PART ONE: GRAVE NEW WORLD

“Under conditions of peace, the war-like attack themselves.”
‘Transformers: The Death of Optimus Prime’

“The shadow of the dome of pleasure,
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!”
‘Kubla Khan’, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

BALTIMARE, EQUESTRIA

Baltimare had an air of carnival to it tonight: the entire city was decked with bunting and dressed up to honor the launch. The pegasi had even cooked up a nice, balmy anticyclone to put some real verve in the evening air, perhaps their own way of celebrating the end of the Crystal Empire War two months ago and putting an underscore on the peace celebrations.

It seemed that you could not go a block without encountering some parade, marching band, street party or spontaneous demonstration by ponies voicing gratitude and joy to Celestia’s Unconquered Sun.

You also could not go a block without encountering the newly-installed ‘security apparatus’, tall crystalline pillars planted on each street corner, their surfaces intricately engraved with arcane glyphs that glowed softly, projecting a luminescent field around the device. The pillars relayed news and weather information, monitored for criminal activity, and at night provided a soothing rainbow light to light up the streets; they even played music.

Ponies had protested at first, but the devices did make the city so much more photogenic, and proved extremely useful as the war in the Crystal Empire had pushed on into victory. And now it seemed they were here to stay.

‘Totem-proles’, ponies had begun calling them.

Sweetie Belle took it all in as she hung over the gunwale of a private sky-yacht, enjoying a freshly baked bun and the circus that the city below had become.

“Careful there, darling,” cautioned a mare’s voice, and Sweetie found herself carefully levitated away from the drop. Her hooves trod the air in futility as her captor came into view.

“Aww c’mon Fleur,” she squeaked. “I was being totes careful!”

“Then I believe you can be, uh, how do you young ones say, ‘totes’ safe at the same time,” announced the yacht’s approaching captain and owner, pausing to polish his monocle and glancing towards his wife. “See love, stuffy old Fancy Pants can ‘totes’ get down with the lingo of today!”

Fleur and Sweetie shared a brief moment of eye contact and exchanged several high-school musicals worth of embarrassment in a single glance, before sniggering together. They were both arrayed in flowing dresses, and as Fleur carefully lowered the filly onto the deck they each took a moment to primp their manes and hemlines. Fancy himself had been keeping track, and suspected that at this rate they’d wear out the fabric from sheer hoof-contact long before landing.

“You’re already with the times, Fancy. Don’t push yourself out of them. What do you think?” Fleur said, turning around once more so that he could see the full splendor of her attire; styled from pearlescent material with a few carefully selected accents in pink and lavender which, together with a tastefully reserved selection of gold jewellery, brought out and enhanced her natural grace and charm.

“Every inch the rival of a princess or queen, my love…” he said with total honesty. “I have noticed that the art of Rarity’s dresses is not so much their inherent beauty, but how they accentuate and reveal the beauty that was already there.”

“Oh! Oh! What about me Mr Pants!?” Sweetie chirped, and she attempted to adopt one of Fleur’s stock poses. “Will I be the Sweetie Belle of the ball?”

They had to admit, Rarity had gone all out in making her little sister look and feel as much a royal as any Canterlot debutante; the dress had been fashioned from silver and blue and was complemented by a jewel-studded headband that held her mane up in a simple but highly effective manner. Anyone could see that when Sweetie Belle grew up she would be a mare of singular beauty, but today she was downright adorable.

“If by ‘Sweetie Belle of da Ball’ you meanz the centre of attention then noe Sweets, that’s going to me,” a second filly interrupted in a rough Manehattanite drawl. “I look like a complete schmuck trussed up in this!”

Babs Seed was, for all intents and purposes, wearing a filly-fitted tuxedo. She had refused to wear “any frou-frou junk” and so Rarity, with exacting taste, had tailored her up something completely different. The fit and material was exquisite, and accompanied by a brocaded waistcoat in green and the cutest little pink bowtie (“I hope Octavia forgives me for borrowing her look”, Sweetie had heard Rarity muttering under her breath as she had measured, cut and sewn). Altogether, Babs looked exactly what she was; a no-holds barred tomcolt ready to take on the world with all four hooves, but as Rarity had said, “looking fabulous while doing so”.

“You look every inch a proper young mare unafraid of who she is, Barbara,” Fancy Pants said firmly, a perfectly-worded comment which seemed to gave Babs back a touch of her usual pizazz, and straightening up she proudly flicked a gold ring-piercing in the crest of one ear.

“Atta girl,” Fancy Pants smiled, before his attention flicked across to their starboard quarter. “Ah I believe we’re being called in to land.”

Sure enough, a pegasus sky-marshal was signalling them with a pair of flags. His own regular tuxedo exchanged for the cap, blazer and turtleneck expected of a valiant master navigator, Fancy Pants crossed to the yacht’s helm and spun the wheel, taking them out of a holding pattern and down the prescribed approach-corridor, which was marked out with colour-coded tufts of cloud; ever the gentlecolt he tipped the mare a courteous salute as they passed her by.

They descended steadily, moving out away from the city centre and towards the docks and jetties of the harbour, which backed onto a great bay that caught the evening light like a huge, placid mirror. Sweetie Belle herself had borrowed an old tripod camera from Featherweight before leaving Ponyville, and was snapping shots of everything she could. There was no consideration for colour, composition or presentation, but as with everything she did, the heart was there in spades.

Babs, for her part watched on, a little sadly. Scootaloo, Applebloom and Rarity were meant to be here with them as Fancy Pants’ invited guest and ‘plusses’, but for various reasons, had been unable to attend. Rarity had been called to Canterlot on royal business just before takeoff from Ponyville, Applebloom refused to leave the farm with her big sister still out peacekeeping in the Crystal Empire, and Scootaloo, well…

...poor, brave, lovely Scoots was held up in Ponyville General Hospital with a fever. For her part Babs hoped it was just the feather flu, but it felt like a lie...despite the name, no flu ever caused pegasi to actually moult their feathers. Both herself and Sweetie, Crusaders to the core, had wanted to stay, but Scootaloo herself had insisted they go to Baltimare.

“And be sure to bring me back plenty of happy memories…” she had said, face pale and struggling to not cough. “And any decent food you find - the stuff here tastes like it’s contracted out to Flim and Flam!”

She’d looked so small and frail in that huge hospital bed...with no-one but a kind pegasus nurse named Wildfire for company. Where was Rainbow Dash when her number-one fan was sick in hospital!? Off peacekeeping with Applejack, or running errands for Her Royal Flankness, like Rarity?

Babs resisted the urge to stomp a hoof. Instead she thought of what Fancy Pants had said and drew herself up, head high and developing young muscles coiled under her tuxedo. A young mare at one with herself, self-assured and certain.

Something was rotten in the State of Equestria, she was certain of that as well. It was great to see the war with the Crystal Empire ended, but still...something had changed, she was sure of it. It wasn’t anything big. It was just a sense of something shifting, ever so slightly. Her hosts seemed just as concerned, and hearing Fancy Pants muttering under his breath about “worrying paradigm shifts” was enough to put the fear in her.

“Oh my GOSH!” Sweetie suddenly outburst, her voice doing that cute squeaky thing it did whenever she got excited. “There it is!”

Her dark train of thought redirected into sunnier spurs, Babs turned to see where Sweetie was pointing, and let out an impressed whistle.

“Is that what your friend built Mr Fancy?”

“Indeed Barbara,” Fancy Pants said proudly. “That down there is Kreme-Brulee’s ‘Great Babe’.”

“I thought it was called the Great Equestrian?” Babs responded, and Fancy and Fleur chuckled together.

“It is m’dear, it is. More so... It is like a child to him. He has poured his heart and soul into it... And by Celestia, it shows!"

Babe or Equestrian, the craft moored up below at the Geordie Lamp Shipyards’ fitting-out dock certainly was Great. Babs was used to seeing skyliners flying over Manehatten, or even mooring with the tower atop the Equestria State Building, but this, this was what she suspected was called ‘a kwan-tom leap’.

“Quantum Babs, ‘quantum’,” Sweetie said smugly, and Babs, scowling, realised she had been thinking aloud.

“Thanks a-lot, dictionary mare...that sure is a mighty impressed chunk a’ steel thoughz.”

It was; at nearly seven hundred feet in length and eighty feet across the beams, and painted in a rich plum purple all over, the Great Equestrian was truly the largest moving object ever forged by hoof, horn or feather, and that was just the basic floating hull dimensions. Because thirty feet above the deck proper was the immense, rigid floatation bag that would allow the colossal skyliner to soar effortlessly between sea and sky, anchored to the hull by six immense girder-masts that also functioned as funnel uptakes to carry off exhaust from the engines.

And from figurehead to transom the entire craft had been elaborately sculpted and embellished, wood, gold, glass and brass cunningly fashioned into whorls and stars and curves. Altogether, the effect was a bold declaration that this impossible beast was a creature of the air.

Babs decided there and then that someday she’d build something like this; and sealed it with a promise to herself, though out of respect to her hosts she refrained from spit-shaking her own forehooves.

“Ah-ha!” Fleur said. “Fancy, I can see Kreme. He’s waving for us to set down at the small dock abaft of the ship. Turn to heading three-three-one and maintain angle of descent.”

“Ah-aye Chief Mate De Lis!” Fancy Pants acknowledged, and carefully swung the prow accordingly. Fleur herself, not a single hair out of place, levitated a mooring rope above her head and, with a skill that would get applause from Applejack, neatly lassooed a bollard just as the yacht’s keel kissed the surface of the water.

“Kreme old boy!” Fancy called out, his cap raised in greeting as he and Fleur ably set about making the boat secure. “Girls, this is my friend the Master Engineer and Architect, ‘Iron’ Kreme Bulee.”

The two fillies turned towards the rail expectantly, wondering what kind of pony could have single-hoofedly envisioned the Great Equestrian. A titan surely, one whose mind and limbs bestrode the world.

What they saw was a robust unicorn stallion who was clearly not as young as he had once been. His hide was gunmetal and his severely-cut jacket and vest was a dusty black. Indeed, he’d look like any other pony except for the brilliant light of intelligence in his gleaming eyes…

Well...that and the peppermint stick he was jauntily chewing on…

And the frankly oversized top-hat firmly planted atop his head.

“A pleasure, young ladies,” he said briskly, raising the Hat of Destiny briefly to reveal he was bald on top, but that he still possessed a thick set of cobalt-blue mutton-chop whiskers. Almost immediately his attention flashed over to the adult ponies.

“Fancy! Fleur! So good that both of you could be here...come right this way, I simply have to give you both a tour before all these tedious formalities kick off!”

Babs stared agape as he trotted past them with not a single backwards glance. “What in the hay did we do to dezerve that Sweetz...Sweetz?”

Where Babs had responded with vitriol, Sweetie Belle was regarding the elder stallion with what was definately sympathy...or even pity.

“Did you see how tired he looked…” she said quietly. “I’ve seen Rarity like that when her work overwhelms her, but I’ve never seen her look so…”

“So what?”

“So sad…” Sweetie Belle finished. “So very sad, and lonely.”

Babs blinked, and then looked back at the old buck with fresh eyes.

And she saw...as Kreme Brulee escorted the four of them around his immense creation, she saw that Sweetie Belle was right. Even as they marvelled at huge engines and mighty boilers (pre-charged with steam from shoreside plant, their furnaces not yet lit), she could see that the engineer’s constant little smile was frayed at the edge, a self-denying mask that hid a deep inner pain.

And yet, his pride was very real, and wholly justifiable. Everything about the Great Equestrian spoke of effort, artistic talent, and mechanical ingenuity poured into years of design and craft, expressed not just in huge girders and hull-plates that could have served as shields for giants, but tiny, thoughtful details, like the provision of hot water washbasins for every one of the crew cabins, and a separate laundry catering solely for cloud-based bedsheets and duvets any pegasi might have brought on board. This wasn't merely a factory-built passenger transport, it was a work of art, a labor of love.

But it was only when they reached the passenger decks did the full scope come into focus. Here were lounges, libraries, vast restaurants and broad, sunlit promenades outfitted in every decorative style to suit the tastes of the passengers. And beneath was the machinery of the ship, the vast interlocking organs that harnessed steam, water, gas and electricity as useful force, a secret industrial city working in unison to carry eighteen hundred fare-paying travellers in opulent comfort and perfect safety across the face of Equus. From the boilers to the captain's quarters, to the helm, to the prow, it was nothing short of a work of art.

“Mr Kreme,” a tiny voice suddenly piped up. “Why?”

It was Sweetie Belle, her interjection cutting off the maestro in the middle of an explanation to one of Fleur’s question. He looked down in surprise, face working in discomfort at the filly’s sudden demand.

“Why what, young mare?” he said at last, grudgingly extending a hoof in acknowledgement.

“Well, why all this?” Sweetie insisted, swinging a hoof around to take in the full scope of the ship’s Main Atrium, a vast vertical shaft cutting through several decks and connecting them with a vast, curving staircase. Every surface was carved, polished and painted to perfection, lending everything a sense of grace and dignity.

But what Sweetie Belle was specifically drawing attention to were the statues. They flanked the staircase at each landing, depicting ponies in various poses. Scholars holding aloft phials and laurel leaves (larus nobilis faust), workers rearing up wielding tools like titans, doctors and nurses tending to the sick and ailing. Teachers and sailors and weather-makers.

“But nowhere a soldier…” Sweetie said pointedly. “No weapons or armour. And in the middle of it is this…”

‘This’ was a colossal crystal statue at the centre of the atrium, positioned where everyone boarding the ship could not miss it. It depicted five ponies caught in the moment of a high-hoof bump; a pegasus, a stallion, a unicorn, a crystal pony, and a thestral.

And rearing beside them, joining in, were other creatures. Griffins, zebras, reindeer, buffalo and many more, all pressing a limb together in solidarity. Stepping back it even became apparent that the wide plinth on which they were standing was carved in the shape of a huge, coiled dragon, the wurm itself adding a single claw into the meeting of hooves, talons and paws, out of which arose a crystalline tree that ascended up and out through the rest of the atrium’s cavity, its boughs hung with light fixtures.

“That…” Kreme answered, his tone guarded. “Is ‘Kith and Kin Crowing Harmony’. It sits in the very center of the ship, and cost us thirty thousand and twelve bits to commission. The artists in the Crystal Empire gouged us too at that...and I still don’t know what the tree represents - that part just grew by itself and we ran with it...”

“So what does the rest of it mean then?” Sweetie pressed, green eyes narrowing and tiny voice fluting as she enunciated the larger words. “Because, and please do correct me if I’m wrong, it seems apparent to oneself, that this entire ship is some grandiose demonstration of discontent against current international affairs.”

She smiled brightly and clopped her hooves together daintily. “Bravo, sir!”

Kreme-Brulee stared, and then began to laugh.

“An intelligent child, a remarkable child!”

He suddenly spun around, his coat-tails swishing behind him as he raised one hoof, as if desiring to join in with the statue.

“We’re coming out of a terrible war young mare, you know that much I’m sure.”

“Yessir!”

“It is my hope that it shall be the last we shall see for many lifetimes. But it is also my belief that there should not have been a war at all. King Sombra was but a monster, and monsters are but bogey-mares, phantoms that evaporate in the light. Did we really need to send armies and squadrons against his poor, enslaved, disturbed and starving chattel from over a millennium ago, as opposed to offering them shelter in an unfamiliar world? Was there not some better solution, some grand gesture of love and goodwill that would have burned away hate and shadow, allowing the Crystal Ponies to stand tall and proud without months of bloodshed? Yes, surely there was!”

He was getting worked up now, and almost bouncing with animated energy. Fancy Pants observed this with a look of understanding, while Fleur had to raise a hoof to hide her giggles. Babs herself was scowling, one perfectly-manicured hoof scratching at the tilework.

“And let us go back further. The Changeling Invasion of Canterlot was a terrible deed, but what example does it set to ponies for our Royal Guards to hunt down and butcher every hive they could… no, that's not what it means to be of Equestria! It's about extending an open hoof and giving before receiving; forgiving and befriending!”

He stuttered for a second and glanced at the statue. “I wanted a changeling to be among the Kith and Kin...but the board of directors thought it would be...’unpalatable’ to the passengers. But in everything else, this ship is my vision of Equestria’s truest self; a realm where peoples of all races might find work, peace, respect, and friendship, and family...”

On the last word he fell suddenly silent, and slowly his hoof drifted back down to the floor. The weight of years showed suddenly in his eyes as he nervously pulled a fresh peppermint stick from a leather pocket-case and popped it in his mouth.

“...that’s what it means to be a Great Equestrian,” he finished lamely. “Not a pony, a zebra, or what have you. A citizen of this great land of ours, committed to it’s ideals.”

He levitated out a silver fob-watch and consulted it. Babs briefly saw a photograph affixed inside the lid, but couldn’t make out the details.

“Well, there’s only an hour left until the launch,” Kreme sighed at last. “We’d best begin to move up on deck.”

As the small group began to trot back up the stairs, Babs paused and looked around one final time, her keen eyes scanning quickly over the ornamentation.

“Sweetz was right. No soldiers or fighters…” she said to herself.

And then, in her mind, she quietly added an addendum, one which shook her more than anything about the ship's decor.

“And not a single alicorn neither...”

*

Dusk was heeling into night, the sun reduced to a thin scarlet weal on the far horizon. A thin crescent moon coyly peeked from between clouds. The stars waited in hushed silence.

The Great Ship’s deck was cast in an almost total darkness, many hundreds of gathered nobles breathing in soft expectation. But on either side the shipyard was thronged with thousands of ponies bearing candles. Inland rose the dark shadowed skyline of the city, an onset of light fog dimming its radiance.

Babs and Sweetie Belle were seated in the front row of the dignitaries, flanked by Fancy Pants and Fleur...the latter and Sweetie holding hooves excitedly. Kreme-Brulee was sitting beside Fancy, and Babs could see a look of glowering distaste anchored into the cast of his eyes and the set of his jaw.

As for why he seemed so put out on this night of triumph...well, after the tirade in the Atrium she suspected it reflected his feelings towards the guest of honor who would tonight name the ship, and become its patron.

The guest who should be arriving any, moment, now...

Everypony waited, the hush ebbing and flowing like the soft wash of the incoming tide.

Then, a soft, warm and yet darkly solemn voice began to speak.

“To all of us, comes a gift. A spark, so fragile and precious. A finite moment, with its beginning and end ascertained, yet filled with infinite chance…”

A soft flurry of sparks at the ships’ prow coalesced into a dark figure, her wings and horn touched by moonlight, and stars flowing in her mane.

“From deep and sacred night was the first dawn born. From the shadow is the candle’s glow made illumine. Through the storm cloud breaks eternal hope. From darkness, comes life.”

Princess Luna, her teal eyes glistening with warmth, stepped up to the mainmast and regarded her gathered subjects. A slight smile played on her lips, and her voice was alive and bright, a song of distant stars and suns humming within it. Mysterious, joyous, potent.

“To all of us has come this gift, and tonight it comes again! Behold, the Starstrider, the Vassal of Joy! The Bringer of Gifts comes, bearing Life!”

She raised her hoof euphorically towards the darkened sky, and the trills in her voice burst into the jingle of a thousand sleigh-bells. Sweetie Belle and Babs bounced forward on their cushions, smiles threatening to split their faces.

“It’s him! It’s Sint Erklass!” Sweetie whispered, hooves clasped in joy. Bab’s leaned over and drew a hoof back to give her a quick jab in the shoulder. Silly Filly…

“Holey smokes!” she then gasped as a shadow ran across the face of the moon, drawing behind it a single vehicle. More and more voices raised in awe as it swooped towards the shipyards, coils of fog trailing in its wake. Camera flashes popped in the crowd as it landed, a wooden sleigh bearing a solemn zebra stallion enrobed in silk, and a pale reindeer doe draped in a silver-blue shawl. This was the Zebrican ambassador to the Court of the Adlaborn, and the Snow Maiden, high shaman of the Arctic Herds.

But all eyes were on the majestic reindeer buck in the traces, his mane and coat a blaze of russet and silver, his antlers proud and whorled, strung with bells and shimmering with all the colours of the aurora.

“Father of Hearthswarming, noble guests” Luna greeted them, bowing low in acknowledgement of one of the few beings known to dwarf even her own lifespan. “You honour Equestria with your presence.”

“Rise, dearest child of the Moon!” the champion of the north roared in laughter. “And to all children of Equestria, a very merry greeting to you this summers night. We come with a joyous gift!”

“Indeed,” smiled the Maiden. “A gift of life to a noble cause, bequeathed to us by allies dear.”

Luna rose and raised her wings, flowing through the scripted exchange without pause.

“Speak you true? Then please, do show all here, this gift you bear.”

The zebra trotted forward and held aloft a sealed pouch.

“Oft have I flown with the Reindeer King,
And to distant lands his gifts help bring.
O’er talus, jungle and desert blight
A thousand leagues in swiftest flight!
With the blessings of the dragon lord
A treasure from his mighty horde!”

He reared back and held his cargo aloft.

“This gift. my friends, we now proclaim.
Behold! A draught of living flame!”

Luna, Sint and the Maiden’s eyes all flashed in sync, each of them pouring forth a tiny bolt of magic. With a flash the bag disintegrated, leaving only its precious cargo cradled safely in the ambassador’s hooves.

It was a sealed reliquary wrought from silver and glass. And inside, wrapped around a scarlet fire-ruby, was an undulating coil of liquid gold.

“Wyrmfire!” Luna announced to the crowd. “Yes, my little ponies, tonight we shall launch and bless this worthy ship, in the presence of royal friends from distant lands, with no less than a gift of flame from the First-Born daughter of Spykoran, the Dragon Lord himself!”

The crowd roared, a crescendo so loud that Luna had to deploy the Royal Canterlot Voice to complete the ceremony.

“To each of us a gift of life, to each of us a light to guide us through sacred night…” she intoned cavernously, levitating the reliquary and stepping to the foot of the mainmast. “And so tonight we light the lamp of this vessel, and bestow upon it our blessing and grace.”

She carefully rose to her rear hooves and cradled the reliquary in her forelegs. There was a trill of magic, and the brilliant flicker of flame jumped out of the container to flit and dance playfully abound the tip of her horn.

“We stand here tonight on this magnificent ship, a true example of the greatness to which we aspire. And so, it is only meet and right that we bestow upon her a suitable name. It gives me the highest honour to proclaim the ship the Great Equestrian!”

She jabbed a hoof into the sky, and the flame on her horn leapt up in a vivid jet that seared the eyes, shooting up like a firework until it struck an empty lamp on the underside of the ship’s floatation bag. It swallowed the bolt of light, and then magnified it back into a golden radiance that shone down like a tiny sun on the crowds assembled on-deck and shoreside. And as it did, veins of light began to spread across the surface of the floatation bag, magical spells of levitation woven like filigree into the very fabric.

The ship swayed, lifting subtly out of the dock. The mooring ropes hummed softly as she tugged against them, eager to fly.

“May the sun and moon and heaven above bless her, and all who sail upon her…” Luna finished softly, suddenly whispering in the reverent hush that had fallen at the moment of ignition. The golden light was reflected in her eyes like the fire of distant stars.

The flicker of flame in the lamp pulsed, and then expanded massively, surging down conduits in the masts and below decks. Beneath their feet there was a powerful ‘whump’ as the boiler furnaces came alight.

“Cast off all lines!” ordered the ship’s captain, a elder buck with a flowing white mane and beard. “Let’s stretch her wings!”

And thirty thousand ponies exploded into cheers.

*

Of course, it would take hours to raise enough steam pressure for the ship to move under her own power, even with the boilers pre-warmed, but that only gave more time for everyone onboard to celebrate as the Great Equestrian ascended slowly, cautiously climbing above the skyline of Baltimare, seabirds and clouds playing around her in sportive joy.

Babs, bow-tie askew and collar loosened, wended her exhausted way below decks, a happy smile on her face and her stomach full of apple fritters. Above her head was the drum of countless hooves dancing on the promenade to the music of the superstar musician Billygoat Bridle, backed by a sixty-piece electric orchestra and a unicorn mix-mistress with a messy electric-blue mane. Even Princess Luna was on the dancefloor, enthusiastically (if somewhat disjointedly) throwing herself into the fray beside her subjects. No-one was safe.

Chuckling at that (and blushing from when the giddy princess had given “the latest of the most bold Crusaders!” a quick peck on the cheek), Babs finally came to the lip of the Atrium, and gazed down the stairs towards ‘Kith and Kin Crowing Harmony’. The fire that permeated the ship’s enchanted subsystems was even causing the wondrous statue to light up, golden light shimmering from a million-and-one crystal facets. She could see the Captain posing proudly beside it for photographers, a scale model of the ship held in his hooves.

She sighed in quiet wonder.

And then her eyes narrowed. Below she could see someone else regarding the statue, a pony stallion clad in a dusty fedora and poncho, a single speck almost lost in the milling crowds . He was trotting round ‘Kith and Kin’ in a circle, examining each frozen figure with a scathing expression.

Babs shifted, suddenly feeling very uneasy, a single breath escaping her lips…

...and despite the murmur and hubbub of the thronging ponies, he heard her. There was no mistaking that twitch of the hat that indicated a perking of the ears, and then, slowly, as if expecting trouble, he had turned and looked straight at Babs, one pair of vivid green eyes staring into her own.

And then he smiled grimly, and mouthed four small words.

‘ITS ALL A LIE.’

Babs stepped back, and straight into a pair of legs. She gave a very filly-like shriek and spun round.

“Be careful young colt,” Kreme Brulee said, not unkindly, but absently. He was scanning around them, head rotating from side-to-side as if he was at a tennis match.

“Mr Kreme,” Babs said, suddenly non-plussed. “It’s me, Babs Seed, and I ain’t no colt.”

Kreme looked back in her direction and blinked several times as if trying to pull her into focus.

“Oh...yes...the other filly.”

Babs felt a scowl settle over her face and a growl rise in her gorge…

“Well done Kreme!” a pegasus stallion interrupted, one who Babs had been very briefly (and disinterestedly) introduced to: Mr Isneigh, the chairpony of Equestrian Air Navigation. “A Night to Remember!”

“Oh, thank you Spruce…” the engineer muttered, trying to brush the other stallion off, and not succeeding. “It was nothing.”

“Nothing!? Far from it old sport!” Isneigh enthused, his wings and mustache rising together. Babs, her anger stalled and plunging to the deck, had no option but to stay put and silent. “Securing Luna’s patronage for this project was a stroke of genius. It doesn’t matter now if Trans-Equus-Lines get that unwieldy monster of theirs off the drawing-boards; the only way they’ll do better than this is if they slap Celestia’s name on the damn thing!”

Kremes’ eye twitched, and suddenly his attention was back on Isneigh in full force.

“Spruce, I don’t give a single buck about the darn alicorns!” he seethed, and it looked to Babs as if he was getting several long months of repressed rage off of his chest. “If I knew then what I know now, I would never have let even Moonbutt sully my ship with her touch, let alone her thrice-damned warmonger sister!”

Babs expected Isneigh to respond with anger. When he instead scanned around in sudden fear and pulled Kreme into a silencing hug, she felt a frisson of terror run down her spine.

“Kreme, careful what you say…” she heard him plead. “Walls have ears!”

“You see!” Kreme responded, his words vicious but guarded in volume. “You know what’s going on, even if our pretty little moon-princess hasn’t cottoned on yet! They wanted to install those damn totem-proles on my ship Spruce, on my Great Babe, the only child I have left! Does this seem like Equestria, where we have to be so afraid? Watch our flanks in the presence of those abominable things?! Since the wedding, maybe even before then, our land, or something in Celestia, has shifted!"

'So I'm not the only one who’z noticed?' Babs thought to herself, curious about what he was going to say.

"We're turning into something else, something that isn't Equestria, and my Great Babe doesn't belong to whatever that is! It belongs to Equestria, or whatever of our Equestria is left after Celestia -"

Babs would never hear what he was about to say, for he was interrupted by a sharp bang…

...because at that moment, two decks down, ‘Kith and Kin Crowning Harmony’ had exploded.

The whole ship lurched to one side, throwing everyone to the deck. Lighting failed all through the Atrium, bulbs shattering and flickering. Smoke began to rise from several growing fires, and steam hissed from smashed conduits.

Frightened and trembling, her eyes stinging from the gathering fumes, Babs dragged herself to the broken rail. What she saw through the haze put a fear deeper than Discord or any Nightmare into her soul.

‘Kith and Kin Crowing Harmony’ had not simply shattered; it had swelled and burst into a frozen razor-edged holocaust, a crystalline death-flower eighty feet across. It filled the whole width of the Atrium’s lower deck, penetrating floors, ceilings and bulkheads...and…

...and…

...and ponies. Babs felt faint as she saw red splatters all across the deck, heard the dying wails of ponies impaled on crystal spikes and skewers. The crystal facets, that seconds ago had glowed in warm shades of orange, yellow, red, pink and purple, the colours of a sunset,, mirroring the atmosphere of the celebration above, were now.... Babs didn't know how to describe it, but something looked wrong. They flashed in colors that left her stomach churning like a storm at sea, sickly yellow and bruise-purple, lime-green and blood-red, and the shadows they cast seemed to...to deepen, somehow.

Though it was difficult to tell how many had changed to blood-red or how much of that colour was fresh, dripping down and splattering the walls, often from clumps of viscera and fur from poor unfortunate ponies, dyed so red by the blood that it was impossible to tell what color they had originally been.

...she saw the captain, lying on his side in a spreading pool. His model of the Great Equestrian lay beside him in the sanguine puddle, and so was the top half of his head.

It was still blinking.

She heard a scream, a rusty shriek that was terrifying and inequine, not simply a pony-cry but some evolutionary throwback, a racial memory from eons past when her mindless ancestors had chewed the grasslands like animals.

It was the scream of a dying horse.

And she was the one making it.

The roof tore apart, powerful magic ripping the steel like paper. Luna, a cobalt angel of mercy, flew in on shafts of moonlight, her wings pushing huge down blasts of air that crushed the fledgling fires in an instant. One eddy of wind caught Babs, and she staggered, lost her footing, and plunged over the edge.

Babs saw her death, saw herself tumbling into that maw of crystal teeth.

And then somepony caught her, and she found herself being carried in two strong hooves, their owner’s wings beating on either side.

“Don’t look Babs…” Luna said, cradling her like a foal and levitating other injured ponies out of danger. “Don’t look.”

Babs shook for a second, and then began to howl, tears and cries tearing their way out of her soul as Luna flew up and out of the pit of Tartarus that seconds ago had been the Atrium.

*

“How...how did it happen?!" Fancy Pants was demanding as he held Babs and Sweetie in his forehooves. Fleur was a few feet away, using her magical dexterity to bandage other ponies with swathes of fabric torn from her dress.

“I...I don’t want to even contemplate it!” Kreme Brulee shuddered, doing his best to tie a tourniquet around a bloody stump that had previously been one of Spruce Isneigh’s wings. “Ponyplots, I need some elastic to tie this off!”

Fancy was holding the fillies so that they faced out over the city, away from the carnage, but Babs, her hooves shaking, undid her bowtie and held it up into Fancy’s eyeline so that he could see its’ elasticated strap.

“Give...give it…” she said shakily, and felt him stroke her mane comfortingly.

“Wonderful little filly, well done,” he said, and levitated it away. “Here Kreme, use this.”

There was a few seconds of quiet work, and then they heard the engineer cough.

“There. He’s still unconscious but he’ll not bleed out now.”

He came and stood beside them, trying to keep the red stains on his shirt out of their sight. Then, giving up, he tore off the offending article entirely and tossed it overboard.

Babs watched it flutter down towards the city like a flag of distress. She could still see ponies partying in the streets, unaware of the terror unfolding above them.

“You sir, j’accuse, I declare this your sin!” a distinctive voice cut through. “Some flaw of design brings this mess we are in!”

They all turned to see the zebra ambassador to the reindeer advancing along the deck towards them, his finery torn and his eyes blazing. Again he raised a hoof, pointing it at Kreme Brulee.

“For crimes against my nation, you have no blame,
But before pony-kind you must grovel in shame!
Your ‘Great Babe’ is lethal, a flying charnel!
For this grave disaster, you shall burn in-”

“How dare you!” someone squeaked, and Babs saw Sweetie Belle pull free of Fancy’s grasp and strut right up to the surprised dignitary. “How dare you! What do you know about anything?”

Babs looked away, and saw Kreme-Brulee had sat himself down beside her, his head hanging low. Trying her best to choke off further sobs, she reached out her tiny hoof and placed it in his own.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“Can you even put two and two together, let alone two hull plates...” Sweetie was railing, some mad edge of terror undercutting her words. “It wasn’t a boiler or engine that blew up, it was a statue, a crystal statue!”

She shivered and herself began to sob. “How can something so beautiful just...just hurt so many ponies?”

Then she began to weep, and fell against the ambassador, who uncertaintly began to try and comfort her.

“Yes indeed…” Fancy murmured, and then slowly looked at his old friend. “Kreme, who did you commission ‘Kith and Kin’ from?”

“It...it was done in the Crystal Empire…” the old unicorn whispered. “By their master artisans. The very power of the Crystal Heart was used as a focus to shape it…”

He gave a shuddering sob. “I thought it would help promote their artisans, help their economy until a suitable heir could be found to take on the crystal throne and stabilise their government...but for this to happen…”

He looked towards the prow of the ship, where Luna and the reindeer delegation were finalising triage on the worst injuries, vast energies swirling around horn, antler and cloak.

In between them and this part of the ship was the gaping hole the lunar diarch had ripped into the atrium, right under the ship’s main lamp. The light it cast flickered, as if the ship itself was struggling to stay airborne.

“...something has gone terribly wrong,” he finished, and the tears came in great unstable gouts.

“MY LITTLE PONIES,” a thundering voice resonated out of the sky, irreverently shattering the sense of numb horror. “PLEASE ATTEND CLOSELY!”

Babs looked, and felt her eyes widen. Down in the city below, a steady glow was rising, as every totem-prole began to shine with an iridescent light, projecting rainbow beams up into the sky…

...and throwing a colossal image of Princess Celestia, three thousand feet high, onto a cloud-bank, gazing across the city with a soft, kindly smile. In the distance, identical projections could be seen rising ascendant over Canterlot and Manehattan.

For a moment nothing moved except for the soft motion of the titan’s ethereal mane. Then it drew a breath and opened a colossal maw, huge enough to swallow the stricken Great Equestrian like a hay-dog.

“MY LITTLE PONIES, I BRING WONDERFUL NEWS!” it proclaimed. “THIS MORNING, IN THE HIGH-ENERGY-MAGIC-BUILDING AT MY SCHOOL FOR GIFTED UNICORNS, A PORTAL WAS OPENED TO ANOTHER WORLD!”

It paused to allow that to sink it. Babs suddenly felt very afraid, and drew closer to Fancy Pants. She didn’t like how the smile failed to reach her Monarch’s eyes. That feeling of something off intensified, though she couldn't quite grasp how or why. And Celestia's eyes seemed... Wrong, somehow. They didn't look happy, taking on an almost bruise-like color. This should have been great news, but at this moment in time, something was didn’t feel right, and a cold creeping fear spread across Babs’ spine. She wasn’t entirely sure it was because of the explosion, but somehow, she was not reassured.

“MYSELF AND OUR FINEST SCHOLARS HAVE SCRYED INTO THIS REALM. IT IS NAMED ‘EARTH’, AND IS INHABITED BY LIVING, SENTIENT CREATURES. THEY THINK AND FEEL AS WE DO, BUT UNFORTUNATELY THEY DO NOT KNOW HARMONY AS WE PONIES ALONE DO.”

Fancy must have felt something was amiss too, as he tightened his hug around Babs. She glanced towards Sweetie, and saw both she and the Zebra ambassador were staring up with slack jaws. But only one of them looked insulted.

“WE NOW KNOW THAT OUR OLD WORLD IS NOT A LONE BASTION, A STRANDED ISLAND IN THE SEA OF STARS, BUT PART OF A GREATER WHOLE. AND AS WE HAVE HERE AT HOME, IT IS SURELY EQUESTRIA’S DESTINY TO GO FORTH INTO THIS NEW WORLD, AND SHARE THE BLESSINGS OF MAGIC THAT WE EMBODY.

WE HAVE FACED MUCH STRIFE AS A NATION. THE TREACHERY OF THE CHANGELINGS, AND OUR RIGHTEOUS MARCH AGAINST KING SOMBRA HAVE STRUCK AT THE HEART OF OUR HARMONY. BUT NOW, WE FACE A NEW AGE, A TURNING POINT FOR EQUESTRIA AND EQUUS AS A WHOLE. AS SUCH, WE MUST BE RESOLUTE AND UNITED IN PURPOSE AND DRIVE, AND NOT ALLOW OURSELVES TO BE DIVIDED BY PETTY STRIFE AND DISCORD…”

“Oh no…” Fancy whispered. “No no no...my Princess, no!”

“AS SUCH, AS OF TODAY, BY RIGHT OF CONQUEST AND BIRTH, I HAVE EXERCISED MY CLAIM UPON THE CRYSTAL EMPIRE. I SPEAK TO YOU NOW FROM THEIR CAPITAL, WHERE MINUTES AGO I TOOK MY RIGHTFUL PLACE UPON THE CRYSTAL THRONE.”

Babs caught a horrified breath, and looked towards the smoking crater of the Atrium. No...no...it couldn’t be. She knew what Fancy Pants had to be thinking, and he had to be wrong.

“Sister, no!” She heard Luna cry, and saw the dusky alicorn leap off of the ship and hover in front of the illusive vision of Celestia, as if the one-way transmission could hear her. “This is not right! You know not what you do!”

“REJOICE, MY LITTLE PONIES! WE ARE NOW ONE, AND SHALL REMAIN ONE AS WE GO FORTH, AND MANIFEST OUR DESTINY ACROSS EQUUS AND EARTH ALIKE!”

The apparition smiled beatifically, every inch the wise, kind ruler who had forever guided Equestria, and forever would. But Babs knew better now.

‘It’s all a lie…’

“IN HARMONY’S NAME, I SWEAR IT.”

The image flickered, and then dissipated in a flurry of scintillating shards of light. They shimmered down like rainbow snow, falling across the city, and the drifting ship. The hovering Luna took off like a shot bolt, pushing hard in the direction of Canterlot.

“Celestia...you idiot mare!” she heard the Zebra ambassador roar, shaking a hoof at the sky with neither rhyme no reason, ancient tradition and custom forgotten in the heat of the moment. “The protocol for this is clear! Contact with other worlds requires a Conclave Concordia Maxima, a gathering of representatives from across Equus! What you’re committing is a declaration of imperialistic war!”

Other ponies across the ship were muttering amongst themselves, those who could put two-and-two together and connect the explosion with Celestia’s claim upon the Crystal Throne. She saw two mares, one of the musicians and the unicorn DJ, holding each other close and tight. They looked scared, and angry.

“This...this can’t happen!” Fancy Pants was repeating to himself, the former Prime Minister desperately clinging to some inner hope. “The ponies of Equestria won’t let this happen...we just need to sit down with the princess and have a talk...half an hour talking, that’s all it will take.”

But from the city below, Babs could hear other sounds rising in argument to his words. Shouts, cheers, whoops of joy...and the happy noises terrified her more than the transmission’s words had.

‘By Celestia’ - no, that was the wrong alicorn to swear by. ‘By Luna’, she thought, becoming one of the first ponies to swear by the newly returned princess, they're... Happy. They’re happy about having declared war again! Do they even know what's happened?!

The magical shards were still fluttering down from the sky, and she caught one in her hoof - the residual magic had coalesced into a tiny matrix, a solitary snowflake of atrophied energy.

She clutched it to her chest and hunched over, crying. She wanted this to not be true, she wanted to undo what she had seen, she wanted to bring those dead ponies back to life, and run straight to Scootaloo, hug her close and pour out all the feelings she felt for her…

...but most of all, she wanted Princess Celestia dead.

The Great Equestrian, her decks lined with the injured, and her bowels full of the dead, continued to drift aimlessly, all pressure vented and her boilers cold. It would be morning before pegasi squadrons arrived to tow her back to the docks, and a new sun would have risen over a changed Equestria.

A war dawn.

Babs missed all of that, passing out from emotional exhaustion seconds after catching the tumbling flake of magic.

The last she remembered was the sight of Luna accelerating away towards Canterlot, and the burst of moon and starlight released in the night princesses’ wake as she broke the sound barrier...

*

PART TWO: BATTLEFIELD DEARTH

“Victory! Over this land we will fight for our liberty!
Armed with the greatest of men and machinery!
This is the fight for our truth and our destiny!”
‘The Anthem’, Shiro Sagisu

“...the pure ‘accident’ - the accident caused by fate alone - is rare on the railway. Almost invariably human fallibility is responsible...It is in this contrast between trivial error and terrible consequence that the drama of the railway accident lies. Is it not the essential stuff of all great tragedy?”
‘Red For Danger’, LTC Rolt

HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA

Halifax was in flames as the trains fled, iron serpents writhing their way of of a burning nest.

“There! Pull up there!” Colonel Hex of the PHL/UN forces shouted, jumping to his feet inside the cab of locomotive 9782 and jabbing a finger forward, pointing past the windshield.

“You sure you want to jump off?” Jean-Eric, the elderly black engineer asked; a tone of caution in his voice. “The whole city’s lost, man. Don’t see no point staying unless you want to watch the world come undone.”

“I said I would lead the defence of the remaining bridge,” Hex, barrel-chested and muscled, if nearly two decades past his prime, said with conviction. His tac-vest practically bristled with weapons and ammunition. “And that’s what I meant. Let me just check here to see if there’s any troops left to rally.”

“Alright, if that’s what you want,” Jean shrugged, and with a quick motion of his hands idled the throttle and set the brakes. The whole cab jolted as he reined the power in, before they drew up with a shriek of metal, just before the rails ducked under the approach span of the broken Angus MacDonald bridge.

The two men leaned forward, scrying for any possible figures moving on the road-deck overhead. Behind them, Tess Jones was leaning cross-armed against the rear bulkhead, fiddling with the display of an old Ipad. Aside from the dim glow of the gauge-lights and the LCD Operation Displays, it was the only source of light in the cab. Music could dimly be heard from her earphones.

“Wait here for a moment,” Hex said at last, disappearing down the steps and out through the nose door.

“Alright, but we’ve only got minutes before the next train catches us in the ass!” Jean called after him. Tess, an old WW2 gas-mask hanging round her neck, slid into the conductor’s seat that the soldier had just vacated, her Ipad clutched close to her chest.

“You want me to run back and set detonators on the track?” she asked curtly. “Warn on-comers that we’re stopped here.”

“What’re detonators?”

The young Briton waved her hands as if groping for a synonym. “You know, warning caps – track torpedos.”

“Oh...not just yet. There’s a few minutes before anything catches up,” he hummed. “We’ve only got a few torpedos anyway and I’d rather not waste them less than five miles from where we started.”

Frowning, Tess watched from her window as the Colonel jumped down from the locomotive’s leading catwalk and sprinted off into dark smoke that was spreading in from the river. Out in the channel was the burning husk of the 747 that the Wonderbolts had brought down onto the bridge, and the fume of its grave was washing ashore in a deathly, silent wave. High above, rising clear above the blanket and the torn suspension span, was one of the bridge’s towers, navigation lights still twinkling atop their gothic throne of steel.

“Back at the yard, Paul said you and your family drove trains yourselves, over in the UK,” Jean said from his side of the cab, dark skin and grey hair painted in shadow, eyes glinting. He was a Caribbean-Canadian, and had been riding EMDs, Alcos and GE diesels before she had even been born. “Steam trains even. That true?”

“Uh-huh,” she said, barely acknowledging his attempts to open up a conversation and keeping her face pressed to the window, more interested in the view and her music. “Narrow gauge ones though, on a heritage line. Barely two feet between the rails.”

“Is that right?” he mused, keeping his own gaze directed out the back door on his side, watching out for the gleam of headlights in their rear. “Specialised stuff, or sounds like it anyway. That gig pay any good?”

To his surprise she gave a snide snort. “Not really, given I did it as an unpaid volunteer. Rest of my time I was a stewardess for Stena Line Ferries.”

Before he could pry further she straightened up. “Hex is coming back.”

The fumes blowing in from the river were thicker now, gathering over the tracks and around the engine: as Hex staggered back onboard it poured in with him.

“No one was left...” he wheezed, eyes streaming. “...any survivors from the defence garrison must have pushed on up towards the Mackay bridge. Roll em’.”

“Rollin’!” Jean acknowledged, advancing the throttle. From behind came a rising whine as forty-four-hundred horses sang at his touch, and the three of them swayed as 9782 stirred into motion, passing under the bridge and onwards.

“Keep eyes out behind for me girl’,” Jean called over. “I gotta watch the road ahead.”

“Got it.”

“And please turn that music off...hard to be alert with that stuff jammin’ your ears.”

Grunting, Tess tapped the Ipad and cut off a pulsing chain of guitar chords. Then, turning her seat to look back, she watched silently as downtown Halifax slid out of sight across the harbour. The heart of the city was a firestorm; a flaming ring of buildings clustered around the foot of Citadel Hill. Above it all arose Fort George, perched on the summit of the hill and watching on in silence, just as it had for nearly three centuries. She supposed the old structure would last out long enough to see at least one final sunrise, before the barrier arrived.

“Let me sit down...” Hex demanded gruffly, and she directed a withering gaze up at him.

“This is my seat, I’m the conductor,” she said curtly. “You’re a passenger who jumped on as we left the yard.”

“Hey!” Jean called out from his own seat. When neither of them stopped squabbling he slammed his fist on the whistle control, letting off a deafening roar from the air-horn mounted overhead, forcing their mouths shut and hands over their ears.

“Now SIMMER DOWN, the both of you!” he cussed as they turned their full attention to him. “You might be my conductor and you might be a colonel, but this is MY engine, MY home! You want me to drive you anywhere, you play by my rules.”

Hands raised in surrender, Tess moved to get up from the swivel-chair, and he jabbed a hand indicating for her to keep her ass in place.

“No-no, you stay there and be my eyes in the rear. Colonel, if you please.”

Rumbling obscenities to himself and coughing roughly, Hex relented and sat down on the floor, back against the rear wall. There had been a spare seat for a third crewman there at one point, but it had been stripped out in a salvage drive months ago.

The rest of the cab reflected that parity of maintenance: normally locomotives had their road-number painted somewhere distinct on one of the desktops or bulkheads, but this beast had so many parts cannibalised from her classmates fitted to keep her rolling that it seemed everywhere you looked there was a different set of digits marked, stamped or scrawled. About the only new addition was a gun-rack that some entrepreneur had mounted above the windscreen; it was currently being used to hold a bundled-up sleeping bag by its strap.

Thankfully, the scavengers hadn’t removed all of the creature comforts. The was a hotplate in here, and the chemical toilet in the nose compartment still worked, even if it stunk to hell. There was something even better though.

“Girl, the refrigerator mounted on the side of the conductor’s workdesk. Open it up.”

Tess obliged, revealing that the small space had been crammed full of bottled water.

“Now...” Jean continued, as if lecturing a child. “Offer one to the Colonel, if you would be so kind. Shit, a cough like that, sounds like the man’s about to etch his lungs raw.”

Muttering something obscene of her own she grabbed a bottle and tossed it at Hex, who returned her glare with compound interest.

“Colonel...” Jean chided, in the sing-song voice of a master who knew when his opponent had to fold.

“...urhg. Thank you, Miss Jones,” Hex sullenly added, before twisting off the cap and swallowing gulp after gulp of the clean, chilled liquid. Tess knew for herself how good something so simple and basic could taste in a pinch, and managed a faint smile, keeping her attention on the rear window. She’d gotten a lungful of the same stuff that had done a number on Hex.

“You’re welcome.”

Then she waved to get Jean’s attention, and briefly nodded at the fridge.

“Er...can I have some too, please?”

“Go right ahead..” he permitted, before holding up an empty plastic cup. “Pour me a shot too would you?”

“Sure...” She caught the cup as he tossed it across the cab to her, and he grinned, spreading his lips in a white-toothed grin that gleamed like a thin crescent in the gloom.

“She, isn’t it so much better when we all get along? Isn’t friendship magic?”

“Did you just quote Twiligh....” she trailed off, staring in disbelief as he smirked, before throwing the cup back with a laugh. “Well fuck you too pony-tone!”

“Oh, so she can show emotion!” he replied, deflecting the cub with an arm, his own grin spreading. “Make a note in the Captain’s log Colonel, I just got T’Pol here to smile!”

Hex shook his head and nursed his bottle, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like ‘crazy civilians’. Tess and Jean shared a look and shrugged, their smiles matching.

“Takes one to know one.”

“True that.”

“Oh great; now they’re having a bonding moment,” Hex said to the uncaring ether.

“Well you’ll be shot of us soon,” Jean observed, easing the throttle back and nodding forward. “We just passed the Tufts Cove Power Plant and are coming up on Shannon Park. The Mackay bridge is just off to the east.”

Hex climbed to his feet and leaned in between the two of them. 9782’s headlights cast a thin cone of light on the rails ahead, throwing the surrounding landscape into pitch-black contrast, but the bridge could be seen outlined in spotlights off to the left, decks aglow with retreating vehicles that led, in an unbroken chain like fairy-lights, to a flyover bridge that spanned the rails ahead.

“That’s Highway 111, the Circumferential Highway. You want me to pull up underneath it to drop you off?”

“No, no...” Hex waved a hand. “Ease through and round the curve to Windmill Road. The forces defending the bridge are using it as a muster point.”

“Alright,” Jean said, and gave the throttle a brief tap. The locomotive hummed softly, rolling easily under the highway and out the other side. Ahead, a red flare spat fire in the dark, waved by a figure in fatigues.

“There they are...guarding the switchtrack.”

The brakes hissed, spitting air, and Jean eased them to pitch-perfect stop right ontop of a point where the line divided. The main track continued to curve away to the right, crossing Windmill Road on a simple bridge and into the night. From the junction a spur line bent off in the opposite direction, vanishing among dense trees and scrub.

“This is my stop...” Hex straightened up, popping joints in his back. “Thanks for the ride, and the water.”

He paused, gave one last glance around the cab, his eyes lingering on the weaponless gun-rack. Then he pointed at Tess.

“Come with me, quickly.”

She glanced at Jean, who was staring out the back of the cab, watching the line behind.

“Go on,” he waved. “But make it quick.”

Outside the air was cold, but restless, as if a weather front was pressing down on the city ahead of the Barrier. Tess scrambled down onto the trackside, shivered, and drew her oversized coat tighter around herself. At least this breeze kept the smell of burning away. Feet crunching in the ballast, she stalked down the line to where Hex was exchanging salutes and talking intently with a lone soldier who had flagged them down with the flare. Beating herself with her own arms for warmth she stalked past them and paused on the bridge, looking down on the floodlit length of Windmill Road, alive with troops and vehicles readying to flee the city. Civillians – people like herself, she guessed – were being hustled onto yellow school busses, while others queued endlessly, waiting for a place.

She looked back at 9782, idling powerfully in the dark, number-boards and headlights lit and cab windows aglow.

‘I’ve got my ride...do they?’

“Jones!” the Colonel called out, breaking her reverie and marching over to her, his arms swinging. “I’ve been informed that you’re a resourceful pain-in-the-ass. You’re going to need those skills I reckon.”

She opened her mouth to butt back and he silenced her. “Let me speak.”

He pointed out to the north-east. “The Barrier is coming, and it is going to kill everything in its way. It doesn’t care who you are or where you came from, it is programmed to eradicate us down to atoms and seed the earth with our dust.”

“I’ve seen the Barrier with my own eyes, Hex!” she spat back, hands deep in her pockets and shoulders slouching. “I was on one of the last ships to get out when Britain collapsed.”

“Good, then you know what it can do. You lost family or friends – don’t deny it, I can see it in your eyes.”

His hand swept around in an arc to point along the line. “Up at Truro, is something that might be able to stop all that, maybe even pay them back for everyone we’ve lost. It’s you and that engineer’s job to make sure it gets to Montreal safe.”

“But we were told...” she began to protest.

“...that you only had to get the locomotive to Truro and then that was it, I know. Well that’s all changed. I’ve just gotten Intel that the town’s being assaulted by the HLF's Thénardier Guards.”

“The Human Liberation Front?” she repeated, a sinking sense of where this was going sinking into her gut.

“Yeah,” Hex spat into the ballast and shook his head in disgust. “The Thénardiers are about the closest thing the deranged, imbecilic bigots have got to a proper special-forces unit; Truro’s the hub of Nova Scotia, and they’re trying to control all road and rail traffic passing through there to the rest of Canada.The bastards probably don’t even know what’s sitting right under their noses.”

Then he looked her in the eyes.

“Now, that cargo needs to be safely claimed and hauled to Montreal for analysis. Allied troops are holding the town and keeping it secured, but they’re going to have to stay put and hold the HLF off instead of taking over responsibility for the train. So, I need a train-crew to run that shipment right through to Montreal, and it’s going to take a cunning, resourceful, pain-in-the-ass to make it happen. Thankfully, I’m told there’s one standing right in front of me.”

He held something out to her.

“But if you’re not enough of a bullshitter and gambler to do all that on your own, I reckon you’re going to need this.”

She looked down. It was a handgun, jet-black and gleaming with precision-machined potency.

“I’m asking for your help, Miss Jones…” he stressed softly. “Help us to save what’s left of everything. Before there's nothing left."

“I...I don’t...”

He stared down at her, eyes dark, and opened his mouth to sp-

SWHA-THOOM!

Flames erupted into the sky back beyond the Circumferential Highway, painting the clouds red and gold. On the street below all of the floodlights died, leaving only the glow of headlights to illuminate the desperate evacuation preparations. Hex spun and swore massively.

“Mother Pus Bucket! That was the power plant!”

A train whistle blared nearby, and Tess felt a chill that ran deeper than any coat could warm. Hex had grabbed the soldier and was screaming at him.

“Get a unit over to the plant! Find who’s in command there and support them ASAP!”

He shoved the private down towards the convoy assembling on the darknened and began to stride after him, yelling back over his shoulder. “JONES! GO, NOW!”

Tess stood frozen, staring down the line. Again a locomotive roared.

“Jones!” Hex bellowed. “Move out, now!”

A third flat drone echoed around them.

“And tell your engineer to stop sounding off like that.”

“THAT’S NOT OUR TRAIN!” she screamed, the words spinning Hex around like a top.

“Oh, fuck!”

For a fourth time came the screaming drone of a horn, blowing loud, and approaching fast from behind. This time it was a sustained scream, a warbling cry that was suddenly strangled into silence…

And in its place arose the approaching clatter of wheels over rails.

“We’ve got to go, now!” Jean bellowed from 9872, body half-out of the window. “Get on!”

Hex grabbed Tess and clumsily dragged her towards the locomotive, forcing her onto the catwalk steps. “Go, go, fucking, go! Get to Truro, get the cargo, get it to safety!”

Tess felt the wheels spin beneath her as Eric juiced the traction motors. They churned on the slick rails, not gripping. Head lolling she found herself looking back down the length of the engine, and she realised they were still parked on the switchtrack, the padlocked manual lever that controlled the junction sticking up just behind Hex.

The roar of the unseen train coming up from behind was biblical. 9782’s prime mover gunned again, and she imagined the ‘Wheel Slip’ warning lights flashing maniacally in Jean’s face. With agonising slowness the locomotive began to creep forward.

“No time!” she shouted, pointing behind Hex. “Change the points! Throw the switch!”

Hex whipped round, saw where she was pointing, and his eyes flicked to the spur that curved away into blackness. Several more buildings on the adjacent street burst into flames.

“Shit!” he swore, throwing himself forward and grabbing hold of the switch with arms that once must have had muscles like steel ropes. Once. Hex was not a young man anymore, and his arms corded with sweat as he struggled against the padlock and chain. His head flicked to one side just as the approaching train thundered out from under the highway, headlights flaring demonically on the front of its quadruple-headed locomotive lashup.

Wheels snatching at last, 9782 cleared the switch, tail-end lit up by the oncoming storm’s gaze. Teeth netted and hands white-knuckled and shaking, Hex threw all of his weight into the lever...

THWEE-BANG!

...and fell flat on his ass as the train’s four locomotives rushed past into the spur, the lead engine’s cab windows smashed and stained with purple goop. Tess Jones stood between him and the screaming machines, chest heaving and her own hands clenched around the grip of the gun he had given her.

The shattered remains of the padlock lay at her feet.

Hair whipped up by the train’s slipstream, her face a frozen mask, Hex saw the young railwaywoman turn and stare up at the juggernaut they had diverted, its wheels shrieking sparks as it ground off the main and onto the branch line. A massive string of box-cars flashed past, their weight surging sideways on the curve.

He saw her mouth form words, inaudible over the cyclonic clatter and rush. Then, with unexpected passion, she scrambled over to kneel beside him.

“Where does that line go!? Where did I send them!?”

Hex’s mind flashed with answers, none of them pleasant.

“Wright’s Cove! It’s an old gypsum loading dock – the rails end on the waterfront.”

With a final rap of wheels on joints, the last vehicle in the train scudded past them. The two of them flung themselves around, sprawling in the dust to see what it was.

It was a passenger carriage, one of three added to the end of the train to carry military personnel.

But when the army consist had actually rolled, they had been full of evacuees.

The gangway door at this end was open. A man was standing in it, clutching a child and backlit by the carriage lights. The two of them were staring down at the tracks speeding underneath at over sixty miles an hour. Unable to jump, faces anguished, they looked up and back at their unwitting killers as the runaway train rushed out of sight round the curve, racing headlong to doomsday.

As they vanished into eternity, 9782 was revealed standing safe on the main line, grinding back to a halt. Jean, leaving the controls for the first time in an hour, scrambled down off of the locomotive and joined the two of them, frozen in place at the switch.

“That spur’s only a mile long, tops...” he said quietly. Hex looked slowly up and met his eyes. Tess, chest rising and falling with tense slowness, did not move, instead staring off along the rails as if willing the train to come back and try again...

They all knew it was a futile hope.

There was no flash, no sudden explosion. Instead, from far off, they heard a dull roar and a slow, undulating cacophony of metal crunching metal, boxcars and carriages ringing like bells as they plunged off the edge of the world.

On and on the sounds of horrible death banged, thundered and pounded, until at last they faded away into a series of dying echoes.

Hex felt Tess curl up under his hands, her hands clawing into the gravel. Her shoulders twitched. Maybe she was crying…

She wasn’t.

“MOTHERFUCKERS!” the girl screamed, rearing back onto her knees and balling her fists in rage, a primal scream tearing its way out of some depth of her soul. “MOTHERFUCKING PONIES!”

Then the fight went out of her, and she slumped into a slouch, her chest heaving and her head bowed. And yet, despite all expectations, she wasn’t crying.

“Your cargo, Hex...we’ll get it out,” she said softly. “One way or another...we’ll get it out.”

‘And make those animals pay...’ Hex imagined her finishing. ‘Pay for what they’ve done, pay for what they’ve made us do.’

He moved to help her up but she waved him away, instead pulling herself to her feet by grabbing hold of Jean’s arm.

“Go,” Hex urged as they all heard a sound like rolling thunder - hundreds of hooves pounding like hail over asphalt, and coming closer.

“Well, there’s no pegasai here at least...small mercies, they’re all focused on the airfield,” he muttered, looking to the sky for an instant, before snapping his head down and shoving both man and girl towards the engine. “GO! NOW!”

Jean-Eric practically threw himself back into the cab and began working the controls, unlocking the throttle and easing it slowly forward. 9782 thundered in response, twin plumes of diesel fumes towering from the exhaust manifolds. Tess, riding for a moment on the catwalk steps, watched the dirty grey columns of waste gas leaping off her mount, and then slowly tipped her head down to where a dusty, flame-shot cloud was rising out towards Wrights Cove.

“Here...” Hex said as he drifted past her, holding something bulky up. “You might need this again.”

Tess reached out on instinct, and caught the weight of the object in one hand. Hex threw a casual salute in her direction, and then disappeared beyond the dim light thrown by the locomotive’s lights.

Slowly, she made her way back to the cab, swaying and jumping with the motion of six sets of wheels rattling over every joint. She entered behind Jean’s seat and he looked in her direction.

“Hey? You alright?”

She didn’t answer, instead slumping down into the conductors seat…her seat, and flicked on an overhead light to see what Hex had handed over to her. It was his tactical combat vest, Kevlar-lined and studded with pockets. The handgun was holstered in one, and several spare clips of ammunition were neatly stored in others. The words ‘Colonel Ambrose Hex’ were lettered over one breast, and on the other was a white-on-blue image of a lyre surrounded by a laurel wreath. PHL: Ponies for Human Life.

“Ponies...” she murmured. “More fucking ponies. Those... Those fucking geldos, they've brought nothing but misery!"

For a second she cradled the vest in her hands, and then threw it into the corner. Jean looked over, trying to see through the wall into which her features had set.

He opened his mouth to say “you didn’t kill those people”, but then a flicker of light caught his eye off to one side of the line.

“Holy shit!”

The railroad was almost out of the city limits now, threading out through industrial buildings and small business. Like Windmill Road, these had all been used to marshal supplies and people that had to be moved out of the city...but now they were a single, holocaustic battleground.

More burning structures flashed into view on Tess’s side, and backlit by the flames they both saw rushing figures fleeing in all directions.

Some ran on two legs, and others ran on four.

“It’s the Salvation Army...” Jean growled, his amicable face contorting into a grim cast. “The rats running ahead of the storm.”

Tess matched his grimace, but then felt herself bounce in her seat as he eased the throttle down, reducing the power.

“What...what are you doing, why are you slowing down?”

“Wright Avenue and Akerley Boulevard are ahead, and we cross both of them on the level.”

“So what, if there’s anything in our way just ram it – this thing weighs what, half-a-million pounds?”

“Four-hundred-and-twenty-thousand, actually.”

“It’s still the size of a building!”

“Sure she is, but that’s not the problem. Right after Akerley the line splits into parallel sidings – I don’t want to take a yard switch on the fly and rip us right off the rails.”

Tess threw her hands up, and then jumped as a set of grade crossing lights flew past, lights and bells howling on emergency power.

“That was Wright...” Jean explained calmly. “Half a mile to Akerley, and then once through the yard we’re out and clear on the main.”

She didn’t answer, and instead was peering intently through the window, face flashing red and gold in the light of the fires flying past. “How fast do you dare go?”

“Thirty, twenty tops in the yard. Why do you ask?”

She turned, looked past his head, and then pointed out both sides.

“Do you reckon that’s any faster than THEM?”

He flicked his eyes off of the line ahead and saw where she pointed. Galloping figures were paralleling the train on either side, plate-armour shimmering like liquid gold as they jumped fences and pounded down access roads and parking lots. They could have been mindless animals, horses running wild across the urban plain. But in the flashing light it was possible to see intelligence in their eyes, and living, tangible malice.

War Horses. Equestrians.

Ponies.

“Go faster Jean...” she said, pushing herself off her seat and into the centre of the cab, as far as possible from windows.

“I already said...” he began to protest, only for something to smash against the side of the cab. Smears of viscous purple liquid spread over the windows. They'd need a hazmat suit to clean it off...or failing that, a storm.

“You might be the driver, but I’m the conductor....” she insisted, grabbing hold of the roof to steady herself. “I’m the train captain! And if our choices are either burning in a wreck or falling at their hooves then I’d rather burn.”

9782 lurched over a rough, neglected track joint and Tess’s Ipad, resting on the edge of the conductor’s workstation, tipped off onto the floor, the jolt unpausing its playlist and yanking the headphone jack out of the socket.

“It’s all up to you!
No one lives forever!
Been burnt in the hell,
By all those pigs out there.
It’s always been hell,
From when I was born.”

As the rough, violent, profane rhythm pounded in tempo to the thud of the rails, she saw him turn to look at the window, saw his reflection smeared a cartoonish purple by the goop flowing over the glass, and saw his jaw clench.

“THEY MAKE ME VIOLATE THEM!
No matter who they are!”

“Alright, let’s burn!” he shouted, and threw the throttle wide. 9782 leapt forward, wheels slamming into a rising tempo, faster-faster-faster as the music rocked, and the diesel motor behind them roared like a lion eternal, spinning all of its power into the traction motors. Flame and flank and fur on either side blurred into a living watercolour painted in light as the digital speedometer rose into the high 40s.

Tess, legs swaying as she rode with the motion of the living steel, looked to either side, saw they were overhauling the stampede, felt the roar of the engine and the song driving her on, and grinned wide. It was like being in a greyhound race, but charging along on a colossal steel bunny with an iron hide and cowcatcher teeth.

“I’ve missed this so much...” he heard her whisper. “You’d love this, Dad.”

More phials of potion broke against the walls of the engine, but in a desultory manner. And even as their speed climbed over fifty-five the numbers of ponies that they were overtaking did not seem to reduce.

“I don’t think it’s just us that they’re after!” he called out. “Looks to me like we’re in the back of the pack!”

9782 screamed around a corner, canting to one side like a ship catching the wind. She jumped over another junction, and then put her head down and charged along another curve.

“Akerley Boulevard, just ahead!” Jean shouted, straining to be heard over the racing locomotive.

“Ride em’ Jean...” she said, pulling herself over to him and hanging onto the back of his chair. “Ride em cowboy!”

“We’re on first-name terms now are we, Tess?” he mused with blasé calm. “Well if we’re gonna burn, we’re going to go down spitting fire. Let’s show these geldos a real wonderbolt derby!”

“No need to think about it,
You do it or you die!
These aren’t tears,
Don’t let it trick on you!”

He shoved the throttle into notch eight, and with sparks flying from all wheels they erupted out of of the last corner and reached the grade-crossing...

...which was wide open and clear. Well, except for an entire platoon of ponies caught in the moment of crossing, having failed to stop, look and listen.

They amounted to a few quick thuds against the cowcatcher.

”I am hard as steel,
Get out of my way!
Pay back all at once
Suck away the tender part!”

Seconds later 9782 vaulted the switchtracks into the yard, sailing over them as if rolling on silk.

“We’re through, but I’ve gotta brake for the top curve into the swamps!” Jean shouted, forcing the throttle shut, past ‘idle’ and through into ‘dynamic’ braking. The lurch of counter-force threw Tess across the cab, and almost straight into her own seat. Holding onto the leather she jabbed the toe of her shoe onto the Ipad to cut short music, and then heard a scream of overtaxed electronics.

Spinning herself around she gazed back through her rear window and saw sparks flying from an immense bank of rheostats mounted high on the sides of the locomotive’s rear hood.

“You’re going to blow the dynamic grid!” she shouted. “Use the air!”

“I’m trying to not wear flats on all the wheels!” he yelled back, teeth gritted as he struggled to balance the dynamics with manual air-brakes. As the locomotive shook and screamed, threatening to tear herself apart, the speedometer dropped as fast as if it was wearing lead boots. “Right, I’ve got it, I’ve got it!”

“And something’s got us!”

“What!”

Tess did not answer, but instead pulled on her gas-mask and threw herself out the back-door. Jean spun in his seat, seeing her running down the catwalk and out of sight, one hand on the rail and the other toting the handgun Hex had burdened her with. It was a 9mm, sleek and utilitarian, he knew that much, but he’d never been one much for guns, so he wasn’t sure what model it was. Nor did he care. There were more important things to worry about...

All he knew for sure was that now his young conductor had a big gun.

Even brought down to running speed, the slipstream generated by the locomotive’s momentum was fierce. Standing on the rear of the engine Tess was also feeling the immense heat being blown out from the rheostat grid.

But her eyes were fixed solely back, watching the rails fly out from underneath...and a single pony in dull barding galloping along as fast as she could beside the line, doing her best to pace the lone engine...and outrun the entire herd of troops chasing after her.

They were blurs and streaks against the flaming industrial district, flowing like smoke along the road that paralleled the line....then they ran out of asphalt.

The mare, not slowing in the least, simply jumped the boundary fence in a single soaring leap and landed squarely on the tracks, hooves blurring in the ballast and thudding on the ties as she kept up her relentless charge.

Tess felt the weight of the handgun in her grasp, aimed it slowly at the chasing being. It was obvious that she was fleeing ahead of the Salvation Army, but that wasn’t important. The thing was a pony, and so she deserved to die.

But her finger hovered over the trigger, unable to snap shut.

A father and child, riding an express to hell...

And then the ‘beast’ looked up and was met with the sight of Tess aiming a gun in her face. And what flashed over her eyes...her freakishly human eyes, was not rage or sadness or even resignation.

It was betrayal. Naked rage at having been forsaken after having been pushed so far beyond her limits.

Tess lowered the gun in a moment of shock, and in that instant, the mare coiled herself and leapt, hurling herself up and at the catwalk.

She caught the handrail, with her teeth. Tess jumped back in shock as the mare hung there, whipping off of the back of the locomotive like a bizarre pennant.

“Thoot them thou thidiot!” she spat around the rail, before hooking her hooves onto the bar and pulling herself onto the deck, where she flopped like a fish snatched from the stream.

“Shoot them you idiot,” she repeated weakly.

Tess looked at the handgun, and then back at the pursuers. Could she? No, despite it all, she couldn’t. As she lowered the gun into a jacket pocket, the pony sagged limply onto the corrugated metal surface.

“Pathetic...”

But there was no need to shoot. The two of them slid sideways slightly as 9782 hit the top corner out of the yard, screaming her way out of the city and into open, wooded swampland. The burning ruin of Halifax began to dwindle into the distance as the powerful engine accelerated over a creek and out onto the single-track line to the north.

Leaving it all behind. The evacuees, the soldiers, the lost and the dammed. And the ponies too.

Holding onto the rail Tess glanced forward towards the cab, seeing Jean-Eric gazing back, his expression stern. Then she looked down at the mare, still lying limp on the deck, repeating six words over and over, until at last she passed out.

Dragging all eighty pounds of earth pony (plus gear) back to the cab was enough to wear down what goodwill had manifested within Tess. Finally however, she lugged the mare through the door and dropped her onto the gently rocking floor. Exhausted and beaten, Tess slumped into her chair, setting the handgun and both shotguns from the pony’s saddle down on her workstation. They had a decent armoury growing here, or so it seemed.

“Who is she?” Jean said at last. Like her, he seemed to be coming down from a severe case of emotional whiplash.

“I don’t know...” Tess sighed. “All she told me was one thing.”

“And what was that?”

“Celestia is a cock-loving whore...” she sighed, shaking her head, before kneeling down to pull up the barding and expose the pony’s blank behind. “And yet, somehow, she looks like a newfoal.”

Jean mimicked her action, rocking his attention flicking between her and the tracks ahead.

“There anything in her saddlebags with her name on?”

“Seriously? You want me to loot her possessions?” she replied with deadpan snark, before shrugging and obliging him. “Fine, might as well cap today off with petty larceny.”

One side of the saddleharness was stuffed with food, some of it canned, some of it fresh, almost all of it almost certainly looted, stolen or coerced. Everyone’s food was nowadays.

The other bag though was full of surprises. As she unfastened the catch on it stacks of printed material poured out.

“She carrying a library or something?” Jean blurted out in surprise, and it sure looked like it. There were handwritten diaries, old photo-albums, even some comic books!

Thoughtful, Jess picked out a loose wad of photos wrapped up in a scrap of paper. A smiling family, a grey mare with a purple mane staring blankly at the camera, an old city skyline.

“Wow, San Francisco…” she muttered. “Before the war, and the destruction of the bridges.”

And then, without much thought, she glanced at the scrap of paper in which the sheaf of pictures had been wrapped.

“Jean...I think we found our mare!”

It was a typewritten bulletin, a hastily-printed and distributed circular. Tess recognized it as following a pattern similar to HLF newsletters and the like - barebones, only bearing the hand-stamped HLF logo to distinguish it as anything even remotely official.

TO ALL HUMAN LIBERATION FRONT CELLS: SPECIAL ORDERS

Please be advised that VERITY CARTER (23), formerly of the Thenardier Guards, fell in combat on DECEMBER 20TH 2022, while infiltrating a PHL facility in New York.

As of February 2023, a newfoal claiming her name and identity has approached several of our leaders and heroes, seeking aid and comfort. Be advised that this creature is to be DESTROYED UPON SIGHT.

Verity Carter was a martyr for true humanity, fighting for our salvation from invaders, traitors, spies, and those horsefucking traitors of the PHL that call themselves the saviors of humanity. The animal standing in her place now is an affront to all reason and decency. If it approaches you, do not be deceived by its lies and arguments. Nothing remains of the woman that we once knew. It merely carries memories that it abuses to infiltrate and convert more and more of our people. Quite likely, it has already revealed many of our secrets to the PER and PHL, opening us up to infiltrators. In light of this threat, maintain constant vigilance and enhanced security measures.

Tess snorted at this singularly pathetic display of pretentiousness, which screamed "WE'RE RELEVANT!" to the point that it practically assaulted her eyes. So far as she was aware, the HLF did not have much in the way of secrets, unlike the PHL, who kept tight-lipped about nearly all of their activities. On top of that, the most common cause of death [besides ‘shot to death by PHL or civilians’, ‘death by bad rations’, ‘death by magic’, ‘suicide’, and ‘malnourishment’] for HLF was publicly known to be ponification, common enough that it would have been a miracle if they still had any secrets left to keep. Even a civilian like her knew that her self-proclaimed front of ‘liberators’ had reduced themselves to a group of egotistical, deluded braggarts.

Admittedly, braggarts with guns. Big guns at that, when they weren’t stolen surplus or homemade monstrosities that were as dangerous to the user as the people in front of them. Trying to stomp out the thought that the worst of these lunatics were right in her path, less than a day’s travel ahead, she read on to the end of the bulletin.

Our friend is dead. Honor her memory by killing what remains of her body before it can do lasting damage to our cause.

!!DESTROY THIS NEWFOAL UPON SIGHT!!

Crudely Xeroxed into place under the bottom line was a grayscale photo of the mare currently laying unconscious on the cab floor between them; it showed her being examined by a zebra of some description, her face contorted into a hateful grimace.

“Well, that’s a new trick…” Jean muttered after she read it aloud to him. “First time I’ve heard of a newfoal doing anything but smile, sing and shit rainbows about how wonderful Celestia is. What does that mean for us?”

Then he saw something flicker onto the windscreen, a tiny fleck that lingered for a moment before dissolving. Another sleeted into view.

Tess, oblivious, was massaging her eyes. “It means we’re out on our own, can’t go back, and know that ahead of us is a radical unit of the HLF, that somehow we’ve got to liberate an unknown cargo from. And whoop-di-doo, we’ve got some freak of a newfoal onboard that they’re gunning for.”

“There’s one more problem you forgot to list,” he added softly, before waving a hand forward, where snow was beginning to settle on the windscreen, falling flakes shining brilliant white in the headlights. And with every passing second the fall grew heavier, driving down onto them from the north-east.

“Winter’s coming.”

*

PART THREE: THE SHAPES OF WRATH

“Who knows what true loneliness is - not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.”
Joseph Conrad

“Get down on your knees,
Get a good head on your shoulders!
If it’s for your guys, go to the end of the earth.

Do what you think,
Give it with dedication!
I’ll put out your misery.

You made a mess,
For Christ’s sake, this rotten world!
Shit out of luck, go with my vision.

Light up the fire,
Right on the power!
Weapon, I have it all.”
‘Red Fraction’, Black Lagoon

PORTLAND, MAINE

“Augh!” Lightning Dust screamed, waking with a burst of energy and flaring her wings on reflex.

Then the pain hit, and she screamed again. Her throat was beginning to feel like a griffon had hatched in her stomach and clawed its way up and out through her mouth.

Hacking, she reached out and grabbed a tin mug with her hooves. The water inside it was lukewarm, but drinkable, and went down with a wonderful soothing smoothness.

Then she paused, drew a blanket around herself, and called up into a huddled ball.

Stars...she had been dreaming of...a sea of stars, waving like corn in a breeze.

And then she had fallen out of that sky, and jolted awoke in shock. Finding herself still trapped here was not as much of a waking blessing as she would have liked.

The lighthouse had been abandoned years ago, or so it seemed. At some point she guessed somepony...or something had tried to make part of it into a private dwelling, and then for some reason given up. Half of the lower levels had been worked over, the stonework re-pointed and whitewashed, but further up all she had found was damp, mould and bird-droppings.

The lamp itself had been automated, running by itself on some kind of...mechanical talisman magic, or so she guessed. That had crushed any hopes of getting help from the keeper-pony, but it had given her one piece of insight.

The plaque. The writing had been a bit strange, but eventually she realised she was looking at a form of the standard alphabet, arranged to form words in plain Equestrian. Now she had a name for where she was.

Ram Island Ledge Lighthouse, in someplace named ‘Mane’ (though it had been spelt with an ‘i’, weird), wherever that was. It seemed she was slumming here under the good graces of some authority called the United States Coast Guard. Again, whoever they were.

She was grateful to them however for one other thing. Because there had been a watertight trunk in the lamp-room, labelled ‘SURVIVAL EQUIPMENT: FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY’.

Inside had been the blanket and mug, signal flares, and bottle after sealed bottle of clean water. She had some trouble working out how to crack open the translucent, squishy bottles, but finally she had drunk her fill.

Most of which she then threw up from the sheer shock of it hitting her empty stomach. Ah well, you win some, you lose some, she grudgingly admitted, feeling a little less certain than usual.

There had also been some kind of device, made of a hard, chitinous material and inset with buttons and dials. The word ‘Motorola’ was stamped on it, but that had been of no help in discerning its function.

And there was food. Several packets of hard tack biscuits and something labelled ‘jerky’. It had been hardy, leathery and salty, but it had filled her up and helped the water stay down.

And so she had eaten, drank and slept her fill, before turning to her final prize: a first-aid kit. That red cross may have lacked the usual four little pink hearts in the finials, but had been recognisable enough. It had yielded up bandages, antiseptic and some self-adhesive plasters, all of which she had used to patch herself up. Then, for the pain, there were some wonderful patches labelled ‘Fentanyl: High Concentration Painkiller. WARNING: 50 times more effective than equal quantity of Morphine. Do not exceed recommended dose’.

Things after that had been a little blurry, at least until she woke up with her eyes full of stars.

Now, she felt somewhat better. The pain in her wing roots was returning however, and she suspected that she may have popped a joint or two. If she had, almost certainly those dislocations would have locked in place by now, and sure enough her wings were stiff and hurt to move into any position other than held out and rigid.

‘Maybe another Fentanyl would help’, she had briefly mused, only to reject it out of sheer pride. She was Lightning Dust, she didn’t need drugs to overcome her problems.

Well, that and she wanted to keep her head clear. She kept the patches though, just in case. She might have not had the confidence to try and stitch up her worst injuries, but she had enough dexterity in her hooves to stitch the blanket into a basic bindle that she could slip around her barrel. Into it had gone the patches, water, and the last of the biscuits and jerky.

She’d need it for what she intended next: getting off this rock. From there she had to find her way back to Equestria. Her internal sense of place, was telling her that she was somewhere between the Tropic of Prancer and the Reindric Circle, so she had to be somewhere in Equus’s northern hemisphere, just like Equestria itself.

‘If you’re even on Equus’, whispered a voice in the back of her mind. ‘Does this honestly look anything like home? Look at the stars, look at the sea, look at the bucking sky. This weather is unnaturally natural, self-governing and untamed. None of the civilised races would stand for it.’

“Shut up!” she shouted back. “I’m going home! All I have to do is find a consulate, or embassy or something. I’m an Equestrian! I have rights beyond the common creatures darnit!”

‘Suit yourself’, the voice had answered with a twinkling shrug. ‘I’ll be here when you need me. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. It’s a whole new world for a pony like you, one where you’re completely out of your depth! You don’t even know about th-

“Get of of here! I don’t need you…..” she answered, trying to ignore the fact that she was have a shouting match with voices in her mind. “I’m going home, and then I’m going to be a Wonderbolt. The greatest Wonderbolt! If surviving this doesn’t get me Breezie-Points on the application exam, then I’m a donkey!”

Then she had stomped her hoof and angrily stormed up to the zenith of the spiral staircase, her wings held out flat and twinging at every step.

“I know I’m right! I know I am. I am going HOME!”

From the galley around the upper works of the tower she had been able to see for miles. Inland, beyond the bay and its’ wooded islands, there was evidence of a city, its lights spluttering in the dark - perhaps the storm was giving them trouble with the power supply.

Out to sea, was the ever-flowing convoy of ships and boats. The emergency supplies had also gifted her a pair of binoculars, and with them she had finally been able to appraise herself of her passing neighbours.

Clumsily, wishing she had the dexterity of her pinions for this, she lifted the lenses to her eyes, aimed herself at the passing ships, and stared, crudely rolling the binoculars in her hooves to rub the focus dials.

The ships resolved out of darkness, coalescing from shadow into solid steel. There were other shapes, prowling the decks or gathered in huddles around small lamps and fires.

She focused on them, pegasai sharpness of vision enhanced by glass optics.

“There we go...” she purred as they came into the clear. “Show me what you ar-”.

Her voice didn’t trail off so much as hit a brick wall skull-first. After several moments she lowered the binoculars, her pupils now contracted into twin terrified pinpicks that were almost swallowed in the shocked, lunar landscape of her face.

Those weren’t ponies...they weren’t anything that belonged in nature.

The ever-present wind blew across her, ruffling her dirty, salt-licked mane. Its spider-web touch sent shivers down her spine, but no-where near as much as what she had just seen. It suddenly threw a whole new light on things.

She turned and looked at the door behind her; tall and broad enough to accommodate even a princess without having to duck. She spun back and tipped her head up at the rail around the galley, set well above her own eye-line. If she had wanted to, she could have stepped right under it and off the edge...

Compared to her, this place was grossly oversized. But not when compared to the creatures that must have built it.

She looked again through the binoculars, and felt that same doubt begin to gnaw its way into her heart and soul.

They walked on their hindlegs, and were taller than any pony. Those that were moving around did so with a lumbering, lanky motion, their long forelegs swinging at their sides. She could not see if they had fur or scales, because they were so bundled up in rags, coats and other clothes. A lot of them were carrying what looked like odd metal pipes feeding into boxes.

And instead of a proper face, above their necks they had a grey, leathery expanse of skin in which soulless flat eyes rested, unblinking. Some of them even had long, corrugated trunks that fed down into filter-packs...

Oh. Masks. Whatever they were, they were wearing gasmasks. Or ‘service respirators’, as one particularly unpleasant captain at Flight School had insisted the cadets call them.

Abashed, Dust began to sweep her line-of-sight in little arcs, scanning until she found an exception to that rule...there! Again she fiddled with the focusing tabs, and found herself looking at what must have been a mother and her foal. The two of them were huddled in the angle formed by two intersecting bulkheads, trying to keep out of the clutch of the elements. The mare had partially stripped off, and was trying to coax the filly into suckling at her pale teat.

Something in her expression caught Dusts’ attention, and she felt a certain sinister curiosity coaxing her on as she spied on the unknowing creature. The mane was lank and streaked with filth, but seemed to have once been a dull tan. Her skin was only lightly-furred, and had a pallid blue-ish complexion speckled with dirty spots, like an egg. Half-exposed as she was, she was shivering in the cold, and desperately trying to get the infant to feed. Her mouth, large, expressive and dark-lipped, was making pleading, begging shapes, silent to Dust at this range.

‘Kids...’ she sneered to herself. ‘I bucking hate kids. So needy and greedy, always hogging the attention...’

And then she saw the tears trickling out of the mare’s two sunken, glistening eyes, eyes dark as bruises; those same tears cutting silver tracks through the grime and dirt as they fell across her cheeks, saw the growing desperation with which she tried to rouse the infant…saw its open, sightless, dead eyes.

Dust felt her breathing stop, a horrid tightness clinging around her chest as realisation struck her a roundhouse buck across the face.

“Oh...squits, that’s... wrong...” the breath in her lungs seemed to just quit on her as she saw.

Unable to carry on intruding onto the pathetic little scene she began to hunt across the various ships, trying to find something to buoy her spirit. She saw some more of the creatures clustered in morbid silence around the guttering light of a tiny paraffin lamp, canvas shelters billowing around them in the storm. Some distance away two larger ones, stallions perhaps, were fighting one another for what looked like a chunk of bread. And at the stern of one ship several more were disposing of the dead overboard, but not before carefully stripping them of their clothes and possessions. Then, with a sad, painful finality, the naked corpses were consigned to the deep.

There was no hope here. Everything she saw was a story of misery, grief and despair, played out on a floating stage of rust, filth and rotting metal that Lightning's instincts told her belonged in the scrapyard. And yet, even as the horror of it all sunk into her all the way to the marrow, she found herself unable to look away. What was she seeing? What was happening here? Most importantly, why?!

Monsters, she decided at last. She was in a land of monsters. And they'd been... They were fleeing something, so that had to be running from something even worse.

And at that moment, she heard the whistle of wings turned into the wind, and felt her soul soar. She knew that sound, felt it resonate in her wings.

It was the sound of pegasi flying in formation. Dropping the binoculars, the ships forgotten, she scanned the open sky with her naked eyes.

A lone speck dropped out from the sky out over the bay, plunging into view from between the scudding grey clouds. Another followed, and then a dozen more, all tunnelling straight-down towards the ships like the tail of a hurricane reaching for the surface. More squadrons burst through from above, until it seemed like a huge, shadowy claw of fur and feathers was reaching down towards the ships, every squadron a razor-tipped talon ready to clench.

Dust, being Dust, didn’t see that, or notice the sinister purpose with which the fliers were descending towards the ships, or the panic their appearance caused on deck.

All she saw were ponies, and to hee, that was all that mattered.

“Yes!” she whooped, bounding up to perch on the lip of the rail, all four hooves bunched together and muscles coiling. She felt the wind on her face and gauged its flow over her damaged wings. Yeah, a good kick-off might just give her the lift she needed to reach those guys...

In that moment of confidence, she was herself again, and she felt her teeth clench into a cocky snarl.

“I’m going home!”

And with that she launched herself up and away from the lighthouse, all of her athletic strength released in a single dazzling burst. Barely noticing the crackling fire screaming in her back she tipped back in a tight backflip, caught the storm under her wings, and rode it.

It hurt, but it was good pain. Real and simple and honest, not those fake, weak emotional tremors. Once again she was stuck in the middle of this wild, indecent weather, but now she had the measure of it. All it took was a quick tip and a roll and she was tacking against the headwind, and angling down across the water towards the ships. The pegasai were swarming around them, so all she had to do was touch down somewhere out of the reach of those...things, and call for help.

“Hey!” she shouted, waving a hoof wildly. “Over here! On your right quarter, I’m over here!”

They ignored her, or didn’t hear. The screams were drowning out her words.

“Wait, what!?”

She could hear it now, rising in peaks and waves over howling sky and sea. As the pegasai dived and looped over the ships, the creatures on the deck were screaming in fear and rage.

Shocked, she almost lost herself to a sudden downdraught. She fell through a pocket of rough air and nearly went back into the drink, but managed to spin herself out and sideways, her own cries joining in the harmony as her damaged body was once again pushed beyond its limits.

She saw one of the ships flash under her, a black metal tube like a half-sunken whale. It was being towed by two smaller vessels, and seeing them she took her chance. Rolling in the airstream, she dropped in a perfect hoof-fall, hindlegs pointed straight down and forelegs tight at her side.

Dropping like a living thunderbolt from the sky, she caught hold of one of the two boat’s masts and hugged herself to it, her hooves finding a grip on the slick metal. There was a small crossbar here from which a flag flew, and it was enough for her to perch and orientate herself.

“Yes!” she shouted, crowing to the sky. “Now that is how a pro does it! Did you see that!”

“Holy shit!” someone screamed back. “It’s Lightning Dust!”

“Yeah, that’s right!” Dust answered, ego running ahead of her thoughts. “Ain’t no other like - hey!”

‘BAN-BAN-BAN-BANG!’

She threw herself off the mast at the deck below as something shot over her head with a screaming whistle that promised death. Her aim was slightly off however, and instead she plunged into an old wooden lifeboat that had been mounted on the vessel’s superstructure.

“What! What?” she blabbered, thrashing in the lifeboat’s weather-proofing tarpaulin, hating how familiar that word was becoming in her vocabulary. Her outreaching wing cracked against a spar and she hissed out a fresh shriek.

“She’s in the lifeboat!”

“I heard you, fuckwit! Shut up!”

More rat-a-tat bangs lashed out, and Dust gasped as holes tore through the wooden hull inches from her face. “Oh, no-no-no!” she prattled, rolling herself out of the tarps’ clutch and throwing herself out over the gunwale and onto the deck.

“Stay still and let me rape your face you goddamn merry-go-round toy!” a voice roared. “Where’d you go!”

Chest thumping, lungs gasping, Dust pressed herself to the deck and peeked under the gap between the bottom of the lifeboat and its cradle.

The banging bolts (arrows, spears?) were being fired at her from the other vessel towing the huge iron whale. But where her current ride was a wooden, lumbering beast, the craft running alongside was sleek and steely, a shark.

And two of the strange creatures were balancing on its deck, one crouched and pointing while the other stood tall, legs astride for stability and a silver weapon in either fore-paw. This one’s mane was tied back in a burgundy ponytail, and her teeth were exposed in a predatory snarl.

‘She honestly wants to kill me,’ Dust realised, the shock numb inside of her. ‘Well, that’s something new.’

Her blasé attitude was cut short when the one with the handheld thunderbolts suddenly stiffened and threw its forelegs out. “I’ve got the fucker! Die bitch!”

More blasts rang out and once again Dust rolled herself clear. Hooves racing she flung herself forward and into the cover provided by the boat’s wheelhouse.

“Tugboat Luna!” she heard the other creature yell. “You’ve got a pony onboard! Listen up man, Lightning Dust is hiding on the other side of your wheelhouse from us!”

“Luna?” Dust repeated, before the door she was pressed against flung open and a booted hoof kicked her right between the wings. The impact threw her down and almost into the water, but instead she struck the tugboat’s gunwale and flopped, wet, broken and howling, onto the deck, her face pressed into a soggy paper flyer.

‘‘Luna’: The World’s First Commercial Diesel Tugboat’, it read, the words running like mascara into black tears.

She felt the deck bounce as her attacker jumped down to her level. As she sobbed weakly, her cheek wet with trickling rivulets of water and ink, she saw the legs of a towering figure lurch into view. They bent into a crouch, and something took hold of her neck. Then she was lifted into the air, hanging as limp as a piñata, face-to-face with one of the bipeds for the first time.

Its skin was coffee-black, weathered and torn. A pair of sunglasses glinted green, hiding its eyes from view, but she saw its mouth pull open into a savage sneer.

“Well fuck me if it isn’t true!” it rumbled in a voice like an avalanche. “Lightning Dust?”

Caught in his glare, Dust could only nod fearfully.

“Girl, for all the shit you’ve pulled, this is going to feel so right!” the towering bulk said, and she felt something cold and metal press against the underside of her jaw.

“Why?” she gasped weakly, tears pouring from her eyes.

“Say that again?” he asked, suddenly stunned. “After years of crap; your whole damn race shittin’ over us, destroying our homes, turning us into those fuckin’ zombies, you ask why?!”

“Stop wasting time and kill the whorse Dutch!” she heard another voice shout from far off. “If you want to play with her, you’ve got to share.”

“Shuttya hole! Call up Fleet Control! Tell them we got a high-priority hostage!”

Lightning was too worn out to muster any response. Black voids were swimming at the edge of her vision. She was ready to go, ready for all this to end. Even if she couldn’t go home, she just wanted the pain to stop.

And then, as oblivion reached up to claim her, she heard the fragile tinkle of glass smashing, and the giant dropped her in surprise. She hit the deck hard, tried to pull herself up, and then collapsed into a sodden heap, barely able to move as voices erupted all around her.

“Oh, shit...POTIONEERS! TAKE COVER!”

“They’ve got the First Lieutenant! Cut em’ down and get her out!”

“Fucking killjoys! Come here and taste my guns you shitters!”

“Control! Control! This is the PT-617 and the Luna, towing the HMCS Onondaga! We’re under attack and have a priority hostage. Please send – oh shit! Shit shit SHIT! It’s on me! Get it off me!”

BANG!

“Sorry guys. I’ll follow you guys on soon...COME ON YOU FLYING CUNTFUCKS! You want the Lightning Dyke, you’ve gotta pay for her!”

What followed was a short, orgiastic stream of bangs and obscenities...that dwindled into howls, and then gurgles, and finally a silence dimly laced with the hush of waves and a distant, euphoric voice.

“Oh wow! This is GLORIOUS! I feel so light and bright...I’m full of joy! Full of joy! Your Majesty, you fill me with joy! You took away my pain YOU TOOK AWAY MY LOVELY HURTS. YOU TOOK AWAY MY MEEEEEEEEEEEEEHEEEEHEHEHEHEEHEE!”

The voice wobbled off into giggles, mad, exultant squeaks that rasped like nails on a chalk board, swinging from happy to some volatile combination of anger, sadness, and fear every other syllable, as she repeated that phrase, ‘you took away my me!’ incessantly, unable to stop, ecstatic one syllable, sobbing the next. And Lightning Dust, blind from exhaustion, cold and shattered, decided she hated those giggles more than the pain. That…. that’d been the angry mare, or whatever the equivalent for these things was, the one that had tried to kill her! That was… that wasn’t right. What could have made her into that?! It was like she’d become somepony completely different, but that…. there wasn’t any magic allowed like that, was there?! Why were ponies doing this?!

What was happening, who were these people?! What were these things?! What was any of this?!

And where the ‘fuck’ was she?

“Newfoal, identify yourself!” someone, a stallion, barked.

“Hello Master. I’m Revving Engine siiiiir, HOW CAN I seeeeeerve our majestic QUEEN-QUEEN-QUEEENIE!!”

“Answer me a few questions. What’s your speciality?”

“Combat-orientated…ready to PURGE and DESTROY...ready-ready for the mission…GIVE ME A CUTLASS AND I’LL FIGHT! I’m ready, I’m ready!”

“Riiight...and what do you think of our Queen?”

“Oh she’s wondrous, glorious...let me meet her, please...let me meet our Eternal Sun, but first GIVE ME BACK MY CUTLASSES! Then let me meet her, praise her, DDDDDIIIIE for her! LET ME DIE FOR HER! LET ME DIE!”

“Urgh...another mule. Just show me where the Lieutenant is, and then kill yourself, freak.”

“Yessir! Happily sir! She’s over there sir! How do you want me to die sir?”

“Stick yourself on the mast, jump into the engine, throw yourself overboard, I don’t care.”

“Yessir! I’’ll die-die-die! Thankyou sir! Thankyou for freeing meee-hehehehehheeeeeeeeee! SWEET RELEASE!”

A splash, and a bubbling rush that faded into nothing.

“This new formula’s the absolute dogs’ nads,” the male voice grunted. “We need slaves or soldiers, not these inbetween freaks that can’t accept their purification. We’re better off without them.”

“I mean, I like the idea behind this,” another male agreed. “Twilight Sparkle’s definitely on to something. Newfoals aren’t usually good for much besides those silly charges, so I appreciate having smarter ones. But this… this failure rate? It’s just… just awful!”

Lightning drew in a gasp, trembling.

“I know, right?” the first male asked. “We need more like that Focus Ray fella… He could’ve gone pretty far if not for the Blue Spy. But you’d think the potion would at least save the poor abominations, regardless of its balance of traits.”

He wasn’t sad that the mare had… oh Celestia, he’d ordered her to kill herself! And she’d welcomed it! Whatever had changed her… had…it had stolen her...stolen her very being.

Dust felt herself shake, unable to imagine having the core of herself ripped away...that wasn’t death, that was eradication...a living death beyond death, unparalleled in its terror.

“But no,” the second male said. “These latest ones even have to fight when they’re made perfect. Why do they have to do that? Aren’t they happier? It doesn’t make it easier for any of us.”

He wasn’t sad. No, he was disgusted. He’d had no sympathy whatsoever! Neither of them did!

“I can’t wait for them to get the next iteration of the formula tidied-up and out of beta, or at least find some way of controlling these new recruits. Then at least our horsepower shortages will be behind us, and all of Earth will open up ahead of us…”

There was a whistle of wings and the clop of four hooves neatly landing beside her.

“...and speaking of what’s in front of us.”

Lightning Dust felt the tip of a wing gently touch her face, and she recoiled, pulling herself tighter into a ball. The touch was, in these singular circumstances, somehow more terrifying than anything she could have experienced at that time.

“Oh Dusty. How did you get out here? It’s me girl, it’s Prism Flash...your little ‘Dashie’s’ dad...”

‘Prism Flash? Dashie? Who is that?...how does he know me...what’s going on….’

As Dust gave herself up to the darkness, she heard Prism murmur again, a hoof stroking her mane. From the venomous disgust of just a minute ago, he had jumped to a sickly-sweet, almost tender joy...

“It’s all right. You’re with us...you’re with us.”

...and that made her want to scream…

Monsters. Monsters, everywhere.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Author's Notes:

Chapter Two, for your consideration. Many thanks to everyone for the spirited response to Chapter One, but especial thanks to editors Redskin122004, Doctor Fluffy and Rush for helping me with support, advice and patience.

Once again, it's great to be back!