The Fermi Object

Swamps

Commander Firelock didn’t like the swamps south of Baltimare. They were swamps, he was a pegasus, there shouldn’t be any reason for him to go here except to fly over them. But that was where they saw the alien, so he buckled down clutching his rifle and sulked.

“You don’t look too enthused about this, Firelock.” Spitfire jabbed at him.

“It’s a swamp. I hate swamps. They smell and there is no reason we should be going into one. That's why we have wings.” He didn’t have to shout over the motor because it was silent.

Behind them was a minor fleet of a combination of Wonderbolts, Equestrian Guard and scientists. One, armed to the teeth with everything from knives to the latest tech in cartridge based guns. The other, armed to the teeth in every measuring device Canterlot could possibly come up with. Firelock KNEW that a great deal of those were extraneous, as there wasn’t a chance in hell they could use a rectal thermometer in this situation.

On top of that, not a single one of them knew how to deal with a swamp. First there were the mosquitoes. They brought bug repellent, not a bad idea when you’re camping next to,say, a lake, but here, there were at least ten mosquitoes for every cubic foot of space, probably for miles. Any kind of repellent wouldn’t cut it against the swarm, even if the mosquitoes wanted to get away, they were so dense the mosquitoes’ sheer volume prevented that. But that wasn’t what got Firelock into his sulking mood. There were perfectly good pegasi here who could just as easily take turns kicking up a breeze and blowing them all away.

“Nope, that wasn’t regulation.” That was the constant litany of his misery. Even in his head he couldn’t think to maintain a respectful tone while thinking that.

“We can’t blow away all these mosquitoes, Firelock, that’s not regulation.”

“That's not regulation, after market motors should not be installed on these boats.”

So here they were, with gummed-up propellers full of tangled plants, in a smelly mosquito-bitten hellhole, with ponies having to take turns rowing through the swamp. AND they were out of bug repellent.

Obviously, there were reasons for all this. Somebody higher up had wanted all caution, and probably had thrown their weight around to ensure the safety of the scientific staff. Firelock suspected that even the most harmless of the scientific crew were ticked, gnatted and mosquitoed off, to the point they would give whoever gave that order a stern talking to if not a punch in the face.

Spitfire, on break from rowing, decided to come down and talk to Firelock.

“So what’s the story of that rifle you got there?” She asked.

“This? This was an heirloom from my grandfather.”

Firelock ran a hoof down the gun with its long rifled barrel, curved pegasus stock and almost out of place engraved magazine and receiver.

“Bullshit, that receiver and magazine didn’t exist even 15 years ago. Especially not on a Jezail.”

“AH!” Firelock held up a hoof. “But they still make some of the better rifles over in Saddle Arabia, and that's where I had it refitted with modern parts. The receiver, and the magazine are brand new.”

“Your willingness to maim an heirloom aside, that barrel looks new, and it wouldn’t exactly fit modern caliber weapons.”

“They actually melted down the old barrel and recycled the metal into this new one, see this sight here?” Firelock pointed at the welded on piece of metal at the end of the barrel, “That's actually the original iron sight of the gun, they took it off before they re-made the barrel. They even re-purposed the old flintlock as a firing pin at my suggestion.”

“I still can’t get over how casual you are about defacing a family heirloom like that.”

“To me, it’s a reminder.” Firelock moved far away with his mind, back to something his grandfather said. “When I was about five, my grandfather, a military stallion, took the gun down and told me this: ‘this is the gun that won the skirmish of Pasternwar. In a battle, a war, a fight, you must always realize the rules. Not the rules other ponies have told you, but the rules imposed upon you, so that you can change with them.’ ”

“Sounds like a smart stallion.”

“Didn’t win him the skirmish though, kept a bullet from that in his leg til the day he died.”

“What’re those up there?” A wet and smelly member of the science crew pointed off to the distance some hours later.

Firelock woke up out of his frustrated stupor to look.

“Birds.” He grunted, and put his head back down to stare holes into the boat.

“No no no, those aren’t birds, at least not any that I’ve seen.”

“So, they’re birds a long way off. Not having been in a swamp like this, there are bound to be plenty of birds you haven’t seen.”

“I’m an ornithologist.” said the Earth pony. “I know all the birds in the area. There aren’t any vultures or gulls in these swamps, very few birds of prey, and nothing that would circle in those kind of numbers.”

Firelock looked up at the birds, closer this time. His advanced pegasus eyes noticed something an Earth pony would have a lot harder time with.

“What’s your name?” Firelock asked suddenly, looking down at his cutie mark.

“Silica Chert.” A name said proudly, by a pony whose name didn’t match up with his wing-and-book cutie mark.

Before Firelock could even ask the question Chert was already answering it.

“Couldn’t abandon the family name, even after I moved off the rock farm.”

“Well, then, you need to talk to Captain Spitfire, because despite me hanging on as an advisor in this situation, it seems I have as much pull as a dingleberry across military lines.”

It only took a hop from one boat to another to find Spitfire rowing herself, a sheen of sweat doing its best to wash off the bug repellent.

“Yes?” Spitfire asked tersely. They were destined to butt heads after he’d made a comment about how he was right about the outboard motors.

“Chert has spotted something odd off in the distance, he thought it should be brought to your attention.” Firelock carefully put Chert in-between them in the conversation, where Chert succeeded to flounder like a chicken in the water.

Unable to find words, he resorted to pointing at the “birds” off in the distance. Spitfire took one glance at the birds and then a grumpy look back at Chert.

“Yeah, so? They’re just birds.”

“I don’t think so. Look a bit closer.”

Spitfire squinted into the distance before her expression of annoyance changed to that of shock. She turned back to bark at the soldiers, lazing around at their posts on the small boats, resigned to the mosquitoes.

“We’re moving NOW.”

Chert squinted at the dots in the distance. They were getting bigger, but they were getting bigger than they should have, and it was taking longer to get to them than was expected. So to pass the time, he looked at them through his binoculars to try and get a better idea of what he was looking at, and possibly cross reference it to one of the magical species of birds, or possibly a gathering of dragons.

Through his binoculars he could just make out some details, but the sunset obscured most of the fine detail.

They were pot-bellied, with a thin visible head that glinted in the distance. Their wings were huge, and he believed them to not be feathered. As they flew in slow circles, he began to notice their behavioral patterns. Not once did he ever see one of them land. They also seemed to have some kind of purpose to their circling: As they got closer, it seemed more and more like they were taking turns making long glides in the convoy’s direction before circling back into the flock.

Eventually, though, a cloud moved between him and the “birds,” and Chert frowned at it. This was important research and shouldn’t be interrupted by the presence of unnatural, un-pony -controlled clouds. He was about to put his binoculars and notebook away when he saw something remarkable.

The “birds,” whatever they were, had began to skim the cloud, and in doing so, had come a lot closer. Hastily he brought his binoculars to bear and just could barely make out what they looked like.

They had leathery wings with extremely thick joints connecting them to the shoulder. It was hard to make out details at this distance, but it looked like they had brightly colored scales of some kind that didn’t sit flush with their bodies, instead they seemed to bristle out. The scales seemed to be red-tipped, with a bluish sheen to them, almost metallic. They had a thin head that Chert thought was impossible, it shouldn’t have been able to hold a brain in there, because he believed he could see the eyes from all the way back here - he thought he was seeing either eyes, or a very strange third or fourth mouth.

What really stuck out about them, though, was that they were skimming the clouds with their gaping mouths, or possibly gills of some sort, as they seemed to have two holes on either side of their neck, eating away at the cloud in some unknown fashion. Within minutes, the cloud was entirely gone and they seemed to be flying a bit heavier in the air than before.

Turning to look about in the sky, he noted that there were plenty of other clouds that they seemed to be ignoring, and it was only this one that they took offense to.

“So what have you learned so far?” Spitfire demanded of Chert, who seemed to be the only pony both lazing around and getting work done at the same time.

“They aren’t birds. They could be dragons, however, they lack features we normally associate with dragons, like only having one mouth. They have scales, like dragons, but they seem to flock, like birds.” Chert paused, unsure before continuing. “Oh yeah. And they’re watching us. And they seem to be able to eat clouds?”

“Yeah, how do you know about that last part?”

“Well, for the last hour they’ve been taking turns making long glides in our direction, and as soon as a cloud got in their way, they attacked it. They don’t seem to take offense at any of the other clouds in the area.”

“So, do they look dangerous?”

“I don’t think so, however their level of coordination suggests that they’re watching us for something else, some specific reason.”

“Well, that's not a comforting thought.” Spitfire rubbed her chin while squinting into the distance at the things. “Anything else you can tell us about them?”

“From this distance? No.”

“Keep an eye out anyway. If they start looking aggressive, start making a lot of noise.”

Everypony in the entire convoy tensed up when they heard a rumbling off in the distance. There was alert in the air as muskets were raised by what looked like tired soldiers. Even Firelock had raised his own jezail. The air was tense; it sounded like some rumbling beast was approaching them directly.

Then Firelock laughed and everybody nearby turned to glare at him.

“That's a gryphon smuggling airboat. I never would have thought to use row boats to catch them.”

Sure enough, minutes later, two gryphons on a flat-bottomed fan-backed boat appeared from the undergrowth, to meet a blockade of angry ponies with guns. Instantly, they shut off the boat and raised their claws in the air before immediately trying to fast talk.

“We have rights!” said one.

“None of you have a warrant for our arrest! This is clearly an illegal holdup, and bandit activity.” said the other, better-spoken one.

Firelock didn’t even have to look at them to know who they were. One was a puffed up (literally) little punk who looked like a pigeon. He would probably fail most middle school tests you could throw at him, but Tippler could out-fly, out-hide, and out-shoot three quarters of the ponies under Firelock’s command.

The other was basically a giant runt: What he lacked in height he made up for with bulk. What he lacked in looks, he made up for with not only being mechanically minded, but legally minded, which tended to surprise his prosecutors when they attempted anything. Canarien or Canar looked like a brick, but he could talk lawyers around like a cart salesman convincing you to take a bad loan. By the time they recovered their balance, he would already have them on the defensive.

Even as Canar was being fitted with a wingclip, he was already making legal arguments about how they were being treated.

“No need for that, Canar.” Firelock spoke up. “I know who you are, and I signed your arrest warrant myself. You’re criminals on Equestrian soil. Not only that: you got yourselves up against a military tribunal this time. Should have left that jewel thief back in Baltimare.”

And that was that.

Firelock could still remember the first time he put a wingclip on the meat smugglers years ago. It didn’t actually clip their wings, it merely messed with the primaries and forced them, if they could actually get in the air, to spiral around on one wing. He wasn’t quite sure how wingclips worked back then, so the way he had put them on, the two criminals crashed directly into one another.

They weren’t friends, not by a long shot, but he could understand their point of view. You couldn’t get meat from Equestria, too many animals were sapient, due to its closeness to the magical pole, which haphazardly dumped magic out on a huge scale. Ponies in Equestria didn’t eat meat, unless it was something like shrimp at a high class party. Both of these things led around to strict laws with unintentional effects.

One of these effects was that monstrous creatures, like cragodiles, became illegal to hunt for meat, despite actually being outright dangerous to ponies. Many creatures in wilder places, like the Everfree, and even the swamps down here in Baltimare. were similarly off limits. Combine that with strict meat license requirements, and that's how you get meat smugglers.

“You gotta tell them we didn’t know they were an artifact dealer, Lock.” Tippler said. “They said they were a jewel thief, and we didn’t get why that was a bad thing. If we woulda known about what they did with the amulet, we wouldn’t have touched ‘em.”

“I’m certain Canar will probably argue your sentence down, or something.” Firelock said unconcernedly.

“Yeah, but you know us. We try and keep our beaks clean for that stuff. It looked like the guy was paying a lot to run away from a bitland theft. Aiding and abetting a guy who stole maybe fifty bits worth of stuff couldn’t have gotten us more than a fine.”

“And you weren’t at all suspicious about the amount of money he was offering?”

“Well, no. We just figured he was some rich brat who didn’t know how little he was running away from. I mean, we didn’t see no massive sack of gems, so we just thought we’d take his money, get him on his way, and make sure not to tell him what he had to worry about. If we’d’ve known...”

Firelock knew the two gryphons well enough to know they weren’t lying. Not enough to prove anything in court, but they might well call him up as a character witness. He actually tended to agree with them about the meat laws in Equestria. Gryphons on occasion needed what they couldn’t get without a license, and that lead to more crime than was necessary. More crime, heavier sentences, more distressingly unhealthy gryphons he had to arrest.

“Yo, Locky, why we goin’ that way?” Canar spoke up.

“We don’t have time to row back and drop you off back in Baltimare, when we’re almost where we were going in the first place.”

Once again, military regulation shot them in the foot. Convoys couldn’t travel faster than their slowest component, so while there was a perfectly good airboat and plenty of fuel, nobody could use it, and it had to be a rowboat.

“There have been reports of creatures from out of the Fermi Object out that way. We’ve been sent to investigate.”

“Yeah, I mean, those bird things are different, but we had to stare down a monster larger than a cart, really angry lookin’ thing with lotsa scales, it just took down a cragodile. I don’t think we should be goin’ that way. Maybe you should take us back for the trial.” Canar never played poker, he had a courtroom face. He was using his courtroom face.

“Well, why don’t you tell us about this monster then.” Spitfire said from behind them.

Canar didn’t jump, he only jumped internally; Firelock did jump.

“I dunno, miss, it’s never a good idea to talk to officers without a lawyer.”

“Then why were you talking to Commander Firelock here?” Spitfire jabbed.

“I know him, and if we’re going where I think we’re going, I’d like to get out of there alive.”

“So what, with all these armed and trained ponies. What could possibly worry you in this company?”

“Those things have become a lot more active lately. They aren’t friendly, and they don’t like gunfire.” It took a lot to make Canar crack, but he looked close to letting something slip past his guard.

“I don’t see the problem here,” Spitfire said, taking up the unspoken challenge. “We’ve got plenty of guns, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“I know, but I mean, guns only piss ‘em off. Bullets just bounce off like they’re tennis balls.”

“And you haven’t told me about them before...?” Firelock inquired.

“They’re just swamp creatures. They look like cragodiles, hydras, and ‘dose crab spider things. We thought you’d know about them.”

“Spitfire, can I talk to you for a moment?” Firelock asked.

They hopped off onto another boat, away from the two convicts.

“All right. So, the scientists have some sort of plan if the creatures aren’t hostile. What's our plan, in case they are?”

“That’s why you’re here. I'm here in command, but this is still technically a naval action. Didn't you read your job description?”

“Oh, I thought I was in more of a general advisory role here. That explains a bit.” With that, Firelock walked off, to try and save a bit of face from his sulking earlier, which was the reason he didn't fully read anything given to him when all this started.

Hopefully, she thinks I’m going off to come up with a plan. Firelock thought to himself, with a hint of shame.