October 31st, 1077

Delta scrunched her eye, picking at a stray nugget of gunk left over from a long night of fitful sleep. A DJ who sounded like she took her caffeine via injection kept yapping over the radio about some up and coming artist whose name Delta would probably only retain for five minutes, maybe ten if she cared even a little about the latest pony to make a million bits from singing someone else’s song.

The crust came free and she flicked it at a crumpled paper bag on the passenger seat containing the greasy crumbs of this morning’s breakfast. Red Delicious didn’t serve what most ponies would exactly call food, but it was quick and it was on Jet’s tab anyway. Besides, she might as well indulge while she still has this gig. Now that the last module of SOLUS was in orbit and her daughter with it, she had a feeling her ex-husband would find a way to “reassign” her to a certain familiar junkyard on the outskirts of town.

“...nine-thirty and it’s TIME for the TOWER OF POWER TOP TEN TUNES selected by listeners like YOU!”

Delta glowered at the radio and did some mental math. Not counting the nap she’d taken in Steepleton… eleven hours, she’d been driving. According to the ache in her back, it felt like double that. Keeping one wing hooked around the bottom of the steering wheel, she did what little she could to stretch out her confined muscles. Back in the day, she would have just flown the cross-country journey from Las Pegasus to Manehattan and worn the week’s worth of muscle strain as a badge of honor. Now they had gas powered carriages, and at Delta’s age she was pretty sure she didn’t have that kind of endurance. The last thing she wanted was to subject herself to the embarrassment of having to beg Jet to send someone out to pick her up.

In the rear mirror the boxy frame of a hay hauler drew steadily closer. Bits of loose straw blew off the ridiculous stack of bales strapped behind the cab, most likely on its way to one of the beef farms tucked away in the area. She ignored it. Gryphons had to eat, too, she supposed. Better the cows than her.

A bee popped against the windshield. She sighed and toggled the wipers.

A little help from Jet was nothing compared to the humiliation that was waiting for her in today’s papers. Grimacing at the fresh memory, she’d felt a steady pressure building inside her as the countdown to launch ticked away on the monitors. JetStream Aerospace project leaders and their staff had crowded the same hotel ballroom Apogee had invited Delta to make an idiot of herself in a year earlier. And of course the press junket was there, snapping pictures of gathered onlookers or toting bulky cameras through the finely decorated tables as they hunted for candid reactions to tack above their articles.

Delta had found herself on the same balcony, except this time she wasn’t looking at an unpiloted rocket in the distance. Her daughter and three other ponies were inside the capsule mounted at the top of the stack. Worry had crept into her heart like a parasite, plaguing her with visions of the rocket exploding on the launch pad. Of the capsule being engulfed in flame. Of disaster after disaster parading through her mind even though she knew the ponies who designed the technology had given her only child the best chance of survival any pony could have in this endeavor.

So when the engines lit and the rocket lifted safely above a column of smoke into the midday sky, the immense relief Delta felt had dissolved her “proud mother” pose into an ugly mess of tears.

She cleared her throat, shoving the embarrassing memory back to the dusty corners of her brain where it could sit and think about what it did. Of course the press had descended upon her like vultures, burning every second of it onto film like a tattoo she didn’t want. It was part of the reason she was slow-rolling her way across Equestria. Jet thought it would be a good idea for her to be there on board the boat he’d outfitted to retrieve Apogee’s capsule from the Celestial Sea. More emotional TV goodness for the viewers at home, was more like it.

The hay hauler was practically crawling up her ass. She glared at its grille in the rear view mirror as it waited for a break in traffic to overtake her.

“Dick,” she muttered.

Another hour and she’d be in the bluffs. Until then, she’d have to deal with lead-hoofed assholes like the one behind her. As she waited, it occurred to her that she wasn’t that far from Foal Mountain. She smirked. With well over a hundred Stables completed, Stable-Tec had taken the initiative to start scheduling mandatory monthly evacuation drills which were already getting old fast. All residents designated for leadership roles were required to attend bi-weekly job training exercises on top of that, or risk forfeiting their spot. Sure, Stable-Tec was paying them for their time, but the paychecks were a pittance compared to the price some ponies paid to get reservations in the first place.

Naturally, Spitfire had seen fit to schedule one of those drills today. Delta and Apogee had been given assurances they wouldn’t receive a strike for missing today, what with the family making history and all. She squinted through the smear of bug guts and road grit until she could spy the hazy lump of Foal Mountain off to the right of the highway, grinning like a fiend. Somewhere over there, a whole lot of pegasi were about to be bored to death.

She turned back to the road, paused, then glanced up at the crisp blue sky. Apogee’s crewmates would be preparing her for the world’s first EVA in orbit right now. She knew it would only take one twist of the knob to switch the radio to a station carrying her daughter’s voice. Delta already knew the prep list by heart. The suit they’d designed together would do just fine in vacuum. Everything depended on what Apogee did once she was outside the airlock. That was something Delta couldn’t bring herself to listen to. The stress of the day was already eating at her. For now, she just wanted to pretend that everything was fine. That she was just a shitty mother with a shitty junkyard to deal with, and Apogee was just another bump in a long road of mistakes she and Jet had made together.

The radio sputtered and the overcaffeinated DJ’s voice was replaced by the hollow hiss of static. Delta grimaced, turning the volume down. That wasn’t fair. Apogee was one of the few good things to come out of her life. Knowing she was up there, doing things no pony had ever done before, terrified her. And she was terrified because she loved the stupid kid.

A flicker of lightning blinked out of the corner of her side mirror, but when she looked to see if there were clouds in the west all she could see was the headlight of the truck behind her. Another couple of feet and the driver of the swaying rig would need to buy her dinner. Glaring ahead, traffic in the other lane was spotty but steady enough for her to tell he wouldn’t be getting around soon, which meant there was no point in tailgating her.

So he was an asshole, then. Lightning flickered again as she rolled down her window, filling the carriage with the roar of wind and the faint scent of manure from the passing cornfields. She held a hoof out in the universal gesture of, “Back off.”

Another flash, but every mirror just gave her different angles of the hauler’s bug-encrusted grille. Further up the road, a family-sized carriage sent up a skirt of gravel as it pulled over and skidded into a frantic U-turn.

“What the fuck?” she muttered.

More carriages started pulling off the road. Behind her, the hauler blared its horn. Thunder shuddered above it. Instinctively, Delta pulled in her hoof and extended her wing out the window to flip the asshole off. As she did, lightning flashed again.

Oily vapor lifted off the highway. Smoke boiled away from carriages that had pulled over. Delta jerked her wing inside as if she’d touched a hot stove only to find that several of her feathers had curled and blackened all the way down to the flesh. Confused and hurting, she looked in her rear-view mirror. The hay hauler was engulfed in flames.

Before she could process what she was seeing, the truck accelerated and rammed into her. She shouted a curse, grabbing the wheel with both wings. Through the open window she could hear the roar of its engine as its driver poured on the gas. She could feel the tires lose traction, watched the nose of her carriage slide sideways as if to gawk at the burning cornfield. Too many things were happening. She tried to steer out of the slide even though the physics were against her.

Lightning flashed as the hauler shunted her onto the shoulder. Gravel and dirt battered the undercarriage like hail as she slid. She was too disoriented to remember which wheel dropped into the cornfield, stuck, and wrenched the carriage around just in time for her to see the blast wave sweep toward her. Then it hit.

For several long seconds, she was weightless. Up became down, and down blended into the chaos of bellowing wind and her own terrified screams.

Darkness. Silence.

She became aware of herself again and murmured a wet groan. Blood was in her mouth. Gluing her throat shut. Opening her eyes, she found herself laying on the cool soil of the field she vaguely remembered crashing into. Her thoughts plodded along agonizingly slow, like hooves through the sucking mud. She pushed herself halfway up, her stomach nearly emptying itself in revolt. She spotted the carriage nearby, smoke coiling up from its crumpled frame, engine revving, its shredded tires flapping violently toward a burning sky like some rabid, dying animal.

Dark shapes caught her attention overhead. Her head bobbled as if weighted by lead, but she could make out the forms of pegasi overhead. She blinked. One of them passed above her close enough for her to spot a large brown suitcase clutched against his belly. How long had she been out? Weren’t there supposed to be sirens when-

Twin shocks of emerald light lit the west and north skies.

Bombs, she thought. Celestia’s Light those are-

Thump.

Delta shoved herself to her hooves just as a pink suitcase exploded against the dirt beside her, retching its hastily packed contents back into the air like a laundry landmine.

Thump. Thump-thump.

A panicked wave of screams came from the pegasi flying above as the shocks from both bombs clapped their ears like thunder. Distantly, she knew they were dumping their belongings. Shedding weight so they could fly faster. Get somewhere safe.

She swayed on her hooves. Somewhere safe.

The Stable.

She flapped her way into the air like a fledgling bird and followed the evacuees to Stable 10.

Panic and pain scoured much of the long flight to the mountain from her memory, but not all. Later, when she would think back to the day the bombs fell, she would recall the agony that shot up her right foreleg as it dangled uselessly in the wind, the tendons sliced during the rollover. She remembered waiting for the next flash to be too close. For her feathers to burst into flames just like the hay hauler whose tailgating likely shaded her from being burned to death inside her rented carriage.

She remembered the dust and ash thrown out by the explosions making it next to impossible for her to see, and the reassuring grip of the stallion who found her circling in a tearful panic near the slope of the mountain. She remembered that he looked like Rainbow Dash and would later discover that his name was Bow Hothoof, and he had died ferrying several other lost pegasi toward the tunnel before the landslide prevented his return.

She remembered stumbling toward the open door of Stable 10 with dozens of others as the bombs thundered and unnatural winds bellowed behind her. The gentle touch of a Wonderbolt’s wing on her aching shoulders as she passed some kind of defensive line along the wide steps, Spitfire herself among them with a long rifle slung around her neck. The momentary panic as she found herself crammed into a crowded antechamber among a hundred other screaming pegasi, their faces unrecognizable behind layers of ash, blood and tears.

And she remembered the sound of the door as its great mechanisms groaned to life.

Pegasi turned with fearful eyes to watch the massive cog roll tooth by tooth toward the breach. Some watched as Spitfire and a clutch of Wonderbolts shouted warnings through the gap, weapons aimed at some unseen threat. The gear needed no help moving into place but Delta found herself willing it to hurry anyway.

With a song of steel biting steel, the door sank into the skin of the Stable. Heavy bolts sank into place with a sound like cannonfire, sealing the great vault as the world outside turned to ash.

“Test, test.”

Fingertips delicately danced across the knobs of her handmade equipment, adjusting the gain on the signal that had taken her weeks to pin down the first time around. One of Coldbrook’s people had touched her stuff after all, screwing things up just enough for her to spend her afternoon recalibrating the tunneling signal when she should be sleeping.

Fiona rubbed a hand over her face, letting it come to rest over the bridge of her beak. She could see the feeds coming in from the Enclave’s fleet of spritebots just fine. It was the broadcasting portion that was giving her trouble. As a self-proclaimed professional in, and probably the only member of the broadcast industry on this side of Equestria, she took this little hiccup personally.

Staring back at her from a high-end terminal screen that had taken her over a year to track down, a single feral ghoul watched the spritebot with only passing interest. Their unblinking eyes never stopped creeping her out. Touching another knob with one hand, she brought the other back to her mic stand and depressed the transmit key.

“Test, test. One two, one two. Blink once if you receive me. Blink nonce if you’ve eaten anyone this week.”

The ghoul didn’t react.

Fiona reached out with a broad, desert colored wing and gave the transmitter’s chassis a frustrated smack. The image jumped, settling back to the husk’s uninterested gaze.

“Wakey wakey, eggs and-”

The feral ghoul snapped to attention, lunged at the screen with a howl and the signal cut out. Fiona blinked, then laughed. “And we’re in business.”

She leaned back as far as she dared on the chair’s old rollers and stretched her arms behind her neck until she could feel their muscles sing. As she let out a breath of self-satisfaction she stole a peek out the dusty windows of her firetower and gauged the angle of the fuzzy blob of light that was Equestria’s sun.

Three, maybe two and a half hours until the ponies of Blinder’s Bluff would begin turning on their radios to listen in on her triumphant return to the airwaves. Or at least that’s what some of them were calling it. As far as Fiona was concerned, it didn’t feel like she’d won anything. This equipment belonged to her. She was the one who collected it, memorized the connections, and assembled it all into a working, reliable radio station. She’d known that operating out of the firetower on the bluff put her under Coldbrook’s jurisdiction but she’d always understood him to be a reasonable stallion. But now that he had a Stable dangling in front of his nose he’d become someone completely different. Or maybe he was just showing his true stripes for the very first time.

Picking up the discolored JoyBoy from the console, she flipped to the next signal in the sequence and waited for it to connect. When it did, she found herself looking at a small farmhouse from atop a shallow ridge somewhere in the wasteland. She frowned as she noticed the single figure that caught the bot’s attention. A blue stallion, by the looks of it, working the handle of a water pump behind the house. He thought he was alone and hadn’t bothered to wrap his wings before coming outside. A dustwing. If the Enclave hadn’t already sent a strike team to wherever he was, they would be shortly.

Fiona tapped the transmit key and leaned toward the mic. “Hey, you.”

The stallion froze, looking for the source of her voice.

“Up here,” she said. When he finally spotted the spritebot, she could see the dread in his eyes. “You need to skedaddle. If you’re anywhere near Blinder’s Bluff, get there now. Tell the Rangers that--”

The connection dropped and the terminal flipped automatically to the next feed. The Enclave must’ve had someone watching the same bot when she broke in. She sighed, hoping the dustwing was smart enough to put two and two together on his own. Leaning over, she picked up the little notebook she used to jot down airworthy stories and used a nib of charcoal to scratch BLUE DUSTWING at the top. If he did somehow make it to the Bluff, it wouldn’t hurt for the ponies living here to know he was one of the good pegasi.

Tapping a button beneath her talon, she started scrolling through the feeds hoping to get lucky a second time. Finding dustwings before the Enclave had time to drop a bullet on them was like winning the spritebot lottery. And yet, as usual, a golden win was naturally followed by an equivalent stretch of losses. It never deterred her from looking, though. There was always something out there worth talking about, and the spritebots were little monocular experts and sniffing them out.

Still lots of activity around the old JetStream Array. Rangers patrolled the outer fence in pairs, now, and there were several angles affording her a view of the gun emplacements positioned on the central building’s roof. The only thing unusual about that was where the heavy weapons were pointed, aimed down at what looked like a mostly collapsed warehouse with a very distinct burrow built out of the twisted wreckage of a rusted garage door. Aurora’s deathclaw friend, she guessed. Judging by the precautions taken to monitor the burrow, it was still in there.

Tapping the JoyBoy, she cycled through the angles until new locations popped up. Most were just bots heading from one point to another, showing her nothing except barren wastes and the odd half-living forests that still found a way to grow among the bluffs. One bot busily navigated a muddy riverbed. She caught another slowly hovering across the buckling remains of a stunning trestle bridge, the pilot that was currently navigating it manually clearly interested in a line of boxcars that had somehow gotten stuck on the bridge’s sagging rails.

Fiona couldn’t help but admire the pilot’s skill at managing the bot’s single, twitchy thruster. Leaning forward in her seat, she watched the view inch its way toward the boxcars by the feathers of a skilled Enclave pilot.

“Almost there, little guy,” she rooted. “Little further.”

As the side of the first car gradually bent into view, Fiona touched the left arrow on the controller’s directional pad and the spritebot obediently puttered over the edge of the bridge. She cackled as the Enclave pilot could only watch as fifty pounds of expertly navigated tech pancaked into the hardpan below.

“So close,” she giggled, and flipped to the next bot.

An hour later, she’d begun cycling into the sequence of spritebots with weaker and, in her mind, more valuable signals when it came to her broadcasts. This was where she raked in her listeners, with news and stories from the far reaches of eastern Equestria. She rubbed a knuckle against her eyelid to keep her from zonking out. The views toggled around the mountains and she smiled a little at the familiar vistas. One day, she hoped Griffinstone would start to rebuild like Equestria was. As much as she liked to test their patience, these ponies were trying their damndest to create something from their ruins. Gryphons, on the other hand…

She tried not to dwell on it. She’d done what she could to try to be a voice of reason, and her people had shown their gratitude by trying to burn down her home with her still inside. Griffinstone would either stop destroying itself or it wouldn’t. She’d resolved not to let it take her down in the process.

She shook her head, focusing. The mountains always made her homesick. She skipped through the feeds until she started seeing the coast, then slowed.

The video tended to get fuzzy when she tapped into signals this far out, but this evening things were unusually clear. The Enclave must’ve been sending more bots out this way, which meant the faint signals had more relays to piggyback off of and suffered less degradation. With her pad of paper at the ready, she started flicking through bots in search of a hook that would wet her listener’s appetites.

Highways and overpasses, suburbs and little encampments became the standard fare of the afternoon. A few bots meandered the empty streets of a once picturesque middle-class neighborhood while a lone sprite navigated a tangle of traffic that had been compacted together when the bombs fell. She spent a few seconds watching ocean waves lapping at the entrance of a concrete spillway before switching to a bot that had somehow gotten itself stuck halfway up a highrise somewhere in what appeared to be Manehattan. At second glance, she realized that it was monitoring a pill-shaped anti-air turret that had been assembled atop a roof several blocks away.

She made a note of its rough position and left it where it was, knowing info like that could cover a hefty slice of her dues to Coldbrook this month.

More streets, viaducts and empty buildings. A trade caravan, a bomb crater, a raider camp in the suburbs. The wasteland had a tendency to look the same after the first hundred cycles.

Then Fiona paused.

She cycled back until the crater appeared on screen. The spritebot didn’t seem particularly interested in it, happy to move along its preprogrammed pathing until it spotted something that would trip it's surveillance mode and send a ping back to the Enclave, and the crater was quickly sliding off frame as it meandered north.

She tapped the directional pad, flipping it to manual control, and spun it back to the crater. It didn’t take long for her to recognize the site as the balefire crater in Fillydelphia, and it took even less time for her to pick out the familiar faces gathered along its rim.

Squinting at the picture, her lip quirked at the sight of Aurora’s Pip-Buck poking out from under the sleeve of a coat that looked fresh off a feral ghoul’s back. At least she’d managed to hang onto the device a little longer this time around. If it weren’t for her letting Ironshod manipulate her into leaving it with him, Fiona would have never risked losing her station or her livelihood. She wished she could reach through the screen and slap the Stable dweller for dragging her into something so stupid, but the warm rush of anger toward the mare cooled as she remembered just how dire her situation had been.

Still.

Fiona licked the corner of her beak and sighed. Aurora was a decent pony. A little dense when it came to trusting authority, but it was hard not to respect a pony that was willing to risk her life to bring someone back to safety that she had put in harm’s way. Most ponies around here would have thrown up their hooves and said oh well, so sad, that’s the wasteland for you, and moved on. Aurora hadn’t done that.

As angry as Fiona was with her for turning her life upside down, there was a big part of her that still liked the little idiot.

Against her better judgement, she nudged the little bot forward.

More than an hour after discovering the bulkhead, Roach had made little progress in prying it apart.

The sickly green light of his magic flashed beneath the surface of the water like an electric arc. A foam of tiny bubbles had begun to form above the deepest part of the pond, releasing a noxious gas that was the result of the collision between chemistry and magic. Without being able to see it for herself, Aurora was forced to form an image in her head based on Roach’s description.

A monstrously deformed but intact bed of steel lay just a few feet beneath a layer of pulverized concrete, rebar and mud. A heap of soggy debris piled, glob by glob, along the pond’s furthest edge where the radiation spun off by Roach’s magic would cause them the least harm. Aurora glanced down at her Pip-Buck, making sure the rads stayed below yellow as he excavated. A glimmer of hope began to grow inside her, but this time she made sure to repeatedly remind herself that this could just as easily be nothing. She wasn’t going to get her hopes up a second time.

Yet as another swath of debris lifted out of the water and slapped onto the wet mass at the other side, she couldn’t help but share in their mood of excitement. Unbeknownst to Aurora or Ginger, a little visitor had slipped to within a hair’s breadth between them.

One moment, they were enjoying the silence.

Then:

“Howdy howdy!”

Aurora and Ginger bolted off the ground as if it were electrified, Aurora’s wings striking out from under her coat with enough force to send the spritebot wobbling backwards while Ginger barreled sideways into a profanity-spitting Julip. The three of them struggled to their hooves in a tangle of legs and tattered fabric while the spritebot, still airborne behind them, swayed with the sound of its controller’s manic laughter.

Equally furious and bewildered, Ginger rounded on the little spy and promptly trapped it within a dense bubble of bronze magic. Only when she started trying to crush the spritebot with said magic did the laughter stop and a familiar voice emerge from its tinny speakers.

“Woah, woah! Ginger, easy! I’m messing with you guys!”

Aurora and Ginger exchanged a look of confusion while Julip simply stared at the intruding machine with understandable mistrust. After a moment of hesitation, Ginger released the spell and the spritebot bobbed free.

Aurora narrowed her eyes. “Fiona?”

“Yah-duh. Who else?”

She blinked. “You scared the shit out of us!”

“Payback for almost losing me my radio station,” she retorted, swinging the machine a bit closer. That got a wince out of Aurora, having never had any real chance to apologize after watching Fiona storm out of the bar back at the Bluff. “How have you been? I heard Coldbrook gave the three of you a shitty deal, too.”

“More of an ultimatum,” Ginger corrected. The bot turned toward her. “Hello again, Fiona. I take it you found a new place to run your radio show?”

“Nope, same old place. Coldbrook wound up having to give me the firetower back or risk being buried under a pile of very nasty letters.” Before either of them could ask her to explain it in a way that made sense, Fiona pivoted the bot around to the third mare of the group. “Oh, wow. Since when did Roach grow teats?”

Julip flushed, half-raising her hind leg to threaten a retaliatory kick. “Are either of you going to tell me who the fuck that is?”

Fiona’s laughter trickled out of the bot. “Why I oughta!” It arced around the trio until it finally settled near the crater’s rim in front of them, turning to Aurora. “I like your new friend. You gonna introduce us?”

This was going to tire her out more than the walk to Fillydelphia had. She gestured a wing to the bot. “Julip, this is Fiona. She’s the one that helped me get my Pip-Buck back from Coldbrook.”

Julip eyed the bot. “How is she connecting to Enclave tech?”

Fiona chuckled. “Company secret. Don’t worry about it.”

Behind them, the pond began to hiss with the emergence of more electrolytic fizz as Roach’s magic hauled up another pile of rubble.

“Woah,” Fiona said, pushing the bot past them. “What are you three up to? Is somebody down there?”

“That would be Roach.”

The bot’s little speakers peaked as Fiona whistled. “Can I ask…?”

Aurora glanced at Ginger, who gave her a hesitant look in response.

“This stays off the air.”

Fiona paused. “All of it?”

“All of it. Please. It involves my Stable.”

This time her response was immediate. “Oh! I didn’t realize this was… yeah. Sorry, this’ll be completely off the books. I promise.”

While Aurora didn’t know Fiona well enough to tell whether she planned to keep that promise, there wasn’t much she could do now if she didn’t. Even if ponies only found out that something vaguely interesting was going on in the crater that destroyed Stable-Tec HQ, it would likely lead to a small flock of scavengers poking at the water anyway.

She decided if she was going to say anything, it would at least be the truth.

“Roach found a bulkhead down there. We’re trying to figure out a way past it,” she said. “We think it could be a Stable.”

Fiona uttered a thoughtful hum, still watching the dim glow emanating from the pool. “Heck of a light show. Is this where that thing you’re looking for is supposed to be?”

“Ignition talisman,” she said. “And… maybe. I hope. We really don’t know what’s down there.”

A pause. “But if there is a talisman down there, you could use it to save your people?”

“Yes.”

Another pause. Longer this time.

“Aurora… do you know what Coldbrook is trying to do right now?”

She took a slow breath, exhaled, then nodded. “He’s trying to dig up my Stable.” She left out the part where he threatened to scrap everything inside if she disappeared on him.

“Yep.” Fiona cleared her throat. “That’s pretty much what I’ve heard, too. Wasn’t sure if you knew.”

She took a seat, motioning for Ginger and Julip to do the same. They weren’t going anywhere soon anyway.

“It’s fine for now,” Aurora said. “Turns out the Enclave really, really don’t want the Rangers getting inside. They’re doing what they can to disrupt the dig.”

“That’s… okay, wow. You’ve been busy. Do I want to know how you even got in contact with that pack of crazies?”

Julip lifted a wing from under her jacket and waved. “Howdy howdy.”

For a moment, Fiona was silent. “Oh-kay… you’ve been really busy.”

“If it makes any difference,” Julip droned, slipping her wing back beneath the leather, “I’m not with the Enclave anymore.”

“Huh…” The bot turned back to face the rippling pond. Fiona, for once, seemed to be at a loss for words when it came to the little green mare she’d just been teasing. “So, what’s the game plan with the whole underwater treasure thingy?”

Aurora smirked at the water. “Wait for Roach to tire himself out, for starters. We haven’t worked out how any of us are going to get down there if he does find a way in.”

“Not without puking up our organs,” Julip added.

Ginger made a disgusted noise. “Thank you for that, Julip.”

Julip shrugged without apology.

Fiona swung her sprite toward the pond, then up the ridge of the crater toward the noise of crashing waves in the distance. “Well there’s your problem! You’ve got seawater seeping in!”

“Is she being serious?” Julip whispered.

Aurora rolled her eyes. “She’s a little…”

“Flamboyant,” Ginger finished. “But she means well.”

Julip didn’t look convinced, watching the bot as it puttered back toward them.

“Well, if you can’t pump out the water, you could always try power armor. That’s how the Rangers get through the rad zones, anyway.”

Julip snorted. “You got the bits lying around for three sets of power armor?”

Fiona chuckled. “I’m sure they’d charge half price for you, Tiny.”

The little mare’s chest puffed out with fresh anger but Fiona was already moving on before Julip had time to unleash her tirade. The bot hovered toward Aurora, the lenses behind its grille whirring to bring her into focus. “How many bits you got?”

Aurora tipped her nose back to her saddlebags. “Around a hundred. Probably less.”

“Oof. Okay, yeah, you’re broke. Umm… let me think.” Her voice hummed over the connection, whispering out a little ditty that Aurora didn’t recognize as a song she knew. They waited until, finally, Fiona jumped back on the line. “How about this. I can probably get you one suit. Maybe. But it’s going to piss off Coldbrook. Like, a lot.”

She grimaced, unsure whether she wanted to poke that bear any more than she already had. “Any chance you could go through Ironshod instead?”

“Nah, ol’ Quickshot’s out of town on some kind of business, and this isn’t something I’d want to drop on any of the other Paladins. A lot of them are actually pretty okay ponies. Coldbrook’s the only one I know who can pull rank on the quartermasters out there anyway. I just need to make it worth his while to send the order.”

Aurora pursed her lips, staring down at the opaque pool of water, then hesitantly nodded. “Alright. As long as you’re offering. I don’t want you to burn any more bridges on my behalf.”

“Trust me,” the gryphon murmured. “Coldbrook will be doing himself a favor when he says yes. I’ll head down now and see if I can convince him. In the meantime, don’t go selling this spritebot for scrap. I’ll turn it back on when I’m done. Night-night.”

“Wh…”

The spritebot dropped to the dirt like a stone and started rolling down the shallow slope straight toward the pond. Aurora had to dive to grab it, whipping her feathers out from beneath her coat and wrapping them around the tumbling ball.

With the spritebot secured and the stinking fabric of her coat flopping over the top of her head, she let out an exasperated sigh.

“Night-night.”

“Where’s the sound?”

“Beats me,” Opal shrugged. “Ask the folks who built this place. Now shush.”

Rainbow looked over to where Sledge stood on the other side of the desk but found no help there. His attention was entirely fixated on the silent security footage playing out on the terminal. With a shake of her head, she resigned herself to watch.

The footage had been taken from a camera mounted in a high corner of the Atrium. Rainbow vaguely recognized the layout from when Sledge quietly ushered her from her cell to Aurora’s compartment, but this angle afforded her a more complete view of the space. A cluster of tiny numbers in the bottom left of the shot displayed a simple timestamp.

10/31/1087

15:09

A little after three in the afternoon. Much earlier than the 7:19pm mentioned in Delta’s message. As she continued to watch, she noticed the decorations hanging from the second level railings. Loosely braided ribbons and streamers provided a festive mood for the residents gathered down below. Balloons wafted gently in the recycled air, tied to the supports of a little stage constructed just below the overmare’s office window. A blue banner hung behind the podium with cheerful yellow letters that read: HAPPY REMEMBRANCE DAY!

Rainbow found herself wrinkling her nose at that. It only took a moment for her to notice the significance of the timestamp. October 31st, 1087. Exactly ten years to the day since the bombs fell. The last day of her old life, and the first of the next. The celebratory atmosphere felt wrong, somehow. Like asking the bereaved to blow out the candles on a birthday cake during the funeral.

Metal chairs were lined up in neat rows in front of the stage, occupying most of the open space the Atrium afforded. Every seat was filled and more pegasi stood wherever they could, some leaning over the railing above while fillies and colts fidgeted impatiently while the mare at the podium spoke.

It was Spitfire. A fresh bolt of anger rushed through her as she watched Spitfire, ten years older and quite a bit grayer, read from a stack of notes behind the microphone. While Rainbow couldn’t hear the words she could tell by Spitfire’s posture that she was just going through the motions. She hardly moved from the spot, stopping only to adjust a narrow pair of glasses set over the bridge of her muzzle. Occasionally she would outstretch a wing, gesturing for some sort of emphasis, before putting it back and continuing on. She must have been nearing the end of her speech because after a few short minutes, she set her glasses on the podium while the gathered pegasi stood to hammer their hooves against the floor in approval.

Rainbow scowled.

The video shuddered, and suddenly there were pegasi in the midst of loading empty chairs onto carts while residents milled around in the periphery. Many had plates of food held in their wings, standing near whatever flat surfaces they could where they could set down their drinks. She checked the timestamp and saw that it had skipped ahead an hour. She was certain Opal hadn’t touched the keyboard, and judging by the older mare’s blinking she was just as bewildered. The footage had cut forward on its own.

“Looks like Delta mighta spliced this together for us,” Opal murmured.

Sledge hummed in agreement.

Rainbow squinted at the screen, scanning the residents for Spitfire. Sure enough, the then-overmare stepped out from the bottom of the screen with a drink in her wing and a familiar black and blue-maned stallion on her shoulder. He was older now, just like his counterpart, but he was unmistakably Thunderlane. Tears pricked at her eyes, caught off guard by the wave of emotions that came from the sight of someone she’d been confident she’d lost. Even though Thunderlane had grown unusually distant toward the end, she still counted him as one of her closest friends from her Wonderbolt days. In spite of the company he kept, it was still good to see he’d made it in.

As the two of them strolled along the Atrium, Rainbow started to worry that Delta had pointed them to the wrong video. Or possibly the timestamp had been wrong. Then she reminded herself that the footage had begun to play at a predetermined time, and she tried to trust that whatever Delta was trying to show them, it was important.

It didn’t take long for Spitfire to prove her right. As if on cue, she began to slow, her eyes briefly turning upward as if listening to some unseen voice. Judging by the brief pause in the many conversations around her, it must have been something over the PA system. Spitfire said something to Thunderlane, downed the rest of her drink in Spitfire fashion, and left him holding the glass.

The angle abruptly switched to a camera at the top of the stairs leading to the walkway. Spitfire climbed into view, nodded curtly to a pair of residents that moved out of her way, and made a bee-line along the catwalk to her office door.

The angle switched again to a lens just above her office door, catching a glimpse of the pensive expression tightening her jaw. Another jarring shift and they were watching her step through the door from the far corner of her office. Automatic lights clicked on for her as she stumped over to her desk. It was a stark difference from her office in the Pillar. No photos of the Academy, hardly any photos at all save for one on her desk that faced away from the camera. A few potted plants occupied the corners of the room, but beyond that Spitfire’s office looked barren. Evidence that she hadn’t been able to take much with her before the bombs fell.

Curiously, a single rifle did hang on a fine wooden mount behind her desk. A bolt-action with a nicely polished wooden stock. One of the ceremonial rifles given to each officer of the Wonderbolts after they transitioned to wartime service. Somehow, Spitfire had managed to bring it with her. Or more likely, she’d had it stored at the Stable ahead of time like so many other residents after their approval. Ponies liked to joke that the Stables were going to wind up being Equestria’s most luxurious storage garage.

Rainbow found herself wishing she’d been a little firmer about wanting to start that process, but it had already taken so much badgering to get Applejack to sign onto the application that she was afraid of pushing any harder. Curse of hindsight, she supposed.

Spitfire dropped into her chair and sat there, motionless, for several long seconds while the phone on her desk blinked its light signaling a call waiting. She looked as if someone had taken half the air out of her. Finally, she reached out with a wing and pulled the receiver out of its cradle. Resting her head against the flat of her hoof, she started talking.

For some time, nothing happened. The camera was too far away to clearly read the display that indicated who the caller was, and Spitfire wasn’t exactly scribbling captions onto cue cards for them to follow. She nodded, occasionally gesturing in the air with a feather as she spoke. Nodding again. Picking up a pencil from a cup beside the phone and slowly walking it between her feathers as she listened.

She started tapping the smooth surface of the desk with the eraser, as if emphasizing something she was saying. A long pause where she said nothing, then staring up at the ceiling mouthing a truly silent profanity. Flipping the pencil, she started pecking away with the point. Her posture shifted, coming to attention as she began to gesture more vibrantly with her free wing, as if the pony on the other end was here in the room with her.

She shook her head. No. A pause, and another exasperated look skyward. No, again. She started speaking more rapidly but abruptly stopped, pursing her lips as the caller cut her off. She waited, the pencil held still in her grasp until a deep, disturbed look bloomed on her face. She spoke haltingly, trying to say something and clearly having trouble articulating her point. Distress turned to fear as she sat up straight, the pencil falling from her grip as she shook her head again and again.

And then she stopped. She pulled the receiver away from her ear and stared at it. The light of the open line had gone dark.

Second passed.

She set the phone back into its cradle. Feathers press against her mouth as she stares wide-eyed toward the medallion window and the Remembrance Day celebration taking place beyond it.

The footage jumped.

Thirty minutes. Spitfire’s office, from the same vantage. She was still seated at her desk, forehead rested against one hoof, her shoulders shaking. Rainbow could see her mouth hung slack in a wordless sob, tears pattering against the surface of the desk as she cried for no one but herself. She’d never seen Spitfire look so utterly defeated. So bleakly alone. Rainbow shifted uncomfortably on her hooves, wishing the footage would skip forward to something else. Seeing Spitfire without all the bravado and conniving confidence she’d cultivated around herself, watching her suffer some unspeakable pain in the privacy of an office that was barely hers…

It made Spitfire harder to hate.

Mercifully, the image finally stuttered. When it resolved again, Rainbow frowned. The timestamp read the same. The angle was unchanged. Spitfire still sat defeated behind her desk.

And then the office was plunged into darkness.

Emergency lights kicked on instantly, bathing Spitfire and her meager office in a dim half-light tinted the color of urine. Spitfire’s ears perked up, either at the sound of the circuits tripping or the PA system mounted in the ceiling. She lifted her face away from her hoof with stunned silence, her blear eyes blinking up at the newly anemic light. She swallowed, half-turning in her chair as if to convince herself it was actually happening. Understanding dawned in her eyes and, slowly, her face crumpled with fresh tears.

The footage skipped forward several hours. They were back in the Atrium, except this time the celebration was cancelled. A few ponies milled uneasily among the smeared remains of dropped meals and spilled drinks, unsure where to go. The lights were back on, for the most part. Near the bottom of the screen, in the same corner where Spitfire and Thunderlane had emerged earlier, a single pegasus stormed into view. As she did, Aurora looked at the timestamp.

19:19.

“There’s Delta,” Opal murmured. “On the warpath.”

As the angle switched to the stairs, it was clear she was favoring her right hind leg. She grit her teeth as she pulled herself up the last treads, grease and what looked to be metal shavings smeared across an old white shirt that hung loose on her frame. Her two-toned blue mane was plastered over her face, dark with sweat, and her crimson eyes looked lit by some inner fire.

The angle switched to the office door. Delta flicked her badge through the reader and spat a silent curse when nothing happened. She planted her hooves, stared directly into the camera and shouted Spitfire’s name at it. Banging her hoof against the steel surface she shouted again, this time flavored with some unmistakable profanity, but the door stayed shut. Delta stopped waiting. Jamming the edge of her card under the plate that held the reader down, she bent it up enough to get a few feathers underneath and then pulled on it, hard. The plate bent, allowing her better purchase until the screws that held it down stripped out of their mounts. Furious, she yanked out a braid of wires, bent two free of the bundle and used her teeth to strip the ends. A quick touch together and the door sprang open.

Rainbow was ready when the camera switched. Spitfire still sat at her desk, but now one of the drawers hung open and a mostly empty bottle of something expensive sat in the middle of her desk. Spitfire’s face was matted and damp but she had run out of tears well before Delta barged in. The blue mare stood inside the doorway, trying to piece together what she was looking at, and a fresh rage bloomed in her eyes.

Spitfire was unsettlingly still as Delta began shouting her down, a wing pointing at her in accusation before winding around toward the darkened Atrium outside her window. Spitfire glanced at the window, then at Delta, and reached for the bottle.

Delta slapped it off the desk with the flat of her wing, a gust of wind throwing Spitfire’s tangled mane away from her face. The bottle exploded against the wall, showering a nearby fern with expensive liquor and bits of glass.

Whatever Delta was saying, it rolled off Spitfire like oil on water. The beleaguered overmare was clearly well ahead of her when it came to punishing herself, and she simply stared up at Delta with a tired look on her face that seemed to ask whether she was finished. Slowly, reluctantly, Delta started running out of steam. She paced back and forth in front of the desk, asking questions Spitfire had no answer for.

She said something to Delta, slowly at first, then with the growing certainty that Rainbow recognized. Her knee bounced under the desk as she mumbled something, nodded, and repeated it for Delta to hear. The gears were spinning again. A collapse had been averted and it was dawning on her that she needed to do damage control. Even with half a bottle of liquor sloshing through her veins, Spitfire was finding her stride. She said something to Delta that drew a startled look of confusion from the mare. Delta responded with a clear and firm no.

Spitfire shook her head and repeated herself, this time leveling a hoof toward her. Delta laughed, paused, and looked at her like she was crazy. She repeated her answer.

That prompted Spitfire to get to her hooves and step around the desk. Rainbow tensed as she watched her former mentor push Delta back against the wall and hold her there, mouth working double-time now that she’d fixated on her new goal. Delta bent her face away from the onslaught, then followed the tip of Spitfire’s wing as she pointed directly at the security camera.

For a brief moment, both mares stared up at Rainbow, Opal, and Sledge as if just noticing they were watching. When Spitfire turned back to resume berating her Head of IT, it felt as if a set of crosshairs had shifted away as well.

Several more times the two mares looked up at the camera, answering the question of what Spitfire was asking. This was the moment when she ordered Delta to erase the archives. To remove all evidence of what had just happened, including the first ten years that led up to it. Rainbow watched Delta pull herself free and move toward the door, answering Spitfire with a tiny nod and an even smaller okay.

She backed out of the office and the screen went dark.

Opal’s chair creaked as she leaned away from the terminal. Rainbow exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Sledge said nothing.

“Ain’t that a pickle.”

Rainbow looked to the old mare and nodded.

Finding Coldbrook during his off hours wasn’t ever easy, but neither was it impossible. It was around dinnertime for most of the Bluff, officers of the Steel Rangers included, and one thing Fiona knew about the stallion was that while he often ate his breakfast with the enlisted ponies at the commissary down in Stable 6, his dinners were usually enjoyed elsewhere.

Elsewhere, in this case, being the Bluff’s most popular and conveniently gryphon-sized bar and grill. She’d been surprised when Dally and Dice, her two best snoops who shared a second floor balcony overlooking the cobbles and rusty rails leading to and from the Stable, pointed her in the direction of Someplace Else. Coldbrook usually frequented the cozier, classy by comparison eateries upslope, favoring his privacy over visibility while he ate. But as usual, Dally and Dice only traded reliable information for their caps and tonight was no exception.

Pushing open the double doors, she nodded at the old stallion behind the bar and smiled when Lime tossed his rag over his shoulder and tipped his nose questioningly back toward a row of bottles behind him. She shook her head no and he promptly turned his attention back to the swarm of thirsty ponies crowding around his bar.

The last time Fiona had been here, Coldbrook had practically thrown her out. Since then she had admittedly felt a little uneasy about coming back, not that Lime wouldn’t have welcomed her if she had. As he had told her many times before in his old-fart-mumble-grumble, her business brought him business and he wasn’t so proud as to turn down good caps. That, and she was one of the few patrons he had who genuinely enjoyed the sketches he decorated his better bottles with. Sure they were all the same rotgut but Lime’s personal touch somehow made it taste a little better. And hey, for a pony who drew with his mouth, he was a pretty talented artist.

She scanned the cherry-cheeked faces that waited on Lime for their next glass, padding across the dusty floorboards as she did, before looking amongst the ponies pulled into tight clusters around the wide variety of scavenged tables and booths. Once again, Dally and Dice proved their worth. She spotted Elder Coldbrook seated in a booth beside an open window, absent of glass, and its wooden shutters latched open to allow some much needed fresh air to flow through the establishment.

His faded green eyes were already watching her, having spotted her well before she did him. He sat alone on his side of the booth, though the bench across from him was occupied by two ponies she didn’t recognize. As she sidled toward them, her hips sashaying a little as she navigated the cramped spaces between each table, she smiled at the sight of Coldbrook sitting up just a little straighter in his seat. Clearly he hadn’t expected to bump into her here.

“Fiona.” He lifted a glass of amber liquid in a haze of silver magic by way of polite greeting, but the set of his jaw sent a different message. “I would have thought you’d be preparing for your broadcast.”

She smiled, plucked his glass from the air and tipped a puddle into her beak. Part of her curled up in revulsion at the too-sweet taste of Lime’s self-proclaimed “imported Vhannan rum,” while the rest tried not to laugh at the thought of the old codger being naïve enough to pay the inflated price of cheap liquor that Lime had taken the liberty of dissolving a scoop of sugar into. The earth pony usually reserved the harmless scam for ponies he didn’t recognize, and something told Fiona that this was Lime’s way of getting back at the Elder for commandeering the bar several days earlier.

Fiona slid the glass across the table where Coldbrook caught it, waiting with dwindling patience for her response.

“I just wrapped up my prep work, actually. Thought I’d swing down and touch base with a few contacts before I go on air.” Letting her smile touch the corner of her eyes, she looked down at the two ponies seated across from him. “Speaking of, who’re your friends?”

Coldbrook took a slow breath, then nodded to his guests. “This is Knight Feldspar and his wife, Olive. Today is the anniversary of the Knight’s tenth year...”

He trailed off, pressing his lips into a firm line as Fiona planted her hind end into the open seat beside him. The mare and stallion seated across from him kept their expressions carefully neutral.

“Ten years with the Rangers, huh?” She whistled at Knight Feldspar. “I’m surprised I haven’t seen you around before.”

His wife cleared her throat. “Ten years married,” she clarified, emphasizing the last word for Fiona’s benefit. “We’re monogamous.”

“Monogah… muh-ah-guh…” As the couple looked to Coldbrook with concern, Fiona waved them off with a chuckle. “I’m kidding. Happy anniversary, you two. Ten years is a big one.”

The pair murmured their thanks, clearly uncomfortable.

Coldbrook cleared his throat. “Is there anything I can do for you, Fiona?”

Reaching over, she picked a nib of sliced carrot off his plate and popped it into her mouth. “As a matter of fact, there is. I was hoping to confirm a rumor I’ve heard today.”

He watched her chew, expressionless. “I’m sure it can wait.”

She smiled. “If you say so.”

After a long pause, he apologized to his dinner guests and regarded Fiona with open impatience. “Out with it.”

“Well,” she said, glancing out the open window at the ponies walking the cobbles outside, “my birdies tell me you’ve got Rangers working at a new dig site a day or two west of here. Some say that you’re trying to excavate a Stable.”

Coldbrook sipped from his glass. “And?”

“And,” she continued, “the Stable your people are trying to dig up might be the one that Aurora Pinfeathers originally came from.”

The glass tapped against the surface of the table. Coldbrook licked the corner of his lip and addressed his guests. “Excuse us, please.”

Fiona didn’t need to be asked to get up. She slid out of the booth, making way for the smaller creature beside her, and allowed him to lead her across the bar and out the front doors. Coldbrook was the type who only listened to someone like her after he felt compelled to take control of the conversation. They both knew she wasn’t telling him anything half the Bluff didn’t already know, and now she had his gears spinning as he worried about what it was she was leading up to.

A crowded bar was too risky, and a busy street just as much so. If she was going to drop a bomb, he wasn’t going to hazard every pony within earshot getting wind of whatever it wound up being. He led her down the narrow alley between Someplace Else and the neighboring brothel. With only the upper floor of the latter building boasting any windows to look down on them, there was still enough residual noise in the alley to keep their conversation private.

When they were halfway down, Coldbrook stopped and turned to face her. “Stop jerking me around. If you came down here to ask me for something, ask for it.”

Straight to the point. Okay then. “Power armor,” she said.

He blinked. “You’re a little big for that.”

“Not for me,” she said. “For Aurora. She made it to Fillydelphia and she needs a suit.”

He stared at her.

She shrugged. “You wanted to know. Now you know.”

After a moment, he shook his head with incredulity. “Need I remind you that the last time I spoke with that mare, she assaulted me without provocation? Now she’s asking for favors?”

“She threw a table and called you a motherfucker,” she corrected, earning herself a narrow stare from the stallion. “Considering the reception Ironshod gave her and the leash you tried to put on her after she came back, I’d say you got off easy.”

Coldbrook sucked on his teeth, shaking his head. “Setting that aside, she knew what would happen if she violated the terms of our agreement.”

“Easy to call yourself the winner when you knew you were playing with loaded dice, Elder.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But I’m taking the broader picture into consideration. Aurora lied her way into this city, paid nothing for the medical services we rendered and lied again when she agreed to provide us with key schematics to the technology that the Enclave harvested from the Bluff’s Stable. And when she left, she did so under a specific set of terms that she violated not three days later.”

He cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “Miss Pinfeathers and her companions have done nothing to repay the Rangers’ hospitality since the day they arrived. If you are in contact with her, you may tell her that her request for power armor is summarily denied and that going forward she should refrain from burning her bridges before resorting to beggary.”

For some reason, Coldbrook thought the discussion was over. Fiona cocked an eyebrow as he stepped toward her with the intention of getting past, and she couldn’t help but smile at his expression when she spread her wing to stop him.

He narrowed his eyes at her. “You are on the thinnest of ice, gryphon. Move.”

“But you haven’t answered my question,” she said. “About the rumors. I can’t go on the air with just speculation.”

Wrapping her wing in a silver aura, he shoved it aside and stepped past. “I imagine that hasn’t stopped you before.”

She turned to call after him. “So I have your permission to talk about the Enclave soldiers that have been harassing your Rangers at Foal Mountain?”

Coldbrook stopped as if he’d run into an invisible brick wall and did an about face. “Who told you that?”

Gotcha.

She shrugged. “My sources prefer to remain anonymous.”

“They forfeit that right when they started spreading lies. Give me names.”

Despite how much smaller he was than her, he looked so serious that she couldn't help but think of the little fledglings back home who would huff and stomp their tiny feet when they didn’t get what they wanted. Coldbrook’s muzzle even had the same wrinkles that some gryphlets would form above the crests of their beaks.

She reached out with a single, taloned finger and pressed it into Coldbrook’s nose three separate times. “You. Are. Adorable.”

He backed away, anger blooming into something dangerous. His horn glowed. An open threat.

“Oh, calm down. I couldn’t give you names even if I wanted to. Ponies wouldn’t talk to my spritebots if they knew I was going to blab about them on air.” She smiled, hoping the lie was vague enough to be convincing, and gestured at the busy street at the end of the alley. “Or to you, for that matter. Either way, the rumor mill’s been working overtime. Ponies seem to be of the opinion that the Enclave wouldn’t be leading an incursion into the center of your territory if you hadn’t started poking at that Stable. Some are even saying the Enclave is trying to protect it from you.”

Coldbrook’s expression darkened. “Those are dangerous ideas, Fiona. I recommend you think twice about voicing them again.”

She snorted. “I’m not looking to give you a reason to take my radio show away a second time. I’m just telling you what I’ve heard. And… I miiight be willing to help you set the record straight if you happen to have a better understanding of what’s happening at Stable 10.”

The Elder stood silent for several long seconds, his eyes narrowed with consideration as he chewed on her offer. For a moment Fiona was worried she might have injured his pride enough for him to reconsider the agreement that had allowed her back into her firetower. When the stallion spoke, it became clear his thoughts were bent in a different direction.

Damage control.

“Suppose you used your broadcast to set the record straight,” he murmured. “I’m guessing you want something in return. An increase to your allowance?”

Tempting. More caps would make keeping the firetower a lot less difficult. She had a feeling that she had Coldbrook in a corner she wasn’t apt to push him into a second time. Not without reprisal, that is. Depending on how pliable he was right now, she might have a chance at bartering her way back to something amounting to the life she’d been living up until she got involved with Aurora.

She considered it. Then she let it go. That wasn’t what she was here for.

“I’ll get by on the allowance. Besides, I’m banking on my cooperation being worth some reciprocation.”

The tension on his face began to relax. “Make an offer, then.”

“Power armor,” she said. Coldbrook’s expression chilled. She stifled a grin. Mostly.

“I want you to give Aurora Pinfeathers a suit of power armor.”

Seeing Spitfire behind that desk, walking among ponies whose names she still remembered resurrected an old bitterness within Rainbow’s heart. For a moment all the concerns of this dying Stable and the dead world beyond fell by the wayside, and things felt simpler. More manageable. It was easier to be angry.

It was exactly what Opal and Sledge didn’t need from her right now.

She turned from the monitor and wandered to the front of the small office, trying to find something in Opal’s… eclectic décor that might soothe her frayed nerves. Her eyes settled on a little wooden shelf tucked in the corner, decorated with what looked like porcelain figures of ponies performing almost laughably outdated chores.

“Feelin’ alright over there?”

It was as much a question born of genuine concern as it was an old mare’s way of needling her out of her funk. Rainbow picked up one of the figurines in her remaining wing, an cheerful little earth pony frozen in mid stride with a sloshing pail of water hanging from her jaw, and shrugged. “I’m fine. Blue’s not knocking at the door.”

Opal’s chair creaked. “Ain’t talkin’ about Blue. I’m talkin’ about you. And be careful with my Pommels, they’re heirlooms.”

She set the figurine down. The painted porcelain rasped against her feathers when she let go. “Let’s just say it was a long time coming for someone to put Spitfire in her place, and leave it at that.”

Opal let out a dubious hum. “Ain’t so sure I like seeing anyone gettin’ kicked when they’re down. Poor thing looked troubled.”

“Too bad for her.”

She could feel their eyes on her, probably trying to decipher her mood and decide where it was safe to poke and too dangerous to prod. She was, after all, an Element of Harmony. Best not to anger the pony with the fancy jewelry.

It was difficult not to roll her eyes at the thought, but she managed.

“Bad blood, I take it.”

She glanced at Opal, then pulled up one of her guest chairs and sat down with a nod. “Something like that. Spitfire and I used to be good friends. We both crossed lines, but…”

The two of them waited, giving her room to speak the words Rainbow knew they didn’t have time to hear. Two centuries might have passed but all that time felt like a bad series of lucid dreams for her. One minute she was cowering in a utility room with a stallion who was actually a changeling, the next she was trying to remember who she was, reminded why they weren’t being allowed inside, told stories, sung songs, wanting nothing more than to be inside with her parents and then waking up generations after they were irrevocably gone. Gilda’s death still weighed on her and yet neither Sledge nor Opal would likely know her name. They might not understand why she’d been willing to rope a friend into something so dangerous. Why giving the zebras technology might have relieved the pressure that kept the war moving.

She swallowed, deciding against it.

“Spitfire took things too far. That’s all she ever did. Take.”

She didn’t feel particularly compelled to elaborate. The silence stretched until the seconds began to strain, then Sledge ended their collective suffering by clearing his throat.

“Maybe I’m missing something, but I’m not sure what we were supposed to gain by watching that footage.”

Opal thoughtfully wrinkled her muzzle at the frozen image on her terminal, her feathers idly scooping up a pen and tapping it tip to clicker against the desk. “By the looks of it, Delta was chewin’ the overmare’s hide over the lights conkin’ out. Seemed pretty clear t’me that she knew something was about to happen, what with the waterworks.”

Rainbow shifted in her seat. “I’ve never seen Spitfire fold like that before. If she knew the power was about to fail, she could have warned someone.”

“Unless it was out of her hooves,” Sledge pointed out, nodding up to the half-powered lights above. “Like it is for us.”

Opal gave the pen a quick double-tap of agreement. “The emergency lights did trip on the video. Might be this ain’t the first time we’ve had generator troubles down here. I imagine it would only make sense if Mechanical called up to her office ahead of time. Let her know trouble’s brewin’.”

“Then why have us watch the footage in the first place?”

They glanced at Rainbow.

“I mean…” she made a face, trying to hold onto the threads of logic before they blew away, “...why go through all that trouble? If all that happened was the generator went down, why would Delta encrypt ten years worth of data and be so cryptic about pointing us to this one video that she had to have compiled herself? It’s like bulldozing a house so nobody finds out you spilled soup on the carpet.”

She could practically see the analogy sail over both their heads. She leaned forward, gesturing at the terminal with both hooves. “Delta Vee wanted someone to find that video, and she went through a lot to make sure it wasn’t Spitfire.”

Sledge pursed his lips and frowned at the terminal. “Okay, so let’s review. Spitfire gets a call from Mechanical, has a breakdown, the generator fails, she has a fight with Delta and the lights turn back on. What am I missing?”

For nearly a minute the office was silent save for the idle hum of the terminal’s fans and the murmur of conversation just outside the door. Finally, Opal spoke.

“The way the cables under my servers were cut, I’d say yer onto somethin’.” She rubbed a sprig of feathers against her mouth, then opened them in question. “From what I’ve seen of Delta, she’s the paranoid type. I doubt she’d let any low level tech start cuttin’ away those lines, so my guess is she did it herself.”

Sledge’s eyes narrowed. “Aurora sounded convinced those cables used to connect us to Stable-Tec’s network. What good would it do to cut us off if the problem was with the generator?”

“Maybe,” Opal pondered aloud, “they were dealing with the same problems we are now. We already got remnants of Equestria’s old army trying to find a way in here. Ten years after the bombs fell ain’t much time at all. Plenty of ponies alive who remembered where they’d seen Stables being built, and it only took Aurora a week to find a way into the network from the outside.”

She tapped the terminal, the crows feet around her eyes deepening as she considered the image. “What if that call didn’t come from Mechanical? What if someone clever on the outside figgered a way onto the network and started making threats hoping to be let inside?”

Compelling as it sounded, Rainbow wasn’t convinced. “Hard to do with a landslide blocking the tunnel.”

Opal made a face. “Well, I suppose so…”

“What about the message she sent?” Sledge pointed a feather at the terminal to indicate the cryptic message Delta sent to her husband after encrypting all of Stable 10’s archives up until that point. “‘Pedigree’ or something like that? Where does that fit in all of this?”

“Perigee,” Opal corrected, her own feathers already working to bring up the message in question. “Wasn’t that her kid’s name? The space cadet?”

“Apogee,” Rainbow supplied, leaning back in the little chair. All this thinking was starting to run her ragged. “They named her Apogee.”

“Funny name,” Sledge murmured.

“They were a funny family,” she agreed. “No strangers to the tabloids, either. I’m guessing you two don’t know what those are, do you?”

They stared at her with blank expressions.

She winced and shook her head. “There was a lot of history in that family that wasn’t strictly… legal. It’s not important. Jet and Delta named her after orbits or something sciencey. They may have gotten along like gryphons and charity work, but those two loved that filly in their own ways. No way on Equus Delta would’ve gotten her name wrong.”

“Could be a nickname,” Sledge offered.

Opal snorted. “Bless your heart.”

He frowned, catching the gentle admonishment.

“Don’t matter if they were eccentric or not,” Opal chuckled, tapping the keys to her terminal with a fresh edge of focus. “Ain’t no parent what loves their only kin uses something as clunky as Perigee as a nickname. May as well start calling you Maul for all the sense it makes.”

Sledge shrugged. “I like Maul.”

He smirked across the desk at Rainbow while Opal made an exasperated noise, ignoring the both of them as she puttered with her terminal. “Suffice to say, children, there’s no record of any pony bein’ named Perigee. Rainbow’s ‘sciency’ theory looks t’be the better chit to play. Got a few hits out’ve the Archive. Historical media, mostly.”

A pause.

“Jet Stream sure liked to talk to the press.”

Rainbow sat up a little straighter. “He mentioned Perigee to the media?”

Opal nodded. “Few times. It’s a thing, not a who. He wasn’t a popular stallion with the princesses, I take it.”

She stood and leaned over the desk so she could see the screen. Opal was tapping down the lines of a slightly blurry, scanned photo of a page taken from the Manehattan Gazette. It comforted her to see something familiar again even if it was just a picture on a screen. Real newspaper, not just shimmering green letters on a black screen. She wondered how many public libraries Scootaloo’s people had to raid to make microfilm backups like this.

The article Opal skimmed wasn’t one of the personal interest stories Jet preferred to be featured in. It was one of the many rebukes published by the Ministry of Image on the princesses’ behalf. The headline read, Rebel Rocketeer Plunges Hazardous Waste into Celestial Sea. An impressive photo of a spent rocket stage splashing into the waves dominated the bulk of the page, followed by the usual smear campaign beneath. The author, writing under a pen name, lamented her concern for the safety of Equestria’s ocean ecology should Jet Stream Aerospace be allowed to continue testing. There wasn’t much to chew on, there. The article quickly deviated to the usual touchstones, namely the implications of a pony challenging the time-honored truth of the princesses being the sole movers of the sun and moon. Common references were pointed to in ancient tomes, scrolls and folk tales that had been accepted for thousands of years.

And as usual, the flimsy comparison of JSA’s official figures from a few lackluster test flights. Just enough to flavor the article with something readers who still believed the princesses’ supremacy could laugh at. Theories such as the sun being comparatively stationary in a system or orbiting planets. Statistics of the proposed distance of the moon, it’s mass and a suggestion that ponies would weigh less should they stand on its surface. The latter point was used as a nudge-and-wink compliment to Princess Luna, but not before mentioning JSA’s proposed orbit for the rocky body. A grainy diagram from one of Jet’s own publications detailed the current theory, with two marked points in particular standing out in the sketch.

At the lowest point in the moon’s orbit, a six-digit figure and the word perigee standing above it. At its highest, barely a fifty thousand mile difference, sat apogee.

“No secret codes here that I can see. Not unless Delta fancied usin’ a six-bit encryption key.” Opal picked up her pen, gave it a tap, then paused. “You two searched the archive for this as a keyword before coming up here, yes?”

Rainbow blinked. Sledge opened his mouth, stopped, and closed it.

Opal closed her eyes, took a breath, and said, “If I run this search and find somethin’, I’m hucking this pen at one of you.”

Eyeing the narrow burgundy pen still held between Opal’s feathers, Rainbow took a cautious step back and seated herself. With her free wing, the elderly mare punched in seven letters and tapped Enter.

The terminal chattered happily away with its new task for several seconds until it stuttered and slowed. When it settled, Opal tapped the nib of the pen against her desk before flicking it through the air where it bounced firmly off Rainbow’s forehead.

“Ow!”

“Yer dang right, ow! All that time flapjawin’ and we could’ve been looking at this.”

She spun her terminal around for Rainbow to see. A single entry out of the entirety of Delta’s encrypted partition stood out at the top of the screen.

Sledge leaned over Opal’s shoulder. “Is that it?”

In less time it would have taken to brew a pot of coffee, the code wranglers on the other side of the office wall sent back their answer. At first Rainbow wasn’t sure what they were all looking at. A single, unbroken block of alphanumeric junk glowed back at them.

“It looks like Delta fell asleep on the keyboard,” she said.

A second pen whizzed past her ear, causing her to flinch.

“This ain’t gibberish,” Opal breathed, feathers darting across the terminal. “This is an encryption key.”

Rainbow and Sledge watched as a prompt appeared which she hastily copied the block of text into. Her terminal let out a quick series of electric clicks followed by a second prompt. A smile crossed the old mare’s lips as she closed out of it and opened Partition 41.

As the endless list of files loaded in their neat little mind-numbing rows, Rainbow noticed something new. With the appearance of each file, an accompanying word had replaced the one which had dogged them for days.

Unrestricted.

Ginger wrinkled her nose at the strange graffiti adoring the stone façade of the tilting tower’s fifth floor. She’d heard from the traders that passed through Junction City that the cities along the coast could tilt toward the strange side, but as the four of them ventured back into the forest of leaning skyscrapers and barking traders she found herself stumped by the inscrutable tag.

None of the ponies who lived here seemed to notice the hastily smeared black letters, nor had any effort been made to remove them or the crudely painted depiction of the alicorn peeking from behind a line drawn across the brickwork. Maybe it was someone’s idea of a joke. A punchline that someone had gone to literal heights to leave behind.

Fiona’s spritebot hovered beside her, not by its own propulsion but with the help of the bronze aura provided by Ginger’s horn. Whether or not the eccentric gryphon would be able to deliver was still up in the air. The little bot had gone dead without much more than the vague promise of power armor on a timeline that only Fiona knew. As the sun dragged a hazy glow toward the west horizon, the four of them turned back toward the city in search of a safe place to spend the night.

Ginger gave the spying eyes of Twilight Sparkle a quick shake of her head before turning her attention to the many venues that lined the street.

Most of the vendors had started the familiar ritual of packing away their unsold wares and counting the day’s caps. Sunset was at least another hour away but already the looming buildings were draping long black shadows into the gridwork of streets and avenues. Lamplight flickered from behind ramshackle curtains hung in the windows above them. Voices murmured from within covered wagons, their new proprietors winding down while the night life crept into the dark. Ginger caught the eye of a single guard standing sentry outside his employer’s wagon, a heavy shotgun floating idly beside him in a haze of pink magic. Sensing no threat from her, the stallion nodded. She returned the gesture and they continued on.

They passed unnoticed by a mare fighting with the pull cord on a rusty generator she’d dragged out to the sidewalk. Each spastic flutter of the motor drew a steady stream of profanity from her until, just as she was about to drift out of earshot, the generator coughed to life. Ginger looked back to see the mare connect it to an electric sign hung above her door. A string of red lights blinked on, framing three rough sketches of ponies engaging in a variety of blushworthy acts. She nudged Aurora, tipping her head back for her to see and delighted at the sight of her companion’s eyes growing large. Brothels weren’t the sort of place Ginger saw herself visiting, but they were most certainly a good place for expert inspiration.

Drifting until her hip bumped Aurora’s, she gave her a little smile while sparing her the embarrassment of a crass comment. Aurora bumped her back.

After a good bit of idle wandering and chatting with the locals, it was obvious to all of them that Fillydelphia wasn’t the sort of place where living came cheap. An accounting of their possessions didn’t help the situation. A small collection of disparate ammunition, Autumn’s holotapes, a few slices of roasted molerat and short stack of seventy-two caps were the only items of value the last week had left them. Excluding their weapons, none of which were for sale. One night, even in the seedier inns, would cost them more than they had. Like it or not, they’d be sleeping under the stars yet again.

Figuratively. Ginger shot the bank of slow marching clouds a sour look. Not that they ever noticed.

Roach passed out the last of the molerat while they started looking for alternatives. A light conversation about city living had sprung up between him and Julip when the spritebot sprang to life, scaring an undignified yelp out of Ginger in the process.

The bot puttered in the air ahead of them, spinning along its poles until its array of cameras spotted them. “Good news! Colonel Crank said yes!”

Fiona waited as if expecting them to jump for joy, but the four of them simply stared back, befuddled.

An exasperated but no less excited gryphon pressed on. “Coldbrook gave a green light on the power armor.”

Aurora’s ears perked at that, and Ginger watched with shared enthusiasm as the mare searched the skyline for the distinctive glass towers the Steel Rangers were said to have fortified. Were the buildings surrounding them any taller, she might not have seen the tilted glazed rooftops peeking up from behind them several blocks to the south.

Ginger chuckled at the eager rustling of Aurora’s feathers beneath her unfortunately necessary disguise. The pegasus was quick to take the lead. Fiona’s spritebot bobbled around them as they turned down a cracked intersection, drawing the confused looks of several ponies passing by.

“How’d you convince him?” Roach asked.

The gryphon’s voice buzzed out of the tinny speaker with a touch of pride. “I didn’t. He decided all on his own.”

A touch of worry wrinkled Ginger’s brow. “You blackmailed him.”

“Let’s just say that I’m a reporter who chose not to report something, and Coldbrook rewarded my discretion with a favor.”

Roach snorted. “You could’ve been a lawyer.”

The bot paused.

“What’s a lawyer?”

Magnus Plaza was, in a word, imposing.

Unlike the scavenged junk that made up the ramparts around Blinder’s Bluff, the wall encompassing what used to be a business park had been constructed from uniform sheets of inch-thick steel held together by parallel welds. Canvas and wire bags filled with pulverized concrete insulated the wall from anything that might puncture the outer steel. Ponies patrolled both sides in pairs, eyes always moving, their heavily modified weapons worn prominently over armor that looked every bit as impregnable as the wall they guarded.

Ginger admittedly didn’t know much about construction as the mare beside her, but judging by Aurora’s reaction to seeing the wall the Rangers here were doing something right.

The price of admission was Fiona’s spritebot. Ginger surrendered the device at the gates, certain the stallion carrying it off would turn it around for caps the first chance he got. By comparison, the two chocolate colored mares assigned to escort them inside looked positively bored.

With night arriving in full force, Magnus Plaza practically glowed. A generator whined somewhere unseen, providing power to the lamps that illuminated what felt like a city within a city. They were led by their escort down what must amount to the main street. Rangers looked their way with a variety of expressions, few of them inviting. As they passed what appeared to be a pop-up mess station, a stallion bearing a tray of food paused to look at them, frown, then turn to find an empty bench on which to sit.

Past the barracks, at the foot of one of the glass towers, they found themselves pointed toward a wide row of a half dozen shippings containers knit tightly together side by side. A container near the middle had its doors propped open, the space inside converted into what could best be described as a booth. Where the bottom half of the opening was filled by a steel desk and no small amount of bulletproof reinforcement, the upper half consisted of a mesh of chain link fencing and a narrow slot through which caps and weapons could be exchanged.

Ginger sighed relief at the sight of the quartermaster’s station. As smoothly as this day had gone, she half expected something awful to happen.

If the mares escorting them looked bored, the pony seated behind the mesh looked practically comatose by comparison. Stocky and about as charming as a brick, the middle-aged mare watched them approach from her stool with a cocked eyebrow and visible irritation for what must have been existence itself. All she needed was a cigarette to hang off her lip and…

The mare lit her horn and lifted a dirty stub from an ashtray beside her and lit the crushed end. Ginger winced.

“Be still my heart,” the quartermaster groaned. “Celebrities.”

She spoke with an accent Ginger couldn’t place. Rough as the quartermaster’s appearance, but with an air of apathetic sarcasm that hinted that she wasn’t worried about landing on anybody’s disciplinary radar. Judging by her uniform’s notable lack of sleeves and the faint discoloration borne by what was left, the mare had already spent several years sitting at this desk.

The name stitched to her uniform read simply: MUM.

She didn’t have to look to the others to see that they were waiting for her to take the lead. Part of her wished past-Ginger hadn’t been so eager to step in when negotiation was required. A quick glance at their escorts made it clear they were only here to keep them from causing trouble, rather than provide assistance.

Ginger cleared her throat and stepped toward the desk. “We were told Elder Coldbrook radioed ahead about a suit of power armor.”

Mum’s eyes slid toward her like a pair of windworn stones. “How nice of him.”

“Yes, well, if you could point us to it…”

The mare dragged on her cigarette and let the smoke filter lazily to the ceiling. Ignoring Ginger, she pulled the nib from her mouth and pointed the smoldering end between Aurora and Julip. “Which one of you is Aurora?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Aurora lifted her hoof.

Ginger frowned as Mum slowly looked Aurora up and down, her eyes narrowing only briefly before she stubbed out her cigarette and blew out the last lungful of smoke.

“No dustwings.”

Ginger started to object, but to her surprise Aurora was quicker on the draw.

“Who said anything about dustwings?”

Mum leaned forward, the stool beneath her emitting a creak of protest as she pushed her ashtray aside so she could cross her hooves atop the counter. “You’re either a pegasus or a hunchback. Whichever it is, I don’t care. I’m not assigning you armor just to have you shit yourself inside it.”

Ginger bristled. “Excuse me-”

Mum wrapped her muzzle in a hazy aura, closing her mouth. “Not talking to you.”

Were they not standing at the center of a literal legion of Steel Rangers, she might have entertained the idea of levitating the quartermaster’s ashtray somewhere particularly difficult to retrieve. Things being as they were, they needed her cooperation if Aurora was to stand a chance of getting into the Stable that Roach uncovered. Ginger smothered the urge to dispel the mare’s magic with her own and jerked her mouth free of her grip instead.

Mum’s horn dimmed, her point made. Her eyes weighed on Aurora, or more accurately the admittedly out of place lump beneath her tattered coat.

“Look, kid, there’s no Enclave here. Lemme see the wings.”

Fear made a good actress out of Julip. Now that the E-word was being floated, Ginger expected her to go conspicuously still. To their collective relief, Julip looked up at Aurora with something bordering on genuine worry. After a couple seconds, she tapped Aurora on the shin and tipped her head toward Mum.

“She says it’s safe.”

Aurora sucked on the corner of her lip, nodded once, and proceeded to relax her wings enough to lift one out from beneath her disguise. Mum regarded the spread of grey feathers with minimal interest, her eyes taking in the dimensions like a bored tailor.

The quartermaster gave Aurora a dismissive head shake. “Too wide. Suits I have’ll squeeze you ‘til something breaks. Or leaks. Coldbrook can say what he wants, but he’s not the one who has to hose out whatever you can’t hold in.”

Ginger watched Aurora’s stubbornness surface, knitting the mare’s brow.

“I guarantee you I’ve squeezed into access panels smaller than your power armor. I’ll be fine.”

Mum continued to stare back. Then her gaze dipped to the Pip-Buck on Aurora’s leg. “You won’t.”

Ginger’s hooves scraped against the concrete as she shifted her stance, waiting for the moment that seemed to be coming. Of course coming here had been a mistake. The Steel Rangers had so far caused them nothing but grief. Why should this night, escorted to a pony as friendly as a rusty knife, be any different?

While she moved like she was in no hurry, Mum still noticed Ginger’s defensive posture and frowned. To Ginger’s bewilderment, that was all she did. A moment later, she was staring back at Aurora with what looked like exasperation.

“Look. I’m going...”

Mum stopped to regard the two escorts still lingering behind them. Ginger glanced back at them and noticed the discomfort on both of their faces. An unspoken threat passed from the quartermaster to the younger soldiers, and the two mares quietly wandered away. When they were out of earshot, Mum spoke again.

“I’m not going to repeat this and neither are you. Coldbrook wants you to hurt yourself and any Rangers with a brain in their head knows why. You and your friends threw a grenade into his house of cards and now he has the High Elder so far up his ass he doesn’t know whether to speak or shit.”

Ginger wrinkled her nose. “Colorful.”

“And accurate,” she groused back. “The Elder’s never been shy about taking credit for the work F&F Mercantile put into making the roads safe again. Now he’s got traders robbing each other in broad daylight and word’s getting around that some of the raider tribes are poking around their old stomping grounds. Normally that’d be enough to get a pony intimately acquainted with a firing squad, but that sob story Flipswitch put on the airwaves ginned up a lot of sympathy for you.”

Aurora spoke with a low voice. “It wasn’t a sob story.”

Mum shrugged. “If you say so. All I know is you’re lucky Cider and his sister were as screwed up as they were. Plenty of Paladins got petitioned to put Cider in a cell. None of them were willing to risk upsetting the apple cart.”

Ginger held up a hoof to forestall her. “Why are you telling us this?”

The quartermaster shrugged again. “Just letting you know the score. Coldbrook can’t touch either of you. Not directly. Too many ponies out there who’re happy to have Cider and Autumn gone. More than a few Rangers, too. But if the Stable mare happens to step into some armor on her own, it’s not his fault when her wings get broken.”

The four of them exchanged looks of uncertainty. Aurora, most of all, looked as if her confidence had fractured. Short of diving into the crater’s irradiated soup completely naked, power armor was the only safe way for her to reach the Stable beneath the surface. No amount of Rad-X would protect her from that amount of toxicity, and even if they had the fortune of finding a prewar hazmat suit that wouldn’t leak, the trapped air would cause her to bob to the surface like a cork.

There was no way around it.

And yet, Aurora was frowning at the ground while the gears in her head spun.

“Okay,” she murmured, wings shuffling back under her ragged coat. “Okay, fine. What about her?”

Ginger’s heart skipped when Aurora tipped a hoof in her direction. The quartermaster followed the gesture, and Ginger found herself being scrutinized from stem to stern. A beat later, Mum grunted.

“‘Kay.” Her stool creaked again as the mare pivoted, then dropped to the shipping container’s metal floor with a dull clang. Bewildered, Ginger watched the mare approach a narrow door cut into the walls of the adjacent container and shoulder it open. It slammed shut behind her, and for the next minute they could only hear hooves thumping their way to the leftmost vessel.

“Aurora,” she whispered, eyes flicking between her companion and the unseen noises of the gruff mare. “No. We didn’t come all this way for you to wait on the sidelines.”

Aurora’s expression was unsurprisingly pained, her eyes panning the windows of the tower just beyond the quartermaster’s station. Ginger could tell she was thinking the same thing. That sending her down instead of going herself wasn’t what she wanted, either.

And yet.

“We can see if she’s wrong once when we get back to the water.”

Ginger pursed her lips. “But you don’t think she’s lying.”

Aurora shook her head. “That’s not where I’d bet my bits, no.”

A heavy clunk shuddered the double-doors of the far container and the lock disengaged. Like something out of a Steel Rangers enlistment poster, Ginger watched as an armor cast helmet pushed its way out and onto the concrete with an accompanying chorus of hissing pistons and whining servos. Several other suits of power armor stood idle nose to tail in the container, each bearing identical Steel Ranger paint schemes on a wide variety of armor. Before they could walk close enough to see the full interior, the pilot’s armor-clad horn took on its glow and the doors swung closed behind her.

The armor went still. A second later, a bright hiss of pressurized air streamed out as heavy panels lifted away from the quartermaster inside like the petals of a strange, mechanical flower. Mum stood in place, her half-lidded eyes suggesting that this was a process she waited for more times in a day than she cared to. Once the armor was fully open, she walked backwards until she was fully out of its shell and motioned for Ginger to come over.

She did, reluctantly, her discussion with Aurora still unfinished.

“Ever pilot one of these?”

Ginger shook her head. Mum blinked, slowly.

“Fine. Sure. Why not. I’ll give you the crash course.”

The crash course, as Ginger discovered, was more crash than course.

Seeing the Steel Rangers parade around in power armor had given her the false impression that the entire process was intuitive. Lift one leg and the suit lifts one of its own. Turn her head and the helmet turns as well. What she hadn’t accounted for was the absolute ordeal she was going through trying to walk in a straight line without any sort of tactile feedback to tell her which hooves were on the ground and which weren’t.

There was a saying her mother used to have. Something about walking like a dog in boots. She spat a quiet curse as she lifted her left foreleg only to have her right hoof slam the rest of the way down to the pavement. She cursed again when the helmet’s external speaker amplified her first profanity.

“Careful,” Roach rumbled. “Got a wagon coming up.”

“I see it.”

The wagon, one of the new independent traders spun up from the downfall of F&F Mercantile, was being pulled by a team of two mares. Both exchanged worried glances as they approached the stumbling armor, then carefully averted their eyes as they pulled their wagon well out of Ginger’s path until she was able to stomp by.

“This is ridiculous,” she huffed. “There’s clearly something wrong with this suit.”

“They take some time to get used to.” He gestured ahead, trying to reassure her. “By the time we’re through the city, you’ll be wearing it like a second skin.”

Ginger didn’t share his confidence. “A second skin that takes its sweet time to do what I tell it to do.”

“Input latency,” Julip chimed. When Ginger looked down at her, she practically shrunk behind the changeling beside her. “Model P-45 armor rolled out with a 0.25 second lag between the pilot’s movement and the suit’s.”

She narrowed her eyes, hoping they could see her annoyance through the helmet’s visor. “Why are the two of you experts all of a sudden?”

Roach shrugged. “Spend enough time scavenging the wasteland and you’re bound to find some abandoned power armor. Long time back, I had a chance to play around with an exoskeleton someone had left behind. Had to ditch it when it ran out of power, though.”

Ginger smacked the tip of her hoof against a crack in the pavement, causing the armor to scrape hard against its knee. She cringed, preparing for the bolt of pain out of instinct, but then she remembered it wasn’t her knee being ripped up. One heated sigh and a staggering step up to her hoof later, she turned her gaze from Roach to Julip.

Freshly defected, Julip wasn’t about to blow her own cover. “I think you know how I know what I know.”

Ginger groaned. “Duly noted. Where’s Aurora?”

At that, Julip bit down on a grin and shrugged. Roach stared firmly ahead, but the smile curling his cracked lip betrayed him too. A quick look at the road around her came up empty and nearly sent the suit on a swaying trajectory toward a roughly assembled street lamp. Only when she returned to the comparative safety of the center line did a curtain of familiar feathers slide down over the suit’s visor.

“Of course you are.” A gentle shake of her head cleared her vision, and the rasping sound she’d been hearing from the plating behind her neck made more sense. “How long have you been back there?”

The sound of Aurora’s laughter pried a smile out of her. “Five streets.”

“Blocks,” Roach corrected.

“Tomato, potato.”

This time it was Roach’s turn to groan. Though Ginger couldn’t see her, she could guess Aurora was wearing a teasing grin.

“You took your wings out?”

“Half the Rangers saw them back at the plaza, and Mum made it sound like they all knew who I was anyway. I didn’t see the point. Plus that coat smelled like death in a sewer.”

She mulled that. The entire purpose of her disguise was to minimize unwanted attention, but it would be hard to do that with Ginger stumbling along in a suit of power armor twice their size. Aurora would have to wear a flashing neon sign to draw more eyes than she was.

“Just don’t get us into any trouble that requires me to do more than walk in a straight line,” she warned. “I’m not entirely confident I remember how to get out of this thing.”

The speaker near Ginger’s left ear rustled, Aurora’s voice just a hair closer to the microphone than it had been. “I’d love to help.”

A familiar warmth twitched to life deep in her belly, but she kept her composure. Aurora had spent the better part of her adult life working with heavy machinery. It shouldn’t have surprised her at all that she’d find a little more than strictly professional excitement from seeing her tromp around inside what amounted to a locomotive with legs.

“Let’s put a pin in it for later,” she chuckled. “There are young ears listening.”

Julip’s ears flattened. “I’m twenty-eight.”

“Innocent, impressionable little ears.”

“Oh my fuck.”

Ginger giggled through her next stumble while Julip trotted ahead, followed close behind by Roach who glanced back with not unpleasant exasperation. Off he went to keep the compact pegasus from murdering someone. She smiled after them and wondered whether Julip really understood why he was so protective of her despite her prickly demeanor. He’d been the same way with Ginger when he found her as a runaway. A stallion who, despite the years, still took it upon himself to be the surrogate father. Giving him an excuse to pair off with Julip was proving to be good for both of them.

It was fully dark by the time they arrived back at the crater. Unsurprisingly, another spritebot had arrived to replace the one given to the Rangers. It rested in a cluster of broken bricks, no doubt parked there by Fiona while she tended to her first broadcast. Ginger suspected the power armor had some form of radio built in but it was anyone’s guess which of the toggles below her chin would bring it up on the HUD. Aurora, as if reading her mind, had hopped down from her back to half-walk, half-putter with her Pip-Buck. The most she could tune into was the ghost of Fiona’s voice among a wash of static. Their guardian gryphon, as Ginger was beginning to see her, was either introducing the next musician in her lineup or advertising a trumpet. The hazy squeal of brass answered that question and Aurora spared her any further torture by turning the radio off.

They found Roach and Julip poking around the rubble just outside the lip of the crater. Ginger hummed quiet approval when Julip barked a genuine laugh, spurred by the punchline to one of Roach’s many colorful stories.

Beside her, Aurora’s attention was on Ginger’s visor. “Time to call Mum’s bluff.”

“I don’t think it was a bluff,” she said, leaning her weight forward onto the switches beneath her front hooves. A harsh hiss of compressed air rushed along her back as the suit bloomed around her. Walking herself out of the armor, she put a hoof against Aurora’s chest before she could take her place. “Go slow.”

Aurora nodded, just a little more dubious of the machine now that she was shuffling her way into it. Padding covered most of the interior exoskeleton, including the armor along the suit’s belly that acted as a bench of sorts to slide forward along. Somewhere along the way back she’d discarded her coat completely. Ginger lit her horn, stopping Aurora so she could lift away her rifle and saddlebags. The dapple grey mare glanced back at her sheepishly for the oversight.

She kept her horn lit in case the armor needed to be wrenched open. Worry pressed into her throat as she watched Aurora tuck her wings as best she could manage then pushed the switches to close the suit. Ginger stood back, craning her neck as the pieces jerkily inched upward and toward one another. Aurora operated the heavy switches in steps, toggling them on and off until the two largest halves around her barrel were just a foot apart. She grunted, and Ginger craned her neck to see as the halves jerked forward another inch.

“Fuck.”

The suit opened slightly, Aurora adjusted herself, and she tried again. The pieces barely moved further than they had the first time before she had to stop.

“Come on.”

She frowned. “Aurora, don’t force it.”

A defeated sigh filtered out from the gaps. “I know. She was right about my wings.”

“Too tight?”

“Only around the joints.” The suit jerked open enough to relieve the pressure. “Probably doesn’t make it any better, though.”

“Probably not. Let’s get you out of there.”

Aurora didn’t answer. Not at first.

“It smells like you in here.”

Ginger flushed a little and gave the armor a smack with the flat of her hoof. “Out. We still need to find somewhere to sleep.”

Aurora grumbled a half-hearted complaint as she freed herself from the suit. Dark as it was, the moonlit clouds still gave off enough silvery light for her to spot Ginger’s flustered expression. Like a predator scenting prey, Aurora stepped back onto the scorched soil and traced a line toward her.

“Okay.”

She blinked. “Okay what?”

Aurora’s hoof settled beside hers. Electricity shot down her neck as the mare’s lips brushed past her own, hovering just below the cup of her ear.

“Let’s find somewhere to sleep.”

She nuzzled closer, kissing her neck as Ginger’s thoughts began to come apart. They should be talking about the crater. There were things they needed to do. Things she wanted to do. Roach hadn’t told them about the thing. The Stable. Something about that. Aurora had buried her muzzle in her mane, inhaling deeply.

The crater could wait. Rest was important. Very, very important.

“What about Roach and-”

“They’re busy.”

“But we-”

“We’re busy.”

She certainly was.

“Luna’s grace,” Ginger whispered, “you’re incorrigible.”

“Mmh,” Aurora hummed back, loosely hooking her feathers around her foreleg. “Come on.”

Aurora led her out of the crater, the night air threatening to rush in and cool the primal heat blossoming in Ginger’s chest if she dared let her get too far away. But as soon as they started moving, Aurora came to a sudden stop. The pegasus looked back at Ginger, whose eyes were very pointedly focused somewhere else, then to the machine parked just below the rim.

A kittenish grin touched her emerald eyes.

“Bring the armor.”

Opal leaned back in her chair. The terminal glowed back at her, dutifully waiting for its next task. Partition 40 was open. An entire decade of history, some of the most valuable in Stable 10’s two centuries of operation, had been unlocked thanks to a trail of breadcrumbs left behind by the same mare who hid it away.

“So, what now?”

Her ear twitched, dragging her away from her thoughts. They weren’t finished. Not by a long shot. With a heap of secrets waiting to be picked from years of data, the real work was just starting. Turning to Sledge, she bore a weary smile.

“We get some coffee on the boil n’ start digging. G’wan now, you know where it is.”

Sledge put a hoof on the back of her chair and squeezed out from behind her desk, leaving her alone with arguably the most significant discovery in Stable 10’s history. The Element of Loyalty stared back at her as the door shut behind the overstallion, the two of them finding themselves unsure what to say without him to bridge the gap.

“Well,” she started, unsure how else to keep the silence from stretching. “Can you drink coffee with yer, ah, condition?”

Rainbow pursed her lips and shrugged. “I haven’t tried. I probably shouldn’t. Sledge has me trying out some medicine to help me stay… present, I guess?”

Opal nodded, set her feathers on the keyboard and started tapping out some starting instructions for the department. They were going to need more than the three of them working on this. As she pecked at the keys, she offered a sympathetic nod toward the grievously wounded and yet inexplicably healthy former minister. “Give it a day or two. One of the docs upstairs will nail up a name for it.”

She was heartened to hear Rainbow snort agreement. Some things in the world never changed, especially when it came to personal fame. “Don’t s’pose you have any guesses to what Overmare Spitfire was tryin’ to hide? Other’n what we just saw on that video Delta put together.”

Rainbow blew out a breath to signify the sheer breadth of secrets the first overseer might want to sweep under the rug. After some thought, she seemed to settle on a simple answer. “Everyone has a skeleton in their closet.”

“Mm.” She nodded, making sure to include a direct link to the partition in her message. “Truer words.”

Rainbow ran a ragged feather across her thinning mane and shook her head at the ceiling. “Spitfire was dipping her hooves into anything she could toward the end. Didn’t matter if it was MoA work, another ministry’s or civilian territory. She couldn’t sleep unless she felt like she could control all the variables.”

“Ponies back then would do anything for peace,” she murmured. Seeing the slight frown on Rainbow’s face, she winced. “Sorry. That was uncalled fer.”

She barely looked fazed. More curious than anything. “Did you know any of the first residents?”

That scared a good laugh out of Opal, startling Rainbow in the process. “I ain’t that old! But my great-grandmother would sometimes talk about her great-granddad when I was a filly. Always had kind things to say about that stallion if’n she asked him about the things he did before the war. Wouldn’t say a word about what he done after it started, especially during the bombing.”

Rainbow crossed her hooves over her belly and nodded at the carpet. “Can’t say I blame him.”

“Don’t imagine anyone would.” A quick click on the keyboard and her instructions flew off to a dozen different terminals. Her department wasn’t large, but her people were efficient workers. They’d be digging in earnest before Sledge finished brewing the first pot. “Nobody here blames you either. For what happened at the end, I mean.”

That was a step too far. She was saying things she didn’t have much right to say, least of all to one of Equestria’s old guardians. Opal grit her teeth behind closed lips as she watched Rainbow’s eyes mist over, her withered jaw clench against the raw emotion Opal let loose on her. She had a tendency to move too quickly with ponies she didn’t know. Worse with those she respected. A product of her own insecurities, she supposed. Now she sat here in the comfort of a well-worn chair watching a pony from the old days fight back tears.

“I’m sorry,” she offered.

Rainbow waved her off with the only wing she had left and cleared her throat, roughly, several times until she was able to reach something resembling composure. “It’s fine.”

Opal set her chin against her hoof, trying to think of something she could say to roll back the hurt she’d caused.

“Really,” Rainbow insisted. “I’m just tired. It’s been a long time since I’ve been… me, for this long.”

She paused. “Does that mean you’re… should I get Sledge?”

“No.” Rainbow dragged the back of a feather under each eye, clearing the moisture. “No, it’s not Blue. But I could use a quick ten if we’re going to pull an all-nighter. Is there anywhere I can lay down?”

Opal glanced around her office as if expecting to see a cot that hadn’t been there before. She’d known pegasi who sometimes slept in their offices, but she wasn’t one of them.

She shook her head. “Sorry, hon.”

“It’s fine,” she repeated, though this time around it did seem genuinely fine. Opal let herself smile just a touch as Rainbow grasped the chair’s armrests with her hooves and hop-turned, hop-turned until she was facing the near wall. A short stack of boxes she used to store her binders of monthly paperwork served as a makeshift hoofstool, allowing Rainbow to recline comfortably in her seat. She draped her wing across her stomach and tipped her head back, eyes closed. “Don’t let me sleep too long.”

Opal nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

Rainbow didn’t open her eyes, but she smiled all the same.

“Dash,” she said. “My friends call me Dash.”

Aurora woke where she’d fallen asleep. With her head resting atop Ginger’s chest, her ear pressed to her heart. The early morning air was just chilly enough to cut through her coat and bite into her skin. It was surprisingly pleasant. Their shared body heat warmed her belly and their intertwined legs while the breeze cooled her back. Her pillow stirred, but Ginger’s breathing didn’t change. Long, slow breaths. Aurora closed her eyes, listening to the mare breathing, and dozed off again.

It was a little brighter out when she came around again. Ginger’s magic was gently lifting Aurora’s wing away from her legs so she could get up. Aurora stretched her hind legs as far as they’d go, exerting a quiet squeak as her tired muscles sang. The sea breeze smelled salty, something she’d heard of but never experienced until now. It only took a moment for her to decide she liked it.

“Rise and shine,” Ginger murmured.

As rested as she felt, she was happy to do a little of both. She gulped down a lungful of the cool morning air and sat up just enough to share a kiss with the mare beside her. It lasted only for a moment before both of them pulled back, each wearing the same wincing smile at the less-than-romantic taste in their mouths.

Aurora couldn’t resist asking. “What’d you eat last night?”

She was already giggling as Ginger lifted a brow at her, then at the bright black scrapes in the burned boards they rested on. In their hurry to find someplace private, they had settled on the first standing ruin they could find. With sunrise arriving shortly, Aurora could see their little hideaway hadn’t provided as much privacy as she’d thought. The partial cinder block wall Ginger slept against and the burned floor that served as their bed was all that remained of the building. The power armor loomed nearby, fully open, dutifully facing away from the amorous mares who’d shamelessly involved it in their debauchery.

They got up, and from then the morning went quickly.

She spotted Roach and Julip camped not far from the crater, the pair of them quietly chatting much in the same way they’d been when Aurora and Ginger snuck away. A small fire sent ribbons of ashy smoke skyward. Roach had taken to roasting some of the pecans they’d brought back from their foray into Stable 1, a few of which he passed over to the two of them as soon as they drew up to the fire. Ginger parked her armor near the crater and they ate, passing around roasted nuts, tart apples, and a good amount of banter until their bellies were full. When they were finished, Roach stood and motioned for them to follow him back to the crater. They had work to do.

Ginger was the whole show now. All the planning and preparation would be for nothing if her power armor couldn’t protect her from the toxic soup at the bottom of the crater. It felt strange watching Ginger disappear back into the armor with Roach walking slow circles around her, having her move this way and that as he checked the seals. For the past week and some change, Aurora had been preparing herself for her arrival here. She’d expected to find a dusty old building long forgotten by the ponies who tended it, not a bomb crater and an impassable pond of radiation. Waiting on the sidelines hadn’t been part of the plan, but that seemed to be how it was panning out.

She parked herself on a rock nearby and watched them work, happy at least that Ginger would be the mare going down in her stead.

It wasn’t until Ginger steered the armor down into the water that the warning bells of anxiety began to creep in. As stagnant water sloshed around the suit’s legs, her heart beat a little quicker. Roach had Ginger stop when she was up to her ribs, the two of them waiting for any sign that water was getting into the suit. As they waited, Aurora swallowed, her throat tacky and dry. She forced herself to take deep breaths to calm herself. Ginger was going to be fine. If anything happened, she could magic her way out of it.

Probably.

“You look like you’re going to puke.”

Julip had pulled up beside her, but Aurora had been too focused on Ginger to notice. She pursed her lips and tried not to look as sour as her stomach was turning. The last thing she wanted was for Ginger to see and think she was having doubts.

She overheard Ginger say something about submerging and grimaced.

“Worried,” she mumbled, expecting something sarcastic to come out of Julip’s mouth in return. What she said instead came as a welcome surprise.

“Don’t be. If that unicorn can teleport a slaver fifty feet into the air, she can handle a dive into the deep end of the pool.” Julip sat, her gaze shifting to Roach. “Plus she’s in good hooves. If your talisman is down there, they’ll find it for you.”

Aurora considered that and blew out a long breath. “That was uncharacteristically reassuring, coming from you.”

“Yeah.” Julip chuckled to herself. “He’s starting to rub off on me.”

“Heyo.”

“Gross.”

She shrugged.

Julip pressed on. “Anyway, I talked to him last night about your ignition talisman. Drew him some sketches in the dirt so he has an idea of what to look for.”

“Thanks for doing that.”

“It was either that or we try to break open one of the spare power cells for the suit. It runs off the same design, only in miniature. He appreciated the version that didn’t involve our hooves being forcefully removed from our legs.”

She snorted a laugh, shaking her head at the imagery. It was a welcome break from the constant fretting, even if her nerves started jangling all over again as Ginger waded deeper into the pool.

“Still worried?”

She couldn’t take her eyes off the battered armor. “Terrified.”

Julip hummed. “Roach says that’s how you know you love someone.”

Aurora took a moment to consider that. Then, slowly, she nodded.

“I guess he’s right.”

With the seals tested and only minor levels of radiation able to seep through the armor, Ginger brought the suit to the edge of the water and called out to let them know they were taking the dive. Aurora tried hard not to let the worry trickle into her voice, but she was only capable of so much.

“Be careful!”

“You too,” Ginger called back. “We’ll try to be back in a few hours. Keep her out of trouble, Julip!”

Aurora pressed feathers to her chest with playful indignance despite wanting nothing more than to take Ginger’s place. She held her breath as Ginger turned with Roach by her side, the latter swimming into the crater while the lesser slid beneath the murk as if it weren’t there at all. One step after the other, Ginger sank until finally, inevitably, the water lapped over the last inch of armor and dragged her out of sight.

For as far back as she could remember, Scootaloo had always been a worrier.

If asked about it, her staple response would always revolve around her harried fillyhood attempts to earn her cutie mark. It was the easiest answer. Most ponies who knew her knew at least one story of how she and her fellow crusaders would terrorize Ponyville in pursuit of that one defining trait their confusing and unknowable universe deemed most worthy of a brand. It was an easy sell, but it wasn’t the truth.

Her incurable unease came from something less mystical. It had been a seed planted unknowingly by her mother and father. Something they had noticed and fretted over long before Scootaloo had any desire for a cutie mark, a purpose, or destiny. Something that, spoken of in quiet whispers when they thought she wouldn’t hear, seared itself in her mind for decades to come.

“What kind of pegasus will she be if she can’t even fly?”

She never forgot her father’s shushing, or the metallic click of their bedroom door drawing shut. The cartoon that had captured her attention gradually faded from focus as her little mind tried to decipher what her mother had meant, only to piece it together one year later when their family moved from Cloudsdale down to Ponyville. Up until that point she hadn’t known her wings were stunted. She found that out on her first day of school when a well-meaning teacher’s aide introduced her to the class as a brave filly who wasn’t letting her disability stand in her way.

For the next several years, Scootaloo’s thoughts would revolve around what she couldn’t do. She agonized over what kind of future a grounded pegasus could hope for, what sort of mark she could expect to appear on her flank when every skybound pony she could think of bore some symbol of flight. With her parents less and less in the picture, their work taking them to all corners of the world for weeks on end, she found herself turning to the town they expected to foalsit her while they were away. Ponyville was small, but it was dense with activity.

And, she realized, opportunity.

It didn’t take long for Scootaloo to decide to take her future into her own feathers. Worry became fuel. She started to experiment, drawing the attention of two fillies who quickly became her closest friends. They formed a club, wreaking no small amount of havoc in their crusade to earn their marks. When they finally appeared, a set of matching marks that few ponies ever had the luck of sharing, it only emboldened her.

They grew up. The world changed. And changed some more.

Then the war came, and Scootaloo began to worry again. So she went to work.

ALL PERSONNEL EVACUATE TO SHELTER. ALL PERSONNEL EVACUATE TO SHELTER.

The carpet practically slid beneath her hooves as her security detail pulled her toward the stairwell. Ponies had begun to make their way down into the shelter from the office above, crowding the corridor with barely contained fear as they followed. To her staff’s credit, they didn’t break. Even as she was ferried out of the hallway and onto the stairs, she could see nor hear any evidence of panic. The weekly evacuation drills were doing their job. She looked down at the ponies turning down the next flight below and saw unwiped tears, mouths working their way through shameless prayers, but not a single one of them broke rank. If there was anything to be proud of right now, Scootaloo was proud of the ponies she worked with.

And yet a new worry had wriggled its way into her chest. Something she hadn’t had time to plan for. As a muted rumble of thunder vibrated the walls of the shelter, fear for the mare who had gone back out just minutes ago plagued her thoughts.

“Millie, I need...”

ALL PERSONNEL EVACUATE TO SHELTER.

She pinned her ears, lifting her modified Pip-Buck an inch from her muzzle. “Millie, mute this stairwell’s speakers.”

ALL PERSONNEL EVACUA-

Merciful silence, replaced by the orderly stampede of hooves on concrete and the scared murmur of her employees. She could feel the eyes of the nearest ponies turn toward her with something like hope, but there was nothing she could do about what was happening outside. The zebras had finally gone off the deep end. All they could hope for now was to survive the next hour.

For Rainbow Dash, that might only be minutes.

Scootaloo half-walked, half-hobbled along with her security as she kept her Pip-Buck near her mouth. “Millie, I need to know how bad things are topside.”

A pause. “Seismic sensors have detected seventeen individual surface detonations along Equestria’s western seaboard. Media outlets based in Las Pegasus, Van Hoover, Cloudsdale, and Port Withers are no longer broadcasting. Stables 72 and 108 failed to seal and have been compromised. Stable 91 sealed with a suboptimal population.”

Scootaloo muttered a curse for the members of Van Hoover’s city council who forced Stable-Tec to settle on buying land several miles beyond the city limits, despite knowing that one traffic jam could render 91 out of reach. “How many got in?”

“Twenty-one residents, including the department heads of Mechanical and Sanitation,” Millie answered. “Overstallion Hitch is unaccounted for.”

Turning down the next flight of steps, she grit her teeth and tried to keep a level head. “Get the department heads together. Help them select an overseer from the surviving residents. They’re going to be on their own for a little while.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Shaking her head, she stared forward. Hopefully there would be time later to give 91 better guidance. She peered over the railing and felt a touch of relief at the sight of ponies filing out the open door several flights below. Already, a part of her was preparing for what she needed to say once everyone had gathered at the bottom. Break the awful truth to many who had convinced themselves this was only another drill.

“Millie, I need a best-case analysis for Minister Dash’s chances of reaching her Stable.”

Her security detail guided her around and down the next flight while dozens of ponies went quiet, waiting for Millie’s answer. Several seconds ticked by.

“Reported detonation patterns suggest Equestrian targets have been selected in sequence, beginning in the west and proceeding east. Accounting for current weather schedules, a ten year sampling of Minister Dash’s median speed records, and assuming optimal conditions, she stands a seventy-one percent chance of surviving a one-way flight to Stable 10.”

Scootaloo frowned. It took another turn of the stairs to decide it wasn’t enough.

“Millie.” She slowed as she approached the congested line of ponies waiting to squeeze out of the open door just below her hooves. Her lips hesitated to form the words, knowing making any changes like the one she was thinking of might send out ripples that could affect ponies generations from now.

But this was Rainbow Dash. Mentor, idol and dearest friend. If Equestria survived, it would have to forgive a little theft on her part.

“Connect to Shelter 0,” she said, ignoring the strange glances from her own security detail. “Copy and send voice override templates for each of the ministers to all Stables. Priority integration.”

As the line inched down the steps, she waited for something to go wrong. For someone from the Pillar to detect the backdoor Applebloom had left for her buried within Robronco’s code. For history to remember her not just as a paranoid defeatist who ended up being right after all, but as a mare who mistrusted the ministries so deeply that she chose to keep one key to herself just in case.

Millie spoke. “Command line ‘Shelter’ unrecognized.”

Frustration pushed her to bite her lip hard enough to hurt. “Then add it back in, Millie.”

A pause. “Warning. Multiple conflicts-”

She finally broke composure, shouting into the open air and causing the ponies around her to flinch. “THEN MAKE IT WORK!”

Another pause. Longer this time, as if she’d somehow managed to offend the AI.

“Integration completed.”

She stared down at her hooves until someone else’s touched her shoulder. Sighing, she glanced a couple steps behind her to see a stallion she didn’t recognize but who wore a trim navy vest emblazoned with a Stable-Tec logo just below the collar. One of the office pages, she realized. The sort of pony that operated behind the scenes to make sure mares like her stayed fed, watered and caffeinated while they did the work of preparing for the apocalypse.

Pressing her lips into an apologetic line, she wondered how much the world owed ponies like him. Ponies whose names would never make the pages of history.

The world could have used more like him. She nodded, letting him and the many others who stared at her know she was okay, and his hoof returned to the steps.

“Millie,” she said, choosing her words carefully as dozens upon dozens of ears turned toward her voice. “Please verify that all six Elements of Harmony have access to all Stable-Tec resources.”

“Confirmed,” came Millie’s reply.

Some of the weight slid off her shoulders. It was the best she could do. It was something she should have planned for from the start. She knew the ministers. She knew one of them more than anyone else. Even Millie.

Rainbow Dash wasn’t flying to Stable 10.

She was trying to save Applejack.

---

“Faster. Please, please please...”

A flash bloomed behind the distant horizon, sour and green and full of malice. Another bomb. Another city lost to the insanity of a nation of zebras whose spies had crawled into Equestria like ants scenting something sweet. Somehow, some way they had gotten their hooves on balefire. Righteous anger shoved her thoughts toward revenge. There would be an atonement for whoever gave Vhanna the bomb. Taught them to engineer Equestria’s technology. Pointed their missiles back toward the land that had provoked them.

Another flicker. Another blush of emerald. Closer this time.

Focus.

Her muscles seared as if every churn of her wings was pressing acid between the fibers. It had been years since she last pushed herself like this. The wind whistled through the gaps of her flattened ears like a siren, but she wouldn’t stop. She climbed as high as she dared, leaving the speckled cotton ball clouds far enough underhoof that they reminded her of the fluffy snowflakes she and Applejack once watched fall in Canterlot one morning.

She crushed her eyes shut. Focus!

The mountains sank away behind her as had the widening disks of chromatic light that gave each of her sonic booms their moniker. Pressure built along the tips of her hooves, a cone of shimmering color that trailed down her forelegs before whipping behind her and clapping shut in an explosion of sound and color she would never hear or see. The core of her attention was fixed on a single point on the horizon where she knew, if she was fast enough, a mountain would appear.

And with it, Applejack. All she had to do is make it there.

Equestria curved beneath her. The vast plains of the east blending into the studded bluffs where ancient glaciers had supposedly carved out the deepest bedrock before receding north. Vast, verdant forests hugged by crystal blue lakes and meandering rivers. A small ridge of low mountains, one of which sheltered Spitfire’s own Stable. A hole in the ground that she’d convinced the two of them to sign on as residents for. A forgettable public relations stunt, Rainbow had assumed.

Out of the southern sky, a flash so vivid it caught her off guard. A distant, blinding star that made her eyes ache through closed lids. An air detonation. Minutes later, thunder rippled through her like a physical thing. She tried to think of anything down south worth the zebras sending a bomb after. Nothing came to mind. Maybe one of Twilight’s projects. Not something she had the luxury of worrying about.

Relief filled her chest as the peak of Canterlot Mountain slowly lifted above the discolored horizon. She pistoned her wings hard, throwing every ounce of strength she had into getting back to the Pillar where Applejack and the others had to be taking shelter. It was the safest place in the capitol for any of them to be.

She steered into a shallow descent, the tip of each hoof cupping the grand shelf that suspended Canterlot out from the mountain like a saucer taken from a foal’s tea set. She was too far away to make out the white stonework of the castle. The distance still too great for her to see the purple and gold banners that fluttered atop its spires from sunrise to sunset and sunrise again.

Too hopelessly slow to win a race against the missile that punctured the bedrock below the great city and heaved it all up into the morning sky.

---

At the bottom of Stable-Tec Headquarters, Scootaloo and more than a hundred members of her company waited.

They huddled together in groups, friends and coworkers finding pockets of space to occupy among the industrial racking where they sat with their eyes glued on one another’s Pip-Bucks while the world above came to a bitter end. Scootaloo slowly walked down the wide aisles of raw material intended to keep this place and the Stables like it capable of renewing its aging infrastructure long after the first generation was gone.

She tried not to think about that. Up in her formal office on the surface, it was easier to think of things that way when she could look out the window at the rolling sea. It would be harder for her to steady her nerves down here. The reality of being the first of many generations of survivors would hit her eventually. She didn’t plan on being in plain view when that happened.

Rods of pristine steel, copper, brass and more alloys than she could name glistened on shelves that would slowly become lighter as the years progressed. Clocks stacked with raw material, all ticking down to the same day when the poison being seeded above their heads would run its course. Scootaloo had personally made sure that this shelter had double the normal complement of supplies. Enough to assure the survival of this facility, come what may.

She wandered past a group of six ponies gathered beneath a wall of hermetically sealed containers simply labeled COMPLEX PROTEIN RECIPE A-9 and tried not to picture the milky pink slurry that would constitute a measurable percentage of their diet until the gardens bore their first crop. They sat in a loose circle, the six of them murmuring questions to one another as they all flipped their Pip-Bucks from one radio station to the next. Most frequencies were dead, now. Some still spat static, suggesting some relay towers on the west coast hadn’t gone down just yet. One, an FM station local to Fillydelphia, played the same emergency bulletin on loop urging citizens to find shelter.

It wasn’t like the movies, Scootaloo realized. No broadcasters had heroically remained at their desks to report Equestria’s final moments. They had all gone.

And so they waited.

Scootaloo was in mid stride when the last bomb dropped on their heads. One moment she was lifting a hoof off the floor, the next she was stumbling face first into one of the shelves. It took her several seconds to orient herself. A high whine rose from deep behind her eardrums as she pushed herself off a floor that felt different than it had before. To her shock, she could feel it vibrating. Reverberating like the surface of a struck bell.

She could taste blood on her tongue and when she started to work her jaw back and forth, hoping to hasten the return of her hearing, a bolt of pain from the split in her lip caused her to flinch. Already ponies were coming to render her aid, ignoring their own problems to tend to her. She let them, not wanting to start this apocalypse by making them question their instincts, and gently touched her tongue to her teeth, sparking another flash of discomfort. Chipped, she realized, from diving into the racks.

The waiting was over. A stallion pressed a wetted square of gauze to her cut lip, the peroxide setting the superficial wound on fire. She grunted and watched as tens of ponies with something to do hurried into action. Her eyes caught sight of a mare’s Pip-Buck as she hurried past, its screen flashing with an unsilenced warning message.

As the stallion in front of her dropped the bloodied gauze onto the floor and lifted a fresh, dry square from his emergency kit, Scootaloo lifted her hoof into her line of sight so she could read the message.

Dread rose into her throat.

“Ma’am, you need stitches.”

The stallion indicated to the patch of gauze held to her lip in his magic. She opened a wing and pressed it in place with a feather, glad to have a reason to mask her expression. Nodding, she allowed him to help her the rest of the way up and steer her back toward the stairs. Something about that struck her as funny. He had the same alert flashing on his Pip-Buck, too. And yet he was following the training she’d spent the last several years drilling into his and a hundred other ponies’ heads.

Help the wounded. Don’t panic.

As they reentered the stairwell, she coughed to clear the blood from her throat and addressed the machine that always listened.

“Millie,” she grunted, “give me Stable 10’s current status.”

She strained to listen to Millie over the ringing in her ears.

“Stable 10 was sealed twenty-two minutes ago with thirty-one percent of the registered population. Six department heads are present. Overmare Spitfire is present.”

A pause. Millie anticipated the question before Scootaloo could ask it.

“Minister Rainbow Dash is not present.”

Next Chapter: Chapter 32: Found Estimated time remaining: 40 Hours, 33 Minutes