Twilight Sparkle and the Stupid Original Pony

When Bob and Taciana reached the surface they found the world changed.

Physical damage, it was soon obvious, was minor. One building had been demolished, a few civilians had been killed by some of the more ruthless seekers during the search. But almost nobody knew what the frantic search had been about.

There were rumors of more extravagant death, but mostly limited to the upper echelons of the government and the military. At street level, the city was not full of destruction, but rather rebirth. Instead of madness and violence, the city, the whole world, was celebrating freedom.

At first they joined the excitement; indeed, there was good cause to rejoice. The oligarch government was gone, their military enforcement arm had imploded and scattered.

It was obvious that nobody knew what would happen next but Bob and Taciana knew that they had work to do.

“Okay, we should start looking for that woman Bear told us to find.”

—

A Surface Attack Squad vehicle sped across the rough roads of the Outside. An air cushion smoothed the more egregious of the topological insults, but that just allowed the pilot to pour on more speed.

Without warning intractable forest on either side gave way to a primitive village; if it had a name the military navcomp didn’t bother to report it.

After a high performance braking maneuver, the small craft disgorged its crew before a building denoted by a rough red cross painted over the door.

Before the squad could assay entrance, a single man emerged from the structure, hands over his head. From every doorway and window villagers peered in sullen helplessness.

“I’ll come peacefully. Don’t hurt my family or patients.”

As his squadmates covered him, one soldier approached the doctor.

Removing his helmet, he saluted.

“Squad Seven-Charlie-Hotel reporting, Dr. Johnson, sir! Our voluntary orders are to make contact with you and defend this location as needed.”

“Voluntary orders?”

“MilNet is offline, as far as we can tell the army is disbanded. But the orders sounded good, so here we are to comply.”

Johnson lowered his hands.

“What the fuck?”

“We honestly don’t know what the fuck.” Red braids swung as he shook his head. “Maybe it’s the end of the world. Sir, there’s an un-manned storage depot fifteen kilometers southwest of this location. Field rations, small arms and medical supplies. Would that be useful?”

The orders had come over the secure MilNet, before it shut down, but the cryptographic signature had come from one of their private patrons, his most mysterious instructions yet. And no clue whose command they were meant to wait for.

—

Feet up on the General’s desk, Beulah casually enjoyed one of his cigars. The oaken monstrosity weighed a tonne – literally. When her feet shifted, it rocked unevenly: one square leg was stuffed into the General’s mouth, pinning the back of his head to the floor. He had had the misfortune of surviving the chaos of conflicting orders and friendly fire that surgically eliminated that fraction of the military –mostly brass, and the more thuggish enlisted– which most enjoyed power. It had taken both Edna and Beulah to lift a thousand kilograms of luxury furniture high enough to drop it on him. (A boot on his throat kept him from wiggling away as they positioned it over him.) He still twitched a little, but he was mostly harmless now.

“If he’s chewed through the varnish, that’s gonna hurt the resale value.”

“Fix it or feature it. If we document whose teeth made the marks somebody’s gonna pay twice what It’s worth. Who gave you your fucking orders, asshole? Two groans for Konig, one for the senate.”

“Gnnnnn nnnnnnng.”

“Figures.” She tapped the cigar on the corner of the desk; ash fell onto the General’s face. “You got that footage?”

“Yeah, lookit this.”

Edna shunted a feed to the desk’s surface, freezing the motion almost immediately.

“You were right, the army was after her but they got their asses handed to them. This is less than a second after they kicked down Tanna’s door.”

The side of the arcology structure had developed a slight bulge.

“Now watch this.”

The EWO cloned the image, adding tactical and thermal overlays to the copy. In slow motion the bulge swelled and popped like a splattering boil as the individual trackers for the penetration team winked out.

“See that? Zero thermal bloom, that’s not an explosion, even though it looks like one.”

She zoomed out to a citywide view, replayed the relevant milliseconds.

“We shoulda stuck with Tanna. I’d sure like to know what went down in there.”

“Looks like they had it covered, without us.”

The non-explosion that looked like an explosion took place at ambient temperature, dropping cooler as it progressed. The larger chunks of debris warmed as they vanished from the MilObs camera’s field of view.

“Whatever is going on is endothermic, the building skin cools significantly as it buckles outward, but we have air friction heating the fragments. Some of them clocked hypersonic.”

She zooms back in as the video plays on. Beside the display the number sixteen appears in fatal red.

“Pen team was zeroed out in five seconds flat.”

“Awesome.”

“They were equipped with whatever those renegades landed, the day before. It wasn’t enough.”

“Any clue what?”

“Some kind of non-lethal weapon. That’s all I’m hearing.”

“They sure got a lethal reply.”

“Yeah, I’ll be talking to my suppliers, they may know something. Next, some bright light in command decided to send in some more cannon fodder, meaning a couple dozen of the best capture and acquisition troops, by way of the elevators after the Op is already compromised.”

The clusters of dots rising through the building suddenly plunged downward, shooting into the building’s substructure and going out.

A moment later the unit fatalities count climbed again.

“Ouch. Mistake.”

“One of many. They send in the grunts, but stairs are impassible by now. A few idiots hurt themselves trying.”

Another window opens, showing a montage of enforcers failing to climb well lubricated stairs. Beside the death count, an injury count appears and begins climbing. One of the grunts bumps the safety of his weapon as he falls and the other count increments by three. A hundred and two dead.

Beulah slapped her forehead. She’d seen too much action over the centuries to be surprised by human stupidity but the gesture was instinctive.

The target dots are rising.

“That’s wrong. They got out somehow, but it wasn’t by going up. This is the military’s best intel, and it’s fucking wrong. Gravimetrics suggest that there is a utility lift operating in the central building cavity. The blueprints say it was removed, but one of the old analog systems spots them in the nearest transit tunnel.”

Seven dots continued to rise as Edna fast-forwarded.

“Who’s there?”

“Just the five we know, Tanna, Gloam, Isha, Twilight and Discord, that’s all. They got two phantoms in the decoy data.”

“That could have been us.”

“Officially, I think it was. Clean slate time.”

In the video multiple VTOL troop carriers were touching down on the roof as more land based units gather around the building.

“I’m pretty sure they’re clear by now, ‘cos if they aren’t, they wouldn't have made it. It’s been eighteen minutes now.”

The false targets have almost reached the top of the building as the roof swarms with enforcers.

“And, boom.”

In the space of seconds, a raging fire fed on pure oxygen spread through the entire building, death count shooting into the hundreds then over a thousand as flaming wreckage falls to the ground.The thermal goes white as it overloads and in minutes the entire structure is reduced to a spike of glowing slag.

“How many civilian fatalities?”

“From the fire, none. There were only thirty three units occupied and everybody left the building under various pretexts. We can guess who coordinated that.”

Beulah nodded. The general’s office was not secure enough to name the individual who had probably saved the uninvolved residents.

“Anyway,” Edna continued, “we’ve got to find some new backing. I don’t think selling used furniture is going to fund us for long.”

“Let’s go see if anyone is ready to start new government yet.And put one of those gel-fraggers of yours through his head. I don’t want anyone pulling any data out of his brain if we leave it intact.”

clickBOOMSPLATclick

—

Cities had mostly recovered from the darkness, and although the masses were mostly uninjured, blood had run like water in the halls of the elite.

In the aftermath, Lady Akos stroked her patron’s sandy hair.

“It’s the end of your world, Konig,” she said, and chuckled at her use of familiarity above her station. He was in no position to demand suitable honorifics. His head was between her legs, eyes peacefully closed, a light pressure from her thighs keeping his position just right for the perfect access.

“To think that I’d be the one to share this moment with you.”

She had finally reached the top, just as the top fell.

With delicate fingertips she brushed his eyelids open and parted her labia to piss into the empty sockets.

“I wish I’d thought to do this before killing you,” she said, peering down to watch urine fill the newly eyeless cavities.

Overflowing, it ran down the dead tyrant’s face, adding a glossy sheen to the bulging cheeks.

Bladder empty, she released her legs’ grip; the roughly severed head fell at her feet, splashing blood and piss on her ankles. She really didn’t care; he had defiled her far worse during his life. With a kick, she propelled the gory object onto the heap with the rest of Konig’s cronies.

She knew that her daughter had gone. She didn’t know how, or where, but there was no doubt that Tanna’s cryptic claim of an imminent departure had come to pass.

The government was in disarrays now, but outside the Oligarchy proper (she had seized the opportunity to kill quite a few herself, in addition to her newest partner), the death toll from a global paroxysm of systems failure had been suspiciously low.

“Some notoriety, daughter?” the sometime courtesan chuckled again. “Let’s see what notoriety your mother can carve out of a world you have turned loose from its chains. If your father couldn’t fix it, maybe you could break it until I can.”

Her vision was finally clear.