Under Free Flag

by twillale

Rating: teen
Tags: Adventure, Princess Celestia, Human, Main 6, Princess Luna, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Other
Length: 49564

First contact is never what you expect it to be.

The Second Age of Sail, I often hear this era called. Personally, I think the very definition of irony should be that we would have to develop spaceflight, nuclear fusion and ways to reach worlds beyond our own just to circle back to using wind-powered vessels. Not that I really care how this old bird gets from port to port, the important thing is that the drinks are cheap and the work is good—in that specific order.

I'm a free mariner. My domain is wherever the wind blows, and my sovereign is none. If you can respect those rules... welcome aboard.

Published 2012-10-27 16:40:01 UTC
Last updated 2012-12-23 23:04:55 UTC

Chapter 2

CHAPTER II

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

—T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

“Spike! Is the picnic basket ready yet?”

A tiny, yawning dragon stomps down the staircase of the library, carrying a tripod-mounted telescope the size of himself slung over one shoulder.

“It’s been ready for the last two hours, Twilight. We just need to grab the perishables out of the icebox.”

Twilight’s head peeks out of the kitchen door, horn aglow with a soft magenta aura as food flits around the air of the room behind her, conducting an orderly march to a large, woven basket on the wooden table.

“And are you sure that everything is in there as planned?”

Reaching the bottom floor, the dragon leans the white tube against the wall and shuffles into the kitchen, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah, we went over the checklist before my nap. And double-checked it. And triple-checked it. It’s all there.”

“And did you bring the—”

“It’s outside the door.”

“And have you got the—”

“Twilight!”

Spike glares at his adoptive sister, parent and caretaker with the kind of supreme annoyance as only one who has just been awakened from a pleasant sleep can muster. She finishes packing the basket resting on the table and chuckles, rubbing the head of her little companion with a hoof.

“Sorry, Spike. I’m sure you have it all under control.”

“Of course, I’m your number one assistant for a reason.”

Climbing onto a chair, he securely tucks a checkered red-and-white cloth over the contents of the container, grabs the handle in a clawed hand and clambers onto the waiting back of the nearby unicorn, now occupied with ticking off the final checkboxes of a long, partially rolled-up list.

Trotting out of the kitchen, the telescope floating after her, Twilight exits the large tree housing the Ponyville library with a happy spring in her step.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Yeah. I won’t fail this year!”

The small dragon shakes his balled fist towards the darkening sky, his vow almost costing him his balance. Twilight chuckles at his bravado as he regains his grip of her purple-and-pink mane.

“I’m sure you’ll be able to stay awake for the whole thing this year.”

“I sure hope so, I’m afraid Rarity will see me as a baby forever if I can’t even stay awake a whole night,” the passenger of the pair grumbles, eliciting another smile from Twilight.

“Hey Twilight? What’s so special about this eclipse, now? Doesn’t princess Luna do them pretty much every second year or something?” he asks after a while.

Delighted about a chance to share knowledge, Twilight launches into an excited explanation, pace quickly increasing as she gets into her spiel in earnest.

“Oh, Spike, it’s not the same! We’ve never had a full lunar eclipse in the Equestrian lunar cycle, or, well, at least not since the banishment of Nightmare Moon! Princess Luna has always been particular about the moon’s brightness providing enough illumination for those ponies who are out and about at night, especially after she learned how much activity there is after daylight hours now. But tonight she will obscure the moon entirely!”

“Huh. So we’re going out to watch the moon disappear? Seems a little silly,” Spike exclaims with a puzzled look, earning another good-natured giggle.

“There’s more to it than that, Spike. First of all, we get to witness the eclipse in stages instead of as a pre-set configuration at moonrise; secondly, Cadence tipped me off that Luna intends to do something extra special involving a meteor shower; and third—”

“Hang on, I thought the meteor shower was some kind of once-in-a-century thing?”

“Yes, proper ones are. This is a smaller and artificial. As I understand it, it’s orchestrated by princess Luna herself, purposefully breaking a bunch of small asteroids into pieces and letting them fall into the atmosphere. But as I was saying,” she quickly preempts the already forming interruption, “the third and final reason is that it’s an excellent chance to take a break and spend some time with our friends. Not that we should need a reason for that,” she finishes with a smile. Spike, apparently having exhausted his interest in the subject of celestial engineering, rides on without further questions about the topic.
The rest of the short trip is spent bantering about trivial topics and enjoying the refreshing night breeze.

*

“Howdy there, Spike ‘n’ Twilight! Mighty beautiful night, Ah gotta say.”

“Hi, Applejack! Hi Applebloom and Big Mac! Yes, isn’t it? We were just setting done setting everything up. Did Granny Smith stay at home this year?”

“Eyup, said she’d not expose her bad hip ta these night winds for no moon,” the orange cowpony chuckles as she shrugs out her saddlebags. As the two groups begin to unpack and set up whatever food and equipment they’ve brought to the little hilltop, merrily chatting away, other familiar faces arrive one by one, their voices and laughter carrying far in the crisp air.

“Cutie mark crusader nightwatchmares, go!”

“Darling, that pie looks absolutely wonderful! Would you be willing to share a piece in exchange for some merengue, perhaps?”

“Cupcakes for everypony! This is the beeeestest batch of cupcakes I have baked since, well I don’t know since when, maybe not ever! Maybe these are the best cupcakes ever and wouldn’t that be so cool—”

“It is gettin’ mighty cold out here, how about a nice cup of warm cider, everypony?”

“I didn’t know you could drink it warm.”

“Of course ya can, we do it all through winter at the farm!”

“Um, I’d like some, please, if that’s okay...”

“Sweetie Belle! Don’t you even think of touching that telescope!”

“Would you like some—”

“—and I told her, well I am the fastest—”

“—be delighted to! But only if you’ll come model for my latest creation...”

“...it’ll start with the so-called penumbral eclipse, where the moon is only partially covered by the shadow of the planet.”

“It’s nice, isn’t it... a little cold, though.”

“Would you like to borrow a sweater? I have an extra one somewhere around here—”

*

…and I am so tired and just want to lay down in the grass and let the light summer drizzle cool me from ears to tail after a long hard day at the office where the papers come in and go out and come in and go out and come in again today, today that is the day of the eclipse, she thinks as she effortlessly slips into a dream and into the next, allowing the half-formed images and torrents of emotion pass her by like thick mists. They evade her as if she would be the only solid thing in an otherwise liquid universe; not a bad comparison, all things considered. Luna titters to herself as she lets the stream carry her through her nighttime realm... and onto the train where a l l the hopes and dreams of an entire village travel stuffed into a burlap sack on my back which is aching but then I might n e v e r have taken to music is wafting from somewhere and it’s a beautiful melody and more of a symphony really except for that one flute which seems to be a little off it’s almost s c r e a m i n g s c r e a m i n g s c r e a m i n g like the beeping of the fucking proximity alarm and, and—Luna suddenly looks back, turning her head as if listening to a sound she can’t quite place, such a prominent jarring note of fear and hatred a thing she hasn’t felt in her tranquil realm for a long time. A raw disharmony, muffled as if from far away, but unmistakable in content: the wail of a large collective of terrified minds. An alien presence, the machinations of those strange, tortured minds like a black stain on the swirling, bright colours... and like that the thread is gone, the sharp shards of emotion lost in the gently surging sea of hues and chords, memories of taste and electric anticipations of touch; she waits for a long time, now immobile and shapeless, floating in a languid vortex of a filly’s bubbling laughter, before decisively turning and floating away, dark thoughts worriedly orbiting her like ghostly afterimages after staring for too long into the sun. For now, the moon is more important.

*

“That was... really awesome!”

“Princess Luna really put down effort into this one.”

“Mm-h.”

“Any of y’all want some more cider?”

“Oh, that would be wonderful! I say we simply must do this again sometime!”

“I’m sure I could ask princess Celestia in a letter, if—agh!”

The lavender unicorn suddenly winces as pain stings her forehead.

“Twilight! What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. It feels like... something’s not right. It’s like a spell gone wrong, but who... and where?”

“Twilight, dear, are you sure you aren’t just coming down with someth—ah! Oh dear.”

“Did you feel it, too? I think it came from... around there?”

“Everfree forest?”

“Yeah, but far in. Somewhere in the direction of Froggy Bottom Bog, if not further.”

“Is it something evil? I’ll fly over there and kick its tail into the curb!”

Rainbow’s effort to transition from shadow boxing to flight are hampered by Applejack’s teeth around her tail, to the pegasus’ obvious annoyance.

“Now don’t go doin’ anythin’ hasty, y’hear, Dash? Can’t darn well go rushin’ headlong into danger.”

“I’m not afraid of danger! Danger’s my—ooh, what the hay? Is anyone else feeling that?”

First, there is no sound.

The only heralds of the world changing are a string of bright, white lights seemingly sliding out of thin air to harshly illuminate the sleeping Everfree forest as well as surrounding hills and mountains. Some seconds later a lazy rumbling, like very distant thunder, rolls over the landscape, followed by the sound of wind tearing close around the corners of a creaking cottage.

The stargazing group on the hill stares in uncomprehending silence at the dark shape in the night, sharp shadows dancing across its elongated, knife-shaped body. A ceramic cup falls to the grass from a distracted hoof. Behind the strange apparition, the final stragglers of the meteor shower streak across the thin sliver of the slowly growing moon.

The giant scale of the alien object becomes readily apparent as it closes to the ground, trees and smaller hills appearing like tiny models in the bright glow of artificial sunlight. Ponderously banking to the side, the distant silhouette roars loudly a final time before it rapidly descends out of sight. For a heartbeat, the ground trembles.

A gigantic cloud of brown dust and black smoke billows into the sky, the thick, tree-shaped pillar briefly illuminated from within by flickering white light before even that goes out as abruptly as it has begun. Only the soft rays of the moon are left to weakly outline the surreal scene.

The first ones to recover their wits are the three fillies, more excited than worried about the spectacle.

“Sis, wha’ was that?”

“Ah don’t know, sugarcube, but Ah ain’t too sure it’s something good.”

“Was it some kind of monster?”

“I don’t know, Sweetie, but I most certainly hope not.”

“Twilight, should we maybe send a letter to the—”

With a sudden intake of breath, the small dragon belches loudly, and a scroll of dark blue parchment materialises from a cloud of green fire. The message quickly floats over to Twilight, who proceeds to open it and rush through the contents with a puzzled frown.

“Well, what’s the princess saying?”

“It’s from princess Luna,” answers the unicorn, “...and it only says this:”

The open scroll turns to the other assembled ponies and levitates forward so that they can all gather in to read the message.

Twilight Sparkle,

Gather the Elements, and make haste to assure that nopony in the area can close in on the object that has landed in the Everfree forest. We cannot stress this point enough.
The Royal Guard has been dispatched. Celestia has been informed.

Await further instruction.

Princess Luna

“Well that’s... short. And boring,” notes Rainbow Dash, lazily hovering in the air.

“What if there are ponies in there?”

“Girls! If princess Luna thinks it’s dangerous enough to set out the Royal Guard as well as gathering the Elements of Harmony, it’s something fairly serious! It’s not a responsibility to be taken lightly!”

“Twilight is quite right, Rainbow. Like Applejack said: we can’t go into action without proper preparation.”

“Aw, horseapples. Girls? Ah don’t think we were the only ones to hear that big ruckus.”

The hilltop offers an excellent view over Ponyville, now coming alive with lights as windows and doors open to admit the heads of sleepy ponies peering out into the night, some of them shouting questions to their neighbours or pointing at the great moonlit cloud rising on the horizon from the air or upper-story windows.

“Oh, no! This is exactly what princess Luna told us not to let happen! Rainbow Dash!”

“Whoa, calm down! What is it, Twilight?”

“Get down there and ground all the pegasi as fast as you can. I’m sure you can do it fast enough to stop anyone from getting too curious about the Everfree?”

“You bet your flank I can! Watch this!”

Leaving only a strikingly coloured afterimage, the rainbow-maned pegasus blasts off into the waking village. Whirling on her remaining friends, Twilight begins organising with the confidence of purpose.

“Fluttershy, find the Mayor and relay the princess’ orders to her: nopony is to enter the Everfree before the Guard has gotten the situation under control.”

“I’ll do my best, Twilight,” the pegasus offers meekly before flapping away in the wake of her high-speed friend, though at a much more reserved pace.

“Frankly, dear, I don’t think anypony would willingly venture into that dreadful forest at night, anyway.”

“Right, but it’s still better to cover all potential trouble spots before morning. Rarity and Pinkie, do you think you could go from house to house and calm the earthbound ponies so we don’t get any panic, I’m sure Rainbow has her hands full with the flying inhabitants, already.”

“But of course. Sweetie Belle, you stay here with Twilight, and no troublemaking, all right?”

“Got it, sis.”

“Okie-dokie-lokie, Twilight! I think what they need to distract them is a—”

“No parties, Pinkie, just... calm them down. Most ponies in Ponyville were asleep when this happened.”

“Then we’ll have it in the morning instead! Isn’t that a brilliant idea! We can have a breakfast party and eat pancakes and jam and muffins and...”

Rarity throws Twilight a final, exasperated glance over her shoulder as she trots away after the bouncing Pinkie, still listing breakfast ingredients while receding into the distance. Both Twilight and Sweetie Belle giggle behind their hooves at the displeasured scowl, before turning back to the remaining members of the group.

“Ah’d love to help, Twi, but Ah’m a mite worried about Granny, being all alone at the farm an’all,” Applejack begins, before being interrupted by a large, red hoof against her side. Big Macintosh nods seriously at her sister before gently nudging her in Twilight’s direction.

“Ya’ll go?”

“Eeyup.”

“Well, thank ya kindly, Big Mac. Please make sure that everythin’s all right back at the farm, will ya?”

With a curt nod, the large stallion rounds up the trio of fillies now excitedly huddled together on the hill, presenting increasingly wilder ideas on the origins of the strange interlopers. The rather loud discussion is interrupted by the eldest of the Apple siblings, and quickly replaced with loud pleading.

“Why can’t we stay here, we want to help when Twilight gets more information from the princess!”

“Yeah! Please, big brother!”

“Ee-nope.”

“Aww,” the dejected Crusaders pout as they start ambling back towards the dark orchards of Sweet Apple Acres under the watchful eye of Big Mac, disappointment soon forgotten in the heat of a new argument mainly centered on whether the newly appeared entity is in fact an artifact of a civilisation of time-travelling ponies from the future or insectoid visitors from a parallel dimension.

“But if they’re time travellers, why haven’t we seen any before now?”

“Duh, because they’ve been travelling even further back to stop the other travellers from appearing.”

“That’s stupid!”

“Is not, it’s totally explained in Daring Do and the Desert of Time!”

“It’s still dumb.”

“Is not!”

“Is too!”

“Is...”

The lavender unicorn turns to her earth pony friend as the shrill voices disappear into the night.

“All right! Applejack, you can help me draft contingency evacuation plans for Ponyville and—”

“Whoa, slow down there, sugarcube. No need to get all panicky right off the bat.”

“But what if there’s an emergency going on! Or brewing! We have to be prepared for every risk!”

The orange cowpony places a calming hoof on the shoulder of the fidgeting unicorn.

“Listen, Twi, we don’t know what’s goin’ on yet, and the princesses’ have the situation in hoof. There’s really nothing much we can do, and getting all worked up about is just buckin’ an empty orchard.”

Closing her eyes, Twilight takes a deep breath before exhaling slowly.

“Okay. You’re right. No point getting into a panic. Let’s go back to the library, put on some tea and wait for the others.”

“Now, that’s more like it.”

“Um, ladies, I hate to be the one to say this but... should we maybe clean up here first?”

Turning to survey the abandoned hill littered with picnic baskets, blankets and empty cups, both remaining ponies groan in unison before gingerly getting to work with collecting the scraps of almost a dozen stargazers’ late-night dinners.

*

The arrival of the second letter happily coincides with the return of Rarity and Pinkie, the pegasi having finished their respective missions some time before. All present ponies settle down around the central table of the library. This time, the stationery is cream coloured, and stamped with a seal bearing a stylized sun.

After unrolling the scroll and glancing through the first paragraph, Twilight harks her throat and begins reading the letter out loud, unwittingly mimicking the familiar cadence and speech patterns of the author.

To my faithful student, Twilight Sparkle, and my loyal subjects Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Fluttershy, Rarity and Pinkie Pie:

I’m sure both you as well as your friends and neighbours are wondering what is going on, as I understand Luna’s first letter was quite curt. I am sorry for not taking an earlier time to inform you properly, but things have been quite hectic in Canterlot during the past few hours. The Council is, frankly speaking, in an uproar, and many nobles are advocating direct military action. Imagine that, if you will. Offensive military action, an abomination we have done well without for hundreds of years in our peaceful Equestria!

I’m sorry about that outburst, but sometimes I fear that the noble families with most hand in the running of our lands don’t always appreciate the weight of such rash decisions.

But let us not dwell on such grim matters. The situation, in short, is as follows. A group of creatures, in possession of or with access to great magical resources have entered Equestria through Luna’s domains.

The sentence seems to startle Twilight, who breaks off her reading in an excited outburst.

“Through Luna’s domains? That’s amazing! I thought the resistivity of dreamspace delimiters were theoretically impossible to overcome with raw power alone!”

A brief silence follows, as the lavender unicorn stares into nothingness, her brow furrowed in contemplation and her mouth silently moving. Finally the cyan pegasus hovering near the ceiling coughs very loudly.

“And in non-egghead speech that means...?”

“In ‘non-egghead’ speech, Rainbow, it means that it’s very, very hard to do right, especially for an object the size of that... thing we saw earlier.”

“Well, why didn’t you just say so straight away? What else does it say?”

“I’m getting there, hang on.”

Why they did this, we are not certain, but Luna assures me that they did so under great duress, and possibly in desperation. If this is true (and I have no reason to doubt Luna’s considerable knowledge within her own field) these creatures, what- and whomever they may be, might simply be looking for refuge from some unknown evil. If this is the case, it is my firm conviction that we are to meet them with open hearts and minds.

To this end, I would like you and your friends, in the role of the Elements of Harmony, to be the ones to try and communicate with these visitors. Luna will most likely be able to arrive within a few days to assist you, but the faster you can establish a dialogue with our guests, the better we can prevent any terrible misunderstandings from occurring. Still, please wait until morning, Twilight. I know you can be a bit excitable at times of virgin discovery, and I wouldn’t ask (or want) of you to go into the unknown without being well-rested and alert.

The final line of the paragraph brings a round of chuckles from the other assembled ponies.

“Seems she does know you pretty, well, Twilight!”

“Right, moving on,” the unicorn in question quickly mumbles with a slight blush on her cheeks.

To assuage the fears of the nobles, as well as to prevent anypony from unwittingly stumbling upon the newcomers, Luna and I have deemed it prudent to place a Royal Guard cordon around the area where the visitors have landed. It is well within the Everfree forest, in the general area of the large bog there. Tomorrow you can meet up with the commander on scene, a certain unicorn captain named Diamond Hoof. I will attach to this letter a separate writ under which you will be allowed to enter the cordon.

The best of luck.

Your Teacher,
Princess Celestia

There is another thoughtful silence in the library as Twilight rolls away the letter.

“Well, that’s a lot to think about,” offers Rarity after a while.

“Oh, I do hope they’re nice ponies...”

“We don’t even know if they are ponies, Fluttershy.”

“Oh, well... I hope they’re nice... aliens...”

“Aliens? Oh hay yeah! Or maybe they’re time travelling ponies, like in Daring Do and— wait, does anyone else hear that?”

Five pairs of ears swivel curiously, looking for the source of the strange sound.

“Sounds like it’s getting louder...?”

“—eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee—”

Five nozzles and a small purple snout zero in on Pinkie, who is crumpled together into a tiny, shaking ball, voice rapidly descending into audible frequencies.

“Pinkie, what—”

“—eeeeeeeeeends from space?!” the pink pony suddenly explodes into the air, eyes twinkling and glittering with manic excitement, before bouncing around the room like a crazed rubber ball.

“This is so exciting I haven’t been so excited ever and not even like that one time when Twilight came to Ponyville and I told her that I had ‘never been so excited in my life’ but for real this time—”

Although initially taken aback by the sudden shift of emotional tone, the other friends in the group quickly regain their wits, jaded by daily interaction with the volatile personality of the Element of Laughter.

“I think it’s probably best if we go to sleep—”

Twilight’s sentence breaks down into nonsense syllables as Pinkie grabs her by the shoulders and shakes her vigorously.

“Sleep? Are you crazy? There’s so much to prepare! We must have food and streamers and confetti and—”

Extricating herself from her rambling pony, Twilight continues unheeding of the continuing background listing of party accessories.

“Like I was saying, best if we try to get some sleep before we get to it. It’ll take some time to get to get all the way there, and probably some more to get through the cordon, so it’d be best if we’d start as early as possible.”

She finishes her outline with a long yawn, politely covered by a raised foreleg.

“Aaaand I guess that’s my que to get some shut-eye. See you girls tomorrow morning!”

“Yeah, until tomorrow!”

“Good night, everypony!”

Exchanging farewells for the night, the group of friends trot, fly and bounce away into the night, leaving Twilight and Spike to compose a short answer to Celestia and prepare to get at least a few hours of rest.

Over the Everfree forest, the looming dust cloud slowly dissolves into the night winds.

*

Chapter 3

CHAPTER III

It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

—Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“This is an emergency situation! We can ill afford to sit on out hooves, doing nothing!” bellows an elderly beige unicorn, slamming her hoof down on the table.

“An emergency of your own devising, madam! Lashing out at the unknown without even attempting to understanding it is behaviour fitting for wild animals, not civilised ponies!” retorts an almond stallion with equal zest and volume.

The two well-groomed ponies fiercely glare at each other from across the circular chamber, successive marble tiers filled with regally outfitted ponies following the exchange with rapt attention. The standoff lasts but a second before the two speakers simultaneously attempt to out-shout their opponent, the room erupting into a wild cacophony as further parties try to make themselves heard in the din.

Lost in the storm of yelling and wildly gesticulating ponies, two superficially quite dissimilar unicorns sit with their heads inclined toward each other, the topic of their discussion well hidden under the blanket of voices.

“I do not care for the haste with which minister Lintel is trying to force a decision, but it does give us more room to maneuver,” remarks the left one, a burgundy stallion, absentmindedly adjusting his opulent, gold-trimmed vest and carefully fluffing his complex coiffure. On his flank is depicted a candle with a golden flame.

“Indeed. She is a war-mongering fool, but a useful one,” scoffs the other, a copper-brown mare in a plain but well-crafted linen dress, dark brown mane impeccably brushed and her precisely braided tail partially obscuring the monochrome scales of her cutie mark.

“I have set some things in motion at the ministry of agriculture, regarding the orange plantations. I presume this little... altercation should be no trouble regarding that?”

“I highly doubt it. The committee of interior affairs is completely mired down in the Ponyville incident at the moment, even though nopony really knows anything beyond what everypony else does.”

The extravagantly dressed stallion raises an amused eyebrow.

“‘The Ponyville incident’? Is that what they are calling it now?” he asks with a dry smirk.

“Yes,” the mare answers, without the faintest hint of humour.

“How amusing, considering the history of the place as a hotbed for all manners of cataclysmic events. But no matter. We shall wait and see how the situation develops.”

The mare nods in agreement.

“Prudence before all, for pride goeth before fall.”

At that very moment the great double doors of the hall swing open under the power of two ornately-plated guards, both snapping to attention at the passing rustle of large, white wings and the clear notes of golden horseshoes striking marble flagstones. The chamber—with two jarring exceptions—falls quiet, eyes respectfully lowering at the entrance of princess Celestia.

“—treasonous simpletons who would doom the whole of the nation to oblivion—”

“—bloodthirsty idiots willing to throw away every value Equestria was founded upon— ”

Both fuming debaters halt their respective tirades at the shared realisation that their voices are the only ones echoing against the high ceiling. Frozen in mid-movement, with open mouths, both opponents stare at the benevolent smile of their ruler before snapping out of their trances and hastily propelling themselves onto their respective pillows, flush of anger now replaced by glowing embarrassment. Princess Celestia halts in the middle of the chamber, slowly letting her eyes travel over the assembled nobles.

“I see the... discussion is already well underway,” the gold-crowned alicorn remarks.

“Your Majesty, if I may?” one of the earth ponies present requests, carrying on after receiving a nod from his sovereign.

”Much of the dissonance within the Council stems from the uncertainty of the situation. If there is any more information that you can give, perhaps that would bring a measure of order onto the table,” he suggests.

Murmurs of assent waft from the audience.

“You are quite right, chancellor Caparison, and indeed that is what I intended to do.”

The large, white alicorn calmly tucks her half-open wings to her sides and steps onto the speaker’s podium before beginning her address with clear and precise intonation, the inflections those of a supremely experienced speaker.

“I have only just consulted my sister about the further nature of these... interlopers, as she is the one who has had the most opportunity to observe them in action. According to Luna, these strange visitors have come as refugees, thrust into Equestria possibly without meaning to do so. As such, and in accordance with the information Luna has been able to glean, the visitor are most likely not hostile to ponykind.”

A quiet murmur ripples through the Council chamber.

“Your Majesty, when you specifically mention ‘ponykind’, does that mean...?”

“Indeed, the visitors are not of this world.”

A shocked silence quickly erupts into whispers, murmurs and outright exclamations of astonishment. Celestia continues slightly louder, the noise of the crowd quickly receding.

“To reiterate, it is my belief and that of my sister that these creatures are not hostile. However, stranded on unknown ground, it would not be inconceivable that they could lash out in fear at any unexpected advances upon their position. Therefore, purely as a precaution, we have seen it fit to screen off the crash area using the Royal Guard. We intend to open a channel of communication to the alien visitors as soon as possible.”

“Your Majesty! Have you chosen to whom the diplomatic mission will fall?”

“It is my intention to send the bearers of the Elements of Harmony.”

“Majesty, who has been appointed commander of the operation?”

“Captain Diamond Hoof, by decree of my sister.”

“Your Majesty!”

“Majesty—”

“Princess!”

Silencing the multitude of requests with a raised foreleg, Celestia turns towards the doors.

“Please, mares and gentlecolts, there is much to do before the situation is completely under control. This has been merely an informational meeting, and any further questions can be directed to me or Luna during normal court hours.”

As the great double doors are pulled shut with a finite clang in the wake of the princess’ departure, the marble chamber explodes into utter chaos, making the earlier shouting match compare to the current ruckus like a field exercise would compare to war. Several nobles hurriedly flee the chambers or huddle together in groups of varying sizes, the convoluted gears of the political machine that is the Canterlot aristocracy furiously spinning to rearrange plans and power structures in light of the new information. Forgotten in the midst of the milling crowd, two ponies calmly remain seated in their original positions.

“Well, that was certainly... interesting,” the copper mare remarks.

“Yes, I’d say so. Very clever, playing both the Elements of Harmony and a loyal soldier so early into the game. The princesses have certainly made sure to keep the reins of this incident firmly in their own hooves.”

“They have been playing for a long time. Oh well, I have many things to see to. I trust you’ll keep me informed of your own machinations,” the mare comments, getting up from her pillow and stretching numbed legs. Her companion smiles amicably and places a light kiss on one of her hooves, as a farewell.

“You shall be privy to my every move, dear.”

“You lie like a fish swims,” states the brown mare with a joyless smile before stalking away.

Chuckling, the dark red stallion watches her leave before smoothly coming to his hooves and exiting the room through an alcove on the opposite side of the great doors.

*

Celestia smiles to herself as the doors slam shut and the Council chamber immediately explodes into anarchy behind them.

That ought to give them something to busy themselves with for a while.

Briskly moving down the sunlit corridor, the princess of the sun is soon joined by her nocturnal counterpart, the other mare looking fatigued from both scholarly endeavours and missed sleep. Luna falls into step next to her sister, curiously casting a sidelong glance at her.

“I did not recall that the nobles were ever this blatantly annoying, even in the olden days. A thousand years ago you would have cast them all out of that chamber, informing them that they had no place questioning your decisions.”

Celestia sighs deeply, smiling wistfully at the pony beside her.

“Oh yes, but one does never really appreciate what one has before it is gone, don't you think? In the past few centuries the administration of the land has become a burden too large to carry by one pony, even by one with long experience and a capable staff.”

Celestia stops briefly at an old mosaic of herself and seven simply garbed ponies, depicted in animated discussion around a round table.

“The original Council of nobles was a group of my most trusted staff, and served in a primarily advisory capacity. However, as Equestria grew and prospered, the amount of both nobles and posts on the Council grew, and with our borders touching more and more neighbouring countries’, my time was increasingly lost into foreign affairs. And with time...”

The older princess trails off, half-heartedly gesturing back towards the chamber she just left behind.

“With your return, I’ve finally begun reclaiming the time and resources required to minimise the potential of the Council to cause any serious damage, but as of the current moment they have a direct involvement in most day-to-day running of the country.”

“Oh Tia, you were always too soft on those pompous fools,” the navy alicorn chuckles. Shaking her head mournfully, her voice rises into a melodramatic lament.

“Ah, but what happened to the strong knights and travelling poets of old? Canterlot used to be such a lively place, back when the houses were still made of logs. Back in those days, the noble house were truly noble: straight-backed and strong of hoof! Ah, where are gone the times of yore, mine sister?”

The sisters share a fillyish giggle at the old memories, continuing down the corridor in a far happier mood than moments ago.

”Have you discovered anything of interest regarding our otherworldly guests?”

”But little. I think I have discovered how the breach of my domain's borders was made, however.”

”Oh? Pray tell.”

”It's a fascinating topic, really, it seems there has been a lot of research into it during the last four decades or so. Without going too much into the technical specifics, the visitors used a remarkably clever method of focusing magical pressure onto several outside spots corresponding to the same coordinate on the dream membrane, and then ramming the very fore of their vessel through the gap in the few moments before it could collapse.”

”Sounds like a fairly violent method.”

”It is, and one that requires exceedingly delicate timing. Like I have mentioned, there is plenty of reason to believe that this particular method was chosen out of desperation.”

”Even so. So the opening in the membrane can be... propped open?”

”Hm? Yes. The challenging part is creating the breach in the first place. For a gateway of any longer duration, there's the dilemma of where to anchor the physical gate, as well.”

”I see.”

The pair continues in silence for a while, before finally reaching the intersection leading to the observatory tower.

”Well, I shall get back to my work, then.”

”Please remember to rest, as well. You have been working hard.”

”I will. Waste not your concern on a grown mare, sister.”

The white alicorn quickly nuzzles her sister, before releasing her back to her study.

”Lulu,” she calls out softly, stopping the other alicorn in mid-stride.

”...appointing Diamond Hoof was a wise choice. Thank you.”

”'twas nothing. I but asked myself what action thou would've taken,” Luna replies without turning, before disappearing behind the corner.

Celestia looks after her sister, listening to the receding hoofsteps, and smiles. Luna's blush had been almost too quick to notice. Almost.

*

Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV

Quivis beatus, versa rota fortunæ, ante vesperum potest esse miserrimus.
Anyone who is prosperous may by the turn of fortune's wheel become most wretched before evening.

—Ammianus Marcellinus, Historia

I dream of a blue horse looking at me through a safety glass.

What the fuck, subconscious mind?

...

“—ris. Eris!”

Nngh, just let me sleep for five more—ow!

“Can you hear me? Wake up!”

Yeah, yeah, I can he—augh! Goddamnit!

“Hey! Wake-”

“Slap me one more time and I’ll strangle you with my bare hands,” I snarl.

There’s a long, relieved exhalation.

“Thank the Gods. You okay?”

I grunt an affirmative and release the offending wrist. The bridge is outlined in a weak red glow; seems the emergency lights have kicked in.

Ugh, I feel as if I’d had a few drinks too many yesterday.

Right, let’s see. Lying on floor, nothing hurts too bad and no shiny red tissue damage indicators, that’s good. That’s Ace’s ugly mug hovering above me. Also good, in a way.

It’s dead quiet.

Bad, bad, bad. With a start I realize I can’t even hear the drone of the adjustment thrusters, nor the singing of the hull as the sails shift in the wind. It’s dead quiet, and that unnerves me indescribably much more than any target lock alarm. I compress my mounting panic into a tiny knot in my stomach and turn to Ace.

“What happened?”

He looks haggard—even more than I remember—but he seems less tense. The lock-jawed attack dog posture has softened into his usual ornery naval officer imitation, and even with the worried scowl there are the embers of a smile touching his eyes.

“We blew the Wall.”

“What?”

“Just as the geckos were about to get into proper direct-fire distance we caught a huge mass signature, so we took a gamble and jumped the Streamwall.” That annoying eye-twinkle is trying its best to evolve into an annoying smirk. My head still feels like someone’s just grabbed my ears and shaken my cranium like a drink mixer, so my thought processes aren’t exactly snappy, but that smirk always did get on my nerves. After a heroic mental effort and a few seconds of booting my sluggish brain back to work it’s still annoying, but damn it, it’s contagious. I feel the corners of my mouth twitching.

“And we pulled it off?”

“Almost flawlessly.”

“Almost fl... We’re in offstream orbit?”

“Planetside, actually.”

The smirk is now a huge, shit-eating grin.

“...and the G’s didn’t follow?”

“No time to react. Probably the last thing they were expecting.”

Oh, this is just too much. I burst out laughing, collapsing back against my command chair. Three days. Three fucking days and nights of pursuit and panic, and just as they’re about to hit us with a warhead we luck out on the most improbable damn escape in the universe? Oh Christ, this is great. That was probably all my good karma right there, for this life and the next. I’ll be reborn as a cockroach.

Oh God, it feels good to laugh again. Laugh until my sides hurt, which isn’t very long, by the way. I quickly realize how utterly exhausted I am. I wipe the tears from my eyes with my sleeve and lean back to take in the scene.

The bridge is pretty okay, all things considered. The Trickster was built for both grav and zero-G operation, so all the stations are fitted with every kind of strap and holster imaginable to keep stuff from flying about. I spy the lumbering form of faithful old Xavier, the first mate, applying a bandage to the head of the newest radar operator—Devi or Dewi something—other bridge crew similarly paired up and checking each other or stations for damage. The relief in the room is palpable, it’s like all the tension and fear went out the window with the sound of the engines.

“How bad is it?”

“What, the Trickster? Or the crew?”

“All of it.”

“Could be worse. Nothing we can’t fix, given time.”

Uh-oh.

“Did we lose anyone?”

“One.”

“Fuck.”

I have to close my eyes for a second.

“...who?”

“Darnell, Stephanie. The new girl on the engineering crew. She wasn’t strapped in when we impacted.”

“...God damn it.“

“Yeah.”

Well, that certainly killed the mood. I remember Stephanie, vaguely. I try to get at least acquainted with everyone in my crew, but her I met only once or twice. Still, new girl or no, she is... was still one of us. I sigh deeply, and when I look up Ace is looking me over with an assessing stare. He tiredly waves his arm in the general direction of the quarters.

“Go get some sleep, Eri. I’ll handle the immediate procedures.”

The familiar sting of sibling rivalry makes its presence known in the back of my mind.

“Why don’t you go? I can handle it just as well as you, and you know it.”

He smiles at me in that really knowing manner which pisses me off to no end, and I’m sure he can tell exactly what’s going on in my head.

“Yeah, I’m sure you can, sis. But you were awake just as long as me, and I didn’t have to keep the crew going with my mind-magic.”

“Don’t call it ‘mind-magic’, you fucking superstitious luddite.”

Okay, that was arguably weak, but it’s the best snark I could come up with at the moment.

“Okay. But seriously, just go.”

I try to stifle a yawn, fail miserably, and decide that maybe he’s right. This time.

“...all right then. But just a few hours. You come wake me, okay?”

“Sure. Sleep tight.”

I wearily push myself to my feet and shuffle off the bridge and towards the sweet siren call of my bunk.

*

I squint at the time projection on the side of the bed. The little red numbers politely inform me that i’ve been asleep for seven hours. Seven damned hours. To hell with it all, he promised he’d wake me ‘after a few hours’, the bastard. I roll out of my bunk, wiggle out of whatever disgusting clothes I’m still wearing and stomp into the tiny shower cubicle in the tiny bathroom. Hey, being the captain has some perks.

As the tickly combination of ultrasonics and fine mist blast the sweat and grime off my body, I’m slowly starting to feel alive again. Also less mad. It’s hard to be angry at someone for long when they’re doing nice things for you. I jump out of the cubicle before the drying program has finished, kick the dirty clothes littering the floor into a corner and rummage through the dull green storage compartments for a clean uniform and something to eat. Munching on the vaguely chocolate-flavoured chunk of calories that is a compressed nutrition bar I briskly make my way back to the bridge.

The lights are back on, and Xavier is sitting down in the command seat, as I enter licking the final stains of ‘natural chocolate aromas’ off my fingers. You’d think that in the hundreds of years we’ve been making this stuff we’d be able to make it taste like real chocolate instead of sweetened cardboard, but hey, can’t have all the good things, I guess. It’s either spaceflight or realistic fake chocolate.

They should’ve gone with the chocolate.

Xavier, stickler that he is, gets out of the chair and salutes me as I enter.

“Captain.”

I wince, as I always do.

“Please, Xavier, you carried me on your back when I was barely old enough to walk, can’t you just call me by my name, like everyone else?”

Hey look, a whole sentence without curse words! I guess being clean, rested and full does make a difference after all. He smiles warmly at me, but still stands at attention, back rigid as if he’s just had an aerial shoved up his arse.

“Not while on duty, ma’am. This is how I served your parents, and this is how l serve you.”

I try to stare him down—a trick which hasn’t worked for the past twenty-five years or so, I might add—give up and collapse into my chair with an audible sigh. Old Xav seats himself next to me and resumes his vigil over the flickering projections suspended in the air in front of him. Taking quick stock of the wealth of data flitting around the room, I notice to my satisfaction that, as Ace said, almost nothing seems to be irreparably broken on the ship, although there’s some obvious hull damage and the keel thruster is well beyond saving. I click my tongue in annoyance when I glance at the status readings on the sails. The headsail is busted all to hell, that’ll limit mobility once we’re back on windpower. Other than that it’s really mostly scrambled electronics.

“Give me a quick overview of the last hours, if you would.”

“Yes ma’am. As you probably heard, we’re planetside after making an emergency drop from the stream. As far as we can tell, we’re situated in some kind of mudflat with mangrove-like vegetation. A stroke of luck, that, the landing could’ve gone a lot worse if we’d been forced to land on rock. The atmosphere is breathable, and the environment seems to be surprisingly earthlike.”

I raise my eyebrows at that. Curiouser and curiouser.

“Terraformed?”

“No clear indication, but it’s possible. The engineers are working in closed suits, to be on the safe side.“

Prudent. I scan the footage from outside cameras, noticing several work crews, cutting and welding stuff around the crushed thruster, looking like large insects scurrying around in the twilight with their reflective bubble helmes and auxiliary appendages. It’s lighter out than before—dawn must be approaching.

“We’ve propped the ship up on the starboard side to keep it level, there’s solid ground to port. We’ve had plenty of indication of wildlife, but...”

He trails off. Not good. Though his face betrays nothing, I can sense the uncertainty in his emotions, and cold shivers run up my spine. Old Xavier has served on the Trickster since... well, since before either me or my brother were born. Well past sixty, he’s tough as iron and has more experience under his belt than most merchant crews have between them, and when he hesitates it’s never a good thing. I eye him warily.

“But?”

“It’s strange. If I had to take a guess, I’d say the planet has been deliberately terraformed to sustain life as we’re used to it, but there isn’t really any indication of human habitation. No radio transmissions, no light pollution, no comms lasers, no nothing.”

That chill I felt earlier decides to make an encore to raise the hairs on my neck and then gleefully skip down my spine again. No radio? I know that new colonies often ‘form areas far larger than strictly necessary and then just let the forests spread freely, but far enough to cross the radio horizon? Without new settlers dropping in to build new outposts, broadcasters and airways? Less than bloody likely, as Elizabeth would say.

“We have some... interesting readings, though.”

I perk up as Xavier makes a languid hand wave at one of the screens, which promptly explodes into a riot of colours representing temperature readings. Clearly visible against the cold black and navy hues of the sky is a... pattern? A... formation, maybe five or six, of small, yellow-and-orange dots that quickly weave back and forth over the canopy before disappearing behind the treetops. I realise it’s a recording, the time stamp indicating that the footage is a few hours old by now.

“That didn’t look like an animal.”

“No, ma’am. Their heat signature is somewhat higher than human body heat, and they seem to move in formations and precise patterns. Too precise to be animals, at least to my eye.”

“Any visual sightings? Higher resolution thermal images?”

“No, ma’am. They appear intermittently and then disappear. The closest we’ve seen them at is two clicks. The thermal cam took a beating in the landing, so we haven’t been able to get a clear picture. Hell, we didn’t get the whole camera array unjammed until a couple of hours ago.”

I lean back in the seat, absentmindedly running my hand through my still-damp hair. Spy drones? No, even encrypted, those would receive a control signal which we could measure, and there’s no point in flying them in groups. Interceptors...? No, not hot enough. Semi-sentients? ...possible. Maybe some kind of smartboosted large bird. Genetic engineering, but no people, though...?

Eh, no use mulling over so little data. I push the thoughts from my mind.

“Okay, just keep an eye on them for now. We’ll put the Sparrow out immediately after sunrise.”

“Aye, captain.”

“And stop calling me captain.”

“Aye, ma’am.”

I glare at him.

“I’m going on an inspection rounds. Keep the ship running.”

“Aye.”

I clap him on the shoulder and leave.

*

Bright orange wall-mounted handles flit by as I stride alongside the thick, red guideline painted on the floor. Blood-red letters spell out “SICK BAY” at every intersection.

For all the damn colours you’d think that the place would feel less desolate, but unfortunately even a ship as... socially vibrant as the Trickster is cursed with that nuclear bunker aesthetic of spacecraft everywhere.
Ah well, it’s the crew that makes the ship, Dad always used to say. I smile at the memory as I turn the final corner before the medical quarters, where some would-be comedian or another has put a completely superfluous amount of effort into calligraphing a single sentence onto the bulkhead. ‘Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'entrate‘.

“All hope abandon, ye who enter in,” I murmur under my breath.

“The Divine Comedy, if I’m not mistaken,” a curt, male voice calls out.

“Ah, Julian. Good morning,” I smile at the surgeon, receiving a noncommittal grunt in response. Oh well, you can’t fault the doctor on his manners. He doesn’t have any to fault.

I glance around the white walls of the room while Julian washes his hands in the zero-G sink by the wall. The main area is a mess, with some kind of foul-smelling colourless chemical bleeding out onto the floor from a container full of punctured plastic bottles, and there’s a bunch of empty forms strewn all over the waiting area. A pair of nurses in their distinctive white jumpsuits are taking inventory of a badly battered box of medical supplies, while a third is ticking off a list. They barely spare me a glance, fully immersed in their work.

Julian turns to me and eyes me with a scowl—I swear he trims his beard like that just to frame that grimace—while folding his work spectacles into the front pocket of his laboratory coat.

“You’re here about the girl.”

Straight to the point, as always.

“Yes.”

“Come.”

With that, he turns and strides through an automatic side door with the text ‘NO SURGERY’ hovering a millimeter off the door’s surface in bold, green letters.

The room is cold, the space dominated by the bulk of the operating table. Eerily reminiscent of a huge arachnid, its curled-up legs are bristling with extension-mounted scalpel arrays, clamps, tubes and beam lights. I suppress a shudder as I walk up to the table, looking at the human-shaped object under the white sheet. Without ado Julian pulls the sheet down, revealing the young engineer underneath. A thousand worn-out phrases about peaceful sleep flit through my mind as I sadly regard the dead body. Shoulder-length sandy hair, dimples. Thick eyebrows. Nothing especially remarkable.

Seeing people—your people—dead isn’t pleasant, even if you weren’t there to see it happen. I’ve stood here before, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever get used to it. Don’t sure if I want to. And even if you know it wasn’t your fault, it still smarts: I’m the fucking captain, It’s my responsibility to keep my crew as safe as they can be.

After a while I nod to Julian, turn, and leave.

*

“Oi, Eris!”

Another familiar voice. All right, girl, enough gloomy thoughts. I shoot a fairly genuine smile back at the grinning imp bearing down on me, her angular face suspended over a rough black collar adorned by a single red stripe.

“Spitfire, good to see you.”

Still grinning, the infantrywoman stomps up to me and claps my shoulder with enough force to dislocate any one of my joints. I really wish she’d realise that just because I’m a head taller than her doesn’t mean I have her ridiculous toughness. Okay, nevermind, smile, ignore the pain. I notice her glance towards the sick bay before turning back to me, a more serious expression on her face.

“To spot the girl that got 'er loaf of bread caved in, yeah?“

I wince at the choice of words, but nod nonetheless. Elizabeth was never one for subtlety and tact. Come to think of it, I seem to be running into all the delicacy-challenged crewmembers one after the other, today.

“Yeah. In a way I’m happy that we got off with so little casualties, but... you know,” I trail off.

“Eyup, it were a tight spot we got out of. Son't flog yorself over it.”

“Yeah, I know. What’re the platoons doing?”

“We're puttin' togeffer a scoutin' patrol, right, I'm supposed ta pull a briefin' for the girls and fellas in ten.”

“Right, well, I won’t keep you any longer, then.”

“Awright. Oh yeah, yor bruvver's been 'ave a lookin' for yer. He should be on the observation deck.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“Take care of yorself now!”

Ow! Crap! Why does she do that shoulder thing? I watch her scamper away down the corridor and begin walking to the nearest ladder, rubbing my arm as I go.

*

“Hey, Archie.”

In his favour, he barely raises an eyebrow at the nickname.

“‘Archie’? You haven’t called me Archie since you were twelve.”

“Nevermind that, Archie. What’s going on?”

“This is revenge for letting you sleep in, isn’t it?”

I smirk at his long-suffering sigh.

“Okay, fine. Have your petty vengeance, you petulant child.”

He turns back to the armour-plated window and zooms the image with a few hand gestures. There’s a short moment of vertigo as the faraway forest suddenly rushes in and then tilts, pans and finally focuses on the sought-after target on the forest floor. All right, let’s see. Fully enclosed suits, rifles, light body armor, blue stripe. One of Abebe’s ground teams. I realize how light it’s getting outside, the troops are setting up what I now recognise to be a drone crash landing pad, and doing it without the help of searchlights. Sunrise must be mere minutes away.

“Setting up the pad for the Sparrow?”

“Yes. Did you speak with Xavier?”

“Yeah. What do you think those fliers are?”

“I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

We stand in silence for a few minutes, watching the black-clad people on the ground mill around the bulky equipment. I glance over at my brother, who seems to be lost in his thoughts. He’s shaved the stubble, showered, and found a fresh doublet, so he looks slightly more human now, and now that we’re just the two of us he isn’t pulling that ridiculous military act anymore. I pull him into a one-armed hug and rest my head against his shoulder.

“It was a good call, getting us out. Thanks, Archie.”

He says nothing, but squeezes me back. We stand like that for a while, briefly allowing ourselves to forget that we’re responsible for well more than a hundred people stranded on unknown ground and with probable pursuers hot on our tails. Over the horizon, the first golden rays of a G-class star burst over the treetops and rush to embrace the forested landscape.

Of course, it doesn’t last. A demure electronic chime heralds the hairless head of Xavier, the projection popping up at eye height in front of the observation window. I release Ace who straightens up and addresses the disembodied face on the glass.

“Is everything ready?”

“Yes, sir. The Sparrow is loaded in the catapult, and ready for overflight.”

“Good. Launch at your discretion, and sweep the forested hills southwest of here. Focus on the last reported locations of the unknown fliers.”

“Roger: scouting Bogeys, launching when ready.”

The picture winks out of existence, and a few seconds later a deep metallic clang accompanied by the faint static noise of high-yield atmospheric thrusters signal the ascent of the unmanned spy craft. Ace cycles through a few curt hand signals, and the image of the ground crew returns to a regular one-to-one panoramic view of the outside, peripherally obscured by the fair dozen of feeds flowing in from the airborne drone.

“And now, we play the waiting game.”

Leveling at an even height of three hundred meters, the Sparrow quickly reaches the place I recognise from the morning’s thermal camera feed. Executing a lazy horizontal loop over the area, the drone angles out to the left and begins weaving in a languid pattern in the general direction of the highest visible hill, a few kilometers distant.

A minute passes with nothing showing on the display feeds besides forest, interspaced by the occasional clearing or large, overgrown boulder. Then another. The silence is becoming rather anticlimactic when an angry metallic buzz jars the tranquil stream of nature photography, and a monochrome thermal feed automatically slides into the center of the viewscreen. I squint at the image, trying to see what triggered the alarm.

“I don’t see anything.”

“There.”

Once he points it out it’s pretty obvious. Although hard to spot from the angle of the drone, a noticeable white trace of heat mars the cold grey shade of a flat slab of rock, laying on the edge of a clearing. Ace holds up a finger above his ear. A small speaker icon winks to life on the screen.

“Xavier?”

“I see it, sir,” assures the disembodied voice.

“Take us closer.”

The image is growing now, not in the smooth, even rush of shifting lenses, but in the lazy gliding jumps of the drone changing direction and gunning its thrusters to close the distance to the clearing. It takes but half a minute for the Sparrow to descend to a hundred and fifty meters and close in on the clearing, sensors meticulously examining the rock and surrounding ground for movement, heat, radiation and sound.

For several seconds, nothing happens.

“There’s something warm in that tree. Maybe it's just an anim—what the fuck?”

Ace doesn’t get to finish his first sentence before the fliers burst out of the foliage, automated cam servos dispassionately locking onto and tracking the moving objects, now rendered in beautiful high resolution, well-lighted images being streamed back to the ship in real-time. Which doesn’t make the images any easier to process. At all.

Instead of just constructively skipping a gear and fitting new facts into its worldview, my mind promptly spits out the whole cogwheel and then collapses the whole machinery in on itself. Out of the wreckage, the single question my brain has deemed most relevant to the situation excavates itself to the surface.

“Is that horse holding a fucking sword?”

*

Chapter 5

CHAPTER V

Leave a way of escape to a surrounded enemy, and do not press a desperate enemy too hard. Such is the art of employing troops.

—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The rays of Celestia’s sun have just started warming the clearing as the break for the team comes to an end. Wing sergeant Mountain Gale finishes the last scraps of his sorry field breakfast and stretches his white wings with a series of loud cracks and pops. By Luna, but this night has felt long!

Pegasi weren’t meant for ground stationing, he decides as he tries to shake the kinks out of his body.

Pegasi were meant to fly, to observe from the air: to use their natural advantages! Not that he would have had a better idea of what in Tartarus they were observing, but at least he wouldn’t have to wake up with his body aching all over. Grumbling, he starts stalking around the edge of the clearing, taking stock of his flight team.

“All right, break’s over, up an’ at ‘em! You’ve time to feel sorry for yourselves once our shift is over.”

A grumpy chorus of affirmatives floats from the team as they get up from under their assorted shrubs and trees, checking pieces of equipment and stowing away whatever scraps they have left from their respective meals. Sergeant Gale quickly inspects all four present members of his wing, turning to the final and further removed member of the group after concluding the round to his satisfaction.

“Chaser! Any movement on the target?”

Outside the edge of the woods, perched on top of a large boulder lies a lone winged mare, pressed as flat as possible against the rocky slab with a pair of matte-painted binoculars in her hooves. She clears her throat before answering, voice raspy from hours of hugging cold rock.

“Same as before, sarge. Some kind of tall creatures bumbling about the object; doing what, I can’t tell. They seem hesitant to leave the immediate vicinity of it.”

Mountain Gale nods to himself before casting an apprehensive glance towards the slowly rising orb of the sun on the horizon.

“Good work. Start getting down from there, sun’s being raised in a few minutes.”

“Got it.”

The mare starts scooting backwards, careful not to damage her equipment, but comes to a sudden stop before reaching the lip of the stone.

“Hang on... Sarge! Something’s going on.”

Chaser quickly shimmies back to her original position, aiming the binoculars over the treetops. The pegasus team, now alert to the new situation, spread out flexing wings and neck muscles. Sergeant Gale trots closer, taking care to stay within the cover offered by the trees.

“What do you see? Report.”

“I’m not sure. It looks like... some kind of hatch? A hatch just opened on the object.”

“What, like the one the creatures disembarked from?”

“No, bigger. And on top. Something’s... Whoa! Single airborne, just popped out of there!”

Mountain Gale feels his heartbeat quicken—so far the interlopers have shown no capacity of flight. Had they seen them? No, Chaser is good, she would’ve noticed. Tense, he listens as the mare on the rock continues her rapidly spoken report.

“No visible wings, flier seems to use some kind of magic. Rapidly ascending, estimated altitude two thousand wingspan and counting. I think it’s... shit! Heads up! It’s coming this way!”

Sergeant Gale turns in place as Chaser unceremoniously slides over the edge of the boulder, catching her fall with her wings and making a mad dash for the woodline with a few powerful flaps. Trusting his subordinate to manage herself, Gale begins barking orders, the assembled guardspegasi leaping to action with trained ease.

“Cover, now! Weapons out! Make sure that you can clear the canopy if you have to!”

Tasting dusty jute cord in his mouth, the sergeant draws his short scimitar out of the saddle scabbard secured to his barding. Vocal orders are unnecessary at this point. A Guard wing trains together for years before being eligible for field operations: every pony in the group knows their own role and that of their wingmates by heart. Glancing to his left to make sure Chaser has gotten safely out of the open, Mountain Gale flutters up into a gnarled tree, finding a solid branch to stand on and brushing leafy foliage to the side in an attempt to keep his view of the sky clear.

Agonizingly long seconds tick by, marked only by the occasional scrape of armour on wood or rustle of wing.

His ear twitches at an unfamiliar sound.

Far away, from the general direction of the strange object comes an insistent droning noise, like the rush of a distant river and growing steadily louder. The guardspony finally catches a glimpse of its source as the strange flier banks into view, flying fairly low. He warily follows the flying magical contraption with his gaze, its turns unhurried and wide, not unlike the careening motions of a bird of prey.

Keeping a watchful eye on the dark shape silhouetted against the brightening sky, the sergeant grabs the dull back of his blade with a hoof to free his jaws.

“It’s a scout,” he remarks at conversational volume, confident that the distance will mask his voice from the flying object but carry to his nearby subordinates.

“Think it’s looking for us, specifically?” A quiet voice comes from the tree to his right. Blitz, maybe?

“No idea. If it gets too close, we pounce it and rally at the command post. Clean retreat, no heroics. Everyone get that?”

A chorus of affirmatory grunts and ‘yes sir’s muffled by mouth-held objects stem from nearby trees.

“Good. Now shut up and stay sharp,” the sergeant growls and hefts his scimitar anew.

For a few seconds the strange flying object seems to just weave around, swinging back and forth in an aimless searching pattern, before suddenly decelerating to a hovering halt. The sergeant squints his eyes against the sky, trying to make out the way the object is facing, when it suddenly emits a series of short, angry pulses of blue-white light and jerks into rapid movement.

Mountain Gale feels his mouth go dry around the handle of the sword as he realized the flier is rapidly dropping altitude, now clearly headed towards the clearing where his wing had been camped during the night. Forcibly keeping his breathing level, he plays through the standard E&E drill in his mind.

Just like training. Fly-by, strike the target, hard loop. Then go low and sprint for the rally point. Pass, whack, loop and sprint.

All the while, a treacherous voice of doubt whispers away at the back of his mind. Although well trained, neither Mountain Gale nor his wing have seen any seriously dangerous duty. Sure, there’ve been some minor criminal incidents and some patrols in bad storms, but that has all been familiar ground, it’s normal. This is a completely unknown opponent, with unknown intentions, and using strange magic to boot.

This will be the real test.

Swallowing, sergeant Gale shifts the grip in his mouth and tenses himself for kick-off, his face screwing up in determination. The flying... thing is now getting close enough to make out in more detail, and Mountain Gale takes an involuntary breath when he let his eyes pass over the... carapace of the strange creature.

A flat, rounded square, it mostly resembles a giant insect, with four glowing legs on each corner turning and jerking to balance the beast, whatever it is.

No, not a beast, the pegasus realises with a touch of wonder, a machine of some kind.

Lensed tubes resembling large, black telescopes and smaller, sleeker camera-like devices rotate and pan on a number of multi-jointed limbs, scanning a dozen directions at once. Coloured with mottled greens and greys on top, the opposite side of the boxy shape exactly mirrors the hue of the sky. The rushing sound is now accompanied by a loud, high-pitched whine, and Mountain Gale instinctively flattens his ears against his skull in discomfort. He observes the floating shape hovering some three hundred wingspan in the air, his heart hammering in his chest.

The flying thing seems to pay particular interest to the boulder in the clearing, training several of the eye-like appendages on the rocky outcropping, as well as waving several antennae-like stalks at it, the purpose of which elude the observing pegasus pony.

Carefully not to disturb the tree he is perched in, Mountain Gale slowly shifts his gaze to the boulder, and feels his breath stick in his throat.

Celestia damn it, that fool!

There, in the tall grass at the base of the rock, glints the metal clasp of a Royal Guard issue saddlebag.

The binocular bag! It must have fallen when she rolled off the boulder! Sun and moon, Chaser, such a rookie mistake!

He continues cursing silently under his breath. Quickly weighing the options of him and his squad, Mountain Gale comes to a decision. Tensing into a low crouch, breathing fast but controlled, the Guard sergeant blinks a drop of sweat out of his left eye, bites down hard on the handle of his sword and leaps into the air with an inarticulate cry of challenge.

*

I’m still staring at the monitors in disbelief as the first of the flying horses— no, pegasi? Isn’t that what flying horses are called? ...anyway, as the first pegasus, the sword-bearing one, tackles the Sparrow. The cameras jolt as the controller takes evasive action with equipment arms retracting as fast as possible to protect the valuable optics.

Several of the other winged creatures pass the Sparrow by, flitting past at enough of a distance to be out of reach for simple melee weapons. I’m transfixed, fascinated by the creatures in their quaint little armour, cameras barely swiveling fast enough to track the impressive aerial maneuvers. The first attacker—the one with the sword—disappears into the forest in a blur before the next one has even reached the drone. As a not-too-shabby pilot myself, I have to admit: that was some damn snazzy flying.

While I’m standing there staring at the unfolding spectacle, however, the controller of the drone is not. Must be Meifen, I swear that woman is a wizard behind the stick. No dirty pun intended. With a deft horizontal flip, she foils the next two would-be optics vandals, unfortunately bringing the machine right into the path of the final winged menace bursting out of the foliage.

“Fuck!” I comment in a totally calm and collected manner as a camera feed explodes into a fair simulacrum of a carnival, four-digit sums for optical repairs flashing in front of my mind’s eye.

Well, at least I’m not alone with my anguish.

At roughly the same moment that the hideously expensive hardware gets busted all to hell, Meifen triggers the Sparrow’s automated proximity defenses.

Lucky for the winged equine, the APD is designed to keep big birds from getting too curious about the shiny flying things, so it has non-lethal loadout. Unlucky for the winged equine, the birds it was designed for have a wingspan of five meters, give or take.

I wince in sympathy—that’s regular old sympathy, not the ‘mind-magic’ kind—as the hyper-viscous slugs of cellulose pelt the poor bastard. Taking a clean hit to the base of the skull, it drops like a rock and disappears into the trees. Aw, fuck, I hope it’s alive.

Visualising a sheet of stark blue followed by the bold, white numeral ‘1’, I lightly pinch my left ear.

“Abebe, go,” a heavily accented voice answers.

“It’s Eris. You’ve got ground teams out, correct?”

“Affirmative.”

“Scramble a team on skimmers, the drone took down a hostile flier about two clicks southwest of your position. I’d like you to check it out.”

“Your word is law. Abebe, out.”

I smirk at the antics of my second platoon leader as I go through the motions for a bridge connection.

“Drone control here.”

“Meifen, it’s Eris. Can you see the rest of the fliers?”

“Negative, I could see them weave away between the trees. Those horse-birds fly like nobody’s business.”

“Roger. Try to spot the one that fell, and stay on site. Abebe is putting out a ground team.”

“Míngbái, chuánzhǎng. Anything else?”

“Nah, I’m good. And don’t call me captain. Eris, out.”

Back to the feeds, lessee. I think I’ll need a few... how the hell was that done again?

“Ace, could you pull up head cams for the skimmer team?”

“Done... and done.”

“Thanks.”

I watch the forest roll on by as the small, open-topped hovercraft steadily approach the radio beacon of the Sparrow. The projections of the drone’s optics now showcase the immobile body of the fallen pegasus, and I breathe a sigh of relief as I see the telltale signs of both lungs working and a pulse on the psychedelic colour-sprayed image of the motion highlight display. The more I look at the creature, the more intrigued I become. It’s really magnificent, a perfect hybrid of bird and... well, it’s not really large enough to be called a horse. A pony, perhaps? I wonder how those wings are constructed...

Okay, I need to get down there and see this myself, hostile environment or no.

“I’m going there.”

“I don’t think that’s the best possible idea...” Ace begins, then sighs deeply and rubs the bridge of his nose with a resigned expression.

“—but you don’t care a figs toss about what I think, do you?”

“Captain’s privilege!” I trill at him, happily skipping out the door of the observation deck.

*

These new quick-lock environmental suits are really handy. The click-clack of a few magnetic latches later, I’m running start-up checks through the interface of a skimmer, feeling the powerful omnidirectional turbine hum inside its stiff carbon-weave chassis. I let the skimmer buck and swerve a few times, revving the engine as I hover into one of the the claustrophobic single-vehicle airlocks, the hiss of the pressure seals almost inaudible as the room adjusts to the near-identical atmospheric conditions on the outside of the ship. Orange attention lights flash as the outer doors open, revealing the narrow ramp pressed into the trampled earth below.

Adjusting my hands inside the clumsy suit—one size fits all, my ass—I pull the handles to my shoulders and kick the accelerators back. The skimmer responds with a satisfying roar, rearing as the thruster catapults the whole vehicle into a high arc, blasting rotting leaves and charred swamp grass to the sides with a splash of displaced air as it comes down to a hover above the forest floor. Grinning, I let the machine dance in a skittish circle as I take stock of the scene.

Crash pad and technical crew, check. Engineers stalking about the hull, freaky, living bundles of cables and universal joints caressing twisted metal. The picket line of black armour, moving about in pairs and small groups or reclining on standby in the seats of idling vehicles. And, of course, the science teams flitting around with scanners, collecting water samples from nearby sinkholes, animatedly gesturing at some plant or another and just generally behaving like little children suddenly thrust into a cake buffet. Well, seems we have a fairly representative sample of the whole family out today.

As I finish my parade turn, I come face to face with two sleek skimmers not unlike the one I’m riding. Well, except for the colours. Normally the active optical camouflage automatically tries to mimic the general hues of the surrounding terrain, gathering data over time to refine its ability to blend into the background. That’s ‘normally’, as in ‘not manually overridden because you like flashy colours’.

Sasha and Kolya are lounging on their skimmers, one leaning back against the canary yellow seat with his hands clasped behind his head, the other leaning over the electric blue-and-green front hood, arms crossed. They grin at me through transparent full-face visors.

“Privet, Eris. We heard you need babysitter, da?”

Sasha’s baryton sounds tinny and flat through the helmet speaker, but the bemusement is clear in his voice.

Spinning around in my seat, my visor automatically magnifies the view in response to my squinting eyes and craned neck. Ace waves at me with a smirk from the observation window. I empathically give him the finger before turning back to the horror of primary colours that simultaneously constitute some of my dearest friends and the cause of nine out of ten headaches during port stay.

“Why he would give the responsibility to you, I have no idea.”

Kolya chuckles.

“Maybe he want you dead so he can be kapitan, eh?”

“Sure looks like it. Come on then, you oafs, let’s get going before it’s night again.”

Without further comment, I flex my fingers—damn these gloves to hell—and gun the skimmer in the direction of the turquoise half-circle dancing in my visor, rear view camera showing flashing colours falling in behind me.

*

“How the bloody hell does it fly with that body-to-wing ratio?”

“Faith?”

“Hot air?”

“Hidden engine?”

“Har har, very fucking funny. How’s the damage look?”

“Not bad, as far as I can tell. I’d say the hind leg is the worst off, broken at worst, and I don’t think that wing’s meant to bend that way, but superficially it seems fine. I’m not a vet, though, so the best I can do is straighten it out and splint the leg. It was lucky to fall into a tree.”

“Just do what you can, okay?”

“Will do.”

I turn the pegasus’ metal helmet around in my hands.

It’s really very nice, ornate but light, and with a wide field of vision. Perfect for a flying creature.

“Eris.”

“Yeah?”

“Check this out.”

Are those... broken binoculars?

“Jesus, someone really put down a whole shitload of money on these things.”

“You think it’s gen-engineered?”

“Well, what the hell else would they be? Heavily smartboosted, too, if they can be trusted to carry such delicate equipment.”

“Carry... or use?”

I cast a skeptical eye at my escort, leaning against the engine block of his grounded skimmer.

“You mean that they’d be smart enough to deliver a report? I highly doubt it, there are only a handful of enhanced animals that can talk enough to do that, and those cost several fortunes to have made.”

“So you mean it was just carrying the optics?”

“Well, it’s the only reasonable explanation I can—”

“Chuánzhǎng, you’ve got four fliers incoming,” Meifen’s cool voice breaks into my ear. Abebe’s team immediately fans out, barrels rising to cover overlapping firing sectors. Sasha and Kolya smoothly vault onto their skimmers, gun racks swiveling towards the clear sky. I touch the helmet over my ear, focusing on the comlink to the bridge.

“Understood. Get some distance and mark them as they come in. Keep me posted on their movements.”

“Roger. They’re on low approach now, ETA to you one hundred and twenty seconds or less.”

Four fliers. They’re missing a number, if I remember the feed right. If this was a military opponent, I’d say they sent one to report and get backup, but that’s stupid.

Right?

And why are they coming back? I guess they realized that a member of the... pack? swarm? flock? Whatever, that one of them is missing. Fairly unusual herd behaviour, that, usually animals just leave the fallen behind.

Eh, I guess we’ll see what’s up in a minute.

I’d say Meifen was right within a margin of ten seconds. The group of four expertly lands on the other side of the clearing in a loose diamond formation. And I say formation, because that’s exactly what it is. Weapons out, scanning different directions and moving carefully to stay close to ground cover at all times. I look into the enormous eyes of the one in the lead and, incredulously but undeniably, come to a highly disturbing conclusion:

“Well, fuck me and call me captain. These things are intelligent.”

*

Well fuck me and call me princess. Those things are big up close.

Pulse hammering, Mountain Gale looks at the strange bipedal creatures across the clearing. Carefully scanning the interlopers, he counts at least five identical googly-eyed creatures spread out into the shadows of the forest, poorly trying to hide behind trunks and rocks.

No, not hide. They’re looking for cover.

“I fhink lhey are shome kinge of foldiersh,” he slurs quietly around the handle in his mouth.

“What about the ones in the middle?” asks Blitz, equally quiet but speech far clearer, mouth unobstructed by his saddle-mounted spear.

“Dungno. Lheagher?”

“Look, it’s Chaser!”

Mountain Gale tenses up as he spots the prone form of his squad member behind the garishly painted yellow-and-red machine, idling at a hover with the same grating high-frequency whine as the earlier flying box. Carefully closing some distance to the silent creatures, he lifts a foreleg and points at Chaser. The tall alien with a large, bubble-shaped and glass-like head steps forward, holding up both front legs, hooves terminating in thick, stubby tentacles like blunt claws.

*

“Be advised, tiny pegasus is okhuitelno adorable, over,” notes the voice over the crisp comlink.

“Shut the fuck up, Sasha.”

He’s right, though. With those huge eyes and tiny little scowl, the winged, white leader—I’m going to call it Grumpy—is almost ridiculously saccharine. The only way it would look more like a stuffed toy would be if it was pink. Grumpy very carefully stalks forward, making noises too quiet to be properly heard. I surreptitiously glance at the small fork-and-oval icon on my visor, press my pinkie to my palm and rub my thumb and index finger together as if turning a volume knob. The helmet microphones instantly amplify the surrounding soundscape, and I listen in as one of the other pegasi opens its mouth. It’s gibberish to me, of course, but the structural patterns of language are clearly there. The pattern analyser of the ship’s translation software pulls its straw to the stack by informing me that, yes, it is indeed nonsense to us.

Well, I take back everything my stupid mouth said about them being animals.

“Orders, ma’am?” queries a rough female voice in my ear.

“Hold for now, let’s see what they want.”

Suddenly one of the quadrupeds spots something, and loudly exclaims it's surprise. Ow, my ears. I key back the volume as I follow the gaze of the group, now focused behind us. Right, there’s the little issue of the one we shot down. Grumpy points at the shape on the ground.

Hm. This is certainly going to be a hard one to explain. How do you pronounce ‘self-defense’ in Pegasish? I turn to the men behind me.

“Sasha, Kolya: back off, slowly. They only want the one behind us. And take those cannons off them.”

“I am not certain is very—”

“They have spears, Kolya, for God’s sake. Abebe’s team’s got high-powered rifles trained on them. Back off. And get out your stretcher.”

“All right, all right, lyuboi. But is own stretcher, you compensate for this later, yes?”

“Yes, sure, just get on with it,” I reply absentmindedly before stepping forward and showing the equines my empty hands, fervently hoping that my Sympathy will be efficient across species.

Small, luminous letters spell out ‘ARMED’ in the center of my vision. Hey, I prefer a peaceful solution, but I’m not stupid.

*

The bubble-headed one briefly turns to the two creatures on the active flying contraptions, and though it’s body language looks as if it is talking, no sounds emerge. As it turns back to face the pegasus team, still displaying its empty appendages, the slender tubes on top of the colourful chariots turn back to the front with a hum and partially lower out of sight. With a gust of wind and a slight increase of noise the flashy devices float back, leaving only the creature extending its front legs towards the pegasi.

It’s trying to show us it’s not hostile, Mountain Gale realises.

Slowly, not taking his eyes off the still interloper, he sheathes his scimitar.

“Sarge?”

“Stay alert. I think it wants to communicate.”

He takes a tentative step towards the creature, gaze flicking between the stranger and Chaser all the while.

She’s breathing. Thank Celestia.

With deliberately slow movements, the bipedal alien brings one of its appendages to its head, touches the shiny surface of the glass bubble and draws upwards. The sergeant tenses involuntarily as the opaque surface of the bubble turns entirely translucent in the wake of the multi-digited hoof, revealing a strangely distorted face underneath. Two small, amber eyes stare back at Mountain Gale, set over a strangely compressed muzzle, leaving the face rather flat in the eyes of the pony.

Several seconds pass with the representatives of the two species simply looking at each other.

Keying the fabric at its throat, the taller of the odd pair coughs loudly, before stepping to the side and gesturing towards the pegasus on the ground. Backing towards one of the flying contraptions, the biped receives a tall object of metal and cloth, and gestures at the wounded pegasus again, making sounds which remind Gale of a scratched gramophone record being reversed.

Eagerly, the pegasi trot to their comrade, still maintaining rough formation but slightly less on edge now that the situation seems stable, fear of the unknown making way for worry about their wounded friend.

“Blitz? How bad is it?” asks the sergeant, stubbornly keeping his eyes on the strangers.

“Bad bruising, wing’s sprained but whole. She’ll fly.”

Mountain Gale lets out a breath he didn’t realise he had been holding.

“...leg’s worse, though. I gather it’s broken. It’s been splinted.”

“Splinted?” the sergeant risks a glance at the kneeling Blitz.

“By these... creatures?”

“I’d guess so. It’s made in a highly unusual manner, and it’s not something Chaser would’ve managed on her own.”

“Will it hold?”

“Yeah, at least for now. It’ll be a right load o’ trouble carrying her, though.”

“Well, horseshit.”

“Sarge, I think that one wants something.”

The glass-helmeted alien is waving its front leg at the pegasi surrounding the unconscious Chaser. When it has ascertained that Gale has given it his attention, it lowers the long bundle of metal onto the ground and locks it open with a quick snap, then nudges the now flat object towards the ponies and steps back into a waiting position.

Mountain Gale looks up curiously as he realises what the thing is that’s been presented to the squad.

“Blitz.”

“Yeah?”

“Would a stretcher help?”

“Sure, but where did you plan to find a— oh.”

The pegasi glance at each other uncertainly, before Mountain Gale resolutely steps forward, grabs one of the handles in his teeth and hauls the stretcher up alongside Chaser.

“Strap her in and let’s get out of here.”

“Right you are, sarge.”

The process is quick, once the guardsponies get to it, the large latches on the holding straps making securing the unconscious pony to the carrying device an easy task, even lacking magic and opposable thumbs. While half the squad takes off from the clearing, stretcher held fast between saddle straps and teeth, Mountain Gale takes a long, final look at the foremost alien, trying to scry the emotions behind that inexpressive face. Finally he sighs, and nods towards the strange group and their strange equipment.

“Thank you.”

Then he turns and flies away, Chaser’s helmet held in his mouth.

*

“Well, that could’ve gone a lot worse,” I venture as the group leader disappears over the trees.

I conduct a short and wordless dialogue with Abebe’s squad leader, primarily involving the hand signals for ‘saddle up’ and ‘understood’, as I walk back to my vehicle.

“Was very good first contact, very little casualties,” Sasha nods sagely.

“Da, and is refreshing to meet species that does not try to shoot us on sight,” supplies Kolya.

The two idiots keep their poker face for several seconds before bursting into raucous laughter, slapping each other on their backs. I can’t help a wry smile as I get on my skimmer and visualise a circle of golden yellow.

“Tell me I didn’t just hallucinate that whole episode.”

“It’s you and me both, if that’s the case,” Ace answers from the bridge.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know what to think, though I can say with certainty that I’ll need a few stiff drinks to cope with it.”

“You and me both, brother,” I reply as I rev the engine and angle my hovercraft back towards the ship.

*

Legal disclaimer: I obviously don't own My Little Pony (trademark of Hasbro) or this would be canon. All likeness to real people or characters created by other authors is entirely unintentional.

Chapter 6

CHAPTER VI

If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run — and often in the short one — the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.

—Arthur C. Clarke, The Exploration of Space

“Is everypony here? Is everypony ready?”

Affirmations of varying degrees of wakefulness sound into the early morning, courtesy of a small group of six friends with saddlebags loaded for a day’s trip into the Everfree.

Going over a lengthy list of preparations, Spike is ticking off items at the dictation of his lavender caretaker.

“Inform Mayor Mare about the general outline of the situation?”

“Check.”

“The Sprechen Sie Drakonisch?—The Definitive Guide To Meaningful Dialogue With Foreigners?”

“Check.”

“Check the double-checked checklist for discrepancies?”

“Aaaand that’s a check. Everything’s a-ok, Twilight,” assures the little dragon, deftly rolling together the long parchment and stuffing it inside one of Twilight's saddlebag alongside the quill.

“Excellent! Oh, this is so exciting! Who knows what kind of magical knowledge we can learn from those travellers!”

“I'm sure it'll be really cool. And interesting. So interesting, in fact, that maybe you'll want to sent the princess a letter immediately!”

Twilight eyes the baby dragon with a smile.

“Spike, you know we talked about this. We can't take you along without having any idea what we're going to meet.”

The hopeful face of the dragon falls at the gentle rejection of his unspoken question.

“But—”

“Oh Spike, It's so gentlecoltly of you to stay and help guard Sweetie Belle and her friends!” Rarity suddenly interjects, cupping the cheek of the dragon with a hoof.

“I dread to think what would happen without someone dependable here to take care of them!”

Indignation immediately forgotten, the small dragon puffs out his little chest with pride.

“You think I'm dependable?”

“Absolutely, darling, why else would I leave my beloved sister in your hooves— I mean, claws?”

“Well, I guess it is pretty important that someone stays back and keeps things in order...”

“Great!” Twilight jumps at the opened opportunity, nuzzling the small dragon and gently giving him a push towards the library tree, “Big Mac will be here in a minute with the Crusaders. Make sure you keep the library in order while I'm gone, okay?”

“Of course, who's your number one assistant?”

Twilight giggles as she turns away, mouthing a silent 'thank you' to Rarity.

“You, of course!”

Preparations complete, the six friends begin their trot towards the faraway tree line, leaving behind the library and the purple baby dragon waving a handkerchief.

*

“...it’d be nice if they’d like animals, too.”

“I’m actually surprised you didn’t put up more of a fight, Fluttershy. I would’ve thought you’d want to stay in your cottage.”

“Well, um, the princesses especially asked us to, so I thought it would be important. And, um, there aren’t any dragons there. Right?”

Sounding a little less sure towards the end of the sentence, the pink-maned pegasus nervously glances around, alternating between a low flutter and a calm trot.

“Nopony has mentioned dragons, Fluttershy.”

“Oh, good, I don’t know if I could handle a dragon.”

“You handled that last one pretty handily, if I don’t recall mistakenly,” smiles Rarity, eliciting an embarrassed mumble from the yellow pegasus who promptly proceeds to hide behind her mane.

In a light-hearted manner the beginning of the trek into the Everfree forest proceeds without event, punctuated only by cheerful banter and the occasional theory of what awaits them inside. The closer the group gets to their destination, however, the more somber the mood grows. This far along the path the forest itself is darker and more overgrown, filled with rustling shadows and strange sounds even in the clear light of day. As the first moss-grown trunks of the wetlands begin appearing on the wayside, the travellers are stopped by a pair of armoured and armed ponies standing sentry in a bend of the road.

“Halt! This area is off-limits to civilians, under royal orders!”

“Good thing we’re on royal business, then,” Twilight begins before the larger of the stallions cuts her off.

“I’m sure you are. However, I’m under orders not to let anyone pass. Please return the way you came, miss.”

“No, but you see, I have a—”

“I don’t like to repeat myself.”

In a blur of colour, Rainbow Dash flits down from the air, pressing her face up to the scowling guardspony.

“Hey, mister! Do you even know who you’re talking to?”

“Civilians,” scoffs the white pony with disdain, refusing to budge an inch.

“Look, I’m sure if you’ll just look at this—”

“I said no.”

“Solid,” suddenly interjects the other, considerably more nervous-looking stallion, “I think we might have to let them go.”

“What? But we were specifically ordered to—”

The smaller stallion leans in to urgently whisper into the ear of his colleague, the latter’s face registering an amusing progression of emotion beginning from the displeased scowl, passing through confusion and ending in a flicker of recognition as he takes a closer look at the six mares.

He clears his throat in a very self-conscious manner.

“Hrm. You wouldn’t happen to be a miss Twilight Sparkle, would you?”

“That’s me.”

“And I assume your friends are the...”

“The Elements of Harmony, yes.”

Suddenly very awkward about the whole situation, the stallion vaguely gestures down the road.

“In that case, I... apologize for my rude behaviour. The command post is just down the road—”

“No, no, no!”

The stallion takes a surprised step back at Twilight’s annoyed outburst.

“I won’t have any of this ‘special treatment’ nonsense, there’s protocol and procedure for this kind of thing! We could be anypony!”

Emphasising her words with a stomping hoof, the unicorn yanks the writ of passage from her saddlebag and shoves it into the face of the startled guardspony. What follows is a rather amusing episode involving a smirking pegasus, an increasingly uncomfortable royal guard and a terrifyingly in-depth quiz about the detection of counterfeit documents. A few minutes of intense questioning later, a satisfied lavender unicorn skips away, carefully rolling the valuable parchment back into her saddlebags, leaving behind a slumped-down and sobbing earth pony being awkwardly comforted by his partner.

“Whoa nelly, ya really put him on the spot back there.”

“The rules are there for a reason, and all members of the Guard have to be able to recognise at the very least the eight basic indicators of a genuine royal writ. What if the princess would be in incompetent hooves?”

“How the hay do you know what goes into Guard training?”

“I memorised the Royal Guard Organisational Training Manual and Regulations I-XII in school, back when I was still living in Canterlot.”

“Totally called it.”

“Wow, Twilight, so you’re like, super-duper good at survival and jousting and stuff?”

“Well, no. All that’s in the field operation manuals, and those were restricted. But I do know the seven acceptable shades of grey for the coat of a guardspony—that’s book IV, section eight—and the maximum regulation-compatible length of a guardspony’s mane and tail,” Twilight answers proudly, “I’m sure I could still recite all ten volumes from memory.”

A pregnant silence hangs over the group.

“So Fluttershy, are we still... on for our spa... trip?” Rarity begins, rather loudly.

“Oh, yes, um... our... weekly trip. That we do, um, every week...”

The discussion quickly moves on to other topics, nicely filling out the time before the arrival at the first tents of the encampment.

*

“Halt! This area is off-limits by royal decree!”

“Look—”

“I said 'off-limits', ma'am!”

*

“Captain Diamond Hoof?”

“Who’s asking?”

“Hello, my name is Twilight Sparkle, and the girls in the doorway are the—”

“The Elements of Harmony, yes, yes, yes. Is there something in particular you need me for right now? I’m trying to lead an operation here,” the charcoal grey stallion brusquely interrupts her, glaring across the cluttered map table with poorly hidden annoyance.

“Well– that is... I mean, it’s not—”

“Then please leave me to do my job. No, belay that. I don’t want you lot running around in my camp without supervision. Wait outside the tent, I will have someone to oversee you shortly.”

Twilight opens her mouth to reply, then closes it again. With a huff she turns from the grey commander staring at his grey maps and trots out of the grey tent, only to be nearly bowled over by a grey guardspony rushing past her. Indignantly she sits down with her friends outside the command post.

“Well, that was a complete waste of time. Augh! And why is everything so grey in this camp?”

“Oh, I completely understand your pain, darling. Just look at these dreadful tents, nothing but shades of grey everywhere! It’s a veritable crime against design to have somepony live and work in such a drab environment.”

“Maybe it’s, um, for hiding better. Many small animals do that to evade predators...”

“Oh, I know it's for a reason, Fluttershy, but it’s still terrible. Terrible, I say! it’s as if every piece of it was designed with nothing but a ruler for a tool!”

“Captain, sir,” a crisp, young voice snaps from inside the tent, “Mountain Gale’s wing has unloaded and the sergeant is ready for debriefing. Private Windchaser is receiving medical care for her wounds, sir.”

The friends perk their ears at the loud report being made inside the tent at the mention of a wounded pony.

“Very well. Send him to me post-haste.”

“Sir!”

The grey mare gallops out through the flap, disappearing around a tent corner. Before any of the friends have a chance to think too much about the short exchange, the commander harks loudly.

“I assume you heard that.”

Twilight and Applejack both flush slightly at being caught. Rarity pointedly looks at something interesting in the clouds, with Fluttershy hiding behind her, while the remaining members of the group seem untouched by their unintentional eavesdropping. Diamond Hoof sighs deeply.

“Well, you might as well come in. If you’re going to try to contact the aliens, you might as well know as much as we do.”

Their accidental misbehaviour quickly forgotten, the group files back into the roomy tent, the commander glaring at the parchments in front of him and muttering to himself, words like ‘personal student’ and ‘probably banished to the moon’ audible in his litany.

“Alright,” he growls, looking up from his maps, “here’s the situation:”

“We’ve been patrolling the inner perimeter of the cordon since we were deployed, approximately ten hours ago. So far we’ve stayed out of sight from the Googlies—that’s the common term we’ve been using for the interlopers—who are moored at the very edge of Froggy Bottom Bog, on the west side of this valley here.”

He indicates a section of a topographical map before continuing.

“So far the Googlies have stayed close to their vessel. We haven’t really been able to surmise much about their transport itself—it seems to have taken the colour of the background, magically or otherwise—and is therefore exceedingly hard to observe. First contact was a few hours ago, when a pegasus wing was spotted and forced to make a hasty retreat: one of them was wounded under unclear circumstances, and had to be evacuated by her team. As I understand, they flew her back on a stretcher which according to the team leader was gifted upon them by the inhabitants of the strange craft... Like I said, the situation is murky, to say the least. I hope we’ll get some clarity once sergeant Gale gets here to report. That’s all I know for now. Ask your questions.”

Sitting back on his haunches Diamond Hoof rubs his temples, eyes closed, before levitating a cold-looking cup of coffee from the table and grimacing at the contents. Twilight looks up from a parchment floating in front of her face, quill momentarily ceasing its fevered movement.

“Why ‘Googlies’?”

“Because they have big, glassy eyes. Next.”

“Has anyone gone closer to the... Googlies than the team with the wounded pegasus?”

“No. Next.”

“Do you have any further word from the princess?”

“Only to keep her and her sister up to date, and to assist you as best we can.”

“What measures have—“

“Is this a bad moment, sir?”

“Oh, thank Celestia. Enter, sergeant.”

“Sir.”

The sergeant looks tired but moves with purpose, tucking his helmet under a foreleg and coming to attention in front of the older guardspony.

“Sir, wing sergeant Mountain Gale, reporting—”

“Yes, yes, yes, we've both had a long day, sergeant. Stand at ease and deliver the Luna-damned report.”

“Very well, sir. At sunrise this morning, after staking the target since deployment...”

The guardspony quickly runs through the events of the previous night, the captain and his six guests intently listening to every word, with Twilight furiously scribbling notes onto her overflowing piece of parchment.

“...and we just got here a while ago. The docs say Chaser is going to be fine. A mild concussion, bruising, a sprained wing. The leg's broken but it'll heal all right thanks to the splint.”

The sergeant lapses into silence. The captain is the first one to break out of his reverie.

“Thank you, sergeant. So to clarify, your personal assessment is that the interlopers are not here with hostile intentions?”

“That was my impression, sir. They seemed as wary of us as we were of them, but...”

“But what? Spit it out, man.”

“It's just... sir, may I break regulations for a demonstration?”

The captain lifts an eyebrow.

“If it'll make my work easier, you can break all the regulations you want.”

Without a word, the sergeant turns his head and draws his scimitar in a wide arc. Twilight's quill stabs through the parchment with a pop as the group of friends take a surprised step back from the sharp-edged weapon.

“Hey! What in tarnation' are ya doing!”

“That's dangerous!”

“My notes!”

Mountain Gale holds up a calming hoof, while carefully returning his sword to its scabbard.

“I am truly terribly sorry for startling you, ladies, but it goes a long way towards what I'm trying to prove.”

“Very amusing, but I'm still waiting for that point, sergeant.”

“I apologise, sir. But allow me to ask you why you didn't flinch when I presented my weapon?”

The captain's scowl takes on an even sourer shade as his brain quickly connects the dots.

“Because I live with weapons every day. You're saying that the interlopers are part of a military unit?”

“I can't say for sure, sir, but the one I understood to be the leader shooed back the others and approached my team, unarmed, without the slightest hesitation. Any civilised being, especially one with powerful enough magic to create flying machines like the ones we saw, knows a sword or a spear at sight, making the interlopers either very, very stupid...”

“...or dangerous enough not to care,” finishes Diamond Hoof.

The brooding silence is broken by Twilight, now working on a fresh sheet of notes.

“Sergeant, I'm not a soldier, but... you said their leader was 'unarmed', implying you could tell it didn't carry anything dangerous, yet you also mentioned that the others 'didn't carry any swords or spears' of any kind. What kind of equipment did they carry, then?”

For the first time since his entry, the sergeant's expression falters from the inexpressive mask idiomatic of the Guard, instead now tinted by a slightly embarrassed blush.

“Well... it is correct that I didn't see a single tool that I could unambiguously identify as a weapon. However, the way the Googlies moving in the forest placed themselves was identical to a unicorn spellcaster unit. Furthermore, the medical staff, while unable to tell us how Chaser got hurt, agree that some of her damage could not have been caused by the fall.”

“Are you saying she was attacked?”

“Likely, yes but” he quickly continues, “it could be construed as self-defense. We did attack their flying contraption first.”

“Oh, right! Tell me about the flying thing! Was it a balloon of some kind? How fast did it move? What kind of magic did it use?”

The sergeant casts a pleading look towards his superior officer as the excited unicorn closes in on him, hefting her quill like a dagger.

“Miss Sparkle. The sergeant has had a long shift, and a member of his squad was recently wounded in action. He needs a few moments of rest,” interjects the captain, “thank you for the report, sergeant. You are dismissed.”

“Thank you, sir!”

Plopping his helmet on his head, the winged stallion flees the command tent without looking back. Twilight dejectedly looks after the disappearing font of knowledge.

“Don't fret, miss Sparkle. You'll get your chance to learn from our visitors firsthoof soon enough. Now, if that's all—”

“You're right! We need to get going as soon as we can! When can we get going?”

“Yeah, all this talking and waiting is making me go nuts.”

“Fer apples sake, Rainbow, we've been here for all of half an hour, at most.”

“That's, like, half an hour too much.”

“Maybe if you'd have more patience than one of Fluttershy's bunnies, you'd sit the hay down and listen to what's happenin'.”

“But it's so boooring!”

“Darling, it's like a plot from one of those Daring Do novels you read all the time, how could you not be interested?”

“That's exactly the problem! How can you just sit here and listen to somepony else's adventure?”

“So, captain, when can we leave?”

“Soon! Very soon! Within moments! Just please leave me alone! This operation is already giving me an ulcer, and the very last thing I need are some of the most important ponies in all of Equestria romping around in the Everfree under my watch and responsibility! The sooner I get you out of my mane, the better,” the captain wails, his attempts to herd the unwanted guests out of his tent thwarted by a pink foreleg draping over his shoulders.

“Now looksie here, Diamond, my pal. You need to unwind! You're totally overworking yourself, and the only way to fix that on the fly is the patented, traditional, guaranteed-to-work, grandma Pie all-natural, herbal cupc—”

“By Celestia get out of my command tent before I buck you to the Goddesses-damned moon!”

*

As promised, a detachment of monochrome guardsponies appears within the hour, easily locating the colourful group of the element-bearers. Forming two staggered columns by the entrance of the low palisade, a near-black earth pony with white rank insignia adorning his helmet trots up to the six friends.

“You are the diplomatic mission we were sent to escort, I presume?”

“Yes, hello, my name is Twilight Sparkle and the girls are Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy and Rarity.”

“Sergeant-at-hooves Plate Mail, at your service. And we have met before, miss Sparkle, although I doubt that you remember me: I used to work at the palace.”

“Oh! Sorry, I can't really...”

“It's fine, we only met briefly and weren't introduced. Now, I presume you've made all your preparations?”

“Yes, we're ready. Is there something we're waiting for?”

“We'll start as soon as— ah, he's here.”

Flapping to slow his descent, Mountain Gale swoops over the encampment and lands in the middle of the two columns, nodding towards the black earth pony.

“Hello, Plate.”

“Gale. Shouldn't you be resting?”

“I got a few moments’ nap and a cup of coffee in. Captain thinks that it'd be good to have somepony with you who's been in contact with the Googlies before, so here I am.”

“Orders are orders, eh?”

“'Duty calls, get out of bed; Guards can sleep when they are dead',” the white pegasus recites in the call-and-answer of a marching cadence, and the two guards grin at some shared memory or private in-joke. Plate Mail gestures into the forest.

“Well, that's everypony present. Shall we?”

*

This day just keeps getting weirder and weirder. I'm morosely cradling a plastic cup of tea in my hands, looking over a parallax-enhanced feed from one of the Sparrow's telescope objective pairs and feeling a headache coming on again. The feed now covers half of the curved window, turning the observation deck slash briefing room into a giant movie theater. The surface of the long table is covered with a large, white, three-dimensional smart plastic model of the image on-screen, looking strangely hollow on the side that the Sparrow hasn't scanned with its sensors.

“Well, I guess that leaves no doubt to the question of whether they are intelligent or not,” Abebe quips, his entirely redundant comment breaking the silence in the room.

“Bloody ‘ell,” Elizabeth mutters, eyes flitting over rows of grey canvas constructs.

“So what the devil are we looking at? The space-faring descendants of ancient Roman horses?”

The smooth, rolling voice belongs to Tito Arroyo, the chief engineer, idly poking the malleable plastic hovering over the briefing table and watching it re-shape itself into tents and palisades in the weak electronic suspension field.

That's a surprisingly viable theory for the impromptu village of square, grey tents, arranged in neat rows inside a shallow palisade of wooden poles. On the other half of the window is the silhouette of a large, spired city precariously perched on the side of a large mountain, the highly magnified image tinted blue by the intervening distance.

Don't look at me that way, Tito, how the hell should I know?

“If I knew, I'd tell you,” I begin slowly, “but as it would appear we've stumbled on something entirely uncharted. Or, if not, at least a very well-kept secret.”

“Are you saying we've crash-landed onto an entirely new sentient species? That's loco!”

“I know. That's why, at the moment, I'm highly skeptical towards that theory. This whole place is too... earth-like, in all senses of the word. But the fact still stands that we've run across a whole society of something that's way beyond common gen-engineering, and as such we're going to have to tread very carefully on this one. To that effect, it is with utmost displeasure that I'm issuing a ship-wide order.”

Heads turn to me, expressions serious. A look around proves that everyone present understands the gravity of the situation, as well as the implications of a fully restrictive captain's order.

“As of this moment, nobody moves around outside without explicit authorization from their group, unit, platoon or team superiors. Outside activities ranging further than visible distance from the ship will be conducted in groups no smaller than four, and only with permission from me, Ace or Xavier. Contact with natives is to be kept to a minimum. If they approach you, retreat to the ship. Use of force is strictly prohibited unless self-defense can be unquestionably proven.”

I take a deep breath and exhale slowly. This kind of shit always leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

“You know as much as I do how I hate to have to do this. Please make sure the rest of the crew knows as well, and that we'll try to better the situation as soon as humanly possible.”

Nods and murmurs of assent come from around the room, present crew leaders forwarding recordings of the order or jotting down messages on terminal pads, and I know it will be done even though it sucks for everyone involved. Bless this crew and all the people in it.

“Ma'am, I think there's something going on in the camp,” notes Xavier, facing the large view screen. I look over his shoulder at the group of twenty or thirty quadrupeds, the black-and-white armoured ones badly clashing with the pastel colours of the central group of six.

“What the hell is this, then?”

“Seems they're taking off in our general direction, ma'am.”

“Looks like an escort formation...”

I turn around to look at Abebe, Elizabeth silently nodding her assent.

“...or at least that's how I'd arrange my troops if I only had access to primitive weapons like those.”

An escort? The six in the middle must be someone important, then, and the only reason you'd send someone with a protective detail to meet with space aliens is...

“Julianne, Spitfire, Xavier, get your asses in gear. I think they want to talk.”

*

Legal disclaimer: I obviously don't own My Little Pony (trademark of Hasbro) or this would be canon. All likeness to real people or characters created by other authors is entirely unintentional.

Chapter 7

CHAPTER VII

All things I thought I knew; but now confess
The more I know, I know, I know the less.

—John Owen, The Works of John Owen

”This is it, ladies. The edge of the bog is right ahead, after that we'll be crossing open ground to reach our goal.”

”Sergeant Gale, you mentioned earlier that the hurt pony was wounded when the aliens were startled. Should we send somepony ahead, so we won't seem hostile to them?”

”Good thinking, miss Sparkle, but I'm rather sure they already know we're coming.”

”Why would you think that?”

”Remember my description of the flying machine? I think it's meant for observation, for gathering information in uncertain areas without having to put anypony in harm's way.”

”Like a scrying spell?”

”Something to that effect, yes. That flying thing has been spotted several times since the incident with Chaser, high in the sky. I think they've been observing us just as we've been observing them.”

”Oh.”

”Eyes front, we're here,” calls Plate Mail.

Trees thinning out, the group reaches the edge of Froggy Bottom Bog and stops, blinking in the sunlight. The sergeants quickly walk through the two columns of guardsponies, calmly inspecting equipment and dealing out reminders on behaviour and maneuvers. The six diplomatic envoys and several of the guardsponies openly stare in wonder at the strange colossus now visible across the small, muddy bay that they've paused at, dwarfing the surrounding trees with its dark bulk. True to the sergeant's report, the huge construct is painted with a facsimile of the bog's vegetation, patterns and shadows mimicking the greens, browns and yellows of the surrounding forest, down to branches slowly moving in the wind. This close the overall shape of the strange craft is more readily visible, however, and the assembled ponies' eyes track a long, knife-shaped silhouette, broken here and there by bulky protrusions the size of small houses, the monstrous construction topped by a huge, curved window, staring into the horizon like a giant cyclopean eye.

”Celestia, that thing is enormous!”

”That thing was flying last night?”

”It doesn't look like a balloon of any kind...”

”Wow, they must have a huge kitchen in there!”

Ignoring Pinkie, the detachment starts off anew, trudging trough the soft earth on the edge of the bog, dense forest finally giving way to the lone, heavy-rooted Everfree mangroves. Soon enough they reach the first of the fallen trees.

”What in tarnation's happened here?”

”Whoa, all the trees have been pulled out of the ground!”

”Not pulled... pushed. Remember that big boom we heard last night? That huge thing crashing into the ground must've caused quite a shock wave... Look, the ground is all charred closer to it.”

”Sergeant! Look over there!”

”Seems you were right, Gale,” mutters Plate Mail.

The ponies fall silent as they begin the approach of the craft. In front of a gigantic ramp leading into the innards of the hulking vessel’s hull stands a group of the strange interlopers, huge glassy eyes and bubble helmets glittering in the sunlight. Around the group, unicorns look around the gargantuan object curiously, heads and horns twitching like dowsing rods looking for an elusive source of water.

“There’s... some sort of scrying magic being cast on us. It’s of a strange kind, though,” Twilight whispers.

The guardsponies fan out into a protective wall around the six friends in the middle before stopping a careful distance away.

All of the group, however, does not stop.

“Shove the sun up my— stop, for Celestia’s sake,” hisses sergeant Plate Mail, too late in making a grab for the pink tail that disappears between two armoured guardsponies in front.

*

We’re waiting at the bottom end of the port side loading ramp. Julianne is wearing her hostile environment field research suit, the bizarre lovechild of a steampunk art installation and a physics lab, while Xavier has donned his worn and battered standard issue light armour. Having rid myself of the bulky and uncomfortable quick-lock suit, I flex my hands in the skin-tight datalink gloves, enjoying the high-accuracy simulation of the outside air on my skin. Cost me a fortune to have tailored on New Alexandria, but damn was it worth it. I thoughtfully stroke the protruding chin of the helmet, watching the group of guards similar to the ones we met earlier form up around the pastel group in the middle. Hey look, Grumpy’s here, too! Makes sense, that they’d send someone who’s seen us before. None of us is carrying any weapons—well, visible ones—but though the outside of the ship looks monolithic, I know that a lot of firepower is thrumming under the hull, ready to be released on less than a seconds notice.

So no, I’m not particularly nervous. Honestly I’m really rather curious about the equines, and if I have a healthy interest in new discoveries, I know that Julianne is about to blow a fuse right next to me. Quickly flipping over to the internal channel of the science team, I wince and quickly cut the transmission at the onslaught of insane radio chatter and data streams spewing over my visor.

“Average body heat is thirty-five degrees centigrade, give or take a few tenths...”

“A fair bit below the human baseline.”

“Yeah, except for the winged ones, those are a bit higher, instead.”

“Higher metabolism, flying is probably energy-consuming. FLIR shows almost double values around the wings.”

“Those horns read strangely, they get all fuzzy on the NEFSCAN readings.”

“Maybe they’re hard-neuron tissue. Like the rats on Argos?”

“Can’t be, biomass resonance scans come up negative on that—”

Holy shit, the girls are about to explode with all the Science. Leaving the lab rats to do their job without my arguably worthless input, I focus instead on the six envoys.

Okay, now we’re firmly in ‘plush toy’ territory, there’s even a pink one! Apparently they do come in other colours than grey and white. I wonder if those colours denote some kind of rank or station in society...? Huh, now that I look at it, not all of those have wings. Actually, most of the military types don’t, either. Some of the pegasi have... horns? No, wait, that’s called a... an unicorn. Some have neither horn nor wings, like the bouncy pink one. I’m going to call those ‘normal ponies’.

The detachment slowly approaches the Trickster over the scorched earth left in the wake of our decidedly suboptimal landing, taking in the huge size of the streamship. I grin under my helmet at their expressions as the group comes to a halt some distance away.

Well, most of it.

Without preamble, the bouncing pink plush toy clears the ring of armoured guards, heading straight towards me in a completely relaxed albeit alarmingly fast manner. I catch a glimpse of the others craning to grab the swinging tail of the colourful normal pony and missing with a hair’s breadth.

They look surprised, and fucking terrified.

I feel a familiar buzzing sensation at the back of my head at the same second that my visor comes alive with red target markers, everything from the snipers in the dark of the open airlock at the top of the ramp to high-energy particle beams drawing a bead on the approaching equine.

Cold, clammy fear grips my innards as I simultaneously realise what the buzzing means, and what is going to happen in exactly five seconds to the happily oblivious pony if I don’t act fast as hell.

“Hold you fire,” I bark into the comm net, simultaneously pressing my palm against my cheek to broadcast on all channels, gesturing with my free hand to keep both Xavier and the ship in general from doing anything stupid, and furiously overriding ship systems with my own access codes, “if any one of you fuckers opens fire I will string you from the fucking ship myself!”

For two very tense seconds, It’s just me yelling obscenities on all tactical channels, and then, to the angelic honks of the weapons systems dropping a lock, the red diamonds blink out of existence one by one. Releasing a long breath, I feel the jitters of adrenaline surging in my blood stream, the pink creature miraculously still alive.

“Okay, everybody listen. That thing is not hostile, I can sense it strong,” I carefully enunciate into my mic.

I refocus on the pony now neatly coming to a stop in front of me, feeling the buzzing of happy, expectant emotions tingle across my consciousness.

“...it’s a Sympath. I want everyone to stand down unless the damn thing explodes.”

Releasing the global broadcast, I turn my attention back to the fluffy creature at my feet, looking up at me with those sickeningly cute puppy eyes.

Uh, damn, I suddenly feel very self-conscious. What do I do now, give it a treat?

Okay, I’m going to wave. That’s what they do in the movies, right?

“Hello there, little pink... thing?”

It lets out an adorable squeal at the sound of my voice, before launching into a rampant exposition in the same gibberish that Grumpy spoke earlier, although in frequencies about two octaves higher. I stare at the hyperactive envoy in amusement for a few seconds, until it apparently realises that I can’t understand a word it’s saying. Shutting up, it tilts its head at me curiously before reaching into its backpack in an impressive show of flexibility, pulling something out and offering it to me. I stare at the colourful wrapper and its contents, jarred by the sheer absurdity of the situation.

“Is that a... cupcake?” Xavier leans in to see the object in my hand better. One of Julianne’s sensor shafts snakes over my left shoulder, bathing the frosting of the cake in flickering red light.

I nod, since I can’t think of a damn thing to say.

“Seems perfectly edible, too,” decides Julianne, her voice as confused as I feel.

The pony that just offered me a perfectly ordinary dessert looks at me expectantly—they really do share a lot of our body language, I realise with a start—and I give her a tiny bow in thanks.

“I can’t eat this, I’m afraid... but thank you, oh pink envoy of your insane species.”

I can’t help but chuckle, this whole situation is just going so far off the rails that I don’t know what to do but laugh anymore. The deranged pink one squeals again with ridiculously huge smile, suddenly jumping into the air and biting a small handle on its chest strap.

Then it explodes.

*

Preoccupied with trying to make sense of the strange spells radiating from the alien vessel, Twilight doesn’t realise that Pinkie is gone before the panicky tones of the sergeant reach her conscious mind.

“—oh dear Luna and Celestia that crazy pony is going to get hurt or worse!”

Eyes snapping to the front, Twilight realises in horror that Pinkie has almost crossed the distance to the group of bipeds, the apparent leader of which is gesticulating behind it with urgency. In panic, Twilight concentrates, about to lash out with her magic, when Pinkie stops in front of the foremost creature. With nothing terrible immediately occurring, Twilight gives a seconds pause in her casting.

Pinkie and the large alien stare at each other for a few seconds. Then the latter tentatively raises a foreleg, giving a small wave and voicing what is unmistakeably a greeting. The rogue pony diplomat draws a breath, as if surprised and delighted that the thing can speak, immediately launching into one of her rampant stream-of-consciousness rants about meeting new friends and arranging welcome parties for them, quickly branching off into apparently rhetorical queries about the alien’s favourite foods. Twilight feels a headache coming on as the possibly mad pony stops, reaches into her saddlebag and offers the opposing party a cupcake.

“Did she just—” begins Mountain Gale.

“Yup, that’s Pinkie for ya’,” quips Rainbow Dash, hovering in the air. Twilight turns to her friend with disbelief.

“Rainbow, how can you be so calm? Those things could hurt Pinkie!”

The colourful pegasus casts a sceptical eye on her nervously moving friend before returning her attention to the exchange taking place in front of the ramp.

“Nah, there isn’t anypony that Pinkie hasn’t been able to befriend, ever. She’ll pull through.”

Leaving Twilight sputtering with a number of conflicting emotions fighting to get out of her mouth, Rainbow lazily flips around in place, striking a pose in the air.

“—and besides, if there’s trouble I’ll get her out of there faster than you can say ‘Loyalty’.”

Giving up on her apparently also crazy friend, Twilight returns to the earlier exchange just as the visitor, delicately holding the baked good in one hand, gives a small bow and expresses another impossible-to-understand sentence.

“Yes! She likes it! Then I Pinkie-wish you—”

Her brain no longer co-operating, Twilight watches in numb horror as the pink party pony bites down on the handle attached to her saddlebags, which promptly cover the three aliens and Pinkie in confetti and streamers with a loud bang.

“—Welcome to Equestria!”

Sergeant Plate Mail lets out a strangled sound, somewhere between food lodging in a throat and an imploding bagpipe, as the leader of the opposing group staggers backwards from the explosion, dropping the cupcake onto the ground.

For a few seconds, the air is very still. The biped in the bizarre suit decked with little boxes, lenses, wires and other trinkets cowers back, halfway into a crouch with its forelegs shielding its head. The black-clad one, most similar to the ones described by Mountain Gale, has fallen into a hunched stance, looking ready to pounce at the slightest provocation. Finally, the central alien, having taken the brunt of the streamer-based assault, very slowly moves its stare from the pink attacker to its arms, taking in the glittering bits of paper covering it like decorations on a cake.

A breeze blows through the clearing, the colourful streamers fluttering in the wind.

Then there’s a chortle, which quickly grows into a hacking chuckle. Then a full laugh.

The ponies watch, frozen, as the sitting creature throws its head back, roaring with laughter. With it’s whole body shaking the tall biped holds its midsection with both free appendages, Pinkie maniacally bouncing around and matching if not surpassing the mirth of the confetti-covered alien. A tangible wave of relief passes through the rest of the pony detachment, as the two beings from universes apart collapse on the burnt ground, leaning on each other for support as they howl with glee.

*

Legal disclaimer: I obviously don't own My Little Pony (trademark of Hasbro) or this would be canon. All likeness to real people or characters created by other authors is entirely unintentional.

Chapter 9

CHAPTER IX

Today, most software exists, not to solve a problem, but to interface with other software.

—IO Angell

I smirk.

“I think they like it.”

“Who wouldn’t? I’m an artistic genius, remember?”

“You’re an insufferable, arrogant bastard, I remember. What about them?”

I jerk a thumb towards the hornless ponies.

“Projector that size can’t draw the whole thing in this sunlight. How about goggles?”

“Are you carrying extra visors?”

Tito looks at me with the indignation of a slighted artist, opening a satchel attached to his suit.

“I’m an engineer, Eri. Of course I carry extra goggles.”

*

Twilight slowly turns in place, taking in the enormous torus-shaped constructs built of thousands upon hundreds of thousands of paper-thin shapes hovering close enough to each other to seem solid at the slightest distance. Around the huge, slowly revolving wheels extend dozens of smaller cubes, spheres and shifting abstract tangles of lines and curves; everything outside the warm amber glow of the central structure hypnotically shifting colours in slow, pulsating patterns. The two unicorns gasp at the huge structure, heads swiveling to take in every detail at once.

“It’s... beautiful!”

“What kind of spell is this?”

Twilight carefully approaches one of the revolving tori, extending a hoof to touch the luminous surface. As her foreleg closes on the ring it slows to a halt, the mushroom-like lamellae spreading silently apart. As the unicorn gently touches one of the golden gills, noting the odd sensation of touching thick jelly, the four-cornered slice turns a pure white, a similarly rectangular page materialising above it with a slight rustle. It's blank but angled for easy reading. She quickly pulls her hoof back, and the page blinks away.

“It’s like... a library,” she whispers, “...a blank library.”

“That’s what they did that big magic dance for? Lame.”

Realising their friends are standing just outside the circle, Twilight and Rarity turn towards the sound of Rainbow’s voice, before looking a each other and smiling.

“You’re only saying that because you can’t see what we see, dear,” Rarity says.

“Well in case you didn’t notice, I’m not a unico— huh?”

“What’s going on, Dash?”

“The dancing one is trying to give us something. Looks like... eyeglasses?”

Twilight quickly trots in the direction of the others, the lowest of the golden shapes smoothly flowing around her as she passes through it, closing the gap as soon as her tail flicks through. Outside, the dancer is holding a bunch of curved spectacles in one hand, gesturing between the pair of glasses now in Rainbow’s hooves and the large, magical construct behind Twilight. Understanding what the devices are for, Twilight excitedly canters up to her friend, grabs the lenses from her hoof and promptly shoves them onto her face.

“Hey! What’s the big deal!”

The dancing magician smiles and turns his hand against the frames of the glass as if turning a key. Rainbow looks up, annoyed over the invasion of her personal space, and stops dead, comment dying on her lips as the vision of light flickers to life on the detachable visor.

“That’s a library?”

Twilight giggles as the pegasus shoots into the air, diving through floating geometrical shapes and doing laps around the central structure.

“Oh my gosh, this is so cool!”

Courage bolstered by the positive reaction of their three friends, the other ponies quickly don visors of their own and allow the magician to turn them on in turn.

“It’s like a huge cake of gold! Can’t eat it if it’s gold, though, that’ll hurt your tummy.”

“Well, Ah’ll say. Tha’s mighty impressive.”

“Oh, oh my...”

As the six friends move about, admiring the invisible structure, the magician finally offers a pair of the few remaining visors to Mountain Gale, who peers at the offered piece of equipment with suspicion. Casting a look at Chain Mail and receiving a curt but encouraging nod, the pegasus sergeant hesitantly places the lenses over his eyes, uncomfortably flicking his ears at the tight fit of the optics designed for a quite different shape of head, before submitting to the activation sequence.

The guardspony raises his eyebrows as the cheery ping of a chime plays in the cavalcade of colours and shapes flooding into sight. As he tilts his head, Gale notes the lenses actively darken the skies to highlight the glowing lines of the... library, the fact confirmed by a quick glance over lowered lenses. Steeling himself, the sergeant trots into the shimmering light, entering the central space just as the magician and the alien leader step through on the other side.

With a dramatic flourish, the magician takes a deep bow and retreats to the very edge of the circle, making room for the other figure to take center stage.

The assembled ponies turn to look to the leader as it looks around, as if to ascertain the whole audience is present, before extending a foreleg with a snappy gesture.

The leader continues it’s gesturing, flexible digits taking precise formations with a purpose and grace clearly stemming from years of experience. With a flicker, the glass-headed figure disappears, in it’s place standing a slightly slimmer creature in the same general shape but clad in flowing red cloth instead of the tight black suit of before. Amber eyes smile at the equines.

“It’s the leader,” Twilight realises, “it’s showing us an image of itself.”

“So that’s what they look like underneath. Are those suits for protection?”

“I’d think so, yes.”

With a beckoning gesture from the first biped, the magician steps forward and a similar image flickers to life over it as well. Small, round glasses, similar in construction if not in shape to the ones the ponies are wearing, hang on the end of a short, triangular muzzle underlining dark green eyes and olive skin topped by an unruly black mane. Eschewing the loose attire of the other, the magician wears instead a more tight-fitting blue jacket, double rows of golden buttons running down the front, the garment terminating well below the hip. Both creature’s hind appendages are covered in black cloth, the ends encased in high boots.

The ponies observe the pair for a while, the strangers standing at ease, turning around to allow observation from different angles.

“It’s amazing they can stand upright with just two legs,” notes sergeant Gale with interest, “one’d think that they’d fall down with that kind of height.”

Fluttershy suddenly squeaks, backpedalling into safety behind the closest of her friends available.

“Wha’s the matter, sugarcube?”

“Uhm, you didn’t... notice? Their teeth?”

The buttery yellow pegasus points with a shaky hoof, the other ponies following the line of her indication, eyes settling on the smiles of the two strangers. Smiles flanked by sharp canines.

“They’re carnivores,” breathes Twilight.

*

Uh, what the hell happened now? One second everything’s hunky-dory and now they’re all scared and nervous. And why is that yellow-and-pink one hiding and pointing at my... face?

Oh.

Oh, come on!

“Jo?” I begin, voice sweet as honey.

“Yes?”

“Julianne, darling, are the ponies herbivores?”

“Uh, yes?”

“And you were planning on telling me this...?”

“What? I thought you knew.”

I wish I had one of Tito’s ancient mechanical headpieces, so I could slam a physical phone into its receiver to cut the call. As it is, I’m restricted to using my neural interface to kill the connection before I say something untoward, the line abruptly terminating in a millisecond-long click of static.

All right, deep breaths, count to five. Smile. Without teeth!

“Tito, pull up some imagery of healthy meals with no meat. Also, draw a pony not being eaten by a human.”

I get a long stare in response.

“Well, get to it!”

“Working for you is a waste of my considerable talents,” he grumbles, before getting to it.

It takes almost a quarter hour of carrots, coconuts, rice and holos of zero-G hydroponic farms to make the panicky toy horses calm down enough to move on to other topics. Surprisingly, the pink-haired ball of fear seems to come to terms with our dental equipment the fastest. You can never tell with the quiet ones.

Look, it’s not like I enjoy lying to the adorable things, but, like every good fabrication, this one has a grain of truth in it. I mean, the vast majority of meat consumed by exo-Terran humankind is either synthesised, vat-grown or recycled. Real meat, the flesh of a living animal, is a fairly rare luxury on streamworlds and is a royal pain in the ass to get. Not that it makes much of a difference, it all tastes the same to me. It’s a status and wealth thing, I guess.

Anyway, the point is that while we eat meat, we don’t eat meat. Now try to explain gen-engineering food labs and automated nutrition factories to a civilisation armed with swords and spears, using pictures.

I think we’re entitled to a little white lie.

When they finally breathe evenly enough to approach, I pull up a rotating representation of human teeth, arranged in their natural configuration. Pointing at the flat molars and opening my mouth to let the ponies observe their position in my virtual jaw. Yeah, that’s right. Omnivore. Yeees, nice pony, calm pony.

*

After displaying its teeth, the image of the leader returns to its original position. With the same movements as before, the little depictions of farms and strange free-floating orchards disappear, leaving only a fairly cartoonish but well-made representation of a biped and a pegasus pony leaning on each other, laughing, and holding a pair of half-eaten apples.

“Well, that’s a relief,” mumbles Twilight.

“Predators are perfectly natural,” pipes Fluttershy quietly.

“I hope they weren’t offended by our... episode,” continues Twilight, flushing slightly at the memory of the frantic explanations and images in the wake of the ponies’ little fit.

“Well anyone would be frightened if you suddenly found out that the other party could want to eat you,” huffs Rarity.

“Scared? I wasn’t scared.”

“Yea’, yea’, RD, we know.”

“No, really! I’m not— what’s this, now?”

At the gesturing biped’s call, weakly glowing lines form in the air, six fanning out from the leader to point at the coloured ponies and one connecting Mountain Gale to the magician, still working on details and shading on his impromptu work of art.

“Uh... what’s going on?”

“Maybe it’s trying to make a point.”

“Oh!”

“What is it, Rarity?”

“Well, look. What is the feature that separates us from sergeant Gale over here?”

“...he’s a guardspony?”

“Girls,” Rarity wiggles her eyebrows with heavy emphasis on the word, “what are we, that Mountain Gale is not?”

Twilight is the first to realise the implication of her friend, whirling on the grinning biped.

“She’s a mare! And the other must be a stallion!”

Six pairs of eyes take in the projections on the other side of the circle, noting features and comparing them to the more familiar differences of pony anatomy.

“Well, now that you mention it, they do have a lot of common features to us...”

“Yeah.”

“How exciting, I wonder what else we could have in common? I should— oh! I’ve completely forgotten to take notes!”

Twilight hurries to draw a blank page of parchment out of her bags, bringing quill to paper in a frenetic burst of writing. As the scroll fills with tight lines of text and intricate concept maps, the female takes a few steps, curiously peering at the levitating stationery from an oblique angle. Twilight’s quill stops as the biped waves to get her attention.

The red-shirted female stops the closest rolling torus and deftly draws her free hand across a spread of rectangles, the blank pages blurring into the air above the glowing section. With a quick double tap and a grabbing movement with her fingers—as if grabbing a fly from the air—the leader steps back, glowing pages remaining above the still ring without disappearing but rotating into a new configuration, flowing together into a large canvas.

She wiggles her index finger at the canvas, eyes moving over invisible controls. Twilight perks up as three high-pitched beeps sound in the magical space, and the lines of light thrum in response to an influx of outside power. Slowly lowering the scroll of notes, Twilight moves to stand besides Rarity, the other, more weakly attuned ponies looking towards the source of the new noise without feeling the strange vibrations.

In front of the spectating group, the central construct splits cleanly all the way to the top, smoothly sliding to the sides under the commands of the pointing alien. Hard, black lines sheathed in shimmering blue light flick on out of nothing, forming a narrow, angular alleyway to the looming shape of the alien vessel, a note hovering at the lowest frequency of hearing rolling across the dark corridor.

Rarity and Twilight edge backwards, with cold chills unheeded by their bespectacled comrades running down their backs, as ghostly spikes and translucent razor edges whisper in the air at the end of the tunnel where the corridor disappears into the metal hull of the great ship. Low murmurs like monotone voices hum in the distance.

“What’s in there?” Rarity asks in a small voice.

“Wards,” whispers Twilight in return, “very, very powerful wards.”

Fearlessly stepping into the open mouth of the newly formed avenue, the bipedal manipulator slashes her hands through the air, yanking an invisible line. In a rush of speed barely visible to the naked eye, a shining progression of pages tears through the air, cleaving the sinister alley like a golden beam. Instinctively ducking or dodging the immaterial pages into the air, the ponies scatter as the slivers of amber rush into the tori, merging into the giant shapes in a blur of flying colour. The blast takes less than a few heartbeats, the storm of shapes disappearing in the blink of an eye and leaving the equines disoriented and scrambling to readjust their concept of space. The ominous pathway collapses on itself with two angry beeps, the golden rings melting together and resuming their languid rotation.

“What— what just happened?”

The biped turns to the ponies, smiling broadly. Indicating the surrounding mirage with a sweeping gesture, she finally points to the large canvas, now alive with a bewildering labyrinth of tiny nodes and infinitely fine interweaving lines. Twilight pokes a segment of torus with her hoof, the pages jumping out of it as before.

Now, however, it is no longer blank. Hypnotised, she scrolls through page after page of images, moving recordings and texts in unknown alphabets, several rectangular pages displaced by tiny, three-dimensional models instead.

“She... filled it. She filled the library with knowledge,” she says quietly, enraptured.

Working through the rows, she walks a slow circle around the torus, images flickering by as fast as she can sweep her hoof over the still surface of the toroid shelf. Finally, she reaches the open canvas, leaning in to study the intricate designs on it. As her eyes scan the page, understanding dawns on her face.

“It’s like a spell diagram!”

Tracing the intricate shapes with her hoof, Twilight’s excitement grows like a torrent.

“It is a spell diagram! The design is strange, and it’s ridiculously recursive, but the basic layout is the same as in basic magical theory! Here’s a balance node, this is a... yes! Control logic, here’s the input...”

The other ponies close in, peeking at the gibberish on the canvas over the shoulder of their engrossed friend.

“I don’t understand a thing about that mess,” decides Rainbow, before becoming bored and hovering up into the upper levels of the construct.

Rarity studies the chart with a thoughtful frown.

“I recognise the designs, but it’s really far beyond my understanding of magical theory. Twilight, are you saying this can be used for making a spell?”

“Yes,” exclaims the excited unicorn, turning to her friend with a grin “the design is unorthodox, but the theory seems sound. It looks very similar to the translation spell I was attempting, only with a ridiculous amount of safety catches and repeating patterns.”

“That’s nice, but... won’t that take a lot of preparation?”

“Yes. I’ll need to copy this...”

The unicorn pulls out her half-filled parchment again, flipping it over and copying a number of nodes from the labyrinthine tangle. Suddenly, the biped steps forward, shaking both it’s head and a front appendage. Miming a grabbing movement with both hands, a semitransparent copy of the canvas detaches itself and flits into her hands. Depositing the ghostly after-image on Twilight’s horn, she releases her grip, and the projection promptly implodes into a miniature version of itself, falling into a quick orbit around Twilight’s horn.

Twilight stares cross-eyed at the tiny chart spinning in circles around her head, feeling a niggling pressure not unlike the touch of the earlier red ring’s spell. Carefully activating her own magic, the same clicking sensation of latches falling in place resounds in her mind, followed by the ticklish caress of silk against skin. The small patch of light has disappeared, but Twilight feels a new presence form in her mind, resting against her psyche like a memory almost remembered but just barely eluding the conscious mind.

“Well, that certainly feels weird,” she comments, touching her head with a hoof and probing the strange feeling with her thoughts.

With a sudden release of pressure, the hovering chart suddenly escapes the confines of her skull, exploding into being in front of her face. Releasing her concentration, the luminous map recedes back into her horn.

“Oh wow,” she exclaims in wonder, “that is weird.”

Pinkie giggles loudly at the odd display.

“They put it inside your head! Now you can really have the library on your mind all the time!”

Snorting, the pink pony collapses in laughter, the others rolling their eyes, smiling at the antics of their friend, or doing both.

“Are y’all sure tha’s safe?” tries Applejack, poking Twilights head with a hoof.

“Ya can’t put too many apples in a basket, and, pardon me fer sayin’ so, but yer basket is plenty full already, Twi’.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not really... in my mind as much as it’s... in with it. This is excellent, now I can do research back at home!”

Twilight turns back to the tall alien, nodding her head in thanks. The other party reciprocates with a slight bow, before backing off. The lavender unicorn casts a final, longing look at the endless pages of data languidly floating around them.

“Oh, I’d so like to go through all this knowledge, but... I think we’ll have to get back to this tomorrow. There’s only so much studying we can do without being able to talk to the other party. Or read their alphabet.”

“Yes, it’s been a good while, already. I believe it would not be a wrong decision to retreat for today,” Rarity agrees, rubbing her head with a hoof, “...and besides, it’s very tiring to keep up this... connection.”

“Um, I’m worried that the animals are getting lonely...”

“Hey, are we leaving? ‘Cuz I’m getting pretty bored up here,” comes a voice from above.

“Maybe it’s for the best. Let’s saddle up, girls, and come back tomorrow.”

Removing their visors, the non-unicorn ponies line up to hand back the loaned equipment. Twilight and Rarity concentrate, feeling the connection to the aliens’ magic decouple, the spectacular colours fading so fast as to leave both mares blinking in the sudden brightness of the sun. The smaller rings re-appear, switching back to their angry red, before winking out entirely as the two hosts disconnect from the invisible assembly as well.

Twilight projects the gifted diagram back and forth a few times, discovering that the spell is in fact visible even outside the arcane dimension as the leader turns to the ponies, covered in her suit of dark fabric and clear glass again.

The two parties bowing to each other the ponies turn and trot away, the four bipeds watching them go.

“What in Celestia’s name were you up to?” begins Chain Mail as the group of seven returns to the waiting Guard detachment, “you were prancing around like crazy up there.”

“You didn’t listen in on our conversation?”

“Didn’t carry so well, all the way here. What happened?”

“Well... Look, I’ll explain on the way,” sighs Mountain Gale, “...it’s a lot to take in.”

*

The formation of ponies disappears back into the woods. I’m fairly sure they’ll be back.

“Huh, turns out those horns can act as comlink interfaces, data storage units and projectors as well,” I muse aloud, absolutely certain that I don’t even want to think about how that works.

“Hey Ace, how about that drink?”

“...yes. I’ll be on the observation deck with a bottle.”

“You’re my favourite brother.”

I cast a passing glance at Julianne craning her neck to catch a final glimpse of colour through the woods. She’ll be back in the lab with her head in a data engine before I’ll even get to the briefing room, I promise. Xavier walks up to me as I follow Tito up the ramp, the engineer already disappearing behind the airlock doors.

“Do you think we’ll have any use of the translation software they got?” he asks.

“I don’t know, but it’s worth a shot. Besides, it’s a common enough program, it’s not like we bequeathed great secrets of dangerous potential upon them. And the purple one seemed to get what it was about.”

“Yes. It— she seemed the most active in interfacing with us. Well, in a rational manner, at least.”

I chuckle as I remember the first events of the meeting.

“Yeah, that pink, fuzzy one was pretty intense. An odd group of envoys, to say the least.”

“Courtesy of social status?”

“Maybe. I’m sure they’ll be back again.”

The cool spray of the decontamination nozzle hoses the airlock down with a wet hiss as the heavy doors clang shut behind us. Stepping through the drying airstream and through the opening inner doors, I release the locks on my helmet and shake my hair free.

Ah, yes, nothing like stale, recycled air to conjure up a thirst.

“Let’s take a review in the briefing room in half an hour. Same crew as before, plus Tito.”

“Understood. See you in thirty.”

The inner door slides shut on silent rails behind Xavier’s black-clad back, his headwear loosely hanging from one hand with the eye visor reflecting corridor lights. I wiggle out of my suit, hanging it inside one of the red personal lockers and stuffing the hard full-face helmet into its shelf. Throwing on a loose, brown tunic, I saunter off in the direction of the combined briefing room and observation deck, already tasting single-malt low-gravity-distilled whiskey on my tongue.

*

Chapter 10

CHAPTER X

On two occasions I have been asked,—”Pray, mister Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?” (...) I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

—Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher

“This coffee tastes like cat piss.”

“You’re free to make your own any time, captain.”

“My stash is for emergency use only. And you’re a real cunt in the mornings, Tito.”

“I got a grand total of two hours of sleep tonight—in three segments—because of a rocket fuel leak, so please stumble into a thruster.”

“Your insults suck. They lack punch.”

“I have manners.”

I sip the terrible coffee, eyeing the slow progression of reports rolling over the screen. The night has passed without incident, so I’m well-rested and motivated enough to actually do my morning rounds all the way down here. The engineering bay is Tito’s kingdom, and hence is full of quaint little anachronisms like wall-mounted displays and mechanical switches. He always boasts that he could make the ship fly without a single automated system, and I’m inclined to believe him. The space is full of hustle and bustle, technicians with sprawling smart tools poking at some piece of obscure equipment or another and engineers with smudged overalls lumbering about in bulky yellow exoskeletons. A pair of younger crew members snicker at our familiar-albeit-hostile banter, trying to hide grins under the visors of their caps as they rummage around inside an open service panel.

“So, are you going to get this scrap pile into the air any time soon?”

“We could fly tomorrow, in an emergency. I estimate a week for full repairs, give or take a day.”

“A week? I could build a new ship myself in a week.”

“If you’re unsatisfied with my work, you are free to release me from service and recruit one of the ponies to do engineering work for you instead.”

“That doesn’t sound like too bad a plan. Maybe I’d get a cup of decent coffee, for once.”

“You don’t have to drink it, if you don’t like it.”

“What would I have to gripe about then?”

A comm channel opens into my ear with a quiet pop.

“Eris, it’s Jo. The pathogen results for the outside atmosphere are in.”

“Hit me.”

“Well, it should be safe. The air is breathable, although a little high on oxygen, and we identified a few tens of thousands of unknown microorganisms, but analysis says here’s nothing in the surroundings that the smart antibiotics can’t target. I’d still be a bit careful with local wildlife, though. We’ve been picking up heat signatures in the area.”

“Good, excellent. Thanks, Jo.”

“No problem.”

The line closes with a click. I finish the last of my drink—that really is quite disgusting—and hand the cup to Tito.

“Right, duty calls.”

“Going to go pose in someone else’s work area, trying to look important?”

“Fuck you,” I call over my shoulder as I leave the engineering area, the thrum of the reactors disappearing behind me as I turn a bend in the corridor.

Ah, what a great morning, feels like today is going to be a good day. Visiting Tito always gets my mood up.

Whistling the jaunty melody to The Sailor With The Ocean’s Biggest Gun I greet the assorted crew members passing me by with a sloppy caricature of a salute, knowing the catchy tune will most likely haunt the ship all day. As most good maritime drinking songs, The Sailor has a goodly amount of raunchy lyrics to go around so by the time I march through the doors to the bridge I’m loudly singing the end of verse twenty-one.

“Whatever this bloke aims at, his target always falls,
he fires with both barrels, gives em' powder, shot, and balls!
The harbor's local madam, she ran off to be a nun,
the time she saw the sailor with the ocean's biggest gun.”

I’m ambushed inside the door by billowing coats and hat plumes in various shades of turquoise, green and neon orange, heavy arms draping around my shoulders and two rough voices joining in on the chorus.

“Thrusters up! Fill the sails! Sound the horn for departure, he’s setting off again,
and from whichever port he’s leaving, he’s a legend!”

It’s a song about a guy’s dong, okay? It’s not high art.

Shrugging off Sasha and Kolya, I lean against the back of my command chair. Elizabeth quickly corrals the two brothers to stand by the door, presently opening to admit a tall, gaunt man flanked by two tall, gaunt subordinates.

“Hello, Eris,” he says with a twinkle in his eye and takes a gentlemanly bow.

“Abebe.”

I treat him to a warm smile. Degagmanna Abebe is a charmer to his fingertips, and having him around is always a nice counterpoint to the rough-and-tumble bulk of the crew.

I turn to the assembled personnel, proprioception sensors implanted in the back of my skull translating hand gestures into commands. A three-dimensional topographical projection forms in the air, the rough outline breaking down into finer and finer shapes in five quick pulses. Finally, the mountains, hills and forests take colour from a patchwork of photographs and artificially coloured radar images, forming the distinctive light-and-dark mess of a multi-sensor composite map. Numbers and labels flicker to life on my retina, the tiny projectors inside my eyeballs overlaying my vision with shorthands and legends.

I look over the image, taking in roads, railways, buildings and tent villages.

‘Schizophrenic fairy tale’ is the term that comes to mind. Railroads but no gunpowder? How does that even happen?

“Okay everyone, here’s the map of the area, compiled from drone surveys and radar images,” I begin.

“...as you can see, we’re just on the edge of a fairly large wetlands, here. The closest native habitation is this town or village here, and we’re surrounded by what appears to be a military cordon, marked by this circle here. Here, about an hour’s flight away, there is a larger city with several railway connections. Any questions about these locations?”

“Designations?”

“For now we’re just going with ‘LZ’, ‘VILLAGE’, ‘CITY’, and ‘CORDON’. Anything else? Good, moving on. I have given orders pertaining to movement already, but until we can reliably communicate it’d probably be helpful to appear as friendly as possible. Then again, looking like a target has never benefited anyone greatly, us least of all, and I know the platoons will be going stir-crazy within half a week if they have jack shit to do.”

“Yeah, let’s not ‘ave a repeat o’ Blacksburg, awright?” Spitfire mutters with a dark expression.

“Hey! That refinery was accident and you know it,” Sasha protests indignantly.

“And we were young at time,” adds Kolya.

“Shut up, you.”

“...right,” I continue, “let’s not. Anyway, beside the regular close perimeter response readiness, let’s run a few mobile patrols for intel and show of force. No engaging, strict mission control. Set up a schedule between the two of you for for an even handful of patrols, day and night.”

“Any specific route you want us to take?”

“Inside the cordon, and at maximum visual observation range. If the cordon shifts, so do patrol routes. Altitude no higher than the tree tops. Otherwise do as you see fit.”

“Roger.”

“Oh, and the pathogen results are in, the air is safe. I’d be careful in the forest, though.”

“I understand.”

“Awright.”

“Good. Any questions? Then get to it.”

Xavier gestures me over as the others leave. Drawing a circle in the air starting from his head, Xavier partitions the spot we’re standing in from the rest of the room, the bridge blurring through the distortion barrier blocking clear sound and vision. I’d raise an eyebrow but I’m already fairly sure what he’s going to want to talk about.

Right, now he pulled up Ace on a private feed. This is about the cargo.

“Ma’am, sir, about the cargo.”

Called it.

“...I’ve told my opinion of this job, and I won’t repeat it, but I will say I have an itch that something’s terribly wrong with the whole picture. The initial acquisition and loading went smooth and easy, not a single sign of trouble, but the minute we were out in free waters we’re jumped by three hostile ships? With all due respect, ma’am, that’s a little too much of a fecking coincidence to me.”

“You think the whole job was a setup?”

“I’m saying it’s a possibility. Devil knows we’ve got plenty of people willing ta hoist us off to the Geckos.”

Ace clears his throat.

“Xavier, a setup for what? Only thing we know about that thing in the hold is that it’s not a bomb. Seems like a fairly convoluted way to get us killed.”

“Honestly, sir, I haven’t got the foggiest. The only reason I can think of why we aren’t taking an orbital carpet bombing is that the only one of those three ships that could keep up with the Trickster was a corvette. If it could breach the streamwall, we’d be in trouble.”

“How much time are we looking at, worst case?”

“Worst case, they’ll be coming for us in less than a week. Most likely it’ll take almost a month.”

I digest the information for a moment.

Shit.

Well, now it’s more important than ever that we can open a channel to the equines. It’s not entirely ruled out that the Great Empire would want to talk first, but then again it’s not entire impossible that I’ll sprout wings and start laying eggs either. The—literally—cold-blooded bastards aren’t really famous for taking kindly to other sentient species in their territories. Doesn’t help that they consider fairly everything their territory.

“This is going to be really hard to explain to the natives,” Ace notes.

“Oh, really? I think ‘we might have lead a species of genocidal lizards vastly more advanced than you to your planet, sorry’ might not really cut it. Jesus, they don’t even have firearms.”

We collectively mull over that for a second.

I sigh.

“Well, right now there’s nothing we can do about it. Your concerns have been noted, Xavier. Let’s concentrate on getting the ship fixed for now.”

“Aye.”

Ace nods before cutting his feed.

The distortion field disappears, the sounds and sights of the bridge rushing back into focus. Xavier salutes and moves along, leaving me in the meager company of the map and my thoughts.

*

“My goodness, Twilight, you look like a mess! Have you slept at all?”

Twilight grins sheepishly as Rarity moves in to brush off the generous amounts of chalk on her coat.

“Hi, Rarity! I guess I have been a little engrossed in this translation spell. But look! It’s almost complete!”

“It ought to, with all that. It looks like a terribly complicated spell.”

“Well, it’s not as—my mane is fine, please stop fussing! It’s not as complicated as it would appear on first glance. Translations spells are really more like enchantments with a lot of fiddly bits: they basically upkeep themselves once they’ve been cast on someone.”

Trying to shoo off the other unicorn, Twilight releases the glowing image stored in her horn, eyes flicking between it and the blackboard taking up most of the floor space.

“Hm, I think it’s almost done, but I can’t really be sure it works without testing it out with the aliens’ spell. Ooh, this is so exciting! We might be the first ponies to ever talk to an extra-Equestrian alien!”

“I must admit that I was intrigued by the clothes they showed in those... images. At least some of them are as interested in us as you are of them, too, if the one in that hideous suit was anything to go by.”

“Yes, I was a little taken aback, but I think I can understand what it... he was feeling. Was it a stallion? I can’t recall.”

“Neither can I, dear. I think they never indicated that.”

“I guess we can ask. I can’t wait! I just have a few more things to do and we’ll be almost ready to go!”

“What, this early?”

“What better time? Sweetie Belle is already at school, right?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“I’m sorry, am I interrupting something?”

The voice belongs to a beige mare, curiously looking around at the mess of books and the extended blackboard covered in near-illegible scribbles. Twilight smiles amicably at the newcomer.

“Oh, no, it’s fine. Welcome to the Ponyville library, can I help you with something?”

“I hope you could. I’m looking for any books you might have on the topic of dreams.”

“Do you mean dream magic? Hypnomorphea and the like?”

“Something like that, yes—I’ll know what I’m looking for when I see it. It seems like a very hard topic to get any information on, though.”

Twilight trots to a corner of the library, already pulling tomes off the shelves.

“Well, yes, it has only recently regained its former popularity. You’re in luck, though: it’s a long-time hobby of mine, so I have a number of books on the topic! Nice to meet another unicorn with the same interests, miss...”

“Poppyseed.”

“...miss Poppyseed. I don’t think we’ve met before, are you new in Ponyville?“

“Oh, no, I’m just passing through. I’d heard that princess Celestia’s prodigal student runs a library here, so I thought to stop by and take a look. I figured it would be a fair probability that you would have books on rare magic.”

“Oh, I just like to gather knowledge on many different topics,” Twilight answers, looking slightly abashed.

“No need to be modest about it. You’re quite well-known in Canterlot. Protege of the princess, Element of Magic, diplomatic envoy to unknown creatures...”

Twilight fidgets uncomfortably under the praise, but Rarity’s ears perk up.

“Excuse me if I seem rude for interrupting, but how did you find out about that?” she asks curiously. Poppyseed turns to her with a detached smile.

“It’s no big secret. Princess Celestia held a speech on the topic yesterday.”

“Really? But there has been no extra activity in Ponyville, not even a single journalist.”

Poppyseed shrugs noncommittally.

“Maybe they just haven’t made it here yet.”

“Why, if I know one thing about the Canterlot press, it’s that they’d be over rumours like these in a heartbeat. Are you sure this is where you heard about this?”

“Quite sure. But really, I only remembered the fact because I was looking for that book.”

“Well, here are all the works I have on dream magic. Take your time,” Twilight says as she straightens out a tall stack of thick tomes. Poppyseed begins rifling through the tower, discarded volumes quickly forming a new stack next to the first one. The process is short, and Poppyseed lowers the last book with a sigh.

“Not here. Oh well.”

“Sorry I couldn’t be of help. If you could give the title of the book you’re looking for, I might be able to find it...”

Thank you, but I don’t remember the title. Or rather, I only know what it looks like. Thank you for your time, miss Sparkle.”

“Oh, no problem.”

The guest nods to the two friends before trotting out the library, nudging the door closed behind her. Twilight begins re-shelving the volumes in silence, while Rarity thoughtfully stares at the closed door.

“Twilight, didn’t you think there was something awfully strange about that mare?”

“Hm? Strange how?”

“It’s hard to place, but... it felt like she was avoiding my questions. Like she wasn’t here looking for a book at all. She left in quite a hurry, too.”

“Well, why would she come here, then?”

“I don’t know. But there were other things as well. Didn’t you notice her cutie mark? A sealed envelope doesn’t seem very related to poppy seeds. Or dream magic, for that purpose.”

“Well, many ponies change their names. And maybe she’s just a hobbyist, like me.”

Rarity gives her her friend a long look. Twilight giggles.

“Well, okay, I might have more than a passing interest in the topic. Anyway, I can mention it to the princess in my letter. I was about to send a report before leaving to test out the spell anyway. Spike should be back any moment now.”

“I’m sorry to be such a worrywart, Twilight. All that business yesterday was quite exhausting.”

“Oh, think nothing of it. Would you like some tea while we wait for Spike?”

“Why, that would be lovely.”

*

The second trip to the encampment goes much smoother than the first one, the guards in the outer cordon obviously now informed on the identity of the Elements. Soon enough the group is back amongst the escort detachment and ready to move out.

“Good morning, ladies. Another day, another alien, eh?”

”Good morning to you too, sergeant.”

“Just call me Plate.”

“Attention!”

“At ease, for the princesses’ sake. It’s too early for this.”

“Captain! We weren’t informed you’d be joining us.”

“You are now. Going to return the stretcher I see, sergeant Gale.”

“Yes, sir. I thought it prudent.”

“Hrm.”

“Hello again, captain Hoof.”

“Hrm. Are we going or what?”

“Yes, sir. At your pace, miss Sparkle.”

“Thank you.”

*

“By the sun, what is that?”

Leaving the treeline behind, the ponies find the area around the visitors’ ship quite changed. Four familiar figures wait at the end of the ramp, but the surrounding terrain has been mostly cleared. Fallen trees rest in large, pyramidal heaps, a large bipedal machine completing one of the piles as the ponies make their careful approach.

“I didn’t know they got that big...”

Apparently satisfied with the stability of its work, the angular walker turns to look at the approaching ponies, gives a small wave with one enormous claw and lumbers away to disappear behind the ship.

“It’s another suit,” Mountain Gale notes, “there was one of those creatures inside it.”

“Wow, it must be really strong to move that around.”

“No... remember how much trouble they had with the table? I think they’re using the suits to multiply their physical power.”

“Like you do can with magic, Twi?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s that noise?”

The high-pitched whine has barely become audible when the group of flying machines arcs over the foliage to the far left of the ponies. The four skimmers momentarily slow as they break their fall, tightening up into a close formation and making a low-flying approach to the bigger craft. Pointing with its foreleg, the lead of the group gesticulates towards the lowered ramp before breaking off and flying over to the group of bipeds waiting for the ponies. The machine comes down to a jerky hover, and the pilot briefly converses with the other group before turning around and following the other three up the ramp.

“Fascinating! Were those the machines you talked about, sergeant?”

“Not the observation one, if that’s what you mean. We saw that kind when we evacuated Chaser, though.”

“We’ve actually seen them around a lot since yesterday,” comments Plate Mail. “They seem to be running patrols inside the cordon.”

“Those seemed pretty fast, I wonder if they’d be up for a race?”

“Hopefully you can ask them yourself, Rainbow.”

Making their final approach, the group of ponies finds he previous day’s table already deployed, the goggles lying on it. The red and green circles hover in the air. The waiting hosts are somewhat different from the day before, however.

Wearing the same suit but having eschewed the helmet, the leader smiles at the approaching ponies. The group take some time to take stock of the aliens’ now unobstructed facial features.

“They’re eyes are really small, I wonder if their vision is worse than ours...”

“Wow, they have really sparkly eyes!”

“Indeed, I wonder if it’s just the light, or...”

“It’s pretty weird, how flat their muzzles are.”

“I find them quite endearing, actually.”

Twilight steps forward, reaching out for one of the circles with her magic. Excitement shows in her movements.

“Right, let’s get right to it.”

HELLO

USER [TWILIGHT SPARKLE]

ACCESS GRANTED

“Oh, uh. Thank you?”

Her friends lining up to have their goggles activated, Twilight takes a deep breath, closes her eyes and concentrates. Her horn shines with the forming magic, the spell spreading to envelop her in a lavender glow.

“Hm, these here glasses feel different. Feels like they fit on mah head much better than yesterday.”

“Yeah. I think they’ve been adjusted some— whoa. Whoa! Check out Twilight!”

Curious to the reaction of her friends, Twilight opens her eyes and gasps. Within the aura of her magic, normally slightly translucent and fuzzy, intricate shapes are now visible. Infinitely tiny dots and swirls appear and disappear seemingly at random, creating a beautiful mosaic of shapes whirling around Twilight’s body.

“Oh! That is fabulous!”

“It’s like a magic pattern chamber!”

“A what now?”

“It’s like a really dense magically charged cloud, it’s used for magic research. But this one is so clear! And it doesn’t require any bulky equipment. This could mean a lot for magical research!”

“Uh, Twi’, Ah’m happy for ya, but how’s that spell coming?”

“Oh, right!”

Finalising her spell, Twilight watches as the luminous squiggles whirling around her slow down and settle down on top of her fur like an intricate full-body cutie mark. As the spell finishes, the marks pulse once and then rapidly fade from existence. Accompanying this strange, silent theatre is the familiar, slightly dizzy feeling of magic taking it’s hold of her perceptions as the translation spell settles on her mind.

“Well, that was interesting... Now we’ll see.”

Twilight expectantly turns to the other party, who runs through a short series of gestures. Touching her lower front teeth. Toughing her ear. Twisting her free hand against her palm and finally extending her arm across the intervening distance.

A tight matrix forms in the air. Perfectly geometrical lines shoot out to connect with Twilight’s horn, small whirlpools of light responding in kind.

There’s that strange feeling of magic adjusting, and the matrix is gone in an instant.

Twilight blinks.

She takes a breath.

“Hello? Can you understand me?”

The alien smiles broadly.

“Good morning, miss. Just call me Eris.”

*

Chapter 11

CHAPTER XI

To-day’s most trivial act may hold the seed
Of future fruitfulness, or future dearth;
Oh, cherish always every word and deed!
The simplest record of thyself hath worth.

—Henry Timrod, The Past

My dearest Twilight,

I am delighted to hear that the visitors are not hostile, especially considering everything you’ve described their magic capable of. I must admit I am a little concerned about their liberal use of war wards and their seemingly militaristic appearance. I have faith in your abilities, however, and trust you’ll be able to find a common language soon enough.

The politics here in Canterlot are turbulent as ever, and I would not burden you with the details. I deeply regret almost all of my time is consumed by putting out fires, so to speak, and that I cannot join you in forming new bonds with these guests from beyond our world. The Council, consisting of more than one pony, suffers no such limitations, and their subordinates seem have their hooves in every aspect of governance around here.

It is with that in mind that I would like to caution you of strangers asking veiled questions for the time being. Though I wish it weren’t so, your description of Poppyseed makes me suspect somepony may already be eyeing Ponyville in the name of some petty intrigue or another. The public announcement regarding the visitors will be made only later today. It will not mention you or your friends to spare you from some of the publicity, at least.

I would not wish to make you suspicious of every new pony you meet. Just remember you have no obligation to tell anyone but me or Luna what is transpiring in the forest, no matter what anypony says.

Your teacher,
Princess Celestia

Laying the quill down with a sigh, Celestia rubs her eyes with a weary hoof.

Whoever thought that pesky Council would conspire in silence and without causing trouble?

Rolling the parchment up and affixing it with her personal seal is an almost unconscious action after so many years. Celestia’s mind is already occupied with other things as the immensely complex spell effortlessly whisks away the letter, the flickering magic curiously reminiscent of the flames from which the letter will re-appear in a moment.

As she returns to finalising her her speech, Celestia is interrupted by the muted steps of unshod hooves. She turns to the only guest who would enter her chambers without knocking.

“Good morning. I am surprised you are still awake.”

Luna stifles a yawn before sitting down next to her sister.

“So I was. There is something we need to discuss, however.”

“Pray tell.”

“Something novel moves outside the Dreaming.”

In present company Celestia allows some surprise to bleed into her expression.

“More visitors?”

“Visitors... but not of the same vein as before. I am not quite sure what to make of them, to be honest.”

“Do explain.”

Finding her efforts to hinder it futile, Luna allows a wide yawn to escape her.

“Let me first tell you what I have found. Or rediscovered, rather. Hundreds of years ago, shortly after the beginning of my... absence, Clover the Clever finalised some of Star Swirl the Bearded’s lesser-known theories, sealing the Dreaming from the inside.”

“Oh? I wasn’t aware those two had such insight into your sphere.”

“Dearest sister, there weren’t many spheres those two didn’t study at some point.”

The sisters share a private smile at old memories.

“Anyway, Star Swirl in his later years apparently entertained a suspicion that some of the monsters of old would actually not hail from inside Equestria at all, and strove to shut them out of our realm for good. I was aware that he had been conducting research in that direction, but I admit I never knew Clover actually put it into practice.”

“Neither did I.”

Coming to think of it, that may well be the source of that lovely Hearth’s Warming tale, Celestia silently muses. She thoughtfully taps her chin with a hoof.

“But if the Dreaming is sealed, how did our current visitors get in?”

“Quite honestly, I cannot yet say for sure. The magic is very old, and very subtle, but as far as I can tell the seal was purposely built to allow for someone to be able to detect the entrance under certain circumstances. I would guess great distress would qualify, if I were wont to explain the presence of our new guests.”

“Well, that does sound a lot like Clover.”

“Indeed.”

Furrowing her brow, Luna gets up and walks a worried circle.

“That said, we’re back at my original matter.”

“The other visitors?”

“Yes. As I said, the seal itself is built to subtly detect strong emotion. The better to distinguish those in need of urgent aid, supposedly. Lately I’ve begun understanding how to tap into that to probe what lies beyond...”

Stopping, she turns to her sister.

“...but I am not quite put at ease from what I see.”

“How so?”

“There is sentience there, that I can tell. Something about them seems off, however.”

“Do you mean they are aggressive? Warlike?”

“No, quite the opposite. It is... hard to explain. If anything, I’d say they exhibit no strife whatsoever.”

“Isn’t living in harmony a desirable thing?”

“Yes... Perhaps you’re right. Still, I would like to know what inspired our original visitors to such terror before making a judgement.”

“If you say so. Twilight will be testing the new translation spell today. Perhaps you’ll have a chance to talk to the interlopers soon enough.”

“Splendid! Do keep me informed when word arrives.”

Blinking tiredly, Luna turns and begins trotting towards her chambers.

“I will. Sleep well,” Celestia calls after her.

“Of course.”

The sound of hooves receding into the distance, Celestia turns back to her desk, suppressing another sigh.

“Now where was I? ‘Citizens of Equestria...’”

Outside the chamber, one of the guards swivels his ear back to face the corridor.

*

“The princesses’ pupil and her entourage have successfully made contact.”

“By the stars, Astoria. Can’t we at least have a drink before we get to business?”

The copper mare so addressed turns to give the speaker an icy glare.

“My time is valuable, Golden, and I have little patience for your social games in private.”

The stallion shrugs, filling a small crystal glass with a thick, orange liquid.

“As you wish, my dear. I must warn you that you’re eschewing an excellent vintage, however.”

“I’ll survive. Now. My sources tell me there are more aliens on their way.”

The stallion pauses with the glass halfway to his muzzle.

“Really, now? How accurate is this information of yours?”

“Very.”

“...I guess that’s all I’m going to get? Oh well. I assume since you bothered to come meet me in person you think that these newcomers will change something?”

The mare flashes a quick smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.

“It might. According to princess Luna, the new intruders are strangers to conflict. Perfectly harmonious, you could say.”

The stallion’s ears perk up, and he unwittingly casts a worried glance around him. He puts the glass away and looks at his companion intently.

“You mean they could have potential for our project?”

The mare gives a predatory smile in response, before turning and trotting for the door.

“That is all I had to impart. Keep your eyes open.”

Sitting down on a low chair, the stallion thoughtfully rubs his chin.

“Oh, rest assured I will, dear. Rest assured.”

Golden Touch reaches for his glass as the door clicks shut and swirls the liquid within. After a while of contemplation he empties the whole glass of fifty-year old salt liquor in one swig and gets on his hooves.

“Feather Duster!”

Few heartbeats pass before a slate grey pegasus in a simple black apron opens the door.

“Yes, sir?”

“Send for two messengers, and have them meet me in my study. I wish to remain undisturbed until then.”

“Very well, sir. Anything else?”

“No, you may go.”

The pegasus bows and leaves. Golden Touch smiles to himself as he starts trotting towards his work room, plans and instructions already forming in his mind.

“This may yet turn out to be a good year indeed.”

*

“Ahh...”

I’d forgotten fresh air tastes this delicious.

I take deep, long breaths, enjoying the feel of a light breeze on my face. It’s hardly distinguishable from the simulation of the suit, but just knowing it’s real makes all the difference in the world.

Oh, and there’s the smell, of course. Smell and texture, I should say. The air filters in a closed environment have a tendency to purify and purify until the air inside is utterly sterile. It’s not something you notice while actually living on the ship, of course, but the sudden switch to the humid wetland atmosphere outside is amazing. The smell of the mud, of trees, the sweet tang of rotting under-vegetation... all overlaid with the sharp odour of burned plants and metal. It’s a beautiful symphony of olfactory instruments, and I’m enjoying every second of it.

I don’t get many moments of peace before the ramp shakes under the heavy steps of the first engineers moving out to work. I walk to the side, giving a wide berth to the massive walker heading down from the airlock. Motobu waves at me with a wide grin from the wide open cockpit as he lumbers by, guiding the six-ton beast onto the ground as smoothly as I would a skimmer. He may be young and cocky, but he drives that thing well, and to be fair, ‘cocky’ probably applies to the whole damn crew in any case. I laugh as Motobu grabs a whole fallen tree in one massive claw and twirls it like a marshal’s baton, before heading off to the closest piece of flat land to start piling rubbish on.

It’s sunny, and only a few clouds drift lazily over a clear blue sky. Morbid what-ifs aside, it looks like I wasn’t wrong when I though it would be a good day. I flex my arms and run in place, trying to shake loose the kinks in my muscles before taking a few walking steps and then slowly easing into a jog. Running in an outside environment feels great after such a long while, even if I won’t be able to stray more than a few hundred meters from the ship. Starting to feel warmed up, I accelerate slightly into a comfortable running pace, soon falling into the pleasant rhythm of my own steps.

In through the nose, out through the mouth. Thump, thump, thump, thump.

As I run, my thoughts begin to stray, remembering jobs past and loves lost. Now doesn’t that sound like something a bitter old witch would say? Hey, I’m not trying to weave a dark and troubled backstory here, I’m just stating facts. It’s been good at some times and rough at others.

The clammy sweat on my right palm only serves to accentuate the dryness of the left. As always, the prosthesis responds smoothly and instantly when I flex my hand. I’ve had it for so long—and had it fixed so many times—it’s in a very definite way a part of me now, but there’s forever that slight difference of feeling, a tiny disconnect between left and right. Good thing I’m right-handed, I guess. I pull my wrist back to its extreme and nudge it back and forth a couple of times to the beat of my running.

Beep, ‘ARMED’. Blip-blip, ‘DISARMED’. Beep, ‘ARMED’. Blip-blip, ‘DISARMED’.

See? ‘cause it’s in my arm.

Comedy gold.

Thump, thump, thump, thump.

I was eleven when I lost my hand. I actually regard the memory with some fondness now. We were still kids back then, Ace and me, and all the other kids thought it was wicked cool. Started a bar brawl, too, when I was sixteen. Snuck out during port stay with the idiot brothers, and some half-drunk asshole called me something ugly at a local watering hole. Sasha smacked him upside the head with a bottle of spirits, and then all hell broke loose.

Uh, now that I think about it, that got me grounded for the whole stay. That wasn’t a fun memory after all.

I glance at my wrist, numbers flashing into existence over it, telling me I’ve been running for no more than a quarter of an hour. I speed up a little as I start on my second lap.

Mom was furious that time. ‘Jesus, Alexandr’—she never used nicknames, not even for Sasha—’a fucking bottle? Do you know what it fucking cost me to have that bloke’s eye replaced?’ she asked, again and again. Never did she question his motive, but she was pissed off for losing money. I smile.

I carefully poke at the memory of her death.

Nnnope, still hurts.

Thump, thump, thump, thump.

I busy my mind with short-term administrative stuff for the next lap. By the time I round the bow of the ship, more engineers are already out, clearing ground and disassembling scaffolds from repaired areas. I wave at them as I run past, getting cheery shouts in response.

On the third lap, a skimmer team is forming up under the loading ramp. Miloslava kicks her turbine into gear and roars away into the forest, the three others forming up around her. I watch them weave skillfully into the trees, swearing as I almost stumble on a root sticking from the ground. There’s a snort behind me.

“Careful, or you fall and hurt pretty face!”

“Go suck a dick, Kolya.”

“Sorry, but am not into men.”

“Where’s your brother?”

“Helping Spitfire. Is equipment day today.”

“Right.”

We run in silence for a while.

“What is wrong?”

The questions startles me. I think it over while catching my breath.

“Why would you... think anything’s wrong?”

“You’re gloomy.”

It’s a simple statement, but it implies a lot of things. I glance at the stoic profile of my friend, and he pretends not to notice.

Are you becoming unstable?

The question remains unsaid, but it’s there.

There’s a little flash of annoyance, but it’s overshadowed by a much stronger impulse of gratitude. Sasha and Kolya don’t show it often, but they care. They care a lot. They’ve also been around for most of my life, so it’s hard to hide things from them.

“Don’t worry, I’m fine. Just thinking of the past.”

“Okay.”

“Remember that bar on Recuperance?”

Kolya grins widely.

“Where Sasha smacked that guy with bottle?”

“Yeah.”

“Good times. I remember a certain girl kick that guy in nuts, also.”

“I did not.”

“Oh yes! Then you tell him: ‘bitch, my hand is fabulous’ when he on ground.” He laughs loudly.

Huh, I did not remember that happening.

“In my defence, it is.”

Kolya laughs again. Both him and his brother display plenty of mirth, so they have a quite large repertoire of laughs to pick from. This one has a warm, comforting sound, a laugh than can wring joy from almost anything. I chuckle along, which my lungs soon tell me I have no business doing while running.

Glancing at my wrist again, I note I’ve been exercising for just over an hour. Time to get to work. I slap Kolya on the back, get a grunt and a smile in response and decelerate to walk up the loading ramp. I’m just through the inner airlock when Xavier opens a line into my ear.

“Ma’am, the diplomats are en route again.”

“Got it. Good timing, I just got in. I’ll take a quick shower, get the meeting ready.”

“Same crew as before?”

“Yeah.“

“Roger.”

I skip the long walk to my own quarters in favour of the communal showers on loading deck, grabbing my op suit from my personal locker as I go by. As I predicted, the Sailor’s been the soundtrack of the day, and I’m humming the melody as I rinse myself in the stall.

Barely ten minutes later I’m stuffing the sweaty jumpsuit into the washer at the bottom of my locker, the other members of our impromptu diplomat team arriving one by one.

“So, how’s the air?” Tito asks.

“Fantastic. You should all leave the helmets in and enjoy the weather.”

“But we still had to wear the suits. Why?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course.”

“Well, wear whatever you want next time.”

I hide my smirk as he harrumphs and flicks his glasses onto his nose. Motobu comes stomping up the ramp, delicately grabs yesterday’s table in a claw and stomps back out again. Seems the engineers didn’t enjoy carrying that piece of furniture by hand. Lazy buggers, always coming up with ways to automate the workload.

Julianne’s eyes are literally glowing with all the software she’s running, her gaze flicking this way and that, working some arcane subroutine or another. It’s funny how you can almost tell what job people have around here just by looking at how much light bleed there is from their micro-projectors.

We chat about everything and nothing as we make our way down. Eventually the conversation peters out and we simply wait, enjoying the sunshine. Tito walks over to the table and starts unloading the augmentation visors from his satchel.

It doesn’t take long for the ponies to appear at the edge of the clearing. They seem surprised at what we’ve done with the place, Motobu earning several long stares as he piles logs into a stack with his walker. I shoo him away and he waddles away behind the ship to do something else instead.

At the next moment, Miloslava’s skimmer team busts into the clearing and moves straight up to the ramp. She breaks off and hovers over to where we’re standing.

“Good morning, everyone,” she greets us over the whine of her turbine. “Cordon’s still there, if you’re wondering.”

“Whatever would we do without your input?”

She shrugs, unwittingly drawing a little buck from the skimmer.

“Hey, you gave the orders. Anyway, seems they’re not closing in at least. Nothing’s changed since last night. We saw a lion, though.”

“What?”

“Yeah, it was pretty weird. It ran into the woods when it heard us coming.”

“...okay? Oh well, it’s not like it’s any more surreal than anything else so far. That all?”

“A-yup. See you around.”

“Later.”

She spins on a dime and flies back up into the bowels of the ship, disappearing behind the airlock door. Having slowed their advance slightly during the exchange, the ponies are now approaching in the same configuration as before. The purple one seems to be all business today, striding right up with purposeful steps with the others chattering away behind her. Without preamble she connects to the data space, and I turn an imaginary monocle and let the visual input brighten until I can see the structure as well.

As the other ponies move to start putting on their borrowed goggles, the unicorn up front begins doing whatever it is she does with her horn. Tito leans in, talking in a low voice. Kinda redundant, that, considering our guests can’t understand us anyway.

“Okay, just so you know: I tuned down the subroutine visualisation filter. Julianne wanted to see how that horn interacts with our cloud.”

“So program runs will be visible?”

“Yeah. Since it’s capable of interfacing, there should be a point... of... connect...”

I turn to look as Tito trails off, and so does everyone else present. Inside the glow coming from the unicorn’s horn, there’s this strange organic mess of squiggles and flickering points of light. Now, I may not be an expert on data systems, but I know what they should look like. That is not it.

“Uh, Tito?”

“Qué diablos...? That’s not what a program should look like. That’s an incoherent mess!”

The unicorn seems unrattled. Excited, rather, rapidly explaining something to her companions. Soon enough the squirming patterns settle down onto her body, briefly tattooing her from top to tail with glowing runes.

Right.

Well, now she’s looking at me. Faint, stylized speech bubbles superimposed over the pony inform me of an available translation interface, so here goes nothing. Trusting the safety measures of the ship to do their thing, I start chaining gestures.

Translate: speech. New audio connection. Open interface.

Execute on target.

A far more familiar program matrix manifests in front of my hand as a host of airware kicks into gear, billions of qubits of linguistic data arming the interface for translation. Thin lines representing the points of connections streak out, locking onto—apparently functional—biological connectors on the unicorn’s body. Ignoring the superficial insanity of that though, I wait.

The purple mare looks up at me with a nervous expression, and takes a deep breath. The slightly metallic voice synthesis of the translation program hits my ears a second after the words leave her mouth.

“Hello? Can you understand me?”

I grin. Now we’re getting somewhere.

*

Chapter 12

CHAPTER XII

“Language is a virus from outer space.”

—William S. Burroughs

“Citizens of Equestria!

A few days ago, our world bore witness to an unprecedented event. An event which may change our understanding of the universe forever...”

Princess Celestia’s voice echoes from the palace balcony, washing over the mass of ponies gathered to listen.

Well, at least the news are officially out now, Celestia thinks to herself, mentally sighing at the disappearing prospect of having to sort out another press scandal.

“...our envoys have successfully made contact, and are at this very moment trying to find a common language with the visitors....”

I wonder if they’ve already talked.

It’s past midday, and the warm summer sun shines from a cloudless sky. With routine and confidence polished under hundreds of years of public appearances, Celestia flawlessly delivers her speech though her mind wanders on completely different topics. Mentally going over her list of tasks for the day, she feels a tinge of nostalgia at the memory of the now rare moments of privacy with her sister.

Luna’s right, things used to be so much easier in the old days. But then again, we’ve come a long way since then, in many ways...

Celestia looks out over the thousands of ponies standing amongst the splendour of the city, her city, and the endless view from the palace. Green hills, lush forests and sparkling rivers stretch into the horizon in every direction, the tableau beautifully framed by mountains topped with pure white snow.

It’s almost imperceptible, but were you looking very closely you might note the prime regent of Equestria standing just a bit taller.

*

“Good morning, miss. Just call me Eris.”

The purple pony in front of me takes a small, involuntary breath. I can understand the reaction. I’m as surprised as you are that this worked, my alien friend.

“...may I ask your name?”

“Oh, of course! My name is Twilight Sparkle...”

Ingrained habits from years of negotiations with short-tempered clients paralyse the muscles controlling my face. Thus, my incredulous laugh is restrained to the silence of my mind.

H... Her name is what?

“...and these are my friends: Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Applejack and I believe you’ve already become acquainted with Pinkie Pie.”

I can feel my cheeks twitching. For a few increasingly awkward seconds I say nothing until I feel I can trust my voice again. It’s the translation software. It’s got to be the translation.

“I’m sorry if I seem rude, but are these your given names or titles of some sort?”

Twilight Sparkle titters in an exceedingly adorable way. I notice from the corner of my eye that the other members of my team are pointedly looking in other directions, and that Julianne is shaking slightly.

“Oh, no, those are our names. We’re just regular ponies.”

“Then you aren’t diplomats?”

“Well, not by profession. We were just appointed to the task by princess Celestia.”

“I see. Forgive me, but for us it appears slightly... callous to send six completely novice subjects to such a meeting. Unless out-of-worldly visitors are common around here, of course.”

“Oh! Well, you could say we’re not entirely regular ponies. We represent the six Elements of Harmony: Laugher, Loyalty, Honesty, Generosity, Kindness and Magic, one of the most powerful magics in all of Equestria. Since I came here to study friendship we’ve— I’m sorry, is something the matter?”

Julianne, though silent is shaking violently, tears rimming her eyes. She looks at me with a panicky stare before shaking her head and almost running out of the simulated space. I wince at her howling laughter in the distance, mercifully cut off by the ship door sliding shut. I turn back to the ponies with a wooden smile.

“Sorry about that.”

“Is there something the matter? Is your friend alright?”

Aw, she seems genuinely distressed.

“Yes. She shares my translation interface, and, uh, your names sound quite...”

I futilely search for a neutral word.

“Adorable,” Tito deadpans.

So much for tact. Augh, her confused face is even worse!

“Well, yes. In fact, everything about your appearance comes across as exceedingly cute to us.”

“But that’s, I... what?”

The other ponies are becoming restless hearing but one side of the conversation. Twilight Sparkle quickly sums up the short exchange and then tries to answer the deluge of ensuing questions, giving us some time to compose ourselves. I can relate to the ponies behind her as I try to piece together the discussion from the translated fragments.

“Well, yes, but— no, they’re not ‘crazy’. Different species have different standa— no, I don’t think they are cute, I don’t know— stop interrupting me!”

After a while, Twilight seems to get her little group in order, and she turns back to me with a slightly embarrassed smile.

“Well, I guess it’s better than the opposite...”

I laugh.

“Yes, quite so. By the way, how come you’re not... applying your translation to your friends?”

“Ah, well, it’s a quite exhausting spell. I don’t think I could cast it on all of us.”

“‘Spell’? As in a magic spell?”

“Of course. You’re doing it, aren’t you?”

Oh boy, this is going to be interesting.

“Well, to be frank, I’m not.”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean I don’t have the abilities you’ve been exhibiting through your horn. All the translation and airware runs are done by the ship.”

Twilight flinches at ‘airware’. Ah, of course.

“Sorry, that didn’t translate?”

“No... it came across as something unintelligible. But I’m still not sure I understand...?”

“Allow me to demonstrate.” I press my thumb and two first fingers together.

“Translation interface: new object. Two-part composite: air break ware stop, dictionary meaning. Related nodes: software, hardware, data, program. Add and process.”

I turn back to Twilight.

“Airware. Airware runs. How about now?”

“Fascinating. What did you do?”

“Like I said, all the ‘magic’ you’re connected to is done by that vessel over there. She’s called the Trickster. I just taught her how to look for the right word to translate with.”

“It’s alive?!”

“Oh, no. It’s not sentient, just a very, very complex machine. Still, it’s capable of storing and analysing vast amounts of data, or simple ‘learning’. It’s not perfect, though. You can see my lips don’t sync up to my words, can’t you?”

“Actually, my spell also enchants vision, so it seems like you’re using the right words...”

“Oh, wow. That’s cool. We have to synthesise your voice, so it sounds rather unnatural, but like I said, the machine’s learning. You’re already much less artificial-sounding than a moment ago.”

Twilight’s eyes light up as she listens to my explanation.

“So it’s learning Equestrian as we speak? That’s amazing! How does it work?”

I laugh and put my hands up.

“Whoa there, I just tell people where to drive this thing. Ask Tito if you want to know.” I jerk a thumb behind me.

“Tito?”

“Oh, right, sorry.” I step back to let the team members behind me step up.

“This is Xavier d’Havillande, my first mate.”

“Ma’am.”

“Tito, my chief engineer.”

“A pleasure.”

“Likewise. Your spellcasting is quite impressive.”

“But of course. Talent and practice go a long way, as I’m sure you know firsthand.”

Huh, someone’s being remarkably humble.

“...and finally, back from her little episode we have Julianne, the head of our forensics and analysis team.”

At least she has the decency of looking ashamed.

“Hello. And sorry.”

“Oh, it’s fine.”

As the rest of the group shakes hands with the three, I point to where the group of soldiers is still standing.

“I presume your escort answers to your princess as well?”

“Yes, they’re part of the Royal Guard. I understand you’ve already met sergeant Mountain Gale?”

Meh, I liked Grumpy better.

“I have. We had a little... altercation with one of his soldiers.”

“She’ll be okay, I’m told.”

“I’m glad to hear that. It was not our intention to cause you any harm.”

“Twilight he-what-now expression-question?”

The sudden, robotic voice seems to come from orange pony with a tattoo of apples on her rump—’Applejack’, I think? Seems the pattern matcher got an adequate amount of data out of the interface to start making simple translations. Nice. I hold up a hand to stop Twilight Sparkle from answering.

“Translation interface: adjust settings. Audio broadcast on. Filter: complete translation only. Process.

Good day, Applejack. I only asked about your Guard escort.”

She starts in surprise as my sentence translates into passable Equestrian. The other ponies look at each other with open surprise, with the exception of Twilight Sparkle, who’s curiously looking back and forth between us.

“Understandable-do-I-you?”

“Yes. The translation will get better with time.”

The following sentence doesn’t translate well enough to make any sense, but since she’s offering her foreleg I assume it was some kind of greeting. Oh well, it’ll come. I shake her hoof.

“Well, to get back to your question,” Twilight Sparkle begins, “the Guard was deployed by princess Luna for safety reasons. We couldn’t know what kind of creatures you would turn out to be, after all.”

I nod appreciatively. This other princess at least seems to have her priorities in order.

“You seem to have a lot of princesses to go around, Twilight Sparkle.”

“Just Twilight is fine. The royal sisters rule Equestria jointly, with princess Celestia controlling the sun and princess Luna the moon.”

Interesting translation error there.

“I see. I must say I am fascinated by the mismatch of your magic and your technology. It took our species thousands of years of cumulative development to create the things you seem to be doing naturally, yet your soldiers still carry spears.”

Twilight gives me an apprehensive look. Even without Empathy I can tell she’s slightly worried about something, but hesitant to bring it up. I try to smile at her in an encouraging manner.

“Well, Equestria is a peaceful place. There hasn’t been a war for hundreds of years. Then again, you seem very well armed. Are you... a military unit?”

Are we a... I burst out laughing. Xavier is scowling fiercely in an attempt to stop the corners of his mouth from creeping up, and even Tito has forsaken his laconic mask to reveal a grin. Through the gaps in the dataspace I notice the Guards lean in, curiously trying to listen in on our conversation. The ponies up front seem to hover between being confused and being offended. I shake my head as I wipe the corner of my eye.

“Uh, was the question inappropriate? I don’t see the...”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m sorry for laughing, but quite frankly I don’t think there’s a military outfit in all of human-inhabited space which would accept us into service.”

“But your weapons? And the wards I triggered when I first tried to cast the translation spell?”

“Oh dear, but is this gonna be a long story. Extremely compressed version?”

Twilight nods. I select the master brightness controller and dim the virtual space to reveal the surrounding scenery. As the visitors blink in the sudden light I touch my ear.

“Ace? Strip the camo.”

“Are we making a show?“

I grin.

“Of course.”

I step up in front of the group, casting my arms out wide as I turn to face the envoys.

“Again: allow me to demonstrate!”

The single undulating note of a klaxon cuts through the clearing, and a powerful buzzing fills the air. I watch the widening eyes of the audience, enjoying their reaction indescribably more than I would the admittedly impressive sight unfolding behind me as the Trickster sheds its camouflage in a slow, sweeping wave from bow to stern.

The sounds are, of course, completely redundant, but for style points? We’d do anything for style points.

Turning around, I pause to admire the pure white coat Ace has chosen, red highlights running the length of the sleek hull.

“I assume you have seagoing ships? Yes? Now, this one essentially works in the same way, though it mostly travels in the air. You can see the yard foundations—where the sails come out—along the hull there and there, for example.” I begin pointing as I explain. “Now, please look back there and imagine this was one of your ships. What’s missing?”

I turn back to our guests. The answer comes without a second’s pause.

“Easy. Flag-none. Another-of-me-ask!”

Everyone turns to look at, uh, Pinkie Pie. I absentmindedly note she’s quite accurately named.

Another note to self: first impressions sometimes lie. But I’ll be damned if I’m thrown off by that. I cast my arm out in a dramatic point to the pony in question.

“Correct! We’re what you would call free mariners. It means this ship recognises no sovereign, and thus we fly no flag.” I pull myself up with pride. “...and neither will we do so. Thus we’re under no protection but our own. We go where we want, but we aren’t welcome everywhere.”

“Ah, I think I understand. So you live on the ship?”

“Sure. With full supplies we could theoretically stay on the Stream for months, if not years.”

“The stream?”

“Yeah, the ‘world-between-worlds’. You know, where we came through to get here?”

“Oh, Luna’s domains? Oh, you’ve got to tell me more about that! The information I could find was spotty at best...”

Twilight’s getting quite excited, her eyes exhibiting a gleam I’ve seen before. In the science team. Uh-oh.

“I’m sure Julianne can help you with that, though as I understand, we don’t know too much about it ourselves. That will have to wait for a better time, though. We’ve got something we’ll need to discuss with your princesses as soon as possible. Do you think there’s a possibility of an audience?”

“I’m sure, though both seem to have been very busy lately. I’ll write them and ask. May I ask what the matter is about?”

“It’s related to the reason we had to enter your world in the first place. Please understand I’m quite reluctant to discuss it frivolously, but be assured it’s a matter of life and death. For many.”

The sudden change in demeanour must’ve come across as quite sudden, because Twilight involuntary tenses up. Discomfort radiates from her posture, and I lean back slightly and smile weakly to soften the impression.

“Please? I don’t wish to alarm you, but this is important.”

“Yes, of course. I’ll pen the letter as soon as I get back to Ponyville.”

“That’s the name of the nearby town?”

“Yes, we’re all from there.”

“I see. Are you all students, then, or...?”

“Farmer-of-apples-am-I. Many-generation-family-in-village-Pony do-so.”

“Beautiful-clothing-maker-I-am. Own store-in-town.”

“Most-fast flier-I-am. One day-will-be-I lightning-bolt-of-awe!”

“Um, Animal-care-taker-I-am. Live-near Forest-Forever-Free.”

“I-am baker! Do I-parties all-time for all-pony!”

I notice the translator is slowly starting to piece the sentence structure together.

“Hello, all, nice to meet you. I am the captain of this vessel.”

And so the discussion goes.

For a while we simply query each other about various topics, the other ponies slowly joining the discussion as the quality of translation gradually increases. If I’m to believe the envoys, their civilisation sounds like a proper paradise: minimal crime, not a single war for centuries and a society built on the values of harmony and friendship, all benevolently ruled by two immortal princesses.

Call me cynical, but I’m not buying it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen enough of their ‘magic’ and other completely unbelievable things just today to be beyond doubting small details like supposedly immortal rulers. It’s the utopian society I can’t swallow. During my life I’ve negotiated with spies, soldiers, bureaucrats, outlaws, merchants, scummy politicians, religious leaders and arrogant nobles, and though it’s an ancient cliché by now, if something seems to be too good to be true...

Besides, if I was a princess negotiating with aliens, sending an adoring student and her sheltered friends to negotiate under strict military escort would be exactly what I’d do to get the opponent’s guard down. Thus, under my diplomat’s smile and generously offered information about humankind in general, I’m sparse on the details about my crew, the Trickster, our weapons and our capabilities.

I like to think the best of people. But I’m not stupid.

I tell the ponies about Earth, about the Golden Age, the invention of fusion technology and the exploration of space. I tell them about the great disasters of the twenty-first century, about the Eco-wars, about the Sigma protocol and the global lockdown.

Twilight recalls the legend of Nightmare Moon and the thousand-year banishment. She explains the context to the Elements of Harmony. She tells the story of Hearth’s Warming Eve and the founding of the country, of Star Swirl the Bearded and Clover the Clever, of the development of magic and the Ordering of the realm.

I tell the story of the prototype dimension collapser, First Breach and of the first forays into the Stream. I describe the beautiful but tragic tale of the Fahri family, Abdul-Khaliq and Khairiya, who gave their lives to spread the blueprints all across the world and triggered the Exodus. How we spread across the Stream in those first, rickety pioneer ships, finding new worlds, completely free for the first time in centuries.

She talks about the Griffon Wars and the withdrawal of the dragon Unities into the far reaches of the world, the turmoil of the Wild Winters and the founding of the weather control teams. Of places: Cloudsdale, Canterlot and Manehattan. We learn that we’ve landed in the Everfree forest. The group of six tells us about Discord, about the redemption of Luna and their lives in Ponyville. At some point I notice the Guards have crept closer and closer as we’ve been talking, and are now standing close enough to listen.

For hours we talk. Xavier tells the old, old story of the New Hansa and the roots of the world-merchants who eventually rejected the rule of sedentary society and gave birth to the free mariners. Tito describes the rebellions that led to the colonial wars against the navies of China and the European Federation and the founding of the first freeports. Julianne describes advances in science and medicine, gravity distortion rails and smart metals, prostheses and replacement body parts. We watch videos and holographic projections, and explore Tito’s dataspace.

As we take a break for a late lunch, a small group of the Guards approaches us humans where we sit on the negotiation table. The rest of the ponies are seated a distance away, unpacking what seems to be a spread of different kinds of vegetables and fruit. The military detachment is quite obviously led by the gruff stallion in front wearing a simple but functional piece of body armour. I nod in greeting, both to him and to Grumpy who’s accompanying the leader.

“Good afternoon.”

“Greetings. I-am-called Captain Diamond Hoof. I-am appointed as the commander of the cordon.”

Ah, the military types. They’re the same everywhere, aren’t they?

“A pleasure to meet you. I’d like to apologise for the earlier incident.”

“Worry not. I-am-told the action was self-defence.”

“Indeed. I assume you require something from us?”

“Yes. We-have listened to your dialogue, and we-are interested: you-say you-serve no nation, but you obviously have combat-skill. What is it you-do exactly?”

Well, that’s the billion-credit question, isn’t it?

“Everything. As long as it pays well and preserves our honour, we take on most jobs.”

“You-say you-are not bound to a nation, but I-am. And I-must know for the safety of the pony-persons I-am sworn to protect: is-your empire a possible threat to Equestria?”

Whoa. I raise my eyebrows in surprise. You don’t muck about, do you, pal?

“You know, that’s an uncommonly direct approach. I think I like you.”

I stop to think for a second.

“Well, look.” I hand him a pair of goggles. “Let’s take a simple example.”

A quick flick of my wrist detaches a segment of the data tori, the pages forming a small map of the Hermes tradeway. More than a dozen major ports light up along the winding substream.

“Here’s one of the most trafficked trade routes outside Earth-controlled space. Every one of these specks of light is a port anchored outside the Stream, in real space. These...” I point “...are estimated population numbers.”

Diamond Hoof’s got one of the best poker faces I’ve ever seen, but not good enough for me. A second’s pause in breathing, a fractional widening of the eyes. A tiny tension in his neck as his brain takes in one seven-digit figure after another. I grin.

“Now, if all these would be ruled by one instance, then you’d have an issue. Fortunately that isn’t the case. Take Milnesport here, for example. Though there are almost five million people living there, they’re divided into factions ruled by the Council of Miros, the Council of Commerce, four major corporation-protectorates and over a dozen minor ones. And that’s before you factor in religious factions, other local communities and all the passers-through. Milnesport, as a community, wouldn’t and probably couldn’t act as one unit unless forced to. And for most of the space outside Earth’s sphere of influence, that’s the way we’d like it to be.”

I turn from the map and display the small knife I’m eating with.

“Here’s the thing, though: your magic is capable of some pretty fantastic things, but the level of your technology is this. Against any of the more powerful factions on that map, not to mention the ones outside it, you wouldn’t pose much of a challenge, militarily or industrially.”

I skewer a piece of omelette on my knife and stick it into my mouth.

“I-see. But you-must have at least some factions which-are not as strong. How do-those-live in harmony?”

Looks like this guy didn’t make his rank just by kissing ass. I chew and swallow.

“Well... Some, if they are strong enough to police themselves, declare themselves freeports. Basically that means that the trade oversight superfactions and autonomous organisations will step up to protect them against colonial forces or external aggression, but it also means you get a huge influx of all kinds of people. Your infrastructure and society have to be strong to carry that kind of burden. Others just submit to an existing sovereign power as a vassal state.”

“Those-are the only options?”

“Well, there’s declaring independence, but that leaves you standing alone, so you’d better be ready to either step up your military game or play the political one well.”

Diamond Hoof silently broods over the map for a good while while I finish my meal.

“Thank-you for your time.”

He turns to leave.

“You’re welcome. Hey Gr— sergeant Mountain Gale!”

The pegasus turns back, surprised. I smile at him.

“Mind if we have a little chat?”

Unsure, he looks to his superior who dismisses him with a curt nod, although I can tell the captain’s curious too. Mountain Gale trots up to me and I indicate the grass at the side of the table.

“Thank you. I-prefer to stand, ma’am.”

Oh fuck off, even other species?

“Eris is fine. I’m not much for titles.”

“Very well. How may-I stand to service?”

“Let’s just say I’m curious by nature. How’s your teammate doing?”

“Wind-chaser? She-will heal. While we-discuss that matter... Please stand by a beat.”

With a few wing-flaps—it somehow looks very intuitive and natural, although I intellectually know it should be all wrong—he flies over to the rest of his formation to return with Kolya’s stretcher dragging behind him.

“I-would-like to return this. It-was a great help.”

“Thanks, I’m sure Kolya will love to get it back.” I put the object away. “Now, tell me something about yourself.”

*

Chapter 13

CHAPTER XIII

“People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.”

—Thomas Sowell

Majesty,

My report on the aliens follows.

The captain, “Eris”, doesn’t seem hostile, and neither does her crew. While they are well-armed and in possession of great magical power, she insists they are not a military unit in the sense of the Guard. While these creatures’ empire is enormous it seems fractured into smaller fiefdoms. I am told that major factions within it would be powerful enough to force Equestria to submission, were they so inclined.

I’m sure you’ll get a comprehensive write-up from your sister’s student.

We will meet them again tomorrow. I continue my vigil.

Diamond Hoof

Luna lowers the letter, hiding her snicker behind a polite cough as her sister skims through the massive scroll slowly scrolling in front of her.

“I heard that,” Celestia notes without turning around.

“It seems your student has been quite productive, sister.”

Celestia puts down the huge report and rests her eyes on the horizon.

“Twilight, though a brilliant scholar, has always had a penchant for somewhat... verbose reports.”

“So it would seem. I find her thirst for knowledge a quite endearing trait, myself.”

“You don’t have to read said reports.“ Celestia nods towards the night blue scroll. ”Is that from captain Hoof?”

“Indeed, and it is as it’s author. Curt and to the point.”

“Well, I believe you’ve said that you chose him for this job exactly because of his personality.”

“Hah! His impatience with etiquette is one of his most valuable traits.”

“True words. I hope the talks will continue as well as they have started.”

“So do I, though it seems we have nothing to fear from our first guests.”

Celestia frowns.

“I would like to think so, too, but these... primates still seem quite volatile, advanced though they may be. Can you trust a mage who bows to no mistress?”

Luna snorts dismissively, waving the roll of parchment in the air.

“Bah, a little roughness and a disregard for authority has always been the hallmark of sailors, even here. And recall the knights errant! What happened to the Celestia who bestowed her favour upon a stallion before a particularly exciting joust, hm?”

Luna playfully pokes at her sister with the scroll. Celestia bats the offending object away with her wing, a faint colouration to her cheeks.

“That was a long, long time ago.”

“Ah, but you have grown old and stiff, sister. I shall leave you to your bureaucratic entertainments.”

“I’ll take a break soon enough. Will you be visiting the encampment?”

Luna turns back at the door.

“I’m thinking of taking a first look tonight.”

“Be careful.”

“By the stars, sister. There’s a full squadron of Guards present. What could possibly go wrong?”

*

“How in the name of all fuck did this happen?”

The angry shout rebounds from the metal bulk of the ship and echoes around the clearing. The responsible human continues into a long string of curses which, even only partially translated, manage to bring a blush to the cheeks of most ponies within earshot. The engineer punctuates her rant by accusingly waving her cap at the other orange-suited crew members milling about her and occasionally kicking a nearby walker. Showers of sparks and clouds of steam burst from inside the damaged bulkhead.

“W-what’s going on?” Fluttershy asks, peeking over Twilight’s withers towards the railing engineer. Eris laughs a hearty laugh, collapsing her artificial hand back into its normal shape and rolling down the sleeve of her suit.

“Welcome to engineering. It’s not a work place for the faint-hearted.”

“But, um, does she have to be so—” Fluttershy's ears flatten over the earbuds of her visor as the distant shouting rises in volume for a few seconds.

“—will kick you so hard in the dick you’ll be pissing blood out of your—”

“...angry about it?” She casts her eyes to the ground.

“Well... That’s just her personality, I guess. I’ll admit she’s got a slightly short temper.”

“—tear your goddamned tits off—”

“...and quite a colourful vocabulary.”

A new human steps into the circle of those already present, a faint grid of crossed-out triangles springing up between the group and the working crew. The volume of the chaotic scene around the hull abruptly drops to a whisper, and Eris greets the newcomer with a lazy wave of her hand.

“Thanks, Ace.”

“No problem. Looks like there’s a skimmer team suiting up, if you want to take a break.”

“Oh, nice! You take over here, then.”

“Sure.”

The tall newcomer turns to the ponies and inclines his head. His voice is quiet but carries clearly over the muted backdrop of distant clangs and shouts.

“Good afternoon. My name is Ares, though most seem to prefer to call me Ace.”

“Treat my brother well, alright?” Eris quips over her shoulder as she walks away.

“Oh, so you’re related? Nice to meet you, my name is Twilight.”

“I know,” Ares says as he squeezes the offered hoof, “I have been following your interactions with my sister from the bridge.”

“Oh. Oh! That reminds me, you have to tell me how that works! I can’t sense any magic when you talk to each other across a distance...”

“There isn’t any. We transmit our messages encoded in very high-frequency electromagnetic waves,” Ares explains as he moves to greet everypony present in turn.

“But... you’d need an oscillator for that, and Eris said you don’t have anything similar to our horns.”

“True, but you saw her left hand, yes? It’s the same thing. We manufacture the equipment we require and then merge it with the body in various ways. Like inserting them behind our eyes.”

Ares’ eyes shift through a flurry of glowing colours as a demonstration.

“Amazing...”

His mouth quirks into a small, crooked smile.

“It’s just a long, long process of small improvements. To us your ability to levitate objects and fly with those tiny wings appears far more impressive.”

“Hey! My wings aren’t tiny.”

“My apologies. I merely meant that, physically speaking, you shouldn’t be able to produce enough thrust to fly. They are quite beautifully proportioned from an aesthetic point of view.”

Rainbow self-consciously angles her wings back, the conflict between pride and annoyance at having them called pretty evident on her face. Applejack snickers behind a hoof.

Ares peeks behind the next to last pony in line, offering his hand to the half-hidden figure behind.

“Well met, miss Fluttershy.”

“Um, hello...”

Ares gently grasps the timidly offered foreleg. Fluttershy carefully looks out from under her mane, meeting the human’s dark eyes with an involuntary squeak.

The other ponies watch with interest as their pegasus friend goes through a series of fidgets, jerks and posture changes under Ares’ steady gaze. After a few seconds he releases her hoof.

“Hm.”

“Don’t worry, she’s just nervous around new ponies. Creatures. Persons.”

“It’s all right. I wasn’t the most sociable of people when I was younger, either.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Eris was always the more... outgoing of us.”

“...y.”

“Pardon?”

“Um... I-I meant to say... I’m sorry, I don’t want to offend anypony...”

Ares thoughtfully scratches his chin while looking the pegasus over.

“Like I said, it’s quite all right. But I wonder...”

With a sudden squeal, Fluttershy dives behind Rainbow Dash. The human stands still as a statue, following her with his eyes.

“Fluttershy? What the hay?”

“Oh, um, it’s... I just...”

Peeking out from behind her friend with a haunted look, Fluttershy blushes and hides behind her mane.

“What’s up with you today, Shy? You’re totally on edge.”

“I-I... don’t know...”

“Fluttershy.” Her name called, she peeks at the human. Instantly, the tension drains out of the scared pony, her crouched posture relaxing into a more upright stance. She looks at Ares, wide-eyed.

“But... why?” Confusion is evident in her voice.

“Because you are like me. Come, sit. Let’s talk.”

Ares settles down on the edge of the projection table.

“Did Eris talk to you about Sympathy?” The ponies shake their heads in unison. "Well... this might take a while."

Ares collects his thoughts for a few heartbeats, and begins talking.

“In... the final stages of the Eco-wars, the amount of land available to farm and live on became critical on Earth. Genetic engineering saw a surge as the surviving governments scrambled to effectivise agricultural production to the point where they could upkeep the existing population. Somewhere along the way the gene-engineers of the time—it’s lost to history who—mapped the workings of a cluster of genes integral to the development of our prehistoric ancestors’ brains: the structures of social interaction.

These were genes that had always existed in the human gene pool, of course. The research, however, made it possible to bring out, multiply and control these effects in individual humans. What we essentially created was a human who could consciously manipulate the subconscious signals we use to affect others. They were the perfect spies, ambassadors and instigators, and very soon they were in use by all parties of the war.”

Pausing, Ares looks up to the half-empty sky.

“In the aftermath of the wars a lot of old borders crumbled, and hundreds of years of knowledge were either lost or freely distributed. The same was true for the gene program. The engineered genes spread into the general populace as former combatants settled down to rebuild, their former identities forgotten or consciously hidden. Today, an approximated four percent of all humans carry the altered genes in some configuration.

There are two main ways the engineered genes manifest: Sympathy and Empathy. The first is the ability to affect others subconsciously, and the second is a heightened sensitivity to their emotions and attitudes.”

“So it allows you to manipulate others to do your will? That’s terrible!” Twilight exclaims.

“You misunderstand. Sympathy is no different from being, say, a ‘natural leader’ or a ‘good persuader’. The signs such a person exhibits—confidence, purpose, trustworthiness—are simply amplified, because the Sympath can identify them in their own behaviour. There is no hard line which separates a skilled speaker from a weak Sympath. Do you see?”

“I... think I do.”

“You should. You spend time seeing the effects of both every day.”

“I’m sorry?”

Ares nods at Pinkie Pie.

“I presume she’s very good at making you cheer up and go along with her plans?”

“Well, yes...”

“Of course I am, silly! Nopony likes to not party!”

Ares waits patiently. Twilight’s eyes finally widen as she understands the implication.

“Are... you saying Pinkie has this ‘Sympathy’?”

“Well, something very akin to it. It saved her life when she ran up to Eris at our very first meeting.”

“You would have attacked her?”

Ares’ eyes remain inscrutable.

“She charged at our captain without warning. People have gotten shot for much less.”

A heavy silence descends on the group as the ponies take stock of the alien with new eyes. Even Pinkie seems quiet after the revelation.

Twilight finally breaks the silence with a nervous laugh.

“Well, I’m glad nothing happened. Right, girls?”

“So are we. She’s not the only one, though.”

Ares shifts his dark eyes back to Fluttershy.

“What did you feel when you hid behind your friend?”

“It... I, um, thought you were going to attack us. Sorry...”

“Don’t be. The signals I gave were aggressive.”

“What signals? You didn’t move at all!” Rainbow suddenly draws back. “Can she read minds?”

Ares’ sudden laugh takes the ponies by surprise.

“Ah, no, she can’t. The reason she reacted so strongly was because she’s not used to interpreting human body language. It’s not something supernatural, only a combination of very, very high sensitivity to a number of very minuscule signals. The threat of violence seems to be a universal concept.”

“So when you said Fluttershy is ‘like you’, you meant...”

“Yes. I was born a weak Empath. And unless I’m mistaken, she has a potential far higher than mine.”

Another silence descends on the group as the ponies mull over the information. Rarity protectively steps in front of Fluttershy.

“I am most certainly hoping you’re not thinking that this will change a thing between us six!” She levels a glare at the other ponies. Ares clears his throat.

“Before you start arguing, there are a few things I’d like you to keep in mind. First of all, like I said, it’s only a natural disposition to certain social behaviours, untrained it doesn’t really differentiate you from the rest of the populace. The Gods know we’ve had enough misunderstandings and prejudice in our own culture.”

For a split second Ares’ eyes flick to the side and something hard glints in his expression.

“Secondly, and more importantly, what I’ve said only applies to humans. With your species, the genes were most probably not introduced into the gene pool artificially. It’s entirely possible you’ve evolved the traits on your own, which would explain why you’re still alive. And sane.”

“What do you mean?”

“For humans, while they confer quite tangible advantages, these forcibly developed skills aren’t without a price. For us Empaths, the strain is usually mental. Tell me, Fluttershy, have you ever felt that society is full of lies, aggression and hidden agendas?”

“I... um...”

“That doesn’t sound like Fluttershy at all. She’s perfectly fine with other ponies!”

“You say your passion is taking care of animals. Why?”

“Hey! Is this an interrogation? Lay off her!”

“It’s... alright, Rainbow.”

The other ponies turn in surprise. Fluttershy looks straight back at the unwavering Ares.

“Animals are... honest. They don’t tell lies. I think I... understand what you mean.”

“Fluttershy!”

“My friends are the same. I trust them because I know they want me to be happy.”

Ares nods thoughtfully, and for a second he smiles warmly.

“I see. They are the bedrock of your sanity.” He alternates between Pinkie and Fluttershy. “...and yours too, I would imagine. You are both very lucky.”

“Of course! We have the bestest of friends, after all!” Pinkie exclaims, before scooping as many of her friends into a hug as she can reach. Ares chuckles at the scene.

“But then... what about y’all? How d’ya handle the strain?” Applejack manages from within the group hug.

“Fortunately, though I said four percent of humanity carries the genes, only a fraction of them exhibit fully matured Empathy or Sympathy. For those few, life can be tough... Many die, by their own hand or by accident.”

“How awful!”

Ace shrugs.

“People die for various reasons all the time. It’s not as bad as it sounds, there’s always techniques and drugs to curtail and control the backlash.”

“So you were... trained?”

The human smiles softly with a faraway look in his eyes.

“Our father taught both me and Eris. He was a very important pillar for us both, while he still lived.”

“Oh, he’s passed away... I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. That’s life.” Ares’ expression has returned to it’s blank default state.

The conversation dissolves into silence at the heavy topic, Twilight and her friends unsure of how to continue. Their thoughts are interrupted by the now familiar whine of thrusters, audible even through the dampening screen as a new group of hovercraft exits the ship. Ares eyes Rainbow Dash as she floats into the air for a better view.

“Are you interested in the skimmers?”

“Do they go fast?”

“Very.”

“Really, now...?”

Ares dismisses the intangible noise wall with a flick of his hand and whistles sharply through his teeth. The group turns in response and quickly makes its way over to the group by the table. Eris’ face becomes visible as she pulls up sideways, the remaining four hovercraft skipping around impatiently behind her. The distant shouting continues unabated.

“—jam a frequency wrench up your asshole if you give me lip again—”

“What’s up?”

“Looks like Rainbow Dash here would like to run a patrol with you.”

Eris grins with delight.

“Think you can keep up?”

“Hay yeah I can! You're looking at the fastest pegasus in all of Equestria!”

“I’ll believe it when I see it!”

Releasing the decelerator, Eris rotates her skimmer around full circle before gunning the engine, the team ascending straight into the sky with a roaring blast of wind.

“All right! Finally some action!”

“Rainbow! Maybe you should—”

The pegasus flexes her wings and takes off after the humans in a blur of movement, leaving her friends behind in the swirling cloud of ash and dry leaves. Twilight coughs and rubs her eyes with a hoof.

“—inform the Guards...”

She trails off as the fliers disappear over the Everfree. Three pegasus guards scramble in a panic to pursue, desperately flapping their wings to keep up with the sudden change of situation. Ares chuckles.

“Well, they’ll be gone for as long as your friend can fly, I’ll reckon.”

“Oh dear. That could be a while,” Rarity comments as she tries to re-arrange her mane. “Seems your sister enjoys flying as well.”

“Loves it. The ability of flight has always fascinated us as a species, I think.”

“I can understand how that would be enticing if you lack the natural means to do so.”

“How do those machines fly?” Twilight asks, squinting towards the horizon. “They don’t have wings either, and enchanting an object to fly at that speed would be massively energy-consuming...”

“I'm sure it would be. There’s some complex technology involved, but basically there’s something called a Stoltzmann rail inside, which creates a kind of weak lifting force. Think of it as a balloon full of a light gas, only compressed into a very small space. Active, it makes the whole contraption light enough to move with a single, big thruster.”

“Interesting... how does that work, exactly? Balloons need a lot of volume for lift, but...”

“It’s not really my specialty. You might want to talk to the scientists or engineers.”

“—I will murder you in your sleep! Perkele!”

Ares reasserts the zone of silence with a wave and smiles wryly at Twilight’s pensive expression.

“Don’t worry, Niina’s not the only engineer we have. She is a very good one, though.”

“What about the one we met earlier?”

“Tito? Sure. Do you want to go now?”

“What, inside?” Twilight’s eyes light up. “Yes! Yes I would!”

“Twi, wait up fer a beat.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Look, Ah understand this is all very ‘mportant and we were asked by the Princesses, but Ah can’t leave the orchard for too long. Big Macintosh can’t handle all those trees by himself.”

“Oh... Are you sure? It’s a great opportunity!”

“Ah know, and Ah’d like to go. But...”

“Excuse me, but if I understand correctly, you run a rather large apple orchard?”

“A-yup. Sweet Apple Acres, biggest orchard in th’ region!”

“Impressive. I think I might have a proposal which might benefit all parties.”

“Ah’m listening.”

“Since we’re confined to our ship most long journeys, our supplies are often of a rather... well-conserved variety. Fresh produce is a rarity, and one we value greatly. We can’t offer you any local currency, but perhaps we could spare some farm hands in exchange for goods?”

Applejack thoughtfully rubs her chin.

“'Farm hands'? D'ya mean hired workers? Well, it’s not like we need any help, but it’d save us time a-plenty, and we’ve got more than enough apples ta spare...”

“Exactly. Our maneuver platoons aren’t doing very much at the moment, and I would rather not have them getting too restless. As an additional bonus, you wouldn’t have to leave your friends today.”

“Well, that does sound like a darned good deal! All right.”

Ares gets up from the table, sealing the deal with a shake.

“Well then, I’d be glad to function as your guide. Will your escort be joining us...?”

"I dont' know, let me go ask..."

*

Chapter 14

CHAPTER XIV

“A certain man once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea, and twenty years later, on the exact day,
a Friday apparently, he was eating a large fish - but there was no diamond inside.
That’s what I like about coincidence.”

—Vladimir Nabokov, Laughter in the Dark

The rough surface underneath is making the skimmer skittish, and the swirling currents throw the vehicle around when I ease up on the decelerator handle.

“I’ll believe it when I see it!” I quip as I spin back, grinning at the pegasus in front of me.

I stamp down with my feet, the skimmer gleefully pushing off the ground and streaking into the sky, the scream of the exhale nozzles dampened by the speed of my ascension. I can’t help but laugh out loud at the rush of wind, safe from the chill behind thick layers of heat insulation.

“Woo-hoo!”

The altimeter ticks away in front of me: a hundred meters, one hundred and fifty, two hundred... The strain of the rapid climb burns in my thighs, pressing my boots into the footrests. In a matter of seconds I level out at about two hundred and twenty meters and settle into a lazy holding pattern, the rest of the team forming up around me.

Now, where’s that pony?

“Whoa! What the hell was that?” Sabra’s voice breaks into my ear and I wrench around in my seat to see what spooked him. The other pilot’s head is tilted back, and I follow the direction of his gaze to a rainbow-coloured tail flapping in the wind.

I glance at the airspeed meter. Twenty meters per second.

“What the actual fuck?”

The broadcast must be on, because Rainbow Dash turns her head around and laughs. I glance to the closest skimmer pilots. Sabra is still gaping, while Steph just grimaces and shrugs at me.

I laugh out loud. She’s got spirit, this one.

“Well, looks like you weren’t boasting there, Rainbow Dash. Most impressive.”

“Uh, hello? Is this thing on?”

“Yeah, go ahead.”

“I told you I’m the fastest.” I think I could hear the smirk over the radio even without visual confirmation. I match her expression as she looks back at me.

“Don’t get too cocky. We’re not even close to the limit of what these babies can do.”

Free from the unpredictable ground turbulence, the skimmer is to me all but an extra limb. I flick my wrists to pick up some speed with a tiny nose dip before aggressively twisting the controls to starboard.

I revel in the adrenaline rush as I fall into a rapidly accelerating dive, safety straps around my lower back and thighs jerking taut as the centrifugal motion tries to throw me off my seat.

I whoop with glee as the skimmer plummets, turbine screaming.

You ain’t seen nothing yet, my winged friend.

*

A bright, orange light blinks thrice as the heavy door slowly lifts and folds into the hull. The smallish room inside follows the style of the humans’ other equipment, predominantly sporting sharp angles of metal and smooth surfaces of some unknown, dull material. Ares casually walks into the gloom, leaving the five friends together with captain Hoof, Mountain Gale and a third guard named Glitterstreak nervously peering inside. The human patiently waits for the emissaries to make their move.

Finally Twilight crosses the threshold, closely followed by the poker-faced Diamond Hoof.

One by one, the rest of the group enters the chamber, glancing around as nothing immediate happens.

“Um, is something the matter?”

“Not really. We’re just waiting for the airlock to cycle.”

“Why not just open both doors?”

“It’s built to work this way. Both for security and for operation in hostile environments.”

“Like the Everfree?”

“Oh, much worse than that. Here you have breathable air, at least.”

“Uh...”

The orange light flashes again, and the door re-unfolds itself with the same, even speed. The walls take on a soft, ambient glow to illuminate the room as the entrance seals with a click. The outside sounds of machinery and raised voices disappear, only faint clangs echoing through the walls.

“Don’t be alarmed, but there will be some moisture in the air in a moment. I recommend closing your eyes, it can be slightly irritating to the sensory organs.”

Hidden nozzles expel a fine mist into the room, the ponies fidgeting as the cool droplets drift over them. Somepony sneezes.

“Agh, I got some in my eye...”

“Um, sorry, but what is this?”

“A mild disinfectant. We try to minimise the impact we might have on a new environment as well as keep the ship clean.”

“Oh.”

Narrow slats open up in the floor and a hot gust of wind ruffles fur and wings.

“My mane! Oh dear.”

The enormous inner door chirps cheerfully. With a loud clack its segments separate, the overlapping petals opening, flower-like, and retracting into a cylindrical stump of corridor. Loud noise assaults the visitors: echoing shouts, bursts of laughter and the rattling of footfalls on metal punctuating the ever-present backdrop of idling engines. A very, very quiet bass hum emanates from the inside walls, as if the ship itself acted as an enormous speaker.

Ares stops at the circular entrance and sweeps his arm to encompass the space beyond.

“Well then, ambassadors. As the executive officer of this ship, and on behalf of our captain and crew, it is my honour to welcome you onboard the Trickster.”

Slowly filing out of the small chamber, the group enters the huge hall.

“Oh goodness...”

Craning their necks to grasp the size of the space, the ponies scan level after level of walkways framing wide doorways stencilled with yellow numbers. Large, square doors neatly line the inner wall like the cells of an enormous beehive. Both individuals and groups of humans walk around on the metal shelves or sit by the handrails with their legs hanging over the side.

On the bottom, the hall forms a wide square lined on a side by a series of similarly tubular entrances as the one open behind the group. Following the gentle curve of the hull the room tapers towards the top, terminating in a tight wedge more than a hundred wingspan above.

Ares looks at the gawking ponies with a mildly surprised expression.

“I did not expect you to be so impressed by our hangar. Surely you must have bigger structures in that mountain city in the far distance.”

Twilight excitedly trots around in a wide circle.

“Canterlot? Well, yes, but not by much, and certainly none that fly. Besides clouds, I mean, but this is all built in metal! I can’t even imagine what it would take to process this much iron!”

“There’s actually a lot less steel than you probably think. Much of the hull consists of lighter alloys over carbon superstructures.”

“Carbon? But that’s... I mean, how can it hold?”

“It might be a bit of a long lecture. Let’s talk about that later.”

“Is this a storage space for your flying machines?” Mountain Gale breaks into the conversation.

“Very good. How did you guess?”

“The layout is very similar to pegasus housing in Cloudsdale. I presume there are emergency hatches in the roof?”

“Indeed. You can see it outlined in yellow if you look carefully.”

“Above the topmost level? Yes, it’s clearly visible from here.” The winged pony points with a hoof.

Ares squints at the weak lines of paint half-hidden in the shadows above.

“Huh. You must have remarkable eyesight. Or perceive colours quite differently from us.”

“Hey, check it out! Look!”

Yells and whistles calling for attention sound from above, heads popping over the safety rails or out of open entrances. The sound of excited discussion floats down to the visitors.

“Whoa, that is the cutest thing.”

“They can fly? Awesome!”

“Sir! Will we get to meet the ponies too?”

Ares waves his hand at the closest faces peering down.

“In time. Get back to work.”

“Yes, sir!” The grinning head disappears.

“If you would? This way, please.”

Ares leads the group into a side corridor, metal doors—easily a leg measure thick—easing into the walls like curtains at their approach. Behind, the pathway continues into the distance, light spilling from windows painting the walls and floor in alternating segments of light and dark. Thick lines of colour run across the floor. Diamond Hoof squints at the sunlight as they walk past.

“Strange... These windows seem to be set right at the surface, but I could’ve sworn we didn’t move back towards the entrance.”

“We didn’t. There’s more than thrice your body length in armour and hull layers separating us from the outside.”

The old soldier peers suspiciously at Ares.

“Magic?”

The human smiles over his shoulder.

“If you’d like to call it that.”

A gesture from Ares pans the image of a nearby window to the groups of Guards still waiting outside.

“You seem very fond of scrying magic,” Twilight remarks as the group continues, leaving the oddly angled image hanging on the wall.

“Why waste time? Fast communication is both convenient and life-saving.”

Twilight lapses into silence, eyes tracing shadowy alcoves hidden away from the brilliant sunlight.

Every one of them speaks of life-threatening danger and death with such ease. It feels... dark, somehow.

“Mister Ares. I’m terrible sorry if I appear to be prying, but we only seem to be passing a lot of closed doors. May I ask where this ‘tour’ is headed?”

“Of course you may, miss Rarity. We’ll be at our destination in a moment. And to answer your unasked question: the doors in this corridor lead to cargo holds. Most of them are simply empty.“

The corridor ends in an identical door to the one at the other end, the metal lightly swishing away. The silence of the empty corridor is replaced with the sounds of life, dozens of voices mingled with the sounds of clinking metal and thumps of feet. The new passage is devoid of windows, instead branching into twisting paths framed by doors and hatches of varying sizes. Raucous laughter, stumps of drunken song and a blanket of loud, overlapping voices drift from an open double door to the immediate right. Pinkie immediately perks up, zooming to the front of the group with surprising speed.

“That sounds like a party! Is it a party, Acey?”

“Ac... Huh. Yeah, you could say that. It’s the mess hall, so there’s probably an off-duty squad or two in there. Want to stop by and say hello?”

In a pink flash Pinkie is across the intervening corridor, bouncing into the middle of the doorway and striking a dramatically pointing pose, precariously balanced on her hind legs.

“I sense a party! Why wasn’t Pinkie invited?”

The mess hall reacts with dumbfounded silence, the song faltering into confused mumbles.

Then the room explodes into cheers.

“Heeey! It’s crazy pink pony!”

“Awesome!”

“Get in here, you badass motherfucker!”

Bouncing with glee, Pinkie disappears into the rowdy room. The rest of the group gathers up by the doorway.

About a dozen humans mill around a square table bearing Pinkie, most of them sporting cups or canteens of varying sizes. A lank man in a long-sleeved jacket, limply leaning against a wood-panelled bar, clears his throat and starts up on another jaunty vocal tune. The words of the song fail to translate. Twilight peers at the out-of-place piece of ornate furniture in the otherwise spartan hall, colourful bottles neatly lined up and fastened to shelves behind the counter.

“Is that a salt bar?”

“Pardon?”

“It’s, uh, something adult ponies consume for enjoyment... Dulls the senses and creates euphoria.”

“'Salt'? Do you mean alcohol?”

“Alcohol?”

“It’s a liquid chemical with a depressant effect on the central nervous system. You can see the effects of small amounts with the crew members present: flushed skin, lessened inhibitions, some balance problems...”

“It sounds a lot like salt, except the liquid part. I mean, salt is sometimes dissolved into liquids, but...”

“Huh. Interesting. It might just be a translation error, but to be on the safe side... Hey, Lin! Don’t give her that until we have greenlight on toxicology.”

Caught red-handed, the dejected technician takes back the canteen from Pinkie before the pony has a chance to drink whatever’s inside. Pinkie shrugs.

The door behind the counter opens and a horror of colours well too small for the frame squeezes through and into the room.

“Govno! Fuuuck!”

Straightening the massive orange feather in his hat, the muscular human gives the counter an angry kick before pulling a bottle out of the bar shelf.

“How can single platoon have so much shit to catalogue, huh? I ask you! Fuck!”

With a deft flick of a thumb the rubber cork clatters into a sink. The human promptly attempts to empty the contents of the bottle in one swig, disregarding the drops escaping into his bright blue beard. Noticing the uncommon guests in the middle of trying to drink and pull a chair out at once, the newcomer almost chokes on his liquor.

“Hey, it’s little horses from outside!” The human grins as he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His cheeks stretch even further as his eyes travel to the table and register Pinkie. “It’s you! I like you!”

Perched on the side of the table, Pinkie giggles and stretches out a foreleg.

“I’m not ‘you’, silly! I’m Pinkie Pie!”

The human bursts into laughter, rapping his fist against the extended hoof, the strength of the gesture almost pushing Pinkie off the edge of the table.

“Okay! I’m Kolya.”

“Hello Kolya! Do you like parties, because I should totally throw all of you a ‘welcome to Equestria’-party since you’ve never been here before and...”

“Pinkie.” Twilight gently chides, doing nothing but adding to the noise of the laughing Kolya, the off-key singing in the background and Pinkie’s excited explanation.

“...and then we could make more cupcakes since Eris dropped the first one and it got all inedible...”

“Pinkie!”

Quickly the room devolves back into the ambient chaos of a small but lively party, made all the worse by the addition of the ponies. Ares looks down as a well-trimmed white hoof daintily knocks on his knee.

“Yes?”

“Well, I... Hrm. Most of you seem to prefer rather... let us say pragmatic gear, so I could not help but notice your friend’s...” Fidgeting uncomfortably, Rarity’s gaze lingers on Kolya’s garish outfit before flacking towards the floor, trapped somewhere between scandal and not being able to look away. “...ensemble,” she finishes lamely.

“Ah, yes, the brothers Incorrigible.”

A shudder runs through the unicorn.

“There’s two of them?” She swallows audibly.

“Dreadful, isn’t it?”

Rarity’s shoulders sag in relief. “You think so too? Oh, thank goodness. I must admit I was afraid you would all dress like that out of those drab full-body overalls.”

Ares lets out a small, dismissive laugh.

“Ye gods, no. Sasha and Kolya just have a... slight authority problem. They like to break the rules where they can. Including the rules of fashion.”

“I’m so glad we can agree on that.”

“Really, I was already amazed that they manage to look out of place in every human culture we visit, but to think they’d look awful even across species... Truly the stream is full of wonders.”

The pair observes the play unfolding in the hall, Twilight still working to catch Pinkie’s attention while trying to resist the distractions of the curious crewmembers’ questions. Applejack similarly shares her attention between good-natured conversation and shielding the panicky Fluttershy from inquisitive humans, while the Guards hang back in a tight group of their own.

“They seem to be getting along surprisingly well.”

“Yes. It does feel like an incredible coincidence that we would share so many cultural features.”

Rarity looks up, Ares’ piercing eyes observing her. She holds her gaze on the human as he shifts away, trying to assess the mysterious creature.

He would probably look good in a cape, Rarity muses idly. Or armour. He stands as if suspended over a frame of steel.

Ares claps his hands together, curiously managing to quiet the rowdy crew with the simple gesture.

“Sorry to interrupt, miss Pinkie, but we ought to be going. There will be plenty of time to get to know all of us later.”

“Okies, Acey!”

Subdued giggles from the crew are quickly suppressed by the level stare of dark eyes. Towing the quadrupedal group behind him, Ares leaves the hall and continues down a corridor. Fluttershy quickly nestles close to Rarity in the middle of the formation.

“He’s... a little intimidating, isn’t he?” The pegasus asks in a voice barely audible to her friend.

“Ares? Well, he is a bit hard to read,” Rarity replies.

“It’s, um, I meant the other humans... They obey him very naturally. It’s... respect and, um, a little fear, I think.”

“Fear? I admit he is a little... stiff, but that’s hardly a frightening attribute, dear.”

“Maybe. Um, it’s just what I think. It’s probably wrong.”

Rarity muses over the tall back leading them forward with a thoughtful frown.

“No, don’t play down your intuition, darling. It’s a lady’s most important tool!” She cushions the mild admonition in a smile.

“Well, we’re here.”

Leading the ponies through another oddly contracting door, the shouts, thumps and rustles of vigorous physical activity echo from the corridor up front. Bridging the short distance to another pair of large doors, the ponies step into an entirely different type of room.

Brightly lit by hundreds of spotlights, the rectangular hall aspires to horizontal size rather than height. Though spacious, the front half of the room is entirely occupied by a large crowd of humans spread across its breadth in sparsely spaced pairs. The foremost ponies flinch as one of the closest human voices an aggressive shout, rushing into a wild tackle to grapple her opponent.

“Oh, no! What’s going on? A fight?”

“No,” Mountain Gale states flatly. The three Guards’ eyes are firmly glued to the spectacle. “They’re training.”

Finding leverage, the attacking human lifts her opponent’s legs into the air, using her shoulder to bodily slam him into the thick mat underneath. Quick as a snake, the attacker slithers between her downed quarry’s legs and pins him to the ground, the strike of her free hand stopping just short of his neck. Getting up, the female offers her partner a hand, pulling him to his feet and receiving a nod as thanks. The pair steps apart and both combatants resume their original stances, slowly dancing around each other in search of an opening.

Twilight and her friends breathe out as they reassess the situation.

He’s right, Twilight thinks as she carefully studies the pairs, they’re not really trying to hurt each other.

Academic interest piqued, the unicorn glances at the guardsponies following the “training” with rapt attention.

Seems it’s not far enough removed from Guard training to be completely alien... I guess this is what Shining had to do, too. Or does.

“Protect your head! It doesn’t matter how tough you think you are, a good shot to the chin will drop you in one strike!”

Though the translation only slightly ups the volume, the original exclamation carries clearly across the room. Far from the brute force of a simple shout, the voice carries across the air with the resonance of an instrument. A tall man—even on human standards—steps into view from within the sea of bodies, elegantly side-stepping grappling or toppling fighters with his hands clasped behind his back.

“Balance is everything! Find your center and fight from there!”

The lithe trainer stops to observe a pair on the fringes of the group where a large, blocky man bodily lifts his much smaller opponent into the air and slams him down like a sack of flour, the smaller human shaking his head to clear the shock of the violent impact. The trainer carefully observes a repeat performance, his brows knitted in a slight frown.

“Trent! Leverage. Don’t just use your muscles to throw your partner around.”

The big human looks up as his partner clambers up again and smirks self-assuredly.

“Commandress says strength is a virtue, sir.”

“I know she does, I’ve worked with Elizabeth for years. The difference is that she focuses her considerable power, whilst you just throw it around indiscriminately.”

The man named Trent bristles at the comment, unconsciously lurching into a more intimidating stance. Whatever reply he is about to muster dies on his lips as he notices the mismatched group in the doorway, his eyebrows shooting up. Turning in the direction of the other’s gaze, the trainer notices Ares and the ponies.

“Cease! XO on deck!”

The command stops the frenetic motion in the hall as the combatants help each other up. Far from the polite bow, or the rigid snapping to attention of the guard, the stances of the fighters remain relaxed and haphazard. Nonetheless, the atmosphere of the room subtly shifts into one of attention as curious eyes turn to the new group. Ares steps into the bright light of the hall, holding up a hand to his head.

“Thank you. Carry on.” The ponies remain under the scrutiny of the room as Ares steps up to the trainer, but unlike the crew in the hangar and mess hall, the humans remain in their positions without approaching.

“Good work, Abebe. How far along are you?”

“Almost done for the day, sir. There’s one more lesson we need to go over.”

“I found some day work for the platoons. Do you think blue’d be up for the task?”

“Anything is better than training general combat skills all day.”

“Excellent. Don’t dismiss the crew once you’re done.”

“Yes, sir. All right, gather around!”

The dispersed crew quickly form a rough half-circle, wiping off sweaty foreheads and necks. Beckoning Trent over, the trainer, Abebe, positions himself between the arc of humans and Ares’ group.

“Have you ever sparred with Elizabeth, Trent?”

“Spitfire? Sure.”

“Yeah, he got his ass handed to him in the first week after joining,” an amused voice adds from the crowd.

“Shut up,” Trent growls.

“She fought just like you, in the beginning. Directionless, mindless power.”

Frowning, Trent rolls his shoulders.

“It’s worked for me so far.”

The taunting conversation continues. Ares lowers himself to a knee, speaking from the corner of this mouth.

“Trent there is a fairly fresh crew member, and he’s been something of a troublemaker. Abebe probably wants to teach him a little humility.”

Mountain Gale leans in, but keeps his eyes in front. “I’m not looking to criticise your methods, sir, but big egos often react badly to public shaming...”

“True. But being part of this ship is more than a job. We can’t afford any loose cannons—for all our sakes. Look.” Ares subtly points to a whispering group behind Trent. “The older crew knows what’s going on. Most of them have been out there themselves.” Ares flashes the ponies a lopsided smile. “Big egos are nothing new on this ship. But that doesn’t mean you get to be a bully.”

“—demonstrate, then, if you’d please. Strike me,” Abebe states calmly, tapping his chin.

“You sure? You might get hurt.”

“Are ya sure this’ll be all right?” Applejack whispers. “Ah mean, Big Mac’d probably beat me in a fair tussle just on account’a being bigger an’ stronger...”

Ares’ eyes twinkle mischievously.

“Fair? Watch.”

“Don’t be frightened, Trent. Strike.”

“Fright— All right, you asked for it, old man.”

The bigger human moves without warning and with surprising speed for his bulk. Trent feints left with a light instep, reverses and levels a vicious hook at Abebe’s slender neck. Applejack grits her teeth in sympathy. Fluttershy covers her eyes and the rest of the friends gasp audibly. Even the Guards flinch in anticipation of the blow to fall.

It doesn’t. With a tiny, relaxed step the slender man barely shifts his weight forward. Barely, but enough.

Trent’s eyes bulge when Abebe’s palm sinks into his torso, just below the ribs. For a long, lazy moment the two figures flow around each other, looking like dancers in the middle of a slow waltz turn.

Abebe almost casually grasps his crumbling opponent and pivots.

The faint rustle of cloth is the only sound indicating that anything physical has actually happened. The room watches in perfect silence as Trent gracefully sails through the air, rotating slowly. The moment shatters as the heavy human unceremoniously impacts with the mat, rolls over and gasps to fill his suddenly uncooperative lungs with air. Quickly stepping up, Abebe turns the big man over on his side and checks for damage with practiced ease.

“Just breathe. Easy does it. Breathe.”

Slowly, Trent’s lungs sort themselves out, the suspended gasp replaced with quick, shallow breaths.

“What— the f— fuck just... h— happened?”

“Redirection. I used your momentum against you. Don’t talk. Breathe.”

Others leave the crowd and help Trent up into a half-sitting position, the grins on their faces earning deathly glares from their unwilling patient. Abebe turns to the assembly.

“Power is useless without control. Remember this. Good work today, everybody, Ares’s got some words for us before you go.”

“Right,” Ares begins while stepping up. “We’ve all been cooped up on this ship for fairly long, and I’m aware you’re probably going a little stir-crazy in here.”

Amused snorts waft from amidst nodding heads.

“R&R restrictions still apply, but at least we’ve found something for you to occupy yourselves with all day. Applejack here needs some help on her farm nearby, and she needs a few pairs of capable hands. Anyone interested?”

A couple of glances and a few whispered sentences pass around the crowd before a small group steps forward as one.

“Red two volunteers.”

In rapid succession more crew steps forward, many at once or as individuals.

“If it gets me out of here? Anything.”

“Blue one volunteers.”

“Sis and me grew up on a hydroponic farm, we’ll help out.”

“Fuck, if everyone else is going... Count me in.”

“I’m in.”

In moments almost the whole crowd has voiced their assent. Ares turns to Abebe.

“Well then. Could you set up a rotation?”

“Of course, though only for my platoon. Reds will have to ask their commandress.”

“Very good. Is tomorrow at sunrise acceptable to you, miss Applejack?”

“Ah reckon’ that sounds mighty good.”

“Excellent. Then you’re all dismissed.”

The crowd breaks up, some staying to chat with the ponies or each other but most heading off through various entrances. The first group of volunteers strikes up conversation with the guardsponies, the topic quickly moving onto the earlier sparring match. Twilight and Ares observe the lively discussion from the sidelines.

“I don’t know why they’re so excited. Trent could’ve gotten badly hurt!”

“I doubt it. Abebe is a master of his craft.”

“At violence?”

“At controlling the situation with the minimum amount of necessary force. Far better than irresponsibly causing collateral damage.”

Twilight furrows her brows in dismay.

“I still think they could’ve tried to talk reason instead of fighting...”

Ares scratches his chin.

“Maybe. The stream is a dangerous place. It’s better to hurt now and learn than to get stabbed in a bar fight on some Gods-forgotten asteroid.”

Twilight uncertainly looks up at the human, shuddering slightly.

“Are all humans this morbid?”

Ares smiles crookedly.

“I’m told I have a very dark outlook on life.”

Listening for a sound only he can hear, Ares stares at empty air for a second.

“Are you expecting more envoys, miss Twilight?”

“No. Why?”

“An object approaches the ship. It seems to be a—” Ares listens again, eyebrows rising. “A... flying chariot?”

Twilight’s eyes widen.

“The princess is coming here?”

The guardsponies stop in mid-sentence, turning around at the exclamation.

“What?”

Ares follows the rapidly panicking unicorn, pinching his ear with a hand.

“Eris, it’s Ace. Go escort them in. Looks like we’re about to receive royal guests.”

*

Author's Note

Happy Hearth's Warming, everyone! This is a slightly longer chapter than usual, but I felt it was unnecessary to split it. I have and will be taking a little break from the story over the holidays, but I'll try to be back on the about-bi-weekly schedule come January.

Chapter 1

CHAPTER I

Or shipwrecked, kindles on the coast
False fires, that others may be lost.

—William Wordsworth, To the Lady Fleming

God, how I fucking hate alarms.

I don't usually resort to this kind of language, mind you. Well, okay, I do, but not out loud. Or, well, I do, but I at least try not to. Getting barely any sleep for three nights does wonders for your inhibitions on the use of expletives, though. Not that I have a lot of those, I spent virtually my whole childhood in closer proximity to sailors than any growing girl should. There was this one time in jolly old Amsterdam II when I was twelve— right, rambling; sorry, tired.

So, alarms—did I mention how much I loathe them? Any kind, really, but the ones that imply someone wants you dead are the worst ones. And pretty much every possible kind of those are clamouring for attention at the moment.

"Steady in stream, two-hundred and seventy knots!"

"Two-hundred and seventy."

"Distance to target, two clicks and closing!"

"Two clicks. Droppers ready."

I feel the seat shift as my brother leans forward in his crash harness. His voice is harsh, hoarsened by yelling orders around the clock for the past three days.

"Fire."

...and nights. Did I mention I've been awake for three nights? Sleep has been kind of a valuable commodity lately. I cast a glance at the weary man beside me, noting the bags under the eyes, the unshaven stubble. He looks like he fell out of an airlock and swam back. I almost chuckle at the mental image of Ace in the water, just barely matching the airspeed of the Trickster.

Holy crap I must be tired. Must be that I haven't slept for thr—right.

It's interesting, really. Once you've been flipping between unconsciousness and mortal terror for a few days, you start to get kind of detached from the whole 'going to die' thing. I guess humans weren't really designed for prolonged combat by hardware proxy. Who would've guessed? I disinterestedly eye the glowing mess that is the main tactical projection hovering in the middle of the bridge. Oh look, there go the droppers, whee! If I squint, they almost look like the hundred-kilogram cans of high explosive that they are rather than some kind of streamweather symbols on a freeport newscast. "Today we can expect strong winds up the Hellion passage, with intermittent bouts of freefall ballistic weaponry."

Oops, almost giggled again; focus, Eris!

Okay, all right, I've got this. Try to count the angry red distance-to-target counter to stay awake? Sounds like a plan.

"A thousand meters! Nine hundred!"

Eh, fuck. Someone else is doing it for me.

"Five! Four! Goddamnit!"

Hey, that's not a number!

"Droppers destroyed."

Shit, that's hollow. I can almost taste the despair in that voice.

Not kidding, by the way. Being preternaturally sensitive to the emotions of others isn't the fucking riot it promised to be, once people really start feeling bad about their life.

Oh well, that's why I'm sitting up here instead of waiting for death in my bunk, I guess. I try to crawl up from the slumped-down position I’ve ended up in, feeling like I'm on the downward slope of a looong night of those great martinis at the Hanged Prospector, and dredge the bottom of my tired carcass for something to give. To my surprise, I find it.

Huh, seems I’m not totally disenchanted with living yet.

I'm way too tired for this kind of shit. Need to concentrate.

Okay, deep breaths. Nurse the little flame. Let’s see: hope, and maybe a little bravado. And some defiance, yeah, defiance's good... aaand just let it all, you know, expand. Flow out, like, er—look, it's really hard to explain unless you're a Sympath yourself. If you've ever been out all day in a really bad storm and come back inside, get out of your sopping wet clothes, drag your miserable shivering self over to a warm fire and wrap yourself in a blanket... Well, it's kinda like that. Except not at all.

Whatever. It works is my point.

I let my shoulders relax—feels nice, didn't even notice all that tension—and let the warm, encouraging feeling bubble up and burst free unto the bridge. It feels... good. Like the whole room is resonating.

No giving up on me, now! We can still do this.
"No giving up on me, now! We can still do this."

It doesn't have to be fancy; in fact, simple is usually best. Not just the words: every part matters, they need all my strength now. I can feel their weary gazes through my closed eyelids, I can feel how they're looking at me, to me, greedily soaking up what little I can throw at them.

...two, one, and... Open your eyes. Look them in the face. Smile. Project.

We've done this for days, and they still haven't caught us, right?
"We've done this for days, and they still haven't caught us, right?"

I feel how my mind and body are protesting in unison, but I still push. And I can feel it work. Bilateral parasympathetic effectors, or Empath-Sympaths—like me—who can both project and perceive are really rare, but undeniably efficient. I dole out good vibes, the audience gets a rise, I catch the happy on the rebound. Once you get into a positive feedback loop, especially with a crowd, you can motivate people to do some pretty crazy stuff. Of course, that cuts both ways, so psychological self-insight and militant optimism are recommendable character traits to stave off insanity and death. ‘Know thyself’ and all that tripe.

For a while, a nice while, I just sit in the loop and enjoy myself, although I know it'll come back to bite me in the ass soon enough. I can feel my heartbeat—no, scratch that—I can feel everyone's heartbeat. The room feels bright, the air feels fresh, I feel like I'm filled with helium and about to burst out of my harness. I feel like breaking into song and okay pain, pain, pain, oh Christ that hurts, breathe and smile and don't lose them, just lean back and relax, relax, relax, ooh yeah that's it, getting better by the second, just need... to... rest a little. Okay, yeah. Okay. Breathe in, breathe out.

I open my eyes when I feel a hand on my arm. Ace is looking at me, that insipid, lopsided mixture of half a smile and half worry on his stupid, stubbly face. He squeezes my arm gently as he leans close, murmuring quietly enough not to be overheard by the bridge crew.

"You okay? Just rest, we'll be fine without you for a while."

I try to wring a final bit of acid wit to fling at my insufferable, condescending brother, but my mind is now in a state of complete rebellion against my will and refuses to play proverbial ball, so I just nod weakly and let my head hang down on my chest as blissful sleep pounces my conscious mind. Just before I fall asleep I can hear a final, quiet whisper from the general direction of the warm spot on my right arm.

"Thanks, Eri."

*

Oh fuck, I'm inside a blender. Behold, my first lucid thought!

Oh God why is the ceiling under me and why are the lights—

"—dropping fast, losing speed—"

"—hit! We took a hit, keel thruster isn’t—"

"Brace for impact in ten!"

—oh shit, I know that last one is bad! Reflexes honed by hundreds of disaster drills and more than a few real crashes kick in as I throw my hands over my head, trying my best to curl up into a ball while still strapped into the crash harness.

The last voice I hear is a familiar one, from as early as I can remember.

Oh well, as final moments go...

"Breachers! Fire!" Ace roars.

Then lightning strikes me.

Then, darkness.

*

Legal disclaimer: I obviously don't own My Little Pony (trademark of Hasbro) or this would be canon. All likeness to real people or characters created by other authors is entirely unintentional.

Chapter 8

CHAPTER VIII

If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein

Oh my God this pink thing is fucking brilliant. Alien species with superior technology lands in your back yard? Give them a cupcake, then suicide glitter bomb them. I’m still chuckling as I get up and start brushing the worst of the colourful paper crap off my suit, flicking through open radio channels currently on fire with the chatter of spectating crew members commenting on the live video feeds of the first meeting. The general intra-crew channel is useless for any meaningful communication, courtesy of a certain two idiots cackling so hard they can hardly speak.

“—and then, and then... It bite handle—” Kolya bursts into screaming laughter again, never finishing his sentence.

“Ka-boom!” Sasha roars into the net before breaking down into incoherence.

Click. ‘CREW2’

“—either mad as a scavenger, or it has pink cojones the size of a—”

Click. ‘SCI1’

“—psychology, gift-giving seems to serve a similar societal function, but they can’t have any natural predators or how else can you rationally explain—”

Click. ‘TAC1’

“—I swear to God, I had my finger on the trigger, cross hairs on that suicidal pink thing—”

Click. ‘OBSRV’

“Ace.”

“Yeah?”

“Send someone down with a holo-projection table. I think we’re ready to negotiate.”

*

“Sun and moon, I thought I’d seen every crazy stunt possible in basic training.”

“I’m still not sure that my heart didn’t stop when she bit that trigger.”

The sergeants shake their heads in unison, Plate Mail removing his helmet and running a hoof through his sweaty mane.

“Eh, what’d I say? Pinkie’ll pull through.”

“Okay, girls. Nothing to do but get in there. Come on.”

“Yes, too late for a proper introduction now, I guess. Let’s hope we can show them that some of us can behave with class.”

“Don’t be such a stick in th’ mud, Rarity. Ah think Pinkie made a plenty good first impression, judgin’ by the reaction’ of that important-lookin’ one.”

“But something terrible could’ve happened!”

“But it didn’t, and now we don’t have ta break the ice.”

“Well, that may be, but—”

“Girls, focus! This is no time to be bickering.”

“Ladies.”

“Yes, sergeant?”

“...good luck.”

“Thank you.”

Resolutely leaving the formation of guardsponies, five remaining element-bearers trot across the intervening distance, the bipeds turning to observe the newcomers. Twilight steps up to the leader, peering into its flat face through the transparent visor. A small pair of amber eyes looks back. She nervously clears her throat.

“Hello. I don’t presume you’ll understand me, but... my name is Twilight Sparkle.”

She points at herself, carefully repeating her name, before fully extending a foreleg. The tall alien seems to understand her intention, trying to emulate the unicorn’s self-introduction and doing a horrible mess of mimicking it, but catching the basic rhythm of the name. Pointing at itself, the visitor lets out a short barking sound, before grabbing the extended forelimb with it’s dexterous fingers. The movement appears oddly familiar, although the weird way of grabbing the extended foreleg feels strange to Twilight. The creature lets go of her hoof after a brief squeeze, straightening up and partially turning back towards the ship.

“Hey look, they’re bringing something down,” exclaims Rainbow Dash, bringing the group’s attention to two bipeds ponderously lugging a large piece of furniture between them.

“It’s... a table?”

“My, I guess they do have some manners, after all.”

“That looks awful heavy...”

Thoughtfully rubbing her chin with a hoof, Twilight grounds herself and concentrates, a light glow enveloping her horn, the luminescence quickly spreading to the table. To a yelp of surprise from the two carriers, the heavy table levitates into the air and smoothly glides to land between the two negotiating parties. With an accomplished look, Twilight turns back to the leader.

Said leader is staring at her with an expression which the unicorn would almost call astonished. Feeling her smile wane she turns to her friends for support, finding only similar confusion.

“They seem a little... surprised,” Rarity offers.

“How could they be? They obviously have powerful magic at their disposal! The sergeant said they utilized levitating transports earlier!”

“Ah guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

*

“Did I just— did that horse just generate a flux pin field? Or did someone spike my coffee with acid?”

“How the fuck? It doesn’t have any equipment! Are you telling me that horn the size of a flashlight can create quantum levitation at a distance of over ten meters? Fuck you, it’d have to run on fusion power for that.”

“Stop mewling, bitches, this is amazing! Get me sensors on that creature! We’re all going to be rich and famous!”

“Way ahead of you, sister.”

I’d say the scientists are pretty excited, considering how their language only veers into the vulgar when they get their hands on something really juicy. Julianne is almost climbing over the table in her hurry to get to the horned creature, wildly gesturing with a pen she pulled out of some god-forgotten pocket or another. The unicorn backpedals in obvious distress, apparently never having stood on the receiving end of a rampant scientist on the hunt for new knowledge.

“Ma’am, if I may, I think it’s about time to get to the business at hand,” Xavier remarks through a private line. I nod in agreement. This has been fun, but we have a lot of work to do, and the first step is to establish a line of communication to the natives. I loudly clear my throat over the speakers.

“Julianne. You’ll get to study the ponies all you want later, but right now you’re just slowing proceedings down.”

With a guilty start, the head of science on board turns back to our side of the table with a sheepish smile. Wistfully tearing herself away from the levitating pen, having finally gotten the unicorn to understand her wishes, she trudges back to her original position with a sigh and contents herself with casting longing stares at the other party.

The six ponies—decided, I’m going to call them ponies, they’re too small to be horses—gather on the opposite side of the table, heads barely reaching over the rim. Right, tiny quadrupeds. How rude.

I key two spots on the table, legs whirring softly as they contract, lowering the top of the piece of furniture to a more miniature equine-friendly height. The ponies sit down, except for the lavender one. She levitates a book out of its bags—damn, that is a cool power—rifling through the pages and flipping the book around on the table after finding the page it’s looking for. I lean over.

It’s a picture of a highly stylized unicorn and a... gryphon. You know, half eagle, half lion, all fairytale.

Hey, no formal education doesn’t mean I can’t be well-read.

On the page the two creatures of myth are apparently talking, illegible but clearly different lettering flowing out of their mouths—or beaks, in one case—interweaving in the middle of the page and continuing to the other party in the script they’re using. The whole picture looks like a holo-animation artist trying to emulate ancient heraldic designs, but the intent is clear. I glance at Xavier.

“Bypassing the fact that there we’ve stumbled upon a whole plethora of non-existent mythological creatures—”

I stop to rub my forehead, quickly realising the damn helmet is hindering my efforts.

“—right, negotiating with an unicorn, never mind. Anyway, bypassing the gryphon for a second, this looks like translation to me. What do you think?”

“Ma’am, if I hadn’t just seen that purple thing just do what it did, I wouldn’t hesitate a second. As it is, I request permission to be the test subject.”

“Your dedication to duty is admirable, you stuffy old man, but you’d have me put another of my crew in harm’s way to protect myself? Fuck you.”

Expression mostly hidden by the face mask, he smiles at me with his eyes, a rare gesture of warmth from the severe old man.

“...and that attitude is why this crew would follow you through the fires of hell and back. But no. First mates are expendable. Captains are not.”

I try to stare him down for a long while. It doesn’t work.

Never does.

“Fine. But carefully.”

“Of course, captain.”

“Don’t— just get on with it.”

Xavier steps forward, gesturing at the unicorn.

*

“Ah think they understood wha’cha want, Twi’,” Applejack comments as the black-clad one points at first itself, then Twilight’s horn.

“Um, I’m not sure they really know what you’re going to do,” pipes a quiet voice from behind the group.

“What makes you say that, Fluttershy?”

The timid pegasus peeks out from behind the assembled group, gaze flickering over the glassy-eyed alien before skittering to the ground.

“Um, it’s the... body language of the large black one. It looked a little like a bear... with a cub. I think it’s unsure of what’s going on, but doesn’t want the other one to be in danger, um, or so I think...”

“But it’s just a translation geas,” Twilight huffs in exasperation, “how can they understand divination and world-walking magic but be amazed by the simplest of unicorn spells?”

“Well, the princess said it herself, Twi, they’re not from around these parts. Now Ah know precious li’l of unicorn magic, but maybe them’s just got other kinds’a spells back home?”

“I know,” sighs Twilight, “but it’s just so... Augh! Okay, let’s just do this.”

Turning to the tall volunteer on the side of the table, Twilight’s horn lights up as the dull glow of the magic spell appears in mid-air and moves to envelop the tensed alien. After completely surrounding the nervously waiting bipedal creature, the purple light gently flows in to touch it.

The translucent immediately mist freezes in the air, like a movie reel stopping in the space of one frame. Twilight’s eyes widen as invisible spikes of power forcibly deform the spell, the colour of the cloud violently flickering into blue as the light on her horn flickers like a candle flame.

With the sound of glass cracking, the magic winks out of reality, both spellcaster and target stumbling back from each other with a yelp, as if pushed apart by a great wind.

“Twilight! What happened? Are you all right?”

“Let me see,” commands Fluttershy sharply, pushing herself to the front of the group and rapidly inspecting Twilight for any obvious wounds. The lavender unicorn is taking short, shallow breaths, still wide-eyed in the aftermath the sudden magical surge.

“I... I don’t know. There was some kind of violent counter-magic...”

“Hey! You! What did you do to her!”

Rainbow Dash defiantly interposes herself between the two groups, wings flared in an aggressive crouch. By the side, the guardsponies are moving restlessly. Sergeant Gale glides over to the group, coming down next to Twilight.

“Miss Sparkle? Were you attacked?”

With a start, Twilight sits up, pushing away the ponies milling around her and grabbing a hold of Rainbow’s tail with her magic.

“Stop, everypony! It wasn’t on purpose!”

“What? But darling—”

“Look! They’re just as confused as we are.”

The other ponies turn their heads towards the opposing group, the intended recipient of the translation spell unsteadily leaning against the low table in an awkward crouch, the other two going it over with worried movements.

The two groups look at each other, apparently coming to the same conclusions.

“If it wasn’t intentional, then what in Equestria...?”

“I think it was a war ward.”

“A ward?”

“Yes, a very powerful automatic defence against offensive magic.”

“But you weren’t attacking them!”

“I know, but the translation spell still requires a certain attunement to the recipient’s thoughts. The ward was probably designed to hurt anyone attempting a distraction or brainwashing spell.”

Twilight shakes her head again, both in frustration and to clear the final vestiges of vertigo from her mind.

“Dangerous defences like those haven’t been used in Equestria for... at least centuries! Princess Celestia won’t allow wards which could hurt anypony who would stumble across them, so I’ve only seen them in theory. I was careless.”

“So it was a mistake. What now?”

“I don’t know. Let’s see if they have any ideas.”

*

“Oi, Xavier! What the fuck happened?”

“I... don’t know. There was something... strange, like a pressure in my head, then my visuals went all distorted to hell. I though I was going to faint.”

“Maybe I can answer that, Eris,” a familiar voice pops unto our semi-private channel.

“Tito? Talk to me.”

“Well, just as that... gas touched señor d’Havillande, every electronic warfare countermeasure alarm in engineering went apeshit. Ol’ Methuselah’s ECM scripts kicked in and blasted every I/O port in his suit, hence the distortions of visuals.“

“So he’s going to be okay?”

“Sure, just some nausea from random electric overspill to his brain.”

Yeah, sounds healthy.

I stand in thought for a second, looking at the visibly bewildered ponies. One of them is looking ready to fight me hand-to-hand. Hand-to-hoof? But hey, protecting your friend from an alien twice your size, and unarmed? I like the style of these equines more and more for every minute.

Okay, easy there, little pony. I’m not dangerous, see? I don’t want to fight you.

“So... what you’re saying—and do correct me if I’m wrong—if I’m not totally ignorant of the finer nuances of condensed matter physics... is that the purple pony with a magical horn on it just interfaced with the data cloud of the Trickster. With her head.”

“Eh, seems to be the only reasonable explanation,” Tito answers, without a care in the world. I can almost see him shrug and reach for the volume slider of his faux-antique music player.

“Tito.”

“Mm-h?”

“Get your ass down here.”

“...I knew I shouldn’t have called it in.”

I kick him off the channel, quickly blocking off a couple of other feeds as well. The thought of what must be going on in the science team’s channel makes me shudder.

Xavier recovers quickly—tough as old leather, that one—and we hang back waiting for Tito to get down. Julianne is facing the craft, hands imperceptibly twitching as she sifts through hundreds of screens of raw data, filtering and sorting. Our counterparts are deep in animated discussion, the rainbow-haired one still casting sour glances in my direction.

Maybe they’re mates or something.

Now that I’m on that train of thought, even the winged ones seem a bit scrawnier than the ones I saw earlier. Since Grumpy is still hanging around after Xavier’s little wireless connection with the unicorn, I can get a good comparison, and yep: Grumpy’s bigger. That makes the colourful ones male, right? No, wait, that usually doesn’t apply to most mammals. Are they mammals? Female it is. Are all the males monochrome, I wonder?

There’s an easy way to find out, really, but my scientific curiosity doesn’t carry me far enough to ogle other species. Besides, there’s an even easier method available.

“Julianne.”

“What is it n— I mean, yes, er... sorry, what is it?”

“What gender are they?”

She blinks at me a few times.

“The six with crazy colouring are female, mister centurion back there is male. The soldiers are a mixed group.”

“Right, and you found this out by...?”

Julianne grins at me in a way I most certainly do not want to explore any further.

“Want to see the bioscans?”

“Thanks, I’m fine.”

Two genders, then, like us. My idle musings on the role of gender in pony society is interrupted by a flash of orange escaping the airlock, followed by our fourth human sauntering down the exit ramp. Tito waves at me as he approaches and gives a formal nod to Xavier.

“Hey, Eris. Señor d’Havillande. Juliette... who is not listening at all, I see. Ah well. What did you need me for?”

“Plug me in, we’re setting up a separate, unprotected data space to see if we can use that as an interface.”

“And you couldn’t do with me on the ship, because...?”

“You’re faster than me—”

“That is true.”

“—and you need to get out more,” I finish with a grin. Tito groans as he conjures a shared data manipulation interface from thin air.

“You are an evil, evil woman, Eris.”

“I know. Get on with it.”

I wouldn’t admit it, but I also like to watch Tito do his magic. He’s worked with the Trickster a long time, and he knows the computer systems on the ship inside and out, so his manipulation of the oceans of data stored on the data banks comes close to true artistry. He learned from the best, of course, but since Old Methuselah went into semi-retirement Tito’s been the head authority of engineering, and he does his job well.

The fact that he’s got a great ass doesn’t bother me at all, either. Only two things keeping me from laying my grubby hands on him are: a, that we grew up together, so we’re practically siblings, which makes the whole prospect kind of icky; and b, that he’s gayer than a shipful of refugees from the Holy Will Enclave.

Oh well, I can at least have an aesthetic appreciation, can’t I?

Looking to all the world as a fairytale sorcerer weaving his spells, sans pointy hat and cape, my chief engineer begins his work. Waving his hands in precise gestures and muttering barely voiced commands, I stand back and enjoy the show of coloured grids, flitting swarms of information infrastructure and network modules appearing, disappearing or mutating in bright flashes, the whole process displayed on my visor with laser precision. It’s like watching a house form out of nothing, walls and subsections of wildly increasing complexity bursting over wire-frame partitions and spheres. The whole process takes but a few minutes, testament to Tito’s incredible skill with the medium.

I mean, wow. I would’ve worked on that for hours.

I notice the two unicorns opposite tilting their heads to Tito, as if listening to a barely audible sound, their friend’s eyes flitting between the madly dancing human and their friends. Except for the crazy pink one. She’s groovin’ with Tito. Really well, too.

The horned ones can sense him work! That’s good, maybe this plan will bear fruit yet. I notice Xavier standing next to me, also observing the creative process.

“You’ll try to form a safe environment to communicate in? Clever.”

“Let’s hope it works. And I don’t know how much good it will do if she got too scared to try again.”

“She?”

“I asked Jo. They’re female.”

“Right. Well, let’s hope for the best.”

“Yeah.”

*

“What the hay is that one doing?”

“Dancing, Ah think. Or, at least Pinkie seems ta think so.”

The five ponies by the table watch the strange weaving and bobbing movements of the biped in silence for a while, the odd, sweeping gestures combining surprisingly well with Pinkie’s soundless disco moves.

“It’s... casting a spell, I think,” Twilight comments after a while.

“Yes, I can feel it as well,” notes Rarity.

“Tha’s a mighty strange way ta be about it.”

“Actually, Zecora told me that some Zebrican magicians do a kind of casting through dance.”

“But what is it doing, exactly?”

“I don’t know, but it’s fairly powerful. Maybe it’s trying their version of a translation spell?”

“Seems it’s done.”

Offering a polite bow to Pinkie, the new human turns to gesture to something invisible while talking to the leader, who nods and turns to face the low table. In response to a gesture over the tabletop, the central flower-like pattern splits into separate pieces disappearing quietly to the sides, revealing two multi-faceted spheres of dark glass. The spinning objects glimmer in the sunlight as they glide up from the table with a hum.

Lights flickers as the glass globes emit multiple, intersecting beams of light, the barely visible lines fanning out into a prismatic spray and quickly dimming into obscurity in the sharp glare of the sun. As the individual beams grow invisible, however, images coalesce from thin air, two large, red circles forming out of multi-hued static and flashing to hover over both the dancing magician and the leader. Both bipeds tilt their heads to see the circles, before bringing both front appendages together in a twisting gesture, as if turning keys against the flat palms of their hands. The circles flash to green.

Two empty, red circles similarly fizz into being between the two groups. The dancing magician expectantly gesticulates at both Rarity and Twilight, before pointing to the floating rings.

Rainbow Dash hovers up to the nearest circle, suspiciously poking it with a hoof. Her hoof slips through the image without resistance, cutting through the projection where her shadow blocks the beams of the glass spheres.

“This is some weeeird magic, Twilight. Are you sure about this?” the pegasus mutters.

Twilight hesitates for a moment, then steels herself and steps up to the closest ring.

“I think you have to be an unicorn for it to work. And there’s only one way to find out if it works.”

Squeezing her eyes together, Twilight carefully extends her magic towards the glowing red circle, staring down at the unicorn like a large, baleful eye. Carefully probing, she at first feels nothing.

A light pressure washes against her extended senses, like a warm mist wafting over her face. The mist seems to coil around her magic, then abruptly stop and reverse a tiny fraction, adjusting itself to her wavelength. There’s a wholesome feeling of matching components latching together: a tiny mental ‘click’.

HELLO

The sudden sensation startles Twilight. It’s not a language, not even a proper sound, but the intent is clear: a greeting. The series of non-speech continues with a series of clear concepts.

GUEST

IDENTIFY

[TWILIGHT SPARKLE]

The last bit isn’t even her name, just a kind of image of her own magic fed back to her horn. Through closed eyelids she sees the red ambiance switch to a light green.

The process seemingly over, Twilight breathes out a sigh of relief and opens her eyes. She recoils with a gasp, her friends immediately swarming around her.

“Twilight!”

“Twi, is it another ward?”

Twilight waves the other ponies away, her eyes darting about, focused on something beyond the green circle of light.

“No, no. It’s okay, girls. It’s not a ward. Rarity... you might want to see this. My goodness.”

Looks mixed with relief and curiosity now turn to Rarity, the white unicorn looking at the final red icon and swallowing nervously.

“Well, if you’re absolutely certain it’s safe...”

With a sky blue glow, Rarity gingerly touches the immaterial symbol with her magic. With a slight wince as the connection identifies her horn and adjusts itself, she watches the fourth hologram flick into a matching colour with the other ones.

Rarity raises a hoof to her mouth as the link opens and data begins pouring through.

“Oh, my.”

*