Chapter 2: Duty and Obligation

I didn’t pull my gaze up from the floor until I arrived at the mess. It took me a moment to locate Duster, as the place was currently packed wall-to-wall with the breakfast rush. The line for food wrapped all the way around the room to end right by the door where I’d come in.

Unwilling to risk being hounded by a superior officer for flying above the crowd, I scanned the long tables full of ponies trying to get a quick bite in before starting their morning duties. I didn’t have to look hard, and I found Duster at his usual spot—all the way at the back of the room nearest the north corner. Plopping down beside the burly pegasus, I allowed my head to slam into the surface of the table, and groaned melodramatically.

“Where is Solara?” I mumbled into the shaped cloud.

I heard the smile spreading across his face as he spoke. “Y’ took a bit longer’n a spell, Hoss. She weren’t none too happy. Solara already blames ya fer losin’ command o’ our squad. Reckon she’s got a point. Ah’d watch out if Ah was you, pardner, she’s on the warpath.”

“But it’s not my fault!” I protested. “Astral said that I was reassigned because I’m a potential security risk, but I haven’t done anything! You can’t put this on me when we still don’t know what it is exactly that I’ve done to bring this about!”

Duster nudged me in the ribs, completely ignoring my plight in favor of his own personal enjoyment. “Hey. Hey, ‘member that time y’ pissed her off, an’ she beaned y’ with that hailstone the size o’ a melon?” He started to snicker as I rubbed the spot on the back of my head where I’d been hit by it. It had been months ago, but my head throbbed with the memory of it as if it had happened just yesterday. I’d forgotten we were supposed to go out to dinner once we were off duty, and I’d inadvertently stood her up to hit up the bar with Duster. Needless to say, she hadn’t been too happy about it.

“Or how ‘bout the last time, when she took a leaf out o’ yer own book, stole a thundercloud from the armory an’ used it t’ hit y’ with a bolt o’ lightnin’?” Duster guffawed boisterously, slamming his hoof repeatedly on the table, and I pulled my head up to glare at him.

“Okay, no,” I growled defensively. “That’s not funny. I was in the infirmary for three days. She could’ve killed me that time!” I really didn’t think I’d deserved that one all too much. It had affected me much more than it had her. I’d gotten busted down from captain to second lieutenant for pissing the wrong bunch of ponies off, landing her, Duster and I at our current posting as a result.

“An’ yet,” Duster choked out between gasps of air as he moved a hoof up to straighten his straw hat, now askew, “Y’ still go out with her. Tell me now, LT, why is that?”

I felt my ears start to burn, and I slugged him in the shoulder. Okay, that was tearing it just a bit. I was already having a crappy day as it was and he was only rubbing salt in the wound. I really didn't need to deal with Duster's playful jabbing at my love life's hiccups on top of all of that.

“Lay off, you country bumpkin," I grumbled moodily. "I'm having a bad enough morning, I don't want to listen to you point out all the flaws in my relationship, thanks. You've never even had a marefriend anyway, who are you to talk?"

“This 'bumpkin' don't need a marefriend t' tell when yer in a poisonous relationship, Hoss. Solara's a right purdy li'l thing, but 'iffin y' ask me she's more trouble'n she's worth. Y' should find somepony nice who likes you fer you, an' not jus' fer yer body. Ah'm savin' muhself for the perfect filly. Reckon Ah'll know her the very minute Ah meet her."

"I suddenly feel compelled to make an incest joke, considering your upbringing," I said dryly.

Duster chuckled and shook his head from side to side. "Real funny, Hoss. Ah don’t belong on no farm though, y' know that. Ah was born t’ serve in the military like muh grandpappy before me.”

“I think this says something a bit different, buddy," I said, poking Duster on the flank. "The country life is calling, you can't escape it no matter how hard you try! Look at the hat you're always wearing! It's slowly taking you over like an alien parasite! Next thing you know, you'll be showing up on base in patched overalls and missing like four teeth."

"Lookie here feller, it ain’t the purdy li’l picture on yer flank that determines what yer good at. What really counts is what’s in here.” Duster gestured to his chest with a hoof. “Our cutie marks don’t determine our destinies, Hoss. Ah don’t much believe in fate. Fate’s jus’ an excuse ponies use when they ain’t got the motivation t’ try an’ achieve what it is their heart desires.”

“You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t take to heart profound epiphanies from the pony who had to repeat power armor training three times in order to pass,” I sighed. Pushing myself up, I started towards the door. “It's an admirable sentiment, buddy. I really don't think there's any escaping our destinies, though."

The sound of Duster’s grumbling faded behind me as I made my way out of the mess, and I turned right once I squished my way past a group of troopers and cleared the door. Best to get my early morning duties taken care of before I had to clock in to work on the Enclave’s dime later tonight. Not that what I had to do this morning was strictly a duty. Rather, it was more of a formality. Besides, I’d be lying to myself if I said I didn’t love this part of my job.

Stepping out onto the base grounds, I paused just outside the door to take a moment to bask in the early morning glory. Closing my eyes in sheer pleasure as the warmth of the sun bathed my coat and feathers, I took a deep breath, feeling the cool air dampen the back of my throat as it rushed into my lungs. A balmy eighteen degrees to start out the morning, a light refreshing breeze blowing from south by southeast, and not a drop of rain scheduled to fall. My eyes snapped open. Oh, yeah. Today was going to be a good day.

Unlike most of the pegasi around me, I started off at a trot in lieu of taking to the air, much as I loved flying. The clouds beneath my hooves were pliable but sturdy, settling gently under my weight and rebounding like elastic as I traipsed my way across the base grounds. I did notice that I tended to walk from place to place a lot more than your average pegasus, but I had my reasons… and they were pretty good ones.

The base’s layout was reasonably simple and easy to remember, and I made my way south towards the massive tower on the way to my destination. Directly behind me at compass north was the command office—the building housing Astral’s office as well as the majority of the base’s administrative offices. To the east was the barracks, and to the west were the aircraft hangars. I glanced over at the hangars on my way by, meandering my way over when a pair of mechanics that were currently poring over the exposed innards of a sky-tank looked up to give me a friendly wave.

“Hey guys,” I said amiably as I approached, “How’s it going? Is that Astral’s sky-tank you’re working on?”

“Yes, sir,” one of the mechanics said, leaning out from an open hatch on the side of the armored aircraft, his coat spackled with grease and oil stains. “There were some problems with the pilot’s interface causing her to pull to the right, and the gatling laser turrets were due for recalibration, so we figured we’d take care of any other problems we could find while we were at it. Sir.”

I’d never been very mechanically-inclined. I could disassemble and reassemble an energy rifle like nopony’s business, but when it came to aircraft, my knowledge went only as far as basic specifications. I knew that the sky-tank was an airborne troop carrier, and that the late war-era models had been redesigned to include ventral troop bay doors and side-mounted gatling laser turrets for cover fire. Early war-era models had a rear-deploying troop bay and missile pods mounted on stubby little pylons on each side of the aircraft. A cursory glance revealed Astral’s personal sky-tank to be of the former variety.

“All right, I won’t tie you up any longer,” I said, turning to leave the mechanics to their work. “Take good care of that thing, huh? Wouldn’t want anything to happen to the Colonel.” My tone gained a noticeably forceful edge at this point, and it didn’t go unnoticed by the mechanics.

“Of course not, sir. We’ll have her flying as well as the day she rolled off the assembly line.”

Leaving the mechanics to their work, I set off once again towards my objective—the final building on base that had been obscured by the tower until I’d made my way around it. Inside was the weapons development lab, a sort of think-tank where all of the Enclave’s eggheads could come together to do whatever they could with the limited resources we had. To be fair, they’d put out quite a bit of amazing experimental technology, and I’d had more than my share of fun testing it out for them.

As I approached the doors to the building, I hurriedly clipped my military ID to a fold on the front of my flight jacket to hasten the process of authorization checks, pausing to make certain that it was secure before I stepped into the lobby.

If there was one location on the base where security was tight, it was definitely the R&D lab. I was immediately subjected to a metal detector before I was allowed to go any further, dutifully emptying any metallic objects in my pockets into the stupid little tray. Upon being waved through and reclaiming my things, I then had to go through the rigamarole of a security clearance check, wherein my ID was confirmed and my visit logged into the system before I was allowed to pass into the inner depths of the research labs.

All this to have a chat with a pony. Sweet Cygnus.

Chief Engineer Nocturne—or Doc as I called him—was an eccentric pony to say the least, but he was hooves-down the smartest pony I’d ever met. Having worked so closely with him for a good few years, I’d been treated to more at-length discussions about weaponry than I could shake a stick at. Testing his experimental weapon prototypes was a job perk of mine, one I’d acquired after a good deal of wheedling my sister. If I couldn’t fly with the Wonderbolts like I’d always wanted to, I’d been damn sure I was going to find something else I wanted to do.

“Doc?” I called out as I made my way slowly through the engineer’s workplace, rubbernecking every which way as I did. Workbenches and sophisticated tools for developing magical energy weapons were placed against every wall and even in several spots at the center of the room, leaving very few narrow pathways for a pony to move about. “Yo, Doc!”

When Doc didn’t return my hail, I assumed he was off in one of the other labs, and allowed my attention to wander until he made his way back. It wasn’t long before my curious nature got the best of me, and I gravitated toward a cluttered workbench to investigate. Various parts of a magical energy rifle had been eviscerated and strewn all over its surface, and I recognized it instantly, even spread out into its composite parts.

The weapon parts in front of me were those of a Magical Energy Rifle, colloquially known as a Sunburst rifle among Enclave troops, due mainly to the distinct orange ray of magical energy emitted by the weapon. It was well known for needing little upkeep and providing a reliable amount of shots per microspark cell—about thirty or so before the power was completely depleted. Standard-issue. Bread and butter weapon of the Enclave military.

I was so engrossed in my task that I didn’t realize I had company until I was assaulted by a loud, trumpeting squawk.

“Honk!”

“Stars alive!” I shouted, shooting straight up into the air in fright before I looked downward and noticed the animal that had startled me. Once I’d realized that she wasn’t a threat, I drifted back down to land alongside her. “Jeez, Bella. You scared me half to death,” I sighed to the large bird standing beside me, my heart still hammering erratically against my ribcage. “Doc needs to put a bell on you or something.”

It wasn’t uncommon for ponies in the Enclave to have pets, but living in the sky narrowed the choices down to pretty much just birds. Bella was a magnificent, snowy white swan—a bird revered for its beauty and very well respected among Enclave ponies, due in no small part to its connection to the constellation of Cygnus the Swan.

Looking down at Bella’s neck revealed a piece of jewelry draped around it, not unlike a collar. What she was wearing was far more important than a collar, however. It was a talisman enchanted with a cloudwalking spell, which enabled her to remain with Doc above the clouds instead of plunging straight through them, or forcing her to remain flying at all times.

Bella had grown quite used to having me around the lab, given my many visits to see Doc. Sneaking up to startle me had quickly become one of her quirky little habits, and I swore to Polaris that she derived amusement from it. There was a degree of intelligence there, one that I wouldn’t have expected to see from somepony’s pet bird. Bella was an odd duck. Er… swan.

“Mach!” a croaky-sounding old stallion called out, and I snapped my head up to see Doc trotting in through a door at the far end of the lab. “You’ve sure kept your old friend waiting, haven’t you? I was wondering when you’d get here! I’ve got something real exciting to show you today. Two things, in fact!”

“Oh, yeah?” I said, feeling my foalish grin spreading as the old engineer closed to grips and extended his hoof. We shook amiably and he clapped me heartily on the back, taking a firm grip of my shoulder and steering me towards a distant corner of the lab. “You’re riled up pretty good, Doc. I guess Astral wasn’t kidding when she said you had something really different this time.”

Doc was a bit long in the tooth, but hadn’t yet reached his twilight years. The old stallion had had a foggy grey coat so bright in hue that it could be mistaken for white at a glance. Doc’s mane was really something else, though. Shocks of bright white hair stuck out in every which way, giving the old pony the appearance of having been struck by a bolt of lightning sometime in his youth. A little pair of pince-nez were always perched upon his muzzle, and his cutie mark depicted a strange triad of glowing bars set in a Y-shape.

I’d never really been able to figure out what it actually meant.

I followed eagerly as Doc guided me deeper into the lab, butterflies fluttering in my stomach as my excitement grew. Bella tottered along beside us, her tail feathers swishing back and forth as she waddled after her owner like a little chick after its mother. When at last we stepped up to the workbench, I felt my curiosity turn to confusion. What I was looking at didn’t appear to be a weapon in the slightest—although, granted, it was covered by a sheet.

“Well,” Doc said, turning to beam fiercely at me. “Here it is, Mach.” With a grand gesture, the old weapons engineer swept the sheet off of the table and I frowned down at the object that had been concealed beneath it. What the hell was it?

The device was rather simple in design. Its largest portion was vaguely octagonal insomuch that it had eight sides, but it had been stretched out to odd proportions. It looked more now like an egg comprised of sharp, hard angles instead of the familiar geometric shape. A bulky antenna that looked retractable protruded from the device’s other side, and a strange little arm ran perpendicular to the main casing, with a tiny little razor-thin screen mounted directly to its bottom edge.

“What the hell is this, Doc?” I said as I furrowed my brow at the strange device and scratched absently at the back of my head. “I can’t make heads or tails of it.”

Doc chuckled warmly, and reached over to a nearby scrap metal bin to produce a different device that looked as though it had weathered a bomb detonation. “Do you recognize this, Mach?”

I squinted at the rent piece of metal. It took a moment, as it looked quite different from the ones I’d seen before, but it came to me eventually. “Yeah, that’s a PipBuck… or what’s left of it, anyway.”

“Just so!” Doc exclaimed suddenly, causing me to jump in surprise. “Just as this is a PipBuck, so too is this device on the workbench.”

“That’s a PipBuck? C’mon Doc, give me some credit. I may not be the brightest bulb, but I wasn’t born yesterday, either.”

“Have I ever led you astray before, Mach?” Doc said as he scooped up the device in a hoof. “Here, try it on. You’ll see.”

Doc approached me and lifted the device up towards my head, and I eyed him warily while he set to placing it on me. He turned it aside in his hoof and I saw a small brace with a hole big enough to fit something through protruding from the inside edge of the device’s casing. As Doc lifted it up, I soon realized that the hole was for my ear, which I also noted the device’s odd shape vaguely resembled. The brace sat upon my head, using my ear to keep it steady, while the device itself fit snug up against my ear, and the little arm with the screen hung just in front of my right eye, like a sort of gunsight or display screen.

“Ohh, I get it,” I said in sudden understanding. “It’s sort of like a hi-tech monocle, right? At least as far as the design is concerned.”

“It’s a little more complex than that, my young friend,” Doc replied, and I felt a gentle tug as he flipped a switch.

I nearly had a panic attack. The instant Doc powered the device up, the little screen burned to life like a tiny little video screen, but that wasn’t all. Twin displays at the very bottom of my peripheral vision magicked into existence, and a far more complicated display than either of them popped up directly at the center. I recognized most of the bits on the center display—readings like altitude and airspeed as well as a horizon line, compass direction, and a bank indicator. Where had I seen these displays before?

“Whoa, Doc… what the hell is all of this?” I said in utter shock, waving my hoof in front of my face to see if I could disrupt any of the displays. They remained unfazed, and moved with me every time I turned my head. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

“Well, Mach, like I said—it’s a PipBuck. It’s not exactly your bog-standard PipBuck, though. I’ve done some tinkering—”

“Of course you have,” I said with a grin.

“—Some tinkering,” Doc continued unabashed, “With its primary components. By now you’ll have noticed that the E.F.S. spell matrix has been swapped out with a matrix from an Enclave power armor suit, hence the flight interface at the center of your vision.”

So that’s why it seemed so familiar. The Eyes-Forward-Sparkle systems in Enclave power armor were geared towards aerial combat instead of ground warfare—the better to suit our airborne race and its fighting style.

“In addition, I have also managed to outfit it with matrices taken from a set of night vision goggles as well as a wideband communications device, making it a useful tool for intercepting and listening in on radio transmissions. To manage this however, I’ve had to remove both the radio and flashlight functions. All other functions—Stable-Tec Assisted Targeting System, item-sorting spells, automap, et cetera—remain intact, I’m happy to say.

“I designed it as a lightweight alternative to the amazingly useful everyday tool that is the PipBuck, and repurposed it to fit the needs of your modern Enclave trooper. I call it… the ScoutBuck,” Doc finished proudly.

While Doc gave me the rundown, I fiddled with a trio of switches on the side of the device, cycling through the various menus to explore their functions. One revealed a sort of status screen showing a happy little cartoon pegasus in perfect health, another showed the contents of my pockets—a mere twenty bits—and the final one gave me a list of various communications frequencies to which I could listen in on. Oddly, for such an advanced piece of technology, the displays were entirely in black and white, and I said as much to Doc.

The old stallion grimaced. “Ah... well, the best I could get my hooves on was an older model PipBuck—a 2000. I hear Stable-Tec retired them some time ago, and all the stable ponies are probably using the more advanced PipBuck 3000 by now. None of the salvage teams have turned up any of the newer PipBucks. Requisitioning that one for my own use was a nightmare in paperwork alone, and it’s an outdated piece of technology.”

“Is the flight HUD always active?” I asked as I experimentally turned my head and watched the horizon line remain level while everything else tilted around it. “While it would be undeniably useful in air combat, it’s making everything a little hard to see right now.”

“It’s altitude-sensitive,” Doc explained. “It appears once you’re in the air, but if you’re on the ground it fades out to make navigation and everyday tasks less difficult. Being as far above the ground as we are, it’ll be active the whole time.” Upon noticing my look of mild disappointment, Doc hastily added, “But the display can be manually toggled off at any time.”

Doc reached over to flip another switch, and the complex flight interface at the center of my vision disappeared, leaving only a crosshair and the indicators at the very bottom of my peripheral vision. I let out a long, low whistle, marveling at the device’s potential.

“Jeez Doc, this thing must’ve cost the Enclave a fortune. Are they going to become standard-issue? Hell, will there be de-militarized models available to the public? If this is something the stable ponies use in their day-to-day lives, I can imagine it working out just as well for our people.”

“Oh, no,” Doc chuckled, shaking his head back and forth. “No, I wasn’t contracted to develop this. I made it in my spare time. It’s a gift. To you, Mach. For helping me test all of my weapon prototypes. You’re far and away the best field tester a pony could ask for.”

“Oh… Doc, I don’t know if I can—”

“Nonsense!” Doc interrupted, turning his back on me and walking in the opposite direction. “I refuse to take no for an answer! I have no use for it, and you can make the most out of its functions on your reconnaissance flights. Hurry now, we’ve wasted enough time. I’ve still got to show you the new weapon prototype!”

My reply died on my tongue, and I immediately took off after Doc, following him as he made his way back to the door he’d entered his lab from. With a flap of her impressive wings, Bella fluttered up and perched herself upon Doc’s ginormous hair, waggling her tailfeathers primly as she settled down upon his head for the ride. Such a prima donna, that one.

I had no idea what was behind the door Doc was leading me to. I’d never been anywhere but inside his lab before, and any weapons testing I did was merely field testing. Doc always made sure to check and double check his work before issuing it to me for proper field testing. My job was to determine the viability of prototypes in uncontrolled environments, thus gathering the necessary data for the proper higher-ups to determine whether the weapons in question would be considered for production. The old engineer’s job was simply to make sure they didn’t blow up in my face.

When I followed him into the room beyond, how he did his pre-emptive testing became quite clear.

We’d walked straight into the next closest thing to a firing range. It was a long, narrow corridor that had a rail attached to the ceiling—a track for hanging targets. Beyond that, there wasn’t all that much to it. Out at the far end of the range was what appeared to be a very large gem in a custom housing, and immediately ahead of us was the weapon Doc had undoubtedly been working on.

“Well… here it is, Mach,” Doc said, gesturing to the weapon with a flourish as we stepped up to it. “It’s not the most complex thing I’ve ever designed, but it was quite the departure from what I’m used to. I really had to step outside of my comfort zone with this one.”

The weapon in question was just shy of twice a Sunburst rifle’s length, and a whole lot bulkier. To start, the receiver was nothing like what I was used to. There was no ejection port for spent shell casings found on ballistic weapons, and likewise no access panel for the calibration of delicate energy weapon components. Even the barrel was unlike anything I’d ever seen. A series of odd disc-shaped parts surrounded its length at regular intervals, and extended nearly all the way to the muzzle. Atop the receiver was what appeared to be a targeting optic, and I peered into it to find that it wasn’t a scope as I’d thought.

“Stars alive, Doc! What is it?”

“This, my friend,” the old engineer pony said with another fierce grin of pride, “Is what I like to call a coilgun. I’ve been contracted to develop a mass-produced equivalent to Colonel Autumn Leaf’s Star Blaster. The goal is to issue our troopers a weapon that will overcome any foe—even the exceptionally deadly alicorns.”

I felt my mane crawl in discomfort. I’d fought alicorns once in the past. Once. If it hadn’t been for my squad, I’d have been slaughtered outright. If this coilgun could do what Doc hoped it could do, then any threat they posed would soon be a thing of the past.

“You’ve got my ear, Doc. What do I need to know?”

“I’ll skip the extensive details, because I want you awake long enough to actually absorb the pertinent information,” Doc jabbed playfully. “The coilgun is a hybrid firearm—which is to say, the components are equally balanced between ballistic and magical energy. The weapon is loaded with a solid slug of a specialized material, which is then propelled by a series of electromagnetic fields shrouding the barrel that accelerate it to incredibly high velocities. We’re hoping that the slug’s material combined with the high velocity of the shot will bypass the alicorns’ shields entirely.”

I held a hoof up thoughtfully to my chin. “You said it was hybrid? What does it use for power?”

Doc gestured to a magazine attached to the weapon’s side, and an empty socket on the opposite side.

“The coilgun's slugs are stored in this magazine here, which hold a total of up to five. The gun also requires one microspark cell per shot to magnetize the round's ferrous core and charge the electromagnet capacitors. I’m still working on the power efficiency, but as it is a prototype, these things will change for the production model.”

I hummed and scratched at my chin. “A whole microspark cell, huh? Those aren’t hard at all to come by, but having to swap cells after every shot is deadly on a modern battlefield. What about operating it? It’s the size of a sniper rifle, and all of those components must make it rather heavy. I also noticed that this device mounted on top isn’t a scope of any kind.”

“You have an eye for details, Mach,” Doc said, rocking back and forth on his tippy hooves eccentrically. “The coilgun does not come standard with a bit or hoof trigger. This is a weapon intended solely for battle saddle use. As such, the optic I’ve outfitted it with links up directly with the onboard E.F.S. systems in power armor, or in your case—the ScoutBuck.”

“Perfect,” I stated simply. “I’m most proficient with my battle saddle, so I prefer that anyway. On a semi-related note, how confident are you that this coilgun of yours is going to do exactly what you want it to do, Doc? Nothing shy of high-yield explosives or anti-materiel rifles have been purported to successfully cut through alicorn shields. Even then, it’s iffy.”

“That is what I aim to find out right now, Mach,” Doc said, turning so that he was facing downrange. “As you can see, at the far end of the testing range I’ve set up one of our standard energy barrier projection gems. Similar devices protect vital targets like Neighvarro Tower, but this one projects a field far less powerful than those.

“Now if my calculations are correct,” Doc said, slapping his hoof down on a button affixed to the wall nearby, “Once the capacitors on this rifle reach full charge, you’re going to see some serious shit.”

A bright blue dome flickered into life around the gem in the distance, fading lazily in and out of visibility as the currents of magic surged through it. Doc quickly began bustling around the coilgun, popping a nearby microspark cell into the receptacle on the weapon’s left side, and checking to make sure the magazine was loaded and secure. Reaching a hoof up to pull down the lab goggles upon his forehead elicited an indignant squawk from Bella as she was disturbed. I watched eagerly as Doc picked up a trigger he’d hardwired into the weapon in lieu of a battle saddle.

I waited with bated breath as Doc bit down on the trigger… and nothing happened.

“Damn!” Doc exclaimed, spitting the trigger back out onto the table. “Damn, damn!”

“Hey, relax Doc,” I encouraged the old pony as he produced a small screwdriver and began attacking the coilgun, his brow furrowed in deep thought. I could practically see the gears turning, and he was probably running through multiple problem scenarios in the time it was taking him to gain access to the weapon’s vital parts. “They can’t all be perfect on the first shot. You’ll get it.”

“I don’t really have much time to troubleshoot, Mach,” Doc mumbled around his screwdriver, jerking back when a side panel popped free and exposed the innards of the coilgun. “I need this operational by tonight if you’re to run field tests for me. I’d love to keep chatting, but I really need to buckle down and get to the source of this issue before your flight. In fact, it’s entirely likely that the only reason you’ve made it this far without sustaining serious injury is precisely because I’ve been so careful.”

I’d never really thought about it that way before. In retrospect, it made me feel incredibly uncomfortable. Something could have gone wrong on any one of several occasions, and I could’ve died because of it. Hindsight was twenty-twenty though, as they say.

I gave Doc a reassuring pat on the shoulder as I began to see myself out. “Well, let me get out of your mane, then. I’ve still got a while yet before I’m on the clock, I may as well go find something to kill time.”

Doc grumbled an unintelligible response as I turned to leave, passing back through his lab and the staggering amount of checkpoints before emerging once again into daylight. I paused just outside for a moment to contemplate my options, noting that the ScoutBuck was showing all of the ponies on the base as little white blips on the E.F.S.’s compass. If I remembered the facts from my Airpony’s Manual correctly, the E.F.S. was a friend-foe system. So white blips were non-hostiles? What color would hostile targets be on this relic, grey?

While I was busy chuckling at my own joke, a pair of hooves slipped past my head to cover my eyes, and a mare’s voice spoke from behind me.

“Guess who?”

Uh-oh. I knew that voice. I tried to take off, but she had me down and pinned before I’d even made it a centimeter off the clouds. “Uh… hi, Solara,” I grinned sheepishly up at the mare sitting on my chest.

Though it was mostly covered by her flight barding, Solara had the most blindingly bright orange coat I’d ever seen on a pony. Looking at her was like staring at the surface of the very sun itself. Her wine-red mane was just as much an exemplification of her personality as it was Solara turning her nose up at military regs. It was long, wild, and just as untamed as she was—windswept and blown out in every direction.

Her cutie mark was a pair of binoculars, and it suited her well. She had the best eyesight out of anypony I'd ever met. Perhaps Solara's most distinguishing characteristic, however, were the intricate patterns of the feathers on her wings. Comprised of multiple hues of oranges, yellows and reds, Solara's wings looked as if they were made of purest, shimmering flame. I'd never seen anything quite like it before.

As we stared at each other, I remembered the last two times I’d pissed Solara off, which made me none too eager to see her at the moment. Sweat was starting to bead on my forehead as we sat there in awkward silence, and my mind raced with the possibilities she could be planning to exact her wrathful vengeance upon me. It was quite the shock when she broke into her cute lopsided grin and clambered off of me, offering me a hoof up.

“Jeez, calm down,” the fiery orange mare snorted. “I’m not mad at you, dummy. Duster was just riling you up, trying to make you nervous. You know how he is.”

Oh. Oh, thank the stars.

“Well, uh, you can never be too careful, right?” I chuckled nervously, fighting the impulse to wipe my brow in relief. I thought I’d have been a goner after that incident with the thundercloud. “There’s not much that can top being shocked by lightning.”

“Look,” Solara said mutedly, leaning in close, her tone serious. “I heard through the grapevine that Doc’s latest prototype is supposed to be an alicorn-killer. You’re not actually going to be testing it on them, are you? You know how dangerous they are.”

“Won’t know until tonight what my mission is,” I sighed. “Doc’s scrambling to work out some last-minute bugs, so I really hope that I’m not expected to live test it against an alicorn. Where are you and Duster headed tonight, by the way? Y’know, since… you were reassigned to Nova and all.”

Solara rolled her eyes and blew a raspberry in response. “Command’s got us headed out to do the routine flyover of Fillydelphia. See what they’ve been up to down there. You know, the usual bullshit."

“Why?” I scoffed disdainfully. “Fillydelphia has three things—factories, radiation, and griffon mercenaries. That much hasn’t changed for years, and there’s no reason to suspect otherwise. The griffons have gotten wise, you know. They spot us when we do our runs. We’re sport to them, Solara. If they see you, they’ll try to shoot you down just for fun.”

“Fun? Shooting at us isn’t fun for them, it’s their way of getting back at us for the war on their people. I’ll show you what the definition of fun is, stud,” Solara purred, sidling up to me. I stepped back a hoof as she approached.

“Hey, any other day I’d step in and rock your world, but I’m potentially in some real deep shit already, and I need to keep on our superiors’ good side. We’ve already been busted for fraternization more times than I can count and—mmph!”

My protests were quickly silenced as Solara pressed her lips to mine and threw her forehooves around my neck, pushing me back aggressively so that I was forced to sit. I responded in kind to her advances as she sat on my lap and wrapped her hindlegs around my waist, tenderly reaching a hoof up to caress her wild mane and neck, pulling her harder into me. It wasn’t long before I had to separate from her, and I leaned back to stare into her gorgeous, ravenously hungry golden eyes.

Something was off about that, but it was the furthest thing from my mind at the moment.

“We’re gonna—get caught,” I panted as I tried to catch my breath. “Let’s take this someplace—a little more—private.”

Solara grinned wickedly and immediately seized my hoof in hers, taking flight and pulling me straight towards the hangar. I hastened to keep up, noting rather pointedly that the mechanics had finished their maintenance on Astral’s sky-tank, leaving the hangar devoid of occupants. Solara made a beeline for the open troop bay, and slammed the doors shut after she’d dragged me inside.

“Well, now that I’ve got you safely away from prying eyes…” Solara said in a deep, throaty rasp, grabbing ahold of me and throwing me roughly into a bench seat in the troop bay. “I think it’s time I had my way with you.”

Solara swooped over and perched herself upon my lap once more, pressing her muzzle to mine so forcefully my head hit the Sky-tank’s bulkhead with an audible gonging noise. Like always, I easily fell prey to her advances, and I cupped two gratuitous hooffulls of her flank, eliciting a gasp followed by an excited, shrieking giggle from the bawdy little mare. Why bother fighting her at this point? I still had a few hours to kill, and there was no way anypony would possibly see us canned up in Astral’s personal Sky-tank.

What could go wrong?