After-Action Report (SF 221)
Queen’s Veiled Fang, Region 13 (Covert Operations)
Mission Code Name: OASIS BRUSH
Location Code Name: LUCKY PLUMAGE
Agent: Myrmarachne
In accordance with the Queen’s Glorious Plan to Depose the Usurper Thorax (curses upon his name), Agent Myrmarachne was assigned to around-the-clock surveillance of C/N BONNET and family members in C/N LUCKY PLUMAGE. Mission briefing indicated targets would travel via hot air balloon. Three weeks pre-arrival, agent integrated to local environs and appraised means of access to municipal airfield.
Let me drop the formalities for a while. Sneaking into the Las Pegasus Airfield didn’t go the way I expected, but I think it’s above my paygrade to make sense of it. Why don’t I just lay out what happened for you geniuses at Hive-in-Exile Command to analyze?
Like any good Veiled Fang agent, I’ve got a number of cover identities, but my go-to is “Rivet.” His Manehattan taxi license says he’s an earth pony, but his Cloudsdale weather certificate lists him as a pegasus. For good measure, he’s a unicorn on his passport. Rivet usually has to wear some kind of hat and vest for his job, so I can walk in one door as a pegasus and walk out another as a unicorn, with no one the wiser.
For this mission, I’d been assigned to tail one of Celestia’s (curses also upon her name) pets on a trip to Las Pegasus with a party of old nags. It sounded like a mind-numbing errand, but as the saying goes, the Queen’s great leap is ten thousand tiny steps.
I get to work planning my infiltration. On most observation missions, I’d just slap on some wings and watch from the clouds, but for this mission, around-the-clock surveillance means a rendezvous at the Las Pegasus Airfield. That airspace is tightly controlled, so I had to get clearance to be nearby. Fortunately for me, tourist season is heating up, which means the Airfield has a half-page of “Help Wanted” ads in the local newspapers. Baggage valets, maintenance workers, and balloon marshals would all have gotten me on the Airfield grounds, but my multifaceted eye catches on the one posting for a cloudbuster at the Weather Service.
Airborne jobs have built-in advantages for this kind of mission, but I may have also let personal feelings affect me. The taxi license and passport are forgeries, but I apprenticed at a snow factory for years to earn my Cloudsdale weather certification. My old boss there, Billowing Blizzard, was a real stickler for details, but I loved that he knew exactly what he wanted. I still keep in touch with him, too. He’s not a friend, obviously, but I am proud of that situation.
Anyway, the ad said to go directly to the recruitment office. I put together my application, don my hard hat, jacket, and saddlebags, and fly over to the Airfield’s office complex.
This place screams “designed by and for bureaucrats,” from its sleet gray exterior defaced by block letter signage to the shabby white interior caught in the glare of buzzing ceiling lamps. There’s a burly earth pony sitting at the front desk, but he waves me through the entrance turnstile with a group of ponies who seem to know what they’re doing. Unsure of where to go, I look around and see maps hanging by each stairwell. I inspect one, but find out they don’t have a directory. Each map is just an outline of the building with ranges of numbers stuck in each corridor.
I don’t have a number for the recruitment office.
My only choice is to ask around. The first pony I see gives me directions to head up a few flights of stairs. I do, but I get lost and ask another pony. He says I’m all mixed up, that I need to go to the basement. I can’t find a stairwell that goes all the way to the basement, so I ask a third pony.
“Recruitment office? We don’t have one of those,” she says. “Canterlot sends us all our recruits.”
Fighting the urge to spit venom, I backtrack to the front desk, where the burly earth pony is still keeping guard.
When I’m a few paces away from him, he turns around and locks eyes with me, putting my cilia on end. I freeze, about to pass out from trying so hard to look casual. A shoddy smile takes over my mouth. He rises up from his stool and says to me in a voice so deep I think we’re about to have an earthquake, “Can I help you, sir?”
“Me?” I look around, but somehow I’m the only creature in the foyer right then. “Oh, I’m just looking for the recruitment office.”
The stallion flicks his ears. His eyes squint. He gestures for me to approach, and my legs shake as I get close enough to see the veins in his neck pulse. I start to wonder if there’s any truth to the rumors that earth ponies have a sixth sense for picking out our kind. Bile seeps up my throat. Tangy venom leaks into my mouth.
I’m seconds from a bite and bolt when he says, “Which one?”
“What?”
Then he starts to sing.
It turns out every department at the Airfield has its own recruitment office, each of which he shows to me in a lively horn and piano number. The lyrics weren’t too memorable, other than the chorus “From the Department of Depths to the Bureau of Burros / Meet the Premier of Prisms and the Chairmare of Churros.” I stop him once we reach the Weather Service wing, which hides behind a stainless steel door with bright golden signage reading “Las Pegasus Weather Service.” After he leaves, I push open the door and enter a different world.
My fake hooves click against real hardwood floors polished to such a sheen I can see Rivet’s bewilderment when I look down. Portraits of pegasi, earth ponies, and unicorns gaze at me from either side as I continue down the hallway. Spotless doors slide past me as I try to find the Weather Service’s recruitment office…
“Excuse me, are you the pony looking for the recruitment office?”
Apparently, it found me. I turn to an open door to my side that frames an orange pegasus leaving her desk.
“Yep! Name’s Rivet.”
“Ginger Snap.” We shake hooves, and she leads me into her office. It’s got some elegant furnishings, verging on ostentatious. A framed Wonderbolts poster hangs on the back wall, and underneath it is a picture of a younger Ginger in uniform. I suddenly recall that the Wonderbolts, for all their glitz, are one of Equestria’s most elite military units.
“Spring Fog said she saw a new pegasus asking about the recruitment offices earlier,” she says after we sit. “It’s a good thing you found your way here before another department poached you. There can be considerable competition for promising new hires during tourist season.”
“Sounds intense.”
“Exceedingly.” She chuckles, but then gives me a cool look. “Did you bring your application package?”
I show her Rivet the pegasus’s papers, but before I even get a word out, she points to an entry on the résumé.
“You worked for Billowing Blizzard?”
Is that good or bad? Her expression is too stony to read. I play it safe with a nod.
“Apparently you survived!” She laughs. “He used to work here. Fantastic weather pony, although he could be persnickety about his clouds. He claimed his motto was ‘measure twice, cut once, and measure again to be sure.’”
“‘And then redo it, in case it comes out better the second time,’” I add.
“He hasn’t changed a bit, then!”
I smile and shrug. “I liked him. It’s good to have someone strong in charge.”
Her head bobs as she shuffles my papers together. “The Weather Service hires all three races, but this is for a cloudbusting position. You’re qualified to fly, correct?”
“Sure am!” Saddlebags are covering my wings, so I lift them to show her.
“Excellent. If you’re good enough for Billowing, then you’re good enough for me. When can you start?”
It’s music to my ears. Another easy mission for the glory of the Queen. “Next week.”
“Really?” She quirks an eyebrow. “You can relocate that soon?”
For a second, I can’t really parse what she said. “Well, I live about ten minutes from here—”
“And as I thought the classified listing stated, this is for a cloudbusting position in the Cloudy Mountains post.” When I don’t react, she continues with, “You see, the Weather Service provides weather control for all of Las Pegasus, not just the Airfield. To ensure no clouds mar the sky during tourist season, our cloudbusting posts have been set up miles away from the city.”
Miles away. I’d have a better view of the Airfield from my apartment.
“I’m sorry,” I say, “but I don’t want to move.”
The interview is over. I pack my application up into my saddlebags and leave Ginger’s office. The Weather Service job was just one posting, and I’ve got two weeks to find another, so I don’t feel like a failure yet. I tell myself I’ll do the changeling thing and adapt to the opportunities available when a unicorn wearing a bright orange jacket and hard hat walks up to me and grabs me by the shoulder.
“Hey! Are you the guy looking for a job?” he barks. “We’re looking for balloon marshals, pal. Easy job, you just need to swing around light cones and walk backwards. Unicorns only, though.”
Sometimes fortune smiles. Sometimes it bares its fangs. A ground job isn’t ideal, but it’ll work. The problem is, the résumé in my saddlebags lists Rivet as a pegasus. “Uh, can I mail you my résumé?”
“Don’t bother, I don’t want to read it. All you need is a horn.” He eyes my hard hat. “You got a horn, buddy?”
The saddlebags hide my wings from him, so all I do is grow a horn under the hat. Then, with the kind of ease a unicorn who just loves showing off his horn would have, I tip the rim up. “Yes, sir.”
“Great! You’re…” He frowns. “Ginger Snap.”
“Ray of Light,” she says from behind me in a frosty voice.
I drop my hat.
Her hooves click against the polished floor like the tightening of a cinch. “It would seem you’ve backwards-walked quite far afield today, Ray.”
Ray winces, but then beams a smug grin over my shoulder. “Nope, I think I ended up right where I wanted. Just got myself a new hire, this… What’s your name, guy?”
“Rivet,” I mutter.
“Ribbit! Just one look and I knew he’d be the perfect balloon marshal.”
My back’s still to her, but her smirk comes through clear in her voice. “I regret to inform you that you’ve just hired a pegasus for your unicorn-only job.”
I stay calm. Times like this are when cool confidence is vital. If I walk away and don’t take off my hat or saddlebags—
“Pegasus?” Ray cackles. “Does this look like a pegasus to you?”
Before I can react, he wraps a foreleg around my shoulder and spins me around. I must be lighter than he expects (I never did like faking the bulk Rivet would have), because I twirl until I stumble over my hooves. By the time I regain control, my hat is seesawing on the floor next to my saddlebags.
My horn and my wings are out for all of these ponies to see.
“No,” Ginger says as she examines my forehead, “he does not.”
“Huh,” Ray says, his eyes locked on my sides.
Pony jail is probably pretty nice, I think as I wait for them to call the guards on this idiot changeling spy, but they might extradite me to the usurper’s hive. I start to shiver.
Then Ginger says, “An alicorn hire would be quite the coup.”
“Hang on a sec…” Ray says.
“Rivet, disregard everything I said about cloudbusting. Would you care to work as a climate logistics analyst? You could start at an ES-11 paygrade.”
My mouth won’t function.
“Let’s slow down here,” Ray says, but Ginger isn’t waiting.
“ES-12! And your office would overlook the atrium.” She waves a disgusted hoof at Ray. “Believe me, you don’t want to stare at the grime-ridden Airfield all day.”
Anything beats a dungeon cell, I figure. I’m ready to say yes, and then shapeshift into a frog before they wise up.
“I said hold on, for crying out loud!” Ray’s outburst finally catches her attention. “Ginger, how many alicorns do you know of?”
Ginger blinks. “Five. Their Majesties Celestia, Luna, Cadance, Twilight Sparkle, and Flurry Heart.”
“Uh-huh. And what do they all have in common?”
“They’re princesses,” Ginger says, “four of whom rule over unique domains.”
Oh, good, I’m mocking royalty with accidentally becoming an alicorn. At least treason would keep me in pony jail. Admittedly, for life.
“Right.” Ray nods. “So that would mean Rivet is—”
There are legends of soldiers endowed by the Queen with indomitable strength or unquenchable bravery, but my heroes have always been the changelings who used their wits to overcome the odds in even the worst situations. As a fresh hatchling, I’d imagine myself filling their chitin, sneaking behind enemy lines without hope of rescue to strike a fatal blow against the Hive’s enemies. My fantasies culminated in one moment of crisis when the fate of the Hive would depend on me choosing the perfect lie. This moment had, at last, become reality.
So of course what spills out of my mouth is the first dumb thing to pop into my head.
“I am Rivet,” I say, “the alicorn princess of making sure hot air balloons land…goodly.”
Silence engulfs us, much like the walls of a jail cell will soon engulf me.
“Well,” Ray says, “you know what that means.”
“Yeah.” I hang my head.
Ginger sighs.
“This guy’s mine!” Ray starts to tackle me, and my joints buckle submissively, but he stops once his foreleg is around me. I realize I’m receiving a “hug.”
“So he is,” Ginger says somberly.
Ray magically picks up my saddlebags and hardhat. My mouth is still gaping when he rests them on me and tugs me towards the door.
“C’mon, Princess Rivet, let’s get you started on your royal duty.”
As we reach the door, Ginger calls out, “If you ever desire a change in career, Your Highness, that atrium office is waiting for you.”
The Weather Service door swings shut, but her voice booms through.
“ES-12! And a signing bonus!”
So, yeah, I got onto the Airfield by the time the targets landed. Turned out C/N BONNET didn’t even show up; it was C/N CHROMA with the grannies. They all went on a roller coaster. It looked fun.
Hive-in-Exile Ministry of Finance should expect an expense voucher in the next few weeks. Princess Rivet had to get fitted for a crown and scepter, and they are not cheap.
I’ll be sure to attach the receipt this time.
Author's Note
Hive-in-Exile Ministry of Protocol Approved Code Names for the “Mane 6”:
Applejack: BONNET
Rainbow: CHROMA
Rarity: STITCH
Twilight: HOTBRO
Pinkie: COOKIE
Fluttershy: SOFTLY
Starlight: AND THIS FOOL
