The Great Escape!

Chapters

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12

Chapter 1

The Great Escape!
Chapter 1

Five years.

Five long, hard years, and she had never been in one place for very long. As the truck rolled up to her new 'home', she knew that while it would be a different place than the last five places that she'd been at, there would be no difference between any of them.

That was just how the world worked. The Nagadan gulag would be no different. Summer Lightfall let out a sigh as she sat in the back of the truck, watching out the window as it pulled past a gatehouse and into the labour camp proper.

Summer was an Equestrian. A unicorn no less, and here she was being shuffled around once more to endure yet another year of forced labour for the Unified Præsidium of Socialist Republics. Summer hated what they were doing to her, but as far as she was concerned she had something to hate more. Hatred was what was keeping her going, the desire for revenge taking precedent above all others.

This was Madeline Wolsey's fault.

Five years ago. Summer Lightfall had been a soldier in the Equestrian Republican Army's Fillydelphia regiment with the rank of lance corporal. She had been serving under Lieutenant Madeline Wolsey, a direct descendent of Field Marshal Trixie, the Republican Army's greatest leader. Wolsey, unfortunately, was nothing like her grandmother. Wolsey had been inept and careless during the communist uprising in an island nation in the South Sea, known as the Salayan Emergency.

Summer had been taken prisoner by Præsidium Spetsnaz forces, and Wolsey had been left for dead, but in her heart, Summer knew that Wolsey had lived. Her ultimate goal was to escape from the Præsidium and correct that. Madeline Wolsey's inept command had gotten a lot of good ponies killed during the Emergency.

She'd had heard the guards talking at Vorkuta, the last camp that she was at, the Emergency was apparently over now. The Equestrian Republic had won and had been able to defeat the communist uprising. Good for them. Honestly though? She didn't really care. That was the past. The only thing that mattered to her now was putting a bullet between Madeline Wolsey's eyes.

Summer didn't know how, she didn't know when, but she did know this. She would escape from the gulag. Leave the Præsidium behind and return to Equestria where she would find and kill Madeline Wolsey. She would have her revenge, and nothing would stop her.

After that... Summer didn't know. Maybe she'd hang herself, wouldn't be much point in continuing to live afterwards.

That didn't matter now. She had to kill Wolsey first, she would think about what to do afterwards after it had happened.

The truck came to a stop, the doors to the driver's compartment opened, and then immediately shut behind them. She heard some light chatter in the cossack language before the back of the truck opened up. Two cossack soldiers climbed up into the truck, brandishing assault rifles at her.

Summer made no response to them, simply getting up and following them out without putting up any real resistance, she had learned a while ago that trying to do so didn’t get anywhere. She would save her strength for the real thing.

Summer walked quietly behind the two cossack soldiers. Only the sounds of her restrains could be heard as they walked towards an interior checkpoint.

‘‘Tolʹko odin? Chto proiskhodit?’ one of the guards asked, looking up as the two soldiers escorting Summer approached.

‘U nas yestʹ spetsialʹnyye prikazy NKVD, eto odin schitayetsya ochenʹ opasnym, i budet transportirovatʹsya v odinochku’, one of Summer’s guards said as they walked past.

‘Da, da. Nezavisimo, idti vpered do kontsa’, the other guard said before motioning them forward.

Summer had mostly understood what they had said. One didn’t live in the Præsidium for as long as she did without picking up some of the language. She generally understood what the guards and other prisoners were saying at the labour camps, even if she couldn’t speak the language herself. The important thing to get out of the conversation between the Præsidium soldiers was that the NKVD, the Præsidium’s intelligence agency, considered Summer to be very dangerous, and wanted her isolated when going between labour camps.

Summer wasn’t quite sure why. She’d never caused any major disturbances during her time at any of the work camps. Her anger was not directed towards the Præsidium, she had no desire to do anything to any of the forced labour camps she had been interned in, only to escape, and return to Equestria and kill Madeline Wolsey.

Her guards led her deep into the Nagadan facility to a small concrete cell. It was currently empty, and there was a single wooden bunk for her to sleep on. So far it looked like she would be having the place to herself. That was nice. She’d had a roommate at the last camp she’d been in, and it was not an experience that she wanted to repeat.

‘Good news!’ one of the Præsidium soldiers said as he unlocked the door to the cell for Summer to go into. ‘Gulag is generous, and give you day off from working! Tomorrow you start work in steel mill. Rest up!’ the soldier said with a rude grin.

Summer said nothing, and trotted inside the cell. Watching as the guards locked it back up. It seemed that they had been hoping for some kind of response from her, but when she did not give one, they merely walked away from her with a shrug, and went on about their business.

Summer glanced around the cell; it was incredibly barren, with the exception of the wooden bunk and a toilet. She went up to it and pressed down on the flushing trigger. Much to her surprise, the toilet was in working condition. That was nice. All of the other cells in the other labour camps she had been in had had toilets, but this was the first one that had actually worked.

Summer trotted back over to the wooden bunk and sat down on it. She had to wonder how she looked. Her forest green mane was nothing but tangled knots, and her canary yellow coat was stained with dirt and now closer to a piss yellow. Not that it mattered, because pretty much every prisoner was going to be as dirty as she was. Each labour camp had bathing facilities for the prisoners, though they were rarely allowed to use them more than once a month, or when some important member of the communist party came to visit the camp to inspect the workers. That was the only time they were actually given soap, and the only time that the guards turned on the hot water.

Even if given the opportunity to shower. Summer wouldn’t. It had to have been mid-November by now. She had made the mistake of showering in November once, never again. She’d almost frozen to death after doing it. The brutal Cossack winter was soon to be on them once more, at this point she was just glad that her prison stripes were enough to keep her somewhat warm.

‘Psst!’

Summer glanced around. Where had that noise come from?

‘Psst!’ the noise came again. Where the hell was that coming from!?

‘Hey! You there!’

Summer jumped slightly, someone was around her. ‘Who’s there?’ she asked, continuing to glance around trying to find who was talking to her.

‘Who I am isn’t important. What is important is you, and who you are. You’re a unicorn!’ the voice said again.

‘Well, good to know you have eyes!’ Summer said as she scowled at the faceless voice.

The mysterious voice was clearly male, deep, but not like that of a Cossack. The accent wasn’t particularly clear either, but whoever it was belonged here just as much as she did, not at all.

‘Equestrian?’ the voice asked.

‘Yes...’ Summer said with annoyance. To be fair, unicorns did exist in small pockets around the world now that Equestria had become globalised. Still, most of the world’s unicorns did still reside in Equestria. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m in the cell above you! There’s a small hole in the floor that I can see you through’, the voice said simply.

Summer looked up, sure enough; there was a hole in the ceiling that someone in the cell above could look through and see everything, but unfortunately for Summer. She couldn’t see anything of who she was talking to. Summer let out a frown of annoyance as she continued to listen to the voice.

‘You’re new, that’s good! Where do they have you assigned to work?’ the voice asked her.

‘Steel mill’, Summer said simply. The forced labour camps in the Præsidium produced a number of materials for the state. Most of them mined coal or uranium or any hundreds of other useful materials. Apparently, Nagadan had the fortune of being a coal mine. Since they mined coal, then that coal could be used to create steel, and with steel the Præsidium could make pretty much anything.

‘Ah! Good! Good! I’ve been waiting almost a year to get lucky and have someone down there be assigned to the steel mill! Listen very closely, because what I am about to tell you is incredibly important’, the voice said simply before Summer interrupted.

‘Hold on! Why should I even be talking to you anyway!? For all I know, you’re another guard looking for a reason to put the smack down on me!’ Summer said with a growl in her voice. ‘Who are you?’

The voice was quiet for a moment before answering. ‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you my real name. You can call me TANTALUS, that’s my code name. I am a Special Executor of the Office of the Prime Minister of the Equestrian Republic’.

Summer frowned. Special Executor? They were basically someone who had been entrusted with authority to carry out a special task for the Republic and the Prime Minister itself. What was one doing here? The likelihood of a gulag guard knowing what a Special Executor was had to have been pretty low. So Summer figured that she’d go along with this... for now. ‘Okay... TANTALUS? What is it that you want?’

‘You’re not the only Equestrian here in Nagadan’, TANTALUS said plainly. ‘There’s another one here. Been here for a very, very long time, earth pony, goes by the name of Sprocket. He’s been awful quiet lately... and he’s gotten to be pretty good friends with Viktor Karkov... they’re up to something, and I want to know what it is... problem is, I work in the coal mines, and Sprocket and Karkov work in the steel mill. So...’

‘So you need someone else to find out for you?’ Summer said, finishing his thought for him.

‘’Yes! Exactly!’ TANTALUS said with hushed excitement in his voice.

‘What makes you think I’m interested?’ Summer asked, raising an eyebrow at the voice coming from the hole in the ceiling.

‘Talk to Viktor Karkov and to Sprocket. If they’re planning what I think they’re planning... you will be very interested. Trust me when I say that’, TANTALUS said simply.

Summer frowned and thought it over for a moment. The name Sprocket was very familiar to her for some reason. Then it hit her. ‘Hold on. Sprocket? You don’t mean...’

‘Like I said, he’s been here a very, VERY long time’, TANTALUS said, reaffirming his point.

‘All right, fine. I’ll do it, I’ll talk to them and figure out what they’re planning’, Summer said, offering a small shrug. After all, what did she have to lose? It wasn’t like talking was against the law or anything. And what could the guards possibly do to her? Lock her in a gulag?

‘’Good! Good! Let me know what you find out!’ TANTALUS said before his voice faded away.

Summer nodded, and went over to the small wooden bunk. Tomorrow was going to be a very interesting day. That, she knew for certain.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The clock on the computer terminal struck 1700; that was it. The work day was over, time to go home and relax. Relax, right. Anastasia Hopely let out a deep sigh at the thought. When she considered what today was, there would be no relaxing this evening.

Hopely looked up and watched as Detective Sergeant Ana Kelso approached her. 'Hey Hopely, you heading out?' the earth pony mare asked as she approached.

Hopely looked up and nodded her head in the affirmative. 'Yep', she said simply. Hopely was a detective for the Ponyville Police Service's Serious and Organised Crime Group. Ana Kelso was her direct superior. Kelso was a pale olive coated earth pony mare, she wore her teal mane in a straightened fashion that hung down just past her shoulders, in all points, Ana Kelso was a fairly attractive mare. Hopely admitted, she thought Kelso was kind of cute, but that was it. She had no desires for her superior officer in any way. Especially not today, she had far too much on her mind to even be thinking about sex. Hopely looked up at Kelso for a moment, watching as a frown formed on her face. Clearly she had been expecting more out of her.

'Have you voted today?' Kelso asked.

Crap. It was Election Day wasn't it? Hopely had completely forgotten. She hadn't turned on her television at home in the past month, she knew better than that. The only thing on the telly for the last three months had been political adverts. 'I'm going to be stopping by on my way home from work', Hopely said. 'Not like it matters, since FutureTec manipulates the elections behind the scenes'.

Kelso frowned and shook her head. 'Maybe it doesn't matter now, but it will soon, and I'd like to think that when we fix the system, that social liberals in power is the best way to go', Kelso said simply.

'Uh huh', Hopely said, nodding her head. The members of the PPS' Serious and Organised Crime Group were wrapped up in a secret war against the Equestrian Future Technologies Corporation, known simply as FutureTec; they had discovered that the company had been using its great economic power to manipulate the course of the Equestrian Republic, how long it had been going on, they weren't entirely sure. What they did know was that it had been going on for too long already. They had all vowed to take FutureTec down, so far, they'd had a few victories, but they still had a long way to go. 'I take it you voted PPP?' Hopely asked.

'Yep', Kelso said nodding her head. 'Hasn't been a Parliamentary election that I haven't voted PPP in'.

That was Ana Kelso alright, centre-left as always. Hopely didn't see eye to eye with Kelso on politics, but she didn't continue the conversation any further. There wasn't a point, Hopely was fairly conservative, she was about the furthest right you could be while still calling yourself centre-right. She had learned a long time ago that arguing with the centre-left was pointless.

'Hey, Hopely? Viola and I are meeting up with Sparky and Dizzy around 1900 and going out to dinner, want to come? It'll be fun!' Kelso asked, offering Hopely a smile.

Hopely merely shook her head. 'Sorry Sarge, got things I need to do tonight, thanks for the offer though. Maybe next time', Hopely added, offering Kelso a friendly smile.

'Well alright... see you tomorrow Hopely', Kelso said with a nod before placing her fedora on her head and heading over to the lift.

Hopely packed up her things and trotted over to the lift. Pressing the button and riding down to the bottom level.

…

'Welcome to the Year 100 Parliamentary election! Please state your full name, and the party you wish to represent your constituency'.

Hopely let out a sigh and blinked at the voting terminal before her, almost as if she was debating her choices. She knew better, her vote didn't matter. Not when a mega corporation was the real determiner of the outcome of the election.

'Anastasia Hopely, Equestrian Fascist Party', Hopely said after a moment.

'Thank you! You have successfully voted in the Parliamentary Election. To continue on to the local election, please say “continue”. To finish voting, please say “exit”'.

'Exit', Hopely said, rolling her eyes and stepping out of the voting booth. Kelso couldn't complain now, she'd voted. She let out a small chuckle at her choice. The Equestrian Fascist party was a joke, they existed on the books yes, but no one took them seriously. How could you when there were only three actual party members?

The real purpose for the Fascist Party was for protest voting. Didn't like the choices? Vote for them. Actually, the more Hopely thought about it, she was somewhat sure that that was the Fascist Party's slogan.

She left the poll and climbed on her motorcycle and headed for home. She laid herself down on the seat, watching as the holographic canopy materialised over her head. She switched on the autopilot and entered the coordinates for home, as the motorcycle began to move on its’ own, turning the corner out of the polling station’s parking lot and heading onto the open road. Hopely let out a small sigh and closed her eyes for a minute. She had a lot on her mind.

Five years. It had been five, long hard years since she had made the most important choice in her life. Five years ago, she had chosen to terminate her pregnancy. She told herself that what she had done was for the best, but that didn’t make it easy.

Today was the arbitrarily chosen day for what that foal’s birthday should be. Her foal would have been five years old, in school and making friends. Hopely couldn’t help but feel guilty and selfish at the choice that she had made five years ago. She had murdered her foal before it could even have a chance at life.

Abortions were legal in the Republic, rare, but legal. Improvements in medical technology and contraceptives had rendered accidental pregnancy almost completely nonexistent. Hopely’s problem had been that she had not gotten pregnant by accident. Her pregnancy had come about by rape. Hopely could close her eyes and she would find herself back to that day. Lying on the cold hard ground, her overcoat ripped open. She was pinned on the ground, forced to watch as that rat bastard lay on top of her, grinning that stupid grin, moaning softly with pleasure at each thrust. He was in complete control; he had complete power over her. She couldn’t scream, she couldn’t cry out, oh she had wanted to. She’d even opened her mouth to do it but nothing came out. No one would hear her. No one would come to help her, and it had only turned the bastard on more. She had known her rapist, and that was what had made it so damned enjoyable for him. He was able to do whatever he wanted to her and she could do nothing to stop him. She had seen his face; he had made no attempt to hide it from her. He wanted her to know it was him.

What made the situation worse was the fact that she had orgasmed during the act. Her body had enjoyed it, and it made her sick. When she thought back to that day it was all she could think about. Her body had enjoyed being ravaged by that fucking commie bastard, her mind had saying no and her body had been saying yes. She was disgusted with herself, and when he finally was done and left her there. He knew his control had become complete.

She hated Yuri Tasarov. She wanted nothing more than to catch him alone in a dark alley, just as he had her, and force him to watch as she mutilated him to the point of being unrecognisable. Then, and only then would she show him a mercy that he had failed to show her that day five years ago when he had raped her. She would put a bullet between his eyes and leave him for dead.

A pipe dream, a fantasy, one cannot simply murder the most powerful agent of the Præsidium NKVD. Even if she could get close, she wouldn’t be able to for the simple reason that he would not fall into a trap like that. Neither would she, it only takes once for that to happen to make sure it can never again.

Even if she did somehow manage to torture and kill Yuri, that wouldn’t be the end of it. If anything were to happen to Yuri, it would be pretty obvious who had done it, especially considering the way she would. Yuri’s right hoof operator, another bastard who was just as cold and as sick as he was, Oleg would hunt down each and every one of her friends and torture them for hours before finally killing them. Sparky Starlight, Dizzy Doo, Viola Auditore, Ana Kelso, Amarilla de la Manzana, Juan Carlos... he would find them all, and ensure that they would suffer. He would leave her alive, but the damage would be done to her. She would have to live knowing that in her desire for revenge, she had killed her friends to do it.

Anastasia Hopely had learned a long time ago that the world was a sick and twisted place. This had always been, and it always will be. She pulled up outside her flat, parking her motorcycle and heading upstairs. She opened her front door and locking it right behind her. She pulled off her overcoat and set it down on her sofa before heading into her kitchen. She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a pan and set it on her kitchen table. It was a birthday cake that she had gotten for the occasion. She looked down on it, reading the text written in icing over and over again. ‘Happy fifth birthday!’ it read.

Sticking out of it were five small candles, one for each year. She took an elongated utility lighter in her teeth, and lit each of the candles one by one.

‘Happy birthday to you... happy birthday to you... happy birthday, happy birthday... happy birthday to you...’ Hopely said as tears formed in her eyes. She waited for a moment, and then blew out the candles for her unborn foal. She picked up the tray with the cake and promptly tossed it into the rubbish bin before opening up her refrigerator again and pulling out a half full bottle of whiskey. She opened it up and drank the remaining contents in one go before tossing the empty bottle at the wall and falling to the floor in tears. Knowing that this would be how she would spend every one of her unborn foal’s birthdays, and she would be the only one who ever remembered it.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Summer Lightfall took a deep breath as she entered the steel mill. Stepping inside, she watched as three of the prisoners with protective masks over their faces dumped a bucket of molten iron into a mould for a steel bar. The room was hot, and it was loud. Still, with winter rapidly approaching, Summer couldn’t complain. At least while working in here she wouldn’t have to worry about freezing to death. Summer remembered what it was like working in the mines during the winter; she shivered as memories of the cold came back to her.

She took a look around, casing the area, getting familiar with where the each of the guards patrolled at. Nagadan was a no nonsense kind of place, that she could see plainly. There were four guards in the room, each of them patrolled along catwalks above the worksite, which was good for them, she figured, because the guards would be able to see very little talking going on, and would be able to hear none of it.

Excellent! Summer let out a small smile; maybe this TANTALUS person wasn’t so full of shite after all. This place was perfect for planning something, as long as they kept up their work while they were doing it, the guards would be none the wiser.

Summer turned and began to walk along the perimeter of the room, she needed to find Sprocket, get in on what he was planning with Viktor Karkov, whoever that was. She got no further than five steps before she found herself running into someone. She was surprised when she had discovered that it was indeed a someone, and that that someone was built like a brick wall. Summer stumbled back and looked up to see what was likely the biggest creature she had ever seen. Standing at two hundred and fifty centimetres tall, and looking down on her in slight annoyance was a bipedal creature unlike which Summer had ever seen before. The creature had the face of a bull, with horns that looked as if they could skewer a pony whole. One of his eyes was missing, and in its’ place was a heavily outdated cybernetic replacement. The more Summer looked at him; he was more machine than anything else. What little of him that was still organic was his massive chest, his right arm had massive biceps that looked like he could crush her head with a single flex of them. His left arm was cybernetic, and half missing, it looked to have been blown off at the elbow, likely from a large calibre bullet. Both his legs were cybernetic, and looked to be in the best condition of all of him. Summer knew what he was, this was a minotaur, but she had never thought that she would actually see one. They very rarely left their own country. The minotaur looked at her and offered a scowl.

‘If someone doesn’t start paying attention, they will soon find themselves being corrected!’ The minotaur said with a huff as he pushed past her and went about his business. Summer glanced upwards, one of the guards had taken notice of the scuffle and had his rifle pointed down at them. Summer ignored him and went back to it. No harm, no foul. Now it was time to find Sprocket.

It wasn't that hard, fortunate to say. Summer turned around the corner and that was when she saw him. Sprocket was an old pony, one of the oldest still alive. He had to be a hundred and ten at this point. His body was filled with outdated cybernetics not unlike the minotaur. TANTALUS was right; he had been out here for a while. What was left of Sprocket's coat was a dirty brown, though those patches of those were few and far between. All four of Sprocket's legs had been replaced with cybernetics that had been beaten up and dented for who knows how many years of abuse.

His eyes were charcoal black, with a single red dot in the centre of them. Old style ocular implants had to be the most creepy, unnatural looking part of him. Had she not known who this was, she might have found him frightening.

This had confirmed it. This Sprocket was the Sprocket she thought it was. In the days before the Great Patriotic War, FutureTec had been lead by Sprocket as the company's chief executive officer, before that, he was known as the Techno-Wizard, one of the greatest scientific minds ever to live in Equestria. He had been at the cutting edge of science, his research into robotics and Artificial Intelligence put Equestria on the path to a golden age of science and industry... just not the one that he had intended.

Sprocket had been part of FutureTec's AP/VI project, and had created the first Virtual Intelligence, called Mr. Happy. The prototype VI was, to be frank, dangerous and unstable, and had caused the deaths of seven researchers due to compatibility issues with the robot chassis that it had been operating. Because of this, science shifted away from robotic hardware to VI software.

To say Sprocket was disappointed would have been an understatement. He became recluse, and when the Great Patriotic War broke out, he headed to the continent, volunteering to help the Schäferhund with weapons research, where he was never heard from again.

It became pretty clear what had happened. He must have been taken prisoner during the war and shipped around the gulag camps for the last 60 years or so. That was problematic; the Præsidium had made numerous claims that all prisoners from the Great Patriotic War had been released by Year 42 of the Republic. They lied, clearly, though that really should not have been much of a surprise.

One of Sprocket's eyes turned towards her, he had noticed that she was standing there and let out a deep sigh before turning to face her. He opened his mouth to speak, but then he stopped, and closed his mouth. He stood looking at her for a moment, almost as if he did not believe his own eyes before opening his mouth again to speak. 'You... are... a unicorn', he said slowly, almost as if he had forgotten how to speak his native language.

'Yes', Summer said nodding her head. 'Glad to know you have working eyes', she added sarcastically.

Sprocket let out a smirk at her comment. 'Most of the time, they glitch on occasion thanks to the lack of proper maintenance... the guards won't let me near tools and I don't trust anyone else to do anything with them, so I am kind of stuck there', Sprocket added with a shrug.

Sprocket glanced around the room for a moment before he waved Summer over. Summer trotted up to him slowly, glancing up towards the catwalks to check where the guard’s attentions were at. They were most certainly looking down upon them and that was when Summer realised what Sprocket was doing, he had brought her next to the control console of one of the steel mill's machines, and occasionally gestured to it as he spoke. To the guards, it would look like he was showing her how to work the machine.

'Do you know who I am?' Sprocket asked.

Summer nodded her head in affirmation.

'Tell me of Equestria, it has be so long since I have heard anything of Equestria', Sprocket said, a look of longing appearing on his face. Summer frowned; so much had happened that he had missed.

'What do you want to know?' she asked. Sprocket was silent for a moment, and gestured to the machine twice before offering up an answer.

'Tell me, is Scootaloo still alive?' He asked.

Summer had to think about that for a moment. Scootaloo was the Republic's second Prime Minister. She knew why Sprocket was asking, and she offered him a frown before shaking her head in the negative. 'I'm afraid not', Summer said, offering him a consoling look.

'I see...' Sprocket said frowning. 'Do you know how she died?'

'Natural causes I think? She died some twenty years ago', Summer said with a shrug.

Sprocket nodded. 'Well... at least there is that', he said with a sigh. Summer knew a lot about Sprocket. She had written a paper on him when she was in high school, and she knew that Scootaloo had been Sprocket's wife. He must have known that the likelihood of ever seeing her again was low, but now he knew that it would never be again. 'I suppose that I knew, on some level... but I guess it is nice knowing now, at least she died peacefully... do you know anything about my daughter?'

Summer frowned and shook her head. Both Sprocket and Scootaloo had been public figures, she had known about their daughter. That they'd had one anyway, but unlike her parents, she had kept herself out of public life, preferring to have a normal life and a normal job. If she was still alive, Summer was not sure.

'Fair enough', Sprocket said, gesturing to the machine once more for the guards.

'Now it is my turn to ask you something', Summer said.

Sprocket raised an eyebrow at her, but nodded his head and motioned for her to speak.

'I know you are planning something. Something big', Summer said, offering him a small smile.

'I have no idea as to what you're referring...' Sprocket began before being interrupted.

'Save it. I know you and Victor Karkov are planning something', Summer said, bluffing and hoping that dropping Karkov's name would get Sprocket to open up to her. 'I want in'.

'I see...' Sprocket said nodding his head. 'Well then... I think that's something we can set up', he said offering her a smile, leaning forward and whispering into her ear. 'We are planning to escape!'

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Anastasia Hopely's eyes slowly drifted open. She heard a buzzing noise in her head. She glanced around and discovered that she was lying on her kitchen floor, she must have passed out. She rolled over onto her back and looked up at the ceiling and let out a sigh. She hadn't passed out from drinking since her third year at University.

She heard the buzz again. That was when she realised, that it wasn't in her head. It was someone at her door. Hopely rolled back over onto her stomach and discovered several empty bottles of whiskey lying on the floor around her.

The door buzzed again, Hopely looked over to it and then back down at the bottles on the floor. She couldn't answer the door with all of these lying around. 'Just a minute!' she called out as the door buzzed again. She pushed all the bottles into a corner and dropped a dish towel that was lying on the counter over them before heading over to the door. She reached up and brushed her mane back into its' usual shape with a hoof before opening the door. She was surprised to discover who it was.

'Finally! I thought you had gone deaf!' Otto Büchsenmacher said with a scowl.

Otto Büchsenmacher was a schäferhund 'information retrieval specialist', working for the Ponyville Police Service. And by 'information retrieval specialist', she of course meant computer hacker, and by working for the PPS, she meant working for DCI Auditore, who had evidence that he had hacked into the website for the Welaran Home Office and put up an edited the image of King William of Welara to one of him wearing a dress. Needless to say, the Welarans weren't happy about that, and that was enough to keep the dog in line.

Schäferhund were a race of quadrupedal carnivorous canines. Otto himself was twice as large as Hopely, with thick matte black fur, dark and beady eyes that almost blended in with his face. His teeth were sharp and had the capability to rip and tear through flesh. All and all, schäferhund were intimidating. Except for Otto, he was a complete wuss. If Hopely just lightly bopped him on the nose he would probably start crying.

‘What do you want Otto?’ Hopely asked with a sigh.

‘“What do you want Otto?” She says’, Otto said with a huff. ‘No “hello Otto, how are you doing this morning?” Typical’.

‘Otto I am not in the mood for any shite from you right now so...’ Hopely began before Otto raised his leg to interrupt her.

‘If I may? I merely came down here on the instruction of DCI Auditore to find out the reason for why you did not show up for work this morning, and I’ve already figured out the reason’, Otto said as he made his way inside the flat.

A blank look formed on Hopely’s face, and she turned to look at the clock in her flat. To her dismay, it was a quarter past eleven in the morning. She should have been into work some four hours ago. She closed the door behind Otto and turned to face him. ‘What do you mean you know the reason?’ she asked, nervous of what the dog would say next.

‘You are hung over, Detective Constable Hopely’, Otto said as he sat down on her sofa.

‘No I’m not’, Hopely lied, hoping that Otto didn’t have the social skills to see through it.

Otto looked blankly at her for a moment. ‘Hopely. I am schäferhund, do you know what our main recreation activity is?’ he asked.

‘Shooting your guns at the firing range?’ Hopely asked.

Otto was silent for a moment, tossing his head back and forth before nodding in affirmation. ‘Ja... I suppose it is... do you know what our second main recreation activity is?’ Otto asked.

‘Um...’ Hopely said, thinking about it for a moment before being interrupted.

‘It is going out to Beer Halls and drinking, I think I know when someone has been drinking’, Otto said triumphantly.

Well fuck. Hopely had to admit that Otto had her there. She looked at the schäferhund nervously as a smile formed on his face. He was already thinking of how he could use this situation to his advantage. Hopely wasn’t about to let that happen.

‘I’m certain that you would not wish DCI Auditore to learn of this, ja? What is my silence worth to you?’ Otto asked as his smile turned into a cheeky grin on his face.

‘How about you don’t tell DCI Auditore, and I won’t bash your teeth out with my hoof?’ Hopely said, taking an aggressive step towards the dog and kicking out with her hoof, not coming anywhere close to his muzzle, but still causing him to flinch.

‘Alright! Alright! You win!’ Otto said as he shifted on the sofa away from her, wondering why he even thought that trying to blackmail her was a good idea.

'Good', Hopely said rolling her eyes, typical Otto, all bark and no bite. 'Now, I want you to go back down town and tell DCI Auditore... I'm taking a holiday, and that I'm sorry for not telling her personally'.

'Alright, alright', Otto said as he got up from the sofa and trotted back over to the door, mumbling to himself as he went over to it.

'And Otto?' Hopely said, causing the dog to look back over to her. 'You tell anyone about what happened here and I'll...' Hopely didn't bother finishing the sentence; instead, she made a quick motion with her foreleg across her neck. Otto understood very clearly. If he talked she would hurt him. He opened the door and shut it quickly behind him.

Hopely let out a sigh and went into her bedroom. She pulled off her overcoat that she had neglected to take off the night before, allowing it to fall to the floor and climbing into her bed and lying back. This was good, she just needed a little time to relax and calm herself down after what had happened last night.

Hopely rarely took any of her holidays and sick days. Each year, each constable in the Ponyville Police Service was given twelve sick days and twenty four holidays for the entire year, so far, Hopely had only used ten, they had to use all of them before the year was up or they would get into trouble. Hopely had gotten into trouble with the PPS last year because she had only used five out of the total thirty six days.

She blinked, watching as the ceiling fan above her rotated slowly. She just watched as her eyes became heavy, too heavy to keep open. She decided that she would just rest her eyes for a moment, she closed them and before she knew it she had drifted off to sleep.

…

Hopely's eyes shot open as she heard the buzzing noise of her door. She looked over to the clock sitting on her bedside table. It was 1702, shite! She'd fallen back asleep and had been out for just over six hours! She rolled out of bed, forgetting put on her overcoat as she trotted over to the door and opened it up.

'Hiya Hopely! How are you doing today?! Oh hey! You're not wearing your overcoat! I've never seen you without it before! That's neat!' said the obnoxious pink ball of energy that was Pinkie Pie. 'May I come in?'

Hopely looked down and discovered that she indeed wasn't wearing her overcoat and blushed lightly in embarrassment. 'Um sure Pinkie Pie... come on in', Hopely said as she showed the obnoxious pink pony into her flat. She quickly trotted back into her bedroom and grabbed her overcoat and haphazardly threw it back on.

While really, there wasn’t any sort of social stigma attached to nudity in the Equestrian Republic, wearing clothes had become the norm in their society for purely functional reasons, the most important being pockets. Pockets were useful, and Hopely made a use of them pretty much every day, still, while there wasn’t anything considered wrong with not wearing clothes, Hopely didn’t like being naked around other people, it made her feel uncomfortable.

She trotted back into the main room; Pinkie Pie was standing in the kitchen looking at the towel that Hopely had tossed over the empty bottles of alcohol. She picked up the towel and discovered the bottles, but merely gave them a shrug and picked them up and set them on the counter, rinsing them out in the sink before putting them in the recycling container next to the door.

‘You don’t have to do that’, Hopely said, eyes widening as Pinkie Pie had discovered the binge drinking escapade that Hopely had undertaken the night before.

‘I know, but it looks like you had a rough night last night, and I want to help out!’ Pinkie Pie said with a bright smile.

Hopely liked that about her, Pinkie Pie wasn’t judgemental like other ponies were, when she thought about it, she figured it might have had something to do with the fact that Pinkie Pie wasn’t really a pony at all. This Pinkie Pie was actually a changeling that had been imprinted with the memories, and thus, personality of a pony who lived during the Old Monarchy by FutureTec as part of some convoluted experiment into the creation of artificial intelligences. Hopely didn’t claim to understand the project; she was a language and history person, not science and mathematics. ‘Why are you here, Pinkie Pie?’ Hopely asked after a moment.

‘Oh, Kelso and Viola are having a romantic evening in. Kelso was going to be cooking for Viola, and then likely ordering Pizza after she sets it all on fire!’ Pinkie Pie said cheerfully.

Hopely nodded her head in agreement. Ana Kelso couldn’t cook to save her life.

‘So! I figured, “Hey! Hopely’s single and likely to not be having any romantic evenings with a colt/mare friend that she doesn’t have! I’ll go see if she wants to go get dinner with me!” So then I came over here. Want to go out and get Māo Xióng take out with me?’ Pinkie Pie asked.

Hopely wasn’t sure if she should be insulted by Pinkie Pie’s insinuations or not. She decided to ignore them and focus on a more important question instead. ‘Pinkie Pie... you’re a changeling... you don’t eat food’, Hopely said.

‘While I look like a pony, I’ve got a pony’s digestive system, which means I can process food! It doesn’t give me sustenance, but it quiets hunger for a little while until I feed’, Pinkie Pie said with a shrug. ‘Not to mention that most foods taste really good! Like Māo Xióng! Now come on! Want to go with me?’ Pinkie Pie asked.

Hopely did have to admit. She was a little hungry, she hadn’t eaten all day. ‘Sure, why not. Know a good place?’ Hopely asked.

‘Yep! I know a great place! I’ll upload the coordinates to your motorcycle’s navicomputer!’ Pinkie Pie said as she brought up her foreleg and opened the MIP’s holographic keyboard.

‘Speaking of my motorcycle, how did you get here anyway? Take the bus?’ Hopely asked as she zipped up her overcoat.

‘Nah, Doctor Fontaine’s financials are locked out on this thing, so I can’t swipe it for the city busses’, Pinkie Pie said, gesturing with the FutureTec issue MIP on her fetlock. ‘I walked’.

‘What? Pinkie Pie! DS Kelso and DCI Auditore’s flat is in Downtown West!’ Hopely cried out.

‘Yeah, and?’ Pinkie Pie asked as she continued to type at the holographic keyboard of her MIP.

‘I live in Whitetail... did you seriously walk all the way here from Downtown West?’ Hopely asked.

‘Uh huh! Only took me four and a half hours!’ Pinkie Pie said cheerfully.

‘We really need to get you a Bus Chit’, Hopely added with a sigh and a facehoof. ‘Where is this place we’re going anyway?’ she added as Pinkie Pie closed the holographic keyboard and started walking over to the front door.

Pinkie Pie turned back to Hopely and gave her a huge smile. ‘Oh it’s this great place in Downtown Central! Kelso took me there when we first met and their rice is so good! You’ll love it!’

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

'A break out? Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure!?' TANTALUS asked as Summer spoke to the mysterious voice from the cell above her. Summer merely nodded her head in affirmation, relaying what Sprocket had told her.

She had no further information than that. Sprocket had said that it was a bad idea to spend too much time talking about it while working, the likelihood of being overheard was low, but occasionally the steel mill did grow quiet enough for conversations to be heard. Worse still, idle conversation while working was prohibited, Sprocket and Summer had been able to get away with what talking they did do by pretending to show her how to work the machines.

'A break out... of course, how could I have been so stupid as to not think of that...' TANTALUS said with worry in his voice. 'I'm getting dull... been here for far too long... Summer? Have you met Karkov yet?'

'No', Summer said, shaking her head in the negative. 'Sprocket didn't think it was a good idea, the guards started watching us for a while when we were spending a fair bit of time with each other. Sprocket was worried that they didn't buy the cover of him showing me how to work the machines, said it was too dangerous to talk to Karkov today...'

'I see... he's organising the Steel Mill workers... but can't get the miners... so then that means that...' TANTALUS' voice said before trailing off. He was silent for a moment; Summer almost asked him if he was still there, before another response came through the hole in her ceiling. 'Let me tell you about Viktor Karkov, he was an officer in their army before being sent here, his commanding officer had done him wrong and he killed him. Karkov is ruthless and doesn't do subtle. His break out isn't a simple tunnel out or cut through a fence at night while no one is looking. It's going to be a full on prison revolt... has to be...'

Summer waited for TANTALUS to speak again. He was silent for a long time, too long, Summer was starting to get impatient with him. 'And? What's your point? ‘she asked finally.

'My point? My point!? My point is that a violent revolt is going to do nothing but get everyone held in this camp killed! That's what! Karkov is the kind of person to throw lives away on a lost cause, he did it during their Invasion of the Capran Republic, and he’ll do it here too!' TANTALUS cried out.

Summer blinked, and thought about what the mysterious voice had said for a moment. 'So... you don't want to escape?' she asked.

'I... what?! You can't be serious, even after everything I've told you, you still want to take part in this uprising?' TANTALUS asked, understanding immediately what Summer had meant by her question.

'Yes', Summer said nodding her head in affirmation. To be frank? She didn't see a problem with what TANTALUS had said in the slightest bit, she didn't care about the lives of the other prisoners, she didn't care how many would die in such a revolt. All she cared about was getting out, returning to Equestria, and putting a bullet between Madeline Wolsey's eyes. She didn't care what she had to do, or how many had to die for this to occur. She would sacrifice the entire prison population, including TANTALUS, Sprocket, and Karkov to do it if she had to.

'All those lives! Thrown away like that... all so that one person can have his revenge on the system that put him in here...' TANTALUS began before being interrupted.

'Sacrifices worth making', Summer said. 'Karkov and I have something in common in that regard. Revenge is all that's kept me going these last five years. I don't care what has to be done in order to achieve it, but it will be done'.

TANTALUS was silent again. 'I regret ever speaking to you', he said finally after what seemed like an eternity. 'You're just as much a monster as Viktor Karkov, and it's going to come back to bite you, hard'.

She heard TANTALUS get up in the cell above her; she heard his steps fall as he walked away from the crack between their two cells. She knew that she would never again speak to TANTALUS through the crack in the ceiling, but honestly? She really didn't care. Whatever happened to TANTALUS after this was no concern of her. She only had two concerns in her life, and that was escape, and exacting her revenge upon Madeline Wolsey.

Summer trotted over to her bunk and laid herself down on it, shutting her eyes to try and get some rest. She had to wonder what Wolsey was doing right now. She hoped that her former commanding officer was having the time of her life, she hoped that the mare that had gotten everyone killed during the Emergency was enjoying the time she had left, because now Summer knew for certain. Madeline Wolsey would not have much time left.

…

Madeline Wolsey let out a sigh of pleasure as she lay under the covers of her bed, looking up longingly at the stallion sharing her bed with her, she leaned forward and kissed her lover’s lips. She needed this, she had needed this bad. It had been a long time since she had felt the embrace of another living being like this.

'Sjaak...' Wolsey moaned quietly.

The afrikneigher stallion smiled at her as he nuzzled her gently, kissing his lover's neck. 'I've been looking forward to this all month', he said softly.

Wolsey nodded in agreement as she leaned forward to kiss him again. It had felt like an eternity since she had last made love, and now she finally had the opportunity to sit back and relax.

Five years, five long years to bring her to this point. She had been honourably discharged from the Fillydelphia regiment after being shot during the Salayan Emergency, she'd been rehabilitated, and was back to living a normal life. A couple months after coming back, she'd gotten involved in politics, and had worked her way up through the ranks of the Ponies’ Progressive Party. She'd even served as the Member of Parliament for Fillydelphia Central. Before she knew it, she had become the head of the party at the national level, and when the results from the election came in... if the PPP held the majority of votes, she would be forming a government with herself as the Prime Minister! Imagine that! The idea excited Wolsey; she had to admit, not as much as the embrace of her lover, Sjaak De Vries, but almost as much.

Sjaak De Vries was an afrikneigher pony, an immigrant from the nation of Zhosa-Borwa on the continent of L'afrique. Afrikneighers were the pony minority in a land full of zebras, but while being the minority, afrikneighers made up the majority of the middle class, and nearly all of the upper class, and held the political power in Zhosa-Borwa. Sjaak was in his early thirties, just like she. His coat was a light crème colour, and his mane a jet black, slicked back in a professional cut. She had met him during her time as MP for Fillydelphia Central. Sjaak De Vries was a Senior Systems Analyst for FutureTec, working at Station BRIGHTHOUSE in the Whitetail Industrial Complex in Ponyville on the Discovery Project. Wolsey liked him a lot; he was the shy, quiet type around her. He was a gentle lover and would cater to her every whim if she let him. It was kind of funny how different he was when they were alone when they were around other people.

When they were in public, Sjaak was a sardonic bastard, hardly a people person. He'd been passed over for a promotion to the administrator of station BRIGHTHOUSE in favour of some nobody named Sparkplug Starlight because of this. She had spent many hours soothing his ego afterwards, and frankly, she had been okay with it. She liked Sjaak, he was kind to her, the sex was pretty good, and it offered her a chance to escape for a little while from the problems that she had.

Wolsey did not deserve the honourable discharged that had been given to her. She had led the soldiers under her command into an ambush; she'd frozen up and gotten a lot of people killed. She'd ordered a retreat and only three of her platoon had escaped alive. Her and two others...

She couldn't remember their names, as much as Wolsey struggled, she could not remember their names! She remembered the canary yellow unicorn mare, that had threatened to kill her just as she had been dragged off into the jungle by two Præsidium Spetsnaz soldiers. Wolsey had never told anyone, not even Sjaak the true story of what had happened. How could she? It would ruin her if anyone found out the truth. She had been seen as a war hero, sole survivor of a unit that was wiped out in a valiant fight. No one could know the truth, she felt guilty over what had happened to the canary yellow unicorn mare who had threatened her, but not enough to admit the truth.

'Are you alright?' Sjaak asked her.

Wolsey looked up at her lover as he lay on top of her. She had almost forgotten that he was there. 'I... yeah, I'm sorry, just nervous about the election is all', she lied. Sjaak seemed to buy it; he pulled out of her and rolled over onto his back. 'I'm sorry...' Wolsey added with a frown.

'It is alright', Sjaak said, taking her foreleg in his, leaning forward to kiss her on the cheek. 'Relax, go to sleep, in the morning we will see the results of the election'.

Wolsey nodded and kissed her lover back, the two of them rolled over, and Sjaak went to sleep. Wolsey, however, would not be getting any sleep that night. She had not thought about the canary yellow unicorn mare that she could not remember the name of in a long time, and she would be occupying her mind for the rest of the night.

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Hopely sat back as her motorcycle drifted through the streets; she glanced up at the holographic canopy above her as it displayed navigational information. There was a map that displayed the route that they were taking, how fast they were going, where exactly their end destination was. Looking at the map, it became pretty clear that this place was pretty far out of the way.

'How did you learn about this place again?' Hopely asked, calling over to Pinkie Pie, who was sitting in the holographic confines of her motorcycle's deployable side car.

'Kelso took me here when we first met, before I even knew I was a changeling. Their food is really good! I should know, I accidentally devoured all of it while Kelso was working out a dispute with the owner', Pinkie Pie said with a smile.

Pinkie Pie was clearly enjoying the ride; she had the canopy retracted pretty much all the way, allowing the wind to whip through her mane. It was going to be nothing but a tangled mess by the time that they got there. Hopely thought about it for a moment before realising that Pinkie Pie's mane was always a tangled mess, so what she was doing really wouldn't matter.

Hopely still had a lot on her mind, what had happened last night... it wasn’t like this was the first year she ‘celebrated’ the ‘birth’ of her foal, her poor nameless, genderless, innocent foal. It had been five years, but in those five years, this was the first time Hopely had ever spiralled out of control like she had. Last night was a terrible night, but was this an indication of things to come? Of that she could not be sure. What she did know was this, what had happened last night could not be allowed to happen again.

‘Hopely? Hellooo? Belleau to Hopely, come in Hopely, do you read us?!’ Pinkie Pie said as she waved her hoof over her eyes.

Hopely snapped to attention, and discovered that they had pulled up outside the restaurant. Māo Xióng Yī was a small restaurant in a storefront. Of course, it was a takeout place, so how much space did you really need? As she looked around the place, Hopely noticed that the restaurant was decorated with paraphernalia from the Peking Republic. She let out a sigh of relief, the owner wasn't a communist. Though, Hopely was pretty sure that if he was a communist, he wouldn't own a takeout restaurant. The Māo Xióng owner was standing behind the counter, looking at the two ponies intensely as they walked up to him. The Māo Xióng were a large, bear like people with black and white alternating fur. It was almost comical, because the owner looked to be incredibly uncomfortable; he barely fit in his own restaurant. The Māo Xióng species were much larger than ponies, and because of their large size, it made manoeuvring around difficult.

‘You no call ahead?’ the owner asked as he looked them over.

‘Uh... no, is that a problem?’ Hopely asked.

‘Call ahead preferred’, the owner said with a huff. Hopely was half tempted to make a snide remark about how she didn’t have to patronise his restaurant, but decided against it, she was pretty hungry and didn’t feel like going anywhere else. Also she didn’t want him to spit in their food.

‘I’ll do that next time’, Hopely said with a shrug as she glanced at the menu for a few seconds. ‘Two large orders of fried rice and an order of spring rolls, please’, Hopely said as she ordered their food.

The owner tapped at his cash register for a few moments before looking back up at her. ‘Eight pound forty five, cash only’, he said with a huff.

Hopely was starting to get annoyed with this bastard, but said nothing. She pulled out her wallet and placed a ten Equestrian pound note on the counter. The owner inspected it for a moment before putting it in the cash register and giving her back her change, almost as if he thought there was a chance it might not be real.

The owner went back and started cooking their food. They waited for about five minutes before the owner came back with a bag for their food and passed it over to them. ‘Here go’, he said in his usual huff.

Hopely took the bag in her teeth and motioned for Pinkie Pie to follow her; they exited the restaurant and took a seat on a nearby bus stop bench. Hopely had to admit, she had been hungry before, but now she was starving. She opened up the bag and looked inside, seeing two containers of fried rice. ‘Hey! There aren’t any spring rolls in here!’ Hopely said before passing the bag over to Pinkie Pie. ‘Hold this a moment, I’m sure he just forgot to put them in’.

Pinkie Pie nodded her head and took the bag, watching as Hopely got up and went back inside the restaurant. She was hungry too, so she opened up one of the cartons, and let out a sigh of pleasure as the wonderful aroma of the fried rice filled her nostrils. She knew that she should wait for Hopely before eating any... but it smelled so good, and was hot and fresh! One bite couldn’t hurt.

Before she knew it, both cartons of fried rice lay empty on the ground, she had practically inhaled both of them.

The door to Māo Xióng Yī flung open and Hopely stormed out, turning around and shouting at the owner as she left. ‘You are so fucking lucky that I’m a Police Constable! Or I would burn your fucking restaurant to the ground!’ Hopely screamed as she walked away.

‘Ér nǐ tā mā dì nàme xìngyùn, wǒ bù dǎ nǐ yòng bǎn qiú qiú bàng!’ the voice of the owner called back as the door shut behind Hopely.

‘What happened?’ Pinkie Pie asked as Hopely walked up to her.

‘Fucking cheapskate claimed I didn’t pay for spring rolls... so I don’t get any spring rolls’, Hopely said with a grumble.

Pinkie Pie stopped and thought about it for a moment. ‘Huh’, she said, tilting her head back and forth as she remembered the previous time she was here.

‘What?’ Hopely asked.

‘The same thing happened with Kelso when we were here the last time!’ Pinkie Pie said.

‘And you’re not just mentioning this until now!?’ Hopely cried out.

‘Huh, now that I think of it, Kelso might be banned from coming here…’ Pinkie Pie said.

Hopely let out a sigh of frustration, at least there was fried rice for her to eat. She looked onto the ground and saw the two empty cartons. She stared at them with disbelief and then looked up at Pinkie Pie. ‘Oh you have got to be kidding me!’ she cried out in frustration.

Pinkie Pie offered her a nervous chuckle before picking up the empty cartons and putting them in the bag. ‘I happen to know another restaurant...’

…

As Hopely sat munching on a slice of Port Pizza’s mushroom and pepper pizza, she looked over at Pinkie Pie, watching as the changeling pretending to be a pony herself watched the foals running around having fun. ‘Are you feeding off them?’ Hopely asked.

‘Uh huh’, Pinkie Pie said nodding her head in affirmation. ‘Feeding is passive, can’t control it one way or another… at least, I don’t think I can’, Pinkie Pie said with a shrug. ‘To be honest with you, Hopely, I really don’t know how my body works’.

Hopely shrugged as she took another bite of her pizza. ‘You want a slice?’ Hopely asked, she had ordered a medium pizza, but this was her second slice and she was already starting to get full. Hopely figured that the rest of it wouldn’t be too much of a problem for a big eater like Pinkie Pie.

The changeling pretending to be a pony shuttered at the thought. ‘No thank you, I… I mean, the original Pinkie Pie had a really really really really really really really really REALLY bad experience with mushrooms once, and just looking at them makes me feel really uneasy’, Pinkie Pie said with a shrug.

Hopely had to wonder exactly what she meant by that, but it clearly was something that had bothered her quite a bit, and she decided not to press further. ‘Fair enough’, Hopely added with a shrug as she finished the slice of pizza and boxed up the rest.

‘I’m thinking of changing my look’, Pinkie Pie said finally.

‘I thought you said that you didn’t know how your body worked?’ Hopely asked, raising an eyebrow.

‘Oh, I don’t! I meant like… my mane and tail style. I might look like Pinkie Pie, I might sound like Pinkie Pie, hell, I even think like Pinkie Pie, but no matter how much I want to be, I am not Pinkie Pie. This poofiness? It’s really a Pinkie Pie look… am I making sense?' Pinkie Pie asked.

‘I think so…’ Hopely said. ‘You want to be your own person; you don’t want to hold on to what’s defining you when it isn’t you’.

‘Yeah! Exactly! I think I should come up with a new name too, eventually someone’s going to recognise the name Pinkie Pie…’ Pinkie Pie said.

‘How about Felicity? It fits, trust me on that’, Hopely said with a smirk.

‘I like it! That’s me now! Felicity!’ the mare who would now be forever known as Felicity said with a bright smile.

Felicity, it meant happiness, and knowing her, she could always find something to be happy about. The more Hopely thought about it, the more she could see that it could apply to her as well. Hopely had been focusing on the sadness of her unborn foal. That foal was gone, aborted before it could have a chance at life, and Hopely had felt guilty over not allowing this foal to grow up.

However, this event did not need to define her; it didn’t need to control her life. She didn’t need to keep beating herself up over it. She couldn’t change it; there was nothing to be gained by continuing to mope.

She offered the newly named Felicity a smile. She was glad that the changeling pretending to be a pony had stumbled onto her doorstep.

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

'Summer Lightfall!'

Summer's eyes popped open as the hoarse whisper filled the air in her cell. She had been a light sleeper since her imprisonment; the need to wake at a moment's notice had saved her life plenty of times in the past.

'Summer Lightfall!' the voice came again. She sat up and looked towards the ceiling, half expecting it to be TANTALUS that was calling to her. It was not, standing in the doorway to her cell was none other than Sprocket himself.

'Sprocket? What are you doing here?' Summer asked.

'It's time! Come on! Karkov is gathering us!' Sprocket said, grinning madly.

Excellent, Summer had been looking forward to meeting Viktor Karkov, she had heard so much about him, yet so little of him was seen. He did work in the Steel Mill, but in the day and a half that Summer had been at Nagadan, she had not seen him once. This had apparently been by design; Viktor Karkov had been a major in the Præsidium's Second Shock Army who had been imprisoned here for killing his commanding officer. That made him something of a 'high profile' prisoner, they had to be careful, if someone was noticed speaking to Karkov, then the guards would know something was up.

Sprocket had been made prisoner-foreman of the Steel Mill, a position that he had held for longer than anyone could remember, including himself, as such, he was the only one who could speak to Viktor Karkov without arousing the suspicions of the guards. The planning of the breakout had all been Karkov's ideas, passed to the rest of the conspirators through Sprocket. Summer wondered for a moment, who these others were, she figured that she would be meeting them as well.

Summer trotted over to her cell door, only to find that it was unlocked, in fact, the lock on her door was broken. It must have been like this since she had got here. Sprocket pushed open Summer's cell door and waved for her to follow. 'The locks go bad on these doors all the time when it gets cold, they don't bother to fix them; they figure what is the point? Where would we go after all?' Sprocket said with a grin. 'Time to show them their folly!'

…

She took a deep breath, it was time. Sjaak De Vries patted her on the back to reassure her. After all, it wasn’t like this was the first time that she’d gone out onto a stage and spoken in front of a crowd when it was, quite frankly, the absolute last thing that she wanted to do.

Sparky Starlight trotted out onto the stage, and stepped up to the podium, her notes of what she’d be speaking about sat written on two sheets of holopaper in front of her. She took a deep breath and used her telekinesis to pull the microphone down to her mouth so that she could speak.

‘I just wanted to thank you all for coming out today, it’s a pleasure to have the members of the press here with us for this historic announcement’, Sparky said, feeling like she was going to vomit. She hated talking in front of crowds with a passion, but as administrator of Station BRIGHTHOUSE at the Whitetail Industrial Complex, this was all part of the job. There was a glass of water that had been left on the podium for her, she took a drink from it and smiled at the crowd.

‘Six months ago, during the Discovery One’s trek to the gas giant Tartarus, Mission Commander Ice Wind reported to FutureTec controllers that there was a large metallic asteroid that they’d just passed. Preliminary surveys done by the Discovery One crew determined that the asteroid, dubbed X57 was rich in heavy metals, the most important being osmium, and iridium, which, as you are all aware these two elements are highly sought after for their use in armour plating for the ships of our navy. Alongside the metal deposits, X57 is equally rich in helium-3, which is, of course, an essential part of the fuel cycle of our fusion reactors. The Discovery One command crew informed us that the forty five kilometre long asteroid was on a slow course towards Belleau, and calculations done by the ship’s on board Hannibal-class Virtual Intelligence informed us that it would be passing between Belleau and our moon, Selena, at the end of February of next year. It is my pleasure to announce to you today, that FutureTec intends to bring this asteroid, X57, into orbit around Belleau, where it will be strip mined for resources. Estimates of the He-3 count on the asteroid project that it has the capability to power every fusion reactor on Belleau for the next one hundred and fifty years, this is not an opportunity that can be passed up’, Sparky finished before taking another drink of water.

She let everything that she just said sink in to the reporters before her for a moment before speaking again. ‘We have time for a few questions…’ she said before every reporter in the crowd’s forelegs had shot up.

‘Miss Starlight! Have you considered the dangers of bringing such an asteroid into orbit?’ one of the reporters shouted out.

‘Oh of course we have, bringing a forty five kilometre long asteroid into orbit is no easy task, there was a lot of complex math that was involved in calculating the asteroid’s trajectory, one wrong calculation, and the asteroid either hits our world and destroys all life, or it hits Selena and causes a tidal shift which will kill us all. Neither of those prospects is very appealing. We’ve gone over the math nearly a hundred times, the absolute worst thing that could happen would be a slight rise in sea levels when X57 enters orbit, which we are projecting to be no higher than a centimetre at the absolute highest’, Sparky said confidently. ‘Next question…’

…

Sparky pushed open the door to the washroom and dashed into the first open toilet, promptly vomiting into it. Oh she hated talking in front of large crowds. Hated it! She was lucky that she’d been able to hold it back this long! She let out a deep sigh before rising to her hooves and flushing the vomit down the toilet. She went back over to the sink and cleaned herself up a bit before leaving the washroom entirely.

To her surprise, Dizzy Doo was standing outside, leaning against the wall; she looked up and Sparky and smiled. ‘Hey!’ she said as she trotted up to her, planting a kiss on her lips.

Sparky wrapped her forelegs around Dizzy and kissed her back. ‘Hey’, Sparky said softly as she held her mare friend tightly.

‘You did great!’ Dizzy said brightly as the two of them released their embrace.

Sparky merely let out a sigh. She’d been incredibly nervous during the entire thing. Sparky Starlight had always been a shy mare while growing up. Before a couple of months ago, she’d grown up with only two friends in her life, Dula Heartstrings, who was currently the Chief of Navy for the Equestrian Republican Navy, and ten years her senior, and the recently deceased Shortfuse Skydancer. She’d met Dizzy Doo a few months ago after a bit of soul searching had practically dumped her on her doorstep. The two had become fast friends since then, and had now grown to something more.

Dizzy Doo was a nephite, a member of a religious group from out west, thanks to that, the two had radically differing cultures that sometimes clashed with each other, but thanks to Sparky’s kind and caring personality, the two of them ended up being perfect for each other. The biggest difference between the two cultures was their views on sexuality, the general social liberalism held by the majority of citizens of the Equestrian Republic didn’t see much of a problem with casual sex, so long as safe measures were taken to prevent accidental pregnancy, and even in the modern era, the problem of accidental pregnancy was practically non-existent thanks to improvements in medical science. Of course, the homosexual relationship that the two of them shared would have made that a non-issue entirely.

The Nephites, on the other hoof saw it differently; their spiritual beliefs saw sex to be something special to be shared only between those who had made a lifelong commitment to each other, marriage, something that was becoming rarer and rarer in the rest of the Republic. Sparky respected Dizzy’s beliefs on the subject, but still took every opportunity to make teasing sexual advances on her, which would cause her mare friend to turn an adorable shade of pink every time.

‘Thanks’, Sparky said with a smile. ‘It went better than I thought it was going to… I’ve been working on this for a while’.

‘Yes you have…’ Dizzy said, a coy smile forming on her face as she leaned forward and whispered into Sparky’s ear. ‘And you deserve something… special’.

Sparky turned bright red, Dizzy wasn’t seriously suggesting… Sparky stopped herself; she saw what Dizzy was doing. ‘That’s… that’s not funny’, she said.

Dizzy couldn’t help but giggle. ‘It’s a little funny’, Dizzy added with a widening grin. ‘Anyway, I’m thinking ice cream, sound good? I do love me some vanilla!’

Sparky sighed and nodded her head. ‘Twit’, she muttered under her breath as the two left the Whitetail Industrial Complex and headed out for ice cream.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Summer Lightfall glanced around as she and Sprocket made their way into the antechamber of the cell block. She walked along the concrete floors with a light step as a small group began to gather.

That was when she saw him. The enigmatic Viktor Karkov. He was a grey coated pony, a little larger than the average earth pony, just like all Cossacks, who were all pretty homogenous. The average was a light grey coat with a slightly darker grey mane. Karkov was no exception, though he did sport a scraggly looking beard. It was his eyes that caught Summer’s attention. A deep, piercing blue, that had just enough insanity in them to let the observer know that his plans had just a chance in hell of working.

That seemed to be enough, a crowd of sixteen had joined them in the antechamber, all of them knowing they had but one chance for freedom.

Karkov smiled as Sprocket and Summer joined them, and spoke softly, and in a calm voice. Odd, considering they were all about to march to their deaths.

‘And we have now, our secret weapon,’ he said, pointing to Summer as she walked in. ‘We have been waiting for you for a long time, Summer Lightfall.’

Summer blinked, looking oddly at him. ‘Me?’ she asked. ‘Why?’

Karkov merely chuckled at her. ‘Your reputation precedes you, Summer Lightfall, the guards spoke of your arrival. You radiate hatred and malice. The perfect soldier for our liberation!’ he called out.

‘BRING FORWARD THE HORNED KNIGHT!’ the other prisoners called out.

Karkov grinned and waved for the group to follow, as they moved into the next room. Several more workers from the steel mill joined them. She looked over and spotted the cybernetic minotaur join them. He grunted at her as he looked down. He towered over the rest of the group, and was carrying a shovel over his shoulder.

‘Months of careful planning, Miss Lightfall, we have awaited your arrival, now that you are here, it is time to put our plan into action.’

Karkov and the group stopped before a pair of double doors. ‘Never lose faith, my friends! We will not falter! We will be free! Or dye trying!’ he called out and kicked open the doors.

Behind the doors were two guards who were caught by surprise by the group. The minotaur stepped forward, and swung the shovel, knocking the guards square in the head, and sending blood flying as they fell to the ground in a heep.

‘URAH!’ The prisoners shouted with glee as they all ran through the door. Two more guards came, responding the commotion, pulling weapons on them.

Foal’s play. The guards were wearing Storm Harnesses with pistol arms raising up. Summer enveloped their pistols in her telekinesis, yanking them free from the harness, and turning them on their former owners, firing a round from each into their heads. She grinned as she took her new dual pistols. It was time to put them to work. She stepped forward, leading the group as they left the antechamber, and into the main cell block. Several more guards noticed the growing uprising, which had swelled to nearly thirty inmates. Summer put shots down range to them. Downing them effortlessly.

Oh how Summer was enjoying this. They weren’t Woolsey, but they’d do, for now.

Karkov turned to the cyborg minotaur and grinned. ‘Iron Will, go to the guard station break open the arms locker there!’ he ordered.

The minotaur nodded, taking up the shovel like a sword as more guards formed up to stop them. ‘When somebody tries to block! Show them that you ROCK!’ he cried out, charging them down at breakneck speed.

One of the guards, who had enough sense panicked and ran, and hit the button for the alarm, which would put the entire prison on alert.

Summer turned her way towards the metal stair case leading up to the second row of cells. She had spotted the cell that would have been above hers. She felt the need to gloat to TANTALUS about how well that things were going. Those part of the uprising were swarming around. Breaking open as many cells as they could. Summer reached the top and looked in the cell and stopped. She was surprised. Standing before her was not what she was expecting. A tall, slenderly built reptile that stood on two legs looked back at her. It was purple in colour, with green spines running down its head and back. The creature looked back at her with emerald green catlike eyes. He folded his arms over his chest, and tapped impatiently with his foot.

‘TANTALUS?’ she asked.

He nodded his head.

‘You’re not what I was expecting,’ she admitted.

‘For the record? This is a damned fool idea, we’re all going to get killed,’ TANTALUS said simply. ‘Step back,’ he commanded.

Summer nodded her head, and moved back away from the cell door. TANTALUS took in a deep breath and spat out flames of green dragon fire, melting the lock on the door, causing it to swing open and walked out. He looked at her and shook his head, and held out his hand.

Summer nodded, and handed him one of the pistols. Which the dragon looked over closely. ‘I’d give anything to have my old revolver back, but it’ll do,’ he admitted and turned and walked down the stairs with her.

‘How long have you been here TANTALUS?’ Summer asked.

‘Since before the Great Patriotic War,’ he admitted. ‘I’ll tell you about it later, assuming we don’t get killed in the process of escaping.’

Summer nodded, and rejoined Viktor Karkov and Sprocket. The two were watching in abject glee. More guards had showed up, and the other prisoners, had engaged them in hoof-to-hoof combat.

Karkov took in a deep breath. ‘Forward! Comrades! Take the fight to these dogs!’

‘ASCEND FROM DARKNESS!’ the prisoners called out in an echoing chorus as they beat down the unprepared guards.

They made their way over towards a service elevator. Iron Will had returned holding a KV-74 rifle in one hand, and grabbed the door with the other, and pulled it open to allow them to board.

Karkov nodded to him and boarded the lift with the group. He looked over to TANTALUS and smiled. ‘You are the one they call TANTALUS?’ he asked.

‘Don’t ask me questions you already know the answer to, Karkov,’ TANTALUS said disdainfully. ‘It’s a waste of time.’

Karkov chuckled, and nodded his head. ‘Very well, Executor TANTALUS, I know who you are indeed. My father was the one who took you prisoner when you tried to sneak into our lands.’

TANTALUS rolled his eyes. ‘I imagine he was rewarded for it,’ he said sarcastically.

‘Da, he was promoted to Polkóvnik after the affair,’ Karkov said with a nod as the service lift reached the top floor.

The lift opened, and they were outside in the cold November air. The guards were waiting for them. One of the guards in the lower level must have been able to get off a report, as three guard towers that surrounded the prison’s courtyard opened fire on them. Overlapping fields of heavy machine gun fire fell on them like a hot knife through butter, and many of the inmates fell in the first few seconds.

‘I told you!’ TANTALUS cried out as the group began to scatter. Summer, Iron Will, and TANTALUS dove behind one large rail car filled to the brim with coal that was on a track leading up from the mines. Sprocket and Karkov took to another one as more prisoners poured out from other buildings in the complex.

Summer glanced around her cover. They were safe for the moment, but they’d have to get moving soon. Summer looked to Iron Will, who nodded his head, understanding immediately what she had in mind. The cyborg minotaur through his weight against the rail car, pushing it along the track, allowing them to advance with relative safety.

Karkov saw what they were doing, grinning at Summer’s ingenuity, and waved over more prisoners as they began to push the car they were using for cover ahead.

These tracks lead to the complex’s rail depot. If they could commandeer an engine, they would be free. The actual town of Nagadan was a mere fifteen kilometres from the detention facility, directly on the Occidental Ocean. If they could reach the port, they could slip aboard a ship bound for the Twin Gryphon Kingdoms. Afterwards, it would be a simple issue of smuggling herself back into Equestria through the Dominion of Kanata, of which the Republic enjoyed few, if any, boarder checks.

That was something to wait on though. They had to fight through these fools first.

The guards weren’t really anything to worry about. They were members of the Internal Troops under the broad auspice of the NKVD, the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs. Though the NKVD was primarily known for its intelligence service, it also had jurisdiction over the Militsiya, the civil police, and the fire service, as well as the Internal Troops, responsible for dealing with security matters, and guarding facilities like Nagadan.

Basically, they took anyone who wasn’t suitable to serve properly in the Red Army. Summer figured that they could take them without too much trouble. She, however, did start to figure out TANTALUS’ concern. If this uprising got much bigger, there was a good possibility that the Præsidium could deploy Spetznaz groups against them. If they didn’t escape soon, and they showed up—

Iron Will had pushed the rail car just under one of the guard towers. She stopped, an idea forming in her head and she slipped out from behind the rail car, pointing her pistol forward and quietly climbed the staircase to the top of the tower, peering up to watch as two guards worked the machine gun.

Typical. They’d not even bothered to watch the stair case for someone doing exactly what she was about to do. She lowered her pistol and placed two shots in the back of each of their heads.

‘Fools,’ she muttered as she grabbed an ammo belt for the machine gun, draping it over herself, and enveloped the HMG in her telekinesis, ripping it from its tripod mount with a grin. ‘Let’s see how you like this you fuckers.’

She re-joined the group. Iron Will nodded his head in approval as they got to the end of the track in the courtyard. Summer turned the HMG down range, up to the second guard tower, and opened up on it. Firing off twenty rounds or so to knock out the gun emplacement. She turned to the third tower, and did much the same, though the guards having seen what had just happened to their comrades, abandoned their post in panic. Knocking their gun off the tripod mount and allowing it to fall onto the ground.

Iron Will grinned, dashing over to it and picking it up. ‘What a generous gift you give to Iron Will!’ he cried out at the fleeing guards, before putting a few rounds down range after them.

Resistance to them was faltering. With Iron Will and Summer both covering the prisoners with heavy machine gun fire, the guards broke, and ran for their lives as they reached the rail depot.

The prisoners had gathered some explosives from the armoury, laying them at the walls and blasting several holes in the concrete walls of the prison complex. Now thousands of prisoners as part of the uprising poured through them, letting collected political prisoners, murderers, and all sorts of violent criminals loose.

‘They will swarm like locusts over the countryside,’ Karkov said. He had other plans for escape as he, Sprocket, Summer, TANTALUS and Iron Will boarded a train engine. They would ride the rails to their freedom before Spetznaz could be deployed after them.

Sprocket let out a sigh of relief. ‘I never thought I would be free again,’ he admitted.

‘We are not free yet, my friend,’ Karkov said. ‘This was but step one.’

TANTALUS nodded his head in agreement. ‘The NKVD is sure to be setting up road blocks and check points at all the major roads and rail stops away from here. Most of the prisoners who escaped today will be hunted down and killed.’

Karkov nodded his head. ‘Most, but not all, such is the heavy price for freedom. It is paid for in blood.’

The engine began to move forward, slowly at first. Summer sighed, and looked to TANTALUS, studying him for a few moments. ‘Who are you? Really?’

TANTALUS sighed. ‘I’d prefer you stick to using TANTALUS—but if you really must know, my name is Spike.’

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Hopely decided to take another personal day tomorrow. The year was almost over anyway, and she was required by law to use all of them that were provided to her. The idea was, being a member of the police force was a stressful job, and having enough rest and relaxation was essential to a healthy life.

Well, Hopely had never exactly had one of those, but, perhaps now was the time to start. Felicity seemed to be rubbing off on her.

They’d gone back to Hopely’s apartment, and Felicity had immediately locked herself in the washroom. Hopely raised an eyebrow as she looked at the door, hearing the lock click, but she merely shrugged it off, she sat down, and turned on the television.

They were showing the election results. Hopely had completely forgotten about them. She leaned in close as a map of Equestria. She watched as constituencies slowly began to fill in. Some yellow, some blue, very few green, and the occasional few were in other colours. Small parties that in the grand scheme of things didn’t matter.

Hopely sighed, as the map filled in, it became obvious. Most of the constituencies were yellow. The Pony’s Progressive Party had won the election, and would be forming a government in the coming days. Not that it mattered, Parliament only held the illusion of power. Equestria belonged to the secretive cabal that was the Future Technologies Corporation. So the results of the Election mattered very little.

Hopely sighed, she watched Madeline Wolsey took to the stage to give a speech, and turned the television off. She wasn’t interested in hearing another politician with no real power to do anything flap their gums.

Hopely rose to her hooves and got up to use the washroom, only to find the door locked. She’d forgotten.

She banged on the door. ‘Felicity!? What are you doing in there?’ she asked.

The door opened and the cotton candy pink pony strode out. Hopely nearly jumped in surprise. She’d straightened her main and tail into short, neat little curls, it made her almost unrecognisable.

‘Well—that’s different,’ Hopely admitted.

Felicity smiled and nodded. ‘The old Pinkie Pie’s mane poofed up like that regardless of what she tried to do with it. It appears I don’t have the same problem.’

Hopely smiled back. ‘It looks good on you, a little strange, but I just have to get used to it,’ she said simply.

Felicity smiled brightly at her and threw her forelegs around her friend in a tight hug.

‘F-Felicity—’

‘Oh! Sorry Hopely, I forget my own strength sometimes,’ she said as she relaxed her grip.

Hopely took a deep breath, but kept smiling at her.

…

‘Summer! We have a problem!’ TANTALUS called out.

Summer’s eyes snapped open and she looked up. The dragon was pointing out the window. The road opposite the railroad tracks was swarming with trucks and motorcycles.

‘Not Spetznaz?’ Summer asked.

TANTALUS shook his head. ‘They seem to be the local garrison of motorised infantry,’ he said, glancing out the window at them again.

Summer smirked. ‘Shouldn’t be an issue then. I’ll handle them,’ she said, her voice filled with malevolence as she grabbed the HMG and climbed gingerly out the back window onto the rear platform of the engine. She set the gun on the railing. She had very few rounds of the original belt left, but she let them fly. One of them, a tracer, zoomed ahead of one of the motorcycles. Its pilot spotted the round and overcorrected in an attempt to dodge the gunfire. The bike lost its grip on the road and fell, sending him flying and slipping under one of the trucks. The driver of which, panicked, and in an attempt to keep steady, collided with another truck. More of the trucks slammed into them as the entire group became involved in a multivehicle pile-up.

Summer couldn’t help but let out a snicker. ‘Chumps,’ she said as she crawled back inside. ‘I dealt with them!’ she called out.

‘Not quite,’ Karkov said and motioned for Summer to take a pair of binocular goggles that were lying on the floor. Summer picked them up and slipped them on.

‘What am I looking for?’ she asked.

‘Directly ahead, on the tracks,’ Karkov said.

Summer looked forward, dialling in the goggles to catch a glimpse of what it was that Karkov was referring to. She saw two Cossacks standing on the tracks. Both wearing cold weather jackets. One of them wore his main slicked back, and almost seemed to have glowing green eyes. The other wore his mane spiked up, with eyes of amber. They looked entirely unconcerned that a train was barrelling towards them at breakneck speed.

Summer frowned. ‘It’s just two guys… standing on the tracks,’ she said, and paused. She looked closer, clicking forward to another level of magnification. It was at that point she realised, she recognised them.

She found herself filled with rage. ‘Yuri Tasarov, and Oleg Petrenko,’ she said with a growl. She could hardly believe it. They’d murdered Cereal Wheatly in cold blood, and taken her prisoner during the Emergency, and there they were, just standing there. ‘Increase speed,’ she ordered.

Iron Will nodded his head and adjusted the throttle, pushing it all the way forward as the diesel engine increased speed. Yuri and Oleg were undaunted, standing their ground until the last possible moment, when both of them jumped, and grabbed a hold of the engine’s railing, pulling themselves up onto the engine and into the controller’s compartment.

Summer pulled her pistol on Yuri. Yuri smiled at her and gave a quiet chuckle, before licking his hoof and using it to push a hair in his mane back that had fallen out of place. ‘Come now, Miss Lightfall. You did not really think we were just going to let you go?’

‘Honestly?’ Summer said. ‘I was kind of hoping you would.’

Yuri smirked. ‘I am afraid not.’

Summer was not about to put up with his nonsense. He might be able to intimidate others with his demeanour, but Summer was a mare with nothing to lose. ‘You’ll take me back over my dead body.’

‘If that is your wish,’ he said with a nod, and looked up to Iron Will, Sprocket, to TANTALUS, and then to Karkov. ‘All I want is her, what happens to the rest of you is no concern of mine.’

The others stood silent before Yuri looked to Oleg. ‘Take her.’

Summer leapt into action first, diving at Oleg, recalling the words of Drill Sergeant Gunmetal during her basic training.

‘It is important to remember! You are not Schäferhund! You do not have sharp teeth! You are not a gryphon; you do not have sharp talons! You are not a kangaroo! You cannot balance on your tail and kick your enemy in the face, and possibly claw their eyes out while doing it! Which means, that if you are forced to fight up close and personal, you are at a disadvantage, which is why, if you are forced to fight in close quarters, you must be the one to initiate combat!’

Fortunately, she seemed to have caught Oleg off guard as she bashed his face in with her hoof, landing a powerful blow and knocking him to the floor. She had initiated, and she now had the upper hoof.

Oleg countered, responding with driving his own hoof into her stomach, and throwing her off him. Summer clattered to the floor and brought herself to her hooves. Oleg did the same, blood trickling from his nose, he gently dabbed at it with his hoof, looking down at the blood and frowning, before drawing a knife from his sleeve.

Summer glanced over to Karkov, and TANTALUS, Iron Will even, looking for help, but there was something odd about them. They almost seemed to be in a hypnotic trance, and she glanced over at Yuri, who merely stood there with that grin on his face. ‘They are in no condition to help you. Oleg, I grow tired of this. End it.’

Oleg nodded and lunged at her with the knife. Summer bared her teeth and lowered her head slightly, Oleg’s eyes suddenly went wide as Summer pulled under his chin, her horn impaling him in his throat. Oleg stumbled back, blood oozing from his neck, he grabbed at it as he choked on his own blood, before falling to the floor, gasping for air.

Yuri’s grin turned to a frown.

Summer felt Oleg’s blood run down her horn, dripping onto her face. ‘You’re going to have to do your own dirty work from now on. You want me? Come and get me,’ she said, a look of pure insanity formed over her face as her lips gave way to a malevolent sneer.

Yuri glanced down at Oleg, who’s movements began to slow, he let out a gurgle, before he fell still, and then back up to Summer. ‘I think not—Not today,’ he said, slowly backing out of the cabin. He looked back to Summer and offered her a smile. ‘Until we meet again, Summer Lightfall,’ he said before jumping off, hitting the ground with a roll and scampering off.

Summer scowled and looked down at Oleg’s body, she grabbed his forelegs in her telekinesis and dragged him outside too, tossing his body off the platform. ‘I hope you get eaten by bears.’

She looked back to the other members of her party, all of whom were coming out of their trance like state.

‘What happened?’ TANTALUS asked, clutching his head.

‘Yuri Tasarov and Oleg Petrenko happened,’ Summer said with a scowl. ‘Yuri is more dangerous than I thought, he seemed to be able to put you all in a trance just by looking at you.’

TANTALUS nodded and looked up at Summer’s horn, gasping with surprise. ‘Is that blood?’

‘Oleg’s,’ she said with a nod. ‘Fortunately, Oleg Petrenko will not bother anyone anymore. I saw to that.’

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Kelso needed coffee.

That was all it took of course. She locked her computer terminal and got up, trotting over to the break room. She hoped that one of those bastards from the Criminal Investigation Department hadn’t drank it all.

She stepped into the breakroom, she watched as a unicorn mare clad in detective’s coat stood before the coffee maker, mumbling under her breath. ‘I swear, I’m the only one who ever makes coffee in this damn office,’ she grumbled.

Kelso studied the mare for a few moments. Cobalt blue coat, with cyclamen mane, done up with long, elegant curls. Her electric blue eyes had bags under them, and she looked to be barely able to keep herself standing, Kelso frowned and walked up beside her. The mare was a head taller than she was, and seemed to be in a sort of trance as she blinked at the coffee maker.

‘With respect sir? You look like hammered shit,’ Kelso commented.

The mare couldn’t help but smirk and looked over at her. ‘Yeah, Ponyville will do that to you. Unlike you Soggies, CID actually has to work for a living.’

Kelso chuckled back at her, playing it off that she actually did plenty of work, almost all of it unofficial these days though. Detective Inspector Yuco Stark was a member of one of the CID’s most effective Murder Investigation Teams, along with her partner, Detective Sergeant Ymiria Yaxley, Stark had the highest closure rate of any of the Ponyville Police Service’s detectives.

‘Late night?’ Kelso asked, making pleasant conversation.

‘Early morning,’ Stark admitted. ‘Got called to the scene of a murder. Dark alley, no witnesses. CCTV camera across the street had a full holostate and didn’t record the murder. Probably going to be one of the endless cases that get tossed in the unsolved box for forever.’

Kelso frowned. That was simply the fact of life, little more than half of murders remained unsolved, and while Stark and Yaxley were able to close sixty per cent. of their cases, it still left hundreds unsolved. That was just how things were. True, the unsolved rate had dropped significantly in the last one hundred years, from 99 per cent. in Year 5 of the Republic, to 51 per cent. in year 100. An improvement, but tell that to the families.

‘And then there’s this case, missing filly from Fillydelphia—’ Stark added. CID was responsible for coordinating with other departments on cases such as these, usually runaways from outside PPS jurisdiction who get reported as being seen in town. ’13-year-old filly vanishes without a trace after a class visit to the FutureTec Whitetail Industrial Complex, to see the space control centre I believe—’

Red alerts went off in Kelso’s head. Young filly? Vanishes after visiting FutureTec? Stark might not haved realised it, but she’d made quite an impact on a casual remark.

‘That’s horrible! Those poor parents must be so worried,’ Kelso said. This was her way in.

Stark nodded her head. ‘Yeah, doubt anything will ever come of it though. Filly was a troubled girl from a broken home. Had a record for juvenile delinquency six metres long. My guess? She ran off when she got a chance when nobody was looking, probably doesn’t want to be found.’

‘Maybe—’ Kelso said, her voice trailing off. ‘Would you mind terribly if I looked into it?’

Stark raised an eyebrow. ‘I mean, if you want—’

‘After all, as you said, us Soggies have nothing to do. One case off your workload can’t hurt right?’ she asked.

Stark smirked and nodded her head. ‘I suppose so, alright Kelso, I’ll shoot the files over to your desk if you really want them.’

…

Kelso had chugged three cups of coffee. She was back at her desk, looking over the files that DI Stark had sent over.

She’d been right to be concerned.

Aurora Lightfall, born March 3rd, Year 87 of the Republic, aged 13. The file on this filly had been quite extensive. The youngest daughter of journalist Australius Lightfall, and his wife, Aurelan. Older sister, Summer, declared MIA in 95 YOR during service in the Fillydelphia Regiment. She'd been an honour student at the Cheerilee Academy. Verifiable intelligence quotient of 210.

Kelso frowned, it got worse. After her sister going missing in 95, her grades declined, and she’d been arrested several times for petty theft, vandalism, assault. This poor filly, her life had completely fallen apart after her sister went missing. She’d been in and out of therapy, and reports indicated that she had not spoken a word to her parents in nearly three years.

Worse still, she’d run away from home multiple times. This was probably the reason that DI Stark had been so quick to dismiss the case. There was only so much you could do for someone intent on running away.

Kelso had a nagging feeling in the back of her mind, and turned to her computer terminal and tapped at the holographic keyboard.

‘Station BRIGHTHOUSE— Oh hello Kelso,’ said the voice of Sparky Starlight, as a glowing orange hologram of her head appeared on the desk before her.

Kelso smiled. ‘Hey Spark, how’s tricks?’

‘Busy as always, you heard the announcement I take it? About X57?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I’ll say this about FutureTec, certainly no lack of ambition. You’ll have to tell me all about it sometime—I’m calling on business. I understand you had a class of students visit recently.’

Sparky nodded her head. ‘Indeed, a class of eighth years from the Cheerilee Academy in Fillydelphia, why?’ she asked.

Kelso frowned, ‘Are you aware that one of the students went missing shortly after the visit? An extraordinarily brilliant student?’

Sparky was taken aback. ‘No… I did not. If it happened off our grounds, security wouldn’t have taken an interest.’

‘Unless they did,’ Kelso said.

Sparky immediately picked up on what Kelso was implying. She then smiled warmly. ‘I should doubt that very much. I will check with security to see if they have anything that could help you.’

Kelso raised an eyebrow.

‘Also, I’m most certainly glad to accept your invitation to dinner. It’ll be nice to get everyone together again, see you at seven!’ she said and shut off the line.

Kelso blinked. She realised that someone must have come into the room, forcing Sparky to speak in code. She dropped the holographic display of her PIP over her eyes, flashing them back and forth through the menu to send a text message to Dizzy, Viola, and Hopely, explaining the situation, and for them to all meet up for pizza at 1900.

Hopely was the first to respond. Asking if she should bring Felicity.

Kelso paused as she read the message. ‘Who the fuck is Felicity?’

…

They’d met for dinner at Port Pizza.

It had proved to be a spot where they could talk freely. It was a foal’s hang out, primarily, so they were unlikely to be overheard by anyone who bore them ill will. Which had started to seem like more and more people were joining that list every day.

Everyone had been surprised at Pinkie Pie-Turned-Felicity, but they all agreed in their own time, that the new look really worked for her.

They took a table in a far corner of the restaurant for themselves, and began to hammer out a plan of action.

‘If you ask me, I think it’s pretty obvious what happened. Someone at Station BRIGHTHOUSE recognised how bright Aurora Lightfall was, and had FutureTec security do a snatch and grab on her when nobody was looking,’ Kelso theorised.

Sparky nodded her head. ‘The only question is, why though? Being smart is hardly a reason by itself.’

Kelso shrugged. ‘I’m more concerned that they have her, rather than the why of it.’

Hopely nodded in agreement. ‘We’ve all seen the nefarious things FutureTec will stoop to.’

Dizzy Doo nodded her head as well. ‘Where do they have her though?’ she asked.

Kelso frowned. ‘If I were to guess, Station SPECTRE. We might have been able to force our way in the last time with Pinkie Pie—er, Felicity,’ she said, looking over to the bubblegum pink pony who sat across from her, smiling brightly and chewing on a slice of cheese pizza. ‘It makes sense, it’s remote, easy to cut off from the outside. Doctor Fontaine is certain to have beefed up security since we were last there, though.’

They all nodded their head in agreement. They’d taken Felicity to Station SPECTRE at the Ghastly Gorge Industrial Complex a few weeks ago to get answers as to where she’d come from. The Station’s administrator, Doctor Belle Fontaine had attempted to order FutureTec security to murder them to cover up the secretive research into artificial intelligence and genetic memory they were doing there. They’d obviously failed of course, thanks mostly to the martial prowess of Dizzy.

‘You don’t think they intend to turn her into an AI, do you?’ Dizzy asked.

Kelso frowned. That did make sense. The filly was so unbelievably brilliant. Such natural intelligence was certain to roll over into the realm of useful for Doctor Fontaine and her crew.

‘Maybe,’ Kelso said. ‘We need to get in there. But how?’

Felicity shovelled another piece of pizza into her mouth. How the changeling clone could manage to eat so much people food was beyond them. ‘Ohh, I fink I might hab an ider on dat un,’ she mumbled with her mouth full of food.

She lifted up her left foreleg, revealing the MIP on it. This particular Micro Information Processor had belonged to Doctor Fontaine. They’d taken it during their first trip to Station SPECTRE. Felicity swallowed her food and smiled. ‘Most of Doctor Fontaine’s files and security credentials are locked out now, but there’s a few that aren’t encrypted. There’s a pretty detailed schemantic of the complex that's not locked out. It shows an underwater entrance into the complex that’s used by submarines for secret deliveries. It’s never guarded. So we just have to get us a submarine, and we can sail right in!’ she said with a bright smile.

That of course, left one small issue. Where the hell where they going to get a submarine?

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

It turned out, finding a submarine had been the least of their worries. Downtown Ponyville was surrounded by two rivers, the Splendid River which separated downtown from the suburb of Freetown on the west side, and the Whitewater Rush, which served as the divider for Whitetail on the east.

Criminals weren’t very smart, fortunately. Oh, they’d had a brilliant plan alright, a drugs smuggling ring had tried to sneak several kilos of crash into Ponyville via submarine. They had failed to do their homework, and had picked the Splendid River as their avenue of approach, not discovering until it was far too late that the Splendid was the shallower of the two, and passing downtown, the river level dropped to only being two metres deep.

The smuggler’s submarine had run aground and they’d abandoned it and their cargo. Drugs smuggling fell under the purview of the Serious and Organised Crime Group. Kelso and Viola had gone to take possession of it, knowing immediately how fortunate they’d been.

‘It almost seems too convenient,’ Viola commented as the car drove; navigating itself to the scene, turning onto the motorway and glancing over to her left, to Kelso sitting in the passenger seat; her eyes buried in the holographic display of her PIP. ‘Not three days ago, we determined we needed a submarine, and one just pops into existence?’

‘I agree,’ Kelso said with a nod as she closed the hologram over her eyes and looked over. ‘Trap?’

‘Trap,’ Viola said with a nod. ‘Fontaine must have someone tailing us.’

Kelso nodded again. ‘Well, on the plus side, since we know it’s a trap, we can’t get caught in it.’

Viola had nothing to say to that.

Kelso looked out the window as they drove along the busy motorway. She glanced up as she spotted two police hovercraft floating above them. The flying saucer shaped aircraft buzzed over to support them on three turbofan engines mounted on the underside. Kelso had been inside one once, they were particularly advanced craft. Essentially, they were two cast sheets of stainless steel welded together on the outside. On the inside, they were packed to the gills with the most advanced tracking technology, complete with a negative feedback control system,and a virtual reality holographic display to give them a real time view of the outside of the craft, allowing a pegasus pilot to fly it as if they were flying in open air under their own power.

Flying is neat. I should have been a pegasus, she thought to herself.

The car came to a stop at the edge of the river. Kelso glanced out the window, looking at the abandoned submarine. It was a small one, no surprise there, only about ten metres long, and three wide. It was sure to be a cramped little thing inside, but it would have to do. Kelso stepped out of the car, and flashed up the display of her PIP over her eyes. She looked up at one of the hovercraft floating above them.

‘What do you think Kilo-2-3? Think you’ll be able to get it with your tractor beam?’ Kelso asked.

She heard a snort over the communication channel. ’Honey, I could pick you up in my tractor beam and carry you around. This thing is going to be no trouble at all,’ the voice of the hovercraft’s pilot; an older mare, responded.

Kelso blushed and nodded her head, she looked over as a flatbed lorry pulled up, its backup alarm chiming as it moved perpendicular to the river.

Kilo-2-3 slowly tilted forward, coming to a halt over the submarine, as a bright blue flash of light enveloped the smaller craft. The vehicle began to move upwards as the hovercraft pulled it from the water. The craft’s pilot gently manipulated the submarine in the tractor beam, lining it up with the flatbed lorry, and placed it down with a gentle thump.

‘Thanks for the assist, Kilo-2-3, we should be good from here,’ Kelso said with a smile.

‘Anytime, Detective Sergeant, always happy to help out!’ the pilot said as the hovercraft banked and flew off back towards headquarters.

Viola walked around to the driver’s side of the lorry. ‘Take this thing to the impound lot. We’ll be by to have a look over it later.’

‘Of course Detective,’ the driver said with a nod as they pulled away.

Kelso frowned and looked to Viola as the lorry drove off. ‘So, is the submarine itself the trap? Or what we’ll find when we drive it into Station SPECTRE?’ she asked.

‘Knowing FutureTec? Probably both,’ Viola commented.

…

Sparky sat at the kitchen counter; slumped over, idly playing with an old sixpence coin from before the Republic switched over to decimalised currency. FutureTec was starting to weigh on her. She and her friends had been through so much lately she was starting to get demoralised. She’d rationalised her continued employment with the company in order to have someone on the inside to keep an eye on things.

So far, it wasn’t working. FutureTec security had foalnapped a young filly under her nose while said filly was visiting her installation. She was supposed to be in charge at Station BRIGHTHOUSE, but it was clear that someone else was calling the shots.

She wasn’t contributing to their cause one bit, her work load as administrator was quite heavy. It was almost as if the secretive cabal of FutureTec’s dirty tricks squad had done this purposefully. Dumping workload onto her to keep her from being effective.

That was a sobering thought.

She frowned and got up from her seat, and put on her jacket. ‘Grandma!’ she called out.

Her grandmother trotted in, the older than dirt pale yellow unicorn mare brushed her fading two toned mane out of her ruby red eyes and cocked her head side long at her. ‘What’s up Spark?’ she asked.

‘I’m going out for a bit, I probably won’t be back for dinner,’ Sparky said.

Vinyl ‘Grandma V’ Scratch, merely nodded her head. ‘Alright kiddo, is everything okay?’ she asked.

‘Not really, just need to clear my head for a bit.’

Grandma V nodded again. ‘Alright, take it easy out there, okay?’ she asked.

Sparky nodded before trotting out the front door and over to her Cord Perfecto SUV. She climbed into the driver’s seat, and engaged the autopilot, before leaning back in the seat and closing her eyes. She must have nodded off for a bit, because she found herself awaking twenty minutes later, having arrived at her destination.

She stepped out of the car and wandered into the Freetown cemetery. She combed the rows of tombstones aimlessly for a few minutes, debating with herself if it was even a good idea to be here right now. She finally came across the one she’d been looking for.

Shortfuse Skydancer
76-100
Lost, but never forgotten.

Sparky dropped to her knees. ‘Hey Shortfuse,’ she said quietly. Her feelings of loss for her dead friend coming into the forefront of her mind. It had only been a few months since her best friend had succumbed to her fatal injuries when the Cosmonaut Anatoliy Leninov crash landed during their return from the gas giant Tartarus.

She still had trouble accepting her friend’s fate. Tears ran from her eyes as she remembered what had happened. The last words she’d had with her friend came rushing back to her.

‘Hey Sparky? Do you think heaven is real?’ Shortfuse had asked.

Sparky closed her eyes, and found herself back in the smashed cockpit of the Leninov, looking on in abject horror as she relived the one experience in her life that left her the most helpless. Shortfuse sat in the pilot seat with a steel beam through her chest.

‘I hope so,’ she had said, in the quietest of whispers.

‘Well—if it is, when it’s your time, meet me at the bar,’ Shortfuse had said with a smile as she closed her eyes and her head went limp.

The memories were too painful for Sparky, she got to her hooves and bolted from the grave. She could never keep herself together when she visited. She hoped that Shortfuse would understand.

Sparky stopped to catch her breath under a tree. She rested a hoof against it, and panted softly. She wiped her eyes with her free foreleg. Why did she do this to herself? If Shortfuse was still alive, she’d tell her not to morn her, but to remember the good times.

She had trouble remembering the good times. That had been almost a life time ago.

Sparky suddenly jumped as she heard a twig snap. She glanced around, paranoia setting in. She wasn’t alone.

She looked up into the tree, and looking down at her was a navy blue earth pony mare, sporting a long, jet black mane, looking back at her with icy blue eyes. She wore a set of khaki coloured saddlebags on her flanks, and a set of green lensed goggles on her forehead. Sparky tried to place the mare for a few moments, before realising who she was looking at. ‘Siddley?’ she asked.

The mare looked back at her. ‘Lost, confused, feelings of worthlessness and regret hang over you like a black cloud. Sparkplug Starlight,’ she said in a deep, thoughtful voice.

Sparky grimaced at the use of her full name as Siddley hopped down. She’d met Siddley only once before, during their first trip to the Ghastly Gorge Industrial Complex; going by the nom de guerre ‘The Unknowable Mare,’ a telepath whose skills had been honed by imposed blindness. She'd become a co-belligerent in the fight against FutureTec. Secretly hating them for stealing her away from her family to train her as a Stalker.

Stalkers were pony telepaths trained to root out changelings. Before Siddley, the last known pony known to be a Stalker had lived fifty years ago. Telepaths were rare among unicorns, almost unheard of from Earth Ponies.

‘I am surprised to see you here,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think that you’d be allowed to wander.’

‘I would like to see them try and stop me,’ Siddley said with an unamused look. ‘Besides, I do important work. This city is plagued; face dancers walk the streets freely. Did you know there are one thousand, one hundred and seventy-three that roam?’

Sparky blinked at her. ‘How do you know that?’ she asked.

‘I am a telepath. It is my business to know,’ she said scornfully. ‘The face dancer you keep among you hinders my progress in rooting them out. I have not given it the long sleep only at the insistence of Ana Kelso.’

Sparky growled. ‘And you'll keep it that way. If you hurt Felicity, you will regret it.’

Siddley looked surprised. ‘You’ve given the abomination a name? What folly. You treat it as if it's people.’

‘She’s more of a person than you are. You're soulless,’ she said.

Siddley smiled eerily. ‘Why thank you Sparkplug Starlight, having a soul in my line of work is a hindrance,’ she said as she opened her bag and an apple floated out of it.

Sparky gasped. Siddley was an earth pony, but she had just telekinetically lifted the apple. She took a bite and offered a bite to her.

Sparky took a step back, looking at her in fear. This was not normal.

‘What are you?’ Sparky asked.

‘One without soul, as you say,’ she said and telekinetically tossed the apple core over her shoulder. Sparky turned tail and fled. If Siddley had meant to intimidate her, she had succeeded.

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Sprocket increased the speed of the train engine, pushing the throttle to the maximum as they all hopped off. The Internal Troops would be looking for it, so better that they left it behind.

It was Viktor Karkov’s idea to send it off on its own, where it would inevitably crash into something else and cause even more property damage. Summer found that she did not care. She felt that her time with this little group of jailbirds was rapidly coming to a close.

She looked over to TANTALUS, he looked back at her. ‘What are you planning to do from here?’ she asked, mostly to be polite. She didn’t really care, she only had room enough for one fixation in her mind.

‘I was sent on a mission from Prime Minister Twilight Sparkle to destroy an artefact that can control the minds of others. It’s exceedingly dangerous, and I happen to be able to destroy it,’ TANTALUS said, crossing his arms over his chest.

This piqued Viktor Karkov’s interest. ‘Is by chance a strange leather-bound book?’ he asked.

TANTALUS let out a gasp of surprise. ‘You know of the Tome of Alhazred?’ he asked.

Viktor Karkov frowned and shook his head. ‘I do not know it by that name, but if it is a black leather book that radiates evil. It is in the private possession of Yuri Tasarov,’ he said.

TANTALUS frowned and exhaled sharply through clenched teeth. ‘Of course, it is why am I not surprised? I’m starting to think that everything nasty in this world has his hooves on it.’

Summer was not particularly interested in this development. If TANTALUS wanted to go after Yuri Tasarov, then that was his business. Summer’s only concern was with the death of Madeline Wolsey. If Yuri got in the way again, Summer would not hesitate to kill him. He didn’t matter to her plans, though, and if he left her alone, then she would leave him alone. She turned and started to walk towards the tree line.

‘Where are you going?’ Sprocket called out to her, focusing those unnatural eyes on her.

‘I have some business to attend to,’ she said without looking back.

‘We’d be safer if we stayed together!’ Sprocket called out to her and moved to follow. Viktor Karkov stuck out his foreleg to stop him.

‘No. My friend that is a broken mare who only has one drive, it would not be right to try to dissuade her from her path,’ Karkov said simply.

‘Selfish if you ask me,’ TANTALUS said. ‘All we’re doing here is trying to save the world!’ he called out after her.

This made Summer pause. She turned back to look at TANTALUS and stared at him for a full minute before positing her response. ‘Fuck the world,’ she said simply. ‘The ghost of Princess Fucking Luna can bring down the sky on this miserable fucking world, and I wouldn’t shed a tear for it. So long as I get a chance to put a bullet between Madeline Wolsey’s eyes first,’ she said and whirled around and galloped off into the treeline without a second look.

‘What now?’ TANTALUS asked, looking back at Viktor Karkov.

Karkov smiled brightly at him. ‘I think I might just know where Yuri keeps it.’

———

Stowing away in a cargo container in the port of Nagadan had been surprisingly easy. She’d only needed to slit the throats of ten guards to make it into one. Summer Lightfall sat on the floor of the half-empty cargo container, and she was unconcerned about what came next.

The freighter rocked and rolled through the stormy seas of the Occidental Ocean, bound for the Twin Gryphon Kingdoms. Her plan was simple, she would sneak off the ship, and make her way to the Equestrian Republic embassy. She’d tell them everything, that she was Lance Corporal Summer Lightfall, she had been taken prisoner in 95 by the NKVD, and that she had been the sole survivor of the prison revolt at Nagadan, as far as she knew, and had escaped.

That wasn’t a lie by any stretch of the imagination, TANTALUS was running off on some fool’s errand to destroy some stupid book, and Karkov, Sprocket, and Iron Will were going to help him. They were going to get killed. It was probable that they were already dead by this point. Yuri Tasarov clearly had some sort of mentalic power from his ability to put them into a trance that had kept them from interfering when he commanded Oleg Petrenko to attack her.

Anyone in a right state of mind might have wondered why, if Yuri had such an impressive mentalic ability, he did not just use it on Summer to make her want to come back with him. Summer Lightfall had not been in a right state of mind for five years, so even though the thought had occurred to her, she discarded it immediately.

She was close, so very close to completing her life’s ambition. She estimated that in a little more than a week, she would be back home, and Madeline Wolsey would be dead.

Her thoughts turned to those she had lost. Her friends, ‘Cereal’ Wheatly, Colour Sergeant Gunmetal, Private Joker, all dead. Wheatly had been killed by Oleg Petrenko. She had avenged his death, so that had to account for something.

It felt right that, given the circumstances, the entire platoon be wiped out. It would be a monument to the ineptitude of its officer. She had officially decided after she finished with Wolsey, she would turn the gun on herself. There wasn’t any reason to live anymore after that anyway. What else would happen? If she murdered Wolsey, the police would arrest her, and she would go to prison for the rest of her life. It would just be pointless.

Yes, this was indeed the perfect plan.

A thought occurred to her; it wasn’t enough that Wolsey would be killed. No, the world needed to know what a fraud Wolsey was first. Yes, she would make her confess her crime. Summer couldn’t help but smile. Everyone would see, Wolsey’s legacy would be ruined. Then they would die together.

‘Yes. Yes. Yessss.’ Summer spent the rest of the trip muttering happily to herself.

———
‘Stack up!’ TANTALUS ordered and turned his head to look behind him to see if they would actually do it. Viktor Karkov took his place on the other side of the door frame, beside Sprocket, ready to cover them as they went in. Iron Will hefted his rifle in his one good hand and pointed it at the door, nodding that he was ready to go whenever they were.

It was hard to believe that someone as outwardly critical of the “decadence of the Equestrian Republic” as Yuri Tasarov would live in such a big manor house, on what was clearly an estate from the time before the revolution had turned the old aristocratic Cossack Confederation into the state of the people that was the Unified Praesidium of Socialist Republics.

Yuri couldn’t possibly spend much time in this place, in the middle of nowhere that it was when he worked in the NKVD offices in Petrograd. The house looked deserted, they would go in, burn the Tome of Alhazred, and get out.

TANTALUS had lived the last hundred years knowing that he had failed Twilight Sparkle. She had trusted in him to find that damnable book and destroy it.

It seemed like only yesterday that Twilight had called him into her office and asked him to hunt down the Tome and destroy it. The book had at one time seized control of Twilight’s mind, and almost destroyed the friendships that she had held most dear.

All of it was coming ahead today, TANTALUS nodded to Iron Will, and the minotaur charged forward and kicked down the door. TANTALUS went in first and swept the room, followed shortly by Karkov.

‘Clear!’ TANTALUS called out.

‘Clear,’ Karkov agreed.

Iron Will and Sprocket followed them in. TANTALUS looked over at Sprocket and nodded at him. The old-style ocular implants saw in thermal, so if there were anyone here, Sprocket would see their body heat first. Sprocket and TANTALUS moved in lockstep. Both of them took point as they crept slowly through the house. Everything had an extra thick layer of dust on it like no one had been here for quite some time.

‘Would have thought he would have had someone cleaning the place,’ Sprocket commented idly as they made their way up a staircase, into a hallway. Viktor pointed out a sign that pointed to a library. If the Tome were to be anywhere in this house, it would make sense for it to be there.

They crept along the hallway, TANTALUS jumped as he stepped on a creaky floorboard, his heart began to race, could someone have heard them?

No, that was silly, this place was deserted, the dust on everything proved it. TANTALUS shook his head and took a deep breath and pushed open the door to the library.

There it was. TANTALUS would recognise that book anywhere. It sat on a small wooden pedestal in the centre of the room.

‘This feels too easy,’ Viktor said with a frown. ‘I would have thought something would have arrested our progress.’

TANTALUS couldn’t help but feel the same way, as he slowly approached the pedestal, they turned his head to look at Sprocket. ‘See anything?’ he asked.

Sprocket did not get a chance to respond, TANTALUS glanced over at a bookshelf that was bathed in shadow, and Yuri Tasarov stepped out from it as if he had materialised from the shadow itself. Sprocket let out a scream. ‘He wasn’t there! I would have seen him if he’d been there a moment ago!’ he cried out.

Viktor and Iron Will levelled their guns on Yuri, TANTALUS was about to, but he suddenly felt as if his arm was too heavy to hold up his pistol. His arm sank lower and lower, and he felt his hand go numb, and the gun dropped to the floor in a clatter.

Yuri grinned at him and chuckled. ‘It was foolish for you to come here, Spike the Dragon. You cannot stop the will of the people.’

‘You’ve never cared about anyone but yourself in your life!’ TANTALUS spat back at him. ‘What do you know is the will of the people?!’

Yuri merely shook his head. ‘You simply don’t understand. None of you ever did. That is what we call ourselves. We are The People before we were driven to near extinction by the ulix’ith’nail.’

‘The what?’ TANTALUS asked, looking confused, but Yuri ignored him and pressed on.

‘The sinai called us Warlocks, and the ulix’ith’nail—the Others, you know them as—called us the Meccab, but we are The People! And I intend to make sure you remember it!’ Yuri said, his face began to melt and reform, his grey coat sloughed off and was replaced with sickly sallow skin, his legs split into a group of ten tentacles, and his body contorted into a round bulb with two onyx black eyes that looked like they could stare into your soul directly.

Yuri reared himself up so that he balanced on the tentacles, raising him up to a height of three metres, he leered at them and shuffled forward. Iron Will charged, lowering his horns as if to skewer the monstrous creature, but those dark eyes narrowed on the minotaur.

‘Don’t be shy! Look them in the eye!’ Iron Will cried out and leapt into the air to drive his horns into the creature’s eyes. Iron Will suddenly burst into a thin red mist. His cybernetic pieces came crashing down to the floor in an untidy pile.

Despite lacking a mouth, they could tell that Yuri was grinning, and he waved a tentacle back and forth in mock disapproval. ‘Now that that is out of the way,’ Yuri said. ‘I think that I am going to have a lot of fun with the rest of you.’