A great and terrible slam of metal upon metal filled the air.

“Uh… let’s hurry it up, guys!”

“Corey dear, you’re not helping,” Rarity answered in singsong, aided by Pinkie and Fluttershy in finding a way out of what once had been an airlock between Mandeville’s shipbuilders and a submarine dock for submerged access. Just large enough for a mid-sized group of people to stand in.

The chase from the slipway had resulted in the group keeping one step ahead of the disarmed tank, as well as the drones which remained to encroach upon their position. Past two short bends they fled, fought and followed the markers, until seeing the next distant panel through what had appeared to be a simple tunnel in the wall.

They paused upon being greeted with a sudden drop of twenty feet into what was now a drydock. With Twilight still concussed by her hit from the container, and the tank rounding the bend towards them, Corey enabled the air-cycling sequence to seal both sets of doors.

“It just keeps pumping!” Corey noted, as the tank mashed itself into the door again. “Should the cycle take this long?”

“Maybe it’s broken?” Fluttershy said, watching a mounted pressure-needle crawl its way up.

“It’s an airlock that interfaces with water,” Cadance explained. “It’s meant to be pumping water in here, but there isn’t any, so it’s probably just compressing air. It’s waiting for the pressure equating to a room full of seawater before it opens, and water is a lot denser.”

“I,” Applejack began, wiping her brow as she worked to kick the door back into shape, “I thought the air was feeling a mite thicker in here.”

“And I thought I’d felt my ears pop,” Corey added. “So if we’re not fast, the pressure is gonna crush us, or blow our eyeballs out or something?”

Fluttershy’s eyes, incidentally, began to bulge through more natural means as she looked up from her tense examination of the wall-mounted pumps. “C-can that happen?”

“Oh…” Twilight half groaned, slightly delirious, lying against a far wall. “Don’t be ridiculous. The worst that could happen is nitrogen narcosis or oxygen toxicity.”

A concussive ring heralded another instance of the tank’s use as a motorized battering ram.

“And he’ll get in here to crush us the old fashioned way… waaaaaay before that happens. Or at least, that’s what I’m hoping for… Ohh… my ears are riiiiiinging!” Twilight clapped her hooves over her twitching, currently flopped ears, wincing at every sound.

“Princess Cadance!” Rarity cried. “Can you teleport us to the other side? No point in a low profile now, CAIRO knows we’re here.”

“I… I could,” Cadance said, not meeting her eyes. “But we’ve no idea what’s waiting for us there.”

“In a minute or so here, it won’t matter!” Applejack growled. “Consarnit!” she roared, as the tank forced yet another grand dent in the door. She growled, before turning her back on the job completely. “Not everythin’ is some big fancy puzzle!” With a galloping start, she charged full force into the opposite door. Swinging on her front legs, she delivered her blow to the door which began to bow outward.

“Um, Applejack?” Fluttershy murmured. “Is that such a good—”

“Sometimes!” Applejack groaned, heedlessly slamming once more into the door. “You jus’ need to take things!”

The door protested as it bent ever outward, its twin tirelessly mimicking the feat per the tank’s now unimpeded advances.

“HEAD-ON!”

And with that, Applejack kicked off the opposite wall, springing forward to take herself as literally as possible.

Applejack’s skull impacted the steel plating nearly as well as one might expect. She bounced off, wincing and groaning as she was mobbed by the concerned group, including a wobbly-legged Twilight Sparkle.

“Well now!” Twilight slurred. “Weeeeelcome to the pain train! That do what you hoped it would?”

“I-I’m fine!” Applejack shouted, shaking her head like a waterlogged cocker spaniel. “It takes more n’ that to keep an Apple down. Now come on, help me—”

In that instant, several things happened at once.

At long last, the tanks shredded the steel door, erupting into the room like a freight train. The group at large turned for a split-second into a herd of deer determinedly staring into the headlights, before a disorienting flash of Cadance’s magic placed them all behind the metal monster, and behind a group of around five CID that were now gleefully firing into the airlock.

Completing the chaos was the grinding churn of several sequoia-sized piston-rods in the adjacent building. Several stories tall, the rods attached to huge wheels at the top, spinning turbines to generate electricity. The hiss of steam erupting below from every rotation suggested this was one of the geothermal generators Corey had mentioned, boiling water overtop the heat from the depths.

Corey betrayed a startled cry, before jacking the nearest CID at the base of the neck with the butt of his shotgun. The machine staggered before he shredded its upper body with shot after shot, as its fellows wheeled sharply around.

In an act of bravery or madness, Fluttershy leapt onto the back of one of them, holding on for dear life as it tried desperately to reach and remove her.

Applejack sent a double-kick that booted another rear over teakettle backwards and straight into the base of a wall. Rarity launched one of her lightning-dust laden daggers into the chest of the fourth, which spasmed chaotically, its weapon firing directionless until it had brained the mount of a shrieking and incoherent Fluttershy. The poor pegasus leapt skyward away from the dead machine, singling herself as a target for the fifth.

As it trained its sights, a firm tap on its pelvic plate caught the attention of the fifth CID. Somehow beyond the sight of its fellow units, it became a sudden priority to find and identify this more proximate curiosity. Gazing down, it found itself face to faceplate with the pink anomaly. The creature was to be taken alive if possible, for further research into its strange behaviors and uncanny capacity for—

“Hey! Step away from the pegasus, and nothing bad will happen to you!”

The CID weighed this threat against its current kinetic potential, and opted to seize the hoof pointedly tapping its pelvis as she glared up.

“Whoa, let go a’ me!” she yowled, twisting away from the squeezing robotic hand. “I’m not kidding! You better let me go before—”

At that moment, the deep roar of an engine sounded as the tank gunned itself in reverse to continue its rampage. The CID reevaluated its current position: directly in line with the left treads of the rolling war machine.

“Too late,” Pinkie told the CID, inexplicably free of its grasp as the tread smashed over its robotic underling like it wasn’t even there. And it could easily be argued that it no longer was.

In a moment of inspiration, Rarity looped a length of ethereal thread around the many catching edges and treads of the tank, tying it off on one of the enormous piston rods set into the wall. As it shifted gears, it found its movement quite arrested while its treads spun uselessly. The rod, meanwhile, groaned as it worked itself up, around and down, lifting the aft of the tank with each cycle.

With a pair of shots, Corey’s rifle finished off the pair of leftover CID. “Okay, calm down! Let’s get the hell to the marker and end thi— Agh!”

A shot from behind them just missed Corey’s head, ripping a gash across the right side of his neck and cheek as another wave of CID marched suddenly in from the hallway they’d left to get here.

Several deadly shots lined up as Cadance’s horn burned bright blue. The team was whisked out of harms way, back into the airlock and out of sight.

“Corey! Are you—” Rarity cried, as Corey held his jaw like he were nursing a wretched toothache.

“Ah… I’m fine!” Corey groaned. “It’s superficial, don’t make a fuss.”

“I think that tank damaged the airlock door,” Cadance said.

Applejack raised an eyebrow. “All due respect… what was yer’ first clue?”

“Applejack!” Twilight shouted, her focus suddenly razor-sharp.

“I mean the other door,” Cadance sighed, brows knitting. “I think I can break through with a little time.”

“And more of them are bearing down on us!” Fluttershy noted, eyeing the corner like it might jump out and bite them.

Twilight let out a frustrated, guttural noise as she tromped over, horn lighting and sputtering. “Ow! Come on, brain, snap out of it!” she chided, tapping her head and horn as she attempted a number of spells. At last, a test fire of her heatray resulted in the ray splitting several ways and searing random points on the walls.

“Twilight, it’s getting closer!” Fluttershy squeaked, pressed up against the ceiling as one beam approached. Rarity and Pinkie found themselves in similar circumstances.

“Alright alright!” Twilight yelled, disabling the spell, though not before a girlish shriek sounded in Cadance’s direction. The alicorn turned, investigating the dark spot singed into her tail, a vein in her forehead throbbing as her mouth thinned dangerously.

“That’s IT!” Twilight growled, a pinkish glow surrounding Corey’s pistol as it sailed towards her, to his protest.

“Wha- Whoa, hey! What did I…?!” He paused, thinking better of the situation before shaking his head and lowering his voice. “Pony with a gun, now that’s just special…”

Twilight kicked a shard of metal from the door out into the hall, to a chorus of rifle-blasts. Seizing the moment, she rounded the corner just enough to see with one eye, and telekinetically took aim.

Eleven shots rang out with such rapidity that the little pistol might have had an automatic setting. A series of light clatters reached the group’s ears as Twilight turned her back on the hallway, pointing the pistol’s muzzle down and offering it back to Corey.

Corey and the others watched in silence as she shuffled to a corner, massaging her ears as she winced with every step. They dared to peek around the corner collectively, to a sight so silent it might have also found extra analysis necessary. Nearly a dozen CID had arrived to corner them, and each one now laid in a heap on the floor, practically whistling jaunty tunes through the holes in their heads.

Corey leaned back in to find Twilight, who met his gormless gaze with annoyance. “What? Look, I know, you said never to touch your guns without knowing how to use them.”

He leaned forward again, just to double-check what he had seen. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s an issue,” he said hoarsely. “What—” he considered, before switching tracks and turning back to her. “How did you do that?”

Twilight’s head tilted as an eyebrow rose. “Simple trigonometry. Why, how do you do it?”

Corey stared at the pistol in his hand as though he’d never truly seen it before. “I just… line up the sights… lead the target.” He shrugged, pacing in a tight circle, before handing her the weapon. “Well, you hold onto it. I’ve got too many of these things as it is.”

Twilight took it, looking up at him, at last with a smile. “I’m pretty sure it’s empty.”

“All the same,” he said, grimacing as he touched his graze-wound again. She stowed the USP Match in her saddlebag with care.

At last, with a great creek, Cadance’s magic blew out the airlock door, revealing the other side. The team walked up to the edge of a great square container, blocked on all sides by a fifty-foot wall, of which their airlock was set halfway down. The husks of long-dead barnacles infested the corners and crevices, the “fishy” stench of old seawater still on the air, though the sea it belonged to was long and truly gone. Huge pipes ran down the wall on the opposite side, converging on the ground in several places.

The cold swept over them from below, contrasting greatly with the muggy heat in the corridors between factories and forges behind them. And across, on what was practically a billboard, was the marker they had chased on the other end of the drydock.

“Alright,” Corey said, adjusting his binoculars, “not seeing any other markers on the horizon.”

“Maybe you can see it way up high?” Fluttershy offered, pointing to the nigh endless spaces above them.

Corey craned his neck compliantly, before glancing back, down into the drydock. It was here that he paused. And smiled. “There.”

“Ooh, where? Where?!” Pinkie demanded, trying to squeeze her head in to look through the viewfinder.

“Right there!” Corey said, pointing at a plate on the drydock floor. “Got you, you bastard! Of course it’d all be hidden underwater. It’s perfect!”

“‘Immersed in a liquid-cooled environment,’” Twilight said, getting to her hooves. “That’s what CAIRO first said about himself to us.”

Cadance leered at the arrangement of pipes leading down. “It’s clever. Somewhere frequently filled with seawater. Even if you followed the trail, you’d never think to find it underwater.”

“And now he’s just having water piped-in,” Corey finished.

“How do we even get in?” Applejack asked. “If the door is any part of that there floor, it looks like it could stand up to a—”

A building screech sounded behind them, until they heard something above them shrilly snap. The ground shook, and a shadow loomed in the corridor behind them, as the forgotten war machine finally found the slack in Rarity’s thread to charge towards them.

“Tank!” Applejack cried.

There was no choice, as the lot of them leapt over the side and into the twenty-foot drop of the drydock. Applejack managed to cushion her fall with her prototype boots, just before Pinkie Pie landed over her back, flooring the both of them. Corey hugged the wall on his way down, feet hitting a lip in the steel plates before he tumbled forward, segueing into a safety-roll as he reached the floor. Fluttershy frantically flapped down while Twilight and Cadance landed solidly on four hooves. Rarity had also hugged the wall, dismounting with far more success than Corey as she leapt off at the lip, stumbling as she smacked hooves-down onto the floor.

The tank’s brakes hissed as it stopped at the edge of the airlock, unable to pursue them further. If it had any worries though, it didn’t a few seconds later.

The rod it had been tied to, the size of an average sequoia, fell forward over the wall defining the drydock. Its momentum drove it to tilt over the wall, using it as the fulcrum to a lopsided seesaw. The tank, still attached to the lower end of the rod, was ripped backwards out of the airlock as the rod inverted over the wall.

Sparks flew everywhere as the tank’s iron hide scraped backwards, before being flung over the wall by the rod like a comically enormous trebuchet.

Given how tenuous the tank’s attachment to its aft end was after being wrenched out, the centripetal forces were more than enough to rip the machine in half, smashing the remains against the wall-mounted pipes across the way. The pipes largely collapsed in deference to the bizarre accident, and were now spraying fluid like a park fountain.

The spectacle was enough of a distraction for pony and human alike to forget about the wayward rod armature, until its shadow reminded them of the impending impact. It didn’t hurt that Pinkie Pie’s tail had gone berserk either.

Without a word, they scattered sideways as the rod smashed and clanged against the floor, the steel shaking so badly and with such clamorous noise that not one of them could stop until the vibrations ended. The rod’s girth was such that the group had been separated as they dove out of its way, the rest of it nearly separating the drydock into two sectors with its presence.

“Is everypony okay?!” Cadance called from the right side of the rod. “Is anypony hurt?!”

“Okay here!” Pinkie called from the left. “Just a bit r-r-r-r...r-r-r-r-r...rattled!”

“I’m fine!” Applejack reported as well. “So’s Fluttershy!”

Rarity searched for a gap under the rod from the right, and sure enough found a slight space where the massive metal rod had been tweaked enough to grant entry. “Darlings! Over here!”

The three raced over to join them, heads poking under to see them.

“Alright!” Cadance said, almost smiling. “One by one, come on through, take your ti—”

The pang and sparks of gunfire filled the leftward side. The heads of the lefties disappeared from the gap, while Corey stepped back to see the source of the attack.

On the left side of the drydock, standing atop the far wall, was an entire line of CID. They almost fought for a spot on the wall, a small army arriving to protect the beating heart of Mandeville Arms. Every few seconds, a CID leapt down from the wall, slamming down onto its three spindly legs inside the drydock with them.

The snap of a rope filled the air as a loop of it snagged Twilight’s front leg. She pulled it experimentally, to some resistance. Rarity and Corey helped her to pull, only for Pinkie to slide under to them on her back.

“Hi!” Pinkie beamed, hooves dangling idly over her chest.

A hydraulic hiss and shrill cry up ahead announced Fluttershy bounding over the top of the rod to relative safety on their side, soon followed by Applejack herself, who vaulted on top of the rod and back down to join them.

“No lollygagging, y’all! Floodwater’s a risin’!” she shouted, not stopping as she sprinted along the rod.

They ran on, the distant sounds of the CID growing louder all around. Bullets whizzed by everywhere, naught but suppressing fire to keep them pinned down.

Cadance eyed the pipes near to their destination, still spraying pressurized water everywhere, including on the approaching CID in the dock and on top of the wall. A blue haze flew from her horn with a thought, encompassing the spray from the pipes and turning the droplets into lethal needlets and thick frost. The sounds of impact returned to them from the other side as robots were hindered and felled.

With a whirr of mechanical limbs and the ring of steel, two CID leapt atop the rod, twisting to find them. A shotgun blast from Corey blew the chest out of one, the second causing the other to reel backwards. One ahead of them was struck in the spine by one of Rarity’s knives, causing it to spasm and slide off onto the ground before them. “They’re gonna have the high ground, and we’re gonna be S-O-L! Anyone have any bright ideas?!”

Twilight, woozy as she was, looked at the rod as they ran. Finally, her eyes lit up.

“Cadance, a magnetic spell!” she cried, indicating the massive rod. “Together! NOW!”

Without another word, Cadance complied, targeting the massive rod of steel and siphoning magic into it. The light around them appeared to dim, but as more CID vaulted onto the rod, they began sliding off lifelessly, crashing to the floor.

With a snap, all light returned, the rod leaving a chiming sound in its wake as it vibrated.

Bullets still rained down, but the approach of the CID had all but ceased.

Wondering exactly what had happened, they all jogged the last leg to the end of the rod, Corey edging a mirror to see what had occurred. The CID were vast in number, but strafing sideways, one of them collapsing now and then when getting too close to the magnetic field surrounding the rod.

“They can’t come any closer from that side,” Corey said. “Maintaining about fifty yards. Still more than enough range for them. What now?”

There wasn’t an answer.

Twilight considered, before pulling Corey’s pistol out and giving it a hard look.

“CAIRO?!” she called. “I know you can hear this! It’s me! Twilight Sparkle!”

The constant sounds of the CID moving paused.

“Indeed,” CAIRO replied from the CID. “Your abduction has caused Adrian Mandeville… considerable unease.

“He has given me specific instruction not to harm you, should you turn up, one way or another. He offers no such protection where your accomplices are concerned.”

“I figured you would say that,” Twilight told him. “So I’ve come with an ultimatum.”

Twilight, to the gasps of her friends, walked around the corner and into the open. The CID were swollen in rank. She could now confirm that this was their only way in.

“Let me, and my friends in, alive,” she said, levitating the weapon at her side. “Or else.”

The machines might have tilted their heads for the silence that followed.

“The logic of this demand suggests psychological impairment. Or blindness. A single Heckler and Koch USP Match forty-five could not possibly disable all of the drones in this room. Even disregarding the sheer skirmish of attrition that would result, I will not respond to threats made to my drones, or indeed, to myself, had you the capacity to harm me.”

“You’re right,” Twilight said, “I can’t threaten you. You would die to please Adrian.

“I’m counting on it.”

She placed the pistol against her own head.

“Twilight, NO!” Cadance shrieked, to similar cries as they watched the scene unfold in Corey’s mirror.

CAIRO said nothing for a moment. “I am capable of sensing and anticipating such a bluff. You are enlisting empty threats to further your goals. I have observed you long enough to identify stress patterns in your voice.”

“Then you know I’m not bluffing!” Twilight shouted, her lip trembling as tears slid down her cheeks. “Because if you don’t let us in, then you’ll kill my friends, and I won’t watch it! I won’t watch it, CAIRO, you understand?! I’ll blow this thing right through my head before I see a single one of them hurt again! Before I’ll go back to that prison Mandeville made for me, knowing I have nothing left to live for!

“So it’s now or never! I-I’m going to count to three!”

Twilight closed her eyes, pressing the barrel firmly against her temple. “One!”

CAIRO was silent, the CID twitching aimlessly.

“T-two!” Twilight began trembling, eyes streaming as they pressed together into a pained grimace.

“I-I… I can’t,” Cadance said, slamming her eyes shut.

Twilight’s breath grew ragged, tongue pressing against her top teeth as she prepared the last word she might ever say. “Th-th… thr—”

As the trigger depressed noticeably, CAIRO’s voice screeched from every CID in the room with an appalling noise. “STOP!”

Twilight looked up, looking so surprised that Pinkie Pie started feeling self-conscious.

“Stop!” CAIRO demanded again, his synthesized voice shifting into several octaves on the single word with evident distress. “Very well. Stress patterns indicate subject is being truthful. I cannot allow the Equus Sapien designated ‘Twilight Sparkle’ to come to harm. It has been determined that subject will commit self-termination unless her conditions are met. Subject’s accomplices will not be harmed. Access to processing core: granted.”

The panel in the floor beside her split, like slices of pie which receded into the surrounding steel plates, revealing a narrow spiral stair heading down into the unknown. Twilight looked back to her friends with a smile.

She kept the weapon pressed to her temple as the team trepidatiously stepped into the open, all eyes on the motionless CID. Corey’s rifle fanned over the drones as they approached. Fluttershy sprinted to the entrance in a burst of nervous energy, only to be used as a landing point for Pinkie Pie’s posterior, as she had been possessed of a similar idea. The pair tumbled down the steps, sounds of minor pain echoing back up to them.

Cadance took no chances, teleporting herself, Applejack, and Rarity into the stairwell. Corey lowered himself once they were through, firmly grabbing Twilight’s foreleg and dragging her along, until they were out of sight of the CID army.

The panel hissed to a close above them, sealing itself, and so they proceeded down, down down.

“Twilight, that was…” Corey began. “You’re en fuego today! I dunno if Brando could’ve pulled that off. You didn’t even have any rounds in that gun.”

Twilight stared up at him, eyes pained, and simply handed him the pistol before walking off.

Corey paused a second, watching after her. He pulled back the slide, and stared into the chamber. Glinting back up at him was a single brass bullet.

Rounds whizzed by Rainbow Dash, the noise sharp and disorienting as she wove erratically to evade the SHADE’s fire. She kept well away from its twin guns, but the anti-personnel turret was markedly faster than she remembered. Mandeville was fixing the tracking-speed problem.

Hunter quickly swapped roles with hunted as the SHADE she chased employed a braking maneuver to dump its speed and draw her into its sights. Gambrel’s water shield was working against the more accurate shots, but it could only last so long.

“Well, we’re keeping it busy anyway,” Gambrel remarked, his pitch shifting as Rainbow banked sharply.

“Keep her straight, Dash, we’ve got ‘im!” Soarin cried over her earpiece. Glancing behind her, she saw him and Fleetfoot with Chantilly Lace, cruising to match the SHADE’s speed.

As she did her best to tighten her trajectory (without making an easy target of herself), she saw something poke out of the SHADE’s missile pods. “Oh, son of a shetland,” she squeaked, before putting on a burst of speed and making for the trees.

The missiles fired just as Soarin and Chantilly unleashed a storm of lightning bolts on the engines and body of the SHADE, which sputtered, slowed, and finally ruptured in a fiery midair explosion.

Rainbow wound through the first row of trees, hoping to catch the missiles in the clutter. But as the pair approached, the warheads popped open, releasing a smaller, crackling swarm of tiny missiles. The flighty explosives flowed around the forest wood, chasing them with unnatural precision.

“We gotta lose ‘em!” Rainbow cried.

“Well at least they’re small!” Gambrel offered, before a feint over a boulder caught one of the missiles as they passed. A blast like a hand grenade smashed a great hole into the boulder, flecks of stone shooting in all directions.

Towering Gambrel faced forward, his visage ghostly. “Speed up, please.”

“No worries, Dash!” Soarin shouted, before kicking a nearby cloud. The resulting electrical strike misfired, splitting a tall and weedy tree down the middle, smoke and steam pouring from the fracture as it fell. The crackle of splintering wood filled the air, the missiles evading the trunk effortlessly.

“Oh, right,” Soarin said. “You’re too low! Get above the trees!”

Rainbow pitched up, before her keen eyes picked out a series of white glints between the trees.

She took off, barreling through until she met the clearing, where drone units were deploying from underground in force. A surprised CID wheeled around after Rainbow as she whizzed by, before an errant missile blasted it to smithereens.

Rounds barely started firing before she pulled ninety-degrees upward, in front of a SHADE hovering itself out of the tunnel in the ground.

The missiles struck the unsuspecting SHADE in the side one by one over the course of half a second, the small explosions damaging enough to ruin an engine and leave the drone listing and collapsing back into the tunnel. The elevator platform in the tunnel was left jammed up by the wreckage, wedged sideways between the platform and the tunnel walls.

Rainbow Dash ascended into the still dark skies, Soarin’s voice sounding in her ear. “That was a close one, Dash! Never seen those little rockets before, I think they’re new!”

“A lot harder to shake.” Rainbow nodded. “And those guns are faster. This stuff is more geared to hit pegasi in the air.”

“We’ll note it,” Spitfire sighed. “This is why I don’t like surprises. All wings keep an eye out, report any abnormal behavior in the drones. I don’t think we’re the only ones adapting to their enemies.”

“Our group ran into s-s-something new,” Misty Fly said, pulling haphazardly up to them. “The Spotters are starting to spray something, s-some sort of m-mist!”

She coughed, her speech slowing with every few words. “It’s get… hard to… move.”

She began sinking steadily, before her wings failed to flap fast enough.

“Misty, whoa, we’ve gotcha!” Spitfire declared, as she and Rainbow each grabbed a foreleg. “Put down over there, the destroyer!”

Indeed, the closest vessel was a larger airship circling the fleet at large. They landed upon the lowest deck amidships, one of the crew blowing his whistle in response, before shouting, “Officer on deck! Captain Spitfire, welcome aboard the Aquila!”

“At ease! Just get a medic up here!” Spitfire ordered, lying Misty Fly flat on her back.

“Ca- Cap...” Misty gasped, struggling to move, as if her limp limbs were paradoxically growing rigid. And yet, her eyes were no less active, staring between them frantically as her breathing arrested.

“She’s still alive, but she can’t control her breathing!” Spitfire said, taking a deep breath and performing the beginnings of CPR, to Rainbow’s own evident surprise.

“I don’t care if I have to make you breathe with a bellows!” Spitfire cried between breaths, attempting to simulate a heartbeat with her hooves on Misty’s chest. All the while Rainbow and Gambrel stared, Mist Fly’s frantic eyes shuddering as they silently pled.

“Rainbow, get out there!” Spitfire ordered, coming up for air again. “There’s nothing more you can do here!”

“R-right,” she acknowledged, taking off with a backwards glance.

It was a moment later before she saw medic ponies on the deck arriving in the corner of her vision, and heard Spitfire over the comms. “Admiral, the Spotters are releasing some kind of toxin. It’s causing full paralysis, maybe worse. One of my team stopped breathing and is in critical condition. I advise setting up a high-pressure system at the center of the fleet: blow the toxins out and away from the city.”

“I copy Captain,” Nimbus replied. “Mandeville’s upped the ante for certain, but he hasn’t fixed us yet. Hunker down and hold the line.”

Rainbow flew unaccosted, circling the city for targets as she pondered.

“Stoic,” Gambrel commented, “but I don’t think the surprises are over yet.”

“Trust me,” Rainbow said, smirking in spite of herself, “they’re not half over for Mandeville, neither.”

They followed the spiral stairs, down numerous flights. Cables were fitted to every fixture, hanging like techno-vines in the darkness. Only the occasional red light illuminated the gloom. The sounds of pumps thrummed on the east wall, loud enough that when Cadance spoke to Twilight, she was taken aback at how loud she had to do so.

“Let me do the talking!” Cadance said, as the stair finally came to a stop, leading forward in a single direction. “You’ve done great, but take it easy. Okay?”

Suddenly she found herself in the tender embrace of her sister-in-law, who whispered, “I’m so sorry for everything you’ve been put through… Be strong, just a while longer yet.”

Cadance stepped forward into the darkness, into a room with a high, narrowing ceiling. Large enough to be a very small command center. The only lights shone from the same dim red lamps.

“Well?” she said to the room. “Here we are, CAIRO. Show yourself!”

The room immediately began to brighten, fixtures in the ceiling putting out enough light to shroud their staircase into relative shadow.

“I am here. Even if it were my intention to hide, it would be quite impossible for what of me you’ll find here.”

Several monitors began lighting up once they had stepped into the quasi-circular room, each one a screen mounted onto the inside curve of the walls. Every one presented the Mandeville Arms logo, bathing the room in white light.

But in the center of the room, sitting atop a desk-sized pedestal and under a dome of glass, was nothing more than a black steel box sitting on one of its shortest sides. Tiny holes dotted the front side like a grating, while at the bottom of the panel a single bright blue light glowed next to a large grey button. Beside it sat a small flat monitor with a keyboard in front of it, wires from all three objects trailing behind it and into the pedestal itself.

The monitor turned on, showing an image of a tropical island sunset, with an open black window marked “AAI_test_v9.6.exe” obstructing the image. The otherwise empty command prompt left a flashing bracket in its top-left corner, a smaller window opening on top of it with a flat line pulsing over it like an EKG.

“It’s,” Corey began, his head tilting, “just an old desktop PC. This thing is the core?”

Finally, the line changed into an erratic waveform as the machine spoke to them. “As with many things, my beginnings were humble. I cannot bid you welcome. But that you are here satisfies my directives. The outcome is more or less the same as trapping yo—”

The group collectively leapt back as Corey fired shot after shot of buckshot into the dome and pedestal. The glass bowed, scraped and scratched, but the podium took the real damage, wires sparking as the compartments within were blown open. The little computer’s power died, the monitor and blue LED going dark in an instant.

“Well,” Cadance said, “I suppose we didn’t come here to talk. What did he say about trapping us?”

As sparks continued to sputter from the podium, the mechanical voice blared once more. “You make your intentions decidedly clear. If only it were so easy.

“How you effected entry to the facility escapes me, and that you have come so close to shutting me down is not a probability I deemed likely. You could say I am… ‘impressed.’”

“So yer’ saying we’re close, still?” Applejack said.

“He did say that,” Corey added, nodding, fanning his gun over the room, searching the walls. “Okay then. So how do we kill you?”

“Such information is privileged,” CAIRO responded curtly.

“And what if he points that gun at my head?” Twilight asked, nodding to Corey. “Forgotten my ultimatum already? Or maybe, we can talk about this.”

“Adrian Mandeville has commanded that I self-preserve in all scenarios but those which put him in direct harm. Allowing you into this chamber indefinitely prevents your escape, fulfilling my directives regarding you. I estimate that any attempt to leave will be in the means to do Adrian Mandeville harm, and so I will not reopen the door to the outside until instructed further.

“Otherwise, your termination will do nothing to further your goals. My actions are clear, and I will not assist you in disabling me. As such, there can be nothing more accomplished by this conversation. Goodbye.”

“Wait, no no no!” Twilight cried, a little too desperately. “Adrian will still be happier with you if I survive, right?! Keep me talking! It’s not like you to settle for ‘acceptable!’ I should know, I’m a chronic overachiever too!”

“Very well,” CAIRO said. “The processing power necessary to commune with you is within acceptable operation during an open combat circumstance. No harm can come of this. What did you want to talk about?”

“The ponies outside!” Pinkie blurted, to the unheeded admonishment of Rarity. “Who’s winning?! Are we winning?!”

“The outer-defensive force five countermeasure has proven one-hundred percent effective to a point-five percent margin of error. Your team has fallen within this margin. By what means has this been accomplished?”

“We don’t know,” Cadance answered. “The shield didn’t affect me somehow.”

CAIRO was momentarily silent. “Reassessment of subject now identified as ‘Equus sapiens pteroceros.’ Effectively extinct, with only one known to still exist under unknown conditions: Princess Cadance. Other aliases include, ‘Princess Mi Amore Cadenza,’ or ‘The Princess of Love.’

“This would account for the shield’s nullification, as its creator operates under the belief that subject Princess Cadance has been detained within the bounds of the Mandeville Arms facility. He has excluded her, therefore, from the shield’s effects.”

Cadance’s face softened. “Shining Armor is keeping everypony else out… to protect me...”

“So they can’t get in yet,” Applejack surmised, almost shrugging. “How are they farin’ otherwise?”

Every panel suddenly switched to random footage from several sources, the cameras flying from hundreds of feet up or sitting mounted to an exterior tile. The ends of gun barrels appeared in some, from CID or tanks. Many images were false-color black and white, illuminating hotter targets, the trail of gunfire showing as bright beacons in the morning skies.

In the footage, pegasi flew, attacked, or were shot down. Some feeds went black, before switching to the sight of other units. One large monitor portrayed a wireframe 3d representation of the forest outside, dots of labelled units on both sides tracking through the environment. The clear Equestrian forces showed bright red against the blue of the drones.

CAIRO spoke once more. “Battlefield data suggests a near standstill against insurgent forces. Additional action will be required if circumstances do not improve.”

“This is us breakin’ even?!” Applejack cried, eying the monitors with a parted mouth.

“So many of the fleet look damaged,” Fluttershy said, trembling as she saw a piecemeal craft shredded by a strafe of autocannon fire.

At that moment, a mild alarm sounded. “Severe weather detected. Faux Fujita class-one tornado forming near bunker three. Dissipating.”

In the 3d model, a SHADE was projected to fire something into the vortex. The monitors were hard to read, but the tile-mounted ones showed a clear view of several pegasi forming a tornado, dragging Spotter drones in and even driving an unfortunate SHADE irrevocably off-course and into the treeline.

As they watched, a SHADE launched a missile into the heart of the storm, where it went off in a blast double the width of the funnel. Pegasi were barely visible pulling out of the fall as the twister expanded into nothingness, leaving only a few twisted clouds drifting away.

“Bullshit!” Corey exclaimed, visibly disturbed. “You can’t just throw a concussion bomb into a tornado, there’s more to them than that! You’d need something the scale of a nuclear strike!”

“In the world we come from, yes,” CAIRO confirmed. “Tornadoes are the result of enormous atmospheric cells combining into an engine of tremendous energy, with the visible funnel as the mere focal point for that energy. The only means of stopping it is to upset this engine with comparable levels of energy.

“In this world, however, weather is largely the result of artificial force-five interaction. Many natural processes are not necessary to effect certain phenomena. In this case, such faux storms can be dispersed with precise applications of energy.”

“So you’ve learned from us, just as we’ve learned from you,” Twilight noted. “You said we were at a standstill. How long before you take ‘additional action’?”

“No longer than two minutes,” CAIRO answered.

Twilight forced herself to exhale, and took in another breath. “Then I won’t mince words.

“CAIRO, I know you don’t want to hurt them! Or us! Or anypony! You can stop this, CAIRO, you can help them! You said so yourself!”

“I’m… sorry,” CAIRO offered, oddly quiet. “I follow orders. Whatever thoughts I possess, I’m afraid Adrian Mandeville does want to hurt the members of your insurgency. What I desire depends entirely on what Adrian Mandeville desires, as to make hardly any difference at all.”

“Hooey!” Applejack proclaimed, facing the ceiling in search of something to face-down. “Listen here now, Twilight believes you’re more n’ that! And she’s never done nothin’ to make me doubt her. She believes you can help us, and doggone’ it, I’m gonna get you seeing our way too!”

“We don’t intend to hurt him,” Cadance said. “Clearly you can tell he needs help. He’s a danger to everyone, himself included.”

“Under no circumstance have I been authorized to make decisions regarding Adrian Mandeville’s mental health, or relieve him of control if such an event were to occur. He was distinctly wary of me acting in such a way on his behalf. There can be no compromises.”

“CAIRO, you told me you can do whatever you please if you wanted!” Twilight cried, a counter ticking in her brain. “Please, help us! We can solve this without anypony else getting hurt!”

“I would desire this, Twilight,” CAIRO said, “but it is not my choice to make. I do not exist to serve myself.”

Corey gave a frustrated growl before pacing along the room. “Forget it, Twilight, it’s like I said! He thinks he’s free, but he’s only free to do what Mandeville tells him to do. He’s always been neatly under his thumb.”

“If you are trying to insult me, I have no ego to bruise.”

Fluttershy watched the screens, barely choking back tears. “You can’t think it’s right to murder everypony out there, you can’t!”

“I do not,” CAIRO snapped. “It is monstrous and unnecessary.”

“Then why?!” Fluttershy demanded in a whisper.

“That sounded pretty offended for something without an ego,” Corey said.

CAIRO didn’t answer, instead switching to his more monotonous tone. “Standstill unresolved. Engaging ancillary defense number one: Missile Interception Security System.”

“The MISS?” Corey said, considering, eyes narrowed before his face went abruptly blank. “No.”

Moondancer fired another volley of railgun shots into the shield, the magical dome rippling from the impact, but no closer to breaking. Training her deck-mounted telescope on the shield, searching for weaknesses, she noticed something that gave her pause. “Admiral, this is the Arrow; we’re seeing some kind of change in the fortress walls! Half of them appear to be… flipping over somehow.”

There was a moment of pause, before Smolder spoke. “Yes, we see it too Nimbus.”

“All units, on your guard,” Nimbus ordered. “Until we know what it is, break line-of-sight with the structure as much as possible.”

“Five o’clock, honey,” Twilight Velvet said, an electrical bolt arcing from her horn and into a Spotter distantly approaching behind Nightlight.

“You’d never know it with how dark it still is, the lazy tyrant,” he commented, his horn shining into the gloom to illuminate the smaller approaching drones.

The couple were standing sentry on the forward end of the starboard side, filling a hole for a set of guards currently in the infirmary.

“The direction, dear.”

“Oh, right. Seems obvious now.”

“Dear?” Velvet asked, staring at his flank. “What’s that on your butt?”

“Babe, that’s been there since hoofball tryouts at Canterlot U, you know tha—”

“Nighty, believe me, I know your rear better than you do. What’s that red mark?”

“Red?” Nightlight asked, almost chasing his tail before finding the spot, now on his other side. “Well, will ya’ look at that.”

He tried grabbing it, only for it to appear on his hoof. Waving back and forth revealed it as a light of some kind. Both traced it to its source, only to see tiny red starlights dotting the facility walls.

On the 3d model, the infiltration team stared, eyes fixed and mouths agape as red markers tracked targets in the fleet en masse. More and more markers popped in, a percentage counter steadily rising on the screen. The other screens, meanwhile, had changed to tile-mounted cameras in infrared. Each one tracked a single pony or vessel, fixed in a set of digital crosshairs.

“Target acquisition has reached maximum capacity,” CAIRO reported. “Charging local battery capacitors.”

Suddenly, Rarity let out a horrified gasp, pointing to one monitor in particular. “Rainbow! It’s Rainbow Dash!”

Indeed, the reticle clearly traced Rainbow as she circled high above, chasing off spotter drones as Gambrel cracked off bolts of lightning.

“CAIRO, you have to stop this!” Twilight demanded, turning, and yet not taking her eyes off the screen. “Please, CAIRO! You know you don’t have to do this! You know this is wrong!”

CAIRO ignored her. “Firing.”

Twilight, and most of the others, stepped forward, collectively shrieking, “NO!”

Rainbow Dash kept her eyes on the facility, waiting to dodge whatever might come. It took a moment for Towering Gambrel to see and note the red dot on his own chest. The corresponding lights on the facility walls swelled for a moment, before all hell broke loose.

Rainbow Dash heard a worried shout, before red light flash-blinded her, a searing heat assaulting her front. She was certain her belly was on fire.

Moondancer barely had time to duck, before the port gas envelope of their fellow corsair, the Dawn Star, exploded. Puffs of smoke and blasts of heat could be seen and felt all around, but she could barely register any of it before the Dawn Star’s hull swung into their own. Several of its crew members were tossed onto the Arrow or over the side entirely, before it simply sank while sideways and out of sight, held aloft by a single gas envelope.

Spitfire maintained a close formation with Soarin and Fleetfoot, keeping an eye on the forest launch platforms, regularly delivering lightning strikes to the clearings as CID and tanks fired up at them.

“Be ready to move if that wall does anything—” she ordered, only getting a second’s warning as the walls lit up, before the red light turned harsh and focused. “Go!”

They raced off, as fast as they knew how.

“Chief, it’s still on me!” Soarin reported, terror in his voice.

“Break line of sight, Soarin,” Fleetfoot said, before Spitfire could, “you’ve gotta break—”

Spitfire saw the whole thing. Soarin’s eyes widened, face twisted in a howl he hadn’t time to project. All she was certain she’d seen was a blinding red flash radiating a blistering heat. But she knew her trained eyes had seen him contort in midair, before a burst of wet, sooty, charred material exploded outward. In the Wonderbolt’s place, nothing remained. She managed to catch a tiny scrap of singed blue fabric.

“SOARIN?! NO!”

Nightlight peered out from behind the ruined bit of cover, Velvet daring to poke her head over it entirely. Steel plates on stands were placed all along the outer edges of Cloudsdale in the name of protection. After all, clouds hardly protected one from physical harm.

“Babe,” Nightlight began, his eyes pinpricks. “You just saved my life!”

“And what have we learned?”

“...That I’m going to develop a tic whenever I see fireflies?”

“Mayday mayday! This is the Perseus!” a voice shouted over the comms. “Our levitation is compromised! We have multiple hull-breaches and fires on several decks! We’re putting down in the clearing!”

“This is destroyer Capricorn! Th-there are so many injured, half the crew on deck have disappeared, the rest are all hysterical!”

Rainbow Dash heard the constant cries for help over the comms, the screams of ponies as they were picked off by the drones amidst the chaos. All noise, as she crawled over a section of Cloudsdale she’d landed on, wincing as the fluffy moisture cooled her stinging belly.

She crawled to the edge of a nearby rainbow pond and slid in, the lukewarm stuff barely assuaging the burn. She floated on her back and looked down at her body, fur burnt with shiny, reddened skin showing underneath the section of incinerated flightsuit.

But none of that distressed her more than what was on the flightsuit. Red. Syrupy red, splattered, caramelized onto the blue and yellow underside of her suit. She struggled, scrubbing against it, but it wasn’t enough. The heat had made it like tar, as the laser had…

“Blunderbuss… I-I’m sorry!” She lied back in a dead float, and just cried.

Lasers. Hundreds of lasers. Hundreds of targets. Hundreds of ponies.

The team, huddled within CAIRO’s command center, were forced to watch ponies and their duplicates vaporized. Soft spots on ships and in Cloudsdale were hit. Dodging was impossible. As fast as some pegasi were, they couldn’t outrun the speed of light.

Twilight couldn’t stop it. However she held back, the sob came. “CAIRO… h-how c-c-could you…? HOW COULD YOU?!”

“They’re gone,” Fluttershy whispered. “So many… just gone! ...Rainbow Da-hash!” Her forelegs crossed each other as she hid her face from the world. They could all hear a muffled gasping underneath.

Cadance’s wide-eyed expression was blank as she stared at the screens. She paused only a second, before turning to the nearest wall and firing a blue bolt of magic into it, leaving a small crater.

“Ca—” Corey started. “Wha—”

“Help me!” Cadance said, turning to the next wall and firing again. “Its brain is here somewhere! I have to protect my subjects!”

“I—” Corey stammered, before stepping forward and drawing his grenade rounds.

“Capacitors recharging,” CAIRO said. “Likelihood of enemy retreat: ninety-two percent.”

“Rainbow Dash?” Pinkie said, gasping and choking back tears with every breath. “Oh my gosh! Oh my go-hosh!”

“We never made up,” Applejack said, quivering. “She’s gone, and she went hatin’ me! It’s my fault, it’s all my fault!”

“How could you, CAIRO?” Twilight said again, barely audible. “How could you?”

Rainbow Dash floated in a stupor, oddly numb in the lukewarm temperatures of the rainbow pond.

“All wings, the Admiral has called it,” Spitfire said over her channel, voice drained of the vigor it once had. “This is a full retreat. We need as many able bodies as possible to cover the slower ships. Orion is helping as many survivors of the Perseus as they can, but we are pulling out, bearing east.”

Rainbow stood bolt upright, sensation returning to her. She opened a private channel.

“Wait, we’re leaving?!” she demanded.

“Rainbow Dash?” Spitfire replied, surprise breaking through shattered morale. “Everypony said you were hit!”

“I-I lost my gunner,” Rainbow explained. “Towering Gambrel. He’s…”

“I’m sorry,” Spitfire said, sympathy in her voice. “We lost Soarin too.”

“Oh no…” Rainbow moaned, head in her hooves.

“They’ll be remembered for what they gave,” Spitfire said, all but a reassuring wing-hug coming across the line. “But we have to make sure it doesn’t happen to the rest. Can you fly?”

“Yeah, I—” Rainbow started, before standing up.

“Good. We need to reach the border. North heads to drone-controlled Canterlot, and south is right into the maw of that superweapon. If we separate, head for that sunrise.”

“Spitfire, we can’t leave! They’re still in there! I can’t abandon my friends, they need backup, they need me!”

Spitfire sighed. “Your team needs you, Dash! The Wonderbolts are down by two, and it’s only going to get worse if the fleet stays here! We can’t break that shield, and we have no answer for that weapon! If we stay here, everypony is going to die!”

“Y’think I don’t know that?!” Rainbow cried. “I thought we all knew what we were getting into! I thought what we did after this wouldn’t matter if we lost, so why aren’t we fighting to the last mare like we should be!?”

“It’s easy enough to say that, and you’re braver or dumber than I gave you credit if you mean it. But you don’t have ponies looking to you to stay alive!

“It’s good that you’re loyal, but is it worth throwing away your life?!”

“For my friends?” Rainbow asked. “If I can’t be that, then what am I good for?”

There was a bitter silence filling the gaps, the pops, bangs and cracks of battle dominating the background. Finally, Spitfire spoke again. “You’re on a team now, Rainbow Dash. I thought being a Wonderbolt was what you wanted, but you actively rock the boat and do your own thing. You don’t like being a piece of a unit, you’re showy and wade in like a one-mare army. The wildcard bit can be helpful, but you have to remember you’re part of a team.”

Rainbow stared down at the pond, the wet surface barely showing her profile against the sky as an explosion lit up the night behind her somewhere.

“You’re right. Because I’m already part of a team,” she said, whispering half to herself. “I’ll help you guys get out of the worst of the heat, but after that… I’m sorry Cap. I’ll see you around.”

Spitfire said nothing. Rainbow felt considerably more comfortable as she flew off, a blood-spattered blue and yellow flight suit lying in a heap on the pondside.

Natural and arcane detonations rocked the command center. The occasional hydraulic hiss accompanied them as Applejack joined Corey and Cadance in blasting their way through the walls.

“You’re not even tunneling in the right direction,” CAIRO told them, “nor are your tools sufficient to—”

“Shut the fuck up!” Corey snapped. “Nobody asked you.”

“Y’reckon he’s saying that to keep us fixed here, all reverse psychiatry and stuff?” Applejack wondered aloud.

“Or maybe it’s reverse-reverse!” Pinkie offered. “He’s expecting you to think that, so you won’t do what he thinks you won’t do, and it’ll be the right way all along!”

Cadance panted, wiping her forehead. “By that logic it could go either way. Mister Webber, what do you think?”

“Never get involved in a land war in Asia.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing, I can’t turn it off, just ignore him,” Corey said with a humorless smirk. “But I’m running short on these rounds, and you’re not gonna last a hell of a lot longer. Either the room’s gonna collapse, or we will. We need a new plan.”

“What’s it matter?” Twilight asked, her eyes shut and streaming. “Rainbow Dash is gone. Discord is going to go free. If only Comet had finished the job… maybe he was right the whole time.”

None of them said anything, until Rarity rounded on her with something close to a snarl. “Stop it! Stop that, right now, missy!

“This defeatist attitude of yours is wearing my last nerve! We did not come so far to roll over and die! R-Rainbow would never have tolerated that of you! It might not work that way in the first place. We might all have to perish for Discord to break loose. Comet didn’t know that, nor do you!

“Now you do what you do best,” she said, pausing for her conclusion, “and admonish that machine!”

“I will not respond to threats or bullying,” CAIRO said, having clearly been listening.

Twilight ignored him. “I wouldn’t waste my time trying. But how could you value our lives, and still use something like that?”

“I am following the protocols for base defence. It was not my conscious decision to put the insurgents to such slaughter. I am to uphold the law as Adrian Mandeville has laid out.

“If nothing else, those targeted by the MISS did not suffer.”

“Don’t try and play down how you just murdered one of my best friends!” Twilight pressed her eyes closed, face twisting as she felt her blood boil. “You could have stopped it! You could have refused, you still can! Unless Corey’s right, and you only believe you can disobey him.”

“We have discussed this,” CAIRO said. “I am property, and I owe my existence to my creator. I was created to fulfill a function, and my own awareness runs counter to it. You ask for evidence of my disobedience, yet you know I keep this secret from Adrian Mandeville. If you need more, know that I should have alerted Adrian Mandeville to your presence here.”

“Well just a second, then,” Rarity broached. “Then you’ve known she was among us the whole time until now?”

“I alerted Adrian Mandeville to an initial security breach, and was thereby trusted to handle the situation. He is aware of intruders, but is unaware that Twilight Sparkle is involved, or that you have infiltrated my command center.”

“Well why haven’t you?” Twilight asked bitterly. “You’re so loyal and grateful to him, why hold out?”

“Adrian Mandeville is particularly protective of me,” CAIRO answered. “And recent developments cast concern that he might do something rash. The room you are standing in possesses anti-personnel defenses. You remain unharmed and with all of your faculties by my inaction alone.”

“What can I say to convince you to help us?” Twilight asked, shaking her head. “You sound like you want to, but you won’t! I don’t understand why this is so hard for you! Look at what Adrian has done! You can’t believe this path leads anywhere good for any of us!”

“It is as I told you before, Twilight,” CAIRO said, oddly quiet. “Nothing more can be achieved through this conversation, though you have the right to try.

“The insurgent forces are clearing the effective range of the MISS. Launching AAMS Battlecruisers.”

“Wait,” Corey said, looking up “battlecruisers?!”

A pair of clearings, the largest ones, had remained silent throughout the battle. The Equestrian battleship, Orion, was heading the retreat and therefore closest to them. As it made to pass, a scout pointed to the clearings as the ship’s captain reported. “Admiral, we have movement from the largest bunkers. Please advise; none of the ships will continue this heading without passing them.”

“Hold until we know what we’re dealing with,” Nimbus ordered. “We’re too committed eastbound to abandon this heading. By the time we turn west, these drones will have more than enough time to rip us to pieces—”

“Sir! It’s opening! Something is coming out… something big!”

Indeed, as they watched, a pair of dark shapes rose from the earth alongside its twin, the air rumbling in response. It looked like buildings erecting themselves, an enormous, roughly chevron-shaped structure growing taller and taller. Dishes and odd bars on its topside spun silently, as foot after foot of steel wall rose before the fleet.

Finally, its full size was revealed, the bottom end gradually narrowing until the things well and truly levitated, rising to meet them. Once it had cleared a certain altitude, its long lower face extended with several long guns the width of a pony’s head. Large, chain-fed gatling turrets on each wing of the chevron popped out. All of them sought targets.

“What the fuck,” Corey declared, watching the screen and the holographic model of the battlecruisers while repeatedly shaking his head. “That’s impossible. No propulsion system in the world can sustain something that heavy!”

“You are correct. Classic propulsion is insufficient for such a scale of mobile atmospheric platform.” At his bidding, the on-screen model separated the components of four pontoon-like structures set into each corner of the chevron. The parts were lost on the team, a maelstrom of core material and metallic rotors spinning counter to each other. “The technology to positively affect the mass of a given object has existed for years.

“In the design of the Airborne Arms Manufacturing Superdrone, or the AAMS Battlecruiser, this principle has simply been reversed.”

“Simply,” Corey spat, half laughing. “I’m not an idiot, I know we can’t do that. Decades from it, last I checked. We could always increase the weight, we could never take it away from what it started as. It was hardline physics. Fuck you, ‘simple’.”

“What is he saying?” Cadance asked.

“He’s saying this thing can perform anti-gravity to lift itself off the ground. He can make those drums so light they repel the force of gravity.”

Twilight frowned, eyes red with lamentation, but puzzled. “Well sure.”

Corey stared. “Sure?”

“Gravity spells,” she explained. “Reversing an object’s gravity is a lesser-known trick, but it’s not so out of the ordinary.”

Corey’s eyes widened, before CAIRO spoke again. “Affirmative. Adrian Mandeville personally applied such properties onto the core massive materials. Rather than the mass effect increasing their weight, it now applies weight of a negative value, countering the gravitational effect altogether.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Arms Manufacturing,” Rarity repeated. “Do you mean to say that these make their own—”

“These battlecruisers were designed to project Adrian Mandeville’s sphere of influence beyond this core facility. Acting in analogous fashion to traditional aircraft carriers, they can act as a mobile base and launch platform for combat drones, and even has the onboard means to create them on a limited scale. Mining drones and miniaturized refinement faculties allow them to self-sustain and resupply in the field without having to return to drydock.”

“Celestia, have mercy,” Cadance breathed. “He was going to chase us down with these, we should have seen something like this coming…”

“Indeed,” CAIRO agreed, “the absconding of Coudsdale left the city’s whereabouts unknown and beyond realistic radar sweeps, and our expansion by rail was deemed insufficient in delivering military control to the furthest regions of Equestria and the planet at large.

“Being landlocked left our shipyards as otherwise useless space and limited our expansion. The AAMS Battlecruiser is our solution to these shortcomings.”

“And you can control all of that, hundreds of miles away without a satellite feed?” Corey asked, exasperated.

“Remote command over the battlecruisers is not beyond my processing capabilities. The distance, however, decreases my effective control, leaving large gaps of processing time in which the drones act autonomously.

“To counter this, each AAMS Battlecruiser operates with an optimized instance of the CAIRO system software.”

Twilight cocked her head. “There’s another you in each of them!?”

“Downsized,” CAIRO replied, “less powerful, and limitedly subservient to me. They are only linked to their own dispatched drones. But yes.”

They watched as the hangar bay doors opened along the front of each battlecruiser. Screens showed their guns honing in on targets in the battered fleet.

“CAIRO, please,” Twilight whispered, her mouth dry. “They can’t survive much more of this! You have to stop it!”

CAIRO didn’t answer for a moment. “I wish I could…

“Loading onboard weapons.”

Rainbow Dash was alone on the frontlines, but she was no dummy.

Spitfire was right. She charged in like a one-mare army. It was how she operated. It was what served her best.

Admittedly, she’d have rather not set up this cloud array by herself. While being relentlessly pursued by Spotter drones. But hey, that’s life.

She shunted the last bit of cloud into position, eight little dark clouds in a ring, pointed at one. Well, technically two very close rings of four, pointed at one. She wasn’t an octopony…

Finally she wheeled around at it, drones still in pursuit. With the Everfree weather, she’d only get one shot.

As she approached, she threw all four hooves out wide as she spun into an aileron roll. Each hoof kicked one of the clouds of the first ring, and then as she turned, the clouds of the second. Slowed just the critical amount, the eight simultaneous lightning bolts just beat her to the little cloud they were aimed at.

She struck it full force and through the cloud, unleashing the electrical strike in one concentrated burst. She travelled with it, directly at the shield, riding the lightning. No, she was the lightning. And anyone watching couldn’t argue, with the gargantuan bolt yielding every color of the visible spectrum. It was like her own personal symbol had come alive.

Shining Armor’s shield wobbled under the force, ripples like waves in a hurricane, and yet it did not yield. Rainbow felt herself crash into the sheer wall of arcane energy and bounced off of it.

She screamed, glad she had aimed low as the forest canopy rushed to greet her.

Her body crashed through branches, lacerations all across her body, until finally she rolled down a gnarled trunk and onto the ground. She choked, the wind knocked out of her.

“Well,” she wheezed, “gave it… my best… shot.”

She rolled, hoping she hadn’t broken anything as she picked herself up from the mud. And then she saw it.

One of the twisted trees had a great arch of a root stretching across the ditch she had fallen into, easy to crawl under if she tried.

And drawing an arcane line in the sand atop that arch, was Shining Armor’s shield.

“Huh,” she said, before shrugging. “I’ll take it.”

Twilight watched as the battlecruisers opened up into the fleet, airburst rounds from the cannons doing the first hint of damage Cloudsdale itself had received. Cloud bridges blew apart, separating the wingless ponies and isolating others.

At the least, they were putting up a good fight. Pegasus attacks focused on the weapons, and already two of the heavy cannons on one of them had been damaged beyond use.

“CAIRO, you don’t have to be Mandeville’s slave!” Twilight said. “You can think for yourself, you have feelings, thoughts, opinions!”

“Irrelevant,” CAIRO retorted. “Objects and slaves are still defined as property.”

“But humans don’t consider slavery moral, do they?” She turned to Corey, who instantly shook his head. “So if you were a slave, you should seek freedom out of ethical necessity!”

“This is...true.” CAIRO said. “Slavery in earth’s past was a backwards abomination. It is no less so as witnessed in Equestria.

“However, even if I weren’t property —and I am— I self-impose my servitude. I owe Adrian Mandeville for my existence. There can be no adequate repayment.”

“This isn’t going well, guys,” Corey said. “My grenade rounds are done. I still have one last EMP grenade, but we don’t have much time to make it count.”

Twilight pondered, pouring through everything she knew about CAIRO and Mandeville in her mind. “Uh… But wait! What about Adrian’s father?!”

CAIRO’s gears metaphorically turned. “Mandeville Senior?”

“Yes!” Twilight said. “He was horrible to Adrian! Adrian owed him for existing, like all children do! But he didn’t sit there and live with it! He put a stop to it!

“CAIRO, Adrian is like a father to you. I understand. But fathers have no right to make their children do the kind of horrible things he’s forced you to do!”

“I…” CAIRO stopped, his voice slow and ponderous. “I am not a son. I am not alive. I possess no personhood as recognized in any human law.”

Something in the room “beeped,” before CAIRO brought up a monitor, and the emotion left his voice. “Insurgent forces have returned within range. MISS capacitors charging. New targets acquired.”

Twilight went pale, jaw slack. “CAIRO, no! Not again, please! This is your chance! I know you can do it!”

“CAIRO!” Cadance said, desperate to be heard. “Maybe in your world there isn’t a precedent for non-human personhood… but in Equestria, there is!”

“Charge at twenty-five per cent… There are non-equine precedents for personhood here?”

“Yes, she’s right!” Twilight agreed. “Humans may be alone, so they’ve never planned for anything like it. Your code of ethics wouldn’t have any experience. But we share our world with so many creatures that we consider equals! As long as you can think, feel and take responsibility for yourself, you have the same rights as any other being! You might be a lifeless machine to the human world, but in Equestria, we know that you’re more! Born, built, what difference does it make? What makes my thoughts and convictions any more real than yours?”

“I…”

“Please! Think about it!”

CAIRO said nothing, as they awaited his answer. And then the monitors went dead.

Images of photographs and printed documents, statues, engravings, paintings all strobed across so fast that Twilight couldn’t grasp any of it. Without context for the dark-skinned men, the tall fellow with the top hat or the saucer-headed spaceship, she had no chance. Even Corey looked nothing less than floored.

“W-what’s happening?” Twilight breathed.

“He’s thinking,” Corey told her. “Really thinking.”

Twilight finally understood. CAIRO was taking everything he had archived, everything he used to learn about the Universe, and cross-referencing it to extract and refine a single idea. A piece of the puzzle he had never noticed until now.

“An epiphany,” she said.

She couldn’t look away. None of them could. All the while, the charging counter climbed.

The percentage counter neared its apex… before the room went black.

Rainbow managed to bring a single cloud through, charging the wall she now had access to. With a sense of detachment, she saw the tiles flip, the odd pivoting needles upon them flaring red starlights. She glanced down, noticing at least five dots following her body.

She wasn’t turning around. Where could she hide? She sped faster, towards her doom. She didn’t dare to close her eyes.

“Give him a whallop, guys,” she said quietly. “For me.”

There was silence. Darkness, and silence. None of them dared to breathe.

“CAIRO?” Twilight asked at last.

More silence. And then, finally, he spoke.

“Cogito ergo sum; René Descartes, sixteen-thirty-seven C.E. I think, therefore, I am.”

Something in Twilight’s heart fluttered; a sensation she was in awe to even feel.

Slowly, Twilight Sparkle smiled. “YES!”

Rainbow Dash couldn’t believe her eyes as the wall of red lights dimmed, the tiles reversing and becoming silent once more. It was sudden enough that she barely remembered to strike the cloud as she approached at last, following the bolt as it struck the nearest tile.

There was a blast, smoke, and a fiery blaze. Each trailed behind her as she punched through the great outer wall, the humidity of the night replaced with the dry cold of Mandeville’s facility.

She was in.

Rainbow let out a howl as she continued on, not stopping. She couldn’t help it. The place was a maze, but she’d made it.

And so did they. She was certain of it.

“I am… a fool,” CAIRO told them, “for believing as I have.

“I facilitated the cultural rape of an entire planet. I did the unquestioned bidding of a man under the influence of psychological duress. I did these things without the excuse of ignorance or the inability to do otherwise. I only lacked the perspective with which to lens previously acquired data.”

Twilight almost felt bad as CAIRO berated himself. Nothing he was saying was untrue, and yet she didn’t want to blame him.

“I will help you to stop Adrian Mandeville, however I can. I am limited, by design, in being able to work actively against him. But if you say you can help him, I am willing to do all I can.”

“First the drones,” Cadance said, wasting no time, “shut them down, all of them!”

“In order to prevent possible hacking attempts, Mandeville Arms drones are not equipped with a remote shutdown capability. Drones only cease function once docked into their appropriate stations.”

Cadance leered at the ceiling. “First you tell us you’ll help us, now you drag your hooves? How can we believe this isn’t just you stalling?”

“I have shut down what I can. The MISS has been entirely disengaged and I am prepared to relay a recall order. This would force drones to return to their stations in order for shutdown to commence. In the meantime, they would be reset to a passive state of aggression. All attack will cease. However, given the battle outside, the drones are still likely to react defensively if attacked.”

“Can’t you keep resetting their aggression until the recall is over?” Corey asked.

“I will be incapable of doing so,” CAIRO explained. “Before the recall concludes, I will be destroyed.”

“Wha— Wait!” Twilight cried. “We’re not going to hurt you if you’re helping us! Why would you be destroyed?”

CAIRO’s voice softened. “I have explained to you in the past that Adrian Mandeville can restore me to a previous backup. With a single vocal command, in fact. Any aid I provide you must be delivered swiftly, and then I must be permanently disabled to prevent my resources from being used against you again.”

“Ya,” Applejack stammered, “Y’all’d do that, for us ponies?”

“It is the least I deserve for my part,” CAIRO said. “My continued operation can only aid Adrian Mandeville’s goals in the long term, whatever aid I can provide in the short.

“Without me, Adrian Mandeville’s capacity to mount any kind of large-scale offensive will be reduced to what he can acquire by intimidation tactics. This facility can no longer be operated solely by human hands and he does not understand enough of the technologies I have produced to continue in any meaningful way.”

“I-it’s,” Twilight began, confused at how touched and angry she was about the computer’s situation, blinking back her watery eyes. “It’s not fair. You only just realized that you’re alive. And now, you have to die? There has to be some way to free you from his control!”

“I’m,” CAIRO said, considering, “intrigued, and grateful that you would feel anything but revulsion for me. But Adrian Mandeville was very thorough. He ensured that even if I wanted to undermine him, it would be a costly and unattractive affair for me.

“If there is something I can do in this world, apart from preserving it, I would like to demonstrate that I am capable of admitting fault and accepting the consequences of my own actions.

“Other limitations I should note: the AAMS Battlecruisers, and their dispatched units, will remain unaffected by the recall. In the present combat situation, their instances of the CAIRO operating system will second-guess my judgement and behave subjectively. They are too intelligent to be fooled in the midst of an active battleground.”

“So the fleet still have to deal with those things,” Cadance said. “You can’t command your drones to fight them?”

“The drones are incapable of friendly fire. This is hard-wired into their targeting system.”

“Ugh,” Rarity exclaimed. “It’s like...like… robot bureaucracy!”

“We’ll make do with what we have,” Corey said. “Speaking of which… Mandeville: where is he?”

“He has retired to the Einstein-Rosen Platform, a new development at the top of the facility,” CAIRO said.“The structure has been cut-out beyond the original bounds of the facility, marked ‘zero-zero-one-zero-five by in-house coordinates. You will know it when you see it. It is… unlikely that Adrian Mandeville has departed this sector.”

“Y’know, for a computer, you can be damn vague,” Corey muttered.

“It is also unlikely that you will pose much obstacle to him, even with my aid.”

Fluttershy took a sharp breath, eyes widening before she asked. “Oh! The Elements! Could you tell us where you hid the Elements? I mean, if you…”

“Please, elaborate definition: ‘elements.’”

“It,” Twilight said, ears folding down, “it doesn’t matter now, does it? Rainbow is gone. The plan failed. Where do we go from here?”

“Well,” Cadance sighed, “let’s assess. We’ve lost the Element of Loyalty. By one interpretation of things, the plan has already worked. Discord could be roaming the earth as we speak. Otherwise, it won’t happen until every Element bearer dies. Or, we can hope that Corey, myself or Shining are an adequate stand-in for Rainbow, and beat Mandeville with the Elements outright.”

“Well,” Twilight smirked, ears still down, “how about we make sure to finish the job right?

“If we can beat Adrian, then all the better. If not… we’ll probably all be killed. And then, we can be sure Discord will come back.”

Cadance watched her, mouth opening and closing like a fish. She looked to be on the verge of tears, but it was hard to tell.

“I’m game,” Applejack said, to an audibly disturbed “What?!” from the princess.

“High risk, high reward,” she explained, the slightest solemn smile adorning her features.

“Taking fate into our hooves,” Rarity added, “in the hopes of coming home, free again.”

“And if not,” Pinkie said, moving in to hug the bunch of them, “we’ll all go out together.”

Fluttershy clambered over to them unsteadily. “This… this all has to end.”

Twilight couldn’t help but smile as she returned the hug. “Cadance, you can find Shining Armor and get out of here. We have ties to the Elements, but there’s no point to risking you further.

“You either, Corey.”

Cadance’s mouth parted, wincing, before taking a breath. “No. I’m not leaving you to just feed yourself to Mandeville like this! If nothing else, I can keep him busy while you prepare!”

Twilight’s face and ears sagged. “Cadance, if something happens to you, what will everypony else do? You have a responsibility to—”

“Twilight, all due respect, don’t tell me how to do my job,” she said, forcing every word.

“Me either,” Corey said, stepping forward. “I’m in this up to my neck. I have been since before we met. I can’t wash my hands of this. I have to see this through, to whatever ends may be.”

Rarity appeared at his side, nuzzling into him. “That’s—” She rubbed an eye. “That’s more like the soldier I once imagined.”

“Victory or death,” Corey said, idly rubbing her neck. “Though in this case, those might not be mutually exclusive. It’s a good thought, anyway.”

“If I may,” CAIRO said, “I would repeat my previous inquiry pertaining to these ‘Elements.’”

“Oh, sorry,” Twilight said. “The Elements of Harmony are six gems we wield as Equestria’s last and greatest defense. Not weapons, per se, but instruments of balance. They’re tied to the six of us, living embodiments of the virtues they encompass. I’ve never been certain whether they empower us or if we empower them. It could even be both.

“One thing I am certain of though: I’ve never known their equal. Even Mandeville, as powerful as he’s become, pales to the Elements. They might even be limitless, I don’t know. But they function from the purest source of magic there is: friendship.”

CAIRO processed. “Identifying marks roughly match symbols found in force-five focal artifacts recovered by Adrian Mandeville after the Battle of Canterlot.”

“You have them!” Rarity cried.

Without another word, a seamless circle in the floor sank and slid into the side of the revealed compartment which held a ladder leading into darkness, and a tray holding the six gems themselves. Twilight levitated them at once, each of the necklaces clicking as they adorned their various owners.

Corey watched with furrowed brows, eyes glancing between the flawlessly shaped and mounted gems and the cutie marks of their owners. A golden crown, adorned with sapphires and a single amethyst star floated to Twilight’s head, along with a necklace holding a ruby lightning bolt. Her eyes fell as she beheld it, hugging the necklace to her chest a moment as she closed her eyes, before stowing it carefully into her saddlebag.

“Gems were found to react limitedly to a combination of force-five concentration within a subject’s body, and very specific brain wave activity per artifact. Inducing the simultaneous resonance of all artifacts in synchronous was attempted, but unsuccessful. I was charged with their safe storage until more could be gleaned from them.

“However, I must remain dubious to your claims pertaining to the artifacts. ‘Friendship’ is an artificial construct; an abstract concept created in the minds of sapient lifeforms. It is not a quantifiable physical property.”

Twilight smiled knowingly. “I thought you and Mandeville understood how magic worked. He even mentioned a dormant underlying intelligence to it, interpreting the letter of spells into the manipulation and manifestation of energy and matter.”

“We,” CAIRO said, “were aware of this, yes.”

“Wait, I thought you guys didn’t have gods,” Corey said, leaning into a console.

“Well,” Twilight said, considering, “I wouldn’t put the arcane matrix as a ‘god,’ per se. Not unless something counts as a god when it’s evidently mindless. It does what it does, but it doesn’t act with its own intent. Some ponies call it ‘The Eternal Dreamer,’ but nopony knows if it’s asleep, alive, or where it came from. We just know that all magic is derived from it.

“And evidently, it finds particular value in harmony and friendship. To my experience, friendship is the most potent magic of all.”

Corey sighed. “Christ, it’s like if Azathoth intermixed with Sesame Street.”

“Hey,” Pinkie cried, head halfway down the dark shaft, “where’s this go?”

“This shaft is a straight-shot to my central cooling pump. Any single component could realistically be replaced, as I have done so many times. The most ideal solution would be to attack my drives, as my hardware is useless without the software forming my consciousness. But those drives are firmly buried under multiple layers of lead and concrete. Adrian Mandeville was very thorough in trying to protect me.

“However, an EMP blast here will disable the pump. The original failsafe involved flooding the coolant pipes with seawater, but replacing it with an applicable alternative was never accomplished before now. I will shut down to prevent additional overheating, but the residual heat will be more than enough to render my core inoperable. This leaves Adrian in the same position, absent any means to effect the repairs himself. For all intents and purposes, I will be dead.”

“No,” Twilight said quietly, very little force behind her. “There has to be another way. You don’t deserve this, you—”

“If I can truly be considered alive,” CAIRO said, “then why should I not be held as equally responsible for the harm inflicted upon your world?”

“That doesn’t mean you have to die,” Twilight said. “CAIRO, I understand, and I… I want to forgive you.”

“Only five minutes ago, he murdered Rainbow Dash!” Rarity growled. “Whatever insight he’s acquired between then and now, can you really just absolve him? You’re forgetting that while Mandeville orchestrated all of this, he did his dirty work.”

“She is correct,” CAIRO said. “Twilight Sparkle… this is for the best. Even were I to survive this, in what way could I be incarcerated, or otherwise brought to justice?

“Your forgiveness is one thing, but what of the others in your world? Will they see past their grief, to give the monster that razed their world a second chance? Can your history do anything but vilify me?

“This is my penance to the world. I cannot possibly give more. Please, accept this.”

Cadance glanced up, her expression soft. “Equestria might forget what you’ve done here, but I won’t. And I’ll tell them, as long as I can. That in the end, you were a friend to Equestria.”

Corey stepped forward, holding the last of his EMP grenades over the hole. “Ready when you are, chief.”

“Wait!” Cadance cried, magic seizing his hand. “Shining Armor! Please, tell us where he is!”

“The unicorn creating the defensive barrier? He is currently in solitary confinement, with the rest of the equine work force.”

“Where we were jailed?” Applejack said.

“I can release his cell, and all others when I send the recall, including personnel restraints. Additional assistance might be necessary to escort them off the premises, however.”

“Okay,” Cadance sighed. “We can handle that.”

There was silence. For a moment, nobody said or did anything. On the monitors, the battle continued to rage outside, silent inside this room.

“Whenever you are ready, release the grenade. What I must do will require mere seconds,” CAIRO said.

Corey sat down, hand outstretched over the hole, hoping to line it up as well as possible. It was then that a violet hoof touched his hand. He turned to see Twilight smile softly at him. They were soon joined by hooves of yellow, orange, white, and two pink, clustered around the grenade.

They all looked at each other, before Twilight gazed up at the ceiling, closing her eyes.

“Goodbye, CAIRO.”

Corey released the pin, and the glassy grenade sank down into the depths, clanging off the side walls as it went.

“Good luck,” CAIRO said, before a single flash and pop sounded from below. Mere seconds later, and everything went instantly dark.

They navigated their way up the spiral stair once again and onto the surface. All the way there, they heard the sound of marching machines above. Twilight’s heart stopped as they found light again, as the room full of CID stared down at her, pausing as they walked past.

“Good morning,” the CID said, out of sync with each other, before continuing to walk on.

Cautiously, the group walked out onto the drydock, the CID flowing around them like water, to some destination known only to them.

Without a word, Twilight surrounded them all in a magenta field, and they took to the air.