October 31st, 1077
Low Equus Orbit

“Cloudbreaker, Control. Comm check.”

“A-firm, Control. Spearhead on comm. How do you read? 1-2-3-4-5, 5-4-3-2-1.”

“Affirmative. You are about four-by with a slight decrease/increase in volume, sort of a wavy volume to it. Over.”

Apogee glanced at commander Spearhead and pretended not to notice him proceed to mash his suit’s stick mic between his vacuum suit’s rigid collar and the corner of his chin. Half a thousand bits worth of microphone scraped closer to his muzzle before he finally keyed open the channel again.

“Okay, how about now?”

“Hey, that’s beautiful right there. Thank you. We have you five-by.”

She snorted. If her mom wasn’t currently driving literally across the country right now, some poor engineer down at JetStream Aerospace would’ve been getting their ear chewed off.

“Affirmative, Control, five-by.” Spearhead let his chin off the link. “I see you laughing over there.”

Apogee didn’t bother hiding her grin. Everything about where she was right now made it impossible not to. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, sir.”

He extended a hoof forward and plucked his moleskin notebook from the air as easily as he might nip a grape from the vine with his teeth. Something told her they were going to miss having articulating fingers once they were back on the ground. “‘Sir,’” he chuckled. “You wait until we’re three hundred miles off the planet before deciding to call me sir.”

She rolled her eyes, her own mechanical digits making the final entries into the computer for their next burn. At its closest approach, SOLUS would still be flying several dozen miles above them. Their experimental command shuttle - well, everything about this mission was experimental - needed a few more hard kicks before the delicate work of rendezvous was needed.

As she keyed in the numbers, she stole a peek out the nacho-shaped window beside her. Up until today, the sweeping curve of the planet was something ponies had only seen in photographs taken from her dad’s first probes. The resolution of those cameras had been the envy of Equestria and caused understandable apprehension among the smaller nations of the world. Yet it was nothing compared to the verdant, blue ball gracefully turning below them. That was all the proof Apogee needed to know for sure the princesses were frauds.

No alicorn, no living creature on Equestria could ever dream to ply their influence against something so massive. Not the moon and certainly not the sun. If Celestia or Luna had even a fraction of the magic it would take to do something so monumental they wouldn’t need armies. The Wonderbolts wouldn’t have been decimated. This war, the villains Equestria faced, none of it would have been more than a footnote in the pages of history if the princesses could do any of the things they claimed to do.

She took a deep breath, pushing away old angers and resumed her work. If ponies wanted to believe the universe revolves around a dusty old diarchy, that was their delusion to cling to. She knew the truth.

Plus she got to feel microgravity and they didn’t. So there.

“How’s it going back there, Keys?”

The straps that kept her from floating out of her chair also kept her from looking around the headrest at the stallion behind her, but boy she could hear him. Underwater training could only do so much to prepare them for real zero G. Just like the lab coats back on Equus had warned them, space was going to be nothing like neutral buoyancy pools. Weightlessness meant everything - their manes, their bodies, their organs and everything inside those organs was going to be on the float.

Sticky Keys, as they discovered, had a stomach that objected strongly to having his dinner bouncing around inside it. Unfortunately for all of them, he was a noisy puker.

“Gonna use up all the v-bags if the damn Nauzine doesn’t start working.”

He’d better not, she thought grimly. If the air recyclers didn’t scrub the smell of sick out of the shuttle soon, she was going to need one too. “Sandy, give Keys another 10mg tablet.”

Seated next to the opposite window, Sandy lit his horn and tore a pill from a blister pack he’d stuck to the wall with a square of velcro. “Chew it before you swallow this time.”

Keys let out a weary groan. “That’s what she said.”

“I…” Apogee closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her snout with her mechanical fingers. She would have marveled at how second nature that reaction had been if Keys wasn’t such a bucking idiot at times. “That isn’t how that joke works.”

“It could.”

“That’s disgusting and it isn’t.”

“Celestia’s sake, Keys, take the Nauzine and shut up.” Spearhead wore the face of an exasperated parent, but Apogee could see the laugh lines threatening to deepen along his muzzle. Historical Equestrian events be damned, at the end of the day they were all just normal ponies. Regular, immature ponies stupid enough to let themselves be strapped to an overengineered bomb and be shot into an environment utterly hostile to life.

Normal stuff.

Spearhead stole a look in her direction and smirked. Back to work.

“Control, Cloudbreaker.” There was still a hint of levity in his voice as he spoke to the team down in Las Pegasus. “Confirm ETA to ascent burn.”

The comms crackled in the capsule. “Cloudbreaker, Control. I see you at -07:14.”

“A-firm, synced.”

She settled back in her chair while the ship’s computer ran through the math. Tuning out the stallions, she made a few mental calculations until she was sure the burn times it spat out felt right. At their current velocity they were in a perpetual fall around Equus that outpaced every known object they as a species had ever hurled through the air. A sixteen second burn was all they needed to close the gulf between their low orbit and the trajectory SOLUS had been placed in.

Seven minutes went by in a blink.

Her eyes never left the readouts. A gentle pressure pulled her into the foam of her seat, barely a shove compared to the kick in the ribs they’d taken during liftoff. As the seconds ticked along, she imagined the highest point of their orbit lofting itself deeper into the abyss, creeping along until it just grazed their target orbit by a few scant miles. The engines died back and puffed out.

It didn’t feel any different but they were on a rollercoaster now, climbing toward SOLUS at the very top. Then they would drop away, plummeting back toward the planet only to swing back and do it all over again. Three orbits stretched into a precise ellipse. By the third pass they would be able to see it like a dark star, sliding along the viewfinders as they made chase.

Apogee touched her hind leg to the secured cargo drawer beneath her seat where the M.A.S.T. talismans, the final and most sensitive components of SOLUS, waited in white cocoons of foam. In a few short hours she would be floating at the back of the capsule with the six hearts of Equestria’s future beating alongside her own.

“Command, Cloudbreaker. Maneuver was successful.”

“Cloudbreaker, we see you. We’re expecting some nice pictures down here.”

“A-firm that.” Spearhead tapped the cuff of her suit. “Home’s on your side. Make sure the lens cap is off.”

“Yep,” she said. “Got it.”

Reaching up, she pulled down the portside photography rail and loaded one of several cameras they brought with onto the gimbal. Safely behind the viewfinder, every square mile any pony had ever trod on hung before her like some impossible Hearth's Warming ornament. She swallowed, waiting for her frayed nerves to steady, and snapped the first picture.

The mountains of Griffinstone slid under the lens.

She could do this.

“Oh.”

Ginger blinked, eyes wide. “Oh. Roach? ROACH I HAVE IT!”

In her excitement she tried to stand. The roof of the maintenance shaft stopped her with a metallic bang that was barely audible in the midst of seven generators’ bone-rattling drones. Six generators, now. The one above her, a monstrous machine in its own right, had groaned to a stop. Its ignition talisman, the singular force behind its operation, floated harmlessly in a delicate haze of her own magic.

Pain bloomed where her head bounced off rolled steel. She ignored it. In her hurry to squeeze through this cramped maze of plumbing and wires, she hadn’t thought how she would turn around. She realized she wasn’t going to. For several frustrating minutes she wriggled backward, pushing off whatever she could to recover the inches she’d kicked her way across just moments earlier.

No. Wasteland or not, there was something to be said about dignity. She was not about to climb out of this crawlspace ass first when she was carrying the one thing the three of them had been seeking since Aurora first stepped into her shop. She’d already practiced on enough rocks to get a feel for this. It couldn’t be that hard.

The glow around her horn brightened, her magic expanding to envelop her and the talisman both. A picture of where she wanted to go formed in her mind and a touch of intention completed the spell. Air rushed up the fringes of her mane and the maintenance tunnel vanished. A wave of dizziness washed over her as the control room that overlooked the generator hall flooded into existence around her.

Gravity kicked in just as quickly. Crouched as she had been, she’d teleported an easy foot off the linoleum. Before she could so much as yelp, she hit the ground with a graceless whoof as the air was knocked out of her lungs. Several wheezing seconds passed as she recovered her breath. She rolled over, splayed out on her back with the talisman floating above her, and began to laugh.

Roach stared helplessly into the open floor hatch. Everything about this was insane, but they had no choice but to do it anyway. Ginger was the only one among them with a horn that wasn’t going to pump the place full of rads, so down she went. Minutes passed and suddenly the hulking cylinder of humming metal had begun to slow. Then Ginger had shouted something neither he or Applebloom could make out despite it being fractionally less deafening.

There had been a flash of light, and the thought occurred to him that she’d dislodged some kind of cable or touched something… electrical. He wasn’t an engineer. He didn’t know the words. All his brain could put together was building-sized generators plus sudden flash equals bad.

A firm hoof against his shoulder jarred him to reality. Applebloom was shouting something, using the same hoof to point back the way they came. Run? Evacuate? Was that it?

“WHAT?”

She practically shoved her muzzle into the ragged cup of his ear. “I SAID, YOU DIDN’T SAY SHE WAS A TELEPORTER!”

He looked toward where Applebloom pointed. By the time he realized what she meant, his fellow ghoul was already making her way back across the generator hall to the stairs. Bewildered, he followed, his eyes locked on the tiny black stone bobbed behind the window on a cloud of Ginger’s magic.

“We can’t be more than a day’s flight away, right?”

“I don’t…”

“I mean we’d need to make sure they eat and drink first, plus rest in between. Aurora said it took something like three hours to fly down to the solar array. That’s, what, three or four times faster than it took that bounty hunter on hoof?”

“Maybe. I wasn’t…”

“We’ll need supplies so we don’t have to stop on the way back. Food, water, first aid. The Big Three. It’ll weigh more but it'll save us time in the long run. Right?”

“Ginger, slow down.”

Roach looked to Applebloom in silent apology as she shouldered open the stairwell door for them, the mare visibly overwhelmed by Ginger’s bubbling excitement. Ginger all but pranced up the stairs alongside him with the ignition talisman turning lazily in her magic.

He couldn’t blame her for being giddy. He felt a bit of it himself. Looking at the obsidian glint of the talisman’s perfectly fabricated angles, he felt a relief deep in his heart that had been building for days now. He knew if he described it, Ginger and Aurora would know exactly what he was referring to. Every mile that they pushed behind them was another mile further from a Stable on the brink of collapse. Another mile they would have to retrace. Worst of all, there was an unspoken worry that asked whether they were even going the right direction or if Aurora’s hunch would wind up being a dead end. Out this far, straddling the lapping waves of Equestria’s eastern coastline, there was no doubt in Roach’s mind that coming up empty would have meant the death of Stable 10.

Ginger had known too. It was why she’d been willing to take Aurora’s place without so much as being asked, and why she’d wriggled beneath a humming generator despite the danger it posed. After ten days of struggling through a wasteland that did nothing but push back against them day and night, they were here. They’d found together what Aurora had set out thinking she would have to find alone.

Ginger managed to tamp down her excitement, but only just. Grinning, she gave him a lighthearted shoulder bump. Despite himself, he smiled a little more broadly and thumped hers in return. Aurora’s hunch had been right.

“Luna’s grace, I can’t wait to tell her.”

He chuckled. “I had no idea.”

They followed Applebloom back to the seventh floor where the canyonlike shelves of Supply continued gathering dust. Without Sweetie Belle to contend with, Roach was able to give the orderly pencil scratches passing them on the walls a closer look. Skimming the neat lines he saw that they acted as much as a diary as they did notes. They walked by too quickly for him to read any one sentence to completion, but the fragments he did skim were easy to piece together.

As they stepped back into Supply’s yawning warehouse, Roach couldn’t help but finally ask. “Did you ever make any progress researching the decay?”

Applebloom silently mouthed something to herself, regarding the vast sprawl of shelves before her like a book whose index she only vaguely remembered. A second later she was moving again, passing the endless aisles one after the other.

“No,” she answered. “Not really. Not… maybe. I dunno.”

Roach tried not to let her see his confusion. She noticed anyway, wincing a little as she looked back at her strange new guests.

“All I know is what didn’t work-work-work.” Her tail snapped the air as if to dispel her stammer. “None of the ponies that were left responded to medication. I tried-tried-tried… I tried everything I could find in the infirmary. None of the pills helped with the decay. Didn’t even slow it down.”

He hummed, remembering the rumors he’d heard when he first ventured out of the tunnel beyond Stable 10. In those early years, ghouls were pitied more than anything else. Some still had living relatives who hoped to see them get better. Others were freshly turned, having unwittingly stumbled through radiation hotspots without realizing it. Fragmented as Equestria was, the survivors had shown a real determination to solve the mysteries of what made ponies turn ghoul. Then, as all things do, the momentum slowed. As more ghouls went feral, attacked and killed, sympathy quickly waned and was replaced by mistrust and disdain.

By then, ponies had more things to worry about than mysterious afflictions. From the ashes had sprung two competing factions, one which flew the banners of the fallen Equestrian Army and a second which seemed to appear from nowhere, claiming the old princesses had ascended while leaving them to safeguard their thrones. With Equestria sliding back into the meat grinder of a new conflict, ghouls were regarded as a problem to be solved by a different generation. So far that generation had yet to appear and what some ponies called the ghoul problem grew through the decades.

“Maybe with Millie cooperatin’, I’ll figure it out.” Applebloom paused, then turned down a long stretch of shelving stacked with hardened plastic tubs. “Food, water n’ first aid, right?”

“The Big Three,” he parroted.

Ginger flushed a little but wasn’t about to let a little ribbing dampen her mood. “Just enough for the trip home. Nothing extravagant.”

Applebloom snorted as she slowed to squint at the manifest adhered to a passing container like one might read a road sign. She kept walking. “Trust me, Stable-Tec never did extravagant.”

“Says the mare living in the world’s safest air-conditioned bunker,” Ginger countered.

“Hmph.” Applebloom wisely chose not to argue the point. She eventually stopped at a bay of yellow containers which appeared to be to her satisfaction and hauled two off their bowing pallet by her teeth. She gave each a gentle kick, spinning the latches toward Roach and Ginger. “Imagine things topside ain’t all sunshine and butterflies just yet.”

Roach smirked. “Not quite.”

The latches made a satisfying set of clacks as they released. The rubber seals crackled apart when they pulled apart to reveal a simple set of leather saddlebags embossed on either flap with Stable-Tec’s iconic nine-toothed cog. Simple block font stood centered within each gear.

Applebloom saw their curious expressions and offered a shrug in response. “Like I said, the whole point of this place was to be a life raft to the other Stables. I guess if Vhanna hadn’t gone and dropped a bomb on top of our heads, we mighta actually put some of those kits to use. Coulda come to help your friend instead of the other way around.”

Roach tried not to imagine what could have happened if anyone else were tipped off to the survival of a Stable like this. In retrospect, he supposed the zebras might have done them all a favor by burying this place. It only took one ant to lead a pony back to the anthill. It wouldn’t have taken the Enclave or the Rangers much time at all to track a field support pony back here to discover the goldmine waiting inside.

The contents of each set of saddlebags were identical. Two MREs and two metal water flasks rested snugly in one pack while a first aid kit, field dressings, disinfectant and two sleeves of pristinely minted gold bits wrapped in banker’s rolls weighed down the other. He smiled at the sight of old currency and wondered whether anyone working for Stable-Tec had ever considered bottlecaps trouncing gold as the new postwar currency. He breathed in, enjoying the scent of new leather. He debated asking Applebloom for two more kits, one each for Aurora and Julip, but decided against it. They’d taken plenty.

“This is perfect.” He paused to nip his new saddlebags by the strap and swing them onto his back. Compared to how lightly they were packed, the bags had a reassuring weight to them. “Thank you.”

“Ain’t nothin’.” Roach tried not to smile at her casual, unironic countryism. “You’re the ones that got Millie talkin’ to me again.”

“About that.”

Ginger sat on the cool concrete, gaze stuck on the now open first aid kit floating in front of her. She was considering one of the contents, a little tin box of band-aids. Half of the papered strips slid up and out of the box, making room for the ignition talisman. The black stone was a near perfect fit. The tin and its excess bandages settled back into the metal container, which latched firmly shut with a click.

“This shelter loophole we’ve been exploiting in her programming.” She murmured the words with uncertainty, as if she were afraid to ruin something that had helped them come this far. “It’s only a matter of time before someone else finds out about it, and I worry the next pony who does might not be as... delicate as we’ve been.”

Applebloom nodded understanding. “Millie?”

“Yes, overmare?”

“Delete the command line ‘Shelter’ from all systems.”

A pause. “Command line deleted.”

She tipped her head to Ginger with a cracked smile, who nodded back in thanks. Then her eyes drifted to their identical saddlebags and the smile faded. “I guess you two need to get going soon-soon-soon.”

Roach cleared his throat and glanced at Ginger. “It is getting to be about that time. Anything else we need?”

She shook her head, eyes craning up to the storehouse surrounding them. “Nothing we need, no. Just an endless list of wants. Thank you for having us, Applebloom. Today has been a welcome change of pace.”

“Makes me wish y’all had more time to tell me what a normal day is like for you.” Applebloom slid the empty cases back under the shelves and tipped her head for them to follow. “Guess it can’t be much worse than gettin’ rahed at by Sweetie Belle all day long.”

Roach chuckled at that, but when Applebloom lifted a brow toward him he realized she hadn’t meant it to be a joke. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Looking at Ginger, he was surprised by the bare look of are you serious in her eyes. He grimaced, wondering what part of him had thought Applebloom would see her friend’s condition as anything to laugh at. She thought Sweetie Belle was like any other feral ghoul locked up in this Stable. Maybe it was due to Millie’s indifference that she hadn’t learned she was wrong.

As they crossed the threshold out of Supply, he decided to speak.

“Applebloom, can I ask you a question?”

After a pause, she looked over her shoulder at him. “Sure. What about?”

“Sweetie Belle.”

He winced as Applebloom’s expression grew more guarded, but he persisted anyway.

“This is going to sound strange, but… has she ever spoken to you?”

July 21st, 1077
Canterlot

Primrose shut her eyes and inhaled deeply, taking in the faint scent of agriculture that drifted up to the promenade railing. The weather ponies had rain scheduled over the next two days and she could already smell the moisture building on the morning updrafts. She’d never been much of a flyer, preferring to stretch her legs within easy earshot of the local gossip whenever the chance arose, but she was experienced enough on her wings to understand how much time and labor went into seeding the weather patterns as they rolled in from the west. The weather factories dotting the countryside had made that work much easier in recent years, but the fine details of directing those fronts to where they were needed would always require a pegasi’s guidance. She smiled to herself. Maybe she could have been a weather pony in a different life.

The balconies were quiet this morning, save for a group of young colts who loitered on one of the stone benches, huddled around the screen of the year’s new electronic toy. A JoyBoy, they were calling it. Some new game... thing. They were easy to ignore. Her attention was taken up by the rolling vista of Equestria sprawled before her.

“So you’re Primrose.”

Her body jerked as if touched by a live wire. One moment, she was seemingly alone with her thoughts. The next, she was sharing the railing with the dangerously potent Element of Magic.

Twilight Sparkle stared over the promenade with a bored expression that hinted at a mare who had seen and done things most ponies would describe in fiction or comic books. Here was an alicorn who had been at the center of Princess Luna’s return to rule, Discord’s banishment and Tirek’s violent death. A mare who had briefly wielded the combined magic of Equestria’s three rulers and who had the confidence in her own abilities to give it back.

She’d read the Friendship Journal for herself and lost track of how many times the fate of Equestria had hinged on the choices of one privileged purple mare and her little clique of friends. It disgusted her to think that the whole world was content to hang on the success or failure of six unremarkable ponies rather than risk scuffing their own hooves by taking some initiative. The magic of the Elements had done nothing but make Equestrians complacent and there was no better evidence than the absolute mess being made of the war with Vhanna. Thinking about it made her blood boil, even now.

She packed away that anger and nodded with a cozy smile. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me, Minister Sparkle.”

Twilight openly glowered at her. It felt like she was being stared down by a fucking lighthouse. “You have five minutes, Primrose.”

Straight to the point, then. “I have a proposal that involves Stable-Tec.”

“Then you should talk to Stable-Tec.”

“I would if I expected Scootaloo to listen. I thought it would be wiser to speak to you, since you lead one of the ministries that subsidized their nationwide shelter initiative. That, and I believe this proposal might interest you personally, given your generous life expectancy.”

Twilight narrowed her gaze at Primrose. Fresh suspicion brewed behind those lavender eyes. “Get to the point.”

She could feel her mouth going cottony, but the ball was rolling now. There wasn’t much left to do but chase after it and hope she wouldn’t get crushed in the process.

She cleared her throat. “I assume you’re familiar with Stable-Tec’s true modus operandi by now. Stir up the nation’s anxiety, sell the wealthy idiots of Equestria tickets to their local Shelter, cash out when the war ends… it’s a good get rich quick scheme, right?”

“I’ve known Scootaloo since she was a filly, Ms. Primrose. She doesn’t scheme and her company is under contract to repay their debt to the Equestrian taxpayers when Vhanna surrenders. She is entirely aware Stable-Tec will be lucky to break even when that happens.”

“And what if we lose the war?”

Twilight paused, only to regard her with a dismissive smirk. “That won’t happen.”

She could sense the warning in Twilight’s tone, but she pressed on. “Stable-Tec seems to think it’s possible, or they wouldn’t have dropped every bit they had into construction. Why do you think they’ve been retrofitting their blast doors to withstand a balefire bomb?”

She watched Twilight shake her head and stare down at the sprawl of Equestrian farmland. A little ways to the southwest, a faint patch of civilization seemed to catch her eye. Ponyville. The backwater town that brought her and the other Elements together for the first time. The eye of Equestria’s proverbial storm and the totem that allowed Twilight to brush off Primrose’s borderline imprisonable line of inquiry. She considered the possibility that Twilight would choose to ignore her until her time was up and decided to push harder.

“How long until the zebras get the bomb?”

Twilight regarded Primrose as if she’d been slapped. “We’re done here.”

Fuck. Already she could see the violet haze of magic emanating from the minister’s horn, charging with that arcane force that would allow her to simply teleport away. There was nothing she could do to stop Twilight once that spell took form. That’s why she’d come here with another card to play. The words chattered across her tongue just as the bubble of magic shimmered into view.

“I know you’ve been diverting stimpacks to the Ministry of Technology.”

The spell evaporated. Twilight’s horn went as dark as the expression that blanketed her face. When she spoke, her voice was like cracked glass. “Reconsider what you think you know, then.”

Primrose swallowed. When she’d pulled the strings to schedule this meeting, she knew she’d be playing with fire. She hadn’t expected the fire to play back. In for a bit, in for a bushel. No turning back.

“There’s nothing to reconsider, Twilight. Your ministry contracted a large medical supplier operating out of Manehattan to transport recalled stimpacks to Hay Lakes Hospital. A pegasus working the loading dock has instructions to doctor the manifests so the stimpacks are brought to the Ministry of Technology while a shipment of placebo syringes are sent west for disposal. I know this because the pegasus at Hay Lakes Hospital is one of mine.”

Towering beside her, Twilight’s nostrils flared as she inhaled a slow, contemplative breath. “One of yours.”

She nodded, working hard not to let Twilight see the howling fear behind her eyes.

“Assuming any of this is true, which none of it is, how would you have known to put one of your people at Hay Lakes? That recall was issued less than a month ago.”

She did her best to appear as unassuming as she could. A minor threat, just an amateur manipulator trying to squeeze her way into the big leagues. A sheepish smile crossed her muzzle. “I don’t think it would be good for anybody if I told you how my organization works.”

“Your organization.” Twilight rolled her eyes, sparing a quick glance at the colts still gathered on their bench behind them. They were oblivious to the conversation taking place just a short trot away from them, enamored with the blips and bloops of their plastic toy. “And what does your organization want?”

She looked up at the alicorn. “Another five minutes of your time, for starters?”

Twilight answered by sitting down on the stone promenade. “You had a proposal regarding Stable-Tec.”

And there it was. The first tug on the line. One quick jerk and she could reel her in at her leisure.

“I do. And please, hear me out on this. If the worst does happen like Stable-Tec is preparing for, I don’t think it’s in Equestria’s best interest for life in these Stables to be so… unchallenging.”

Twilight watched her, saying nothing.

She continued. “On the timescale Stable-Tec is projecting, our society wouldn’t be preserved as it stands now. It would stagnate without the unexpected mishaps of everyday life. I suggest that in addition to funding Stable-Tec’s current project, your ministry devises a selection of difficulties for these Stables to overcome.”

“Difficulties.”

She nodded. “A scheduled crop failure, for example, or an introduction of residents to a Stable with a history of resisting authority. Small puzzles of life that might realistically occur outside the otherwise controlled setting of a Stable which a population would be forced to solve. That way subsequent generations are encouraged not to depend solely on the Stable for their survival and are better prepared for the trials of a world that may not be in a condition to accommodate their needs.”

After a pause, she added, “A muscle only grows stronger with use, Minister.”

Twilight watched her. “You’ve given this some thought. What would happen if I were to agree to help you?”

“Nothing the public would notice. I already have several contacts inside Stable-Tec who are prepared to move on this and you have my word that Scootaloo would be insulated from any knowledge of the adjustments we would make. Your contribution would be more… logistical in nature. Several of these changes need to happen quickly and I can’t think of many contractors who would question Twilight Sparkle when she tells them to jump.”

The alicorn hummed, the gears in her head turning as she thought. Primrose didn’t need her to think or she risked poking holes in the already tenuous smokescreen she needed to maintain.

She turned to face Twilight, meeting her eyes with a modest bow. “I apologize if I crossed a line with you earlier, but it’s worth considering how lucky you are for me to have been the pony to discover your cache under the MoT. I honestly don’t know what you need those stimpacks for and I don’t want to know. That’s your business, but… I may be able to help keep your hooves clean if someone else were to open one of those crates by mistake. In return, I’d like the honor of working with you.”

Some of that was true. She didn’t know why several thousand doses of recalled medicine had been stockpiled in the bowels of the Pillar, but oh boy did she want to know. More than that, she wanted this purple giraffe to understand that if she tried to get rid of her there were others loyal to her who were poised to throw the so-called Element of Magic straight under the nearest bus.

Twilight stared for several long seconds before nodding, once. “Alright. You have my attention, Primrose. For your sake, you’d better not waste it.”

Ping.

Primrose’s ear twitched. Something important. Secure line. She buried her face into her pillow’s silken cover, her thoughts a frenetic blur of carnal bliss. A sturdy hoof pressed firmly but not indelicately into the small of her back, pinning her to the sheets as its owner went about his rhythmic work. He’d introduced himself, a middle-ranking officer of the Enclave, but she’d forgotten his name as soon as he climbed onto her.

Ping.

He wasn’t here to be her lover or to earn some accolade to brag about in the New Canterlot saloons. He was here because she was pent up again and needed release, and because she wasn’t going to hang an ice pack under her tail to avoid the problem like some superstitious mares were wont to do. If heat were a matter of hot and cold, ponies would have died out as a species back when the freezer was invented.

Ping.

Ugh. They weren’t going to stop until she answered. Primrose hissed a breath through grit teeth when it pinged again. The stallion’s cadence had broken down, not because he was close to finishing but because his curiosity was distracting him from the task. They knew not to send calls up to her private quarters unless it was critical, which meant whatever it was needed her attention now.

“Get off,” she growled.

The stallion chuckled. “Kind of what I’m… ngh, here for.”

Pleasure was quickly burned away by raw annoyance at the informality in his tone. She made to push herself up and for the barest flicker of a moment, the officer pinned her down on her even harder.

Ping.

No. With one firm shove, she bent up from the mattress and shot the stallion a withering glare. His libido shrank with it. Realizing his mistake he stumbled back, his once impressive and now thoroughly unwanted cock slapping him in the stomach as it sprang free from under her tail, the stallion stuttering off several inadequate apologies as he slithered off her sheets. She said nothing as she rolled over, only indicating the door out of her quarters with one firmly leveled feather.

He left. The door hissed shut behind him. She’d figure out his punishment later, if at all. Sometimes paranoia could be worse than anything her happy little head could conjure up.

Ping.

“Yes, I heard you already. Fuck.” She flopped back onto her pillow, eyes on the ceiling as her wing hooked around the device on her nightstand. Her Pip-Buck was one of a long line of improved models that, quite frankly, would have made the R&D geeks from Robronco stain their precious cleanrooms. She dangled the slim, beveled screen above her nose and stared with fresh annoyance at the notification.

Wrinkling her lip, she tapped it with her hoof. “Yes?”

A familiar mare’s voice answered. “Minister, we have a problem.”

Primrose spared a glance down the line of her belly and the matted mess drying between her legs. “Add it to the list, Clover. What happened?”

“We’ve been shut out of Stable-Tec’s network, ma’am.”

She sat up. “When?”

“A little over ten minutes ago.”

“Rangers?”

“No ma’am, they’re still working to excavate Spitfire’s Stable. No indication that they’ve made any attempts to connect to its local network or are even aware it exists.” He paused. “It’s still early, but so far this looks like the network shut us out on its own. It’s possible the Millie A.I. acted on its own to patch the backdoor, but we think it’s unlikely.”

Primrose pinched her eyes shut and sighed. “So, what then.”

“We’re blind, ma’am. It could be some time before we find another way in, and there’s no guarantee the next method will have anywhere near the efficacy as the Shelter flaw did.”

In other words, the next Stable to collapse might end up doing so on their own without the traditional Enclave welcoming party stationed outside. That wasn’t a problem. It was an existential threat. It meant the Steel Rangers had as good if not better odds of finding the next failed Stable as the Enclave did unless they could find a way back into Stable-Tec’s densely encrypted network. That could take months.

Realistically, years.

“Clover, why don’t you ever bring me good news?”

“I’m afraid that isn’t my job, ma’am.”

She chuckled grimly at the touch of levity in his voice. Her Director of Security was one of those rare few pegasi who had earned her respect. He didn’t fear her like most ponies did, and she had suspicions that he didn’t truly believe the dogma she’d surrounded herself with once the balefire burned itself out. What he did do was understand his role within the Enclave and performed it effectively. Director Clover wasn’t a stallion who minced words. He said what he believed needed to be said whether or not it was what Primrose wanted to hear.

And because he did it so well, he’d gradually become her official bearer of bad news. She liked him for that.

She set her Pip-Buck in her sweat-slickened lap and sighed. “Have a team look over the most recent data from the remaining Stables and prioritize the three most likely candidates for collapse. Figure out whether we can adjust some of the existing patrol routes to give our scouts a clear view on those doors, if at all possible. I want eyes on them until we can reconnect with the network.”

“Yes ma’am.” A pause, then a quiet thank you to someone in the room with Clover. “Our records show Stable 48 being next in line to open. They’re due about two years from now.”

“Which one was that?”

“One second. That was the Eternal Youth Experiment designed by one Aria Blaze, ma’am.”

It took her a moment to remember the name, but when she did she made a disdainful noise. “I thought that project failed decades ago.”

“It doesn’t appear so, although 48 did have struggles early on.”

“Sturdy little things.” She shook her head, wondering why she’d signed off on that disaster. Then again, Aria had been a well spoken mare. Even now, she remembered her argument for the project being strangely hypnotic, as if giving Millie control of a small fleet of experimental robots to watch over a Stable packed with foals wasn’t crazy. As if instructing the A.I. to fatally poison each filly and colt to reach the age of sixteen wasn’t monstrous. A Stable run by children.

Dark, dark thoughts. She tried not to dwell on it.

“Any word from our runaway out east?”

She could picture Clover shaking his head. “Dancer and Chops have yet to reestablish contact with former lieutenant Julip, however during their last check-in they suggested Aurora may be headed to Fillydelphia to contact the local Ranger group stationed there for aid.”

“Hm.” With a quiet grunt, she swung her hind legs over the side of her bed and used the satin bed sheet to wipe herself off, her Pip-Buck cupped in her empty wing. “I could have sworn we were helping her.”

“She wouldn’t be the first pony who tried spending both sides of the same cap.”

Fair. She frowned at the translucent smear now darkening her sheet and tossed it aside. “Can’t blame her for trying, if that’s really what she’s there for.”

“It holds more water than the broken chip Lieutenant Julip almost sold you on.”

“Har-har.” She rolled her eyes. “That mare spent how many years down in the archives and the best lie she could glue together was that Aurora came out here looking for a water chip. What is a water chip supposed to be?”

“Lazy writing, ma’am.” Judging by his tone, Clover was already moving to check the next box on his list. “While I have you, ma’am, I wanted to ask whether you still want Julip involved in this op. Dancer has expressed an interest in taking her place, and from a security standpoint I feel it would be best to make the transition sooner rather than later.”

She had to resist the urge to cut him off. They’d been over this already.

“No.” She stared at the folded black and white flag in its little display box on her dresser as if speaking directly to it. “At this point we know Aurora has little reason to trust the Rangers courtesy of Elder Coldbrook and his ilk. The fact that she was willing to make contact with us at all speaks volumes. It means whatever drove Aurora out of that Stable is important enough for her to forego the local propaganda and give us a chance at cooperation. Tearing Julip away from her now could spoil that charitable spirit. For now, the goal is to reestablish contact and observe from a distance.”

Clover was silent for a beat, but his disagreement was deafening. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Clover?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

She slid her Pip-Buck onto her foreleg and smiled at its flawless design. “Trust me. I’ve been at this for a long time.”

Sweetie Belle lay curled on her bed, head sunken into pillows, her tired eyes slitted just enough to see the three of them gathered at the open door. She looked exhausted, Roach thought, as if being led around the Stable among unfamiliar faces had taken a physical toll on her. When the door slid open, she hadn’t gotten up. She simply rolled over, brow tucked into an irritated furrow, and watched.

“Is her condition common for, um... “

“Ghouls,” he said, shaking his head as he spoke. “No, not to my knowledge. I’ve only seen it once.”

“Your friend,” Applebloom recalled from their discussion on the way back up. “Blue.”

He nodded, torn between wanting to protect Rainbow Dash and the gnawing obligation he felt to tell Applebloom the truth. In those early months after the landslide the two of them had opened up to one another about the more private aspects of their lives. He’d told her about his husband and daughter and the life they had together, and she’d confided in him her regret for pursuing Applejack’s affection sooner than she had.

Telling Applebloom that her sister’s closest companion was alive was tempting, and a large part of him wanted to be responsible for the romanticized, tearful reunion he pictured in his head. That, unfortunately, was not a risk he had the right to take. There was a reason he’d forced himself to start calling her Blue. One slip-up would be all it took to ignite the rumor mill. Whispers of an Element of Harmony who survived the bombs would spread like a fire, and it wouldn’t be long until someone got up the nerve to start digging and put together enough fragments from the old world to find out Rainbow Dash had been registered to Stable 10. A Stable buried by a long forgotten landslide in a quiet pocket of Equestria frequented by a changeling ghoul who somehow survived the bombs but whose home was a closely guarded secret.

The Enclave and Rangers were already prepared to kill one another over old tech. He didn’t want to think what they might resort to if they learned one of the six Bearers was still alive.

“She’s a lot like Blue,” he agreed, resting a shoulder against the open door frame. Sweetie Belle’s eyes turned toward him, blinking slowly as she drifted closer to sleep.

“She’s never talked to me since the decay took over,” Applebloom sighed. “Not even a little. What makes you think she can?”

Roach glanced back to where Ginger waited in the hallway, pursing his lips into an apologetic smile for making her wait. He knew she wanted to get topside to break the good news to Aurora. So did he. She smiled back, understanding, though she wasn’t able to completely hide the impatience in her eyes.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, turning back to Applebloom. “Not for sure. What I do know is that Sweetie Belle doesn’t behave like feral ghouls should. She lets you put her on a leash. She only gets agitated when Ginger and I get too close. I don’t think I’m too far off in thinking she’s guarding you.”

Applebloom stared across the room at Sweetie and sighed. “I guess you’re right. I didn’t know that was abnormal.”

“If it’s anything, it’s a good sign. You said she was your friend so there could be a part of her in there that remembers you. Try talking to her more. Tell her stories that might resonate with her. You use singing to cope, don’t you? Maybe there’s a song she likes. Try anything that she could use to pull herself back to the surface with.”

He lifted a hoof, gesturing at the almost cozy transformation of the conference room. “You made a home for the two of you, and that’s something I wasn’t able to do for Blue. Maybe this is what keeps her from going completely feral. Maybe it’s not. What I do know is that talking worked for us.”

She wrinkled her nose at the floor. “Yeah. Okay.”

Something about her tone caught his attention. He frowned. “Something bothering you?”

It was probably the most obvious question he could ask, but he decided it needed to be asked. Stuck in a Stable for two hundred years with no one to talk to except the vacant husk of a friend and the feral residents locked within their compartments would leave anyone with enough problems to make a therapist’s head explode. This wasn’t that. Up until now, Applebloom had been a jittery, nervous, yet otherwise supportive pony. Even as they spoke during their walk back to the first level, she seemed genuinely excited at the possibility of “fixing” Sweetie Belle, as she put it. This was different.

“Applebloom?”

She blinked. “Sorry. Sorry, sorry. Just thinking… about whether talking might work for Scoots.”

Applebloom had spoken only sparingly about Scootaloo until now. He glanced at Ginger to see if maybe she’d picked up on something he hadn’t. She only shrugged in return.

“You said earlier that she attacks the walls sometimes. Do you think it could become an issue when you start working with Sweetie Belle?”

“Scoots only does that if she hears something she doesn’t recognize… which is a lot. I think. I don’t know for sure. She’s… hard to explain. Easier if I just show you.”

Ginger piped up. “I’m not so sure agitating your friend is a good idea, dear.”

But Applebloom was already backing out of the door, her mind set. “It’s okay, she’s slow-slow-sl-… fuckin’ stop it, she’s slower than she used to be. A lot of ‘em are.”

Roach stepped out of the doorway, allowing her to toggle the switch that sealed Sweetie Belle inside. As they followed her down a short length of corridor and around a corner that seemed to follow the walls of the now closed conference room, Ginger gave him a look that appeared to be asking him to offer some polite objection which might let them bow out of the unexpected detour. He couldn’t think of anything, nor did he particularly want to.

The short hall stopped at a dead end, but it was as if there was a gentle gravity pulling him along. He could feel the long dulled edges of his senses wake up as soon as his first hoof settled into the hall’s worn carpet. The walls here, veneered in cracked wood panels and yellowed framed photos of old Equestrian landmarks, were devoid of Applebloom’s ever present graffiti. He thought maybe he was tricking himself. That his sudden awareness of the air filling his lungs, the tickle of fibers against the soles of his hooves, and the bright scent of something floral in the recycled air had always been there and he was only just now paying attention.

It felt… strange. Like the unsettled feeling that follows vertigo.

At the end of the short hall waited a genuine wooden door. No heavy duty hydraulic switch, no miniaturized blast door. Just a dark slab of knotty alder and a single brass handle. A tarnished brass plate rested on the grain at eye level.

As Applebloom turned the handle, Roach picked up on two small details. First, the nameplate had been fastened with rivets, which meant the door had a metallic core. Second, a small black hemisphere mounted above the door had been marred with deep, white toolmarks. A piece of the plastic dome had broken off and he could see the glint of a lens through the gap. In spite of Millie’s security, Applebloom showed an unbending drive to open the doors which were closed to her.

Applebloom pushed the door open, the wood veneer grinding against the frame. Ginger lit her horn, the two of them staying in the hall while Applebloom ventured in. The fluorescents were dead, making it seem as if the office was swallowing her whole. That sensation of clarity grew stronger when Roach poked his head inside to get a better look. The half-light from the hall behind them only stretched so far making it difficult to make out any details, a problem Ginger quickly remedied by casting a mote of amber light inside. It filled the space with arcane torchlight, revealing an office in shambles and the ghoul who made it that way.

Roach breathed a disappointed sigh when he spotted the withered husk of what had once been Scootaloo. Curled in the far corner, she was already in the process of getting to her hooves. Her atrophied limbs cracked and popped as they gradually straightened, skin like cracked leather stretching apart as she pivoted her gaunt frame toward them. A filthy strip of pink ribbon clung to her skull in a rough blindfold. Roach didn’t have to ask why. He knew. He’d seen what happened to ghouls when they reached the last years of their unnaturally extended lives. The way their bodies gave up moisture a thimble at a time, thinning until they resembled living skeletons dressed in their own desiccated skin. And yet it was the eyes that were the worst affected. Like grapes on their way to becoming raisins. The blindfold had been a small mercy on Applebloom’s part.

Scootaloo attempted to navigate the mess, her hooves shuffling across carpet so disheveled that it had been worn through to the padding beneath in some places. Her shoulder struck the corner of her desk, eliciting a frustrated noise from her throat that sounded nothing like language. When they got this far along, it never did. He’d seen it happen in the tunnel and he’d come across ferals in the wasteland who fared even worse.

She was gone. Had been for a long, long time.

“Hey, Scoots.” Applebloom stepped toward her, placing a hoof at the center of her withered chest. She stopped, her head drawn to the sound of Applebloom’s voice, and reached for the mare with the small, molting stalks that had once been her wings.

Applebloom tilted her neck away to stay out of range of the probing appendages. “I brought visitors that wuh-wuh-want to meet you. Isn’t that nice?”

Roach stepped inside while keeping one eye on the feeble ghoul, ready to step in should it try to strike out with one of its heavily bandaged hooves. A discolored path drew a line from the far corner of the office, around the overturned desk, and toward the opposite corner where several shelves had been snapped off the wall, making way for the deep gouges and dark smears where Scootaloo had beaten her hooves bloody in an attempt to reach the strange noises coming from the conference room beyond.

A fine layer of dust had settled on every surface he saw, telling him it had been some time since Scootaloo had moved around. Several framed photos lay broken on the floor, the shards of glass crushed and kicked to the edges of that single path. Roach swept his hoof over one such photo, clearing the dust away to reveal the grinning faces of three young mares spattered with paint. They stood together on a ramp leading up to a low built treehouse, something they no doubt had some help building. He glanced at Applebloom and her far gone friend and quickly saw the resemblance.

“His name is Roach,” Applebloom continued. “And she’s Ginger. They came from the outside. I’m helping them fix their friend’s Stable.”

He glanced to the doorway where Ginger stood, then made his way to a section of wall that had been spared the worst of Scootaloo’s early violence. A simple, inornate bookcase with hinged glass windows protecting each shelf stood alone, filled with mementos of an accomplished mare’s life. A purple and white striped helmet rested alongside a family photo of Scootaloo with her aging parents. On the shelf below that, a well worn square of fabric knotted into a cape lay patched with a faded blue emblem, matching the capes worn by the three fillies in the broken picture frame.

The rest of the display was dominated by Wonderbolt memorabilia. Plastic figurines of Equestria’s prominent flyers struck powerful poses inside their unopened boxes. Neatly folded programs collected from over a dozen individual shows promised the expert acrobatics and flying the Wonderbolts had been known for before the war. Past those, Scootaloo’s collection took on a more singular focus. A fabric patch in the shape of a cloud and rainbow lightning bolt sat beside an autographed photo of a young Rainbow Dash. A pair of flight goggles and a suspiciously blue feather lay together as well. Photos of the two of them together, initially with a starry-eyed Scootaloo staring up at her idol which slowly transitioned to the calmer grins of two close friends, clustered along the lower shelves.

There wasn’t much else to see except the remnants of a dead mare’s life. Slowly, he made his way back to the door.

“She’s not dead.”

Roach paused and looked at Applebloom as if she’d somehow read his thoughts. Her eyes were still on her feral friend, her gentle pressure keeping Scootaloo from closing the last few inches.

“I know it looks… bad. But she ain’t gone yet.” She leaned away, unfazed by the snap of the ghoul’s teeth. “Whatever it is that causes the decay, it’s like when fall comes. All the leaves turn color and fall off. Ain’t pretty, and not all the trees make it through the winter, but most of ‘em do. They’re just waiting, you know? Waiting for the thaw, so they can turn green again.”

There was hardly any emotion when she spoke. She recited the words as simple facts that every pony should know. An unwavering belief that whatever afflicted ghouls was something that could be cured. Roach chewed the inside of his cracked lips. It was a pretty comparison, but it failed to resonate. Ghouling wasn’t a form of natural dormancy. It wasn’t something that could be cured by medicine or magic. Applebloom had been right the first time. It was decay.

He nudged the door all the way open, signalling that it was time for them to head out. A lump of moss colored leather got caught in the jamb before the knob could touch the wall. “For what it’s worth, Applebloom, I hope you’re right.”

“I know I’m right,” she affirmed. “Once Millie compiles all my notes, I’m going to find a way to prove it, too.”

He nodded as he peeked at the back side of the door where an old jacket hung from one of the hooks. One of the sleeves was caught in the pinch. He gave it a quick tug, pulling it loose. The rest of the jacket swung out like a pendulum and landed against the wood with a peculiar thud. His scavenger’s instincts kicking in, he started poking around the pockets.

“If you do make progress, you’ll want to be careful contacting the surface.” He opened the old jacket, inspecting the lining. “Between the Enclave and the Steel Rangers you could draw a lot of dangerous attention.”

“I built Robronco Industries from my studio apartment in full view of two extremely old fashioned princesses. I know all about dangerous attention.”

Spare nothing for the feral ghoul who currently wanted nothing more than to feed itself with the softer parts of her face. Roach shook his head and turned his attention to the conspicuous sag in the jacket’s left breast pocket. Lacking feathers or nontoxic magic, he hooked the tip of his horn under the pocket’s bottom seam and tipped out the contents.

It slid out onto his waiting hoof with barely a sound. The corner of his lip quirked in confusion. A moment passed, then recognition struck like a hammer. His eyes flicked up to the old flight jacket that bore the faded but unmistakable emblem of the Wonderbolts on the shoulder. Four block style letters spelled the name DASH across the right flap.

His heart jumped into his throat. Resting in his trembling hooves lay a ruby cut into a perfect bolt of lightning: The Element of Loyalty.

He didn’t think. His hooves moved on instinct alone. Chest pounding, he swiftly slipped the gemstone under the flap of his saddlebag. It barely made a sound, but he held his breath anyway as he stole a look toward Applebloom. The ghoul’s attention was still on her friend, unaware of the theft.

It wasn’t stealing, he convinced himself. This was different. He’d spent most of his life caring for the mare the gem belonged to. Her Element, presumed lost during her final flight to the shelter of Stable 10, had been here the whole time. Waiting, he decided.

He cleared his throat. “We should get going before Aurora thinks about swimming down after us.”

“Huh?” Applebloom turned in time to see him stepping out into the hallway. “Oh. Okay then. Let me just put Scootaloo to bed and I… guess I’ll show you out?”

Roach looked back through the door with measured caution. “Put her to bed?”

“Mmhm. Back up, Scoots. That’s it.”

They watched Applebloom press more firmly into Scootaloo’s chest, forcing the mare to take a step backward. Then another. When she finally corralled the frail ghoul into the corner she quickly pivoted, replacing her foreleg with her hind to keep her from advancing. Scootaloo jabbered out a frustrated growl, searching with her teeth for the offending limb. Applebloom had opened a drawer in the former overmare’s desk and now held a narrow autoinjector between her teeth. Another quick pivot and she was facing her friend, front hoof gently pressing her muzzle away while she sank the needle into her neck.

If Scootaloo felt the injection, she made no indication. Over a span of a few seconds the noises she made slowed, her vascular system betraying her as it ferried the chemical cocktail toward her brain. Roach said nothing as he watched Applebloom wrap a leg around the ghoul’s ribs, catching her modest weight as the muscles in her legs relaxed and settling her to the ground where she lay when they first arrived.

“What was that?”

Syringe still between her teeth, she spoke around it as if it weren’t there at all.

“Catatone.” She opened another drawer and dropped the used syringe in with several others, then closed both. “It’s the only thing that puts her down long enough to forget what bothered her in the first place.”

“And she’ll be okay?”

She regarded him with a deprecating smirk. “She’ll be sleeping it off for an hour or two. You’ll be heading back to Stable 10 by then, right?”

He nodded. “Right.”

“Take her jacket with you.”

His mouth opened, but the question he was going to ask evaporated under the glare of her level gaze. He nodded, hesitantly, and retrieved Rainbow’s flight jacket from its hook. Ginger shot him a strange look as he held it out for her to take, bewildered by the silent exchange. Then her eyes widened as she read the name under the lapel, and she quickly went about carefully folding it into a shape that would fit neatly within her own bag.

He licked his lips. “I wasn’t…”

“Ten was Dash’s Stable. I’m guessing there’s a few descendants of hers in there who’d appreciate having an heirloom or two to remember her by.” Her eyes followed the jacket as it slid into Ginger’s saddlebag. With it tucked away, she pulled the door shut and stepped past them. “C’mon. Let’s get you back to your friends.”

Before he could think of anything to say, the two mares were already walking down the hall. The moment was gone, so he followed.

He took his usual position of waiting off to the side while Ginger stepped into her power armor, listening to the light conversation that passed between her and Applebloom as they made sure the internal padding wouldn’t crush her saddlebags as the panels closed. He said nothing, quietly noting that the floor was still generously puddled with crater water from his unpleasant arrival. They couldn’t have been down here for more than a few hours and yet somehow it felt like they’d spent most of the day. Or maybe he was just tired.

With thank yous and goodbyes shared between them, Roach toggled open the door to the surface and followed Ginger inside. Applebloom waved as the door slid back down. Once it sealed, Roach set his jaw and lit his horn.

“So are you going to tell me what happened between you two back there?”

Lit by the sickly glow of his magic, the plug of metamorphosed mud and rubble began to flow clockwise like tree pitch. “Later. Once I have time to think about it.”

He could feel her helmet’s unflinching gaze boring into him and did his best to shrug it off. Ginger hadn’t endured those first years when Rainbow would emerge from Blue’s fog and go into the same panic, over and over again, when she saw the empty socket of her necklace. The gibbering disbelief as he worked to remind her day after day that there was no point in searching the tunnel ruins for her Element because he knew it wasn’t there. He’d noticed its absence well before the collapse, when she’d gone into a panic at the sight of the blast door sealed with hundreds of others screaming to be let in. Others had noticed too. The Element of Loyalty, here, without her elemental stone.

He nor Rainbow ever said it aloud, but both of them knew her arrival at the Stable in the state she was in was a large part of why so many stranded ponies gave up hope so quickly.

Water began to spill into the hivelike tubule, pooling around their hooves and rising steadily. Ginger’s attention turned away from him to focus instead on the rapid dissolution of the plug above. This stage of their journey was over, he decided. He would have time to reckon with his decisions later. Maybe, when he was able to place Rainbow’s gemstone into her wing, he would find a way to send a message back to Applebloom. Maybe.

As trapped air and inrushing water churned around them in a fizzing deluge, he followed the swarm of bubbles upwards. Ginger stayed close behind.

“Apogee, Control. O₂ flow check.”

“Control, I see O₂ flow showing nominal.”

“Affirmative, Apogee. We see you nominal down here, too. Flight Surgeon is giving you authorization for EVA. Whenever you’re ready.”

Apogee held herself steady in the cramped airlock by placing her hooves onto the slightly magnetized strips marked in black on the “floor.” She owned screwdriver sets with stronger magnets than the ones keeping her oriented, but the point wasn’t to lock her in place. It was to keep her from flailing her hooves for purchase in a confined space whose only notable features were manual switches that controlled the pressurization and depressurization of the module. Similar black markings ringed the otherwise white cylinder in regular intervals, but the ones she stood on now bore small white pips in their centers. Zero gravity or not, this was what JSA had decided to call the bottom of the airlock. Standing here, all the warnings and control labels stood right side up.

“Affirmative, Control.” She took a slow, deep breath and stared at the hatch in front of her. Three inches of precision engineered titanium were all that separated her from the vacuum of space, a hostile void that contained nothing and everything at the same time. Secured in a suit perfected by her mother, flown up on a craft designed by her father, a part of her was keenly aware she was about to cement her broken family into the ledgers of not just Equestrian history, but world history. Ponies, zebras, gryphons… even the changelings would come to know her name in the coming days. It was terrifying to think about, so she stopped thinking about it. History could wait. She had a job to do.

“Affirmative,” she repeated. “Depressurizing now.”

She reached over and gave a marked valve on the wall a quarter turn. Somewhere on the hull, atmosphere hissed into the black sky. A gauge mounted over the valve tracked the drop in airlock pressure while the rest of the crew, safe inside their module, watched for any signs that the inner hatch was leaking.

“Seals look good,” Cloudbreaker chirped over comms. “I have you down to eight point one psi, Apogee.”

“Seven point seven,” she answered back as the needle continued down. After a few seconds she said, “two point zero psi. Suit pressure is holding at four point three. No leaks. Kinda feel like a balloon animal.”

“Apogee, Control. Verify good mobility.”

With her chin off the comm toggle, she groaned. “Me and my fat mouth.”

She dutifully went about the required steps that had been drilled into her head back when she was still swimming in the neutral buoyancy lab in Las Pegasus. Lift one leg, then the others. Extend one hoof, then the others. Twist, turn, bend and flex. She could hear the muffled swish of fabric when one leg swiped past the other, but the sound was coming from the suit itself and not from outside her helmet. She’d been told that sound wouldn’t travel in a vacuum but to actually experience it was eerie. As the last ounces of pressure were vacated from the airlock, she couldn’t help but marvel at the sheer silence that greeted her.

“Control,” she said, startled by the dominating volume of her own voice, “ah, Control, mobility is nominal. Pressure reads zero point zero psi. Confirm go to disengage outside airlock.”

“Apogee, Control. You are go for EVA.”

She blew out a long sigh. “Here goes.”

Taking a step forward, she reached out to the controls and set her hoof over a red painted handle a few inches away from the pressure valve. A flex from her right wing sent a signal to the suit’s mechanical digits which wrapped around the textured bar. She swallowed, held her breath, and pulled it all the way down.

Down on Equus, the simulated hatch had always emitted a chunky, metallic sound that signalled a clean and successful unlocking sequence. Here in the vacuum, she heard nothing. For a split second she worried the sequence failed, but the background chatter coming in from mission control reassured her otherwise. Stepping forward with her hind hooves, she grasped the bars mounted to the hatch and pushed.

The titanium lid swung toward the stars and she stepped out into the void.

Julip’s torso bucked with discomfort, wrenching her back to consciousness just in time for her to retch up the clot tickling her chest. Agony radiated out from her ribs as she vomited a vile mash of apple skins and jellied blood, milking a low groan from her as she flopped back onto the rocks.

When she came around again she barely had the strength to lift her head this time. She gagged, uselessly, until a foam of bloody bile trickled into the dirt. She swallowed, coughed, and groaned again as fresh throbs of pain twisted her into a fetal ball. Some vestigial corner of her brain knew this is what dying felt like. This wasn’t a busted leg or some wasteland disease that would knock her down for a few weeks. This was life ending.

Her chest burned for air, so she breathed. Her mouth cracked open with a pitious cry at the sensation of fire cradling the left side of her chest. The helpless feeling of her lung being squeezed together no matter how hard she tried to get more air. The feeling of drowning. The pain forced a hard cough from a body struggling to try anything that might dislodge the hurt, and a stupid thought crossed her mind: she didn’t want to die in discomfort.

She split her lips in a silent laugh. Screw discomfort. She didn’t want to die, period.

Not that she had much choice. That grey maned asshole signed her death warrant when he pulled the trigger. What she’d give for the chance to jam the muzzle of that pistol up his shitpipe and fire off a few rounds herself. Fucking Rangers for killing her. Fucking Primrose for forcing her to come out here in the first place. Fucking herself for letting her guard down.

Sluggish as her thoughts were, she opened her eyes and began to realize something. She was still alive. Alive enough to puke and breathe, anyway. With a grimace she lifted her head a few inches off the stones and slowly absorbed the reality that she’d been left to die. No one else was here. No Rangers, no Aurora, no…

“Fuck,” she hissed.

Aurora.

She dropped her head back to the dirt, coughed again and gasped for more air. Her heart was pounding in her head now, clawing at her skull for oxygen. Pushing down the pain she gasped again, doing her best to fill her lungs. The others didn’t know what happened and the Rangers had been careful to cover their tracks. Giving up wasn’t an option. Not until Roach and Ginger knew who’d taken Aurora. She needed to buy herself time.

She lifted her head again, this time to assess her condition. The first thing she noticed was that she’d fallen on her left side. The bomb blasted soil beneath her torso was dark with drying blood, as was the leather jacket she used to cover her wings. Precious little of it was fresh. Playing back the ambush in her head, she realized she’d been allowed to lay on the same side she’d been shot on. Lifting her free wing, the bloodsoaked jacket slid away from a ragged exit wound just behind the crux of her right foreleg. Pink froth bubbled out of it with each breath.

She would have laughed if she didn’t think the pain would make her black out. He’d aimed for her heart at point blank range and missed. Got her lung though. Needed to fix that before she blacked out and didn’t wake up.

Plug the hole. She looked to the ridge she and Aurora had sat on and mumbled profanity at the glaring absence of their saddlebags. Fuckers. No options there. She sure as shit didn’t have anything tucked away in her jacket pockets. But she did have the jacket. And her jacket did have a fabric lining.

Okay. Okay, that was something.

She couldn’t do this lying down, but she didn’t relish the idea of getting up from where she lay either. Or dying. Especially not dying. And right now, not dying involved getting up.

Before she had time to think about hesitating, she rolled herself onto her belly and screamed through clenched teeth. Every damaged nerve and bruised muscle sang as if being dragged up by a cluster of rusty hooks. As soon as the pain started to subside she moved again, dragging herself up onto one hoof and then the other. Standing on wobbling legs, she took an unsure step toward the ridge. Then another. It was agony.

She managed to stumble close enough to the concrete ridge to catch it when she finally fell. Her butt hit the dirt hard enough to knock what little wind she had left out of her lung. Whimpering through the hurt, she scooted back until she thumped against it. She’d traveled all of maybe twenty feet. There was no doubt in her mind she wouldn’t be able to muster that strength again.

She bent forward and used her wings to flip the jacket over her head, pulling her forelegs out of the sleeves as quickly as her body would tolerate. When it came off she went to work, using her teeth to tear strips out of the lining. Once she had a few good rags of fabric in her lap, she tossed the jacket aside and began rolling several scraps into a ball with her feathers.

Julip hesitated, but only briefly. Then she shoved the lining deep into the sucking wound.

She wasn’t proud of the sound she made.

When the tears stopped and the world slowed its spinning, she risked a glance down at her work. The knot of brownish cloth stared back up at her from its new home like an unwelcome lesion, forming an imperfect seal. It would have to do. She barely had enough energy for the next part.

Turning her head to her other side, she saw what she feared had happened. Getting up from the ground had broken open the clot which kept the entry wound closed. A bright, thick river of fresh blood oozed out onto the rocks. Maybe this hadn’t been a good idea after all. Maybe she should have stayed put until help arrived. If help arrived.

Her chin lolled across her sternum and she frowned at the remaining rags in her lap, confusion making it difficult to remember their purpose. Everything hurt too much. She blinked, slowly. Alarm bells started sounding in her head, screaming at her not to go to sleep. Her half-lidded eyes guided her feathers toward the scraps. Watched as she muddled them into something resembling a loose ball. Winced at the distant sensation of pain when it contacted the seeping wound.

She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed down on the knotted scraps. They sank into her. If she screamed, she didn’t remember. She was out before her head touched the ground.

Climbing up the silty embankment was frustrating work, but Ginger only needed to look up toward the water’s surface to reassure herself that she was making progress. A few yards ahead of her Roach dog-paddled through the daylit murk, pausing to watch her as she slogged uphill until she drew close enough for him to swim further away to mark her next waypoint toward shore. Algae-coated mud, gravel and glassy shards of once molten stone broke apart with every step, stirring up a dirty cloud that seemed to chase her forward. A younger Ginger might have compared the mesmerizing scene beyond her helmet to the pictures drawn in one of her mother’s fairy tale books, but the noises her power armor made dispelled any feelings of whimsy.

When Roach broke the surface she expected he would wait in the shallows for her, but when the silt he kicked up thinned he was nowhere to be seen. Disappointed and, admittedly, a little irritated with him she stomped up the last few yards alone. As her armor finally breached the water she could see he’d led her up to roughly the same piece of shoreline where they’d first entered the crater pond. Within the space of the same breath she spotted Roach a good fifty or so yards up the shallow slope, water still flowing off his chitin as he frantically worked to undo his saddlebags. At his hooves, motionless, in a dark pool of what had to be her own blood lay Julip.

Her stomach dropped. She looked left, then right for any sign of Aurora but there wasn’t one. Julip was here, but Aurora wasn’t. She was gone.

“Ginger, get over here! She’s been shot!”

There was pain in his voice that was uncharacteristic for him. She tried to gallop but the suit was sluggish, then as if to add insult to injury it slipped on the wet rocks along the shoreline. Roach was yelling for her to hurry up even as he upended his bags to get at the first aid kit inside. A bolt of anger struck as she stumbled in the armor. Furious, she lit her horn and cast magic on herself. The helmet’s visor promptly vanished, replaced by a rush of air and a very startled changeling just a few feet away.

She hardly noticed his reaction or the metallic crunch of the now empty power armor toppling to the ground. Her attention was torn between the bloodied green mare collapsed in front of her and the crushing absence of the pegasus she couldn’t find.

Julip was hurt. Badly. A lump of cloth, glossy with blood, stuck out of a bullet wound in her chest like someone’s twisted idea of a rose. Already, Roach had his ear pressed to her muzzle, eyes wide with fear as he listened for life. After what felt like minutes but couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, he regained a sliver or two of composure as he retrieved a stimpack from the kit.

Ginger’s eyes darted across the blasted ruins as the autoinjector triggered, hissing as it pumped Julip full of healing compounds. They were the only ones here. Whoever did this had left Julip for dead.

“I don’t see Aurora,” she murmured. When Roach didn’t respond, she repeated herself. “Roach, I don’t see her.”

“We’ll find her. One thing at a time.”

Between them, Julip’s abdomen bucked weakly as she coughed out a froth of blood.

Ginger felt the weight of this new reality start settling over her like dark soil atop a casket. Her thoughts started racing. Stepping back from where Julip lay, her first assumption was that the two mares had gotten into a fight with one another. Her throat went dry. Julip had already shown she could be abrasive enough to prompt Aurora to attack her. Aurora wasn’t a large mare, but she was larger than Julip. Left alone with no one to stop her, she could have easily overpowered her. Shot her.

“Ginger, stimpacks won’t fix this. She needs a doctor.”

She ignored him, spinning again in another frantic circle as she absorbed the scene around her. The rocky soil had been heavily disturbed in several places, most notably where another dark, rusty stain had soaked into the dirt several yards away. Julip had fallen there first only to drag her way here where more crescent prints had packed the ground. Some, she realized, were much larger and pressed much more deeply than the others.

“Ginger!”

“Rangers were here,” she whispered. Her eyes widened, tears stinging them as realization dawned on her. “They were right here.”

“Damn the sun, Ginger, I have eyes too but I need you with me right now or Julip is going to die!”

His patience with her was gone. She could hear it in his voice and see it in the way he was glaring up at her. He needed her help, right now, but she was at odds between knowing what she should be doing to help and the anguish she felt at Aurora’s unexplained absence. She wanted to race around the rim of the pond screaming her name in hopes that she might come out from wherever she was hiding. Worse, she wanted to leave Julip here to do it. But Roach wouldn’t forgive her if she did. Something told her Aurora wouldn’t, either.

Slowly, she exhaled, and looked down where Julip lay.

“What do I do?”

Whether Roach understood the question beneath the question, he didn’t say. “She’s lungshot and she’s lost a lot of blood. We need to get her back to the city. I saw a doctor’s office on the strip when we first passed through, but she needed to be there an hour ago.”

Comprehending, she nodded. “You lead, I carry.”

“Good.” In a gesture that seemed more befitting of a father and his sleeping child, Roach used the ridge of his hoof to clear the black mat of mane from Julip’s face. “Don’t move her too much. We could lose her if she starts bleeding again.”

Trying to instill calm among her whirling thoughts felt like keeping a candle lit inside a hurricane. Still, she tried. Magic swirled around her horn and encompassed Julip’s crumpled form. The unconscious mare lifted from the stained soil without so much as a muttered groan, gently pinned into position by a weak version of Ginger’s shield spell.

As soon as she was off the ground, Roach threw on his saddlebags and loped into a steady gallop. Ginger followed with their casualty in tow, heading east toward the tilting towers of Fillydelphia. As she drew close to him, she asked the only question on her mind.

“What about Aurora?”

The expression that flickered across Roach’s face wasn’t reassuring. Then again, there was nothing reassuring about what the two of them had just walked into. Julip and Aurora had very recently been paid a visit by Rangers, leaving one of them nearly shot to death and the latter missing completely. Ginger’s gut wrenched at this feeling of utter helplessness. That whatever happened had done so right above their heads while they strolled the corridors of Stable-Tec HQ. In truth, nothing Roach could say would reassure her because in their absence something had gone horribly wrong. All they could do now was salvage the pieces they could, however they could.

“We can ask Julip exactly what happened when she wakes up.” Roach arced around the rusted frame of a burned out carriage, his eyes set on the city ahead. “For the time being, we assume the Steel Rangers are hostile and plan accordingly. Agreed?”

Jumping a wide crevice in the charred asphalt, she looked to Julip and the wadded rags that she’d stuffed into her wounds. If anyone knew where Aurora had gone, it would be Julip. Everything hinged on keeping this former soldier of the Enclave alive.

Furious tears stung at her eyes. She hated this. Hated that she couldn’t be indulged in a single moment of screaming panic. That they didn’t have the luxury of time. She picked up the pace, despising every step of it.

“We’ll find her, Ginger.”

She grit her teeth and nodded.

“We’d better.”

“Put it down in there.”

Aurora’s world lurched as the trunk she’d been shoved into dropped to the ground. Her first thought upon seeing the old steamer was that they were going to bury her in it like the masked villains in her Appleoosan westerns, and it took everything she had in her to keep it together. She had screamed and fought against Ironshod’s magic and even managed to land a faltering kick across the cheek of one of his stallions, but it only worked against her in the short term. More unicorns stepped forward to press her into the trunk, forcing her mouth open as they did so another could stuff a ball of filthy rags between her jaws to stop her making noise. With her wings belted to her sides and a gag knotted painfully tight behind her head, she was shoved into the trunk and forced to watch the heavy lid come down on top of her.

The panic attack that gripped her when she first felt the trunk moving was something she wouldn’t forget. For what felt like hours she lost all control, screaming through her gag until her throat burned while convinced she was going to slowly suffocate in this musty container. At one point she’d attempted to kick through the panel closest to her hind legs, prompting her bearers to stop and unlock the lid just enough to press the muzzle of her own rifle through the opening. Ironshod warned her to stop, his silver magic gripping her trigger as he spoke. She stopped.

From then on she didn’t make a sound, resolving to listen instead. At first there wasn’t much to overhear. Ironshod and his soldiers kept quiet company for the majority of the journey leaving her to listen to the muffled crunch of rubble resolve into the firm click-clack of hooves on a cleanly paved surface. Soon she could hear murmured voices and the sound of a radio playing music she didn’t recognize. They were in the city, she realized, and the temptation to start kicking the lid of the trunk was immense. Ironshod wouldn’t shoot her with so many witnesses around, would he?

The image of Julip’s body jerking at the crack of his pistol made her reconsider. This was Ranger territory. She doubted it would be hard for him to claim he had put down an Enclave pegasus. He might even earn a medal.

The trunk tipped and she felt herself being carried down a flight of stairs. Doors creaked open and closed behind them and it seemed as if her bearers were allowing themselves to relax a little. Hoofsteps spread away from her, throats were cleared and a low hum of quiet conversation echoed against the walls of her cramped container. Distantly, she could hear the rapid putter of a small engine that sounded a lot like the generators back in Kiln. It seemed strange to her that Ironshod would need a little misfiring generator when the Rangers had access to better tech, but the thought fled from her mind as soon as she heard him order her to be set down.

The trunk struck metal, startling a muffled yelp from her. Hooves clicked around her until finally an aura lit around the lid and lifted it open. Her eyes shut against the sudden rush of light as she was unceremoniously hoisted out of the trunk and dropped into a metal chair.

Rangers went to work around her as she forced one eye open against the glare. A single lightbulb burned at the end of a silver conduit, the glass cage surrounding it puddled with fetid yellow condensation. Empty wire racks stood against both walls on either side of her, sagging and caked in decades of rust. The room was long and narrow, enough so that the stallions zip strapping her to the chair had to be careful not to run into the racking as they maneuvered around her. It took several seconds before she recognized the room for what it was. She’d worked on her share of walk-in freezers back home and the faint scent of refrigerant was hard to misplace.

Directly in front of her stood Ironshod, his salted grey coat conspicuously unburdened by the uniform her first appeared to her in back at Blinder’s Bluff. He stared back at her, Desperate Times slung over his shoulder as if her rifle belonged to him. Behind his dispassionate glare, through the freezer’s only door, lay hers and Julip’s saddlebags in a heap.

“Comfortable?”

She winced as the straps around her hind legs were zipped tight against the chair. The gag in her mouth prevented her from saying anything, which for once was a good thing. She knew the trouble she was in and the answers she had for Ironshod would have earned her an early beating, so she glared instead.

The corner of his muzzle ticked upward into a smile. He was enjoying this because of course he was. With a gesture, the Rangers finished securing her and filed out of the freezer. Only Ironshod stayed behind.

“You broke your agreement, Aurora.” Light swirled around his horn, attaching itself to her chin and forcing her to look up at him. She jerked her head out of his grip, something Ironshod could never hope to do if Ginger ever got a hold of him. He looked unfazed by her defiance, his eyes sliding over her as he paced leisurely around her chair. She grimaced as she felt the warmth of his frame curling against her as he reappeared beside her. “That Pip-Buck you still wear was returned to you with conditions attached.”

Even in her current predicament it was hard not to scoff. He hadn’t given back her Pip-Buck so much as Fiona had blackmailed it straight out of his hooves.

He finished his lap in front of her, giving her a profile view of the middle-aged stallion and the glowing crucible marking his hip. “If I recall correctly, you were directed by Elder Coldbrook to make contact with the Enclave and… what was it again? That’s right, bring back the coordinates to SOLUS. Arguably not an easy task but a simple one. Two steps, Aurora, that was it, and you chose to betray us before taking the first.”

He glared down at her with nearly believable disappointment. “Siding with the Enclave? I knew Stable ponies were ignorant of the world but for you to stoop so low as to actually bargain with that fanatical cult is beyond reckoning. That mare you’ve been so eager to please? The so-called Minister Primrose? She’s just another silver-tongued ghoul who managed to tell the right lies to the right ponies. We know who she was before the war. She was a secretary. A glorified coffee pourer, not some deigned-from-the-great-beyond princess in waiting like she so cheerfully claims to be.”

At least she’s not threatening to pillage my fucking home, or at least that’s what she would have said were there not a lump of rags in the way.

He lifted a brow in response to her muffled retort. “The sooner you accept your mistake, Aurora, the sooner we can move past what comes next.”

She narrowed her eyes at him and mumbled her unintelligible answer. You’re going to die.

A part of Ironshod appeared to understand her meaning, and he smiled. “I’ll give you some time to think about it.”

With that, he turned and strode across the threshold and out of sight. Seconds later the silver door swung shut in front of her, its inner latch broken off, sealing her inside.

For what felt like minutes she could only hear the muffled tones of a conversation outside. Hoofsteps milled near the door and Aurora found herself squinting against the glare of the caged bulb overhead. Like they had when Sledge locked her in a cell back home, her thoughts turned to escape. If she could do it once, she could do it again.

A hard mechanical clunk from behind startled her, and she craned her neck around to see that the blades of three cooling fans had begun to spin. The noise brought a hard, stale wind that swirled against the cramped silver walls with a faint scent of refrigerant. It didn’t take long for the air to cool around her and dread sank in as the temperature steadily dropped.

The light blinked off and the freezer plummeted into darkness.

The chill poured over her shoulders. She began to shiver.

“Apogee, Control. Check in. Your BPM just spiked.”

She laughed, careful to avoid keying her mic as she did. A careful twitch of her feathers under her suit sent a quick puff of compressed nitrogen through hardened vents in her suit. She couldn’t believe she was here! A trespasser in the infinite void, daring to step hoof off her planet to experience something no pony or creature had ever experienced before. The only thing connecting her to the culmination of equine invention that brought her here was an insulated tether hanging stiffly behind her, nearly blindingly white against the black backdrop of stars.

“Of course it spiked, I’m in actual space!” She flinched at how quickly she’d forgotten radio protocol, sheepishly adding, “Um, over?”

She pictured a few polite grins down at Ground Control. They had to allow her a little levity. If they didn’t, she might pop!

“Apogee, Control.”

A tickle of electricity lit up her spine when her dad’s voice came over the radio, followed quickly by a touch of trepidation at the lecture her younger self often anticipated.

“How’s it look up there?”

A smile brightened her face and she maneuvered herself around until the planet fell into view. “You tell me, dad.”

Every mile of Equus hung beneath her hooves like some ridiculously detailed sculpture. From up here she could see every sunlit mountain, every beach and even the golden clusters of Vhannan city lights as they waited for dawn to cross an ocean that looked like a puddle.

Before launch, she had always assumed being here would give her some understanding of the largeness of the universe but the opposite turned out to be true. Looking down at the home of everything she ever knew made their world seem that much smaller.

“It looks beautiful, kiddo. We’re proud of you.”

Rainbow Dash sipped on a fresh mug of coffee as video from Apogee’s camera played in shades of green on Opal’s desk terminal. Her office was starting to pick up a distinct scent of funk from the three of them being packed in here for so long, and Rainbow was struggling to keep her eyes open.

According to Sledge, rumors were starting to make their way around the Stable about the pony pulled in from the outside. Apparently trotting her up here hadn’t gone unseen, and there was a chance one of Opal’s techs had sent a few private messages of his own. Whispers of a ragged pegasus with a telltale cloud and lightning bolt on her hips somewhat limited the guesses on who their new resident could be. She was going to have to face that at some point, and for a while her fantasy of being just another pony in the crowd would be impossible, but she would cross that bridge when she got there.

For now she was content in knowing the medicine Sledge had given her was working. Blue never seemed to visit on a schedule but she was definitely running late. If the tradeoff meant she had to actually endure physical exhaustion again, she’d take it in a heartbeat.

Apogee’s father could be heard clearing his throat over the comms. “Okay, back to work before I get a call from your mother.”

“Haha, okay. Watch out for traffic down there, mom.”

Rainbow was impressed by how quickly the young mare switched back to her mission, using some kind of thrust mechanism in her suit to pivot on two simultaneous axes until a familiar object drifted into view of her hemispheric visor.

“There it is,” she murmured.

It hung in the black like a Hearth's Warming ornament. Six vast retractable arms spread an array of glittering solar panels like a fisher’s net, each one pivoted toward the sun. Four distinct modules stacked into a squat cylinder, culminating in a pronged tip pointed planetside, had been delivered into orbit in previous uncrewed launches. Rainbow remembered the debates that sprang up around whether it was wise to send ponies up for the final launch, but Jet Stream had been adamant it was necessary due to the delicate nature of the payload. Rainbow had a feeling deep down that it was more about proving a point to the princesses.

Besides, the ponies who still believed they could manipulate the solar system were long overdue for a reality check.

“Apogee, Command. Please copy, HUD is disabled.”

A quiet sigh, followed by the click of her radio toggling open. “Copy. Bringing HUD online.”

The feed lost some resolution as a webwork of numbers, tick marks and floating labels projected themselves onto the glass of her visor. The camera moved with Apogee’s head, fixed somewhere in front of her right ear, and the mare groaned to herself. “Yessir, training wheels on, sir.”

Rainbow snorted and took another sip of coffee. It was bitter and good, but her brain was not used to pulling all-nighters anymore. She blinked, verging on dozing, before taking in a fresh breath of air and sitting up straighter in her seat. Standing beside her, Sledge chuckled. She wasn’t sure if it was at the terminal or at her. Opal sat cross-legged in her swivel chair on the other side, oblivious to anything beyond Apogee’s feed.

It hadn’t been a difficult video to find. Delta Vee’s trail of breadcrumbs turned into road flares once her partition was decrypted. A search of Apogee’s name had led them straight into Delta’s own search history which was dominated by references to her daughter, Jet Stream Industries and several broadcast companies that Rainbow recalled had paid JSI substantial sums for broadcast rights to the mission. As early as the first day following the bombs, Delta had been hard at work attempting to make connections to networks beyond the one Stable-Tec designed. Sifting through a mother’s search for her daughter had been… painful. Delta’s obsession with harvesting as much raw data from the outside as she could didn’t wane.

Nine and a half years of searching later, she found what she had been looking for.

Apogee’s heads up display tracked SOLUS in her visor, flickering notations into her field of view that identified key parts of the satellite. Rainbow sympathised with the young mare’s frustration. Whoever designed the HUD’s layout had done a criminally poor job of prioritizing data.

Little puffs hissed through the speaker as Apogee approached. She spent a moment looking down at the black and white craft that had taken her this far, an aptly named shuttle stage dubbed Cloudbreaker perched to the third module in the stack by a set of docking clamps as if it were a bird clutching a tree by the bark. It allowed Apogee, and by proxy Rainbow Dash, Opal and Sledge, an idea of just how large this satellite truly was.

Apogee ignored the flurry of data and live markers that cluttered her visor and feathered her way back down her umbilical toward SOLUS. The second module, one below the six winglike solar panels, resembled a giant hex nut. Apogee’s HUD denoted it as TRIAXIS OUTPUT MULTIPLIER Mk. VI. Mercifully, once Apogee drew close enough to the module for it to dominate her field of view, most of the unnecessary labels blinked out.

“Securing to module two,” she said, and the camera’s view turned to one of her suited forelegs. A pinpoint sized LED blinked on just above her pastern and her hoof thumped down onto the satellite’s chassis. Three more thuds echoed from the speaker and Apogee’s frame of view converted SOLUS from a wall of modules to a floor. “Secured. MAGs all green.”

“Apogee, Control. Green on fours. Hold for blackout.” A long pause. The footage jumped. “Comms blackout. You are clear to proceed with installation at Containment Chamber 1.”

“Affirmative.”

She moved slowly along the skin of the module until she arrived at a square panel denoted with a narrow, painted white border. A tiny green label popped to life as if to assure her she was in the right place. A frustrated sigh buffeted the microphone and Apogee went to work using a mechanical digit to loosen the four marked screws.

“What kinda gadget is that s’posed to be?” Opal marveled.

“A finger,” Rainbow said.

“Well I finger it looks more like a screwdriver t’me but have it yer way.”

Sledge shushed them, his eyes glued to the screen. Opal shrugged her frail wings and continued to watch as Apogee lifted the panel away on her magnetized boot, then tipped her helmet down until she was looking down the line of her belly.

Six distinctly marked pouches bulged around her waist. Using the fingers of her free hoof, she opened the velcroed flap of the first pouch and lifted out an angular black object. Rainbow recognized the shape and hummed as one of Applejack’s Mass Arcane Storage Talismans, better known as M.A.S.T., reflected Apogee’s helmet across its obsidian surface.

Briefly, the talisman caught the unfiltered light of the sun and the shadow of a dense structure glinted beneath the surface. A frown crossed Rainbow’s muzzle as she sipped from her mug.

Apogee held the talisman toward the open chamber until the stone lept from her grip and snapped into orientation between six equidistant contacts. It settled like a plucked bowstring, blurring along the edges for several seconds before growing still. Seemingly satisfied, Apogee reseated the panel and tightened it down.

“Unit 1 in place. Making my way to Containment Chamber 2.”

“Copy. We see Unit 1.”

Progress grew quicker with the first talisman in place. Rainbow set her empty cup on Opal’s desk and waved off Sledge’s offer for a refill as she watched Apogee pace herself along the satellite’s hull, stopping to repeat the process with the second and third talisman. There was just enough play in her umbilical to peer over SOLUS’s far side where the stubby wing of Cloudbreaker was just barely visible. Then she turned around, retracing her steps so she could repeat the process at the chambers embedded in the opposite side.

“Don’t drop anything out there,” a voice quipped.

“I’ll try not to, commander.”

Apogee paused to wave toward the shuttle’s windows as she passed it, and a crew of ponies whose names Rainbow was ashamed to have forgotten waved back.

“Unit 4 in place.”

“Copy. We see Unit 4.”

“Unit 5 in place. Heading to Chamber 6.”

“Copy. We see Unit 5. Good work.”

Her tether began to draw taut as she reached the last containment chamber. By now her mechanically aided digit passed over the screws like clockwork and she swept the panel aside. Dipping into the sixth pouch, she retrieved the final talisman and lifted it into the sunlight. There, a dark starlike pattern sat clearly transcribed within the obsidian hexagon.

“Huh,” she murmured. “Here’s one for the history books, I guess. Do us proud, little star.”

SOLUS soundlessly snatched the talisman out of her fingers. She sighed and mumbled something about wishing she’d thought of something cooler to say. “Unit 6 in place. How’s it looking?”

A pause. “All units are online and nominal. Return to the shuttle and standby.”

“Copy. Making my way back now.”

She turned and began retracing the white line of her umbilical, careful not to walk over the containment chambers on her way back. Cloudbreaker appeared to rise up below her hooves as she walked. The airlock door, outlined in black, waited for her above the shuttle’s right wing. Rainbow heard her sigh again and it didn’t take a psychologist to understand why. She didn’t want the spacewalk to end.

Her movement forward stopped, and in defiance of her instructions, she paused long enough to turn her visor to follow the pronged tip of SOLUS toward the planet below. Hundreds of miles below where she stood, a vast array of mirrors in the Equestrian southeast stood ready to receive its first delivery of concentrated sunlight. A source of plentiful, inexpensive energy would finally become a reality in full spite of the monarch that so stubbornly opposed it. The resource shortage that prompted Equestria to declare war would be over.

Rainbow felt a knot forming in her chest, her eyes on the timestamp burned into the footage. Pieces of a puzzle she didn’t know existed were coming together. At the same moment Apogee stood in awe of the planet turning in front of her, Rainbow had been sitting in Scootaloo’s office at the bottom of Stable-Tec HQ for a meeting neither of them remembered rescheduling. Fascination and dread mingled freely as she anticipated what was coming.

She squirmed in her chair. Was this what Delta wanted them to see? The bombs fell. Seeing them from space, as morbidly interesting as that was, didn’t change what happened. What was the point?

Chinning her comm switch, she grinned like a filly down at the dark ocean sliding out of the east horizon. Night had fallen over the Griffinstone coastline and pockets of dim lamplight glittered up from their mountain homes. “We’re coming over the Celestial Sea, commander. Didn’t you say you have gryphons in your family?”

Spearhead’s tinny voice popped into her earpiece. “My brother-in-law, yeah. My sister moved to the North Aeries to live with him. Good bird, but he could always call more. Hint hint, Tawny.”

Apogee snorted over the open channel, joining Spearhead’s well meaning rumble of a laugh. She imagined hundreds of miles below there was a skygazing gryphon whose ears were burning right about now. But as she opened her mouth to continue the international ribbing, Keys hopped onto the channel.

“Sorry, Apogee, Flight Control says they want you back in the airlock ASAP and need to borrow the commander for a minute. Thanks.”

Disappointment dimmed her smile, but not as much as Keys’ curt tone. Sure, he was just following orders, but he didn’t need to get snippy. With a resigned sigh she turned away from the lazily turning globe and toward the descent shuttle.

She picked up her hoof and set it down. Then she blinked, turning her attention to the spot she had stepped. She could feel vibrations as if she’d dropped a hoof on the surface of a gong. Had she done that? Her HUD wasn’t warning her of anything she couldn’t step on. The skin wasn’t marked either. But the more she concentrated, the more she could feel it. A steady, growing drone travelling through SOLUS’s skin and resonating in her vacuum suit.

“Control, Apogee,” she said. “I’m feeling a vibration.”

A pause. Her frown deepened as it dragged on.

“Control, Apogee. Please copy.”

Silence stretched. Then, “Apogee, Control. We have a situation.”

She could hear raised voices coming over the comm. Among them was her dad’s pleading for calm. Her heartbeat ticked up.

“Apogee, Control. We need…” Hesitation. She could hear him swallow. “Can you see Cloudsdale from your position?”

Confused, she peered across the void toward the magnificent ornament that was their planet. Equestria’s west coast was just beginning to curve beyond the horizon, but despite the shallow angle and the whorls of clouds that would have otherwise made finding Cloudsdale like finding a needle in a haystack… she saw it.

Or, she saw where it usually was, marked by a pinprick of pale green light that pushed away the clouds like a drop of soap in oil. It took several seconds for her to realize what she was seeing. When it finally clicked, the breath lodged in her throat. “Oh no.”

“Apogee, Contr… not have vis... ou copy?”

“D-do, um…” The words tangled in her mouth. “Cop-copy, Control. I copy. I’m seeing an explosion northwest of Canterlot.”

A piercing light winked into silent existence on the east coast. Manehattan.

“Control, what’s going-”

Spearhead’s harried voice broke over the comm. “Control we have - ah! - an emergency on the shuttle! Keys loaded a holotape into the flight computer and I’m locked out! Apogee, I need you in the airlock now!”

“...ntrol… firmed bale… det… ati… loudsdale, Mane… an, Tro… dam…”

Tears welled in the corners of her eyes as another emerald mushroom sprouted from the Equestrian countryside, then another. Spearhead barked over the comm for her to move but she was too paralyzed to even think let alone walk. This was it. The headlines in the papers accusing Vhanna of stealing balefire technology had been true after all. Every day of the last several years had grown worse and worse just to culminate in this.

Her throat hitched. They’d crossed the finish line. SOLUS was meant to promise a new future to not only Equestria, but to every creature who wanted it. This machine that her mom and dad had been willing to work on together after decades of hating one another was supposed to fix everything.

Fire bloomed on Equestria’s west horizon and the popping static from Ground Control went silent. A deep permeating numbness swallowed her as she watched the tiny mushroom expanding over Las Pegasus. Jet Stream Aerospace had been hit and she knew, deep down, that her dad had just died.

Spearhead yelled over the comm. She only distantly understood what was happening inside the shuttle. A fight had broken out. Keys had done something to the flight computer. It all felt so unimportant now. Distant. She was just one pony, alone, orbiting a dying world. Her mission was over. A failure.

Apogee didn’t register when her ears popped or when the umbilical disconnect warning flashed on her HUD. Glancing at the ship, she saw the connection point drifting away from its port beside the airlock. It had been ejected. The outer airlock had been sealed. Through the forward cockpit windows she could see Spearhead at the controls, blood clinging to his face, yelling at the computer and through the comm at the same time. She tipped her chin toward the toggle switch in her helmet, vaguely aware her suit had switched over to the six or so hours of recyclable oxygen stored in the tanks on her back, and turned off her HUD. A flick of her ear dislodge her earpiece, and Spearhead's voice grew distant as it floated free on its wire. A shuddering sigh passed her lips as the distractions faded.

The steady hum coming from SOLUS was a strange comfort. She didn’t know what it was doing. Maybe it would blow up. Probably not.

A deep thud rippled through its superstructure and a strange motion caught the corner of her eye. Cloudbreaker was on the float. The docking clamps had released it back into space. She watched as it drifted, pushed away by gentle white puffs of nitrogen. Spearhead's beaten face pressed against the cockpit window, his eyes wide with fear as he watched the distance growing between them. The shuttle was flying itself. There was nothing any of them could do, so she didn’t try.

Great jets of gas wrenched the shuttle around like a filly’s toy until the engines pointed retrograde. For several long seconds, Cloudbreaker hung there as if to give her one last chance to cross the chasm between them. Time ran out. The engines fired at max burn and she watched the shuttle streak away, the engine bells glowing orange, yellow, then white hot.

She stood there, watching them fade against a backdrop of uncaring stars. Watching Equestria gently bend over the horizon as balefire boiled away the clouds, charred its cities and poisoned the soil. Her parents were dead. No one was coming to save her.

No one was alive who could.

So she waited.

The minutes passed. Equestria drifted out of sight, replaced by the vast Celestial Sea and the moonlit continent on the other side. The lights of Vhanna lifted out of the east and she felt a jealous anger rise within her. How much had they stolen? How long had it taken for them to catch up with Equestrian science? Who helped them? How did nobody know what they were building? Why did no one try to stop them?

She watched the streetlights of their cities slide triumphantly below. Glittering grids of roads, highways and untouched infrastructure crossed the sprawling savannah as if nothing were wrong. As if ponies weren’t dead and dying by the millions just an ocean away.

On a whim, she toggled her radio back on. A grim curiosity gripped her in that moment and she scanned through the frequencies, wanting to know exactly why they did it. What finally pushed Vhanna over the edge? She wanted to hear them say it. She wanted to hear them celebrate so she could give herself permission to hate them. More than that, she wanted there to be a record of what they had done so that no matter how hard they worked to make their genocide palatable, a facet of truth would be forever beyond their reach.

Dead air hissed from her floating earpiece. She twitched her feather, searching for whichever frequencies the zebras used for public broadcasts. Without Cloudbreaker she wouldn’t be able to transmit, but she could still listen.

Her earpiece buzzed through an active frequency. She backtracked, finessing her way until she could decipher the speaker’s grainy words. A heavily accented male voice, practically shouting into the microphone. Apogee scoffed, thinking at first he was boasting his people’s victory over Equestria. But the more she listened, the more her expression changed. The more panic she could hear in the zebra’s voice.

“...vernment is not responsible for the attacks in Equestria! If you can hear this, I beg you think before seeking vengeance! Vhanna was not capable of this attack nor would I ever authorize such a thing! The lives lost today in Equestria are a tragedy that we mourn with you and we are dedicated to providing as much aid to the Equestrian people as they require! If there are any of you able to reach our shores to assist in the rescue effort, Port Sahadi and Port Berberi are being made available to all Equestrian civilian and military personnel with logistical experience. Please understand that Vhanna does not condone the atrocities committed against Equestria today and that we stand ready to render…”

SOLUS twitched.

Blinking, she frowned at the dim puffs of gas fluttering from the maneuvering ports ringing its pointed tip. The low hum rose to a deep, teeth-shaking groan and she stepped back on reflex, unsure what was happening. Emerald light reflected off the polished surface of the prongs as they tilted toward the first city passing below.

“Wh…”

A blinding column of roiling fire speared through the void and plummeted into the city below. Apogee screamed as the radiative heat from the beam cooked the front of her suit, staining it char grey. Then, as soon as it began, the blazing spire winked out. The roaring mechanisms within SOLUS quieted.

On the surface below where a nightlit city once stood, a gargantuan dome of sickly green fire boiled away the dark. She watched in silent horror as the shockwave rippled through farmland and across highways leaving behind a sea of emerald fire. The broadcast spat static, then died.

SOLUS maneuvered, stabilized, and fired again. Less than a second and the beam vanished, and another city went with it. Apogee felt herself start to shake as the second shockwave met the first hurling a widening sheet of earth and debris into the air. And again, tiny puffs of gas leveled the killing tip of SOLUS toward the third city. And the fourth. And the fifth.

She watched Vhanna drown in fire, too terrified to move. Too stunned to back away from the heat that cooked her suit and left the sour taste of tarnished bits in her mouth because she understood with devastating clarity what she was seeing. What she’d been tricked into doing.

SOLUS had been fed balefire.

The feed from Apogee’s helmet stopped.

Rainbow leaned forward, her muzzle held in her feathers, as the images of Vhanna turning to ash replayed in her mind. She knew the stallion’s voice she and Sledge heard pleading over the radio for peace. It’d been Ambassador Abyssian. Fluttershy had met him once upon a time, and she’d sworn to his decency more times than anyone wanted to hear back then. He’d begged Equestria not to retaliate because he knew the score. He’d seen the same propaganda Rarity’s ministry cooked up in the loyalist papers. He knew the story she was trying to sell Equestria and how readily its terrified populace would cling to it as gospel.

She’d known it too. In her heart of hearts she knew Equestria was the only government in possession of balefire technology. She just hadn’t slowed down enough to consider what it meant.

“Vhanna didn’t do it,” Rainbow murmured.

Sledge looked at her with furrows in his brow. “What?”

She shook her head, hating the words but speaking them anyway because they were true.

“The zebras didn’t drop the bombs,” she said, eyes fixed on the darkened terminal. “Equestria did.”

Next Chapter: Chapter 34: Turning Stones Estimated time remaining: 37 Hours, 27 Minutes