. I don't like this grand game either, and I'll do whatever I can to keep our home world out of it."

Flurry lowered her head and said, quietly, "I… I'm sorry Twilight. I should have realized…" Then her head came up suddenly and she said, "But you do it too!"

"Huh? Do what?"

Her eyes grew wide. "Ponyville and Twilight Town. Bright and Dark."

"What?" I jerked my head so far up in surprise that my horn hit the overhead. "No, no, no! That's not the same at all! Twilight Town was an accident! I'm not running any sort of experiment with them!"

"But you keep up the appearance," she said, pointing at me. "You play the game! That's why you look like that now!"

"Ponies like what they're used to. I just—"

"They're happy, aren't they? The Twilight Folk, I mean. Most of them are pretty prosperous, right?"

"Well, yes, but so are most Ponivillians!" I protested.

"So who's doing a better job, the Princess of Friendship or the Queen of Twilight Town?"

"I… uh… Look, that question isn't even meaningful. One place isn't better than the other…"

"Oh, sure! No difference." She scowled at me. "Then why don't we ask Ao if she wants to move to Ponyville?"

I could see that we were getting nowhere. "When we get back, we're going to have to discuss all of this. We'll need a royal summit to figure out what to do about… well, everything. I will make sure you're included, and we will debate it all then. Will that satisfy you?"

She scuffed a hoof on the deck. "I suppose. But what if Mother decides I'm too young to—"

"Steal a ship, go pirating across the dimensions, and topple an empire?" I grinned at her. "Then start your own free city and declare yourself queen. That way, you'll outrank her."

Flurry snickered and the tension in the air fell away. "Don't tempt me!"

I grinned. "Well, we still have to get back, and there are a lot of dangers between us and the gate. We can worry about the seating arrangements at the summit later."

"Yes, and the Empire may be listing a lot, but it isn't quite toppled yet. We still need to—"

"Oh holy stars!" I cried out, interrupting her. "I completely forgot! Wait here, I'll be right back!"

I dashed out of the cabin and down the ladder to my own. I hurriedly rummaged through my files, grabbed a folder and galloped back.

"Here!" I said, thrusting a folded paper at Captain Skyla.

"What's… Oh, it's that silly declaration of war you made me sign…" She trailed off as she noticed the second signature at the bottom.

"Yep," I said gleefully as I passed over the agreement of unconditional surrender. "Both officially signed by His Glorious Imperial Majesty, Emperor Fauvel the Seventh."

She looked up at me, and I positively wallowed in her opened-mouthed expression of absolute shock.

"Congratulations," I said. "You won!"

= = =

We worked our way slowly through the twisting smuggler's pass. The moonlight was helpful, but Ao and I flew ahead with shuttered lanterns to help mark the way through each leg. There were parts so narrow that Sirocco had to pivot the steering fins as far up as possible to clear the granite cliffs to either side.

Five hours later, we finally made it through to the high plains, and Loose Leaf guided us to a safe mooring ground as the eastern sky was beginning to lighten.

The plan was to stay hidden for the next couple of days while we made comprehensive repairs to Nebula. Then we would do a lightning run through the Western Territories, dropping medallions as we went, until we reached the Badlands gate.

Then we would go home.

Well, that was the plan, anyway.

= = =

Author's Note

Thanks to Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for pre-reading and editing!

25 The Brightness at the End of the Tunnel

Chapter Twenty-Five

The Brightness at the End of the Tunnel

We posted lookouts on nearby peaks to watch for imperial vessels, or even just scouting pegasi, but our mooring ground was well and truly out of the way, and we saw nothing in the air but birds for the three days we took to make repairs.

Nebula's envelope looked horrible, but it was sound at least, and the gas cell beneath was as tight as was reasonable for a field repair. We had exhausted our anti-magic coating, but I restrung the fine strands of the thaumic wire mesh across the patch, which would give us a bit of protection.

The most difficult task was removing the jammed engine bearing and then reforming the collar that held it in place to receive the new one. Once that was done, replacing the propellor and shaft was easy.[1]

[1] Easy, but extremely messy. It was fortunate that grease and engine oil stains hardly showed on my black coat.

The unskilled crew—mostly rebel unicorns—were kept busy with simple tasks like cleaning, painting, and pulling crossbow bolts out of the hull and deck.

We even had some time in the evenings to relax a bit. Sirocco found an old squeezebox in a storage locker and suggested a bit of music and dancing after supper. Nopony aboard knew how to play the thing, but several of the unicorns volunteered to sing acapella, and they were amazingly good. They hadn't been allowed to own much personal property, and certainly no musical instruments, so they had developed a style that mimicked instrumental sounds.

They sang us a hauntingly beautiful song with strange lyrics that faded away into profound silence. I think we were all too stunned to applaud. They also knew a lot of tunes that were perfect to dance to—another activity that they hadn't been expressly forbidden—and they immediately started another song that got all our hooves tapping.

On my suggestion, Cream Puff shared out judicious amounts of apple brandy, and the party got a bit raucous. When His Miniscule Majesty yelled up the companionway for us all to shut up so that he could get some sleep, the resulting laughter and catcalls shook the deck. Cream Puff took a mug of his special cinnamon and nutmeg hot chocolate (sans brandy) down to the colt as a conciliatory gesture, as well as a big pillow he could wrap around his ears.

"What are we going to do with that truculent little brat?" I asked Skyla and Ao as we lounged against the quarterdeck rail, watching the dancing on the main deck. "We can't leave him here. The ponies scrambling for power would make him into a political hoofball, if they didn't kill him outright."

"He would have died in that wreck, if it wasn't for us," Skyla replied. "Anything we do with him has got to be a step up from that."

"If this one may offer a suggestion," Ao said. "Bitter Grass has complained of the lack of help in her herb fields of late. The youngling is sturdy enough, and Bitter Grass is kindly despite her stern reputation. The colt needs a family. Bitter needs a new apprentice..."

"Not a bad idea," I said, nodding. "Bitter Grass is one of the few ponies I know that would have both the patience and firmness to deal with that little monster."

Ao sipped at her tea and nodded in agreement. "Magical herbalism is a good trade, and he would be able to make his living easily enough when he comes of age."

"Well," I said, clinking my mug gently against Ao's delicate porcelain cup, "that's a plan then, and another item on my list checked off!"

That was to be the last bit of eminent satisfaction I would have on that world.

Oh, things went according to plan for the next few days as we ran southwest across the plains, zigging and zagging a bit to drop off a few medallions at isolated towns, but it felt like clean-up work to me, and I was mentally done with the whole adventure and eager to be home again.

I fitted the big gate gem with a triple-alicorn sigil, and built connected settings for the additional gems it would take to power the portal. All that remained was to place the gems when the time came.

The first sign that things were going to go badly came after we'd fought our way back through the stiff winds of the southern pass in the Dientes Blancos Mountains. With our reduced crew, it would take a half day to fully recharge our nearly depleted power crystals, so I thought some scouting would be in order while the unicorns worked.

The last information we had about the Western Fleet was that the three surviving ships were anchored at Palo Verde, about eight leagues north of us. Skyla agreed that it would be a good idea to confirm that they were still there. I also wanted to deliver a load of medallions to the unicorns of the town, so I got a blast from the pegasus disguise gun, and Sirocco and I loaded up our saddle bags and flew north.

The ships were gone. Worse than that, they had taken every unicorn in the town with them.

It took us a while to learn what had happened. Fortunately, the stunning appearance of my disguise tended to shut off the average stallion's critical-thinking capabilities, and after an evening casually chatting with a number of very attentive ponies in the cantina, I was able to put together a picture of events.

The imperials had tested every gem they had for sabotage. It was a pretty simple test—they connected each gem to a dismounted ship's gun with a long orichalcum cable, put the gem on the other side of a large boulder that acted as a blast shield, then just fired the gun until the crystal was depleted. Or until it exploded. The crystals that remained intact were recharged by the town's unicorns while under strict observation.

Shortly after they had finished validating the safety of their gems and topping them up, they'd herded every unicorn in the town and outlying farms into the airships and headed west. I batted my lashes until I thought my eyelids were going to cramp up, but nopony had any idea exactly where the airships were heading, minus some implausible lies made up to impress me.

Sirocco and I discussed the news as we walked out of town. The majority opinion held by the ponies in the cantina had been that the ships would head for the imperial base at Ursa Negro where the new factory was being built, and use it as their base of operations. News of the imperial fleet's destruction had arrived in Palo Verde by exhausted pegasus courier two days after the ships had departed, and it wasn't clear whether the information had been conveyed on to the other towns of the territory or not.

"That would certainly have an effect on their plans," I said. "If they know what happened at the Black Gate, they'd run at the sight of us."

"Otherwise," Sirocco added, "we're just the pirate scum who embarrassed their governor, and they'll do their best to blow us out of the sky."

"Right." I nodded. "So that means we had better avoid running into them to be on the safe side."

"And that means scouting ahead and avoiding towns, which will slow us down." From the dejection in his voice, it sounded like he was eager to get home as well.

"Maybe we can find some more burro pack trains to give the medallions to. We've still got a good store of bits aboard to pay them in advance for distributing them, and hurting the empire that conquered their kingdom would be an added incentive." I looked back over my shoulder at the distant lights of Palo Verde. "I think we're far enough," I said, and unslung my raptor set.

I clicked the transmit button three times and within a few seconds got a reply. "Skyla here. We were getting worried. Over."

"We're fine, but things took much longer than expected. It's too dark to risk flying back tonight. We will see you in the morning. Over."

"Understood. Stay safe. Out."

Sirocco and I found a soft sandy spot to settle in and wait for moonrise, napping in turn as the other kept watch. The moon was near new, so we didn't get enough light to make flying safe until about an hour before dawn.

The Nebulas tried to put a brave face on it, but it was obvious that everypony was discouraged by our bad news. After a brief meeting with Ao and me, Skyla decided that we would head for the Badlands gate by the most direct route possible. We would distribute or dump our medallions whenever a likely opportunity presented itself, but we wouldn't risk approaching settlements that might be hosting a hostile flotilla of warships.

When she announced her decision to the crew, she got a bit of a surprise from an unexpected direction.

"Captain?" Loose Leaf spoke up from the crew assembled in the waist. "We could drop caches of the medallions with gold and instructions on a couple of the old smuggling routes south of Rocas Rojas. It wouldn't be far out of our way, and that way they'd be likely to fall into sympathetic hooves."

We had another quick little meeting that included Leaf.

"This one wonders how a mere scribe is so knowledgeable in the ways of surreptitious importation," Ao said, squinting suspiciously at the skittish little pegasus.

"Professional jealousy?" I whispered to Ao softly out of the corner of my mouth. Oh, the look she gave me!

"It's all in Flit Wit's A History of the Pre-Imperial Smuggling Trade," Leaf said promptly and proudly.

Skyla snorted and stamped a hoof. "You guided us through a treacherous pass on the strength of three hundred-year-old information you read in a book?" she asked, indignantly.

"Successfully guided us," I pointed out, while Leaf tried to stammer out an apology. But I had a couple of questions of my own. "If these routes are written down, aren't the imperials also aware of them?"

"Oh… uh… No, ma'am!" Leaf stammered out. "Y-you see, anything prior to the Empire is considered primitive and worthless. Most records prior to the founding were thrown away or left to decay. The copy I read was probably the last existing one."

"Who else might have read it?"

"W-well, if anybody else had read it, they're probably dead by now, judging by the amount of dust on it when I found it. See, I worked in the stacks at the Steelspire archive, and it got so lonely back there that most days I poked around back in the dead shelves for something interesting to read." Her voice steadied as she warmed to her subject. "That's where I found Flit Wit's book. Oh, and there was this other really good one on hydraulic mining for—"

"O-kay, then," Skyla interrupted her. "I suppose it won't do any harm to drop crates of medallions on these trails. I'll leave you to go over the charts with Sirocco and help him plot a course. Nothing too far out of our way, mind you."

We nosed around the edges of the Badlands for the next couple of days, dropping off caches of the medallions with instructions and bags of bits. We could have gotten to the gate much quicker if we flew a direct course, but the confusing jumble of crags and spires made that impossible unless we went for high altitude to get above it all. We considered that, but decided to follow the longer route we had originally come through rather than endanger our rough repairs with extreme flying.

And that's why we flew right into the ambush.

I don't know how they figured out where we were headed. Oh, we'd unintentionally left clues behind as to where we'd come from, but for them to be at the right spot at the exact moment we returned? It's entirely possible that the fleet had nothing better to do and had decided to camp out on the gate in the faint hope we might return. Never discount luck, good or bad.

Ao and I were up in the cupola with the cluster of crystals designed to power the gate and unlock the way to Twilight Town. We were planning on flying ahead as soon as we caught sight of the sandstone arch and putting the gems in place so that Nebula could fly straight through without slowing.

The first inkling we had of trouble was the sound of ornithopters behind us.

We traded one surprised look, and then sprang into action. I took the gem cluster and turned it sideways, shoving it as far down in the cupola as it would go. There was so much power contained in the apparatus that if an enemy shot broke one of the crystals, the resulting explosion would destroy most of Nebula's upper structure, not to mention anypony nearby.

Ao whistled up the quarterdeck and gave Skyla the report. I only heard half the conversation, but I could make a very good guess at the rest.

"If they let us know they were behind us before attacking, they are certainly waiting in front of us as well," she said.

I scanned the canyon ahead of us with my spyglass and saw nothing suspicious, but I knew Ao had to be right.

"Yes, Captain," Ao said into the speaking tube. "We can do it!" Then she put the plug back in and turned to me. "This one has committed us to a possibly risky course of action, Ms. Nightshade. Apologies in advance."

The roar of Nebula's engines speeding up confirmed my suspicion. "We're rushing the gate, aren't we?"

"Just so," Ao confirmed. "We are to keep to cover and then race ahead and place the gem cluster at the last moment."

"Swell," I said, snugging up the chin strap of my helmet. It actually wasn't a bad plan. The imperials probably assumed that we would need a lot of time to carefully place the gems and get the gate operational again. Until we did so, we'd be bottled up, a stationary target for them to leisurely blast away at.

I called the quarterdeck with a bit of maneuvering advice, then hunkered down to wait. It wasn't long.

The instant after the first shots slammed into us, Sirocco gave her full fins down, and Nebula's nose rose like a whale breaching. The enemy was unprepared for an airship to make such an abrupt maneuver, and their second volley went low, with only a couple of shots hitting us near the keel.

We could see two of their ships then, moored in little side canyons with a network of cables holding them steady in the narrow space. They had even unshipped several of their main guns and placed them on the canyon's rim to provide a better field of fire.

The gunners elevated their barrels, and Ao and I instinctively grabbed for hoofholds. Sirocco didn't disappoint us. Just before the enemy fired again, he cranked the fins full up and Nebula suddenly headed for the center of the planet. Cannon fire crackled just over our heads and we heard a great tearing noise as the top of our tail fin was blown away.

We peered forward hoping to get a glimpse of the gate. Our elation at spotting it was tempered by the sight of the largest warship moored almost directly beneath the great stone arch. Her forward gun turrets were aimed straight at us, and she had one up on top of her envelope as well.

"UP!" I yelled through clenched teeth. "Up, up, up!"

Sirocco couldn't have possibly heard me, but he knew his business. Nebula's fins swooped down, the starboard one actually scraping the wall of the canyon, and we leaped upward again.

The big warship's main guns tracked us and fired. Nebula's hull shook from the heavy impacts that hit her somewhere beneath her bow, and then everything went to Tartarus.

It wasn't until well after the battle that I realized what had happened. The warship's cupola gun must have tracked us as well, firing on the order of the gun crew's officer. But as we rose, the higher gun's aim had intersected the stone archway, and when it had fired, the full blast went directly into the stone at the apex.

Right where the power crystals were designed to fit.

Portal magic operates within an extremely narrow range of variables. Usually, if everything isn't exactly right, nothing happens. Almost always, if something goes wrong, but the portal still operates, it merely leads to somewhere unintended and possibly unpleasant. In rare and appalling instances, the magic runs out of control and very bad things happen.

Anypony who witnesses little flickering rainbows of light at the edges of a dimensional gate is strongly advised to shut it down immediately, or failing that, flee as quickly as possible. We were a long way past the typical little warning signs of an unstable portal—the chromatic aberrations ringing the arch were lancing outward in long hissing flares.

If that wasn't bad enough, what appeared to be rips in the sky opened up, revealing vistas of other worlds. There's no point in giving advice for such a situation, because that's the buffering structure of the multiverse tearing away, removing the natural boundaries between universes. Unless there is a magically powerful expert present to immediately repair the damage, such an event usually results in the utter destruction of all the universes so exposed.

I tore my eyes away from the sky and looked at the archway. Beneath the arch, I could barely make out the wreckage of the bow of the big warship. She must have been cut in half when the portal tried to open.

The only good thing about what was going on was that mana from the other worlds was flooding through the rents in the sky. I felt light, almost giddy. I felt strong again.

I reached out and rapidly crumpled the barrels of all the enemy's cannons. Then I sent rock fragments ripping through the gas cells of the ships, causing them to slowly sink toward the canyon floors. It was a trivial matter for me to sense the power gems in the following ornithopters and rip them out of their mountings.

Distractions taken care of, I tried to deal with the universe coming apart at the seams. Skyla appeared at my side in a flash of teleportation magic.

"What can I do?" she asked, wild-eyed.

Unable to give her a short course in repairing the fabric of the luminiferous aether, I told her to collect as many of the unicorns from the warships as possible. The staccato pops of her teleportation magic and the startled whinnies of surprised ponies became a background beat to the ghastly ripping noise of the world coming apart.

I struggled with the tears in the sky, managing to halt the spread of the damage and slowly, ever so slowly, reversing it. As they closed, another problem cropped up. I was shutting off the flow of the magic that enabled me to make the repairs, and the chromatic flares from the gate were opening them anew.

"Ao!" I cried out. "We've got to stabilize the portal! Can you get the gems in place?"

She didn't bother replying. Her antlers lit, she lifted the cluster out of the cupola, and she flew for the gate.

"Be careful of the flares!" I called out to her and returned to stitching the universe back together.

I focused on the rifts again, barely able to keep them from growing until there came a loud crackle of energy from the portal and the destructive influence of the chromatic flares disappeared. I braced myself and poured all my strength into a sealing spell that hit the remaining holes all at once. They closed. I could feel the mana leaving me as they shrunk to tiny points and then disappeared entirely.

I dropped to the deck with a gasp. "We did it!"

Skyla stumbled over to me. "I think I got them all. I hope so. I can't teleport anymore." She leaned down and gave me a nuzzle. Then she looked up and asked, "Where's Ao?"

"She's…" I looked at the gate. The gems were in place, glowing softly. The surface of the portal was a smooth shimmering plain. Ao was nowhere to be seen.

"Ao?" I rapidly scanned the empty sky and screamed, "Ao!" There was no answer.

Skyla said something, but I really don't know what it was. I was already up and over the forward cowing of the cupola and flying for the gate. When I cleared Nebula's nose, I could see on the canyon floor far below, the body of my friend.

I folded my wings and streaked downward, hitting the sand way too hard and stumbling to her side. "Ao! Ao!" One side of her body was horribly injured, burnt and blackened by magical energy.

She moved and groaned, turning her head to look at me with pain-dulled eyes. She took in a shaky breath. "So, it has come—" She broke off with a sharp hiss of agony.

I lit my horn and bathed her side in the strongest pain-relieving spells I knew. "Don't try to talk! I'll get you aboard. We'll get you some help."

Skyla landed beside me then, and it was a very good thing she did. I was so exhausted, I doubt I would have been able to levitate Ao aboard by myself. Together, we managed it. Though we tried to be as careful as possible, she cried out several times on the way up. Each moan and gasp tore at me like a knife.

As soon as we had her safely aboard, Skyla charged for the quarterdeck, shouting for Sirocco to get us through the gate.

"We'll be home any minute Ao!" I said as I knelt beside her. "I'll get you to the hospital. You know Dr. Snapdragon, she can fix anything!"

She looked up at me and shook her head slightly. "We both know that adventurers seldom die in their beds, do we not, my friend?"

"Ao, I…" But her eyes closed and her head slumped to one side.

And that's when everything stopped.

Nebula shuddered to a halt and everyone but me froze in an aura of stasis magic.

"What?!" I leaped to my hooves, and there, gliding over the stern rail in a shimmering suit of golden armor, was… me. Her feathers were much lighter than my usual color, a shade of lavender so light it was almost white, but I knew who she was. Beyond her, Spike—a Spike perched on the canyon's edge in an equally polished set of plate.

She flipped back her visor to reveal a pale face and cold expression. "Bright 37," she said. "What is your designation?"

"Not now!" I screamed at her.

She scowled at me and the metal spirals set into her horn lit in a threatening manner. "I am Bright 37," she repeated, tapping the front of her chest. Sure enough, it was engraved into her peytral, followed by a string of symbols I couldn't decipher. But there were a couple of other things there that made perfect sense to me. "The map has shown thousands upon thousands of miniportals opening from this world, and on arrival I saw actual rifts in the aether! I was sent to adjudicate what might have been a violation of the rules, and I find a near disaster! You will provide me with your designation, and—"

"I am not a part of your stinking game!" I growled at her, stalking forward. "I want nothing to do with that insanity, so release my ship right now!"

She looked down at my peytral and frowned. Then, some fine lines of force sprang from her augmented horn and played over the surface of the portal. A glowing three-dimensional map appeared in front of her and she studied it carefully. "Unclaimed… unscored… but still within the boundaries. Interesting. I'm afraid I will have to... " She trailed off as I approached with my teeth bared at her. "Oh, please! What are you going to do? You're not powered! Your magic won't even—"

She was right. My magic wouldn't. But my hoof sure did. The left snap kick caught her right under the chin and rocked her head violently back. The right thrust kick that followed instantly afterward hit her directly on the starburst medallion that seemed to be floating above the surface of her peytral, and a dimensional portal vortex blossomed around her.

I flipped myself backwards to avoid being sucked in and only lost the last third of my tail.

There came an angry roar from the clifftop above me. I'd forgotten about Spike. Again.

He swooped down on the ship, green fire churning in his open maw. I leaped to the rail and shoved aside a frozen unicorn that had been operating a launcher, then swiveled the weapon to bear on Spike and pulled the release lever just as he began to breathe out.

The shot hit him directly in the chest. Thank the stars for standardization! The weights of the net package had hardly begun to spread out before they slammed into the big starburst medallion on his armor. The portal that yanked him back to his own universe generated enough thaumic spill to rock Nebula beneath her envelope, and it knocked me off my hooves.

I scrambled up and popped Skyla and Sirocco out of their stasis spells. The rest could wait. "Get us through the gate!" I yelled as I ran for the stern and leaped into the air. I dispelled the stasis line that had locked Nebula's keel to the ground and flew upward until I could get a good look at the top of the arch.

I knew my little trick on the Bright Sparkle wouldn't slow her down for long. She'd be back. We might be gone by then, but she knew the coordinates of our world, and with the three-alicorn sigil set into the gate, she could easily come through after us. And she would be very, very mad at me. I had to remove the sigil.

Oh sure, there were probably hundreds of unused parachute medallions lying around the Empire, but she didn't know about them yet, and that would give us time for the final refugees to arrive before we changed the lock on our world.

I scanned the desert below and selected a rock about the size of my head. I lifted it high in my magic, grunting with the effort, and flung it into a shallow arc. I watched it for a second to determine if it was on course, and then gave it a little corrective nudge. Perfect.

I landed on Nebula's starboard horizontal tail fin and continued to watch the rock arc downward toward me. I glanced behind me to where Nebula's envelope was vanishing into the surface of the portal. It was going to be close.

The best way to remove the sigil was to remove the gem it was attached to, and the best way to "remove" a highly charged magical crystal was to put a big crack in it. It would remove itself and most of the big sandstone arch with it.

The rock descended and I realized with dismay that Nebula wasn't going to quite clear the gate before it struck.

= = =

Author's Note

The unicorn's acapella "instrumental" singing is a real thing, and there are several groups like Van Canto and Pentatonix who do this. If you want to get a general feel for what the rebels first sang that night aboard Nebula, give this a listen: Hallelujah

Extra-emphatic thanks to Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for not only pre-reading and editing, but for putting up with my squirrely BS as well. And Jordanis gets full credit for the great chapter title!

Epilogue

Epilogue

One Day at Vagabond House

My residence in Twilight Town is about as far from a crystal castle as can be imagined. It started out as an admittedly luxurious bungalow on a hill overlooking the town and has grown in a haphazard manner as I found the need for more space for books, guest quarters, equipment, souvenirs from my travels, and books. A broad-roofed porch ran all the way around it, and there was a Neighsian-style garden at the back that took up nearly as much space as the house itself.

I don't know exactly when the Twilight Folk started calling it Vagabond House, but the name stuck, and the source remained a mystery, as with so many things in that town.

The big bedroom at the southeast corner had sliding panels for walls that could be pushed entirely aside to open the room up in fine weather, revealing a wonderful view of the town below and the distant sea. Most airships coming from Zebrica passed by that way, heading for the mooring towers, and I enjoyed guessing at what cargo and passengers they held as they approached.

I was standing there at the edge of the porch, wearing my more usual body despite being "in Town." I was sipping at my morning coffee and watching a stubbly little freighter reverse her engines, when Cream Puff arrived with the breakfast cart.

"Good morning, ma'am!" he said cheerfully, as he wheeled the cart into the room and began setting out the plates.

"Morning, Puff," I replied, keeping my eyes on the airship as her crew prepared their mooring lines. They were all Saddle Arabians in full, fancy tack, which was a bit odd. I made a mental note to ask the harbormaster about it later.

A whiff of the food when Puff removed the tray covers immediately tore my interest away from the unusual airship crew. I turned and went into the bedroom, thanking Cream Puff as he wheeled the cart away.

The bed had been shoved to the back of the room, and I had raided the rest of the house for pillows and cushions to build the sort of soft jumble that Ao preferred to sleep in. The food was set out on a low table right next to her nest, and she was already levitating some strawberry crepes onto her plate.

"Good appetite this morning?" I asked her as I settled myself on the other side of the table.

"Indeed," she said, turning her attention to the basket of fresh muffins.

"By the way," I said casually, as I slid a little still-covered dish across to her. "I had Puff swing by the Griffonstonian restaurant yesterday…"

Her eyes lit up, and she hastily uncovered the plate of pickled herring in cream sauce. "Oh, thank you Twilight! This one has been craving these!"

I smiled and looked away, pretending a renewed interest in the Saddle Arabian freighter while she finished her loathsome treat.

"Nebula's repairs are going well," I said as I spread butter on a steaming muffin. "I got a letter from Gudgeon in the morning mail. He pointedly didn't ask how I'd managed to shear the entire tail section of her envelope off, but he did heavily imply that I might want to hire a competent crew for my next trip."

The kirin shook her head sadly. "The poor fellow has no understanding of how dangerous your voyages often are."

I must have reacted to her words more strongly than I realized, because she hurriedly said, "Oh, Twilight! This one did not mean any criticism of how you—"

"No, no! It's fine! I know you didn't!" I sighed and took another sip of my coffee. "I just can't help feeling a bit guilty, you know?" There was a moment of awkward silence, so I asked, "How are the replacements feeling?"

Ao rolled her body around so that I could see the gleaming orichalcum scales that had been magically grafted to her side. "This one feels no pain or discomfort at all, and though it may be immodest, this one cannot help but think that they enhance this one's already considerable beauty."

She nearly got me, and I avoided snorting coffee up my nose by the slimmest of margins.

She continued on, pretending not to notice my reaction. "This one is considering replacing some undamaged scales for purely aesthetic reasons. So you see, the mishap may have been a blessing in disguise."

I snorted. "Well, if I had known it would only take running a few kilothaums of mana through you to get you to stop calling me 'Majesty', I would have done it myself, years ago!"

Ao gave me a wicked grin and opened her mouth, but I interrupted her. "Oh, no you don't! I can't thwack you when you're recovering, but I can convince the staff that you can't have any of Mayor Buzzy's methyglin for medical reasons."

She didn't stop smiling. "You fight dirty, my friend."

I grinned back at her. "I fight to win."

"As one should," she said, nodding.

We finished our food, and Ao said she felt like a walk in the garden, so we strolled along the veranda toward the garden gate together. I hated seeing how stiff she was, but I told myself that it was a vast improvement on the condition she'd been in only a couple of weeks before.

We chatted and circled the big pond a couple of times, and then sat in the moon-gazing pavilion so that Ao could rest for a bit. "Luna and Flurry Heart will be arriving soon," I told Ao as we watched fat carp lazily drift through the water. "They'll be glad to see how much you've improved."

"Ah, it will be pleasant to see the young one again," Ao replied. "But this one understood that she was still arrested, and would be for some time yet?"

"The word you want is grounded, and yes, her mother swore to keep her locked in the palace until—and I quote—the sun is a cold, dark cinder." I teleported a bit of fish food from the container at the edge of the garden and sprinkled it over the pond, causing a sudden stir of interest in the colorful koi. "But my clever niece has some changeling friends who are willing to risk imperial displeasure for her sake. As far as Cadance will know, she'll be studying in her rooms like a good little filly."

Ao looked at me from the corner of her eye. "You are a terrible influence, Twilight Sparkle."

I sighed. It was true. "Well, the others think that we can simply seal ourselves away from the Players[1] and be safe, but Luna and Flurry agree with me that we need a lot more information about their capabilities, at the very least. We need a brainstorming session together, and as I am equuina non grata in the Crystal Empire at the moment..."

[1] The collective name I decided to give the Dark and Bright factions of the Great Game.

"Have there been any more attempts at the barrier?" she asked.

I shook my head. "No. They must be convinced that they can't brute-force their way through by now. But there have been some unusual fluctuations in the aether. I think they might be trying to finesse their way in."

"If they succeed?"

I flicked my tail in irritation. "I really don't know, and that's the crux of the matter. I… we really need to understand what we're up against in order to effectively deal with the situation. That's why Luna and Flurry are coming. We're going to try to figure out a way—"

"To slip out of the universe unnoticed and in disguise? To sneak around the multiverse gathering not only knowledge, but perhaps allies?"

I turned to look at her directly. "You really do know me way too well."

"That may be so," she replied, carefully keeping her gaze on the feeding fish. "But this one does not know whether an old and battered kirin would be wanted in service of such an endeavor."

"Ao! I nearly got you killed! Why would—"

"Perhaps," she said, quietly but firmly interrupting me, "you do not understand this one to the same degree." She paused for a long time, but I knew that she had more to say, so I sat in silence until she continued.

"Where this one was born, there is a temple. In the innermost space of that holy place is a blade that was broken in battle a thousand years ago. It can never be used again, and there is no merit or magic in it, but my people revere the shattered sword in the memory of the one who used it to free a kingdom." Ao looked directly into my eyes before finishing. "Many swords rust in their scabbards, forgotten in abandoned places of little worth."

I nodded. "I understand. I'm not sure I agree with your philosophy, but I do understand."

"Then…?"

"I still have no right to ask you to—"

"You need not ask. This one offers."

When is it more important to put a friend in danger rather than hurt their feelings? It may seem like a stupid or easy question, but it isn't.

"Of course, you're coming along," I said, somewhat surprised that I had ever thought it would be otherwise.

Ao sighed, leaned back in her seat, and closed her eyes. "This one is content."

= = =

I carried Ao back to her nest and left her sleeping while I went to the scriptorium to check up on Loose Leaf. At my request,Leaf was writing out everything she knew about the history and technology of her world. I made it a habit to go over the text with her each day and add annotations based on our discussion.

She had a jackdaw mind that latched on to anything shiny and ignored the "boring stuff", so it made for some frustration on my part. When she came out with some fascinating tidbit, but knew nothing of any serious depth about it, I had to content myself by making a note in the margin rather than screaming in frustration and banging my head against the wall.

I deliberately kept Equestrian books away from her so that she wouldn't conflate and confuse information from two different sources. This caused a good deal of frustration for her. "Your world is so wonderful!" she complained to me. "I want to know all about it!"

"Don't worry," I reassured her. "As soon as you're done with these notebooks, I have a bunch more transcription and copy work for you, and you'll get plenty to read then. Years worth, in all honesty."

A smile lit up her face for a moment and then faded. "Does that mean I won't be coming with you on the trip?"

I raised my head in shock. "What trip? There is no trip!"

Loose Leaf peered at me over her reading glasses for a moment. "If you say so, ma'am."

"Where did you hear about this trip?" I snorted in irritation. "Which is totally not happening!"

Leaf shrugged. "In addition to the resettlement statistics Stalwart Lance and Filigree sent me to go over, I've been helping Pen Flourish with the invoices and inventory work this last week, and looking at the bills and purchases you've been making… Well, it's obvious to me." She looked down at the page again. "Of course, if you say I'm mistaken, I must be."

I sighed. "No, you're right. It's a strong possibility, but there's a lot of planning to be done first. It's going to be an information-gathering voyage, and we don't intend to do any fighting, but given how my last trip went…"

She nodded. "I know I'm not a fighter, or even a strong flyer, but if it's information you're after, I'm a cursed good archivist and historian." She pointed at the stripes on her lip that were partially obscured by actual ink stains. "I earned these several times over, and the only reason I didn't get them sooner was that the other scribes thought I was weird and obsessive."[2]

[2] Which was true. But having personally been weird and obsessive for most of my life, I did not consider those to be necessarily negative traits.

I briefly wondered if everypony knew about the trip. Was it common gossip in the marketplace?

"I can be useful," Leaf continued. "I speak eight languages, including the old trade pidgin that was used when the gates still worked. And I can calculate supply—"

"Wait, what?" I looked at her in shock. "An interdimensional trade language? Really?"

She nodded. "Yes. It's considered a dead language back home, but so many old records…" Her eyes went wide. "Oh, no! You're going to make me write out a whole dictionary and grammar, aren't you?"

I shook my head. "No. Not right away, at least. But starting tomorrow morning, you're going to give Ao and me lessons. There's always a lot of down-time on long trips, so you can work on the dictionary and grammar on board."

"I'm coming?" She grinned so widely that the quill dropped from her mouth.

"Why not?" I said, rolling my eyes. "Everypony else is!"

= = =

A little after lunchtime, a raggedy old jenny mule knocked at the front gate. The porter let her in and asked what her business was. She replied that she bore a grim prophecy that was for the Dark Queen's ears only.

The porter nodded politely and had her wait in the front courtyard while he sent me a brief note asking how far I wanted him to throw her down the path to town. He was joking, of course. I did seem to attract some unusual types, but I was always kind to them,[3] and they most often left the house with a few bits for their troubles.

[3] Except for the assassins, of course. They helped keep my reputation for strictness fresh in the minds of the Twilight Folk

As both Spike and Ao were napping after a pleasant lunch, and I had nothing urgent on my schedule, I decided to have a personal chat with the jenny. I cast an illusionary disguise of my dark persona before I walked to the front veranda.

I took one look at the scruffy old mule and grinned. "Well, if it isn't the notorious Captain Skyla!"

Flurry Heart dropped her disguise and scowled at me. "How did you know it was me? Sunburst said that was the best illusion spell he'd ever come across!'

"Oh, it was good," I agreed. "No direct imperfections at all." I pointed to one of the light bamboo screens that provided shade for the courtyard. "But those are enchanted to catch your shadow as it is, rather than what's projected. Since the shadow is a secondary effect of that spell, it isn't as robust as the illusion itself."

"Auntie, you're positively paranoid!" She chuckled.

"I'm thorough and careful, that's all," I replied, stepping forward to hug her. "How are things at home?"

"Not too bad," she replied as we walked into the house together. "Mother’s so busy dealing with almost a hundred thousand unicorn refugees that she’s mostly forgotten to be mad at me. She’s even asked Sunset for help, if you can believe that! She's still sticking to the plan of imprisoning me until I'm old and gray, but I think that's mostly for form's sake. I'll probably be allowed out of the palace in a couple more weeks—with a platoon of guards to accompany me, of course."

"Is my picture still posted at every border crossing?"

That got a chuckle out of her. "She knows you're the reason I got home safely!"

"But she still blames me for putting the idea for the escapade in your head in the first place, doesn't she?"

"No," Flurry said, shaking her head emphatically. "It took me a while, but I've convinced her otherwise. If only our return hadn't been so dramatic."

I sighed. "She was expecting us to sail serenely out of the gate, but when we barreled through, Nebula all shot up with her hull and envelope smouldering, and me bellowing my head off for a doctor…"

Flurry nodded. "And the portal sort of exploding like that behind us and setting the watch tower on fire…"

"And all the terrified, screaming unicorns on deck…"

Flurry bit her lower lip. "Yeah… It's going to take her a while to get over that."

"She was really frightened for you," I said.

Flurry hung her head. "I know, and I'm really, really sorry about that. I've told her enough times."

"And yet here you are, and here I am—aiding and abetting."

We sighed simultaneously.

"But, it is important, isn't it?" Flurry finally said.

I shrugged. "Maybe our seal will hold and the Players will ignore us, but that's just as bad as locking ourselves in a dungeon. Sure we're safe, but is it worth it?"

"Mother thinks so."

I nodded. "Luna has her doubts as well, though I think it's mostly that she doesn't want me to go gallivanting off across the worlds again without her. Sunset is open to being convinced, but that’ll take some pretty specific persuasion. Everypony has a different take on the situation, and that's why I wanted us to work out some sort of plan that has a chance of making them all happy before we all get together again."

Flurry shook her head. "They'll never all agree! We should just go!"

I stopped walking, put a wing across her chest, and looked her right in the eyes. "No. Cadance will never forgive me if I purposely drag you into danger. She has to agree, or you're not going."

Flurry Heart opened her mouth to argue, and then slowly closed it. She gazed out toward the mooring grounds with a thoughtful expression, and in a suspiciously meek voice said, "I suppose you're right, Auntie Twilight."

I immediately made a mental note to install several subtle anti-theft and anti-stowaway devices aboard Nebula before she left ground dock again.

We peeked into the southeast bedroom and found that Ao was awake. I left her and Flurry to catch up and went to my study, passing by Spike's hammock. He was still snoozing.

Not many doors in Vagabond House have locks, or even latches on them. Everyone who lives in the house understands that if my study door is closed, I do not wish to be disturbed. I almost left the door open, seeing as how my afternoon paperwork consisted of dealing with the multitude of challenges presented by the influx of the Empire’s unicorns. Even the considerable satisfaction of having rescued all of them was diminished by the enormous task of getting them settled in and acclimatized to a strange new world.

I sighed, swung the door shut, and resigned myself to my fate.

As I crossed to my desk, I felt a chill run up my spine. Some dark and subtle magic was at work. I was unarmed and wearing no armor, but that certainly didn't mean I was helpless. A gnuish bone blade hung over my desk. I positioned myself where I could snatch it down with a quick motion of one wing while simultaneously placing a hoof next to the laceshield orb that rested on a low shelf of the bookstand on my other side.

I lifted my journal off the desktop with what would appear to most ponies as a levitation field. By increasing the mana I fed to it, I could instantaneously turn the already active force-ram spell into a powerful weapon.

There was something in the shadows at the darkest corner of the room.

I tensed.

The shadows moved of their own accord, swirling like heavy fog over the sea, drawing inward to form a tall, powerful figure.

I dropped the book and lunged forward. "Luna!" I cried with delight.

She caught me up in her big strong wings and swung me around, laughing and kissing and stroking me with all the built up passion caused by nearly three days apart. Okay, it wasn't quite as forceful as the welcome she'd given me the night after my return,[4] but we still had a lot of time to make up for, and it left me breathless.

[4] Which was good, because compensating the Twilight Folk for the storm damage had put a noticeable dent in my treasury.

I wanted to tumble her to the floor right there and cover her with kisses and love-bites, but there were several little knick-knacks around us that might detonate if accidentally kicked too hard, so I bridled my enthusiasm with the promise of unleashing it later.

She understood, of course. She nuzzled me at the corner of my jaw with her silky-soft lips and whispered, "Tonight…"

I gently nipped her withers in answer, and she nickered low in her throat.

We managed to get out of my study without triggering any defensive items, and entered Ao's room to find her and Flurry still happily gossiping away.

"No, do not rise," Luna said even before we had gotten fully into the room. She was well acquainted with the kirin's enthusiasm for protocol."It is pleasing to see you looking so well, Ao!"

"This one thanks you, Majesty," she replied.

Luna smiled and gently stroked Ao's head with a wingtip. "I cannot thank you enough for keeping my Twilight safe, Ao. You must call upon me for any boon or favor you desire. If it lies beneath the moon, it is yours!"

Ao gaped at her for a second and then gave me a quick glance. I nodded: Luna was absolutely serious.

"This… This one is…" Wow. Seeing Ao speechless was a unique and enjoyable experience.

"And I insist you call me Luna," Luna said, twisting the worldview-altering knife.

"Y-yes, Luna," Ao replied. She was trying her best to appear calm, but her wide eyes and lashing tendrils gave her away.

I thwacked Luna on her shoulder with a wingtip. "It took me over a decade to get her to stop the Majestying and ma'aming! How do you do that?"

Luna gave me a casual look and a sly smile that made me go weak at the knees. "I possess a commanding personality, Twilight. I am dismayed you have forgotten."

As if I ever could.

After a few minutes, we relaxed and fell into casual conversation. I sent for tea, and Spike joined us shortly afterward. We talked until Luna had to raise the moon, and then we moved to the garden where the staff had set out a light supper on low tables surrounded by torches.

It wasn't until we lingered over dessert and coffee that the serious talk began. Spike went to sleep under the table,[5] but the rest of us made good headway toward a solid plan of action.

[5] He barely fit, and I realized how much he had grown lately. He wasn't yet a behemoth like his cousins, but it wouldn't be long before he really began to fill out. A few decades more, and he wouldn't be little Spikey-Wikey any longer.

I was adamant about the necessity of taking action against the Players, but none of the rest questioned my motivation. Not then.

= = =

Luna and I lay on a cloud that was slowly drifting toward the sea. The moon was sinking toward the western horizon and we knew we would have to part soon. But I was stretching it out as long as possible, basking in the afterglow and the cold tickling of sweat drying on my coat while running a wingtip along the sweet curves from Luna's barrel to her thigh.

"I know you think I'm a little obsessed over the plan," I said to her.

"You would not be my darling without your passions," she answered, "mysterious though they be to me."

"If I can broker or force a truce, or even work out an agreement of neutrality with the Players, we won't be trapped here any more!"

"Trapped?" Luna said, trying heroically to keep the amusement out of her voice. "Confined to only one tiny world! A terrible fate, indeed!"

Her joke startled me. I had been thinking of the world as a tiny place. When had my attitude changed so much?

"My darling?" Luna said after a little while. "I did not intend to make mock of thee…"

"Huh?" I rolled onto my side to face her. "Oh, no, no, that's okay…" I didn't want to slip back into silent revery and risk Luna thinking she had offended me, so I began narrating my train of thought. "When boundaries contract, no matter how large they are, it can't help but feel—limiting. And I think that's what bothers me so much about the Great Game."

Luna gave me a curious look but didn't comment.

"They've limited their choices down to two. Well…" I considered the various Twilights I'd met out in the worlds. "Two classes, anyway. Each world on the gameboard may have variations within a limited set of parameters, but it's always some variation on Bright and Dark."

"More appropriate for my sister and I perhaps?" Luna said.

I nodded, thoughtfully. "Yes, and here I am, Twilight—halfway in between. Why am I doing this?" I brought a hoof down hard and a chunk of cloud puffed up and dissipated on the wind. "I'm probably younger than most of the Players, and I know that different ponies have different needs, different approaches to life! It doesn't—"

"If I may make an observation, my love?" Luna interrupted me, gently laying her wing across my shoulders. "And I beseech thee, take it not as a condemnation."

Uh-oh. She'd slipped back into Archaic Equuish: she was serious. I looked at her warily. "Go ahead."

"Thy cousins must share with thee a quality I greatly admire, though I know well the difficulties that arise from it. Indeed, such is why I shall not allow thee to voyage beyond our world again…"

I couldn't help myself. I felt a flush of anger and opened my mouth to protest.

Luna gave a slight gesture with one hoof to acknowledge my feeling, but continued on. "...unless I am by thy side."

"Oh," I said, feeling foolish. "Well, I won't fight you on that. But what about this 'quality?'"

"'Tis simplicity itself, my love!" She grinned at me. "What thou despiseth beyond measure—in all thy incarnations, by evidence—is to lose."

"Ah… Well, yes, you've got me there," I admitted. "But do you think it's that simple? Two Twilights got into a debate about which method of governing was better and it all snowballed into…" I threw out a hoof skyward.

"Hast thou set thy course on stopping this Great Game?"

"Well, yeah."

"And shall thy efforts be lackadaisical?" She smiled at me with such merriment gleaming in her beautiful turquoise eyes, that I couldn't resist kissing her. Also, I loved it when she used words like "lackadaisical."

I finally broke off the kiss, still holding her head between my wings. "No, my dearest, wonderful Luna. You know me…"

Her grin gleamed brightly in the pre-dawn light. She knew as well as I did what I was about to say.

"I fight to win!"

= = =

Author's Note

First and foremost, I have to thank Fana Farouche, Jordanis, and Present Perfect for the amazing amount of work they did. They made this story much, much better than it would have been without them. Each had their own particular style of commenting, suggesting, and correcting, but all of them were amazingly easy to work with. Honestly, each of them are insightful and knowledgeable to a ridiculous degree.

Beyond untangling my sometimes circuitous prose, Fana Farouche did the impossible; he actually drove some idea of proper comma usage into my thick skull. He has a sharp mind and a dry wit, and always brought some amazing contributions to this project.

Jordains has the uncanny ability to take a fractured and badly-expressed concept and turn it into a clear and concise sentence. I believe some sort of dark magic is involved. He is also very adept at the crafting and timing of plot points in order to make the story flow smoothly.

Present Perfect is so darned good at spotting punctuation errors that, after the first couple of chapters, I stopped looking at his corrections and just went down the doc clicking accept, accept, accept... He has an elliptical way of dropping what might otherwise be harsh criticism that makes me happy to do a rewrite or additional scene. (See my comment above about dark magic.)

And beyond all that, these great guys often turned the gdocs comment threads into fascinating conversations in their own right. It was a pleasure and an honor to work with them.

Thanks also to all of you wonderful readers who upvoted, commented, or even just quietly enjoyed the story. Without you, there would be little point in writing.

I have to include an additional thanks to two readers in particular. I can't ever enjoy my own work the way another reader can, but thanks to Seraphem and WovenTales, with their blow-by-blow color commentary, I can get a bit of an idea what it might be like. You guys rock!

Lastly, I want to direct your attention to the new bit that has been added after the appendices. It isn't necessary to enjoy or understand the story, but it is there for those that might want a bit of closure regarding the Players. (Without having to read another five books or so!)

Appendix 2: Maps (Warning: Possible Spoilers)

Below are the maps acquired by Nebula's crew at Rocas Rojas in Chapter 6, including Twilight Sparkle's added notes. They contain mild spoilers for certain events. They are not necessary to understand the story, but may be enjoyable to study as the action progresses. To that end, I've noted what chapters should be read before looking at each map, if you want to completely avoid all spoilers.
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Chapter 8
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Chapter 11
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Appendix 1: Diagrams

The following illustrations are not necessary to understand or enjoy the story. They are purely extras for the readers who like such things.

A note on the last measurements in the above diagram for those readers not steeped in age-of-sail terminology: Despite using "tons", those are measurements of volume, not weight. If one were to completely fill Nebula's hull with water, the water would weigh 850 tons. If her envelope were filled, the water would weigh 9,450 tons. Despite the label "lift", her load capacity is nowhere near that weight.

Publisher's Note

Publisher's Note

On the Decacentennial of the Declaration of Universal Harmony, Grandleaf Publishing is proud to issue a special facsimile edition of Far Traveler's annotated masterwork, The Seven Century War, along with all the extant volumes mentioned in the added bibliography, in this deluxe boxed set.

Until now, theannotated volume has only been available to scholars travelling to the Black Gate City Archives to examine the original. Other copies of Far Traveler's history are common enough, and the work is considered to be a solid and accurate account of the great struggle that shaped our modern pandimensional civilization.

What makes this particular volume unique is that it has been exhaustively annotated and corrected by an unknown historian. At several points there are extra pages inserted into the volume in order to make room for lengthy commentaries. Much of what is asserted in this gloss cannot be verified, but in every single instance where evidence could be found relating to a passage, it has borne out the unknown historian's claims. There is a scrawled bibliography on the end flyleaf that includes the preceding, ~~obviously fictional~~ novel, and that is why it is included in this collection.

Perhaps the most interesting correction to The Seven Century War is on the title page. For all its brevity, it is generally agreed among scholars that it is highly significant.* There, the unknown historian has struck out the archaic word War and written in Endeavour.

* And indeed, I meant it to be.