Flurry Heart caught the falling creature right out of the air in front of her. Not a simple catch—it was moving so fast, with enough energy to kill several ponies with the impact. She blasted all that away in a wave of heat and sound, filling the room with white for a few seconds. Her horn steamed from the effort, and an involuntary squeak of pain escaped her lips.

This was exactly the kind of spell her aunt had lectured her about in her early years. The foundations could save your life one day!

The pony stopped falling, and didn’t turn to organic slime as she did so. Flurry Heart collapsed backward onto her haunches, feeling the click of heavy human armor as it made the whole walkway shake.

It might protect her body, but it hadn’t made the magic any easier. The vaguely pony-shaped creature she’d just saved dropped out of her magic with an unceremonious thump as she stopped holding her up.

“I thought the village was evacuated already,” Lucky asked from just behind her. Not to her, but the half-dozen soldiers that were coming with them. “Who the hell is that?”

Captain Davis started saying something, but Flurry Heart didn’t let him finish. A pair of figures landed behind the first, far more gracefully. One was a pegasus, while the other… the other was a changeling.

But these weren’t the changelings that would fill her with fear, or haunt the nightmares of ponies. Chromatics! Flurry Heart squealed with delight, stumbling forward towards them. Her armor resisted the movement—it wasn’t made to do anything quickly. Maybe I should’ve found a pony craftsman to make this for me. But until recently, Flurry Heart hadn’t dreamed she would be going to fight.

“We’re…” The changeling she’d just saved made an effort to stand, though a futile one. Instead of rising onto her hooves, she ended up flopping sideways, wings humming uselessly at her sides. There was blood seeping out from one of her legs. Horseapples. Maybe that spell wasn’t as good as I thought.

“The screening fighters report resistance,” Forerunner said from behind them, as though he were commenting on the color fabric she’d chosen for a dress. “We have eighty seconds before our departure window closes.”

“We don’t have time to deliberate…” Lucky said from behind her. “We’ll have to leave Motherlode’s doctors to deal with them. We have to help Camp Storm, come on.”

“N-no…” The changeling reached out again, this time directly towards Lucky. She seemed to recognize the pony’s face, though Flurry Heart didn’t recognize her in return. Definitely not Thorax. “Governor… important…”

“We’re here on a diplomatic mission,” the pegasus said, apparently recovered after her landing. But she hadn’t come down fast enough to break all her bones. “We’re looking for the… governor, I think?”

“Alright, fine.” Lucky sounded exasperated. “Davis, get all three of those people aboard, they can come along. Field medic can tend to the purple one. How long, Forerunner?”

“Thirty seconds.”

“Run!”

They ran. This was one of those moments where Flurry Heart was amazed at the cooperation and confidence of these humans. What ponies could do only when they were good friends and all agreed on their goals, these humans did through tradition. They moved basically in step, up the large ramp and into the Wing of Midnight. The ramp hadn’t even retracted behind them when it lifted up into the air, roaring straight up through the same opening that the changelings had taken down.

Most of the soldiers rushed around them, some of them upstairs to do something that was probably important, but she couldn’t have said what it was. But she remained below with Lucky, along with a single soldier she knew was named Davis, apparently there to protect them.

“So, you know who these people are?” Lucky asked, mostly to Flurry Heart. “Are they telling the truth?”

“Could’ve sent a memo if they were here honestly,” said the marine, though he wasn’t pointing a weapon anymore and didn’t do anything to restrain them. But Davis had been fairly calm the last few times Flurry saw him, that was why she’d been willing to trust his company on their mission. “Diplomats don’t break in through the ceiling.”

“Well…” The purple changeling finally stood on her own. She was taller than the other one—an adult where the yellow still had some room to grow. “This is, uh… maybe a little awkward. I’m not sure how much of it you’ll believe.” She stared at the shut cargo door, then winced as their ship rumbled.

The battle was still going on out there. Qingzhi and his army fought against the Storm King, on a battlefield Flurry Heart didn’t understand. But Lucky said they could win, and that was what mattered.

“Where are we going?” asked the younger of the two. “To the terraforming ship, yes? You won’t be able to destroy it without me.”

The room went silent. For a few seconds, there was nothing more than the low rumble of the engines, and the occasional burst of gunfire from outside the ship.

“You know what we’re doing,” Lucky Break said. “I wish to know something about you. We have very little time… and I don’t like talking next to a cargo door that might be blasted off. Join us upstairs?”

“Yeah, great,” the purple one said. “There’s… some big stuff you need to know. I’m not sure how much has made it topside.”

They walked, with Lucky in front and their marine bringing up the rear.

“Did King Thorax send you to help?” Flurry Heart asked. “I haven’t seen him for so long, I’ve started to wonder if I ever would.”

“Things have been difficult in Irkalla,” the pegasus pony said. Flurry Heart felt confused for a few seconds, until she realized the obvious. These were changelings, so that one was probably just transformed still. Why she hadn’t changed back in the presence of creatures who knew they were changelings, she had no idea.

But there were more important things to worry about. Flurry Heart couldn’t forget that she would have to fight in less than ten minutes. But if Lucky can do it, I can. It was really just the next logical step for an Equestrian princess. They always fought the most difficult battles so that other ponies didn’t have to.

I just don’t know anything about war, I’ve never used their weapons outside of the range, and I’m probably gonna get us both killed. She took a few deep breaths, focusing on the changelings. The pegasus was still talking.

“We’re here so that I can make contact with the governor ruling the… Pioneering Society? Your diplomatic envoy reached us about a month ago. There has been… some disagreement over it, but honestly we’ve been craving another advanced culture on the surface for a thousand years. We can… get over what you look like in time.”

“Right.” Lucky Break cleared the tables with a wave of her horn, then sat on her haunches in front of it. The wood and cushions couldn’t support the weight of armor. “I think I missed the part where you explained what the heck you are. Some free information for you—there’s a war, monsters are taking over, we’re trying to stop it. Not as much time for diplomacy as there used to be.”

Their guests all took a seat—well, two of them did. The younger one wandered past Lucky to poke and prod at the entertainment controls. Not a chance she’ll actually do anything.

But music started playing a few seconds later—one of Lucky’s favorite artists. A pianist Flurry Heart couldn’t pronounce, who played compositions that sounded like far more energetic versions of what could’ve been pony classical music.

Lucky Break perked up a little at the song, apparently recognizing it too. “That’s… most new aliens we meet can’t just pick up our tech and use it.”

“I remember,” said the changeling off-hand, before sitting down right in front of the speaker and closing her eyes. She hummed along with the tune for a few seconds, apparently not terribly interested in the conversation.

Lucky Break looked sidelong at Flurry Heart, desperation in her eyes. “What can you tell me about changelings? Can they… be trusted? No affiliation with the Storm King?”

“None!” Flurry Heart exclaimed, before they could end up down another confusing conversation. “They’re… a long time ago they invaded Equestria, but Celestia beat their evil queen. Then they had no leader for a while, and… a pony named Thorax took over. He was much nicer. Probably… lots of other things in the middle, but I was really little when it all happened. Wasn’t even born for some of it, since the first time the evil queen tried to take over was when my parents got married…” She trailed off, seeing her friend’s eyes glazing over.

“I’m Ocellus,” said the pegasus. “You might not recognize me. It’s been… a little while.”

But she remembered the name. Flurry Heart wasn’t close to her or anything, but she knew she was related to the king. Beyond that, things got hazy. “Yeah, uh… I think I remember you from court once. You were friends with Spike?”

“My uncle was friends with Spike,” she corrected. “Close enough.”

“So you’re here because you… want to help us fight the war?” Lucky stared at the yellow changeling, who was still standing in front of the media controls. She’d switched to a simple guitar piece, and started making little motions with her hoof. “Am I getting that right?”

“Not quite,” corrected the purple one. Though what really caught Flurry Heart’s attention was that she was speaking English. Somehow. “When we left there wasn’t a war on. Othar was growing great, there was no space Hitler… it was all great. That was the world we wanted to show Ocellus… guess we won’t be getting that.”

“We.” Lucky Break slumped sideways, leaning briefly against Flurry Heart. She wasn’t wearing her helmet, so Flurry could feel the heat of her. The alicorn was clearly exhausted with all this—she hadn’t slept since they learned they would be attacked soon, so far as Flurry Heart knew. The weird patches she kept sticking on her face to stay awake were obviously wearing her down. “Say something else.”

“That’s… vague.” The changeling leaned forward, glaring at her. “I’m sorry you’re busy, Governor, but this is important. I don’t know where we’re going that you need armor, but Ocellus here is basically a princess. She can’t be put at risk, you need to turn around. This mission can’t be as important as the Pioneering Society making friendlier contacts. You know, friends who won’t try to wipe us out once they learn where we live, like Equestria did.”

“That isn’t what happened…” Flurry Heart squeaked. But Lucky wasn’t watching her.

“You have a northern states accent. Where did an alien learn to speak that way? All the training materials we shared with the natives are System Common.”

“Oh, I’m not an alien… I mean, not more than physically. I’m Sarah Kaplan, the same one who went missing. I’m like Perez… I picked a body I thought would help with the mission.” She glanced briefly at the pegasus, who immediately looked away.

Why are you and Ocellus so hurt right now?

But as much as she liked her friend, Lucky Break hadn’t noticed that, or she didn’t care. “That is… that’s not impossible.” She tapped something on her armor. “Forerunner, are you hearing this?”

“Obviously.” He didn’t speak from the radio, or even out of the wall. One of his pony-form robots appeared beside them almost as if by teleportation, settling into the empty seat beside “Sarah” without regard for her personal space. “If you’re asking me to verify, I have no way of doing so. She does not possess any implants, but that would not be expected if she had been reassigned a body.”

“Give me, uh…” Lucky frowned. “Sarah’s ident code.”

“8b65 e196 af3a d87c” Sarah sounded annoyed. “Look, are we going anywhere dangerous? Ocellus isn’t a warrior and neither am I. If I had been thinking straight… we shouldn’t be out here. King Thorax won’t be happy if something happens to her.”

“The code is correct. Voiceprint is off, but that’s to be expected.”

“Good enough for now. We can grill her or whatever once we don’t get murdered by a terraformer. Don’t let any of them near secure systems until we get a chance.”

“Done,” Forerunner said.

“We can’t turn around,” Lucky finally said. “I’m sorry. Camp Storm is already under attack. The resistance is stretched thin, there wasn’t anyone to help. The war for Motherlode is in the air, so Flurry Heart and I are going to play liberator for a bit. You don’t have to come along… I can have the Midnight drop you off in the woods after we jump. Get them communicators, Forerunner. Guns too, just in case.”

Davis stiffened at that. “Maybe wait to give them the guns, ma’am. If we can’t verify who they are.”

“I can,” Flurry Heart cut in. “I mean, I didn’t know Sarah, but I know King Thorax. His niece isn’t going to be dangerous to us.”

“You know her?” Davis asked, flicking a hoof towards the mare listening to music. “Because she’s the one who worries me.”

“No…” Flurry Heart admitted. “Not by sight. But there are a lot of changelings.”

“She’s the one who’s here to help with the war,” Sarah said. “I don’t know her well either, she’s just… somepony we recruited. She acts like she knows something about it, but I haven’t exactly had much time to meet her either.”

“Overflowing with confidence,” Davis said. “Governor, with respect. We can’t be blinded by how they look.”

“I’m older than you are, Captain. The appearance of ponies does not confuse me.” Little flashes of light appeared in front of her face—information only she could see on her screen. “Forgive us a moment, uh… changelings. We have a broadcast to make.”

You’ll have to do hard things. Things that terrify you. But they’re the things that Equestria needs. Forerunner’s words rang in her ears. Flurry Heart rose from her sitting position, looking confused. “W-where do you…”

“Right there.” Forerunner’s pony gestured to a stretch of bright green wall. “Just look straight out while you speak. Most of Equestria will only hear it anyway, but this is about history too. We’ll make sure it’s all recorded.”

She passed the younger changeling, who was still fascinated by the music player. Perhaps a little sour-faced when Forerunner shut the playback off. “Remain silent, everyone. I’ll edit the whole thing before we transmit, but we’ll get a cleaner recording if I don’t have to scrub.”

Flurry Heart stopped in place in her hulking metal armor, using her magic to fluff up her mane a little. It had grown back enough to cover her head, though not much further, with its original color restored. Rarity had found her some skilled stylists originally from Ponyville who had spent hours adding the extensions and colors that would make her appearance even recognizable to the average Equestrian.

At the bottom of her vision, the display started flashing her teleprompter.

“Ponies of Equestria,” she began, her voice quavering. The armor made her look big and strong, but it was a lie. “Today is the day of our liberation. After…” She trailed off. She could remember giving speeches like this, written by someone else. This one didn’t have anything she hated, but it also didn’t feel like her.

She looked away from the projection screen, and out at the camera. “When Canterlot fell, I was taken as a prisoner by the Storm King. Instead of fighting him like my mother, I hid. He captured me, and kept me as a puppet, to tell you whatever lies he wanted.

“I escaped a few months ago, and have been working with the resistance all over Equestria ever since. We were unprepared for this attack—and we have lost so much. Some of it may be gone forever, but not all of it.

“Brave ponies have joined us, friends from a far off land we once thought were enemies. But there aren’t that many of them, not enough to win the war for us. Today we take back our home.”

Flurry Heart no longer felt afraid. This was what she’d needed to do for months now, to admit to Equestria itself that what she’d done was wrong. Her admission would be immortalized in radio broadcasts shared by resistance agents in every major city in the country.

Forerunner didn’t seem upset that she wasn’t using his speech. The screen near one eye had gone black—he wasn’t even trying to get her to read it anymore. But will he even let them hear it if I don’t say what he wants? She had barely even mentioned the humans, instead of the praise he’d wanted her to give. But this isn’t about you. We’re not taking back your home, we’re taking back ours.

“Do not fear the Stormbreaker—we will destroy it. We need your help to take back your cities—throw off the colonial authorities, destroy what they have built. Though my mother and Luna have joined Celestia in death, Princess Twilight and I will be fighting beside you.”

She relaxed, breathing out and looking back at Forerunner. “I’m, uh… I think I’m done. I want you to send it exactly like that.” Forerunner wouldn’t lie to her, he never did. If he wasn’t going to let Equestria hear what she really thought, then he’d say so.

“Everything except that last part,” Forerunner said. “It is not accurate. It appears you have been… operating under flawed assumptions.”

“My God…” Lucky was at her side in an instant, albeit a longer instant than she would’ve taken without the massive metal armor. “Flurry Heart, you… you didn’t know? This whole time, and…”

“Didn’t know what?” Flurry Heart was crying now. She hoped that Forerunner would be nice enough to stop recording while she did. “Something you know… about my mom?”

“Yeah.” She nodded urgently. “I just thought… you would’ve… course you didn’t, you were stuck with the Storm King. I’m sure he’s been lying to you this whole time.”

“About what?” Flurry Heart’s horn started to glow, just a little. The ship rocked, lights flickered. For the first time in her life, she felt angry at her friend. “What did you know and not tell me?”

“Your mother isn’t dead,” she said. “Dead alicorns come back… I thought you… knew that.”

“Like Celestia came back?” She was practically screaming now. “Like Selene came back? I’ve never seen an alicorn come back to life, Lucky! You’re the only one!”

“Luna and Cadance were not killed,” Forerunner said from her headset, speaking in the same simple sentences he always used. “The Storm King’s lie is that his magical weapon could kill an immortal. The reality is that he transformed them into another form of life, one that exists along an axis so slow that they haven’t experienced even a single thought since the moment he changed them. There is almost certainly a method to restore them. We planned on discovering it once the war was over.”

Flurry Heart’s anger melted, and she slumped onto her haunches. Lucky Break tried to get close, and this time she shoved the alicorn out of the way. Not gently, either. “W-why didn’t you tell me that, Lucky? Why didn’t you tell me that from the first minute? Does… Did you tell Aunt Twilight too?”

Her expression of horror was all the evidence Flurry Heart needed.

Flurry Heart found she couldn’t think about their current mission anymore. Liberating a slave camp before the evil soldiers could kill all the captured ponies—that was important. But how could she fight with someone she didn’t trust at her side?

“You were supposed to protect me,” she whispered. “I always knew you would. When the Storm King captured me, you sent Perez to… you saved me from Celestia. But nopony’s protecting me. It wasn’t you, just like it wasn’t Celestia.” She ran, leaving dents in the deck-plating as she went.

Lucky Break didn’t follow her.

Flurry Heart had a singular destination—the armory. The armor couldn’t just be pulled off—there were machines to do it. She slipped her hooves into the little depressions in the floor, then stood in place as mechanical arms whirred. Once the biggest sections were off, the chestplate opened like a clamshell around her, and she stumbled backward like she was being vomited up by an animal. Even in the undersuit, she felt like she was dripping with sweat.

She lied, went the thought, over and over in her head. The one pony I thought I could trust.

And if that was a lie, what else?

She didn’t know what else to do. Flurry Heart found herself a table, climbed under it, and cried.

“Drop in fifteen minutes,” Forerunner’s voice called over the Wing of Midnight’s intercom. “All personnel, prepare to disembark.”

Frozen blood drifted through the air like dark red snow.

Olivia blinked, wiping a little of it from her visor as she made her slow way down the hallway. Its organic walls were already turning gray in thin ribbons—it would all be rotting soon. She probably would’ve seen the flies circling if they hadn’t been sucked out into the void too.

The ground was littered with the dead. They had killed hundreds of them—almost pony-shaped creatures that had kept pouring in even when the atmosphere was cut. Towards the end, some of them hadn’t been as sluggish as the others—were they adapting? But that hadn’t done them much good in the end—they were too slow, and not well-enough armed.

“I don’t mean to be a bother…” Perez said, with a tone that was obviously very much bothered. “But I only have fifteen minutes of O2. Could we speed this up a little?”

Olivia hesitated just one more second, then pressed the detonator on another explosive. She felt the floor shudder under her again, and bits of metal went flying in the distance, tearing up the organic walls and spraying greenish blood into the air. Then the gravity came back—for a second or so—and everything thumped to the floor. She felt the brief pressure against her legs and spine, and the protest from her suit as it adjusted to the unexpected change in orientation. But she was still standing on the “floor,” so she didn’t go drifting.

Gas billowed around them, drawn back behind them in a wave that doubtless went all the way to the breach. There was something more sluggish about the flow this time, almost as though the hole wasn’t as large. But she couldn’t go back and check. No way it can heal through the hole we blasted in it.

But that wouldn’t be a problem for much longer. Perez was already charging forward into the breach, massive shotgun up and firing. Even though there was no atmosphere to hear it, she imagined her ears were ringing from the echo in such a cramped space, as spent cartridges flew out behind him one after another. Olivia took one look at his helmet-cam, and saw why. There were just over a dozen of the thick-furred creatures waiting around the source of the explosion, with a makeshift blockade made of hunks of metal and office furniture. It had been a little too close, and several of them were already dead.

She charged forward to join him. “The rest of you, stay back! Mogyla, watch our back. No telling if they’re trying to find their way around and flank us.”

“On it, ma’am.” The rush of air past her wasn’t overwhelming anymore, and it didn’t seem to bother the soldiers either. She’d seen this kind of thing on big ships before—they sometimes had so much air within that it might take hours for a breach to empty the ship. In that time, the crew could easily move to defend their vessel. But human ships typically had numerous interior sections, kept isolated from each other by bulkheads and airtight doors. From the sound aboard this one, the ancients hadn’t cared about redundancy that much.

Fighting here was like returning to an old hobby she’d been missing. The violence had always been terrible, and it was true that each battle left a little scar on her mind. But she had always felt like she was making a difference with what she did. Now there was no reason for her to doubt it—saving an entire planet was on her shoulders. It didn’t matter how well Qingzhi fought, even if his troops could kill every aircraft coming for Motherlode and the ponies could throw off their oppressors. The Stormbreaker would still come down and terraform their whole kingdom dead.

She and Perez fought within the protection of active-camouflage, however imperfect it was. Thick metal crossbow bolts flew all around her. Several clanged off her armor, permanently destroying the delicate chromatic elements that made her invisibility possible. A spear struck her right in the chest, tearing deep into the armor before its momentum finally stopped. She yanked it free, then killed the one who threw it.

There was plenty more killing to be done.

It took only seconds, and they stood surrounded by a dozen bodies. Perez tossed a wooden mask onto the ground in front of the nearest pile, grinning from inside his helmet. “I can’t wait until they find out I’m aboard.”

“Clear for the minute,” Olivia called, and a second later their companions joined them. “What’s radar look like, Mogyla?”

He swore under his breath in Russian, right into the microphone. “Not good, commander. Looks like this section just sealed. Maybe we should stop opening up hull breaches.”

“Get some plastic over that hole, Perez. Mogyla, Deadlight, I want directions to the bridge.” The ship had gone eerily silent around them, except for the hiss of gas. It was probably getting pretty thin in here. Her suit announced that its pressurized O2 had increased by a measly 2%. It wouldn’t be able to recharge much if the room vented.

She stepped forward while they worked, inspecting the ship’s interior as she hadn’t been able to do while killing these soldiers.

The corridors were ovular and slightly uneven, with patterns like overlapping crystals wafer-thin along the walls. Occasional flickers of color appeared in those crystals, and they were transparent enough for her to see the network of something like veins underneath. Like the one they’d breached to get aboard, except that they were still green and not gray.

“This way looks promising,” Mogyla called after a few seconds, gesturing to a ramp leading up. “Only problem is, it’s a dead-end. They all are. We’re going to have to cut through an interior bulkhead.”

“Shit.” Perez smacked his shotgun forcefully back into its holster, removing one of the fallen spears. “I’m so done welding. You all can have some fun, I’ll poke around and see if I can find another way out.”

“Sure.” Olivia turned to the way Mogyla had indicated. “Deadlight and I will take care of it. You two watch our six. Mogyla, get some suicide drones around the other entrances.”

“Assuming they don’t plan on waiting here for the atmosphere to kill us, might be a good plan,” he called back. His way of acknowledging the order.

Deadlight followed beside her, his voice coming in over a private channel a few seconds later. “I’ve never welded before, Wayfinder. I don’t know… much of anything you’re doing. Except for the killing.”

The hallway around them was uncomfortably high overhead, its fractured crystals shimmering almost in response to their presence. Maybe there was a display there, if only she knew how to get it to appear. But she didn’t know, and no amount of standing in place and waving around in her armor would make it.

“Does the blood bother you, Deadlight? Didn’t you see your world end in blood?”

External pressure stabilizing at .4 atmospheres. Oxygen tank at 4% and climbing.

Not a second too soon. Her suit would extract only the relevant gas, spewing the excess back into the air around her. She could keep breathing here with confidence, even if the air in the Stormbreaker was poison. Unless the hyper-intelligent race who built this thing knows how to trick my suit into thinking it’s isolating 02 when it’s really killing me.

“And more since,” he said, voice low. “Equestria’s peace was uneasy at first. Survivors from my home mixing with Celestia’s pure earth ponies. There were wars. Rebellions.”

But the crossbow bolts stuck in the wall suggested that probably wasn’t the case. The ones who built the Stormbreaker could’ve done that, but not the Storm King himself. He was a festering boil on the back of Equestrian giants.

“You don’t seem like someone who would watch from the sidelines,” Olivia said, stopping as they reached the metal bulkhead. But comparing it to a similar system on a human-built ship wouldn’t have been fair—instead of a thick piece of steel, this was an intricate aperture of interlocking metal, and felt thin when she tapped her armor against it. Thin, but with almost no flex to it. Another alien supermaterial.

“I didn’t,” Deadlight agreed, settling down beside her and watching as she prepared her torch. He removed his own from his belt, going through the motions of connecting it to the fuel line and sparking it to life. “But it never got any easier. Watching ponies die… I was watching instances destroyed. Lives and hopes that wouldn’t ever be complete.”

Olivia held her torch to the door, and was relieved to see the metal going white hot under the pressure. A few moments later and she could see her line of fire cut through to the other side. Thank god.

This barrier wasn’t here to repel boarders, or else she knew she never could’ve cut through it. This was a utility ship, a scientific vessel. God help them if the Storm King ever got his paws on a warship.

“Like me,” she said, spending a few minutes instructing him. “Very slow, yeah. These are discrete sections, and we have to cut enough to force our way through.”

Then she leaned back, frowning to herself. “I don’t know that it ever got ‘easy’ for me. But it wasn’t about doing something that was hard. It was about the alternative. If I didn’t bring down the slave-ship, then who knew how many more people they’d harvest.”

“Why would… why would they need to?” Deadlight asked. “I thought you had mastered life and death. Why would you harvest when you could just create something new without a crime? Just ask your version of Forerunner to make more bodies.”

Olivia laughed. “That technology wasn’t mature when I… left. The Pioneering Society began harvesting neuroimprints a long time before they could do anything with them.”

She was well over halfway through now. Light poured in from the other side. “Hold on.” She shut off her torch, removing a fiber camera from her belt and poking it through the hole. There was no sense charging blindly into danger if they could avoid it. And now they knew the enemy was waiting for them.

But there was no enemy waiting through there, just a room with lots of low tables and holograms floating over them. She couldn’t read any of the writing, since it was in the ancients’ language, but Forerunner probably could once they sent the recording back.

“Okay, we’re safe. No one in there.” They went back to their work, and for a few minutes Olivia could forget the danger she was in, forget how at any moment they might be killed by any number of alien defenses.

“Nothing going on here,” Mogyla said, after her third security check. “Any orders for me?”

“Yes,” she said. “Get a drone outside with our datagram. Fuck stealth at this point, send everything we know. If we die gruesomely in the next few minutes, they need to know what went wrong.”

“Already done,” Mogyla said. “Our door is already closing, but hopefully it won’t cut the wire. We should be free to transmit until that happens.”

“Can we receive?” It was stupid to ask. All Olivia had to do was lift up her controls and probe the local mesh. There it was, network coverage to Forerunner’s satellites. She probably would’ve been notified about it sooner if they hadn’t been deployed on a stealth mission.

“Can you cut for a minute, Deadlight?”

She didn’t even wait for confirmation, stepping back as she established a connection. “Forerunner, do you read?”

There was no image—waste of bandwidth given they only had a drinking straw of an antenna to send word back and forth. “Here, Prefect. I just got your datagram. Looks like you’re having fun.”

“We should be into the interior in a few minutes,” she said, ignoring the obvious emotion in his voice. It was hard to imagine this program as he had been when she first heard his voice, mechanical, genderless, basically mindless. We’ve all changed here. But he’s the only one who was expected to evolve. Those software updates were a good thing—she could only imagine how difficult this mission would’ve been with G1 equipment, when she’d had to use construction equipment like a mech and stun rifles instead of guns. “Is the Stormbreaker doing anything?”

Forerunner sent her an image, obviously taken from the satellite network. Even greatly magnified, the ship was small and blurry. “Still in high orbit. I’m reading increased EM, but I don’t know if the latest spike means anything.”

“As intelligent as you are, Forerunner… what do you think the Storm King is building?”

Deadlight had expanded the hole, big enough that one of their heads could fit through. He pushed, and this time the plates gave a little. It wouldn’t be much longer now.

“There are two possibilities… both equally grim. But it isn’t the organic that matters here—it never is. This is not a conflict between you and the Storm King.”

Olivia’s eyebrows went up. “Isn’t all of Equestria in flames right now?”

“It is,” Forerunner agreed, though his voice was dismissive. “But you miss the point. Harmony has absolute control over the surface of this ring—every person aboard that ship with you could be instantly killed if it wanted. But Harmony doesn’t. It could’ve taken remote control of the terraforming vessel and piloted it down into the sun, or back into skydock. It didn’t. Why?”

Olivia’s head hurt. She started pacing, lifting her rifle and flipping off the safety. Deadlight was nearly through. She would be ready to cover him once they got inside. “Ask Lucky. Or… no, ask Martin. That’s his kind of question.”

Forerunner laughed. “Martin understands, it’s true. This war isn’t between you and the Storm King—or even between Equestria and him. It’s between Harmony and the Storm King on one side and Failsafe and I on the other. We are the agents—the rest of you are segments.”

Olivia shuddered. For a second it seemed as though the hull of the Stormbreaker had gone transparent, and her eyes could see across the vastness of space. There, across a billion billion stars were a trillion Forerunner probes, a quiet, patient computational network. The lasting legacy of humanity, built before they had grown wise enough to know better. Their model was only one of many.

“I don’t accept that,” Olivia said. “Harmony doesn’t mind-control the ponies of Equestria. Lightning Dust killed Celestia. The other princesses sided with Lucky. Harmony wanted us to stay in Quarantine forever.”

“Maybe.” Forerunner’s voice grew distant. “I hope you’ll kill him for me. The Storm King disrupted months of effort. We’ve made a habit of stealing the tools from Harmony’s hands—let’s break this one.”

Transmission complete.

“I’m through,” Deadlight said, shutting off the torch and letting it fall back against his side. “We’re in!”

No flashing alarms this time, no rush of air. Their plastic patch on the hull was working, or maybe the self-healing slime. Either way, it was time to move.

“Get up here,” Olivia ordered. “Deadlight and I are going in. Keep watching our backs.”

The metal bulkhead came away in bits and pieces as she shoved her way through, widening it a little at the cost of further scrapes on her armor. But she already had a damaged suit, it wasn’t like the stealth would be very good anyway.

They passed the first of the projection tables, showing one of the familiar maps of the ring she’d seen so many times before. This one kept far above the ring, showing dozens of little shapes like the Stormbreaker moving in systematic patterns over the empty places. She couldn’t read the symbols, hadn’t even tried to make sense of the ancient language. It included security features that made it difficult for an organic mind to make sense of—those few who could read it from the Pioneering Society all had magical help.

But she thought those were numbers, each little dot corresponding to another screen. She passed another one, and a massive window looking down on the ring. It was a strange thing—she’d seen out of plenty of such windows before, and knew what to expect from a planet below. Not this—not a curve with a distant red glow somewhere behind it. She looked away.

The next projector didn’t have a map of all of Equus, but camera shots taken from a lower orbit. She watched another terraforming ship move for a few seconds, passing slowly over a field of melted rock and leaving friendly-looking soil behind. Another on a separate screen shaped the paths for rivers and lakes, leaving them filled but sterile.

“Harmony wasn’t lying about rebuilding the ring,” Deadlight said. “It’s really doing it. Lucky was right.”

Of all the little displays, one of them had bright red lights all over it. And from the look of the screen, it was from their own ship. “We’re off-course.” Deadlight pointed to that display, frowning visibly. “Why do you think Harmony is letting the Storm King do this?”

Mogyla and Perez appeared at the hallway behind them, emerging from the gloomy ramp beyond. Perez waved his shotgun in a friendly way. “No hostiles?”

“Nothing yet,” Olivia said. The room full of displays led to several exits, some narrowing a little while others got wider. I’ve seen pictures of this, from the mission the others took. Thicker hallways probably go to mission-critical areas, while thinner ones go to more specific ones. She pointed to the two widest. “We’re going to split up. Deadlight with me, and you two. Assemble your bomb, be ready to use it if you even think that it might disable the ship.”

“I’m not a fan of suicide,” Mogyla said. “I’d like to use ours after we find an escape pod.”

“That is a secondary priority,” Olivia said, her voice resolved. “We will return. But only if we can stop this.”

Deadlight opened his saddlebags, removing his half of their bomb. “You want this now?” He set it down on the ground in front of Olivia.

It was comparatively compact, not even a meter long. The armored field-casing was covered with nuclear warning stickers. More importantly, it had only a single mechanical access—the intricate flaps and ports that would interface with her half of the bomb.

“You two go ahead,” Perez said. “We’ll put ours together as we go. Hands.” He waved them at her once, grinning smugly.

“Yeah, whatever.” Olivia waved him off. “Good luck you two. See you again in Othar.”

Mogyla saluted. “Unless we see you sooner.” They left.

Olivia removed her own half of the bomb, feeling her hooves shake a little as she mated the cylindrical section with Deadlight’s flatter head section. It made a cheerful click, then lights all over it went deep red, cycling slowly down. She opened the flap of her saddlebags. “Go on, settle it in for me. Pack it so it doesn’t move.”

Deadlight picked it up and started working. “I’m surprised you’re advanced enough to have a bomb that can bring the Stormbreaker down.”

“We don’t… know that we are,” Olivia said, voice distant. She brought up the mesh again on her helmet screen, and there was the bomb waiting for her.

Korkechov-Class Portable Fusion Device (WAITING)

Arm.

Authorization required.

Commander Olivia Fischer, Signature: MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4...

Device armed. Detonation parameters?

Deadlight jumped from beside her, pulling his hooves back in alarm. “Did I do something wrong? It just clicked.”

“No, nothing.” She flipped the flap closed, locking her bags again. They’d bulge and weigh her down unevenly, but the armor was equal to that.

Primary parameters: my lifesigns.
Secondary parameters: 30 minute timer, renewable.
Tertiary parameters: command.

Parameters accepted.

Next Chapter: Part 2: Detonate Estimated time remaining: 2 Hours, 12 Minutes