The difference between robots and synths? Well... we're prettier, to start with.

“Gotcha!”

I blinked in confusion at the tall, silvery, mare. Her eyes immediately reverted to their familiar pink color and both pupils rounded out. The holographically projected face and mouth lightened, matching the color of the rest of the robopony’s polished gray chassis. Her grim expression was gone too, replaced by a grin so wide that it seemed to be pushing the horizontal limits of the range that her emitters could form their illusions, “the look on your face makes me so glad I can go back and review my memories any time I want,” the mare said in a gleeful tone.

For my part, I felt my limbs grow weak as my body recognized that there was no longer any danger, and thus abruptly emptied itself of all of the adrenaline that it had flooded through me only seconds ago. Much to my own consternation, I found that I couldn’t bring myself to flash the mare as scathing a glare as I might have liked to. After all, it had been a little funny I supposed. A pink earth pony and a rainbow-maned pegasus seemed to be underwhelmed by my own estimation of what they obviously felt was a very well executed prank.

“You are a bad pony,” I sighed, setting about smoothing out my pinions, which had not quite yet gotten the message that the threat had passed, “and you should feel bad.”

“Iiiii don’t though!” Moonbeam snickered. She began to strut around the workshop now, seemingly both to impress upon me the extent of her alterations, and to assess her own satisfaction with them, “so, what do you think of Moonbeam 2.0? Now with the ability to actually do things when there’s danger,” she added in a droll tone.

“You did plenty against the Steel Rangers,” I pointed out as I took a few moments to finish making sure that all of my feathers were back in their proper place before indulging Moonbeam by taking in her changes for myself.

“Only because of some old MoA virus that Selene had lying around,” the mare countered bitterly, “I was absolutely useless helping the two of you fight the Übersentinels up there. Heck, I wouldn’t have been able to do much to help fight off even just regular old raiders,” her frown then shifted into a wicked grin, “but now I’ve got real firepower! Watch!”

Before I could say anything, Moonbeam whipped her head around and leveled her recently enhanced horn at the bay full of tool-tipped arms that had just finished altering her. A cyan beam of light pierced through the air and struck one of them full on, melting it down into a puddle of glowing orange goo that began to rapidly cool into useless slag.

“Let’s see those Rangers try and take me back to their bunker now,” I heard her growl.

I stared at the mound of congealed steel and tried very hard not to picture what that attack would have done to a pony encased in steel power armor. Or what that attack of hers could have done to mere pony flesh with a direct hit. There was dying, and then there was...whatever something like that did to a pony. I peered down at my own weaponized bracers. They had yet to be used on a living creature too, but after seeing what destruction they could inflict on those giant metal behemoths today...

“If it’s all the same, I’d like you to try that virus thing again if Rangers do show up,” I said, still trying not to think too hard about melted down ponies, “not all of them are bad ponies,” maybe it was silly to think that in light of our last encounter―or really any of my prior encounters―with their organization. However much of a benefit of the doubt that I’d like to give them, I couldn’t deny that Hoplite was in the minority. Whether it was because she was a ghoul who’d been around long enough to remember a world before the Wasteland, or because she wasn’t even a pony, or something else that I wasn’t even aware of, the former Star Paladin wasn’t anything like her comrades. Apparently, those differences had also caught up with her, and cost her her title and position within their order.

It was entirely possible that Hoplite might not even feel nearly as favorably towards me during our next encounter precisely because of that. I might be wasting my efforts trying to curb Moonbeam’s hostility towards the Steel Rangers in order to preserve a glimmer of nobility and restraint that didn’t even exist anymore. Yet, even if it turned out that Hoplite had indeed fallen ‘in line’ with her fellows the next time we met, I still didn’t want to kill her if I didn’t have to.

She’d proven that she could be a good pony―er, horse―once. I had to believe that she would be capable of it again.

Those pink eyes flashed brilliantly at me, “easy for you to say,” the mechanical mare countered, her projected lips curling back in a snarl, “they don’t think of you as just some piece of tech to be kept on a shelf for all eternity.

“I’m not a pony to them. I’m just a machine. No more entitled to rights and respect than a toaster,” she raised up one of her newly reinforced hooves and curled it menacingly, as though flexing a muscle, “well, this ‘toaster’ can fight back, and you’d better bet that I will. I already warned them once what would happen if they didn’t give up.

“If they do come back,” the mare lowered her hoof and shrugged, “then that’s on them. They chose to die.”

I wanted to respond, but nothing came out; not when I saw the intensity in her glowing pink eyes, which had acquired a slightly crimson tint around their outer edges. She was mad. Beyond merely ‘mad’, in fact. It was the same variety of raw, unadulterated, hatred that I held for the likes of the White Hooves. It was a visceral animosity that refused to be ameliorated by anything that could be said to her right now. The freshness of it wouldn’t allow it.

A part of me was even reluctant to try and dissuade her. After all, what she had been put through by them...I couldn’t imagine. It had to have been something akin to long term imprisonment, and all for the simple ‘crime’ of being what she was: an Old World ministry experiment. The Steel Rangers didn’t even have the benefit of being able to claim ignorance. Star Paladin Achilles had known exactly what Moonbeam was when he’d brought that team to collect her at my family’s ranch.

In the end, all I could manage to do was give a somber little nod of acknowledgement. I was disappointed, sure, but I also knew that I couldn’t do anything about it. Not now. Maybe later I’d be able to talk her down, but her emotional scars would need time to start healing before that could happen. Though, I had to wonder if Moonbeam wouldn’t be ready to forgive the Steel Rangers until around the same time that I could bring myself to forgive the White Hooves.

The real Princess Luna might return to Equestria before that happened…

I looked over the metal mare, my gaze focused on her new wings, “are you going to need to practice with those things?” I asked, “it took me years to learn how to fly.”

“No, I’m good,” Moonbeam assured me. Then I saw her expression flicker for a brief moment before it reformed, looking more somber than it had before, “Selene had all the drivers ready to go. That’s all it took, you know? To learn how to pull off maneuvers that I didn’t even know were maneuvers an hour ago: just a quick little download of some software from a database that Selene had built into her directories.

“It was like flipping a switch, and then I suddenly knew everything there was to know about flying. Now...it feels like I’ve been flying my whole life…” the levitation talismans in her wings activated, lifting the robopony slowly into the air where she then proceeded to drift and roll around leisurely, like gravity was no longer any sort of consideration for her. Even I couldn’t have done the things that she was doing as slowly and smoothly as she was doing them.

Moonbeam turned to look at me with her glowing pink eyes, “I can’t even remember what it felt like to not know how to fly. It’s like...the change was retroactive somehow. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear I was a different pony than I used to be,” she looked over herself, noting the alterations that she’d had made, “although...I guess that’s fairly accurate,” she looked right at me now, “can I ask you something?”

“Um...sure?” it was hard to not feel a little put off by her words, and the calm stare that she’d leveled against me.

“How do you know that you’re really you?”

“I―wait, what?”

“Your memories,” she clarified, “your personality. How do you know it’s who you really are?”

“I mean, whose else’s would they be?” I couldn’t keep from letting out an uneasy laugh at the question. After all, it seemed quite absurd to question whether my memories were my own. How could they not be?

“Right…” the mare said, nodding to herself, as though only now realizing how absurd the question had sounded, “you get everything that makes you, well, you from what you experience first-hoof,” Moonlight wasn’t even looking at me, seeming to be talking to herself, “nothing’s feeding you information from the inside…

“Nothing’s...created by an AI…”

“Let’s go check on your mother,” I suggested, not liking what Moonbeam seemed to be dwelling on. I knew that Selene was a bit of a sore subject for her. This at least seemed to sooth the metal mare slightly, in that it got her mind off of thinking about whatever was currently nagging at her. Of course, her mother’s current condition was still another topic of some sensitivity, given her injuries. She was alive though, and on the road to recovery. However, it looked like not a whole lot had changed in the last hour since putting her up in the infirmary.

The two of us didn’t have anywhere else to be though. I’d made my report to the others in New Reino. Moonbeam had gotten herself fixed up―and then some. All that was left was to wait for Starlight to regain consciousness and get strong enough to travel again.

Our trip here might have been a little underwhelming in the end―I still needed to figure out what to do about the money situation―but I couldn’t categorically say that it had been a wasted effort. If nothing else, I’d learned a few things. Which reminded me, “I found something you might want to hear,” I offered, passing the robopony the holotape that I’d listened to in Nightjar’s office, “it might explain a few things about why the MoA did all of this to you.”

The robopony took the offered disk into her magical grasp and floated it up to eye level to look at it more closely. A moment later, she physically touched it to the tip of her horn. Her eyes started flickering for several long seconds, then she returned the record to me. I took it back and regarded the mare curiously.

“A weapon,” Moonbeam finally said after a lengthy pause, staring out at nothing in particular, “they were making me into a weapon,” I saw her holographic lips pulling back into a thin line, “I was a child,” she seethed, “but to them…” my gaze was drawn suddenly to the floor where one of her reinforced hooves was currently gouging a furrow into the hard steel surface beneath us. I felt myself taking an involuntary step back from her as a result.

“Didn’t I have little enough,” she went on, her voice sounding strained, acquiring a progressively rising quaiver, “born without a working brain. A deformed body. Never to grow up. Never to have a normal life. I’ll never even get a cutie mark!” her lips curled back, revealing a set of projected clenched teeth. There were even tears glistening off of her illusionary cheeks, “but that wasn’t enough for them.

“No. They had to take everything that I did have, and turn me into a weapon!”

I didn’t know if she’d intended it or not. It was hard to tell from her expression whether she’d even been aware that she’d done it. A brilliant stream of sky blue light burst from her horn on that last word and erased the better part of a square yard of the clinic’s wall. I stared blankly at the hole that had been melted through the thick alloyed construction, watching as a few droplets of molten metal congealed and fell before everything cooled and solidified once more.

To her credit, Moonbeam did look briefly shocked by what she’d done. But it was only a brief look. An instant later, her expression flickered and then was once more impassive and blank. It was as though she hadn’t been even the least bit upset at all, “I need a moment to think about this,” the robopony said, again in a surprisingly nonplussed tone. She turned to look at me, “would you mind giving us some privacy?”

There was a moment of hesitation, I had to admit. After all, I’d just watched this mare destroy part of the room seemingly by accident. Plus there was this sudden change in her mood...I mean, I didn’t know how everything worked with her being half-computer and all. Not an hour ago she’d been about to kill me while in control of that giant robopony. For all I knew, she was going to murder us all in the next ten minutes!

Starlight Glimmer was her mother, sure, but did that really matter to a mare who was this unstable?

The bigger question was: what would happen if I refused? I very nearly did too, “Moonbeam, I know this is upsetting, and I’m sure I can’t even begin to understand how―”

“No,” the mare agreed, cutting me off in that same calm tone that was even more eerie than Arginine’s own unperturbed demeanor, “you can’t,” she glanced over at the portion of wall that she’d just melted before looking back at me, “I just need some time to sort my thoughts. That’s all. To center myself.

“I’ll be fine,” she nodded towards the still sleeping unicorn, “and so will she. I promise.”

That glimmer of doubt remained, but the last thing I wanted was to push her back towards another outburst. I wasn’t a therapist; I didn’t know what the right move to make here was. The only decision that I could make was a tactical one: I no longer knew what kind of threat that I was dealing with. That meant that the best course of action was to withdraw, reevaluate, and make a new plan.

So that was what I did. I nodded at the mare and very carefully extracted myself from the clinic. I didn’t go far. Just down to a nearby office that let me keep their blips in range on my Eyes Forward Sparkle. If something changed, I’d be able to catch it. Hopefully, I’d even be able to respond in time to keep Starlight from being killed.

I didn’t know how long I was expected to wait to let Moonbeam collect her thoughts and deal with what she’d just learned, or what to do with myself while I waited. I didn’t want to explore any more of this place and risk being too far away to intervene. I also wasn’t sure I’d be able to take simply sitting and staring. Then I recalled that I had other holotapes from the director’s office that I hadn’t listened to.

There was a chance that one of them had additional information that might help Moonbeam out. Of course, they might also push her further over the edge too. It was best that I listened to them before letting her know that I had them. I looked through by bags and found the tape with the earliest date on it. Perhaps I’d spoiled the ending of Nightjar’s story by listening to the last disk first, but I still didn’t know how all of that had gotten started.

I slipped the holotape into my pipbuck and started the recording. The first few seconds were what sounded quite clearly like a pony fumbling with the recording device and shoving it into a pocket. I could hear the grating static of the mic being rubbed up against fabric before finally settling down and clearing up. Then a door opened and a young mare’s voice could be heard in the distance, “Mister Nightjar? The Ministry Mare will see you now.”

“Thank you,” I recognized the pegasus stallion’s voice from the other recording. The sound quality took another dive as he stood up and began walking. I could hear a second door open, and then close again, “Ministry Mare Rainbow Dash. Thank you for seeing me.”

“Well, I did kind of invite you here,” the scratchy voice of the cyan pegasus responded, “it’d be pretty uncool of me to not see you after doing that. Take a seat.

“I don’t suppose you know why I’ve called you here?” the mare posed.

“I have a few suspicions,” the stallion responded in a guarded tone, “there have been a few whispers here and there about a new project in the works that needs staffing?”

I heard the mare give an anemic little chuckle, “I don’t know if I should be impressed by your resourcefulness, or concerned about the looseness of my staff’s lips...but, yeah. That’s the broad strokes.”

Then it sounded like Rainbow Dash was changing tacks, “tell me, Mister Smarty-Pants: if you know so much, then tell me why Equestria is going to lose the war in...oh, I think it’s about four years now?”

There was palpably stunned silence that could be detected even through the two century old recording, “I beg your pardon, Ministry Mare?” the stallion was clearly shocked to have heard the statement. Admittedly, so was I. Not that I considered myself to be any sort of expert on the war that led to the creation of the Wasteland that I now lived in, but I hadn’t gotten the impression that any one side had been in imminent danger of outright losing. I supposed that it sort of made some sense that one of the sides must have felt that way though, as it would have explained why they’d seen destroying the whole world as a viable option, but I certainly hadn’t ever thought that it had been Equestria who’d been on the brink of defeat!

“Ministry Mare,” the male pegasus said as he began to recover from his shock, though he was still audibly nervous, “I don’t know what you may have heard about me, but I swear that I’ve never once―in my life―had that sort of defeatist attitude! If anypony has been telling you otherwise they are lying to you, and I―”

The mare was laughing now, though it wasn’t a very mirthful one, “oh ho! I guess that it really is possible to keep a secret after all! Though, I guess I really owe it to Rarity on this one. Nopony knows how to dress up a report like she does.

“Calm your feathers, Nighty,” the ministry mare chided her guest, “nopony’s saying anything about you. Well, not to me anyway. No, I’m being dead serious,” and, indeed, her somber tone certainly suggested that she was, “Equestria will be forced to surrender in four more year. Even if we win every major battle during that time,” she paused and snorted derisively, “honestly, depending on how well we win those battles, we’ll be forced to surrender even sooner!”

“I―but...how?”

Rainbow Dash didn’t immediately answer. She let the question hang in the air for several long seconds before responding with what sounded like a completely unrelated answer, “what I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave this room, do you understand? There are fewer than a dozen ponies in all of Equestria that know this, and about half of them are going to be visited by Ministry of Image agents by this time tomorrow and have their memories...adjusted to reduce that number to just the Princess and us Ministry Mares.

“Depending on how this meeting goes, you might get a visit tonight too.

“Three years after the war began,” Rainbow Dash began, seemingly diverting onto yet another tangent for some reason, “Equestria’s crop yields suffered their first decline in over a thousand years. There’s always been a huge surplus every year, so it wasn’t a big deal. Hardly anypony even noticed it except for the ponies whose job it was to track that sort of things for the sake of tracking it. Egghead stuff.

“The thing is, those yields kept declining, more and more, with every passing year,” the pegasus mare continued, “five years ago, in an event that hasn’t happened since before there was even an Equestria: we had a shortfall. There wasn’t enough food grown to feed everypony.”

“That’s…” the stallion said in an awed tone, disbelieving, “I’ve heard nothing of this.”

“Nopony has,” the mare replied simply, “like I said: Rarity’s ministry has been working very hard to make sure nopony who knows about it keeps knowing about it. But the fact is that Equestria has been very quietly buying food from our neighbors to make up the difference so that nopony would notice.

“We’re already rationing some things under the guise of making sure there’s enough to feed our fighting troops and the refugees ‘fleeing zebra tyranny’; and that’s partly true,” she added, “but it’s also to make sure that nopony notices how little there actually is to go around. We should have been doing that right from the start, but nopony thought this war would go on for as long as it has,” she added under her breath so quietly that it was barely picked up by the stallion’s recording device.

“I’m sensing a ‘but’, or you wouldn’t be telling me any of this.”

“Give the stallion a prize!” Rainbow Dash quipped then, in a more serious tone added with a mirthful note, “indeed. ‘But’...those neighbors of ours just ran out of their own surpluses. They don’t have anything more to sell us. They can barely feed their own populations. So, in two years the shortfall will be so bad that there will be a famine, the onset of starvation in three for most of the population and, in four…”

“Surrender,” Nightjar finished, sounding almost breathless. There was still that persistent note of denial though, “but, how? Is this something the zebras are doing to us? Can we fight it?” then another thought occurred to him, “surely the zebras are suffering the same setbacks as we are! If we can find some way to outlast them―”

“I’m going to stop you right there,” Rainbow Dash interrupted, “because those aren’t questions that a lot of ponies with much more egg-shaped heads than you haven’t thought about already―no offense,” to who? Him or the ‘eggheads’?

“To answer your first question: no. This isn’t some weird zebra attack. It’s just numbers,” Rainbow Dash now entered into a mode that I hadn’t heard from her before in any recordings: lecture mode, and began to break things down in a tone that suggested that she actually had a rather firm grasp of the material, “for as long as there have been ponies, there have been pegasi controlling the weather. We plan the sunshine, the rains, and the snow. With the right management, a team of weather ponies can turn even the driest of deserts into lush apple orchards either by bringing in rainfall from tropical regions, or just creating our own rain clouds from nearby water reservoirs.

“Pegasi have, quite literally, transformed this continent into the next best thing to a pony paradise over the last few millennia.

“However,” the mare stressed, “us pegasi have a second time-honored tradition that dates back to the mythical days of Pegasopolis: military service. When Princess Celestia put out the call, we answered. We answered in numbers that blotted out her sun! When Princess Luna took over, we continued to answer. We flocked―literally―to the front lines and did everything we could to help out. Because we’re pegasi! Because, pound-for-pound, we’re the fastest, toughest, and most agile, fliers in the skies,” I could hear the note of pride in her voice as she said this. Heck, I even felt my own chest swell just a tad!

“Our skies,” she emphasized with a possessive twinge, “pegasi dropped everything they were doing to go and help…

“...including the weather service,” that reserved tone was back now, and I could hear her resignation, “and, honestly, we couldn’t afford to tell anypony ‘no’. The zebras had both the dragons and the griffons working for them. Without us there to stop them, our ground forces would have been wiped out without a second thought,” she admitted ruefully, “as it is, our numbers are only enough to keep things at a standstill. Every day there are more casualties. Which means that every day we need to draft more pegasi. Which means,” she sighed, “that every year there are fewer and fewer weather ponies.

“Fewer weather ponies means less rain―especially in the areas that need it the most. Less rain leads to smaller crop yields, and less food.”

“Sweet Celestia…” I heard Nightjar whisper, having just realized how dire the situation truly was.

“So, that’s the answer to your first question,” the mare said, “next, I’ll answer your third one: no, the zebras don’t have the same problem we do. I don’t understand all of the specifics about how they do their weird zebra voodoo stuff, but I know that they do use something like magic to affect their climate like we do, in order to boost their crop yields. The difference is that it seems to take a lot fewer of them to do it. I saw one report that said only a single zebra was needed to affect a whole town’s farmland,” she grumbled in irritation, seemingly upset that their enemy had found some way around what should have been a mutually significant problem.

“The Ministry of Awesome does have a project in the works to accomplish the same thing―using fewer pegasi to maintain the weather we need―but it’s going to take a bit longer to have it ready. If it even works at all,” she added with a sour tone, “technically we’re waiting on some technology that still needs to actually be invented, but I’ve heard some whispers that the Ministry of Arcane Science is getting closer on that front,” Rainbow Dash cleared her throat and readdressed the stallion, “which brings me, finally, to your second question:

“Yes, we’re doing something about it. But, what’s being done will only affect Equestria, and that’s not quite enough.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Equestria isn’t alone in this fight,” the ministry mare reminded him, “the Crystal Empire, the yaks, the Saddle Arabians, we have a lot of allies that are either having the same problem that we are, or soon will be having it. What’s currently in the works won’t help them, and they will need help. If our allies fall, it doesn’t matter how much food we have, Equestria will fall soon after they do.

“The truth is that we need our weather service back. Which means that we need something to replace them with right here at home,” I heard the sound of rustling papers as something was slid across a desk, “I want you to look over this proposal for me. They’re schematics for a new type of robopony. A flying combat drone designed to hold the line right here in Equestria so that pegasi can be transferred back into the weather service and sent to help our allies improve their own food situation.”

There was the sound of somepony flipping through pages. When Nightjar spoke again, it was with a reserved tone, “this is...ambitious, Ministry Mare. However, I don’t think that these design parameters are actually possible―”

“They’re not,” Rainbow Dash acknowledged, “an engine small enough with that kind of thrust doesn’t exist. There’s no spark reactors with the output required for the size they’d have to be...yet,” she stressed, “most of those hurdles won’t be hurdles for long though. For the purposes of this review, I want you to assume that the designs in there will work as-is.”

I heard the stallion grumble low in his throat as he continued to flip through pages, “even if I assume these things will work mechanically, the kind of software they’d need to be able to coordinate as a coherent flying unit...Ministry Mare, our squadrons train for months to do what they do. No robopony―not even the dedicated combat models―are capable of doing what our fliers do. They’re not capable of little more than figuring out the direction the enemy is in and shooting!

“A unit intended to operate as part of a squadron would need to be able to process more variables in less time than anything our current computer technology is capable of,” his tone shifted suddenly, as though to counter what he assumed the Ministry Mare’s response to be, “and don’t tell me such a leap is right around the corner! I have a sufficient clearance to have heard about anything even close to those capabilities coming out of MAS or MWT any time soon. I don’t doubt that one of these drones equipped with our usual software would be very formidable one-on-one; but you’re talking about a flight of these things potentially going up against a flight of dragons!

“It can’t be done,” he concluded simply.

Rainbow Dash was quiet for several seconds, “you are a smart pony, Nighty,” I could hear her smile in her words, “and you’re thinking in the right direction. That’s good,” she paused once again, “so, you’re saying that the only problem you can see is the C&C issue? That if, somehow, a way could be found to coordinate these drones effectively, then they’d prove to be a viable defense for Equestria?”

“I―um, I suppose, yes,” the stallion faultered, “if what you’ve said about some of the technologies involved is true, then I don’t see why these drones couldn’t be built; and their specifications would certainly make them formidable.”

“Good. You start on Monday,” Rainbow Dash said in a cheerful tone, “somepony will be by your place to pick you up that morning. Pack for a long trip. Don’t mind the ‘Wind Ryder’ logo on the side, the wagon’ll be equipped for passengers. Your file says you’re not married; what about a marefriend?”

“Uh, no, I―”

“Coltfriend?”

“No. Why―?”

“Good! No loose ends. There’ll be an operational security blackout on all your correspondence until further notice,” her cheerful tone endured, even as the stallion became progressively more flustered as his attempts to get clarification were continuously rebuffed, “once you’re settled in, I’ll send you your marching orders. Thanks for coming by. I’ll need that file back, by the way.”

“I’m sorry,” the stallion stammered, still sounding a little confused about what was going on, “what’s going on?”

“You’re hired,” Rainbow Dash said simply, “you applied for a job, I’ve just finished interviewing you for the job, and now I’ve hired you for the job. Congratulations!” there was a brief pause where nopony said anything, “you might want to go home and get your affairs in order. Like I said: you won’t be able to talk with anypony for a while.”

“But I don’t even know what the job is!” he protested.

“Sure you do,” the mare insisted, “you just saw the file.”

“I’m going to be building those things?”

“Yup. A lot of them. The first production run will need to be a thousand units,” she informed him, “I’ll want a prototype finished in six months.”

“But―six months?! Ministry Mare, I told you: the technology doesn’t exist!”

“And I told you that we’re working on it. You’ll have what you need when you need it. That’s all that I’m going to tell you, and I don’t want to hear that you’ve been asking anypony questions either. If the zebras find out what’s going on, they’ll try and stop us. That’s one of the reasons we’re working so hard to suppress the crop reports. If the zebras find out how bad things are getting, they’ll know that all they need to do is hold what they’ve got and wait us out.

“And, make no mistake, Nightjar, that is all they have to do to win this war, as things stand. We can’t let them know that, and we can’t let them delay this project. If either of those things happen, Equestria loses. Princess Luna loses.

“Is that understood?”

“...Yes, Ma’am.”

“Good. Dismissed. And welcome aboard.”

That was the end of the dialogue. All that could be heard after that was the sound of Nightjar standing up and leaving the Ministry Mare’s office. He apparently stopped recording once he was a fair way down the hall and somewhere that he felt that he wouldn’t be observed.

I sat in silence for several long moments as I fully processed the contents of the recording. Notes of it struck a chord in the back of my mind. I’d come across some very similar talking points during my visit to the Arc Lightning facility. The mare who’d been running that place seemed to have managed to fall under the radar of the Ministry of Image’s information purge where those food reports were concerned. Though, from what I remembered of her own entry on the subject, she hadn’t been in the official distribution loop for the information anyway. She’d come to the same conclusion that Rainbow Dash did though: that disaster for Equestria was right around the corner. That knowledge had been what spurred her to create the Gale Force…

...which also happened to be one of the key components for the drones in this place. Suddenly, I wasn’t so certain that the mare responsible for developing them had ‘slipped through the cracks’ after all.

The entire population of the Wasteland could spend the next two hundred years debating the ethics of mutilating and conscripting a foal into serving as the control software for an army of drones designed to free up the ponypower necessary to manipulate weather patterns and keep populations from starving to death. The morality of all of that, for me, was a moot point. All of it had happened in another time, and another place entirely from the Wasteland that we lived in today; and there was no way to change it. Nor, I felt confident in saying, was it likely that something like this would happen again any time soon.

No, for me, the only real pertinent question was how I should use this information. Or, if I even should use this information.

The drones were built. McMaren’s broadcast tower was operational and the signal it transmitted could be heard all across the Neighvada Valley. The interface designed to connect with Moonbeam was working too―we’d seen that first-hoof. It would be foal’s-play for either Homily or Foxglove to get those systems and this hangar to work together like they were supposed to. All of the hardware was in place and presumably functional―though I’d want Foxglove to sign off on that front.

Here I was, with an army that was designed to take on the whole zebra military and their allies right at my hoof-tips. Everything that I needed to turn back Arginine’s stable. Crush it into a fine paste and be rid of their threat forever more. In fact, there was no reason that I’d have to stop with Arginine’s stable. The White Hooves, slavers, raiders, these things could end the threats that they all posed. I could save the whole valley―maybe even the entire Wasteland!

...I’d just need Moonbeam to do it. I’d need her to become the focal point of the weapon that the Ministry of Awesome designed and built around her.

I’d just need to turn her into Trellis.

I could come to her with what our options were, I supposed. Let her choose. If she agreed, then that burden would no longer be mine to bear. If she refused...then we’d find another way. Somehow. Of course, I’d pretty much already exhausted every other option that I’d ever come up with. We’d blown past Plan’s A, B, C, and now even Plan D was looking to be a bust. There was still quite a bit of the alphabet left, sure, but I wasn’t certain how much more time we could afford to spend going through more letter. As it stood right now, if she did refuse...we were all probably going to die before something else could be devised.

Saving the valley might come down to not even giving her a choice. Could I do that? Trade one life for thousands? I mean, I’d trade my own life like that many times over without a second thought. That was different than putting somepony else’s life on the chopping block though. Yet, that was kind of what real military leaders did in a war, right? They sacrificed a few of their own to achieve victory over the enemy? I was trying to build an army to fight these engineered ponies. That made me some kind of general, right? If generals were supposed to make those kinds of decisions…

If I did that, and it turned out that I couldn’t live with making that choice...even then it’d be alright, wouldn’t it? I’d have saved the valley. Sacrificing my own personal scruples was worth that. I mean, if I was ready to lay down my life, then why not my integrity?

All I had to do was not give her a choice.

Not that I could think of a lot of ways to actually make Moonbeam do anything, especially not after her recent ‘upgrades’. If she decided that she really didn’t want to become the weapon she’d been designed to be, then there probably wasn’t anything that could be done about it. I let out a defeated sigh and picked out the next holotape. I swapped it for the current one in my pipbuck and loaded up the file.

Only, this disk didn’t contain an audio log. It didn’t seem to contain a record of any kind. Instead, I started to see a wave of symbols falling down my helmet’s heads-up-display. It was moving along pretty fast, but what I could see of it looked like partial words, random numbers, and various punctuation that didn’t look to be anywhere near the right place to form a coherent sentence. This went on long enough for me to worry that I might have broken something and eject the disk. Hopefully Foxglove would be able to do something if I had managed to break anything…

>> GOODNIGHT_MOON.EXE DOWNLOAD COMPLETE

I stared up at the message, not sure what to make of it. Then, a moment later, I saw another pop up beneath it:

>> POSEIDON NODE DETECTED WITHIN RANGE

>> INITIATE REMOTE OVERRIDE? Y/N?

I froze in place, my brain working overtime. Then I recalled Nightjar’s last recording, and his mention of their plan to abduct Moonbeam. They couldn’t have known whether they’d be going up against the AI or not. Which meant that they’d have wanted a way to make sure that it wouldn’t resist, and that it could be made to obey its new masters in whatever organization it was that wanted her―the OIL or whoever.

So, it looked like they’d mitigated that particular risk and created some sort of program meant to make Selene obedient to them. In theory, I could use this program to subdue Moonbeam and force her to take control of the roboponies here.

I could have my army. I could save the valley…

All I’d have to do was sacrifice one pony. One life―barely a life, if I wanted to think of it that way―to save thousands. A pony who’d really already been ‘sacrificed’ two hundred years before I was even born by the Ministry of Awesome for this exact purpose. She wouldn’t even be dying or anything. She’d told me that Selene being in control was like dreaming.

I could put a pony to sleep to save the world, right? Anypony would be willing to do that to save everypony that they cared about.

Right?

My mouth opened. I could feel the air there, sitting in my throat, just waiting to be formed into the word. The single word that would save the citizens of Neighvada. Just the one, simple, word. All of our problems would be solved if I just said it, “Y―”

“Hey! Windfall! Mom’s coming around!”

My mouth slammed closed with an audible click. My eyes remained on the patiently waiting message hanging in front of my eye. I swallowed hard and ejected the disk. Just like that, the message went away entirely. My wing moved to slip the holotape back into my saddlebags with the others, but then I hesitated. Instead, I placed it into one of the pockets sewn into my barding so that it would be right at hoof when it was needed.

“Windfall?”

I jerked with a start as the robopony poked her head into the room, her pinks eyes regarding me intently, “you okay? You heard me, right?”

My head was nodding before I managed to form words again, “yeah, yeah. Sorry, I was looking over my equipment,” I took a deep breath and managed to wrangle up a reasonably happy looking smile for the metal mare, “let’s go see your mom.”

Moonbeam’s holographically formed features returned a wide grin of their own. Apparently her parent’s recovery had swept away her lingering despondency, which was good. It was good that she was happy again.

...it was good.

I trotted out after her and we made our way back to the clinic where I was greeted by the sight of a only barely conscious Starlight Glimmer. Upon catching sight of me her pale blue eyes lit up, a smile making a valiant attempt to appear on her tired lips, “hey there! So, I heard we won. Yay us…”

“Yeah,” I felt myself nodding, consciously aware of how hard I was working not to look in Moonbeam’s direction, “yeah...we won. How are you feeling?”

The mare shrugged, “not great,” she admitted, “but I’m guessing that it’s good that I’m ‘feeling’ at all, right?”

That much, at least, was true enough. Nopony here was a doctor by any stretch of the imagination, but I had to believe that her becoming conscious was a good sign. Besides, while I didn’t know what most of the numbers on all the monitoring equipment meant, they were all very reassuring colors, so, that was encouraging.

“Did we find what we needed?” the pink unicorn asked.

I took a deep breath and shook my head, “not really, no. They were building robots here, not guns. We might be able to make something work, but…” I could only shrug. The unicorn nodded her understanding, her own meager smile fading slightly, “your daughter got an upgrade though,” I offered in an effort to keep her spirits lifted, “so...that’s something,” my eye still couldn’t look at the robopony though. Not yet. Not after those thoughts that I’d just had.

Not after what I’d been about to do…

“I see that,” Starlight said, looking to the towering Moonbeam, “they really do grow up so fast.”

Those glowing pink eyes rolled, her holographic lips curling in a wry smirk, “it’s been two hundred years,” she pointed out, “I don’t know if I’d say that was ‘fast’.”

“I guess…” her mother admitted.

“But, at least I can kick some real flank now!” the metal mare made a show of flaring her new wings and displaying her reinforced casing for her mother to see. I could see, however, that Starlight didn’t seem to be particularly enthralled by the revelation. A part of me could sympathize. The unicorn had lived in a very different time. Presumably, she hadn’t desired for her daughter to grow up to be some sort of hardened fighter. I knew that my own mother hadn’t wanted this kind of life for me.

The Wasteland didn’t particularly care for the desires of mere ponies though. It took a perverse sort of pleasure in dashing those kinds of hopes every chance that it got.

“...I bet you could,” was all that Starlight Glimmer managed to say on the subject. There was very little pride to be heard in her words though. Moonbeam didn’t seem to catch it; or, if she did, she hadn’t visibly reacted.

“I’ve contacted the others,” I told her, changing the subject, “we’ll figure out the money thing later. They’ll keep recruiting and we’ll join them once you’re well enough to travel.”

“Sounds good,” the mare nodded weakly.

Silence enveloped the room, building upon my discomfort, “I’m going to comb the place,” I finally announced, “a lot of ponies used to live and work here. They had to have valuables, and we need the money,” without another word, I excused myself from the infirmary and trotted deeper into the facility.

When I was out of earshot, and confident that I wouldn’t be stumbled upon in the next few minutes, I let out a breath that I hadn’t known I was holding and collapsed against a wall. My hoof was resting against the pocket into which I had placed the holotape with the control program on it.

I could feel, in the depths of my mind, the disapproving glares of several tiny ponies who seemed to be party to my thoughts. Right now, they didn’t seem to care very much for what I was still considering. It wasn’t like it was something that I wanted to do to Moonbeam. But, if sacrificing her was what it took to save everypony...then it would be worth it, right?

...Right?

“So...I’ve been thinking about it,” I heard the voice of the pink unicorn mare saying from off to my left. I canted my head slightly so that I could see her from out of the corner of my working eye, “like, I’ve given this whole thing a lot of thought. I’ve weighed the advantages and the risks. I’ve tried to be as objective about it as possible. I really have.

“However, I have nevertheless come to a conclusion that I think you will both find very inconvenient,” my brow raised slightly as I noted her distinctly calm and even tone. It wasn’t that I found it strange that Starlight Glimmer was capable of speaking in that way. Far from it. Rather, I found it very interesting that she could maintain such a conversational tone while looking outright terrified!

“I hate flying!” the unicorn’s composure finally broke down as she screamed out the admission and proceeded to bury her face into the back of her daughter’s neck.

Moonbeam and I exchanged looks, both of us trying to stifle our amusement as we witnessed her freak-out. For my part, I found it patently hilarious that anypony could actually hate flying. It was literally the most awesome thing in the world that existed―and a little blue pegasus with a chromatic mane agreed with me wholeheartedly on that point.

“Relax, Mom,” the robopony said, “you’re not going to fall or anything; we’ve got you strapped down pretty good,” and we did. We’d all agreed before leaving that Starlight was recovered enough to travel, but we also all recognized that none of us were bona fide experts on pony health. So we’d taken some precautions just in case it turned out that we were all idiots and put together a harness of sorts to keep the unicorn in place in the event that she passed out mid-flight.

“‘Pretty good’ isn’t the same thing as ‘very good’,” she pointed out anxiously, her eyes squeezed shut so that she didn’t have to look down, “or ‘perfect’, for that matter!”

“You’re fine,” I insisted, trying my best not to sound a little annoyed at her unfounded concerns, “and even if you do fall off, I’ll catch you!”

“If I’m strapped in so well, then how come you think I might need you to catch me!”

“I don’t think that―but you just―!” I let out an exasperated growl, “you’re fine!” I said once again, “besides, we’ll be in New Reino in, like, three more hours at this rate.”

By electing to fly the whole way back to join up with the others, we’d shaved a week off of the trip. Even as close as we were right now, going the rest of the way by foot could end up taking the better part of two days. And that was assuming that Starlight was even well enough to withstand that kind of demanding physical activity so soon after recovering from her injury. Keeping her on top of Moonbeam, and jostling her around with all of the walking might even prove too much for her body to handle.

She was just going to have to deal with being scared for the rest of the trip, because there wasn’t anything that she could say to change my mind about flying the entire way back to New Reino.

“Vertibuck; East!”

I blinked in surprise at Moonbeam’s shouted words before I noticed that she was looking to her left. I turned my attention to follow hers and, sure enough, I could make out a tiny black dot in the distance. At this great distance, I couldn’t tell exactly what the dot was, but I had no reason to doubt that the metal mare’s own mechanically enhanced vision wouldn’t have been able to positively identify it as one of the flying contraptions that the Steel Rangers were known to possess.

Though, I had to admit, I could think of only a few times that I’d even heard about the Rangers actually taking one of them out into the valley in the last decade. As I understood it, they didn’t have all that many of them in the area, and were loath to risk them where the Republic was likely to ambush them and shoot them down. Of course, the New Lunar Republic had recently undergone a pretty drastic redeployment of their forces, hadn’t they? The Steel Rangers probably didn’t feel very concerned about coming across an armed patrol these days.

I could also only think of a few reasons that these technophiles would have for being out in the middle of nowhere...conveniently close to where we just happened to be. Or rather: where Moonbeam happened to be. On a hunch, I looked the other way. As I’d feared: I spied another black dot to our west that was getting rapidly larger on the horizon, “another one to the West,” I advised the robopony.

“And a third one to the South, right in our path,” she warned, “they’ve got us surrounded.”

She was right, I realized. There was now no longer a doubt in my mind about what had brought three of the rare craft out to this remote part of the Neighvada Valley at precisely the right moment to trap us.

“How is that possible!” Starlight demanded, her eyes still shut firmly, “all of this sky and they somehow found us like this?!”

“It actually wouldn’t have been very hard for them to do,” I was forced to admit, even though my own initial mental reaction had been very similar to hers. However, all it took was a moment’s thought to see how we’d been caught so easily, “they would have been able to hear the interview that I did with Homily, just like everypony else in the valley. Plus, they were who I got the location of the hangar from. They couldn’t have known we were going there specifically, but it wouldn’t have been hard to guess that we’d eventually be going to at least one of the places I got from them.

“All they had to do was get a lookout near those places and wait for us to show up,” Achilles had vowed that the Steel Rangers would come after me again, and while I hadn’t believed that it was an entirely idle threat, I hadn’t expected them to act quite this soon. Not after being so thoroughly beaten during our last encounter. How many times did those ponies need to be stopped cold before they got the hint anyway?

“If we let them drive us to the ground, we’re dead,” Moonbeam said, though she wasn’t sounding particularly optimistic about being able to avoid having that happen.

“They can chase us all the way to New Reino too,” I pointed up, sounding just as unhappy about our options as she was. We weren’t likely to find a lot of protection within the valley’s gambling hub. The Rangers didn’t necessarily have to confront us directly once we were there. All they had to do was threaten the casino barons that ran the place, and demand that the locals produce us for the Steel Rangers. I didn’t have anywhere near the goodwill built up with New Reino that I did with McMaren. Nopony there was going to stick their necks out on my account, let alone Moonbeam’s.

We could either resolve ourselves to fighting the Rangers here and now, which I wasn’t looking forward to doing against the kind of firepower that they’d brought to bear, or…

I was frowning even as I tuned my pipbuck to the frequency that the Steel Rangers used, “well, good afternoon, fellas. What brings you all the way out here?” Maybe feigning ignorance was being a little more antagonistic towards these ponies than was likely smart, but all I was really interested in was getting them to talk to me. As long as they did that―

“We’re here for the AI, Wonderbolt,” I blinked in stunned surprise as I recognized the voice of the mare who was responding to me. As much of a surprise as it had been that any Rangers had come after us like this, it was far more of one that she’d be here to do it, given what I’d been led to believe by Achilles, “give it to us, and you can go free.”

“Star Paladin Hoplite? What are you doing? I thought we had an under―”

“It’s Initiate Hoplite,” the mare cut me off, bitterly, causing me to wince at the habitual reference I’d made to her former rank, “and I’m telling you for the last time: turn over the AI to us and you can leave,” there was a pregnant pause, then, “otherwise...we’ll open fire. You have thirty seconds,” I heard a brief burst of static as the frequency was closed off. There would be no more talking.

I glanced to my left, “I take it you heard that?”

The robopony nodded, “I heard. I’m not going back with them,” she said emphatically.

“No, you’re not,” I assured her, and I meant it. Running wasn’t an option, but I really didn’t want to fight if I didn’t have to. The fact that it was Hoplite leading this group, and not a pony like Achilles, let me think that there was a possibility of talking our way to a solution. Admittedly, I wasn’t sure what that solution would be, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t one somewhere that we couldn’t both accept. Hoplite had proven herself to be a reasonable pony―er, horse, rather...I really needed to stop doing that―in the past. Hopefully that meant that I could work something out with her again.

“But I don’t want to kill anypony if we don’t have to.”

“They’re Rangers, Windfall,” her voice dripped with obvious loathing for the technophilic order, “and they were warned.”

“I know this Ranger,” I assured the robopony, “I’ve worked with her in the past.”

“And, yet, here we are in the present, surrounded by Rangers, which includes her,” she retorted, “I’m left wondering how well those talks worked out?”

“Just give me a chance, Moonbeam. That’s all I’m asking for.”

The metal mare was quiet for several seconds, then, “fine. You get your chance. One chance,” she emphasized, before she began descending towards the ground. I cast my eye at the vertibuck in front of us, mentally urging those ponies not to make me regret this, before following her and Starlight down.

We’d only just finished unstrapping the pink unicorn mare from her daughter’s back when one of the vertibucks landed a few dozen yards away. I noticed that the other two continued to drift around us. I could see Steel Rangers perched in the open sides of the massive flying machines. However, even from here, I noticed that there was something very different about these Rangers from any other that I could remember seeing: they weren’t wearing their usual powered barding. Instead, they were dressed in some sort of orange jumpsuits.

Given the results of our last encounter, I suppose that it made some sense that they wouldn’t want to get too close to Moonbeam with their armor on. On the other hoof, that also meant that we were without our prior advantage. It was highly doubtful that Moonbeam had a virus at hoof that could infect simple fabric garments…

It was hard to miss the lanky ghoul who was the first to disembark from the grounded vertibuck. This was the first time that I’d seen Hoplite all the way out of her armor, and the lack of the bulky steel barding only served to further emphasize her trim and tall figure, especially compared with her squat pony peers. I waved at the mare and began to trot over, trusting that our past relationship would be enough of an assurance that I wasn’t interested in starting things off with any violence.

However, I drew to a hard stop before reaching her, my intended greeting shriveling away unspoken as I noticed the pony that had exited directly behind her. I’d seen his face just a couple weeks ago. Back then, it had been scowling in rage and loathing. But now...Achilles was grinning.

I put the pieces together in my head in probably only a few seconds after seeing the Star Paladin. There’d be no talking our way out of this, I realized. That had never been the plan from the Steel Rangers’ perspective. Frankly, I highly doubted that there had ever been the intent to let any of us leave unharmed either, even if we had chosen to comply―which Achilles had to have known wouldn’t happen anyway. He’d known that The Wonderbolt would jump at the chance to talk though. Hoplite’s reports would have been all the proof the stallion would have needed of that.

Although, he’d also have to have known that I probably wouldn’t have agreed to negotiate with him. Not after what had happened at my family’s ranch. Hoplite was another matter. I’d talked with her in the past. I trusted her. He knew that. He knew that Hoplite was a good mare...and that that quality could be exploited where I was concerned.

To her credit, Hoplite even gave me the last clue that I needed. It had been almost imperceptible. Anypony not looking directly at her probably wouldn’t have noticed it. Of course, since my attention had been locked almost exclusively on the mare, that meant that I did notice when she gave the subtle shake of her head, her milky eyes warning me away.

This was a trap!

I stopped in my tracks, and turned around to warn the others.

Though the recognition had taken only a few short seconds, and my attempt at a warning a fraction more, the cold reality was that we’d been doomed from the moment we’d touched down. The Rangers on board those still airborne vertibucks had us in what amounted to a killing field. Each of the vertibucks launched two missiles right at Moonbeam and Starlight, and I was powerless to help them. They’d at least seen my reaction, and my effort to return to them. That alone had triggered something within the pink mare. Too quickly to have seen the incoming rockets, she erected a shimmering faceted dome of protective magic around the two of them.

I suspected that, against a conventional explosive, that barrier would have been sufficient to shield the two of them from harm. However, it appeared that the Rangers had not fitted those particular warheads with their typical shaped charges. Indeed, the vibrant eruptions of blue lightning suggested that those weapons had been intended specifically for Moonbeam.

They also had a devastating effect on Starlight’s barrier. It would be explained to me later, in much more detail than I was capable of retaining, that there was a very close relationship between the magical energy that powered nearly all pony machines, and the innate magic that was used in the casting of unicorn spells. Thus, weapons that were designed to disrupt machines―like blue-banded grenades―could also dispel some magicks. So it was that the expanding spheres of electrical energy seemed to unravel the unicorn’s shield spell, and continue right on through to ravage Moonbeam.

The robopony didn’t even seem to react. There was no scream of pain, or even a look of shock. Her pink eyes simply winked out the moment the first tendrils of lightning touched her. The holographic face that she had been maintaining dissolved away. A second later she just...fell over. Like an empty suit of power armor.

“Moonbeam!”

I barely heard Starlight’s anguished cry. Her mind was likely racing with all sorts of paralyzing thoughts about what that attack might have done to the very magical talismans that were keeping her daughter’s organic body alive. For all that she knew, she’d just watched her child die. I wasn’t thinking about any of that though. There wasn’t time to. The Rangers had thought to use their moment of surprise to make a preemptive strike on the pony who represented the most significant threat to them, in an effort to cripple our ability to retaliate before we could respond.

Unfortunately for them, they’d targeted the wrong pony.

The world slowed down to a crawl as I engaged my pipbuck’s Sparkle Assisted Targeting System. The drifting pair of vertibucks hung nearly motionless in the air, the Rangers in the doorways reloading their launchers with what looked to be standard warheads now. They’d wanted Moonbeam intact. Starlight and I, not so much. I locked to one vertibuck, queuing a single attack, and then I shifted the system to target the other craft with another single strike. I spread my wings and planted my hooves.

Then I executed the sequence.

For the majority of this trip, I had been operating with my Gale Force in one of the low-power flight assist modes that Foxglove had wired into it. It was enough to nearly double my typical flight speed, while simultaneously using only a small trickle of power. I’d swapped out for a fresh spark battery when we’d stopped for lunch a couple of hours ago, meaning that I still had a little over half a charge left. At the rig’s maximum thrust settings, that was about five seconds of powered flight. Which would be more than enough for me to clear the skies right now.

I transformed into a teal and white streak as I bolted for the first vertibuck. My target was admittedly a rather small one, and would have been difficult to hit under most circumstances. If the pilots of those machines had been moving at any great speed, I probably wouldn’t have been able to manage this. However, moving quickly would have meant sacrificing the aim of their gunners, and they’d wanted to be very precise with those opening shots in order to avoid missing and completely ruining their efforts. So right at this moment they were hardly moving at all.

That made it a very simple prospect to buzz through the narrow gap that existed between the metal fuselage, and the whirling rotors spinning overhead. The alloyed blade running along the front of my wing met hardly any resistance at all as it passed through the rapidly rotating column of metal and hydraulics that served to connect the vertibuck to its means of flight. Then my wings flared, the levitation talismans embedded into the rig working overtime to first stop, and then reverse, my flight path, sending me streaking to the second airborne vertibuck.

The first one had barely even begun to fall when its companion was rendered similarly flightless. I didn’t spare the time to admire my work though. After all, that was only two of the three threats dealt with. My Gale Force rig was effectively depleted by this point, but that hardly mattered. Now I was the one attacking a grounded target from the air, and the Ranger flying machines weren’t well equipped to deal with threats from above, it turned out.

I dove for my grounded quarry, throwing my forelimbs forward in rapid succession. My bracers belched bolts in a nearly steady stream, saturating their landing zone and eviscerating the engine of the grounded vertibuck that Hoplite and Achilles had been riding on. The pair of Rangers scrambled to get away from the clear focus of my ire. Even the pilot who had been inside of it was doing his level best to be somewhere else as his craft was picked apart around him.

The final vertibuck now out of action, I directed my attentions at a new target: the one pony who could end all of this once and for all. Star Paladin Achilles was moving rather stiffly even after almost two weeks since Moonbeam had laimed. Apparently whatever Moonbeam had done to his leg was still in the process of healing. Not that he’d have been able to escape me with four perfectly working limbs anyway. I descended upon the earth pony stallion, tackling him to the ground without much regard for how badly he might get hurt in the process.

He went down with a rather satisfying scream of anguish, and I was pretty sure I managed to break his shoulder when I landed on him. I stretched out my wing and placed the Gale Force’s keen razor none-to-lightly against the side of his neck as a rather pointed―heh―indication that he really didn’t want to do anything that I might find disagreeable. Achilles proved to be a lot smarter than he looked and declined to make any further effort to evade me. However, he did still regard me with a rather baleful look that I didn’t very much appreciate.

Their leader subdued and at my mercy, I finally spared a few moments to survey the aftermath of my retribution. The two vertibucks that I’d downed looked to be mostly intact―save for the bits that let them fly―having apparently been designed with the idea that battle damage might render it necessary to make less than ideal landings. I did, however, doubt that any of them were at all salvagable. It didn’t look like there was any part of them that wasn’t bent or broken. That included their occupants, most of whom were literally making attempts to crawl out of their savaged vehicles while nursing one or two broken limbs. A few looked like they’d been lucky enough to have only been rattled by the impacts, and were focused on aiding their more seriously injured companions.

Nopony looked particularly willing to continue fighting. I took that to be a good sign.

Hoplite was back on her hooves now too, also surveying the damage that I’d wrought on their little task group. I noted that there was an oddly satisfied glint in her eyes. Something that struck me as being along the lines of an ‘I told you so’. She soon found me standing over their superior officer and her withered lips spread into a cruel little smile as she walked closer.

“Why, Star Paladin Achilles...I do not envy the report you’ll be making to the Elder about how badly you fucked this up,” oh yeah, she seemed to be enjoying this, “I suspect that she’ll need to invent a rank below initiate to demote you to in order to properly punish you for this.”

“Don’t talk to me, abomination!” the stallion seethed from beneath me. Not caring for his tone, I flexed my wing to remind him of his predicament. He got the message and clamped his mouth shut. Though his features were still heavily creased in a deep scowl.

“You should go check on your Rangers,” I urged the ghoul, “the Star Paladin and I have surrender terms to discuss,” oh, he didn’t like that choice of wording!

Hoplite looked torn between her desire to further taunt the stallion and carrying out what she knew should be her priority at a time like this. Duty won out in the end though. She turned to leave, but hesitated for a moment, looking over at me, “for what it’s worth: I’m sorry.”

“I know,” I sighed. The Saddle Arabian Ranger left to go and care for her comrades, leaving me alone with the Star Paladin to have our little chat. For his sake, I hoped that it proved productive, “personally, I don’t care what the Rangers do to you when you get back home,” I informed the stallion, “they can promote you, for all the fucks I give.

“What I care about is your ability to learn a lesson,” I knocked Achilles over the head with my hoof for emphasis, “now, I know you Rangers are a thick bunch. Dealing with Hoplite taught me that much! Of course, if you had any sense in your head either, we wouldn’t be talking like this right now. So I’m going to spell out a few things for you as simply as I can in the vain hope you’re capable of actually learning something:

“You Rangers think you’re tough shit, and I get that. I’ll even admit that you’ve earned that reputation, for the most part. You’re big, well armed, well armored, and have all sorts of fancy toys,” I waved the wing that wasn’t currently pressed up against his throat at the nearby smoldering vertibuck that he’d rode in on, “y’all do have a lot going for you. You really do.

“But you guys came out here seeming to have forgotten one thing,” I leaned in close to the Star Paladin’s ear so that there was no chance that he wouldn’t hear what I said next, “you Rangers have never been able to beat me. This right here marks the fifth fight I’ve been involved in with you assholes, and you Rangers haven’t come out on top once!

“Is it because I haven’t been killing enough of you, is that it?!” I seethed in the stallion’s ear, urging his head further back as my wing pressed even more firmly against his throat, “is it not enough to just beat you? Do I have to execute each and every Steel Ranger I come across to really hammer this point home?”

He didn’t answer.

“Tell me!” I screamed at the earth pony, drawing a wince from him as I was still bent down next to his ear. I took a deep breath and straightened myself up. In a more civil volume, though it came out as more of a growl, I continued, “it was one thing when we just happened to run into each other in the Wasteland. I could live with just having to pay attention to where you ponies were and make an effort to not be there. But now you’re actively following me around.

“You’re going after me. Even worse? You’re going after my friends,” I looked over to where Starlight was still bent over her daughter’s inert body. A lump built up in my throat as I noted that my Eyes Forward Sparkle wasn’t showing a blip associated with the robopony’s body. That usually meant that whoever I was looking at was dead, but...I also knew that robots that were simply turned off didn’t register either. Was that how it worked with Moonbeam?

“It stops now,” I heard myself saying, “this is the last time, do you understand me?” I looked down at the stallion to be certain that he was paying attention, “because the next time, I will personally come for you, and I will dismantle your entire order and cast its remains to the winds.

“The Steel Rangers, an organization that has endured in the Wasteland for two hundred years, will end,” I informed the stallion, without the slightest hint of doubt or levity, “and it will all be because you couldn’t leave a little pegasus and her friends alone.

“Do. You. Understand?”

Achilles met my gaze with a defiance that I did not appreciate as he responded, “we will not abandon our sworn duty. Not on your word, little filly. Make all the threats you want. Kill me if you must. The Steel Rangers swore an oath, and we will uphold it!”

I let out a defeated sigh, dropping my wing away from his throat. That seemed to have come as a great surprise to the Steel Ranger, who apparently had been quite certain that I’d kill him for saying that, “I guess it’s true: you can teach a pony a lesson, but you can’t make them learn it,” I shrugged and turned away, heading back to Starlight and her daughter to see if there was anything that I could do to help, “if you want the Steel Rangers to end with the current generation...well, that’s on you now, Achilles.”

The pink unicorn turned to look at me, her mouth open as if about to say something. From the expression on her face, I assumed that it was going to be some sort of plea for me to do something―anything―to help her daughter, who still didn’t seem to be responding. However, before she could speak, her expression shifted very suddenly, from one of anguish, to a look of terror. Her blue eyes were locked onto something behind me. At that same moment, my ear twitched as I heard the high-pitched whine of an energy weapon’s capacitors charging to fire.

Reacting on instinct, I spun around, cloaking myself with my wings. Apparently I had moved not a moment too soon. I didn’t see it, but I heard the magical energy pistol discharge, and I felt the searing heat as the crimson bolt struck the alloyed wing coverings of the Gale Force. Two more shots followed closely on the heels of the first, splashing off the protective shielding of my flight rig and leaving behind blackened scorch marks and the smell of burning flesh and feathers.

I quickly rolled away, leaping into the air in a flurry of wings as I drew my compact pistol and brought it to bear on the cretenous stallion who’d tried to shoot me in the back after I’d just spared his life. However, before I could get off a shot, there was another flash of scarlet light. This time it didn’t come from the Star Paladin though. It emanated from somewhere behind me and, in fact, struck the earth pony. Well, more accurately, it passed clean through him. The stream of brilliant red light lasted for a solid second, and appeared to quiver from side to side.

When it ended, Achilles simply...fell apart.

Everypony seemed to be frozen in shock. First, having been taken aback by the Star Paladin’s sudden assault from behind, and then by his swift and unexpected dismantlement. Even my own gaze was stuck lingering on the steaming hunks of limbs and flesh that had once been a living pony only seconds ago. It was only with a conscious effort that I was able to tear my attention away and seek out the source of his macabre death. What I found somehow only served to fill me with an even greater sense of dread.

Moonbeam was back on her hooves, it seemed. Only, the synthetic mare looked even less like Moonbeam than I could remember. Including when I’d come across her immediately after her recent upgrade. Her pink eyes were blood red, and it seemed that no attempt was being made by the robopony to project any sort of holographic face across her head any longer. Her attention was focused on Hoplite’s remains.

However, that didn’t last for very long.

“Moonbeam, you’re alright―!” Starlight’s relief at seeing her daughter up and moving again was short-lived. The robopony’s horn began to glow for only a second or two before a burst of energy erupted outward from around the metal mare, throwing away any ponies or debris that were in her immediate proximity. This included the pink unicorn, who went tumbling end-over-end, having been the closest to Moonbeam when the spell went off.

I dove for the pink pony to make certain that she was alright, “what―?” she was disoriented, certainly, but not seriously injured, it seemed. Then the mare’s eyes went wide, “Moonbeam! No!”

Expecting to be on the receiving end of another attack, I threw up my wings to shield the both of us, but the effort proved to be a futile one: it wasn’t the two of us that the robopony seemed interested in. Peering over my armored appendages, I saw Moonbeam’s horn lash out with another sustained ray of crimson energy. It licked at one of the injured Steel Rangers, weaving through her body and very deftly carving the poor mare into about a half dozen portions of varying sizes.

She was going to kill them all, I realized. Already, I could see the tip of her horn glowing as it charged up for another burst of lethal light. The Steel Rangers were at a loss. Their vertibucks were in tatters, and their heaviest ordinance along with them. They very clearly knew that what sidearms they had would be less than useless in stopping the robopony alicorn that was ravaging them. Most of them were too injured to even try and run away, not that any of them thought for a moment that they could have without the aid of their flying machines.

I could see the acceptance clearly on Hoplite’s face. She recognized their doom, and realized that there was no escaping from it.

Only a moment ago, I had vowed to the now-dead Achilles that I would tear down the Steel Rangers...but not like this. I wanted their organization gone―the manic technophile mentality that spurred ponies to imprison Moonbeam, and to wage a decade-long war on ponies simply to reclaim a single robopony. I wanted their doctrine to die…

...not helpless, injured, ponies.

I threw out my hoof.

The bolt of energy caught the metal alicorn in the head, diverting her beam at the last moment, and sparing the life of the Steel Ranger that she’d been targeting. The robopony hesitated, and then turned to look directly at me. Even from where I was, I could see that the damage that I’d inflicted had been minimal...and it was slowly starting to repair itself.

I had her attention though, that was the important part, “stop it, Selene!” I yelled at her, for I knew now that was who it had to be in control at the moment. Moonbeam was certainly not a fan of the Rangers, by any stretch, but I refused to believe that Starlight’s daughter would be slaughtering helpless ponies like this. The artificial intelligence that had been designed to control war-machines, on the other hoof? Yeah, I would believe that she would be doing this.

“The fight’s over, Selene! They’re beaten. You don’t have to kill them,” as I spoke, I began slowly edging closer to the Rangers, interposing myself between them and the alicorn. I entertained no illusions that the protective armored shell covering my wings would be able to stop that beam of hers. It had barely been up to the task of rebuffing Achilles’ little energy pistol. Mostly, I was just operating under the notion that I wasn’t somepony that Selene would shoot at.

There wasn’t any particular reason that should be the case, granted; but if Moonbeam was still in there somewhere, I was confident that she’d intervene before I ended up as Windfall giblets. If it turned out that I was wrong…

...well, hopefully I’d at least be killed instantly...

“All hostiles must be eliminated.”

That most definitely wasn’t Moonbeam’s voice. The level of distortion in the words was such that it almost sounded like several ponies speaking at once, honestly.

“They don’t look very hostile anymore to me,” I pointed out, gesturing at the injured collection of defeated ponies who seemed to be too scared to move, lest they risk being the next pony to be diced by the robopony, “I’d say you accomplished the mission. Now stand down, Selene.”

The metal alicorn peered down at me with those brilliant red eyes, contemplating me for several agonizingly long seconds. Then, “you are unauthorized to give orders to this network.”

“Yeah, well, who is exactly?” I rebuked the artificial intelligence, “you have to know that the Equestria you knew is gone. The Ministry of Awesome doesn’t exist anymore. Everypony that worked on making your died centuries ago.

“So, tell me: whose orders do you obey now, exactly?”

“This network will operate using standing rules of engagement until a recognized authority presents itself,” it responded simply.

“Well, the zebras aren’t here, so that means you have no enemies to engage,” I pointed out, “so stand down!”

The robopony cocked her head slightly before responding, “Royal Equestrian Declaration of Hostilities, Article Three: Designation of Lawful Combatants: any sovereign nation, or paramilitary organization, or individual, or collection of unorganized individuals, that takes hostile action against elements of the Royal Equestrian Military shall be considered a de facto ‘enemy force’ until such time as a formal resolution can be drafted to clarify the aforementioned group’s diplomatic status with Equestria and its allies,” Selene’s head straightened once more, her scarlet eyes flashing briefly at me, “the standing orders of this network are clear. These ‘Steel Rangers’ must be eliminated.

“And so must you.”

Oh, horseapples…

I was moving before I was even thinking about where I was going to go. After all, it hardly mattered, so long as I wasn’t in any one spot for longer than a moment. Selene’s crimson beam traced after me as I made my frantic flight to ‘anywhere else’. My nose tingled with the fresh scent of burned hair, and I suspected that my tail had not been as fortunate in avoiding injury as the rest of me was for the moment.

Gunshots and the high-pitched whine of energy weapon fire rang out from below. It was now that I spared a glance, though I felt my gut knot at having already reasoned out the source of the weapons fire, and the inevitable consequences. A few of the healthier Steel Rangers had taken up their weapons in a bid to catch Selene while she was distracted. However, it seemed that the robopony’s recent upgrades had been expertly applied. None of the solid rounds seemed to have the power behind them to actually penetrate the reinforced chassis, and the paltry output of the energy pistols left only the same minor scoring that they did on my own alloyed wing armor.

Selene’s response was much more potent. With what seemed like an afterthought, two more Rangers were butchered by her horn’s blood red beam. I couldn’t tell who I was angrier at: Selene for slaughtering ponies who were clearly no threat to her, or the Rangers who seemed to be downright intent on getting themselves killed in a fight they had to know they couldn’t win! In either event, I couldn’t allow it to go on. As ridiculous as it seemed even to myself: I was the only pony present who could hope to stand a chance against Selene.

My hoof moved to the pocket holding the holotape containing Nightjar’s program, “hey! I thought you were supposed to be some sort of super sophisticated combat computer or something?” I yelled at the robopony, throwing out a couple more blasts from my fetlock-mounted energy weapons, “so then why are you taking your eyes off the real threat here: me?”

The alicorn android threw up one of her own allowed wings, deftly deflecting my shots. However, I managed to accomplish my primary mission and now had Selene’s undivided attention, “your mother was desk fan, and your father smelled like a ghoul’s backside!” I zipped down, buzzing past the glaring robopony and popping off another quick jab that was just as ineffectual as all the others before it. As I flitted past Hoplite, I offered an abrupt, “nooffense!”

As I leveled out into a steep climb away from the ground, my ear twitched as it detected the sound of something rumbling behind me. I spared a glance over my left shoulder and immediately blanched. Selene had engaged her own Gale Force, and was very quickly closing the gap between us, her horn already charging up for another strike, “holyhorseapples!”

I rolled and flipped around, cringing as I felt the tendons in my wing joints protesting the sudden shifts in my momentum. However, I gladly accepted the mild joint pain in lieu of the violent death by dicing that I narrowly avoided as a result. Selene didn’t seem to have nearly the aversion to spontaneous shifts in g-forces that my flesh and blood body did though. With a stilting abruptness that made her look otherworldly, the metal mare veritably paused in mid air and spun in place, lashing out at me with both hind hooves.

The full brunt of the fierce double-kick caught me square in the gut. I felt the ceramic plates of my armored barding, designed to absorb even the strikes of high-powered rifle rounds, pulverize in an instant beneath the force of Selene’s buck―along with a rib or two, if the intense pain was any indication. Most of the air was expelled from my lungs as my body was flung backwards. The disorientation was such that I must have blacked out for a moment. That was the only way that my brain was able to explain taking a second hard hit from behind a second later.

That time, I knew that I didn’t lose consciousness. Yet, I was still at a loss to explain how Selene was suddenly in front of me once more. I cringed, attempting a last minute flip to avoid being close-lined by the spinning buck that the metal mare was building up to deliver. The reinforced alloyed limb sailed just over my jaw, missing by less than an inch. Then Selene’s Gale Force talismans burst to life and immediately changed the axis of the alicorn’s rotation from a spin into a roll. Her now downward angled chopping slice landed across my chest and I felt something that wasn’t my barding give way.

Breathing was suddenly next to impossible and I was falling towards the ground, tumbling languidly as my wings managed only half-hearted flutters through my shock and pain. The alloyed alicorn hovered high above, watching me fall with an air of indifference, as though she had just swatted away an annoying little insect.

“Windfall!” I was faintly aware of Starlight screaming my name, and then I felt weighless. My world acquired a gentle azure haze to it. It was hard to keep track of everything that was happening right about now. The lack of oxygen was beginning to have an affect on my brain, and things were getting muddled.

There was a pink blur, some ponies were yelling things, but they sounded far away. Something bitter was touching my lips and spilling onto my tongue. A lifetime of danger and injuries allowed some instinctive part of me to instantly recognize it as a healing potion being poured into my mouth and I swallowed it on reflex. Just as the last of the concoction was emptied, I could feel the pain in my chest start to lessen and it became―slightly―easier to breathe again. Each inhalation felt like I was breathing in fire, but it was at least enough to get my brain focusing again.

Starlight Glimmer’s distant words cleared up rather suddenly halfway through what she was trying to tell me “―have to get away from here! I don’t know what’s wrong with her; it’s like, like she’s not herself!” the pink unicorn’s features were contorted with anguish as her teary eyes beheld her rampaging daughter. The Steel Rangers were trying to form what they could of a defensive perimeter as they evacuated their wounded, with Hoplite organizing things. She might no longer have the rank, but in the midsts of the current madness, she very clearly retained the respect and ingrained obedience of her peers.

“No,” I managed to cough out, along with some bloody spittle that the healing potion had brought up from my recently punctured lungs. My fetlock smeared the crimson dribble and I struggled to get back up onto my hooves, ignoring the pink mare’s protests, “she’s not.”

I reached into the pocket of my barding where I’d stashed the holotape and withdrew it, sliding it into my pipbuck, “I’ll get her back,” or we’d all die, I very distinctly declined to add out loud.

“Windfall―!”

“Stay down,” I instructed the mare, “but be ready to help when we need it.”

“Help? How?! I’m not going to kill my own daughter!”

“You won’t have to,” I assured her. At the moment, I didn’t know if that was because I was going to find some way to bring Moonbeam back to us, or if it was because I’d be the one to do that in her place. We’d all learn the answer in the next minute or two.

If I had wanted to be able to explain things to Starlight in greater detail, Selene seemed inclined to rob me of the opportunity. She’d deigned to return to the ground once more. The members of the Steel Rangers’ defensive line were engaging her now, but it was clear that they lacked the firepower to do anything more than annoy the metal mare. I saw her horn building up another lethal charge. Time was up, “be ready!” I yelled at the unicorn before launching myself back into the fray.

“Moonbeam!” I screamed out at the top of my lungs, drawing a collection of confused and nervous looks from among the gathered Rangers; and, in an instant, the shooting stopped. The word also evoked the slightest of twitches from the alicorn facing them down as well. I landed right in the middle of what could, at any moment, become a very deadly crossfire, glaring at the robopony, “I know you’re in there, Moonbeam!”

For the time being, at least, guns were no longer blazing, and even the alicorn’s horn wasn’t lashing out. Though the crimson glow of its prepared charge remained. In the corner of my vision, I noted the familiar scrolling characters of the GOODNIGHT_MOON.EXE program as it loaded into my pipbuck’s buffer. It ended in the prompt from earlier, and that was where I left it, primed and ready at a moment’s notice. It was the closest thing that I had to an ace in this fight, but I didn’t want to use it if I didn’t have to. Selene wasn’t stopping me from talking, so I was going to do that for as long as she’d let me.

“Shut her down, Moonbeam,” I continued, standing my ground between the towering steel mare and the nervous Rangers. I waved my forelimb at the latter, not taking my eyes off of the alicorn, “they’re not a threat anymore. They can’t hurt you, and they won’t try anymore,” I was extremely grateful to hear Hoplite picking up on what I was saying and very sternly instructing the other Rangers to lower their weapons and slowly back away.

“The fight’s over,” I reiterated, “so it’s time to put Selene away and come back to us, Moonbeam. Come back to your mom, Moonbeam.”

Starlight wasn’t quite as quick to interject herself as the ghoul had been, but after a pointed glare and wave of my hoof she eventually ventured closer and started speaking as well, “yes―yes! Please, Moonbeam, stop what you’re doing,” she pleaded, “I know you’re angry at them, and nopony can blame you. But this…” she looked around the battlefield and the smoldering vertibuck wrecks and the chunks of diced Rangers before returning her glistening eyes to her daughter, “this is too much. Please...let it stop here.”

“Enemies of Equestria must be destroyed,” the metal mare responded.

“Hey!” I snarled back at her, “butt out! We’re talking to Moonbeam, not you!”

“There is no distinction.”

Starlight began to shake her head in disbelief, but no words came out. So I spoke instead, “I don’t believe that―I don’t believe that, Moonbeam! Now you come back out here and prove me right,” I took a deep breath and started taking slow, deliberate steps towards the mare.

“This network does not recognize―”

“Shut up!” I snarled, “Moonbeam, I know you’re in there! You know how? Because I know you’re scared! I remember our talk this morning, Moonbeam. Right after you got your upgrade. I remember you talking about how you felt different.

“I didn’t really understand what you meant then, but I think I do now. You weren’t sure if you were a real pony, were you? I’m right, aren’t I?” there was no answer, but I pressed on anyway, “I mean, Starlight―your own mother―got tricked for months by a fake, right? If those ministry ponies could make program good enough to fool your own mother, then why couldn’t they make, well...you?

“Why couldn’t they make ‘Moonbeam’?”

“Well, I know they didn’t! You know how? Because you’re scared that they might have! How stupid would that be, to make a fake program that was afraid it might be a fake program? I mean, yeah, those ponies were stupid enough to blow up Equestria, but what we’re talking about here is a whole new level of dumb!

“That’s why I know you’re real, Moonbeam; and that’s why I know you’re in there. Now it’s time for you to come out and put this bitch that’s driving your body in her place!”

Those crimson eyes flashed brighter, but I held my ground, “your last words have been logged,” Selene said in what wasn’t quite the same dispassionate voice that she’d used up to this point. The glow at the base of her horn pulsed, and I’ll admit that I flinched, fully expecting to die right then and there. Indeed, that final utterance of ‘yes’ to execute the program and shut Selene down was halfway up my throat when the both of us were surprised to see that pulse of light come to naught.

The light in her horn died away completely, and I breathed a sigh of relief. However, it turned out to be a very misleading reprieve, as that sigh was not sooner across my lips than I found myself tackled to the ground by about half a ton of steel alloyed mare. I bounced and rolled along the ground, finally coming to a pained stop a dozen feet from where I just been standing. When I looked up, Selene was standing above me, her glowing eyes twitching.

I coughed and began to once more slowly stumble back up to a standing position, “that’s it, Moonbeam; put that bitch in her place,” I groaned, “you’re in control, not it…”

That last comment earned me another solid punt further afield. Still I refused to be silenced, even if my words were starting to slur a bit by now, “that thing...it’s just a stupid computer program…” I hoped that I was speaking loud enough to be heard by somepony besides myself. It was hard to tell. That last hit had my ears ringing a good bit, “doing what dead ponies told it to do…

“It’s not a real pony...because it can only obey its programing,” I tried to stand up again, but Selene didn’t let me get all the way up before swatting me aside once more. It was hard to tell if her hits were getting weaker, or if my body was just so saturated with pain that I couldn’t feel new injuries anymore.

My mouth was still working at least, “...but a real mare...can choose for herself…”

This time I was kicked while still laying on the ground, “silence!”

“Programs obey…” I murmured, sputtering out a glob of blood that was pooling in my mouth. I managed to turn my head towards the alicorn and smirk up at her in smug satisfaction, “but I’m a mare. So: fuck...you. Fuck her, Moonbeam!”

A solid metal hoof grabbed me by the collar of my barding and hauled me off the ground. Every part of me hurt to much to even attempt to move, so I simple dangled from her grasp like a limp sack; but I didn’t stay quiet, “A mare chooses; a program obeys,” I slurred, “so make Selene obey your choices, Moonbe―”

My jaw caught a heavy metal hoof for my trouble, but still I pressed on, “a mare chooses; a program obe―” another hit, “a mare chooses; a―” my head lolled back, and my half-lidded eyes beheld the flickering red eyes of the robopony with pink highlights trying to peek around them. Selene was starting to lose out on whatever internal struggle was going on, I realized. Of course, it’s hoof was cocked back, ready to drive straight into my face. The blow would probably kill me, but I didn’t care. I’d won, and I’d done it without sacrificing Moonbeam.

“...I chose…”

The hoof drove forward. My world went dark.

Footnote: Level Up!
Perk Added: Toughness - You can take a Lickin', and keep on tickin'! Gain +10% damage resistance.

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