Nothing good lasts forever.

You can throw that up there with all the other pessimistic adages I’m sure we’ve all heard before. ‘The good die young,’ ‘you can’t fight fate,’ ‘the gods are dead,’ whatever suits your fancy. Nothing good lasts forever. On that day, I learned that saying firsthoof, and why it’s become such a grim little phrase that we hear constantly. It’s because it’s true.

Mom came back almost three hours after she’d left, which was an hour later than she said she’d be out, and an hour earlier than I expected her back. Apparently, the whole little secret surrounding Dish One was quite the hot topic around town, and gossip was everywhere. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Mom personally hunted down every single techie who worked there to try to wring the truth out of them. Judging by the expression on her face when she came back, she wasn’t successful.

“Shut up,” she had grumbled, knowing full well I was about to tease her about it. I merely chuckled and went back to work on the saddle mounts I was making. Not all of our earth ponies and pegasi could freehoof a rifle like Brass could, and military-grade shoulder mounts that automatically pointed wherever the wearer was looking were in short supply. Well, I guess I should say working ones were. We had plenty of dead ones we scavenged parts from when we needed.

We spent the next six hours working together like the awesome team that we were. It always felt satisfying to work side by side with Mom. Whenever we did, it looked like a dance. We both waltzed around the shop, visiting machines to do whatever work we needed on our parts before slipping out of each other’s way. We’d simply call out the names of tools and pick them up from the counter on our right (and always our right) a second after the other dropped them there. We shuffled parts to assemblies back and forth as we finished them, each adding what we had and passing the contraption back to the other so that they could do the same. Mom said that my grandpa called it the ‘Steel Saltarello’, but she called it the Working Waltz. I liked just calling it the Dance.

If only we had some music other than our awful singing. I know ponies are supposed to have some innate magic for musical numbers, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t have it. Besides, we didn’t know any songs apart from those on a select list Equestria had printed way back in the day designed to increase efficiency in the factory or morale on the battlefield, and those were designed to be sung by choruses thousands strong. There weren’t a whole lot of mother and daughter songs on that list about working in a forge on a shitty planet lightyears away.

But like I said, it was probably for the best. We were awful singers.

I remember stepping back from the table against the wall and wiping the sweat off of my brow, staring at the few dozen receivers, trigger mechanisms, barrels, sights, and other spare parts for the rifles in Blackwash’s armory Mom and I had just finished making. I could feel the hot fingers of soot clawing into my coat, and could taste the ash on my lips. Beside me, the soot plastered to Mom’s blue coat stood out a little bit more. Her chest and forelimbs were charcoal black from the ash, and her face was similarly streaked with the stuff. We’d both need to shower before we went to bed.

“Done,” she hummed, setting the last bolt on the table next to its brethren, and brushed shoulders with me. She reeked of sweat, but I knew I didn’t smell any better. Her muzzle was turned into a half-smile, that mixture of proud and exhausted that comes after finishing a long day’s work. I’m pretty sure I had the same expression as well, just mixed with more exhaustion. I’d been up for twenty hours by now, and sleep couldn’t come soon enough.

Mom must’ve been reading my mind (or more likely saw the huge yawn I made) and nuzzled me behind the ears. “Why don’t you go start getting cleaned up,” she said. “I’ll finish cleaning up shop.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled, returning the nuzzle. The hot, sweaty strands of her mane clung to the soot on my face, and refused to separate until I’d walked away from her. While her blue magic began sorting the replacement parts into boxes, my orange magic grabbed Fortitude and a mag of ammo. I might have wanted to try out the new barrel before I showered up and went to bed, just to make sure that it was sighted properly.

There were two moons out tonight, and the larger of the two, Argenta, was nearly full, so I had plenty of light to guide me across the short walk between the shop and the house. The metal roofs of Blackwash were all bathed in a gentle light, and the massive dishes at the edge of town seemed like dim little moons of their own, the white panels reflecting the moonlight. Cello bugs hummed in the night, their little bodies giving off deceptively deep notes that together created a solemn, mournful melody that I couldn’t escape. It was like an orchestra that mourned the death of the day, and would play long into the night until the sun rose in the morning.

It was beautiful. Sometimes on warm summer nights like this, I’d just lay a blanket on the grass and lie there, staring at the stars for hours. They were so crisp and vivid, and sometimes I could see the other planets in the system lazily tracing their way across the sky. They had names, but they were all dumb names, like ‘Meadowbrook-2b’ or whatever the Equestrians used to call them. Nova named them after the four fairy tale princesses, which I thought was kind of cute. “Celestia” was certainly easier to remember than some scientific name.

I set Fortitude down on a rock and trotted over to the side of the house to grab my target. It was a square of metal riveted to a stick and pockmarked with bullet holes from when I was too lazy to go across town and use the gunnery range. I hauled it over to the pile of rocks I usually used to hold it and wedged the end in as far as I could. Then, trotting back to my rifle, I lined up a shot by the light of the moons. Five shots was all it took to get the sights calibrated and know that my new barrel was quality stuff.

I unloaded Fortitude and set her aside. I’d done enough shooting today; I didn’t need to keep ponies awake in the evening as well. Instead, I simply sat on my rock, staring at the stars. By some fluke, I happened to look to the south just as a shooting star burst into flames in Auris’ thick atmosphere. The brilliant streak of light didn’t even last a second before it was gone, but I saw it when I closed my eyes for a long time after. I might not have been a little filly anymore, but when I saw that shooting star, I placed my hooves over my breast and did what everypony’s supposed to do when they see one.

I made a wish.

I didn’t wish for petty things like money or fame. Blackwash didn’t have the former, and we were small enough that the latter wasn’t worth much anyway. I didn’t wish to get off of this planet earlier, despite how much I joked that I wanted to go to Equus and experience first world comforts for the first time in my life. I had a suspicion that they were just as fucked as we were; it was the only explanation I could think of for why they’d abandoned us for such a long time. So instead, I wished for something that would shed answers. I wished that I knew what Equus’ last message was. Was it a library full of ancient secrets? Instructions for how to get off of Auris? Something else? I really wanted to know. And though it might seem like a stupid wish, I didn’t really care. Really, who expects something like that to really come true?

Maybe I should’ve wished then that I knew Fate is a bitch who likes to mess with me when she’s bored.

As I picked up Fortitude and began dragging the target back to the side of the house, my ears perked at a strange noise. It sounded like something beating the air in the valley, accompanied by a high-pitched whine. I’d never heard anything like it before, but it definitely sounded mechanical. Unless this was just some new terror of wildlife that Auris’ freakshow evolution had cooked up for us, but I seriously doubted that. Discarding the sign and clutching Fortitude in my magical grasp, I trotted around the corner of my house to get a better look at the valley.

That was precisely when the first explosion rocked the mountaintop.

It must’ve been close, because it picked me up off my hooves and flung me across my backyard. I hit my head a few times against the ground as I tumbled, and when I finally came to a groaning, dizzy stop, I was thirty feet away from where I started. My ears rang, and for the longest time, I wasn’t even sure I was still alive. When the ringing began to fade away, and I could start to feel all of the cuts and lacerations in my coat from the shrapnel that’d nearly sliced me to pieces, I realized I was still very much alive, and in an awful lot of pain.

Adrenaline kicked in at that moment, and I rolled onto my hooves. I stumbled and nearly fell back down as the world swam around me, so I hunched over and tried taking some deep breaths. When the dizziness finally left and I could stand up straight without feeling like I had to puke, I looked around me to see…

Chaos.

The side of my house had been completely torn apart, and I could see flickering flames inside and billowing smoke pouring out of the gaps in the ceiling and the new hole in the wall. Tiny tongues of flame decorated the yard around me, ignited by shrapnel from the initial explosion. I took one step towards the house, about ready to dash forward and try to put out the fire, before another explosion ripped a house further down the street into shreds. Somewhere, in the black of the night, I heard screaming, and the chatter of automatic rifles began to fill the air.

It must’ve been the concussion smothering my thoughts, but I simply stood in the glow of my burning house for a stupidly long time while I watched everything I knew be torn down around me. The black silhouettes of pegasi moved between the fires and smoke, dropping hoofball-sized objects on buildings which blew up on impact. Dark shadows danced on the walls of buildings as ponies ran from the fires, and somewhere close to the dishes, I heard the telltale sounds of a raging firefight… and somepony calling my name.

I didn’t register that last part until hooves gripped my shoulders and literally shook me out of it. Blinking, I shook my head and rubbed my temple as Mom’s blue face dominated my vision. “Ember, we have to move!” she was screaming, and I felt myself being tugged along after her. Concussed and more than a little confused, I simply followed like a braindead idiot until Mom sat me down on the floor of the workshop and closed the door behind us.

I realized that Fortitude was still in my magic when Mom took it from me and began piling toolboxes in front of the door. There was copper in my mouth, and I worked my jaw from side to side as I felt out the sore spot on my tongue. I must’ve bit it when I was tumbling across the yard. Groaning, I placed my head in my hooves and muttered, “What’s happening?”

Mom was too preoccupied with chewing on her lip and looking out the window of the shop to answer. Her magic pulled the magazine out of Fortitude and she counted the rounds left before sliding it back in. Then she turned to me. “What happened at the dish yesterday?!” she barked, her eyes boring into my soul with pure, concentrated nightmare fuel. Mom was scary when she was angry.

“We… w-we heard something!” I cried back, flattening my ears against my head as another explosion hit not too far away. Just what was going on out there?! “A s-signal! From a probe! An Equestrian one!”

“A signal?” Mom’s eyes widened, and she glanced out the window again, holding the family rifle closer to her chest. “What did it say?”

I shook my head and shrugged. Why was I trembling so much? “We don’t know,” I said, wrapping one foreleg around the other to try to stop my shaking. “It was all in code. It didn’t make any sense, but…” My voice trailed off as realization dawned on me. “But it sent out signals… to the rest of Auris…”

Mom seemed to come to the same conclusion I did, because a new look of horror swept over her features. “The rest of Auris…?” She swallowed hard and all but collapsed into the corner by the window. “Sun and stars…”

Just then, a series of thuds sounded through the roof of the shop. Both Mom and I ducked a little lower, and looked toward the corner of the roof where we’d heard the noise. Fortitude’s barrel swept back and forth, and we both held our breaths, too afraid to make even the slightest noise. Even still, I almost screamed when another set of thuds joined the first, and through the muffled screaming, gunfire, and explosions, we heard two raspy voices.

“Look at them run!”

“Damn shame. It’s not even fair.”

“Shame that the first time we can exercise the ordinance in months, they don’t put up a good fight.”

“Yeah, but remember, we’re only supposed to put down the fighters. The rest are much more valuable alive than dead.”

“Yeah, yeah. Takes the fun out of a good mission. You check this sector yet?”

I looked at Mom, who’d been busy trying to zero in on the source of the noise. I saw her horn briefly strobe, and the safety on the side of Fortitude disengaged. She raised it up to the ceiling before I could stop her. “No, wait—!”

Blam! Blam! Blam! Fortitude thundered in the confined space as Mom fired through the roof at the voices. We were rewarded with pained screams and a heavy thump that shook the roof—but only one. One of the voices cursed and the roof momentarily bowed like a pony had jumped off of it. Given what I’d seen outside, it was likely a pegasus taking flight, and that meant we were fucked. Really, awfully fucked. I looked at Mom in horror, but she was too busy keeping one eye trained on the roof and another looking out the window to her left to notice.

The next thing either of us knew, a hail of bullets came spraying into the shop, through the flimsy roof Mom had just shot through. Both of us ducked our heads and scrambled behind whatever cover we could find as bullets bit into the dirt all around us. Little puffs of dirt and soot plumed up from the ground with each impact, and I could only watch them, mesmerized, as I cowed behind the lather with my hooves over my head.

Heart thundering, I didn’t dare to move until after the barrage stopped. When ash stopped billowing up around me and the roof didn’t shriek from lead tearing through it, I chanced a look around the edge of the lather, searching for Mom. I saw her crammed into an open cabinet underneath one of our workbenches with Fortitude held close to her chest, eyes wide and ears flattened against her skull. I guess she could see the panic in her daughter’s face, because it was like flipping a switch; in the blink of an eye, she’d crawled out from under her cover and readied her rifle again—just as a shadow appeared in the window.

Mom immediately spun the rifle around and put another five rounds through the window, shattering glass and ejecting shell casings across the floor, but failing to elicit any screams. All was silent after the fifth shot rang out, save for the ringing in my ears, and Mom slowly began to move towards me without aiming Fortitude away from the window. Broken glass crunched underneath her hooves, and she kicked a shell casing across the ground as sweat beaded on her brow and she breathed through gritted teeth. When she was halfway across the shop, she stopped at a low chuckle that sent icy fingers through my spine.

“You’ve got some fight in you, eh? Good. Raids just aren’t the same when you keel over and die.” Shadows danced by the window, and I saw a ragged foreleg dart through the window to toss something into the shadows of the shop. “Let’s see how you deal with this!”

Whatever the stallion threw into our shop beeped once, then exploded into a cloud of fiery napalm. Suddenly, it felt like somepony had taken the heat shielding off of the forge, and I felt the hairs in my mane curling as the temperature surged. A bright orange glow bathed everything around me, and I scrambled to my hooves to try to get out of this damn oven.

Only, we’d barricaded the door, and the window was too small to squeeze through.

Mom seemed to realize this as well. A quick flash of her horn caused a faint blue glow to materialize around her and across my vision; I recognized it as a flame retardant spell, useful when working in the forge, but not enough to save us from burning to death. She tossed Fortitude aside (cringe!) and wrapped her magic around the tool cases and machines she’d knocked over in front of the door. “C’mon!” she screamed, struggling with a drill press as her horn sparked and flared with exertion. I reached out with my magic to help her and heaved, and immediately regretted it. It felt like somepony had taken a sledgehammer to the base of my horn, and I fell to my knees, clutching at my skull. Let me tell you, trying to use magic when you’re concussed means life is pain and everything is terrible.

But we were going to die if I didn’t help Mom, so I swallowed hard and rose back to my hooves. This time, I tried to brace myself before heaving against the drill press, and so when I felt the pain come, I turned it into a primal scream and dragged the thing away from the door with Mom’s help. I nearly passed out afterwards, but Mom was there to wrap a foreleg under mine and keep me on my hooves.

Thankfully, the drill press was the only really heavy thing in front of the door, so Mom was able to move the rest while I panted and recovered. Sun and stars, I really needed to sleep for like three weeks straight when this was over with. I was so tired…

“Ember!” Mom screeched as she literally tore the door off its hinges and flung it aside. Her magic grabbed Fortitude and she dashed into the open, wildly spinning in place as she sought out our assailant. Apparently, she didn’t see anypony, because she lowered her rifle and waved at me. “Let’s go!”

I jumped as a falling cinder scorched my flank, providing all the motivation I needed to gallop out of the forge. Mom waited until I was nearly at her side to turn and gallop as well, and the two of us briefly ran towards our house before turning away from the inferno that awaited us. If there was any pain in Mom’s eyes at seeing our home in smoke, I must’ve missed it, because I looked back over my shoulder at the loud groaning of the forge’s roof collapsing. The plume of air billowing out of the shattered window and open door lifted thousands of glowing sparks into the air, casting the barest illumination on a dark figure soaring towards us with wings spread.

“Down!” I screamed, lunging at Mom. She hardly had any time to react before I shouldered her out of the way, sending Fortitude falling from her grasp and knocking us both over. And not a moment too soon; as soon as we hit the dirt, I saw the ground in front of us explode with bullets, followed a moment later by a gust of air as the pegasus zoomed overhead. Flapping his wings, the stallion rose into the smoke over Blackwash and banked out of sight, leaving only swirling dust in his wake.

Mom and I picked ourselves up off of the ground a moment later and scurried to the cover of a rocky outcropping. With the pegasus gone for the moment, we took our chance to breathe. Unfortunately, it also gave us time to look at the carnage in front of us. “Oh, sun and stars,” Mom murmured, staring at Blackwash. “The entire town… I…” I saw her swallow hard, likely trying to hold down her tears. I stood by her side, feeling my throat tighten up too, just from looking at it. Everything I’d ever known was burning to the ground. I… I really hope you never have to feel what I felt in that moment.

For better or for worse, I didn’t have a whole lot of time to dwell on that moment, because our friendly neighborhood marauder chose that time to dive down at us, guns blazing. Mom and I scattered in opposite directions, with me taking Fortitude and scrambling across the ashy ground. I yipped in pain as something tore along my hind leg, making me stumble and trip, ending with me sliding on my shoulder across the ground. I rolled onto my back, grasped my leg between my hooves, and was able to see a red channel carved through the skin and flesh, starting just below the flaming coal on my flank and ending above the knee.

I was also able to see the form of the pegasus as he veered away from the ground. Flashes of light above each shoulder accompanied the crack of gunfire as he fired at Mom, who kicked up dirt and ash as she rolled out of the way—but not far enough. I heard her scream and saw blood plume from her torso as a bullet ripped through her midsection, leaving her in a limp heap on the ground.

“No!!!” I screamed, grabbing Fortitude with my magic and bracing it against the inside of my hind leg. Sorrow was replaced by fury, and the only thing I wanted was blood. I tracked the bastard as he wheeled through the air, likely looking for an easy kill shot on me as I lay on the ground. Just before he could bring those guns mounted on his shoulders to bear, I unloaded with Fortitude at a hundred yards—well outside the range of those automatics he was using. The first bullet missed, tearing a chunk of feathers from his left wing and nothing more, and the stallion tried to bank away. Too bad for him, I’d already began firing to his right, in the direction he was banking. Three bullets chewed through his torso, if the splatters of gore backlighted by burning Blackwash were enough to go by, and in a limp, lifeless heap of feathers, the pegasus crash-landed somewhere against the side of the mountain.

I wasted no time after that. I was on my hooves in a flash, even though the exertion and pain was making me dizzy, and I slipped several times as I galloped to Mom. I kept Fortitude held aloft in my magic and trained toward the sky, just in case, as I slid the last few feet to Mom’s side.

She was still breathing, but not without a lot of trouble. Blood stained her muzzle, and she weakly coughed and writhed as she choked on her own vitality. I wasn’t any doctor, but judging by the hole I could see in her side, it’d gone through her lungs, which would explain the choking. Even worse, her eyes were staring ahead, unfocused. She’d gone into shock.

Of course, none of these thoughts crossed my mind at the time. I was panicking too much to think clearly, and the very first thing I did was drop Fortitude and press my hooves to the bloody wound, trying to stem the bleeding. I didn’t care that I was kneeling in the open, vulnerable to anypony who felt like taking a potshot at me. Tears burned my eyes, and I violently shook my head to try and knock them loose. “M-Mom!” I howled, my voice rough, ragged, and hysterical. “Please, Mom! Please! No!” I choked on a sob, and leaned forward to press my muzzle into her mane. She smelled like soot and ash and ozone, like a fresh welding job. I breathed it in again, and again, and again, not wanting to forget what she smelled like. Moaning, I simply collapsed against her side, my hooves slick with her blood, unable to do anything other than cry and beg. “Mommy…” I cried, wrapping my hooves around her torso and simply laying there with her. “Please… don’t go…”

A bullet wound like Mom’s was a death sentence without any real medicine. I think the bullet went through both of her lungs instead of just one, since she simply collapsed and immediately went into shock after taking it. Even if we had doctors, medical equipment, and weren’t under attack by these strange ponies, it would’ve been a long shot that she would live.

Instead, Blue Spark, my mother, died in my forelegs that night.