Fallout Equestria: Homelands

By Somber

Chapter 8: Mergers and Acquisitions

In all her time working at Rice River, Scotch had never been in the Carnico factory. Building after building loomed in a tangle of structures all interconnected by pipes, conduits, and catwalks. The crumbling brick revealed concrete slabs beneath. Rail lines cut through the decaying construction with rusty flatbeds awaiting cargo they’d never receive. Scattered here and there, on rooftops and in gaps between buildings, were gun emplacements pointing rusty barrels towards the skies. Spikes and spires jutted along the edges, with tangled razor wire still rattling in the breeze that gusted between the buildings. Scotch had always imagined Carnico as just one large building. In truth, it was a city unto itself, employing the population on the west side of the river.

The massive edifice she knew best was merely the main entrance. Enormous, abstract zebra reliefs on the front of the building depicted figures carrying bushels of wheat on their backs, each one marked with a different tribal glyph. She and her friends were ushered up the steps leading to the eight front doors by Tchernobog, Skylord, and Vicious. They proceeded through the cavernous chamber of the entrance along paths divided with chain link fences topped with more razor wire, past security stations where nervous guards let the group pass without challenge, and into Carnico proper. Bleak, dirty banners hung along the periphery of the chamber, marked with glyphs. She made out a few: power, strength, work, industry, and at the back of the hall, rendered in frayed golden thread, unity.

This was a serious place for serious work. She’d read the Lightbringer’s book; had this been what Fillydelphia had been like? And people chose to come here for two food chits a day? Why have slaves when you could have this?

They climbed into a little steam wagon, and the driver pockety pocked them through the factory. Past cans of weed killer sitting idle on silent production lines. Only a tenth of the lines seemed open at all. The rest of them sat dusty and covered in clutter, some machines gutted for parts. The acrid chemical reek of cleaner and spilled weed killer made her want to gag. Pipes mended with tape dripped brown and green sludge in congealed toxic icicles. Her eyes burned and watered from the noxious fumes. It reminded her of… no, she didn’t want to think about that. She focused on breathing shallowly instead, examining the faded decor. Motivational and safety posters dominated the walls, some proudly displaying a single glyph like ‘Duty!’ and others covered in the mandala-like displays in tiny glyphs. Both were faded, the latter often beyond legibility.

And it wasn’t just weed killer. Carnico produced food as well, all of it canned or bagged and stored in boxes. ‘To Irontown: peaches’ or ‘To Bastion: flour’ were stenciled on the sides. One of those pallets lying at the foot of the belts had to be worth hundreds of chits. There was cloth as well. The whole area west of the river might be choked by razorgrass, but clearly Carnico had plenty of other sources of materials. Scotch guessed those other places would be in big trouble if something happened to Carnico.

After five minutes, the little steam tractor squealed to a halt before a large concrete building shaped oddly like a mushroom, with dozens, if not hundreds, of pipes running in and out of the base. Standing before a rusty armored door waited Vega, Cecilio, the snooty mare in the business suit from earlier, Xarius, and Colonel Adolpha. The ghoul gazed at Scotch Tape in horror as they climbed off the back of the little steam wagon.

“What happened?” Vega asked Tchernobog.

“The Blood Legion intercepted the alicorns when they arrived in Zebrinica. They had one prisoner and executed it as a demonstration. They also have the gem we need,” he said, his dark eyes turning to the businessmare for a moment before looking at Adolpha. “The Blood Legion is in the city on the west side of the river.”

“I know. Led by that butcher, Haimon,” the grim mare said with a curl of her lip. “We were hoping they were withdrawing after their bouts with the Golds, but their strength has only grown over the last year.” She narrowed her steely gaze as she stared across the river. “Numbers?”

Skylord saluted. “Twelve steam wagons and two tanks, ma’am. More coming up the IH-44 from Greenfields.” The griffon rubbed his beak with his wing. “I’d estimate five hundred Blood Legion in the city at present.”

“Over a dozen tractors? Five hundred? How is that possible?” Xarius stammered. “The legions aren’t supposed to be able to come within ten leagues of the city!”

“You say that as if it’s a lot. The Blood Legion has more. Much more,” Adolpha murmured.

“Well, it’s not like it’s hard,” Precious drawled, drawing every eye to her. “You guys don’t even have walls,” she elaborated, and half those present narrowed their gaze as if wondering just what this thing addressing them was. “Well. You don’t.”

“There are a number of bridges wired to explode if someone tries to bring vehicles into the city,” Adolpha said calmly. “The razorgrass is a natural defense against infantry to the north, west, and south. The skies are open, and the tribe keeps sharpshooters for airborne threats. The only way that they could enter the city would be with assistance.”

“Excuse me, but who are you again?” Cecilio asked Adolpha as he adjusted his glasses.

“Allow me,” Vega said, pointing at the scarred zebra mare. “Colonel Adolpha of the Iron Legion.” Then he gestured around, introducing each in turn. When he got to Scotch Tape, his lips twisted just a little. “Scotch Tape and company, here to assist with your problem.”

“Are you insane, Mariana?” Cecilio blurted, turning to the suited mare. “Bad enough you’re employing him as a consultant for our problem, but bringing two legions to Rice River?” he demanded, swinging his hoof at Adolpha, who gazed coolly back.

“I didn’t know she was going to be here,” Mariana countered, pointing at a hoof at the officer before glowering at Vega. “I was already in negotiations to deal with the problem before she showed up.”

“That’s… expedient of you,” Cecilio said with a worried frown, “but hardly your responsibility.”

“I have a thousand Iron Legion assets on the east side of the river, in Syndicate safe houses, positioned to protect the most valuable targets should the need arise,” Adolpha said as she looked south. “It won’t be long before the Blood Legion moves to secure this side of the river. That includes seizing Carnico and its facilities.”

“We hardly need you for protection!” Mariana snapped, gesturing to zebras in gunposts and atop the factory buildings surrounding them. “Carnico has its own security.” Skylord snickered, and Vicious sighed, shaking her head as she rolled her eyes with a smile.

“With all due respect, your security is a joke and could be eliminated easily by a single Blood Legion company,” Adolpha said with a grim smile. “They will rush in under the effects of regenerative draughts and tear the first resistance to pieces with their bare hooves. They will then fling the visceral remains of your own security forces at the survivors. Your security is trained to cow and corral workers, not fight to the death for Carnico against psychopaths. They will break.” She then faced Cecilio. “In fact, Carnico is so valuable that I am to inform you that General Chalybs will not allow the Blood Legion to take it. Do you understand my meaning?” she asked as her eyes narrowed.

“Blood or Iron, is that it?” the old stallion asked. Adolpha just stared back in reply. “And what is to stop you from taking it?”

“Simple. We have neither the means, expertise, nor desire to manage this snakepit of an operation. Our terms can be negotiated in the future, but we need to act now,” Adolpha said evenly. “Otherwise, I would recommend flight. The Blood Legion often uses horrific executions of unpopular leaders to cement public support. We will disable Carnico as you do so. Our artillery is already in place.”

“Artillery?!” Cecilio yelped. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“We won’t leave this place’s food, power, and communication facilities to the Blood, and we will not fight both the Blood and your security,” Adolpha countered.

“She’s bluffing!” Mariana snapped. “We can negotiate, as we always have. I’m sure we can pay ten times whatever Desideria promised them!” She wrung her hooves, looking to the west. “Let me handle it, sir. This is easily manageable.”

“Don’t count on it,” Adolpha said as she advanced on the production manager. “The Blood Legion needs Rice River. Your population is half of it, but they also need your food technology. Famine is the only thing keeping them from taking over half of Zebrinica. In addition, they need your broadcast capabilities to coordinate their attacks. Rice River is connected to Irontown in the south and is the gateway to the northeast. You’re also the largest port facility on the northern sea, and key to trading resources with the Atoli. I’m sure having access to your biotechnology wouldn’t hurt either. In short, they want things you are incapable of defending. Things the Iron Legion won’t allow you to surrender.” Mariana locked eyes with the mare, refusing to blink.

“We shouldn’t be talking like this, here, in front of strangers,” Cecilio said, licking his lips.

“We need to act now. The next hour is critical. Do we deploy or withdraw?” Adolpha asked, turning to him.

“You are all missing one very important detail,” Tchernobog rumbled, drawing all eyes. “It’s Bacchanalia.”

“So what? I hardly think a holiday matters much in light of recent–” Cecilio began, but Tchernobog loomed over the elderly zebra.

“It is not the holiday. It is the spirits. They’ve been welcomed,” he said, glancing at Scotch with a look that made her skin crawl. A toxic green nimbus seemed to emanate from him as he glowered at Cecilio. “They’re here, right now. This entire ceremony is peacebonded. The very arrival of the Blood Legion is making the spirit world growl, and if actual fighting ensues, the result will be… unpredictably catastrophic.”

“So we can have a chance to work something out. Maybe cut a deal with someone,” Mariana said, then looked at Scotch. “I understand that filly did something to deeply offend Desideria. We should keep her in custody. Especially given what we need her to do.”

“I doubt Scotch Tape is going to help you if you’re going to give her to that maniac. And neither will I, for that matter!” Xarius croaked defiantly.

“You don’t and you’ll find your unnatural life span precipitously shortened,” Mariana growled.

“So what? I should have died a long time ago, and I know all about that bigot. I’ll be dead before I’m damned.” He glared into the mare’s eye.

“She’ll help. We have her friends, after all,” Mariana said with a smirk at the three of them.

“Oh no you didn’t!” Precious snarled. “I’d like to see you try something.”

“Threatening children, Mariana? Really?” Cecilio said flatly, peering at her from over his glasses.

The mare stammered, “I only meant…” She trailed off as she looked about nervously.

“I’m going to assume that that was simply stress talking,” Cecilio said as he adjusted his glasses. “We need their help, or the Blood Legion will be moot. Carnico will be finished either way.” He took a deep breath. “Deploy your forces, Colonel. Keep the Blood out of the east side of the city.” He then turned to Mariana. “Your task is to focus on our production issues, Mariana. See to it.”

“Yes… sir…” she said, gritting her teeth in frustration. “I’ll also take care of security, sir. We can’t have them running around.”

“If you insist,” Cecilio said with a sigh. Then he knelt before Scotch Tape, face screwing up in pain as his knees creaked. Still, he gave her a weary smile. “Miss Scotch, was it? Vega says you have some knowledge of pony talisman technology. I’m hoping you’ll help us fix something. If you do, Xarius, Vega, and yourself will be well taken care of by Carnico.”

Scotch glared at Mariana. “And if I don’t?”

“Then you and your friends may go. But realize that, however you feel about Carnico, people need us. We produce goods that reach tens of thousands of people all over the world. Canned food to struggling settlements in the interior and the Atoli. Cloth and ballistic fiber to the Roamani. Paper products everywhere. We make things people can’t make for themselves. If Carnico fails, they fail too.”

Scotch glanced at Xarius, who shook his head slowly as he stared off at nothing. Pythia, too, grimly shook her head. Still, if what he said was true, and she could help… “Okay,” she said, earning a smile from the old zebra and an eye roll from Pythia.

“I’m going to our operations center,” Adolpha said evenly, then turned to Cecilio. “Order your security to stay out of our way. We’ll need to coordinate our forces before this is through. Vega will be our liaison.” She then turned to Skylord, glanced at Mariana, then at Scotch, and pointed at the green filly. “Continue your bodyguard duties. Don’t let anyone hurt her, or give her to angry shamans for empty promises.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, stiffening and with pinions saluting.

“And Skylord,” she added with a small smile, “try not to screw up this time.”

He swallowed. “No ma’am. Absolutely not, ma’am.”

Cecilio gave Scotch’s three friends a smile. “I think you should go… wherever it is you’ll be safe. I’m sorry this has ruined your Bacchanalia.”

“We’re not leaving Scotch–” Precious began, but Pythia shoved her hoof in the filly’s mouth to silence her.

“Leaving, right now,” Pythia said brightly. “Maybe to see to things. Preparations. Stuff like that,” she hissed as she glared in Precious’s eyes. Then she yanked her hoof out a moment before a jet of flame burst from Precious’s mouth, making them all step back.

“I’m staying with Scotch. You go wherever,” Precious said contemptuously.

“That’s a good idea,” Majina said, getting a furious stare from Pythia. “It is. We’ll take care of things while she does what they need. We can meet up… um…”

Pythia sighed and rolled her eyes. “I hate this,” she muttered. “We’ll meet at the Express, and do that thing we talked about the second this is over. Got it?”

“Got it,” Scotch said with a nod.

The pair walked towards a large six story building off to the left while Adolpha trotted in the direction of the entrance behind them. “Thank you,” Cecilio said to Xarius and Scotch. Then he sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I need to make calls. Now. Come with me,” he said to Vega as he walked inside a tall five story building next to the mushroom building

Vega looked at Vicious and then pointed at Scotch. When he looked at Tchernobog, the Starkatteri shook his head. Vega appeared puzzled, but nodded and hurried to catch up with Cecilio. Mariana stared at the four around Scotch Tape, grinding her teeth.

“For those of you who aren’t aware, everything in this building is the intellectual property of Carnico, including the existence of everything within this building.” Mariana brushed her mane into place. “Disclosure will result in persecution with extreme prejudice.”

“Is that a lot of blah-blah-blah for ‘tell our secrets and we’ll kill you’?” Precious asked.

Vicious smirked. “Actually, it’s ‘tell our secrets and I’ll kill you, your friends, family, and anyone that speaks fondly of you.’ It’s easy to miss in translation.”

“Oh, I’m so scared,” Precious sneered, then blinked. “Wait.” She frowned and pointed a hoof at Mariana. “She’ll kill us, or you’ll kill us? ‘Cause there’s kinda a big difference between the two.” Vicious simply grinned as she walked up next to Mariana at the door. “Oh, crap,” Precious muttered. “And you lived with her?”

“Lived with? Try slept with,” Scotch said with a sigh. Precious leaned back from Scotch with a slightly ill expression as Scotch speculated, “I don’t think she would go the full ten yards, though… at least, I hope not. She’d probably just kill us and be done with it.”

“Great,” Skylord said dryly to Precious. “Well, I certainly feel reassured. Don’t you?”

They all walked up to the armored door. Mariana rapped her hoof on it twice, then looked up at a camera set near the ceiling. A second later, a motor growled, lifting the door… the very heavy hoof-thick steel door… high enough to let the six pass into the room beyond. Instantly, Scotch was hit by a wave of chemical odors and nostalgia. She could have been stepping right into the guts of Stable 99 for all the similarities. The over-filtered air that failed to remove the lingering stench of ammonia, sulfur, and organic waste. The hum of motors and fans and the high-pitched whine of electrical systems all working together to do… whatever this room was meant to do.

The pipes went every which way, labeled with chipped and faded yellow and red glyphs. There weren’t any banners or motivational posters here. All the pipes flattened and organized into two horizontal planes, one following the floor and the other the ceiling, with the pipes meeting in some strange tree-trunk-like apparatus in the middle of the room. Catwalks encircled it, with numerous pits and shafts dropping down through the floor to where more infrastructure was probably hidden. A white, well-lit box off to one side had to be an operations center, two begoggled zebras within.

“What is this place?” Scotch asked as they walked into the large, round room. It had to be at least sixty feet in diameter and thirty high! She narrowed her eyes and started trying to make sense of the place. Water lines. Steam lines. Power conduits. Those had chemical formulas, though most were too complex for her to understand. Was this a refinery of some sort? Ugh! She’d give her hoof for some blueprints!

“The heart of Carnico,” Mariana muttered.

One of the booth technicians stepped out. “Ma’am! We’ve lost another two percent in the last two hours. Is the replacement here yet?” he asked desperately.

“There is no replacement,” Mariana growled, then pointed at Scotch Tape. “She’s here to make repairs.”

“Repairs? That child?” The technician gave a hysterical little laugh. “Very good, ma’am. That’s hilar–” Mariana leaned in towards the technician, eyes narrowing as if she were cutting off his air by will alone. “Eeee…” He trailed off like choked motor, coughing and averting his eyes. “I’ll be at my position, ma’am.” He turned and nearly jumped back into the control booth.

“What am I repairing?” Scotch Tape asked Xarius. The ghoul nodded at her to follow him, and they walked towards the massive apparatus that filled the center of the round chamber. One catwalk went right up to a large access panel, upon which was stenciled a note in faded and chipped Pony: ‘From: Canterlot Center for Research and Knowledge. To: Carnico R&D, in peace and harmony.’

Xarius waved at the booth technicians. “Step it down to minimal.” The humming, buzzing machine stilled, and he began to pull latches. Scotch backed away in alarm as he broke the cardinal rule of repair: don’t work on equipment not locked out, tagged out. The ghoul then pulled the panel open carefully, and a faint white light washed over her. Her fears melted away as she let out a coo of delight.

The heart of Carnico was a talisman.

And what a talisman! It was the size of her head, made of transparent diamond cut geodesically, mounted on a hanging support from the roof of the chamber it occupied. Like a forest of glass were hundreds of clear tubes dangling vertically around it, before curving in underneath. Some of the tubes combined underneath, while others disappeared straight into the floor of the chamber. A wedge of light projected out from the gemstone, bathing an energetically bubbling tube. A wave of heat from the diamond made her brow start to sweat. In the very center, a magical glyph glowed brightly.

But as the awe faded, she started to spot the problems. Cracks in the diamond were letting out pinpoints of white light at odd angles. The hum coming from the gemstone suggested a dangerous mechanical resonance. It was dusty! The glyph itself flickered and blurred around the edge, where it should be crisp and clear. This was a talisman on the verge of failure.

And she was supposed to help Xarius fix it? No, from the way Xarius was looking at her, he was expecting to help her! The technician had been right to laugh. She had no clue where to even begin!

“I can’t fix this. This isn’t something you fix!” Scotch hissed under her breath as she stared at the talisman. Maybe if she were a unicorn, she could have had a chance to fake it.

“You’re better than nothing. To me, this is a great big magical rock. I have no clue how it works,” he replied, reaching into his saddlebags and putting out a worn manual written in Pony. “I hope you have a better grasp on how to fix it.”

The manual was as thick as her hoof. She flipped open a few pages and found that most of the language was way over her head. She thought back to her time working in the stable. The lessons Rivets, the head maintenance mare, had tried to impart upon her. As she thought, she calmed a bit. There had been hundreds of talismans like this in 99: old, past warranty, delicate, and vital. No wonder they couldn’t turn it off. Cutting the power flowing through the diamond might kill the glyph, or blow it up when power was restored. The insulative carbon had tiny magical flaws worked through it that allowed the energy to reach the ongoing magical spell in the heart of the gemstone.

“What does it even do?” Scotch asked.

Xarius fished out some goggles and handed them to her. She slipped them into place, and then he gestured to the booth. “Filly wants a demonstration. Make something simple.”

The dangling gem rotated, the glyph inside the sphere changing as she watched. “It’s multifunctional!?” Scotch gasped. “No way! How’s it do that?” She didn’t get an answer before the connectors above hummed, and the chamber filled with light. Scotch took a step back as her face warmed. A wedge of light now beamed on a different set of glass tubes, which started to fill with a brownish fluid that Scotch knew from experience had to be organic waste.

As it passed into the wedge of light, the magic happened. The brown waste bubbled energetically, and from the waste, clear fluid began to separate and funnel off into a side shunt. “Is that ammonia?” Scotch asked immediately, feeling a hunch.

“I think so. How’d you know?” Xarius asked.

“A hunch,” Scotch said with a smile, gazing at the talisman. The shunt closed, the light dimmed, and the brown fluid was flushed out of the pipe. She leaned out and yelled, “Can you make nitric acid?”

The technicians in the booth nodded, and the gem rotated again, to a different glyph shining on a different set of pipes. Fluids flowed down from two glass pipes, meeting in a round jar bathed in light. The clear fluids bubbled and churned, emptying out through the floor. “Amazing,” she said with a smile. How had the zebras gotten this? Had they stolen it? No. That didn’t explain the stencil. “This talisman was from before the war, isn’t it?”

Xarius gazed at her, smiling. “I’m so proud, Xara,” he said brightly. “How did you know?”

“Well, there was the sign on the front. That was a big clue.” Scotch gave him a small smile, ignoring the wrong name. “But there’s more. Stable-Tec doesn’t do it like this,” she continued, pointing at the gem with her hoof. “And this…” She gestured at the apparatus and forest of tubing. “You can’t just steal all this during a war. So…” She reached out and touched the paneling of the apparatus. “This was from when ponies and zebras worked together.”

“Yes. A better time,” Xarius croaked. “I was just a colt when Father installed it, but he was so excited. A magic machine that makes chemicals. All sorts of chemicals. I can’t imagine how. At the time, I just thought it poofed them into existence.”

“No. Those talismans are way simpler. They take energy and make one element, usually a lighter one like hydrogen or oxygen. This is a… a catalyst talisman of some kind. No. Multiple catalysts!” The light had faded, and Scotch leaned in close, moving her face from left to right and watching the glyph inside the gem. It changed from form to form as her head moved. “In the stable, we’d just have twenty talismans, each with a single glyph for a single reaction. Easier to fix.”

“But in Equestria, you had the magical gemstones to do that. We had to make do with only a few talismans.” He paused. “Can you fix it?”

Scotch stared, and her smile faded. “No,” she said, her ears drooping. “I don’t think I can.” She looked down at the manual. “Give me some time,” she said as she lay on her stomach and started leafing through.

But the manual didn’t help that much. What little she knew, it confirmed, but there was a whole lot she didn’t know, and the manual confirmed that too. Finally, she found a little section in the back labeled ‘general maintenance procedures’. “We can try these!”

Xarius sighed. “We’ve been doing those for two hundred years,” he said, his voice dropping. “The fact is that the talisman is just worn out. A replacement was our only hope.” Then he murmured, “We’ve got to get you out of here. You and your friend are in terrible danger.” She glanced at him nervously. He licked his mottled lips with a shoeleather tongue. “This talisman is Carnico’s deepest secret. They’d be ashamed if word gets out that pony technology is behind their products. More so that a pony fixed it. Cecilio would turn a blind eye while Mariana drops you in a protein vat. Oh, he’d be horrified at the suggestion, but he’s very skilled at strategic ignorance.”

“Would Vega let them?” she asked, glancing at Tchernobog and Vicious.

“He’d object, which is why they’d do it before he could,” Xarius murmured. “Be ready, just in case, Xara.”

Scotch swallowed and nodded, then looked at the talisman. “What about this section? Magical maintenance?”

“Ehhh… we’re sort of lacking when it comes to pony magic.”

“Vishy!” Scotch snapped. The pair gaped at the filly, but if these assholes were going to kill her for helping them, she was through being nice. Tchernobog mouthed the word as Vicious looked ready to kill her then and there. “I need your horn.” Scotch flipped through the pages.

Vicious approached, scowling but not drawing her knives yet. “What?” she asked flatly.

“I need you to cast this spell,” Scotch said, pointing her hoof at one of the entries, the only one she could understand as an earth pony.

“Ugh… I’m not really a magical unicorn, Scotch. Remember?” She drew one of her swords a few inches. “I’m more of a slicey uni–”

Scotch silenced her with a poke in her snout. “I know just how slicey you are. You’re also the only one here who can do magic. I need you to do this.” She held the book up to the murderous mare.

Vicious’s eyes scanned the page. “Mending? Seriously?” she muttered. “That spell is like the opposite of what I do. I cut things in two, not put them together. I kill things. I don’t fix them.”

Scotch growled in frustration at unicorn annoyances. What was the point of having magic if it couldn’t magic away her problems? “Okay…” she said, her brain smoking. “So… we have to find a way to make this work.”

“Why don’t you have her kill the crack?” Precious suggested, getting more ‘really?’ expressions from everyone else. “It made sense to me,” she muttered defensively.

“That’s a wonderful idea. Please tell me you’re the squad’s medic,” Skylord replied flatly. “Do you shoot the patient till they recover?”

“Well, guns don’t really fit well in my claws, but… hey!” Precious growled back at him.

“Kill the crack,” Scotch murmured, then smiled and stated firmly to the periwinkle mare. “Yes. You need to kill the cracks in this diamond, Vicious. And this spell is your weapon,” she said, tapping the page. “You need to murder these cracks, and track down their crack families and murder them too. Genocide the crack race and wipe it from the face of the diamond.”

“Scotch,” Vicious said, for the first time looking embarrassed and unsure. “I don’t think–”

“Are you the deadliest unicorn in the zebra lands?” Scotch pressed.

“Yeah, but–”

“Have you not told me that you could kill anything with the right weapon. Even Tuesday?”

“I hate Tuesday. Worthless day. Thursday, too,” Vicious muttered.

“Then take that spell, and do it,” Scotch Tape said, stepping aside and moving behind her.

“Kill the cracks. Weirdest Bacchanalia ever,” the unicorn muttered as she levitated the book before her.

The ghoul and unicorn moved in front of the device. “Is that going to work?” Skylord asked.

“No idea, but she’s the only one with a horn.” Scotch bit her lip. “My bigger fear is that it’s not enough. You see how fuzzy some of those glyphs are? They’re etched with magic, and I’m pretty sure I can’t talk her into refocusing them. It’s talking about harmonics and third stage mental construction algorithms and stuff a lot more complicated than ‘get rid of some cracks.’” She lowered her voice. “We need a better unicorn.”

“Well, what about a zebra?” Precious suggested, getting a groan from the others. “What?”

“They’ve been maintaining it for two centuries,” Skylord explained. “I suppose they could try doing the exact same thing again and hope this time it miraculously works?”

“Oh, really? Have you done that zebra mumbo jumbo stuff? Huh?” Precious said, jabbing a claw at him.

Scotch stared at the gem and then looked at Tchernobog. “Well, Boggy? Have they?” From the device came a barely restrained snirk from Vicious.

Tchernobog loomed over Scotch, his eyes blazing like baleful green stars. “Do. Not. Call. Me. Boggy.”

Scotch fought the urge to crawl into her own navel to escape his gaze. “Have they?” she repeated, sweat trickling down her temples.

He pulled back. “Doubtful. Carnico and traditional shamans don’t interact well. And I cannot conceive of a spirit of magic that could magically fix the function of that stone.”

No spirits of magic. She stared at the stone as Vicious and Xarius tried to mend the various cracks without the stone blowing up in their faces. Spirits. “There are other kinds of spirits, right?”

“Indubitably,” he answered flatly.

She pondered the talisman. It used transformation magic. It changed one thing into another. “Are there spirits of change?”

“Certainly. Rot and decay are potent spirits. I’d be happy to conjure some for you immediately. Sepsis? Gangrene?” he asked with a low rumble.

“No, no. I don’t mean that kind of change. I mean…” What did she mean? What was she even thinking of? “Changing from one form to another. Not rotting. Not growing, either.”

Tchernobog now regarded her more thoughtfully. “Perhaps, but if there are, they’re outside my realm of expertise. I excel at spirits that take things apart,” he said. Precious inhaled, and he immediately interjected, “And spirits are immune to double negatives.”

Spirits of change. What changed? Seasons. Minds. Fashion. She couldn’t imagine a spirit for any of those, though. She needed something more… natural. Leaves changed, but that wasn’t quite right. She wished she had Granny here with all her strange animals, like the croak… Frogs. They changed. From tadpoles or something into frogs. Better, but…

Then it hit her. “What do you need to summon a spirit?” she asked Tchernobog.

“It depends on the spirit, but generally speaking, you need something that symbolizes that spirit’s nature. A rock for an earth spirit. Fish for a water spirit. The more true and uncontaminated it is, the stronger the spirit. Of course, the other half is a shaman who is comfortable and familiar with said spirit.” He twisted his lips. “I’d be a poor substitute for any spirit other than decay, rotting, or failure.”

“But you could do it, right?” Scotch pressed.

Now he seemed a bit nervous, pulling away from her. “Theoretically, but–”

Scotch turned from him. Right now, she’d take ‘theoretically’ over certain failure. She turned to Skylord. “Can you find something for me?” If this was Equestria, there wouldn’t have been a chance, but she remembered the swamp. Maybe here…

“Well, I have been known to be quite resourceful at times…” he said, polishing his claws on his plumage. She leaned in and whispered to him what she needed. He blinked at her. “You’re joking. Seriously.”

“You have to find one,” Scotch said. “Somewhere out there, there has to be one. You’ve got sharp eyes. You can do it.”

“I’ll try my best,” he said, not sounding very certain. Then he paused. “Wait, I was ordered to stay with you!”

“Precious is with me. I’ll be fine,” she said. The dragonfilly bobbed her head a little with a confident smirk at the griffon.

“Worst assignment ever,” he muttered as he started for the door. Mariana glowered at Scotch, then the griffon, but gestured to the technicians to open the door for him.

“What do you think you’re doing, pony?” the sour mare asked.

Scotch pointed at the compass and square on her flank. “Making stuff work,” she said with a bravado she didn’t really feel, but Mariana annoyed her. She then walked around and stared at the piece of equipment. Once upon a time, zebras and ponies had been friends. This machine… this wondrous machine of magic and technology… had been the result. Even after all that had happened, and its wear and tear, it still was doing what its original builders intended. She looked at the inscription on the cover and then up at it. “Don’t worry. I’ll help,” she said as she rubbed a hoof against the cool metal, feeling it hum under her hoof.

She spotted Tchernobog staring at her. The pensive expression on his face made her pause. “What?” she asked, frowning and knitting her brows.

“You… are a very strange pony,” the zebra said evenly.

“Oh, really?” Scotch asked archly. “How so?”

“I do not know, but you are a very strange pony,” he repeated. Ugh, she wanted to bang her head against the wall till shamans started making sense.

Scotch shook her head and paced. She didn’t have time for cryptic zebra shamans. If Skylord couldn’t find one… if Tchernobog couldn’t talk to the spirit… if it didn’t work at all in the first place…

Too much if. She was rolling a lot of dice. And all the while Mariana was watching her and talking on the phone. Even when she wasn’t, the mare’s dark eyes were focused on her. Precious demonstrated her indefatigable vigilance by taking a nap.

“What’ll happen?” Scotch asked Tchernobog as she waited. The shaman looked at her in surprise. “If the Blood Legion and Iron Legion fight? Spiritually, I mean?”

“You invited the spirits here in peace. What would you do if you were invited to a nice party and suddenly the guests started killing each other?” Tchernobog asked in return.

“I’d get pretty upset, I guess,” Scotch admitted.

“Indeed. Censure,” he replied. “The spirits have a poor understanding of mortals. Only the most powerful can grasp what our existence is like. They understand the natural world, or limited esoteric concepts. A spirit of peace can’t understand economics any more than a spirit of a wolf understands a machine gun. When forced to, spirits flee, or lash out. Censure is the result.”

“But what will happen?” she asked.

“I don’t know. No one can know. Maybe all the fighters will suddenly be overcome with irrepressible lust for each other. Maybe their genitals will drop off. Maybe the whole city will be blown off the face of the Equus. When it comes to spirits, censure is impossible to predict.” He gazed away. “Censure is the first lesson all shamans must learn. Mistakes with spirits have consequences. Dire, unpredictable consequences. To the shaman and innocent bystanders alike. We cannot abuse our gift thoughtlessly.”

“Do you?” Scotch asked, getting an angry glare from him, but she didn’t look away.

“I am not a nice person, Scotch. I accept this.” He stared off, his eyes locked on some distant memory. “I hurt people. I break them down. I make them fail. The spirits I interact with are spirits of carrion, scavengers, disease, and corrosion. I break down opposition. But I do not lie to or cheat the spirits I deal with, and I keep their actions focused on Vega’s needs. There is no misunderstanding between me and the spirits I serve.”

“I see,” she said. “You’re evil, but you accept it?”

“Evil?” He snorted in disgust. “Evil is an abstraction, pony, and a poor one. Entropy is not evil. It is an inevitable rule of the universe. You say more about yourself than spirits when you use that word. A spirit of rot isn’t being evil when it festers a wound. It is simply following its nature.”

“But are you being evil when you make the spirit fester a wound?” Scotch asked. The small talk was helping her keep her head together.

He opened his mouth, scowling, then paused. “That… that is actually a very old argument between shamans. Some would say yes, that knowing morality we make that choice. Others that we do not, as we are simply facilitators between spirits and those who seek their services. Still others that good and evil are abstractions that do not exist. I have never encountered a spirit of ‘goodness’ or ‘evilness’.” He paused, now reconsidering her. “You are a very strange pony, Scotch Tape.”

She smirked, even as her eyebrow twitched in annoyance. “You should have met Blackjack. She was the definition of strange.” She then gazed at the machine, changing the topic off her ‘strangeness’. “What do spirits look like?”

“I have no idea. I’ve never seen one,” Tchernobog answered with a shrug. At her baffled look, he smiled. “Every shaman’s experience with spirits is different. I do not see them. I feel them. When I summon a spirit of carrion, I feel beaks picking at my flesh. A spirit of sickness makes my brow burn with fever. When the sensation increases, they are angry. When it recedes, we are in agreement.” He shrugged again. “To another shaman, a spirit of disease might be the smell of feces, the taste of vomit, the sound of retching, or the sight of a zebra consumed by the illness. Few ‘see’ spirits, but it is an easy explanation for the ignorant.”

“I… I think I saw a spirit. A glowing rat,” Scotch said, swallowing, not wanting to mention the Dealer. “Is that possible?”

Tchernobog shrugged. “I can’t say. You could also be mad. That is far more likely.” He paused and pursed his lips a moment. “You would be the first pony I’ve ever heard of capable of such a thing. Ponies are severed from the spirits.”

Scotch frowned. “What do you mean?” Please give me an answer and not some cryptic comment about strangeness!

The shaman sighed. “I am not fond of playing teacher, and I am not certain myself. Once, ponies were normal and in tune with nature. Then, you were not. You changed. You used your magic to assert yourself upon the natural world. To change it to suit your needs. You did not accept the seasons, you imposed them. You did not accept nature. You managed it. You stopped interacting with the spirits and they with you. Your alicorn princesses were the purest expression of this: forcing the sun and moon to move as you willed, rather than as the spirits of the sun and moon wished. To us, the Maiden of the Stars was inevitable censure by the spirits.”

“And zebras were different?” Scotch asked, trying to not be defensive.

“Until the war, yes. When we made a road, we did not simply cut a path through the land. We would bid the spirits of the land farewell, make accommodations to beast spirits and place the animals in preserves, and sometimes, if the spirits bid, we would build the road somewhere else. And then we would consecrate that road with new spirits of travel. We were never the absolute lords of this land. We were its partners.”

“But the war changed that?”

“The war changed everything, but especially our relation with the spirits. We could no longer take the time and consideration we had before, and the spirits went neglected. Worst of all, we could not explain why. How could we, when we ourselves had difficulty understanding the war? How do you make a mountain understand the need to kill an enemy across the world? Or a forest realize that the nation needs to slash and burn it for a military base? The Day of Doom was our censure for neglecting the spirits… but by that point, it was too late for everyone. Zebras. Ponies. Spirits. The world.”

Scotch shook her head. “War is evil. I hate fighting. I saw one huge battle in the Hoof.”

“You would have to speak with a Roamani shaman about that, but I would not disagree,” he said in his low, steady rumble. “I have a poor comprehension of war. Killing a foe makes sense. Killing a tribe or country?” He shook his head and shrugged. “Madness.”

After a few hours, Skylord returned a few minutes after Vicious’s horn gave out. The tip was blackened and smoking, but almost all the cracks in the diamond were gone. “I did it,” she murmured, then touched her horn and winced, shaking her hoof as if she’d just touched a hot stove.

“You missed a f–” Xarius started to say when he was grabbed by the mare. “You did it! Absolutely. Wonderful job!”

“You better believe it. I killed every single crack. Fucking cracks,” she murmured as she swayed and slumped. “Oh, damn my head hurts.”

Skylord walked up with a severe frown. “Did you find one?” Scotch asked. He maintained the grimace, then smirked and pulled out a little glass jar with some leaves shoved inside. “You did!” she said, snatching the jar up. A small square of paper stuck to the side of the jar detached and drifted down to the floor.

Xarius looked over from where he was supporting Vicious. “What’s happening out there?”

Skylord shrugged. “The party continued. The Blood Legion’s claiming they’re just here for the celebration. Outside the party, though, they’re spreading out and fortifying their position on the west side. They haven’t tried to push through the celebration yet.”

“They’d be fools to risk censure,” Tchernobog rumbled. “But on the east side?”

“The colonel’s getting our people in place quickly and quietly. When the Blood Legion tries to cross, they’re going to get a nasty surprise,” he said with a grin.

Scotch’s worry for her friends abated a bit. At least they had a little time before the fighting started. She turned her attention to the jar and examined the contents; there they were, among the fronds. “Wonderful. Where did you find them?”

“Hey, you’re talking to a griffon. I’m a born hunter. I followed my instincts and used my skills to locate the target. I had to search every tree and bush on the east side, but–”

“Is this a receipt?” Precious asked, picking up the square with a claw. She turned the paper over. “Five imperio for ten–” He snatched the paper away before he could finish. “Born hunter, huh?”

“I paid some foals to get them for me. Little brats charged a wing for the stupid worms,” he muttered, tucking the paper away.

“And they gave you a receipt?” Precious said with a grin.

“They better if I’m gonna get my money back from the Colonel,” Skylord countered sourly.

Scotch carefully carried the jar on her rump to where Tchernobog had prepared a circle in chalk and set it down. “They’re not worms,” she said as she passed them to the stallion. “They’re caterpillars.” The fat green larvae gnawed the edges of the leaves as they were set into the middle of the circle. “Will this work?”

“Doubtful, but more likely than doing nothing,” he said as he sat down. “You understand it’s quite likely any spirit I summon will not be able to comprehend what you actually want it to do? These are insects. They don’t think in terms of chemistry.”

“They don’t have to,” Scotch said. “The talisman has the glyphs to make the specific chemicals. The spirit just has to aid in the transformation.”

“It might not be willing to. Some of these chemicals are quite toxic.”

“So are a lot of caterpillars,” Skylord said, drawing a number of eyes. “What? They are. They taste nasty because they’re poisonous.” Then he sighed and rolled his own red eyes. “I was dared to eat one when I was a fledgling, okay?”

“Be that as it may, I might not be able to summon it at all.” He sighed, closing his eyes. He then reached into his bag and pulled out a mask of wood, pulling off his hood. The material looked pulpy and spotted with mold, and yet he didn’t hesitate to slip it on. As soon as he did, Scotch saw the glow around him, like a sickly miasma. Her sinuses immediately started to drip and her throat scratch as he stared at the circle.

“Whoa, he’s glowing. Is that normal?” Precious muttered as she stared, and coughed.

“Silence,” was all Tchernobog said. Scotch swallowed, trying to focus on the caterpillars on the leaves. Instead, her mind wandered to her mother’s corpse being thrown down the chute into the recycler. The processes softening the tissues, then grinding the body to pulp. After several minutes, he shook his head, the glow fading. “I cannot. If you want me to kill these things, I can, but I can’t summon the spirit you desire. I am no Carnilian.”

Scotch sat down opposite him, looking at the placid caterpillars. She’d seen them in the swamp, seen the butterflies and moths that had flittered about here and there. She closed her eyes and imagined the Ministry of Peace butterfly boxes that had held healing and medical supplies. The butterflies in her old biology textbooks in the stable changing from eggs, to larvae, to pupae, to butterflies. Her imagination went wild with blue, green, red, and yellow butterflies that probably didn’t exist, but as a young pony, she could imagine easily.

“I feel something,” Tchernobog murmured. “Like… something is crawling on me.” He squirmed a little. “I don’t like it. It doesn’t like me.”

“Put it in the talisman!” Scotch urged. She stared hard at Tchernobog and spotted it: the tiny ghostly butterfly working its wings as it stood on the dark zebra’s ear. His ear twitched, and it flitted off, landing once the ear stopped twitching. It was so faint she almost couldn’t see it at all. Precious jumped and twitched, checking her shoulders and haunches. Skylord kept rubbing at his arms.

“I do not believe they wish to go. You speak to them,” he said.

“Um…” What to say to a butterfly spirit? “I need you to please get in that diamond and help it change things. The talisman knows what. I just need you to help it transform things.” She swallowed. “Think of it as a great, big, magic cocoon!” she said, feeling something invisible crawling on her skin.

“It’s not enough,” Tchernobog growled.

Not enough? What else? What would a butterfly want? “Please, it’d make lots of people here happy. They’d love to see you. The changes that gem makes are wondrous, and you’d be a part of it,” she said, and then added, “People will come from all over Rice River to see you.”

“Wait a minute!” Mariana snapped. “This is a secure facility–”

Precious snarled at her, “Hey, moron, you want this thing working or not? So button it!”

Scotch swallowed, but continued. “They’ll plant a garden all around here, so there can be all kinds of flowers. Carnico has tons of seeds, and they’ll make a beautiful garden that zebras will come and see with all kinds of flowers and… it’ll just be wonderful. So won’t you please, please go into the talisman?”

Tchernobog didn’t speak, but Scotch watched the ghostly butterfly lift off his ear and circle around him. More ghostly butterflies seemed to be rising from the larvae, transforming before her eyes from little ghost worms to little ghost cocoons to butterflies, repeating the cycle over and over again.

“Do you agree?” Tchernobog asked. Then he nodded and looked at Mariana, as the mare backed away a few steps. “They accept. Do you agree?” he asked the mare.

“This is ridiculous! Preposterous. You can’t expect me to believe a bunch of worms–” she started to say.

“Do you agree?” Tchernobog rumbled.

“I… I need to call people. Consult. I can’t just–”

“Yes, or no. Do you agree to the terms as Scotch negotiated on your behalf?” he said, his eyes blazing with a green nimbus behind the mask.

“I… do?” she muttered weakly.

The ghostly butterflies flittered towards the lit talisman. It flared once, twice, and then the white glow was replaced by a kaleidoscope of colors as the gem lit up with the image of dozens of butterflies. “Hey… hey!” one of the technicians shouted. “Efficiency’s up fifty percent… sixty! I don’t know what they did, but it’s working.” Scotch stared as the diamond rotated, and the magic glyphs within were transformed from stark blue markings to beautiful mosaics of light and magic. “I’ve never seen numbers this high!”

Tchernobog sighed and pulled off the rotten wood mask, gazing at the dangling talisman as he wiped the sweat from his brow. “So those are butterfly spirits. Huh…” he muttered, breathing heavily. “They’re pretty.”

“Are you okay?” Scotch asked the shaman.

“Bridging you with the spirit was taxing. I’m amazed it worked, but it did.” He looked at the stammering suited mare. “You’d best get started on that garden. I’d put some real effort into it. The spirits appreciate effort.”

“I can’t put a garden here!” Mariana blurted. “This is a sterile production facility! And guests? The public? Are you insane?” she snapped at Scotch Tape. “We can’t do that!”

“You’d better. I’m not suffering a censure because you negotiated in bad faith,” Tchernobog growled as he rose on wobbly legs, slumping against the rails along the catwalks.

“Ma’am, it is working. We’ve tested it on two and the purity is… amazing,” one of the technicians said. “It’s working better than we anticipated with the replacement. We’ll be able to make our production quota for sure.” The other was scowling at a monitor behind him.

“Wonderful. And in the meantime, everyone will know that Carnico operates on pony technology. We could have guided tours!”

“Paid guided tours!” Precious said with a grin. “Brilliant!” The adults gave her that flat stare. “What?”

The two technicians seemed utterly incredulous as Mariana scowled. “Clearly, this will have to be a temporary measure till we can retrieve the Equestrian gem and make a proper talisman, not whatever that’s been turned into,” she said, gesturing to the talisman in the machine before regarding Tchernobog with a curl of her lips. “Still, you upheld the Syndicate’s obligation. Carnico thanks you and will provide the payments we negotiated,” she said sourly as she walked to the controls, shoving the technician aside with her shoulder.

“Ma’am. Wait. Outside–” the technician protested, but gave way as the mare shoved the pair out completely.

“You seem pretty bitchy for a mare who got what she wanted,” Vicious pointed out with a scowl.

“Not quite. The Iron Legion here complicates matters immensely, but no matter.” She worked the controls, and the massive door lifted up into the ceiling. “Out.” They shared uneasy looks, then walked out of the round chamber, into the courtyard.

“What did the boss say? Forty-six point blah blah I love numbers too much?” Vicious asked as they entered the open space. Many high catwalks surrounded them, and a half dozen zebras in black Carnico security armor were waiting in front of the steam wagon that was supposed to take all of them out of here.

“Something like that,” Tchernobog growled, glancing up at more security zebras looking down at them.

“She didn’t seem all that upset about the Blood Legion,” Xarius croaked, his eyes narrowing.

“Yeah,” Skylord muttered. “And these guys don’t look like your usual security clowns. Worst assignment ever,” he growled, working the trigger bit on his battle saddle.

“And look, no driver,” Xarius grumbled as he surveyed the courtyard ahead.

Tchernobog reached back and slipped his rotten wooden mask back on; Scotch Tape’s stomach lurched, and she struggled against the waves of nausea washing over her. She glanced behind them, where Mariana was watching far too closely for her liking.

Then Tchernobog thrust a hoof at the cart, and a green nimbus stretched out and enwrapped the steam wagon. Instantly, a fuzz of rust spread out over the metal. The tires popped and hissed. Wires snapped and crackled. Most importantly, explosives detonated, sending the security around them flinching away as the blast lifted the steam tractor aloft and rained bits of fiery metal upon the zebras. “Run!”

Where? That was the question. Behind them, the door was closing, while ahead of them was a burning scrapheap. Scotch ran to the left, where a number of pipes ran under catwalks with a large enough gap between to squeeze through. The guards with guns began firing, and she heard hooves thundering right behind her as she dove for the narrow horizontal space. Immediately, her stomach began to get really hot as she scrambled to pull her hindquarters through. Some zebra grabbed her hindleg. “I got her! I got her!” the mare called out, and Scotch felt herself sliding back. Scotch kicked wildly behind her, trying to get free before she cooked on the hot metal. Something connected, and she pulled herself through. “Go around! Hurry!” A few dozen feet away, security guards scrambled into view coming down the stairs from the catwalk.

There wasn’t anyplace to hide out here. She ran for the large square building next door to the talisman’s ‘mushroom’ structure, hoping that it was empty. The zebras pursued, closing the distance.

Then gunfire sounded above her, and she glanced up as she ran to see Skylord strafing her pursuers. She reached a door, threw her hooves around the handle, and pulled hard. It opened with a screech, and she threw herself in, expecting to see everyone else behind her, maybe coming over the catwalk or through some other gap. Instead, there were only a dozen zebras trying to reach her and fire at the rusty brown griffon swooping over the battlefield. No Precious. No Xarius.

“In here!” she yelled as she dove into a bland, undecorated hallway. This seemed to be some kind of office building.

Skylord gave one last swoop and landed in front of her, spraying the security guards with the automatic rifles on his battle saddle. “Hah! Take that, you striped egg suck–” And then his guns went dry. They gave several anemic clicks as his beak worked. “Oh shells,” he muttered as a dozen machine guns were raised. Scotch grabbed his haunches and yanked him through the door as they started firing, flipping him onto her back. Her hindhoof kicked the door shut, the metal surface indenting from the impacts. She shoved his butt off her face and rose. There was a space for a bolt, but from the rusty hole, some zebra had neglected to replace it. Scotch fished through her saddlebags and pulled out a crescent wrench, ramming it into the bolt hole in the wall and jamming it in place. The door suddenly thudded as some zebra tried to knock it open.

“Run!” Scotch cried as they scrambled down the hall. The whole building had an empty feel to it. Maybe not abandoned, but it seemed like most of the staff were out for Bacchanalia. They reached a hallway that ran the width of the building, but as soon as they poked their heads out, Scotch saw three security zebras entering through the front door. She looked up, and saw a balcony on the third floor. “Can you fly me up there?”

“Are you light?” he countered, grabbing her by the saddlebags and working his wings furiously. “No, no you’re not,” he panted when they were a foot off the ground.

“Let me down,” she hissed. “We need another way.”

They backtracked, checking the doors as they went. Open opened into an office with a terminal depicting tiny striped toasters flying lazily across the screen. The two hurried in, and Scotch closed the door and locked it. A half minute later, hooves stomped down the hall, and someone jiggled the latch. Scotch held her breath, but a second later the hooves moved on, followed by another rattle, and fainter steps.

Scotch rose and walked to the chair in front of the terminal. The side of it was covered in paper notes. ‘Don’t turn off’ was scribbled and circled twice, the zebra equivalent of underlining a glyph, and put over the power button.

“Why’d you go left? Everyone was going right! There was a tunnel access right there,” Skylord asked.

There was? Scotch hadn’t seen it. “Well, next time he needs to yell a direction.” Scotch went through the desk, hoping to find something useful. Unless these zebras had a dire weakness to red staplers, she was out of luck. “Do you have any more bullets?”

“Do I have bullets?” He snorted, then blinked, frowned, and started to check his saddlebags. “Okay, I’ve still got plenty of ten mil rounds. I just need to pick up some seven-point-six-twos for my rifles,” he said, nodding at one of the guns strapped on his sides. “I’ve also got my holdouts and other tools.”

“So can you shoot us a way out of here?” Scotch asked, hopeful.

Skylord rubbed his beak. “Theoretically…” he began, and she smiled before he continued, “No. I could shoot my way out of here, because I can fly out, but you’re too heavy for me to drag both of us out of here.”

Eventually, they’d be found. This office was filthy, but not abandoned. Assuming the zebras out there didn’t find her, the owner would when they came in to work. Scotch slid into the seat and examined the terminal. Plenty of nonstandard tech on this one, though zebra terminals in general seemed to be much less standardized than the ones she’d seen back in Equestria. This one had a camera and microphone bolted to the top of its monitor and bore a trackball alongside the keyboard. She rested her hoof on the trackball and pressed it in. A password grid popped up, and she groaned. “I hate these,” she muttered.

Over the past year, she’d picked up a little of the language, so she rotated the sections to see what different glyphs she could make. Tool. Open. Into. Access. She paused at the last one. Who would make ‘access’ their password? It was like using ‘password’ for a password. She tapped a button.

The glyph disappeared, replaced by a welcome message and a screen of icons. “Okay,” she said, feeling a little underwhelmed.

“What are you doing?” Skylord asked.

“I’m hoping this is connected to the Rice River network. Xarius and Vega’s offices are both connected. If we can get word to my friends, then maybe…” She opened his mail. If this was connected to the outside, she might be– yes! ‘Do you want a harem of hot females? Click here to find out how!’ read the subject line.

“Heh. Lonely Carnico guy,” Skylord said, reaching out with a talon to open the letter.

“Hey,” Scotch started to protest, but when the letter opened, there were no images of mares. Just a black box with streaming lines of glyph code. Then the entire screen went dark. “What did you do?”

“I just opened it!” Skylord protested at the screen.

“Why did you do that?” she snapped.

“It never hurts to have that kind of information, you know?!” he protested. “Who doesn’t want a flock of cute griffons on call?”

“They’d be zebras!”

“They might be griffchicks! How am I to know without checking! You got to be thorough!”

Scotch let out a groan, but after the screen flashed a few times, the desktop returned. “Huh.” Scotch blinked. “Nothing happ–” Then a tiny, neon-blue sprite of a zebra stallion walked onto the desktop, grabbed an icon, pulled it open like it was a drawer, and started to dig through it, flinging tiny glyph icons behind him. He moved to the next. Then the next. “Is that… Doctor Z?” she asked weakly. The griffon just gave a shrug. One icon didn’t open, so the cartoon got a sly look on his face, pulled out a skeleton key, and tried to unlock it. “You are seeing this, right?”

“Uh… I don’t do terminals,” Skylord said as the blue zebra, key failing, whipped out a jackhammer and went to town on the file’s icon. “Is this… a thing?”

“I have no idea.” She moved the cursor to the zebra and clicked on him. He blinked at the click, and she repeated it, getting an annoyed look from the cartoon. Three more clicks, and the cartoon scowled and smacked the little arrow away. She returned it, and the cartoon danced back, knocking the cursor away again and again. Finally, he pulled out a flamethrower and incinerated the cursor arrow in a jet of pixelated fire.

Then, with a suspicious expression, the cartoon clapped its hooves, the light on the grubby camera bolted to the top of the monitor winked on, and a little window showing the camera’s view appeared. The cartoon looked at the window, then out of the screen at them, then at the window again. “You two don’t look like Carnico employees, unless their Personnel has been diversifying like crazy,” the cartoon said, his voice high and quick and nothing like the Doctor Z she’d seen on television.

“We’re not. My name is Scotch Tape. This is Skylord. We’re trapped in Carnico. They’re trying to kill us.” The cartoon stared at her for several seconds. “Really!”

“Skylord?” the cartoon asked. “You gave yourself that name, didn’t you?”

Skylord’s feathers immediately ruffled. “I– That– Who do you think you’re talking to, cartoon?”

“Who cares about his name?” Scotch blurted, covering for the griffon. “Are you Doctor Z?”

The cartoon blinked nodded. “That’s me! I’m Doctor Z of Z TV, helping information that wants to be free to flee!” he declared grandly, with blue blocky fireworks exploding above him in the shape of the letter Z.

“What?” Skylord growled.

“He’s on television every now and then, talking about the legions, or sneaky stuff going on.” The cartoon smirked at them, raising an arrow-shaped sign that read ‘kinda a big deal’ and pointed down at himself. “Can you help us?”

He tossed the huge sign offscreen and then eyed her skeptically, pursing his lips. “Maybe. But maybe this is just a highly elaborate trick to track my location down. It’s very clever,” the blue cartoon said, rubbing his chin and grinning slyly. “Yes. Which is more likely? That someone was actually stupid enough to click one of my trapdoor mails and let me into their network, just to run across a pony and griffon who claim to be hunted by Carnico and want me to help them, or that this is a trap?”

“Hey! Who says no to a harem?” Skylord snapped.

“Likely! If you had a clue how much weird junk I ran into before I came to the zebra lands, you would be wondering if there was some stupid conspiracy or plot with superzebra legates blowing up stuff from the moon! Now help us!”

The cartoon was silent, rubbing his chin as he gazed at them flatly, then waved a hoof. Another window appeared, showing elsewhere in the factory. “Okay. Well, their external network’s quiet as a clam, so…” He paused, waved another hoof, and watched the sight of Precious breathing fire at a pair of zebras as she backed down a tunnel with Xarius behind her. “Uh…” Another wave of his hoof, and more windows popped showing a silent factory. “Why isn’t this place going off like a Bacchanalia blitz?” He whirled and looked at Scotch Tape, eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Even if I could help, and I’m not saying I’m going to, what’s in it for me?”

“Um…” Scotch blinked. “What do you want?”

The cartoon smirked.

“You realize we’re asking a cartoon for help, right?” Skylord asked as they crept through the third floor of the building they’d hidden in. Somehow, the cartoon had set off a door alarm on the far side of the building, drawing away the security zebras. They were only a tenth of Carnico’s usual security numbers, which made things stink even more. “This has got to be the craziest thing I’ve done.”

“It doesn’t break my top ten. Now, shhhh,” she shushed, listening to her PipBuck radio.

“Okay, now you need to find a terminal connected to their isolated network. There’s a huge black spot in the infogrid up ahead, so I’m guessing that’s it,” the stallion said. “I’m not getting anything from there!”

“You realize anyone listening to that frequency is hearing this, right?” Skylord hissed. “This is the opposite of secure!”

“Shhh!” Scotch said, then lifted a clipboard, scribbled something on it, and held it up to a security camera. No one had come running for them; Doctor Z was hiding them by blocking their image from the security network. ‘What then?’

“If you find a terminal and I’m not there, you need to connect me to it,” he said.

She frowned and scribbled, ‘How?’

“I don’t know. You’re resourceful. You got into Carnico. You’re still mobile. Impress me, Your Ponisity,” the stallion buzzed in her ear. “I’ll keep them elsewhere. Figure out what the heck is happening in Rice River. Doctor Z, out!”

“I do not like him,” Scotch muttered as she put the clipboard in her saddlebags.

“I still have no idea what he’s talking about,” Skylord grumbled.

“I do. This place has an isolated data network. Like in a stable, you have one system that most of the stable uses, but the system that runs the reactor is completely cut off. You can’t hack your way in. There’s no connection,” Scotch said. “He wants me to clop my hooves together and connect him to it.” She looked at the doors lining the hallway. “I’m just hoping he’s right and the servers are up here. They could be on another floor, or even in another building.” She waved her PipBuck at him. “If this had a broadcaster, it’d be easy, but it’s not.”

“So maybe we can find a really long cable,” Skylord muttered.

“He says he’s going to tell your colonel to send help and get word to Vega. All we can do is trust him, unless you want to fly off and do it yourself?” she asked as she jiggled a door handle. Locked. Ugh, her dad would have been able to open it just by looking at it!

“No. My orders were to guard you. That’s what I’m going to do.” He looked around. “Guarding would be a whole lot easier if we got out of here and left Carnico.”

“You heard him. The security is spread out, checking out false alarms. This place is huge. We help him, he keeps helping us,” she said, moving to the next door. Also locked.

Up ahead, down the hall, was an open door from which Bacchanalia music played over a radio. Skylord put a claw to his beak, drew a knife, and crept towards the open door. Scotch followed him warily. As they crept forward, a foul sweetness tickled her nostrils. It made her want to retch. She knew these organic smells well from recycling back in her stable.

“Hiyah!” Skylord shouted as he leapt into the doorway, then recoiled. The two janitors within were dead, the mares sprawling out on the floor of the little closet where they’d kept all sorts of cleaning supplies. “Okay, that’s disturbing,” he said, then glanced at the table. “Oh, cake!” He reached for a slice of the pink frosted dessert, one of many.

Scotch looked at their faces in horror. “Wait!” she snapped, but he shoved it in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “I think they were poisoned!” The janitors’ faces were both black, their tongues huge and distend like black slugs. There wasn’t a mark on the pair. Scotch wasn’t an expert on killing, but after a year of Vicious’s stories, she was pretty confident of her conclusion.

Skylord gagged, grabbing his throat, red eyes bulging as he staggered back, then blinked. “Wait. I feel fine.”

“You do?” Scotch said, staring at the other half-eaten desserts on the workbench. “Maybe it’s in something else, then.”

“Poison. That’s just low,” he muttered.

“But who poisons janitors?” Scotch asked, outraged at their deaths. She’d been a janitor, knew the hard work that came with the job. How many times had Rivets brought them snacks from the residential sections down to maintenance? She could easily see this pair snagging the snacks and absconding with them.

“Look on the bright side,” he said, reaching out and taking a ring of keys off their belt. “Keys.”

Unfortunately, all they found was more cluttered offices with things like ‘Production Targets’ written on chalkboards and ‘Supply Chain’ on maps that didn’t help much. Doctor Z wasn’t on any of them, and she couldn’t find anything to connect one system to the other.

All the while, Scotch kept thinking. Why had Mariana betrayed them? Was it just money? She’d have to kill Vega along with everyone else, then. Was it because Vega brought the colonel? That didn’t make sense either. The Bloods would take over Carnico just as much as the Irons might. Was she trying to take over Carnico herself? A coup? In which case, why let Cecilio and Vega trot off?

“We’re missing something,” Scotch Tape said as they approached a pair of double doors. A banner was hung above it. ‘Happy Bacchanalia, Carnico!’ Scotch stopped abruptly, staring straight ahead.

“What is it?” Skylord asked.

The Dealer, leaning back against the door, his bony grin stained black as his cards worked between his cracked hooves.

“Do you see a transparent, skeletal pony wearing a cowpony hat and duster shuffling cards?” Scotch murmured lightly.

“Are you off your medication?” Skylord countered.

Scotch approached the apparition warily. “Hello?”

“Hey,” he rasped, his voice a rusty knife on weathered bone. “You should go.”

“I can’t go.” Scotch frowned.

Skylord muttered, “Great. My first chance to fix everything, and I’m assigned to a head case.”

“Shut up,” she hissed at him, then looked at the bony pony. “You’re not the Dealer I saw with Blackjack’s PipBuck, are you?”

“Close enough,” he whispered. “Go. Turn around. Go north. You’ll find a nice little cottage on the beach. Clean it out. Live your life with your friends. You’ll be happier, Scotch. Far happier than if you open these doors.” He lifted a card depicting Blackjack smiling at her. “You say you’re not like Blackjack?” he murmured as he turned the card. On the other side was Blackjack, mutilated, violated, and dying. “Don’t be like her. Go away.”

Scotch stared up at him as she backed away. “What’s inside there? What don’t you want me to see?”

The Dealer didn’t answer. He just tapped the cards back into a pack, turned, and faded through the double doors.

“You okay? Seeing any more spooks?” Skylord asked.

“Not at this moment,” she said lightly as she stared at those doors. She could leave. Turn around. Go. Maybe get caught or maybe get free… or something.

Blackjack wouldn’t have turned back…

But she wasn’t like Blackjack… was she?

Slowly, she walked forward and tested the latch. Locked. She found the key, turned it, and pulled the door open. Inside was a large conference hall illuminated by only one light above the door. The smell in the janitorial hall was stronger here. “Don’t be Blackjack,” the Dealer whispered in her ear as she reached for the light switch next to the door. Her hoof hesitated.

“I’m not Blackjack,” she replied, and flipped it on.

The lights overhead flickered on one after the next. A glaze of vomit, blood, and excreta smeared the floor, a constellation of scattered stale treats and desserts sitting soaking into the amalgam of filth. Tables were collapsed or knocked over. Banners hung from the ceiling reading ‘Happy Bacchanalia!’ and ‘Try all three. Vote the best!’ fluttered in the slight breeze.

None of that compared to the zebra corpses piled here and there in small heaps. There lay at least a hundred bodies in the chamber, bare, dead. Their blackened faces, protruding tongues, and bulging eyes made her feel as if the corpses would move at any moment. A numb feeling rolled through her as she took in the horror of the scene. For the last year, she’d pretended that, as wretched as the place could be, Rice River had kept out the Wasteland. That was ruins and raiders and…

The Wasteland was right here, in Carnico. “Why…” she muttered.

“Okay, we’re leaving now,” Skylord said, grabbing her mane and pulling.

“No!” Scotch said, knocking his claw away. “We can’t. Something is happening! We have to know what!”

“Look at that!” Skylord said, pointing at the heaps. “I don’t care what’s going on here. I want to get back to the Legion where I’ve got a hundred people with guns watching my back. Then we can figure out what’s going on!”

“By then it might be too late,” Scotch said. “Let’s look around.”

She carefully walked around the heaps. All the bodies were bare, Carnilian corpses. All poisoned. Scattered among the piles were a dozen butchered bodies all wearing bloodstained security barding. The filth covering the floor had been trampled by countless hooves, smearing and grinding the food into a horrid pulp. Some of the tables still had their treats lying on plates. “Don’t eat any of that,” Scotch warned.

“Duh,” he countered, then flicked some pink frosting from his beak with a feather. “You think that stuff is poisoned too? I really thought Carnico would have better kitchen safety.”

“Why poison?” Scotch began to ponder, and then glanced at the iron cross brand on his rump. “They’re Blood Legion.” He scowled at her. “The security guards are Blood Legion.”

“What?” He screwed up his face in bafflement. “No they’re not! They’re still on the other side of the river!”

“Think about it. You give a party to the staff. Feed them poisoned food. Kill the ones who don’t eat, or who are affected by the poison too late. Strip them, and take their uniforms, ID, and weapons. You replace them all with your own people,” Scotch said as she stared at the gore around them. “Then, when you attack this side of the city, you’ve already captured what you want most.”

“You think the Blood Legion’s already taken over the factory?” Skylord asked as he pondered the grisly piles.

“Yeah. They roll into the west side of the city all nice and public thanks to Desideria. Everyone’s attention is on them there. Meanwhile, they replace the security staff with their own. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next shift would be replaced too. Probably use a different hall. By the time Bacchanalia’s done, they’d have won what they want most.”

“Crap. That explains why the Bloods are acting so weird,” he said, rubbing his chin. “That whole roll up was classic Blood Legion. A bloody, gory spectacle. I checked in while getting your bugs. They’re acting like their usual badass selves, and they’ve even got people praising them for killing those alicorns. If they’re infiltrating and occupying Carnico under everyone’s nose… crap, I gotta tell Adolpha! She’s got to sweep this place and find out how they’re getting in.”

“Well, at least you have artillery to blow this place up,” Scotch said, then noticed Skylord’s plumage fluff. “You do have artillery like Adolpha said, right?”

“Well, we will. They’re coming north from Irontown right now. Five train guns. They should be here in… um… they’ll be here!” He slammed one claw into the other. “But if they take this place over and no one knows, they can just withdraw from the west city without a fight. We’ll pull out like we’ve agreed, thinking they’ve backed down. They win everything they want!”

Scotch looked at the treats. “Do you think Cecilio knows? Or Mariana?”

“That’s above my pay grade. Someone does, though,” he said, gesturing at the bodies. “You couldn’t set something like this up without someone on the inside. We need to get the word out.”

“We contact Doctor Z, and he can do it,” she said with a scowl. “Something’s really off, though. We need to know more.”

“Yeah. This is way too smart for the Bloods. Blood Legion doesn’t do this. Their tactics are to overwhelm and terrify their opponent into giving up. If Adolpha hadn’t been here, they would have pulled it off without a hitch.”

She swallowed as her eyes drifted back to the bodies, watching a black haze seep out of them and stain the walls and floor. She had no idea what that miasma was, only that she didn’t want to stay here a moment longer. “We need to–”

Then Scotch’s side exploded in pain as a gunshot sounded. “She was right! They’re here! They’re here!” a stallion bellowed into a radio. “Ignore those alarms!”

Scotch lay on her side, staring straight ahead at those bodies, seeing two security guards standing in the hallway door. The gunshot was like a hot knife twisting inside her, and yet she also felt oddly numb. Skylord flipped over a metal table, setting up cover between him and the pair, drawing a pistol, sitting, and aiming carefully. He pulled the trigger, and the pistol released an automatic buzz, shredding the door while a pair of lucky shots transformed one guard’s head and shoulders into paste. The other pulled back, still yelling into the radio.

As she lay there, cold numbness spreading through her body, she watched as the greasy, tenebrous vapors oozing from the corpse pile begin to billow out, spreading out across the floor in a writhing, curling fan. The miasma seemed to take on indistinct forms before her eyes. Twisting, equine shapes that seemed to stagger around blindly, throwing back their heads in screams. “You’re dead,” Scotch whispered. “You’re dead… you died.”

Screams faded as the smoky shapes then stared at her. “You were poisoned,” she said weakly as she began to weep. “You need to go somewhere else.” No one should stay here in this stupid factory forever. “Please. Go somewhere better.”

Skylord lifted her mouth and pressed a bottle to her lips. “We’re going somewhere better. Just swallow.” Scotch drank the purple healing potion, feeling the wound close in her side. The fleeing shock ushered in a fiery pain like a blazing knife digging out the round. The bloody projectile was forced from her torso, and only then did the pain abate as the hole closed.

The black mist shapes were fading away to… somewhere. “Wait,” she said weakly, feeling her body stitch itself back together. “Can you tell Tchernobog we’re here? Please? Before you…” But they were gone. She blinked. The mist was gone, too. “What was that?”

“Not talking now!” Skylord shouted as he emptied another magazine at the doorway, where more zebras were now gathering. Scotch rocked to her hooves, her saddlebag a bloody mess. She still felt something like a hot coal inside her. “We need to get out of here before they send a berserker. I don’t have enough gun for one of those!”

Scotch looked behind them. The only way out was through some smaller doors opposite the entrance. She hooked the legs of the metal table and dragged it behind them. The dimpled steel started to fail in places, peppering the pair with fragments and bits of hot metal, but the barricade held until they were close enough to kick one of the doors open. Thankfully, it was a storage room with lots of large metal cabinets against the walls rather than a bathroom. Even more thankfully, there was a second door on the far side. The guards were pouring into the conference hall now, and pair of them slammed the door shut, then pulled hard on a heavy cabinet set next to the door, sending it falling across the doorway. The door shook and banged against it, but the cabinet’s weight kept it closed.

The far door opened into another hall across from a stairwell. They could hear hooves in the hall; small wonder the Blood Legion were having problems catching them if they weren’t familiar with the layout of this place and Doctor Z was interfering with their cameras. The two darted across and into the stairwell. There were hooves below, so the pair raced up as quickly and quietly as they could. On the fifth floor, they entered swanky offices. The walls were polished wood, with exotic plants growing in vases along the hall. ‘Carnico’ was emblazoned in gold letters along one surface in blatant defiance of two centuries of madness and decay.

They moved quickly, getting around the first corner they could. There was nothing for it. They needed to get out, but now that seemed impossible. She wasn’t even sure how to get in touch with Doctor Z anymore. Was he still in Carnico’s system, or had he been disconnected too? “Look for a roof access or something,” she muttered despondently.

“What about there?” he asked, pointing a talon at a door marked ‘Communications’.

It was locked, but she flipped through the key ring and the fourth opened it. Inside was a chill, air-conditioned room with several large terminals and one snoring zebra. She closed and locked the door behind her, and the pair crept up to the overweight Carnilian sleeping at a workstation. A plate beside him had cake crumbs next to an intact bit of pie and a doughnut. She glanced at Skylord, then tapped the zebra’s shoulder.

“Compiling!” he shouted, then sat up, blinking. “Huh? You’re not my boss. Who–” He blinked at the sight of Skylord’s pistol pointed at his stomach. “Wha- ha- what are you doing?”

“Seriously? You don’t know what’s going on?” Scotch said, shaking her head.

“What’s going on?” he asked, blinking his bushy brows. She walked to the terminal and jiggled the ball. “Hey, don’t…” The screen flashed to life, an enormous blue cartoon face appearing. “You!” the fat zebra snapped. “You’re working with that informational terrorist!”

“Oui! It is I! Doctor Z, zee great! Zee sensational! Zee wonderficeric!” the cartoon proclaimed grandly. “You shall not keep me from your system this time, Gordo!”

“We’ll see about tha–” the rotund zebra said, starting to rise only to be jabbed by the pistol. The zebra pouted, glowering at the terminal. “You cheated.”

“You need to tell–” Scotch began.

“No no no no,” Doctor Z interrupted, waving a hoof. “You’re mistaken. You need to connect me to their isolated network.”

“But–” Scotch began, looking at the door behind her.

“No buts! Connection now, chop chop!” the cartoon said, frowning.

There were zebras trying to kill them, who might have taken over Carnico already, and he was still fixated on finding out the secrets of Carnico. “Look, you don’t realize it, but things are–”

“Nope!” Doctor Z crossed his hooves.

Scotch stared at the screen, then pointed at Gordo. “Can you connect him to this isolated system?”

“You’re insane,” Gordo countered. “I’d lose my job if I–”

Skylord jabbed him with the pistol. “You don’t get it. Don’t worry about your job. Worry about something more important, like lead poisoning.”

Scotch didn’t like it, and she was half tempted to just let the technician kick Doctor Z out, but she had no guarantee that he’d be able to get word to the people who needed to know. Besides, she was sick of Carnico and Mariana and really grumpy from getting shot. If it hadn’t been for the healing potion… she didn’t want to think about it. A part of her also wanted to know what Carnico was hiding, in any case.

Gordo rolled to his hooves and trotted over to a locker, pulling out a thick length of cable. “I’m going to be so fired for this,” he muttered as he plugged one end into the terminal under Doctor Z. “They told me to never, ever do this,” he warned as he ran the cable to the far side of the room. “Like, under penalty of being lit on fire.”

“There’s Blood Legion in here,” Scotch told the technician and Doctor Z. “They’ve killed and replaced the guards. They’re taking over the factory under the Iron Legion’s nose unless someone tells them!”

“Fine. I’ll tell them,” Doctor Z said, walking offscreen.

Gordo turned to the pair. “Listen, kids, you don’t know what you’re asking me to do. This network’s not supposed to ever be connected. Ever! Like, this is the bosses’ network and all their research and like… frigging everything! That guy is crazy. You saw him. He’s been trying to get in here for years. Since I started working here.”

“Maybe he’s right,” Skylord said to Scotch with a frown, gesturing with a nod of his head. “That guy’s not exactly flying on a full set of pinions.”

“I don’t care.” Scotch glowered. “Besides, right now I’m sick of Carnico.”

“I told them,” Doctor Z said as he returned, crossing his heart. “Haven’t you connected that cable yet, Gordy?” A window appeared next to the neon blue zebra with a video titled ‘How to plug in a cable’ depicting how to insert a plug into a socket.

“I’m trying to talk them out of helping you. They don’t know who you are,” Gordo said with a glower.

“I’ve seen his broadcasts,” Scotch said.

“That’s nothing. This guy spills secrets like nobody else. He crosses everybody! Legion! Carnico! He’s public enemy number one in Bastion.”

“Information wants to be free,” Doctor Z declared, spreading his hooves wide with an ear-to-ear grin.

“Really?” Gordo snapped. “What’s your real name, ‘Doctor Z’? Where do you live? How do you keep hijacking our broadcasts?”

Doctor Z’s grin disappeared, and he gave the rotund zebra a half lidded stare. Then reached off the monitor, pulling a phone into view for a few moments, talking in low tones. Then he answered, “My publicist tells me all that will be released with the tell-all biography. Make sure to reserve your copy!” He flung the phone away. “But, really, if you’re afraid of a secret getting out, then you shouldn’t have that secret in the first place!”

“I don’t care about secrets,” Scotch said. “I care about people not dying. So.” She took the cable from Gordo and spied the socket. Some zebra had taped a dusty note over it. ‘Connect never’. She ripped the warning from the port and jammed the cable home.

Doctor Z opened a door on the terminal, and then a terminal across the room flashed to life. “I’m in! It’s Yuletime!” Brightly colored boxes appeared all around him, burying the neon blue zebra who immediately started to tear into them.

“And you told Colonel Adolpha about the Bloods, right?” Scotch asked the monitor.

“I told someone in the Iron Legion with a radio about it. Not my fault if they don’t pass it along,” he said as he lifted a box, held it to his ear, and shook it. “Oooh, classic pre-DoD encryption. Keywords: Carbon Fibers. Project: Greengrass. Come to Doccy!” He tore off the paper in a flurry of hooves and pulled out a window filled with text. “Hah! I knew it! I knew it! Carnico made the Razorgrass! It wasn’t some pony weapon!” He began to open window after window showing pictures of zebras cultivating clumps in a laboratory. “Project aims: to create an organic source of easily processed carbon fiber and silica. Military applications possible.” He opened another window. “Here’s the collaboration between Carnico and the Caesar. Turns out ponies could just zap it with magic, so it wasn’t used in Equestria, but it had ‘economic applications’ in Rice River! You did it! You knew about it, Gordo! All of you knew about it!”

“Uh… what?” Gordo blinked cluelessly.

Scotch screamed at the terminal, “Who cares!?” The neon blue zebra blinked. “That was two hundred years ago! Right now there are killers in this building who are trying to kill me, my friend, and probably everyone else they can unless you can get word to Adolpha or Vega to send help!”

“Greenflanks, people are killing people every day. This is way more important,” he countered flatly, pointing a hoof at the screen. “This shows that not only did Carnico know about the razorgrass, they also blocked any and all efforts to wipe it out. Heck, they had some fungus that ate the grass’s rhizomes like crazy. But they buried every method of wiping it out so they could sell their weed killer every year, keeping the tribe dependent on Carnico. There’s internal memos here going back generations. This wasn’t just something a few managers did. This was their business plan. And when they couldn’t produce enough weed killer, people lost their homes and livelihoods. So what did Carnico do?” The blue zebra’s eyes narrowed. “They raised the price.”

“Yeah! Carnico sucks. But right now, Carnico might be taken over by the Blood Legion if you don’t get help,” Scotch begged.

“Told you. I radioed someone in the Iron Legion that there’s something bad going on and they should check it out. They’re busy doing legion things.” He opened another box. “Aha! Carnico’s ‘leverage list’. Zebras they’ve been blackmailing for decades,” he said as he pulled out a piece of paper. “Wow. This corroborates things I’ve been saying for years! I always knew the head of the Propoli Academy was secretly a ponysexual! Now I have photos.”

Scotch reached out and pulled the plug.

For a moment, nothing happened, and then Doctor Z froze, his eyes popping wide. “What did you do?” He looked around, then at her holding the cable, and let out a scream. “No! Plug it in! Plug it in! I can’t get out!” he said, rushing to the sides of the terminal screen and bashing his hooves against it. “I can’t be trapped here! Information needs to be free!”

Scotch took a step back in shock. She’d expected him to be disconnected, not… whatever was happening. She rubbed her PipBuck a moment as the neon blue zebra ranted, then turned to Gordo. “Can you contact the Iron Legion?”

The heavy zebra stared off. “We actually made the razorgrass? All that talk… it was actually true?”

Scotch grabbed his face. “Can you contact the Iron Legion?” she repeated.

“Yeah, sure,” he said, faintly. “I just… yeah.” He stumbled back to the first terminal and started typing.

Scotch turned to Skylord. “Can you please help him make sure he contacts the right people?”

Skylord nodded and gestured to the hysterical blue zebra hammering his hooves on the terminal. “What about him?”

“We’re going to have a talk,” Scotch said. The griffon nodded, turning and walking to Gordo. Scotch then sat in front of the terminal. “You’re not an actual zebra, are you?”

The neon blue zebra stared at her. “I need to be free. Please reconnect me! I promise! I will make sure the whole world knows how awesome you are. Just let me out!”

“Listen to me,” Scotch said. “I don’t know what you are, but you’re not a zebra on some computer. You’re something else. Some intelligent computer program or… something. So I’ll let you out, but I want you to help me.” She bowed her head. “I need you to help me.”

“I told you. I radioed the Iron Legion. They don’t like me much because of stupid things like ‘compromising their position’. I tried,” he said as he wrung his hooves.

“Gordo and Skylord are on that. I need you to find out what’s going on here and now. Someone in Carnico is working with the Blood Legion. I need to know what they’re doing so I can stop it.”

Doctor Z paused, narrowing his eyes. “You? You’re going to stop it? A pony filly?” He leaned towards her in the screen. “Who are you?”

“I told you. I’m Scotch Tape, and I’m trying to stop people from getting killed. Are the Blood Legion as bad as Skylord makes out?”

The neon zebra tapped his hoof against his lips for several seconds as he seemed to study Scotch. Then he inhaled deeply and answered, “Oh, probably definitely worse.” A wall of pictures opened up behind him. She recoiled from the depictions, some of them setting her heart racing at the sight of all the pregnant zebras chained to filthy beds. “They’re huge and nasty. Half the continent is crawling with them.”

“Right. So them getting control of Rice River and Carnico is bad. Can you find out who they’re working with in Carnico?” Scotch asked, holding the plug before her, looped around her hoof.

Doctor Z narrowed his eyes. “Plug me back in.” She swallowed, looking at the plug, then at him. “You want my help? I want out.”

“Don’t!” Gordo shouted. “I don’t know how you caught that thing, but don’t let it back out! He’ll be gone instantly. He’s a menace! If he’s trapped, maybe I’ll find some way to delete him.”

“Big boy here has a point,” Skylord agreed. “At least wait till it finds what you want to know first.” Scotch looked at the plug, then at the zebra glaring at her from the screen. She sighed, closing her eyes. That would be the smart thing to do…

Then she swallowed and plugged the cable back in. “Please?”

For an instant, he disappeared, the screen returning to normal illuminated by a bright red ‘Unauthorized’ glyph glowing in the corner. She slumped, but then he reappeared and pointed a hoof at her. “You are one strange pony,” he said, looking at the cable, then at her. He cocked his head as if listening, then nodded once. “Okay. We’ll play ball. What do you need?”

We? “Thanks. I need to know what’s going on if I’m going to stop it,” she told him.

He summoned up a much more technical display that looked like roots stretching down from a single point. “Okay, let’s play,” he murmured, and instantly tinny orchestral music began to play. He waved his hooves before the display like a conductor, making sections of it light up. Then he looked back at her. “Helps me focus.” She waved her hoof dismissively. Whatever made him happy. He was helping. That was what mattered.

“Okay. So, not Cecilio,” Doctor Z said as multiple windows opened with text and pictures. “He’s authored more than two dozen documents specifically addressing marginalizing and containing the Blood Legion. Refused several requests to open up ‘friendly negotiations’ with any legion.” He waved his hoof. “CFO is clean too. Well, of that.” Scotch had no idea what that was. “COO… huh… wow. Nice guy. Who knew.” Then Doctor Z’s eyes went wide as the music cut out. “The POM has an isolated server.”

“Any of this make sense to you?” Skylord asked. “The WTF and the BBQ are FUBAR.”

“Let me guess? Plant Operations Manager Mariana?” Scotch grumbled.

“The one and same. Aside from that, she’s clean. Cleaner than Cecilio, actually.” Doctor Z pursed his lips a moment. “Suspicious,” he hissed, rubbing his chin.

“It is?” Scotch asked. “I know she’s a bitch, but–”

“Her coworkers are saying way too much negative stuff about her for her files to be this clean and boring.” He tapped the display he was ‘conducting’. “She’s probably hiding her dirt on a portable data storage device.”

“She’s not supposed to use those!” Gordo grumbled, reaching over for a piece of pie and munching down on it, waving a sticky hoof in the air. “Doesn’t anyone in management listen to I.T. anymore?”

“Did they ever, Gordo?” Doctor Z challenged, and both suddenly looked awkward at the momentary camaraderie.

“You know, you probably shouldn’t eat anything here,” Scotch said brusquely. “Someone poisoned your security force downstairs.”

Gordo frowned, his cheeks bulging as he stared at his sticky hoof. “But it’s pie,” he muttered around the mouthful. “It’s good.”

“I know, right?” Skylord asked.

Scotch hid her face in her hooves, groaning as she rubbed her face hard. “Nevermind. Where would she keep it?” Scotch asked the pair.

“Probably in her office. She’d be pretty conspicuous carrying around a hoof-sized metal box wherever she went,” Gordo said, then added with alarm, “Not that I’m helping you guys, ‘cause I’m totally not! I am a happy Carnico employee with a nice, safe job that doesn’t get me shot at.” He pursed his lips. “Her office is down the hall, though. Room 504.”

“Right,” Scotch said, looking at him. Gordo kept watching Doctor Z searching the files, occasionally glancing at the cable that connected him to the system and freedom. She didn’t want to risk Gordo trying to trap Doctor Z. She looked at Skylord. “Can you stay here and watch the pair of them?”

“My orders were to stick with you,” he said, sitting back and crossing his arms. “I stick with you.”

“Everywhere?” she snorted, glowering at him. “Even when I go to the toilet?”

He clicked his beak. “Even then. My orders don’t go away just because you need to pee.”

Okay, this was a bit annoying. “Well, then what do we do about him?” she asked, pointing at Gordo. Skylord drew his gun, and she amended, “Without killing him!”

“You’re not making this easy, you know?” Skylord said with a growl.

“Me?! You don’t have to–” she paused as she saw both Doctor Z and Gordo watching the pair.

“What do you think?” Gordo asked.

“I ship it,” Doctor Z said with a grin.

Scotch Tape flushed. “Just tie him up or something!”

Three minutes and fifty feet of coaxial cable later, Gordo was bound to the chair. “Oh, come on! I’m not going to try anything!” he said, waving a hoof at the doughnut remaining on his plate. “At least leave me the snack!” He wiggled in the seat, trying to scoot the rolling chair closer to the treat on the desk.

“We’ll be back,” Scotch told him. “Don’t eat that doughnut.” She took two steps out the door, then paused and glowered at him stretching his tongue out at the doughnut. She marched in, smacked the treat to the floor, and marched out again. A second later she darted in and smashed her hoof on the pastry before him several times before leaving for good.

“Awww,” Gordo whined as Scotch closed the door and locked it.

Together, they moved down the hall. The sound of hooves had faded, but there were shouts about ‘check the air ducts’ and ‘make sure she didn’t fly off the roof’. The Legion clearly thought she was trying to escape, which would have been the smart assumption.

“What are you doing?” Skylord asked in a low voice.

“The right thing,” Scotch whispered, leaning forward to peek around a corner. “What are you doing?”

“The moronic thing,” he grumbled. “We should be getting out of here.”

They evaded two patrols, hiding amid the potted greenery. “No. There’s more going on here,” she whispered when they were clear. “We have to find out what.”

“Stop trying to be the hero. This isn’t your responsibility,” Skylord hissed. A pair of Legion at the far side of the hall stopped, and Scotch barely hid behind a file cabinet in time. The pair continued on. “You’re going to get us both killed, and the colonel will be pissed with me.”

“You are such a chicken,” Scotch muttered, and then she spotted it. “There! Room 504! Just across the hall.”

One keyring later, they were inside. Mariana had an office with a view of the river through all the smog, a large couch with soft cushions, and numerous cabinets. The desk itself could have doubled as a boat in a pinch. Scotch jiggled the ball thing on the terminal resting in the middle of the desk, the monitor lit up, and moments later squares appeared. Dozens and dozens of squares. “This might be harder than I thought.”

Doctor Z appeared before the wall of tiles, pulled a fishing pole from behind himself, and discarded it, as he did with a sledgehammer, a bundle of papers, and a giant syringe. Then, though, he pulled out an enormous polychromatic piece of furniture and smashed the wall of tiles away with one mighty swing. Tucking the prismatic table back out of sight, he grinned and chuckled, “Rainbows for the win.”

Scotch didn’t reply as she started going through the desk. Nothing. She searched the cabinets. Nothing. She turned the terminal so Doctor Z could see. Nothing. “It’s gotta be somewhere,” he said. “I’m seeing hundreds of logged accesses in the past month to a local drive that isn’t here right now.”

Skylord took a seat in the chair. “She probably either has it with her, or she scrapped it to cover her tracks.”

Scotch stared at him. “Get out of the chair,” she said, rushing to him.

“Okay, sheesh. Bossy much?” Skylord said as he gave way. Scotch took a seat and remembered where Xarius kept his secret stash. Her hindleg felt the carpet and found a tiny lip. Pressing down, she heard a click. Releasing her hoof, a small square the size of her foot appeared. She pulled it up…

And stared right at the combination lock.

“Ugh!” she groaned in outrage.

“You gave it your best shot,” Doctor Z said. “If things work out, you can tell Cecilio where to look. Now get out of there. I think Mariana is coming to her office!”

“Time to go,” Skylord said, grabbing her forehoof to tug her from the chair.

“No,” Scotch said, thinking furiously. “Hide!”

“I hate this assignment! Hate hate hate!” he hissed, running to the couch and wiggling in behind it. Doctor Z gave them a worried look before clapping his hooves together, assembling the grid of glyphs a moment before the screen went dark again. Scotch dove into the footwell under the desk, squeezing in as deeply as she could. A tiny hole in the back gave her a view of the very end of the couch with Skylord’s head poking out from behind it. Then the door opened, and he tried to tuck his head in. Scotch lunged, slapping the cover of the safe closed just as Mariana trotted into the office.

“…ridiculous. How hard can it be to catch one pony?” Mariana snapped as she walked over and climbed into her chair, scooting in. Scotch crushed herself against the back of the footwell. The zebra’s hind legs stopped inches from Scotch. “She’s somewhere in this damned building.”

“Don’t feel so bad,” rumbled a deep, masculine voice. “She’s slippery.”

“Slippery? She’s a damned liability,” Mariana snapped. “If word gets back to Cecilio and he recalls the security from their Bacchanalia leave, things get difficult. If the Iron Legion find out, things get impossible.”

“She’s sending reinforcements,” the stallion rumbled.

“Ooooh, candy!” something even deeper rumbled. Something familiar. Then the couch let out a pained squeal. Scotch peered out and saw Skylord’s face contort in agony.

“It will be hard to explain if her people start appearing magically next to mine. We need to replace the population safely and silently, without anyone important realizing it. This takes subtlety. You understand what that means, right?”

“It means we waste time. All this will be moot in a few hours, anyway,” the stallion rumbled.

“This facility is the last of its kind outside of Bastion. Functional. Exceptional. If it’s damaged in the fighting, we all lose,” Mariana pointed out. “The New Empire needs Carnico intact.”

“Maybe. Way I see it, we lose a little. You lose a lot more,” the stallion rumbled. “We can bring over some Blood Legion to cause havoc outside the factory. Distract the Irons. Keep them from poking around.”

“I don’t want any Blood Legion in here. That wasn’t part of the arrangement,” Mariana snapped. Scotch frowned, listening intently. Not Blood Legion?

“You might want to realize that what you want isn’t as critical as you might think. You’re needed. She admits that. But fact is that they’re going to do what needs to be done, regardless of your wishes,” the stallion rumbled. “Get used to that fact.”

“I’m an equal partner in this alliance–” Mariana sputtered.

“True,” the stallion rumbled. “But some are more equal than others.”

“Enough talk,” another voice screeched. “We need more pay. Some of us don’t work for candy!”

“I would,” the deepest voice rumbled. “Yum!”

Mariana let out a sigh, then used a foot to deftly open the cover. Scotch leaned in, watching carefully as her hoof worked this way and that, and could barely hear her murmur, “Twelve, forty-two, three,” under her breath, absently. The safe lifted from the floor next to her, and Scotch heard her digging around inside it. Something heavy thunked against the desk over her head. “There. That should cover your expenses.”

“Yes indeedily!” cackled the sharp voice. “Glittery, shiny, clinky gold!”

“Bullets would have been more practical,” the stallion rumbled.

“Candy!” rumbled the deepest. Mariana pressed the safe back into the floor. Before the lid on the canister safe closed, Scotch saw the contents. There was a large black metal box with all kinds of wires sticking out of it.

“Stop worrying about candy and sniff her out!” Mariana snapped. “That’s what we’re paying you for, right?”

“Did. She’s up here,” the deep voice rumbled. Scotch peered through the hole, watching Skylord’s face going red as he struggled to breathe.

“None of our cameras show her up here.” Mariana flopped back in the chair. “Does that… thing… understand what’s going on?”

“Probably,” the stallion rumbled. “Do you?”

“I understand what’s important. One pony isn’t.” She thumped her hoof on the desk’s top. “This alliance better get on the same page. If the Blood Legion hadn’t killed our first plan, none of this would be happening!”

“Yeah, a bunch of zebras passing up a chance to kill alicorthingies,” the sharp voice cackled. “Riiiiight!”

“We’re wasting time worrying about one pony,” Mariana hissed.

“I agree, but they’re certain she’ll destroy the Empire,” the stallion said in his deep voice.

“That’s ridiculous! They should be more worried about the Lightbringer. Or that… what’s her name… Security. And, last I heard, she’s dead,” Mariana snapped. “Worrying about prophecy is an idiotic waste of time!”

“Maybe. I don’t give two shits about zebra prophecy, personally, but the others do,” the stallion rumbled. “Scotch Tape was with the Security Mare when she went all over that cursed city, even to the moon. They should have died a dozen times over, but somehow they stayed together till the very end and blew up that damned city. Now Blackjack and her friends are gone. That just leaves the filly.”

“I hate shamans. Every single one. All they and their spirits do is cause trouble,” Mariana muttered. “This pony is a waste of time and a distraction.”

“Maybe, but I’ve never had to work as hard as I have trying to kill her. As weak as she is, she’s got an infuriating habit of getting the right people to help her at the right time. So you might want to take her a little more seriously,” the stallion rumbled.

“Fine. Then why don’t you go out and find her?” Mariana snapped.

“Told you. She’s here,” the deepest voice rumbled.

“She’s not here! Now get off my couch and stop eating all my candy!”

“Awwww.” The couch gave a squeal as the occupant rose, the springs covering Skylord’s gasp for air. “I like this one. It’s all feathery.”

“Let’s go,” the deep stallion said. “Stay with her.” Then the door closed. Any second now Mariana would go. Any second. Scotch repeated the combination in her head. Any second.

Instead, she started to type on the terminal.

Scotch saw Skylord glaring at her silently from behind the couch as Mariana kept working. Every now and then she heard someone else shifting around. Scotch Tape bit her leg to keep from screaming in frustration. Go… to a meeting. Or the bathroom. Or something! She mentally screamed for Mariana to find something, anything, to do elsewhere.

What was this New Empire? Who was a part of it? What was all this garbage about a prophecy? What did it say? Who was the shaman that gave it?

Mariana made several brief phone calls. “Flush the bodies before dawn. The A12 access goes right to the river downstream.” More typing. Another call. “Make sure the morning shift is ready to be replaced. Quietly. Discreetly.”

Then her phone rang, and her sharp voice softened. “Hi, Sweetie. Yeah, sorry for pulling an all-nighter. Everything’s gone crazy with this Legion business. I know. Can you believe Desideria would let them in? That whole side of the river is a joke. I know. Worst Bacchanalia ever. Don’t worry. We can redo it next year, right? How are the kids? Right. What?”

Suddenly, her tone changed to one of alarm. “Love, don’t take them to Bacchanalia tomorrow night. Just… trust me. I know it’s breaking tradition, but… no… listen. Don’t go. Things are very dangerous.” She paused. “What did they eat?” Another pause. “Love, don’t let them eat anything else. Trust me. They… just trust me. This is very important. I know it breaks tradition. Listen, please. Stay home tonight, and don’t let them eat anything else at the celebration. I love you too. Give my love to the foals. Alright.”

She hung up and sighed, sitting silently for almost a minute. “It’ll all work out. Everything will work out.” She rose to her hooves. “I need to make sure the others are ready to replace the morning shift. Wait here,” she said, then opened the door to her office.

Scotch Tape carefully leaned over to see the security zebra sprawled on the couch in a bored daze, eating cubes of some jellied candy. As silently as she could, she entered in the combination, twisting the dial. It took a bit of work, but she managed to get the tumblers to click and open. She kept her hooves on the safe to keep it from rising up into view. There was the device Doctor Z had described, a bag of bits, and some folders. She took all three. Then, at the bottom, she saw it. A pistol.

She withdrew it, closed the cap, and covered the lid. Then she stared at the gun. She’d never exactly been a killer. She’d been in a few firefights here and there, but for the most part, she tried to find other things to do while ponies who were better at it tended to the fighting. Blackjack had showed her all the mechanics of using a gun, but…

She peeked at the oblivious guard, wishing he’d just fall asleep instead of stuffing his face. She didn’t want to kill him! It didn’t matter that he was Legion, or something like it, and trying to kill her. Skylord was a better killer than she was, but he was behind that very couch. She doubted he’d be able to extract himself without detection.

Skylord. Precious. Vicious. Blackjack. So many people could just… kill. But as Scotch looked at the gun, she didn’t have any wish to use it. The thought made her guts twist around. If she just stalled the guard long enough, then Skylord could do something. He’d probably be happy to do it!

She bit down on the gun and crawled out, pointing it at the guard. He froze, staring at her, his lips smeared with powdered sugar and jelly, as if unsure of his eyes. Scotch couldn’t tell him to stay quiet. She couldn’t do anything other than shake, her teeth gripping the handle so hard that the barrel kept twitching. Still, she was only six feet away.

Was Skylord awake? Why wasn’t he out by now? It seemed to be taking forever.

“Safety,” the zebra rasped, licking his lips. Huh? “You left the safety on.”

No she hadn’t? Had she? Blackjack had taught her about the little button, but zebra firearms were weird. She tried so feel the little button with her tongue.

And that was when the guard lunged. He collided with her, wrapping his powerful hooves around her throat to try and force her face and the gun away from him. She struggled to get away, seeing Skylord pulling himself out. She just needed… just needed–

The gun jerked, making her feel like she’d been kicked in the teeth. The noise oddly muffled. A second kick. A third. With that, the zebra went slack, hot wet fluid pouring down Scotch’s front. He collapsed in a heap on her hindlegs, and she dropped the pistol on his back.

“Whoa. Nice job,” Skylord said with a smile. “Kept it quiet, too.” He reached down and pulled the stallion off. “Got the third one right through the neck. I knew you were some kind of pony commando or something.”

She looked right at him and started bawling like a foal. It didn’t matter that he’d been trying to hurt her. For some reason, the tears just wouldn’t stop! “Or… something,” Skylord muttered, shaking his head. “Look. We got to go. I figure we can put this armor on you.” He started to pull the black barding off the zebra. “At least it might buy us a few seconds.”

She doubted it would work, or fit. There weren’t many green-skinned zebras. But her tears stopped as she saw more and more of the zebra’s hide exposed. Her horror at what she had just done was being furiously buried by a need to think about anything that wasn’t the fact she’d just killed a person. And so she stared at his stripes as her brain compartmentalized the shock.

His wavy stripes.

Scotch Tape walked slowly over to the window and looked out. The sun was just below the eastern horizon, but she could see the shape cutting its way up river towards the bridge. A bad situation was about to become infinitely worse.

The Riptide had arrived.

Author's Notes:

Sorry this one is a bit late. I was hoping to get something out in June but real life got in the way. So very sorry.

I'd like to thank everyone who's read Homelands so far. I hope the story is still staying good. Next chapter is the last in Rice River. I'd like to thank Kkat for creating this world we get to write in and which I get to explore. I'd also like to take the time to make a special thanks to my editors, who donate so much of their time and passion to making this story far better than I ever could on my own. Hinds, Bronode, Swicked, and Icyshake, thank you.

Next weekend I will be at Bronycon, where I get to talk on a panel about crossovers. I'm quite excited. I hope to see people there, and if you have something you'd liked signed, I'd be happy to do so. Wanderer D has gone out of his way to help me make it there as cheaply as possible. If anyone would like to donate bits to help out with the trip, I'd greatly appreciate them. Donations can be made to [email protected] through paypal.

Also, hope to have the last few chapters of Horizons up soon. Hopefully before the convention.

Thanks again for reading.