It starts as a stillness lingering in the stagnant air, bringing a sudden and unexpected calm to the swaying forest of sensor spines stretching towards the scalded heavens. The sudden quiet is detected only as a few belated chimes on a monochromatic green screen. A short blurt of binaric machine cant heralds the reports conclusion, and in moments, the simple readout is sent through the nascent noosphere to other outposts across the Grande Basin range.

All that time, Bakti Huynh's attention remains fixed on the blinking red and green lights pulsing just outside the glasteel window. The young adept scratches a long nail across the back of his neck where the swollen skin around the new augmetics socket. With another languid sigh, he reclines on the uncomfortable latticed seat and winces. With a wiggle, he shifts from side to side to get comfortable for the remainder of his ten hour watch over Refinery 9's landing port.

There wasn't much else to look at past the scratched pane, and nothing inside that could hold his attention for long. What little there was to be seen from Refinery 9's southern control tower wasn't anything that Bakti hadn't seen before.

The assortment of blinking lights delineated the octagonal raised landing platforms just outside the window, drawing any attention away from the bulkheads of the refinery's modest perimeter walls. Manatax's wind blasted wasteland lay beyond in a never ending expanse of twisting crimson dunes stretching off towards an ashen horizon.

Well, aside from the craggy inselburg of Geminos Rubrim that lay eight kilometres due south. Nestled among the dunes, Bakti couldn't be entirely sure why the early explorers called the duo of dull grey basalt buttes jutting out of the desert 'the Red Twins'. It was probably some crude joke, knowing the caliber of the locals outside the Martian priesthood's enclave.

Bakti barely takes notice of a pneumatic hiss and rhythmic clomp from the doorway behind him. He merely waves his electoo over the command console, accessing the newest updates through the noosphere.

The result wasn't much, a small exploratory group would be headed out at twenty-one thirty Terran Standard time, which translated to tomorrow morning at five forty seven, Mantax sidereal. Thirteen minutes before the end of his watch, and too far away to be excited about.

Only then did he notice the weather warning that had silently arrived in his notification panel: a cyclogenic event. Category two, dangerous winds and electromagnetic cascades expected for a period of eighty five standard hours. Vulturax and exploratory teams ware being recalled.

“Every time, every single Omnissiah divined time!" Bakti launches into his thoughts mid stream with a thin and reedy drawl. “Metal and mettle preserve us.” the young mechanicum adept sighs resignedly. He used the excuse of being in the presence of another to use his flesh-voice. How long would it be until that too was replaced? It was perhaps a little concerning to the youth, and more so than the steady buzz and thumping now just a few meters to his right, descending into the observation chamber of the control tower.

The neophyte datasmith quickly taps a few runic keys on the arm of his seat, ignoring the shuffling form of Lambda-421 as it descends the steps into Bakti's inglorious sanctum. A series of echoing crackles and pops rasps from the grainy loudspeaker before giving way to a hiss and a distant tinny voice.

“Go for Tacheen.”

“Well, you were right Hatacheen. I don't know how, but you were right. We've got an electrostorm on the way. Decent sized one, too.” Bakti sighs with a faint wheeze, rubbing his remaining unaugmented eye as he awaits the inevitable.

“Toldja so.” The voice on the other end chortles, “these ol' bones don't lie. Hey, Bakti, got a bit of a gecko in your throat or something?”

“Procedure.”

“Aaaah, so they put a tube down your throat. Alright. So no drink after work?” Tacheen replies from wherever in the refinery he was today. The faint crackling noise of rhythmic distortion was a bit of a clue, he was probably put in the filtration rooms next to the regulator pumps.

“I keep my word, Tacheen. But I'm on station until tomorrow.”

“Alright, maybe next time.” the tinny voice said, “Don't go ogling Lambda, now.”

Bakti's gaze twists away from the deadened stare out the window, and to the mechanical mass shuffling along in front of him. It only just connects that the servitor was, once upon a time, female. The remnants of cloth pants and a neat stripe down the side depicts the refinery's practical logo and designation, but beyond only the most basic shape, Lambda was nearly unrecognizable as a human, let alone a woman. The waxy and dead, red-eyed augmetic stare coupled with the trailing tangles of mechadendrites jutting from her scalp and trailing down her spine to her tail bone just sounded like something out of Martian myth.

The servitor slowly turns its head, its binaric voice crackling in its synthetic drone from behind the bronze grill that replaced most of her face from lower soft pallet down.

Her.

Sighing heavily, Bakti drags his nails across his shaven head and right back to the implant that had been sunk into his skull. “Omnissiah damn you, Tacheen.”

The vox caster winds down again as the indicator lumins fade to a steady green. 'Hatacheen' focuses on the decipher key, waiting for the series of five LED's to illuminate in sequence before even drawing breath on the aged turquoise nuncio vox. All around him the steady whir of pneumatic oxygen exchangers continues their rhythmic hissing cadence. High atop Tower 19's scaffolded communications spire, more than half a kilometre above the ground, the perch held a commanding view of the countryside. From the north western blackstone mountain range, to the southern wastes and the Red Twins, nothing escaped notice. Not even the distant dust clouds heralding the approach of another column of nomadic scavengers.

Manatax's star beats down hot and uncomfortable, sizzling through the thin atmosphere and turning the ashen skies a noxious yellow. But the station's meteorological instruments had to be right: there were more disturbances now. He had sensed it, smelled it in the stagnant air. A storm was brewing.

Vicious gales and sandstorms were common along the barren frontier, but they always posed a problem due to the dense ferromagnetic sands kicked up in abundance. They would periodically shut down most of the EM spectrum and blot out both communications and sensor sweeps. Unless a command ship were right above them in geo-stationary orbit, no one would hear them if something went wrong.

And something was definitely 'wrong'.

Hatacheen pulls his grey cloak tighter around the black undermesh bodyglove, giving the immensely tall figure a sinister cloaked appearance as he waits for the equipment ciphers to complete their decryption.

Four green.

Not enough.

There was always the chance that they could be intercepted if it wasn't completely within the margins. Exposure for expediency wasn't acceptable. The vox-set blathers senselessly, cycling through a few cipher shrouds as it tries to connect. The man's enormous hand hovers over a datathief's display slate. The pertinent information stolen from the system's sensor net had already been written in his mind, but he had to be prepared if things changed. With a quiet blip, the final indicator light turns green, and 'Hatacheen' presses the receiver toggle.

After an unenthusiastic blip, a message and data burst appears. Aside from parsing through logistics and tender movements for a half dozen minor expeditionary fleets in the surrounding system, only a single message was of note.

'Prince fleet split. Component α returning to Segmentum Solar along Ryza warp corridor P-502. Component β continues into Segmentum Ultima by tertiary conduit zone L-400. Disposition unknown. Cause unknown. Destination unknown. Advise heightened monitoring to all assets along L-4 routes.'

'Hatacheen' depresses the send toggle.

The laboratory was in something of a state, not that many would have been able to tell by the before and after pictures. Where once empty wooden crates stood in abandoned corners of the room as storage space for the less-than-tidy occupants, now the same wooden crates had been dragged over and emptied to make room for the more sensitive equipment.

'The Machine' as it had been so lazily named, in Moondancer's opinion, held both amazement and faint disappointment. All of its potential had been wrapped up into a somewhat lopsided ball. A ball then fastened with duct tape and stuck in the corner. Its spinning baubles and tangles of garishly hued conduit wires could have been mistaken for the mane of some hideous mecha-monster if one was to wander across it in the dead of night. An image not the least helped by the twin black reels at roughly 'head' height and a single illuminated acoustics adjustment matrix just beneath that.

Moondancer sighs, resting on her squished space atop a water-stained and crumb infested blue and white striped couch at the far end of the room. Scratchy dried straw sticks from the gaps in a threadbare back cushion to prick her haunch, and her precious space is taken up by about the only other truly friendly face in the room-

Sluuuuuuuuuuurp.

Sunset smiles obliviously from a hooflength away, a grape juice box in her magical grasp. She seemed only too happy to noisily suck the dregs from the bottom despite the series of pointed glares directed at her.

'I'mma smack a filly if she doesn't cut that out.'

Moondancer hardens her momentary glare, then glances back up to the relentless pacing coming from the far side of the room. Starlight treads the top of the split level floor, the glorified dias up the staircase upon which the monolithic mass of a machine lay at rest. The Unicorn's sharp glare at the machine is interspersed with glances their way.

'Well I'm not budging.' Moondancer snorts to herself, though it comes out as a petulant wrinkled muzzle, and a habitual nudge pushing her glasses further up her snout. Meanwhile, Sunset stares straight at the machine with a curious grin and an obnoxious sucking rasp through the straw.

The noisy sound draws an irritated sigh from the pony next to her, the third and last on the cramped couch.

“Is that really necessary?” Trixie hisses under her breath, narrowing her eyes after having taken them off her slightly torn cloak hem. The result of an accident of some pony treading on it while occupied with a box of audio tape reels.

In lieu of a reply, Sunset stifles a grin and more quietly sucks the little remaining liquid hiding in the corners. It wasn't hard to catch the flagrant smirk and little glance to a now frowning Trixie. The smile by the end said 'done'.

Trixie's irritated glare shifts its focus to Moondancer. Apparently, at some point in the last few moments, a satisfied smirk had split her muzzle unbidden.

Refocusing her attention on the pacing Starlight and the back of the chunky and far too chatty pink Earth mare, Moondancer stares upwards. With the quiet murmurs and occasional stops to peer over a slightly swaying Clarion Call, it bring a single thought to the Unicorn's lips.

“If I didn't know better, I'd swear that the Princess of Friendship's student up there was originally Celestia's emergency back up Twilight. Y'know, in case she ever misplaced her at a gala or lost her behind the couch cushions.”

Sunset snorts, quickly clamping a hoof to her nose with a hacking sound of pain melding into her laugh.

“That is entirely unfair!” Trixie scoffs, now fully turned from her cloak as she rises to all fours. “My Starlight is nothing like Twilight Sparkle.” the latter's name nearly spat out.

“Uh-huh.” Moondancer says, then squints through her glasses. “Sure...”

Trixie huffs loudly and leaps off the couch before trotting haughtily across the room and up the stairs to the upper platform. Sunset clears her throat with a cough and blinks away the last of the tears. “Was that just to get more couch space?” She wiggles over, taking some of the vacated seat.

“Happy coincidence.” Moondancer replies, also shifting her weight to escape the discomfort of the prickly straw.

“Starlight, just what are we waiting for?” Trixie calls from the foot of the steps and quickly hops up them with a few very obvious stamps of irritation to punctuate her point.

“Clarion Call said that the messages go out every day at this time.” Starlight glances over at the Earth mare, who flashes a somewhat unsure grin in reply.

“It's not always exactly the same time, but pretty close. It's just a little later than usual today.” She goes on, biting her lip and hunching over to bury her muzzle in the illuminated control panel, silhouetting her head in an nefarious green halo. “But It can't be too late, after all, we haven't eaten yet.”

“Trixie distinctly saw you scoffing down a family-sized bag of Chancellors Choice ketchup chips half an hour ago! If it weren't so awful, Trixie would have demanded her sha- oh for Celestia's sake, it's still on your muzzle!”

Clare freezes at the accusation, and less than covertly scrubs a forehoof across her face. “I was not 'scoffing'. eliminating the organic detritus so that we could, um, assess what other more important objects deserved our focus of attention during the packing procedure.”

Salvation comes like a summoned Siren, a crash of pots and pans and the clatter of a lid rolling around in its dramatic attempt to escape the downstairs kitchen. “Cosine Wave!” Sine's voice booms from the attached household down the rickety hall attaching the annex to living quarters.

“I'm tho tho thorry! I'll clean it up!”

With a warble and hiss, the machine spits out a rasping blurt of wheezing air as it shudders and shakes. As the myriad of gadgets whir to life like some indoor wind chime, the wheezing machine's reels click and begin to turn. Clarion's eyes widen as a smile creases her muzzle.

“Sine, Cosine, get your flanks up here!” The Earth mare takes a shaky breath and looks straight at Starlight with an undaunted grin of anticipation.

The lilac mare grins and quickly concentrates just long enough for a flash of sapphire magic to surround the control panel and the archaic ear-like speakers. “There,” Starlight takes a breath and waits in anticipation. “That should work.”

Moondancer perks her ears up. They'd been waiting for this moment, taken their break, and got everything else prepared in preparation for magically disassembling and move The Machine to the awaiting train. It had been Clarion Call's pleading that she couldn't wait another day that got them to wait as long as they had.

But the more she listens, the more the sense of eagerness drains away. At first the popping clicks and strange little trills of the machine descend into a rhythmic thrum broken by a static pop. A strange light fills the room, crackling as if interacting with the spell cast on the device.

A sudden unequine screech breaks the silence, sending shivers straight up Moondancer's spine before the grainy sound of a background rhythm greets her ears, it was dead air from somewhere else. And then the monstrous machine seems to speak. Its tone bleeds through as if speaking under water at first, Clarion Call adjusts a few dials, and the deep voice clears with a static pop.

'Eye One, this is Dusk Prime. Received. Proceeding under high-readiness, assumption of Prince. Course aligned with current locale, full surveillance of inter-system traffic underway. Correction submission: ETAIO fourteen, oh-two, seventeen. Step up site surveillance confirmed. Ultima response to Prince not received. Request additional legion assets. Request additional extraction assets. Request full summery analysis of transit contact designate Sierra-two-one along L-four route. Request confirmation of orders under Kingpin scenario. Request confirmation of orders under Seismic scenario. HD, out.'

The voice was deep, rasping, but intelligible. As the machine's unequine tones descended into silence and the spools of tape wind down, an uncomfortable silence cloaks the ponies that heard it.

“I TOLD you it was bucking real!” Clare's whooping laugh breaks the lull, a single exhilarated response that sounds out as Moondancer's fur continues to prickle at the alien voice from the unknown.

The mare was right.

It was real.

Candlelight spills from under the crack of the study, its sole occupant poring over a mountain of documents as day transitioned to night. Yet he remained planted in his high backed chair with the curtains drawn. While the arcane wards of silence at his doors and windows shine with a faint blue haze, the noiseless flicker of a fire spell emanates from the stone hearth. Even the tick of the ancient grandfather clock in the corner had been stopped to allow for uninterrupted thought. Aside from the scratching of a quill on parchment, or the occasional flap of an opening file folder, the room was drowned in an oppressive silence.

It was exactly what the lone Unicorn wanted.

Despite the elaborate filigree on bookshelves and end tables adorning every part of the lavishly furnished abode, it was still just a work space. The more distractions, the more time it would take to review the mountain of schematics, allocations, requisitions, and correspondence which would make this project come to fruition.

The pale Unicorn stallion shifts aside another plain manila file with a sigh and perhaps a little too much force. A few black and white photos spill out as the folder tips off the cramped desk and falls to the floor. Neighsay grunts in irritation and after massaging his muzzle with both forehooves, he finally stands. The stallion's back cracks as he moves, both hind legs shot through with pins and needles.

Circling around the wide oaken desk, Neighsay picks up the folder's contents spread over the red Abyssinian carpet. With a sigh, he shuffles it back into the mass of paperwork piled high on the edge of his workspace before allowing himself a respite. A glance up at the shadow shrouded clock in the corner revealed it was just past two in the morning.

Plodding across the carpet and kneading his frogs into the plush surface, the stallion looks up at an easel holding a large schematic board. It lasts for less than a second before he affixing his attention to something far more compelling. Crossing the carpeted room to his turn of the era credenza, he wordlessly opens the elaborately embossed and latticed glasswork case. Past the pony marquetry and gilded floral veneer, lies a row of simple brown bottles in a variety of shapes and sizes.

He selects one, and swiftly retrieves a simple glass tumbler from another shelf before pouring a measure of fragrant golden liquor. The Unicorn inhales the floral scent of heather, honey, and alcohol vapors before downing the glass in a single gulp. With a loud sigh of contentment, Neighsay refills the glass and turns to regard the easel mounted illustration depicting the Ponyville School of Friendship.

He snorts reflexively, barely holding back a sneer as the glass raises to his lips. “Foolish mare.” he mutters and breathes out again before allowing himself a more controlled sip.

Savouring the fiery warmth of the herbal liqueur as it slid down his throat, the stallion takes in the details again. Red ink depicts where halls and structural alterations were made to accommodate the San Palamino Acoustics team. More over, another chamber far deeper down was illuminated in red, depicting sunken arcane columns and lodestone piers with dozens of notations scribbled in the corners. Alterations he'd made himself. The Lumin Mirror's inner chambers were arcane shielded in one of Princess Twilight's magic experimentation labs, reinforced by his own devising, and paid for by the Crown. But the whole complex, for it would soon become nothing less, would be under the Equestrian Education Association.

Even if they didn't know it yet.

“Isn't it strange,” the stallion says to the empty room, collecting his thoughts and savoring the taste of honeyed liquor on his tongue. “Princess Sparkle's school would have been a serious threat to Equestria. Now, the same building could be the foundation of an institution to safeguard pony kind for a hundred generations.”

It was too important to let something like this go undiscovered. If Equestrians didn't, who would snatch up the opportunity? Celestia may have grown to loath the old ways; but were not the Caprine, the Swine, the Bovines all protected under Equestria? They were not ponies, but none held a miserable lot in life. Meanwhile, the rise and fall of Gryphons, the sickly emergence of Changelings, the anarchistic rabble rousing of Minotaurs, and ever present threat of Yaks all showed the need for a stabilizing force in Equestria. And force had been exactly what Celestia had shown increasingly uncomfortable in utilizing.

Celestia had withdrawn her protection in favor of appearing a benevolent ruler. The ancient paintings of shimmering hosts as a bulwark against anarchy had been stripped from galleries, and now reside in the vaults of private collections. The 'Bad Old Days' of toppling tyrants and dethroning warmongering spirits had passed into legend. There was no more iron shod hoof to maintain order in the lands of the Sun.

Instead, it had been decided that the fate of Equestria would be rest in the hooves of six young, flawed, fallible, and frustratingly obtuse fillies.

“No thought for their safety, let alone Equestria.” he sighs, letting the borderline treasonous thoughts dissolve with a sigh. “How long before the walls of Canterlot come toppling down? Just being able to say 'I told you so' to a Princess is a hollow victory when the world around you burns.”

Why did ponies need to bleed and die in the name of 'friendship' with those who couldn't understand it? Why not let the shield absorb the impact? “I will leave them something to keep ponykind safe. I will leave them something better than 'hope'.” He didn't trust the archaic princess of the Night knew how the world presently worked. For that, he was thankful. Luna was a pony who understood the need for force, and the need for displays.

Placing the tumbler on the shelf next to the bottle of spirits, the Unicorn stallion crosses back to the files and flips the top one open again. He barely glances over the photographs of a cocky turquoise Pegasus mare with a golden windswept male, grinning broadly in her recruit uniform. “If we're to make a proper display, we'll need a properly impressive delegation.”

Dragging out a quill, ink, and envelope, he returns to his writing.

Author's Note

Well, the first of 2 bridge chapters, concerning just some passing of time.

Aaaaand yeah, I kinda figure Equestrian hard liquor is close to Disaronno or Drambuie, more or less for the record.